So, if you are thinking of quitting, what would have to be in the next patch to change your mind?
in Necromancer
Posted by: Kayotik.5790
no no no no no… A CHICKEN HEAD!!!!!
All of my yes. I would LOVE to have a Chicken Head focus. Especially if it ’BWOK’ed on skills.
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How do you embed videos on here?
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I would be satisfied if they implemented an additional effect to wells like the green bubble giganticus uses- Where if you attempt to leave the well prematurely, you receive extra damage.
It would reward the players who leave the well quickly, without making the well entirely useless against players who do so.
If the triviality of condition stacking is as potent as you’re suggesting, then the bleed cap becomes inconsequential. One could even suggest that the cap is a deterrent to prevent everyone from using such a “useless” mechanic.
This, of course, is not the case. And I sincerely doubt that your conjecture about conditions dealing an equivalent amount of damage holds any water. There are too many variables to look at a couple numbers and say, “oh, I’m doing 30% more damage per second against this target, so all targets must be affected in the same way.” Unless you have numbers at varying amounts of toughness with damage-affecting conditions, at numerous levels of condition damage, you’re basing a claim on a large assumption.
Your misconceived notion that I’m defending the bleed cap is preposterous. I’m not saying the bleed cap isn’t annoying; I’m saying that the game was designed around the condition damage limitation. I should hope ArenaNet knows exactly why the cap was put in place, because unless they give a definitive response, anything discussed here is merely speculation.
I think the only way for wells to receive an increased duration or a reduction in cool-down would be to reduce their effectiveness (via damage they deal, or time between ‘ticks’).
Although I agree that the wells should be naturally targetable, this becomes less of an issue when built defensively. More importantly is how predictable they are without the trait… so much that I would go to the extent of saying the ranged wells are a requirement for anything outside of pve, if you intend to use them at all.
as i’ve already outlined there is no such thing as overbearing superiority of condition damage when sustained dps is considered. so those encounters would not require any change (aside from calculating in that condition speccs now do equal damage to direct damage speccs)
Unless you have specifically done the damage comparisons with various elements taken into consideration, what you’re saying is merely speculation. I backed my statement by saying that I didn’t know what ArenaNet hoped to accomplish with the bleed cap- A “Gut Feeling” isn’t going to change the way bleeds currently stack, and if ArenaNet didn’t have a reason, the system would not have been implemented in the first place (Of course, I would personally like to see a dev response to justify it).
4) what the hell is condition focused supposed to be? and why shouldn’t you die when you are focused by a big group of people?
This was an edited addition to my post, a one liner reminding players that if the cap is removed and your condition removal is on cool-down, you’re as good as dead without even having been in direct contact with the player(s) who applied it. I’d like to think that this game won’t turn into a “fire-and-forget” game where you DoT the target up, hit tab, and repeat. Most condition removals have longer cool-downs than the duration of the bleeds anyway, and without a cap a group of condition based characters would arguably be more dangerous than a power based one.
You’re not going to fear, kite, knockdown, knock-back, or daze that 10k condition damage. You make it out to sound like condition damage is easier to counter than power/crit. Unless you’re running 2+ condition removals with relatively short cool-downs, this isn’t the case. Making condition damage even more effective would turn this into Condition Wars 2. Although playing a necromancer, I could understand why you want this to happen.
Know it would not be ideal but could they just turn additional bleed stacks into direct damage (damage would have to be discussed). So you do not lose out but the scaling would not go over the 25 limit ?
This could also give us a chance of doing some damage to “bleed immune” targets like cannons….
This is exactly what I would suggest appealing to ArenaNet for. Unless somebody wants to make a graph showing the damage a person does at specific levels of condition damage against targets of various health pools, while simultaneously doing the same for power/crit against a target at differing levels of armor/vitality while taking into account conditions which affect said damage such as weakness and vulnerability, I’m going to presume ArenaNet has a reason for the limitation.
Asking ArenaNet to change something as drastic as this would require a lot of dedicated balancing, something we already know ArenaNet is struggling to maintain.
I really do hate to see you leave the necromancer class.
If you’re not having fun with the class because it’s too squishy, there’s not much else I can help you with. Give that defensive setup I recommended a shot first, and see if you still feel the same way. It honestly sounds like you would really enjoy the play-style of a defensive guardian.
I would also like to point out that if you choose to use the aforementioned trait/utility suggestion, you may also find speccing 10 points into spite for the retaliation on death shroud with boon duration and the 30 point trait in soul reaping that reduces death shroud cool-down time favorable. You would have to get a majority of your boon duration from runes, but something like this could certainly work.
If you still wish to continue with the necromancer, despite the information I’ve given you on it’s poor performance in sustainability during a prolonged encounter (in this case, being a tank), the only advice I can give you is to go deep into the death magic line for boon duration, place points in soul reaping for spectral ability cool-down reduction, and try to keep protection up 100% of the time that you are not in death shroud.
Trust me when I say I’m not trying to dissuade you from playing the class because “necromancers are broken.” I’m letting you know this because I had the same idea to create a tanking necromancer that performed little better than an offensive one in terms of survivability.
Any boss you may be having difficulty with at 80 will generally kill you in 2-3 hits, regardless of how “tanky” you are. The fact that we perform this role worse than others reassures the fact that in it’s current state, we are not able to do what you’re looking for efficiently.
You CAN make a tanky necromancer. But that warrior with 800 health regeneration per second and higher base armor is going to more efficiently serve the same purpose while simultaneously dealing more damage than you.
Edit: I’m not saying necromancers are squishy burst damage-dealers. I’m saying that we are naturally tanky, and an offensive build has about the same longevity as a defensive one (in level 80 dungeons, where you continuously get hit for larger amounts of damage than you would otherwise find in pvp).
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If your intention is to tank 5 mobs simultaneously and kill each one individually, you will be sorely disappointed with the necromancer. Even at 80, if you get stuck with 5+ mobs, you either aoe them down or die trying to pick them off singularly.
To put this in perspective, our 4 second life drain channel heals for less than a single hit of damage. Even with the fastest weapon available, the life on hit heals for less than a single stack of bleed damage. Our regeneration boon requires you to be in melee range. And the worst part is that outside of regeneration (and a 32 second cool-down heal) we scale extremely poorly with healing power.
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If you’re looking for the ability to kill more effectively in 1v1 scenarios you may want to stick with your ranger.
The class you’re describing as the “difficult to level, great at the max level” would be the mesmer.
And the flesh golem does regenerate health outside of combat, making it easily the best pet we have while leveling- and it will greatly improve your survivability while doing so. Just keep in mind that unlike the ranger pet, the flesh golem dies a lot. You won’t be able to chain groups of 3-5 mobs back to back, but you’ll be able to handle those situations more easily.
If you’re looking for more aoe damage, I’d recommend trying out one of the various condition specs posted on the forums, and learning to kite with it well.
The combination of the flesh golem and aoe capability with conditions makes leveling a necro pretty easy, once you get the hang of it.
Much like XXVI Red stated, I have absolutely no idea what the developer’s intentions were behind the bleed cap. Although, a few possibilities certainly come to mind:
1) The most likely reason the cap was instituted was so that the game could be balanced around survivability against both power and condition damage separately. Power/Crit is largely affected by the targets armor, and the more armor the target has, the larger the amount of damage is that gets reduced. Essentially, you’re still losing the same percentage of damage, but it makes dealing incredible amounts more difficult as you begin stacking those stats higher and higher. Conditions, on the other hand, are affected only by vitality. Increasing the vitality of a mob to make an encounter in PvE more difficult while using (specifically) conditions also has a negative impact on power users. The only easy alternatives are to give said encounter a condition removal on a relatively short cool-down, or to instead limit the amount of damage you can deal regardless of how much condition damage you’re using.
2) I have absolutely no numbers to back this up, but it would be easy to assume that they would design condition damage around lower, more consistent damage. Where power/crit builds may be limited to which moments they are easily able to unleash their burst potential, condition based damage continues to add up. Regarding only the effectiveness of killing potential over a longer duration, condition damage would be uncontested if not for a limitation set in place.
3) And of course removing the bleed cap would affect several abilities very negatively. Epidemic and Plague Signet (once fixed) just to name a couple. Imagine pulling up to 100 bleeds onto yourself in any large scale fight in WvW. You’d either be forced to completely forgo the signet, or accept the possibility that it will forcibly be on cool-down 80% of the time it would be of any use. Likewise, epidemic alone would make any add spawns during a mob encounter completely nonexistent. I believe ArenaNet designed the abilities around a bleed damage limitation to specifically make it easier for both game production and further balance at a later date.
4) Additionally, nobody likes to go from 80% > dead simply because they got condition focused in pvp, even while managing to escape.
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Glad to see you made another video barti! Although I must admit, you really took me by surprise when I saw the minions… they really do add a lot of sustained damage to a tankier character, when they’re not running around in circles =P.
It’s unfortunate to hear that this will be your last video for a while. I’ve only made a couple short videos in the past, so I can only begin to imagine the amount of time it takes to edit all of the video/audio. But I am glad to hear that you’ll be continuing to try out new builds… hopefully your videos have shed some light on the different and less commonly explored builds (spectral and minion centric), and will/have inspire(d) more necromancers to give them a shot!
Edit: Oh, and needless to say, +1 to the good music and creative story.
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I think the justification most players have for their necromancer complaint(s) is:
“Why play a necromancer when it takes 2 minutes to create one of the more reliable classes for s/tpvp.”
And unfortunately, they are correct. Take a look at the next few pvp games you play, and count the ratio of mesmer/thief/warrior to necromancer. Players that continue to use the necromancer in s/tpvp enjoy the play-style, regardless of good or badly it performs. This doesn’t mean they entirely ignore the problems with the class, but choose to look past them for an enjoyable experience.
In PvE, you can basically roll with any class, in any spec, and still do well when combined with other players doing the same thing. It may not be optimal, but as long as you kill the boss, finish the instance, and collect your loot, it doesn’t really matter. Yet again, this doesn’t mean necromancer is in a good spot. Just take a look at the bug post, and I’m sure you’ll begin to understand why so many necromancers are expressing their frustration.
If you knowingly built squishier for more damage, then you really shouldn’t be complaining about the survivability. I agree that putting your enemy on the defensive early in a fight is a huge advantage, but the ability to do so comes at a price… I’m sure you already realize this.
Like I already mentioned, we don’t have many avoidance abilities simply because, as a class, we were designed to be tankier- In the same way guardians, warriors, and engineers are. Could you imagine giving a guardian an escaping teleport? Or a warrior stealth? That’s the tradeoff we accept by playing a tankier caster.
I agree that the extra health pool and toughness does not guarantee a victory- and if it did, ArenaNet would have been doing an extremely bad job at balancing the game. You also stated that our biggest problem is dealing with CC. I can agree entirely. But we aren’t the only class that is affected by CC in the same way. Most tankier classes, though, have forms of stability to resolve this issue (which I did mention was a major problem we face).
When I mentioned fighting at 1200 range, I was under the assumption that you were using a glassier build, and in which case the best form of defense is proper positioning and correct timing on when you engage. The difference of a few seconds can mean a great deal. However, since you said that you’re running a tankier build, completely disregard that.
As for the fear, you can invest 20 points in soul reaping to pick up 50% more fear duration. Or place points in spite for up to 30% duration. Both of those are pretty easy to pick up without going far out of your way, but I don’t think you’ll really see any noticeable difference with a .5 second duration twice every minute.
As for the downed states- I agree that in 1v1 situations, the necromancer’s is extremely lacking. Keep in mind though, that the #1 skill actually drains life from your target and helps to mitigate the blood loss while simultaneously dealing damage. This literally forces the enemy to finish you. Otherwise, you’ll remain in downed state, continuing to deal damage, longer than any other class. In PvE, this is a much greater advantage. In PvP though, through a combination of both your own and your allies’ cc… oh who am I kidding? You’re right. Our downed-state fear needs to be an AoE.
The cake is a lie.
Sweet, delicious cake.
I guess you could call me the thread necro.
OreoWolf, you need to calm down and realize what you’re replying to. Nobody in this thread has been complaining about how underpowered we are. The OP stated the exact opposite, in fact. The people replying to him all asked for proof of him hitting for 6k in an entirely defensive build- which, let’s be honest.. probably didn’t happen.
Either you’re replying to the wrong thread, or you haven’t read a single post in here before replying.
If you feel so confident about us being a priority target in PvP, then why do you think we ever “fell short” of anything. From what I’ve determined, the nerfs we got before the games release were necessary. I think they may have gone overboard with them, and they definitely broke many abilities/traits in the process… but I think as soon as all of the bugs get worked out, we’ll be in a decent spot.
If you’re concerned about being focused, build tankier. In Spvp I’m using a 1600 toughness 27k hp build that, despite being extremely tanky, still performs a moderate amount of damage. The necromancer class wasn’t designed to be squishy and rely on avoidance abilities. We are a higher damage guardian-higher survivability warrior that primarily attacks from range. You don’t see either of those classes with stealth.
People attack necromancers because they think we’re squishy. Between death shroud, consume conditions, plague form, back into death shroud, consume conditions again, and the ability to have 100% up-time on protection with easy condition removal and high base health, I’d much rather them target me than a variety of other classes using more offensive builds. The fact that we don’t have easy access to a longer duration stability is our only major drawback (Although I could definitely list a few minor ones).
If you know for a fact that you’ll be a focus target, try activating spectral walk before even getting in melee range, and then once they blow all their CC on you, use the second portion to stun break and position yourself behind your allies. Use protection early, open at 1200 range, make sure your life force generators will be up immediately after exiting death shroud… just don’t run into a 5v3 and wonder why they blew you up in 10 seconds.
Oh, and our down state is on par with almost every class aside from mesmer, thief, and of course the elementalist.
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You’d be surprised with the synergy ArenaNet had in mind when they gave us the 5 second fury buff. Life Blast has an approximate cast time of 1.5 seconds. This means you’ll get exactly 3 blasts off before fury ends. Likewise, Life Transfer has an approximate 5 second channel time- It fits almost perfectly with 15 point curses trait.
I really do hate to say this, but you’re really doing yourself a disservice by speccing into the life siphon stuff anyway.
The scaling with healing power is almost (or completely) nonexistent.
Toughness is a better survivability stat than vitality on necromancers.
And most importantly, the total amount of life siphon from a traited blood thirst + vampiric + vampiric rituals is less than a single stack of bleed against any target at level 80. Hell, the self-inflicted damage portion of “Blood is Power” deals more damage to me in a power build than I can heal in the same amount of time, using the fastest weapon available to us (unless you remove it quickly).
Good find though- This (especially well of blood itself) is a huge bug.
Yes, I definitely think 4k per target is impressive. It’s a relatively short cooldown that (against 5 targets) negates the depletion rate of life force. I don’t think the necromancer was ever designed as an “omgz burstdmges” character. Any damage we deal in death shroud is effectively damage we deal while immune to receiving any.
Although I definitely agree with you that death shroud is extremely limiting, I personally really enjoy the death shroud animation. You’re right, that it makes us a visible target, but who wants to target the necro with an extra 18k hp saved up before they can even deal any damage? With our high base health pool, mediocre damage, and death shroud, we are not priority targets… even if we are easily spotted out of a group. As for the extra “stance” options for more offensive or defensive abilities in death shroud, I agree entirely.
I also agree that something needs to be done about the fear mechanic in this game. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe at one point it actually had a long enough duration to justify giving thieves, rangers, and warriors 3 second fears. I definitely understand the short duration on the staff fear. Not only does it have the potential to fear 5 targets simultaneously, but I could only imagine the havoc it would create in PvE with that idiot necro in the back of the group spamming an aoe 5 second fear every time it’s off cool-down. Instead, perhaps an additional condition or a higher base damage to compensate would put the staff #5 in line with the other marks. As others on this forum have already mentioned, I’d really like to see the single target death shroud fear duration be increased. On the same token, I’d also like to see the duration of the fears other classes have decreased (although I’d settle for just an increase on ours).
And I think Jaydee already explained our state of condition manipulation quite well.
I’ll definitely give it a shot, thanks. I’ve been using the same strategy to increase DS damage. Build 3-6 stacks of might in DS, pop blood is power, drop well of suffering + focus offhand with a battle sigil during the weapon swap, and then on the second DS you’ll deal some impressive damage.
Oddly enough, though… I’m hitting harder in Death Shroud than I am in Lich Form. Maybe it’s because those stacks of might are dropping within the first few nukes.
I’m not trying to call you out here, but I rarely even hit for 6k in Lich form in my PvE gear/build. This is the same gear/build I’ve used to hit 9.2k with life siphon.
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I think Ascii was referring to the total possible damage against 5 targets in a scenario filled with several nearby enemies (hence him mentioning “in wvw”).
And yes, 4k per target is entirely realistic regardless of your spec.
I’ve been specifically playing around with a tanky DS build lately. About 27k hp, 1600 toughness, 37% crit damage… And I’m lucky to crit for 2.5k
Via the thread here you’ll notice that dagger is probably your best bet for life force generation. Staff is an amazing alternative, but only becomes more efficient if you’re piercing multiple mobs pet auto attack.
Don’t feel pigeon-holed into a specific trait set-up. It’s extremely inexpensive to respec and try out various builds. Find what works for you.
As for TheAgedGnome, did you make sure you weren’t being down-leveled? Or that you weren’t using a vitality food buff when you noticed the 28k health pool?
10/25/10/0/25 is the build I currently use for WvW, with berserker of berserker gear. I use to go 20 deep into spite for the extra mark damage, but the extra mark radius is just too good to pass up. Sure, you lose a bit of damage against a single target… but your AoE becomes MUCH more effective (which is especially nice for WvW).
Drop a well of suffering + all your marks from a keep wall and I promise you’ll get at least 1 kill (if you’re fast enough).
Oh, and once you have all your gear, you can just start trolling people with lich form. You should have about 90%-100% crit chance, and drop people in about 4 seconds.
I was under the impression that the battle suit golem would deal more damage and have more survivability than I would have had otherwise… In fact, I was really hoping that the suit would have a separate health pool entirely. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Technically I didn’t pick Asura for the racials though. Now, the only purpose the suit serves is entertainment value in Lion’s Arch.
I really do hate to admit this, because I love the amount of damage I can pump out in a power based death shroud build… But the lack of damage doesn’t affect only condition necros. With this bunker build I’ve been playing around with (1700 power), I’ll be lucky to hit for more than 900 on a non-crit.
Maybe if they boosted the base damage, but reduced the power scaling, it would work out better for everyone.
Guys- this is just between us necromancers, but I heard blind spam in plague form is pretty op, and can similarly shut down a target like moa… except it works on multiple targets, and has double the duration.
As for dealing with mesmers in general. You either need to be good at locking onto the real character, or unload some massive aoe condition damage via epidemic.
In absolute honesty, I’m going to have to agree with Seras. The necromancer skills themselves seem much better suited for what you’re trying to do. I think the only time you’d really be able to take advantage of Pain Inverter would be in a retaliation specific build, and even then there are better ways of getting the boon.
Personally, the only racial I’ve found worth using on my Asuran necromancer is the Radiation Field. Even then, Corrosive Poison Cloud is far better in both duration and cool-down. The only time I actually had to use it was path 1 CoF pre-nerf.
Looking back, I really wish I would have went human- Reaper of Grenth looks pretty cool.
I can’t decide which is worse: The fact that Ezekeel very clearly and precisely pin-pointed the largest flaw in your attraction to the necromancer on multiple fronts, and that you not only ignored his post, but insulted him in the process. Or the fact that despite this information, you still seem to think necromancers have good synergy between abilities. And if necromancer was the only class in this game, I would barely even agree with you then.
Your first statement about how effectively dark path works in conjunction with auto attack…. I’m not even entirely sure if you’re being serious. Literally every single class in this game has both a gap closer and an auto attack. The fact that we have to put death shroud on cool-down to do this further goes to show the exact opposite of your claim.
Your second statement is entirely misleading, in both the belief that the resultant retaliation boons are useful for anything outside of leveling up (seriously- name one boon that’s worse than retaliation), and that the “lots of damage” you produce can be done more effectively and efficiently on any class that doesn’t rely on a 20 second cool-down to do so. This doesn’t even take into consideration how absolutely horrible and unreliable the 1 hit-point balls of fluff are in pvp, especially when they can be kited, unintentionally aoe’d, or when the AI bugs out entirely.
Your third statement… Congratulations, you just combined two 45 second cool-down, high damage AoEs, and it actually did a considerable amount of AoE damage. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the amazing synergy of using two point blank aoes that require you to become an immobile target.
The fact is, necromancers interact well with other classes more than we do ourselves. I’m okay with this- But your entire misunderstanding of what you think to be “good ability interaction” is absurd.
Edit: On a lighter note, your enjoyment of the abilities alone should be enough to warrant leveling up your necromancer. If you’re looking for ability synergy, look elsewhere.
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The generic staff model on gw2db is shown for several of the named exotics, including Deathwish. I think a better source of images would be Guildhead.com. It also has a better 3d image viewer.
Unless you are explicitly using swiftness for very long periods of travel, spectral walk alone should provide more than enough map mobility. Spectral walk can also be used during combat to generate life force, so there wouldn’t be any need to switch utilities for combat (although I wouldn’t recommend using spectral walk in a dungeon unless you’re doing speed runs).
@Exphryl
It honestly sounds like you have no idea what to do with utilities, weapons, or even stats. There are many, many good guides on these forums (as well as guildwars2guru) that should be able to assist you.
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Blind is one of the most situational effects. Simultaneously blinding multiple foes results in a huge damage reduction, even if only momentarily. Sure, if the blind gets wasted on an auto attack it’s not doing much good. But imagine blinding a 5k+ hit. No other condition is going to reduce damage that drastically.
Weakness, on the other hand, is designed to counter high non-condition based damage. Too bad its very description makes it less effective where it’s needed most. Regardless of this fact, it’s still an approximate 10% damage reduction over prolonged periods of fighting. Dropping weakness on multiple opponents makes a pretty considerable difference.
If toughness gives you an estimated 34 damage reduction for every 100 toughness, you would need 600 additional toughness to equal the amount of damage reduced against a target with 2,000 Damage Per Second that has 100% weakness up-time on them. Keep in mind that this is just some napkin math, and that most targets you face have much higher than 2,000 damage per second. Meaning you would need much more than 600 toughness to be the equivalent of 10% damage reduction through weakness.
It would be nice if there was an option to go condition damage/ toughness/ vitality, eh?
You’ll basically have to decide whether you want more survivability, or more damage in death shroud + more effectiveness with on-crit sigils.
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It is possible to get protection via spectral wall, spectral armor, last gasp, ritual of protection, armor runes, and increased effectiveness through boon duration. Not to mentioned the survivability we get through life force generators.
I really do feel like dagger is missing something though, but I’m not quite sure if it’s a gap closer. We already have both dark path and spectral grasp on relatively short cooldowns, that can be reduced even further with traits. I think what you might be suggesting is a more responsive and timely gap closer- Having to go into death shroud, and wait for a slow moving projectile to hit the target (which can be avoided by LoSing the projectile before it hits them) as well as using an ability that fails to work half the time due to a bug/terrain/projectile LoS via spectral grasp (as previously mentioned with dark pact) is simply too unreliable.
Edit: I really do like your endurance drain idea though, but it has been mentioned several times before.
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This is the build I’ve been playing around with lately, specifically designed for WvW. In berserker gear, it’s amazingly fun. Dropping well of suffering + all marks is a guaranteed kill on at least 1 target. Drop it on 5 people, and watch their line disintegrate. You could also choose to swap out Weakening Shroud for Hemophilia- Depends on whether you’ll be in the open field, or attacking/defending keeps.
Sounds like you want something a bit tankier though. That would work out especially well for you since you mentioned wanting a healing/support build for pve.
Something along the lines of this build with some cleric gear should work out well for what you intend to do. I’m sure you can think of a few ways to improve it, but it has the high durability, high healing power, and utility/support that you wanted.
um i get 7k crits+ on my DS….it actually out dps lich form completely….
….you only get usefulness out of DS if you actually invest in it…First off, 7k crits is a lie. Even in a full power spec against a glass canon, you do not hit for 7k.
That being said, why should you have to invest in it to get any usefulness out of it? What about a condition spec, we can’t invest in it. We hit for 500 when in it…and 1-2 hits while we’re in it and it’s gone. Not to mention, it seems any stun takes life force from 100 – 0…MOA takes life force instantly from 100-0.
….why should you have to invest points in your shroud to get something out of it? it has to be understood that there are many different builds and situations for necro…i can hit for 7k crits in shroud till about 75% then ill settle down to around 5.8k….and im also talking pve
I can verify that Lloyd is telling you the truth. In PvE, life blast really does hit for 7k. I’ve also seen life transfer hit upwards of 10k. If I can do it with a higher crit damage than power, I’m sure a pure spite build could hit much harder. The trick to pulling this off though, is that you’ll need 20+ stacks of might, and 20+ stacks of vulnerability on the target. Not entirely unrealistic requests with 1 guardian in the group, since you can apply the vulnerability and over 15 stacks of might yourself.
In s/tPvP there’s absolutely no way you can do this. It’s a difference of over 600 power and 40% crit damage. If they buffed the base damage for s/tPvP, I would be 1-shotting lowbies out in WvW.
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You’ll have to do some testing on your own, but I’m almost positive you can use on-crit sigils on both your primary and secondary weapon. The problem isn’t that the offhand won’t trigger, it’s that if EITHER of them go off it puts both on internal cooldown.
As for using staff… you have to basically be in melee range to make use of the regeneration and condition transfer effects anyway. The fact that it has 1200 range makes it useful in a variety of situations, from dealing damage while capping something at a distance, to applying that fight-changing fear, to landing a chill on a running opponent.
Use what you’re having fun with though- but keep in mind the consequence of not having a staff.
Quick test on the Medium Armor Golem in Heart of the Mists. 30 Spite, 30 Curses, PvP Carrion Amulet, Rune of the Undead by default. Left the Major slots blank.
Used the timer on Well of Power to guesstimate the timeframe of the kill. Dagger auto attack spam took 9 to 10 seconds to kill the Dummy, leaving the Well at a 50-51 second cooldown.Same deal with the Staff, I swapped nothing out. Medium Dummy, Well of Power to guesstimate. Staff skill 2, 3 and 4 were all used, immediately swapping into Death Shroud to finish the Dummy off. Well had a 50-51 second cooldown remaining.
This proves exactly what I was trying to point out- That a staff, in a hybrid build, would deal the same exact amount of damage as a (180 range) dagger. The chill, poison, weakness, regeneration, fear, and conditions you transfer are all added utilities by taking the time to swap out your weapon. It’s an equivalent amount of damage, and thus should be treated as such… not the utility stick you seem to believe it to be.
1) The quick setup I threw on heavily favored Staff over Dagger due to any Condition damage in the build.
2) The difference between the two is that you have Putrid Mark, Chillblains and Death Shroud all on cooldown by the time the ‘rotation’ is done. The Dagger had nothing on cooldown while also generating a chunk of Lifeforce. The Staff version also requires more input, which has god knows how many additional variables if we get into legitimate theorycrafting, which I, like stated, would preferably stay away from.
The build you chose did not favor dagger over staff. Regardless of the probably that dagger scales more heavily from power/the spite tree than from staff, and that the higher precision would affect that said higher base damage (with the inclusion of the more frequent hits) more prominently, you skipped some essential traits.
Spiteful Marks and Hemophilia.
Where those two traits increase the damage a staff does substantially, there are no traits you could possibly receive in this build that would affect dagger damage in the same way. You suggest cool-down reduction in blood, I say staff reduction in death. The fact that you saw similar damage while using lich runes is completely negated by the fact that you didn’t pick up 10% base damage on each mark, and 20% more bleed damage from mark of blood. I’m not suggesting that build you threw together favors staff more than dagger- Throw some divinity runes on with the traits I recommended and I’m sure you’ll see what I’m talking about.
As per your comment above, about trading the “generate(d) chunk of life force”-
In both PvP, and especially PvE, you should be continuously gaining life force over a period of time. Eventually, you reach 100%, and therefor need to expend this reserve to keep benefiting from the generation at all. Unless you never use death shroud at all, you lose absolutely nothing by switching to staff/death shroud. The fact that you don’t gain more life force during this process is irrelevant. And then now that you have your marks on cool-down means they’re actually being used as utility tool while you continue to supply damage… I’m not quite sure how you see this is a bad thing, unless you’re specifically saving putrid mark for a specific condition you know a specific mob is going to apply. And in that rare occasion, I would most certainly agree with you.
Axe Life Force generation is also subpar in comparison to Dagger, just for the record.
About the only advantage you’d get for using an axe is range and that pitifully short retaliation on skill 3. You are far, far better off getting that trait that increases damage done by 20% to enemies below 50% health rather than traiting for extra axe damage.
If you have any questions about the usefulness of axe’s life force generation being done in a burst-channel ability, please refer to my guide where I explain how the quick generation within a small window contributes to a theoretical 100% weapon swap efficiency.
(edited by Kayotik.5790)
You know, you’re the second person today that has commented on staff’s low damage. I guess I’m going to have to make a video soon.
From a PvE standpoint, it’s relatively easy set up a condition transfer before you even swap to the staff. If you’re in a group that is so reliant upon your 4 second duration aoe chill that you can’t use it at all offensively, I think your group may have larger issues than trying to maximize character effectiveness through stats. As for proccing weakness from the poison field, you would need to use putrid mark directly after it regardless. And with such a poor healing power, you shouldn’t be using mark of blood as a “regeneration tool”, but instead as a damaging tool that just so happens to also replenish life in an aoe.
The utility staff provides is amazing, and can be capitalized in PvE with little more than a 2,3,4,(5) button rotation. The utility is the secondary effect, not the staff’s damage itself.
Edit for clarification: Staff can be used with its utility in mind, with a specific build that takes advantage of the 100% up-time regeneration buff. In any other build, the utility it provides, although still extremely useful, takes a backseat to the amount of aoe burst you can unleash.
A fair comparison would be the usage of axe main-hand. You can either use it defensively with its extremely high life force generation in a death-shroud based tank build, or use it more offensively while taking advantage of the vulnerability stacks it applies.
Although both life force generation and the vulnerability stacks affect either build, one becomes more significant than the other depending on the scenario.
(edited by Kayotik.5790)
Before you mention how you’d be stuck auto-attacking with a staff after unloading your marks, consider spending the remaining 5 seconds of that weapon set in death shroud- gaining stacks of might every 1.5 seconds while capitalizing on the fury buff.
How does that damage compare to auto attacking the entire time with a scepter? I can’t give you the exact numbers. But in a hybrid build, I have a feeling you’d be surprised.
I’d really like to point out the effective damage one gains by alternating between weapons. The “secondary weapon” mentality really diminishes what could be an entirely useful and significant set of abilities.
With my current build, using 20/25/x/x/x, it’s not uncommon to crit for more than 4k with putrid blast alone. The entire combination of marks (including the condition damage portion) deals approximately 10,000 damage in less than 4 seconds. Not even accounting for the utility you provide, the damage you gain from switching to a staff should not be overlooked.
Edit:
That’s not even taking into consideration the amount of base damage you’ll be increasing via the “Target the weak” trait in the curses tree. Regardless of how low the base damage may be, it synergizes extremely well in a hybrid build.
(edited by Kayotik.5790)
Wow! An incredibly informative post Arianna, with a single exception. Hybrid builds. Say what you will about our base damage values, but staff works amazingly well with both power and condition damage.
Dagger has almost double the damage per second of other weapons, with the same amount of power. Thus, you could very efficiently sacrifice what you would have otherwise gained in power to improve your survivability, and deal the same amount of damage as other weapons!
Like you mentioned, this would require 2 of the three armor stats to be defensive, with the primary stat being condition damage. As you also already mentioned, this is unrealistic- and I believe it to be the primary reason double dagger doesn’t work as well as other combinations. (however, you can still do something similar with proper stat allocation and carrion/rabid gear).
Just throwing in my 2 cents…
I think the cool-down times would be extremely reasonable, if not for the duration and unreliability in pvp.
A 5 second duration with a 60 second cool-down? That’s less than 10% up-time. Watching the ground you corrupted return to normal after only a few brief seconds looks and feels weak (however, I’m not saying it technically is).
As for the second part of my statement- I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve dropped a well while defending a keep in WvW, only to see more than half of the players standing there dodge roll away before even receiving the second tick of damage/effect.
There’s no easy way to solve these problems. The first aspect involves increasing the well duration, the second involves reducing the cool-down. Do both, and they’ll be extremely overpowering. Do only one, and the other suffers. Do none, and they’re just a 1-tick pony (hah).
(edited by Kayotik.5790)
I don’t think the necromancer, as a whole, is a disappointing or weak class. I think the problem is that so many people chose the necromancer, expecting something entirely different.
After one look at the traits in blood magic, many players decided to build life-steal based necromancers (and were extremely frustrated with how poorly they performed).
Some players wanted to build high dps condition necros, and too felt the burden of underwhelming game-play. Using bleeds as a primary source of damage, and simultaneously being limited by the current bleed cap, condition-based necromancers took a heavy blow in dealing damage. The fact that they maintain fewer stacks, and apply them slower, than most other bleeding builds only adds to the frustration.
Those looking to make a necromancer into a tank soon realized that guardians were able to do this at magnitudes of better efficiency.
Our only weapon that can compare in dps to other classes is our dagger, with a meager 180 range.
Thieves and warriors can deal triple the damage of necromancers built specifically for highest damage possible (against a single target).
Death shroud was/is very limited in functionality, and unless specifically built around it, becomes a useless class defining ability.
As mentioned before, the pets are useless in half the content (although I personally didn’t expect much different in this game).
The list goes on.
Placing crit/crit damage, condition damage/duration, healing power/toughness, vitality/life force, and power/boon duration (might and fury) together would make necromancers unbelievably more powerful than they currently are.
I would go so far as to say that ArenaNet did this explicitly so that necromancers are held back and cannot benefit from being simultaneously extremely durable and deal a considerable amount of damage without having to give something up.