Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Constructive-necromancer-thoughts/first

I would encourage people, not just PvPers to read that thread because as Dev Allie says in there they’re closely monitoring that thread.

Phantaram.1265:

TLDR; necromancers playstyle is cool with tankyness instead of disengaging but does too much damage on top of all their support and cc… and tankyness, come up with a way to reduce their damage in this thread. Or other tweaks you would like. Maybe necromancers are a little too tanky? They pretty much have everything but disengage right now so I’m open to any ideas.

The discussion in there is something that should be held on the Necromancer forums and not just in the sPvP subforum because unless Anet states that they will split PvE from PvP then expect further nerfs.

I encourage everyone to read through the posts there, especially the OPs initial post, I just quoted the TLDR above but apparently we’ve got it all, except a disengage.

No mention at all of the fact that DS just plain sucks for defense in PvE now, I know Bas and Nay ( I belive it was Nay) in another thread states why, I’ll edit that link in when I find it.

Edit: Here it is, Bas and Nays’ post in one.

Bas.7406:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I never thought this day would come where I have to hang up my necromancer, but I think it’s now. They are going in the exact opposite direction from where our class needs to go. With this new DS obliteration, I have no need to play necro anymore. It’s a sad day for me and many other necros in this community too. My final straw was last night when I was asked to wait outside a boss fight because the group “didn’t want to spend the whole fight rezzing the necro” <—- exact wording. I don’t really blame them. I’ve tried using DS like I used to, and the difference is staggering. Either you go full LF or you don’t bother and just eat the dirt. I’m not arguing that the other nerfs were needed, I know they were. But this one baffles me beyond belief. Farewell necro, maybe we will meet again in the future when you get your cahones back.

This is what I was trying to explain to Bhawb and some of the pvp guys. This nerf to DS is massive for anyone who plays pve or wvwvw. It’s a nice change for tpvp where you face bunkers and condition spam, but in a boss fight where you 20k damage hits are dealt out more often then 10 seconds, you get destroyed now. I don’t know how many times I used DS because I had already dodged twice in 30 seconds which means with no block, invuln or way to disengage, ds was it. This new change essentially killed us on certain boss fights.

So, for the tournament all other necromancers pay the price?

Thats great.

I don’t even feel our position in tournaments merits anything but buffs. We’re the tracks the focus train rides on, because we can’t escape.

The dev started the discussion by saying she thought we were target number 1 because of our threat. Silly person – we’re target 1 because we can’t escape.

Allie Murdock.8152:

We’re kind of on a time crunch, so yeah

If we’re going to do any hotfixes before the Qualifiers this weekend, they need to be asap.

So, for the huge majority of the playerbase who have no interest whatsoever in this tournament crap, they screw us all over? This is how you balance? This is the criteria you used? A small percentage of your players will determine the changes you are making to our class? These posts need and should be here in the necro forums. Unless of course the rest of us just do not matter.

Dhogoth.1856:

So, for the tournament all other necromancers pay the price?

Thats great.

This is my point, it is incredibly sneaky and cheeky of them to limit that discussion to the sPvP forums only when it (potentially…) encompasses all necros, PvE, PvP, WvW.

Thus I made this thread, to give everyone who doesn’t read the sPvP forums a chance to see what is going on.

Well sPvP balance changes tend to be warranted in WvW so I’m fine with that. The PvE implications I’m not really concerned with because I find PvE this game absolutely dreadful. But I realize I may be alone in that opinion.

But yes, it’s a pain to have to hunt down finding threads like these. Especially this late in the game where they have hundreds of responses, in 4 different threads all in the sPvP forum.

Atherakhia.4086:

…..But yes, it’s a pain to have to hunt down finding threads like these. Especially this late in the game where they have hundreds of responses, in 4 different threads all in the sPvP forum.

Exactly! I don’t sPvP and therefore had no reason to ever look at that forum. Imagine my surprise when Gutbuster linked us to it.

I see so many Necromancer threads pop up in the sPvP forums now and i always think “This should be in the class forum”, why don’t mods move it here? Some comments are just a waste of time to read in there and it makes our class look worse than it is.

sPvE heros just try to nerf those professions which they don’t play.

Necro to tanky? Reduce our dps?

Any more of these daft crying topics and our class will be totally obsolete everywhere.
Those ppl seriously need to learn to play necro before they run off to anet and cry for nerfs like a spoiled little brat.

They ask for suggestions from the sPvP players usually the top tier guys and I believe it is not the intent of those Top Tier players to manipulate the Devs but I think their opinions are many times biased. Symbolic is a Top Tier player who has the ear of the devs but that video example he posted was terrible and the fact that he posted it thinking that it was good evidence makes me wonder if the Top Tier guys know as much about balance as the devs think.

It could just be situation where the Devs reached out to them and I’m sure anyone would be jump at the chance to have meaningful impact on the game they play alot. They have stated that they do look at all feedback though I would prefer personally if skills translated to all game modes instead of more splits but I don’t know maybe it is actually needed if sPvP has this much influence on the rest of the game this goes for all the classes I play.

This is flat out wrong on so many levels i cannot believe it is supported. I know you have visions of turning this into an E-sport but you cannot allow a small minority of your player base to dictate the outcome of a class in all areas of the game. I spent hours trying to revamp my character and planned on some weapon changes this evening which would have meant a gold investment only to see there could be more changes coming and voted in by what 5% of the total population?

" Allie Murdock.8152:

We’re kind of on a time crunch, so yeah

If we’re going to do any hotfixes before the Qualifiers this weekend, they need to be asap."

Bloody shameful if you ask me!

They are biased.

Phantaram.1265:

I’ve played necro here and there since release but I’ve played necro at least 6 hours both today and yesterday

This guy is totally and utterly clueless about our class, yet asks for “much needed nerfs”.
The fact alone that he posted a topic called “Constructive necromancer thoughts” in the spvp section of the game instead of the obvious necro section.

Sense, it makes none!

“Allie Murdock

PvP Community Coordinator

Next

Hey all, just wanted to let you know that we’re watching this thread closely.

Really appreciate the constructive feedback, particularly yours, Phantaram. You seem to be analyzing from a very objective and unbiased point of view, which is very helpful."

Yep i have all kinds of faith that this will turn out well for all of us who PvE now!

The problem is that every high level tPvP player thinks only in terms of what is currently used in the meta. They aren’t talking about support Necros, MMs, power necros, etc. they are thinking about the 30/20/X/X/X, which is still really strong.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is that every high level tPvP player thinks only in terms of what is currently used in the meta. They aren’t talking about support Necros, MMs, power necros, etc. they are thinking about the 30/20/X/X/X, which is still really strong.

Indeed, but a lot of the proposed changes in that thread would translate to further nerfs for PvE, it might be needed for PvP I don’t know, but we really don’t need to be made any worse in PvE, in fact we need buffs. And the Necromancer forums is full of threads and suggestions, but apparently only the sPvP forums gets dev attention.

I posted this in that thread but I figure it makes sense to past it here as well.

“What it all comes down to is Anets inability to balance two vastly different parts of the game and despite what they think they will never find an equilibrium where everything works and everything is balanced between the two.

This discussion would be productive and less inflammatory if Anet just decided to split PvP from PvE. All of a sudden things would be so much simpler as PvP balance would not affect PvE balance and vice versa."

I don’t see any other solution, continuing on the current path will always leave one side frustrated and disappointed.

In my opinion, one of the things that made GW1 such a good PvE and PvP game was just that, the split. It allowed for a lot more flexibility from Anets side.

PvE isn’t an issue of Necros being weak, its an issue of PvE being badly designed. Until they fix the design, we will always be sub-par in general.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is that every high level tPvP player thinks only in terms of what is currently used in the meta. They aren’t talking about support Necros, MMs, power necros, etc. they are thinking about the 30/20/X/X/X, which is still really strong.

Indeed, if they mess around with our dps and ds like Phanta suggests all other builds are going to suffer.

Atm they have one Foot in the Grave, after that we’ll have both feet in the grave and burried 6ft under.

Bhawb.7408:

PvE isn’t an issue of Necros being weak, its an issue of PvE being badly designed. Until they fix the design, we will always be sub-par in general.

I can agree with that.

But again the current discussion comes down to the fact that Anet will never be able to bridge the massive chasm that separates PvE from PvP. Things are so vastly different between the two yet we’re somehow supposed to use skills that are identical in both?

I’m not sure I see them re-designing it, which leads me down the PvE/PvP split again.

Edit: Also, good post in the ‘other’ thread. Now watch the sPvPers collectively ignore us/it.

I felt a great disturbance in the Life Force, as if millions of minions suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

The point is: they released the game uncomplete, they took too much time to think on how to balance it, now that they are in hurry to make it presentable for the E-game tournament, they meet all the problems they left unsolved.

They’re in hurry, their aim now is to make the possible to somehow “balance” the pvp, so the pve gonna suffer it no matter what.
Probably they will promise to rebalance it after the tournament.

It’s bad management and bad design since the beginning.

The more, by reading the other thread is understandable how much they have low knowledge of ingame situations and how much they rely on the forum public opinions.

BTW It’s not strange or bad that they discuss on the pvp section, they can avoid more spam from less skilled players.

We all know how balanced League of Legends was at launch.

Tpvp is such a small small aspect of this game.

I truly hope our balance does not continue to be based on this or Anet risks loosing a substantial base of it’s players.

They have been splitting it. It is a good idea, I just think they are a bit too cautious about splitting them.

Bhawb.7408:

We all know how balanced League of Legends was at launch.

It’s not a good excuse.
Recent modus operandi of most of the game companies it’s not really shiny.

It is impossible to have a perfectly polished game that is going to be played by millions of people at launch unless you pull the crap that other games do where they are in constant beta for 2 years. It can be done with single player games, but when you are doing an MMO it just doesn’t happen.

Bhawb.7408:

They have been splitting it. It is a good idea, I just think they are a bit too cautious about splitting them.

Oh I know, But you hit the nail on the head there, they are MUCH too cautious with the splitting.

It’s time they put their foot down, draw a line in the sand w/e and goes.

These are the traits, skills or profession mechanics a bit too strong for PvP, split and change.

These are the traits, skills or profession mechanics a bit too weak for PvE, split and change.

Almost a year in soon, they should’ve done that ages ago.

Why did the dev point out that they are particularly looking at the OP’s feedback, they don’t even suggest which build they are running

“the necromancer playstyle” – what playstyle?

Why do I have the feeling that 1 year from now we will still be running dhumfire builds with hacked damage and still no escape/sustain tools. I can tell that guy is running sPvE heroics thinking he’s God, deathshroud does nothing to people who are smart enough to not stand there and eat through it, one well placed cc is enough to counter it when fighting for a point, that ‘massive’ burning damage gets lost into the sea of targets in teamfights.

FML I need gin

It’s kinda funny that sPvP forum is screaming nurf dam & tankyness. That the necro forum is filled with players from beta saying they giving up there necro.

Both sides seem to say, get rid of Dhuumfire.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is that every high level tPvP player thinks only in terms of what is currently used in the meta. They aren’t talking about support Necros, MMs, power necros, etc. they are thinking about the 30/20/X/X/X, which is still really strong.

The problem is when they nerf a popular build, its also usually a nerf to builds not as good.

Just like now after they just nerfed Terror because of dumbfire, it nerfed old non-Spite Terror builds that were just fine, or even a bit lacking, and made you want to pigeon hole even more.

I suppose the only advantage I’ve seen in the thread is that the Devs can distinguish between a lot of the QQ and things that are meaningful.

One of them brought up the fact that the trolls/zealots are in polar opposites on stances, arguing over each others heads and contradicting both one another, and themselves.

I’m trying to be reasonable in that thread, but the fact is that the thread isn’t a discussion. It is a monkey kitten fight. No one wants to talk about what necros have, the strengths of what they have, and the weaknesses of what they have. They just walk in already convinced that necros need a nerf or buff, and then stick to that story no matter what happens.

Pendragon.8735:

Just like now after they just nerfed Terror because of dumbfire…

and that changed nothing btw, regarding a 30/20 build that is.

Everyone was complaining about condition pressure, the difficulties of cleansing etc.
No one ever said “if only that combo did 300-ish damage per tick less!”

That nerf isn’t really a big deal even for non-dhuum builds, so that just makes me wonder even more what the reasoning behind this change was…

I really do have to keep insisting that the nerf to terror wasn’t because of dhuumire, but because of terror. In that patch, at the same time we received dhuumire, we also received twice the amount of fear, in both AoE and on single targets.

Considering that terror damage wasn’t cut in half, this still comes out a big win.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I really do have to keep insisting that the nerf to terror wasn’t because of dhuumire, but because of terror. In that patch, at the same time we received dhuumire, we also received twice the amount of fear, in both AoE and on single targets.

Considering that terror damage wasn’t cut in half, this still comes out a big win.

Against who? People who walk into the wall?

It’s 0 extra fear and -1 utility slot against targets with the perception to #1 not walk into a bright green wall and #2 see an attempt at doom’ing you into the wall and anticipate it.

I’m not sorry if people have to actually think whilst playing against a necro

I get that pvp balance is “more important”, as in, imbalance will have more immediate negative consequences, but they are balancing with blinders on. They are advancing a class concept that is fundamentally broken in pve. They fill fractals and dungeons with one shot mechanics, give every other class the tools to deal with it, and then take away the ONE pseudo invulnerability we had. I honestly don’t understand what they think a necromancer is bringing to the table in high end pve, except leaching aegis and covering up useful combo fields with our wells as we try to make up for our lack of melee cleave. If they refuse to separate pvp and pve skills anymore then they do now, fine, but they can’t then go forward with a class concept that is so narrowly balanced for pvp and so utterly broken in pve.

I think the balance ideal is fundamentally broken in PVP as well. The idea with necros not having the other tools results in a very difficult balancing problem.

Necro survivability is incredibly finite at the moment, with Death Shroud as mitigation being limited by HP. In small scale fights of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2, it is currently overpowered, since a full bar gives Necromancers an incredible statistical advantage over other classes. However, when you get larger than that, DS offers very little comparative protection, being worn away quickly. Then, the necromancer’s lack of escapes and blocks/evades/invulnerability comes back in full force, getting them killed quickly.

There’s almost no balance to it. Either the necromancer is overpowered because it is a small scale fight, or the necromancer is really underpowered because it is a large scale fight. No other class seems to have such a polarized effectiveness, and the design philosophy of Anet can only make the problem worse. If you give the necros more damage or suvivability for team fights, this makes them more overpowered in small scale fights. If you scale them down their damage or survivability for small scale fights, then they become even worse in team fights and large scale fights.

Other than to drop the design philosophy, I can’t think of a solution to this problem.

As someone said earlier, PVE design in general is broken. It’s broken because they invented mechanics, and then broke the rules for those mechanics regarding the PVE content. This is the same issue we had in GW1. They think degen/condition builds are good, while they are really only good against other players that have a fair health pool. But in PVE monsters have far more health, and thus the faster you kill it, the better.

Same with that annoying Defiant mechanic. You can’t give necros a mechanic like fear, and then make every boss in the game immune to it. You just can’t. You have to stick to your own rules. If a class relies on attrition, then attrition needs to work against PVE opponents. If a class’ only defense is control skills, then control skills need to work against PVE opponents as well. And if Death Shroud is our other main defense, then it needs to scale with the kind of damage that PVE enemies deal (that includes one-hit kills). And that is exactly why the necro is broken in PVE. They need to fix this imbalance. Not through the tPvP flavor of the month, but by making the PVE game respect their own game rules.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I think the balance ideal is fundamentally broken in PVP as well. The idea with necros not having the other tools results in a very difficult balancing problem.

Necro survivability is incredibly finite at the moment, with Death Shroud as mitigation being limited by HP. In small scale fights of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2, it is currently overpowered, since a full bar gives Necromancers an incredible statistical advantage over other classes. However, when you get larger than that, DS offers very little comparative protection, being worn away quickly. Then, the necromancer’s lack of escapes and blocks/evades/invulnerability comes back in full force, getting them killed quickly.

There’s almost no balance to it. Either the necromancer is overpowered because it is a small scale fight, or the necromancer is really underpowered because it is a large scale fight. No other class seems to have such a polarized effectiveness, and the design philosophy of Anet can only make the problem worse. If you give the necros more damage or suvivability for team fights, this makes them more overpowered in small scale fights. If you scale them down their damage or survivability for small scale fights, then they become even worse in team fights and large scale fights.

Other than to drop the design philosophy, I can’t think of a solution to this problem.

You’ve succinctly stated the paradox that faces balancing the necro’s survivability. However, I think there exist solutions that won’t radically change the profession nor drop the design philosophy.

One suggestion – found in this thread – is to cap the maximum amount of damage a necromancer receives per second while in Death Shroud. It wouldn’t have much impact on 1v1 but would improve our survivability against burst and focus from multiple opponents.

Another suggestion would be scaling Life Force gain or loss based on the number of opponents within X radius of the necromancer. In a 1v1, the scaling is at baseline: 100 points of damage is 100 points of Life Force lost while in Death Shroud. For each additional enemy, decrease the damage received by some factor; say 10%. Of course, there would have to be a limit to this so the necro isn’t effectively taking zero damage while in Death Shroud. Maybe it tops out at a 70% damage reduction if surrounded by 7 or more opponents.

Alternately, the necromancer gains more Life Force the more enemies are near. One opponent will grant 10% Life Force when killed by the necro. Each additional enemy within the effective range (whatever that may be) will grant an additional 2.5% Life Force when anything dies near the necro. As above, there would be a cap to this bonus so the necro isn’t gaining 100% Life Force with a single kill, for example.

Regardless of what solutions, if any, are implemented, they need to revert the most recent change that saw damage from Death Shroud overflow to our regular health bar. That is (or, rather, was) the profession’s de facto block/evade/invulnerability. In fact, it was our only form of block/evade/invulnerability. Fixing the bug that was causing us to take more direct damage in DS than we should have been is not balanced compensation for loss of that mechanic. A punching bag that’s twice as big as others on the market is still a punching bag.

Am i the only one who wanted necs to be ‘op’ as they were before last patch? It was nice to see them melt d/d eles when d/d eles were destroying them easily since game was launched. I don’t even have a nec nor im i planing to make one in the future but i wish necs stay powerful and other classes get to their level instead of making necs crap as they were since August 28th 2012.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I think the balance ideal is fundamentally broken in PVP as well. The idea with necros not having the other tools results in a very difficult balancing problem.

Necro survivability is incredibly finite at the moment, with Death Shroud as mitigation being limited by HP. In small scale fights of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2, it is currently overpowered, since a full bar gives Necromancers an incredible statistical advantage over other classes. However, when you get larger than that, DS offers very little comparative protection, being worn away quickly. Then, the necromancer’s lack of escapes and blocks/evades/invulnerability comes back in full force, getting them killed quickly.

There’s almost no balance to it. Either the necromancer is overpowered because it is a small scale fight, or the necromancer is really underpowered because it is a large scale fight. No other class seems to have such a polarized effectiveness, and the design philosophy of Anet can only make the problem worse. If you give the necros more damage or suvivability for team fights, this makes them more overpowered in small scale fights. If you scale them down their damage or survivability for small scale fights, then they become even worse in team fights and large scale fights.

Other than to drop the design philosophy, I can’t think of a solution to this problem.

You hit the nail on the head and provided a good explanation of why the Necromancer, who is probably the most AoE heavy class in the game, is ironically actually best suited for 1v1 fights. It’s not so much the weapon and utility skills we have, it is how Death Shroud works akittens very core.

Dev and monitoring.

Sounds like the same trolling thats been going on for almost a year. Gullible people are funny.

PvE and PvP skills split in GW1 because Anet realized they couldn’t balance both together. Why didn’t they do the same for GW2?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Necro survivability is incredibly finite at the moment, with Death Shroud as mitigation being limited by HP. In small scale fights of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2, it is currently overpowered, since a full bar gives Necromancers an incredible statistical advantage over other classes. However, when you get larger than that, DS offers very little comparative protection, being worn away quickly. Then, the necromancer’s lack of escapes and blocks/evades/invulnerability comes back in full force, getting them killed quickly.

There’s almost no balance to it. Either the necromancer is overpowered because it is a small scale fight, or the necromancer is really underpowered because it is a large scale fight. No other class seems to have such a polarized effectiveness, and the design philosophy of Anet can only make the problem worse. If you give the necros more damage or survivability for team fights, this makes them more overpowered in small scale fights. If you scale them down their damage or survivability for small scale fights, then they become even worse in team fights and large scale fights.

For what it’s worth, my experience has been almost the exact opposite… I think the people who have tried to build bunker necros have also found that it’s just not as effective as one might think; if I remember right I saw a post just a bit ago about somebody going up against an ele 1v1 and losing in a 5 minute bout because they were gradually worn down.

I just can’t tell at this point what is going on.

To be fair, with the amount of water field blast healing they have access to, an Elementalist specced for it is kind of a special case outlier.

If you ignore that is one of the more effective and thus often used specs.

It is funny and sad how op necro skills and weapons suddenly are after reading the spvp threat. Even marks or dagger oh are op…

Most amusing is how all this started
>Ele posts vid, bawing how DS ate his burst.
>DS dmg overflow implemented, but fixed bug causing increased dmg.
>further Bawing over Dhuumfire and DS still.
>Perma Evade/Stealth still exists.
> Talks underway about nerfing DS

my sides are in orbit.

It sickens me that the devs respond favorably to the spvp nerf demands while ignoring the far-more reasoned PVE and WvW complaints. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, and sadly, that’s not hyperbole.

I think more to the point is that they were suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of people saying a single thing, and it took the other side a while to even realize there was a problem (I don’t think anybody was thinking these changes were going to be considered OP) and respond in kind. The latest quote from Allie Murdock shows that they are hearing the other sides now, and frankly I think they will realize that the idea that Necros are too strong defensively is ridiculous.

I also do think that the only reason that thread has grown so much is because it was started by phantaram, AKA the only name I recognize from tournament videos. Part of the reason I bring this up is to fix a strange page listing bug the forums get sometimes.

1. You can PvE fine without any major traits at all.
2. Condis are horrible for PvE.
3. You can PvE fine without any major traits at all.