Guild Wars 2

Necromancer

Well of Corruption skill: Updated damage skill fact to indicate the correct number of attacks.
Well of Suffering skill:
Updated damage skill fact to indicate the correct number of attacks.
Updated the number of attacks to be consistent when affected by Focused Rituals.
Spinal Shivers skill: Updated damage facts to indicate damage dealt based on boons removed.
Signet of Spite skill: Updated the skill facts to indicate the passive effect of this skill. Increased the passive power boost by 100%.
Corrupt Boon skill: No longer causes odd interactions with Aegis. Now unblockable.
Epidemic skill: Now unblockable.
Flesh Wurm minion: Increased health by 25%.
Flesh Golem minion: Increased health by 25% and toughness by 10%.
Lich Form skill: The Grim Specter skill now strips boons from enemies and conditions from allies when it reaches its target point instead of only when the missile hits a target.

Meh.

Kravick.4906:

Necromancer

Well of Corruption skill: Updated damage skill fact to indicate the correct number of attacks.
Well of Suffering skill:
Updated damage skill fact to indicate the correct number of attacks.
Updated the number of attacks to be consistent when affected by Focused Rituals.
Spinal Shivers skill: Updated damage facts to indicate damage dealt based on boons removed.
Signet of Spite skill: Updated the skill facts to indicate the passive effect of this skill. Increased the passive power boost by 100%.
Corrupt Boon skill: No longer causes odd interactions with Aegis. Now unblockable.
Epidemic skill: Now unblockable.
Flesh Wurm minion: Increased health by 25%.
Flesh Golem minion: Increased health by 25% and toughness by 10%.
Lich Form skill: The Grim Specter skill now strips boons from enemies and conditions from allies when it reaches its target point instead of only when the missile hits a target.

Meh.

Indeed, what a joke!

Can’t really complain. Its what we expected for the most part, and it is another buff (though tiny in terms of effect).

I still don’t get why they buff the 2 minions that actually don’t die in the face of a stiff breeze, and frankly the AI is the biggest minion problem at the moment anyway. They should focus on that first as far as MM builds are concerned.

With that said, the only changes important to tourney play are the Corrupt Boon and Epidemic changes. Signet is still useless, and the buff to the minions doesn’t really do anything except make builds that were already using them marginally better. Grim Specter is the least important reason to run with Lich Elite, and while it is nice to give Lich a bit more utility, buffing what was already one of the game’s most powerful elites didn’t really seem necessary.

When will they ever look at the disorganized mess they call necro traits

So the sum total of our changes was reverting a previous nerf, increasing health of two minions (AI untouched) and increasing the passive on a signet no one uses.

Hmm. Well, something is better than nothing I suppose.

Are people more likely to use Signet of Spite now? I suppose 180 power is not to be sniffed at.

Mindx.9610:

When will they ever look at the disorganized mess they call necro traits

oh Grenth, so much this

As expected.
15 chars

Minion AI didn’t get improved? Sad

So we still die at sneeze when downed in pve? Great.

Corrupt Boon and Epidemic becoming unblockable are huge in my book. Both for WvW and SPvP

I think I’ll be using Signet of Spite occasionally now, but it won’t have a permanent spot on my bar.

180 power is pretty dang good, especially in builds that use a lot of Knight’s gear and could use the extra power. 1200 range cripple is great for chasing down those eles and warriors (way more reliable than Spectral Grasp, for sure) and the blind will negate a thief opener. Poison, too, good for lessening heals on demand. And you don’t have to fiddle with targeting!

Cooldown still sucks and long casting time still sucks. But hey, at least now there’s a reason to use it.

Underwhelming patch for us, I guess I was expecting a bit more than what we were already told.

Summoned creatures and pets can no longer draw aggro from enemies that have not already aggroed on their master.
Adjusted ranger pet AI when fighting enemies in PvE. Melee pets now attempt to move behind enemies as long as they are not actively being targeted by the creature.

From the way the SOTG was stated, the pet AI was supposed to be for all summons as well. I am usually excited by changes, but this one, ugh. They buff a signet no one uses anyways, and buffing the Passive does nothing to it.

The Rangers signets got massively awesome improvements reduced CD’s buffs, and the like and they had good signets!!

lettucemode.3789:

I think I’ll be using Signet of Spite occasionally now, but it won’t have a permanent spot on my bar.

180 power is pretty dang good, especially in builds that use a lot of Knight’s gear and could use the extra power. 1200 range cripple is great for chasing down those eles and warriors (way more reliable than Spectral Grasp, for sure) and the blind will negate a thief opener. Poison, too, good for lessening heals on demand. And you don’t have to fiddle with targeting!

Cooldown still sucks and long casting time still sucks. But hey, at least now there’s a reason to use it.

Underwhelming patch for us, I guess I was expecting a bit more than what we were already told.

How are you going to interrupt the opening move with signet of spite. That cast time and cd is the issue, and if you are running a build that needs the 180 power, you would lose it all once you activated the signet.

It was what we expected. The real question is what changes were made that didn’t make it into the patch notes? There are always a few of those.

they gave the hp bonus to the wrong minions. I was really expected all the minions to get an HP buff.

Eh…. but like I have said on previous occasions, they are comfortable with where necros are in SPVP, and until that changes, they are likely scared to make any changes to traits/skills that might overpower the class.

Too bad they didn’t look at our other signet passives, and irritating cast times. And please don’t consider the “UNBLOCKABLE” walk-back a huge buff back up. Epidemic used to hit people while dodge-rolling and invulnerable. BLOCK is/was a small part of the misses, and was largely targetted to SPVP, where those block skills are freqently over-used.

They are moving to punishing block in general by giving many abilities to passive go-through on block. Unfortunately for WvW, block normally isn’t the problem. Going down/dodge roll/passive invulnerables are what normally cause epidemic to fail.

Still hoping they continue to roll back the nerfs to epidemic and just leave in LOS requirements, as it should have been.

Overall very weak on the Necro attention, almost to the point of neglect compared to what happened with rangers and engineers. Again it is mostly the SPVP drive that prevents balancing, but whatever.

Meh.

Flesh wurm, who cares…

Flesh golem, he’ll still be good for his standard 3 charges before dead…I don’t see this changing much. His brain goes dead faster than his HP usually.

Unblockable stuff…you know, I never had problems landing corrupt boon or epidemic through blocks because I check for aegis buff and throw setup, but I guess now I can think a little less.

monthly trollfest on necros!

However, eles got slammed with the nerf bat they so richly deserved. XD

Bas.7406:

lettucemode.3789:

I think I’ll be using Signet of Spite occasionally now, but it won’t have a permanent spot on my bar.

180 power is pretty dang good, especially in builds that use a lot of Knight’s gear and could use the extra power. 1200 range cripple is great for chasing down those eles and warriors (way more reliable than Spectral Grasp, for sure) and the blind will negate a thief opener. Poison, too, good for lessening heals on demand. And you don’t have to fiddle with targeting!

Cooldown still sucks and long casting time still sucks. But hey, at least now there’s a reason to use it.

Underwhelming patch for us, I guess I was expecting a bit more than what we were already told.

How are you going to interrupt the opening move with signet of spite. That cast time and cd is the issue, and if you are running a build that needs the 180 power, you would lose it all once you activated the signet.

Basillisk Venom has a long casting time too. Many times roaming around in WvW I see a thief, and as we move toward each other he starts casting something, and 100% of the time it’s Basilisk Venom. Since I know this, I can start casting the signet before we get within Steal range of each other. I’ll gladly trade 180 power for not losing half my health or all my life force as the fight starts.

Not even a single note about HP in downed state? Even if they stealth-fixed that (let’s be optimistic), the ignorance towards the community over such a long time is astonishing.

Other than that, the changes are – no surprise – underwhelming.

Why are people disappointed when they just had SOTG and this is pretty much exactly what they said.

Also, 25% HP & 10% toughness isn’t something to laugh at for Flesh Golem, considering he is over 50% of your minion DPS as an MM.

Otaking.4675:

Meh.

Flesh wurm, who cares…

A buff to our shortest cooldown stun breaker? I care!

Rennoko.5731:

Again it is mostly the SPVP drive that prevents balancing, but whatever.

Trolling?

A-net is splitting sPvP from PvE and WvW, and the amount of attention on sPvP in this game has been laughable. You can’t be serious with this.

So you want Epidemic to hit through Invulnerable, Evades and Dodge? The reason why you can’t do that isn’t because sPvP would go nuts, its because Epidemic would be game breakingly good in all game modes. If your epidemic is getting dodged/evaded, then be more patient and bait those dodges out or set it up with a fear or immob or daze. If you are casting it on an invulnerable target, then shame on you. You need to cancel-cast if you see an invuln pop. There should be no guarantee hit skills in the game, especially if they are as strong as Epidemic.

Unblockable is not really the right solution for either of these skills anyway (but it is an improvement on what they had). CB should be blockable, but not by Aegis (since it would be corrupted) and Epidemic should just be a short cast (1/4 to 1/2 s) that is blockable. It would promote more skilled play rather than cheap, unblockable, easy button mechanics.

Like the AI change and the unblockables but other professions got a lot more. Remarkably few nerfs if I read that all right. Still not liking signets, though, with only one improved and no CD reductions. Still waiting for changes to the trait tree. Not sure what to think of the wurm and golem buffs. They may not actually matter. Wurm is more special-purpose and golem will still not dodge. Suspect other professions will run pets more, though. Overall, it seems other professions got a larger boost, today, except for a handful of very specific OP builds.

The fact that minion AI still isn’t fixed is honestly inexcusable.

Oh, and why was it I paid extra real money for Mist Wolf and it remains a joke for an elite skill?

Fungalfoot.7213:

The fact that minion AI still isn’t fixed is honestly inexcusable.

AI is partly fixed. Minions will no longer go looking for trouble, I hope.

Leeto.1570:

Same changes we always get – bug fixes.

What did everyone expect?

They flat out told us the changes would be to the corruption skills, signet Passives and minion health and to some extent the AI.

They are already adding a 5th DS skill which will be a buff no matter what. They are looking at traits and hopefully looking more at the signets. I mean the SOTG was just posted a week ago… You didn’t all expect improved marks just since then, right? The only thing I see worth complaining about is a possible lack of a fix to downed HP.

The class as a whole got stronger, so be thankful nothing was taken away. There is always next month and the month after and things overall have gotten better for the Necro over time since launch.

I sincerely hope they fixed the down HP aspect, but didn’t mention them in the notes. A fix to the minion AI would have been nice, but really I just want the downed HP fixed. :P Otherwise, I’m pretty much not surprised with the results. It is, as Roe said, pretty much what they said in SOTG. If it’s true that next month’s major patch is going to be for bug fixes, than we better make sure that these two big fixes get on that list.

Definately signet of spite is food for thought.

While this patch won’t make me weep tears of joy for my small necro, they said that this patch was mostly balance, and next patch Bug fixes.

Next patch is where I’ll be weeping. Let’s hope it will be of joy! I’m leveling a thief to add to my collection now

Roe.3679:

What did everyone expect?

They flat out told us the changes would be to the corruption skills, signet Passives and minion health and to some extent the AI.

They are already adding a 5th DS skill which will be a buff no matter what. They are looking at traits and hopefully looking more at the signets. I mean the SOTG was just posted a week ago… You didn’t all expect improved marks just since then, right? The only thing I see worth complaining about is a possible lack of a fix to downed HP.

The class as a whole got stronger, so be thankful nothing was taken away. There is always next month and the month after and things overall have gotten better for the Necro over time since launch.

Agree with this I do. We knew there wasn’t going to be much in there, and at least it was positive stuff (unlike the ele’s).

I think they said in SOTG that next month would be mainly bug fixes, so hopefully minion AI will be near the top of that list.

leeto saw it coming! lol

cant complain !
i have over 5100 + well power ! with signet buff

I heard rumours tough necros Death shroud= 5th skill?
werent it suppose to be within this patch?

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Rennoko.5731:

Again it is mostly the SPVP drive that prevents balancing, but whatever.

Trolling?

A-net is splitting sPvP from PvE and WvW, and the amount of attention on sPvP in this game has been laughable. You can’t be serious with this.

So you want Epidemic to hit through Invulnerable, Evades and Dodge? The reason why you can’t do that isn’t because sPvP would go nuts, its because Epidemic would be game breakingly good in all game modes. If your epidemic is getting dodged/evaded, then be more patient and bait those dodges out or set it up with a fear or immob or daze. If you are casting it on an invulnerable target, then shame on you. You need to cancel-cast if you see an invuln pop. There should be no guarantee hit skills in the game, especially if they are as strong as Epidemic.

Unblockable is not really the right solution for either of these skills anyway (but it is an improvement on what they had). CB should be blockable, but not by Aegis (since it would be corrupted) and Epidemic should just be a short cast (1/4 to 1/2 s) that is blockable. It would promote more skilled play rather than cheap, unblockable, easy button mechanics.

Not trolling. They are only splitting the things they have to, and ignoring everything else. As far as i know, they have no plans to split traits or anything like that, and they will not be re-working traits on a class that is arguably fine in SPVP. They want this to be an E-sport, no matter how bad they are failing at it. They do balance to SPVP.

You do realize that this skill just one patch ago DID go through invuln, dodge, everything else right? And it wasn’t game breaking back then. It amazes me that people hear this and think “OMG THAT WOULD BE SO BROKEN RIGHT?”, and have no idea it was just that way, and had been that way since release (IE for months and months)

When epidemic had infinite range, and spread to an infinite number of targets within the 600 radius, THAT was overpowered. That was patched shortly after release. You could make the argument that LOS and casting it on targets behind walls was OP, but I would argue it isn’t any worse than dragons tooth or others, but I can let that neft stand.

If epidemic was really so game breaking when it couldn’t be dodged/invulned, EVERY necro would have been running it, and people would have been rolling necros JUST for that skill. That wasn’t going on. You didn’t see epidemic necros like glamour mesmers, (which got destroyed this patch). There are still numerous down-sides to trying to use the skill in WvW.

I play WvW, and the concept of “baiting” out the dodge roll means I have to start the cast, then cancel the cast, which means I have to wait 3 seconds, before I start my 1 second cast again, when his dodge will be back up. You can’t bait anything out on a skill that has a 1 second cast time. Tag it on the end of a fear? Okay, well I better have increased fear duration, since it takes me 1.5 seconds to land the epidemic after I cast the fear, and fear only lasts 1 second.

You know what most people do in fear? Break it, or dodge roll after it ends. Nevermind that people are going down and getting up all the time in WvW, meaning landing epidemic on anything that doesn’t have zero conditions is a chore in the least.

I love epidemic and I was an avid user since release. Today, I have gone to a wells build, because quite frankly I can depend on a well to always be good, while epidemic fails so often (even with unblockable), it is hardly worth the cost on the utility bar.

As was mentioned before, it basically works on pets, and downed players now, and if you have an active player up and moving, don’t waste your time casting it on them. For a nice skill that was powerful (but not OVERPOWERED), having it reduced to being focused on things that can’t avoid damage is a shame.

Change it back, it wasn’t broken two patches ago. And now that confusion is reduced signficantly, pairing with a mesmer is much less effective if you are that coordinated as well.

No, DS 5 was just something they were going to add in and wanted input about. It was never going to be this patch though.

Rennoko.5731:

…

Wells are no more difficult to dodge roll out of (and render absolutely useless) than Epidemic is, except one has 3x the CD of the other. It’s 15s CD is reason enough for it to not be a guaranteed hit every time, even one decent Epidemic will apply huge pressure.

If you don’t like it, feel free to not like it, but don’t pretend that it is the sole ability out there that is a low CD high damage ceiling but requires a lot of setup to pull off.

well build is always the way to go, such powerful skills

The patch with the new DS skill will be the necro focused patch. Just wait for that guys. Hopefully downed hp will be fixed next month seeing as its a bugfix patch. Signet of spite wasnt bad for an extra boost in power on a zerker build. Now its even better. Obviously you dont use the active. Although Blood is power is still better unless your group can give you those might stacks instead.

Bhawb.7408:

Rennoko.5731:

…

Wells are no more difficult to dodge roll out of (and render absolutely useless) than Epidemic is, except one has 3x the CD of the other. It’s 15s CD is reason enough for it to not be a guaranteed hit every time, even one decent Epidemic will apply huge pressure.

If you don’t like it, feel free to not like it, but don’t pretend that it is the sole ability out there that is a low CD high damage ceiling but requires a lot of setup to pull off.

Yes, but the well stays around for 5 seconds, and can hit other players that are nearby, so that even if one or two get out, the other guy downed has to eat the well one way or the other. Not to mention they can be used to zone people out of ressing, force them into a corner, etc.

And more importantly, if the guy i cast a well on dodge rolls, the well doesn’t just fail and do nothing, it still casts and does its job, even if no one is there to take the damage.

Epi is also the ONLY skill that does zero damage to a target, but has the potential to do near tons of damage to everything around it. It is unique in this respect to any other skill. I hate the argument that the short cooldown makes it okay that it fails all the time now.

Spending 1 second every 15 second casts epidemic, means that is 7% of my combat time spent on using that skill, when I could have gotten off an extra mark, or two sceptor attacks, or whatever. There is opportunity cost in casting, it isn’t just free-time.

It is a unique skill, and if it had a cast time of 1/2 second, I might agree with the changes, but as it stands it is hardly worth taking in WvW under the current circumstances compared to a wells build.

I am not just talking out my back side here. I ran epidemic for months in WvW straight. The change was too painful, which is why they partially reverted it. They need to revert it all the way back.

So where’s this 5th DS skill? i was under the impression it would come with this patch now we got to wait till the next round of class balancing.

spoj.9672:

The patch with the new DS skill will be the necro focused patch. Just wait for that guys. Hopefully downed hp will be fixed next month seeing as its a bugfix patch. Signet of spite wasnt bad for an extra boost in power on a zerker build. Now its even better. Obviously you dont use the active. Although Blood is power is still better unless your group can give you those might stacks instead.

Dream on.

Another point supporting Renoko’s argument is that conditions are less powerful in PvP than in PvE because of all the cleansing. The actual damage is pretty low in a PvP battle compared to attack damage but their effect on mobility helps define the battle line.

Rennoko.5731:

You do realize that this skill just one patch ago DID go through invuln, dodge, everything else right? …

If epidemic was really so game breaking when it couldn’t be dodged/invulned, EVERY necro would have been running it, and people would have been rolling necros JUST for that skill. That wasn’t going on. You didn’t see epidemic necros like glamour mesmers, (which got destroyed this patch). There are still numerous down-sides to trying to use the skill in WvW.

I play WvW, and the concept of “baiting” out the dodge roll means I have to start the cast, then cancel the cast, which means I have to wait 3 seconds, before I start my 1 second cast again, when his dodge will be back up. You can’t bait anything out on a skill that has a 1 second cast time. Tag it on the end of a fear? Okay, well I better have increased fear duration, since it takes me 1.5 seconds to land the epidemic after I cast the fear, and fear only lasts 1 second.

You know what most people do in fear? Break it, or dodge roll after it ends. Nevermind that people are going down and getting up all the time in WvW, meaning landing epidemic on anything that doesn’t have zero conditions is a chore in the least.

I’m perfectly aware of the skill’s history, but thank you for the condescention. I found it quite funny.

Epidemic was nerfed BECAUSE it was entirely out of hand in WvW, not sPvP.

I’ll leave the comments about not being able to bait a dodge alone, but you have plenty of ways to increase fear duration, and 2 sources of fear readily available to insure that your epidemic lands. If you are running WH, then you have a 3rd option to CC before the Epi. If you are worried about a stun break, then let them break one, follow it with the another fear or daze and land your Epidemic. Yes, it is a hard skill to land, and as I said, it would be a better skill if the cast time was just shortened and it reverted to being blockable, but having to work a bit to set up a skill this strong isn’t that bad a thing.

out of hand in WvW?

It was only strong because Confusion was doing crazy damage. And it wasn’t even OP.

I don’t remember ever seeing a post on the forum saying : “Man Epidemic is OP nerf it!”.

I didn’t see an all necro team roaming around casting epidemic.

I’m a tPvP’er, not a WvW’er, so I can’t comment on WvW’er dynamics and how effective or ineffective it is there, but in tPvP Epidemic is pretty much standard. This was pre-nerf and post-nerf, and it will continue to be standard on condition necro bars going forward. The fact that it continued to be used in high level tPvP even after the nerf is a testament to its strength. Everybody likes to use hyperbole regarding how hard it is to land Epidemic vs good players or what not, yet Epidemic lands very regularly even at the highest levels of tPvP.

So from my tPvP perspective, I find it a bit silly when people are continuing asking for buffs to Epidemic. A short cast time on Epidemic would make it incredibly powerful combo with Doom, essentially turning Doom into a 20s cooldown, 600 radius AoE fear. Some have also suggested balancing a reduced cast time with an increased cooldown, but that hurts the raw DPS output of Epidemic, which is really the core of what Epidemic is all about.

@Skyro, I’m still waiting for a team of 2 well coordinated Terror necros with Epidemic completely destroy team fights by having Epidemic’d fears every 10 seconds.

Bhawb.7408:

@Skyro, I’m still waiting for a team of 2 well coordinated Terror necros with Epidemic completely destroy team fights by having Epidemic’d fears every 10 seconds.

Not even that, there are tons of things you can do with Epidemic in a coordinated, team environment, due to the fact that conditions spread via Epidemic take into account the caster’s condition damage (which for a condition Necro will obviously be high).

For example, Cry of Frustration is fairly useless for glass cannon shatter Mesmers, but 8 stack of confusion in a 600 radius with Necro’s 1300 condition damage? Or how about those long duration burns from Engineers or Guards? The fact of the matter is that even at the highest levels of tPvP, Epidemic is STILL not being used to its fullest potential, and yet it is still incredibly powerful.

Which highlights another issue on player’s view of Epidemic, in that everybody looks at it from what the Necro can do with it alone (which they can still do a lot with if you know how to time large bleed stacks correctly), but in reality its strength lies in its ability to leverage your team’s conditions.