Why isn't anything being done?
Sorry for a few spelling errors and autocorrections… typed on phone with manhands… blasted smartphones…
IMO, the problem isn’t as much with Necromancer, as it is with the way PvE is designed. Pretty much all the support we bring is unnecessary or useless in dungeons.
Robert doesn’t want to just give Necros a bunch of blast finishers and make them a conventional support. And I agree with that decision. What they need to do is make our strengths more relevant in PvE.
IMO, the problem isn’t as much with Necromancer, as it is with the way PvE is designed. Pretty much all the support we bring is unnecessary or useless in dungeons.
Robert doesn’t want to just give Necros a bunch of blast finishers and make them a conventional support. And I agree with that decision. What they need to do is make our strengths more relevant in PvE.
Id be so happy to see this. But our damage is still inferior as well.
Id love to see HoT enemy conditions to be really dangerous so we can cleanse people and get damage by shoving it on them instead. Vulnerability needs to be as lucrative as might as well
IMO, the problem isn’t as much with Necromancer, as it is with the way PvE is designed. Pretty much all the support we bring is unnecessary or useless in dungeons.
Robert doesn’t want to just give Necros a bunch of blast finishers and make them a conventional support. And I agree with that decision. What they need to do is make our strengths more relevant in PvE.
Id be so happy to see this. But our damage is still inferior as well.
Id love to see HoT enemy conditions to be really dangerous so we can cleanse people and get damage by shoving it on them instead. Vulnerability needs to be as lucrative as might as well
The main problem with our damage, AFAIK, is the lack of damage modifiers. Unfortunately we’re unlikely to get more, since the last trait update was done recently. (Unless they change something in the Reaper traitline)
Just wait for Nemesis special video… It’s gonna be awesome!!!
<bananamatic> visible hitbox is a bad meme
Im placing my hope on zerker builds being made impossible to run and lower the massive damage gap between classes.
You can’t help but love a mind set like this. Because my class sucks, lets make everyone else suck too…instead of fixing my class. No one else is allowed to have fun because I’m not having fun.
IMO, the problem isn’t as much with Necromancer, as it is with the way PvE is designed. Pretty much all the support we bring is unnecessary or useless in dungeons.
Robert doesn’t want to just give Necros a bunch of blast finishers and make them a conventional support. And I agree with that decision. What they need to do is make our strengths more relevant in PvE.
This isn’t true though. The support we bring is blind, weakness, boon corruption, and condi removal/transfer. The only one of those that isn’t used much is boon corruption. All the others are used regularly, but necros aren’t good enough at that and dps to justify bringing them. Other classes do necros utility just as well while still bringing damage.
Necros don’t have reflects, invulns, vigor, blocks,
extra dodges, real stability, mobility skills,
burst skills, sustain, or good support. GG ANET.
extra dodges, real stability, mobility skills,
burst skills, sustain, or good support. GG ANET.
Our damage is fine when it comes to base damages and stuff. The problem is eles have ice bow which is overpowered so they take 2 party slots and then you’re better off with 3 guys who have damage buffs or utility. We lack party damage buffs, and vulnerability actually is pretty good but we don’t apply enough of it early in fights.
Reaper is bringing a lot more damage to the table so don’t be surprised if it becomes more accepted in the meta. Reaper’s Shroud and some of the new traits are really strong.
They actually did respond to our feedback from the last BWE and buffed the damage on GS skills. That helps a lot since now we’ll have a strong 3 target melee weapon.
Dagger is not weak in the first place. It beats most other weapons in base DPS. The biggest factors that overshadow necro damage are things like ice bow burst and other professions bringing overpowered party buffs that are more valuable than base damage.
As for “Arenanet seems to be having completely different information that we clearly cant see.” – They probably know that necro is easy to play and delivers consistent results in pug groups. You’re less likely to wipe when you have a good necro. The highest damage, fastest team comp probably doesn’t come out ahead statistically for pugs because most pugs don’t have the knowledge and skill to pull it off efficiently. Like a single wipe ruins your efficiency in a speed run.
IMO, the problem isn’t as much with Necromancer, as it is with the way PvE is designed. Pretty much all the support we bring is unnecessary or useless in dungeons.
Robert doesn’t want to just give Necros a bunch of blast finishers and make them a conventional support. And I agree with that decision. What they need to do is make our strengths more relevant in PvE.
This isn’t true though. The support we bring is blind, weakness, boon corruption, and condi removal/transfer. The only one of those that isn’t used much is boon corruption. All the others are used regularly, but necros aren’t good enough at that and dps to justify bringing them. Other classes do necros utility just as well while still bringing damage.
I wouldn’t even consider blind to be something we specialize in. All we have is pretty much well of darkness.
And weakness isn’t really popular. When was the last time you thought “Hey, we should bring someone to apply weakness?”. At best you’ll be using that consumable in high level fractals.
The “unique” support we bring is condi manipulation and boon removal (I’d say weakness too, I don’t think any other class does it better). Those aren’t useful, so we’re not useful either. That’s my point.
With gravedigger damage increase by 50%, we now give effectively 50% more damage than dagger AA when an enemy is below 50%. I haven’t calculated how good the DPS is below 50%, but that is still at least a 25% increase DPS compared to what we used to have + blind on the same weapon, good burst vulnerability, etc… while still keeping the amazing self-buffing and PUG efficiency that necro always had. This will be a clear improvement in our acceptance rate in LFG.
And indeed, in challenging group content, necro/reaper will most likely perform better comparatively:
- extra survivability without speccing for it
- weakness, blinds
- vuln will probably be harder to cap
- most likely some boons to play with (we have already seen it in open-world in HoT)
- most likely more conditions to cleanse
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
Anet should prioritize getting HoT out first, so that’s why nothing is being done.
As for HoT feedback,
Reaper GS is looking very very glass cannon.
Reaper Shroud is melting very quickly due to lack of defenses
Shouts look underpowered, but zero cast time is OP so they are ok
Chill doesn’t cut it as a control mechanic with this amount of access to the condition
Reaper is extremely weak outside of melee range because staff is really weak once 4+5 go on cool down (and focus/axe/scepter are garbage tier)
If this is how it should be, then all anet needs to do is tweak numbers when they want us in or out of meta.
As for necromancer issues:
The condition update made all damaging conditions other than burning garbage
Only Dagger and Warhorn are strong weapons
Damage in PvE is low, Support in PvE is low
Need to be carried by teammates in pvE and Pvp
Taking anything other than staff nerfs your death shroud damage
Condition transfers cause enemies to rally off their teammates
Necromancer long cast/cool down transfers Ill equipped to deal with burning meta
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Anet should prioritize getting HoT out first, so that’s why nothing is being done.
As for HoT feedback,
Reaper GS is looking very very glass cannon.
Reaper Shroud is melting very quickly due to lack of defenses
Shouts look underpowered, but zero cast time is OP so they are ok
Chill doesn’t cut it as a control mechanic with this amount of access to the condition
Reaper is extremely weak outside of melee range because staff is really weak once 4+5 go on cool down (and focus/axe/scepter are garbage tier)If this is how it should be, then all anet needs to do is tweak numbers when they want us in or out of meta.
As for necromancer issues:
The condition update made all damaging conditions other than burning garbage
Only Dagger and Warhorn are strong weapons
Damage in PvE is low, Support in PvE is low
Need to be carried by teammates in pvE and Pvp
Taking anything other than staff nerfs your death shroud damage
Condition transfers cause enemies to rally off their teammates
Necromancer long cast/cool down transfers Ill equipped to deal with burning meta
Reaper is Glass Cannon? Have you tried running Valkyrie armor and decimate defenses? 75% crit chance normally, 125% in RS, and 32k health plus a second health bar that will actually fill up pretty kitten fast due to the GS auto changes.
With gravedigger damage increase by 50%, we now give effectively 50% more damage than dagger AA when an enemy is below 50%. I haven’t calculated how good the DPS is below 50%, but that is still at least a 25% increase DPS compared to what we used to have + blind on the same weapon, good burst vulnerability, etc… while still keeping the amazing self-buffing and PUG efficiency that necro always had. This will be a clear improvement in our acceptance rate in LFG.
And indeed, in challenging group content, necro/reaper will most likely perform better comparatively:
- extra survivability without speccing for it
- weakness, blinds
- vuln will probably be harder to cap
- most likely some boons to play with (we have already seen it in open-world in HoT)
- most likely more conditions to cleanse
Effectivly we get roughly 30% more DPS than dagger if we spam gravedigger if a foe is below 50% hp. The coeff/s is 1.5 for gravedigger (new one) and 1.33 for dagger. But if you miss with gravedigger you are losing out on alot of damage. We will see how it turns out soon.
Gee, thanks, you let the reaper out of the basement.
The old content may not be updated for HoT but the new content should punish Necromancer for its design themes much less
Also, Reaper seems designed for PvE content with shouts and hard-hitting cleaves.
To my eyes, PvE shortcomings are being addressed.
The old content may not be updated for HoT but the new content should punish Necromancer for its design themes much less
Also, Reaper seems designed for PvE content with shouts and hard-hitting cleaves.
To my eyes, PvE shortcomings are being addressed.
How do the shouts address PvE content?
EverythingOP
Effectivly we get roughly 30% more DPS than dagger if we spam gravedigger if a foe is below 50% hp. The coeff/s is 1.5 for gravedigger (new one) and 1.33 for dagger. But if you miss with gravedigger you are losing out on alot of damage. We will see how it turns out soon.
Yes but there is about 10% increase weapon strength. So at the end, gravedigger used to give almost the same DPS as dagger AA but is now 50% higher.
Effectivly we get roughly 30% more DPS than dagger if we spam gravedigger if a foe is below 50% hp. The coeff/s is 1.5 for gravedigger (new one) and 1.33 for dagger. But if you miss with gravedigger you are losing out on alot of damage. We will see how it turns out soon.
Yes but there is about 10% increase weapon strength. So at the end, gravedigger used to give almost the same DPS as dagger AA but is now 50% higher.
Gravedigger: (1.5*1047.5*2200)/2600=1330
Dagger#1: (952.5*1.33*2200)/2600=1072
If I did my math correctly that is the “tooltip” DPS with 2200 power, with the new changes.
Gee, thanks, you let the reaper out of the basement.
It’s not that necros are weak – it’s everybody else who are too strong. We have one-man-army classes who can damage, tank, heal, buff and shoot dragons while blindfolded and singing hedgehog song. Of course necros aren’t wanted in such scenario, but that doesn’t mean they should be buffed to the same level.
People here anticipate reaper. We actually have new playstiles to look forward to. We want to try new weapons, skills and traits.
Now look at eles forum. Really, look at it. It’s not that tempest is bad, it’s just that core ele is so OP it simply can’t be improved in any way. So people kitten about new spec and probably will avoid it. That’s not exactly good sign for a class.
Welcome to Rivendell, mister Anderson
Reaper is Glass Cannon? Have you tried running Valkyrie armor and decimate defenses? 75% crit chance normally, 125% in RS, and 32k health plus a second health bar that will actually fill up pretty kitten fast due to the GS auto changes.
Yes, that was the first thing I tried.
Greatsword only has a tiny blind field (thief pistol 5 sized when it starts) and a pull for defense.
It’s a glass cannon & dying in 3 hits instead of two doesn’t change the fact that you have few active defenses.
#24 leaderboard rank North America.
Im placing my hope on zerker builds being made impossible to run and lower the massive damage gap between classes.
You can’t help but love a mind set like this. Because my class sucks, lets make everyone else suck too…instead of fixing my class. No one else is allowed to have fun because I’m not having fun.
It’s not an entirely selfish argument, though. There are so many different gear, build, and stat combinations in the game and exactly one of them is preferred/demanded/required by nearly all PVE content in the game. That’s a problem with game design and isn’t a problem just with necromancer.
If you can’t might stack or help skip trash, your build has nothing to offer a dungeon group. The best you can hope for is to get a “hanger-on” generic DPS spot. Then even within that “eh, we’ll take this guy as our 5th” there’s a huge disparity between how much damage some classes can sustain versus others.
The game’s PVE content should not be designed such that it is most-efficiently cleared with all participants wearing the exact same, purely offensive stat combination.
I’m a solo and low-level pug runner myself, so I’ll be looking forward to several things.
#1: Massive increase in vulnerability stacking. Focus 4 with GS 3 already puts an enemy at 24 stacks of vulnerability. Bitter chill synchronizes well, and Well of Suffering puts out even more vulnerability. Also add on unyielding blast, and things will be great.
#2: Decimate Defenses. That’s going to be great.
#3: Greater might stacking.
#4: Effective offense in shroud. Currently, life blast has about the same DPS as the axe auto attack. With reaper’s shroud, the DPS will be just under dagger. This means that I can be much more durable without sacrificing as much offense.
#5: And should the situation require it, greater lifeforce generation/healing. I’ll be maining decimate defenses, but chilling force + blighter’s boon equals quite a bit of life force and healing. So, in those rare circumstances where I have to preform my civic duty and facetank a boss, I’ll be much more effective at that.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
Main problem is that you don’t see a whole lot of boons in pve and because of the “Zerk or gtfo!” meta our support (mainly condi sponge builds) are kinda useless because an ele can just swap to water atunements real fast, blast a field, and clear conditions.
They’re already toning down the amount of blast finishers that are readily available and boons seem to be showing up a little more in PvE from what i can tell, so necros are going to get more useful by way of the content changing to be more friendly to us as opposed to our class needing to change to suit the content. Also a greatsword is going to be a HUGE boost to everything (more cleave means more damage on groups, more siphons so you can survive longer) and on a somewhat unrelated note, now that condis are at least theoretically viable necros can offer tremendous support by running in any group with high single target condi application and just spamming epidemic.
Edit: The only thing i don’t like is our dependence on the spectral line for decent shroud uptime. If they made the reduced degeneration and the 15% life force increase baseline, i’d be happy. (they could put some damage reduction on vital persistence instead, and imo strength of undeath doesn’t need compensation for the 15% increase getting pulled and made baseline, though if you must i guess you could put a x% chance to get 1-2% life force on crit.)
(edited by CynicalFred.9135)
I wouldn’t even consider blind to be something we specialize in. All we have is pretty much well of darkness.
And weakness isn’t really popular. When was the last time you thought “Hey, we should bring someone to apply weakness?”. At best you’ll be using that consumable in high level fractals.The “unique” support we bring is condi manipulation and boon removal (I’d say weakness too, I don’t think any other class does it better). Those aren’t useful, so we’re not useful either. That’s my point.
I want weakness very often, but maybe that is just me. As I said though, even at condi manipulation and boon removal we aren’t as good as other classes. We don’t have nearly as much aoe condi removal as other classes, and our boon removal is matched by mesmers who bring other better utility. I personally think we are outmatched everywhere except self might stacking and vuln stacking.
It’s not that necros are weak – it’s everybody else who are too strong. We have one-man-army classes who can damage, tank, heal, buff and shoot dragons while blindfolded and singing hedgehog song. Of course necros aren’t wanted in such scenario, but that doesn’t mean they should be buffed to the same level.
People here anticipate reaper. We actually have new playstiles to look forward to. We want to try new weapons, skills and traits.
Now look at eles forum. Really, look at it. It’s not that tempest is bad, it’s just that core ele is so OP it simply can’t be improved in any way. So people kitten about new spec and probably will avoid it. That’s not exactly good sign for a class.
While I get your point, saying that we aren’t weak, everyone else is just strong is the same exact thing as saying we are weak. When every other class can solo dungeon paths we can’t, it’s cause we need buffs. There is no effective difference. I definitely agree that eles can be spoiled little kittens though.
The game’s PVE content should not be designed such that it is most-efficiently cleared with all participants wearing the exact same, purely offensive stat combination.
As opposed to what? Something that requires a perfect party comp like in other games? Maybe we will see something close to that with the supposed challenging content, but it would go completely against anet’s philosophy for general content. Currently you can do the overwhelming majority of content naked so that any build will work, this is very much intended. The reason berserker is best is because you take the most risk by having no armor, and aoe buffs effect direct damage better than condi.
If you don’t like this, why not just go play wow or something. They have forced roles, which seems to be what you want. People have been making your complaint for a long time now, and it has been explained many many times why anets decision is both justified and within their design of the game.
Necros don’t have reflects, invulns, vigor, blocks,
extra dodges, real stability, mobility skills,
burst skills, sustain, or good support. GG ANET.
extra dodges, real stability, mobility skills,
burst skills, sustain, or good support. GG ANET.
As opposed to what? Something that requires a perfect party comp like in other games? Maybe we will see something close to that with the supposed challenging content, but it would go completely against anet’s philosophy for general content. Currently you can do the overwhelming majority of content naked so that any build will work, this is very much intended. The reason berserker is best is because you take the most risk by having no armor, and aoe buffs effect direct damage better than condi.
If you don’t like this, why not just go play wow or something. They have forced roles, which seems to be what you want. People have been making your complaint for a long time now, and it has been explained many many times why anets decision is both justified and within their design of the game.
A-net never say they don’t want people to go for support roles, they just made sure that any class could fill that support role. This means you don’t need to wait for a guardian if you want support, anyone can play its favorite class while providing the needed role. And this is true to some extent. In PvP, most classes can do most roles, albeit not always as efficiently, and the elite specialization often provide access to a role that is currently weak in the class (for example bunker thief will most likely be possible with the new specialization).
So to come back to PvE, a well-designed and challenging PvE content would force at least a few of the party to spec for tanking and/or support, like we currently see in high tier PvP.
I hardly play necro in PvE anymore. I want to play necro, but it just doesn’t perform well enough. Been switching a lot between guardian, warrior and engineer in PvE lately, and will probably make one of those my main and shelf my necro if necro doesn’t get the attention it needs by HoT.
[qT] Necro main.
Who said we bring blind? Eng brings blind by the truckload, and in more reliable forms than necro does. What necro brings is fear, chills, cripples, poison and weakness, not in any particular order; as well as second-to-none group condi management. Omitted vuln because while we’re good at it, so are most of the other classes, so it’s a moot point.
What we do bring to the table is a debuff tank. We have the large health pool and undervalued damage of a tank, but instead of buffs we have debuffs and anti-boon skills.
The issue isn’t quite what is wrong with necro, but rather what is wrong with the whole AI design of PvE. The first and foremost issue is defiance. It’s a horrid cop-out of a system. This is evident in the SW, as defiance doesn’t appear quite so much, tankier necro builds make a lot of the fights significantly easier.
WvW necro has been at least reliable for a while, and the blood magic/signet rework boosted us to the middle of the pack for PvP. The issue is that in PvE, mob AI leans too heavily on the crutch of defiance instead of actual AI.
The game’s PVE content should not be designed such that it is most-efficiently cleared with all participants wearing the exact same, purely offensive stat combination.
As opposed to what? Something that requires a perfect party comp like in other games? Maybe we will see something close to that with the supposed challenging content, but it would go completely against anet’s philosophy for general content. Currently you can do the overwhelming majority of content naked so that any build will work, this is very much intended. The reason berserker is best is because you take the most risk by having no armor, and aoe buffs effect direct damage better than condi.
If you don’t like this, why not just go play wow or something. They have forced roles, which seems to be what you want. People have been making your complaint for a long time now, and it has been explained many many times why anets decision is both justified and within their design of the game.
If Berserker is the only relevant gear in PVE by clearly being the best, then why are there other gear options? It’s bad, narrow game design, whether you want to spin it as anti-WoW or not. If every choice but one is incorrect, then there’s no point to having the other choices.
I’m not saying the game needs an enforced, dedicated Tank/Healer/(De)Buffer trinity system; I’m saying that the game is pretty horribly balanced when we have ~26 different item stat combinations but nearly every single build in the game should be using precisely one of them for nearly all PVE content.
There’s no “justifying” having 25 useless stat combinations show up as loot in PVE, and having only one blatantly ideal choice removes a lot of potential build variety not just in terms of gearing and playstyle but even in actual character skill setups and choices.
There’s no “justifiable” reason that Anet couldn’t develop interesting, engaging encounter mechanics that more heavily rewarded a balance of survival, direct damage, condition damage, hard-and-soft CC, and/or healing. There’s a huge gap between “LF1Tank” and simply suggesting players maybe, possibly invest in a few stats besides full Power, Precision, and Ferocity.
EDIT — And, to bring my rambling back on-topic, Necro really feels the brunt of this limited game design, because all of the tools that Necro has simply aren’t that useful in a game full of might-stacking Zerkers. As others have said, it’s not that Necro has nothing to offer, but rather what they offer doesn’t fit into the extremely narrow and one-dimensional PVE content. Hopefully, the “challenging group content” will fix this. Ideally, any encounter (re)designing will be retroactively applied to Tyria’s existing content, to foster and encourage more build variety than what we’re currently seeing. Will Necro still need some love and balance tuning? Of course. But the gap between the “required” classes and the “unwanted” will be a lot narrower than it is now.
(edited by Endlos.4852)
Endlos.4852 really said what I feel.
I don’t want to nerf any other classes, I want to feel like Necromancer’s design actually has a place in a group.
If your class is worse than the others at pretty much everything that is wanted in PvE, and they release a new elite spec that does not change any of that in our favour, then I cannot help but feel that it’s badly designed.
If PvE content is purely designed around Zerker gear and blast finishers/fire fields then we have no place to shine.
Even if they bring in a bunch of mobs like the husks that can really only be taken down effectively with conditions then we’re still not in a great place. Other classes still do that a whole lot better. It is possible that the Scepter stuff Robert Gee is looking at could resolve that, but at the same time if it does, we have no use for Reaper if we’re expected to run condition builds.
It’s not that we cannot clear dungeons with a necro in the party, it’s just demoralizing to think and be told constantly that it’d be done faster, better and easier with someone else in the group.
I hear this argument: It is not a necromancer issue, it’s a PvE issue.
Wrong. It is a necromancer issue.
If the necromancer can complete content, but does so in ways that screw up things for everybody else, then everybody else won’t want a necromancer. Further the supposed things that “a necromancer brings that aren’t wanted in PvE” aren’t really necromancer strengths either.
What necro brings is fear, chills, cripples, poison and weakness, not in any particular order; as well as second-to-none group condi management. Omitted vuln because while we’re good at it, so are most of the other classes,
What we do bring to the table is a debuff tank. We have the large health pool and undervalued damage of a tank, but instead of buffs we have debuffs and anti-boon skills.
.
Fear isn’t good in PvE since the mob runs away. Its functions the same way as a stun, (which other classes have far more access to), with a run away effect.
Poison access is all on scepter which is too bad to use in its current state (and minions which will not be allowed to be top tier)
Chill seemingly does nothing. Kiting PvE mobs isn’t a thing that exists.
Cripples the same. Plus cripple access isn’t very good, and is mostly tied to terrible axe and scepter weapons.
A necromancer can spec for a good amount of weakness by taking a grandmaster trait. But even this is weaker than more than 100% uptime weakness on autoattack which Elementalists and thieves have (and Revenant will get zero cool down weakness attacks), or stacking weakness by blasting poison fields.
I don’t even know what “group condition management” even is, but if it’s plague signet and unholy martyr, just stop. Those are bad. Real group condition management is interacting with fields for a group condition clear every few seconds.
Necromancer boon rips dont really excel either. Mesmer has boon rip on autoattack of a popular weapon. That’s far better for pvE than the necromancer having a lot of long cool down boon rips. Even excepting mesmer, The necromancer doesn’t outperform the boon rip sigil that anybody can take by much, and many other classes have a trait that boon rips every 10 or 15 seconds, putting them close to necromancer tier, at significantly less lost DPS investment.
(also necromancer boon rips turn stability into fear, which may be unwanted).
#24 leaderboard rank North America.
I hear this argument: It is not a necromancer issue, it’s a PvE issue.
Wrong. It is a necromancer issue.
If the necromancer can complete content, but does so in ways that screw up things for everybody else, then everybody else won’t want a necromancer. Further the supposed things that “a necromancer brings that aren’t wanted in PvE” aren’t really necromancer strengths either.
What necro brings is fear, chills, cripples, poison and weakness, not in any particular order; as well as second-to-none group condi management. Omitted vuln because while we’re good at it, so are most of the other classes,
What we do bring to the table is a debuff tank. We have the large health pool and undervalued damage of a tank, but instead of buffs we have debuffs and anti-boon skills.
.Fear isn’t good in PvE since the mob runs away. Its functions the same way as a stun, (which other classes have far more access to), with a run away effect.
Poison access is all on scepter which is too bad to use in its current state (and minions which will not be allowed to be top tier)
Chill seemingly does nothing. Kiting PvE mobs isn’t a thing that exists.
Cripples the same. Plus cripple access isn’t very good, and is mostly tied to terrible axe and scepter weapons.
A necromancer can spec for a good amount of weakness by taking a grandmaster trait. But even this is weaker than more than 100% uptime weakness on autoattack which Elementalists and thieves have (and Revenant will get zero cool down weakness attacks), or stacking weakness by blasting poison fields.
I don’t even know what “group condition management” even is, but if it’s plague signet and unholy martyr, just stop. Those are bad. Real group condition management is interacting with fields for a group condition clear every few seconds.
Necromancer boon rips dont really excel either. Mesmer has boon rip on autoattack of a popular weapon. That’s far better for pvE than the necromancer having a lot of long cool down boon rips. Even excepting mesmer, The necromancer doesn’t outperform the boon rip sigil that anybody can take by much, and many other classes have a trait that boon rips every 10 or 15 seconds, putting them close to necromancer tier, at significantly less lost DPS investment.
(also necromancer boon rips turn stability into fear, which may be unwanted).
We do rip faster then one boon every 10 seconds but for the rest +1.
EverythingOP
On the boon rip front, Mesmers do excel in frequent, low-count boon removal. Necromancers do far better with large numbers of boons that are applied more infrequently.
Unfortunately, the former is all we currently see in boons that we care about removing for PvE. Nobody cares about the Swiftness Mordrem Wolves have, but the Dredge Protection and Might that’s reapplied in literally 3 seconds? Different story.
I hear this argument: It is not a necromancer issue, it’s a PvE issue.
Wrong. It is a necromancer issue.
If the necromancer can complete content, but does so in ways that screw up things for everybody else, then everybody else won’t want a necromancer. Further the supposed things that “a necromancer brings that aren’t wanted in PvE” aren’t really necromancer strengths either.
What necro brings is fear, chills, cripples, poison and weakness, not in any particular order; as well as second-to-none group condi management. Omitted vuln because while we’re good at it, so are most of the other classes,
What we do bring to the table is a debuff tank. We have the large health pool and undervalued damage of a tank, but instead of buffs we have debuffs and anti-boon skills.
.Fear isn’t good in PvE since the mob runs away. Its functions the same way as a stun, (which other classes have far more access to), with a run away effect.
Poison access is all on scepter which is too bad to use in its current state (and minions which will not be allowed to be top tier)
Chill seemingly does nothing. Kiting PvE mobs isn’t a thing that exists.
Cripples the same. Plus cripple access isn’t very good, and is mostly tied to terrible axe and scepter weapons.
A necromancer can spec for a good amount of weakness by taking a grandmaster trait. But even this is weaker than more than 100% uptime weakness on autoattack which Elementalists and thieves have (and Revenant will get zero cool down weakness attacks), or stacking weakness by blasting poison fields.
I don’t even know what “group condition management” even is, but if it’s plague signet and unholy martyr, just stop. Those are bad. Real group condition management is interacting with fields for a group condition clear every few seconds.
Necromancer boon rips dont really excel either. Mesmer has boon rip on autoattack of a popular weapon. That’s far better for pvE than the necromancer having a lot of long cool down boon rips. Even excepting mesmer, The necromancer doesn’t outperform the boon rip sigil that anybody can take by much, and many other classes have a trait that boon rips every 10 or 15 seconds, putting them close to necromancer tier, at significantly less lost DPS investment.
(also necromancer boon rips turn stability into fear, which may be unwanted).
So you’re saying that none of those things can ever possibly be made useful in PvE?
What if there’s a monster that moves very fast and has a strong AoE damage aura? Fear, cripple, and chill would be fantastic against it.
What if there’s a monster that needs to be CC’d but also pulses stability? You could bring a bunch of thieves to spam headshot, or you could use a single boon corruption to cc it instantly.
Condition management doesn’t just refer to aoe cleanses. Necromancers can also aoe convert conditions into boons, pull conditions off allies and transfer them to enemies, or just collect them all and eat them for health. Similar to revenant, but a bit less vulnerable to killing yourself if resistance gets removed.
Enemies like the Mordrem Husk Copper (I think, maybe it’s iron) is a fantastic boss to fight as a condition necromancer. It lasts long enough that the necro’s slow stacking but long lasting conditions can really build up to a critical mass, and the hordes of dangerous adds make epidemic an incredibly strong skill, and condi transfers let you save an ally that got caught and slapped with 30 bleed stacks by moving those bleeds onto the boss.
There are absolutely ways to make the necromancer’s strengths meaningful in PvE. Not everything will always be a “blast fire fields then stack and burn” fight.
I agree thins need to be done but chill is actually quite useful in pve (mobs and bosses do have skills that have cool downs and chill will effect those cooldowns)
I do think other things need to be done in general more so with the profession mechanic, the professions utility skills, and a few of the weapons (axe and scepter) Along with some conflicting traits and lack of damage modifiers or surveil modifiers that other light armored professions or most professions have in general. I DONT LIKE THE FACT THAT NECROMANCER/REAPER IS ALL ABOUT CHILL AND NOW EVERY PROFESSION HAS A SUPER EASY FIX FOR REMOVING CHILLED we need a trait that prevents chilled from being removed so easily or chilled needs its effectiveness increased even more for reaper.
This isn’t just a Necro problem but rather a PvE problem. But don’t expect Anet to fix PvE in the old maps because it means it will change the so called Meta. And what does that mean? That means the people who is playing this so called Meta will be forced to change their builds and gears. In turn it will create a problem for party A in favour to save party B. Anet isn’t going to fix a problem by creating a new problem. That is where Anet believes HoT is going to fix this problem by creating a new way to play the game rather than “Kill the mob before they even have any chance of landing their first attack!”
All is vain.
Enemies like Husk Copper, the Thresher in Amber, and SW mid.
My experience is taking UM and one of Shrouded Removal/Necromantic Corruption. You provide massive support against condi-heavy bosses while in DS, clearing(or xferring) condis and allowing you to stay in DS for a very long time. Works far better than the reflects too, since it allows the rest of the group to focus on outright damage instead of stopping to build reflect walls. It is unfortunate that UM needs a 2nd whole trait line to be at all useful, but that is the incompetence of the necro development team for you.
Before it was nerfed to 7%, I was able to by-myself support an entire group on that boss, surviving with a standard 25+ stack of poison on me while in an MM build.
Ways to improve AI that would make necro better:
Get rid of the anti-cliff pull protection that all mobs enjoy. If you can pull a mob to it’s death, great.
Allow fear to work on bosses, at least as a stun.
Allow weakness to work on bosses. We have the same application rate of weakness as ele has, and unlike theirs, ours works at range(!Lightning Dagger 2) alongside our DPS. , and isn’t a massive Group DPS gimp(!Earth Staff 1).
Chill isn’t just for kiting. Remember that it also should affect all their skill cooldowns and attack speed, if that actually worked on bosses, necro would instantly gain a place in all groups, because less time spent dodging the big 1HKOs means more time spent dpsing.
Necro’s best utility is actually condition manipulation. The problem is that there are no places in PvE where the condition pressure from both damage and control conditions is enough to demand the level of anti-condi stuff that necro can bring to the table.
There is a logic fallacy here. When everything else fits…and one thing does not…what do you do? Do you consider everything else to be broken…or do you fix the one thing that does not fit? Common sense would be to fix the outlier instead of trying to redesign everything else. This argument of trying to bend pve to the necromancer’s alleged strengths, is myopic. Its like when one person cannot accept what everyone else on the planet is telling them they are doing wrong…at some point, you have to tell yourself…am I right and everyone else is wrong…or do I need to reflect inwards and fix myself. This special snowflake (slow, attrition, selfish, low mobility, low dps, ramp up dps) model needs to be re-evaluated in terms of the overall game design.
The issue of the so called “useless” gear sets is not even an issue to begin with. Certainly not one that should be addressed by taking a dump on the entire pve game mode. It certainly isn’t this huge issue people are making it out to be. The only time it even is noticed is in instanced pve….which is an extremely tiny part of the game. Not even a part of the game that any serious amount of resources are being put into. Is it such a huge issue that high level fractals and abandoned dungeons are cleared faster by berserker gear? A full nomad team can do this same content in full safety net mode with almost no threat of failure…what is the problem here? If a full nomad squad can do it…how is any gear set “useless”? If people want to play the game in slow motion…that’s a personal choice…not a game design problem. If people want to play the game on the razor’s edge (berserker)…that’s a personal choice too…also not a game design problem. Take your own mantra and actually pay attention to what it means…play how I want! It doesn’t just apply to you…it applies to the rest of us too. Are your feelings that fragile that you can’t play the game when a group that doesn’t like your play style doesn’t want you? That sounds like a personal issue too…that’s life. When I’m in a group that clearly doesn’t match my play style…I do the logical thing and leave it to get another group that will match my play style. I don’t come to the forums to demand that the game be redesigned to make everyone have to play my way. There are plenty of game modes where berserker is not the dominant gear set or play style. There is exactly one game mode, where it is dominant….and one type of content in that game mode at that…instanced pve. ANET has even caved to make condi more desirable in high level fractals…in the upcoming expansion…toughness, health, and precision scaling mobs…rejoice…your river of tears has has been heard loud and clear. congratulations…now there may be a new top dps gear set (sinister)…your nomad/clerics/etc is still not the top gear set…what did that really fix?
ANET designed this game so that you can truly play how you want…you can do any game mode, in any gear set. Obviously certain game modes are going to favor certain gear sets/build types by design…that is not a problem. You guys are not going to be satisfied until there is a guild wars 2 uniform that all players have to wear. Then you will really be crying when there is no excuse for lesser performance….since everyone will be in equal gear.
The short of this is that necromancers/reapers need to be normalized to the rest of the game/professions. ANET needs to stop trying to hold onto this special snowflake mentality and provide necromancers/reapers with the tools to fit into the pve game mode. That’s really what the reaper specialization should have been…a pve centric option. This is their chance to do exactly that…some altruistic boon sharing/providing options…some group utility options. Its obvious that they are not going to allow mechanics to diminish boss mobs performance like chill and fear would need to do to be effective. Do you really think they are going to allow you to further trivialize bosses by slowing their attack rate or restricting boss movements? Do you really think they are going to allow us to stop boss mobs from executing attacks via fear? It would be a different issue if they allowed the effects of cold shoulder/putrid defense to act like the protection boon and diminish the damage the mobs could inflict…that would actually be a workable mechanic…but that would again, require us to not be selfish…and share that with our group to make us be useful. They could make our conditions do something like this and get us some pve love…instead of trying to break the rest of the game to compensate for our poor design model. They gave us the blood trait line as “support”, but no one brings a class to help rez faster. No one brings a class for tiny siphon heals against spike damage. Certainly no one brings a class to purposefully block useful combo fields with dark/poison fields. I think they need to just remove these lesser combo fields and have the effects be applied in other ways…like auras…so we aren’t a direct impediment to the useful fields.
Our class mechanic is another huge sticking point for me. I can’t repeat this enough…the concepts of actually nerfing our dps/utility simply by actually using our class mechanic is just beyond bad. Shroud should be a bonus. We should actually want to use our class mechanic any time we can. It should not simply be something we begrudgingly use when we need to stave off a one shot or focus fire. We shouldn’t have to give up half of our class functionality (utilities) to use our class mechanic. We shouldn’t have to trait/slot for things like movement speed twice, just to have it available both during and not during uses of our class mechanic. This hp shield mechanic is what’s killing shroud. ANET is clearly deathly afraid that we are going to be unstoppable if we have the hp sponge shield, while also having our utilities. Simple solution…strip the hp shield from the shroud mechanic and let us have decent active defenses. Let shroud just be like a kit…provide different abilities…like a class specific weapon swap. That way we don’t have to be the square peg in the round hole that makes all necros want to have the game redesigned.
stuff
We are not trying to bend PvE to help necros, we are trying to bend PvE away from its initial bad design. The game has many mechanics (immobilize, weakness, blinds, slow, chill, daze, interrupts, conditions/boon manipulation) which are negated or rendered useless by PvE content. You cannot play how you want it, because many ways you may want to play are impossible. Example, I want to be an interrupt mesmer, which is one of the key playstyle of the class. Well, my interrupt traits won’t proc very often, and if I interrupt the boss after all his defiant stacks have been removed, I am very happy with my trait proc, but my team-mate elementalist and its icebow wants to kill me now…
The proof of this failure is the huge gap between PvE and PvP. People keep complaining about “A-net should have a different PvE and PvP balance”. I disagree! Anet should have a PvE which uses all the mechanics that the game provides with a decent AI so that the PvP balance is meaningful also for PvE.
No, PvE sucks, and it just happens that the mechanics that are banned affect more necro than other classes. The solution is not to fix necro to be a second elementalist. There is not only 1 outlier, 99% of builds are outliers as far as PvE is concerned.
snip
If you think the gear situation is fine, then you have no grounds to say necro needs to be changed. Yes, people can choose whatever gear they want and give up damage for survival. Playing necro is the same sort of choice, especially if you have a lot of armor, like full knight’s.
So people can choose necro to have an easier time surviving and beating content more reliably, but slower. It’s the same thing you’re arguing is acceptable for gear.
However, most players want to gain rewards efficiently. It turns out necro is probably not good for that purpose.
Also, PvE is really shallow. It’s not possible to give necro a unique niche that isn’t already filled because there just isn’t any need for anything other professions don’t do already. The PvE content does not demand it.
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We are not trying to bend PvE to help necros, we are trying to bend PvE away from its initial bad design. The game has many mechanics (immobilize, weakness, blinds, slow, chill, daze, interrupts, conditions/boon manipulation) which are negated or rendered useless by PvE content. You cannot play how you want it, because many ways you may want to play are impossible. Example, I want to be an interrupt mesmer, which is one of the key playstyle of the class. Well, my interrupt traits won’t proc very often, and if I interrupt the boss after all his defiant stacks have been removed, I am very happy with my trait proc, but my team-mate elementalist and its icebow wants to kill me now…
The proof of this failure is the huge gap between PvE and PvP. People keep complaining about “A-net should have a different PvE and PvP balance”. I disagree! Anet should have a PvE which uses all the mechanics that the game provides with a decent AI so that the PvP balance is meaningful also for PvE.
No, PvE sucks, and it just happens that the mechanics that are banned affect more necro than other classes. The solution is not to fix necro to be a second elementalist. There is not only 1 outlier, 99% of builds are outliers as far as PvE is concerned.
As far as the Speedclear in Dungeon Meta is concerned? Sure. That is player created and the Devs had nothing to do with it. If you would like to ‘play how you want’, then stop joining groups that have other expectations. The game is not the problem in this scenario. You are. Surely with all the ‘PHIW’ threads all over, you can find a welcoming group instead of trying to force yourself into a party that, obviously, wants noting to do with your ‘style’ or what you think you’re bringing to the table.
And it should be obvious why the Ele is upset that you just ruined his 5 sec Deep Freeze so you can get your own kick out of your 0.5 sec Daze which was probably not gonna be necessary anyway.
As for Necros, any good Dungeon group, outside of groups going for records, bringing along a GOOD Necro is not a problem. Look at Brazil and DnT, for instance. If you’re getting pushed out of general groups, they’re probably not that good anyway. This is all silly and remenescent of the ‘4 Warriors/1 Mesmer’ mentality of adges past. Dungeons are not hard with any comp. The ‘elitists’ most people complain about are generally just bads and lemmings. Any, truly good, Dungeoneer doesn’t really care for daily runs and are, mostly, VERY helpful and understanding. Heck, most can solo/duo the content anyway. These groups that claim you’re “holding them back” or w/e other excuse are probably just bad themselves and want to project on others by exclusion. I agree that it’s sad and pathetic, but, most often, they’re probably doing you a favor.
stuff
We are not trying to bend PvE to help necros, we are trying to bend PvE away from its initial bad design. The game has many mechanics (immobilize, weakness, blinds, slow, chill, daze, interrupts, conditions/boon manipulation) which are negated or rendered useless by PvE content. You cannot play how you want it, because many ways you may want to play are impossible. Example, I want to be an interrupt mesmer, which is one of the key playstyle of the class. Well, my interrupt traits won’t proc very often, and if I interrupt the boss after all his defiant stacks have been removed, I am very happy with my trait proc, but my team-mate elementalist and its icebow wants to kill me now…
The proof of this failure is the huge gap between PvE and PvP. People keep complaining about “A-net should have a different PvE and PvP balance”. I disagree! Anet should have a PvE which uses all the mechanics that the game provides with a decent AI so that the PvP balance is meaningful also for PvE.
No, PvE sucks, and it just happens that the mechanics that are banned affect more necro than other classes. The solution is not to fix necro to be a second elementalist. There is not only 1 outlier, 99% of builds are outliers as far as PvE is concerned.
As far as the Speedclear in Dungeon Meta is concerned? Sure. That is player created and the Devs had nothing to do with it. If you would like to ‘play how you want’, then stop joining groups that have other expectations. The game is not the problem in this scenario. You are. Surely with all the ‘PHIW’ threads all over, you can find a welcoming group instead of trying to force yourself into a party that, obviously, wants noting to do with your ‘style’ or what you think you’re bringing to the table.
And it should be obvious why the Ele is upset that you just ruined his 5 sec Deep Freeze so you can get your own kick out of your 0.5 sec Daze which was probably not gonna be necessary anyway.
As for Necros, any good Dungeon group, outside of groups going for records, bringing along a GOOD Necro is not a problem. Look at Brazil and DnT, for instance. If you’re getting pushed out of general groups, they’re probably not that good anyway. This is all silly and remenescent of the ‘4 Warriors/1 Mesmer’ mentality of adges past. Dungeons are not hard with any comp. The ‘elitists’ most people complain about are generally just bads and lemmings. Any, truly good, Dungeoneer doesn’t really care for daily runs and are, mostly, VERY helpful and understanding. Heck, most can solo/duo the content anyway. These groups that claim you’re “holding them back” or w/e other excuse are probably just bad themselves and want to project on others by exclusion. I agree that it’s sad and pathetic, but, most often, they’re probably doing you a favor.
The meta is relevant though. It’s good that most pugs are willing to take a necro, but the issue is more that players want to be able to gain rewards efficiently and so there are a lot of people who just don’t play necro because of that. There really isn’t any point to playing it unless you enjoy it enough to be willing to give up some speed.
Necro is actually good for carrying pug groups and making the runs go smoothly, so for people who do random pugs or have casual friends it’s not that bad, but a lot of people don’t recognize this and they just play meta stuff.
It’s a bad choice for people who want to hardcore grind it up with a tryhard guild and get their rewards as efficiently as possible. For those people I imagine it’s frustrating that the necro isn’t an option.
stuff
We are not trying to bend PvE to help necros, we are trying to bend PvE away from its initial bad design. The game has many mechanics (immobilize, weakness, blinds, slow, chill, daze, interrupts, conditions/boon manipulation) which are negated or rendered useless by PvE content. You cannot play how you want it, because many ways you may want to play are impossible. Example, I want to be an interrupt mesmer, which is one of the key playstyle of the class. Well, my interrupt traits won’t proc very often, and if I interrupt the boss after all his defiant stacks have been removed, I am very happy with my trait proc, but my team-mate elementalist and its icebow wants to kill me now…
The proof of this failure is the huge gap between PvE and PvP. People keep complaining about “A-net should have a different PvE and PvP balance”. I disagree! Anet should have a PvE which uses all the mechanics that the game provides with a decent AI so that the PvP balance is meaningful also for PvE.
No, PvE sucks, and it just happens that the mechanics that are banned affect more necro than other classes. The solution is not to fix necro to be a second elementalist. There is not only 1 outlier, 99% of builds are outliers as far as PvE is concerned.
Just because ANET will not allow you to trivialize pve boss mechanics, doesn’t mean the game needs to be redesigned around mechanics that will allow you to to completely eliminate boss mechanics…that would be really boring if you could interrupt the only things that would ever put you in danger. If bosses could not even catch up to you to do anything to you would be another similar issue. There is a reason some people choose to play pve and not pvp…and vice versa…they absolutely do not need to function the exact same way. It would be different if ANET would really implement a fully balanced game concerning professions and npcs and mechanics, but we know that will never actually happen….so until that does…then this pvp and pve are one thing you want, will never come to pass.
havent read the thread. so in response to OP
PvE will change with the expansion, on saturday we will get more info
From what we have seen there will be mobs with a lot of CC, making condis and soft cc useful. but im certain that the devs are looking into making necro better without just slapping couple of blast finishers or increasing damage. so dont worry that much.
Also right now pve is so easy every class has enough damage. and i pug lv50 fracs all the time, and turns out transfusion is meta^^
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If you think the gear situation is fine, then you have no grounds to say necro needs to be changed. Yes, people can choose whatever gear they want and give up damage for survival. Playing necro is the same sort of choice, especially if you have a lot of armor, like full knight’s.
So people can choose necro to have an easier time surviving and beating content more reliably, but slower. It’s the same thing you’re arguing is acceptable for gear.
However, most players want to gain rewards efficiently. It turns out necro is probably not good for that purpose.
Also, PvE is really shallow. It’s not possible to give necro a unique niche that isn’t already filled because there just isn’t any need for anything other professions don’t do already. The PvE content does not demand it.
Because apples are not oranges, then no one can say anything…okay! Gear does not equal profession design. That’s one of the main points ANET addressed when removing the stats from specialization lines. You should be able to tailor your profession to your standards via both gear and traits. You shouldn’t have to be relegated to being a hp sponge/face tank unless you choose defensive gear and/or defensive traits. That’s one of the problems with necromancers/reapers in my opinion…our class mechanic is designed to face tank….albeit rather poorly…also my opinion. There isn’t a good reason for the necro/reaper to not have both a slow and steady option, and a fast and furious option. That’s the same way with gear…you can choose to play how you want. There’s not a good excuse to permanently and intentionally relegate one profession to the “fat kid on the play ground club”. You obviously see the situation that creates…and it is not a good one…at least not as far as instanced pve goes.
Yes, pve is relatively shallow in this game. Its not like the overall game is dripping with complexity. Its doubtful they are truly going to redesign the entire game to fix that at any point. Lets give them a realistic target that is within their grasp/budget/tolerance to fix. Pvp is going to be more complex than pve by default since it is not scripted behavior you fight against. There is also the fact that you can use all of your CC skills (no defiance/unshakeable/etc) and build varieties there…since survival builds and support builds are huge there.
Boon Ripping:
There used to be a Guild Bounty boss that required you to rip off both stability and defiance stacks in order to hurt.
Necromancers weren’t wanted for that boss. Necromancer boon rips weren’t frequent enough compared to Mesmer or thief and necromancer boon corruptions put more defiance stacks on the boss.
Because additional players put additional defiance stacks on bosses, necromancers were forbidden from fighting that boss.
So even in the best case “boon rip needed in PvE” situation so far, necromancers weren’t wanted.
#24 leaderboard rank North America.
I really don’t know what you guys think moving to a condi meta will accomplish. Do you realize the Necromancer is one of the weakest condi builds offensively in the game? It can’t stack bleeds or poisons well, it has almost no access to torment, and burn is very unreliable. Warriors, Eles, Rangers, and Engineers each blow Necro out of the water. So condi is a lost cause.
Another group of people are trying to imply a shift away from a berserker meta will somehow change things, but the only way that would be true is if every class other than Necro shifted away from berserker and left Necros as the sole class able to maximize their power. So this is also a lost cause.
The Necro is fundamentally flawed and players have been complaining about the simple fact that Necro going into the expansion as bad as it was would lead to either an incredibly weak Reaper class or a Reaper so horrendously overpowered that Necro would cease to exist becase you absolutely need Reaper to account for the class’s shortcomings.