Guild Wars 2

Arheundel.6451:

sPvP/tPvP suffers from having a really small population pool because new players can enter the fold too early.

I disagree with your suggestion as it would fragment the playerbase, but I totally agree with your assessment of the problem. The recent free trial made this painfully obvious, and it was frustrating for everone – both for the newbies and the teammates who had to carry them.

I think people should simply not be allowed to join tournament until they’re rank 10 or something. This isn’t hard to do, it’s only a 2-3 hours of hotjoin, but it’ll at least teach them the basics of capping points and how much more fast-paced and brutal the fighting is.

I also think the tournament queue system should be better explained too though: people don’t understand that if you force-close the game you’ll be dragged back into the match when you log back in, or that if you leave you don’t get replaced, unlike hotjoin, so you’re screwing your teammates over. I ran into a lot of trial people in the past 2 weeks who spent their entire first match trying to quit!

While there’s a lot I’d LIKE to see (more skill/trait interdependencies and inter-profession synergies to encourage group fights, more build diversity, etc), the game fundamentally works ok. The major problems plaguing pvp are with the game mode, not with the fundamental mechanics. My top 3 would therefore be:

1. MORE GAME TYPES:
For two reasons: firstly, it’s really repetitive to play the same thing match after match, and secondly, it’s really difficult for beginners to get into, as watching all the people doing the free trial and trying out pvp in the past few weeks has shown me: I’ve never been among those players who have been requesting pure deathmatch, or 1v1 duelling arenas, but those kinds of game modes might be handy for people new to pvp to learn on without having to worry about scores and point capture mechanics.
But it’s not just beginners for whom Conquest doesn’t do it: it’s just not a very sophisticated game mode, and there’s very little tactical variety to it. It just doesn’t have the depth to support a high-level competitive esports scene. I know some of you in the dev team disagree, but among players I think I’m in the majority thinking this. To my mind, GW1-style GvG was the perfect competitive game mode: multiple win conditions (guild lord or 60% DP), secondary mechanics that didn’t dominate or overshadow the main fighting (majority of matches were decided by what happened in the big group fight at the flagstand rather than by small lord gank groups or VoD), large variety of possible tactics and group split combinations. It was ingenious, iconic, and balanced, and I have no idea why you didn’t carry it over into GW2!

2. TOURNAMENTS! TOURNAMENTS! TOURNAMENTS!
You need to either massively step up your support for third-party tournaments or introduce automated tournament seasons in-game. And you need to do a much better job of advertising them and helping people watch – a couple posts on twitter and facebook are NOT enough! You need to alert people in game as well, possibly via mail, with a pop-up notification, or by a big splashy ad when you open the PvP window. And linking to streams isn’t enough either, they’re entertaining but I would much prefer a way to watch in-game as well. You could possibly sell observer spots for high-ranked tournament games for gems. And while I’m on the subject of Spectator Mode, a way to review your own games (possibly for payment again) would be nice too.

3. GETTING BEGINNERS INTO IT!
I may have put this third but tbh it may be the most vital thing: the pvp community is shrinking, queues for matches get slightly longer every week. The game’s population is still pretty high, but pvp feels like it’s on the decline. You need to encourage the PvE people to play more! That will involve reworking PvP rewards, but that’s not enough: the biggest obsctacle for them isn’t terrible rewards, it’s how hard it is to get into! I’m not just talking about the fact that the actual combat is more difficult than PvE(though it is), but mainly about the fact that they have no clue what the difference between hotjoin, solo arena, and team arena is, how the queue system works or that they can’t exit a tournament game once it starts, or even how Conquest works!
The past 2 weeks have been an absolutely PAINFUL illustration of this point, as I kept getting grouped either with or against people doing the free trial and having no idea what they’re doing, both in Team Arenas and Solo Arenas (another indication of how small the pvp community is, when completely new people get thrown in the same match with people ranked above the 90th percentile!) I watched the poor newbies run around cluelessly, get killed, get frustrated, try to exit the match only to be dragged back in again cause they had no idea how the system works, or simply standing still afk because they had queued up 10’ ago and had given up on waiting for it, and, of course, get subjected to an awful lot of verbal abuse from those of their teammates less patient than me.
So I’m asking: why were people completely new to the game allowed to join Team Arenas straight from the off? Why isn’t the “join match” options in the pvp window disabled until you go to the mists and complete the tutorials? Why isn’t there a better way to introduce players to pvp rather than just dropping them straight into the deep end? And lastly, why can’t you disable tournament for new players until they’ve played a certain amount of matches in hotjoin, or reached a certain rank?

OK, this is probably a lot wordier than you wanted, I’m sure you were just expecting a list of 3 lines, but I just thought I needed to explain WHY these issues are vital.

Thanks for listening!

Don’t think you got what I was saying Andele: if the conditions are cleansing off me, then it must have hit, right? I’m just wondering why they don’t always properly transfer despite being cleansed!

Excellent guide Nemesis, I always enjoy how clearly you break down the game mechanics. Your 2nd video (the profession-by-profession guide) was particularly useful.

Would be a shame if you stopped making videos! How come you’re quitting?

I don’t get why Bhawb thinks the well is fine: when even in WvW group fights (where the Well should shine!) people bring Consume Conditions instead, it’s clearly underpowered (or CC is overpowered).

Sometimes I’ll use Plague Signet and nothing will happen – all conditions stay on me, nothing gets transferred to the target. I understand that this is normal, as PS needs to hit, so maybe it got blocked/evaded/obstructed by LOS etc. I get it: if the attack misses for any reason, nothing gets transferred.

HOWEVER…

Sometimes I’ll use Plague Signet, all conditions will be cleansed off me, BUT WILL NOT GET COPIED TO THE TARGET! So why does that happen?

I know what you’re thinking: I used it against a warrior in Berserker Stance or something. Well I probably did at some point, but it happens to me very often, once or twice a match, and against various different classes – it just now happened to me when I used it on a mesmer, and afaik they have no condition invulnerability skills.

I think there’s 2 possibilities to explain this:

1. It’s bugged. This is the most likely explanation to my mind (Occam’s Razor).

2. It is working as intended, and cleanse without transfer happens because the skill functions in two stages: if the skill does not make contact with the target (blocked by line of sight, dodged, caster is blinded), then nothing happens. If OTOH the skill makes contact with the target, but the target either blocks it or is under an invulnerability (eg.Renewed Focus, Mist Form, Distortion), then conditions are cleansed off you, but not applied to the enemy. I consider this an unlikely explanation as it assumes the game treats dodges, blocks, and invulnerable effects differently, and it also seems a convoluted way to design a skill.

I’d appreciate any other possible explanations for why this is happening, or a clarification from a developer.

I have also noticed a reduction in responsiveness. Very noticeable in both tpvp and WVW, where I might be wailing on a camp supervisor for up to a minute and the golem just wanders around aimlessly unless I use charge or the supervisor hits it first.

Seconded, such a change would be greatly appreciated!

At the moment necromancers are discouraged from using Well of Blood in organised WvW group fights because it might overlap with water fields and prevent them from interacting with finishers to grant healing. This locks us out from using possibly our best group support skill in the very circumstances in which it would perform best!

Turning it into a water field would make sense from every possible perspective – it would make it consistent with other similar healing skills, all of which provide water fields, and it makes sense from a thematic/fluff perspective as well (I mean blood is 98% water and it’s even CALLED a WELL! How is an engineer’s healing sprinkler a water field and a skill called a WELL a light field? :p ).

If the necromancer needs a light field Well of Power would be a better fit for that. We have more than enough dark fields anyway.

Yeah most people use Dhuumfire because of the extra burst damage, but that’s not to say your build wouldn’t work! Well, you can’t take Greater Marks with 10 in Death, but you could put those 10 points in SR for Foot in the Grave, nice counter to all the hammer warriors running around. If you’re only just starting out in pvp you might actually find it easier to learn with cause it’s a bit more defensive. The only thing I would say is a must-have trait for a condition build is Terror, it’s a lovely trait. Try them both, see which one you like best!

Arvid.3829:

To me, the number one reason they should change the field type is this: the guild I do organized wvw with pretty much doesn’t allow necroes to even use Well of Blood, as the long lasting light field risks covering up water fields, which are more needed than the healing that Well of Blood can provide. So this skill having any combo field attached to it that isn’t water, while still needing to be used in the same area as where you want water fields, destroys it’s own purpose: it would literally be better of (in WvW) not having a field at all…

Yep, I’ve also been told off for dropping Well of Blood while running with a big group in wvw. It really limits its usefulness in group fights. I think Bhawb’s fears are unjustified, compared to other professions we have very limited access to blast finishers. Nobody’s going to take Bone Minions in a non-minion-focussed build just to get a measly <3k more healing (and that’s IF the minions are alive and standing in the well when you need them!). Flesh Wurm I might consider in a non-minion build, but considering the blast finisher happens where the wurm is, you’d need to drop the well right on top of it, which means you won’t get to teleport very far – negating the whole point of the skill!

Kashijikito.1864:

If you agree show your support in the suggestions forum! Maybe we can get anets attention if enough people want this!

Did you cross-post there, or shall I make a new post? If you’ve already got one post a link please!

Play around with Audacity too, its volume normalisation and noise reduction features actually work! And get yourselves some better mics once you start making a bit of dough from youtube or twitch!

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

But…. but…. but… blood is so much thicker than water! :p

No, in all seriousness, I wholeheartedly agree with this and have suggested it myself in the past. It would be a much needed change, and it makes sense from every possible perspective – it would make it consistent with other similar healing skills, all of which provide water fields, and it makes sense from a thematic/flavour perspective as well: I mean if engineers can turn their healing turret into a sprinkler to provide a water field why doesn’t a WELL provide one as well?

Sorry, the name of the software I tried to refer to is spelled GOLF-INDIA-MIKE-PAPA in the NATO phonetic alphabet, it got caught in the swearie filter! :p

EDIT: you know what, simpler to give you a download link than to bypass the forum swearie filter! http://goo.gl/7GOzK

I really don’t think larger points favour bunkers. I mean thinking of the most common bunker professions like guardians and engineers, they both lose out. Engis put out a lot of aoe, and bigger points mean you don’t have to sit there and eat it in the face in order to contest the point. And those guardian area-denial skills that stop you from getting onto the point to contest it completely become much easier to avoid.

I guess spirit rangers are the only commonly-played bunker build that does better on graveyard: greater area means it’s harder to aoe their spirits down, and gives the ranger more space to kite and evade.

Yeah the Transfusion trait is pretty good now, I have to say! Pity we can’t heal ourselves with it. The most obvious use I can see for it is for a minionmancer to heal their minions, but unfortunately there’s far better traits for MMs to take in that same attribute line…

kitten is a lot more powerful than MS Paint and it’s Free Software, and Audacity is a simple, free, open source audio editing application

Thanks Rennoko. I’m curious, how did you test? Just watching mobs wail on it and writing down the damage numbers? Cause damage to minions doesn’t appear in the combat log.

Also tested in mists, exactly the same as before.

Has anyone conclusively tested whether the HP buff applies to WvW as well as PvE yet?

Thank you!

Yeah the audio was the worst of any episode so far. I know you can’t control your guests’ microphone quality but a little bit of audio levelling and m,aybe hiss reduction in post-processing wouldn’t go amiss. Much better to spend a couple hours making it better and putting it on youtube than to stream it live and make it impossible to listen to.

And to add insult to injury Twitch kept cutting out to buffer for me, though I know that’s not your fault. But the silence of buffering highlighted just how annoying the background noise in your audio was.

The discussion was really interesting though, if you guys sounded better I could listen to you all day! :p

Rennoko.5731:

For your viewing pleasure…. I did the testing… and just so we don’t have only anecdotal evidence floating around.

And honestly, if the idea was to introduce diversity, WHY would you not improve the scaling??? Would it really be bad to give necros a reason to not use rabid/dire gear?

Thanks for doing the testing! I have to echo the feeling that these changes are insulting, especially considering how long they’ve been hyping this change for and dropping hints that we’d be happy about them!

All the best fights I’ve ever had in PvP were in that central point on Legacy, and I think the reason is because it’s a larger area than most points. It gives us more room to run around and kite, the whole point isn’t one pulsating glow of overlapping particle effects (so you can actually see what’s going on!), and you actually need to target intelligently and focus people down rather than just spamming as much AoE damage as possible and still managing to get people down cause there’s nowhere to run from it without leaving the point and letting them cap.

I’d like to request the devs that the maps be redesigned to make all capture points larger. At the very least, the central point on every map should be as large as Legacy’s, even if you keep the rest unchanged!

Rennoko.5731:

I think it should be restored to pre-nerf status (after the 50% buff and before the last damage nerf), and they should remove burning from the Spite tree.

Hear hear!

I think it’s not bad actually, with the exception of epidemic: good in theory, but with such a long cast time your target will either get downed or cleansed before you’re done casting it. You’re better off packing a second well, or Spectral Wall. I personally would also drop CPC. It’s pretty good because it reapplies conditions, so all the group-cleanses are less useful, but only when the enemy zerg has to stand in it. So it’ll work ok if the enemy is defending a keep or something like that, but not in other situations.

However, Silverthorn is right about this: in big zerg fights the damage doesn’t come from conditions. That’s not to say they’re useless – blinds, chills, weakness etc can devastate the enemy group. Just don’t expect your bleeds to stay on them long enough to actually do any good. Therefore, rabid gear isn’t really worth investing in, you’re better off going carrion or even soldier, because you’re not there to stack bleeds, you’re there to disrupt. You might also want to replace hemophilia with chilling darkness (synergises with Plague Form 2), and Dagger Mastery with Ritual of Life, which is a pretty awesome trait in group fights.

I don’t think that’s true Yngvar, I use the same setup and they proc just fine.

Yeah, I do like it but I’d also go with Master of Terror. I know it’s hard to build life force at the start of the fight but it makes SUCH a difference!
I’d also choose Corrupt boon over epidemic buut that’s debatable.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Though I think we likely would want to sit on really huge balance updates to occur between major seasons competition wise for PvP/WvW along the lines of every 3 months or so in the future. We made this mistake once in Gw1 and did a huge balance update in the middle of one of our major competitions and set the entire PvP community into an uproar, and we promised we wouldn’t do that again.

I don’t think you need to worry about that, as the ranking system in GW1 was far too different:
1. Guild rankings in GW1 reset between seasons, whereas in GW2 they’re a. individual rather than guild-based and b. persistent rather than season-based
2. GW2 tournaments from what I’ve seen are open registration, whereas GW1 championships that ANet organised (at least the early ones, I quit GvG before the automated tournament system came in) were based on who came on top of the leaderboards.

As such, a major balance patch in the middle of a GW1 season could conceivably completely changed who ended up qualifying for the end-of-season tournament by making some builds unviable. In GW2 it wouldn’t really affect anything, as your rating didn’t affect whether you could sign up to join the qualifying tournament. The only way in which a player or team might have cause to feel like they had been screwed over by a balance patch is if it came in too close to the date of the tournament for them to be able to adjust their builds. Of course, you might be planning to change this and make future tournament eligibility dependent on your place on the leaderboards, but since the system is still individual rather than team-based I don’t think you’ve got such a plan in the works for the short term

So yeah, the tl;dr is patch away dudes! As long as you don’t bring in something earth-shatteringly upsetting 1 week before a tournament I don’t think anyone will mind!

Daecollo.9578:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/How-to-counter-stun-locking-warriors/first#post2494724

You people need to learn to play, really. Necromancer is one of the best professions in the game and I am tired of seeing these threads.

I play a Necromancer in SPVP and I don’t think i’ve ever lost to a Warrior, I lose to thieves, but not Warriors. Sure they can run away, but there is No way a stun locking warrior can do enough damage to me to kill me. Not 1v1 anyways.

It’s different in wvw, the stats cap is MUCH higher, and it’s easier to gain offensive than defensive stats.

Yeah I’ve done the maths and traited axe is only a hair lower than staff in average damage.

Switched to dagger, WAY harder staying alive. Need more practice.

Lopez.7369:

I’ve been playing this in top 100 solo queue: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;043Z-FKlHFJ0F4cJVJ0;9;4T;09T59B;40;029BINV0-NV0Ewk2Ewk25BK

I think it’s a lot better than Khalifa’s build with all the changes. Synergizing Dark Pact and Well of Suffering with Death Shroud and Life Blast is crazy burst.

Funny I should see this now, I tried a deathly perception build in pvp just last night for the first time. I made a thread about it, and everyone suggested I switch from axe to mh dagger – seems you’ve been having some success with it too! :p

Seems you all think I should switch from axe to mh dagger, I’ll try it out tonight and let you know how it goes

That woiuld be pretty creepy, i like it!

Might be a nice new revenue stream for ANet too: custom-skinned versions of existing skills on the gem store. For warriors, how about banners with creepy clowns or cute quaggans on them? For eles, how about a Flaming Rubber Chicken instead of a Fiery Greatsword?

I can also think of lots of rude ones but thery’d probably get me banned from the forums :p

We already have candy cane hammers and princess fairy wands so why not skill effects too?

5. You’d think with a Deathly Perception build you’d be spending most of your time in DS and your utility slots don’t matter much, but boy are you wrong! Utilities are the thing I changed around the most tonight. My “full spectral jacket” bar didn’t last long, as I found out 2 stunbreakers aren’t worth much if they don’t also grant stability, cause your average stun warrior can just CC you again immediately. So I swapped out walk for well of power, not so much for the measly 1" stability but because its tick can get rid of those immobilises and let you dodge away. This was never as much of a problem for me with a conditionmancer, as when you’re playing conditions, your bleeds keep ticking even wihle you’re stunned, and if you have a bit of LF you can pop into DS and fear them, doing even more damage. That’s the greatest thing about Fear really: it’s not just the ability to save your skin by making an enemy flee just when they have you stunned and they’re about to unload their damage combo on you, it’s also the fact that it lets you do up to 3k Terror damage while you’re stunned. But with a power build, if you’re stunned, you’re not doing any damage. With this in mind, I got rid of Spectral Wall too, cause fear is nice if you have Terror but I felt I needed to go more aggressive. I really miss the boon stripping of Corrupt Boon. Tried swapping in focus for OH dagger but then I didn’t have enough condition cleansing, I tried Chill of Death instead of Axe Training but that affected life blast damage too much, so I decided to double up on wells, and move my last 10 trait points from Curses (I had Weakening Shroud) to Death for Ritual of Protection. Another possibility, which I haven’t tried yet, would be to sweap OH dagger for Focus, and take Shrouded Removal instead. However, like I described above, I don’t really “shroud dance” very much, I just build LF and pop into DS to finish people off, so I’m not sure how much use I’d see from Shrouded Removal.

6. Sigils were an interesting one:
One thing I also tried, but it didn’t work for me: swapping sigil of air for sigil of quickness. My thought was with near-100% crit in DS I’d be sure to proc it, and then burn them down with my massive Life Blast crits. However, even when that did work (a lot of the time it would proc earlier before I had enough life force built up, and then the long cd would mean I didn’t have it at all for the rest of the fight), all it did was let me get in 4 life blasts in the time when I would hagve gotten 3. Very nice and bursty, but not that destructive, and the fact that you can’t control when you get it makes it worthless. I tried Sigil of Blood for a long time, and I have to conclude that when you’re not in DS it’s actually a lot better and more consistent than Sigil of Air. Even though its damage doesn’t scale and it can’t crit,

So, that’s it. I’m still fiddling with the build, might even try mh-dagger instead of axe, though I’m so flimsy I’m a bit scared of getting any closer to the enemy than I already have to. The TL;DR is it didn’t work like I expected it to – there’s neither shroud-dancing, nor staying in DS for a long time; instead you get your enemy low and then use life blast to burst them down. It does great damage, but it isn’t quite as bursty as I would hope a glass cannon berserker build wouild be, since it relies on either axe 2 or a slow 1" autoattack.

Hope this was a little useful to some. Any advice on how I could improve my build, or anything similar anyone else is using, would be warmly welcome!

I know I’m not the first person to try this by far, but after a whole year of pvping as a rabid conditionmancer and a PVT minionmancer, I decided for the first time ever to go berzerker with a Deathly Perception build. After a lot of trial and error I decided on the following build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAnYWjMaZ7daaa07JEpCYD0j3rWcGqHlD68hA-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNoY9xUEA

Though when I say “a lot of trial and error”, I mean the 6 games I played with this last night, so not a lot at all!
So anyway, here are the observations of a noob berserker necro:

1. OMG THIS BUILD DIES SO FAST!
It’s not just the reduced toughness that I miss, it’s the conditionamancer’s ability to keep enemies snared and weakened, the absolute awesomeness that is Terror, and Corrupt Boon’s ability to completely turn a fight around. With this build there’s not much stopping them from getting up in your face. If you thought chain-stun warriors are tough to deal with when you’re running conditions, you aint’ seen nothin’ till you’ve seen how they rip through you in Berserker gear!

2. LF is surprisingly hard to build!
Staff 1 is, of course, useless, Axe 2 on its own isn’t enough even with the reduced cd from axe mastery. I even tried Reaper’s Precision briefly (Curses V), which is, frankly, a joke of a trait! :p I tried popping both Spectral Walk and Armour just as I’;m joining a fight, but with the 1" internal cd on LF buildup on them they just don’t generate enough now – and popping them early leaves you with no stunbreakers when you need them! And, of course, the extremely low toughness and relatively low HP means that your life force gets eaten through VERY quickly once you’re in DS, even if you have a full bar.

3. Deathly Perception is not that scary.
Sure, Life Blast regularly does 2.5k damage with it, but when you consider the 1" cast time it’s not really ridiculous. A glass cannon thief or warrior can easily hit for over 1k with their normal 0.5" cast time autoattacks, and those are fully spammable rather than requiring them to build up life force beforehand! Now, if you’ve managed to build up a few might stacks from weapon swapping, the enemy has a bit of vulnerability on them, and they’re under 50% health so that Close To Death kicks in, THEN you can start getting some scary numbers. I didn’t write down the biggest number I’ve gotten, but I have never before been able to get such huge chunks off a healthbar in 14 months of playing necros!

4. In view of the above, my biggest realisation tonight is: Death Shroud is your finisher, not your bread and butter autoattack damage. You should basically only go into DS after the enemy is >50%, keeping your Doom handy in case they try to heal themselves or pull off some escape. It’s tempting to stay in DS and build those might stacks with life blast, but your life force just gets eaten away too quickly if the enemy isn’t stunned or immobilised and has the ability to hit back. Having realised this, I’m wondering how much use I’m really getting from Near to Death and Reaper’s Might. I briefly tried Spiteful Talisman with Signet of Spite as an opener, but 3 Might stacks isn’t really much to write home about. I could keep Reaper’s Might and use Blood is Power if might-stacking was the plan.

I was wondering about durations of condition transfers (not just Plague Signet but Deathly Swarm and Putrid mark too). Does it transfer the remaining duration? The original duration? Or is it just a fixed duration? Does your own condition duration affect the transferred condition at all?

PS. I strongly agree with the OP that the functionality should be redesigned. I love the concept but I would like it to be more “active”. I don’t mind getting all the disabling conditions as long as I can choose when.

I’m really sorry to butt in with a noobish question, I genuinely don’t mean to troll, but I genuinely don’t understand the point of these threads. Thing is, pve isn’t competitive: one person’s success doesn’t affect your success. As long as any class can complete any pve content, what does it matter if zerker warriors can get through a boss fight marginally faster than you?

I understand that it could be a problem when it means that people doing way more damage than you means you don’t get gold completion in events, but, frankly, whenever I joined boss fights I normally just focus on the trash mobs, and when there weren’t any spam my autoattack on the boss – and I STILL get gold 90% of the time even though I’m sure other people are doing way more damage than me. So I’m genuinely puzzled that for other people not getting gold is a consistent problem – does it really happen that much?

Also, couldn’t the gold completion problem be fixed very easily by simply teaming up with other condition classes? Then you’re all equally “handicapped”, you all get gold, and, let’s face it, you don’t really finish fights THAT much slower than all-power groups do you?

I know there’s some elitism among some in the pve community, who won’t take people unless they have the right class and gear, but, I mean, it’s a big game, there’s gw2lfg.com and now an in-game tool too, so can’t you just ignore those people and go join other condi folks?

Also, quite frankly, whoever judges their teammates just by the amount of dps they’re putting out is utterly clueless if you ask me. I’m sure the amount of blind, poison, and weakness than your average conditionmancer can dole out helps a lot to keep people alive, and that those same people don’t complain that their guardian keeps giving them stability and cleansing their conditions rather than DPSing like mad. So can’t you just avoid these people instead of complaining about conditions being so terrible on the forums?

In all honesty I do think you have a point, all ANET have to do is lift the 25-stack cap for champion mobs and above, because those things have such massive health pools that it wouldn’t make much difference anyway. But even if they do, it would be more a quality of life change than something necessary, cause any way I look at it, it just doesn’t really matter!

I’m really not trying to troll. And I don’t do that much pve so there might be something I’m not realising, in which case please feel free to point it out!

Nope, 99% sure it’s just direct damage. You can eaasily check in the mists.

I strongly agree with the OP. Big damage should be the result of long-CD skill chains rather than relying on spammable attacks. This was the case in GW1 and that’s what made it so exciting both to play and watch. (In fact it was much more so the case as you mostly needed more than one team member to blow their cooldowns to down someone, but I realize that GW1 was a team game and GW2 is balanced more around individual fights so that part is not comparable.)
That’s why as a necro player I really think Dhuumfire has to go, and I disagree with ANet’s attempts to balance it by nerfing Terror damage by 17% and decreasing Scepter 2’s bleed damage. Even in its nerfed form Dhuumfire is pretty good damage, and is most reliably triggered by spamming scepter’s autoattack, meaning all a necro needs to do is kite and spam, rather than forcing them to blow their long Fear cooldowns for the Terror damage.
The fact that it forces everyone into the same build makes me hate it even more.

Spectral wall is awesome dude, you should definitely stick it in! Lay it just behind your well of corruption, watch them hit the wall right as their stability get stripped and laugh! Then as soon as it expires drop your Reaper’s mark just in case.

I’d also switch your Adept blood trait for Ritual of Life – more healing for your group is always welcome.

Well the point is to be able to swap quickly so 2nd set won’t do it. Rampager sounds like a possibility, it’ll be horribly dangerous to play though! :p

Not working for me either.

OK here’s the deal, when I bring my necro into wvw I normally roam with 1-2 guildies, and for that I use a condition/corruptions build. However, once in a while I like to join a big zerg and help take a keep, or clash with an enemy zerg and watch all those big numbers go up, and for these big group fights I think a power-based Wellomancer would be better.

My question is: is there a hybrid-like gear setup that’ll let me change from conditions to wells on the fly, without having to swap out all my armour and jewellery? I already figured out a nice attribute setup that works for both (0/20/20/20/10), which lets me change from small-group to large-scale play just by swapping 4 traits, 2 utilities and 1 mh weapon (scepter to axe), but I realise my well build is pretty kitten with my carrion/rabid gear. Is there a gear combination I can use that’ll let me do both reasonably efficiently? Or should I just bite the bullet and switch to power-based gear for both roaming and large groups?

We do need more finishers…

Riot Inducer.8964:

What I would give to get my old Krytan Armor back.

Scar pattern armour for me!

I saw a guild use a N/W like that in a world championship quarterfinals once! :p Don’t remember which year and which guild (probably [NR] though), but it was very funny to see, and impressive that they got so high up the ladder with that build!

Bhawb.7408:

Your example is great to show that conditions can still be countered, however unfortunately for certain builds that just would never have happened, and I think that is where ANet wants to go.

Some classes, or more specifically builds, just can’t deal with condi classes. A mesmer, for example, wouldn’t have made it more than a few steps. What we will see is probably incremental buffs to condition cleansing so every class at least has possible tools to use.

Well the situation he described is the problem the devs were talking about: hard counters. Some builds can deal with conditions (but not do much else), some can’t.

Thing is, I don’t see how they can introduce soft counters without fundamentally altering not just skill balance but game design as a whole! If you take necromancers first, sure there’s the fire-and-chain-fear rotation by which you’ll actually down someone, but the majority of the damage before that burst will have been dealt, like you said, from bleeding applied by scepter 1. And scepter 1 attacks twice per second! If you dodge at the right time, you avoid 2 stacks of bleed, and you can only dodge twice per 10"! So you’re much better off saving your dodges for the big damage skills, like Reaper’s Mark, or Corrupt Boon (although it’s hard to dodge, instant cast time and an animation that doesn’t really distinguish it from other skills), and either cleansing or healing through the bleeds – and those count as hard counters, because you have to trait for cleansing or carry more utility skills that do it.

I know dodges aren’t the only example of “soft counter” but it’s the one most prominent thing that everyone has access to, along with using terrain and los to obstruct incoming attacks. The tl;dr is that having the majority of damage (in nearly all builds and professions!) being dealt through rapidly spammable autoattacks means that soft counters are devalued. They’d need to radically slow down the cast time of autoattacks across the board (with a corresponding damage increase) in order to make soft counters meaningful.

MH-sword, partly because we need another melee weapon, and partly because I had an Icy Dragon Sword in GW1 and I want to recreate that look (BRING BACK SCAR ARMOUR TOO! :P )
Seriously though, what the necro needs is a defensive weapon – something like the mesmer’s Staff, focussing on avoidance and disruption rather than debuffs and underpowered regeneration like our own staff. I know ANet have it into their heads that that’s not the necro’s “style”, but staff just isn’t cutting it atm, especially since the Putrid Mark bug/nerf was introduced.

Wait wait wait… POISON DOESN’T REDUCE HEALS?? :o When did this bug sneak in Is it all poisons or just scepter 1?

Bweaty.9187:

Anyway, rather than flame war. Because a Dev bothered explane the reasons for there latest small change. Let’s unite & make necro babys Wink wink

Hmm… I don’t think minions are all that viable in high level tournament to be honest! :p