Guild Wars 2

Sepreh.5924:

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?

I liked that last bit… that’s very much along the lines of what I’d like to see as a Spite grandmaster. Withering Precision (not exactly, but something similar) fits so perfectly in the Spite line, while Dhuumfire clearly belongs in Curses.

Jon -

Terror probably needs to be grandmaster, and share a slot with Dumbfire. Pick between terror damage and burning.

In return, move Attunement to Adept, move Enfeebling blood to Master and then go from there.

Also, I’m not sure why you say “blood is fine”. It’s not fine. It’s still awful.

I’d like to see a different minor trait for every level of Death Magic. It’s a terrible tree unless you go all out in pets, and pets are laughable against anyone with half a braincell.

Draehl.2681:

I liked that last bit… that’s very much along the lines of what I’d like to see as a Spite grandmaster. Withering Precision (not exactly, but something similar) fits so perfectly in the Spite line, while Dhuumfire clearly belongs in Curses.

Im glad someone agrees

I have always (as I am sure others have) split conditions into two main categories: damage dealing conditions and support conditions.

Damage dealing conditions include burning, bleeding, torment, confusion, poison and fear (with torment).

Support conditions include blind, chilled, crippled, immobilize, vulnerability and weakness.

Since curses is the condition damage line, it should include the best access to the damage dealing conditions. Spite has condition duration as a secondary attribute so it makes sense that some traits that deal with support conditions are included there. I think it is kind of funny that right now we have “condition necros” and “power necros” (as well as other builds). All necros should be “condition necros”, but not all necros should use damage dealing conditions as their primary damage source.

I play a berserker necro so I will probably never get rid of Close to Death. That being said, having good access to “lockdown” conditions in the power line (spite) would allow direct damage necros to more easily “lock down” a target. Having a grandmaster with weakness/chilled that actually allows you to lock the target down would be a great option for direct damage necros who do not spec a lot into precision or crit damage. This may allow for a more “tanky”, attrition build that utilizes direct damage, support conditions and toughness… or siphons… (build diversity)

Never ever have I seen someone complain that their bleed stacks were so high that the bleeding would never make it to the bottom stacks. You know why? Because people cleanse a million times in a fight. They don’t even have to think about it. And now we can’t either. R.I.P putrid mark.

Honestly, terror builds look cool on paper, but they’re dull in practice. They don’t perform as well as you’d like to think. Too much trait investment for too little gain.

What they should be doing is increasing how much damage gets released per tick for bleeding, as well as lower the amount of stacks applied per each skill… across the whole board. Then we wouldn’t have a problem with the 25 bleed cap, and necros would actually be able to do damage against groups of people larger than two who all together have 685940% uptime on cleanse. Ever try playing against a tight group in PvP or WvW? Dear lord, you’ll do nothing as a condition necro. You’ll always see your bleeds stick to their bar for about a second, and disappear or turn into a boon. It’s disgusting.

Maybe they should think about that balance, not just on paper and 1v1. They should be thinking about staking class mechanics against each other— statically, so they can think about the inherent problems when you introduce the most probable case scenario.

P.S. The reason why dumbfire is doing such good cover damage is because it does such good damage per tick. Why do you think other classes that use burn as a condition do so great?

Regarding the Reanimator trait:

I know this will probably never happen, and maybe the devs have already considered it, but I think it would be a much cooler trait if it activated when using a minion attack skill, instead of when an enemy is killed. Keep a CD of 15 seconds or so.

Doing this would add an extra layer of strategy to using the minion attacks and would add a level of control to building up a minion horde that’s not currently present.

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.

Wait what? Where was that posted? Does that mean they wont fix Staff and keep the “bugs”?

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

…

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.

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.

This line receives a lot of discussion as well, but any proposal we talk about always ends up with more work than we have time to build, much less test.

I hope this helps direct discussion a bit, and thanks for your patience,

Jon

Almost all of the people on this forum can testify to my love for the necromancer class, and the respect i have for ArenaNet. How i still advertise the game and the class…
With that being said… allow me to say that while everything you said is true, you speak as if besides all of these… necromancer can survive focus fire, can chase and escape…
We had all of these because we can not survive focus fire, we can not chase… we can not escape !… our damage was all that we had going for us…

I have an idea… one of your best necromancer players fights vs 2 of my people and see if he doesn’t die instantly. Then you get two of your best guys… and i will bring you one of each class (except necromancer) and i will prove to you that you can’t kill him… he will escape you, at least for a minute or more…

Not to sound rude… but have any of you tried playing high end TPvP ?… If so please show me how can you survive focus fire, and be more alive then dead in those situations, which are… almost all the time…
No aegis, no block, no distortion, no invulnerability, no mist form, no revive, no total condition immunity, no total physical damage immunity… no mobility…All we had was our damage which made us really strong 1v1… really bad at everything else.

Take that away from us… you’ll see way less necromancers in TPvP, and that is because people will eventually get tired of fighting a bit then dying from focus fire… fight a bit, die… fight die / low damage = kill nothing because targets always get away… chase = negative.

Andele.1306:

Wait what? Where was that posted? Does that mean they wont fix Staff and keep the “bugs”?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/

As a power melee necro, I would like to go 25 in death. Its just hard to with your minor focusing on minions. Death 5 would be more useful it the minion turned into a posiin cloud on death or something. Death 15 is what it is I guess.

blood line needs to have quickening thirst and dagger mastery combined and made a master level talent. Melee mancer sustain should come from blood but we need to take dagger talents instead and most weapon cool down talents already do more then just lower the cool down on the weapon.

Nemesis

I have an idea… one of your best necromancer players fights vs 2 of my people and see if he doesn’t die instantly.

I’d even being willing to bet their best necromancer against ONE of my sPvPers. Confident they could shut them down easily on several classes. One most likely could do it with his guardian, warrior, and mesmer. (Likely with Thief as well easily enough.)

Nemesis

No aegis, no block, no distortion, no invulnerability, no mist form, no revive, no total condition immunity, no total physical damage immunity… no mobility…All we had was our damage which made us really strong 1v1… really bad at everything else.

Simply quoted because it cannot be reiterated enough.

Basically they are nerfing random things which hurt more builds which are not that powerful at first place.

Go terrormancer.

Hi Jon, thanks for your post. I’d like to share my own (somewhat high level) view as well (focusing on condimancer mostly):

• ‘Flavour’ text:
  [quote=3133116;JonPeters.5630:]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.
  [/quote]
  I mostly agree with this, but then I look at the actual changes and I don’t really see the same. Or to be more precise, if you read everything literally: the first and second sentence somewhat contradict one another. Basically, you’re saying: some stuff is too strong and some stuff is too weak, so we brought the strong stuff down a bit and left the weaker stuff as it is (aka ‘maintained’). Again, that’s taking eveything litteraly (I don’t feel that this is the spirit of the text), but unfortunately that’s pretty much exactly what I see in the changes…

• Terror+Dhuumfire
  With the introduction of Dhuumfire, you basically gave us the tools for strong burst potential (terror + dhuumfire) on top of our already decent sustained damage (bleeds); in other words it allowed us to play a kind of condi glass cannon (at least in traits). In itself, I see nothing wrong with having this option. Where the problem arises is that this option basically overshadows any other for 2 reasons: traitwise there are no other roles that you can choose that are this impactful (more on this later), and you don’t give up a lot of survivability doing so. I (and others) feel that leaving Dhuumfire where it is and moving Terror up to grandmaster could resolve this somewhat, as the difference between 30/20/0/0/20 and 30/30/0/0/10 is losing our best defensive trait (making the glass cannon more glassy) and losing that 50% fear duration.
  There is a lot to be said for changing Dhuumfire to torment as well, but that’s another discussion that others have already gone into extensively.

• Other build option
  [quote=3134349;JonathanSharp.7094:]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.[/quote]
  I found this very intersting, but unfortunately, there is pretty much no way to specialize in this role through trait choices: these are build in to the necro’s base rotation, but you can’t really improve upon that. At the same time, I feel A LOT of necroes would greatly welcome a role where you do some base pressure (bleeds) and add to that some pressure relief for your team through non-damaging conditions (chill, blind, weakness, etc.); compared to the current base pressure+burst (terror and dhuumfire). This is also in line with other balance decisions you made for other classes, where if some options were a bit strong, you instead opened up other options more, thus having more people chose those and thus relieving some of the problem. Maybe a new trait (GM Death Magic?), that greatly affects the duration of non-damaging conditions, could do a lot here?

• Defense through Death Shroud and Life Siphon
  While this is all good and well on paper, I still feel this is lacking in practice. Death Shroud can be very good, but there is a night and day difference between fights in WvW and sPvP here. I can only beg to consider making us start with some life force in sPvP, as building it up as a condimancer can be really be a problem and just makes you flat out less useful at the start of a match (and if your opponent knows this and focuses you early on, I can assure you you’re raging hard…)
  For life siphon I think most will disagree with you that “On the defensive side, the Blood necros are starting to feel pretty good.” At least, siphoning isn’t something you pick up if you want to improve your defenses a bit. You either go siphoning all out (mostly in a minion master build) or you don’t bother with it at all. An extra effort in that department could still go a long way, e.g. it has been suggested to let life siphon work through death shroud (as the 2 counteract each other now).

Also, another consideration IF Terror and Dhuumfire are moved to Curse Grandmasters… they’re both effectively condition burst. Would it not be more appropriate to have Terror be the “burst” option and have Dhuumfire instead apply longer duration Torment? This would create a consideration of “Do I spec for burst condition or sustained pressure conditions?” Plus Torment is infinitely easier to balance than burning because you can more granularly adjust the stacks/duration, compared to Burning.

JonPeters.5630:

On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good.

Please to explain how this is true, outside of minion builds. Investing in Blood always feels to me like 10 points worth of payoff for 30 points of traits. Dismal numbers and poor scaling for vampiric traits, “support” heals that don’t help you and are a joke compared to what other support builds can offer (most of which starts with “w” and ends with “ater fields”), a couple of cooldown reductions that might be worth picking up if the line offered anything else, and Mark of Blood on dodge (which knowing our luck will be nerfed from two bleeds to one, just for laughs). I’m seriously trying wrap my head around how the Blood line is any good, let alone pretty good.

Blood Magic Necromancers aren’t feeling good. I have no idea who you got that idea from (it had to have been internal), because I have never talked to a Necro that feels non-minion siphoning is good.

Also, can we get some clarity on the quote from Chapman?

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.

You do realize this is total crap right? That a 25 second CD ability that cleanses 3 conditions. How does that equate to one of the best skills in the game?

I feel like you say something really great (Death magic is way too minion focused) and then shove your foot in your mouth (making Dhuumfire even easier to acquire).

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.

I’m genuinely curious as to what kind of analysis has led the design team to the above conclusion – one that differs vastly from that of the necro community. It would really help to know some of the underlying thought process behind your reasoning here, since quite frankly we’re not even close to being in the same ballpark.

Regardless, there are two problems with Dhuumfire as I see it:

First, it works directly against the class concept of attrition (without any benefits, as opposed to terror). This ultimately boils down to what kind of a class you want to design, but here I’m assuming that the necromancer is supposed to outlast the opponent by means of sustainability (life siphoning, death shroud, etc) and lockdown (non-damaging conditions, snares, gap closers, etc) while whittling them down over time with moderate damage output. The problem then is that Dhuumfire deals far too much damage too fast for this to realistically occur. What you currently have is not an attrition class, but rather a condi-burst class that relies on overwhelming the target with heavy condition damage almost immediately. Moderate damage output over time is the price an attrition class must pay in exchange for superior sustainability and lockdown. It is what provides the (gradually closing) window of opportunity that other classes are given against a necromancer. Burning adds too much burst to work with the class concept – Terror is more than enough, and is incidentally also a much more interesting mechanic since it doubles as a cc, which means it actually matters when you unload it (while Dhuumfire is essentially just damage for the sake of damage).

The second problem is that Dhuumfire lowers the skill ceiling of the class considerably. If the goal is to design a class whose purpose is to stall for time (and eventually come out on top), it stands to reason that slapping a condition onto the class that drastically reduces the need to do so removes much of the interesting gameplay. A good necromancer should win as a result of skillful play – knowing when to unload fears, managing death shroud, applying snares and kiting appropriately, and so on. Dhuumfire requires literally zero skill to trigger, and reduces the time length of combat to the point where you – instead of stalling for time – now have incentive to unload everything immediately in order to put the enemy in an unrecoverable position right away. When you have enough burst damage to do this, strategic concerns about when to use which skills go right out the window. You just go for the jugular.

This forum has seen a lot of posts on Dhuumfire by now, and few of them express a favorable view of it. There’s a limit to how many bursty elements you can add to an attrition class without ruining the concept, and Dhuumfire is one too many. Availability is the least of its problems (if anything, having to invest 30 points in Spite is what keeps the trait in check).

Thank you Jon for finally posting to this forum.

May I voice my disappointment for the way you touted the changes our blood magic trait line. Seriously even the devs showing off the “changes” seemed to hardly be able to keep a strait face and rushed quickly into showing us the only “real” change to transfer. In the future, please refrain from displaying so much hype for what could be considered, at best, to be a small tweak.

As for these changes it seems you are still bound and determined to make us the condi dispenser and thus continue to move us away from the attrition class you promised us.

Signed: you average (non-condi) necromancer

By JonPeters.5630 logic bip is the most OP ability in the game, it can oneshot any class by the click of one button.

flow.6043:

Andele.1306:

Wait what? Where was that posted? Does that mean they wont fix Staff and keep the “bugs”?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/

kitten it im quitting necro past farming/till we get new actually efficient weapons now bye.

Some great (negative) feedback guys, but some of the posts are bordering on hostile. Don’t scare them away or they might not come back at all. What I’m picking up on so far as general feedback lately…

-Dhuumfire, despite being powerful, is bad for Necros overall.
-More control would be welcome, especially for power builds.
-DS is great, but fails to protect us against burst from multiple sources like Vigor/Evade/Stealth/Invulns can.
-Aside from minions, Life Siphons are still rather weak.
-Death Magic needs less emphasis on minions.

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. This line has a lot of powerful traits, but suffers from having only 1 choice at grandmaster tier.

in what world is 6s/25s = almost 50%?

It is currently 6/15, which with condition duration and other weakness inate to most PvP builds (only thing they usually look at) does equate to near 100% weakness.

Bhawb.7408:

It is currently 6/15, which with condition duration and other weakness inate to most PvP builds (only thing they usually look at) does equate to near 100% weakness.

i know what it is right now… -.-

but he wasnt talking about any other weakness. it was only about this one trait.

and 6s/15s = 100% uptime is just as incorrect.

RashanDale.3609:

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. This line has a lot of powerful traits, but suffers from having only 1 choice at grandmaster tier.

in what world is 6s/25s = almost 50%?

An imaginary world where every necro has, as a base ability, +100% condition duration. I’m pretty sure they’re basing their design decisions off of the idea that we get that for free, no matter our build. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

Mark of Blood
2000 damage, and could be used every 6 seconds. It is a 1200 range attack that can hit 5 targets, and on top of that can place regeneration on 5 allies that can heal each of those allies for up over 1000 health every 5 seconds, and can basically maintain 100% regeneration uptime….

Curses

I feel like Spectral Attunement and Master of Corruption could be adept tier, but they would be really strong there and we would have to move 2 traits up to accommodate them. If we did that the first candidates are Chilling Darkness and Weakening Shroud (closer the old version). This is totally worth a discussion, but at the end of the day all master tier traits in this line are overshadowed by Terror which is the real problem.

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.

I hope this helps direct discussion a bit, and thanks for your patience,

Jon

I don’t know if you’ll be back to this thread or not, but I’d like to point out/discuss a few things here…

Most notably you talk like somehow we are supposed to be proud that we can do 2000 damage to 5 targets over 4 seconds on a 6 second CD… I don’t know if you’ve heard about the warrior class, but they have a very similar move called hundred blades. It is on a 9 second CD, does damage almost instantly in an AOE, can’t be cleansed or removed and does 20,000 dmg… I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, but no one is ever going to believe that 2000 cleansable slowly applied damage is somehow “too strong”

Additionally, while the healing is nice, I have never once hit more than 2 allies and 2 enemies at once with this. The healing is nice, but again applied over a long time, and can be purged off allies. There are plenty of other classes that can apply more powerful healing with higher uptime and require much less precision targeting and no enemy to activate it.

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”

While this is true in PvP, it is certainly not true at all in PvE. It is mostly unused in PvE since most other classes have 100% burning uptime and this trait is completely useless. However your proposed solutions would be acceptable if the trait was also changed to torment like many people are asking. Torment is underused in PvE and would be a great additional source for it from necros. Just make sure the damage stays comparable. 1 stack every 8 seconds (i.e the new sigil) is fairly worthless and not worth a trait.

Please keep in mind the PvP vs PvE differences when making changes to this trait.

Andele.1306:

Wait what? Where was that posted? Does that mean they wont fix Staff and keep the “bugs”?

It was posted 2 days ago by Tyler Chapman

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3131858

Apparently the bugged version is fine for them, so there updating the tool-tip to display the bugged version and pass it off as an intentional tweak justified by the fact its the best skill in the game kitten kitten .

Ascii.9726:

Andele.1306:

Wait what? Where was that posted? Does that mean they wont fix Staff and keep the “bugs”?

It was posted 2 days ago by Tyler Chapman

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3131858

Apparently the bugged version is fine for them, so there updating the tool-tip to display the bugged version and pass it off as an intentional tweak justified by the fact its the best skill in the game kitten kitten .

I’m fine with this, so long as they bring every single other skill in the game down to the point where Putrid Mark is indeed the best skill in the game. Those would be balance changes I could get behind ^^

JonPeters.5630:

I hope this helps direct discussion a bit, and thanks for your patience,

Jon

Thank you Jon for posting those very in depth thoughts on the design rationale for upcoming and possible future changes to our favorite class’s traits (and on the weekend at that!)

Although class changes can disorienting for me at times, I feel like the future of the Necromancer is in good hands ^^.

Again I see a problem in their focus on individual abilities in isolation. They talk about the max impact of skills (fully traited), they do not talk about viable builds where most of the time you cannot fully trait all of the skills. This has caused a lot of our current lackluster abilities to either be “meh” because we can’t trait them, or OP when traited and used in combinations that the devs haven’t even considered as they are do not appear to look at build synergies.

The same is starting to apply to the damage reduction/condi removal abilities of other classes and how they effect the necro meta. The devs are obviously really gun shy about OP damage abilities/skills but they do not seem to apply the same caution to what is becoming OP damage mitigation and its effect on all condi metas. When you look at the “mitigation abilities eruption” of some of the professions it is difficult to see how the actual impact on the condi metas has been taken into account….especially when there is also nerfing of the condi’s themselves being introduced at the same time. We are talking about balance here.

PVE Necro Notes

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

Curses
This line just has a lot of good traits.

This is totally worth a discussion, but at the end of the day all master tier traits in this line are overshadowed by Terror which is the real problem.

I really don’t use Fear at all. All of the bosses are immune to Fear, and in group play, making the target run away just kitten es off anyone who was trying to melee it. I don’t use any of the Master tier traits in my build. I don’t run Corruption, Spectral, or Warhorn so all 3 of those are useless to me, and I avoid using Fear as much as possible, so Terror is right out.

Instead I run Hemophilia and Weakening Shroud as my Adept and Master traits. I use Withering Precision as my GM trait. Not because I like it, but because I don’t use a scepter, so Lingering Curse is literally useless as well.

Yeah, Curses has a lot of great traits in it… but not much synergy. It’s kind of a grab-bag of loose ends.

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.

I don’t use Dhuumfire. I did try it out when it was released, but found it wasn’t worth it. I have a really hard time justifying spending more than 20pts in Spite because Siphoned Power is such a bullkitten trait. If I did drop 30 into Spite, I would be getting Close to Death instead. Dhuumfire really adds nothing useful against trash mobs that die fast anyway, and in Boss fights, my Fire contribution is usually irrelevant compared to what the other professions can do.

JonPeters.5630:

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.

I already run 20/30/XXX as a condi necro. Dhuumfire just is not tempting to me as a PvE player. Those other 20 points can go into Death for a very effective Staff or Minion build. They can go into Blood for more sustain through siphon-healing. Or it can go into Soul Reaping for more Life Force/Death Shroud utility.

When you look at it that way, I don’t know why a condi necro would take Spite to 30. It seems like a highly specialized build that gives up a lot of versatility.

JonPeters.5630:

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.

I absolutely agree. Reanimator needs to go away, or get swapped out with one of the Adept Traits to make it optional. I hate that I have to take Reanimator to get to my Staff traits, and Protection of the Horde is a joke, but I have no choice if I want effective Mark utility.

I want to say again that it sounds like this “balance pass” stuff is PvP-centric, and that very little consideration is given to PvE play. I know that profession balance is more important in PvP, and that’s probably why it comes across that way. But it feels like the attitude is that we’re going to take great pains to carefully balance PvP… and the PvE players can just deal with it.

I’m quite sure that is not the approach you are taking, but when we get balance passes like this, it’s hard not to feel like the PvE issues are being neglected in favor of PvP issues. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that they are not two separate things, and start balancing them independently.

Jon, I have no words for you if you think the Blood magic tree is ‘pretty good’. It is no where near as good as Soul Reaping.

Bump Bloodthirst back to 50%, OR allow siphons to heal our healthbar when in Deathshroud.

Oh right… No comment at all about ‘Siphoned Power’, and how it compares to other GM minor traits in the game?

Come on… I want to hear the logic behind that trait.

Jon,

Try speccing primarily in Blood and Death and go tag along with a roaming havoc squad. DO NOT roll with a zerg, they will only serve to paper over the inadequacies of these lines when actually experiencing first hand what we are talking about. Any competent opposition will nearly always focus fire you if they are in range and recognize what you are. 5vX, open field, nowhere safe immediately nearby to run to.

And if you are actually specced in Blood and Death; it is not because you are the most dangerous target- it is because you are the easiest to kill.

I LIVED this experience for months on end trying to make it work; I swapped to a class that had disengage tools and the difference was night and day. Both my damage and survival skyrocketed; the first because I was not longer getting chain ganked, the second because I had tools that actually did the job.

And I was going to type up more information, but really, screw it. I shouldn’t have to. Just go experience it versus competent and motivated opposition.

Hi Jon!

Thanks for posting. I see where you guys are coming from. However, I’m still scratching my head on that Signet of Spite change.

Can you provide some insight?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Hi Jon!

Thanks for posting. I see where you guys are coming from. However, I’m still scratching my head on that Signet of Spite change.

Can you provide some insight?

I released a new TPvP build that uses it, and as i heard… it spread…

Nemesis.8593:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Hi Jon!

Thanks for posting. I see where you guys are coming from. However, I’m still scratching my head on that Signet of Spite change.

Can you provide some insight?

I released a new TPvP build that uses it, and as i heard… it spread…

Like an epidemic? :p

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Nemesis.8593:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Hi Jon!

Thanks for posting. I see where you guys are coming from. However, I’m still scratching my head on that Signet of Spite change.

Can you provide some insight?

I released a new TPvP build that uses it, and as i heard… it spread…

Like an epidemic? :p

I see what you did there…

I don’t understand at all… I really don’t.

Terror is the red-headed step child on the chopping block every patch. While that trait is everything that is RIGHT with high reward skills.

Do you know how much damage terror does if I miss my fear? Or get it gets blocked? Or evaded? Or tossed into stability? Zero.

Dummfire on the other hand, they can be Jackie Chan and it will still get them on the next auto attack crit 100% chance, or aoe crit, or whatever.

And Dummfire is okay, while terror is a problem? The earlier post even said you wanted less automatic stuff and more skill based stuff.

FYI: Terror is and was that skill based stuff.

I wish with so much fervor we could go back to pre-torment pre-burning days and try buffing up necro again from there.

EVERY SINGLE BALANCE PATCH focuses on the 30/20/0/0/20 necro and nerfing it, while dabbling with minor things in the other trees. We all know that build with Geo, and skill, and weakening shroud, can put a bunch of bleeds onto a target at once. But did you ever stop to think that not everyone does or wants to run that build?

The nerfing that is going on, without sufficiently improving anything else is just going to continue to force everyone to play that same old had build until it is in balance, which is going to break and ruin every other build we have.

Agreed. Terror is a good mechanic. It rewards you for using it wisely and punishes you for using it unwisely. Passive mechanics are the definition of not being skill-based.

I can’t really quite understand where they are coming from.

As far as i’m concerned there are two different necro builds.

You got the DS and power wellmancer, whom is the kittened little cousin of the staff elementalist. Compared to elementalist it has less damage, less range, infinitely less utility, multitudes lower survivability. That’s mostly because power necros have this time old dilemma where all their weapon skills are turret crap outside of dagger auto chain.

Then there is the pure breed dueling spec that is terror doomfire. Admittedly it can occasionally be pretty frustrating to play against, but by all means it’s not the only offender on that front. Put it in any other scenario outside of it’s comfort zone of 1v1 and the build pretty much falls apart. It can’t take focus and it lacks the cleave.

Those are the non eccentric necro builds that are actually played. The wellmancer is sup bar and terror is one trick pony in same sense as the D/D glass cannon thief is. Increasing gear item level is not helping the case of either one of them. Both became relatively weaker with the introduction of ascended weapons and both will become more weaker when the rest of the ascended gear hits live.

Reflecting these changes against those realities and the reaction is: What?

Here is what I think needs to be done to necros traits:
Spite:

• Death into Life (15): I think this trait is irrelevant, if there is no vampiric build available. No matter how much % he grands. This means, necros need better heal from from siphons probably with a -10% from healing skill per siphon trait used (?) so you are changing active with passive heal.
• Siphoned Power(25): Who the hell needs 1 stack of might, when he is nearly dead? No one. probably increase this to 5 stacks or an other stat i.e. protection. Or why not add some Lifeforce? Everything is better than 1 Might@25%Hp.
• Spiteful Talisman (II): This trait is good, but does not synergies well with necros other main-hand weapons (900 range max.)
• reaper’s might(VI): Nice idea, but life blast has a way to slow attackspeed (on land) to get a good benefit out of this trait.
• Spitefull Marks (VII): Marks deal to less direct damage, so this

Curses:

• Target the weak (25): Relatively weak, compared to other traits i.e. warrior who gets 10% for a single bleed. And it only boosts direct damage, but if you play condition necro your damage is so low, that it makes no difference.

Death Magic:

• Reanimator (5): Merge this trait with any other minion trait. If I don’t use minions this is wasted 5 points merge it with minion master (III) and add “+20 toughness for every condition on you”
• Protection of the Hord (15): Same as reanimator, non minion masters get nothing. merge with Flesh of the master (X) and add probably a “gain toughness based on DS level” not sure here, but it should be something with +toughness because of deadly strength
• Dark Armor (I): with 2500 armor this is a 16% damage reduction while using 6 skills on 6 different weapons (one while downed) for 2,5-3,5s. I think it is not worth using it compared to other traits here. probably grand 3s protection when using a channeling skill?
• Staff Mastery (V): Just cosmetic, include a permanent scythe to the staff if used.
• Necromatic corruption (XII): Interesting, but to weak compared to Death nova and there is no grandmaster trait for non MM. Probably something with boons, so the 30% duration are worth it?
  I know those traits should synergies with each other, but 1 jagged horror = +20 toughness and therefore +1 power. Channeling skills will get +20 power (that is less than 1% more damage) they synergies but it is not worth it.

Blood Magic:

• Here I have to say it sucks, that dagger, well and siphon traits share the same line. I think it would be nice to have a dagger-vampiric(fast attacks), vampiric-well(multiple hits) or dagger-well(high damage) build, but all the important traits are in the same line and that sucks. There are so many builds i have in mind, that would require 50+ points in that trait line. A split of this line would be nice to allow different builds, but I haven’t figured out how to do so.
• vampiric (15): only effected by 0,5% from healing power (1288 = +6 heal). That is to less for a vampiric build. Make this trait our main healing source with a coefficient of 5% while reducing our healing skill by 10% (not sure about the numbers)
• Blood is Power (25): even with the increased numbers, this trait is bad it is only a <5% (@2500 attack) damage boost while >75% health, for a full zerker it is <4% (without might). what about a fixed +10% more damge here?
• Bloodthirst (II): probably needs changes due to vampiric change
• Vampiric Prcision (V): +10% from 5% from healing power, decreases healing skill by 10%
• Transfusion (VI): Should scale with healing power, to make a heal support necro viable
• Vampiric Master (VII): Not sure about this, because I never used it. Should be the same as other Siphons, but not that strong.
• Vampiric Rituals(XII):
  In the end you should be able to get much more health with the vampiric traits, than with your normal heal. Because you selected those traits and you have to hit the enemy as well to benefit from it. But I am not sure about all the numbers I used up there.

Soul Reaping:

• Path of Midnight (III): Only 15%, while other traits reduce CD by 20%

Because it is late her, I can’t go thorugh the skills, but what I really hate about the necro is the power based DS. For a Condition build it is only there to prevent some damage, while spreading torment. Would love to see more conditions there, probably due to swap able skills.

gn8 and I would like to know what you thing about this.

unleashed.8679:

Death Magic:

• Reanimator (5): Merge this trait with any other minion trait. If I don’t use minions this is wasted 5 points merge it with minion master (III) and add “+20 toughness for every condition on you”
• Protection of the Hord (15): Same as reanimator, non minion masters get nothing. merge with Flesh of the master (X) and add probably a “gain toughness based on DS level” not sure here, but it should be something with +toughness because of deadly strength

These two really need to happen. Death Magic should be more than just the Minion tree. It has some traits I love for other builds (okay, maybe just Greater Marks), but going down it feels like such a waste with the first two minors being so purely minion focused.

So what’s the devs viewpoint of blood traits? Everything was mentioned by JP except those and that line is still the worst/least used of all. They openly admitted it was bad and the last round of changes left them the same as before. Hence aren’t they still bad?

I feel like moving dhuumfire doesn’t really help. Keeping it at 30 in spite makes it a huge investment that not all Necros make because it is so hefty.

Another thing is that if you move axe training to grandmaster, it’ll be a nerf to some power specs that use axe training and close to death. Axe training would need a pretty big buff to compensate that loss.

Reworking it is needed but making what seems like a small change has huge ramifications, even for the unintended specs.

Since dev is here, can we raise the question about Putrid Mark? As far as i remember the nerf never came into patch notes and there has been no official answer on it.

Sujiro.3590:

Since dev is here, can we raise the question about Putrid Mark? As far as i remember the nerf never came into patch notes and there has been no official answer on it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/first#post3131858

Apparently, it was the best around. And since nothing else was going to keep it down, the devs had to. After all, after reducing it down to only three conditions, and only from you rather than your allies, why it was still so much the super bestest skill ever that they obvs had to also put it on full CD when interrupted.

This blows. Removing bleed stacks from anything severely cripples a necros ability to be a viable class in PvP. What should happen is to reduce the durations of poison, cripple, and weakness across the board and a slight nerf to Signet of Spite. The cooldown of Weakening Shroud shouldnt be messed with.
If only the higher-ups in Anet would stop having such a raging kitten for power builds.
Whats with all this whining about Dhuumfire? It finally gave necros the edge to stand up against the heavy hitting power builds. Why the hell should it be removed? Or are you not a necro main and some dagger spammer thief who wants an autokill class like ranger?

Jon, I really appreciate that you take your time to explain your point of view to us. I am certain that Collaborative Development will work if we can get more open discussions like this.

Now I will talk about your post.

Mark of Blood – And by extension, the staff as a weapon.

It might surprise you, but the staff is the only viable weapon a necro have in WvW. We use it not because the staff is overpowered. We use it because a necro in WvW only have staff to get AoE damage.

Dagger is totally useless in a zerg fight. It is single target so it doesn’t have cleave. And between all the snares and a necro’s lack of stability, it is literally impossible to be close enough to a foe for long enough to kill that foe.

Axe is totally useless in a zerg fight. Its damage is way too low and once again it is single target.

Scepter is another single target weapon. Its skill 2 ’s 10s recharge is way too long for its low damage to be viable.

So necros are stuck with staff. It should be obvious that a nerf to Mark of Blood, the main damage source of the staff, by 33% will be devastating to a necro’s effectiveness in WvW.

I have never heard of anyone complaining about the damage of Mark of Blood in WvW. Between the bleed cap and the abundance of condition removals in WvW, Mark of Blood rarely deals its full damage. Even at full damage it does not hurt that much when compared to other classes.

I understand that you guys balance this whole game around spvp. But let’s be honest, almost no one plays spvp. There are a lot more necros playing WvW and pve dungeons.

Weakening Shroud – you guys are nerfing the weakness. Necro lose survivability here, the very thing that you guys said you want to promote.

Dhuumfire – It seems to me that you guys are balancing the whole necro profession around Dhuumfire, not the other way around. You guys are assuming that every single necromancer uses Dhuumfire, which is obviously far from the case. I personally do not use Dhuumfire.

Balancing the whole necro profession around one trait/skill is a flawed logic.

Reanimator – This trait doesn’t need fixing. It cannot be fixed. This trait needs removing and replacing it with something cool.

Jon,

Blood line is definitely not fine. One of the chief complaints in this forum has been about how terrible blood is and how useless death is to anyone but a minion master.

JonPeters.5630:

[snip]

Death Magic
On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good.

Jon

Demonstrating, once again, the following:

1) No one at ArenaNet who has any input or influence on class balancing mains a necro.

2) Everything that preceded the quote above in the [snip] section further reinforcing the pigeon-holing of necros into the condimancer build.

Blood Magic only feels good if you’re playing a minion master traiting Vampiric Master. Outside of that, Blood Magic still remains sub-par (by a large margin) for non-minion master vampires, specifically, and the class as a whole still suffers from a lack of sufficient attrition and sustain in general.

That one quote above makes it abundantly clear that this class is being balanced off a spreadsheet or database table and not actual play experience. Otherwise, that comment would not have been made in light of how incredibly sub-par life siphoning builds remain.

I challenge you to play a non-minion life siphoner and see how far you get in any PvP arena. Then come back here and try to tell us “Blood…necros are starting to feel pretty good.” What an absolute joke and insult.