Guild Wars 2

Such a well explained post of necro. Since necro is my second main/most played alt next to Mesmer which is my main (were kinda in the same boat as you, we don’t fit this bunker meta in NA, which is ironic since we are supposed to be good against it) I agree with what ya said and your suggestions.

Blackmoa.3186:

So what are the problems of necromancers in PvP?

1.) Low mobility. PvP is mostly about good rotations and having a necromancer on your team slows you down and forces you into a team-fight play-style and therefore making you less flexible than other compositions
2.) Bad downed-state. A downed necro can’t do anything about getting stomped. This further encourages teams to focus a necro before other classes.
3.) No sustain. Necro is supposed to be a sustain class according to anet, but their lack of boons(most importantly vigor) combined with point 2 of this list make necros a dangerous choice in longer fights.
4.) Toxic gameplay. Playing against necromancers is 100% anti-fun. Winning against one doesn’t feel like an accomplishment most of the time while losing to a necro feels like being cheated.
This 5 points need to be addressed in order for necromancers to get a healthy spot in the meta.

I’d like to address this post:

1) Yeah, Necromancers have low mobility, but that is a design choice. Guardians have no mobility too, but nobody ever complained about them crippling the team roaming potential as, unless you want to focus your team comp around rotations and roaming, a good teamfighter is as good as a good roamer and, as far as I know, Necromancer is an excellent teamfighter.
If teamfighter didn’t really mattered, we would see teams of 5 ele/thieves roamers all around the game, which isn’t really the case since team fights happens in a game and you usually want to win those. Having a Necromancer in your team for sure doesn’t give you a free win card, but it surely helps, especially when the enemy team is excessively focused on roaming.
What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t take a Necromancer in your team and play as you have an high-mobility team comp, but instead consider that you have an advantage in teamfights and just seek for them instead of splitting the fights over 3 small scale engagements on three nodes.

2) This is balanced around the downed state health. Necromancers have a sub-par downed state, so does Warrior. This is because downed state health scales only on base HP, which means that Warriors and Necromancers are the most tough professions to kill just by cleave and, as a consequence, the easiest to ress.
I don’t think you would say that it is easier to ress a Thief/Elementalist compared to a Necromancer, because it is not. That’s why they have the best downed state in the game.

3) Necromancers sustain themselves through Death Shroud. Most people in the Dhuumfire era used build with no LF generation whatsoever, which is why you probably think they have horrible sustain. That isn’t really the case as if you manage to have fairly good LF generation (perhaps running horn instead of dagger OH), Necromancers have an extremely good sustain. Not comparable to Eles, of course, but extremely good nonetheless. Also, Necromancers have several buttons to save their butt from the enemy team focus.

4) This is a matter of opinion. I would say that the most anti-fun factor is not fear stacking but extremely strong “DIE NOW” buttons like Signet of Spite.

Blackmoa.3186:

Dhuumfire explanation/buffs/nerfs, etc

Important note, the other buffs we got back then were needed (and still had counters like stability denying over 60% of a condi necros burst even in a dumbfire terror setup). Then most of them got nerfed for said dhuumfire back to no value (tshackles being the only unaffected one). Post feature patch we are at a net weaker point than prior to dhuumfire.

Blackmoa.3186:

So what are the problems of necromancers in PvP?

1.) Low mobility.

1.) Increase range of Flesh Wurm and make it exchange place with the necromancer on reactivation instead of killing it. If used with poor positioning the Wurm will quickly be killed. If used to get out of a bad situation the effect will be nearly the same as now. For balance reasons maybe increase the summoning cooldown.

Flesh wurm is the wrong place to look.. well mobility overall is a bad place to look for, the entire kit necros have (both condi and power, much less for hybrid but they butchered em with feature patch changes) dont even work with a high mobility playstyle (unlike mesmer or ele setups for who its core). That brings the issue to~

Blackmoa.3186:

3.) No sustain. Necro is supposed to be a sustain class according to anet, but their lack of boons(most importantly vigor) combined with point 2 of this list make necros a dangerous choice in longer fights.
4.) Toxic gameplay. Playing against necromancers is 100% anti-fun. Winning against one doesn’t feel like an accomplishment most of the time while losing to a necro feels like being cheated.

3.) Flavorful access to vigor. A prime candidate for this would be the Spite 5 point trait(former 25) siphoned power. Proposed new trait:”Gain vigor when you remove a boon”(with internal cooldown of course). Maybe a buff to lifeleech trait base values but addition of an internal cooldown.
4.) Remove fearstacking. Also maybe don’t make fear duration increase with condition duration, it simply is no fun to be feared for ~4 seconds just because the necro you hit had nightmare runes equipped. CC chaining someone should be at least somewhat reliant on team coordination and not just spam everything. Maybe lower dmg of terror and add more utility like a 1sec chill at the end of the fear.

These two go hand in hand, necros need the cc (and chain ccing) to survive if they wanna keep mobility a weakness. And its not really a problem unless its a necro fighting necro, since… well you got quite mandatory skills which double as stun breaks, stability+ another effect on every profession except thief who are efficiently immune to us (Not to mention that melandru runes exist (which in all honesty should as they used to, count with both parts for necro fear, first applying cond duration reduction then cc reduction (reducing a 2s fear to a 1.1s fear).

The entire sustain problem could be solved in a lot of easy and confirmed balance ways:
a) Self healing works in DS/Shadow form vampiric priests
b) Life stealing is % max hp (low like 0.5%) on hit, but mutually exclusive/EQ and WoW, countless examples
c) Exiting death shroud heals the player for around 15% of the damage delt to LF in the last 5~7s/Death Strike from DKs

Important things to note here tho are: internal cooldowns are never balanced when talking about active sustain (not burst healing, actual sustaining a fight/tanking), they are either broken to the point where people max their RNG (hell same thing was here in GW2 with the ghost strawberry leeching) or so worthless that noone bothers.

Second, necro vs necro ends up being a timing fest and who doesnt get their skills obstructed, much less for power builds, but very obvious for condi, this shouldnt be a thing, sadly i dont have any ideas for it nor a good example for such a situation from other games.

As for downed state my only comment is, 1 should be canceled on retarget (spamming esc is annoying) 2=PBAOE fear of of 450 range making it a point decap like guard 2 and giving 3 a aoe targeting.

TLDR: Make melandru runes reduce fear with both parts, stability is and should continue being the last condi on corruption priority list = condi cc is fine
Sustain is kitten and will be, but mobility and vigor aint the solution.

Killing/getting killed by a condi necro “doesnt feel right” because of obvious weaknesses and strengths, if you are dumb enough to not be ready or know the counterplay, you feel cheated since you dont have playroom in all builds that are and were popular since the release of GW (yes its a side effect of the meta, not a balance issue), while murdering a necro when you know their weaknesses is kinda facerolly since said weaknesses are bloody obvious.

It seems to me that the real reason necros are not used is because of our high weakness to CC and the fact our defense does not scale at all with more than one opponent. Because of this, necros need someone to peel for them. As such, the presence of a necro on the team is not only needing to justify its own spot, but also the spot of the person that peels for them. Nobody else needs to do this

When Dhuumfire was released, necros could put out so much damage to justify effectively taking two spots on the team. They were more than capable of busting even the most durable of bunkers fast enough to take the defended point before help could show up. Since then, the damage has been nerfed (shaved bleeds, Weakening Shroud’s effect nerf, weaker Terror) and they no longer are capable of breaking bunkers before their help arrives. Thus, necros can no longer justify two spots on teams.

Since the likelihood of damage returning is extremely low, defenses of necros must be brought up to the point where they don’t need someone to peel if they are going to return to being truly competitive..

Necromancers need to be able to exist as a singular entity on a team. With the exception of when we had so much offense that we could guarantee whoever was the first person to target us would die faster than we would, it just doesn’t make a ton of sense for a standard team to use up two slots for a profession that can’t carry hard enough to justify it.

Hello! ive also been playing necro since prerelease and have like 3k tourneys played as necro.

I think your sugestions are fine, and i really like the idea of vigor on boon removal.
Most importantly I like the aditions they made to necro (specially path of corruption) but we need some of the nerfs to acomodate the dhuumfire undone. More specifically Corrupt boon should corrupt all boons (or in the very least prioritize stability instead of it being the last thing it corrupts) and return the 1 bleeding on staff 2 mark of blood. 2 bleeds really make the staff just a utility weapon.

Just my 2c

Fear stacking isn’t really a problem because fears are best used separately for maximum benefit. However if Fear duration is that much of a problem to you, then a better solution to flat nerfing it is to change how it scales. remove the condition duration scaling, Increase the base duration of fear and “base damage” from terror, and change the terror trait from “increased condition damage when enemy is feared” make the secondary effect “fear duration is increased by x%”

If you nerf fear duration scaling, other necromancer builds that are already suffering will suffer even more. We’ll see the dhuumfire effect on other builds all over again. This change would reduce “fear nuking” but leave fear as a good from of CC for all necro builds.

Also, we don’t need access to vigor really. What we need is some form of protection from focus fire burst. like for example:
fear of death: If you lose x percentage of maximum health within x number of seconds, gain dark shield for 5 seconds. Any enemy that hits you during dark shield will be feared for 2 seconds. (cooldown of 10 seconds per target, 90 second cooldown on the trait)

Nemiros.3590:

Hello! ive also been playing necro since prerelease and have like 3k tourneys played as necro.

I think your sugestions are fine, and i really like the idea of vigor on boon removal.
Most importantly I like the aditions they made to necro (specially path of corruption) but we need some of the nerfs to acomodate the dhuumfire undone. More specifically Corrupt boon should corrupt all boons (or in the very least prioritize stability instead of it being the last thing it corrupts) and return the 1 bleeding on staff 2 mark of blood. 2 bleeds really make the staff just a utility weapon.

Just my 2c

Boon removal/corruption is supposed to be the necromancers strength. Most popular classes like guardian, ele and warrior have the ability to gain boons rather fast and many of them. Corrupt boon is our strongest anti-boon utility and is still rather good. Any necro should bring this to team arena if he/she wants to be useful. I do not think that they should revert it back to corrupt all boons but rather prioritise certain boons like stability and/or aegis.

With the change to dhuumfire i think that reverting grasp of the dead and mark of blood back to 3 bleeds each would be in its place. Its already hard to cover-condition bleeds and they would be nice to have back for a little extra condi-burst. If this happens – it might even be worth going back to mark of evasion in blood magic (also got nerfed with the mark of blood change).

Staff as a weapon is great – but the AA is unreliable and one of the worst AA’s in the game. I would like it to be more like mesmer staff AA without the bounce effect. Remove the piercing effect and reduce the cast time. We need more reliable ways of gaining life force especially with condition builds. Power builds do this just fine.

we need to start posting necro balance posts on the warrior forum, then the devs will be forced to read them as they admire posts about the only class they play and don’t want anything to trump it -.-

I copied the main post to the Profession Balance subforum. Moa, I hope you do not mind.

yeah think we should keep the tread there

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-The-state-of-Necromancers-in-PvP

Go there and upvote it. (+1). It should bring some attention.

Necromancers need a big overhaul, especially in PVE, they are severely lacking.

djooceboxblast.9876:

Nemiros.3590:

Hello! ive also been playing necro since prerelease and have like 3k tourneys played as necro.

I think your sugestions are fine, and i really like the idea of vigor on boon removal.
Most importantly I like the aditions they made to necro (specially path of corruption) but we need some of the nerfs to acomodate the dhuumfire undone. More specifically Corrupt boon should corrupt all boons (or in the very least prioritize stability instead of it being the last thing it corrupts) and return the 1 bleeding on staff 2 mark of blood. 2 bleeds really make the staff just a utility weapon.

Just my 2c

Boon removal/corruption is supposed to be the necromancers strength. Most popular classes like guardian, ele and warrior have the ability to gain boons rather fast and many of them. Corrupt boon is our strongest anti-boon utility and is still rather good. Any necro should bring this to team arena if he/she wants to be useful. I do not think that they should revert it back to corrupt all boons but rather prioritise certain boons like stability and/or aegis.

With the change to dhuumfire i think that reverting grasp of the dead and mark of blood back to 3 bleeds each would be in its place. Its already hard to cover-condition bleeds and they would be nice to have back for a little extra condi-burst. If this happens – it might even be worth going back to mark of evasion in blood magic (also got nerfed with the mark of blood change).

Staff as a weapon is great – but the AA is unreliable and one of the worst AA’s in the game. I would like it to be more like mesmer staff AA without the bounce effect. Remove the piercing effect and reduce the cast time. We need more reliable ways of gaining life force especially with condition builds. Power builds do this just fine.

yes! this is what I was trying to say in my comment. I agree that corrupting all boons is too strong, but the main reason to bring corrupt boon is to corrupt stability, it should really be prioritized instead of avoided in the corruption order.

The state of Necros in pvp will be the topic of the next SOAC But of Corpse Podcast this sunday. Make sure to tune in on http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming at 21 gmt or listen to the recording.
Bhawb and me will be joined by Djooce and Zombify

Did zombify ever share that build he said he was gonna use for the tourney?

Dunno but we’ll probe him for it.

I’m WvW trash, but I had a few quick thoughts:

1. The downed state is very trash, but I think I only really have a problem with this because other classes have downed states that aren’t trash (Mesmer/Thief/Ele). If they were all trash, I might not mind as much.

2. In an environment where people meta as hard as they can, is Necro really that toxic when compared to other classes? I feel like toxicity is such a subjective topic that pinning one class down as being “more” toxic would be a Herculean data analysis effort. I don’t think people not liking to be chain feared makes Necro toxic, but maybe that’s just because it seems like every class has something that makes someone hate them.

3. Is Fear chaining a problem because Fear is a problem, or because Nightmare runes are a problem? I think there’s a chicken and egg motif going on with a lot of complaints in this game, and I’ve been thinking more about what the actual source of the problem is in many cases. Being feared for 4 seconds because you attacked a Necro is lame, I agree. Does that mean all fear shouldn’t get condition duration benefits, because of this one rune? Does it mean that fear shouldn’t stack duration? Maybe fear shouldn’t stack duration, maybe fear shouldn’t get condi duration gains, but if Nightmare runes didn’t exist would we still be having this conversation? Is passive condi application because you were hit a good mechanic (looking at you as well, Perplexity (don’t know if these exist in sPvP (WvW trash))).

4. Necros have limited mobility, yes. Again though, is this a problem that requires giving Necros mobility, or is the fact that sPvP team comps require mobility a failing of the map design? What if there was a Reznor-style wheel map with mid in the center of a rotating set of platforms that allowed a Necro to Flesh Wurm safely on “home” to port to it at will, or alternatively jump to it? Before people scream “omg fear bombs off edge terrible map design robble robble dodge issue robble”, I’m just wondering if maybe the fact that teams require mobility is, in fact, the problem. Or perhaps the problem is that Necros are pigeonholed into a role on their team that requires mobility. Perhaps they should be given a different role, or perhaps that role shouldn’t require mobility.

Now, maybe things like mobility are unavoidable products of how the game works. I’m just looking at it from a different angle for a change of pace.

The only class to get a HUGE nerf was necro in the patch because anet play engineers and are bad at the game. Necros own bad engineers harder than anything and so nerfs came.

Necro will NEVER be viable in conquest. So it is almost a pointless discussion to have. In conquest you need to hold points, decap points and get to points quickly to outnumber people.

So other classes will always have the upper hand. Necro is the slowest class by far. It has probably the least natural sustain and it has no boons which mean it cannot hold a point.

Really even after dhuumfire necro was the king of combat but still in conquest it probably wasnt all that.

There is no solution to this problem. If you want to play conquest pvp on a competitive level then you wont be useful as a necro because it is inherently designed to not be suited to conquest.

These are the facts…

Anet are a company who decided to lower all thief cool downs by 33% when thief was already total spam when they buffed initiative regen. There really is no hope.

O and necro has been useful for about 1 month out of the last 18 months. Really it is the class with the worst record. Engi has been viable at a high level with hgh and far point for about 8/9 months, same for ele. Guard and thief are just perma god mode because they suit conquest.

You make a game mode based around moving and standing on points then the class which does that best (guard) and the class which is most mobile (thief) will always just cripple the meta game.

There is no solution to this. The game is set up to fail because of fundaemental game design errors. Mainly just having one game mode. They made this choice and it killed the game. And the game will never be anything but dead untill they admit they were wrong. That won’t happen.

I tend to think the main problem with necromancers bring classified as an attrition class is that the design just fundamentally runs counter to that plan. Necromancers are designed around finite resources. Currently there simply is no way to reliably renew our health pool and life force (outside of a few, select builds). On a class with finite resources, the clock essentially begins ticking from the moment you engage. Finite resources reward a bursty style of play, which is to say that you must deal enough damage over time to kill your opponent before you run out of said resources. It is no accident that Dhuumfire – the one trait that allowed necromancers an inordinate amount of burst damage – is the one that lifted them into the realm of viability (and beyond). Of course that amount of condiburst is nonsensical and unhealthy for the game, hence the recent nerf which I will be the first to admit was entirely deserved. We are all fundamentally better off with a necromancer that deals moderate damage over time, rather than the silly amount of condiburst enabled by pre-patch Dhuumfire.

The problem is that a design based on finite resources does not reward moderate damage. The design needs to be shifted toward renewable resources instead. A class with renewable resources can play the waiting game, can afford to deal moderate damage over time while employing stalling tactics to eventually whittle down the opponent. Renewable resources reward the attrition style of play. It is not a concern that damage output is merely moderate, so long as you can buy enough time for it to work. Put simply, necromancers need better sustain – and presently the tools we have either aren’t good enough or just plain don’t exist. The means by which the necromancer renews its health pool and life force need to be 1) reliable and 2) build-agnostic. Speaking of which, I continually wonder why a supposed attrition class would have resource renewal tied to something as situational as player deaths, an entirely unreliable mechanic – but I digress. In any case, allowing necromancers to reliably renew their resources is, in my humble opinion, the first step on the path toward viability without having to rely on bursty gimmick traits like pre-patch Dhuumfire.

@ManaCraft: I don’t really understand what you’re saying, because Life Force is exactly a renewable resource. It’s finite in the sense that it has a cap, but that’s because it has to have a cap. To suggest the entire LF mechanic is tied solely to character deaths is misleading. Every single weapon gives you a way to generate Life Force with the exception of OH Dagger. Some are better than others in various situations (before you say Staff #1 is trash, step outside the sPvP box for a second and imagine shooting a few into a group for 20% LF per attack), but there are a multitude of ways to build such that you can generate LF. Utilities like SA let you sit in near-invulnerability while in DS, Spectral Grasp gives a really nice burst of LF if you want it, and Spectral Walk gives a little boost as well.

Also, did you know that if you have Last Gasp and the SA triggers while you are in Plague Form (I bet the same holds true for Lich Form), the gains you get from LF per hit have a strange interaction with your resulting LF when you exit the form. I just ran a test on the Thief mob in sPvP, and from 0% LF, when I used Plague Form at ~54% health, waited for it to tick SA on me from health drop, then waited for SA to end, I exited and had 100% LF. Yes it’s a super long cooldown, yes it requires 15 points in Soul Reaping, but I think it’s pretty neat. I just tried to run a quick test against the Ele where I waited to be just about at 50%, went into Plague Form, let him trigger SA, then after 1 hit while SA was active I left Plague Form. I went from 0 – 34% LF.

It seems like you want condi Necros to be able to equip all of their most efficient condi damage weapons and still boast respectable LF generation. What would you define as an appropriate “attrition” survival time against the various bursty builds? How about in 1vX situations? How much LF generation do you think would be appropriate and on what weapons/utilities would you find it? Which traits would you choose for this build, and how much damage would it do?

I just want a better grasp on what you think “attrition” means and what sort of build you think you deserve it on. Seems like an incredibly slippery balance slope to me.

Dear Blackmoa,
I main elementalist and after trying out multiple classes when the elementalist was nerfed to the ground I found the Necromancer and the engineer to be the most rewarding.
Engineer has an amazing burst and great mobility and perks. The Necromancer has very very high damage, high hp, quite tanky even if you go full zerker.

Just so ya know I start thinking a class/build is good only when you can beat people in a 1v3 which I did several times with the necromancer. Now I have not tried out many builds with the Necromancer I’ve just made a power minion build and when the minion AI was ruined I switched to just Power/DS-build. 15 stacks of vulnerability, 100% crit chance. It all adds up to 4-5k dps from 1200 range. Near double that in lich form so I don’t quite understand why you think that the Necromancer is in a bad spot right now in tpvp…

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Dear Blackmoa,
I main elementalist and after trying out multiple classes when the elementalist was nerfed to the ground I found the Necromancer and the engineer to be the most rewarding.
Engineer has an amazing burst and great mobility and perks. The Necromancer has very very high damage, high hp, quite tanky even if you go full zerker.

Just so ya know I start thinking a class/build is good only when you can beat people in a 1v3 which I did several times with the necromancer. Now I have not tried out many builds with the Necromancer I’ve just made a power minion build and when the minion AI was ruined I switched to just Power/DS-build. 15 stacks of vulnerability, 100% crit chance. It all adds up to 4-5k dps from 1200 range. Near double that in lich form so I don’t quite understand why you think that the Necromancer is in a bad spot right now in tpvp…

tpvp is not about fighting, it’s about capping points. So the pvp maps are in reality 3 concentrated spots you have to be and the rest is moving space. This will mean that team fights are quite common. Since the necromancer has no scaling defense (@manacraft a defense on finite resource is okay, it just needs to scale with the amount of enemies), it is an easy target for picking and make us bad in team fights. Our allies can’t protect us that well since deathshroud blocks healing (an important aspect of support),unlike any other class. So all in all we don’t want to be in a team fight, this wouldn’t be a problem if we could easily disengage and move to another point but the necromancer is just so slow that it is just a waste of time. So no, we are in a bad place in tpvp.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Dear Blackmoa,
I main elementalist and after trying out multiple classes when the elementalist was nerfed to the ground I found the Necromancer and the engineer to be the most rewarding.
Engineer has an amazing burst and great mobility and perks. The Necromancer has very very high damage, high hp, quite tanky even if you go full zerker.

Just so ya know I start thinking a class/build is good only when you can beat people in a 1v3 which I did several times with the necromancer. Now I have not tried out many builds with the Necromancer I’ve just made a power minion build and when the minion AI was ruined I switched to just Power/DS-build. 15 stacks of vulnerability, 100% crit chance. It all adds up to 4-5k dps from 1200 range. Near double that in lich form so I don’t quite understand why you think that the Necromancer is in a bad spot right now in tpvp…

Necromancer has always been amazing against new or unexperienced players which is why you might have had good experiences with 1vX fights. When you start playing against ‘top’ players/teams it is a different story. It is possible to win 1vX fights as a necromancer in high-tier matches but it requires a good deal of luck and EPIDEMIC. The most common power build on necro which is 6/2/0/6 is a great damage dealer but comes short against organized teams. Necromancers are usually the main target and if the enemy team realizes that you are a power necro you will be targeted even faster. You cannot discuss balance by damage numbers or stats. The only way you can judge a build viable is to try it in a certain scenario which in this case is tournament pvp.

I hope we can discuss this further on sunday.

How does my build of runes of the privateer MM PVT fare against a top team? I use Axe / dagger sigil of frailty / sigil of battle and staff sigil of water sigil of purity

I am pretty sure I can hold my own for 1+x vs 1. Minions hit for boon removal and healing. And they most likely get buffed with 3 stacks of might with 14s duration and I have a bit of burst damage with axe dagger.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@ManaCraft: I don’t really understand what you’re saying, because Life Force is exactly a renewable resource. It’s finite in the sense that it has a cap, but that’s because it has to have a cap. To suggest the entire LF mechanic is tied solely to character deaths is misleading. Every single weapon gives you a way to generate Life Force with the exception of OH Dagger. Some are better than others in various situations (before you say Staff #1 is trash, step outside the sPvP box for a second and imagine shooting a few into a group for 20% LF per attack), but there are a multitude of ways to build such that you can generate LF. Utilities like SA let you sit in near-invulnerability while in DS, Spectral Grasp gives a really nice burst of LF if you want it, and Spectral Walk gives a little boost as well.

Also, did you know that if you have Last Gasp and the SA triggers while you are in Plague Form (I bet the same holds true for Lich Form), the gains you get from LF per hit have a strange interaction with your resulting LF when you exit the form. I just ran a test on the Thief mob in sPvP, and from 0% LF, when I used Plague Form at ~54% health, waited for it to tick SA on me from health drop, then waited for SA to end, I exited and had 100% LF. Yes it’s a super long cooldown, yes it requires 15 points in Soul Reaping, but I think it’s pretty neat. I just tried to run a quick test against the Ele where I waited to be just about at 50%, went into Plague Form, let him trigger SA, then after 1 hit while SA was active I left Plague Form. I went from 0 – 34% LF.

It seems like you want condi Necros to be able to equip all of their most efficient condi damage weapons and still boast respectable LF generation. What would you define as an appropriate “attrition” survival time against the various bursty builds? How about in 1vX situations? How much LF generation do you think would be appropriate and on what weapons/utilities would you find it? Which traits would you choose for this build, and how much damage would it do?

I just want a better grasp on what you think “attrition” means and what sort of build you think you deserve it on. Seems like an incredibly slippery balance slope to me.

LF generation is dependent on attacking and your enemy and even though LF can be recovered somewhat reliably in combat a Necro’s health isn’t, except in a MM build which has shody LF recovery.

The issue is that even by recovering LF, health is slowly draining away, always.
The best attrition build I’ve ever seen in this game was p/d thief.
They recover health and initiative in stealth, come out hit you a bit and then restore themselves all over again in stealth. That’s a good example of wearing someone down and renewing your resources, health and initiative.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@ManaCraft: I don’t really understand what you’re saying, because Life Force is exactly a renewable resource. It’s finite in the sense that it has a cap, but that’s because it has to have a cap. To suggest the entire LF mechanic is tied solely to character deaths is misleading. Every single weapon gives you a way to generate Life Force with the exception of OH Dagger. Some are better than others in various situations (before you say Staff #1 is trash, step outside the sPvP box for a second and imagine shooting a few into a group for 20% LF per attack), but there are a multitude of ways to build such that you can generate LF. Utilities like SA let you sit in near-invulnerability while in DS, Spectral Grasp gives a really nice burst of LF if you want it, and Spectral Walk gives a little boost as well.

Also, did you know that if you have Last Gasp and the SA triggers while you are in Plague Form (I bet the same holds true for Lich Form), the gains you get from LF per hit have a strange interaction with your resulting LF when you exit the form. I just ran a test on the Thief mob in sPvP, and from 0% LF, when I used Plague Form at ~54% health, waited for it to tick SA on me from health drop, then waited for SA to end, I exited and had 100% LF. Yes it’s a super long cooldown, yes it requires 15 points in Soul Reaping, but I think it’s pretty neat. I just tried to run a quick test against the Ele where I waited to be just about at 50%, went into Plague Form, let him trigger SA, then after 1 hit while SA was active I left Plague Form. I went from 0 – 34% LF.

It seems like you want condi Necros to be able to equip all of their most efficient condi damage weapons and still boast respectable LF generation. What would you define as an appropriate “attrition” survival time against the various bursty builds? How about in 1vX situations? How much LF generation do you think would be appropriate and on what weapons/utilities would you find it? Which traits would you choose for this build, and how much damage would it do?

I just want a better grasp on what you think “attrition” means and what sort of build you think you deserve it on. Seems like an incredibly slippery balance slope to me.

The big life force gains come because your health total goes up in plague, which will increase your life force pool. So you’re gaining a huge amount of life force, and then when you exit plague, your life force total stays the same despite the reduction in your up pool.

Roe.3679:

Cogbyrn.7283:

@ManaCraft: I don’t really understand what you’re saying, because Life Force is exactly a renewable resource. It’s finite in the sense that it has a cap, but that’s because it has to have a cap. To suggest the entire LF mechanic is tied solely to character deaths is misleading. Every single weapon gives you a way to generate Life Force with the exception of OH Dagger. Some are better than others in various situations (before you say Staff #1 is trash, step outside the sPvP box for a second and imagine shooting a few into a group for 20% LF per attack), but there are a multitude of ways to build such that you can generate LF. Utilities like SA let you sit in near-invulnerability while in DS, Spectral Grasp gives a really nice burst of LF if you want it, and Spectral Walk gives a little boost as well.

Also, did you know that if you have Last Gasp and the SA triggers while you are in Plague Form (I bet the same holds true for Lich Form), the gains you get from LF per hit have a strange interaction with your resulting LF when you exit the form. I just ran a test on the Thief mob in sPvP, and from 0% LF, when I used Plague Form at ~54% health, waited for it to tick SA on me from health drop, then waited for SA to end, I exited and had 100% LF. Yes it’s a super long cooldown, yes it requires 15 points in Soul Reaping, but I think it’s pretty neat. I just tried to run a quick test against the Ele where I waited to be just about at 50%, went into Plague Form, let him trigger SA, then after 1 hit while SA was active I left Plague Form. I went from 0 – 34% LF.

It seems like you want condi Necros to be able to equip all of their most efficient condi damage weapons and still boast respectable LF generation. What would you define as an appropriate “attrition” survival time against the various bursty builds? How about in 1vX situations? How much LF generation do you think would be appropriate and on what weapons/utilities would you find it? Which traits would you choose for this build, and how much damage would it do?

I just want a better grasp on what you think “attrition” means and what sort of build you think you deserve it on. Seems like an incredibly slippery balance slope to me.

The big life force gains come because your health total goes up in plague, which will increase your life force pool. So you’re gaining a huge amount of life force, and then when you exit plague, your life force total stays the same despite the reduction in your up pool.

You wouldn’t call the fact that you can gain ~48% of 2x your LF pool, then when you go back to normal vitality, it simply reduces your total LF while maintaining your raw LF a strange interaction? The game is clearly keeping track of your % LF, but it casually ignores it in this scenario in lieu of max HP, even though your HP scales by % when going into/out of Plague Form.

I know why it happens. I was just pointing out THAT it happens in case people hadn’t found it.

Blackmoa.3186:

The state of Necros in pvp will be the topic of the next SOAC But of Corpse Podcast this sunday. Make sure to tune in on http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming at 21 gmt or listen to the recording.
Bhawb and me will be joined by Djooce and Zombify

Awesome!

Blackmoa.3186:

The state of Necros in pvp will be the topic of the next SOAC But of Corpse Podcast this sunday. Make sure to tune in on http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming at 21 gmt or listen to the recording.
Bhawb and me will be joined by Djooce and Zombify

Awesome!

The big life force gains come because your health total goes up in plague, which will increase your life force pool. So you’re gaining a huge amount of life force, and then when you exit plague, your life force total stays the same despite the reduction in your up pool.

hmm.. simply go plague with a minor trait to gain lifeforce.. haven’t seen lifeforce doubling simply because i used plague. if so ill add it to the bugs topic ^^

Cogbyrn.7283:

You wouldn’t call the fact that you can gain ~48% of 2x your LF pool, then when you go back to normal vitality, it simply reduces your total LF while maintaining your raw LF a strange interaction? The game is clearly keeping track of your % LF, but it casually ignores it in this scenario in lieu of max HP, even though your HP scales by % when going into/out of Plague Form.

I know why it happens. I was just pointing out THAT it happens in case people hadn’t found it.

Behind the curtains, LF isn’t tracked as a % but as a ‘health’ number; it’s only displayed as a %. You can also see this by adding/removing some vitality in the Mists for example.

It’s not a bug. You can get a similar effect by swapping weapons. I have a Shaman’s staff and Rabid Scepter/Dagger on my condi setup and use it all the time. Life Force is gained in % of maximum, but it’s still a set number.

It seems some are kind of ignoring the elephant in the room: Guardians have been the most core component of any team since release and their mobility is arguably worse than ours; so no, having bad mobility does not inherently exclude you from conquest. But what they lack in mobility and damage, they make up in survivability and team support (through crazy amounts of boons).

And so there is a possible role for us right there: imagine guardian-like survivability (through solid LF-regen, that scales with opponents; while actually being able to receive healing in DS), with moderate damage while basically radiating metric-kittenloads of debilitating conditions (vulnerablity, blinds, poison, weakness, torment, cripple, etc.). I’m obviously exagerating with the metric-kittenloads, but you know, basically what the guardian brings in own-team-support, you’d bring in enemy-hindering abilities…

The problem isn’t that we don’t have attrition at all, its that the attrition isn’t accessible to many builds.

Minions have sustain through:
Decent LF generation
Poison fields + finishers
High CC, with lots of hard CC and nearly permanent soft CC
Good healing, through regen, siphoning, and the ability to bring healing sigils
Consistent damage
High poison, weakness, cripple, chill uptime

Now, the question is how do you get those things to transfer over to non-MMs. Some of them already exist, and the others need to be added via traiting and new skills. For example, change Withering Precision to Corrosive Poison, every time Poison is applied apply Xs of Weakness. Put in a trait that puts blast finishers on skills, one that makes staff marks leave fields. Fix the vampiric traits, put a 1s ICD on them, but significantly buff their effect per proc (reduces the abuse from huge AoE proc situations, but makes them useful in a normal situation). And put more traits in Spite that inflict non-damaging conditions, preferably tied to certain skills or other conditions so they still have counterplay (also spite is a great line for blast finishers).

Now, obviously you shouldn’t have the DPS of a terror build while the tankiness/sustain of an MM, but if you have the full range of options, then people can choose for themselves where on that spectrum they want to be. They can go full traiting for defense/support and (along with new support weapons) become a debuff bunker, or they can stay near where we are now and have reduced sustain for damage.

As for the speed issue, lets just be honest, it shouldn’t be much better than it is now, frankly. Necromancers, by design, probably should have comparatively bad rotations (although I think a buffed Flesh Wurm opens the possibility of Necros having one chance to jump out of the team fight and rotate once, but without the ability to really rotate back), equal to Guardians. However we need the sustain to be able to hold our own in a team fight.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Roe.3679:

Cogbyrn.7283:

@ManaCraft: I don’t really understand what you’re saying, because Life Force is exactly a renewable resource. It’s finite in the sense that it has a cap, but that’s because it has to have a cap. To suggest the entire LF mechanic is tied solely to character deaths is misleading. Every single weapon gives you a way to generate Life Force with the exception of OH Dagger. Some are better than others in various situations (before you say Staff #1 is trash, step outside the sPvP box for a second and imagine shooting a few into a group for 20% LF per attack), but there are a multitude of ways to build such that you can generate LF. Utilities like SA let you sit in near-invulnerability while in DS, Spectral Grasp gives a really nice burst of LF if you want it, and Spectral Walk gives a little boost as well.

Also, did you know that if you have Last Gasp and the SA triggers while you are in Plague Form (I bet the same holds true for Lich Form), the gains you get from LF per hit have a strange interaction with your resulting LF when you exit the form. I just ran a test on the Thief mob in sPvP, and from 0% LF, when I used Plague Form at ~54% health, waited for it to tick SA on me from health drop, then waited for SA to end, I exited and had 100% LF. Yes it’s a super long cooldown, yes it requires 15 points in Soul Reaping, but I think it’s pretty neat. I just tried to run a quick test against the Ele where I waited to be just about at 50%, went into Plague Form, let him trigger SA, then after 1 hit while SA was active I left Plague Form. I went from 0 – 34% LF.

It seems like you want condi Necros to be able to equip all of their most efficient condi damage weapons and still boast respectable LF generation. What would you define as an appropriate “attrition” survival time against the various bursty builds? How about in 1vX situations? How much LF generation do you think would be appropriate and on what weapons/utilities would you find it? Which traits would you choose for this build, and how much damage would it do?

I just want a better grasp on what you think “attrition” means and what sort of build you think you deserve it on. Seems like an incredibly slippery balance slope to me.

The big life force gains come because your health total goes up in plague, which will increase your life force pool. So you’re gaining a huge amount of life force, and then when you exit plague, your life force total stays the same despite the reduction in your up pool.

You wouldn’t call the fact that you can gain ~48% of 2x your LF pool, then when you go back to normal vitality, it simply reduces your total LF while maintaining your raw LF a strange interaction? The game is clearly keeping track of your % LF, but it casually ignores it in this scenario in lieu of max HP, even though your HP scales by % when going into/out of Plague Form.

I know why it happens. I was just pointing out THAT it happens in case people hadn’t found it.

It’s gained by percentages but the actual resource is a finite value. You keep what you earn.

Also, my apologies for explaining since you already knew why it worked that way.

Arvid.3829:

It seems some are kind of ignoring the elephant in the room: Guardians have been the most core component of any team since release and their mobility is arguably worse than ours; so no, having bad mobility does not inherently exclude you from conquest. But what they lack in mobility and damage, they make up in survivability and team support (through crazy amounts of boons).

And so there is a possible role for us right there: imagine guardian-like survivability (through solid LF-regen, that scales with opponents; while actually being able to receive healing in DS), with moderate damage while basically radiating metric-kittenloads of debilitating conditions (vulnerablity, blinds, poison, weakness, torment, cripple, etc.). I’m obviously exagerating with the metric-kittenloads, but you know, basically what the guardian brings in own-team-support, you’d bring in enemy-hindering abilities…

Guardian mobility is waaay better than necromancer mobility.

In combat, guardians have access to vigor and extra dodges. So I’ll concentrate on land speed.

Bunker Guardians carry a staff, which combined with their shouts gives them enough swiftness to get across the map quickly. They aren’t forced into Warhorn (costing them a condition removal), or forced to burn a stun break just to run across the map. They aren’t forced into traveler runes, and can take runes that actually contribute to their build.

Non bunker guardians have a leap and a teleport and are thus much faster than Necromancers.

How much would it help if life siphon worked also in DS. Or will this just make the MM build broken beyond belief?

CratZ.6270:

How much would it help if life siphon worked also in DS. Or will this just make the MM build broken beyond belief?

With the number of hits from life transfer, life steal would probably be good for non-MM and a full heal for them.
People are already complaining about MMs- god knows why- so they’d cry for our blood and since Necros are not warriors we’d be hotfix nerfed, just like when Dhuumfire was first introduced.
It was OP and deserved the nerf but I can’t remember another hotfix nerf for anything else that wasn’t a bug with unintended consequences, like the mesmer phantoms this patch.

The biggest thing for me is that every class has a “gimme a sec to breathe for a little bit” type of skill.. necro lacks it. Closest thing IMO for a necro is a well placed flesh wurm that needs prep and is too kitten slow to truly be active. Necro NEEDS a mobility skill… period. The idea that we can’t be mobile is something that needs to be let go. Obviously we will never be as mobile as a mesmer or thief or ranger with evades and blocks etc. I have ALWAYS felt dark path as ground targetable dark “ride the lightning” would solve EVERYTHING. Getting focused? Deathshroud, eat some hits then ground target to a safe area via dark path, heal, re-position, rejoin the fight – in gw2 PvP – THAT is the definition of sustain.
Guardian getting focused? Blocks invuln boonspam un-interruptable heal – HUGE PROBLEM for necro.. how many times does CC get rupted – sigh
Warrior getting focused? who focuses Warrior in a team fight? They have so many blocks invuln leaps stances etc etc
Thief getting focused? Stealth shadowstep evade lol nice try
Mesmer getting focused? Stealth evade clones lol who focuses a mesmer
Ele getting focused? Water attunement vapor form RtL Arcane shield etc etc.
Engi getting focused? lol who focuses engi but again they have shield block ridiculous turret heal supply crate and countless knockback blowouts that make focusing them a real pain
Even the lowly ranger has evades and a few blocks as well as nice leaps on the sword and gs to disengage

EVERYONE has mobility skills but us. It is time my friends to petition to Anet to let go of this old mantra that necro must not be mobile. Until we can disengage and peel for ourselves this problem wont go away. Playing a necro in high level tPvP is a question of how fast will you get focused and murdered in a team fight. I simply gave up. I love the necro and still bring him out in WvWvW to melt people in seconds with my condis and fears but this class is so one-dimensional. The attrition class has become the one trick pony burst class. Sadly these days I play all of my other characters in PvP to much greater success. Necro right now is hotjoin and solo q hero. Organized tPvP necro has no place

CratZ.6270:

How much would it help if life siphon worked also in DS. Or will this just make the MM build broken beyond belief?

It should exist as a 20 or 30 point trait in the Blood Magic tree, and it’d be fairly weak option for MMs, or at least require a very huge trade off (Death Nova or TotM). People might complain, but the MMs that use it would be significantly less scary.

Dark path could also be a leap maybe?

As long as it remains targeted, yes I agree, I think untargeted DP would be too strong.

Why Bhawb.. seriously? Why can everyone have an untargeted leap/blink but the necro. It is single handedly the reason we get trained down in team fights. I know you are experienced necro player. There is no way it will make us OP. In fact, I still do not think it is enough! Great positioning cannot overcome CC in this game. Warrior walks wherever he wants and leaps at you with ES. So you stun break spectral walk/armor and try and heal/reposition yourself. Engi drops supply crate on you so you go into DS to absorb the hits since you used your heal you can not cure the immob. You go into plague (if you even have it equipped) as your last resort. You die on the point because you can not do anything. This happens to me daily.

As Dark Path exists right now it is one of our best skills, with Path of Corruption, it IS our best skill. Buffing it to be a 900 range targeted teleport is absolutely insane of a buff. The ability to escape from a fight should not be innate, it needs to exist as a trait (a trait could make it targeted), or as part of a weapon/utility skill.

You have to realize that every other class has to give SOMETHING up for their mobility. If its on a weapon skill, they get a significantly weaker weapon skill than if it didn’t have mobility, if its on a utility skill, they gave up another utility skill for it. Making it targeted would result in it literally losing all of its non-mobility function, and probably even a CD increase.

What does a Thief give up for Heartseeker? Equipping Shadow Step?
Ranger equips a sword – Mesmer takes decoy – Guardian takes shelter – Yea they give up a weapon/utility/trait but all of those classes are HAPPY to do it because they realize mobility/disengage/block/invuln/stealth is the best thing in this game! Fine. Dark Path is really strong right now with PoC there is no denying it. But our best skill?! Terror with Doom is better to get pressure off of you. ANYWAY honestly I do not care where you put it but the necro NEEDS a way to get the pressure off. Before the grandmaster PoC dark path seemed like a great place for mobility but now I can see your point. In conclusion we need the following – Put a 5 sec block somewhere. Put a 9-1200 range teleport somewhere. Put a mobility skill somewhere. Until you do this necro will just get burned down at mid till the end of this games lifetime

I would accept targeted leap, at least it would help us towards the “CANNOT ESCAPE FROM” a bit.

HERE IS THE PROBLEM

Anet wants us to be the attrition class.
+
Anet does not want to give us block,aegis,vigor,stability,evades or invulnerability.

Why the hell can they not see these two ideas are not compatible in Guild Wars 2.
Classes that can evade and dodge ALL incoming damage or skills when they choose(or simply be invulnerable or block) makes a better candidate for attrition.

Being ping ponged around and being team focused is not attrition.

Login.5102:

HERE IS THE PROBLEM

Anet wants us to be the attrition class.
+
Anet does not want to give us block,aegis,vigor,stability,evades or invulnerability.

Why the hell can they not see these two ideas are not compatible in Guild Wars 2.
Classes that can evade and dodge ALL incoming damage or skills when they choose(or simply be invulnerable or block) makes a better candidate for attrition.

Being ping ponged around and being team focused is not attrition.

They would be compatible if they werent afraid of giving necros the healing needed to do that (like for example, healing for 20% of the damage delt to DS in the last 7 seconds? Or around 94 base hp on hit from vampirc (but it being mutually exclusive to other forms of wifesteal).

Andele.1306:

wifesteal).

Stay away from my woman.

Anyways it would have to be a huge healing buff like in your example. Because most life siphoning wont do anything about get focused down.

Lol and if they want us to be ping pong balls, how about gain health evertime your CC’d.

This video shows why I disagree w/ you on a lot of points you make:
http://youtu.be/HzyVTFM7uSc

You sir, need to learn from the underdog pros.