Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

Well a meaty buff to our downstate isnt exactly a meaty buff to the class in general. ;3

Hah!

Depends on how much time you spend in down state… (?_??)

Avruk.2953:

They fixed a state where we are supposed to be… in the downstate.
More important is, that ping-pong wvw necro, now will be a thing. Correct me if i’m wrong (my client is still updating) Foot in the Grave is 1 stack for 3 sec, right?

From the notes -

• Stability: This boon has been changed from a duration stack type to an intensity stack type. Crowd-control effects will remove one instance of stability apiece each time they are applied. Each ability and trait has been adjusted to apply a certain number of stacks. All instances of stability not listed in these release notes will remain at one stack.

So it looks like you are right. I hold out hope they may balance it further once this first stability change is out.

edit: formating the relevant section

Here are the full Necro patch notes (rather than making a new thread):

Necromancer

• Life Leech (Downed State): Updated the skill facts of this ability to be accurate.
• Flesh Wurm: This skill will no longer activate if a valid path to the target point cannot be found.
• Plague: This ability now grants 3 stacks of stability every 3 seconds, with a 3-second duration.
• Lich Form: This ability now grants 1 stack of stability every 3 seconds, with a 3-second duration.

The following necromancer traits will now remain active when the necromancer enters the downed state:

Death Magic

• Minion Master
• Flesh of the Master
• Death Nova
• Necromantic Corruption
• Deadly Strength

Blood Magic

• Bloodthirst
• Vampiric Precision
• Vampiric Master
• Vampiric Rituals
• Vampiric

Curses

• Withering Precision
• Barbed Precision

Soul Reaping

• Master of Terror

Spite

• Training of the Master
• Chill of Death
• Close to Death

My guess is when they decided not to make death shroud our class mechanic, instead of our downstate, they shiv’d in our downstate without backing out everything else.

I’m really not sure how big of a difference this will make – possibly making us a bit more of a threat when downed if we’ve invested in the blood traitline?

I’m holding out hope that we will see changes to PvE itself, that will resolve the issues. Maybe making it considerably more difficult so that pure dps isn’t all the things that it currently is.

Breaking news: Fear is now an interrupt!

Just some additional stuff from the previous slide too:

• Reanimator: This trait has been merged into Death Nova
• New Adept Minor Trait – Armored Shroud: Gain bonus toughness while in death shroud.
• Protection of the Horde: This trait has been merged into Flesh of the Master
• New Master Minor Trait – Soul Comprehension: Your passive life force generation from nearby deaths is increased
• Vampiric Master: Reduced the effectiveness of this trait by 10%. The healing portion of this trait will now scale with the necro’s healing power stat
• Training of the Master: Reduced the damage increase to minions fro 30% to 25%
• Dhuumfire: This trait has been changed so that it will make Life Blast inflict 3 seconds of burning with a 10 seconds recharge. This trait is no longer split.
• Bug fixes!

I think it’s actually Soul Comprehension – and my understand of the reading is that it increases the base amount of LF you get from deaths. Basically additional sustain of LF, which when coupled with hp healing and the increased toughness from the other new trait mentioned, means more sustain from multiple sources.

It looks like individually the traits could be underwhelming, but together they could add up to much more tankiness. Also, choices – all three together may give you great sustain, but you could drop one of them and take more damage oriented traits in it’s place.

Just to add in the info from the link tommyknocker posted, specific to necro’s:

Necromancer
Quite a few changes are being made to the necromancer. With this update, we continue our focus on survivability and attrition. Dhuumfire is being unified for PvE and PvP and moved to Life Blast instead of requiring the necro to critically hit an enemy. The Death Magic line has been reworked and restructured slightly so that minions are no longer a required element of that trait line. We’re moving some traits around and making room for Armored Shroud, which grants bonus toughness while in Death Shroud, and Soul Comprehension, which increases the base life-force gain from surrounding deaths.

I also feel that the following will affect many builds as well -

On-Kill sigils (those sigils which trigger when you kill something) have received an update as well. The functionality of each sigil has changed so that killing a player is worth five stacks of a sigil in any game mode, while killing a monster only grants one stack. This type of sigil will have more strict rules applied on them, so that a player will no longer be able to gain 25 stacks and then un-equip the sigil.

you guys are so depressing. 40 new traits across all classes are coming, a new way to earn the traits. No full details about what those traits are, and yet 90% of the posts are complaining that they aren’t powerful enough?

I’m actually quite excited to see what the changes are going to be, changes are exciting.

These changes, coupled with the easy of re-traiting, could point to a more fluid flexible system in the future – including more diversity. Additional traits will mean that existing traits will get looked at and rebalanced as well – details we do not know – but this looks to me like the start of the refresh we’ve been asking for.

Bare in mind this bit from the description as well:

In addition to a bit of a trait line rework…

We should be seeing some reordering of traits.

ah! I thought that was someone who had an idea about a new trait they wanted to see – wasn’t clear from the title of the post they were talking about the overhaul.

So with the news here – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

including:

Necromancer: Unholy Sanctuary
In addition to a bit of a trait line rework, the necromancer’s Death Magic will be gaining the ability to heal your health pool while Death Shroud is active. Unholy Sanctuary allows you to turtle in your Death Shroud and slowly heal yourself, granting you additional survivability in situations that might otherwise spell certain death. The healing rate of Unholy Sanctuary is the same as the regeneration boon and will be affected by healing power.

Let the wild speculation and maybe even a little rejoicing begin!

You know, I didn’t notice at first that this post was from a year ago.

Rennoko.5731:

…

Necro has serious issues with cast times, balance, build diversity, etc. I am not ignoring that, I am focusing on the 1 positive from the last patch that brings some joy to the class (some of us).

Sadly, it feels like little has changed

Bhawb.7408:

I’m sorry, how did a debate about spectral walk allowing falls get turned into a talk about death shroud, when that was never in question at all?

OP’s question had exactly nothing to do with Death Shroud.

My fault, sorry!

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

…

It was nerfed because it had the unintended consequence of allowing necromancers to survive a fall outside the map and see areas they weren’t intended to see. This happened – by accident – when a necro was knocked off the edge of a PvP arena, popped DS, and survived the fall into an area of the map that players weren’t supposed to access.

…

Actually, you can probably still do this with spectral walk, so I don’t think that was the reason it was changed, just the mechanic was hilighted by that use of it.

I do know it wasn’t a bug, as I’m fairly sure it was patched in as intentional before being patched back out again.

…

Anyway, back on topic – It is a great escape move, spectral walk is pretty much the only skill we have to play with that can help us escape – under very specific circumstances.

We used to be able to leap from high cliffs, switch to DS to absorb the hit. It would knock us down for a second or two, and remove all our DS, but we’d survive the fall.

sigh I miss being able to do this.

Brando.1374:

-snip-

Love the Idea of Making a necro choose to get burning or terror!!!!!
a necro should not be able to get both at the same time!

But only if terror has a small buff! The one suggested by Jon does add some skill to the play, on both sides.

JonPeters.5630:

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

I just want to say it’s awesome to be having a conversation like this, I think everyone here was really hoping we’d be able to have an opportunity like this.

With regards to life siphon and the recent changes, I’m curious if you are seeing the numbers / usage you were hoping to see from these changes? Or is there a possibility of further tweaking?

Is the idea of healing to our HP (even a greatly reduced amount) while in DS completely off the table?

well, at least the interrupt will be fixed…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/3155840

Just a throw away thought, not even sure it’s the right place for it, but what if…

When we run out of HP, but have sufficient Life force, we enter DS instead of going down (heh, what DS was originally intended for). It could even work in a similar way with DS → HP where hits to us at low health overflow into the DS we have.

If it could be coupled with HP regen while in DS (even a hugely reduced amount, like 50% effective), it would give us the sustain we need.

Throwing my hat in too – 23/24 and I am positive I went to each one. Every one of them now says “You’ve learned all you can..” etc.

Necromancer

• Life force meter improvements:
  • The meter has been resized in order to properly display the entire bar. Previously, about 10% of the bar was hidden.
  • The current life force value is now displayed on the bar.
  • The current and max life force is now displayed on the tooltip.
• Spectral Armor: Increased the duration from 8 seconds to 9 seconds when traited with Spectral Attunement to match the intended duration increase. Added a duration skill fact.
• Lingering Curse: This trait will no longer increase the duration of blind on the Deathly Swarm skill.
• Target the Weak: This trait will now properly increase damage when the target has the torment condition.
• Mark of Revival: Increased the base radius of the Reaper’s Mark created by this trait to 180 to be consistent with other marks.
• Mark of Evasion: Increased the base radius of the Mark of Blood created by this trait to 180 to be consistent with other marks.
• Spinal Shivers: Added a damage fact for each damage value based on the boons the target currently has on them.
• Locust Swarm: Increased the base cripple duration to 2 seconds.
• Spectral Grasp: This skill now grants bonus life force when traited with Spectral Attunement.
• Tainted Shackles: This skill now uses radius instead of range.
• Banshee’s Wail: Normalized this trait to increase the effectiveness of warhorn skills by 50%.
• Vampiric Precision: The life siphon now correctly scales with the Bloodthirst trait. The damage portion of the life siphon from this trait now scales slightly based on power. The healing portion of the life siphon from this trait now scales slightly based on healing power.
• Vampiric Rituals: The damage portion of the life siphon from this trait now scales slightly based on power. The healing portion of the life siphon from this trait now scales slightly based on healing power.
• Vampiric Master: This trait will now cause minions to properly deal damage when siphoning life. The damage portion of the life siphon from this trait now scales slightly based on power. With the new damage addition, base siphoning from this trait’s minions has been reduced by 16%.
• Unyielding Blast: Fixed an issue so that this trait will now properly apply vulnerability when using Life Blast underwater.
• Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, and other life siphon skills: Increased the base siphoning by 20%.
• Bloodthirst: This trait now grants 20% bonus siphoning, down from 50% more effectiveness (which results in no change when combined with the change to other siphoning traits).
• Deathly Invigoration: The base heal from this trait has been increased by 100%.
• Transfusion: This trait now scales with healing power at a rate of 20%, where it didn’t previously scale.
• Well of Power: Fixed an issue so that this skill will properly convert burning, chilled, confusion, immobilize, and torment on allies.

it’s almost like a WvW terrormancer rune. Extra condition damage and another fear for terror damage. The crit damage is kind of a weird one. Maybe it makes more sense for condi-engies?

I guess the aoe fear will proc from your location, not the golem. In which case it might make the golems charge less effective, if the enemies are scattered from where you are due to the fear….

Tricare.2946:

just a little tip, use it if you’d like. You can start to cast your heal, then dodge and cancel it. the torment will still go off. not sure if it’s a bug /shrug

Certainly sounds like a bug with the runes – this would allow you to spam AoE torment on every ICD of the runes.

Oxe.6142:

It’s not a nerf. It’s security against putting DS on CD and wasting it.

Any build that uses on entry or on exit effects and just “flash” DS – any delay will be a nerf. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever had a problem with premature detransforming.

Bhawb.7408:

Rennoko.5731:

How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.

Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.

I’ve been thinking about something like that, and I think it could work, if they implemented it more like Vlad (from LoL)’s E. You have a self-buff that you stack up over time, and by keeping it up, it makes your siphons stronger.

That would also make some interesting counter play by other necros boon stripping/corrupting, or allowing it to get juicy enough to steal….

Shinjusuke.9156:

Since we (might) have a tiny bit of dev attention in here

Can we PLEASE see some love for Vamp/Dagger builds? Seriously.
Give an overall health siphoning boost that makes it not abysmal (since the only real health siphon outside of minions leeching is on the dagger anyway), and allow us do at least half of our healing while in death shroud.

So many cool ways the Necro could be done.. so many ignored…
Sick of being stuck just going “okay bleed… some more bleed… bit more bleed… some bleed…”

C’mon guys…

Did you see the update from Chap in the general forum? They’ve stated the Oct 15th Patch should see some love for our blood trait line.

This one is also going on in the PvP forum which might be of interest to the PvP necro’s on here:

Stop making MAPS and give us MODES

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The previous leak was definitely fake if you read them all. Part of it was increasing Mark of Evasion’s radius to 180 base…which it already is. There were a few other things that were being “fixed” that currently do not function the way that list says they currently do (that is, the way they currently work is how those notes say they will be made to work).

Chances are what was “leaked” was a previous version of these notes.

Bhawb.7408:

I think the best part of this is that the previous leak was just confirmed to be accurate, when we had all the threads closed for being speculation.

More on topic, I love that the Vampiric changes have been confirmed.

They never said it wasn’t accurate, just not confirmed. Even the post by Jon is not 100%, which is fine. I’m just happy to get an idea of the direction they are heading.

Just to add to the above, these are a few things that are called out that could affect us specifically:

Guardians

We reworked Purging Flames: it now removes three conditions from allies in an area effect around the guardian on cast while still burning enemies (enemies that enter or exit the flames are still burned). Once the skill has been cast, it then reduces condition duration for allies who remain in the consecration’s area.

Rangers

The Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that.

Mesmer

Power Cleanse: We wanted to add some condition support, and made it so that this skill can remove 2 conditions from 5 allies.

So it does appear that to combat the condition heavy meta that are increasing other classes abilities to cleanse. We’ll see if this will go overboard or not. I can see some tweaking back and forth in the future, either to ensure conditions have a chance to do some damage before they are totally cleansed, or possibly to clear partial stacks rather than the entire stack.

Rennoko.5731:

Godless.1857:

I wonder if you get two procs from 6th ability with Blood Fiend – one on summoning and one on heal…

You do… but you really have no way to get the 2nd proc, because the minion will be dead before the cooldown is up on the on-heal torment ICD.

The same reason why the blood fiend is terrible in any and every other non-minion build. It gets focused and killed, and now you have no healing.

Agreed. It might work if you are roaming looking for very small 1v1 fights, duels etc. It would assist in trying to keep the opponent in range – but to be honest, we probably have better ways of doing that with chill and cripples.

I wonder if you get two procs from 6th ability with Blood Fiend – one on summoning and one on heal…

As I said on the stream, I’m very happy to see some necro’s start streaming – fed up of the majority of streams seeming to be thief or ele.

Maybe not be the best place to ask – do you have any recommendations on where to start putting WvW skill points first, or just wherever?

Correct link is this I think:

Necromancer Tier 1 WvW by Ascii

Bhawb.7408:

Increasing your bleeding damage by 1 tick will still increase your effective DPS by around 15, and with how long fights take that amounts up over time.

But really, imo Ascended gear is more for Fractals. If you don’t do Fractals then its hardly necessary.

In terms of stats…. I think most people are going for Ascended gear for the looks, and the prestige, rather than trying to keep on top stats-wise.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

[snip]…

If it’s the case that you want Chill of Death to process when the enemy is at or below 25% health and must be hit by the necro at that point, then an alternative description may have read:

“When an enemy is at or below 25% health, Cast Spinal Shivers on them with your next attack. This effect can trigger only once every 20 seconds.”

I agree, I think this is what the skill actually does. Unfortunately it makes it slightly less useful, especially if you are trying to catch someone fleeing the fight because they are low on health.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Mammoth.1975:

Well, I think you’ve proved my point satisfactorily now. Have fun whining.

Your obvious lack of self respect and opinion that deviates from the mob mentality that feeds this… “game” is the only fun thing around here.
Have fun playing in a game where anything and everything happens on a whim of a mob. With utter lack of any kind of logical progression or thought out plan.
- WE WANT TO DIVERSIFY!
- HERE IS FIRE.
- NOW WE NERF ANYTHING THAT IS NOT FIRE. SO YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW OF GOD OF THE UNIVERSE TO SPEC INTO THIS kitten NOBODY ASKED FOR.
If this is anets idea of being logical and objective. Then have fun continuing to support this shoddy product. I hope their kitten tastes good for the amount of kissing you seem to provide is mind boggling.

Yawn…. disappointing. I give it 3/10.

Oh wait, you aren’t trolling? really?

Ok, well, I suggest a few people here follow the Anakin Rule. Read your post back before posting, if it sounds like it’s being read by Anakin Skywalker from Episodes 2 and 3 then you are being entitled and whiny. If you include insults about bodily functions, then you are frankly childish.

Andele.1306:

Yes because kissing the kitten of lazy people that wanna hide the fact that the older version was and is a better game from a mechanical standpoint will totally fix everything. And telegraphing skills with a camera that spazzes out on every edge and corner is a very solid idea with many hours behind it.

Show me the game (or anything) that you have helped to make, that has sold over 3 million copies of.

I don’t know where you get off calling out the developers as being lazy, seriously your entitlement levels are through the roof. If you are going to be unrelentingly negative, un-constructive and frankly childish, the community in general would be better off without your “wisdom”.

Andele.1306:

Again, instead of giving us just a post like this that can be nothing (since staff has kinda lost their trust from what i think is most of the necro community after the downed hp and the DS hp stuff), why not do what responsible (and sane) devs up to date did with every mmo that exists, actually allow us to see the hp of the enemy (and in the necro case of DS LF based HP)? There would be no problems that way!

Because of the design decision to make combat visual rather than forcing numbers. Hence the telegraphed moves instead of a skill bar telling you what they are about to cast.

I vastly prefer this more nuanced approach.

(also, you might want to tone the snark down if you want to be able to have a reasonable discussion about this)

@Karl

It is so nice to see red posts here, thank you for providing the reasoning and the clarifications!

it seems like it would lend itself more to being mixed in with other sets, rather than all of one particular stat group. If you are aiming for a particular armor level, or vit level, or crit chance – this set gives the option to boost crit chance, rather than crit damage.

Mammoth.1975:

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

1 stack of bleed, so OP

Here’s the thing. Grasping dead bleeds have 100% uptime on a standard condi necro. That means you now have 1 less bleed all the time.

That’s a minimum 4% nerf to your bleed damage, but since no one is maintaining 25 stacks, it’s actually higher, closer to 10%.

You still have burning, terror, and poison though right? Except that bleeds are your bread and butter dps. Those condis all together add up to significantly less than your bleeds.

It’s around a 5-6% nerf to total condi damage output. Dhuumfire in its 2s incarnation is about an 8-9% boost. Losing that ‘one bleed’ nearly nullifies it. Obviously the effect on your aoe capability is more significant again.

It was probably (almost certainly) needed, but don’t underestimate it.

Agreed, on paper it sounds like “heh, 1 bleed – oh well” but in percentage terms it has a real value. It will probably mean that the average number of stacks we can maintain will be reduced. I think it will actually help a little in balance terms just for the extra seconds it will take to down someone without that “one more bleed”.

Drakula.8405:

Told u we got nerfed in pvp and this is just the start .

you are right, reducing the bleed stacks for grasping dead from 3 to 2 has made us completely unplayable now.

/s

Cionna.3158:

wooow, 2 stack of blood instead of 3….. why? that skill was OP??

ehehehe “ArenaFail” are very funny……they continue nerf necro and buff class OP, like Ranger.

I remember when they make dhumfire, after 2 weeks “ArenaFail” has nerfed death shroud, traits and dhumfire..ye Necro was OP…. Now Ranger and Warrior are the leaders of OP, and ArenaFail don’t touch the Warrior and buff Ranger spirit…

are you f*****g kidding us???

It’s like you didn’t even read the notes at all…

A good point is made in this thread – How to avoid the next balance disaster

The current game right now has terrormancers, spirit rangers and stunlocking warriors running rampant. The terrormancers have been around long enough now that people know the counters (ie CC, and condition removal work wonders). Spirit rangers currently offer far too much reward for far too little risk. Stun lock warriors are incredibly powerful against condition heavy builds, but are generally warriors only option right now.

The thing is, these builds came about after buffs that were done to counter the old meta of mesmers and elementalists ruling the roost. I have a feeling that a lot of the “old guard” want to return to the old meta, because that’s when they started playing, picking the classes that at the time dominated.

Personally I think they are trying to get to the point where you can’t go glass cannon and win without high skill levels. They want people to make choices about their build so that they can cope with all other builds in some way, with varying levels of skill. The old GS Mesmer being able to burst down at 1200 range doesn’t work now because condition spikes at similar ranges can stop them in their tracks. The aim now would be to make sure they can trait and build to cope with condition spikes which should mean they take a hit to the damage they do.

spoj.9672:

And here I was hoping for an actually useful stat combo like power precision condi damage or condi damage power precision (better versions of rampager).

Celestial!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Could I get a link to this, please? I am very curious what else was said.

This is the economy blogpost – new stat combos came about from the removal of magic find.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/economy-report-brace-yourself-disequilibrium-is-coming/

Here is a VoD of the live stream

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2844578

oZii.2864:

What!!! With out a doubt!!! Im all over that like white on rice!

Also rune of scavenging wiil become condition damage and life steal!

And travellers will have move speed bonus too!

Some nice mixed combos to help out a few things we are lacking

So from the dev livestream just now, it seems there will be a new stat grouping of Dire:

Dire Stat Combo (Condition Damage, Toughness, Vitality)

Sounds pretty tempting for Necro no?