Guild Wars 2

Yeah, kitedyou, I noticed it and edited my post. Please read it again.

I also think hybrid builds do need some buff as they are a bit underwhelming at their current state. They don’t gain too much offensive punch for what they have to sacrifice.

Bhawb.7408:

Andele.1306:

Because he is, no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire, if you like that type of condi playstyle , go play a engie, mesmer or guardian.

That’s quite a bit of revisionist history there. A lot of Necros recognized that without burning we were a subpar condition damage class in every aspect of the game. A lot don’t like what has happened since it was added, and don’t like how it was added, but that isn’t the same.

No, no, no, no, no, Necros recognize that without another damag dealing condition we werent as strong of a condition carry, this would have easily been fixed with the changes i recommended way back (except for Tshackles to be necro torment, for the scepter 1 to be swapped into Torment, Bleed, Poison chain or turning S2 bleeds into torment). 2 new additional cover conditions and one that is kinda bursty was a plain stupid move, also it made no sense for us to set fire onto the enemy, tying it to doom was kinda a kitten y move since it would have been better used as foreshadowing his release instead of “since it sounds cool”, also a awesome discworld reference into the dumbfire meme AND its slotting is kittenty.

The reason why Dhuumfire wasn’t a good idea initially (in my opinion) was because necromancers got powerful with that trait, after which, condition removals got buffed to compensate. Now anet is aiming to go as far as to nerf staff bleeds! But what happened to the condition builds that didn’t utilize dhuumfire? They were not as powerful as dhuumfire builds and yet they now have to face an even higher amount of condition removals, overboosted warriors, etc. The power creep has destroyed most of the once-not-so-bad conditionmancer builds.
I love the necromancer. I have done 88% of my tournaments on necromancer. But introducing a build to the class that can overshadow every other build of that class is not something to be happy about.

That said, I’m a proponent of the idea of not changing dhuumfire’s functionality at this point in the condition that it is moved to grandmaster curses along with terror. It would open up so many options for conditionmancers and fixes the terror+dhuumfire problem.

Definitely sad that I missed Jon Peter’s active discussion – glad it happened.

Siphoned Power - I actually did NOT realize that it had that mechanic of granting might whenever you get hit under 25%. Unfortunately as others and you have said, you’re in “execute” range – and damage rolls over through Death Shroud into a period where you can’t do anything. Pretty much if you’re pressured into that point, and getting hit on a level where that short duration might can be stacked at any respectable amount, you are dead. If the pressure is light and you’re letting yourself get that low, it’s still a loss. Condition builds don’t use DS for DPS, so it’s only used to huddle and cry in, or drop 3-5 (as 1 doesn’t help and 2 is too clunky). Power builds that use DS for DPS want to get into it at 90%+ for scholar runes and would lose 10% damage for less or dead… and of course face the fact they’re often squishier builds, so are even more likely to die from the DS drop while in the sliver HP range.

So while it’s nice to see that there is an actual thoughtful mechanic behind the trait, it’s still useless. I personally would prefer to see it go to on hit rather than low HP being hit with the current short duration. If it stays as a when hit, the might needs either much longer durations (I’m talking 20-30s) so there is payoff if you actually survive staying in the death range… or the threshold increased to 50% with a 10s might.

Siphons - At this current stage, they still suck. Their damage/HP gains are so small that they can’t even be considered sustain for attrition style play to go into the tiny damage. They face a double balance issue – the fact that it does DPs and HP, and also the fact that it applies to AoEs. In a stars aligned well bomb, it reaches the point you guys balance it around – where they actually can be a sustain (assuming your targets kitten around in the wells instead of actually play the game and leave the obvious red circle)… for 5s. After that, or any situation where you’re against fewer targets, you might as well not even have siphons. Due to this, siphon builds are sub-par most situations in both PvE and PvP will be non peak siphon situations. Blood Magic is only touched for Well-o-mancer or MM builds since the line contains some traits they might want in it.

So how do we boost siphons considering their max potential? Some thoughts are to axe their AoE capability with a timer so it can only trigger on one target and then be balanced around that. But then already lack-luster traits like Vampiric Rituals becomes even more useless. My personal thoughts is to change it to utility.

Siphons take endurance – this would be a major change that I think is a shot that Necromancer needs. More targets means more endurance – but then with more targets you’ll also need to dodge more. Necros face the issue of having no sustain that scales as spectral skills are instantly bursted through with more targets due to their internal cooldowns. No blocks, evades, invulns, etc where you can avoid any scale damage, they just die. Dodges are an evade type, and this would be a unique mechanic to give them better access to a survive skill that scales. This also would allow siphons to work in DS, so it makes it where a trait line is no longer made useless by class core abilities.

Side Thought - Make Terror do damage based on how ugly your character is…

Drawing Guy.3701:

Side Thought - Make Terror do damage based on how ugly your character is…

lol. I like that one.

Kitedyou.1720:

Samhayn.2385:

I think before you Nerf terror or dhummfire it would be better to ask why people use then so much.

I use Dhuum because it fits in nicely with my hybrid spec. It is a tremendous help in fighting off thieves now…previously there were only bleeds readily available to dagger hybrids…which can be cleansed off pretty easily and don’t do a lot of upfront damage from condition because we need to stack and stack and….oh bother, they cleansed….stack and stack and stack… You get the point.

I also run a hybrid spec and use dhuumfire for the same reason. Kinda why I would rather it get changed to torment then get tied to DS.

Bhawb.7408:

Andele.1306:

Because he is, no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire, if you like that type of condi playstyle , go play a engie, mesmer or guardian.

That’s quite a bit of revisionist history there. A lot of Necros recognized that without burning we were a subpar condition damage class in every aspect of the game. A lot don’t like what has happened since it was added, and don’t like how it was added, but that isn’t the same.

I don’t agree with this at all. I never thought that burning or another condition was the answer to what necros needed before the dummfire patch… I may have been thrilled at the time (as getting buffed is always good), but I never intended to be an AD carry as it were.

I rolled necro to be the "bard’ esq player who does slow consistent damage, and controls the fight. He soaks damage pretty well, and manages to win his fights because of kiting and positioning, and attrition (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, the game and developers have continued to increase the burst damage of classes (necro obviously included) and move away from allowing the playstyle to even exist. Ascended weapons, the ridiculous stat buffs in WvW, consumables, stacks, all extended the odds of you getting just instagibbed by an old-school player.

Getting backstabbed for 8k is no fun at all when you have maxed out your characters toughness. Getting burned down 5k DPS by a condi necro who does nothing but auto attack is no fun either. Getting hit for 3k damage from a perplexity engineer who face rolls his interrupt skills, or a thief who uses one of those dippy birds to hit headshot over and over again.

The changes that allowed spectral skills to work in DS was a good and big change for that, but it was only one side of a 6 sided dice required to make the sustain work in practice.

Damage was not what I wanted. I had bleeds and terror back then and was dangerous enough in my own right. The problem now is, once you have let the cat out of the bag on all this insane stat scaling, how do you put it back in?

Speaking of minions, why not allow the Flesh Golem to swim? I haven’t seen anyone bring that up yet.

Jeez, I leave a few days and Anet is already planning to nerf us again -_-

Speaking of nerfs, did anyone have noticed if minions die as fast as before the last buff?
I’m not sure but I think they stealth-nerf us (after the buff, my minions were able to fight champs but now they die against any trash mob just as before).

Moving Dhumfire to DS is just a bad move and at only 2s duration it’s incredibly paltry for a grandmaster trait. Even at 100% more condition duration you’re looking at ~2600 dmg IF it doesn’t get removed or dodged. Popping into DS will be a huge telegraph that burning is coming and that it’s time to dodge away. If we are to balance this with warrior logic(100b telegraph= huge damage) then the trait should apply a 10k-15k burn. Last bit was sarcasm by the way :P.

We already have way too many traits that rely on DS and DS simply isn’t that cohesive to the class. The class as a whole isn’t even cohesive either so there is that. I think we need to spend more time making more viable builds(siphoning, DD, DS, Minions, tanks, conditions and all hybrids inbetween) than trying to nerf current specs down so players don’t have to have condition removal.

My suggestion, since a complete condition system revamp will never be done, is just make a new trait and condition. Call the trait infection and make it a combo like condition where applying poison converts bleeds into infected wounds that does their combined damage (.15 condition damage+ (1.5*level)+6.5). This way we have access to a new condition that allows us to apply pressure but not quite the “burst” of burning, unless you let them stack up of course. You can further balance it so that 1 poison will convert up to X bleeds. This will also help in PvE where bleeds cap quickly and condition builds drop by the wayside.

Rennoko.5731:

I don’t agree with this at all. I never thought that burning or another condition was the answer to what necros needed before the dummfire patch… I may have been thrilled at the time (as getting buffed is always good), but I never intended to be an AD carry as it were.

Sure, there were quite a few people who disagreed with the idea as well. But to say that “no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire” is completely and utterly false, when many Necromancers, especially those within higher tPvP acknowledged that as we were, we would never see the light of day as a condition class, except when played absolutely perfectly.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

This would make a DS crit build pretty awesome and actually provide more than just defensive purpose for conditionmancers. Getting more conditions damage in DS was something asked for a long time ago (ideally we wanted the underwater form as an alternate on-land DS, but I can understand the balance concerns there). I think if this is going to be implemented though, we’re going to need more reliable and stronger LF generations. Generating LF for a power build isn’t too difficult, but condi builds struggle more with it.

Rennoko.5731:

I rolled necro to be the "bard’ esq player who does slow consistent damage, and controls the fight. He soaks damage pretty well, and manages to win his fights because of kiting and positioning, and attrition (sound familiar?).

If you mean condi specs ya be talking about warlocks, bards spam buff/healed or did the annoying rank 9 spells with DFI and SoWR (aka casting the strongest spells that only hit like 1d6 less than a wizards while buffing everyone for 8/8 (to 10/10) and giving everyone a additional 10d8 proc on attacks while being protected vs everything except stuff that went for Fortitude saves with just a 20% AFR which they could avoid by casting the song)

AKA Bards are S/F burst eles with aura twist in traits.

its a ery bad idea moving Terror to GM curse tree. If you do this, you cannot get 100% duration on fear without food.

using 30/20///20 we have 100% duration with rune of necromencer: 20% with the rune, 30% with spite and 50% with Master of terror. i use it befor dhummfire.
if terror is moved to GM, Master of terror need a up to get the cap of 100% duration.

So, do you want to nerf terror in PVP?

Drawing Guy.3701:

Side Thought - Make Terror do damage based on how ugly your character is…

Or, knowing our population, make the damage you take from Terror based on how attractive her character is….

;)

Sepreh.5924:

Drawing Guy.3701:

Side Thought - Make Terror do damage based on how ugly your character is…

Or, knowing our population, make the damage you take from Terror based on how attractive her character is….

;)

My dmg would be off the charts lol

I think staff #1 needs a rework too. It’s still so slow to actually hit someone(needs the same speed with lich form auto atack), doesn’t deal noticable damage with condition builds. (which are the main users of staff) Currently I use it as only ds recharger. You may balance its damage with some torment. You can add 3 different style attacks for auto attack like other weapons. Or you can add 3-5 projectiles that spread to various directions for aoe like damage. Our staff auto attack is inferior compared to especially a guardian or elementalist.

Sepreh.5924:

Or, knowing our population, make the damage you take from Terror based on how attractive her character is….

;)

Terror’s damage now scales inversely with the amount of clothing your character is wearing.

Bhawb.7408:

Terror’s damage now scales inversely with the amount of clothing your character is wearing.

Instakill all the light armors except me, well also a lot of heavy armors since i noticed a lot of em got less armor than my necro both in cloth or in “heavy/Cof + Rewards armor combo” armor

flow.6043:

Avigrus.2871:

Forsaker.9213:

ManaCraft.5630:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

JonathanSharp.7094:

We also like the idea of making Terror scale with # of conditions on your target, so there’s more “play” to trying to load your target up with a lot of condies before you hit them with Fear. Your opponent can try to keep condies low, so that Terror won’t hurt as much.

So what happens when you put two and two together? Does this actually reduce the burst of the condi necro, or do you merely end up with a rotation that goes Signet of Spite -> Doom -> Life Blast? What does your internal testing tell you?

If the goal is to promote interesting gameplay for the condi necro, you need to reduce the burst to a level where attempting to put the opponent in an unrecoverable position immediately by unloading everything right away is no longer the default option. The condi necro needs less burst and more slower acting damage to incentivize strategic gameplay.

Yes u are right and i agree 100% but u forgot smt , he also need some more sustain , becouse if we gonna lower the dmg and amout of condis that we can stack , ppl will just run over us , and for example AR engi trait , this one trait will counter whole condi build on necro what is OP , i dont mind some counter traits/skills but this is hard counter. The only thing that keep us alive atm is that we can condi burst someone , ofc its not good for the balance so devs need to figure out how to improve our sustain also.

Yeah, you are right – all well and good making our damage act more slowly, but we will need good sustain if that is going to be the case otherwise we will simply be out DPSd and be dead.

First of all: necros don’t get out DPSd even without burning.

Try playing an Axe necro

Umut.5471:

I think staff #1 needs a rework too. It’s still so slow to actually hit someone(needs the same speed with lich form auto atack), doesn’t deal noticable damage with condition builds. (which are the main users of staff) Currently I use it as only ds recharger. You may balance its damage with some torment. You can add 3 different style attacks for auto attack like other weapons. Or you can add 3-5 projectiles that spread to various directions for aoe like damage. Our staff auto attack is inferior compared to especially a guardian or elementalist.

I agree with you except for the idea with multiple projectiles. I think there’s enough AoE dmg already on the staff. But I’d be very happy if torment was added to the staff #1, perhaps with some other tweaks as you mentioned. In my opinion Necro should have more ways to deal Torment to enemies. Wasn’t it intended mainly for necros anyway?

P.S.: I’m looking at it from a PvE player perspective. I don’t play PvP much.

In terms of Death Magic, I feel like non-minion specs have no real reason to go beyond 10 points, maybe 20 if you’re really crazy about staff. Something at Master and Grandmaster level to entice necromancers looking to be tankier would be excellent and improve build diversity. Additionally, the trait line doesn’t do a whole lot to help your party members even though it’s got boon duration, which seems odd.

I also think that Necromantic Corruption is not a great design- boon removal is time sensitive and can be pivotal to a fight, so attaching it to a random chance on an AI attack seems like a bad idea. It also doesn’t do a good job of demonstrating its power- it’s not clear to the necromancer when the trait is going off, and I’m sure that many people who fight necros won’t really notice it until it screws them up at a crucial moment, at which point it feels awful for them.

I had some ideas about this which I posted a while back as examples of traits that I think illustrate support and defense options that still fit with the necro.

Adept-
Scales of Fate- When you remove a condition from an ally, they gain 2 stacks of Might (10S) (Only works on allies, not on yourself)

Master
Inevitability- When Chill, Cripple, or Immobilize is applied to you, transfer that condition back to the source (20S cooldown)

Grandmaster
Shadow of Death- When you enter Death Shroud, you and nearby allies gain Protection (2.5S)

On a somewhat related note, can we expect to see more enemy condition pressure in dungeons? I think that necros would be more valued in high-level dungeons if one of our strengths was as valuable in pve as it is in pvp.

Thanks for taking the time to read through all these threads, it is really appreciated and definitely a step in the right direction!

Distaste.4801:

My suggestion, since a complete condition system revamp will never be done, is just make a new trait and condition. Call the trait infection and make it a combo like condition where applying poison converts bleeds into infected wounds that does their combined damage (.15 condition damage+ (1.5*level)+6.5). This way we have access to a new condition that allows us to apply pressure but not quite the “burst” of burning, unless you let them stack up of course. You can further balance it so that 1 poison will convert up to X bleeds. This will also help in PvE where bleeds cap quickly and condition builds drop by the wayside.

This may solve the problem with the bleed cap, but there’s also the vulnerability cap. If we’re going to introduce even more conditions to the game, maybe we should make sure conditions them selves work correctly first. One of the biggest issues right now, is that it doesn’t hold a candle to DPS. It doesn’t scale right, partially due to the condition cap, but also due to bosses being resistant to conditions.

This has made our condition-focused class extremely unpopular in PVE, because the game favors DPS over condition damage (and that is a bad thing, it dumbs the game down). I think the two should be on equal footing if we want to have any spot in dungeon parties and restore some semblance of balance to the game.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

snip

Not only are they resistant to conditions, but direct damage scales vastly better with modifiers and stats in general, and most engagements with any kind of a decent team (even pugs) don’t allow conditions time to act.

Unfortunately, the very thing that makes direct damage king and conditions weak in PvE is exactly the thing that makes them the exact opposite in PvP.

“Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.”

Here in lies my issue. We can not sustain long enough for conditions to do there job in many cases. I assume this is why dps was buffed, viewed as op, and is now being “shaved”. I like the DS changes of late as well but your only focusing on 1/3 of our sustain. I welcome anyone at anet to explain to me how a 35-40 hp siphon is supposed to equal any amount of sustain particularly when we cant heal in DS, have no evade type ability to counter 1 shot abilities in pve, and many of our utilities hurt us to use. Right now we necros have to jump through hoops and watch little green bars that we waste essential trait slots just to fill up to get the sustain other classes get simply by speccing a certain trait line.

kailin.4905:

I welcome anyone at anet to explain to me how a 35-40 hp siphon is supposed to equal any amount of sustain particularly when we cant heal in DS, have no evade type ability to counter 1 shot abilities in pve, and many of our utilities hurt us to use. Right now we necros have to jump through hoops and watch little green bars that we waste essential trait slots just to fill up to get the sustain other classes get simply by speccing a certain trait line.

I think that devs just dont want to force people into “having to take blood magic” or the more realistic option of them being clueless what to do with necro after they crapped their pants from what we caused during beta.

One problem to keep in mind with Dhuumfire (and Incendiary Powder) that gets common complaints among the sPvP crowd is the lack of counterplay i.e. you have no way of knowing when the ICD is happening, what attack to avoid to avoid the burning, and even if you dodge, the next crit is going to land the burning.

I really like Jon’s idea of tying it to a specific attack (Life Blast was proposed) because that gives you an actual strategy to avoid it.

Both traits should be reworked to provide some counterplay. It is fine to move them around, but I hope this deeper issue is also addressed in a future patch.

Well; Blood does not give an appreciable level of offense even if the siphons were “good” so it would still be not the best choice to solely rely on in a damage centric game design. I don’t feel forced to run Signet of Malice on my thief, and it arguably has far more easily accessible sustain. (granted, it heals on attack instead of siphons; still better sustain though)

Both methods suffer from the drawbacks of needing to continuously attack; but only one comes with the option of being able to effectively choose your exposure window and also the ability to sacrifice it temporarily for burst healing.

I still think power damage % based siphons would be one of the easier to balance options though, a flat always on siphon is too abusable and virtually requires a cool-down or being nerfed to pointlessness like what we have now. This would help Power necros be a bit more viable too; as well as hybrids.

You could have the trait based damage dealt be out of the box (pre bloodthirst) be something like 2% of power damage dealt, which gives an equal self heal. A ’zerker necro would of course get a high siphon amount from this; but they had to sacrifice some damage to grab this trait from Blood, plus having paper defenses and little CC avoidance means it is still risky.

I’d really like trait that shares at least some siphon healing with team mates though; would open up an aggressive support option

Overkillengine.6084:

I still think power damage % based siphons would be one of the easier to balance options though, a flat always on siphon is too abusable and virtually requires a cool-down or being nerfed to pointlessness like what we have now. This would help Power necros be a bit more viable too; as well as hybrids.

Since release to now, Vampiric traits need to be mutually exculsive (so vampiric allows siphoning on normal hits, vap prec swaps siphon from normal hits to crits, minions siphon by themself but disable your siphon/weaken it to their level and maybe adding a condi siphon) and based on the DK death strike.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

That is over a 50% nerf in damage in WvW/PVE, due to its much more difficult to work into common rotations early in a fight, where right now, Dhuumfire usually procs right away. With no duration its like getting one extra Life Blast maybe, and not much of a cover condition any longer at 2 or 3 seconds.

Obviously the whole point is to reduce its strength, but are we going to then get back any of the nerfs that were done to bleeds and such over the last few months, when you guys were trying to deal with Dhuumfire/Terror in all kinds of other ways, by knocking other stuff down?

Most still calling for Dhuumfire changes don’t seem to realize, they likely have no intention of reverting any of those past nerfs, and it would be a massive disappointment if it takes months to get Necro back in line to respectability.

As most of the old condi builds prior to Dhuumfire introduction are now much much worse than they used to be due to all the shaving off that has been done to various traits and skills. I would like to dump Dhuumfire ideally and go back to those builds, but they are no longer sustainable, and even back then, we’re borderline underpowered vs the field.

Rennoko.5731:

The “on crit” part was oddly out of place in a non-crit tree… they made that comment before. I would prefer non-crit as it opens up more choices. Or 50% non-crit if you think its too strong at 100% non-crit. I think if it was 50% non-crit chance I likely wouldnt take it as I couldnt rely on it to proc.

No doubt, no condition necro certainly wants to sit in DS and fire off possibly 3 or 4 life blasts waiting for a meager 2-3s Dhuumfire.

Even as it stands at 100% on hit, I think it will do a good job of reducing 30/20/0/0/20 builds. But what would we getting back elsewhere in condi or sustain to make up for that our condi burst will now be heavily curtailed, that is the question.

Has Anet considered that at all, I see no evidence so far.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Distaste.4801:

My suggestion, since a complete condition system revamp will never be done, is just make a new trait and condition. Call the trait infection and make it a combo like condition where applying poison converts bleeds into infected wounds that does their combined damage (.15 condition damage+ (1.5*level)+6.5). This way we have access to a new condition that allows us to apply pressure but not quite the “burst” of burning, unless you let them stack up of course. You can further balance it so that 1 poison will convert up to X bleeds. This will also help in PvE where bleeds cap quickly and condition builds drop by the wayside.

This may solve the problem with the bleed cap, but there’s also the vulnerability cap. If we’re going to introduce even more conditions to the game, maybe we should make sure conditions them selves work correctly first. One of the biggest issues right now, is that it doesn’t hold a candle to DPS. It doesn’t scale right, partially due to the condition cap, but also due to bosses being resistant to conditions.

This has made our condition-focused class extremely unpopular in PVE, because the game favors DPS over condition damage (and that is a bad thing, it dumbs the game down). I think the two should be on equal footing if we want to have any spot in dungeon parties and restore some semblance of balance to the game.

If you read my first sentence in that paragraph I allude to there needing to be a complete condition overhaul. It will never happen because we are too far along. I mean people have been complaining about the condition caps since the game released and there has been nothing done at all. I’m not sure if ArenaNet is just incredibly unwilling to make major changes to the game in an attempt to make it better OR if they just don’t have the man power(money) to actually do it. Just judging by all the updates until now I am leaning towards them just having an incredibly small team.

Until the condition system gets overhauled conditions in PvE will always be second class. The best we can hope for are some new conditions that at least allow us some more breathing room before hitting the stupid caps.

Andele.1306:

kailin.4905:

I welcome anyone at anet to explain to me how a 35-40 hp siphon is supposed to equal any amount of sustain particularly when we cant heal in DS, have no evade type ability to counter 1 shot abilities in pve, and many of our utilities hurt us to use. Right now we necros have to jump through hoops and watch little green bars that we waste essential trait slots just to fill up to get the sustain other classes get simply by speccing a certain trait line.

I think that devs just dont want to force people into “having to take blood magic” or the more realistic option of them being clueless what to do with necro after they crapped their pants from what we caused during beta.

They don’t want healing to be powerful, that is why most healing skills in the game scale horribly. That’s actually one of the biggest problems with class balance in this game is that they are so afraid of healing and mitigation being powerful alternatives. You should be able to build a 75% mitigation build that takes huge hits and still keeps on ticking. Healing should be powerful and thus make poison a real counter. The whole class/balance system is a complete mess from start to finish. Given a day to revamp the game I’d make all armor available to each class with certain tradeoffs for each one. Make the base health the same for every class. Then make armor/toughness mitigate more, healing power scaling to match power, and % crit and % crit damage nerfed down to reasonable levels.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Side Thought - Make Terror do damage based on how ugly your character is…

So how much damage would I be doing?

Distaste.4801:

Andele.1306:

kailin.4905:

I welcome anyone at anet to explain to me how a 35-40 hp siphon is supposed to equal any amount of sustain particularly when we cant heal in DS, have no evade type ability to counter 1 shot abilities in pve, and many of our utilities hurt us to use. Right now we necros have to jump through hoops and watch little green bars that we waste essential trait slots just to fill up to get the sustain other classes get simply by speccing a certain trait line.

I think that devs just dont want to force people into “having to take blood magic” or the more realistic option of them being clueless what to do with necro after they crapped their pants from what we caused during beta.

They don’t want healing to be powerful, that is why most healing skills in the game scale horribly. That’s actually one of the biggest problems with class balance in this game is that they are so afraid of healing and mitigation being powerful alternatives. You should be able to build a 75% mitigation build that takes huge hits and still keeps on ticking. Healing should be powerful and thus make poison a real counter. The whole class/balance system is a complete mess from start to finish. Given a day to revamp the game I’d make all armor available to each class with certain tradeoffs for each one. Make the base health the same for every class. Then make armor/toughness mitigate more, healing power scaling to match power, and % crit and % crit damage nerfed down to reasonable levels.

Thank Grenth you aren’t making games…

Distaste.4801:

They don’t want healing to be powerful, that is why most healing skills in the game scale horribly. That’s actually one of the biggest problems with class balance in this game is that they are so afraid of healing and mitigation being powerful alternatives. You should be able to build a 75% mitigation build that takes huge hits and still keeps on ticking. Healing should be powerful and thus make poison a real counter. The whole class/balance system is a complete mess from start to finish. Given a day to revamp the game I’d make all armor available to each class with certain tradeoffs for each one. Make the base health the same for every class. Then make armor/toughness mitigate more, healing power scaling to match power, and % crit and % crit damage nerfed down to reasonable levels.

Agree completely. That would make the game much more interesting.

Andele.1306:

Overkillengine.6084:

I still think power damage % based siphons would be one of the easier to balance options though, a flat always on siphon is too abusable and virtually requires a cool-down or being nerfed to pointlessness like what we have now. This would help Power necros be a bit more viable too; as well as hybrids.

Since release to now, Vampiric traits need to be mutually exculsive (so vampiric allows siphoning on normal hits, vap prec swaps siphon from normal hits to crits, minions siphon by themself but disable your siphon/weaken it to their level and maybe adding a condi siphon) and based on the DK death strike.

Yes and no; it really depends on how they stack up since stacking them does incur the opportunity cost of speccing in Blood as well as spending traits to get them. One way to do it is a base siphon trait gives % siphon for the base power damage on all attacks but does not crit; while vampiric precision gives a separate % bonus amount on crits only. Getting both means at least 20 pts and two traits right there.

Not many high damage builds would want to allot that much to Blood; and support/tank builds aren’t going to have the extreme power damage base to ramp it up to unkillable bunker level sustain. The best overall stat array for a siphon build would be Cleric+some crit gear most likely, which isn’t going to be insta-gibbing anyone even with unresistable damage siphons.

Distaste.4801:

They don’t want healing to be powerful, that is why most healing skills in the game scale horribly. That’s actually one of the biggest problems with class balance in this game is that they are so afraid of healing and mitigation being powerful alternatives. You should be able to build a 75% mitigation build that takes huge hits and still keeps on ticking. Healing should be powerful and thus make poison a real counter. The whole class/balance system is a complete mess from start to finish. Given a day to revamp the game I’d make all armor available to each class with certain tradeoffs for each one. Make the base health the same for every class. Then make armor/toughness mitigate more, healing power scaling to match power, and % crit and % crit damage nerfed down to reasonable levels.

I don’t agree with all those changes, but you are correct that in order for poison to be an important counter, they would have to boost the effectiveness of healing. Then you would also see more healing-focused builds, instead of only DPS. Right now poison is just yet another condition that slowly ticks away at your health.

I also think they could take a look at boon removal. Currently the boon system just doesn’t work very well, because a lot of boons last very short, thus they often disappear by the time you finish casting a boon removal spell (especially in PVE). Or they get reapplied so fast that you might as well not remove them at all. I’ve seen PVE bosses that instantly reapplied their boons within 1 second of them being removed. That defeats the purpose. And of course most of the enemies in PVE do not use boons at all. In GW1 disenchanting was way more important, because enchantments lasted longer, and some stayed up indefinitely, as long as you had the energy to maintain them. So the effects of removing an enchantment were felt much stronger.

I also think they should look at making toughness more important. Currently it is way too easy for people to just bring their worst cardboard armor and focus on DPS exclusively. This again, dumbs down the game. Ideally there should be a balance, where healing matters, toughness matters, and of course DPS matters. But not ONLY DPS.

Pendragon.8735:

Even as it stands at 100% on hit, I think it will do a good job of reducing 30/20/0/0/20 builds. But what would we getting back elsewhere in condi or sustain to make up for that our condi burst will now be heavily curtailed, that is the question.

Has Anet considered that at all, I see no evidence so far.

I agree, and feel this is the most troubling wind blowing on the horizon. I expect they will rework dummfire, and continue to ignore the incredibly obvious fix to sustain, allowing siphons to scale w/ healing power and/or a small % of healing to work while in DS (traited or straight rework).

It is just so obvious to me that if you start scaling siphons at 3-5% healing power and then work your way up if it is needed to find the right balance. I get tired of the argument of 5 targets vs. 1 target and balancing. If there are 5 people, that is 5 times the damage that can be direct at you, should siphon not be 5 times as effective (as it currently is today)?

The trade off for siphons should be good scaling at the cost of other stats… it is as simple as that. Healing power should be a good stat for us, as it is for rangers and eles and guardians and warriors, IF we build to take advantage of it, which currently we cannot (for self sustain).

Rennoko.5731:

It is just so obvious to me that if you start scaling siphons at 3-5% healing power and then work your way up if it is needed to find the right balance. I get tired of the argument of 5 targets vs. 1 target and balancing. If there are 5 people, that is 5 times the damage that can be direct at you, should siphon not be 5 times as effective (as it currently is today)?

Exactly, I don’t know what anet is so afraid of, if I get attacked by 5 targets then a full Life Transfer (if healing worked in DS) would generate less than 2k hp. How is this a big deal?

I believe we should get more scaling for general healing and life force regeneration anyway, not just siphoning.
It’s so weird that the only class that has to rely on health, and health alone as a defensive mechanism, has the worst healing. Siphoning traits are heavily restricted atm, and other then those the only skills that scale mit multiple targets are: Locust Swarm, Necrotic Grasp, Feast (underwater) and the active of Locust Signet.

if they move terror to grandmaster and make it so that i cant get terror and lingering curse thats a pretty huge kittening nerf and im gonna be really kitten ed.

if they move terror to grandmaster and make it so that i cant get terror and lingering curse thats a pretty huge kittening nerf and im gonna be really kitten ed.

Distaste.4801:

They don’t want healing to be powerful, that is why most healing skills in the game scale horribly. That’s actually one of the biggest problems with class balance in this game is that they are so afraid of healing and mitigation being powerful alternatives. You should be able to build a 75% mitigation build that takes huge hits and still keeps on ticking. Healing should be powerful and thus make poison a real counter. The whole class/balance system is a complete mess from start to finish. Given a day to revamp the game I’d make all armor available to each class with certain tradeoffs for each one. Make the base health the same for every class. Then make armor/toughness mitigate more, healing power scaling to match power, and % crit and % crit damage nerfed down to reasonable levels.

You mean thats why every dedicated heal is at a 1:1 ratio, heals on aa have a 0.2 ratio (which if i may add is a lot for on auto attacks), why our dear Transfusion and the following: Geyser, Water Trident, Empower, Cleansing Wave, Shadow Refuge, Super Elixir are all over a 0.8: ratio (DK DC about other professions traits tbf).
Yeah no heals scale just as well as just power does, the only broken scaling in game is crit to crit damage since they had the wonderful idea that it should be additive.

Overkillengine.6084:

Yes and no; it really depends on how they stack up since stacking them does incur the opportunity cost of speccing in Blood as well as spending traits to get them. One way to do it is a base siphon trait gives % siphon for the base power damage on all attacks but does not crit; while vampiric precision gives a separate % bonus amount on crits only. Getting both means at least 20 pts and two traits right there.

What i had in mind more was: a) siphons being focused to compliment builds, not to make builds focus on siphons (way less toxic to the game), thus keeping healing on condi, heal on crit and heal on normal hit split.
b) not be a % of damage delt, but be either a % of your or enemy HP (so 0.5%~), based on the amount of damage you took in the last, like 7 seconds with a minimum amount on hit or a % off the dps you manage to deal once pre second (so vampiric based “regeneration” effect). All have worked in other games (even if the last one was kinda a disaster it was still enjoyable to play).

Also if you are speccing into blood (on a non well build) its probably for sustain, and if you can get sustain that keeps you going enough that you can only live with 2 dodges while actually helping allies and keeping chill/weakness/other stuff rotations on bosses to weaken them so that your allies can dps easier, it would be well worth 15/20 points (tank/dps setup respectively) or even 30 if it would heal allies wink wink nudge nudge devs.

Bhawb.7408:

Sepreh.5924:

Or, knowing our population, make the damage you take from Terror based on how attractive her character is….

;)

Terror’s damage now scales inversely with the amount of clothing your character is wearing.

BRING BACK GW1 SCAR ARMOUR! :p
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080926143349/gw/images/f/f7/Necromancer_Elite_Scar_Pattern_Armor_M_gray_front.jpg

Its been over 3 days and still no reply at all for the Mark of Blood nerf. Jon are you guys going to push though with this 33% nerf even with almost total rejection from the necro community?

For one, that nerf is only in PvP, where most necros don’t care.

Two, while we agree the nerf is pointless, it just doesn’t seem that big a deal; not when there are other things that are honestly a higher priority to change,

The intent by Anet for the necro is ‘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.’

However, as damage dealing continues to be ‘balanced’ for necro builds we are losing something as the sustain part is subpar: while in DS, LF vanished at an alarming rate and siphons are lacking in a number of ways.

In order to bring something new to the necro class, I am suggesting a new life stealing (LS) condition that would work in conjunction with DS, siphons, etc.
Clearly, the amount of life stolen would need to be balanced around syphons to prevent some form of god mode. This is my take on a few things others have mentioned in the forums before – credit to all the community’s input.

Key points for this condition:
1. Multiple application increases duration. It does not stack.
This allows for aNet to more effectively balance the amount of health return.
2. It can be unique to the necro class in one of two ways:
a) This is the one life stealing ability that can restore health while in death shroud, thus improving sustainability. I don’t expect it to return one to full health, but may allow enough to survive that one hit when coming out of DS and getting off a heal.
b) This is the one life stealing ability that can generate LF while in death shroud, thus improving sustainability. Again, I don’t expect this to turn this into an endless DS, but may allow enough time for an ability to finish cooling down in the background, such as healing.
3. Scaling can be managed in one of several ways:
a) it doesn’t and is a set amount making it easy for aNet to balance.
b) scales in some way with healing power
c) scales in relation to your health as a %.
c) scales in relation to the number of conditions on the target. I personally prefer this one as it creates an interesting dynamic in the game. You have to apply conditions to a target for this to be effective. With the amount of cleansing in game, it takes on a strategic element balancing condition application (general), removal, and application of said LS condition. You could set it up that with no conditions on a target, you get no return. Alternatively, maybe this is the condition for condo builds that generates LF when in normal form, and health when in DS. This is also balanced by the current condition cap (25).

This condition could be applied through weapons, for example staff (it is a utility weapon) or perhaps on sceptre #1 on x attack.
Alternatively, it could be a Master tier trait, for example in the Blood line, ‘Lifestealing condition applied on… crit/fear/torment’ (to balance it further, you could use the torment dynamic of movement to determine whether there was any return in the first place [potentially deals with stacking in dungeons?]) … Using the fear example, positioned correctly one may have to make the choice between fear doing damage vs health returns.
Depending on the choice above, one would expect the return to be relative depending on how it is applied and would also mean not all builds/weapon choices would take it.

How do you balance this with Epidemic?
You don’t. The aim of this condition is sustain, not full healing and the return should be designed with this in mind. Against a single target, you don’t use epidemic. Against multiples, you have an increase in returns but you also have an increase in incoming damage. Again, this isn’t meant to allow you to survive 1vX, it is to increase sustainability. Alternatively, when used with epidemic transfers only allow for 50% return unless directly applied.

Edit: I don’t see this applying any damage at all. It only generates a return.

Well folks, perhaps there is some light at the end of this dark tunnel. Looks like they finally took notice. Now lets hope this leads to big changes.

JonPeters:

Many things that were discussed will see the light of day in some form in the future, even though the focus of these topics were about what is going to be seen for Dec 10th. Some big takeaways for the future. We want control builds and condition builds to have more of a place in high end PvE. We want all profession build diversity to continue to increase, which we will do through more trait and skill work. We want to continue to more clearly define the play styles of the professions. We want to make the combat in Guild Wars 2 better for every single person playing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’ll state the obvious:

FIX condition damage! FIX IT! All this dancing around the actual balance issues, does nothing to improve the viability of the necromancer profession. All this is, is moving statistics around a bit. One bleed less here, one second of recharge longer there. What are you really changing? Look, if you’re not going to fix the actual problems with the class, then just leave it alone. Why even mention the necromancer in the patch notes at all?

Condition damage needs to scale so it works in PVE, even during giant group events where everyone and their mother is stacking bleeds and vulnerability. The condition cap is the biggest obstacle for this condition focused class. It doesn’t work as it is now.

Meanwhile in PVE

Meanwhile, the necromancer is one of the poorest classes in PVE. Our damage output is poor in Fractals and dungeons. And then one balance patch later, we do even less damage. One more balance patch, we have longer cool downs, and do even less damage. One more balance patch, we lose our Death Shroud’s ability to survive insta-kills. Yet another, even lower damage numbers and longer recharge….

Is anyone paying attention to what is happening to this class in PVE?

This. I haven’t logged in for… many months now. I’ve seen the events, they look like great fun. I’d love to play. But I won’t. Not while you refuse to even think or talk about how to fix condition damage in PvE, which is in an unusable state especially in high density environments.

Every patch I check and I see no change. And I still won’t log in. Not until this is fixed. I can only hope the forum login I made to make this post doesn’t count as a game login.