Guild Wars 2

In PvE necromancers are gods of selfishness capable of soloing all sorts of content that other classes struggle with. Even high level fractals can be cheesed with quintuple necro comps.

In PvP necromancers are completely dependent on team support and have the worst self-sustain of any class.

Why is there such a dichotomy between PvP and PvE? Because Necromancer defense is built around LF gain and LF gain does not scale with damage taken and there is a massive deference in damage taken between the modes.

To make a example: In raids which are the highest difficulty of PvE, a druid will only need 6k HPS tops to keep the entire group up, and that’s a worse case scenario where everything is going wrong and the group is taking all sorts of avoidable damage. However the DDs of that raid group will be doing 30k DPS each. Players deal over ten times the damage of even high end PvE mobs.

Necromancer LF gain is fixed, it doesn’t change based on scenario. In PvE our LF out scales the mobs easily and we are gods, in PvP it’s horribly under scaled and we cannot keep ourselves alive.

Our LF needs to be scalar based on incoming damage. We should have LF sources that work relative to the incoming damage. This would normalize our defenses so that we aren’t gods in PvE, and aren’t chattel in PvP. Such a change would be good for necros regardless of PvE or PvP. PvE would be helped because with necros not being PvE gods anymore we could then get real DPS buffs. PvP necros would be helped by not being fodder.

yes

this might make necro too forgiving vs burst builds. the scaling would have to be carefully adjusted. I like the idea though.

I doubt they will have enough time to make a change like this, it’s a struggle already to decide which CD’s to reduce in 4 months.

Not really sure how realistic a change like this would be.

A controllable regenerating damage shield that reduces damage by 50%, gives access to another skill bar while allowing continued recharge of all skills on the primary bar.

Justine.6351:

Not really sure how realistic a change like this would be.

A controllable regenerating damage shield that reduces damage by 50%, gives access to another skill bar while allowing continued recharge of all skills on the primary bar.

The change does not make shroud any stronger than it is. Nor am I proposing that our LF be buffed to where we can indefinitely sustain ourselves against a spike.

Moreover I’m just proposing changing the mechanic so that we have equivalent sustain to everyone else.

Protection will always mitate 30% of incoming damage. If you get hit for 10k it mitigates 3k, if you get hit for 1k it mitigates for 300. That is what I mean by “scaling”

Crinn.7864:

Justine.6351:

Not really sure how realistic a change like this would be.

A controllable regenerating damage shield that reduces damage by 50%, gives access to another skill bar while allowing continued recharge of all skills on the primary bar.

The change does not make shroud any stronger than it is. Nor am I proposing that our LF be buffed to where we can indefinitely sustain ourselves against a spike.

Moreover I’m just proposing changing the mechanic so that we have equivalent sustain to everyone else.

Protection will always mitate 30% of incoming damage. If you get hit for 10k it mitigates 3k, if you get hit for 1k it mitigates for 300. That is what I mean by “scaling”

um that is exactly what shroud does, -50% damage taken, infact its better than protection, it just doesn’t last forever. And necro do infact have access to protection aswell.

Justine.6351:

um that is exactly what shroud does, -50% damage taken, infact its better than protection, it just doesn’t last forever. And necro do infact have access to protection aswell.

We have extremely limited access to protection in very short durations. And yes we do have some other sources of of scaling mitigation. But as literally the entirety of the PvP meta shows that mitigation is so far behind the curve.

50% mitigation on shroud is pathetic once you realize that our combined LF gain + healing is still less that a quarter of what a typical meta class does in DPS. (I’m also not entirely sure the 50% mitigation actually works given the fact that I’ve see 10k hits on shrouded necros with some consistency in sPvP)

The DPS in the meta is way beyond what our class can handle. I was in a match with Nos the day the patch dropped and watched him get deleted.

Our shroud gains are static. Due to this, we dont get shroud back fast enough to sustain ourselves in PvP, where enemies do ten times as much damage as enemies in PvE. Our defense mechanic is based on PvE, where it’s good enough to avoid the damage we would take without it.
In PvP, the enemy damage is absurdly high and easily gets past it because we dont generate more for how much dmg we take.
If we had a static 6k shroud for example, the mobs in PvE wouldnt get past us. The 30k dps dudes in PvP would break it incredibly easily. This is exactly the issue necros have and the root of the devs immense difficulty with balancing us- just in more easy to understand text.
So, the suggestion here is to make it scale accordingly so we dont die too fast or slowly anymore unlike how we die too slowly in pve n too fast in pvp rn. That way, everyone wins. So, as the first comment said..
yes pls.

Crinn.7864:

Justine.6351:

um that is exactly what shroud does, -50% damage taken, infact its better than protection, it just doesn’t last forever. And necro do infact have access to protection aswell.

We have extremely limited access to protection in very short durations. And yes we do have some other sources of of scaling mitigation.

looks at my character where I maintain 75-100% Protection uptime solo

Okay.

Honestly, we just need more sources of life force gain that scale with the number of opponents. 1v1, our life force is fine, it’s the CC vulnerability that kills us.

Teamfights, it’s more often the life force that’s the issue.

If our sustain is too weak compared to any other class because of damage and relativity in sustain itself… shouldn’t… maybe… damage and sustain of other classes be looked at as well?

Honestly, given the right composition in PvP i can do pretty well and feel even tankish to a point, that said i do see where you are coming from.
Personally i had this idea about granting the second half of the skillbar while in shroud and making spectral skills grant some damage conversion for life force while outside of shroud and into health while in shroud.

Sadly that is just as unlikely to happen as A-Net moving core-classlines to an elite Status to reduce the current amount of builds overperforming because of, essentially, dual-classing.

LouWolfskin.3492:

If our sustain is too weak compared to any other class because of damage and relativity in sustain itself… shouldn’t… maybe… damage and sustain of other classes be looked at as well?

The sustain of other classes is fine though and works well for all game modes.

Necros have sustain problems because unlike everyone else’s sustain mechanics ours do not change with the content. Blocks and evades do not care if a incoming attack is 1k or 20k they negate it either way. Life Force however does care about the size of incoming attacks.

In PvE necromancers are gods of selfishness capable of soloing all sorts of content that other classes struggle with.

That is not right… PvE solo display mostly feature skilled elementalist or warriors. After that would probably come thieves. Necromancers are, at best, middle tier when it come to solo PvE things.

Even high level fractals can be cheesed with quintuple necro comps.

High level fractal is probably the only content where necromancer’s inner quality (resilience/condi corruption) can correctly be displayed in this game’s PvE. It’s a breather for necromancers but it’s a shame for the game as a whole.

In PvP necromancers are completely dependent on team support and have the worst self-sustain of any class.

The difference with other professions in pvp is due to necromancer lacking way to nullify damage/attack. If I were to play the devil advocate and side with anet necromancer’s design, I’d say that players don’t rely enough on blind. Blind is supposed to be our “block”.

Necros have sustain problems because unlike everyone else’s sustain mechanics ours do not change with the content. Blocks and evades do not care if a incoming attack is 1k or 20k they negate it either way. Life Force however does care about the size of incoming attacks.

You contradict yourself, the issue is not sustain but the lack of way to nullify some incoming attacks. In reality necromancer’s sustain is high but it’s design that force him to endure attacks instead of warding them is responsible for this feeling of bad sustain.

For me, the solution is not some improvement in LF scaling or whatever, the solution lie in tweaks that could come with E-specs. I believe that anet can do change on the necromancer’s mechaism that are a lot more impactful than just changing the skill set of the shroud. And I hope that they will do it.

An E-spec in which the shroud is not a second life bar should be easy to implement (Druid is a live version of this!), Anet just need to add a few skills in this spec that can ward off attack to make this viable.

Dadnir.5038:

That is not right… PvE solo display mostly feature skilled elementalist or warriors. After that would probably come thieves. Necromancers are, at best, middle tier when it come to solo PvE things.

From a survivability standpoint, Necro are still the best in PvE content, which in turns makes it best for soloing.

High level fractal is probably the only content where necromancer’s inner quality (resilience/condi corruption) can correctly be displayed in this game’s PvE. It’s a breather for necromancers but it’s a shame for the game as a whole.

Necromancer is valued in fractals for it’s ability to cheese fractals via LF outscaling damage. Necromancer has no other qualities that are valuable. If you are not running 5 necromancers, you are better off running a no-necro raid subsquad comp.

The difference with other professions in pvp is due to necromancer lacking way to nullify damage/attack. If I were to play the devil advocate and side with anet necromancer’s design, I’d say that players don’t rely enough on blind. Blind is supposed to be our “block”.

Do you know what blocks and evades are so good?
Because they are scaling mitigation. A block stops all of the damage regardless of how big the hit is. A block will stop a hit regardless of whether it’s a 1k hit or a 20k hit.

LF doesn’t do that, which is why LF doesn’t work in sPvP.

the issue is not sustain but the lack of way to nullify some incoming attacks. In reality necromancer’s sustain is high but it’s design that force him to endure attacks instead of warding them is responsible for this feeling of bad sustain.

Necro sustain is not high. Necro sustain is relative since LF gain is fixed you either have enough of it to trivialize the content (see PvE) or you don’t and you are completely incapable of sustaining (see PvP)

Stop fixating on blocks/evades. Block/evades are just details, at the abstract level they are just a form of scaling mitigation.

LF gain is mitigation, it’s reactive mitigation rather than hard mitigation yes, but it is still functionally mitigation. But since it doesn’t scale it’s crap in high damage environments like PvP.

I’m sorry crinn but for me you sure have a lot of experience in PvP (except perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that blinding your foes is the sae as a “block”) but your understanding necromancer’s survivability is to shallow in PvE.

In PvE you find a lot ore situation where your foes will hit extremely hard than in PvP. Except perhaps if you think that PvE is only open world PvE and even here, if you find yourself in a scaling event you’ll most likely die faster than other professions.

LF gain is mitigation, it’s reactive mitigation rather than hard mitigation yes, but it is still functionally mitigation. But since it doesn’t scale it’s crap in high damage environments like PvP.

That’s here you are wrong. The LF bar is basically health, you do not mitigate, you take the damage, well, those damage seem to be reduced, but still you take those damage, you do not strictly mitigate them.

You mitigate damage when you reduce the incoming damage by a certain percentage. A block/evade/blind happen to be a 100% mitigation over 1 or more incoming attack. The real worth of block/evade/blind is that it also nullify any incoming hard CC and that’s why it’s vastly superior to the shroud where you tank (and ot mitigate) the icoming attacks.

I’d like to see a trait that blinds nearby foes on enter/exit of Shroud. Honestly, we need better blinds if that is our “block.”

Dadnir.5038:

I’m sorry crinn but for me you sure have a lot of experience in PvP (except perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that blinding your foes is the sae as a “block”) but your understanding necromancer’s survivability is to shallow in PvE.

…
A block/evade/blind happen to be a 100% mitigation over 1 or more incoming attack. The real worth of block/evade/blind is that it also nullify any incoming hard CC and that’s why it’s vastly superior to the shroud where you tank (and ot mitigate) the icoming attacks.

While a blind technically does the same thing as aegis it’s noticeably less effective. In pvp blind are either ignored through resistance or easily countered by attacks with multiple hits or just fast attack (the latter also applies to aegis which is why it’s also not that great unless you can use it instantly). You also got to actually hit with it to work . In pve blinds are mostly useless for those that are affected by it and the things that we would want to blind usually won’t be affected and take breakbar damage instead while a block will always work (unless damage is unblockable ofc).

Evades,blocks,invulnerability will always be way superior as a defence than blind as it’s a lot more reliable as they apply to yourself. Yes blinds negate 100% of an attack when it works but it’s only situationally useful. You are technically right but looking at how reliable they are as defences, blocks/evades/invulns not the same as blinds. I would not put them in the same category.

Dadnir.5038:

I’m sorry crinn but for me you sure have a lot of experience in PvP (except perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that blinding your foes is the sae as a “block”) but your understanding necromancer’s survivability is to shallow in PvE.

In PvE you find a lot ore situation where your foes will hit extremely hard than in PvP. Except perhaps if you think that PvE is only open world PvE and even here, if you find yourself in a scaling event you’ll most likely die faster than other professions.

The only mob skills that hit hard are fight mechanics that are intentionally designed to kill you, and they all happen to be deterministically avoidable.

However in PvP you have heavy hitting damage that is not deterministically avoidable.

That’s here you are wrong. The LF bar is basically health, you do not mitigate, you take the damage, well, those damage seem to be reduced, but still you take those damage, you do not strictly mitigate them.

LF gain is healing to the shroud bar. Healing is mitigation, it’s just post-mitigation rather than preventative mitigation. It also doesn’t scale which is why it’s crap.

This sounds like a bad idea to me…

1. You get jumped by enemies
2. You gain a bunch of life force from the damage
3. You go into Death Shroud and eat more damage
4. You run out of LF and go back to normal mode
5. You heal and wait for more damage to fill your LF bar again
6. You go back to step 3 and repeat…

So like… any time you are low on life, you will be high on LF and can go into tank mode.

felincyriac.5981:

I doubt they will have enough time to make a change like this, it’s a struggle already to decide which CD’s to reduce in 4 months.

Lol, I know, right?

Reworks? Yea, we’re way past that, unless it’s got a Guardian involved.

@OP
It’d need to be very carefully balanced. Too much and you end up with necromancers just being immune to burst damage, too little and it ends up worse than now.

I think one of the biggest issues LF has is that it typically takes LF to make LF when PvP’ing, since shroud is a pretty necessary part of staying alive and getting kills. The reason the necros get killed so quickly is because they spawn with no/low LF and get focused because they’re top-priority targets that need to die ASAP since they can instantly turn a fight. The reasoning there is more of a kit/meta design issue than LF itself. You can help it by giving necro some starting LF on respawn, but it won’t solve the being-focused problem. That’s on ANet to nerf boons and conditions, mostly, in order to keep the necro in-line with the prioritization of other builds/professions.

Any change is still unlikely.

ANet did buff sustain in the past. But most people didn’t recognize this as it was indirect through damage increasing. It just brought the weapons in line so the effect is non existent in PvE, but significant in PvP/WvW.

If I today want do deal the same amount of damage in PvP/WvW like the time HoT was released a can put at least 300 of my stat points in toughness or vitality.

Did this help? No! Esp. not in PvP where you are limited to amulets.

More LF generation won’t help.
-Shroud cooldown is 10/7 seconds. You die in these seconds.
-Less shroud cooldown would make the class in its current state OP in 1v1.
-If you increase shroud tankiness to outsustain teamfights, necros are unkillable 1v1.
-In current mechanics you have to get rid of the reaper first. Its CC is too dangerous.

Necro needs a small amout of mobility to avoid the initial midfight burst. That’s all.

Make Flesh Worm instant cast (double tab the skill -> port). Increase cooldown to 45 seconds. Necro will be fine.

KrHome.1920:

Make Flesh Worm instant cast (double tab the skill -> port). Increase cooldown to 45 seconds. Necro will be fine.

I love this idea, though I think they would need to have a 0.2 second delay on the teleport part to avoid accidentally killing the wurm if you actually intended to use it instead of teleporting.

DeceiverX.8361:

@OP
It’d need to be very carefully balanced. Too much and you end up with necromancers just being immune to burst damage, too little and it ends up worse than now.

I was thinking changes like “Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk now convert 50% of incoming damage into Life Force. Spectral Armor no longer grants protection”

Or “Soul Comprehension: 5% of incoming damage is given back as Life Force”

Xenon.4537:

This sounds like a bad idea to me…

1. You get jumped by enemies
2. You gain a bunch of life force from the damage
3. You go into Death Shroud and eat more damage
4. You run out of LF and go back to normal mode
5. You heal and wait for more damage to fill your LF bar again
6. You go back to step 3 and repeat…

So like… any time you are low on life, you will be high on LF and can go into tank mode.

If our LF gain is scalar, and you are taking enough damage to refill shroud every 10 seconds, that means you taking practically all of your base health in damage every 10 seconds.
You’re going to be dead very fast if such where the case.

The only time scalar mitigation can make you invincible is if you have 100% mitigation 100% of the time. Anything less than that and you are eventually going to die.

I think that the problems with necromancer are that they don’t do enough damage and life force is hard to balance overall. Like others have said 6K health means nothing when players have 30k DPS. But 6K health is huge when it comes to PVE.

I think that life force should be built each time a player uses a skill. It is controlled by the player ( not based off deaths or incoming damage). Also, it shouldn’t be a extra health bar anymore because it’s too complicated to balance. It should be a window of time where the Necromancer does increased DPS.

Plastazote.7914:

I think that life force should be built each time a player uses a skill. It is controlled by the player ( not based off deaths or incoming damage).

But why? Basing it off incoming damage directly fixes the problem you just mentioned:

Like others have said 6K health means nothing when players have 30k DPS. But 6K health is huge when it comes to PVE.

Also, it shouldn’t be a extra health bar anymore because it’s too complicated to balance. It should be a window of time where the Necromancer does increased DPS.

But HP isn’t hard to balance at all. HP is literally the simplest of all mechanics. The only reason shroud has balance issues is because it doesn’t scale with incoming damage.

Crinn.7864:

Plastazote.7914:

I think that life force should be built each time a player uses a skill. It is controlled by the player ( not based off deaths or incoming damage).

But why? Basing it off incoming damage directly fixes the problem you just mentioned:

Like others have said 6K health means nothing when players have 30k DPS. But 6K health is huge when it comes to PVE.

Also, it shouldn’t be a extra health bar anymore because it’s too complicated to balance. It should be a window of time where the Necromancer does increased DPS.

But HP isn’t hard to balance at all. HP is literally the simplest of all mechanics. The only reason shroud has balance issues is because it doesn’t scale with incoming damage.

If only Spectral Armor could work like Infuse Light and Defiant Stance but with LF instead of health (and 2 sec duration) could be a great thing.

Crinn.7864:

Plastazote.7914:

I think that life force should be built each time a player uses a skill. It is controlled by the player ( not based off deaths or incoming damage).

But why? Basing it off incoming damage directly fixes the problem you just mentioned:

Like others have said 6K health means nothing when players have 30k DPS. But 6K health is huge when it comes to PVE.

Also, it shouldn’t be a extra health bar anymore because it’s too complicated to balance. It should be a window of time where the Necromancer does increased DPS.

But HP isn’t hard to balance at all. HP is literally the simplest of all mechanics. The only reason shroud has balance issues is because it doesn’t scale with incoming damage.

I agree it could solve HP balancing issues but I guess I’d personally prefer if Lf generation is internally controlled by the player and not controlled by the situation like incoming damage. That way you build it when you need it instead of relying on incoming damage. More satisfying gameplay if it’s under player control. Also I think necros don’t do enough damage compared to most classes and think using Lf as a health bar is a crutch to not give necro more DPS as a secondary reason for my suggestion to build LF each time a skill is used instead.

Plastazote.7914:

I agree it could solve HP balancing issues but I guess I’d personally prefer if Lf generation is internally controlled by the player and not controlled by the situation like incoming damage. That way you build it when you need it instead of relying on incoming damage.

LF generation already works exactly that way. At it’s crap.

Also scaling LF generation does not mean passive generation like some people here seem to think. It can be scaling LF gain attached to active cooldown usage. Such as a the aforementioned Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk changes.

Also I think necros don’t do enough damage compared to most classes and think using Lf as a health bar is a crutch to not give necro more DPS as a secondary reason for my suggestion to build LF each time a skill is used instead.

If what you say is true about LF bar being a crutch, how does LF gain being based on skill usage change that? It doesn’t.
Also scaling LF gain would reduce shroud’s effectiveness in PvE (but increase it in PvP) reduced effectiveness in PvE would open Necro up for possible DPS buffs. (assuming that survivability is a factor in how Anet balances DPS)

No, life force generation is currently based on enemy deaths as far as I was aware. Changing Life Force generation to be based on skill activation will not eliminate the crutch but trading the extra life bar for extra damage instead might. Either way it’s just personal preference there’s no right and wrong.

Plastazote.7914:

No, life force generation is currently based on enemy deaths as far as I was aware.

All weapons (excluding offhand dagger) have LF generating skills. A slew of Utility skills do as well.

See link for list:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

LF from enemy deaths is literally the smallest and least relevant source of LF. For theory crafting purpose you basically ignore it completely.

Crinn.7864:

Plastazote.7914:

No, life force generation is currently based on enemy deaths as far as I was aware.

All weapons (excluding offhand dagger) have LF generating skills. A slew of Utility skills do as well.

See link for list:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

LF from enemy deaths is literally the smallest and least relevant source of LF. For theory crafting purpose you basically ignore it completely.

Which is also why Soul Comprehension is the most worthless trait in the entire game. It may contribute for about 1% of total life force gains when equipped. In PvE, not PvP (where it’s assuredly lower).

Now that we’re seeing PvE/PvP splits in numbers, could that be a more appropriate approach than scaling the LF gain to the damage dealt? Just give the necromancers faster LF gain in PvP so it has more of a chance to absorb the incoming damage?

Crinn.7864:

Plastazote.7914:

No, life force generation is currently based on enemy deaths as far as I was aware.

All weapons (excluding offhand dagger) have LF generating skills. A slew of Utility skills do as well.

See link for list:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

LF from enemy deaths is literally the smallest and least relevant source of LF. For theory crafting purpose you basically ignore it completely.

Hmm, I guess you are right about other sources of LF generation. I was thinking more that every skill used generates LF (proportional to the cooldown) with the intention that you build LF to gain a window of high DPS instead of a second health bar. It’s all just personal preference but Anet’s second life bar design makes me a bit sad.

My main problem with LF scaling off incoming damage is that it might not be there to use when you need it because a player can’t control when they take damage all of the time. I prefer it to be tied to active cooldown / skill usage.