Guild Wars 2

I’m probably not the only one feeling this right now…but there seems to be a direct nerf on condition builds here, especially with removing 1 stack of bleeding with the mark of blood. It also disheartened me when I saw how they got rid of the condition durations on enfeebling blood. When traited, it now only gives 2 seconds of weakness!!! What’s happening here? A week ago, I thought that the new healing skill and improved traits would allow everyone to be able to siphon health-in fact, it was even stated in the update:

The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the necromancers to focus on sustaining themselves through the use of death shroud, health siphoning, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

…but, all I’m seeing here is that there’s less diversity for condition builds. And when you consider that using a power build is more viable in PvE anyway, why the nerf on condition builds? Just so we’re not as cheap in PvP?

Plus, the new signet is not that great; while you heal on hit, that’s not really siphoning. That’s pretty much just like adding toughness that doesn’t even scale-whether you get hit for 4000 or 400, it heals the same amount.

But nonetheless, it seems that everything that was updated put more emphasis on stealing health through power builds, instead of condition builds. Now, obviously, you’re always going to steal more health with power-but a healing skill should be able to actually sustain you in combat, not just take away a little bit of damage and give a tiny amount of healing. That is the whole point of a condition build: To sustain yourself while dealing slow, consistent damage. But all the update really did was make power builds in PvP better, and condition builds worse. That is why I believe that there needs to be a serious overhaul not only for the healing skill, but more fundamentally, for improving condition-mancers’ builds.

I’m rather upset about the change of SoV. I too was hoping for a ll factor on my dire condi necro to make it -that much more- sustainable. *sigh

You aren’t the only one. I’m pretty kitten ed, enough so that when ESO comes out I’m uninstalling this game /delete necro just in case and no more donations from now until then. That is assuming they don’t make an attempt at fixing this. No point in playing a game where your favorite class gets smashed.

I feel this was a good patch, if I look at the big picture. It’s like they are trying to find a baseline. Sure… my main is a necro, and I feel left out, but they can’t fix everything at the same time.

I honestly believe we’ll have a necro patch early next year (before season 2?, if any) moving us towards the baseline, and that’s the only reason why I’m not pushing my ascended armor.

Diamond skin… I can see this being an issue in PvP, I don’t like passives in general, but I don’t expect it to interrupt my WvW roaming too much. I guess I have to wait and see.

jpersson.7368:

I feel this was a good patch, if I look at the big picture. It’s like they are trying to find a baseline. Sure… my main is a necro, and I feel left out, but they can’t fix everything at the same time.

I honestly believe we’ll have a necro patch early next year (before season 2?, if any) moving us towards the baseline, and that’s the only reason why I’m not pushing my ascended armor.

Diamond skin… I can see this being an issue in PvP, I don’t like passives in general, but I don’t expect it to interrupt my WvW roaming too much. I guess I have to wait and see.

It will if you run into an ele, happened to me while roaming yesterday.

borrok.9267:

It will if you run into an ele, happened to me while roaming yesterday.

I don’t have many 1v1 against ele:s to begin with, and as a roaming necro I’ve learned to pick my fights.

Besides… Diamond skin is new, ppl want to try it out, but I’ve got a feeling it’s too situational for roaming ele:s in the long run. It’s like me, not running Foot in the Grave because I feel I’ve get more of an advantage being aggressive. Time will tell.

jpersson.7368:

I feel this was a good patch, if I look at the big picture. It’s like they are trying to find a baseline. Sure… my main is a necro, and I feel left out, but they can’t fix everything at the same time.

I honestly believe we’ll have a necro patch early next year (before season 2?, if any) moving us towards the baseline, and that’s the only reason why I’m not pushing my ascended armor.
.

I hope what you have mentioned here is true.

But from the past many many patches, where they nerf necro to the ground, lots of players said the same thing as you before. But in the end, its getting worst for every patch……

so…..yea… don’t put so much hope… the least you hope, the least disappointment you feel.
Just always remember, Necro is the least favourite class by Anet =)

cheers~~~~~

jpersson.7368 is right m i feel the same when it comes to pvp balance but still ton of work is needed , guys if u have any sugestions about balance the necro in pvp come and share

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-improvement-Deffensive-Side-in-PvP/first#post3359466

HaseKent.1843:

I hope what you have mentioned here is true.

But from the past many many patches, where they nerf necro to the ground, lots of players said the same thing as you before. But in the end, its getting worst for every patch……

I know I can be annoyingly optimistic, even though I’ve had necro:s long enough to experience earlier patches. I guess I never learn. At least I feel they communicate their patches better now-days.

The red posts in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Necromancer/first gave me some hope for future patches, specifically https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Necromancer/page/9#post3164718

Balancing a game like GW2 must be insane, there are glitches, ANet most probably have to make business decisions, just finding a strategy /how/ to balance must be a nightmare, and then implement/test it. I can understand if conditions must be partially re-designed to be properly balanced, and if that’s the case I’m not certain we’ll see it until GW3.

However.. I will still continue to play/enjoy my necro.

if they will do burn on life blast its gg , cya condi build , we wont do any dmg , scepter power dmg is super low , we already have less and less bleeds , terror dmg nerf , weaknes duration nerf.

Its so stupid , they are nerfing our bleeds ande fear dmg witch were fine and at the end they will nerf burning insted nerfing burn is 1st place , so kittened

I didn’t want to start yet another Dhuumfire prestige discussion, but I guess it’s my own fault with that reference. My point however, was to substantiate my belief that changes are coming early next year. Some will be good and some will be bad — that’s inevitable.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

I
The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the necromancers to focus on sustaining themselves through the use of death shroud, health siphoning, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

If this is the case then they MUST buff DeathShroud so that it isnt easily burst through in seconds and actually make the Siphon traits WORTH getting. This to me just shows they have NO idea what they are doing, had they actually spent TIME with the Necromancer class they would know that Siphons are kitten and that you can EASILY be burst from 100% DS to 0% in seconds….

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

If this is the case then they MUST buff DeathShroud so that it isnt easily burst through in seconds and actually make the Siphon traits WORTH getting. This to me just shows they have NO idea what they are doing, had they actually spent TIME with the Necromancer class they would know that Siphons are kitten and that you can EASILY be burst from 100% DS to 0% in seconds….

I agree….siphoning is pretty weak right now, it needs to be improved. But death shroud seems to be all right, I think it would just be nice if you could inflict more conditions in death shroud.

When enemies can blast through death shroud and another 75% health before your skill bar even refreshes out of ds and the last 25% during the cast duration of your last desperate move How in the ever living kitten are you supposed to use death shroud for protection.

Lopez.7369:

CursedShaitan.9720:

When enemies can blast through death shroud and another 75% health before your skill bar even refreshes out of ds and the last 25% during the cast duration of your last desperate move How in the ever living kitten are you supposed to use death shroud for protection.

I have never seen this happen in my thousands of hours playing necromancer.

I have! It happens all the time when you try to solo a zerg in WvW!

Oh…wait.

Even with the nerfs conditionmancers still feel pretty good. I just wish they would stop adding condition immunities and change it to something that still counters conditions.

It’s too bad that Anet doesn’t seem to know what they want to do with the necromancer. Sustain? what sustain? conditionmancer’s have one of the most obnoxious hard hitting bursts in the game that can only be countered by an equally obnoxious amount of condition removal and broken immunities. Our sustain is subpar at best and any new toys for sustain seems to be doa.

I’ve settled down on what I think necromancer sustain should look like and I’ll just sit on my hands till anet decides to tweak our sustain, otherwise I’m happy with my results.

You could try revamping it yourself sure conditions may have been completely destroyed and burned to the ground but you learn to overcome that and move forward. mankind is based on having trials and tribulations and to overcome them. No person should feel like that but humans have digressed to Oh you just destroyed my battle ship, your first one. I lose and give up flip table and end of story. Don’t sit there and take it just overcome it! i ran a condition-mancer and it wasn’t for me so i switched to a necro DS crit/power build and i like it. re-build yourselves tweak a little and see how it works out for you. I still run Blind well, Corrupt Boon and Signet of Spite with Flesh Wurm/Plague depending on what i need. I always choose Flesh Wurm, he helps me out a ton.

hmm what i dont feel anything from the change.
spinal shiver hit at 50% hp (and hit again usually when the warrior or guardian at 20% hp) making them a really kitten class to fight 1 vs 1.
enfeeble nerf? sure, but it didn’t affect much. still using that trait because nothing is funnier than glancing thief attack.
putrid mark nerf………….. this is really kitten but usually you only have 4-5 kind (well you cant stand on the wall anymore soaking conditions and throw em back to people below you and ask “are you still alive down there?”)
reanimator…….. please just remove this trait or move it to adept (some people like this trait since they use minion)
diamond skin……… well from my observation almost no ele use this trait and even if they use it it can be removed with 2 cycle of scepter 1 (if you use staff its your own loss) or doom.

on summary we really gain nothing from this patch while everbody else get something useful.

i suspect they really want to systematically eradicate necromancer from the game

I have to disagree that the buffs to the power end of Blood and Death Magic “nerfed” attrition Conditionmancers. Running Apothecary Wells I still get the extra 130 power post patch from Deadly Strength and Blood to Power. This helps scale up the siphon damage I have and is a whole gasp 4-5 points per hit behind siphon healing. The power boost also gives us a tiny bit better scaling on our normal damage as well. 1230ish Power and 2400 Attack is not bad for a tanky conditionmancer build that completely ignores any investment in Power/Spite except “accidental” investment due to the traits above.

The technical aspects of Power and Condition based Necro weapons have to be taken into account as well. The mechanics of our weapons and their pros/cons remain unchanged. Staff/Scepter Conditionmancers are just going to do more area damage over Powermancers even with Wells. Staff Siphon procs are fairly powerful in large fights. I find siphons to be more useful on Staff due to the AoE aspect of procing them (at least 150 more damage/healing per mark if hitting 5 enemies). Power builds are less likely to use Staff due to the very low base damage on skills 2-5 (yes even Putrid Mark).

Still it would be nice to see more updates improving the condition side of things. The only condition buff in this patch (and honestly for the last couple months) was from Jagged Horrors staying up in numbers of 2-3, 3-6 if MM due to the 15 second CD. I was testing this and they can sustain 4-8 stacks of bleeds on an enemy…if you can sustain them (easier said then done). Better than it was before for sure, but like others have said it would be nice to have something there that helped all Necros.

The nerf really just comes from the buffing of anti-condition capabilities of other classes and the new SPvP version of MoB. I think Anet’s intention is to buff the anti condition of classes before they tackle the big rework of condition damage in general. If that ever happens…

@Stillmoon

Although the change to Putrid Mark was a fairly large blow to staff for the instant self/group transfer aspect, I believe it still transfers a max of 3 conditions per hit. Meaning if you hit 2-3 foes you’re going to transfer 6-9 conditions from yourself to them at a max of 3 different conditions stacks per said foe. Obviously this was to curb the mass transfer of all conditions from 5 people (which could add up to 25 stacks of bleeds, perpetual burning, poison, weakness etc etc.) to 1-2 people. That’s a lot of extra DPS from casting one skill, especially when you add Epidemic. DPS that wasn’t ours to begin, but was “stolen,” centralized and transfered back. Pretty OP.

Our skills are balanced around the maximum up time for conditions we use for them to be fully effective. Now how often does that happen? With all the cleanses, dodges, immunities and avoidance that other classes can use to kill our conditions, there is no wonder we have significant issues. It comes down to the fact that the very rare circumstances that enable our condition to actually do their budgeted damage almost never occur. And yet it still forms the basis of our balance budget. Unless that changes we will stay where we are, no matter what.

They surely have enough data now to look at the actual effectiveness of our skills. The old “what about Epidemic?” will arise. If it is a problem then address Epidemic usage and what it can spread, don’t knobble every other skill we have because of it. And for heaven sake I hope JP doesn’t pull the silly “what if 2 necros use it” stunt again, because 2 necros SHOULD do twice the effect …… that comes at the opportunity cost of not having another class using their skills.

TLDR: Our conditions balance should be based on effectiveness, not some theoretical, unachieveable maximum.

Oldbugga.7029:

Our skills are balanced around the maximum up time for conditions we use for them to be fully effective. Now how often does that happen? With all the cleanses, dodges, immunities and avoidance that other classes can use to kill our conditions, there is no wonder we have significant issues. It comes down to the fact that the very rare circumstances that enable our condition to actually do their budgeted damage almost never occur. And yet it still forms the basis of our balance budget. Unless that changes we will stay where we are, no matter what.

They surely have enough data now to look at the actual effectiveness of our skills. The old “what about Epidemic?” will arise. If it is a problem then address Epidemic usage and what it can spread, don’t knobble every other skill we have because of it. And for heaven sake I hope JP doesn’t pull the silly “what if 2 necros use it” stunt again, because 2 necros SHOULD do twice the effect …… that comes at the opportunity cost of not having another class using their skills.

TLDR: Our conditions balance should be based on effectiveness, not some theoretical, unachieveable maximum.

But But But But… What if two warriors hammer bomb you? D= Or two thiefs backstab you? D= D= eh… I agree with you completely. Theoretical arguments are ridiculous, and max up time would stack 25 bleeds, burn, torment, fear and poison plus whatever you corrupted. Real life scenario is you stack maybe 12 bleeds and they cleanse. Oh well.

I forgot one MAJOR issue. And that is the cap on conditions that means some of our skills effectively have zero impact at times due to the cap. The game engine itself restricts us from achieving the budgeted balance of our skills….that MUST be overcome.

Necro isn’t balanced for, ever was or ever will be around maintaining 25 stacks of bleeds. It’s balanced around maintaining 8-16 stacks of area bleeds, in addition to weakness, poison and chill. These stacks are easy to maintain against all but the most condition cleansing oriented builds due to quick CD times and Condition management. Against builds not focused on cleansing cons every two seconds those area bleeds are enough to seriously pressure, if not down many opposing players if you last long enough. We would be untouchable if they balanced us around maintaining 25 stacks of bleeds on 5+ targets (or they would seriously kitten all our traits).

Think about it for a sec. 100 damage bleeds on just a bunker gear/build setup and maintaining those 25 stacks throughout. That’s 2500 area damage per tick just from bleeds alone. Against 5 players that would be 12,500 damage per tick… over 30 seconds thats 75000 damage to a single target. 375000 to a 5 man group. You killed them all in a 30 second period about 5 times over by just firing and forgetting your area Marks and other area bleed skills and if they don’t finish you off in that time, they’re all dead. Even if they were clensed 15 of those 30 seconds, you still did 37,250 damage to each player. Killed them all 1-2 times over.

As for the cap, again Necro condition damage has never been about reaching the bleed cap. It’s always been about managing, controlling and proliferating mass area conditions.

The cap affects all condition builds as much as it does Necro and needs to be addressed. Actually if you’re going to reach a condition cap with two or more condition based classes, you want at least one of them to be Necromancer for Epidemic.

On pve – i like rabid condi necro

On pvp – i’m PVT-MM necro, and condi necro’s are so cute, they trying so hard to kill me, but can’t.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

On pve – i like rabid condi necro

On pvp – i’m PVT-MM necro, and condi necro’s are so cute, they trying so hard to kill me, but can’t.

Yep, but they “should” have an easier time than powermancers (unless they go full out DS/Lich). Depends if said conditionmancers are always focusing on you and not your key minions first.

A full out DPS conditionmancer if its going to have a chance has to first condition spike Blood Fiend or Flesh Golem then use Epidemic to blast away all the minons and additionally spread weakness etc. (easily done with SoP). That should disable the minion DPS/support. Then they should condition spike the master to death within about 16-20 seconds after that (before BF recharges). Easier said than done since there’s going to be other players to contend with and a good MM will make sure he/she uses his/her crowd control to keep his BF alive and evade damage when it’s down.

The update however did nothing to change this except remove 1 bleed stack from MoB for Conditionmancers. A blow to non-critical chance condi necros depending on Staff without certain sigils/traits, but not so much for Rabid Necros or Necros using Sigils of Geomancy, MoE in addition to Staff, Scepter/Dagger. Rabid Necros will still have a lot of non bleed damage plus 14 to 20 bleed stacks regardless of the nerf. For Geomancy/MoE using Necros it’s only 1-2 less bleed stacks out of 12-16 in 10-15 second intervals. If players aren’t using MoB twice before swapping after initial strikes with Marks, then the lossed damage can easily be made up by using AoE bleeds skills more efficiently (using MoB and Grasping Dead twice before weapon swapping).