Guild Wars 2

I understand… Well to me anyway, I still got nerfed, because I don’t use healing power gear, and with the same gear/build I was using pre-patch, my self healing got nerfed noticably with dagger #2. If it is just a bug.. I guess all I can do is hope it gets fixed.

But I am still mad that they made any changes to the blood tree that resulted in NO CHANGE in the amount we siphon, what was that supposed to accomplish? The tree was crappy before and it is still crappy, even with healing gear.

It was so that non-bloodthirst siphons are stronger.

I honestly don’t quite get the complaints about Dhuumfire. Engis get the same trait at Adept (!) level until now, and it will only be moved to Master in the upcoming patch. Yes, we have Epidemic and that is a big factor in the effectiveness of our condi builds, but I don’t think Dhuumfire is inherently problematic because of it. I think we need a condi trait at GM Spite, so that condi necros have a reason to go 30 points into it besides the 10% extra condition duration. Dhuumfire might not be the best trait for this in its current form, but I wouldn’t want to see it being removed completely either.

I don’t really care for much of the things buffed/nerfed in the patch, the bleed nerf on Staff 2 seems pointless and out of place though. No one uses this skill to stack bleeds anyway, I’ve always seen Staff as a utility weapon for condi builds, with scepter/dagger being the set for any significant stacking. I mainly use the skill for the regeneration, the bleeds are just a nice bonus. I’m quite happy about the change to Chill of Death, love that trait.

However, this patch shows that Anet have little idea of how to further build diversity for the Necro, seeing as they buffed so many niche traits with marginal implementations. Really, a nice way to push for more diverse builds would be to replace Protection of the Horde with something that is actually useful for someone not running minions and give us a non-minion Grandmaster option in Death Magic.

Okay guys… just spent all of yesterday catching up with the changes in the last 6 months.
I woke up this morning and had a few moments in my head trying to conjure up a build that would still work after all these odd nerfs and buffs.

PvP aside since its a whole different beast and meta..

Has anyone tried rolling up a zerk/knight based Minion master?

Okay, consider roughly a 0/0/30/x/30 build. You yourself would play mostly damage out of death shroud, while minions stack in additional physical DPS. When you pop out of DS, you have their secondary abilities to choose from. In my ideal bar setup, I’d roll with golem, shadow, and bone fiend at least. third slot is a mystery so far for me.

Max armor from minions and death points, boon duration% means you can also pick up retaliation to compliment your defense. Can either go knights+ruby slotted or Zerker+Emerald slotted. I’d pick zerk+emerald because that gives you just enough armor to be around the 2.1k mark to gain EHP and with dark armor slotted in the death tree, you could potentially be a good duelist with a d/d + a/f setup.

If you think about it… enter with death shroud, pop torment and fear, exit and blind opponent, golem ram stun.. immobilize blind and chill trifecta from dag ->axe swap… DS would be regened long before then and just autodump damage from life blast. If you put BiP into that 3rd bar slot and roll with some strength sigils and perhaps grab some of that might stacking from spite tree.. you could be a pretty hard target to take down even with a zerky setup. (with the ideal sigils and 10 points in spite, getting 13-16 might stacks when prepping for LB autodumping is really fantasti DPS… 4-6k per hit easily.)

Well Bloothirst wasnt even supposed to work with Locust Swarm, Life Siphon and Signet of the Locust (nor with some other items and runes i wont mention because a dev i caught in the mists of ebay asked me not to spread bug abuse cough hp to condi proc) since they are on damage of skill heals/supposed to be, but retained their original press demo functions as siphons.

Disappointing.

Then again, I’m not sure what I was really hoping for since a.net seems to have made their position on the vampiric aspect abundantly clear. What is especially disconcerting, though, is the continuing trend of attempting to solve the dps problem by whittling away at our bleed sources, while leaving dhuumfire intact. This will do nothing but further reinforce our dependency on burning, which is precisely the opposite of what the class needs.

Slower damage, more sustain, more reliable cc. That is the recipe a.net!

Bloodthirst never worked with Locust Swarm. Do you mean Deadly Feast?

From playing SE, CoE, and some WvW yesterday… conditions are simply not cutting it for viability these days. Gone are the days of just pumping massive condition duration and condition damage and dropping BiP, MoB, Enf x2 from DS and Critting like mad to keep the stacks maintained.

People are cleansing like crazy now. They even released runes specifically designed to combat necromancers and conditions. Is it time to push the power based necro?

And while people think “oh god, power based necros.. why not grab a warrior or thief?”
Really consider the DS mechanic for a second. People who play a tanky toon like I do know how amazing DS is for damage soaking and dealing damage once you get your armor rating high. Just consider it.

Crit chance and Crit damage% have always been the keys to amplifying DS damage through the roof.

Might stacking has always been a reliable way to amplify damage, this is most apparent with axe based builds.

DS still retains life force when getting hit with high armor rating.

Minions have been getting somewhat subtle buffs lately. What better way to give a zerker geared toon armor than to roll with minions and drop points into the death tree? We’ve seen the spite tree lose its glamour over the months.. time to reroll those traits?

Seriously— with golem, bone fiend, shadow, and wurm… you’re looking at at least a 2k DPS static advantage from them while they’re all alive. And they’re not that squishy anymore. Given that in WvW people don’t try to kill your minions in duels and in dungeons its all about stacking so they don’t get focused on that much anyways…

Is the time for the MM returning?

Necromancer’s in PvP

Response to Patch Notes:

The proposed reduction on the overall condition pressure of necromancers by reducing a few bleeds sounds reasonable!

Increasing the internal cooldown on Weakening Shroud will affect a necromancer’s ability to survive quite substantially.

Reduce the duration of the bleed Weakening Shroud applies instead?

Suggestion for Patch Notes:

I would like to see the trait X, Soul Mark, moved to adept tier.

Questions for Devs:

1. Could there be a change to how the death shroud bar appears for teammates in a party to denote a difference between actual health and life force pool?

2. Has Anet considered allowing necromancer’s to recover actual health while in DS?
—This would make siphons slightly better.
— It would increase necromancer’s ability to sustain in team fights.

On a side note:
Is there any possibility of Lyssa runes being removed from PvP?

Sheobix.8796:

snip

Yeah, its a solid build. You only need 0/0/20/0/30 to make it work, the last 20 is up to you.

Actually, now that I think about it.. only need 10 in Soul tree.

zerk+emerald slotting gets you to roughly 50%/50% on both crit chance and crit damage.

20/0/20/20/10

Vampy siphon MM with path to midnight and might stacking from LB.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdG1IhWrevmpG9eCRmR0QNxHOGqHuz68hA-jUyAo/BRTiCNRAgKAl8UWzeCithioxqtx0wER1SBcxwI-w

This build can deal nice damage in DS while also having very high armor and beefy minions. It will benefit from the increased toughness to power conversion and the buffed vital persistance in the near future…

Your old juggermancer build (20/0/25/25/0) will get both of those GM minor buffs and be a tanky minion spec that can leech health pretty good.

After testing the new blood changes in pvp I think the only way to really make a siphon spec is with minions, which sucks but at least its there.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bloodthirst never worked with Locust Swarm. Do you mean Deadly Feast?

Locust let you do additional 2~3 true damage to structures/objects without hp bar/selection with vampiric if you got over 5000 power/if you used it with lich or plague and generated a bit more LF if used that way when very downleveled/on queensdale champs.

Not really important since just vampiric does 25-40 to em either way on LS hits (pro tip you can use it to destroy the spore towers without help of golems/siege/bombs with 5 necros using vampiric on a well and d/wh build very very fast).
So no it worked, it was just very obtuse and quite worthless.

They are nerfing conditions constantly(both condi removal abilities for other classes, and necro skill nerfs), but they aren’t adding alternative direct damage aoe weapons to compensate this. If you don’t want us to play with condition build, add us alternative ranged aoe weapons to use with power builds. I already started to hate my condition build in wvw, because my conditions get cleansed so quickly without dealing noticable damage. It’s not a problem for other classes with power based aoes. Please don’t kill necro class…

Tobbygnome.6793:

Remember Terror was already hit by, wat was it, 17% or something?

Terror has actually been nurfed twice, once in June 25th when it was moved up to Master traits preventing certain builds from using it and and again on July 23rd when its damage was reduced by 17%.

look at this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY3djEat69ama07JAZGRT9MjuBnSh7oD-jkyAY/BRTZgJRgEBIqAQyrIasNiioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQEDjA-w

and the more minion reliant alternative:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY3djEat69ama0bKCJFRjaTK6G4gU8epRVwdA-jkyAY/BRTZgJRgEBIqAQyrIasNiioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQEDjA-w

My response in that thread.

RE: Necro changes

Some of it is good, but I really don’t think enough is being done to actually make the Blood and Death lines an attractive choice. I want to spec in them, but right now the sustain and defense gained from them is too low to bother with. One thing that would help is minor traits that were more generalist in Death instead of MM focused; and Blood traits need to just not suck.

Plus I don’t appreciate feeling forced into the faceroll Dhuumfire spec if I want to run conditions, which these changes don’t really help out with.

On staff; while your conclusion from your datamining about how many Necros use it may be that it is a top of the line weapon/skill set; what you may be failing to realize is that thanks to lack of disengage we are forced to carry it for fights where the only safe distance is 1200, as that gives us (barely) time to break off and run early if our screen folds or wanders off chasing a squirrel. We have no other 1200 range weapon options; and we are too slow and do not have enough roots and snares to get away if more than a couple people ignore our melee screen and assist train us at shorter ranges.

So having the staff skills burdened with an exception to mechanics that everyone else to my knowledge gets a blanket pass on (full recharge on interrupt) on top of a major stealth nerf to one of the only good support options the class has (putrid mark; team condition manipulation) seems unnecessarily punitive and detrimental towards viability and diversity. We use staff because of lack of good alternatives, not because it is face-roll easy.

Best thing is, this is just the stuff they are communicating to us, by May 2014 they might actually tell us what really was changed. Hopefully with more tact then with the Putrid Mark change.

Tyler Chapman

We are changing the tooltip to clear up the confusion for this skill. It is a 3 condition transfer from self to foes when they trigger it. None of the other issues are bugs.
Hope this clears things up. This skill has undergone major balance renovations.

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3135004

And worse it doesn’t seem like they care about/understand Necromancer…

We have ZERO true active defense ~ Deathshroud’s Lifeforce pales in comparison to a 2 sec block in many situations. (One hit kills in PvE, Assist Trains, CC Chains, etc, etc, etc.) Which is why burning/terror is pretty well the only viable PvP build ~ 100% in ~ if we fail the condi-bomb we are dead. period.

At this point I’d trade Deathshroud in a heart beat for any other classes active defense!

Myrkr.5803

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Suggestion-for-Necro-Lack-of-Evade-Block/first#post3030165

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Necromancer:
*Vigor 9sec on 50sec CD (40sec Traited) requires two utilities

Elementalist:
*Vigor 5sec on Crit with 5 sec CD
*Vigor 6sec on Cantrip use
*Invuln 4sec on 50sec CD (Focus)
*Projectile Reflect 5sec on 30sec CD (Staff)
*Projectile Destroy 6sec on 30 CD (Focus)
*Block 5sec/3atks on 75sec CD (Arcane Shield)
*Invuln 3sec on 75sec CD (Mist Form)
*Invuln 3sec on 45sec CD (Earth Shield)

Warrior:
*Vigor 10sec on 20sec CD (Warhorn)
*Vigor 8sec when you use a Stance
*Block 3sec on 30sec CD (Shield)
*Evade 3/4sec on 10sec (Greatsword)
*Invuln 4sec on 60sec (Enduring Stance)
*Block 1atk on 15sec CD (Sword OH)

Ranger
*Vigor 10sec on 40sec CD (Lightning Reflexes)
*Vigor 5sec on 15sec CD (when crit)
*Vigor 5sec or 3sec/pulse on Heal
*Vigor 5sec when swap to Moa/Bird/Jellyfish
*Evade 1sec in AA chain
*Evade 3/4sec on 40sec CD (Lightning Reflexes)
*Invuln 6sec on 60sec CD (Protect Me)
*Evade 1/2sec on 8sec CD (Sword)
*Evade 3/4sec on 15sec CD (Sword)
*Evade 1 1/4sec on 10sec CD (Dagger OH)

Guardian:
*Vigor 10sec on 60sec CD (Save Yourself!)
*Vigor 5sec on 5sec CD (on Crit)
*Aegis on 60sec CD (Virtue of Courage)
*Block 2sec on 30sec CD (Shelter)
*Projectile Destroy 6sec on 120sec CD (Sanctuary)
*Projectile Reflect 10sec on 40sec CD (Wall of Reflection)
*Aegis on 60sec CD (Retreat!)
*Invuln 3sec on 90sec CD (Renewed Focus)

Thief:
*Vigor 15sec on 35sec (untraited) CD (Steal)
*Vigor 8sec on Heal
*Evade 3/4sec on 15sec CD (Withdraw)
*Dodge returns some Endurance (Feline Grace)
*Stealth

Engineer:
*Vigor 5sec on 5sec CD when gaining swiftness (Swiftness can be gained on Crit)
*Projectile Reflect 3sec on 30sec CD (Shield)
*Block 2sec on 40sec CD (Shield)
*Block 3sec on 20sec CD (Gear Shield)
*Invuln 3sec on 60sec CD (Elixir S)
*Projectile Reflect on 15sec CD (Air Blast)

Mesmer:
*Evade 1~4sec Evade on 60sec CD (Distortion)
*Vigor 5sec on 5sec CD (on Crit)
*Vigor 5sec/Illusion Shattered
*Projectile Block on 25sec CD (pWarden)
*Block 2sec on 15sec CD (Sword OH)
*Evade 2 1/2sec on 12sec CD (Sword)
*Block 2sec on 12sec CD (Scepter)
*Projectile Reflect 2sec on 15sec CD (Mirror)
*Projectile Reflect 6sec on 40sec CD (Feedback)
*Focus can be traited to Reflect Projectiles
*Stealth

((And I missed several guardian defenses as well as Thief’s withdraw heal))

Instead we were forced to trade Dhuumfire for:

Myrkr.5803

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3135004

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A massive loss of utility on Putrid Mark (Stealth Nerf)

A Bleed Stack on scepter #2 (sPvP only)

Terror increasing to Master tier

Greater Marks increasing to Master tier

Terror Damage reduction

Not to mention in the same patch group Loss of Deathshroud absorbing a single hit

As well as Spectral Armor/Walk Lifeforce generation normalization.

That is an impressive trade off.

Soon the list will include another bleed (off Staff #2) and Signet of Spite (Which is a MASSIVELY telegraphed skill that applies as damaging conditions TWO bleeds and Poison currently ~ So terrifying.)

95% of my playtime is on Necromancer and basically the changes/responses since this game came out can be summed up as somewhere between Insulting and Quit/Reroll.

(“Necromancers haven’t figured out the really powerful builds yet” (read: L2P) (“Necromancers need to learn how to use Deathshroud” (read: L2P)
(And the most recent Putrid Mark “communication” come to mind easily…)

jpersson.7368:

I feel they are leveling the playing field with this patch. Sure, I hoped for more specifically for necromancers, but I can understand if they don’t want major changes to one profession when they are trying to level the others.

You know, I think you’re right. This balance patch isn’t about Necro at all, but they couldn’t very well give us nothing. From what I’ve seen in other forums, Elementalists and Guardians are rejoicing, Mesmers are in the same boat with us, Warriors are QQ all over everywhere, and Thieves are organizing a ragequit.

Maybe we should count our blessings that we got ignored this time around.

RashanDale.3609:

I Deschain I.4623:

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

this. so much this. Why do Guardians constantly get buffs? they need to get hit with the nerfbat, hard and often; not buffed…

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…

Are you kidding me? Guardians already got hit hard with the PoV fix. I don’t get how you can complain about guards, they easily get flopped by condi bombs.

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

Isn’t that a bit excessive of an increase in cd… at least try 20 seconds first.

If your going to do that at least move Death Shiver or Reapers Protection down to adept.

Or maybe give a real reason to go into blood by moving Ritual Mastery down to adept and Vampiric Rituals down to master.

NOOOO weakening shroud!!!! It should be a pvp only change. It is so useful for condition when stacking ;[ conditions dont need to be nerfed for pve. Vital persistance to 50% is nice though. But PLEASE not weakening shroud nerf…

This is what these canges mean for me and my Apothecary Support and Rabid Conditionmancer Build:

Apothecary Well Support: The Jagged Horror 1/2 CD will allow me to use them as more viable bleeders on attack adding to my DPS. Still mostly useless especially on any non condition based build. This build will also get another 130 power from traits slightly boosting siphon and normal damage. Although its obvious they want Death Magic and Blood Magic to be more power oriented, I still believe going condition well is better than power well for support and AoE DPS. The changes just keep making me more hybrid without losing any condition damage.

Unfortunately this doesn’t add up anymore in PvP, as about 2/3 of my Staff bleed damage in pvp is gone, making me have to role another build, go Power to keep DPS up or mindlessly spam all other AoE bleeds including geomancy and MoE. Jagged Horror change as mentioned does nothing for me in PvP.

Rabid Conditionmancer:

Regardless of the nerfs to Spite Siggy and MoB I will probably now use Rabid in SPvP over my support build to make up for the lost DPS with my other build. I never brought Weakening Shroud because I already felt the CD on it was too long to be useful. Chill to Death buff is also nice for my Rabid Conditionmancer. All in all not bad except for the lost DPS in spite siggy in all game modes (not a big deal).

I was in the process of making a video review for Guild Wars 2 expressing my support for the game, and then i see this…

With these changes necromancer is UP again… he already was in a weird spot as it was, but now…

Necromancer was/is very strong 1v1 if played right, but you can always get away from him if you want… and instantly dies in 1vX – such a weird meta, i know…
Now, the necromancer might not be strong in 1v1 either… so now he is not good at anything anymore, excellent…

If they nerf the damage, they might put us under a threshold that would simply make us not have enough damage to go over condition removals + heal + immunities at all, so we just keep doing damage… but since it is not enough, it will always be denied and reverted.

GG…

PS: does anyone remember my suggestion for DS 5 skill ?… the soul eater ?
Damage done at the end of a duration, based on other damage done at the end of that duration AND IF CURED return life… (based on damage done)

That would have given us less damage then dhummfire without forcing us into it, would have not taken a condition slot for a long time, dhummfire would have not been necesary at all… since now we would have had ways to reset the fight if the players decide to disengage, and have a bit of support vs multiple.
The catch was that the decision to heal us would have not been ours, the enemy decides if he wants to risk and take more damage and press on OR… cure + heal and in the process healing us as well, and leaving combat.

Would have fixed the long lasting problem that most classes try a 1 shot combo on us, while immune to conditions just for fun… then run away and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Necromancer would still be not mobile, or OP damage… but would have been able to have the fight reseted as well WHEN THE ENEMY decides that.

I remember having almost a thousand people asking for my skill to be implemented… but nooo…

If Anet ever read the necro forums we wouldn’t even need to talk about this.. >_>

LoL @ all those who were abusive about my hate of dumbfire.

See what supporting the god of fire/life dose?!!

Bhawb.7408:

There wasn’t a single “nerf” to blood magic. The only nerfs resulted from incorrect scaling with the newly buffed siphons, otherwise everything was either unchanged or flat buffed.

Excluding losing 30% of BloodThrist, minions healing less per hit.
Was a loss to over all attrition, unless you accidentally picked up Vampiric doing other things.
Sure it was a ‘damage boost’ to minions with power…

Even the effects of gear/stats on the skills sum it up:
0.004 Healing Power.
0.2 Power.

If they truly want us to be attrition; they need to do something sufficiently constructive in Blood and Death to give us access to the sustain needed to stay alive and do our jobs.

reanimator change?

Overkillengine.6084:

If they truly want us to be attrition; they need to do something sufficiently constructive in Blood and Death to give us access to the sustain needed to stay alive and do our jobs.

Agreed. A simple change would be to make blood the “sustain” line and Death the anti-burst line. By buffing lifesteals some more and perhaps giving Death a new Grandmaster trait- “Your life force depletes 90% less from damage for 2 seconds after entering DS” A pseudo block, which won’t stop conditions from coming at you, but can help with our lack of vigor/multi target defense.

IMO move Death Nova to Master, remove Death Chill, and add a new Grandmaster trait along these lines.

Draehl.2681:

Overkillengine.6084:

If they truly want us to be attrition; they need to do something sufficiently constructive in Blood and Death to give us access to the sustain needed to stay alive and do our jobs.

Agreed. A simple change would be to make blood the “sustain” line and Death the anti-burst line. By buffing lifesteals some more and perhaps giving Death a new Grandmaster trait- “Your life force depletes 90% less from damage for 2 seconds after entering DS” A pseudo block, which won’t stop conditions from coming at you, but can help with our lack of vigor/multi target defense.

IMO move Death Nova to Master, remove Death Chill, and add a new Grandmaster trait along these lines.

Why not just have Death Shroud give Aegis on activation/exit?

Sarrs.4831:

Draehl.2681:

Overkillengine.6084:

If they truly want us to be attrition; they need to do something sufficiently constructive in Blood and Death to give us access to the sustain needed to stay alive and do our jobs.

Agreed. A simple change would be to make blood the “sustain” line and Death the anti-burst line. By buffing lifesteals some more and perhaps giving Death a new Grandmaster trait- “Your life force depletes 90% less from damage for 2 seconds after entering DS” A pseudo block, which won’t stop conditions from coming at you, but can help with our lack of vigor/multi target defense.

IMO move Death Nova to Master, remove Death Chill, and add a new Grandmaster trait along these lines.

Why not just have Death Shroud give Aegis on activation/exit?

Because it would only work on one hit. The idea being to give us some defense against multiple enemies that we are sorely lacking compared to those with vigor/invulns/stealth/etc. This would vary from those in that we would still get hit with any conditions/disables, but would allow DS to eat a large chunk of damage within a small period of time, similar to how it once did, without the downside of being able to do the silly jumps, etc.

When it comes down to it, you can “out skill” and win when outnumbered using classes like Thief, Ele, etc. with their evasive skills, but it is very difficult to with via brute force of the Necro when outnumbered unless you’re fighting complete incompetents.

Ascii.9726:

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

The bleed reductions don’t seem to make much sense when halving the recharge on Reanimator will result in what? More bleeds.

The cross-line traits (Deadly Strength, Blood to Power, Death into Life) might sound good in theory, but they are trivial-to-minor boosts for Power-based builds that opt for more tankiness. In effect, two of them improve DPS slightly for tanks….I thought they wanted to reduce raw DPS? Or does direct damage = pressure and condi dmg <> pressure?

Banshee Wail & Chill of Death – big thumb’s up!

Vital Persistence change is a great boost, but really just reinforces again the point that’s been stated so many times on this forum: Death Shroud should not drain at all!

In general, improving sustain cannot mean more on-demand defenses that reduce incoming damage while we are at full health and can make us OP. Last Gasp and Chill of Death are examples of traits available only when at reduced health – i.e., where sustain is needed.

To me, sustain also has to mean more ways to recoup lost health. This keeps it from being OP at high/full health. One way might be to change Bloodthirst to scale inversely off of health: the lower my health the more Bloodthirst siphons.

Another might be a Major trait which reduces damage inflicted (i.e., reduces Power & Malice by x%) when one is under 20% health, but which instead causes AoE siphoning of health. So it would be very helpful 1vX, but at the cost of making it much more difficult to finish off a target while under 20%. This is the kind of self-inflicted dilemma Anet seems to like necros to have to choose between. So, for example:

Vampiric Focus – when below 20% health reduce Power & Malice by 33% and AoE siphon health (900 range) every second for 10 seconds. Recharge: 15 seconds

Jon thanks for posting, I look forward to further discussions about these Dec 10th changes. I assume by your post that nothing is yet set in stone and maybe the community here can further outline the problems as we see them and this will give us a better understanding as to how you as developers view them.

Might want to take a look at this “trait” called Siphoned Power while you’re at it. At its current state, you can pretty much remove it from the game and no one will notice the difference.

Reposting this from the general thread to have a shot at broadening the discussion.

Taken from the mesmer post:

Scepter
Scepter is still missing something but we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play and are trying to move away from builds that focus so much on the “1” skill. I feel like that scepter should be the tricksy defender that can stop enemies from attacking and defend allies, but maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working.

Are there changes possible to necro weapons that greatly revolve around just that – spamming ‘1’, whether it’s the dagger, the DS, the axe or the scepter.

In general after palying most professions I feel that necromancer, which is my favourite character, is really left behind in the fun weapon category. They are usually decent, good even, but all are missing some nice skills that would make the gameplay more fun.

Usual necro fights:
Snare skill (Chillblains, Grasping Dead, Dark Pact) -> DPS AoE -> ‘1’, ‘1’, ‘1’
Repeat.

I probably am a little biased, but that’s how I feel. Could the necro get some interesting chains on their skills to make it more fun than it already is?
I think there is no discussion making things more fun and more active should be the way to go when designing and evolving each profession.

Once again, thank you, Jon, for taking your time at the weekend.

JonPeters.5630:

Weakening Shroud
This trait as it currently stands on live is a borderline grandmaster trait. It is near 100% AoE weakness uptime for a small investment. The new version is still probably worthy of master tier with almost 50% AoE weakness uptime.

I agree that the quality of Weakening Shroud exceeds adept tier.
I already posted this in the original discussion thread, but here it is again: many necros wouldn’t have a problem with reduction of weakness uptime or just 1 stack of bleeding if the cooldown stays the same.
You could make it apply 1x bleeding and 3 sec weakness, but keep the 15 sec cd. I bet some would even agree to a 10 sec cd without any bleeding at all, instead of a regular Enfeebling Blood every 25 sec.

It’s not about uptime for necros, but about chosing the right moment to mitigate damage and increase sustain in shroud.
If all you do is increase the cd, you’ll take away survivability but still allow for the same condition pressure if the skill is off cooldown.

JonPeters.5630:

…at the end of the day all master tier traits in this line are overshadowed by Terror which is the real problem.

I agree that Terror overshadows all other traits, but that’s not necessarily a problem.
All condition builds go 30 in Curses only if they want a second master trait (Lingering Curse is PvE only).
But if you bump Terror to gm, then you’ll only nerf those builds who aren’t using 30 points in Curses already. So Terror overshadowing other traits is only problematic if you think that players shouldn’t have a trait in a different line as well, because necros will always pick Terror for PvP content.

JonPeters.5630:

Dhuumfire
We know there are problems here, but again this condition helps those conditionmancers get over the top and is really what brought them into play in a lot of parts of the game. I think the real problems with this trait are:
1) Having to put 30 points into the power line as a condition necro.
2) Requiring crit on a 30 point trait in a line that does nothing to improve crit chance.

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

Mind… blown.. O_o

I can NOT belive that you feel this trait needs easier access. The real problems with this trait… is the trait! It needs to be erased from the necro trait lines forever, unless you plan to make it the second gm Curses besides Terror.

Let’s get one thing straight: Dhuumfire is stupid op even if (!!!) you run full Carrion or Dire with less than 20% crit chance. It will always proc reliably (you get fury with 15 in Curses), it requires no skill and has absolutely zero drawbacks defensive wise.
The fact that you go 30 in Spite to get it doesn’t make it weaker at all. It actually makes the necro stronger, because most skills (especially DS) have strong hybrid tendencies anyway. And there’s Chill of Death and some really good adept traits, nothing that a condi-mancer wouldn’t want.
Move it down to master tier so you can have 20/30///? Not sure if I want to laugh or cry at this -_-

Dhuumfire is an embarrassment to the necro profession!

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.
****
I hope this helps direct discussion a bit, and thanks for your patience,

Jon

Lets dissect this:
MoB – A typical condition neco deals about 4-5% of his damage via it since it requires enemy triggers and because of death magic limitations via reani and poth it can never be used for its full potential as perma regen if you can somehow proc it every time, we are nerfing it for kittens and giggles, but wont do it for pve since people would go apekitten over such a change as they did over MoE

Terror – A awesome idea we left in a adept place at start because it made sense, then buffed it up to a build design trait, but didnt make it powerful enough to be grandmaster, now we gave you a kittenty unwanted GM trait so that people can complain about this trait being op despite being hard countered by stability. So instead of making sense by removing dumbfire and placing terror here and buffing it to 120% of its old potential/do some pre condition damage boost that would reward skilled condi control, we shall continue to troll you poor guys who want hexes.

Also we think that Hemophilia, Reaper’s Precision and Spectral Attunement are strong and/or on the correct trait line.

We dont know what we should put in the spite line, a line which has awesome potential with kittenty trats named after awesome things, like Spiteful Spirit which could easily be a 0 cd on DS entry cast Unholy Feast allowing for necro tanks or maybe moving Reapers Might up to GM and make it Life blast be the underwater version?

P.S. we think blood magic line is fine.

On a serious note, by god please, devs its nice that you reply, but such posts just make you even more the designated villain, maybe a nice constructive discussion which would include player feedback on actual new ideas going on would help, since a lot of traits and skills you think are good or useful, plain aint.

nekretaal.6485:

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.

Lol. You should see the kitten in the ele forums. You should remember that you can touch them with your little toe and they’ll drop under the 90% tresshold. This is nice for the support builds which are out of range of your little toe but they’r all (me included) mad about the fact that anet is trying to push support staff so hard but has no clue about the rest.

Jon, the biggest problem with Dhuumfire is that it is easy coverage of the bleed stack that you mentioned is hard to remove. Dhuumfire is a high-damage cover condition. By keeping Dhuumfire as-is, or even making the trait more accessible, you are actually reinforcing the problem. If you wish to keep the trait, then it needs to be changed to a condition already in the necro’s rotation. That would make cleansing condition stacks more effective.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Jon, the biggest problem with Dhuumfire is that it is easy coverage of the bleed stack that you mentioned is hard to remove. Dhuumfire is a high-damage cover condition. By keeping Dhuumfire as-is, or even making the trait more accessible, you are actually reinforcing the problem. If you wish to keep the trait, then it needs to be changed to a condition already in the necro’s rotation. That would make cleansing condition stacks moer effective.

Yes, there is not nearly enough cleansing of conditions going on in this game already…

Is it just me, or do all developers think Necros have the best most powerful skills in the game?

Jon Peters on Mark of Blood

This is one of the most versatile and powerful skills in the game.

Tyler Chapman on Putrid Mark

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

Jon its pretty obvious that no words are going to change what is already happening. The justification for these changes is great when you start picking out best case scenario numbers that in reality never actually happen.

That is the problem when you try to balance a class via a spreadsheet rather than playing the class and discovering in practice you never ever get close to the scenarios you state. I would love to have 100% weakness uptime, the full ticks of my staff bleed, the perma regen numbers and bleed damages that you state. In reality outwith the spreadsheets the conditions are cleansed easily either via combo fields or via traits or utilities that other classes bring. It’s an urban legend that all Necro builds can easily outstack the condition cleanses, as not every Necro is spec’d for condition application.

Regen is all well and good when you consider we rely on DS and in order to negate being railroaded we enter into DS and thus negating that perma regen we obtain. Terror on its own is not as powerful as you think but combined with Dhuumfire it does take it over the edge. I would rather you take Dhuumfire and stick it on another classes trait line and give us something else that doesn’t require you butchering our class or other traits just to balance out this deadly combination.

As for the other skills in Curses, Chilling Darkness is never a master trait, yes it is a good skill but we have 3 blinds and one requires the enemy to stupidly stand in a well with a long cooldown. The other one requires you to be remotely close for the unreliable bounces to happen and the last one requires you enter into plague form and then wait another 180 seconds before it happens. So yes the skill is a good skill but it is never a master skill and again in theory its great if everything worked and the enemy never ever cleansed conditions or they just stand there like idiots to let it happen.

Again I do not know where you get the information from, Blood Necro’s are not feeling pretty good, we are feeling pretty shafted as you tweaked around the numbers to give us blood necro’s little to no improvements in the way of life siphoning. If its not for the fact you rely on that tree if you run Well’s and probably certain minion builds there is little to no point in going into it as the siphons you receive are laughable at best and the only saving grace was transfusion which can be beneficial to your team members.

The problem being is that you are aware certain trait lines need work done but when are you ever going to find the time to do it?

Ascii.9726:

Is it just me, or do all developers think Necros have the best most powerful skills in the game?

Jon Peters on Mark of Blood

This is one of the most versatile and powerful skills in the game.

Tyler Chapman on Putrid Mark

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

Well, if there weren’t 14000 ways to remove conditions, MoB would be amazing.

JonPeters.5630:

Dhuumfire
We know there are problems here, but again this condition helps those conditionmancers get over the top and is really what brought them into play in a lot of parts of the game. I think the real problems with this trait are:
1) Having to put 30 points into the power line as a condition necro.
2) Requiring crit on a 30 point trait in a line that does nothing to improve crit chance.

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

All of this back and forth could upset a lot of balance, but if this moved down to master tier Terror would almost certainly be moving up to grandmaster to accommodate. At least then condition necromancers would be 20/30/x/x/x, which just makes so much more sense. The biggest thing holding that back is the lack of a replacement grandmaster in Spite. We aren’t huge fans of weapon or utility type specific traits at this tier otherwise an improved Axe Training might have a shot. This is the crux of the damage necromancer problem right now, and we will talk about it more next week so any discussion on it here will aid us in those talks.

Jon,

Thanks for the post. I very much agree with your points on Dhuumfire, though I specifically wanted to comment on the Spite grandmaster traits. Close to Death makes a great deal of sense as a raw damage increase, however despite the balance considerations I don’t feel Dhuumfire belongs in this line, or at the very least not as the grandmaster. Have you guys toyed at all with the idea of creating a grandmaster trait centered around conditions that do not do damage? This is particularly intriguing to me because this is the Condition Duration/Power line, so something that boost and/or plays off the application of Chill/Immob/Weakness/Vuln/etc. would be very much welcome. Some ideas:

-Gain quickness when applying Chill/Immobilize/Fear + Reduced CD of skills that apply these effects. 10-20 sec cooldown.
-Gain health and/or might stacks when one of your control conditions is removed.
-Target the Weak- bring this trait to Spite as a Grandmaster, with some functional or numeric tweaks. Again, perhaps go down the line of just working with Immobilize/Fear/Chill/Cripple control skills.
-Also, you might look into defenses against non-damaging condition effects, either as a standalone or addition to one of the above ideas… Rather than trying to shed debilitating conditions maybe you’re better at just powering through them. IE… you take less damage while dazed/stunned/immobilized/feared. The effectiveness of Chill/Cripple/Vulnerability/Weakness is reduced. Etc.

Just some thoughts, but I really feel there is potential for Spite to be fleshed out a little better as a damage/control line, rather than just damage.

Even though I will not get a response, I have to ask does any Dev actually play Necromancer? (I mean actually play it ~ Meta Events/PvE/Dungeons/Fractals 30~40/WvW and sPvP ~ not just load a test character into sPvP.)

Because honestly, after the removal of Deathshroud absorbing a hit, the lack of an active defense (mainly PvE/WvW) is brutal. (Once agin spending lifeforce to “block” or reverting the deathshroud absorb change would be an easy fix, as it “cost” us Lifeforce (health) to block.)

The lack of Mobility is also brutal (WvW) and we recieve zero compensation for it. (I know cripples/chills are supposed to be the fix but they don’t work against relatively spammable movement skills. Dark Path and Spectral grasp are very slow and often buggy.)

Jon Peters

Death Magic
On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good. The Death line on the other hand is too focused on minions. From Reanimator, which we have heard over and over feels bad as a minor trait, to the fact that 1/3 of the remaining traits are minion traits, to finally the fact that both grandmaster traits are minion traits.

Death and Blood magic are only useful for minion masters.

The only decent defensive trait in Death Magic is Reapers Protection (2sec fear on disable with a 90sec CD (being buffed to 60sec) vs Tempest Defense which is a 4sec Aura that stuns for 1 sec each time you get hit 60sec CD (being buff to 25sec), not to mention the heavy synergy Elementalist can get with auras) and Ritual of Protection. (Only useful for invested Well users)

In PvE the “sustain” that blood magic gives (actually was nerfed that last time it was “improved”) is meaningless against one hit KO boss mechanics (That blow right through Death Shroud and put us in down state.

In PvP in also doesn’t matter, without any active defense (vigor to dodge, evades, blocks or invulnerables), escapes, stealths, etc. You are either not getting hit, or CCed to death. (And at best vampiric wells is spending 30 pnts for area denial ~ so that someone can roll in and punt you off the point anyways. Extremely limited stability.)

Hey Jon, thanks for posting!

I know me talking about this idea is broken recordish and comes from another necro (Nemesis), but has any thought been given to moving Dhuumfire to grandmaster in curses and moving terror to grandmaster in curses (and perhaps reverting the change to terror damage)? That way, condi necros will not have to invest into spite if they do not want to, the “condi burst” of dhuumfire+terror would be stopped and build diversity would be opened up.

Clearly another trait would need to be put into spite master. Maybe a modification of withering precision that includes chill as well as weakness?

flow.6043:

JonPeters.5630:

Dhuumfire
We know there are problems here, but again this condition helps those conditionmancers get over the top and is really what brought them into play in a lot of parts of the game. I think the real problems with this trait are:
1) Having to put 30 points into the power line as a condition necro.
2) Requiring crit on a 30 point trait in a line that does nothing to improve crit chance.

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

Mind… blown.. O_o

I can NOT belive that you feel this trait needs easier access. The real problems with this trait… is the trait! It needs to be erased from the necro trait lines forever, unless you plan to make it the second gm Curses besides Terror.

Let’s get one thing straight: Dhuumfire is stupid op even if (!!!) you run full Carrion or Dire with less than 20% crit chance. It will always proc reliably (you get fury with 15 in Curses), it requires no skill and has absolutely zero drawbacks defensive wise.
The fact that you go 30 in Spite to get it doesn’t make it weaker at all. It actually makes the necro stronger, because most skills (especially DS) have strong hybrid tendencies anyway. And there’s Chill of Death and some really good adept traits, nothing that a condi-mancer wouldn’t want.
Move it down to master tier so you can have 20/30///? Not sure if I want to laugh or cry at this -_-

Dhuumfire is an embarrassment to the necro profession!

Agree with this: Jon’s comments illustrate the kinds of unnatural contortions required to make Dhuumfire acceptable.

If it were reworked (on hit, etc.) , would there would not still be the issue of covering bleeds, which might lead to more bleed nerfs?

The best way to stop having issues with Dhuumfire is to stop having Dhuumfire!