Showing Posts For Ghlitch.8932:
The design team overlooked something vitally important in EOTM… ambient creatures to kill so necromancers can build up their death shroud.
This is especially important when a necromancer dies and their death shroud is completely depleted. There is nothing to build it up with until you get into the middle of a pitched battle.
So give us some ambient creatures in the spawn area so we don’t go in to battle handicapped.
While we are fixing outliers…please look at the application rate of torment on impale.
It’s fun fighting a group of pirates and getting 15-25 stacks of torment on you. Deathly Swarm + Epidemic makes my condition necro feel good.
It is not about the number of conditions. It is about the marginal utility the additional condition provides. Incendiary Powder adds a lot less damage to an Engineer than Dhuumfire does add to a Necromancer because the Engineer already got Burning from other sources. This means that Incendiary Powder is a lot weaker than Dhuumfire although they basically do the same. That is why you can’t balance Dhuumfire based on a comparison with Incendiary Powder (or probably Burning Precision).
The number of damaging conditions isn’t the only factor to determine how powerful a condition build of a class can be. Necromancers will still be very powerful in the condition department. Especially because of Fear although it might be scarcely applied. Because it buys you the time you need for your conditions to deal damage.
You now might argue that Engineers got knock downs/backs instead. True. But they will have to give up either damage (P/S instead of P/P) or a utility slot to get them while Necromancers always come with DS and most likely with a Staff.
The fact of the matter is you’re focusing on it being about burning rather than it being about damage. No matter what type of damage it does, it’s still an extra 1,400 damage condition at a master trait level with a low barrier. Compared to a high barrier, grandmaster trait that will do only 900 damage.
Crowd control is not the issue. That it applies burning at all is not the issue. It stacks with all those other sources of burning the engineer has applied already, it’s still going to do that damage.
This is only about a trait dealing damage. As it is now, dhuumfire already does less damage than incendiary powder as it only lasts 3 seconds to powder’s 4. After the change, it will be doing the same lower damage, just less frequently. All this will do is cement engineer as the alpha condition damage dealer.
I would much rather Dhuumfire get replaced by a trait that instead of doing burning damage on crit, does torment damage on crit with a 2-3 second cooldown. That would give necros more of an identity of stacking conditions rather than trying to vie with engineers as a burst condition profession. Not to mention we’d be maxing out stacks of a condition very few others apply. And instead of necros being punished by not having all those escapes others have, high torment stacking would let us punish all those people running circles around us.
(edited by Ghlitch.8932)
I do agree that Dhuumfire should be moved to a different tree and maybe be lowered a level. However, you might keep this in mind: Engineers already have a good access to burning. Since it only stacks in duration this means that Incendiary Powder is a lot less powerful than it is on the Necromancer who gains a whole new strong damaging condition. Therefore, there can’t be any balance based on this comparison. The cooldowns (1 and 2) won’t be an issue since they are the same (untraited). Life Force will be. But I guess that this is the intention of the devs.
Untraited engineers have access to 4 different damaging conditions (Bleed, Burn, Confuse, Poison) and these just with weapon skills. Untraited necromancers have access to 3 damaging conditions (Bleed, Poison, Torment) if you count death shroud as a weapon skill.
By default, engineers can do more damage than necromancers with conditions.
Dhuumfire gives us access to a fourth damage type just to bring us back on par with an untraited engineer. Terror gives us access to a fifth damage condition, but one that can only be scarcely applied.
So here’s my thoughts on Dhuumfire from a condition necro’s perspective.
It’s good that it’s going to be a predictable skill, used when we need it, not at random.
However the barriers to using it are now a bit too high. Most traits have one or two barriers for use. Barriers for example are: you have to crit, the trait has to be off cooldown, you have to be using a certain weapon, you have to use some other sort of condition like immobilizing, or you have to be in a certain form. The majority of traits have a single barrier for use. The more powerful ones have two barriers.
With the proposed changes, Dhuumfire will have 4 barriers for use:
- Dhuumfire will need to be off cooldown
- Your Death Shroud will need to be off cooldown
- You’ll need to have some life force
- You’ll need to be in Death Shroud and hit someone using the default attack
All these things will need to happen in order for you to inflict a 3 second burning.
Now we’ll look at a trait that is almost exactly the same as Dhuumfire pre-balance, engineer’s Incendiary Powder:
- Incendiary Powder needs to be off cooldown
- You need to crit someone
With only two barriers, you’ll create a longer burning and it’s only master tier.
Compared to that, the Necro’s grandmaster tier trait seems pretty poor. It’s more of an adept tier trait. Now, am I saying you need to make it an adept to compensate? Not necessarily, you just need to give it a better trade-off to keep it in the grandmaster. Higher barrier grandmaster traits should be pretty powerful. Instead of a 3 second burn, make it a 6 second burn. Or instead of a 10 second cooldown, make it a 5 second cooldown. Or instead of single target, make it an AOE burning.