Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Showing Posts For Steelstickfig.9146:
With the new trend of legendary back pieces (and many players now reaching the point where they actually have said back pieces), it would be super great if some effort could be put forth in making back items show through Shroud.
Engineers had a similar – yet far more prevalent – issue for several years, and only semi-recently was it fixed. Hopefully it takes less time for necromancers to get similar attention.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Except mesmer and rev. Idk how they avoided so many nerfs.
This made me upsetti spaghetti moreso than anything else.
On the bright side, all the reaper fotm rerollers will default back to something else, now.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Deathly Chill + Blood Bond Synergy is something that could be interesting – at least with PvE power builds. It’d probably beat out Reaper’s Onslaught since camping daggers/greatsword is higher dps, anyway.
So that’s kinda cool.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
The entire point of the trait was to give old-burning like damage. We’ve always had issues with keeping up a constant condition damage threat due to all our damage being lumped onto low intensity high duration bleeds, and they replaced the one thing that meaningfully fixed this problem with a low intensity high duration bleed.
This right here can’t be ignored, and honestly was one of the best things about Deathly Chill that set it apart from other conditions. It had a great identity as being one of the few sources of condition damage that was easy to apply and easy to maintain with minimal dedication.
Was this easy as hell to maintain? Of course, and that’s why it was appealing. In my case, it allowed for the creation of condition builds that weren’t bound to scepter, since Dhuumfire’s burning and static chill damage was enough.
And, bleeding sucks. It has always sucked. It’s simple, boring, and having all of our pvp damage frontloaded onto it is an issue. If this new Deathly Chill has to give some sort of new condition – which is fine – I’d much prefer if it was a less common one like torment or poison, which both fit the debilitating nature of chill rather than lame bleeding.
Also, can we stop the pvp vs. pve bickering? A nerf to necro is a nerf no matter where it hits hardest.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Reapers were in the really unfortunately state that turret engis were in way back – namely that they just rolled over the average player. In higher-end matches, namely diamond/legendary, having any more than one necro on a team was a huge liability. But, as it stood, like 90% of the playerbase saw reapers as this unstoppable death machine that was in itself the perfect team-comp.
The nerf was inevitable, but waaaayyy too heavy-handed, imo. The worst part is not only were reapers’ offensive conditions bonked, but their only source of stability was too. And, what’s worse, reaper will still be able to destroy most players due to it maintaining its boon corruption capabilities.
But wells got their cooldown reduced slightly :^)
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Put down your angry riot signs about S2 matchmaking for a moment and listen to what might be an awful side-effect of how league progression currently works in relation to the The Ascension journey.
A few weeks ago I hit legend like a super cool guy, and was roughly one-half through the The Ascension’s achievements when I hit a bit of a wall. This wall was queue-times. Progressing the The Ascension achievements, especially the dreaded 3-Games-a-Day ones, have become nearly impossible to progress at any time that isn’t primetime during weekends. This is, frankly, discouraging – but it is only a symptom of a larger issue.
Throughout the lower divisions, queues were overall very good and rarely climbed above 5 minutes. Even when reaching higher divisions early on, the logically longer queues would gradually drop down after a few days. Legendary, however, is different. I expected queues to be painfully long, but after sitting in multi-hour queues a few times on consecutive nights, I can only assume that very few people are attempting to climb this high. Why is this? Ehhhh, that’s another thread.
The most important thing to take away from lengthy legend queues is just how gosh-dang boring HotM is. Sitting around and staring at a gradually diminishing map chat is not fun. Some suggest adding a jumping puzzle or something, but in my opinion that’s a shoddy band-aid fix. The solution, I think, would be to allow hotjoin play whilst in queue. While I cannot fathom how difficult this would be to implement (it could be impossible for all I know), it would interestingly solve numerous problems.
- People don’t play hotjoin – now they have an excuse
- People get bored queueing and often give up – now they have something to do
- People can’t progress dailies, etc. – now they can
Additionally, hotjoin is a great place to try out new builds, strategies, etc. – thus it’s the perfect location for a pregame lobby.
As for solving the legend conundrum of being punished for climbing quickly by being unable to progress certain achievements, that’s a more complex issue that can probably only be solved by doing something that most people will dislike. For instance, hitting legendary allows these achievements to be progressed whilst in unranked (though that would give an even greater incentive to hit legendary, but it would also deincentivize progressing through the legend tiers).
Of course, none of the above will ever happen unless the community really wants it ;^)
Thoughts? Considerations?
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
The interesting thing about Necromancer – something that I’m just starting to realize right now – is that their current iteration and role in the meta is countered not by a specific build or class, but rather team coordination and strategy.
In lower brackets, Reapers dominate everybody due to pug teams just not having the coordination or know-how to properly focus fire, kite, peel, and zone. Unlike Revenant, Tempest, and Dragon Hunter (the other three oft-complained-about classes), who all have something you can shoehorn into a build to “counter” them (unblockables, chill/burst, and anti-projectiles, respectively), no amount of condition clear will necessarily make Necromancer fights free wins. This, I think, is by design.
The sad reality is that Necromancer stomps less skilled/coordinated players, much like Dragonhunter (though they don’t drop off as hard). However, they are also necessary due to the prevalence of boom spamming, etc. Everything is terrible.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
this looks pretty fun, i havent tried mm for a long time. gonna try it out, thanks for the share.
melandrus rune tho? isnt that redundant with minions taking your condis?
Melandru was chosen because I’m a huge coward. Nightmare would be good too. Grenth would be beneficial due to the low cooldown of YSIM, and probably wouldn’t be too redundant due to the prevalence of cleanse-happy tempests.
The rune component is certainly up to the user, as it isn’t really crucial to the build functioning.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
I kind of wish I could slot Bone Minions twice in my utility line for base Necromancer but Shambling Horror is good with the Reaper line, though Reaper means sacrificing Blood Magic if you want to keep Death Magic and Soul Reaping.
All things considered, I find that Reaper Shroud is just so vastly superior to Death Shroud that taking the traitline is necessary in competitive play. Without Reaper, you lose access to our only form of not-terrible stability and not-terrible Dhuumfire application. Furthermore, Deathly Chill is a cornerstone of this build due to it not taking scepter – the damaging chill and burning are “enough,” but only if both are present in large quantities.
If you must run base shroud, you become a ping-pong-ball unless you stay at range. And, if you’re staying at range, why run a defensive build instead of the standard corruptomancer that excels at ranged combat?
As far as minions not dying goes, that’s partially the reason why I slot Bone Minions and Rise! The first can be detonated on command, and the latter is guaranteed to die after 25 seconds. Additionally, due to the sheer amount of AoE spam that comes out of Tempests, Dragonhunters, and other Reapers, its very unlikely that your minions will survive a teamfight.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
No Soul Marks? :/
Oops, that’s not right.
Fixed the above build to include Soul Marks – which really can’t be played without due to the prevalence of revenants.
Might want to try Shrouded Removal or Putrid Defense instead of Flesh of the Master, since you actually want your minions to die.
I’m not sure how well it will work, but it’s worth testing.
The first tier of Death Magic is dependent on the enemy comp, with Flesh of the Master being more useful against aggressive teams due to the heightened durability of Shambling Horrors.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
In my opinion, Skyhammer is THE best designed map if you take the gimicks out of the equation. The way it is built encourages smaller skirmishes and prevents snowballing due to the large-ish distance between points and small-ish distance from spawn to the points.
If anything is to be changed about Skyhammer, the layout should remain the same.
On the flip-side, the jump pads and disappearing platforms should be adjusted.
The jump pads should be readjusted to be more reliable (maybe have them always launch to a pre-determined location, similar to the jumping mushrooms in HoT maps). The platforms, in the other hands, should probably be removed entirely. They’re janky, unreliable, and give a huge advantage to knockbacks, pulls, and immobilizes.
As for the Hammer itself, its role is fine (though the platform it’s controls are on should maybe be enlarged somewhat), but the implementation is sort of wonky. A guildmate recommended that maybe the hammer have its attack split into two abilities: The standard big aoe damage, and a knockdown attack. To prevent it from becoming too weak, maybe the latter attack should apply conditions or something…
One thing that I think a lot of people don’t realize, is that there is a tremendous opportunity cost to using the Hammer – and with the current meta builds, it often just isn’t worth it at all! Having one guy man the hammer leaves your team at a 4v5 disadvantage, and most specs now have so many evades, invulns, and stability stacks that it frequently renders the slow-attacking, highly telegraphed hammer as useless in a large teamfight. But, this is mostly in more organized teams – it still demolishes lower-skilled puggers (much like necro >_>).
All in all, I think Skyhammer is a really good map that is only a few changes away from being ranked-appropriate.
In comparison, Spiritwatch has more fundamental issues, and Courtyard needs other deathmatch maps to be compared to.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Do you like corruptions? Scepter? Signets? Necromancer’s current spot in the meta?
I don’t, so I decided to play this season with what is potentially the goofiest build I could come up with without being (entirely) useless. And, because I need to justify my choice, I felt like sharing it for craps and giggles.
This build was made mostly out of my love for minionmancer, specifically with the idea of minions helping me as opposed to me helping minions (which is the more traditional case).
Build: Rat Bomber
Unfortunately, it’s still condition based and runs both of the typical condition traits and the typical hybrid amulet. But that’s okay, because it uses dagger – which might be my new favorite spvp weapon.
With the recent addition of boon corruption to Dagger 3, it’s super duper close to finally being an actually good weapon. Due to the speed and unparalleled life force generation on the autoattack, it functions decently as a defensive choice, with the 2 skill being ~okay for kiting and sustain. The 3, however, is godlike when used at the right time. Stripping an enemies boons and immobilizing them in one ability can often guarantee a kill during a teamfight. And, since no boon corrupts into immobilize, it’s never superfluous.
As for utilities, the only minions run are those that can result in easy Death Novas – for obvious reasons. It is not uncommon to have a stack of 6 or more minions all die or expire at the same time, resulting in around 5000 unpredictable damage – and random is fun!
I initially made this build to be defensive in nature due to solo queue often meaning that nobody will peel for you, and sometimes good positioning just isn’t enough. But after playing it for a bit, I found it to be crazy fun. And, I mean, this build took me to legend around a week ago – so it’s got to be worth something, right?
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
(edited by Steelstickfig.9146)
It looks like this was a widespread thing that all happened around the same timeframe.
HoTM chat is talking about it too. I doubt anybody will get reimbursed though – especially since it looks like it happened to a huge amount of people.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
I played another immediately after – got rewards and pips.
But no legend due to the previous bug setting me back.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Also happened to me at around the same time – looks like something went down on Anet’s end, hopefully they’ll reimburse people or something.
Make sure to file bug reports!
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Just happened to me as well – would’ve had legend, too.
Map was Foefire – happened approx. 3:00 pm EST, 3/7/2016
I filed a bug report w/ attached screenshot, but no idea if that’ll even be seen.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
This is perhaps one of the best concise descriptions of the current problems with how spvp is being handled currently – especially the bit on boon corruptions and elite spec versatility. You should honestly post/link to this on the gw2 subreddit, you’d get way more praise over there.
It cannot be stressed enough that power creep is one of the most dangerous things to happen in a pvp-oriented game. It’s inevitable, sure, but can be kept in check. Almost all of the dominating elite specs are dominating because of just how well they cover for a given professions’s classic flaws. If anything, the idea of outright replacing certain elements of a profession’s profession skills should’ve been stuck to as was seen in Reaper (one of the better designed elite specs, imo). If the elite specs are going to offer everything that the base class offers and then some, of course they’ll be overloaded.
And as far as buffing X to nerf Y, take a look at another semi-competitive game that attempted a similar methodology: Hearthstone. Anyone who plays any of that game knows that that method simply doesn’t work – because it not only limits build diversity (you need X card to counter Y card; you need X profession w/ X build to counter Y profession), but also means that unless your comp has said class, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
But those of you saying it’s “not undertuned” or “it does enough damage”, have you actually compared the amount of damage a necro wielding an axe does compared to equivalent weapons of other classes? Or even to the scepter?
As for scepter being overtuned, same question – have you compared the damage a necro can do while wielding a scepter to that of other classes wielding their ranged weapons? It may seem overtuned in comparison to axe, but that says more about the axe right now than it does the scepter.
This is definitely the most destructive thing about axe – it’s very easy to be… misled by its design. Due to it always hitting reliably and the 2 skill showing a big number after the cast, it is easy to feel as if it’s perfectly fine.
Especially since it’s our only option for ranged power damage – it doesn’t really have anything in the necro kit to be properly compared too – aside from base Death Shroud, which is also lacking in many respects.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
So here’s a fun thought:
Way back before the Pre-HoT trait rework, the Unholy Fervor trait was proposed to offer a… 2% (?) reduction in cooldown on axe skills every time an axe skill lands. This was widely criticized for obvious reasons – namely that it was undertuned.
But what if it made a return in some fashion? To give axe a unique identity not only amongst other necromancer weapons, but amongst other classes as well. What if the primary damage component of axe was frontloaded onto the 2 skill, which had a cooldown reduction mechanic based on successful axe auto hits (or even better, hitting a target that is inflicted w/ cripple – thus bringing axe 3 into the equation).
Cooldown reduction mechanics already exist outside of traits in the form of Gravedigger, and this could really tie axe together as a unique power weapon that wholly relies on “chunking” rather than steady dps.
This would of course warrant numerical rebalances.
No. It feels awful to use and the new animations for it just sealed the deal on not wanting to touch it ever again.
AA animation needs to be reverted. AA itself needs to be faster.
Also this. Rip kawaii spinning asura.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
(edited by Steelstickfig.9146)
When questioned whether-or-not axe would receive substantial buffs, Robert Gee (I think) claimed that due to it’s nature as a ranged weapon w/o a projectile, it can’t be buffed. Ergo it’s impossible to balance and probably deserves a partial rework.
In my opinion, you’re super right in that the problem with axe isn’t so much that it’s undertuned, but that it just plain feels bad to use. For lack of a better word, it feels flaccid. I think this is due to a number or reasons, but I subscribe to the belief that it’s due to the 1/2 essentially being the same skill (single target skill that hits a dude), with the 2 just being a superior version.
Additionally, the 3 has zero synergy with any part of the kit! Sure, it’s a good ability for a multitude of reasons, but that doesn’t excuse it for being out-of-place and unsatisying to use.
I mean, just compare it to it’s condition counterpart, the scepter – that weapon has been iterated to the point of being pretty dang well designed. The auto and 2 serve different purposes and are functionally super different, and the 3 ties the whole weapon together through natural synergy – the weapon feels good to use due to good design.
In conclusion, axe is bad. Dagger is, too – but that’s another show.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Another big issue I find with Unholy Martyr is it’s lack of synergy (both functionally and thematically) with the rest of the line. The way I see it, before BM can be called a group-support tree it should be called a life siphon and healing tree.
Every single other trait in the line has something to do with healing or sustain (Banshee’s Wail is a bit of an outlier, but not much considering the sustain aspect of warhorn 5).
Unholy Martyr is different. Sure, it’s group support and sustain, but it accomplishes that through condition and life force manipulation – two things that are nowhere else in the line. The trait is just the perfect garbage storm of having no synergy, being overtly situational, and not even that great when the situation calls for it.
My suggestion would be to attach some sort of transfer aspect to it, maybe have the trait cause some shroud ability to auto transfer (maybe even the auto, only with a reasonable ICD). While this certainly doesn’t fit with the rest of BM, neither does Unholy Martyr.
As for swapping it with Unholy Sanctuary… Martyr definitely has way more synergies with Death Magic due to it having more condition manipulation traits. However, it cannot be forgotten that it was nerfed due to these synergies with minion traits that allow for easy condition trading.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
After playing a substantial amount of chillomancer (and subsequently getting extremely tired of it), I decided to try the slightly-more-hipster route of power reaper.
The build I’m currently running is a slight variation of:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Paladin_Shout_Reaper
Instead of Reaper’s Onslaught, I take Blighter’s Boon, and Strength Sigils for the extra boon spamming to proc said trait. As the metabattle page says, it actually feels relatively bunker-y.
Now, my question is, has any thought been given to creating a more defensive reaper now that the defensive amulets are gone? I considered dropping Spite for BM, but that render’s Blighter’s Boon useless (which is fine), and the grandmasters in BM are all lacking unless I run wells. Similarly, Death Magic’s master traits don’t really accomplish what I set out for unless I run minions.
Also no signets, please. I don’t like their playstyle – even if they are very very strong.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Sleeper OP builds?
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Structured PvP recently got a new sigil that gives 5 seconds of swiftness and 1 second of quickness on weapon swap. Does this exist in PvE yet, to anyone’s knowledge?
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Not only does it work, it looks outstanding. The third hit of GS auto actually covers the sword with ice in such a way that the fire particles temporarily disappear – which makes for some really aesthetically pleasing contrast between the fire and ice.
The blade trail is also super beautiful on Gravedigger and Nightfall, much better than the actual legendaries, imo.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
I sort of like the design of corruption skills as being “harm yourself to perform powerful things,” but I think their issue is actually two-fold.
1. The actual means of self-harm: The conditions. Conditions are clunky as all hell – they keep you in combat, mess with transfers and cleanses, and actually punish you for speccing into condition damage / duration!
2. The skills themselves just aren’t that strong. Epidemic is the only one that seems super stronk, and even that is only in niche situations. Blood is Power is weak, and Corrupt Boon is entirely overshadowed by signets. Of course, CPC is much better than it was, before.
The second issue is harder to fix, but I think the first could be remedied just by changing corruptions to deal a fixed percentage to the necro’s health rather than inflicting a clunky condi. Not only would this not punish necros for building condi damage / duration, but it would also synergize super-well with blood magic.
As an example, what if CPC didn’t inflict weakness, but rather it was some sort of toggle-able skill that cost ~10% health per tick (or 5, or 7, etc.)? Similar adjustments could be made to the other corruption skills to make them not only cool, but also interesting.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Minionmancer Necros can also take a trait called Necromatic Corruption which causes each of their minions to take one condition from the necromancer and then transfer it to their target when attacking. The trait has a 10 second ICD but that’s per minion, and a minion must have been summoned for at least 10 seconds before the proc can occur.
Most MMs do not take the curses line, hence no automatic plague signet.
The only transfers on the typical MM build will be staff 4 and the aforementioned minion trait. You could conceivably play around this by waiting until their minions are dead to unload your burning burst, but it’d be difficult to keep up with their pressure.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
What about moa form?
Moa specifically will still destroy them. When we decided on these changes we felt that the behavior of Moa vs pets was one that needed more discussion. We didn’t feel comfortable changing this behavior for this patch as it affects more classes than just necromancer.
Lich and Plague form was more of a clear cut issue of “hey, let’s not punish minion masters for pressing their elite”.
I just wish that Moa form would actually kill the minions (thus triggering Death Nova, etc.), rather than making them just poof away.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Yeah, I think many of us wanted to see more damage on RS 1, 4 and 5. It’s not looking good though at this point, I doubt we’ll see it get boosted at this point. But never lose hope, I guess. It would be nice, as I’ve always felt if you spent the time to build LF it should most certainly pay off at least a little bit over standard weapons.
The thing is, much like how I personally despise camping dagger / GS for highest damage, others might dislike the idea of having to be in RS. A single optional trait that directly boosted shroud skill strength (perhaps in the SR line, where it would best fit) would remedy this, though.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Wouldn’t you want to faceroll…err I mean use your GS skills before jumping into RS?
Also what about Death’s Charge, worth it for DPS?
If I remember correctly from the last BWE, using Death’s Charge at point blank hit around 8ish times in quick succession. These all triggered lifesteal traits, etc. With its recent 30% speed increase, maybe it’ll serve as slight burst of damage when combined with traits that trigger on all attacks w/o ICDs. Maybe.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
I’m experiencing similar things. The past two days I’ve seen a huge increase in 4v5s, with nearly every game having at least one player drop halfway through.
What’s weird is how it definitely started with the game going free-to-play, despite there definitely not being any super new players in any of these games. Perhaps the influx of new spvp players caused a bizarre shift in everyone’s mmr in relation to overall matchmaking?
Do you play necromancer? Me too.
Ive never understood why we have 3 different choices for 25% movement speed. Its a waste of trait/utility slots. We could have something else but instead we have duplicates of the same thing. Makes no sense.
I think this is a larger issue than just 25% speed. We have 3 sources of 25% speed, we also have almost excessive levels of might, vulnerability, and crit chance stacking, to the point that we can theoretically have 130% crit chance in Death Shroud without fury or any investment in precision or precision based buffs, not in DS can still get up to 80%, meaning a Curses/Reaper Soldier Necro can hit 100% crit chance with just fury.
So we end up with a lot of traits that effectively duplicate effects, and instead of other professions who can stack up a lot of their beneficial effects and get crazy results, we hit ceilings with our “stacking” very quickly because they are based primarily on mechanics that are shared heavily.
This is – imo – one of the biggest flaws with Necromancer at the moment: We just have too many gosh darned ways to improve the same four things (Might, Vuln, Movement Speed, Crit Chance), and all of those things have a hard cap! If some of our self-might or ludicrous amounts of free crit chance were changed into personal percent-damage increases then maybe we’d be semi-competitive damage-wise.
Do you play necromancer? Me too.