Guild Wars 2

@Arvid
Is that the newest damage formula? I haven’t been even a fraction as active on here as I once was, so I haven’t the slightest idea as to what has been figured out.

When stating that lower damage weapons aren’t worth the Power investment, I refer to the fact that a skill that does 100 damage (Being a low damage weapon) will simply double to 200 damage with an additional 916 Power investment. An ability that hits for 1000 damage (Being a high damage weapon) will be bumped up to 2000 damage, resulting in an overall difference of 900 damage, even though the stat investment was the exact same; you get much less bang for your buck per point when your base damage is already low in comparison to a harder-hitting base damage ability. Drastic examples, same concept.

In this example, I would come to the conclusion that dropping a few, or even a chunk of stats from Power in favor of Vitality, which benefits -all- Professions in an exactly equal manner (1 Vitality = 10 HP, always) is actually a valid conclusion. If I were doing 1000 base damage, as opposed to 100, that additional 1000 damage would look far more tempting than a few hundred or a few thousand additional Hit points.

I’m actually debating this for a tanky build over Soldier’s.

Anyone know whether damage calculations are based off of the 916 base stats (With an additional 916 Power being ~100% additional damage), or whether abilities actually scale via ratios (Ie, for every point in Power, you gain .X damage in ability Y)?

Swapping to Sentinel from Soldier gives approximately 910 more HP while losing 91 Power. Assuming Power does not scale via ratios, but off of the base stats, that’s approximately a 10% damage drop from Power primary to Power secondary. Is that worth an additional 910 Health, which (Presumably) double-dips back into Death Shroud at a slightly lower rate, given that our base damage is relatively poor as it is?

Kardiamond.6952:

My guess? They didn’t know about it until 1 week ago when I posted it on WvW. They might still don’t know about it.

I’m actually willing to bet that they’ve known about it the entire time; I seem to vaguely recall that at one point, Deathshroud was essentially our “downed” ability. This 33% Downed HP in comparison to other Professions was probably a by-product that was left when they made the swap to Deathshroud being our Profession mechanic.

End product is rushed, this is the result.

Bhawb.7408:

Well, assuming they are based off exotic gear, give them an additional (slight) stat increase to whatever their stats are for each piece of ascended you have. So each piece gives a 1% or w/e increase to their base damage/defense.

That would be an extremely viable way to handle the issue. Problem being that it isn’t implemented, and with Arenanet’s track record, won’t be implemented until a big enough uproar is raised after players are decked out in Ascended gear.
It is the same issue with Engi Turrets, Elementalist Elementals, Ranger Pets, Thief’s Elite and Mesmer Phantasms. They are all based off of the currently released itemized gear, and with no scaling to speak of at all based upon gear rarity, they will be approximately 15% sub-par in comparison to the newest Ascended stat cap.

Is that 15% going to be enormously noticeable? It’ll be as noticeable as the difference between Exotic and Ascended gear; In some situations there will be absolutely no difference. Assuming equally skilled and geared players, with one being fully decked in skills that scale in proportion to their own combat strength, it will very much make a difference.

While I do agree that their damage output is not bad by any means, there is an issue; Ascended gear.
The current implementation was entirely fine, based off of the assumption that Minions were statically set to the Exotic gear level. However, I find it extremely hard to believe that they were initially set to a gear level of what the Ascended gear is/will be at. Which means that a player fully decked out in Ascended in the future is going to have Minions that perform approximately 15% worse than they should otherwise be performing.

That is an issue.

If this is actually the case, then I’m not entirely sure I’d want it changed. As of right now, Bloodthirst + Life Leech is enough to Rally you, even while sustaining a low to medium damage input. If we had 66% more HP while downed, Life Leech would -not- be able to Rally you alone, and you would be forced to use Bandage in order to Rally.

Life Leech is not percentage-based in terms of Lifesteal, while I’m fairly certain that the bleed-out while Downed is based off of your Maximum Life in the Downed state. This is actually easily tested with the +50/80/100% Downed HP consumable; The damage tick will increase by approximately 50/80/100% while the consumable is active.

Life Leech, however, does -not- increase in healing while this consumable is active.

This would make increasing the Downed HP pool a double-sided blade; It would hurt us as well as help in some cases. If they were to increase Life Leech to be a percentage based Lifesteal, however, we would be leeching more health while downed than we would be while actually in combat. I doubt Arenanet wants that outcome.

The problem is that this is more of a niche scenario. When would this additional 66% HP actually save you? In PvP while getting stomped, it doesn’t matter if you have 5 HP or 5 million HP. You’re dead as soon as you’re stomped. In PvE, it would prolong your death a bit if you had multiple monsters beating on you, but the bleed-out would be the same as if you had 66% less health, and you would have to be out of combat in order to Rally via Bandage. You might be saved if you had two or three party members reviving you, and that Health increase would have allowed you to live. But I can personally count on one hand the number of times where that scenario may have played out true, while I can not count the number of times that Life Leech alone has saved me.

So is there really a ‘good’ outcome for this?

Most (All? I can’t remember if Sigil of Leeching is affected) of the Siphons are scaled with the WvW’s Medic buff. The 1 or 2 points of increased Siphoning you are seeing is absolutely, one hundred percent coming from that buff. It does not scale from anything else.

Blood Fiend’s passive heal is also not increased by Bloodthirst or it would be healing for upwards of 1.5k. It heals somewhere in the low/mid 900s after two (Recent)consecutive buffs and does not scale with any of our stats, just like the rest of our minions. The misinformation that gets around on these forums is disgustingly bad.

Assuming equally skilled Thief? You die. Period. If you’re outplaying a Thief, you are better than them; If a Profession has a way to counter the vast majority of abilities you can throw out, but chooses not to counter them, then they are not playing properly. A properly played Thief will, more often than not, beat you.

Assuming you’re better than the Thief? Advice in the thread.

What other Minor Trait in the game would be able to reliably give you a damage cushion, a decent chunk of healing, 80 Toughness and more Combo fields?

As stated. The Minor Trait itself is not good. Paired with everything else? Five of them would be rather stupid for a Minor.

I think the issue with Jagged Horrors come in when you start synergizing the that one Minion with everything else. Jagged Horrors, alone, are pretty… Uh… Bad. Really bad.

Assuming, for a second, that they took away the Degeneration on the Jagged Horrors and put a cap of 5 on them; This is 80 additional Toughness to a Minion Master build than on Live, as well as ~480 addition healing every 3 (4?) seconds assuming Vampiric Master is taken, as well as four additional Death Nova zones on death. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll leave it at those being the -only- benefits that would be gained. That is an absolutely enormous boost to a build for a single Minor Trait.

Frankly, Arenanet was kitten for having put Reanimator as a Minor. I haven’t the slightest idea as to what they may have been thinking.

Freedansan.3571:

If you don’t mine me asking, that seems to be the problem with PotH? Is the bonus simply enough? Maybe a % bonus seems to be in order then o.o
What do you think would be a good replacement for it? I do think there is a place for this trait for the semi-tanky MM out there.

It pigeonholes an entire Trait line into going one route for the optimal benefit. And even then, you’re nearly shooting yourself in the foot by taking every utility slot full of buggy Minions in order to receive a nearly negligible optimal benefit.

Quick fix? Make Reanimator not so glaringly horrible. Change Protection of the Horde to give Protection for 3 to 5 seconds upon Minion summon and/or death. Most preferred change? No, not really. It’s still RNG-esque and doesn’t -really- benefit a non-MM imho. But considering they already have the voicing in for when a Minion is summoned or killed, they -must- have some kind of flag for it, and tacking a short-lived Protection buff onto that would hopefully be a simple change.

But that would probably open up numerous more bugs that somehow make Minions even more inept than they currently are, would somehow manage to nullify our Dodge roll during the summon/death animation of a Minion, and would double the cooldown length of all Minion abilities. Because at this point, that seems to be about what our track record is.

Skale Venom’s amazing on our Channels, isn’t it Ascii? ;p

Rennoko.5731:

Truncated that a bit, but I wanted to just draw attention to a the fact that you have a class circle strafing and using two skills, and the occasional utility, and the requires precise timing, practice, and skill to counter; utilizing all or most of our utilities and weapon skills; including those on our swap.

If that does not point to a disparity in the classes, I can’t imagine what would. The read was excellent information for someone who doesn’t play or know the thief class that well however, and I appreciated the information.

This is more or less the issue I have with it as well; It’s like saying, ‘If you play to absolute perfection, have complete mastery of the Profession, and you simply rely on the opponent to kitten something up somewhere in the fight, then you will win.’

I don’t understand that line of thought. How is that even a plausible solution? Should it not be that, ‘If you have complete mastery of the Profession, and play to absolute perfection, you will simply annihilate anyone that stands in your way, unless they play with very similar perfection and mastery.’?

Regardless, that was a nice read. Thanks for the information.

He doesn’t scale with Bloodthirst. He doesn’t scale with Healing Power. It is a flat Health gain per attack. His Siphons also do not do typical Siphon damage, as far as I’m aware. It’s just flat damage, with you gaining some amount as an entirely independent Heal. He scales with absolutely nothing you can throw at him, except the Minion Traits. They buffed his passive Siphon heal by 200% a few patches ago, from what I can remember.

Vampiric Master does have an affect, just like the other Minions; It’s a flat heal that does not follow normal Siphoning rules; It does no damage, does not scale with Bloodthirst, Healing Power, etc.

The only way to increase it is to do well in WvW and have the Medic increase all incoming healing.

Edited in; Taste of Death, last I tested a while back, was a 1:1 increase. 1 Healing Power = 1 Point of Health gained. Tooltip-wise, at least. The heal itself seems to be weird.

• And a few minor ‘balance tweaks’ wherever needed.

1) Have the amount of Healing that was reduced while under the Poisoned condition be transferred to us.

2) Have Chill, while maintaining the current effect, make skills used while under the Chilled condition recharge 33% slower until the skill is available for use.

While maintaining the ‘Master of Conditions’ theme, I feel one of these two (Or both) changes would serve to augment our proposed ‘attrition’ playstyle in an outstanding manner.

In regards to the poison change; Poison, as it currently is, is rather underwhelming. The heal reduction isn’t particularly massive, and the damage is negligible in comparison to a stack of Bleeds. If my assumption is correct, I’d believe the majority of Condition Necromancers would love to see our third Scepter swing simply apply 2 or 3 stacks of bleed instead of poison, but correct me if I’m wrong here. However, if Poison was changed so that we would actually receive whatever healing (Or a percentage of it) was reduced in the form of a heal, I believe it would both offer up a larger variety of builds, add a decent chunk of skill to the Necromancer gameplay, and bring back some of the mentality of the Guild Wars 1 Necromancer.

For example; Assuming a Warrior uses a skill that would normally heal him for 5k. If healing while poisoned, this 5000 heal is reduced to 3300. We would then gain that 1700 negated healing in health. This would both make Poison far more desirable to -any- Necromancer build, while also serving to boost our status as the attrition Class; The longer a fight lasted, the stronger we would become. Literally.

On top of the standard change this would bring, we just might actually see skills like Corrosive Poison Cloud being used, as well as the Fall damage reduction trait. Hybrid tanks would more than likely become at least slightly more viable than they currently are. It would open up a decent number of build options while retaining a very Necromancer-esque feel to it. It could also bring back some of the Guild Wars 1 Necromancer feeling of punishing foes while sustaining ourselves via Hexes.

As far as the Chill effect goes, I feel that it is currently an underwhelming condition for both the short application time it generally has, and also for the lengths of which we have to go to reliably apply it. Without creating a build revolving around Chill and nothing else, we really do not have many sustainable ways of applying it. Because of this, I would like to see it be changed to more of a niche, utility condition that, when used properly, can cripple an enemy in a longer fight. You would still get the standard effect of movement reduction (Which I personally use it for; Not so much for the cooldown reduction, as it is barely noticed outside of burst PvP builds), while also promoting good playstyle of predicting when an enemy is about to use a cooldown ability, and promptly chilling them.

This, like the above mentioned Poison change, would both promote our Master of Conditions title, as well as serve to augment our attrition playstyle. That being, the longer the fight goes on, the more often we get to Chill. And the more often we get to apply Chill, the longer the enemy cooldowns will become, leading to a long, drawn-out fight; That is what we were built around doing.

This change would more than likely open up build variety revolving around Chill as well, particularly in PvP (Getting someone’s Elite chilled would hurt them quite a bit).

While both of these changes together may very well push us over to ‘Horribly broken’ status, I feel as if one or the other, with a few number crunches, would not push us into the broken zone. These changes are also not attempting to alter the core concepts of the Necromancer himself, but attempt to promote the idea of the Profession as a whole.

TL;DR version; Change current conditions so that Bleedspam isn’t the only thing that Conditions are about.

Thought? Comments? Criticisms? Discussions?

I was asking for information on this quite a while back; It’s more or less unofficially confirmed that Death Shroud takes double damage from Condition damage. And Agony is treated as a condition.

As far as how the Resistance actually works with Death Shroud, I have no idea. I stopped caring, and until Arenanet can show me that they’re capable of intelligent fixes, I will continue to not care.

I’d rather have it toggleable. However, considering that would probably be more coding changes, it would simply open up more areas to bring out new bugs.

I’d be down for having it disabled and I generally run MM.

+1.

BladeArrowney.2619:

More often than not, most of the ones I encounter are either good enough to draw me into a stalemate, or GOOD enough to force me to retreat with my tail between my legs. I know I’m not the only one this happens to, my guild mates agree (except the one that plays necro, but he’s a slacker) and I’ve had plenty of people agree with me on reddit.

This is the issue.

Directly from the Developer post; Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, [which] allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

You, apparently, are not supposed to be able to get away from Necromancers easily. You either initiate and die, or you initiate and win, per what the Developers want us to be. As it is right now, you initiate and either kill us or get away safely because we have no means to catch anyone or anything.

This is why we are distraught. The whole vision of the Necromancer is up in the air, and nothing actually resembles what we’re hearing from the Devs. That is -really- not a good sign.

Thank you for basically solidifying our concerns from an outside perspective though. =/

Rennoko.5731:

I believe that is the case…. can’t get on to test yet though.

I won’t be bothering to update for a while, so confirmation would be good, I guess.

Just to kind of throw some laughs into the thread, here’s Arenanet’s obliviously incompetent outlook on the Profession, apparently;

Necro
The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Isn’t the Terror buff worded so that the damage Fear inflicts will now be increased by 50% if the Feared target has any (Additional) conditions on them?

And not ‘You do 50% more damage to the target while they have conditions’?

Whoo, we got the kittening Ranger treatment from last patch!

kitten you Arenanet. Seriously.

Fire Elemental Powder is a consumable item that spawns a permanent (Until killed) Fire Elemental pet of the name ‘Ember’.

With that said, I do believe the OP is trying to point out that a consumable item works better than our entire Profession’s Minion line, and because of this it may very well be possible that the Necromancer Minion AI was actually -meant- to be as piss-poor as it currently is. Why else would an item that is available to everyone in the game actually function more appropriately than our actual Skills? I’ve wondered the same thing after seeing a lot of these consumable pets run their course.

I find it hilarious how so many people are jumping the gun out of ignorance.

For the record, the Ogre Pet Whistle acts the same way; Far, far more responsive and intelligent than our actual Minions are.

Edited in to address the power discrepancy issue; The consumables that are in-game are completely out of whack as far as how powerful they are. So you can safely put aside any kind of ‘X item is op’ arguments. Ogre Pet Whistle (Essentially a permanent Ranger pet), Skale Venom (% chance to proc the Thief’s Skale Venom ability), Healing Seed Pod (Stacking Regen on top of Condition removal every second for ~5 to 10 seconds, with a 15 second CD) and Fire Elemental Powder (The Ember) are actually some of the consumables I run at all times.

I was under the assumption that Lifeforce is not ‘healable’ by normal means, under any conditions; That is, any healing you actually get while in Deathshroud is effectively 0. It just fluctuates dependent on whether or not you are gaining Lifeforce via traditional means.

I’m sure I’d have noticed that my Lifeforce went up a notch or two with all the incoming healing, but the only time it seem to increase while in Deathshroud is during Life Transfer or nearby deaths.

Edited in; It’s more than likely another ‘feature’, rather than an actual bug in Arenanet’s eyes though. Shrugs

Bumping this. Still waiting on any kind of confirmation from other Necromancers. And I’d hate for such a terrible design mechanic to be lost amongst our other bugs.

Frankly, the more I think about it, the more I believe Guardian will be the prime ‘Tank’ and ‘Support’ candidates for high level Fractals, while Thieves will be your best ‘Damage’ bet for the same Fractals. Both have low base HP and have next to no reason to stack Vitality, and both have numerous ways to completely nullify damage without actually ‘mitigating’ it.

nachtnebel.9168:

Necros still have DS which is really helpful against Agony. But you really should avoid being in Lich or Plague Form when Agony hits you.

As far as I’m aware, Death Shroud can take 4 (Unmitigated) hits of Agony at 100% Lifeforce before being depleted. It’s taking double damage from it, just as it takes double damage from additional sources of Condition damage. Ie, it’s absolute trash for mitigating Agony damage. No idea if it’s working as intended or not because of Arenanet’s ridiculous policy on being completely silent on whether or not something is a bug or working as intended.

Kravick.4906:

At least this more or less cements in the fact that Death Shroud is taking double damage from Conditions, right?

Its ok. Necromancers are OP because of Death Shroud.

Oh I know, we’re an unstoppable force. Especially when Death Shroud instantaneously disappears because a Boss decides to throw two stacks of Agony on you.

I can feel the power coursing through my frail corpse, as I lie on the ground in a pitiful attempt to Leech myself back up. It. Is. Glorious.

Three to four ticks before 100% Lifeforce is gone? If someone could confirm, that would be -fantastic-.

Assuming this is actually the case; Are you kittening kidding me? So not only do we take some of the highest amount of damage in-game via Agony due to base HP being higher, while our Healing scales piss-poor, meaning we have next to no way to actually mitigate said damage, but now our kittening Profession mechanic is completely and utterly negated by a PROGRESSION MECHANIC? Is this some kind of a sick, twisted joke, or am I overreacting to Arenanet’s complete incompetence at designing anything currently in-game?

At least this more or less cements in the fact that Death Shroud is taking double damage from Conditions, right?

NecropsY.8649:

This is not even true,
only Axe skill 2 was buffed
nothing else was buffed damage wise

This. Damage output is the exact same as always. Nothing’s been changed.

Staff #1 has also had a much longer range than 1200 for a very long time now. I guess it just wasn’t public knowledge? I’ve been using it to solo pull the Hunter from the Crusher in Arah’s Forgotten path since Day 1 (Or 2, or 3. Whatever).

That’s a given, but I didn’t expect Arenanet to be that daft. Or rather, I really didn’t want them to be.

Oh well.

The majority of random crap we got in the patch were Bug fixes through and through.

The only thing that really irks me (Outside of Thieves getting their Trait leech scaling with Power while Siphons remain unchanged), is that at this point I don’t know what the kitten is considered a bug and what is considered intended. I honestly did not see Mark of Evasion as a bug; I thought it was simply a nice addition to an otherwise slightly underwhelming Trait that also gave our Dodge Rolls multiple, varying uses.
Surprise, it was a bug. They didn’t even bother to remove the ridiculous 10 second ICD from it. Which was yet another reason I assumed it was working as intended.

So seriously, what in God’s name is considered a bug at this point? It would literally take Arenanet all of five minutes to respond to our list, stating whether each individual bullet was a ‘Feature’ or an actual bug. And they can’t even get their heads out of the sand long enough to do that, understaffed or not. It’s a bit ridiculous, really.

Mammoth.1975:

Oh, and this gem was sitting in the notes too:
Leeching Venoms: This trait now scales based on the thief’s power

This honestly pisses me off. Complete and utter bullkitten.

Blood Fiend’s heal is scaled with WvW buffs. It doesn’t heal for 600+.

Except for the fact that the Ascended armor has the Jewel equivalents already built in to the item. You’re missing out on a Rune for a set bonus, but if you were aiming for stats, you won’t be using the Runes anyways.

On top of that, it has the Infusion slots; If you can find an Ascended item with your designated stat set, it will be better than an Exotic. Period.

Assuming Magic Find is ~13 Stat points for 1% MF, the Main stat attribute goes up from 92 to ~130. The secondaries go up from 63 to 68 each. That’s around a 48 overall point jump from one ring piece. One. That is a -huge- kittening point difference for just a single piece. You throw in a full ‘Ascended’ gear set and compare it to an Exotic and the difference will probably be staggering.

This isn’t even taking into account the Infusion slot. It may be used for Agony mitigation. But why would an ‘Offensive’ Infusion slot have any form of damage mitigation in it? Offensive would imply some form of damage increase. So as of right now, that is anyone’s guess. But the numbers are from Exotic to Ascended are a bit ridiculous at first glance.

Props to Arenanet for showing us a Magic Find ring though. At least that way it looks like the stat differences aren’t nearly as large as they are.

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

Considering this is almost exactly what I use Dark Path for in PvE (Minus the Dark Pact use; There’s no reason to immobilize a target that’s going to be chilled when the missile actually hits), I understand where you’re coming from; In PvP, this is much, much harder to pull off, mostly due to the enemy being out of range by the time the Dark Path projectile hits them.

Is there no way to make it extend the actual range the missile can travel before being considered out of range, while keeping the castable range as it is? I’d assume this would keep the original design intent in tact while relieving a metric crap ton of frustration in PvP from our gap closer.

The issue with the Soul Reaping Traitline, if it is indeed working under that assumption, isn’t so much that we’re not benefitting from it, but that the rounding is shaving off nearly all benefits we’re actually gaining from it.

Ie, assuming Lifeforce to have the value of 1,000, and you are hit repeatedly for 5 damage, 5 times. -Normally-, this would drop you down to 975 Lifeforce value, or 97.5%. However, if it is handled via percentages, then each one of those 5 hits would drop you down 1% due to rounding (We can’t take 0 damage from an attack). So you would come down to 95% Lifeforce, instead of the estimated 97.5%, due to being hit for minimal damage, but being hit five times, all because of the percentages rounding up to actually do damage. Essentially we’ve lost out on 2.5% of our Lifeforce pool because of that.

Even if you added that 30% Lifeforce via Soul Reaping, your maximum HP would go up to 1,300. That same damage would normally drop you down to 1275, or 98%. However, again, due to the same rounding as above, it would drop you down to, once again, exactly 95% Lifeforce. In this case we lose out of 3% of our Lifeforce pool (From what the estimated drop would be compared to what the actual drop would be), even though we did technically gain that 30% additional Lifeforce.

If this -is- how it works, it seriously does suck. That doesn’t really mean a fix for Gluttony nor the 30% additional Lifeforce would fix it. That means they would have to actually give Lifeforce a numerical value instead of going off of percentages, and treat it as if it were a secondary HP bar, assuming they wanted it to work as intended and not chalk it up to a ‘Feature’. It means that Lifeforce scales depending on how hard you’re being hit, and not how often; If you’re being hit often, but for small amounts, Lifeforce will be shredded, whereas getting hit for large amounts, at a slower rate, will be far more beneficial due to being able to fill the percentages out, if that makes sense (Getting late here as well, so I’m more or less rambling in an attempt to get my thoughts out before I go pass out.).

A bit off tangent of the original post, but I believe Gluttony is partially working; Is the amount of Lifeforce gain on enemy death supposed to be 10%? If it is, you actually gain 11% with Gluttony Traited, and I would assume Arenanet finds this to be ‘working as intended’. If this is also the case, then this only solidifies the percentage rounding that I used in the above example.
Edited in; Just double-checked Gluttony, and I’m pretty sure it can be chalked up as ‘Working as intended’, it’s just a tool-tip error, sadly. 10% Lifeforce is gained upon killing a foe without Gluttony Traited, whereas 11% Lifeforce is gained with it Traited. Not a single skill (Including the Spectral w/ Trait) was being benefitted from Gluttony. So I’d honestly chalk that up as working as intended. Imagine that, a typo in a core gameplay mechanic nearly two months after release. Yeah, we’re definitely not being ignored or anything. Honest.

Thanks for the tests Ascii, I’ll try to get around to double-checking ’em when possible.

Red, as far as the Elites go, I’m -almost- positive that they’re doing something with the BASE stats. Ie, I believe Lich Form doubles your 916 Base Power and then adds on whatever you have via Traits/Gear. I’m not entirely certain on this, as I haven’t really done much testing on either of them, but I believe that to be the case as far as Lich and Plague are concerned. They may very well be altering Vitality in some similar manner.

Outside of that, thank you for the information; I’ve been reading through your thread as well. It’s honestly very strange how awkward the numbers are. Frankly, the only thing that comes to mind is something very similar to your Harddrive analogy; That is, Deathshroud is based around percentages, and not actual numbers. Which means whatever rounding they’re using could throw god knows how many calculations out the window.

Edited in; Actually Red, that might be -exactly- what it is. If a number is over some sort of threshold, it rounds up to 1%, regardless of how low the damage may actually be in comparison to what percent of Death Shroud it may have actually taken out. I recall that while doing my test, the Orrian used the one multi-hit skill with the same animation as Necrotic Bite. That’s ~5 hits of semi-low damage, which may very well have skewed results drastically if each one of those hits accounted for 1% of my Lifeforce bar every time. It would also explain why my Lifeforce seems to drain so rapidly while under heavy Conditions. It would even explain why low-damage, many-hit channeled abilities seem to destroy us (Or at least me).

If that’s the case, well… That seriously sucks imho. That more or less guts a lot of the use of Death Shroud.

Edited edited in; If the above holds true, this would also probably explain why Soul Reaping is seemingly doing absolutely nothing in your other thread. It may very well be doing -something-, but it would be such a marginal increase due to how percentages are handled that it may as well be negligible.

Right, the actual time in Death Shroud does not change, regardless of how much HP or +Lifeforce% you have while actually in Death Shroud.

You could have +5000% Lifeforce from something, and have 50,000 HP, but the actual time you are able to stay in Death Shroud, excluding external damage, is the same as someone with +0% Lifeforce and 20,000 HP. It ticks at a rate of 4%(3% Traited) Lifeforce drained per second. Abilities do not consume Lifeforce. Nothing but damage and the amount of time while actually inside of Death Shroud will take off from your Lifeforce.

The only thing additional Lifeforce in a numerical format will give you is an additional buffer against actual damage sustained while in Death Shroud. It does not change the total percentage of Lifeforce; This is and remains capped at 100%, regardless of Traits or additiona Lifeforce%. However, you will be able to sustain more damage than someone with a smaller Lifeforce pool, because your actual pool will be larger. But both of them will equal 100% when full.

What I wanted to find out (And what another similar thread that I missed seems to be attempting to find out) is actually how much the value of Lifeforce is. I don’t want 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%. I want actual numbers, equivalent to what our normal Health Orb shows.

And Fall damage is definitely a percentage of your maximum Health, which would skew results. Otherwise it would have been a fantastic test for it. The only thing I can think of in the Mists that would be equivalent to an actual battle is with Svanir or Utahein beating on you, which would be much harder to actually pull off and compensate for than having a few Undead beat the crap out of you. The Fire Pit is also based on your maximum Health, so that more or less rules that one out too. You might be able to pull a test off with one of the Profession trainer guys in the Mists, but that’s about it as far as a controlled test goes. It’s somewhat troublesome, honestly.

Dumb question: why would you let an Orrian beat on you. You lose 3%/sec just being in DS….so taking combat damage would skew that wouldn’t it?

4%/sec is the baseline Lifeforce loss while in Deathshroud. 3%/sec is with the Vital Persistence trait. But that’s not the issue; I wanted to find out how much actual Health we have in Deathshroud, and a percent doesn’t really do that for you. Because we don’t have any numbers on our Lifeforce bar that show the actual HP, I took damage and found what percent that damage number made up, and used that to get some kind of estimate as to the numerical number of our Lifeforce bar. I just noted that I had the Vital Persistence Trait and then took off what percentage of Lifeforce I would normally have lost while in Deathshroud during the timeframe I was in it. Whatever the difference was between the estimated and actual is what I assumed to have been taken off of due to damage taken since there wasn’t exactly any other way to have lost that Lifeforce.

I’ve estimated Death Shrouds health at roughly 18K at 100% and 23k at 130%

How much Vitality was that with, if you remember?

It is entirely percent-based.

Did a somewhat controlled test just recently to guesstimate on the Maximum HP pool on Deathshroud for my particular build.

HP pool of approximately 30k, no WvW buffs, consumables, etc etc. 15 in Soul Reaping (Ie, 15% more Lifeforce pool), taking Vital Persistence Major. That Trait makes your Death Shroud tick down 3%/sec. Extremely easy to figure that much out; Hop into DS, taking note of the % you go in at, wait for it to tick down once, hop out and check remaining Lifeforce.

Assuming the above to be true, five seconds inside of Death Shroud should leave me with 85%, if entering at 100% Lifeforce. So with that said, it’s relatively easy to figure out an HP figure. I went to Orr, hopped into Death Shroud at 100%, let an Orrian beat on me for five seconds, popped out and ran away so as to not skew any of the Lifeforce numbers (Ie, using any abilities, killing it, and avoiding nearby deaths).

Over the span of five seconds, I had taken 2023 damage, leaving me at approximately 76% Lifeforce. So 2023 damage was approximately 9% of my Lifeforce pool. Which means that 100% Lifeforce was ~22k HP. Without Soul Reaping, closer to 19k. With a 30k HP pool. Imho, that’s pretty kitten if this is the case.

First off, can anyone find anything wrong with how I obtained these numbers? Did I miss something? And does anyone want to try out a different build and number crunch a bit? If DS is supposed to scale off of Vitality, then I’m somewhat terrified of what the base ~18k HP actually turns out to be in DS.
I’m going to bed for now, so I’ll check back tomorrow.

Edited in; Not particularly complaining nor claiming this to be a bug. Simply curious about what the actual numbers are, or what some kind of figure would be.

TL;DR Those claiming they feel squishier in DS really are. 30k HP supposedly = ~19k DS without Traits.

Kayotik.5790:

From a PvE standpoint, it’s relatively easy set up a condition transfer before you even swap to the staff. If you’re in a group that is so reliant upon your 4 second duration aoe chill that you can’t use it at all offensively, I think your group may have larger issues than trying to maximize character effectiveness through stats. As for proccing weakness from the poison field, you would need to use putrid mark directly after it regardless. And with such a poor healing power, you shouldn’t be using mark of blood as a “regeneration tool”, but instead as a damaging tool that just so happens to also replenish life in an aoe.

The utility staff provides is amazing, and can be capitalized in PvE with little more than a 2,3,4,(5) button rotation. The utility is the secondary effect, not the staff’s damage itself.

Edit for clarification: Staff can be used with its utility in mind, with a specific build that takes advantage of the 100% up-time regeneration buff. In any other build, the utility it provides, although still extremely useful, takes a backseat to the amount of aoe burst you can unleash.

A fair comparison would be the usage of axe main-hand. You can either use it defensively with its extremely high life force generation in a death-shroud based tank build, or use it more offensively while taking advantage of the vulnerability stacks it applies.

Although both life force generation and the vulnerability stacks affect either build, one becomes more significant than the other depending on the scenario.

I don’t particularly want to get into theorycrafting on the forums, nor semantics, so don’t take this as anything substantial;

Quick test on the Medium Armor Golem in Heart of the Mists. 30 Spite, 30 Curses, PvP Carrion Amulet, Rune of the Undead by default. Left the Major slots blank.
Used the timer on Well of Power to guesstimate the timeframe of the kill. Dagger auto attack spam took 9 to 10 seconds to kill the Dummy, leaving the Well at a 50-51 second cooldown.

Same deal with the Staff, I swapped nothing out. Medium Dummy, Well of Power to guesstimate. Staff skill 2, 3 and 4 were all used, immediately swapping into Death Shroud to finish the Dummy off. Well had a 50-51 second cooldown remaining.

1) The quick setup I threw on heavily favored Staff over Dagger due to any Condition damage in the build.
2) The difference between the two is that you have Putrid Mark, Chillblains and Death Shroud all on cooldown by the time the ‘rotation’ is done. The Dagger had nothing on cooldown while also generating a chunk of Lifeforce. The Staff version also requires more input, which has god knows how many additional variables if we get into legitimate theorycrafting, which I, like stated, would preferably stay away from.

Now, once again, don’t take this as anything substantial. It was a quick test I did to see if your process had weight to it, and I didn’t see much at first glance. If there was something I missed, then I can try it some other time in more depth.

In terms of AoE, the Staff blows away anything the Dagger has. I honestly thought that was just something that didn’t even have to be acknowledged; If there is more than 1 target, the Staff immediately overtakes the Dagger in terms of, well… Pretty much everything.

Axe Life Force generation is also subpar in comparison to Dagger, just for the record.

Oh, no, the Staff can do a considerable amount of damage. I understand that. But the Staff’s Auto attack will not out-damage the Dagger’s auto attack. Thus the only time I find myself in my Staff set is to A) Tag mobs in Events, or B ) If I know that all of my Marks are off of cooldown. Even then, I will rarely throw down all of my Marks at once. I’m generally already in melee by using a Dagger as my ‘primary’ weapon set, so Putrid Mark is better used as a Condition transfer than an actual damage component. Likewise. Chillblains is more useful to my build as both an AoE chill and a Poison Field, as opposed to damage output. Mark of Blood is also used more as a Regeneration proc on myself and allies, rather than another damage component.

This makes Staff, at least in my build, extremely situational as to when to use it, but very strong when the use for it actually arises. It supports and supplements the weakness of my Dagger mainhand weapon set. Thus I consider it my secondary set; because it complements, but isn’t the weapon I use the most.

Edited in to address your post as well; That is actually exactly what I do. When I find the time to use the Staff’s Marks, I will cast whatever it is I need and then hop into Death Shroud and use whatever would actually be useful in that scenario until my Weapon swap comes off of cooldown. But that doesn’t change the fact that I find my Staff as a supplementary item to my Dagger, and still find the majority of its abilities to be relatively situational.

I will concede that I really haven’t done much testing with the Staff, so I can not say much in regards to it. I see it as a very support-esque based Weapon that has a jack-of-all, ace-of-none mentality, making it almost mandatory as a secondary weapon, but negligent as a primary. It works well for what it’s worth.

Dagger has much better Power scaling than Scepter does. That’s really all there is to it. Scepter is, literally, terrible with Power. Dagger is actually halfway decent with it.

Edited in to address above; I do believe that Life Blast at least has a half decent Power scaling as well. And if it scales well with Power, then Precision is generally not a terrible idea in terms of raw damage. It’s even better if the normal base damage is high, which Life Blast seems to be one of our higher.

Power is terrible on a Necro Condition build. We are not Thieves with a base damage two to three times that of what it really should be. Our base damage is pitiful, and the majority of our scaling is pitiful. This results in power being an extremely underwhelming stat in general for almost anything other than Dagger. It also means that Precision is, in terms of damage, terrible as well (If our base damage is low, the Crit damage is going to be minimal; Not exactly a good choice). Our dream set would more than likely be Condition/Toughness/Vitality. That doesn’t exist in-game though.

Condition/Toughness/Precision is the stat set Condition builds generally go for. There are other niche builds that could use something else, just like we -could- use the Healing Power stat for the -amazing- 30:1 healing it would provide to Life Siphon.
Toughness converts to Condition Damage via Rune of the Undead. Yes, it is only a 5% conversion rate, but it makes Toughness even more valuable than it already is as a defensive stat. This means we would want to go for a Condition Damage/Toughness/X stat set. Guess what the only stat set is that contains Condition/Toughness/X? Condition/Toughness/Precision.

Precision isn’t exactly a -wanted- stat in a Condition build. However, if we’re going for the most damage possible with conditions, the set is going to come with Precision anyways. Luckily for us, we can somewhat convert an otherwise completely useless stat into actually having a small impact via Traits (Which you will be getting entirely by default), and Sigils if the need be.

So while the OP is correct in regards to not having as much stat allocation customization as would be nice, Precision isn’t a stat we so much -want-, it’s a stat that Condition builds have shoved down their throat, and need to make the most out of.

With Bloodlust, Vampiric Precision was ~51 HP/Crit. Vampiric was ~39 HP/hit. Sigil of Blood is ~430 HP/proc. No ICD on Vampiric nor Precision. The Sigil has an ICD of 2 seconds, with a 30% chance to proc.
When lifestealing, your current HP has to be below Maximum, or else you won’t get any healing via lifestealing.

Without Bloodthirst, Vampiric ticks for 21 unmitigated damage per hit as damage, while Vampiric Precision ticks for 25 unmitigated damage. With Bloodthirst, Vampiric ticks for 33 unmitigated damage per hit, but it looks like Vampiric Precision gets screwed up in terms of damage.

Edited in; Damage and healing are both unscaling in terms of your stats as far as I have ever been able to tell.

Bumping/Necro’ing this.

Is this confirmed how Chilled works? And if so, does this mean that the skill is only on a ‘longer’ Cooldown for as long as the enemy is actually Chilled, and has no bearing on skill activation while chilled?

And does it affect skills used before being Chilled that are already on Cooldown?

As much as I would love for Necrotic Traversal to actually do something and not be rendered entirely useless by attempting to port to a spot that’s less than a jump’s height above the current axis I’m on, it would break too many maps imho.

It’s already possible to get out of maps in a select few areas, god knows what an additional targeted Teleport, long cooldown or not, could accomplish.

Cleave Dagger would be absurdly, brokenly overpowered if it maintained the current Life Force generation that it has.

And at this point, I honestly don’t even know if Arenanet has the code to make it so that the primary target would be the only one that you’re gaining Life Force from.

We beat her yesterday with… Four or five sparks spawning? I’m not sure if having one spark is bugged or intended, but the 4/5 sparks made it… Irritating, to say the least.

We pulled her out of the room. One player stood at the far side of her cave and waited for her invisible buff to appear and grabbed the sparks on that end, while our Ele grabbed the sparks that spawn near the mouth of the cave. Both of them ran the sparks to the statue.

The other three of us (Me as a Necromancer, a Thief and a Guardian) stayed on Dwayna. The entire time. She is merely stealthed, not invulnerable, while hidden. This means she is A ) Susceptible to poison while hidden, which we -believe- was slowing down her healing process, and B ) Attackable. It negated out the chunk of healing she would have otherwise gotten while being hidden. That and the fact that there were only two players running sparks meant that they were not aggroed onto any other random players.

Now my question is whether this was/is intended, or if we essentially exploited the fight in doing this.

Edited in; Whoops. Orcao, my group member, actually posted about this when we downed her. So here’re the screenshots of the kill I guess. Lol.

@Teknomancer
Correct, the Power/Toughness/Vitality is available from WvW. It’s actually the -only- way to obtain the Earrings and Rings, as far as I’m aware. However, I found the easiest way to get the actual gear was from farming dungeons for the Tokens and then just transmuting them to whatever looks I wanted. Butcher in HotW is easily farmable, and Inquest as well as Military are also very farmable in SE.

I do agree with the Rabid gear though. I feel as if Necros got jipped extremely hard in terms of gear, considering all my Guardian friends were fully Exotic’d in two or three days.

As far as Minions go, if they take aggro, that is a good thing; That is a hit that no one from your party is taking. Minions are expendable. Each one of them (Outside of the Golem) is on less than a 30 second cooldown with the 20% reduced CD trait. Outside of a few exceptional boss fights (Which feels as if Arenanet just failed miserably at coding; There is no reason to literally punish players for the spec they’re running), the more bodies you have in a dungeon, the higher your chance of surviving is. Especially in melee. My normal dungeon group finds dungeons exponentially easier when I run with them because of the 6 additional bodies. You’re essentially doubling the party size.

The only time it’s really a liability is on massive AoE fights, in which case I agree entirely; Lupicus phase 2 and 3? Minion Master is worthless. I actually run out of the room, get out of combat and swap my set around. Luckily, however, Death+Blood is extremely viable as a Wells and/or support spec.