Elite Concept: Harbinger

Elite Concept: Harbinger

in Necromancer

Posted by: Dignified Loser.7689

Dignified Loser.7689

I suppose this is an attempt at providing an atypical shroud: functions very similarly to traditional shroud skills but rather than replacing your health bar, life force is consumed, enhancing skills when more life force is consumed. You also maintain access to healing, utility, and elite skills while “shroud” is active.

Harbinger: Focuses on manipulating health and life force to gain a risky advantage. Gains access to main-hand swords and sacrifices. Sacrifice skills consume health (and/or life force when traited) in exchange for stronger abilities/effects.

Mischief Skills and Main-hand Sword Skills:


F1a. Summon Undead Mischief: Consume your life force to summon undead rodents to attack your foes; summoning rodents based on your current life force (10s cooldown).
-Life Force Consumed per Rodent: 10%
F1b. Dismiss Mischief: Disperse all remaining rodents, gaining a small amount of life force for each rodent dismissed.
-Life force: 1%

Mischief “Shroud” Skills:
1. Gnash: Command a rodent to attack your foe; attacking more frequently the more rodents you have.
-Damage: 600 (0.75)
-Bleeding (x1): 6s
-Number of Targets: 1
-Range: 900
-Cast Time: 0.5s
2. Gorge: Send a group of rodents to leech health from your foes (15s cd).
-Damage: 512 (0.6)
-Bleeding (x3): 7s
-Life Siphon Damage: 115
-Life Siphon Heal: 175
-Targets Above Five Rodents: 3
-Targets Below Five Rodents: 1
-Range: 900
-Cast Time: 0.5s
3. Dreadful Cry: Command the rodents to let out a cry, fearing foes near you (24s cd).
-Damage: 135 (0.6)
-Fear Above Five Rodents: 2s
-Fear Below Five Rodents: 1s
-Targets: 5
-Radius: 300
-Cast Time: 1s
4. Gnaw: Send the rodents into a frenzy, leeching health from nearby foes (35s cd).
-Damage Above Five Rodents (x10): 1800 (1.7)
-Damage Below Five Rodents (x5): 900 (1.7)
-Life Siphon Damage: 80
-Life Siphon Heal: 75
-Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 600
-Channel time: 2s
5. Devour Vermin: Consume a rodent, healing yourself (2s cd).
-Healing: 375 (0.2)
-Cast Time: 0.75s

Main-hand Sword Skills:
1a. Consuming Stab: Stab your foes and generate life force for each foe struck.
-Damage: 540 (0.6)
-Life Force: 3%
-Number of Targets: 2
-Range: 300
-Cast Time: 0.25s
1b. Nefarious Slash: Slash your foes twice, bleeding them.
-Damage (x2): 440 (0.8)
-Bleeding (x2): 6s
-Number of Targets: 2
-Range: 300
-Cast Time: 0.5s
1c. Leeching Gash: Strike your foes again, leeching health from each foe struck.
-Damage: 510 (0.9)
-Life Siphon Damage: 64
-Life Siphon Heal: 100
-Number of Targets: 3
-Range: 300
-Cast Time: 0.5s
2. Devouring Blade: Leap towards your foes with a ghostly blade, leeching health and life force from them (12s cd).
-Damage: 512 (1.8)
-Life Siphon Damage: 200
-Life Siphon Heal: 475
-Life Force: 2%
-Number of Targets: 3
-Range: 600
-Combo Finisher: Leap
-Cast Time: 0.75s
3. Soul Siphon: Leech life force from your foe, dealing more damage while above the life force threshold (20s cd).
-Damage (x15): 550 (1.2)
-Life Force: 2%
-Number of Targets: 1
-Damage Increased: 15%
-Life Force Threshold: 66%
-Range: 900
-Channel Time: 3s

Sacrifices:


Healing Skill:
Ceaseless Hunger: Sacrifice a portion of your health to break stun and cause your attacks to leech health for a period of time (20s cd).
-Life Siphon Damage: 115
-Life Siphon Heal: 300
-Health Sacrificed: 12%
-Duration: 12s
-Breaks Stun

Utility Skills:
Harbinger’s Balance: Drain your health while bleeding and leeching life force from your foe (18s cd).
-Damage (x20): 600 (1.2)
-Bleeding (x20): 2s
-Health Sacrificed (x20): 1%
-Life Force (x20): 2%
-Range: 900
-Channel Time: 5s
Fetid Consumption: Sacrifice a portion of your health to convert conditions you’re suffering from into life force (24s cd).
-Health Sacrificed per Condition: 2%
-Life Force per Condition: 1%
-Cast Time: 0.75s
Jagged Horror: Sacrifice a portion of your health to summon a jagged horror (3s cd).
-Health Sacrificed: 10%
-Cast Time: 0.75s
Harbinger’s Reprisal: Sacrifice a portion of your health to cause all incoming attacks to damage the attackers for twice the amount (30s cd).
-Health Sacrificed: 7%
-Duration: 5s
-Cast Time: 0.5s

Elite Skill:
Dread Grasp: Sacrifice a large portion of your health to heavily damage your foe. Recharges faster when killing or downing a foe (60s cd).
-Damage: 1800 (2.2)
-Health Sacrificed: 33%
-Number of Targets: 1
-Recharge Reduced: 50%
-Range: 900
-Unblockable
-Cast Time: 1.25s

Traits:


Minor Adept:
Ravaging Mischief: Gain access to undead mischief summoning, main-hand swords, and sacrifice skills.

Major Adept:
Hunger Pains: While below the heath threshold your attacks leech health.
-Life Siphon Damage: 60
-Life Siphon Heal: 50
-Health Threshold: 50%
Sacrificial Resurrection: Sacrifices heal and partially revive you and nearby allies when cast.
-Revive Percent: 2.5%
-Healing: 422 (1.0)?
-Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 360
Harbinger’s Persistence: So long as you have enough life force you can summon a mischief from the downed state. Take less damage while controlling a summoned mischief (15s cd).
-Damage Reduced: 10%

Minor Master:
Fate’s Will: Whenever you kill a foe you and your minions gain health (3s cd).
-Healing: 600 (0.3)

Major Master:
Devouring Swarm: While controlling a mischief periodically leech health from nearby foes.
-Life Siphon Damage: 85
-Life Siphon Healing: 70
-Number of Targets: 5
-Interval: 3s
-Radius: 360
Spiritual Blade: Sword skills have a reduced cooldown. Generate life force and partially revive nearby allies when you swap to sword (9s cd).
-Revive Percent: 3%
-Life Force: 15%
-Number of Targets: 5
-Recharge Reduced: 20%
-Radius: 300
Necrotic Nutrition: Devour Vermin additionally cleanses conditions and generates a small amount of life force.
-Conditions Removed: 1
-Life Force: 2%

Minor Grandmaster:
Harbinger’s Wrath: Deal more damage and take reduced damage based on your current health.
-Damage Increase below 75% Health: 5%
-Damage Reduced below 75% Health: 5%
-Damage Increase below 50% Health: 10%
-Damage Reduced below 50% Health: 10%
-Damage Increase below 25% Health: 15%
-Damage Reduced below 25% Health: 15%
-Combat Only

Major Grandmaster:
Ravaging Thirst: Siphoning health grants you and nearby allies a stacking power and healing power effect. Cast a Lesser Ceaseless Hunger when striking foes below the health threshold (10s cd).
-Ravaging Thirst (10s): 10 Power and 10 Healing Power
-Maximum Stacks: 10
-Life Siphon Damage: 94
-Life Siphon Heal: 260
-Health Sacrificed: 3%
-Duration: 4s
-Health Threshold: 50%
-Number of Targets: 5
-Radius: 600
Feast of Souls: Sacrifices instead consume life force and convert life force into health respectively. Sacrifices generate life force when cast below the life force threshold.
-Life Force: 6%
-Life Force Threshold: 50%
Mischief Pundit: Whenever you summon a mischief, summon additional rodents, increasing the effectiveness of mischief skills so long as you do not fall below the rodent threshold.
-Additional Rodents: 5
-Rodent Threshold: 10
-Effectiveness Increased: 50%

Additional Notes:
-All numbers are guesstimates.
-Naming scheme is a work in progress.
-Generally speaking, the stronger the skill the higher the health/life force cost.
-Finally, aside for the numerical aspect of “undead mischief skills”, the rodents are mostly aesthetic and can be altered accordingly.

(edited by Dignified Loser.7689)

Elite Concept: Harbinger

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Posted by: dzeRnumbrd.6129

dzeRnumbrd.6129

I like the name Harbinger.

I don’t like pets at all, therefore I don’t like any of the shroud skills. I also think from a technical perspective that having a lot of rodent minions around might stress the server out in WvW.

I’m not a fan of the sword skills either as they sound boring to use (all 3 skills only do basic damage and life force drain — there are no combo finishers, no movement skills, no pulls, no utility like blocks, reflects, CC etc). Is sword #2 a PBAOE or ground targeted?

I think it is essential that melee has movement or pull skills to help balance out kiting and also CC to stay on target. I prefer movement because many runners have some stability.

Necro should be heavily rewarded with superior damage for going melee because they just don’t have the invulns, blocks, etc that most melee classes have to sustain themselves. So I would like to see more damage or more utility on the sword.

I also don’t like Health->Life Force conversion concept – it would be better to go the other way Life Force->Health to add to our sustain. Health is something you can’t readily restore whereas Life Force is easy to restore. Health has far more value than Life Force IMO. Sacrificing something of value for something of less value doesn’t appeal (even though you are giving me twice as much). I may be swayed on this idea though. Nothing in that utility bar would make me swap out my wells and corrosive poison cloud though.

Reprisal should have a multiplier effect so incoming damage is multiplied by when returned or all attacks (instead of one attack) during the 5 seconds are returned. 30 seconds is a long time to wait for recharge on returning 1 attack. What if someone does a simple auto attacks on you? You return 1k damage to them and then you’ve got a 30 second cooldown to wait for. If it said “Sacrifice 5% health to return double damage to enemy for 5 seconds” then that would be interesting and possibility worthwhile because it then becomes a block/invulnerability for us (something we lack). No one would attack us while we had Reprisal up (would need a visual indicator such as a green or red aura). It should then be renamed to “Stop Hitting Yourself”.

Dread Grasp is probably too OP, with 3000 damage you would down a player with one keypress. My Ghastly Claws (1072 dmg) hits a WvW tower lord for 20k-25k and you’re talking about three times that damage (60k-75k). For anyone slightly glassy it means instant downed state and for a tank character that’ll mean at least half or 3/4 health bar gone.

Sorry that review overly negative. Everything I didn’t criticise was OK so there were plenty of good areas

Elite Concept: Harbinger

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Posted by: Dignified Loser.7689

Dignified Loser.7689

Thanks for the feedback and no need to apologize.

I will offer at at least one point of clarification though:

  • The rodents/mischief aren’t minions/pets, you could say “dark energy” or simply “do more damage” or whatever; so no, no need to be concerned about too many minions. It’s really just a thematic choice if anything.

As for the rest of you points it’s all fair, specifically:

  • Boring sword skills. Yeah, I suppose I was sick of seeing conditions and wanted something without them, but I suppose, at the very least, some combo finishers and movement skills could be added.
  • Health -> Life Force is a precarious effect but I’m unsure how to improve it’s appeal. As for the two or so skills specifically mentioned, I will take your suggestions and make some edits.

(edited by Dignified Loser.7689)

Elite Concept: Harbinger

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Posted by: Dadnir.5038

Dadnir.5038

Do you lose LF while being hitten in shroud or life? I’d really like the idea of an external shroud surrounding the necromancer instead of the necromancer becoming the shroud.

I am wondering how you see :
- Gorge interacting with Path of corruption
- Gnaw interacting with Transfusion

I’m seeing a bit late that rodent are not minion? Are they some spectral thing image that surround the shrouded necromancer (visual effect)?

Sacrifice : In my opinion sacrificing health directly is a bad idea. This is the kind of thing that would work in a game with dedicated healers but gw2 is not this kind of game. The idea is interesting in itself but in the end it is a bound to be as flawed as corruptions are right now.

Trait :
- Adept traits seem ok, however the treshold for pain hunger seem a bit high. I think it should be at 50%.
- Fate will : ICD?
- Devour vermine : honestly, this skill need to be different if you want to associate necrotic nutrition to it. The combination of the 2 generate a bit to much of sustain.
- Harbringer wrath : It a bit complicated but I like it…
- Ravaging thirst : this trait may kill us. (a skill that sacrifice health may be bad but a trait that do it is worse)

Well that’s mostly all I see. Overall it feel like a tanky spec that bring some interesting support tools.

No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.

Elite Concept: Harbinger

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Posted by: Dignified Loser.7689

Dignified Loser.7689

Do you lose LF while being hitten in shroud or life? I’d really like the idea of an external shroud surrounding the necromancer instead of the necromancer becoming the shroud.

I am wondering how you see :
- Gorge interacting with Path of corruption
- Gnaw interacting with Transfusion

I’m seeing a bit late that rodent are not minion? Are they some spectral thing image that surround the shrouded necromancer (visual effect)?

Sacrifice : In my opinion sacrificing health directly is a bad idea. This is the kind of thing that would work in a game with dedicated healers but gw2 is not this kind of game. The idea is interesting in itself but in the end it is a bound to be as flawed as corruptions are right now.

Regarding life force drain while active there is none, since the idea was to drain all life force up “summoning” the mischief. As for the mischief/rodents, though not minions, “they” are an external shroud of sorts, but it does not protect your actual health, hence why slot skills are still usable. That being said, how many are “summoned” does impact the usefulness of the “shroud” skills. Regarding Path of Corruption and Transfusion does hold some balance issues, mostly Transfusion since Gorge is a single strike, multi-target attack. Transfusion on the other hand, since the “shroud” doesn’t function quite the same, would heal/revive the player necromancer, which, in correspondence with Sacrifice skills, could be balanced, maybe.

Sacrifices I agree are more interesting than practical, but I don’t feel like changing them so I guess it is what it is.

I adjusted the mentioned traits accordingly as you suggested.

Thanks for the feedback, it’s always appreciated.

Elite Concept: Harbinger

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Posted by: Silv.9207

Silv.9207

I really like that possible elite spec.
The only big problem I see there is that more or less every skill consume hp and don’t grant any defence to the necromancer.
I talk as a pvp player and I don’t see that elite spec viable. We still die like flies in pvp, unable to block a single hit, how can we fight anyone if the first thing we do is consume our own health?

The only way to balance the consumed health can be increase by tree times or more the HP obtained by the sword skills and leeching skills.
But that will result in a total imbalance why the sword will be used also without the Sacrifice skills.

That’s a good idea and I really like it, there’s only to do a rework on Heal and LF restoration/generation

Elite Concept: Harbinger

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Posted by: Elbritil.3817

Elbritil.3817

I like the style it is imagined, reminds me for the old wow warlocks. But yea in the current state of the game, it gonna kill the player. But if the fate’s will trait would work like a self heal boost like 2x siphon heal and +15% all incoming non-siphon heal would balance the things. Just imagine a blood-curse-harbinger build. A shaman/apotechary build would be devestating power on the fields.