Guild Wars 2

Can we talk about how slow generation of large resource pools which drain quickly is a burst mechanic and not an attrition one?

I don’t get why all the devs seem to think necro is an attrition class. The class defining mechanic is pretty much a textbook example of burst design. You slowly stack up a resource out of combat, have the ability to quickly turn that resource into damage, and either the enemy is dead and you can reset, or it’s GG and you lost the fight to a real attrition mechanic.

Take a look at where necro is played in pvp. Up until the signet changes it was universally zerk bomber. Why? Because necro is a burst class by design, the devs just don’t know it.

Recently they’ve patched this up with a few honestly overpowered mechanics. Two instant cast full condi transfers on a 24s cd? Yea that’ll turn anybody into a decent bruiser. But it doesn’t solve the real problems and this kind of design is only going to lead to balance issues down the road.

Either change the necro mechanic to be truly attrition based by tripling all LF generation and halving the size of DS, or start giving it more of the tools it needs to really function as a bursty profession.

How do necros generate LF out of combat?

Linnael.1069:

I don’t get why all the devs seem to think necro is an attrition class.

Maybe because they designed it that way?

Linnael.1069:

Because necro is a burst class by design, the devs just don’t know it.

Yes, because they don’t know anything about the very class and traits and mechanics that they designed, tested, and use.

In short, there are multiple options to play a variety of play styles. If you want to play a more burst build, sure!
If you want to play more attrition based? Sure!
Want to do something else? Why not?

Should I be limited in how I play necro because some meta website tells me to? Or should I play what I find fun?

I don know about that. DS doesnt really feel like a mechanic that you would give a burst class.

I agree with the OP, necros have that huge almost 20k base HP pool plus DS. Give a class like that a lot of sustain and it will never die. Meanwhile, look at eles and guards. They have innate sustain built in, and it isn’t a problem because they have small HP pools. I always thought the best sustain mechanics should be on the low HP class, not the high HP one. DS would make a lot more sense if necros had 10k base hp.

Necromancer is bursting like hell already. There are some traits which makes you autowin after an enemy is under 50% health. I really mean it, it just requires 1 more hit to get this enemy in down state if you have him at 50% health. How is that not bursty?

And if you are specced the right way DS AA is terrible damage.

Is the class really that bursty though?

No where near Thief, Mesmer, Ele, or even Ranger imo.

Kodama.6453:

Necromancer is bursting like hell already. There are some traits which makes you autowin after an enemy is under 50% health. I really mean it, it just requires 1 more hit to get this enemy in down state if you have him at 50% health. How is that not bursty?

And if you are specced the right way DS AA is terrible damage.

One trait proc doesn’t make a class bursty. Have you ever played a mes? How bout a thief? medi guard? fresh air ele? Those are builds/classes with real burst on a very short cd, not a trait proc at 50% hp, which is the only actual burst necros have outside of wells which require a huge setup.

To get burst, I would suggest making the focus 5 skill spinal shivers instant cast, then remove the trait proc chill of death. Also, redesign dagger 2 to be a single target high dps life siphon instead of the 4 second channel it is now (3/4 second cast, 10k damage in pve). Maybe rework shroud 4 into a port (12 second port would be too op), and shroud 2 into a high dps skill (3 aoe bleeds, 3 seconds of aoe chill, and upwards of 5-7k damage in pve please).

Having a large health pool doesn’t make you a burst class, same with the lifeforce pool.

Look at it this way, the necro’s natural health pool and shroud both counter burst, which allows the necro to turn any fight into an attrition fight.

Furthermore, shroud is the only mechanic in the game that converts max health into some kind of sustain/mitigation because the rate at which it generates scales off your max health.

That said, of course the necro is able to spec for burst damage. Anet didn’t want necro to be forced into only attrition builds. They wanted every profession to have a variety of builds and playstyles.

Atherakhia.4086:

Is the class really that bursty though?

No where near Thief, Mesmer, Ele, or even Ranger imo.

The elementalist isn’t that bursty, one of the complaints ele have is that they have to rely on cantrips, water/arcane just to be viable any other build is worthless in PvP. The only burst they have is scepter and scepter is extremely terrible and predictable.

+1000

OP is right. There is nothing “attrition” about the design of death shroud. The only mechanics that work are the burst mechanics.

Khristophoros.7194:

Having a large health pool doesn’t make you a burst class, same with the lifeforce pool.

Look at it this way, the necro’s natural health pool and shroud both counter burst, which allows the necro to turn any fight into an attrition fight.

Furthermore, shroud is the only mechanic in the game that converts max health into some kind of sustain/mitigation because the rate at which it generates scales off your max health.

That said, of course the necro is able to spec for burst damage. Anet didn’t want necro to be forced into only attrition builds. They wanted every profession to have a variety of builds and playstyles.

I disagree, the counter to a lot of health is burst and cc. The counter to burst is active defence like invulns, dodge rolls, and ports. These skills allow you to turn a fight into a sustain battle. A big health pool that doesn’t regenerate quickly means the fight will always end eventually. Meanwhile, eles and guards can almost always go back to full health if they can create some space and time.

Also, necros can’t really spec for burst damage. Chill of death and wells are burst I guess, but you have to play around them for the other 20-30 second they are off cd. wells also take 3-4 seconds to deal big damage, while burst to me happens in less than a second or two. A real burst build is always either landing burst, setting up burst, or running away. Necro burst builds don’t really do that at all.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Atherakhia.4086:

Is the class really that bursty though?

No where near Thief, Mesmer, Ele, or even Ranger imo.

The elementalist isn’t that bursty, one of the complaints ele have is that they have to rely on cantrips, water/arcane just to be viable any other build is worthless in PvP. The only burst they have is scepter and scepter is extremely terrible and predictable.

Scepter is their burst weapon. If you find it terrible and predictable, that’s fine. But it doesn’t change the fact that their burst with the weapon is among the highest in the game.

And as another person mentioned, even a Guard does more burst.

I’m not trying to argue that the class isn’t capable of burst. Just trying to keep it in perspective. I’d hardly consider Necro a burst class.

This is most obvious on condi builds, where all you do is spike people down with terror and signet of spite while your 8 second bleeds tick for 117 per second.

Elementalist also has icebow. Best burst in the game!

Atherakhia.4086:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Atherakhia.4086:

Is the class really that bursty though?

No where near Thief, Mesmer, Ele, or even Ranger imo.

The elementalist isn’t that bursty, one of the complaints ele have is that they have to rely on cantrips, water/arcane just to be viable any other build is worthless in PvP. The only burst they have is scepter and scepter is extremely terrible and predictable.

Scepter is their burst weapon. If you find it terrible and predictable, that’s fine. But it doesn’t change the fact that their burst with the weapon is among the highest in the game.

And as another person mentioned, even a Guard does more burst.

I’m not trying to argue that the class isn’t capable of burst. Just trying to keep it in perspective. I’d hardly consider Necro a burst class.

Scepter is not a burst weapon, it has attribute for a burst weapon but it is far from it. The cost of going into burst means a quick and easy death when encountering a competent player. Unlike thief and mesmers where they can disengage and come back two seconds later to whoop dat kitten .

My point really is that you don’t pick the ele if you want a burst class. Just like you would not pick the necro if you wanted a class that is good for something.

For those of you who aren’t getting the point, here’s the difference between burst-oriented mechanics and being good at burst damage.

Burst oriented mechanics are systems that allow you to be more effective for a short duration at a long-term cost. Entering fights with a huge bar of life force that you maxed out just by slapping a few ambients on the way there is a burst oriented mechanic. Your amount of available life force starts off very high relative to the investment you made towards generating life force during that fight (no investment at start) and then rapidly declines as the fight gets longer, because you must then consider LF generation an active priority, potentially conflicting with positioning, DPS, and healing priorities. Basically, shorter fights mean your initial LF bar does more for you and LF generation can be less of a priority. Deathshroud is better the shorter a fight is. This is a bursty mechanic.

Note this has nothing to do with whether you actually have good burst DPS. That’s exactly my point with this thread actually. The necro has a burst mechanic built into it, but the devs think its an attrition class and keep giving us slow damage over time effects and huge cast times. Their intentions and the core principles of the class conflict, which is why it has so many issues.

(Sidenote: This is also why necro has so many issues in PvP but you’ll see people complain about necro wvw roamers all the time. PvP necro starts the game with 0 initial life force, whereas roaming necros will basically always be at 100%. If you change lifeforce into a high-generation, low-pool statistic as suggested, this becomes far less of an issue.)

I do not wholly agree with that the DS is a burst oriented mechanic. While your statement is technicaly true, it also acts as a second health bar. There is nothing bursty with that. It is also, contrary to your statement DS is quite strong in longer fights, using one and a half DS is quite possible and that alone is great for attrition. I also firmly belive that the Necro shouldn’t burst at all. Instead it should be reworked so that the attrition element actualy works, make wells into something similar to inverse banners, long lasting debuffs with large area and high cooldown with low damage slapped on on top, but they are immobile (have fun capturing that point against a necro, nice in boss fights). Give them a condi trait that allows for debuffs to be refreshed (ex. whenever you inflict a condition 15% chance to reset all conditions to their original duration).
Their whole design screams attrition, conditions, 2nd health bar, high base health, mediocre damage, boon management and no mobility. But Anet keeps kittening up (mostly because of the “play the game your way thing”), as this playstyle can easily get out of hand with a few overtuned changes.

Arche.7326:

I do not wholly agree with that the DS is a burst oriented mechanic. While your statement is technicaly true, it also acts as a second health bar. There is nothing bursty with that. It is also, contrary to your statement DS is quite strong in longer fights, using one and a half DS is quite possible and that alone is great for attrition. I also firmly belive that the Necro shouldn’t burst at all. Instead it should be reworked so that the attrition element actualy works, make wells into something similar to inverse banners, long lasting debuffs with large area and high cooldown with low damage slapped on on top, but they are immobile (have fun capturing that point against a necro, nice in boss fights). Give them a condi trait that allows for debuffs to be refreshed (ex. whenever you inflict a condition 15% chance to reset all conditions to their original duration).
Their whole design screams attrition, conditions, 2nd health bar, high base health, mediocre damage, boon management and no mobility. But Anet keeps kittening up (mostly because of the “play the game your way thing”), as this playstyle can easily get out of hand with a few overtuned changes.

The idea to tweak wells to be more like banners is a good one, I think. While WoC has good damage, it’s so… Lackluster. Unless, of course, you’re fighting a melee build. Still, I think it’s a valid idea for sure. And instead of banners, they could be Effigies instead, and could still be traited for life siphoning (because that would still have to go somewhere, right?)

Linnael.1069:

For those of you who aren’t getting the point, here’s the difference between burst-oriented mechanics and being good at burst damage.

Burst oriented mechanics are systems that allow you to be more effective for a short duration at a long-term cost. Entering fights with a huge bar of life force that you maxed out just by slapping a few ambients on the way there is a burst oriented mechanic. Your amount of available life force starts off very high relative to the investment you made towards generating life force during that fight (no investment at start) and then rapidly declines as the fight gets longer, because you must then consider LF generation an active priority, potentially conflicting with positioning, DPS, and healing priorities. Basically, shorter fights mean your initial LF bar does more for you and LF generation can be less of a priority. Deathshroud is better the shorter a fight is. This is a bursty mechanic.

Note this has nothing to do with whether you actually have good burst DPS. That’s exactly my point with this thread actually. The necro has a burst mechanic built into it, but the devs think its an attrition class and keep giving us slow damage over time effects and huge cast times. Their intentions and the core principles of the class conflict, which is why it has so many issues.

(Sidenote: This is also why necro has so many issues in PvP but you’ll see people complain about necro wvw roamers all the time. PvP necro starts the game with 0 initial life force, whereas roaming necros will basically always be at 100%. If you change lifeforce into a high-generation, low-pool statistic as suggested, this becomes far less of an issue.)

You are totally disregarding the fact that life force generation is a percentage of your maximum health which makes it a great sustain mechanic. There’s nothing else in the game that turns vitality into sustain.

So I mean, you have to actually spec for sustain. Both toughness and vitality increase it and it also depends on how much life force generation you bring in your build.

Also, the life force mechanic doesn’t enable you to burst people. It helps you survive against burst. So yes it’s useful in a burst fight but the same is true of active defenses.

Both are also useful in sustain fights because they are available on some kind of time interval, though life force generation is highly variable based on your build. So the issue here is the rate at which you can generate life force, not the mechanic of having a life force pool.

Traited Spectral Armor is a win there. Run out of life force? Pop Spectral armor. Nine seconds later (the cooldown of death shroud, about) you have about 74% life force back. It’s truly wonderful

Khristophoros.7194:

snip

You still don’t understand what a burst-oriented mechanic is. Life force is a defensive mechanic. Doesn’t mean it’s not a burst oriented one. Whether a system is optimized for long-term or short-term encounters is not dependent on how much damage it provides.

Take a look at the facts:

1: Life force is the slowest generating resource in the game by a long margin even in optimal cases and requires investment to generate. However, LF is easily stacked up between fights and has a large maximum pool.

2: Life force scales to vitality, another burst-oriented stat. Vitality is 100% useless past the opening of a fight unless your opponent can 100-0 partway through.

3: Life force is thus always better in a shorter fight than a longer one. This means it is a burst oriented mechanic.

4: In order to make the necro an attrition class despite it’s textbook burst oriented class design, devs had to saddle the necro with massive cast times, unreliable sources of power scaling, and some frankly overpowered patches to LF generation that only fly under the radar because its so bad at baseline.(full dagger auto chain generates 8%; spectral armor can generate 80%).

5: Necro hits live. PvP players to complain bout 0 LF at match start. WvW roamers complain about oppressive 100% LF encounters. Everybody complains about kittenty cast times and how easy to avoid our power damage is. Despite all this Necro still sees the majority of its play as a 100% zerker glass cannon

Life force is a burst mechanic on a class that the devs keep trying to turn into an attrition class, and that’s the source of most of the necro’s problems. That’s just a fact.

Now can we start talking about how to fix it? If ANet wants to push the attrition angle I suggest we cut the LF pool to a third of its current value, allow DS entry to cool down while in deathshroud, and triple all LF generation.

If ANet would like to see the burst angle see play as well, I think a pretty major overhaul of the power weapons is in order. Axe and Focus both need pretty major reworks, and dagger could be alright with either a speed or damage buff on life siphon.

Linnael.1069:

Khristophoros.7194:

snip

You still don’t understand what a burst-oriented mechanic is. Life force is a defensive mechanic. Doesn’t mean it’s not a burst oriented one. Whether a system is optimized for long-term or short-term encounters is not dependent on how much damage it provides.

Take a look at the facts:

1: Life force is the slowest generating resource in the game by a long margin even in optimal cases and requires investment to generate. However, LF is easily stacked up between fights and has a large maximum pool.

2: Life force scales to vitality, another burst-oriented stat. Vitality is 100% useless past the opening of a fight unless your opponent can 100-0 partway through.

3: Life force is thus always better in a shorter fight than a longer one. This means it is a burst oriented mechanic.

4: In order to make the necro an attrition class despite it’s textbook burst oriented class design, devs had to saddle the necro with massive cast times, unreliable sources of power scaling, and some frankly overpowered patches to LF generation that only fly under the radar because its so bad at baseline.(full dagger auto chain generates 8%; spectral armor can generate 80%).

5: Necro hits live. PvP players to complain bout 0 LF at match start. WvW roamers complain about oppressive 100% LF encounters. Everybody complains about kittenty cast times and how easy to avoid our power damage is. Despite all this Necro still sees the majority of its play as a 100% zerker glass cannon

Life force is a burst mechanic on a class that the devs keep trying to turn into an attrition class, and that’s the source of most of the necro’s problems. That’s just a fact.

Now can we start talking about how to fix it? If ANet wants to push the attrition angle I suggest we cut the LF pool to a third of its current value, allow DS entry to cool down while in deathshroud, and triple all LF generation.

If ANet would like to see the burst angle see play as well, I think a pretty major overhaul of the power weapons is in order. Axe and Focus both need pretty major reworks, and dagger could be alright with either a speed or damage buff on life siphon.

1: I assume you’re talking about WvW, because the only way to gain life force outside of combat is to sacrifice minions, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was removed as an exploit eventually. Killing a deer does not really count as in between fights outside of WvW.
2: Vitality is common on burst specs with low health pools. The idea behind giving Necromancer massive amounts of vitality is that it reduces the percent of your health conditions take from you since conditions do not scale, allowing a Necromancer to “theoretically” outsustain condition builds (It is like Blissey in Pokemon: lots of hp and high “Special Defense”).
3: Life Force is better in short fights simply because it doesn’t run out as often.
4: The Devs don’t seem to know how to make attrition work without evades, heals, and teleports. Frankly, I don’t know how to make that possible either.
5: Our power specs are more popular than our condition specs because our condition specs are the weakest condition specs. (Our biggest advantage in condis is that we have a small amount of access to all of them.)

I agree with Linnael. The huge pool of DS needs to be traded for rapid regeneration on a smaller pool with active defense integrated into the rest of the class. I also think they need to make DS function more like a weapon swap and less like a transform. That means being able to use utilities, get allied healing and swap weapons. Then they need to rework the necromancer weapons a little bit. Obviously axe and focus, but also dagger 2, and scepter. They could then replace life transfer with a port and make dark path a damaging aoe skill.

The issue is that they can’t agree on what the class should be.

Eng and Ele are burst classes. Particularly ele, they have paper defences, and are built to front load tons of damage. Or at least at first it was, now it’s a “Do anything and everything you want” class that as of HoT does the job of every single class(barring mesmer portals) better than the host class.

Necro is half built to be a burst class, one look at the well or signet build will settle that one. But it’s got the defences to be an attrition class, very clearly designed to be a burst class that can take some punishment and counterattack swiftly.

The problem is that while they thought they were getting the agility of a burst class and the tankiness of an attrition class, they ended up with a TYE-wing, part burst, part tank, advantages of neither and disadvantages of both.

Necros are good at aoe burst, well bombs are very much the meta in the current WvW side of the game. But single target burst, other classes can do much better.

This isn’t to say that when all the stars align, that we can’t have a nice burst. Such as when the target is below 50% hp, and you’ve taken the 20% extra damage trait, also having chill of death proc at the same time, along with your sigil of fire/air proc at the same time…all the while doing a DS 3, 1 combo. That, is a nice burst. But again, it requires stars to align. This is power necro I’m talking about though. Condi builds are better at attrition.

With that said, OP is right in that shroud mechanics don’t work well. If you don’t start a fight with near 100% LF, you’re at a great disadvantage. And during combat after your LF is blown to pieces with one shatter combo, it’s hard to gain LF again. The mechanics require you to hit things and well in PvP, people tend to avoid getting hit. So there goes your attrition as you scramble to gain LF because a necro is very vulnerable while outside of death shroud.

Yeah, I think people are misunderstanding what the OP was saying.

OP said that having a resource that makes you a lot stronger but declines really fast and is slow to build back up, is the kind of resource that a burst profession should have. He(?) didn’t say that the necromancer IS a burst profession. I think his point was precisely that the necromancer is NOT a burst profession, but it should have been, because the profession mechanic is designed like that.

The reason DS is a “bursty” mechanic is because you spend it fairly quickly, but it’s hard to build back up once it’s out. It’s the same as having high-damage skills on very long cooldowns: once they’re spent, either you’ve won the fight or you’re a sitting duck and you’re about to lose.

Obviously the necro isn’t a great burst class, and the OP wasn’t saying that. You can land some huge damage with wells if your enemies stand in them, but they’re easy to get out of, so you mostly use them for control and area denial rather than burst. You can do some pretty hard-hitting life blasts, but they’re slow and easy to avoid, so hardly “burst” in the “take half your healthbar away before you know what’kitten you” burst. Most importantly, unlike the burst mechanics of other professions, DS doesn’t regenerate out of a fight. A thief can go into stealth and wait for their initiative to regenerate. A mesmer can hide behind scenery until their cooldowns come back. But a necromancer has to keep attacking to generate more life force. Since life force is also the necromancer’s only survivability mechanic, this is pretty counterintuitive. “Oh no, I’ve run out of my only means of protection! I must get in my enemy’s face and let them wail on me until it comes back!” It’s not a total wash, we have stuff like Spectral Armour etc, but with damage continuously going up it’s hard for it to cut it.

If they wanted to make attrition a viable option for a necro, they would have to seriously increase the rate at which life force can be generated in combat. However, you have to do it in a way that’s only usable for condition builds, cause otherwise burst builds would pretty much get neverending burst. I think the only way to do that is by putting it on the actual weapon skills, and mainly scepter, or maybe to introduce a trait that improves life force gain on a scale with your condition damage attribute.

Frankly though, the whole class is a total mess, with jury rigged mechanics and makeshift pathes that fail to keep up with the power creep of other classes. I really think DS should just be redesigned from the ground up in a way that’s compatible with the current state of the game. For one thing, with the ridiiculous amount of damage that’s flying around these days, I don’t understand why we should be starting off empty in pvp. Let people start with full life force, make life force drain faster while in DS, and increase the rate at which you can regenerate it by hurting people! That way it stops the necro from being a sitting duck at the start of a match, it lets the burst builds play like burst builds and open strong instead of sitting on a ledge and going “hold on lemme lay a few soul marks first so I don’t get one-shot when I jump onto the point”, it lets the attrition builds actually play like attrition builds by having a chance to keep their survivability mechanic up, and it preserves the unique flavour of the necromancer by forcing you to stay in a fight to regenerate your resources rather than letting you do it by running off and hiding and thereby turning you into a goth-themed thief.

Yeah DS may not help much for attrition currently, but you can clearly see that the principle ideas behind it have attrtion in mind. LF building up in combat and by killing enemies and not being effected by the healing debuff of poison clearly shows this. So i dont see why it would in principle be a burst mechanic. That you can store LF long before a fight even begins is just a bad implementation of those attrition principles.

And honestly even if LF generation would be increased and the max LF would be reduced (which certainly would make DS more balanced), long fights would still end the same. Your LF bar just goes up and down faster but your real health bar still only goes down and it is not like you can stay in DS all the time. The reason why necros lose the long game is because they cannot reset they real healthbar like the other “attrition” professions can (or seen the other way around prevent them from reseting thier healthbar).

The argument of shroud vs active defense is flawed because they do the same thing. They absorb massive damage when timed correctly, so they can both counter burst which allows you to make the fight into a sustain fight.

They both come back after a time interval, which allows you to continue using them for defense over the course of the fight, so they remain relevant as the fight goes on.

I don’t think defenses determine if a class is burst or attrition in this game. All of the defenses are useful in both cases.

As to why power builds are better- It’s because necro has weak condi damage scaling.

Cecilia.5179:

1: I assume you’re talking about WvW, because the only way to gain life force outside of combat is to sacrifice minions, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was removed as an exploit eventually. Killing a deer does not really count as in between fights outside of WvW.
2: Vitality is common on burst specs with low health pools. The idea behind giving Necromancer massive amounts of vitality is that it reduces the percent of your health conditions take from you since conditions do not scale, allowing a Necromancer to “theoretically” outsustain condition builds (It is like Blissey in Pokemon: lots of hp and high “Special Defense”).
3: Life Force is better in short fights simply because it doesn’t run out as often.
4: The Devs don’t seem to know how to make attrition work without evades, heals, and teleports. Frankly, I don’t know how to make that possible either.
5: Our power specs are more popular than our condition specs because our condition specs are the weakest condition specs. (Our biggest advantage in condis is that we have a small amount of access to all of them.)

Vitality mitigating conditions is a misconception. It gives you more time to react sure but offers 0 mitigation whatsoever.

Beyond that I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. You seem to be agreeing with all my points. LF is by design better in short fights than it is in long ones, and so our condi specs suck and our burst specs are good despite the devs pushing an attrition angle.

Muchacho.2390:

Yeah DS may not help much for attrition currently, but you can clearly see that the principle ideas behind it have attrtion in mind. LF building up in combat and by killing enemies and not being effected by the healing debuff of poison clearly shows this. So i dont see why it would in principle be a burst mechanic. That you can store LF long before a fight even begins is just a bad implementation of those attrition principles.

And honestly even if LF generation would be increased and the max LF would be reduced (which certainly would make DS more balanced), long fights would still end the same. Your LF bar just goes up and down faster but your real health bar still only goes down and it is not like you can stay in DS all the time. The reason why necros lose the long game is because they cannot reset they real healthbar like the other “attrition” professions can (or seen the other way around prevent them from reseting thier healthbar).

So you’re saying that if LF was high generation low-pool then it would be an attrition mechanic, but because currently it is low generation high-pool its a burst mechanic?

nice to see you agree with me.

Also not quite sure how you determined that LF would go down faster if all you did was lower the max and raise generation.

Khristophoros.7194:

snip

Jeez man can you just ask yourself one question. “Is deathshroud best used in long fights or short ones” It’s such a simple concept. No, just because you can generate some over time doesn’t mean its an attrition mechanic. Is Well of Suffering an attrition skill just because i can use it more times the longer the fight is?

Defense is just as important in determing whether a class will be good at burst as offense is. Look at S/D ele. Highest burst damage in the game by a good factor of two. Totally kittening trash because ele really only has one burst-oriented defense skill (arcane shield).

Linnael.1069:

Cecilia.5179:

1: I assume you’re talking about WvW, because the only way to gain life force outside of combat is to sacrifice minions, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was removed as an exploit eventually. Killing a deer does not really count as in between fights outside of WvW.
2: Vitality is common on burst specs with low health pools. The idea behind giving Necromancer massive amounts of vitality is that it reduces the percent of your health conditions take from you since conditions do not scale, allowing a Necromancer to “theoretically” outsustain condition builds (It is like Blissey in Pokemon: lots of hp and high “Special Defense”).
3: Life Force is better in short fights simply because it doesn’t run out as often.
4: The Devs don’t seem to know how to make attrition work without evades, heals, and teleports. Frankly, I don’t know how to make that possible either.
5: Our power specs are more popular than our condition specs because our condition specs are the weakest condition specs. (Our biggest advantage in condis is that we have a small amount of access to all of them.)

Vitality mitigating conditions is a misconception. It gives you more time to react sure but offers 0 mitigation whatsoever.

Beyond that I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. You seem to be agreeing with all my points. LF is by design better in short fights than it is in long ones, and so our condi specs suck and our burst specs are good despite the devs pushing an attrition angle.

Vit is supposedly good against conditions because armor does absolutely nothing against conditions.

Well, it’s the same as how vit gives you more time against regular damage, but instead of armor mitigating the damage, you mitigate it actively with removals.

Khristophoros.7194:

Linnael.1069:

Cecilia.5179:

1: I assume you’re talking about WvW, because the only way to gain life force outside of combat is to sacrifice minions, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was removed as an exploit eventually. Killing a deer does not really count as in between fights outside of WvW.
2: Vitality is common on burst specs with low health pools. The idea behind giving Necromancer massive amounts of vitality is that it reduces the percent of your health conditions take from you since conditions do not scale, allowing a Necromancer to “theoretically” outsustain condition builds (It is like Blissey in Pokemon: lots of hp and high “Special Defense”).
3: Life Force is better in short fights simply because it doesn’t run out as often.
4: The Devs don’t seem to know how to make attrition work without evades, heals, and teleports. Frankly, I don’t know how to make that possible either.
5: Our power specs are more popular than our condition specs because our condition specs are the weakest condition specs. (Our biggest advantage in condis is that we have a small amount of access to all of them.)

Vitality mitigating conditions is a misconception. It gives you more time to react sure but offers 0 mitigation whatsoever.

Beyond that I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. You seem to be agreeing with all my points. LF is by design better in short fights than it is in long ones, and so our condi specs suck and our burst specs are good despite the devs pushing an attrition angle.

Vit is supposedly good against conditions because armor does absolutely nothing against conditions.

Well, it’s the same as how vit gives you more time against regular damage, but instead of armor mitigating the damage, you mitigate it actively with removals.

Vitality doesn’t mitigate anything at all is the point. People feel like having more vit is better against condition classes because they get more time to react, but really bringing vitality to any sort of attrition fight is a huge mistake. The only edge case in which some vitality is useful is guards/eles, who may honestly get bursted down in the span of one or two ticks if they don’t buffer their tiny HP pool. On anybody else its better to have sustain or even better more damage and just end the encounter faster.

Linnael.1069:

So you’re saying that if LF was high generation low-pool then it would be an attrition mechanic, but because currently it is low generation high-pool its a burst mechanic?

nice to see you agree with me.

Also not quite sure how you determined that LF would go down faster if all you did was lower the max and raise generation.

Mhh maybe i have a different definition of a burst mechanic but i dont consider a bad implemented attrition mechanic as a burst-mechanic but whatever.

What i mean with LF goes down faster is if you reduce the max LF enemy attacks will drain LF quicker (in precents) and knock you out of DS quicker. Well i guess that is what you want since it would make DS worse against burst.

Linnael.1069:

Jeez man can you just ask yourself one question. “Is deathshroud best used in long fights or short ones” It’s such a simple concept. No, just because you can generate some over time doesn’t mean its an attrition mechanic. Is Well of Suffering an attrition skill just because i can use it more times the longer the fight is?

Defense is just as important in determing whether a class will be good at burst as offense is. Look at S/D ele. Highest burst damage in the game by a good factor of two. Totally kittening trash because ele really only has one burst-oriented defense skill (arcane shield).

You can spec for more LF generation if you want more attrition. If you want to make fights short then you don’t need to spec more LF generation. So it was actually designed to allow us to choose.

All I have to say is that you better not be trying to change my Spectral Wells build. Because I swear to Grenth I’ll blow up Tyria if you take away my Soldier Power Tank. glares

Seriously, though, why should any mechanic related to attrition only apply to a condition spec? Why can’t it apply to both condi specs and power/tank specs?

Muchacho.2390:

Linnael.1069:

So you’re saying that if LF was high generation low-pool then it would be an attrition mechanic, but because currently it is low generation high-pool its a burst mechanic?

nice to see you agree with me.

Also not quite sure how you determined that LF would go down faster if all you did was lower the max and raise generation.

Mhh maybe i have a different definition of a burst mechanic but i dont consider a bad implemented attrition mechanic as a burst-mechanic but whatever.

What i mean with LF goes down faster is if you reduce the max LF enemy attacks will drain LF quicker (in precents) and knock you out of DS quicker. Well i guess that is what you want since it would make DS worse against burst.

You would need to completely reverse some of the core properties of the life force system to turn it into an attrition system. Sure it’s an implementation error, if by that you mean they totally implemented the wrong thing.

manveruppd.7601:

snip

This guy gets it. I’m going to ask all the people talking about whether necro should or shouldn’t be good at power burst to go and read the whole thread again.

Here’s all I know: in a zerg v. zerg fight, it’s the necros massive burst that will make or break a fight. No class does a better job at taking down multiple targets quickly. <— This is the reason I continue to main a necro.

Linnael.1069:

Muchacho.2390:

Linnael.1069:

So you’re saying that if LF was high generation low-pool then it would be an attrition mechanic, but because currently it is low generation high-pool its a burst mechanic?

nice to see you agree with me.

Also not quite sure how you determined that LF would go down faster if all you did was lower the max and raise generation.

Mhh maybe i have a different definition of a burst mechanic but i dont consider a bad implemented attrition mechanic as a burst-mechanic but whatever.

What i mean with LF goes down faster is if you reduce the max LF enemy attacks will drain LF quicker (in precents) and knock you out of DS quicker. Well i guess that is what you want since it would make DS worse against burst.

You would need to completely reverse some of the core properties of the life force system to turn it into an attrition system. Sure it’s an implementation error, if by that you mean they totally implemented the wrong thing.

manveruppd.7601:

snip

This guy gets it. I’m going to ask all the people talking about whether necro should or shouldn’t be good at power burst to go and read the whole thread again.

It takes 26 seconds or so for a full life force bar to degenerate, and 51 with VP. Does that amount of time seem bursty? If it were all gone in seconds you might have a better point, but it’s not.

I mean sure, if they gave the class a ton of active defenses, changed almost all of our weapon skills, DS skills and utilities, and made DS drain quickly for hard hitting skills, you’d be right. But then we’d just be mesmers.

Thustlewhumber.7416:

Here’s all I know: in a zerg v. zerg fight, it’s the necros massive burst that will make or break a fight. No class does a better job at taking down multiple targets quickly. <— This is the reason I continue to main a necro.

They achieve this through the application of 2 wells every 45 seconds. Well of Suffering only does 25% more damage than Lava Font which has 100% uptime. We’re also likely going to see this completely outclassed by the upcoming Chronomancer and Tempest specializations.

So while Necro is technically a meta class in WvW, it’s only because of the damage it does with 2 of its skills and nothing else.

Khristophoros.7194:

The argument of shroud vs active defense is flawed because they do the same thing. They absorb massive damage when timed correctly, so they can both counter burst which allows you to make the fight into a sustain fight.

They both come back after a time interval, which allows you to continue using them for defense over the course of the fight, so they remain relevant as the fight goes on.

I don’t think defenses determine if a class is burst or attrition in this game. All of the defenses are useful in both cases.

As to why power builds are better- It’s because necro has weak condi damage scaling.

Active defenses like blocks and invuls: You can block even 541543512345132451341231341 dmg if you are targeted by a large group.
Your Death Shroud can “absorb”… ~20 000 dmg and it does not scale with the number of enemies.

That’s the problem with DS. It does not scale. You don’t have the same defense against 1 enemy as against 100. Every other “attrition” build has mostly blocks/invuls/stealth which “scales”.

What makes DS useless as attrition is the lack of scaling. You can survive 3 second with a 3 second block skill, but you can’t survive 3 seconds while using DS if the enemy has 3 burst class on your quaggan as they’ll just outdamage it.

And you can’t even get healed while running for your life in DS!

Necro’s almost-scaling defensive skill is spectral armor, but afaik it was nerfed so you can get LF only once per second, and as most builds can attack you once per second, it is not really scaling.. If it was per attacker or no limit at all, it would be a really nice/OP defensive skill, as you couldn’t be killed while it’s up and you’re in DS.
That’s a defensive skill, like the 3 second block skills! And the counter-move is the same as the invul/block skills have, don’t use CD/any attack on him while it’s up.

tl;dr
DS does not scale.
DS makes you unable to get healed when you need the most (when you are under attack and have to use your “defensive” ability).
DS is useless as defensive skill, all it does is allow you to damage the enemy a bit longer in small-scale.
DS is a nice mechanic for burst oriented builds while doing almost nothing for attrition builds ( as it is implemented right now ).
Block/Invul >> Second Health Bar.

Roe.3679:

Linnael.1069:

Muchacho.2390:

Linnael.1069:

So you’re saying that if LF was high generation low-pool then it would be an attrition mechanic, but because currently it is low generation high-pool its a burst mechanic?

nice to see you agree with me.

Also not quite sure how you determined that LF would go down faster if all you did was lower the max and raise generation.

Mhh maybe i have a different definition of a burst mechanic but i dont consider a bad implemented attrition mechanic as a burst-mechanic but whatever.

What i mean with LF goes down faster is if you reduce the max LF enemy attacks will drain LF quicker (in precents) and knock you out of DS quicker. Well i guess that is what you want since it would make DS worse against burst.

You would need to completely reverse some of the core properties of the life force system to turn it into an attrition system. Sure it’s an implementation error, if by that you mean they totally implemented the wrong thing.

manveruppd.7601:

snip

This guy gets it. I’m going to ask all the people talking about whether necro should or shouldn’t be good at power burst to go and read the whole thread again.

It takes 26 seconds or so for a full life force bar to degenerate, and 51 with VP. Does that amount of time seem bursty? If it were all gone in seconds you might have a better point, but it’s not.

I mean sure, if they gave the class a ton of active defenses, changed almost all of our weapon skills, DS skills and utilities, and made DS drain quickly for hard hitting skills, you’d be right. But then we’d just be mesmers.

So you’re saying our only defensive mechanic lasts a long time if you never get hit. ok.

Read the whole thread to learn why you’re wrong. Whether the life force system is burst oriented has nothing at all to do with whether it does alot of damage, whether it soaks alot of damage, or whether you can trait for generation.

The whole kitten point is that you have to make major investments to get it to work effectively over time because its design is short-term focused. All you guys going “but VP” “but SA” “but SM” are literally just arguing against yourselves. “But you can use it long term if you bring x, y, and z.” Meanwhile anybody who knows how the game works is working with the mechanic and gets to spend slots x, y, and z on actually useful things. Why would anybody think its an attrition mechanic if to get it to be strong over time you have to invest, and to get it to be strong in short fights you do not have to invest. Its so kitten simple.

But whatever. By all means if you want to totally ignore what attrition and burst actually mean, keep thinking of DS as an attrition mechanic. Then wonder why attrition necro is literally not good in a single game mode, or come up with a different explanation for the fundamental design inconsistencies that are all over the place. I can wait.

(PS: Jeez you’re literally wrong on everything. 26 seconds is plenty bursty. Even glass vs. glass encounters are going to take at least 30s unless somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, and the average cele fight takes like 3 minutes)

I understand what you’re trying to say, which is that this type of set up seems like it would fit a burst class/mechanic better. But in order for that to work, everything needs to change. Mesmers are everything that you’re describing. They have a resource that needs to be built up and can be rapidly expended, and they have the tools to survive without said resource. Just because getting zerged can go through your DS quickly doesn’t mean it always is gone quickly. You probably need to work on your positioning if you’re always running through a full DS bar in a few seconds.

And what awful players are you fighting that fights take so long? I kill most celes in 30 seconds, bunker guards in less than a minute. Burst classes either kill me in their opening combo or are dead shortly after. The only spec that takes awhile for me to kill is actually an mm necro, which supports the whole attrition thing more than your theory.

Roe.3679:

Just because getting zerged can go through your DS quickly doesn’t mean it always is gone quickly. You probably need to work on your positioning if you’re always running through a full DS bar in a few seconds.

Do you mean it this way?

JonPeters.5630:

Keep in mind that some professions are harder to master than others. I believe Necro is the hardest, opinions may vary, but just keep this in mind. No we arent ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be. Give it some time for the average player to learn these things. For example early on in LOL master yi was dominant until people learned how to counter him.

@Roe.3679: Death Shroud isn’t just about the number of life blasts you can pump out, it’s how long you can afford to stay in the fight and keep pumping out life blasts. DS lasts a lot less than 26" if you’re getting wailed on , as you well know, which limits your ability to stay in the fight and keep putting out damage.

Roe.3679:

I understand what you’re trying to say, which is that this type of set up seems like it would fit a burst class/mechanic better. But in order for that to work, everything needs to change. Mesmers are everything that you’re describing. They have a resource that needs to be built up and can be rapidly expended, and they have the tools to survive without said resource. Just because getting zerged can go through your DS quickly doesn’t mean it always is gone quickly. You probably need to work on your positioning if you’re always running through a full DS bar in a few seconds.

And what awful players are you fighting that fights take so long? I kill most celes in 30 seconds, bunker guards in less than a minute. Burst classes either kill me in their opening combo or are dead shortly after. The only spec that takes awhile for me to kill is actually an mm necro, which supports the whole attrition thing more than your theory.

It seems like a burst mechanic because it is a burst mechanic. Get it through your head. The problem is that its a burst mechanic on a class that the devs don’t want to be about burst, which is why we want it changed.

You’re saying that all your fights are shorter and you’re trying to say that i’m the one fighting awful player? lmfao. What kind of kittening horrible cele ele/engi can’t kittening manage their infinite stall rotation? What kind of terrible mes/thieves are you seeing that aren’t just shadowstepping out if they miss their opener? You’re talking about play at such a low level that you’ve gone all the way out the other end and think you’re ahead or something. In tournament the cele bunkers are expected to hold for at least a solid minute when the zerk thief rotates in for a 2v1 against them, and you think you’re playing against good players when they die in 30s 1v1? LMFAO.

You can feel free to check my pre-Dec. 17th pvp rankings if you think I’m such a low level player.

They aren’t going to revamp the whole class, perhaps you should get that through your head. It’s been requested, discussed, refined upon, compiled, etc for years. It’s not happening.

Roe.3679:

You can feel free to check my pre-Dec. 17th pvp rankings if you think I’m such a low level player.

They aren’t going to revamp the whole class, perhaps you should get that through your head. It’s been requested, discussed, refined upon, compiled, etc for years. It’s not happening.

So rather than admit how wrong you were, the moment your bullkitten was called out you literally just resorted to telling people to stop suggesting things because you think the devs are never going to do anything.

I’m not even going to talk about kitten like “never going to be an expansion” “never going to get flying” “never going to get dueling”. You’re literally the opposite of constructive. Get off the forum you troll.

Alright, let’s stop arguing about if DS is or is not an attrition mechanic and instead suggest changes to make it into a good one. Just a few of the already listed suggestions:

Cut the total DS pool by 2/3 or maybe like half (6-10k)
Increase LF gen on weapon and traits by 300%.
DS cd starts when you enter.
Allow all healing in shroud.
Allow using utilities in shroud.
Give necros some stab, some vigor, fix walk and wurm, maybe rework DS 2 and 4 into a damaging skill and a port (port on 4 skill). Fix well of darkness being poo.
Get rid of all the massive cast time skills.

IDK what you think about DS now, but this ^ would work 100 times better in competitive play, while also making necros less OP against noobs.

Linnael.1069:

Roe.3679:

You can feel free to check my pre-Dec. 17th pvp rankings if you think I’m such a low level player.

They aren’t going to revamp the whole class, perhaps you should get that through your head. It’s been requested, discussed, refined upon, compiled, etc for years. It’s not happening.

So rather than admit how wrong you were, the moment your bullkitten was called out you literally just resorted to telling people to stop suggesting things because you think the devs are never going to do anything.

I’m not even going to talk about kitten like “never going to be an expansion” “never going to get flying” “never going to get dueling”. You’re literally the opposite of constructive. Get off the forum you troll.

What exactly am I wrong about?

Interesting that you call me a troll for pointing out that revamping the entire class wont happen. Perhaps a more prudent suggestion, like a smaller life force pool, that fills more quickly and more abilities that gain life force with more enemies around would solve the issue without turning us into mesmers 2.0.

Again, feel free to search my pages and pages of post history to see my constructive posts. Just because you noticed that (if EVERYTHING were different) DS could make more sense as a burst mechanic instead of how it works now doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees is wrong. It’s a good observation, but means nothing, because it’s so far from the reality of the class.

The devs don’t make fast changes to classes even when things are wildly under or overppwered, so they certainly won’t go searching for things like this. We already know what we are getting in the expansion, and it doesn’t address this at all. That doesn’t even have a release date, even though it was announced over 6 months ago.

It’s cute that you think this could go somewhere, but I suggest you accept Necromancers as they are.

Roe.3679:

Linnael.1069:

Roe.3679:

You can feel free to check my pre-Dec. 17th pvp rankings if you think I’m such a low level player.

They aren’t going to revamp the whole class, perhaps you should get that through your head. It’s been requested, discussed, refined upon, compiled, etc for years. It’s not happening.

So rather than admit how wrong you were, the moment your bullkitten was called out you literally just resorted to telling people to stop suggesting things because you think the devs are never going to do anything.

I’m not even going to talk about kitten like “never going to be an expansion” “never going to get flying” “never going to get dueling”. You’re literally the opposite of constructive. Get off the forum you troll.

What exactly am I wrong about?

Interesting that you call me a troll for pointing out that revamping the entire class wont happen. Perhaps a more prudent suggestion, like a smaller life force pool, that fills more quickly and more abilities that gain life force with more enemies around would solve the issue without turning us into mesmers 2.0.

Again, feel free to search my pages and pages of post history to see my constructive posts. Just because you noticed that (if EVERYTHING were different) DS could make more sense as a burst mechanic instead of how it works now doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees is wrong. It’s a good observation, but means nothing, because it’s so far from the reality of the class.

The devs don’t make fast changes to classes even when things are wildly under or overppwered, so they certainly won’t go searching for things like this. We already know what we are getting in the expansion, and it doesn’t address this at all. That doesn’t even have a release date, even though it was announced over 6 months ago.

It’s cute that you think this could go somewhere, but I suggest you accept Necromancers as they are.

You have literally been wrong about everything so far. Like how kittening stupid do you think this forum is. Not only are do you keep trying to pad this “complete class rework” straw man, “your” alternative is literally ripped straight out of my original post.

“a smaller life force pool, that fills more quickly”
“change the necro mechanic to be truly attrition based by tripling all LF generation and halving the size of DS”

Like are you kidding me. How dumb do you have to be to not think you’re gonna get called out on this crap.

One more kittening time. Read the kitten thread before you post. Deathshroud is a burst mechanic whether you like it or not. Necro isn’t a burst class woohooo you got that one right. Everybody else is here talking bout how to solve this obvious massive problem while you’re just like “nope i refuse to believe it”.