Black Avarice
(edited by reedju.5786)
[PvX] Necro Balance Changes (sPvP Background)
BALANCE JUSTIFICATIONS & MAINTAINING BUILD DIVERSITY
CONDITION BUILDS
*The first and most glaring change to diversity would be for condi builds. Without Dhuum they currently would have negligible pressure and I don’t wish them to be left without proper compensation. To remedy this all you need to do is partially revert condi nerfs, for example:
Revert:
-% dmg reduction to terror (remember without Dhuumfire no condi necro will have the +30% duration to fear or other condi’s and the terror/dhuum spike will no longer exist).
-allow putrid mark to remove and transfer 1 condition from each ally in its radius to an enemy when activated (this allows skillful support and extra condi pressure if placed properly)
-Re-add the removed bleeding to Mark of Blood, scepter #2, Enfeebling Blood/Weakening shroud, Mark of Evasion (we will need the extra pressure back with dhuum removed)
Keep:
-Terror as a master trait, it is too strong for the adept tier
-Reduced duration on weakness
-the 5 condition corruption cap on Corrupt Boon in order to keep the game from being spike/hard counter oriented. But to compensate set a global boon removal order with stability in the #5 spot. This would keep things like necro axe #3, focus #5, WoC, Chill of Death, shatters, etc. from automatically removing covered stability but still allow the most powerful Corruption utility to counter it (40 sec CD)
Change:
Corrosive poison cloud:
-applies a 7 1/2 second of self-weakness to the necro as it always has (can be transferred to enemies and barely affects condi necro dmg)
- applies poison as it always has
-no longer applies weakness on pulse. Instead it applies 3x stacks of torment every 4 seconds over a 12 second duration. (max 9 stacks if opponent remains in for entire duration)
This brings condi necro back to essentially the same state it was in pre-dhuumfire but instead gives the community what it asked for. Meaningful use for control conditions (weakness & blind buffs), sustain through DS (buff to Vital persistence, increase LF generation, Spectral reworks), and more damage/control over fights (signet of spite, torment/DS #5, & Spectral wall)
SUSTAIN BUILDS
Now for keeping sustain builds balanced. Anet has made it clear they are very nervous about necro siphoning becoming OP and thus will not allow them to scale well with stats. I believe the solution to that is these strategically placed powerful siphoning/DS sustain traits that allow necros to build for attrition, but also forces them to choose carefully.
-New options:
*through various trait combinations, these changes would allow some degree of healing in DS for Signet of Vampirism (XI Hungering Death), Blood Fiend (XI Hungering Death & VII Vampiric Master), and Well of Blood (XI Hungering Death & XII Vampiric Rituals) which would give a niche benefit to 3 skills currently subpar to CC.
*With modification to Dark Armor siphon/tank necro could use axe or dagger #2 to remove ~9-13 stacks of SoV in 5 seconds. That is a base heal of 4,027 with the addition of ~2,700-3,900 healing from stacks. It also gains a 3 part risk/reward function
1. using the active removes possible passive healing in DS (about ~325 per hit with hungering death)
2. If someone blocks/blinds your active you will recieve the base heal (4,027) but deal no damage and gain no healing from stacks.
3. Even if you land the active stacks and damage, you must then land at least 1 full channel to get the absolute most out of the heal (~7-8k). This allows a wide range of counterplay and depth to a currently useless skill.
Black Avarice
(edited by reedju.5786)
Disclaimer: While it is unfortunate it would take multiple traits to make SoV useful, it is even more sad it is currently underperforming regardless of setup.
The idea behind the trait placement and use of siphons as DS’s singular heal are aimed at keeping us from being unstoppable killing machines once we get rolling. If you initially tried to build around all of these new traits with a 30/0/20/20/0 build you would have the highest siphon capability but also no DS generation without utilities or weapons. Meaning sure, you can heal in DS and potentially gain ~9k healing every 28 seconds but you are sacrificing all of your DS longevity.
One option to build would be a mix of spectral/signet utilities (Signet of vampirism, Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk, Signet of the Locust, Plague Signet), 30/0/20/0/20, Staff + Dagger/Dagger which would give a combination of LF generation, DS uptime, and sustainable healing.
But between the already present spectral and well synergies throughout the trees I believe these siphon buffs would allow us at least a new platform to theory craft from. SoV still may need an addition of an enemy specific 1 second ICD with a 3-5 enemy cap so it gains some scaling under increased pressure.
POWER/HYBRID BUILDS
Overall power builds are not in a bad place at the moment. They have strong traits in several different trees and good mix of damage & sustain provided between Spite and Soul Reaping. While there would be no direct nerf/buff to power & hybrids with these changes it would leave them a few new options to build bruiser/sustain power as opposed to glassy DS shield options currently at our disposal.
Well community I hope you let me know what you think. Just some thoughts and ideas Ive been toying around with for a few months aimed at giving us attrition potential. Good or bad, I enjoy discussion!
Black Avarice
Everything is spot on. One of the best necro balance suggestion threads I’ve read.
Except for: Dark Armor. Sig of Vamp addition belongs with signet mastery more then anywhere else.
Passive healing in DS with Sig of Vamp would be high though, lets be honest here. We would get a lot of qq and be compared to heal sig op, blahblah. I think lowering the passive siphon to 350 would be a good thing. Sure we could get some burst heal with life transfer (which would have to be worked so siphon heals would only come from 1 person), but overall the cast and travel time of life blast wouldnt make Sig of Vamp to op.
Thanks for all your time and energy, and whatnot.
/salute
Team Deathmatch for PvP – Raise the AoE cap for WvW – More unique events for PvE
Well done. +1. good suggestions and no call for a I win buton.!!
- Not sure the new Spite GM should be a siphon related trait, it must be in a defensive line or just simply a default thing for necro after some tweaks.
- Mark traits are all over the place, some merging / moving is needed.
- The new Dark armor idea is just don’t make sense and SoV needs a total rework anyway.
- Deathly invogoration fine as a master trait, it’s balanced around Near to death.
- Siphon balance is more complicated, so skip Bloodthirst.
- SoV needs a more complicated rework, necromancers already did a few threads about that, like THIS.
- Terror is master trait for months now … jeez, do you even necro or just throwing out random toughts?
- The cap on Corrupt boon was beacause you could just intsagib someone with multiple boons. Stability as the last removed condition is sux, indeed.
- CPC is fine as it is, weakness is great and that massive amount of poison too, but other utility skills often outshines it.
- Overall damage of condi necro need to look at, but changes at other classes makes it even harder to balance out, so it won’t come soon.
- Sustain builds has a lot of problems, such as lack of active defense, DS bugs all over the place, incoming damage and LF generation ratio, non-existant heals in DS, slow cast animations and so on, it’s another difficult part of necro balance wise.
tl;dr: These things got already mentioned numerous times.
Thanks for the Feedback!
@Stand the Wall
Removing the ICD for SoV and placing that on Signet mastery would overcrowd that adept trait (20% cd reduction to all sigs, 3 might on active, and ~1-4k increased healing for SoV active). It was mainly placed on Dark Armor so it would give incentive for players for use dagger and axe #2 which rarely see play. In PvP they are easy to dodge and have long channels. In PvE dagger 1# spam is better dps and dagger #2 is best left untouched unless built for support or in dire need of even minor heals. This would give players incentive to set up CC in order to land dagger/axe #2 with the heal active for burst heal + dmg.
As for Healing in DS as soon as i started the math for a response I realized the 100% increase for heals was over the top and altered. Its best that siphons heal normally through DS and are only able to reach high numbers through heavy stat and trait commitment. However I believe it is completely reasonable to allow the siphon dmg to remain at 100% increase in DS so there still is an offensive aspect to the trait.
Currently I believe with Hungering Death + Life Transfer you would be fine benefitting from siphoning multiple targets. Remember base healing for siphons is only 32. With max scaling we only gain 6 additional healing per siphon. With Bloodlust being reverted to 50%, you could only gain ~56 healing per target. So in the ideal scenario when you have 5 targets in range of Life Transfer, fully traited and geared, and you benefit from all 9 ticks your Hp would increase by 2,520 (40 second cd, 30/X/X/15/X trait investment required). As any necro knows the “ideal” is rarely achieved and you are most likely the target of those 5 angry enemies. In a 1v1 or if Life transfer was limited to one target you would receive only 504 healing. Considering its only 2,520 max healing in the best possible scenario and requires over half your traits to attain its a fair trade
@Dalanor
1. The exact reason we need a sustain trait in Spite is so that players can gear zerker and have an option to sacrifice large increases in dmg for supplementary dmg + sustain. Death/Soul Reaping/Blood are already full of defensive options.
2. As for corrupt boon and terror, if you would have read carefully, you would have seen I acknowledged that those were the current states of the skills and the only thing that should change was Stabilities place in removal order. I actually justified why they should stay EXACTLY the same as they are now. They ONLY reason i mentioned them was to show the disparity in what i thought needed to be kept (see the list under “keep”) and the damage changes that needed to be reverted (the list directly above it, “revert”)
3. I have played necro since the first beta and almost exclusively since. My primary experience has been 1000+ hrs in s/tPvP. I have also leveled and played PvE & WvW content on my necromancer in order to gain a sense of balance between the three game types. I was featured on But of Corpse all necro podcast and have worked with/learned from amazing community necros (Bas, Bhawb, Zombify, Kravick, etc.) Nothing special, I just enjoying theorycrafting and discussing necromancer with my community.
4. Your assessment of Corrosive Poison Cloud highlight everything that is wrong with it. Anet has made it clear utilities should be a choice and anything that is clearly out shined needs to be looked at. Currently it has such unskilled weakness application it is a joke.
1. 7 1/2 seconds of transferable weakness on the necro
2. 3 seconds of weakness on pulse (12 second duration)
3. weakness on blast finisher
My changes still allow 10+ seconds of weakness application (not counting all other sources we have) but cut out the redundant application and gives it damage that could give us other options when Dhuumfire is removed. With mine you have
1. the exact same weakness through transfer and blast finisher
2. the exact same poison application
3. potential x9 stack of torment over 12 seconds if utilized to its full effect. This would still keep our access to torment minimal, but give incentive to use a skill no one currently runs while also removing a poor design that has remained unchanged since launch.
5. As for SoV, siphons are difficult to balance and I agree Id love to see if changed completely. However, Anet responds to logical changes that can be executed in increments to protect balance. My suggestions stay within their original design concept, but make it something that actually benefits the necro. My changes would give SoV niche use, build synergy, a way to heal in DS, and depth to its active play.
Black Avarice
(edited by reedju.5786)
+1 /sign
A condition trait makes more sense in spite than a healing/death shroud trait since it’s a power+condition duration tree.
… I still want tengu.
(edited by Hammerguard.9834)
@Hammerguard
Honestly, I hear this response a lot and I see where this instinct comes from. However, I believe ever placing a condi trait in the Spite trait line was a mistake for the following reasons.
1. Prior to Dhuumfire, there were no condition traits worth taking in this line and there still aren’t. Everyone picks up chill of death because it works regardless of having better power synergy and then whatever for adept slot as none are worth it. Since launch we had been stuck with the subpar substitute for CtD, “Axe Master” and no one ever ran it. While they needed to revamp the trait it should have never been with burning. Necro already had the widest access to conditions and the most readily available covers. Torment and supplementary sustain were all that was needed to bring “pre-pax” condi necro into the meta. (they did this with LF gen changes, spectral reworks with armor and wall, adding torment/tainted shackles)
2. No other condition build for any other class (besides engi and this is primarly due to its ability to hybridize by simply putting 30 pts in explosions) puts 30 points into its power tree. Why? Because besides for engi, the power + condition duration tree is 90% associated with power traits. This is to prevent an OP synergy between condition duration and condition traits placed conveniently in the same place (The reason why Anet felt they needed to nerd dhuumfire duration AND remove bleed stacks).
3. A primary reason condition duration ended up in Spite is its balance disruption anywhere else. Soul Reaping and Curses are out of the question as Hemophelia and Master of Terror would be completely out of whack with free additional stacking duration. Blood wouldn’t make sense as it contains all our healing utilities and is best suited for vitality and healing. That leaves Death and Spite. You could make an argument for placing condi duration with death to draw condi builds to take its defensive traits with condi duration as an added bonus; boon duration on Spite would help might stacks but has far less synergy than the multiple boons/traits in Death. Remember even power necros rely on our heavy condi access to survive (blind, weakness, poison, chill, cripple, immob) and the condi duration on spite allows them to have slightly better access to these without directly investing in them. I think the current stat designation for each tree is spot on.
Now these are my justifications for adding a siphon based trait to Spite and why I think it has far more synergy and balance there than any other tree.
1. Soul Reaping and Blood are out of the running from the beginning due to the fact they already have very strong traits in competition with each other and a very set role in building. Currently ALL siphon traits are in blood making it hard to build for it and limiting its variations greatly. To truly build for siphons there needs to be more than one way to use them between utilities/traits as all our current options are subpar.
2. Curses is indisputably the condition trait line. Its GM traits may not be picked up often and may need a change but it should not be with siphons. Siphon dmg scales with power and get the most benefit from channels or rapid attacks (Life transfer, dagger/axe #2, dagger #1 etc.) to gain the most procs. Not to mention the most obvious reason, conditions don’t siphon making this a poor choice.
3.Death is already a defensively aligned tree but is mainly dominated by our Minion Master Brethren. Minions already siphon Health and are currently awaiting a nerf on Vampiric Master meaning Anet already doesn’t want to further promote minion/siphon synergy. Not to mention to add Hungering Death to this tree you would have to chop a perfectly good GM trait only to add sustain to our build with the most sustain…redundant right?
4. Spite already has a high dmg option (CtD), Hungering Death would be a sustain option that offered some dps. It would also create more siphon options by giving incentive to spec into Spite and Blood for synergy. The Adept Signet Mastery would give a CD reduction and might on active of the 2 siphon signets we now have (SoV and Signet of the Locust). Also my re-imagined siphoned power (3x stacks of might for 15 seconds on siphon- 30 sec ICD) along with Signet Mastery would give a new option for might stacking powermancers currently do not have.
Overall I am able to see both sides of the argument, I appreciate those of you who took time to respond. Honestly, I just get a little giddy when I think of all the theorycrafting option these changes might open up.
Black Avarice
(edited by reedju.5786)