Guild Wars 2

@Roe you have a pretty good point there, weakness is pretty useless, I mean, the point is to decrease the damage, and who are the ones with the most damage? Glass cannons, glass cannons get affected the least from vulnerability because they crit pretty much on 50% chance.
So who gets weakened most from weakness? Bunkers . Bunkers don’t have damage, and they don’t need to have damage because that is not their use.
Weakness should be reversed, criticals do 50% dmg, normal hits do normal damage.(or a general X% reduction, the “offensive” protection)

Vulnerability is fine, a bit weak but it has a good purpose, I believe vulnerability should increase damage by 2% per stack and 1% cond dmg, so 25 stacks of vulne is ~25 more damage per bleed. Sounds fine to me.

Also poison is fine as a condition, but also weak, it has weak damage and weak healing reduction ,a 50 or 66% would be much better.

Bhawb.7408:

For PvP, issues are a bit more complicated. Its not that weakness, poison, and chill are weak (in fact, letting chill stay on you for a long time will devastate just about any build, weakness nullifies vigor, poison craps on a lot of healing), its that the other forms of support are much easier to utilize. You can stick a guardian on a team, and it takes very little coordination for him to do his job. I think Necro support will see more play when teams are much more comfortable with playing with the more difficult mechanics.

The biggest buff to weakness would be to remove the stupid critical hit clause. IMO, weakness should be a flat 50% chance to glance across the board. Critical hits or not. It never made sense why critical hits ignored weakness.

The whole problem with a debuff strategy via conditions (weakness, poison, vulnerability, etc) as opposed to a buff strategy based on boons is that conditions are much more easily removed and must be applied to every single target that you want them to affect, whereas boons only need to go on one target – yourself – to be effective against multiple opponents. Also, debuffing someone else with conditions won’t prevent yourself from being cc’ed, and for a class with zero viable stun breakers that’s something of a problem. Thus, in skirmish-sized fights, necros tend to be an easy target for focus fire, and when this happens your team has to either 1) go into Emergency Babysitter Mode™ or 2) leave you to die a horrible death.

This, incidentally, is also one of the reasons why I don’t have a lot of faith in a new condition on DS5 solving any problems for us.

I don’t think weakness is meant to be strictly damage reduction, you have to remember that it completely nullifies vigor, in addition to having a decent damage reduction (certainly not huge).

The other problem would be if weakness became too strong as a damage reduction mechanic; as it also stacks with protection. Meaning weakness would not only be (on average) a 25% damage reduction, but now protection is mitigating 33% of the damage left over, meaning you would take about 50% damage.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t think weakness is meant to be strictly damage reduction, you have to remember that it completely nullifies vigor, in addition to having a decent damage reduction (certainly not huge).

The other problem would be if weakness became too strong as a damage reduction mechanic; as it also stacks with protection. Meaning weakness would not only be (on average) a 25% damage reduction, but now protection is mitigating 33% of the damage left over, meaning you would take about 50% damage.

It already does this with non-crit builds.

Poison effecting heals that remove poison as opposed to the removal occuring, THEN the heal occuring would help that condition a lot. I don’t think having weakness work on crits would be a bad thing. If it was too strong without the crit clause, then just adjust the figure to balance it out. Right now it womps non- crit builds, and is marginally effective against crit builds (if only for the endurance regen reduction).

I personally would prefer if the effect of weakness relative to endurance, was that dodges just took more endurance while under the effect of weakness.

But as to the point PVE bosses and boons, I think that is an excellent point as well. There are currently no bosses I can think of that flip your boons, or do bonus damage to you with boons on. While I can think of plenty of bosses that reflect conditions, clear conditions, take zero damage from conditions.

I doubt they will change this though. Anet has said all along they want dungeons doable with any group. That means you cannot require or even sufficiently need those debuffs, or you would be FORCE to group with poison/weakness classes, which they will not do.

Bas.7406:

Wow, this thread went all over the place haha. I saw Zzods forum post, and I have read most of these. I even brought up these points with Gibbly and Zombify who are probably two of the top Necro’s in tournament play right now.

I could not comment on high level play as I am not playing it.

In regards to Zzods weapon choices and skill choices, it’s obvious he doesn’t have a ton of experience with the necro based on the fact that he misstated how a lot of skills work that are evident to most players. Including the axe options, Axe 3 plus Axe 2 timing after a dodge is amazing in tpvp. No self-respecting Axe wielding Necro just throws out Axe 2. You always wait for the dodge axe 2 boom.

However he is absolutely correct in that the real issues with the Necromancer only come up when you get up to the top levels of tournament play. So I went to the guys who still play the class in tournaments, Symbolic of EU (went ranger for 80 percent of the maps), Zombify of SOAC, and Gibbly of JFK.

Here is a synopsis of their replies to me over the last week.

1). The Necromancer is incredibly powerful if played correctly. You have to be more aware of your positioning, and when played right and you stay within your position it’s one of the most beautiful classes in the game. It synergizes well in team play and you can literally win a team fight by proper application of CB and Epidemic.

2). They have a ridiculously tough time with certain comps that have classes that can attack your positioning with impunity aka Double Engi comps.

3). If you get out of position you are screwed. They used more choice words, but their essential them was the Necro is the only class that relies so much on positioning and that if you aren’t watching and get caught out of position you are royally screwed.

4). You have to have a peeler. If your team doesn’t have a peeler find a new team or switch classes. Guardians/Ele’s/mesmers are peelers and they need to be specced and aware of their role as peelers. If they aren’t or they miss a peel you are screwed.

5). You have no business roaming or moving away from the main fight where your peeler and guardian are. You are the slowest class in the game and even with Spectral walk you will only get caught by the Thief/Ele/Ranger roamer and then you are dead.

6) The lack of any sort of disengage, vigor, or easy stability access is what hurts the class. All we want is one of them. Give me one of the three and I am a happy man, make DS 2 a port, or make Spectral Armor give Stability or jsut give me a better vigor access so I can choose to use DS offensively.

7). Fear is the single greatest weapon we have. Our weapons are not designed to deal damage but to setup our tools to help other players kill.

8) The necro is so close to being perfect and so dangerously close to being op, that any adjustment that’s too far in the benefit direction would immediately create a disadvantage to anyone we face. All we know is that we need a few minor changes.

9) There are maps where because of the Necro’s lack of stability/disengage/mobility it’s better to either sub out your necro for a player that can actually be effective or swap professions (namely Khylo and Spirit Watch).

After watching players play in the torunaments I must say I agree with them, the Necro is beautiful to watch in the hands of an expert, but there are some severe deficiencies that prevent it from really being a strong tournament class.

Uh, excuse me? It’s obvious that I don’t have a ton of experience with necro? Huh?
I misstated the bleed stacks on one ability where the tooltip IS wrong (I didn’t trust it, but figured it couldn’t possibly be wrong this long into release..maybe got changed etc), but wrote it anyway because I was cranking this post out in 45 minutes and didn’t care to bother double checking it. Big deal. It is rather offensive you are basically calling me a “newbie” because of it. So, what are all these other numerous things I mistated or don’t understand?

I would put my necromancer skills up there with ANYONE in this game. EASILY. If you don’t recognize my name as a quality player, then you weren’t involved in Tpvp when it was in its peak time.

It’s funny how other people found my post as good analysis, but you are able to characterize it as " In regards to Zzods weapon choices and skill choices, it’s obvious he doesn’t have a ton of experience with the necro based on the fact that he misstated how a lot of skills work that are evident to most players. "

Thank god we have other good necromancers around so that we can fact-check stupid Zzod’s posts and point out his inexerpiences. rolls eyes

Weakness also doesn’t do squat to condition builds, either. It’s not a Necro specific issue but it could certainly help if it was improved.

Well I`v tried all other profs, and Necro suits ME best.
For me, that`s what matters. I will never be the best player in WvW, the best dps in a dungeon, and PvP I don`t do.
If you wanna be the top dog roll a warr, if you wanna be the stealth assasin roll a thief, and so on. 90% of people will find something to suit their need, and if not, there are other games out there that may suit them.

Yeah I know necro has problems, it has problems since launch; did you checked the engi forums? the ranger one? things could be worse (well not in the warr forum).

relax & try to enjoy, if not, roll something else.

rogerwilko.6895:

If you wanna be the top dog roll a warr

Reading that made me die a little on the inside.

I may have exaggerated a little.

Another gem from the State of the necromancer thread that belongs here.

Oldbugga.7029:

Personal opinion.

As an ex-systems analyst/auditor (among many other things) I have learned that you should not try to design the basis of any system around outlier low probability results.Outliers need to be accepted as low frequency and seen as such and the circumstances that caused them should be addressed specifically…not only through restricting the activity itself (eg is 2 CBs and 2 epidemics produce an outlier you potentially place a DR on them WHEN USED CLOSELY TOGETHER….NOT generally or in different circumstances). It is almost impossible to incorporate system balance to equitably deal with those improbable outliers and the run-of-the mill results that will overwhelmingly be more likely outcomes.

In many of the arguments here, and as seen by the hesitancy by the devs to even contemplate the occasional outliers in out abilities, reasonable suggestions for the bulk of the potential gameplay suggestions are being too readily dismissed by the slight probability that once in a while the planets will line up and some exceptional outcome is possible…occasionally and NOT consistantly.

I think for balancing and skills development the devs should not be focussing just on the outlier results as reasons to limit abilities but should also consider the likelihood of such aberrations and address that as the balancing factor.

Also, Necro players are not some unique breed of game player. I don’t think “blaming the players” for adopting the “cookie cutter” builds because they work is helping anyone’s cause. Other professions are doing exactly the same and it is the comparitive results that are causing players to be gun shy in trying newer builds which usually have proven to be less effective. I trust more the fact that the competively focussed players will chose the most effective builds rather than hypothesizing that the reason for that choice is that they are lazy or stubborn or reluctant to change. I don’t think the players are at fault for expressing their disatisfaction at the poorer necro performance when adopting the same build strategies as any other profession and achieving inferior results.

Of all that has been written on this issue so far, the above post by Oldbugga comes the closest to explaining in general terms why the inherent game design of the necromancer is fundamentally flawed. If you read through the State of the Necromancer thread, it is clear that most attempts to defend the viability of the class rely on referring to either epidemic or corrupt boon (or both) and the power of these skills. And it is true that these two skills are, at least potentially, among the most powerful in the game.

However, this potential rarely shines through. The perfect storm almost never actually materializes. Videos such as the one posted by Bas display the outlier scenario, not the run of the mill occurance. This, in fact, is the entire purpose of builds that attempt to capitalize on the power of epidemic and corrupt boon: to drag the outlier scenario into the realm of acceptable statistical probability.

If the fact that the only viable build that involves necromancers is based around potentially abuseable mechanics is an eye opener, the realization that such builds are ultimately not viable anyway at the top level due to the many shortcomings of the class as a whole – as already accounted for by Zzod and others – should be a huge red flag. This essentially paints the picture of the necromancer class as a one-trick-pony, really only brought along to perform its party piece, and then relegated to being babysat the rest of the time. If such outlier scenarios are what’s preventing us from having a real discussion about the geniune flaws of the necromancer, the solution is simple. As Oldbugga correctly states, the circumstances that cause such outliers should be specifically pinpointed and addressed at the source. What should NOT be done is precisely what A.Net is currently doing, which is leaving many other aspects of the class in a subpar state to somehow justify the presence of the outlier. This bring us to the inevitable conclusion, for which I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flak, but here goes anyway:

Nerf epidemic and corrupt boon!

There it is, plain and simple. Now I should perhaps mention that by nerf I simply mean introduce some restrictions or redesign them in a way that reigns in the extreme damage potential. In other words, they should produce results that are more reliable, predictable, and consistent – without being game breaking. If bringing the class up to par on all the other parameters would break the game balance due to the presence of the outlier scenario, then that too must be addressed in a meaningful way before we can move forward. In arguing for improvements to the necromancer, that, really, is what we’re asking for.

I dont think anyone really cares, but just to point it out you can get Stability using lyssa runes. It works on Flesh golem charge, so has a 40s cooldown to activate with a 10sish internal cooldown (so you can’t summon golem and then charge for 10s of it)

not the best place, but I don’t think its worth a whole thread.

Loyo.8526:

I dont think anyone really cares, but just to point it out you can get Stability using lyssa runes. It works on Flesh golem charge, so has a 40s cooldown to activate with a 10sish internal cooldown (so you can’t summon golem and then charge for 10s of it)

The cooldown for the 6th bonus is 45 seconds. And it works on summoning the golem as well.

I’m sure many necros out there are not only aware but also use it. Still, like Foot in the Grave, it is too specific to boost the necro’s survivability/attrition as a whole class.

I suspect that all Necro skills are already balanced around the possibility of epidemic, such that you’re slightly penalized if you don’t take it in any situation with multiple opponents. Rather than adjusting every skill the necro has with conditions on it, I’d love to see Epidemic made universally available, and put on Death Shroud.

The problem with this is that with its current iteration, you could epidemic the fear from doom too easily. As it is, I’m pretty sure going into death shroud interrupts the cast on epidemic.

I don’t feel like corrupt boon is nearly as much of a problem, because while it can leverage a lot of power, it has a more tightly defined scenario in which to do so (Enemy boon spike), and similar effects can be accomplished via other skills (Well of corruption, spinal shivers, possibly even the Necrotic Corruption trait for minion boon removal, to keep it all within the necromancer). That said, I could probably be convinced otherwise.

But what epidemic does is very much unique to that skill, and changes how a lot of the game plays.

@Mana:

I would have eventually commented Oldbugga’s post itself.

Epidemic and Corrupt Boon are not outliers!
Even the example that Oldbugga gave himself (2CB and Epi in a row) are nothing special in WvW. What else do you think is going to happen when 2 necros target a boon heavy guardian in a hostile zerg? And: there’s absolutely nothing super devastating about it that would warrent a nerf. In the heat of the battle people get focused, that’s just how it is. No outliers here…
So nerfing either one would accomplish nothing.

Besides, this and the corresponding thread in the PvP section are for the most part not about the (lack of) damage the necro can do. It’s about what can be improved to make the necro less of an easy target in groupfights, because as it stands the necro’s attrition mechanic (DS + high hp) just doesn’t work as well as the boon stacking of other professions who aren’t branded “the attrition class”.

I don’t think CD is really that powerful, epidemic could be deadly, but corrupt boon is only good for corrupting stability, pretty much everything else is not that great, and corrupting the boons of a boon stacking build for a few seconds of X,Y conditions is harmless, usually the boons on these builds can be recovered within a few seconds.

So very true, cept. If ya’s split pvp & pve. Why not listen to the PvE’ers, fix us there so we useful & copy across the bits that work to PvP?
A-Net seem scared to fix anything because they are scared we’ll be OP. Why not start by making us FUN, then worry about balance for pvp?

Because a lot of people have fun playing Necromancers, most people who don’t just move on to another class and have fun there. Not to say there aren’t minor fixes that they could do for us, but mainly what they need to fix is balance related.

And really PvE isn’t something they can fix us in. It isn’t that Necromancers are bad, its that what we bring to the table isn’t necessary right now. We’re godly in trash mob situations, but those situations aren’t challenging enough to matter. We can punish boons on enemies and conditions on allies, but both of those are very rare. We can stack a bunch of conditions on enemies, but that is outclassed by boons on allies, and multiple bosses just remove condis anyway (and don’t punish boons). They’ve pretty much made PvE to make us unwanted, and in the future they need to introduce mechanics that you need a Necromancer for (and do that for every class).

flow.6043:

@Mana:

I would have eventually commented Oldbugga’s post itself.

Epidemic and Corrupt Boon are not outliers!
Even the example that Oldbugga gave himself (2CB and Epi in a row) are nothing special in WvW. What else do you think is going to happen when 2 necros target a boon heavy guardian in a hostile zerg? And: there’s absolutely nothing super devastating about it that would warrent a nerf. In the heat of the battle people get focused, that’s just how it is. No outliers here…
So nerfing either one would accomplish nothing.

Besides, this and the corresponding thread in the PvP section are for the most part not about the (lack of) damage the necro can do. It’s about what can be improved to make the necro less of an easy target in groupfights, because as it stands the necro’s attrition mechanic (DS + high hp) just doesn’t work as well as the boon stacking of other professions who aren’t branded “the attrition class”.

My example was not chosen as a definitive example of an outlier outcome but merely picked up on a comment by Bas or Bhawb about such a combo melting a zerg…I did not define it as OP.

My basic message (well that I was trying to get across) was directed at the limiting of the base abilities like Epi or CB in themselves (like the nerfs we have seen) rather than unusual OP combinations that occur too frequently for balance. This is what makes the base character abilities lame (as we have seen) and requires the much higher levels of player engagement etc to achieve even comparable outcomes. And there is NO NEED to tone down all outlier results, if they are within accepted frequencies they can be tolerated…but you should NOT gut the base abilities on the basis that some rare combination of circumstances MAY occur….and they should NOT figure prominently in balancing.

From a personal necro point of view (or any other class that struggles to at least achieve some parity with the powerhouses) I find it really frustrating that we are neglected in terms of achieving that balance and although I know Bas/Bhawb have stated that ANet will be toning down other professions to be more in line with our own, I do not see it…and apparently nor do many others as our relative population is at the bottom (shared with engis on 11%). I don’t like using hypothetical or annecdotal reasoning but I think ANet need to look closely at the real reasons for this….and it cannot be sheeted away by glib reference to forum attitude and that the forums are not representative of the playerbase in general because those are merely self serving excuses for other failures.

Or, and go with me on this, ANet can work on the popular/strong classes and continue to fix/buff them and just leave the janky classes to fend for themselves. All mmos do this, and with ANets kitten for warriors or guardians, doubt this will be changing. Just do the smart thing like everyone else, re-roll into one of the good classes and shelf your waste of space necro. Once you stop seeing them in game, then and only then will the possibility of a fix come into play.

Can’t let this sink into oblivion.

All recent communications have indicated they are looking into things. The idea of getting burning, a new condition, better scaling on healing and siphon are all things that would help out significantly.

It just makes me want to point and laugh at everyone who was commenting on how we were in-balance, and minor tweeks were all we needed (myself included for saying that). It seems the rosey-outlook on things was even more-so than the devs thought… I will go back to making demands for buffs, and bug fixes, angrily.

Rennoko.5731:

All recent communications have indicated they are looking into things. The idea of getting burning, a new condition, better scaling on healing and siphon are all things that would help out significantly.

It just makes me want to point and laugh at everyone who was commenting on how we were in-balance, and minor tweeks were all we needed (myself included for saying that). It seems the rosey-outlook on things was even more-so than the devs thought… I will go back to making demands for buffs, and bug fixes, angrily.

ANet says a lot of things. They were especially famous in GW1 for saying they were going to do something, and then never doing it, or taking more than a year to finally implement the idea (in a paid expansion no less). Case in point, the elementalist from GW1. When they introduced hard modes in prophecies, they buffed every NPCs elemental resistances so high that it completely screwed over the class. No one wanted eles for anything in PVE except as a support healer of some kind, but necromancers were arguably better at that role also due to Soul Reaping (gave energy on enemy death, AKA infinite energy vs extremely large but finite energy pool.) It was the only thing elementalists could do as their damage became complete crap after hard modes got introduced. It took ANet nearly 4 years to fix this problem and reduce the armor levels of hard mode NPCs (they buffed HP levels of NPCs to compensate though) to allow them to be viable again.

I want to be optimistic, but I honestly can’t take anything ANet says at face value any more at this point. I’m sorry to say, but their balance process is so remarkably slow that nothing they say can even remotely be seen as a possibility until it actually does happen.

They should give the Necromancer more Mobility with D/D , a port on 5 or something.

I cast Signet of Undeath on this thread.
So now the necromancer finally cuts it, although the class picked up a couple major official as well as stealth nerfs in the process, but it is yet again facing ‘adjustments’.

Will it again sink into oblivion, or will it manage to retain the holy grail that is viability in tpvp, even if for the wrong reasons?
Stay tuned, as the misterious ways of Anet unfold!

KarlaGrey.5903:

I cast Signet of Undeath on this thread.
So now the necromancer finally cuts it, although the class picked up a couple major official as well as stealth nerfs in the process, but it is yet again facing ‘adjustments’.

Will it again sink into oblivion, or will it manage to retain the holy grail that is viability in tpvp, even if for the wrong reasons?
Stay tuned, as the misterious ways of Anet unfold!

We don’t have only 1 viable build for tPvP right now and ANet only mentioned nerfs to that 1 build.
Increasing our survivability and LF generation will be some pretty good buffs to any build, so I’m, personally, really not that worried for this patch.

If terror gets hit, it’ll affect more than just a single build.

KarlaGrey.5903:

I cast Signet of Undeath on this thread.

nice^^

It’s funny how ~80% of this thread was about increasing survivabilty, yet this hardly changed at all. So I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say " now the necro cuts it".

I guess they solved our survivability issues by giving us a few extra tools to kill our opponent before they manage to kill us!
That, and spectral effects in DS for extra lf generation, IF you actually take spectral skills, that is!
Woo!
But yea, I suppose it only cuts it until people pull their kitten together and just CC the class into oblivion, as they have done it before the patch.

What they need to do is reduce the overwhelming offensive pressure from burning/terror combo, and then give us the survivability we need. Right now the only thing making us work better is that there is so much damage going out its a game of chicken as to who wants to stay in the fight longest; first one to stop attacking loses.

It’s hard to see how they could nerf Dhuumfire (it’s already just a 10-point Engi trait), but nerfing Terror is going to seriously hurt Condi builds and Terrormancers without any real point. I wonder if they’re going to reduce Terror’s damage but then increase our access to Bleeds or Poison to compensate.

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s hard to see how they could nerf Dhuumfire (it’s already just a 10-point Engi trait), but nerfing Terror is going to seriously hurt Condi builds and Terrormancers without any real point. I wonder if they’re going to reduce Terror’s damage but then increase our access to Bleeds or Poison to compensate.

I don’t know…. we already have enough to stack 25 bleeds and full uptime poison. And I don’t even trait for 100% bleeding. The quick fix is just to combine terror and burning in a GM level trait in curses, done. Can’t do both at the same time now. Would be a big nerf to overall damage, but would put us about back to where we were before the patch with the addition of torment, which would be fine balance wise in my opinion once they buff our survival.

Bhawb.7408:

What they need to do is reduce the overwhelming offensive pressure from burning/terror combo, and then give us the survivability we need. Right now the only thing making us work better is that there is so much damage going out its a game of chicken as to who wants to stay in the fight longest; first one to stop attacking loses.

Agreed, but Jon, ever so foolishly, said that they’re looking at giving more weapon skills the ability to generate life force at the cost of offensive capability. This is the wack-a-mole kind of thing that they said they’d never do. Go figure they break another promise they set from the beginning. (No gear treadmill *cough*ascended*cough).

One thing to note is that ANet did this to themselves. They should have known that adding a new condition and making it so that Necros are the first to have it will make Necros FotM. A class that’s FotM will see cries for nerfs and people feel more inclined that the class is op, whether it is or not.

I’d expect to see either the life force % for existing weapons to go up or maybe adding life force into off-hand skills. Jon also mentioned that Necro’s have too many skills that offer bleed and that they’re going to tone this back. To that, I bite my thumb at him and spit on the floor. If anything that needs toning back is the Terror/Dhuumfire build and Necro’s need to keep their attrition power. Bumping survivability and nerfing bleeds kinda defeats the attrition purpose. I guess that’s ANet being ANet; take 3 steps forward than 5 steps back.

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s hard to see how they could nerf Dhuumfire (it’s already just a 10-point Engi trait), but nerfing Terror is going to seriously hurt Condi builds and Terrormancers without any real point. I wonder if they’re going to reduce Terror’s damage but then increase our access to Bleeds or Poison to compensate.

Jon said they’re toning the bleeds back so if they do nerf Terror don’t expect anything else adjusted to compensate the nerf.

Rennoko.5731:

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s hard to see how they could nerf Dhuumfire (it’s already just a 10-point Engi trait), but nerfing Terror is going to seriously hurt Condi builds and Terrormancers without any real point. I wonder if they’re going to reduce Terror’s damage but then increase our access to Bleeds or Poison to compensate.

I don’t know…. we already have enough to stack 25 bleeds and full uptime poison. And I don’t even trait for 100% bleeding. The quick fix is just to combine terror and burning in a GM level trait in curses, done. Can’t do both at the same time now. Would be a big nerf to overall damage, but would put us about back to where we were before the patch with the addition of torment, which would be fine balance wise in my opinion once they buff our survival.

This would cripple condi builds, though, which have heretofore relied on Terror as their burst condition.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Jon said they’re toning the bleeds back so if they do nerf Terror don’t expect anything else adjusted to compensate the nerf.

:(

I think it kind of depends what they nerf. If they hit sceptor durations, it won’t be so bad, but I bet they have in mind to reduce the bleeds from things like dagger 5 and sceptor 2 (by one bleed each), and MOB to 2 bleeds per cast. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see that.

In the SOTG he even commented that necros stacked bleeds too fast, when using geo, and several very specific traits. The problem with nerfing those, is that one build that capitalizes on bleeds is nerfed, and then any build NOT capitalizing on that is nerfed harder.

I am all for balance, but I think I will miss the way things were before the patch. Back then people actually respected me as a player for sticking with the (supposedly)weaker class, and now people tend to scowl at me and say rude things. At least after the nerf that will go back to normal.

Things would have been so much better if they had fixed the siphon scaling to be something worthwhile, fixed death magic, fixed the base size of marks, and added torment. No burning, no doom buff, no spectral wall fear… That would have been a patch that no one would cry about, and it would have made necro more fun to play.

Rennoko.5731:

Things would have been so much better if they had fixed the siphon scaling to be something worthwhile, fixed death magic, fixed the base size of marks, and added torment. No burning, no doom buff, no spectral wall fear… That would have been a patch that no one would cry about, and it would have made necro more fun to play.

It’s odd. As much as I liked the patch, I was anticipating a rework on the defensive end, not on the necromancer’s offensive capabilities.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Blaine Tog.8304:

It’s hard to see how they could nerf Dhuumfire (it’s already just a 10-point Engi trait), but nerfing Terror is going to seriously hurt Condi builds and Terrormancers without any real point. I wonder if they’re going to reduce Terror’s damage but then increase our access to Bleeds or Poison to compensate.

Jon said they’re toning the bleeds back so if they do nerf Terror don’t expect anything else adjusted to compensate the nerf.

I thought he said the opposite, that they ’don’t’ want to mess with bleeds as that would effect too many main builds.

To the quoted question though, how to nerf terror without hurting condi builds, well they would have to seriously buff traits in Death and Blood Magic. Get rid of the auto minion traits, beef up siphoning more, etc.

They could still do more yet for Soul Reaping but then 30/30 Spite/SR builds might get too strong.

But far better than any of that just tone down dumbfire a bit. Either 15 second cooldown, or reduce duration by a second or so (25% damage).

The sigil of Para nerf is already gonna hurt terror.

Change the Burning proc to a base of 3 seconds instead of 4. That will probably be enough.

I don’t believe the developers are going to make changes such that Necromancer condition pressure is laughable like it once was. I think they want to make it such that the damage and condition protection from burning is toned down a little.