Update 6/18/09

Dunno, I used to kill turtles with my A/N with Reversal on them, the problem i had is when there is a monk with several healing skills. With the A/N the way I play it is I don't just let WK do the work, i use daggers to attack as well, and also, the 3 sec rc of reversal makes it but a little help to the survival of the turtle.

But i have seen different builts that swirls around WK, so I guess some are weaker than others.

Actually that would have been a better update for WK, perhaps with just a little bit of power reduction. I really like your idea loz

roflany1 who claims wk wasnt unbalanced does not play this game

Strawman argument.

Item spells have a significant downside for the benefits they provide - you lose all the benefits of the staff or weapon/offhand you're using. This could be somewhere between 10 and 20 energy, up to 60 health (or more if using conditional health bonuses), a set of HSR and HCT bonuses, and so on. Adding 1 energy per point of Spawning Power while holding an item* would a) require investment (and the Ritualist is still getting less out of the deal than an Elementalist) and b) reduce the downside to using item spells. However, it wouldn't serve as a means of gaining energy, since an Insightful staff with Hale and Hearty would still grant more energy than having 16 in Spawning Power.

Mighty Was Vorizun would probably need to be debuffed, but since the energy gain it provides came about because ANet acknowledged that using an item denied the energy from the usual weapon set.

In terms of in-game lore, it has a simple explanation - the Ritualist has learned to draw from energy stored within the ashpots in just the same way any character can draw energy from a staff, focus, or weapon with the "I Have The Power" inscription.

*Possibly just fragile items - this would stop Ritualists from becoming default flag runners.

CoP always was an interrupt skill. It's just that the damage was so good that that was what it was primarily used for.

A strawman argument would be that sins can't use daggers while holding an item, so they're balanced. We're both talking about rit's holding items and their effects on energy.

Having the ability to hold an item and gain energy from them because of an attribute (or just because someone was feeling generous), rather than the skill, should not happen. Items are treated as weapon sets in themselves. At the moment they are in line with other weapon sets. What you're wanting to do is basically combine multiple weapon sets into one. While holding PwK, you would have the equivalent to a shield set (minus the health, but more armor) and a caster set in one, along with a party heal. Obviously a lot of the item spells can't be interpreted like this, but they don't see use now anyway.

Lore is retarded. Anything that takes lore into serious consideration is also.

Magically?
Ya ok. Sorry you fail.
I either play monk which obviously I can keep myself alive or assassin. Shadow step/snare and kill the necro Shadow Ref as heal boosts hp up qute a bit plau the regen outweighs the degen. Not difficult to do if you know what you're doing.

Sorry, but the only thing that fails here is your argument. Of course you're going to stay up as a monk, that's not difficult at all.

If the necro is half decent, he's going to have a IMS, and go after you when you're already fighting someone. So when you're in the middle of fighting, he's going to cast his hexes and run away. Even if you do manage to shadow step to him, you're already going to be damaged.

Now, assuming the necro is terrible and tries to kill you while you're not attacking anything:
Unless you're running 14 shadow arts (which would be pretty fail), the regen doesn't outweigh the degen. Not to mention the necro will probably have faintheartedness, which is more degen, and slows your attack rate. On top of that, the necro will probably have insidious parasite, which not only makes it longer for you to kill it, but it also damages you. So, you have 10+ degen, along with insidious on you. Go ahead, kill the necro, you're still going to have degen and less than half your health. Cast shadow refuge, you're going to have 6 seconds of regen. Seeing as the necro isn't going to be the only person around, you're going to die.

Against an assassin 1v1, the build is pretty laughable. But Guild Wars isn't balanced for 1v1. If you can't see how the skill was degenerate and bad for the game, then you don't know what proper balance is.

Your strawman was in suggesting people wanted to get "like 40 energy" for summoning a pot, which no-one has. 40 is clearly ridiculous, while a figure that is potentially less then the energy you forfeit by summoning the pot is not so ridiculous.

Even ignoring the fact that PwK is one of the few item spells that does get used and even then it's more for the party heal than the armour bonus, let's consider it. Instead of using PwK, the Ritualist could be using an offhand with the Ignorance is Bliss inscription and a spear with the Defense inscription. That gives said Ritualist the SAME oh-so-valuable armour bonus that PwK provides. This armour bonus is also combined with a net +7 energy from the offhand, whatever benefit the focus core grants, whatever benefit the spear inscription grants (which could be I Have The Power to bring net energy back to +12 - and on a caster, probably WILL be), and whatever benefit the spearhead grants. Oh, and the ritualist can also attack with the spear. Won't do much damage without investment of points, but it's there - and the suggestion here requires investment of attribute points in Spawning Power.

Now, take PwK with, say, 12 Spawning Power under the suggestion. What does that give you? 10 armour and 12 energy. The spear/offhand set can match that easily, while still giving the benefit from the spearhead, the focus core, and whatever token damage throwing the spear gives. On the other hand, PwK costs you the energy it cost to summon it and a skill slot. On an analysis of the benefits of carrying PwK versus a regular weapon/offhand set with appropriate mods, the weapon/offhand set wins every time.

Of course, this argument ignores the fact that most pots, including PwK, aren't intended to act as a substitute for a weapon/offhand set. Instead, many of them act as a kind of 'stored spell' - they may provide some small benefit while carried to compensate for the loss of the weapon/offhand set, but the main payoff comes when the bundle is dropped and the spell effect goes off. This is where the real argument against the idea comes from - that the loss of energy is the cost of being able to 'hold' the spell, not that the benefits of holding the pot come anything near the benefits of a well-chosen weapon/offhand set.

Your argument might apply better to some of those pots that are designed to be held rather than stored and dropped - but apart from VwK farming, who uses them? Maybe to trigger effects conditional on carrying an item, but believe me, in those cases, the pot is a price you pay to get the conditional effect, not a benefit in and of itself (and even then, builds doing this tend to be sub-par in my experience). Possibly because few if any of them are worth the cost of losing the benefits from your weapon and offhand to use, let alone the energy and skill slot it takes to use them?

tl;dr:

A fairly simple analysis can show that even with this proposed bonus, many pots still actually come up deficient compared to a good staff or weapon/offhand set that doesn't cost energy or a skill slot to bring. The fact that, on the whole, pots AREN'T used should, furthermore, be an indication that perhaps they could use a boost.

As for the lore thing: You started it, by asking how a pot could "magically" give energy. I simply answered your question, but if you want it summarised: Maaaaa-giiiiic. *wiggles fingers*

Funny, because I havent died under WK. I dont 1v1 at all I go after npcs but if I get hexed with something that could potentially kill me if I dont react I am smart enough to shadow step right away. Again im sorry you fail.
but i'm done with you, not my fault if you suck that bad.

Hailey...c'mon now. I think you're missing the point Arkantos is trying to make. Let's get this back on the actual skill and not calling peeps out.

I think WK got nerfed too hard for NECRO primaries that invest with a Sup Rune. I know it won't kill by itself and I don't ask it to. So, as a good little necro, I bring Insidious (as Arkantos mentioned, lol) and I attack others that are already engaged. Is that good tactics for a team game? Isn't getting a 2v1 advantage something that you strive for? All things being equal, the greater numbers will usually win. You should die if you get teamed on. So don't go around throwing that "Game Balance" talk around if that's the case. However, as I said before, up the damage and degen at 16 to something more than 1 more on each or cause all non-necro skills to be disabled for 10 secs.

Yes, I suck so bad that when a WK necro and a damage dealer attack me, I die because I have a single self heal and no monk support. One day, I wish to be as good as you. Until then, I'll continue sucking so bad. Continue being amazing at this game, sir.

But I do believe you're missing why the skill was nefed. It wasn't nerfed because the damage was too high, it was nerfed because of its effect. It took no skill to use. As a cast and forget hex in areas where you must run around, it was way too overpowered.

It was meant to be over the top. It's what I do.
I used it because it sees most play. And the armor bonus was quite useful before the nerf, which was why it was nerfed.
I think what I was referring to was PwK armor bonus + the +10 armor while holding an item insignia, which is +20 armor overall.
20 damage: game changing. Actually, that would be a wand. Spear is more like... 2.

The item bonuses are there to offset the loss of energy. If you want more energy, that's where the sacrificial part of the game comes in to play. More energy > effect of the item? Drop it. Not? Keep it. Also keep in mind that "effect" is not only refering to the passive effect, but also the one that takes place after it is dropped (assuming it has one, as in the case of PwK).

Again, sacrifice.

Most of them aren't, as is the case with most of the rit skills. This is due to a poorly designed class. Buff them? They're too powerful. Nerf them? They're unusable. Most of the rit class needs a complete reworking, which won't happen.

You're wanting rits to be an all-in-one awesomefest, and awesomefests are just too much awesome for one game to handle.

I was making a joke. As noted by the magical unicorns.

Just to drive my point home, here are a few examples of why this is bad:
Energetic Was Lee Sa: If you take the passive item effect and combine it with extra energy, that would be a necro or ele's wet dream.
Generous Was Tsungrai: I can have more health AND more energy? obaby.
Mighty Was Vorizun: Health, armor, and even more energy, oh my.

Just thought of this and don't feel like scrolling up: Right now rits are limited by their energy. Throwing items into it only helps this out, because they have to choose between their energy pool and the item effect. If they were to have more energy, what's stopping them from just spamming resilient weapon an 5 people, and warding on the other 2, while keeping party heals going through PwK, and having an extra 20 armor just because?

Geez c'mon ppl WK wasn't nerfed because it was OP in JQ!!!....Anet dont give a shit about JQ or else they would nerf RoJ as well to death not some HM nerfing for NPC scatter....RoJ has not changed=WK wasnt nerfed bc of that, period.

WK was nerfed because it punished kiting and splitting and that the tactical game play in a way that it was ridicilous. You dont need to 1v1 Hailey just get into an arena like RA, TA, or do some GvG...thats all. The damage alone could be handled actually but the recharge was so short that the necro could spread it out 24/7 along with LC if we are here (just tabbing around for lulz). If you ask me WK should not even exist in it's current form even after the nerf.

I really cant understand why ppl like to make pointless arguments over and over on this forum but oh well...at least I can laugh a good one

Major flaw in your argument...NPCs do run from it in JQ now.

NPC's do run from it, but a monk with 16 smiting prayers can STILL kill all npc's at a shrine in JQ, simply because the npc's run away way too late.

As for the wk argument, they nerfed it because it was too easy to use and it punished the other team too much for kiting and other tactital stuff.

Don't think anyone would go for 16 att. makes the caster too easy to kill, unless you then sacrifice energy insignia for health ones, even then it's hard to make up for the -75 hp.

so do NPC's run from Firestorm as well????

"Anyone" = Not the average AB, JQ, nstuff player
Moreover, anyone who brought RoJ into AB (meh, can't say for JQ, not really playing this) failed. Eles outdid and still outdo them by far. Period.

About the argument Arkantos and whoeverelseiforgothisname were having
1. Melee in 1v1 vs. a half decent Necro (Insid, Faintheartedness (not even elites)) loses.
2. Self heals o.o? Be brave, bring frenzy (ah, you can take lions comfort on a warr, thats kewl, rest is a NoNo though) and trust in your monk.
3. Got no monk? WTB? Fail somewhere else then please.
4. Shadow Step? Srsly, once good, now nerfed far too much, i can think of at least 3 skills for each build i'd bring first....
5. WK ... too good, nerf was deserved. ESPECIALLY in low end PvP where most teams (means those that actually know what to do) are stuck with one monk (mostly one hex removal only). Having to deal with alot of other easily spammable hexes and a lot of kiting/running involved, it was too powerful (if it kills you by itself, well, fail more plx). Period.

So basically you are justifying shadows of hob's arguement based on a few players? Not a smart thing to do.

Also, Roj = aoe skills like sandstorm, savanna heat, etc. So it in itself isn't much more of a shrine clearer(like the skills used in the E/A solo cap build in AB), except the skill is in the monk profession. And ofc eles out do monks damage wise.......they are meant to be a damage chucking machine.

Update - Monday, June 22, 2009

Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that caused Xinrae's Weapon, Vengeful Weapon, Nightmare Weapon, and Weapon of Remedy to heal the caster rather than the target.
Fixed a bug that caused Spirit Siphon to appear twice on the skill list when interacting with a Priest of Balthazar.
Fixed a bug that prevented the Guild Versus Guild Zaishen Combat Quest from properly updating.

Well, that was a random update. Thought it would be tournament house related.

I was hoping for the same...I wonder if ANET could possibly provide a timetable for these points? Also, maybe they should release some statement on the state of the Tourney house for next month...

I've heard some people who didn't get their points now have them. So even if it isn't listed, it might have been stealth updated in there.

Really?....well wasnt aware of that hence I'm playing roj monk on JQ and never ever run one out of it as much as they did before....aka randomly... so yeah RoJ as it is as ever.

Yesterday I even saw a dervish again with RoJ what is a big lolz but still, even he could cap a shrine...so don't come with that that npc's running out from RoJ when they do this at best 1 time out of 10 which is retarded, randomly etc also it can be caused by several other things (by teh way the only ones that causally running out are the archers at my knowledge and I playing alot bc I'm very close to max rank).

Concluson that you trying to compare some random scatter which sometimes working sometimes not and was implemented bc of SC's (which are also works fine even with RoJ just you need more brain now to use it) with WK which has nothing to do with JQ but more like splitting, kiting and tactical gameplay in real PvP which this game is about.

P.S...won't post more on this matter bc this argument won't get us anywhere until anet really fixing things as they should, hf and gl.

I was at the JQ today with my crazy RoJ derv and I didn't see any npcs running from RoJ.

If they do it, it occurs far too rarely to be considered anywhere near consistent.

They could try to make Necros more interesting outside suicide bombs and skills that people hate like there is no tomorrow.

I call it undeserved hex hate. While nobody bothers about auto-attacking the crap out of other players, they hate hexes.

If we want to differentiate between more casual low and high pvp and whatever, The 3 degen and 20% healing reduction of Lingering Curse, even on spam, do not really endanger anyone in JQ or FA that much. Not even Gunther. People just hate long lasting hexes who already are tuned down to be pressure rather than actually being dangerous by itself.

Weaken Knees also assumes that the Necro hexes someone and then a player of your team, a melee, starts chasing the guy who then goes the "way of the turtle" and dies. Weaken Knees stops people, even a ranged attacker cannot just run after a Necro with this hex applied. It is more annoying than dangerous in the lower brackets. And how dangerous is it in GvG? I have not seen it outside of hexways.

The change made it unattractive to use it for -5 degen and a little damage on Warriors and to some extent on non-necro primaries in general, as the -x degen now scales with the attribute level.


Even at 16 Curses, Necros now have -1 less degen (-4 is max now, 20% down from -5) and 38% less damage for the additional damage while moving.



Now screw both WK and LC, bomb them to the stoneage. But do not forget to give especially Curses some BETTER elite skills and necros a role in PvP. They are not too common in High end PvP, Mesmers are much more common. In FA, JQ and AB I cannot say that playing my Necromancer is really that much fun.


For GW2, they have a lot of work to do. OK, maybe there will be entirely new classes and abilities anyways.


Still, I am not too fond on my Necro being primarly a PvE expert and being rather limited in PvP, for Mesmers it is outside of PvE skill powered builds quite the opposite (though I personally found quite good Mesmer builds that do not primarily rely on Cry and Ether Nightmare for PvE, too).


For those who do not bother to read more than one paragraph, SHORT VERSION: I am not happy about the state of Necros in PvP in general. (And of Elementalists in Hard Mode PvE)

Regarding RoJ:

Yes, NPCs do run now, but it still makes no difference, they just die like before.

Which is somehow funny...^^

Do you mean the npcs run>but they run too late so they die anyways from the burning? 'Cause I thought this update fixed that.

I'm sorry to disillusion you, but A-Net is hardly interested in JQ etc. when it comes to balancing. You haven't played GvG lately (no offense, it's just that A-Net concentrates their PvP Skill Updates on this part of the game). Hex-Pressure was nasty. WN and LC was nasty. WN is still quite nasty.

Stealth update today?just downloaded 1 file

That is because all they did was try to make it useless for warriors to run it.

LC has been nerfed several times. And WK will once again be a forgotten skill.

They don't want necros to play spikers.
They don't want hexway.
Even Foul Feast is nerfed, ANet defines necro a strange role.

Even Curses don't have much decent elite skills for PvP.

And look at blood magic, it's really a poor line in both PvE and PvP. Oppressive Gaze and Angorodon's Gaze were once good skills, but have been rendered useless. The only thing people remember is BiP.

I personally thing blood magics should be much more creative rather than full of small life stealing craps.

For example, skills such as infuse health and scourge healing sound much more like blood magics rather than monk spells in other games.

Which is also costing you your insignia slot, which could be Radiant's, or Survivor's, or, y'know, any insignia that actually sees use.

It's two more than you get while carrying an item... and a heck of a lot more if it's being used in synergy with orders, MoP, or Barbs.

I've already accepted this argument in principle. However, the fact that people don't use them suggests that they simply aren't worth the sacrifices.

Nope, ANet would never do anything to change Ritualists. Certainly not in PvE. After all, it hasn't happened in any recent update that I can think of.

The necro or ele won't get that energy unless they're a Rit primary, and Ele and Necro primaries have enough energy management already.
Actually, you probably still have more health and LESS energy... and you've also lost access to your HSR and HCT mods. It's just less by a smaller amount.
Which I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned as one that would have to be rebalanced... since ANet buffed it when they realised how pointless it was to have a +energy pot when summoning that pot lost you the energy bonuses you had in your weapons.

Yes, because gaining 1 extra energy per point spent in an attribute that is rarely used except for spirit spamming is really going to keep the ritualist spamming for more than, oh, three more casts.

No knocking Blood Magic in PvE. My Ranger going all touchy-feely with it has him kicking more butt in PvE than I've ever been able to get him to do with a bow.

On Rits...

They're worth the sacrifices - but, personally, I avoid most Item Spells because holding an item seems to make calling targets for the H/H not work properly and do little more than to cause me to run at the target (and shift-ctrl-clicking to try and call the target without moving seems to get completely ignored by the H/H instead of just sometimes ignored).

Point. You could say that's another sacrifice, but it's an interface issue rather than a design feature.

Indeed. They have no place and no love for Necros in PvP. And no idea what to do with them either.

What shall Necros do actually. They are not allowed to do what they could do.

Everything that can screw up Melees (read: to 99% this means Warriors) is considered bad. Because nothing else besides physical attackers is viable to kill stuff for extended periods of time. But this is what Necros could and should do, counter melee. They have lots of enchantment removal and curses mostly focused on anti-melee mechanics.

Annoying primarily casters on the other hand with hexes and interrupts seems to be very viable. This is what Mesmers do.

And when everything is in the supposedly right order, not much blocking, not much hexes, the Metagame is considered "stale and boring".

Seriously, do you even play PvP?
Necros are still an effective class.
Hexes aren't dead just because some really overpowered Skills got nerfed...
They are still viable in RA,TA (Faint...easy cover...FF/PS etc.). Same goes with GvG etc.
The pressure the nerfed skills (LC, WN, and to SOME extent Suffering) created was disproportionated to the energy/recast etc. the skills had.
And trust me on that: Some kind of Hexway will come back soon to PvP ... there already new builds tested around (Corrupt Enchantment with Barbs, Cultists Fevor etc.).

why would you want to spike when you can bloodspam anything to death ? call it bloodspike if it makes you feel better, it's still the most retarded and overpowered build in game

anyway, watch obs mode on a double champ weekend and come back here to tell us how necros are useless in gvg

Basically what I want to respond to here is that for your suggestion to go through, there would have to be an ungodly amount of changes to both the class mechanics and skills.

Although they did update quite a few skills in the past update, how long did it take for them to actually change those skills? Most of the skills that were buffed (in reference to spirits) got nerfed years ago. Anet, unfortunately, refuses to do large skill updates for all classes combined, they won't make enormous changes for one class.

I would even seriously doubt they would make the change if it was just a simple matter of changing the primary and a few skills.
I will reply to this one. Most people don't make the sacrifices because they either don't consider them, or are too lazy/bad to do them. That's more in a reference to general weapon swapping though, rather than weapon/item consideration.

The point is, they nerfed blood spells to stop life stealing spike.
(OG, AG, etc.) But didn't redesign them to something new/viable, simply reduce the amount of life stealing or increase the recharge. That made a boring attribute line even more boring.
For example, Mark of Subversion is mush less useful than Shame. Consider remake some skills' functions.
We don't want so many life stealing skills, give me something different.

There surely were some necro builds. But mostly LC and WN before nerfed.

If you are talking about N/As vamp spirit build, come on... it only works in limited maps and can be countered by most ballanced builds easily. If you can't, even after all gazes' nerf, there is nothing more to say.

And I am not a necros spike build lover, what I would like to see is more viability for all classes in GvG.
Bassically, dervs, sins and necros are relative uncommon in GvG (compared to war, ranger, ele, mes and monk).

Please tell me you are applying to the live Krewe test team. And i pray you get accepted.

It seems your ideas and IQ are higher than all of the live team's put together, seriously. If anet would listened to rational, intelligent people like yourself this game might not have gone the way it has.

I agree with you on the grounds of multiple player-vs-player.(Like in AB, JQ, RA, GvG, etc). Since I have played 1v1 with my MB ele against a Vamp spirit Bspiker and lost, while he retained around 70%+ hp. So BS is powerful, really powerful in some cases in a 1v1, long time limit situation. However, with alot of people involved, BS is far weaker compared to an ele. Since BS can only spam blood magic skills, while an ele can do a variety of damage to the opponent.