Guild Wars 2

Good day everyone…

So everyone knows the number of complaints about necromancer recently…

Basically the problem is that Bleeding + Burning + Torment + Fear traited with Terror = too much damage…

If you take away burning you ruin hybrid builds, if you mess with Terror you ruin condition type builds that do not benefit from burning… all in all… because of this huge amount of feedback, i believe something will be done.

So here is my contribution towards a solution to this…

You all know how much i love my Fear and my Terror… apparently i am mostly known for my fear condition build for WvW (thought my PvE guides were the main attraction), so i would never attempt to ruin any of my creations…

With that being said…

Current state of Terror: Fear deals damage, and it deals an additional 50% damage if the target has another condition on them.
This combined with everything else deals too much DPS at one point in time…

My suggestion would be that Terror: Fear now converts bleeding ticks into HP for a period of time… how many & what period is debatable.

What this will achieve… will break the combo of bleeding + burning + torment + fear without taking out the burning.

Give a much needed survivability for the necromancer, even VS multiple… since we have access to AoE fear… and will only lower the damage of old condition PvP builds by a small amount… especially since old condition builds now have torment so their damage was increased regardless…

All in all… the combo is broken, old condition builds revert to close their initial condition damage and gain more survivability, especially vs multiple… which their were lacking.

So we can finally play the attrition game as conditionmancers… instead of i fear you into the ground before you burst me intro the ground… is more of a i pressure you, you pressure me back, i pressure you… you pressure me back (now i can hold my ground because i can heal properly).

What do you guys think ?
This was the original suggestion… from here on end i will edit with the final conclusions i have taken based on community feedback.

edit:

Keep the initial fear damage, but instead of the +50% more damage you get healing of bleed stacks with a 0.5 or 1.0 (ratio and duration is debatable)… and since you put it in GM curses alongside dhummfire… you can’t have both.

Old condition build’s damage remains the same since we now have torment to compensate for the lack of 50% extra damage from fear when condition is on, and we get the survivability that it is required of a condition – long lasting fighter to have.

The combo with fear – terror + dhuumfire + bleeding + torment is broken…

Since withering precision gets moved into spite, and teamed up with chill… it will make pure glass cannon builds viable by giving them survivability in terms of “acting as a debuffer”.

Also you might want to move Lingering Curse in Curses adept… move hemophilia into Curses masters and team it up with master of corruption so that PvE builds don’t get their bleed duration tampered with… and the free slot could be used for a condition – support/healing type trait.

There has been an opening for that recently with the weakness modification… and the gear with toughness healing power condition damage stats is already present in the game.

Only if it works in Deathshroud. Furthermore, if they’re going to nerf Terror’s damage, I would expect to see more heals function in Deathshroud (not all of them, but some). It would be very counter intuitive to have a trait that turns our fear into a heal when our most reliable fear is used from Deathshroud, where you can’t be healed.

Yngvar.7614:

Only if it works in Deathshroud. Furthermore, if they’re going to nerf Terror’s damage, I would expect to see more heals function in Deathshroud (not all of them, but some). It would be very counter intuitive to have a trait that turns our fear into a heal when our most reliable fear is used from Deathshroud, where you can’t be healed.

Well of course haha… i should have specified that, thought it was self explained.

So you want to remove terror damage completely and make it a survivability trait? Im not sure i fully understand your suggestion. My solution would just be to remove the bonus fear damage while another condition is on the target and maybe boost the base fear damage slightly to compensate.

Terror isn’t the problem at all. Terror was not only fine balance wise, but we were still underpowered even with it. They introduced burning, and now a single build is OP, one that uses both. Hybrid builds do not, nor have they ever needed that trait, they just ran CtD before it existed. Burning is the culprit, and changing Terror is going to kill condition builds. Just make burning less ridiculous (reduce its duration a bit) and we’ll be back to being strong offensively but way too weak defensively.

Bhawb.7408:

Terror isn’t the problem at all. Terror was not only fine balance wise, but we were still underpowered even with it. They introduced burning, and now a single build is OP, one that uses both. Hybrid builds do not, nor have they ever needed that trait, they just ran CtD before it existed. Burning is the culprit, and changing Terror is going to kill condition builds. Just make burning less ridiculous (reduce its duration a bit) and we’ll be back to being strong offensively but way too weak defensively.

Yeah… way to weak defensively doesn’t sound very necromantic to me… Thought i would push for a change to one of our builds into a true attrition class…
We had terror which did 1k DPS from time to time… now we have torment that does not as much i admit, but it does something… We stil get focus fired like a m… and now that we are more dangerous, we get even more focus fired.

Make us less dangerous and make us more resilient… so we can enjoy some PvP without everyone yelling “GET THE NECRO !” We are clearly not made to be countering “GET THE NECRO” situations…

Bhawb.7408:

Terror isn’t the problem at all. Terror was not only fine balance wise, but we were still underpowered even with it. They introduced burning, and now a single build is OP, one that uses both. Hybrid builds do not, nor have they ever needed that trait, they just ran CtD before it existed. Burning is the culprit, and changing Terror is going to kill condition builds. Just make burning less ridiculous (reduce its duration a bit) and we’ll be back to being strong offensively but way too weak defensively.

I agree – Terror was never the problem.

Reducing the Dhuumfire burn from 4 sec to 3.125 (3 1/8) sec results in an effective reduction from 5.2 sec (4 * 1.3) to 4.063 sec (3.125 * 1.3), due to the 30% cond dur from Spite. This would be a 22% decrease in the damage from Dhuumfire.

This seems like a simple and effective way to lessen the effect of Dhuumfire+Terror without altering either feature significantly.

Think about it… well you guys don’t know my PvP hybrid yet… but it will be able to put people into the ground a little bit better then the old conditionmancer fear build, and be a little less survivable… even with my Terror modification.

And the old fear conditionmancer will turn into the real attrition build, played right you simply can’t kill him… even while getting focused, what good is the fear wall that helps you escape if you die by the time you put it on the ground… now a well place AoE fear on top of AoE bleeds and torment can fully heal you back… you can’t put anyone into the ground any time soon with that damage until they run out of condition removals, but they can’t really kill you either…

The whole point of fear was to overwrite condition removals, that’s how i made the build… now i think it would be beneficial for the PvP necromancer to have… viable playstyle options…

Build variaty… conditionmancer as point focus pressure… AoE sustainer, moves slowly… infects everything and sustains himself by infecting things…

Quite different then the fast-zapping 2-3 second full healing low damage elementalist… but i believe as enjoyable…

edit: I would even go so far as to say increase the burning duration to 6 seconds standard while converting terror damage into healing for bleeding even while in DS.
Will definitely make the PvP conditionmancer a true attrition class, especially with the weakness modification… and will empower the hybrid PvP necromancer just a little bit to compensate for the loss of the fear damage.

Come on guys… i want to 1v4 total noobs in WvW by outlasting them… and using LOS and running and teleporting and basically outskilling them… Now… there’s absolutely nothing you can do in such a situation…

At the same time if they increase burning duration they’ll shift the role of the damage dealer from the conditionmancer to the hybrid, and leave the conditionmancer to play as the attritioner. We’ll have two viable playstyles.

Nemesis.8593:

well you guys don’t know my PvP hybrid yet… but it will be able to put people into the ground a little bit better then the old conditionmancer fear build, and be a little less survivable… even with my Terror modification.

Don’t keep us in suspense! Share the knowledge

Nemesis.8593:

now a well place AoE fear on top of AoE bleeds and torment can fully heal you back…

Let’s assume that this fear-heal would actually be effective enough to “fully heal you back”.
Why would anyone not take Terror? And why would anyone who runs a condi build not take Dhuumfire to compensate for the loss of damage?

especially if you add this:

Nemesis.8593:

edit: I would even go so far as to say increase the burning duration to 6 seconds standard while converting terror damage into healing for bleeding even while in DS.

You’d completely eliminate any kind of build diversity.

Some sort of condition siphoning could certainly be a nice way to improve sustain, but it shouldn’t be connected to Terror.

Also, what Bhawb said, except I don’t think that a duration reduction for burning would change anything…

The thing is that without Terror damage we have no offensive condi damage builds. That is the crux of our damage, and without it Condition damage builds just aren’t up to par. Do we need more sustain? Of course, every Necro agrees on this, and ANet agrees, so lets not nerf the lynchpin of our condition damage to get it. It’d be like power builds asking for them to halve dagger 1 and Well of Suffering damage, and give them back double life steal. Does it make them more survivable? Yes, but it also gets rid of the only thing that was going for them.

remove burning necros do not need burn

Interesting thought Nemesis. If the terror “heal” does a decent amount (and scales with healing power) this could be a nice change especially with improved Blood Magic traits that I hope come out next patch. It would probably be moved to Grandmaster tier. Not to hijack your thread, but I think it might be a good idea if….
*Move Terror to Grandmaster (but make said heal be worth the title)
*Move Dhuumfire to Curses Grandmaster
*Change Dhuumfire to 3 seconds of burning on five second cooldown
*Replace Dhuumfire in Spite with a new grandmaster that allows for more sustain in Power/hybrid builds (and not some “hurrrr 10% to toughness we’re done here GJ team”)

This helps because Condi builds get more sustain through terror healing (and possibly Blood Magic changes) so they can actually be attrition builds, or they can choose Burning for more damage. I chose 3 every 5 seconds since most people in PvP don’t spec for condi duration (besides fear) and while 5+ (4 + 30%) seconds is nice, that 10 second cooldown that you just wasted on a guy is nearly dead anyway. This also leaves room for a Spite GM trait focused around sustain, so the common 30/x/x/x/30 builds these days can get some actual sustain in PvP.

*Power gets more sustain in PvP, since even zerker builds can survive in PvE they can keep their CTD
*Hybrid gets more sustain (New Spite GM + new Terror), can still get burning/CTD if they choose
*Condi gets sustain OR damage (and they don’t have to waste points in Spite)

From what I have noticed is the main issue is the lack of a weakness, supposed to be our weakness is to stun lock us, however if someone gets close enough to do that, we just DS and doom them away and because of weakening shroud, terror and on crit procs, they are now burning weakened, 2-4 stacks of bleed with a very long fear on them. that is just to good of a counter for what is supposed to be our weakness. personaly I say if Doom had a 1/4 sec cast time we would not be able to fear while stunned so whenever someone says were OP we have a weakness to tell them about

Upon further consideration i too agree that the “new” terror trait should be moved into grandmaster of curses instead of Lingering Curse… so we avoid builds like 30 – 20 – 0 – 0 – 20.

The point is since fear heals… you have to chose between burning and extra fear-healing duration… that was my point, i kind of missed my own point hahaha…

I know you are really experienced with the class nemesis and this suggestion is good, but tbh what i don’t like about dhuumfire is that burning is such a good condi (close to op tbh) that almost every condi necro is now taking that trait. The class needs more variety and dhuumfire did just the opposite imo. They should modify that trait in order to keep it appealing for hybrid builds, but not that much for pure condi specs.

Behemoth.2193:

Interesting thought Nemesis. If the terror “heal” does a decent amount (and scales with healing power) this could be a nice change especially with improved Blood Magic traits that I hope come out next patch. It would probably be moved to Grandmaster tier. Not to hijack your thread, but I think it might be a good idea if….
*Move Terror to Grandmaster (but make said heal be worth the title)
*Move Dhuumfire to Curses Grandmaster
*Change Dhuumfire to 3 seconds of burning on five second cooldown
*Replace Dhuumfire in Spite with a new grandmaster that allows for more sustain in Power/hybrid builds (and not some “hurrrr 10% to toughness we’re done here GJ team”)

This helps because Condi builds get more sustain through terror healing (and possibly Blood Magic changes) so they can actually be attrition builds, or they can choose Burning for more damage. I chose 3 every 5 seconds since most people in PvP don’t spec for condi duration (besides fear) and while 5+ (4 + 30%) seconds is nice, that 10 second cooldown that you just wasted on a guy is nearly dead anyway. This also leaves room for a Spite GM trait focused around sustain, so the common 30/x/x/x/30 builds these days can get some actual sustain in PvP.

*Power gets more sustain in PvP, since even zerker builds can survive in PvE they can keep their CTD
*Hybrid gets more sustain (New Spite GM + new Terror), can still get burning/CTD if they choose
*Condi gets sustain OR damage (and they don’t have to waste points in Spite)

Nemesis agrees…
Burning or healing – fear seems to deserve a place in GM curses, and they don’t mess up any of my builds, that are kind of used… at the moment.

Will actually do everything you said, i had a good idea, you’ve made it better… GG, back to work.

edit: 1 minor note… don’t make it stack with healing, will mess up build combinations and stat variation. Just a standard heal based on bleeds on target… maybe even a 0.5 ratio, maybe even a 1.0 ratio for the duration, maybe add a cap to it… stuff… you know

edit again: ooo… they can move withering precision to Spite and make it apply chill and weakness… you get PvP sustain but in the form of debuffing, especially if you modify it to have proper weakness and proper chill…
This is actually perfect hahahaha…

I find it far more likely that they would give us something along the lines of “Fear steals life force” than providing direct heals. They have said they wanted to increase our sustain through life force generation. I would actually have no problem with this sort of thing as long as they made the gain sizeable enough.

Again some good theory crafting Nemesis with an elegant solution. My only concern is that the complexity/subtleties may be difficult to grasp for the less attuned players (like me)….but I suppose that is the nature of our profession and its roles.

Nemesis needs to get hired at ANet.

This idea is the death of pure condition builds. I love you Nemesis, but this one went way into left field.

Bhawb.7408:

This idea is the death of pure condition builds. I love you Nemesis, but this one went way into left field.

You’ve seen the latest discussion ? You can keep the initial fear damage into it if you must… but the traits movement around from spite to curses and heal on fear would be… something…

There is no problem if we can’t get fear on top of burning, fear loses a bit of damage to gain a significant heal… renounce the heal for burning damage, or take the burning into the hybrid… but you take it from 0 – 30 instead of 30 – 0… and since 30 – 0 is now free for improvements for power build… and withering precision needs a place to go, mix it with some chilling… and you have more survivability for power builds, while keeping in tune with the necromancer theme.

“Acting as a debuffer” – which funny enough are conditions that benefit from condition duration that we have because… spite.
Of course burning has to have it’s base duration increase since it will no longer be in spite…
Anyway… fun stuff, didn’t have time to think about it too much… i spent the last 5 days making my latest video. Going to upload it tomorrow… ohhhh the feedback it is going to get.
Can’t wait

I like you an your ideas Nemesis, but I can’t agree with that one. Sue, another heal would be very cool. Sure, 30/30 builds would be more balanced. But it crushes traditional conditionmancer in tpvp just with one shot. Without ability to burst pressure you’ll become a tanky target which does mediocre damage, has almost the same survability as in before (because problem in here isn’t really size of HP you have and you can recover, problem is lack of combat tricks such as evade, aimed teleport on DS#2, block, stability), can’t push condition cleansers. It’d be heaven for all classes and specs with which you have very limited time to kill (Mesmers between escapes, Thief between stealths, Elementalists in a window with water attu on CD). In conclusion, sometimes heal may be good, but without Terror counterpressure we’d be pretty done. I’ll suggest a possible solution for Terror soon.
~Natchniony

I’d prefer if terror simply had terror’s damage reduced. Although it is cool that I can get it to tick for 1400 or so in WvW, before the recent changes the only time that would happen was with Reaper’s Mark and Doom, and only for a single tick.

I used it in much the same manner that I use terror now: a finisher. After sustaining in the fight a bit, I fir off my remaining fears in an attempt to chain-stun my opponent to death. Back when I received only 3 ticks of fear this was more balanced: I could do about 4.2k unavoidable damage with fear, but unless used wisely this would wipe my defensive abilities, leaving me helpless. But now that doom is 50% better and spectral wall is 1000% better, I routinely fear other players for 6-7 seconds at a time. Note: this is not a dedicated fear build (only have 50% duration increase).

I now burst for twice as much damage: about 8.4k now. This damage goes right through protection and toughness, hitting their HP directly. This is bad news against anyone who stacks protection/toughness, or anyone who has low HP. The low HP classes being thieves, elementalists, and guardians: 3 of the 4 most played PVP classes (the other being mesmer). Knowing that, a lot of the QQ starts to make sense: A class with 2900 armor can get burst down from 75% health by these darn necromancers, and they’re stunned for the duration of it, too.

If we look at the situation mathematically, a simple solution shows up. If all necromancers received at least a 50% increase in fear (doom), then arguably terror should do 50% less damage. As it happens, terror does 50% more damage when the opponent has a condition, so if we remove this bonus, then terror becomes much more manageable. Doing this, my terror damage goes to 930 a tick, coming to 5.5K for a full fear burst.

With the combined difficulty of stacking fear (positioning with spectral wall is not easy against a smart opponent), as well as the ability for stun breaks and stability to stop / prevent the burst, this is an understandable number to have. It is slightly higher than what was available to me pre-patch, but it also has the potential to be lower than what was available to me pre-patch.

You want to have an attrition gameplay, without putting any points in defensive traits? I find this to be a bit too much. I mean, it is logical if you go full damage, to have less survivability, what you want is to go full damage, and have more survivability. Imagine the staff #5 on several people? Or the wall? Each enemy with a ticking fear is healing you back.

I like this suggestion however:

TheAgedGnome.7520”

I agree – Terror was never the problem.

Reducing the Dhuumfire burn from 4 sec to 3.125 (3 1/8) sec results in an effective reduction from 5.2 sec (4 * 1.3) to 4.063 sec (3.125 * 1.3), due to the 30% cond dur from Spite. This would be a 22% decrease in the damage from Dhuumfire.

This seems like a simple and effective way to lessen the effect of Dhuumfire+Terror without altering either feature significantly.

Azraeel.1238:

You want to have an attrition gameplay, without putting any points in defensive traits? I find this to be a bit too much. I mean, it is logical if you go full damage, to have less survivability, what you want is to go full damage, and have more survivability. Imagine the staff #5 on several people? Or the wall? Each enemy with a ticking fear is healing you back.

I like this suggestion however:

TheAgedGnome.7520”

I agree – Terror was never the problem.

Reducing the Dhuumfire burn from 4 sec to 3.125 (3 1/8) sec results in an effective reduction from 5.2 sec (4 * 1.3) to 4.063 sec (3.125 * 1.3), due to the 30% cond dur from Spite. This would be a 22% decrease in the damage from Dhuumfire.

This seems like a simple and effective way to lessen the effect of Dhuumfire+Terror without altering either feature significantly.

If a bunker necromancer gets focused… bunker necromancer dies… if a bunker guardian gets focused, he lives for at least 15 more seconds guaranteed…

This change will increase survivability of bunker necromancers as well, but not by too much since they don’t have high bleed ticks… besides… perhaps the bunker necromancer should be about massive Life Force generation… (just a thought).

Keep the initial fear damage, but instead of the +50% more damage you get healing of bleed stacks with a 0.5 or 1.0 (ratio and duration is debatable)… and since you put it in GM curses alongside dhummfire… you can’t have both.

Old condition build’s damage remains the same since we now have torment to compensate for the lack of 50% extra damage from fear when condition is on, and we get the survivability that it is required of a condition – long lasting fighter to have.

The combo with fear – terror + dhuumfire + bleeding + torment is broken…
Since withering precision gets moved into spite, and teamed up with chill… it will make pure glass cannon builds viable by giving them survivability in terms of “acting as a debuffer”.

Also you might want to move Lingering Curse in Curses adept… move hemophilia into Curses masters and team it up with master of corruption so that PvE builds don’t get their bleed duration tampered with… and the free slot could be used for a condition – support/healing type trait.

There has been an opening for that recently with the weakness modification… and the gear with toughness healing power condition damage stats is already present in the game.

This is what I’m saying, if they want to work on our survivability, maybe they should work on the Death Magic and Blood Magic trait lines, along side DS, and not on offensive trait lines. Our bunkers lack because the defensive trait lines are quite bad compared to other classes.

I am fine with your trait modifications, as it doesn’t affect my powermancer 30/10/0/030 build in any way.

Azraeel.1238:

This is what I’m saying, if they want to work on our survivability, maybe they should work on the Death Magic and Blood Magic trait lines, along side DS, and not on offensive trait lines. Our bunkers lack because the defensive trait lines are quite bad compared to other classes.

I am fine with your trait modifications, as it doesn’t affect my powermancer 30/10/0/030 build in any way.

Yeah… of course any time i release suggestions i try not to break the current builds. Not after all the time i spend making guides on them, there’s a personal interest for me there…

Those guides will get views, those views in time promote the game… and new players may join, which want to know more about some of the classes they want to play… and so on…

You don’t want a sustain class’s sustain based on a condition (bleeding), because then a Necro is still screwed vs high condition clear classes. Especially as you will have lost burning as a cover condition, you’d be too dependent on sustaining well only vs bad builds or bad players that don’t know to wait and clear bleeding soon as it passes 5 stacks or whatever.

A true sustain class should be self sustaining, like past ones like DD ele or Boon guardian. Sure boon hate can hurt these somewhat, but they come back up so fast, it can never really totally derail their sustain. Especially now with Corrupt Boon nerfed back down. And even less so mobility sustain like thieves or memsers.

As much as I love the idea of using bleed stacks you have applied as a heal somehow, I really don’t think Fear/Terror fits as the trigger mechanism.

Softspoken.2410:

As much as I love the idea of using bleed stacks you have applied as a heal somehow, I really don’t think Fear/Terror fits as the trigger mechanism.

agreed! maybe a slight modification to withering precision or torment.

Remove the Terror-DMG and give us a 2 sec extra Fear

Maartac.9457:

Remove the Terror-DMG and give us a 2 sec extra Fear

nice idea. except alot of necros use fear specifically for the damage. though an 8 second fear would be hilarious

Nemesis.8593:

Good day everyone…

So everyone knows the number of complaints about necromancer recently…

Basically the problem is that Bleeding + Burning + Torment + Fear traited with Terror = too much damage…

This qualifies better for ‘too much damage’.

It even puts the old bs to shame.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Nemesis.8593:

Good day everyone…

So everyone knows the number of complaints about necromancer recently…

Basically the problem is that Bleeding + Burning + Torment + Fear traited with Terror = too much damage…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlXskSmfpI

This qualifies better for ‘too much damage’.

It even puts the old bs to shame.

Right… necromancer is Ok, everyone should L2P hahaha…

KarlaGrey.5903:

Nemesis.8593:

Good day everyone…

So everyone knows the number of complaints about necromancer recently…

Basically the problem is that Bleeding + Burning + Torment + Fear traited with Terror = too much damage…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlXskSmfpI

This qualifies better for ‘too much damage’.

It even puts the old bs to shame.

But … but … Necros do too much damage!

Aww, since you gotta jump to conclusions, let me break it down for you.
Yes, the 30 30 10 build has a lot of damage, no doubt.
But if you wanna argue about ‘too much damage’, a necro is a far cry from actual damage classes, let alone a spike as shown in the vid above.
It does approach them somewhat, though, after the fear chain starts. But I’m sure most learned by now how to work around the stunbreaker-deprived class that is the necro.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Aww, since you gotta jump to conclusions, let me break it down for you.
Yes, the 30 30 10 build has a lot of damage, no doubt.
But if you wanna argue about ‘too much damage’, a necro is a far cry from actual damage classes, let alone a spike as shown in the vid above.
It does approach them somewhat, though, after the fear chain starts. But I’m sure most learned by now how to work around the stunbreaker-deprived class that is the necro.

Thank you for breaking it down for me, but as i said… if they are going to do something about this, i wanted to contribute in a constructive way.

Sorry, what?
My point was one should first look at, you know, ACTUAL damage builds before labelling DoT builds as ‘too much damage’ and call for nerfs.
Anyhow, I’d be perfectly fine with changing burning to something else, and reverting DS fear to 1 s duration. I however do not suport any additional nerfs to terror that would make it weaker than before the patch, when not a single soul complained about it.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Sorry, what?
My point was one should first look at, you know, ACTUAL damage builds before labelling DoT builds as ‘too much damage’ and call for nerfs.

Look at my posts… and see how much i spoke against the fact that necromancer is now OP. Look at many many of my videos, and pod casts how much i preached about the real problems of the necromancer…

I’ve been doing it for months… as the game is at the moment, it’s sort of a “i fear you into the ground before you burst me”.

A true PvPer does not like or favor these kinds of mechanics – who can spam faster… i wish to reduce the damage by let’s say 15% in favor of 30% survivability vs multiple especially. The fights will become more… “use your brain to adapt and overcome” rather then “must spam fear before i die”.

If there’s anyone who defends necromancers here, then that would be me…
I even got into sort of an argument with Spoj about it, because he wanted just to nerf us, or so i thought… and i know Spoj, we PvPed together… we recorded together.
That’s how much i defend necromancers.

Nemesis.8593:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Sorry, what?
My point was one should first look at, you know, ACTUAL damage builds before labelling DoT builds as ‘too much damage’ and call for nerfs.

Look at my posts… and see how much i spoke against the fact that necromancer is now OP. Look at many many of my videos, and pod casts how much i preached about the real problems of the necromancer…

I’ve been doing it for months… as the game is at the moment, it’s sort of a “i fear you into the ground before you burst me”.

A true PvPer does not like or favor these kinds of mechanics – who can spam faster… i wish to reduce the damage by let’s say 15% in favor of 30% survivability vs multiple especially. The fights will become more… “use your brain to adapt and overcome” rather then “must spam fear before i die”.

If there’s anyone who defends necromancers here, then that would be me…
I even got into sort of an argument with Spoj about it, because he wanted just to nerf us, or so i thought… and i know Spoj, we PvPed together… we recorded together.
That’s how much i defend necromancers.

You’re right that it’s a ‘battle of fears’, especially in a nec vs nec match-up – whoever gets a solid fear chain in first (on top of nice stack of condis) wins, but the ways one can go about that is what makes it somewhat interesting.

And yea, button mash with overly good effects is detrimental to pvp as a whole, but sadly it’s not a mechanic unique to the necromancer class (as clearly shown in that video).
Anyhow, I am against any Terror nerfs simply because I think the main offenders are the burning and the longer DS fear (even though I consider the latter to be ok).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’d prefer if terror simply had terror’s damage reduced. Although it is cool that I can get it to tick for 1400 or so in WvW, before the recent changes the only time that would happen was with Reaper’s Mark and Doom, and only for a single tick.

I used it in much the same manner that I use terror now: a finisher. After sustaining in the fight a bit, I fir off my remaining fears in an attempt to chain-stun my opponent to death. Back when I received only 3 ticks of fear this was more balanced: I could do about 4.2k unavoidable damage with fear, but unless used wisely this would wipe my defensive abilities, leaving me helpless. But now that doom is 50% better and spectral wall is 1000% better, I routinely fear other players for 6-7 seconds at a time. Note: this is not a dedicated fear build (only have 50% duration increase).

I now burst for twice as much damage: about 8.4k now. This damage goes right through protection and toughness, hitting their HP directly. This is bad news against anyone who stacks protection/toughness, or anyone who has low HP. The low HP classes being thieves, elementalists, and guardians: 3 of the 4 most played PVP classes (the other being mesmer). Knowing that, a lot of the QQ starts to make sense: A class with 2900 armor can get burst down from 75% health by these darn necromancers, and they’re stunned for the duration of it, too.

If we look at the situation mathematically, a simple solution shows up. If all necromancers received at least a 50% increase in fear (doom), then arguably terror should do 50% less damage. As it happens, terror does 50% more damage when the opponent has a condition, so if we remove this bonus, then terror becomes much more manageable. Doing this, my terror damage goes to 930 a tick, coming to 5.5K for a full fear burst.

With the combined difficulty of stacking fear (positioning with spectral wall is not easy against a smart opponent), as well as the ability for stun breaks and stability to stop / prevent the burst, this is an understandable number to have. It is slightly higher than what was available to me pre-patch, but it also has the potential to be lower than what was available to me pre-patch.

100% this.
Good and well explained post.

FEar is better than before patch. 50% more damage its not needed anymore

The greatest fault , in mechanics, for this Terror is the way bleeding stacks work.
-Will the game "know"which stacks are ours for how terror will work?
-Epidemic will also bring tons of qq especialy when aoe fears take place after a decent epidemic.

My 2nd objection is that curse become the mythical attrition trait line where we should be an attrition class.Not a class with an attrition trait tree.

Thumbs up for the idea (s) since without ideas and good feedback we go nowhere.

Nemesis.8593:

Anyway… fun stuff, didn’t have time to think about it too much… i spent the last 5 days making my latest video. Going to upload it tomorrow… ohhhh the feedback it is going to get.
Can’t wait

Still waiting! Impatiently.

Uberkafros.5431:

The greatest fault , in mechanics, for this Terror is the way bleeding stacks work.
-Will the game "know"which stacks are ours for how terror will work?

Interestingly, the game does know which stacks are yours – that’s how might stacks can change the damage of bleeds you’ve already applied.

I think aside from a “healing” for defense I’d like some more traditional abilities to shrug off damage. There is a reason other classes can survive well past the point a necro can and that’s the abilities to relocate character position, making the class untargetable(loss of target) and allow for re-positioning, or complete immunity or evasion of fire(meaning the CC that comes along with it).

I also don’t think the loss of all utilities in both elite forms and DS helps “attrition”. I’m not convinced an attrition necro can exist with the current trait lines and lack of supporting utilities. DS is still terrible outside of a burst type mechanic also which makes you a walking punching bag if you are build tanky, as none of the a ilities offer you much of anything.

IMO you want attrition then none do it better then the d/d ele ATM. Mix of tank/heals/mobility with both decent direct damage and condition.

I love my necro don’t get me wrong, but I’ve personally had no success outside of the “best defense is offense” approach.