Guild Wars 2

I am inclined to agree with the way you put it there Spoj.

I could get behind the idea of allowing all heals to effect the necro, then adjust for that. I absolutely feel all traits, and skills, and so on, in effect should apply any heals with those coming from the necro themselves.

The problem your going to run into, is changes to DS after the fact are going to be out of balance if your in a large group, or solo, one or the other. I say this, because which ever end of the spectrum they balance for, will hose the other.

Thats probably true but i thinks its needed regardless.

The thing is, people are afraid that Necromancer will have its current power and a lot of sustain buffs, and this fear is justified imho…

Necromancer is certainly not weak – it’s bursting capabilities in a competitive setting, both condition and power, while still maintaining their own in small skirmishes (1v1 – 2v2’s) is quite something… Though their sustain only scales for these kinds of skirmishes, whereas burst healing (Ele) Invulns (Warrior Stance, Ranger Signet), Blocks, Vigor and numeral teleports do not diminish in numbers…

A Necromancer get’s focussed a lot, and people usually say this for either two reasons:

• They hurt when unattended
• They are easy to shut down

Frankly, both are true… And this is an issue…

There are design inconsistencies that only happen because of the power that a Necromancer has on a small scale… The very fact that this is the only class out of eight that is not able to recieve heals from the team because of their defensive mechanic blocking it is one of these inconsistencies and should not exist in the first place… If there needs to be toning down from the damage on certain builds to make it happen, then do so, because it is crippling the way combat and teamplay in general works, and it is poking holes within the design of the Necromancer An attrition based fighter …

They have to be very careful with where they remove damage if they go down that route, Because currently in PvE necro is one of the least damaging professions.

That being said if they still refuse to give us healing through deathshroud. Then they need to compensate us in other ways. By blocks and other damage avoidance. Ideally id like a bit of these anyway. And as you say the design inconsistancies of DS shouldnt exist in the first place. So i really do hope they stop shying away from it.

spoj.9672:

They have to be very careful with where they remove damage if they go down that route, Because currently in PvE necro is one of the least damaging professions.

Well yea, though as we all know Anet does not like PvE enough to take things into consideration to help this :P

If anything though, most of the damage a Necromancer does in PvE comes from Dagger auto, Warhorn and Well of Suffering – all three who are not the main power sources of a Necromancer in PvP (Well of Suffering maybe a bit, but that is only useful against people who cannot press WASD) so I hope it’s going to be safe…

You forgot reapers touch and tainted shackles as a main source of damage in PvE.

Id be worried if they toned down condition damage aswell. Its currently very weak at max potential in PvE. And necro even has a lot less potential condition damage than other classes.

So im not really sure where they would tone the damage down. Further nerfs to Lich form? Because that doesnt sit well with me either.

Id say the better solution would be to just nerf lifeforce generation on power builds. And leave damage untouched.

spoj.9672:

You forgot reapers touch and tainted shackles as a main source of damage in PvE.

Id be worried if they toned down condition damage aswell. Its currently very weak at max potential in PvE. And necro even has a lot less potential condition damage than other classes.

So im not really sure where they would tone the damage down. Further nerfs to Lich form? Because that doesnt sit well with me either.

Id say the better solution would be to just nerf lifeforce generation on power builds. And leave damage untouched.

Sorry, was a bit out of the loop with Necromancers regarding PvE and their rotations :P
Have not done much research prior to my comment, but hey, I also had a lack of coffee during the whole day…

I am not someone to look at when it comes to shaving and stuff… I usually point out flaws, but my lack of experience regarding balance usually necks me…
What I do question is nerfing Lifeforce Generation on power builds though… I mean, if we go by a common power build, their weapons are usually D/D + St … Though aware that Axe is used, it is on average what is used mostly in tournaments…
Staff is within this spec the only way to reliably build up lifeforce weaponwise, where traits can make up for some small percentages… So traits like Reaper’s Precision and Soul Marks would probably get hit (for a common 6/2/0/0/6 build) if we think about this but, as mentioned, Staff likely as well…

The problem then arises where Staff and exploding Flesh Worm is the only way for a Condition Necromancer within TPvP to get Lifeforce… Outside of this, they have a huge shortage of it on their average builds (0/6/4/0/4)…

I wonder if nerfing Lifeforce Generation is really the answer, but in the end, we would never know if Necromancers do not recieve heals in Deathshroud as a whole… Who knows, it might just open other options (such as my exotic Condi build) to shine better than what is standard…

Fyi, yes, I am fully aware I am rambling and thinking out loud… I am again not one to look at when talking specifically about balancing, I am more one for pointing out problems – that is easier in the end :P

They need to allow healing while in DS. Necros supposedly give up mobility for sustain, yet they have no real sustain. The Siphon traits are all pretty horrible and even if you take all of them and the heal to make the healing decent, it doesn’t outweigh what you give up to get it. Give Necros the sustain they were meant to have, nerf some of the damage on the extreme parts of the class to compensate. The necro in general needs a major overhaul though, the weapon sets are absolute trash and have no real cohesion, a lot of traits suffer from the same lack of focus. Most of the necro gameplay is trying to get into DS because the weapon skills are so bad and so much is tied to DS in traits. This is exactly why there are only 2 builds for the the Necro, everything outside those builds is lackluster, underpowered, or useless. At least giving necros some sustain would allow for another viable build.

coglin.1867:

The problem your going to run into, is changes to DS after the fact are going to be out of balance if your in a large group, or solo, one or the other. I say this, because which ever end of the spectrum they balance for, will hose the other.

I disagree.

First of all, any kind of self healing like vamp traits or Parasitic Contagion is currently too weak. If healing through DS would be possible they would still not be able to sustain a necro properly, and taking these traits would mean a significant damage loss.
Many people who argue against DS healing seem to be under the impression that necros could play the same builds as they do today and get a big chunk of healing in addition to that for free. Both is not true. Builds would be significantly weaker in exchange for a slight sustain increase.

Secondly, the scaling in team fights will always be worse than in 1v1s, nothing will change that. The extra siphoning could never be strong enough to compensate the damage loss of being attacked by 2 or more players.
Also, some extra hp can never be the equivalent of blocks or invulnerability, so I’m actually rather offended when people suggest necros shouldn’t get the same healing from allies in team fights as other classes who also have access to those far superior defensive mechanics.

A balance of scaling – which is exactly what coglin mentions as a problem to other balance changes – is a requirement at some point, yes. Especially WvW hinges on the idea that you could play in parties of 5 or zergs of 50-100, and to this individual levels of being wanted have to be balanced.
Notice that I didn’t say “power”. Or “performance”. “Being wanted”.

That is to say, a zerg of 8 should ideally want 10+ Mesmers. Just like a group of 8 ideally wants 1 Mesmer.

Anchoku.8142:

…weighed and found lacking because Necromancers being able to heal in DS would make them stupid OP…

This has the potential to be true but would not necessarily be the case if it was balanced well. No healing in DS is an example of fast/lazy/sloppy design. Would it be harder to balance? Absolutely. But not allowing healing in DS creates so much anti-synergy that the intended overall class design is non-functional.

Necros have minimal defense because “omg second life bar”. But DS blocks virtually every other ability/mechanic and in isolation DS isn’t good enough to justify this “minimal defense” trade off. Therefore DS should not be as isolated from other mechanics (like healing).

flow.6043:

coglin.1867:

The problem your going to run into, is changes to DS after the fact are going to be out of balance if your in a large group, or solo, one or the other. I say this, because which ever end of the spectrum they balance for, will hose the other.

I disagree.

First of all, any kind of self healing like vamp traits or Parasitic Contagion is currently too weak. If healing through DS would be possible they would still not be able to sustain a necro properly, and taking these traits would mean a significant damage loss.
Many people who argue against DS healing seem to be under the impression that necros could play the same builds as they do today and get a big chunk of healing in addition to that for free. Both is not true. Builds would be significantly weaker in exchange for a slight sustain increase.

Secondly, the scaling in team fights will always be worse than in 1v1s, nothing will change that. The extra siphoning could never be strong enough to compensate the damage loss of being attacked by 2 or more players.
Also, some extra hp can never be the equivalent of blocks or invulnerability, so I’m actually rather offended when people suggest necros shouldn’t get the same healing from allies in team fights as other classes who also have access to those far superior defensive mechanics.

Hit the nail on the head with this one, there is absolutely no reason ally healing shouldn’t heal necros at all times. Necros defensive mechanic is at best on par with other classes defensive mechanics, yet necros are punished for being in Death Shroud. All healing should be allowed in DS, and then they should balance after that.

Rym.1469:

I imagine Anet don’t want it to reach a point where a Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer uses Endure Pain/Distortion/Shelter/Elixir S, Gear Shield at say 1/3 health and, whilst in stance/distortion/heal/shrink, block, is healed to full health by local water field blasts and other AoE heals. It would be an enormous buff to Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer sustain. Not sure if it’s the sort of thing Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer needs in sPvP.

Oh, wait…

None of those things constitute the same mechanic as an additional pool of health.

I truly don’t see why there is any argument against necro’s being healed in DS since any healing would go to the necro’s health pool and not DS. Plus with the ability to be healed in DS would just see necros conserving their life force for when they actually need it for either surviving a burst or using it for their spike rotations which if I’m not mistaken is what the concept of DS was supposed to be but instead we got what we have now.

DarkMezmer.5198:

I truly don’t see why there is any argument against necro’s being healed in DS since any healing would go to the necro’s health pool and not DS. Plus with the ability to be healed in DS would just see necros conserving their life force for when they actually need it for either surviving a burst or using it for their spike rotations which if I’m not mistaken is what the concept of DS was supposed to be but instead we got what we have now.

agreed +1

Most of the time spent on my necromancer was in the mad kings labrynth, and I always found it annoying how I used death shroud at low health expecting my allies heals to put my HP back up, only to come out of it with the same health. I can see how it could be overpowered in PvP, but in PvE healing while in death shroud wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Perhaps they should convert heals while in death shroud into some other effect? I’m not sure what, but heals not affecting you at all just seems silly.

Maybe I am the one not looking at this right but being able to accept heals in DS is roughly equivalent to having very high invulnerability uptime. Almost no heals in DS make it a CD burning mechanic for skills.

If I traited DS, I could spend half the match turtling and soaking heals from allies. I just think that right now, Necromancer is tuned to survive while missing a lot of heals. Improving siphons is already hard for the balance team.

Anchoku.8142:

Maybe I am the one not looking at this right but being able to accept heals in DS is roughly equivalent to having very high invulnerability uptime. Almost no heals in DS make it a CD burning mechanic for skills.

If I traited DS, I could spend half the match turtling and soaking heals from allies. I just think that right now, Necromancer is tuned to survive while missing a lot of heals. Improving siphons is already hard for the balance team.

Yet if you did do as your second point suggest you wouldn’t be contributing much to your team as you would probably need to be chaperoned the entire match by another teammate to just keep you healed which isn’t optimal most of time.

To be able to turtle and full heal in deathshroud while being attacked would require some serious water field blast spam. Necro really doesnt have that much sustain on its own especially when outnumbered.

It would however finally make necro a possible bunker.

Are you all dying in like 5 seconds or something? Seriously our sustain isn’t as bad as a lot of you are saying and I get you are all upset that our class mechanic prevents our hp from being healed…. but I don’t think the devs designed the necro to get heals in deathshroud and I have no clue how most of you don’t understand how op it would be to be getting burst healed along with any other regen or healing while in deathshroud.

Yeah the sustains manageable 1v1 providing you have lifeforce to start off the fight. But you cant bunker with that sustain. I also think you are overestimating the prevalence of burst healing in sPvP. :P

The necros DS was completely reworked right before release. So it was kind of rushed in the end. They have also been afraid of bringing back the immortal necro that was in one of the beta’s. Which has hindered balance over the last 2 years.

NeXeD.3042:

Are you all dying in like 5 seconds or something? Seriously our sustain isn’t as bad as a lot of you are saying and I get you are all upset that our class mechanic prevents our hp from being healed…. but I don’t think the devs designed the necro to get heals in deathshroud and I have no clue how most of you don’t understand how op it would be to be getting burst healed along with any other regen or healing while in deathshroud.

No you dont understand what the meaning of this topic is…

Not allowing healing healing in DS is one of the worst design decision Anet could have done with necromancer.

If healing in DS is op, which may or may not be true, then rebalancing Ds would be a lot better then getting no healing at all in Ds.

In fact i would even agrue, independent from healing in DS, that the differences between a necromancer without any LF and with a full LF bar is too big and need some normalisation but that is off topic…

Well the topic is necromancers punished for having regen which is the case sometimes. But any class can be punished for having regen on…. mostly by necros.

I’m not arguing about ds being changed and then we get healing through ds. I’m arguing about giving healing in DS in the necromancers current state. If they changed ds to a smaller number and made it more of an offensive mechanic then we might need healing in DS.

I absolutely understand the topic. Muchacho. You want healing in ds because every other class has a mechanic but only necro gets locked out of receiving healing while using it, but every other class doesn’t have a extra hp bar that also increases toughness has an instant interupt, a teleport, a decent aoe damage channel, a powerful condi application that has a power hit and an immobilize….

Well I want a hard CC condition that also does damage on my ele, oh and I want a second hp bar.

NeXeD.3042:

Well the topic is necromancers punished for having regen which is the case sometimes. But any class can be punished for having regen on…. mostly by necros.

Yes but necros are the only profession, where the punishment comes from themself not from an enemy. So i would argue there is a difference. And before the argument with corruption skills comes, no i dont consider those skills self punishing since you can transfer/consume those conditions.

NeXeD.3042:

If they changed ds to a smaller number and made it more of an offensive mechanic then we might need healing in DS.

Actually i would be fine if that would happen, since as i said before the differences between 0% LF and 100% LF are to big.

NeXeD.3042:

Well I want a hard CC condition that also does damage on my ele, oh and I want a second hp bar.

OK but then i want invulerability skills on my necro and slows on my guardian etc…

Jokes aside, i am fine if there are things not any profession as access to or are for one profession only.
But i dont think it is good game design if i have a profession mechanic that discourages me to use skills (e.g. bloodfiend) or here in our case a boon or even a whole traitline like Bloodmagic due them being kinda useless while in DS.

But hey this is a discussion as old as the game is, maybe i simply should stop wanting to play bloodmagic necromancer and be happy that i can play terrormancer or other necromancer builds that actually dont really care about healing in DS that much…

We have to wait 3 months to Necro buff.

the topic is necromancers having regen becomes pure liability in death shroud

a Necromancer in Death Shroud is literally receiving no benefit from the boon.

being punish wouldn’t be a issue if we could benefit from it

comparing death shroud to distortion is just sad
aside from some a couple of skills death shroud and condition cleanses is all the defense of the necromancer
so stop comparing at least half the defensive option a necromancer has to one skill a mesmer has

in the case of blood magic sustain i think part of the issue there is it is alway active if it wasnt alway active they could make blood magic sustain work probably

Evan Lesh said he will mention this to the design team.

There is hope.

Simonoly.4352:

Rym.1469:

I imagine Anet don’t want it to reach a point where a Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer uses Endure Pain/Distortion/Shelter/Elixir S, Gear Shield at say 1/3 health and, whilst in stance/distortion/heal/shrink, block, is healed to full health by local water field blasts and other AoE heals. It would be an enormous buff to Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer sustain. Not sure if it’s the sort of thing Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer needs in sPvP.

Oh, wait…

None of those things constitute the same mechanic as an additional pool of health.

Yes, they really do. Endure pain has far better scaling than DS. Endure pain on a DD burst could absorb 10k+ damage. If the necro is fully specced into DS then he will get 78% of his life in life force, at 20k hp that’s 15.6k. If the necro is in DS for 5s he loses 10% lf naturally, leaving ~14k actual damage absorbtion. So already endure pain is near what DS is capable of and that’s just regular endure pain vs fully traited DS. if we start looking at multiple enemy situations then we would see that endure pain scales just fine, yet DS doesn’t scale at all. Endure pain is also ready to go where the necro needs to build the LF in order to use DS. So in a 1v1 DS is good, but passed that other skills that actually scale are flat out better. Why do you think necros get focused in team fights? A bit of extra health doesn’t stop focus fire, invuls/evades do though and mobility certainly helps.

Then outside of endure pain warriors get more endurance regen, more vigor, mobility, evades, stuns, blocks, a relfect, and flat out more armor. Are you really trying to tell me that having 14k more hp makes up for all of the above and it’s still reasonable that the necro can’t be healed in it? Warriors aren’t even the top tier of bunker either. Necros defense is DS spectral armor, and I guess plague form, that’s really it. The siphons/regens they have are near usless as one is so paltry and the other doesn’t work in DS, which is where a necro will be when they actually need heals. Finally let’s not forget to mention what an utter mess the necro weapons are. Sure other classes have a few bad weapons but for necro the choices are horrible for building a coehesive build. There is ultimately always a weapon skill on your bar that doesn’t really fit the build and is near useless.

Distaste.4801:

Simonoly.4352:

Rym.1469:

I imagine Anet don’t want it to reach a point where a Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer uses Endure Pain/Distortion/Shelter/Elixir S, Gear Shield at say 1/3 health and, whilst in stance/distortion/heal/shrink, block, is healed to full health by local water field blasts and other AoE heals. It would be an enormous buff to Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer sustain. Not sure if it’s the sort of thing Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer needs in sPvP.

Oh, wait…

None of those things constitute the same mechanic as an additional pool of health.

Yes, they really do. Endure pain has far better scaling than DS. Endure pain on a DD burst could absorb 10k+ damage. If the necro is fully specced into DS then he will get 78% of his life in life force, at 20k hp that’s 15.6k. If the necro is in DS for 5s he loses 10% lf naturally, leaving ~14k actual damage absorbtion. So already endure pain is near what DS is capable of and that’s just regular endure pain vs fully traited DS. if we start looking at multiple enemy situations then we would see that endure pain scales just fine, yet DS doesn’t scale at all. Endure pain is also ready to go where the necro needs to build the LF in order to use DS. So in a 1v1 DS is good, but passed that other skills that actually scale are flat out better. Why do you think necros get focused in team fights? A bit of extra health doesn’t stop focus fire, invuls/evades do though and mobility certainly helps.

Then outside of endure pain warriors get more endurance regen, more vigor, mobility, evades, stuns, blocks, a relfect, and flat out more armor. Are you really trying to tell me that having 14k more hp makes up for all of the above and it’s still reasonable that the necro can’t be healed in it? Warriors aren’t even the top tier of bunker either. Necros defense is DS spectral armor, and I guess plague form, that’s really it. The siphons/regens they have are near usless as one is so paltry and the other doesn’t work in DS, which is where a necro will be when they actually need heals. Finally let’s not forget to mention what an utter mess the necro weapons are. Sure other classes have a few bad weapons but for necro the choices are horrible for building a coehesive build. There is ultimately always a weapon skill on your bar that doesn’t really fit the build and is near useless.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.