Guild Wars 2

CHIPS.6018:

By pvp they mean spvp and wvw. If they only meant spvp they would have said so.

This nerf to Mark of Blood is going to hurt us a lot in wvw.

PvP = sPvP, they don’t call WvW PvP

1) We aren’t shatter mesmers
1a) How do you count a “successful” sacrifice
1b) Bone Fiend being an explosion makes 0 sense. If you’re allowing enemies to routinely get within 450 range of him, you’re either in PvE (where they focus him often) or you shouldn’t be using him
1c) Flesh of the Master is far too strong for an adept trait

2) Interesting idea, although it wouldn’t ever happen because it steps all over the Ranger’s toes.

3) It’d be nice to have one or two more minion traits if in the future they add more minions/types of minions. Otherwise they just need to straighten up the current ones.
3a) There should never be a trait that auto procs minion’s actives. It removes a massive amount of the play involved.

Of course, if this is a good balance decision, then obviously they should go for it. Everyone agrees something needs to be done for our defense, its up to them to figure out what.

But guess what. Every class in the game feels neglected. Warriors feel neglected, Guardians feel neglected, it doesn’t matter what class you play there is a large portion of the community that feels like they have been slighted, we aren’t unique.

No thank you.

I can just imagine the QQ on the other profession’s forums… I love it!

Its honestly just too late for ANet to do any kind of massive rework like this.

Balance doesn’t have to deal with making us feel good about it. If they want to revert the changes, if they feel that is a good choice balance wise, then go for it. But go off the principle of it being the best balance decision, and you can make your arguments (which are perfectly valid) for why it should come back.

If its the best decision balance wise, make the change back, after seeing that we just need the change and the fact that we blatantly lack any remotely similar defensive tool. Or don’t, because there are plans in the future of making that. But do it based on balance.

CHIPS.6018:

Its been over 3 days and still no reply at all for the Mark of Blood nerf. Jon are you guys going to push though with this 33% nerf even with almost total rejection from the necro community?

Its not their job to make people happy when it comes to balance. We will kitten and moan at every nerf they do, regardless. If they honestly believe that it is a good decision for the game they will do it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The investment in this case is using the life force generation skills. Especially on Scepter/Dagger, this can be quite the limitation.

In PvE that isn’t much investment at all. You have two weapon sets and 10 seconds to get 10% LF to block the next hit.

Dagger gives that to you in 2 rotations, Axe 2 will give it to you over one full channel, Staff in 3 targets hit with staff 1 (which can be done in one auto attack), 1 warhorn 5, 1 focus 4. Its not hard at all.

I feel like scepter 3 is bugged (too lazy to go test right now) otherwise 4 conditions on the target and scepter 3 is 10% as well. There is no possible build you can have that can’t give you 10% LF quite easily in 10s, and that is assuming you’re in a boss fight with no adds. Generating 10% LF in PvE is something you can do easily in any build.

Avigrus.2871:

I think he was referring to the overflow changes and the lack of a one hit kill block mechanic.

This needs to be reversed if only in PvE for dungeons.

The lack of a one-hit block mechanic I agree needs to change. But no class in the game should be able to, without a single investment of any kind, be able to block one hit of infinite damage every 10 seconds.

I’ll leave MM out of it, because that is the only build that (ignoring some basic problems that we still have) is actually decently balanced right now defensively.

The problem is they’ve basically put all of our defense, right now, into two things. Ridiculously high eHP through Death Shroud, and conditions. The problem is these things don’t translate well into actual fighting. eHP just isn’t good enough when it doesn’t let you avoid CC or huge bursts. Same with conditions, that demand that you pre-apply them and keep them applied, yet they can usually be removed with ease (its only our damage conditions that get left usually).

The problem is we have no way to invalidate a hit of our choosing, or make it through heavy focus fire. We can’t have mobility to escape, which is fine. But that means we need some way to make it through focus fire, which we just don’t have.

Essentially our only “defense” right now is ensuring that we never get into the situations that we don’t have the ability to live through. No other class in the game has this as an innate problem to their class.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

snip

Not only are they resistant to conditions, but direct damage scales vastly better with modifiers and stats in general, and most engagements with any kind of a decent team (even pugs) don’t allow conditions time to act.

Unfortunately, the very thing that makes direct damage king and conditions weak in PvE is exactly the thing that makes them the exact opposite in PvP.

Sepreh.5924:

Or, knowing our population, make the damage you take from Terror based on how attractive her character is….

;)

Terror’s damage now scales inversely with the amount of clothing your character is wearing.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

Kashijikito.1864:

You know, the more you guys talk about it, the more likely it’s going to be changed/removed right?

Well….I somehow doubt this, because Arenanet just told us that this WAS intentional; I don’t see how being able to do this is particularly unfair or “cheap” in any way. It’s just super fun when you’re in the mad realm and you fall out of the sky and still survive. People are like, “Huh? What did you just do???”

The same guy has said something was intended only to be corrected by another dev later. So not the most reliable source as of now.

leovuo.5046:

Sorry for the derail but I am surprised by some reactions regarding the DS fix. How is having 200 points left of DS, taking a 6K hit and but soaking up the entire hit balanced or not bugged? You shouldn’t have more points in DS than you are given, right? Or is there something I’m missing?

Its a fun little showing of Psychology.

Think of it this way, you walk up to a kid. They are normally perfectly happy. Now give them a piece of candy. Now take the candy away from them.

Guess what? They aren’t as happy anymore. Even though they are exactly where they started. Except psychologically it has. Because you took something from them. It doesn’t matter that they were first given something, that it was never theirs to begin with, all that matters is that something was taken away.

The only reason this is such a big deal is because it was something fun and really useful we had that was taken away.

Rennoko.5731:

I don’t agree with this at all. I never thought that burning or another condition was the answer to what necros needed before the dummfire patch… I may have been thrilled at the time (as getting buffed is always good), but I never intended to be an AD carry as it were.

Sure, there were quite a few people who disagreed with the idea as well. But to say that “no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire” is completely and utterly false, when many Necromancers, especially those within higher tPvP acknowledged that as we were, we would never see the light of day as a condition class, except when played absolutely perfectly.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

I don’t know what anyone is worried about with life siphon and hitting multiple enemies.

We have examples from other games – like wow.

Both shadow priests and warlocks had the ability to siphon life, and the consequence of tagging so many enemies always overshadowed the benefit.

Because:
1) This isn’t WoW
2) WoW is not an example of good balance by any remote stretch

Andele.1306:

Because he is, no real necro ever wanted dhuumfire, if you like that type of condi playstyle , go play a engie, mesmer or guardian.

That’s quite a bit of revisionist history there. A lot of Necros recognized that without burning we were a subpar condition damage class in every aspect of the game. A lot don’t like what has happened since it was added, and don’t like how it was added, but that isn’t the same.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

And pretty much everyone is in agreement that this change to Death Shroud was a dreadful idea

Speak for yourself. New Death Shroud needs improvements, but the old was terrible implementation.

Kitedyou.1720:

As other have stated before, the bleed cap is a very big issue for the Necro. Why not change the 1 bleed to AOE poison for 2s because this would help all Necros, regardless of what weapons they use. We wouldn’t be limited by the bleed cap as we so frequently are.

This would make the skill too strong for an adept, poison on command is a really strong thing to have for shutdown purposes, and paired with weakness it’d just be too good for the small investment.

flow.6043:

Necromantic Corruption is overshadowed by Death Nova already, so maybe that one needs a buff..? How about merging Necromantic Corruption and Fetid Consumption (do MMs pick this trait?) in Death Magic as a defensive counterpart to Death Nova. Or merge them both in Blood Magic and make way for a non-minion gm trait in DM? It would be a strong Blood Magic gm for once, but makes you drop either 20 in Spite or 30 in DM to get it.

Fetid Consumption is picked up all the time, and in a full minion build is borderline broken with all your minions up (its kept in line because minions can and will die). You are essentially immune to conditions with that trait.

It is a pretty common build to have 0/0/30/30/0 for minions, with the last 10 floating around. The loss of increased damage doesn’t matter much when you’re pulling off 6 conditions every 10 seconds just from your minions.

Hounds of Balthazar is great for a burst build. I’ve insta-gibbed people quite a few times with them.

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.

This nerf had nothing to do with pure staff builds. But staff is nearly omnipresent in both PvP modes, and this was a way to shave a little power off of our condition damage without actually impacting the utility the staff gives.

Kashijikito.1864:

You’ve never heard of evasion tanking?

I’m aware of what it is, I don’t think it fits Necromancers. It doesn’t make much sense to me that the most aggressive class in the game would have its defense based on avoiding fighting. It goes directly against what we do.

The only suggestion thats made sense to me for our class is if we got endurance stealing.

Bug.

ThanatosAngel.8024:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Then how about combining it with Minion Mastery instead and bump it up to Master? Combine Reanimator with Flesh of the Master and have it spawn jagged minions off minion deaths instead of enemies.

1) Minion mastery becoming a master trait would be a massive nerf to minion builds.

2) Reanimator is going to be combined with Death Nova, two traits which have a lot of internal synergy.

I’m sorry, how did a debate about spectral walk allowing falls get turned into a talk about death shroud, when that was never in question at all?

OP’s question had exactly nothing to do with Death Shroud.

You’re talking about being able to survive a jump with spectral walk right? Its because teleporting you resets your “falling” counter, so you can negate the majority of the distance you’ve fallen and land safely.

To people talking about DS use in condition builds:

You do realize that essentially every “meta” condition build right now finishes its burst with DS right? You do your bleeds on whatever weapon you’re on → swap weapon (Geomancy Sigil) → bleeds on that weapon → DS (Weakening Shroud) → DS 2/3

This is the current type of bleed rotation used, and it relies on DS for a pretty large amount of its damage, in fact DS is what gives it that little push over the top. It is reasonable to expect that condi Necros would have LF to do that more often. It also gives us more burning in situations where we can sit in DS, because this game isn’t only PvP.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

I really like the idea.

My only worry, what about piercing life blast?

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

That was my worry. What about a 10s ICD, so that it can’t be used with Near to Death to “abuse” the weakness duration?

I still feel like the general idea of dodging damage seems strange for us. Not that it couldn’t be done, but it seems weird that the class that is based around aggressive face-tanking would get more dodging.

I think we need completely new traits, I don’t feel like any that we have at the moment feel right in those spots, with the except of Shrouded Removal.

I feel like the weakness is just a little bit too small. I feel like 3s base would be perfect. In PvP overall condition duration sits at 50% at max for weakness, which would give it a 45% uptime, assuming you used it on CD. But more realistically, it’d be used less often as the normal bleed burst rotation.

Otherwise, I think its a decent option, my only fear is that, like other on-entry skills, it ends up too weak because it “can” be spammed every 7s in one build.

Rennoko.5731:

We all love the discussion… I think we just wish it was possible to pick a topic and have them respond on that one.

I think the problem is that the devs do still need to pick and choose what to answer and when. They have answered a lot of our questions, and then those people feel happy and satisfied (or don’t because they didn’t like the answer) and then everybody else feels like their questions should be answered as well.

And lets face it, sometimes they don’t have an answer. They don’t look at and balance every single thing at once. Maybe your question (siphoned power for example) just isn’t on their immediate radar, so they really don’t have anything to say. There is a huge minefield you have to navigate :P

At the least though, it is good to know they acknowledge some of our issues.

Fungalfoot.7213:

The best suggestion I’ve seen in regards to how to fix siphon is to let us siphon while in shroud. With it being our only way to heal up in shroud it would make the blood line extremely valuable for any necromancer looking for sustain. Transfusion would be the great enabler here and it applies to any build, not just well bombers. I’m very wary of ICD and would like to see alternatives explored before considering it.

I think siphoning while in DS should be a new grandmaster, with the current Vampiric Rituals should be moved to master, or if it isn’t that strong make it a master trait and keep vampiric rituals at GM, but buffed.

The reality is Necromancers have comparable CDs to every other class. Even before they massively lowered CDs across all wells and SA, we had comparable CDs when averaged out.

Per ICD making Dagger/Warhorn less risk/reward: yes it would, if you didn’t use wells (which no power build in their right mind would do). The point is that you get the high risk/reward plus AoE siphoning from Vampiric Rituals, which do not need an ICD, because of their inherently limited nature (just like Vampiric Master). This gives you the AoE multi-opponent scaling, assuming you can keep them in, and wells would still proc Vampiric/Vampiric master, but couldn’t reach the very ridiculous amounts of 600 HP/s per well in idealized scenarios. Dagger/warhorn still has ridiculous sustain because of its LF generation, and it still rewards risk/reward.

But the real question in all of this is: do we keep the majority of an entire trait tree useless to every single build but one (and this extends to more weapons, the one with the best siphoning becomes the new balance point), or do we implement some kind of “gate” on the siphoning in ridiculous situations and normalize it, so every Necro gets access to sustain?

JonPeters.5630:

We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .

Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.

Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.

Thanks,

Jon

Does this mean it is the era of #BelieveInJon?

Definitely the best news I’ve heard of in a long time. I think everyone can understand it will take time to make the changes, but as long as you know they need to be made, that’s great.

Do you guys have any ideas of what you want the 5/15 traits to be? Any chance we’ll have a Torment-like discussion like we did when you guys were iterating on the new condition?

Also, just some input from a minion-user here. Do you guys plan to buff Protection of the Horde? With your current plans, it would be a 120 (+20 per Jagged Horror) trait vs a 50% HP boost to minions. There is exactly 0 situations in which I’d ever take PotH over FotM, especially when most builds are either very tanky and high on toughness (and thus additional toughness has diminishing returns), or the glassier builds are using the minions to take aggro off of themselves, and the toughness isn’t worth the loss in minion HP.

The trait has a number of changes that could be made for it, but I wonder if you have any plans to differentiate it from FotM in a significant way. For example, FotM is for minion builds that want to keep minions alive for a long time. However, Death Nova would do nicely with a trait that didn’t care about increased HP so much. Maybe give PotH some benefit on summoning minions, instead of keeping them alive?

What skills are you talking about? There are only two minion skills that could possibly have this behavior: Haunt and Charge, and I have never noticed this behavior. All the rest are either between you and the minion (Necrotic Traversal, Taste of Death) or centered on the minion (Rigor Mortis, Putrid Explosion).

Edit: I guess what you are asking is for the red tooltip to update when the minion is out of range. I understand why, but I don’t know how they’d program that, or that they have to. That is the difficulty (skill) in using a minion build. All minion skills (I just tested this) center on the minion, not you.

+1 to Pendragon. There are a few different ways to make siphons workable for all classes. ICD (which has faults), specific "after X happens the next hit siphons) triggers (like runes/sigils), there are a few ways to work it.

They just need to become balanceable, in some fashion, because at the moment they aren’t.

I would like to take personal credit, on behalf of Tenderly and myself, for them not removing the bleed stack anymore, because we said it was a stupid idea on the podcast and obviously that must be the reason why they changed their mind (totally srsbsns).

We did need Burning (or something else burning was just the easy fix) pre-Dhuumfire. Our condition damage was laughable except when left to free cast, which no one in their right mind did when training a Necro was about as difficult as soloing a Rabbit. We were completely beaten out by Engineers, the only time people really ran a Necro (except for the very, very best Necros) was with an Engi there to help.

Problem was they gave us burning, torment, and a number of helpful buffs all in one patch, and it blew us right up into the #1 condition spot.

Similar ideas are what a few people have suggested, things along the line of: apply AoE blind when you enter Death Shroud, gain block/invuln when entering DS for a very short duration, gain Aegis on entry, etc. Yours works just as well, they are solid concepts.

I think there are a number of things they could add trait-wise to make DS way better defensively, and also encourage active play (like timing the DS entry).

Essentially the trait simply Copies (like Epidemic) any conditions applied while in DS to enemies within the radius.

Could you could it up? Yes, but you can do that right now with any AoE condition application + Epidemic, and that doesn’t require anything but the skill and any of our condition weapons, and it is far from OP.

No vigor, thanks.

Do we need way more access to true defensive mechanics? Yes, 100%. But vigor isn’t the way to do it.

I’ll post here in a few when I have time, because my answer is going to take way too much time, lol.

Thanks for opening the discussion though, I think its helpful for us (and devs) to have limited trait discussions to keeping functionality.

Swap back to Carrion gear (which has always been superior as long as you have the crit chance for Dhuumfire) and boom, problem solved.

Godless.1857:

well, at least the interrupt will be fixed…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/3155840

HA, HAHAHAH, yeah some people called that one. It gives a bit of hope though, that maybe not all of its current functionality is intended.

It transfers 3 conditions from you to the enemy who triggered it, as far as its condition cleansing goes. Nothing off allies.

Also if someone could check this, I believe it will still cleanse you, but not transfer, if someone activates it but is not “hit” by it (like dodge rolling through).