Guild Wars 2

Forsaker.9213:

snip

This post is full of false statements and inaccuracies.

1. Dhuumfire patch is not the only buff patch followed by several nerfs. Necromancer received several buffs to both damage and sustain. Terror, Spectral Wall, Death Magic minor traits, Vital Persistence, Spectral Armor working while in Death Shroud, weakness change, DS damage bug, Spectral Wall and Signet of Spite are all buff to (condition) Necromancer, but you purposely listed only the nerfs to make it look like Necromancer is the underdog class forgotten by ArenaNet. Necromancer is a far better profession as it used to be a year (and an half) ago. Stop pretending it is not.

2. I’ve never started to compare Necro to Warr. This is the 4th or 5th time I’m trying to say that. Perhaps you should read my posts.

3. DS is sustain and can eat a considerable amunt of damage with enough LF generation. You can say it doesn’t as you want, but it works as sustain.

4. You are going to take damage and team focus anyway, I’ve never denied that, but you have tools to mitigate it and a team to protect you in teamfight situations.
You’re making it look like a single thief, a Warrior AoE or mesmer autoattack can down you in a matter of seconds.

5. Nightmare runes were buffed. 2s (+fear/condi duration) automated fear? Yeah, kind of bad. Again, don’t take clear imbalances as an excuse to buff a profession more than needed. The fact that Strenght or Balthazar runes are too much does not mean that ANet should give Necro an equivalent toy to abuse.

You talk about “reality”, forsaker, but you have no real arguments, to be honest. Necromancer fits the role of teamfighter and it is doing well. You’re asking ANet to change the design philosophy of the profession to fit your wills because you don’t seem to be happy with it, or you’re just joining the “buff me” cries that you can see coming from any single profession players.

Roe.3679:

Burning with might stacks deals more damage in a power build than staff’s main source of dps, and staff is a solid weapon? In what world are these things comparable? And then you say that staff is ok because we have DS? Just making sure I understand your points here…

Burning with Might stacks deals more damage that a single cast of MoB, though you can stack bleeds from 2 stacks of it. Then there is poison, fear and the eventual conditions you’re transfering through putrid mark.
I haven’t said staff is a solid weapon because of the damage output, but because of the utility and the other conditions it provides. Nor I’ve said that staff is a solid weapon because of DS.

Abimes.9726:

This is a fact, Necro can’t dodge everything in team fights (kind of normal) , it have 2-3 dodges + 1 stunt breaker (or 2 in some rare situations) , dodge wars skills you’ll get hit by burst or some other CC and LF can’t temporise as much than any block or invulnerability or a teleport and if it does it let you with no possibility to respond the damage.

“About large fights, you are not supposed to stay on a node but to stay as far as possible dealing damage on the node.”

Fact, I think any competitive players know that , but if you wan’t to land your burst at one moment or another you’ll have to land your dark path or at least get into 600u range to land your burst.

Fact, And actually the bow ticks are more around 600 than 500 in team fights due to the other might source … and yeah the MoB + Chillbains = like 500 …

If you get team focus, you will for sure getting hit multiple times and this is the situation when you want to use Plague, Protection, Flesh Wurm or some spectral skills while in Death Shroud.

If you’re on a teamfight, you either minimize the amount of time you are on a node or simply avoid to use dark path. If you do so, you can apply a considerable amount of conditions staying at scepter range or even at Staff range.

Actually, Burning + 25 stacks of might without any extra condition damage is 547 dps.
Two MoB stacking with each other are 440 dps.

Abimes.9726:

@sorrow

Even if you consider necro damage being ok , you can’t compare it to the new meta war might stacking which is insanely bigger … and if it’s not, it’s insanely more tanky with soldier gear … and sustainable (thinking of the Soldier evicerate war which was played in TOL).

I’ve already spoken about the warrior comparison, saying that it is pointless.

Nobody here has denied that Warriors require futher tuning, but the fact that Warriors are much easier to play and a little bit too strong at the moment isn’t a justification to give Necromancers unneeded buffs, nor to dumb down the gameplay to match Warrior easiness.

Abimes.9726:

And how you can out rotate à team with a necro in it , and don’t tell me necro is going to roam fast enough between 2 points vs à high mob team and you just have to keep your points … by doing that each fight will finish out numbered.

I’ve never said that a necro is supposed to roam, but I’ve said that you can afford to slot one.
Necro never had insane mobility, nor do guardian or spirit ranger, but people keep slotting them because mobility isn’t everything.

Abimes.9726:

You’r just bringing back the same thing over and over comparing the effectiveness of some skills … but in team fights you don’t have 200 dodges to dodge pin down , A Arrow , and all the other stuff going around… And in that case Short CD’s are bether than high CD’s cause at one moment you’ll be able to land them … even if it’s one the second try ( which is still faster than à 45 sec CD)

Pin Down is just one on 25s cooldown. If you’re random dodging wasting your endurance on autoattacks and worthless skills, then you played bad.
I thought we were talking about high level PvP, right?

Abimes.9726:

Necro Is ok in small scales fights 1v1 , 2v2 cause he can evade the damage by stunt breaking / dodging , like any class … but on large scale you have 0 access to vigor , low dodges if you wan’t to get proc of energy sigil you have to switch on staff for exemple ( staff is awesome , just the auto , sucks a bit ) but staff is very situational and you don’t wan’t to get stuck 10 sec with it , you have no way to negate the damage , unless you sacrifice a full DS bar which leave you with near 0 burst ability ( and don’t tell me pls the 8 easy dispellable bleeds stacks you proc with some AOE is gonna push a lot of damage it’s near war’s burn with it’s AOE and some stacks of might)

Staff is not situational, it is extremely solid.
It has utilities to cope with any situations, with a fair supplement of DS skills.
It is not only about damage, but also about the shutdowns.

About large fights, you are not supposed to stay on a node but to stay as far as possible dealing damage on the node. If you get team focus on you (as it usually happens), you have tools to survive a fair amount of time and you eventually get downed if you team can’t put enough pressure on the enemy team too. But this is what happens with any other profession.

Burning with mightstacks deals about 500-600 DPS, not that much to outperform on a condition build if you consider that a single MoB outputs about 220 DPS.

Bhawb.7408:

I play in NA, and NA has always had more Necros than EU. EU has a very anti-Necro meta, with all high level teams heavily focusing on rotations (which Necros can’t do well) over straight up fighting, and also have historically had very heavy anti-condi team comps with huge condition cleansing.

In soloQ I’m sure there are still Necros, there are also a few still on teams, but overall Necros just aren’t as strong in competitive play.

TeamQ is competitive. Some might say that SoloQ is competitive too, but this is arguable.
What I’m reading there is something like “yeah, there are necros on teams, but there is no necro left”.
Many teams still run necro, they are nowhere a rare sight as they used to be pre-July patch or like Elementalist before the feature pack.

The fact that some teams focus on rotations does not mean anyone do that, nor that an heavy mobile team can’t have a Necro too in their team comp to supply more damage in teamfights.

Tim.6450:

The conditon necromancer has to either take a staff or take a scepterand spam auto attacks.

Which is anyway the most common weapon choices out there for condition builds and even power build because of Staff.

Tim.6450:

Cleave is AOE, a small cone but still AOE. So technically bleed and burn are AOE.

We aren’t arguing for the sake of arguing, right?

Tim.6450:

Yes it is, a shorter cooldowns means that it can used more often which means that are is a bigger chance the enemy has no defences left. Which means it is more reliable.
Also about LOS staff has LOS problems with marks, see attachments.

Not really.
A competent player knows what skill to dodge and what don’t. You can afford to eat some Fan of Fire or Smoldering Arrow, but you really want to dodge Pin Down and Arcing Arrow which are, guess what, the skills with the bigger telegraph. Any profession with no endurance traits or vigor can easily dodge both and you can make LB half useless.

What about staff? 3 of the marks have pretty much the same animation. How can you know that the mark which is coming is a MoB, which you can afford to take, or a Chilblains, that you really don’t want it to hit you? You can’t.

That’s what I mean when I say that casting a skill isn’t like flipping a coin.

Also, LoS problems of staff are situational at best. The situation in the screenshot is made up.

Tim.6450:

First the basic principle of high level pvp is apparantly on point combat which is melee range, so in pvp it is very reliable. It is also has 10% more range. Also torch in incendintary powder have around same uptime of burning.

Actually, the basic principle of high level PvP is knowing when to stay on points and when to not stay on them.

When you’re stepping on a node, you’re exposing yourself to AoE and cleave and it isn’t really something you want to do that lightly. If you want to stay on a node long enough without dying to AoE and cleave in teamfights you have to run the proper build. That’s why most competent team just have a single guy on a node (usually the guardian) and all the others away from it.
On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about cleave and AoE if you are away from the fight at a safe distance.

Bhawb.7408:

You do realize Necromancers are heavily falling out of the meta, right? We’re not debating hotjoin heroes here, this is about high tier viability, and as of right now it just doesn’t really exist.

I don’t know what meta are you talking about.
In EU, Necromancers are far from being out of meta in high tier PvP for what I can tell. Maybe they are in NA, who knows. Do you play in NA?

Andele.1306:

a) Why are you comparing utility conditions to active defense? The two have about as much in common as losing a boss vs skipping him or doing a wall immob on him (as in getting the bosses hitbox and pathing stuck in a wall to keep him in combat and on low hp while in forced pathing like lupi on the lower right door). Yes you do get the same results, but one requires effort/a trade of skill and focus for it while the other is easy effortless and with almost no cost.

b) Dont even freaking dare compare a aoe utility weapon with a less than 2.5 times power ratio (on actives not aa) with long cooldowns to a might stacking condi weapon with 4.1 times power ratio (not counting burst skill in addition to not counting aa which have the same 0.6 as necro staff) with low cooldowns.

c) Are you telling me that a 8s cd gap closer with a 1s stun does not allow you a reliable 3/4 cast time hit despite having minimum 3 more cc and maximim 7 more? Because that is bs…

a) If you want effortless gameplay, there is warrior for you. Developers have said multiple times how Necromancer is supposed to defend himself and dumbing down everything to the Warrior level just because there is a profession which is newbie-friendly doesn’t seem a wise choice in my opinion.

b) I dare. Staff is a much better weapon compared to longbow and its utilities along with the traits it can be paired with, and it is worth way more than any LB in any build.
Again, if you don’t like the playstyle of Necro, you shouldn’t play it instead of posting a rant on the forum on how LB is way better in your opinion.

c) What?

Anyway, this is not a topic about Necromancer vs Warrior.
Nobody here has denied that Warriors require futher tuning, but the fact that Warriors are much easier to play and a little bit too strong at the moment isn’t a justification to give Necromancers unneeded buffs, nor to dumb down the gameplay to match Warrior easiness.

Tim.6450:

Correct but warrior has reliable acces to poison (sigil of doom + fast hands means 50% uptime of poison with one sigil)

So can Necro. The only difference is that Necro isn’t forced to use a valuable sigil slot to apply poison.

Tim.6450:

Necromancer do not have reliable acces to aoe chill (unless you count epidemic).

Chilblains is a reliable access to chill.

Tim.6450:

Well, you have to consider that necro with aoe condition skills is actuallly a condition spec while the hambow is a power spec. By the way fan of fire is AOE.

But it still applies burning. Even in full condition build, all of the warrior’s condition are single target, except for burning.

Tim.6450:

Wrong, cooldowns come into play in this discussion. 3 out of 4 marks have 20 seconds cooldown or higher and mark of blood has a 6 second cooldown. Warrior longbow 3 skills with a cooldown lower or equal to 10 seconds. So while the necromancer marks hit easier (I’m not even sure about because fan of fire has a low tell). The warrior can use his skills more often and have more chances to hit someone thus more reliable.

Cooldown isn’t related with the reliability of a skill.
Casting a skill isn’t like rolling a dice and hoping that the skill lands.
Also, you, purposely or unpurposely, have ignored the LoS factor which is quite big in competitive play.

Tim.6450:

Fierce blow has incredible uptime of weakness unlike all those other skills. 75% uptime untraited, ungeared is alot more then 25%, 20%, 30%,25%, 16% uptime.The necromancer has at least with 3 of them to reach the same uptime then Firece Blow.

Uptime matters very little when you have to stay in melee range and can’t reliably mantain it.
Throw Torch has a much higher uptime compared to Incendiary Powder, but that doesn’t mean that Throw Torch is better compared to Incendiary Powder in terms of burning application.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Death Shroud is not sustain.
You can´t reset a fight as a Necro, the class has NO sustainability. It has mitigation but it doesn´t scale with the number of enemies or incoming damage.
Warrior sustain doesn´t scale with enemies, but his mitigation does and while he´s not taking damage he´s healing by a very good amount, the Necro can´t come close to the amount of damage a warrior can negate and health resored during a single Endure Pain.

Necromancers have a set of conditions that can be easily used with defensive purposes, the soft CCs I was talking about are great if used defensively.
True, you can’t pop endure pain and eat any damage, but you’re making it look like endure pain makes warriors immortal to team focus for an unlimited amount of time. Endure Pain is just a skill to delay the damage you would take anyway for a couple of seconds, it does not provide warriors protection, nor a bigger health pool, nor defensive conditions and soft CCs.

And, again, Death Shroud is sustain. If it wasn’t as you’re claiming, then you would be able to take away any Death Shroud use without losing survivability, which is impossible as Death Shroud is the strongest source of survivability for Necromancers.

Also, it looks like you’re ignoring the point I’m trying to make. Each time you regenerate Life Force, it is somewhat the equivalent of regenerating HP. It is true that regenerating HP is much more valuable than regenerating LF, but it is also true that you regenerate much more LF than a warrior can regenerate HP.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Where is the poison on hambow?
Why is this important? Hambows can deal enough damage without needing poison.

If you think poison is valuable just because of damage, I’m afraid I’m starting to doubt your PvP competence.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Where is the AoE condition pressure (other than on a single condi on bow) on hambow?
This is weird, you want me to give an example besides the example.
Combustive shot is a fire field that´s huge, reapplies burning if it´s cleansed and deals continuous damage to foes who stay in it. What more do you need? It´s like a huge Necro well that applies a huge amount of bleeds.

Damage is not everything.
It does not apply weakness or chill or poison or cripple. And warriors have only combustive shot as AoE condition skill.

How viable would be Necromancer if the only AoE condition skill is a combustive shot-like one? I’d say close to zero.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Where is a reliable ranged weapon like staff on hambow?
What is a Bow? Warriors may complain about it but compared to staff auto, bow’s auto attacks hurt and are projectile finishers, on the weapon with the HUGE fire field.
Also look at pindown for even more utility and damage.

I talked about RELIABILITY.
Staff marks always hit and if traited are also unblockable.
Longbow skills are slow, with an huge tell, are projectiles (so subject to LoS fails) and can’t be traited to be unblockable.
It would be stupid to argue that staff is a much more reliable ranged weapon compared to LB, even for the most biased warrior hater out there.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Where is an instant-cast CC like Doom on hambow?
Warriors have no instant CC. But they do have good access to stability so that their CC doesn´t get interrupted.

But can be dodged. Very few people waste an interrupt on an incoming CC rather than dodge or a blind.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Where is the AoE weakness to mitigate the enemy damage output on hambow?
This is actually funny, Fierce Blow grants small AoE weakness with a very nice uptime on the CC weapon for the class with the best passive survivability in the game. Yes, I do think it´s ridiculous.

Fierce Blow is a melee small cleaving skill.
Compared to Enfeebling Blood (and Weakening Shroud), CPC, Corrupt Boon on might (quite popular these days) and Signet of Spite, it is much less valuable.

Forsaker.9213:

guys plz just ignore his posts

Yeah, sounds like a good getaway if you’re not able to sustain a discussion with actual argumentations.

djooceboxblast.9876:

If they stay on a node? A thief is never a free kill in a team fight. A decent thief with initiative and shadowstep/refuge will almost always be able to get away. A necromancer on the other hand cannot just get away. Now necromancers are almost always the first to be targeted because they are a threat if left alone but more so because they are an easy target.

sorrow.2364:

Thieves survive only because of the mobility and some evades, if they stay on a node for more than 2 seconds, they die.

Getting away isn’t exactly staying on a node. And by staying on a node I mean contesting it. If you focus a thief, either he has a stunbreaker available or he’s dead if you manage to land a single CC on him.

Point is that Thieves can’t stay in teamfights at all, which is fine as they are designed to do so, but Necromancers can while also holding a quite good amount of focus.

Necromancer isn’t the only profession incapable to leave teamfights at will. Guardian, Warrior, Ranger and Engineer have all not the best of time while trying to leave teamfights.

Necromancer aren’t a that easy target. A necromancer with empty life force bar, plague on cooldown, spectral armor unslotted and no flesh wurm available is an easy target.

Erzian.5218:

Wow, please stop embarrassing yourself.

Thieves survive only because of the mobility and some evades, if they stay on a node for more than 2 seconds, they die.
Since when thieves have started to hold nodes and survive in teamfights for prolonged periods of time? Maybe I’m not up to date and the meta has completely changed in the two hours I haven’t played the game.

Forsaker.9213:

sorrow , plz go play necro , u camed here talking about smt u have no clue. Necro dont fit to the game , he is in worst situation ever , bad mobility , bad sustain ( DS its not sustain it will give u 2s more before u will die ) , dmg on necro is super low atm , ofc necro can kill guardians but what decent team will let guardian 1v1 necro? Thief will just jump in necro dead thats why u cant even go for 1v1 situations , necro just lack defensive mechanism.

And idk why u compare necro to war??!! Ofc war is superior , atm with streaght runes its way over the top , try to 1v1 good ele with 0/0/2/6/6 build , i just started to play staff ele , when i see necro its simple free kill for me.

Before u will say smt more , go play necro , go see how it is . And its not only like ppl focus necro becouse if they dont they will lose every fight , atm gaurdian + ele can completly counter necro condi , they focus him becouse its free 5pts.

Who talked about 1vs1 situations? As much as no competent team will let the guardian fight alone vs a necro, no competent team will send a Necro 1vs1 against a guardian.
In case you missed, nobody here even mentioned 1vs1 situations in which I’m well aware it is not optimal to send a Necro alone. And no, I don’t think people focus necro first because it is a freekill, thieves or mesmers are much more a freekill, but more likely because if you leave him untouched your team will melt one by one.

But yeah guys, go on with your madness and “you’re not a necro, go play it” and keep whining for buffs.
Maybe someday ANet will go crazy again and will wipe away any downside of Necromancers, so you guys can walk in SoloQ melting people with fearchains, spamming conditions like no tomorrow while having permavigor, mobility and HS-like sustain.
How crazy are you sorrow for pointing out that a profession like Necro is supposed to have some downsides and counters!
Better buff everything to the roof because warriors can get 25 stacks of might and eles can cleanse conditions instead of being a Necro pounchingball.

lol at Necro in the worse situation ever.

Kiriakulos.1690:

DeathShroud is not sustain. This is a huge misconception shared by the developers which resulted in the attrition class with worst sustain I’ve ever seen in any game. DeathShroud is at best mitigation, which doesn’t scale with the number of attackers and which you can be forced out of.

Combustive shot’s fire field negates most condition removal by reapplying the burn when it’s removed, that’s not something the Necro can replicate with his AoE conditions.
Fear can be negated by both condition immunity as well as stability, that makes me consider it less reliable than normal stuns, but you are correct about Necro’s having a range advantage for their CC.

Blocks and damage immunity is 1vX mitigation, protection, Spectral skills with ICDs and plague while they do mitigate damage, they scale horribly with the number of enemies. Spectral skills actually don’t scale at all because of their ICDs.

Necros can’t cleave, this is a fact. Stomping is a very important part of combat, it can rally allies and finally remove foes at the same time, a single stomp can swing team fights so having a class with reliable stomping is very attractive, so this is an important feature that Necros mostly miss out on, except for the DS FitG stomp.

I don’t think that Hambows need the boonstrip to deal with bunkers like a Necro does because their damage output is already high enough even while the enemy has defensive boons, the Necro’s isn’t.

My point is that anything that you state a Necro can do, a Hambow can to it more reliably, more easily and with more room for error, so why would you pick this profession if a single build can outperform almost everything it does?

Death Shroud is sustain.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve listed Healing Signet, Dogged March and Adrenal Health, which don’t scale with attackers too, right? So why are those sustain and Death Shroud isn’t? A percentage of LF gained is the equivalent of gaining a less valuable amount of HP.

I’ve already pointed out that Combustive Shot provides only burning, which is nowhere close to the amounts of conditions that Necros can apply AoE. Of course you can permanently mantain torment, poison, cripple, bleeds, chill and weakness on AoE permanently (CPC goes close to it, though), but you’re not supposed to do so, otherwise necros will turn in a mindless AoE spam machine, which is the kind of gameplay anyone hates here, right?

Stability can be corrupted… in fear. Also, all warrior’s CC are tied to a pretty clear animation. Doom is instant cast if I’m not wrong.

Are you trying to say that Necros are supposed to sustain team focus for an unlimited amount of time? Warriors have endure pain and blocks, true, but once their effect wears off, what do they have?

About cleave, I probably used the wrong term. With “cleave” I mean using AoE on the downed body, which is in many situations a way better tactic compared to stomping. There are professions that simply can’t be stomped reliably, that’s where you’d rather have a Necromancer with poison and AoEs rather than a warriors with stability ready.

Do you think that an hambow warrior can solo a boon bunker? Well, they can’t. Not even close if the enemy isn’t completely incompetent. Necromancer, on the other can, can easily do it.

An hambow can’t do what a necro can do better.
Where is the poison on hambow?
Where is the AoE condition pressure (other than on a single condi on bow) on hambow?
Where is a reliable ranged weapon like staff on hambow?
Where is an instant-cast CC like Doom on hambow?
Where is chill to shut down your enemies on hambow?
Where is the AoE weakness to mitigate the enemy damage output on hambow?
Seriously…

djooceboxblast.9876:

How on earth does necromancer have better cc than a hambow warrior? Soft CC maybe, but hammer brings way better hard cc. Oh and the AOE bleed, poison and chill that gets cleansed every 5 seconds. I encourage you to get good at necro and play against decent teams.

Stop trolling and go away please! You are starting to annoy me.

Yes, Necromancer have better soft CC and on-par hard CC.
Hammer may have CC on lower cooldown, but Necromancer brings range and more reliability. Better is a matter of opinion, I think that the reliability of Necromancer’s hard CC is better and, of course, hard CC is not the reason of why people bring warriors in their team comp.

AoE bleed, poison and chills will of course will get eventually cleansed if your enemy can play properly and save its cleanses for crucial conditions, but it is also up to you to watch out for the cleanses and use your cooldowns in the proper moment. Cleanses are not unlimited.
Or do you want to win by just spamming your skills on cooldown, do you?

I’m not trolling, I’m just trying to bring some reasons to someone who clearly don’t want to see any.

Kiriakulos.1690:

But their mobility and sustain are still better than a Necro’s even after the nerfs.
Signet of rage with dogged march, Adrenal Healing and Healing signet are objectively better than anything the Necro can bring.

Huge AoE constant burning with might stacks is better AoE condi pressure than a Necro can dish out with all the other conditions.
Hammer CC is imo a lot better than the fear stacking a Necro can output and with more damage to boot on a lower cooldown.

Besides that there’s also the matter of better 1vX mitigation and stability for stomps.

The only thing you said that can be objectively done better by the Necro is boon strip, but that seems like a bad trade-off for everything else.

Necromancer sustain himself through Death Shroud. You should now that any life force you gain is somewhat comparable to an equivalent amount of healing you get. The fact that you don’t see green numbers does not mean that sustain insn’t there.

Burning is not better than the amount of conditions that Necros can pull out AoE.
Poison, chill, torment, bleed, cripple, weaknees are all better compared to a single condition damaging condition fueled only by situational buffs. And you can even transfer conditions you have on enemies in an area if those are not enough.

Hammer CC is not that better compared to fear stacking. As I’ve pointed out above, Necromancer’s hard CC are more reliable but can be spammed less, while soft CC is way better.

True that Necromancer can’t stomp, but they can cleave insanely good and supply poison on downed bodies, which is something warriors can’t do. The 1vsX mitigation is called Plague and Spectral Armor in Death Shroud. Other than that, there are very few professions who can mitigate 1vsX focus for an extensive amount of time and they are both supposed to be tanks.

It is not only the boon strip, but also the damage output on team focuses and the soft CCs.
Also, you underrate boon strips. Boons strip is a requirement if you want to bring down fast enough a boon bunker (ele or guardian) and the other two professions who can strip boon are Thief and Mesmer, but both are way worse compared to necro.

djooceboxblast.9876:

What game are you playing? :O

The same you do.

Kiriakulos.1690:

A Hambow warrior can bring better sustain, mobility, AoE condi pressure and CC.

What are you even thinking when you compare that to a Necro? Lucky epidemics? With the amount of nerfs the Necro received on his AoE bleeds, combustive shot alone deals much higher and sustained AoE condi damage than a Necro can output with bleeds.

The hambow mobility is rather bad.
The sustain has been nerfed and it is not as good as it used to be.
The condi pressure is carried only by the runes of strength 25 mightstacks madness.
Other than burning, there is nothing left as “condi pressure”: no poison, no AoE bleed, no AoE torment, no chill.
The CC is superior on Necromancer by far.

Still, an hambow warrior does not provide boon removal which is quite of an huge selling point for Necros.

I really don’t want Necros to be crazy OP. What you’re suggesting is giving Necromancer mobility, even more sustain and even more condi pressure? Pretty much you’re saying “let’s wipe away any downside of the profession so we can be good at everything”…
Then we’ll be back at june of last year.

djooceboxblast.9876:

The thing is – there are many other professions that are good at team fighting which also have good mobility for fast rotations. Warrior, ranger, ele are the most noteworthy of those. As a necromancer you are forced to run either speed/traveler runes or spectral walk/warhorn to have a decent uptime of swiftness/movement speed. Necromancers are great at team fighting but need other professions to protect them. When you meet a high mobility team that forces you to keep an eye out for every point on the map – you do not always have those other professions to protect you which means that you are easily kitten by faster rotating teams.

The last ESL 6v6 tournament is a pretty good example for showing how good necromancers are at team fighting with the right support. But conquest brings totally different scenarios and requires a good deal of mobility/sustain(staying power) for you and your team to be succesful. Necromancer by itself does not have that.

Necromancer is the only profession who is able to melt anyone he wants if played properly while dealing a decent amount of AoE condition pressure.
No other profession has this teamfighting capabilities, that’s why it should carry also an opportunity cost with it.

If Necromancer also had good mobility and even higher sustain, then they would be a must-go in any team and will eventually outshine any other profession at it. There aren’t that many profession who can solo a bunker easily, if I’m not wrong.
So why would you bring a Warrior or an Ele when you can bring a Necro which provides better staying power, better CCs and outputs higher pressure?

What I tried to say before is that if you are running a Necromancer and get outrotated by an high-mobility team comp it is probably because you’re playing their game.
The point of high-mobility team comps is to split fights on three nodes and win on small scale combats, so if you’re playing for three points you are obviously going to be out-rotated because you’re adopting a playstyle which isn’t suited to the build you’re running.

Also, Necromancer has an huge deal of sustain. Of course they can’t survive to team focus from extensive amount of time, nor they can disengage the fight (this is an issue of other professions too), but they are tanky enough to eat a good amount of damage. Death Shroud, after the double damage bug has been fixed, provides an huge amount of tankyness to Necromancers and Plague has always been extremely good for holding points against multiple people and to force enemy players out of it.

Bhawb.7408:

Every single top tier player will tell you the same thing, coordinated PvP is about rotations.

Really? I don’t think so.
PvP is about rotations as much as teamfights. You can rotate as good as you want, but if you lose teamfights, you’ll lose the game because you haven’t the staying power to defend your nodes, nor to cap them back.

Try to play with 5 high-mobility professions and without a guardian, which is the Teamfighter (with capital T) and let’s see how your team holds up.

I’d really like to hear top tier player saying that teamfight capabilities don’t matter with a straight face.

leman.7682:

How can a necro win a teamfight that ends before he or she joins it?
Rotations are EVERYTHING.

If the teamfight ends before the necro has the chance to joins it, then it means that your team is full of unskilled squishies. In that case, I don’t think the issue is the Necromancer.

Seriously, though, you can clearly see what a lack of Necromancer (or an engineer which does pretty much the same) does to a team if you watch the last tournaments (both ToL and ESL weeklies), when a node (usually mid) stays contested for almost the whole match because both teams don’t have enough teamfight capabilities to get it.

Of course if you get outplayed because you play a teamcomp with Necro as you would with an high-mobility team comp you’re going to have a bad time, but again, this is not a problem of the Necromancer profession.

Pushing far point makes sense if your team is competent enough.

I seriously hate people who get two nodes and then just sit there waiting for the whole enemy team of 5 to come to contest it again.

Moving the fight on their home point when you have a bunker is way better than having the fight on your nodes and risk a decap.

A single, competent person is enough to watch two nodes and if the team is competent enough, you can easily count the enemies and estimate the respawn timer to know when the enemy is going to push your close point.

How the game is all about mobility and rotation, seriously?
You guys seem to play a whole different game.

Rotations is just as important as teamfight capabilities and Necromancers are great at that.

Blackmoa.3186:

So what are the problems of necromancers in PvP?

1.) Low mobility. PvP is mostly about good rotations and having a necromancer on your team slows you down and forces you into a team-fight play-style and therefore making you less flexible than other compositions
2.) Bad downed-state. A downed necro can’t do anything about getting stomped. This further encourages teams to focus a necro before other classes.
3.) No sustain. Necro is supposed to be a sustain class according to anet, but their lack of boons(most importantly vigor) combined with point 2 of this list make necros a dangerous choice in longer fights.
4.) Toxic gameplay. Playing against necromancers is 100% anti-fun. Winning against one doesn’t feel like an accomplishment most of the time while losing to a necro feels like being cheated.
This 5 points need to be addressed in order for necromancers to get a healthy spot in the meta.

I’d like to address this post:

1) Yeah, Necromancers have low mobility, but that is a design choice. Guardians have no mobility too, but nobody ever complained about them crippling the team roaming potential as, unless you want to focus your team comp around rotations and roaming, a good teamfighter is as good as a good roamer and, as far as I know, Necromancer is an excellent teamfighter.
If teamfighter didn’t really mattered, we would see teams of 5 ele/thieves roamers all around the game, which isn’t really the case since team fights happens in a game and you usually want to win those. Having a Necromancer in your team for sure doesn’t give you a free win card, but it surely helps, especially when the enemy team is excessively focused on roaming.
What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t take a Necromancer in your team and play as you have an high-mobility team comp, but instead consider that you have an advantage in teamfights and just seek for them instead of splitting the fights over 3 small scale engagements on three nodes.

2) This is balanced around the downed state health. Necromancers have a sub-par downed state, so does Warrior. This is because downed state health scales only on base HP, which means that Warriors and Necromancers are the most tough professions to kill just by cleave and, as a consequence, the easiest to ress.
I don’t think you would say that it is easier to ress a Thief/Elementalist compared to a Necromancer, because it is not. That’s why they have the best downed state in the game.

3) Necromancers sustain themselves through Death Shroud. Most people in the Dhuumfire era used build with no LF generation whatsoever, which is why you probably think they have horrible sustain. That isn’t really the case as if you manage to have fairly good LF generation (perhaps running horn instead of dagger OH), Necromancers have an extremely good sustain. Not comparable to Eles, of course, but extremely good nonetheless. Also, Necromancers have several buttons to save their butt from the enemy team focus.

4) This is a matter of opinion. I would say that the most anti-fun factor is not fear stacking but extremely strong “DIE NOW” buttons like Signet of Spite.

Warriors are not OP, they are just cheap.
Apparently, NA likes it cheap.

Bhawb.7408:

The last time teams were running double anything with frequency was back when D/D eles were insanely broken. There is a reason double warriors were so prevalent, and its not because warrior is balanced. They don’t need to nerf it with an orbital bombardment, but it still needs tuning.

SYNC ran double spirit ranger back then, they still lost to CC horribly.
Profession stacking is just a cheesy way for people not willing to theorycraft a proper team comp.

brannigan.9831:

The idea that people from one part of the world are better on average at a video game is ludicrous at best. Taking the game more seriously, spending more time playing it, and having teams together longer does not equal more innate ability at the game. In a strange way N/A should be respected because we realize this game isn’t worth putting much effort at all into. I guess when you have the welfare state minding you 24/7 some Euros have plenty of time to waste on bland games with almost no incentive to excel. Most of us in America have better things to do.

’murica!!111

Bhawb.7408:

If ANet went f2p they’d need to massively expand their support. They’d be handing out bans 5x more often than they do now, the abuse would be crazy. I can just imagine how quickly people would be able to grab black lion keys with a bot and craploads of accounts.

They can just make F2P the PvP part of the game just for the sake of e-sports.
F2P accounts can’t gain gold, can’t sell things on TP etc.
They can just play the game and unlock skins in the wardrobe.

Then, as most likely happens when people get involved in a game, a lot of them will spend money and eventually buy the game to enjoy it fully.

No issues, no problems, lots of money, lots of esportz.

tichorum.2415:

League is popular because it’s simple. People can understand simple games easier so they get more involved and invested in them.

And it is free2play.
There are an huge number of prepubescent kids, dyehard pirates and extreme casuals who won’t spend a single penny on a game a priori, which is an pretty high barrier for an e-sport game.

Other than Call of Duty or any other console e-sport joke, not a single e-sport game can match the popularity of League or DotA because of the B2P barrier.

The only two B2P serious and fairly popular e-sport games I can think are Counter-Strike and Starcraft, which both are on the market 10x longer then GW2 and are nowhere as popular as League or DotA.

Get better, get in the top100 teamq, win games.
That is the whole point of PvP, isn’kitten Otherwise there is casual WvW roaming, where you can get way more grindy ranks.

Considering you’re running berserker, I’m quite impressed by the fact that a thief just passing by didn’t wiped your health bar in 3s of focus.

I think celestial is overall a better choice .

Neko.9021:

To play at Level 40+, you almost certainly have to.

At level 40, you need 55 AR to survive the Agony checks. At level 50, you need 70 AR.

You can get 20 from Infused Rings with +5 Agony Infusions inside, then 10 more from Accessories. 5 More from an amulet, and then 5 more from a backpiece.

That’s 40 AR. You still need 15 or 30 more to do higher level FOTM.

To Infuse a backpiece, you need to spend 250 Ectos (a ton of money). If you place a +5 infusion, that gets you to 45 AR. Still not enough.

At this point, you either need to buy a bunch of +10 infusions (costs about 70 gold per, on the trading post), or get Ascended Weapons or Ascended Armor. It easily costs over 100 gold to get a craft to 500, and then about 50 gold or so to make an ascended weapon or armor piece.

So yes, if you want to progress in fractals and have a decent chance at getting good rewards, you do need to spend hundreds of gold.

According to drop research, you can play level 30-40 fractal and get the same rewards as doing lv50 fractal:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av4NvDVKEaOzdHJPaTlsRU5LeEJWN3hodklXWGFCU1E&usp=drive_web#gid=0

Doing lv40+ fractals is only a matter of challenge and it is unnecessary in order to get fractal skins or ascended stuff.

haviz.1340:

They always have been tier bound, those threads have people confirming that.

I misunderstood that it was level bound instead of tier bound, sorry about that.

I don’t know, to be honest, since if you’re doing lower level fractals you’re not getting the rewards of higher tier.

RainWater.4762:

-u can get precursors and mats from the tracks and bags, so its possible, yes. but im still waiting for a topic called “legendary reward track, cmon anet”

-you had the chance to get a pvp only light armor set. also an amazing back item skin. so yes

-no, and i dont get the point. pvp is pvp and pve is pve. win a few teamq games and you will gain 1g. make dungeons and fractals every day and you will gain your 1g per first run. pvp is not that a big part as pve is.. so ofc in pve are more possibilities in making money.

-play with every profession in soloq/teamq and finish your titles

it was so easy to get armor and weapon skins in pvp mode while pve players had to run dungeons multiple times. i got nearly all dungeon sets for free just for playing pvp and doing nothing specific.

you lazy guys, just play the whole game, and not only 20% of it, if u want the whole stuff.

1) You can get precursors and mats, but still you can’t craft it since gift of mastery and legendary gifts require you to craft and to do world completation as it isn’t something you can do in PvP.

2) “Amazing back item skin”. You mean meh back item skin that has been heavily inflationated and sold on the TP for about 20g?
Also, big lol at “you had the chance to get a pvp only light armor set”. That armor was horrible and easily obtainable and low rank.

3) Why PvP is not that a big part? Who said that to you? Why grinding AI should be better rewarding than winning against actual players?
Those PvE players getting rampant in the PvP forum are hilarious.

4) Still not even close to the amount of achievement points you can get in PvE.

5) LOL, it was easy to get dungeon armor in PvP back then? To get a kittenty CoF armor set you needed to get r50, while to get cultural armor or TA skin you had to be r80, which no players has ever been.

So now we are lazy who wants to get rewarded for actually playing the game competitively while you PvE guys who are now swarming PvP with your shinies legendaries earned by grinding mobs without even touching PvP since launch are the hard-workers? Yeah, definitely true.

LordByron.8369:

You don t know much about pve… and since you feel the right of judging it i will just ignore you.

Yeah, man, best thing you can do is to stop posting in this thread.

LordByron.8369:

1)people with several legendaries are mostly TP players.

And players with a single legendary (so an huge part) have crafted it. What’s your point?
Not everyone has the will to play TP on a daily basis to get 5 legendaries, but just want to get a single legendary by playing the game.

LordByron.8369:

2)fractal rewards are awful and were even worse.
For one year i run fotm getting less silvers than cutting a couple of trees…

Still better then 30s per win in PvP or no silver at all.

LordByron.8369:

3)if a fractal player is a PvE player than a WWW player is a PvP player….

Not really. WvW and PvP share completely different balance, equipment and objectives.
Fractals and dungeons share the same purpose (kill the AI controlled bad guys), share the same balance and the same equipment.

Moot point, again.

LordByron.8369:

4) you don t have to spend several hundreds gold to play PvP.

So you don’t have to spend several hundreds of gold to play fractals.

haviz.1340:

Nah, you can do different tiers for more daily chests.

I’m pretty sure you can’t, unless they have changed it recently. Time ago I used to do fractals and I clearly remember I did even levels fractals only once a day because otherwise I had no chest at all, while doing odd level fractals just to level up.

haviz.1340:

There are people who do just fractals and you group them up with people who spend few hours daily by farming either dungeons or running in trains farming champions. All of those types are pve players but they have completely different profits.

Which is anyway still higher than the average PvP profit, which is my point,
Even if you do only fractals you get higher gold income compared to doing PvP for reward tracks, as one PvP match takes 10 mins average while one fractal takes one hour.

As I pointed out, if you win all matches in tPvP, you get 5 rewards, which will be one Tome of Knowledge, one trasmutation charge, 6 mob chests and 2 champion bags.
Doing a fractal you open at least 4 final chests and kill way more mobs than the equivalent of 6 mob chests.

haviz.1340:

He meant that you can play TP which is hardly a pve and buy a legendary.

How many players got the legendary playing the TP? Seriously…

haviz.1340:

You can get more than 1 daily by doing different tiers (e.g. scales 38 and 30)

As far I know, you can get one fractal reward chest per day (the one who drops fractal skins and ascended stuff) regardless of the tier.

haviz.1340:

I wouldn’t generalise people like that because there would be no distinction from hotjoin casual player and tpvp competitive player.

I don’t get it.
Also tPvP competitive players go in hotjoin to test builds and such.
I don’t think it is an huge generalization when I say that fractal players don’t do fractal 4 times a day without getting rewards but instead go to do other PvE contents.

LordByron.8369:

yes via gold
Getting a legendary in PvE is as easy as buying it via PvP rewards.
TP flipping earns those things

Also you get more gold thana fractal player

Nope. Even if you get gold income comparable to a PvE player, you can’t get a legendary as you need 100% map completation.

No fractal player does fractal more than once a day as it gives no daily chest. I bet anyone who does his daily fractal will do his daily dungeon run after it.
One full fractal requires a little bit above an hour of play. In an hour of play, if you win any tPvP match you queue in, you get about 1 tier and an half of reward tracks, which is nowhere comparable to what you get by doing fractals.

You get more than a fractal player.

Fractal player is a PvE player.
Read above.

LordByron.8369:

Fotm skins are the only think left to PvE players not accessible via gold and it has been severely inflationated in the last patch.
Gimme finishers in fotm and i accept you to have fotm skins.

Oh, the misinformation…

To all the players saying that in PvE you can’t get ranks:

- Can you in PvP get legendaries? No.
- Can you in PvP get exclusive champion bags skins? No.
- Can you in PvP have a gold income comparable to a PvE player? No.
- Can you in PvP get an amount of achievement points comparable to a PvE player? No.

Ranks is the only think left to PvP players and it has been severely inflationated in the last patch. I can get through more than an half of r72 by playing just 3 teamq. Any PvE player can get r80 by playing casually teamq farming the low MMR, while the most cool skins are still restricted to PvE/WvW only. Not to say that the most cool finishers are in the gemstore, easily acquireable by PvE players by converting the massive amounts of golds they get from Killing AI entities into gems.

Also, Fractal Skins is just a matter of grind and RNG, so are reward tracks. I see no difference on this aspect. Perhaps make fractal track being unlocked only by completing any region track, so it is endgame content just like fractals?

Want your skins exclusive to PvE? Then add to legendaries a “Gift of Challange” which can be acquired only by reaching rank 80 in PvP and see how funny is to have the most exclusive and cool skins gated by contents you don’t want to play.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Actually I used to PvP a lot, mainly with my Thief in sPvP and Warrior in WvW. It doesn’t matter what you think regarding skill in any of the game modes, Fractals are end game content with a defined gear progression that would be side stepped by simply showing up to sPvP matches and getting a pat on the back.

Gear progression in fractal is just for fractal’s sake.

Nobody here asked to handing out fractal rewards easy, we have just asked for a reward track which gives a little bit of fractal rewards and a chance for fractal skins. NB: A CHANCE.

It happened with dungeons which are also endgame content, I don’t see why it shouldn’t happen for fractals too.

BurrTheKing.8571:

I am against the current design of conditions because they dumb down the game in addition to making it uninteresting to spectate. ANet has been pushing the Esports things pretty hard (Tourney of Legends) and this kind of gameplay will not makes people want to tune in and watch. What are they going to see? A massive cluster of particle effects on a tiny circle that makes it very difficult to tell what is going on.

What people find interesting to watch is of course going to vary from person to person, but I don’t know many people that like it. I suggest you go into the Heart of the Mists and ask people what they think about conditions. When I did I got a tidal wave of negative opinions. Balanced or not, conditions are not conducive to enjoyable gameplay for a lot of people.

Also, not every class has access to the cleanse reguired to beat a condi user. These players, some of which poster on this forum, have decided that “if you can’t beat them, join them.” This is going to lead to some classes feeling like they HAVE to go condis and try to wear them down before they get worn down themselves. I don’t know WHERE you get off saying that condi classes are squishy, especially Necro. Even Engi has Elixir S and the block on Tool kit in addition to getting protection whenever they are hit by a control skill.

Conditions were better designed in GW1. It was only possible to have so many pips of health draining at one time so it was ineffective to have several condi-focused players on your team. The current stack cap is so high in PvP/WvW it’s perfectly viable to have more than one condi class on your team.

Well, the problem of being bad to watch has nothing to deal with condition as it is a problem entirely related to AI entities.

You don’t really have to like conditions, you just have to deal with them as it is a game mechanic. Nobody in GW1 liked hexway, double SF elementalists or tainted necro because they were extremely annoying, but as soon as the skill level rises, you realize that those build become easily counterable by just spreading out on the field. That is pretty much what happens with conditions.

Conditions, in fact, in their current state encourage careful play and positioning awareness which is something much needed in this game. I wouldn’t like if I were able to walk on a node with a squishy build and get out alive without any risk, I am supposed to balance the risk of getting a lot of conditions by getting on a node and take my positioning into consideration when planning to burst someone down. I can imagine berserker thieves and warrior dishing out massive cleave carelessly on a node if there wasn’t any risk associated of staying in the fight for too long carelessly.

Also, despite what people say, condition engineers and necromancers are extremely susceptible to focus. Both have no disengage tools, while Necromancer lacks real damage mitigation options excluding DS (consider that condition necros usually have really poor LF regen) and engineer usually lacks any form of stunbreaker when running condition + double block. It is worthless to pursue the argument of condi users not being squishy because they definitely are.

Consider that if you know that you don’t have the tools to beat a condi profession, then you simply shouldn’t engagé a 1vs1 against him. You should just send a D/D triple cantrip ele against them or, maybe, a warrior which just wrecks them.
When you’re talking about teamfights, then the professions who haven’t the tools to survive to conditions then they usually don’t have the tools to stand on a node too, so the best way to play is to just stand out of it instead of walking in it carelessly and then complaining that you’re too squishy to survive there.
Keep in mind that those professions are usually the profession who dish out considerable amount of damage and are easily capable of burst down a condition user in a matter of seconds if well played.
A mesmer shatter, for instance, is capable to deal insane amount of damages who can easily kill a necromancer or an engineer with no problem, same applies for a thief burst.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Yes! Please! ArenaNet listen to your players! We want to get stuff super easy super fast! We don’t want to actually put some effort in! Please,. trivialise the only end game content you have in the name of Free Stuff.

Insert whiney crap about PvPers getting screwed out of items since forever

We AFK on Treb in Khylo! And by God, it’s time we got some recognition for it!

I guess you don’t PvP that much, don’t you?
Assuming Player vs AI requires some sort of effort except for grinding and mechanical knowledge.

BurrTheKing.8571:

You two can defend conditions all you want, but from I’ve heard from sitting in the Heart of the Mists a large number of players don’t find 3 condi teams fun to fight. You can try to justisfy how it’s balanced but that will not change the fact that it still boils down to dropping circles on another circle.

You also seem to assume that I’m ALWAYS losing to these teams when I’m not. I made a Mace/Shield + GS build that is specifically designed to lock down condi builds. That still doesn’t change that the game feels much less skill based now. The number of PvP players plummeted the last time condis were the meta. It would take a good 10+ minutes just to find an opponent for TPvP because all the good players left.

Right now we see so many players because of the new reward system that everyone is keen on trying. The rewards are actually really good, I’ve gotten an ascended ring and armor piece already. Once people get their fill there’s a good chance they’ll get tired of it. Also, sure you can send someone after the condi user but that means you have one less there to capture. Not to mention MANY maps have hills/overlooks that reuire going out of your way to reach.

No competent team is running 3 condi teams right now as far I know and the meta is nowhere condi-centric as it was after the june patch.
Necromancers aren’t able to condi-burst someone as they used to and engineers are Always the same: lethal if left untouched, pretty squishy when focused down.

You can argue what you want on how condis take no skill in your opinion, but fact is that all condi professions are squishy and the real skills is to have a good positioning and to survive the enemy focus. Any competent team will just shut down the condi profession in a matter of seconds.

If you know how to counter condis and if you don’t lose to them, why are you arguing here that they are an issue? It really looks like that you want them removed from the game just because.
I’m not arguing that PU mesmers should be removed from sPvP as they aren’t an issue, still that build is skill-less and annoying as kitten but it doesn’t provide any meaningful contribution to the team.
Same applies to MM, they are brainded as kitten but I won’t complain about them since a little bit of AoE and kiting will just shut down the build.
What about condi thieves? They can pretty much win any 1vs1 and are easy to play, but who cares if you can just ignore them and win the node?

You know how to counter condi profession, you have no problem winning against them, so why are you here complaining? Is that because you feel so skillful with your warrior that you feel entitled to claim what is skillful and has the right to remain in the game and what is skill-less and should be erased asap?

Come on…

Also, FYI, you just need one person to cap a node, not to say that a thief or any burst profession is never supposed to stand on a node considering how squishy they are.

Also, I don’t think that a thief has any problem to get through Hills/overlooks.
In Foefire it is easy as kitten to get on the ledge.
In Forest, you just need to send the thief on the back way to intercept the enemy necro (you are supposed to know that the necro/engi will be there at start or any moment).
In temple, you just need a couple of jumps to get on the safe ledge.
In kyhlo, you just need to shadow step out of the clock tower.

I don’t see how it is difficult for a thief to chase and lock down a condi profession.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Even with Warriors’ high amount of condi removal there’s no countering a team of condi users dropping a constant flood of red circles on a capture point. As soon as Zerker Stance runs out you’re going to have ever condi in the game on you and the second you clear it it’s going to be reapplied. Individually you can take care of them with control but when they are together there’s no way to deal with so many conditions being constantly placed on what you are trying to cap. A big part of this has to deal with the fact that the capture point system of PvP is poorly designed. The points are far too small and most AoE’s take up the whole area. PvP is going to stay in it’s currently casual state if things remain as they are. Who wants to watch players spam circles onto another circle all game?

I’ll try to explain to you how conditions are not a problem in their current state.

Condition are designed to put heavy pressure on clustered places, that’s why most of them are AoE. The issue here is that your Whole team is standing still on the node, while you just need one person to stand there to prevent the cap. Most competent team just leave the guardian or the spirit ranger who can easily survive to the AoE and conditions while professions capable of dealing high damage (Thief or Warrior) stand out of the node seeking for the professions who apply conditions who are usually extremely squishy.

You can take out a condition engineer or a condition necromancer just by sending out a thief or a warrior chasing him and you’ll realize that he can’t properly apply conditions on a node anymore if he’s forced to use his defensive cooldowns to survive the burst of the guy who is focusing him. That’s how most people deal with conditions.

Of course if you leave that grenade engineers or condition necro untouched on that ledge doing his dirty job while standing in 3 on a node, your Whole team is going to wipe hard, but that’s what it is supposed to do. You played badly, your team failed to properly pressure the most dangerous target and you die.
It is all fine to me.

And that’s the only situations in which condition builds are a real threat, because in any other situations (1v1 or 2v2 fights), they are completely worthless as they just die once they are focused.

So my suggestion is the following:
1. Try to just put a single, tanky profession on a node who can survive the conditions (like guardian). If the pressure is going to be too harsh, that guardian can easily rotate with another tanky profession (warrior in berserker stance, for instance) on the node or just leave it freecap for a couple of seconds, just to regain health and come back to contest it. He just needs to survive enough time for the burst profession of the team to catch up on the condi applier.
2. Always focus the condition guy first. Once he has the team focus on, he can’t properly apply condition and he eventually dies because most of them don’t have enough defenses. A single thief chasing the condi guys is enough to completely shut him down.
3. If someone gets downed, don’t ress unless you have defensive cooldown on you, as the cleave will be so high that both of you (the resser and the downed guy) are going to die. Be sure to first have the cleavers shutted down before ressing.

That’s it. This is how I deal with conditions and I have no problem whatsoever with them.

I play PvP and WvW about equally, I guess I could have made that more clear but things feel about the same in both: tanky condi users. And yes, I was playing last night because I don’t want to totally quit only a few days after the parch, but my initially impression is still negative. There are some decent changes, but they are overshadowed by how imbalanced condis are compared to power. Power has to invest in Power, precision, and ferocity in order to deal damage. Conditions on the other hand just need condition damage to be effective. Some need Precision to get on crit prots but nowhere near as much. Duration is not a problem because either you can constantly reapply the conditions or you can use runes and sigils to pick of the slack.

There are still some viable power builds, but players are quickly making the switch to condis because they are easier to play and offer less risk. PvP feels even less skill-based now, just dump red circles on the circle. I don’t mind WvW as much but that’s only because I’ve accepted that the PvE elements mean it will NEVER be balanced. [/quote]
Well, in PvP conditions are nowhere out of hand and, as a Warrior, you are supposed to have no problem whatsoever to cleanse damaging conditions.
Also, power in PvP is not overshadowed by conditions, not even close.

Lightning Rod is awesome for staff I’ve heard.
Zerker is not an obvious choice as it was for maximum damage, hybrid builds with celestial gear are much more viable, you should try them out.

I’m talking about PvP, but I guess it is the same about WvW mostly.

D/D ele is the most fun I’ve had in GW2 among all the professions.
Reroll it just for trying, it is Worth it in my opinion.

I’m a bit confused.
Are we talking about WvW or sPvP? Because OP talks about PvP and then mentions Dire gear…

tom.7468:

sorrow.2364:

Before the april patch, thief was definitely OP.
Those PW thieves were roaming around melting HP bars and stunlocking with two button press while disengaging at will.

Now I don’t know how it plays after the patch and if the 1 extra initiative cost on PW makes a real difference, but that nerf was much needed.

Well i was fighting 2 theives and 1 guardian the guardian left when was around 80% hp and i killed both theives toke the orb and scored in spirit watch on my necro.
Guess that answer you’re question. Yes it was solo it was 2 days ago.

I meant when played by competent players. I thought it was obvious.

Before the april patch, thief was definitely OP.
Those PW thieves were roaming around melting HP bars and stunlocking with two button press while disengaging at will.

Now I don’t know how it plays after the patch and if the 1 extra initiative cost on PW makes a real difference, but that nerf was much needed.

Bring condition removals and the problem with the “condition meta” (which is kind of silly talking about meta 4 days after the balance patch) will become a minor problem.
Unless your Whole team is sitting in the circle eating engineer’s grenades without caring about focusing him, in that case there is nothing that can save you.

Romek.4201:

ok – i ask you why not have than wvw track too where we get in pvp the skins from wvw tournaments? OR give this wvw skins in fractals too so the PVE people can get it too?

plz understand some skins/things/items have to be unique to an mode or it make the mode worthless

WvW and PvE is pretty much the same thing, as you can just follow the blob and get the rewards.
It follows the same balance, same equipment and same stats of PvE, so in my eyes it is pretty much the same gamemode.

PvP, on the other hand, suffers for having the lack of several skins available to other gamemodes, including the legendary ones, as you can’t make a legendary weapon without going through WvW or PvE, while you can easily make it without touching PvP at all.

Since I see that the direction they are heading to is not to create exclusive skins and rewards to PvP but just reproduce the rewards you get from PvE/WvW in PvP, then it is fair to make all the skins available in those gamemodes in PvP too, otherwise PvP will remain the crippled and underwhelming version of WvW/PvE reward-wise.

Keep in mind I’ve said “a chance to get a fractal skin”.

Yes, fractal is high level content, as much is PvP. I don’t see, then, why it is bad to give a chance also to PvP exclusive players to get fractal skins.
The whole point of reward tracks and the new reward system is that players are going to take the same rewards regardless of the gamemode they enjoy the most.

You like running fractals but hate PvP? Then go to run fractals.
You can’t stand to run a single fractal but you like playing PvP competitively? Then you can get fractals rewards through PvP.

I don’t see anything to be upset about.

I don’t think that sigil/runes changes are bad.
Of course some of them are too strong while some are too weak, but buffing the sigils/runes is a good way to improve build variety, as now you’re not forced anymore to run lyssa if you have a low cooldown elite, nightmare if you’re a condi profession or ogre if you’re a dps because other sigils suck.

Now some people have found their new toy with balthazar and strength runes, but I’m quite sure that they won’t be the only options available as the meta settles and explore the counters of overpopular rune/sigil sets.

Now that there are reward tracks and dungeon reward tracks, why there isn’t a level-able fractal reward track in which you can obtain ascended armor/jewelry as final reward or, perhaps, a chance of getting a fractal skin?