(edited by Kain Francois.4328)
Suggestion: Necros stronger as fight goes on
I think their basic idea of “stronger as the fight goes on” is that it accumulating life force opens up the ability to jump into death shroud to let rip its skills. Then pop back out to accumulate some more. Think of it as a milder form of the attunement dance of elementalists or kit juggling of engineers.
Then Arenanet needs to address the life force regeneration issue some builds have. There is just far too many skills that don’t contribute to the profession’s mechanic. In a basic condition based build for instance, you will have only 3 skills that builds life force and 1 of them is a Death Shroud skill. So that leaves you with staff 1 auto attack and scepter 3 every 10 seconds. Simply unacceptable.
This isn’t a problem where people are dying all around you from zerg encounters, whether in pve or wvw, where 1 death will at least unlock your F1 skill. But in the smaller fights or spvp against people who know how to fight back, life force regeneration needs vast improvements. Your profession mechanic should synergize with any build you choose to run. That’s why it’s a, oh I don’t know, a profession mechanic.
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well when(lol if) we get a cleave weapon with a leap, many of the problems of the necromancer class will be mitigated. i haven’t played my necro in a month or so for those reasons alone.
As quick as the Valkyries ride,
As true as Odin’s spear flies,
There is nowhere to hide.
As true as Odin’s spear flies,
There is nowhere to hide.
Problem 1. Necromancer Death Shroud isn’t all that useful besides for mitigating damage. Life Blast is a disappointment, and isn’t much stronger even if you have more Life Force.
Problem 2. Necromancers lack a PvE niche even with cleave. If ArenaNet promotes “getting stronger as fight goes on”, I would like to see that be true.
That Empowering Shroud…. Well, it would keep me mightcapped at 25 for entire matches, because with Near to Death, CD on DS is only 6 seconds and if your LF drops to 0, it doesn’t have any cooldown on come-back
:D
[rude]Antagonistka – Revenant, EU.
[SALT]Natchniony – Necromancer, EU.
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[SALT]Natchniony – Necromancer, EU.
Streams: http://www.twitch.tv/rym144
Getting stronger doesn’t literally mean you gain stats or something as the fight goes on. Its generating LF, removing their boons, putting conditions on them, etc. that as the fight keeps going on lowers their ability to deal damage while you gain more and more HP.
Since devs said Thieves are all about quick fights:
Here’s an idea for a new Thief trait.
Minor trait – “Balance”
“When you enter combat mode gain 3000 Power and 3000 Ferocity for 3 seconds.”
—New Trait!
Empowering Shroud
no cooldown
You gain 4 stacks of might for 60s whenever you enter Death Shroud. This trait only works in combat.
I stopped reading after this. I mean, seriously? 60 seconds? Why not make it lasts 1 day?
Frenk, the idea is that only after 40 seconds you have 16 stacks of might. However, it works only in combat, thus’ you cannot pre-prepare it. 16% more damage after 40 seconds doesn’t seem too overpowered in my opinion, considering most fights are over by then.
But let’s use our common sense here. What’s important isn’t the individual numbers, but the concepts. If Necromancer shouldn’t deal more damage over time in a boss fight, what SHOULD they do?
(edited by Kain Francois.4328)
It has nothing to do with them directly gaining stats over a fight.
Lets say a Necromancer is fighting a Guardian. As they fight, the Necromancer is constantly gaining LF, giving them extra effective healing, they strip the boons off the guardian, making the guardian weaker. They apply weakness, lowering damage output and endurance regen, blinds stop a few attacks here and there, chill makes the guardians abilities come off CD much later, and poison is reducing their healing.
Now comparatively, the guardian really isn’t making the Necromancer any weaker, the Necromancer is at the same power level they’d expect to be. The longer the fight goes on, the less damage the guardian is doing, the less they can heal, and the Necromancer is still going along at full effectiveness (the only real way to make a Necromancer weaker over a fight is death, since they don’t rely on boons and can remove conditions readily). And so, over time, the Necromancer wins because the relative power between them shifts towards the Necromancer more and more with each tick of a condition, with each boon removed, with each use of DS to make damage worthless.
The issue isn’t the idea of attrition. If you want to see attrition at work try 1v1ing as an MM, especially a Cleric MM. The issue is that Necromancers still aren’t fully tuned to being able to do this. A heavy reliance on abilities that need too much setup (Feast of Corruption) or are too easily nullified (Axe 2), and CC is not only nearly impossible to avoid (due to no real mitigation) but it completely removes all our tools for attrition.
Some numbers need to be brought up. Some weapons need more reliable sustain, some of our burst needs to change to sustain, and we need ways to deal with CC so we don’t get hit with Double Jeopardy by CC effects. But overall the idea of sustain is fine, and it very much fits in with what Necromancers should be.
Frenk, the idea is that only after 40 seconds you have 16 stacks of might. However, it works only in combat, thus’ you cannot pre-prepare it. 16% more damage after 40 seconds doesn’t seem too overpowered in my opinion, considering most fights are over by then.
Add strenght runes to that: → 25 stacks of might in about 30 seconds which could lasts more than TWO minutes + an additional +7% damage.
You have to NEVER forget about rune/sigils combinations.
Good point, Frank. I’ve removed Empowering Shroud from the first post.
I would like to hear what people think of the Corruption mechanic idea?
Frankly, I’m with Bhawb on this one. Necros don’t need new mechanics, they need their current ones to synergize better (instead of fighting each other, like death shroud and any healing does now) and in general to just be stronger.
Personally I think Corruption is not really distinguishable enough from Vulnerability.
Nalhadia – Kaineng
Frenk, the idea is that only after 40 seconds you have 16 stacks of might. However, it works only in combat, thus’ you cannot pre-prepare it. 16% more damage after 40 seconds doesn’t seem too overpowered in my opinion, considering most fights are over by then.
Add strenght runes to that: -> 25 stacks of might in about 30 seconds which could lasts more than TWO minutes + an additional +7% damage.
You have to NEVER forget about rune/sigils combinations.
And this i think is a problem with the game in general. Rather than making the runes and such a “nice” addition to the core traits and skills, traits and skills are held back because adding rune X or food Y ends up turning the toon into a demi-god.
And so we end up with a whole lot of meh looking traits and skills because they only shine when combined with X and Y, resulting in pigeonholed builds.
BTW, i think i would play the swapping (DS, weapon sets) a fair bit more if i could actually see the state of the skills while not in them. But then that would reveal that GW2 is more like a multi-bar MMORPG than ANet may be willing to admit…
I like death shroud and on this the Anet devs are spot on.
A Necro can stay in the thick of fights a lot longer, especially compared to the other 2 light armour classes, Ele and Mesmer.
I would suggest a few small ‘tweaks’:-
1) As already been said put a few more life force gains on Necro’s weapon skills, even if its only 1-2%. For example I run a staff/sceptre/horn Necro. My main life force generator is staff 1 skill, so I end up in staff mode like 70-80% of the time. With sceptre/warhorn, you only get life fore gain on 3 and 5 skills, obviously they have long cooldowns so contribute very little life force.
2) The 5 death shroud skills, I think 4 are useful to good. The exception is the no 5 skill, everytime I use it it seems to do hardly any damage, like 40 or less, its not even worth pressing the 5 button to trigger it, your better off to continue blasting away with the no 1 auto attack skill.
Just a couple of suggestions/tweaks to Necro.
2) The 5 death shroud skills, I think 4 are useful to good. The exception is the no 5 skill, everytime I use it it seems to do hardly any damage, like 40 or less, its not even worth pressing the 5 button to trigger it, your better off to continue blasting away with the no 1 auto attack skill.
The 5 skill is heavily based around landing the end of the chain, which gives a decent duration immobilize and a fair bit of damage. Other than that its just guaranteed torment application in AoE.
???
If a Necromancer shouldn’t deal more damage over time, then what should their niche be in High End PvE and Fractals?
Frankly, I’m with Bhawb on this one. Necros don’t need new mechanics, they need their current ones to synergize better (instead of fighting each other, like death shroud and any healing does now) and in general to just be stronger.
This is actually what necros need the most, allowing healing in DS is what bloodmagic tree needs the most. It also opens up the use of bloodfiend and the ticks from bloodwell dont become useless if you go into Ds after the cast. SoV will probably still useless unless they allow the passive to work in DS.
Come on, let’s be realistic here… What is self-healing supposed to do to make Necromancers have an important role in FoTM and high end PvE?
Come on, let’s be realistic here… What is self-healing supposed to do to make Necromancers have an important role in FoTM and high end PvE?
For Pve nothing but this is about mechanic design in general and how it is stupid that a core mechanic DS counters an other core mechanic lifesteal aka blood magic…
Necro could use some buffs in PvE as long as those buffs are not carried over to PvP or WvW.