Guild Wars 2

I tried it the other night as well, and you’re right about rangers: they just pinball you about like crazy and you can’t even hit them. It’s like a hard counter to the build.
Was also kinda disappointed with the damage against warriors. Takes ages to kill them, which really should not be the case with a berserker amulet. Everything else melted.

Yes, RP is great for when you get jumped, but think about why it’s great: because the professions who have the capacity to jump you, CC you, and burst you down DON’T HAVE ANY STABILITY. The advent of the celestial sustain meta since April has meant that, to overcome the endless healing of all the warriors, engis, and eles, bursty builds have had to go full-out burst, with no defensive utilities at all. They relied on sheer DPS burst as their only defence, killing the enemy or forcing them to run before they could counter them. The one exception was S/D thief, who, in addition to burst, had endless evades at their disposal. And since most CC by the warriors and engis was attacks, if they were evaded they wouldn’t connect, so, again, they didn’t need stability.

OK, so here’s my theory about the pre-patch meta: if sustain was rock and burst was paper, the necro definitely fit the role of scissors: then full-out burst builds designed to counter the tough warriors just weren’t equipped to deal with RP, as it triggers passively, can’t be evaded, can’t be dodged, and can’t be blocked. No Mesmer ever brought Mantra of Concentration cause they didn’t need it to kill people: they’d unload their burst from range and blink away before the payback came. Thieves too, would jump around, evading and stealthing, and avoiding all the hammer blows, magnets, and big ol’ bombs. But Reaper’s didn’t care that you were stealthed when you dazed me with your sword 1 or feared me with your skull, it hits you anyway. Just today I was fighting a shatter mesmer in team queue, he stealthed himself to stomp one of my teammates: halfway through it he decided he wasn’t sure if he could finish stomping before I could finish reviving, so he hits Diversion to stun me and interrupt my stomp. Naturally, RP procs, even though he’s stealthed, he gets feared off, I finish reviving, and we kill him.

Now, obviously these builds are still being used, they’ll continue to be used, and they’re still vulnerable to RP. But I think in the medium term there’ll be a few fewer S/D thieves and shatter mesmers around. The “anti-sustain” role will be taken over by ranger, who has multiple effective counters against fear (not to mention that they can CC us from outside RP’s range). In that meta, there are fewer targets susceptible to RP (any warrior with half a brain will pop an appropriate stance before introducing his hammer to your face), so the opportunity cost of not having stability yourself massively increases. For duels etc, RP will still be effective, as, even if they expect it the first time and pop stability before engaging, it’ll probably catch them out when it comes out of cooldown again. But for 5v5 matches, I think people will gravitate elsewhere.

Does RP even work against point blank shot? It does fear pbaoe 360 units, and point blank shot has a 1200 range when traited. (despite its name, ironically)

Oh and the fears are just 3" including Master of Terror.

Where the hell do you get your candy?

Yeah I agree that staff isn’t worth it since the Putrid Mark nerf, but a lot of people have been running it anyway (with axe/focus on the offset). Anyway, my question wasn’t “will people now startt runnning it?” but will it give MMs enough extra mobility to actually be viable at high level?

CratZ.6270:

How about this:
Make signet of undeath into an elite skill.
Then buff the passive LF generation (maybe 1% / sec, open for discussion )
and make the active give a chunk of LF (15-20%) while also reviving team mates in 600 radius. The numbers are just arbitrary here and balance discussion needed to adjust.

I always thought this would be a great idea too! Especially since, because of how powerful the active is, it’s the kind of skill that HAS to have a long cooldown whether it’s in an elite or a utility slot (otherwise you win every team fight ever). So it fits with the game’s philosophy of elites that are basically just a very long recharge iwin button.

The passive DEFINITELY needs a buff if it were an elite, it’s pathetic. The active could be made elite-worthy in 2 ways: either reduce its cast time down to 1.5" so you can pre-empt a stomp (and increase its aoe a bit cause it’s incredbily hard to target), or, preferably, turn it into something like the elementalist’s Glyph of Renewal: long cast time, but revives allies in aoe within 1,200 of you. That way even if you can’t cast it faster than a stomp you can start pre-casting when your ally is about to go down, and because it’s a huge pbaoe you don’t need to ground-target – just be near where they’re dying.

It’s an interesting idea, a berserker/DS build with actual sustain! Won’t have the raw damage of the meta build but that’s kinda gimmicky, too easy to lock down and destroy. And it’s fairly flexible too: I guess you could make it tankier by going Knights or Cavalier’s (in fact, because of the Death 25 trait, you’d only lose a minimal amount of power if you swapped to one of those two! ) or burstier by dropping 10 points from Curses to get Deathly Perception. Less life force (marginally) for more burst. Oh, or you could use Valkyries and use that healing power, since you’ll be healing literally all the time you’re in DS. Not that the regen scales great.

Also occurs to me that if you went for DP you could also drop Curses completely for Reaper’s Might or Spiteful Spirit. Both would benefit from the boon duration, though it’d be slightly less defensive with the weakness gone.

SPESHAL.9106:

In theory, if you are so low on health that you could eat a killing blow, wouldn’t you already be in DS if you had enough LF???

In theory, if your DS is on cooldown, that means you just got out of it. Are you leaving DS with LF remaining? Are you building up enough LF during the cooldown period for this trait to even make a difference if it procs?

Well I guess the theory is you get knocked out of DS due to LF running out, pop your spectrals, eat a couple hits in the face to build LF up again, and then when that last hit that would’ve killed you lands you get popped back into DS even though it’s on cooldown. And remember, he’ll have regenerated a bit of health while in DS due tot he trait (pathetic amounts though, the healing aspect of this needs a buff), so he won’t be a total sitting duck when he comes out.

I’m sure they’ll eventually create 2-3 different models for each class to choose from. Maybe even “premium” models, letting people choose from among the fancier armour kits to represent them. There’s folks who care enough even about how their OPPONENTS see them that they’d pay a few gems for the option to appear different even to people with standard models enabled. Give it time, they’ve got 1 basic model per class and that’s not working properly yet, it’ll be awhile before they’ve gotten it running smoothly enough to roll out to the whole game. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t restrict it to custom arenas only for the initial rollout.

I’m not sure I would like to see the option extended to spectators though. I know it would make matches easier to watch (though it’s less of an issue since you’ve got a shoutcaster following and describing the play-by-play), but a lot of high level players care a lot about what their character looks like. They want to build up a “brand” and they’d like stream viewers to be able to recognise them.

I hope they wise up and listen to you man, it’s one thing when a developer ignores their players (though even that is bad), but a whole order of magnitude worse when they’re ignoring their tournament partners.

You mean “Content Guide”? In the General tab? I had it set to default. Just logged in and disabled it. Are you saying the pvp map markers are turning up because of that? Was this intentional?

Black Powder in its previous version was directly comparable to Well of Darkness
Let me restate, for emphasis: a weapon skill which costs the amount of initiative that you generate in 6" had almost as good functionality (1" less duration, slightly smaller radius) as a utility skill with a 60" recharge. I mean, be reasonable here, it was an obvious target for a nerf.

Nimrud.5642:

For S/D its no question. Flanking strike not triggering LS when out of range is somewhat acceptable (still I dont think it was gamebreakingly OP before), but not triggering due to blinding or blocking is just stupid imho. So the moaning about S/D being ruined has a basis.

It’s logical though: it’s a chained attack. Every other skill like that in the game doesn’t progress tot he 2nd skill in the chain if the first doesn’t hit. However I agree with you in part: Larcenous Strike wasn’t the real problem in the s/d build. For me, the problem was that, with so many evasions, s/d thieves were impossible to pin down. So you couldn#’t counterpressure them to get them of, they could just back off to regenerate some initiative and keep coming back until you ran out of cooldowns and dodges. So, if it were me, I would have put a higher initiative price on Flanking Strike, and not put any additional restrictions on Larcenous Strike.

I don’t like them personally. They obscure important information, such as whether the point is being contested/captured, who is on that point, and how many people are there.

I know you can also see capture point status at the top of the screen, but the minimap was a much better way to keep track of that information because you coiuld also see everyone’s position: now all that information is hidden, because the event marker obscures the entire point and all the profession icons.

I appreciate the intent to guide newbies to where they need to go, but instead it just spawns all sorts of random places (capture points that your team is already capping uncontested, over minor 1v1s between points, and once right outside the enemy team’s spawn for me), so it completely fails at its intended goal AND makes reading the minimap harder.

If you guys wish to improve the minimap, please work on the bug whereby dead players are still shown on the map until they respawn instead.

It’s just a gradual rollout, I’m sure they’ll expand it to solo queue eventually. At any rate, it’s not working for me and many other people, and it would cause massive crashes in the first few days after hte patch, so chill: they’re trying to get it working right, then they’ll expand it as appropriate!

I have been noticing many disturbing signs and portents lately. Everywhere I look, nothing is as it seems. First, here:

Helo frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Then, here:

hey man thanks for responding. idk what vee wee is but i tried playing turret spec on my engi but i read that it’s a bad build and man they were right. the only people i could beat were people as new or as bad as me.

And then, most bafflingly:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

I think the evidence speaks plainly: CONSPIRACY!

Ehecatl.9172:

I was actually in a hotjoin match. 5 rangers vs 5 necros. Not even kidding, that’s how the teams ended up.

Rangers got beaten pretty bad, but it was an interesting match. Sadly most of those rangers were longbow snipers and had no condition cleansing.

Ah, it’s just like the good old days! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydtoztX4f9M

(EDIT: except the necros got beaten in that video. But otherwise EXACTLY like the good old days… including the RNG! :p)

Blu, it would be SO EASY for ANet to give custom arenas a /set_timer command. The reason they won’t do it is because they can’t enforce a “perfect” pause state for the game. That is, everything remains frozen in place as soon as there’s a disconnect. But these things are trifles! If you simply make everyone restart at spawn when the game pauses, maybe one time red team will get a slight unfair advantage, maybe the next time blue team will, but all that is NOTHING compared to not having to deal with disconnects and 4v5s at high level prestigious tournaments. You guys run and cast the tournaments, if you lobby for it they’ll cave and give it to you. We don’t need a perfect pause, we just need something that’s better than nothing at all, which is what we have now!

I know nobody will be using minions in pvp until Flesh of the Master stops despawning our pets, but with the buff to Locust Swarm, I thought I’d just poll how many of you will be dropping your foci (or off-hand daggers for the rebels among you) for warhorns now. The problem with MM has always been limited mobility, so I’m guessing once the minion bugs are ironed out the new warhorn will enable MMs to actually contribute to a match in more ways than simply killing anyone who comes to the point they’re afking on.

I’m not sure it’ll ever make them into decent mid-bunkers, as the aoe from all the elementalists and hambows will kill off the minions within seconds, but in some maps like temple you could viably run over to reinforce mid and still have enough speed to get back to close when needed.

If you see a lot of other necros on the enemy team, really the best thing you can do is swap out Reaper’s for FITG. Laugh while htey waste their passive fear procs on yoru stability! Swap out master of terror for close to death for extra laughs and 50% stability uptime, and taunt them by popping into DS and running back and forth through their spectral walls :p

Ah, that’d explain why they didn’t despawn when I tested – I didn’t have that traited.

Yeah I really am not sure the word “overnerf” is appropriate. The zerker necros are still getting similar amounts of damage. Sure, they no longer have the chance for lucky air/sigil procs to one-shot people with, but that was ridiculous anyway. But I used to use Lich when wvw zerging and getting 5k crits in Knights gear – that stuff is just not on! You can’t have a guy in Knights gear getting those kinds of numbers out of an aoe piercing skill! I don’t care if it’s on a 180" cooldown, it’s silly!

This place might as well be the bugs forum! :p

I agree that the cooldown on DS is way shorter than all the other examples you listed, but you have to go all the way down SR to get a grandmaster before you even have stability! Meanwhile, you’re comparing it against things that require no trait investment at all, only a utility slot in the case of the ele skills, or not even that in the case of mesmers and guardians (who have on-demand distortion and aegis). Let’s face it, FitG is sub-bar, and most of us only shroudstomp to soak up the cleave damage that gets thrown over corpses. The test would be if they made that change and suddenly everyone dropped Reaper’s Precision to get FITG. I guarantee you they won’t.

Preaching to the choir VeeWee, everyone’s been begging for that sort of restriction forever and they just won’t listen.

It’s a 0" cast time skill, so it should not interrupt actions. Plain as. This should be treated as a bug, just like Spectral Armour or Armour of Earth interrupting stomps would.

Really weird about the minions! You should definitely post on the bugs forum.

Bhawb.7408:

So yeah, Flesh Wurm definitely dies when I get downed. Not sure if its for everyone because that’s harder to test, but its true.

Is this in pve or pvp? When I tested in heart of the mists it definitely stayed alive.

Zietlogik.6208:

Combustive shot is a duration skill, so it counts as a hit regardless, because of the field it leaves behind.

If that’s the intended functionality then it’s a joke of a nerf.

Either cleansing ire should only proc on the initial attack, not on subsequent hits, OR (and this is my preference), the skill should be changed to a single-target projectile which leaves a field centered on its target behind only if the initial target is hit. The latter option should have the additional effect of curbing the warrior’s might generation capacity.

Me and my teammates experienced crashes on Temple, Forest, and Foefire, while in team arenas. Some of us were using standard models, some were not. Client crashed again while trying to reload into the match (ie. got to character selection, got “heart of the mists” loading screen, got “legacy of the foefire” loading screen, crash) multiple times, not loading until either I had changed characters or match ended.

Anyone else got the bug since the patch? I haven’t so far.

Zerker is better in 99% of instances but I’m sure there’s a few niche builds that rely on on-crit effects for whom assassin’s would be at least an option, if not optimal.

Thanks for getting on this so quickly, it was really annoying.

While you’re at it, can you make it so activating Death Shroud doesn’t interrupt stomps/revives too?

Nah dude, THIS is Masochism!

I’m down with my minions and they still rockin’ it.

Sorry, I’ll get my coat. I mean my minions don’t die when I get downed, just tested in HOTM.

The bonus is still there (see pic), it’s just a UI bug.
Phew

I can’t confirm that Lich Form’s precision bonus is also a UI bug though….

That’s also the case, I was gonna make a separate post but you pre-empted me

I don’t know if it’s just a UI bug (the bonus is still there but doesn’t show in your attributes window), or if the bonuses have been removed, intentionally or by accident.

EDIT: I can confirm that, in the case of Plague, this is a UI bug, and the Toughness bonus is still there, but it’s not showing in the stats window. See pic for confirmation. I don’t know if this is also the case with the Precision bonus from Lich though.

I can confirm that the bonus Toughness doesn’t show up on your attributes panel when you go into Plague form, whether in pve or in pvp. I don’t know for sure that it’s not just a UI error: I would need someone to come hit me with a steady weapon to check that for sure. If anyone’s in-game right now and on EU servers whisper me and we can test it, it would take 3".

HOWEVER, even if the bonus Toughness really is gone, this could be a bug rather than a stealth-nerf. After all, Lich still grants bonus Vitality. I’ve therefore started a bug thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Plague-Form-bonus-Toughness-not-there
Please go bump it.

Entering Plague Form no longer grants a bonus to your Toughness attribute, whether in pvp or pve.

I know the Power bonus was removed, but, since Lich Form still grants bonus Vitality, I suspect this one is a bug.

It’s one of our strongest offensive utilities, it doesn’t need a buff. I agree that it’s strange that the active buffs your power whereas the passive inflicts conditions, but I think that’s cause it was originally designed as a way to give power necros access to condis they can’t easily get. Conditionmancers can inflict most of those with a standard build.

Wait… so you they made a GM trait that lets you essentially use DS as an Aegis on enter (but only on a fatal blow and with a 30" cd)? I guess that makes it more interesting than I thought, but it’s still no way worth of grandmaster.

Also, there’s every possibility that’s unintentional and will be hotfixed in 2 days…

Xae.7204:

They’re all pretty bad right now. I would put a Signet there instead of the Elites if I could.

Plague is still great in pvp, makes you tankier for those few seconds you need to survive while help arrives. I normally run Golem when I’m queueing solo and Plague only in organised groups (where you can actually EXPECT help when you call for it), but with the nerfs to charge I might switch to Plague full time.

Yeah, it’s not surprising at all. And in fact our Fleshy was a worse offender than stuff like Fiery Rush, because even if they got you up against a wall you could dodge most of it. Golem knocks you down, and knocks you down REPEATEDLY, so unless you already have stability you can’t dodge out.

Frankly though, I didn’t like the other wallrush nerfs either, I consider it a bit of a skillshot to be able to get someone up against a wall like that and punish them for it. I know the punishment was, ahem, perhaps disproportionate, especially considering that some capture points in pvp are very cramped and even with the best positioning in the world it’s easy to be feared near to a wall. All in all though, I think a much fairer nerf would be to allow the golem to deliver the final strike in the charge regardless of how far it moves, and only nerf the repeated small strikes. That’s how the other wallrush skills work, after all – their final strikes weren’t affected at all.

Hmm… definitely nothing about crit chance nerf in the patch notes, you should probably post in the bugs forum as it could be unintentional. It could also be a stealth-nerf, of course, I don’t know, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt so I can rage with that little bit extra indignation afterwards. :p

I mean… realistically you weren’t gonna stay in it for the full 10", so for the first 5" it’s a 25% buff. But yeah, when you consider ally healing in big boss fights in pve where you don’t often get knocked out of the well it’s definitely a nerf.

The good news is that with its duration reduced it would no longer be ridiculously overpowered if they turned it into a water field, so maybe we can start lobbying for that change! It’s a very reasonable change, both thematically and mechanically, as most healing skills in the game (except guardian’s) are water fields: and it’s a sodding WELL kitten , and they do say blood is thicker than water! :p

Yeah if it prioritises fear it’ll be a free stunbreak. Still, let’s see how it goes, my guess is only 1 condition and 10" cooldown so it won’t be that powerful. And my guess is warriors, mesmers and possibly thieves are the only ones who will bother to use it, most other professions need their sigil slots for other things.

PS. ironically called “GvG”

If you want larger scale fights you should find some of the wvw guilds on your server. A lot of them run organised 15v15 up to 25v25 fights against guilds from other servers.

Aomine.5012:

manveruppd.7601:

I don’t really think it’s an exploit – no more than ranger swapping warhorn in and out to give swiftness or ele swapping staff in and out to blast some lightning fields. If they decide that sort of stuff isn’t on they’ll lock weapons and utilities for the pre-match 10" countdown.

They simply couldn’t do that because not everyone join right away. Some of them wait until last minute because they are away or they’re in the middle of other Hot-join match and they still want to switch around according to enemy’s team composition.

Yeah but if you knew that your build would be locked then you just wouldn’t wait until the last minute, would you? You’d just go 10" earlier!

Also, slightly off-topic, but regardless of whatever else is done pre-match, I do think 0% LF is way too harsh. 25% like it used to be is fairer.

I don’t really think it’s an exploit – no more than ranger swapping warhorn in and out to give swiftness or ele swapping staff in and out to blast some lightning fields. If they decide that sort of stuff isn’t on they’ll lock weapons and utilities for the pre-match 10" countdown.

Slow and steady incremental changes is ok at frequent intervals. Slow and steady at 6 months apart isn’t incremental, it’s glacial.

Ah right, sorry, got what you meant now.