Guild Wars 2

Lack of mobility? Spectral walk, spectral grasp, DS 2, focus 5, Signet of Spite, Golem Charge, Grasping Dead, and smart fear wall placement don’t help you close gaps?

600 to 900. I’m not saying all 600 at all. If people have to give up a trait to get 900 range on scepter and staff, then the inherently strong abilities on the weapons come at a price. Again, you cannot reflect necro range. Rangers, Mesmers, Eles, and Engineers can be reflected.

What makes Necromancers special? Why do you want to have it both ways with easy life force, a second health bar, max range CC, and 900 range AoE and single target condis that burn nearly every 10 seconds?

There is no other option than Necro right now for close and ranged pressure! It’s bullkitten! They’re not earning their place they were given their place.

jmatb.6307:

Lack of mobility? Spectral walk, spectral grasp, DS 2, focus 5, Signet of Spite, Golem Charge, Grasping Dead, and smart fear wall placement don’t help you close gaps?

600 to 900. I’m not saying all 600 at all. If people have to give up a trait to get 900 range on scepter and staff, then the inherently strong abilities on the weapons come at a price. Again, you cannot reflect necro range. Rangers, Mesmers, Eles, and Engineers can be reflected.

What makes Necromancers special? Why do you want to have it both ways with easy life force, a second health bar, max range CC, and 900 range AoE and single target condis that burn nearly every 10 seconds?

There is no other option than Necro right now for close and ranged pressure! It’s bullkitten!

You are talking about those skills as if they were all used. No one uses focus with the 30/30/10 build. Golem is hardly ever used. Necros use plague form. DS 2 is buggy as all hell and misses more than half the time I use it. Quick tip, run up or down stairs and it fails. Spectral grasp is only ever used with power builds because we don’t want you 1 foot away. We want you 900 range away where we can light you up.

The lack of mobility we have isn’t saying we can’t catch up to you. The lack of mobility is the terrible time we have getting away from someone who has closed the gap. WE DON’T WANT PEOPLE NEXT TO US!!! How hard is this for you to understand? Standing next to someone as a necro is just about the stupidest thing you can do. We want you crippled and chilled as we keep you at range.

azuzephyr.7280:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

azuzephyr.7280:

Why are people posting number logs like we’re talking about stand and cast pve, this is spvp, 10% extra bleed damage isn’t going to do anything to help our shortcoming in pvp

If you are talking to me, then it is simply objectivity. I refer to my analysis as potential, largely because there are countless ways things can go wrong. Regardless of circumstances, the potential skill exists, and player skill allows for greater achievement of that potential.

Please tell me the potential of a class who has meagre practical access to stability [in terms of actually putting it to use] at the cost of up to 50% of their ehp, versus the other professions whom all have better practical access mixed with hard walling abilities and escapes required for tournaments

I’d love to hear it, really

If you weren’t talking to me, then it is probably easier to just admit you weren’t talking to me instead of flailing wildly in to nonspecific and generalized accusations that have nothing to do with my prior analysis on engineer bleed pressure vs. necromancer bleed pressure.

Ynot.8397:

jmatb.6307:

Lack of mobility? Spectral walk, spectral grasp, DS 2, focus 5, Signet of Spite, Golem Charge, Grasping Dead, and smart fear wall placement don’t help you close gaps?

600 to 900. I’m not saying all 600 at all. If people have to give up a trait to get 900 range on scepter and staff, then the inherently strong abilities on the weapons come at a price. Again, you cannot reflect necro range. Rangers, Mesmers, Eles, and Engineers can be reflected.

What makes Necromancers special? Why do you want to have it both ways with easy life force, a second health bar, max range CC, and 900 range AoE and single target condis that burn nearly every 10 seconds?

There is no other option than Necro right now for close and ranged pressure! It’s bullkitten!

You are talking about those skills as if they were all used. No one uses focus with the 30/30/10 build. Golem is hardly ever used. Necros use plague form. DS 2 is buggy as all hell and misses more than half the time I use it. Quick tip, run up or down stairs and it fails. Spectral grasp is only ever used with power builds because we don’t want you 1 foot away. We want you 900 range away where we can light you up.

The lack of mobility we have isn’t saying we can’t catch up to you. The lack of mobility is the terrible time we have getting away from someone who has closed the gap. WE DON’T WANT PEOPLE NEXT TO US!!! How hard is this for you to understand? Standing next to someone as a necro is just about the stupidest thing you can do. We want you crippled and chilled as we keep you at range.

You don’t want people close to you? LOL

Do you know what Death Shroud is and how it’s best used?

Wow, just amazing jmatb. I won’t be surprised if next you say Necro have best downed skills and best underwater skills.

Necros have their spot in tpvp, so do engineers. So I don’t see the problem here. Mainly I see engi, ranger, thief, eles, guardian, necro teams. Not so much warriors or mesmers.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

azuzephyr.7280:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

azuzephyr.7280:

Why are people posting number logs like we’re talking about stand and cast pve, this is spvp, 10% extra bleed damage isn’t going to do anything to help our shortcoming in pvp

If you are talking to me, then it is simply objectivity. I refer to my analysis as potential, largely because there are countless ways things can go wrong. Regardless of circumstances, the potential skill exists, and player skill allows for greater achievement of that potential.

Please tell me the potential of a class who has meagre practical access to stability [in terms of actually putting it to use] at the cost of up to 50% of their ehp, versus the other professions whom all have better practical access mixed with hard walling abilities and escapes required for tournaments

I’d love to hear it, really

If you weren’t talking to me, then it is probably easier to just admit you weren’t talking to me instead of flailing wildly in to nonspecific and generalized accusations that have nothing to do with my prior analysis on engineer bleed pressure vs. necromancer bleed pressure.

I was talking to you, and I stand by that there is no point talking about pvp in terms of numbers, especially in terms of bleed pressure when neither profession is reliant on it. Bleed might account for more damage than any one other source during an encounter by virtue of being atached to auto-attack, but my output comes from other sources, bleed is merely the most common filler.

I’m rank 48/84.59% win ratio and highest ladder rank being 59[albeit a currently retired one]. Never have me or my team wanted bleed pressure from any source, not from engi, or necro.

jmatb.6307:

You don’t want people close to you? LOL

Do you know what Death Shroud is and how it’s best used?

No you don’t want them next to you. I really want to know what profession you main, because I am baffled by your perception of the Necromancer.

@jmatb: I can’t really help you there, because you seems so inclined to think we can solo a group only with staff. Just try it out in a couple of solo tPvP, spam all you 4 marks on someone and watch him melt under the pressure. Then when you’ll see that he’s well alive and kicking, and that you now try to hit with a slow auto-attack that don’t hit hard for condi build and almost always miss while your good marks are on cooldown, you’ll quickly change to your other weapon set.

There is no burst from 1200 range. The burst comes from being close, so that you can’t react. Putting a wall behind you, fearing you through it and spam marks, scepter 2-dagger 5 and then DS to pop another free dagger 5 (traited) + DS #3, #2 and #5 is the burst you’re speaking off.

That easy to do “burst” has put all our freaking abilities on cooldown, I do hope at some point it achieve something. I can do easier and faster damage with only one weapon set from my mesmer, warrior and almost any other class really. Most of this burst is not instant, it has cast times, can be evaded or negated, and it is normally against me.

Peoples are crying that fear is cheap, what about knockdown, blowout, pull, stun and daze? Stability is the answer to all those, yet only fear get targeted as the annoying CC that removes control of the player (ok and for it’s damage). It’s a good thing that you don’t play necro, you’ll rename this class to Ping-Pong ball in no time against classes that can hard CC you.

And when stability is mentioned as a counter, people jump on Corrupt boon, then that he used Signet of Spite, Plague signet, then Spectral wall, Well of Corruption, Spectral walk and Spectral armor and… and… and… we have 3 utilities box like any other class…. Ignorance is showing in a lot of posts, like when I was dreaming that mesmer/any “OP” class get nerfed to the ground when I didnt understand their timing and cooldown.

Now if you are facing 3 to 5 necro in the same team, they could have all those combos available, but then I wouldn’t call that team balanced. The same amount of warriors could just stomp this team in the ground. Same for a full cleanse ele team, guardians or 25% immune to condi engi.

Anyway I hope people at least try them more than 6 hours, and play them against good players that knows how to deal with necro. They’ll see pretty fast the weakness of the class once 2 or more people focus them with CC and raw damage. (Please dont put conditions on them….)

jmatb.6307:

Ynot.8397:

jmatb.6307:

Lack of mobility? Spectral walk, spectral grasp, DS 2, focus 5, Signet of Spite, Golem Charge, Grasping Dead, and smart fear wall placement don’t help you close gaps?

600 to 900. I’m not saying all 600 at all. If people have to give up a trait to get 900 range on scepter and staff, then the inherently strong abilities on the weapons come at a price. Again, you cannot reflect necro range. Rangers, Mesmers, Eles, and Engineers can be reflected.

What makes Necromancers special? Why do you want to have it both ways with easy life force, a second health bar, max range CC, and 900 range AoE and single target condis that burn nearly every 10 seconds?

There is no other option than Necro right now for close and ranged pressure! It’s bullkitten!

You are talking about those skills as if they were all used. No one uses focus with the 30/30/10 build. Golem is hardly ever used. Necros use plague form. DS 2 is buggy as all hell and misses more than half the time I use it. Quick tip, run up or down stairs and it fails. Spectral grasp is only ever used with power builds because we don’t want you 1 foot away. We want you 900 range away where we can light you up.

The lack of mobility we have isn’t saying we can’t catch up to you. The lack of mobility is the terrible time we have getting away from someone who has closed the gap. WE DON’T WANT PEOPLE NEXT TO US!!! How hard is this for you to understand? Standing next to someone as a necro is just about the stupidest thing you can do. We want you crippled and chilled as we keep you at range.

You don’t want people close to you? LOL

Do you know what Death Shroud is and how it’s best used?

Dark path(DS 2) is used to catch up to people and chill them. This skills is used for closing to people. I only ever use it for people running from me. Doom(DS 3) is a fear so that is clearly to move people away from you. Lifer Transfer (DS 4) hits everyone within 600 range but does really poor damage so I don’t bother with it. Tainted Shackles(DS 5) will imob someone in 600 range. It is not used because we want to stand next to you. We use it because then we can easily transfer all of those lovely conditions or load someone with everything. Last but certainly not least is Life Blast which is best within 600 range but does very poor damage for condition users. This damage does not scale well with the 30/30/10 build that everyone is bithing about.

I am very familiar with every single DS ability and I know how they are used, when, and with what specs they work best with. I also know that having someone right next to you in DS is a great way for them to eat through all of your life force. This is a pretty large problem with 30/30/10 as it has terrible life force generation. We also can’t build conditions which are the focus of that spec.

Now if we are on a power spec I love being close to you and I don’t mind you eating away my life force because I can gain it back rather quickly.

Keep trying. I love the senseless kittening.

jmatb.6307:

Lack of mobility? Lack of mobility? Spectral walk, spectral grasp, DS 2, focus 5, Signet of Spite, Golem Charge, ….

Really I dream every night of me riding my Flesh Golem ordering a charge to my other minions and all together rush victorious into the enemies..

Sorry to the OP, but by the moment “we” are heavily offtopic, I couldn’t hold this one.

Luke.4562:

Really I dream every night of me riding my Flesh Golem ordering a charge to my other minions and all together rush victorious into the enemies..

So much win.

Here is my opinion:

The problem isn’t that necros have high damage, eventhough people think that that’s the problem. No, necros absolutely need the high damage because they do not have high mobility and break stuns like other characters. Glass cannon warriors with berserker stance and CC can easily kill necros.

The real problem with necros is that 1) all their damage comes from conditions 2) The method of application of these conditions is ground targeted persistent AoEs. The result is that the class just seems to rely on cheap tactics. You don’t even have to LoS your target to apply conditions. I will grant that rangers and mesmers use similar cheap tactics in the form of traps and phantasms that follow your target even if you LoS the mesmer. But, rangers do not possess the amount of burst condition application that necros do and their traps are on a comparatively higher cooldown. Both of these faults in the ranger are justified because 1) rangers do not rely strictly on condition damage and 2) rangers have high mobility.

My suggestion for necros is to give them more direct damage potential while reducing their condition application potential so that their overall damage potential is the same. Secondarily give them skills that actually require LoS/positioning as opposed to mostly ground targetted AoEs persistent or self centered AoEs.

Caffynated.5713:

I felt like necro was mostly OK before this patch. They were the strongest class in game by a small margin, but they had some strong counters. Their lack of mobility was made up for with their great built in survivability even in a glass cannon spec. They could melt you if you didn’t focus fire them, but they couldn’t handle being trained or chain CC’d.

Now, they have just as much damage (terror nerf isn’t even equivalent to 1 stack of bleeding) but we’re juggernauts in death shroud with life force coming out of our ears.

The one major drawback to dhuumfire + terror specs was their poor life force generation. It kept them in check by limiting their ability to use death shroud for attack and defense. The buff to base mark size freed up the points needed to get soul marks (and of course the bonus spectral armor) and coupled with the increased life force generation from spectrals, dhuumfire glass cannons now have an abundance of life force. Couple that with the bug fix to DS ability to soak damage, and it has more than doubled the survivability of a “glass” cannon that was already fairly stout to begin with.

I think this is a pretty accurate analyzation of what has happened between the last 2 patches. +1 Caffynated!

Buffing necromancer damage to what it was may not have been the right decision because it didn’t affect necromancer playstyle much just made them viable through sheer damage. Now with 20 in soul reaping + spectral armor buff + the new deathshroud necromancers playstyle is exactly where it should be but now they have the high damage that got implemented before.

So I think what happens when we nerf the damage a bit is that we have necromancers with a proper playstyle but is moved more toward balance.

Thanks for the kind words Allie! Glad you have provided these forums with some transparency and love lately <3

azuzephyr.7280:

I was talking to you, and I stand by that there is no point talking about pvp in terms of numbers, especially in terms of bleed pressure when neither profession is reliant on it. Bleed might account for more damage than any one other source during an encounter by virtue of being atached to auto-attack, but my output comes from other sources, bleed is merely the most common filler.

I’m rank 48/84.59% win ratio and highest ladder rank being 59[albeit a currently retired one]. Never have me or my team wanted bleed pressure from any source, not from engi, or necro.

…No point of talking about numbers in PVP? What do you think governs the system of PVP? It is about how high your numbers are, at what rate those numbers come (divided by activation and animation time), how reliable those numbers are (procs and chances to hit), how available those numbers are (recharge time), and how those numbers defend against other numbers (vitality, toughness, protection, cleanses, invulnerability frequency, etc). It is these very numbers that Arenanet changes to balance classes, and since we have seen unquestionably the effect that these numbers have on the metagame, then it means that the numbers are a foundation of the game.

I’m going to stop you here, since your case for reasoning is that objectivity, mathematics, and logic have no place in discussion where they are fundamental. Get rid of those and you are left with nothing but unverifiable hearsay, incomplete anecdotes, and paranoia drudged up on the same level that the boogeyman is around every corner and is going to get you no matter how strong or well armed you are. This train of thought will devolve into nothing but a “But no, I can counter their counter by doing this counter on their other counter”, which will never produce anything meaningful.

Are you talking about the part where he used his skills that don’t give invuln and only last for 6 seconds or the part where he tore someone who was trying to burst down the necro a new one? Should I get a video recorded where I used my power necro to take out a condi necro?

Phantaram.1265:

Caffynated.5713:

I felt like necro was mostly OK before this patch. They were the strongest class in game by a small margin, but they had some strong counters. Their lack of mobility was made up for with their great built in survivability even in a glass cannon spec. They could melt you if you didn’t focus fire them, but they couldn’t handle being trained or chain CC’d.

Now, they have just as much damage (terror nerf isn’t even equivalent to 1 stack of bleeding) but we’re juggernauts in death shroud with life force coming out of our ears.

The one major drawback to dhuumfire + terror specs was their poor life force generation. It kept them in check by limiting their ability to use death shroud for attack and defense. The buff to base mark size freed up the points needed to get soul marks (and of course the bonus spectral armor) and coupled with the increased life force generation from spectrals, dhuumfire glass cannons now have an abundance of life force. Couple that with the bug fix to DS ability to soak damage, and it has more than doubled the survivability of a “glass” cannon that was already fairly stout to begin with.

I think this is a pretty accurate analyzation of what has happened between the last 2 patches. +1 Caffynated!

Not really, by the moment that build could generate enough Life Force through Spectral Traits in both Soul Reaping and Curse trees + Spirit Walk and Spectral Wall.

That spec format could just testify that the build and the mechanics weren’t working with logic or synergy.

jmatb.6307:

Bas.7406:

jmatb.6307:

You don’t want people close to you? LOL

Do you know what Death Shroud is and how it’s best used?

No you don’t want them next to you. I really want to know what profession you main, because I am baffled by your perception of the Necromancer.

So that would be all of them, now that necros can.

I feel like (for the most part) those who main necro want dhuumfire gone (because they know what we are capable of without it) and those who mainly fight necros want DS brought down (theyve faced burst before, but don’t realize how situational/squishy DS really is).

The supposed nerfs aimed at bringing necro in line for PvP, however, have started conflicts in balance between PvP/PvE players.

And then there are those that think condi necro should be a quasi-melee class…

Hopefully Arenanet has a better sense of what they want done with the necro than the community does because if not…I don’t even want to imagine it.

We never needed extra damage, we had a strong control/teamfight niche with (even if it was limited) some diversity. Now the undisputedly apex build is 30/20/0/0/20, for me simply the effect on class diversity, and the communities sanity is enough evidence that burning was a bad idea. It literally has no counterplay. Coming from a previously “UP” necro I’d rather return to that time when we could play well and get good results in return. Anyone who tries to argue that a skilless RNG ability is a good direction for this game can forget competitive play.

Yes the engi has it, but it doesn’t have any of our access to control or boonstripping. Also, it is only supplementary to the burning they have interesting ways to use. Too much is too much, the recent changes to DS, LF, weakness, blind (sorta? people act like we have so many applications of this when in reality we have a single weapon/utility/elite), and torment were plenty. Honestly if anyone should have had this much added at once it should have been warrior or any of the countless other unplayed condi classes (thief/mesmer/guard/ele/etc.)

reedju.5786:

I feel like (for the most part) those who main necro want dhuumfire gone (because they know what we are capable of without it) and those who mainly fight necros want DS brought down (theyve faced burst before, but don’t realize how situational/squishy DS really is).

I want people to adjust their comps to deal with a meta change instead of running to the forums to complain. Where do I fit?

Phantaram.1265:

So come on guys come up with something to reduce necromancer dps that fits well with where arena net is taking the necromancer.

Where is Arena Net taking the Necromancer? Cries for viability and build diversity have skewed all risk / reward in Necro traits, utilities and death shroud skills. There are no sacrifices to be made when building a Necromancer you can simply take every newly introduced damage buff and get away with it by all the new passive survivability.

I made a post after previous patch in a similar thread: warning about adding more passive life force generation without carefully balancing our life force usage.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/My-Necromancer-Suggestions/2412882

My opinion about Necromancer’s place in a balanced meta:

“Necromancer should counter condition teams and boon stacking, while being weak to burst and crowd control. We should receive more tools to return or spread condition pressure and turn boons on opponent as a form of staying power. Arriving slower to the fight and being weak in skirmishes against burst comps, but turning the tide against bunkers and grouped up players.”

Necromancer only breaks the game when the meta is so AOE and condition heavy that power or control builds aren’t a viable counter. I am afraid recent buffs / nerfs to moderately balanced builds have shifted the meta so roughly we are in a downward spiral until Necro’s prescence is countered by a new overpowered power build.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

azuzephyr.7280:

I was talking to you, and I stand by that there is no point talking about pvp in terms of numbers, especially in terms of bleed pressure when neither profession is reliant on it. Bleed might account for more damage than any one other source during an encounter by virtue of being atached to auto-attack, but my output comes from other sources, bleed is merely the most common filler.

I’m rank 48/84.59% win ratio and highest ladder rank being 59[albeit a currently retired one]. Never have me or my team wanted bleed pressure from any source, not from engi, or necro.

…No point of talking about numbers in PVP? What do you think governs the system of PVP? It is about how high your numbers are, at what rate those numbers come (divided by activation and animation time), how reliable those numbers are (procs and chances to hit), how available those numbers are (recharge time), and how those numbers defend against other numbers (vitality, toughness, protection, cleanses, invulnerability frequency, etc). It is these very numbers that Arenanet changes to balance classes, and since we have seen unquestionably the effect that these numbers have on the metagame, then it means that the numbers are a foundation of the game.

I’m going to stop you here, since your case for reasoning is that objectivity, mathematics, and logic have no place in discussion where they are fundamental. Get rid of those and you are left with nothing but unverifiable hearsay, incomplete anecdotes, and paranoia drudged up on the same level that the boogeyman is around every corner and is going to get you no matter how strong or well armed you are. This train of thought will devolve into nothing but a “But no, I can counter their counter by doing this counter on their other counter”, which will never produce anything meaningful.

Goodluck with your 5x zerk warrior teams then.

I don’t know how/why you think you can ‘stop’ people, but continue as is if you wish, most of the mechanics which are governing pvp are not related to damaging numbers but rather active control mechanics, I dont really see you as much of a voice on the matter if I am honest.

Since I don’t feel like reading 6 pages and people still mention the 30/30/10 build I thought I’d say not every necro uses that now.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;044Z;1kHkH0p3ZJkJ0;9;4TJ;0J29A38;538-KNH4;2hoHAhoHA2Vm

There are things that can be changed from double fear duration to marks give life force and a few minor changes (utilities)

Don’t assume only 30/30/10 is used.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Since I don’t feel like reading 6 pages and people still mention the 30/30/10 build I thought I’d say not every necro uses that now.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;044Z;1kHkH0p3ZJkJ0;9;4TJ;0J29A38;538-KNH4;2hoHAhoHA2Vm

There are things that can be changed from double fear duration to marks give life force and a few minor changes (utilities)

Don’t assume only 30/30/10 is used.

you are late to the show. Why go 30/30/10 with the bigger marks? Everyone already uses 30/20/0/0/20

I would just like to chime in with some of my PVE brothers and sisters, that this latest update has been a staggering blow to the PVE necro, which was not considered, and clearly is still not being considered in the slightest. No one wants necros for dungeons or fractals, due to bad DPS and terrible defense. I urge the devs to also read the PVE forums.

The necro may work fine in tPvP, but the PVE game vastly favors other classes, and does not favor condition builds in the slightest. The blow to Death Shroud especially has made it impossible for necros in PVE to have any defense against spike damage, such as all those one-hit kill bosses, or zergs in WvW.

Please read the PVE forums as well.

reedju.5786:

I feel like (for the most part) those who main necro want dhuumfire gone (because they know what we are capable of without it) and those who mainly fight necros want DS brought down (theyve faced burst before, but don’t realize how situational/squishy DS really is).

The supposed nerfs aimed at bringing necro in line for PvP, however, have started conflicts in balance between PvP/PvE players.

And then there are those that think condi necro should be a quasi-melee class…

Hopefully Arenanet has a better sense of what they want done with the necro than the community does because if not…I don’t even want to imagine it.

We never needed extra damage, we had a strong control/teamfight niche with (even if it was limited) some diversity. Now the undisputedly apex build is 30/20/0/0/20, for me simply the effect on class diversity, and the communities sanity is enough evidence that burning was a bad idea. It literally has no counterplay. Coming from a previously “UP” necro I’d rather return to that time when we could play well and get good results in return. Anyone who tries to argue that a skilless RNG ability is a good direction for this game can forget competitive play.

Yes the engi has it, but it doesn’t have any of our access to control or boonstripping. Also, it is only supplementary to the burning they have interesting ways to use. Too much is too much, the recent changes to DS, LF, weakness, blind (sorta? people act like we have so many applications of this when in reality we have a single weapon/utility/elite), and torment were plenty. Honestly if anyone should have had this much added at once it should have been warrior or any of the countless other unplayed condi classes (thief/mesmer/guard/ele/etc.)

To be honest, I’m not a fan of Dhuumfire. I don’t find it to be overpowered due to how frequently it goes wrong, but it does seem like it is a big bandaid to a problem that should’ve been solved other ways.

I was against giving Necromancers burning long before they got burning. If they needed more condition damage, then they should’ve received better access to poison, bleeds, and confusion. If they needed more raw power, then they should’ve just buffed the base damage of those attacks. It is a simple solution, but a relatively effective on.

I would’ve preferred confusion instead of burning. For one there’s play involved, since confusion is based on action instead of a straight DPS. Second, confusion is rarely used so it won’t be overwritten by other classes. It provides depth while providing either offense or defense through enemy inaction. It works great on an engineer for both purposes, so it would make sense that it would also work well on a necromancer.

I find the whole thing inelegant, and if Dhuumfire was removed I wouldn’t be sad about it. My concern is whether necromancers would loose too much by losing it. Without that burning proc, Necros do lose a lot of power in a 1 vs 1 situation, since the bleeds are slow to accumulate, and the auto attack chain is often interrupted before poison is applied.

Phantaram.1265:

Caffynated.5713:

I felt like necro was mostly OK before this patch. They were the strongest class in game by a small margin, but they had some strong counters. Their lack of mobility was made up for with their great built in survivability even in a glass cannon spec. They could melt you if you didn’t focus fire them, but they couldn’t handle being trained or chain CC’d.

Now, they have just as much damage (terror nerf isn’t even equivalent to 1 stack of bleeding) but we’re juggernauts in death shroud with life force coming out of our ears.

The one major drawback to dhuumfire + terror specs was their poor life force generation. It kept them in check by limiting their ability to use death shroud for attack and defense. The buff to base mark size freed up the points needed to get soul marks (and of course the bonus spectral armor) and coupled with the increased life force generation from spectrals, dhuumfire glass cannons now have an abundance of life force. Couple that with the bug fix to DS ability to soak damage, and it has more than doubled the survivability of a “glass” cannon that was already fairly stout to begin with.

I think this is a pretty accurate analyzation of what has happened between the last 2 patches. +1 Caffynated!

Buffing necromancer damage to what it was may not have been the right decision because it didn’t affect necromancer playstyle much just made them viable through sheer damage. Now with 20 in soul reaping + spectral armor buff + the new deathshroud necromancers playstyle is exactly where it should be but now they have the high damage that got implemented before.

So I think what happens when we nerf the damage a bit is that we have necromancers with a proper playstyle but is moved more toward balance.

Thanks for the kind words Allie! Glad you have provided these forums with some transparency and love lately <3

No offence mate, but if you’re only going to comment one ppl who agree with your choice of nerfing the necro and ignoring comments about the actual veteran necro players it couldn’t be more obvious of how biased you are.

If you’d actually played necro for longer than 6 hours you’d know that even with the spectral changes necro is no where as op as you claim it to be.
I also saw the video where (I think it was you) showed how your necro friend can eat your ele burst, no necro starts a fight with over 50% ds. So if you’d do that in a realistic setting, that burst would simply flow over in his hp, pretty fast and leaving him with much needed def skills on cd.

This thread should be renamed to “destructive necromancer thoughts” instead, because that is how the PVE necromancers feel about the recent changes, and also the new suggested changes to their class. It is a terrible shame that the entire class was nerfed with only a tPvP Pax tourny in mind. A terrible shame!

There are also PVE and WvW necromancers!

Just wanted to add my few cents to this thread, being someone who hanging up my necro main, and starting to build a warrior.

Warning: a bit lengthy

Necro Feedback:

= Defensive =
IMO, to gain diversity and keep with the theme of the necromancer, the majority of the necromancer defensive attributes were placed into debuffs rather than buff. EX for kiting, we have access to alot of cripple / chill, while other classes get swiftness. But this setup is very problematic for us in both PvP and PvE:

- PvP
The 2 big issues here: The number of counters to our debuffing and the fact that we NEED to hit for it to be effective. Given the fact that these skills usually have long cooldowns and sometimes cast times, plus the fact that we lack stunbreakers and other forms of mitigation, it becomes problematic. Other classes get things like distortion, stealth, stability, vigor, aegis, etc that contribute to the amount of time the can be invulnerable or practically invulnerable….. which can completely negate the cooldowns we blow to try to stay on par. On the other hand, we cant do anything about their stunbreaks, stealth, etc. Even removing buffs like stability or vigor is difficult because they of the long cast times and the fact that they can cover their buffs with with invulnerability.

- PvE
Imma breakdown my opinion of the offensive side later, but generally PvE, esp dungeons, comes down to Glass Cannon + dmg mitigation stuff previously mentioned: swiftness, vigor, stability, aegis, distortion, etc. If we spec more defensive, we fall behind DPS wise. In a glass setup, we get 2 dodges and that is it. There is no projectile reflection for big ranged hits, no other invulns, and DS if able to absorb the big hit, needs time to be built up, which can be tricky in certain builds if their arnt adds dying around you in a boss fight. It also leaves you susceptible to any condition / stun effects that big hit might have. For trash mobs, AoE weakness + chill is fantastic, but is pretty limited in that it can only affect 5 mobs there can be/will be more on many occasions; whereas, an ele doing a water heal on 5 party ppl, doesnt usually get a significant disadvantage be parties are usually teams of 5.

= Offensive =
- PvP
Looking over the issues with defense, not being able to escape 2v1, and dying if the 2 have some clue of what they are doing, necros are able to apply nice pressure in a pvp setting. I would like to see twitchier / quicker buff removal for the reasons listed in the defensive section. If we dont get access to stunbreaks and escapes, I would like see additions that might counter opponents’. Just spitballing, but maybe things along the lines of: stealing endurance, debuffing endurance, fear depletes endurance or breaks stability / aegis / distortion, a debuff that prevents stunbreaks or stealthing, a cover conditon (gets removed on con removal instead of other conditions), etc. Basically, if we cant run away, we should have a somewhat reliable methods of preventing them from escaping or avoid what we would otherwise use to prevent them from escaping. If we cant break stun or mitigate dmg with invulnerability, we should have reliable methods of apply dmg mitigation and keeping it applied.

- PvE
—direct dmg
We are outclassed by warriors in direct dmg due to cleave. Their direct dmg is fantastic. They also have access to nice party support skills that increase dmg like “for great justice” and discipline banner. They have access to vulnerability and can apply it to all targets they are hitting. Necromancers cant dmg buff party members, and cant contribute debuffs better than the group of wars stacking and cleaving target. They also outclass our dmg. Because dungeons are basically Glass + invulns, we cant contribute with support or dmg.

— AoE / Conditions
Generally if you can do nice AoE dmg your single target is lack luster. Eles have the benefit of not having a startup time for there AoE, and because powerful mobs are generally skipped via escapes (which we dont have alot of xD), when AoE is needed, the mobs usually dont last long enough for the conditions to outdo the Ele’s AoE (eles also are able to benefit from vulnerability done by other party members). The only exception being a boss that spawns mobs, you just epidemic the conditions you’re maintaining on the boss and it is awesome. Condition builds have their own problems of low direct dmg (which translates to slow of not being very compatible with with other conditions build. If two conditions professions are in a group, one either respecs, or one is kicked. Condition Necs just dont synerize very well with PvE meta. We are subject to a limited number of stacks + sharing them, cant contribute as well to dmg buffing + actual dmg as other professions, and dont gain as much of a benefit from buffs and debuffs other party members are doing, ex: time warp isnt that great if we are already maintaining 25 stacks of bleed.

-And all bosses are immune to fear. -_-

grumble

But yeah, all this ^.

shimmerless.4560:

chaosgrimm some of what you have said about pvp (i’m ignoring the pve stuff as this is the spvp board after all) is strange. it is not hard to remove stabil or vigor corrupt boon (sp?) is up every half minute or so. why would they cover it with invuln? it would be completely redundant.

Corrupt boon has a 40 sec cooldown (unless traited for but no one takes that trait) and it misses more often than we’d like to. It also got nerfed quite hard recently, now only removes 5 boons and stability is somewhere at the bottom of the priority list.

I see people complaining about corrupt boon, epidemic, all our spectral skills, heck even our signets. You do realise we only have 3 utility skill slots right?

I just think that burning damage is so strong in necros hand, and it should get the burning duration reduced or something.

Nigros atm are like walking nuclear reactors killing people with 2 marks and things like that.

P.D: Just for fun → http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WlPAY9DM5Q

This vid was recorded just one hour ago.

So what about all the spirit ranger bs spamming all the conditions on you, ressing themselves over and over and being such a troll that you cant even see the tiny asuran ranger behind a bunch of ai controlled bs.

My point is that necro nerfs are needed but be careful what you wish you. An altogether worse ai dominated meta with engi turrets and ranger spirits will be next

shimmerless.4560:

chaosgrimm some of what you have said about pvp (i’m ignoring the pve stuff as this is the spvp board after all) is strange. it is not hard to remove stabil or vigor corrupt boon (sp?) is up every half minute or so. why would they cover it with invuln? it would be completely redundant.

sry, may have been a bit too loose with the term ‘invuln’. One example would be getting vigor + stealth. corrupt boon cant hit a stealthy target, a target under the effects of distortion, etc. These buffs can be covered to secure other instances in invulnerability. Stability can be a bit of a different issue, you are generally only needing it to secure a few seconds of a burst if used offensively or secure a CC on the nec so you can burst, and the majority of our ‘escapes’ / mitigation are aggressive. If corrupt boon is avoided or given the spinal shivers cast time, you arnt going to be able/ have time to remove stability and counter the burst or cc affect. A half minute cooldown is alot considering if you miss you’re screwed in most cases xD. Meanwhile, a mesmer could just blink away, and doesnt even need to really anticipate a burst coming.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I would just like to chime in with some of my PVE brothers and sisters, that this latest update has been a staggering blow to the PVE necro, which was not considered, and clearly is still not being considered in the slightest. No one wants necros for dungeons or fractals, due to bad DPS and terrible defense. I urge the devs to also read the PVE forums.

The necro may work fine in tPvP, but the PVE game vastly favors other classes, and does not favor condition builds in the slightest. The blow to Death Shroud especially has made it impossible for necros in PVE to have any defense against spike damage, such as all those one-hit kill bosses, or zergs in WvW.

Please read the PVE forums as well.

Don’t bother, they clearly don’t give two red pennies for our opinions, if so this thread would have been posted in the Necro forums or discussion forums. They’ll do what they think they need to do to get through tournament PvE players be dammed.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all, just wanted to let you know that we’re watching this thread closely.

We are doomed.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all, just wanted to let you know that we’re watching this thread closely.

Really appreciate the constructive feedback, particularly yours, Phantaram. You seem to be analyzing from a very objective and unbiased point of view, which is very helpful.

This is not confidence inspiring. I am not sure why it is that somebody with six hours of necro experience who produces a troll video is labeled as “objective and unbiased.”

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ok, here’s the deal. I’m hearing different things from everyone I talk to.

1. Necro DS is too much and should be brought down
2. Necro damage is too much and should be brought down
3. Necro survivability is bad

Which is it? At this point, I want to see streams and videos of matches.

Why do you want to see more streams and videos of cherry picked “data” that is basically going to just show you whatever the person who videos it wants you to see?

Here is what I think a fair assessment of what is going on with the class is:

1) You probably botched up with the addition of Dhuumfire. You then compounded that mistake by nerfing terror instead of Dhuumfire or swapping the the 30% condition duration in the spite tree with something else. The reason that’s so is because you made 30/20/-/-/- required for anybody that wants to play condition damage. The natural place for the remaining 20 points is soul reaping for some additional survivability.

2) The latest changes to siphoning and death shroud were probably overall good, if your vision of the class is a meat shield for attrition fighting. The bleed over of life force into health was a bad choice, because it means that we can’t absorb any kind of burst damage if life force is low, and we need that possibility because we have no other defense in that case. Irrespective of that nerf, I think that necro players are of the opinion that we do not actually fight attrition fights as well as a variety of other classes, even if we are specced to do so. We have reasons to think this beyond just “I think my class should be able to go 1v3 and win.”

3) Right now, there are too many asinine proposed “fixes” to the necro class to count, and you guys are spasming through a bunch of ham handed buffs and nerfs. Further, you are giving lots of necro players the impression that all of your balancing is being done on the word of tourney players with alterior motives. This is really not great. What you need to do is actually sit down and take a look at the math for yourselves on what the possible damage inputs and outputs are for a few builds, think up a couple of possible fixes or adjustments, and then actually talk to necro players about them.

With the right team comp and support conditions are far from broken. Solo’Que will always be hell no matter’s what vs conditions or burst. But Pre-made vs Pre-made its your own fault if your team gets owned by conditions.

For one there is so many ways to counter conditions but for some reason people would rather run a GC build with a low HP pool with next to no condition remove. Then complain about conditions being OP. How is it the condition teams problem, when clearly your team doesn’t take the right counter measure to handle conditions.

Each meta has it’s pro’s and con’s matter being smart about it, you can’t counter everything so counter the meta that hurts your team comp the most.

I don’t prefer to run full GC, have extra vit, plenty of condition removal through traits, heal skill, utility, and elite via activating runeset of lyssa, and I can tell you that it doesn’t make nearly enough of a difference. They simply reapply their massive amount of conditions and get that free 4+ seconds burning because they landed a crit somewhere and the fight has gone on longer than 10 seconds.

Couple that with what Phantaram stated about attacking them in DS form with Spectral Armor on and yes, you are practically healing them. Necros can not only go full glass cannon and burst decently hard, but they can stack conditions which is more than just the icing on the cake, as well as strong CC and then have a rather high health pool for being such a powerful setup.

I think having an actual cast time on the marks could definitely help. And if they’re going to spec like glass, I think they should be going down similar to glass. Currently they do not. I think that’s largely what is a problem here, on top of the fact that they can do this in an aoe fashion.

I don’t mind their tankiness really, it doesn’t seem imbalanced by itself. But when you couple that with strong damage and ungodly amounts of pressure due to conditions and terror, and we’re suddenly well over the top. I think if Necros were left alone before they had all these buffs, and simply changes were made to DS like with Spectral Armor, and just given torment, they wouldn’t be quite as ridiculous, but that burning on crit really pushes a power build to be equally powerful as a condition build. :/ Actually no, I still think they’d be pretty close to over the top. Condition duration / application is just too kitten strong.

You most certainly can’t do that on pretty much any other class, save for Engineer being possibly the only other candidate for that. Strong immediate damage, burning on a crit, loads of conditions, tons of boons, and an aoe elite skill for a stun + healing.

It’s hilarious how Caffynated described necro berserker power builds as “great built in survivability for glass”.

Pretty much discredits the rest. Try running a power necro for any amount of time before you ever feel like saying stuff like this again.

As a glass necro you died to burst builds faster than anything but a glass ranger.

Power dagger necros are in a horrendous state. A melee class with no teleports, no actual burst that needed to go into a teamfight melee range but had no disengages.

Are you kidding me? Power necros were fine? This is just aggravating.

Dhuumfire is the main problem. Before the patch where terror existed and all the other conditions existed (save for torment which isn’t that prevalant), necromancer condition damage was strong, but you could cope with it. Now it’s over the top mostly because of Dhuumfire. With condition duration increases from Spite and runes, you get 5 seconds of burning every 10 seconds, which deals 2500-3000 damage for each application. Because of how condition removal works (last applied removed first) and the variety and frequency of conditions applied, the burning rarely gets removed. The bleed stack is often removed, which accounted for a lot of damage pre-patch, but now it’s not nearly as big of a chunk of the total damage because of Dhuumfire.

Short Term
Use a PvP/PvE split on Dhuumfire and make the sPvP version a much shorter duration like 2 seconds. That way it gives a little burst factor and another condition to remove, but doesn’t contribute so much damage so quickly. It also leaves PvE out of the picture.

Long Term
A lot of things need to be addressed with necromancer and a happy medium found between them all.
- Dhuumfire needs to be useful for condition builds, but not overly powerful. It also needs to work for hybrid builds, which seems to have been one of its original goals.
- Staff could use a re-work. A lot of people (not at the top level) just do 2-3-4-5, weapon swap and it works a little too well. While marks are on cooldown, staff feels very boring.
- Weakness should behave consistently (no RNG) for a short duration, like an offensive version of the Protection boon.
- Life force mechanic needs re-evaluated. Pay attention to using death shroud offensively (mostly power builds) and defensively. For example, a heavy damage condition build like the old 30/30/10/0/0 which uses death shroud only defensively should have less access to large amounts of life force so that they remain a glass cannon. More defensive or balanced builds and those which use death shroud for damage can generate life force faster. However, also need to address the start of a match with 0 life force vs. mid and late game with 100% life force.

Well, the staff is mark spam because the autoattack is so terrible. The marks outside 2 and 3 are on long cd’s.

After you’ve used the marks you’re using a terrible weapon that has no damage with a slow projectile, and the auto on the weapon is power based despite the staff being a condition weapon.

The staff is just not a weapon you can stay on. It’s the for the long cd cc’s and to complement scepter condi application. You can’t sustain conditions with the staff, but you can with the scepter.

I’ve avoided discussing the PVE scene because of, ultimately, that’s on the sidelines for my personal goals, but since it is brought up a lot I might as well talk about it.

Doing PVE with a necro has always been a mixed bag. This is mostly because, even if I ask beforehand in a dungeon group if someone else is running a condi build, they never respond. I have to find out later that the thief is spamming death blossom, because saying “I am” in party chat is apparently too difficult to do. Maybe they’re just afraid that they’ll get kicked for saying yes by elitists, but don’t realize we can detect a condition build from a mile away.

The overlapping of burning is an extremely big problem here. In any group, if there is a guardian, elementalist, or engineer you might as well not have Dhuumfire. Warriors, Mesmers, and Rangers also apply burning when specced for it, making it so Dhuumfire is only a safe bet when paired with thieves, and maybe warriors since they rarely run their burns.

You’ll only want to run a condition build in a premade, but when done right it is pretty good. Enemies in PVE have a lot of HP, and the damage multiplication from Epidemic can be immense in the right circumstances. Lay down 13 AoE bleeds, fire epidemic, then everything in the room is at the cap. When fighting against multiple champions and bosses, this makes taking care of all of them at once really easy. With spectral wall, you can inflict terror on a group of enemies 2 to 3 times, doing quite a bit of damage and control. Combine that with AoE weakness as well as group condition transfers and regen, and the Necro can come out on top with their conditions.

I don’t have a plan to improve condi necros in PVE because, for the most part, thy are fine. I would like to see 2 things done:

#1: Terror does full damage through defiant.
#2: Dhuumfire causes either 4/5 stacks of confusion or 4/5 stacks of torment instead of burning. Rename it something else.

And I’ll be good. For the most part, the flaws with conditionmancers are flaws with conditions in general.

For most of PVE, though, I run a much different set. Knight armor w/ ruby orbs, ruby trinkets, berserker weapons, 30/0/10/0/30 build. The good ole powermancer. There’s only a few complaints I can have with the class, and the biggest complaint is that I can’t run full zerker without becoming incredibly squishy. So, I have to run either knight trinkts or knight armor so I can survive more of a hit.

The damage isn’t too bad, but it isn’t too good, either. PVE is ruled by AoEs, and necromancers don’t have a cleave. If necros want AoE power, there’s only 3 things they can do:

1)Use a staff for it’s piercing auto attack and Putrid Mark
2)Use Wells and Bone Minions
3)Pick up Unyielding Blast.

I went with the latter. Unyielding Blast and Reapers Might lets me do piercing attacks from a distance, and they hit for around 5K each, so by hitting 3 or so enemies it does 15K per auto attack. That isn’t too bad, but unfortunately ikittens my defense with my offense, requiring me to sacrifice Death Shroud in order to do respectable damage.

The biggest problem being that, as a powermancer in PVE, you have to sacrifice a lot of utility in order to do AoE damage. We get 3 utility skills, and giving 2 of them over for AoE damage via wells means that we get one trick to let us “contribute” to our team, and with long cooldowns that is an exaggeration. It is for this reason that power mancers are stuck with running 10 in Death Magic: So they can take Ritual of Protection and go “See? I contribute! I give everyone really short protection!”.

This is two places where a conditionmancer really beats out a powermancer in PVE. They do more damage in an AoE, and they come with a whole lot more support utility by default. If conditions weren’t so messed up in PVE, the conditionmancer would be the norm.

To remedy this issue, I’ll have to take some other people’s suggestions and improve on the power weapons themselves:

Axe #1 Should cleave. Give it a small AoE and a 3 target cap.
Axe #3 Should be a blast finisher.
Dagger #2 should do 50% more damage and heal for 50% more.
Warhorn #5 should do double the damage.

Again: a lot of these ideas are not my ideas. While these sound powerful, in the grand scale of PVP these do very little. It is only in PVE that these are significant changes.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ok, here’s the deal. I’m hearing different things from everyone I talk to.

1. Necro DS is too much and should be brought down
2. Necro damage is too much and should be brought down
3. Necro survivability is bad

Which is it? At this point, I want to see streams and videos of matches. If you have examples of the following, please share (STREAM SHOULD BE AFTER THE PATCH):

1. Team w/ 1 necro vs team w/o necro
2. Team w/ 1-2 necros vs team w/ 1-2 spirit rangers
3. Team w/ 1 necro vs team w/o neco but w/ berserker stance warrior (with heavy CC build – maybe mace/shield + hammer)
4. Team w/ 1 necro vs team w/o necro but w/ 1-2 spirit rangers
5. Team w/ 2 necros vs team w/ 1 necro & 1-2 spirit rangers
6. Team w/ 2 necros vs team w/ 2 berserker stance warriors (with heavy CC build)
7. Team w/ 2 necros vs team w/1-2 spirit rangers & 1 berserk stance warrior (with heavy CC build)
8. Team w/ necro vs team w/ Engi (w/ 30 pts in Alchemy)
9. Team w/ necro vs team w/o necro, but with any combination of the following: spirit ranger, berserker stance warrior (with heavy CC build), Engi w/ 30 in Alchemy, guardian w/ contemplation of purity/stand your ground.

Any other examples are welcome, but I want to SEE that what you are saying is in fact true. The sooner the better.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Give us observer mode for tpvp and you’ll receive all the practical evidence (instead of staged matches) you need.

The defensive problem with Necros in PVE is identical to the one in PVP: We have a finite bag of HP that melts quickly when attacked by multiple sources, or by a champion doing one big hit. Big problem is, nearly every champion has at least one big hit, if not more.

Other classes cope with this in the usual way: they have vigor to dodge more attacks, they use evade skills, they use blocks, and they use invulnerability. Some classes, like the guardian or the engineer, combine the use of protection and massive healing in order to mitigate a lot of damage. Necromancers have none of this, so we end up just taking the hits.

The problem being that you can’t win an attrition war with an NPC just based on HP. Anything above a veteran mob has at least 10 times your HP, and champions frequently have 50 times your HP. Some melee mobs aren’t a problem because you can just kite around them with cripple and chill, but ranged mobs with frequent damaging attacks will blow right through you. The battle ends up being about generating as much Life Force as possible so you can block their next lethal hit, and this doesn’t always work.

Many overworld champions hit for much more than a player’s maximum HP. Every temple boss except Lyssa can easily do this. Originally if you could dodge their other attacks you would generate enough Life Force to absorb a hit. But now that hits overflow from Death Shrouds, this tactic no longer works. This means that necros are now soft-bodied rez bait who’s only defense against ranged damage from champions is to hang back as far as possible and hope they don’t notice the Necromancer.

The “overflow” really wasn’t an issue for PVP, at least as far as I played in it. When not being focused down by 4 players or so, I sustained enough Life Force to absorb a lot of their ambushes from full. The only time overflow might be a problem is if DS is timed perfectly to align with something like Fire Grab or BackStab, which is an occurrence rarely encountered.

I’d just prefer it if they gave PVE necro something to let them fight champions better.

The developer’s posts in this thread make sad. It shows that’s they will nerf that profession if people are asking for it. Serious, I can go into Tpvp for 50 matches and record them, then present the one which shows necros are OP.

hmmm… maybe I can show videos of how bad is necros. Will the devs buff necros now? I always thought they buff/nerf base on combat logs/calculations, own observation, or play the game.

jmatb.6307:

I have no idea how people are this clueless about Necro. Blows my mind.

Stop blaming others for being clueless when you are exactly the same. It is as if people think that the fotm build is the only viable builds for necromancers at the moment.

Let me ask you a question? Where do you think condition necromancers are most effective?

I will answer the question for you because clearly you have no understanding of how a good condition necromancer is played. UP CLOSE! UP CLOSE! UP CLOSE! (weakening shroud, mark of evasion, geomancy sigils, dark path and so on) Up close is where condition necromancers do their best burst, so reducing the range will not help you here and will only make more balanced builds worse.

This thread is ridiculos kittenpoo.

Suddenly everyone complaing about DS which actually got a bit worse than EVER in certain way.

If you’re bothered by terror/dhuumfire necro ask them nerf that leave glass zerk necros out of it. Yes I mean glass. There’s a big difference between soldier and zerk gear survivability and damage. Not to mention the utility skills you pick.

If some kid lost spvp because of getting cc’ed or something. Oh kitten.

I can tell you in my experience strongest necro is minion necro with staff and no damage at all. Because it beats my zerk necro hands down.

Go figure.

edit: also OTHER class condibuilds. Sigh. Ranger pew pew pew I don’t need to even take a step and people die.

Definitely necros needs to tone their damage down a LOT, right now they have lots of deathshroud health that is really getting ridiculous that a glass cannon can tank a lot of damage and do a really high burst damage, that is OP, i find really hilarious their claims and crys that they have no sustain!!!, LOL really LOL to this.

Shalla.3967:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

As I’ve said before, these are my main thoughts on the issue:

-> Burning wasn’t necessary, our damage was ok-ish before the big patch. Swap it for torment and/or chill and the trait is still worth taking as a cover/control trait, whilst offering a choice to those that don’t want to run with it.

-> Terror should be GM. I don’t believe that any of the current GM traits even hold their weight as such to be fair, when compared to terror.

-> I disagree with those blaming marks. Specially now, I believe marks are in a good place. I was confused at first, but I really like the way this patch went. I’ve been running untraited marks as a trade off for 20 in soul reaping and I think DS is in a good place at the moment (despite being sad that I can’t fall off mountains freely without spectral walk, was a fun perk to have, but that’s irrelevant), even though our ability to disengage is still somewhat lackluster, making us good duelists but, due to the current exaggerated nature of burst, not so good team fight survivors (and I say this not because we can’t survive burst incoming from a group source, which should effectively be an issue for every class, but because we barely have the option to abandon the fight or to reposition ourselves.). I’d be ok with this if damage in general wasn’t so high as it currently is, which leads me to my next point.

This obviously does not only apply to the necromancer, but I still believe damage is just ridiculously high at the moment. Bursting someone down doesn’t even take coordination between 2 people these days. A few classes can kill people in a burst rotation, which I think is really damaging the game. It’s all about the damage at the moment. There’s no room for support, “sniper” type builds (which I’d love to see one for the new ranger longbow, for example), and other clever ways to win games away from sheer damage/number fights. I think toning everything down would also help with the current problem that is profession stacking.

I appreciate this thread. It seems more constructive and down to earth than others. Even so, some people need to stop acting like immature brats about this kind of stuff. It happens with necromancers today, but if there’s another class that gets a bit overly buffed soon, the OPOPOP comments start flowing, the word “meta” gets chuckled around like a bra-less tit and senseless videos of unrealistic scenarios start being posted for no reason other than annoy players whilst trying to act cool.

Ohh, Shalla. You read my mind.

Devs please read it! Torment/chill idea for Dhuumfire, Terror being a GM for me seem to be the best ideas.

Shalla +1000

The only problem I can see is that spirit rangers, S/D thieves, automated response engies and berserker stance warriors especially may kick the necro out of the game if the changes go too far. Sadly, and I say it with full sanity, being a necro player, it still would probably be better than seeing what the game is now at PAX.

I don’t know what’s the best way to fix the necromancer for the better for the moment, I have yet to think about it. I’ll probably post later.

In the other hand, after reading those 7 pages (Yes, I’m serious.) please, please,
Stop incessantly posting the same terrible idea over and over again – you know who you are. Stop replying to noobs, and ignore them if necessary? Try to avoid engaging in arguments unless its absolutely necessary. (it’s pointless to try and convince jmatb for example) And most important of all, think about each post you make, and always ask yourself this; “is this post necessary.” And no more ad hominem attacks – u say pve in ya post, me no listening to you, you suck kitten -. Seriously cut that kitten out.
This is a thread about “constructive” necromancer thoughts. Mod should probably consider adding a blacklist for such a crucial thread that will irremediably have an huge impact on necromancer playstyle in TPvp as well as in PVE, and WvWvW in the futur.