Chilling Darkness provides 1 second chills when Plaguing to 5 people every second. Although it seems small it provides massive disruption to backline cooldowns and is a vital trait for teamfighting in WvW.
You cant simply put 30 points in Spite for what seems like a power boost by Close to Death. The amount of survivability you would give up for this requirement based trait is not worth the trade by itself. You would have to give up some vital traits that make a Wellomancer build work as-well.
You don’t give up that much. The points invested into Death Magic are not worth the damage loss, same applies to the points spent into the Curses line.
I’d rather go with something like 30/10/10/20/0.
Doing so, you gain:
- Close to Death
- Increased mark damage
- 200 more power
- 30% more condition duration
- Healing on enemy death
While losing:
- Chill on blindness
- Greater marks (not needed anymore after the untraited size buff)
- 150 toughness
- 15% boon duration (not needed at all)
You can also giving up on Close to Death investing 20 points only into the spite line and go deeper into Blood Magic for Vampiric Rituals.
Also, I wouldn’t go that deep into the Curses traitline, I’d rather go into the Spite traitline for Close to Death, which is an huge damage boost paired with the increased power of the traitline.
I’d prefer to get Dhuumfire completely removed and replaced with something that actually makes some sense and is a valid alternative to Close to Death instead of having a worthless grandmaster trait, weaker than an engineer adept trait, that nobody is going to pick anymore.
I think that everyone agrees that PvP still needs some work to be done in order to be completed, so I’d like to sum up some ideas, mostly taken from what I really liked about Guild Wars 1 PvP and I’d like to be ported over Guild Wars 2 to make it a better game.
Those ideas don’t include all the feature that has already been discussed (like solo queue) and acknowledged by developers.
I really appreciate any form of constructive feedback, thoughts or anything you want to say about those ideas.
So, here we are:
PvP titles should be easier to understand
That is something I really don’t like. This has be already done right with champion titles (Champion Phantom, Champion Shadow etc), but why general PvP titles are so hard to understand?
When I read “Ransacker”, it says absolutely nothing to me about where I’ve archieved that title, which tier it is and how hard I had to work to obtain it. Those consequential titles should, in my opinion, be easy to understand at first glance which tier they are and which gamemode they are linked to, so that I can be really proud to show my (for instance) tier 8 “Mist Walker” PvP title.
——————————————————————————————— Lack of gamemode variety
It has been said some times, but I think this is a crucial issue to this game.
For the ones who did not play Guild Wars 1, there was a gamemode called Heroes’ Ascent, which is, in my opinion the best PvP gamemode ever designed. In the spoiler I briefly explained what it is.
It is a series of matches against different random selected teams in different gamemodes and map. Once you join Heroes’ Ascent with your team, you start playing against another team in the Underworld, which is basically a classic arena without respawn. If you win, you step to the next map against another team, increasing the amount of rank point you earn per win. If you lose, you are redirected to the Heroes’ Ascent main instance to start back again from the Underworld.
If you get a considerable amount of wins, you finally end up into the Hall of Heroes, whose gamemode is randomly selected among previous gamemodes. If you win the Hall of Heroes, your team’s name is broadcasted worldwide and you have access to a final chest containing some of the most rare (so expensive) items in the game.
The gamemodes in Heroes’ Ascent were arena without respawn (or annihilation), arena with wave respawn, capture the flag (called relic run), conquest and 3-teams king of the hill.
Why HA is, in my opinion, the best gamemode ever made? Because it forced people to build their team composition to face different situations and different gamemodes, encouraging balanced builds and rewarding all-round players.
It is obvious that, in a conquest gamemode, bunker and AoE spam is extremely effective, but they are completely useless into annihilation or capture the flag.
Guild Wars 2 needs a game mode like HA to get rid of all the AoE-bunker meta.
———————————————————————————————— PvE and PvP should be more linked to each other
Most PvP players enjoy PvE aswell, but what makes me really uncomfortable is that anything I do in PvP does not reflect into the PvE/WvWvW experience at all.
I’d like to level my character, make money, gain awesome skins I can use in any gamemode in sPvP too!
I enjoy PvP a lot, but if I want to play only PvP I can’t enjoy WvWvW neither high level PvE, while, on the other hand, if I play a lot of PvE I can enjoy WvWvW and sPvP as much as I enjoy PvE. I think this discourages a lot of players to play PvP.
That’s it for now! I’ll edit this topic as soon as more ideas come in my mind or, if you have anything to propose, I can add it to the OP (obviously giving credits) in order to give it more visibility. Sorry if my grammar and language skills aren’t that good, but unfortunately I don’t speak english on daily basis.
If any dev watch this thread, I’d really appreciate any thought from your side.
I have to say that I’m not an incredibly good Warrior player, neither it is my main profession, but I like to theorycrafting and play on it sometimes, because I like how weapons and traits are designed.
I’ve came up with a build which covers pretty much every role in this game and I found it quite effective. I’d like to share this build with you and gather some feedback and suggestion to improve it, since I really like the infrastructure behind it.
The idea is to have solid direct damage, good condition damage, nice defenses and CCs, which is also the source of long-lasting confusion.
The free utility slot is for any stunbreaker of your choice. The other two utility are there because I wanted some extra interrupts to trigger Distracting Strikes but, of course, you can switch those utilities with anything you like.
The main lack of this build is the absence of critical damage. This can be easily covered by bringing Valkirie Amulet over the soldier one (giving up on some vitality) or Berserker (giving up a lot of survivability), but I think that the Carrion jewel must to stay there.
What do you guys think? Any ideas to improve the build?
I tried it and I never SPvP’d on my Ranger before and was getting 230-250 top scores so something’s working.
Well, you don’t need a master degree in PvP to get to the top of an sPvP match.
Guaranteed that if you have played in WvWvW/PvE your ranger long enough, you can easily make a top score in sPvP.
Necro did not take a significant nerf.
They essentialy made big hits overflow into your health bar but they also fixed Death Shroud so that it is 100% of your HP now.
People are complaining because the fact that big hits did not overflow to HP was extremely useful against dungeon bosses.
One thing to also remember is that sure another profession can do higher damage in shorter time but once the burst is done it can be very risky to stick around. Necro is quite bulky especially with this latest patch and their damage never stops unlike burst classes which drops drastically and becomes more risky (soon as you burst people can switch to you and melt you rather instantly).
You can argue that burst classes can kill quicker and have tools to evade/invun damage but necro’s damage never stops and its so high with less risk as its 900 range as opposed to melee.
Isn’t this the definition of attrition?
Perfectly match the Necromancer description (finally).
As the title says.
Since it looks like that now Death Shroud works as it was supposed to work since launch, people are mad.
There are a couple of topics into the sPvP forums but I bet there will be more, more and more. Looks like that also some “high ranked” players are taking a stand (Phantaram didn’t liked his air instant burst completely eaten by Death Shroud).
So that’s it, folks. Just want to get you informed.
You don’t “waste” anything. The flesh golem trick sacrifices nothing. If you give 10% to the casuals that don’t know the flesh golem trick then all the pros will be running out the gates with 20%. Sounds like you don’t know the flesh golem trick o.O This is L2P no?
Yeah, it puts your elite on cooldown at the start of the match. Sacrifice nothing? Lol.
Looks like people like to say everyone else L2P. Does it make you fell better?
This is simply an example of the tools necro have to mitigate A LOT of burst. I’m reading a lot of people asking for lifeforce at the beginning of games because of stealth ganks. With the golem trick, you’ll start the game with deathshroud and you’ll have the ability to mitigate a substantial amount of damage as displayed here.
I get the impression that the people asking for lifeforce at the beginning of games have failed to utilize the class to it’s fullest potential which makes it a L2P issue. GW2 is a rather complex game and it’s going to be very difficult (as we’ve seen in the past year) to balance for top level and casual play. I’m not sure about the casual player base but the hardcore players are definitely frustrated with recent changes. So many top tier players are quitting. This has been a reoccurring pattern. Very few hardcore players have stuck around since the beginning. Hopefully Anet can find a good level of reward per skill that is balanced at both casual and top levels of play.
This make no sense at all.
If you are capable to start with 10% life force wasting your Elite, why don’t we get those 10% life force anyway?
Are Necro’s easy to kill and need life force at the start of the game, or are they unkillable death machines?
These two threads seem to be entirely disparate and diametrically opposed.
The difference is clear.
First, that thread is a joke for the simple reason that you can archieve the same amount of invulnerability by just using any of the invulnerability/block/evade/distortion skill on any profession.
Secondly, to archieve those ~6 seconds of invulnerability you need to have Life Force. A Warrior does not need to build up adrenaline to use Endure Pain.
So if I understand this correctly, a burst ele got upset because his burst combo failed to kill a necromancer (presumably wearing rabid or some other toughness enhancing amulet) who had protection and spectral armor.
Isn’t that as stupid as trying to burst a blocking warr/guard/blurred mesmer?
That’s exactly what I thought.
“OMG, that warriur blocked my semi-instant burst combo! plz, nurf!”
The only difference is that Necromancer is still susceptible to big hits.
Let’s brainstorm some scenarios if we did this, FOR SCIENCE!
If death shroud = survivability, and we allowed necros to have death shroud from the start, then how could that change how necros play? How would this affect certain maps and the balance of those maps? How would this affect the meta? How would this affect other classes?
Also, if we gave necros death shroud, should we give warriors adrenaline? Should we give thieves initiative? Should we give everyone everything they ever wanted?
Ultimately, what I’m looking for is the reasoning, and why you feel this would be a positive change for the game. I’m curious, because it’s easy to say “I want, I want” without saying why.
I think that the reason is quite simple.
Death Shroud is, by far, the most prominent source of survivability of Necromancer, while adrenaline is used only for offensive purposes (I don’t know what you meant with giving initiative on thieves, since they start the match with full initiative anyway :P).
What I’m trying to say is that to build up Life Force you are supposed to survive but, if you want to survive, you’d probably want to use Death Shroud, which is based on Life Force, which is what you want to survive for.
It is a vicious circle.
About adrenaline it is different. Adrenaline is solely for offensive purposes. You hit your enemy, you build adrenaline and then unleakittens destructive power :P
Maybe it wasn’t the confusion (condition) shatter, but my point still stands that if Mind Wrack was used instead of one that applies a condition, the Engineer would have fallen over dead.
He used Mind Wrack with 3 clones two times in the video.
Have you really watched it?
Yes, because when I see someone immune to condis I use Cry of Frustration instead of just insta-jibbing them with Mind Wrack. Your videos keep getting worse.
Where do you see Cry of Frustration in the combat log?
It’s me or there is no Cry of Frustration at all?
Also, guys, I’d calm down a bit.
We don’t know how much the DS damage fix will affect the actual gameplay, it might be quite good.
We don’t either know how new base marks will perform ingame.
So there is no reason to cry that much until we try those changes out.
Well, at least the P/D set would be quite good.
Considering the easy access to stealth, kiting capabilities of Shadow Strike and torment, it will be quite funny to play with :P
In real life, Torment always deals 150% damage of a bleed. Have you ever seen your enemy standing still unless immobilized?
Your arguments sound like a lot of theorycrafting and not actual play in tpvp or even hotjoin :/
“I asked a friend?” lol..
Bottomline; rank 7 is like 20 hotjoin games and really not a indicator of anything; play some tpvp to check if your “theorycrafting” is right..
If you don’t like it go to wvwvw as Karla Gray has purposed.
If the semi-competitive side of the game isn’t intriguing to you
maybe the casual side will be.
The point is that the competive side of the game is intriguing not even the 5% of the buyers, according to how many people have watched the last highly publicized tournament (ESL test tournament) and highly exaggerate the numbers (5% are 150.000 players, only about 1000-2000 watched the finals).
You can clearly see that the competitive side is almost desert just checking out the massive matchmaking waiting times in tPvP and it’s not by suggesting players “go play WvWvW or PvE” that you’ll fix this problem, neither dismissing the point of view of someone who is interested in competition but not in GW2 PvP.
the most obvious thing to do that does the most good for the game is to tone down condi dmg. another idea would be to implement a “max degen” cap like in gw1.
No, it is just how conditions work in this game.
In Guild Wars 1, there was condition damage at all. You did not needed to heavily invest into a stat to have decent degen.
That means that you can’t just put a cap on the main source of damage of some builds if you don’t put a cap to raw damage too. If you would, condition damage will be always inferior to raw damage.
I’ve mentioned 5vs5 hotjoins.
The point in hotjoin is still winning over the enemy team, since you gain more glory hence you get more of what you want.
5vs5 hotjoin and a 5vs5 tPvP SoloQ vs SoloQ are exactly the same thing.
Also, you’re talking like in tPvP is not full of troll builds too.
I dunno… it feels like this guy has just been doing hotjoin and is bored..(r7)
Of course this is the case there are no strong players in hotjoin and the style of play is LETS MAXIMISE GLORY GAIN.
I don’t know how a r7 player may find a 5vs5 with gigantic waiting times more fun than a fast-joining 8vs8 considering that the mode and the maps are still the same.
Seriously, it’s like tPvP is a whole other world with ponies, fun and rainbows and it isn’t still the same conquest with the same design you find in 5v5 hotjoin arenas…
@jportell:
Your arguments are a joke.
You are comparing the Necromancer, which is by class description the profession with better condition management in this game, to Engineer and use it as justification for the 100% immunity to conditions…
Also, you seem to lack the base knowledge of the profession.
Axe builds rely on Vulnerability much much more than any other power build in this game.
Also lol @ “Necros have good hybrid builds”. Make a freakin Necro and test for yourself how a condition weapon deals damage.
Leaving aside your false convictions about Necro, you still avoid to address what we are criticizing about the skill and you are keep focusing on something we’ve never said it was wrong (condition counter).
So, to avoid you post again another time without addressing the core issue of the trait, I’ll nail it down for you: Why is it fine that the immunity is potentially unlimited? Why do engis have access to a potentally permanent 100% immunity instead of some extra active condition cleanses?
This is the point you have to address and what we are criticizing in about 11 pages, understood?
And this is why you’re terribly biased .
Aside from Transmute and Cleansing Formula the one you’ve linked are all active – and Cleansing Formula triggers on an active elixir skill anyway.
Transmute doesn’t even cleanse instead.
Transmute can convert an incoming condition – that means that already inflicted ones are still there. It won’t cleanse a burning that is already there if it triggers on a burning, but i’ll just convert the new one in a boon. On a 8% chance. On a grandmaster minor trait.
Then we have the active skills – and all of them are in different utilities.
Super Elixir cleanses a single one; Cleansing burst cleanses two – and that’s assuming the turret lives enough to process it.
But the most stupid thing there is
Toss elixir R: who would waste it for the cleansing effect? Beside you, i mean.
You suggested an useless alternative. Why do you compare engineers with warriors? We haven’t got their burst capabilities, especially without HGH – and they take the same grandmaster slot. Getting it in a bunker build would be useless – we lack passive condition removals and the only full one we’ve got is elixir C – and getting it in an offensive one would be useless as well – you are already giving up HGH for that and you’ve spent almost half of the trait points in defensive stats.
Using sorrow’s “logic” it’s okay if a bunker can’t kill anyone, but anyone can kill the bunker.
Have you ever listened to any dev statement about bunker-burst?
They have clearly stated that they have designed GW2 to make damage have a more relevant role compared to defense.
Do you know what that means? I guess not, so I’ll explain it easy easy to you.
It means that if you play as a bunker and you’re giving up on all your damage you will of course survive more, but you won’t be unkillable. In most cases, survive more is crucial to the point that being unkillable shouldn’t belong to this game.
And, if you look at the game right now, no bunker is unkillable. They just survive more than the average build which is what they are supposed to do.
Generally the lack of population is due to lack of rewards and the incredible grind to get high enough for decent looking weapons.
There are a lot of PvE’rs who’ve sPvPed but gave up because they weren’t seeing the progression they wanted as opposed to running CoF over and over for gear etc.
The people who stay are the ones who enjoy the PvP. If rewards are fixed, there’s a higher probability of bringing in new talent. So I wouldn’t chop this up a issue of balance rather than an issue of incentive.
Not really.
The lack of reward doesn’t force the people to not watch high tier tournaments and I don’t think it is the issue at all.
Counter-strike, which is one of the most famous and most played competitive game ever made, has no form of progression at all, but the playerbase counts millions of players and each high-level tournaments have at least one million spectators each.
I’ve never playerd LoL, tbh, but I don’t think it has a deep progression/reward system too.
The issue is that the PvP is, by factual considerations, not interesting which is the core issue at the moment and you won’t solve it by listening to top tier players which are, in fact, playing the game because they are enjoying it as it is and they are not even the 0.02% of GW2 buyers.
There are separate teams from PvP and PvE in ArenaNet. Separate staff.
If the PvE team or PvP team doesn’t like a class change, then they split the skill – however, they try their best not to do that as to not screw up the feel of class from one section of the game to another.
AKA, 2% of the player base is only affecting the sPvP section of the game, in which they are a much higher percentage.
I’ve edited my previous post to better reflect what I’ve tried to say.
Guild Wars 2 has sold 3 million copies, that means that there are at least 3 millions of potential competitive players. Even if we want to say that 1 millions aren’t interested at all into competition, the other 1.999 millions just don’t care and follow the competitive PvP. Why? Would you ask it that to the top tier players? I wouldn’t.
First off, people sometimes forget about the fact that Guild Wars 2 is a game, after all.
The “top tier” players aren’t even the 0.1% of the player base and, considering that the last important tournament of GW2 had only about 1000 spectators while Guild Wars 2 has sold 3 million copies, I think that there is an issue which can’t be solved by listening only to top players, which seems what ArenaNet is doing in the last period.
Secondly, playing a lot of tPvP and being a top player doesn’t mean you have enough critical eye to understand the issues of the game and to formulate an adequate solution to them. Obviously that doesn’t mean that you can’t be a top player and a good “analyzer”, I just want to point out that “being a top player” doesn’t imply “being a good analizer”. That’s why every people should be listened not because of what they are but because of what they say.
1) Bone Minions aren’t ever used for the healing on hit. You might keep them alive for a while, but Flesh Golem, Bone Fiend, and Flesh Wurm are all still giving HP/s while Bone Minions provide the AoE
2) I am not against the idea of them healing on death, I would suggest it work like Death Nova’s damage though, not triggering on sacrifice.
3) This isn’t burst healing either…?
1) Bone Minions give some sweet extra health. They are two and they attack once every 3.5 second (according to Google), which is equivalent to 100 health each ~1.7s, which is exactly the attack speed of Shadow Fiend, so not bad at all.
2) I specifically wanted to make the Master trait of blood magic to work as burst healing traits. Deathly Invigoration, Transfusion and Vampiric Master are all burst heals. If you make it works like Death Nova’s damage, it will ends just like Death Nova damage: random and uncontrolled. This is something I want to avoid, to be honest.
3) Yep, it is. If you sacrifice both the Bone Minions and eventually the Flesh Wurm, you’re healed for 3k+, which is kinda bursty.
The vampiric master seems really strong. I regularly run Cleric, with 1200 healing power, meaning it would be healing for about 1.3k per death. So Bone Minions are not only dealing 4-5k damage, plus poison and weakness, but also healing me and nearby minions for 2.7k every 20 seconds (or 16 traited). That is a lot of added power into an already tanky build with tons of healing.
I think that Vampiric Master is the best trait among the ones I’ve suggested.
Yes, it is strong, I know that you may be not used to work with strong traits (:P), but it is far from too strong.
Why?
1) If you are sacrificing your minions, they aren’t providing you the constant 100hp of healing.
2) It is a natural counter to AoE wiping all the minions. Each time a minions die, all the nearby minions are healed, that means that they won’t just implode against any AoE.
3) It covers the inner lacking of burst healing of Necromancers, which makes them unviable covering a defensive role.
Also, I won’t say that minionmaster are a tanky build with tons of healing. The small, constant healing you are taking as a minionmaster won’t help you at all into surviving and that is proved by the complete lack of minionmasters as bunkers in tPvP.
How many traits have you spent to get the combo you’ve mentioned?
I count 3 traits involved and at least 50 traitpoints already spent.
Considering the amount of traitpoints you spent into the defensive traitlines, you are supposed to last at least as much as a 0/0/0/20/30 elementalist.
a) the vampiric trait would still get changed even if any changes go to the blood line itself, it was kitten, it is kitten and will be kitten for quite some time (125 hp being static regen for pretty much every other equivalent it has that doesnt even require hitting stuff/combat), but if you look at alt healing build of a guardian, a dagger necro that could heal for around 100 pre hit in a aoe would cause quite a hp difference over every fight thats bigger than a 2v2 and it would be quite really useful in most dungeons.
b) No its increased to 10 (10 – current duration of well in question = number of seconds the well lasts longer), not increased by 10 (so 5/6/7 depending on well + 10).
WoD is still mostly a annoyance factor, blocking invul and cc are all still better as defensive tools and for WoP, please take a look at contemplation of purity, cleansing flames, purging flames, healing rain, healing spring and fumigate in terms of condi removal and secondary effects.
c) Believe it or not, most minior master traits are actual anchors of a build, if not then the entire line has strong synergy with the grandmaster part (e.g. mesmers 4th shatter on self that entirely changes their scailing and playstyle)
Following most good traitline miniors its: Secondary effect on something that you often do for role the line is in, change in efficiency, damage boost or aplification of strength of the traitline.
I’ll add your suggestions to the OP.
Though, I’m still skeptic about the well trait.
10s for wells are quite a long time. Considering the retaliation and the low recharge time of WoS, it looks definitely too much.
