Following the first beta weekend event, I noted that players took to the social play that Guild Wars 2 inspires much quicker than I had anticipated. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t expect people to play socially at all, but the industry itself has conditioned us for solo play over the past 8 years to the point where I was beginning to give up hope that we may never see another truly social MMOG for another decade.
MMO shooters, or games that focus wholly on competitive play, don’t really count here. But even in those games you still see a high percentage of players who take the lone gunman approach rather than focusing on team play. I attribute this to the horrid implementation of leaderboards that call out individual players for their achievement, rather than the successes of full teams as a unit.
That was one thing I always loved about the GvG rankings in GW1; you were ranked as a guild rather than it being a list of how well xX Jimmy Jo Jim Bob Xx performed in the last season. Tracking individual achievement is absolutely important, but leaderboards need to factor in promoting group play, or the idea that you’re winning or losing as a team much better in most games.
Getting back to BWE1 then, the other trend I noticed in all of the social play happening is that it wasn’t really equal across game types. Dynamic Events, by their nature, inspire social play without having to be truly social in the process. The same really applies to most open world content in Guild Wars 2.
But since most players were still getting a feel for the combat system and professions, you rarely saw much, if any, organized team play happening in structured PvP, with WvW falling somewhere in between the two extreme ends of the spectrum.
The Winds of Change
While I didn’t find that too terribly surprising at the time, I was absolutely surprised at how radically that has shifted for BWE2, especially when it comes to structured PvP. The addition of basic tournament play helped promote this naturally, but even in most hot-join matches I played I encountered a major upswing in players being conscious of being part of a team, and working together to complete objectives.
Mind you, about 50% of the time in hot-join it boiled down to zerg tactics, where an entire team would take advantage of group swiftness to zip across the map and destroy unsuspecting defenders. In other words, you weren’t seeing a lot of splits outside of tournament play, but rather the brute force approach based on the notion that there is strength in numbers.
Still, it was refreshing to see structured taking shape as more of a team event, rather than a disparate group of individuals scampering around attempting to solo objectives the way they would generic quest content in other MMOGs. To go a step further, we’re also beginning to see more players conscious of the fact that each profession has a number of utility skills and traits that are wholly focused on interesting group interactions.
This hasn’t fully crossed the threshold towards becoming the norm quite yet, but I suspect that heading into BWE3 – and certainly by launch – competitive players will be factoring these things into their builds to a much higher degree than we’ve seen previously.
Building for Team Play
Necromancers have a number of excellent support skills and traits, and could very well be one of the best professions to lend revive support in the game currently. Other professions have some excellent revive potential as well, but the necro is also naturally more resilient than most others, and can account for absorbing incoming damage during revives depending on how their build is structured.
Rather than babble out long descriptions of different group support tricks necros have up their sleeves, below I’ve compiled two lists; one each for skills and traits. The items in either list are wholly focused on benefitting the team in a very direct sense.
Necromancer Team Support Skills
- Mark of Blood (staff) - Inscribe a mark that inflicts Bleeding on foes and grants Regeneration to allies when triggered by a foe.
- Plague Signet (utility) - Passive: Transfers conditions on nearby allies to yourself.
- Putrid Mark (staff) - Inscribe a mark that transfers conditions from allies to foes when triggered by a foe.
- Reaper's Touch (focus) - Send out a scythe that bounces between foes and allies. Causes Vulnerability to foes and Swiftness on allies.
- Signet of Undeath (utility) - Active: Revive up to three downed allies in the target area.
- Well of Blood (heal) - Conjure a Well of Blood to heal nearby allies.
- Well of Power (utility) - Transform conditions on allies into boons every two seconds.
As you can see, there isn't a massive number of skills that directly benefit allies, but each one is worth working into your build for different reasons. Now let's take a look at the current traits that directly support or benefit allies in some way...
Necromancer Team Support Traits
Blood
- Mark of Evasion (adept / major) – Leave a Mark of Blood when you dodge
- Ritual of Life (adept / major) – Create a Well of Blood when you revive an ally
- Transfusion (adept / major) – Life Transfer heals nearby allies
- Deathly Invigoration (master / major) – Heal in an area when you leave Death Shroud
Soul Reaping
- Mark of Revival (adept / major) – Create a Reaper’s Mark when reviving someone
Again, a short list, and one that helps illustrate how Blood is really at the heart of providing direct team support as a necro. This makes Blood a much more interesting trait line across the board, because it can really go one of two ways. First, you can focus more on life steals which are a big help if you decide to get into some dungeon tanking, but you can also swing fully in the opposite direction and play it as a group support line.
While many of the items listed here are absolutely going to see situational usage, I would still encourage my fellow necros out there to take some time to really think about how you might work them into your builds. If you think about it, most of the skills and traits listed have the potential to shine in every game type offered in Guild Wars 2.
In other words, things like area heals or revives are going to be beneficial whether you’re ungrouped and running dynamic events, crawling through dungeons with a few close friends, assaulting key structures in WvW, or on the bleeding edge of competitive play in structured PvP.
Before I descend back into my secret underground laboratory to continue work on our awesome new update for GW2Hub, I’ll leave you with two questions.
The first you should be asking yourself: How can I work team-based components into my builds rather than being wholly focused on my own DPS or ability to dominate as a lone gunman in team play?
The second question I would encourage you to answer below in the comments: Based on your BWE experiences so far, how important do you feel team support skills and traits will be to the metagame once it’s established in the live game?
Bear in mind that I haven’t even touched on combo fields and finishers… yet. Look for a full rundown of that whole nutty system in a future edition of Grenth’s Grog, coming soon to a GW2Hub near you!
Comments
I really have to insist that Well of Darkness be placed on this list of skills.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Darkness
also take a look at the combo fields;
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo#Combos
Now, you can argue that the effect on allies isn't "direct" (and probably did quietly to yourself while writing this, which lead to this skill not being listed in the article) however, any skill that provides AoE blinds (thus insuring that the next attack from enemies within that AoE will miss allies) AND also presents allies with the opportunity to heal themselves by shooting through it simply cannot be left out of a discussion of ways necros can be supportive in groups.
The WoD will blind enemies every 2 seconds they remain within it for 8 seconds (and with my incredibly advanced math skills I'm thinking that's approximately 4 blinds... per enemy.) In addition, for that entire 8 seconds it acts as a combo field causing most ally range attacks to act as lifesteals AND any blast effects (everything from a warrior's stomp to an engineer's bomb or magnetic shield) to apply yet another impromptu blind on enemies even beyond the normal circumference of the WoD.
That's a WHOLE LOT of blinding and healing going on from just one skill being thrown down by a necro. I've seen this take a "Oh F*** we're all gonna die!" situation and completely reverse it to a "No prob folks... I got this" outcome to an encounter.
Throw in the obvious WoB skill (which provides the retaliation boon from subsequent blast effects in addition to the obvious healing) and you have TEAM point defense. Add the Transfusion trait you also mentioned in the article and DUDE! We're talking some seriously staunch, "THIS dirt belongs to US" resiliency that is nigh impossible to beat while the effects of the wells last.
In a game where "action" must be taken to secure victory, the denial of action is the most powerful thing you can do. Blind cannot be overestimated, and should not be left out of any truly aggressive and/or supportive build.
There are times in the game (PvE and PvP) where you can't simply maneuver or run... sometimes you have to get stubborn... sometimes you've got to pull a Gandalf and shout "You... Shall NOT... PASS!" And when those times come along, you want a necro around who knows how to draw a line in the dirt and make a stand. Not just surviving himself, but also pulling everyone else through with him.
*EDIT* Damn... I just re-read your article again and specifically the last paragraph and I feel rather foolish since you clearly stated your intention to address this sort of thing at a later time. But I love my rant too much to pull it (LOL) and I stand by everything I stated in it still.
Combo fields and finishers are definitely a major enough topic to be covered separately, but you do still bring up some great points.
While the majority of what a necro can do is really going to benefit team play, this time around I was mainly drawing some attention to any skills and traits that explicitly state they factor in direct ally support. That said, blinds are indeed a massive thing, and part of why Well of Darkness is a staple in one of the non-minion builds I've been running fairly regularly.
In fact, wells in general are on my list of topics I want to cover a bit more in depth and may even do so for next week, since combo fields / finishers is a broader topic that applies to all professions and will probably be handled as such here.
You did bring up an excellent point with blinds, one ability that Sardu did leave out was the necro elite plague form with gives access to aoe blinds as well as poisons and cripples. I can't stress how awesome providing huge aoe blinds via plague form can be in changing the tide of battles for allies in pve and pvp.
I've actually solo'ed entire teams via clever use of well of suffering, darkness and plague form.
The aforementioned blood traits were definitely all on my list of support/tank build for necro. Using the trait for shorter cooldown on deathshroud (forgot the name off the top of my head) to increase the Healing potential of Deathly Invigoration.
To answer your question, Sardu - late as it is, both in terms of daily-timeology and in terms of this-here-article's-old - I figure that team-support skills, as opposed to solo skills, will be used in direct proportion to how reliable one figures their team is going to be.
Example (and I'm gonna be a douchebag here and use Warrior skills instead of Necromancer, since I know Warriors better than Necromancers right now): let's look at Signet of Might vs. "For Great Justice!" They're very similar skills - both are meant to produce a quick spike of extra punch for the Warrior in a pinch, but one of them (SoM) is clearly meant for solo play, while FGJ! is designed for group utility. Signet of Might has a slightly stronger activation effect, generating nearly double the Might count of FGJ!, as well as a signet's typical highly valuable passive effect. Can't argue with free Power. FGJ!'s Might lasts longer, true, and it also grants a brief spurt of Fury, but let's disregard that for a moment.
Say it's six months after release, the hype has had a chance to die down some, and I'm on me sylvari Warrior, out in the boonies hitting up resource camps in Wuvwuv. Or, possibly, out eventing in PvE. My first inclination is going to be to take skills like Signet of Might, because I can't reliably count on even having a team, let alone what I'll need to do to help it. Sure, I could bring along a banner of some sort - but which one? Is my ally-do-jour going to be Power-focused, with low crit damage and no conditions to speak of, or is he going to be as deeply invested in bleed damage as I am? is he going to be a melee fighter that can anchor enemies in place for ground-targeted effects, or are we both going to be kiting like crazy (Don't judge, the Warrior's rifle is bawss)? Is that ally even going to be an ally, or is he just passing through on his way to get back to the nearest keep assault?
If I'm dropping into Wuvwuv without a prepared team, or hitting hot-join on sPvP, I'm probably going to focus more on self-help skills like Signet of Might, because I myself am the only concrete element in my game plan. I know what I'm doing, and thus can plan around it. Sure, I could bring along For Great Justice! instead of Signet of Might in a hot-joinable sPvP match...but what if my team consists of two Focused Rituals Necromancers, a defensively-minded Guardian, and a Thief? The extra Might doesn't help the Necromancers for jack, no amount of Might is going to make the Guardian a credible threat on attack, and the Thief is generally not going to be within shout range anyways. If he's doing his job, at least.
While something of an extreme example, it still shows that there are distinct cases where bringing a team-support skill into what amounts to GW2's Random Arena equivalents can actually hinder your team's chances of winning. if I'd brought Signet of Might in the above team mix as opposed to FGJ!, my own personal damage would have been higher, which would have worked better with the team composition I had. I'd be able to spike a little harder, and it might make all the difference. Sometimes, if your team is unable to take advantage of the beneficial utilities you've brought to the fight, then you've wasted space you could have used to improve the performance of the one element of your game plan you had control over.
(This, by the way, is why I prefer offensive, enemy-focused characters/builds/professions like the right Warrior or Thief - Lord only knows what my allies are doing, but I'm usually pretty sure of what the enemy's going to be getting up to in any given situation)
However, most of the time during BWE2 I was playing with a close friend, and thus I never even considered taking Signet of Might. Don't even think I unlocked it. I knew what Pierce was doing, which meant that I knew which team utilities would work and which ones would fail, and that changes the game up entirely. In any situation where you have two or more guys going on offense, For Great Justice! is strictly better than Signet of Might. The effective +damage from Might is 3 stacks times the number of players dealing damage, which alone makes FGJ! worth more overall damage than Signet of Might, even without factoring in Fury or FGJ!'s longer boon duration.
Even just two players working together would usually be better served by taking well-chosen team-focused utilities, but that's two guys who can rely on each other to be doing what they've told each other they're doing. If I have no idea what my allies are doing at any given time, then picking the wrong team utility skill sometimes isn't much better than taking no utility skill at all. A self-help utility has a discrete value on the battlefield - it'll always offer the same amount of benefit. A team utility may offer significantly more than that, but it can also offer less if your team-of-the-moment sucks at taking advantage of what you brought.
I can't really make predictions for sPvP since I'm not one much for it at the moment, but I would anticipate that a lot of 'pure' team support skills, like most of the stuff on your list up there, is going to stay firmly in the bin outside of prebuilt teams. How'm I supposed to realize that the Necromancer's trying to transfer my conditions with Putrid Mark when the first inkling that he even has Putrid Mark is when he bellows at me in team chat to "STAND N TEH MRK DAMMIT." How're my scratch-team allies supposed to know that I'm primarily a rifle Warrior and that I'm thusly a really poor choice to drop ground-targeted effects under? I won't be anchoring enemies in them the way the guy was obviously hoping I would, which leads to cussing fits and bad blood all around.
No...that sort of thing is going to be purely for the prebuilt teams. Everyone else will be bringing their best improvisation tools because in Wuvwuv and hot-joinable games, improv is all you've got.
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