This is accurate. Easily repeatable by taking out staff and pressing “escape” during the cast time.
That’s the problem. Warriors Minion necros, and spirit rangers all get access to tanky specs THAT STILL DO BIG DAMAGE + SUPPORT.
Every other class is balanced around choosing between damage, tank, and support. You want damage? You gotta go glass and be good at dodging damage. You want bunker? You gotta give up your ability to do power dps. Condi damage does equal damage to power damage right now but only requires investment IN ONE STAT. So spirit rangers get to kitten out DPS while being tnaking and having screen clutter + pet AI as a crutch.
Spirit rangers do not get to complain about class balance until condi damage gets scaled back or is changed to depend on more than one stat (like power spec)>
Its an over simplification. MM necros have high single target damage, and high sustain. But there is a reason you almost never see them in high level play. They generally very easy to counter, because they have almost no meaningful defense, their main use is 1v1 dueling.
A real bunker gets blocks, invulns, vigor, protection, etc. MMs have almost exclusively sustain, they actually have almost no mitigation. They are every bit as weak to focus fire as any necro. The reason the do well 1v1 is in general a single burst class doesn’t have the ability to burst through a defensive Necro in one go, and by the time you can burst them again a lot of it has been healed back up.
They actually have a weakness, some way to meaningfully counter them. You hard focus fire them, you AoE the hell out of their minions, you simply kite their minions (no hitting = very low DPS output and no sustain), there are ways to avoid it. You can stop their theoretically high bunkering and DPS, because in reality against a good opponent those numbers are never reached.
Warriors on the other hand get high regen simply by being alive. As long as they aren’t dead, they are regening. You can’t kite their regen, you can’t stop them from regening, it simply happens. If you try to burst through their regen, they have multiple sources of incredible mitigation to get through it. They get this super high regen while running full damage. Then they get CC that makes you unable to effectively fight them. And then that CC is still doing high damage. Almost every method of meaningful counterplay against what they have is countered again by another mechanic they have.
You’re asking to add strength to a weapon, which is fine if you believe warhorn is weak (debatable but still there). Problem is any strength added to a weapon is totalled in its overall strength, meaning everything added to it must still be within its “power budget” to borrow words from LoL developers.
What does this mean and why does it even matter? It means that, by adding swiftness in AoE, that strength gain is taking away other strength that could be put in the weapon. This could be increased damage, wider AoE, whatever, but the important thing is it is taking away power from something, that is how balance works.
So the question is, is added AoE swiftness worth a loss in otherwise effectiveness, either through a nerf to what we have now, or a “nerf” in the sense that it replaces anohter buff we would otherwise have gotten. I say no. Swiftness just isn’t an important buff in general, and the other weapons do better because they are at their core AoE buff weapons, which ours is not.
Flesh wurm is a disengage mechanic in every sense of the word. Just because it isn’t like shadowstep where you can get caught and then just cast and teleport away doesn’t mean it isn’t. Flesh Wurm requires pre-thought and pre-casting, but the reality is when you are actually in the fight, you activate flesh wurm, and you get ported up to 1200 units away, effectively disengaging you from the fight.
You just can’t use it as freely for mobility like other skills, it is only a disengage, as opposed to flat mobility.
Interesting idea. I wouldn’t say that it is always the case, but many builds do place the burden of the fight on the defender, and it doesn’t really create fun gameplay.
Very common display bug. A lot of modifiers that do not work through general things displayed on your hero screen, or are specific (like increases damage when behind enemy) will not change anything you see, but still activate in game.
It would literally take you maybe 10 seconds of testing to figure out if this is bugged or not, as it took me maybe 30 seconds to log in, load up my necro, equip the trait, hit a golem a few times out of DS, go into DS and hit a few times, and very obviously see my crit chance change.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Its just a display bug, a lot of the modifiers don’t get included in tooltips like that.
They do more damage and attack more conditions than a necro can
No condition build out conditions a Necro when they are fighting against us.
They need bigger tells to Flesh Golem, but that is it. A small windup before he flies off.
However, Shadow Fiend has a ridiculously long windup. Bone minions are not easy to land, in fact only very good MMs land them consistently, and it requires a lot of micro attention. Bone Fiend is strong, but his active is at best a Dark Pact, but on a 50s cooldown. Those are all either balanced (guaranteed stuff like Bone Fiend has super high CD, harder stuff to land has lower).
And the idea that minions work with low skill is false. Low skill MMs work against other low skill players. Low skill MMs are more useless than any comparable build (gear/weapon wise), because they will not only get little to no effect from minions, but they will have lost vital traiting to otherwise useless utilities.
The reality is that any decent player knows how to kite the minions, and low skill MMs have no idea how to deal with that. Minions only have high DPS if you can keep them on their targets; aka microing them. And bad MMs aren’t good at that.
We’ll be going over this tomorrow in the Podcast, thanks for all the feedback, and last chance if anyone wants to add to the discussion.
The problem is the AI doing the the job for the players. Necros, rangers, mesmers and in some point engeniers abuse the AI in some point. That should be nerfed so people actualy do some PvP in PvP.
So we can play builds that take real skill, like regen warriors!
You don’t need Well of Power, really, although its okay to have it.
But I agree, Fetid Consumption in your build is best. If you find your minions are dying a lot, drop TotM for Death Nova, it’ll be a significant improvement. TotM is only really worth it if they stay alive long enough to have big DPS increases.
30 in spite is actually taken in essentially every high damage build there is, so yes its pretty strong.
Axe isn’t that great, really. Its okay in PvE where you can set up really high damage 2s and staff is meh for power builds, its okay in PvP if you are a bunker-y Necro without staff, and its okay in WvW if you aren’t using dagger in a power build. It also makes for a decent hybrid weapon.
However in general Axe is a situational weapon, not an instant-pick.
Because they decided for it to be. They could have had dagger 1200 range, staff melee range, scepter on off-hand and axe as a two hander if they wanted. They just decided that axe with the kit they wanted for it would work best at 600 range.
+100 to dash for someone actually understanding that any decently successful MM actually requires really good microing of the minions.
WTB condition transfers.
I can guarantee axe range has been 600 since release and during most (if not all) of the BWEs.
Agreed. Axe has never been a 900 range weapon, at the very least since launch.
Actually redesigning dungeons makes a lot more sense for them. Dungeons are terribly implemented as is (in general), and I think they know that, as evidenced by a number of boss changes. They’d be suited to change the dungeon’s around, and in the process make dungeons a lot more interesting.
Reverting the change alone is bad. The old mechanic was bad. It worked, but it was bad. If anything, they should add a trait that accomplishes a similar function, such as CHIPS idea of one second of block on entry, or something of the sort.
He said “try it first in duels”, so at most it is a WvW or sPvP build, most likely sPvP.
Interesting idea. It will definitely have pretty crazy single target damage and lockdown, in fact if you play it right I could see you winning 1v1s easily as long as you get offensive right away.
My only problems with the build in general is you can and will get trained down in half a second by any warrior. They will pop berzerker stance, laugh off all the fears and immobilizes, and then wreck your face because you have no defense.
This skill only removes 4 specific conditions. Got a stack of bleeds on you? Too bad, it doesn’t solve that. Burning? Nope. Blind, chill, weakness, vulnerability, cripple, fear? Nope, none of them. There will still be plenty of room for condi-removal support.
Having played blood necro almost exclusively for 7 years in GW1, I used health sacrifice skills on a near-daily basis. I find their excuse that adding the same mechanic to GW2 would be “too complicated”…lacking.
+1. It wasn’t even reserved to blood Necros. MMs had massive HP costs associated with Blood of the Master, Blood is Power was a pretty hefty skill, and even a lot of curses and just random other skills had self-harm involved in some way. Most Necromancer skill-bars had at least one ability that hurt themselves in some way, either for really strong effects (BiP), or for super low CD/no mana abilities to use.
I find it a bit bland that the only thing we have is essentially tacked-on to Corruption skills. I’d love to see them bring back using HP as a secondary resource we can use.
I still can’t get over Bhawb calling us an in your face fighter class with one melee weapon that lacks cleave >.< Ohhh boy!
Its more of the “idea” of it, honestly. Not necessarily that we are always at 100 range, but if you want to be doing anything important on a Necro you need to be within 900 range, and constantly attacking.
Compared to say, Mesmers or Thieves, who very often completely disengage for a fight, circle around a bit, wait for CDs, then come back in for a short bit, and repeat.
Although yeah, I’d love more melee weapons.
Pure MM builds are fairly locked into 0/0/20/20/0 with a choice of two of Death Nova, Fetid Consumption, or Training of the Master, yes. But pure MMs aren’t the only way to play minions, which actually have some of the most flexibility (since they solely rely on utilities and traits).
A third bone minion would make the skill too strong. It would need to be a specific trait, either a grandmaster type one that made all minion skills have more effect, or one just for that. Otherwise base would just be crazy good.
No one is going to believe you, because they are baddies. As long as ANet doesn’t listen to people who obviously have no idea what they are talking about (I hope), I could care less if people think MMs are OP and need nerfing.
Poison, torment, confusion, and toxin removal are going to be useless in WvW, it isn’t going to be that big of a deal.
I don’t use tab targetting much at all partly for this reason. You are going to want a hot-key for nearest-target as well, which is what I generally use.
Its useless in sPvP, decent in WvW, and pretty much useless again in PvE (unless you really have nothing else to get in that spot).
I actually downed a guy in WvW with death nova the other day. I think it was the first time I had ever seen that happen.
How many minions did you have out? I’ve downed a lot of people because of death nova in sPvP, especially the new CC warriors, and anyone who still runs 100b.
“I know what kills MM necros, killing their minions!”
>Kills all minions, proccing death nova 6 times for 10k damage
>Immediately dies
“Omg necros so OP”
Good times man, good times. If they did increase the death nova damage, I think it’d have to be PvE only (not WvW). I’d have to look at the actual DPS numbers overall though, I wonder how bad Death Nova actually is now, since I think the burst damage of it ends up averaging another 100something DPS from on-proc to when the minions can be summoned again, which is actually (ironically) higher DPS than some minions while alive.
So funny to see people like Bhawb claim ‘but necro is fine, we are pure (and good) at attrition’. What a complete and utter joke.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree that the actual implementation of their plan as of yet is subpar.
I not only didn’t say we are fine, I literally said the exact opposite.
I agree that our actual attrition right now is subpar, and most of the use Necromancers get is actually opposite of attrition; its based off our massive AoE condi spam/burst. But I don’t want ANet to see that and say “well our idea failed, time to slap boons and invulns all over necros” and end up having the class become an emo guardian.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
It works any time they deal direct damage, through auto attacks or skill activation. Meaning Flesh Wurm (who doesn’t deal any direct damage on his active) and Blood Fiend don’t siphon through their activations.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
I essentially think of it as a hidden buff that they proc, instead of something they simply do on their own, in a sense. Training of the master only applies to damage the minions directly cause with their auto attack or activation skills. Vampiric Master, however, can be thought of as a hidden auto attack buff, something they proc with auto attacks, like spirit buffs. These are secondary effects that the minion’s auto attacks carry, but are not innate to the auto attacks themselves.
However, training of the master does not apply to outside buffs. If bone fiend shoots through a dark field, for example, the field applies a one hit AA buff that causes an effect. That effect isn’t affected by training of the master, as it isn’t actually damage dealt by the minions themselves, but an effect that is proc’d by those auto attacks. Spirits, buff fields, etc. all work in this way. TotM only applies to damage dealt directly by the minions themselves, not extra effects the minions are “carriers” of.
In this way, TotM doesn’t apply, although its a bit weird obviously. Anyway that is simply my opinion and an explanation. I don’t think it necessarily should count either, btw, neither of these traits are weak by any means.
Minions are definitely way too strong. That’s why we saw every decent team running MM builds a few weeks back, even two MM builds if they were really good, and why even still we see minion builds with high representation in high end PvP and tournaments.
I mean come on, didn’t you see the last tournament? There were dozens of these no skill MM players running around just pressing 1 with minions up and winning.
Wait wait wait
>"Stun breakers for popular utilities please"
>Corrosive Poison Cloud
>mfw
Anyway, our stun breakers are actually on great skills already, I don’t see why they need to be on others.
The mods are reading this and laughing their heads off
I know I am
1. Marks are 5.
2. Spectral wall is 5 at any exact moment, to my knowledge. Meaning only 5 enemies can be affected by it at once. However, as you can imagine, that rarely matters, since right as you get hit you run away from it.
3. If you dodge the mark’s activation, it will not hurt you. You can literally see all 4 of our marks in front of you, dodge roll into them, pop all of them at once, and nothing happens to you. The trait increases the size and makes them unblockable, which is nice, but not necessarily a big deal in WvW.
4. Almost all AoE has a 5 man limit. Meaning whenever it takes effect, it can only affect 5 people at that given moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree that the actual implementation of their plan as of yet is subpar. In fact, minions are one of the only places where they got it right (tons of CC, tons of sustain).
But I would much prefer that they keep trying to buff us up to what we should be, instead of band-aiding us with things we aren’t meant to be.
Grenth doesn’t strike me as someone sweet, considering he’s the god of cold and judgement.
That aside, a PvE only increase to Death Nova I could see. It deals 1.3k or 1.7k (traited) AoE, which isn’t exactly massive by any means.
An unsummon button would be interesting, I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Lol I misunderstood what you said and was wondering if there were actually Runes of The Bust.
6th rune bonus, +1 to cup size
Are you in PvE, PvP, or WvW?
I’m assuming PvE, just based on “full soldiers”, in which case it is up to how you play, but the above suggestions are solid enough (I only recently started playing around with minions seriously in PvE, so I don’t have a gear set yet).
“Dangerous” generally means that they found and fixed the bug, but in doing so might have broken something else even worse (programming does that often enough), unless there is some context I am missing.
Yes, I had a ton of time in the original GW game.
I used to jump into hotjoins until the queue proc’d, usually to make fun of silly hotjoin heroes and their “builds” (not that I’m remotely better of a player).
Nowadays, I like to run in circles.
Build: Minions.
I’ll list the combo variations according to which you have available, but minion combos themselves are always core around Axe and Dagger mainhand weapons, with either Focus or Warhorn offhands. Also, the only minions involved are Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, and Flesh Golem
Staff/Scepter/Dagger off-hand should be used just as any condition necro would, and are essentially separate combos to Minions as the two don’t really have any specific combined burst. Just blow up your bone minions when you want damage.
Opening combo – For when you are first engaging. If done right it will force defensive CDs off your enemy, generally I get at least one stunbreak off this.
1. As you come up on the enemy acquire aggro with minions
2. Right at 900 units from them (as close as you can manage) activate Rigor Mortis – Immobilize for 4 seconds + condition duration
2a. Focus if they have any boons you want gone, use Focus 5
2b. Focus if only 1 enemy, wait till you are close to 600 units, use Focus 4 so that it reaches them when you enter 600 unit range (will bounce between you two and stack 12 vuln), otherwise, use when possible
2c. Axe use Axe 2 now, you should have time to get most of this off before they get unlocked
2d. If you started with A/F, swap to your other weapon now, if that weapon is Dagger/Warhorn continue, if not just spam when you can
3. Right as Rigor Mortis expires, Charge with Flesh Golem, if it expired when you were doing the above, don’t worry, Charge is really hard to dodge, just make sure you wait for a fraction of a second for any panic dodges
4. As Bone Minions get in range, blow them up on the target, make sure they are CC locked
4a. Dagger Use dagger 3 so they get immobilized before they stand up from the knockdown
4b. Warhorn Cast Locust swarm while they are immobilized, or if no dagger right after they are knocked down
4c. Dagger If you took any damage coming in, you can Life Siphon if you want now, since you’ll get essentially a full channel, however if you do your burst is over now, don’t go further
- Note – Save Banshee’s Wail, this is key, you’ve done all this burst specifically so you can train them down a ton of HP, don’t just let them heal all willy-nilly after this, and you want to finish this up with DS so Doom won’t be available
5. Enter DS
6. Cast Tainted Shackles
7. Channel Life Transfer if you don’t have Transfusion, or you do and the heal won’t be wasted
8. Dark Path
9. Drop DS, start pressing the kitten out of your buttons
10. Watch for heals, if you actually got to this point (shouldn’t happen usually), get ready to interrupt heals. You should have either staff or warhorn out at this point, if you don’t, sucks for you.
Also, if at any point in this build they break your CC, you just skip the intermediate steps. The key to any good minion burst is chaining all your hard CC at once and allow your minions to close in and AA for free, and then save your soft CC for afterwards to keep your minions on their target.
That burst works at any time in the fight, btw. If anything isn’t up, you just skip it and move on. Its a pretty general checklist. I’ll see if I can write out my in-combat rotation later.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
this occurs with skills that have an effect during its activation time, such as shelter
It is more than just those. Necromancer marks have 0 effect until placed, but if interrupted get put on full CD.
Thanks for the quote, I didn’t know of a good one in the forums (they are usually on streams).
Considering how most of this is just aesthetic-concept crap
“Cosmetic crap” is pretty binding for the game. Imagine if they called us Necromancers, but all of our effects were straight from My Little Pony, people would be pretty kittened off.
Marks now lay down a field of flowers. Locust Swarm summons hummingbirds, Lich is a giant Care Bear. All our minions are cute cartoon animals. Everything is pink, frilly, full of rainbows and flowers.
People would be put off of the class. Why? Because theme matters. And the idea of slapping mobility onto our class is a slap in the face of the entire theme we have.
For clarity, this has been a bug with at least the Necromancer staff for a few months. You can see it by beginning to cast a spell, and interrupting yourself in some way. The marks will go on full CD, instead of the 3s “interrupt CD”. Easiest way to do it is to start casting the skill and press escape.
I am sure this extends to other things as well.
Necromancers don’t have mobility because we aren’t supposed to have mobility. Its like asking why a tank can’t fly, because its a tank. If you want to fly, hop in an airplane.
The class is supposed to be an in-fighter. Sharp has constantly used fighting terms to describe the necromancer, so I’ll go to those. We are supposed to be an in-fighter. A successful in-fighter has a number of ways to come out on top, one of them is simply out-manlying his opponent. What I mean is he gets in their face, and he starts swinging. He swings hard, fast, and doesn’t relent. This type of fighting style ends up getting you bruised and battered often, but it is a highly aggressive style, and generally relies on just overwhelming your opponents.
To translate it to us. Necromancers are pure-aggression. Almost everything we do has the main focus of being used aggressively, and then some of them have a side-use of non-aggressive play. We win by out-trading our opponent, in our case we debilitate them through conditions, and enhance ourselves through a few limited buffs and things like siphons. As we continue trading with our opponent, this comparatively makes them weaker, each hit from us not only hurts them, but makes us stronger. Every hit from them is made less useful by weakness, every chance to escape is limited by cripples and chills, their attempts to heal are poisoned. And in this way we stay in their face, continuously applying a stream of pressure until they crumble.
Obviously the above can be debated as to how it actually works but that is the goal. We get in your face, we make you weaker in comparison to ourselves, and we slowly beat the hell out of you.
Now back to fighting terms. In-fighters, for their actual fighting style, don’t need or want mobility to run from a fight. They want mobility to get in close, and that is it, but they never truly “disengage” at all. You get in, you stick to their face, and you never relent. All this talk about mobility is literally the opposite of an in-fighter; an out-fighter.
This is someone who dances at the very outside of your range. They weave in for a split second, quickly let out a combo or two, and then weave right back out, disallowing you any chance to reply. They use mobility as their key weapon to accomplish their goal.
TL;DR, ANet isn’t afraid of giving us mobility to make us OP. They won’t give us mobility because it is 100% opposite and contrary to the kind of gameplay style they want us to have. Does this suck sometimes? Hell yes, but that is besides the point.
And if you need fast long-range teleport? Ele and mesmer can do this, necro can’t. You reach cast point faster, then it ends.
Then you shouldn’t be playing Necro.
inb4 another “necros need more mobility” thread, the last one died literally last night.