Honestly, I’m not that hopeful at all. “Notes” isn’t a guarantee of anything, and notes being gated behind a long beta means even less. We have to wait longer to maybe see fixes to issues we’ve been waiting forever for in the first place. We don’t even get to see these notes. Gee posted basically to tell us that he’s too busy to say anything else.
It was good progress towards transparency, which is what the OP asked for. It’s not like he’s going to give us definite changes when they aren’t definite yet.
some more footage from today
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/9901352
Better but still difficult to watch due to some awkward trait choices and skill use choices at certain times but i suppose its new to everyone.
That’s more in lines with what I expected. Dhuumfire was keeping 3-4 stacks of burning up, which is good news.
The only burning that is OP is the kind a Necro transfers back.
I don’t understand why gravedigger was nerfed. It already did less DPS than dagger auto attack with 100% cooldown, why give us a clunky second waiting period between? There’s literally nothing you can do with that time.
My guess is possible OPness in PvP with quickness.
I don’t think anyone can count this as evidence to show “Burning isn’t OP.”
Easily this.
Do they not teach the scientific method in school anymore?
Can you describe what handicaps this would solve that aren’t flat buffs?
It would solve the handicap of having a class mechanic that works against your build choices other that your DS traits.
Remember blood magic? No one used it until they reworked it to work in death shroud. An entire trait line made useless for nearly 3 years because our class mechanic worked against it. And it isn’t overpowered in the least, nor a flat buff, just a long overdue sensible change.
You shouldn’t be punished by your class mechanic for investing in utility slots and traits.
I agree that having a class mechanic that works against the rest of the class is absurd, however the “Blood Magic buffs” were flat buffs. That’s not even a question. They were necessary, and quality of life changes, but saying they weren’t buffs is just silly.
What I’m saying is the mechanics need to change away from being a transform before it should benefit from present Utilities.
I still really hope he considers the idea of merging Chilling Darkness to the Minor Master trait in Reaper.
And replace it with Brain Freeze !
YES!
That was excruciatingly painful to watch.
Agree 100%. He not only looked new to Reaper, he looked new to the whole game. Oh well, not every class is for everyone!
As a note, I hope through all this I wasn’t associated with Zoso.
gg this is real life, Robert Gee answered prayers
Praise!
Can you describe what handicaps this would solve that aren’t flat buffs?
Our overwhelming predictability in Death shroud.
I’ll give you that. It’s a lot like Rampage’s overwhelming predictability. O:)
(okay slightly more on the “underwhelming” side. Still quite effective though.)Rampage is an elite that grants 2 stacks of stability every 3 seconds that can negate most hard control and you’re not expected to be able to use rampage every 10 seconds because of that. Rampage doesn’t make up 90% of the warrior’s defenses either. The abilities on rampage have a much shorter cast time for the most part, excluding doom. So the predictability with DS vs Rampage only increases rather than decreases. All these elements combine to create a mechanic that is extremely easy to predict and counter. Another distinction between the two of them is that Rampage is a control and damage skill while Death shroud is supposed to fill damage, control and defense all at the same time while excelling at none of them. While rampage has a clear focus death shroud does not.
Predictability is the only thing I mentioned. What does someone do when they Rampage? They Throw a rock, they charge you and they try to beat your face in. That’s all it can do and it’s very predictable. Well, besides running away. That’s a common use too.
Aka, bad comparison. You can’t really compare the two. Death shroud is more akin to a weapon swap, kit or conjure weapon than any of the transforms. A transform doesn’t often have multiple traits associated with it to improve its effectiveness. Perhaps one, maybe two traits depending on the profession. While death shroud is a profession mechanic. Death Shroud is also the only profession mechanic that locks you out of using your utility and you suffer greatly for it. You seem to believe death shroud is more powerful than it actually is. Death shroud is fairly weak as a profession mechanic and its extremely weak when compared to most transform skills. Excluding racial transforms.
Literally nothing you just said proves it isn’t a transform. You can talk efficacy all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that Anet has made Shroud into a transformation mechanic. The next closest thing would be a kit, which isn’t that hard of a change to make. I would LOVE if they turned it into a kit mechanic. If it is a kit mechanic there’s even more of an argument for getting Shroud F1 and Reaper Shroud F2, and enabling healing/utilities/elites. Shroud in its current form is very flawed, that’s something I don’t disagree with in the least.
yeah make a splash and burn in aoe
I like it!
What about Reaper? If traited for piercing this could get messy.
I like it, too. I think it might be cool to have a delayed effect like Ele fire underwater. That would be pretty decent for comboing damage for bursts.
As for the pierce, just make the explosion originate at the first target hit.
ds works more like elementalist summon weps and engis stuff with a “lifebar” if ele and engi can use their utilities why not necros why we have to fight handicap all the time
Those are totally different. Ever picked up a summoned weapon? Guess what, you still have your utilities, just like any other class picking up a summoned weapon. You are arguing completely different mechanics. (You are even holding your same weapons in Shroud!)
Can you describe what handicaps this would solve that aren’t flat buffs?
Our overwhelming predictability in Death shroud.
I’ll give you that. It’s a lot like Rampage’s overwhelming predictability. O:)
(okay slightly more on the “underwhelming” side. Still quite effective though.)
Death shroud is not a transform since the cooldown is completely different (cooldown doesn’t start at entering) and it doesn’t destroy minions.
It’s a class mechanic! If it functioned in a way that destroyed minions every time you used your class mechanic the class would implode out of stupidity. I’ll concede that it’s the ONLY transform that doesn’t kill Necro minions, but as a side note… runes of Vampirism’s Mist Form destroys minions but not Ranger spirits. Cooldowns? Serious? All other transforms have long cooldowns, this compensates.
- It literally transforms you, in a way much like Rampage.
- It overwrites your current skills.
- It blocks out utilities.
- It overwrites other transforms.
They can let us use utilities in Shroud and I will be more than happy, but it is treated as a transform and nothing but a change in Shroud mechanics could convince me otherwise. A dev could even come on here and say it’s not a transform, I would just think of it as how one day Spectral Walk is working as intended and the next day it’s a bug.
“Additional skills” doesn’t include taking away all existing skills. It’s a transform and the proof of that is that it can overwrite already existing transforms, something only a transform can do. Anyone can call it whatever they please but its function is that of a transform.
If they wanted it to be something different it should have been an F1-F6 mechanic, F1 Shroud activation and F2-F6 for skills.
Originally, shroud was our downstate. It had 4 skills and that is it. Anet didn’t like that idea, so they changed it. Made it into a transform, which locked the right side of the toolbar. It still had 4 skills, and so they added another one.
Thank you.
But lately they have been talking about how it is a 2nd healthbar. Regardless of this, deathshroud from its very conception has been lacking a solid identity. Its functionality has been changed a multiple times.
In the current iteration of GW2, it would only make sense to change it from how it currently functions, as a “transform” into a second health bar with skills attached.
I completely agree. They could make it more skillful to move it away from the transform into a real “second healthbar” with “additional skills,” which I think would be great from multiple perspectives. We would have a full upkeep skill that lets us raise our DPS and make use of unique skills, raising the skill : power balance, especially for PvE.
Right now, this lack of a clear shroud identity is what has been holding us back. Deathshroud is counterintuitive with signets, counterintuitive with minions, counter intuitive.
I fully agree with this too, but the problem is that it is currently a tranform and I think transforms shouldn’t have access to utilities.
We need to be able to use our utilities in deathshroud if necromancer is to become less handicapped.
Can you describe what handicaps this would solve that aren’t flat buffs?
I’m going to go against the grain and say I don’t want it. Shroud is a transform and transforms shouldn’t have access to utilities.
They have been screaming at us that’s it is extra HP with additional skills constantly so your argument is invalid.
“Additional skills” doesn’t include taking away all existing skills. It’s a transform and the proof of that is that it can overwrite already existing transforms, something only a transform can do. Anyone can call it whatever they please but its function is that of a transform.
If they wanted it to be something different it should have been an F1-F6 mechanic, F1 Shroud activation and F2-F6 for skills.
I’m going to go against the grain and say I don’t want it. Shroud is a transform and transforms shouldn’t have access to utilities.
I like it, but it needs some things noted.
First, it can’t be more than 10%. A 20% damage bonus would destroy WvW.
Second, it would be horrible as a rune set when you think about it. Making it a rune set would mean that only people wearing the runes get the bonus, so if you don’t have a special set of armor for just running with Necros/Chrono’s then it’s a waste. Its function would be that of a Scholar rune without the universal bonus.
Third, I love the idea as a trait but it needs balancing. My idea would be to separate Vampiric Rituals into two traits. The first would be Vampirism Wells + Protection in the Major Line to compete with Vampiric Presence (Selfish vs group healing) and move Banshee’s Wail to Spite. Then for the Grandmaster make it give 20% recharge bonus for Wells and 10% more damage to enemies in Wells. This would take away competition from Chrono’s for the PvE Well damage bonus.
No more hybrid weapons please.
If you are going to do direct comparisons you could at least list damage coefficients.
less LF generation isnt what a necro needs
I would take a more reliable pull, with a longer effective range against running targets, that still Chills enemies, over a 5% LF nerf any day. Life Force generation is so easy now, and if you make the Spectral skills good enough to take Spectral Mastery that 5% comes right back and you can get 15% Life Force and 6 seconds Chill every 24 seconds. Remember, you don’t get any Life Force if the attack misses.
^This. Projectile’s shouldn’t just be randomly put on skills, if it isn’t a projectile finisher why does it have the negative consequences of projectiles.
Agreed.
It being a projectile doesn’t even fit in with the fact that its spectral. Grasping someone with otherwordly energy should not involve using projectiles to do so.
It would look really cool if the animation was similar to Axe, in that it has a an animation at the player and then the hand appears at the enemy. I’d say it would be fair to reduce the LF generation, give it a slightly more obvious animation, and make it non-projectile.
You should bow down to your necro overlords and they may spare you.
Necros find everyone more useful dead.
They could have an effect like Spectral Walk trail just a few units behind you when you walk. It wouldnt get in the way of footfalls.
I’ve been using it a lot, all I want changed is for it to be unlockable and possibly for it to pull Downed enemies. 1500 range is a bit too much, but I would love yanking Rangers across the map.
Shouldn’t a heavy beat a light….
If they stand in one spot and do nothing but press 1, then yeah, probably.
necro is imo atm hands down the strongest class to 1v1 and is extremely usefull in pvp just cause of its aoe wells and damage, also mesmer is not squishy, it can facetank every burst after the first susccesfull distortion vs enemy bursts, stop the nonsense and say light armors are weak or squishy, they broken and stupendously OP vs medium and heavy armors….. medi guard stand 0.000000000% chance vs any spamming necro out there or mesmer even…..guardians are a joke, warriors are mediocore tops, even thieves are a joke now the most stupendously op classes are, mesmer necro and ele….in this order the rest pales in comparison- also, there is no power meta….powerbuilds still cant destroyed and obliterated hardcore by condi or cele in general…just some powerbuilds work slightly better now…there is no power met atm…there hasn’t been for over 2.5 years….its all condi or cele again or better said. still….there is no power meta, powerbuilds are highly inferior to condi still
The game is clearly balanced around the Ascended armor prices.
Let’s see.
- No reflects/projectile mitigation, which both elementalists and mesmers have.
- No decent escapes for when you’re cornered/outmatched. Mesmers and elementalists have quite a few.
- No decent elites. Lich is a joke. Plague makes you harder to kill somewhat, but you’re also a bigger target. Flesh Golem doesn’t even attack half the time.
Admittedly, elementalist apparently also has weak elite skills as well, while mesmers stick to either Mass Invisibility or Moa Signet.
In addition to this, several other lingering problems like lack of reliable Stability and decent combo fields/finishers remain even now, leaving necromancers still subpar compared to the other two most of the time.
and yet, a good necro is strong both vs of these professions…
…nerf Axe auto?
We’re pushing 16k responses on how much the axe is bad. I think Arena net gets it. I think they’re working on it now. But just in case, keep posting.
Keep dreaming. We’ve been pushing them on how bad axe auto and staff auto are for over 3 years. Guess what’s changed.
I mean, staff is a condition weapon with 4 conditions related skills, with a slow and weak power based autoattack attached to it.
Scepter is a condition weapon with a #3 skill that scales off of power.
Necro and ranger suck for a reason, and it’s the amount of crappy hybrid weapons they have with low autoattack damage to boot. Hybrid weapons will never work in this system, half of their component doesn’t benefit from the full stat investment coming from armor and traits.
well staff got a bit of an upgrade still not perfect but I can live with it but axe need some love is too bad atm no 1 uses it
They should let the necro PvP npc use it for some relief.
Speaking of PvP NPC, gimme dose blocks pls.
(I know it’s connected to dodge but they can do it while Immobilized.)
Always have been except that tiny window with dhuumfire.
Why is that?
I’d love to see necros own eles and mesmers and everything else that get in its way. But it prolly wont happen.
Just wishful thinking.
Hardly anyone complains about necros and the ones that do are clueless.
seems to that this kid is actually clueless…ps. necro’s don’t only own ele now…they are pretty much to what I refer to as faceroll to win vs anything class
I agree, let’s nerf Axe auto.
RP weirds me out.
Reaper Shroud 5 also has hard CC that isn’t fear based, as does Chilled to the Bone, but those are also chill effects so it wouldn’t matter.
Yeah, there’s that too. In total it would give Reaper 2 options for Chill that it would not have otherwise.
Brain Freeze would make the following Necro skills apply a new condition:
Dark Path
Chillblains
Spinal Shivers (and related trait)
Spectral Grasp
Chilling Wind (Lich #3)
Plus possible boon conversions.
It would really transform Reaper into the “Close up = Death” role people have been wanting, without increasing individual skill coefficients.
- You have to take Curses Tree, which means Brain Freeze, Terror, and Parasitic Contagion all blend together really well.
- Opens up Reaper for another build it otherwise wouldn’t have.
- Skills above (minus Dark Path) benefit still but it also benefits:
- Spectral Wall
- Reaper’s Shroud #5
- Frost bolts from Ice Field + 2 new Whirl Finishers or Frost Aura (all self-generated)
- GS Autoattack chain
- Terrify (Reaper’s Shroud #3 second form)
Chilling has been nerfed by converting to resistence.
Chilling Darkness was nerfed into oblivion, then they put a little band-aid over it.Give us Brain Freeze instead.
Brain Freeze – inflict Confusion (or Torment) whenever you apply Chill to an enemy.It’s brilliant, and it even fits the Curse theme.
I’m against it. Proc off proc off another proc is just dumb concept and ruins the gameplay.
Exactly that would happen if you ever applied any Blind. 4 Conditions out of nowhere.Instead, give us Chill on Interrupt. We have some good amount of CC effects, but nothing that would reward timing them for interrupts.
As for other, powerful DoT conditions – place them on actual skills if you like. Grasping Dead or FoC.
Considering it would replace Chill on Blind, Blind would only apply Blind.
Chill on interrupt would react poorly with Reaper’s Chill on Fear since all of our interrupts except Warhorn #4 are Fear based.
Spectral Grasp and Charge say hi.
Well, Spectral Grasp already applies Chill so it’s the same deal as the Fear -> Chill. Charge is an interrupt but it originates from the Flesh Golem and not the player, so it wouldn’t apply Chill.
Gs #5 would be an addition.
Chilling has been nerfed by converting to resistence.
Chilling Darkness was nerfed into oblivion, then they put a little band-aid over it.Give us Brain Freeze instead.
Brain Freeze – inflict Confusion (or Torment) whenever you apply Chill to an enemy.It’s brilliant, and it even fits the Curse theme.
I’m against it. Proc off proc off another proc is just dumb concept and ruins the gameplay.
Exactly that would happen if you ever applied any Blind. 4 Conditions out of nowhere.Instead, give us Chill on Interrupt. We have some good amount of CC effects, but nothing that would reward timing them for interrupts.
As for other, powerful DoT conditions – place them on actual skills if you like. Grasping Dead or FoC.
Considering it would replace Chill on Blind, Blind would only apply Blind.
Chill on interrupt would react poorly with Reaper’s Chill on Fear since all of our interrupts except Warhorn #4 are Fear based.
Spectral Grasp and Charge say hi.
Well, Spectral Grasp already applies Chill so it’s the same deal as the Fear → Chill. Charge is an interrupt but it originates from the Flesh Golem and not the player, so it wouldn’t apply Chill.
Also remove retal from it, retal is useless as a boon, especially in PvE. Give it something useful like vigor or fury per opponent hit.
Everything about unholy feast and the focus skill spinal shivers is bad for PvE and great for PvP. This isn’t so much a fault of the weapon as PvE encounters not being designed properly (lack of enemies using boons, no need to cripple enemies, ect). Retaliation is in the same boat. It’s a great boon, PvE just needs to keep up.
There are mobs that apply boons. The dredge. Porblem being they apply 3-4 boons in a 4-5 second interval so any boon strip is pointless as they come immediately back up.
And it also doesn’t make a difference with the damage output of elementalist/warrior/thief, things melt with protection or without.
Retaliation could use a 600% damage increase while in PvE, and outside WvW so it doesn’t get broken there. A 400 tick per 2-3 second interval autoattack is miserable on mobs that have 30-40k hp.
Personally I still think retaliation should be a % damage reflection, 20-25% damage reflected or so. That way it becomes useful against single heavy hitters like thieves or slow attacking enemies like guardians and not totally broken against rangers/mesmers with multi hit autoattacks or its multiple procs on barrage, which means the ranger takes far more damage back than his wimpy Barrage does.
+1 to alp of this
Chilling has been nerfed by converting to resistence.
Chilling Darkness was nerfed into oblivion, then they put a little band-aid over it.Give us Brain Freeze instead.
Brain Freeze – inflict Confusion (or Torment) whenever you apply Chill to an enemy.It’s brilliant, and it even fits the Curse theme.
I’m against it. Proc off proc off another proc is just dumb concept and ruins the gameplay.
Exactly that would happen if you ever applied any Blind. 4 Conditions out of nowhere.Instead, give us Chill on Interrupt. We have some good amount of CC effects, but nothing that would reward timing them for interrupts.
As for other, powerful DoT conditions – place them on actual skills if you like. Grasping Dead or FoC.
Considering it would replace Chill on Blind, Blind would only apply Blind.
Chill on interrupt would react poorly with Reaper’s Chill on Fear since all of our interrupts except Warhorn #4 are Fear based.
Chilling has been nerfed by converting to resistence.
Chilling Darkness was nerfed into oblivion, then they put a little band-aid over it.
Give us Brain Freeze instead.
Brain Freeze – inflict Confusion (or Torment) whenever you apply Chill to an enemy.
It’s brilliant, and it even fits the Curse theme.
I still want Brain Freeze trait somewhere accessible that makes chilling an enemy inflict confusion or torment :P
Love it!
there’s actually more and more necros in soloq
Really? I see mostly the same ones so often I keep track of builds and names :/ on topic that’s not necro specific you probably had a mental dilemma “Which necro should we target first?”.
yea, Qing right now, almost 2 necro every single Q, and just had a 5 necro Q, 3 on one team 2 on other..
I’ve been seeing more of this too. Pre-patch I switched back and forth between Necro and Mes, but Mes was just too powerful post-patch to feel rewarding. Unfortunately it feels like Mesmers are just as common.
A little damage boost? Axe autoattack needs at least 900 range and close to a 50% damage increase.
Also remove retal from it, retal is useless as a boon, especially in PvE. Give it something useful like vigor or fury per opponent hit.
From PvP point of view you will facetank a lot so it’s not useless it’s not a negative of the weapon everything else is.
A weapon shouldn’t have a skill that’s only useful in a pvp setting. Retaliation as a boon needs rethinking. It’s just this weird clone of confusion.
Why take away something that is useful for PvP just because it doesn’t benefit you as much as others? That’s pretty selfish.
It doesn’t “benefit me as much”. It doesn’t benefit me at all, it’s worthless. And the retal is worthless in pvp still compared to other more powerful boons.
You strike me as one of those people who thought a retaliation mesmer build was a good idea.
Retaliation on a Mesmer? That’s almost as scrub as being serious about PvE on a Necro.
Ugh, Sagat you’re right. Frankly, the current animation is an embarrassment to the design team + balance team coordination.
A little damage boost? Axe autoattack needs at least 900 range and close to a 50% damage increase.
Also remove retal from it, retal is useless as a boon, especially in PvE. Give it something useful like vigor or fury per opponent hit.
From PvP point of view you will facetank a lot so it’s not useless it’s not a negative of the weapon everything else is.
A weapon shouldn’t have a skill that’s only useful in a pvp setting. Retaliation as a boon needs rethinking. It’s just this weird clone of confusion.
Why take away something that is useful for PvP just because it doesn’t benefit you as much as others? That’s pretty selfish.
Quickness shortens Evade times and Slow increases Evades times.
…because boons are bad and conditions are good.
2 MM’s just throw an Engi at them for the AoE Moa that destroys their whole build.
It does turn hilarious when the Necro dodges the thrown Elixer X and is now a Moa Master. The minions retain their actives when Moa’d, so the Golem can still Charge and the bone minions can still explode.
LOL! I want to make a Moa Farmer Necro just for that.
MM necro bunker duos. Just try to take a point from them, even with one other person, I dare you.
1 MM you can kill with AoE after a bit of a fight.
2 MM’s just throw an Engi at them for the AoE Moa that destroys their whole build.
Test: Use “Damage = weapon strength * power * skill coefficient / armor” to create a qualitative answer to whether Vitality or Toughness is more effective as a Defensive trait.
Base numbers:
Vitality = 1000
Health = 19212
Life Force = 13257
Toughness = 1000
Armor = 1888
Weapon Strength will be kept at a value of 2445 as is consistent with the Power given by a Staff while I was wielding it with arbitrary specs in Heart of the Mists.
Skill coefficient will be kept at a value of 1.
Power will be used to find the needed power to 1-hit a Necro test subject. The point of this is simple, higher Power needed, the more resilient the build is.
Shroud offers a 50% direct damage reduction and since the formula is all multiplying and dividing I simply add it to starting Life Force with a multiplier of 2.
Base Power needed (zero added Vitality, zero added Toughness):
19212 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 1888
Power = 14835.3
Power needed Toughness (zero added Vitality, 1200 added Toughness):
19212 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 3088
Power = 24264.5
Power needed Vitality (1200 added Vitality, zero added Toughness):
31212 = 2445 * power * 1 / 1888
Power = 24101.5
_______________________________________________________
Life Force is similar and will show similar effects to Protection
Power needed versus Life Force Toughness (zero Vitality, 1200 Toughness)
2 * 13257 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 3088
Power = 33486.8
Power needed versus Life Force Vitality (1200 Vitality, zero Life Force)
2 * 21537 = 2445 * Power * 1 / 1088
Power = 33261.2
_______________________________________________________
Conclusion:
Against direct damage Vitality and Toughness function almost exactly the same on a 1 Vitality : 1 Toughness scale. Downside to Toughness includes zero extra protection against Conditions. Downside to Vitality includes less relative healing compared to Toughness (honestly not even a downside, it just means your health bar doesn’t go back as high while still giving the same health).
Notes:
If you want me to do some further calculations including particular builds or give actual condition differences I might do it if I’m bored enough. If there is an error please correct me, there’s nothing worse than false information floating around. Guild Wars Wiki for damage calculation page.
First qq post against how op the necro is in awhile – rip in reapers
There’s one in the PvP forum about how 3 Necros on a team are too powerful.
You know what a signet necro can do? Send it right back!
Just like these complaints.
You heard it here first everyone, Necro is OP but only when there are three.
Why don’t you ask for advice on how to kill Necros instead of crying OP.
Wait a second. What does my suggestion even buff? All Necros have to spec all the way into Death Magic for some Blast finishers and Minions lose the 25% damage bonus and Condi transfer? That doesn’t sound like much of a MM focused buff.