Guild Wars 2

The V.8759:

The axe change is kind of a big damage increase actually.

It’s decent, but the problem with Deathly Claws is that, unlike, say, Life Siphon, you need to maintain facing throughout the channel, meaning it can be avoided too easily, without even dodging. The target can just walk through you, and the channel will not track.

I would prefer that they reworked it so it worked like Life Siphon (where if you have LOS at the startof the channel it keeps hitting), rather than giving it a damage boost.

Alternatively, they could’ve turned it into a cone-shaped aoe, like elementalist’s Drake Breath (dagger 2 fire), so it’d be harder to simply step out of it. Though that would probably be OP at its current damage level and at 600 range, so we’d be talkign about a total redesign.

I think you misunderstood him, Lopez: your MMR IS personal. I reckon that’s the problem, that it’s unsuitable for calculating your skill in a team game.

My suspicion is that this is also the reason you get people managing to climb to the top of the leaderboards with only a few games. Picture this: high ranked team gets a disconnect, gets beaten by a low-ranked team because of it. Result: the low-ranked team’s MMR rises hugely, because the game doesn’t take account of the 4v5. Alternatively, 1 extremely high ranked player gets teamed up with 4 complete beginners, they drag him down and he loses. Result: the opposing team gain massively in MMR, because the high-ranked player pulled his team’s average MMR up hugely.

An individual MMR system would work if the game mode was 1v1, but for something as involved as conquest, where having 1 complete beginner who doesn’t know that you don’t need 2 people to stand on a point to cap it, and with a revive system that means that a clueless person getting themselves killed can give free revives to ALL downed players in the opposing team, it means that having a bad player on your team can actually be worse than having 1 LESS player on your team, MMR is ineffective.

The only sensible and reliable system would be a TEAM-based MMR. And since each account can be in multiple guilds, a team-based rating can work without the problems we had back in GW1 with smurf guilds and the risk of tanking your guild’s rating. So come on, bring the guild back in the guild wars and give us team-based ratings and leaderboards!

Oh, interesting, I hadn’t realised he was so high-ranked. Clearly this guy is not as ignorant and stupid as he pretends to be, he’s just blatantly and shamelessly trolling, and you should all STOP FEEDING HIM.

@OP I didn’t realise this also happens in solo queue. It happens a lot in team queue and I find it frustrating, but I thought that solo queue always (eventually) works.

To be fair to ANet, the reason this happens is so if 5 people join as a group, any of the 5 can cancel the queuing by leaving the group. Maybe they need to change their build or something for instance. It’s sensible that it should happen in those cases. But if 5 people all join solo, why the hell should it cancel for everyone if 1 person leaves?

Also, sometimes when I’m queued, the game automatically kicks me off the queue. I don’t know if it’s related to this (maybe everyone left my queue or something), but I don’t think it’s the case, because I’ve had it happen even when we were queued as a group. In other words, 5 of us submit as a group, wait around, then a few minutes later notice that we’re no longer queued up, and none of us had cancelled.

As a quick-fix, until you figure outwhy this happens and fix it, could you make it so the Arenas window opens automatically when you are removed from the queue for any reason?

It’s not localised, people on both sides of the Atlantic have been having issues, ranging from lag and skill activation delay, to mass disconnects. I personally am in the UK and play with a lot of central europeans and there have been nights when we were all having problems, so it’s definitely not localised to a specific country or ISP.

Bhawb.7408:

I never said it should be nerfed. I never said it was OP. But that doesn’t mean its not one of the best removal skills in the entire game, because it is. It is a conditional full cleanse on a far lower CD than other full cleanses. And just because people underestimate Swarm doesn’t mean it isn’t, also, an extremely strong removal.

Well that was kinda my point, that Deathly Swarm is, in fact, almost as good as Putrid Mark, despite the fact that a. it has a lower cooldown, so you’d expect it to be proportionately weaker, and b. it’s on an offhand weapon, giving you the flexibility to combine with with a high damage mainhand if you so want to, whereas Putrid Mark is on a low-DPS 2-handed weapon focussed on support and utility, so you’d expect it to offer more support and utility than DS.

I’m nt saying that Putrid Mark isn’t stronger, after all, you can trait it to be unblockable, it can transfer blind, it does more direct damage, and it can hit up to 5 targets instead of 3 (resulting in more conditions transferred off you). But it’s not so much stronger as to justify a 38% longer recharge (when both untraited), and the fact that it’s part of a weapon with mediocre damage. Staff is supposed to make up for its crappy damage by giving allies regen, giving them a poison field to combo with, fearing enemies off of them, and Putrid Mark was similarly originally intended to provide ally support by cleansing them. Instead of toning down the skill and retaining the ally support, they just removed it altogether and made it selfish, and incongruous with the rest of the weapon set. It sucks.

Muchacho.2390:

I am pretty sure deathly swarm can transfer blind it was bug fixed long time ago…

It consistently misses when I’m blinded, happened to me hundreds of times, including recently. A few times I hilariously got blinded while the swarm projectile was in flight, which I thought was impressive! :p If it’s supposed to transfer it then it must be bugged. I’m happy to jump into a hotjoin server and test it just to make sure though.

I wouldnt say DS is better for immobilize. For example if you oppnent immobilizes you and goes behind you DS doesnt work due its facing requirment. Putrid mark however can be cast behind you (the full 1200range), though it may be a little hard due the kamera but binding the look behind you key helps.^^

Ah, actually, if you cast DS while immobilised YOU ACTUALLY TURN TO FACE YOUR OPPONENT! Don’t know if it’s a feature or a bug (probably a bug), and I didn’t know either until someone posted a video of themselves doing it a few months ago, but it works. You can only do it if you’re not pressing any directional keys while casting though.

As for marks, it’s kinda weird: when you’re moving, yes, they don’t require facing and you can cast them behind you, like you said. But when you’re immobilised, for some reason you NEED facing. You can only cast them within your front 90 degree arc, and sometimes I have trouble casting them even at my feet because your front arc is so narrow there. The only reliable trick I’ve found: move the mouse cursor to your skillbar or over the target display, so it defaults at casting at your feet. I have no idea whether they’re supposed to need facing all the time (so the way they work when you’re moving is bugged), or if they’re supposed to not need it (so they’re bugged if you’re immobilised), but they can’t possible be working as intended.

Regarding pve, I don’t see why they don’t simply raise the condition limits for bosses. Make it 30 for elites, scaling up to maybe 75 for massive world bosses. Or even have the limit scale for world bosses, since the encounter scales in difficulty with the number of players participating. I suspect power builds will still outdamage condi builds, but not as dramatically, and aoe conditions will clear adds way faster.

As for necro scepter specifically, I think it’s in a decent place right now. You can build up decent bleed stacks, keep 100% poison uptime, and the quick reapplication means you’ll quickly burn through your opponent’s cleanses. I’d prefer #2 (Grasping dead) to apply torment instead of bleeding, as more condis make it harder for enemies to completely nullify your damage (I’d even take a nerf to Grasping Dead’s overall damage if it came from torment rather than bleeding, as it’s more likely to stick), but even in its current form it’s ok.

The only skill I’d seriously redesign is #3 (unholy feast), as both its direct damage and its LF generation is really sub-par. IMHO the two functions are not reconsilable, and if you boost both the skill would become OP. You don’t want to allow someone with 0% life force to cast SoS on someone, then do 5k damage with a FoC and jump into DS to fear them. You’d basically be able to burst them down from full HP like that! :p What you want it to do is to do a nice bit of physical damage if your opponent has a lot of conditions, so as to act as a direct damage “finishing move” when they’re low, and to act as a defensive, LF-generating skill the rest of the time, so it actually has a place on your skillbar and you don’t ONLY use it when your opponent is at <10% HP. Don’t have it do both all the time.

Therefore, what I’d do is make both the life force and the extra damage conditional. Do extra damage if your target has more than X conditions on them, OR generate LF if the target has <X conditions on them. Alternatively, make the presence of a specific condition the trigger: poison would be a good one, as the presence of poison usually indicates you’ve been in a fight against a necro for awhile (whereas bleeds proc passively from critical hits, so you might have one on you even if you’ve only just engaged). I’d keep the base damage at around current levels, but I would make the bonus damage from condis be a flat amount, that can’t crit and won’t scale with power. At the moment, even with carrion gear, so you have a bit of power, FoC crits for around 1600 even if cast right after SoS – not great for a “finishing move”. So it could look like this:

Inflict {wpn*1*pow/arm} damage (same as current scaling), and gain 2% LF. For each condition on your target, inflict an additional {10+(levelx3)} damage. If your target has no conditions on them, generate an additional 10% life force.

The above version would generate 12% LF if the target has no conditions, and 2% life force with a bonus 250 damage (which cannot crit) per condition. So against someone with 6 condis on them,you’d do 1500 bonus damage, which cannot crit, plus the base damage of the skill (which tends to be around 300-700 depending on whether you’re hitting a clothie or a heavy and if you’re in rabid or carrion), so if you’ve just feared+SoSed someone you could expect just under 2k damage from it, but no bonus life force.

There’s other things you could do with it, of course. Maybe you could turn it into a mini-heal and have it steal X health for each condition on your target instead. Maybe you could moderately increase the LF generation (say 5% instead of 3%), but halve its recharge time if the target has<4 conditions on them (so you could generate a decent 5% LF every 5", except when you use it as a big damage finisher when you’ve overloaded the target with condis). This was just one idea, but the main point is the LF generation should be increased significantly and the bonus damage slightly, but not in a way that allows you to do both with 1 cast of the skill.

Stop feeding the trolls, they multiply like tribbles.

I’m glad you’re working on ladders, but I feel compelled to point out that GW1 LAUNCHED with them NINE YEARS AGO. GW2 is only now getting them 2 years+ into the game. How many more years will have to pass before you guys finally realise you got it right the first time round and finally reimplement other abandoned GW1 features? 3 years for GvG? 4 for elimination arenas? 5 for a predictable and comprehensible “last in/first out” removal system for boons and conditions? 6 for a guild-based rating system rather than an individual one (it’s a team game after all)?

Seriously Evan, this isn’t directed at you cause you’re not management over there, but whoever made the call to throw out 7 years of GW1 pvp features and start over with nothing made a criminally bad decision and shouldn’t be in charge of an ant farm, much less a game with the sort of budget GW2 took to get made.

You say that, but at its current level it’s similar to Deathly Swarm, and nobody is calling that the SECOND best removal skill in the game. In fact they’re neck and neck: Deathly Swarm has a much lower cooldown, but Putrid Mark can also transfer blind. DS is definitely better if you’re immobilised though: the facing bug with marks means it’s hard to even cast them at your feet when you can’t turn.

Besides, one weapon skill in isolation is no way to balance things: Staff is a weapon with very kitten offence, which you bring along for support and utility, so it’s ok for its defensive skills to be better than equivalent skills on other weapon sets.

Not to sound like a sourpuss, but with every 3rd thread in here being a complaint about 4v5s and the ineffectiveness of the dishonour system, it’s pretty shameless of the OP to come in here and say “I keep missing my matches cause I’m reading articles on the web and FORGET TO CHECK ON THE QUEUE” and then to have the audacity to blame ANet for it too!

The problem is with your attention span, not the developers, and I’d rather Evan devote his time and resources to working on actual features rather than the online equivalent of a baby monitor for people like the OP. Things like that are convenience features, and we’re still lacking critical infrastructure. It seems to me that only someone with a gargantuan sense of entitlement would blame others for the fact that he’s ruining the playing time of his teammates, and insist that time and money be spent reminding him that he COMMITED to playing an arena game. If you consider 5’ to be too excessive a commitment maybe you should stick to hotjoin?

It genuinely was better before the April feature pack, in which they made ranger pets more responsive. I’m wondering if it isn’t the resurgence of a bug, but rather an intentional stealth-nerf.

Disclaimer: plays necro, ergo might be paranoid :p

I also spent WEEKS chucking it at my teammates’ feet thinking I was being helpful and cleansing them before I found out…

Yeah chill and cripple are amazing. Except:
a. if you’re a warrior, running around with dogged march, berserker stance, and guaranteed condi cleansing every 7" with combustive shot
b. if you have any kind of teleport/shadow step, whose range unaffected by snares
c. if there’s a couple of guardians or elementalists amongst the enemy team providing regular pbaoe team cleanses
d. if you’re fighting on a tiny capture point barely larger than the melee range so snared or not the enemy can still catch you
e. if you’re a thief, whose weapon skills have no cooldown and are therefore unaffected by chill

other than that they’re awesome! :p

Rup is fine, the OP is being a bit of a kitten tbh. Karl is a skill balancer and Grouch organises tournaments, neither of them are professional marketing/PR people, and I for one would rather hear things from the mouths of the people working on them rather than from some polished but soulless corporate shill. We don’t need it to be polished and shiny, we just need it to convey information. It does a good job of doing that and I’m grateful you guys put in the time. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m happy with all the news I got on that show, coughBALANCECHANGEScough, but I’m glad we got to hear them in advance

That being said, you should take Grouch’s and Jessica’s swivel chairs away, watching them rocking themselves left and right is incredibly distracting! :p

You guys should absolutely sign up for tournaments. With you dominating US and Cheese Mode dominating EU maybe it will finally send a message to whoever’s been in charge of balancing this game.

@OP if you think that system is better, go play WoW, AoC, WAR, Wildstar, or any other MMO that uses that system. No judgement, but that is exactly what GW and GW2 have never been about, and I hope that it remains the case.

Bhawb.7408:

its bad because we have not one true support weapon.

Restore ally cleansing to Putrid Mark!

You know I started a guardian alt recently (guess why…), and I’ve been noticing that low level mobs are much better at running out of aoe. I definitely don’t remember mobs making much of an effort to run out of my wells when I was levelling my necro!

Shorter cooldown is better for Armour, no question. It’s a good buff (though somewhat unnecessary, the ability is seeing plenty of use as it is).

But for Walk, I would take a longer duration instead, and here’s why: when you use it to break stun, it doesn’t give you protection, like Armour, or teleport you out of trouble, like Flesh Wurm. All it gives you is swiftness and some life force gain (though again less than Armour), and the ability to teleport back to where you activated it for 8". That 8" is theoretically long enough to run away and juke an enemy, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t give you stability, you’ve already used your stunbreak, so you are quite likely to get CC’ed or snared again within those 8". So, in practice, you’re not gonna get very far, and you’ll only be able to teleport back to where you were originally jumped in the first place, which is still dangerous.

If, otoh, the duration of the “Walk” portion (not the swiftness) was doubled or so, to 16-20", suddenly you have more options than just casting it to break stun AFTER you’ve gotten jumped. You’d instead be able to cast it BEFORE getting into the fight, throw some attacks around, and trigger the teleport after you’ve gotten in trouble. You’d be able to run to reinforce mid point, and then teleport back home if a thief ran there. It would effectively become a limited-duration Flesh Wurm, or a 1-person portal. It blows the limits on the tactical uses of the skill wide open. It’s now not just an active defence, but a preemptive defence, an offensive skill, and even a hedge while being offensive. And the paltry LF gain doesn’t seem so bad when it’s extended in duration.

ArrDee.2573:

You thilly bear you! Pausing exists in Legendary League! Pausing exists in Dota2! Don’t know about CoD or BF, but pausing exists in Counter Strikes, most esports shooter! Pausing is esports!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Those games are a lot simpler, with way fewer moving parts, than an MMO. I know a pvp arena is an isolated instance, but I’m assuming gamestates and character states still need to sync up with the rest of the game (eg every kill you make in a pvp match counts for your achievements). So putting an instance into a perfect halt-state might create desync errors with character servers and who knows what else. So maybe full pausing isn’t possible, or would be insanely difficult to implement.
HOWEVER, like someone said, perfect pausing isn’t possible in any REAL SPORT either. Basketball players don’t freeze mid-stride, with the ball in mid-air. It’s what Evan called a pseudo-pause. So if it’s good enough for sports, why shouldn’t it be good enough for esports? All that’s needed to pause is the timer, score, and state of capture points. This can be done very easily using admin commands in custom arenas – I don’t expect you to implement a system that automatically pauses tournament games, it would be a nightmare. So it doesn’t need to be the perfect blissful state of projectiles-in-mid-air pause you’re envisioning, it just needs to be workable.

Now that I think about it, it’s pretty weird that Transfusion is so good while DI is so bad, even though it’s a Master trait! I guess either one needs a nerf or the other needs a buff… :p Or the OP’s idea to merge them, that might also work.

Lopez.7369:

People keep saying that Death Shroud is better in Carrion, but there isn’t any math to back that up. It deteriorates and generates as a percent of max health. So it works no differently with toughness and vitality than effective health does.

Well the idea is because your max lifeforce is 120% of your health pool, vitality gives you a much bigger total effective health total than rabid. Plus, now that we get bonus toughness while in DS you’re already fairly tanky against direct damage, so more health to help against all the burning and torment flying around these days makes for better protection.
Plus, Carrion actually makes life blast do decent damage, even with the lower crit chance.

Also, while I agree that in a drawn-out fight more toughness is better to have than more vitality due to healing, in reality most fights in pvp almost NEVER go over 2 recharge cycles of your healing skill! Not unless you’re a proper bunker, which neither rabid nor carrion allows you to be. Realistically, if you can’t kill him within a minute, and neither of you gets reinforced, one of you will disengage.

I’m starting to think there’s just not that much thinking behind choosing carrion over rabid. The choice seems to be based on a lot of flimsy beliefs.

I prefer to think it’s more personal playstyle. Maybe some people are better at lining up Deathly Swarms to send back condis, other people are better at dodging big damage skills. Hence, rabid or carrion feel better to them, but they can’t articulate why because they don’t realise their weaknesses. I personally feel tankier in Carrion, even though there’s so many zerker thieves and mesmers, and eles running around with 20 stacks of Might. I suspect that, all else being equal, there probably IS an objective answer to which is better, but it’ll depend more on the enemy team’s composition (and to a lesser extent your own team’s) rather than being an absolute choice of one over the other.

Ayane Hajinmon.9165:

3) Spiteful Spirit (my favorite gw1 Necro skill http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Spiteful_Spirit)
Apply aoe confusion when enter Death Shroud.

Yes!

mordran.4750:

1.) More mobility on the battlefield. I liked how Dark Path worked in early Betas

Yes!

3.) Rework Life Siphoning so that you can support your group with it

Yes, but only if traited.

Poplolita.2638:

1) Revert scepter/staff #2 bleed change in pvp, or add 1 stack of torment to scepter #2 or #3 preferably #3. Make it that it requires your target to have both bleed and poison in order to apply torment.

Yes, 3 badly needs a buff and the post-Dhuumfire nerfs need to get reverted.

I agree, I think they could allow some or all healing to go through DS if they reduced the amount of total LF we could have.

Yeah boons restack so quickly that it is no longer a valid tactical option to remove them before you’re about to deliver your burst. What I’ve come to terms with is that you simply have to burst through them, and then corrupt boons when they’re low to provide that extra little bit of burst needed to bring them down. So I’m not removing selectively and for tactical reasons, just for extra damage.

You know, back in the days before forums, when pointless arguments happened on Usenet, there was 1 topic that was sure to recur once every few months on rec.books.tolkien and spawn virulent flame wars: whether Balrogs have wings.

This topic is far less interesting and occurs even more often! :p

Sure in theory you can combine from different classes, but in practice the 3 classes that have the most fire fields also have the most blast finishers! :p

Like others have said, a hambow warrior can get to 20 stacks on their own. Engis and eles can maintain 10-15 easily. But when you combine 3 of those classes in any combination on a single point, the whole team can get to 25 stacks in SECONDS. That’s where the problem is, in team fights. In 1v1s even warriors are not that bad, because the damage of celestial gear without the might is pretty mediocre.

xDudisx.5914:

Summarizing: war is ok the problem is the might stacking making celestial have too much dmg

Well, you say that, but if you had 3 celestial rangers or necros wearing Strength Runes they wouldn’t be getting to 25 stacks within seconds… It’s only when you have warriors, engis, and eles that you can do that, with warriors being by far the fastest at might-stacking.

Rennoko.5731:

Roe.3679:

Rennoko.5731:

Softspoken.2410:

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…

No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.

Most times when I’m about to die, I’d rather just start over with life force.

I can see this being useful for PVE perhaps, but I’ll never take it, just like I didn’t take it before.

So this brings up a fascinating question….

What about those huge 1-shot kill situations in PVE and PVP. If I have say 5k DS left, and 100 HP. I get backstabbed for 6K, so it autoprocs DS. Does the additional 5900 damage overflow into DS?

Because if it did, that would be pretty comical…. surprise!! you just wasted 25% of your DS for no reason.

That’s an entertaining thought! Actually though I think DS would proc as soon as you receive the fatal damage, so in your example you’ll go into DS as soon as you receive the 6k hit, and you’d still have your 100HP. Of course then you’d take 5k damage to your life force, get knocked out of DS, and the 1k rest of the damage would overflow to your 100HP, downing you, so yes, you do waste 5k life force for no reason! :p

Except, except, EXCEPT!!! Isn’t there supposed to be a bug with damage overflowing from DS to HP? I remember a thread were people were explaining it to me a few months ago. Doesn’t it go like, if you receive a single hit which does more damage than you have Life Force, then instead of the remainder overflowing, you take the whole hit to your HP as well?

So, if you had Unholy Sanctuary, 5k HP, and 5k LF, and received a 6k hit, unholy sanctuary would autoproc DS, you’d take 6k damage to your life force, knocking you out of death shroud, and tkae the full 6k damage again to your HP, downing you? Or did I misunderstand how the bug works?

If that’s the case then not only have you wasted your LF for no reason, but you literally took TWICE as much damage as you should have!

And the fact that we thought of these potential problems within an hour of watching the video demonstrates that Karl and Grouch playtesting changes DOES NOT CONSTITUTE SUFFICIENT QA and they desperately need player input and a test server!

Rennoko.5731:

manveruppd.7601:

That’s a QoL change though, not a balance change.

It has balance implications…. being able to USE DS while ressing someone to pre-emp a stun etc…. now if it breaks actions when it is used it will work about the same way it did for people that knew what they were doing pre-patch…. So in that case it is just easier…

Flashing DS will most likely interrupt ressing and stomping though I would wager.

But we could already do that with practice, it just lets you do it by default anyway. Oh and if flashing ds would interrupt actions that’s a major problem, as it means your revive would be interrupted if you ran out of lf and got knocked out of ds.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

manveruppd.7601:

xDudisx.5914:

Nerf the war class won’t solve the problem, since other classes can do it too.

No class can do it as well as hambow specifically: higher uptime on fire field than even elementalists, 2 blast finishers per weapon set, faster weapon set swapping than other professions. Plus the effects are multiplied by the duration increase of the runes, meaning they gain MORE BENEFIT from Strength runes than any other profession.

that is working as intended, because hambow:
- cannot summon illusions
- cannot enter stealth by themselves
- cannot death shroud
- cannot summon minions
- cannot prevent their boons from being removed

seriously, stop complaining because you refuse to play professions that remove boons easily.

I main a Necro! :-D And not the minion summoning kind either! :-)

That’s a QoL change though, not a balance change.

Rennoko.5731:

manveruppd.7601:

I didn’t quite get what Karl said about Unholy Sanctuary: what did he mean when he said it will “bypass its own cooldown”?

Means if your deathshroud is on cooldown, it will still trigger deathshroud (assuming you have life force) once you take lethal damage.

Oh right, thanks. I thought he meant THE TRAIT’S cooldown.

Cast time nerf on CB is meaningless: it still doesn’t have any clear and distinguishing casting animation, it’s just the necro waving his arms around, so you don’t know whether you’re dodging CB or Mark of Blood. It was easily dodgeable already, but only by chance! :p

Rennoko.5731:

Well that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. A freebie sort of cheat death for lazy people tied to unholy sanctuary if you forgot to use your DS or got locked out because of a mistake, and a whole 1 extra second to steal life with our heal signet….

Yeah, it basically lowers the skill floor of the class, as if spamming scepter 1 wasn’t easy enough already.

I didn’t quite get what Karl said about Unholy Sanctuary: what did he mean when he said it will “bypass its own cooldown”?

Mia Crazymike.1780:

@manveruppd.7601

Your suggestion is not bad, but i believe that the change shouldn’t be tied to Death Shroud.

It’s not ideal, I know, but think of it this way:

1.What do we want Reaper’s Protection to do? Well, it’s in the name: it’s to protect necromancers while they’re stunned/knocked down/feared/etc. The current idea is well, since necros don’t have much stability to protect them from being disabled in the first place, make them disable their enemies back for the duration of the CC. Currently it does that, it works and I don’t think it’s OP – it’s just, well, kinda lame that it’s completely passive and takes no skill. I kinda like the concept of the idea: hurting a necromancer hurts you back even harder. It’s very necro-themed and appropriate. I just want it to be active.

2. if you want it to not be passive, it has to be tied to an ability. But when you’re disabled, your abilities don’t work unless they’re either stunbreaks or instant cast abilities. So the current functionality of disabling the enemy automatically goes out the window, and instead it has to either allow you to break stun or modify our current stunbreak skills.

3. You could have the trait modify stunbreaks so they fear people around you (or do something else nasty to them), but I think that’s OP. You could pack 3 of them and have even more fears than people have now. It would instantly make the most annoying bunker necro build you can imagine viable: one that just sits on a point, and does most of its damage while CCed – absolutely skill-free.

4. OTOH, DS has 2 instant cast abilities (DS itself, and Doom). Currently, those work while you’re disabled but don’t break stun. Turning DS itself into a stunbreak is OP because it’s on a 10" cd (6" if traited!), so that leaves Doom. It’s on a 20" cd, shorter than any of our stunbreaks but not ridiculously short. To ensure you’re able to use it, have the trait grant LF on stun. And it preserves the current theme of inflicting fear back when you’re disabled.

xDudisx.5914:

Nerf the war class won’t solve the problem, since other classes can do it too.

No class can do it as well as hambow specifically: higher uptime on fire field than even elementalists, 2 blast finishers per weapon set, faster weapon set swapping than other professions. Plus the effects are multiplied by the duration increase of the runes, meaning they gain MORE BENEFIT from Strength runes than any other profession.

I kinda like that we don’t have the clichéd zombies and skeletons. I like the designs of most of them, except for shadow fiend which is basically as bloated blob with sad little eyes. They should make it look like the stabby dude from the Spectre Finisher, that would be cool. I also prefer the design of the Bone Fiend like it was in GW1, which was basically a ribcage on chicken legs. It looked creepy but in a funny way. The current scorpio-like bone fiend, is, well, kinda unimaginative.

easy to fix tbh:

increase health threshold to 33%
increase Might stacks to 5 and duration to 10"
introduce a 5" internal cooldown.

That way you can get hit while you’re running off to heal, and the Might hasn’t expired after you’ve come back to take your revenge. And the internal cooldown ensures you can’t just sit in DS and accumulate massive amounts of Might either.

I really like the idea of profession-specific achievements, would be fun! Could we have chests to go witht hem please?

Even with a full LF bar you can’t last long enough for those might stacks to do you any good when you’re so low! Damage is too high, combat is too fast for anything that procs when you’re <25% health to be useful, unless it’s an invulnerability (see: Endure Pain, Self-Regulating Defences).

Mia Crazymike.1780:

Even though it’s the rune he is talking about. I do understand the connection to Reaper’s Protection.

I assume that was a typo and you meant to say “don’t understand the connection”? If so,. the connection is that I’m an idiot and only pasted in the 2nd part of my last post, where I was talking about the runes. I edited above to include my suggestion about Reaper’s Protection too, but I’m pasting it below:
Having said that, while I thinkt hat the effects of Reaper’s Protection and Runes of the Nightmare are not OP, I don’t think they’re implemented in a way that rewards skilled play. I reckon reaper’s prot should be changed to a trait which gives 10% life force whenever you are CC’ed (no ICD), and converts Doom (DS3) to a stunbreak. That way the fear proc is not passive, and it buffs the necro’s built-in defence mechanism (death shroud) rather than by giving an extra thing. Plus, it gives us an extra stunbreak with a fairly short recharge, and the choice on whether to use it defensively, or just eat the duration of the CC and save the fear to use offensively, introducing a tactical choice.

I don;‘t think celestial gear by itself is OP. I don’t even think Strength or Pirate runes by themselves are OP.

The problem, like some have mentioned, happens when you have multiple elementalists and hambow warriors in the same team fight. All laying down fire fields, all of them blasting each other’s fire fields. With 2-3 people give EACH OTHER more might, combined with the massive duration bonus from the runes and the passive might procs from runes and sigils, means the whole team can get to 25 stacks very easily. THAT is definitely OP!

I don’t know how to fix it tbh. I definitely think the fire field on longbow needs a nerf (hambows can keep fire fields up 100% duration, and have 2 blast finishers on <10" recharges on each weapon set!). Maybe the duration bonuses on might-granting runes should also be shaved. But I suspect the long term solution might be to completely rework the combo system.

Mia Crazymike.1780:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

In what way would you “nerf” the one passive fear that necromancers have on a 60 second cooldown?

manveruppd.7601:

Having said that, while I thinkt hat the effects of Reaper’s Protection and Runes of the Nightmare are not OP, I don’t think they’re implemented in a way that rewards skilled play. I reckon reaper’s prot should be changed to a trait which gives 10% life force whenever you are CC’ed (no ICD), and converts Doom (DS3) to a stunbreak. That way the fear proc is not passive, and it buffs the necro’s built-in defence mechanism (death shroud) rather than by giving an extra thing. Plus, it gives us an extra stunbreak with a fairly short recharge, and the choice on whether to use it defensively, or just eat the duration of the CC and save the fear to use offensively, introducing a tactical choice.

Nightmare runes should also be changed: I think unconditional procs are boring, hard to plan for, and hard to play against. Instead of “50% chance on hit”, it should be something like “50% chance when you suffer damage equivalent to 10% of your HP in a single hit”. Obviously with a reduced ICD to compensate. This makes it less likely to be just a random proc, and more likely to proc exactly when the necro needs it: ie. when receiving burst damage, which necros have few protections against. Frankly, I also wouldn’t midn if they were turned to a power set, as power necros have even fewer defences against burst damage (and they need them the most).

Additionally, I think Marks shoudl be changed so that their cast is more obviously telegraphed. by having the area marker appear at the start of the cast rather than at the end. To balance having made them easier to dodge, increase their base physical damage by making spiteful marks, and, ideally, also Soul Marks baseline (ideally also normalising the damage between the different marks, so that one of them doesn’t do 1,200 damage while another does 130) and reverse the mark of blood nerf.

Romek.4201:

moi.4398:

Lich is a one trick pony on 180sec cd since 2 years , why nerf it now ?

trie to make more power necros so 5+ all with same build

than go soloQ and spam a lol makro with lichform
after this log on next necro and do same

you clear every node ^^

That goes for any elite though. Switching characters mid-match should be an exploit anyway, only a matter of time till they make it one.

What time? You know they’ve doing a Ready Up today too, righht?

Get 10 people together and try it in a custom arena. I’m sure you’ll see why it wouldn’t work then. I’d happily help you try it out if you’re on EU.

moi.4398:

I think Parasitic Contagion should heal Necro in DS because the heal is really weak atm except in a perfect rotation and spread via epidemic , but if you are able to do this , you are winning the fight and don’t need healing .

Yeah, Parasitic Contagion was a huge letdown for me too, when I realised that our 2 most damaging conditions (Terror and Burning) are only accessible in DS… I’m sure they actually considered this when they were designing it, and deliberately made the new Grandmasters a little underpowered so people wouldn’t complain cause they ahd to unlock it. But it’s in the game now so I retain hope that in the future they’ll change it to heal us in DS, like they’re buffing Blinding Ashes just now.

moi.4398:

As soemone said , terrormancer as no hardcounter in the game ( except diamon skin ) and can win almost any 1v1 matchup if played good .

Now that I just don’t agree with: Berserker stance? elixir S? Any number of other things? A lot of classes have excellent cleanse skills and great access to stability, they just choose not to bring it because, these days, most people are running either full bunkers or full zerker builds. So the odd occasional conditionmancer or condi engineer throws a curveball at all the “meta” teams because all their thieves and mesmers who bring Lyssa runes as their only cleanse just melt. That doesn’t mean necro is OP, it’s just hte rock<paper<scissors nature of the game, and it definitely doesn’t mean that someone playing condi necro can beat a player better than them.