Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: My intention is not to ask for a nerf to stealth, since it’s the Thief’s equivalent to Deathshroud in terms of defensive and offensive applications.

While both mechanics are very different, on a macro level, Stealth is to the Thief what Death Shroud is to the Necro. It allows you avoid some damage through proper usage, has potential to increase your damage output, and receives numerous benefits through traits. While the actual direct benefits, such as boons/cleansing/healing/mobility of both vary, they have somewhat similar roles in their applications.

Hence, why are Necros not “officially” allowed to revive/stop in Death Shroud?
I mean, we can technically stomp in DS if we mash buttons fast enough to make the server think they triggered together or whatever, but that doesn’t seem like an intended consequence, and no one’s complained about it thus far. I just don’t get it. Moreover, Necromancer’s used to be able to swap weapons in Death Shroud, but that “feature” bugged out when Transformations received an update, and ANet decided they liked it better that way for some reason.

By utilizing stealth, Thieves can revive and/or stomp with reduced risk, as in PvE, mobs will drop target, while in PvP, targeted skills will miss. Necromancers, however, have no such benefits, and either have to tank the hits and rez/stomp, or endure, letting their comrade die/foe rally. And before I hear stealth apologists come in yelling that DS is equivalent to impunity every X seconds, stop and think – gaining life force to tank a hit requires as much effort and planning as using stealth. Moreover, if we were to get hit while rezzing/stomping, we lose our built up resource, similar to a Thief who uses all X seconds of stealth to achieve that purpose.

tl;dr – Let Necros ShroudStomp or ShroudRez. There’s no reason not to.

Chaba.5410:

But why should gap closers and escape mechanisms not be rolled into one?

Because it allows professions not meant to escape to do so, or professions not meant to close gaps to overwrite that weakness.
Dark Path is a good example of a “gap closer” -it doesn’t work without a target, and has associated damage and effects, so its a fairly bad escape in most situations (critters aside), and is best used for offense.
Blink is good examples of an escape mechanism, as all it does is let you move around and avoid damage without hampering your foe, so it has no direct offensive applications.

Just to carry over one reddit suggestion I found interesting:
Missed stealth attacks remove stealth, but do not apply revealed.

I want to see “Direct Damage Corruptions” that eat your health in order to deal damage/CC enemies.

A miracle. /15char

Interview other class personalities and get their opinions on where the Necromancer sits. For example, you could interview Wooden Potatoes and see where he thinks Necros sit from an Ele POV. Or Teldoo and an Engi POV.
As the Profession forum has showed, few people who don’t play this class actually have any idea what they’re talking about regarding the Necro. I’m interested in seeing how far this extends.

Kiriakulos.1690:

So, when do we begin the more controversial trees? Namely, Death and Blood?
Those will probably generate the most entertaining results.

I’ve given it about a week in between each poll, so unless everyone is really antsy to move on to those, I planned on starting them on Sunday.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m assuming Spiteful = Spiteful removal.

I seem to have stumbled over the word “Marks”. Edited.

I’m actually fairly interested in some of these results.

• Would Death into Life be better as Vitality? Would you keep it as HP if it was a minor trait?
• Would you rather Spiteful Marks be merged, or do something else? If merged, with what?
• For Spiteful Removal and Parasitic Bond, is the concept bad, or the reward? I personally have gotten great mileage out of these in WvW zerg fights, but…
• Would you prefer that Spite be more self synergistic, or be useful to more builds?
• The comments seem to indicate that people really dislike this trait tree in the way it’s set up, as well as the traits within, citing “unremarkable” or “disjointed.” However, many of the traits received positive reviews – so what gives?

This is a Necromancer skill. Necros lifesteal. Necros also have the AoE to get good mileage out of this. Instead, we get Signet of Vampirism, and you get stuck with it, instead of a better heal. What can you do? #ANet

Swagg.9236:

Oh, right, I took out my suggestion for [Reaper’s Mark]. It is a really clunky suggestion in the end. I’m still somewhat at a loss for what it could be aside from just an AoE fear button. Maybe it should just remain an AoE fear button. Adding a short delay to it as I’ve done to the rest of the marks would work just fine, but I feel like that’d be just a bit of a lazy update.

If it makes you feel better about it, it can still only hit 5 people to Static Field’s zerg-stopping prowess. I fully agree that poorly telegraphed skills are bad, especially CC skills, but I don’t think that changing the activation parameters of the skill (save for, say, casting time) would do it any good. I feel like if marks had better tells, people would quickly realize that they are in fact weaker than they appear.

I agree with the post cast delay as long as the overall cast time is unaffected. Marks do need better visual cues. However, I believe that all Marks should function in the same trap-like, one-shot way – at least at first. We don’t really know what power shift would occur by simply editing the animation for clarity. Moreover, making them different destroys their identity – Guardian Symbols all behave equally.

I think that before you can begin to modify skills and traits, you need to decide what roles those skills will play in a given build, and what builds it makes accessible – something that, at least to me, wasn’t immediately clear in your suggestions.
How does this skill promote attrition? How does it promote burst? If it does or doesn’t, do we want it to? Simply changing something to be more inline with something else might make the game “better” as a whole, but it won’t necessarily improve the Necro.

killahmayne.9518:

As I mentioned in my previous post, I acknowledged that my example was an extreme example. I was just trying to illustrate the point that polling 500 forum users introduces more unintended inherent bias as opposed to polling 500 players regardless of whether they use the forums or not. Whether that bias is significant or not, I don’t know.

Presumably, if we were to introduce game theory into such an analysis, it would tend to be valid, since game theory is “the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers,” and co-operative victory would, in this case, be achieving balance. That being said, I don’t understand enough on the topic to further this discussion.

fellyn.5083:

Balefire.7592:

killahmayne.9518:

I am not talking about statistical sampling whatsoever or offered any insight on it, if you even read my post. I just made a general statement.

You definitely did. To be specific:

For all we know, the opinions of 90% of the people who don’t look or post on the forums could be totally different from the 10% that do.

For all we know, especially all we know about statistics and probability, there is an incredibly high probability that the opinions of those not posting on the forums are the same as those of forum warriors.

Not entirely true. The kind of player who posts on the forum are usually a completely different kind of player that just plays the game being completely oblivious to the forums.

We know that’s true therefor it’s safe to assume the vast majority of the players do not have a strong opinion on warriors one way or the other.

Using the opinions of forum posters to represent the entire player base doesn’t work.

When we see threads blow up like with the flame kissed cultural armor shenanigans then you know regular players have come to the forum to share their mind. That’s simply not the case with warriors. It’s usually the same people thinking they represent a large majority when they don’t.

It might not directly represent opinions in the same sense, but it’s still a valid indicator. Ultimately, ANET does and will do whatever they want based on whatever metrics they choose to observe. That being said, you can go count the number of different usernames posting in these threads, but I believe it’s sufficient to warrant further investigation.

Again, that mentions nothing about statistic sampling whatsoever and that wasn’t what I was implying either. I offered no opinion on it with that general statement.

But while we are on this topic.

You mentioned something about 500 people on the forums and how that will represent the whole GW2 community. That is like asking 500 people in Utah who are apart of an anti-Obama group whether they would vote for Obama in the next election and then extrapolating those results onto millions of people. You need to take small samples from different areas, which in this case, entails both forum and non-forum users to get a more accurate and wider range of responses.

In that case, I apologize, as I misinterpreted your wording.
But to continue the discussion, you’re presuming that the 500 forum goers relate to the 500 Utah-folk directly, which isn’t the case. For example, I am a WvW focused player. Others prefer PvP or PvE. That already introduces diversity that, from my perspective, your example didn’t seem to have. Furthermore, if you poll 400 Republicans on Obama, they’re response is obvious. But we aren’t a two-party system – we’re an 8 party system, with heavy partisanship, as many players play multiple classes. In fact, even some warriors have stepped forth to call for nerfs.
My intention isn’t to say that the forum warriors perfectly model the player base, because they probably don’t. However, they are a large enough fraction of the player base that their opinions may serve as indicators of the general consensus, and thus, may warrant further investigation.

killahmayne.9518:

I am not talking about statistical sampling whatsoever or offered any insight on it, if you even read my post. I just made a general statement.

You definitely did. To be specific:

For all we know, the opinions of 90% of the people who don’t look or post on the forums could be totally different from the 10% that do.

For all we know, especially all we know about statistics and probability, there is an incredibly high probability that the opinions of those not posting on the forums are the same as those of forum warriors.
Could they be different? Sure, I guess it’s statistically possible. But it only takes 385 or so people to correctly model the response of a population over 5,000,000 with 95% accuracy.

RashanDale.3609:

It’s funny how absolutely everyone hates siphoned power tho

I guess to answer my own question, that is, by and far, the most unsurprising result I’ve ever seen. Ever. EVER.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

errr no. the forum community will be always be the vocal minority when compared against the rest of the actual playing players population.

killahmayne.9518:

For all we know, the opinions of 90% of the people who don’t look or post on the forums could be totally different from the 10% that do. Those that don’t tend to know less about the game.
And Warriors have been the most popular class even since the beginning of the game. That doesn’t equate them to being overpowered.
Engis are the least popular, however they are a very powerful class and not underpowered whatsoever.
Game balance isn’t based on a popularity contest.

This isn’t how statistical samples work. No pharmaceutical company ever tests their new medicine on 100% of the population. No market research company ever calls every single person that could fall within the target demographic. No factory can examine every single product the produce on the assembly line. No political party ever polls the whole country to figure out where they stand. Even ANET cannot take every single opinion of every player into account when trying to make a decision. Acquiring and/or processing that much information just isn’t feasible.
Instead, there is a statistically derived method that allows you to more-or-less scale the data acquired from a few sources to the entire population. For example, if I wanted to know how one million people would react to something, I could ether ask all 1,000,000 people (which is time consuming and drains resources), or I could ask 400 or so people. As it turns out, the range of response diversity within those 400 people will, with an extremely high probability, mirror the range of responses of the 999,600 others. Of course you’ll miss the occasional outlier, but that’s not really what you should be considering in the first place.
While forum goers are biased, and tend toward negative criticism, you can’t simply ignore when they respond en mass. If 300 people think Warriors are OP, there is a very, very high chance that a fairly large portion of the player population agrees, knowledgeable or not (see where I bring up politics above). You can look up statistical sampling if you don’t believe me. And, you know, I’m no market research analyst or anything, but if a large proportion of my target demographic believes there is something wrong with my product, it’s probably in my best interest to fix it.

No offense, but people need to get over the fact that conditions are killing them. I get that conditions might be over the top at the moment, but that’s beside the point. Conditions were intended to be an alternative source of damage, and certain builds hinge around it entirely. Why should all of my damage, which is based on conditions, be negated for two seconds beyond the fact that you just wiped all of my previously incomplete damage?
What you’re asking for is essentially the same as me asking for my blocking skills to also get an additional two seconds of 50% damage reduction and immunity to critical hits.

This would be a pretty cool trait to have replace Speed of Shadows. Kind of like our own Dogged March:
Fleeting Shadows - Incoming movement-impeding conditions have their durations reduced while in Deathshroud. Gain Life Force when you are affected by one of these conditions.

And now, to bring the Spite discussion into its next stage, here are the results.

Do any of them surprise you? If so, why?

fellyn.5083:

Xae.7204:

That you think it is “mass-hysteria” and not “well deserved mass outrage” speaks volumes for your own delusions.

It’s not mass anything considering only a small amount of players actually post on the forums.

Presuming we had even as few as 500 people posting on these forums, that would be a large enough sample size to make statistical inferences on the rest of the population.

I said this before, and I’ll say again: I fail to see how your proposed changes increase the attrition capabilities of the Necromancer. Making our condition skills harder to land but more powerful tends to burst-style game play. Your proposed new resource promotes using your heal skills at the wrong time (health-wise) to acquire it, tending to glassier, more bursting builds. Condi spam is a bad arrangement, but it’s the closest thing to attrition this game has – small amounts of incremental sustained damage that have poor instant DPS, but are easier to maintain.
While a highly telegraphed bleed-equivalent to Eviscerate every 25 seconds leads to more “skillful” game play, it isn’t attrition. And frankly, I don’t even think it’s that skillful either – landing a big power hit after baiting immunities/blocks/dodges is equivalent to spamming conditions after baiting a cleanse, the difference being that the power hit has its damage applied upfront, while the condis tick over time, and may be removed before dealing all of their damage. Hence, attrition-style condition specs need to maintain constant conditions on the foe to equalize the damage done in the same period of time by power specs. (Note that I’m not referring to ranges here – melee should deal more damage than ranged attacks, but that’s another balance issue.)

This is quite simple. Use the in-between option of ground targeted and fast-cast. The range indicator circle shows up as you move your cursor.

Gryph.8237:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

That.. is a wall of text and i browsed trough there and the suggestions seem reasonable.

It really seemed logical to me. That said, I am not sure what the rest of the community would think of the change to dhuumfire and trait move. I would appreciate an honest discussion from the necro community, or the community that has to fight necros.

— sorry for the above wall of text.

There’s still about a day left on the Traitworks Spite poll, so I don’t want to directly comment on the results yet, but you might be surprised – I was.

I support the idea of moving Dhuumfire to Curses master. Like you said, making Dhuumfire compete with Terror forces better build crafting, and having it not require its own 30 points allows for better build diversity. The question is, though, what Curses master trait to remove for it?

Mrbig.8019:

cymerdown.4103:

A lot of these responses are to the title of the thread, which is admittedly inaccurate. If you actually read the post, he’s not saying that power necro, or lich form as a whole is overpowered. He’s saying that lich form #1 skill hits too hard, which is accurate. Power necro as a whole is not quite top tier viable (thief says hello), but that doesn’t mean that lich form in its current iteration is how it should be. Lich form should just be reworked a little to make some of the other skills in the kit a bit better but reduce the auto’s damage by a small margin (10%ish should be enough).

If you take a look at other skills, they’re pretty strong too.

Grim specter ( lich form 5th skill) is ridicolously strong ( basically 6-7k AoE damage curing conditions and ripping boons), a nice knockback + chill on 3 and good AoE damage + 8vuln stacks on 2.

The only lackluster skill is the 4th.

I play power necro ( as a main, along with thief) from dumbfire patch and when i use lich, i use all my skills because 80% of times they’re worth it.

1 does lots of damage but needs to be that way, Lich Form is exactly the way elite skills should be: gamechanging.

Like a well placed Moa on a bunker guard ( when mesmers could still actually use Moa).

Skill 4 is only lack luster if you let the horrors die. They can do quite a bit of damage if left alive.

Essentially, Necros have two major weaknesses- sustained direct damage and crowd control. Our resilience to either varies a little depending on the build, but they’re ever present. We’re also not terribly mobile – that’s our designed flaw.
If you can make a build to exploit one of these, you’ll have an easier time. Trying to beat the Necro at their own game (conditions) will be much, much harder, as a large amount of our skills/traits help us deal with those.

Fair enough. The point was that this signet isn’t necessarily intended to do damage – it’s intended to incapacitate the opponent, be it for defensive or offensive reasons. Hence, you are giving up the additional damage generated by the power boost for some breathing room/a window of opportunity when you activate it.

Signet of Spite gives power because beyond looking scary on your bar and covering bleeds, none of those conditions are terribly useful to a conditionmancer (two bleeds is paltry). On the other hand, chill, cripple and vulnerability are of great use to power Necros, especially those of the melee dagger variety.
The signet itself isn’t the issue, it’s compounding effect is. I agree with the above posters that if cleanses were better designed, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Swagg.9236:

Balefire.7592:

Like I said, the Necro community knows what changes they want, and how they want them.

This isn’t about what “the Necro community” wants; it’s about what’s best for the game. Well-cued, wind-up, powerful ranged abilities is what this game needs; not spammy throw-away ranged skills on short cool-downs that blur into a beam attack of damage and conditions that not even skilled players or seasoned shoutcasters can often interpret properly. Necromancer has been fundamentally broken since creation with regards to its identity on the battlefield and how it contributes its damage. I understand that Necromancer players have become accustomed to playing with a mostly broken class, but it’s time to fix it.

Way to twist my words. Not once have I stated what Necromancers actually want, so you’re fairly off-base here in presuming anything. We know what we are about – all of that criticism you read about faceroll condispam is pointed directly at us.We’re also distinctly aware that we have terrible attrition. You’re 100% right in saying Necromancers need better tells, less condition spam, and better attrition mechanics. None of those things are exactly secrets. That doesn’t, however, mean your suggestions are (A) going achieve those things, (B) the best way to achieve those things, © what ANET intends for Necromancers, or (D) going to be willingly accepted by the player base.
There are various ways achieve balance for the Necromancer without following your specific suggestions, which you are promoting unilaterally. Unless you are on the Balance Team, your opinions are worth as much as anyone else’s – no more, no less. If anything, a concerted community effort in promoting changes is more likely to get the attention of, and be supported b ArenaNet, as evidenced by the CDIs. As such, you may be interested in, you know, actually consulting the players that will have to deal with your supposed changes.

Suffice it to say that complexity is judged by it’s opposite – simple, elegant solutions tend to work out better. If you think some of these things are truly simple, than I’m afraid the disparity in our frame of reference is quite large, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree on several notes. I currently don’t have the time to delve further into commentary regarding each individual change, but I might PM you later.

Swagg.9236:

Then bring your buddies here. I’ll stick to my guns all day. I’ve got everything that I need to say written up at the top of this thread, and this thread belongs on this forum.

I get that you want to have one thread for each profession here. I’m not saying it doesn’t belong here, I’m just saying it would be worthwhile to post it there as well for further feedback. I can’t really force them to come here and comment.
Like I said, the Necro community knows what changes they want, and how they want them. And a lot of these suggestions simply don’t line up with the consensus. By involving the community, you allow yourself to develop suggestions that both achieve your stated goal and make players happy. ANet may or may not give any regard to these ideas, but one this is certain: forcing Necros to swallow a bunch of changes they don’t want will not please them, and is a quick way to diminish their involvement in the game, at least as a Necromancer.

Swagg.9236:

Balefire.7592:

I agree with some suggestions (mostly the Axe ones), but most of these will not happen for one good reason: complexity creep. Adding more skills and functionality is fine, but I mean, look at how cluttered the profession mechanic area looks in your image. Complexity creep is the antithesis of good design – Occam’s Razor.

Sure, I suppose. Only thing is that the skills I’m proposing are very straightforward and possess a clear overall goal in their collective design. The suggestion on the whole isn’t very complex at all outside of maybe the coding that would be required to make it a reality.

Possessing a clear design goal is different from being straightforward.
Take Spinal Shivers. Currently, it is very straightforward – it does a few things, but does them consistently. Your version, while perhaps more powerful, has increased complexity simply based on the fact that it has variable end effects.
Another example would be your version of blood curse. Currently it bleeds, bleeds, poisons. Each hit is defined, and will only do one thing. You have increased the complexity of skill by attaching not one, but two conditional effect modifiers to it. Not only that, but I’m personally totally lost regarding it’s AoE applications and it’s variable nature – if I strike a bleeding foe, will foes around it get bleeding or torment? What if I strike a tormented foe? Do the conditions of nearby foes matter? What exactly happens if I hit a foe with torment, but not bleeding?
The biggest source of complexity creep here is your mechanic suggestion. New necros already have difficulty learning how and when to use death shroud properly – adding additional skills, especially ones tied to an entirely different resource, will only complicate things. No other class has to manage two resource bars, and when you figure in minions, it pushes it over the edge. Moreover, are blood power skills available in death shroud? Can I generate blood power in death shroud? If not, why are my profession mechanics meant to clash in this way? Will blood power skills generate life force? How will my profession trait resource (life force pool) affect blood power? What traits will be updated to affect it, if any?

You have also made several changes that weaken skills without any apparent reason. Why does Reaper’s Mark have to have a double-activation skill when Static Field doesn’t? Giving it a more apparent animation is one thing – and that’s a change I would agree with (I support better mark animations). However, your changes not only nerf the skill with the charge-up requirement, they increase complexity due it’s variable power range as well as the fact it requires further activation.

Lastly, I don’t disagree with the idea of modifying things to increase attrition and sustain, but frankly, I fail to see how adding another resource bar and modifying a handful of skills (note that few of the skills you changed are truly defensive) will achieve that.
The reason I suggested you post this in the Necro forum isn’t because I want to see your ideas get torn into (which will certainly happen) – it’s because a lot of these suggestions seem misguided in terms of achieving the attrition play style most Necromancer would like to see. I post in those forums daily, so trust me when I say this – a lot of these changes aren’t what we’re looking for.

striker.3704:

Balefire.7592:

Bhawb.7408:

Death Nova, Fetid Consumption.

As far as I’m concerned, the fact that both Grandmaster traits in DM are minion related is as egregious an error as PotH and Reanimator. The Grandmaster slot might as well be a second master as far actual defensive traits are concerned, which is not as it should be.

Most other grandmaster traits (including other classes) are exactly like this. Why should the death magic tree be different?

Except they aren’t:
Dhuumfire – Now tied to life blast, can be used by every build.
Close to Death – Can be used by every build.
*
Withering Precision – Can be used by every build.
Lingering Curses – Only useful if you use Scepter.
*
Necromantic Corruption – Only useful if you use minions.
Death Nova – Only useful if you use minions.
*
Vampiric Rituals – Only useful if you use wells.
Fetid Consumption – Only useful if you use minions.
*
Foot in the Grave – Can be used by every build.
Deathly Perception – Can be used by every build.

Note how every traitline except Death Magic has Grandmasters that can be used by more than one build. I also can’t recall of any other profession who has both GM slots in any given tree only cater to one particular play style.
If you don’t use minions, the Grandmaster slot in Death Magic might as well just be another master slot. Blood Magic has similar issues, but at least you get a choice between two different builds if you’re going to dedicate the slot to a GM trait.

I agree with some suggestions (mostly the Axe ones), but most of these will not happen for one good reason: complexity creep. Adding more skills and functionality is fine, but I mean, look at how cluttered the profession mechanic area looks in your image. Complexity creep is the antithesis of good design – Occam’s Razor.

I won’t go through every suggestion, simply because I’m lazy, but I don’t think very many of these are good. Some of them may improve Necromancer attrition, but most involve such radical changes that they will probably never see the light of day. Feel free to post this in the Necro subforum – you’ll probably get a pretty good critique on most things from Bhawb and couple others.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

this is working as intended because warriors are meant to be the easiest profession to play. do you remember that guild wars 2 is a very casual game and has a lot of casual players? casual players like to play easy professions.

The warrior omnipresence is fine – it’s exactly as you said. However, that doesn’t mean warriors should be the best ,verywhere, otherwise, what are the rewards of playing a more complex profession?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

maybe put the poll link in your first post. people will find it easier.

Done. Plus the title too. The character limit on titles sucks.

cymerdown.4103:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

cymerdown.4103:

The autoattack should be toned down and other lich moves should be slightly buffed to compensate, I think.

What auto attack?

The #1 attack, deathly claws.

That’s an inside joke since it has been bugged since forever – the game won’t remember your autoattack settings for Lich, so you have to manually assign it every time.

As long as it either does or does not kill minions/spirits/elementals/pets on a consistent basis, I don’t mind it, and I’ve frequently had it used on me to cancel Plague or Lich. The only issue I see at the moment is how it affects summons differently for different profrssions.

cymerdown.4103:

Josh Davis.6015:

While Lich does a metric ton of damage, it’s also extremely telegraphed and on a rather long cooldown. If anything, Lich does an excellent job of area-denial – I’ll gladly vacate a point for 20 seconds or so to avoid it.

This is unrelated, but I remember a certain PvP team that ran 2 Lich necros and Time Warp mesmer (before the haste changes). It was brutal.

Anyways, as you were…

Honestly, it does do too much damage. There are ways to counterplay it, but it has extreme potential to snowball a team fight as soon as one person goes down. Luckily for team arena, power necro as a whole isn’t the best spec, but especially for solo arena or lower elo teams, lich form is very, very destructive tool, especially combined with wells + transform shenanigans. The autoattack should be toned down and other lich moves should be slightly buffed to compensate, I think.

As has been previously stated, if properly spec’d, Life Blast can easily exceed Death Claws’s damage. If the Necro does nothing but spam Lich auto, they can fire it up to 20 times on a 180 second cooldown. It locks Necros out of their heal, utility skills, and profession mechanic (and associated benefits). It’s also the most telegraphed skill in the game, since it has a giant green wraith informing you it’s coming, and it’s pretty slow.
I figure there are plenty of downsides to offset the damage. If it seems that overpowered to you, once you know it’s there, save your cooldowns and/or run away. Once in Lich Form, there is little the Necro can do to you save damage.
If it makes you feel better, consider that Backstab and Killshot do similar damage on much shorter cooldowns without all the ability locking. They have their own drawbacks, but the points stands.

We’re currently sitting at less than half the number of votes Curses had by now.
I believe in the Necro community – vote on!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Balefire.7592:

I don’t mind leaving things as they are, provided other classes get escapes too.
Why should my Necro have to sit and eat leaps, but fail to catch a running Warrior? I have a gap closer that won’t do jack all if it misses. I want free movement – And I know Necros were supposed to have bad movement, but Warriors were supposed to have mediocre cleansing, so meh.
By the logic posted here, give my Necro some leaps/dashes/etc, then we’ll see how many Warrior’s are happy with “their prey [getting] away.”

rocks paper scissors.
warriors do not have death shroud, minions, etc.
play other professions if you wish to escape.

That’s not a valid argument. By that logic, we should be ok to fix dash-escapes, and you can go “play other professions if you wish to escape.”

I don’t mind leaving things as they are, provided other classes get escapes too.
Why should my Necro have to sit and eat leaps, but fail to catch a running Warrior? I have a gap closer that won’t do jack all if it misses. I want free movement – And I know Necros were supposed to have bad movement, but Warriors were supposed to have mediocre cleansing, so clearly it’s ok to break some roles.
By the logic posted here, give my Necro some leaps/dashes/etc, then we’ll see how many Warrior’s are happy with “their prey [getting] away.”

I think Necromantic Corruption could easily be made to replace Withering Precision as boon strip on crit. >.>

Figured I’d put this here, given the thread title and all. It actually seems like a pretty idea to me.

I agree about moving it but not replacing it.

As a main Elementalist and as much as I hate Dhuumfire, this nerf was a bit too harsh.

In my opinion, in Spite, replace Siphon Strength (25) and have it so whenever you Fear, you also apply burning, no cooldown.

About Siphon Strength

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Is completely useless anyways, gain 1 stack of might once you hit 25% health?! This passive takes freaking 25 points too!

Being a nice passive trait it will benefit condition, power or mixed based builds without making it a must have.

The implementation might not be up to snuff (Burn on fear? We have 3 on demand fears…) but the new Dhuumfire (or some minor variation) would be a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCHMUCH MUCHMUCH MUCHMUCH MUCHMUCH MUCHMUCH MUCH better Grandmaster Minor than Siphoned Power.

Bhawb.7408:

Death Nova, Fetid Consumption.

As far as I’m concerned, the fact that both Grandmaster traits in DM are minion related is as egregious an error as PotH and Reanimator. The Grandmaster slot might as well be a second master as far actual defensive traits are concerned, which is not as it should be.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Kiriakulos.1690:

% of uptime is a lot less important than actual continuos uptime for stability, just ask yourself what is better, 3 sec stability every 7 seconds or 20 seconds of stability every 80 seconds? I’d take the 20 seconds even though it’s proportionately less, since with 20 seconds I can do a full skill rotation AND heal by the end of it.

kitten that is the most incorrect statement I have ever heard. How many people actually believe this?
Do you realize that plenty of builds will remove boons?
Do you realize that plenty of players might just run away to waste your stability?
Do you realize that plenty of builds have cc that can lock you out of the fight after your stability has ended?

Hmm, odd, Balanced Stance and Armor of Earth seem to not only be viable, but be quite powerful while following this formula. Meanwhile, Foot in the Grave is rotting in the ninth circle of Grenth. Funny how that works, eh?

Bhawb.7408:

Seriously, I don’t understand why people don’t know this yet:

They have different teams for different things. The living story team does absolutely nothing about balance. They don’t touch it. The PvP team that makes maps and new PvP stuff doesn’t touch balance either. The balance team balances, that’s it. They can’t do things nearly as quickly as people on this side want, because it just isn’t possible.

I think it’s because for the longest time, we would get mixed patches with balancing, features and living world stuff. Now that’s it’s separated, it’ll take some time to get used to. Frankly, I think I would prefer something like scheduled quarterly balance patches anyway.

gesho.9468:

isnt this getting changed? last readyUp said they are moving dhuum to shroud and lifeBlast proc

That just makes it worse. We now have a worse version of a trait that has essentially caused numerous other traits and skills to be nerfed. Plus, good Necro players will still proc the burn without a whole lot more trouble, only now it won’t be ever present, but a part of the Terror burst chain, since chaining a Life Blast after Dark Path +Terror isn’t terribly difficult. So in reality, while there will be a slight nerf in condition pressure, it won’t single-handedly undo the last 7ish months, and both Necromancers and their opponents will continue to be unsatisfied.

With the Dhuumfire change, will it be relocated? It never felt like a Spite trait, and now it doesn’t feel like a Grandmaster one. Also, several things, such as Terror, were nerfed because our condition pressure was too high with burning. However, with the change, the frequency of burning applications will decrease. Hence, will such things be restored to their former glory?

Also, several Necros have made it clear that they are against the existence of Bloodthirst and Near to Death. Those two have caused other effects to be weakened since things must be balanced for “peak” conditions, but in cases where they are not chosen, the affected traits become sub-par. What is your opinion of this?

Come on guys and gals, we’re sitting at less than a third of the voting turnout for Curses! We can do better!

That depends – can I as a Necro, have a rune that makes me immune to, or heavily reduces direct damage? Or how about immunity to CC? My profession has such pitiful stability; it’s cool, right?
Removing gameplay elements sounds nice in theory, especially when they’re imbalanced, but it creates unsavory experiences. Many professions rely on conditions to achieve different things. Conditions might be too powerful right now, but invalidating them just reduces viable specs, it doesn’t necessarily improve the game.