Guild Wars 2

Fynd.4890:

Kill.6973:

Fynd.4890:

If you played the game before the November 15th patch, then logged in on the 15th, you would notice that Necrotic Grasp velocity was changed along with the scepter speeds and not documented like they were.

Never happened without ANET confirmation. Even if they so called changed it, it is still one of the slowest auto attack in the game….there is no point for the “change” because it is pretty bad.

I think you are confusing between the speed and the range. Range increase? Perhaps.
The speed at which it travels, same old.

I’m done repeating myself. Enjoy your journeys in Azeroth.

Just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about, there was no speed change to necrotic grasp and no reason why a scepter auto should be on par with a staff auto attack wise.

TheWalkingDead.7298

Just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about, there was no speed change to necrotic grasp and no reason why a scepter auto should be on par with a staff auto attack wise.

I know exactly what I’m talking about regarding anything related to necro ; I’ve been reporting class bugs / editing the wiki / keeping track of class changes since BWE1.

If you want to continue your inquest against me with your buddy Kill.6973, do it elsewhere – I’m just here to help.

Fynd.4890:

TheWalkingDead.7298

Just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about, there was no speed change to necrotic grasp and no reason why a scepter auto should be on par with a staff auto attack wise.

I know exactly what I’m talking about regarding anything related to necro ; I’ve been reporting class bugs / editing the wiki / keeping track of class changes since BWE1.

If you want to continue your inquest against me with your buddy Kill.6973, do it elsewhere – I’m just here to help.

Stop crying and saying people are out here to be against you, from what i see you are the only one calling out people by saying “enjoy your journeys to Azeroth”.

There is one simple argument that most people on this thread agree and stressing.
tehdirtyfivethirty.3507, UndeadPriest.8632, TheWalkingDead.7298, XiL.4318, and lettucemode.3789 are the only ones pretty much discussing this “issue”. 4 out 5 are saying to not compare a scepter with a staff.

Kill.6973:

Fynd.4890:

TheWalkingDead.7298

Just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about, there was no speed change to necrotic grasp and no reason why a scepter auto should be on par with a staff auto attack wise.

I know exactly what I’m talking about regarding anything related to necro ; I’ve been reporting class bugs / editing the wiki / keeping track of class changes since BWE1.

If you want to continue your inquest against me with your buddy Kill.6973, do it elsewhere – I’m just here to help.

Stop crying and saying people are out here to be against you, from what i see you are the only one calling out people by saying “enjoy your journeys to Azeroth”.

There is one simple argument that most people on this thread agree and stressing.
tehdirtyfivethirty.3507, UndeadPriest.8632, TheWalkingDead.7298, XiL.4318, and lettucemode.3789 are the only ones pretty much discussing this “issue”. 4 out 5 are saying to not compare a scepter with a staff.

All I’m asking is that you explain how you wish for necro staff(more specifically Necrotic Grasp) to be fixed. You’re stating your dislike for it, but no solutions to the supposed problem.

Mr Peters: Thank you for dropping by and letting us know about the upcoming fix. We’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

I was just stating the problem with it, i don’t believe its my job to make a solution. Last time i checked i’m in the medical field. Dislike is a word you used to belittle this situation. I’m just upset, like most, that other classes such as an ele have a decent auto attack staff speed.
Staff, to me at least, is my primary dps output and to see it being avoided most of the time with its speed is disappointing, let alone its damage is weak but that’s not what we are discussing atm.

Kill.6973:

I was just stating the problem with it, i don’t believe its my job to make a solution. Last time i checked i’m in the medical field. Dislike is a word you used to belittle this situation. I’m just upset, like most, that other classes such as an ele have a decent auto attack staff speed.
Staff, to me at least, is my primary dps output and to see it being avoided most of the time with its speed is disappointing, let alone its damage is weak but that’s not what we are discussing atm.

If all classes were defined by their auto attacks, this game would be in an even more sad state than it currently is. Spamming 1 for your main source of DPS is poor gameplay, that’s why Dagger mainhand will always be a disaster to balance. Devolving necro into a shortbow ranger just spamming staff 1 at range would be a detriment to the class’ current playstyle, which – in my opinion – is in a good state. Necro just needs the last of their bugs fixed.

striker.3704:

alanis.6094:

alanis.6094:

striker.3704:

alanis.6094:

RashanDale.3609:

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Thanks for the update! I’m hoping the team realized that 5% is just absurdly small, and 20-25% feels much more appropriate.

20%-25% on the other hand would be a must-have for almost every necro. not sure if i want that.

Necrotic bite would go from 4% to 5%.

FoC would go from 2% to 2.5% per condition.

Necrotic Grasp would go from 3% to 3.75%

…25% is perfectly fine.

It doesn’t sound like a lot on paper but it adds up quickly. Not to mention at a 5 point investment for 25% faster life force generation is a bit crazy. That’s better than most of our grand master passive traits.

Just because our GM (and most other traits) are pretty terrible, doesn’t mean this is OP. I can name 6-7 minor traits on my Mesmer that are more powerful than this.

And to go a bit further— in comparison to my Mesmer, if their traits are a good baseline it wouldn’t be outrageous to have this trait:

“All abilities that inflict conditions recharge 20% faster” as a 5pt minor trait.

Basically, many classes have strong stuff out there — while 25% more LF sounds like a lot, I don’t think its really that much. If it gets buffed to 10%, it is still a very, very weak trait.

The issue I have with it isn’t that the rest of the skills are under powered. It’s that if this trait becomes THAT much better than everything else it becomes a must have for any necro. I don’t want to see anything become like that for all builds.

25% doesn’t sound like much, but that’s still 25% less time needed to generate life force which could be a big deal.

meanwhile, mesmer has a 5 point trait that gives them 20% CDR on a massive amount of skills — both utility and weapon skills.

Brienson.7319:

striker.3704:

alanis.6094:

alanis.6094:

striker.3704:

alanis.6094:

RashanDale.3609:

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Thanks for the update! I’m hoping the team realized that 5% is just absurdly small, and 20-25% feels much more appropriate.

20%-25% on the other hand would be a must-have for almost every necro. not sure if i want that.

Necrotic bite would go from 4% to 5%.

FoC would go from 2% to 2.5% per condition.

Necrotic Grasp would go from 3% to 3.75%

…25% is perfectly fine.

It doesn’t sound like a lot on paper but it adds up quickly. Not to mention at a 5 point investment for 25% faster life force generation is a bit crazy. That’s better than most of our grand master passive traits.

Just because our GM (and most other traits) are pretty terrible, doesn’t mean this is OP. I can name 6-7 minor traits on my Mesmer that are more powerful than this.

And to go a bit further— in comparison to my Mesmer, if their traits are a good baseline it wouldn’t be outrageous to have this trait:

“All abilities that inflict conditions recharge 20% faster” as a 5pt minor trait.

Basically, many classes have strong stuff out there — while 25% more LF sounds like a lot, I don’t think its really that much. If it gets buffed to 10%, it is still a very, very weak trait.

The issue I have with it isn’t that the rest of the skills are under powered. It’s that if this trait becomes THAT much better than everything else it becomes a must have for any necro. I don’t want to see anything become like that for all builds.

25% doesn’t sound like much, but that’s still 25% less time needed to generate life force which could be a big deal.

meanwhile, mesmer has a 5 point trait that gives them 20% CDR on a massive amount of skills — both utility and weapon skills.

Like I mentioned before, the value for the trait shouldn’t be based on other classes but instead be based on the relative value of our existing traits. If all of our traits need buffing, then it should be done in little bits or all at once. Not in chunks that favor certain specs.

Fynd.4890:

Test it yourself. Go into the mists with a friend on mesmer or guardian and spam 1’s on golems.

My request was for you to provide proof as you were the one making the statement,
as I haven’t seen any official numbers for velocity (time/range traveled)
but it’s a moot point,
since you are still comparing it to, in your own words
“the other 2 slowest auto-attack projectiles in the game”
therefore you yourself have provided a reason for why people
at least feel the projectile is too slow
So, your left with discussing the merits of it’s utility or damage versus other weapon/profession combos.

Which as I’ve already stated, that I feel it’s less an issue with the Auto-Attack itself,
then the Staff setup, which forces too much of a reliance on the Auto-Attack skill (Necrotic Grasp).
So even if it has the same projectile speed, it doesn’t counter the argument that the Staff in the hands of a Necromancer, is not perceived as fun or effective as it should be in comparison with other Profession/Weapon combos to many players.
Some have argued that this is due to the Flight Speed of it’s projectile
(An Argument, which while I’m not convinced is true,
I accept to be as valid as any other for what could be altered to make this skill feel more worthwhile)

Fynd.4890:

You want necro staff to have direct damage parity with ele staff ? That would be poor design, in my opinion.

No, not necessarily, my point was simply your
argument for being able to hit multiple targets
making it better than other auto-attacks, wasn’t really valid
when you actually compared it with other Staff Auto-Attacks.
As I said before I’m more or less fine with the status quo on number of targets and damage values, as long as the fun and utility of wielding a Staff as a Necromancer
is on Par with other weapon/profession combos.
Which right now I would agree with others that it feels lacking,
I simply have a different idea for the solution.

Fynd.4890:

UndeadPriest.8632:

While I think Necrotic Grasp does indeed Feel like it’s too slow, I don’t think it need anything more than a minor tweak at most

The devs read these forums for design suggestions, all ideas help.

LoL… I had a strange image of all the Dev’s at Anet huddled around their computers hitting refresh on their browsers waiting for me to tell them how to fix everything pop into my head when I read that, and it made me laugh. ;-)

On a more serious note, If I changed anything with the auto-attack, I would likely decrease it’s activation time to .5 to put it more in line with the scepter skills you mentioned,
but that’s assuming that the changes I suggested to the Mark skills were also implemented, otherwise I don’t think it addresses the main issues with utilizing a staff as a Necromancer

So as I stated before

I think the more import failure is with the Marks (staff skills 2-5) and their recharges (i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)
If the recharges on all the marks was decreased
say by like 30-40% (a very rough estimate) than this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack
(Except Mark of Blood, I think it’s recharge is at a pretty good point where it is.)

UndeadPriest.8632:

So as I stated before

I think the more import failure is with the Marks (staff skills 2-5) and their recharges (i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)
If the recharges on all the marks was decreased
say by like 30-40% (a very rough estimate) than this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack
(Except Mark of Blood, I think it’s recharge is at a pretty good point where it is.)

Staff is an extremely powerful weapon. It is not meant to be used solely by itself though. Swapping weapons is a requirement for playing any class to its fullest. If you want to spam AAs to kill things I suggest you look into ranger short bow.

UndeadPriest.8632:

So even if it has the same projectile speed, it doesn’t counter the argument that the Staff in the hands of a Necromancer, is not perceived as fun or effective as it should be in comparison with other Profession/Weapon combos to many players.
Some have argued that this is due to the Flight Speed of it’s projectile
(An Argument, which while I’m not convinced is true,
I accept to be as valid as any other for what could be altered to make this skill feel more worthwhile)

Everyone I know that mains Mesmer and Guardian scepter complains about the sluggish projectile speed of their scepters and wish they’d get buffed again. Of course necros are going to feel the same way. In an ideal world for people that main “X” class, they want “Y” weapon to shoot kittening lasers that hit 20 people with one projectile and destroys all their siege/gates.

UndeadPriest.8632:

No, not necessarily, my point was simply your
argument for being able to hit multiple targets
making it better than other auto-attacks, wasn’t really valid
when you actually compared it with other Staff Auto-Attacks.
As I said before I’m more or less fine with the status quo on number of targets and damage values, as long as the fun and utility of wielding a Staff as a Necromancer
is on Par with other weapon/profession combos.
Which right now I would agree with others that it feels lacking,
I simply have a different idea for the solution.

I still feel my argument is valid that Necromancer staff auto-attack is where it should be in comparison to the other light armor staff classes.

Elementalists’ Fireball edges Necrotic Grasp out in damage and velocity – this is expected from a class whose archetype being the master of ranged direct damage.

Mesmer’s Winds of Chaos isn’t that great if you’re not within 600 range for the bounceback and I’d rate it on par with Necrotic Grasp.

UndeadPriest.8632:

On a more serious note, If I changed anything with the auto-attack, I would likely decrease it’s activation time to .5 to put it more in line with the scepter skills you mentioned,
but that’s assuming that the changes I suggested to the Mark skills were also implemented, otherwise I don’t think it addresses the main issues with utilizing a staff as a Necromancer

So as I stated before

I think the more import failure is with the Marks (staff skills 2-5) and their recharges (i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)
If the recharges on all the marks was decreased
say by like 30-40% (a very rough estimate) than this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack
(Except Mark of Blood, I think it’s recharge is at a pretty good point where it is.)

The mark recharge times are fine and well-tuned, you’re acting as though necromancers don’t have a weapon swap. Your staff marks are on cooldown ? Swap to scepter and throw Grasping Dead / Enfeebling Blood – stack some bleeds/poison, then go back to staff.

Lower the cooldowns on any marks and tPVP team fights will get utterly dominated more than they already do by necros.

hackks.3687:

Staff is an extremely powerful weapon. It is not meant to be used solely by itself though. Swapping weapons is a requirement for playing any class to its fullest. If you want to spam AAs to kill things I suggest you look into ranger short bow.

When did I ever suggest Spamming AA’s was a good thing?,
You need to actually read my post,
I frankly feel too much emphasis is being placed on the Auto-Attack.
I would rather be able to spend more time using other skills,
rather than having nothing but AutoAttacks while waiting for the other skills to come off their cooldowns.

Fynd.4890:

The cooldowns are fine, you’re acting as though necromancers don’t have a weapon swap. Your staff marks are on cooldown ? Swap to scepter and throw Grasping Dead / Enfeebling Blood – stack some bleeds/poison, then go back to staff.

Lower the cooldowns on any marks and tPVP team fights will get utterly dominated more than they already do by necros.

As far as Weapon Swapping,
Obviously, I do so all the time, I’m not sure if there is any other way to successfully play a Necromancer, especially if you use a staff as one of your weapons.

My point is that despite weapon swapping you are still using an Auto-Attack most of the time, and with the staff, switching back immediately doesn’t provide you much selection since the only thing that will have recharged in 10 seconds, or (even 16 seconds when traited) is Mark of Blood.

As far as “dominated by Necros more than they already do”
I’m not suggesting, there wouldn’t be a need for balancing the numbers for damage (condition and direct)

My suggestion was in reference to the long cooldowns making your skill options very limited during most of any fight, leaving you with only Auto-Attacks
Therefore, the Staff Auto-Attack feeling lackluster actually would matter,
if more than half of the time in a fight your left with a choice of spamming that or your other weapon’s Auto-Attack because you’re waiting for your other skills to come off cooldown.

I don’t want the Auto-Attack, to be the reason to use the weapon,
which is why I’m not advocating major changes to the autoattack.
I do however, want the other selection of skills on the bar,
to leave me with more than
(use autoattack or use different autoattack for the majority of the battle)

While a lot of skills have long cooldowns,
I currently find the Staff to be overly “burst-y”, even in excess of the other weapons,
and is basically just what I use at the beginning of a battle, and every 20 seconds or so,
since its way less fun/useful to use it’s auto-attack than whatever other weapon you have.

Fynd.4890:

Everyone I know that mains Mesmer and Guardian scepter complains about the sluggish projectile speed of their scepters and wish they’d get buffed again. Of course necros are going to feel the same way. In an ideal world for people that main “X” class, they want “Y” weapon to shoot kittening lasers that hit 20 people with one projectile and destroys all their siege/gates.

Of course,
but I think you can find a middle ground that at least allows people to feel the skill is responsive, and fun to use, without making it utterly game-breaking-ly overpowered.
And FYI, I don’t think this problem is exclusive to the Staff wielding Necromancer, but this is the Necromancer forum, so talking about issues with Guardian & Mesmer scepter skills is a topic for elsewhere.

Fynd.4890:

I still feel my argument is valid that Necromancer staff auto-attack is where it should be in comparison to the other light armor staff classes.

Elementalists’ Fireball edges Necrotic Grasp out in damage and velocity – this is expected from a class whose archetype being the master of ranged direct damage.

Mesmer’s Winds of Chaos isn’t that great if you’re not within 600 range for the bounceback and I’d rate it on par with Necrotic Grasp.

Well, I’m not really arguing that point with you,
merely that the suggestion that it couldn’t possibly need to be changed because it had features that were so superior to other skills,
but in reality was something you could find on other autoattacks was silly.
Frankly I agree, that none of these skills are statwise far and away better than the others.

I apologize for being a broken record, but once again I have to point out,
that I don’t think the Necromancer Staff Auto-Attack is altogether significantly worse than any other autoattack stat-wise,
but I think it does lack the “fun/utility” factor that many other autoattacks possess,
and I strongly feel that the rest of the staff line is too slow on it’s recharge, placing too much emphasis on the Autoattack, or as you pointed out just leaving the weapon swaped out altogether, and using your other weapon’s autoattack.

UndeadPriest.8632:

hackks.3687:

Staff is an extremely powerful weapon. It is not meant to be used solely by itself though. Swapping weapons is a requirement for playing any class to its fullest. If you want to spam AAs to kill things I suggest you look into ranger short bow.

When did I ever suggest Spamming AA’s was a good thing?,
You need to actually read my post,
I frankly feel too much emphasis is being placed on the Auto-Attack.
I would rather be able to spend more time using other skills,
rather than having nothing but AutoAttacks while waiting for the other skills to come off their cooldowns.

when did I ever suggest spamming AAs was a good thing. You merely commented to the effect that you feel you are overly reliant on them. I merely suggested you look deeper into the class to find a way to expand your game play or opt for a simpler, less complicated class to play.

I’ll post what you said again so you can think about it some more

UndeadPriest.8632:

So as I stated before

I think the more import failure is with the Marks (staff skills 2-5) and their recharges (i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)
If the recharges on all the marks was decreased
say by like 30-40% (a very rough estimate) than this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack
(Except Mark of Blood, I think it’s recharge is at a pretty good point where it is.)

The fact that you say “(i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)” suggests you are spamming AAs while you wait for your marks to come off CD rather than swapping weapons/swapping to DS/swapping to Elite/dropping wells/slinging corruptions/etc. There is more to the class than what you are suggesting here.

You then go on to suggest CDs on marks be reduced by 30-40% when we already have a trait for 20% thus your suggestion seems to be asking for it to be made possible to have no need to swap weapons and just allow you to constantly roll through skills 2-5. So your suggestion seems to imply again that you don’t want to switch weapons/transform/DS/etc.

You finish the statement by saying “this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack”. To which all I can say is, I am a staff wielding Necromancer and I don’t rely on my staff AA. I certainly make healthy use of it when the situation calls for it though.

I can only suggest you look into utilizing more of the class as there seem to be some things that are missing from your game play.

hackks.3687:

UndeadPriest.8632:

hackks.3687:

Staff is an extremely powerful weapon. It is not meant to be used solely by itself though. Swapping weapons is a requirement for playing any class to its fullest. If you want to spam AAs to kill things I suggest you look into ranger short bow.

When did I ever suggest Spamming AA’s was a good thing?,
You need to actually read my post,
I frankly feel too much emphasis is being placed on the Auto-Attack.
I would rather be able to spend more time using other skills,
rather than having nothing but AutoAttacks while waiting for the other skills to come off their cooldowns.

when did I ever suggest spamming AAs was a good thing. You merely commented to the effect that you feel you are overly reliant on them. I merely suggested you look deeper into the class to find a way to expand your game play or opt for a simpler, less complicated class to play.

I’ll post what you said again so you can think about it some more

UndeadPriest.8632:

So as I stated before

I think the more import failure is with the Marks (staff skills 2-5) and their recharges (i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)
If the recharges on all the marks was decreased
say by like 30-40% (a very rough estimate) than this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack
(Except Mark of Blood, I think it’s recharge is at a pretty good point where it is.)

The fact that you say “(i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)” suggests you are spamming AAs while you wait for your marks to come off CD rather than swapping weapons/swapping to DS/swapping to Elite/dropping wells/slinging corruptions/etc. There is more to the class than what you are suggesting here.

what he means is that for most necromancer’s the staff is pretty much:
-swap from whatever weapon you were currently using
-drop all marks on the enemy for the combo, chill, damage, weakness, and bleeding
-wait for 15 seconds to be able to go back to your other weapon

It makes sense too, mark of blood has a short cooldown so it gets spammed and chiblains is a simple chill+poison field so it’s a good one to use off cooldown.

putrid mark and reaper’s mark are the only two which have utility. Even then it’s a simple matter of reading your enemy to know what is best to do with them.
condition enemy? wait for a big stack of conditions then use it to send it back.
power based enemy? use it to activate the chiblains combo field for weakness.

for most fights you end up just hitting 2->3->4 right off the bat only leaving reaper’s mark. This means you will be auto attacking and occasionally dropping a mark of blood for about 10-12 seconds waiting on cooldown for weapon swap. That’s a long time, so I can see why he would like a shorter cooldown on marks.

besides, even if you open with the staff instead of your other set, as soon as you switch to the staff you’re back to square one.

striker.3704:

hackks.3687:

UndeadPriest.8632:

hackks.3687:

Staff is an extremely powerful weapon. It is not meant to be used solely by itself though. Swapping weapons is a requirement for playing any class to its fullest. If you want to spam AAs to kill things I suggest you look into ranger short bow.

When did I ever suggest Spamming AA’s was a good thing?,
You need to actually read my post,
I frankly feel too much emphasis is being placed on the Auto-Attack.
I would rather be able to spend more time using other skills,
rather than having nothing but AutoAttacks while waiting for the other skills to come off their cooldowns.

when did I ever suggest spamming AAs was a good thing. You merely commented to the effect that you feel you are overly reliant on them. I merely suggested you look deeper into the class to find a way to expand your game play or opt for a simpler, less complicated class to play.

I’ll post what you said again so you can think about it some more

UndeadPriest.8632:

So as I stated before

I think the more import failure is with the Marks (staff skills 2-5) and their recharges (i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)
If the recharges on all the marks was decreased
say by like 30-40% (a very rough estimate) than this would make it so Staff wielding Necromancers were not spending so much time relying on their auto-attack
(Except Mark of Blood, I think it’s recharge is at a pretty good point where it is.)

The fact that you say “(i.e. your spending most of your time auto-attacking unless you swap weapons)” suggests you are spamming AAs while you wait for your marks to come off CD rather than swapping weapons/swapping to DS/swapping to Elite/dropping wells/slinging corruptions/etc. There is more to the class than what you are suggesting here.

what he means is that for most necromancer’s the staff is pretty much:
-swap from whatever weapon you were currently using
-drop all marks on the enemy for the combo, chill, damage, weakness, and bleeding
-wait for 15 seconds to be able to go back to your other weapon

It makes sense too, mark of blood has a short cooldown so it gets spammed and chiblains is a simple chill+poison field so it’s a good one to use off cooldown.

putrid mark and reaper’s mark are the only two which have utility. Even then it’s a simple matter of reading your enemy to know what is best to do with them.
condition enemy? wait for a big stack of conditions then use it to send it back.
power based enemy? use it to activate the chiblains combo field for weakness.

for most fights you end up just hitting 2->3->4 right off the bat only leaving reaper’s mark. This means you will be auto attacking and occasionally dropping a mark of blood for about 10-12 seconds waiting on cooldown for weapon swap. That’s a long time, so I can see why he would like a shorter cooldown on marks.

besides, even if you open with the staff instead of your other set, as soon as you switch to the staff you’re back to square one.

I don’t understand the 15s wait on weapon swap. Weapon swap is a 10s cd, not 20. I’ll assume it’s a typo for now and should’ve read as 5s.

Dropping all marks would leave you with 5s till swap. #2 can be dropped again after dropping 2-3-4-5 if you were so inclined as it will be off CD at that point. As soon as all my marks are down, I’m out of staff and into DS, then out of DS into dagger/focus, then back to staff to drop 2-3-4 inside a well, then back to DS, then back to dagger/focus, so on and so forth.

If I need faster mark application the 20% cd reduction does a good job of it IMO. I actually avoid it though because it makes me too inclined to stay with staff rather than rotate through all my ability chains and use all the tools I so carefully chose to round out my build with.

I’m really just not having any problems with it. Easy bleeds and regen, poison and chill are awesome, big combo hitting combo with full condition clear, and an aoe Fear. With all that utility what’s not to love?

Anyways, this thread is about Gluttony getting a fix anyways. Can’t wait to see what they did to it. Should smooth out some kinks I think.

Not to be cynical but…

Incoming nerfs to lifeforce gains on the skills themselves to balance it, or something. =p

Anyway if a red is still reading, any chance of having Life Force gains across skills being normalized, and having life force from death being removed. It’d be nice to have consistent life force gains for each weapon and only having it change through traits or utility skills.

Because as you’ve said before “Not having access to your skills sucks”.

Knote.2904:

Not to be cynical but…

Incoming nerfs to lifeforce gains on the skills themselves to balance it, or something. =p

Anyway if a red is still reading, any chance of having Life Force gains across skills being normalized, and having life force from death being removed. It’d be nice to have consistent life force gains for each weapon and only having it change through traits or utility skills.

Because as you’ve said before “Not having access to your skills sucks”.

given their tendency to make small incremental changes I don’t see them nerfing LF gain across the board to make up for the addition of a functioning Gluttony. They’ll certainly keep an eye on it though.

hackks.3687:

Knote.2904:

Not to be cynical but…

Incoming nerfs to lifeforce gains on the skills themselves to balance it, or something. =p

Anyway if a red is still reading, any chance of having Life Force gains across skills being normalized, and having life force from death being removed. It’d be nice to have consistent life force gains for each weapon and only having it change through traits or utility skills.

Because as you’ve said before “Not having access to your skills sucks”.

given their tendency to make small incremental changes I don’t see them nerfing LF gain across the board to make up for the addition of a functioning Gluttony. They’ll certainly keep an eye on it though.

I was pointing more towards us having nerfs alongside our buffs/bug fixes. =p

The thing most of you are forgetting is that you dont want to use staff number 5 unless your being attacked, 3-4 are on a quite a long cd so when you swap, you usually use 2-3-4 then your left with auto attacking.

You cant just weapon swap whenever you want so the weapon swap argument isnt a good direction to go. I truthfully think that with dodging and just moving out of the way slow projectiles have no place, any of them. If you can press A and sidestep a projectile something is wrong. Also staff doesnt really have a fun playstyle, lay down 2-3 marks and either switch weapons or auto-attack.

Not many of the other weapons arent that fun either. I do love necromancers though, theres a lot of things that are just… not fun. A pet on killing an enemy because you need bigger marks that dont last near long enough to do anything. They lose health before they are even fully summoned. The staff auto attack is slow and sluggish and needs to be changed, it just needs a fun factor to it. How to bring about a change like that i dont know, its a highly skill based weapon though. I think maybe making it a good aoe auto attack would fit the weapon pretty well since the rest of the weapon is highly aoe focused.

Instead of it having a penetration have it a siphoning blast or something that explodes on contact in a cloud that has aoe damage that is equal to 50% of the initial hit. It would have a long range and keep the same travel speed but promote getting a little closer in battle to land the hits better. It would still have the scythe effect but it would need a different spell effect. Or it could even leave a cloud of death that poisons people that enter it and it lasts for 1-2 seconds or something. If it lands it has some impact and has a fun appeal to it and the damage wouldnt be overwhelming since the poison can last a short amount of time.

I wouldnt play wvwvw on my guardian just because of trying to level as a melee there was a pain in the kitten and there wasnt a good ranged option, the staff couldnt reach on walls and the enemy could just backpedal away from the pink tennis balls.

Remember that only we have third AA, which is Deathshroud. (Engi are similar, but they take kit and fe. throw grenades). To me DS will always be OP, even more on Power build (where LF > 50% is like 1,150 damage, where thief back damage is 1800, but normal on my thief is less than 1 DS).
As far as I am a little glass cannon and stick to backline on WvW and also pve (and deal my real damage in DS, 900 range, piercing life blasts and so on) I would love to have my staff stacking more LF (even when it’s attacking up to 3 targets). Marks are ok, because they are crucial on WvW, after like 5s when two zergs are in fight. You see all your friends in lots of conditions, put 4, to position 3 and 5, and for lil regen and bleed 2. For me it’s awesome!
But true Necrotic Grasp should be somehow else build. Well I imagine necromancer as half-dead, half-being here creature, it’s why Gluttony must be changed, or connected with changing the Staff and the Axe (instead of vulnerability I would love 5% life force per hit on AA, as far is it is 2x lower range from Staff, but stil a lil faster and the thing is to generate DS and get back to it because “That’s my true form”, and also like my necro says “I am Death incarned!” and that is true about my vision of necro.
We got trait from SR that makes us possibility to get back to DS after 5s. Would love to have 100% LF again after ALWAYS, but always can stack 20% in that time, so it has sense only in 10s (don’t counting deaths nearby, they are big deal in playgame but on WvW fe. they are resing others and mostly don’t get other LF but from skills, so must stay back, spam 1, watch for good time for marks and tap DS for my best damage).
Priority for me is having a possibility to get back fastly to DS so solving problem with Gluttony is also solving problem with staff and axe (that was mentioned in other thread). I imagine and already love now getting 8% life force from Staff attack, or 5% per attack from Axe, and that would be lovely. Deathshroud is our weapon, please give us possibility to get to it more often (in my build now can deal hit 12 attaks that pierce enemies, but only once per a big fight on WvW or after 30s, would love make returns all 10s)

Dunno if it’s too long and a bit chaotic, but I really miss that +5% for each skill used.

/Edit
Oh, “Ghastly Claws” has a definition "Summon spectral claws to slash your foe in a quick flurry of strikes, gaining life force per strike. " Should not be 8% LF for strike, so it would 8% x 8 succesful strikes = 64% LF? Before it was 4% LF per strike, but it was for full used skill. If it was 64% of LF on Ghastly Claws I’d be happy about my necro, if it’s bugged please tell me

Saschare.2049:

Oh, “Ghastly Claws” has a definition "Summon spectral claws to slash your foe in a quick flurry of strikes, gaining life force per strike. " Should not be 8% LF for strike, so it would 8% x 8 succesful strikes = 64% LF? Before it was 4% LF per strike, but it was for full used skill. If it was 64% of LF on Ghastly Claws I’d be happy about my necro, if it’s bugged please tell me

You gain 1% life force per strike of the channel(8x strikes). The tooltip before the November 15th update read, “4%” which implied .5% per strike even though it actually provided 8% life force gain if the full channel landed. It was strictly a tooltip change and no code was edited.

Sure, but I mean the logic (and hope for me :P). I know now in maths it’s 8 strikes and fully gives you 8% LF, not so newbie about necro.
Look, scepter’s 3 – “Feast of Corruption” says "Strike your target, dealing additional damage and gaining !life force for each condition on them.! " Down it says 2% LF and refers to the description. I could get even 10% of LF+ on bosses full of conditions. So, if Axe is so nerfed (reffering to other threads) it should be best on power + DS build, so probably it should fastly regain Life Force. The description of Ghastly Claws says “gaining life force per strike” (same as “gaining life force for each condition”). Strikes are 8 in Ghastly Claws, so it should work the same, like with the conditions on Scepter.
Seems logic to me and with description of the skills like this.
Btw, what for would be trait making DS come back faster (5s CD DS), when in no way you can collect at least 50% of Life Force in 5s?

Saschare.2049:

Btw, what for would be trait making DS come back faster (5s CD DS), when in no way you can collect at least 50% of Life Force in 5s?

You’re really underestimating life force gain in PvE. With so much dieing around you, usually you will find yourself sitting on max life force. I can’t speak for PvP.

Knote, if they removed LF gain on death I would be very disappointed. Killing critters to gain life force when running around in WvWvW is the reason I never enter any fight without a full bar if I can help it. They give like 5% too.

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Thank you!
It is really nice to know that this stuff is at least being worked on and that concerns have been taken onboard.

lettucemode.3789:

Knote, if they removed LF gain on death I would be very disappointed. Killing critters to gain life force when running around in WvWvW is the reason I never enter any fight without a full bar if I can help it. They give like 5% too.

Lol are you serious?

So you want to continue being balanced around this annoying gimmick.

You get screwed in situations where things aren’t dying rapidly around you.

removing LF gain from deaths really wouldn’t have much of an impact on filling your LF bar from killing mobs. the LF gain would have to be balanced to a more “front end” accrual, which would make sense since we’re supposed to use our mechanic during a fight, not after it. Necros would still be able to wander off to kill some mobs real quick to fill LF.

I’d gladly give up gaining LF from kills for more LF gain during an actual engagement. sign me up

It’s not a gimmick, it’s a nice side bonus to our class mechanic. And I don’t get screwed in situations where nothing is dying around me. If you do, I suggest finding a place for Spectral Walk or Armor on your utility bar.

Spectral Armor, about 6s, spectral walk, maybe 8s (not in game, won’t enter and check). As far as I am glass cannon (still as I said having range of 900 and more) nobody will hit me for that far, and if so I would have been dead so far. OK, warrior came 3 or 5 hits I’m down, but nvm. I filled my DS bar for 15% LF, yay…
The thing is that when you are power built (axe is best [up to 7k damage on boss], and would be even more best when there would be logic in description of Ghastly Claws [as I have already said, look at logic of scepter and axe about gaining Life Force – this skill was made for filling our bar and get back to our true form – DS]) you need to get back to DS all the time. sPvP – kill chickens and rabbits for LF – where are they? Starting with 0% LF – my weapon. Somehow I have to fill it faster after having my first fight. FE I could already have my LF on tournament on Son of Svanir by the Ghastly Claws and get ready.
Well, some tell me “If you don’t like it, don’t play it.” “Necro is not burst dmg, is DoT!” blah blah. Well, necro for me is condition master and the damager, but in words of condition master I mean the thing how troll he can be. All for those who love this class and know that necro is the king of conditions, but don’t have to have condition damage to make big DoT (Plague Signet, Epidemic, Well of Power, well of corruption, putrid mark – in real you use the condition damage of your enemy to make their weapon to kill themselves ro make you even stronger “muahahaha” <manic screamin’>).
Let’s say, we have already put our wells, used plague signet, they have full of dot’s, we are full of boons, full of LF, time for DeathShroud! Stacking might on Spite trait up to 10 and your PIERCING (yes, when your enemy would love to use turtle strategy, you just love necro in DS) Life Blasts you just see crittin’ enemies for 4k+, gaining might, vulnerability (in my build also weakness, so say bye bye to all those not berserker builds) and all these things from 900 range.
Imagine now sPvP without deathshroud, big bosses, PvE and a lot of others. Life blast is crucial for our play and the best balance of EHP and starting 18,000HP+++ (counting DeathShroud) makes us a must to be glasscannon and know how to play it. It’s why LifeForce is so crucial to me.

P.S. We don’t need to be tank, if we can stack back our LF to 100% again in 5s. That is the essence of playing unbugged necro for me. Your normal mode is for stacking LF and make DoT control, DS for real damage.