Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Andele.1306:

Because he is, no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire, if you like that type of condi playstyle , go play a engie, mesmer or guardian.

That’s quite a bit of revisionist history there. A lot of Necros recognized that without burning we were a subpar condition damage class in every aspect of the game. A lot don’t like what has happened since it was added, and don’t like how it was added, but that isn’t the same.

I don’t agree with this at all. I never thought that burning or another condition was the answer to what necros needed before the dummfire patch… I may have been thrilled at the time (as getting buffed is always good), but I never intended to be an AD carry as it were.

I rolled necro to be the "bard’ esq player who does slow consistent damage, and controls the fight. He soaks damage pretty well, and manages to win his fights because of kiting and positioning, and attrition (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, the game and developers have continued to increase the burst damage of classes (necro obviously included) and move away from allowing the playstyle to even exist. Ascended weapons, the ridiculous stat buffs in WvW, consumables, stacks, all extended the odds of you getting just instagibbed by an old-school player.

Getting backstabbed for 8k is no fun at all when you have maxed out your characters toughness. Getting burned down 5k DPS by a condi necro who does nothing but auto attack is no fun either. Getting hit for 3k damage from a perplexity engineer who face rolls his interrupt skills, or a thief who uses one of those dippy birds to hit headshot over and over again.

The changes that allowed spectral skills to work in DS was a good and big change for that, but it was only one side of a 6 sided dice required to make the sustain work in practice.

Damage was not what I wanted. I had bleeds and terror back then and was dangerous enough in my own right. The problem now is, once you have let the cat out of the bag on all this insane stat scaling, how do you put it back in?

JonPeters.5630:

Bhawb.7408:

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

Consider uncoupling the trait from Enfeebling Blood entirely. It would now only cause Weakness. Base weakness would be 3s.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Dhuumfire moving would also open up a gap for a new GM trait in Spite, so we’d need to figure that out as well.

Great suggestions!

Chilling Thirst
You deal more and receive less damage from chilled enemies. Increases the duration of your chill effects by 20%.

Or some generic benefit for chilling/immobilizing/fearing an enemy. Quickness? There really is a niche to filled on the control side of things.

I heard Arena Net talking about Death magic needing some buffs in another topic. But the topic was a bit too flooded so I decided to create a new topic in order to discuss my thoughts on the matter.

But first let me explain what death magic is to me. Death magic for me was always the line of magic that made life feel like death. Filled with disease, necrotic flesh, boils on one’s enemies. Very much about afflictions of the flesh as well as raising the dead.

Looking back to the first game we see various skills that had to deal with conditions or how high your opponents health was in the death attribute. I would personally like to continue this theme. For the most part it seems to be fairly forgotten by the death user except for the inclusion of the Staff traits.

So here are some suggestions I would have for the trait line.

1. Master/Grandmaster Trait: Contagion: While in deathshroud, whenever you suffer a condition each foe around you suffers that condition as well. (This one might need to be worked out a bit more. However, this was a skill back in GW1 that I really liked and wanted to make work. I just couldn’t get it to work in a build. It was a real shame and I would like to see this effect given to the GW2 necromancer. It might even pull me away from using spite just for this as a more defensive condi build.)

2. Change protection from the horde to Protection from Death: Gain toughness for each minion you control and each condition you are suffering. (While Protection from the horde is a nice idea, in practice it doesn’t do anything for the person who wants to use death magic but has no interest in minions. This way the player will be getting something out of it without taking something away from the minion player.)

3. Master/Grandmaster trait: Discord: While in death Shroud critical hits have a 50%-100% chance to apply bleeding/torment for 5 seconds. (I figured this could be an interesting trade off. Normally, the Condi Necro doesn’t want to be in death shroud for an extended period of time. But sometimes they have no choice. This normally kills there damage. But with this it would give them the chance to actually deal some damage while in Death Shroud. And if they took the grandmaster trait in Deathly Perception and this was a master trait this could be a match made in heaven. Granted if terror was brought to grandmaster and Lingering curse went down to master, you still wouldn’t have access to either Burning or fear for damage. But I believe this could be worth while regardless.)

4. Adept/Master/Grandmaster Trait: Weight of Death: If you attack a foe below 50% health they suffer torment from your attacks. (Although hard to figure out just how this one should go. If it was torment for each landed attack against them it should defiantly be grand master. But that also depends on how long the torment lasts. If this was 1 stack of torment for 4 seconds with a 3 second cool down I could see this being more like an Adept. Any way this one could go it would be an interesting trait to play with.)

What do you guys think? Do you like these ideas do you have your own? Please leave a comment below.

We can rebuild it.
We have the technology.

It really was fantastic pvp, strategy, team builds and really was the best pvp experience i’ve had in any game. The knowledge you required to do well and the array of possible team setups even the gimmicks were diverse. It had a real depth of gameplay and teamplay.

BUT its gone now, golden age will be missed.

Decrypter.1785:

I care gw1 pvp > gw2 pvp /bow

I care gw1 pvp > gw2 pvp /bow

R.I.P Decent Combat system

1) Fix the bug that causes marks to go on full CD.
2) Make Putrid mark transfer conditions off allies, but keep it at 3 conditions per person

Anet wanted to buff support skills last month. Necros have some of the weakest support. Anet gave several other classes enhanced condi clears to reduce condi dominance. So why is anet taking away a support skill and a condi clear from necros? This change is directly contrary to both the general direction they are trying to take the game and the necros class needs.

The way this has been communicated is also very poor. Anet’s post implies the nerf was intended all along. However there was no notification of the “major balance changes” and no reply to the numerous bug reports. This is not collaborative development. Instead it undermines the possibility of collaborative judgment by engendering mistrust and resentment in the playerbase. Anet if you want to work with the players then you have to be straight with us.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

We are changing the tooltip to clear up the confusion for this skill. It is a 3 condition transfer from self to foes when they trigger it. None of the other issues are bugs.

Hope this clears things up. This skill has undergone major balance renovations.

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

I would LOVE for you to explain how this is one of the best skills in the game. Go on I’m waiting.

So we finally get gold rewards form tpvp and people are complaining about it. I rather get 8 to 10s per win than crappy armor skins and paid tokens which I’m swimming in.

I don’t understand at all… I really don’t.

Terror is the red-headed step child on the chopping block every patch. While that trait is everything that is RIGHT with high reward skills.

Do you know how much damage terror does if I miss my fear? Or get it gets blocked? Or evaded? Or tossed into stability? Zero.

Dummfire on the other hand, they can be Jackie Chan and it will still get them on the next auto attack crit 100% chance, or aoe crit, or whatever.

And Dummfire is okay, while terror is a problem? The earlier post even said you wanted less automatic stuff and more skill based stuff.

FYI: Terror is and was that skill based stuff.

I wish with so much fervor we could go back to pre-torment pre-burning days and try buffing up necro again from there.

EVERY SINGLE BALANCE PATCH focuses on the 30/20/0/0/20 necro and nerfing it, while dabbling with minor things in the other trees. We all know that build with Geo, and skill, and weakening shroud, can put a bunch of bleeds onto a target at once. But did you ever stop to think that not everyone does or wants to run that build?

The nerfing that is going on, without sufficiently improving anything else is just going to continue to force everyone to play that same old had build until it is in balance, which is going to break and ruin every other build we have.

Weakening Shroud
This trait as it currently stands on live is a borderline grandmaster trait. It is near 100% AoE weakness uptime for a small investment. The new version is still probably worthy of master tier with almost 50% AoE weakness uptime. This line has a lot of powerful traits, but suffers from having only 1 choice at grandmaster tier.

in what world is 6s/25s = almost 50%?

Some great (negative) feedback guys, but some of the posts are bordering on hostile. Don’t scare them away or they might not come back at all. What I’m picking up on so far as general feedback lately…

-Dhuumfire, despite being powerful, is bad for Necros overall.
-More control would be welcome, especially for power builds.
-DS is great, but fails to protect us against burst from multiple sources like Vigor/Evade/Stealth/Invulns can.
-Aside from minions, Life Siphons are still rather weak.
-Death Magic needs less emphasis on minions.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

How is this one of the best skills then?

Tyler Chapman.1832:

…it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

The only skills that go on full cooldown when interrupted are those that give an effect during the casting time (Block while casting, stability when you start casting, etc…), Marks (all of them suffer from this) have no effect during casting time.

Also, in its original form, it was one of the best skills in the game (One of the few Necromancer had, have you seen the rest of our weapon skills?). For the past few months, it is no more than another transfer on a long cooldown that still doesn’t make Staff a viable main weapon, it has nearly no group utility (the blast finisher requires an enemy to function at all).

If this is “one of the best skills in the game” and as such requires a full cooldown in interrupt, why doesn’t Moa Morph go on full cooldown when interrupted? Why doesn’t Healing Rain go on full cooldown when interrupted? Why doesn’t Shadow Refuge go on full cooldown when interrupted? Why doesn’t Battle Standard (Warbanner) go on full cooldown when interrupted?

There are plenty of “best skill in the game”s that don’t go on full cooldown when interrupted, and many of them are far more potent in combat that a measly transfer of 3 conditions.

Tyler Chapman

We are changing the tooltip to clear up the confusion for this skill. It is a 3 condition transfer from self to foes when they trigger it. None of the other issues are bugs.
Hope this clears things up. This skill has undergone major balance renovations.

So basically one of our skills under went massive changes over FOUR months ago, and there was not a single patch note to communicate it. After which the Necromancer community spent over four months repeatly reporting bugs with the skill and asked for clarification. And this is our response…

Tyler Chapman

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

Just for clarity sake…

We got Dhuumfire (4sec on 10sec CD, 2Sec on 10sec CD in sPvP, as a Grandmaster Trait (vs Engineers Minor trait that is 4sec in both game modes)) for:

A massive loss of utility on Putrid Mark (Stealth Nerf)

A Bleed Stack on scepter #2 (sPvP only)

Terror increasing to Master tier

Greater Marks increasing to Master tier

Not to mention in the same patch group Loss of Deathshroud absorbing a single hit

(Huge issue in PvE content and a one of many suggestions of how to fix it
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Suggestion-for-Necro-Lack-of-Evade-Block/first#post3030165)

As well as Spectral Armor/Walk Lifeforce generation normalization.

That is an impressive trade off.

I’ve posted this numerous times.

Change all on-death traits to have new triggers as follows:
1. Full effect on enemy death
2. Reduced effect on extra triggers: enemy down (sPvP only), ally death, minion death

OR make the full effect trigger no matter what, but reduce its effectiveness slightly to accomodate the extra triggers.

Reduced effects would either be lowered amounts of whatever should happen (spiteful removal only removes 1 condition), or reduced chances of happening (25% chance to summon Jagged horror). Tune the ICDs and effects as necessary, but it makes absolutely no logical sense that we only benefit from our enemies dying for our traits, but we gladly steal our allies life essences.

It also vastly improves them all. Reanimator isn’t bad because of Jagged Horrors, its bad because it doesn’t happen often enough, and often doesn’t happen when its meaningful. Same with Spiteful Removal.

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

…

We talk about a lot of different versions of this trait including moving to master tier, making it on hit instead of on crit, and reworking the numbers to making it more reliable to use and to counter.

All of this back and forth could upset a lot of balance, but if this moved down to master tier Terror would almost certainly be moving up to grandmaster to accommodate. At least then condition necromancers would be 20/30/x/x/x, which just makes so much more sense. The biggest thing holding that back is the lack of a replacement grandmaster in Spite. We aren’t huge fans of weapon or utility type specific traits at this tier otherwise an improved Axe Training might have a shot. This is the crux of the damage necromancer problem right now, and we will talk about it more next week so any discussion on it here will aid us in those talks.

Death Magic
On the defensive side, the Blood and Soul Reaping necros are starting to feel pretty good. The Death line on the other hand is too focused on minions. From Reanimator, which we have heard over and over feels bad as a minor trait, to the fact that 1/3 of the remaining traits are minion traits, to finally the fact that both grandmaster traits are minion traits.

This line 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.

I hope this helps direct discussion a bit, and thanks for your patience,

Jon

Almost all of the people on this forum can testify to my love for the necromancer class, and the respect i have for ArenaNet. How i still advertise the game and the class…
With that being said… allow me to say that while everything you said is true, you speak as if besides all of these… necromancer can survive focus fire, can chase and escape…
We had all of these because we can not survive focus fire, we can not chase… we can not escape !… our damage was all that we had going for us…

I have an idea… one of your best necromancer players fights vs 2 of my people and see if he doesn’t die instantly. Then you get two of your best guys… and i will bring you one of each class (except necromancer) and i will prove to you that you can’t kill him… he will escape you, at least for a minute or more…

Not to sound rude… but have any of you tried playing high end TPvP ?… If so please show me how can you survive focus fire, and be more alive then dead in those situations, which are… almost all the time…
No aegis, no block, no distortion, no invulnerability, no mist form, no revive, no total condition immunity, no total physical damage immunity… no mobility…All we had was our damage which made us really strong 1v1… really bad at everything else.

Take that away from us… you’ll see way less necromancers in TPvP, and that is because people will eventually get tired of fighting a bit then dying from focus fire… fight a bit, die… fight die / low damage = kill nothing because targets always get away… chase = negative.

I like the idea of the Necromancer changes, but a few things worry me.

Condition Damage
1) Are the bleeding nerfs permanent, in a way that you want to push us towards Dhuumfire/Terror for damage?
2) If you are going to then nerf Dhuumfire/Terror (the only things that are actually still holding us up as a viable condition damage build), will you revert some of the nerfs we’ve seen since Dhuumfire was added? (not all, but some).
3) What about changing Dhuumfire to Torment? Its current method isn’t fun, the Necromancer has little control over it, the opponent can’t do much about it, its just sucky right now, and it only has 1 way to balance it (duration). Torment, along with a better trigger mechanic, has 2 tools for balancing (duration and intensity), and also has more interesting gameplay associated, since if the person in question needs say 3 seconds till their cleanse they can just sit on the stacks and take the non-upgraded damage.

Defense
You keep saying we should be low mobility high aggression. I 100% agree, we should be the “manliest” class in the game. However we need to all agree that it isn’t the case right now, unless you are an MM.
4) Do you agree that Death Shroud is still slightly subpar when it comes to a defensive mechanic because of its non-scaling with enemies (whereas a block is a block, no matter how many)? If so, do you plan on any good gameplay ways to fix this (such as a 1s block on DS entry as a trait)?
5) Can we agree that non-MM siphoning is still broken? I see the problem with it, it has really difficult balance because it scales with how quickly you hit. What about implementing a short ICD on Vampiric and Vampiric Precision so it doesn’t have the crazy AoE procs (wells can proc 15 siphons per second with full traiting, 5 targets, and critting)? This way even scepter/staff builds with lower attack rates can benefit, making Blood Magic a sustain option for everyone not just dagger/wells.
6) We need more love on Death magic. I’ll talk about reanimator just below, since I talked with Sharp(?) about this before. Death Magic isn’t a good tree unless you have a staff, or are an MM. We need a non MM Grandmaster trait that gives us some really strong defense for the investment, and Necromatic Corruption needs some big changing. Death Magic overall should be our main defense tree, with Blood Magic as our sustain tree, and Soul Reaping as our Death Shroud tree (hybrid offense/defense). As it is right now though, Death Magic gives no noticeable defense to non-MMs. Blood Magic is subpar sustain, and Soul Reaping outpaces both of them in any defensive effort.

Reanimator and On-Death Traits
7) Reanimator. Thanks for the ICD drop, this helps quite a bit. But it needs to proc more during fights. As it is now, it will never proc meaningfully in any PvP match (by the time someone is killed, you won the fight, his addition is meaningless), in PvE they don’t spawn on any boss fights without adds until the end. “Hey guys I just got here, who do I attack?” “Oh, everyone’s dead? I’ll just sit here until I die…”

What about extending it to apply on minion and ally death, and in PvP when enemies are downed (instead of dead, since enemies get downed all the time and come back up, he could help swing things)? The ally/minion activation shouldn’t be guaranteed, but a smaller chance, maybe 20% when a minion dies, 50% when an ally, whatever works. But this way we get benefit no matter what.

This could apply to all on-death traits, almost all of which aren’t great in PvP or boss-fight PvE right now. Allow them to activate on minion or ally death, or enemy down, but at a reduced strength for ally/minion. This creates a lot of internal synergy within the Necromancer class, and it makes sense (why would we only benefit on enemy death? All death is equal, we already take our allies’ life force, why not other things?).

To summarize, I’d just like to know the direction the Dhuumfire/Terror and other nerfs to damage are going. I’d like to know your plans and feelings on Death and Blood Magic as they currently stand, and how you will allow us to have more defensive options. And I’d like to know your feelings on making on-death traits more impactful with more triggers than simply enemy death.

I’ll be honest, I “understand” the point of it. Necromancers in PvP (the only place balance matters to them, lets be honest here) are too strong because of our ability to stack a bunch of bleeds that get covered.

Problem is the bleeds themselves are 0% the problem. We were the same pre-dumbfire. Back then though, we were two conditions down, and our scepter poison was down. That means we had less cover conditions, and also our scepter 1 spam didn’t force removals like it does now.

So what is the logical thing to do after the recent patches changed us? Address the new patches. What did ANet do? Nerf things that are perfectly fine on their own, but only bad due to a new trait nobody likes as is. Allofmywut?

I get their through process: we need to nerf Necromancer damage because its too high, so lets nerf their damage. They just are doing it stupidly.

Also, pour some out to our dead homie, Putrid Mark. </3

Justin ODell.9517:

But… but then I won’t have a bunch of fans because I’m one of the only devs on my server!

I would definitely like to see this done, but it requires some back-end server work. If I could only clone myself.

Just roll a Mesmer real fast, it’ll solve that no-cloning problem.

Stability sucks but is needed in this CC fest. They both would need to be reduced.

sorrow.2364:

Immunity has always been a stupid mechanic in this game and stability is a part of it…

I agree with this entirely… Yet the game needs stability. Which just says that there are issues with the proliferation of CC’s more than anything else.

Basically there are too many in the game, or their risk/reward structures are badly balanced.

-a sort of HA mode (with its own title system, 5vs5)
and 2 GvG modes:
-GW1 GvG, with a flag stand or some other kind of 2nd objective (5vs5, but might have to increase to 8vs8).
-GW2 GvG, just to brawl around: 15vs15/20vs20/25vs25 – whatever you like.
bring back the champ title for the GW1 GvG and award extra wxp or something else for the GW2 GvG (+ a title because why not <3)