Guild Wars 2

Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.
• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133116

It’s like ANet telling us: “For god’s sake just reroll a guard or warrior already”.

I Deschain I.4623:

It’s like ANet telling us: “For god’s sake just reroll a guard or warrior already”.

Somewhat agree.

It’s mostly nerfing conditions in PvP while our power specs in PvE still remain hugely less effective to other classes in dps and team utility. Why would anyone ever pick a necro over a warrior in tougher 5 man content? Jeez.

I Deschain I.4623:

It’s like ANet telling us: “For god’s sake just reroll a guard or warrior already”.

Pretty much, when you look at the Warrior notes there’s no changes to Adrenal Numbness, Healing Signet or Berserker Stance.

What i find most disappointing is there still nurfing every condition related skill because they cant balance or remove Dhuumfire.

A bunch of nerfs.

I especially like how elementalists will be immune to our conditions from now on.

Wish they would listen to this forum, they can take some condition damage, but improve our mobility, lack of sustain, and lack of group utility.

I Deschain I.4623:

It’s like ANet telling us: “For god’s sake just reroll a guard or warrior already”.

Well, they’re definitely telling us something. I’m not sure it’s that polite.

Bleeds are not what made people complain about necro’s. it was Dumbfire!
they should remove or change burning to torment or another way to apply poison.

Ascii.9726:

we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act._

• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

Good lord anet, I will gladly take condi nerfs if you actually buffed our sustain (group utility wouldn’t hurt either). Two of those things in there don’t even have synergy (DS and siphons) and yet you want us to focus on siphons as a form of sustain? I’m still laughing/crying at last Blood Magic “buffs”. Still though, I find it sad that Anet lacks the ability to admit how terrible Dumbfire was and how without it pretty much no one would complain about our condition damage (although SoS plays a part in this at times in 1v1).

However it’s nice to see Death Magic get some love, even if it’s nothing that game changing.

Just remove dumbfire already…

I Deschain I.4623:

It’s like ANet telling us: “For god’s sake just reroll a guard or warrior already”.

Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.

The kitten? The first one hits Staff way too hard.

Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%

Healing power is kitten, especially for nec. This wont change anything

Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.

The 15% and the extended duration was already good enough. pointless buff.

Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

Welp. Nerfed into uselessness…

Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.

Oh kittenmit, now it’s pretty obvious that theyre mocking us…decreasing cooldown doesnt do anything as long as the horror itself is still so kittening useless…

Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

Same here. Just remove it already and give us something fun and useful instead…

I already made a post with several numbered reasons in that thread about why Dhuumfire should be changed to Torment instead of Burning to help balance necro condition damage (on the first page, even). No direct response to it, but at least we know the devs are reading that thread specifically, so they will see it.

I can’t believe they actually nerfed staff. Joke of the century. kittening get rid of Dumbfire already and stop messing with the rest of the class.

It’s funny,Dhuumfire isnt even that good.

Banjal.7328:

It’s funny,Dhuumfire isnt even that good.

then they should remove it and give us something else. or revert the nerfs that came after dumbfire.

Well, they promised great changes before the 2014.
This is what i was expecting, thanks ANET, you gave me the right reason to stay away from this game for other 3-4 months.

Brando.1374:

then they should remove it and give us something else. or revert the nerfs that came after dumbfire.

They should just remove it. I’ve had enough of that awful trait and now that it’s destroying staff it has simply gone too far. Stop being stubborn and get rid of the blasted thing. Mistakes happen and this was an obvious one.

The mark of blood change is another 33% nerf to our damage with staff. Just like it was a nerf with scepter. I don’t understand their reasoning for these nerfs. Its like they want to kill the builds that dont utilize fear or dhuumfire for condi damage. And because of these nerfs that dont favor builds who dont run those traits, it actually emphasizes and supports going for those traits in order to remain viable.

Things they could’ve done to fix it. Fix fear damage scaling. Or make dhuumfire proc poison or torment. And lower torment stacks. And if you nerf the damage with weakening shroud procs or mark of blood at least give us sustain like all necros want.

Currently the sustain is still bad as we require being near things in order to gain life force. IE: I need to hit you with marks or my attacks in order to gain life force. A smart player can already just engage disengage until you run out of life force and then kill you as you cant build the life force without somthing to hit.

People still get away from necros plenty easy if you wanted us to be hard to get away from. And siphons don’t work in shroud which is a major downside. Healing still doesnt work while in shroud either. And scaling for siphons is a joke.

The strongest builds currently are still going to be dhuumfire even after the nerf and fearmancers. And builds that don’t use those are basically nerfed harder than those specific builds.

Berullos.6928:

The strongest builds currently are still going to be dhuumfire even after the nerf and fearmancers. And builds that don’t use those are basically nerfed harder than those specific builds.

This is exactly the issue with it. I run a hybrid build without Terror and Dumbfire and now my build is being kitten on just because. They need to target the root of the problem instead of everything surrounding it. They’re just forcing necromancers to rely more on these traits.

I’m starting to think this is just a matter of pride. They’re too kitten prideful to admit that Dumbfire was a mistake so now they have to nerf everything else down to make it somehow work.

I’m really digging the Reanimator buff.

I’m not sure what they can do to Dhuumfire. If they remove it, they won’t replace it with anything that would compensate for the damage loss. If they change it to Torment, it would either be:

A) Such a low stack on such a low proc rate that it wouldn’t be worth taking

OR

B) It would be completely over powered because of the duration increase from Spite and the fact that it would help out both power AND condi builds in PvP.

I think I would much rather have either more Poison application or, even better, Chill. You don’t see a lot of chill builds anymore BUT it would really help both power and condi builds if we had more chill access via traits. Even then it still doesn’t help us where we need it most but at least it would alleviate our mobility woes a little bit more.

Well atleast my cleric, knights, and celestial siphoning necro got buffed, now they just need to tweak siphoning.

Weakening Shroud nerf hurts… even more because I know they’re targetting it for the bleed when I’m using it for the Weakness.

I like to think these nerfs are building up to something better down the line.

Remove dhuumfire. Improve our team utility, if not, we should have the highest dps in a power role if we are supposed to be so godkitten greedy. A warrior should be able to dish out so much damage on top of all the boons they bring. It’s simply IMBALANCED.

Terok.7315:

Just remove dumbfire already…

“We are hearing everything you guys are saying and after careful consideration, we’ve decided to remove Dhummfire. Also, we really want to enhance the necromancer’s ability to be a tank, so we’ve increased Deathshroud by 1000% and reduced dmg across the board!!!”

These changes will do… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Losing 2 stacks of bleeding does kitten all to our over-the-top conditions in PvP. All the things that make us too strong still exist, all the things that make us too weak still exist.

The buffs are nice, but inevitably meaningless.

However, I guess we’ll talk about it in the podcast tomorrow, just to go over it.

transtemporal.2158:

Terok.7315:

Just remove dumbfire already…

“We are hearing everything you guys are saying and after careful consideration, we’ve decided to remove Dhummfire. Also, we really want to enhance the necromancer’s ability to be a tank, so we’ve increased Deathshroud by 1000% and reduced dmg across the board!!!”

Thanks for being an idiot. We don’t want to be impossible to kill. What we want is to not be overly reliant on a single trait because everything else has been getting nerfed to compensate for it. Removing Dhuumfire would promote build diversity, because as it currently functions, it simply cannot be balanced.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Berullos.6928:

The mark of blood change is another 33% nerf to our damage with staff. Just like it was a nerf with scepter. I don’t understand their reasoning for these nerfs. Its like they want to kill the builds that dont utilize fear or dhuumfire for condi damage. And because of these nerfs that dont favor builds who dont run those traits, it actually emphasizes and supports going for those traits in order to remain viable.

Things they could’ve done to fix it. Fix fear damage scaling. Or make dhuumfire proc poison or torment. And lower torment stacks. And if you nerf the damage with weakening shroud procs or mark of blood at least give us sustain like all necros want.

Currently the sustain is still bad as we require being near things in order to gain life force. IE: I need to hit you with marks or my attacks in order to gain life force. A smart player can already just engage disengage until you run out of life force and then kill you as you cant build the life force without somthing to hit.

People still get away from necros plenty easy if you wanted us to be hard to get away from. And siphons don’t work in shroud which is a major downside. Healing still doesnt work while in shroud either. And scaling for siphons is a joke.

The strongest builds currently are still going to be dhuumfire even after the nerf and fearmancers. And builds that don’t use those are basically nerfed harder than those specific builds.

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of times, when running standard Necro condie builds, the bleeds actually do a large portion of your damage if they are allowed to stack on a target. Burning is nice, and Torment can be decent, and of course Poison brings down opposing heals. But the Bleeds are where a large amount of the sustained damage comes from.

We want to bring down that raw dmg but still allow the Necro the ability to “shut down” targets. Notice we’re not bringing down Chills much, or Vulns, or Blinds. We don’t mind the Necro shutting targets down, we just don’t want them also doing a ton of condition damage on top if it.

For Dhumfire and Terror: we have plans on reworks for those down the road, but they won’t make it in for this patch. We have plans for those, but they’re a little further down the “balance” road.

Thanks for the feedback!

Double post, but this seems to be a good sign. I disagree with what Jon is saying, but at least they’re starting to acknowledge where the problem actually is.

Ten gold that they’ll resolve the “Dhuumfire+Terror” issue by nerfing Terror and leaving Dhuumfire alone.

Ah, yes. It’s that time again. The quarterly “Let’s troll the necro community” patch. Every time it happens the following just becomes truer and truer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoJJOrR4wj8 (the section on Shamans is relevant)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Double post, but this seems to be a good sign. I disagree with what Jon is saying, but at least they’re starting to acknowledge where the problem actually is.

Ten gold that they’ll resolve the “Dhuumfire+Terror” issue by nerfing Terror and leaving Dhuumfire alone.

Seems to me like they intend to keep on peeling bleed to make room for Dumbfire. And then, yes, possibly nerf fear damage down to what they consider acceptable levels.

I’m mainly kitten ed because they went and kittened with the staff, myself. They’ve stripped that weapon of all its group utility and they’re now targeting the measly damage it outputs to combat builds which don’t even rely on it. It’s just baffling.

Ascii.9726:

• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.

• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

I really like these two. I’ve been running Persistence already ever since they fixed DS, I don’t think most realize it already gave you 8 more seconds of LF vs natural decay. That’s a bunch of punishment you can take.

Chill of Death would often proc too late or when enemies were already beaten, at 50% it will cause them much more heartache.

That said, the further nerfs on bleeds and condi damage is concerning. Combined with all the new cleansing effects, I’m beginning to wonder if they want to kill off condi builds entirely, you go dhuumfire or bust pretty much.

Also all the tankiness they keep buffing still does nothing to solve the class’s key flaw, and that is getting jumped and focused by multiple people. There is no good escape for those situations other than invulnerability, vigor for chain dodging, or mobility. I guess we are just supposed to die whenever the other team is smart enough to jump us all at once. So much for counter play.

Encountered a thief today, he zipped across the map so I never knew where he was. Backstabbing me for 5k and so on,you know the drill, needless to say, I lost.
Met an engineer, within 3 seconds I had 15 confusion stacks on me, and was knocked around like a pinball. Those confusion stacks, were on top of all the other condis an engy can throw out ofc.
I also met an elementalist, within 2 seconds I had lost 10k hp, he did insane dmg.

I went back to the necro cause I missed it, but from that patch review, I don’t think they even know what they want with the necromancer.
This may be the reason why I’ll go back to my mesmer, it rox, can do dmg, disengange and do all the things I want the necromancer to be able to do. Alas, I had hoped for a better future for my deathly friend ..

Draehl.2681:

I like to think these nerfs are building up to something better down the line.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ROFLMAO!!! XD

Oh, you were serious…?

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Draehl.2681:

I like to think these nerfs are building up to something better down the line.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ROFLMAO!!! XD

Oh, you were serious…?

That’s what I was thinking when the game released. Then they gave us the god mode patch, and have since beaten us repeatedly with the nerf bat.

I gotta say… it somewhat looks like the devs were checking out Bhawb’s trait discussion thread and/or the last podcast.

• Mark of Blood:1 bleed in PvP only.

Why?
I’d rage hard if this was a WvW change as well.

• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.

Ok…?
that changes everything. nat!

• Spite 15 – Death into Life: Increased conversion from 5% to 7%

Are you sure this isn’t supposed to read 70%? Because then we’d actually notice this trait.

• Spite X – Chill of Death: trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.

One of the most potent traits in PvP gets a chance to trigger a lot more often now. Good thing they’ll nerf Mark of Blood to compensate -_-

• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud: Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

I guess it makes sense to give it the same cd as Enfeebling Blood, but I really don’t think it was a necessary change.
This is hands down my favorite trait, so I’ll definitely still use it even with a longer cd.

• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail: Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.

Umm.. good.
I get the feeling that the few devs who actually play a necro occasionally are using a warhorn, because that’s the one weapon that repeatedly got buffed over the last months.

• Death 5 – Reanimator: Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.

Why??? Why are they trying to fix this trait? Any effort put into this is a waste, remove it already.

• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection: Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.

Appropriate change, still a bad trait.

• Death 25 – Deadly Strength: Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.

Interesting. That might be the best buff for Death Magic ever.
(I guess healing power is too op for necros, so Death into Life just got a 2% raise)

• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power: Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

Sounds good, makes a lot more sense this way.

• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence: Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

This trait might be worth taking then, not sure if anyone would drop an offensive trait for it though.

Hey, it happened in WoW. Given, it took the better part of three years for Affliction to be anything more than a farming spec, but hey, it happened.

On the Reanimator change, I think you might change your mind about it being so bad when you can get a small horde from just that trait. I can already get three up at a time often in PvE after the health buff and I am really noticing a difference in effectiveness (because I actually pay attention to it instead of whine). Getting six of the buggers up without healing them or using a skill slot is actually a pretty big deal, since that’s as many minions as you can get from filling your bar with minion skills.

I like the blood/death 25 actually though, but I’m a power necro and I don’t pvp so those nerfs don’t affect me at all.

Reanimator has a built in cap, people don’t realize it because its near impossible to keep that many up. Its 5.

And no, Reanimator will still be bad. Less bad, because they are finally fixing one of its issues, but they are fixing the smaller of its two biggest issues, which is that it will still not trigger when you actually need it in the majority of difficult encounters. It just means you’ll get a few more of them from trash mobs.

Guys, if you want stuff changed, also post in the thread made by the devs. Just be constructive and not kittens.

Bhawb.7408:

Reanimator has a built in cap, people don’t realize it because its near impossible to keep that many up. Its 5.

And no, Reanimator will still be bad. Less bad, because they are finally fixing one of its issues, but they are fixing the smaller of its two biggest issues, which is that it will still not trigger when you actually need it in the majority of difficult encounters. It just means you’ll get a few more of them from trash mobs.

I did not know of this cap. I know there isn’t a cap on the number of jagged horrors you can have, because I’ve had over ten via Lich Form (can cast Mark of Horror twice) and Reanimator.

Still, five minions for free in WvW will actually be nice. Especially when you’re sitting on an arrow cart.

It’ll be nice in WvW’s larger gameplay, and it’ll be nice for general PvE stuff. My problem with it is it’ll still be useless in PvP, and it’ll still be mostly useless in any small-scale fighting (WvW and PvE boss fights without adds).

Even with Dhuumfire changed into 15 second torment with 10 stacks, death shroud being able to take one-shot hits, wells cooldowns halved, signet cooldowns halved, corruption cooldowns halved and spectral effects last for twice the duration we’d STILL BE THE WEAKEST PROFESSION.

Bhawb.7408:

It’ll be nice in WvW’s larger gameplay, and it’ll be nice for general PvE stuff. My problem with it is it’ll still be useless in PvP, and it’ll still be mostly useless in any small-scale fighting (WvW and PvE boss fights without adds).

Well, unless you’re running MM, there will no longer be a reason to go into death magic for PvP, I think?

Even if there weren’t a cap, Jagged Horrors have almost little impact on the MinionMancer build. (and given that, it would have no utility in whatever other build)
Protection of the Horde, Deadly Strenght = a ridicle low quantity of Toughness and Power.
Death Nova would be one of the best traits with Reanimator, for Aoe Poison Field which deals simply a ridicle amount of damage, can help with spreading Weakeness BUT it still isn’t a controllable action, so it loses a great part of its utility.
Necromantic Corruption… but really, who is even playing this? With the pathig problem and the slow speed of Jagged Horrors it wouldn’t even be that valuable in PVP.
Fetid Consumption is the best trait Reanimator would work together.

The point is this since September 2012. They have totally no idea of what they’re doing. They just had to mantain Necromancer as a profession because of it being a core profession in GW1, but they clearly don’t want to put any effort in emproving it.

Nerfing staff ?

realy ?

I mean realy ?

but seriously REALY ?!

http://www.arena.net/

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

transtemporal.2158:

Terok.7315:

Just remove dumbfire already…

“We are hearing everything you guys are saying and after careful consideration, we’ve decided to remove Dhummfire. Also, we really want to enhance the necromancer’s ability to be a tank, so we’ve increased Deathshroud by 1000% and reduced dmg across the board!!!”

Thanks for being an idiot. We don’t want to be impossible to kill. What we want is to not be overly reliant on a single trait because everything else has been getting nerfed to compensate for it. Removing Dhuumfire would promote build diversity, because as it currently functions, it simply cannot be balanced.

I was joking dude. I realise removing dhuumfire would actually be a positive thing but Anet in its current mood will remove it, then plonk a 20% dmg debuff on top of it, then buff our tankiness just for giggles.

Necros are impossible to kill? That’s interesting. You really must tell me how you survive 3v1 sometime.

So finishing map completion then leaving for good it is.

I feel like anything after hitting lvl 80 is complete and utter horse sheet. It’s almost like there is 2 companies working on this game. A really talented and creative one was responsible for the core game, graphics, lore, exploration, 1-80 content.
And the other worthless, uninspired, kittenty one is responsible for the patches, endgame content and updates.

It’s mind-boggling how kittening amazing 1-80 content is, and how kittening unbelievably kittenty everything that comes after is.

Ontopic
Spite X is a nice change
Curses IV makes sense from an integrity stand point, sucks for game play. I’d prefer for them to take away some of the bleeding stacks/duration and keep the ICD.
Death VIII… just wow… more skill-free fear spam. I have no hope for this game’s future. at all.
It’s so apparent what they are trying to do (make blood/death ‘more attractive’) and yet the changes are so random.
Can we talk about nerfing Dhuumfire already?

STILL no buff to life siphoning.

Vital persistence buff is the only one that even caught my eye. But even with that, what trait would we give up to get it..?

So basically Necro’s are getting nerfs with nothing done to address how useless they are in PvE or how bad some of their traits are.

GREAT ANET GUD JOB.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, unless you’re running MM, there will no longer be a reason to go into death magic for PvP, I think?

Reanimator is still 95% useless in PvP because he doesn’t prokittenil after a person is killed, which for 95% of MM builds mean you just won your 1v1. He’s basically a victory-trophy in most situations, and the ones were he isn’t (team fights) you have already won the fight if you killed someone, he certainly won’t tip the balance any.

I agree with everyone saying the reanimator change is a game changer. It’s amazing.