Guild Wars 2

gesho.9468:

Balefire.7592:

How is this any different from a 8k Backstab, or Eviscerate?
Except for, you know, the fact that 17k over six Life Blasts averages to about 3k per Life Blast, which isn’t even that big a power hit.
Attaching Dhuumfire to Life Blast is a bad idea in my opinion, but not because Life Blast is too powerful.

landing single backstab takes more then #111111111111111111

You let the Necro hit you repeatedly with a slow moving, long cast time projectile, that requires the Necro to have already built up life force, and can only be cast a set number of times before that life force runs out. Frankly, I’m not sure what to tell you.
Did you dodge? Did you use an invulnerability/block skill? Did you CC the Necro? Did you damage the Necro to force them out of Death Shroud? Did you run away?

How is this any different from a 8k Backstab, or Eviscerate?
Except for, you know, the fact that 17k over six Life Blasts averages to about 3k per Life Blast, which isn’t even that big a power hit.
Attaching Dhuumfire to Life Blast is a bad idea in my opinion, but not because Life Blast is too powerful.

geekanerd.4123:

Reslinal.2359:

I understand that bg’s superior coverage in season 1 put stress on sor, however I think it is the way sor’s leadership responded to this challenge that led to the ultimate demise of the server. Sor was not the only server that faced superior coverage problem. Jq was beaten by bg too, look at where it is now. When sor first entered t1, you were underdog too with worse coverage than season 1, yet you preserved and ended on top.

From what I hear from your players (like last meeting), the dominance of “fights only” group and asociated elitisim discourages casual players from playing, and the constant lose by big margin due to no support for ppt style of play destroyed sever morale and leave guilds like choo (said by choo representative) with fewer and fewer to recruit.

That’s essentially what I said above. There are a lot of factors in this; Blackgate’s stacking for the first season was the catalyst, but hardly the sole reason SoR as we know it is gone.

That said, is choo trying to come off as a martyr in all of this? I mean, I like the guys in choo, but c’mon. There were plenty of times choo abandoned hard points for fights in the field. And I say that as someone who understands and respects the undeniable fact that choo commanders put in more than their fair share of time running pugs and defending keeps. Yet, they ran tagless a lot, too. Just like TW, FEAR, HIRE and the rest. I personally had a couple experiences where we were getting throttled at a keep and we knew choo was tagless on the map and they never came to help. I’m not blaming or saying this is good or bad or anything. But lets not throw rocks in glass houses.

Choo was not in favor of tanking T2 (we lost more than one member in the process), and we kept on trucking as long as we could. But Choo couldn’t carry the server in PPT alone, nor would we ever want to.
We are well aware of the fact that our departure has harmed the server, but we had reached a tipping point. The server tanking had led to many PvX’ers abandoning WvW, and Choo was experiencing high burnout, with a steadily diminishing pool to recruit from. We were faced with server versus guild health, and unfortunately, the results are as you see. We love SoR dearly, as can be seen by by what our guild leader said in the last server meeting. The decision to move was long, arduous, and in my opinion, quite divisive, but it is what it is.

It should be fixed now. Try this.

Hi guys. I let the poll sit for an extra little bit in order to get some more votes. Here are the results.

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

On an unrelated note, I’m going to have to take some away from the game in general, and possibly from the forums as well as I have been transferred in my workplace, and will need some time to move/adapt.
If anyone would like to take up the reigns of this thread/discussion for the time being, it would be appreciated. Please PM me for further info.

ANET has explicitly stated these are false, unlike the other ones.
Moving on.

This is not a bad trait. It’s not exceptional, but not bad.
If you want an example of a bad trait, see Siphoned Power.

I’m getting a “This survey is closed” off of that link.
Are you still taking votes?
If not, will you publish the results?

Nova Stiker.8396:

Hey ArenaNet, where is my trait that instantly casts Phoenix? I’d love an instant cast Grenade Barrage against low targets too.

Those got scrapped when you received traits that provided vigor. :P

Dalanor.5387:

Yes, death! More death!
Btw what will happen when we finished with the last traitline? Will you make a summarized post on the balance forum Balefire?

Yes, and more. However, I would like to re-run the Soul Reaping survey, as it did its job well for a first poll, but the formatting was very different, making direct comparison difficult.

Since the Devs have finally started opening up the floor to discussion (see here), and Necros are currently in third place for “class that needs the most work” by popular vote, I’d like to try and finish this up ASAP.
Hence, what you’ve all been waiting for: the Death Magic Survey.
PLEASE KEEP WRITTEN SURVEY RESPONSES BRIEF. POST ANY PARAGRAPH RESPONSES TO THE THREAD. AT THIS POINT IN TIME, ALL I AM LOOKING FOR IS AN EVALUATION, NOT SUGGESTIONS.

Sorry about that, but I don’t want the survey responses getting too out of hand. Any major text responses should be put in the thread to further discussion. Putting them in the survey only increases my processing workload.
Please ask any and every Necro to fill out this survey.

1) Thieves – Too many game play elements go against the stated design goals of visually cued combat, and while they are very squishy (and thus deserving), their high damage avoidance creates frustrating game play. Moreover, because they fulfill the “spike damage” role so incredibly well, it prevents other professions from performing such a job. Lastly, their group support is not the worst, but it could be improved.
2) Necromancers – Their mechanics clash terribly, as you cannot siphon in DS. Moreover, they cannot trap people, they cannot chase enemies, have terrible support, and there is a distinct lack of sustain for a class with no mobility – all things that go specifically against the stated design philosophy. Lastly, the profession is currently too easily pigeonholed as several utilities are below par, and multiple trait lines have poor synergy, mediocre traits and bad organization.
3) Rangers – Because so much of their damage is tied to an AI counterpart, the character itself is left rather lacking. Things like Signet and Shouts only being useful for the pet (for the most part) prevent the class from having substantial build diversity. Moreover, several weapons seem to have become lost in regards to their purpose, and many of the pets simply outshine the others by a mile.

Qaelyn.7612:

Sanduskel.1850:

we care about winning. we don’t care about taking objectives.

The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. LOL.

Samhayn.2385:

Whole lotta telling people they are quitters because they don’t play they way you want them to play going on in this thread.

They’re being called quitters because they are quitters. It’s not about them playing the way someone else wants. It’s about them suddenly deciding they don’t want to play the way they played when they had matchups more favorable to them, and the way they will play again when they have more favorable matchups.

You don’t really think this “we prefer EotM playstyle” bullsquat will last more than 10 seconds after they get paired with weaker servers, do you?

Even that ends up being true, what does it matter? SoR currently cannot challenge BG or JQ in terms of PPT, so the T1-rotations of T2 servers are bound to happen. The only question is whether we at SoR cares enough to delay them, or whether we periodically interfere with them by winning T2 matches by too large a margin. Do you think calling us quitters will magically solve the T2 predicament of rising by bolstering SoR’s morale? Or that posting a new thread about this every day will coincidentally cause BG and JQ to de-stack so we remain competitive?
SoR could easily fully quit if we wanted to. Instead of continuously pushing a Sisyphean rock up a hill, we’ve moved our game play elsewhere. To me, EotM is the pinnacle of what I was looking for in WvW: a large scale PvP experience. There are no coverage gaps. There are fewer map population imbalances. Hiding in your structures achieves very little. And there are multiple other benefits. If that doesn’t match your or ANET’s expectations of WvW, then you can petition for/ANET can edit the T&C or the EULA to reflect as much.

Dalanor.5387:

Malpercio.2436:

Dalanor.5387:

I will explain this. It’s the exact same situation as the charr armors.
Charr armor clipping only affect a “few” players, because charr is the least played race, so it’s a low priority thing. Just as a note, thats why they are the least played in a mostly cosmetic based game, but whatever …
So if necro is broken, it will be low priority, since it’s the least (?) played class.
Business, my fellow brother and sisters. All about business and priority, there is no class favoritism, just priorities.

I get the kitten covered end of the stick, im a charr necro…

Me too.

Me three. :/
We should start a support group.

Vuh.1328:

How is withering precision considered bad? It’s stupidly strong vs power based classes in pvp, weakness makes thieves, mesmer and eles(and possibly warriors) cry so hard :s.
It’s like one of the best traits you can pick up to fight the current tpvp meta specs.

The issue isn’t necessarily that it’s bad. It’s that it doesn’t do enough for a GM slot.

There’s already another thread for this (with a Dev response), but the more the merrier.
This bug needs fixing.

Please, please, please storm this thread.
Also, I made a reddit post about this, since people need to know.
If you have a reddit account, please upvote it.

I want to see this balloon to the point they can no longer ignore it.

Substance E.4852:

Sorry playing tactically and against comparable opponents was “too hard” and “not fun” for you guys. Have fun beating up zerker pve pugs.

I love your awesome back-handed insult that people who play EOTM are bads. I’m sure several <=T2 guilds who also enjoy EOTM would fully support that stance, right guys?

Don’t forget, SoR did win T1 matches, so clearly it wasn’t that hard. It just so happened that at the time, we had better coverage. Now you have better coverage, so you win. It’s that simple. For anyone to believe otherwise says more about them and their ignorance than it does about current affairs on SoR.
We currently feel that EOTM best caters to what we want to achieve in WvW play. If that doesn’t meet your expectations or definition of WvW, deal with it. We don’t play to make BG or JQ happy. And if a T2 server gets moved up due to our PPT decline, that’s not really our problem either. Should we be forced to play against BG and JQ repeatedly just because you don’t want to?
I feel for the Rallians who still want to win the PPT game. I’m sorry our guilds aren’t doing what you would like. But based on that same logic, you cannot fault us pursuing the gameplay experience we seek. The best I can do is recommend you start your own organized PPT guild, and/or take it up with key SoR WvW commanders.

No one in SoR was ever, to my knowledge, publicly derided for disagreeing with the “for fights” mentality. Our guilds don’t poke fun at people for wanting to PPT (well, we all poke fun at guildies). We simply don’t partake in their endeavor, and make our stance known. Players are more than welcome to stay, but we won’t stress winning the PPT race. Rallians who pursue PPT, do so by choice, and are hopefully aware of where major guilds stand.

This is also not a new mentality. Back when SoR was stuck in the #5 slot, getting rolled by BG’s off hours, the bigger guilds in SoR realized that regardless how hard they tried, how many BG they killed, or how many structures they upgraded, coverage would win. Given recent developments, we’ve simply re-adapted to our old ways, since it’s plainly obvious we don’t have the numbers or coverage that BG and JQ currently enjoy. If people are looking to PPT, I’m sorry to say, but the current SoR won’t suit your needs. That’s just the way it is.

Shufflepants.9785:

Taunt (Condition Suggestion)

There, fixed that for you.

This exists in the game already.
One of the evil trio in Brisban Wildlands uses it.

Sorry for the tardiness, but in conclusion of the current polling period, here are the results.

Do any of them surprise you?
Do you disagree with any of them?

Well, one day left before I publish the results. Let’s see if we can’t eke out a couple extra votes.

A suggestion I posted in another thread, stolen from reddit:
Blocked/evaded/blinded stealth attacks cause the user to exit stealth, without revealed.

Velimere.7685:

Balefire.7592:

You can avoid dealing with this issue by building around it, though. I’m not saying it doesn’t suck – it definitely does, since it makes the Focus bad – but it does have some work arounds. I consider things to be game breaking when they are inevitable, so you’ll forgive me if I disagree.

You can avoid the Death Shroud issue by not using Death Shroud; Mesmers using Phantasm builds don’t really use Shatter skills.

Your argument works both ways: “X is broken, so don’t use it.”

If you think a single, optional weapon skill is as vital to the Mesmer as Death Shroud, a primary defensive mechanic, is to the Necro, then I’m not sure what to tell you.

Velimere.7685:

Balefire.7592:

selan.8354:

some of them gamebreaking, like iwarden

That’s hardly game breaking.

Sorry, but your trivialization of something factually anything but trivial does not make it so herein reality. No – herein reality, iWarden is a phantasm, and as a phantasm, it exists as the big-hitter on any Mesmer weapon-set using a focus (as per the design of Mesmer weapon-skills). iWarden not attacking is very game-breaking for a Mesmer.

You can avoid dealing with this issue by building around it, though. I’m not saying it doesn’t suck – it definitely does, since it makes the Focus bad – but it does have some work arounds. I consider things to be game breaking when they are inevitable, so you’ll forgive me if I disagree.

selan.8354:

some of them gamebreaking, like iwarden

That’s hardly game breaking.
Game breaking is the Necro losing access to utilities on exiting death shroud, since you can’t heal or stun break for a good 2 seconds after.

I had a really thorough response typed out, but the forum ate it, so I’m going to be a little more brief. EDIT: Maybe not so brief.

Necromancers don’t have vigor because we have that health sponge. I agree that it’s one dimensional, but adding vigor on top of death shroud, especially at such an accessible slot, might push it over the top. Also, Necromancers are meant by design to be the “face tank” profession. It’s part of their identity, and if you remove that, you begin to homogenize professions. There are also plenty of ways to add sustain without vigor. For one, better access to protection. Moreover, things like retaliation, confusion, and torment are useful because as you take hits/move around, your opponents suffer for it.

Regarding Dead Skin, I think unintuitive was perhaps not the right word.
I think the issue here is in the execution of the trait, not in its idea (which, as I understand, is to improve our hardiness). I thought you intended on promoting active benefits, which this is not (for the most part). Moreover, a long history of playing MtG (which has a surprising number of parallels) has taught me that effects that rely too much on your opponent’s actions tend to unsavory gameplay. This trait looks like it’ll reduce a lot of damage, but a good opponent will make sure it triggers as little as possible. On the other hand, a bad opponent will have a difficult time dealing with it, giving us a binary trait problem. I think it would be better implement as an “Elemental Attunement”-like buff on exiting DS that increased your toughness/life force/healing/whatever, since that promotes smart play (do I eat a reduced 100Blades and max my LF, or buffer it in DS?).

With Near to Death, I do believe it is unintuitive. It creates complexity where none is needed since “optimum play” would require you to keep track of your DS cooldown while in DS. Moreover, it just seems odd for a transformation to trigger its cooldown on activation.
I think the main issue is that yes, it promotes bad usage. With this change, if you outlast the DS cooldown, you can pop out, use whatever skills you need, then pop back in. Also, a similar situation arises when you’re focibly removed from DS, since you just need to get to 10% again to re-enter. It nullifies the opportunity cost of Deathshroud which is one of the few interesting strategic decisions associated with it.
Lastly, this change would kill DS flashing as a build. It’s not currently viable, and Near to Death does mess up other things, but I believe that some fine tuning, both of these issues could be resolved, creating another possible play style.

Regarding Death Nova, you might be better off asking Bhawb, but simply put: it’s damage insurance. Minions are meant to achieve sustained DPS in comparison to the burst of Wells or the Sustain of Spectrals. However, due to AI reliability, or lack thereof, this isn’t always achieved, as your minion might be killed before accomplishing anything significant. Death Nova insures that they at least do something. It also allows for two different minion master variants to exist: one which wants to keep its minions alive for sustained DPS, and one with functions like a Necro equivalent of a Shatter build.

The effect on your suggested Death Nova, is good, but I just don’t think it needs to replace the original. Besides, if anything, Necromantic Corruption is just as good a name for it.

rpfohr.7048:

Manuhell.2759:

rpfohr.7048:

High Access to poison and soft CC.
But is not enough, you need some defense to get by their initial immunity.

Thus classes I feel do well against warriors are ranger and engi.

Guess what, they’re just nerfing poison grenade and net turret in the balance patch…

Then I guess you should start playing a ranger……

Seriously though poison / CC wear down builds work against warriors

Engi will still be a viable option even though its getting hit as warriors are getting a SLIGHT nerf too.

Maybe check into a thief, they have decent poison as well.

I will tell you that when I play a warrior, the toughest fights are the ones where it is difficult to catch and burst because of CC you and use poison to negate Heal Sig.

So start leveling your thief / ranger if your so concerned about your engi nerf.

Necromancers have access to three fears, plenty of chill and cripple, and poison on our auto, yet Warriors are supposedly our counter-profession, so this isn’t entirely accurate.

Phadde.7362:

The Necromancer seems really underpowered in PvE group-encounters.

The group-healing (even when specialized in the trait-tree that’s based upon it) seems to be worse than what other professions have access to for free. And this seems to be the reality for most of the support, including a loss in damage-output that’s a lot milder to other professions. Offensive boons aren’t all that plenty even when traited for and isn’t shared with the rest.

I really like the profession, but I play it as my fifth alt, so I’d think that it’s not one of these cliche cases of “wining about ones main profession needs a buff”. I’m also not extremely knowledgeable about the profession.

So here’s a question I’d like to ask: Why hasn’t the Necromancer seen improvements in party support and utility?
Surely it could be done by simply making a lot of the traits and skills less selfish. Things such as making the boons gained from Reaper’s Might and Furious Demise -traits party wide perhaps?

A stack of might for everyone on each Life Blast, and some Fury for everyone whenever you enter DS. That ought to be a step in a healthy direction for the profession.

Am I wrong? If not, why hasn’t these kind of changes been implemented? Can’t be all that hard to patch in. I mean, looking at the threads on this forum creates an image that Necro-players love the profession but despite the poor state it’s in.

Necromancer players love the profession.
However, ANET’s design/update cycle regarding professions is very slow, and they seldom visit/comment on threads in here. Instead, they post in general forums, where terribad Hambow Warriors and Permastealth Thieves whine loudest, so significant beneficial changes are made.

Swagg.9236:

Reanimator (Death Magic – 5; minor)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Gain 5 seconds of Vigor upon leaving Death Shroud.
  • Cool-down: 15 seconds

Necromancers are not meant to have vigor by design.

NEW TRAIT – Dead Skin (Death Magic – XI)

• Gain 1 stack of Dead Skin every 5 seconds that you don’t take damage (up to 5 stacks total). Lose 1 stack of Dead Skin every time that you take damage. You cannot lose more than 1 stack of Dead Skin each second. When you lose a stack of Dead Skin, you gain 2% Life Force.
  • Dead Skin (1): Gain 300 toughness.

I think this is somewhat unintuitive, but in terms of what it accomplishes, I guess it’s fine.

Near to Death (Soul Reaping – VIII)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Death Shroud begins recharging right as you enter into it.

I always see people asking for this, and I think it’s a terrible idea. Not only is it terribly unintuitive, it allows you re-enter deathshroud as soon as you exit provided you outlast the cooldown, which therefore offers no punishment for exiting DS at the wrong time.

Death Nova – MOVED TO – (Soul Reaping – VII)

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• When you enter Death Shroud, you create a bubble of toxic energy at your location. After 2 seconds, this bubble bursts, poisoning and knocking back foes.
  • Delay: 2 seconds
  • Damage: 314 (1.0)
  • Poison: 3 seconds
  • Knock-back: 180
  • Combo Finisher: Blast
  • Radius: 180

This is the flag ship minion master trait, and it’s perfectly fine as is, since people complain about the zoo aspect, not Death Nova. It baffles me that you would remove this from minion builds while leaving Necromantic Corruption or Fetid Consumption, both of which are never used.

Reapers Mark (Soul Reaping – VII)

• REMOVED FROM THE GAME

And replaced with?

There are plenty of threads in the Necromancer forum discussing bad traits, so I would take a cue from those. Also, the Necromancer trait workshop thread, which I run, might be of use of to you.

I think the issue we currently have with Signets is how utterly disjointed their effects are. Compare them to, say, Elementalist signets, on a conceptual level, and you’ll see what I mean. And that’s without traits for them.

Here it is.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Josh Davis.6015:

I just finished spending a few hours catching up on these responses. There’s a lot of good feedback here…and some…not so much!

I’ve seen quite a few posts mention the lack of bug fix mentions and I wanted to let you guys know that for the most part they’ve simply been excluded from the balance preview. Our designers have been and will continue to work on profession bugs all the way until this build is locked up and ready to ship.

I’ll touch base with the guys on Monday when we get back into the office and see if we’re able to provide any updates.

Thanks again, everyone.

Look at the necro bugs reported about 6 months ago too please. fixes are needed bigtime on the professions mechanics.

For example, I’d really love it if you could fix that one bug where I can’t use any slot skills after exiting death shroud. Especially since, you know, THIS IS HORRIFICALLY GAME BREAKING IN EVERY GAME MODE AS YOU LOSE ACCESS STUN BREAKS AND YOUR HEAL
I’m literally flabbergasted at how long it’s taken to fix this since no one profession is kitten in this way. I mean seriously, this isn’t a bugged weapon skill, it’s a bug on EVERY SLOT SKILL involving our MAIN PROFESSION MECHANIC. If I was in charge, I’d have committed everyone to this bug – I don’t give a flying kitten about any other class bugs, because currently, their profession mechanics aren’t bugged to ruin their game play. How long would it have been ok to let Burst skills or Attunement swaps rot?

shawshank.4906:

My proposal is to improve the minor grandmaster trait Strength of Undeath (which grants you a 5% damage increase while your DS is above 50%) to work similarly to warrior’s trait Empower Allies or guardian’s Strength in Numbers to include nearby allies (up to 5).

This would make necromancer a more wanted profession in dungeons and large scale pve since they lack support and a 5% damage increase to the whole party would make them more viable.

This would promote poor usage of Death Shroud, which is our primary defensive mechanic, and, in the case of power builds, the source of most of our damage. Hence, I can’t say I agree with such a change.

Come on ladies and germs, keep ‘dem votes comin’!

Disclaimer: This thread is not about balancing risk/reward and zerker/bunker/sustain or the like. It is about the dilution of the suggested GW2 gameplay roles.

I’ve seen plenty of posts here and there complaining and/or promoting the fact that GW2 chose to forgo the traditional trinity for a new one: Damage/Support/Control. However, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is the fact that in practice, this hasn’t really worked out, since everyone specs for DPS, with just enough CC and support to get by.

I think one of the main reasons behind this is simply the raw availability and low power level of non-damage based effects across skills. What I mean by this is that no one really has to spec for boon sharing, healing, or soft/hard CC because these effects are all just built right into our regular skill sets at a fairly low power level. Specialized roles have been diluted, reducing diversification.

If the availability of things like boons, group healing/cleansing, support conditions, and crowd control was more limited, but more fruitful if one to chose to specialize in those areas, I feel like build diversity would be increased simply because there would no longer be dominant builds that accomplished every role. DPS Guardians and Eles wouldn’t be able to support their teams as well, and therefore, actual sacrifices would need to be made when composing your build.

Things like boons and CC are currently far less meaningful than they can be. Getting 10 stacks of might, chilling your foe, or dazing them would be real game changers if they were more sparse, but more effective. Currently, their effects are felt, but are mare coincidental. Reducing the availability of such effects would also raise the skill ceiling, since cleanses, stun breaks, and boon stripping would be a lot more valuable due to the more powerful nature of the effects they counter.

I’m not saying that we need to strip all weapon skills of such effects and relegate them to utility skills. However, I believe the current density of non-damage based effects is too high in damage based builds. What does the forum community think?

tl;dr: I think that reducing the availability of boons, support conditions, CC, and group effects would increase build diversity, and allow for more diversified gameplay, as professions wouldn’t simply outclass each other in every field.

Aberrant.6749:

Balefire.7592:

To be totally honest, I feel like Weakness would be better served by splitting its effects into two conditions. It would make it far easier to balance, since the current effects are somewhat disjointed (the glancing part is defensive, while the endurance hit is offensive).

That just makes it multi-purpose… also splitting it would mean that there would be yet another condition that classes can pile on to cover other conds….

While that’s certainly an issue, there are benefits. For example, if it was split up, you could give classes that rely on one of the two aspects more of that particular effect without over buffing it.
For example, giving Necros more ways to drain Endurance would be nice, since then people can’t dodge away from the “attrition” class. Meanwhile, the Thief could make better use of the glancing effect, improving its survivability, without necessarily ruining other classes’ dodges, since its liable to land very large hits

To be totally honest, I feel like Weakness would be better served by splitting its effects into two conditions. It would make it far easier to balance, since the current effects are somewhat disjointed (the glancing part is defensive, while the endurance hit is offensive).

Kiriakulos.1690:

Couple of suggestions for you Swagg.

A few easy modifications to try and avoid the imminent fiasco of the Dhuumfire change:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview/page/5#post3570656

Second a way to fix lifestealing and make the Blood tree more appealing:

Change the minor traits in Blood Magic and make them 5 = Vampiric, 15 = Vampriric Precision, 25 = Bloodthirst.

This fixes the inherent OPness that Bloodthirst brings in the 10 slot and actually makes the tree scale the more you invest in it.

Also change lifestealing so it’s flat recovery with no damage inflicted and use 30 + 0.01 for Vampiric and 100 + 0.05 for Vampiric Precision, both scaling with healing power.

I disagree.I never understood what Vampiric Precision was doing in Blood to begin with, given it’s a critical hit based effect. Putting it in Curses allows to achieve some sustain beyond the borders of Blood Magic. If anything, Deathly Invigoration should be a minor, given it’s current values, since it’ll be useful to every Necro where Vampiric Precision is build dependent (the opposite of what a Minor should be).

I would like to see suggestions on how exactly we keep up with our enemies, given the fact that you’re increasing/improving the leaps/charges/teleports on Guardians (and maybe others?), who aren’t meant to be terribly fast in combat, or to run away.

I agree with flow.
We already lose access to our heal skill and any skill-based sources of regen in death shroud anyway. All the current system does is screw up existing regen, invalidate an entire trait line, and ruin allied attempts to help us.

spoj.9672:

I think people are just unhappy about making an op trait have some skill and thought process implemented. People like easymode passives because they are lazy.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. While some might just want to remain OP, a lot of people are upset because we’ve had no indication it’s being moved (down and across), and the new version is barely worth a master slot when compared to Incendiary Powder.
Plus, there are plenty of people who would like to see it totally gone, since it’s uncharacteristic for its trait line and the Necro in general, and has resulted in nerfs to itself and other effects that were fine before it’s introduction.

Dark Path – Never hits and too slow. It can be avoided by sidestepping or through swiftness. Compare to Flashing Blade, which has a shorter cooldown and has no activation requirement" (it has no minimum resource requirement to access the skill).

Don’t Necros get any extra love here? We do have one of the highest numbers of individual boon stripping abilities in the game….

Dhuumfire nerf is fine, as long as it doesn’t stay at GM level. It’s good for a Master level trait, since it no longer synergizes very well with condition specs (which have trouble acquiring life force).

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

cool!

15/ something.

D:
Why no more words?

So, since discussion has stalled, and there have been requests to move on, I present to you the Blood Magic Survey. Please take the time to complete it, and if you know any other Necros, bribe them to do so as well.

I took the liberty of adding some questions at the end given the current sorry state of siphons.

If requiring a target is lame, can us Necros get our GTAoE Dark Path back? I’d even be ok with a range reduction. Currently, it’s just awful.

Oh, I have another one:
Is the incompatibility of our biggest sustain mechanics (death shroud and siphoning) intentional? If so, why? Would you ever consider weakening one or both to have them function together?
Necromancers are hardly the tanking beasts we were in the betas, and can barely bunker a point, so I don’t see how the pitiful gains from siphons will unbalance us if extended to Death Shroud.

You could also maybe do something more community focused instead of game focused. Not really sure what though.