Guild Wars 2

Lopez.7369:

In high-level play, a condition necromancer who constantly runs into melee range and stays there would always be treated as objectively bad. That’s true even if you disagree.

Except all the high level players I’ve seem to disagree with practically everything you’ve said. Are you saying that you speak for them?

They all definitely advocate proper positioning, it is your biggest defense as a Necro. The “aggressive” playstyle still involves a lot of kiting, but has quick dips in/out of the fight, or more commonly the bleed bursting is done as a counter-aggressive setup (because you will be focused and any melee build will get in range if they want to).

Lopez is advocating for a much more defensive and sustained approach whereas the meta is far more aggressive in general. Also something important to note is that Geomancy vs Earth is completely linked with Rabid vs Carrion, since you should definitely be using them in tandem with each other. It is an issue of playstyles, and while everyone is going to think their playstyle is best/better, its up for debate.

Bhawb.7408:

And again, a fact of high level play is that the vast majority of high level Necromancers, including the ones that have played on numerous teams and in many tournaments at the highest level of play GW2 offers, have said that Carrion is better and that Geomancy is better.

If you disagree, that is entirely fine and you are welcome to your opinion. If you want to post math that proves that, again that is fine. But otherwise you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are right just because you say so.

Better than Carrion for Necromancer would be condition damage+/power/healing. Necromancer already has high vitality. Extending it through armor only gives the Necro a slight head start but does little for sustain because the health pool is difficult to refill. Vampiric traits are supposed to help aid refill health but are still weak.

Adding toughness with armor reduces the rate of damage taken but, of the armors available, none have both power and condition damage. Cleric’s has both healing and toughness but then just power and no condition damage.

So, again, the best armor for Necromancer ought to be cond/pwr/heal but no such stat combination exists. Mixing Carrion armor with Cleric’s or Apothecary trinkets may be the best blend of stats. Of course, you can add healing by filling out the Blood Magic trait line, too, but that limits traits in other areas.

Condi Necros address sustain via LF generation, which is a listed reason for why Vitality is approximately equal to toughness (some say better, but idk about the math on that) only for Necromancers. On most classes, vitality is counter to conditions and burst, and toughness goes best with healing. However, on Necros added vitality doesn’t really help us against conditions or burst (as both aren’t that big of a deal the first time with such massive HP pools) and toughness isn’t a clear winner in sustain because of LF generation being a % of HP thing. We have completely greyed out any real difference between the two in most situations.

And honestly healing power on a Necro isn’t worth it unless you have invested specifically into healing outside your normal skill. You want a bit of extra healing (signet, siphons, perma regen, traited healing) before it really pays off, compared to just boosting your innate sustain which has nothing to do with healing power.

@Lopez: if you do the math, they end up being nearly equal overall. The only differences are how they work (sustain vs burst), and that technically geomancy can hit multiple people (god help you if that many people are within that radius though).

I have a Carrion set with vampire runes and sigils to help siphon and there are the wells, siphon on crit, and minions. Damage avoidance through DS, dodges, CC, and reduction through toughness are still critical to sustain the Necro during combat but it is hard to avoid face-tanking with limited combat mobility. Improving heals can help, though return on investment in healing is poor.

I disagree about putrid explosion being blockable. It’s important to be able to hit a target that blocks a lot otherwise they just heal up. Timing an explosion on a blocking engie is extremely important too. They heal for quite a bit if you don’t kill them fast.

Plexxing.2978:

I disagree about putrid explosion being blockable. It’s important to be able to hit a target that blocks a lot otherwise they just heal up. Timing an explosion on a blocking engie is extremely important too. They heal for quite a bit if you don’t kill them fast.

A good MM will be able to maintain very significant poison uptime on a target. The skill is already very difficult for people to avoid, except by always staying away from the bone minions (which again a good MM will never allow for long), keeping it unblockable on top of that makes it very easy to land against anything short of evade spammers.

alanis.6094:

Dhuumfire changes — your lifeblast applies 3s burning on 10s cooldown (poster note: way to take the worst possible suggestion and roll with it, guys)!

Wasn’t that a joke post in the dark humor topic a while back? Oh god, is the dev team so bitter that they can’t take a joke? Well! I’ve said before that “Arena net doesn’t want people to play the necromancer.” And I was joking of course. But I’m beginning to believe it.

About duuhmfire,

I personnaly like the changes they will make.
If i remember well,it lasts for 2s and will last for 3s and with some condition duration,you may reach 4s which according to me is kind of a buff.
You will precisely know when it will proc and it is a good thing.
And finally,you’ll be able to decide to whom it will be applied which sounds very important to me (no more random proc with an AOE).

I have 2 questions which won’t probably be " answerable" untill the patch is released:
-If the first life blast misses,will duuhmfire be considered as “proced” or will it be applied with the second (or third etc) life blast ?

-If you use the piercing blast trait,will duuhmfire proc to all the hit people or only the first one? (i think only the first one,but who knows ?…)

I may sound like a weird guy but i had stoped using duuhmfire some times ago (went for an hybrid build with carion) and these changes make me feel like using it again (because of what i said and the fact that precision won’t be needed for it anymore).

My problem is that Life Blast has always been too SLOW! Faster cast time, NOW!

Is this kitten for kittening real!?

ADIOS kittening necromancer.

A giant thread telling them the dumbfire to lifeblast change was a bad idea and they do it anyway. Remember everyone, ArenaNet listens! They just don’t care.

It’s not just about poison, it’s about getting that last little bit of health down before they heal.

Wow. Take the class that’s bottom of the barrel and gut ‘em worse. Why does the balance team still have a job? If I screwed up that bad I’d of been fired instantly. This is just pathetic.

Nexxa.7306:

Wow. Take the class that’s bottom of the barrel and gut ‘em worse. Why does the balance team still have a job? If I screwed up that bad I’d of been fired instantly. This is just pathetic.

Whoa now, let’s not steal elementalist accolades

Bhawb.7408:

And again, a fact of high level play is that the vast majority of high level Necromancers, including the ones that have played on numerous teams and in many tournaments at the highest level of play GW2 offers, have said that Carrion is better and that Geomancy is better.

If you disagree, that is entirely fine and you are welcome to your opinion. If you want to post math that proves that, again that is fine. But otherwise you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are right just because you say so.

HI BHAWB! NA necromancers apparently prefer carrion over rabid but that does not make carrion a better choice. Top level EU necromancers have been running rabid for a long time and even Posi did in the PAX finals where as we all know Car Crash owned the kitten out of SYNC. Did Zombify run carrion? Also, geomancy is no longer as viable as it once was because of the heavy cc coming from hambow warriors. You are better of by taking energy sigils nowadays. Stop dwelling in past necromancer forum posts since these dont really apply anymore.

My ending keyword: rampager/carrion – go figure it out!

Oh please… I’m on EU. I don’t want to be all hipster about this, but I’ve been promoting carrion over rabid before it was cool :P
Rabid + Earth in sPvP is sooo 2012, and it was inferior to carrion even then.
Lopez, I’m sorry but by now you’re a clear minority with your oppinion. And as to the positioning and toughness vs vitality issues… you’re wrong, at best it’s an l2p issue. If you can’t handly going melee for a while you’re probably doing something wrong, not to mention the group support of taking some focus off your team mates instead of “hiding” at a safe distance.

flow.6043:

Oh please… I’m on EU. I don’t want to be all hipster about this, but I’ve been promoting carrion over rabid before it was cool :P
Rabid + Earth in sPvP is sooo 2012, and it was inferior to carrion even then.
Lopez, I’m sorry but by now you’re a clear minority with your oppinion. And as to the positioning and toughness vs vitality issues… you’re wrong, at best it’s an l2p issue. If you can’t handly going melee for a while you’re probably doing something wrong, not to mention the group support of taking some focus off your team mates instead of “hiding” at a safe distance.

Oh oh oh! At what level do you play? SoloQ or TeamQ? Carrion is not bad and neither is rabid. It is a personal preference and something you should sometimes choose depending on the enemy teams setup. Carrion works great against heavy condi setups and vice versa. Going melee may not be a problem but once you get focused by good teams your going to go down no matter what. Positioning and well thought through offensive/defensive decision making is key.

Yay, Dhuumfire has a trade-off finally and needs to be actively applied, love it!

Good job i don’t even run with Dhuumfire this is just another nerf to condition builds on Necromancer In My Opinion.

Though, that being said if they took on board my idea for changes it could be awesome:

Move Prowess(Crit Damage) Into Spite
Move Malice (Condition Damage) Into Soul Reaping
Move Expertise (Condition Duration) into Curses

After thinking about it, my opinion is that nothing will change….
Meta condi build would be still 30/30/x, and here I’ll tell you why. (PvE environment)

First:Burning on Lifeblast. DS is an important part of condition rotation, #2 and 5# over all. If you’re running with terror even 3# (some boss are immune, but not all them).
Waisting 1 sec to cast a life blast it will not be so bad (also there are other buff incoming, like sigil of Earth going to 100% on crit, ecc..).
An other thing about DS is that the triat ‘Near to Death’ is a little wasted since all of my skills have a cd higher than 10 sec.
In my condition build i often put my last 10 points in Soul Reaping for ‘Path of Midnight’ (-15%cd on DS skills) but even with that I don’t see a point for having ‘Near to Death’.

Second:Buff/Nerf on Runes.
This one is quite important, and no one have talk about it. The Dev made an example with Runes set that give Might duration, moving higher bonus at the top of the set, and nerfing the low ones.
A lot of condition build (pre-dhuumfire) were using 3 set of runes (2 each) or a set of 2-4 runes for stacking condition (especially bleeding) duration. I suscpect that it will not be easy anymore after the 21 january.
Here’s is when Spite comes usefull. A longer condition duration allows us to stack more, to raise our dps of bleeding stack, or doing more burning tick inside that 10sec intern cd.
30% condition duration in the spite trait is important because it allows you to not pick runes set with condition duration (such as Undead)

However, Dev still said that this is only the tip of the iceberg, what we saw is not that full list of necro’s patch notes. I really think that we’ll find some good surprises.

flow.6043:

I can see why they nerfed minion mancers like this, although I’m more interested in what Bhawb (or any other MM veteran) has to say about it.

@Dhuumfire: hell yeah! This will promote strategic and skillful play, rather than noob-spamming passive procs. I was really hoping they would go through with this one.

I was since the start a MM , after the big MM nerf , I stopped playing MM and started a DS build. DS is much more viable than MM. After some people got this (quite) awesome idea for the Summonings. 2 thief with thief guild. They both have venom sharing. 2 Necros with Minion builds (+ venom sharing again) and 1 mesmer or spirit ranger. These pvp parties are (were) so OP. Thx to this more people start playing MM in Pvp.

But still , MMs are easy killble.

I got to thinking about this more, and attempting to force a life blast with every DS, and concluded it isn’t that much harder to do.

However, all those situations you can’t or don’t want to blow your 10 second ds cool down, you are now without that burning.

It doesn’t deserve a GM slot anymore as I personally now value the last 10 in curses and the last 10 in soul reaping more. Especially if you can lean on someone else for burning.

I will still try it out and see what it feels like, but I think the duration should have been 4 seconds, and it should have been master level. Even there, I would prefer chill of death, which tells me that is a fine place for it. It would make it a more attractive hybrid trait as well only needing 30 in spite.

Will see how things go. If they did do some buffing to death magic I may avoid spite all together, like before dumbfire.

One thing to note is that in the GM slot a 3s Dhuumfire is actually 4s (3.9 to be exact) because you will always have that +duration on top. Just like how a 4s Master trait would be 5s. I don’t know that it is a GM anymore, and they have mentioned moving it down to Master before.

Distaste.4801:

A giant thread telling them the dumbfire to lifeblast change was a bad idea and they do it anyway. Remember everyone, ArenaNet listens! They just don’t care.

Quite a few people wanted the Lifeblast-based version as well. If the community is split, then ANet can’t possibly make everyone happy.

djooceboxblast.9876:

snip

Symbolic actually mentioned on stream chat not that long ago that Carrion was better, I think we were making fun of someone’s terrible build at the time. Unless he has since changed his opinion, his has always been that it is better if you are managing LF (and he’s EU).

But it appears to be much more split than I realized.

Lopez.7369:

Zaganna.6034:

However, Dev still said that this is only the tip of the iceberg, what we saw is not that full list of necro’s patch notes. I really think that we’ll find some good surprises.

The developers say this with every single patch. It always turns out that the “many” changes they were leaving out were bug fixes or random tweaks no one cares about.

Don’t forget the tooltip fixes. Plus random bugs that came from nowhere of course.

Dalanor.5387:

Lopez.7369:

Zaganna.6034:

However, Dev still said that this is only the tip of the iceberg, what we saw is not that full list of necro’s patch notes. I really think that we’ll find some good surprises.

The developers say this with every single patch. It always turns out that the “many” changes they were leaving out were bug fixes or random tweaks no one cares about.

Don’t forget the tooltip fixes. Plus random bugs that came from nowhere of course.

Indeed is correct.

I needed to point that I was talking about sigil/runes :P

this is how some classes are “balanced”

Dina Van Heyr, you made me laugh so much…

Thank you.

alanis.6094:

I’d support the Dhuumfire change more if it they moved it out of Spite.

It’s a shame when you return to a game where Necros have always been powerful, but constantly whined about as being bad on forums. Now they make noob-style condi-builds for every bad player to roll a Necro. So sad.

djooceboxblast.9876:

Bhawb.7408:

And again, a fact of high level play is that the vast majority of high level Necromancers, including the ones that have played on numerous teams and in many tournaments at the highest level of play GW2 offers, have said that Carrion is better and that Geomancy is better.

If you disagree, that is entirely fine and you are welcome to your opinion. If you want to post math that proves that, again that is fine. But otherwise you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are right just because you say so.

HI BHAWB! NA necromancers apparently prefer carrion over rabid but that does not make carrion a better choice. Top level EU necromancers have been running rabid for a long time and even Posi did in the PAX finals where as we all know Car Crash owned the kitten out of SYNC. Did Zombify run carrion? Also, geomancy is no longer as viable as it once was because of the heavy cc coming from hambow warriors. You are better of by taking energy sigils nowadays. Stop dwelling in past necromancer forum posts since these dont really apply anymore.

My ending keyword: rampager/carrion – go figure it out!

Well, anyway, choice of armor stats is minor compared to the upcoming sigil an rune revisions. Djooce reminded me that my exotic Rampager +60% Might duration set is probably going to get jacked. At least I had already recycled my Chill duration set.

Honestly, the lack of substantive content additions and the way Necromancer keeps being re-balanced in ways completely opposite of what the more level-headed, experienced players want means I will play less, play Necromancer less, and forego buying any more gems with real money. I look at all of these really young guys on the vid stream talking about upcoming patches and know the game is over.

Yeah Necros were always powerful (but to be honest not in the grotesque way others are or have been) if and only if they had enough team support. Alone they are immobile as hell and are focused down quite easily, they do not have useful tools to reset a fight. Long time the community voiced concerns that this is problematic since nearly every other class has something like this. Look at warriors, look at thiefes to just name the worst. They are kings of mobility and dish out ridiculous damage. In one of the older state of the games back in the days when arenanet tried to make themself look like if they cared for the community they said that they will look into the mobility problem. Then in the next patch we got dhuumfire. They simply kittening don´t care. When i looked the stream i found it hard to get serious information between all the trash talk of the devs. I´ve really never seen a company presenting themself in such an unprofessional way.

alanis.6094:

I’d support the Dhuumfire change more if it they moved it out of Spite.

With it now being connected with Life Blast, i think it would be better suited to be moved to Master tier Soul Reaping. It is no longer Grandmaster value, though i don’t think it ever was.

I find it hilarious they think MM passive healing, Which to get it high requires an entire specific skill bar and major trait, on the SUSTAIN CLASS OF ALL OF THEM, is too strong at less than 200 hp per second while warriors 400 HP per second signet only gets an 8% decrease and a BUFF TO IT’S ACTIVE. This is such blatant favoritism it isn’t even funny.

striker.3704:

I find it hilarious they think MM passive healing, Which to get it high requires an entire specific skill bar and major trait, on the SUSTAIN CLASS OF ALL OF THEM, is too strong at less than 200 hp per second while warriors 400 HP per second signet only gets an 8% decrease and a BUFF TO IT’S ACTIVE. This is such blatant favoritism it isn’t even funny.

Well, this is what happens when a Dev team ALL play the same class…
Bias doesn’t even begin to cover it.

striker.3704:

I find it hilarious they think MM passive healing, Which to get it high requires an entire specific skill bar and major trait, on the SUSTAIN CLASS OF ALL OF THEM, is too strong at less than 200 hp per second while warriors 400 HP per second signet only gets an 8% decrease and a BUFF TO IT’S ACTIVE. This is such blatant favoritism it isn’t even funny.

blood fiend in itself has 294 hp/s.

I used to look forward to these profession and gear balancing updates. Now they just make me depressed.

Tim.6450:

blood fiend in itself has 294 hp/s.

Technically that is wrong, seeing as it has to HIT something first, then you get onto what happens when it dies

More nerfs, no improvements to the class. No surprise here…

See you next month A-Net!