(edited by lorndarken.3702)
Close but not quite there yet
AI is fine,yes Flesh golem has some issues on a very rare occasion, but the reality is that it works 95% of the time.
I don’t think healing should become a big part of life siphoning. It is against their design philosophy (they want proactive defense, not reactive, plus too much life stealing becomes a source of direct damage immune to toughness), and it shouldn’t be a main focus of the class. Even in GW1, the only builds that really had access to huge life stealing were Touch Rangers, otherwise necromancers really just had some side-life stealing to supplement HP, which is what we have now.
Increasing fear becomes insanely dangerous with Terror. A single 6 second fear means 6k damage from a terrormancer, along with 6 seconds of free damage. And guess what, you can epidemic Fears. Right now, it isn’t viable because by the time you epidemic the fear is gone, but with a 6 second fear you could fear entire teams for 3-6k damage, with two abilities, along with hard CC for the full duration. Its just too much.
AI is fine,yes Flesh golem has some issues on a very rare occasion, but the reality is that it works 95% of the time.
I don’t think healing should become a big part of life siphoning. It is against their design philosophy (they want proactive defense, not reactive, plus too much life stealing becomes a source of direct damage immune to toughness), and it shouldn’t be a main focus of the class. Even in GW1, the only builds that really had access to huge life stealing were Touch Rangers, otherwise necromancers really just had some side-life stealing to supplement HP, which is what we have now.
Increasing fear becomes insanely dangerous with Terror. A single 6 second fear means 6k damage from a terrormancer, along with 6 seconds of free damage. And guess what, you can epidemic Fears. Right now, it isn’t viable because by the time you epidemic the fear is gone, but with a 6 second fear you could fear entire teams for 3-6k damage, with two abilities, along with hard CC for the full duration. Its just too much.
the anet devs said that necromancer was an attrition based class , would not life stealing not be insight to that of attrition ?
and yes i know about that trait that would increase damage on fear making it 6k damage , maybe that should be nerfed instead . in other mmos when a player used fear it would not do damage to a player and it should not here but only be used as a form of cc . if someone has stability fear would not effect them and its not like some people don’t have access to break frees to prevent fear from running it’s course . i don’t currently like where fear is at in the moment , and i also believe that a increase of fear from 1 to 3 seconds would not be a huge problem for people in wvw /spvp , 6 seconds might be tough to deal with since lots of people don’t run break frees or stability in their utility bar but if that is the risk people want to take by not doing so , then it should not be a reason to keep the necromancers fear nerfed . when warriors have a 2-3-4 second fear depending how close they are to people , a thief when they steal from a necro they get is a aoe 3 second fear , and ranger pet that grants 3 seconds of fear . i don’t see the purpose as to why necromancers are the only ones to have their fear nerfed when necromancers are meant to be the attrition class .
i agree with all of this.
The lifestealing being in the healing tree gives suggestion that it was meant to effect it…but apparently there is a bug that has never been fixed to allow it. Oddly enough SOME life steal abilities DO benefit from healing O.O. So i think its safe to say these should…and they recently “fixed” it to heal a lot more …prob as a bandaid till they can make it benefit from healing.
And before you go “that cant be it they woulda fixed it along time ago if thats all it was” Engineer turrets never scaled off anything…but recently suddenly started scaling off condition damage (not power yet) and think of the 200 other things that seem like a simple value in a line of code to fix that still dont work. I think its safe to say siphon life IS supposed to work off healing…but will probably need toned down a bit when they do. Also, it gives necros a survival choice…right now necros have the least ways to mitigate and avoid damage but are given regenerations/lifesteals/deathshroud to help them make up for the fact they need to take damage. (everyone else has evade/immortality/invis..necros dont)
Also, to the subject of pet AI, its still unreliable, i was in spvp just earlier and they attacked one guy and i killed him then a rogue jumped me…i ran around in circles fighting the rogue, but because he invised one time…after coming out of invis they all stood there wondering around not attacking him….it broke their ability to fight him…othertimes i was chasing someone up some stairs attacking and the only one that followed and attacked was the flesh golem while the others stood next to me doing nothing, it should NEVER happen even if it was 5% of the time they didnt attack its a BIG PROBLEM.
Also, fear lasts longer on other professions, other professions have access to more hard cc’s stuns, knockdowns, barriers, ae immobalize. Necromancer is rather limited to a couple single target immobals with cast times, 1 knockdown from flesh golem, drag from death grasp…uhm…cant think of anything else. Just a reasonable access to chills but hard cc, not so much. Fear is it, and you would think fear would make up for our inability to avoid damage and lack of hard cc….
Solution, fix it so it does NOT work with epedemic…easy fix on that. Let it last an addtional second. Tone down fear damage trait to accomidate this change. easy peasy…. So yea….there ya go.
(edited by Zinwrath.2049)
We already have life stealing, if you go 15 into Blood Magic you get decent HP per crit, completely independent of healing power. But again, they want proactive attrition, and they want counterplay to that attrition besides just flat out burst builds. Huge life siphoning is counter to their design philosophy in this game (although you can actually have very strong life siphoning builds already).
Again, a 6 second fear, Epidemic’d to a full team of 5, damage or not, is OP. That is 6 seconds of very difficult to avoid hard CC, on relatively short CDs. An entire team would need to save every stun break they had just to deal with a single necro. The other classes get longer fears because they don’t have the access to fear that we do, nor the ability to make it as powerful as ours is.
Just because you don’t like the current fear mechanic, doesn’t mean that it is broken and should be changed.
@Zinwrath, I have spent lots of time testing minion AI, I have shared my results with other necros who have confirmed my findings; the fact is that minion AI is reliable.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
@Zinwrath, I have spent lots of time testing minion AI, I have shared my results with other necros who have confirmed my findings; the fact is that minion AI is reliable.
No, its not. Again, this is why no one listens to you or takes you seriously. I can confirm what Zinwrath is talking about with the pet AI. Happened to me last night in WvW actually. Thief Cloak and Daggered off my golem. The rest of the fight the golem just followed me around and refused to attack anything else. Wouldn’t even attack the mesmer or his clones when I switched targets and started to attack them.
Stuff goes here.
id like to also add one more thing , necro pets should not be allowed to take buffs from other classes , lots of times in wvw people stack up to get 25 stacks of might and if my minions are near the stack they get buffed also . it hurts the group play when pets that are getting buffed over actual players and some of the players not getting the buffs . i think they may need to change this so that minion master would be welcomed in groups in wvw so that the minions wont get the buffs over another player . thats just my opinion on that matter .
add another thing to the cacophony of things i notice is the lack of reward based on the overall risk a necro faces more than most other classes in game in 1v1 scenarios comparative to that of a ele mes or thief . i am not alone when i state this . if people are looking for the constructs of balance , should it not also reflect the manner of speaking that some classes like engineers , rangers , necros , are in that place of being between a rock and a hard place when you look at the overall survive ability
this concludes my reason at how i look at the necro class like many others . attrition is meant to wear down . anet said that is what they want out of the necromancer to be . i share their insight in this , i don’t believe necros should be the end all be all of top tier
classes nor should they be pigeon hold into playing a certain way and that can and should be said in the likes of the other professions . i hope this is in good light and not considered a means of a way to over power something that true to it’s nature
and that is attrition !
(edited by lorndarken.3702)
LMAO 6 second fears… maybe two, but even that seems unlikely without the removal of master of terror.
LMAO 6 second fears… maybe two, but even that seems unlikely without the removal of master of terror.
they could nerf master of terror and make it 20 % to the 3 seconds
what im suggesting is that necromancers can fear for 3 seconds across the board , and if necros want to get that trait Master of Terror to then get 50 % more out of their fear which would make it 6 seconds they should be able to do so .
Get a calculator and read that part again please.
hint → http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage
what im suggesting is that necromancers can fear for 3 seconds across the board , and if necros want to get that trait Master of Terror to then get 50 % more out of their fear which would make it 6 seconds they should be able to do so .
A 3 second fear increased by 50% becomes 4 1/2 seconds; not 6.
In early development, Necros were the only profession with access to fear. Obviously, that changed and I know there’s no going back; they aren’t going to remove fear from the other professions at this point. Even so, I think more could be done to re-instate Necros as the undisputed masters of fear.
To counter by saying Necros have greater access to fear is tenuous at best. If the Necro in question is not carrying a staff, then their only access to fear is via Doom while in Death Shroud (on land). A 1-second, single-target fear skill with a 20 second recharge that relies on having sufficient life force to activate Death Shroud in the first place? Hardly what I would call “greater access” in comparison to the other professions with access to fear. Especially in light of their longer fear durations and/or AoE capability.
Some suggestions (only ONE of the following; not all of them together):
1) Increase Necros fear duration to 2 seconds across the board. Master of Terror remains at 50%, giving Terrormancers 3 seconds of fear. The Terror formula might need a little tweaking if the damage proves to be too much.
2) Increase Necros fear duration to 3 seconds across the board. Master of Terror is decreased to 33%, giving Terromancers 4 seconds of fear. The damage from Terror would very likely need to be scaled back a bit.
3) Fear durations remain as-is but make Doom an AoE fear affecting up to 5 nearby enemies.
4) Add a 1-second fear to one or more utility skills. For example, every signet on activation causes fear or every corruption skill causes fear.
5) Give Necros access to fear with every offhand weapon (these suggestions are in addition to the offhand skills’ current effects):
a) Dagger offhand’s Enfeebling Blood would add a 1-second fear to its AoE target area.
b) Either Focus’ Spinal Shivers – being single target – would cause a 2-second fear OR Reaper’s Touch would cause a 1-second fear to each enemy it hits (but not both).
c) Warhorn’s Wail of Doom would cause a 1-second fear to up to five foes in the AoE cone.
The above would balance nicely with the offhand weapons’ current recharges and cast times:
At 30 seconds, Wail of Doom has the longest recharge but is compensated by having the shortest cast time and a more-or-less guaranteed “hit” of fear on the targets within the cone’s AoE.
Enfeebling Blood is in the middle of the pack with a 25 second recharge. You could potentially fear opponents more often than Wail of Doom, but that assumes you succeed in accurately placing the AoE targeting reticle. Combined with it’s longer cast time when compared to Wail of Doom, this balances the more frequent casting.
Spinal Shivers’ 20 second recharge comes close to being the shortest recharge. However, this is balanced by the fact that it would hit only a single target. To then achieve parity with the other fear-inducing offhand skills, it’s fear would last 2 seconds instead of 1 second.
Lastly, if Reaper’s Touch were settled upon as the Focus’ fear-inducing skill, it benefits from the shortest recharge of all at 18 seconds. This is not unbalanced, though, because Reaper’s Touch bounces between foes and allies. With only 5 bounces, it’s unlikely Reaper’s Touch would ever effect more than three enemies; and that’s under ideal conditions. By contrast, Wail of Doom and Enfeebling Blood would have the potential to effect up to 5 opponents caught within their AoE.
Each of these offhand weapons benefits from a trait which reduces recharge times for that weapon; so none have an advantage over the other in that regard.
The Staff’s Reaper’s Mark becomes problematic. To balance it with the suggested introduction of fear to the offhand weapons, Reaper’s Mark could have its recharge time reduced (30 seconds seems about right) or it’s fear duration increased to 2 seconds.
Before anyone screams that suggestion #5 would be OP because then Necros would have access to three sources of fear (staff, an offhand, and DS’ Doom), keep in mind they already have access to two of these (staff and DS’ Doom). Adding the third source of fear would not be OP given the restrictions I’ve outlined above combined with the cast times and recharge times of those skills.
So many souls, so little time. ~ Kraag Deadsoul
The suggestion of adding fear to offhands avoids giving the Necro access to a single, very long duration fear (potentially problematic because of Terror + Master of Terror), while still giving us greater access overall. Yes, a Necro could then potentially chain Reaper’s Mark, an offhand skill’s fear, and Doom together and extended by Master of Terror.
However, what with the delay in swapping weapon sets, the cast times of the offhand skills, popping into DS to access Doom, the short duration of each instance of fear, and the asynchronous recharge times between all of these, it’s unlikely we’d see Necros achieving chained fears of 6 seconds continuous duration outside of idealized theorycrafting.
So many souls, so little time. ~ Kraag Deadsoul