Hey guys I would like community feedback experiences using minions.
Where do you find minions useful? – Lots of places
Where do you find minions not useful? – Situations where I need control over the AI to, for example, prevent the minions from attacking.
Would you use a full set of minions without minion traits? – Would you put diesel in your E-85?
would you use one minion with minion traits? – Minor or major
would you use one minion without minion traits? – Absolutely
which gear sets would you use minions with? – Minions don’t wear gear.
Boon corruption is not, entirely, random. The person running boons has a fair bit of control over the resulting conditions. Necromancer has no “choice” but the boon-spamming opponent does.
Corrupting even one boon per AA cycle will be powerful against professions that generate boons constantly and, if a profession is set up for certain boons with 100% up-time, that player should be ready to see it get corrupted more often than a boon with low up-time.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
First, I do not understand how a change to a condition damage weapon will affect a power weapon. People play builds they like. The weapon is secondary.
Second, from a PvE PoV, adding a corruption to scepter will help give it a bit more use in PvE when compared to the condi-burst professions and I like the dev’s thinking in making boon-spamming more dangerous in all game modes.
Third, axe seems fine as it is. It has been buffed I-don’t-know-how-many-times.
The gaps I see in weapon functions are: long-range direct-damge, short-range condi-damage, and strong group support (for a significant dps loss).
Staff is a fine AoE weapon but it’s limited group support with condi-transfer toned down, Defiant implemented, and it was never a long-range, single-target dps weapon. Arguably, axe is the long range dps weapon but several professions get 1500 range, well outside of most hazard areas.
Scepter is the only pure condition damage weapon with nothing more potent to switch to at less than 150 range. A short-range condi-burst weapon would be very nice and likely an instant hit with the profession.
One idea for a new group support weapon might be condition corruptions, or making conditions into boons. Combine that in a new elite line that sacrifices Shroud to heal allies using LF and I think that could make Necromancer more capable in support roles.
Its all well and good have interesting dynamic fights like that. But for truly challenging content you need timers and gates as well. Both sides are required to create difficulty. Without them you can just take slow cheesy routes (see safespots etc). And the timers on spirit vale arent even hard gates. So im really confused about all these complaints about “hard gates” and “hard timers”. They dont exist in gw2 raids yet people are implying they do falsely. Im guessing they havent actually played the raids or havent lived long enough to run out of time on the timer so they dont realise that. :P
I agree the events should be planned and there should be limits in the time to complete but disagree on how tightly scripted the first raid is. Group dps is emphasized too heavily creating potential for profession discrimination while group survival and real time strategy seem under-rated.
Do this, then do that, bring me a rock, reset for the next phase – this all reminds me of a turn-based, sequential game.
A raid I would like to see would have several bosses active simultaneously using a variety of skills and having a variety of weaknesses. The raid team would have to decide which to separate and kite or focus, which to attack simultaneously and how to counter their skills while keeping the raid alive. The initial part of the fight would be extremely difficult, of course, but getting one boss focused down would relieve some pressure and ease the next focus target. This is much like the first fight in the Uncategorized fractal but scaled up.
There are other aspects of fractals I would include in a raid design.
After writing all that, I thought about what are the closest examples to fighting a good AI in this game.
It is events with multiple mobs: each one may only have three skills but, with several types of them and in good quantity, the result is closer to what I expect of a boss with good AI. There is still no active skill countering but the numbers and positioning of multiple, powerful mobs.
Soloing or duoing refugee camp defense offers more real time strategy because of the more random and less predictable elements while being difficult enough due to being grossly outnumbered.
Arenanet could take four of their favorite fractal bosses, a few lower bosses like champs, stuff ten players onto a platform with them, and wish everyone luck. I would prefer that to gated phases and timers. The variety of boss skills should mix things up enough in the chaos.
PvE is always going to be scripted. If you have a boss that acts “intelligently” with blocks/dodges/etc., then the fight will render down into gaming the boss to force blocks/dodges/etc., after which you apply the actual DPS. It will still be scripted. PvE is a scripted challenge that you overcome as a group. Once they create learning AI, maybe they’ll be able to create something you seem to want.
Also, you can’t say “threat should go to the highest DPS/healing”, then turn around and complain about there not being a reason to bunker. If there was a reason to bunker, the bunker wouldn’t even be able to take aggro in your scenario, since DPS would just be stripping it off constantly. They’d have to fully develop the concept of “threat”, add in abilities that generate more threat, and then you’re back at a trinity. A toughness-based aggro system should work just fine.
Further, these are the first 3 raid bosses ANet has created. What exactly were your expectations? Tuning is always a moving target when it comes to raid encounters. If ANet wants to move away from a “zerker meta”, they’ll have to see how the zerker meta operates in a raid situation, why it still works, and analyze how they might be able to design an encounter that punishes it in some way. It’s going to take time.
And if they are simple sponges on a timer, why was the 3rd boss only killed for the first time two days ago? It took people 3-4 days to figure out a couple sponges?
EDIT – @Skoigoth: I agree with you. At this point it’s about completion, it seems, and if you can complete with a Reaper, then that’s good in my book.
PvE does not need to be scripted to such detail. The script just resets the fight as the next phase begins. It is useful for controlling the pace for event progression, if you are a developer measuring player performance and builds.
Ten skills on a boss AI, all with individual cool down timers, add a lot more complexity for players than scripted phases.
Bosses do not need groundbreaking AI development. They just need a few skills on rotation and the rest of the skills on demand as automatic counters to players’ skill use.
The server knows meteor shower is coming so why not use a dodge to avoid the red circle? The AI does not have to predict anything, just react to skills with strong damage or heals. If the boss would just block, dodge, or interrupt big skills using counters on cool down timers like real players, that would be more than challenging enough without needing multiple phases heavily scripted. It would also create a more pvp-like experience so PvE players would not develop bad habits.
Regarding aggro, toughness could be used to claim a tank role and help position the boss but the meta does not need a tank role and building for aggro control has no value in the zerker / sinister meta.
If toughness-based tanking is not where the game designers want to go, fix the aggro table so at least player damage, control effects, and heals factor in more strongly.
Arenanet should either make events require a tank+healer system for positioning and keeping dps-ers safe, or change the aggro formula to be less friendly to those same dps-ers. Right now, the system is broken from the stand point of both options: tank+healer does not increase the effective dps of other professions so there is no point to toughness while offensive and healing stat’s also do not generate more aggro meaning there is no penalty in building glassy.
All of these suggestions are well within Arenanet’s ability. I do not understand why the company still chooses to design easy PvE AI and scale up difficulty with ‘bring me a rock’ event design.
Staff is a good utility weapon. I would like to see its utility broadened even more.
Necromancer really needs a ranged power weapon, though, but it should not be staff.
I am struggling with how similar the raid content is with traditional PvE. The same old issues that plagued PvE and made Necromancer less than optimal are still there.
First, I do not understand why there have to be time limits and other gates that force separations between professions with different damage output. I want a developer to explain this. A challenging encounter should not boil down to bringing max dps professions and this is how the raid is shaking out.
Second, the raid bosses still do not calculate aggro the way I think they should. The highest damage or heals should claim aggro. There is no reason to bunker for aggro controller so max dps is the only build that matters. Aside from needing a few high condition damage builds, some CC, and a little boon stripping, the meta is still berserker/sinister/boons, leading back to the first point. The raid does not support professions designed around non-desirable ‘roles’ when the most important requirement is dps. Artificially claiming aggro with a toughness build does not help the team. Do healers like Druid or a water Ele need to be there?
Third, raid bosses follow a set script for what they do and when they do it. Once a player memorizes the script, the raid becomes less interesting. I would rather see raid bosses have ten skills like players and enough intelligence to block, counter, dodge, heal, and target skills toward specific professions. This “wandering around using three skills” design is garbage.
Raid bosses should be difficult to play against and not be a simple damage sponge on a timer.
The more I play the new PvE areas, the more disappointed I am in how that play adheres to the old ‘just flail at it until it dies’ design.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
The map participation calculation is bugged. The participation is zeroed out when a player has not actually left the map. This happens when…
1) A particular instance develops low population and players are offered the option of joining another instance. Upon joining the map, participation is reset.
2) A player in a group joins another map to play with another group member in a different instance, thereby restarting the map participation process.
There may be other ways to unintentionally “leave” the map and reset the participation level such as personal story, though I have not confirmed this one.
Please correct this error.
So necro, specifically condi, is great for general fights static or mobile, but isn’t meta. Meta being condi engi, revenant and tempest?
Yes, pretty much.
Necromancer condi still suffers from the PvE immunity Curse – most of Necromancer conditions is soft CC that only counts toward break bars.
People still ask me to run a condition build for corruption and think Necromancer is great at condition damage when it is really a soft CC support class, which is slightly less useless in PvE than it was.
Necromancer running condition damage is still lame. It takes too highly a tuned build to be less effective than the meta.
The only things Necromancer seems to do well are clinch-res and be half decent at multiple roles.
Thanks for the input. I am going to put together some new armor and have a cleric’s stet stored, somewhere, already. Something with the new expertise stat is also on the list but I need to figure out how much expertise i really have to have so i don’t end up too light on power and condition damage stats.
I really wish there was a 3-stat armor with expertise as one of them, instead of the 4-stat spread.
Dagger is a great weapon – the equal of greatsword.
That is exactly how I feel.
I almost said dagger > greatsword but the new weapon is so shiny-new right now. Honestly, GS needs utilities and traits that generate a lot of LF. Dagger does not. GS needs good heals. Dagger does not.
If only off-hand dagger were as useful as main-hand…
There are more than enough casual aspects remaining in HoT. Gw2 is not hard core by any measure. The long, gated events requiring a minimum population and participation are less hard hard core than annoying in how heavily scripted they are.
Hard core is…
When you lose a week’s worth of experience each time you die.
When the nearest res point is a huge distance from your group.
When you get so little xp for mobs you can solo that everyone is forced to group because xp requirements to level are exponential.
When everyone in the group is expected to memorize a list of mob type weaknesses and immunities.
When the combo system is three or more tiers deep, attached to most spells and attacks, and everyone must know the which skills to use in the right order to avoid combinations where the mob takes normal or reduced damage from.
When most high level skills are rare drops from specific mobs you need a group to farm for.
When you wait for half an hour up to, maybe, all day to gather a group to go grind for xp or a rare drop you want/need.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
Woah, “…not casual…”
What is the player cap per map shard, anyway? New areas seem large and convoluted enough to handle an expanded population but I do not know if the servers can handle more.
As Bhawb has pointed out many times, Necromancer defense does not scale. There are no immunity skills.
Necromancer’s offense does scale fairly well compared to many professions. Thus, your team should draw multiple opponents to you so you can pre-condition them nicely for a large team advantage. (theoretically with perfect timing, and perfect positioning) Necromancer condition spam can put multiple opponents’ condition clears on cool down, leaving them exposed for your team mates.
Going to give the raid another try, tonight. Condition damage may not be Engi level but surviving, res’ing, boon corruption, tanking in sinister gear, and our CC like horn’s stun, chills, and fear are useful even if not exactly maximum.
If Necromancer / Reaper are part of a meta, I would argue there is no meta, as Arenanet intended.
Part of the reason the new areas feel more friendly to Necromancer is because the mobs are more active and not so faceroll easy.
Perhaps I have been using it wrong by not having healing. It feels like just a trickle exiting shroud in zerker gear. My minions do not look very much happier when I use it on them.
How do you use LfD and how often?
Necromancer is good enough for most PvE except it is still sub-optimal for the original dungeons where mobility (skipping), stealth, and boon generation rule.
Life from Death is a trait I struggle to make useful. When in Death Shroud, I res before leaving. Dropping shroud to res is not how I like to work.
If I run out of LF while res’ing and am kicked from shroud, it interrupts the res making this trait useful but otherwise it is faster to continue res’ing. The outgoing heal on exiting shroud and the odds of de-transforming during a res feel small.
Thoughts?
Rirgul, your equipment has an awful lot of condition duration. How does dps compare to sinister or rampager?
Right now, I am using bursting and malice on a pair of giver’s weapons.
Transfusion is pretty much Necromancer’s saving grace for group support. BiP is part of Corruptions, which is not my favorite skill set right now.
Dagger is a great weapon – the equal of greatsword.
Transfusion was very useful, as was boon corruption and CC. One group had insufficient boon removal so I ran Dark Path and NCSY. Blood Magic, Curses, and Reaper.
Will change out Curses for soul Reaping and/or death Magic in tonight’s game. Really want to give zerker Mm a shot.
BTW, Ember works.
No success my first night trying the raid. Started with a sinister bleed MM build using scepter/horn but was asked not to run the minions. Opted to run shouts and Dark Path, instead, for the chill condition damage and ended up taking greatsword, too. Scepter was far easier to keep dps up on.
Ran rabid torment armor, too, for added toughness but overall condition damage did not seem very good compared to other professions like engineer.
Plan to try a zerker dagger/focus, axe/horn build, next but do not have appropriate runes for the raid. Scholar runes may not be as productive as Ranger runes.
WoB is no longer my go-to group heal. I use Transfusion for that. The outgoing heal is too weak to suffer the WoB’s conditional healing.
Only wear condition damage armor with scepter equipped. Otherwise, power-crit still trumps all.
There are situations where scepter is handy, though, but you can get by with axe on a power build, instead.
tried to get a gear response on a different thread. no responses. so here it is rephrased does a reaper chill minion bomber get more damage out of condition damage or power damage?
Power is always your largest dps contributor unless you use scepter exclusively.
Terror, Dhuumfire, Deathly Chill, a few bleeds from Curses, none of that condition damage equals direct damage unless you are swinging a scepter. Even then, utilities like minions or wells can still give significant direct damage.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
Toughness is part of the armor value but toughness is over-weighted in the aggro table. It has been this way since the game launched. A player with substantially higher toughness than other players is regarded as a higher threat despite the trade-off of dps to gain that toughness. This contributes a lot to the berserker meta because there is no benefit to lowering dps for more defensive play. Having no additional toughness increases survivability by decreasing your threat value. Dps and healing, on the other hand, are under-weighted, meaning increased dps and heals do not affect aggro as much as toughness.
Your equipment’s total defense value plus toughness is “armor” shown on the hero panel.
Aggro is the result of an AI’s calculated threat priority. A player’s toughness stat is highly weighted, although there are other factors like damage.
Necromancer’s lack of mobility and its strong AoE conditions mean at least part of the team should be playing around it, not outpacing or abandoning it.
Put a Necro on a point, have a Ranger perched ready to snipe, and someone stealthed nearby. When the other team sees a lone Necromancer and rush in for the easy kill, jump them after the Necro lays out condition spam.
I did not get online last night but have noticed Reaper has lower average dps than several other professions. It is certainly not OP.
Well, there is general boss immunity to conditions and the condition caps to take the fun out of condi. Bleed, poison, and break bar wreckers are the only viable choices for Necro conditions.
Bleeding tank transfusion will be my raid build. I do not think I will use the Reaper line for the first run.
Need to dust off Krait runes.
You lost me at duel swords.
Describe the functional niche your specialization idea fills and how it addresses shortcomings of current necromancer builds. The theme is irrelevant.
Actual team play should do it and you will not find that in Yolo PUGs. Your team should be using you as both bait and trap.
Necromancer AoE condition effects scale rapidly up the more players get too close but that situation is totally bad news for a solo Necro. Your team should treat you as the point to defend and stay on tight orbit. It is kind of like players running boon sharing builds. Ideally, put a strong boon sharer with strong condition-mancer to maximize advantage for three others.
PvP arenas are large and have too much going on for consistent 5v5 team fights. When I PUG it, people die, get separated, or break off for solo/duo stuff. Necromancer is designed more for AoE debuff than anything else. The other team really wants you separated or dead to keep your effect on the match minimal.
Unfortunately, PvE and even WvW content trains players to not work well together.
If you are new, try running a condition build using the Curses trait line and scepter / war horn. If you want a power build like greatsword, try using axe / horn or axe focus. Both scepter and axe are easier to stay on target with while you learn.
Oansur, Who in the world told you horn is superior in PvE? The last time I ran it seriously in PvE was for the interrupt chance during an experiment using Rune of Perplexity.
Ps: I typically run traited dagger / traited focus in PvE when not running greatsword/shouts. When I do run greatsword, staff, scepter/focus, or axe/focus are typical combo’s.
Off hand dagger is weak and unnecessary in PvE.
Horn causes as many mobility problems as it solves and bosses are immune to stun.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
I mis-counted but my point was the developers expect Necromancer to “buy” condition transfers on corruption builds. That does not mean the cost/performance is adequate. I almost never trait for a Corruption build. It does mean that, at least for PvP, a corruption transfer build is close to balanced on their records.
It is not at all balanced in PvE, being the single weakest build by a very wide margin, if conditions are not ideal for Epidemic. (Even nerfed Epidemic is either super strong or ultra useless.) R.I.P., CPC.
Even in PvP, conditions, especially Necromancer’s soft CC, feel much less effective than they used to but I am not very knowledgeable about that.
Corruption utilities are definitely weak but transfers are supposed to be required for their use. I loath using any but the heal and elite, always build for transfer and removal if I do run them, and still hate the trait but I play more PvE and WvW.
Putrid Mark
Deathly Swarm
Plague Signet
Plague Sending
Suffer
Sigil of Generosity
Necromancer has 7 6 ways of transferring conditions and several more ways to remove them. Building for transfers is absolutely, IMO, necessary so it is highly Necromancers are expected to transfer self-inflicted conditions to opponents.
Edit: Was thinking of Blood Bond as a transfer but it is lesser SoV.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
You can mix stat’s, too, adding Cleric to Berserker or Valkyrie. People only think they must have a matched set.
The main question I think OP has is if condition damage is good enough to have gear for. My opinion is that everyone should have a condition damage set of armor along with a power-crit set and carry them both. Whether you use rampager, sinister, or add a little defense is up to you but sometimes condition damage works, even on Necromancer where condition damage is weaker than other professions.
I would rather focus on improving lesser used skills and making traits/skills more complementary.
For example
Signet of Undeath – add passive Transfusion teleport range increase.
Lingering Curse – add 25 per cent duration increase on all conditions. Adjust scepter bleed and poison duration accordingly.
Could someone please recommend a good PvP guild for Alex?
Reaper is only one trait line and it is focused on greatsword, shouts, vulnerability, chill, and chill condition damage.
It seems like a lot when it is new but it does not do much for ranged damage, dagger, horn, scepter, healing, bleeding, poison, weakness, fear/Terror, wells, corruption, Signets, or Spectral skills. It only helps minions a little, maybe.
AI is still bad in HoT but I almost danced in joy at seeing one of the Mordrem Guard dodge.
The AI really should mimic team PvP. Right now, HoT is only tougher because mobs have more health and stronger attacks. It is just scaling and that is boring by itself. Event boss battles are also too highly scripted: do this for this phase and that for that phase, etc. Bosses should have better counters so players are forced to group up and coordinate combat skills, not group for loot or to not get lost.
For example, I save DS 4 Transfusion for when the team needs an AoE heal or to shift-res a downed player to safety. If Transfusion could move players more effectively, it would be truly awesome but the movement fails often practice. Every pull fails more than I like but that is for another thread.
I have seen lots of other players also build for team support and use skills to help each other. Players want that but the AI and events focus more on following a script, gating one phase after another against a timer, than meeting an objective or countering a raid’s objective.
Coordinating special skills and utilities with big group benefit is what I want form PvE, not an uncooperative zerg of max dps-ers. Only really good AI can force players to cooperate more effectively.
True, Necromancer boon corruption was nerfed slightly while most professions received stronger condition clears.
I think we are lucky to have finishers at all.
Necromancer does not have rotations that provide large dps increases
Generally, start by popping off staff skills as quickly as you can, switch to scepter, and stay there as much as possible.
Scepter is tricky in that you restore your LF with Feast of Corruption, not the auto-attack. However,scepter AA does most of your dps.
Once you switch to scepter, make sure you have your target with an auto-attack then use focus 4 for vulnerability and regeneration before going back to auto-attack. Cripple with scepter 2 if you need to kite. Chill with focus 5 after your target uses a bigger skill.
Use focus 4 whenever you can. It hits hard and constitutes a lot of the remaining damage aside from scepter AA and DS. Use scepter 3 and staff for LF.
Scepter condition damage builds are slow to build LF so consider utilities to help that or minions to take aggro.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)