Guild Wars 2

DelOnasi.6051:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Also, are there really so many attacks in PvE that you don’t have enough dodges without Vigor? The number of people I’ve seen just dodge randomly for no net gain is so high that I have an intensely hard time believe that.

This hurts a lot in several high end PvE fights such as Lupicus. It’s not really fair to comment on the PvE aspect of a necromancer change if you haven’t played a necromancer in a lot of dungeons. Necros were never one of the “best” dungeon classes, making this all the more painful.

In general, are there so many attacks that you don’t have enough dodges without vigor? If you time everything perfectly, probably not – this game’s PvE is pretty easy in general. But every other class gets some form (usually multiple) of avoiding single spike hits: vigor, +50% endurance regen traits, block, invunerability, aegis, evade skills, and projectile reflection. Necromancers have none of these, and previously could make up for the difference with skillful use of death shroud. Now the skill cap has been lowered, and necromancers are the only class to have none of those defenses against large 1 hit attacks (other than natural dodges, which every class has).

Stop feeding the kitten wipe troll. I wonder how can you time everything perfectly if you have multiple trash mobs spamming their attacks at you.

Haven’t played it yet but the DS change just sucks from the fun side. like many have said in wvw that was our only and funniest way to get away from blobs that are coming. Additionally if you weren’t using that 10% of DS to absorb big hits when it’s called for i don’t know what to say, to me it didn’t seem like an exploit, but the only thing we have to mitigate dmg. when things start to go downhill in a fight for whatever reason.

DelOnasi.6051:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Also, are there really so many attacks in PvE that you don’t have enough dodges without Vigor? The number of people I’ve seen just dodge randomly for no net gain is so high that I have an intensely hard time believe that.

This hurts a lot in several high end PvE fights such as Lupicus. It’s not really fair to comment on the PvE aspect of a necromancer change if you haven’t played a necromancer in a lot of dungeons. Necros were never one of the “best” dungeon classes, making this all the more painful.

In general, are there so many attacks that you don’t have enough dodges without vigor? If you time everything perfectly, probably not – this game’s PvE is pretty easy in general. But every other class gets some form (usually multiple) of avoiding single spike hits: vigor, +50% endurance regen traits, block, invunerability, aegis, evade skills, and projectile reflection. Necromancers have none of these, and previously could make up for the difference with skillful use of death shroud. Now the skill cap has been lowered, and necromancers are the only class to have none of those defenses against large 1 hit attacks (other than natural dodges, which every class has).

Thank you for that, and it’s kind of the whole point. I feel like Necros have been masking a much larger issue with their class using DS in a way that ANet probably never intended from the start. Now that it’s been removed, it’s going to be like a bright-red sore that demands attention if things are as dire as level-heads lead me to believe.

It’s difficult to properly kitten the state of a wound if you still have a band-aid slapped over it. I’ll give Necros that it was a clever use of how the game worked to weave DS in to mitigate spikes, but without it, I’d be hopeful that you get something that’s more fun and enables more dynamic play, such as better LF generation for more frequent DS usage, or short-term Aegis on DS use. Personally I’d be ultra disappointed in my class if I had to use Adrenaline to simply mitigate a burst of damage.

ANet sure took its time with a one year old band aid.

Khal Drogo.9631:

ANet sure took its time with a one year old band aid.

I still can’t use Earthshaker from a higher point on an incline to a lower point, because it misses everything on account of the elevation disparity.

Sometimes small things take time, and priorities shift all the time based on the current state of the game. If what other people are saying is true, DS is absorbing thousands more damage than it used to. Perhaps they thought this would balance that out.

And if it turns out it is really burning PvE Necros, they’ll come up with an actual fix that allows Necros to make use of their profession mechanic as more than just a block on huge spikes of boss damage.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Khal Drogo.9631:

ANet sure took its time with a one year old band aid.

I still can’t use Earthshaker from a higher point on an incline to a lower point, because it misses everything on account of the elevation disparity.

Sometimes small things take time, and priorities shift all the time based on the current state of the game. If what other people are saying is true, DS is absorbing thousands more damage than it used to. Perhaps they thought this would balance that out.

And if it turns out it is really burning PvE Necros, they’ll come up with an actual fix that allows Necros to make use of their profession mechanic as more than just a block on huge spikes of boss damage.

Yeah not going to happen. Because there arent many PVE necros in the first place. And any complaints are just “WAHHH!” to people who play the best classes in PVE.

Whatever, calling time out on GW2. Congrats balance team, you made me spend time in the forums again.

DelOnasi.6051:

Roe.3679:

You really thought it was intended to tank infinite damage when DS is drained? This change was coming for months. If it caught you by surprise, I’m really not sure what to say. Perhaps if you wanted blocks on demand you should have rolled a guardian.

Most classes have several ways to mitigate infinite damage – vigor for dodges, +50% endurance regeneration traits, blocks, invulnerability skills, aegis. A large portion of PvE as it is currently implemented revolves around avoiding spike damage through these abilities. Removing this from necros without adding other sources of spike damage mitigation is a huge and unwarranted nerf to necromancer viability in dungeons.

+100001 to this!
Also it this made necro punching bag in pvp.

IMHO it seems like they were trying to fix the fall damage bug and, in their shortsightedness, overlooked the PvE implications. But really it’s not the end of this world, PvE in this game is a joke anyway. Now necro might actually get access to some vigor via reanimator swap trait re-do.

First Ranger, which I stopped playing, now necro is getting picked on, how far is this going to go, I honestly don’t think I could be bothered training up on another class to the point i got to on ranger or necro, ds was viable the way it was because we have low in combat mobility, not that this is a complete class breaker but where will they stop now that their attention is on us. Being able to jump of cliffs was a great escape, other classes have means of escape why shouldn’t we and in wvw it was one of the funniest things to troll enemies off over with you, now you take away just alittle bit more of that fun out of the game, thanks guys.

Roe.3679:

Azraeel.1238:

Roe.3679:

Kajin.5301:

Saturn.6591:

TheStarflyer.9641:

Saturn.6591:

Necros can’t suicide-jump off cliffs anymore. That’s about the only real DS-nerf here.

On the other hand, they fixed a bug that apparently was letting Necros take more damage from direct attacks while in DS. So I’d say the survivability is now INCREASED. Not even talking about the faster generation of life force through spectral skills and axe 2.

Spoken like someone who has never played a necro… go back to ele or guard, leave the skilled players alone…

Actually, Necro is one of the classes I play quite frequently. I didn’t touch my lvl 30 Ele or my lvl uhm… 14 (I think) Guardian for at least two months.

Edit: Talking about skilled; it appears to me that you’re not one of the “skilled players” if you don’t see the facts. Even if you should have to face-tank a big attack of a boss for some weird reason, it will actually do less damage as before, because they fixed the bug that did make you take more direct damage while you are in DS.

Going into DS before a big incomming hit (backstab/mighty blow/evisc/boss’ OHKO) would make you effectively ‘dodge’ it, even if you had only 5% pool. Now you will eat all the dmg as it overflows out of DS. That’s why he called on you being not-skilled. This is not only a jump-off-cliffs nerf, it’s a definately survivability nerf since we didn’t get any evade/invul/escape tool replacement. Check wiki for Evade/Invul/Block/, guess who’s missing at the party.

You need at least 10% life force to get into DS.

I find it heavily unlikely that everyone complaining about this actually used a sliver of life force to soak up a big hit. The way people are crying it sounds like some people could absorb every backstab and always generate 10% life force on a whim to block everything.

Most if the time it’s probably soaking 1k damage, and hardly ever these huge hits.

That’s because you are thinking in PvP style, think using PvE, and you will see a HUGE difference.

You’re right, i was thinking about PVP.

Personally I would consider using this in PVE to be an exploit.

So soaking up one large hit from an attack and loosing death shroud is an exploit. But being invulnerable to all attacks for something like 11 seconds on a mesmer is completely AOK…. Sure. Makes perfect sense. The necromancer’s one and ONLY means of defense is clearly an exploit, but a mesmer or guardian being able to shrug off multiple 30k+ damage attacks without so much as batting an eye is good game balance.

I am the mighty Nerfomancer (poses) feel my wrath (falls over dead as he shifts out of Deathshroud).. cough..

I find the internal cooldown for the spectral skills a BIG nerf.

Spectral walk with the internal cooldown now gives an absolute maximum of 16% life force (2% per hit over 8 seconds). However, this only happens if you’re being hit every second over those 8 seconds. You’re likely to gain much less as you probably won’t be getting hit that consistently.

Blame the guy who got out of the Skyhammer map and into the Crystal Desert.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Two responses, and neither of you told me if PvE requires more dodges than are physically possible without Vigor.

And you want your profession mechanic to be a poor version of an Aegis? That’s what you want. You don’t want it to be useful, you don’t want to be given something else. You just want to use DS for avoiding spike damage in PvE.

What you don’t realize is I’m actually curious about why you can’t dodge things in PvE with dodges, and I think that with this change, your potential for receiving something along the lines of an evade/invuln/block have increased.

So please, divert your angst elsewhere.

How about answer your own question? Try playing whatever your current class without traiting for vigor or using any evasion/protection/block skills. Don’t use any weapon mobility skills either. Try that on a fight like lupi in arah or alpha in coe. Then provide your own answer on whether 2 dodges are enough with no vigor. Try not being able to heal at all while using your core class mechanic on top of that.

ODB.6891:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Two responses, and neither of you told me if PvE requires more dodges than are physically possible without Vigor.

And you want your profession mechanic to be a poor version of an Aegis? That’s what you want. You don’t want it to be useful, you don’t want to be given something else. You just want to use DS for avoiding spike damage in PvE.

What you don’t realize is I’m actually curious about why you can’t dodge things in PvE with dodges, and I think that with this change, your potential for receiving something along the lines of an evade/invuln/block have increased.

So please, divert your angst elsewhere.

How about answer your own question? Try playing whatever your current class without traiting for vigor or using any evasion/protection/block skills. Don’t use any weapon mobility skills either. Try that on a fight like lupi in arah or alpha in coe. Then provide your own answer on whether 2 dodges are enough with no vigor. Try not being able to heal at all while using your core class mechanic on top of that.

You could have chosen to run through scenarios on those boss fights where you gobble up two dodges and do not have a third dodge ready. I don’t care if it’s adds, inopportune AoEs you have to dodge through, edge case scenarios, whatever. You could have tried to generate a logical discussion centered around empirical evidence.

You could have, but you didn’t.

Instead, you spent a full paragraph telling me to go try it. And what then? If I come back and say “Actually that isn’t bad at all, you just manage X with Y and then you have a dodge ready for Z, since it only happens every W seconds”, what is the response? Here’s what I think it will be:

“We still need something.”

Feel free to insert your degree of flame-baiting/anger/what-have-you.

I don’t PvE. I haven’t seen any of those bosses. Maybe you need a mechanic to reasonably get through them as a Necro, whether it’s another Evade, a Block, an Invulnerability period, Vigor, whatever. Unfortunately, nothing anyone has said has even tried to begin proving that’s the case. And you just added yourself to that list of no-helps.

For those who are trying to look smart, you anticipate a hit by going into DS when you feel like the boss is about to perform his spike damage. Your DS won’t vanish instantly as soon as you go into it, and you can sustain it a little longer if you use DS4. I did this as an Oh Sh!t button and trying to soak up some big damage attacks. Like for example when fighting Maw, there is one AOE damage that once downed me, so I started to use DS like halfway through, and it throws me out of DS once I get hit. Surprisingly, I when looked around, many people who took a direct hit didn’t get downed, while if I took that I would have definitely got downed. Same for Fire Shaman’s axe throwing, and mossman…

The main reason I’m bummed is because I thought they would buff the DS mechanic, not nerf it.

Can’t believe people are just ignoring this, PvE wise, this made dungeon necros squishy as kitten

There needs to be some serious balancing done to counter this kittened change

It’s much nicer on paper, to have 100% life pool as life force. More so, that direct damage doesn’t hit for even more. (E.g. 25k life, 100% death shroud, sucked up in a 12k hit.)
It makes more sense, more life force = more damage eaten.
Most will say, tho fun, ‘drop necro’ may not have been by design.

What it really show’s is the problem with having no, vigor, faster endurance regen, block, invul, teleport.

Doing a dungeon now, polite groups ask the necro to sit out the boss fights.

I’ll also point out, staff 4 nurf, also makes me feel even less helpful in a group.

I’ll also point out, 1 sec + lag before we get heal/skills, no access to heals/condi clean in DS, hinders the situation even more.

Kitarity.8976:

Not too sure about others but taking out the DS fall damage is drastically going to reduce my WvW survivability. All the other classes seem to have some way of escaping from unfavourable fights e.g. Thief speed/stealth, Mesmer blinks, and so on, jumping off of cliffs was the one thing I looked forward to. God kitten it ANet, took away one of the most fun aspects as a Necro.

Because we had ONE build that made things hard for them. Not even impossible, just hard, and holy kitten that better not show up in the PAX tourney where their “balanced game” was under the spotlight. Wait till after the pvp nonsense is over then see where we are. If it doesn’t change in a few weeks, then we pull out the torches and pitchforks. Until then, roll an engi. You’ll have more fun than you’ve had since they started swinging that nerf hammer on our beloved necro. Engi is in a really good place if you were formerly a skilled necro. Easy Mode lolz.

And btw it has nothing to do with the jumping off cliffs. It has EVERYTHING to do with not being able to use out class mechanic the way they have pounded into our heads the last few months. Now we’re just victims of RNG and worse, the mercy of whether or not we face bad players in pvp. If we do, we might have a chance, if not, we’re screwed.

BTW….WTB other classes the brain capacity to bring necro counters in their builds instead of running to forums to QQ to get that nerfbat swinging (just to clarify, terror nerf…ok needed, if dhuum stayed as it was….dhuum nerf…ok needed, if terror stayed as it was…both>>>> WTF. HOW can you see that as balanced? 2 seconds of burning and a chunk off terror>>> combined….just NO. We never should have had burning to begin with. This was NOT our doing yet we suffer for it. Undo all the recent changes, give me back my old, slow, clunky, buggy, yet semi-viable necro. ANYDAY. You killed so many builds in one swoop that weren’t even part of the original QQ)

TL;Dr
Clean it up. It’s time to balance off actual balance. Once PAX is over this needs to end. We have put up with this long enough.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

BTW….WTB other classes the brain capacity to bring necro counters in their builds instead of running to forums to QQ to get that nerfbat swinging (just to clarify, terror nerf…ok needed, if dhuum stayed as it was….dhuum nerf…ok needed, if terror stayed as it was…both>>>> WTF. HOW can you see that as balanced? 2 seconds of burning and a chunk off terror>>> combined….just NO. We never should have had burning to begin with. This was NOT our doing yet we suffer for it. Undo all the recent changes, give me back my old, slow, clunky, buggy, yet semi-viable necro. ANYDAY. You killed so many builds in one swoop that weren’t even part of the original QQ)

TL;Dr
Clean it up. It’s time to balance off actual balance. Once PAX is over this needs to end. We have put up with this long enough.

They killed “so many builds”, that were all dependent on a 4-second burn and a Terror that did 17% more damage?

My god, please calm down. You sound like you’re trying to raise the fourth reich because the class isn’t quite what you want it to be.

Cogbyrn.7283:

ODB.6891:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Two responses, and neither of you told me if PvE requires more dodges than are physically possible without Vigor.

And you want your profession mechanic to be a poor version of an Aegis? That’s what you want. You don’t want it to be useful, you don’t want to be given something else. You just want to use DS for avoiding spike damage in PvE.

What you don’t realize is I’m actually curious about why you can’t dodge things in PvE with dodges, and I think that with this change, your potential for receiving something along the lines of an evade/invuln/block have increased.

So please, divert your angst elsewhere.

How about answer your own question? Try playing whatever your current class without traiting for vigor or using any evasion/protection/block skills. Don’t use any weapon mobility skills either. Try that on a fight like lupi in arah or alpha in coe. Then provide your own answer on whether 2 dodges are enough with no vigor. Try not being able to heal at all while using your core class mechanic on top of that.

You could have chosen to run through scenarios on those boss fights where you gobble up two dodges and do not have a third dodge ready. I don’t care if it’s adds, inopportune AoEs you have to dodge through, edge case scenarios, whatever. You could have tried to generate a logical discussion centered around empirical evidence.

You could have, but you didn’t.

Instead, you spent a full paragraph telling me to go try it. And what then? If I come back and say “Actually that isn’t bad at all, you just manage X with Y and then you have a dodge ready for Z, since it only happens every W seconds”, what is the response? Here’s what I think it will be:

“We still need something.”

Feel free to insert your degree of flame-baiting/anger/what-have-you.

I don’t PvE. I haven’t seen any of those bosses. Maybe you need a mechanic to reasonably get through them as a Necro, whether it’s another Evade, a Block, an Invulnerability period, Vigor, whatever. Unfortunately, nothing anyone has said has even tried to begin proving that’s the case. And you just added yourself to that list of no-helps.

Well, to be perfectly honest, you aren’t listening either. Yes, by using up Death Shroud (from full), we can survive those attacks. Once. We haven’t built up enough when the attack rolls around again.

The one-hit skills that one-shot (Kudu’s Mega Blaster) aren’t the huge problem. It’s the mass AoE rapid-hard hitting attacks that are. Lupicus and Subject Alpha like to use these a lot and two dodges doesn’t cover the length of time that the attack takes place. They also use them more frequently than once every 20 seconds, so you cannot dodge twice when they use the attack next without Vigor or an evade skill (which Necros have none of).

This isn’t even counting the open world bosses like Harathi Hinterlands and the various Temple events (especially Grenth) that have AoE pulsing one-shot (if you’re not at max health) attacks. Previously, I would avoid what I could, then use death shroud to negate the damage to keep fighting. Now, I can do that once in a several minute fight.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, to be perfectly honest, you aren’t listening either. Yes, by using up Death Shroud (from full), we can survive those attacks. Once. We haven’t built up enough when the attack rolls around again.

The one-hit skills that one-shot (Kudu’s Mega Blaster) aren’t the huge problem. It’s the mass AoE rapid-hard hitting attacks that are. Lupicus and Subject Alpha like to use these a lot and two dodges doesn’t cover the length of time that the attack takes place. They also use them more frequently than once every 20 seconds, so you cannot dodge twice when they use the attack next without Vigor or an evade skill (which Necros have none of).

This isn’t even counting the open world bosses like Harathi Hinterlands and the various Temple events (especially Grenth) that have AoE pulsing one-shot (if you’re not at max health) attacks. Previously, I would avoid what I could, then use death shroud to negate the damage to keep fighting. Now, I can do that once in a several minute fight.

I was trying to get content out of responses. Yours finally prevailed, so thank you for that. Also, note that I was the one open to doing something like giving Necros Aegis on Death Shroud use to serve the same purpose as it was previously used without sacrificing the entire profession mechanic to it.

Would Sigil of Superior Energy ruin your DPS? I know it’s inconvenient, but from full Endurance it’s effectively 3 dodges with the appropriate weapon swap. I’m an advocate for allowing Necros some mechanism to PvE given the design decisions ANet has made for their boss mechanics. In the meantime though, would something like that work?

The issue with Sigil of Energy is that to use it effectively, it precludes any other on-swap sigils, but more importantly, any on-crit sigils as well. It is often used on a staff, but all that does is give one extra dodge every 20 seconds due to weapon swap timer.

It helps, but as I said, those attacks come more frequently than once every 20 seconds, so you are in a very similar situation anyhow. Now you have three cycles instead of one (dodge-dodge-dodge, dodge-death shroud, dodge-dodge-dodge) before you are out of options (dodge-death shroud the second time will usually have significant overflow to health, especially for a condition build).