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I wish support classes were better balanced for end game content


Noe.8032

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@"Asum.4960" said:Necro desperately needs something extra, I agree. Especially since Anet seems committed to never make it a top Tier DPS, Healer, Tank, Boon Support, anything - something to incentivize at least bringing one along could go a long way for diversity, and Vampiric Presence just ain't cutting it.

It's not that the necromancer need "extras", it's that the "extras" he already have are incredibly inadapted to PvE and thus hold no value for a group/raid. Debilitating conditions are either hard nerfed by defiance or simply without value due to how mobs/boss behave (when it's not both), boon corruption isn't adapted to fights in which you outnumber your foes nor does it's effect is especially valuble due to mobs/bosses imperviousness to debilitating conditions, the environment still don't output conditions at a steady pace that could be sent back reliably and life leeching just isn't that much of a thing in PvE.

That said, elementalist's auras aren't much more valuable in PvE then what the necromancer got (imo their only value is in the boons/effect they can grant through traits when applied), ANet thoroughly killed projectile reflect in PvE (because lupicus projectiles were so OP he was killing himself with them), mobs conditions output is and have always been terrible which make cleansing terrible as well and, above all, defense in PvE is severly undervalued compared to offense because in this game your best defense is offense.

More than any specific profession, it's PvE itself that need to be looked at. Defiance (whether there is a breakbar or not) need to show a reaction to boon hate, Projectile hate need to hod some value, The environment need to be able to weaken players through slow ramping conditions... etc.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:Necro desperately needs something extra, I agree. Especially since Anet seems committed to never make it a top Tier DPS, Healer, Tank, Boon Support, anything - something to incentivize at least bringing one along could go a long way for diversity, and Vampiric Presence just ain't cutting it.

It's not that the necromancer need "extras", it's that the "extras" he already have are incredibly inadapted to PvE and thus hold no value for a group/raid. Debilitating conditions are either hard nerfed by
defiance
or simply without value due to how mobs/boss behave (when it's not both), boon corruption isn't adapted to fights in which you outnumber your foes nor does it's effect is especially valuble due to mobs/bosses imperviousness to debilitating conditions, the environment still don't output conditions at a steady pace that could be sent back reliably and life leeching just isn't that much of a thing in PvE.

That said, elementalist's auras aren't much more valuable in PvE then what the necromancer got (imo their only value is in the boons/effect they can grant through traits when applied), ANet thoroughly killed projectile reflect in PvE (because lupicus projectiles were so OP he was killing himself with them), mobs conditions output is and have always been terrible which make cleansing terrible as well and, above all, defense in PvE is severly undervalued compared to offense because in this game your best defense is offense.

More than any specific profession, it's PvE itself that need to be looked at.
Defiance
(whether there is a breakbar or not) need to show a reaction to boon hate, Projectile hate need to hod some value, The environment need to be able to weaken players through
slow
ramping conditions... etc.

I do agree with you, although I don't think a major PvE rework to make the game more adaptive and complex is ever coming, quite the opposite. Anet seems very keen to simplify and tune down everything they can.

I've for years floated around and advocated for the idea of introducing the need for a debuffer/utility archetype to GW2, in addition to the DPS, Boonsupport, Healer ish trinity we have, making room for more viable builds and varied compositions, and both helping along some underused specs in PvE as well as lessening the divide between the gamemodes and the need to split balance by making more traditionally PvP centric mechanics relevant in PvE.

Now ofc for years we suffered from the Chronomancer problem, a spec which no matter how content was designed could just cover everything in one slot, be it boon rips, pulls, CC, debilitating conditions, tanking, boon support, portal/skips, reflects etc. etc., which imo massively held back the game, be in terms of content design, class design or composition diversity - but even with that issue slightly lessened now, I don't really see the game moving into a direction where more such utilities are needed much more frequently (and even more so, the majority of content, old content, being updated to make it relevant across the board).And even if they did, Necromancer still would not be anyones first choice in covering any of those aspects, especially with much more diverse and powerful kits like Mesmer and Revenant in play.

So one can only hope (not really) that eventually after 8-10 years since launch they will design Necro for the game we have, rather than something else it could be.Other professions just got more lucky in that the designers didn't decide to shoehorn them into a small thematic niche, giving them the option to opt in and out of certain utilities, damage or tankiness, etc.Necro design, in the context of the game we got, is just fundamentally flawed in it's (lack of) choices.You can't choose between baked in selfish boon support and extra damage or group support, between corrupts and another (more fit for PvE) type of utility, Shroud centric or mostly Shroud less gameplay, etc.No matter what you do on Necro you will always be a form of tanky and immobile with some corrupts and mediocre to bad damage and heavily relying on it's Profession mechanic to do anything, which just doesn't work well for organised/endgame PvE as it' always been, is, and most likely will be.

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@Galmac.4680 said:For me I can't get into my head, that a necromancer is supportive. Someone who deals with the dead, with conditions (even that he can't do really good). And then called scourge.

Necromancer was a supporter class in GW1. It was also a support in Diablo 2 which the original founders worked on. Necromancers might also take inspiration from real world Carrion feeders which reduce the spread of disease and help to keep land fertile.

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@"Nimon.7840" said:The problem with some of the support specs: they are completely busted op.Druid can heal and provide important boons and unique buffs to the group (spirits, spotter)Firebrand can heal, and provide it's subgroup with quickness and aegis + stability. Which lets you ignore a lot of mechanics.Renegade (healer) has insane healing output, and can do perma 10 man alacrity

That's the three busted healers.

Spirits and spotter are core ranger utitlities. That's not the fault of druid.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else. There is a reason this elite spec is pure garbage compared to other support options in PvP and WvW (with one exception; using it as an immobilizer in a wvw zerg, aka an utility spot). And the elite spec is stuck being garbage in every other game mode just because the combination of core ranger utilities and the might + healing from the druid elite spec has given it a role in the raiding meta from day 1. Even now, when it has fallen out of favor in fractal metas and easily can be replaced in raids too, people complain about it because it is a solid choice for raiding and the default go-to for a lot of pug groups.

Druid isn't busted. Not even close. It's carried by core ranger. Firebrand on the other hand has meta builds in pve, pvp and wvw. THAT is busted. Scrapper is the meta cleanser and healer in wvw, and tempest are solid support in both pvp and wvw. There is variety. A lot of it. If you stick your head outside of pve once in a while.

Druid is the least busted support spec in the entire game. It's underwhelming. In any content where spirits aren't useable, it falls completely flat. It needs a serious design overhaul, or at least refinement and changes to several of the glyphs and traits. And core ranger needs support utilities other than spirits that brings some synergy between the core class and druid. Several traits in Nature Magic has room for reworks to make that happen. Sadly, none of that will happen because people still still call it "busted" in pve and that's where Anet leaves it at.

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@"Asum.4960" said:No matter what you do on Necro you will always be a form of tanky and immobile with some corrupts and mediocre to bad damage and heavily relying on it's Profession mechanic to do anything, which just doesn't work well for organised/endgame PvE as it' always been, is, and most likely will be.

While I do agree on everything else, I do think that not much is needed to make the "tank" role "viable" through an e-spec (the necromancer basicaly just need a trait or skill that transfert incoming CCs from him to a minion).I know it's a nerf but moving the boon ripping effect of the mesmer's sword AA to Illusionary leap and swap would help a lot in making boon hate on other professions less useless.Making boon corruption proc a bleed when corrupting a defiant foe without boons is a pretty easy fix as well that would ease in fixing the "mediocre" dps of the necromancer (it also open the door for boon hate to have an effect on defiance and thus have the effects related proc naturally).Replacing the boss arena damage from raw power damage every 2 seconds by an 8-10 seconds bleed stack every 10 seconds shouldn't be challenging to do either. And it would both promote condition manipulation/cleansing and increase the necromancer's dps. (You'd easily have some raid comp that would be designed around the idea for more efficiency)

I mean, I'm not a genius yet this kind of solutions come easily to my mind, I don't get what prevent ANet from doing these simple things instead of playing their eternal numbers waltz with the necromancer's skills and traits.

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@Lazze.9870 said:

@"Nimon.7840" said:The problem with some of the support specs: they are completely busted op.Druid can heal and provide important boons and unique buffs to the group (spirits, spotter)Firebrand can heal, and provide it's subgroup with quickness and aegis + stability. Which lets you ignore a lot of mechanics.Renegade (healer) has insane healing output, and can do perma 10 man alacrity

That's the three busted healers.

Spirits and spotter are core ranger utitlities. That's not the fault of druid.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else. There is a reason this elite spec is pure garbage compared to other support options in PvP and WvW (with one exception; using it as an immobilizer in a wvw zerg, aka an utility spot). And the elite spec is stuck being garbage in every other game mode just because the combination of core ranger utilities and the might + healing from the druid elite spec has given it a role in the raiding meta from day 1. Even now, when it has fallen out of favor in fractal metas and easily can be replaced in raids too, people complain about it because it is a solid choice for raiding and the default go-to for a lot of pug groups.

Druid isn't busted. Not even close. It's carried by core ranger. Firebrand on the other hand has meta builds in pve, pvp and wvw. THAT is busted. Scrapper is the meta cleanser and healer in wvw, and tempest are solid support in both pvp and wvw. There is variety. A lot of it. If you stick your head outside of pve once in a while.

Druid is the least busted
support spec
in the entire game. It's underwhelming. In any content where spirits aren't useable, it falls completely flat. It needs a serious design overhaul, or at least refinement and changes to several of the glyphs and traits. And core ranger needs support utilities other than spirits that brings some synergy between the core class and druid. Several traits in Nature Magic has room for reworks to make that happen. Sadly, none of that will happen because people still still call it "busted" in pve and that's where Anet leaves it at.

Druid is not busted, but OP is pointing out something that is a problem, in my opinion.

Druid is the defining support in raids and such because of the unique buffs core ranger provides: spotter, frost spirit, etc.It would be great if every class would have some unique buffs which are powerful enough to make them compete for a healer slot in raids.

For example, engineer is quite good at healing with the current scrapper healer build. However, everyone will tell you that it is not recommended to take a scrapper as a healer. Why? Because engineer as a class lacks unique buffs to increase the dps of their team, unlike druid.

Engineer has exactly 1 unique buff it can share, pinpoint distribution. But it is located in firearms, which engineer can't take for their healer build since it literally provides nothing except that one condition damage buff. And even in situations in which your team has alot of condition damage, it wouldn't be worth it, since other classes can provide more additional condition damage for their team than engineer. Firebrand and druid once again come in mind. Oh and then is also the fact that unlike other healer specs, engineer deals absolutely no damage whatsoever while healing, since you have to camp med kit.

More classes need powerful unique buffs so you can actually run them as healers without putting your team at a huge disadvantage. Some classes are still in need of their support elite spec (warrior, thief, engineer), so this is something that Anet should keep in mind if they are designing support specs for them. They need unique buffs which are actually desired in high end PvE.

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Boost druid's PVE heals, turn Frost Spirit to apply freeze and might on hit (as thematical opposite of Sun Spirit) while it still has might available thru Nature's Vengeance and druid is finally a rather equivalent option compared to others. (Spotter isn't mandatory even for many power builds.)Make Engi's turrets pulse 10-target boons with Improvised Turrets-trait (Kitty's been asking for this one for over 2 years now) and return quickness to Toss Elixir U (engi used to provide 60% quickness uptime for 5 with it), maybe also add the 5-target quickness to Kinetic Battery in Tools (to make it a choice of full might for 5 or 90% quickness for 5 as scrapper while core engi can get both while losing Function Gyro. Choicessss...).Give necromancer some partial group fury source (now it's literally the only class that can't provide fury for allies), you can name it "Fury of the Dead" or something.Make warrior's Mending Might also heal allies receiving the might by 69 + 0.04*healpower per stack they receive (so warr gets heals from all shared might stacks with reduced co-efficient while allies get heals with increased co-efficient thru received stacks).Give thief a quickness source through Leeching Venoms (replace siphon with 1s of quickness per stack used for everyone who hits enemy with venom) and Shadow Siphoning (Stealth attacks provide 2 seconds of quickness for 5, 3s cooldown).

Those changes should make all healers more or less equal. Providing quickness would still require quite a snackrifice and even thief can't quickness, might+fury and dps/heal properly at same time, always a choice (while FB is still capable of that and more, hmm hmm).

E: And in case people wonder how mesmer brings fury and might for allies now, keyword: staff ambush. If you rotate properly, full might and fury for 10 with Aristocracy runes while doing 70% of dps mirage's normal dps by using staff/axe+pistol swapping weapon off-CD and spamming ambushes in staff with 3 clones.

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@Lazze.9870 said:

@"Nimon.7840" said:The problem with some of the support specs: they are completely busted op.Druid can heal and provide important boons and unique buffs to the group (spirits, spotter)Firebrand can heal, and provide it's subgroup with quickness and aegis + stability. Which lets you ignore a lot of mechanics.Renegade (healer) has insane healing output, and can do perma 10 man alacrity

That's the three busted healers.

Spirits and spotter are core ranger utitlities. That's not the fault of druid.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else. There is a reason this elite spec is pure garbage compared to other support options in PvP and WvW (with one exception; using it as an immobilizer in a wvw zerg, aka an utility spot). And the elite spec is stuck being garbage in every other game mode just because the combination of core ranger utilities and the might + healing from the druid elite spec has given it a role in the raiding meta from day 1. Even now, when it has fallen out of favor in fractal metas and easily can be replaced in raids too, people complain about it because it is a solid choice for raiding and the default go-to for a lot of pug groups.

Druid isn't busted. Not even close. It's carried by core ranger. Firebrand on the other hand has meta builds in pve, pvp and wvw. THAT is busted. Scrapper is the meta cleanser and healer in wvw, and tempest are solid support in both pvp and wvw. There is variety. A lot of it. If you stick your head outside of pve once in a while.

Druid is the least busted
support spec
in the entire game. It's underwhelming. In any content where spirits aren't useable, it falls completely flat. It needs a serious design overhaul, or at least refinement and changes to several of the glyphs and traits. And core ranger needs support utilities other than spirits that brings some synergy between the core class and druid. Several traits in Nature Magic has room for reworks to make that happen. Sadly, none of that will happen because people still still call it "busted" in pve and that's where Anet leaves it at.

I personally don't consider one spec being viable in all gamemodes as busted, that should imo be the case/desirable for pretty much all specs.While I get where you are coming from with looking at it from a cross gamemode PoV, I do think it's problematic when for 5+ years pretty much exclusively only a single spec is used for a specific role in an entire gamemode, namely Raids.While I do play all gamemodes and there is some variety between them, the discussion at hand is about PvE engame and for example Tempest being borderline broken in PvP as hard carrying support doesn't really help to bring variety to the Raid experience, so it's not really relevant for anyone finding groups/compositions stale in that mode.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else

Plus this is a slight understating of the value of one player being able to cover 10 man Might. The Spirits, Spotter, Pushes, Immob/control, group res etc. are all just gravy on top of that which further beats every alternative out, but even without that, save for maybe Boon Tempest if that's still a thing, you would still need two supports or at least hybrids to replace that one thing on Druid, which with 10 available slots total in a Squad is a big difference.

Additionally Druid did and to a some extend still has a presence in PvP as well. If I recall correctly it was actually quite oppressive at times and had to be brought down there. Just to say it's not always just been the Raid Healer, but even if that were the case, I'd much rather see it get more viability in other gamemodes (and staying a viable choice for Raids too) than being the almost exclusive choice for one.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:No matter what you do on Necro you will always be a form of tanky and immobile with some corrupts and mediocre to bad damage and heavily relying on it's Profession mechanic to do anything, which just doesn't work well for organised/endgame PvE as it' always been, is, and most likely will be.

While I do agree on everything else, I do think that not much is needed to make the "tank" role "viable" through an e-spec (the necromancer basicaly just need a trait or skill that transfert incoming CCs from him to a minion).I know it's a nerf but moving the boon ripping effect of the mesmer's sword AA to
Illusionary leap
and
swap
would help a lot in making boon hate on other professions less useless.Making boon corruption proc a bleed when corrupting a
defiant
foe without boons is a pretty easy fix as well that would ease in fixing the "mediocre" dps of the necromancer (it also open the door for boon hate to have an effect on defiance and thus have the effects related proc naturally).Replacing the boss arena damage from raw power damage every 2 seconds by an 8-10 seconds bleed stack every 10 seconds shouldn't be challenging to do either. And it would both promote condition manipulation/cleansing and increase the necromancer's dps. (You'd easily have some raid comp that would be designed around the idea for more efficiency)

I mean, I'm not a genius yet this kind of solutions come easily to my mind, I don't get what prevent ANet from doing these simple things instead of playing their eternal numbers waltz with the necromancer's skills and traits.

I don't consider Tank an archetype in GW2, as it's more a consolidated secondary role, usually also done by a major role/archetype of the Boon Support (Chrono mainly, or FB), or increasingly also the main Heal, aka Druid.And Necro can already tank, quite well on bosses like Soulless Horror actually, but aside form that there are usually better options for it.

Pulsing conditions on players definitely would help a lot to make supports like Scourge and Scrapper more desirable, and there are many content adjustments one can fairly quickly come up with (pulsing boons on a wide variety of enemies, etc.) that would certainly bring some more variety to the game and make Necromancer especially more at home in PvE, but it's been 8 years now that I and many others have suggested such things.

I do think though that Necro has plenty of bad Traits which could be redesigned to make some "PvP Tools" more viable in PvE, without having to redesign the whole of PvE content (even though they would be minor and easy to do changes), namely things like what you suggested, for example Insidious Disruption, currently a fairly dead Trait in all gamemodes as it can't compete with both the higher damage and Utility of Plague Sending in all gamemodes, could also trigger on Corrupt usage on top of disables (and possibly be buffed to 2 stacks in PvE).

Suddenly another Weapon in form of off hand Dagger to transfer BiP is viable together with Torch (as Plague Sending has to be given up) and corrupts now serve as a DPS increase in PvE like they pretty much do in PvP, making Scourge slightly more competitive as cDPS.That would ofc also mean that Garish Pillar would be used as part of the rotation for the CC to trigger Insidious Disruption as well, which would lead to much tighter LF management and a harder rotation and not leave much room to use Nefarious Favor and Sand Cascade, reducing the Condi Cleanses and Barrier a DPS Scourge provides as trade off for the higher DPS.

As you say, it doesn't take a genius.

It's just a bunch of little changes like that they would have to trickle in, rather than for some reason throwing a whole Toughness mechanic at us in a Death Magic "rework".

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@Asum.4960 said:

@"Nimon.7840" said:The problem with some of the support specs: they are completely busted op.Druid can heal and provide important boons and unique buffs to the group (spirits, spotter)Firebrand can heal, and provide it's subgroup with quickness and aegis + stability. Which lets you ignore a lot of mechanics.Renegade (healer) has insane healing output, and can do perma 10 man alacrity

That's the three busted healers.

Spirits and spotter are core ranger utitlities. That's not the fault of druid.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else. There is a reason this elite spec is pure garbage compared to other support options in PvP and WvW (with one exception; using it as an immobilizer in a wvw zerg, aka an utility spot). And the elite spec is stuck being garbage in every other game mode just because the combination of core ranger utilities and the might + healing from the druid elite spec has given it a role in the raiding meta from day 1. Even now, when it has fallen out of favor in fractal metas and easily can be replaced in raids too, people complain about it because it is a solid choice for raiding and the default go-to for a lot of pug groups.

Druid isn't busted. Not even close. It's carried by core ranger. Firebrand on the other hand has meta builds in pve, pvp and wvw. THAT is busted. Scrapper is the meta cleanser and healer in wvw, and tempest are solid support in both pvp and wvw. There is variety. A lot of it. If you stick your head outside of pve once in a while.

Druid is the least busted
support spec
in the entire game. It's underwhelming. In any content where spirits aren't useable, it falls completely flat. It needs a serious design overhaul, or at least refinement and changes to several of the glyphs and traits. And core ranger needs support utilities other than spirits that brings some synergy between the core class and druid. Several traits in Nature Magic has room for reworks to make that happen. Sadly, none of that will happen because people still still call it "busted" in pve and that's where Anet leaves it at.

I personally don't consider one spec being viable in all gamemodes as busted, that should imo be the case/desirable for pretty much all specs.While I get where you are coming from with looking at it from a cross gamemode PoV, I do think it's problematic when for 5+ years pretty much exclusively only a single spec is used for a specific role in an entire gamemode, namely Raids.While I do play all gamemodes and there is some variety between them, the discussion at hand is about PvE engame and for example Tempest being borderline broken in PvP as hard carrying support doesn't really help to bring variety to the Raid experience, so it's not really relevant for anyone finding groups/compositions stale in that mode.

I don't know. Guard is definetly the strongest class in the game right now.

Endgame pve:

  • coreguard is playable at some raidbosses but not that good
  • dragonhunter still meta on a lot of bosses
  • firebrand meta or very good on a lot of bosses, as either condo, condi quickness, or healer can be played (mostly fractals)

PvP (I don't play that gamemode, so I can only repeat, what someone said that plays spvp)

  • coreguard playable as support and damage dealer
  • dragonhunter very good in middle tier
  • firebrand extremely good

Wvw:

  • coreguard playable as condi or power in zergs (one of best damage dealers) and playable as power for roaming
  • dragonhunter: good as condo for zergs, very good power and condi roamer
  • firebrand: the only reliant source for stability in wvw, therefore mandatory in every single group of a zerg and can also be played as roamer

Shall we compare that to other classes?I take necro as I know that class the best and thief:

Pve:

  • core: both classes have no good build here, maybe thief as a boo support, but can't be played on all raidbosses
  • hot-espec: necro - still the lowest benchmark of all full dps classes, not really so good in good groups and also very bad on a lot of encounters. Thief - playable as boonsupport and good as damage dealer on some bosses
  • pof-espec: necro - worst of all dps builds, only exists because of epidemic. Thief - rifle build is playable at some encounters

PvP:

  • core: necro has a meta build. Didn't hear about thief.
  • hot-espec: necro is playable but needs support. From watching streams of very good players, thief seems to be extremly strong, basically 2 thieves every match (one on each team)
  • pof-espec: both not good

Wvw:

  • core: necro - only playable as roamer.
  • hot-espec: necro - good roamer but has a lot of easy to abuse weaknesses and good damage dealer for zergs if they go melee
  • pof-espec: still the most played necro spec. Still very good as damage dealer/corrupts but the things scourge does, other classes can do it better: short fights corrupts/strips best stripper is spellbreakers, longer fights, best stripper is chrono. Damage wise, scourge gets outshined by basically every other existing damage build. Has a little bit of support in forms of barrier and condi remove. All points together make it a good to play spec, but it's not playable as support.
  • thief is the king of roaming. Most seen spec is Daredevil, but core and deadeye are both very strong. Downside is, the class is not good in zergs. And not so good in guildgroups, but still playable as Daredevil.

So you see, guard has a lot more very good builds with a lot more build diversity (specs can be played as different roles)

So we can either say, all classes aren't where they should be, or just: guard is too strong/overpowered

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else

Plus this is a slight understating of the value of one player being able to cover 10 man Might. The Spirits, Spotter, Pushes, Immob/control, group res etc. are all just gravy on top of that which further beats every alternative out, but even without that, save for maybe Boon Tempest if that's still a thing, you would still need two supports or at least hybrids to replace that one thing on Druid, which with 10 available slots total in a Squad is a big difference.

Additionally Druid did and to a some extend still has a presence in PvP as well. If I recall correctly it was actually quite oppressive at times and had to be brought down there. Just to say it's not always just been the Raid Healer, but even if that were the case, I'd much rather see it get more viability in other gamemodes (and staying a viable choice for Raids too) than being the almost exclusive choice for one.

@Asum.4960 said:No matter what you do on Necro you will always be a form of tanky and immobile with some corrupts and mediocre to bad damage and heavily relying on it's Profession mechanic to do anything, which just doesn't work well for organised/endgame PvE as it' always been, is, and most likely will be.

While I do agree on everything else, I do think that not much is needed to make the "tank" role "viable" through an e-spec (the necromancer basicaly just need a trait or skill that transfert incoming CCs from him to a minion).I know it's a nerf but moving the boon ripping effect of the mesmer's sword AA to
Illusionary leap
and
swap
would help a lot in making boon hate on other professions less useless.Making boon corruption proc a bleed when corrupting a
defiant
foe without boons is a pretty easy fix as well that would ease in fixing the "mediocre" dps of the necromancer (it also open the door for boon hate to have an effect on defiance and thus have the effects related proc naturally).Replacing the boss arena damage from raw power damage every 2 seconds by an 8-10 seconds bleed stack every 10 seconds shouldn't be challenging to do either. And it would both promote condition manipulation/cleansing and increase the necromancer's dps. (You'd easily have some raid comp that would be designed around the idea for more efficiency)

I mean, I'm not a genius yet this kind of solutions come easily to my mind, I don't get what prevent ANet from doing these simple things instead of playing their eternal numbers waltz with the necromancer's skills and traits.

I don't consider Tank an archetype in GW2, as it's more a consolidated secondary role, usually also done by a major role/archetype of the Boon Support (Chrono mainly, or FB), or increasingly also the main Heal, aka Druid.And Necro can already tank, quite well on bosses like Soulless Horror actually, but aside form that there are usually better options for it.

Pulsing conditions on players definitely would help a lot to make supports like Scourge and Scrapper more desirable, and there are many content adjustments one can fairly quickly come up with (pulsing boons on a wide variety of enemies, etc.) that would certainly bring some more variety to the game and make Necromancer especially more at home in PvE, but it's been 8 years now that I and many others have suggested such things.

I do think though that Necro has plenty of bad Traits which could be redesigned to make some "PvP Tools" more viable in PvE, without having to redesign the whole of PvE content (even though they would be minor and easy to do changes), namely things like what you suggested, for example Insidious Disruption, currently a fairly dead Trait in all gamemodes as it can't compete with both the higher damage and Utility of Plague Sending in all gamemodes, could also trigger on Corrupt usage on top of disables (and possibly be buffed to 2 stacks in PvE).

Suddenly another Weapon in form of off hand Dagger to transfer BiP is viable together with Torch (as Plague Sending has to be given up) and corrupts now serve as a DPS increase in PvE like they pretty much do in PvP, making Scourge slightly more competitive as cDPS.That would ofc also mean that Garish Pillar would be used as part of the rotation for the CC to trigger Insidious Disruption as well, which would lead to much tighter LF management and a harder rotation and not leave much room to use Nefarious Favor and Sand Cascade, reducing the Condi Cleanses and Barrier a DPS Scourge provides as trade off for the higher DPS.

As you say, it doesn't take a genius.

It's just a bunch of little changes like that they would have to trickle in, rather than for some reason throwing a whole Toughness mechanic at us in a Death Magic "rework".
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@Asum.4960 said:

@"Nimon.7840" said:The problem with some of the support specs: they are completely busted op.Druid can heal and provide important boons and unique buffs to the group (spirits, spotter)Firebrand can heal, and provide it's subgroup with quickness and aegis + stability. Which lets you ignore a lot of mechanics.Renegade (healer) has insane healing output, and can do perma 10 man alacrity

That's the three busted healers.

Spirits and spotter are core ranger utitlities. That's not the fault of druid.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else. There is a reason this elite spec is pure garbage compared to other support options in PvP and WvW (with one exception; using it as an immobilizer in a wvw zerg, aka an utility spot). And the elite spec is stuck being garbage in every other game mode just because the combination of core ranger utilities and the might + healing from the druid elite spec has given it a role in the raiding meta from day 1. Even now, when it has fallen out of favor in fractal metas and easily can be replaced in raids too, people complain about it because it is a solid choice for raiding and the default go-to for a lot of pug groups.

Druid isn't busted. Not even close. It's carried by core ranger. Firebrand on the other hand has meta builds in pve, pvp and wvw. THAT is busted. Scrapper is the meta cleanser and healer in wvw, and tempest are solid support in both pvp and wvw. There is variety. A lot of it. If you stick your head outside of pve once in a while.

Druid is the least busted
support spec
in the entire game. It's underwhelming. In any content where spirits aren't useable, it falls completely flat. It needs a serious design overhaul, or at least refinement and changes to several of the glyphs and traits. And core ranger needs support utilities other than spirits that brings some synergy between the core class and druid. Several traits in Nature Magic has room for reworks to make that happen. Sadly, none of that will happen because people still still call it "busted" in pve and that's where Anet leaves it at.

I personally don't consider one spec being viable in all gamemodes as busted, that should imo be the case/desirable for pretty much all specs.While I get where you are coming from with looking at it from a cross gamemode PoV, I do think it's problematic when for 5+ years pretty much exclusively only a single spec is used for a specific role in an entire gamemode, namely Raids.While I do play all gamemodes and there is some variety between them, the discussion at hand is about PvE engame and for example Tempest being borderline broken in PvP as hard carrying support doesn't really help to bring variety to the Raid experience, so it's not really relevant for anyone finding groups/compositions stale in that mode.

Druid brings might and some healing. Nothing else

Plus this is a slight understating of the value of one player being able to cover 10 man Might. The Spirits, Spotter, Pushes, Immob/control, group res etc. are all just gravy on top of that which further beats every alternative out, but even without that, save for maybe Boon Tempest if that's still a thing, you would still need two supports or at least hybrids to replace that one thing on Druid, which with 10 available slots total in a Squad is a big difference.

Additionally Druid did and to a some extend still has a presence in PvP as well. If I recall correctly it was actually quite oppressive at times and had to be brought down there. Just to say it's not always just been the Raid Healer, but even if that were the case, I'd much rather see it get more viability in other gamemodes (and staying a viable choice for Raids too) than being the almost exclusive choice for one.

@Asum.4960 said:No matter what you do on Necro you will always be a form of tanky and immobile with some corrupts and mediocre to bad damage and heavily relying on it's Profession mechanic to do anything, which just doesn't work well for organised/endgame PvE as it' always been, is, and most likely will be.

While I do agree on everything else, I do think that not much is needed to make the "tank" role "viable" through an e-spec (the necromancer basicaly just need a trait or skill that transfert incoming CCs from him to a minion).I know it's a nerf but moving the boon ripping effect of the mesmer's sword AA to
Illusionary leap
and
swap
would help a lot in making boon hate on other professions less useless.Making boon corruption proc a bleed when corrupting a
defiant
foe without boons is a pretty easy fix as well that would ease in fixing the "mediocre" dps of the necromancer (it also open the door for boon hate to have an effect on defiance and thus have the effects related proc naturally).Replacing the boss arena damage from raw power damage every 2 seconds by an 8-10 seconds bleed stack every 10 seconds shouldn't be challenging to do either. And it would both promote condition manipulation/cleansing and increase the necromancer's dps. (You'd easily have some raid comp that would be designed around the idea for more efficiency)

I mean, I'm not a genius yet this kind of solutions come easily to my mind, I don't get what prevent ANet from doing these simple things instead of playing their eternal numbers waltz with the necromancer's skills and traits.

I don't consider Tank an archetype in GW2, as it's more a consolidated secondary role, usually also done by a major role/archetype of the Boon Support (Chrono mainly, or FB), or increasingly also the main Heal, aka Druid.And Necro can already tank, quite well on bosses like Soulless Horror actually, but aside form that there are usually better options for it.

Pulsing conditions on players definitely would help a lot to make supports like Scourge and Scrapper more desirable, and there are many content adjustments one can fairly quickly come up with (pulsing boons on a wide variety of enemies, etc.) that would certainly bring some more variety to the game and make Necromancer especially more at home in PvE, but it's been 8 years now that I and many others have suggested such things.

I do think though that Necro has plenty of bad Traits which could be redesigned to make some "PvP Tools" more viable in PvE, without having to redesign the whole of PvE content (even though they would be minor and easy to do changes), namely things like what you suggested, for example Insidious Disruption, currently a fairly dead Trait in all gamemodes as it can't compete with both the higher damage and Utility of Plague Sending in all gamemodes, could also trigger on Corrupt usage on top of disables (and possibly be buffed to 2 stacks in PvE).

Suddenly another Weapon in form of off hand Dagger to transfer BiP is viable together with Torch (as Plague Sending has to be given up) and corrupts now serve as a DPS increase in PvE like they pretty much do in PvP, making Scourge slightly more competitive as cDPS.That would ofc also mean that Garish Pillar would be used as part of the rotation for the CC to trigger Insidious Disruption as well, which would lead to much tighter LF management and a harder rotation and not leave much room to use Nefarious Favor and Sand Cascade, reducing the Condi Cleanses and Barrier a DPS Scourge provides as trade off for the higher DPS.

As you say, it doesn't take a genius.

It's just a bunch of little changes like that they would have to trickle in, rather than for some reason throwing a whole Toughness mechanic at us in a Death Magic "rework".

Druid is only usefull in raids tho, hfb can be used in all modes. But druid is limited

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I don't see how breadth of viability is an issue or OP though, ideally every Profession should be viable in as many avenues of the game as possible.Not really the same to me as something being pretty much exclusively viable in a mode, such as Druid as solo/main heal in Raids/10 man instanced PvE.

I don't feel the game would benefit from for example Guardian being less viable in more gamemodes, but I do think the game would benefit from more variability in terms of main/solo Raid healers.

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@Thornwolf.9721 said:I mean... same with tanking. The only REAL tank with the tools to tank and not be a detriment to the party is Chrono~ Kind of sucks honestly. So I feel your pain. (I really hate how druid is designed in this game, needs a re-do in my opinion)

Objectively, druid have the tools to tank but not in PvE, which is probably what you find frustrating. It got focus on crowd control and glyphs with ideal tools for a tank. What's unfortunate is that PvE end game just disregard those tools and focus.

It's the problem of the game, PvE and it's defiance are terribly unfit for a lot of the characters tools. Defiance almost nullify half of the debilitating conditions in game making them useless, the end game content have been designed to prevent player from exploiting stealth/projectile block/projectile reflect, retaliating effects (retaliation/glyph of unity/auras) are reindered useless by the usual slow but hard hitting mob/boss design (when players basically strive on stacking attack speed and multiple source of damage that make such mechanisms deadly for them), boon hate is a terrible fit in encounters that oppose a single big foe that don't need boons to 10 players, the way PvE encounters make use of conditions is even worse than conditions in PvP/WvW... etc.

How can any other profession tank better than a chronomancer when the chronomancer have boon ripping on it's auto attack (getting rid of any boon that could pop) and good offensive/defensive support unhindered by PvE mechanisms, all while keeping hit nullifying skills on it's weaponset? No other profession have that much. I mean some rely on blind to nullify hits but that's worthless in PvE...

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:I mean... same with tanking. The only REAL tank with the tools to tank and not be a detriment to the party is Chrono~ Kind of sucks honestly. So I feel your pain. (I really hate how druid is designed in this game, needs a re-do in my opinion)

Objectively, druid have the tools to tank but not in PvE, which is probably what you find frustrating. It got focus on crowd control and glyphs with ideal tools for a tank. What's unfortunate is that PvE end game just disregard those tools and focus.

It's the problem of the game, PvE and it's
defiance
are terribly unfit for a lot of the characters tools.
Defiance
almost nullify half of the debilitating conditions in game making them useless, the end game content have been designed to prevent player from exploiting stealth/projectile block/projectile reflect, retaliating effects (retaliation/glyph of unity/auras) are reindered useless by the usual slow but hard hitting mob/boss design (when players basically strive on stacking attack speed and multiple source of damage that make such mechanisms deadly for them), boon hate is a terrible fit in encounters that oppose a single big foe that don't need boons to 10 players, the way PvE encounters make use of conditions is even worse than conditions in PvP/WvW... etc.

How can any other profession tank better than a chronomancer when the chronomancer have boon ripping on it's auto attack (getting rid of any boon that could pop) and good offensive/defensive support unhindered by PvE mechanisms, all while keeping hit nullifying skills on it's weaponset? No other profession have that much. I mean some rely on blind to nullify hits but that's worthless in PvE...

Its one of the reasons I loathe guild wars 2 PvE when it comes to end-game, it literally feels like im playing a linear story-based game with luke-warm narratives but being forced to play it with a bunch of other people so its not really a single player game. I honestly stopped raiding in HoT and likely never will raid again for example, and after the cold war grind for my bear armor unless they add more armors that are norn stuff behind it (or something I like) I likely wont do those either. Even though I want the bone-skinner ascended weps I just cant be bothered as the content is boring~

I quit mythic raiding in WoW because of the cesspit that was the community, here its the content that drives me off. Im a WvW player really... and even there most of the mechanics of the game are either wasted or not applicable. To me that is a sign of bad game design...

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:I mean... same with tanking. The only REAL tank with the tools to tank and not be a detriment to the party is Chrono~ Kind of sucks honestly. So I feel your pain. (I really hate how druid is designed in this game, needs a re-do in my opinion)

Objectively, druid have the tools to tank but not in PvE, which is probably what you find frustrating. It got focus on crowd control and glyphs with ideal tools for a tank. What's unfortunate is that PvE end game just disregard those tools and focus.

It's the problem of the game, PvE and it's
defiance
are terribly unfit for a lot of the characters tools.
Defiance
almost nullify half of the debilitating conditions in game making them useless, the end game content have been designed to prevent player from exploiting stealth/projectile block/projectile reflect, retaliating effects (retaliation/glyph of unity/auras) are reindered useless by the usual slow but hard hitting mob/boss design (when players basically strive on stacking attack speed and multiple source of damage that make such mechanisms deadly for them), boon hate is a terrible fit in encounters that oppose a single big foe that don't need boons to 10 players, the way PvE encounters make use of conditions is even worse than conditions in PvP/WvW... etc.

How can any other profession tank better than a chronomancer when the chronomancer have boon ripping on it's auto attack (getting rid of any boon that could pop) and good offensive/defensive support unhindered by PvE mechanisms, all while keeping hit nullifying skills on it's weaponset? No other profession have that much. I mean some rely on blind to nullify hits but that's worthless in PvE...

I dislike the defiance bar it was better before it came and made open world feel like you had to use skills you dont like or want to. Solution is to remove mesmer boon rip tone down evades and change soi to only affect chrono

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@"Laila Lightness.8742" said:I dislike the defiance bar it was better before it came and made open world feel like you had to use skills you dont like or want to.

Nope it wasn't. Most of what the defiance bar is doing was already there before, it's just that you had a number of "stability" stack to remove to manage a CC instead of the window of breakbar you have now. It was a very poor mechanism, even poorer than the current mechanism.

Solution is to remove mesmer boon rip tone down evades and change soi to only affect chrono

Just moving the boon rip from the AA to the 3rd skill would open thing up. Ripping the mesmer from anything else would be pointless and would just meaninglessly hurt the profession's viability.

However, as I said somewhere else on the forum, to fix PvE in order for the boon hate role to be viable there you just need to make Boon hate proc a "reaction" when it hit a defiant foe. (in such a way that traits and skills effects related procs even if there is no boon removed. For boon corruption they can just let it proc a mere bleed stack, making defiance being considered as a stack of vigor).

Doing just this single changes would improve considerably the way boon hate based specializations are seen in PvE. There would no longer be any competition between teammates for scarce boons to rip or corrupt, spellbreaker would build it's Attacker's insight without hindrance, the necromancer could probably squeeze out a bit of extra condition damage and scourge would be able to finally make full use of it's punishments in PvE. They could even make it give a boon to the thief when he steal on a defiant foe with Bountiful theft (10 seconds of regeneration for example, this would help the support thief a lot).

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