Guild Wars 2

Rennoko.5731:

Bas.7406:

Signet of Spite is never worth it no matter what build you run, the tradeoff is not worth the cost. There are a multitude of other utilities that provide a better return on investment.

He is referencing the spite tree not the spite signet.

Haha, okay I should have read his entire post first. Doh, I always tell people to read thoroughly before posting, and just breezed through his post ;p.

Spectral Armor: The Cooldown is too long for it’s completely low duration. The 15 point trait in Soul Reaping is significantly better.

Signet of Spite: Not even sure what the deal is with this or any signet.

Plague Signet: It has it’s uses, but there are so many better and more efficent ways to do the exact same thing (dagger 4, Staff 4) or just cleanse them with a heal.

Shadow Fiend is my least Favorite minion, but he is pretty tanky against veterans and the aoe blind = mmmmmm.

Signet of Spite is never worth it no matter what build you run, the tradeoff is not worth the cost. There are a multitude of other utilities that provide a better return on investment.

Caris.1594:

TL;DR – I like my minions, but I want them to regen between fight and/or be able to dismiss/resummon.

Oddly enough from beta to live they nerfed the health of minions by a significant portion because they were incredibly powerful in pvp.

There are multiple ways to regen your minions health, but I really don’t see a need to as I prefer them to die for Death Nova of it just doesn’t matter all that much since 24-32 seconds later I get them back. 30 seconds in a dungeon is nothing.

The ways you can heal your minions are as follows. Staff 2, Focus 4 (unreliable), Transfusion (life transfer healing), and Well of Blood. If you are running with a guardian who has symbolic heals (they all should :P), shout heals (that’s annoying to your teammates), and elementalist regen.

I ran with Del Onasi and Nay who were running full Necro support builds, and they were able to keep a constant state of protection as well as heals going and I did not lose a single minion during the run until the final boss.

As for the dismissal, I wholeheartedly agree I would love to just get rid of them and resummon them.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

@OP: what do you use for gear & weapons? Berzerker?

I run the same build as he does with Berzerker gear exquisite ruby jewels, Axe/Focus, and Staff.

Zul.1506:

@Bhawb: I wouldn’t join an All-Necro guild though, it’s nice having some variety :P

Still, I wouldn’t mind doing an all-Necro dungeon run! Never could find enough Necros at one time to do it though

The next time we host one let us know. Nay of the Ether and Andele usually do a few every week.

haha, I linked to them, and I will watch it a bit later. Been busy

If you are running solo, than it will work sometimes, and other times you will get crushed. The key in solo roaming is avoiding the zergs. Thanks to culling being off you can see them coming a mile away.

If you are soloing than I recommend either going more defensive or more offensive in your spec. Hybriding is fantastic in groups because you can drop a bit of health to gain more damage, but when playing solo I like to go all the way in one direction or another.

I am not an expert, but that 22k health scares me as a solo without more damage. However if you can take down a supply camp solo than that’s all that matters ;p.

Are you running with a dedicated group or solo?

If you are going 30 in soul reaping for 5 second swaps than 25 percent slower drain on LF is not worth taking.

A big positive is Dagger/Well flip to Lich form and bomb targets. If you are going full power than you might as well go all the way.

You won’t do as much damage as a person who goes 30/25/0/0/15, but if you build a tankish with gear you could really bunker up some dungeons so your high damage teammates can go all out. 0/20/0/20/30 just reads like more of bunker build.

I am almost positive 30 in Spite would beat out 30 in Soul Reaping for pure damage.

I appreciate all the positive feedback so far.

Good Evening, Necro Community! I am curious as to what else But of Corpse and sittingonacouch.com can do for you.

We are creating a new youtube channel where we are planning the following.

1. But of Corpse Podcasts with Videos of the guests playing.
2. All-Necro Dungeon Runs (Andele and Nay do these so well)
3. Tips and Tricks for Dungeons – Such as how to do an effective speed run for each dungeon. (Green Tea is going to be helping with this one)
4. Build Testing – You give us a build we will test it.
5. Connections to all the great Necromancer guides (Nemesis and CHHIPPS so far)
6. Tournament videos (Help me convince Khalifa :P)

I want to do Tutorial videos with players who post builds and how it works for them, and have them teach me how it works. As well as a you just started playing tutorial and how to level as a Necro. Would anyone care to see this?

Is there anything else we can add that might help the Necro community?

((No dreadlord, I won’t just go away haha))

Khalifahaze.6045:

Yeah pretty much, it’s a high risk high reward team build very fun with a coordinated team – not so much solo haha

I have a video of me soloing in a tournament with your build. It’s hilarious! 10 minutes of deaths but I ended up with 110 points and a win. I am thinking of putting it together with a few other videos for when we launch the new youtube channel for SOAC Gaming where the podcasts will be going.

Kravick.4906:

Interesting build. I tried it, but didn’t like it. Way to squishy without the necessary mobility to make it work.

I think the major reason it works for Khalifa is because he has a team there to support him. In any other situation you are going to be targeted and destroyed in a matter of seconds. Especially when you pop lich form. This is a team fighting build, so if you don’t have a team to play with, this build most likely won’t work.

I actually had the pleasure of fighting Khalifa several times over the last 3 weeks. Hes a good player, make no mistake, but when I face him on my thief he doesn’t stand a chance against me if I catch him far enough away from his teammates. Of course any time he has teammates around he has the advantage. His team is very good at calling targets, focus firing, and getting people off the ground compared to the PUGs I always play with. On the flip side of things, every time I encounter his group when I am playing my necromancer, he absolutely destroys me in every fight.

Without a coordinated team, this build isn’t very effective IMO.

Kravik needs to catch the podcast :P. He actually mentioned this specifically stating that the main reason why he was so successful is because his original team was built around the powermancer.

He stated that powermancers are very strong, but not alot of people want to make a team around a specific build so the unique builds get left by the wayside for a more universal appeal (conditionmancers).

Such as theives in High End Tournaments are rarely seen because they have to be protected and against very good players they rarely catch you napping.

Riot Inducer.8964:

Bas.7406:

They refuse to come to the forums simply because they don’t wish to waste anymore time trying to explain this and getting flamed.

Heh, glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’d probably be a fair bit more active on these forums but the Profession subsection feels like nothing but people complaining about how terrible their profession is. It’s not just necromancers, almost every one I look at is filled with that sort of thing.

It’s one of the reasons I started the Podcast. I knew a lot of really good Necromancers that were avoiding the forums, and we just wanted to put a more positive and constructive outlook on the game.

Sprawl.3891:

people still do tournaments?

It’s a bit low, but there are quite a few teams still rolling especially EU. I am probably going to talk to some people and see if we can get a few teams going from SOAC Gaming just to try and get the Tournaments moving again.

Blink Squikitten605:

I’d like to check out the pod cast, but I’m getting a “webpage not available”. Just a heads up.

It should work now. I think we had an overload on the webpage. We are working on it now. It did the same thing for me earlier.

Are you using firefox?

philmosk.3420:

Khal,
Thanks for the in-depth discussion. It’s nice to see peeps sticking with the Necro, despite the issues the class as a whole is still having.

One question, though. I was considering farming the Twilight dungeon for the Nightmare rune set, but now I’m conflicted. Is the Precision you get from the Thieves set that exceptional, or could I augment the Precision loss another way?

Two things, he mentioned in the podcast which I recommend you catch.

1). Khalifa has never done a single bit of PVE ;p.

2). He now uses Eagle Runes and 1 Divinity Runes. For pve purposes, the stats are slightly different and depends on how your gameplay is going.

Bumping for those who haven’t listened to the Podcast and want to see the build.

Trust me, Guys, if you have any interest in tournaments, you want to listen to this podcast. Khalifa and I are going to be working together in the future to do some instructional PVP and tournament videos.

We have gone over a few of those, the podcast is up and running. Unfortunately, I posted this a bit late, but we will have him back on, and we are still trying to get Zombify locked down as well.

In Wednesday’s Podcast we had an amazing conversation with Khalifa who is the one of the top Necromancers in the NA tournaments. He also runs a power build and wrote a guide for tournament play as a power necromancer as well as been on esports talking about Necromancer play.

Here is a link to his guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Khalifa-s-PVP-D-D-Necro-Build-2/page/2#post1608420

Currently Khalif’s record in tournaments 2003 wins and 356 losses as of last night. We are pumped to have him on the podcast this week. We did not even close to covering everything we wanted to talk about, and I apologize ahead of time for those who wanted certain questions asked. In the future we will post ahead of time to give everyone a chance to ask questions from them.

He will definitely be on in the future, as we delve more and more into specifics of gameplay.

http://sittingonacouch.com/the-gw2-necro-podcast-but-of-corpse-ep-7/

Xsorus.2507:

Bas.7406:

Come to the Necro Xsorus! You know you want too :P.

If I still had time to play a lot, I would actually finish working on the Necro, as I wanted to Minion Necro video (Yes I’m a masochist)

I am actually going to do a few Minion videos, I will let you know when they are up. Minions are ridiculously powerful when specced right. I wiped out a glamour mes until you figured out how to shatter them all at the same time. Minions are my favorite utility, but they have the same issues that ranger pets do except with a slightly more delayed response time. ;p. However you do get essentially a permanent cripple.

Come to the Necro Xsorus! You know you want too :P.

Skyro.3108:

You have to realize that predictability was ANet’s design intent. That’s the whole reason they had weapon sets in the first place, why there’s no cast bars but unique cast animations, etc. They wanted players to have a visual cue on what to look out for so they could time their dodges and stuff.

The lack of viable, unique builds and play-styles is something else entirely. That is why IMO each class should be balanced around roles. Each role typically necessitates different play-styles and builds, and if you give each class say 3 or so viable roles they can fill it is a nice balance between predictability and varied play.

That’s an interesting idea, but that would put them back into realizing that leaving a role system was a bad idea. Since their whole premise was leaving roles behind and just having this completely dynamic play, I am not sure they will do that.

Once you start developing roles, people will fall into a holy trinity WoW type or LoL type roles and then we are back to what they wanted to leave behind. Not sure that’s possible with what they want to do with the game.

In Wednesday’s Podcast we are going to talk to Khalifa who is the one of the top Necromancers in the NA tournaments. He also runs a power build and wrote a guide for tournament play as a necromancer at guildwars2guru.com.

He and Zombify are going both going to be able to meet and record tonight. I would love to get some questions from the Necro community that you would like us to go over with him.

Currently Khalif’s record in tournaments 1987 wins and 379 losses as of last night. We are pumped to have him on the podcast this week.

Please post your questions and we will try to get some of them answered.

Skyro.3108:

@Bas

In your example you have this incorrect notion that you are “taking no damage” while in DS, when in essense it is basically all EHP. You do not seem to recognize this, even through my many attempts to explain this fact. If consider your health pool and LF pool as one big EHP pool your whole example becomes nonsensical.

It is you who is linking two separate issues, being able to heal in DS and our HPS output, together. If you are making the argument that you think our HPS is too high in PvE, which I have little experience with so I won’t comment, then that is an entirely separate issue. But our HPS is most certainly not high in PvP, which is what you were alluding to with the “unkillable in 1v1” comment.

The whole point of me explaining the optimally short up time of DS was say that in a realistic scenario your DS uptime is short, and the amount of consistent HPS is low (in PvP). This basically means the healing you would receive in DS is minimal, at best. The plus side however is that it indirectly buffs many underpowered traits in the blood line, and promotes more synergy with team members.

And I find it very very hard to believe it is this way due to balance concerns. Like I said previously, I am pretty sure this is just bad coding by ANet.

I can see what you are saying about EHS, but that would be looking at DS as an actual life bar, while I look at it more like a utility transformation state. I can see your point, but my point is that currently when I leave DS I am still at 14k health if I lose it, and with the healing added to DS, I would be back at 28k health in DS or whatever health I currently have which using your EHS means that I would have constant resupply of EHS from two sources making us incredibly difficult kills.

I am not disagreeing with your notion that in most builds you wouldn’t be unkillable. I am saying against a majority of players in a 1v1 situation with a 0/10/0/30/30 build with Cleric’s gear we would be as close to unkillable as the elementalist was pre 30 Arcana nerf.

PinCushion.7390:

Oldbugga.7029:

Well if what Bas is saying IS correct, what evidence is there that ANet are trimming the other profs down to our level? NONE (in fact the opposite..epidemc nerf anyone). This is just the old MMO argument “so-and-so class is OP…devs pls nerf it” and we all know where that goes.

The alternative then is to seek an increase in necro abilities to match because that argument above will get us nowhere.

EDIT: and the line of least resistance (effort) for the devs is to buff one or two of our abilities rather than nerf one or two abilities for 3 or 4 professions. So if buffing us is improbable I would say nerfing the others is even more of an improbability purely on the effort required.

It isn’t about the line of least resistance. It’s about creating a level playing field where every profession has a variety of builds with which they can contribute in both PvE and PvP. In PvE it prevents content from becoming (more) trivialized, and prevents players from being shoehorned into roles and builds that they may not actually enjoy. Both of these add to the game’s overall longevity and marketability. In PvP it prevents matches from becoming foregone conclusions based purely on which group has the “correct” class composition, and also creates a certain amount of unpredictability in gameplay. How many times have you seen a Warrior with a Greatsword in PvP or WvW and knew exactly what he was going to do and how to react to it? That’s a problem. There aren’t enough ways to build a solid Greatsword Warrior that players actually want to use, so GS Warriors are painfully predictable to the point of being boring. That’s just an example, but there are countless others. D/D Elementalists are another build that is very potent, but also incredibly predictable.

Incredibly well worded. Thank you!

Pendragon.8735:

Thing is this patch is more a nerf for us than a buff, as Epidemic is probably our strongest skill and took a hit, especially the stealth nerf of it only hitting 4 people now. That is a 20% effectiveness reduction! Lame. Then we still have Ele’s running around as kings of whatever they want to do, barely getting tinkered with on the edges at best.

I was really expecting they would make some moves toward solving what are commonly discussed as our bigger weaknesses. They appear to think we are fine, or finished.

Has that 4 been tested? I heard it was tested and it was still 5.

Skyro.3108:

There is nothing to consider. All the DS traits that require you to stay in DS are complete and utter garbage because of this very fact.

Outside of screwing around, I agree, and it’s one of the reasons I prefer Minions over a DS focus build. Outside of PVE and even in PVE staying in ds longer than halfway through your lf bar is a complete and total waste. If your LF runs out not only are you screwed if you get caught in wvwvw or tournaments, but if you are facing a boss you get jobbed as well.

Ruufio.1496:

I really hope we hear a devs opinion on the subject. This sub-forum hasn’t seen a red post in over a month. Have they ever even tested allowing healing in DS in any of their test servers? Such as how they tested capture the flag and didn’t like it?

Why don’t we ever see dev discussion on the most debated subjects? All we see in the dev tracker is, “Thanks for reporting the bug! We are looking at it! It looks beautiful, thanks!”

The last few times a dev posted every angry necro came out of the woodwork and ripped them a new one. This would cause anyone to be wary of peeking their head out, and is why I keep trying to push for a positive outlook and positive spin on our discussions to bring them back in.

Obviously, Jon Peters made the most hilarious statement about necros which was then reinforced that the people looking over necros don’t play it in the State of the Game with the beautiful comment (you should use DS when you are about to die which brought the even better comment from a listener who posted, “and then what you kittens it’s not like we can get away”).

Or my personal favorite comment, because of the Minion master we need to buff Mesmer Greatsword.

So as you can see we don’t have the greatest love for them, but instead of trying for a more positive approach (Chips has done an amazing job in the attrition discussion of keeping it more progressive and positive) than the more common anyone who thinks necros are in a good place are a kitten fanboi who blows rainbows up peoples butts (courtesy of my favorite poster Dreadlord)

@skyro

The problem here is we are having two different conversations. You are discussing optimal usage of DS which I agree with, and in the strictest sense you are correct. If you use DS to swap in and out then there is no danger of it becoming OP.

Your scenario of the heal situation actually made me laugh because of how often it actually happens, and has happened numerous times in Dungeons with myself and others trying to drop a heal or shout to bring me up a bit.

However, there is a bit of a disconnect where you and I are talking. (Disclaimer: all numbers are subjective because I have no desire to go check the actual numbers so I am rounding)Let’s say I am in a fight and I get hit for 14k, because I forgot to use DS to absorb or didn’t have enough LF to absorb it.

So I use Staff 2 to pop regen healing me for 300 per tick , I picked up siphon on hit which is 33 per hit, than I pick up Life Transfer which is around 2400 for the channel. I also pick up wells siphon 150 per tick (I have heard reports of higher, but I haven’t seen it).

I am sitting at 14k health now, and with most classes (ele’s not included) this is half the battle, you can drop the rest of their health pretty rapidly with another burst knockdown even guardians at 14k have to use their healing ability.

If we could heal at full healing power which is what some of you want. I could realistically drop my wells, hit the marks 2 to regen, than pop into DS keep healing while taking no damage and hit life transfer realistically healing my life most of the way back up without using my actual heal. You don’t see how this could make us incredibly difficult to kill? Not to mention anyone could do this every 10 seconds or every 5 seconds. Let’s not even add that Well of Blood is amazingly powerful. This would make us a less mobile version of the Elementalist that saw a serious nerf to it’s 30 arcana, yet is still called op and ridiculous by most players.

If our healing saw a significant reduction say 50 percent minimum to our heals while in DS than that would at least be worth of discussion.

Oldbugga.7029:

Like all of our viable builds they come at a cost of other utility/damage. It is a matter of playstyle as to which build you prefer and what is important to you in selecting the “specialty”. I don’t think many would argue with Bas that there ARE work-arounds for the MM builds/AI and indeed for most of our “bugs/design foibles” but it is that the way the game should be implemented and left? I think that is the issue.

I don’t think pet AI is a bug. It’s a design issue. Their aggro triggering is tied into single target abilities, and the entire pet AI is buggy and a bit warped. However, my point was more that Minion AI is as good as the rest. That’s not saying much, but it’s saying that it’s not broken it’s more a universal issue. From what I have seen it’s an Arena-net design that was prevalent in GW1 as well, but just not as evident because of how the game was set up.

This leads us to the discussion at hand, any specialty utility builds we make force us to give up or take something to use it. Which is why in high end tournaments you won’t find Utility Specific Builds for any class. You take a little bit of each and spec around what your task is instead of utilities.

This is where Minions fall off, they generally do not perform well in that situation. Epidemic is too good, Signet of Undeath is pretty amazing, and that leaves one free utility. If this is your reason for not taking minions than fine, but the blanket statement of Minions suck is not valid (you didn’t say that, just making a point as to people think Minion AI is the reason why when it’s more they aren’t strong without fully speccing)

Oldbugga.7029:

Saying that this is fine and that is fine is reinforcing poor implementation and neglect of valid gameplay issues….in considering issues to be addressed the devs will naturally gravitate to those views that offer the least requirements for them…. but this in itself is no excuse not to do something (like minion/pet AI) if we are to get a game that is working as it should be. I think some of the “incidental” and “accidental” changes that have occurred shows that this is not the case at the moment.

TLDR: No near enough is not good enough.

I agree poor implementation is the issue here, but I still think Minions are fine as they are built. We don’t need better control over them, they need better response triggers. However, looking over the history that GW1 and GW2 this isn’t going to change, therefore the perception of what minions are needs to change.

Minions are perfectly fine in 80 percent of the game. High end tournaments are about the only place they don’t really have a role because of the need for certain utilities. I haven’t tried Fractals with Agony yet to see if it affects minions that much.

Rennoko.5731:

Epidemic certainly hit 5 targets before the patch… I didn’t notice after if it was different, and I am not online now. Not sure why people think it was 4… it was always 5 or uncapped historically. The target you are spreading from doesn’t count as one of the 5, because no conditions are applied to it.

The 4 was my fault, I thought it counted the person, but I was corrected earlier by it.

Oldbugga.7029:

Well if what Bas is saying IS correct, what evidence is there that ANet are trimming the other profs down to our level? NONE (in fact the opposite..epidemc nerf anyone). This is just the old MMO argument “so-and-so class is OP…devs pls nerf it” and we all know where that goes.

The alternative then is to seek an increase in necro abilities to match because that argument above will get us nowhere.

EDIT: and the line of least resistance (effort) for the devs is to buff one or two of our abilities rather than nerf one or two abilities for 3 or 4 professions. So if buffing us is improbable I would say nerfing the others is even more of an improbability purely on the effort required.

They just dropped the hammer for the second time on Engineer 100 Nades builds, and put an interesting nerf on the Thieves perma stealth builds (though that’s not the main issue). Engineers are mainly going to be HGH builds now which should be even more fun.

They nerfed the snot out of 30 arcana power builds for ele’s. Heartseaker got nerfed, Pistol Whip got nerfed, Poison on thieves got nerfed. Guardian’s boon Save Yourself and the healing from the Shouts got nerfed severely in one of the first patches.

They put a nice across the board nerf on quickness which will bring Mesmer and Warrior Burst down a bit. I haven’t taken a look at the Elementalist tree, but unless they hammer cantrips they will stay the same.

Oglaf.1074:

Bhawb.7408:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Arghh. It seems pretty inane to fix a trait only partially.

You would rather they not fix anything until they can fix everything? It is completely a point of personal preference, (no one can really be right or wrong in this), but I will take a small fix over nothing.

The trait is still broken. I will not use a broken trait even if it is slightly less broken than before.

I don’t use it anymore. I like the 1200 range, but the fact that the CD doesn’t actually work makes it almost pointless since I would only use Focus 4 when up closer anyways for the regen.

Rennoko.5731:

Oglaf.1074:

Bas.7406:

Dredlord.8076:

Bas.7406:

That wasn’t what they fixed ;p. They never claimed to fix reapers touch being broken. They fixed the fact that the buff they gave to Spinal Shivers didn’t work when you took Spiteful Talisman.

I think you maxed out your fanboyism with this post coming to the defence of a broken trait that only got half fixed. Give your head a shake would ya?

Take a look at my sentence again. Notice the tongue in cheek smilies. There you go! Now we learned sarcasm on the internet. Good Boy!

That was a very, very bad use of sarcasm, mate.

Yeah your under the bus on this one Bas…. it was a gross oversight to bother going in and looking at that specific trait, fixing one broken part, and leaving the other broken part alone. Especially a cooldown fix no less. Just lazy. I can tell you if a mesmer trait had that going on it would be hotfixed.

I don’t disagree it was completely ridiculous that they didn’t fix it. I was just pointing out that they never claimed to do it, and being sarcastic or was I being sardonic. Either way, my point was to mock the fact that they didn’t improve the entire trait and then just avoided stating it all together.

In the future I will refrain from smilies since they only seem to confuse people.

Skyro.3108:

You’re living in a fairy tale if you really think that is how it is going to play out in PvP, where nobody has knockbacks for your Well and interrupts for your channeled siphons. And I don’t even know why you bring up dungeon runs.

If you are packing 1400 healing power and 30 SR/blood you’re a bunker, you’ve devoted 60 points and your ammy into defense so yes, I think it is fair that you should be unkillable 1v1, which is not OP and more like a minimum threshold to being a viable bunker. What you fail to realize is that nobody brings Necro bunkers to high level tPvP because it’s not just about surviving 1vX, it’s about support and most importantly node control. The guardian is unmatched in this aspect.

Necro bunkers are not good because they have no stability and no node control. If you wanted an off-bunker there are also many better choices (Ele for instance, who also happens to be better support, mobility, and can still dish out good damage).

And if you’re getting beat on, and you are actually staying in DS for long periods of time, this is bad bad bad. You are going to run out of LF incredibly fast, and will no where near be invulnerable.

I’ll give you a pro-tip on why you want to be in and out of DS quickly whenever possible. For example, the cost of casting one life blast essentially costs you 1 tick. 2 life blasts (which comes in at just under 3 secs of total cast time) costs you 2 ticks. 3 life blasts however will cost you 4 ticks. That last life blast essentially cost you 8% life force. If you’re staying in DS for 5s (at the cost of 20% LF) as a bunker to somehow take “advantage” of regen while in DS is just bad. You’re much much better off timing DS to prevent huge chunks of spike damage, and then just taking more moderate levels of DPS from your regular health pool.

One of the main reasons the Near Death straight is strong is because it lets you manage your LF deterioration much much better, by continually getting in and out of DS right before a tick would hit and having it available more often to time to negate spike damage.

I have no idea why you are directing this at me. Your point was completely outside of the situation described. I simply painted a single scenario where it could be viewed as overpowered. Describing every single possible situation that would come up would create an hours worth of reading.

I completely agree with the rest of what you said, so again, why are you going off on me? I would never take a Necro Bunker over a mesmer, ele, engineer, ranger, or guardian bunker for exactly the reasons you stated. I was simply painting a broad picture.

You are describing using DS in it’s current state – which is a pro way of using it. Again, I have no idea why you are directing your wrath towards me since this wasn’t even the point of the discussion.

From there your conversation goes more into correct tips for using ds offensively and defensively, and again this had nothing to do with the conversation at hand which was pointing out how healing inside of DS can be perceived or used in an OP manner.

I believe you meant the Near To Death Trait, but again, I am a fan of the trait so I am not sure why you are coming at me so aggressively. I was explaining how you could use the trait to keep a consistent healing while reducing a nice bit of damage from hurting you.

Healing plus no life taken plus damage done = Invulnerability which is why people are crying for Cantrips done.

The way DS is currently situated your playstyle and tips are fantastic. I do appreciate the tips.

@rashandale – If there was a significant reduction to healing while in DS than I could see it being implemented. The problem would be more if they didn’t do it, than the standard build for tournament play would be 30 in DS because it would be too strong to ignore.

@sas
1) You are correct to a degree, but to give us a bit, and the amount of siphons point to their intention to use it in that facet. However giving someone the ability to cancel out all damage while continuing to hurt you and healing themselves every 5- 10 seconds can cause serious balance issues. Examples Thieves with Culling in wvwvw.

2). You mean like 80 percent of the elementalists are speccing 30 arcana because their surivability essentially doubles by doing so. Anytime you have a build that would double survivability it becomes the build to run. There is a reason everyone complains about elementalist outside of their mobility. You would essentially turn us into a slightly less mobile elementalist.

3). Gimping damage for double survivablility is already done all the time see point 2. Rashan has a much more valid way of helping with the reduced healing done in DS, but I could still see that really making you a pain to kill with the amount of small heals we can put out.

@dreadlord – when you have a valid point that doesn’t come with a personal attack, we can talk. Just to help you out Please see Kraag’s post below mine where he pointed out exactly how to do it with relative ease. Thanks for your input though.

I think someone had a great idea in a previous thread about creating a second auto attack that stacked conditions with a reduced damage for conditionmancers to use.

Dredlord.8076:

Bas.7406:

That wasn’t what they fixed ;p. They never claimed to fix reapers touch being broken. They fixed the fact that the buff they gave to Spinal Shivers didn’t work when you took Spiteful Talisman.

I think you maxed out your fanboyism with this post coming to the defence of a broken trait that only got half fixed. Give your head a shake would ya?

Take a look at my sentence again. Notice the tongue in cheek smilies. There you go! Now we learned sarcasm on the internet. Good Boy!

Someone actually ran some tests a while back as to our maximum damage utilites, and a full Minion Zerker build over an extended fight is our highest damage build. Giving that at least 3 of our 5 minions are up a majority of the fight.

Granted that happens about 40 percent of the time, but against a standing dummy over a 5 minute test, Minions win by a pretty large margin thanks to wells long CD. However with two or more opponents or in a short burst or in cases where your minions don’t live more than 70 percent of the fight, wells win.

Ezeriel.9574:

good lord… all this time I had no idea I was so worthless in WvW

I apologize to my server, and will never take my necro in there again.

As it was most days the only thing i really felt I did of value was spread conditions to the arrow cart guys hiding out of range on the wall… now that’s over too

No that will still happen as long as your main target isn’t hidden behind the wall. so if you target someone and it hits the arrow cart guy it still works.

vicious.5683:

welcome to the happy necro-world of Bhawb n Bas, where necros are on par with eles, guards and mesm

Flattery will get you everywhere. Thank you for the compliment.

Guardians wish they were as good as necros.

RashanDale.3609:

Bas.7406:

Because we would become incredibly difficult to kill. It would basically be you can’t hurt my health, I am recouping my health, and you are being hurt in the process. If you traited for the 5 percent CD on DS, you would essentially have invulnerability with regen while dealing damage every 5 seconds. Considering Life blast can hurt and you could use fear and Life Transfer to heal. You would be next to impossible to ever kill 1v1.

i read this answer at least 6 times now and it still doesnt make sense in my head. why exactly would it be OP? and what is this about invulnerability??

at least we should be able to receive a portion of regeneration/heals, while in DS, like 50%.

It’s considered invulnerable because you aren’t taking any damage to your health. Regen even at 200-300 per tick. Which is completely possible with life siphoning traits as well as regen, and 1400 healing power you can get pretty legit.

Well of Blood is incredibly strong.

Example: I drop well of blood, hit ds and sit in it while you hit me. I recoup all of my health, while dealing damage to you. To top it off, I come out hit you with staff 2, Focus 4, and then transfer condtions to you, 5 seconds are up, back into Death shroud. Now I have Regen ticking, I picked up Life Transfer heals, siphon on hit, and another siphon ability. Now I am hammering you with fear, then the amount of damage you did on me is healing back up and I just life transfered for another 2k before my health is gone.

I could essentially become a regen machine, not to mention if you have a guardian or ele next to you keeping regen going. Now do you see what I am saying.

If they reduced it to say 25 percent that would make sense, but full heals in DS would be crazy.

@Skyro, talk with Nay and Del Onasi about our healing abilities. I once felt like you did and then watched their support builds keep three minions alive through an entire dungeon. I no longer disagree with them.

Faction.4013:

Ezeriel.9574:

I can’t imagine that it only ever worked on 4 targets…

Yeah…it’s only ever been 4 targets plus the “source” of the Epidemic.

Out of curiosity, how long have you been playing a Necromancer?

Yes and no, they limited aoe to 5 targets quite a long time ago, though that may have just been a tooltip fix.

krippler.9826:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Wait… epidemic originally worked without LoS?

It was great in PVE to be able to kite a bunch of mobs into a tight circle, BiP one and then Epidemic them on the run without facing the mobs.

Ahhhh….those were the days….

The nerf only affects your ability to activate epidemic through walls and objects. You can still cast it while running away. I tested it.

So it was a straight wvwvw nerf, which makes sense without culling it would be ridiculously easy to stay hidden and hammer someone with epidemic. So it’s not as bad as we feared.

PinCushion.7390:

CHIPS.6018:

As expected this patch didn’t help us much. But hopefully Anet is reading our feedbacks and working on fixes. ^^

LOL! You mean like they fixed Engineer? Buffed the damage of the build everyone hates to play (Turrets). Destroyed the build with actual damage in it (100nades).

It’s all the same to me. My wife plays a Turret Engi and she’s ecstatic about the patch. But it doesn’t bode well for Necro, except we don’t really have any OP Damage builds to nerf. Maybe that’ll be a blessing in disguise.

Like I have said numerous times. The issue with the game is not the Necromancer. It’s the Niche roles that other classes are forced into because their other specs are so much worse than the niche specs.

We are really well balanced, every other class wishes they had the variety of builds that we have available.

I posted this in another one, but I do enjoy this conversation quite a bit. I do think a few requests are a bit overboard, but I think we do need some changes.

Personally, I just want to see more ways to build DS without being interrupted or relying on deaths. If they could scale Life Force collection based on the damage we take that would be the ultimate way to go.

Essentially the larger percentage of your total health that’s taken the more Life Force you gain outside of Death Shroud. So if you are sitting at 21k health and you get hit for 14k you would get 20 percent LF. If you are sitting at 30k health and take the same hit you would only get 10 or 15 percent LF. While condition damage and small hits would only give you a minute source of LF per tick.

This would make it more of an attrition game since players would know that a fight with a 30 point Soul Reaping tank class could last quite some time.

Granted if someone took the 5 percent talent and built a tank out of it. he could essentially have a full DS every 5 seconds.

That’s the way it has always worked. The line of sight was expected nerf since it is such a powerful weapon especially in zergs where you can hit a 5 man immobilize and damage stacks over an entire group every 12 seconds.

I am not sure where you thought it spread to more than 4 targets. It’s always beekittentarget max since the patch that limited it to that.