Guild Wars 2

I definitely think the RNG for ascended gear is terrible and I’ve lost my motivation to play until it is changed, but the quest logic doesn’t apply to dungeons. Sure you can pick different paths in the other dungeons, but you still do essentially the same thing each time. This is an inevitability in any video game regardless of what you’re doing.

alanis.6094:

RashanDale.3609:

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Thanks for the update! I’m hoping the team realized that 5% is just absurdly small, and 20-25% feels much more appropriate.

20%-25% on the other hand would be a must-have for almost every necro. not sure if i want that.

Necrotic bite would go from 4% to 5%.

FoC would go from 2% to 2.5% per condition.

Necrotic Grasp would go from 3% to 3.75%

…25% is perfectly fine.

It doesn’t sound like a lot on paper but it adds up quickly. Not to mention at a 5 point investment for 25% faster life force generation is a bit crazy. That’s better than most of our grand master passive traits.

This is an issue with a number of abilities. I know the blood fiend’s numbers act funny depending on the zone your in as well. it’s definitely a bug though.

To be honest it makes sense they have different people dedicated to different areas of focus. Coding a new area is quite different than debugging it.

However, I definitely feel like there should be a bigger team on general content polish be it balancing combat, balancing rewards (looking at you fractals versus older dungeons), debugging classes, or debugging dungeons.

While it’s an MMO which is much harder to program and de-bug, it’s a given that fewer bugs and interruptions contribute more to a solid feeling game than any ammount of content. A great example of a single player game that comes to mind is deus ex: human revolution. Though a lot of the content in the game is kinda lob-sided to favoring one style of play (brute force hacking) and many of the shop keepers have little to sell (the limb clinic has all of 2 praxis kits) the rest of the game is excellent because I have yet to run into any bugs or issues with the game doing exactly what I want it to do. It makes a game feel so good when it plays like butter.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Striker

Yeah but it’s sad that our class mecanism remove spectral armor/walk, as those are in the same traits line.

You have to time it right in fights, or you are just wasting them. Especially the spectral armor at 50% hp.

I believe the spectral skills are there simply for generating life force in a pinch when you’ve run empty. Especially since both spectral walk and spectral armor gain life force from you being hit. There really isn’t a time where you would want to generate life force other than when. . .well. . .you’re out of it.

I tend to agree. I’d much prefer having more minions versus +% damage/health traits. The increased minion number just seems like it would be so much more fun.

However, I’m willing to bet that if we had more minions out at ocne the AI would become even worse. Once the AI is fixed I’ll then feel the desire to beg for more minion traits.

Rockhorn.2376:

If I’m honest, MF has no place in an MMO. It forces you to have sub-optimal gear, lowering your combat efficiency, and thus weakening the group you are running with.

Please, just remove the stat entirely.

You shouldn’t be forced to wear a specific gear in order to get good drops from mobs.
It punishes the player and the group for wearing it, making dungeon runs harder.

That’s the trade off though. MF gear gives you the opritunity for better gear at the cost of a higher challenge. It would be silly to be able to have your cake and eat it too. Whether it’s ethical to use it in pug groups or not is a whole other matter.

Jerlis.1507:

Also use all non weapon skills.

While as a minion master I would like that, I can see why we can’t use utilities in DS. Though spectral skills are designed to synergise with DS, if they could be activated in it DS would be OP imo. If spectral skills were the only exception then other builds would benefit more from DS than a DS centered build.

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Nice, I hope ya’ll figure out why the blood fiend health siphon heal isn’t at it’s proper value soon. In most PvE zones it’s still the pre-buff value. In the lower level zones where it does seem higher, it’s only by about 50% rather than +100% more.

I’m glad to see gluttony get adressed. I’ve always wanted to tinker with a death shroud build since my MM gear works perfectly with it, but I wanted to wait for the tree to be rounded out first.

I’m honestly a bit surprised the RNG for ascended is still in and that the connection bug hasn’t been fixed.

Using bodies as a recource made some skills far too situational for them to be useful. I’m glad Anet decided to move away from that.

Dakiaris.2798:

Actually if they improve the ai and change the current way the health/damage is implemented so that it scales based on player stats it would function ok… The active abilities are good for some of the minions it’s just in most pve situations they are to squishy…. In spvp they are just obnoxious due to being all over the place you usually die to condition damage from the necro who is in the middle of them… Only time they are obnoxious is on any melee built class because of the bone fiends active while out. Flesh worm gives a decent turret type attack and stunbreak/teleport to safty active…

Honestly the way you worded your post makes this sound like a QQ thread so you may wanna think your post through a bit more in the future… Give what you don’t like about it and what you think needs changed and whatnot.

Anet has already tried the “scale off of stats” thing and found minions to be ridiculous without being traited into, so they decided to give them flat stats and the current trait system.

Once the AI is fixed they’ll be fine in PvP, however in PvE some bosses need mechanic changes for them to be viable. Mostly bosses who scale the number of AOEs based on allies rather than players.

1. Minion AI. Pretty much already gone over in depth
2. Jagged horrors: again, discussed to death
3. blood fiend siphon: seriously, I don’t understand how they screwed up a flat numbers buff. It’s still the old value despite being being buffed.

Dakiaris.2798:

The best way they could fix it is to make it give 5% life force per utility , 7% per heal and 30% on elite….. Or just a 5% for all of them… That’s all they would need to do so that we have more life force generation.

This is actually a pretty good idea. However the numbers might need to be a bit lower with it being a minor trait and all.

Dakiaris.2798:

striker.3704:

Oh kitten no, that would be terrible.

I was talking about the 30% minion damage back to the minion tree instead of having it on the tree that has the axe…. Move the axe trait to T2 and move the minion 30% damage to T2 death magic… It was like that during the beta weekends idk why they changed it.

Exactly, that’s what I think is so terrible. If you put training of the master on the death magic tree it would cram too much into one tree, and it would basically force all pure minion masters to go 10/0/30/30/0.

Spreading traits across multiple trees is a good thing as it allows people to spread out their builds and create diversity. In fact at some point in the future I’d like to see it get to the point where all trees have something to offer each build type.

Dakiaris.2798:

Kardiamond.6952:

@Dakiaris

The reason why Axe is considered a MM weapon more then any other, is the vuln stacking.

This is the only way to boost our minions damage other then the spite trait.

That’s why most people consider it a MM weapon.

It’s considered a MM weapon because of the fact the MM 30% damage is in the same line as the axe… Honestly they need to move that to the MM tree so people stop considering it a MM weapon.

Oh kitten no, that would be terrible.

striker.3704:

-The bone minion putrid explosion has a 3 second delay with it’s own death nova poison cloud combo field.
-The blood fiend’s heal isn’t consistent. In some areas it is more than 200%, increased to the proper amount in others, and some aren’t boosted at all.

SO am I wrong or was the blood fiend’s auto attack heal not increased correctly? The vast majority of the time it seems to be the “pre-buff” value.

I’m honestly surprised they STILL haven’t fixed their blood fiend buff yet. It’s still the default value.

This is very similar to the guild wars 1 necro. They just essentially made us more diverse. (which you wouldn’t be able to tell at face value).
minion master:
-In guild wars 1 as a minion master you were more or less locked into only minion summon skills, and then maybe 1-2 nukes at the cost of any minion buffing abilities.
-In guild wars 2 as a minion master you have the ability to use 19 skills on top of the minion summons. (weapon skills, minion actives, death shroud).
condition/curse:
-condensed into one in guild wars 2 so I’m combining them here. in GW1 conditions were mostly buff prevention and healing punishment. Curses were more or less punishment for doing anything.
-In GW2 condition builds not only reduce healing and remove buffs but also apply great AOE.
blood:
-GW1 had plenty ofr the blood necro to drain from and in many ways. enjoyed sacrificing health to deal damage.
-GW2 ok, this is the one instance where it dropped off. blood necros seem to have become more of a subsidary rather than an actual focus. We might see this expanded on in an expansion but nothing is certain.

Then death shroud was added and spectral skills, which adds +1 to necros in GW2. (as far as diversity goes).

overall it’s the same feeling as GW1 but with more to do in general.

XiL.4318:

Also @people hating on focus 5 should stand closer to their targets while using focus 4 and rethink your arguments.

That has nothing to do with focus 5. That’s simply stating the power of focus 4 in a close combat situation.

Talset.1456:

Axe 1 dps relies on minions and other allies, doing more that other weapons with them and doing less without them.

The weapon seems balanced. If you look at the dps of other weapons you should see that it is not that different. The Axe scales with the same amount of power and crit as everything else so it probably does not need a buff. Axe also has the best trait of all weapons increasing both damage and cooldown reduction.

I would agree that maybe a change is needed such as moving Axe Training trait to Master to be accessible to more builds that want to use axe.

The thing about vulnerability is that the damage it gives is lower than you would think as it’s based on the enemies hp.

Let’s say you’re fighting an elementalist with 15k HP. you apply vulnerability with the axe and get all the bounces of your focus #4. In total you get about 20 stacks on vulnerability. you then deal about 6-8k damage to the ele through minions and axe #2 channel.

Even in this scenario, all that vulnerability only attributed to about 1.2k-1.6k damage as opposed to you applying more generally useful effects on the enemy such as chill, poison, or weakness (all are very common conditions the necromancer applies). which give a 66% cooldown increase and 66% movement speed decrease, 33% healing reduction, or 25% damage reduction (ignoring criticals or conditions) which can all add up to more of a health difference in battle.

On average, the axe might maintain 8-9 stacks of might if you constantly auto attack. On this ele if you were to only auto attack this would only add up to about 900 damage difference. As opposed to if you were to use a scepter and apply bleeding and poison that after 2 auto attack comboes gives more of a damage difference. Mind you the inverse is true, in that if the enemy had 3k health instead, that would add up to a 1.8k health difference which the scepter wouldn’t out-preform in a power build in 2 auto attack chains.

However, over the course of a fight you won’t be only auto attacking, and the scepter necro won’t stop auto attacking after 2 chains to simply let the axe necro catch up. if the axe necro stops to cast another spell the vulnerability stacks decrease, and the benefit to damage is lessened. Even in the best case scenario of the enemy having a high HP the axe vulnerability is still out preformed by the scepter (which has a longer range and is also instant) both in instances of maintaining their respective conditions and if they stop to do other spells.

In general vulnerability is over sold. Even the respective inverse of it, protection, is a flat 33%. This is more than if you were to have even the maximum ammount of vulnerability and is much easier to apply.

The only real benefit to vulnerability I can see is that in a power build, it is a decent cover condition since it is constantly applied through the axe protecting things like weakness, poison, chill, and cripple from the passive condition removals.

naphack.9346:

The big thing about axe is its instant nature. You got a 600 range attack with no visible projectile whatsoever. Let it stay 600 range, cause a 900 range instant attack would be too powerful. About the damage, that can be changed tho :>

edit: At above:
Necro trait lines need some juggling anyway. It’s the most narrowed down thing in the whole game. You need to specialize exclusively for one thing or it won’t work out anyway.

I agree, it seems odd to me that axe training is a grand master trait of all things.

I can’t edit my post so I’m just gonna reply again. Siphoning isn’t supposed to heal faster than damage, it’s supposed to simply slow down the rate you take damage. You also need to keep in mind that when you siphon you deal as much damage as you heal. So if you were to hit the enemy with the axe 2 for the 8 x hit and siphon for 25 per hit, that’s a bonus 200 damage on top of 200 HP healed.

The issue I see with siphoning is that it has diminishing returns when you spec for it rather than giving more benefit the more you go into it. If you were to go a full siphoning build versus a necromancer who picks it up as a suppliment, you would heal for just about the same ammount of not less in the long run.

I believe the main cause of this is that all of the utilities and weapon traits a blood necromancer would use are crammed into the same tree. However most other specs can find useful traits in other trees quite easily. (minion masters can use spite and blood, well necromancers can get staff from death and wells from blood, even well placement from curse. ect)

If the dagger traits were moved to a different tree I could see the blood necromancer being in a better spot. Maybe if dagger traits were in soul reaping or something.

gamefreak.5673:

striker.3704:

Knote.2904:

I just wish the #4 was more of a neutral skill so it wouldn’t feel wasteful on a Condition Build.

To be fair the condition build already has dagger off-hand. The focus is designed with power builds in mind.

If only we had a weapon to spawn minions, then maybe we could be a minion master actually.

I would like that too, but for now the focus makes a decent alternative as the vulnerability it gives synergizes well with minions.

Control Core.1079:

striker.3704:

I’ve never had any instance of it not going off. The only thing close to it I can come up with is if a small object blocks the flesh golem’s path and he is held against it while charging off screen.

That is also annoying when that happens. I’ll try and make the situation more clear. I’m in pvp and I hammer the button to use the charge skill, most of the times it activates after 2-3 seconds. On some occasions you can see the animation going on the skill icon when you press the button, but the golem doesn’t do the skill and then the animation stops.

There are a number of reasons for this.
1. each minion has it’s own cast time for their active abilities. This is most noticeable with the shadow fiend winding up for his blind.
2. the flesh golem might have been CC’d when you cast, however this usually prevents the ability from casting all together putting it on full cooldown.
3. like you mentioned, it might have been latency.
4. sometimes the rippling “casting” effect on the skill icon gets stuck. This has happened to me quite often when using minions. The skill isn’t actually casting if it gets stuck though, just the skill icon animation.
5. You might not be seeing the casting bar, as the flesh golem charge has a lengthy cast time for the player.

The normal jagged horrors are exactly the same as the jagged horrors from lich form. However they shouldn’t be giving on kill effects.

I think a more appropriate title would be “axe and focus need a buff”. Though I agree, the Axe either needs a damage increase on the auto attack or a range increase and the focus #5 is incredibly situational. The low damage and chill don’t make it useful enough for any instances outside of the boon removal. Especially with the atrocious cast time.

Softspoken.2410:

Interesting. Does the “Minions have 50% more health” trait affect its duration?

Technically yes since the health taken off is a flat amount.

I’ve never had any instance of it not going off. The only thing close to it I can come up with is if a small object blocks the flesh golem’s path and he is held against it while charging off screen.

Chamone.6890:

Raging Bull.5048:

It IS a good change. It adds a suspense factor to the game play and makes things more interesting. “Logical progression”, as you call it, just bored so many people to death that the ANet guys had to change/tweak their initial system. And it’s a good thing they collect data and respond to it accordingly, there might still be hope for this game (if they continue to do so).

Now, I WOULD go play WoW but I don’t want to spend the cash on it’s money subscription. If GW2 manages to surpass, or at least reach the WoW heights you can bet your butt it will soon have 15-16 million ACTIVE players (if WoW managed to have 14 million with the monthly sub).

“Suspense Factor” ??

Are you high?

There’s NOTHING fun about doing the same dungeon over and over and over. NOTHING.

Adding a random chance to get a rare drop doesn’t make it any more fun, it just means that some people get the great reward for doing it once, some people get it for doing it 100 times, and some never get it at all.

At least with the tokens system you had an end goal in sight, you knew how many times you would need to do the dungeon to get what you want (less times now that they added bags of wonderous goods).

With RNG drops you literally have no end in sight, you’re just waiting after every boss kill to see if you won the lottery.

It makes ADDICTIVE gameplay, sure, skinner box technique has been used in WoW, in Casinos, in Slot Machines for years, works perfectly, keeps people playing for sure.

But is it fun?

This basically encompasses my feelings on the random drop chance. It was something WoW’s done for years, and shouldn’t have any place in this game.

Knote.2904:

I just wish the #4 was more of a neutral skill so it wouldn’t feel wasteful on a Condition Build.

To be fair the condition build already has dagger off-hand. The focus is designed with power builds in mind.

I agree completely. The leveling system just divides people even more.

I personally refuse to do fractals anyway since the dungeon has that stupid RNG drop system for ascended gear, but if they were to finally switch it back to the token system I wouldn’t be able to find a group due to being so far behind in fractal levels.

I agree so much with the RNG for rings thing. It’s complete bullkitten to me that they would completely disregard their manifesto on the random drop crap.

That’s not even getting into the fact that even if they put it onto the token system like it should have been to begin with, that this still makes older content completely obsolete unless that make some ascended gear only available from them.

the focus 5 is OK but the cast time really is too long.

Druitt.7629:

Vexor.3640:

A full pet build also takes ALL of our utility slots. That is a pretty steep cost. It is true that mesmers have Phantasm utility skills but they are widely ignored, especially in regards to pvp situations.

You don’t need to go to the extreme to surpass the Pet Profession, Ranger. Heck, the Flesh Golem (Elite slot) is already as good as a pet: it regens and can be commanded to attack. You only need to use one more utility slot to have twice as many as a Ranger, leaving two free slots… IF Minions are basically as good as pets.

The fact that you could fill your utility slots with Minion-like Pets is just adding insult to injury.

Vexor.3640:

I would rather jagged horrors just flat out not decay. 9/10 they’ve decayed and died before I even get to the next fight.

I’ve never heard a Necro that likes JH. I’ve seen and mentioned three or four changes in other threads. JHs are a totally different kind of thing which isn’t summon, minion, illusion, or pet. And it doesn’t really work very well.

2 things:
1. the ranger’s pet is far stronger than anything we get as utilities. The ranger pet not only scales with much more intensity than necromancer minions, but they also have 4 abilities of their own and are much easier to control. The only reason the flesh golem is comparable is that you have to use your elite slot to get it in the first place.

2. The jagged horror is a minion, the problem is that it doesn’t do much [read: anything] even if the necromancer is running a minion build. I personally like Jagged horrors myself, but it simply is too lacking to be useful.

Between those two I think the charr would make the most sense, however the only necro armor is Arah, and it looks terrible on charr but silly on asura, so it’s up to you.

The old dungeons still don’t have enough reward to make them worth doing over fractals.

RNG in fractals was terrible decision. Ascended gear should be tokens just like every single other dungeon in this game.

If you want to cater to the WoW baby RNG players, do it with skins, not with top end gear.

Also the old dungeons aren’t worth doing except for skins. There needs to be even more incentive to do them.

RNG for the best in slot shouldn’t exist in this game period.

I seriously do not understand why the game degenerated back to RNG drop chance bullkitten that was supposed to be one of the biggest things this game wasn’t going to have. The fact that I need to grind fractals for ages in hopes that I get two of the one specific ring I want with the specific stats I want is utter bullkitten. the token system was perfect, you worked towards a goal and you knew you were making progress.

Also, the older dungeons still haven’t had anything done to make them relevant anymore. I have no desire to play at the moment simply because it feels just like WoW again for me. There’s only one dungeon worth running that gives the best gear, there’s a random chance I can get the gear I wanted, and nothing else is worth running because it’s all been outdated by the new best in slot.

I gave the dungeon time to sink in, and honestly, it disgusts me. It’s pretty much tore down the pillar this game stood on.

Knote.2904:

I think removing the 50% fear trait and just making our 1 second fears 1.5 seconds baseline would be good.

Then replace it with something that does something interesting with fear or something.

However, alot of traits need that treatment lol.

I agree with this. It’s silly to trait for that .5 seconds more when there are other better things that could fill that same slot.

If you want to roll minions, you will be limited to only select paths in dungeons and open world PvE. PvP won’t treat you kindly.

The rest of the builds are OK. (the soul reaping tree sucks though).

spam 2 until the other plague form abilities are made comparable in strength.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

To be honest, i am not shocked. I personally feel the development team is lacking ALOT when it comes to fixing issues and bugs. Especially when they say said skill is fixed you use it and bang you can see that it is NOT fixed and in some cases made WORSE.

A great example is the blood fiend heal on attack, which wasn’t changed at all last patch despite the notes saying “200% of the old value”.

Funky.4861:

Not everyone pvp’s, and in pve the wurm in it’s current form is awkward to use at best, unless you plan of using the tp during/after the fight. Even then, it’s only really useful for vets/champs etc and they tend to kill it before u use it’s tp ability. This seems like a good case for pvp/pve separation of how the skill works (btw, WvWvW is not pve).

idk what you’re talking about, the wurm gives the second highest damage per second of all of the minions, making it better than bone minions for boss battles or champion enemies.

I don’t agree with any of your trait stat distributions at all. They don’t make sense with ANY of the traits in those lines.

There’s also extreme bias saying that the condition tree is our class mechanic when the necromancer is evenly split between all of his possible utility builds.

Venom.6189:

.. how about this, keep the 2nd skill as it is but change the first ability “summon flesh wurm” to have the worm errupt from the ground – instead of just appearing – causing a fear and /or knockdown effect in an area around it.

So 1st skill Summon Flesh Wurm

Targeted

1200 m range. 45 sec cd (upped 5 sec for balance)

Causes a flesh wurm to erupt from the ground at the target location, causing enemies in the vicinity to flee in terror for 1. 5 seconds. Deals x amount of damage.

(or knockback/ knockdown with trait)

2nd ability Necrotic Traversal stays the same.

This way everybody is happy, we get to keep the escape and tactical advantage of necrotic traversal and we get another hard cc to help “lock horns” with other classes.

They’d need to give the flesh wurm a 90-120 second cooldown to try and balance everything it lets you do.

The tp is also a counter to the wurm being focused. It creates a blast finisher and poisons in an AOE around itself while giving you life force. This gives the enemy a “lose lose” scenario to focusing it or you.

If they focus the wurm (assuming you have death nova) they eat 10+ seconds of poison as well as guaranteed weakness (death nova self-combos with minion blast finishers.)

If they don’t kill the wurm they take size-able damage from it over the battle and have to deal with it being an escape mechanism for you.

Aexrael.5918:

It copies, not transfers, the times I’ve used it in dungeons, making it simply overload the necromancer instead of being beneficial to the team.

This has been a bug with it for some time now.

I play in hopes that:
-I can find an Arah group and get my full Arah set
-Minion AI and mechanics are fixed

Raptor.5024:

striker.3704:

Raptor.5024:

I think there needs to be a skill that bleeds us and heals the minions. So basically sacrificing our health for a short time to heal the minions. There was a skill like that in GW1 that I used all the time with my MM build. I forget what it was called, but basically it gave you -3 health degen and +10 health regen on the minions. Now of course the minions in the last game gradually lost health, so a +10 health regen was very helpful but not overpowered because they’d start losing health immediately afterwards.
Anyways, I also use Well of Healing instead of the healing minion on my necro and I tend to jump into the middle of my minions while they’re fighting and use the Well to keep them healed (and myself). Works pretty well for me and I also have tons of Vitality and Toughness to keep me alive while doing this.

The skill you’re thinking of was vereta’s sacrifice. It was an OK skill but it was outshined by blood of the master (which was core to minion army builds).

As for the main topic the things minions need are an AI fix, and for the blood fiend buff to be fixed.

2.Bone minion root to be instant cast
3.Minion master trait reduce the minion active cooldowns.

Yep that was it. I think I used both of those skills off and on. Anyways, I’ve been working on trying to make an MM build that keeps the minions alive longer and keeps me healed as well. Basically I’m at 20/0/20/20/0 in traits with Training of the Master, Flesh of the Master, Bloodthirst, and Vampiric Master. Does anyone know if upgrade components (sigils, gems, etc) that give +healing power affect the life siphoning done by my minions, as well as the staff mark and well of blood that heal me and the minions. (haven’t had a chance to test)

You would be better off with transfusion than blood thirst. ATM blood thirst doesn’t increase life siphoning by 50%, it’s closer to 25%.

Abigor.4952:

In my opinion jagged horrors have great potential, and I`m sorry if I repeat somebody`s words already. But I see those kittens as an additional zerg minions which while not being able to attach or hold directly can boost necromancers performance.

In ideal way it would be better to summon more than one kitten (up to 3-5?), or let the jagged live as long as a normal minion until somebody kills him. That way each horror could add +toughness to necromancer on next trait, + add the ability to create toxic area on death/ draw conditions / remove boons when having corresponding traits (as far as I understood now toxic cloud doesn`t , not sure about others). It`s fine that jagged horror doesn`t have that much hp or dmg, I don`t think it`s it purpose.

Now, I agree basically what jagged horror does – resurrects, if your lucky it will distract enemy for 1 sec and die. Didn`t have problems with horror being agro and rushing on enemies , so far I`m only annoyed by my character yelling “you`ve” killed my minion and stuff.

Are you saying it would be ideal if they didn’t degen? If so I completely agree.