Necro Balance Patch Review

Necro Balance Patch Review

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Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

So a few people are not impressed with the current balance patch and I wasn’t too happy either. But I think its good to look at this with a more critical eye without our attachments and emotions getting in the way. I’ll be reviewing each change as it stands and if they are related to other Patch Changes I’ll mention those as well. I’ll also be looking at this from a Core, Reaper and Scourge perspective and make statements based on that. At the end I’ll go through my final thoughts on this and it’ll be open to discussion. Lets begin.

  • Dagger Unsplit skills: This is nice to see. Bringing up the power for PvP. Nothing major to talk about though, so moving on.
  • Spectral Walk, Spectral Armor and Spectral wall: Lumping these together. The increase is nice. This will be needed since the necromancer’s duration in shroud has been severally nerfed. More on that later. Although the Spectral walk with its unique enchantment is removed.. Not sure what that means as it seems the same as before.
  • Spectral Grasp: Grabbing 5 targets seems like a great change for this. Though the cool down is far too long for what we’re expected to do with it. I doubt it’ll be as powerful as arena net thinks. If it wasn’t a projectile I might agree with that cool down, but as it stands nice redesign, a bit too conservative with the duration.
  • Lich Form: I really like the idea behind the changes made to lich form. However the Skills are still a bit clunky and awkward to use. They seem to have a bit of Anti-synergy with itself that makes this elite a bit unwieldy to use. The most DPS out put for this skill though still seems to just spam your auto attack but now using the charges from skill 2. I like the idea of the changes, but they really need to look at those number as I found I wasn’t getting a DPS boost compared to just camping in reaper’s shroud and it was just has no fluidity to its motions. I might be mistaken on this one, but I just don’t see it.
  • Shadow Fiend: Damage buff and weakness and chill added on top of the blind. This Actually lets it provide a bit more control and the damage buff is nice. I haven’t tested this out yet, but this is nice to see. Now if only Arena net would take a look at all of the Minion skills as they are all lacking.
  • Signet of Spite: Now inflicts Torment. This is nice. A bit more damage on such a long recharging skill. I don’t have much to say about this since This Signet has always been in that awkward position of being a Condi and power skill that are always fighting with each other. it may continue to see use in PvP, but wont see use in PvE most likely since it is still too steep a dedication for it. It does have some new uses on signet shroud builds, more on that later.
  • Soul Eater: Now grants life force and heals you while wielding a greatsword in combat. This is a much preferred change compared to its previous incarnation, however the necromancer doesn’t have a real use in this department for it. This puts it into a similar position as Dagger with the life force generation and the healing. The issue I see with this trait is that its still competing with Decimate defenses and the reaper’s Tanky builds still don’t have the support they need to really take advantage of this. I think Soul Eater is an interesting trait, but I don’t see a use for it just yet.
  • Spectral Mastery: Anet giveth and Anet taketh away. There isn’t much to say about this. If Life form was better than It was I’d absolutely say that you should take this trait. However, Lich Form is still lacking. I don’t see a use for this as it currently is. Vital persistence, even with its nerf is still superior in most situations. Now this is subject to change, but that requires a few things to change with spectral skills.
  • Terrifying Descent: Added a stack of torment for 3 seconds on fear. No internal cool down. It honestly wouldn’t matter if this had an internal cool down or not since Fear is such a rare condition for the necromancer to use. or anyone for that matter. The 1 stack is pretty meh, and doesn’t give me a reason to take this trait. If it was 2 stacks at 3 seconds that would be a maybe. But even then it seems under powered. I understand that this is now supposed to be the minor damage trait, but the other two just give you so much better utility. Blind is more common on the necromancer and chill is a much stronger condition even without Deathly Chill that I would much rather take that than this. Perhaps its balanced right for Scourge, but this doesn’t seem like it would be worth it in comparison to plague sending. Even with the Demonic lore trait. That’s just speculation on my part though. Who knows. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

  • Spiteful Renewal: I actually like this trait. I’m not sure how useful it’ll be, but a bit of extra healing and condi removal? Seems okay. I don’t have much to say about this as I feel this needs a home on some more attrition based build.
  • Signets of Suffering: Okay, lets get this out of the way. Arena net. Darling. Signet passives should not be a motivation to take a grandmaster. The passives should be base line for signets. Of course I say that necromancer should just have utility in shroud. On another note though, improving the base effectiveness of Signets is okay. Though In my testing some Signets are good while others are not that great. Signet of Vampirism seems to be the best for this since you can get the healing while in shroud which is nice. But again, signet passives should be baseline. You shouldn’t have to take a grandmaster for signets to have function on a bar.
  • Ritual of Life: Did arena net just take my Idea for Spirit of Preservation in my Ritualist suggestion and Apply it to Ritual of Life? The answer seems to be yes…. Okay.. I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff so You got me Anet…. I’m in love with this trait. This is just awesome… I can’t tell you how much I just want to use this…. Sorry.. Gushing a bit…. Yeah, this seems awesome especially since you can double up on your wells. I haven’t tested it yet, but I assume this to be the case. I’ll be sure to test it later.
  • Life from Death: Straight up buff. I actually like this trait, but It was always a bit underwhelming. I don’t really think this will change much, but we’ll see how it works out.
  • Vampiric Rituals: Unsplit. Buffed the life stealing which is nice. Not much else to say about this, it doesn’t change well builds all that much.
  • Speed of Shadows: This change is one that I like to see since it’ll combo nicely with foot in the grave, giving you stability and removing those impairing conditions. I don’t think speed of shadows was that good before hand, and this improves it for Reaper and core. Scourge this is still a bit underwhelming though, as their desert shroud is on a 20 second cool down. I’d much rather see some Life force synergy here as this denotes a major problem with necromancer balance and the scourge.
  • Vital Persistence: Removing the decay reduction was a good move. However, the major issue with this is that Arena net didn’t compensate the loss of a huge piece of our defenses. The decay reduction should have honestly been made base line for the necromancer. But the worst part about this is their reasoning for nerfing it doesn’t change it from being the only choice of the 3 options. Its still hands down the best choice of the three and this goes for all types of necromancer, Reaper, Core and Scourge. This is a change where arena net got half of it right but the important half completely wrong.

So how did Arena net do? Not well. The changes are clunky, and questionable at best and don’t do enough of what they set out to do. Reaper is still going to heavily favor condi over power since the power changes did little to nothing to improve their position while at the same time, actually Weakening their usability with the Vital persistence nerf without compensation. I’ve done some testing with the changes and power reaper is either the same as it was or worse off in the damage department. On the other hand for planning for the future, Scourge has no love this patch with a single trait gaining very very Minor synergy with the scourge while they are still plagued with the lack of shroud being a major hindrance for external synergy.

Arena Net almost always taken a conservative stance with the necromancer and it hasn’t payed off. Only when they’ve maid extremely radical changes has it had great pay off in the long run. Arena net. Darling. The necromancer and Scourge are going to need major work before the expansion in order for them to fill the function you want them to fill. If you continue to take this conservative approach it will be the necromancer community that suffers. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to go back to the days of “No necromancer”.

(edited by Lily.1935)

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Posted by: Warcry.1596

Warcry.1596

Signets of Suffering – the main reason for my success in PvP since Season 5, has been changed. Not a nerf or a buff, or rather too soon to say, but I am sad that it no longer does what it does and now I need to come up with something else to succeed with

“He shall make whole that which was torn asunder.
Restore that which was lost. And all shall be as one.”

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Posted by: Vlad Morbius.1759

Vlad Morbius.1759

Vital Persistence, this is far too big a nerf to ever compensate for and though i appreciate the attempt to dissect these balance changes and to bring some bright spots forward, this clearly destroyed power Reaper. This demolition of a class I have played religiously since HoT is impossible to swallow and especially after almost a year of pouring my resources into Ascended and Legendary gear. I refuse to play a condition necro as a main, i have one i don’t enjoy it and isn’t that what this game is supposed to about, playing what you enjoy.

There was no viable reason to completely eradicate power necro, there could have been some minor changes to this trait that could have been compensated for but 180 vitality was not one of them.

Vini, Vidi, Vici, Viridis…I came, I saw, I conquered…I got a green??

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Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

Vital Persistence, this is far too big a nerf to ever compensate for and though i appreciate the attempt to dissect these balance changes and to bring some bright spots forward, this clearly destroyed power Reaper. This demolition of a class I have played religiously since HoT is impossible to swallow and especially after almost a year of pouring my resources into Ascended and Legendary gear. I refuse to play a condition necro as a main, i have one i don’t enjoy it and isn’t that what this game is supposed to about, playing what you enjoy.

There was no viable reason to completely eradicate power necro, there could have been some minor changes to this trait that could have been compensated for but 180 vitality was not one of them.

I prefer Condi to power and I did some testing like I’ve mention. And the power reaper feels a bit bulkier but its DPS feels kinda shot. The bulk doesn’t make up for that though as being bulkier can be helpful in PvP and WvW, but the necromancer’s Bulk in PvE is often more than enough. So this change isn’t what the community wanted or needed for power.

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Posted by: Zietlogik.6208

Zietlogik.6208

Vital Persistence and Speed of Shadows….why

Vital Persistence just didn’t have anything to compete with, it wasn’t “too strong”, the other 2 options are just too situational or just complete garbage….so there was only 1 option to take honestly.

Speed of Shadows is nice for swiftness since we don’t really have great mobility, but the loss of 20% shroud recharge really make it feel awful, now rotations are even slower and there is less reactionary play when swapping between shroud and weapons.

Maybe the balance team just plays insanely casually and think these are great changes, but to people who actually have mechanical skill and can weave these traits into their playstyle, this is gutting.

Zietlogik [Warrior] Chronologix [Ranger] Ziet The Dreaded [Necromancer] Zietlogic [Revenant]

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Posted by: Vlad Morbius.1759

Vlad Morbius.1759

That’s the point i was making, the DPS is nowhere near enough to remove the survive-ability with that trait and 180 vit to someone wearing Valk gear is inconsequential. They could have reduced it by 10 or 20% but to remove it completely without supplying us the tools to increase the DPS to compensate has killed this build. Necromancers already struggle to find their place in this game and if they think everyone will jump into Scourge as a support class they don’t know the necromancer community at all!

Vini, Vidi, Vici, Viridis…I came, I saw, I conquered…I got a green??

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Posted by: Ramoth.9064

Ramoth.9064

the unique enchantment thing on spectral walk is the spectral walk ‘effect’ icon, its been removed, because spectral armor doesn’t use one either.

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Posted by: grave of hearts.7830

grave of hearts.7830

My opinion on soul eater along with vitality bonus is that anet wants to push reapers towards crusader stats,which kinda makes sense lore wise but doesnt make sense competitive wise.
Edit: and tbh i still see nothing outside shout burst to effectively fend off a thief (which wvw is infested with) and even that at times is inneficient.

SoS Defence and Emergency commander
If you see a gear above my head……run
If you see me Offline,its totaly not a trap

(edited by grave of hearts.7830)

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Posted by: LinhZeri.6412

LinhZeri.6412

The Vital persistence nerf is a huge hit without even making shroud skills more powerful… It was basically a must have to even be able to survive and now that is gone lol which tells you they don’t play necromancer at all (mained necro since beta). There needs to be a reason for it to end so quick as it does now and as of right now it doesn’t…. They basically making shroud not the old concept of a safe zone but of a unique powerful ability for a temp time… Vital persistence decay should of been made base line (but at 25% as it would be way too go at the 50% as a baseline). Speed of Shadow there was no reason to remove that base 25% speed no reason for that what so ever lol. _shrug.

Lichform looks fine they still need to make the darn transformation smaller and should be a cool shade or something instead of what we got. It just a giant HIT ME NOW transform.

(edited by LinhZeri.6412)

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Posted by: Sephylon.4938

Sephylon.4938

I’ve noticed a real hit to my suitability in wvw. The loss of shroud cd and the fact that shroud decays this fast is just horrible. It’s now either a miracle or an enemy’s mishap when I survive fighting more than 1 person at a time. Was the nerfs to shroud really necessary? What exactly is it that anet wants to happen with necro? At this rate scourge won’t even be taken in pvp or wvw due to its inability to stand on its own 2 feet. (assuming that spellbreakers will be as sustainable, and self-reliant as they seem to be).

Additionally, I was expecting something, anything that made power specs actually viable, as it stands, condi reaper is still better than power reaper, and additionally it would seem that condi reaper will either be on par or stranger than condi scourge. Think about this; a POWER spec is just as viable as a CONDI spec in terms of condi damage! At this rate power scourge will be more useful than condi scourge.

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Posted by: LinhZeri.6412

LinhZeri.6412

I’ve noticed a real hit to my suitability in wvw. The loss of shroud cd and the fact that shroud decays this fast is just horrible. It’s now either a miracle or an enemy’s mishap when I survive fighting more than 1 person at a time. Was the nerfs to shroud really necessary? What exactly is it that anet wants to happen with necro? At this rate scourge won’t even be taken in pvp or wvw due to its inability to stand on its own 2 feet. (assuming that spellbreakers will be as sustainable, and self-reliant as they seem to be).

Additionally, I was expecting something, anything that made power specs actually viable, as it stands, condi reaper is still better than power reaper, and additionally it would seem that condi reaper will either be on par or stranger than condi scourge. Think about this; a POWER spec is just as viable as a CONDI spec in terms of condi damage! At this rate power scourge will be more useful than condi scourge.

Don’t forget we usually ignore us and barely support even with the vital persistence. in wvw teams. Necrolifeman lol. always the one caught when not in a good and caring team.

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Spiteful Renewal is a nice change. Adding a bit of condi cleanse and additional healing is nice.

The really nice part about it is that it removes the drawback from Consume Conditions and turns it into extra healing. Spiteful Renewal is on about a 1/2 second delay after the Heal skill. If you have corruptions traited, Spiteful Renewal removes the Blind.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
http://www.twitch.tv/reverse830
I’m a Geeleiver

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Posted by: Sephylon.4938

Sephylon.4938

I mostly solo roam as a hybrid reaper (closest I could get to a power build without feeling like I’ve lost all my limbs).

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Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

Spiteful Renewal is a nice change. Adding a bit of condi cleanse and additional healing is nice.

The really nice part about it is that it removes the drawback from Consume Conditions and turns it into extra healing. Spiteful Renewal is on about a 1/2 second delay after the Heal skill. If you have corruptions traited, Spiteful Renewal removes the Blind.

the consistency in this trait is nice. One of the few good changes, but this is minor in the grand scheme since this does very little compared to what vital persistence did for our survivability. While at the same time, Vital was… well… Vital for power reapers. Without it they’ve lost quite a bit of DPS… As surprising as that might sound.

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Oh, the gutting of Vital Persistence was no doubt the largest nerf to any class in the entire patch.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
http://www.twitch.tv/reverse830
I’m a Geeleiver

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Posted by: Anchoku.8142

Anchoku.8142

Duration consumables took a hard nerf and it will change my viper build.

Viper’s armor already had a poor amount of expertise per piece but, with the consumables change, it becomes much harder to hit the +100% duration cap.

Rare Veggie Pizza changed from 20% condi duration to 6.66%.
Giver’s weapons changed from 10% to 8%. Two 1H Giver’s weapons gave 20% by themselves. This allowed plenty of room to cap bleeds and allowed for Rune of Thorns to cap poison. I could switch runes to Krait and get back to capping bleeds.

Game balance will be shifting a bit away from condi without easily being able to double durations. There will still be a lot of condition damage but people may find the 3-stat armor types more attractive than before the update.

Chill duration will also be affected so power Reaper using chill for CC will be trimmed. In fact, a lot of Necromancer’s conditions are soft CC so expect that food you use to like will not help you there.

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

I run 2 Trapper, 4 Nightmare and get 79% general condition duration before consumables. Sure, capping everything doesn’t happen anymore, but you still get pretty close (and there with Bleeding).

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
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Posted by: Sephylon.4938

Sephylon.4938

Spiteful Renewal is a nice change. Adding a bit of condi cleanse and additional healing is nice.

The really nice part about it is that it removes the drawback from Consume Conditions and turns it into extra healing. Spiteful Renewal is on about a 1/2 second delay after the Heal skill. If you have corruptions traited, Spiteful Renewal removes the Blind.

the consistency in this trait is nice. One of the few good changes, but this is minor in the grand scheme since this does very little compared to what vital persistence did for our survivability. While at the same time, Vital was… well… Vital for power reapers. Without it they’ve lost quite a bit of DPS… As surprising as that might sound.

To add to this, 1 condition per heal is worth very little in wvw with all the cover conditions, even in a 1v1 situation, and I assume it’s worth the same for pvp.

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Posted by: Barnabus Stinson.1409

Barnabus Stinson.1409

These changes are completely disheartening, Power Reaper catches up to Condi reaper cause we nerfed condi food… better nerf reaper in general to make it so it doesnt catch up too much

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Posted by: EremiteAngel.9765

EremiteAngel.9765

Anyone tested if spiteful renewal works on our healing utility too?
Like signet of the locust.

Scourge Demo Weekend Roaming Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsby6rYkxS8

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Anyone tested if spiteful renewal works on our healing utility too?
Like signet of the locust.

Why would it? “When using a healing skill” has always, without exception, referred only to using the dedicated heal slot #6 on the skill bar.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
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Posted by: Iridi.8473

Iridi.8473

So a few people are not impressed with the current balance patch and I wasn’t too happy either. But I think its good to look at this with a more critical eye without our attachments and emotions getting in the way.

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

Necromancer is the worst class hands down. Wake up Anet.

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Posted by: Mavrip The Ripper.8623

Mavrip The Ripper.8623

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

you have double health bars. you can boost your def w/ minions, you have fear as a gap creator from multiple sources if you so choose it (shroud 3, staff 5), we can chill like crazy which essentially just add icing on top of the gap closers we have. you can trait and choose your skills for swiftness or stability if that’s really what you want? We don’t have invuln or warrior dumblocks, if you spec for wells then you can grab protection on top of having that 2nd whole health bar + leaching. Necro can have crazy survivability! We are just lacking in the DPS department heavily.

Oh, also we have this dodge function for when we are paying attention which makes surviving even easier.

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Posted by: Brokensunday.4098

Brokensunday.4098

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

you have double health bars. you can boost your def w/ minions, you have fear as a gap creator from multiple sources if you so choose it (shroud 3, staff 5), we can chill like crazy which essentially just add icing on top of the gap closers we have. you can trait and choose your skills for swiftness or stability if that’s really what you want? We don’t have invuln or warrior dumblocks, if you spec for wells then you can grab protection on top of having that 2nd whole health bar + leaching. Necro can have crazy survivability! We are just lacking in the DPS department heavily.

Oh, also we have this dodge function for when we are paying attention which makes surviving even easier.

I prefer block evedaes invul over hp any day you can sock so much… seems you never pvp on a necro before and btw a second life bar should not degrade…..

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Posted by: Dadnir.5038

Dadnir.5038

So… After the change of Plague form to Plagueland, while I was disappointed to lose our useful elite transform, I manage to grow a seed of hope that we could finally get rid of this ugly thing which is Lich form.

Worst of all, the recent annoucement about futur e-specs were starting to hype me, motivate me.

So when I managed to take a glance at this balance patch I was in High spirit.
The elementalist’s notes made me laugh, gutting so blatantly the elementalist dps so that Weaver can overpower any other elementalist build.
Then came the guardian and I was baffled! They finally did it! They finally changed spirit weapons into something very usefull.

At this point my hope shot throught the ceiling, just skipping engineer and mesmer to direct a look at the necromancer!

I read quickly, see an announced change on signet and lich form. I’m excited, I look at signet and inwardly say: “Oh good! That’s an interesting change!”.

And then… It’s here… the “lich form” change… The wave of disappointment that overthrow me, depress me, tire me…

Yes! Anet, you achieve it! You managed to thoroughly Wash the hype away!

Ok! now that the bloody tears have dried up a bit, let’s just say what would have been hundred time better than those changes.

- Change rending shroud so that it apply a toughness debuff instead of applying vulnerability. Make this tiny change at least in PvE. This would buff tremendously the usefulness of a necromancer in a party, making him desirable.

- Change/remove soul comprehension.

- Add stuff with barrier because, with what barrier you are giving the scourge, there is no way that this will work.

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

(edited by Dadnir.5038)

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Posted by: Lahmia.2193

Lahmia.2193

The change to Vital Persistence made sense in that it couldn’t be used on Scourge but also because it was an incredibly powerful trait. It was a legit reason for taking an entire traitline, thought annoyingly, anet failed to compensate for said nerf.

Surrender and serve me in life, or die and slave for me in death.

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Posted by: NecroSummonsMors.7816

NecroSummonsMors.7816

Anet I knew you would do this…is it really this hard splitting traits for elite specialization? Because in my opinion it’s the better way to avoid really bad consequences when balancing since each spec would have it’s own traits.

Now there are really bad things in this patch but also some good:

Vital persistance:

Removing decay reduction it’s ok but you have to at least make it baseline otherwise builds that heavily counts on being in shroud get destroyed. Also being less in shroud make a lot traits that benefit by being in shroud a lot worse(death magic as whole).
So why don’t make 33% decay reduction baseline? Because right now shroud degen too fast and with damage on top a necro in shroud last very few secs and this shouldn’t be it especially since the traits focus on reducing shroud skill cooldown, how am i suppose to use shroud skill if i can’t stay in shroud longer enough?

Speed of Shadows:

I can see the sinergy with foot in the grave and the fact the scourge won’t be in shroud, but removing the reduction recharge is really devasting for 2 reasons: i cannot flash shroud anymore and i can’t flash dash to move more freely, infact with 7 sec cooldown to wait to enter shroud and 6 sec of cd for the dash on reaper it really was a perfect combo. Now waiting 4 sec to dash again to me seems stupid.
But i can also get it that maybe sand shroud on a 14 sec cd could be too much

Signet of Suffering:

If the idea was to completely destroy a signet core necro build well you’ve done it.
Imo signet’s passive effect should stay in shroud by default and the buff to passive effects it’s not that great especially for signet of the locust and signet of the undead.

Terrifying Descent

Should be 2 stacks for 2 secs so if a player is good enough can really make a good use of fear to chain stacks of torment.

Good job on Spiteful Spirit, Spiteful Renewal, Ritual of Life, Life from Death and Vampiric Rituals. (last three traits are a good revamp for blood magic)

Spectral mastery
Seems fine a +1,5 sec duration on Spectral Armor when taking this trait

The duration increase on spectral skills it’s good especially because every build can benefit it even without picking the trait.

Soul Eater
It’s not bad getting a bit of healing and life force, but 0,5% of lf for seconds seems a joke. At least 1% for 1 sec should be usefull. I still have to test this trait a bit more to give a more constructive feedback especially for healing scaling on the healing.

Lich Form: Still have to test, i’ll upate my response

Specatral Grasp

Good idea to make the pull multitarget, but the cooldown is too high even when paired with spectral mastery. I mean 40s for a pull and a bit of life force is too much.
This utility could be improve in 2 ways:
1) the more targets i pull the more life force I get for +X% for each target, keep same cooldown
2) reduce cooldown to 30s and increase life force baseline to 20%

In the end I would ask where are the buffs that would make power reaper competitive with scourge? Because right now except spectral skills and souls eater there’s nothing and in my opinion it’s not enough. From a pure survivability point of view with shroud duration gutted i feel forced to pick Chilling Victory and Blighter’s boon to stay in shroud a bit more, while before I could run reaper onslaught and get a really good dps boost by camping in shroud.

(edited by NecroSummonsMors.7816)

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Posted by: Vitali.5039

Vitali.5039

My heart is bleeding..

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Posted by: Brokensunday.4098

Brokensunday.4098

My heart is bleeding..

stop using blood is power and a tip transfer it to anet ^.^
jokes a side its a sad day to be a necro main

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Posted by: Vitali.5039

Vitali.5039

My heart is bleeding..

stop using blood is power and a tip transfer it to anet ^.^
jokes a side its a sad day to be a necro main

I have tried to transfer my bleeding stack to a necro’s dev but I can’t without a target.

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Posted by: Ghostt.1293

Ghostt.1293

My heart is bleeding..

stop using blood is power and a tip transfer it to anet ^.^
jokes a side its a sad day to be a necro main

we got used to sad days still wont play ele’s if that is what they are trying to do

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Posted by: jacim.5904

jacim.5904

Nobody is talking about the fact that the new signet of suffering in combination with plague signet is broken, it just makes shroud un playable. You just transform get loaded with condies, cant do anything about it, and in a matter of seconds shroud is out.

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Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

So a few people are not impressed with the current balance patch and I wasn’t too happy either. But I think its good to look at this with a more critical eye without our attachments and emotions getting in the way.

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

Read my whole post. You seem to be accusing me of giving this patch a good review. I didn’t.

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Posted by: EremiteAngel.9765

EremiteAngel.9765

Anyone tested if spiteful renewal works on our healing utility too?
Like signet of the locust.

Why would it? “When using a healing skill” has always, without exception, referred only to using the dedicated heal slot #6 on the skill bar.

Um well… I asked as there is a 5 sec CD on the trait’s tooltip which would be odd if it interacted only with our 6th slot healing skill.

I did think perhaps it triggers for the lesser heal skills from traits like lesser well of blood and lesser vamp signet. Which also got me wondering if other skills like signet of locust which has a healing tooltip works to trigger it too. Or maybe even our Dagger 2 life siphon which has a healing tooltip too and might be counted as a healing skill.

Or perhaps I am just over thinking things and the 5 sec CD in the trait has no reason to be there =/

Scourge Demo Weekend Roaming Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsby6rYkxS8

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

1, I would say it’s just a holdover from it’s prior function.

2. Blood Fiend.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
http://www.twitch.tv/reverse830
I’m a Geeleiver

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Posted by: Mavrip The Ripper.8623

Mavrip The Ripper.8623

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

you have double health bars. you can boost your def w/ minions, you have fear as a gap creator from multiple sources if you so choose it (shroud 3, staff 5), we can chill like crazy which essentially just add icing on top of the gap closers we have. you can trait and choose your skills for swiftness or stability if that’s really what you want? We don’t have invuln or warrior dumblocks, if you spec for wells then you can grab protection on top of having that 2nd whole health bar + leaching. Necro can have crazy survivability! We are just lacking in the DPS department heavily.

Oh, also we have this dodge function for when we are paying attention which makes surviving even easier.

I prefer block evedaes invul over hp any day you can sock so much… seems you never pvp on a necro before and btw a second life bar should not degrade…..

Sure, “prefer” whatever you want. necro is still one of the tankiest classes out there for PvE because you have so many ‘oh @#$%’ options.

A second life bar should never degrade? According to what… I kinda feel like this isn’t your game, that your opinion is just that…

Seems like I never pvp on a necro? Based on what, your feelings again? learn to adapt… or you know, just complain lol..

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Posted by: Brokensunday.4098

Brokensunday.4098

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

you have double health bars. you can boost your def w/ minions, you have fear as a gap creator from multiple sources if you so choose it (shroud 3, staff 5), we can chill like crazy which essentially just add icing on top of the gap closers we have. you can trait and choose your skills for swiftness or stability if that’s really what you want? We don’t have invuln or warrior dumblocks, if you spec for wells then you can grab protection on top of having that 2nd whole health bar + leaching. Necro can have crazy survivability! We are just lacking in the DPS department heavily.

Oh, also we have this dodge function for when we are paying attention which makes surviving even easier.

I prefer block evedaes invul over hp any day you can sock so much… seems you never pvp on a necro before and btw a second life bar should not degrade…..

Sure, “prefer” whatever you want. necro is still one of the tankiest classes out there for PvE because you have so many ‘oh @#$%’ options.

A second life bar should never degrade? According to what… I kinda feel like this isn’t your game, that your opinion is just that…

Seems like I never pvp on a necro? Based on what, your feelings again? learn to adapt… or you know, just complain lol..

what is a life bar??? shroud is a resource and is for offence and defense it is the only actual defense a necromancer have and when I say I prefer is personal opinion you don’t have to get all crazy about it and that btw these actual active defenses are way better by far than shroud ^.^ and just read you comment and see and read the skills or even play on top tier pvp with a necro and see for yourself what I’m saying
and I know not every one share same opinions and thought’s and I’m fine with it but is like we are talking about two whole different games, btw my necro is practically untouched for pve but on pvp is destroyed

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Posted by: Sephylon.4938

Sephylon.4938

welp, they heard us.

Death Shroud: The base drain of life force from being in death shroud has been reduced 25%.
Reaper Shroud: The base drain of life force from being in reaper shroud has been reduced 25%.

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Posted by: Mavrip The Ripper.8623

Mavrip The Ripper.8623

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

you have double health bars. you can boost your def w/ minions, you have fear as a gap creator from multiple sources if you so choose it (shroud 3, staff 5), we can chill like crazy which essentially just add icing on top of the gap closers we have. you can trait and choose your skills for swiftness or stability if that’s really what you want? We don’t have invuln or warrior dumblocks, if you spec for wells then you can grab protection on top of having that 2nd whole health bar + leaching. Necro can have crazy survivability! We are just lacking in the DPS department heavily.

Oh, also we have this dodge function for when we are paying attention which makes surviving even easier.

I prefer block evedaes invul over hp any day you can sock so much… seems you never pvp on a necro before and btw a second life bar should not degrade…..

Sure, “prefer” whatever you want. necro is still one of the tankiest classes out there for PvE because you have so many ‘oh @#$%’ options.

A second life bar should never degrade? According to what… I kinda feel like this isn’t your game, that your opinion is just that…

Seems like I never pvp on a necro? Based on what, your feelings again? learn to adapt… or you know, just complain lol..

what is a life bar??? shroud is a resource and is for offence and defense it is the only actual defense a necromancer have and when I say I prefer is personal opinion you don’t have to get all crazy about it and that btw these actual active defenses are way better by far than shroud ^.^ and just read you comment and see and read the skills or even play on top tier pvp with a necro and see for yourself what I’m saying
and I know not every one share same opinions and thought’s and I’m fine with it but is like we are talking about two whole different games, btw my necro is practically untouched for pve but on pvp is destroyed

you need to explore the class if you think shroud is the only defense on necro (or read my previous comments).

I don’t understand your first fragment about what is a life bar. For that matter, I also don’t understand why you are calling me crazy.

your unsupported pvp feelings are irrelevant, season 5 when I was active in sPvP, I was ranked <150 until the last couple weeks where I got sick of attitudes similar to yours who had to rage when a necro used anything non-“meta” (GASP) and dropped off (same reason why i have only done 30 or so matches from this past season).

And lastly, the fact you are incapable of keeping track of the games is not my problem. I’m sorry that you are having that issue, but all I can offer is condolences. I have only presented alternatives and my opinions- which according to you, you are fine with… even though you clearly have some supper salty feelings toward. :/

move on, if you don’t like the game go play runescape. complaining rather than being proactive and finding an alternative solution (for your case, play a different class b/c you clearly don’t like necro playstyle— which is FINE because this is the reason there are different classes!)

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Posted by: Brokensunday.4098

Brokensunday.4098

No, you’re wrong. No emotions involved. Just pure facts. Necro was worst class in terms of self-survivability with 0 blocks, 0 invulnerabilties, 0 gap creaters, 2 gap closers, little to no stability, little to no swiftness. And now they nerfed it even more. Any “buffs” you think they did, well they’re not good buffs. Theorycrafting is just theorycrafting.

you have double health bars. you can boost your def w/ minions, you have fear as a gap creator from multiple sources if you so choose it (shroud 3, staff 5), we can chill like crazy which essentially just add icing on top of the gap closers we have. you can trait and choose your skills for swiftness or stability if that’s really what you want? We don’t have invuln or warrior dumblocks, if you spec for wells then you can grab protection on top of having that 2nd whole health bar + leaching. Necro can have crazy survivability! We are just lacking in the DPS department heavily.

Oh, also we have this dodge function for when we are paying attention which makes surviving even easier.

I prefer block evedaes invul over hp any day you can sock so much… seems you never pvp on a necro before and btw a second life bar should not degrade…..

Sure, “prefer” whatever you want. necro is still one of the tankiest classes out there for PvE because you have so many ‘oh @#$%’ options.

A second life bar should never degrade? According to what… I kinda feel like this isn’t your game, that your opinion is just that…

Seems like I never pvp on a necro? Based on what, your feelings again? learn to adapt… or you know, just complain lol..

what is a life bar??? shroud is a resource and is for offence and defense it is the only actual defense a necromancer have and when I say I prefer is personal opinion you don’t have to get all crazy about it and that btw these actual active defenses are way better by far than shroud ^.^ and just read you comment and see and read the skills or even play on top tier pvp with a necro and see for yourself what I’m saying
and I know not every one share same opinions and thought’s and I’m fine with it but is like we are talking about two whole different games, btw my necro is practically untouched for pve but on pvp is destroyed

you need to explore the class if you think shroud is the only defense on necro (or read my previous comments).

I don’t understand your first fragment about what is a life bar. For that matter, I also don’t understand why you are calling me crazy.

your unsupported pvp feelings are irrelevant, season 5 when I was active in sPvP, I was ranked <150 until the last couple weeks where I got sick of attitudes similar to yours who had to rage when a necro used anything non-“meta” (GASP) and dropped off (same reason why i have only done 30 or so matches from this past season).

And lastly, the fact you are incapable of keeping track of the games is not my problem. I’m sorry that you are having that issue, but all I can offer is condolences. I have only presented alternatives and my opinions- which according to you, you are fine with… even though you clearly have some supper salty feelings toward. :/

move on, if you don’t like the game go play runescape. complaining rather than being proactive and finding an alternative solution (for your case, play a different class b/c you clearly don’t like necro playstyle— which is FINE because this is the reason there are different classes!)

Lol i love the necro and that’s why i stick with it for this long as defences we god what? Damage mitigation on minions prot from a trat athats about it 0 blocks evades etc so necro really only haves shroud to soak up damage for pvp any of that is just not viable at the moment thats why neceo get focus so hard and dont tell me i cant keep track of the game because i been here scince beta and always on top pvp tiers pve is irrelevant scicne any prof / build can do the job apart from raids and " fractals" and as the part you didn underst tand a lifebar aka hp does not deplete which shoud do by decing because it would be op to camp it with out any sort of negative effect hope that clarify it sorry my english is not the best. And im not changing game because you cant handle other persons opinions or even if i get salty like 90% of the comunitiy is and yes i will try some other builds and in the worst case change prof because i still love the game from day one in gw1 proh, we got off topic good not gonna reply more dont want a ticket

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Posted by: Lily.1935

Lily.1935

welp, they heard us.

Death Shroud: The base drain of life force from being in death shroud has been reduced 25%.
Reaper Shroud: The base drain of life force from being in reaper shroud has been reduced 25%.

This is still a nerf to Power necro. And it buffs Condi necro’s survivability. Not their damage, just survivability. Its really not enough. They should just put the remaining missing 25% in as well.

And Vital persistence is still the only option of the 3 for soul reaping!

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Honestly, Spectral Mastery just needs it’s nerf reverted and it’s a strong contender.

Fear of Death just needs a total rework.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
http://www.twitch.tv/reverse830
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