^
Reading those patch notes is not just reading a wall of text; it is an experience. There are pictures! Icons! Tables! Previous-to-new comparisons! Witty puns! And most importantly: dev feedback and rationale!
The last point is most important. ArenaNet, this is your opportunity to really connect with your community. Including dev feedback and rationale concerning changes into the patch notes enables the community to understand the devs’ reasoning on decisions, and improves the feedback that the community provides henceforth. It makes the community feel included, and not so alienated.
A good indicator of well-written patch notes is that the notes should be able to make some sense to someone who doesn’t even play the game.
Just my $0.02.
Are you daft? Pip is a military term.
Pip, a decoration worn on a military uniform to denote rank, such as on British Army officer rank insignia.
Getting good will earn you some; crying and typing on a forum won’t.
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Plague: (Stays the same)
-A) Reduce the cooldown from 180s to 150s.
-B) Reduce the duration from 20s to 15s.
-C) If point B is done, I would also like to freely enter and exit Plague throughout its duration even if it means the added toughness and vitality is reduced.
Great suggestion. Being able to pop in and out of Plague would add a whole new dimension to the skill. Players would be encouraged to actively utilize the stability and condition pulses and weave them into combos.
Right now, Plague’s #1 problem is the sharp drop in pressure once the Necro enters Plague. By enabling activation/deactivation of Plague for 10-15 seconds, the Necro will be able to maintain pressure on opponents and continue to be a threat. This would certainly fix Plague’s issue of being a “lul ignore the plague. Nah actually let’s just outright kill the Necro in plague” spell like it is right now.
I’m liking the pace of matches, though. All of my games have ended less than 10 minutes. These are breakneck speeds in comparison to last season’s trollobunkermancer infestation.
You can still face 5-man premades duo queuing. They didn’t disallow that possibility.
5 solo cannot vs 5-man premade. That’s all. Every other combination is possible.
They decreased the fear duration on necro skills and added diminishing returns when chaining fears.
wat
Solo queue is fine as an option. There’s nothing wrong about solo queue, and we have the infrastructure to implement solo queue (again) at the drop of a hat.
The problem is that we don’t have the pvp population to support solo queue without severely hurting the queue times of all other queues. That’s it.
It makes more sense this way. A loss is a loss.
Good ideas, keep them coming. Maybe change plague blast to transfer one condition every third blast, similar to the corrupt on scepter’s autos.
I really believe plague blast, or certain properties of plague blast, needs to be implemented into shroud. The 0.5 second cast is a world of difference from 1 second.
Condi transfer on shroud #1 seems appropriate because Reapers can instantly transfer 5 conditions in shroud by proc’ing Plague Sending. To transfer 5 conditions with my revamped plague blast, it would take nearly 8 seconds of shroud #1 casts.
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Axe should be changed like this:
- Make axe a melee weapon that cleaves, just like dagger, but can switch to ranged DPS. Details below.
- Axe #2 should not be a channel. It should be a cast DoT just like Ranger’s bird-swarm from warhorn #4.
- Attacking the marked target gives the Necro an attack speed boost.
- When a target is marked with the axe #2 DoT, autoattacks from axe can hit from long range on the marked target (think Urgot’s seeker missiles in League).
- Deselecting the marked target and autoattacking will result in melee cleave attacks.
If they just made these few changes, axe would a viable ranged power weapon for Necros.
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Reaper specialization outclasses Core Necro specialization. Post your ideas here on how to fix this.
Problem #1: Reaper shroud is better than Core Necro shroud in every way.
Fix:
- Replace Core Necro shroud #1 Life Blast with Plague Blast.
- Give Core Necro shroud #3 pulsing stability just like Reaper. Activating it again will inflict a single target long-ranged, longer duration fear (as opposed to Reaper’s flavor of self-AoE small fear).
- Change Core Necro shroud #2 to a delayed ground-targeted teleport, exactly like League’s Lissandra (example: http://cdn.leagueoflegends.com/champion-abilities/videos/mp4/0127_04.mp4). Lower the recharge to be equal to Reaper’s, so that it can be used to strategically weave in and out of combat just like Reaper.
- Add to Core Necro shroud #4 a pulsing boon corrupt effect to increase synergy with condi builds, similar to Reaper’s #4’s synergy with different builds.
Your turn.
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Give core specializations 4 trees instead of 3.
Game fixed.
How do I upvote this thread x100? Does the red +1 button do anything?
Mesmers painfully lack condi clear. You’ll want to hit-and-run. Load them with condis and GTFO. Let them stealth and blur and blink around in agony while your condis tick on them.
I would love an extra pathway into Shroud.
Shrouded Healing (spectral): Instantly enter Shroud and heal yourself for X health.
This gives players access to Shroud when it’s on recharge. Entering Shroud is instant, but the heal will have a cast time. If the heal gets interrupted, the necro still benefits from going into Shroud.
So Gunflame or whatever and gg?
This can’t happen when Warrior has such hard-hitting moves. The attacks aren’t always easy to land, I know, but that doesn’t mean you can remove all counter-play.Anyway, good changes for now, but hopefully they’ll squeeze in a couple more.
That’s why it would be restricted to Signet of Might, which has room for counterplay and windows of opportunity built in.
Not warriors, who still have no reason to play this game or buy HOT.
^
Add to warriors’ Signet of Might the ability to make their attacks unblockable + immune to evade + corrupts Protection.
The masters of weaponry should have the unique ability of landing all attacks successfully (aside from invulnerability).
please, please, PLEASE do something about Warrior. Anything.
block block block…. evade evade evade… immune immune immune immune… aaaand im dead
^
Add to warriors’ Signet of Might the ability to make their attacks unblockable + immune to evade + corrupts Protection.
The masters of weaponry should have the unique ability of having their attacks always landing successfully (aside from invulnerability).
what’s the matter you guys don’t enjoy getting farmed by full 5 man premades as 5man pug? You are forgetting 1 thing. We are esports!
Anet: “checking your logs”
Anet: “Yup, all is fine.”
I meant while in the Mallyx legend. Beating a rev would be as simple as – wait for Mallyx, stack immobile, ping pong and burst to your hearts content.
You just described how to beat any class. Burn their cooldowns, CC, burst. And revenants should be excluded from this formula because..?
Re-implementing solo queue would be simple. Much like how there are checkboxes for stronghold and conquest, there would be checkboxes for solo and team.
Traditional solo queuers who want to continue having the same exact arena experience as now will check both boxes. Players who want an actual solo queue will only check the solo queue box, and teams who want to only play other teams will check the team box (or if they want to continue farming pugs, check both boxes).
Everyone gets to have, and eat, their cake.
Because Solo Queue was too popular. So popular that everyone wanted to play solo queue instead of team queue.
The success of solo queue is the reason it was removed.
I just had a 45 minute solo queue only to be matched up vs Abjured.
First, what the heII? It’s 11:30 AM CDT. How does a 5 man team get together in the middle of a weekday.
I don’t mind vsing Abjured, PZ, Apex over and over. What sucked was the 45 minute queue. Why does this still happen? Even after pvp activity spiked from the league launch, 45 minute queues are actually still a thing?
Please share your thoughts here about how much you love matchmaking too.
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But Their hardest counter is the warrior, and it’s always been the warrior. Warriors lack playtime atm but even the core rampage warrior would own any flavor of necro, be it core or Reaper.
Warriors were good at rushing down core necros due to to necros lacking melee cleave. Core shroud is notoriously awful at dealing with melee rush-downs because of its slow ranged abilities with directional line of sight requirements and long cast times.
Reaper shroud solves these previous issues by introducing melee cleave, AoE CC, and stability: all of the tools needed to wreck warriors, or at least punish them heavily for attempting a rush-down.
However, I agree with the original post. Condi reaper is decent but not overwhelming or underwhelming. It is surprisingly balanced as is.
So, you want this added to spectral skills.
Precision is not necessary for a condi reaper. Precision maximizes condi damage, and precision allows reapers to hit the maximum condi damage ceiling possible because of Target the Weak.
Rabid amulet combined with Undead runes and Curses traits enables the condi reaper to achieve the highest condition damage possible for reapers, if that is the player’s goal. That is the only function of precision.
The only reason why condi reapers get dhuumfire is to make shroud less useless to them, because in reality the condi reaper outputs much more pressure through weapons and utilities.
Shroud to a condi reaper is mostly a defensive cushion with some burst through #5 + #4 and then #1 dhuumfire. Without dhuumfire, 95% of the total amount of time spent in shroud would be useless.
Same goes for my side. If I’m queuing as 4, the success of our games just depends on babysitting our pug. It doesn’t help that the pug is often a hopeless crappy player that has no idea what they’re doing. By the end of the game, the pug is often flaming us, thinking they’re superior, when they were obviously carried by us. Pugs learn nothing from being matched with premades, and/or versing premades.
5-man or none.
I hate playing vs premades because all games boil down to identifying the pugs on the enemy team and picking them off. If I’m going to play vs premades, I expect an actually challenging full 5-man team. Otherwise it becomes a boring game of bully-the-pug-and-win.
5-man or none.
20k damage is not possible in sPvP anymore. This is a troll post.
It just feels awful that even with my pulsing 3 stacks of stability, I still manage to get stunned/dazed. What’s the point.
Condition reapers should have no problems against Rangers. This is where power and condition diverge in usefulness. Condition Reapers just excel at long ranged pressure.
PvP wisewise, both styles are beneficial to a team. The main difference is that condition reapers have better long ranged pressure. Necros just don’t have very many ranged power weapons; axe is okay but not great.
I noticed that neither of you guys (the 2 posters above) run unholy martyr or vital persistence…how does that affect your gameplay? How do you (or your build) work around the fast RS depletion? I see you load up on traited spectrals, so do you compensate the lack of UM/VP by having great LF regen?
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. My build generates life force very quickly, but it depletes more quickly, so it balances itself out. It fits the play style because majority of damage and pressure comes from outside of shroud, so it’s better to use shroud as little as possible and only enter shroud when absolutely necessary.
I only trait in spectral for the life force generation synergy with Spectral Wall. If I wasn’t running wall, I wouldn’t run spectral trait either.
Also, Weakening Shroud is necessary because this build does not use offhand dagger. Weakness is needed as a cover-condition to hinder enemy condition cleansing.
It is almost perma stab since you can get into that transform easily.
The stability has a 20 second cooldown.
Key notes:
1) I use Superior Sigil of Speed (on-swap quickness) and Sigil of Rage on Scepter/Focus. The speed sigil is so versatile: great for nearly instant casting focus #5, Consume Conditions, and any other long cast time abilities on weapon swap or shroud drop. Rage Sigil is for quickly overloading the target with conditions with scepter or through Shroud (shroud #4 with quickness is tremendous burst).
2) Spectral Mastery makes the Spectral Wall grant life force every single time it is touched. Even if an opponent has stability, you are granted an easy 5% life force every time they cross the wall. Dropping it in the middle of a team fight means instantly 0 – 100 life force.
3) Damaging chills and fears and dhuumfire makes this build output very high pressure, both in melee and long-range. Though it has high damage output, it also has a lot of built in survivability through spectral skills, passive/active condition transfers and cleanses, and high toughness.
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This was the previous effect: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Deathly_Chill&diff=1091051&oldid=1091049
Though the character animation is not synced, the Dragon BaII Z glowing ball of light is synced to the actual stomp completion. Just keep your eye on the ball and ignore the body animation.
I don’t like how elite specs are now mandatory to stay competitive. It is sad to me that the arrival of HoT really did kill off many quality builds that have evolved over years and years of gameplay, feedback, and patches. HoT arrived and squashed all of the old builds.
+1
I cannot believe this is not a thing yet. ArenaNet is hesitant to do this because they don’t want the game to become an “Eyes Glued On Cooldowns” game, but oversimplifying the game to the point where the player is neglected information is even more negative.
How does that feel? Quite literally; Chill is in the same position Bleeding was months ago. How is that good?
I don’t support the idea that multiple sources of chill should all independently damage targets. Chill as a single stack dealing a single tick of damage is the way it should be. However, I do agree that non-damaging chill overriding damaging chill feels awful and anti-fun. Priority should be given to chills that are causing damage.
By the way, my opinions are strictly about PvP.
This would be a good supplement to the melee style of reapers but it would take away ranged pressure options, which reapers are already very limited in.
I think the Blind application from traited Consume Conditions is so destructive. Having to waste an ability just to break out of blind after healing feels awful.
It’s funny. Corruptions are powerful un-traited as is, yet they become weaker when traited. I don’t understand the logic behind that.
Deathly Chill feels really good. It’s a consistent source of damage that requires Active Gameplay to upkeep. The fact that chill damage does not stack means that chill application requires strategy; it’s not brainless spamming of a condition like Mesmer’s confusion or Guardian’s burn.
Overall Deathly Chill should be kept the way it is. It feels strong but not imbalanced. It encourages Active Gameplay and strategy to use effectively.
Almost all classes have traits and abilities that instantly remove or reduce chill specifically and passively. Daredevils can remove chill on evade, etc.
Chill revolves around active gameplay. It is strong and decent damage but not imbalanced.
Rabid amulet , undead rune, curses trait line: chill ticks for ~800 damage.
+25 might, +25 vulnerability on target: chill ticks for ~1100 damage.
It’s pretty decent, consistent damage. It’s good but doesn’t feel imbalanced.
Yasha is correct. The two heal traps work very differently. Both traps have a small heal and a big heal.
The DH heal trap gives a small heal on cast but doesn’t give the big heal until it is triggered. The trap is actually a trap while in-combat that needs to be triggered, just like most other traps.
The ranger’s gives a big heal on cast and a small heal on cast, too, from regeneration; the trap automatically triggers on cast while in-combat. Does that make sense? On cast, the trap is activated right away while in combat and does not require a 3rd party to trigger it. It’s a “trap” by recent classification only; by design it wasn’t a trap before until recently when ANet slapped the word “trap” onto the skill’s tooltip.
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Shield of wrath: 36s CD untraited.
Shelter: 30s CD
Renewed focus: 90s CD (72 when traited, which is usually the case).
Virtue/shield of courage: 70s CD. Both apply aegis, latter blocks projectiles for 3s.What is this about blocking every 10s?
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fragments_of_Faith
5 fragments = 5 aegis
One trait activates one aegis and one fragment trap on stun, so that’s 1 aegis + 5 more aegis. The active version of the trap is another 5 aegis. That’s 11 aegis from DH specialization, in addition to all the aegis from the guardian base spec.
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Ranger traps are condition based, DH traps are damage based. You can’t compare apples and oranges.
I don’t think the problem is the damage. Is the utility you get from them.
The utility in ranger traps is the recharge. The shortest ranger trap recharge is 12 seconds. The shortest DH trap recharge is 24 seconds.
Combined with this: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Trapper
And rangers have all the utility they need.