Guild Wars 2

First, I will echo Sublimatio in that I agree completely with Spoj’s statements in regards to Curses and Spite. Gosh I hope ANet reads it and actually cares enough to do something.

Anywho, one thing really got me when reading over the Spite traits, and it was the new Axe Training. It is almost a flat-out worse version than what we already have. Here’s a quick comparison:

Axe Training

• Now:
  Damage Increase: 10%
  Cooldown Reduce: 20%

• Future:
  Damage Increase: 10% while foe is crippled
  Cooldown Reduce: 2% per hit of Rending Claw

With the new Axe Training Trait, it will take at least 4.6 seconds (empirically found) of hitting with Rending Claws have the cooldown reduction equivalent of what we already have. This is kind of silly when Ghastly Claws has a cooldown of 8 seconds, which means we’ll be auto-attacking for 60% of its downtime in order to break even with what we’ve already got. Also the 10% damage boost is now gated behind cripple. Dumb.

Possible Fix?: Let Rending Claws give 1.5% life force per hit as well. This provides more incentive to actually use Rending Claws rather than swapping to other skills.

Overall, I’m fairly disappointed. My builds hardly changed and hardly improved. I guess we’ll have to see what is published.

Just some Deathshroud tweaks that seem fun to me.

1) Rework of DS. Reduce total HP and improve LF generation across the board. Reduce CD, perhaps. Also siphoning works in DS.

2) Add benefits to the necro for LF outside of DS. So at certain levels of LF, the necro gains siphoning abilities.

• 25% Life Force – Vampiric – Behaves exactly the same as Vampiric trait.
• 50% Life Force – Vampiric Aura – Siphoning from Vampric heals in an area around the caster (180 radius).
• 75% Life Force – Ravenous Thirst – Siphon additional health when target foe is below threshold (50%). Does not stack with Vampiric Aura

3) New Blood Master Minor: Vampiric Shroud – Siphon health from nearby foes when entering Deathshroud.

Just some half-baked ideas to shake up DS.

Drarnor: Did you have Unyielding Blast traited? My tests did not include it (control tests), but I suspect Unyielding Blast would improve the projectile’s “behavior” and hitbox. Regardless, thank you for your additional information! It does scale well, and I was getting 1k+ with it in PvP. I just would have hoped that it would be ‘easier’ to hit allies with.

Lol, very nice, Bhawb XD

Funny thing is, I was an Asura and the Patient was a Charr with one of the largest model sizes (which made it a bit difficult to gain an accurate reading of truly where the blast hit). Of course, we know know that races/sizes make no difference, but the imagery is quite funny!

By any chance, have you been able to test this trait? You have demonstrated that you have a stronger understanding of the game’s mechanics than I do, so I would like any input you have to offer.

Good day everyone! After some very (minor) testing, it seems that Renewing Blast (Life Blast heals allies it passes through) has a horrendously awkward hitbox for allies. Allow me to share, briefly, what I have gathered:

Very Brief Testing:
Location: In the Mists at the herd of golems to ensure prolonged combat.

Hypothesis: Renewing Blast procs most when it passes through the “base” of a Patient (i.e.: legs-area). Contact with other parts of the Patient yields rare success.

Testing Method: Patient hits a golem, jumps off ledge to self-inflict damage and remains in combat. I (Caster) then target a golem between Patient and myself to test Renewing Blast. Unyielding Blast was not traited.Quick results are as follows:

Caster, Patient, Foe are on the same height:
Minimal-to-No proccing of Renewing Blast. Life Blast clearly passed through Patient. There were rare procs, but this happened when patient was behind the caster. It could be that the hit box for LB (Life Blast) moves from the base of the Caster to the base of the Foe.

Caster and Foe on the same level, Patient on raised terrain:
Frequent, constant proccing of Renewing Blast. No real issues where had.

Caster on highest ground, Patient on middle ground, Foe on lower ground (“severe” height differences – used staircase instead of mounds):
Minimal-to-No proccing of Renewing Blast. The blast clearly passed through the center of the torso of the Patient with no results.

Caster on high ground, Patient and Target on Low Ground:
Decent proccing of Renewing Blast (I think, I didn’t write down details – needs more testing). Blast passed through the upper torso of the target.

These were really, REALLY brief tests of the skill (~10 min). I intend to record this incident later this weekend, should time allow. Please share your stories/anecdotes concerning this skill.

Personal Story/Anecdote:

• Used it in PvP to heal an ally stomping a foe. Ally and myself were on nearly even grounds, foe was part way down a staircase. Blast passed through allies legs/base.

• Used Renewing Blast during a Teq run (as a test). Procs were incredibly rare, but that may be due to Renewing Blast only “checking” the first 3-5 individuals hit, and if they’re at full health, the attack no longer heals. However, since this is Teq, I doubt many were at full health.

Personal Verdict – Needs more testing. As of now, this trait is not good due to its unpredictable nature. My recommendation: Avoid it.

Have a nice day!

PS: This trait’s bizarre behavior shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering how Necrotic Grasp and Deathly Claws behave. Regardless, I look forward to your thoughts and opinions!

By itself, this trait is fairly lackluster. But it does shine a bit when comboed with Vital Persistence (drain 50% in DS). These two result in a net loss of 0.33% DS per second (yes, you can theoretically stay in DS for 300 seconds, assuming you take no damage).

Da Simple Numbers:
Vital Persistence over 3 seconds – Loss of 6%
Unholy Martyer after 3 seconds – Gain of 5%
Result – Net loss of 1% every 3 seconds

So, theoretically, this provides super-long DS and comboes well with skills that work well in prolonged DS (such as the Renewing Blast, SR 13). Or even living amonst a Zerg, you can improve you DS sustain and spam skills for a longer period of time.

HOWEVER, this does not take into account that you may be siphoning damaging condis, like multiple stacks of bleed — which means the 5% gain is immediately nullified by the butt-load of damage you’re about to take. It would have been nicer if Renewing Blast made Life Blast transfer a condition every X seconds, or something. That would provided stronger synergy, in my opnion. Also, I’ve found it VERY difficult to line up shots with Renewing Blast in sPvP, since allies are usually moving around all the time. But that’s just me (and I didn’t use Unyielding Blast, which may make a difference).

Do we have any ETAs on this? Devs have known about his bug for at least 5 months, so I can only imagine that it hasn’t been fixed for one of a few reasons:

1) The issue is rooted deep inside the bowels of coding, making operation difficult and cumbersome. If this is the case, then I fear this reflects poorly on how much Reds care about profession-damaging bugs.

2) The issue gets forgotten and/or pushed back as other issues arise. However, the bug has been documented for about a year now and we’ve had a Red comment over 5 months ago. Surely this bug could have been squashed, or at least commented on.

It’s disheartening having Reds state awareness of a bug and then not share information with the community about its progress. Have we been forgotten, or is there simply apathy towards this issue?

Further, this lack of information leads me to believe that the devs actually have no idea how to fix this issue, and hence are maintaining silence on it, and I know that this lack of communication has contributed to many Necro players to feeling forgotten and devalued. So please, just provide some sort of update or something.

I hope everyone has a nice day. Take care one-and-all.

I let this thread be buried, hoping that a fix would arrive forthwith. However, it appears that this bug is still active. Is there a reason why this bug still exists? Should we consider a “feature” now?

Before the release of the Executioner’s Axe Toy, I was enamored with the idea of a Hades ult from Smite. I was hoping Tainted Shackles was going to be this, but beggars can’t be choosers.

However, since the release of the Executioner’s Axe Toy, I’ve become a bit hopeful for the future of Necro weaponry. The Axe is, unofficially, the first Great Axe in the game since it comes with its own unique idle and attack animations. And skill #3, Meat Grinder, behaves just like the Hades ultimate, pulling foes into the center. So hopefully when the Great Axe is released as a real weapon (nothing official has been said, but it’s gonna happen), the Necros will get an awesome pull like Meat Grinder.

Happy New Years everyone!

I’d argue that Spiteful Marks is an incredibly useless trait. How useless? Well let’s math!

First, let’s establish some baselines. With 2.2k Power, the tooltip claims the following damage for each skill:

• Mark of Blood: 271
• Chillblains: 452
• Putrid Mark: 1084
• Reaper’s Mark: 226

Now, let’s assume you have exactly one target available at every cast, and that there is no cast time for each mark. Thus, within a one minute time frame and using a skill immediately off cooldown, you theoretically could inflict the following amount of damage:

271* (60/6) + 452*(60/20) + 1084*(60/25) + 226*(60/45) = 6968.933 = 6969.

So, against a single target, you can inflict a theoretical 7k damage over the course of a minute. So 10% of 7k is 700 extra damage a minute, or about 11.67 additional DPS. That’s right, that’s less than 12 additional DPS. But this is against a single target with no crits. Let’s up the ante! Let’s say we have 100% crit rate with an additional 50% critical damage (so 200% damage on crit) AND 5 willing targets. We arrive at a “staggering” 116.7 additional DPS. So, to recap:

2.2k Power, No Cast Time, Damage=Tooltip:
1 Target/No Crits: 11.67 DPS bonus
1 Target/100% Crits: 23.3 DPS bonus
5 Targets/ No Crits: 58.33 DPS bonus
5 Targets/100% Crits: 116.67 DPS bonus

Slight Perspective: A single stack of Might, provides about 17 additional DPS for dagger chain 1.

Recommended Changes:
a) Remove
b) Merge with 20% CDR
c) Increase bonus damage to 20-30%
d) Add effect of applying vulnerability for each mark
e) Other

I’m not a fan of Spiteful Marks. Take care all!

Still no fix. Watched this bug cause Zombify to die in a livestream last night. So what’s this about removing game breaking bugs?

Bump! Hopefully tomorrow’s patch remedies this bug. Have a nice day!

The skill got the Death Shroud treatment. During their testing of the skill (the skill we saw from the datamine) they found it to be too powerful and potent. However, the realization of this was probably towards the end of the testing period and so they immediately nerf-hammered it, tried it, stated “oh good, it’s not OP now”, and shipped it. After this, they didn’t test it for viability. They simply made sure it wouldn’t break the Necro and sent it off, which is what happened with Death Shroud during the beta tests.

All-in-all though, I would like to see this skill as a utility (minus the 4k healing, of course).

@Merlin Dyfren Avalon: I love that idea. You should make a thread about it so it receives more views and support. The worst case scenario is that we actually get it to work well and come up with strategies on how to use it. Otherwise we can commiserate about its awfulness and maybe garner support for it.

Bump. Bug still present. A dev response would be awesome! Have a great Friday everyone! I look forward to the livestreams today!

Agreed, Cheby. That depletion bug was very fun to use when Scarlet’s Minions events first came out. Regardless, let us hope that the deathshroud skill lockout bug is handled soon.

Bump. Hope people have a nice Thanksgiving!

Bump. Have a nice weekend everyone!

My apologies for another bump. Any updates on this bug would be greatly appreciated. An interim change, while the bug is being sorted out, could be giving Necro protection for 1s upon depletion of Death Shroud. Just to help slight survivability while the utilities are gone.

Bump. Still active bug.

A post in the Engineer boards by Jon:

… We will not get to every bug but we are focusing on ones we think have the most detrimental impact to gameplay.

Jon

While this is directed towards the Engineers, please address the above bug which, indeed, has “detrimental impact to gameplay” for Necromancers.

JonPeters.5630:

This line [Death Magic] receives a lot of discussion as well, but any proposal we talk about always ends up with more work than we have time to build, much less test.

Jon

.

… but any proposal we talk about always ends up with more work than we have time to build….

Jon

.

… more work than we have time to build….

Jon

.

JonPeters.5630:

…more work….

Jon

There we are!

Paint me cynical, but that is why I think the changes are the way they are. Certainly they are not “lazy”, and I think they understand our complaints with the Necromancer (how could they not with hundreds of posts spanning several months), but what seems to be the case is that any changes made would require foundational rework, which they seem to have no intent on doing. Thus we get “shaves” and “small changes”.

In fact, perhaps this is also why we still have Dumbfire. Prior to this trait, Necros were nearly bottom-of-the-barrel in tournament play, but with its advent we have a place in tournaments. ANet realizes this, and knows that if they remove Dumbfire, they are stuck with, once again, a class that doesn’t belong anywhere, which would force them to look at the fundamentals of the class and address those issues. They don’t want to do this since it requires “more work than we have time to build”. As long as they can say “every class has a build that works in tournaments”, they’ll use that as a scapegoat to avoid addressing the shortcomings of a class.

Side note: To address Jon’s statement about Blood Magic, consider this:

• Consider dagger main-hand (our fastest auto-attack attack weapon).
• Traited with Bloodthirst, Vampiric Precision, Vampiric.
• Assume 50% chance to critical.
• Assume there is always a target to hit.
• Assume 1123 Healing Power

You get a 4-hit dagger chain in 2 seconds. So that’s a total of 120 hits per minute. Assuming we get 50% criticals during this time, the amount of healing per second would be:

• [120(45) + 60(56)]/60 = 146

So that’s 146 Health per second. However, this requires a foe to hit and engaging in active combat. Regeneration, on the other hand, heals for 270 per second at this point, with or without combat (and if a Necro doesn’t run Staff, the access to regen diminishes greatly). I’ll avoid getting into other class-specific heals, but the point stands that the amount of heals generated from vampiric traits is nominal at best. However, if siphoning worked in Death Shroud, that may open up some builds as well as benefit our “attrition”.

Take care and good luck with the week, everyone!

Bump! There was a Red response here but nothing has happened since. Could we please get an update? This issue has been acknowledged multiple times, but with no action taken that we can tell. It really is a critical/annoying bug, and the fact that it’s not receiving more Red attention is a bit disheartening (how would you feel having utilities locked out after every adrenaline skill? Every cloak? Every pet swap?).

Take care and have a nice day

Bump! The issue still persists. However, we did receive a Red response to the issue in this thread

Explicitly, it’s stated that:

Regarding >>>Leaving a Transform – no heals/until buttons for 1sec + lag.

As shown in the original post, this issue has been persistent for
I remember this popping up not too long ago, but can’t remember where we left off on it. I’ve been playing Necro a lot lately and it has been bothering me, too. I’ll talk to the guys on Monday and see what this is all about, and see about taking care of it.

I think it was mentioned at some point there was a cooldown added to prevent unwanted skill executions when leaving a transformation. But again, I’m not sure if this was intended for Death Shroud.

-Bill

It has been approximately 9+ months since the problem was documented. I’m unsure if this issue has since been addressed by another Red in the bug forums, but I’m offering this bump to readdress the issue (the forum search feature is busted beyond repair so I can’t easily search this topic).

Have a nice day!

OmegaProject.9831:

I was just about to post something about this I have performed some tests myself against the Chieftain in the Mists, and have an interesting observation. In my observations, our Death Shroud isn’t 100% of our Health. It seems to be, in fact, 120% of our health. That is:

Hypthothesis: Life Force = (1.2 + 0.01*Points in Soul Reaping) * Health

This has come out of a few different tests: one with no amulets/traits, one with only amulet (Soldier), one with 30 points in Blood Magic (Soldier Amulet), and one with 30 point in Blood Magic and 30 points in Soul Reaping (Soldier Amulet). I took special care when using 30 points in Soul Reaping not to activate Last Gasp in a recorded/tabulated run. In each of these tests, (taking into account the 4% natural decay and the bleeding incurred by Chieftain’s standard attack), my tests suggest the above hypothesis.

I look forward to others’ findings and results!

EDIT: Furthermore, it was hypothesized that prior to the patch Life Force was approximately 60% of our Health. If we were taking double damage in Death Shroud, then it stands to reason that the above hypothesis may hold. But I am far too lazy to do much more for now Good luck with your researching!

Here is a quick video I put together illustrating the above hypothesis. It certainly isn’t optimal, but I feel it is sufficient to qualify as ‘evidence’ to support the hypothesis.

Have a nice day, everyone!

I was just about to post something about this I have performed some tests myself against the Chieftain in the Mists, and have an interesting observation. In my observations, our Death Shroud isn’t 100% of our Health. It seems to be, in fact, 120% of our health. That is:

Hypthothesis: Life Force = (1.2 + 0.01*Points in Soul Reaping) * Health

This has come out of a few different tests: one with no amulets/traits, one with only amulet (Soldier), one with 30 points in Blood Magic (Soldier Amulet), and one with 30 point in Blood Magic and 30 points in Soul Reaping (Soldier Amulet). I took special care when using 30 points in Soul Reaping not to activate Last Gasp in a recorded/tabulated run. In each of these tests, (taking into account the 4% natural decay and the bleeding incurred by Chieftain’s standard attack), my tests suggest the above hypothesis.

I look forward to others’ findings and results!

EDIT: Furthermore, it was hypothesized that prior to the patch Life Force was approximately 60% of our Health. If we were taking double damage in Death Shroud, then it stands to reason that the above hypothesis may hold. But I am far too lazy to do much more for now Good luck with your researching!

Ascii.9726:

Unblockable wells so stronk, love this change (28 second unblockable suffering).

Anyone worked out what this means:

“Vampiric: This trait now scales up 6 additional points with power for its damage and healing for its healing per attack.”

Vampiric does the same amount of damage/healing it traditionally does. BUT if you have:

• High Power & Low Healing: You will do 31 damage and be healed for 25HP
• Low Power & High Healing: You will do 25 damage and be healed for 31HP
• High Power & High Healing: You will do 31 damage and be healed for 31HP

Now what constitutes “High”, I have no idea!

Take care everyone! I’m super-pleased with the patch

Did anyone else notice the new Skill Facts on wells?

Wells are unblockable

(Also Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend give 10% LF)

@Bhawb — In the Mists, I’m receiving the proper amount of additional damage and healing. Where is this issue occurring for you? (Make sure you’re not down-leveled in PvE )

Bhawb.7408:

Death Nova’s extra damage appears bugged, in that it doesn’t exist. Someone please test it out to see if this is true or not.

Thanks for pointing this out! I took a quick look and, at the moment, the damage only takes effect when the minion dies from “natural” means. That is, presently popping Bone Minions doesn’t apply the Death Nova. However, letting a minion die to damage does tick about 1.1k-1.4k damage. This also applies to Jagged Horrors, whether they die by decay or by damage

HUZZAH!

Addendum: I’m not sure if this has always been true, but Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend supplies 10 Life Force upon death (either by summoning and swapping skills or by natural death). Fun times!

Out of curiosity, what do you guys think of the utilities of this skill? I’ve been thinking very slightly about it and have come to the thought that it isn’t a particularly great “pursuit” skill. Depending on the class, remaining in 600" range for 3 seconds may be tricky (however, Dark Path → Tainted Shackles gives should allow decent success against most sPvP heroes). What I think this skill will excel at is allowing us an improved chance of escape. Sitting for DS for 3 seconds may be hard, but if we can pull it off, pursuers will be locked into place for X seconds, hopefully allowing us to heal/cleanse conditions and book it out of Dodge.

Hmm…I wonder if we have to remain in DS to maintain Tainted Chains. I hope we don’t, but we’ll have to see

Random note: I suspect the animation and effect will mimic the Guardian’s Binding Blade skill. The animation may be closer to our Deadly Catch, though.

Have a nice day folks and enjoy the upcoming content!

Excellent find cal! While I’m not super impressed by it, I certainly like it! It has a miniscule cast time and doesn’t appear to be channel, so we can maintain DPS while this skill is ticking down. So then Tainted Shackles -> Life Transfer will both end about the same time, leaving a nice AoE immobilize (best case scenario) and letting you drop out of DS and take advantage of the immobilize. Unfortunately, the immobilize is counter intuitive to the entire concept of Torment, which I find sort of humorous, but I’m certainly not complaining about a free immob (unless it’s under 1 second).

And to my understanding, it’ll probably place 1 stack of Torment per second for 3 seconds. The immobilize will likely coincide with the final application of Torment.

I hope the damage isn’t as low as the wiki shows, but hey, we get a free low-risk, noninvasive AoE skill! What’s not to like?

Good day folks! I hope everyone is having a fine weekend and such! As many of us know, there is a bug regarding Death Shroud wherein our utilities are greyed out for some period of time when we leave Death Shroud. This bug has been recorded and documented many times. Here is a quick video I slapped together to showcase the issue in a little more detail:

Video

In an attempt to repeatedly replicate this bug, I have made some minor discoveries that will hopefully lead to a solution.

1) The issue occurs primarily when Life Force is allowed to deplete to zero. In my tests, I had a 100% “success” rate with this bug when allowing Life Force to dissipate naturally while in Death Shroud.

2) The delay, for me, comes out to be almost exactly one second. However, this was only timed/recorded under ideal circumstances (out of combat, engaging in no actions).

3) I have not been able to replicate this bug when cancelling Death Shroud prior to exhausting Life Force. This doesn’t mean such an issue doesn’t exist, but I have been unable to replicate it.

Some Notes:

• The tests were conducted at various levels of initial Life Force. That is, some tests started at 100% Life Force, some started at 10%, and so on. Every case resulted in a one second delay.
• The tests were, unfortunately, far from exhaustive. As one can see, I was wearing armor and I had trait investments, which could potentially influence results. Regardless, I had zero investment in any Death Shroud related traits (including zero investment in the Soul Reaping).
• I put all of this together in fairly short period of time, so there may be some mistakes.

I will gladly add any other notes offered by the community.

Take care everyone! Have a nice day!

Good day folks! I hope everyone is having a fine weekend and such! As many of us know, there is a bug regarding Death Shroud wherein our utilities are greyed out for some period of time when we leave Death Shroud. This bug has been recorded and documented many times. Here is a quick video I slapped together to showcase the issue in a little more detail:

Video

In an attempt to repeatedly replicate this bug, I have made some minor discoveries that will hopefully lead to a solution.

1) The issue occurs primarily when Life Force is allowed to deplete to zero. In my tests, I had a 100% “success” rate with this bug when allowing Life Force to dissipate naturally while in Death Shroud.

2) The delay, for me, comes out to be almost exactly one second. However, this was only timed/recorded under ideal circumstances (out of combat, engaging in no actions).

3) I have not been able to replicate this bug when cancelling Death Shroud prior to exhausting Life Force. This doesn’t mean such an issue doesn’t exist, but I have been unable to replicate it.

Some Notes:

• The tests were conducted at various levels of initial Life Force. That is, some tests started at 100% Life Force, some started at 10%, and so on. Every case resulted in a one second delay.
• The tests were, unfortunately, far from exhaustive. As one can see, I was wearing armor and I had trait investments, which could potentially influence results. Regardless, I had zero investment in any Death Shroud related traits (including zero investment in the Soul Reaping).
• I put all of this together in fairly short period of time, so there may be some mistakes.

I will gladly add any other notes offered by the community.

Take care everyone! Have a nice day!

I’m quite excited and intrigued by the numbers we will see on this, as well as its functionality. Perhaps it will:

a) Deal damage based solely on distance traveled, so moving at all would tick damage every 300" or 600" with increasing damage the further they moved.

or

b) “Tether” a foe to a spot (the place they were standing when the condition was cast), and the farther the foe moves from that spot, more damage they take every 300" or 600" or something.

I really like (b), but I don’t think it can happen. It would cause issues with reapplication of the condition with non-communicating teammates, since it could potentially mess up foe positioning. So I’m left to believe that (a) is the likely choice.

Now, could this change (along with others) make Necro an “off-node” node defender? That is, we defend a node by disallowing foes from ever reaching it through Torment, Chill, Cripple, Immobolize, etc. You can’t neut a node if you can’t reach it And even if they do reach it, perhaps a well-placed Dark Path would put you right onto the node, allowing further defense. I dunno, I’m just spewing out thoughts.

Have a nice day folks! Stay awesome!

Softspoken.2410:

What if they introduce more pull skills? I realize that as is we have Spectral Grasp, but it seems to me putting more pulls on, say, weapon skills would give Necros an affordable way to negate a disengage. It also increases the “If I go in against this Necro, they can try to keep me here” factor.

Neat idea! I had a similar thought yesterday, but it involved buffing Dark Path instead. My simple thoughts:

• Recharge reduced to 10s
• Cast Time Reduced to 1/2s
• Projectile Speed Increased 33%
• Reduce Chill to compensate

The recharge is reduced so that you are guaranteed to be able to shoot off 1 Dark Path every time you enter DS (barring Near to Death). The reduced cast time allows for players to enter DS and leave it without dropping pressure. The improved projectile speed helps to ensure that the target will actually get hit before leaving the 900 range.

With these changes, a Necro could potentially be “in your face” every 10s, which seems to be in line with the dev’s class design.

Anywho, these are just my quick thoughts. I like the idea of gap closers on the Necro, but this may be influenced by my bias towards Power Necros and love of dagger main-hand. As for the Condition Necros…maybe if they made Feast of Corruption a caster AoE (600 range) and added Poison to it, that may synergize with Dark Path. I dunno, I’m just spitting out ideas.

Have a nice day everyone!

I feel more assured coming from this stream than I have in any prior stream. I don’t recall all the details as I was doing Final prep while they were talking, but these are some of the points I remember they discussed:

• Looking into Death Shroud numbers (i.e.: Life Force gain).
• New skill will synergize with Dark Path.
• Want to make DS our “surfival” mechanic.
• They are aware of healing and its interaction (or lack thereof) with Death Shroud. Based on what Jon said, it seems very likely that the first “buff” it will get will be that regeneration heals through DS.
• They do not want to give us Vigor/Stability (it seems their goal is to have DS be our substitute for these).
• Minion skills will respond faster.
• They are aware Vampirism (Blood 15) is bad.
• Weakness may affect Critical Hits soon (after proc adjustments)
• They do not intend to make Spectral Armor gain stability. They fear that this will make Spectral Armor a “staple” (similar to Signet of Undeath, Corrupt Boon, and Epidemic)
• They are aware of Necros getting CC’d and blasted into oblivion.
• Looking into Moa Morph nuking minion summons

EDIT: Discussion of the Necromancer happens at 33:10 of the video

Bhawb.7408:

I personally really like the way they are looking at the class. They are really fighting to not homogenize us and basically give us exactly what other classes have to make us fit into the meta. Instead they want to keep Necromancers different, but then buff or otherwise tweak those uniquenesses to make us more viable in our own right. I love that. I don’t play a Necro to play a dark Guardian, I play a Necro to be the king of debuffs; so I want to have meaningful debuffs, and not just stack boons on myself because that is what the cool kids are doing right now.

Totally agree, Bhawb.

Have a nice day everyone! Enjoy the weekend!

I may as well add my results. Granted it’s hardly a large enough sample size, but it’s a tad bit more evidence. Yesterday I salvaged 5 ectos from 13 rares. I have had similar results from previous salvaging attempts within the past few days/week.

@Kraag Deadsoul

Absolutely beautifully written posts. It really was a great pleasure reading them. I really don’t have anything to say other than “well done” I attempted to write my post “through the eyes of a Developer” hesitant to change the Life Siphoning mechanic, and you provided an awesome rebuttal, so thank you for that. Do take care and enjoy what remains of the weekend!

Good day AirWick and others! For what little it may be worth, I agree. While this doesn’t mean I’m particularly happy about where Siphoning is, I do fear that allowing it to scale could potentially wreck havoc on balancing.

I’m not necessarily saying that if we received any form of “scaled Siphoning” that the forums will be flooded with “Omq Necro Vampyre Bunkers Oober OP Narf Now” but rather that “scaled Siphoning” would be another aspect that the devs would need to consider when making any balances to the class. Subsequently, other aspects for Necro may not receive a much needed buff because such a change, when combined with “scaled Siphoning”, could be OP. Thus the Necro could potentially reach a state of being impossible to buff or balance without breaking something.

Of course these are all “what ifs” and suppositions, but at this time these are my thoughts. Thinking about it a little more, perhaps the culprit that’s holding back Life Siphoning is, ironically, the trait that allows it: Vampirism. As long as this trait exists, “scaled Siphoning” is a very difficult balancing topic since Vampirism will Siphon with every hit, regardless of build. It’s too universal and all-encompassing to allow for too many buffs, which in turn forces the siphoning aspect to be held back. Removal of this trait would allow for buffs to the remaining Siphon traits (including the allowance of “scaled Siphoning”).

I absolutely love siphoning and it was probably my favorite thing about the Necro in GW1, so I would love to see it become more viable in GW2. Unfortunatley, I feel that Vampirism is holding it back and that scaled Siphoning isn’t particularly the answer.

Thank you for your time, and of course, take care everybody. Have a nice weekend!

Fun idea! Allow me to take a whack at this…

Gnashing Swing
Gash your foe (Hits up to 3 Foes)
Range: 250
Cast Time: 1/2 s

→ Feasting Strike
Strike your foe and gain Life Force (Hits up to 3 Foes)
Range: 250
Cast Time: 1/2s
Life Force Gain: 3% (Per Hit)

→→ Marking the Sacrifice
Prepare your foe for death with a “Mark for Death” (Hits up to 3 foes)
Range: 300
Casting Time: 1/2s
Marked for Death: Duration 20s

Nightmare Slash
Plunge your Greataxe into the ground to cripple and poison target foe and nearby foes. Your foes are “Marked for Death”.
Range: 900
Cast Time: 3/4s
Cooldown: 10s
Radius: 120
Poison: 4s
Cripple: 4s
Marked for Death: Duration 20s

Head Hunter
Leap at your foe, inflicting Daze and siphoning health for each “Marked for Death” on the foe(s). A successful hit removes two “Marked for Death” from damaged foes.
Range: 600
Cast Time: 1/4s
Radius: 130
Cooldown: 15s
Daze: 0.5s
Healing: ~300 per “Marked for Death”
Removes: 2 “Marked for Death”

Presence of the Lich
Rend one enchantment from nearby foes and cleanse conditions from yourself. Remove additional enchantments from foes suffering from “Marked for Death”. Removes two “Marked for Death” from each affected foe
Radius: 480
Cast Time: 1s
Recharge Time: 25s
Removes 2 conditions from self
Removes 1 Enchantment from hit Foes
Additionally removes 1 Enchantment for each “Marked for Death”
Removes 2 “Marked for Death” from foes.

Reap
Reap what has been sown. Step to target foe and unleash a Reaper’s Slash to remove all “Marked for Death” from target foe and inflict damage and gain Life Force for each “Marked for Death” removed.
Range: 600 (for the “shadow step”)
Cast Time: 1/2s (The “shadow step” is instant but the swing animation will be 1/2s and be fairly clear).
Cooldown: 40s
Damage improves for each “Marked for Death” removed.
Life Force Gain: 6% for each “Marked for Death” removed.

• Marked For Death: This “hex” does nothing by itself. It just sits there useless, but stacks.

These are rough ideas. It’s past midnight and I just came up with these thoughts, so I have no idea how good they are or even if they make sense. Regardless, thank you all for your time and have a nice day!

I believe Chesire is close to why there was no action by ANet. We provided nothing but “hearsay” and corroborating statements, which is great, but no pictures or hard evidence were presented. Certainly a massive thread about the matter would pique the interest of Devs, and perhaps they tested the issue shortly after the thread’s posting, but as Jon stated, their tests provided no reason to believe that the Necromancer suffered from reduced Downed State health (I’m not too sure as to how their testing wouldn’t show this issue, but perhaps it was performed faultily or interpreted incorrectly). Regardless, by their means they felt that there was no issue, and thus didn’t delve into things deeper. We’ve all made mistakes like this before, and I certainly forgive them for it.

Unfortunately, what they did in response was very poor. They never provided details or information about their personal findings, which implies to me that after their tests reported “no issue”, they cast aside our concerns as unfounded complaints. Furthermore, I fear that such an action allows us to make inferences about how they treat ‘complaint’ threads here — read it, refute it, ignore it. We had a large portion of the community here confused and uncertain about a very real, significant balance issue, but their response was minimal testing and dead air (I claim minimal testing because it took me about 10 minutes to come up with how to perform this test optimally). How, then, will they treat our other concerns that may not be as significant as missing 2/3 or our downed HP? This thought discourages me and makes me uneasy, but I will cast it aside and attempt to give the Reds the benefit-of-the-doubt.

However, I am still very pleased by the quick response from this post. Why? Because within 24hrs of a thread that provided supporting evidence of an issue, we received an answer from a Red. That is excellent, in my opinion. This also supports their claim that they actively scan the boards, which is assuring for me.

Anywho, thank you for your time in reading this thread/post. Take care!

JonPeters.5630:

Ok we found a good repro case. It has to do with how death shroud and downed used to interact. I will get someone on it today and try and get a fix to you all asap.

<3

Thank you for the quick replies! This little Necro certainly appreciates your time and courtesy. Have a nice day!

EDIT: And a huge thank you to Targuil, the hero of the Necromancers

Kravick.4906:

I don’t like Death Shroud in its current implementation. For the most part, the reasons why have already been covered above, so I’m not going to repeat whats already been said.

Death Shroud used to be something completely different, however. It used to be a down state mechanic. A few months before the game released they completely redesigned the mechanic to what we have now. Then, during the beta weekends, someone found a build that made Death Shroud insanely OP, so they took a jack hammer to the entire class with a fix it later mentality and severely over nerfed several skills and abilities, and even some skills that were completely unrelated to Death Shroud got nerfed. What we have now is the class being balanced around the Death Shroud mechanic, instead of the mechanic being balanced around the class as it should be. As a result, we now have a very bad case of over balancing around a rather lack luster mechanic.

Frankly, I would like to see the mechanic as it is scrapped so that they can give necromancer some real attrition capability. Death Shroud as it is doesn’t work in its current iteration and is nothing more than a glorified Engineer kit. Death Shroud is whats holding this class back, and we are certainly not the masters of attrition that ANet thinks we are.

This is what real attrition combat looks like. We don’t even come close to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exaYZq5ZmBk

This is for you.

Spiffy trait ideas! I particularly like the idea behind Soul Search, but I’m not too keen about the implementation. Using Life Force for health strikes me as possible attrition mechanic we could use, but I’m not a fan of not having “control” of my LF degeneration. That is, maybe I’d prefer having 3% more LF rather than 3% gained health (such as when I have 11% LF and would like to pop a fear. Losing 3% would disallow entering Death Shroud). So, if I may offer a little twist on your neat idea:

Soul Reaping
Soul Search:
Every second in Death Shroud, gain X% of your health.

Balance would dictate the percentage, but I don’t think 1-3% would be super broken. The reason I believe this is because Death Shroud scarcely lasts for more than 10 seconds while in (PvP) combat, so on average the user would be looking at ~1k-3k HP gain. However, this brings up a thought: I’ve had DS piddle out within 2 seconds, which would render this trait fairly pointless, and this trait wouldn’t fit too well in the “shroud dancer” build (pop in and out of DS frequently). So how about this?

Soul Reaping
Soul Search:
While in Death Shroud, take X% less damage and gain Health equivalent to the damage mitigated.

Again, balance would dictate the percentage (10-20%, probably). This trait would benefit most every build that uses DS. It:
1) Provides survivability for to the user for popping DS when stun-locked,
2) Reward users with a DS focused build (provides longer durability while in DS and more Life force => more Health to gain when slapped around),
3) There’s still benefit when using DS in a long-term fights as well as Shroud Dancing.

Woah, typed more than I expected. Anywho, I love Marked for Death. It may be a smidge too powerful, but the idea sounds like a lot of fun. Reversed Deterioration sounds like great fun as well and provides interesting play between the attacker and victim — something ANet is looking for. I don’t have super strong opinions on the other traits, but they are neat nonetheless.

Thanks for sharing your trait ideas! It’s fun to read other’s thoughts and ideas and then reflect on them. Have a nice day/night and good luck with the start of your week!

“You need to master Downed State”

You are correct Targuil. I just went there and completed a single iteration on both classes (with video recorded) following the above protocol. The results were almost identical to the Downleveled zone. Granted, this is based on a single iteration, but no critical hits or glancing blows were experienced, meaning the only variability in damage is that performed by the wurm’s attack itself.

These results, as stated before, were almost identical to those experienced in the downleveled zone. Take care everyone and have a pleasant day!

Hrm, your statement pointed out a variable I missed — namely that there could be an error in the downleveling algorithm. While I severely doubt this is the case, when time is available I may enter a level 80 zone and find a foe where attacks are predictable and constant. I may or may not provide video evidence of those findings (if I get around to testing it). And thank you very much Targuil for bringing this bug to the attention of the community!

lookitsandrea.8531:

“Felt” is not proof of the bug lacking existence. If members can take the time to mathematically find the evidence of the necro’s downed health, then surely a dev can spare a couple of minutes. We don’t even know if Jon Peters was in a level 80 zone, WvW, or even if PvP (because it works in PvP). Sigh…

Ask, and you shall receive. (Kinda. It’s hardly “proof”, but I feel it’s sufficient evidence to warrant a Developer’s investigation).

I’m torn about Death Shroud. In PvE, it’s beautiful. In PvP…it’s alright. My issue lies in its utility. That is, presently it’s basically seen primarily as a second health bar due to its lack of utility in the predominant Condition builds. Now, I’m certainly not saying it’s “useless” in Conditions builds, but it certainly loses its potency since 2 of the 4 skills in Death Shroud are power based.

But I digress — my concern lies in the notion of it being simply a “second health bar”. This bothers me because a “Health Bar” has the purpose of telling you when you are “alive” or “dead”, and by adding a “second” Health Bar, the purpose is to provide more “up” time. Thus its goal is to, essentially, mitigate damage to allow the player to remain in the fight. Unfortunately, most other classes seem to have better ways of mitigating damage than Death Shroud. If the hypotheses are true, then Death Shroud provides ~60% (no investment) of the users maximum health, so if we assume a Necro has 25kHP (Carrion Amulet), then Death Shroud would have 15k “HP”. This, while seeming substantial, may not be the case. Why do I claim this? Because if a Necro enters Death Shroud (at full) and is burst down within 2 seconds, one may think “Ah, so Death Shroud just saved me 15k damage!” This is certainly true, but 2 seconds “Damage Mitigation” is attainable by:

• 2 dodges (doable with classes that have active vigor)
• ~2 seconds of stealth (this is debatable due to AOE’s and such going through stealth)
• 2 seconds of Block (Shield Stance for Warrior, and so on)
• 2 seconds of Invul (achievable by Mist Form and Elixir S)
• 2 seconds of Evade (Thief skills, Ranger skills, Blurred Frenzy, Distortion, etc)
• Any form of Disengagement sufficient to leave the area (RtL, Portal, Thief Shortbow, Warrior’s Rush and Whirling Blade, etc)

Now I do not know other classes well enough to say that there are more of these available, but this what I’m aware of off the top of my head. The point is that if Death Shroud is viewed simply as a Second Health bar, then it literally loses effectiveness the faster it is drained since it is replicable by other classes’ ability to mitigate damage for short durations.

Again, I’m not saying Death Shroud is “bad”, “weak”, or “useless”. I am primarily concerned with its utility and perception of it being a “second health bar”. Also, not mentioned above, is that a HUGE advantage of Death Shroud is its ability to activate while stunned, which many of the bulleted points above cannot do.

And now I need to head out. Anywho, I was thinking of doing a write up at some point about my concerns with Death Shroud as a second health bar (full of tables and numbers and such), but we’ll see. Thank you all for your time and consideration! Enjoy the remainder of your weekend.

I’ve been using TheMightyAltroll’s build for my PvE purposes, and there are many times where I feel nearly immortal. I’ve tried it in sPvP with “ok” success (but I blame myself, I’m not a particularly strong PvPer). I also swapped out Knights gear for Soldiers, providing more Power and survivability at the cost of Precision. Take care and have a nice day!