Guild Wars 2

I would love to see an all spirit ranger zerg in wvw. That would be hilarious.

To hear people talk on the forums, it isn’t possible to counter them. If you meet one, your best bet is to bend over meekly and ask them to be gentle.

Zenith.7301:

He’s probably thinking of the trait that aoe fears when CC’d, which you can’t get on a Dhuumfire build.

So, he’s full of crap.

Necro is very easily killable by 1 class. Thief, warrior, dd ele can still train him to the ground. Phantasm mesmer can do so as well.

Oh… lol, but Reapers Protection requires 20 in toughness/boon duration line which means you’d need to give up +2% dmg for each condition and 33% scepter duration or corruption recharge or well targeting. One fear per 90 seconds IF you get hit by CC? Meh.

I thought he might be referring to downed2 or nightmare runes, since those are ALWAYS in my fear rotation.

Arheundel.6451:

You need 2-3 people to focus down a necro, between DS and 3-4 fear a necro never lack defensive skills..stop lying man

Firstly, you only need one stunlock warrior who knows what they’re doing to keep a necro stunned and knocked down, but any CC and burst will do.

Secondly, you get one fear on the staff and one from DS that are on fairly long cooldowns. If you take spectral wall, its at the cost of offense/mobility/escape/defense. That’s 2 fears or 3 with a utility slot. Where are you getting 4 from?

I don’t see why people make such a big deal of this. Direct dmg still outputs a great deal more damage than condi and condi is incredibly slow. I’m new to PvP but I would think the counter-strategy is to CC and burst down.

Lue.6538:

In my opinion this falls upon the players, if you are experienced at pvping and actually know what you are doing(take a long hard look at yourself before you claim you do.) you should have no problems atleast trying to guide your team forward, should you end up with 4 people ending up rushing close, then theres really no point in ranting at them for doing so, rather explain to them why it wont work and leave it at that, you’re bound to find atleast some people who will listen.

I agree with you but unfortunately, these noble souls are far and few between. Of the 200 odd games I’ve played, I’ve seen exactly 3 players make coaching suggestions that weren’t of the “OG U NOOBS!” “WHY ARE YOU FIGHTING THERE?!” “YOU ALL SUCK!” variety.

forrae.6708:

you seriously just get focused down and killed way to easily. conditions are slow, and even if you take all the survivability possible, its still just not always enough. necros dont have the same bag of tricks that many other classes have, and if you’re a condition necro, you have very little defense without having to sacrifice utilities.

And this is it basically. In a team fight, the opposition SHOULD be closing down necro’s since we have lots of offense, not much defense and bugger all escapes. But if you let me sit at the back and apply cc/condi pressure, then that’s your mistake. Good teams don’t make this mistake, much to my chagrin.

Hawatak.8049:

+1 (even if stunlock warrior is the only possibility for a warrior to be playable atm)

Don’t worry, once all these classes get nerfed into the ground we can all go back to burst warrior.

Absolutely agree OP. Hotjoin is pretty toxic.

Lue.6538:

…as it stands right now the incentive to play pvp is very low compared to pve so people stay clear of it.

Achievement points are the incentive now and that’s probably pulling some people (myself included) who wouldn’t usually play PvP. Turns out PvP is quite fun though.

But there are still a lot of PvErs who won’t play PvP, or even WvW. Some don’t want a highly competitive game mode, they just want to relax and kill some mobs at the end of the day.

Lue.6538:

Namely that the other player most likely was new to the playstyle that the more competitive PvP requires and such needs to be informed.

This is probably true. The learning curve of PvP is pretty steep and there needs to be a better introduction to it. I joined hotjoin games initially because I thought that was what PvP was, but hotjoin is a horrible mess and a bad way to learn for a number of reasons.

You forgot Engi’s. They also have condi damage and should be nerfed.

I’m new to pvp sorry, what’s faceroll about that comp? Mega-pets I guess?

OK, sounds like its tourney for me then. I was trying to get some more experience under my belt before I went in but it actually sounds closer to what I want to play. Cheers guys!

Zietlogik.6208:

But if you are new to PvP you should know something, Rank means nothing….it is as farmable as gold in PvE, it doesn’t prove a players skill, it simply shows the amount of time they have spent in Hot-joins.

Rank is a guarantee of experience even if it isn’t a guarantee of skill, and that counts for a lot when its a lvl50 vs a lvl5 since one of these players is learning their class in pvp and the other knows every trick there is to know.

Occasionally I’ve fought someone and been surprised by their rank afterwards but overwhelmingly the ones that know exactly how to shut me down are NOT lvl1 first timers.

Geff.1930:

High Rank players tend to intentionally go on the opposite team from people whom they know are good.

1) This provides better practice.
2) Facerolling noobs who are not in your league is not fun as it isn’t challenging.

Low rank players will tend to do the opposite thing. They will tend to go on the teams with good players because they are not confident enough in their skills and know that they need to be carried to win a match.

Yes I agree, low ranking players are bottom feeding scum who make up for their lack of skill by leeching off better players.

High ranking players on the other hand are goodly saints who only want to help everyone be better players.

Is that pretty much the narrative you’re trying to sell?

Nikkle.4013:

transtemporal.2158:

ahuba.6430:

there is no matchmaking in hotjoin. thats why it is called hotjoin. you’re welcome

Oh, so the “play now” button only joins you to the first server on the list with a free spot? It doesn’t do matching at all?

Only the solo arena/ team arena’s have match making. Hot joins are just rooms to mess around in. Play now just finds a server that has room.

Oh ok, thanks for that. Explains a lot.

It seems like a topsy turvey arrangement. As a new pvp player, tourney or team or whatever its called seems like its something you “graduate” to after playing hotjoin for a while, but it seems like you’d actually learn more from tourney games than getting constantly facerolled in hotjoin.

ahuba.6430:

there is no matchmaking in hotjoin. thats why it is called hotjoin. you’re welcome

Oh, so the “play now” button only joins you to the first server on the list with a free spot? It doesn’t do matching at all?

I’m pretty new to pvp and I’m perplexed at the “play now” match-making in hotjoin works. Last night I was playing in a low level team against a team in the 40’s and 50’s and one guy at 69. We scored something like 30 points.

Is that intentional, or is it broken?

If it’s broken, that’s fine. If it’s not, what the hell are Anet thinking? On what parallel earth would that match-making produce a positive new pvper experience?

I agree with you OP, I can’t believe Anet intentionally released a patch that makes it harder to complete in a group than it does solo. Where is the logic in that?

Mai Trin was challenging and fun but this is… a big middle finger to the players basically.

Hmmm, ok. Thanks guys. The whole Dredge fractal basically feels like a big adversarial f you to players tbh.

runeblade.7514:

I want to fight a mob that fights like a D/D ele rather than a punching bags that farts red circles everywhere.

I think its desirable to have bosses in PvE that aren’t all that hard to fight. Shadow Behemoth is a good example. It’s in a low-level open world zone where there are people learning the game. You don’t want the first boss they fight to play like a champion PvPer or they’ll get scared off.

But yeah definitely, dungeon bosses should be an interesting challenge.

Actually I’m told it was Swamp-Frost-Dredge so maybe there is something to that.

NeoVaris.4806:

Did you by any chance get it first and then re-roll to get something like swamp? From my experience those extra mobs are only there if you do that.

I’m pretty sure the first one was water. It would be an odd condition to base that extra spawn off in any case – “you re-rolled swamp, so dredge is harder”? And why only dredge? Why not make all of them harder if you re-roll?

I’ve spent a lot of time in fractals over the last few months and there’s every possibility I’m imagining things, but it seems like every patch that comes out adds some new undocumented tweak to the dredge fractal (and I’m not talking about jump-able ledges). For example, I don’t remember there being patrols at the start for 30+. Is this new?

Broadicea.8294:

It’s like watching one of those world record guys do a rubik’s cube and saying “ugh rubik’s cube is such a stupid easy puzzly, nerf pls”

Exactly.

I’m all for adding more interesting mechanics than tank n spank but I don’t think groups should be punished in fights where it’s an option. That’s just weird.

Yay! Necros are back in the trash where they belong!

spoj.9672:

4k dps is pathetic btw even for a necro. Anyway the meta is to melee everything with maximum dps (except for a few fractal bosses) so they shouldnt be moving anyway.

The 4k dps is just from conditions and its pretty conservative (2400 approx self-buffed cond dmg, 18ish stacks of bleeding, continuous poison and burning). It doesn’t include direct damage. I’m giving realistically sustainable numbers since I’m assuming we’re having a useful debate and not just posturing.

How are you calculating 10k dps btw? Is there a meter?

Anchoku.8142:

Unshakable and Defiant are kind of downers, Necromancer suffered immensely on their introductions, but holding a mob boss in a corner lets the medium and light classed unload on it with impunity. Maybe that means some jobs cannot back-stab for max dps but keeping the group healthy and doing damage is increadibly valuable. PUGs with a few new players need this a lot.

Another benefit to controlling boss movement is that support classes can focus heals on the tanks rather than saving them for themselves. It makes the Wars and Guards, along with medium class professions, invulnerable. For Necromancer, being in a “nice” group means the Necro can drop marks and wells on the boss and surrounding tanks and never worry about the tanks letting the boss roam free to do spike damage. Or it could mean never getting focussed on because the higher dps jobs never relinquish hate.

I agree that it’s useful to control a bosses movement but they’re 90% immune to our cc anyway, so I’m not sure why you would bother trying to do this on a necro, or any character for that matter. It’s easier to have the current target stand still and tank it.

If you’re talking about the reduced effectiveness of weakness, blindness and vulnerability, that effects everybody else too.

spoj.9672:

Warrior dps far exceeds the dps a necro can do. A beserker necro does respectable damage but with no useful utility or team buffs its not worth it in dungeons. Other classes are much more useful. Condition dmg will never out damage raw in pve.

As long as the target doesn’t move and lets you do your full axe/mace/gs rotation and you’re in a good group that stacks and uses dmg mitigation to prevent you dying in seconds, sure.

If you have to move or dodge, warrior dps goes down the toilet.

Whereas my cond necro can sustain 4k dps easy (bleeding, burning, poison) on everything in range of Epidemic and my dps is not predicated on standing still so I can kite without reducing my dps. And perma-weakness and perma-crippling of course.

Anchoku.8142:

Transtemporal, Warrior has much better mob control skills. A War can push a boss into a corner and keep it there. Necromancer has only a puny 1 sec Fear on long-is CD for that.

Not saying that is a problem but War has control mechanisms that work better

War does have some great cc but on bosses, who cares? Unshakeable and Defiant make it irrelevant.

And in any case, you shouldn’t be pushing bosses into a corner where dps can’t sit on his back. That’s just… annoying.

In PvE open world and dungeons, personally I think necros are all about condition dmg and AoE condition spreading through Epidemic. If you have other condition toons in the party, its even better.

So why take a necro over a generic dps warrior? I have both a necro and warrior with all ascended gear and I think my necro actually has better dps uptime through conditions than my zerker warrior does through GS and axe/mace. It certainly faster for boss fights where the boss takes a regular break like mossman or svanir.

Personally, I think necro is pretty well balanced now. In 1v1 or 1v2, I’ve got a pretty good chance to beat them if they let me kite and don’t CC me. But if they’re organised at all and using CC, I have to rely on dodges and shroud and that runs out pretty quick.

Man, talk about histrionics. 6 months ago, people would actually ignore my necro because it wasn’t worth the time to kill him unless he was actively blocking a cap. Now that it’s possible to contribute to the fight, its suddenly OP? Unbelievable.

Absolutely agree with you OP. I’m glad these dungeons are progressing in the same way as the Molten Facility, challenging and fun. Thanks for putting the effort in Anet!

I think my only bugbear about the last fight was how hard it is to see the red circles during the cannon sequence and how long the old circles linger while the new ones appear over the top. Makes it very hard to know which one to dodge.

Tip for dodging Mai’s teleport: just stay within 400 or so of her and she won’t use it on you – she only uses it on party members who are 600ish or further away.

Thanks Inculpatus, I’ll do that.

While my actual game account is fine, I am completely unable to reset the password on my support account. Its stuck in an endless loop where I request a reset, use the link in the email, then have the error screen tell me I need to follow the instructions in the email.

Please advise me how I reactivate my support account. This is the second time I’m posting to request help. Please please please please.

I have the support password reset email, I follow the link. No matter what random combination of numbers, letters and non-alpha numeric characters I use, I get “you or some like you has used this password before” or “Failure. We weren’t able to change your password. Try following the link from your e-mail again”.

I have tried this 4 times with a completely random bunch of key presses and each time I get the same result. Is anyone else having this issue?

LOCO.1785:

I completed the aquatic slayer last night killing krait in borderlands. Didn’t notice a difference to be honest.

I agree. They seem to do a little more damage and the veteran model looks like its changed coughyuanticough but otherwise I didn’t notice a huge difference.

Those horrible nasty mesmers. Hopefully someone nerfs them soon. They are ruining the game!!!1!!1!

Who’s up for some hot zerg on zerg action? You won’t be able to see who you’re zerging, but the anonymity just makes it hotter! Mm-hmm!

Funny how they weren’t a problem until someone highlighted it on these forums. Epidemic OG!

No OP, you’re completely wrong. Zergs are used by mindless servers who have no skill and abuse culling and take our jobs. Plus, Zergs undisputably cause people to leave the game and go to wow and cause petrol prices to go up. I can’t believe you’d suggest that Zergs are anything but morally reprehensible.

Straegen.2938:

I think they have it mostly right. I do wish mesmers and necros couldn’t bypass the champion buff though. That buff tends to really slow down small groups but hardly effects larger ones.

To be fair, anyone with condition damage bypasses the supervisors buff, not just mesmers and necros. And I thought it would have to do with everyone running skale venom now, these days I don’t see the supervisor with much less than 20 stacks of vulnerability.

I’d probably disagree with this OP. Extra guards, the hylek and a couple of players are enough to wipe a 5-man team, or delay a bigger one until your own forces arrive. Also, we maybe don’t want to make it mandatory for a zerg to have to take the camp because the guard champion is so tough. This would limit the usefulness of smaller teams (and people whine enough about this as it is )

Drizzzle.5847:

The entire culling system is a failure. We should be able to simply turn off character rendering and see only names or some very low level form that represents enemy players. At this point, I wouldn’t care if the entire map was populated with stick-figures! This would provide a solution for people with low-end computers and a fall back solution for everyone in times of extremely populated battles.

Absolutely agree. If you can see names, then you know where they are, how many they have (approx) and you know whether you should retreat or not. I suspect it will be very difficult for anet to swallow their pride and do something like this since they have a lot invested in cool-looking stuff.

It is pretty pathetic, but think of it like this: if the person really is a troll/spy for another server then sure they’re wasting your supply but they’re also wasting their own gold/seige bp upgrading your stuff!

I’m glad I’m not the only one. Movement is ok but skills are “queueing” up then activating all at once 30sec-1min later. What the hell is going on?

1) I agree, increase targets but reduce damage slightly.
2) Disagree, downed is fine for most professions.
3) I like the suggestion that niim had. Only allow revive from defeated state outside combat.
4) Disagree, but maybe limit the number of targets for combo fields, as with healing.

Also, if changes to number of targets for AoE is made, maybe targets for buffs and healing should be looked at too?

CrassBippy.4619:

Culling is better now, move along folks

These are not the culling issues you’re looking for? lol

So I thought I’d go into wvw for a look this morning, with a clear head after some sleep in case I was overreacting last night.

Was just in Danelon’s fighting a sizable zerg, with friendlies and enemies fading in and out like strings of xmas lights at night. That’s what it actually looks like.

Since I can’t see the enemy anyway, I imagine I’m fighting ninjas. This helps.

Hepan.2709:

This game is built around active dodging and reacting to what your enemy does. If you react poorly to certain situations thats everybody elses fault but your own right?

Yes, so again: HOW DO I REACT TO SOMETHING I CAN’T SEE. The only logical reaction I can have is to get some space between me and the last place I knew he was and hope his stealth runs out before he hits me so I can actually target him.

Hepan.2709:

As for atacking what you cant see: yes you cant target in active stealth, you can spam #1 tho, lucky shots still hurt.

Lol, this is just an invitation to the thief to CnD me. The only auto attack I’ve seen that works effectively is the guardian staff-1 since it covers a decent area. Almost everyone else should not do this.

And yes yes, I know you’re going to say, “aoe kills thieves, so aoe!”. With marks my necro has the fastest and biggest aoe you can get in the game but I don’t have enough to “mine” the entire area around me. This sometimes kills him, but mostly not.

Hepan.2709:

As for culling: yes, big issue. yes, fix asap (tho that last patch just made it worse), but you can target somebody under the effect of culling.

As I said in an earlier post, the difference between thieves in spvp and wvw is night and day. In spvp thieves actually appear for the full 3 seconds of reveal. This changes the game as far as fighting thieves and makes it much more fair. In WvW, it’s just a joke.

Hepan.2709:

When thief exits stealth a black swirl shows up at hist feet, if you click on that you will target him, also tabing after they appear works to and you’re sure to target him if not a lot of other PC/NPC are around.

Only a thief player would say this with a straight face.

Since I don’t know where he’s going to come out of stealth and since he usually goes straight back into stealth, he never actually appears on screen. Most of the time I don’t even see a black swirl. The times I do see it, he goes back into stealth immediately so no targeting. If you’re saying that .5 of a second SOMEWHERE on screen is enough to target him, you have far better reactions than I do.