Guild Wars 2

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

@Kayotik.5790

And how do you do that? How do you start tpvp with Life Force?

I hate this forum. I had a nice long post doing the math for 10 stacks of might, and its gone now. At least someone else did it.

kKagari.6804

That’s just it, it is a problem. And until its fixed nerfing our only means of getting around this problem is a big kick in the…

Oh and i never said that condition necro’s don’t use SR. I do to some extent. But if you want to run Wells and conditions good luck getting more than 10 points into it.

Spectral Walk is only useful for spvp and not so much for tpvp. As if your running off the node your letting the other player win. You can fit it in and can kind of use it but it only generates life force when hit. The Problem is getting hit. It does not in anyway generate 20% of your life force in one go, nor any were close to that.

Spectral Grasp is worthless as you want to be range not melee. This was a very nice buff to melee necro’s.

Yes yes, I know you didn’t say condi don’t use SR, it was merely a preface, to the fact that meta is constantly changing blah blah blah. I was just trying to encourage you into seeing the fact that where there has been removals to some aspects of the necromancer, others have been added in. They might not be on par as with what they were before, but they are additions nonetheless.

Doesn’t SW give 3% per hit? For 8 seconds, if you get hit at least once a second that’s an easy 24%. And just because you have swiftness doesn’t mean you need to leave your node. Why would you think that? Use it as a stun breaker, get some free life force.

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

@dibrom: about last grasp, I mentioned it gives protection now, its pretty good.

kKagari.6804:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

@Kayotik.5790

And how do you do that? How do you start tpvp with Life Force?

I hate this forum. I had a nice long post doing the math for 10 stacks of might, and its gone now. At least someone else did it.

kKagari.6804

That’s just it, it is a problem. And until its fixed nerfing our only means of getting around this problem is a big kick in the…

Oh and i never said that condition necro’s don’t use SR. I do to some extent. But if you want to run Wells and conditions good luck getting more than 10 points into it.

Spectral Walk is only useful for spvp and not so much for tpvp. As if your running off the node your letting the other player win. You can fit it in and can kind of use it but it only generates life force when hit. The Problem is getting hit. It does not in anyway generate 20% of your life force in one go, nor any were close to that.

Spectral Grasp is worthless as you want to be range not melee. This was a very nice buff to melee necro’s.

Yes yes, I know you didn’t say condi don’t use SR, it was merely a preface, to the fact that meta is constantly changing blah blah blah. I was just trying to encourage you into seeing the fact that where there has been removals to some aspects of the necromancer, others have been added in. They might not be on par as with what they were before, but they are additions nonetheless.

Doesn’t SW give 3% per hit? For 8 seconds, if you get hit at least once a second that’s an easy 24%. And just because you have swiftness doesn’t mean you need to leave your node. Why would you think that? Use it as a stun breaker, get some free life force.

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

@dibrom: about last grasp, I mentioned it gives protection now, its pretty good.

Compared to the damage incoming 3% is nothing.

ps. you mean Last Gasp.

kKagari.6804:

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

It really bothers me Anet just seems to tack the stun breaks onto skills. Plague Signet is an offensive ability that you want to use at specific times. When I’m stunned chances are they’re not in front of me and I don’t have conditions worth transferring.

Great skill (if it weren’t bugged), terrible stun breaker.

Dibrom.6408:

kKagari.6804:

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

It really bothers me Anet just seems to tack the stun breaks onto skills. Plague Signet is an offensive ability that you want to use at specific times. When I’m stunned chances are they’re not in front of me and I don’t have conditions worth transferring.

Great skill (if it weren’t bugged), terrible stun breaker.

I agree.

Also on a side note. We should not have to spec into SR just to make DS worth using, or to be able to even use it.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

kKagari.6804:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

@Kayotik.5790

And how do you do that? How do you start tpvp with Life Force?

I hate this forum. I had a nice long post doing the math for 10 stacks of might, and its gone now. At least someone else did it.

kKagari.6804

That’s just it, it is a problem. And until its fixed nerfing our only means of getting around this problem is a big kick in the…

Oh and i never said that condition necro’s don’t use SR. I do to some extent. But if you want to run Wells and conditions good luck getting more than 10 points into it.

Spectral Walk is only useful for spvp and not so much for tpvp. As if your running off the node your letting the other player win. You can fit it in and can kind of use it but it only generates life force when hit. The Problem is getting hit. It does not in anyway generate 20% of your life force in one go, nor any were close to that.

Spectral Grasp is worthless as you want to be range not melee. This was a very nice buff to melee necro’s.

Yes yes, I know you didn’t say condi don’t use SR, it was merely a preface, to the fact that meta is constantly changing blah blah blah. I was just trying to encourage you into seeing the fact that where there has been removals to some aspects of the necromancer, others have been added in. They might not be on par as with what they were before, but they are additions nonetheless.

Doesn’t SW give 3% per hit? For 8 seconds, if you get hit at least once a second that’s an easy 24%. And just because you have swiftness doesn’t mean you need to leave your node. Why would you think that? Use it as a stun breaker, get some free life force.

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

@dibrom: about last grasp, I mentioned it gives protection now, its pretty good.

Compared to the damage incoming 3% is nothing.

ps. you mean Last Gasp.

Yes, getting caught in burst without LF sucks. No, not every single hit on you is burst damage. The effectiveness of SW at gathering LF is completely unrelated to damage you’ll end up taking or what not.

Suppose the old BiP got interrupted. I’d be making the same argument about BiP not being useful at gaining life force. Which would be an argument that falls flat.

The thing is, I’m not even arguing whether the change to BiP is good or not, I’m simply stating other avenues have been opened.

edit: Yeah, I’d hate to HAVE to spec into SR for DS tbh.

Hope you guys enjoy requiring Focus off hand. =p

Well I think 20 SR is mandatory for any PvP build as Last Gasp is too good to pass up, you might as well grab Soul Marks or Mark of Revival since you’re already 15 pts in.

And how effective both Armor and Walk are at collecting LF IS related to the damage you take. Armor gives you a bit more leeway with protection, but walk does not. Both cancel should you change forms for balance reasons should you come under focus fire. I’ve killed Necros by forcing them into Shroud right away after SA popped just by using Ambush trap(the thief pulls) + spreading venoms. Instead of using fast small hits, go for larger ones and suddenly they aren’t getting much LF out of it and need to switch forms fast or die.

might be nice skill if it really is 350 cond damage and some power then it should help a lot conditionmancers..
(venting)but again nothing to help minionmancers.. Even though mesmers got their illusions a upgrade. (/venting)

Lumines.3916:

Well I think 20 SR is mandatory for any PvP build as Last Gasp is too good to pass up, you might as well grab Soul Marks or Mark of Revival since you’re already 15 pts in.

And how effective both Armor and Walk are at collecting LF IS related to the damage you take. Armor gives you a bit more leeway with protection, but walk does not. Both cancel should you change forms for balance reasons should you come under focus fire. I’ve killed Necros by forcing them into Shroud right away after SA popped just by using Ambush trap(the thief pulls) + spreading venoms. Instead of using fast small hits, go for larger ones and suddenly they aren’t getting much LF out of it and need to switch forms fast or die.

Yes, I’m aware contextually that may happen. Which also means, it may not. Its not reliable to discuss that ‘spectral’ effects only ever seem to happen at the worst of times.

Nerf for all necros. Rather remove the direct damage component and add the 20% LF back.

As someone who runs deep SR for power DS builds (which mind you, aren’t really viable) The changes to BiP and Spectral Grasp don’t make me happy.

Even with staff and marks, you do not generate enough life force in spvp to use death shroud effectively for a good bit of the match. BiP served as a good “oh snap” emergency 20% life force to eat big hits, or to keep myself above the crucial 50% Life Force mark (since below 50% you do substantially less damage with Life Blast).

I do use spectral grasp quite often to pull unsuspecting ranged characters, but the 10% life force generation isn’t enough. Unless they somehow tweak life force generation the deeper you go into SR, I’m still stuck using dagger auto attack on downed players to generate what little bit of life force I can, since downed players still don’t trigger marks.

The 10 stacks of might are REALLY nice, but the tradeoff isn’t worth it for me, since I used BiP more defensively.

Nismu.4019:

(venting)but again nothing to help minionmancers.. Even though mesmers got their illusions a upgrade. (/venting)

You got the shadow fiend blind change. Turned a useless ability into a marginal one

oh true, almost forgot that. my mistake. \o/ hurray for marginal skill

Dibrom.6408:

Nismu.4019:

(venting)but again nothing to help minionmancers.. Even though mesmers got their illusions a upgrade. (/venting)

You got the shadow fiend blind change. Turned a useless ability into a marginal one

Not really. Still a 2 sec cast to make your minion use an instant. Still can’t be used as a blind.

I want to see a passive life force generation while out of combat. That would fix the problem.

I won’t comment on PvP because I honestly don’t know much about it.

For PvE and WvW this sounds like a very nice buff.
I was using Reaper’s Might to stack Might but it was always a bit too slow.

Now I can just hit one extra key and have 10 stacks of Might for Epidemic!
Since both Blood is Power and Epidemic are Corruption skills they’ll even both benefit from the same cooldown reduction trait.

Also maybe it won’t take so long just to destroy a barrel now…

Frankly, I was using it with condition transfer as a quick source for long bleeds anyways.
(long bleeds benefit a lot more easily from +duration)

The Might/Life force is just cake.

If they want it used as a burst-enhancer skill they should probably make it instant though.

Here’s something I noticed.

Many people are complaining conditionmancers are the only real viable spec for necros, and ANET seems to be buffing conditionmancers damage with this change. IMO this is shoehorning necros even more intros conditionmancers build by adding more damage to this build. You guys have to remember that 10 stacks of might is not just going to effect the damage on BIP, but also all The rest of the conditions you place on and are already on them ticking away.

There is no reason for a power well necro to take BIP so them buffing the conditionmancers I feel is forcing necros into the same style of play as a conditionmancers.

10x might is enough for a power well necro to take it by itself, I would think.

+350 power by itself is going to be equivalent to 3x extra pieces of gear for example.

Add that with the might some of them stack up from life blast, and they could be hitting 25ish stacks of might.

My only thought is; is this a harbinger of massive changes to DS, such that we’ll be able to enter DS without losing access to our utilities/elites/status information/and so forth?

draculthemad.6273:

10x might is enough for a power well necro to take it by itself, I would think.

+350 power by itself is going to be equivalent to 3x extra pieces of gear for example.

Add that with the might some of them stack up from life blast, and they could be hitting 25ish stacks of might.

Yes since additional 15% damage really makes up for losing a well /sarcasam

There is no reason for a power well necro to take BIP so them buffing the conditionmancers I feel is forcing necros into the same style of play as a conditionmancers.

Like you said yourself, power builds weren’t using BiP anyway, so buffing or nerfing it has little effect on them (except some Death Shroud power builds which might have used it to kickstart life force gain.) If you were playing a power build before, like me, then this change doesn’t “force” any response from you.

The ability to push a button and gain a 10 stack of might is nice. It gives necromancers a sort of burst option, which is certainly something we were lacking. The only argument here is whether or not it’s worth giving up what had been one of our strongest life force generators.

In PvE and WvW, generating life force is pretty easy, Death Shroud is generally available when you want it and having a new burst damage cooldown is welcome. For players who primarily play in those modes (which includes myself) this is probably a buff.

For sPvP, I’m of the opinion that necromancers shouldn’t start matches with their life force empty in the first place. That’s like a ranger starting with their pet dead. We don’t need burst life force from our utility skills; we need to just start rounds with 25 to 50 percent of the life force bar already full. (Starting at 100% would probably overpower dedicated Death Shroud builds since they really get quite a lot of damage at full life force.)

We have so many means to gain lifeforce, just 5 into sr increases it by 5%, 20 for marks gaininig lf.
We hardly have any selfbuffs, 10 stacks of might every 30 or 24 seconds is a buff for me.

Stice.5204:

The ability to push a button and gain a 10 stack of might is nice. It gives necromancers a sort of burst option, which is certainly something we were lacking.

Like others also stated 10 stacks of might means +350 condition damage. So instead of ~100 dmg/bleed i do now 117 dmg /bleed. In other words if i have a stack of 10 bleeds, i gain a 170 dmg increase. With Rend. Claws i have a + of ~30 dmg per hit, with Deathly Swarm a + of ~60 dmg. How is that by any means bursty ?

Really i can´t help myself but when i read such changes i think the Anet devs are sitting there in their office shouting “Reroll please reroll”.

You can’t see how a 20% or so increase in DPS is a burst damage option? I agree it’s not the same thing as other characters popping a quickness ability but it’s clearly a noticeable damage increase for a short period, and it can be comboed with other things like a Life Blast binge or dropping your wells or going into Lich Form to create something at least vaguely akin to burst.

As player more concerned with WvW than anything else, I certainly don’t look at this change and hear “Reroll, please, reroll.”

And like I said above, I don’t think life force generating utility skills is the answer to the life force problem in sPvP. That should be addressed with a system change that allows necromancers to start games and respawn with at least some life force already stored.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Dibrom.6408:

Nismu.4019:

(venting)but again nothing to help minionmancers.. Even though mesmers got their illusions a upgrade. (/venting)

You got the shadow fiend blind change. Turned a useless ability into a marginal one

Not really. Still a 2 sec cast to make your minion use an instant. Still can’t be used as a blind.

I want to see a passive life force generation while out of combat. That would fix the problem.

Haha, I’d love to see a ‘charging up’ button. Funnily enough it’d add some depth in a very soul calibur kind of way.

Can’t believe people are calling this a nerf. This is a huge damage increase and makes it into my WvW build as a staple.

There were already better skills to use if you are interested in high life force regen.

@alanis.6094

Name one skill that gives us 20% life force.

And how can you say its a large damage boost? Look at the numbers, many people have posted them. It just is not that much more damage. And two bleeds over 30sec was crap already.

@AFS

Spectral Armor and Walk. Or traiting for Marks is a pretty reliable way to get it.

The reason people “look at the numbers” and don’t feel its a big damage boost is because apparently a whole generation of kids have failed math.

I think it’s moreso because our base damage is absurdly low in comparison to the vast majority of the other Professions, and our Power scaling is just as pitiful. And sadly, from the looks of it, Thieves and Warriors in particular seem to be in a good spot from Arenanet’s point of view (At least, according to the 0 changes in this patch). So when people are “look[ing] at the numbers”, it really -isn’t- a large damage increase in comparison to the other Professions.
In terms of Conditions, it’s more or less flat damage, but burst is and will always be king in any form of PvP. Especially concentrated burst; You’re not going to be dropping anyone with 25 stacks of bleed nearly as fast as having two Warriors pop Hundred Blades on an immobilized target.

Which means that we need some major tweaking on damage numbers, or some of these more bursty Professions need to be hit with the nerfbat- Hard.

This was a big buff to my condition build. I barely spend that much time in DS anyway. I use my DS abilities quick and get out. If a HB war or pistol whip thief attacks, i instantly enter DS and fear. Don’t need a full bar of life force to avoid that damage.

Also, stack some conditions on an opponent and use scepter 3 to get an adequate amount of life force. Not hard.

alanis.6094:

@AFS

Spectral Armor and Walk. Or traiting for Marks is a pretty reliable way to get it.

The reason people “look at the numbers” and don’t feel its a big damage boost is because apparently a whole generation of kids have failed math.

Those skills do not give 20% life force up front. You have to take damage and if your talking damage well…

LOL sorry i am an Electrical Eng, didn’t fail math. And their math is correct. For a condition necro its about 6.5% damage gain, that’s it. Perhaps for a power necro build you might be willing to take it just for the stacks of might, but the bleeds are worthless.

Condition damage calculations.

0.375 * Level + 5 = Power and Condition Damage per stack

(0.375 * Level + 5)*10 = 350 condition damage.

Bleed only uses 5% of that so.

350*0.05=17.5

so each stack of bleed only adds 17.5 damage.

sPVP condition necro has a bleed that hits for 117 (well mine does and i maxed condition).

(17.5/117)*100=14.96%

So you get about 15% damage boost for 13sec, 13 sec is how long it lasts on my build. again i run a standard condition build. Will last longer if you put points into spite.

So

13/30=0.4333

0.4333*14.96 = 6.48%

So over the full 30 sec we see that we have only gotten a 6.48% bump in damage. For this we gave up 20% life force.

So if you use it every 30 sec you will see your damage go up 6.48%

Or your damage will bump up 15% for 13 sec. In condition damage.

Again this is just not that much more damage.

I will point out that overall you do get more of a bump up in damage as this also affects the base DD that all weapons do, since we get power as well as condition damage.

Again for spvp 2 stacks of bleed for 30 sec is pointless.

Payneful.7934:

This was a big buff to my condition build. I barely spend that much time in DS anyway. I use my DS abilities quick and get out. If a HB war or pistol whip thief attacks, i instantly enter DS and fear. Don’t need a full bar of life force to avoid that damage.

Also, stack some conditions on an opponent and use scepter 3 to get an adequate amount of life force. Not hard.

Ya try playing tpvp were you start each game with 0 life force than say its not hard.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Payneful.7934:

This was a big buff to my condition build. I barely spend that much time in DS anyway. I use my DS abilities quick and get out. If a HB war or pistol whip thief attacks, i instantly enter DS and fear. Don’t need a full bar of life force to avoid that damage.

Also, stack some conditions on an opponent and use scepter 3 to get an adequate amount of life force. Not hard.

Ya try playing tpvp were you start each game with 0 life force than say its not hard.

I do it all the time. It’s easy. Tpvp is the only thing I play in this game. Honestly I don’t even need death shroud to get a kill.

@AFS

Mine lasts 14s, and on a 24s cooldown, so 8.7% before you account for the 350 might that will also be helping — which noticeably helps out FoC and PM, and to a lesser extent GD and NG.

at first i was bummed, but then i realized that this makes your death shroud hit so hard, even as a full condition build.

I liked the 20% LF so much more. I already do enough damage with bleeds. I don’t need 10 extra per tick for 12 seconds. I’d much rather have that 20% LF to keep me alive that much longer.

Typical, they can’t ever give anything to necros without taking something else away. Because having might AND life force on the same utility skill might make it not suck, right?

That said, i’ll admit it’s a nice buff for PvE, for PvP tho it’s not so great.

On another note, thanks so much for the epidemic fix anet, it’s so interesting that out of the 100 bugs that hurt necros, they decided to fix the one bug that actually made us stronger.

As a power Necro I might actually use this now. 350 power and 350 condition damage is not bad, especially with a lot of abilities that seem to be a hybrid of power/condition.

Did anyone actualy tried this now or is all written here only a guessing game?

It is a big nerf. BiP was our only way of getting that instant burst of LF at the start of a match, when you really need it, given how weak necro’s our without any LF.

I just do not see why they nerfed yet another necro skill, the only reason I can think of is because they plan to give necro’s some LF at the start of matches in the near future which would make BiP useless, but if this is the case then why not nerf BiP when that change comes?…

I can get all the might I need other ways. The +LF was the only reason to ever use this skill as a DS/power necro. Now, I’ll never use it. Oh well.

Nismu.4019:

might be nice skill if it really is 350 cond damage and some power then it should help a lot conditionmancers..
(venting)but again nothing to help minionmancers.. Even though mesmers got their illusions a upgrade. (/venting)

Well 1 a mandatory class Mechanic should have priority over an optional class skill.

2 the Mesmer changes were nerfs disguised as bug fixes.

Updated all phantasms and clones available to the mesmer to ensure they activate within their range. Is some weird way of putting that iBerserker now needs line of sight (fair enough).

Phantasmal Warden: This skill no longer has a 0-second recharge when affected by traits. It now has approximately a 5-second recharge. Was a change done by a team that didn’t quite know how an attack actually worked (long story short it has a 7 second recharge not 5 now) and did nothing to the rest of the bugs in this trait basically meaning the trait is now useless.

its a pretty big nerf for me, i used it alot to keep my life force high

gluttony is fixed??? this is very important, more +5% LF is a lot. last time i checked need 33 staff auto attack to fill all LF bar, was the same with or without gluttony, so gluttony do nothing right now.

about BiP? well the insane bleed duration wasnt really important for tourney what was important was the 20% LF every 24s ( 30% before the nerf was so great), so now condition build cant generate LF at any good speed (very very low in fact). scepter 3 skill dont generate good LF, that is a lying easy to test on gole, even with 5 conditions you get very very low LF, if gluttony was working that will change the things a lot, but for now (at least before this patch) gluttony do nothing, not increase 1% LF from skills.

necro condition build already have lot of condition damage, 10might will not gonna do much diference especialy because condition damage dont increase linear. so now we really need gluttony fixed or invest 20 points on SR to get the 3% LF from marks and finaly last gasp is fixed ( well that is what they say…need to test it first)

Extropy.9580:

That said, i’ll admit it’s a nice buff for PvE, for PvP tho it’s not so great.

On another note, thanks so much for the epidemic fix anet, it’s so interesting that out of the 100 bugs that hurt necros, they decided to fix the one bug that actually made us stronger.

I agree. For PvP Blood is Power was the only halfway decent way to get a reliable income of LifeForce when specced into Conditions (30 Curses, 30 SR, 10 Blood). I’m talking about TOURNAMENTS, not that 8v8 hotjoin mess.
At least give conditionnecros a chance in Tournaments and raise the Lifeforce gain of Feast of Corruption to 4% or 5%.

Anyway: Epidemic was a sweet, sweet skill to get the defenders off the walls in WvW. Now it’s even more easy to evade those “bursts” of conditions. Even though it was really easy to get rid of them before. Seriously, the casttime already was annoying like hell with the long range in castle attacks – now it’s just annoying for us. There isn’t even a notification like any “out of range” message when your target runs out of range while you cast the spell.

Epidemic got nerfed (fixed) hardcore for wvw. Now it only has a 600 range. Have fun trying to get that off now.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Epidemic got nerfed (fixed) hardcore for wvw. Now it only has a 600 range. Have fun trying to get that off now.

600!? That is awful range. Why not just let us keep that “bug”? I mean, out of all the things in that list that they know is there, why take that away?

Also, I am going to have to say that even though I try for a power build, I use condition as a secondary means of damage. I used BiP for the bleeds, but above all I used it for the LF. The bleeds were awful, due to the fact that they would be washed away before even reaching anywhere near the 30s mark, but the LF made it worth it. I would rather have the 20% LF than the Might. Sounds strange coming from a power build, but it helped with having DS to fall back on during an enemy burst.

What do you mean, “change your feelings”?
Yes this one change makes all the other bugs and bad trait synergy all right. My necro feels like a powerhouse now.

I LOVE the change.
I do think it’s kind of weird that it’s on a utility skill that mainly focuses on bleeds. Nevertheless the extra might is greatly appreciated. The only other way for us to stack might effectively is with the trait that stacks might when you use signets.

The main reason I took Blood is Power was because of the chunk of lifeforce you got in one go. I prefered it that way. However, I can understand that other people may like it. Different play styles and so on.