Guild Wars 2

Ryan.9387:

I play a Ranger. As such, the only viable build I have is spirits. I don’t have stunbreak or stability.

The necro who comes up to me can kill me without me being able to do anything. He can open up with doom, an instant cast fear which is impossible to avoid if the necro doesn’t use it on spammed evades. From here he can use spectral grasp to pull me over a plate to my death.

Impossible to avoid without stability or stunbreaks which do not fit on a Rangers bar.

It’s probably because spirit ranger is not an optimal build on skyhammer, at all.

LB+GS is by far more effective on that map.

I don’t know based on what knocking someone off a Cliff is considered unskilled play.

Every profession have access to pull and pushes at the same level. Every profession have access to dodges too.

If you get pushed off, you have been outplayed. Period.
There is nothing to blame the map or everything, you had to either avoid the push/pull by getting out from Dangerous spots or dodging or push/pull your enemy first.

You played poorly and you got punished for doing so. Nothing strange here.

Darnis.4056:

Trolloloololololollo, where’s the peer review? OH RIGHT there isn’t one, referencing a post you made yourself sure is hefty proof you’re right.

Honestly if you have no idea what you’re talking about why even bother posting?..

Mesmer is nonviable in the current meta, any team that has a mesmer on it is going to have a much harder time then a team that has two necros instead of just one.

2 necros 1 Spirit 1 Guard 1 S/D Thief(or Engi or even warrior.) is the meta.
If you drop the spirit ranger your back point is going to get capped
If you drop a necro you’re going to lose those team fights.
If you drop the S/D thief for a mesmer Lolololololololololololol
Guards don’t get dropped.

Oh but the mesmer has Moa! What a genius argument that is, how useful one elite is!
Look how well it stacks up to what a Necro can bring to a mid team fight. oh right it basically doesn’t.
Look how well it stacks up to what a Thief/Ranger can bring to close/far point skrimish
OH! LOL Again,

BUT MOA IS OP which is why most mesmers run timewarp.

Gogo personal Attacks and pointless sarcasm! Please, be mature and don’t get arrogant, it makes you look stupid and childish.

I hope that you’ve at least read the topic I was referring to before saying it is worthless. I’ve came up to that conclusion after a lot of reasoning and comparisons to other games. Where is the reasoning that made you say that GW2 is team based? Where that statement comes from?

Have you read what I’ve wrote about optimal, viable and unviable? Looks like you didn’t.

Mesmers run TW? Exactly when was the last time you played PvP?

Don’t even bother to make another post like this, I won’t answer to such a mixture of arrogance, stupidity and flame.

galandor.1059:

Oh the mighty, he said, she said argument.

It is always the other person who is at fault.

Please, tell me how can someone kill an engi which cleanses his conditions once AR kicks in with any condition build with rabid amulet.

Please, tell me how and show me a video proof of you succeding at it.

I can give you video proofs of a condition mesmer and condition necro being incapable to do so, posted in the latest topic.

FirstInfantry.2795:

lol when i fight necromancers and when I lose the fight it is always because I ended up with low health and before i get the chance to re heal I end with 5plus conditions, despite the fact that I run automated response on my engineer I dont see how it should be an issue for you. Infact I believe the trait was already nerfed. You are definitely doing something wrong on your part

Nope, there is something wrong on your part. Being incapable to cleanse your condition once you hit 25% hp really proves there is a real issue.

If a Necromancer is capable to kill you with leftover conditions after AR kicks in, it is just because you played horribly.

prozon.3561:

…. you dont get it, in your words, only optimal builds are viable builds in tpvp.a class can be viable by itself but also can not in a team. Gw is 100% team based. And yes i saw your variety the last 3weeks. Ranger ranger ranger necro necro necro necro guard thief.

Simply all signs against your opinion

No. You’ve failed to understand what I’m trying to say again.

“Optimal” is an overperforming build, something that also a complete noob can play with decent results. Optimal is a build that you are forced to play due to meta to have the best results/efforts ratio.
Examples of optimal builds now are terror-condimancers, S/D thieves, spirit rangers.

Viable is a build that offers good results in right hands but is unforgiving in the hands of a bad player. A viable build can easily outperform an optimal build if played right, but since you have to work harder to get good results from it, people tend to go for optimal builds.
Examples of viable builds now are powermancers, D/P thieves, BM bunker rangers, shatter mesmers, S/D fresh air eles etc.

Then there are the unviable builds, those builds which you can’t succeed with, no matters how good you are.
Examples of unviable builds are hybrid (condi-power) necromancers, condition thieves, staff elementalist etc.

There is a clear difference between optimal, viable and unviable builds. Mesmers at the moment aren’t unviable. They are just not optimal, while they Always was since the last big patch.

Also, your sentence about variety is an huge exaggeration.
Last time I’ve joined in tPvP (about a week ago, after the dhuumfire patch, since I’m on Holiday now), I’ve seen of course an over-representation of Necros and Rangers but the situation is by far not different from 3-4 months ago with BM rangers, mesmers and thieves or 9-10 months ago with Thieves and Mesmers.
The only difference is that now every profession has a moderate representation in tPvP while, times ago, there was Always a profession completely left out from the competitive scene (rangers before the pet patch, necromancers and warriors before the june patch etc).

Also, GW2 is absolutely not 100% team based as I’ve already proved that in a topic I’ve made some time ago. It is team based at 30% at best.

prozon.3561:

Thats simply not true, a 2nd viable spec on a class can’t exist until 1 is just OP.

Bunker ele is viable? Maybe it is at the class itself, but not in the current META. More than 2 Bunkers are bullkitten you lack to much of dps, cause a Bunker ele deals nowadays not rly much dmg compared to a faceroll Ranger with the same and even better bunker abilities atm.

So you can’t replace the Ranger with an Elementalist, 1. Ele lose vs Ranger on node, Ele lose vs Engi on node, Ele lose vs Thief on node, Ele lose vs Nec on node. there is no room to use it instead of a ranger for example for backpoint defend.

But, true, the Ele is a Teamfight based classe with alot of grp support. So if you run the Ele in your teamfight, who will sit or defend your backnode?

You still need the ranger.

You have to replace the thief, engi or necro.

Replacing the thief = nonsense, imense sustain dps by perma dodging stealth support und fast roam class in the game. —> Musthave atm

Necro: More survivabilitie with the new DS and even pleague, plus critical incredible Condi DPS which is nearly All AOE + huge amount of CC. —> absolutly must have nowadays

Engi: Nice team CC support, also AOE healing, AOE stealth, with grenade and bomb kit rly hard Condi DPS, Rez support if used. Only disadvantage very squishy Target.

You see the only class that actually can be changed is the Engi, but think about the amount of DPS you will lack of running a bunker ele instead of an engi. The condis will kitten the ele also automaticly, cause most is AOE spam. And i dont think you are able to deal enough dmg with just a Necro (which is main Focus in this lineup, so normally not able to deal this much dps) and a thief.

D/P Thief once he burstes on necros DS he has to go out spam shortbow and wait until the enemy SD thief catch him into death. GG to Bunker ele…

You’re still making confusion between optimal and viable.

Optimal means that it is the best you can run at the moment due to the meta, even in the hands of a mediocre player.
Viable means that it still performs good and in the hands of a good player can easily outperform an optimal build.

You are making it looks like that right now there are only optimal builds and every other builds are unviable, which isn’t true at all. Now, like in every other meta, there are optimal builds just like viable builds.

For instance, once D/D ele was rampant, it was the optimal build while S/D ele was viable, but not optimal.
Back after the S/D thief buff, S/D became optimal while D/P still was viable and good, but not optimal.
Another example are shatter mesmers and phantasm mesmers. One was optimal, another viable.

Most teams ran optimal builds but, still, you can see sometimes viable builds.

I can keep giving you exaples on how there always was optimal and viable builds then and now. Game variety has Always been the same and this meta changed nothing at all, except shifting for the nth time optimal-viable builds.

The only real difference between last Patches is that now Mesmers have only viable builds, but no optimal builds. This is pretty much the situation in which Necromancers and Warriors have been since launch, so this patch looks worse to you and probably other mesmers or people who are used to see mesmers as a must have in any team, but this is by far not a different patch from the Others.

To be honest, we can also see way more profession variety in the current meta compared to the older ones.

jportell.2197:

Impossible to do because there are no more mesmere in high end tournaments.

Yeah, because since launch there is no mesmer in any tournament ever.

Romek.4201:

dont answer this sorrow guy – he write now 30 sides with nonsense and dont even read arguments like always

you waste your time^^

Thank you for your contribute.
It really proves how capable of reasoning you are.
Well formed and exhaustive.

/sarcasm

jportell.2197:

Hmmmm then how come I HAVE NEVER DIED AT ALL WHEN MOAD AT FULL HEALTH IN A 1V1 AGAINST A SHATTER MESMER ON ANY OF MY BUNKERS? Your hyperbole about this skill is pathetic to say the least

No, your claims are pathetic. No proofs, no reasoning. Just pointless claims.

Look at high-end tournaments and look how many times someone is forced to leave the point or gets killed while moaed.

jportell.2197:

Not trying to defend it and I have been moa’d several times on my engi and just laughed while I fought back because I knew that mesmer wasn’t going to get me down in that time. Moa will only kill someone in 10s if they are pure glass in which case GG the mesmer waited until the enemies health was low. Or the person that got moad was focused by everyone on the other team.

And lets be real sorrow moaing anyone that is clearly a bunker at full health is idiotic to say the least

Moaing someone and then using the shatter combo against him is more than enough to put the enemy at less than 20-30% hp, even a bunker with 2800 armor. Then it is quite easy to burst down someone at 20-30% HP with no stunbreaker, invlunerability and no chances to heal.

Moaing someone at full health isn’t idiotic at all, especially if you want to get that node as fast as you can, which is the case of far points.
In all other cases, yes, it is more convenient to Moa someone at low HP, but in that specific situation, moaing the home-point bunker will result in most cases in a decap, which can change the match outcome.

jportell.2197:

sorrow.2364:

Are you aware that the shatter combo implies an immobilize which prevents dodging?
Are you aware that Moa in serious PvP situations isn’t used when mesmer is at low hp?

Stun-lock warrior is way less Dangerous. Once you manage to stunbreak one time, you only have to kite the warrior.

Stunlock warrior can AOE stun every 7s.
And you are aware that the skill preempting the immobilize for the shatter is the worst pathed and one of the most easily dodged skills in the game? Not to mention all of mesmers burst is negatable through a simple application of protection a stun break going into death shroud blocking or a well timed dodge?

If you’re talking about Earthshaker, I can only laugh at it. It is probably the most obvious skill in this game.

About the immobilize of the shatter, it isn’t the worst pathed, neither the most obvious. It is just another clone rushing at you, among another huge amount of other clones. It isn’t the easiest skill to dodge at all.

Also, don’t derail the topic. We are talking about bursting down someone while moaed.

jportell.2197:

Condi thieves still have very strong power skills. Mesmer shatters can still do respectable damage and neither one of those builds were viable for those classes in any meta and especially not this one. And conditions are a hard counter to mesmers (hence why we have the worst innate Condi clear) and this meta is Condi spam happy

Also STOP RUNNING NOTHING BUT CONDITION BUILDS ON YOUR TEAM!

Have you ever played condi thief?
Without any power, direct damage can be easily outhealed by regen.
Same applies to shatter of condition mesmers, it has already been proven in the older topic that shatter damage is outhealed by automated regen.

Hard counter =/= non optimal

Mesmers are non optimal in the current meta, but conditions are not an hard counter to mesmers, as long as mesmers can still win against a condition build (and trust me, a good mesmer can).

Please, stop with the call your teammates arguments, we are talking about small-scale combat situations, which are extremely frequent in PvP. Any profession have a chance against every profession, except conditions builds against AR engies.

jportell.2197:

Supply crate/flesh golem charge/thieves guild/entangle. Its an elite and its mesmers only half way decent elite and if a mesmer MOAs an engi when the engi is at full health they are terrible players. Most mesmers that give a rip about the class want this skill removed and replaced with something else.

Those elites are not a sure win as much as Moa is, don’t fool yourself.
An engi that gets Moaed by a stealthed mesmer has nothing to blame his skills. Be serious jportell. Neither is Moaing someone at full health a bad tactic.

I think too that Moa should completely replaced with another elite, so it you think that too, don’t try to defent that stupid skill.

Dawdler.8521:

sorrow.2364:

Moa is, in fact, extremely OP in small scale combats (1v1, 2v1, 2v2), because shutting down an enemy for 10s is really gamechanging for an encounter.

For instance, imagine that a Mesmer wants to take the far point, guarded by an engineer. Average profession will try to take down the engineer taking more than 10s+ (it isn’t easy to kill an engineer), giving the enemy team more than enough time to help their teammate.

What about mesmer? Stealth (if you want to be sure), Moa and the point is yours.
Either you burst down the enemy, which isn’t hard with a shatter build and your enemy has no defensive skills up, or you just let him run away and neutralize the point.

In both cases, you’ve won. Just because you’ve used a single skill. No elite has this potential in this game, that’s why it should be really looked akittens

just too bad you can still dodge a shatter in Moa form, as well as easily kill a low-hp berserker Mesmer. Stupid OP Moa

Lol a stun-lock Warrior is far more dangerous to face than a Moa Mesmer in terms of getting stunned.

Are you aware that the shatter combo implies an immobilize which prevents dodging?
Are you aware that Moa in serious PvP situations isn’t used when mesmer is at low hp?

Stun-lock warrior is way less Dangerous. Once you manage to stunbreak one time, you only have to kite the warrior.

jportell.2197:

Well if its working as intended boo freaking who. Get a warr/guard/hgh engi or anyone after the person with this trait. The only class this is a direct hard counter to is necros in acCondi build most other classes can work their way around it through dps. And if hard counters shouldn’t exist then why does pretty much everything hard counter mesmers right now? And eles?

Have you any idea of what an hard counter is?
Nothing in this meta is an hard counter to Mesmers and Elementalists. They are only not optimal in the meta, but a good Mesmer or Elementalist can still be succesful in the current meta.

A good condition Necromancer/Thief/Mesmer can’t be succesful against an AR engi, unless the engi is a complete moron.

Daishi.6027:

^
To be fair, in regards to Moa it’s the only CC that really is “Crowd” Control. Unlike a stun or immobilize you are not shut down from movement or unable to attack, your base stats are the same, I’ve downed many mesmers while moaed, and the ones where I clearly couldn’t, escape was an option including doge. Moa really isn’t that effective outside of 1v1 duels and trolling, considering it’s long C/D even if yeah it is able to land if you set it up well.

Moa is, in fact, extremely OP in small scale combats (1v1, 2v1, 2v2), because shutting down an enemy for 10s is really gamechanging for an encounter.

For instance, imagine that a Mesmer wants to take the far point, guarded by an engineer. Average profession will try to take down the engineer taking more than 10s+ (it isn’t easy to kill an engineer), giving the enemy team more than enough time to help their teammate.

What about mesmer? Stealth (if you want to be sure), Moa and the point is yours.
Either you burst down the enemy, which isn’t hard with a shatter build and your enemy has no defensive skills up, or you just let him run away and neutralize the point.

In both cases, you’ve won. Just because you’ve used a single skill. No elite has this potential in this game, that’s why it should be really looked at.

It has already been talked before.

Now some engineer will post in the engineer forum calling an horde of biased main-engineer players saying in this topic how wrong you are, for some senseless reasons, and then claiming that the community does not agree with you and so AR should stay as it is.

Ouroboros.5076:

^
Not to be mean, but that’s almost the single update of the year, 7 years after release. Probably an update on which they worked for months and that completely changed the class. With all that, sure, they had the time to take 5 days writing a huge blog post and get the translations before releasing it.

Sorry mate, GW2 updates goes at a MUCH faster pace. There’s just no time for this. And there has not been such a drastic change to any class like that. Really unrelevant.

You sure?
What about the big june patch? It was pretty much gamechanging.

Also:
22 May 2011 patch: http://guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/may_2011_skill_balances.php
2 June 2011 patch:
http://guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/june_2011_pvp_update.php

11 days.

Every balance patch had its own developers updates page, with full documentation and explaination of every change.

Just check this page:
http://guildwars.com/support/gameupdates/default.php

prozon.3561:

That’s simply not true.

Pre patch viable classes:

Ele:
bunker/support
DPS

Guard:
Bunker

Messmer:
shatter

Thief:
SD
DP

Ranger:
BM
Trap

Engi:
Nodefighter
HGH

You had 6 classes with in sum 10 viable specs pre patch, what you have now:

Guard:
bunker

Engi:
Node/grenade

Thief:
sd

Ranger:
spirit

Necro:
Terror

War:
maybe

5,5 Classes and only 5/6 viable specs! Thats only the half like pre patch my friend!

Plus, in past the only class makes sense to stack was the elementalist, nowadays you can stack Ranger’s and Necro’s. So the Meta classes decreased even more.

The difference was just pre patch it made no sense to stack classes of getting zero advantage from, there was just no “OP S-Tier” Class left.

Now you’r getting a huge advantage by using 2x ranger or 2xnecro like in past were ele was a long time the S King.

You listed viable spec in the first part and optimal in the second one.

1. Elementalist bunker/support are still viable in the current meta. PAX representations proves I’m right. There is even the insta-spike build now which is optimal in the current meta that you didn’t mentioned.
2. D/P thief is still viable. Nothing has changed. It was once overshadowed by S/D and it still is.
3. BM and Trap are pretty much the same build
4. HGH is still viable

Check your facts and make that list again. Build variety is still the same, pre and post patch.

The only things that has changed is that Mesmers are for the first time since launch out of the god-tier. This is what makes you think that this meta is worse than the others.

Sensotix.4106:

aleks that is completely nonsense if they nerf moa i will quit the game because mesmers elite are REALLY really balanced atm and btw moa is almost the only thing a mesmer casts for a longer time so just open ur eyes its not that hard..srsly stop crying about mesmer its up anyways

Yeah. Open your eyes and look out for that asura raising his tiny arm among loads of clones and pinky things.

Very obvious and telegraphed for a 10s hard-cc.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

All I ever seen in SotG was kitten -licking. X player says something, everyone else nods. Rinse and repeat for every other member that is going to speak.

There’s not enough balance explanations in depth, the “explanations” given all feel so shallow.

And then the balance notes come. Thats another problem. In other games, they have a note at the most important balance changes (eg. We brought down X damage because Y and also because of Z) EXPLAINING WHY THEY DID WHAT THEY DID, where is this happening in GW2?

Yeah, it’s not happening. Not the mention the ninja balance-changes they do and don’t list on the patch notes. This whole balancing process seems like its made by 5-6 different people that have no communication with each other.

You know what’s funny? They did it right in gw1. Each balance patch was previewed with a list of its purposes and some possible expected changes, explaining what they wanted to archive and head to with balance.

This is, for instance, the last balance patch gw1 had.
http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/september_2012_skill_balances.php

saVdoom.2067:

My first 2 paragraphs are aimed mostly to the pos-necro-patch. Quite honestly previously to the patch we had a much more balanced meta.

If you look back at the top teams in NA back in that time, Ostrich’s team that won curse tournament had a necromanser, engineer, S/D thief, elementalist and guardian, 2 power, 2 condi, bunker setup. I’m not saying it was a decent/good meta for the game overall, but much better then what we have now.

TP had also the same setup with 2 condi, 2 power, bunker, with ranger, engineer, mesmer, elementalist and guardian.

Back then it was still about some mindless spamming, but atleast you could see that the elementalist used his full rotation into someone and that is why he died. You saw that berserk illusion wrecking the guy, so that is why he died, while the condi classes would support with cc’s and also keeping poison/burning into the target.

There is a good reason why back then we had 4k viewers in tournaments, while now we barely have 1.2k viewers in a tournament worth lotsa IRL money.

Pre-necro-patch the balance was as horrible as it is now, as it was since launch.

The team composition has always been one for every team with little to no variations at all. Each patch just shifted everyone’s team composition to another.

Are you saying that now you can’t see what is killing you?
Before the HGH came popular (and then Necro), there was no conditions at all. It was all about burst damage and it was a bad meta just like this meta is, don’t pretend it isn’t true.

EU PAX finals had 4k+ viewers during summer time, back then it wasn’t summer time and if there was any loss of viewers, the only thing you can blame is the loss of interest due to the constant bad meta and not specifically this one, which isn’t more bad than the old ones.

aleks.5473:

Moa can be blocked/dodge/miss and interupt it have a reletevly long cast and cd what do you want a big sing over the mesmer ’’I’M CASTING MOA DODGE
’’

Considering that Moa completely shut me down for 10s, yes.
I rather want a big moa sign over Mesmer’s head instead of a generic pink non-telegraphed animation.

saVdoom.2067:

sorrow.2364:

People and you, unintentionally or not, looks like are saying that shifting the meta is more important at the moment that putting mesmers on par, which it isn’t.

Sorry to burst your bubble but shifting the meta is a necessity right now. I main a mesmer since release, and i do agree with Xeph. Mesmers have its issues but they don’t need strong buffs in order to compete in this meta. Simple because this meta is wrong.

The meta is about mindless condi spam, fear spam, stun spam, pet spam, passive play > active skill. Just to name a few.

There needs to be some penalty for condi spam (one condi canceling the other, or not adding on intensity/time) so that it takes timing and coordination on when to use the right condi at the right time. Plus every skill that matters (strong skills) need to be able to be telegraphed so there is a reaction time.

Are you serious?
The meta was like that since release, even when Mesmer was viable.

You’re talking like 5-6 months ago meta wasn’t about Phantasms, mindless rotations, brain-dead bunkering, spam in general and non-telegraphed insta-gib combos.

You’re talking like non-telegraphed strong skills is a new issue, like Moa has some sort of telegraph.

Xeph.4513:

So because we don’t share the same balance views as yourself, it means thakittens fine to take shots at us ?
Sorry its just not making sense to me, because I also disagree with how you view balancing but you don’t see me coming on the forums and getting mad at you :<
just try and treat others as you would like to be treated is all I am saying.

But yes on topic, I do agree that mesmers at the moment are not viable in the meta, does that mean they are a weak class ? no
do they need buffs ? no
Fact of the matter is, that if necro and thief are nerfed, then mesmer will once again be viable and in my personal opinion a little too strong, espically damage wise, so what I would suggest is to:
Nerf the damage on berserker.
Remove the mightstacks given on mirror blade and replace it with regen/retaliation.
Reduce the mental torment trait to only giving 10% increased mindwrack damage.
Reduce Halting strike damage by 15% (its a free windwrack right now)

Hopefully that should bring them in line damage wise.
I am sure there are more things that need to be looked at, but I personally would start there.

I did not got mad at you. I’ve only criticized your view of balance and your contribution to the balance itself with a little bit of sour attitude.

It has never been talked in this topic about how strong Mesmers are by themselves. All suggestions are aimed to shift the meta to bring it again on what it was a couple of months ago, where mesmers were extremely strong and a must-take in every competitive team.

What I’ve criticized to you is that shifting the actual meta and putting mesmers on par with other professions are two important issues and none of them have the priority over the other.

People and you, unintentionally or not, looks like are saying that shifting the meta is more important at the moment that putting mesmers on par, which it isn’t.

Fenrir.5493:

Only well of blood heals… i know now that you dont even know your traits or bunkers, bunkers are no healing lla the time, the role of bunkers is endure damage with protection, otherwise they dont bunker, you would take full damage with 0 protection and with a well necro you can have a lot of protection and a very good healing.

About the other i know warrior can be downed by burst very easy i have a warrior and i tryied a very “bunkering” regen build even with shouts to have some burst healing, but that dosent prevented a thief from stealth to get my health to 20% in 1 backstab and then just spam heart seeker me to death, that for sure wouldnt happened if i had protection on him, regeneration is meaningless to bunker, you should know that if you know what bunkers do but you dont because you dont even bunker because “poor necros cant do that”, and i have a bunker and i know what im talking about.

Bunker is all about sustain.
If you have only a single source of healing, you can’t bunker at all.
It’s not a case if the professions with best access to healing are the best bunkers.

Protection is not everything. It just do the job of toughness, which warriors have by default thanks to heavy armor and a lot of toughness increase traits.

I won’t believe that a thief put your health on 20% with a backstab against a bunker warrior until I see it. It’s about 14k damage on a profession with 3400+ armor, plain impossible.

Krayiss.4926:

@sorrow
-Stability never broke stun.
-DS is used for CC’s Taking big burst and just any dmg in general.
-When I use LT my LF usally goes up 10% and does a bit of aoe damage. Its nice on shadow refuges. So it heals 10% life force, its basically a heal.
-If your in DS and your fear is on CD its called hop out lol (you really don’t play necro)
-What Boz said.
-If your saying evades count (dodges?) then necros have 3?

Its like your not reading my posts or never played a necro.

PS Life transfer is an aoe heal when specced transfusion. Not sure If you knew that.

- So what? You still have no access to stunbreakers while in DS. There is only an exceptional case when spending 30 points into the Soul Reaping traitline that you have access to stability when going into DS but, still, you have no stunbreakers once stability ends.
- Saying the obvious is not useful. I’ve pointed out that Necromancers need to build LF to do something other profession do with a single press of a button.
- Nope, it is impossible. Go in the Mists and make a video of you being able to get 10% more Life Force with a Life Transfer. I’ve just tested it in the Mists. Going into DS and using LT then popping out when it is finished leaves you with the same LF you were before going into DS. I still think you don’t really play Necromancer.
- Still, you have to get out of DS to use your elite, so it isn’t a real HP bar. Don’t turn the topic in the direction you want.
- So you essentialy said a pointless statement..?
- Dodges are accessible to any profession. Some profession have vigor (doubling the dodges), weapon slot evades, blocks, invulnerabilities and so on. Necromancers have none of those.

The Boz.2038:

He’s probably talking about a bug: if your DS ends because it reached 0% LF, the cooldown begins not from the moment DS ended, but from the moment you entered DS in the first place.

I don’t think so, it doesn’t make sense. If you are kicked out of DS because you have no more LF, then you can’t go back in to trigger its effects.

Krayiss.4926:

Thats right you dont have a few of those.
Stunbreaker? You have stability so hmm
hp degen ya its pretty slow lol but doesn’t really matter when you use it right when they burst.
Healing. Life transfer is a heal if you think about it.
No utilities? Hmmm I forgot it give you a whole new set of skill. What do they do. I dont know alot of cc. Chill, Fear, aoe immobilize.
Elite umm Ya im poping my elite every 30 seconds, Plague is 3min cd When I need acess I just take DS off and use it. Its not like you can use your other skills during it so whats it matter?
7sec cd when traited and if you say in it for 7 seconds their is no CD.

And the only reason I need to say thakittens similar to HP is that when I take a hit in DS my HP doesn’t drop.

• Yeah, you have stability for 3s at the cost of 30 traitpoints… It doesn’t even break stun, so what?
• So you’re suggesting to use DS just for eating bursts… Pretty much what you do with invulnerabilities and evades, right? I wonder why Necromancers have to build LF, taking a really long time, to eat a backstab while any other profession can just pop their block/invulnerability/evade..?
• Nope, LT is not an heal. It just compensate for few seconds the natural LF degen at the cost of not being able to do nothing during the cast (including dodging).
• As far I know, if LF was really another HP bar, I would be supposed to access to 10 skills, not 5.
• You know that Plague isn’t the only elite necro have, right? Golem charge can be really useful while you’re in DS but, unfortunately, you can’t use it.
• If you stay in it for 7s there is no CD? Have you ever played a Necromancer? Just for curiosity. Or have you just jumped on the bandwagon yesterday and you are pretending you have played Necro since launch?
• Also when you’re evading when you’re taking hits your HP doesn’t drop. Does that mean that Thieves have a second HP bar?

For a lot of reasons LF isn’t HP.

When you are in DS:

• You don’t have access to your stunbreakers
• You have a constant health degeneration, approximately 5 to 10 stacks of bleed from a condition build depending on your HP pool.
• You don’t have access to healing
• You don’t have access to any utility
• You don’t have access to your elite
• You don’t have on-demand access to it (10s cooldown)

For those reasons, calling LF as HP is a nonsense.

Since when Life Force is considered equal to HP?

glaphen.5230:

How has no one realized necro has some of the best healing in the game with great damage. Well of blood has the best scaling of any heal in the game, with 1500 healing power you instantly heal 6740 then the heal over time is 752 hp per second to even your allies for a total of 14260 per 32 seconds. Plus you have 4000 hp per 12 seconds on dagger life siphon. Signet of the locust is 25% movement speed plus 5k hp with 5 enemies around on a 60 second cooldown. With traits deathshroud gives 3 seconds of stability and 747 aoe heal every 7 seconds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY49iQaKb07JApCNP9g7x3m6BAofOA-TwAgzCmIuRdj7GzNybs3MaY1wOkZIA
2 utilities can be either wells or spectrals, 10 point major can be anything.

Really?
Have you actually tried to run that build?

Here something you might not have taken into consideration:

• Life Siphon has 3 1/2 second casting time (yes, 3s and an half). If you want to dodge, use DS or any utility while you’re casting, you can say bye bye to healing
• You can’t be healed while in Death Shroud. That means that you can’t mitigate damage (Death Shroud is the main source of damage mitigation from necros) and being healed at the same time.
• Signet of Locust is on a 60s cooldown and you need 5 enemies around to be healed for 5k HP.

3s of stability and 747 (WOW!) AoE healing are every 7 seconds only if:

1. You don’t use DS at all as damage mitigation (=> you die)
2. You always have enough Life Force
3. You don’t use any DS skill (since, according to you extimations, you have to stay in DS for a fraction of a second)

Xeph.4513:

Why are you so bitter ?

Because there are so many design flaws in PvP that there isn’t so much to being happy after 1 year of constant updates leading to nothing.

The meta was broken since launch and there wasn’t really a period in which you were able to say “Finally I can play in a balanced game”.

All I see in the sPvP forums are suggestion aiming to make changes that will lead again on imbalances, shifting the meta again in situations in which some profession overshadow all the others.

Mesmer has been and still is a must-take in every tPvP match because of its utilities. In the current meta Mesmer didn’t survived because of not-so-good condition removals. After you’ll bring again Mesmer in the meta, it will be again a must take in every team because of portal, IoL, Moa/TW and so on.

Necromancers and Rangers, after their conditions and spirits will be toned down, will be again unviable and brought in no team ever, because, in the way they are designed, they bring pretty much nothing in the conquest gamemode.

Probably the mother of every issue is that the competitive gamemode is only one and that some professions are designed to be the best at it..?

I have nothing against TP, it’s just that you are the biggest voice in the PvP community, but, still, it looks like you want to bring the meta as it was 6-7 months ago.

How can the profession which brings the best team utility and ridiculous skills unviable in tournament play?

It is viable, but the meta tells you that you shouldn’t play Mesmer.

Once ArenaNet will tone down conditions on Necro and spirits on Ranger, as they will surely do, we’ll come back to the Mesmer-Guardian-Engi-Thief-Ele meta, so TP can jump to the bandwagon as they always did, Necro and Ranger will be unviable again, everyone is happy and the previous state of the things is preserved.

There is even a better solution, give Mesmer more damage, more control and more utility. Like, increase the shatter damage to deal 20k+ damage, increase Moa duration to 20s and make Illusion of Life an unconditional ress. So Memser will be broken OP again in tPvP and everyone is happy, again.

Fenrir.5493:

Really is surprising that necros dont know theyr class, it really is… you can have 5 wells 6 if you revive an ally… so much for 1 skill isnt it.

I don’t know if you are aware or not, but only Well of Blood heals. And, by the way, it is far inferior to Consume Conditions, even when Cleric amulets, which is useless on Necromancer because nothing scales with Healing Power.

sorrow.2364:

Unkillable against direct damage… really, maybe you should stop bunkering and do real damage, any real burst damage will get to a warrior hard specially if it is from a thief, warriors cant bunker if they dont have protection, and rangers regen more health than a warrior and have acces to protection.

Really?
Do you have any proof backing up what you say?

Warriors have, because of the armor, 7% extra damage reduction compared to rangers. They can easily get to over 3500 armor, while rangers can’t, which makes protection not that needed.

Anyway, warrior regeneration with Cleric and 20 points into Defense is:
- 448 HP per second from Healing Signet
- ~176 HP per second from Adrenal Health with full adrenaline
- ~270 HP per second from permanent regeneration with banners
Total is: 894 HP per second

You can easily reach 1k by picking healing power runes or going deeper into Defense.

Ranger regen is:
- 129 HP per second from Signet of the Wild
- ~44 HP per second from Natural Healing
- ~270 HP per second from regen
Total is: 443 HP per second

Not even half of the Warrior HP regen.

Fenrir.5493:

Warriors cant even try bunkering what do you say to that, at least necros have the option to do so, i would love to have these protection uptime with my warrior.

Warriors can’t bunker? Really?

Have you ever tried the builds that are around with 100% regen uptime, 3200+ armor, healing signet and adrenaline healing?

They regen over 1k hp per second, unkillable against any form of direct damage and quite hard to kill even against condition damage (high hp pool).

Fenrir.5493:

Ok i screwed up my descrptions i meal WELLS not pools, my bad.

Im talking about this:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Blood

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ritual_of_Life

You can make a good combo with these:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ritual_Mastery

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ritual_of_Protection

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vampiric_Rituals

And obviously deathshroud, you can make a necrro bunker with these and a shaman amulet, plague elite too.

I guess that you are just (bad) theorycrafting and you never jumped on your Necro and tried to bunk.

You’re saying that Necros can bunker because of a single skill and 3-4 traits to make it work? Really?

On an average situation, you have just Well of Blood. To trigger Ritual of Life, you have to revive an ally, which isn’t actually a reliable situation.

But what when Well of Blood is on cooldown?
You have no healing at all.

Look at other bunkers and how they are capable to heal and completely restore their HP bar with ease and you’ll realize why Necromancers can’t bunk.

Fenrir.5493:

No sustain?, you have a healing pool you even have a free one when you start to revive someone, you have acces to regen too.

Also, bunkers dont rely specifically on healing but enduring damage, the only class that regenerates to everything is ranger.

What are you talking about?
The healing on necromancer is horrible.
Best classes at bunkering are the only professions capable to heal for a decent amount (Engineer, Guardian, Elementalists).

Fenrir.5493:

Pools+boon/protection duration+ deathshroud should be enough

No healing => no sustain => no bunk

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ok, 60% is definitely not true. Or if it is, some sort of unmentioned damage mitigation is happening with DS.

I hopped on my Necro, filled up my LF bar, and tried dropping from the cliffs behind the 60-80 Glory Vendors in the Heart of the Mists. I was packing a Carrior amulet, so my full health was at 28,312

The fall from the spot I dropped from dealt 15,338 points of damage, or about 54% of my health. I then went and dropped from that same spot, only this time I flashed into DS at the last moment (natural degen, therefore, did not kick in). I took a screenshot of my DS bar after the fall and compared the pixel size of the area I’d lost with the pixel size of the full bar. The fall only took about 43% of my Life Force, which implies my full LF total is 35,670 with 0 in Soul Reaping, or 126% my health. If we assume my estimation of how much LF I lost was only approximatelly correct, that puts this roughly in line what other people have been saying: that DS still appears to be 120% of our max health.

(Cross-posting this to the thread with the Red post in the hopes of clarification).

I’ve made the fall test too and, regardless the fact that I’ve got a little bit of variance on the fall damage, any possible result don’t fit the possibility that LF pool is 60% of the max HP.

We should try another test, maybe something with steady weapon. Why would developers spread false informations?

LoneWolfie.1852:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PGp7G_OKfc

I post this long ago, but maybe players need to learn the truth behind glass cannons. The glass cannon thieves are gimmicks that die when they get caught. You can kill that “invisible thief” with a glass cannon XXX profession, just see how I killed the invisible thieves.

(This video was created when Anet thought it was a good idea to have thieves get their stealth revealed to 4 seconds.)

I don’t want to enter in this topic, but posting a video of you not being capable to land a single HS on a guardian, probably with a lot of toughness, when he’s at low health proves nothing at all.

Melchior.2135:

Sounds definitely worthwhile, thanks!

You’re welcome!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vampiric_Master

Vampiric Master heals (not siphon, apparently) 79 HP without bloodthrist and 114 with bloodthrist.
The healing of Vampiric Master is added to the blood fiend’s one, so with bloodthrist and vampiric master, blood fiend heals you for 1k health per attack.

War Mourner.5168:

It’s quite easy to test, as I’ve done myself.
with a thief guild mate, I had 20k hp, full LF. He cloaks, I enter DS, he BS’s me, I leave immediately. He does 5.4k or something, and I am left with 74% LF. There is no natural degen involved in this test (and even if there was one tick, that would mean we would have an even higher LF pool), so it seems pretty simple and straight forward.

I can claim I’ve have done that test too and that I’ve got even better results.

War Mourner.5168:

Wait what? Our pool is 60% with proper damage? Multiple people have tested it to be 100-120%, and many more tested it as 60% pre-patch (when did the double damage bug occur?).

Are we all just completely inept/insane or is something else going on?

Probably the tests were just wrong.
All the tests posted here are quite unreliable and without any visual proof, so it isn’t hard to believe that they were wrong.

BillFreist.1527:

Hi

So a few things about the latest DS changes:

1. Death Shroud incoming damage
   • You now take the correct amount of incoming damage. Before this change (and it wasn’t always like this, either) you would takes the same damage twice.
   • Your Life Force pool is still the same as it has always been. 60% of your maximum health while alive, plus an additional 0-30% of that base value for Traits, meaning you can have a maximum of 78% of your max health.
2. The change to having damage spill over to your health pool was indeed to resolve falling damage, but was also how Death Shroud was, from a Design standpoint, intended to function. Obviously making these changes simultaneously was to help decrease any sense of buff/nerf to the mechanic itself.
3. Thirdly, we are testing a new way to reflect your Life Force energy pool in the UI using real-life numbers! .

-Bill

Thank you very much for the clarification!
You solved a giant doubt and wiped a lot of misinformation!

Blaine Tog.8304:

I ran the numbers near the end of the first page. Basically, Toughness and Vitality are pretty much the same for the Necro, with some builds having a very small preference towards one or another.

For raising your Precision in PvE or WvW, there’s various foods, Maintenance Oil, Fury, and the Sigil of Perception (you can load a Superior Sigil on a rare weapon, kill 25 things with it equipped, then switch to whatever weapon you really want to use).

Numbers should be updated. We have a confirmation from a Gameplay Programmer that Death Shroud is 60% of your maximum HP, going up to max 78% with 30 points into Soul Reaping.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DeathShroud-is-now-base-100-HP/first#post2539415

This changes a lot.

I think we should open another topic to officially discuss about toughness vs vitality on Necromancers.

Haley.2390:

I’m actually interested in all forms of PvP (WvW/sPvP/tPvP) among PvP Necros in general (not just the top tier tPvP Necros.)

Bhawb used “very common” here and this Thief claims that “very common” necessarily means “most”

High tier PvP is a mirror of the most common builds in sPvP. Pretty much any team plays meta builds (most popular) and rarely vary on these builds.

As Bhawb said, there is no doubt that Rabid is the most common set among conditionmancers.

Haley.2390:

Hey, Bhawb. When you say that Rabid is “very common” for PvP Necros, do you mean “most” or “majority” of PvP Necros go Rabid?

My take from your use of “very common” is that you did not necessarily mean “most” or the “majority” of PvP Necros choose Rabid.

But this Thief in the Thief forum believes you do.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Even Bhawb.7408 made this statement;

Rabid has always been, and probably always will be a very common gear stat for Necromancers.

As oppose to “uncommon” or “rare”, what does “very common” mean if not “most?”

So please do tell, what do you mean again?

There is no point to ask people here in the Necromancer forum.
You can get your answer by yourself watching the PAX qualifiers and count how many Necromancers were running an amulet different from Rabid.
I counted none, but I may have missed one.

Thief is the only profession which gives higher reward at lower skill levels. Why? Because you can just spam a single skill and get a fair amount of kills.

Does it mean that Thief is a noob profession? Yes. It is one of the most noob-rewarding profession in this game. What does it mean? That noob vs noob, the noob on thief wins.

Does it mean that you can’t be a good Thief? Absolutely not. There is skill progression as much as other profession. On higher skill levels, getting better as a thief is mandatory.

flow.6043:

Spectral Walk/Armor/Grasp, Locust Swarm, someone dies while you’re in DS…
Also, why would you assume that lf regen is irrelevant when outside of DS?

That is a different situation. As I’ve pointed out after, the DS regen numbers are the same of DS degen, so there is nothing I’ve missed to point out.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That doesn’t explain why it doesn’t cancel direct damage. Getting hit, condition, CC, etc. are not one in question here since those are mitigated or canceled by other means.

Cancelling a direct damage means preventing your HP from taking the damage so you evade, go invul, block etc. because the damage is instead absorbed by those effect. Necro can go to DS to have the same result.

As for frequency, a lot of invulnerability and block skills from other professions has a much longer cooldown than DS.

What you’re missing is that DS is just some extra less valuable HP, not damage cancelling. Why?

Let’s say you want to mitigate a Backstab, for about 6k damage. How would you do that on other profession? You simply dodge, block or go invulnerable, and 100% of the damage is mitigated on demand.

What if you’re a Necromancer? Well, you NEED to have at least the equivalent of Life Force of the damage, otherwise the damage will just overflow on your HP bar. To mitigate 6k damage, you need approximately 30% of Life Force on base HP. Once you mitigated the backstab with 30% Life Force, then you can’t cancel any other damaging skill that will come after for a considerable amount of time (30% Life Force is tough to build up). So, if the Thief will chain another CnD+Backstab or an Heartseeker, you have no way to mitigate them unless the two dodge available to everyone.

Yeah, is true that a lot of invulnerability and block skills from other professions have much longer cooldown, but they not only mitigate 100% of the damage, but they are available from different sources at the same time.
A guardian, for instance, can mantain permanently vigor, which means 2 extra dodges on an endurance bar (3 seconds of evade every 20s), plus blocking damage via Protector Strike on a 15s cooldown and 4s blocking on 45 cooldown with focus, plus aegis here and there.
Don’t let me even start to compare it to evasion thieves and rangers.

The fact that you can’t be CCed and getting condition applied is another proof that DS is by no means invulnerability.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It seems that this is a common misconception since Necro has access to DS to cancel direct damage which favors vitality to increase the amount of damage to be absorbed.

No, the misconception is thinking that DS cancels direct damage.
It doesn’t. You still get hit, you still get conditions applied, you stil get CCed and you still get damage. DS is just a bit more HP you can access with a cooldown of 10s.

Blaine Tog.8304:

You seem to be discounting Life Force gain, though, all of which is %-health based. This means every time I regain LF, I get more back when I have more health, which makes Vitality act as a sort of Healing Power (except better than Healing Power for the Necro because it not only works while the Necro is in DS but it also procs off far more skills). Toughness’s effect on EHP is static for the Necro (it will always mitigate the same % of damage), but Vitality’s role is more complex because of DS totals and LF gain mechanics. I would really like to see an analysis that takes those into account.

I did not discounted LF regain. You can’t gain Life Force while in Death Shroud except for Life Transfer, which is marginal anyway, so it doesn’t make sense to consider also LF gain since it does not contribute to sustaining.

I’ve considered only how much a 100% LF bar allows you to survive, how you generate it doesn’t really affects the calculations I made. You get to 100% (or 75%, whatever you want) life force with carrion as fast as you would with rabid.

Also, the extra “DS healing” you get from Vitality is compensated by the extra 25% healing of Toughness.
They are pretty much the numbers I’ve written about DS degen, considering them as LF generation instead.