Guild Wars 2

I don’t want this to be a troll thread, or “anet is a bunch of <insert random nasty>”, but I want this to be an honest tally of those of us Reapers who have felt the hit from the Jagged Horror change. I really don’t understand why this had to change…it’s been like this since the beginning of the game 4 years ago. It’s not overpowered. The damage output from them is highly relevant (at least to my mind) for the reapers who raid, and their uptime was solely dependent on outside heals in very specific situations. How many of you believe that this change has benched you in your usefulness in raid situations (I’m not going to approach fractals in this). Maybe it’s not as big a deal as I fear, but I really would like the community’s feedback on this, as this is something I feel strongly about, now with this recent patch…the two classes I play are pretty much rendered obsolete in the one form of play I liked the most. Please revert the Jagged Horror change, anet! <3

No need to revert the jagged horror change; I’d much rather get better dps from my skills to encourage better play in order to make up for the huge loss in jagged horror uptime, even if it means some skills have to be changed in how they work in order to not make it too strong for WvW/PvP (aka not going to happen).

Jaggeds should remain as they are. Keeping dosens of them alive due to healing sure as hell wasn’t intended. What we need is straight damage buff for condi and, hopefuly, for power.

Oh, and elite worth using would be nice.

The real problem here was that Necromancers needed a cheesy way to become viable in raids. Now we only hanging by an epidemic bouncing thread, to keep us viable.

I vote for buffing everything else. Necromancers have the right to be good.

Cecilia.5179:

I vote for buffing everything else. Necromancers have the right to be good.

Sorry, but eles are the only profession that gets to have nice things.

Quarktastic.1027:

Cecilia.5179:

I vote for buffing everything else. Necromancers have the right to be good.

Sorry, but eles are the only profession that gets to have nice things.

What are you talking about? Didn’t you see our amazing Necro buffs. That aftercast reduction on greatsword auto. And the damage buff on axe. My god. I think we might just rise to the top of the food chain now. *crazed maniacal laughter

Every class has something special they are known for (RIP Rev, I feel your pain too.) Necro has been synonymous with noob since day one in PVE. For the first couple of years every party had the same mantra “no necro.” Did I want to be the underdog and all the hassle that goes with it? No, I wanted to play the class that made me decide to play this game in the first place. Necro had amazing flavor… at least on the website.

This was fine back before FOTM and raids when we only had dungeons and open world. It is inexcusable for any class not to be viable in end game (raids.) This is the first mmo I have played where the company has classes that do not have at least one slot open to them in a party larger than five. It has left me with the impression that ANET wanted to have something for everyone without really following this idea through. Why not just have four classes that work instead of including ones that do not? It seems like a major design flaw that classes are available that just aren’t good enough for the content provided regardless of player skill.

Mes got their buffs nerfed? There was immediate talk of bringing two mes instead. I do not know if this would work in raid, but it offers insight into how the important classes are viewed.

I don’t care if we have jagged horrors, but ANET please pick a gimmick for necromancer as other classes have theirs. Condi damage? We are necromancers… we should be the best at cursing others. No? Fine. Minions then? We are the only one who has this ability. Make our damage rely heavily on our minions. No? Okay… make us vicious sadists who are just delusional and THINK we have powerful magic. No power build? Okay… HEALS?! Think about that… Necro heals??? Really? Do we have to go there?

Give all classes the ability to play the end game content or be honest and remove the classes that are not supported, but don’t perpetuate the lie that you have as much variety as you pretend to do.

ldyAmalthea.5028:

Every class has something special they are known for (RIP Rev, I feel your pain too.) Necro has been synonymous with noob since day one in PVE. For the first couple of years every party had the same mantra “no necro.” Did I want to be the underdog and all the hassle that goes with it? No, I wanted to play the class that made me decide to play this game in the first place. Necro had amazing flavor… at least on the website.

This was fine back before FOTM and raids when we only had dungeons and open world. It is inexcusable for any class not to be viable in end game (raids.) This is the first mmo I have played where the company has classes that do not have at least one slot open to them in a party larger than five. It has left me with the impression that ANET wanted to have something for everyone without really following this idea through. Why not just have four classes that work instead of including ones that do not? It seems like a major design flaw that classes are available that just aren’t good enough for the content provided regardless of player skill.

Mes got their buffs nerfed? There was immediate talk of bringing two mes instead. I do not know if this would work in raid, but it offers insight into how the important classes are viewed.

I don’t care if we have jagged horrors, but ANET please pick a gimmick for necromancer as other classes have theirs. Condi damage? We are necromancers… we should be the best at cursing others. No? Fine. Minions then? We are the only one who has this ability. Make our damage rely heavily on our minions. No? Okay… make us vicious sadists who are just delusional and THINK we have powerful magic. No power build? Okay… HEALS?! Think about that… Necro heals??? Really? Do we have to go there?

Give all classes the ability to play the end game content or be honest and remove the classes that are not supported, but don’t perpetuate the lie that you have as much variety as you pretend to do.

Bravo, I could not have said it better myself. I haven’t posted in three years and only disappointment brought me to the forums. Necro was the class that sold me the game, that gave me a useful spot in wvw when I was still interested and had a solid spot in raid teams. Since I am only interested in raiding now apart from dailies I wonder how much attention Anet pays to meta mindset that exists there. Let’s hope they pay attention to the suggestions of the above post, cause i feel bitter.

“It’s not overpowered”

So tell me then pls, why so many of players rage about fact that they slightly changed mechanic of the spell ? ….
I am laughing at so many of those who rage about this how 1 “nerf” “destroyed” reaper/necro …. all of them acting like if Anet nerfed every single ability ….

Blackari.2051:

“It’s not overpowered”

So tell me then pls, why so many of players rage about fact that they slightly changed mechanic of the spell ? ….
I am laughing at so many of those who rage about this how 1 “nerf” “destroyed” reaper/necro …. all of them acting like if Anet nerfed every single ability ….

A jagged horror could inflict 1 bleed for 10 seconds (at 100% bleed duration) every 3.5 seconds. So that is ~2.8 perma stacks of bleed per minion. You could realistically keep up about 7 jagged horrors at a time so that is ~19.6 stacks of bleeding from those minions alone. So with 25 might/25vuln and full vipers, each bleed does 235 damage. That’s 4606 bleed damage a second lost for 2 and a half of every 3 minutes of fighting, which is massive. If any other profession suffered that much damage loss, they would go torch Anet’s HQ.

Lahmia.2193:

Blackari.2051:

“It’s not overpowered”

So tell me then pls, why so many of players rage about fact that they slightly changed mechanic of the spell ? ….
I am laughing at so many of those who rage about this how 1 “nerf” “destroyed” reaper/necro …. all of them acting like if Anet nerfed every single ability ….

A jagged horror could inflict 1 bleed for 10 seconds (at 100% bleed duration) every 3.5 seconds. So that is ~2.8 perma stacks of bleed per minion. You could realistically keep up about 7 jagged horrors at a time so that is ~19.6 stacks of bleeding from those minions alone. So with 25 might/25vuln and full vipers, each bleed does 235 damage. That’s 4606 bleed damage a second lost for 2 and a half of every 3 minutes of fighting, which is massive. If any other profession suffered that much damage loss, they would go torch Anet’s HQ.

The problem was when you got 4 necros together with a druid/healing tempest…and could maintain 10-12 jagged horrors per necro throughout an entire fractal.

So anet fixed it in typical anet fashion.

Blackari.2051:

“It’s not overpowered”

So tell me then pls, why so many of players rage about fact that they slightly changed mechanic of the spell ? ….
I am laughing at so many of those who rage about this how 1 “nerf” “destroyed” reaper/necro …. all of them acting like if Anet nerfed every single ability ….

Maybe it was overpowered, (although it was not a “slight change” though that is a different argument) but that is why I do not ask for them to be reinstated. Necro is a class that ANET provided to us. Raids are meant to be competitive and difficult because they are the end game, but we can not use a class that they provide to us for play? The class has needed some tender loving care since the game came out. Despite my statement earlier about healer Necros? I am sure I am not alone that if Necro was a comparable healer to ranger we would re-gear to play healer. But ANET needs to make Necro comparative to SOME form of game play or else why provide the option? The flavor of a class is pointless if it is not played.

Necro does not need to be the best at condi, power, heal, buff… but it should be comparable to another usable class. Then for example, a condi druid OR a necro could fill a condi slot in the party (each with their own benefits such as epi vs. utility spirits to free up druid healer utilities) which provides variety in the game play. That would make it competitive. If you are not playing your role well, then you would be replaced with a different necro or druid. There is nothing competitive about… go reroll nub, your class is useless.

Quarktastic.1027:

The problem was when you got 4 necros together with a druid/healing tempest…and could maintain 10-12 jagged horrors per necro throughout an entire fractal.

So anet fixed it in typical anet fashion.

I agree this is not something to be promoted. It is no different from the earlier years of the game when dungeon runs were greatly overtaken by the 4 warriors 1 mes party composition. But the answer is not to make Necro a burden to the rest of the party either. This will only reinstate the exclusion Necro has faced for the greater half of this game’s life.

ldyAmalthea.5028:

Quarktastic.1027:

The problem was when you got 4 necros together with a druid/healing tempest…and could maintain 10-12 jagged horrors per necro throughout an entire fractal.

So anet fixed it in typical anet fashion.

I agree this is not something to be promoted. It is no different from the earlier years of the game when dungeon runs were greatly overtaken by the 4 warriors 1 mes party composition. But the answer is not to make Necro a burden to the rest of the party either. This will only reinstate the exclusion Necro has faced for the greater half of this game’s life.

To be fair, the 4war1mes comp was mostly due to people not understanding how things work.

Killing off jagged horrors like this was a good thing, really. What we need/would’ve needed though was more damage on our skills. Higher numbers alone most likely would’ve been detrimental to other areas, so changing how skills work would’ve been necessary; i.e. giving us bonus effects if certain conditions are met (Feast of Corruption does this, more conditions = more torment and LF) or, for example, changing scepter 2 into a pulsing AoE – with this we would get more damage in PvE and potentially WvW/PvP, however no one in their right mind would stay still in there. If necessary, the radius of the pulsing area could be smaller than the initial impact etc.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

To be fair, the 4war1mes comp was mostly due to people not understanding how things work.

I’m not sure I agree with you there. The dungeons were never hard even before the power creep, just a matter of learning mechanics. It could be argued though that because the composition was so overpowered those who ran these parties didn’t need to learn the mechanics… stuff just died too quickly to be a threat. This is just like how necro had one super strong skill which allowed all necro parties (or 4 with a druid) to be done with all 3 t4 dailies in no time at all with minimal effort.

The only difference is when they finally addressed the issue, warrior gained a new more party friendly role of ps warrior. What role does necro have now in raids? other than as the joke.

I do agree with you that the jagged horrors are a symptom of the problem and some work needs to be done to the skills. I really like your idea in fact. Make the skills stronger if used strategically. That would promote learning the class and encourage players to become more skilled. Skilled players + supported class = awesome fun. Playing a mash 1 to win (or press elite, skill 4, exit elite) isn’t really playing at all.

ldyAmalthea.5028:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

To be fair, the 4war1mes comp was mostly due to people not understanding how things work.

I’m not sure I agree with you there. The dungeons were never hard even before the power creep, just a matter of learning mechanics. It could be argued though that because the composition was so overpowered those who ran these parties didn’t need to learn the mechanics… stuff just died too quickly to be a threat. This is just like how necro had one super strong skill which allowed all necro parties (or 4 with a druid) to be done with all 3 t4 dailies in no time at all with minimal effort.

The only difference is when they finally addressed the issue, warrior gained a new more party friendly role of ps warrior. What role does necro have now in raids? other than as the joke.

I do agree with you that the jagged horrors are a symptom of the problem and some work needs to be done to the skills. I really like your idea in fact. Make the skills stronger if used strategically. That would promote learning the class and encourage players to become more skilled. Skilled players + supported class = awesome fun. Playing a mash 1 to win (or press elite, skill 4, exit elite) isn’t really playing at all.

Oh, I’m not talking about not understanding dungeons. I’m talking about not understanding fundamental game mechanics such as that banners don’t stack, 100b shows the total damage and not the damage of the current hit…
Those were misconceptions floating around often back then, as far as I remember. Once people realised that those things simply aren’t true it started to break apart.

Exactly. People always say it’s a super easy faceroll class simply because you have a lot of HP + shroud which forces you to facetank most things, but they never look past that, let alone on how to get a (close to) perfect dps rotation, including the timing on when you enter shroud (as you obviously can’t see your shroud cooldowns) and the positioning required in order to have to facetank/dodge the smallest amount of hits possible, even more so than other classes have (not saying other classes don’t have to watch that, necro just has to do so even more) and the rotation by itself is honestly on par with half the other classes in this game.

If you keep the skills as they are and add damage by fulfilling conditions etc. the players less comfortable on necro can still get some sort of okay dps-output while those who fully know how to get the most out of necro can excel in what would still mostly be single target condi damage. On top of that, there’s less reason for people to run their mouth on “how easy everything is with necro”. It’s a win in every way.

To continue that, deathly swarm for example could have part of its swarm latch onto each target it hits, continuously inflicting bleed and torment ticks for a set amount of time with the swarm getting removed if the affected enemy dodges. (In WvW this probably wouldn’t be strong and in PvP the necro would have to make sure his targets won’t be capable of dodging when the skill is used.)
I guess Enfeebling Blood could be a pulsating AoE too, can’t really come up with anything right now. Maybe something that triggers if the target already suffers from weakness.

Do you think people realize that? As a Necro you need to develop an internal timer for the death shroud skills otherwise you waste time and mess up your rotation to go into death shroud only to find your skills are not available (then shroud in general is on cool down.) That’s fine though, it is part of the challenge of the class. We may have “a second health bar” which runs through like water (I admit it can buy a few precious seconds in a pinch) but we lack utility too. It’s a great point you’ve made.

I’m curious… do you think ANET will even wander into our little corner of the forum? They have not treated Necros well. Even their comment of “necros have been fairing quite well” feels so anti-necro. “Necros have been fairing quite well” … so we need to fix that and take away the one real strength you have capitalized on to become a viable part of the game… it’s so dismissive like they never intended Necro to be anything worthwhile. I really have to wonder if anyone will see what is being discussed here whether or not they care to act on it. It’d be nice to at least be heard.

I’m not sure they do, but I assume so. Would be weird for them to not at least have someone read this, the question would be who reads it and if they even agree with us, which I have a feeling they don’t more often than not.

We lost consistent summoning of Jagged Horrors when Rise! was changed in beta to shambling horrors on a timer. Sound familiar? The difference then and now is that almost everyone praised the change as good, and sort of glossed over all of the reasons for the change. Lost to time, we are now in a position where people are basically clamoring for Rise! to be changed back. I see people on reddit basically asking for a skill that summons Jagged horrors consistently on a 45-60 second timer. It’s silly to me that there is no memory of balance changes. I still want necros to be strong but I have to agree with another commenter elsewhere that the devs are probably looking forward to the next expansion/elite spec to give Necros another play style at this point instead of trying to make Reaper or base necro on par with Ele or War in terms of damage.

nightwulf.1986:

We lost consistent summoning of Jagged Horrors when Rise! was changed in beta to shambling horrors on a timer. Sound familiar? The difference then and now is that almost everyone praised the change as good, and sort of glossed over all of the reasons for the change. Lost to time, we are now in a position where people are basically clamoring for Rise! to be changed back. I see people on reddit basically asking for a skill that summons Jagged horrors consistently on a 45-60 second timer. It’s silly to me that there is no memory of balance changes. I still want necros to be strong but I have to agree with another commenter elsewhere that the devs are probably looking forward to the next expansion/elite spec to give Necros another play style at this point instead of trying to make Reaper or base necro on par with Ele or War in terms of damage.

If you’re using Rise with Augury of Death (you should be), hitting 5 targets puts Rise on a 28 second cooldown, and the minions live for up to 25 seconds. That’s only 3 seconds of downtime, assuming you still have 5 targets after the first 28 seconds.

The jagged horrors from Lich Form live 30 seconds, and Lich form itself has a 3 minute cooldown. That’s 150 seconds of downtime. And there aren’t a lot of areas in fractals (not sure about raids) where you can really abuse death nova to maintain your horrors. Of course, part of that has to do with some enemies not counting for “on kill” traits and sigils.

I’m seeing a lot of rationalizing of the jaggie nerf, but everyone’s forgetting one huge fact. ArenaNet provided NO explanation for the nerf. In fact, they said necbros were in a good place content-wide and they were just buffing power builds a bit to make those builds viable. Then they nerfed jaggies to kitten. It’s fine to nerf jaggies to kitten, if they provided ANY amount of reason or logic for it. They instead provided reasoning for why it SHOULDN’T have been nerfed and did it anyways. It didn’t make power builds more viable, it made rerolling more viable.

THAT SAID, I too am on board with some kind of other buffs instead of just making jaggies viable again. Personally, I would very much like it if they made a viable tanking spec for necbros that can be competitive with chronbros (maybe something that focuses on minions and healing). I know it’ll never happen because ArenaNet has arbitrarily decided that chronos should be the only ones tanking ever, but it would at least be an interesting change to make the class viable.

It’s “a minor bugfix”, duh.

@nightwulf: Pretty sure people are just crying for the change to get reverted because it wasn’t op in a way Rise was (I’m not sure how Rise worked in the beta besides what you mentioned as I got dragged back into the game by a friend few days before HoT was released, so I wasn’t able to participate in any of that, but I assume it gave damage reduction back then too) and, to be honest, I don’t think most people know what else to do. They see the change, they see how hit it hard and their only solution is “revert, it was uncalled for”. That’s partly due to them not having any idea how else to fix the problems caused by this, probably them knowing Anet won’t give us plenty of buffs otherwise and in a way they’re right; even something as cheesy as this did not make us overpowered. If this really caused problems, they could’ve slapped a cap on it as emergency solution (even if it was 5 which still would’ve been bad but much better than what we have now) or simply waited until they have an idea on how to buff us otherwise.

Saying “they’re preparing us for the next spec” is an extremely lazy and unexcuseable thing to say/do. Remember how elite specs were supposed to be sidegrades, providing simply a different style of play? We all know how true that held the first time around, repeating it another time would be straight up insulting. Worst case scenario is that they will, no one is gonna take reaper anymore because scourge will be so much better and then they’ll slowly nerf the new elite specs until the next ones arrive. I really hope this won’t happen.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

It’s “a minor bugfix”, duh.

@nightwulf: Pretty sure people are just crying for the change to get reverted because it wasn’t op in a way Rise was (I’m not sure how Rise worked in the beta besides what you mentioned as I got dragged back into the game by a friend few days before HoT was released, so I wasn’t able to participate in any of that, but I assume it gave damage reduction back then too) and, to be honest, I don’t think most people know what else to do. They see the change, they see how hit it hard and their only solution is “revert, it was uncalled for”. That’s partly due to them not having any idea how else to fix the problems caused by this, probably them knowing Anet won’t give us plenty of buffs otherwise and in a way they’re right; even something as cheesy as this did not make us overpowered. If this really caused problems, they could’ve slapped a cap on it as emergency solution (even if it was 5 which still would’ve been bad but much better than what we have now) or simply waited until they have an idea on how to buff us otherwise.

Saying “they’re preparing us for the next spec” is an extremely lazy and unexcuseable thing to say/do. Remember how elite specs were supposed to be sidegrades, providing simply a different style of play? We all know how true that held the first time around, repeating it another time would be straight up insulting. Worst case scenario is that they will, no one is gonna take reaper anymore because scourge will be so much better and then they’ll slowly nerf the new elite specs until the next ones arrive. I really hope this won’t happen.

Rise initially was just jagged horrors. No damage reduction. Necros at that point largely hated jagged horrors because they died quickly and didn’t do much. Players asked for a new minion and maybe something to make reapers tankier. There were other suggestions but those were the ones I remember. But that’s not all! While Rise! was still jagged horrors, players quickly tested and found out that you could keep all those health degenerating minions alive and amass tons of them in group events where there was a lot of incidental healing. Some time later, Anet changed Rise not only to a new minion (technically the Chinese bone minion model), they also did away with the health degeneration and gave them a timed lifespan. Why? Because they noticed how many jagged horrors players were able to keep alive during group events. For technical and balance reasons, they said, they changed the health degeneration. So, if you are curious as to why they didn’t simply add a minion cap for Mark of Horror, well, they did. It’s 5. It’s the limit on that particular skill they were aiming for. Heart of Thorns showed them it’s potential could be overblown through concerted effort.

As for your last point, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think Anet is balancing with future elite specs in mind, which is what I was hoping to point out. They definitely have some challenges carving out new niches for all 8 professions and creating new and effective play styles going forward. Elite specs serve their purpose in theory. They provide a way to play that doesn’t exist in the core traitlines. You also can’t couple elite specs with other elite specs so it’s never a true additive power/options increase. The problem, as I see it, is that the perceived meta professions were largely already ideal in players eyes so getting them to change their meta builds to include new traits would require some dramatic shifts in either core trait balance, a straight power upgrade through the elite spec, or a paradigm shift in combat mechanics.

Necros definitely benefited from the Reaper trait line mostly in sustained melee damage, not much elsewhere. Rangers, also lackluster previously, got an interesting healing niche carved out for them. Elsewhere, the other classes that are seen as functional or meta didn’t benefit as much or perhaps benefited from the elite spec system for the wrong reasons. Just for example, Warrior and Mesmer elites might as well be considered pure upgrades in what they get versus have to give up. Ele, having never left the meta in most game modes, doesn’t really need it’s elite spec but it’s another way to play. Necros have the most wiggle room in terms of giving them something they don’t already have, other classes not so much. You could either see that as a problem with Necromancers or a problem with the design of all the other classes. You wouldn’t be wrong in either case, it’s simply a matter of how you approach the issue.

nightwulf.1986:

We lost consistent summoning of Jagged Horrors when Rise! was changed in beta to shambling horrors on a timer. Sound familiar? The difference then and now is that almost everyone praised the change as good, and sort of glossed over all of the reasons for the change. Lost to time, we are now in a position where people are basically clamoring for Rise! to be changed back. I see people on reddit basically asking for a skill that summons Jagged horrors consistently on a 45-60 second timer. It’s silly to me that there is no memory of balance changes. I still want necros to be strong but I have to agree with another commenter elsewhere that the devs are probably looking forward to the next expansion/elite spec to give Necros another play style at this point instead of trying to make Reaper or base necro on par with Ele or War in terms of damage.

You are not the first I have seen make the reference to rise.

I can not speak for everyone, but I certainly did not forget about Rise. I didn’t have a problem with that change. That was more of an “aww” moment, because it was fun, but not necessary to be viable.

The poor comparison makes me wonder if you or others who have made that statement (while asking “doesn’t anyone remember?”) has stopped to look at the data of what the recent balance patch has done to a necro’s dps in a raid setting.

Try to think about it this way… when they nerfed Rise? I could still go to Tangled Depths and other Hot locations and take part in the content there (the big content at the time.) Such is not the state of Necros after this balance patch.

Sasori.8642:

I’m seeing a lot of rationalizing of the jaggie nerf, but everyone’s forgetting one huge fact. ArenaNet provided NO explanation for the nerf. In fact, they said necbros were in a good place content-wide and they were just buffing power builds a bit to make those builds viable. Then they nerfed jaggies to kitten. It’s fine to nerf jaggies to kitten, if they provided ANY amount of reason or logic for it. They instead provided reasoning for why it SHOULDN’T have been nerfed and did it anyways. It didn’t make power builds more viable, it made rerolling more viable.

No, we didn’t forget. It was commented on about how dismissive Anet has been with the Necro class. “Your fairing quite well” so…. smashes Necro in the leg with a sledgehammer and now your not! haha!

They are pulling some joker nonsense.

Some are saying it is because of new elite. That doesn’t make sense to me. Then change how skills work when the new elite comes out? But you are totally right… people can take up sides whether ANET did the right thing or not still it comes down to no one knows why and ANET hasn’t said anything other than “Necro has been fairing quite well…”

ldyAmalthea.5028:

nightwulf.1986:

We lost consistent summoning of Jagged Horrors when Rise! was changed in beta to shambling horrors on a timer. Sound familiar? The difference then and now is that almost everyone praised the change as good, and sort of glossed over all of the reasons for the change. Lost to time, we are now in a position where people are basically clamoring for Rise! to be changed back. I see people on reddit basically asking for a skill that summons Jagged horrors consistently on a 45-60 second timer. It’s silly to me that there is no memory of balance changes. I still want necros to be strong but I have to agree with another commenter elsewhere that the devs are probably looking forward to the next expansion/elite spec to give Necros another play style at this point instead of trying to make Reaper or base necro on par with Ele or War in terms of damage.

You are not the first I have seen make the reference to rise.

I can not speak for everyone, but I certainly did not forget about Rise. I didn’t have a problem with that change. That was more of an “aww” moment, because it was fun, but not necessary to be viable.

The poor comparison makes me wonder if you or others who have made that statement (while asking “doesn’t anyone remember?”) has stopped to look at the data of what the recent balance patch has done to a necro’s dps in a raid setting.

Try to think about it this way… when they nerfed Rise? I could still go to Tangled Depths and other Hot locations and take part in the content there (the big content at the time.) Such is not the state of Necros after this balance patch.

I see the comparison you are trying to make at the end there and yes, I hear some other players making it too. Although, I don’t think comparing Tangled Depths (open world pve) to Raids is apt. No one really cared about Necros in open world much, it was always in instanced small group content that they got singled out (PVP, Dungeons). However, your implied point about not being meta in Raids anymore takes us back to the question of, should Anet balance for the player driven Meta, against it, or some other option? Was Anet nerfing ice bow 4 and fiery great sword in the dungeon era a good thing or a bad thing? Was nerfing all the charge moves against a wall a good thing or a bad thing? Should Anet adjust skill power around what the maximum potential players find a skill to have or around what power level Anet believes the skill should have? In other words, why not just leave Mark of Horror as is since some players found that what damage it added allowed it compete with other class dps?

I don’t think these questions have answers that are black and white. We’ve been arguing about these philosophical questions of balance since the dungeon era when Necro was highly unpopular and haven’t established anything more than players will continue to make their own rules about how the game should play, and the devs may or may not agree with those ideas.

The necromancer needs at least an additional 3k DPS someplace now that the Jaggeds are gone, or else it goes to the scrap heap.

The Jaggeds were great because they didn’t unbalance PvP.

nightwulf.1986:

I see the comparison you are trying to make at the end there and yes, I hear some other players making it too. Although, I don’t think comparing Tangled Depths (open world pve) to Raids is apt. No one really cared about Necros in open world much, it was always in instanced small group content that they got singled out (PVP, Dungeons). However, your implied point about not being meta in Raids anymore takes us back to the question of, should Anet balance for the player driven Meta, against it, or some other option? Was Anet nerfing ice bow 4 and fiery great sword in the dungeon era a good thing or a bad thing? Was nerfing all the charge moves against a wall a good thing or a bad thing? Should Anet adjust skill power around what the maximum potential players find a skill to have or around what power level Anet believes the skill should have? In other words, why not just leave Mark of Horror as is since some players found that what damage it added allowed it compete with other class dps?

I don’t think these questions have answers that are black and white. We’ve been arguing about these philosophical questions of balance since the dungeon era when Necro was highly unpopular and haven’t established anything more than players will continue to make their own rules about how the game should play, and the devs may or may not agree with those ideas.

I understand it is a poor comparison, because what can compare to raids? But if you really did try to consider it… the point I was trying to make was that the Reapers had to learn handle the new monsters of the new maps which were challenging with the way the skills were changed. It wasn’t easier, but it was manageable. Necro did not walk into the map and instantly die with no chance of surviving regardless of player skill. As for the icebow nerf to dungeons? Eles were not left off the roster because of it, so that isn’t a good comparison either. Necros are not playable in raids because unfortunately it was that one skill we got the majority of our dps from.

With Necro lacking a build that parallels any other class, whether it is META or not – they hold back the team. For example, I used to take my thief into raids. The dps did not really compare with ele (META DPS) especially for large hitbox but it was comparable enough that if the team wanted to bring me it was still doable. If you don’t believe me just go look for the comparison charts released post release.

There is no role now that Necro can be compared to. They can not condi, dps, or boon/heal. So, why have it available? Why have Necro available only to learn when you want to do the content they provide it’s not useable?

Before we worry about the philosophical standpoints we would need some concrete information to begin from or else we are just making wild assumptions, and ANET’s only explanation was “Necros are fairing well…”

These are the problems I have with this. Regardless of their reasoning though the fact remains, Necro COULD raid then “balance patch” and now they can not.

I also loved to finally have a build where you could play a “pet necromancer” without the totally useless utility pets. But people abuse healing horrors in raids and BAM nerfed to crap.
Thanks a lot, balance team, you really sucked the joy out of my necromancer.
I’m HIGHLY disappointed with that patch. And now it’s waiting for 2-3 months at least until something might get fixed. Yay.
What I’d suggest as a fix would be making the Mark of Horrors its own elite skill like mentioned above with a much much shorter cooldown. And the horrors should last at LEAST a full minute. 30s with 5 horrors on a 3 minute cooldown is completely subpar.
“We feel necromancer is in a pretty good spot.” – Bug fixed.