Guild Wars 2

I think the reason we haven’t seen a dev response, for the pve points at least, is that the biggest problems necros face currently is defiant and the condition cap. These two things inhibit our class strengths. Unfortunently, changes to these systems will be months and months away, if they happen at all. These thing aren’t an issue in pvp, which is what balance is focused around. It would take some serious pve only changes to bring necros up to decent level, which anet is unwilling to do. Im 99% sure pve necros will be left to rot until they get around to adressing defiant/condi caps.

They could fix pve balance by giving necros something that isnt that popular or strong in pvp but is good in pve. Which is why I mentioned the reflect bubble the toxic krait use.

spoj.9672:

They could fix pve balance by giving necros something that isnt that popular or strong in pvp but is good in pve. Which is why I mentioned the reflect bubble the toxic krait use.

How about necros reflect 1 skill pre 10 seconds while in ds? Mesmer guardian ranger and ele all already got massive reflect bubbles/zones.

Amazing, simply amazing. We get one dev post in here and suddenly everyone thinks the devs actually want to join the conversation, to the extent of 7 pages thusfar; something that I too am guilty of it seems.

All we need to know from the dev post is that they think we are just fine and if you don’t like it, you can always play another class. I would love there to be an actual debate as to our wants/needs for the future of the necro, but as this one sided topic has shown (yet again) they are happy with us being a fire breathing condi dispenser.

Bah, hey Jon, actually join the conversation, because all you are doing at this point is offering us the false hope that you actually care about us.

Honestly, although these changes are okay (neither here nor there), we need buffs to Death Magic.

I realize Blood Magic has kind of been the ongoing project, and it is getting better (not there yet, but butter), but Death Magic is still the redheaded step child of the trait trees. If you aren’t an MM, or don’t use staff, there is 0 reason to go here. We need good, meaningful traits here, including the minors (which just need to go), because as it stands now, we don’t have a single non-minion defensive tree, we have two half-defensive trees.

I think a.net would do well to listen to the latest BoC podcast since a lot of interesting ideas were brought up on how to improve the overall concept of the class. I’m usually loath to discuss details because I’m more interested in getting people to agree on the general design. But eventually you have to defend your concept by bringing something to the table. So as I see it, getting the (condition) necromancer back on track is a three step process:

1: Addressing the burst

For reasons already stated in previous posts, having too much burst on an attrition class is a Bad Idea™. Dhuumfire is the primary culprit. Terror actually creates interesting gameplay, but the damage dealt by it is still significant enough to warrant some attention. With dhuumfire I don’t have any particular preference, as long as we get rid of it in its current form. Terror is probably strong enough to take a straight up nerf, but I think an interesting idea here is to move terror to a minor trait slot – partly as compensation, but also because terror, no matter which tier you place in in, is an autopick for the class as a major trait (effectively making other traits from its tier irrelevant by default).

Once you’re done with those nerfs, and given the fact that several bleed sources have been and are being nerfed on top of that, you’re left with a class that probably suffers from somewhat of a damage deficit. We can’t go back to bleeds being our only source of real damage, especially not in today’s environment of improved cleansing, so what I’d like to see is torment taking a more prominent role on the necromancer overall. Adding a few, well placed stacks of torment to our weapon skills/traits here and there would go a long way to improve our condition diversity (ie resilience against removal) and compensate for the loss of damage over time without making us too bursty.

2: Improving sustainability

The centerpiece here is obviously the vampiric traits. A.net will simply have to budge on this one if we’re ever going to get anywhere. The simplest way to standardize and balance these is an internal cooldown, coupled with allowing them to scale (significantly) with healing power. However, more interesting mechanics could easily be designed to complement this approach. For example, a redesigned bloodthirst could apply a single stack of a non-removable buff every 3 seconds or so (based on whatever – simply hitting an opponent, landing a crit, stealing life, or even just being in combat) that improves life stealing efficiency by 1% for each stack (max 25 stacks, ends when you leave combat). Or if you don’t like that, make up your own version. The point is that it’s not difficult to design traits that reward you for stalling for time and punish you for leaving combat – precisely the behavior you want to encourage in an attrition class.

Another mechanic that would make a lot of sense on a necromancer is stealing endurance. Not only is it a great fit thematically, it would be a good fix for an underperforming GM trait like withering precision, which is begging for a redesign anyway.

3: Improving lockdown

The last part of the equation is having a realistic chance of keeping an opponent in combat long enough for our DOTs to work. I personally think that dark path, being our only gap closer, plays a major role here. Ideally I would like to see this becoming a nonprojectile spell, which would make it much more reliable. Go to Cursed Shores and fight a Risen Noble or two, that’ll give you the idea. It’s not enough by itself though, we’ll need better access to chill in various places as well.

Another thing I’d like to bring up is distance based mechanics – something along the lines of how the mesmer GS autoattack works, except in reverse. A lot of traits could be redesigned to depend on proximity and apply snares, damage, conditions, or whatever you like based on how close our opponent is to us. I even think this would make a good framework for a redesign of torment if you wanted to make that particular mechanic more interesting (right now the extra damage is pretty much a given anyway, in PvP/WvW you either move or die). Throughout the necromancer traits distance is an entirely underutilized mechanic that makes a lot of sense to apply to an attrition class – you can potentially award the necromancer for staying in combat and punish the opponent for running away at the same time.

I should probably end this post by crediting, once again, the BoC podcast. Most of this is lifted directly from there, and you should listen to it if you haven’t already. It’s also great to know that a lot of the suggestions featured in that cast came from the community as a whole. So keep it up guys!

Hi,

I play my minion master in open world PvE and i’ve run into a problem with the new living story where lots of underwater combats take place.

We’ve got only one elite skill accessible in this environnement : Plague.
It cause more harm than good because it destroy all minions.

I’ve search a way to adapt to this situation, but didn’t find any solution.
Traits won’t change underwater and changing my minions skills to something else will mean that i lose all minions each time i cross a small body of water.

I’ve look the racial skills, but none are usable underwater.

I hope the team will look into this problem if the LS push us more often in this environnement.

Thanks for your attention.

rfdarko.4639

I think the reason we haven’t seen a dev response, for the pve points at least, is that the biggest problems necros face currently is defiant and the condition cap. These two things inhibit our class strengths. Unfortunently, changes to these systems will be months and months away, if they happen at all. These thing aren’t an issue in pvp, which is what balance is focused around. It would take some serious pve only changes to bring necros up to decent level, which anet is unwilling to do. Im 99% sure pve necros will be left to rot until they get around to adressing defiant/condi caps.

I agree and disagree. What Necromancers alone needs (and every other class already has) in PvE/WvW and even team fights in sPvP, is some form of active defense. Something that scales with the number of opponents you are facing (Deathshroud does not) like a Block, Evade, or Invulnerable. (Perhaps pared with a projectile reflect for dungeon utility and as per my suggestion thread, it should probably cost Lifeforce to use so that we can’t have both 30k~50k health and high evade. Because of the cost it would always be one or the other but would still allow us to adjust to the situation.)

At this point though, I would settle for the cheap fix of 1~2sec Evade when you enter (or exit if they want it similar to what we had before) Deathshroud on an iCD. (Or if that is too time consuming just revert the “bug” fix that made Deathshroud overflow into health, until they have the time to make an actual fix for us.)

Defiant effects every class that uses CC (Warriors actually did receive a response on defiant, which gives me hope on that system) and the Condition cap effects every class with a condition spec. (Also something “they are work” on, lets just hope its less work to fix then the Death Magic trait line :P.)

Thanks for replying here Jon, but your post would have been a little more constructive if it had acknowledged and responded to some of the feedback we’ve already given.
What you guys don’t seem to understand about the condition meta is that it’s not about the number of stacks, but about:
- ease of removal,
- ease of reapplication.
In order words, yes, bleeding does most of the damage. But it’s not the long-duration bleeds from Signet of Spite, or Enfeebling Blood/Weakening Shroud, or BiP, or Mark of Blood that are doing it. It’s good old scepter 1! Why? Because it’s easy to reapply! And the reason bleeds are being allowed to do so much damage isn’t because the necromancer can stack a lot of bleeds easily – in fact compared to a shortbow ranger with Sharpening Stone our ability to stack bleeds is pretty feeble. But the necro’s bleed stacks are HARDER TO REMOVE cause they’re covered by 100% poison uptime from scepter 1, 20-30% burning uptime from dhuumfire, plus weakness, cripple, torment, chill and all the stuff that Signet of Spite does. Moreover, because different cleanses prioritise different conditions instead of going for a simple last-in/first-out system like GW1 used, bleeding is rarely removed even though it SHOULD in theory be the last-applied condition almost 66% of the time (due to 2/3 attacks in the scepter 1 chain applying it).
The former, I believe isn’t a problem: covering conditions (eg fear-chain right after Dhuumfire procs) is a tactical choice and a good example of skilled play and should be rewarded. The latter though, artificial difficulty in removing all those bleed stacks simply because skill X prioritises cripple or removes a condition at random, is a game design flaw.
However, unitl you decide to switch to a last-in/first-out system, the way to effectively nerf necro is not to reduce the amount of bleeds they can output, but to reduce some of their cover conditions. The Weakening Shroud change reduces our Weakness uptime, so htat’s 1 step in the right direction, and I think the other should be removing Dhuumfire.

Mark of Blood

Like I said, the theory is not supported by the practice. Talk to any necromancer, from the leaderboards top-10 down to the 50th percentile, they’ll tell you that staff is a sub-par weapon for both condition and power builds, and it’s only carried for utility (namely skills 3, 4 and 5). The majority of necro bleed damage doesn’t come from the long bleeds, it comes from the stacks of scepter 1. So this really isn’t an effective nerf, and only hurts the handful of niche builds that rely on staff.

Terror
I can’t tell you how long we debated moving this trait to grandmaster tier last time around, and this time again. The problem is a huge % of Necromancer builds are hinged on this trait.

It’s an excellent trait: it’s not overpowered, as our fears can be blocked, dodged, or simply ignored through stability, it rewards skilled play due to its additional damage design, and it gives us that much-needed burst. However, if you reverse the 17% damage nerf from a few months back it could be a grandmaster-level trait, and it would nerf the terror+dhuumfire build, as it force people to have to choose to leave behind one of either Dhuumfire, Terror, or Master of Terror.

There is a gaping hole at grandmaster here with Withering Precision (barely worthy of adept tier in our opinion)

Yeah, Withering Precision is a tough one to balance. Perhaps if, instead of on-crit, you tied it to another condition? EG. inflict weakness whenever you inflict chill?

Focused Rituals – Really strong adept trait.
Banshee’s Wail – Already pretty good and got a buff this time around.q

Both good traits, but wonder if they really belong in curses considering both wells and warhorn are mostly used in power builds?

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.

Burning is a very high damage condition (and a difficult condition to balance since it only stacks in duration), and it’s just one condition too many for most professions to cleanse. You’ve been trying to moderate the power of the 30/20/0/0/20 build ever since Dhuumfire was introduced by taking off 1 bleed here, 1 bleed there, a little bit of damage off Terror, but it’s not working: Dhuumfire is the problem. Necros were at their sweet spot after Terror and before Dhuumfire. As many others including me have said before, the ways to fix it are:
a. scrap it completely
b. replace burning with torment
c. change it to proc on inflicting another condition instead of on crit. For instance on immobilise, which would make it handy for dagger and minion necros.

JonPeters

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ELEMENTALIST
Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

ENGINEER
Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER
Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

THIEF
Vigorous Recovery will come down to kitten Vigor instead of 4s.
Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR
Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.
Thanks,
Jon

And

JoshDavis

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers
Just because Jon didn’t include any changes regarding your profession in the above post doesn’t mean we’re done making changes.
Please continue to leave feedback – we’re still listening. We’ll keep you updated as things come up.
Thanks!

Speaks for itself.

I would like to admit that I am surprised by the lack of response from the developers but to be honest I am not really that surprised.

Its a bit like the old saying out of sight out of mind, if they ignore us for long enough they can live in their imaginary world that there is nothing wrong with Necro and that we are that overpowered they need to shave damage and reduce abilities from our class. Despite all of the negative feedback from the Necro community it would have been better spent talking to a brick wall as we get a similar response.

I am not trying to be rude and I understand its a difficult process but we are being treated as if we know nothing about the class and that its just a learn to play issue. The lack of communication is what is infuriating the community and with no real sense of direction for the class after over a year released.

What is the point in proposed changes when no matter what is said the changes are implemented anyway. That is more in line of the air raid siren before the blitz you are really just giving us a heads up that something nasty is about to happen. To top it all off the class is not majorly broken, yes it needs fixes and traits adjusted, re-worked or moved around but we do not expect it all in one patch. As long as the community see’s progress and knows the dev’s vision of where the class is going we at least know there is movement.

Instead we are left in the dark to ponder if we will ever have a fully functional diverse class or if we are going to remain with the same old cookie cutter builds with the same flaws that have existed since launch. Now we are getting more flaws added each patch because of unneeded and unwarranted nerf’s. If the broken still remain broken and the good skill are made worse, where does that leave the future of Necro? Its not looking positive thats all I can say.

rfdarko.4639:

I think the reason we haven’t seen a dev response, for the pve points at least, is that the biggest problems necros face currently is defiant and the condition cap. These two things inhibit our class strengths. Unfortunently, changes to these systems will be months and months away, if they happen at all. These thing aren’t an issue in pvp, which is what balance is focused around. It would take some serious pve only changes to bring necros up to decent level, which anet is unwilling to do. Im 99% sure pve necros will be left to rot until they get around to adressing defiant/condi caps.

Then by the time these changes comes around, every necro would be playing another game. Do they really want that?

It is no excuse to just say that it will take too long.

I, and many other necro players, are getting really tired of having our voices ignored by Anet for the last 15 months. 15 freaking months!!! I would much rather that Anet would come debate with us and reject all our ideas, than being ignored like this.

Slightly off topic, but I made a thread on improving underwater combat earlier on. Almost no one posted in it, because let’s be honest no one cares about underwater combat. Silence is the worst rejection. It means no one cares.

Its the same thing with Anet’s view on necro. Silences is the worst rejection. Anet doesn’t seem to care, and its slowly becoming a concrete fact.

We paid cash just like every other player. We deserve the same level of commitment and respect from Anet as any other classes.

awesome.

Jon I realize you guys are very busy. I want to believe that you guys haven’t responded yet because you are combing through these posts to get a proper idea of where to take necromancers. Please keep us in the loop as best you can, or at least on par with the other classes.

Thanks.

The problem with vampiric is AOE. They are balancing vampiric around fast hitting attacks that hit multiple times and aoe abilities. These abilities include axe 2, staff auto (pierce), all staff marks and all wells. This makes single target siphons weak because if they upped the scaling then healing from aoe would be too strong. You can potentially tag 90 targets in 7 seconds with wells alone (7 pulses x 5 targets=35, 6 pules x 5 targets =30, 5pulses x 5 targets 25). Throw in all staff marks and a few auto attacks and you can potentially tag around 120 targets in 10 seconds.

The devs could man up and address the scaling problem head on or just claim that this continued band-aid fix is working.

I am of the belief that we scared the Devs away from our subforum forever. Hence, please direct your thoughts regarding them ignoring us to the main GW2 forum, in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Profession-Subforums-and-Developers/first#post3157243

Torqky.3682:

The problem with vampiric is AOE. They are balancing vampiric around fast hitting attacks that hit multiple times and aoe abilities.

Hence why some of us have been trying to promote the idea of ICDs for vampiric traits for some time now…

Please buff staff usability till the addition new weapons. Aoes are why most of us play necro.
Staff #5 needs longer fear for example. Staff #4 doesn’t help our allies anymore. Staff #2 is mediocre but gets nerfed constantly because other classes get better and better condition removal abilities with every patch. It gets removed before giving even 25% damage in wvw. Our 240 radius trait has been moved to master tier which is a major nerf to the staff. Please make our main role(aoe) viable again.

Another suggestion for staff is you can add a trait to convert staff’s condition based damage to power-based direct damage. So we can have offensive aoes with power builds too.(except well of suffering) Current staff direct damages are too low to use a staff as powermancer. Nowhere near ele’s meteor shower or lava font. Another option for this is adding a new two-handed and 2x one handed weapons with direct damage based ranged aoe skills.

Torqky.3682:

The problem with vampiric is AOE. They are balancing vampiric around fast hitting attacks that hit multiple times and aoe abilities. These abilities include axe 2, staff auto (pierce), all staff marks and all wells. This makes single target siphons weak because if they upped the scaling then healing from aoe would be too strong. You can potentially tag 90 targets in 7 seconds with wells alone (7 pulses x 5 targets=35, 6 pules x 5 targets =30, 5pulses x 5 targets 25). Throw in all staff marks and a few auto attacks and you can potentially tag around 120 targets in 10 seconds.

The devs could man up and address the scaling problem head on or just claim that this continued band-aid fix is working.

Or, you could realize that the siphoning the necro gets from tagging that many doesn’t even come close to helping him last longer against the incoming damage that those enemies provide. Siphoning is one of the things that actually rewards us for aggressive play, hitting as many things as possible. Given Necromancers embody the school of Aggression, I think that’s fitting.

Necro’s biggest problem defensively is that what we have doesn’t scale beyond one opponent. Siphoning is the only thing we have that actually does. If they increased siphoning to be significant (note I did not say “enough to counter”) against one opponent, it is automatically correct for multiple opponents.

CHIPS.6018:

rfdarko.4639:

I think the reason we haven’t seen a dev response, for the pve points at least, is that the biggest problems necros face currently is defiant and the condition cap. These two things inhibit our class strengths. Unfortunently, changes to these systems will be months and months away, if they happen at all. These thing aren’t an issue in pvp, which is what balance is focused around. It would take some serious pve only changes to bring necros up to decent level, which anet is unwilling to do. Im 99% sure pve necros will be left to rot until they get around to adressing defiant/condi caps.

Then by the time these changes comes around, every necro would be playing another game. Do they really want that?

It is no excuse to just say that it will take too long.

I, and many other necro players, are getting really tired of having our voices ignored by Anet for the last 15 months. 15 freaking months!!! I would much rather that Anet would come debate with us and reject all our ideas, than being ignored like this.

Slightly off topic, but I made a thread on improving underwater combat earlier on. Almost no one posted in it, because let’s be honest no one cares about underwater combat. Silence is the worst rejection. It means no one cares.

Its the same thing with Anet’s view on necro. Silences is the worst rejection. Anet doesn’t seem to care, and its slowly becoming a concrete fact.

We paid cash just like every other player. We deserve the same level of commitment and respect from Anet as any other classes.

I have two posts in the general thread on the Dec 10 changes asking for input on the blantant disregard of Necro PvE bracketed by red posts. And those red posts say nothing in response.

I play a Necro Powermancer in PvE, perhaps the lowest-tier you can get when it comes to neglect (not discounting the issues with ConD, but still). I’d laugh, it’s that blatant.

Vigor isn’t going to happen. For a lot of reasons, but simplest one, cause Devs want Necs to rely on other things (read: clever DS/blind/chill/fear use) to evade dmg, so they won’t add it.

Wouldn’t hurt to have few more defensive tools tho, aside a huge hp pool.

As far as Pve Powermancer is concerned: give Dagger autoattack the meele cleaving.
That’s all i ask.

AndrewSX.3794:

Vigor isn’t going to happen. For a lot of reasons, but simplest one, cause Devs want Necs to rely on other things (read: clever DS/blind/chill/fear use) to evade dmg, so they won’t add it.

Wouldn’t hurt to have few more defensive tools tho, aside a huge hp pool.

As far as Pve Powermancer is concerned: give Dagger autoattack the meele cleaving.
That’s all i ask.

I don’t know, if you asked me last year at this time if necro would ever get burning I would have laughed at you. Vigor seems just as reasonable to make an appearance say deep in the Death magic tree… it is the boon tree after all.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/29#post3156808

A bit upset that after all the comments made necro is not mentioned at all.

JonPeters.5630:

One more update again.

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

HURRAY! Progress? I’m not so sure.
Again, I urge everyone to post in the following thread. If we start to complain boards they actually care about, maybe we’ll get somewhere. They’re apparently not bringing the discussion in here anyway.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Profession-Subforums-and-Developers/first#post3158283

NECROMANCER
We are no longer removing a Bleed from Signet of Spite.

Yay we get one bleed back from one skill!

……..

T_T

But they’re still going ahead with the Mark of Blood nerf? If anything the Signet of Spite nerf was more merited. I really don’t get what they’re thinking.

Does anyone think people take SoS for the bleeds? They take it because the sheer number of conditions overwhelms opponents’ cleansing abilities (and for target the weak). 1 bleed or 2 it’s just as good.

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

This is the only one that I would hate to get nerfed. I think it’s ridiculous to increase the cooldown to 25 seconds. Please, please consider reducing the duration of the spell effect itself (while maintaining the low cooldown) instead of increasing the cooldown by 10 seconds. With a 25 second cooldown, the trait would be almost useless.

I’d rather have this effect proc in frequent short bursts than one long cooldown. With a long cooldown, one clense and everything’s gone. Time to wait 25 seconds.

I think their recent policy has been to harmonise spells triggered by traits with their normal counterparts, and that’s sensible as it can get really confusing otherwise.

However, they could I suppose completely change the functionality of the trait to something like “inflict pbaoe weakness r240 for 4” (CD15") on DS". That would be fair, considering it would do no damage, no bleeds, and less weakness uptime.

I would like to take personal credit, on behalf of Tenderly and myself, for them not removing the bleed stack anymore, because we said it was a stupid idea on the podcast and obviously that must be the reason why they changed their mind (totally srsbsns).

With Weakening Shroud getting nerfed into uselessness it raises (IMO) the necessity for some of the other adept majors in the Curse line to get looked at as alternatives. One that jumps out at me is Reaper’s Precision. The life force gain on this is very negligible except in very specific scenarios like when using Life Transfer. I would very much like to see the chance/life force increased, but with a cooldown. For example, crits have a 100% chance to restore 2% life force, but with a 1s cooldown.

This is part buff, but with the cooldown to keep it from getting too out of control. Probably the direction a lot of mechanics need to go, such as lifesteal.

Torqky.3682:

The problem with vampiric is AOE.

This is a good point. Even if siphon were buffed to acceptable levels, it wouldn’t do much if you aren’t running dagger or axe, meaning not much for condi, who also needs real sustain and attrition.

They need to move siphon to some kind of more timed application. Whether one big siphon on crit, then a cooldown, or perhaps siphoning off a particular skill which is already limited by the skills cooldown, something like that. Maybe the trait triggers at a certain percent, for instance at 75, 50, 25, percent health, the Necro gains the life steal buff and on next attack steals 500 health or whatever. Something less dependent or abusable by AOE, which Necro has vastly different access to based on build.

+1 to Pendragon. There are a few different ways to make siphons workable for all classes. ICD (which has faults), specific "after X happens the next hit siphons) triggers (like runes/sigils), there are a few ways to work it.

They just need to become balanceable, in some fashion, because at the moment they aren’t.

To be honest, i could care less about the bleed on SoS…

I just wish they’d acknowledge the absolute mess that was the blood magic changes in the last patch. They also need to acknowledge pretty much everyone agreeing that Dhummfire should go and they should revert previous nerfs.

..they seem to want to completely ignore these points… i don’t get it.

i don’t think dhummfire + fear is OP, even it’s very good, for many reasons. Considering others professions: they all play with stablities, breakstun, blocking. that mean’s fear can miss the target. furthemore, against a warrior full stun, this one has a better cd skills. fear’s cd are longer compare to it. fear doesn’t count as a interrupt, even it interrupts, that means that we can’t use rune of perplexity with it, which would be really OP.

dhummfire cover all other staks bleeding by a another kind of condition dammage. it’s the idea, and give us a little “burst”. about 3k each 10 second. for some professions i’ts the auto attack, which can’t be clean as the same as bleeding.

Some people are talking about “attrition”, but conditionmancer doesn’t means attrition. they don’t realize what it means with gw2 gameplay. Attrition means TIME, but all others profession’s damages are based on bursting. also, if necro wants time, he needs active protection, stabilitie, blocking, evade, ….ect. If Anet give us time by this way, necro would be much OP than fear + dhummfire.
the only way to necro is to deal dammage and survive.

if dhummfire needs to be balanced, a 15 or 20 second icd may be better. i agree with john to moving it into master trait. but don’t move axe training into gm without a up.
25 iCd of weakening shroud is a important nerf

@ marsexplorer

If Dhuum was moved to master tier, I would love that…. My D/x hybrid Necro could then get Closer to Death AND Dhuumfire…

Man…I can see the crying now… “NERF NECRO NAOW!! IT IS TOO OP!!”

I don’t think they should move it…but I have to say, I sure would enjoy it if they did!

this is the reason why if dhumm is moved, it needs to be balanced

Pendragon.8735:

Torqky.3682:

The problem with vampiric is AOE.

This is a good point. Even if siphon were buffed to acceptable levels, it wouldn’t do much if you aren’t running dagger or axe, meaning not much for condi, who also needs real sustain and attrition.

They need to move siphon to some kind of more timed application. Whether one big siphon on crit, then a cooldown, or perhaps siphoning off a particular skill which is already limited by the skills cooldown, something like that. Maybe the trait triggers at a certain percent, for instance at 75, 50, 25, percent health, the Necro gains the life steal buff and on next attack steals 500 health or whatever. Something less dependent or abusable by AOE, which Necro has vastly different access to based on build.

See, I don’t feel the AoE is an issue. Necros embody Aggression magic and want to be in the fray as an extension. Right now, Siphoning is one of the very few things we have that rewards us for engaging multiple foes.

Yes, we can get some strong siphoning in the absolute perfect situation (which will never happen, even in PvE), but anything should be strong in the absolute perfect situation. That is not something to balance around. Necro’s biggest issue on the sustain side is multiple opponents and having life siphon apply on everything hit means they can actually have some sustain when faces with more than one foe.

Even in the perfect situation that Bhawb calculated, the necro gains about 3k health per second (pretty sure it’s less). While this is a lot of life regen, it also is nowhere close to the damage output of five enemies in melee range. It might buy the necro another second of lifetime.

If siphons were made to be significant (not “hey, you ignored me for two seconds so I’m at full”) against one target, they would auto-scale with AoE against multiple opponents. The effectiveness of this is dependent on player skill.

The true issue you are going to have with balancing necro as a sustain class will be spvp. Making us a viable sustain class also makes us more of a bunker and being a bunker makes us boring to watch and very powerful in a conquest mode game.

so what I fear happening is they Nerf out direct damage well making us a sustain class, then when sustain becomes an issue in spvp for the reasons above it will get nerfed. We may see the direct damage buffed again but that always takes longer.

Honestly, for values, I think a 50% increase on our siphons across the board (except Vampiric Master) would be a good start. I would love to see siphoning made more interesting, but altering values is much easier than changing how it works.

Condi builds could really use life force generation on Grasping Dead, though.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

This is the best necro red post I have seen since I have started playing. No joke.

EDIT: Jon, consider looking into making shrouded removal or spiteful vigor as the 5 point minor traits. Both of those synergize well with a toughness boon duration tree logically, and are pretty well universally wanted.

Also a potentially on-crit activation such as increased toughness for X seconds after you get crit would be nice as the 15 point minor trait.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Honestly, for values, I think a 50% increase on our siphons across the board (except Vampiric Master) would be a good start. I would love to see siphoning made more interesting, but altering values is much easier than changing how it works.

Condi builds could really use life force generation on Grasping Dead, though.

Just scale the stupid things with healing power (siphons). That would stop all the complaining, because if your siphons are bad, it is because you refuse to invest in healing power. I don’t want 30/20/0/20/0 to be the new norm because siphons are OP with Rabid/dire gear after some big buff. I want to take 30 points in blood and justify the loss of burst damage by increasing my sustain (like pretty much every other class can do).

The current situation with 30/20/0/0/20 isn’t going to change next patch at all. It will still be the king of all builds because nothing that makes it so ridculous is being hit. Our 20 point standard spite trait is getting better. Weakening shroud is the only thing on the chopping block, which was not the lynch pin of the build (though it was pretty great).

What about spite minors? They need a rework aswell. Siphoned power mainly.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

[…]

Thanks,

Jon

Yay, finally, thats great news

Now all we need is another redpost regarding lifesteal and our other kitten-tier minor traits.

spoj.9672:

What about spite minors? They need a rework aswell. Siphoned power mainly.

I really don’t mind that skill in theory. I think the threshold should be 33%, and I think the might should last longer, which would make it more reliable.

Rennoko.5731:

spoj.9672:

What about spite minors? They need a rework aswell. Siphoned power mainly.

I really don’t mind that skill in theory. I think the threshold should be 33%, and I think the might should last longer, which would make it more reliable.

Really? For a 25 point minor? Please take a look at every other 25 point minor in the game. Even with 33% threshold and longer duration its not even worthy of an adept minor.

It needs a major rework to be something that actually boosts power necros aggression. Might on crit would be better. Or just a flat modifier like 5/10% damage to foes with weakness on them.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

Thank you, Jon. This gives us two things we wanted: confirmation that you are actually listening to us (I know, we can get whiny at times) and a definite plan on what you are doing. It is extremely reassuring when we get posts like this.

I wouldn’t expect any changes like that to be in the next big patch. Changing values on traits/skills is one thing. Programming new ones is a totally different monster. Even so, I think I speak for all necros that we are glad there is at least a plan that is being worked on.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

Wow! Incredible news!

So, the Death Magic changes… was that an invitation for us to post ideas or do the devs already have something specific in mind and we can give feedback once you publish it here?

spoj.9672:

Rennoko.5731:

spoj.9672:

What about spite minors? They need a rework aswell. Siphoned power mainly.

I really don’t mind that skill in theory. I think the threshold should be 33%, and I think the might should last longer, which would make it more reliable.

Really? For a 25 point minor? Please take a look at every other 25 point minor in the game. Even with 33% threshold and longer duration its not even worthy of an adept minor.

I would have to say no low health trigger point for a measily 5s Might would make it worth it (even 90%). It needs to either be worked where you doing damage triggers the Might (ie like you actually ARE siphoning power) in some stackable fashion, or completely scrapped for something else. If they make a new trait in the thread of every other Grandmaster Minor of any class, it’s 100% guaranteed to be better than the current piece of trash.

As for the other Spite minors – Parasitic Bond is actually good, and while Death into Life may be something most don’t care about (as most building into Power are not going to be heal builds), it’s still along the lines of other traits and is not completely useless as it still is boosting your heal skill a little bit. I have no real complaints about those.

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Thanks,

Jon

Will you consider splitting it in pve? At the moment good uptime of aoe weakness is one of the only redeeming qualitys a necro has. Not to mention it already lasts to little time on bosses with unshakeable.

spoj.9672:

Rennoko.5731:

spoj.9672:

What about spite minors? They need a rework aswell. Siphoned power mainly.

I really don’t mind that skill in theory. I think the threshold should be 33%, and I think the might should last longer, which would make it more reliable.

Really? For a 25 point minor? Please take a look at every other 25 point minor in the game. Even with 33% threshold and longer duration its not even worthy of an adept minor.

It needs a major rework to be something that actually boosts power necros aggression. Might on crit would be better. Or just a flat modifier like 5/10% damage to foes with weakness on them.

I don’t know, with a proper duration, it would be nice in my opinion. I spend a lot of time in that range, and it procs while you are under 33% HP and in DS, so you could wait until below 33%, then pop DS in a large engagement, do your roation, epidemic and then go into cloud form after a heal and be sitting around 10-12 might depending on how often you are getting hit. Toss in BIP and you are near maxed on might stacks.

It certainly isn’t a 25 point trait I go for, but necro really doesn’t have any of those, so it doesn’t bother me too much.

Would you prefer they swapped curses 25 over and reworked curses 25? That is a possiblitiy too.