Guild Wars 2

The biggest factors regarding attrition is survivability, sustainability and control.

If necros are to be attrition fighters, we need to be able to survive burst dmg and be able to recover the loss before the next burst comes. Regarding classes with burst damage skills, it’s not enough for us to survive just one or two skills. They will chain multiple burst damage skills, then they will go on the defensive until the next burst chain.

Attrition fails if we die by the time they finish their first burst chain. If that chain consists of instant skills, and we depend on using skills with cast times to survive it, then that is also fail. We shouldn’t have to rely on getting the first hits to weaken them so their burst is lessened enough to survive it.

The way someone survives is simply damage % mitigation.

What do I mean by “damage %”?

As an example, a warrior deals an average of 500 damage to us. If we have 10k hp that 500 damage is 5% of our total HP. If we have 20k hp, that same 500 damage is only 2.5%.

Another way is to reduce the damage inbound. Higher defense rating, weaken them, buff yourself, etc. If you can reduce that 500 damage down to 250 damage, then with 10k hp you just reduced that 5% down to 2.5%.

This is where sustainability comes in. If we need to rely on skills to pull off the survivability over a drawn-out time, then our survivability skills must have sustainability regarding use. It doesn’t do us much good if we have to blow through a couple skills and then be left without any more survivability for the next 25 seconds. We wouldn’t survive that long. How many skills do we have access to in a fight? 5 per weapon set plus 5 more for a total of 15 skills. If we have 8 skills that benefit us in some way regarding survivability, then we should be able to use them in 4 sets of 2 (situationally dependent) and by the time the effects of the 4th set are used up, the 1st set is off cool down.

But what good is any of that if we don’t have control. An attrition fighter depends more on controlling the fight than any other type. Not only do we need to be able to put out damage during their offensive, but we must also be able to put out the damage during their defensive. We need to be able to negate their damage avoidance and reductions to do this.

One issue I’ve noticed thus far is that the necro attacks are too easily avoidable. Wells allow the enemy to simply leave the area. Marks can be avoided unless you cast at their feet. While some others like Plague Form simply means they can stay their distance from us.

Now I’m new to this game so take what I’ve said with a grain of salt. Although new to GW2, I’m not new to MMOs and have played GW1 quite extensively. The question you have to ask yourself is…

Do Necromancer, as they are within this game, have adequate survivability, sustainability and control to be attrition fighters?

Pfft, our survival skills are pretty “meh”.
-minions give good regen, but don’t scale with Healing power and wow is it frustrating to have minions just SIT THERE while you try and get their ai to come back from the twilight zone.(that 2 attack thing works, maybe 50% of the time. i mean wow do they just bug out in pvp. Sometimes I can only get half of them to attack).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWgn_Pwa2s

Its just…amazing. How does minion ai bug out SO MUCH when ranger pets are generally on top of it, all the time. Idk, its starting to make me mad when i’m sitting there wailing on them and my minions are just "uh whats up? nah i’m going to stand there.
——————————

Anyway our control is also horrible. We have minimal everything.
———————

Sustained damage? Lol sure, if they sit there. They will throw out as much stuns and such as possible, which is pretty easy to interrupt comparitively.

Further on the topic of snares:

Necro have far less snaring options than many other classes. Specially immobilize, where we literally have only ONE skill on ONE of our weapons(dagger). That’s it. We are also very weak in crippling and chilling. We are a far cry from being the KING of snares as promised by Anet.

Many other classes have AoE immobilize, which is very useful in wvw zerg vs zerg fights. Other classes have immobilize on a utility and traits. Yet necro only got 1 single immobilize skill, single target, 600 range on a 25 second cool down. Seriously?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilized

Eles have more chilling options than necros do. Seriously? Necros should be the MASTER of cold and chill. Grenth is the only guy we worship. Why does he love eles who worship every single gods more than us?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Other than engineers, pretty much every single other classes have better cripple than us.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crippled

Keep in mind that necros are supposed to be the BEST snaring class in the game, to make up for a lack of mobility. We are supposed to be able to keep foes in our “kill zone” 24/7, even with massive condition removals. When we fight 1v1, the enemy should have a very hard time running away from us. When we are a part of a zerg, all the enemies should have a very hard time moving or running away.

I think the biggest problem here is that, no matter what some ANet Dev said in some poorly worded forum post, our class isn’t supposed to be hard to run away from. Our class is evidently designed to be one people are supposed to run away from. It’s designed to get stronger the longer a fight drags on.

Chills delay our opponents cooldowns. Poison makes their heals less efficient. Vulnerability gradually builds up, causing allies to do more and more damage. Weakness takes its toll, reducing their damage output and ability to dodge. Their conditions make us heal more, or get transferred back to them. Fear interrupts key abilities at (hopefully) critical moments, which puts them further behind the curve. Death Shroud allows us to soak burst damage, and puts them even further behind the curve. Even the simple act of fighting and killing things gives us more fake hitpoints to waste our opponents attacks.

Our class is designed around keeping our opponents behind the curve so we gradually make their victory more and more unlikely. We aren’t supposed to keep people from running away. We’re supposed to make them want to.

The primary issue I see with this is the same issue most “nudge” classes in most MMOs have. If your core function is to nudge the odds in your favor over time, what use are you in fights that last 5 seconds. In other words, we aren’t going to be good at ganking/roaming no matter what. We excel in pitched battles, where both sides are committed to fight to the death, and where running away means losing something of value. Like many have said already, balanced for sPvP node fighting and not roaming around in WvW.

As for what’s to be done, I can’t say. Currently the primary problems are that encounters are too easy and fast in most PvE for “attrition” to matter, too chaotic and mobile in WvW for it to be effective, and too contrived and controlled in sPvP to allow many changes to the other two areas.

Empiren.6401:

Pfft, our survival skills are pretty “meh”.
-minions give good regen, but don’t scale with Healing power and wow is it frustrating to have minions just SIT THERE while you try and get their ai to come back from the twilight zone.(that 2 attack thing works, maybe 50% of the time. i mean wow do they just bug out in pvp. Sometimes I can only get half of them to attack).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWgn_Pwa2s

1. love the music choice.

2. the last part where the golem drags another karka back to a already damaged character is one illustration on why i am wary of mobility as a defensive mechanism. Especially in areas where mobs are not perfectly static.

PinCushion.7390:

I think the biggest problem here is that, no matter what some ANet Dev said in some poorly worded forum post, our class isn’t supposed to be hard to run away from. Our class is evidently designed to be one people are supposed to run away from. It’s designed to get stronger the longer a fight drags on.

Chills delay our opponents cooldowns. Poison makes their heals less efficient. Vulnerability gradually builds up, causing allies to do more and more damage. Weakness takes its toll, reducing their damage output and ability to dodge. Their conditions make us heal more, or get transferred back to them. Fear interrupts key abilities at (hopefully) critical moments, which puts them further behind the curve. Death Shroud allows us to soak burst damage, and puts them even further behind the curve. Even the simple act of fighting and killing things gives us more fake hitpoints to waste our opponents attacks.

Our class is designed around keeping our opponents behind the curve so we gradually make their victory more and more unlikely. We aren’t supposed to keep people from running away. We’re supposed to make them want to.

The primary issue I see with this is the same issue most “nudge” classes in most MMOs have. If your core function is to nudge the odds in your favor over time, what use are you in fights that last 5 seconds. In other words, we aren’t going to be good at ganking/roaming no matter what. We excel in pitched battles, where both sides are committed to fight to the death, and where running away means losing something of value. Like many have said already, balanced for sPvP node fighting and not roaming around in WvW.

As for what’s to be done, I can’t say. Currently the primary problems are that encounters are too easy and fast in most PvE for “attrition” to matter, too chaotic and mobile in WvW for it to be effective, and too contrived and controlled in sPvP to allow many changes to the other two areas.

Well said. I think having the “worst mobility” together with the “worst snares”, and alongside of “mediocre damage” is a bad bad design.

1) Worst mobility + Worst snares = enemies can engage and disengage any time they want.
2) Mediocre damage = the necro aren’t that effective in the short interval they got to fight.

What makes the slow moving battleship scary? It is those huge cannons. If we remove those cannons the battleship becomes a slow moving oil tanker, which doesn’t scare anyone. Even a small patrol boat can sink an defensiveness oil tanker.

I think Anet meant it when they said the necros will be the best snaring class in the game. However they were working on something else and left necro to the very end, and so they forgot about the snaring part.

The game is half a year old. I think we deserved to move pass beta stage. Give us the true version of the class please: Attrition and Snares.

CHIPS.6018:

Further on the topic of snares:

Necro have far less snaring options than many other classes. Specially immobilize, where we literally have only ONE skill on ONE of our weapons(dagger).
[…]
Yet necro only got 1 single immobilize skill, single target, 600 range on a 25 second cool down.

Just a note:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rigor_Mortis

Barring Eles, Thieves, and Mesmers, who can obviously leave combat in a much easier way than other classes due to long range near-instant movement abilities and/or stealth, no other class is going to get away from a necro by running.

With a Scepter you can have 50% cripple uptime. Axe/Focus gives you 33% cripple uptime, 25% chill uptime. Dagger/Warhorn not only gives you swiftness to chase, but cripple to keep them slowed, plus daze/immobilize for very hard lockdown, with 33% cripple uptime. Staff is the weakest in this area, with only 20% chill uptime. All of these are with no +duration for conditions, and aren’t including the fact that you can switch weapons easily for longer lockdown. You also have access to DS 2, which will take you to the enemy at 900 range, and has 33% chill uptime.

Even an ele is a bit hard-pressed to get away from you, only managing it if they cleanse off any chill/cripple on them, and RTL away. Thieves and Mesmers have a slightly better chance if they can blink+stealth to make it difficult for you to know where to follow.

Bhawb.7408:

Barring Eles, Thieves, and Mesmers, who can obviously leave combat in a much easier way than other classes due to long range near-instant movement abilities and/or stealth, no other class is going to get away from a necro by running.

With a Scepter you can have 50% cripple uptime. Axe/Focus gives you 33% cripple uptime, 25% chill uptime. Dagger/Warhorn not only gives you swiftness to chase, but cripple to keep them slowed, plus daze/immobilize for very hard lockdown, with 33% cripple uptime. Staff is the weakest in this area, with only 20% chill uptime. All of these are with no +duration for conditions, and aren’t including the fact that you can switch weapons easily for longer lockdown. You also have access to DS 2, which will take you to the enemy at 900 range, and has 33% chill uptime.

Even an ele is a bit hard-pressed to get away from you, only managing it if they cleanse off any chill/cripple on them, and RTL away. Thieves and Mesmers have a slightly better chance if they can blink+stealth to make it difficult for you to know where to follow.

I will clarify. My personal opinion is that Necros are not great at roaming in wvw. So necros should stay with their zerg. As such, my focus in wvw is in group fights and group fight support. So to me group snares are very important.

Yes there are cases where our zerg caught a few stranglers in the open, and my individual snares help my zerg kill them faster. But those doesn’t really help our zerg, since we would have won anyways.

Instead, the game changers are group snare skills like Shockwave, Glue Shot, Flurry, and Zealot’s Embrace. All of these gives aoe immobilize.

Other skills like Sanctuary can be used to trap foes inside.

They are really game changers in a big zerg fight. You trap some of the enemy zergs, before your zerg charge in and AoE them all to death. They cannot dodge and so you can easily kill them, and then later deal with the rest of the survivors.

The lack of any sort of AoE immobilize really bugs me. We are supposed to be the KING of snares.

Yes we do have AoE chill and cripple. But in those you can stilll evade. Immobilize and skills like Sanctuary are the real game changers, because it is certain death. High tier wvw guilds uses these to very deadly effects.

Epidemic + any immobilize = AoE snare.

Bhawb.7408:

Epidemic + any immobilize = AoE snare.

I tried Dark Pact + Epidemic. Not reliable at all in a wvw fight.

Firstly Dark Pact + Epidemic have a 2 second cast time in total. So any sort of interrupt skills would randomly break your combo.

Secondly Dark Pact only have 600 range. The target often would dodge away from your zerg at that distance (natural instincts), so your Dark Pact misses.

Thirdly it is hard to use single target skills in all that lag and culling.

Fourthly that single target immobilize sometimes gets removed before your Epidemic lands. The benefit of an AoE immobilize is that some of those foes won’t be able to remove them fast enough.

At the end that Dark Pact + Epidemic combo is more trouble than it is worth. Its reliability is questionable. So I dropped it for something else.

1) I don’t know what zergs you are in, I don’t get interrupted every 2 seconds
2) People can’t dodge forever
3) When lag becomes a real issue is when all skills start becoming unresponsive, meaning every ability will be hard to do anything with. Same with culling, you are just throwing out things hoping someone gets hit.
4) I have never run into a zerg that can cleanse that fast, it only takes 1 second to get your Epidemic off

Btw, to counter dashes and leaping skills, conditions that impair movent like cripple or chill should reduce the range of that skills: if you can’t run properly when you are clippled, then you shouldn’t dash/leap away!

Are you clippled? Is your movement speed reduced by half?
Then even your ability to leap is reduced for the same amount.

(For the sake of reality this shouldn’t apply to shadowstep/teleport ability as they don’t involve actual movement)

Empiren.6401:

Pfft, our survival skills are pretty “meh”.
-minions give good regen, but don’t scale with Healing power and wow is it frustrating to have minions just SIT THERE while you try and get their ai to come back from the twilight zone.(that 2 attack thing works, maybe 50% of the time. i mean wow do they just bug out in pvp. Sometimes I can only get half of them to attack).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWgn_Pwa2s

If you haven’t alrdy, you should post that vid in a new topic. More people need to see their terrible ai! and while ranger pets are waay better i do wish they reacted instantly instead of taking time on f2 skills and usually 1 second before they attack.

Tiborb.1453:

Btw, to counter dashes and leaping skills, conditions that impair movent like cripple or chill should reduce the range of that skills: if you can’t run properly when you are clippled, then you shouldn’t dash/leap away!

Are you clippled? Is your movement speed reduced by half?
Then even your ability to leap is reduced for the same amount.

(For the sake of reality this shouldn’t apply to shadowstep/teleport ability as they don’t involve actual movement)

Leap abilities are infact reduced by Cripple and Chill.

They are also increased by 25% speed signets and Swiftness.

Shadow steps and teleports are not affected by movement speed (Which makes them really strong when immobilized and such)

Bhawb.7408:

1) I don’t know what zergs you are in, I don’t get interrupted every 2 seconds
2) People can’t dodge forever
3) When lag becomes a real issue is when all skills start becoming unresponsive, meaning every ability will be hard to do anything with. Same with culling, you are just throwing out things hoping someone gets hit.
4) I have never run into a zerg that can cleanse that fast, it only takes 1 second to get your Epidemic off

Let me just say that when me and my zerg get to 600 range, and then I start using a 2 second cast time skill on a specific target:

Yes I often get interrupted or CC’ed, usually from random AoE. Not all the time of course.
Yes people do dodge away from our zerg. Not all the time of course.
Yes lag and culling is a huge issue. Not all the time of course.
Yes the immobilized is often gone before epidemic finishes, due to skill lag and condition cleansing. Not all the time of course.

I am not saying it never works. It did work for me here and there. But it is the lack of reliability that’s the biggest problem with it.

CHIPS.6018:

Let me just say that when me and my zerg get to 600 range, and then I start using a 2 second cast time skill on a specific target:

Yes I often get interrupted or CC’ed, usually from random AoE. Not all the time of course.
Yes people do dodge away from our zerg. Not all the time of course.
Yes lag and culling is a huge issue. Not all the time of course.
Yes the immobilized is often gone before epidemic finishes, due to skill lag and condition cleansing. Not all the time of course.

I am not saying it never works. It did work for me here and there. But it is the lack of reliability that’s the biggest problem with it.

I group with an Engineer most of the time, and if they can get their double-tap immobilize to land (Net Shot and Net Turret toolbelt) it’s like 5 seconds of Immobilize that is awesome for Epidemic. IIRC Epidemic works on my stats and not the Engineer’s so my Condi Duration brings that 5 seconds (not accounting for lag) up to around 7-8ish AoE. Haven’t tested it, but it seems to work because that Immob lasts a while.

It helps that we play in the same room and can just talk to each other to set stuff like that up.

Epidemic only spreads remaining condition duration, it won’t ever increase it.

Bhawb.7408:

Epidemic only spreads remaining condition duration, it won’t ever increase it.

Thanks! I wasn’t sure, since it does use my Condi Damage. Anyway, it’s a pretty fun use of the skill.

The problem is that since devs don’t want to make risky patches, we will have to wait another 6 months or so to start to see necromancers in their attrition role.
When they say that 2013 is for change their core game to make it better that means that they have should released the game in late 2013 and not the past year.

PinCushion.7390:

CHIPS.6018:

Let me just say that when me and my zerg get to 600 range, and then I start using a 2 second cast time skill on a specific target:

Yes I often get interrupted or CC’ed, usually from random AoE. Not all the time of course.
Yes people do dodge away from our zerg. Not all the time of course.
Yes lag and culling is a huge issue. Not all the time of course.
Yes the immobilized is often gone before epidemic finishes, due to skill lag and condition cleansing. Not all the time of course.

I am not saying it never works. It did work for me here and there. But it is the lack of reliability that’s the biggest problem with it.

I group with an Engineer most of the time, and if they can get their double-tap immobilize to land (Net Shot and Net Turret toolbelt) it’s like 5 seconds of Immobilize that is awesome for Epidemic. IIRC Epidemic works on my stats and not the Engineer’s so my Condi Duration brings that 5 seconds (not accounting for lag) up to around 7-8ish AoE. Haven’t tested it, but it seems to work because that Immob lasts a while.

It helps that we play in the same room and can just talk to each other to set stuff like that up.

Yeah if you can team up with some dudes on TS or Vent Epidemic is a great skill.

CHIPS.6018:

Further on the topic of snares:

Necro have far less snaring options than many other classes. Specially immobilize, where we literally have only ONE skill on ONE of our weapons(dagger). That’s it. We are also very weak in crippling and chilling. We are a far cry from being the KING of snares as promised by Anet.

Many other classes have AoE immobilize, which is very useful in wvw zerg vs zerg fights. Other classes have immobilize on a utility and traits. Yet necro only got 1 single immobilize skill, single target, 600 range on a 25 second cool down. Seriously?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilized

Eles have more chilling options than necros do. Seriously? Necros should be the MASTER of cold and chill. Grenth is the only guy we worship. Why does he love eles who worship every single gods more than us?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Other than engineers, pretty much every single other classes have better cripple than us.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crippled

Keep in mind that necros are supposed to be the BEST snaring class in the game, to make up for a lack of mobility. We are supposed to be able to keep foes in our “kill zone” 24/7, even with massive condition removals. When we fight 1v1, the enemy should have a very hard time running away from us. When we are a part of a zerg, all the enemies should have a very hard time moving or running away.

We actually do have quite a lot, but you do have to build for it, and that might not be ideal for larger fights, but is perfect for 1v1. On my build I have:

Locust swarm: 13 seconds, applies 2s of cripple per tick, 25.5s CD
Wail of doom: aoe 3s daze, good for stopping them from using movement skills/healing, even when cloaked. 25.5s CD
Dark pact: 3.3s Immob, does what it says on the tin. 25s CD
Spinal shivers: 5.5s chill and boon strip, which often means stripping keys boons such as swiftness or stab. 20s CD
Unholy feast: 5.5s large aoe cripple, very useful against thieves trying to cloak away. 15s CD
Spectral grasp: 4.5s chill and pull, long range and from experience works rather reliably when you time it right. 24s CD
Dark path: 5.5s chill and teleport, good range on it. Tiny 12.75s CD
Doom: On demand CC is incredibly useful for cancelling key abilities. 17s CD
Golem: 1s Cripple on auto attack, and a long range on demand charge for knockdown/blowout (does anyone know the exact reason for when it blowout’s someone instead of the knockdown?) Also good for slowing down pursuers. 45s CD

This is on top of perm swiftness, so the only thing that is seriously challenging to hold is a d/d ele, where it’s all about the RTL: I can immob them mid cast and the won’t move, CC them or otherwise grasp/dark path them mid flight, and since they travel in a straight line it’s more or less a certain hit. If I can’t rein them in very soon after a RTL then they can successfully disengage as I can’t keep up, but yeah, we can carry a lot of tools to keep people where we want them.

While i do agree that we are great in terms of chilling (can hold permachill on someone with ease); you know you cant list as if we have 30/30/30/30/30 and everything traited for in every setup… that is single build that not everyone can follow (unlike lets say guardian, thief or mesmer class mechanics that are ensured and combine with their kits we cant have that overall trait strength).. Also SG does not work from range, even mobs run out of it, it is however a great melee knockdown.

I wasn’t saying every necro has that, I was just saying that’ what my build has, as an example. SG works fine, you just have to be aware of the terrain between you, and lead the enemy or it will miss, and not fire it at max range while they’re running away from you because that’s also a miss because it would have to travel more then 1200 to reach them in the end.

War Mourner.5168:

I wasn’t saying every necro has that, I was just saying that’ what my build has, as an example. SG works fine, you just have to be aware of the terrain between you, and lead the enemy or it will miss, and not fire it at max range while they’re running away from you because that’s also a miss because it would have to travel more then 1200 to reach them in the end.

I believe SG has a pull range of 900. Its stated in the bugs section here.

It will still hit at 1200+ range, it just won’t pull them fully; but a 900 pull at 1200 range brings them in range of everything except dagger auto.

Empiren.6401:

War Mourner.5168:

I wasn’t saying every necro has that, I was just saying that’ what my build has, as an example. SG works fine, you just have to be aware of the terrain between you, and lead the enemy or it will miss, and not fire it at max range while they’re running away from you because that’s also a miss because it would have to travel more then 1200 to reach them in the end.

I believe SG has a pull range of 900. Its stated in the bugs section here.

It seems to be a pull distance around 1000, but I didn’t try too hard to find an exact number. The pull still hits from 1200 though. From what I can tell, if you hit a stationary target at maximum range (walk slowly from out of range until range indicator says it’s fine) the target will still be just out of melee range after the pull: you have to take a few steps to get to them, whereas normally it’ll pull them to your feet.

I don’t know for sure how it works with moving targets and such. But in short: you can use it from 1200 range pretty effectively, it just doesn’t transport your target a full 1200. But the 1000ish that it does transport them is very useful.

Edit: Yep, Bhawb got it while I was double-checking.

Softspoken.2410:

Empiren.6401:

War Mourner.5168:

I wasn’t saying every necro has that, I was just saying that’ what my build has, as an example. SG works fine, you just have to be aware of the terrain between you, and lead the enemy or it will miss, and not fire it at max range while they’re running away from you because that’s also a miss because it would have to travel more then 1200 to reach them in the end.

I believe SG has a pull range of 900. Its stated in the bugs section here.

It seems to be a pull distance around 1000, but I didn’t try too hard to find an exact number. The pull still hits from 1200 though. From what I can tell, if you hit a stationary target at maximum range (walk slowly from out of range until range indicator says it’s fine) the target will still be just out of melee range after the pull: you have to take a few steps to get to them, whereas normally it’ll pull them to your feet.

I don’t know for sure how it works with moving targets and such. But in short: you can use it from 1200 range pretty effectively, it just doesn’t transport your target a full 1200. But the 1000ish that it does transport them is very useful.

Edit: Yep, Bhawb got it while I was double-checking.

At 1200 range I’d be shocked if anyone paying attention didn’t just dodge it.

Re: Kill Zone

Take Heartseeker away from Thief, rename it Soulseeker, make it Dagger 2, take Life Siphon and add it do Dagger 3 (immob + life siphon), lower the new Dagger 3’s range to 600 and give it a 15 or 20s cooldown.

Now you have a kill zone.

Spectral Grasp is, in large part, terrible in actual WvW. If anyone says otherwise, I question whether they WvW. It can make some cute highlights, but get very used to “Obstructed” “Evaded” “Out of Range”.

I have hit people at long range with it pretty often, what you want to do is use Grasp early in the fight when people are at close range for an interrupt, or save it for when they run. Many players will turn tail and use a mobility move (like RTL), if you toss it off at the right time (takes some practice/getting used to) it will hit 99% of players right in the back, and fling them back to you. It surprises most people, and in that split second, and since they are usually only running from a fight they were already losing, that secures the kill quite nicely.

It isn’t an all-purpose skill, but in the right builds it has a few cool niche uses that really make it shine: such as pulling people right back into a well after a dodge (too close to dodge without pure luck), interrupting someone, or for that long range pull right back into combat, along with Dark Path, for the real feel that ANet promises of being inescapable.

I could see it work in small scale, but I have spent many moons cursing that spell when it was large group v. group in the typical standoff distance and I risked my little Asuran butt to run close enough to Grasp only to see one of the many fail messages. To me, Spectral Grasp is like Fredo to Michael in the Godfather p2, I love it but it has broken my heart too many times, and now it has to go.

I think the biggest problems with necro’s and attrition is the fact that passive defense and higher HP bars are the worst defensive mechanics in the game, period. They barely count for defense at all. I spent awhile talking about why investing in toughness and vitality amounts to only a paltry increase in survivability, so now I’ll talk about active defenses.

I’ve played 6 classes in sPVP, with only the ranger and warrior escaping my interest. And my final thoughts on the necromancer are so simply explained in one sentence:

“Boy do I get knocked down a lot…”

And it took me awhile to figure out why, but basically it is because necromancers have no active defenses. What are active defenses? Well, these are skills and abilities that you use in order to block or evade attacks, well as as control or disable your opponent. Because these require the player to actively use particular skills or traits that prevent damage, I call them active defenses.

Active defenses are important because they function without statistical fortitude and also have limitless potential when used correctly. If you think of the most damaging attack chain or skill that any class has, always know that a blocking skill or evade skill will stop it. So when a warrior goes to use 100 blades, tapping Roll for Initiative prevents 100% of the damage. Another side effect of the control effects are that they prevent your opponents defenses as well. When that warrior uses bull’s charge, this prevents the enemy not only from attacking, but also from defending as well. So all in all, blocking and evade make for a powerful defense while disabling control effects make both a good defense and offense.

Necros have none of that. Instead, their active defenses lie in using cripple and chill, which are horrible active defenses because the only thing they prevent is a melee enemy who refuses to use condition curing or teleports or leaps. They aren’t even that good at those, since most cripples are short range and half the chills just close the distance between the two. Necros have few blinds, with one being Deathly Swarm, which is slower than a hippo on Valium, and then probably the only good defense utility in Well of Darkness. They have fear, most of which are awkward skills on long recharges that apply the control for a single second on long cooldown. Of course, whenever a thief steals from you, they get a free 3 second fear that makes you perfect backstab and heartseeker fodder.

Necros are light on other controls. They have only two sources of immobilize: a short range one from a melee weapon that can’t be used for combos, and then another short range one from the loldamage bone fiend that doesn’t work half the time since minions spend half the time lollygagging across the map. They have one delayed daze in the warhorn, which doesn’t do anything else worthwhile otherwise (swiftness that does minor damage and draws aggro, slowing the player down again), and a knockback with the flesh golem’s charged attack.

Necros are also light on condition removal. There’s one in a heal, and then almost all other condition removal requires you to transfer conditions to a target. Which means you have to hit the target. Which means that if you can’t hit the target, you’re helpless against conditions. So either you use the staff and it’s strafeable auto attack, or you use plague signet which does damage to you as an intended function. Well of Power does get mention, although it works slowly and is on a long recharge. Necros have no form of vigor to grant additional dodges, no form of endurance regeneration, pitiful and expensive stability that is nigh unuseable, and horrible stun breakers to boot. Heck, I went back to running the buggy minion master build in sPVP because then I could have a stun breaker that was available more than once a minute.

The one thing that we do have is Death Shroud. Problem: it is only available once each fight, and otherwise DS doesn’t do anything but annoy your opponent. You can use it in the beginning of the fight to try and regain more lifeforce to use it again, but this ruins your panic button and doesn’t accomplish much while doing so. So instead you have DS as a panic button that most classes have the ability to plow right through with their offensive power, and your weapon choice determines how well you can regain life force. Unfortunately the best necro weapon, the scepter, regains life force so slowly that it is insulting. There are no adequate traits to regain life force, either.

So in short, DS is a one trick pony used once a fight that doesn’t really do much other than an AoE attack. This might be worth it if all of those missing controls, blocks, reflects, evades, condition cures, stability, and good stun breakers would amount to something useful in their place, but it doesn’t. Necros have slow and weak weapon skills alongside of utilities that are at best situational and at worst downright harmful, with the only two utilities that stand out enough to be considered good being Epidemic and Well of Darkness.

The saddest part is, almost all of this applies to PVE as well as PVP. Though cripples and chills are more useful in PVE. IMO Arenanet should abandon the idea of an attrition class with no active defenses. It is contradictory, and “This class is meant to take 100 blades to the face” is not a selling point.

EDIT: Completely forgot about weakness. Now weakness is probably the best thing a necro has for a defensive condition, except for the fact that high critical hit builds go right through it, condition curing removes the benefit completely, and it is unreliable in PVE because you never know if an enemy has a high crit chance or a low one.

Bhawb.7408:

I have hit people at long range with it pretty often, what you want to do is use Grasp early in the fight when people are at close range for an interrupt, or save it for when they run. Many players will turn tail and use a mobility move (like RTL), if you toss it off at the right time (takes some practice/getting used to) it will hit 99% of players right in the back, and fling them back to you. It surprises most people, and in that split second, and since they are usually only running from a fight they were already losing, that secures the kill quite nicely.

It isn’t an all-purpose skill, but in the right builds it has a few cool niche uses that really make it shine: such as pulling people right back into a well after a dodge (too close to dodge without pure luck), interrupting someone, or for that long range pull right back into combat, along with Dark Path, for the real feel that ANet promises of being inescapable.

Speaking of Grasp, I tested a build with Spectral Wall + Grasp + DS3. When successful it gives your foe 20 vulnerability by making him run though the wall twice.

If only Grasp is AoE, I could have used Spectral Wall + Grasp (AoE)+ Staff 5 to give 20 vulnerability to a bunch of enemies.

My opinion on grasp is that it misses or fails quite often unless you are very close to your enemy. It could be a bunch of reasons. Dodging, out of range, terrain problems stops the pull, etc.

Overall there are better utilities to take than Grasp. We rarely see thieves using Scorpion Wire for similar reasons.

Thanks blood red, that really pointed out what I was trying to get my head around as a whole.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So in short, DS is a one trick pony used once a fight that doesn’t really do much other than an AoE attack. This might be worth it if all of those missing controls, blocks, reflects, evades, condition cures, stability, and good stun breakers would amount to something useful in their place, but it doesn’t. Necros have slow and weak weapon skills alongside of utilities that are at best situational and at worst downright harmful, with the only two utilities that stand out enough to be considered good being Epidemic and Well of Darkness.

The saddest part is, almost all of this applies to PVE as well as PVP. Though cripples and chills are more useful in PVE. IMO Arenanet should abandon the idea of an attrition class with no active defenses. It is contradictory, and “This class is meant to take 100 blades to the face” is not a selling point.

EDIT: Completely forgot about weakness. Now weakness is probably the best thing a necro has for a defensive condition, except for the fact that high critical hit builds go right through it, condition curing removes the benefit completely, and it is unreliable in PVE because you never know if an enemy has a high crit chance or a low one.

I do agree that Necro lacks active defence and damage avoidance. I agree that they should be added. But I disagree that DS is “totally” useless as a survival mechanism.

The survival of the necro is based on a combination of these 4 things:

Health
Healing (life siphon)
Life force
Life force regen.

The original idea of skills like Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk is that they “replaced” our need for active defences and damage avoidance. We are supposed to get hit “many” times in a fight, and get 3% LF per hit.

Healing (life siphon) and LF regen was supposed to “replace” our need for active defences and damage avoidance. Those regens are supposed to be so high that we can literally “face tank” everything for a decent amount of time.

That’s why necro have such a great time fighting bunker builds. Bunker builds need to hit the necro many times to kill him/er. And from those hits we regenerate a lot of LF though SA and SW. And in a prolonged fights our life siphon and LF regen have a lot of time to help our survival rage.

The problem comes when we face high blast+high mobility (& stealth) classes. These guys often hit us for 4k-8k damage in one single hit. SA and SW cannot help us because we only get back 3% LF from that crazy high damage hit. Our life siphon and LF regen are very weak against high mobility classes because they keep disengaging, meaning we have a hard time hitting them for the needed extra survival.

So it isn’t the idea of “health+healing+LF+LF regen” for defense that is bad. It is the “disproportion” of those that we get when we faces high blast+high mobility classes that is the problem. The “time it takes before we die” and “window of opportunity to get back health and LF” are both often too short for us to survive properly.

It would be great if Anet can find a way to scale “health+healing+LF+LF regen” with the damage intake and output. For example, SA and SW should get back LF proportionally with the damage we take, instead of a flat 3% per hit. Life Siphon and LF should scale with the damage and condition damage we deal, instead of a flat % per hit.

If not, we would need some kind of active defence and damage avoidance. Or maybe even an overhaul.

The biggest problem with spectral skills gaining lifeforce is that they are on very long recharges and are only situational at best. Their mechanic is that you have to take damage in order to gain lifeforce, which makes them at best a moot point. Remember: you are still taking hits to get lifeforce, which is used defensively. Because of this they are far inferior to a skill that simply blocks or evades damage: you don’t need to take damage to block damage.

The situations that they are used for are themselves not superbly effective. The fun thing about bunker builds is that many classes can fight a bunker build and stay alive for a long time, since bunker builds don’t do a lot of damage. This makes spectral walk and armor fulfill the role of “I can take less damage against enemies that don’t do very much damage”, which is the exact wrong place where you would need such a thing, and also the wrong situation where you would bother charging up lifeforce anyway. Considering that, with a 90 and 60 second recharge respectively, even with recharge reducing traits these skills aren’t up enough to make significant use of themselves. Given such long term fights, the life force regeneration from weapons far outpace what spectral skills will give. So instead you would have to use spectral skills for other reasons and just tack on the extra life force gain as a plus. And those other reasons are stun breakers, with one granting swiftness (not very useful in a stun breaker) and the other granting projection. Granted, Spectral Armor is excellent when you use it as a stun breaker, but on such a long recharge you never get to use it as a stun breaker. In sPVP I would go through two fights and die before that 72 second recharge finished.

I myself could never find any use for life siphoning abilities. I spent a week testing them, and I never noticed an appreciable difference in survivability. I think this boils down to a couple of factors:
#1: In order for life siphoning to be “good” you have to invest in many traits to do it. This takes away from other traits that offer, theoretically, a higher contribution to survivability than 37 life per hit.
#2: It was unreliable. Vampiric Mastery requires successful minion attacks, which doesn’t work too well because minions spend most of their time either on the other side of the map, chasing a moving target in futility, not attacking, or dead. Plus it is then necessary to invest in traits that improve minions to the point where they would drain reliably instead of attacking twice then dying.
2b. Vampiric Precision was also unreliable because it meant that you needed to invest a lot in precision to get healing, which for defensive purposes probably would’ve been better invested in toughness. Without fury or crit rate increasing abilities, Vampiric Precision only worked half the time.
2c. Enemies just walk out of wells, making Vampiric rituals nigh useless.
#3. Even though healing was improved by attacking groups of enemies, this in turn lead to groups of enemies attacking you.
#4: Necromancer’s spend a large portion of their time feared, immobilized, dazed, stunned, knocked down, or attacking distortion, evading techniques, or blocking techniques. Yes, without active defense or control the healing from their offense dwindled to nothing.
#5: The regeneration boon is far easier to apply, less constricting, and healed for more.

The biggest issue with all of the life stealing and LF regen through spectrals is that enemies that do damage aren’t some rarity that exist in localized niches. Builds that “do damage” are the norm in the game. I’m not saying that glass cannons are more common than bunkers (which factors in, actually), but that a standard all-around build will end up doing quite a bit of damage, whether through bursts or just from sustained damage. So all in all, necros have problems under many circumstances when using life stealing:

*Classes with potent controlling abilities.
*Classes with good defensive, evasive, and blocking abilities.
*Classes with burst damage.
*Classes with high damage
*Classes with good distance.

So basically any class that isn’t another necro. I don’t think that health stealing is really a salvageable mechanic with the way it is now.

The idea of using both aspects of a spectral skill (the life force generation and the secondary effect) in order for the skill to be maximally effective should not be a shocking revelation. I also don’t see why using a dagger to generate life force quickly somehow invalidates them: they’re utility skills, not weapon skills. You can use them in tandem for further increased life force gain.

As for the statement “You don’t need to take damage to block damage” – Maybe not, but you do have to take damage sometime. Why not get a secondary benefit?

The purpose of Vampiric Precision is to provide a low investment trait that gives a healing/defensive/survival effect to precision builds. You would never take it over bloodthirst in any build that’s trying to focus on the healing power of life steal.

I also take issue with you pointing out regeneration as an alternative, as if it was an either-or situation. Investing in siphoning traits doesn’t suddenly remove all sources of regeneration from your character. Plus, regeneration has a capped intensity due to its ‘scaling with duration’ nature, which you can supplement with siphoning traits.

Edit: I wouldn’t ever recommend vampirism / life stealing as an entire build, although I’m sure someone out there has a spec to prove me wrong, but as an aspect to add to a build.

For a general build, you need 15 points of investment for bloodthirst and vampirism. 10 if you just want a little bit of healing and you’re already high on crits. 20 points if you’re a minion build looking for more vitality and healing, 30 points if you want your well build to acquire some surprising heals. (Which would be crazy high, if not for Ritual Mastery being in the 20 point slot)

No, the big point is that ultimately they are an ineffective waste of space, even when used at the same time. The problem being you’re always taking damage “sometime”. The point is that gaining lifeforce is vastly inferior to evasion and blocking and controls as a defensive mechanic. Given the option to take damage and gain LF or not take damage, the latter will beat out the former. Every single time.

I also never said dagger. The weapon skills in general will outpace spectral skills when fighting against bunkers, and sure you can use those spectral skills to get a burst gain in LF, but you most likely don’t need a burst gain in life force when fighting against a bunker. You’re better off putting something else in those utilities. And the biggest problem with SW and SA is that, as utilities, they accomplish very little. SW is a stun breaker that grants swiftness, making it the most useless stun breaker a necro has. You can’t use it to grant yourself swiftness before the fight because then you’ve lost your stun breaker for the fight. SA is useful as a stun breaker because it grants protection, but is never around to do it. This makes the life force gain of SA at best a tertiary perk.

And that is a big problem with traits and utilities: whenever you pick one you must pick it over another one. If you put your traits into life draining and spectral abilities and choose utilities and weapons to life drain and gain LF, then in the end you aren’t doing much of anything at all. First because SW and SA are horrible as far as utilities go and are horrible with gaining LF, second because life draining heals for paltry amounts when it does work and most of the time it doesn’t work. LIfe siphon is weak because it takes 3.5 seconds to heal away 1.5 seconds worth of damage, and does about a third of the auto attacks damage in that time.

Again, the comparison between regen and vampiric traits isn’t that they are exclusive, but that it is far better to invest into something else and just use regen for healing, for investing in both requires requires a lot of resources to do not much more than just using regeneration.

Look, I’ve been down that road. I’ve tried running multiple spectral skills for stunbreakers, and I’ve tried using life siphoning skills to heal, and I’ve tried doing them both at the same time. It doesn’t work because, in the end, all you end up doing is chasing around an enemy trying to use the dagger’s auto attack while you get controlled and beaten down by another class who either fights at further range, simply has more damage per survivability, uses burst damage to bypass all that nonsense,, or has enough controls that those do-nothing stun breakers get used up then end up on cool down. You don’t have any combos that can do massive amounts of damage because your utilities are all used up for spectral skills, and your weapons clash because you’re running dagger and staff or something like that, or you use the scepter and staff and make Deathshroud utterly useless as anything but a sponge where you absorb hits and do nothing back in return and then not regenerate life force because the scepter sucks at it

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

No, the big point is that ultimately they are an ineffective waste of space, even when used at the same time. The problem being you’re always taking damage “sometime”. The point is that gaining lifeforce is vastly inferior to evasion and blocking and controls as a defensive mechanic. Given the option to take damage and gain LF or not take damage, the latter will beat out the former. Every single time.

Oh no, I’ll gladly agree with you that the option to not take damage is better than one involving taking damage. I just argue that in any given class, the option to not take damage is not always present. Everyone runs out of endurance, even if they (unlike Necromancers) have traits to manage vigor and the like. Plus, invulnerability / block on utilities is more the exception than the rule.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I also never said dagger. The weapon skills in general will outpace spectral skills when fighting against bunkers, and sure you can use those spectral skills to get a burst gain in LF, but you most likely don’t need a burst gain in life force when fighting against a bunker. You’re better off putting something else in those utilities. And the biggest problem with SW and SA is that, as utilities, they accomplish very little. SW is a stun breaker that grants swiftness, making it the most useless stun breaker a necro has. You can’t use it to grant yourself swiftness before the fight because then you’ve lost your stun breaker for the fight. SA is useful as a stun breaker because it grants protection, but is never around to do it. This makes the life force gain of SA at best a tertiary perk.

I know you didn’t say dagger, it’s just the quintessential LF generating weapon, in my mind.
So we’ve established that you don’t find a use for burst LF generation which honestly makes me shrug, but whatever. I can’t be the only person who thinks the claim that swiftness is useless during a fight odd though. I also find the claim that SA is never up odd, but I don’t PvP that much so maybe combat really is rapid enough that you’re losing two major fights waiting for it to come off cooldown.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

And that is a big problem with traits and utilities: whenever you pick one you must pick it over another one. If you put your traits into life draining and spectral abilities and choose utilities and weapons to life drain and gain LF, then in the end you aren’t doing much of anything at all. First because SW and SA are horrible as far as utilities go and are horrible with gaining LF, second because life draining heals for paltry amounts when it does work and most of the time it doesn’t work. LIfe siphon is weak because it takes 3.5 seconds to heal away 1.5 seconds worth of damage, and does about a third of the auto attacks damage in that time.

I’ll give you that you have to give up one thing for another, and I’ll even give you that stacking fully on defensive traits probably isn’t a good choice in terms of overall performance, but I’m surprised that the argument against these traits is “If all you choose are defensive things, you can’t do the damages.” Obviously you’re sacrificing offensive output for defensive measures. How many seconds of damage life siphon heals back depends greatly on your healing power and toughness.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Again, the comparison between regen and vampiric traits isn’t that they are exclusive, but that it is far better to invest into something else and just use regen for healing, for investing in both requires requires a lot of resources to do not much more than just using regeneration.

Then don’t bring up regeneration as a reason to not use life siphoning traits. “I can get a similar effect somewhere else” is only relevant if they actively conflict with each other.

Running out of space in this post, so for the last part of yours: I won’t insist a spectral / life steal build is secretly great and that we should all convert now or anything. All I’m saying is, life steal and spectrals don’t have to be the complete basis of a build to be useful, and they don’t necessitate drastic investments in traits, either.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

No, the big point is that ultimately they are an ineffective waste of space, even when used at the same time. The problem being you’re always taking damage “sometime”. The point is that gaining lifeforce is vastly inferior to evasion and blocking and controls as a defensive mechanic. Given the option to take damage and gain LF or not take damage, the latter will beat out the former. Every single time.

I also never said dagger. The weapon skills in general will outpace spectral skills when fighting against bunkers, and sure you can use those spectral skills to get a burst gain in LF, but you most likely don’t need a burst gain in life force when fighting against a bunker. You’re better off putting something else in those utilities. And the biggest problem with SW and SA is that, as utilities, they accomplish very little. SW is a stun breaker that grants swiftness, making it the most useless stun breaker a necro has. You can’t use it to grant yourself swiftness before the fight because then you’ve lost your stun breaker for the fight. SA is useful as a stun breaker because it grants protection, but is never around to do it. This makes the life force gain of SA at best a tertiary perk.

And that is a big problem with traits and utilities: whenever you pick one you must pick it over another one. If you put your traits into life draining and spectral abilities and choose utilities and weapons to life drain and gain LF, then in the end you aren’t doing much of anything at all. First because SW and SA are horrible as far as utilities go and are horrible with gaining LF, second because life draining heals for paltry amounts when it does work and most of the time it doesn’t work. LIfe siphon is weak because it takes 3.5 seconds to heal away 1.5 seconds worth of damage, and does about a third of the auto attacks damage in that time.

Again, the comparison between regen and vampiric traits isn’t that they are exclusive, but that it is far better to invest into something else and just use regen for healing, for investing in both requires requires a lot of resources to do not much more than just using regeneration.

Look, I’ve been down that road. I’ve tried running multiple spectral skills for stunbreakers, and I’ve tried using life siphoning skills to heal, and I’ve tried doing them both at the same time. It doesn’t work because, in the end, all you end up doing is chasing around an enemy trying to use the dagger’s auto attack while you get controlled and beaten down by another class who either fights at further range, simply has more damage per survivability, uses burst damage to bypass all that nonsense,, or has enough controls that those do-nothing stun breakers get used up then end up on cool down. You don’t have any combos that can do massive amounts of damage because your utilities are all used up for spectral skills, and your weapons clash because you’re running dagger and staff or something like that, or you use the scepter and staff and make Deathshroud utterly useless as anything but a sponge where you absorb hits and do nothing back in return and then not regenerate life force because the scepter sucks at it

One problem I do notice with the likes of DS, SA and SW is that once you turn them on the ball is no longer at your court.

For example you turn on DS. The enemy have the option to back away and simply wait for it to run out. Why? Because your LF drains itself when you are in DS. The enemy doesn’t have to attack you at all.

You turn on SA or SW. The enemy once again have the option to back away and simply wait for it to run out. Why? Because your SA and SW is on such a long cool down it aren’t sustainable. The enemy will gladly wait a few seconds to speed up killing you.

So with DS, SA and SW the ball is no longer in your court. You are no longer in control of your own survival. This I think is a huge problem. You are relying on your enemy being “dumb” and keep fighting you head on during those 8 seconds. If a “smart” enemy backs away and come back after your SA or SW runs out you are screwed. We are talking about a 90 sec and a 60 sec cool down here.

In WvW, I think we necros are blessed by the fact that the enemy are not used to fighting us. They have no idea that they should back off when the necro turns on SW, for example.

And that’s on top of our problems facing high blast and high mobility classes that I mention earlier.

Those abilities “putting the ball out of our court” is assuming a few things:
1) That them running away is more beneficial to them than it is to us
2) That they can even run away
3) That not attacking us is their best option

In PvE, none of these are remotely an issue, mobs will attack you anyway.
In WvW zergs, none of these are issues because a “zerg” as a collective entity, is not able to just retreat (momentum is so heavy in WvW) or just stop attacking you, so it is a similar situation to PvE, but with separate reasons.
In WvW small groups/solo, and sPvP, lets even assume for a second that CHIPS is right, they just stop attacking you. How is that even remotely a bad thing? That means every time you go into DS or use SA or SW, it is no different than if you had popped invulnerability (not being damaged and impossible to damage are no different in this case). That isn’t leaving it up to someone else, you are forcing them to make a choice: waste skills and time attacking me, when I am either not taking any real damage (DS), or you are filling up my LF bar so in the future you can’t damage me or you can completely ignore me in the hopes of “countering” my abilities, but at the cost of giving me free reign over the fight for a few seconds. That isn’t letting the enemy have control over the fight, you have directly forced them into making a choice, where both paths that they can take from that choice are worse for them than if I didn’t force them into it.

Bhawb.7408:

Those abilities “putting the ball out of our court” is assuming a few things:
1) That them running away is more beneficial to them than it is to us
2) That they can even run away
3) That not attacking us is their best option
.

1. Usually not the case.
2. Not hard to pull off vs a necro honestly.
3. Most people would just attack anyway. DS isn’t very threatening and is so commonly used as a sponge/“defense” mechanic that there isn’t really any downside to attacking people while in it. You’ll take minimal damage from a DS necro and you get to hit him when he comes out, making up for that damage done to you.

If people have the luxury(which they often do, they just don’t care), they could always cc the DS necro and run away till after DS and then kill the necro.

Softspoken.2410:

Oh no, I’ll gladly agree with you that the option to not take damage is better than one involving taking damage. I just argue that in any given class, the option to not take damage is not always present. Everyone runs out of endurance, even if they (unlike Necromancers) have traits to manage vigor and the like. Plus, invulnerability / block on utilities is more the exception than the rule.

It is possible to make a build in other classes that doesn’t have a blocking or good control mechanics, but the fact remains that every other class has the option to take skills that block or reflect or evade damage or regenerate endurance quicker or grant stability or grant vigor or layer control effects. Heck, the Elementalist, Guardian, Thief, and Mesmer have active defense as a theme of theirs, with the warrior and engineer having plenty of methods to block and/or reflect on their own. The class with the second least amount of blocking and evading skills is the Ranger, who has to go through some loops to get a long delay blocking skill, but itself still has plenty of evading techniques and vigor. But at least the ranger has arguably the best immobilize in the game to make up for it.

Softspoken.2410:

I know you didn’t say dagger, it’s just the quintessential LF generating weapon, in my mind.
So we’ve established that you don’t find a use for burst LF generation which honestly makes me shrug, but whatever. I can’t be the only person who thinks the claim that swiftness is useless during a fight odd though. I also find the claim that SA is never up odd, but I don’t PvP that much so maybe combat really is rapid enough that you’re losing two major fights waiting for it to come off cooldown.

“Burst” as the term is only so much of an accurate description. If you’re lucky then you’ll get hit… 10 times during that period? Maybe even 15 times for classes that attack a lot. At 3% LF gain for each attack, you’ll be getting only a third of your LF pool back. That amount goes away in 2 or 3 attacks once you are in DS, and against high DPS classes it drops instantly. You have to take enough hits in that 6 second timeframe to make a difference, and that doesn’t always happen. And yes, the recharge on SA at 90 seconds is so long that yes, you can go through two fights without it coming back again.

Softspoken.2410:

I’ll give you that you have to give up one thing for another, and I’ll even give you that stacking fully on defensive traits probably isn’t a good choice in terms of overall performance, but I’m surprised that the argument against these traits is “If all you choose are defensive things, you can’t do the damages.” Obviously you’re sacrificing offensive output for defensive measures. How many seconds of damage life siphon heals back depends greatly on your healing power and toughness.

The argument is in response to the statement that you should be using these things altogether in order for them to matter. Standing by themselves they aren’t effective at all, and together they cost too much of an investment. Also, Life siphon scales quite horribly. If you invest 1000+ points into toughness, it amounts to around a 33% decrease in damage (and in respect, a 33% increase in heal effectiveness). Putting 1000 points into healing power amounts to a 20% increase in the healing potential of life siphon. Considering you can double raw damage with 916 points of power or double condition damage with 850 points of malice, it is highly counterproductive to try and maximize life siphon any further than 10 points into blood magic.

Softspoken.2410:

Then don’t bring up regeneration as a reason to not use life siphoning traits. “I can get a similar effect somewhere else” is only relevant if they actively conflict with each other.

Um no, it is relevant when discussing class balance when a renown class mechanic is impotent in the shadow of a widely available boon.

Softspoken.2410:

Running out of space in this post, so for the last part of yours: I won’t insist a spectral / life steal build is secretly great and that we should all convert now or anything. All I’m saying is, life steal and spectrals don’t have to be the complete basis of a build to be useful, and they don’t necessitate drastic investments in traits, either.

But what I am saying is that there are far better things to invest in, and that these systems as attrition mechanics don’t work at all.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Softspoken.2410:

I know you didn’t say dagger, it’s just the quintessential LF generating weapon, in my mind.
So we’ve established that you don’t find a use for burst LF generation which honestly makes me shrug, but whatever. I can’t be the only person who thinks the claim that swiftness is useless during a fight odd though. I also find the claim that SA is never up odd, but I don’t PvP that much so maybe combat really is rapid enough that you’re losing two major fights waiting for it to come off cooldown.

“Burst” as the term is only so much of an accurate description. If you’re lucky then you’ll get hit… 10 times during that period? Maybe even 15 times for classes that attack a lot. At 3% LF gain for each attack, you’ll be getting only a third of your LF pool back. That amount goes away in 2 or 3 attacks once you are in DS, and against high DPS classes it drops instantly. You have to take enough hits in that 6 second timeframe to make a difference, and that doesn’t always happen. And yes, the recharge on SA at 90 seconds is so long that yes, you can go through two fights without it coming back again.

If you’re in a 1v1, yeah. I keep forgetting that we’re talking only in the limited scope of bunker vs bunker, apparently. I’ll gladly accept your 15 number for rapid attack builds, for 45% life force in those six seconds. Also I thought we were talking about the 72 second traited recharge, but I’ll defer the judgement of how many fights one gets to use a 72 second recharge in to people more involved in PvP.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Softspoken.2410:

I’ll give you that you have to give up one thing for another, and I’ll even give you that stacking fully on defensive traits probably isn’t a good choice in terms of overall performance, but I’m surprised that the argument against these traits is “If all you choose are defensive things, you can’t do the damages.” Obviously you’re sacrificing offensive output for defensive measures. How many seconds of damage life siphon heals back depends greatly on your healing power and toughness.

The argument is in response to the statement that you should be using these things altogether in order for them to matter. Standing by themselves they aren’t effective at all, and together they cost too much of an investment. Also, Life siphon scales quite horribly. If you invest 1000+ points into toughness, it amounts to around a 33% decrease in damage (and in respect, a 33% increase in heal effectiveness). Putting 1000 points into healing power amounts to a 20% increase in the healing potential of life siphon. Considering you can double raw damage with 916 points of power or double condition damage with 850 points of malice, it is highly counterproductive to try and maximize life siphon any further than 10 points into blood magic.

I cannot agree with the idea that you have to go full tilt into everything related to life steal, or spectrals in order for them to matter. I apologize if I somehow gave the impression to the contrary.

For the record, if 1000 toughness gives 33% comparative damage reduction, that would be a 50% increase in the effectiveness of healing on that character.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Softspoken.2410:

Then don’t bring up regeneration as a reason to not use life siphoning traits. “I can get a similar effect somewhere else” is only relevant if they actively conflict with each other.

Um no, it is relevant when discussing class balance when a renown class mechanic is impotent in the shadow of a widely available boon.

Again, just because there is a bigger fish in the bond, does not mean the smaller one isn’t worth catching as well. It’s like saying that burning is useless because bleeding can stack to a higher intensity, so why bother with it at all?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

But what I am saying is that there are far better things to invest in, and that these systems as attrition mechanics don’t work at all.

I suppose that I just disagree: I think they work at least partly. Maybe there’s something better to invest in, but I suspect they have their incomparable trade-offs as well. Gaining extra life force and health over time and through attacking can do wonders for survivability, even (especially?) without being the sole focus of a build.

You may have noticed I’m picking and choosing what parts to reply to: I generally only reply to things I strongly disagree with. The rest I’m content to let stand.

Softspoken.2410:

You may have noticed I’m picking and choosing what parts to reply to: I generally only reply to things I strongly disagree with. The rest I’m content to let stand.

Just like DS, unless you give a active focus on life stealing or spectral skills, they are medicore at best as a defensive/survivability effect and in offensive builds being a total waste because the points spent could be used on damage.

Some people have touched on weakness being so … well, weak. Compared to defensive boons like protection it is rather terrible.
There is a lot of focus on keeping up buffs like protection and regeneration as much as possible for defensive builds, whereas keeping up weakness is nice if it happens, but nobody really focuses on it.

Basically: weakness should reduce crit chance, since crit chance (and the synergy with +crit damage) is such a large part of bursting in GW2 it’s rather odd that arguably the main defensive condition doesn’t affect this at all.

It wouldn’t just be a buff to necros, but it would help the necro most and go a long way towards him being the corrupting (conditioning) defense/attrition monster it’s supposed to be. As well as making him slightly more useful for support.

Snafoo.2869:

Basically: weakness should reduce crit chance, since crit chance (and the synergy with +crit damage) is such a large part of bursting in GW2 it’s rather odd that arguably the main defensive condition doesn’t affect this at all.

I agree with your idea of buffing weakness but, there is a problem with that: people right now (as you said) focus on protection & regeneration, if you buff weakness without touching those buffs, burst will become trash because of weakness+protection+regeneration.

I think it will be better buff weakness and nerf a bit protection (I already saw this suggestion several times in sPvP subforum). How about protection being reduced to 25% instead of 33%?

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

I agree with your idea of buffing weakness but, there is a problem with that: people right now (as you said) focus on protection & regeneration, if you buff weakness without touching those buffs, burst will become trash because of weakness+protection+regeneration.

I think it will be better buff weakness and nerf a bit protection (I already saw this suggestion several times in sPvP subforum). How about protection being reduced to 25% instead of 33%?

Id take Protection down to 10%, but increase the effect of toughness, that would also make guardian and ele builds unable to tank/bunker without actually investing in defensive setups.