Anchoku.8142

People will still complain about Necro being OP, especially dev's. Epidemic does no damage to bosses so why use it when a regular cleave on the boss will also cleave adds? Is Necro dps without Epi's trash-mob cleave good enough? Five stacks of damaging condi at half remaining duration is really 2.5 stacks of applied duration, maximum, only on add's, for conditions not ignored by indomitable. Probably misunderstood something here but Epi looks dead. It is a wasted slot and removes the reason to slot a Necro as an add-wipe profession for PvE content with add's. p.s. With Epdemic nerfed to oblivion, the utility can be changed to something more useful and less non-standard. Ten years of Epidemic's non-standard "don't damage the boss but focus the trash mobs" is over.

Arenanet can easily track how much time, XP and other rewards are being accrued on which professions, specializations, traits and even skills for each game mode and instanced combat. You are right that individual complaints or requests are almost always ignored but well thought out posts and extremely high or low play time / play effectiveness (rewards) will attract attention; even if it takes years and a leadership change. Change is slow but I am certain the actual statistics of players' choice influences balancing and new elite spec' development. Necromancer and Mesmer were each buffed greatly in the first ex-pac while Ele began getting trimmed on skills like frost bow exploit or conditions like burning. One person's perspective is an opinion but thousands of similar opinions carry more weight. To this day, I am shocked that Necromancer received both a power-cleave spec' and a support / condi cleave specialization. Mesmer had alacrity developed for it, too, which made it indispensable for something other than jumping puzzles.

The best way to request a Mesmer buff is to not play it and explain why. This is a suggestion from a 2012 player when Necro players admired Mesmer for having at least one use. Post a request for a buff in the Mesmer profession channel.

All they have to do is scale down shades. That is, make shades effects scale more strongly based on statistics or whatever; for example, "We felt that Scourge's shades in WvW were over-tuned so shades in WvW are reduced to a 120 diameter and scaling factors are adjusted lower by 30%. Run, you tiny sand castles, run! Also, your cast times are all increased by 1 second!... For every skill!" Will they do something this extreme? No, but this is how easy it is to nerf using scaling without changing how a skill is executed.

Anti-barrier!

Yes, there was no buff to Death Magic. Rather, removing damage from CCs left shroud with excess sustain. It is easy for players to forget shroud is used to defend from absolutely every mechanic and stun-locking a Necro is endemic in PvP: Everyone relied on exploiting Necro's weakness to CC so shroud was tuned for it since 2012. I do not understand players complaining that core Necro is good in PvP because it was basically designed for it at the expense of PvE performance. Necro has always been Arenanet's counter to boons in PvP and WvW.

Reaper is very good with trash mobs: lots of cleave, AoE chill, an abundance of LF. Against single targets, Reaper is sub-optimal but, against waves of trash mobs, it's great. View Reaper from a function-perspective: Challenging a single Indomitable target is not Reaper's best use. In PvP, Reaper's chill output gives good pressure but it's cleaves have less use and LF supply is tight. Balance is pretty good.

More interesting than the actual specialization.

Practice using shroud and knowing what generates LF. Reaper dps is far higher than core Necro so remember that trade-off, too. In all honesty, I only die on full berserker, no minion Reaper in PvE when taking on way too much. I laugh it off and respawn. Also, event bosses like Svanir Shaman scale way beyond what any build can sustainably face-tank. Watch the tells and pick your response: dodge, shroud, go ranged, or count on incoming heals and res. This is an easy boss with and there were tons of players farming the event so don't sweat the details. Rather, use the event to practice surviving on high risk builds. Then, try roaming around HoT maps on a berserker Reaper. That will make you sweat!

Epidemic is Necro's trash cleave skill. It's like having a 900 condi-cleave that does 0 damage to its target. Without Epi, Necro had no dps cleave skills on any weapon or utility - nothing. Arenanet dev's probably realized in 2012 that balancing for PvP left Necro with terrible PvE dps and made Epidemic explicitly for groups in PvE. Maybe they thought it would be super awesome but forgot other professions could cleave trash mobs without using a skill that did zero damage to a boss. Epi worked better in WvW zerging right from the beginning. In contrast, Epidemic in PvE was often unnecessary, even if it was cool, because good dps on the boss was mandatory. Also, back in the day, maximum stacks for conditions on bosses was severely limited so Epi dps on trash was lower and Necro's practical condi-dps on bosses with scepter was a joke as players kept pushing each others' stacks off. Back then, power-dps, with cleave, was the build to have if you were not playing Ele and stacking max burning.

@CratZII.5872 @Dadnir.5038 I have the same thoughts and concerns. For condition dps, scepter was required, even as ranged secondary to condi-Reaper's greatsword. And, with scepter, Lingering Curse is always required, too. The change to LC is nice but the trait is so peaky and powerful that it is mandatory for scepter and scepter is mandatory for most condi-dps builds. It would be nice if some of Lingering Curse's condition duration was baselined in scepter and LC was mellowed and broadened to provide only moderate condition damage and expertise on all weapons for better balance between Parasitic Contagion and Weakening Shroud.

@work, will be for a while and the same for the rest of the week but some comments made sense to me as I watch the updates at a loss of productivity. Damage output should scale with Blight while sustain when unsupported by allies should scale inversely. This is a general impression. Can elixer effects and durations scale with Blight stacks, too? It feels like potency should increase as actual health decreases so with 1k health damage would be amazing. I'll bet the dev's already investigated this, though; don't want to be downed all the time for tryimg to play on the edge but maybe a little scaling would be fun. Edit Of course, I also mean the opposite should be true, that damage output should decrease the closer to full, max health with no Blight.

Well, to start with, I would like to see how long I can maintain 25 stacks of Blight and what gameplay is like at minimal maximum health.

First of all, we have not tried it, yet, so I withold my opinion on performance and tuning. Second, the explanation and preview last week made it clear 'Binger was designed to be a peaky dps specialization where damage output is tied directly to risk. Third, the elixers are boon factories Harbinger is meant to abuse where other Necro specializations had minor access to. Load up on Protect and Concentration, then see how it goes. Fourth, 'Binger is totally open to incoming heals. Use allies like Ele or Druid combined with a Scourge for sustain. That is the feeling I got on Friday, 13 August. (Also, dodge.) Fifth, 'Binger seems to have been developed for group PvE and maybe PvP rather than solo Open World and that is perfectly fine. Use core Necro Minionmancer to AFK farm or Reaper to wipe trash mobs while blasting through Open World PvE. The group insurance and dps Scourge brings to PvE and WvW is great, too. Harbinger could be a challenge mode spec' for both boon-spamming and dps and I welcome the idea.

If Arenanet opened both Lingering Curse and Dhuumfire, they might as well split them between game modes so I wonder, too, if Dhuumfire could be linked to LC. Maybe the changes will amount to nearly nothing for other weapons but Lingering Curse could easily be used to "fix" some of Necro's off-hand and utility weapons and become a trait multiplier for more scaling between builds. Edit Lingering Curse could also become a look-up table modifying weapons or skills individually. While Arenanet said no such thing, it is not impossible in the future. Signets of Suffering and Master of Corruption are examples.

When Lingering Curse is changed to broaden its coverage tomorrow, comment on how the change impacted the various weapons' skills. Many skills will not be affected but there may be some surprises; for example, staff or torch.

I am looking at Diviner's equipment and many more types. The beta will come with an equipment set. I am anxious to see how power and condi builds play. I do not see my Scourge support equipment having value on 'Binger and ran into a wall of inefficiency with Blood Magic. On the other hand, with a stability elixer, 'Binger may be able to play a tank role in some corner conditions so I am not ready to rule out equipment with toughness.

The dev's did their best to balance the beta elites so I prefer to wait a day and actually try the new specializations. Maybe there is a reason for the numbers they chose that will become apparent later.

Like the two primary changes too the Necromancer profession; Lingering Curses and increased separation between Scourge support and dps with trimming in PvP. Also like the change to combination field priority and visibility and hope the system develops further into something more potent and complex. Will see how it plays out this week.

Additional thoughts When you know a lot of damage is coming * Necromancer, Reaper, Scourge -> Use F1 to hide from the damage * Harbinger -> Dodge or hope to get a heal because F1 is a wasted keystroke Having a keyboard shortcut to refill the LF bar looks like a handy skill to have but I am a little worried CMC had to use it so often.

Arenanet should have something to trigger Dread, Terror and Fear of Death on. Three traits without the usual shroud Fear seems like too much. Even if 'Binger does not have a Fear on an F-skill, I feel like the traits would do something else.

Of note in the Tuesday balance patch is that Lingering Curses will apply to all weapons so Necro is not confined to camping scepter.

Necromancer – Death Shroud: Players may now use the mount key while in Death Shroud. Doing so will automatically deactivate Death Shroud. Curses – Furious Demise: Fixed a bug that caused precision granted by this trait to not be used for bonus condition damage by the next minor curses trait, Target the Weak. – Target the Weak: The description of this trait has been corrected to include that it also increases the necromancer's condition damage by a percentage of their precision. – Lingering Curses: The bonus condition damage granted by this trait now applies with any weapon, not only scepter. Death Magic – Death Nova: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to fail to properly summon a jagged horror when killing enemies in certain content types or locations. – Soul Comprehension: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to fail to properly grant a stack of carapace when killing enemies in certain content types or locations. – Flesh of the Master: Reduced minion health bonus from 25% to 15% in PvP only. Soul Reaping – Dhuumfire: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to activate multiple times without triggering its internal cooldown when used with scourge specialization skills. Spite – Dread: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to fail to properly reduce the cooldown on shroud skill 3 when killing enemies in certain content types or locations. Reaper – Reaper Shroud: Players can now use the mount key while in Reaper Shroud. Doing so will automatically deactivate Reaper Shroud. Scourge As the community has observed, scourge has quickly become dominant in many game modes, from PvP to PvE. In PvE, the barrier granted by damage-specialized scourges to nearby allies as part of their normal damage rotation has caused scourge to provide overwhelming support even while traited and geared as a pure DPS build. We would like a clearer distinction between scourges' support and damage builds. To this end, we're making a change to the scourge's healing skill, Sand Flare, so that it only grants barrier to the caster by default. The first-tier support trait, Abrasive Grit, was previously very underwhelming, especially when compared against its chief competitor in that tier, Fell Beacon. Abrasive Grit will now cause Sand Flare to affect nearby allies, restoring it to its previous target cap. With these changes, we're shifting some of the scourge's passive barrier-granting ability off of the damage-specialized scourge build and on to builds that have specifically chosen to trait for support. – Sand Flare: Barrier granted by this skill now only affects the caster by default. – Abrasive Grit: This trait has been reworked to the following: Sand Flare now also grants barrier to nearby allies. Granting an ally barrier removes conditions afflicting them. – Demonic Lore: Fixed a bug that caused the internal cooldown of this trait to not occur under certain circumstances. – Herald of Sorrow: This trait now renames the skill Desert Shroud to Sandstorm Shroud instead of to Harbinger Shroud. The effects of this skill are unchanged. On the PvP side of things, we're making some additional changes to bring scourge down. Feed from Corruption is a trait that we've been looking at for a while, and given the continued performance of scourge, it's something we wanted to make sure to touch in this round of changes. For this update, we're primarily targeting the defensive boons as we look to address some of the scourge's overall bulk, but we also wanted to tone down the might generation that this trait could potentially create. We're also shaving down some of the scourge's barrier applications and Nefarious Favor, with the overall goal of making the scourge just a bit more killable. – Sand Cascade: Reduced base barrier from 2,428 to 1,859 in PvP only. – Desert Shroud: Reduced base barrier from 5,016 to 4,013 in PvP only. – Desert Empowerment: Reduced base barrier from 966 to 773 in PvP only. – Sandstorm Shroud: Reduced initial base barrier from 5,016 to 4,013 in PvP only. Reduced final base barrier from 1,684 to 1,327 in PvP only. – Feed from Corruption: The following boon applications from this trait have been adjusted in PvP only: – Might: Reduced stacks from 3 to 1. – Protection: Reduced duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds. – Resolution: Reduced duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds. – Regeneration: Reduced duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds. – Stability: Reduced from 2 stacks for 5 seconds to 1 stack for 3 seconds. – Vigor: Reduced duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds. – Nefarious Favor: Reduced the number of conditions converted to boons from 2 to 1 in PvP only.

Guild Wars 2 live stream on Twitch.tv just ended but a recording should be up soon.

'Binger and 'Bender 🤔