Guild Wars 2

Andele.1306:

Uhhh, no, old old SR traits were a nova on DS entry that scaled with DS level and being immune to CC while in DS. Since the first revamp SR wasnt touched except for numbers and moving down DS cdr for Deathly perceptions.

Talking about “old” live stuff, so everything after release, not old (closed) beta stuff.

They should atleast rework blood fiend and Well of Blood.
As options for a main healing tool and not gimmicky secondary healing like vampiric, DS works so hard against these heals…
Putting similar restrictions on other classes would be like saying “kittenwarriors from now on you can’t heal in stances. No Adrenal Health, no healing sig, no regen if you get your fingers on it.”
Or the old ranger/engi quickness which was not really a crowd favourite.

Soul Reaping saw some changes and Speed of Shadows was a later addition. A really bad one too. But before that we got a grandmaster trait that gave us locust swarm(warhorn 4) when under 25% health or smthg like that, so it could probably be called an improvement.

As for ManaCraft’s suggestion: If the bonus is as miniscule and unreliable as you suggest then nobody wants to take it. Overall the current implementation is imho better (more reliable) than your suggestion and the current one is pretty bad.

On the other hand you brought up good arguments for why a burst of movement increase(like the elementalists attune to air and get 2 sec of 100% speed) might not be simply given to the necro, apart from beeing able to outrun Dark Path at that point…

The PvP rewards also have another side to it.
Sure hardcore pvp’ers don’t need rewards outside of maybe some titles and a high rank on some leaderboard, but everyone else, and especially players who mainly do pve, need incentive to try something out and stick with it.
Now by bringing in the pve/whatever crowd you won’t automatically get better pvp games but you will get a bigger community that now enjoys doing some pvp stuff and are still working on their character/wealth/whatever.
And by getting a wider playerbase you will get more attention towards pvp. This leads to more content beeing put out from devs and players alike, more interest in streams b/c people want to improve, more tourneys with prize pools and overall more competition in the long run. Even if balance is flawed a game can be competitive as long as it has a strong(big) community, e.g. WoW, LoL (both good games in their respective fields but also not rly balanced).
TLDR: Wishful thinking.

It’ll change balance a bit but this could very well take some time.
Doesn’t matter which builds will emerge, you will still see the same complaints. Some build will be branded as braindead/spammy/skillless others will scratch on the edge of viability…
However it won’t magically revive the pvp scene. But if the rewards they start implementing are good enough, people will slowly start to come back or try it out for the first time.

tichorum.2415:

Pyriall.5027:

The game isn’t brand new…it’s over a year old. In terms of gaming it has already seen its best times. Six months to a year is where you see whether an MMO is going to be sustainable or not. I think we have our answer as it relates to GW2.

It took WoW at least 3-4 years to take off with Arena.

In terms of sustainability: look at pve and wvw, so GW2 is unlikely to die out from an unsuccessful pvp scene.

The WoW analogy is actually pretty good.
GW2 still needs rewards and different gamemodes for PvP to become a good integrated part of the game. Once these are in and the community or Anet decide to push the competitive side (again) with cash rewards it might get a 2nd wind. Until then it’s wait and see or casually enjoy pvp.
But don’t take this as a “if we get to point x, it’ll be esports”…

Dhuumfire lacks tells.
Like many other abilities it just happens to activate and ruins your day. No good gameplay comes from abilities like that. I am actually a big fan of the planned “makeover” and thought they would implement it like that in the first place.
And apart from its incorporation in lame dhuumfire builds i actually like the trait, it is one of the only things that pushes wacky hybrid builds, especially if you bring vampiric, over the edge of beeing totally miserable and making them kind of decent.

Also in regards to the theme of the necro and the addition of burning:
I don’t mind. I don’t think its unfitting. Perhaps the implementation lacks some fluff. If you look around and compare the necro to different archetypes in other games, be it tabletop or video, some of them use abilites like “burning/boiling blood”. It is a curse/blood magic thing in my book but w/e works for trait tree balancing.

In recent times Flesh wurm + SW seem to be the way to go utilities in PvP. They incorporate every defensive tool the class otherwise lacks(mobility) and are especially useful in the control heavy meta even if their use is bound to gimmicky mechanics.
ATM i am just hoping for FW and SW to become mandatory in PvP so devs might want to take a second look at all those mobility concerns which have been raised since day 1. Hur hur…

Well, as i see it DS as a mechanic is simply an absorb x damage shield. A shield that blocks a varying amount of damage, depending on the length of the fight. So by letting us heal in DS it would be way harder to get to the point in which siphons are useful and we can’t outheal the dealt damage while negating incoming damage through our shield mechanic. So yes, these two mechanics don’t work well together.
But even so we can’t be healed in DS, siphons still suck and they don’t seem to be in for a change like the last balance update showed, therefore it shouldn’t be the primary focus of the Blood Magic line (like some people pointed out in long gone threads).

As to deciding between a main form of sustain. I’d say it is hardly worth a decision, because outside of Vampiric Master minion builds, rebuilding the health pool is not an option as long as you don’t want to weaken yourself by using something subpar like cleric gear, that has way too less impact and scaling.

If you look optimistically at the last patch and the december balance preview then it highlighted two things:

1. Dhuumfire is the go to condi build (thats why condition application is balanced around it)

2. Vampiric seems to be at its place (thus no increase happened).

You might ask why i bring in the Dhuumfire build in a discussion about Blood magic and that is because i think: if Dhuumfire is the go to condi build, then it highlights how a necro fights. Conditions are the slow / ramp up damage approach and this mixes well with an attrition play style. Also the standard dhuumfire loudout is decently defensive in terms of stat spread(rabid amulett + 20 Soul Reaping + often SA as utility).
And even so i don’t think Dhuumfire is a prime example of attrition gameplay maybe ANet thinks so.
With that said i will take the point of view that our attrition mechanics are fine, because even so we can’t burst like a thief we can kill that thief(depending on build and gameplay environment + comparing “burst” keep in mind that a full dhuumfire condi rota is not instant and takes a good amount of time to execute if its not simply terror + burning procc).

So if our attrition mechanics are fine and Vampiric traits outside of minion builds aren’t in for a change to the better, then what holds Blood Magic as a viable trait line down?
I’d say it is better alternatives all around. If you want damage then spite is the go to line with +power and Close to Death, if you want defense then grab atleast 15 pts Soul Reaping and/or 10 curses for Weakening shroud. The only thing BM has to offer are mediocre healing traits (DI, Trans.), CDR (dagger, wells), even more health for a class with an already enourmous health pool and pretty mediocre minors (let us simply forget siphon).

In an attempt to change Blood Magic more into a viable trait line and sticking close to the thematic of offense and aggression i would suggest introducing more +% dmg traits into the line.
By doing so spite would no longer be the nonbrainer in enhancing physical performance and by adding these modificators to often overlooked traits they could be made way more appealing.
Also these should be conditional modifiers instead of plain +% dmg to reward certain elements of gameplay instead of buffing performance overall.
My first suggestions would be changing:

Quickening Thirst
Increases movement speed for each dagger that you wield. And dagger attacks deal 5% more dmg against bleeding foes.

This change is done to increase the use of the full kitten nal of a necromancers skills while also improving a weak trait for a class that has a 25% movement signet and pretty easy access to swiftness. I had especially Dark Path in mind, which is in my opinion not rewarding enough for a powermancer. Even though chill is great, it is pretty unreliable as a gap closer and doesn’t do much damage so you are often better off with hurling lifeblasts and walking to your target. Also thanks to skills like Mark of Blood, Weakening Blood and traits like Weakening Shroud and barbed precision the conditional trigger is easy enough to only warrant 5% increase.

My second suggestion would be:
Vampiric Rituals
Wells also siphon health every time they pulse. You deal 10% more dmg while standing inside a well.

Simple risk/reward intention. An extremely unpopular trait would get a strong conditional buff that requires face to face gameplay and aggression. Since it is a Grandmaster trait it could be only coupled with either CtD OR Deathly Perc. and it doesn’t apply if Focused Rituals is used (atleast not until you stand in a well). Also it would lead to well gameplay beeing more of a staggered laying exercise to get +10% dmg uptime or dropping everything simultaneously and set everything on one card.

I think that these changes would not only reward more interesting gameplay but also help Blood Magic not beeing a pointless trait dump. It would be either an option for (mediocre) sustain and healing traits or a dmg boost depending on trait choices.

What are your opinions? Should Blood Magic even enhance our damage or should it be simply a “healing” line? Are you fine with traitlines favouring some playstyles (power/condi) or do you think everything should profit equally? Tell me what you think about the suggested changes!
Thanks for reading through it.

Example how it works: You start to revive someone, then the trait triggers and places a Reapers Mark on the ground that gets triggered within 6 seconds or disappears. This can only happen once every 45 seconds (Internal CD of the trait).

Why 2 reviving traits? Don’t know, maybe they lacked ideas for traits? Probably same reason why we got 137984758 minion traits and 4 traits only for staff.
Also the +10% faster revive speed was a later addition to revive traits and not in the game when it launched(i think). It is for making the trait more appealing, same goes for weapon skill CD reduction traits which got a 2nd effect for a lot of classes buuuuut since the necro traits are still in vanilla state they aren’t as fancy. This is something that should get adressed with future balance and trait rework patches, but don’t wait for it to happen soon.

kailin.4905:

So how about they raise the scaling to make siphons heal for like 100 BUT the entire party gets healed for that? I don’t think 100 heal is op given the average health pool of 20k+ and it would help the necro be more accepted in a support role.

Your “but” is not a tradeoff and with the current implementation of life leech and your idea for party healing, 100 hp leech would never happen.
I, and i think a big part of the community, got the impression that Anet’s balancing approach looks at the extremes.
With that in mind your 100 hp leech would net:
5 targets per second – locust swarm
2* 5 targets per second – WoC and WoS
5 targets per second plague

This equals 20 hits per second simply via vampiric alone and that would amount to 2000 health per second for the entire party(making it effectively 10k healing per second.
Pretty strong i’d say.

Bhawb.7408:

Pendragon.8735:

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

That’s called counterplay. You shouldn’t be able to life steal without any recourse, it’d make no sense. The only counters to high sustain in this game is poison, burst, and CC. We’re pretty hard to keep poison on, compared to pretty much anyone else, we’re nearly impossible to burst in one go without multiple people; really CC is the biggest answer to us. And that is a good thing, it pushes a play-counterplay between enemies.

Agree. Sustain and Lifesteal in general should be how a necro executes domination over an extended fighting period.
If a necro doesn’t get hit by a coordinated spike and disable(s), he should be able to recover with ease. The burden of skill has to be somewhat higher on the attacker.
That is the whole idea of sustain.
But as it is right now, necro has no recovery. You get spiked/bursted because thats how most builds in pvp operate and fling conditions in an attempt to take the other person down with you. And that still works cause of dhumbfire mark spam.
So necro still needs sustain and that sustain should be counterable by burst and CC. And at that point you pretty much need one 6-8 second stab utility and everything hopefully works out.

That Dhuumfire trigger on LB is what i thought how you would implement the trait in the first place. On crit trigger are pretty bad in terms of gameplay, especially if they reward as much as this one (dmg gain).

Also, while it is true that condibuilds have their problems with LF generation, the standard Dhuum specc is still decent in it. Especially since people started to run warhorn and fleshwurm with it.

While i would love to see something like a blind when exiting DS this sounds a bit strong and would be more fitting for a master trait.
If the implementation of simple endurance regen buffs would be unfitting then how about something like:

“Steal 10% endurance whenever you apply chill.” as a new 15pt Minor.

That way we would get our own little Twist on chill, got another form of stealing something precious from enemies and get additional endurance regen . . . that could potentially let us dodge every second . . . . So might need an 5 sec ICD and maybe a slightly higher number.
Also every Necro has access to Dark Path and thus chill.

How about a minor that gives a flat buff to endurance regeneration? Similar to the Ranger nature magic minor it could give 25% increased endurance regeneration. That way we still don’t get vigor, because “necros need no boons” but have the option to trait for more dodges.
Or something trigger based like gain 50% endurance on entering or exiting DS.

Hey,
great write up Kraag, you pretty much covered every problem BM has since more then a year.

In response to your suggestions: I am somewhat of a fan of ICD’s. I think they make for easier balancing and also a better insight into how a build can operate in a general situation.
But, like you said, normalizing the amount of health gained via leeching doesn’t reward melee playstyles enough. Therefore i am for a hybrid approach, like you suggested in 3).
Maybe this approach could be implemented by adding a leeching threshhold.?
Every attack adds another stack to the threshold.
Once the limit is reached your next attack would leech health by a fixed amount (+scaling).
Attacking multiple enemies and/or having multiple vampiric traits speeds up the stack generation.
Add an internal CD so that the Leeching procc doesn’t occur too often.
This could be only applied to selected vampiric traits(or only to Vampiric). It might even be an easier implementation since it works similar to Virtue of Justice (Guardian F1).
But on the other hand this comes pretty close to a complete redesign. : /

I don’t know… simply adding an ICD and buffing life leech won’t solve problems. As it looks to me dagger is already one of our least favoured weapons accross all gamemodes and unifying health gain through life leech across all weapones wouldn’t change that so i’m just throwing an idea around.

While i can understand the frustration of thief players, i also welcome the change to vigor in general that is introduced. Especially this one boon had a 100% uptime on a lot of classes and made pvp a mindless dodge spam fest. By reducing vigor uptime ANet puts more focus into timed dodges and endurance management (hopefully) and thus might make the game more timing sensitive and also more fun to play since dodging doesn’t require a lot of thought at the moment but is annoying as heck to deal with.

Ugh, good old shaving. Necro gets really tunneled into either dhumbfire or gtfo. By nerfing bleed build up with weakening shroud and MoB everything that doesn’t trait 30 spite, like some terror variants or the occasional hybrid, gets slaughtered.
If this goes on then Nec might have to settle with minion builds and they are as much fun as getting told “you’re too fat for sweets” on Halloween.
Plz just delete dhumbfire.

Necro has great access to AoE weakness, so we got that going for us.
The only other dmg mitigation that scales with enemies is locust swarms LF proccs since they put a 1sec cd to spectral armor and walk LF-on-hit proccs.
Some random ideas for making attrition and dmg mitigation more group fight friendly would be
i) stronger base life steal but non linear scaling;
If life steal would be strong enough to sustain in 1v1’s and it would scale linear with the amount of enemies you hit, that would mean in a skirmish, where you hit around 5 enemies with life stealing attacks, you need to receive the combined dmg from 5 sources to be taken down.
In other words: if life stealing would work 1v1 and scale linear with combatants, you would be unkillable if you hit 5 people but only 3 are attacking you (exaggerated for emphasis).
Solution: make it scale or accumulate stolen life(=hp) nonlinear. Like 100% in a 1v1, 150% in a 2v1…

ii) Another option would be to make Death Shroud more like a time limited shield.
First option: Death shroud grants immunity to damage but loses about 25% life force(rnd #) per second. This would guarantee that Full Life force translates to 4 seconds of mitigation no matter the amount of targets you get hit by.
Second option: This is how i think the current implementation could be altered to get closer to the first option.
By increasing the Death shroud hp substantially, like setting it to 1 million hp and increasing the scale in which life force is measured (rnd #s: 100% -> 1000per mil, decay from 4% to 100pm) you would get a mitigation tool, that is less affected by hits you receive (every hit between 1 and 1k dmg would decrease your life force by 1pm) and more by the amount of time you stay in it.
As an Example: Lets say you get attacked by 5 people each dealing 1k dmg per second. This would mean a loss of around (16k DS hp / 100 = 160 hp per , 1k/160=6,25) 7 per enemy per second in addition to base 4%. Totals: 2,5 sec lasting DS vs 5 oponents, 9 sec lasting DS vs one oponent. That is around 30% of mitigation uptime.
With the 1mill hp Shroud you would see (1pm loss per sec + 100 pm decay = 101pm lost per sec; 5pm loss per sec +100 pm decay=105pm lost per sec) 9,9 sec DS vs one and 9,5 sec vs 5 enemies and thus a steady mitigation tool.

The increase to per mill lessens the effectiveness of multi hit attacks further.
Obviously those numbers are completely out of whack and shall simply illustrate some modifications to allow necros to get mitigation “frames” that are comparable to what other classes can achieve via dodge and invulnerability.

Hey,
so i have been playing with the concept of vampiric builds for a while and since i am also a big fan of the dagger/melee unholy caster archetype i have tried to incorporate that into a somewhat working build.
I try to make this post somewhat short because not a lot of people like to read a wall of text.
I think the necro is one of the classes that profits more from a wider statspread due to having access to abilities that change from worthless to awesome when changing from power to hybrid. (esp DS2, power build takes staff solely for utility or not at all)
Also some of our strongest traits are condition based (Dhuumfire, Terror, Weakening shroud).
Lastly, dagger has a really high attack rate. The auto attack delivers aprox. 2 hits per sec, life siphon (and life transfer) is close to 3 hits per sec and ranged and by using warhorn you get an additional hit per sec vs single target. Add in a high precision stat and you can utilize vampiric and barbed precision to its fullest.
So with the used setup and with active Locust swarm you can deliver approx 3 hits per sec, coupled with around 60% critrate this results in ~120 siphon from vamp, 60%3hits ~100 siphon from vamp prec and 60%66%*3hits ~ 100 dmg from barbed prec.

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZYkRLbPdzYPBMzgbvhP0b0jjXOYA-TsAg1CsIqRVjrGTNyas1M8Y5xEBA

Some things to keep in mind:
- there are definately better builds, this leans more towards fun and “could work in the future(vamp buffs)”
- Blood to Power adds a permanent 90 power
- Dhuumfire is still strong but 2 sec in pvp or beeing easily overwritten by another class in pve doesn’t justify giving up either vampiric (the concept) or things from curses in my opinion
- runes and on swap sigils are probably not optimal (perplexity could work well)
- can easily swap out BM trait for well cd and slot in wells for pve
- 4 sec warhorn daze
- combo goes smthg like: BiP, staff 2,3,5 -> DS 3,2,5 ->exit, swap Wh 5, dagger auto
- 15 in Spite is mostly for the 150 power beeing the strongest dps boost compared to other options

I really would like some discussion going and thanks for you attention.

Condi nec is way too strong. Burst through Dhuumfire, terror and bleeds is through the roof and AoE pressure with marks, DS, scep2/dag5 is over the top.
Also pretty high weakness and chill application.
The thing that makes people seriously discuss this OP abomination for ages is that it is not the only broken thing currently in use.
Next to spirit ranger, far point (bomb) engis and s/d thieves and the possibly overbuffed warrior it is just a strong choice, but compared to every other build it is just too much dmg in a too small time frame.
Mind you, the class, so to say, is interchangeable. Especially spirit rangers are also running rampant, also mace/shield + gs warri with zerker and balanced stance. 4 sec stun every 8 sec into hundred blades, yep that’s the way to go and way more effective then the silly hammer warri that is talked about here so much.

Necro is strong if compared to Meta/high end pvp builds and Necro is broken/OP compared to everything else. Does that mean necro needs a fix? Yes. Does that mean everything is fine, when nec is fixed? No, bc there is still too much kittenedly OP stuff in the game.

Bhawb.7408:

NO other class in the game gets true siphons, none.

Thief, leeching venoms. It is as much a true siphon as our own siphons are. Deals damage and heals and scales with power for the damaging part and healing power for the healing part.
And even so those siphons sit at 350-450, nobody plays it. But that has to do more with venoms, the perception of thieves and what do i know.

^
Either a internal CD or a non linear scaling to siphon per target.
The possible imbalance in having good life siphon in 1v1 encounter lies in a linear scaling. If you got enough siphon to sustain 1v1 and it scales linear with the amount of combatants then you need focus fire from 5 persons in a 5v5 to exceed the siphon sustain. So instead of adding 100% per additinal siphoning source they should make that percentage lower. Smthg like 100% to original target and 80%,60% etc per additional leeching source as an example.

Also about Drarnors comparison to Ele/thief. Yes siphon gets better the more targets you have since to beeing on hit but this also means that not hitting stuff (dodge, blind, block, invul, evade, distortion) completely negates the effect. So siphoning isn’t plain better then the on cast effect that ele gets.

Full dagger chain sits at around 2 seconds. You can and should test it yourselve by taking time (stop watch) and counting the number of hits from the 3rd dagger chain attack, or using some recording programm.
If the timeframe is reasonable long you get to around 2 seconds.
This is due to aftercast. The hits itself are pretty fast but every attack in guild wars has an aftercast working as a timeframe that probably prevents animation overlapping.
Same should be done for axe auto. I am not sure around what it sits but probably one second for 2 hits if not longer.

After that you can make reasonable assumptions about the % dmg difference.
Also it should be noted that probably every move you do with a dagger that isn’t auto attacking, except maybe warhorn 5 and focus 4, is a dps downgrade, whereas axe 2 is actually a substantial dmg boost that, if axe is traited, should be pretty close to dagger auto attack damage.

Dagger 2 is something that looks pretty good on paper, especially if you count in traits, where it gets to a 3k heal on a 10 sec cd but fails in practice.
Devs said some time ago, at the peak of bunker eles, that they wanted to add counterplay to the healing capabilites of an ele.
Dagger 2 is pretty much what you get, when you add way too much counterplay to a weapon skill that heals. It has a hit requirement (heals only when dealing damage) and so it gets dodged, interrupted, outpressured and locks you out of defense for 3,5 seconds.
In conclusion i think it need some changes. I would like to see some vampiric touch spell, similar to ele touch spells (lightning touch, fire grab) because necro lost the whole lot of touch spells with its transition to gw2. This would fit with the melee concept of dagger and by making it a touch spell it would lower the cast time significantly, which is a requirement for successful melee moves. Obviously numbers would need to be changed.
Also to further strengthen the weapon set i would like to see dagger3 cd reduced and a activate-after-hit ability added that works as a gap closer.
Explanation: As it is now dagger 3 is a make or break ability. If it lands it enables you to keep someone easily in place for 4 seconds (30 spite is likely the way to go with it), which, if the enemy lacks teleports or condi cleanse at this point in time, will likely result in him exploding in the carnage that is a well and dagger 1 bomb. If it doesn’t land or the enemy ports out, then you have to pretty much live without it for the rest of the fight.
Also i can’t think of a place in pve where a 4 sec immob would be gamechanging compared to a 3 sec (eg.: undead abominations are immune to immob and slowing effects, everything else can get easily kited with cripple & chill).
So i would like to see the cd reduced to 15 sec, the immob duration reduced to 2 sec and a gap closing move added as a on-successful-hit ability.

I agree with the Op. Dagger is a gimmicky weapon that needs some changes.
The immob is on a way too long cooldown to be a reliable tool for setting up a well burst and once you take that away you pretty much got a weaker version of the axe (due to long channel on 2 and range req on auto).
Drop 10 points to get ground targeted wells and there really is no need to take dagger. Especially since the auto attack is pretty much high risk and mediocre reward compared to some of the prominent melee moves.

Dagger is a fun weapon and thematically really cool but it is not at the place it needs to be to become a viable alternative.

People don’t complain about necro beeing OP, people complain about one specific build beeing OP. It is the same like it was with ele, mes, thief and whatever else.
30/20/0/0/20(s/d + staff, geomancy, rabid, util: SA, SoS, CB that’s what is run atm) is just a ridicoulous hard counter too so many things in the game due to limited access on condi removal and necros ridicoulously strong condi burst capabilites.
Your standard burst, consisting of MoB, chillblains → DS 3, 2, 5 → weapon swap: geomancy scep 2, dag 5 applies 16 stacks bleed (weakening shroud included), poison, weakness, chill, cripple, torment and terror. Add in additional bleed proccs from barbed prec and dhuumfire and you get close to 4k dmg in a sec. Sure this takes around 3-4 seconds to perform but even then you didn’t even use signet of spite nor CB and are likely to do a weaker version of the combo (without DS 3, but then prolly with Staff 5) in around 10 seconds.
So necro has pretty strong and easy to do again condi burst.

Builds that can compete against that offense have either high evade uptimes (ranger, S/D thief) or extremely good cleanses that can’t be achieved by other classes (shout guard, warri with zerker stance) and mesmers transfering 3 condis back every 45 sec just isn’t enough.

Apart from that one build i fully agree with you BRA, our defense is mediocre at best and utter bs at worst, “hey you, take this class mechanic, that doesn’t allow you healing. No worries it’s alrite, you get a 2nd hp bar and tonz of condi funz!”
Our offensive capabilites lack repeatable burst and are once a fight tricks, that either completely destroy things or get us destroyed by having no effect at all, see epidemic or dagger 3, 25 sec cd! immob into wells, minions in the proximity of AoE.

Take BiP, WoS, WoC, WoB and trait 30/0/10/0/30 getting close to death and ritual of protection. Equip your zerker gear.
Activate all gambits except squeamish. Activate Dead eye. Get ported in.
Stand on the spot where you get into the arena and wait around 3 sec. Then pop Well of blood and blood is power.
Deadeye will port next to you (you dont have to and shouldnt have attacked him until now). Pop WoS and WoC, followed by lich.
Press 1 and 3 and hopefully win.

We got a strong and in a reasonable timeframe repeatable condition burst (<20 sec), strong AoE capabilites through marks, wells and epidemic.

We are the masters of condi/boon manipulation. Apart from one mesmer skill we are the only class that can transfer condis to enemies. Condi removal, especially group wide, is still better done by guards.
We are also the only class that can turn boons on enemies into condis. Again the remove is better handled by another class (S/D thief).
But since we got access to condi transfer and boon corruption at the same time we got that going for us.

Our innate survivability is pretty strong with Deathshroud but due to the recent change to overflow damage we are worse of in PvE where dodge & deeps > everything.
We can get really strong sustain in a zerker build, around 800+ hps, with a minion build but this requires little to no AoE and the only PvE encounter in which this was useable to its full potential was Subject 7.
Also in the survivability departement: We got the best access to wide area blinds. A thief has higher uptimes on blinds if he just equipps pistol offhand but for fighting multiple mobs, like in the 2nd half of the ascalon fractal, well of darkness and plague really come in handy as a group wide defence tool. The usefulness of this is still highly situational.
We also did master the art of gimping ourselves by using our class mechanic. 2 out of 3 possible heals don’t work in DS and regen and lifeleech don’t work. This fate is probably only shared by rangers, whose pets get destroyed by rnd death AoE in probably half of all existing PvE encounters.

So overall we are the master of condiburst & fearlock and collecting lootbags from zergs (be it PvE or WvW), making us a good choice for s/tpvp and open world as long as you don’t want another power class.

The necro skill also applies 5 bleeds but the self stun sure is crap.
Apart from that one skill i think necro underwater set is still far more enjoyable than everything we got on land. It just combos together more nicely, has some mobility and really great skills.

It is not about living in EU or not, A-Net has to make sure that citizens of other states are allowed to participate in tournaments where money is on the line.
There is some obscure legal/law stuff that has to be considered.

Also there is another thread going on this subject in the PvP Events subforum going into greater detail on whose fault it is and etc.

You guys should atleast get a somewhat complete picture of the situation before you are starting your speeches.

Some tips for power necs: make it through p1 with good health and its pretty much a given win.
Why? Because then you can pop lich and have 30s of stability(so you can ignore orbs), can circle kite her in the middle of the room so you have to walk less to get out of the gtaoe and also lich auto shoots behind you, so you don’t even have to face her.
It is pretty doable with power nec, once you learned how to do p1.
Also get 30 in spite for close to death

Just did it with my nec. Think the encounter design is really cheat mode NPC at ts finest. Brings back memories from D3 crappy oneshot gameplay in inferno in the first week.

Tipps for other necs: use mark of doom or wh daze if you have to pick up an orb in the middle of a group of shadow clones.
Play power with 30/0/0/0/15, doesn’t matter where you put the rest of the points.
Once phase 2 hits pop lich and kite close to the center of the arena (shorter ways to get out of the gtaoe) and spam 1 like a madman without facing requirements (lich shoots targets behind him too).

Streets.2705:

My point with original post was if Speed of Shadows is worthless and/or is it working as intended. Why would anyone waste a trait, albeit adept trait, for 25% movement increase in our Death Shroud at the cost of our Life Force and only usable while out of combat. Answer is no one will ever take that trait when they can just slot SotL or blast warhorn #5

Now if it was fixed to work while in combat and had a significant improvement on our speed, that would be a useful “oh kitten, run!” escape option. It wouldn’t be OP because we have to burn our Life Force to use it.

It works in combat, just tested it today in the mists by using 100% accurate science tools (my eyes) and comparing the movement speed in death shroud with traited SoS to the movement speed out of death shroud.

Read my post again or look at drarnors post for an in depth explanation why you FEEL that it doesn’t work. It works in combat and it probably works out of combat.
Again, your base movement speed gets decreased while in combat (see drarnors post) so the bonus in movement doesn’t SEEM that noticeable, because it is a percent based increase.
The trait works everytime you meet the requirements (slot the trait and be in DS) but it is nonetheless a crappy trait (welcome to gw2, where crappy traits make up 50%).

Edit: Also just glanced over your numbers the first time but ummm, that SotL thing is strange.
If you want to directly see the impact of SotL on in combat movement speed i suggest attacking some golem/target dummy, walk a bit and then activate the signet. You should instantly notice the decrease in speed.
Also make sure that the signet works (icon is displayed in buff bar) they sometimes bug out, esp when loading in an already running hot join match and you dont get passive signet effects till you use them, die or switch them out and back in.

They will rework the trait with the next patch. This is more or less a hotfix for the Pax toruney. If you want to see the dev post stating that, look in the pvp subforum.

You get a movement speed reduction while in combat. If you are in combat then your movement speed + swiftness equals your out of Combat movement speed.
That is the first issue, people are experiencing with Speed of Shadows. They compare ooC movement speed to in combat, which is not the same.
Another issue with SotL is, that signets are not active while in shroud. Since shroud is a transform it deactivates our utility bar and thus our signets.
Also movement speed increases don’t stack, so movement speed with SotL and SoS wouldn’t even increase your speed, when SotL would work in DS, the only working addition would be swiftness because the highest movement speed increase overwrites all lesser ones.
Source: gw2wiki and half knowledge
Hope that clears things up.

The skill is godawful in actual combat, it gets interrupted and dodged (negating damage and healing) non stop. Numbers seem okay if you look at a game that uses telegraphed attacks and counterplay to skills, but thats not what gw2 is. If you compare the opportunity cost to what other classes can and will do in those 3,5 seconds you should see parallels to warrior problems of overly telegraphed abilities.
Also looking at the cast time, cd and effects of dagger 3, dark pact, it is one of the worst skills in the game. Especially as an immob (compare to mes sword 3, warri longbow 5, even guard scep 3 or how about ele d/x earth 3?)

LastDay.3524:

Standing in it for the full duration isn’t usually all that hard in PvE if you have dodges left.
Still, I think that it’s a leftover from when Death Shroud didn’t block healing.
A Necromancer at low health could cast Well of Blood and enter Death Shroud pretty much anywhere!
Not so now.

“If you have dodges left” ofcourse you can play around it but isn’t it sad, how you have to trait for 20 blood magic, invest heavily in healing power and use up your dodges just to make an extremely flawed skill work?
Also fractals and the whole agonic mechanic just work so hard against staying in one spot.
On the other hand there are some rare encounters, where you have to stay in a spot, where skills like WoB are a nice addition (AR bossfight) but there are so few of them and shorter application of the healing wouldn’t really hurt.

And yes, if DS would allow for healing the skill would be somewhat better. Blood fiend suffers from the same problem.

Necro healing is mediocre atm but could become pretty good, if they keep tweaking our other options. The thing with CC is that it is also our most reliable condition remove, which adds an additional layer of usefulness to it.
If they keep on improving minions and vampiric stuff in general(hpow scaling, i am looking at) and more people try minion heavy builds, they will find out how good traited blood fiend is. Atm it is our best sustained healing option BUT, like WoB, it gets kitten by our class mechanic and needs a heavy investment in traits.
Also it is a ranged minion(meaning less likely to die in AoE cleave) and decently sturdy. With traited minion hp it sits somewhere between 15-20k health (don’t know the exact number, someone tested it some time ago with the grenth statues in orr).

For Well of Blood, i think it is abyssmal. People look akittens scaling and think it is a great party healing tool but completely ignore how much it gimps you.
Well of Blood is only usable with cleric/shaman: The base heal is at 152 healing per sec on a skill that heals for 5,2k every 40secs. People think its great if you get healing power, but look at the numbers and compare them to other classes.
Without points in healing power:
Engi can heal his party for 2,5k every 15 seconds with healing turret burst. He also cures 2 condis with it and applies 5 seconds regen. No one has to stand around for 10 seconds to get some mediocre heal and the time needed is below 3 secs.
Eles with 15 points in water: cure 1 condi, heal 1302(healing ripple) water trident 1500 heal every 20 seconds. No healing skill involved, time to do it: below 3 seconds.
Guardian staff Orb of light and Empower healing for 788 +1500=2288 +10 stacks might every 20 seconds. Time required ~3 seconds.
This is only a hint at what other classes are capable off without completely sacrificing damage and using cleric. A fully healing specced ele/guard/engi can do even more.
Likewise a necro can do more, since we got gimpy DI and transfusion but what i wanted to showcase was: the Group healing you can get from WoB can be achieved 10 times easier by other classes without cleric gear!
Also every other class doesn’t require their team to clump up and stand on a spot for 10 seconds.

I can’t even fathom where this trash heal (WoB) would be good. In high lvl PvE you get slaughtered by standing in the same spot for 10 seconds. In high lvl WvW (where i got no exp) i am seeing tightly packed raiding parties marching through pug-zergs. They don’t stop, they smash their way through ‘em. In tpvp you get slaughtered for not using CC, because of a lack of reliable condi remove. Also you get cc’ed out of your own wells or killed by the AoE on top of it. Not worth it at all.

Some rnd suggestion: reduce base cd to 35 seconds. Triple the healing per tick but reduce number of ticks to 3 and make it a water field that also removes a condition per tick.

Neare.9703:

redslion.9675:

With scaling we all mean: the fact that I have a high HP doesn’t mean I can go with worse heals AND worse defences. That forces me into playing a “kill it before it kills you” kind of fight.

But that is basically how most classes play. If it’s not that then you’re playing a bunker build and if that’s the case you should be playing on a guardian not a warrior really

Because warriors are supposed to be played like “real thieves”? Constantly circling at the edge of every battle carefully considering the odds of going in at the right time, doing damage and going out – or be slain in the blink of an eye?
Not everyone thinks a warrior should be played like this.
Also about necro lifesteal: it comes close to eles on paper but ultimately fails because of restricting execution, interrupts and not working with the class mechanic.

The thing about high hp classes is that they get hit harder by every source of damage in the long run. Both of these classes lack dodges and or substantial mitigation tools in the form of invulns/blocks/distortion. Yes they got access to it, but both still get hit by conditions in their respective skills (DS, war shield block/endure pain). This leads to them taking more damage overall and beeing held back by heals, which aren’t balanced around the class, but rather the healing amount and their secondary effects.
A 25 second cd heal with most likely heal you for around 5k+, doesn’t matter if you base hp is 11k or 19k, but having less base hp means more access to heals, boons, and evades.

Hey nemesis, great video. Thanks for the work you are doing for the necro community!
Catched a small mistake and wanted to let you know. While counting your dagger chain attacks in 33seconds you skipped the 5th chain. So you get one less chain in (16 instead of 17) and the damage per 33s should decrease by about 6 percent.

Retaliation is an offensive boon, don’t know why you bring it in a discussion about healing. It adds nothing to survivability but it rather adds pressure. Following that logic you can argue that getting Dhuumfire or Terror is a good choice if you “have a problem with the incoming damage”.
The better option would be to point out Weakening shroud, which is a pretty good choice for pbaoe weakness(and thus reducing dmg leading to more effective healing) and adds good dmg in condi builds.
Chill is great for attrition fights but as it is right now, necro is pretty much an all out, “slow burst” class. Recovery is still miles behind the prominent attrition builds and that is what is needed to get the full potential of chill since it is only good for skills on cd.
Also consume conditions healing for 11k requires close to 1k healing power and, like you said, 6 conditions on you. That is a typical “if the stars align” requirement of necromancer skills and especially blood magic.
If the stars align and you get 5 targets standing in your wells and warhorn 5 with traited vampiric prec, bloodthirst and vamp rituals, coupled with minor vampiric you get a good amount of healing. If the stars align and nobody beats your bloody face to a pulp while you are standing, preferably with an ally, in your well of blood so you don’t have to use your class mechanic then Well of Blood heals for a good amount.
If the stars align and you can life siphon uninterrupted and on every cd and you got the traits for it then dagger 2 is a strong healing skill (but still gimping your damage).
Same is true for Locust signet (abyssmal for 1 target considering the 60s cd) and a pretty good active once you got to the 5 targets cap.
The thing with life leech as a whole is: it requires actually hitting enemies and mostly it requires you to hit 5 enemies because the numbers are balanced around that. Every other class that is capable of healing via traits and or weapon skills can do so without hitting someone so their form of sustain is consistent and doesn’t rely on the lack of vigor of their enemies. Also most of those other healing sources don’t have 3.5 second channel durations.

I’d rather see the whole traitline getting a rework than just doing patch work fixes.

Those examples are what i had in mind too, but if they ever decide to “fix” bloodmagic(and i still have hope), they look at every other source of healing available to the necro.
Besides Deathly invigoration there still is Transfusion, Mark of Blood and Well of Blood for AoE heals and vampiric and potentially vamp prec and vamp rit for self heals.
Adding a 2k base heal, which might or might not scale efficiently with healing power, to these existing heals is likely to be a bit over the top.

Towelie.4637:

With the siphoning heal i heal 45 per hit, combine to #2 with dague 371 + 45, + 281 with the permanent regeneration = 697 heal /seconde ( but we lack of survivability ). and with the staff if you hit 5 target you win 45 × 5 = 225heal/hit + 281 regen = 500heal/seconde on your staff. And + all that we got an awesome death shroud !

Im sorry but no lack of survivability here.

The thing about those numbers is: dagger 2 has a cooldown and when it is on cooldown your healing per second drops by more than 50%. Also it has a pretty long channel duration, so it is easy to interrupt and hard to maintain (you don’t want to continue that channel when some big hits are incoming). Apart from that dagger2 healing doesn’t scale with number of foes, which makes it even worse.
Also your shiny regen doesn’t do anything for you, when you use your class mechanic. The same is true for Well of Blood, which is more or less the epitome of blood magic (heals and is a well).
Healing per hit is way too weak and deathly invigoration was already a bad trait when DS cd could be traited to 5 secs. It needs 1400 healing power to be around an 800ish heal and is coupled with skill delay thanks to leaving deathshroud.
Also, if you get enough healing power to bring it up to 800 your offense is trash and your healing capabilites are still mediocre since they require your allies to group up and stand still(WoB, DI, MoB). And since this game is loaded with aoe this makes healing necro just so underwhelming.

@Sorrow:2k base is way too much if you look at similar traits from other classes. But still, the numbers of DI could probably be doubled without making it too strong.If it would sit at around 1600 heal every 7s(heavy traiting) by investing 1400 HPow i think it would be a good trait.
But something has to be done about the horrible vampiric line. It would be my go to specc if it wouldn’t scream “ignore until implemented”.

Vampiric Master is actually decent compared to other vampiric traits. It needs a lot of setup like a complete minion bar, but nets you some decent healing for it.
And yes it doesn’t scale with minion damage and also doesn’t increase it, like every other vamp trait does, but it scales with attack speed.
To give you some numbers: wurm, blood fiend and bone minions attack once every ~3s, bone fiend twice every ~3s, shadow fiend once ~1,6s and flesh golem ~once per second. So with golem, blood, shadow, bone fiend and bloodthirst you get around 300 heal per sec. Thats pretty sweet for a vampiric trait. (This is without blood fiends healing)
Apart from that the reason nobody ever blamed it is because a) minions… b) if you think these numbers are abyssmal than don’t even take a glimpse at vampiric c) and never ever look at Deathly invigoration.

Since the latest patch DS(power) builds are pretty strong for small scale and 1v1. Starting with zero lifeforce sucks, i agree, but the generation in fight is somewhat close to good.
The thing about generating lifeforce is: you have to bring spectral skills, because our weapon integrated tools are just horrible. Axe/focus gets dodged 9/10 times and dagger/x gets kited easily, while having the worst immob in the whole game. So in order to maintain a steady flow of lifeforce you have to get spectral attunement coupled with spectral walk/armor (and you should seriously consider also putting the other one on your bar).
Also i am hearing stories of great success in 1v1’s from the condi loving faction, but that is something else.

So essentially we just became some semi to hard nuking caster with still close to zero attrition. Great! I guess i can finally give up on nec.

You could always play zerker nec and it was pretty decent. With the changes to lifeblast and soul reaping trait line and the easier to reach axe mastery the build should be in a good state. Just do yourself a favour and ingore the blood magic traitline. Points invested in it are, and sadly still will be, utterly wasted.