Guild Wars 2

I got the Whump the Giant finisher at a super cheap price.

Earlier I got the chickenado finisher and I stocked up on keys at the reduced price hoping that HoT will put new goodies in BL chests.

I already had the Minipets, but priced at 80 gems I would have snatched them all up.

So, by the standards of a Steam sale this kinda sucked, but there have been one decent deals going.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem is that it is only underperforming in PvP. It is god like in PvE for defense.

You can tank 5 champs with this trait + epidemic.

Not sure how to fix this. They really need to separate balance.

How often do you cluster 5 champions together in the same fight?

A: never?

Stop with the hypotheticals and introduce real world situations please.

Well of Blood: give necromancer more finishers (100% chance finisher on staff 1 needs to happen) and the well is useable.

Corrosive Poison Cloud: This a really weak version of thief short bow 4. It needs additional functionality. Projectile block has been suggested.

Signet of Undeath: Cast time decrease.

Spectral Grasp: the spectral mastery trait needs to do more for this skill.

The concept of the focus is a weapon to weaken you enemy to that the team can spike them down. The focus has a chill/boon rip on 5 to weaken the enemy and a (theoretically) big damage skill on 4.

However, spiking down enemies isn’t a thing in Guild Wars 2 (Dodging, no dedicated healer class, etc), so the focus is a tool for a situation that never arises.

Focus 4: the projectile is slow and easily sidestepped. It has 1500 range, but if cast a range, you will not get a “bounce” which means that the damage and effect of the skill is pathetic. At the end of the day the only way to get it to work properly is to use it in melee range, but if you are casting this in melee range, you would be better off with Warhorn (WH does better damage).

Also regeneration as a boon is offensive if it regeneration doesn’t work in shroud.

(Compare the focus to the very similar skill mirror blade, which always gets full bounce effects, is a projectile finisher, does more damage, and has a much lower cooldown).

FIX: faster projectile speed, bigger bounce radius, damage increase, lower cool-down, vigor instead of regeneration.

Focus 5: This skill has too little effect for too much cast time and cooldown. It is uncastable in a pvp game with its long cast time. Even if the cast time were fixed, It provides no real boon control with that long cooldown either. (Boon hate needs to be super buffed because boon control has not kept up with boon spam.

At the same time that the skill focus 5 is super weak because of cast time/cool down issues, the trait that mimics the skill is super strong. The damage is big in ideal boon situations and the proc instantly hits when it’s valuable. The trait benefits from the +25% downed damage trait, and this trait was already responsible for getting the downed trait nerfed.

The skill almost deserves a bad cast time cooldown for the “perfect situation” where you hit the enemy with the right three boons and get triple damage, but that perfect situation is rarer that it should be.

FIX: Reduce cast to .25. reduce cooldown to 10 seconds. Reduce chill duration to 4 seconds. Eliminate bonus damage. Reduce boon rips to 2, but they are now boon corruptions.

I vote the easy way: increase damage coefficient on all skills & blast on #3.

That said: Necomancer one handed weapons (all of them) nerf shroud damage, and thus really ought to be designed as utility support weapons or condition weapons.

If real (non easy) work goes into axe (changing animations and skill functionality for example), then I would prefer axe become a utility weapon. The boon corruption idea is good for balance because boon spam is out of control and needs a counter (I’ve previously said that I want a spammy boon corrupt on focus, but a boon corrupt on an axe auto chain might be even better for balance).

OP, you should really try out that Mesmer.

It has fantastic mechanics that you don’t see in every other game.

As for the necromancer. It is a low powered caster (who only does decent damage in melee), and has a transformation built in. The transformation exists to cover up lacking mobility and defenses.

Nerfing Elementalist should be priority balance #1 for anet. The elementalist is tricky to balance with its low armor and low HP.

The best way to nerf elementalist is to buff its counter, necromancer, so that it is actually a counter and not just a 50/50.

Necromancers and Reapers are already dead meat against thieves, meditation guards, Range (and ranger), Hammer warriors, and this doesn’t change even with a few buffs. But a few buffs could keep Elementalists under control.

Hopefully usefulness fixes to axe, scepter, and focus are coming. If any of them are useable that’s a big buff.

Also, there was a lot of interest in the Reaper in the betas. Hopefully anet doesn’t kill this off with a nerf right away. The greatsword, in particular, is so clunky and telegraphed that the damage could still go up another 20-40% before it was OP. at its current damage output, it’s probably underpowered since it gives no team support, has little defense, and isn’t top tier DPS.

Plus Condi necromancer was ether-renewaled. It was over nerfed into the grave. You have to expect a “buff” that is really a slight un-nerf similar to the master of corruption fix is coming.

Finally, changes have a lead in time. The whole community, not just this forum but the pvp forum and reddit have noticed and complained about underpowered necromancers since May. With apologies to rangers its our turn.

This necromancer community hasn’t served the class well: we don’t agree on everything and there are a bunch of apologists who give anet the benefit of the doubt even after three years. The unanimous Elementalist + Warrior communities are better at communicating with the developers. They want everything buffed with no nuances and they get what they want.

The halo was very very difficult to get the first time. And the 10 gold part was there too. It should stay difficult to get.

And the lifesteal is pathetic, other than used on GS #3.

They need to go back to the drawing board on this one.

IF its possible to skip the annoying scavenger hunt and collect AP for account binding a precursor, then expect precursor prices to skyrocket.

Also, all the new players who just joined on their free to play accounts will want legendary weapons (but they actually can’t buy precursors from the TP, so that has a definite effect on demand that I can’t quite predict).

The other thing that should be considered is buffing Axe + Scpter + Focus to non garbage tier.

Both the lifesteal and the cooldown reduction are boring and uninspired and too weak.

They need to go back to the drawing board with this trait.

Maybe it could be a trait for condition users (even burning on crit isn’t too strong given the slow casts of greatsword skills).

The Reaper isn’t a balanced character. It is a gimmick right now, and the melee damage isn’t good enough for a character that doesn’t have team support.

If axe and scepter (and focus) get buffed to the point where everybody doesn’t have to take staff, then I’ll go reaper. Until then, base necromancer is just a stronger character.

jacim.5904:

2_ They have said several times that the way necro benefits its party is by doing dps, so sticking strictly to what they said there is really no point in taking any other gear set than Berzerker.

Did they really say this? If so, DPS isn’t high enough, especially on RS 1, GS 3, GS autos, RS 4, all non dagger necromancer weapons… (And where are the extra damage modifier traits?)

Agree with OP about the need for spite line. Blighter’s boon seems to be anet’s answer for not letting us heal in shroud and spite is the only line with consistent boon generation.

The staff is garbage once 4 + 5 go on their long cooldowns.

Until now this has been ok, because necromancers have Death shroud for proper ranged offense. (And a few patches ago, necromancer had a non crap scepter weapon to swap to).

This is a real problem, but the best fix is to fix axe + focus + scepter, so that you have useable weapons with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Also, not enough chill on 3, and too long cooldown on 2.

Reaper sustainability due to bug. Blighters boon not the culprit. Reaper shroud melting when away from bugged terrain.

I still hold out hope that we’ll get a Death shroud skills 6-10

No kidding. If you ever watched any of the ‘Friday the 13th’ it is clear that Jason has the ability to teleport.

Perpetual Chill isn’t OP. Thieves completely ignore chill, and the chill only variously affects other enemies. Some are hit harder (elementalists) some basically ignore chill due to movement buffs and skill options (engineer) or low cooldowns and leaps (warrior) or both (ranger).

I played a long time with a permanant chill Ranger and the chill effect had far less effect on gameplay than you’d think (and this was pre chill nerf).

Meanwhile anti immobilize traits affect chill, which means that real chill duration is only 85% of tooltip duration.

And in an actual game, a chill that doesn’t last long enough for you to run over to melee range and hit an enemy with a slow casting skill doesn’t count for much.

Reposted from the other thread, since our feedback threads aren’t merged.

(1) Reaper Greatsword is still a total glass cannon. GS4 & 5 offer almost nothing for defense.

(2) I think the damage on Greatsword is too low. Right now it is doing PS warrior level damage, (and far below icebow which outclasses everything by miles) but the class offers nothing for the team.

(3) I played a lot with shouts. My survivability went way down when I took shouts instead of spectrals, my damage went way down when I took shouts instead of wells. Surprisingly, my survivability also went down when I took shouts instead of wells due to Dark field plus RS 4 combo. Shouts offer very little.

(3a). The elite shout doesn’t feel elite.

(3b). I’d like to see an additional condition removed on Suffer.

(4) The heal shout still has too long cast time.

(5) The reaper seems a lot more vulnerable to conditions than base necromancer.

(6) Reaper shroud autoattack doesn’t do enough damage. I tried it with 2 grandmaster traits boost it and it’s not enough.

(7) The class needs needs needs improvements to axe and focus and scepter. Staff at range is awful. Axe/focus/scepter need to be good enough to be alternate choices to staff.

(8) I had trouble tagging mobs with reaper. Some tags require a crit or 2 normal hits and the mobs don’t live that long. (GS is slow, RS 1 does bad damage by itself)

(9) Fire Field plus RS 4 is perhaps the first OP thing the necromancer has ever gotten. (please nerf burning damage).

(10) Elementalists needs a nerf, and the best way to do this is by buffing necromancer/reaper to the point where elementalist actually has a counter.

(11). The chills don’t stick. They are all too little duration/pointless (except maybe for whirl finisher chills). What’s the point of having 20 different ways to chill if you cant chill your enemy long enough to close the gap and get one attack in?

(12). Did RS 2 have it’s range decreased? It hardly seemed to move you.

Every single chill, every single one of them is too short, on average two seconds too short.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anchoku.8142:

If chill were changed to a fully-stacking condition, then the impairment may be something like this:
1 chill reduces movement (except mobility skills) by 10% up to a 50% cap and skill ICD by 5% to a 50% cap, except on bosses where it takes a stack of 10 to equal a stack of 1.

Then, every profession gets its chill application skills reviewed.

That’s an extreme solution that will never happen.

There are much easier solutions. change the chill to “frost” and have necromancers apply one stack of “frost” every time they apply chill. This requires no rework of anyone and fixes the stacking problem, the damage problem, the cap problem and the defiance bar problem.

Or just remove the cap from chill. The game worked perfectly fine for 3 years without a chill cap, it was never once brought up as a problem, and it never caused any issues. Then they went and nerfed chill a dozen different ways for no apparent reason.

Thats what I would do to fix fear terror too.

In other words: There is a new condition called Frost that only gets applied on Traited chills. Maybe it can stack like burning too.

Or for fear: it can be changed into a status effect (like taunt), and apply the new condition “terror” when Traited.

Kyoshiro.6735:

The two main points I would like to focus on: Lack of damage reduction while using great sword

I think the designers of Greatsword realized that it had glass cannon issues, and that’s why they put life siphon on the Greatsword trait. In theory, landing a #3 grants you a decent heal.

Of course, that’s not the way it works out in actual game conditions.

Chill duration from almost every source is 1-2 seconds too short. Chills don’t stick.

I think the problem isn’t the range as much as the damage.

The weapon is a total glass cannon (GS4+ 5 offer next to nothing defense, life force, and kiting), but the damage isn’t really above what anybody else can do either (and it’s typical damage is far below the classes that easily might stack).

At a minimum, #3 should feel more rewarding and the autoattack chill duration shoud be longer.

It’s a brainless damage skill on a weapon that badly needs utility.

I’ll post in this thread instead of starting my own.

(1) Reaper Greatsword is still a total glass cannon. GS4 & 5 offer almost nothing for defense.

(2) I think the damage on Greatsword is too low. Right now it is doing PS warrior level damage, (and far below icebow which outclasses everything by miles) but the class offers nothing for the team.

(3) I played a lot with shouts. My survivability went way down when I took shouts instead of spectrals, my damage went way down when I took shouts instead of wells. Surprisingly, my survivability also went down when I took shouts instead of wells due to Dark field plus RS 4 combo. Shouts offer very little.

(3a). The elite shout doesn’t feel elite.
(3b). I’d like to see an additional condition removed on Suffer.

(4) The heal shout still has too long cast time.

(5) The reaper seems a lot more vulnerable to conditions than base necromancer.

(6) Reaper shroud autoattack doesn’t do enough damage. I tried it with 2 grandmaster traits boost it and it’s not enough.

(7) The class needs needs needs improvements to axe and focus and scepter. Staff at range is awful. Axe/focus/scepter need to be good enough to be alternate choices to staff.

(8) I had trouble tagging mobs with reaper. Some tags require a crit or 2 normal hits and the mobs don’t live that long. (GS is slow, RS 1 does bad damage by itself)

(9) Fire Field plus RS 4 is perhaps the first OP thing the necromancer has ever gotten. (please nerf burning damage).

(10) Elementalists needs a nerf, and the best way to do this is by buffing necromancer/reaper to the point where elementalist actually has a counter.

(11). The chills don’t stick. They are all too little duration/pointless (except maybe for whirl finisher chills). What’s the point of having 20 different ways to chill if you cant chill your enemy long enough to close the gap and get one attack in?

(12). Did RS 2 have it’s range decreased? It hardly seemed to move you.

Reaper is still a free kill for mesmers.

Players are going to learn to dodge RS 5 and the rest of reaper shroud isn’t too scary.

Free to play chests don’t get daily chests with laurels, which does limit their ability to buy many laurel-priced crafting recipes for ascended components.

Last year, Halloween Daily rewards included laurels, and so if you are a FTP account without much ability to get laurels make sure that you get them!

The game has balanced its difficulty around exotic gear, so there is no need to go for ascended gear, but payers probably want to get this gear anyways even if the bonus is small.

There are two methods to get ascended gear without any laurels.

(1) Ascended Gear Boxes: Ascended armor drops! Good sources for gaining dropped Ascended armor are Tequatl, Fractal daily chests, and WvW rank up boxes.

(2) Craft Ascended Armor and transmute to stats that you want

Most armor sets, including sets with the stats that you want are locked behind recipes bought for laurels. What you will do is craft ascended armor with stats you might not want, and transmute it to armor with stats that you do want.

The ascended armor you can make without laurels is
(1) Sinister Armor
(2) Zealot armor
(3) Nomads Armor

Zealot’s armor recipes are overpriced and limited supply these days so buy Sinister Armor Recipes for each armor piece are recommended. Nomads recipes aren’t too bad either.

You will also need to buy the exotic and ascended sinister insignia from the vendor in the Silverwastes (Sinister Recipes) or Dry Top (Nomads Recipes). The Silverwastes is a great loot area, so that’s your best bet. You will need a few hundred bandit crests if you go the Silverwastes route, but that isn’t very grindy to get.

You will also need sheet of Charged Ambrite (Sinister) or Sheet of Ambrite (Nomads). (or watchwork sprokets for Zealots) Buy what you need of these ASAP, because they are cheap now but overdue to spike in price due to limited availability. (many forum threads on this issue in the last few months).

Now that you have the Recipes and specific materials to make Sinister/Nomads/Zealots Armor, go through the normal process of crafting the sinister armor, including leveling up your crafting profession up to 500. If you are making Sinister armor (recommended), then you probably acquired most of the ascended materials you’ll need in the Silverwastes.

The silk/leather/mithril that you will need is time gated and can be crafted only once a day. Get Crafting up to 500 and start crafting these wgen you can. You can also buy the output on the trading post.

Once your armor is crafted you will go to the mystic Forge and transmute the armor to the stats you want. The recipe is:

(1). Ascended Armor Piece
(2) Exotic Insignia with the stats you want
(3). 5 Globs of Ectoplasms
(4) Anthology of Heroes (vendor item bought next to the mystic forge).

So that’s how you get ascended armor without laurels (this method works for weapons too). The best thing about this method is that it is actually cheaper than crafting some of the Ascended armor that you want the regular way!

First of all Borlis Pass is a fantastic server with a tight knit community that has never been ravaged by transfers or server collapses.

It is pound for pound one of the best servers in the game (meaning it does a lot with not a lot of people). This week the server is losing, and going to place third, but the server overall has one of the best records, due to its ability to pull out second place finishes when all seems lost. (The server has a never-quit community of diehards).

I think your friend will love it on Borlis Pass, and maybe it is you who should transfer to play with him! (Transfers to Borliss Pass are in the cheapest tier, but Borlis Pass is one of the highest ranked servers with the cheap transfers)

I really don’t like the calling out of Devs. I don’t think we should do this.

Spiteful spirit is up against a build defining, but niche, signet trait & a damage modifier trait. Its going to lose out a lot of the time no matter what.

The trait isn’t good, but we really cant blame the devs for giving us bad spite grandmaster traits. Our Spite grandmasters are overall good!

I think the Devs know this and Spiteful Spirit is kind of a filler trait that they introduced after making a really creative signet trait. This is a shame, because with a little creative tweaks to axe 3 (and axe weapon needs tweaks) it could be a great utility option for the spite line.

On that note I’ll ask for blast finisher on axe 3 again. With the class’ unique fields and chill on blindness trait, it would be a totally different playstyle than elementalist or engineer.

And the best way to nerf elementalist is to buff necromancer to the point where we actually counter them not just 52-48% them.

Axe needs to be Necromancer’s utility weapon because it nerfs Death Shroud damage. Unfortunately, both Axe 1 and 2 provide little utility.

Op doesn’t read the forum much. That’s all we’ve been talking about for the last month!

Add Scepter and Offhand Dagger to the list of weapons that are low tier and need a rework (not just improved traits or w/e)

A few of them can be stat changed when you infuse them

Belenwyn.8674:

There are six beta achievements you can only unlock during BWEs with your beta characters. The rewards are mastery points and achievement points.

I can’t play this weekend due to labor day camping trip.

I am hoping these are optional, but I think they are not.

Bosses needs to be able to burst through projectile blocks/reflects too. With 10 people in a raid, it could be trivial to chain reflects.

We could even ask players on what specifically to test now.

(1) Does reaper shroud still melt off super quick
(2) Can you hit anybody who is good with your slow and telegraphed skills (especially daredevils)
(3) Is Greatsword 5 still impossibly bad
(4) is greatsword 4 still tiny
(5) Does RS 2 work now?
(6) Is Reaper Damage good enough considering that you are a limited mobility glass cannon who can’t easily self buff without long ramp up time
(6a) How does Reaper damage compare to other class damage
(7) Do dhuumfire builds work? <my guess is no because reaper shroud melts too fast>
(8) Are any of the shouts worthwhile?
(9) Do you see anything unique in the class that will get the class a spot in a 10 person raid
(10) Can a reaper take down a break bar? Or are those I win buttons against the reaper
(11) can you get chill to actually stick on enemies long enough for it to let you get to attack?
(12) Does Reaper’s Onslaught work?
(12a) The numbers coefficients say that Reaper shroud auto is poor damage, is this true in game?

Only the exclusive Dyes. You also can pick any of the dyes in the Zephyrite Swatch, but this still means no Celestial/Abyss…. And most of the rare black and white options are still locked out.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Labyrinth farm payed for all mine on 3 toons. This year will kit out the rest.

Yeah, this thread sounds like someone has money in them and is trying to cash out before Halloween tanks prices lol
I hadn’t heard about them last year, as I missed halloween, so I’ve been waiting patiently to do some farming this year, not breaking the bank or feeding someone else’s speculation at this point.

Look at the historical charts.

Candy Corn prices spike up during the event and don’t fall till the even is over.

I put my money where my mouth is. Candy corn is still dirt cheap so I bought corn and made bags for my HOT Reveant last week. I have no corn on the market, but I am still thinking about flipping corn at 28-35 silver which is what corn cost during every other Halloween.

The candy corn cobs price of stuff adjusted every year, and I fully expect more expensive sinks this year (and possibly also less supply, since Halloweeen event starts on HoT release day).

OP, you are describing the scarecrow skill from lunatic inquisition.

We would love to have that.

mulzi.8273:

adding chill would be a nerf, wouldnt it? I want folks to flee from the wall in an orderly and fast fashion: preferably off a cliff/wall if positioned right. chilling them would give them time to pop their breaker..

Not just that situation, but in the normal field fight situation, the skill has a great use separating guardians (who have stability) from zerglings who don’t have stability. Your Zerg can more easily wipe the separated group.

Dumping chill on everybody doesn’t accomplish this.

Its labor day weekend here in the USA and a lot of us have plans or limited availability.

Anet itself may not be working Monday, so how about we get another 1 day to play with the beta?

Staff is total garbage once 4 and 5 go on cooldown. Axe is total garbage (but let’s you use offhand dagger or Warhorn).

I’m of two minds about the skill. Testing it in Pvp, it seemed to be up whenever I needed it (mostly because my go to CC was RS 5).

But the cooldown is still too long to take.

A kitteny elite on a 60 second cooldown is still better than the current version, which is completely removed by, say, a shoutbow’s “shake it off.”

Anet nerf it however you want, but get the cooldown down to something we can use.

That bird hits like a truck and is tough as hell. Those runes are a good choice.

The lunar new year backpacks are really cheap any stat exotic / ascended backpacks.

I guess they aren’t cute, but they are a fantastic option for max stats on the cheap.

Nooooooo……..

Hey can we get some zhaitaffy candy to drop this halloween so crafting these becomes cheaper?

These are fantastic for getting a new character world completion.

This skill is great in WvW, world class in edge of the mists, and it is terrible everyplace else.

It’s ok that niche skills exist.

I actually think the added chill that it will geat from the reaper trait nerfs it.

Miss Lana Too.5794:

nekretaal.6485:

Btw: (The fractal relic bags have an automatic sorting effect that is really annoying if you don’t specifically want it).

The 150 slot ones take “masterwork before everything else”, but if you only get those bags then it wouldn’t really affect your inventory.

No, even if you do this, they are still annoying, because you can’t use the option to compress your bags, so after you use deposit all materials, you have random stuff in all of your bags and you have to manually sort them.

They are a terror if you try to keep your bags organized.

99% sure there’s a fractal weapon achievement incoming. Some accounts can already view it!

As for the legendary weapons, I’m sure that the precursor hunts will have attached achievements.

Knighthonor.4061:

Can we get Twisted Marionette meta event back in the line up please?

There’s a red post on these forums saying that it is coming back as a guild spawned world event.

So that’s pretty much a confirmation. Of course the specific details of when and how it comes back are up in the air.