Guild Wars 2

That happened to me with Liadri. I was getting close to beating her too.

The feeling passes.

Im somewhat surprised that fractal fortnight was actually a fortnight. Truth in advertising!

One guy opened 500 another opened 1500.

Based on the drop rates from last year (which weren’t high), it is entirely possible that they just didn’t get the item to drop.

Neither of those guys got endless bells or toy maker tonics either.

I would be very disappointed if this item is truly gone.

Don’t we need 20 skill points per piece of ascended armor?

Well I wolnt have to worry about having enough after buy my heal skill now?

I’ve been playing ranger in sPvP..

Healing spring, leap, weapon swap, blast + leap. About 2.5x the amount of healing as consume conditions and much of it party wide. Oh, and its a condition clear. Oh, and I’m doing big damage the whole time. Oh, and if it matters, my teammates can bast too.

Consume conditions is overrated as a big heal. Mending, which doesn’t heal for removed conditions, but has a shorter cooldown and the same base heal as CC, is the red headed stepchild of Warrior Heals.

Lets not over remember the GW1 necro.

For most of the lifespan, it could do 2 things: MM or SS. SS was a curses necro that was only good because dumb AI didn’t punish it the way it responded to regular AoE damage.

It was a gimmick.

MM was another Gimmick that flat out didn’t work in hard content and pvp where there were few deaths and/or no corpses.

There was also orders build, but that doesn’t punt as you didn’t kill anything so far away from the action and as a result got no loot.

Another gimmick.

Towards the end of the lifespan you saw, especially with heroes, Necromancer’s taking on the roles of other classes using soul reaping as an energy engine. Fine. Useful. Not very necro-y.

GW1 necro locked you into gimmicks.

GW2 necro is almost a solid all arounder, but GW2 developers have to figure out that Death Shroud is not a second HP pool, but instead a limited pool damage mitigation system that locks you out of your skills and that leaves you with the same HP you were at when it runs out.

Nike.2631:

Simplest solution is don’t take it. I mean nobody takes it.

Then they patch it later.

It seems like this had a more effective form earlier in testing and its the victim of last minute nerfs. I kinda wonder what miraculous build we’re not seeing that scared them so badly…?

That’s not how anet works.

If nobody uses the skill, nobody whines about the skill and it stays unused and never gets buffed. For example corrosive poison cloud or signet of undeath, and those get much more use than this thing ever will.

I was in favor of just removing lifesteal from the game because anet can’t balance it, so why bother

…

….

But then I saw the new Guardian heal and I’m angry again.

Are the glory vendors getting removed tomorrow? I am not clear on how long they will stay with us.

Marks are basically traps with a different name.

Wells are AoEs with a different name. Ground targeted AoEs with a different name.

Marks are constantly nerfed because the game designers are concerned that traps are OP in the situation where somebody getting focused runs into a stack of traps.

And yeah, the traits that improve marks are so sad that they aren’t work taking even though you use staff.

At least you are not a necro with only 2 dodges and no Vigor.

But in the patch we’ll get a signet that will heal us for 300 after the 15k kill shot.

Every 500 points gives out 2 gold. 1/500 * 2gold = 40 copper. So you can imagine yourself earning 40 copper every time you get an achievement point if it makes you feel better.

Would the toxic tower make a good fractal?

We have seen the fractured update turn parts of old living story content into fractals. The new aetherblade fractal is pretty sweet, as are the 2 new boss fractals. The molten fractal is solid too.

How could it be done? None of the individual floors really are interesting enough on their own, and the content was designed for more than 5 people.

I think the experience of running past a minefield full of CC mobs is interesting and would be a good addition to fractals. The Problem is that the tower is too big and the events too long for a fractal.

Just remove the walls, sick a boss at the end and done… What do you all think?

And what of the final boss? He has different spawn conditions (good) but is just a big meat bag when said and done. Hes certainly less replayable than Mai or the molten bosses, but i guess with agony added might compare well against bloomhunger. Is his instance good enough to be a fractal?

How come the Halloween year one weapons are the only limited edition items to never make a comeback?

It’s terribad.

Next problem

You are the slowest guy out of everybody. Everybody can escape you to reset the fight and then kill you on cooldown.

Next problem

Most of our traits improve our weapon skills, which then have to be balanced as if all of those traits are active.

Next Problem

Minions. They suck. But our weapons are balanced as if we have 7 traited minions helping contribute.

Next problem

Utility Skills. Most of them have no utility, they have damage. Thus we get punished twice, first because our weapon skills have to be balanced with lower damage, second when we have no support.

Next problem

Lifesteal. If it can’t be balanced, remove it from the game. The end.

Next Problem

Reanimator and Protection of the Horde.

Next Problm

Warrior whiners. They whine whenever anything beats them, even when that something has a counter or hard counter. The real problem is that they get listened to instead of laughed at.

Anet probably has some models that don’t match game experience.

If your model said that lifeforce generation was the same thing as health regeneration, then maybe necromancer needs to have no sustain and underwhelming heals.

Where Do I think the class is headed?

The necromancer heal is insulting. On the live stream, the heal bar did not even appear to go up.

If you cannot heal facing stationary golems in he mists, how are you supposed to heal in the game?

The skill cant be tweaked right.

1. The heal values will be balanced by theory crafted numbers like what the above poster is doing and thus will always be terribad/underwhelming in a live setting.

2. The life steal traits exist.

That they exist means that the signet will be balanced based on them existing, meaning that you will be trading offence or defense + 30 trait points, + 5 traits just to get a usable heal.

3. Low damage weapon users (like axe necros). will constantly cry for nerfs of the skill regardless of whether the skill is any good. Meanwhile, the whole game is based on big hits from big weapons.

No, it’s not fine, it is terribad.

A skill that doesn’t heal should be a utility not a heal. Then we can have a debate about whether its good or bad and at what numbers.

Like a playoffs?

Not bad idea actually.

If the skill gave the damage from the lifesteal and the heal from the lifesteal done by all parties to the Necromancer instead of to the parties, then you have a skill that is approaching take able in cerain PvE boss fights only.

Guild Wars 1 Hexes worked this way. IF I had a hex that did lifesteal when somebody did damage, then I would get the lifesteal, because the hex was mine, even if somebody else did the damage.

Pvp, still worst skill in the game, one dodge kills the almost all I the effectiveness of the skill.

Lol at anybody who says the Engineer one is bad.

You get
1. A stun gadget
2. A guarabtee that you can’t be downed while the skill is up
3. A heal when you would otherwise be downed
4. A heal when the skill timer ends.

Now you don’t get a heal immediately when you press heal. This seems like a problem, but the problem can be mitigated by either 1. Carrying Regen in you build, and/or 2. Pre casting the heal before you enter the fight. Experienced players will get used to this.

The Necromancer heal has alleged team DPS increase (worse than frost spirit or banners for example) in exchange for not healing when you need a heal. Garbage. The only interesting thing, maybe, is synergy with the new runes from fractals. Not having a heal but getting a 5-6s Aegis might be fair.

If you are talking about hot join, the dailies have not changed. You still need to capture points, tag kills, and get top player somehow.

Dalanor.5387:

spoj.9672:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/23579-signet-of-vampirism

Hmm looks worryingly weak.

Don’t panic, every skill is off with the numbers. Check out Consume Conditions.

Using the same heal scaling as consume conditions you are looking at:

PASSIVE: 100 point heal
ACTIVE: 250 point heal

With these as approximate numbers, even if they can be traited up to 120/300…. Is the skill still worth taking even though you don’t get an actual heal from the skill?

The new warrior heal will be OP in zergplay, OP but not always useful in regular PvE, and incredibly useful in any sPvP meta that involves a lot of AoE on capture points.

Think about something like Liadri, the concealing dark. Very hard for necromancer, the warrior will just chain immunity and face tank her.

At least it has counter play: does nothing about conditions, and you can theoretically stop attacking the guy if it has a tell.

The necro skill is filler trash. Useful only if the game gets a dedicated healer class, or if Necromancers gain the ability to heal in shroud AND transfusion heals in shroud AND transfusion doesn’t get nerfed.

I still have a Venturi cog.

Yes. 100% likely.

The toxic tower is still up. If it is going by player input, as it appears, it will pop soon. Whatever happens with the tower will be far more interesting than windersday, which was just a jp, a bad dungeon, grindy toypacaypse, and the bell and pvp mini games.

1. World Ranker*
2. Kills
3. Gates/Walls destroyed
4. Towers/keeps/castles **

That’s it. No other achievements please.

. Disable the laurel achievement at the start of leagues
*. Merge the achievement, but give more points for keeps than towers.

Borliss Pass here.

We had good match ups when we didn’t face SBI, Yaks, or FA. The other matches came to the wire. The bottom of the league fully capable of beating us even in prime (and we can have serious issues where bronze servers can beat us off prime).

Devon and the Devs need to think about solving server stacking before another league season.

@azizul suggestion above probably would not have put Yaks in the right league. Some of the servers were improperly ranked/seeded going into the leagues.

Wait? The reward is account bound minis that we already have?

That’s the recurring pattern.

The best rewards will always come to those who rush content. So sorry everybody else.

This skill is terrible.

A Heal skill that doesn’t heal. So you get hit, and your health can’t go back up until combat is over. Also, it doesn’t deal with conditions like all of our other heals can, making you weak to conditions.

We all know that siphon values will be kept low.

No conditionmancer will use this, Staff and scepter attack too slow. No power necro will use this, they don’t wear toughness armor and spend a lot of time in shroud where the skill does nothing.

Let’s be honest what this skill really is:

It is the minions siphon health trait repurposed as a heal skill.

But anet has a design philosophy that dictates that specs based on AI damage are never to be useful in competitive pvp. So, if the skill makes minion masters useable instead of jokes, then a bunch of unrelated skills will get hards nerfs. Sorry, but that is how things work.

Note also that the minions siphon trait still exists: That means that the signet will be balanced at (100% effectiveness minus healing from minions siphon trait). You will have to take the trait just to get your heal to fully work.

danielrjones.8759:

those who want limited amount earned for dailies are the same people who have grinded for hours, are now tired of it, and don’t want others to catch up. .

That’s mostly it.

But, for the people who do these dailies everyday, the fact that most of them were not that challenging and were quick but varied and different was a nice carrot to have.

I am not looking forward to slogging up that tower for the hybrid point today after doing it yesterday. I can barely tolerate doing story dungeons once a weeks since there is so little variety (and even less variety of not-long story dungeons). WvW achieves are a pain in a week where the server has quit because of losing. Fractals are long and boring, a lot of people were doing lvl 1 swamp groups so they could quit and get the point instead of finishing.

If you make the game carrots really tedious people will quit.

Add more, fine, but don’t add tedious ones, limit exusting tedius ones, and keep them varied every day.

I know that you are immune to the allure of this carrot because you are a special snowflake, but this does not add anything to the discussion.

You can’t beat well played warrior. They can always exit, reset the fight, then kill you while you are on cool downs.

Stay at range and use all your soft CC is your best bet.

Vision crystal isn’t a once per day craft.

By hoarding ascended materials, (and for that matter gossamer) you can level up by doing all of the refining at once to get 400-425, then do obsidian refinements at once to get from 450-475.

That is… If ascended crafting ever does come.

1. Gnashblade. (The voice actor who does him is awesome. More please.)
2. Hobo Tron
3. Mad King!
4. Rox and Brahm (but their inclusion in the toxic tower was disappointing)
5. Subdirector Noll

Worst

1. Scarlet (worse than a cartoon villain)
2. Kiel.

Honorable & Dishonorable mention:

Lord Faren. Here you have this guy who is basically caricatured as vanity smurf and treated as comic relief (and he’s good for it).

Then he does something incredibly brave and out of character risking certain death… And. NOBODY GIVES A CRAP….. Certainly not Queen Jenna, who he risked his life for, and nobody cares enough to go look for him. That he’s discovered is a happy accident for him. He’s discovered in a torture chamber about to literally get roasted be scarlet, but its an occasion for a “men look dumb in underwear,” visual joke. He’s randomly in the toxic tower as a prisoner again, no backstory.

So you create this joke character who is somewhat memorable, have him do something brave, and then pooop on him instead of giving him a chance to redeem himself. It is a perfect example of the men are disposable meme, which would not be so annoying except that all of the story driving actions, aside from southsun and halloween, have been made by females for the benefit of females.

For PvE a big theme is how poorly the class synergies with guardians (no finishers, cant get healed in shroud, no cleaving) and the “pack n stack” LOS meta.

There is no cleaving melee attack and this hurts the class because of how every other class has to play with that style. Also, on huge bosses with huge hit boxes, cleaving melee attacks can hit the boss twice for double damage with correct positioning. Necromancer can do something similar, using life transfer to hit jormag in three spots for triple damage, but it isn’t he same. Most of the time, this class is literally doing half damage without access o a cleave.

Finally, the weapons, and weapon selection is limited, are boring. All you got is damage, and conditions (which are mostly just damage). Where is the team utility? Where is the counter play? They play boring too. Scepter is 1 spam. Dagger is 1 spam. Offhand is dagger for the extra condition remove, or focus if you don’t want the condition remove. Warhorn is terrible. Axe is a weapon swapping cooldown nightmare, because the 1 skill is terribad. Staff is a condition trap weapon that keeps getting nerfed, but we all have to take it anyways because it has the only range and utility in the profession.

But that’s why it would suck.

The Blood traits exist. Therefore, to balance out the new heal, it will be balanced at (100% effectiveness – Blood traits).

Then there is the demonstrated fear anet has of lifesteal. The values will never be high enough to be worthwhile.

Assume warrior healsig is OP at 400 heal per second and terribad at 250 heal per second. The maximum theoretical lifesteal to match healsig would be 200 heal per second with 200 dps, but that 200 heal per second is nowhere near the sustain you need to stay alive. And even that 200 is based on also having the blood traits and points in healing (see above point).

Introduction of a lifesteal sig means the blood traits will never be fixed/will always be horrible and could mean future DPS nerfs for power builds.

OP, get it in your head that people who rush content will always be rewarded double in this game.

That way you will not complain when this happens again in the future.

I got 2 loot bag but only 12 ore last time I opened.

They are 4 and a half silver. You can get, like, a major rune for that. Quit ur whining.

We are desperate because we have been stocking up stacks of t7 mats in anticipation of ascended armor which anet promised would be here in 2013.

Some of us have even been delaying ascended weapon crafting because ascended armor crafting is hugely expensive and more important.

The sooner ascended armor crafting comes, the sooner I get back 20+ inventory slots.

Rumor is that we are getting a lifesteal signet with no burst heal on activation. Sounds pretty sorry unless the lifesteal base values are huge and we all know they wolnt be.

Bhawb.7408:

Healing in DS will not come to Necros as a base ability of DS.

I do believe, however, that it should be added in some form as a 30 point Blood Magic trait.

We aren’t asking for a DS healing skill, or even for transfusion to heal us.

All we want is for our blood regen trait, our well of blood regen, our food, our siphons, and for heals from party members to work.

And they should. If I invest 10 points in blood, my 2 traits should work, not be blocked by my own class mechanic.

He has 25 might stacks (given to him by his guardian friend) and the always crit in DS trait.

Maybe bowl of sweet & spicy butternut squash soup + blood lust stacks too.

If anything it doesn’t pulse enough.

Anyways the best use for the skill is to negate duration stacking conditions like burning or poison or weakness or blind for the party.

You have 20% condition damage from traits, and you have 100% terror duration or close to it from spite, mater of terror and oil. That’s a long disable + a spike.

Condition damage scales poorly so you have enough just right there to spike. Keep in mind that that you also have additional condition damage from might stacks which you can stack with blood is power (for dueling) or the Soul Reaping 10 trait. Each might is 35 additional condition damage. Even though you are outclassed by the condis, terror still does no brainer damage.

Outside of 1v1 or small scale, who cares about extra condition damage.

So with this build you have the kiting gameplay of the condi necros, more than 80% of the DS damage of the 30/10/0/0/30 builds without having to worry about melee range (You lose crit damage by putting on power/precision runes, and not having auto crit in shroud. You gain back the damage by having higher base damage on your axe (Which, lets fact it, those dagger builds don’t always have the luxury of swapping to staff before entering shroud, theory vs real world). With auto Fury on DS your crtit % is 70%ish which is acceptable. Plus you have more damage outside of shroud and a Terror Spike/ Master of Terror control. And even though you are in berserker armor, you have the excellent DS 15 trait and the passive extra defense of offensive shroud gameplay.

Keep in mind also that Terror loses a third of its damage when you cast it on somebody who does not already have condis, so if you are seeing low terror numbers this is probably why.

Is having acess to a fear spike and ranged gameplay worth losing theoretically 20% of your shroud damage? IMO yes. Most of what you face is Healsig warriors and they cant be killed with just vanilla DPS. You need to kite them, weaken them, and spike.

Do 30/20/0/0/20 with berzerker gear, runes that get your crit chance to 50% ish (eg, rune of the pack), axe mastery, terror, master of terror, and close to death is probably better than dhuumfire.

Gameplay involves using DS for offense. DS full damage range is the same as axe range so it fits comfortably.

Staff as an offhand to set off a bomb every now and then. Between staff swaps and Death shroud swaps, including death shroud swaps for fury, hopefully you got enough to do without having to use crappy axe auto attacks as filler.

Utilities can be anything, you have enough power condition duration, and condition damage to make anything work. Eg well of corruption, spectral wall, and signet of locust/swap to stun break for wvw zergplay.

Stand The Wall.6987:

necros that dont bring well of corruption to wvw are failures. dont fail guys.

I don’t like bringing well of corruption.

I don’t think that I have ever stripped Stability with the well. It doesn’t work. Of AoEs, only null field seems to work,

Replacing Swiftness with cripple is the best possible likely outcome, but I’d rather bring something like spectral wall for zergplay.

Bhawb.7408:

Lightsbane.9012:

i think the best way to rework axe is to make it melee :/ it would definitely give it a chain. i don’t see any reason axe 2 can’t perform similarly to 100b, i mean necro gets the only axe flurry.

It does perform “similarly”. The problem is that it cannot be as strong as 100b because of the differences in the skill. Making it melee doesn’t make sense. It’d be a direct case of either Dagger > Axe, or Axe > Dagger, and either way one weapon invalidates the other in 95% of situations if you make that change.

100b:
Melee
Roots you for channel duration
3.5s duration
Has a lot of back-ended damage (if you miss the very last hit you lose out on a ton of the damage)

Axe 2
600 range
You can not only walk around while channeling, but also turn
2.5s duration
Damage is equally spread over every single hit
Also gives sustain through LF

Now, obviously 100b works perfectly for PvE because if you’re remotely smart about using it, you can get off perfect 100bs almost on CD. In this case, the larger damage output from it makes more sense. Also you pair that with the fact that warriors have stronger self (and party) buffing, and their already strong 100b gets even stronger.

Making Axe 2 higher damage to match 100b is not going to happen. It makes no sense balance wise. What they should do is give it one of the many ideas that people have put out here, but most of which come down to: Axe 2 needs to be reworked in functionality, and Axe 1 needs a slight buff.

100b also does increased damage in time warp, where axe 2 doesn’t.

100b also cleaves to three enemies where axe 2 doesn’t.

100b does about 5x as much damage. When warriors are doing 20k 100b, i am usually doing 4k with axe 2.

Melee range a longer channel and a root are a penalty but Warrior has a speedy gap closer and a ranged immobilize (traited) on the same weapon, so let’s not pretend that these are bigger disadvantages than they are.

Axe 2 is crappy DPS, worse than dagger auto attack, but on a cool down. It is fine-ish righ now, but the class is nowhere near on par with warrior for power damage. I think the real problem is that axe 1 is a crappy filler skill.