Aplethoraof.2643

I use focus currently on my necromancer, Pistol/Dagger as primary and Scepter/Focus as secondary. For PvE, the vulnerability is decent and the chill is good for breakbars. For PvP, the chill removes 3 boons (fantastic) and does a good amount of damage - the vulnerability isn't as great but is still nice either as a cover condition or just for pressure. For power necros, Axe/Focus is fantastic as well.

I went into Harbinger just recently feeling a lot of dread after the betas. I was pleasantly surprised to find it not only viable, but very fun to play in PvE and PvP (haven't tried WvWvW yet). It doesn't seem too busted (it is exceedingly squishy but can output some serious damage) and it is nice to finally have a cDamage spec (that Reaper nerf was not nice). Now I'm just legit worried about how Anet is going to screw it up. They seem to have a track record at-least from my eyes of giving a really nice solid fun Necromancer build and then just pooping all over it and turning it into crap. I'd love for Anet to prove me wrong this time; I'm really dreading moving all my gear to my Mesmer again if Necromancer becomes dung.

Scepter + Torch in primary, Staff in secondary. Use Staff for breakbars (fear + chill) and spamming out some minor bleed/regen while waiting for weapon swap to come back up. Staff can also be a great condi cleanse. You don't really have a choice - Axe and Dagger are both worse than Staff for condi. You can also go the dual Scepter route, but personally I like Staff's utility.

I wonder if scaling down ability slots, traits, and gear would help in addition to level. So your gear gets scaled down. . .level 1-10 = basic gear stats, 11 - 20 = fine gear stats, 21 - 30 = masterwork gear stats, 31 - 40 = fine gear stats, 41 - 50 = exotic gear stats, 51+ = ascended gear stats. Ability slots could be scaled down in the same way. Slot 1 unlocks at level 11, slot 2 at 15, and slot 3 at 19. Elite skill is unlocked at level 31. So if you go to a place and are scaled to level 10, you don't have any utility slots. Maybe traits could work in a similar way for down-leveling. Level 1-10 = 1st line of traits unlocked, level 11 - 20 = 2nd line of traits unlocked, level 21 - 30 = 3rd line of traits unlocked (I think that is about approximate to how players would be unlocking their trait lines normally. Might even be a bit generous.) That way, players can't just steam-roll through mobs. It takes them the same amount of effort as any other player. This has the added benefit of making adventuring with lower level players more fun (since everyone contributes equal effort to making the kill). I personally wouldn't mind having everything down-scaled so I could enjoy going through earlier level zones, it makes more of the world fun to explore in the end. It is no fun just being able to look at mobs and they die.

Iterative improvement is important though. You look at what other people are doing that fits into your title, you take what they do, and you improve on it. Improvements in gaming literally comes from that; cloning or copying what other games do is very important as a whole. Otherwise we'd never see improvements from game to game. Oh, Doom is this style of FPS? Well I guess we can't make that, because we need to be uniqqqque. If game devs thought along these lines, we'd have never seen Duke Nukem or Blood. Instead, we saw the Blood devs improve on the Doom experience and through that improvement create a whole new experience.

100% agreed. Plus, have you seen how much damage necro dagger does? And it is so quick too. Practically no point to quickness when you have a weapon that attacks 300 times a second. Lich Form should def be just removed. Maybe replace it with a signet elite that does the effects of Thief's Guild (though it should be a bit weaker and the thieves should be renamed to "undead thief"). No passive though, the signet of undead thief's legion doesn't need one - it is powerful enough already. Also remove dagger. Brokest kitten ever seen

I still have no idea why this is, lol. My GW1 necromancer is rocking in his grave hearing that line. I guess GW1 and GW2 are separate universes or GW2 is a soft reboot or some other crap lore. They had Death Magic with all of its array of summoning, poison, disease, and cold damage possibilities. . .and then they said "you get armour lol".

Isn't this basically saying it is a L2P issue? Just because the better players have found an effective counterplay, doesn't mean it isn't busted? Why not use the counterplayers that they have found instead of saying it is OP, then?

I still remember it being Mesmer. It was only recently that I found out that Mesmer has in-fact never been Anet's lovechild and it just a dead meme profession (and of course always has been). Sometimes I think the GW2 forum community is actually a training ground for historical revisionists.

MMO balance comes and goes.At some point in an MMO's history, every class will be OP or underpowered in some respect. GW2 is probably one of the better MMOs for this, its highs and lows are far more mild compared to others. Like posters said - for the longest time, necros used to get booted from PUG parties. It is only fairly recently that they have been considered viable. In WvWvW, you can pretty much play anything. Most classes have something they can offer for both blob fights and roaming. Necromancers fair slightly better in blob fights and are terrible to play roaming - compared to others. For sPvP, it doesn't matter what you play, the following holds true always - if you ask enough people, every single profession is both the absolute weakest and the absolute strongest. Until you get to the top 50-100 (and find out that everyone playing seriously will use power reaper or support scourge, unlike the lower tiers where condi scourge can do OK), what you play on necromancer is generally irrelevant - you can do well on a good number of builds with gold/low plat and below players. So yeah - if you are being serious (it doesn't sound like you are FYI). . .stop trying to be a tryhard and play whatever the hell you want.

Separate discussion, but 100%. Dagger (mainhand) should be focused on condis. Life Siphon should cripple + bleed and the #1 chain should be bleed (with vulnerability for #3). #3 could probably inflict vulnerability as well, considering it makes the necro bleed. It is bizarre that #2 synergies with bleed but nothing about the weapon (mainhand) makes enemies bleed. And that offhand is a decent condi/utility weapon while mainhand is the weakest power weapon.

Dragonhunter is ruining the gamemode. It should be disabled until anet can take the time to balance things properly

It is to basically replicate the gear treadmill in other MMOs - for the players who enjoy grinding from +1 to +2 to +3 etcetera, only to be in the exact same place relative to the mobs.

Presumably if I were in charge - I wouldn't want to be fired. So I'd either say: 1) Cash Shop OR 2) No Cash Shop, sub fee OR 3) No Cash Shop, higher base price, high price per expansion, also sell mini-expansions that would normally be larger updates. #3 might be a little dubious since it isn't constant income (if there was say. . .a DLC every month or every 2 months, it could be). #2 and #3 leave room for my successor (after I leave this job) to add in a cash shop (cash shops can be added in at any time). So I'd pick #1 for sure, since it is harder to add in a sub fee or increase the prices of expansions suddenly than add in a cash shop. TL;DR - Yes I'd put in a cash shop.

IMO: *Blight should be replaced with one of each (non-CC) condition. So poison, burning, bleed, torment, and confusion. One stack each per stack of blight. Then reduce the self-blight a little to compensate. Another idea is to have blight pulse these conditions every second or so instead of being -max HP. *The support tree (or boon-giving tree) should be more attuned to turning conditions into boons and then transferring boons to allies (similar to how necromancer can transfer conditions). The necromancer thus becomes sort of a "glass support", giving lots of boons away, turning conditions into boons, but always having some conditions on them thanks to blight and never keeping boons for themselves (unless no allies are around, in which case why are you running support?). *Instead of a power tree, there should be an offensive support tree where you get more abilities to inflict conditions (instead of blight) on yourself, take conditions from allies, and transfer it to enemies. These should supplement (instead of replacing) abilities necromancer already has for transferring conditions. *Instead of +condi damage for blight, you should get +condi damage per stack of each condition you have on you. This gives you an incentive not have them cleansed as soon as you get them. *The heal should give you conditions, and give you barrier + vitality per condition for X seconds (as well as a small heal so you don't die if you use it at the wrong moment). *Each elixir should give you conditions, then do X effect which is dependant on how many conditions you have. You could have one elixir where you replicate and bottle the conditions you have when you initially use it, then you have Y seconds to throw it at someone and spread them. Just as an example. Maybe the elite elixir could freeze condition timers on both yourself and enemies nearby you for X seconds (they can still be cleansed, but they'll continually tick then when those X seconds are up they'll count-down like normal - effectively adding on X seconds to all their condition stacks). This will focus the spec around what I think they were going for (thematically, since they balance around themes). Putting conditions/damage onto yourself, and getting a benefit from it (this encouraging you to do it, making you into a glass cannon). Shroud 3 should definitely have some condition transfer as well. Pistol's 2 or 3 should also transfer conditions. One other thing that this spec is missing (that is rather core to necro's identity, given every weapon can do it nearly) is boon conversion. Maybe one of the elixirs converts X boons, where X is the number of conditions the necromancer has on them. As well, maybe pistol #3 converts 3 or so boons (in line with other weapons).

OP and myself, if no-one else. It'd be pretty silly of me to say "no, I certainly do not want more weapons". IMO - kind of a waste that poor spear, trident, and speargun have 5 awesome skills each that rarely see the light of day. The content is just sitting there, waiting to be used more. All skills should work both underwater and above water (in some capacity). Including weapon skills. IMO. (Maybe then people won't be so adverse to more underwater content and we can finally have underwater sPvP arenas :'D)

I'd be fine if (and this is directed at RPGs in general) gear and stats were less of +damage or +stat. Those tend to be boring. For GW2 in particular, I'd say my dream system would be: 1) Each minor and major trait gives (in addition to its effect) some +stats. Maybe they also reduce other stats depending on the trait, to make it more interesting. 2) Instead of stats on weapons, you have sigil slots. White has 2, and every set of gear beyond that gets 1 more sigil slot. Sigils become the main thing for gear, and they could really expand on the number of effects. Things like "after you use a utility skill you summon X minion for Y seconds", "after you use your 5th weapon skill you do Z effect". These would serve to change up how you play beyond traits, and they are certainly easier to add than traits. They could add in some stats on each sigil as well, to add in some variety to balance and make up for "lost stats". 3) Runes are fine IMO. Runes are perfect. Though, more in-line with 2, it would be nice if they had a minor effect at 1, a medium effect at 3, and then at 5 (like they do now), they have a more serious special effect. 4) For legendary weapons, perhaps you get every sigil without having to purchase one ever again. For ascended and below, you can swap freely but you need to purchase them individually. 5) For armour, maybe exotic can equip 2 runes and ascended/legendary can equip 3 runes. Same deal with runes as with sigils (from sections 2 and 4), you can freely swap but legendary armour has access to all of them. 6) Damage on weapons is also removed. Damage is based on your character's level, not your weapon's quality. Your weapon's quality just determines how many sigils you can equip at a time, making it easier for new players to break in. 7) They'd need something similar to runes/sigils for trinkets. Maybe trinkets can equip either runes or sigils, or somesuch. I personally just think that effects that scale vertically (instead of horizontally like stats) are more interesting items to play around with. Things that change what you can do or how you play, instead of just increasing the arbitrary number of power by +1. And this way, sigils/runes can cover for the massive amount of skills GW1 had - or rather, the massive amount of skills you need for a really robust customization system. Things that increase numbers WITH conditions (such as lowering others or only increasing numbers under certain circumstances) are fine IMO, since they still alter how you play. But raw numbers are dull AF.

Maybe OP is making a satirical post, since really the title could be changed to any profession's name and it would still be a microcosm of the GW2 community (stereotype-wise)'s attitude towards balance. That, or this post is a delusional fever-dream. Pick your poison.

Or the alternative: Bob tells you to come to public PvP arena X. Tell Bob no. Bob whispers you, calls you a kitten. You block Bob. Bob starts harassing you in map chat. I assume that happens a fair bit currently to everyone with a similar perspective to this?

a) Toxic people can be toxic without it. It isn't the feature that makes people toxic, no worries about that. b) A duel requires consent. So you can't be forced into it.

That'd be fun. There is nothing really at stake, so no need to worry about it being balanced in PvE terms. Similar to how Guild Halls have a PvP arena that is balanced in PvE (which honestly makes it a bit more fun :'D).

Plat and mid gold even. But TBF, copper/silver (and low gold most of the time) are literally trash tiers to be in - there is a reason that as players get more skilled, power builds become more common. Put a skilled power player with lower-ranked players and it is an absolute 1vX slaughter. Even when I was playing necro (which I did enjoy playing condi on) and I happened to run across top 100 players in sPvP, I'd always get them recommending that I play power when I looked for build advise.

If you ask everyone, you'll find that every profession and spec should be banned from sPvP. sPvP is basically an arena for banned builds to play with each-other.

Basically this. Elixirs literally all felt the same. None of them seemed very exciting, unlike reaper shouts or scourge's utilities.

I do like that condi is an option (as I typically enjoy DoT builds the most, plus all my gear currently revolves around condi). It certainly isn't the strongest option, but it is OK. I don't expect it'll be super common though - so maybe condi virtuoso could use a bit of a tune-up. Maybe some bleeds on the weapon skills themselves would be OK? As well as a 33% increase to bleed damage instead of a 25% increase from the grandmaster trait (I saw someone else mention that as well). Perhaps bleeding on dagger #1 & #3, and cripple on dagger #2? As well as bleeding + cripple on the elite?