Guild Wars 2

It’s very tough, but with necro being so difficult to balance, can they really afford to leave it as it is? It’s a constant juggle between necros being the most toxic thing in pvp and them being utterly useless.

Muchacho.2390:

manveruppd.7601:

It’s so slow it can even be stopped by faster blind skills: I’ve often tried to use it to transfer condis back, only for me to get blinded WHILE THE PROJECTILE IS ACTUALLY IN FLIGHT!

Sorry but that is wrong. Like putrid mark it correctly transfers the blind instead of making it miss. I just tested it on the guardian npc (to get a long blind with that i could be sure the blind doesnt end before the transfer), so i am 100% certain.

Are you sure? I’ll test it myself later tonight, if you’re right then it must be a recent change, because I’ve been using dagger since launch and this was always the key difference between Deathly Swarm and Putrid Mark. Except for briefly when they stealth-nerfed Putrid.

Alternatively, it’s also possible that I got blinded when I already had 3 other condis on me, and for some idiotic reason it chose not to transfer blind first! :p But it’s DEFINITELY happened to me.

I agree with you that the lack of monks makes a difference, but it all depends on things like
- the size of the map
- how frequently the supply depot refills
- how frequently the heroes spawn
- how easy the spawnable NPCs are to kill

From what they’ve shown us, I suspect 6v6 will turn out to be the sweet spot, I just said 8v8 in my last post to illustrate that teams will be forced to split, it won’t be a massive team fight in the centre.

[quote=4801384;Mister Fluffkin.7358:
Honestly, HA have been the grandfather of cheese builds, lol. IWAY, VIM-Way, Bloodspike, Contagion, etc. etc… About 5% of the teams played honorful balanced, the rest played pure cheese. Thats why all serious teams played GvG instead of HA.

Anyway, im on the same opinion about stronghold. It absolutly needs a seperate queue!!![/quote]

That’s totally true, but having played in a few cheese builds myself I know that most of them only ever had a chance of reaching HoH if they got lucky and skipped the maps they were weak at! ;D At least in the beginning, Nightfall brought a lot of paragon skills you could bring as a secondary that gave them a fighting chance on non-deathmatch maps too.

But yeah, bottom line is we both agree (as does almost eveyone else in thi thread, it seems): Stronghold needs its own queue!

What sort of wvw do you do? If it’s big groups then tanky gear is probably best, and you should carry staff on one set and axe/free choice on the other. You’ll have enough life force generation to mostly stay in death shroud anyway Your PVT gear will be fine.

If you’re solo or small groups then conditions is still perfectly viable. Probably the best in fact. Minions is annoying cause every time you cross a shallow stream your flesh golem will despawn, and berserker powermancer doesn’t really have the survivability with all the stat inflation you get from food in WvW.

Terrormancer doesn’t really need fitg because they normally carry 2 stunbreaks that are also teleports, plus they run carrion or rabid so they’re a lot more durable. You can normally get out of being stunlocked by porting out, and you won’t get instagibbed when you do.

Powermancers could also carry 2 stunbreaks, it’s true, but they normally go for double wells because they have no other aoe. But the real problem comes from the fact that they have to stay in DS to do the most damage, meaning they don’t have a reserve of life force to soak up damage with when they’ve used all their stunbreaks and get jumped again. And not only do they have less toughness and health cause of running zerker gear, but they also have less life force since it’s based off your health! And since it’s an in-your-face playstyle (even when chucking life blasts they have to stay within 600 for max damage), they have less opportunity to see stuns and knockbacks coming and dodge out of the way.

An aggressive build like that needs either stability, vigor, or some sort of short duration invulnerability to survive. There’s a lot of CC flying about these days, lots of engis, hammer guardians, and warriors around, so I really don’t think powermancer has a chance unless they’ve got good teammates who can cleanse and heal them. But even then, a team built around thatwill be at a disadvantage, since the meta has moved to durable celestial “bruiser”-style builds who can function just as well solo as in team fights. Having to dedicate a guy to babysitting your powermancer means you can’t move around the map to respond to threats as quickly and flexibly.

Honestly, even if FITG were moved down to master level it wouldn’t help, since they need both Deathly Perception and Near to Death. And it’s a powerful enough trait if taken on its own merits, so it’s not like you can just dump it all the way down to adept or merge it with another trait!

One possible solution I’ve been thinking about would be to make Near to Death sort of baseline by changing the Soul Reaping attribute so it reduced DS recharge by 0-30% instead of giving you extra life force. That way you could bump FITG down to Master and take both it and DP. It also has the upside of making conditionmancer sligtly less of a brick kittenhouse, as they have a huge life force pool and this would decrease it by 20%. Downside is powermancers would be even squishier.

Fundamentally though, I think this would be a marginal improvement: when you’re running zerker gear, stability, protection, and life force will only extend your health bar by so much, because all they do is let you soak up more hits. What powermancers need is a way to avoid taking those hits completely, through vigor or invulnerabilities. I can’t think of a simple rebalancing change that would accomplish that, it would need a more radical redesign of the whole profession. So the only thing I can suggest is: drop the double wells, run flesh wurm and spectral walk instead.

I forgot about the Shadow Fiend blind – that indeed is obscenely long! And I did mention that the Deathly Swarm projectile speed makes it useless as a blind.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Now, the skills with blinds are good. The blinds themselves are not.

That I can completely agree with.

If they made it 8v8 we’d still never see any team fights bigger than 5v5 – there’s just so many objectives on that map!

Thing is, different game modes isn’t intrinsically bad: it prevents certain builds from dominating. It’s what I loved about Heroes Ascent in GW1, that you had to progress through all sorts of different game modes to get to Hall of Heroes, and that stopped people from making cheesy builds that were only good at one thing.

However, Stronghold is BRAND NEW! It’ll need extensive testing and rebalancing in the months after release before it’s really ready for primetime. It’s absolutely not fair on people who care about their leaderboard rank to just drop it into ranked arena! Not only that, but it must have its own separate leaderboards as well. I don’t think the first 3 months of stronghold can be treated as anything more than an open beta, and to drop a new, untested map into ranked queue will make a joke of the competitive side of the game.

Nor do I think it should be put into unranked arena either: in that queue, Stronghold will hardly ever come up, since it has to compete with all the tournament maps plus Skyhammer/Courtyard/Spirit Watch! That’s 7 other maps! People who want to play stronghold will often have to play 2-3 Conquest games before Stronghold EVEN COMES UP IN MAP SELECTION, and even then it’s not guaranteed to get chosen (there’s always one guy who votes Skyhammer…)!

Imagine the frustration this will cause people – particularly people who don’t like Conquest and have only come back to pvp to try Stronghold! I don’t think dividing the playerbase is a good rationale for putting Stronghold in the conquest queues if the solution ends up frustrating the playerbase and driving them away instead!

Finally, I genuinely think that 5v5 will turn out to be too small for Stronghold. There’s just so many different objectives on that map (2 trebs, 1 supply card, your gates, enemy gates, 2 gatebreaker spawnpoints, 2 hero spawnpoints) that I think further testing will prove it to work better with 6v6 or 8v8. If they drop it in the Conquest queues, they won’t have the option to ever change the size of the game, because a full team signing up for the queue must be able to play either Stronghold or Conquest! If you give Stronghold its own queue, then you can tweak it to your heart’s content without affecting the Conquest scene.

It would be extremely easy for them to make a “match ready” pop-up prompt that overrides cutscenes. Map loading screens I’m not so sure they can do, but I suspect yes because you can get other kinds of pop-ups while in loading screens (mostly error messages like server disconnects). Alternatively, I’d even consider it acceptable to have map changes kick you from the queue.

I agree that 5v5 is probably too small. Not that I like huge group fights, as there are so many particle effects in this game that it’s impossible to see what’s going on in 4v4 or larger fights. But, the thing is, there are so many different objectives on that Stronghold map, that 5v5 will probably mean 1v1s or 2v2s everywhere, never anything larger.

It seems to me that the main reason they’re keeping it 5v5 is so they can easily slot it in to the existing ranked and unranked queues alongside conquest and courtyard. But there was such a huge outcry against that idea that I really don’t think they’re still planning to do that. And if they give Stronghold its own queue, they don’t have to keep it the same size as Conquest. They could make it 6v6 or 8v8 or whatever! Here’s hoping they’ll see the wisdom in tuning it up to 6v6 and giving it its own queue…

The fact that it works for some people DOES NOT MEAN ITS WORKING FOR EVERYONE. It’s bugged, not completely broken. Instead of shouting at each other try comparing the situations you used it under to see what it is that makes it bug out. For instance, was your armour damaged? Did you try unequipping and reequipping the runes and/or armour pieces? What class were you using? Which healing skill? It could be anything for all we know, and if we don’t identify what breaks it they can’t fix it.

Lily.1935:

Another idea I had was using it was summoning. We have the generic summoning with minions. But i think its possible to use this life force from fallen foes to summon more spammable minions or use it to heal them or allies.

Yeah I also think that would be a great idea. And I don’t even know why you’d need a specialisation to deliver it. You could easily introduce life force-gated weapon or utility skills, that consume LF sort of like a thief’s initiative bar. Alternatively, you could introduce weapon or utility skills that aren’t gated by life force (you can use them even with 0), but consume life force if you have any to make them more powerful. For instance, what about a durational skill that has a base duration of 3", but consumes 20% life force to last 1" longer up to a maximum of 6"? You could make them sequence skills so the necro can end them prematurely if they don’t want to eat up all their LF.

You don’t even need new skills for that: you could use traits to modify existing skills. Wells, for instance, could get a grandmaster trait that modifies them to last longer at a cost of Life Force. For instance, Well of Darkness could become base duration 5", maximum duration 8" at 10% LF/second. On activation, Well of Darkness is replaced with “Blast of Darkness: end Well of Darkness and Weaken foes in area of effect” so you have the option of ending it prematurely (sort of like Warrior’s Impale→Rip).

That’s true and it isn’t. The problem isn’t that our blinds suck, the problem is that, with the exception of Deathly Swarm, they’re all on huge long recharge utilities. Nobody is gonna blow his Signet of Spite just for the blind, and Well of Darkness, even traited for chills, is absolutely marginal compared to the other Wells you could take instead. So we have exactly one skill that’s a short-recharge blind, and there’s 2 problems with it: first, you’re better off saving it for the condition transfer rather than using it for the blind (not really a problem, well-designed skills should have some sort of tradeoff otherwise you’d just faceroll across the keyboard and use everything on cooldown), and, more importantly, its projectile speed is really slow. It’s fine when you’re standing close to your target (I often use it to stop interrupts while stomping), but if you’re at max range it’s very easy to dodge or LOS. It’s so slow it can even be stopped by faster blind skills: I’ve often tried to use it to transfer condis back, only for me to get blinded WHILE THE PROJECTILE IS ACTUALLY IN FLIGHT! Really annoying when that happens! Easily done with instant-applicaiton blind skills like Blinding Flash, Shadow Shot (d/p thief), and even engi’s Static Shot (which isn’t quite instant application as it has a travel time, but it’s a faster projectile than DS).

Not saying Deathly Swarm is a bad skill, it’s just not very useful as a blind: blinds need to be fast enough to be a clutch skill.

I can confirm that this is the case, was trying to use it the other night.

Thanks you guys for starting this thread, I’ve read it with interest and I really think the solutions proposed here would help make MM more viable in high-level pvp, as well as raising the skill floor a bit so it’s not as overpowering at lower skill levels.

ronpierce.2760:

Unfortunately, I take a slightly “easier” or cop-out way of handling the situation (which I personally still would be a completely fair and honest change) instead of a huge rehaul alternative, simply because I realize that resources are limited as is and MM is only a single build, but secondly, it’s not a very popular class to play and it’s not a very favored enemy in battle (due to it having AI), and really no way you handle this will that likely change. But either way, it was great to have you in the discussion!

I get it, and I think the solutions you guys proposed would work well in the short term, but I personally would like to see a more fundamental overhaul in the medium term. (Whatever “medium term” is for GW2, where balance patches come 6 months apart.) I’ve got my own ideas for such an overhaul, which I’m not gonna post in here cause this thread is already massive, but I would like to point out that pet classes are in general very popular in MMOs, and MMs were particularly popular in PvE in GW1. So it’s probably the case that the reason it’s not popular is specifically because its mechanics are so awkward and it’s in such desperate need for an overhaul! ANet shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s not worth wasting resources on, as it’s a playstyle with potential and people would respond if they put in the effort to improve it. If you summon them, they will come!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I have to say, this thread is a great example of why I love the Necromancer forums: we might be a cynical bunch, but we are very civil to each other, even when we disagree.

Very true. I hope devs read this forum, people like the OP are basically doing half their job for them!

Clown makeup for my golem. Make it happen please! I’d pay gems for this! Just sell them as custom unlockable skills, which have the exact same effect as the standard ones but summon different—looking pets. I know that there’ve been requests for custom engi turrets and ranger spirits as well, they could really make a mint from this!

It will be very unsatisfying if matches go to points often, and there are builds out there that can put out so much healing that a lot of them will. They could have brought back the Victory or Death tiebreaker mechanic instead, have both lords with all their guards walk out the bases at 15’ and have a huge pitched battle at the centre of the map instead.

Moreover, if you were able to attack down either lane instead of having asymmetrical attack and defence lanes, it would be much harder for a bunkery team to turtle effectively.

Thanks for answering my question (quoted below) guys, but I don’t really feel like your answer addressed my concerns. You said having NPCs going down both lanes didn’t work cause it became too pve and they never got to their objetive, but you didn’t say if you explored other alternatives, like having the front gates be open but more heavily defended, or having an NPC thief who can follow you and get you in like in GW1 Warriors Isle. Nor did you address the problem I pointed out with your approach, that teams won’t be able to use mobility and map control to come back after losing fights if the lanes are unidirectional like that.

manveruppd.7601:

Here’s a question Grouch:
As per the blog post, players cannot damage gates, and summoned doorbreaker NPCs can only proceed down 1 lane. I’m concerned that this might segregate the action too much, and make each match more predictable because you know which lane the enemy is coming from. If you have a big team fight at the supply depot in the centre and beat the enemy back to their front gates, you can’t really push your advantage there, because you can only break the OTHER gate! And for the team that just got beaten back to their base, they can’t really sneak out the other way and try a sneaky gank from the rear gate, because their doorbreaker NPCs all spawn on the lane they just got pushed back from!

I just worry that breaking the game down into asymmetrical attack/defence lanes will mean there’s less scope for tactical manoeuvring and map control. The appeal of both MOBAs and of GvG in GW1 was that you can do things such as feint down one lane while making your “real” attack down another, or do a slow fighting retreat down one lane while pulling a sneak attack along a different route, generally give the enemy the runaround. In Stronghold, there’s exactly 1 lane you need to defend, and 1 lane you can attack.

So my question is, do you really think the secondary objectives (heroes etc) will be enough to ensure a team can come back from behind through map movement? If they’re already being pressed, won’t it be easier for the team in the lead to spare a person to go cap heroes and thereby solidify their lead?

Have your designers considered putting NPC spawn camps for both teams on both lanes, so you can advance down whichever one you want? Alternatively, what if the front game of each team was completely open, but much more heavily defended, with very powerful NPCs, so that each time had the option of either making a full-on front push, or to sneak round the side with doorbreaker mobs?

Cool, thanks folks. I must’ve misheard him. (I did think it was weird, that’s why I posted to ask :p )

Did I mishear it, or did Hugh say that the treb won’t be able to damage NPCs (doorbreakers etc)?

Softspoken.2410:

If you think soft cc is useless in PvP formats, then I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to complain about the uptime of cripple / chill / immobilize on Necromancer skillsets, then there’s a conversation to be had, but writing off those effects entirely is pretty questionable.

No, I admit I exaggerated, it’s not completely useless but it’s severely underpowered compared to hard CC. For them to come into their own, teleports and movement skills will need to be nerfed, as it’s too easy to ignore soft snares when you have so many movement skills.

I get what you mean about ‘teleport’, since the jump only triggers after (if) Dark Path hits a target. Still, if I recall correctly the distance is traveled isn’t reduced by chill / cripple and is executed in one instantaneous moment, so it’s not a leap skill like heartseeker.

I know it actually IS a teleport! I’m just saying it’s useless AS a teleport, as you can run to your target in almost the same time it takes for the projectile to get there! People use it for the chill and damage (bleeds, boon corruption), not as a gap closer.

60% with no damage reduction would be fine by me if they reduced the recharge times and usability of our stunbreaks (especially fixing the occasional glitching on Flesh Wurm), and improving LF generation for condi necro.

Here’s a question Grouch:
As per the blog post, players cannot damage gates, and summoned doorbreaker NPCs can only proceed down 1 lane. I’m concerned that this might segregate the action too much, and make each match more predictable because you know which lane the enemy is coming from. If you have a big team fight at the supply depot in the centre and beat the enemy back to their front gates, you can’t really push your advantage there, because you can only break the OTHER gate! And for the team that just got beaten back to their base, they can’t really sneak out the other way and try a sneaky gank from the rear gate, because their doorbreaker NPCs all spawn on the lane they just got pushed back from!

I just worry that breaking the game down into asymmetrical attack/defence lanes will mean there’s less scope for tactical manoeuvring and map control. The appeal of both MOBAs and of GvG in GW1 was that you can do things such as feint down one lane while making your “real” attack down another, or do a slow fighting retreat down one lane while pulling a sneak attack along a different route, generally give the enemy the runaround. In Stronghold, there’s exactly 1 lane you need to defend, and 1 lane you can attack.

So my question is, do you really think the secondary objectives (heroes etc) will be enough to ensure a team can come back from behind through map movement? If they’re already being pressed, won’t it be easier for the team in the lead to spare a person to go cap heroes and thereby solidify their lead?

Have your designers considered putting NPC spawn camps for both teams on both lanes, so you can advance down whichever one you want? Alternatively, what if the front game of each team was completely open, but much more heavily defended, with very powerful NPCs, so that each time had the option of either making a full-on front push, or to sneak round the side with doorbreaker mobs?

MarkPhilips.5169:

I forgot, little OT but very very important:

Balance Frequency

With HoT we’ll have 9 new specs (A LOT of new stuff) + 1 new prof. Without a fast balance, the entire pvp scene risks to collapse.

Have you plan to speed up (at least 1 month) the balance frequency and not a 6 month old meta anymore?

I think is really crucial.

Just quoting this for truth and honour.

Yeah, well, so what? The ele can heal the engi while he’s using Elixir S or gear shield, the engi can heal the ele while he’s in mist form or using Obsidian Skin, both COMPLETE invulnerabilities rather than life force-gated ones like DS.

Exactly, don’t get stuck on the fluff, it’s a frigging fantasy game. Make some excuse up using the miracle of apologetics

Bellamy.9860:

1. Apart from “powercreep” i am still not convinced that these testing phases were more than a typical hotjoin match between people not having excess to ressource like meta battle and comparable build collections (dante’s posts).

Oh I completely agree, I’m not saying that their fear of giving us healing in DS is justified purely on the strength of a few thousand scrubs who had never played the game before running around in perma-DS on the game’s first ever beta! I think it wouldn’t be nearly as bad if they did it now.

2. Yes, change healing traits to what was suggested and leave DS alone. Also DS gives you an additional 60-78% of your current life, not 120%, and this assumes you got a full bar of life force at your disposal.

Like others have said there’s the “damage reduction” or whatever you want to call it (I like “gamebreaking bug” personally :p ). It was around for months before I was told about it, I tested using falling damage and couldn’t believe it actually worked.

3,4,5 that’s more a thing for specialization and i don’t think they’ll ever significantly change this mechanic, eg in the way you suggested, for the necro class. This is too much work to do.

I don’t think they’ll do it either. It’s what I would’ve done though and I think the class would’ve been much better for it imho.

Also you personally would like more escapes but they said countless times that this is not what the necro is about.

You say that, but then further down in your post you complain about how vulnerable we are to CC, and how unfun it is to just sit there not fighting, waiting for them to stop knocking you around like a ping pong ball. So I take it we agree that, whatever ANet say the necro is “about”, what they’re saying is stupid?

And yes, i am aware that exactly the last bit is how necro is designed to be. Needing to hit stuff and be aggressive to sustain yourself in a fight. The thing is, even if you do this it is not enough with the exception of completely ignoring a sustain based fighting approach and trying your luck in burst wonderland (zerker well).

Yeah but good design doesn’t dictate gameplay style. Guardians can play very conservatively and defensively or they can go full burst. Elementalists the same (in fact they can do both playstyles in the same build!), and warriors to an extent. Mesmers not so much, I only see zerker shatter mesmers in pvp these days, though bunkery PU mesmers are still apparently running around lower down the ladder. Even thieves to a small extent have a modicum of choice over how many stealths and evades they bring to a fight. But necro is the only class whose playstyle is dictated by its class mechanic, because they decided that since we can have from 0-120% more health than everyone else we don’t deserve mobility, escapes, vigor, and invulnerabilities. This isn’t a “design philosophy”, it’s a balancing nightmare with “Oh, I meant to do that, honest” sloppily painted over the cracks.

Lordrosicky.5813:

We have had eles and engis and and warriors thieves for 12 month peroids who are so OP that 2 of them often find their way into teams. Even at the height of necro people only ran 1 of them. Necros are self hating imo. We are used to have flawed mechanics and a weak class so that whenever we get something OP we all say “this is wrong!”.

That felt so true I wanted to cry! :p

I struggle to think how he’d get to him with 0 LF. Ranger has KB and more cc from pets, sometimes entangle as an elite as well, dagger necro would be dead before he crossed the distance to him.

OK, things to bear in mind, cause you guys seem to be talking at cross-purposes:

1. Healing used to be allowed in DS back in beta, and it was OP. ANet are therefore terrified of doing it again. But one thing to remember: damage today is MUCH higher than it was back in beta. There’s been ridiculous power creep. So I don’t think it would make necros invulnerable by any means.

2. I don’t think any of the people arguing for healing to be allowed through DS in this thread are also saying that DS should otherwise be left the way it is, giving you an extra 120% health. Bear that in mind when you’re responding to their arguments.

3. Like I said in my last post, I’m in favour of a full redesign of DS, turning it into an energy bar for DS skills rather than extra health. However, that’s a long term goal.

4. As a stopgap, I would be in favour of small incremental changes, such as self-traited healing and life steals to go through DS. That’s a change they could make NEXT WEEK.

5. I would also be in favour of reducing the amount of DS you get if the above change were to happen. 120% HP is too much when it’s full. In exchange, some buffs to LF generation (especially for condi builds) should happen.

6. As far as Regeneration goes: remove it from self-traited effects. Turn Full of Life into “your next attack steals health when you drop below 90% health”. Make Mark of Blood similarly give each ally within the aoe a single stack of the lifesteal buff, as per Leeching sigils, instead of Regeneration. Allow lifestealing from all sources to heal through DS. Regeneration applied by allies still doesn’t heal you.

I don’t think this would solve necromancer sustain problems, but it’s a start. Personally, I would much rather have better stunbreaks and escapes than more healing and more DS. I know you can soak up a lot of damage, and possibly even survive and kill the other guy, with good life force generation, but sitting in DS while stunned or knocked down soaking up damage is incrediblly boring.

RashanDale.3609:

@manuveruppd: In addition to Dark path’s tracking, speed and range being vastly buffed, i think mobility on most classes across the board needs to be cut dow or come with more severe drawbacks.
As it is right now, it seems to me that Anet underestimated the value of mobility-skills compared to other skills.

I agree with that too. Range is basically meaningless, it can be closed instantly with charges and teleports. Frankly I think even basic movement speed could use a 10% nerf.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Death Shroud is the most difficult mechanic in the game to balance. It has to not be overbearing for a single foe while also being enough to protect the Necro from multiple opponents. I don’t envy ANet in the slightest for having to balance it.

I also don’t feel any sympathy, because they did bring it on themselves :p

It’s true. There’s very little that’s tougher than a necro with a full life bar, and very little that’s squishier than one with an empty one.

I’ve said it before, the sooner life force stops being extra health and becomes an energy bar for powering DS skills, the better.

Softspoken.2410:

Not really sold on this. I can get why Dark Path isn’t (and shouldn’t) be enough on its own to prevent others from escaping, but a couple weapon skills (Locust Swarm, Dark Pact, maaaaybe Unholy Feast?) seem quite good at keeping you close. So why is this combination of mobility reducing skills and abilities insufficient for the typical enemy?[/quote]

Because all the skills you mentioned (except Dark Pact, which is weak because it has a low range and high cast time) apply soft CC, which is almost useless in this game. It’s too easy to cleanse and its uptime (duration/recharge) is extremely low, so hard to reapply once cleansed. Moreover, teleport/shadowstep skills completely ignore its effects, because, unlike charge skills, their range is unaffected by movement speed reduction. So thieves, mesmers, and sword guardians are basically immune to chill and cripple. The only classes whose mobility is seriously hurt by it are elementalists and warriors, and both of htem have decent cleanses.

Also, don’t you dare call Dark Path a teleport. If you have swiftness you can LITERALLY outrun your own Dark Path projectile! It’s a good in-combat skill with all the bleeds and chill, but useless as a gap closer. If you cast it at over 600 range, your target is quite likely to outrun it and you’ll get an “out of range” message! All they need is a single movement skill and they’ll get past the maximum 1200 range!

Umm… the thread you linked is actually full of people saying thieves are weak against condi necros, and that has been my experience too! Not to say that a smart thief can’t kill me, they can, but if I’m facing someone of similar skill level to me I’ll win unless they get the jump on me while all my skills are on cooldown. Even the impossible to pin down s/d thief with their constant evades struggles!

Cogbyrn.7283:

(Note: I agree. Then again, does a Necro leaving a water field make much sense?)

Blood is LITERALLY 98% water!

Well there’s just no way to have it both ways: if it breaks stun it’ll remove the fear before it can transfer it. Unless, of course, you’re also dazed/knocked down/whatever, and it breaks the other CC first. Making it transfer condis BEFORE breaking the stun will make it work differently to every other stunbreak skill in the game. That just rubs me the wrong way. Everyone else woudl complain, and I wouldn’t blame them.

I’m definitely gonna try it though now that I know it’s an unlimited transfer! Bye bye dagger offhand, it’s been fun! :p Hello delicious Locust Swarm life force generation and the ability to interrupt warriors stomping while in Berserker Stance!

Also, one thing I can tell you: the first necro I see holding Twilight and calling themselves Edward, I will make it my personal mission to make their life in the game as miserable as possible.

Lily.1935:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Duskblade,_Variant_.

That website’s name offends my OCD so badly my teeth grind! IT’S MISSING A D!!!

Really? They must have changed it then! I used to have trouble getting it to transfer anything, even when I wasn’t blinded. Opens up a few interesting options like using warhorn instead of dagger I guess… Stun, better LF generation, quicker moving from point to point.
Mind you, you can’t juke people with PS like you can with Spectral Walk…

While I agree it would be funny and would serve them right for having a longer duration fear than us, isn’t this a pointless discussion? Plague Signet needs LOS to transfer, and any decent thief would be behind you getting his flanking bonus while you’re feared. So it would break stun but wouldn’t transfer condis anyway.
Anyway, conditionmancers are a very hard matchup for most thief builds already. We don’t exactly need any more tricks to use against them. Even though they WOULD deserve it, the smarmy fear-stealing goits! :p

In most other forums they’d burn you for this kind of threadomancy. Here you’ll just get polite applause. :p

But I perfectly agree, as I did then: it’s bizarre, inconsistent, and awkward that this skill isn’t a water field. Every other healing skill in the game that leaves a field behind, leaves a water field!

jportell.2197:

The problem with being a power necro, is far and above it’s inability to escape effectively. Couple this with a general inability to apply consistent (Wells are not consistent) AOE power pressure. Yes dagger is now a great cleave weapon, however it is very tough to pull off in the AOE spam fest other classes can bring (Eles/engis oh hey look at the meta). Other problems power necros have in the current meta:

• Lack of reflects/projectile absorption (pew pew rangers can eat a power necro alive)
• Lack of access to boons for self. (Yes I know this is class design, it is still a major issue for necros.)
• Lack of stability/reliable stunbreaks.
• Lack of a good ranged power weapon (I would rather auto attack with staff than auto attack with axe.)
• Being unable to receive heals in DS, ( I am referring to team heals, this one thing would improve Necro sustain to an amazing level)

OK, so this guy seems to articulate most of the problems with this class pretty well. What do people think could be done to fix them and make power necro more viable? How would you give necros access to more reliable stunbreaks and stability without breaking them?

IMHO a quick fix might be to let necros start the match with 25% LF, but I know that would only go a very small part of the way towards fixing it.

I don’t mind less duration for more intense conditions, but the #6 bonus goes nowhere near accomplishing that. I know it’s on par with Undead Runes, but, well, there’s a reason no-one uses those either… I guess since conditionmancers are more about slowly whittling an opponent down until they;re low before finishing them off with fear chain and/or corrupt boon they don’t gain as much from that ~10% extra condition damage the #6 bonus gives as a true condition burst class like shortbow ranger would.
Would’ve been awesome to have had this back in the Dhuumfire+Signet of Spite days though!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

975 health on each stealing proc. It’s actually a pretty sizable amount for a passive proc.

That’s not bad!

6 piece bonus on a Carrion amulet is 113.75 condition damage if you have no points in Blood Magic. That is ~6 damage/bleed tick.

That’s not great…

Switched to them for a couple of evenings, but tbh I wasn’t impressed. I never even noticed the lifestealing happen, so I don’t know how much health it steals, and the 6th bonus is pretty marginal, adding about 100 condition damage even with Carrion gear (that’s like 3 extra damage per bleed stack iirc?). I know the Nightmare 6th bonus gets wasted on pets, summons, and enemies with stability 50% of the time, and doesn’t come at an opportune moment much of the rest of the time, but when it does occasionally create an opportunity to chain-fear someone, or to cast a big-damage ability on them while they’re feared, it can turn around a fight. I think I’m gonna go back to Nightmare personally, but I’d love to hear what mileage other people have had from it!

I agree that WoP is better, my point was just that he’ll learn best by experimenting, and feel free to use what works best in his environment rather than building for where he eventually wants to end up. That’s just a personal preference of course, and not just in GW2, but in all the games I play. I mean, when I’m deckbuilding for Netrunner, I’m not putting counters to Blue Sun in my runner deck even though nobody in my area plays it yet! :p Then again, I don’t have the pressure of preparing for international tournaments (where everyone will be using the latest meta) on me, but my guess is neither does the OP (yet).

Well the rationale is all transform skills remove signet passive effects, but DS doesn’t work like any other transform skill anyway: recharge starts from when it ends rather than when it starts, it needs a charge-up, you can’t get healed from ANY source while in it (neither your regular HP nor your life force), you get to keep spectral effects (so some utilities work while others don’t), you still use your weapon damage for attacks, it’s just a clustersmudge of arbitrary “balancing” choices that make no sense, because it’s impossible to balance something that can give us anything between 0-120% bonus HP!!

The sooner they completely overhaul it, the better.

leman.7682:

If you want to improve and move closer to the skill cap, use the Wurm.
It may look redundant at times, but it’s the only skill that lets you reset the fight.

Yeah, it’s good for him to practice using it, but the metagame is different at different points on the ladder. Plague sig is probably more useful at his level cause there’ll be more condi warriors and PU mesmers running around, plus teams will be less coordinated so he’ll have fewer enemies +1ing his fights and forcing him to disengage. I think it’s best to play what’s effective at your metagame and adjust it as you go up or down the ladder and the game changes around you rather than just say “well, this is what the best players are using so it must be the legendary Most Efficient Necro Build, I’ll keep using it even if it’s not actually optimal in my gaming environment.” As a bonus you get to try different skills out and not get bored And it’s bad for you to train your muscle memory to work with the same 3 utilities in the same 3 spots (as I learned when I first swapped Signet of Spite for Spectral Walk, took me 2 days of suiciding and wasting my utility skills before I learned I was relying on twitch reflexes too much instead of thinking while I was playing).

Bhawb.7408:

I would like to be able to have back the ability to weaponswap while in DS though. I know some people who would be very happy to have that back, although its about 2 years too late since that got bugged and was added as a “feature”.

Yeah, that was pretty useful.

While I posted above to agree it would be fun, you guys should keep one thing in mind: nobody who DOESN’T want arena-style TDM bothers to post in these threads. So you’re basically shouting into an echo chamber and getting a seriously inflated impression of how popular such a gamemode would be. Let’s face it, if people REALLY wanted it, there’d be more custom arenas running it.

You have to range engineers. If you let them get close to you they’ll just keep you on your back with Ckittenil you die. This means you have to give up the point if you’re standing on it, and in places like mid on Kyhlo, or the side points on foefire, where the point is a little ranged mound that the engi can hide behind and block your line of sight, you also have to get up onto a ledge. Spots like that are hard, there’s lots of cover for the engineer to hide while still capping, and a good one will use the cover to get close enough to knock you from your perch. Also, be ready to dodge his Tool Kit Magnet! As soon as their Hidden Flask trait procs at 75% health, pop into DS, Doom, then Corrupt Boon.

That would explain it, thanks Witcher.