Guild Wars 2

Lucentfir.7430:

First bolded why are you using theives as a basis mobility, when THeives are supposed to be slippery, and warriors are mobile melee tanks(Atm with GS). If you want mobility lose it’d be only fair to take away some of the soft CC necros possess to balance it out.

Life leech by Itself is blantly terrible true, but if there’s one thing I’ve known in this game, it’s that you have to combine and mix things. the all the little things add up to make a big impact. Life leech would be way too strong if they buffed it significantly, since it ignores armor and protection, and gives you the benefit of heal for the damage caused.

Second bolded, you’re kinda unclear here, not making a lot of sense. I’ve tested my build and it works splendidly, in a bunch of duels, and Necro’s main weakness is CC chain(Warrior is the culprit with hammer and/or mace/shield), and at least for me, Zerker phantasm mesmers to a certain extent. I’d say you’re ignorant though, i don’t know how much exploring you’ve done, but I know i’ve explored and tested a lot of runes, sigils, gear and trait setups, to get a good build of life leech for me. Also i recall seeing Chapman’s post playing a Leech necro, not sure what game mode, but he probabaly has found something that works nicely for him like I have :P

As far as being as mobile as thieves, I’m illustrating a point. Giving necros a short range teleport isn’t going to make them as mobile as other classes, but it will give them at least a real mobility skills which they sorely lack now.

You said it yourself, life leech is blatantly terrible. My second point was that necros have to put themselves in harms way to get 80hps while out of death shroud. They must be in range and attacking to get that dps and hps. That requires investment in 3 traits and 20 points into blood magic. Other classes get 100hps or more on much less stringent conditions. I think of backpack regenerator or adrenal health as examples where both of those are one simple trait. Some would argue that it’s also 80dps but 80dps is a really low addition when other classes get 20% damage boosts to their weapons sets. Simply put when comparing life siphoning to other similar skills it is bad. Other classes get better healing traits and better damage traits for less investment.

Also, I have gone through armor sets and builds with knights, soldiers, zerkers, rabid, carrion, clerics, dire and rampagers on my necro. I still own 6 armor sets, and have tried many times in wvw, and pve to make vampiric builds work. The problem is, without food it’s a waste. With food you don’t even need to be a necromancer to make it work. If life siphons are going to be a necromancer feature, they need to make it a feature instead of leaving it in the currently horrendous state it is in.

Sizer.5632:

Muchacho.2390:

Stand The Wall.6987:

I’m just saying its there and if people dont wanna use it thats their problem.
Other classes have practically no stability.

Other professions also dont need it as much…

Maybe i should be more precise. Professions like warriors/guardian/necros who are mainly in the fight need stability more then those professions that are more like poking in and out like thieves/eles/engies and mesmers.

Every class needs stability especially in spvp, why do necros need it so much more than say an ele or mesmer.

That said I still never got why well of power never gave stability per tick instead of just 1s at the start, its not like power necros are the OP class right now and i have to say it sucks to play one when the other side of a match is 3 wars/thief/engy like it usually is. Or maybe add it to a spectral skill but at that point the class would have more stability than everyone other than a war or guard which would just be silly, seems like everyone is overestimating the stability other classes get (eles 6 seconds on a 90s CD is OP!)

Other classes don’t need it because they aren’t supposed to stay in the middle of the fight. A necro is designed to be in the middle of a fight. Necros don’t have blink, they don’t have stealth, and they don’t have invulnerability skills which are often better than stability. Honestly, based on what arenanet has said necros need more sustain and stability than any other class in the game except guardians. All the other classes are faster, have invulns, and blocks. That’s why they don’t need stability because they stun break teleport, or invuln and run. Necros don’t have that option.

Whoever had the idea of another grandmaster trait that give stability please stop. We need skills or adept/master tier traits not another 30 point investment in a tree with bad minors. Also, our channels are limited. We a way to get something close to 10 seconds of stability so we can actually do something instead of sitting flashing ds.

Lucentfir.7430:

Tbh Necros are already scary when you’re a melee based character a condition spam engineer. Giving them mobility or a bag full of stability would be over the top. I’d agree with maybe one or two skills giving short term mobility (3-4 sec). ecro already has great boon contol, and has a crap ton of control effects, and condition transfers. necro might not be mobile, but it’s dangerous if you face a well built/ well played one(unless you’re a well played warrior running zerkerstance, melandru runes, and lemongrass food).

Also Life leech is powerful(I run a build around leeching), it’s just not OP, where people can face roll heal and win. And Healing through Death shourd would be nice, I would prefer at least 10%-20% maximum to allow healing in Death Shroud. necros are great, just need to explore more into it more. Faceroll Condition builds are the norm when facing stance hammer warriors who are equally faceroll with hammer or mace.

I don’t think one movement skill is going to put necros anywhere close to warriors, or thieves.

Your second point shows how little knowledge you have about the class. Life steel is blatantly terrible. Vampiric and Vampiric precision are literally 80 health per second for hitting a foe. That means you must be actively putting yourself in harms way to do 80 damage per second. Two complete tanks, with zero stats in power would do more damage than that to you.

Allie Murdock.8152:

The answer is, we don’t. My first 80 was an Elementalist. After that, I started a Thief which I got up to 74, a Necro which I got up to 22, and now I have a Warrior that is 80. Also have alts of every class.

Also, when I was in the Alpha before I started here, I mostly played Guardian and Ranger to lvl80. This was before they had implemented events in any of the lvl50+ maps. I had a friend that helped me grind up, and we would run around showing off that we hit 80 by grinding mobs.

I dunno why I shared that whole thing, but the point is that we definitely all play a variety of classes, just like you!

What this says to me is that you leveled up your first profession, your second got boring and lame quickly, your third got boring extremely quickly. Then you played a warrior decided it was fun rolling your face across the keyboard, and leveled it to 80. You have to understand why it is worrying when you thought two classes that you started first were too boring to play to 80. This and then you started a warrior which gives far more reward for skill and leveled it to 80. As someone who thinks a lot about design, I don’t understand why your not spending more time working on making other classes more enjoyable WHEN YOU DIDN’T EVEN LEVEL 2 OF THEM TO 80.

If I had the money for full sentinel’s and a commander tag/siege I’d run one of these builds:

This gives you protection, control, a ton of health, but no real group support. Your well protected against condition cleanses, and superb death shroud building. You’ll be able to sit in death shroud for ever.
Spectral Tank

This one uses the same gear but uses wells to give a better support approach. Again, protection, and stability are a must. This time we don’t go into curses because it isn’t necessary.
Well Tank

Dalanor.5387:

with healing signet is not a problem since summer. Yeah. Not biased at all.
____________________________________________________________
on topic:

• Dark path
  Ground targeted teleport, adds aoe chill and blind upon use. 1500 range. Pls?
• Spectral grasp
  Applies chill instantly. Turns into Spectral pul. If you use again, it pulls your foe. Add in a 1 second delay like at Temporal curtain. Or not. Probably not.
• MOAR Torment
  Maybe reduce the overall bleed application in exchange of that to balance out the damage somehow. More or less Necro stays the same with firepower, but a covering bleeds via Torment becomes easier now.
• Tainted Shackles
  Aoe pull, pretty pleeeeeaaaase! Requires resource and it’s on a high cooldown.
• Fix other classes mobility issue
  No, no warrior hating. Stop. But it’s hilarious (not) that even guardians can skyrocket into distance if needed in WvW as a heavy, non-mobile class. We should keep in combat every class, except maybe Thieves but they should have a hard time to escape unstealthed. Of course tone down warriors. They are good, nearly balanced, but over tuned in every possible aspect now.

I think we all want dark path to be a ground targetted, but 1500 range would be too much 1200 or even 900 is more realistic to what they might give us. I’d take 900 over what it is now easy though.

Spectral Grasp could be cool like that, but I still think it should be instant like all of the ground cast teleports.

Torment is something that was supposed to be the necros condition. It was supposed to make us prevelant, but they also added burning which made us op. If they take away burning we might get more torment, but I would also like to see bleeds removed and torment added to some skills.

What they should do is make it pull targets to you if they leave the range of the skill. Currently there isn’t much reason to stay in range, but if we got a pull that would be awesome.

I wont comment on other classes mobility, it is too depressing.

What game type? Minions are ok in PvE as you have them listed but will be terrible in WvW. That condition build could be interesting, but in WvW without Terror or Dhummfire you’ll want to focus less on durations and more on stacks. I would take terror and enfeebling blood, over corruption cooldowns and increased bleeding duration as you’ll get higher dps.

As far as skills go, I’d rather see it tied to either signet of locust or signet of undeath. Currently both of those are very lackluster, and could use a buff. Spectral Armor is currently great as is because with spectral wall you can get a good amount of protection overall. I’d rather see stability on a trait though because we would get more overall stability. For instance, they could give 5 seconds of stability on spectral, or signet use.

As a necromancer I agree to a certain extent with most of your points. As far as movement skills, necromancers won’t get them because they are supposed to stay in the fight. To counteract this they are supposed to make it very hard for enemies to get away. I think arena net needs to make spectral grasp an instant pull because it would help in this respect a lot. Currently, many classes have to many instants that can’t really be countered. This would make running from necromancers much harder, but they still wouldn’t be able to escape well which is by design.

Stability is the one thing I think a necromancer should have so much more of. There are too classes that don’t have good escape mechanics, guardian, and necromancer. It is only fair that if a necromancer has to “stay in the pocket” they shouldn’t be constantly cc’d. Giving a necromancer more stability would also help solve the problem of hammer trains in wvw because necromancers could corrupt many of the stacked boons on these trains.

Combo finishers are similar to stability, in that necromancers don’t have enough of them. There was a thread a while back where I listed my thoughts on this, so I’ll just post those here:

These are the skills I think could have finishers on them.
Life Blast: It should be a projectile finisher, it is slow and projectile finishers are weak enough so that it wouldn’t be overpowered.
Dark Path: It should be a leap, and it shouldn’t send out a claw it should just leap to the target.
Tainted Shackles: When the immobilize hits a blast should as well.
Reaper’s Mark: It is on a 40 second cooldown, give me something beyond an aoe fear with a blast finisher.
Ghastly Claws: This should be a whirl finisher, if you’ve seen the animation you should know this.
Unholy Feast: Also should be a blast, it literally blasts at the end.
Dark Pact: could be a blast as well
Reaper’s Touch: it’s a scythe projectile, why it isn’t a finisher I’ll never know.
Wail of doom: Blast please.

The issue I see is a lot of necromancer skills wouldn’t be able to work as any kind of finisher because they are so unique.

Why lower the skill floor further, good players know when they need to cleanse. They could possibly add a timer on each condition, but even knowing how long conditions last on you is something you can learn. For instance, I know a necromancers auto will apply around 8 seconds of bleeds.

Spicyhash.7605:

Condition damage itself is fine. The methods of application, however, are not. No auto attacks should apply conditions.

Since there are really only three builds in this game: full zerk DPS, condition, and 0 dps support, if you nerf condition damage, there is only one build left: full zerk. You will be getting one-shot even more often if condition damage is nerfed at all.

I feel like condition damage wouldn’t be so bad if control effects weren’t so prevalent. Like, yeah, you’re getting dominated by cheesefire necros with fear, thief/engi perplex cheese, PU mesmer, etc, but it’s also worsened by the fact that you’re being constantly cc’d. thief steal, basilisk venom on 32/45 second cd, mesmer chaos storm/power lock, engi supply crate, shield 4/5, tool kit 2, and so on. There is also immobilize. You can get immobilized, feared, dazed, and stunned all at the same time. 2 sec defiant for players on cc pls.

If you take condition damage off autos you should also take any significant direct damage off autos or it won’t be balanced at all. Your asking them to make this game even more reliant on power for damage. That is something it certainly doesn’t need considering all power builds, and half the condition builds already rely on power. There needs to be less focus on that stat not more.

I’m gonna make a suggestion. First, make a half second delay after cast for marks. Second, add better identifiers to each individual mark. Third, make the marks player triggered. Fourth, either reduce the cooldowns or buff the active effects. This would give marks a lot more skilled play from both ends. The necromancer could use them as spacing while the other person would know which ones to seriously avoid.

The real problem with bunker necros, is that you need stability so 30 points are spent almost immediately. Then you can pick between death magic and blood magic which are both very lackluster when compared with other classes toughness, vitality trait lines.

The problem with many necromancer skills is that they are slightly useless or bad compared to other classes skills. You mentioned main hand dagger. Compare Pin Down (which to be fair is blatantly op), to Dark Pact:
Dark Pact
Pin Down
Dark pact has slightly more direct damage, but doesn’t put 12 stacks of bleed, doesn’t pierce, is shorter ranged, and has a longer cast time. Both skills are on the same cooldown. Life Siphon simply doesn’t heal for enough on the long channel. It should be AOE within 600 range on 3 targets to make it more effective. Otherwise it is just a waste because you might be able to mitigate the damage someone else is doing to you with the measly healing it does.

I like the ideas so far, but I want to ask one other question. How would you go about implementing these ideas? Not necessarily what is balanced, but what do you think would be fun and interesting?

To bring about variety and more interesting gameplay. A little more positive than that other thread with a similar title. Personally, life siphoning vampiric necromancers would be awesome.

These are the skills I think could have finishers on them.
Life Blast: It should be a projectile finisher, it is slow and projectile finishers are weak enough so that it wouldn’t be overpowered.
Dark Path: It should be a leap, and it shouldn’t send out a claw it should just leap to the target.
Tainted Shackles: When the immobilize hits a blast should as well.
Reaper’s Mark: It is on a 40 second cooldown, give me something beyond an aoe fear with a blast finisher.
Ghastly Claws: This should be a whirl finisher, if you’ve seen the animation you should know this.
Unholy Feast: Also should be a blast, it literally blasts at the end.
Dark Pact: could be a blast as well
Reaper’s Touch: it’s a scythe projectile, why it isn’t a finisher I’ll never know.
Wail of doom: Blast please.

The issue I see is a lot of necromancer skills wouldn’t be able to work as any kind of finisher because they are so unique.

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

zapv.8051:

How do you survive elementalists fresh air burst builds if you can’t survive a necro auto attacking? They can do 15k ish damage in 2 seconds. I’m just wondering cause everything else your saying is just so bias no one should even respond to it.

Actually a perfect burst combo kills a heavy golem with 22k hp and 2,597 armor in 2 seconds with 98% of damage during 1 second.

Thank you for keeping me informed and proving my point.

BlackBeard.2873:

One thing that I haven’t seen brought up recently is how strong weakness is (and currently helps drive the trend toward condi/tanky). Weakness was relatively strong previously, applying glancing-blows to non-crits, as well as lower endurance regen. About the time that condis started getting out of control, weakness was changed to apply to glancing blows to all hits, as well as the reduced endurance regen.

Whereas before, weakness could be ignored if you had enough crit chance, now it absolutely demolishes you. Why? If a hit would crit, and instead gets turned into a glancing blow, it becomes 50% of your base damage (not the damage the crit would have). This means that you get >25% reduction in damage.

If you have 50% crit chance, and 50% crit damage (common for a glass/dps build):
- Half your hits would be non-crits. 50% of which are now glancing: 25% normal hits, 25% glancing blows
- Half your hits would be crits, 50% of which are now glancing: 25% crits, 25% glancing blows

With weakness: total damage .25*(1+0.5+2+0.5) = 1.0 base power damage
W/o weakness: .5*(1+2) = 1.5 base power damage

I would propose that weakness be changed so that glancing crits do 50% of the critical damage (in this case 0.5*2) as opposed to do 50% of a normal hit. This might help shift dps vs. condi to be a bit more even.

You don’t remember correctly, weakness was worthless before the change. It should still effect criticals the same as it does now. Also, the people constantly complaining about the condition meta need to realize that the amount of dps and condition builds are pretty much right now.

gesho.9468:

gigi, chill out peeps, i see more drama in this topic then quick post that i fired after casual hotjoin. the build i was playing is full mantra phanta mesmer and only thief is allowed to kill me (working on that one too). it’s not my main (i dont main) and as mesmer’s think, not even viable, but at least condi necros are facerol and mm – not sure, i’ve only played it for couple of nights, but i guess should not be too bad, since i can kite with cripple and can’t be immobilized. of all builds this one could easily stop that lb spam. as i said, i thought it was condi opponent, for which (when i play it) lb is obscure dont bother waste of a autoattack.

not to say that i think it’s ok. 3k auto attack with no requirement other then 600 range. notice that other necro ds skills with half of that single target damage have 15-20 sec cd and can be easily dodged with a very visible channeling graphics.

in fact, if it is such an easily countered non issue as every necro pointed here, why not put a small, say 3 sec cd on it? no damage loss for necros (as you say) and casual players like me could be happy, sounds like win-nonIssue. not that i care too much about it at this point (in fact plan to play that build in coming days), just curios how folks here will settle to have a cake and eat it too. so much for non-issue.

How do you survive elementalists fresh air burst builds if you can’t survive a necro auto attacking? They can do 15k ish damage in 2 seconds. I’m just wondering cause everything else your saying is just so bias no one should even respond to it.

Based on lore, necromancers should have more access to confusion, and torment. If A-net wanted to make that happen they’d need to get rid of burning and lower the bleeds we put out. Then they could put more torment and confusion application on skills.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

In range of target;
So this is any potential target? Or the person targeting them? What if three people are targeting them?

What is a ranger is at 1200 units, but their pet is at 300 units?..the pet is an extension of the ranger.

What about turrets/pets/clones/minions? if they are within the area do they count as ‘target’? even their owner maybe further away?

So a warrior ran away from you..an ele can do the same, so can a thief. A clever necro can lure you away and teleport back. A lot of professions can disengage. This is nothing new. If a opponent choices to high tail and run, you get the node, that is your reward. If you were fighting them off node and are just upset you didn’t get your bloodlust fix, then chances are you’re not being as useful to your team as what you could be. Nodes win matches..not kills. Keeps win WvW..not dragging rights 1 vs 1 duels.

Your points are easy. The only targets would be things that can attack, no ambients. Targeting wouldn’t activate it, simply being in range would. Three people would make no difference. The pet wouldn’t count, only people and enemies. That means strictly players, and npcs that aren’t player owned. Also, I know you didn’t suggest a clever necro can actually escape effectively. Not saying it’s impossible, but if one get’s disengaged by a necro their doing something wrong.

Having said that I like the idea of tying it to adrenaline, but 60% isn’t enough. They need to make it zero percent with no adrenaline. Passive effects are ok, but their needs to be a condition to restrain them. It also forces them to balance burst, condition removal, and healing. I also think it needs to be harder to build adrenaline as a warrior. It seems like they hit their burst and it’s full within 3-5 seconds.

Balefire.7592:

Hi guys. I let the poll sit for an extra little bit in order to get some more votes. Here are the results.

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

On an unrelated note, I’m going to have to take some away from the game in general, and possibly from the forums as well as I have been transferred in my workplace, and will need some time to move/adapt.
If anyone would like to take up the reigns of this thread/discussion for the time being, it would be appreciated. Please PM me for further info.

It gave me an access denied. I guess it needs to be set to be open for everyone like the other stuff.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Nearing my completion of a necromancer. One last question remains for end game application. Which serves the better future Power/hybrid/conditions?

I do play dungeons. I do play fractals lvl 25-35 (can’t be bother with AR after this point.) I do make strong investments in my alts with extoic armor/weapons and ascended trinkets.

This will be my 6th lvl 80 gear out, so I am experienced with dungeon evades, what is needed where for runs and evades etc..

Juast looking for feedback from more exp necromancers about what they found work best over the longer term at end game.

(No advice needed for PvP. I rarely WvW and keep it mostly in spvp, so all traits etc and free anyway.)

Zerkers is always best, but other classes are better for that. Necromancers can do some sick aoe damage. Furthermore, if your doing fractal level 25-35 with no ar please stop. That is extremely rude to the people your playing with be it pugs or guildies. You literally go down every time ar is applied to you at that level.

Personally, I’d rather see them give us better access to torment. That was supposed to be necromancer’s condition and we can barely get 6 stacks of it (tainted shackles then epidemic). I’d be very happy if they put it on staff 1. Back on topic, if necromancers had confusion they would have every condition in this game. That could be a little op.

Kiriakulos.1690:

@Luke

The casting of AoEs on staff is the casting of any ground targeted AoE. They are not skillshots, they are AoE, pretty big ones at that. With their area and casting time, marks are pretty much 100% hits which brings me to the next point:

There is no counterplay to current marks. You can hardly tell which one the Necro is casting and they require lucky dodges to avoid, similar to current Pin Down or a Thief’s stealth opener. Every other example you stated is actually the Necro using his skill on the wrong time, so it’s a mistake on the Necro’s part, not an active counter by the opponent.

There is no hierarchy problem with marks, they don’t trigger on objects, period. Unfortunately objects in this game includes, bosses, monster spawning structures and even downed players. Manual detonations fixes all these issues at once, keeping marks as they are does nothing for it.

Yes, introducing the 1 second timer is a big nerf that’s why I said it’d allow the marks to be buffed with more interesting or intricate effects, like zapv said, marks are BORING right now. Boring and pure spam.

I guess this raises the question of what kind of buffs would everyone want to see. Personally I’m all for lower cooldowns first and foremost. If what is suggested was implemented chillblains could be at 15, putrid mark 20, and reaper’s mark at 30. With 20% reduction that would put the skills at 12, 16, and 24. That would be awesome. One could potentially change the skills to do something else though while keeping the cooldowns the same. For instance chillblains could give swiftness, putrid mark could steal life, and reaper’s mark could give retaliation.

Why would any developer respond to this post when someone states their bias right at the top? Furthermore, what makes anyone think they are trying to achieve balance with they have such an obvious bias? I guess I’m wondering why anyone would make a thread like this because it isn’t going to elicit a response from developers.

The Staff as a whole is a very lackluster and boring weapon, but I don’t know if making the marks player activated fixes this.
Personally, I think the best thing would be to add some utility to staff 1 and make it travel faster. If it applied torment for a 2 seconds it could be used as a main weapon more easily. Making it travel faster seems almost required considering it can be sidestepped without a dodge right now.

The marks themselves need an overhall of some sort. However, if you make them player triggered with a one second icd after cast and don’t change anything else then you just nerfed marks significantly. If you implemented this ^ I would want to see an area buff to the skills and a buff. 1 and 3/4 seconds is easily enough time to run out of a mark, and standing in them would mean you deserve a lot of damage. The problem with that idea is conquest mode because suddenly no one can step on a point with out taking a lot of necromancer mark damage. I’d prefer if they changed marks another way, but I don’t know how exactly they would do that.

Jabberwock.9014:

Are you joking? DS is probably the most powerful class mechanic of all of them, and by a good margin. Necros already have the highest hp in game, and DS scales with it giving you absolutely massive effective hp, and great sustain too when using a power build with dagger and spectral utilities. It’s almost trivial to keep up life force with such a setup… enemies will burst your ds down, then you pop spectral armor (and heal to recover your main bar) and you’re almost immediately half full of lf again.

On top of that, the damage from +50% crit chance life blast (plus might and vuln stacks) is probably the best ranged sustained damage in game. And 4 and 5 do great aoe damage… and you have an instant cast fear… and teleport with chill (one of the best conditions in game). I’ll take that on any class, any day.

LOL, what about toolbelt skills, virtues? or shatters and clones considering that is like half of a mesmers damage. How do you justify death shroud being the strongest?

Pacer.6143:

OMG it doesn’t mean the warrior will be more powerfull just axe OH won’t be total useless.

Just buff it as it is in pvp currently, it’s enough.

Cygnus.6903:

Just go away. This argument is so bad, just leave.

On topic, I agree Axe 5 needs a buff. It does, however, need to remain significantly weaker then axe auto in PvE, because it hits 5 instead of 3 targets. Also, whirldamage is better then cleave.
another option is to remove the 5 targets, and make it 3 instead. Then damage should actually be slightly higher then auto.

My point is your both asking for a buff to a class that dominates PVE, WvW, and PVP while other classes are useless in those areas. Pacer you said you don’t want one of the many warrior weapons to be useless. I’m angry that devs would even consider buffing this while Necros are useless in PVE as a whole. When people ask for stuff on the forums they are asking for development time whether they realize it or not. I’m arguing that before they give any buffs to warriors they should spend more time on other classes that are broken in certain environments. AKA Necros in PVE, Eles in PVP, and Rangers pretty much everywhere.

Just to clarify I’m not saying that axe offhand 5 couldn’t use a buff, but that spending time on that when other classes as a whole are useless and suffer from tons of bugs aren’t worked on first.

Tanzan.4830:

Returning to GW2 after a long hiatus, my highest level toon was only 65. Since I patched up and started playing again I have been really enjoying this and can’t figure out why I stopped playing in the first place (maybe Diablo 3 came out, I don’t know).

I rerolled to start over and learn fresh. I like ranged classes, especially in a game as visually stunning as GW2, it is nice to see what is happening. I made a ranger and was quickly led to believe that rangers are hated and quite often kicked from groups at higher level. Even more so than the huntards of WoW. To counter that I made an engineer. Wow, so much fun with bombs, grenades, rifles and flame throwers, but I am now finding out the same thing, that they are ignored from fracs and groups. Do I HAVE to be a warrior or guardian to be an active part of a raiding group (or whatever it is called in GW).

TLDR version. Is it true that at level 80, groups consist of 4/5 warriors (and/or guardians) and rangers and engineers get kicked from groups.

Is this a game with only 2 viable professions if I want to experience everything?

The general consensus is that warriors and guardians are the best in PVE, but that doesn’t make it true. The fastest groups always have at least 1 ele and more than likely 2. Thieves, and rangers are also common. The stigma that warriors and guardians are better comes from the fact that both of those classes are really braindead and easy. They do far too much damage for almost no skill. IMO both classes need to be made much more difficult to play because they are so mindnumbingly boring.

Here is a list of the current meta records on video, check out which classes are popular.
speed clears

This is the third thread that has the exact same point, they should be merged. Also, The title says PVX and conditions are certainly worse in both PVE and WvW then direct damage. PVE zerkers is obviously better, and in WvW a zerg has too many condition clears for conditions to matter.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Conditionmancers depend on the “tier” that you are playing in.

Low organization pugs and randoms: not a problem.
Med organization pugs: only an issue when there aren’t too many condition users, which usually isn’t a problem.
High DPS groups: condi’s don’t work well here, since enemies usually die in a few seconds anyway.

^ This, also note that High DPS groups only exist within organized groups. You are never going to find pugs that are a High DPS group or at most one in around a 1000. Running a condition build is fine because no one in pug groups will care. If they do they are probably a bad warrior who thinks they are doing the highest damage in the game when they aren’t. Run condition builds if that is what you want to do, but realize it isn’t optimal.

Rhyse.8179:

Tim.6450:

If that were true then conditions would be desired in pve but they don’t. Kinda strange right?

The stack limit is their only problem in pve.

NO, the fact that they do less damage while providing no benefits is their problem in PVE. If stacking was the only limit optimized groups would take one condition build. Seeing as no optimized run does take condition builds they must do less damage.

Kyon.9735:

zapv.8051:

Darmikau.9413:

snip

Overall, condition builds and direct damage builds are well balanced from a design standpoint.

I kinda disagree with this. We won’t be in the so-called “Condi-Meta” if it was balanced.

I’m not talking about the meta at this time (which is debatably not a condition meta), certain builds always need to be toned down and others brought up. I’m saying that the way direct damage and conditions are designed within this game is well implemented. Certain builds are problematic (IMO decap engi), but the way conditions and direct damage are built from the ground up is fine. <— that is what people want changed that I strongly disagree with.

In short I’m not arguing against small changes to certain builds, but Arenanet doesn’t suddenly need to make dodges give complete immunity to an attack that already hit you.

Darmikau.9413:

snip

To your first point, most build require precision and condition duration to be effective. Why do you think necromancers invest 20 trait points in a line to get 50% more fear duration? Mesmers, engis and necros all need precision to proc extra bleeds. Your argument does not hold up when the vast majority of condition builds invest in 3-4 stats. Also, full damage berzerkers gear way out damages a max condition spec because you can invest in 3 stats with an amulet, and gear (all game modes). If there was a gear that gave condition damage precision and condition duration I believe condition specs would be much more viable in PVE. I’m also going to point out that many of the skills which people consider to be spammable aren’t that spammable. For instance a necromancer’s staff skills 3-5, signet of spite, corrupt boon, tainted shackles, and doom are all on a 20 plus second cool down. The spam skills on a necromancer are scepter 2 and auto, whose damage is far less than any zerker builds auto attacks.

Your second point doesn’t mention condition clears or transfers at all which completely mitigate conditions on you, or the immunity traits. Also you can use all of the skills you listed to mitigate the big condition applying skills just as well as the power ones. For instance, you should probably dodge a necromancer’s signet of spite, or an engineers pry bar or concussion bomb. That’s the same as any burst build. You point out that conditions do damage while your blocking and dodging if they are already applied to you. I wonder, do you really think conditions should stop doing damage once they have already been applied? You really think that during thieves pistol whip, mesmer’s distortion, warriors endure pain, engineers gear shield, and guardian’s renewed focus that conditions shouldn’t do any damage? Furthermore, you want a boon or condition that lowers condition damage beyond that? If all of those where implemented along with the amount of ways one can already mitigate condition damage, condition builds wouldn’t exist and necromancers, engineers, and rangers would have no business being anywhere in this game.

I also want to point out that there are as many ways to prevent condition damage as direct damage in this game:
Condition: condition clear and conversion, immunity skills and traits
direct damage: weakness, protection
both: block(including aegis), invuln, blind, dodge

Overall, condition builds and direct damage builds are well balanced from a design standpoint. The issues people are having with condition builds currently is that they don’t pay attention to the animations, and use their mitigation effectively. I also want to point out that most high level pvp teams run more direct damage than condition builds.

locx.6412:

Like Behellagh said, in crowded places that’s the standard. You can download a GPU monitoring program, such as GPU-Z and see if your usage goes anywhere near maximum, which it definitely shouldn’t. If it does however, something’s wrong and we’re going to have a look at that. Your GPU is more than capable of handling what this game has to offer (especially true for 1080p). My 660 gets 100+ fps soloing pretty easily.

Along with GPU-Z you could get Hwinfo64, it is better for monitoring because it will monitor literally everything your computer can.

I liked it, the guy running off the cliff was hilarious. Are you using the barbarian amulet build you posted a little while back? What about WvW, what are you using there?

This might, and I emphasize might, fit the necromancer thematically, but won’t ever happen. Necromancers are the only class required to face tank everything. That is how they are supposed to be, and it doesn’t look like it is supposed to change any time soon.

zMajc.4659:

Warrior Axe offhand number 5 skill Whirling Axe currently does way lower damage than the axe primary auto attack skill making it worse even if you melee 5 enemies at once.

In sPVP the skill has allready recieved a 50% damage boost wich is an indication the devs are aware how lackluster the skill is.

Can we please get the damage buffed in PvE so it’s at least in line with axe auto attack?

When necros, rangers, and engineers get massive buffs in PvE then maybe they should consider this. Before that any buffs to warrior are really unjustified.

Death Magic is well, bad.

Minors:

• Reanimator: Could be merged with Death Nova or gotten rid of
• Protection of the Horde: If you doubled or trippled the toughness and made it an adept trait I still don’t know if anyone would want it.
• Deadly Strength: Good enough

Majors:

• I) Dark Armor : on channel skills just aren’t useful, maybe if it was stability to fit the boon duration.
• II) Spiteful Vigor : LOL it says vigor give me vigor
• III) Minion Master : Minion master trait in Death Magic that isn’t mandatory, I like that.
• IV) Ritual of Protection : Great aoe protection, this is a good trait.
• V) Staff Mastery : There are 4 staff traits, they need to be merged into 2. Don’t care how
• VI) Shrouded Removal : I guess this is nice, but we don’t really need more condition removal
• VII) Greater Marks : There are 4 staff traits, they need to be merged into 2. Don’t care how
• VIII) Reaper’s Protection : This is great, I love it.
• IX) Death Shiver : Shouldn’t this be in a damaging tree? it applies vulnerability that isn’t defensive.
• X) Flesh of the Master : Minion master trait in Death Magic that isn’t mandatory, I like that.
• XI) Death Nova : GM worthy trait
• XII) Necromantic Corruption : Like Drarnor said I want a defensive trait that isn’t minion reliant.

After some considerations:
1) Necromancer:
Has way too many useless traits (grandmaster minor in spite gives one stack of might for instance). Life siphoning is legitimately useless because arenanet is scared of making it op so they don’t make it viable this is evidenced by SOV which is useless. Minionmancers are only currently useful in 1vs1s in PVP, thats it. The bugs in general are insane. Death Shroud lockout bug is game breaking, and has been for 1 year. Death Shroud in general is clunky, it needs to function more like an attunement and less like a transform. Power, support, and tanking builds all need buffs to make them viable.

2) Elementalist:
This would be pretty decent if they had any innate survivability, but there survivability is so bad they can’t even have access to two of their trees. In PVE they are really awesome, but in PVP they die far to easily. I don’t play one like a Necromancer or Engineer, but when fighting one in PVP it becomes obvious they need survivability buffs.

3)Engineer:
They are in an ok place because of a few viable builds. The problem with Engis arrises when you consider that their turrets are useless, and their kits are too important. They need serious buffs to turrets, and gadgets so that they become more viable. A buff to their actual weapons would help them a lot as with build diversity as well. Most of the time I feel build choices are limited because the main weapons are awkward or weak (aka pistol 1).

Overall though many of the bugs for necros, eles, engis, mesmers, and rangers need to be addressed before anything else is even considered.

minimum 200 dps per second against condition builds. along with the damage they are already taking from simply attacking. One attack per second would make that 400dps per second just from retaliation. That’s insane considering that’s how much health healing signet heals per second. That is simply too much damage.

I generally run something like this and most people run something similar. The changes people make will either be to the utilities, a few of the trait selections to the adept majors (the point allocation is almost always the same), or switching the elite for plague. Signet of Spite is incredible, spectral armor for stun break and recharging death shroud when you get focused, and I take spectral wall to deny people at breakpoints. In teamfights though switch out the wall for epidemic.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMaZ7Fbeb07JEoH9CuAiRKOmghSB8kOA-TsAAzCuI+S9l7LzXyvsfN8Y9x8DA

Make some of our bad weapon traits fixed and implement a few new ones to give us a good tanking build. A range increase on the axe somehow (trait), a cleave weapon of any kind, bunch of bug fixes, fix siphons (including sig of vampirism), and new utilities (orders).

What you would do to give us a good tanking build.

I believe they said it would be posted late this week.

ATMAvatar.5749:

I would be sufficiently happy if projectile speeds on ele were doubled or tripled. The current speeds are so low, my character is poor from having to pay for postage on each projectile :/

Give it to the necro and mesmer too and I’m game.

I like these ideas for one reason, they are build defining. Elites need to define your build. For instance many necromancers take plague because it helps in certain situation, but it is so situational it is useless most of the time. These might be a little strong, but the thought behind them is in the right direction.

Heizero.9183:

Direct damage counters:
Blocks
Protection
Invuln
Positioning
Blind
“Zero damage” abilities such as Endure Pain
Dodging
Total:7

Condition damage counters:
Blocks(Still damages if applied)
Invuln(still damages if applied)
Blind(same as first two)
Dodging
Condition Removal
Condition Immunity (Berserker Stance/Automated Response)
Total:6

That is incorrect:
Direct Damage counters:
blocks(aegis counts too)
protection
invuln (this includes endure pain)
positioning
blind
dodging

Condition damage counters:
blocks
invulns
blind
dodging
positioning (this one is kind of lol there are ranged and melee condition and power weapons)
condition removal
condition duration reduction(automated response, diamond skin, zerker’s stance, melandru, lemongrass)

I forgot about protection in my original post, but the argument still favors direct damage heavily. that’s not even pointing out that condition builds attack slower making aegis and blind more effective.