Guild Wars 2

Zacchary.6183:

BrunoBRS.5178:

at least it’s not a trait that will kill you and is adept tier…

Wrong trait.

BTW OP would you like to trade?

I cant speak for the op but I’d gladly make that trade any day of the week. Stealth necro op.

Bhawb.7408:

There is supposed to be counterplay to LF gain, that way the enemy actually has a way to avoid your sustain. That is why sustain tends to be tied to skills that have counterplay, or AAs that can be avoided in some way. But simply putting it on every single ability base is too much.

With my changes there would still be counterplay to life force gain. You would still be rewarded for dodging channeled skills, and all multi hit abilities. Unlike how it is now you wouldn’t be able to completely negate Necro’s Class Mechanic simply by avoiding a few key skills. No other class deals with management of their class mechanic like necros. It should be very easy to access deathshroud. Simply hitting a foe enough times should allow you to enter deathshroud because it is built as the overwhelming majority of our sustain currently.

Roe.3679:

zapv.8051:

My suggestion is to reduce total DS by 30% giving you 91% of the current DS with 6 in soul reaping. Then introduce a 1% life force gain on every hit, creating scaling on necros sustain in teamfights. Then allow stomping rezzing and other interactions in ds, and allow siphons to work in DS. That would be a good start to fixing the sustain of necros.

I’ve had this exact idea, although reducing DS a little more would probably be needed depending on what counts as a hit.

I was thinking literally every time you hit something. If grasping dead hit 5 people you would get 5% life force. That way you would have much more deathshroud for team fights and much less for one on ones. The actual amount of DS compared to now would need to be figured out. I picked 30% because you wouldn’t get one shotted out of it in full zerkers still.

My suggestion is to reduce total DS by 30% giving you 91% of the current DS with 6 in soul reaping. Then introduce a 1% life force gain on every hit, creating scaling on necros sustain in teamfights. Then allow stomping rezzing and other interactions in ds, and allow siphons to work in DS. That would be a good start to fixing the sustain of necros.

I’d like to see them cut the total amount of Death Shroud by say 30%, but fix most of the problems with the mechanics listed by Tadsoul. Then give necros better sustain overall, so it isn’t so focused on DS.

There were only a few changes to traits, and not ones that are commonly used either. I’d expect siphon buffs, and maybe some merger of staff traits. No more than that. They mainly buffed utilities for engis, and weapons on rangers. I’d expect changes to axe 1,2 and maybe dagger 2 and 3, and then a revamp of signets like the rangers got. I’d be very disappointed if I saw nerfs to any of the main builds because I don’t think there is a single necro build that is op or overly strong in pvp or pve (wvw 6/6/2/0/0 perplexity necro is way op but so is everything else in wvw).

Honestly that build is incoherent, and not to good. SOV is terrible despite a few comments saying it is alright. Also, since this is a roaming build well of darkness is unnecessary, and since you won’t be running away from any roamers anyway the warhorn and signet of locust could also be replaced with something better (most roaming build are faster than even with perma swiftness). Near to Death is also wasted because your life force regen won’t be high enough to use that trait effectively. Also in wvw where there is condition duration food, I’ve never found it useful to take master of terror because your condition duration will already sit at 60-70%. Here’s a build using mostly the same gear that will perform better:
Build

Notice that with guard stacks and 25 kills you have over 2k condition damage which makes everything hit really really hard.

Shinjo.6092:

You are missing invulnerabilities that negates damage to your hp which every class except thieves has access to. Also, thieves are not the only class with evades. Thief evades on weapon sets are also limited by the amount of initiative they have to prevent excess spamming, just like how endurance works for dodge. Lastly, there is an opportunity cost to active defenses. What you lose out by engaging in active defense is opportunity to do something else like interrupting your opponent or healing for example, something that passive defenses hardly ever have to worry about.

Necros don’t have any kind of invulnerabilty, vigor or blocks. Rangers don’t have an invuln either they can just redirect damage to their pet, which is 30% of their damage. Also, your acting like other classes have evades similar to what theives have. That isn’t even remotely true. Thieves have far and away the most evades, and no other class is close. That and stealth, initiative, and stealing and you can understand why their is so much thief hating. The class is designed to be cheap.

As far as the other comments go, I will simply ask this. If thief is so underpowered and has been nerfed so much, why is it still way more viable then other classes in this game? Thieves are viable in pvp, pve, and roaming in wvw. Even in zergs they can pick people off. When I see people complaining like this, I just hope you realize that Mesmers are barely viable in any game mode, Rangers are only viable in pvp with spirits, and necros are only viable in WvW. I can understand a people complaining about nerfs their class has received, but thieves are still very strong overall.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I’d sooner nix it entirely.

I’m kind of with wooden potatoes on it, it makes parts of gameplay that are working less interesting (rezing, dodging) and doesn’t open up doors to new gameplay because it seems to be increasing effectiveness for effectiveness’s sake and not for any actual reason. It’s running so naturally counter to the overarching design of self sustainability it feels pretty superficial; either pointless to do in PvE or in PvP more like a ‘vitality 2.0 that just so happens to hit other people’ than something expressly done for the benefit of others.

Honestly,
I think this game just needs to take a big step back and really re-evaluate non-damage specializations on a gameplay level. I honestly think they could find better alternatives for Healing Power, Boon Duration, and Condition Duration.

Everytime someone asks for something to be removed from the game, like stealth, or conditions, I immediately ask if they play the exact same build on the same class all the time. When you have played 6 classes to 80 and have tried various builds on each of them you start to realize how these things fit together. Healing power is for support players and is an excellent stat in that respect. Eles, Guards, Engies, Necros, and even thieves (venom sharing is op in small group roaming) can benefit significantly from healing power. Saying it is a wasted stat, or doesn’t serve a unique purpose across all game modes just makes me think you play in a very small niche of the game. Correct me if I’m wrong on that, but in general healing power is a great staff depending on your build.

Saying a stat hurts celestial gear is idiotic, you just want it to be only the stats you consider good. I agree that it needs to scale better for many skills, but it can still work for a lot of builds. Also, Ryu do you play a warrior because it sounds like you want to have good damage, survivability, and group support without any sacrifice based on your comment on healing power. Just to give an example that healing power is a very good stat look at this necromancer build, absurd amounts of healing:

Crazy good scaling

a t s e.9614:

And necro , they lack sustain only in team fights so if you mean its hard to survive in a zerg fest full of hambows, then yes maybe. But in 1v1 necro is by far one of the most faceroll classes out there. Terror necro= chain fear while spamming stuff off cool down.

Cool, so necros are useless in teamfights where they get focused, you agree then. Seriously though, if a class is only strong in a 1vs1, but useless in anything higher than that they are extremely weak. I’d argue that necros are actually weak in 1vs1s and strong in teamfights assuming they don’t get cc chained, but that is a discussion for another time.

Well here we go, this should be fun.

a)
1) Warrior (very strong at most things)
2) Guardian (Have strong support, dps, and control builds, also to people saying meditation guard doesn’t have very much survivability, realize it still has more than half the other classes)
3) Thief (strong condition, sustained damage, and direct damage builds and basically kick all other glass builds out of the meta)
4)Engineer (good builds all around)
5)Elementalist (This class is difficult to play, but quite strong in most environments)
6)Necromancer (This is me trying not to be biased for my main class)
7)Mesmer (They don’t have good tanky builds, and don’t offer anything dps wise a thief can’t do more safely)
8)Ranger (Useless in WvW, and PVE, barely useful in PVP)

b)
1)Engineer (At high level very difficult to play)
2) Elementalist (keeping track of everything while playing is hard)
3) Mesmer (shattering properly, and using distortion/portal/tw at the right times makes this class difficult)
4) Necromancer (Managing terrible sustain, also require the best positioning to stay alive in pvp)
5) Ranger (Never played it can’t comment)
6) Thief (I never understood why people thought this class was even remotely difficult, not saying I’m the best thief player, but having low health doesn’t mean you are a hard class to play, very easy to teleport away then stealth and survive in almost any situation, and the weapon coefficients to do damage are absurdly high)
7) Guardian (The amount of innate survivability tools is absurd, combine that with decent weapon damage and insane group buffs just by pressing a button and you can understand why this class is easy to play)
8) Warrior (Since almost all of warrior’s sustain is through passive effects you literally only have to focus on doing damage. This class is stupidly passive and easy)

c)
1) Warrior (Very high reward for very little skill, not really fair when other classes have to work real hard to get good damage, or sustain and warriors can afk sustain and do good damage on most of their attacks)
2)Thief (Stealth is very cheap because you can do nothing proactively against a stealthed player. You have to react to them which gives thieves a massive advantage because their reaction is generally shadowstep away and shadow refuge, which is casually easy).
3) Necromancer (This class is very broken because they try to balance it’s sustain through death shroud by comparing it to dodges, blocks, and invulns. These are completely different mechanics and until Anet sees this Necros will have a very hard time being balanced. Also, I’ve never seen more useless or underpowered traits on a class.)
4) Ranger (Can’t believe they made a class that is dependent on a pet that can barely heal itself. Seriously, they need to let rangers succeed without the pet)
5) Mesmer (Bugs, and clones which are similar to the ranger pet as described above).
6) Guardian (They should have their group buffs toned down slightly so that other classes could potentially fill their role, and we could see some diversity at midpoint)
7) Engineer (The classes aoe right now is a lot, but nothing is innately op about this class).
8) Elementalist (They don’t have enough survivability right now, but they are really well designed otherwise.)

The skill is useless in all gametypes, it could use a buff to the active and passive. Devon, I’m not sure if you realize, but 5 clerics guardians quite literally would never die. There are hundreds of 5 man comps that won’t ever die in a dungeon. Heck, good 5 man zerker groups won’t die in dungeons if they are skilled. Overall, your point just doesn’t stand.

Roe.3679:

My worry with new weapons is that they seem to be so concerned with adding broken or OP content that much of it is so weak that classes don’t change. They add things that could address a weakness, but it’s all so weak that it never matters.

So I’m for weapons if they take the risk that something may be OP and that they are willing to address that quickly if it were a problem.

This is a really good point. Anet in general plays to much of the “I’m scared of kittening people off by making something overpowered” and not enough of the “I’m putting this in the game cause it is awesome.” People need to stop worrying about balance, so much. Games are for fun make all the classes fun first worry about everything else afterwards.

Liewec.2896:

Aberrant.6749:

Balance > bug fixes > new things.

this, i’d prefer them to balance the existing content when they get back from their 8 month holiday.
what? they’re not on holiday? so honestly, what do they do?…

The problem with this is that balance will never be perfect and people will always think the game is way out of balance even if it was almost perfect. Saying they should work on balance before anything else is effectively saying they should never produce new content because balance will never be perfect or anywhere close to it in such a diverse game. As someone with real world programming experience, I can tell you that bug fixes aren’t always something you just devote time to. Sometimes you don’t know how to fix a bug, it isn’t as simple as just fixing it. New content on the other hand can doesn’t have either of these two drawbacks, and keeps the game fresh an entertaining.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

snip

Your making an assumption new content will be bug ridden. Even if it is the major bugs get patched within a week, so that isn’t a good argument. The new content that is coming probably won’t be any different from the old content. It is going to be open world PVE with 500 people where I can afk if I want. That or another 5 man dungeon which will be fun, but only provides at most a few runs of entertainment. I have an engi so I realize they have kits, but they also have gadgets, turrets, and elixirs.

I realize it would take a lot of time, thus why it should be top priority. I also realize what would go into balance. You probably wouldn’t need to add that many new traits at most 3-4 and at the least edit 1-2 and add a new one. Again, this just adds to the reasoning of why it needs to be top priority.

Making choosable weapon skills would require way more development time then making a new weapon or two for every class. Your asking for something that isn’t going to happen. 4 new weapon skills for every two handed combination is 4*5*8=160 new skills, 5*2*8=80. So your looking at adding about twice as many skills. Also, bifrost looks terrible on necros. Your also introducing even more balancing issues by adding choosable skills because you could pick the 4 strongest skills.

I realize this probably won’t happen soon, but realistically they haven’t released any kind of new skills since the beginning of the game way back when. This needs to change.

Lace.9472:

I’m sorry that rangers aren’t the class that they should be, but your argument doesn’t hold. No where does it say “play how you want and be assured it will be as useful as playing other ways.” It has always been play how you want unless you want the best set up then play a very specific way. This won’t change anytime soon (maybe rangers could get a buff, but something will be weaker somewhere). I’ve already explained the balance and bug fix, and why the dev team can’t just put infinite time into those things.

None of your arguments provide a compelling reason to work on balance, the dev team clearly thinks this game is decently well balanced because they aren’t dedicating all their time to balance. Bug fixes could probably spend more time, but new weapons add something to the game. Players with 5000 hours played need that to keep them interested.

Bhawb.7408:

Weapons would be massive. I’d rather they take 6 months to add a lot new to the game instead of taking 6 months to try to improve whats already here. Bugs will always exist, things will break, oh well, but I’d rather play with NEW broken things than the same weapons I’ve had for 2 years.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS SOOOOO MUCH THIS ^^^^. New stuff keeps players interested, and can actually help balance things out by providing counters to currently popular things. I agree bugfixes are important, but new content keeps a player base not bugfixes and balance.

As the title says, new weapons should be the number one priority Anet should focus on right now. New weapons would do several things:

Bring some freshness to this game that has had 1 new skill added for every class since launch

Increase the play as you want mentality Anet seems to be striving for by giving more weapon options.

Shore up some weirdness with some of the classes (necros have no cleave and only one melee attack, engis have 3 weapons, no melee weapon and no hammer)

Allow Anet to easily balance out the classes more (aoe for mesmers in wvw, group utility for necros in pve, usefulness for rangers in zerging, soft counters to the Guardian Warrior meta that is plaguing this game).

So my question to all the people on the forum is: Do you agree that weapons should be the highest priority for Anet? If not what do you think should? Utilties, Deathmatch in PvP, WvW map?

If your commanding pugs, wells are obvious, and that includes well of blood. With group cleanses the healing is absurd, and it outshines consume conditions. Stability is almost mandatory so that’s 30 trait points. Gotta have well cooldowns and protection so that’s another 20, and chilling darkness is just to good, so your done. As far as gear, sentinels or soldiers are both way way way better than knights. Knights is a very overrated set. Your EHP isn’t that high, and you actually get more effective power from soldiers. Staff is mandatory, the other weapons set is really up to you, but I run d/d cause it looks bad kitten (fractal daggers), aoe weakness, multi hit blind. I don’t like warhorn that much without the trait. You could take axe instead of dagger, but it doesn’t matter too much. I recommend focusing on protection duration with runes, and healing power doesn’t hurt either because of well of bloods absurd scaling. Sigils, momentum or maybe life, energy is great if you can afford it otherwise leech or heal on swap/hit. This leaves you with this build:
Tankier then thiers^

While this isn’t the be all end all, and you could certainly trade sentinels for exotic soldiers if you wanted it to be much cheaper, it is a good build for pug commanding. You have 25 seconds of aoe blind, 17 seconds of protection, 8500 heal with 3000 in aoe, boon corruption, condition purification?, stability, and around 20k death shroud health without guard stacks. Your armor isn’t quite to 3000, but if you want you could drop chilling darkness for 100 more, or change runes.

The problem with s/d thieves is absurd amounts of shadow steps and dodges. In pvp with capture points being able to teleport across the map easily is a huge advantage because 1vs1s become 1vs2s too quickly. Then you look at the number of evades, which are equivalent to invulnerability, and realize they have extremely high invulnerability uptime.

These create 2 problems for any other class trying to deal good damage. First, they simply can’t rotate as fast in a pvp setting, ride the lightning, and lightning flash simply aren’t as good as shadowstep and steal. Second, any kind of burst an ele or mesmer brings can be avoided easily not only the first time they attack, but the second and third as well. Furthermore, thieves are effected at the very least 1/3 as much as any other class by chill because it doesn’t effect initiative regen. Simply put Anet have made it so no class other than thieves can do zerker because thieves do it the best.

Anet really needs to shake things up and bring warriors, guardians, and thieves down. Guardians and thieves have been meta since day 1 without ever suffering any nerfs to core mechanics. Meanwhile, Necros still have far and away the worst sustain, rangers still have a broken mechanic and rely completely on spirits, and mesmers have been completely supplanted by thieves.

killahmayne.9518:

jportell.2197:

killahmayne.9518:

jportell.2197:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Sarrs.4831:

sounds like the problem is that so much of warrior survivability is predicated around CI

It is, which is why I think the most important healing skill that needs to be changed is Mending. With it being viable a whole bunch more options will hopefully open up.

Warriors should get increased condition clear in their heals when they give mesmers more condi removal in their healing skills. Because lets face it mesmers are the most struggling class in any pvp mode aside from maybe ranger.

#1: If you don’t have anything productive to say, why are you even responding in this thread aside from general crying.

#2: What relevance do Mesmers have in this thread please explain this to me?

#3: These are just suggestions to improve Warrior healing skills. Nobody denies Mesmers or any other classes need improvements to some of there mechanics and traits. If you are so upset go cry in another thread or make your own.

#4: Condis are not what keeps Mesmers out of the meta.

#5: Mending Purity gives Ether Feast which is already one of the best HPS skills a 2 condi removal for just 10 points in inspiration. It also gives the healing mantra 4 condi removals on a a very short CD and Mimic gives 2 on a 15 second CD. Mesmers have other issues we all know this but condition management isn’t one of them. The options are there.

However this is me pointing out that if warriors get anything changed. It should happen AFTER Anet looks at other classes especially in the terms of buffs.

In the way of nerfs warriors should be looked at first.

Do i need to say it again this is a thread suggesting changes to Warrior heals and has nothing to do with what you just said. If you want other classes to be buffed first great go explain that to the world in another thread. Just because a class is in a good spot right now doesn’t mean things can’t be addressed.

ANet has already looked at Warrior Nerfs and a few specific things got nerfed pretty hard. So you know ANet is already looking into more nerfs you don’t even need to be worried about that they nerfed Warriors the last 2-3 patches and another one is probably coming soon.

Simply put this is wrong ^. First of all, this is in the [bold]PROFESSION BALANCE[/bold] forum, not the warrior forum. Second, every single balance change has effects on every other class on the game because if one class gets better you can effectively say every other class got worse in comparison. Every change that is made in this game effects every class in this game. Asking for buffs to warrior skills when other classes are barely viable in most of the game 2/3 of the game is ridiculous:

Mesmers are tw, viel and portal bots in wvw, tw bots in pve, and barely viable with shatter builds, where those shatter builds are much much harder to play then any warrior biuld, in pvp.

Rangers have a broken mechanic in WvW, and fill absolutely no role. In PVE they are viable because of frost spirit, spotter, and vulnerability stacking. In PVP they are only being kept alive by spirits group buffs.

These two classes are in terrible spots and your asking for buffs to a class which:

Is one of if not the very easiest to play in all game modes with passive effects. Warriors have unique group buffs in PVE with banners and good easy to reach damage. Warriors have the best aoe stuns with hammer while being extremely tanky and having absurd mobility with greatsword, and can similarly fulfill many roles in PVP. They also have easily the best build diversity, capable of being extremely tanky, having very direct dps, having very good cc, and having very good condition builds.

Having said that you should understand why someone is aggravated that people continuously ask for buffs for warriors when other classes are barely viable in this game and have awful or no build diversity. Furthermore, the warrior players have been bringing it into the Profession Balance subforum, which is blasphemous considering how strong the class is.

Until other classes have even remotely close to the build diversity, and passive effects warriors have, or those passive effects and easy build diversity are toned down, nothing about warriors should be buffed. A class that is dominant in every game mode with almost every weapon being viable shouldn’t be buffed until other classes come close to that level. Rangers, and Mesmers are in a pretty bad state right now, and the people who play warriors are still trying to get buffs.

Scarran.9845:

This is one of those thin line topics where all it would take is for the maths to be slightly off and its either useless like Unholy Sanctuary or way too overpowered as we can constantly keep our health topped up.

People always say this, but until they actually test it we won’t know. Your saying that it is your opinion, based of no factual statistics or data from this game because siphons have always been terrible, is that siphons are set up to be either op or useless. I personally can’t see how that is true, there is always a decent sized middle ground, and most traits sit in that middle ground.

Bhawb.7408:

Taygus.4571:

but why not DS? …its not like its a few minutes of super strength, you’re still vulnerable to blocks/conditions etc…

Because it has nothing to do with balance.

Hot kitten people, not every single decision in game is about balance. Minions are not absolutely stupid because of balance, transforms don’t affect signets/desummon minions because of balance, there are a lot of things that are the way they are simply because that is how it is.

You can’t stomp while in Deathshroud because it is coded that way, and changing it (gasp) might not be as simple as going to the area where it says Stomp_In_DeathShroud = “false” and changing it to “true”. Hell if coding was that simple they wouldn’t have random bugs.

Well if you want to talk about coding, this game is implemented almost completely in C++. There probably using objects, and inheritance, so while Death Shroud probably inherits all of the properties of the general transform class. It would not be that difficult for them to overwrite that. Furthermore, since warrior rampage is allowed to stomp mid transform it might not be the case that all transforms inherit the property that one can not stomp mid transform. This should in no way be a problem of implementation, and any half decent programmer would be able to make this fix.

My personal opinion is that Anet doesn’t have enough of it’s staff dedicated to bug fixes, balancing, and new skills. Living world is, IMO, a waste because most of the content isn’t permanent. I simply don’t think that they spend enough time worrying about these exact type of issues. Anet spends far too much development time on Living World considering the problems this game still faces. They need to take their time to update the actual classes with new skills and weapons, fix the majority of the bugs, and then maybe work on releasing new content. This would give much needed freshness to the classes, and help end the many woes about bugs and QOL issues like this one.

My opinions aside, this could be fixed easily, so it just needs the development time if they want it to happen. I’m not actually experienced with coding on something like games, but considering you don’t need to implement any really fancy pieces of code it shouldn’t be that difficult. As someone who knows C++, making changes like this wouldn’t take that much time. My point is that changing attributes or numbers should be extremely simple and not take that much time the real issue is if Anet wants to or not.

This is a problem, once again with strength runes not with what might does. Due to the existence of one rune a class can stack a lot more might then they would normally be able to. In general too many people are complaining about the effects of things in this game not the cause. In this case the cause is that strength runes stack way too much might. The effect is that you get eles with 0 condition damage on gear who’s burns tick for 500 or more.

Realistically I can’t see them adding more than one weapon to the class for now. I realize they said they might add all of the weapons, but at the current rate of Anets updates it is simply unbelievable. I’d prefer if they made axe 900 range, and then gave us a cleaving melee weapon. Either a sword, or a hammer. That weapon would need team support as well as cleave, and maybe we would have viable power builds for pvp and wvw.

A while back they merged many of the weapon cooldown reduction traits for half of the classes. That is, they made most of the cooldown traits give a secondary effect. Ranger, Necro, and to an extent elementalist (specific to one attunement cooldowns) didn’t get this treatment. It bewilders me as well that some classes get blatantly more powerful traits then others. Anet should at least keep the standard across all classes.

NevirSayDie.6235:

zapv.8051:

While I don’t agree with the op that simply isn’t true. Lich form with procs most certainly can’t hit for 10k. If you think it can I invite you to give me video proof.

shadowpass.4236:

25 stacks of might, bloodlust, guard stacks, etc. etc. lich form can 1 shot with full zerk lol

Not necessary. Because lich form triples base power, it can proc fire and air sigils for significantly more than normal. Combined with the 4-6k damage from the autoattack, this is sometimes enough to bring the target below 50% health, proccing a 4-7k spinal shivers to finish them off.

The times I’ve seen this have been in PvP vs. standard zerker thief PvP builds. So about 14-15k health. Even with all that, power necro is not even strong enough at tPvP to be used by most teams—but the point is, there’s already quite a bit of damage flying around.

So you have to crit, two sigils have to proc and then a trait has to proc and they have to have 3 boons. I guess I can believe it has happened, but it isn’t like one shots everywhere. Certainly not something someone casually does every game.

Edit: did some quick math, assuming your statements are correct and you need both sigils to proc, and you where full zerkers, it would happen 21% of the time. That is quite a bit higher than expected, but still wouldn’t happen often.

NevirSayDie.6235:

That’s pretty broad. How do you suggest going about equally nerfing all defensive capacity for every profession?

Or if you simply think all damage should be increased, are you willing to accept the 1-shot gameplay that will come with that? Lich form autoattack can already 1-shot some builds, 100-0 in a single auto (+procs). Should it do more damage?

While I don’t agree with the op that simply isn’t true. Lich form with procs most certainly can’t hit for 10k. If you think it can I invite you to give me video proof.

Cecilia.5179:

Elite Skill: Shriek
Throw you head back and unleash a terrible wail, striking fear into enemies (would be telegraphed).
5s AoE Fear
90-120 second cooldown
360 radius

Additional Thought: Maybe have it drain your enemies’ endurance or apply weakness.

Please no, there are other skills that would be far more useful to the class. This would be useless in pvp because people would stunbreak, or dodge. It would also not solve any of our other issues simply because you want to have the longest fear.

Dondagora.9645:

As the title might suggest, I believe that the confusion nerf in PvP and WvW is too much. I understand the overpoweredness that came with the original confusion damage, however I believe that the nerf underwhelmed the condition which was/is one of the main mechanics of mesmers. Thus, a middle ground; Simply make it 2/3 of the original, non-nerfed damage. It’s closer to 1/2 than the actual midpoint between the halved and whole confusion damage, but I believe this is the small push it needs to make confusion builds viable again.

Runes of Perplexity kill any buff to confusion. When someone can easily get 10 stacks of confusion solo, you can’t buff their current damage.

Bhawb.7408:

Elite Spectral:
10s Stability
10s Spectral effect – grant 10% LF per second
Breaks Stun

60-90s CD

It grants the stability we need, in a very accessible manner without barring you from your skills. Can be used to access deathshroud on demand even if you have low LF (and will continue giving you LF).

That would be extraordinarily strong, maybe if it was an 8 second effect or if it was 5% LF per second. Having said that the idea seems good.

As for wells, I think we have most of the things covered. The only thing we don’t really have is a well that gives boons, so maybe something that pulses stability, or might. That would give us better group support for dungeons.

Signets don’t really have a set direction right now, so you could do almost anything.

I’d like to see an elite corruption that gives some torment to enemies. There where some fake elites a while back and the one there looked amazing.

Bhawb.7408:

DeceiverX.8361:

Blinds are active defense though.

Talk to any thief or ranger running birds, and that IS an active form of damage negation, and if you’re not willing to examine your surroundings and learn move choreography to time your blinds right, then you need to seriously re-evaluate your stance here seeing as that’s what defines good players from bad ones who get stomped by getting hit by CC in the first place.

And you wouldn’t be behind every other profession in blinds. I do believe the only profession capable of beating out the necro in terms of blind application potential is the thief unless specifically built for applying blind.

A Necro who took all the blind access would be an absolutely awful build, in general any build is going to have at most 3 options, plague, deathly swarm, and then either WoD or SoS. I literally listed how many options each class has, and we’re definitely not on the high end, we’re right about the middle.

And it doesnt’ matter if blinds work or not, we’re in the exact same point, which is the entire point of this entire thread (which people seem to blatantly ignore to try to pick at one tiny sentence here and there): Necromancer has, by far, the least active damage negation in the entire game bar none and as such has an even stronger need for stability than other classes, whilst getting only one general way to access it that is not reachable for many builds.

We rely on being not CCed to function, and our only ways to not be CCed rely on us not being CCed. The very mechanics we use to counter CC are countered by CC. This is a problem that does not exist in a single other profession, and we ask for literally the least powerful, most easily countered mechanic to achieve this, but instead people say “well you have a high HP pool so its fair”.

My desk is practically broken with how many times I’ve smashed my head into it after reading some of the posts here.

This ^ a million billion trillion times this ^. Please read this anet. Thanks for summing it up well Bhawb.

Dancingmonkey, you still haven’t addressed the issue this thread is trying to address once. Necros cannot in a team situation survive because they don’t have enough ways to escape from team fight levels of cc, or be immune to cc. Every other class has better ways to do this. By adding stability to a utility skill necros will be able to handle being focused for at least a fair amount of time. Until you address this, your points are simply off topic talk.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am seeing the situation your “claiming” as a problem just fine. I simply do not see it as an issue.

If someone invest a large portion of their build into CC, why would you expect to avoid all of the CC? As well, why do you tell me what I need to defeat someone, when I prove your example incorrect in my game play every single day? I find it interesting that you tell me you must follow certain criteria to accomplish something, when I do not. Then suggest a difference in play between the two of us is irrelevant.

It doesn’t help either, that you attempt to imply that necromancer is specifically, as a profession, some how more susceptible to CC then every other profession. When there are other professions with as little or less access to stability. Your also assuming that every other player in professions with stability, us it in every build that everybody uses. It doesn’t help your perspective to assert such conjecture and assumption.

I wouldn’t expect to avoid all of the CC and I never claimed that. I don’t know where you got that from, but this thread is asking for stability on a 60/48 traited cooldown. That means it would probably be about 6-8 seconds of stability tops. This is by no means immunity to cc in a 1vs1.

In high level pvp and even organized wvw, necros get focused faster and harder than any other class in the game. There is a reason for this, it is because they can’t survive getting focused as well as every single other class in the game. I also never assumed other players have more stability then necros, or that every class uses their stability skills. The reason other classes don’t do that is because they have access to all of the defensive mechanics necros do not. These mechanics have been listed in almost every single thread about necros poor sustain so I will not be relisting them.

The only real defensive mechanic necros have that can be easily taken and helps them avoid cc seriously is blinds. Necros have one blind on dagger off hand that has a huge travel time, and 2 main aoe blinds in plague 2 and well of darkness (both of which are easily walked out of and then ignored).

Also, you imply that all classes are equally susceptible to cc. If other professions could be cc’d easily, why are necros always the ones to get focused in teamfights? They have way more health then eles, and thieves so why would someone focus necros with a huge health pool and then death shroud. Could it possibly be that it is because necros are the easiest to cc and focus effectively. No that can’t be it you said differently.

Furthermore, I am in no way shape or form asserting conjecture or making assumptions. I watch TOL, watch youtubers who play gw2, read threads paying specific attention to what good players are saying, and in general study this game. The overwhelming majority of good pvp players will tell you necromancers lack escapes, and stability so you should focus them first. This would be fine if our damage was miraculous as it was right after and even a few months after the dhummfire patch, but after continuous nerfs to necromancers condition damage our output is not high enough to justify taking a necro over other classes.

Despite all this, your post aggravetes me because instead of trying to address what I said you implied opinions about my post and then used them as talking points as if they where products of my posts. I never said necros should be able to avoid all cc, or even came close to implying it. I never said anyone needed to do anything to beat people in this game, only that certain things are necessary to compete at the highest levels (such as a way to avoid being focused). I never told you to follow any criteria anywhere. I never assumed other classes take stability skills, but every class in TOL had some way of avoiding being focused easily (which is the current problem with necromancers).

dancingmonkey.4902:

With all the Hp we have to absorb both damage types, and in most cases, send their conditions right back at them. Why not do what I do on my necro, and use dodges to avoid the CC skills first and fore most. Many of them can be avoided simply by moving out of the path. In those cases dodges are not even necessary.

A lot of the s entries for complaint I am seeing here, appears to be from poor game play decisions more then any thing else. At least that is how I see it. Personally I find dodging CC skills and stun breakers, reasonably sufficient, when combined with our hp pool and DS option. I say this based on my experience with every profession having been leveled to 80, and my love for my necromancer. I much prefer our reasonable balance, compared to how I feel on my thief or warrior.

Right, classic L2P answer. The problem you aren’t seeing is that we have to avoid more than just 2 ccs per 20 seconds especially when getting focused. Giving an active skill that grants stability will allow us to use our active skills when getting focused without sacrificing 30 in soul reaping. That is exactly what necromancers need. Currently what happens in team play is the necro gets focused first not only because they do a ton of aoe damage, but also because they are by far the easiest to get focused. As far as your L2P comments, it is hard for me to agree with you when it is well known that the last 2 sentences are true.

A pull for thieves would be far too strong, theives are already the fastest in combat class. They don’t need more cc, they need a skill that helps against multiple foes, or in team fights. What they should do is simply buff the damage so when there is 2 or more foes the damage is palpable. Thieves certainly don’t need more help 1vs1, or with cc when they have stealth to set up skills already.

Sykper.6583:

Looking at necros briefly all I can really say is that many of their abilities and capabilities stem from the profession being capable of punishing the attacker through conditions or being near the necro passively. Even if you land the most perfect CC imaginable, many of the traits a Necro has will counter you for it.

THAT said, I think necros could use a slight bit of stability somewhere, like 1-2 second duration traits placed in a few places across the trees. They do not need much stability, rather I think they have other issues than being CCed down…

Which traits specifically counter cc? I immediately think of reapers protection, and foot in the grave, but what else? I don’t think another 1-2 second stability is what is needed. We already have a 3 second stability. What we need is an active skill, something we can take instead of one of our other utilites that will give us stability. Signet of locust is good target because its active is underpowered, and it’s active relates to good stability because fast movement helps you counter it. This forces necros who take this skill to make trade offs, which is never a bad thing in a video game.

Hvaran.6327:

“Just food for thought. When the question was asked which 3 professions needed the most help players did state 1)ele 2) Ranger 3) Necro. "

WUT?
Link please.

I just made necro my main is engi, haven’t tried everything yet but class not seem to have som “useless kitten” in his traits or utilies, yes there are a few in each class, but it’s on ok lvl, but engi had huge ammount of nefrs with slight buffs, what make it pretty good for pvp but sucks in large-scale battles.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Vote-for-the-Profession-Collaborative-Development/page/27#post3636880

There is the vote, I’m not gonna go find the where they tallied them, but necros where third with engis 4th. I would also like to note you just made a necro, and therefore have no idea what the class needs in terms of balance. Seemingly you have played an engi for a while, so can probably address their issues better. I don’t want to be rude, but your first impressions of a class is very rarely accurate.

Rangerdeity.5847:

while you cant rez in it lich form and plague both provide stability for their entire durations and plaque provides the highest toughness bonus in the entire game. so you cant rez in them but they are both insanely long stability and one offers defensive bonuses and the other jumps your power and precision to insane levels. dont complain just because your class has different perks than other classes

Well technically you can rez in lich form, plague, and death shroud, you just have to be absurdly quick and press the res then transform button in far less than a second. Also, you really shouldn’t use something that is on a 180 second cooldown as an argument for attrition. Plague is a great skill, but in pvp it is easy to avoid, and it is really only useful for group fights where necros accel anyway.
The problem with necros is that they aren’t really the best at the things that matter, but are really only good at a few other things overall (also this is the necro forum we are here to talk about how to improve the class and make it balanced). The things necros are good or best at:
Beating other condition classes (as seen in TOL not really needed)
Boon removal (best or second best at this, but there are so many spammable boons on the classes that run boon heavy builds it isn’t as useful as it could be)
Single target Condition damage (behind engineer, warrior, and probably thief too due to the nerfs to many of our bleeds, terror, and more dhummfire twice)
AOE condition damage (probably the best at this if not right behind engis)
Soft CC (probably the best at this with chill, and cripple).

Generally speaking those are the things necros are known for, but they aren’t needed enough to make necros good. Furthermore, necros are at the bottom or the worst at many of the things that are needed the most.

In combat speed (easily the worst way behind every other class)
Out of combat speed (Second worst behind mesmers).
Sustain (not terrible in general, but have to make too many sacrifices to get the damage necessary to be even semi-viable)
Countering cc (Again, necros can’t run 3 stun breaks or they lose to much damage, they also can’t run 6 in soul reaping or they once again loose to much damage).
Power builds (necros have good damaging power builds, but suffer from low movement and escape mechanisms making them unviable in serious play)
Group support (wells wouldn’t be terrible if people couldn’t just walk out of them, but even with wells you aren’t tanky enough have long cooldowns and don’t provide as much as almost every other classes support).

The 5 things I just listed are way more important then the things necros are good at.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Burr: You are splitting hairs in an almost insane way.

Berserker Stance: Conditions cannot be applied to you. If you are arguing that the condition makes contact THEN the stance removes it, so it isn’t immunity, then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe take a break from the forums.

It’s not splitting hairs. Having the ability to still hit the player gives you the capability to do things that true invulnerability skills don’t allow. You can still gain adrenaline and life force on someone using Endure Pain. You can apply conditions that are on hit or on crit. You can use control skills. In return you can attack while it’s active. Calling it “invulnerability” or “immunity” makes it sound as if you should just not bother attacking while the stances are up which isn’t necessarily the case.

Zerker Stance is certainly different. There’s not any benefit to using condition-only attacks while it’s up. It’s still not invul/immune as far as the game mechanics are concerned. It doesn’t matter in this case. but yah this one is a bit more splitting hairs but I’ve had to deal with several people saying it’s “bugged” because they have +duration and condis still don’t get through.

No one is saying it is complete immunity, but it is immunity to direct damage, condition damage, or cc. You can not take any direct damage while under the effects of endure pain. You can’t have any conditions applied to you while under the effects of zerker stance. You can’t be cc’d with stability. Therefore it translates, exactly as I said, to immunity from direct damage, immunity from conditions, and immunity from cc except under special conditions. It doesn’t make you immune to other things, but no one is saying that. It is immunity just not immunity like distortion where they are immune from everything.

Holl.3109:

Oh I just remembered, instead of corrosive pioson cloud you can go spectral wal and pick up the terror trait. Drop it right when two factions clash and you tag a lot op people, while also giving your allies protection.
Also, she wasn’t asking for a lot of damage, but how to tag as many people as possible. Dagger 4/5, scepter 2, plague, and your wells all do a bit of damage.
Fun tip – if you have round 100% crit chance in DS with deathly perception you can drop a well and go into DS and have all of the wells crit! So my well of suffering with 3200 normal (6x) does about 6000 dmg!

So you want to do a bit of damage while not being very tanky, you must really not care much about winning. In a zerg it is best to use direct damage. Furthermore, warhorn it’s in an aoe cone, and will help you get away if some melee characters are right on you. It is in general a better choice for zerging.

a t s e.9614:

zapv.8051:

a t s e.9614:

Codi necro should not become stronger. They should put stability in a pure power build instead . Example of a trait : 25% chance to gain stability for 5 sec (30 sec cool down) if you strike a foe for more than 30% of their health.

That would be a terrible trait no one would take, Life blast is the only skill necros have that could do that (axe 2 is multiple attacks this isn’t a thief). Also that means often times you will have killed the person before you get stability. Also the cooldown is huge. Literally no one would take this and it would solve no problems.

Furthermore, as evidenced by TOL condition necros aren’t that wanted because they don’t have enough sustain to survive in this meta. After the dhummfire patch the only reason necros where viable was because you could sacrifice a whole class to baby sit their terrible sustain because of absurd damage. Since then necromancers condition damage in pvp has been lowered several times, and then they nerfed dhummfire a second time. The condition damage necros put out is low compared to an engineer. They also have less survivability.

Even beyond that, condition necros don’t take signet of locust because they rely on signet of spite, a stun break, and corrupt boon. Introducing a skill to possibly reduce their damage, but increase their sustain is exactly what is needed. Also, if you know the class you’ll know people don’t often run signets and they are in general bad except signet of spite. Your suggestion would just force necros to run full zerker and have even less sustain. That is the opposite of what the class needs.

A well played zerker necro can be very strong against everything except warrior because of immunities spam and stuns. But for an adept trait that would be decent .

A good thief will always beat a zerker necro no exceptions. Good eles, and mesmers have a huge advantage as well. That trait would be terrible. It would need to be a 100% chance on maybe 10% of their health to be useful. Your iteration would trigger so rarely you wouldn’t notice. You also couldn’t use it reliably. Attacking it to a utility means people have to make sacrifices for it, and it would help give serious play to signet of locusts active because currently it’s a 25% speed boost and nothing else.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Endure pain does NOT make you immune to direct damage, it reduces all direct damage to 0. On-crit effects can still happen because the attack still lands.

AKA immunity to direct damage, 0 damage equals nothing equals immunity

Berserker Stance does NOT make you immune to conditions, it reduces the duration of conditions to nothing. They only changed the definition because people didn’t seem to get that adding + duration does not make something last for 110% +, it’s still 100%.

AKA immunity to condition damage, 0 duration equals nothing equals immunity.

Balanced Stance gives you a strippable boon that keeps you from being knocked down. It’s a stance in name only so that traits affect it. It’s fine as is, it’s just a signet with no passive. Unless ANet wants to totally redesign stances by giving them shorter CDs and duration and have the overwrite each other they’re going to stay as-is.

AKA immunity to hard CC except under special conditions.

a t s e.9614:

Codi necro should not become stronger. They should put stability in a pure power build instead . Example of a trait : 25% chance to gain stability for 5 sec (30 sec cool down) if you strike a foe for more than 30% of their health.

That would be a terrible trait no one would take, Life blast is the only skill necros have that could do that (axe 2 is multiple attacks this isn’t a thief). Also that means often times you will have killed the person before you get stability. Also the cooldown is huge. Literally no one would take this and it would solve no problems.

Furthermore, as evidenced by TOL condition necros aren’t that wanted because they don’t have enough sustain to survive in this meta. After the dhummfire patch the only reason necros where viable was because you could sacrifice a whole class to baby sit their terrible sustain because of absurd damage. Since then necromancers condition damage in pvp has been lowered several times, and then they nerfed dhummfire a second time. The condition damage necros put out is low compared to an engineer. They also have less survivability.

Even beyond that, condition necros don’t take signet of locust because they rely on signet of spite, a stun break, and corrupt boon. Introducing a skill to possibly reduce their damage, but increase their sustain is exactly what is needed. Also, if you know the class you’ll know people don’t often run signets and they are in general bad except signet of spite. Your suggestion would just force necros to run full zerker and have even less sustain. That is the opposite of what the class needs.

Ganking comes from MOBAs, it is a class that can come out of no where, an stun you really hard. Then a metric ton of damage gets thrown down and you die. In DOTA 2 this requires 2 classes really, but here with immobilize, basalisk venom, and stun in general it can be accomplished by one class.

Lol at the one sentence replies 4 times from that guy. This would be good because the active is currently subpar. It can heal for around 5k with 5 targets. If it also granted around 10 seconds of stability it would be well worth taking. Then they would just need to buff Sov and siphons in general, and necros have a serious tank for pvp.

Good players >>>>>>>> anything else 15 vs 40 is very possible in this game 50 vs 100 is also. Good players will be on a lot, which equates to coverage. I’d take one good player over 5 regular players any day. The people talking saying coverage above all speaking directly about midnight to 8am are hilarious. That is 1/3 of the day. Make up what you lose the rest of the time.

Norjena.5172:

Nothing special. I don´t like these kind of build. They do low dmg, and u don´t have a huge spike. And that´s what necros are used for.

You can´t help others just be being ultra tanky. Selfish builds re the reason why good 25guild raids can easily wipe out 40+ rnd zergs.

Try something like this. It can help others, and it will do more dmg.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAoYWjc00SbNN+0wfbihha6aIGO3oCAqviiIdB-TlSBABBt/gRKxuSZQEPBQJ4p6DSV9HWN9pqSjFOBAAcIAIFATKjA-w

Curios, why don’t you swap consume conditions for well of blood, and deathly invigoration for well cooldowns. Well of blood scales absurdly well with healing power and with zealots you’ll have a lot of it. With well cooldowns your looking at a lot of healing for your teammates, which is what you wanted to focus on. I’m just wondering why your doing it the way you are in that build.

Please don’t run a condition build in a zerg, your damage will be very minimal compared to a power build. Brandos link is good. I’d still take warhorn in that build for swiftness, but the condition clear on dagger 4 is nice along with another aoe. If you want all the aoes on lower cooldown spec 6/2/2/4/0 with close to death, axe training, ranged wells, staff mastery, and well cooldowns in full zerkers. Your have a higher aoe uptime, but slightly less damage.

Muchacho.2390:

zapv.8051:

Spectral Grasp is great, the life force gain is absurd. 15% or 20% in like 1.5 seconds is way faster than anything else.

Only if it hits…

In fact SG is buggy with spectral attunment. The 5% LF should be gained even if SG misses.

I try to only use it at less than 600 range to ensure it will hit, or at least increase the chances significantly. For me it’s less about the pull and more about the life force.

Jzaku.9765:

I don’t get it

What exactly makes you think necromancers are the special snowflakes that “deserve” more torment than other classes? That’s exactly like a warrior complaining he has no access to chill and poison.

Other than that it was ORIGINALLY MADE for the necromancer class, not much.