Guild Wars 2

Gorath.5076:

Btw: precasting the spirit ress is awesome I only really use the spirit for under water point holding in Capricorn. As a bm bunker you are already a pain to take down underwater. And having an instant ress is just hilarious

There is no need to use the spirit pet rez in Capricorn. Your actual downed state 3 is so powerful and is pretty close to instant anyways.

Chopps.5047:

Lol I need the inbox full hint achievement though T_T y r u bugged anet???

Seriously, I’ll clear it out today. If anyone knows how to get that achievement just send me in game PM. Lol!

I meant your forum inbox, but I will catch you in game today or tomorrow. I just remember chopps teaching me about positioning the spirit pets in dungeons, and thinking whoa there are levels to spirit pets I didn’t know about.

Here is a question is it worth it to take the talent that allows the Spirit pets to move with you outside of open world pve?

Chopps, I have been trying to pm you clear out your inbox noob :P. I will catch you in game. I am pretty excited that spirit pets are playing so well. I have even seen some really clutch Spirit Rezes. I love precasting the rez just before I go down.

August 04, 2013 – On this week’s Adrenaline Rising!, Deany Kong and K-Pop sit down with dungeoneering Warrior Dromar the Banisher to talk about Warrior PvE
builds and strategy, and what gameplay mechanics so greatly affect the
way we play. It’s 60 minutes of unbridled berserking power this week
on Adrenaline Rising!

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-warrior-podcast-adrenaline-rising-episode-7/

Your inbox is full mate, tell the other ranger players to stop asking you questions via pm :P.

How is the ranger community feeling about the new Spirit Ranger Meta?

Thedenofsin.7340:

let us know when you get the podcast on youtube, for those of us who don’t use iTunes.

If you are subscribed to the youtube channel it will email you when it’s ready to go, but I do try to post the updated one on the website as well.

August 1st, 2013 – In this week’s episode of But of Corpse, Bhawb bids goodbye to the one and only Gibbly who is moving on to Smite, and they welcome in the new cohost, Tenderly. Gibbly, Bhawb, and Tenderly talk about pvp in general, the path of the Necromancer, and what they would like to see happen in the future.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-necromancer-podcast-corpse-episode-24/

The podcast is fixed and ready to go now.

Chaba.5410:

For some reason it seems cut off. Supposed to be longer than 5 mins?

Dagnabbit, I think I know what happened. I apologize, Hopefully it’s on my end and not a recording that got bugged.

August 1, 2013 – Hello, and welcome to another invigorating episode of Enginious! This week, Koroshi hits the guest spotlight with an interesting view on WvW tPvP, and of course, the many interesting utility skills of the engineers! There’s a great discussion on our ideas for a new ‘arena’, and incredibly off-course conversation. We even discuss some brand new additions (and rumors) to the game, and what we’d like to see in the future. And as always, trust us, we are engineers!

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-engineer-podcast-engenious-episode-9/

The show is live right now!

I will work it out with Jin. I think the issue lies in skype. They can go back to mumble, and do the stream via mumble. I asked them to move to skype because of the cost of maintaining mumble, and the sheer amount of DC’s that Battosai faced on mumble. I will see if they can move to TS or something for future recordings.

June 28, 2013 – In this week’s fine edition of Adrenaline Rising, Kpop, Defektive, and Deany talk with Schwahrheit cover where the warrior is in the tournament scene. They cover the stun patrol, and the very awesome style of play about the current warrior game.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-warrior-podcast-adrenaline-rising-episode-6/

Hello dear listeners,

As usual, it is my pleasure to announce the latest episode of Arrow To The Knee.
In this episode, I, Jindrake, decided to have a little impromptus 1 on 1 discussion with J. Roh, as we match our views in regards to the Ranger’s current state of affairs. We mainly focused on the latest developments in our profession, introduced in the last patch. Battosai was unfortunately away for personal reasons, so we did our best to do without.
Hope you’ve enjoyed our shows. On behalf of ATTK and SOAC, we salute you.

Catch ya next week!

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-ranger-podcast-arrow-knee-e09/

The Itunes version is still on error until the IT guy can fix it.

June 26th, 2013 – In this Episode of Attunement Swap, Aiden Frost and CMC have a great time talking with Blinx. Blinx is one of the premier elementalist on the GW2 elementalist scene. They cover where the elementalist has come from, and where they feel it is headed in the tournament scene.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-elementalist-podcast-attunement-swap-episode-8/

June 25, 2013 – In this week’s exciting Necromancer podcast, Gibbly and Bhawb meet up with Rennoko. Rennoko has been with us before, but this time they come to talk about the crazy buff that the Necro changes have made. They talk wvwvw, and the ds effect on it. Rennoko pointed out some of the more amazing aspects of the Necromancer that are still around.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-necromancer-podcast-corpse-episode-23/

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Bas.7406:

The change only mitigate consistent non-hammering damage. Any burst damage or control plus damage build will destroy you just the same.

^ Exactly this.

The changes to DS are not a buff; they simply fixed a bug and brought it up to where it should have been on day 1 of launch. When you’ve had to live with that bug for 11 months, I can see how simply fixing it can give the impression it’s been buffed. If they had done only this and then left well enough alone, then I wouldn’t call it a buff, but I would have been appreciative that the devs had finally fixed such a long-standing issue.

But they didn’t stop there. They now allow damage to overflow from DS to our regular health bar. This is a nerf. It may not appear so to those who are new to the profession or have not found themselves in a position to utilize the pre-patch version of DS to absorb a spike. Regardless, this does not change the fact that it is still a nerf.

I play vampiric necro (gasp!) and my sustain is pretty decent even without DS when facing non-spike/non-burst damage. I’d more often use DS as a twitch spike sponge. I can understand that for those necros who don’t frequently face that kind of damage, this patch has the appearance of a buff.

With this nerf, though, we just became a lot more vulnerable to burst damage while the change did nothing to mitigate our longstanding weakness against control + damage. I’ve learned to adapt to the latter over the last 11 months. Against the former, however, we just lost our primary defense with nothing given to replace it. This may not be readily apparent if one’s play is restricted to just one area. Play across all aspects of the game – PvE, WvWvW, PvP – and it begins to reveal itself.

I’m not asking for blocks, evades, or invulnerability. With the pre-patch DS, I didn’t need them; it functionally served the same purpose as those skills. With this patch, though, that’s gone. Replacing it with some extra effective health in DS is not going to save you. This patch took a defensive mechanic that existed for the necromancer, removed it, and failed to replace it with something of equivalent value.

That is the definition of a nerf. It may not be readily apparent to a new necro player or one who doesn’t play in areas where absorbing one-hit kills is critical to success. That doesn’t invalidate the fact that, globally, it’s still a nerf even if you personally have been buffed in one specific area of the game or in a particular build.

I’ll reiterate; I’m not asking for blocks, evades, or invulnerability. I really and truly do not want them. Simply revert DS such that damage received does not overflow into the regular health pool. That’s all. Doing so reinstates our only de facto block/evade/invulnerability skill; even if it’s one that is dependent on the life force resource.

Someone should forward this to @Roe since he thinks it’s a massive buff. Kraag has it right. It’s only a buff in situations where you aren’t being controlled or hit with a burst or have a full DS and can see the attack coming. In truth it’s only a buff in terms of the current meta in tPvP where it’s all condition spam and boon bunkers. In situations where you need the stun break and don’t have ds over 50 percent you are simply dead in the water.

In PVE this is massive nerf that essentially destroys Necromancer’s viability on some Boss fights unless you have someone whose entire job is to rez the necro when he gets destroyed. In several fights there isn’t enough time to accrue a full DS bar in order to offset the incoming damage so we used the tricks of the trade to absorb the 20k hit and then continued to play.

Bhawb.7408:

ANet, please don’t listen to people who have never played Necro past FotM builds in tournaments. They have no idea about the class as a whole, they jumped on board after we became too strong, and now are acting like they have half an idea about the class, and it is idiotic. I know you know and talk with the high tier actual necromancers, ones who really know and play the class, listen to them.

I liked the post in the Necromancer forums where the players stated that it angers him that for months the Necro learned to adapt and adjust to his lack of equality, and learned positioning, timing, and every trick in the book to stay alive and function. Once we got buffed it wasn’t the damage we didn’t ask for that was the issue it was the ease of life buffs we received that people complained about.

Terror was never a problem until recently, neither was our DS absorbing burst until our damage became out of control. For months we have had to adjust to the ridiculous S/D thief, the overpowered Ele Bunker, and the ridiculous Mesmer while remaining strong in our belief that if we just had the ability to sustain in a fight we would be on par. When our damage was buffed, and we continued playing the same way suddenly people were crying OP and to take away the core abilities that we learned to play with.

@jmatb It’s obvious you have never played a Necromancer, but instead are the one really bad guardian that every necromancer loves to feast on. Your changes are so anti-necro they are embarrassing to anyone who ever played the necro. Every single profession out there has an easy counter to the Necromancer (except maybe the Mesmer).

DXIEdge.2789:

It’s just this 1 time. The competitive put up with Skyhammer.

It’s not like we’re asking people to not play in tourneys so only tourney signed up teams compete. We’re just looking for some more practice time and we can’t get that in temple

This is the best comment I have seen today. My favorite was the Skyhammer comment :P. I was explaining Skyhammer to the guys from Guild Mag, and the easiest way to explain it was to say, “It’s PVE in PVP. Completely fun, and not competitive at the moment.”

Shar.3402:

I don’t use mist form and don’t play with cantrips regen/vigor, but nice try
If you really think that tanking big bursts, every TEN seconds, with just enough life force to get into death shroud, is something balanced, then I have nothing more to say to you or any other necro that whines for that change.

Good day, sir.

So you don’t play with any defensive utilities and don’t take access to your many forms of vigor and still find a way to play competitively? You have nothing to say because you are incorrect. The Necro has less access to their core mechanic than you do. You have essentially a free heal every 10 seconds, free boons, and a get out of jail free card if you are smart and run dagger off hand.

A condi necromancer barely has time to build the damage to absorb it, is naturally squishy, and has no method of escape, so yes the ability to absorb a single hit every ten seconds is absolutely fair.

Roe.3679:

War Mourner.5168:

You do realise most of this thread was from before people discovered that our LF went from 60% to 100/120% right?

Shenanigans. This buff was right in the patch notes as soon as they were released. Everyone just QQed about it before seeing what it meant.

I do feel bad for the PVE Necros who were relying on a sketchy mechanic, but my build got substantially buffed with this patch. I can finally sustain in a fight instead of hoping I kill someone before my life force is gone.

We were well aware of the buff ahead of time. The buff only affects consistent damage applications without burst. With a lack of stability/invuln/block/vigor, or any other way to eat burst it was an effective nerf every time your DS went below 40 percent.

The issue is that players, who call everyone else QQers, are comparing full DS with Spectral armor on against a bunch of Hot join heros who don’t simply knock you down until Spectral armor is gone and then just free kill you. Sure if two guys train on you while you have a full DS with Spectral armor you will laugh at them, but when DS is down, you die against one semi decent player who knows you have limited access. Plus you just stupidly blew your only stun break to simply absorb damage.

So any smart player would simply let you pop it to absorb and then stun you and dance on your humorously badly played grave. Heck, if I was playing a necro against you, I would laugh as you popped Spectral armor than fear you away while it was on and corrupt boon it and kill you.

The change only mitigate consistent non-hammering damage. Any burst damage or control plus damage build will destroy you just the same. The players who don’t realize this haven’t played against anyone with a semblance of skill yet.

Shar.3402:

Mammoth.1975:

Shar.3402:

step 1) hear the treb shout
step 2) count to 3
step 3) dodge

congratulations, you just took 0 damage from a treb shot without wasting an invulnerability cd or whatever

I got a good laugh from this, thanks

Seems like some people don’t realise that the treb can fire faster than you can regen endurance naturally. Spoiled by vigor and regen traits I guess.

You’re welcome.
Now go back to complain about how you can’t tank 13k hits with 10% life force anymore

go back to mist forming every 60 seconds while stomping thus avoiding all the 13k damage or simply dodging all of it and then knowing that your easy access to vigor will allow you to do it more than once in a blue moon. Or simply use anyone of your other elementalist bag of tricks to avoid the damage knowing that the 40-60 second CD is all you have to worry about.

Phantaram.1265:

Right now DS is not too much because damage in this game is crazy and it’s almost impossible to get the damage off of you (evade spamming thief, 1200 range necros, shortbow spamming rangers) Once some of this damage is nerfed and less reliably applied people will feel hopeless against the new necromancers deathshroud. Some classes already do like elementalist.

Your analysis on burning is spot on.

However your analysis on survivability I will disagree with. Necromancer survivability is absolutely higher than most of these classes that have access to the vigor and invulnerabilities you are talking about. Especially elementalist as I have direct experience with both against top teams in this meta, and I survive way longer on my necromancer. That isn’t to say I don’t get melted to stealth openers at the beginning of the game, but who doesn’t get melted by stealth openers? Even guardians get instagibbed by it there isn’t any stopping it reliably and necromancers actually have a chance if the other team doensn’t coordinate right and I pop plague form as I see the damage start hitting, which has happened.

You are spot on about Burning and the damage in this game being way too high. There is also way too much AoE. You need a lot more single target abilities and remove a lot of the cleaves from MH weapons, and you will see a more balanced game. There needs to be less access to protection in every class, and less access to weakness in certain classes. This would bring a lot more skill to the game.

However, your survivability comment is way offbase, and is more a reflection of you playing players who don’t deal with Necromancers that often. Plague form is a 3 minute elite form that you just wasted 10 seconds into a fight which no other class would have to burn because 2 players jumped you at the start of a fight. If you would have gone into ds, you would have burned your ds and died so you had to waste your elite to soak up damage instead of using a block/invuln/evade or other form which has a much quicker return.

DS with Spectral Armor is incredible for 6 seconds, and then it’s bad. Granted it’s every minute you get 6 seconds of extremely powerful return, but then why isn’t the thief just stealing your boon. Your situations are flawed in that there is always a counter to it. It’s also flawed, because of your lack of experience playing a necromancer. Plague is used to push a point or hold it or blind so you can rez the guardian who just got destroyed by the sheer amount of damage in this game.

The problem still relies on players not seeing the protection on top of you, and then simply knocking you down and around until it’s off. It’s not complicated or tough to kill a necromancer. It’s just there is a whole group of players used to just running in and if we didn’t get away they watched us die. Now we can actually live through a concentrated burst because they never thought of Protection on us.

That’s not to say that DS plus Spectral Armor plus DS damage isn’t a bit over the top especially in a 30/10/0/0/30 build, but if any of our actual attrition skills worked (Blood Magic) or we could receive heals while in DS you would see less complaining about this change from actual Necromancer players.

That being said, you are 100 percent right about the fact that once a Necromancer snowballs with a good guardian or ele next to him he is ridiculously tough to kill and will kill you.

But of Corpse is live Every Sunday at 2:00PM PST/GMT-8 on the soacgaming twitch channel.

VOD :

11/10/13 – This week Bhawb and Tenderly go over the couple of developer posts having to do with the Necromancer profession. We talk about their ideas for traits and Death magic. We also finish up talking about Soul Reaping, leaving the Blood Magic trait discussion for next week, to give it the full time it deserves!

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-necromancer-podcast-corpse-episode-35/

You can catch the discussion at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Discussion-about-our-Traits if you want to add in your input, and we will finish the discussion next week!

But of Corpse Live

http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming

BoC Past Episodes

http://sittingonacouch.com/podcast/guildwars2/necromancer-gw2/

If you have any comments or questions please let me know.

jmatb.6307:

You don’t want people close to you? LOL

Do you know what Death Shroud is and how it’s best used?

No you don’t want them next to you. I really want to know what profession you main, because I am baffled by your perception of the Necromancer.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The thing about CC warriors is that every ounce of CC a warrior has is strongly telegraphed and easily dodged. If you are complaining about a CC warrior, you need to significantly re-evaluate your playstyle.

This is so true, though currently they are the hard counter to necros….wait nope we can just fear them away. It is fun watching Defekitve and hopefully Kpop soon do their stun lock thing!

jmatb.6307:

I’m suggesting midrange as a theme for the class except things like Spectral Grasp, which would be totally useless if it didn’t have that range.

Epi being shorter range would be better too. So would corrupt boon. And if people are kiting you, DS #3 then 2 says hi. Boom you’re back up close doing work.

Except we have no access to any tools (which other classes do have) that would allow you to stay in mid range and do damage without getting knocked around, stunned, and no blocks, evasions, or invulnerability outside of DS. Your logic is flawed in the sense that you havent’ actively played the necromancer long enough to see how easy they are to kill and how the reason they choose 900 is because the necro has to flee long before the fight is over because we have no method of escaping if the fight goes sour.

jmatb.6307:

Poison doesn’t affect res? Fearing people trying to res them doesn’t work? >>

Players rezzing don’t have stability? Fear lasts more than 1.5 seconds? You don’t have a cleanse? The other players on your team haven’t interrupted or used a pet to trigger the Mark? You don’t have a kb or guardian bubble to prevent the damage? You are playing solo in a five man team and so you are the only one rezzing with no one dropping an aoe heal?

shimmerless.4560:

Schlieffen.2054:

I’ve seen AR engies, spirit rangers, stun-lock warriors, and s/d thieves do very well against the fotm necros. There are really good counters to condispam necros, and I’m sure there are counter-builds we have yet to see. Problem is that most people don’t make counter-builds for one specific type of class build, because they enter into a matchup where they don’t know if that build will be there.

Condispam necros are extremely good against the general builds that dominated the meta before necros were buffed. People will want to keep playing those general builds with the blind matchups, even though there are very good counters to condispam necros. They’ll just qq when their general build is strong or average against everything but is extremely weak against necros. Necros will seem like the problem to them because the builds that actually counter necros are not seen as generally viable. They won’t play counter-builds for condispam necros because it would be silly to play a build designed against one specific class-build when you don’t know whether you’ll be facing a condispam necro.

I’ve already made a thread suggesting a change to the way tournament matches begin (there should be an alternating character lock-in draft where both teams can see the builds). The tools for countering condispam necros are there. It makes me sad because there could be so many interesting builds but because the system rewards generally good builds that’s all we’ll ever see.

i tried a necro mancer last night i think i was running 30/20/0/0/20 or 30/20/10 or something i can’t really remember. staff scepter + dagger had no clue what half my skills did and the sheer hurt i put out and the beating i could take before going down was phenomenal. if your burning trait is off cooldown you can bring a thief from 100 to 0 or force them to double shadowstep with scepter auto. a friend later pointed out that i had a wrong utility and i should have taken the fear wall and stood inside it this way melee can’t do anything to touch you and your only threat is from other ranged classes.

people have said stun lock warrior works well against this spec i’m not so sure as eles and guardians were mulch for the boon flip skill and warriors i’d just lay marks everywhere hit f1 while they tried to chain stuns (still doing extremely heavy damage with #5 and #4 or 3 i think) then switch to scepter and hit all five skills for the kills. this is without adding your elite (gain up to 30k+ health and 3000 toughness with condi ammy) into the mix.

i played this in a number of spvp games for about an hour or so and the only thing that successfully brought me down was another necro (with champion shadow title lol)

Hot joins don’t actually count as a legitmate way to show how op a class can be. I watched a dps guardian kill 4 guys at 1 time. I guess they must be op now.

But of Corpse goes live in 2 hours don’t miss out on a chance to talk with Gibbly and Bhawb about the crazy overreaction by tournament players and the odd nerf to DS.

jmatb.6307:

One would think it goes without saying that you don’t use DS while the Well is down. >.>

And yes, shaman is used in reality you might want to look up some nobody scrub on SOAC Red called Zombify. (sarcasm).

You can have sustain on Necro. If people run no healing power on Necro and blame Anet that’s just a l2play issue.

Haha, he doesn’t regularly play with Shaman. He does it when he runs with someone who has regular access to group fury so he can get a little bit more from CC. You only need about 20 to 30 percent crit as a Necro when playing with someone who can buff you with fury.

jmatb.6307:

Glenn.3417:

I’m clueless

You’re not worth responding to at this point anybody who doesn’t see how broken Necros are is batkitten crazy.

Your points are invalid. We are not broken because of range, because you suffer more damage the closer you get to us. We are broken because we push too much damage to fast, and if we can snowball to full DS with CD’s you have no shot. Please adjust your comments to reality.

jmatb.6307:

Well of Blood is a 9000 on you, 4500 to your teammates’ health heal if you do the math with just a Shaman Ammy. If you go Cleric’s you can get 11 thousand health back, and do a 5k aoe heal.

It takes time, but you have time in a teamfight with the way DS is now. It’s a second health bar that Spectral Walk and Armor easily replenish.

If you time Cleansing Conditions right, you will pretty much full heal with that much healing power.

After your litany of posts, my guess is you play a guardian, and have never actually played a necromancer. There is a reason you don’t see a dagger or axe mh necromancer in tournament play. 900 range is hard enough when you have burst classes hammering you with leaps that cover that range and 1500 range engineers bombing you.

Please don’t post about how op necros are at max range. Any necro who sits in Staff all day is worthless. Staff is used when you can’t get to 900 for S/D and you flip to it for Mark of Blood and Staff 3 then flip back to Scepter for damage. You flip back to staff for utility and it goes on. We can’t spam all of our conditions from 1200 range, we can only hit you with a small bleed and chill. Corrupt boon occasionally, but to really hurt you we have to be 900 or closer so please play a necromancer before talking. We actually do a majority of damage with Wells which have a 900 range cast.

Please don’ talk about WoB as a legitimate heal. There is only one heal we use and it’s CC. WoB is only viable when you can stand still and near your team to get all of the heal. CC is just too good.

Shar.3402:

QtHman.6502:

If you are knocked down while in DS, you are knocked out of DS for 10 seconds. So if I am on the ground and it’s on a 10 sec CD how am I supposed to activate it.

Is this a new change? or maybe i spend a whole year in this game and didn’t know about this one.

Can someone please test this and correct me if i’m wrong.

I can tell you for sure that the dodge train golem (that pushes you back) and the engineer npc (which knocks you back with rifle) don’t kick you out of DS.
I can tell you for sure that knockdown (earthquake) doesn’t kick you out of DS.

Unless it was fixed in the last patch Updraft, The Necro Golem, Flamethrower push back and the warrior stomp all knocked and put DS on CD.

hackks.3687:

Two things:

1 – thanks for the video proof that Ele’s instant cast burst is indeed in much need of a nerf, a la added cast/flight times (though I wouldn’t rule out deletion; see 100nades)

2 – that poor Necro had to use two skills to accomplish what every other class can do with a single skill

also, I’m not sure how telling your friend to hold up their shield so you can run into it face first as fast as you can constitutes as a “test”…

It’s not in all reality. It’s a joke of a test, but according to the tpvp “elite” whatever “test” they run is considered factual evidence. Therefore you are I are not worthy to point out the complete ridiculous of the test.

Shar.3402:

Follidus.8027:

didn’t you guys know that knockbacks remove all deathshroud? idiotheads need to stop stirring the pot.

jeez, should have known that updraft would kill necros with full DS by making them panic and press their F1 button!

Two comments that completely miss their point in their attempt to feel superior. Using a knockback on a Necromancer who is in death shroud, knocks the necro out of deathshroud for 10 seconds. It doesn’t remove the LF gained, nor does it actually kill a player. It simply puts deathshroud on cooldown.

If you use a knockback and the player is not in Death Shroud we can pop Death Shroud just as an Elementalist can switch attunements. But and here is the key phrase you are missing IF THE NECRO IS ALREADY IN DEATH SHROUD then a knock back and I believe a stun and but not dazes will knock the necro out of death shroud and place it on a cooldown.

Shananigans.8412:

This poster is sadly misinformed. This is a burst combo that can near 1 shot the mass majority of builds right now. A simple knock-back would have done nothing, because 15k in damage from the combo took next to nothing off of life force, and you can pop shroud while knocked down, and mitigate all that damage.

Air has always been one of the staples of s/d ele builds, as it provides good spike in combination with the arcane spells and decent sustain from range. It is not by any means bad vs. necros and even more so after the patch, it allows you to avoid the large amounts of weakness necros put out.

Fire Burst, while good, is alot more easily avoidable, and the likely hood of landing a full fire combo is next to none, and adds, i’d say approximately 8-10k damage onto the combo, assuming most attacks don’t crit. Which by all means does enough damage combined to kill a bunker guardian.

Again, you completely missed the point. His video showed two guys staring at each other with the Necro activating Spectral Armor and casting ds before ever initiating. The Necro then allowed the guy to initiate all his air attacks. I simply pointed out that if you wanted to truly show you would use the actual hard hitting attacks.
Hitting someone for 2k 1.1k, 2k is not an instant burst like an 8k Fire grab.

If you are knocked down while in DS, you are knocked out of DS for 10 seconds. So if I am on the ground and it’s on a 10 sec CD how am I supposed to activate it. I am sure you must have missed the part where I very clearly pointed out that all he had to do was kb him in DS and he loses ds.

We all know Air is the most common one because you can hit someone quicker and it’s more difficult to dodge. That doesn’t mean that fire doesn’t hit harder. While you are correct the likelihood of someone landing a serious of fire attacks is very very minimal it faces the same likelihood as that situation in the video describes. That would be like me making a video of me blowing all my CD on an Ele in mist form and then posting it saying see how op elementalists are.

Sepreh.5924:

Bas.7406:

Damage needs to be brought down, and the necro needs an option to survive or get out of fight that doesn’t rely solely on Death Shroud

Agree, but can we also say that it is primarily the condition pressure that should be brought down? It would be unfortunate if power build damage was made less viable.

No, power build damage with wells and DS 1 is obscene. Go run a dagger/wh well build, spectral grasp them into your wells pop wh 5 and then flip to ds and hammer them with Life Blast. They are slowed with cripple in melee range, and you can absolutely wreck them. MY LB against a guy with protection on hits for 3-4k.

Now their is a tradeoff considering you are in melee range with no escapes and can die. You are correct in that the sheer volume of aoe condition spam from everyone is too much, but that’s going to be the case as long as most classes have access to massive aoe damage that equals the same as single target damage.

You also have to have significant condition pressure to offset the boon fest from guardians and Ele’s.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I never thought this day would come where I have to hang up my necromancer, but I think it’s now. They are going in the exact opposite direction from where our class needs to go. With this new DS obliteration, I have no need to play necro anymore. It’s a sad day for me and many other necros in this community too. My final straw was last night when I was asked to wait outside a boss fight because the group “didn’t want to spend the whole fight rezzing the necro” <—- exact wording. I don’t really blame them. I’ve tried using DS like I used to, and the difference is staggering. Either you go full LF or you don’t bother and just eat the dirt. I’m not arguing that the other nerfs were needed, I know they were. But this one baffles me beyond belief. Farewell necro, maybe we will meet again in the future when you get your cahones back.

This is what I was trying to explain to Bhawb and some of the pvp guys. This nerf to DS is massive for anyone who plays pve or wvwvw. It’s a nice change for tpvp where you face bunkers and condition spam, but in a boss fight where you 20k damage hits are dealt out more often then 10 seconds, you get destroyed now. I don’t know how many times I used DS because I had already dodged twice in 30 seconds which means with no block, invuln or way to disengage, ds was it. This new change essentially killed us on certain boss fights.

Batmang.5421:

I did not post this to stir the pot. I posted this to show people some of the defensive capability of necro. I dare to say most people would have no idea this was a possibility even after reading the patch notes. Keep in mind there is an icd on the life force generation from spectral armor which unless its bugged, would actually be stronger in damage mitigation (in some scenarios) than whats show in that video.

If you weren’t attempting to stir the pot than you wouldn’t have been claiming l2play not more than two posts later. Your video is horrifyingly one sided. It’s perhaps the worst example of gameplay to illustrate a point I have yet to see.

Essentially you told the Necro to buff himself completely and then hit him with a class that doesn’t deal with burst and you didn’t use any of your actual burst skills.

Tip 1: Any semi decent elementalist would have immediately used his kb on a necro in ds, now the necro is dead.

Tip 2: Air form is the absolute worst thing to ever use pre and post patch against a necro because it relies on consistent damage and not the massive hits which is the main issue.

These are well known and obvious issues that you know as a high-level pvp player. Two of our podcasters went out and tested after watching this little joke of a video. They did two tests.

Test 1: Spectral armor plus 40 percent DS just traits against an ele – Necro started off with 40 percent LF and 21k health – Ele pulled off a true burst using Fire into Air and even landed a Dragon’s tooth – Necro ate 9.5k worth of damage and took a hit of 1.5k to his health.

Test 2: Spectral armor on CD no prot – 40 percent DS – Ele pulls of same rotation – Necro ends at 3.8k health.

When asked if they can now test it with spectral armor up – DS up ,and start with a KB they replied with why the Necro would be dead. Because he has no DS at that point.

That is the reality Blinx, and if your example was designed to prove that we have viable utilities then the video would have shown how simple it is to avoid all of those mitigations with a simple KB or stun.

In the end, the problem lies in the fact that Necros put out too much damage and the changes made have done nothing to improve their survivability. Any knockback or stun immediately locks us out of DS if we were in it. So while the Necro is the ultimate snowball class with weakness/prot/stability on you won’t be able to kill them, they can be easily dismantled with a simple KB.

Damage needs to be brought down, and the necro needs an option to survive or get out of fight that doesn’t rely solely on Death Shroud.

kai.4629:

Really? Allie made an agruement about opportunity cost and having to dedicate 1 player to focus on a necro and your counter agruement is “No, we have to use 3-4 players”?

If you feel the other team is coming to gank you, why not adjust your gameplay or have your teammates around you to counter instead of asking Dev to buff your character?

Way to take something out of context. He explained his point simply. Losing a point for 20 seconds to kill one player that can’t escape or prevent the incoming damage swings the team fight in your favor. No one goes 1 on 1 that’s just stupid. In tournament player it’s always 2 v 1 and peeling. With stability/prot/weakness you can just train a necro down as he can’t do anything to stop it, and since he is the only one able to remove that aegis/stability easily then you have just swung the team fight in your favor.

If he pops into DS, and you have any form of stun it will knock him out of ds and lock him out of his only defensive option for 10 seconds. That’s more than enough time for them to kill the necro and then return to help their bunker who is making sure the point isn’t capped.

This isn’t an opportunity cost this is a win anyway you look at it. You swapped the team fight in your favor, and removed the only player who could disable your stability easily. Now it’s just spam fest and you win because you outnumber them. There is no counter to this move.

Allie and Jon,

I am glad to see you guys taking an active role in discussion here. The guys from SOAC and I had a long discussion about the Necromancer changes and I also got the opportunity to talk with Xeph about the class.

The problem with the Necromancer was never damage. Sure we were a little behind the engineer, but the engineer was brought not because of damage so much as because they didn’t need to be babysat to stay alive. Now that the necro does an obscene amount of damage players are noticing the little tricks we used before we could get destroyed by a single thief with no opportunity to escape to simply survive.

The problem we have now is the Necromancer is the definition of a snowball class. If I have limited to no death shroud I am ineffective and dead. If i am alone with 20 percent or less LF and carry a stun breaker that isn’t spectral armor I am dead or if spectral armor is on cd than I am dead. There is no way for me to avoid the incoming damage and no way for me to escape the fight.

However if I can survive long enough to get 40 perecent LF, and my guardian or Ele is alive and able to keep Prot on me. I can turn into an unkillable machine. DS is extremely effective now at any point past 20 percent or at which it can outlast the amount of damage inflicted by the opponent. So in the tpvp scene where condition spam and bunkers is the meta we are snowballing team fights. Our damage is still ridiculous (nerf to terror was an extremely odd nerf when the issue is the sheer volume of condition damage combined with terror and Life Blast).

So once we get deathshroud rolling and we get hit by a non-burst class we can just sit and farm players. However if our DS runs out or Prot isn’t provided or we simply start a fight with limited ds, we are easily trained down by any semi-skilled team or player.

This creates a snowball effect in which the sheer volume of damage, the necessary changes to weakness, team protection, and the recent fix to the 200 percent damage increase when in ds creates an incredible damage dealing power machine in team fights. This creates a massive disadvantage against any team that runs any form of condition cleave or bunker approach because the necro with a large access to weakness and a full ds bar along with some protection from guard or ele will be incredibly difficult to whittle down while pumping out an obscene amount of damage.

The DS change that angers everyone is the overlay as it was our soul source of damage soaking for pve and WvWvW where the damage comes in fast and hard in greater than 10 second intervals. I used 20 percent DS to soak up 20k boss hits because I was out of energy from dodging it twice and while everyone else had recouped dodge or were able to flip to a full block I used DS to soak it all in.

TLDR: The Necro is a snowball class currently. Pre 40 percent DS they are free kills in every environment. After 40 percent DS they can farm kill and destroy teams. I watched Zomb and Gibbly destroy 3 v 1’s. The biggest hurt to the overflow is in situations where we have to play defensive and use it to defend or help escape the damage. Now if I am at 20 percent health and 20 percent LF I have no evade, escape, or method to absorb the incoming damage. Therefore I am not an attrition class I am simply a snowballing class of death.

Easy Fix: Let DS work the way it has by absorbing the damage delivered or give us a method to get out of a fight or simply allow other players to heal us in ds at a 50 percent reduction. Reduce the proc rate of Dhuumfire. Increase the amount healed in siphon and allow siphoning to heal while in ds at it’s current state, but when out of DS allow it to heal 100 percent stronger.

Fifthnight.9658:

No that isn’t the part. Perhaps you should give it another read.

My point is that the mechanic for Deathshroud was obviously not intended to function as it did before allowing for it to eat up any amount of damage before eating at your health. Nothing is wrong with Necromancer and they are still perfectly fine and playable.

If everyone is so set on bringing up contribution let me point out that posting about the contribution of my post is not a contributing post.

Except they stated repeatedly that the point of deathshroud was to replace our lack of evasion/invulns/boons. In fact in one state of the game, a dev stated that most Necros didn’t use DS correctly because it was designed to save you from death so you should use it defensively however the change did not allow that. DS previously would take 200 percent damage every time someone attacked you while in DS, but it would absorb all the damage taken regardless of the hit or period in which it was used. It was essentially a dodge every 10 seconds, now it’s significantly worse than a block.

Currently if you get hit by a burst damage class and you don’t have protection on, you will get absolutely train wrecked in or out of DS. If your ds isn’t full. This is a bigger hit to WvWvW Solo Necros and PVE Necros in boss fights where you have to dodge massive damage hits. This is not a significant nerf to Tournament necros as the DS change actually benefits necros in team fights where prot and weakness will always be on.

The new ds will make multiple attacks really easy to mitigate if you have prot and weakness spreading with ds. However if you aren’t running with a source of prot and are able to apply weakness, you will essentially be hit even harder than before if running a glass cannon as DS can no longer be used as simply a soak shield to absorb a massive hit.

However, we will be significantly stronger against more bunker type teams Guardians, Bunker Engi’s, Rangers, and any player that uses chain attacks will have a significantly harder time killing us. It’s the burst that we used to absorb and then come out of it fine that’s gone now which inherently hurts our ability when we are rebuilding DS.

Oblivion.8307:

don’t worry guys, necro still broken op.

I agree with one caveat. Condi Necros are still broken op because nerfing terror doesnt’ fix our incredible amount of damage and we can still chain 3 straight fears on one person.

Power Dagger Necros who had it rough before are now completely done with the ds change. Your only hope is to blow someone up before you die. Previously you could use ds to kill and get out if it failed. Now it’s just die even if you outplay the ds nerf means you will still take damage even if you used it defensively to eat the damage.

@Nemesis – necros are still very viable in pvp. They are just bad in solo queueing, and they are even worse now thanks to the ds nerf. The necro should never be stomping anyways. Leave it to your team and rely on positioning and use the downed body as your epidemic train.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Fungalfoot.7213:

And to illustrate my point.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade

Note that every other class in the game is represented while one is conspicuously absent. And now our one way of meaningfully preventing damage is GONE.

Maybe because it’s an unreliable and unintended means for preventing damage.

Maybe you’re going to receive another means of preventing damage to compensate.

I do love how people are magnets to the negative. One guy makes a claim that prods the sore knee-jerk emotions, and everyone latches onto it like they aren’t just feeding the perpetual negativity machine. I was hoping for at least 1 person to objectively evaluate whether or not DS as a “block” mechanic is actually dumb and should be compensated in other ways via my previous post, but it must be too soon to think logically.

EDIT – Also, it’s possible Death Shroud numbers weren’t necessarily higher, but the LF bar was taking larger hits than it should have from a certain amount of damage. So, if you test in and out of DS while just looking at numbers, they’re the same, but the back-end will be different.

Food for thought. And hopefully not food for more emotions.

Except they didn’t compensate it with any change that makes sense. This 50 percent more damage only helps little aoe hits it doesn’t affect the actual damage you would normally use your evades or invulns for so your argument is pointless. If they compensated for the lack of ds blocks with healing in ds or another way to avoid damage that every other class can avoid completely then you would have a point. As of now you are simply saying suck it up because hey a change might come down the road. That’s a ridiculous argument.

Don’t get mad at people who have a valid argument by making claims that aren’t valid. The 50 percent damage change does nothing to help us avoid burst hits except hey now instead of eating all 15k damage you can eat 7k and then die because the other 8k is going to kill you. or instead of eating that entire 7-8k evisc you can only eat 4k. The only way this change benefits is against rapid shots, and other damage that does a chain to hurt you instead of one big hit.

This is a lazy fix, and does zero to help us. The double damage needed to be changed, but the ds nerf was a bad thought with no counter to it.

I normally don’t post my thoughts about patch notes, but I would like to point out how amazing these changes are. I mean think about it guys. We were way too tanky to begin with and with being able to be healed while in Death Shroud and taking so little damage while blowing people up and using DS 2 to escape we were dominating every aspect of the game. Terror was way too op, I mean no one has condition cleanses or a good amount of stun breaks. It’s not like they recently added a new condition that is ridiculously overpowered and could possibly have been removed or nerfed to reduce the damage a bit more.

Wait…hold on….sorry it’s been awhile…um, I can’t be healed in Death Shroud, and now I can’t use it defensively when low on health as well? Wait, you mean the absolute best part of being a necromancer cliff diving is no longer an option. Wait…you mean terror the skill that has been in the game for a long time and no one ever complained about it faced the nerf bat as opposed to the actual skill (dhuumfire) that is so powerful it’s mandatory in every damage necro build.

Well, at least they finally nerfed those ridiculously overpowered spectral skills. Wait…..

Well, at least they either gave us the Greater marks trait because with this DS nerf we will need Greater marks now to stay alive in a fight. Wait…..

Well, at least we can now get more DS so that we can use it defensively more often since it’s based on vitality and so if I run power build I can sit in my 19k health with my 14k DS and not lose it all in one hit thanks to that fix. Wait….you mean there are tons of bosses, classes in wvwvw, and moments when 14k worth of DS will fade away in less than 3 seconds.

So after seeing skyhammer being touted as a great competitive map by their “testers”, I want to know who tested the necro changes before saying, "Yes, we need to nerf the only defensive skill the Necromancers have, because of a map that can’t be used in competitive pvp, because we might be able to live though not climb back up in skyhammer. Did they realize that even if we survived the fall, we couldn’t really do anything once we were stuck down there?

July 20, 2013 – In this week’s exciting podcast, the new co-host CMC is introduced along with some great outlooks on the Elementalist. They talk pvp, pve, and wvwvw and answer some questions about the state of the elementalist. We are excited to have CMC on the sittingonacouch.com podcasting roster. If you have any questions or players you would like to see on the show please let us know.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-elementalist-podcast-attunement-swap-episode-7/

June 18, 2013 – In this episode of But of Corpse, The minion runner himself Bhawb gets to talk minion tournament play with High Warlord Sikari. They talk death shroud healing, necro support mechanics, and the future of Necromancers. You can check out the High Warlord build on intothemists.com

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-necromancer-podcast-corpse-episode-22/

flow.6043:

What?? You think settling a disagreement about what builds are stronger in a round of tPvP by actually fighting it out is “medieval”?
But you would do the very same thing if the argument was about Street Fighter 4???

Btw I’m hyped to see that match!

I apologize to everyone I pulled the plug on the match for the time being. We had some issues with SOAC teams and it took my ability from being able to monitor and do this right. The goal of the match was to simply illustrate new builds, but many of the teams that I knew felt it wouldn’t accomplish much outside of making people feel like they one upped Altroll. They felt that would hurt the game more than help it.

DrixTrix.7168:

thanks, shall listen on my way home however it normally automatically goes into my podcast folder on itunes, odd! :P

I believe that’s on my end. i haven’t checked to see if the itunes folder is still working for us. When we revamped the website it may have broken the itunes connection. I will find out what the link is and fix it.

I apologize.