Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t actually think he knew what he was talking about.

And that one sentence right there sums up everything wrong with the necromancer profession. The devs truly do not know this class. It’s painfully obvious when they do their state-of-the-game and balance patch preview videos. They hunt and peck for traits to equip and skills to add to the utility bar; the conversation almost always revolves around condi builds or loops back around from another topic to condi builds; they make comments which make you just go, “WTF?!?!?”; demonstrating that no one who is responsible for balancing the classes mains a necro.

Until this situation changes, I fear we’ll never see necromancers given the attention they deserve. Do we manage? Sure, after jumping through hoops and learning our class inside and out (despite the off-hand L2P insinuations from certain devs) while fighting an uphill battle. Would be nice for a change to see someone who actually mains a necro be given the balancing reins for just one patch…just one.

The reality is that devs are that way for every class though. There is no way that a developer would know as much as even someone like myself, who spends fairly limited time in game, about a class, because everything I do that is related to the game is about Necromancers.

I sit around here forum-warrioring, I go in game and do testing, I do podcasts, community stuff, etc. And this translates through to the community; though various means we all are very connected to the profession. This is good and bad. Its good because obviously we have a very intimate knowledge of the class, we know things that many devs don’t (especially when it comes to strange interactions of skills, or under-used builds/skills/traits).

However, this isn’t always good, because we also have a strong attachment to the class. It isn’t good for the developers to be as attached as we are, because they’d make terrible balance choices (worse than now, however hard that might be for you to imagine). It is why its important that they have the forums where people like us can voice our more knowledgeable and nuanced views, and then the devs can take it and work with it.

Also, I think Powerr (the person in question) has stuck his foot up his mouth a few times when it comes to Necros. I have a lot more faith when I have talked to Sharp, and I get the same feeling from others that they have a great concept of what the Necromancer should be in the end. The problem is that they have a lot of trouble getting there while retaining our incredibly unique mechanics, and not over or underpowering us.

Bhawb.7408:

The reality is that devs are that way for every class though. There is no way that a developer would know as much as even someone like myself, who spends fairly limited time in game, about a class, because everything I do that is related to the game is about Necromancers.

I sit around here forum-warrioring, I go in game and do testing, I do podcasts, community stuff, etc. And this translates through to the community; though various means we all are very connected to the profession. This is good and bad. Its good because obviously we have a very intimate knowledge of the class, we know things that many devs don’t (especially when it comes to strange interactions of skills, or under-used builds/skills/traits).

However, this isn’t always good, because we also have a strong attachment to the class. It isn’t good for the developers to be as attached as we are, because they’d make terrible balance choices (worse than now, however hard that might be for you to imagine). It is why its important that they have the forums where people like us can voice our more knowledgeable and nuanced views, and then the devs can take it and work with it.

Also, I think Powerr (the person in question) has stuck his foot up his mouth a few times when it comes to Necros. I have a lot more faith when I have talked to Sharp, and I get the same feeling from others that they have a great concept of what the Necromancer should be in the end. The problem is that they have a lot of trouble getting there while retaining our incredibly unique mechanics, and not over or underpowering us.

I can agree with the argument that devs – in the interest of balance – should not become personally attached to one profession over another. However, there is quite a gap between being zealously devoted to a class and barely knowing how it works. There’s room for a middle ground that informs objective design decisions and – it’s my opinion – that middle ground hasn’t been reached.

Now, even that would be forgivable if they would use “the forums where people like us can voice our more knowledgeable and nuanced views, and then the devs can take it and work with it.” Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case:

• Changes we suggest and exhaustive bug lists we compile go largely ignored.
• Stuff is added we never asked for.
• Undocumented stealth nerfs are slipped into almost every balance patch (with revisionist history and tool tip edits used as lame excuses to cover them up)
• The class is far from being the embodiment of attrition and sustain
• Then – to rub salt into the wound – we’re condescendingly told in so many words to L2P.

Now, it has been SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO refreshing to see some red posts of late and to even see them actually engaging us in dialog regarding upcoming changes to skills and traits. However, that process should have been in place from day 1; just getting around to it 14 months later is almost too little, too late. There are a LOT of broken fences to mend and time will tell just how sincere they are in adhering to the Collaborative Development initiative.

Meanwhile, there’s an entire army of necros here on the forum who make reasonable, well-thought out, and balanced suggestions. To be sure, there are plenty which don’t meet those criteria, either, and sifting through them all can be quite a chore. However, there are recurrent themes that keep bubbling up to the top as well as the regulars who post here. Granted, this still represents a miniscule fraction of the total necro player base. But with tens of thousands of collective hours under our belts playing our beloved class, the sensible suggestions shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, either.

I still think once a video is posted of a zerg of 50 necromancers ferry’ing supply from a friendly upgraded keep to the far side of EB map in seconds, someone will realize that skills with no max range need to be looked into.

That doesn’t change the fall damage part at all mind you. Also since that effect has been in place since they reworked SPECTRAL WALK a year ago, i doubt it is getting looked into.

So, spectral walk doesn’t really have a range, right? So, could you pop SW in Wvw or Pve, hop into a mesmers portal, then after it closes you hit spectral recall and you’d be back to where you were at before you went thru the portal, right?

CMstorm.8679:

So, spectral walk doesn’t really have a range, right? So, could you pop SW in Wvw or Pve, hop into a mesmers portal, then after it closes you hit spectral recall and you’d be back to where you were at before you went thru the portal, right?

You can pop spectral walk, waypoint across the map, and click it again to go back to where you started. As long as you don’t change maps, the range is unlimited.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

• Changes we suggest and exhaustive bug lists we compile go largely ignored.
• Stuff is added we never asked for.
• Undocumented stealth nerfs are slipped into almost every balance patch (with revisionist history and tool tip edits used as lame excuses to cover them up)
• The class is far from being the embodiment of attrition and sustain
• Then – to rub salt into the wound – we’re condescendingly told in so many words to L2P.

Terror as it is now was suggested by Nemesis
Torment was one of the many conditions we came up with
Dhuumfire was based on PvPers knowing we needed a way to get conditions to actually deal damage (which is one of two reasons engis outclassed us at the time)
Greater Marks moving up a tier and the radius becoming base was an idea that Tenderly expressed on a Podcast (in fact a few ideas have been said on the podcast that were later implemented, though many ideas weren’t ours)

And if you ever talk to people on the alpha (or w/e they call it) and that talk with the devs, there are a few ideas that they gave that the devs took at went with.

The reality is they do listen. But sometimes they have to take charge, because at the end of the day it is their game, not ours.

Andele.1306:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Intentional. We could probably add a max range but I don’t think it’s necessary at this time since it isn’t really breaking anything. The bug was what Godless described.

Dude, it wasnt a bug, stop acting like it was one that you “fixed” instead of openly saying no we will nerf necros by removing their single hit damage absorb (since all multi hits/aka most burst skills in game would go trough it when the damage to 0LF was delt); for friggas sake it was even added to the game when removing the orbs from wvwvw plain in the patch notes.

Did you ever stop to consider that the word “bug” has become synonymous on the interwebz with “not working as intended” / “currently not desired by us” and as such you’re scolding a generous dev for a small grammar mistake? With folks like you I’m sure the devs will be posting on here really frequently from now on.

Arius.7031:

Andele.1306:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Intentional. We could probably add a max range but I don’t think it’s necessary at this time since it isn’t really breaking anything. The bug was what Godless described.

Dude, it wasnt a bug, stop acting like it was one that you “fixed” instead of openly saying no we will nerf necros by removing their single hit damage absorb (since all multi hits/aka most burst skills in game would go trough it when the damage to 0LF was delt); for friggas sake it was even added to the game when removing the orbs from wvwvw plain in the patch notes.

Did you ever stop to consider that the word “bug” has become synonymous on the interwebz with “not working as intended” / “currently not desired by us” and as such you’re scolding a generous dev for a small grammar mistake? With folks like you I’m sure the devs will be posting on here really frequently from now on.

a) but is something that isnt working as how it was coded because insert one of hundreds of reasons
b) the devs themselves implemented it, thus by very definition not a bug, saying they fixed it is plain lying and disrespectful to the playerbase.
c) No, the net holds and updates words according to its proper meaning, thats why saying "thats g_y means nothing, because its original definition is carefree/chill/relaxed, same reason why newbie and noob are also treated differently, look if sites like 4 chan can keep their overall respect in terms of communication to others better than the devs of a MMO its a serious problem.
d) Sure go with ad hominem if you want to ignore fact, by the way here let me sell you some magic beans that keep away tigers and tell you about a magic invisible fairy that will make sure that you dont just decompose but see all your friends and familiy on far away planet in space.

Rennoko.5731:

CMstorm.8679:

So, spectral walk doesn’t really have a range, right? So, could you pop SW in Wvw or Pve, hop into a mesmers portal, then after it closes you hit spectral recall and you’d be back to where you were at before you went thru the portal, right?

You can pop spectral walk, waypoint across the map, and click it again to go back to where you started. As long as you don’t change maps, the range is unlimited.

Assuming you can load fast enough.

Plexxing.2978:

Rennoko.5731:

CMstorm.8679:

So, spectral walk doesn’t really have a range, right? So, could you pop SW in Wvw or Pve, hop into a mesmers portal, then after it closes you hit spectral recall and you’d be back to where you were at before you went thru the portal, right?

You can pop spectral walk, waypoint across the map, and click it again to go back to where you started. As long as you don’t change maps, the range is unlimited.

Assuming you can load fast enough.

Take the 50% longer duration. If you can’t load into an empty keep in 12 seconds, might be time to invest in a new computer. Even mine can handle that.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

[…]

• If you’re a necro and pop Death Shroud, doesn’t matter if you’re hit for an amount in excess of your health pool. You’ll negate the full imp…Oh, wait…right…that doesn’t work anymore. What’s more is, there’s absolutely nothing else in the necro’s repertoire to compensate for that loss. Nothing. We have absolutely zero mitigation against boss one-hit-kills or player burst attacks.

The extra health from Death Shroud is not compensation against one-hit-kills when that damage bleeds through to our regular health pool. The ability to use Death Shroud to absorb those kind of hits was our only defense against them; we have no access to block, evade, invulnerability, or vigor (vigor can be had in a very gimmicky set up that eats up a couple utilities and which nobody I know equips or uses exclusively for that purpose).

What’s more is, it was never a broken mechanic or OP to begin with. No one was QQ-ing on the forum, “Necros so OP because they can absorb a single boss one-hit-KO at the expense of all remaining life force.” It was an unjustified nerf of our lone one-hit-KO mitigation.

Now, if at the same time they nerfed our DS absorb ability, they had nerfed all other blocks, evades, etc. by giving them an internal damage cap such that any damage in excess of that limit would then bleed over to the player’s health bar, then…maybe…it could be called balanced. If Aegis was limited to blocking only 10,000 points of damage instead of an unlimited amount, for example.

But that’s not the scenario we have. Every class except necro has access to a skill or skills which grant immunity to all damage for their duration. That’s on top of their superior disengage and mobility when compared to necros. Necros have nothing; if we’re out of endurance and get hit by a one-hit-KO, we’re dead.

The thing with old DS, however, was that we could have that one-hit-KO protection basically every 10 seconds when DS was done recharging. We could block a ton of damage, 10 seconds passed and we had that opportunity again, on demand (which is an important issue). With necromancer’s high base health pool and condition builds pushing armor rating pretty high I’d say it was too powerful. Personally I run full condi build on rabid stats, have some sustained healing and regeneration and I’m already not that easy to kill.

That said I of course agree we should get some compensation, ideally with some skill changed to give us some sort of invulenrability. I hope the devs will finally see this as an important issue.

tazer.4982:

The thing with old DS, however, was that we could have that one-hit-KO protection basically every 10 seconds when DS was done recharging. We could block a ton of damage, 10 seconds passed and we had that opportunity again, on demand (which is an important issue). With necromancer’s high base health pool and condition builds pushing armor rating pretty high I’d say it was too powerful. Personally I run full condi build on rabid stats, have some sustained healing and regeneration and I’m already not that easy to kill.

That said I of course agree we should get some compensation, ideally with some skill changed to give us some sort of invulenrability. I hope the devs will finally see this as an important issue.

That’s the problem though; too much theory crafting. It always comes down to examples of how potentially OP the necro is on paper. It doesn’t work that way in actual practice.

I base it on reality, not theory. Not once in the 10+ months preceding the nerf was there ever a single post complaining about necros absorbing one-hit-KOs. Necros were considered a joke, a trash class; no one ever QQ-d on the forum about a necro using DS to absorb their burst. We weren’t wanted in dungeons. We had no place in high-level PvP. DS absorb was in no way, shape, or form making us OP. Our DS absorb capability was balanced in light of our lack of any other form of one-hit-KO damage mitigation coupled with our low mobility and vulnerability to CC.

Furthermore, our ability to block the damage was not on demand; it required having a minimum of 10% life force to re-enter DS when the 10 second recharge was done. Granted, we’ve since had our life force generation improved. Prior to the nerf, though, regenerating 10% life force in those 10 seconds was a challenge; especially if you’re already fighting and/or running for your life against a boss.

Lastly, the DS absorb is not the issue; that’s just a smokescreen excuse. The issue was only ever about surviving falls off the map. We weren’t nerfed because we were OP using DS to solo-tank bosses. We were nerfed because they didn’t want us accessing certain areas outside the map. That’s a legitimate reason to change DS so it wouldn’t allow for unlimited fall distance; no argument from me on that front. However, it is not a legitimate reason for nerfing our sole one-hit-KO damage mitigator.

First, they need to admit to what the real problem is; surviving unlimited fall distances. Second, they need to nerf that and only that portion of the problem (and based on red posts, it is possible for them to segregate the two and nerf just the fall aspect). Then, reinstate the DS absorb capability.

As I’ve stated in other posts on this topic, I honestly don’t want a different mechanic. I’m fine without a block, evade, or invulnerability skill. I’ve gotten used to playing a necro without them and adding one in now wouldn’t feel right. It would feel exactly like what it is; a bandage, a kluge, a patchwork solution because they have no better alternative.

The better alternative already exists; revert DS and allow us to return to skillfully using our profession mechanic as our damage mitigator. And yes, it was skillful, as it required good timing, anticipation of what an opponent or boss was going to do next, and efficient life force management. It wasn’t OP then, it won’t be OP now. Revert it already. That, or they should quit selling us the line that necro is the attrition and sustain class.

It wasn’t OP then, it could be OP now, since as you said they’ve improved our LF regeneration. 10% LF now? I think it’s as much as using Feast of Corruption or just a few staff attacks, pretty easy to do. As for if someone used this extensively… to be honest I wasn’t even aware it worked THAT good until they mentioned it in patch notes. What I know is that now I’d use it for sure – great panic button, available almost all the time.

On the other hand, are there any bosses that can one-hit a necro from full HP or at least 75%? Because in general necros are not that squishy as thieves or mesmers in the first place, unless you’re running some berserker build and you should expect that anyway. I dunno, personally I don’t have much problem withstanding boss fights and I run 20-30 level fractals with my necro. The only boss that could one-hit me was Liadri but that’s another story :P Haven’t tried Lupi on necro tho.
On top of that no one ever kicked me for being a necro, so I guess we don’t suck that much oO

Maybe what they coud do is to boost DS’s HP equivalent. Its base size is 60% of one’s max HP, maybe it should be 80% or even 100%? If my max HP is around 23k I guess someone would need to hit me with a truck to one-hit KO me while in DS :P At the same time it would take longer than those 10 sec of recharge to fill LF meter to some decent amount. I think it would be a good idea, definitely better that an invul with as little as 10% LF.

tazer.4982:

It wasn’t OP then, it could be OP now, since as you said they’ve improved our LF regeneration.

Keep in mind that we still need to build Life Force every single time we want to use our defense, and we can’t use healing skills while in DS. Other classes do not have this obstacle.

tazer.4982:

On the other hand, are there any bosses that can one-hit a necro from full HP or at least 75%?

Several. There are even some that can one-hit a necro with a full health bar and a full life force bar, while in Death Shroud. I’ve seen it happen. Especially once you get to higher Fractals levels. PVE damage is often out of control. There are various bugs that cause monsters in PVE to sometimes hit like a truck, and then there are bosses that are simply designed to do insta-kills. Kudu will always down you for example, regardless of health.

tazer.4982:

Maybe what they coud do is to boost DS’s HP equivalent. Its base size is 60% of one’s max HP, maybe it should be 80% or even 100%? If my max HP is around 23k I guess someone would need to hit me with a truck to one-hit KO me while in DS :P

No, this is exactly the same mistake the developers keep making as well. They fiddle with the numbers a bit, and then reason that a skill that can soak a limited amount of damage, is equal to skills on other classes that can negate an infinite amount of damage.

A skill that renders you invulnerable, will always scale better than a skill that gives you more health. If a boss does a gazillion damage, the necro is still dead, and any other class just hits invulnerability, block or evade, and survives. THAT is the problem. That is why we need the old DS functionality back. It bothers me to no end that no dev wants to respond to this issue. Do they not care about the necromancer class? They broke something that did not need to be changed.

I can understand making it so that we don’t completely absorb damage when the hit consumes the rest of our life force; i.e tanking 9k backstabs with 1.8k life force and taking 0 damage to our actual health pool.

However, the way it is currently doesn’t make sense. If I have 8999 life force and take a 9k backstab while in death shroud, why does it take all of my remaining life force AND do 9k damage from my health pool?

They went from one extreme to the other; the remaining damage should spill over. 2.5k life force and taking 5k damage should consume the remaining 2.5k life force and then 2.5k health.

But that’s only if they’re not willing to revert it back to what it was.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

tazer.4982:

It wasn’t OP then, it could be OP now, since as you said they’ve improved our LF regeneration.

Keep in mind that we still need to build Life Force every single time we want to use our defense, and we can’t use healing skills while in DS. Other classes do not have this obstacle.

Gaining 10% LF is nothing, I repeat nothing difficult to do and that’s all it takes to enter DS. You fill it quite naturally without hardly any effort, so please keep it real and do not make up false obstacles. Other classes have longer cooldowns, require specific weapons, skills, traits etc. – they need to use specific builds to have that invul/evade/block and necro always has DS. Bind it on some extra mouse key and like I said before – we’d have a perfect panic button. Because it’s a class mechanic you always have to keep this in mind. It would be like gettning an invul on warrior’s burst or thief’s steal…

As I said before I wouldn’t mind having an invul on a skill, just like all the other classes do, but not on potentially spammable DS. I don’t think that devs wanted DS to be an actual invul when they were designing it – it always occured to me as extra HP to utilize when things go wrong (and I do use it this way*) and with that in mind old DS could really be bugged and unintended. Because even without invul it’s still a pretty kitten good mechanic, imo :P

*e.g. I’m low on health but my healing skill is recharging so I enter DS and buy myself some time, then exit, heal, and all is good again. DS most definitely saved my butt a coupe of times.

tazer.4982:

Gaining 10% LF is nothing, I repeat nothing difficult to do and that’s all it takes to enter DS. You fill it quite naturally without hardly any effort, so please keep it real and do not make up false obstacles. Other classes have longer cooldowns, require specific weapons, skills, traits etc. – they need to use specific builds to have that invul/evade/block and necro always has DS. Bind it on some extra mouse key and like I said before – we’d have a perfect panic button. Because it’s a class mechanic you always have to keep this in mind. It would be like gettning an invul on warrior’s burst or thief’s steal…

No actually it would be more like having Aegis. It only blocks one hit, and all the following hits still go right through to your health bar. The only difference is that you can’t use your healing while in DS, nor can you use it a second after leaving DS, due to the annoying skill recharge thing.

Not to mention you only stop the damage, not any conditions, stuns, dazes, launches, sinks, floats, knockbacks, or pulls that were on that attack.

Guys multi hit skills went trough DS, unlike on some aegis applications which is a plain skill block for the second.
Vigor something we so aptly dont have, is a more reliable way to get the same type of invul only for multi skills in same possible time frame (of 10 seconds).
SO no every other class has a more spammable DS absorb that they can permanently keep up on them be it via critting or plain playing/using skills.

Death Shroud

Pre-nerf = able to absorb one-hit-KOs from bosses and player bursts using DS.

Post-nerf = unable to absorb one-hit-KOs from bosses and player bursts using DS due to damage overflow. No other mechanism available to compensate. The fact that other classes might have to jump through hoops to achieve blocks, evades, or invulnerability is irrelevant. It’s still an option for them; we don’t even get that much.

Verdict = broken. Game mechanics exist that result in one-hit-KOs unless you have a block, evade, or invulnerability skill or trait available or a vigor buff for extra dodges. All classes have one or more of those options available while necros have none. This is imbalanced and makes necros sub-par in certain encounters. Extra health is not compensation.

Life Force

Pre-nerf = life force generation was slow.

Post-nerf = life force generation has been improved.

Verdict = reverting DS to absorb one-hit-KOs may be OP given that we’d have much more frequent access to it.

Solution = ???

If we can’t revert DS because our life force generation is so fast now that it makes using DS as a de facto invulnerability skill a trivial matter, then what options do we have? Adding block, evade, or invulnerability skills? Skills the devs have said aren’t appropriate for the necro.

Where’s that leave us here and now, in the present reality, outside the realm of theorycrafting? Stuck in limbo in which we remain sub-par in certain scenarios when compared to all other classes who can spec for block, evade, or invulnerability if they choose to.

I’ll keep saying it until the devs choose to hear it:

Extra health is not equivalent to skills which negate ALL damage in a game with bosses that hit far in excess of that extra health. Any class reliant on extra health as their sole form of damage mitigation (necros) will be sub-par in those scenarios. Period.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No actually it would be more like having Aegis. It only blocks one hit, and all the following hits still go right through to your health bar. The only difference is that you can’t use your healing while in DS, nor can you use it a second after leaving DS, due to the annoying skill recharge thing.

Aegis would be inferior for a very simple reason: it’s way more random so maybe it can absorb 100k damage or maybe just 1k. By all means I’m no guardian specialist, but from what I can see Aegis is mostly granted through Virtue of Courage every 45 seconds, so purely random thing, or by “Retreat!” with 60 sec cooldown… so how can you compare it with old DS? There are also some traits that grant Aegis but again, very randomly. Funny thing is that necro can actually grant Aegis AoE: with Well of Power while removing burning and that’s exactly the randomness I’m talking about – quite useless (unless you’re facing grawl shaman in a fractal, WoP is great over there! :P)
I will say it one more time: DS is a class mechanic that can be frequently used on demand. Don’t compare it to any skills or boons, because it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

@Kraag, this is why I keep asking for those options. But re-instituting a broken system (which it was, although I realize this isn’t a shared opinion by all) to band-aid another broken system (and this doesn’t even fix the actual problem) doesn’t help us. We’re just left with two broken systems, instead of one.

What they need to do is start implementing realistic defensive options for us. We have two true defensive options that really feel good: Spectral Armor while in DS, and Plague. Other classes have many, many options. Weapon sets (trading off weapon-damage or utility for defense), utility skills (and not just one), traits (multiple traits of varying strength, tier placement, and tree placement), and potentially more.

Keep the old DS system gone. It just wasn’t a healthy system to keep in the game, it made no sense, it had 0 readability, and putting it back in the game doesn’t fix anything. But we need defensive options.

tazer.4982:

I will say it one more time: DS is a class mechanic that can be frequently used on demand. Don’t compare it to any skills or boons, because it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

I see a version of this quote from time-to-time in discussions regarding Death Shroud. The problem is, it’s incomplete and out of context. The full picture would read:

“DS is a class mechanic that can be frequently used on demand by a class that has no other mechanic for damage mitigation, poor access to boons, low mobility, and high vulnerability to CC.”

Now, allowing for a DS-like absorb on a guardian, thief, or – heck – any other class for that matter would be waaaaaay over-the-top OP. On necro, it’s balanced by our lack of every other form of damage mitigation to which the other classes have access.

It’s not a one-to-one comparison of DS to Aegis or any other non-capped damage mitigator that’s being discussed; even if those are used as examples. The heart of the matter is – at the end of the day – what is functionally happening inside the game. Regardless of what skills or mechanics are employed, when a necro faces a boss that uses a one-hit-KO and other classes face that same boss, what happens? What’s the outcome? What’s the reality rather than the theorycrafting?

The end result is – if out of dodges (something shared by all classes and thus mutually cancel out of the equation) – a necro has nothing. Nothing. That necro is going to die if hit by the one-hit-KO. The other classes – if they’ve equipped their various block, evade, or invulnerability skills or buffed up with Aegis or Vigor – survive.

That’s what it comes down to; necros will die in that situation 100% of the time, the other classes will survive. And this is not due to the necro failing to play to the highest skill level or because they brought the wrong build. It is because there is no other option for the necro; none.

This scenario wouldn’t be an issue if the same limitations applied to all the other classes; but it doesn’t. Every class but necro has a means of surviving such a scenario. The consequence is necros are sub-par in those situations. This leads to necros being selectively discriminated against by game mechanics over which they have no control.

It’s one thing if the necro died because they weren’t playing skillfully or failed to bring the skill or trait that would allow them to survive that one-hit-KO. But that’s not the case and can not be used in support of an argument. The mechanics themselves put necros on an unequal footing in comparison to all other professions relative to certain areas of the game.

An analogy would be if guardians had a weakness against bleeding. If applied to them, they couldn’t cleanse it nor could any thing else in the game cleanse it for them. They would be forced to endure the full stacks and full duration of the bleeding until it had expired. Would this be fair? Would this be balanced? Obviously not.

Yet some are arguing that – in denying necros one-hit-KO damage mitigation – it’s perfectly acceptable to allow necros to have an equivalent weakness to certain game mechanics for which there exists absolutely zero, zilch, nada, nothing that the necro can do to avoid it, counter it, cancel it, escape it, minimize it, or mitigate it. The only option is to die.

If this applied equally to everyone, then no problem. The problem isn’t that we die to one-hit-KOs. The problem is that we die to one-hit-KOs while every other class can live through it by some means. That’s called disparity, that’s called discrimination, that’s called imbalance.

It’s the rules and fundamental mechanics of the game not being applied equally to everyone that we’re upset about. It means we’re not playing the same game; it’s an invalidation of skill in a game that claims to be all about skill; it’s a dismissal of that segment of the player base that mains necros as not being valued as players and customers; it places us at an inherent disadvantage in comparison to all other classes in certain scenarios. THOSE are the issues.

We ask for a reversion of DS to allow us to absorb one-hit-KOs because it worked without being OP. If it’s felt it would now be OP in light of improvements to life force generation, then give us something to compensate. But for the love of Grenth, stop gimping us in comparison to every other class in the game when it comes to this particular scenario!

Show us a little respect as players and customers. And before anyone counters with, “Respect is a two-way street.” or some equally facile pablum, know that we’ve been respectful and more than patient in dealing with the devs’ silence and lack of action on this issue; going on 4 months now. There’s a limit, though, and that limit has been reached and exceeded.

Bhawb.7408:

@Kraag, this is why I keep asking for those options. But re-instituting a broken system (which it was, although I realize this isn’t a shared opinion by all) to band-aid another broken system (and this doesn’t even fix the actual problem) doesn’t help us. We’re just left with two broken systems, instead of one.

What they need to do is start implementing realistic defensive options for us. We have two true defensive options that really feel good: Spectral Armor while in DS, and Plague. Other classes have many, many options. Weapon sets (trading off weapon-damage or utility for defense), utility skills (and not just one), traits (multiple traits of varying strength, tier placement, and tree placement), and potentially more.

Keep the old DS system gone. It just wasn’t a healthy system to keep in the game, it made no sense, it had 0 readability, and putting it back in the game doesn’t fix anything. But we need defensive options.

Couldn’t agree more. But again I come back to reality rather than theorycrafting. What is the situation that actually exists? Answer: necros have no one-hit-KO mitigation and haven’t had it for almost 4 months now. That’s not theory, that’s fact. And that disadvantages us in certain encounters in stark contrast to all other professions.

If they want to give us blocks, evades, invulnerability, great. If they want to give us back DS absorb, I’d be fine with that, too; even if I can agree with your assessment that it’s not the most ideal solution. Do we have either of those solutions, though? No. We have nothing.

So how long will it take and how much noise must we make until this issue is addressed? And if the problem is “they’re working on it but it won’t be ready for a few more months”, then give us back the old DS until the new solution is available. Why is it OK to kitten the necro profession because of their inability to come up with a workable solution as opposed to giving us something that would temporarily resolve the issue and which past experience has demonstrated was not OP?

If their fear is over an imbalance in PvP, then simply add a restriction; no DS absorb in PvP. There; now we have a band-aid which – though not ideal – holds us over until they can implement the real solution.

^ fully agree. We have spectral armour and spectral walk, why can’t the overflow damage be absorbed (like as it did) by a"spectral shield"?? which, only if it is considered OP (which it wasn’t) automatically triggers a 1 sec cooldown on all abilities, except movement, as we are knocked out of DS (you know like the bug that is/was occuring…although I wonder how easy it is to actually code what was a bug as intentional?)….sheesh the convolutions we have to go through just to get parity or near parity.

The Death Shroud absorb was intentional. It was added into the game and even noted in the patch notes.

Removing it was also intentional.

@Kraag, I agree that we need it. I agree it sucks to not have it (there have been times I’ve been in PvE recently and my instant thought after taking a massive hit was “old DS could have saved me”).

But honestly, I just don’t think its worth going back to the old system. It would work in the short run, things would definitely be much more workable, but I can just imagine the devs (if they ever posted) dropping by every thread we have complaining about the still broken system of us having far too limited of options for 1-shot mechanics and saying, “well with Near to Death you guys get one every 7 seconds, that’s already too strong, so we can’t add any others”. I would honestly prefer waiting it out in the short term, rather than have them Dumbfire us again…

tazer.4982:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No actually it would be more like having Aegis. It only blocks one hit, and all the following hits still go right through to your health bar. The only difference is that you can’t use your healing while in DS, nor can you use it a second after leaving DS, due to the annoying skill recharge thing.

Aegis would be inferior for a very simple reason: it’s way more random so maybe it can absorb 100k damage or maybe just 1k. By all means I’m no guardian specialist, but from what I can see Aegis is mostly granted through Virtue of Courage every 45 seconds, so purely random thing, or by “Retreat!” with 60 sec cooldown… so how can you compare it with old DS? There are also some traits that grant Aegis but again, very randomly. Funny thing is that necro can actually grant Aegis AoE: with Well of Power while removing burning and that’s exactly the randomness I’m talking about – quite useless (unless you’re facing grawl shaman in a fractal, WoP is great over there! :P)
I will say it one more time: DS is a class mechanic that can be frequently used on demand. Don’t compare it to any skills or boons, because it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

Ok, then lets compare it to profession mechanics by your logic, which are on demand, Steal – free teleport and quasi stun break, Ele attunements – essentially 10 free skills and on each setup is at least a total of 2 evades or invuls, Mesmer – free invul for 3 seconds, Engie – Free second heal, guaranteed stability+boon, stealth, any number of damage abilities to fit the game, cc and/or 3 stun breaks, Guardian – Sustain, A on demand block and damage boost, Ranger – FREE DAMAGE AND A TANK!

Ok please dont say stupid stuff, vigor which 4 out of 8 professions have on a 100% uptime and other 3 on a over 60% (one having for 5 points half its worth passively and other having 4 dodges instead of 2) when required, please tell me how its not just as strong (if not stronger since multi hits are evaded by dodge while DS was only able to absorb a single hit move/100b could leak trough just for example) as DS absorb? Also lets not forget that unless you are on a D/Wh build you were cooldown dependent (highly so on condi builds) to generate any kind of LF.

@Kraag, by all means I’m not saying it’s OK that necros don’t have that any extra defensive options but that’s the point – options. Having DS in not an option, it’s granted without any sacrifice! You don’t have to sacrifice skills, traits of weapons to have DS, but all the other classes need to set themselves in that defensive way and sacrifice something else. So if we’re talking about true balance and fairness, necro should sacrifice something too to get desired protection, and this something cannot obviosuly be DS, because it’s a free and permanent feature. That’s my main issue. That and easiness to generalte LF.

@Andele, on condi builds scepter’s Feast of Corruption and Staff’s auto attack generate enought LF to enter DS on demand after its cooldown. Very easy to do.
As for other classes: thieves and mesmers are squishy pretty much regardless of their builds, necros are generally not unless they choose to. Their dodges, evades and invuls are not only needed to absorb one-hit-KOs, but also many other blows that wouldn’t hurt necro that much – that’s the reason behind them imo. I recently played my low level thief and mesmer and died way more often when compared to leveling my necro. I believe it’s also true to classes like elementalist, ranger or engineer. Actually elementalist is made of paper, that’s a common knowledge :P Guardian’s Aegis is not on demand, it’s random or has to fall under circumstances.

By the way, if you think about it minions are pretty good to absorb one-hit-KOs :P When I think of how many times Jade Maw targetted that poor Jagged Horror, Golem or some other pet it’s amazing.
And maybe that’s also some explanation to necro’s lack of additional defense – we can have an army of tanky (one of the last updates!) minions that will absorb a ton of damange for us and for the team, most probably one-hit-KOs too just because PvE bosses are stupid and target those low profile minons. I know MM is not a popular option over there but hey, it’s aparently possible.
And yes, mesmers can have their small army of illusions too, but as I said before they also need them for protection from even trash champs that otherwise could kill them in 3 regular hits.

tazer.4982:

Aegis would be inferior for a very simple reason: it’s way more random so maybe it can absorb 100k damage or maybe just 1k.

Please explain to me what is random about Aegis? It blocks the next attack, that’s it. Then it recharges. It is entirely none random. And that’s what DS did, it blocked one attack, and then all your LF was depleted, and DS was on recharge too. If the point you’re trying to make is that DS was an invulnerability on demand, then you’re wrong. DS did not stop conditions or CC skills, unlike invulnerability skills. And lets not forget those skills can be activated on command too, just like DS could.

But unlike every other class, the necro had only Death Shroud to fall back on. In other words, it was a trade off. If you wanted to survive an insta-kill, then you had to trade in your ability to hide in DS against all other damage. A necro using DS to block spike attacks, would constantly have a depleted life force bar, while his health was slowly ticking away. Bare in mind that all other classes have other defensive measures to fall back on, if they’ve used up their invulnerability skill. With the necro, DS used to do both functions, but you couldn’t use it for both at the same time.

tazer.4982:

@Kraag, by all means I’m not saying it’s OK that necros don’t have that any extra defensive options but that’s the point – options. Having DS in not an option, it’s granted without any sacrifice! You don’t have to sacrifice skills, traits of weapons to have DS, but all the other classes need to set themselves in that defensive way and sacrifice something else. So if we’re talking about true balance and fairness, necro should sacrifice something too to get desired protection, and this something cannot obviosuly be DS, because it’s a free and permanent feature. That’s my main issue. That and easiness to generalte LF.

The sacrifice is built into the class. We sacrifice mobility and defense against CC while having no access or extremely limited access to the buffs, blocks, evades, and invulnerability that are available to all of the other professions to varying degrees.

What’s more is, DS absorb is not godmode. It’s the absorption of a single hit at the expense of all remaining life force (a sacrifice in itself). Once that single hit is absorbed and we’re knocked out of DS, we’re back to suffering under the weaknesses inherent to the class.

If another one-hit-KO comes in before we’ve generated enough life force and/or DS hasn’t recharged yet, we’re going to die if we’re out of dodges. It’s not like we’re sitting permanently in DS tanking one-hit-KO after one-hit-KO after one-hit-KO.

I’m not theorycrafting this; 10+ months of experience prior to the nerf conclusively proved that DS absorb was not problematic with regards to game balance. Despite how powerful it may look on paper, it in no way, shape, or form made us OP. At no time was there an outcry, “Nerf necros DS absorb! It’s OP, unbalanced, and game-breaking!” It never was.

What’s more is the devs have come right out and said that necros are expected to face tank everything; but with no mechanic for doing so against one-hit-KOs following the DS nerf. Brilliant design decision there, guys! If we’re expected to face tank, then give us the tools to do it.

In the face of our recently improved life force generation, maybe it would be a little on the powerful side today. Fair enough. There would be ways to mitigate that while still allowing us our own version of active defense.

The issue, though, is not the loss of DS absorb in and of itself. It’s the lack of any option whatsoever. They expect us to face tank, take away our sole means of face tanking a specific type of encounter, but fail to give us anything to compensate. This didn’t just happen yesterday; this is going on 4 months of being crippled in this manner.

You talk about options. That’s great; I’d welcome options…any options…anything at all. But we’re not even being given that. We have no options. If a necro is out of dodges and is targeted by a boss’ one-hit-KO, that necro is dead. Period. It’s not something open to debate because it isn’t a matter of opinion; it’s just pure numbers. If you have 40,000 hit points between a full health bar and your DS at 100% life force and get hit for 50,000 damage, you’re dead; end of discussion. By contrast, every other class in the game has a means of surviving that hit.

That’s the issue. They have options; we don’t…not for the last 4 months anyway. And for some reason that eludes me, the devs seem to consider that OK; despite the glaring disparity, indifference, and imbalance that this situation represents.

So I’m in agreement with you; give us options. If they can’t give us options because they either:

(a) don’t have any to offer because they can’t seem to figure out how to fit in a form of active defense for necros that wouldn’t lead to imbalance or

(b) they have something in the works but it will be months before the next big quarterly balance patch (because we’re certainly not going to see one in the December patch)

then revert DS to be our active defense until such time as they come up with a better solution.

Why is it that necros seem to be the exception? Why do we get the short end of the stick? They seem to have no problem with implementing mechanics that wind up making other professions wildly OP, allowing it to persist for weeks or even months, then coming out with the correction in a future patch.

(continued)

(continued)

But necros? Hell no! They are so deathly afraid of the OP necro they take baby steps at a glacial pace when it comes to improving the class, allowing us to remain sub-par in certain game modes for months and months at a time. Why is that acceptable? Why the double-standard? Why is it OK to negatively impact the necro community’s access to and enjoyment of certain areas of the game because they can’t seem to get their balancing act together? And why do some among the very necro community that is being inconvenienced by that approach defend it? We’re playing the game with one arm tied behind our backs. That may forge us into better players through overcoming adversity; but it starts to wear thin after awhile.

They take away our sole active defense mechanic. That would be fine if they had replaced it with a suitable alternative in the same patch. They didn’t; and 4 months later, they still haven’t and we still have no options. Give us a workable option – a real option that will be implemented, like, immediately and not some theorycrafting about what might be in the pipeline months from now – and I’d be satisfied.

They didn’t give us any compensation when it was nerfed, they aren’t giving us any compensation right now, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to give us any compensation any time in the near future. That’s just shabby treatment of paying customers; and I and those who are in agreement will continue complaining about it until the situation improves. That’s not whining; that’s a normal, healthy, and expected response to what amounts to poor customer service.

tazer.4982:

@Andele, on condi builds scepter’s Feast of Corruption and Staff’s auto attack generate enought LF to enter DS on demand after its cooldown. Very easy to do.
As for other classes: thieves and mesmers are squishy pretty much regardless of their builds, necros are generally not unless they choose to. Their dodges, evades and invuls are not only needed to absorb one-hit-KOs, but also many other blows that wouldn’t hurt necro that much – that’s the reason behind them imo. I recently played my low level thief and mesmer and died way more often when compared to leveling my necro. I believe it’s also true to classes like elementalist, ranger or engineer. Actually elementalist is made of paper, that’s a common knowledge :P Guardian’s Aegis is not on demand, it’s random or has to fall under circumstances.

By the way, if you think about it minions are pretty good to absorb one-hit-KOs :P When I think of how many times Jade Maw targetted that poor Jagged Horror, Golem or some other pet it’s amazing.
And maybe that’s also some explanation to necro’s lack of additional defense – we can have an army of tanky (one of the last updates!) minions that will absorb a ton of damange for us and for the team, most probably one-hit-KOs too just because PvE bosses are stupid and target those low profile minons. I know MM is not a popular option over there but hey, it’s aparently possible.
And yes, mesmers can have their small army of illusions too, but as I said before they also need them for protection from even trash champs that otherwise could kill them in 3 regular hits.

First of all your combo requires: the skills to hit (reasonable unless cced), the enemy to have at least 4 condis and/or 2condi + weapon swap up (both kinda ok expectations on a one time basis but not regular).
A staple of every mesmer build (just as staff is for necro) is either to have MH sword or staff, thats a blink and 2.5s evade, both things that avoid way more than a single hit vs ds could have absorbed in the last portion/1% of its span, also lets not forget that the thief has 60% on a base build and on fractal setups 90%+ vigor uptime and 4 dodges instead of 2. Also you can hardly compare leveling which a minions can solo by spamming to actual “end game content” (btw if you managed to die on a mesmer on something that isnt fall damage during leveling, i must ask how?).
Eles while being very very kittenty annoying to level 10, are quite a breeze to play in pve thanks to the aoe power of staff and scepter focus for personal story.
Also i think you dont know that guardian virtues can be activated…

Look, lets not troll around with extremes, right now DS is about as viable as the only defense as if a ele lost all his traits and attunements and his only allowed utility was CES; reasonable a nice bit of the time, but utterly failing where other very simple skills make it seem like its nothing.

Speaking from someone whos 4 most played professions in pvp are guardian>thief>mesmer, last 2 being fully geared zerker 80s in pve with all dungeons unlocked (and mesmer used for fractals when group whines). My ele is past the first 30 levels and i had no problems in pve (i did quit leveling him but thats because asura really annoy me, same for the guardian, they were pvp alts originally)
AND as someone who has been playing necro since the first press demo into beta all the way to now (even if im more on my ranger for the current patch/farm because of staff bugs) gathering 9k achivement points, soling both challenges during politics solo with necro, finishing Liadri, soloing new AC (2/3 paths) getting to lupi in arah path 4 solo and farming both MF and AR when they existed for items and carrying 5 pug groups trough the “new” TA path while they were 80% of the time dead (i cant really brag about fractals or bothering to do a legendary since for the first i got plain bored after like 24 and am way too lazy to farm up for a precursor/waste money collecting all recipes and skins.
Now excuse me and my technically pompously pretentious post (since a lot of people did stuff way better and more impressive than that), but DS absorb plain needs to return in one way (as it was) or another (limiting the amount of damage DS can take), not faffing around with it and adding weird arbitrary reudctions on DS, implementing obviously stupid stuff and pointless limits to traits/skills.

BTW fun fact DS absorb couldnt take more than 60~ times of total DS value of the % you had/stuff like lava, jade maw tentacle grape lazor and golem crush still killed you had less than 39/70~/90~% LF respectively.

Well Andele, as you’ve done all of this pretty demanding stuff I guess necro’s survivability is close to warrior’s, regardless of lack of vigor, block, invul etc. All in all you somehow managed to do this by skillful play. Becase necro is really not that squishy as some other classes, it’s a different playstyle, right? As you play zerker thief and mesmer I guess you know the importance of their evades, dodges etc. But necro can be hit few times in a row and still be alive. Necro has some good pasive healing as well, just go into Blood Magic, and if you give it too much of damage mitigation it might become quite invincible in good hands, just a matter of finding some gimmick builds.

I also wouldn’t go to extremes and give examples when some boss is throwing one-hit-KOs after one-hit-KOs few times in a row – I can’t recall anything like this and even if, it’s not on regular basis because many more classes and builds could not withstand it and we’d hear a big cry already (like in Liadri’s case). In a typical boss fight we can run out of some AoEs, position ourselves in safer zones and use dodge if really really needed, get some help from the team because boss fights were not designed to be soloed and that’s all. Hard-hitting attacks usually have some sort of transparency so we can adapt to them. I think we can agree on this?

I’m really trying to be realistic and while I do agree that some sort of protection would be good for class equality’s sake (but not too much), I don’t think that old DS is really needed – apparently necro is managing quite well anyway. I’m doing good, you Andele is doing good, I imagine many other people are doing good as well and no one really calls necro an useless class that needs to be carried on, dies all the time etc.

The difference in playstyle is exactly what we lack, there is no special nieche of using fancy utility tricks of being able to evade 9/10 of the boss attacks while attacking or timing blocks, you mostly just sit around in a position which a boss either focuses so you kite him away from the team or he doesnt and you shoot for free while side stepping/get LF generation going.
Look, on its core structure, necro has no real problems in pve survival if you keep your focus on it, but you are being so selfish during that, why not just take a mesmer who by focusing on survival helps the entire team or guardian who doesnt have to focus on survival as much because of kitten block on default boss setup+ 2s block from heal+invul on ulti+aegis actives, seriously i know 2 guardians that i ran Lupi with from TTS that just facetanked all his attacks without hp going under 40% because of the good block uptime and knowledge of when to use which type of defensive cooldown.
Now im not saying necros should be able to do that (because we would plain be bonkers just as our condi burst was during 4s dumbfire + unnerfed terror), but at least letting us not get dumped on by every little knockback we eat in DS or 4th hit in a row (to use same example take the p2 lupi barrages and siphon projectile, both skills which are way bigger than the aoe indicator and barely avoidable with SoL and proper knowledge of animations; it helps that they rehash ranged attack animations on mobs), since you cannot use that second dodge because there is a possible instakill on the way in a second which isnt enough for the evade to regen up.
I just dont want to feel more useful as a mesmer which drops a portal blinks drops it again uses feedback once or twice to reflect like 100k damage at the boss and do nothing the rest of the fight since im terrible at shatter and phantasam drop timing, than as a necro on who i know that i can reliably kill the clockheart if he doesnt do the rng throw into lightning.
In terms of survival id place us at a ranger level (for pve) and warrior (for pvp) *cant comment on wvwvw because i wave at my enemies and they let me enter their jp without a scratch*.

Cherry picking a couple of Tazer’s comments…not out of context though I think.
“just a matter of finding some gimmick builds” and in the same post “I’m really trying to be realistic”.

Necros dont want to run “gimmick builds” JUST TO SURVIVE and THAT is being realistic. Because to get that “gimmick build” we have to become the “selfish” almost to the extent of being “shunned” in many group senarios.

It is NOT merely a matter of this skill or that, the overall consequences are much larger than the individual skill arguments. And this the devs do NOT see because they don’t play the necro enough to experience that…or they just plonk their ANet badge on and see nothing of the real necro experience.

I really don’t want to write this down in fear of nerfs but…
SW midgitates fall damage and allows me to go where DS allowed me to go, nothing has changed since the DS absorb nerf except making necro’s weaker..

So in expectation of a SW nerf i might aswell trow it out there that SW (exept for the cooldown) when timed right midgitates 90-95%% of falldamage. and allows me to run around places i shouldn’t be..

So since this is the case.. bring back DS without overflow please!

such an old trick though ! using spectral walk to jump off cliff due to escape or survival.

1. using spectral before jumping of cliff and return to the top again!

2. dont think many ppl knew about this , jumping of a cliff and when you have about 10 meter left before you hit the ground you double tapp spectral walk for a smooth landing taking no dmg.
Still dont think many necros IGN know about option 2.

Skaelman.9526:

such an old trick though ! using spectral walk to jump off cliff due to escape or survival.

1. using spectral before jumping of cliff and return to the top again!

2. dont think many ppl knew about this , jumping of a cliff and when you have about 10 meter left before you hit the ground you double tapp spectral walk for a smooth landing taking no dmg.
Still dont think many necros IGN know about option 2.

Please stop mentioning that, every necro since release (well the first SW rework) knows of it, same for lich/well bomb, Dark pathed pact and the mark combo field save.

Andele.1306:

Please stop mentioning that, every necro since release (well the first SW rework) knows of it, same for lich/well bomb, Dark pathed pact and the mark combo field save.

It might surprise you, but not every single person on the forums has been playing Necromancer since launch. Especially judging by a few of the threads/comments, we see new players here fairly often, who don’t know these tricks, and would very much like to learn them.

Andele.1306:

Please stop mentioning that, every necro since release (well the first SW rework) knows of it, same for lich/well bomb, Dark pathed pact and the mark combo field save.

What are these and how do they work?

Drop damaging wells and pop Lich form. You get increased stats upon transformation and your wells will hit hard like a truck on streoids.
The dark path thingy is maybe the trick with critters? Just target a white bunny, throw your dark path at it and you have an escape move.
Marks still triggers when somebody dodges trough them, thus making them useless.

Dark Pathed Pact = Dark Path into Dark Pact. You can cast Dark Path and leave DS while the projectile is still on route, and teleporting doesn’t interrupt your actions. So, you cast Dark Path, start casting Dark Pact, and when you get to the target they are immobilized.

Putrid Mark “saves” the combo field it is on. So if you cast Putrid Mark on, say, a poison field, but the opponent doesn’t step on the mark until after the field is gone, Putrid Mark will “remember” the combo, and trigger it regardless. It also can double-combo, once with the on-cast “saved” field, and then with whatever field its on when activated.

Thanks for the info about Putrid mark Bhawb, that was new to me.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Extra health is not equivalent to skills which negate ALL damage in a game with bosses that hit far in excess of that extra health. Any class reliant on extra health as their sole form of damage mitigation (necros) will be sub-par in those scenarios. Period.

I’d also like to chime in and point out that DS also has the onus of not negating incoming conditions attached to attacks like other invuln/avoidance tools as well, so even if you didn’t get one shot, you either need to be able to stay in DS until that condition wears off or have enough health left to live through the lockout period AND have removal tool handy on your regular bar or you get to eat that too.

Too bad you can’t see your utility cool downs while in DS. What a nice “perk”.

So Necro sure as hell does not get DS for free; if anything too much is paid for it.

I would really like to know how far along the devs think they are on fixing the DS lockout bug. Obviously, until it’s fixed, they can’t give us a definitive amount of progress, but at least identifying the offending code would help.

leovuo.5046:

Sorry for the derail but I am surprised by some reactions regarding the DS fix. How is having 200 points left of DS, taking a 6K hit and but soaking up the entire hit balanced or not bugged? You shouldn’t have more points in DS than you are given, right? Or is there something I’m missing?

Sorry for the derail but I am surprised How is having 200 points left of health, taking a 6K hit and but soaking up the entire hit with Aegis/blocks/invulnerabilities You shouldn’t have more health than you are given, right? Or is there something I’m missing?

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Intentional. We could probably add a max range but I don’t think it’s necessary at this time since it isn’t really breaking anything. The bug was what Godless described.

And I don’t see why this had to fixed via cliff falling. Honestly it was pretty neat mechanic even in pve and pvp. I would of worked around it to be balanced then just removed it. Just my two cents.