Guild Wars 2

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

And yet, Defiant Stance was put out where the potential truly is infinite.

Limited by duration. Yes it has “infinite” scaling, just like every block, invuln, and similar mechanic in the game, but they are all still limited by durations.

For example, compare Vampiric Master to Vampiric. Master is limited both by the number of minions you have out, their attack speed, and reliance on them hitting. So at most you’ll have 7-8 minions with an average attack rate of once per 3s (and they will of course die), so there are built in limiters due to the qualities of the minions. So the “max” case isn’t far from the standard case; balance is pretty easy and satisfactory for all sides. Also due to the nature of minions, you’re generally not going to see this combined with anything other than Vampiric.

Vampiric however, is only limited by how much crap you can hit at once. Vampiric, plus Vampiric Precision, plus Vampiric Rituals, throw down four wells, Locust swarm, then Dagger 2, you’re looking at up to 483 procs of those three traits. Including Bloodthirst and assuming an average (I did a weighted average), of 47 HP siphoned per hit that is a total of 22,578 damage dealt and healed, base (without any scaling). That is on top of any effects caused by the skills themselves, that is all additional damage and healing caused through the traits alone.

That is massive scaling, something that other classes don’t see. 483 procs in 10 seconds, 22k additional healing and damage just from 30 trait points. No wonder the devs are scared, in ideal situations it is insane what they will do.

Now, I’m not trying to say that that will ever happen. It won’t. And it sucks that we are balanced because of that insane top-end unrealistic math that will never be achieved in reality. But that is how it goes, and that’s why limiters are really important.

May want to factor in that only two of the wells even can proc Vampiric Precision, there.

Maybe they should consider using 0.25s limiters instead of a full 1s limiter.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

May want to factor in that only two of the wells even can proc Vampiric Precision, there.

I did. I didn’t show the math because it was too much work to type it all out, but I was careful to only include Precision on the two wells that proc it, LS, and D2.

Looks like I picked a great time to return to this game… even after Anet buffed necros to the point where idiots could play them, there is still whining. Love it!

Talentless.5708:

Looks like I picked a great time to return to this game… even after Anet buffed necros to the point where idiots could play them, there is still whining. Love it!

Even Warriors whine.

I’ve tried this well siphon thingy now in the pvp lobby and the numbers arent that high.

I took only Bloodthirst, Ritual mastery and Vampiric rituals. Vampiric came from 15 point minor of course. With these traits i got 42 damage and 40 heal from Vampiric, 20 damage and 65 heal from Vampiric rituals per tick. (1899 power, 360 healing)

Wells ticks 28 times (WoB 10, else 6 times), proccing both vampiric traits while Locust swarm (WH#5) proccing only Vampiric 10 times. Abracadabra, this means 2156 damage and 3340 heal on one target under ~10 seconds. What did i miss?

Even at aoe this isnt that brutal and you give up 30 points for nearly nothing even if you take Vampiric precision, but in that case you need reasonable Precision to procc it. I admit the damage portion would be higher with more power, but Anet balancing around PvP anyway.
In PvE aoe situations arent problem, not even in dungeons. WvW is still unbalanced and when 5 opponent is at the same place as you in sPvP, then there is something already wrong, good luck for your 5v1.

Sorry if i wasnt contructive or misscalculated something in a stupid way. :/

I used whatever numbers are listed as the tooltips, I didn’t bother to test if they are bugged or not (they may be).

Even so, you’re blowing six cooldowns and 30 trait points (or more) to get those kinds of numbers. If I was using six skills all in their absolutely perfect situation, I would hope that I get some really impressive results from it. Even though 22k health sounds really impressive, all it amounts to is a full heal over 10 seconds assuming nobody hits you in return. For using that much of my build in that kind of burst, I’d actually hope I could get a bit more out of it. The necro gets one full heal from investing most of their build into it in a perfect situation.

The Guardian, by just investing their heal skill in their typical damage build, can refill their health entirely 2-3 times in those same circumstances (once you factor in the necro’s much larger health pool, it’s still the same return for much less investment).

I understand that the absolute perfect circumstance needs to be accounted for, but that is not what ANet is (or should be) balancing around (at least, not across the board). If the absolute perfect circumstance for a skill or combo shows up, and the player uses said skill or combo, they should get greatly rewarded for it. Everyone wants those moments where they just feel awesome. Let these moments happen on the rare occasions where they can and don’t make things suck for everything but that ideal circumstance.

TLDR: Reward players when they use their abilities to the maximum effect. Don’t punish them when the perfect circumstances don’t happen.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

A lot of traits for the necromancer just seemed rushed in at the last minute, and there are a lot that never see any use.

Because they made too many last second changes, due to that a few people found OP builds with the Necro in beta. But instead of tweaking what was there, Anet panicked and nerfed Necro into the ground, and its never made sense as a comprehensive class sine.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits

Stuff like this is what the class is missing, and ironically, was once meant to have:

Shade - Soul Reaping - Minor - Prevent knocked back, knocked down, launched, slowed or stunned while in Death Shroud.

Dark Path in DS used to be a teleport. Now the class has no mobility, can’t escape, and can’t catch people. Go figure.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

snip

No, you see that is just the numbers from the traits. I don’t know of many other traits that can cause 22k damage and healing in 10 seconds.

Well of Blood can add another 13k self-healing (35k AoE), WoS/WoC will be adding their own damage, etc. Those numbers are literally just 4 traits working together being activated as much as possible in a small time period.

Bhawb.7408:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

snip

No, you see that is just the numbers from the traits. I don’t know of many other traits that can cause 22k damage and healing in 10 seconds.

Well of Blood can add another 13k self-healing (35k AoE), WoS/WoC will be adding their own damage, etc. Those numbers are literally just 4 traits working together being activated as much as possible in a small time period.

The problem is our bottom end performance is being sacrificed due to theoretical perfect scenarios that result in those top end numbers.

I can understand the need to keep the top end in check; but it’s been over a year and at some point actual serious effort needs to be allocated past some minor number tweaks to adjust the back end mechanics to something actually viable outside of full investment and perfect conditions.

Of course, which is why they need ICDs on those skills; aka limiters. If there is a 1s ICD on Vampiric, for example, then instead of worrying “what if it hits 10x a second” you can know exactly what the upper limit is, and control it very easily.

I’m more in favor of indexing the lifesteal to be a % of the power damage dealt to the target per attack; that way you get something controllable (and helps power/hybrid Necro builds) while not allowing a bunker build to breach the immortality threshold in the way a static base leech does, especially with AE’s.

Overkillengine.6084:

I’m more in favor of indexing the lifesteal to be a % of the power damage dealt to the target per attack; that way you get something controllable (and helps power/hybrid Necro builds) while not allowing a bunker build to breach the immortality threshold in the way a static base leech does, especially with AE’s.

So pretty much the guardian meditation. Didn’t we see what that could do under ideal conditions?

And? Guardians are almost as stand and fight it out oriented as Necros barring a few skills here and there.

Plus they have more on demand mechanics available to them that synergize with healing. They literally get a better ideal set of conditions available to them.

McWolfy.5924:

im a fresh necro and play only wvw. what i think: necro is awesome in large fights. aoe, prots, fears, boon removal, chill, blind with excelent sustain. sometimes i just wach, press buttons, laugh and collect bags. sorry guys but i cant understand your problem. if u want to cry try ranger

You run in huge fights and are, I suppose, taking a lot of credit for kills when the composition likely has MORE conditions than you, MORE dps than you, MORE stability than you and MORE CCs than you. Necros have a place in zergs, and in my opinion a necro traited correctly with the right sigils can HELP their zerg absolutely smash a push when using plague blind. You collect bags though, because of how many targets you touched with your aoe and not because you killed them. Go roam or spvp to see the true effectiveness of necro. As for the sustain part, you are delusional. Other classes in zergs sustain you, that’s how zergs work. It’s a team effort.

On spectral. I get that it’s awesome 1v1. But it’s really removed it’s vs group use.

I also don’t understand why they just kept throwing life at our minions to fix there attrition. It still doesn’t help on the 1shot mechanics. There now just OP vs trash mobs, and still die stupidly when the fight’s get hard.
This would have been a awesome spot to add a ICD max % life taken per second.

I also don’t understand there removing DS block, and not giving us anything to compensate. Again a % max life force per sec ICD, or hell even vigor.
What’s worse is, they dev’s have said that using Spectral Walk, to ‘jump’ any distance, without dieing is fine, yet wasn’t the main reason for removing DS ‘block’, was to stop us jumping places we weren’t suppose to go?

My biggest ‘mad bro’ of late, was putrid mark. Hidden nerf, or a bug, took months for a dev reply to say ‘will update tooltip in future to show how it works now’. Agggh! There go’s our ‘condi manipulation’ role.

Anyways, still werided out at how the new heal went down. Just didn’t see a new button we didn’t need to buy, was as bad as all they done to weaken us of late. (LoL Did I kitten about Weakening shroud, insulting/frustrating more than a new heal I don’t need)

Bhawd: “That is massive scaling, something that other classes don’t see. 483 procs in 10 seconds, 22k additional healing and damage just from 30 trait points. No wonder the devs are scared, in ideal situations it is insane what they will do.”

Really nice advertisement but… Why don’t you try to give us things like hps? What you advertise us is a very specific situation out of cooldown and cast time consideration.

By the way, you will deal on each foe 4k5 damage over 10 second that’s roughly what you can do with a fire sigil. Not that awesome…

And how many time will you be “naked” after this 10 seconds? 20 or 25 seconds? You bet all you have for situations that you will never see. You’ve got to have a least 5 foes at your feet that don’t hit you to hard.

I like to play gardian in donjon, each time I grant a boon I’m healing myself by 70… It’s not much but I’m pretty sur this gardian trait out heal the whole Bloodmagic trait line (except perhap a minion master siphon build).

Same for Elementalist, they can complain a lot but when they sit in water, with a proper build, they can easily out heal and out damage these number of yours.

So, that’s it, you’re seeing numbers that you feel being awesome, but, for me they are just pretty common and a bit weak because I really try to see them in a whole. We are far from this so called “attrition” and the new healing signet is already overnerfed in my opinion with passive designed for sick 1v1 and active revolving around perhaps an ideal world where you gank 5v1 and you are not focused.

By the way, from my point of view, I pretty like the changes on weakening shroud. We can deal a lot more power damage with it than we did before.

Dadnir.5038:

snip

I already said that it has 0 to do with being viable. But the sheer ability to be able to deal 22k damage and heal for the same in 10 seconds OFF OF TRAITS ONLY is too good. I can have a fire sigil too, all of those wells are taking effect; all of that is besides the point.

The point is that semi-infinite scaling is bad because of that situation. That isn’t even “fully” optimized, it is literally just rolling your face over the keyboard once with the right traits equipping and 5 idiots standing around in them. But with such scenarios possible, why would they buff us? A 50% buff allows us to deal 33k AoE damage and healing, again solely from 30 traiting. Do you think even a 50% increase to siphons would bring them up to remotely good enough?

As it is now, siphons will never be more than viable in a single build; the one build that makes the most use of them. Every other build won’t be able to proc as often, and will therefore have subpar healing from them. That is the entire point of why I did that math.

Bhawb.7408:

Dadnir.5038:

snip

I already said that it has 0 to do with being viable. But the sheer ability to be able to deal 22k damage and heal for the same in 10 seconds OFF OF TRAITS ONLY is too good. I can have a fire sigil too, all of those wells are taking effect; all of that is besides the point.

The point is that semi-infinite scaling is bad because of that situation. That isn’t even “fully” optimized, it is literally just rolling your face over the keyboard once with the right traits equipping and 5 idiots standing around in them. But with such scenarios possible, why would they buff us? A 50% buff allows us to deal 33k AoE damage and healing, again solely from 30 traiting. Do you think even a 50% increase to siphons would bring them up to remotely good enough?

As it is now, siphons will never be more than viable in a single build; the one build that makes the most use of them. Every other build won’t be able to proc as often, and will therefore have subpar healing from them. That is the entire point of why I did that math.

Can you explain how did you get this 22k damage from siphons? As i above mentioned, i came up with about half of that in the pvp lobby.

Well of Blood
Well of Suffering
Well of Corruption
Another well
Locust Swarm
Dagger 2

With the following assumptions (to show perfectly ideal):
Wells/Locust Swarm hit 5 targets per second for full durations
Dagger 2’s full channel hits
All hits are crits

30 Blood Magic gives you Bloodthirst, Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals. All calculations done off base damages with the BT boost (meaning its actually higher when you have real stuff equipped). I did not test to see if those listed values are accurate, it is entirely possible one or all of them is bugged.

Well of Blood – 55 Procs of Vampiric, 55 Procs of Vampiric Ritual
Well of Suffering – 35 Procs of Vampiric, 35 Procs of Vampiric Precision, 35 Procs of Vampiric Ritual
Well of Corruption – 30 Procs of Vampiric/Precision/Rituals
Other well – 30 Procs of Vampiric/Rituals

Locust Swarm – 50 Procs of Vampiric/Precision

Dagger 2 – 9 Procs of Vampiric/Precision

209 Procs of Vampiric, 124 Procs of Vampiric Precision, 150 Procs of Vampiric Ritual

Total procs: 483

According to the listed base values, that is 209*(1.2*31) + 124*(1.2*39) + 150*(1.2*50) = roughly 22k damage and healing, from only the Blood Magic traits.

There were a lot of assumptions made, both that the listed values are accurate (probably false, but I’ll assume that it is their intent to be those values), and the obviously unrealistic assumption that this impossible situation would ever happen. The point isn’t to show a realistic situation that would ever happen, but only the math that ANet probably passes around every time someone brings up “so guys… Necros still have bad sustain”.

Thanks for the explanation!
Now i went for pve wonderland and tried it with the same 30 points spent. I got a tiny bit more healing than your math (23300 aoe + dagger).
Without Vampiric precision its 17500 + a bit less from dagger, which is still not that impressive.
If i dont have much experience in the game (which is true, im a pvp noob), i still dont know how this is a problem, when you blow all your CD-s at once. Getting 4-5k heal from one target just low with this investment (skills + traits).
Sorry Bhawb, appreciate your effort to made this comment and all that stuff, but i still cant understand the logic behind this, IF this is what holds back the developers to bring up siphoning.

edit: typo

McWolfy.5924:

im a fresh necro and play only wvw. what i think: necro is awesome in large fights. aoe, prots, fears, boon removal, chill, blind with excelent sustain. sometimes i just wach, press buttons, laugh and collect bags. sorry guys but i cant understand your problem. if u want to cry try ranger

Exactly. I recently came to the Necro from Ranger, and I just can’t understand what the problem is. In large scale WvW, at least, the Necro is light years ahead of the Ranger. I mean, fun and actually useful at the same time.

So it’s just a matter of perspective. It would probably be different coming to Necro from say a Warrior or Guardian. Or, to long time Necros experiencing nerfs.

/shrug

Well, I typed a response then was timed out (because that makes sense, thanks) so it went poof.

Anyway, developers balance towards max-potential, not lower. That much damage is just too much for the investment, and general game development protocol says that you don’t buff something that is already ridiculous in niche situations (LoL devs have state similar things when they changed certain mechanics).

Essentially, the traits are currently balanced assuming something close to that situation happens. That is why they need ICDs, so they get rid of those insane situations and lower the stupidly high max-potential cases, and at the same time overall buff the traits so that the lower cases are brought up to par.

So theoretically an S/D build would be able to siphon similar (though slightly lesser) amounts to a D/WH using Vampiric/Vampiric Precision.

If that doesn’t explain it better, I blame the bad forum design.

Well, not exactly. LoL devs bring extremes in when those niche situations are too easy to set up. If something with a champ happens once every five million games and is extremely powerful, it doesn’t need to be brought in line because clearly it is not easy to set up and kudos to the player for taking advantage of it when things do go perfectly. If it happens once every thousand games, however, then it is probably too easy to accomplish for that kind of power and needs to be brought in line. This can be done by lowering the total effect or it can be done by making it more difficult to set up the situation.

Since the “max siphoning” situation you describe will happen maybe once every five planetary alignments, it should be disregarded as a balance point.

Situations close to what I outlined are not hard or rare to setup in PvE (although they are meaningless in PvE), or WvW.

Bhawb.7408:

Situations close to what I outlined are not hard or rare to setup in PvE (although they are meaningless in PvE), or WvW.

Not true. In WvW, you will be getting ping-ponged, people will dodge, block, interrupt your skills, walk out of the radius, or even just kill you. In WvW, this situation is practically guaranteed to not happen.

I’ve done it plenty of times. All of that assumes they are paying attention, which I have found to very often not be the case, especially when you’re talking about big ZvZs in closed areas. People just do not pay that close of attention, they press WASD in random sequences while rolling their faces over their keyboard until either they die or the enemy dies.

I’m sure it is sometimes different in the very high tier (although I have played at that level long ago, and it wasn’t any different, there were just more idiots to fill the BGs than at low tiers, and a few organized guilds to do 95% of the real work), but in general I find your run-of-the-mill WvW player in a zerg to behave as intelligently as a normal PvE mob.

Even when they’re not paying attention, they typically just walk out of the radius by accident. Unless you literally drop in on them while they’re boon stacking (I’ve done this once, dropped Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption, and hit Plague as the squad I was in came around the hill), you will miss procs. People dodge randomly in ZvZ because they have no idea if they’re being targetted by something nasty or not.

Even so, you will never get all of them to crit. While a necro could reach 100% crit chance by flashing death shroud and wearing all Assassin’s/Rampagers and 30 points into Curses, that crit chance will not apply to all procs, due to the limited Fury uptime not covering the duration of the skills.

What you end up with is a build that is totally focused on achieving this one trick that is almost impossible to ever have occur (outside of PvE) and even when it does really isn’t that great. Woohoo, the necro is tough to kill for a few seconds. He did pretty good damage total, but spread out over 5 or more targets, it really isn’t that much. The more targets there are, the more likely it is for you to pull off this trick, but that also spreads the damage out more.

Those siphoning numbers are extremely difficult to actually pull off, require a hyper-specialized build to that end, require no fewer than 6 skills to be blown on enemies that pay zero attention for essentially a stationary field of overall weak damage and a tough-to-kill necro for a few seconds. After that, he’s free food since he just blew his heal, all utilities, and some weapon cooldowns for that potential full heal.

Even in the best possible circumstances, the actual impact is pretty low. The devs should not be considering that for balance.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Even in the best possible circumstances, the actual impact is pretty low. The devs should not be considering that for balance.

+1

Bhawb.7408:

People just do not pay that close of attention, they press WASD in random sequences while rolling their faces over their keyboard until either they die or the enemy dies.

LMAO, this is too much … i’m crying with laughter here haha. What a visual.

Nope. I rage quieted sPvP for my personal health. Seems aNET is not capable of making balanced PvP for this game. Everything was going good and then….

I’m trying to understand this thread

Necro’s are now terrible because they dislike a new healing skill that was added?

Dalanor.5387:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Even in the best possible circumstances, the actual impact is pretty low. The devs should not be considering that for balance.

+1

I have been screaming this for a long long time. Outlier results should NOT form part of the base skills balance…otherwise you end up where we are now with many lame results rather than good skills where the outlier circumstances are controlled…ANet’s answer is the quick and dirty solution …they just knobble the raw skills. It is even more lame when the game engine itself (condi cap) means we can rarely even approach the balance budget let alone max our potential, especially for PVE where we are now virtually irrelevant in many/most group situations….great game design.

@ Terravos….read a few threads….this is just the tip of the iceberg for many many many issues with this profession that are just plain ignored by the devs.

Bhawb.7408:

but in general I find your run-of-the-mill WvW player in a zerg to behave as intelligently as a normal PvE mob.

So much truth…

Terravos.4059:

I’m trying to understand this thread

Necro’s are now terrible because they dislike a new healing skill that was added?

Nope.

Necro’s are kitten ed because the healing skill was good then they made it useless just before releasing it. Also, they are nerfing abilities that do not need a nerf, all because of Dhuumfire.

We are also kitten ed that they hyped up a big change to Blood Magic to make it useful but ended up doing nothing to it other than fix healing power scaling for 1 or 2 spells.

In PvE, since launch, we have had some of the absolute worst group utility and support, while also providing no cleave damage, and average single target damage.

We also continue to be one of the worst attrition professions even though their repeated design goal for the Necro is to be an attrition class.

It has nothing to do with being strong or not. At least to me.

Signet of Vampirism was supposed to be our saving grace to support in teams. Well its more of a sick joke of how low can this heal go…

I tried out the new healing skill, Signet of Vampirism, in a dungeon and agaist Shatterer and am convinced its only use is as a group heal. It has two things going for it that Well of Blood does not; caster gets some heal no matter what versus potentially getting nothing using Targetable Wells, and other group members also can get heals no matter where they stand so long as they hit the target. WoB, on the other hand, can add a Protect for those inside and siphon. The actual heal amounts I have not finished comparing but I would hope it is stronger for others than WoB is to increase Necro’s attractiveness in team formation.

If it works out right, Necromancers should receive requests from group members to run that sigil instead of any other heal. The sigil, if good enough, ought to skirt the issues caused by condition caps and damage scaling in PvE by giving the profession a party-support tool similar to a Guardian’s. SoV may need tweaking but I think I like it.

If Arenanet can also revisit effectiveness of staff, the trait skills, and a signet, or two, in PvE and give the profession a couple of weapons to fill in the gaps we previously identified, then the Necromancer may be a lot closer to done. That sound like a lot of work, now that I think of it.

Well of Blood has a massive initial self heal, regardless of if you are in the well or not, so that “advantage” is not there. The initial heal on the Well is higher than the max heal on the signet anyway.

Oldbugga.7029:

Outlier results should NOT form part of the base skills balance…

That’s how game balance works. You cannot buff something that is completely broken situationally. You leave it under-tuned until you have the ability to remove that outlier situation from being a problem, and then properly buff it so it is appropriately balanced.

That is very standard game design protocol. The only debate is whether the “outlier” for these skills is so situational that in practice it will not happen with enough regularity to matter. But honestly, Vampiric and Vampiric Precision as they remain now are unbalanceable for any spec but the one that procs them the best. Even if they buffed them enough to be decent for dagger necros, they’d still remain utter crap for any setup that didn’t match that proc rate.

What saddens me the most is that life stealing was always underpowered in Guild Wars 1, and never got fixed. So many years of experience with that unbalance and then they do the same thing for Guilds Wars 2. Boggles my mind.

I think we can confidently say that it will probably never be fixed. Give up on life stealing fellow necromancers.

Terravos.4059:

I’m trying to understand this thread

Necro’s are now terrible because they dislike a new healing skill that was added?

Straw, camel, back.

Long standing issues have been back burnered for so long that with the newest Signet of Insult foisted on the class’s unhealed injuries, people are getting a bit cantankerous and tired of waiting.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What saddens me the most is that life stealing was always underpowered in Guild Wars 1, and never got fixed. So many years of experience with that unbalance and then they do the same thing for Guilds Wars 2. Boggles my mind.

I think we can confidently say that it will probably never be fixed. Give up on life stealing fellow necromancers.

Same issue in GW1. Life stealing remained underpowered for Necromancers because Rangers could abuse it (quite well, I might add, until you ran into a Mesmer) because of their mechanic. I ran a Touch Ranger a lot, and it was unholy what you could do by pressing 12121212312121212123. Literally just press 1 and 2 until out of energy, use w/e the skill was called to sac some HP for more energy, repeat pressing 1 and 2. If you really got in trouble, use a heal. Press 7/8 for stances to run between points.

It took 0 skill to play the build well (perfect for me), and was completely broken unless they had interrupts. But, again, they needed to balance to that case, because if they had buffed it for Necros my Touch Ranger would have run around soloing entire groups.

That wasn’t a niche case so much as it was a problem with the dual-profession system. For example, had they tied those two skill to Soul Reaping, a necro could still use them well and Rangers couldn’t abuse them. The problem there is that only the Rangers were actually abusing it. Assassin/Necros also used the skills for sustain, and it wasn’t a problem. ANet did not balance those skills around the abuse, rather they looked at ways to curb the abuse (unsuccessfully overall) without ruining it for everyone else.

It should be mentioned that these skills (and other life-stealing skills) stole more health (both numerically and percentage-wise) than Vampiric traits do (outside of Vampiric Master) when the average health pool for a necro was 1/50 what it is in GW2.

Bhawb.7408:

Oldbugga.7029:

Outlier results should NOT form part of the base skills balance…

That’s how game balance works. You cannot buff something that is completely broken situationally. You leave it under-tuned until you have the ability to remove that outlier situation from being a problem, and then properly buff it so it is appropriately balanced.

That is very standard game design protocol. The only debate is whether the “outlier” for these skills is so situational that in practice it will not happen with enough regularity to matter. But honestly, Vampiric and Vampiric Precision as they remain now are unbalanceable for any spec but the one that procs them the best. Even if they buffed them enough to be decent for dagger necros, they’d still remain utter crap for any setup that didn’t match that proc rate.

Add the rest of my sentence to what you quoted…

“otherwise you end up where we are now with many lame results rather than good skills where the outlier circumstances are controlled…”

In most of the “balance” scenarios I have been involved with in the past, outliers due to abnormal circumstances DO NOT form part of the balance exercise…..the abnormal circumstances are addressed/eliminated before the skill is balanced around normal gameplay….not just by looking at a spreadsheet and theoretical maxima.

Basically we agree with the principle, it is just the order of events. ANet seems uses a quick and dirty approach that leaves us with sub-par skills, for frustratingly looooong periods, until they eventually hint about get around to addressing fundamental issues that do not turn up on their spreadsheets…like spell/skill actual effectiveness, impact of condi cap on our balance budgets…etc etc.

If we keep just accepting that is how it has to be, then that is how it will be. I don’t believe that it necessarily does have to be like that. They just seem to have thrown the hands up as it is just “too hard”. That is just not good enough for a commerical undertaking like this game and the more we appease that behaviour, the longer it will go on. They have shown good skill developing some of the other classes, they can apply it here to the necro if they want to….those last 4 words are important.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think we can confidently say that it will probably never be fixed. Give up on life stealing fellow necromancers.

Giving up on life stealing is close to giving up on the class as they intended. As with a hardline about no mobility, little stability or vigor, proper life steal is one of the few thematic solutions that work to bring about attrition.

I don’t get why they are so stumped about solving scaling and and specific outlier scenarios, simply put some lifesteal mechanics on ICDs and you ignore this problem and balance it much more easily.

When you hit other people it should be based on one off healing and cooldowns, but when others hit you that is when it should scale, to give you equivalent mitigation against focus fire that other classes get via boons and innate damage avoiding abilities.

Making the defensive spectral skills have cooldowns to generating LF was the exact opposite to how it should work. And opposite how our stealing of health should work on something like the signet of vampirism.

When 5 people are hitting you at the same time, having the first hit each second give back 350 odd health is useless and insignificant. At worst the active should unlock the ICD and not be something that requires you to hit the enemy to get health back. As when being focused you often aren’t getting any attacks off.

multistrike.3546:

Signet of Vampirism was supposed to be our saving grace to support in teams. Well its more of a sick joke of how low can this heal go…

I thought Necros being monsters was your saving grace on teams.

Reading this thread, it seems like a lot of you were wanting basically the Warrior Healing Signet, which to be honest I don’t blame you, who wouldn’t want that overpowered Heal..

You not getting that overpowered heal doesn’t mean your class “sucks” all of a sudden

Dalanor.5387:

Thanks for the explanation!
Now i went for pve wonderland and tried it with the same 30 points spent. I got a tiny bit more healing than your math (23300 aoe + dagger).
Without Vampiric precision its 17500 + a bit less from dagger, which is still not that impressive.
If i dont have much experience in the game (which is true, im a pvp noob), i still dont know how this is a problem, when you blow all your CD-s at once. Getting 4-5k heal from one target just low with this investment (skills + traits).
Sorry Bhawb, appreciate your effort to made this comment and all that stuff, but i still cant understand the logic behind this, IF this is what holds back the developers to bring up siphoning.

edit: typo

If there are any logic in the first place, Mark of Blood won’t be nerfed. >_>

Terravos.4059:

multistrike.3546:

Signet of Vampirism was supposed to be our saving grace to support in teams. Well its more of a sick joke of how low can this heal go…

I thought Necros being monsters was your saving grace on teams.

Reading this thread, it seems like a lot of you were wanting basically the Warrior Healing Signet, which to be honest I don’t blame you, who wouldn’t want that overpowered Heal..

You not getting that overpowered heal doesn’t mean your class “sucks” all of a sudden

No, we were wanting something that was effective at what it was supposed to do, not be overpowered like Healing Signet. What we got was a joke.

Not getting an OP heal does not make us upset. What makes us upset is that we keep getting worse at attrition with each balance patch, yet that is exactly what the necro is supposed to be. We’re fine with out damage output, what we’re not fine with is how difficult it is to stay in the fight against opponents who don’t have to face-tank everything.