Guild Wars 2

Re: Death Magic…

Dark Armor is a trait that could have some promise as a master minor. I know you guys don’t want to feed Necros too many boons, but consider having this trait grant either…

Stability + Toughness while channeling. (with a CD)
or
Stability + Toughness after getting affected with a stun/knockdown/etc. (also with a CD) This would allow us to subvert chain CC when getting focused, an area we are majorly lacking in right now, that you wouldn’t think would be one of our weaknesses.

I’m 100% on board with not giving Necro Vigor. It doesn’t sit well with the design of the class, but Stability SCREAMS Necro since we’re a stand and fight profession.

No im happy with 25 in curses. Only change I would make to the curses line is fix withering precision.

Jon, are there any plans to balance the necromancer for PVE, now that we’ve had so many pvp balance patches?

I think I speak for a lot of necromancers, when I say that we kind of feel the PVE side has been neglected for our class. Especially in regards to Defiant/Unshakeable on bosses, which hurts our class more than any other, the problems with the condition cap, and our lack of defense against burst damage?

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

Thanks for the update Jon! The pve crowd will appreciate this change. While you all are playing around with the death magic tree maybe you should revisit the “Death Shiver” trait. It doesn’t really “Shiver” anymore after the much needed beta nerf. I think you could move this to a grandmaster trait and have it apply a low duration weakness (2sec) every x secs in DS to fill in for the withering precision and weakening shroud nerfs while making the death magic tree more attractive.

On another note, blood line did get improved by being less dependent on bloodthirst. This was a step in the right direction. Im glad you are testing and arn’t make knee-jerk balance changes. However, most of the necro community still thinks the vampiric traits still need some help. Thanks for reading my opinion

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

Thanks Jon for your response.

I can only speak for myself in that being informed that something is being worked on helps ease concerns. It is being left in the dark that is more infuriating and I know myself does not expect our class to be all fixed in one patch as that is unreasonable. But as long as im seeing improvements and progress that is all that matters.

I would be happy to see currently what the thinking is for point 3 as you must have some ideas penciled down. If you are planning merging reanimator with Death Nova and keep it as a grandmaster what about having it also spawn the little critter when your minions die? This allows the minion master to have a minor minion replace his major when it dies. Again this may or may not make things overpowered as there is a max 5 limit on how many of the little critters you can get out.

Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master? As currently im pretty sure alot of Necro’s take this for extra survivability for their pets and this would also help the master and combining these two would make sense and not be an indirect nerf to MM. Would moving out some of the non minion traits as minors help? Like move Shrouded Removal to be a minor as its not a great major trait to take but could be useful as a minor. Or make things really good and make Dark Armour a minor…ok maybe a bit much for the last one but it would make a really good minor trait.

Death Nova is good as a grandmaster for minions but I find no reason to take Necromatic Corruption and its lackluster and not really a good grandmaster trait compared to the benefits of Death Nova. Having two grandmaster traits relating to minions are a bit much id rather provide an alternative trait that is non minion specific.

Jon, now that you’ve just been around, Siphoned Power, is there a plan to change this minor trait, for a 25 pointer it is just so bad. At 25% hp I am not more thrilled to get 35 power and condition dmg. Shouldn’t this be a flat 5% dmg increase or something in that line, to be more in line with other traits?

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

Any further work being done on blood traits? Particularly siphons? The last patch changed nothing with those. They are still useless and go predominantly unused. If I trait and gear for max healing my siphon goes from a 37 to a whopping 43…

A number of times there have been balence discussion on the pvp forums which pertain to changes that effect both pvp and pve. When a pve point is brought up – such as an argument for a split – we are told to go back to the class subforum. With that in mind, I think this is the appropriate place to get dev feedback on the pve side of things.

How do the devs feel these changes will improve or weaken the state of necros in pve? (Read: dungeons and fractals, not open world). Would you consider splitting the weakening shroud change for pve as spoj suggested? What can we look forward to in future changes that will improve our ability to deal with massive spike damage and provide greater team utility?

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Would it? It just gives you some extra seconds of temporary armor when you get whacked by an AoE field.

Otherwise the minions don’t get targeted, so Flesh of the Master isnt doing anything for you.

Edit.

At 15 death magic, protection of the Horde with 5 minions out amounts to a 3% damage decrease. Of course, it only lasts until the minions die. All a merging of the trits would do here is possibly preventing you from being insta gibbed by the AoE that insta gibs your minions.

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

Does this mean it is the era of #BelieveInJon?

Definitely the best news I’ve heard of in a long time. I think everyone can understand it will take time to make the changes, but as long as you know they need to be made, that’s great.

Do you guys have any ideas of what you want the 5/15 traits to be? Any chance we’ll have a Torment-like discussion like we did when you guys were iterating on the new condition?

Also, just some input from a minion-user here. Do you guys plan to buff Protection of the Horde? With your current plans, it would be a 120 (+20 per Jagged Horror) trait vs a 50% HP boost to minions. There is exactly 0 situations in which I’d ever take PotH over FotM, especially when most builds are either very tanky and high on toughness (and thus additional toughness has diminishing returns), or the glassier builds are using the minions to take aggro off of themselves, and the toughness isn’t worth the loss in minion HP.

The trait has a number of changes that could be made for it, but I wonder if you have any plans to differentiate it from FotM in a significant way. For example, FotM is for minion builds that want to keep minions alive for a long time. However, Death Nova would do nicely with a trait that didn’t care about increased HP so much. Maybe give PotH some benefit on summoning minions, instead of keeping them alive?

JonPeters.5630:

rfdarko.4639:

A number of times there have been balence discussion on the pvp forums which pertain to changes that effect both pvp and pve. When a pve point is brought up – such as an argument for a split – we are told to go back to the class subforum. With that in mind, I think this is the appropriate place to get dev feedback on the pve side of things.

How do the devs feel these changes will improve or weaken the state of necros in pve? (Read: dungeons and fractals, not open world). Would you consider splitting the weakening shroud change for pve as spoj suggested? What can we look forward to in future changes that will improve our ability to deal with massive spike damage and provide greater team utility?

Sure. I think all of these following changes are more or equally useful in PvE than PvP. with the last two being very PvE focused.

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

• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.

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

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

FINALLY.

Okay, let’s break this down.

• Banshee’s Wail – This change is the only truly beneficial change to PvE Power Necros.

• Death Traits – These are still a joke in PvE. Minions are a “well, I really want to run minions, so I’ll do subpar damage and be unhelpful in dungeons” kinda thing in PvE. So these changes are inadmissible as “benefiting PvE.”

• Blood to Power – This has potential, but is only useful for builds that run a full 30 points in Blood, which are few. I’m not ready to say this a boon, however, as classes like the warrior had a better version of this trait at an adept level for all party members.

• Soul Reaping II – I have worked with, finessed, and perfected high-uptime DS builds for the last six months. This trait never appeared on my builds for a reason—there are too many other crucial SR traits to take. This one gets dropped. The reduced degen does nothing to slow down LF loss when taking damage, and a good DS Necro doesn’t sit in DS when out of combat. This could be a boon to DS builds in PvE, but it is a very tiny one.

There is still nothing down to address the horrid minor 25 point trait in Spite, Withering Precision is a joke, Well CD’s make it impossible to truly support a party in dungeons in a way that another class can’t do ten times better.

The only thing that Necros (particularly Powermancers) bring to the table in a party is AoE Weakness, and that’s getting nerfed.

No, this is not a beneficial patch to PvE Necros. Not by a long stretch.

My question is why do we keep getting nerfs to bleeds/terror when the real problem began with DumbFire?

any word on removing this trait and reverting the nerfs we have had since this trait was introduced?

JonPeters.5630:

Scarran.9845:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

The difference would be that we would be adding a new 15 point minor as well that you would be getting for free that would have similar power to these. If we took any two major traits that had synergy and merged them they would be overpowered. No difference here.

I think it would be amazing if Jon came on But of Corpse :P

I agree with the above about the blood magic change. I like the idea of opening up more trait lines for pve, but 25 points is a really heavy investment for a single minor trait. Considering you’ll almost always want to take 30 in spite for close to death, your only left with 15 points for curses or soul reaping.

And what two major traits are you going to take in blood magic? Well cd reduction is your best bet, although with the s/d might stacking ele meta going on I find myself using wells sparingly. Lifesteal is of little help – typically I find myself at near full health (from swaping in and out of DS) or flat on my face because I missed dodging the 1-shot KO. A little bit of health regen isn’t going to help me in those situations.

Hi Jon. Thanks for dropping by. I can see Colibrative Development working already.

I think there are 4 questions that urgently need to be answered. Can you please elaborate on these 4 points?

1) Dhuumfire – This is an overpowered trait that almost no one wants, not even necros. We necros hate this trait just as much as other professions.

There has been mainly 2 suggestions. First is removing Dhuumfire totally. Second is changing Dhuumfire to Dhuumtorment, so replacing the burning condition with torment.

2) Mark of Blood – Pretty much all necro agree that this 33% nerf to Mark of Blood is due to the overpower-ness of Dhuumfire. This is the wrong way to balance the class. Nerfs and changes should apply to Dhuumfire directly, not Mark of Blood.

Mark of Blood is a very important skill in WvW. As you know, staff is the only useful weapons in a zerg fight for a necro. None of the other weapons have enough consistent AoE. I would say Mark of Blood make up for about 50% of a necro’s damage output in WvW. A 33% nerf to Mark of Blood will mean a 17% nerf to a necro’s WvW damage output.

Can Mark of Blood keep its 3 stacks of bleeding until further considerations?

3) Bleed Cap – 25 stacks of bleed isn’t enough, for either PvE or WvW. That cap gets reached way too quickly. This is a huge disadvantage for condition users when compared to power users.

A side note, conditions in WvW gets cleansed very quickly. When combined, this means that our conditions eithers gets cleansed, or doesn’t gets added onto a target that already have 25 stacks of bleeding.

Would you guys please consider increasing this cap to 100?

4) Foot in the Grave – Necros are in dire need of stability. Right now it is inaccessible because this trait is located in the grandmaster trait tree.

Would you guys please consider moving this trait to a more accessible spot? Maybe move it to Death 5 to replace Reanimator.

Jon I look forward to your reply. ^^

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

Mark of Blood
At 3 stacks of bleeding and a good amount of condition damage (without even taking into account condition or bleed duration modifiers) this skill was dealing well over 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. The only drawback is also somewhat of a benefit which is that it requires an enemy to trigger it, which also allows you to precast it and then basically almost double it up as it gets triggered. This is one of the most versatile and powerful skills in the game. A huge amount of the condition damage from necromancers comes from their bleeds and while they are removable in theory, the ease with which necromancers can apply conditions makes it is virtually impossible to ever get to the bleeding at the bottom of the stack.

I understand that Mark of Blood does seem like an OP ability when you compare it side by side with other single abilities. But if you compare it to other abilities in the game that have the same types of effects, the necro staff 2 is the jack of all trades (master of none) ability. It has a bleed, but it isn’t an auto attack nor can you pump out bleed stacks. Those 3 bleeds are the only bleeds with staff. It has a heal, but the enemy is the one who causes it to heal. And it heals 1/5 of what Guardian staff 1 heals for (per second).

The overall condi necro needs more stacks of bleeding not less. There is an issue with other classes reaching reaching 25 stacks of bleeding causing the necro to only do damage that is direct. For a condition necro this makes the player almost useless.

JonPeters.5630:

this skill was dealing well over 2000 damage, and could be used every 6 seconds.

2k damage over 6 seconds? Is that a lot? The last time I checked billion blades does somewhere between 15-18k in 1 second, every 5 seconds. Not to mention, there are tons of condition removal in WvW. TONS! And from what I have been reading, Anet is going to be adding more.

JonPeters.5630:

can place regeneration on 5 allies that can heal each of those allies for up over 1000 health every 5 seconds

An enemy player has to trigger the heal and your allies have to be inside the area that the mark was triggered. The area in which the mark give out a hot is small (even when traited) compared to all other healing areas and it doesn’t pulse like other healing areas. If your friendly isn’t inside right when the mark is triggered, they are out of luck for the heal.

JonPeters.5630:

the ease with which necromancers can apply conditions makes it is virtually impossible to ever get to the bleeding at the bottom of the stack.

That is how it should be. It isn’t like Anet has made it so an ability that removes 3 conditions only removes 3 bleed stacks. It can remove 25 bleed stacks 25 stacks of vulnerability and 25 stacks of confusion. A necro should constantly be adding bleeds, that is how they do damage.

Those are my thoughts.

Ascii.9726:

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

Any chance of Superior Rune of the Lich having its cooldown reduced a tad as well?

Jon, might I suggest a new 15 pt minor for Death Magic then?

Deathly Defense – Gain protection whenever a source of damage would deal 10% of your total lifeforce while in DeathShroud. Duration of the boon and ICD for this trait needs to be playtested.

We don’t have that many boon sources to synergize with the boon duration from Death Magic and more protection is always welcome for the class.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Jon, might I suggest a new 15 pt minor then?

Deathly Defense – Gain protection whenever a source of damage would deal 10% of your total lifeforce while in DeathShroud. Duration of the boon and ICD for this trait needs to be playtested.

We don’t have that many boon sources to synergize with the boon duration from Death Magic and more protection is always welcome for the class.

Alternatively, Retaliation. I do feel like Retaliation is a boon that necros could use a bit more access to (as we have only one skill that causes it and two traits).

Also, Jon, while you are correct that there is an issue with Dhuumfire, the issue is that it is a cover condition for that bleed stack that is buried so deeply, not its accessibility. Adding Burning to our repertoire means that bleed stack (where the damage is really coming from) gets buried deeper and is even harder to remove.

Dear Jon,
Are you planning something about problems of condition builds ?
These are nice changes but there’s still no change to our most popular damage type, conditions. The problem is, we can’t deal damage to some event bosses due to the stack limit. This is a problem in pve dungeons too, we are not preferred in parties due to stack limits. Berserker or direct damage builds are still better in these aspects. And this problem doesn’t only affect necromancer. (but affects necros mostly, due to condition dependency in viable necro builds)
And If we want to play as aoe for wvw, we are so depended on conditions due to the low direct damage of staff. Conditions get removed so fast in wvw(sometimes without even dealing enough damage to qualify for loot) and we don’t have a real powermancer alternative for current aoe condimancer build. Current power-based weapons are single-targeted which isn’t viable in wvw zerg or guild raid fights. I’m telling these from the aspect of a wvw player. Thank you for listening to players, keep up the good work guys.

rfdarko.4639:

I agree with the above about the blood magic change. I like the idea of opening up more trait lines for pve, but 25 points is a really heavy investment for a single minor trait. Considering you’ll almost always want to take 30 in spite for close to death, your only left with 15 points for curses or soul reaping.

And what two major traits are you going to take in blood magic? Well cd reduction is your best bet, although with the s/d might stacking ele meta going on I find myself using wells sparingly. Lifesteal is of little help – typically I find myself at near full health (from swaping in and out of DS) or flat on my face because I missed dodging the 1-shot KO. A little bit of health regen isn’t going to help me in those situations.

All good points. And I think fundamental to the issue that Jon attempted to address is this: the Devs are wildly out of touch with PvE Meta in general, and Necro PvE builds/playstyles in particular.

Unfortunately, the fact that it took 20+ posts both here and on the main change thread to get a single response as to the effect of these PvP-centric changes on PvE demonstrates that it’s not a high priority for the Devs either.

If that’s true, I just want to hear it said. I’ll live with it—truly I will. I just want to know that’s what’s going on rather than be led to believe that PvE is truly important and that the Dev team is intentionally trying to boost Necro PvE play.

That being said, here’s what really needs to be addressed for Necros in PvE:

1. Condition-cap needs to be dealt with. Until it is, ConD Necros will hurt.
2. Power Necros need a cleave. Clearing trash is done infinitely better by other classes for this reason. And no, Staff AA does not count. Wells, though good, overwrite far more beneficial combo fields, and as such are detrimental to group comps.
3. Necros need to bring unique offensive support to the table. At the moment, the best DPS Necro builds are also the most selfish. No group will take them for this reason. Anything a Necro can do in support of a group, another class can do better and sacrifice less DPS to do it.
4. There is no point number four.
5. Necros need better access to Weakness to resolve the point number three above. Weakness is immensely helpful particularly in high-level Fractals where it can mean the difference between being swamped by trash or coming out ahead.
6. Necros need better sustain in boss fights. The nerf to DS and the pitiful single-target return on Siphons mean that a Necro has to eat TKOs over and over again in Boss fights. Add on top of that the ill-conceived boon “Defiant,” and Necros once again can’t offer anything to Boss fights.
7. Necros need to be able to heal while in DS. Even if Siphons are the only thing that heals while in DS, it still needs to be done. With the nerf to DS, it’s no longer a truly damage-mitigator.
8. Necros need finishers. All of the Necros finishers are tied to Minions, which are useless in PvE. So Necros can’t even take advantage of their own fields, or benefit a group by taking advantage of other combo fields.

Address these and I’ll begin to think that maybe PvE is an important part of balance conversations. Until then, I’ll wait.

Before Dhuumfire was introduced I do remember a lot of players asking for some kind of sustainability with Necro and some better access to poison .

Which we did get! Deathshroud got completely fixed and I feel its in a good place now and the poison buff to scepter was amazing.

But please don’t nerf our bleed stacks and instead rather look at Dhummfire… As mentioned before a lot of players never asked for it and if our other sources of condition application is nerfed (like bleeds) I feel its going to pigeon hole condi necro builds and force them to go 30 into spite just for the burning to make up for the other nerfs.

Condi Damage with Necro was fine before and is great now with the scepter buff but I think Dhummfire should be removed or reworked. Dhummfire + Signet of Spite is the “I win button” and it took away any kind skill to actually condi burst someone.

JonPeters.5630:

Sure. I think all of these following changes are more or equally useful in PvE than PvP. with the last two being very PvE focused.

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

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

Blood to Power is plain… well worthless as a grandmaster minor, major master (or even lower) traits exist that give not only more power, but unconditionally, to everyone around you or with other benefits, also note that all but Critical Burst and eng Target the Weak are major traits, kinda showing the flaw of putting conditional stats benefits instead of effects/playstyle changers as minors.

As for Vital Persistence, may we know the logic behind it? Since Axe/Focus and Dagger/Warhorn builds have more than enough LF generation in pve to keep DS up when they need it and condi builds in both pvp and pve flash it/use as a sheer defensive tool in terms of uptime, something like a you cannot lose more than 25% life force in a second/returning our absorb effect on DS in some way would be way more helpful. Or plain something letting condi necros keep enough LF to use DS properly seems like less of a worthless/bad band aid trait.

On the side note, did you guys ever think of making the rest of on DS traits more like Deathly perception (a effect instead of boon) and changing the name of the Spite major 5 trait? Its really disrespectful to every necro from the original GW.

Bleed cap. Any updates?

Vital Persistance would be worth picking over other traits if Death Shiver was merged with it.

Currently Death Shiver is a trait that doesn’t make sense at all:
It’s a master trait in a non shroud related trait line, the pulses are too long, the stacks too little the radius too small.

But what if it was a side effect of Vital Persistence? A trait that let’s you stay in Shroud longer and even rewards you for doing so.

A consideration for Vital Persistence- what if instead of being buffed to 50% it decayed 20% slower and damage taken while in DS were 20% lower as well? Or might that be a better separate trait in Death Magic? Just a thought.

1 Necro’s ask for discussion with devs.
2 Devs make a post.
3 Necro’s calm down.
4 Necro’s get nerfed.
5 Return to 1.

KeeZee.7312:

1 Necro’s ask for discussion with devs.
2 Devs make a post.
3 Necro’s calm down.
4 Necro’s get nerfed.
5 Return to 1.

We all love the discussion… I think we just wish it was possible to pick a topic and have them respond on that one. Like 25 in Spite for instance (I don’t hate it currently, but many others have mentioned it). No comment from the Dev on it means it is quite some time out for changes if they even happen.

Really that is one of the easiest to buff GM traits, because no one believes power necros are OP right now, so make that a nice strong power necro 25 point trait. It would actually be a minor nerf or no effect on condition necros, so it is a safe easy buff.

I think existing Death traits could easily become good minors. Dark armor would be good for 5 points, Death shiver would be a good 15 point minor, for example. Its just not ever worth getting these as majors really, but as minors this could become a good trait line.

JonPeters.5630:

Scarran.9845:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

The difference would be that we would be adding a new 15 point minor as well that you would be getting for free that would have similar power to these. If we took any two major traits that had synergy and merged them they would be overpowered. No difference here.

But what if you tweak the toughness numbers so it falls in line as your not merging two major traits its a major and minor. It only becomes a major after the changes and the trait is definitely not a master worthy major trait on its own because if its moved and you are running a minion master build straight away that change has lessened the toughness of your build. Add onto that the squishiness of minions that toughness is only a real benefit if you can keep those critters alive for long enough. Plus comparable to other builds the damage output of a MM build is not really comparable to that of other quality builds and therefore the extra defence/survivability would be a perk of the build.

If it is not combined then Protection of the Horde is going to clash with Flesh of the Master and if your running a minion build its really a must to keep those critters alive so FOTM wins everytime. If your running a death nova build the whole point is destroying those critters for the damage and poison and thus negates the toughness you receive so again no reason to take it.

All it is really doing is replacing a pointless trait for another pointless trait by including it as an option. As I see no scenario where it would benefit me from taking Protection of the Horde over any other minion master trait.

2 sustain related questions:

Thoughts on healing in deathshroud? It feels really bad that 2 healing skills that heal over time get crippled by that restriction. Also the entire blood magic line would be more viable if all those siphons as well as traited transfusion would heal us in DS.

Thoughts on adding a siphon trait that is tied to lifeforce generation? Say 10% of lifeforce generated trough skills is siphoned. Would be easier to balance, would scale with vitality, healing power, and the Deathshroud trait line for build diversity in tems of a viable bunker / sustain build. Would be a nice grandmaster trait since it would work with any weapon set in a defensive way.

Rennoko.5731:

We all love the discussion… I think we just wish it was possible to pick a topic and have them respond on that one.

I think the problem is that the devs do still need to pick and choose what to answer and when. They have answered a lot of our questions, and then those people feel happy and satisfied (or don’t because they didn’t like the answer) and then everybody else feels like their questions should be answered as well.

And lets face it, sometimes they don’t have an answer. They don’t look at and balance every single thing at once. Maybe your question (siphoned power for example) just isn’t on their immediate radar, so they really don’t have anything to say. There is a huge minefield you have to navigate :P

At the least though, it is good to know they acknowledge some of our issues.

JonPeters.5630:

AN UPDATE
Weakening Shroud. This trait now does a smaller version of Enfeebling Blood when entering Death Shroud. Bleeding (1 stack only; 6 seconds [10s with full condition duration spec]). Weakness (2s [3s with full condition duration spec]). No ICD.

Obviously this is a very big change so please discuss, and keep your discussion constructive, so that we can actually talk through the merits/downsides.

Jon

Jon, this is very good news. One of the best uses for this trait is emergency defense, say when a thief or warrior ambushes you with a stun. You pop in deathshroud and the weakness helps negate some of that burst. Putting a 25 second cooldown on this trait really hurt its use, but this new change will still allow us to use it this way.

I have to say I much prefer this new version, thank you!

While you’re here… do you have any thoughts at all about Siphoned Power? And how it compares to other 25 pt grandmaster traits in the game? I along with many others feel this trait is 100% useless, and no where near as powerful as even a 5% damage increase.. (or 10% that other professions get sometimes).

I’ll re-iterate some major problems with necromancers in PvE dungeon/fractal content

1. Necromancers are frowned upon by dungeon/fractal runners because they over-write important combo-fields with their less usefull combo fields.
2. Those less usefull combo fields are most of a Necromancers AoE Damage. Unlike every other class in the game—Necromancers don’t have a weapon that can auto-attack cleave a stack of mobs reliably
3. Unlike the other two scholar professions—Necromancers cannot provide meaning utility pull-to-pull.

On the other hand:

• Elementalist provide: Huge might stacks, Object/Structure Nukes (icebow), Quick boss deaths (Fiery Great Sword), Fire Fields, Condition Cleanse, Insane Damage, Blind, AoE Swiftness, Great damage
• Mesmers Provide: Incredible Reflection up-time, Time Warp, damage sponges, 50% dmg reduction Phantasm, Blink/Portals, SoI’s Boon multiplication, Invisibility, Condition Cleanse, Regen/Protection, AoE Swiftness, Great damage
  __________________________________________________________________

Potential skill-updates for PvE Necromancers

MH Dagger: The idea is to give the Necromancer MH Dagger a ‘Condtion’ cleave that then synergies with Life Siphon for increased AoE damage

• Necrotic Slash: still deals direct damage to the main target, but now additionally applies bleed to foes in cleave range.
• Necrotic Stab: still deals direct damage to the main target, but now additionally applies vulnerability to adjacent foes.
• Necrotic Bite: still deals direct damage to the main target, but now additionally applies Torment to adjacent foes.
• Life Siphon: drains additional health from nearby foes suffering from bleed.
• Dark Pact: Immobilize your foe. If your target is suffering from Torment this skill is a blast finisher.

The synergy between the Auto-Attack and Life Siphon would be similar to the Warrior’s attack chain with Axe—melee-ranged cleave with built-up burst.

Dark Pact additional blast finisher effect would only trigger if the main-target is inflicted with torment. So an ideal candidate would be foes around the Auto-Attack target, or a follow up to a Death Shroud 5. I like the idea of Dark Pact—a skill that immobilizes—triggering a blast finisher on an enemy suffering torment—a skill that punishes mobility.

Utility Skills

• Corrosive Poison Cloud: Is now a Smoke Combo-Field. Reduced CD to 30 seconds.
  The poison/weakness combo finishes are redundant for a skill that already applies both conditions over a long period of time. As a smoke finisher, this skill could be used for applying long duration Invisibility via blast finishers or Blind via projectile/whirl.

• Summon Bone Minion: Activates a blast finisher where each minions are spawned.
  activating and exploding bone minions would yield a total of four blast finishers. If used in a dark field, this could be a sequential application of AoE Blind. If used in Corrosive Poison Cloud out-of-combat this would yield 12 seconds of stealth for spawning/exploding both minions.

• Epidemic: Whirl Finisher

• Spectral Grasp: Make this a 2-chain skill. This first ability only pulls a target to the location you cast the ability. The Follow up ability would apply Chill and Grant Life-force.
  By doing this, a Necromancer can isolate a single mob from a group while remaining ‘out of combat’ and then swap utilities before the second ability places the utility slot on cooldown. this would be a more useful version of the Thief Scorpion wire and welcome more Necromancers to Arah.

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

JonPeters.5630:

Siphoned Power description is wrong. What that trait does is give you Might for 5 seconds everytime you are struck when your health is below 25%. This includes going into DS at that point and then building up a bunch of might by getting attacked. I will get the text updated on that for sure.

Jon

And you feel 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.. while being in execute range is as useful as say +10% damage while target has a condition.. or even 2% to 8% damage increase based on how many conditions the target has? Or the newly improved Death GM minor.. 10% of toughness as bonus power(which for me will be 300 power.. nice!).

Is that the intended use for this trait? To actually want to remain at 25% HP and then perform a full deathshroud rotation while being hit to maybe add the burst from 8-10 extra might stacks? The power of this trait is so low, that the minor trait which adds might when casting Lifeblast probably doubles or triples its damage value.

Like the change to Weakening Shroud, though I also think 3s base is a better starting point. (nobody really goes 100% duration, normally at most you see is 70%).

Re: Siphoned Power; thanks for the clarification, but its still a really, really weak trait. @25% traits should be defensive, not offensive.

JonPeters.5630:

I think all of these following changes are more or equally useful in PvE than PvP. with the last two being very PvE focused.

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

• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.

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

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

No… no I really don’t think so.

Banshee’s Wail reduction shaves 1 or 2 seconds off of skills that already sit at 30s CDs. The difference may show up on spreadsheets, but it’s not going to effect gameplay in any meaningful way.

Reanimator is almost universally reviled by the Necro community. We want it to go away. You get no kudos for buffing a trait that nobody wants. In fact, this “buff” actually makes it worse for situations where minion control is crucial.

Deadly Strength isn’t bad, but it’s still locked at the top of a terribly broken Death trait line. I run Death 20 so I can get Staff traits, and even I can’t justify spending 5 more points to get this trait.

Blood to Power is fine, I guess. I don’t run Blood in PvE though, so I wouldn’t know. I used to run Blood, but abandoned it for Staff Traits. As I understand it, siphon got hardnerfed since then so I may never actually go back to it.

Vital Persistence offers no defensive benefit at all. This trait allows me to stay in DS a few seconds longer, and it only does that if I’m not taking damage. It also extends the amount of time that I’m unable to heal. The only thing this trait offers is longer access to DS skills, but the CDs on those skills are OBSCENE. What’s the point of staying in DS once all of my skills are on CD?

Most of the Death Shroud buffs trigger on entry or exit, so staying in DS longer actually makes it less useful. Effective DS utility is like weapon-swap traits. You want to get in and out as often as possible to proc the effects as often as possible. The last thing you want to do is stay in DS.

No, these changes offer no substantial improvement to PvE Necro. Really.

JonPeters.5630:

AN UPDATE
Weakening Shroud. This trait now does a smaller version of Enfeebling Blood when entering Death Shroud. Bleeding (1 stack only; 6 seconds [10s with full condition duration spec]). Weakness (2s [3s with full condition duration spec]). No ICD.

Obviously this is a very big change so please discuss, and keep your discussion constructive, so that we can actually talk through the merits/downsides.

Jon

Thanks Jon for this as I like the change also and think its alot better than the initial change, I agree that 3s would be a better option but if its 2s or the old way ill stick with this iteration. Stx had mentioned the exact same reason why I find it useful and with this change it means that it will still be a useful trait.

JonPeters.5630:

Bhawb.7408:

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

But that build would have to be:

30/10/0/0/20 (+10) … in WvW … with duration food … and double duration weapons … and duration crystals …

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ryan.8367:

Andele.1306:

Ryan.8367:

the necro class is so lucky that their op bullkitten got overshadowed by warrior’s op bullkitten or else you guys would have seen much more needed nerfs yet the condition spam is still encouraged obviously by anet ..i really cannot wait for this kittening burst condition/tank condition spam meta to be over with. it’s so kittening digusting.

Or you just need to learn to play.

what does learning to play have to do with this game being plagued with condition spam?

i think you fail to realize im not JUST talking about necros here, it extends into engis / spirit rangers, necros and now bunker regen condi warriors as well. necromancers just have the most access to it. its a kittening stupid meta overall and promotes very low skill gameplay.

No, it just promotes Warrior play. The Condition-heavy meta means you can’t just go all-out burst anymore and expect to do well, you have to put in some defensive measures as well (namely cleanses) and be smart about when you use them.

Necros are quite spoiled on that front because of Consume Conditions and Plague Signet, both of which are total cleanses, so we don’t have to worry about how many different conditions are on us in the same way (we still need to keep track, just for different reasons).

Warriors run berserker just fine. Thieves run berserker and s/d can handle necro well as can D/P condi removal 1v1 thief. Mesmer can kill necro 1v1 and most of them run berserker.

The only classes that can’t run berserkers are those who actually have to tank hits and have little to no invulnerability/shutdown potential.

It’s for this reason power necros, power rangers, and berk eles cannot exist. They get burst down too easily.

Weakening Shroud should have a 5 sec weakness.

JonPeters.5630:

The point is this thing is unbounded. You can be hit a bunch of times and it keeps stacking up the might. Maybe the duration is a bit low, but with no cooldown this is a good interesting trait.

Maybe if it triggered at 50%. As it stands, however, you cannot shroud that low or you will die the moment you pop out due to that brief window in which you’re incapable of doing anything. Has there been any discussions on how to address that window? Now that damage overflows from shroud it’s pretty much impossible to stay alive once it drops since you can’t use any skills.