Guild Wars 2

One of these guys in pvp
spite/curses
reaping/curses/shouts
burst condi

As for PVE, prolly something like this. I generally don’t think soul reaping is worth it for a condi pve build.
Basic

Bhawb.7408:

zapv.8051:

Also, spinal shivers would still be bad at a 1 second cast. That’s just a 1/4 second reduction, which is not enough to make it hard to dodge at all. I’d suggest they remove the trait chill of death, which is cheap auto proc BS that carries our burst, and compensate by taking spinal shivers down to a 1/2 second cast or less.

The point isn’t to make it impossible to avoid, which is what 1/2s would be, at that point it only has a cast time so you can’t cast it at the same time as other abilities/while CCed. It changes fights in a very big way, it can’t be less than 3/4s, and even that is pushing it for an impactful ability. If any change would be made its to bump up the damage to push it more properly into the roll it is meant to full.

Well, maybe I just have better reactions then most people, but I can dodge most of the 1/2 second casts consistently (assuming I’m not stoned). 3/4s would be fine as well, but 1 second isn’t enough of a change for me. Also, I feel like it would be more justified at a 1/2 second if as I said chill of death is removed. Damage might be another nice option. I like that you currently get rewarded in pvp for removing more boons, but in pve this also makes the skill useless. Maybe it could deal it’s top damage both if the foe had 0 boons and 3 or more, and thus be more useful in pve.

Reaper’s Touch would be way way better with fury. The regen is bad, it’s clearly an offensive weapon with two skills that hit relatively hard. Regen is probably the least desirable boon on focus. Also, spinal shivers would still be bad at a 1 second cast. That’s just a 1/4 second reduction, which is not enough to make it hard to dodge at all. I’d suggest they remove the trait chill of death, which is cheap auto proc BS that carries our burst, and compensate by taking spinal shivers down to a 1/2 second cast or less.

Toughness is already the best defensive stat by far, doesn’t need any buffs.

Similarly, most of the debilitating conditions and boons are fine, with the possible exception of quickness and slow. Every damaging condition except burning needs a 10% buff or more. They don’t deal near enough damage to be worth it, which is why you don’t see many condition builds in the game that focus on confusion, torment, poison or bleed.

Also, condition application is completely overshadowed by condition removal contrary to what you say. The only place conditions are effective is in a 3vs3 or less. Anything more than that and aoe condi clear makes conditions irrelevant. Resistance is extremely strong, and I think anet wants it to be a self application boon because it would be way too strong if applied regularly in aoe.

This isn’t another MMO this is GW2. Saying other MMOs do xyz is no justification at all for a change, and is in fact justification for not making that change because Anet wants this game to function differently from other MMOs. Support roles already exist in this game, they don’t need more buffs. People are tanky enough as is without more aoe healing and boon application.

glaphen.5230:

zapv.8051:

robertul.3679:

People complain because it’s pretty frustrating to deal with 6k burn ticks or more. That means if you don’t got a cleanse ready for whatever reason you die in 3-4s.

The only way you get 6k burn ticks on a burn guard is if you land a lot of skills. If your getting hit by everything the guardian has what do you expect? If you can’t avoid a burn guard burst, I’d hate to see you fight a good shatter mes.

glaphen.5230:

zapv.8051:

Most builds already run crit chance, not a problem. Also, it is most definitely a viable sigil. I think I see your problem, your letting the burn guard land literally everything. That’s the only way your getting 5-7 condos on you at once.

Those conditions apply on literally instant actions.

Except only a few of them do, which is completely fair because there are many instant damaging skills. Also, most of those instant skills have other prerequisites to land. The point is that guards really don’t apply many conditions outside of burn, and a generosity sigil will very often remove that burn. Your acting like burn guards are putting 5 conditions on people in regular fights which they simply aren’t. As soon as you get rid of the few cover conditions they have, which are all sparse in application, the only thing left is burn.

Literally the only Guardian burn that isn’t instant is Zealot’s Fire. Only reason you don’t see 6k burn ticks is the target can’t survive that long. Also instant physical damage skills, name a couple please. How much condition removal do you expect people to carry, remove cover conditions now remove the burn and hope they don’t put on more right after. Also shatter burst is easy enough to counter if you have any sort of teleport/block or weapon dodge, clones have a travel time, that is if you fail to avoid their swap immobilize in the first place, Guardians instantly teleport.

Most guard burns come from the passive of virtue of justice which requires you to land skills. As for your second statement, I have a very hard time believing people don’t live long enough when they keep posting damage profiles where they lived for 50+ seconds, and yet complain about dieing.

You go on to name shatters, which are instant damage skills, but right before that you said they don’t exist. Guess that’s why you post an argument about countering them, without realizing or at least acknowledging those same skills can counter most of the guardians burn application (which as many have said they can). It’s hilarious again that you don’t acknowledge mesmers have an instant port besides swap as well as stealth to set up their damage even more easily than a guard.

As for the question about condition clear. I expect about 3 every 10 seconds. It’s about how much I normally have and taking anymore than that is overkill. One can easily be from genorosity, and mes and thief can get away with less because of smart disengage.

Bhawb.7408:

Hey look, its this thread again. WoP doesn’t need this, it is way too much power to just add to a skill that is pretty much fine (or was I don’t remember if they screwed up its effect a while back or not).

1 stack of aoe stab every second for 5 seconds while standing in a circle is not that strong. If this skill is fine, how come I don’t see it in competitive play? It certainly doesn’t provide enough utility to justify it in pve the overwhelming majority of the time either.

mazut.4296:

zapv.8051:

I know what the skill does Cogbyrn. Its main use is clearing conditions the secondary effect is giving you boons. Considering you have to stand in a circle where you are very vulnerable to get that conversion, that that conversion is random and thus unreliable, and that it has a 50 second CD, I’d say it needs buffs. Theoretically it is a nice skill, in practice it doesn’t convert what you want and reduces necros already bad mobility by forcing you to stand in it. If it gave stab you would be less vulnerable in it and thus more likely to get its full effect (also would be a good pve buff).

What are you talking about?! Its really good and one of the few aoe party support skills we have…

We are the worst class in this game at party support. This is supposedly one of our best party support skills. Not sure how that doesn’t translate to this skill needing buffs. If our best party support skills are still never worth running, they aren’t strong enough. Same issue I have with blood magic, people claim it is great support, but I never see anyone serious running it in a support build. That to me means it isn’t that great.

I think too many of you are thinking about the potential of the skill. Theoretically, it could convert 25 conditions to boons, grant prot to 5 people, and siphon for you. In reality, your allies won’t stand in it because they want to stay mobile, you will get bursted and ping pong balled because you aren’t getting stab or area denial with damage, and it’s very possible you don’t get the conditions off you that you want because it is a slow pulsing condi removal (which means you might convert cripple five times instead of burn or bleeds).

With stability, your allies would want to stand in this well, and you wouldn’t be completely vulnerable to enemy cc. Also, it would give base necro stability it still sorely needs. It would also still have direct counters in shatter boon removal, well of corruption, null field, and straight up aoe burst. Suddenly support necro would be viable because you could actually cover skills like transfusion or your heal to be less vulnerable to burst cc chains.

robertul.3679:

People complain because it’s pretty frustrating to deal with 6k burn ticks or more. That means if you don’t got a cleanse ready for whatever reason you die in 3-4s.

The only way you get 6k burn ticks on a burn guard is if you land a lot of skills. If your getting hit by everything the guardian has what do you expect? If you can’t avoid a burn guard burst, I’d hate to see you fight a good shatter mes.

glaphen.5230:

zapv.8051:

Most builds already run crit chance, not a problem. Also, it is most definitely a viable sigil. I think I see your problem, your letting the burn guard land literally everything. That’s the only way your getting 5-7 condos on you at once.

Those conditions apply on literally instant actions.

Except only a few of them do, which is completely fair because there are many instant damaging skills. Also, most of those instant skills have other prerequisites to land. The point is that guards really don’t apply many conditions outside of burn, and a generosity sigil will very often remove that burn. Your acting like burn guards are putting 5 conditions on people in regular fights which they simply aren’t. As soon as you get rid of the few cover conditions they have, which are all sparse in application, the only thing left is burn.

Most builds already run crit chance, not a problem. Also, it is most definitely a viable sigil. I think I see your problem, your letting the burn guard land literally everything. That’s the only way your getting 5-7 condos on you at once.

Many conditions, lol it’s a burn guard they only have a few. Also it uses the original persons condi damage not your own. Also, your really dumb if you run it without crit chance.

I know what the skill does Cogbyrn. Its main use is clearing conditions the secondary effect is giving you boons. Considering you have to stand in a circle where you are very vulnerable to get that conversion, that that conversion is random and thus unreliable, and that it has a 50 second CD, I’d say it needs buffs. Theoretically it is a nice skill, in practice it doesn’t convert what you want and reduces necros already bad mobility by forcing you to stand in it. If it gave stab you would be less vulnerable in it and thus more likely to get its full effect (also would be a good pve buff).

You think the only semi-viable condition build in the game, which gets countered hard by generosity sigils, is the most OP in the game. That’s just hilarious.

Yes, this skill should pulse stab. It isn’t about the 1 stack on it now which is to cover the cast time. It’s just that this skill is pretty bad cause of its CD. 40-50 seconds for condi clear is obscene. If it pulsed stab it would empower allies for a few seconds and could be used to stomp effectively, while also making base necro less of a ping pong ball.

More 4 stat amulets in the mold of marauders with 1050 of 2 stats and 560 of the other 2. Power/Condi/precision/vitality, Power/Healing Power/precision/vitality would be great.

Since you seem to want a direct response to your original post.

style.6173:

So after playing the beta this weekend, it became obvious that burn stacking is still a problem. Those who don’t run it say it is broken and those who are carried by it say to use a condition clear.

The first sentence is an opinion. The second is blatantly false because many people stating they don’t really play condition builds have said burning is not broken in this very thread. The only way I see you could reach the conclusion of the second sentence is if you literally think anyone who disagrees with you runs burn builds regardless of their own statements.

style.6173:

Something needs to be changed here. Instead of nerfing burning, I think condi clear needs to be changed.

The change: Remove the highest damaging condi first when activating a condi clear. Add more skill to to the game play. Be smart about when to use condi clears.

You go on to suggest a change to condition clear based on your previously false conclusion. Which of course leads you to a somewhat outrageous change to anyone who’s ever actually played a condition build.

If the highest damage condition was removed first, condition damage builds would disappear completely from the game. Clearing anything that actually hurt would be so easy and mindless that even the worst players could do it. It would be like the current problem with condition builds in fights over 3vs3 where you can’t get enough damage because of aoe cleansing, but in every single encounter.

The current implementation where the last applied condition gets removed first allows for the skillful play of cover conditions. It also allows skillful counterplay by quickly using condition removals after a big burst application. This requires players to be smart about condition clears.

Now, all of this isn’t to say some classes don’t need better condition clear options, but a lot of people want to have their cake and eat it too. You don’t get to spec for all out burst and be super resistant to conditions. The reason condition builds have a defensive stat is precisely because they have the direct counter of condition removal, and you have to land multiple attacks to reach burst levels of damage over a 1 second interval.

Yes you can unranked queue with a friend. I’d also recommend google searching metabattle and starting with one of the meta builds. Probably will be more forgiving, and will help you survive a little longer while your still learning pvp.

In both death magic and blood magic, there are several minor traits normal necromancer builds can’t chose not to take that are far far more valuable to minion masters than regular necro builds. A few of these minors are also just bad.

Death Magic:
I want it to be clear that this is not just an MM traitline, and the minors should benefit many different builds equally.

Armored Shroud: not any better for MMs, but super boring and relatively weak.
Change: Please change it to give vigor, protection or stability, replace it with Putrid defense, make it aoe condition clear, siphon endurance. Tons of much more interesting things that could go there.

Soul Comprehension: In pvp, this trait is terrible for anyone not an MM. MMs get to see that 20% extra LF from their minions dieing. Regular necros do not. It is also a really boring trait.
Change: Either make the LF gen baseline or just get rid of it. Replace this trait with something that gives vigor, protection or stability (to self or aoe), allied condition clear, siphon endurance. Noticing a theme here.

Beyond the Veil: Again, this trait is way better for MMs than anyone else. Really just blatantly unfair to non mms.
Change: Should just apply to allies in aoe. Would give necromancer more much needed support.

Blood Magic: Not as much to say about this one

Vampiric: Either 1, this trait is balanced around MMs getting siphoning, in which case the minion part needs to be moved to something else and the base vampiric life siphon needs to go up, or two it is balanced around everyone taking it, but MMs get siphoning for free.

Change: Merge the minion part into vampiric presence, and buff the base vampiric value to compensate.

Life from Death: This doesn’t really need any changes, but I feel like it is very close to be a super good trait.
Change: make it also remove one condition from allies, remove the rez % if you must, it’s mediocre anyway.

Well, I would like to hear what the community thinks about these changes and these traits as a whole. I feel like most of them are a major hindrance to non MM necros taking these two traitlines, which is why they need change.

TLDR: Minors shouldn’t be 5X more effective for minionmancers over other necro builds.

GS is slow and will never be great in high tier pvp, which is fine. Death’s spiral would be nice at 3/4 second cast.

Reaper’s Shroud is amazing in every way, and the only thing that needs fixing is the reliability of Death’s Charge. I don’t just mean amazing OP either, it is well designed with direct counters all over.

Shouts aren’t bad, Suffer could use one added condition removed baseline. NCSY needs to give allies unblock-ability. Chilled to the bone needs to not go on full cooldown when interrupted or canceled after the first half of the cast (one of it’s main uses could be to bait cds and dodges).

As for the traits, I like most of them. I would like the traitline more if there was a damage increase against chilled foes. Maybe 5 rolled into the master minor.

Any other problems with Reaper are an extension of the base class. Bad LF gen without soul reaping, and d/w needs to be addressed. Spectral armor needs to scale with the number of targets and the other spectral skills need thought. Blood magic needs a trait for allied condi cleanse and it would be great. Death magic adept and master minors need to be replaced with interesting traits that do something to your gameplay. The gm minor needs aoe protection still. Curses needs traits moved around. Corruptions need a ton of work. Maybe make necros a better aoe might stacker, comparable to how war is now, so we would have a spot in raids.

Finally, I’d like to suggest you change the GS 4 skill nightfall into the well of darkness and replace well of darkness with a well that chills foes and deals damage. Heck, you could make it an elite for all I care, I just want one more ice field and another way to get aoe chill.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hi Tongku,

Magic Find affects specific chests in PvP that are labeled like mobs you would kill in PvE land. For instance, the “Bird Loot Box” simulates killing birds in PvE but well a box. :P

So if you were in PvE and you looted said bird your magic find would affect that reward. As such opening the “Bird Loot Box” with high magic find will give you better loot depending on your magic find.

Hope that answers your question.

HUGH HUGH HUGH HUGH HUGH HUGH HUGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

LIKE A BOSS

I’ve played pretty much every meta build in this game. I mostly run condition builds for fun in unranked because they suck and get hard countered by anyone smart at using cleanses (I miss terrormancer sooo much). I never get hard countered by diamond skin eles, shout warrs, or smart teams in teamfights when I play power builds. Listen, burn might do slightly too much damage (and it is slight), but most of the other conditions need buffs, and the aoe cleansing in this game makes most conditions irrelevant for anything over a 3vs3.

The only time I really die to burn builds is when I would have died faster to power builds. If a burn guard hits me with 10 stacks of burn, that translates to a mes/thief hitting me for like 10k burst in the same time frame I wasn’t paying attention or was without cds. While those 10 burns might hit for more over their duration, I or my team can remove them to take very little damage. You cannot say the same for power burst. Also, power burst works much better in a coordinated setup. I would much rather face two burn builds over two power builds because removing 20 burns and 10 burns requires the same amount of condi cleanse while avoiding/healing through 20k and 10k damage is vastly different.

TLDR: Condition builds have huge flaws and are only really succesful in 2vs2s or 1vs1s. Also, burning looks more OP then it is because bleeding, torment, confusion and poison are weak right now.

PS: OP is a whiner, been complaining every day since June 23rd instead of learning to counter burn builds.

YES PLEASE. I want so bad, my reaper scythe should spew out stars from the galaxy when I’m holding twilight, and thunderstorm clouds when I’m holding meteoroligicus.

The stability was 1 stack for 1 second, it didn’t help you at all with cc. The current iteration is actually great because it is an instant stunbreak instead of a 1/2 second one, and it now applies more weakness.

Boon corruption, scepter and staff. Also the hope they will bring back terrormancer in a big way.

Doubt raids will be so hard that 9/10 of your people can’t run fully glassy builds. Anet isn’t very good at this game, and I can’t imagine what is difficult for them will be hard for people soloing dungeon paths. Also, as I’ve state you will still want at least 30% base crit chance to max crit chance always. DP won’t be meta for sure.

ronpierce.2760:

I used it a bit. It has a specific value in having some form of frequent chill in shroud, which otherwise relies on a long AOE cooldown one with RS5.

I think the sigil deserves to have a bit of damage attached to it due to the long cooldown it has. Sigil of Hydromancy is better than it in every way possible, though I understand them not wanting to increase the chill uptime it provides, I do think it should have some impact to it. And maybe even just lower the ICD to 9 seconds to match Hydromancy’s.

Yeah, the real problem is that your pretty much always better off running hydro. Since it is single target I could see the CD getting lowered to 5 seconds. That or they could make it an aoe effect similar to chilling nova. 2 second 240 radius chill on hit would be worth it for ranged builds.

Zerk, sinister, and soldiers or valks. Most of the time you will still want a base 30-50% crit chance so you can max crit chance outside DS. Shouldn’t really be taking DEathly perception when you can max crit chance without it.

As the title suggests, I would like life transfer to pulse stability. It would make the long channel much more reliable, and give necros stab under pressure in DS. This would also make the trait Transfusion more valuable because you could get it off more reliably. Currently that’s the main problem with transfusion from a healing perspective, it isn’t guaranteed like a guard or eles healing to eles. Also, on condition builds it is subpar because of the nerf to barbed precision. Stab would give a good reason to use this skill in many more situations. It would also still have counterplay through boon strip, which I’m hoping is all over in HOT, and several classes in pvp.

TLDR: Please put 4 seconds of stab per pulse on Life Transfer, it would make the skill better for general use and buff the good intentioned Transfusion trait.

Ansilon.6230:

Burn is crazy OP, and is the epitome of “No risk, high rewards” build.

Burn guard is one of the highest risk builds in the game. Similarly, burn engi is extremely risky, as is trap ranger. If you don’t land your bursts on those builds you lose.

RlyOsim.2497:

Frightlight.3796:

Serious Thought.5394:

You could just have weakness affect condition builds…. it’s a really simple fix….

Weakness and protection should effect condi as well

I couldn’t agree more. It’s really beyond me when vun now effects condi damage but these two don’t mitigate it.

Has there ever been an official response as to why this is the case?

Conditions already have more than enough counters, they don’t need more. Along with condition clear, evade, invuln, blind, block, and interrupts still work. Protection and weakness are already extremely strong, and probably don’t need anymore buffs either. I would assume it is so you actually have to spec for more defense then you do now. For instance, eles would just need acrcana, and bunker guards would be even harder to kill. Similarly, cele necro would get tankier, which isn’t something the game needs.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

zapv.8051:

The only problem now is LF gen on S/d. If you aren’t getting the skills off it is because your bad. L2P. The damage is also much better now in pvp. Also, they buffed grasping dead quite a bit, don’t know why people are saying it is weaker.

The trait should be changed to grant 180 condi damage and 20% condi duration for your group while wielding scepter. The base durations could go up maybe a second at most. Certainly not the whole 50%.

For scepter/dagger LF gen, we just need one change. Make enfeebling blood, and therefore weakening shroud, grant 3% LF per target hit. The suggestion to grant 4% LF per condi transferred on dagger 4 would be stupid OP btw.

If your enemy can’t avoid a 1.5s cast then I think the people you are playing against need to l2p actually… you can literally walk out of range of scepter 2. the 1s cast on scepter 3 is also a pretty easy tell that is pretty simple to block/dodge.

I don’t see how 4% per condition transferred would be OP. with a cap of 5 conditions that is max 20% LF on an easily avoided/blocked/reflected projectile on an 18 second CD. Compare that to main hand dagger which generates a guaranteed 8% LF every 2.1s. 4% per condition would be under powered imo.

It’s called leading your target, go play nade engi and you’ll see. It isn’t anywhere near as easy to walk out of scepter 2 as you suggest. I land that skill virtually every time (except dodges). Enfeebling blood could maybe use a cast or landing time reduction.

It isn’t easy to avoid reflect or block at all, you can cast it 1 foot away from someone (that’s how you should be using it). You also never mentioned a cap before, 48% LF would be OP. Even the 20% you suggest would be too strong on deathly swarm which is already really really strong. Putting LF on enfeebling blood makes more sense, that skill by itself is weaker than deathly swarm currently.

It should have just been changed to copy only 3 seconds of quickness. The only thing even remotely strong about it was the 18 seconds of quickness you could get. The might was a non-issue.

The only problem now is LF gen on S/d. If you aren’t getting the skills off it is because your bad. L2P. The damage is also much better now in pvp. Also, they buffed grasping dead quite a bit, don’t know why people are saying it is weaker.

The trait should be changed to grant 180 condi damage and 20% condi duration for your group while wielding scepter. The base durations could go up maybe a second at most. Certainly not the whole 50%.

For scepter/dagger LF gen, we just need one change. Make enfeebling blood, and therefore weakening shroud, grant 3% LF per target hit. The suggestion to grant 4% LF per condi transferred on dagger 4 would be stupid OP btw.

Blood is Power: Needs better uptime on might, never going to compete with aoe might stackers when we can’t even get 8 stacks in a small aoe for 100% of the time.

Corrupt Boon: Could go up to 7 boons, and it would probably be fine. There needs to be a reason to actually run this over signets.

CPC: decent buff, still probably won’t see a ton of use, but it’s goodish now.

Epidemic: Not anywhere near as good as most suggest. One second cast, and aoe cleanse make it near useless in pvp. You would win most of the fights that this skill can win you. I’d like to see it get a cast reduction, or apply a bleed for each condition copied.

Consume Conditions: I miss the old base cd. Move it back down to 25 base, so necros don’t have to trait for a decent heal.

Plague: One of the best elites in the game, massively underrated if a little boring. AOE blind AOE weakness, and aoe bleed/poison are all useful.

Why not do this you ask?

Because that trait would be blatantly OP, several classes have 20% extra damage under 50% health and they are all decent traits.

Novuake.2691:

Mazinger.1084:

HEDRO.2345:

Completely agree with having both zealot and sinister in pvp.
There should be no problem with adding any double+ offensive stat based amulet

just please no dire with them

Can’t imagine who’d actually want dire, but yeah… no. Zealot is sort of a requirement if they want us to be able to give meaningful feedback for Druid, however. The other options are just too tanky and won’t let us be as effective as possible. Please consider Zealot (and perhaps Sinister) for PvP.

Condi shatter mesmers would be complete hell..
ALready the case in WvW. Its invested with them.

One build being, or not being OP is not justification for not having amulets that would increase diversity in pvp.

I’m hoping they add sinister, dire, and zealots to pvp with HOT. Cele will still be really goo d though. In pvp, I would say d/w will be better than GS still. Scepter/Dagger might be a useable replacement for staff if either weapon gets a LF gain buff. Really you could make any of the weapons work, it will just take a little to establish a meta.

BlackBeard.2873:

My prediction:

Even though eles will no longer have as much damage, you will still see lots of QQ because they do have high sustain, ignoring that they once again hit like a wet noodle.

Cele S/D will take over D/D b/c it already stacks might like a boss, and is getting even stronger. This is a good thing b/c S/D takes way more skill to play properly than d/d, and a bad s/d ele just gets rekt. People will complain about “all the damage” s/d ele does when they facetank dragon’s tooth and get caught by a 3-5x phoenix + firegrab + air 2 + lightning flash.

BRING ON THE TEARS

Really stoked to see them buffing a lot of the weak weapons finally. Hopefully, there is more to come for ele scepter.

Addressing the comments on necros health. As a necro, I think there are a few things that need nerfs. First, chill of death is really quite lame. It is the only reason necros have burst, and it completely overshadows focus. Give necros real burst skills that are evadable, and get rid of this cheap BS auto-proc garbage. Same with Plague sending, I want to have to do something to get rid of my conditions. Not rely on a random crit proc that goes off when I don’t want it.

Also, the total amount of DS+Health is obscene, and needs to be taken down. In place of that necros need better LF generation on most of the weapons, and more scaling defense (spectral armor in particular needs to not be as OP in 1vs1, but work better 5v5). Also, the base functionality of DS should be better. Let necros see utils and get healing in shroud. Then consider upping the mobility, or giving necros more vigor, protection, or stab. Finally, necros need better support, Blood Magic is decent, but with no way to grant any boons or clear lots of condis it won’t ever work (maybe with zealots).

I’m pretty sure they factor in which class you play. It is generally expected that you should pick up a new class after your first one much faster than if you just started. Back when I was first learning all the classes, I would go practice on the training dummies till I had several rotations. Going in head first is gonna take way longer than if you just be patient and learn all the skills well. You need to know what the skills do before you learn when to use them.

Bhawb.7408:

Yeah, if anyone has doubts about how strong healing in DS would be go play SR/Unholy Sanctuary Cleric MM, where every time you use DS you basically reset the entire fight. Now imagine every single build being able to do that all the time without the heavy investment.

I do think they need to address healing in DS in some way, but I don’t think 100% would work without massively nerfing the LF pool.

I don’t see a problem with that, a lot of classes can already heal to full constantly by themselves. This would actually require a teammate to help you. It also goes to the point that necros need less health+DS. It would allow us proper sustain, and wouldn’t kitten us from teamwork.

The overarching point is not about balance, the design of DS to not allow healing doesn’t make sense. Teamwork should be encouraged. I’d be willing to take a big hit to total HP+DS if it meant weapons generated LF better, and teammates could heal us in shroud. That is the definition of more sustain, which is what their design is supposed to do.

I want to note that you want at least 30% crit chance in every single pve reaper build, so you can max crit chance out of DS. Also, condi reaper is nothing to scoff at. Scepter is getting some buffs, and HOT looks to be adding more and more enemies to each fight, which makes epidemic all the more powerful. They also probably want to encourage condition damage for more diversity, so I would be unsurprised to see direct damage immune creatures as Lily suggested.

@OP go play bunker guard, pvp tank. Tanks by intelligently dodging, using blocks, invulns, and heavily supports allies with boons and healing.

The problem people who want “tanks” don’t get is that your never supposed to be built to do only one thing really really well in this game. Your always supposed to do at least a few things well. Any build that focuses solely on being as tanky as possible will be subpar in this game because you can give up 10% of your tankiness for a bunch of support, control or dps and still be effective as a tank.

As for everyone saying that druid is a dedicated healer. Go read all the actual skills and traits, and realize that druid is more than just a healer. Healing is the central part of the spec, but it isn’t the whole spec. That spec also brings aoe, control, and condi cleanse in abundance that most people seem to be ignoring.

Smokescale will be the best pet I think. A smoke field is really useful.

That’s the 3rd part of the auto change. They clearly stated on stream feast of corruption would apply 2 stacks of torment by default with up to 5 extra stacks based on how many conditions they have on them.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Bhawb.7408:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Is this actually a buff? we get 1 extra stack of bleed, but lose 60% duration. This seems like a significant nerf to me for overall PvE dps.

You lose 1s of bleeding from Scepter 1’s first and second hit, but gain kitten of bleeding from the final hit, and more poison. On top of that you get 2-7 stacks of Torment. I wouldn’t take anything as gospel yet, wait for a red post or the patch notes on Tuesday.

Robert Gee.9246:

I want to quickly clarify something about this note. The change is that specifically Plague form and Lich form will not destroy your minions. We can’t do this universally for all transforms because it can cause problems with the balance of events or story steps that transform you.

What about Moa Morph?

Is it more than one stack on the final hit? Dulfy has it as just a single extra stack.

With the duration decrease it works out to a wash.

Currently:
2 stacks of bleed every 1.5 seconds, or 1.333 stacks/s. Base 5s duration, 100% from runes/minor/food + 100% from LC = 20s duration. This means you max out at 26 stacks from auto attack.

After balance patch:
3 stacks of bleed every 1.5s or 2 stacks/s. Base duration kitten , 100% increase and 50% from LC = 13.5s duration. This means you max out at 27 stacks from auto attack.

This is a pretty useless change unless I am missing something. Scepter is still crap dps.

Your missing the fact that in pvp you get to +15% condi duration or +65% bleed duration max. I also think there is more to the scepter change than it just being a nerf. Also, the fact that the third skill will be able to get to 7 torment is great.

+10 for relevance

Yeah, this has been suggested many times. If anything, it could at least be 50% so you actually have to think about some of the combos. Most people don’t even realize till they see all the actual combos on reaper, and other classes, but base necro has close to none. With the exception of putrid mark and minions, necros don’t really have any finishers. Minions are build specific, and it isn’t super common that you want to use putrid mark to cleanse condis and blast something.

As for the fields, poison is mostly fine, but the leap weakness needs to be less wonky. Ice is great and needs to stay the same, necros could probably get another ice field, especially with reaper (imo the class with a spec based on chill should have the most ice fields). The ethereal field on spectral wall just needs to be fixed to interact correctly with finishers because it is currently broken and randomly doesn’t proc (chaos armor is underrated and the confusion from whirls is nice cover). It would also be cool if they gave us another ethereal field(possibly on well of corruption or power).

Dark fields on the other hand need a lot of work, leaping applies a blind, and necros only leap applies blind. Since with reaper necros will have 5 dark fields, it needs to get changed to a dark aura or big lifesteal hit (500ish or more). Similarly, the leeching bolts need to heal through shroud, so that the synergy is really there with reaper shroud 4 and dark fields.

Well if your team starts rezzing fast enough it isn’t a big issue. Honestly, stuff like this is needed or people would just run rezbot builds, and no one would ever die. If you blow a utility for it, it is totally balanced. Especially most of these that are on ~60 second cds.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Falcon.8713:

Supertramp.5430:

Falcon.8713:

Axe -> 900 range / Scepter : less casting time on all skills & it’s fine

Yeah, let’s just ignore the fact that scepter 3 is complete kitten.

Kitten ? Used to be useful LF gain on terrormancer

If only we had vital persistence baseline or even no DS degen. Then it’d already be a very strong skill. >_<

No, it would still be pretty bad for s/d weapon set. The LF gen is nice, but it’s a direct damage skill on a condition weapon. Really needs to apply a condition or provide some good utility (boons, healing, cc). Other than that, scepter needs access to torment, and s/d as a whole needs more LF generation. If scepter/dagger looked like this it would be great.

First, remove the Condi duration buff on the GM scepter trait, change it to something else. Then change the scepter skills to (same base damage):

Blood Curse: Apply 8 seconds of bleed
Rending Curse: Apply 7 seconds of torment
Putrid Curse: Apply 6 seconds of poison and gain 3% LF

Grasping Dead: 3 torment for 7 seconds, 7 seconds of cripple.

Feast of Corruption: Gain 3% LF per condition on the target, increase base damage by 2X, apply 3 seconds of bleeding per condition on the target.

Alternatively,
Feast of Corruption: Gain 3% LF per condition on the target, 8% damage per condition on the target, if the target has 3 or more conditions apply fear for 1 second.

Deathly swarm: Probably fine as is

Enfeebling blood: 3 bleed stacks for 10 seconds, same weakness, now also grants 3% LF per target hit. Maybe also reduce the cast time because you cast the 3/4 second animation then it takes another 3/4 seconds for the skill to hit.

The enfeebling blood change would be really nice assuming they make a lot of the LF generation and degen from soul reaping baseline (Maybe also nerf total LF amount to make up for it). Then we wouldn’t be forced into soul reaping as much.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Tim.6450:

Why? Would it make necro OP? Would it make them thematically less interesting?

I actually think it could be made balanced. They would have to tone back a number of the shroud skills to do it, though, and it would honestly feel a lot less impactful as a result. To allow utilities changes the paradigm of DS, which is currently intended to be a transformation with its own life bar that gives you a unique set of skills and nothing else. It’s more like a second weapon swap if you can use your entire bar while it’s active, and I know that’s not what ANet wants.

To directly answer your question, it’s a thematic issue to change it.

I personally wish it acted more as a weapon swap and less like a transform. Still have the separate HP pool, but be able to get healed and use your utilities. As for nerfs, life blast might need to get toned down, maybe dark path, but nothing else really on base necro shroud would be that strong as just a weapon set.

Also, in general it needs to be easier to generate life force, but there should be less of it. I like to imagine necros getting a ton more life force generation on all weapon skills, but it being quite a bit easier to eat through a full DS. This would encourage the active, constantly attacking to sustain playstyle the devs are going for. It wouldn’t be a trivial amount of work, but I think the necro class would be more diverse and balanced. Especially across skill levels.

Also, plague sending and chill of death probably need to be looked at. Chill of death alone outclasses the whole focus weapon, and is really the only reason necros can burst at all. Similarly, the auto-proc plague sending is too strong against condi builds, and doesn’t require any active play to land, while being unreliable because the necro has very little control over the proc.

Cyninja.2954:

I do agree that there are ways to deal with burning, though I do think condis in general are a bit over the top at the moment. Maybe some defenses comming with HoT have not been added to the game yet, who knows.

Condis in general are a bit over the top? Most condi builds are dead. If anything bleed, poison, torment and confusion need buffs. Most condi builds where dead before the June 23rd patch, and are even more dead now.

I do NOT accept the Sigil of Genorosity as a solution though. Sure in spvp you get access to it, but for wvw currently you get to spend 138 gold per sigil. That is certainly not a viable “solution” for WvW.

Too bad wvw is barely considered in balance discussions, but there are far better roaming builds than burn guard.

Cyninja.2954:

Now if conditions did not ignore armor, then we could talk. Fakt is, even with heavy conditions cleanse, you can get burst down by condition builds thanks to crowd control skills. People always pretend condition cleanse is magically happening all the time. Some classes have such high condition aplication, even running max cleanse sometimes is barely enough to keep you alive, not to mention allow you to fight back. Yes, if I counter your build I expect to be able to fight back, not just survive.

Having near direct damage output on conditions is not balanced.

If you take ample condi clear you will never get bursted down by condi builds. Condition cleanse is happening all the time, it isn’t magical. The classes with insane condi application are very dependent on conditions. You seem to expect you should be able to keep yourself 100% clear of conditions completely neutering condi builds. That simply isn’t how it works. Also, what would be the point of vitality if armor effected conditions? It’s already insanely valuable and you want it to be more valuable.

All of your points have been addressed many many many times over the course of the game. Condition builds have rarely been strong or viable in any kind of competitive environment, and in general are currently weak.

Population statistics are a terrible way to look at balance, so I’m going to ignore that (I’m not going to give evidence as to why, anyone with the ability to use google or think logically can see why). The second post is a good read. The issue with thieves is that shortbow, and shadow refuge alone are reason to take a thief now. That means that even though thieves aren’t great in any matchups, they are still being taken for those things. If thieves had even matchups everywhere, and had those things they would be OP. They’d bring everything another class brings and that extra rotation decap ability. Thus, one of two things needs to happen.

Either one, you nerf shortbow mobility and shadow refuge, thus weakening the class initially, but then buff up their actual combat ability to be on par with other classes.

That, or you give 1 or two other classes the mobility, and rezzability thieves have currently, and then go about buffing thieves combat ability. Thus, they would no longer be imbalanced because another class could fill the same role.

As usual Ron pizzle is on point. Gluttony, Soul comprehension, the degen part of vital persistance, and the lf part of soul marks all need to be baseline. Then they need to buff weapon life force generation on scepter/dagger and axe/focus. Then they need to cut the total amount of DS by 10-20%. This would help alleviate the bad LF generation necros have currently on everything except d/w staff with soul reaping.

As for spectrals, I always thought the trait should be GM (move dhummfire to curses maybe). Then along with it’s current effects, each spectral should have another effect. Either that or buff the baseline effects now. Walk needs to either last long enough for you to impact a fight then port out, or have a port to target on it (or make you immune to movement impairing condis). Armor needs to give LF per hit received, but less LF per hit than it does now (3% maybe) maybe stab. Spectral grasp needs to be more reliable, maybe aoe, maybe give a boon (retal, stab, prot). Wall needs a cd reduction, or to destroy projectiles.

As for new traits to replace the old ones, not too hard. Give us damage modifiers, and a few boons. For instance, they could replace soul comprehension with something that gave vigor, stab, or protection. A master tier trait in soul reaping could give a damage mod in DS. Nothing too out of this world or hard about it.