Curse

GloryFox · Jun 02, 2006, 07:51 PM // 19:51

Quote:

I really thought they were going to take spirit energy out of soul reaping all together. Necros still serve their purpose in the pvp game: great support characters individually who can build a decent spike team with a group of necros. Necro spike isn't supposed to be the IT build it is supposed to be a viable build, like ranger spike, thumpers, and fc air spike. Anet does a good job of watching the championships and tuning the skills without totally crushing them, last time it was gale, crip shot and energy surge this time the overpowered builds were spirit spam necro spike and assassin cross map ganking

Exactly and with certain Shadow skills (FIXED) I can now use those skills without drawing aggro from all walks of life, or at least control the reappear zone areas.

Omni Spirit · Jun 02, 2006, 08:05 PM // 20:05

What Anet is really thing: "This is a PVP game and nerfs are needed to balance out GW, so screw all you pve people, go play WoW if you like RPing so much."

/sigh

miasma · Jun 02, 2006, 08:50 PM // 20:50

I'm thinking that the majority of the posters here are deluded into thinking that a nerf on the primary attribute of a class is a fix to a certain flavor of spike that became more powerful in factions. If you want to fix one type of build, you dont nerf every necromancer in the game. Now, no matter what build i am running, there is little or no synergie left to working with a rit or ranger primary.

Case in point.... A very common necromancer build to run in gvg is a hex spammer/warrior hate necro. Before factions, u would have to run OoB as your elite to keep all your hexes from being removed instantly. Now, factions comes out and with it skills like EXPEL HEXES, WITHDRAW HEXES, etc. So what the hell were we suppose to do? Smart guilds, like mine, added a rit for protection and SR energy, dropped OoB, and used Wail of Doom, thus making the necro effective at doing his job even against heavy hex protected builds. If you are going to add a class to your build, he should be able to do his job at least slightly more than half the time against any build, this will no longer be possible for necros. Lose Wail, you are back to OoB hex spam, and completely rendered useless 100% of the time to Expel hexes. Unfortunatly, Anet does not think so much when it comes to necros, as the OP has said. They were way to quick to nerf SR, instead of waiting to see what counters, we as a community came up with, all because of one build that won the Championship. Adjust the specific build if no counters can be found, not the Primary attribute of a class!!!

You know what guys, if you support ANET nerfing like this before we have a chance to come up with counters, then you really dont like this game at all, you are what REAL gamers call "Scrubs". Those few of us who actually enjoy the metagame, enjoy it because we constantly get to be challenged by it. I mean, honestly, My guild ran a balanced build with a necro/rit symbiotic combo against many teams with distract rangers and diversion mesmers, and only a few of them had the inspiration to go after the Rit, thereby protecting their warriors and there damage. In time, all would of adjusted, and we as a community would have enjoyed a more diverse metagame than the pre-factions one. Instead Anet performed an abortion on the Metagame, and many of us are left feeling slighted.

Rally together people! Support what I and the OP has presented here and send a message to ANET to let us play this game our way, the fun way, the only way.

PS. If you are only a PvE'er, please move on, nothing going on here.

Tainek · Jun 02, 2006, 08:51 PM // 20:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omni Spirit

What Anet is really thing: "This is a PVP game and nerfs are needed to balance out GW, so screw all you pve people, go play WoW if you like RPing so much."

/sigh

To quote myself

"As a player of PVE and PVP equally i can say this is 100% pure organic bull

PvP Will ALWAYS take president over PVE with regards to skill changes for one reason, a broken skill in PVP affects EVERYONE in a pvp enviroment, Period. overpowered skills will hurt all players as Fotm builds come out and take over, thus competion is hurt, and the whole PvP metagame suffers.

in PvE, a skillchange can hurt, but it will never affect the ENTIRE PvE community, a small (albiet vocal) minority at worst.

Anet doesnt favor PVE or PVP, but one overpowered skill wont kill the fun in PVE , it CAN ruin the whole of PVP, thus of course PVP takes precident in Skill changes, this is just plain common sense, it doesnt take much intellegence to reach the conclusion.

Not to mention PVE Nerfs can hurt PVP as well, prot bond anyone?

seriously, grow up"

Necro Spike was unbalanced and ruined HA for many people, this nerf barely affects PVE necros as it is anyway, there are so many monsters dieing that
half gain from sprits would hardly be noticed anyway, not to mention ive never seen a PVE necro purely dependant on a ritualist spamming spirits for energy anyway

bushe · Jun 02, 2006, 08:51 PM // 20:51

sweet mother don't tell me you think that necros were nerfed in pve! Did they kill SS? because until they do then pve necros can't complain. also as has been explained ad nauseum: nerfs and buffs HAVE to be 90% pvp because the monsters don't have the ingenuity to use broken combos against you and nobody (you or the mobs) complains about you using broken combos against them

Age · Jun 02, 2006, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Necromancers getting a big nerf excuse me but I wouldn't say that.The 2 most professions to be nerfed have been Monks and Rangers.That is right there are alot of skills we can't use anymore and are completely useless.I am not sure about Rangers in detail but I know what ones for Monks are useless.Don't worry the Ritualist spirits will go through same nerfing stage as the Rangers did.

miasma · Jun 02, 2006, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Age

Necromancers getting a big nerf excuse me but I wouldn't say that.The 2 most professions to be nerfed have been Monks and Rangers.That is right there are alot of skills we can't use anymore and are completely useless.I am not sure about Rangers in detail but I know what ones for Monks are useless.Don't worry the Ritualist spirits will go through same nerfing stage as the Rangers did.

Oh my, well since you brought it up, they nerfed OoB because of monks. And they nerfed the way necro enchantments work, beacuse of Ranger spike. So, you really have no right to get up on a pedistal and cry for those two classes. From the point of a necromancer, your post is downright silly, sorry

robrobrob · Jun 02, 2006, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by miasma

Oh my, well since you brought it up, they nerfed OoB because of monks. And they nerfed the way necro enchantments work, beacuse of Ranger spike. So, you really have no right to get up on a pedistal and cry for those two classes. From the point of a necromancer, your post is downright silly, sorry

Yeah, and Necros are the only ones to be rebalanced. Poooooor necros

Arkyn sei · Jun 02, 2006, 09:39 PM // 21:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stabber

I meant that Energy Storage is possibly the most worthless primary attribute there ever was.

Are you nuts? Try running an ele with only 40 energy... and in reply to OP i don't see a problem , necros have still gotta be my fav Proffesion. No way have they been nerfed.

Kakumei · Jun 02, 2006, 10:00 PM // 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkyn sei

Are you nuts? Try running an ele with only 40 energy... and in reply to OP i don't see a problem , necros have still gotta be my fav Proffesion. No way have they been nerfed.

40 energy as compared to 70--good job, you can cast an extra 2-4 spells at first. When you're out, though, maximum energy means shit.

The Red Knight · Jun 02, 2006, 10:04 PM // 22:04

uh Look at igi's build notice the 2 necro ownage k thnx :|

twicky_kid · Jun 02, 2006, 10:17 PM // 22:17

I really think this was not needed. It doesn't change the long cast time on necro spells. It doesn't change the fact that they are interrupt bait. Most of their spells are over cost and too long recharge. What's the point of infinite energy if you can't get a single spell off?

This is something we are going to see more and more as the release times are getting closer together. We are going to see nerfs very quickly instead of the players discovering counters.

I don't need Anet to hold my hand and make it all better. Let the players figure it out for themselves. People in HA already learned that 2 mesmers with cry of frustration will decimate a necro spike team. 1 PD mesmer could lock down the teams entire spike FOREVER!!!

I'd rather see necro spike in HA than IWAY.

yuna of spira · Jun 02, 2006, 11:02 PM // 23:02

People are still failing to see the whole reason of the post in the first place. This is a PVP thread about Necromancer primaries in GvG. NOT about whether energy storage is good or whether necros and SS is nerfed in PVE. Please DO NOT POST ABOUT THAT. Post your feelings on necro primaries in PvP as some people are.

Savage, youre right about my posting the similarity of necros to eles, monks, and warriors. I was getting too far into a rant and mistakenly tried to compare one profession to another.

However, in terms of ANET moving too fast on the nerfing of this, it seems you dont want to allow the metagame to adjust to this new build as it has with other builds. Yes, Imperial Isle limits the ability to split, but thats a problem with ranger spikes and fast cast ele spikes. Anet created the fire map in prophecies to allow a map where you cannot split. Thus in factions they have created a map where you also cannot effectively split. Thats the way they want it, so that there is one map out of all of the many there are where you have to use other tactics. And yes!, I do think it should be given time to conclude there is no effective counter to it because that is what they have done with everything else and it has worked. They wait, see how the metagame changes to reflect counters to a popular build, and THEN nerf it if it is still prominant. That was my reasoning to show other builds that ANET has taken time to nerf and as a result people brought out counters in the metagame that greatly reduced the effectiveness. What I hear from many of you is that you dont want to wait and try to come up with a counter to this as you and others have done with other builds.

Also, you never fully addressed my issue with the reason someone should be a necro primary. The reasons you go with a certain primary is either the armor (which we can all agree necros suck at), the runes to boost attributes, and the primary attribute. Personally, i feel that the attributes for curses and death arent any better as they get larger than 12, only blood seems to have benefits, and I am not ready to accept that fact that only blood is valuable in a GvG. So thus we come to the reason of the post: soul reaping. Why would you even take soul reaping in the first place into a GvG before factions? pretty much only if you were running a build using pets that died pretty quick. But still, even that depends upon something out of your control. Every other primary attribute is direct, as in you are in control of it. So thats my reasoning that now we have a reason to bring soul reaping into a gvg because we can now produce dead bodies (not corpses) to spark soul reaping. But even still this is not absolutely controllable. If you want to take actual specifics of how much energy someone will be gaining, take this exampe: A ritualist can put up a spirit every 5 seconds, that in no way means that he gets the spirit to die right after the ritualist puts it up but rather when it dies and you would no longer gain the benefit from it. And if it dies from being reproduced by another spirit of the same kind, then it has taken around 17-20 secs for that necro to gain energy off that spirit (assuming the rit has rit lord). So, in effect, the necro has to wait for the ritualist to set up in a defined location, and wait all that time to gain a benefit from a dead spirit? In my experience of running this build with in my gvgs for our necro to absolutely spam hexes and spells nonstop that cost around 10-15 en he needed our ritualist to cast a spirit then immediately destroy it with a rupture soul or feast of souls, thus giving no benefit to the spirits in the first place. And if you start to add in more necros and more ritualists as I know is going through your mind and was in the mind of EW....you are no longer a balanced build and are much more open to counters that would have been present in the metagame had ANET not halved the effectiveness of this.

Finally, this update was not posted anywhere in the post on the guildwars website that came out earlier this week that told us the updates that would be present (heres the post: http://www.guildwars.com/support/gam...-05-30-06.php). With the exception of the flag stand NPC update. So I feel that this is because, plain and simple, of the new FoC spike that was present from EW in the semifinals and finals in which it didnt lose. Additionally the nerf of Soul Twisting wasnt present in that earlier post, another skill that was in that FoC spike. So realistically how powerful was that build in the first place that ANET feels they cant let it survive one week and have to add it into their updates within a few days? Personally I feel no one saw it coming. Who could say they saw FoC and hex spamming making a come back? I know no one I play with saw it comin, no one posting on guru saw it coming. So just quickly look at how other powerful combos have been countered simply because people know what to do against them: energy denial on monks (focus switching), IWAY (SS and wards and warrior hate and killing the trappers first). No one knew what to do. An example of this was Sacrament's mesmers were energy denialing the necros.........They had no clue what the other team was trying to do and I bet that with almost any sensible build if someone doesnt understand what they are or what they are trying to do, they will lose. Why not pressure the spirit spammers? or get them to drop their spirits in one location then run to another, just out of range of the spirits? ANET failed to give this a chance and instead allowed people to not have to think about this new special build, but rather continue to play the game of what skills and professions to play rather than what tactics to employ.

Fenix Swiftblade · Jun 02, 2006, 11:09 PM // 23:09

Energy Storage is an exhaustion buffer. It wont help you cast more in the long run, but it does give you at least some freedom in dealing with spells that reduce your max energy just for casting them.

As for necromancers, I really don't see how the soul reaping change is that big a deal. If you're not running spirits then there's no change. Before, if you were using spirits and soul reaping as energy management you would be gaining at least as much energy as good ol' Pre-Nerf Ether Renewal, and probably more.

As for the 'let us find a counter to it' argument, it's been presented before. Any skill can be countered. If you want to look at how unbalanced a skill is, you have to look at the alternatives. Ether Renewal was nerfed because it provided energy management far superior to anything else out there. It didn't matter that it was perhaps more easily countered than spirit based soul reaping.

The final note in this argument is that with spirits you could get far better energy management than anything else in the game. No other method was even close.

I think this falls under the same place as the minion master nerf. People are complaining that these strategies are worse, not stopping to think about how overpowered they were beforehand, and, more importantly, how powerful they still are.

yuna of spira · Jun 02, 2006, 11:25 PM // 23:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fenix

If you want to look at how unbalanced a skill is, you have to look at the alternatives.

Thats my problem. They didnt give it enough time for people to come up with alternatives. The whole reasoning we had at the moment for saying it was unbalanced was because it had just come out and no one had yet come up with counters that most people knew about. Twicky was absolutely right: we shouldnt need to be held by the hand in which we don't have to come up with any sort of counter, otherwise this game is no longer about the actual battle, but rather the build you come in with at the start.

twicky_kid · Jun 02, 2006, 11:29 PM // 23:29

STOP NERFING SKILLS!!!!

Instead of nerfing skills bring some of those pathedic faction elites up to par. Out of the entire chapter only a hand full of skills are usefull. Only about 2-3 elites are even worth mentioning.

20 recharge AoD. WTF is that? It was the ONLY GOOD elite for a sin. Now its completely demolished. Golden phoenix strike was the ONLY lead off that would allow you enough energy for a 4 hit combo. Now you need to land at least 2 criticals during the combo to have enough energy. The buff to Palm strike is nice as its a very powerful skill but a sin's elite will be for survival not offense. The sin has plenty of elite worthy non-elite skills for offense that it doesn't need an offensive elite.

Soul Twistings nerf is complete dumb. It will be replaced ritual lord which is much harder to deal with and works for ALL spirits not just the next one cast and doesn't sac a spirit to get the recharge. If you are going to nerf a skill don't make it worse than another skill that does the exact same thing only better.

Divineshadows · Jun 02, 2006, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by yuna of spira

Thats my problem. They didnt give it enough time for people to come up with alternatives. The whole reasoning we had at the moment for saying it was unbalanced was because it had just come out and no one had yet come up with counters that most people knew about. Twicky was absolutely right: we shouldnt need to be held by the hand in which we don't have to come up with any sort of counter, otherwise this game is no longer about the actual battle, but rather the build you come in with at the start.

Fenix was not agreeing with you. Of course there were counters. You could design a build that prevents spirits from being layed -- effectively knocking out the energy management obtained from the spirits. However, this type of counter involved skills actually on the bar as opposed to a counter involving just a tactic employed -- knockdown, interrupts, blackout. Several ritualists take mantra of resolve though to prevent interruption (though psychic distraction cuts straight through this). Of course it is nice to have some of these types of counters in your build anyway, are you honestly going to bring enough of these counters to deal with 2 or 3 ritual lord spirit spammers? And if you do, you are gimping yourself when you face other builds.

The bottom line is that there are a limited number of skill slots in any team build. Any "counter" that forces you to consume a significant number of these skill slots moves away from being a counter to a complete build redesign/overhaul.

Any game mechanic that allows a player to obtain 15 pips of energy regen without consuming *any* skills on their bar is and was broken. It's not like the ritualist was sitting there spamming useless spirits either just to feed necromancers energy -- they were viable characters in and of themselves. This change regarding spirits and necromancers was a baby-step and I understand Anet's conservatism, but I think Anet will find themselves needing to address this one again later down the road.

Phades · Jun 03, 2006, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falrow

Expertise works great because all the skills are overpriced in the first place.

And thats about it for useful primary attributes for the PvP sceen. The other ones can be usefull for gimmics.

Actually, if energy storage worked like expertise, everyone would be complaining about elementalists with natural 10 pip energy regeneration. Its not so different than the complaints with, the not initially as visible, 19 pips of regeneration that necromancers enjoyed while acompanied by the correct ritualist builds. ~6.3e per second, whee, that makes the old style ether renewal seem kinda tame (minus the healing of course), but then again you cant disable soul reaping or be forced to sacrifice over half the build to make it efficient.

The only real "gimmic" primary attribute is energy storage, because it is a gimmic to make the mechanic of exhaustion work. All of the others, including fast casting, have a place in differnet build styles. While not all of them are as potent as expertise, or always benefical to the entire team like divine favor, they do appropriatly augment the profession they are given to. Strength seems to be on the weak side, but given the nature of the rest of the skills, it doesnt matter that much. Fast casting is always nice when dealing with hex delivery as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMosesPHD

You're gonna have to explain this one to me pal, because I don't know how you think having a huge bag of energy is worthless. If you want to use an elite other than Elemental Attunement or Ether Prodigy even (which itself wouldn't be too great with only 45-50 max nrg) than you sure as hell need the huge energy supply if you hope to have any sort of endurance in a close match vs. a good team. Regen or energy management isn't gonna cut it with the high cost spells.

First off, regen is more important than maximum storage unless you are crippled by exhaustion to the point where you do not have enough energy to cover the base cost of the spell in question.

From there the explanation starts roughly here with the explanation of theoretical energy needs with related effect versus zero energy cost traits.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319
It can be concluded with one quote really as well from another thread. I just wish i didnt goof the math on it initally.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

...14 Expertise is like running at 2.5x energy capacity with 7.5 pips of natural energy regeneration - 80 max energy and 7.5 pips with druid's armor. Equivilent for the elementalist would be (with normal wand + focus) 105 max energy with 10 pips of regen.

Fenix Swiftblade · Jun 03, 2006, 12:48 AM // 00:48

Let me clarify my post a little bit:

To determine if a spell or in this case an ability that can be effectively measured, is unbalanced, you can't look at the counters for it. You need to look at the other skills or abilities that accomplish the same goal, and more importantly, to what degree that skill/ability succeeds in that regard.

In this case, the goal is energy management.

Elite skills for personal energy management are usually in the ~2-2.5 pip range, with the exception of Ether Prodigy. The energy management gained from the Soul Reaping/Spirits combo was at least 10, probably closer to 20 pips. It doesn't matter if they give us time to find a counter or not, the ability is inherently unbalanced.

This is EXACTLY the same thing that happened with Ether Renewal smiting, save that this time ANET didn't bother waiting.

I don't even know why people are complaining about this. If you want to complain about necros in general, and what ever grief you have is unrelated to this nerf, then fine. Necromancers could probably use a better primary attribute function (although if your casting spells that target corpses, it is a nice way to make sure you have the energy for it). However, employing spirits to create this completely unbalanced effect was broken, and needed to be nerfed.

4-5 energy gained from the death of something that kills itself or is destroyed when another one is brought into play is pretty good, especially if you're already going to be a necro and your team is going to bring spirits to help keep itself alive.

TadaceAce · Jun 03, 2006, 01:33 AM // 01:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falrow

Divine Favor rocks if you do the math.

Expertise works great because all the skills are overpriced in the first place.

Critical strikes is effective, and very good. Only real reason a 'sin is a viable damage dealer.

And thats about it for useful primary attributes for the PvP sceen. The other ones can be usefull for gimmics.

Expertise is versitile.

Divine Favor just rocks.

Critical Strikes... eh so so.

Strength, well, every warrior has strength (cept for wammos but they don't count)

Energy Storage is kinda a neccessity since ele spells cost a ton because they have energy storage.

Fast Casting has its place, mostly needed cause they make mesmer skills an hour cast time.