Guild Wars 2

As the title says. The necromancer has only one real way to defend itself. Life steal isn’t a reliable means of Survivability without the aid of high levels of tanking gear. And even then you need death shroud to last a bit longer with that where as a guardian as pretty does it just as well if not better with 1/4th the health of the necromancer.(this is including death shroud as part of the health pool.)

For people who don’t seem to have a clue about the necromancer’s defenses. They are garbage. Unless you are doing large world events where tones of creatures are dying all at once, you are not going to be able to maintain death shroud unless you dedicate to it. And even then your emergency button has to be planned for and built up to use it. Where as a guardian or a mesmer can pop a block or invulnerability to shrug off large chunks of damage YOU CAN NOT! You don’t have stealth, invulnerability, very little stability, no blocks, no vigor without jumping through hoops like a trained poodle and no teleports that can get you out in a pinch.

A while back the necromancer got a small… VERY small buff. So small of a buff that it only really helped the necromancer’s offensive power and made an already popular necromancer build even more popular. And now arena net have nerfed the necromancer’s already pitiful defenses even further.

You have been changing death shroud since day one, making it less and less like a true “Death shroud” and more and more like a power shield. This isn’t good design, and it sure as hell isn’t good game balance. I wasn’t happy with the last buff because it wasn’t nearly enough. And we needed at a minimum of 2 more buffs of the same size as that one to both our defensive and supportive tactics. And now you make us weaker in the area we are lacking the most? Fixing a bug doesn’t make up for a clear nerf.

You could rarely rely on death shroud to actually save you and now it just isn’t going to save you. The Aegis The guardian on your team is going to help you more then death shroud will. Even more so now that damage bleeds through death shroud. And we still can’t be healed through death shroud!

Arena Net. You frustrate your necromancer community to no end. You ignore us most the time and when you do listen, you listen to the people calling for nerfs when the necromancer doesn’t need them. A player getting beat once by a necromancer doesn’t mean that he necromancer was broken.

No stability unless you go and dump 30 points into something that doesn’t provide migation in real combat.

There I fixed it for you.

HiSaZuL.2843:

No stability unless you go and dump 30 points into something that doesn’t provide migation in real combat.

There I fixed it for you.

Right. I was on a bit of a rant. So I forgot about that. Well of power gives you a second of stability as well.. But that isn’t a reliable source of it.

JonathanSharp.7094:

We want to shift more focus to death shroud through main hand skills,…

Can you then also buff the LF generation from scepter, please, please.

So far, I’m mostly liking the patch changes.

If you seriously want us to use Death Shroud as an actual mechanic of our Profession, then for god’s sake, make it synergize with the weapons we have equipped. Scrap the garbage we have right now and actually implement something that makes us -want- to use Death Shroud.

All I’ve been seeing as of late are double standards being thrown around left and right in the balance department.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

So death shroud is going to be focused towards power builds even more than it already is? With the recent nerf death shroud is almost completely useless for condition builds. Pre-patch it was an amazing defensive tool and good for the fear damage but… terror got nerfed aswell.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

Might I ask, what exactly was the bug that you fixed this patch? The patch notes were rather ambiguous about how big a change that was.

Also, can we pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top have DS suicide jumps back? <Engaging Puss In Boots eyes.>

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

Hello Jonathan, I feel that when you did the Necromancer buff, it was a step in the right direction. Even with the nerf of Terror, Necromancers knew that it was necessary to keep the class incrementally improving.

I understand that you want to channel Life Force through main-hand skills, which is perfectly fine. However, the main-hand contingency (Dagger, Axe, Scepter) are not on par with the Off-hand contingency. The Off-hands that Necromancers possess are adequate (an improvement to Locust Swarm to enable it like Spectral Walk would be amazing! Solve the mobility problem a little, and a change from WH#4 to 2 stacks of Torment would be better for the overall class itself instead of daze.). The main-hands aren’t really adequate when comparing to other light classes which makes your plan of channeling Life Force a bit out of source. A sword for the Necromancer and an improvement on existing main-hand weapons would allow you to
a) Improve offensive AND defensive capabilities.
b) Allow Necromancers more variety.

Thanks in advance for a reply if you have any thoughts on my post

We dont need more lifeforce generation. We need ways of making DS actually keep us alive. All it does is stall for a second. I really dont see why every other class has a wide range of access to blocks, evades, vigor and invulns. But we dont have a single one. I understand you want DS to be what we use for defense. However at the moment it doesnt provide that and with the direction it seems your going in, it will never be enough. We need vigor at the very least. And from a PvE standpoint its really frustrating seeing a trash tier class get changes which effect PvE far more than they effect PvP and making us even more trash tier than ever before.

The way necro’s are at the moment is the complete opposite to attrition and i dont mind being redesigned that way. Unfortunately we arent an attrition or a burst class in pve as we deal sub par dps and are a completely selfish class (with no team buffs and our debuffs can be done with other classes often better) and now lack even more survivability. Were very good at condi pressure which is the only reason we are ok in pvp (condi’s are actually good in pvp :O). However condition damage is useless in PvE. Ignoring that were supposed to be a attrition class, why is the most selfish class with the least escape and defense options the class which also deals awful damage. Surely we should get one or the other. At the moment we dont have either (except arguably in pvp).

Nem.1039:

I sure wish we had the ability to -1 votes for stupid dev’s posts.

Let’s test it on yours, then.

I just don’t see how that’s improvement in defense capabilities. Saying that’s an improvement means you have absolutely no idea what you did in pve.

srsly, SPLIT THE kitten SKILL! like you did in GW1! Necro is kitten already in PVE, you now don’t even want us to survive!? I’m mad, I’m disappointed, I’m angry. Not only because of the nerf, but also because you seem to know nothing you are doing.

I played it tonight & felt like thieves & mesmers focused me down as fast as they ever have. Any time I got even a hint of an upper hand, they used their tricks to avoid damage, reset the fight, and then started it up again on their terms.

Necromancers have mediocre offensive capabilities and nearly zero defensive capabilities. Rather than concern yourself with making them too defensive, why don’t you focus on the classes that are exceptional at both?

A very small buff eh? Ahahahaha…

Oh necro doesnt have a way to defend itself? How about AoE blinds, chills and fears, how about Death Shroud, how about AoE condition transfers?

You are bad.

infantrydiv.1620:

A very small buff eh? Ahahahaha…

Oh necro doesnt have a way to defend itself? How about AoE blinds, chills and fears, how about Death Shroud, how about AoE condition transfers?

You are bad.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Necromancer-Survivability-Explanation-Advice/first#post2474827

in pvp Ds is the same for me ….. i never used that bug.

for pve i don’t know i can’t even remember the last time i did . . .

and like above said Fear is good one though. It’s getting annoying nowadays. u get

Fear nonstop in wvw T1 lol

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

Hello,

The fundamental problem is that deathshroud does not scale anywhere near as well as invulnerability, heavy evasion builds, channeled blocks, mobility, or stealth when you are getting focused by multiple people. The problem is much more obvious in WvW.

Tweaking deathshroud isn’t going to balance this problem out. Necromancers need some new abilities to help survive when they get focused.

The trouble with Death Shroud becoming more and more our main defense it can be counter-productive in that you can’t heal inside it, negating siphons, regeneration, team heals, etc, and you can’t access your utilities which is always going to make it a dumbed down version of playing your normal form skill wise. Just less options to work with no matter how you try and synergize the 5 DS skills.

Also, once its gone, it gone. Some builds remain way better than others at regenerating it, primarily melee based ones the best, but they are also the ones that get focused the most, and kicked around due to lacking easy stability.

Other classes, particularly attrition build ones, their defensive ‘oh crap’ moves come up routinely on set cooldown timers. And remain a lot better at mitigating burst, due to negating outright or just escaping the immediate area.

Poxheart.2845:

Any time I got even a hint of an upper hand, they used their tricks to avoid damage, reset the fight, and then started it up again on their terms.

This remains the other big problem with Necro as attrition. If they don’t want to give us mobility or escapes, fine, but if other classes want to disengage us to heal back up, then we should also be able to heal back up while they are away.

But we can’t because our attrition mechanic, Life Force, almost universally depends on us hitting the opponent to get it. But if they are escaped from the battle, obviously we can’t hit them. They are healing, we are not. They come back, we have no Death Shroud left for the 2nd engagement, game over.

If we are left alone we need to have other recovery abilities that are not dependent on hitting the enemy. Especially as we can’t lock them down into the fight with us, no matter how they try to sell that as the philosophy that we can.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

“Where as a guardian or a mesmer can pop a block or invulnerability to shrug off large chunks of damage YOU CAN NOT! You don’t have stealth, invulnerability, very little stability, no blocks, no vigor without jumping through hoops like a trained poodle and no teleports that can get you out in a pinch.”

Our defense isn’t going to be over-improved. We can’t even escape (stealth, teleport).
Besides that, we don’t have any leaps/teleports to chase either. We cannot avoid stealth/stability/quickness finishers (the main issue is stealth finishers imo). Also, we do not have any skill that can block massive burst damage (I have received about 22k dmg in one hit before in PvP. We cannot avoid any OHKO skills like all other classes with their invulnerable/evasive moves/reflect projectiles)

Nem.1039:

I sure wish we had the ability to -1 votes for stupid dev’s posts.

I gave you +1 bro.

I also laughed. No offense but this is laughable a year later. I can’t seriously take anything at this point.

Block will block anything no matter how sky high it is. So will invulnerability. Ds…. what does ds do? Requires a resource which you need to fight/kill to generate. Also has a limit(you can’t generate anything as condition….just for example). But because its apparently super amazing we have no boons/no stability/no heals/no escapes and so on. We got 1 good stunbreak/swiftness skill… sadly its utility that sucks for anything else and doesn’t synergize with most specs. Yeah…

Cheers to another “It will get better and we will buff necromancers. Need time as to not over buff.” ™

Fun fact… in wvw guardians bubble of win lasts on average twice longer then my ds with full soul reaping. Yep… definitely don’t wont to over power our awesome class mechanic.

though i agree that deathshroud didnt need a nerf im very curious to know what this bug of extra damage we were taking in deathshroud was, if you could tell us how much damage we was taking before im sure some people would be less angry about this patch.

I once watched a twitch tourny for gw2 where you said that you didnt want to pigeon hole people into certain skills, you guys have just made spectral armor mandatory and MAYBE 15 into soul reaping for last gasp, my new condy build is 30 20 0 0 20 running either soul marks or 50% fear duration not sure yet, im still unsure of how power compares with condy builds now since you nerfed power at the same time in a way when it really needed buffs if anything.

I also feel that no matter how much LF you give ghastly claws it will still be useless unless over buffed, you need to apply the LF generation to the auto attack, ghastly is just so easy to dodge when so many have 100% uptime on vigor.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

OK, I spent the day trying out the new death shroud. Althoughit does seem to last longer, I have lost access to my only way of mitigation (read: blocking) a large spike. Even though I have more of it doesn’t make it better. Secondly if you don’t want to over improve us then don’t, give us a way to escape combat easily when we are doomed to fall; this don’t seem like much to ask to me seeing as EVERY other class has this basic ability.

Personally I, and I am sure many others could care less than snail snot about the pax tournament, but we do care about having to repair our armor every bloody time we set foot into the open world in PvE and as the “easy kill” button in WvW.

Let me be succinct here, some of us DON’T care about PvP meta therefore YOU should not base the way you modify the classes around it for everyone! Get a few testers to actually play in PvE and WvW; if you can find a few, lord knows we are getting scarce, and see for yourself already. If you cannot offer anything to help the survivability of the class at this point then leave us the kitten alone, better yet revert us back!

Amen to not carying about some floppy tournament full of …. let me guess not necromancer. LOL

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

Understandable.
However I’d like to point out that the issue isn’t about the Life Force gains.
That’s alright as is, except for the Scepter.

It’s that when a Necromancer runs something like Lupicus or Subject Alpha the other Professions put up shields to survive massive attack spikes.
A Guardian blocks the attack and takes 0 damage.
An Elementalist goes Invulnerable or blocks.
A Thief shadow Steps out of the way.
They all can take 0 damage with no dodges left by reacting in time.

The Necromancer dodges twice and then he dies or takes massive amounts of damage.

In sPvP the same goes when targeted by massive damage spikes.
If you get spiked by 2 or 3 players for 100k damage you just die even with Death Shroud and full Life Force.
An Elementalist just goes invulnerable and survives with no damage done.

In fact the Elementalist’s opponents just blew their cooldowns so the Elementalist might very well have the advantage after it.

Edit:
Actually… after testing the new Spectral Armor for a bit it might be Necro’s answer to it already.
I’m a bit worried how it works against a single hit from a boss as opposed to a combo chain, but we’ll see.

I don’t think today’s nerfs were that bad unless you really used to base jump a lot…I do however agree with the OP that anet really seems like they just don’t get it. DS, even if it shouldn’t have been, was our lone means of having a moment of invunerability/block that we are lacking. I’m fine with DS getting this fix but we need some defense!!!

-Look we never asked for more dps to solve the issues with this class, but that’s what you gave us. Then everyone cried we weren’t a free kill so you took some of it away. But what you nerfed wasn’t the thing that was causing the issue. Terror has always been there and is not some ungodly 15k+ damage ability (which are apparently perfectly fine for certain other classes)

-Even before the last patch the community was begging for more sustain. Buff siphons, let some healing get through DS, or give us an escape. But instead we got more offense that was apparently too much in your eyes. Necro should be feared…the class you cant run from and hangs in on fights which is why we don’t need an escape. Thats what we were told. But that is NOT how it is. Everyone other class has escapes that leave us standing around with our thumb in our kitten any time they choose to run or reset a fight. What about a necro if we fall into a 2v1 or 3v1? We die because we get CC’d due to having no decent access to vigor or stability, and zero means of putting ground between us and a bad situation. There are simply some fights that tactically it is better to run away from and we can’t do that. Especially as a condition player we are stuck not having the ability to burn down a target fast to even the odds, not having the siphon to sustain in a uneven fight, and not having the tools to evade damage or escape when in the thick of things. And somehow you call that an attrition class….

I’m not saying we are awful or anything but how are you missing the point here when we are making it so clearly? I’m fine with most all of your changes but you need to hear the necro player base and act accordingly. Just make DS #2 a port again already and end this nonsense.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

I say play it a while and then see how YOU feel.

Seriously, try the necromancer for more than 5 seconds and beyond the place you play it (implying you have ever played with a necromancer).

Go and solo one of your OP Champions in PvE and see how useful is DS against them (lets see how long you survive with only 2 dodges and no other reliable defense against Horace or the Krait Witch).
Go to a dungeon a see how useful is DS when you have a zerker warrior/guardian/mesmer in your team (implying you don’t play with noobs).
Go to WvW and see how long you last against a zerg.
Go to PvP and roll a MM, no need for more there.

Then comeback here and tell us to play it for a while and see how we feel -_-

Lack of stability, lack of reliable CC, lack of substain, lack of pushback… the list is long for what necromancer is lacking. :/
Sure our DoT damage is great, our utility is good, our movement is good where it stand, but really…
If it wasn’t for my Plague ult, my only way to survive is DS and I get nearly no life force from scepter, being our main and only real DPS weapon. Dagger forcing us in close combat without stability, good substain and CC to allows us to be in melee.
We need a 0.5 duration increased to all our fear, we need 1 or 2 reliable stun and at least a reliable CC in utility. And please, for the love of grenth, change the horn #4 to a huge knockback instead!

DS was the only useful mechanic of this class, and now with the overflow mechanic, it has completely gone. We’ll be useless in both pve and wvw. This was the necro’s main feature from the start of the game, if you wanted to do some nerfs then you should have taken back some of these buffs, not the main defense mechanic of the class which existed all the time.

Umut.5471:

DS was the only useful mechanic of this class, and now with the overflow mechanic, it has completely gone. We’ll be useless in both pve and wvw. This was the necro’s main feature from the start of the game, if you wanted to do some nerfs then you should have taken back some of these buffs, not the main defense mechanic of the class which existed all the time.

I wish they would just roll it back to before the patch that added Dhuumfire and all the other that just made people flock to necromancer and everyone else yell it was OP.

They should have left it alone.

This just shows us how horrible Anet as a balance team… Why don’t they just remove all classes, but warrior so everyone has to play one? Lets admit it, everyone has a warrior anyways.

It’s not like Anet cares about any other professions aswell

Oh look, a dev posts! Time to write something that the devs should really already know about us Necromancers.

WE NEVER WANTED BURNING.
Take away the spike damage condition, give us attrition and survivability in condition builds, give us valid power options for axe, give us functional counterplay for melee dagger.
Also, fix our traits, so we can actually spec for something with fewer than 80 trait points.

So this was done in response to a SPVP tournament… I don’t want to be disrespectful, but screwing over your 2 larger playerbases (PVE and WVW) really doesn’t make sense. Please just split the skills.

In the “Current state of the meta” thread in the spvp JonathanSharp describes the necro as bringing more condi pressure and boon manipulation than the engineer with the trade off of being squishier and having no escapability. Getting over the fact that necros are apparently supposed to be condi glass cannons now instead of the tanky attrition caster, the fact is that dead dps is 0 dps and no one is going to take a necro who is always going to be downed/dead and a free rally for the enemy. All that aoe condi tagging becomes a liability when the moment a necro gets planted in wvw, half the enemy downed gets rallied.

Homonavn.6348:

This just shows us how horrible Anet as a balance team… Why don’t they just remove all classes, but warrior so everyone has to play one? Lets admit it, everyone has a warrior anyways.

It’s not like Anet cares about any other professions aswell

Complaining about a warrior… heh.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

I’d like to echo the statement that, these changes do not bring Necromancers defence/attrition anywhere near the level of classes with Blocks/Invulnerability/Teleports/Stealths/Evades/Passive Regeneration/Passive Condition removal.

Anyone knows the trait/gear/rune of the Necro dummy in the Mist? This guy can block, steal life like crazy and do some weird thing with his dagger. I think we are a shadow of what this guy can do right now, maybe he still is a beta necro and we’re getting change based on the number he can do?

On another note, I did test our DS against direct damage yesterday and my god, I would like to know the numbers before/after the bug fix, I was in Berserker/Cavalier gear and was staying longer than ever in DS, where before all my lifeforce would just evaporate when 2-3 players were looking at me with bad eyes.

JonathanSharp.7094:

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

Holy kitten this made me laugh… If Anet think necro has good defense capabilities… I don’t want to live on this planet anymore

Some really good stuff being said here. Covers everything I could say and more. Hope someone is reading this and taking note.

/Support Necromancers

It sucks to say it guys… After 900 hours on my necro, it has a legendary bound to it, but… I can’t take it anymore and im now leveling a engi…

GG Anet

Necromancers need a way to survive heavy spike damage. Before this nerf, popping in and out of Death Shroud added an interesting dynamic to prevent a giant zerg or some overpowered boss from instantly one-shotting you. Necromancers need a form of defense that grants invincibility, like all the other professions have. Right now we have nothing, but the ability to absorb damage with our lifeforce… and that does not scale well against zergs or bosses. We need something that absorbs damage regardless of the damage amount.

JonathanSharp, please look at this screenshot. This is how much damage bosses do against heavily armored necromancers. We NEED a better defense against this like every other class has.

Coming from a WvWer’s perspective…

The end of the Kamikaze era is just one thing. Let’s bring up some pre-staged situations…

1. Roamers
You like small groups and small fights where skill lag does not interfere and you can bring it all on. You even have your 5-10 man group, everything is perfect. But then the zerg is coming…
What kind of tools do the professions have to make an escape attempt?
- thief: stealth + shadow step + shortbow
- guardian: stability + line of warding + block + aegis
- warrior: excellent mobility + stability + block
- ranger: stability + swiftness + leaps
- mesmer: invis + clones + portal + blink
- elementalist: extremely good mobility + static field + stunning aura + mist form
- engineer: mini + heavy CC

…just a few ways to bring up. Now what did necro have pre-patch?
Erm…pop Walk/Armor, try to survive, find a cliff and jump. We had no real source of stability, no leap at all and we are the least mobile class in the game. No vigor, nor increased endurance regen.
With the recent patch, it means a guaranteed wipe for a roaming necro if he meets the enemy zerg.

2. “Zergers”
Death Shroud itself melts in zerg fights. It did pre-patch, it does now. I don’t care if you’ve fixed a bug and tanks to that we have more effective HP in DS. Extra HP is only extra HP in the end of the day, not a mitigating/evading mechanic like channeled blocks/aegis/invuln./mist form/etc.
The only valid way for a necro to get his own invuln. or at least something close to that was Spectral Armor/Walk combined with DS.
It still heavily limited our skill cap, since we were stuck in Death Shroud, but at least we could maintain our LF pool, which was decent enough. Bear in mind though, that we had no access to any kind of buff/heal/regen. in this form which made it a bad alternative compared to the aforementioned mitigation methods. But still, an alternative…
Now you even took that away with the implemented internal cooldown on Walk/Armor. The maximum amount of Life Force gaining is 48% with Armor (68% if traited for longer duration). That’s without calculating in the damage taken in Death Shroud.

Now, let’s do a little bit of math here…
(I’ll call LF “effective HP” from now on, it pretty much works that way)

Based on this post, I’ll calculate with 50k effective HP in DS assuming the necro has 25k normally, which is an average value.
In this case 48% LF gain (let’s round it up to 50 for the sake of simplicity) means ~25k effective HP. That is ~25k in 6 seconds >> ~4.2k per second.
Now, add natural degeneration (that’s ~2k effective HP if not traited) which makes it only 2.2k effective HP gain per second.
What it means is, that the moment you take more than 2.2k damage per second this kind of effective HP regen. is as good as nothing and you will keep melting since HP -like I said above- is only HP.

This is the very reason why we don’t see many sPvPers/1v1ers complaining and they don’t get how big this nerf really is. While this scenario in sPvP/1o1 is not likely, it happens quite often in WvW/PvE.

I’ve accepted a long time ago, that necro is not and most likely will not be part of the “big guns”. Fine by me – I said – at least, I’m tanky and can survive most of the crap you throw at me. I may not be strong in terms of damage dealing but I can be hell of an annoyance and you won’t get rid of me (at least not by killing me).

And for those who say Necros should focus on condition damage: ever tried running condition build against an organized group on large scale WvW? Conditions need time to kick in and that’s exactly what they don’t have. They get flipped/stripped in seconds and thus countered and ripped from their full potential.
Any decent WvW guild/group runs a decent condition cleanse composition, anyone who plays WvW competitively knows that. Arguments that claims that Necro should be all about condition damage only shows that the person have minimal on no knowledge at all about the WvW meta.

Homonavn.6348:

It sucks to say it guys… After 900 hours on my necro, it has a legendary bound to it, but… I can’t take it anymore and im now leveling a engi…

GG Anet

Why would you level another class in the trash tier?

spoj.9672:

Homonavn.6348:

It sucks to say it guys… After 900 hours on my necro, it has a legendary bound to it, but… I can’t take it anymore and im now leveling a engi…

GG Anet

Why would you level another class in the trash tier?

Simply because this wont happend again. They wont get nerfs, Also, it looks like a fun class

To be fair with that screenshot, that skill of Kudu’s is supposed to one-shot you. My guess is that your actual health is around 22,408?

That said, there are other bosses that have hit me for 18k+ damage (Champion Abomination, I’m looking at you) and I’m in full Rabid gear. Necros are in dire need of some method of spike avoidance and the two basic Dodges just don’t cut it.

Necros do tend to glaringly show how bad armor/hp/lf stats are overall in the current meta compared to the other more active tools.

The same tools that enable the “go zerker or go home” attitude to group gear composition in content because those tools allow near total damage avoidance; obviating the need for passive defense stats.

Quite frankly, there will always be an issue for Necros defensively compared to other classes as long as those tools are as powerful as they are.

glorius.1235:

2. “Zergers”
Death Shroud itself melts in zerg fights. It did pre-patch, it does now. I don’t care if you’ve fixed a bug and tanks to that we have more effective HP in DS. Extra HP is only extra HP in the end of the day, not a mitigating/evading mechanic like channeled blocks/aegis/invuln./mist form/etc.

I dont main a necro but the problem as I see it, is that if DS is buffed for WvW/PvE it becomes OP in sPvP. Therefore one solution could involve providing a form of mitigation that scales with the number of hits taken within a small timeframe, IE when you’re being AOE’d, Zerg’d or focused.

Every time you’re struck by direct damage, gain 1 stack of a new buff, Deaths Resolve. Every second, clear all stacks, and gain 2% life force for every stack beyond the first.
Whatcha think?

Dand.8231:

I dont main a necro but the problem as I see it, is that if DS is buffed for WvW/PvE it becomes OP in sPvP.

With all due respect, this is a false logic.
The aforementioned method is only viable under heavy fire and is only good for surviving, nothing else. The necro sitting in DS can’t do much anyway – no utilities, no weapon sets therefore no on-swap sigils, etc.
This is an entirely defensive mechanic and if the necro is not under heavy fire, natural degen. will eat his LF up anyway.

Of course, if sPvP players can’t realize the fact (or rather couldn’t – past tense), that it is (was) the necro’s own invuln. mechanic and don’t (didn’t) do the same what they would do with any other invuln. skill (i.e. let it run out and try to keep the player out of game via heavy CCs), it’s understandable that they consider (or rather considered) it OP.

glorius.1235:

With all due respect, this is a false logic.
The aforementioned method is only viable under heavy fire and is only good for surviving, nothing else. The necro sitting in DS can’t do much anyway – no utilities, no weapon sets therefore no on-swap sigils, etc.

Well I did preface it with saying I dont main necro ^^; Mines an external point of view. It comes from my experience fighting against, not playing as.

I do dislike that utility skills get locked during a DS transform. The transform itself also seems to degen so fast in combat, between the natural loss and incoming damage. It’s part of why I never really went anywhere with a Necro alt. Not really my cup o tea, just trying to help with some ideas

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

The base marks improvement was excellent, thank you. For the first time I feel like I can use the staff without having to trait it.

To say it frankly, I don’t think mister JonathanSharp understand The Necro Issue.

So let’s give him an hint :

- What you did to spectral armor or Spectral walk is like saying to the Warrior : “Hey dude! Now Endure Pain will mitigate 1 hit every 1 s”

- Implementing the overflow thing is jsut like saying to the warrior : “Hey Dude! We are removing all block on your weapons sets, now, you will take the hit and gain adrenaline from that hit”

What you did with the aetherblade patch for the Necro was a step in the right direction. What you did here is a huge step in the wrong direction. Basically, you’are just saying that this game is meant for 1v1.

Almost all of us complaint because of “Dhumfire”. Honestly, If I wanted some fire in my condition damage I could have asked a gardian friend to come along, They give it for free this burning thing. With Dhumfire you narrowed our build choice. With this patch you narrow even more our choice.

- Any “Tank” builds are dead for WvW and PvE because you thought it was to good for sPvP and your tournament (I don’t even think a Necro will show himself in this anyway)
- Any “Power” Builds still lack a mean to keep his target at range.
- “Vampiric” Builds… Who come with the idea to separate damage and heal in squaling? This one made me laugh to death. Healing Power need love for Necro and “vampiric” is far, really, really far from being competitive right now.
- “Condition” Builds, they were already Ok, Now, they are your major source of complaint from other classes.

There is absolutely nothing in this patch that feel like improvement when you actually play. I tried to see if i took less damage in DS. Guess what? No change. It’s sad to see that your so obsessed with sPvP, that you don’t see what’s wrong in your balance.

Hell! you are stereotyping the classes and reducing build possibility while you shouldn’t. Why did I came to like this game? Because all classes had a way to play any rôle. What are you doing here? You are removing possibility for this classe.