Guild Wars 2

I’d like to start out by saying that I have played a Necromancer in PvP as my main quite some time ago, and I was as delighted to return after the latest changes that came about. I do think though thakittens clear for most of us to see that they are a bit out of balance with other profs, the latest SOTG on GW2Guru seemed to confirm as much.

My understanding (and it may not be correct) of the way that ANet changed up the Necromancer is that they wanted to add in Dhuumfire so Necros could have a viable glass cannon condition build, which I think is great. Necros and Rangers were the only classes without specs that really did a lot of damage that were anything near viable, so I’m glad that was fixed.

However, they wanted to make sure that you could not have Terror (fears do damage), with Greater Marks, Dhuumfire and Master of Terror (increased fear duration). That to me makes perfect sense, as a spec with access to all these abilities is inherently too powerful, there is simply too much control and damage there, and by all rights in the current layout that shouldn’t be possible.

Going into Spite fully though already gets us 30% of the way there to our increased fear duration. That is not enough of a difference to make going for the trait worthwhile and add to that another 20% in runes, 2 Lyssa and 4 Nightmare, and you have the master of terror trait built in through other means. You have something that is pretty much the equivalent to the situation ANet was, in my opinion, attempting to avoid.

I dont actually have confirmation on the following theory and my understanding is that there has been a lot of speculation over how terror ticks work, so anyone offering some clarity on that score would be very helpful. The fear tick apparently starts the first time another condition ticks while the fear is applied. So imagine I have ten stacks of bleed on a target, one ticking every 0.1 seconds. The first tick of terror will be in the first 0.1 seconds of fear being applied, meaning I only need a 1.1 second fear for two ticks, and a 2.1 second fear for 3 ticks of terror. When they’re easily hitting for over 1000 a pop, and the person is controlled, that really hurts.

This is my proposal for a reasonable balance that would allow for glass cannon Necros to still be viable, while reducing the amount of control they provide, and also giving something back to the more traditional pure terrormancers that provide excellent support without over the top damage.:

1. Terror should be a Grandmaster trait. I like that it defines us as a class and that we have so much access to fear, and do feel that we should be able to do something more with it, but at the moment this trait defines a great number of our builds, and so should in my opinion require a full commitment in curses to take. Withering Precision is swapped with it directly.

2. Reduce base Fear length on all abilities to 66% of their current duration (Before you shout me down, hear me out!). So, with 30% in Spite + 20% in runes, you get back to the current standard duration of fears, slightly reducing the amount of control they provide for the glass cannon variant of the class.

3. Increase the additional fear duration from Master of Terror from 50% to 100%. This would mean that our current base of 66% would increase to 133%. With 20% extra in Runes, you could increase this to close to 146% of the current duration

4. Reinstate Sigil of Paralyzation as something that can increase fear duration. This allows necros to swap from applying more bleed stacks/poison on weapon swaps to providing more control. If a stun break can break a fear, why should a sigil that increases stun duration not increase it. While the maths is not totally right this would increase fear to 166% ish of its current duration. (66%*2.5, 2 for 100% master of terror, 0.2 for runes and 0.3 for dual weilded sigils).

I’m far from an elite or top player, and these are just suggestions, perhaps my numbers arent exactly right for the perfect balance, and I’ve got into a lot of detail with them, but try to take the ideas themselves at face value and please give your comments on them. I’d love to hear other peoples suggestions for how the new Necromancer spec could be balanced without detracting from the profession too much

Good ideas, and in general I agree with your approach, which is to approach it from the side of nerfing Terror a bit rather than nerfing/removing Dhuumfire. However, I personally think that it is the damage done by Terror, not so much the fear duration, that is the problem. Here is the list of changes I would try out in the next patch:

• Move Terror to GM trait and reduce the damage dealt by it by 20-25%
• Revert Doom to always be 1s of fear
• Reduce the duration of Spectral Wall to 4s (6s when traited)
• Remove the immobilize from the end of Tainted Shackles, or reduce its duration to 1s
• Make DS2 a ground targetable teleport with 900 range (takes time before porting and does not break stun, though) to give necro a bit of disengage

I was focusing purely on the Terror side of things from a standpoint of changing the glassy spec that has too much control at the moment. You’ve actually reduced the duration of one fear here, and our spectral wall duration, but if Reapers Mark still hits for a 1.5 second fear in AoE, thats too strong in this spec. A skill that was used in a skillful sense for res prevention and stomp prevention alike, becomes a damage burst skill.

I dont actually think spectral wall is overpowered, given that it can be stabilitied through, teleported passed, invlunad through, or just ran round. A necromancer requires a reasonable amount of skill to get any kind of chain of fears off using it.

I think Terrors damage currently feels too powerful because of the addition of dhuumfire. Sure, a condi that ticks for 1.2k ish is very good, but I dont think its overpowered especially with our limited ways to apply fear. Perhaps a more reasonable suggestion would be to change the master of terror trait to include the 50% additional damage when the target already has a condition, as well as the fear duration. That would cut the terror damage in the glass cannon spec to 2/3 of what it is now, without reducing the condimancers attempts at damage.

I have never thought Tainted Shackles immobilize has great synergy with the rest of it. I can see thakittens another condi to remove, but if you are immobilized you can’t move so torment hits for half as much. Theres no doubt that immobilize is very strong, but I think the shackles are relatively easily escaped at the moment, unless youre chilled or crippled. I personally don’t feel that needs changing.

I really like the idea of making DS2 a targetable teleport with a cast time. It could uin our chillblains -> fear into spectral wall -> DS2 -> run to the other side -> fear back into the wall combo, depending on how the teleport would work, but that combo does take a large amount of skill to set up properly.

ANet have also said that they planned for us not to be the most mobile of classes but rather that we should be able to sustain in a fight better than others. So perhaps they don’t want us to have disengages in that way? I’m not sure

Moving Terror to Grandmaster does nothing. Most glass cannon necro’s run 30/30/10. Moving Terror up a tier does nothing to fix the build that everyone is complaining about. In fact it would probably make that build more prevalent as straight terror/condi builds would be nerfed by this move.

The solution is not terror. Necro’s have always had terror and it’s nothing new. It is the combination of terror and burning that have people complaining. Fear IS one of class mechanics, but moving it to the grandmaster tier simply won’t work or help anything out.

The problem is burning and how often necro’s can apply it. The solution would be to either nerf the duration, or how often it procs. I’m actually all for removing burning and replacing it with additional torment as I think this would still give us a nice spike but not be as OP as burning/terror combined is.

To recap, moving Terror to grandmaster tier does absolutely nothing to the build that everyone is complaining about. That’s not the solution needed in my opinion. Address burning and the cries will die down.

No one ever cried about terror prior to the patch. Terror is not the issue.

Moving Terror to grandmaster only ensures that it requires total commitment to a Glassy spec to get Terror, Dhuumfire and Greater marks as I said in my original post.

Like you, I do not believe terror to be the problem, but if you do not move Terror to the grandmaster tier but stick with my other suggestions (read above), what then comes out is the glass cannon build has a 30 20 0 0 20 spec, while that doesnt include greater marks, its still really dangerous and has too long fears with too much damage – that in my opinion is the main problem with the current spec, too much damage combined with too much control, and the only way to prevent that happening is by moving traits around.

There’s no doubting that the damage is high, but so it should be when youre committing 30 points in each of the most damaging trees. However, the control means that we’re a very glassy class that it becomes very difficult to damage. I genuinely feel that the 30 30 10 spec would be balanced in a system where we were being hit at much as the next glassy character, because we’d have to start playing more defensively and using our skills more effectively. That is why I’d suggest nerfing the base duration of fear skills.

Like I said my numbers arent exact, and perhaps Dhuumfire would need to be slightly reduced in duration as well regardless. As I say I was focusing more on the terror side, but it does seem slightly absurd that we can have 60% uptime of burning just by adding 20% condi duration runes.

I’m not trying to get rid of the build everyone is complaining about, I’m simply trying to make it more balanced. I believe that manipulating the way the fear traits are spread is the best way to do that, without destroying a viable Glass cannon necromancer spec, which by all rights should exist. Only Rangers and possibily Eles can’t go full Glass cannon at the moment with decent damage output, and thats because Eles already have great damage just going through Air.

So no, moving terror to the grandmaster tier alone would not change anything, of course. But combine that change with the other changes I posted and it takes a different look. I have also suggested that the 50% increased damage when a condi is applied be moved to the soul reaping tier and combined with the master of terror trait.

The one thing I notice when I read a lot of balancing threads is that people try to balance a single build of a class without taking into consideration the impact it has other other builds of the class. For example: Necro has power based and condition based builds. Most condition based builds will take master of terror as it is a good source of dmg. However Power based builds wont touch that trait at all. Meaning condition based builds use fear as a dmg source/interrupt/gap maker and power base builds use fear as an interrupt/gap maker. With the duration of fear as it is now (no increased duration) using fear as an interrupt/gap maker is on par with Knockback/Knockdown/Daze/Stun. If you lower the base to 66% of all fear it will no longer be on par at least for a gap maker. Which, at least for me, would screw over some of my builds.

If you want to nerf fear duration in a condition build I would recommend that fear duration should not be affected by condition duration but by fear duration only (kind of like Stun/Daze). This way you would force the necromancer to go into a terror based build with longer fear durations or a terror based build with shorter fear duration but has access to burning. This would mean there would be a 30/30/10 build still but also a 10/30/10/0/20 build.

What I’m looking at here is balancing the current Meta builds. 30 30 10 0 0 is too strong and powerful, for the reasons I posted above, and I did try to take into account Condition builds, without removing the glassy Necro builds.

I agree completely that most pure condi builds will take master of terror. It makes perfect sense to take it. Should a pure condition spec do more damage with terror? Thats one question, but I think pure condition specs should be able to use the fear as a gap maker interrupt and a damage source.

Power based builds, (specifically the 30 30 10 build, but also in general) shouldnt be able to produce the same kind of control from terror as they are inherently doing more damage. Even a power build that does not take the terror trait itself with still use fears, and they are still powerful. However, I appreciate your point that I would be making the fears less effective in this role for this spec. If you leave fear durations as they are though, the 30 30 10 spec still has too much damage and too much control, there has to be a way to change that without affecting all Necro builds.

I think I’d rest on my laurels, and my feeling would be that power builds have enough fear duration. Bear in my that you actually get 30% condi duration from the spite tree (disregarding your suggestion for the moment). So what you currently consider to be base duration is actually 1.3 times what fears should be, assuming thats your view. Thats already a long fear to have, youve almost got the master of terror trait just through speccing into the power line, and runes can make up that difference. To me that is too strong. If fear duration was reduced to 66%, runes and the spite tree would make fears up to the current base duration now, which to me is more than enough for a gap creator, especially given the insta cast doom fear would be 1.5 seconds below 600 range, which is I assume where you’ll be using it to create gaps. I personally think that wouldnt affect your specs too harshly.

The fact is though that balancing at the moment revolves around the meta specs, especially when one is too powerful. Unique specs are good in that people do not know what to expect so much, but they do not counteract the fact that some builds in the game are simply stronger than others

Having fear not affected by condition duration is an interesting idea, but not one I’m sure ANet would take up. Fear is for all intensive purposes a condition at the moment, and unless that were to change it does not make any sense for it not to be affected by condition duration.

“This way you would force the necromancer to go into a terror based build with longer fear durations or a terror based build with shorter fear duration but has access to burning”

Thats exactly what I’m trying to create, and I think thats the right approach. Its how you do it thats the problem

Problem with this is that the duration will be nerfed already simply because alot of necros are already running stun duration for staves. Also, nerfing Fear duration’s base will only hurt all other builds while Condi will only take a slight hit. The damage from Terror is high, but a Necromancer has very few control skills and fear, Spectral Grasp, and horn daze are the few that they have. This will hit power builds and well builds alot more. Not only this, but it will further just cause diversity of the class trait-wise to take a hit. 30 in spite and master of terror will be must needs which isn’t what the devs wanted in the first place.

Changing it so fear only is effected by Fear duration wouldn’t be a bad idea, but same concept; limiting diversity. That said, still a great idea which would make it so people have to choose either burning or high duration fears. Terror to grandmaster also wouldn’t change much because people would just go 30/30/10 without hesitation. The spec is glassy and has high damage, and moving a trait even higher wont stop people from trying to get that.

Big problem with this patch for some is how Terror damage is, but its because of whats coupled with it. The class got 3 easily applied conditions with 2 of them being now consistently applied as much as bleed. Poison on scepter allows for permanent upkeep as long as you stay auto attacking, with burning being there alot also. Then Torment is also put in which further makes Condi clears harder to do than before. Specs that run condi clear are simply overwhelmed even if they have a good deal of stunbreaks because they have to clear 5 damaging conditions now, and most actives outside Necromancer only full clear for a massive CD or are limited to 1-2. No matter how you scratch it, there is room for some of those condis to just stick on the target longer than they previously did. Bleeds have the ability to just stay at 9-11 stacks on enemies without being touched in some cases.

Even if you Nerf Terror damage (which probably is a good approach. adjust the 50% additional damage down to maybe 20%). The only other suggestion worth doing it taking out burning and making it Terror for dhuumfire. that way, its a two way street. They dont particularly nerf all builds using terror in the ground or fear while reducing the damage output and debuff cover.

As for the ground Target Teleport, The problem with this is that it would only create the problem of necros being too slippery for little investment. The devs all have made it so each teleport in the game requires a decent sacrifice to achieve on demand teleports. either Weapons like mesmer staff and thief sword or utility slots, there has to be some requirement to use this. All Necros would just have a teleport with DS 2 being it. Now, if the ground target teleport was coupled with a grandmaster trait/master trait that did change all DS skills slightly (add one more stack of torment, give DS 1 sec chill application/ 1 transfer on hit, increase speed of Life transfer channel) then maybe it will have the sacrifice needed to be taken and will open up other trait lines to be worth using.

My issue with some of these suggestions is that burning is what made people feel necro is now OP. You don’t balance burning by nerfing something necros have always had and that’s terror. Terror has not changed since the patch and thus doesn’t need any tweaking in my opinion.

The problem lies with burning and how it was implemented. Its extremely easy to apply burning to foes using Rabid Ammy as the crit chance with that is high. The burn duration along with an easy way to apply it means its almost always up and this is the problem.

Adjust burning’s duration or application and you’ve solved the problem without nerfing other specs that have existed for quite some time. I just don’t see focusing all this effort into adjusting terror when it’s burning that is the problem here. Some necros want burning, I’m fine with that. I think the trade off is that they are glass but if you want to tone them down without sacrificing build diversity then simply adjust burning. Give it a 20 second ICD on procs, give it a 2 second duration (adjusted for condi duration) etc. You then create the ability to “condi spike” occasionally without the class being a faceroll spam all AOE’s and hope for victory type class.

Switch the burning to a longer duration Torment reduce the ICD and lets move on.
Touch terror for what.
What did necros put out before? Stacks of bleeding mixed with poison,weakness, chill and fear. Now they have torment so bleed isn’t the only source of damage, then you throw burning on top of that? No sir.
Change Dhummfire to Dhuumwail or whatever and make it Torment 1 Stack.

IMO I feel like the best way to balance Terror atm is to remove the initial damage tick. The first tick is the only instance of damage that has no counter play to it. Either that or don’t allow certain Fear dealing skills to crit whereby they can proc Burn.

Fear durations and terror builds will take another hit when Paralyzation no longer effects Fear’s duration.

Other than that, I don’t see anything needing to be changed in the offensive department. The people worked up about the damage output, specially those who “main necro”, clearly haven’t spent enough time playing other classes where 3-4 skills to nuke someone in a glass cannon build is status quo.

There’s also no reasoning for removing Fire from Necros. They got it and they deserved it. Everyone else is using it, it makes sense that the kings of conditions would have it too. That being said, Burn damage itself is too high IMO.

As Kryshade said, moving Terror to GM status does nothing but limit Necro’s options further. None of the old issues of survivability have been addressed, but we now have a bandaid in being able to kill someone before they can kill us. If ANet want’s people to stop running glass cannon builds, then perhaps they ought to offer something in the escapability/survivability departments so that there’s another choice available for improving a Necro’s self-sustainability. Until there is one, the best option will still be to roll as glass cannon and just kill them before they can kill you.

Doesn’t terror do more damage per condition on the target now, or is it just a 50% increase no matter the amount of conditions? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Also … considering there are now two more conditions available to necro, terror is definitely an issue because of the added damage while you’re controlled. Burning is extremely strong to be added on by itself, but then to have tormet as well, well … that just pushed Necros over the top. I think they would’ve been fine with just torment added in, but definitely not both.

Because as it stands now it’s extreme damage, fair amount of control, and they get a pretty good amount of health pool + death shroud on top of that. It’s just imba as it is. I’ve watched bad Necromancers do well simply because there is too much damage to go with that control.

I’d really just like to see damage, all around the board, ESPECIALLY burst builds being toned down. I would honestly consider this a complete burst build, even if it’s not immediate, it sure is strong and there’s a lot of health to chew through on a necro, and it’s not like you really can play condition against them viably as they can consume conditions to heal for more & then put conditions you applied onto them back on you and control you more.

Well played necros are a frustrating nightmare and absolutely no fun to play against, even specc’d into survivability and as much condi cleanse as you can grab. This game is just getting worse :/

jonnis.2946:

I’d like to start out by saying that I have played a Necromancer in PvP as my main quite some time ago, and I was as delighted to return after the latest changes that came about. I do think though thakittens clear for most of us to see that they are a bit out of balance with other profs, the latest SOTG on GW2Guru seemed to confirm as much.

My understanding (and it may not be correct) of the way that ANet changed up the Necromancer is that they wanted to add in Dhuumfire so Necros could have a viable glass cannon condition build, which I think is great. Necros and Rangers were the only classes without specs that really did a lot of damage that were anything near viable, so I’m glad that was fixed.

However, they wanted to make sure that you could not have Terror (fears do damage), with Greater Marks, Dhuumfire and Master of Terror (increased fear duration). That to me makes perfect sense, as a spec with access to all these abilities is inherently too powerful, there is simply too much control and damage there, and by all rights in the current layout that shouldn’t be possible.

Going into Spite fully though already gets us 30% of the way there to our increased fear duration. That is not enough of a difference to make going for the trait worthwhile and add to that another 20% in runes, 2 Lyssa and 4 Nightmare, and you have the master of terror trait built in through other means. You have something that is pretty much the equivalent to the situation ANet was, in my opinion, attempting to avoid.

I dont actually have confirmation on the following theory and my understanding is that there has been a lot of speculation over how terror ticks work, so anyone offering some clarity on that score would be very helpful. The fear tick apparently starts the first time another condition ticks while the fear is applied. So imagine I have ten stacks of bleed on a target, one ticking every 0.1 seconds. The first tick of terror will be in the first 0.1 seconds of fear being applied, meaning I only need a 1.1 second fear for two ticks, and a 2.1 second fear for 3 ticks of terror. When they’re easily hitting for over 1000 a pop, and the person is controlled, that really hurts.

This is my proposal for a reasonable balance that would allow for glass cannon Necros to still be viable, while reducing the amount of control they provide, and also giving something back to the more traditional pure terrormancers that provide excellent support without over the top damage.:

1. Terror should be a Grandmaster trait. I like that it defines us as a class and that we have so much access to fear, and do feel that we should be able to do something more with it, but at the moment this trait defines a great number of our builds, and so should in my opinion require a full commitment in curses to take. Withering Precision is swapped with it directly.

2. Reduce base Fear length on all abilities to 66% of their current duration (Before you shout me down, hear me out!). So, with 30% in Spite + 20% in runes, you get back to the current standard duration of fears, slightly reducing the amount of control they provide for the glass cannon variant of the class.

3. Increase the additional fear duration from Master of Terror from 50% to 100%. This would mean that our current base of 66% would increase to 133%. With 20% extra in Runes, you could increase this to close to 146% of the current duration

4. Reinstate Sigil of Paralyzation as something that can increase fear duration. This allows necros to swap from applying more bleed stacks/poison on weapon swaps to providing more control. If a stun break can break a fear, why should a sigil that increases stun duration not increase it. While the maths is not totally right this would increase fear to 166% ish of its current duration. (66%*2.5, 2 for 100% master of terror, 0.2 for runes and 0.3 for dual weilded sigils).

I’m far from an elite or top player, and these are just suggestions, perhaps my numbers arent exactly right for the perfect balance, and I’ve got into a lot of detail with them, but try to take the ideas themselves at face value and please give your comments on them. I’d love to hear other peoples suggestions for how the new Necromancer spec could be balanced without detracting from the profession too much

The problem i see in your suggestions is :
fear is not only bursting skill, but it is also defensive. So reducing lenght you will not only reduce burst, but also necro survavobility ,which is already in a bad state. And of cource it seems that all your suggestions are about fotm build.

Burning its not the problem. Fear up time is. No one complains about the engi same trait that cost only 10 points. Its ridiculous that a 30 points trait be worse than a 10 point trait in other class.
If nerfed no one will ever take Dhuumfire. Terror builds will move to SR and hybrid builds w/o terror won’t be viable anymore. Some builds use Dhuumfire as main source of damage and its ok cause its not that great of a trait.
Don’t nerf things to reduce the build diversity. Terror builds will be viable even without Dhuumfire.

Leave Dhuumfire how it is, Reduce the amount of damage applied from Terror.

Reduce the duration’s of bleeding across the board. Reduce the duration of both Poison/Bleeding on Scepter auto-attack.

Reduce Hemophilia to 10%.

By reducing the duration’s and terror damage it won’t force other classes to be pigeon holed into trying to counter necro’s removing many viable builds from the game.

E.g. Necro Scepter #1×3 + Epidemic with Withering Precision vs Ranger SB #1×3 + Traps. Your combo is way more powerful then the Trap ranger, leaving you the option to take 2 more utilities. This is what I call “Red Flag” that there is an unbalance.

Ranger Trapper is very close to the 30/30/10 build if anyone is wondering. The Necro has allot more survival then the ranger in terms of comparing these 2 builds.

Nerfing terror is simply not the problem. I don’t see how you guys can think that terror is the issue here. Terror existed pre-patch in the exact same form. Everyone is complaining about burning and how necros can drop everyone around them. This is due to the addition of burning, not terror. Terror damage has always existed in the same form. If you nerf terror you are pigeon-holing every single necro into now running 30/30/10 because it will be the ONLY viable build.

If you nerf the duration or the proc rate of burning you tone necros down to the proper level while still maintaining both builds as viable builds. Ideally I’d like to see some sort of control over how burning is applied. That would add to the skill level of the necro in how they manage their spike.

The complaints of everyone in regards to necro are not because of terror damage. The complaints are because once a necro has dropped burning on you every 5 seconds and then they fear you you can’t do anything about it (well you can, but people complain you can’t).

I’ve already seen people adapt to necros in tournies. People have learned to stun break the fears, focus the necro and start bringing more stability.

I’ll say it again. Nerf the proc rate and/or duration of burning and you tone necros down just the right amount. Nerf terror and you destroy a viable non-OP build and force everyone to then roll 30/30/10/0/0.

Kryshade.6075:

Nerfing terror is simply not the problem. I don’t see how you guys can think that terror is the issue here. Terror existed pre-patch in the exact same form. Everyone is complaining about burning and how necros can drop everyone around them. This is due to the addition of burning, not terror. Terror damage has always existed in the same form. If you nerf terror you are pigeon-holing every single necro into now running 30/30/10 because it will be the ONLY viable build.

If you nerf the duration or the proc rate of burning you tone necros down to the proper level while still maintaining both builds as viable builds. Ideally I’d like to see some sort of control over how burning is applied. That would add to the skill level of the necro in how they manage their spike.

The complaints of everyone in regards to necro are not because of terror damage. The complaints are because once a necro has dropped burning on you every 5 seconds and then they fear you you can’t do anything about it (well you can, but people complain you can’t).

I’ve already seen people adapt to necros in tournies. People have learned to stun break the fears, focus the necro and start bringing more stability.

I’ll say it again. Nerf the proc rate and/or duration of burning and you tone necros down just the right amount. Nerf terror and you destroy a viable non-OP build and force everyone to then roll 30/30/10/0/0.

If you nerf Dhuumfire you’re destroying hybrid builds that don’t use terror.
Dhuumfire its ok on engis as a 10 point trait but its OP on necros as a 30 points trait? Lol

If you nerf Dhuumfire you’re destroying hybrid builds that don’t use terror.
Dhuumfire its ok on engis as a 10 point trait but its OP on necros as a 30 points trait? Lol

Except that hybrid/burning necros are the ones that everyone is QQing about. No one is complaining about a standard terror/condi necro because those existed in the exact same form pre-patch as they did post-patch. We’re talking about addressing the build that everyone is crying about and that build is the hybrid 30/30/10 necro. It would make sense to address this particular build but slightly toning down burning. You can still have that build be very viable by slightly reducing the duration and/or proc rate without destroying the build. You nerf terror duration/damage etc and you are then completely destroying the terror build (which isn’t the problem in the first place).

There’s nothing wrong with Dhuumfire. Burning is just overly strong in general, hence why everyone and their brother uses it, and I don’t mean just Necros.

What needs to be toned down is the instant nuke that is Terror damage. Remove the damage tick on the zero count after application and only start the damage once a full second has passed. Voila! Now it isn’t an instant front loaded no-skill nuke, but rather a back loaded semi-avoidable nuke, that takes some actual thinking to use effectively.

Next, add 10 sec to Epidemic CD and reduce the cast time by .25 sec. Voila! Necro aoe cleave has been toned down.

Sigil of paralyzation changes will be nerf enough to the uber terrormancer builds.

Simple, easy balance changes that don’t set Necros back 10 months.

Kryshade.6075:

If you nerf Dhuumfire you’re destroying hybrid builds that don’t use terror.
Dhuumfire its ok on engis as a 10 point trait but its OP on necros as a 30 points trait? Lol

Except that hybrid/burning necros are the ones that everyone is QQing about. No one is complaining about a standard terror/condi necro because those existed in the exact same form pre-patch as they did post-patch. We’re talking about addressing the build that everyone is crying about and that build is the hybrid 30/30/10 necro. It would make sense to address this particular build but slightly toning down burning. You can still have that build be very viable by slightly reducing the duration and/or proc rate without destroying the build. You nerf terror duration/damage etc and you are then completely destroying the terror build (which isn’t the problem in the first place).

nerfing a little the fears won’t destroy the terror 30/30/10 build. Condition bursting with burning its really ok. Bursting with CC it’s the problem… so fear-up time it’s what everyone is complaining about. That’s why sigil of paralysis was fixed. Maybe that’s the only needed change, we have to wait some time to see…

A necromancer in PVP just now just melted me and my friend. He didn’t even move, just stood there. He didn’t. Even. Move.

Stuns? Nope. GG plague.

I mentioned this in another necro nerf post but just make fear an effect like stun/daze and make it not be effected by condition duration (but let stun duration mods still effect it). Of course they would also have to fix how stun duration mods like sigil of paralyzation add (round) an additional full sec to stun/dazes, but you get the point.

This would clean up a lot things and would indirectly nerf terror and 30/30 builds, fix the issue w/ melandru runes, etc. while still not hurting defensive/sustain builds which don’t spec into the spite line.

Then if that isn’t enough they could nerf Doom back to 1s base and/or change dhuumfire to proc torment instead. It’s kind of funny since nobody was asking for increase duration on doom or burning, most Necros were just asking for more survivability/escapes vs focus fire and more sustain. For example I thought the Spectral Wall change as great and exactly the type of change Necros were asking for. Tainted Shackles I thought was a bit much on the damage-side of things but at least it is an interesting ability that can be used in many ways.