Guild Wars 2

tattoohead.3217:

MM provides a much needed “role” to play, something only we can do. And before you go blaming AI why don’t you test it.

I know every minions damage and HP by heart, DPS, how every mechanic they have works now and has worked since launch. I know exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to minions, I’ve spent hours upon hours testing them out.

Minion DPS is nice, and its strong as long as they stay alive. But it will never be meta. Ever. Unless they make them completely OP (if they “dumbfire” them), they will not be the main meta simply because they will always be perceived negatively. They will always be an AI build that relies on you being able to properly micro their aggro and skills, and they will always be a very, very unique build type.

Its just how it is. Keep on trying them out, but it won’t make them meta.

1. No minion gets double damage from siphoning, so already I have a hard time believing what you say from here on.
2. Vampiric isn’t 200-300 per second, its at most what, 50 per hit? Maybe 100 per second with dagger auto?
3. Not denying this, but how is your “real” damage being double what the skill normally does?
4. Sigil of intelligence makes no sense to me.
5. If you are “just sit back and watch minions do so much dps.” you aren’t using them right
6. If you just dagger auto with minions you shouldn’t be using minions. Wells is for you.

Not saying this build is bad, but I’m going to shoot down anything that is blatantly false about minions before it gains steam. It looks like an okay build, but you are working off some wrong premises, and you could really maximize the potential of this build if you made a number of trait/rune/sigil/amulet/skill choice differences.

ronpierce.2760:

Just give holiday bags in addition-to. I don’t think you’re at any risk of over-rewarding PvPers right now.

Yeah, I don’t see any reason why it’d be bad to get more rewards, even if they aren’t considered helpful.

Worst case just deposit them and sit on them until next halloween (like I did) and sell them for 1-2g per stack.

9am yes. I’ll be on to watch, hopefully I can see mah man Zombify with them Necro mechanics.

Necromancers still really need torment or burning, without it our only real DPS condition is bleeding, which just isn’t enough. Pre-burning patch, pure-condition necros just weren’t up to par, they really only ran with Sun Spirit (gives them burning), Engineers (to feed them burning via Epidemic, and also compliment the bleeding), or were just kicked out in favor of an Engi, who’s damage couldn’t just be shrugged away.

The Grandmaster trait being one condition option makes it so a full damage Necro is incapable of also having major defenses (only at most 20 traits left over, instead of 50), and that is good. We’re also very hybrid by nature, so power hardly hurts.

Glowing makes no sense. Part of good visual design is that the tell itself makes sense. Flesh Golem’s tell is a big charge, if you get hit it makes sense that you get knocked around. If he just glowed and walked forward faster… it wouldn’t make any sense.

Asche.5362:

I have reservations. Care to give us your build and educate us on damage numbers?

Not saying MMs aren’t viable, they are, always have been, and always will be. However they will never be meta. By their nature, MMs have always been a high-micro, unpopular choice; you rely on high microing and AI to do things. It will never be the main meta though, unless it becomes unbalanced. And they certainly aren’t unbalanced yet.

This isn’t a end-all fix. For example, Necromancer minions give frankly little to no cluster at all, being a mix of ranged and melee, and not stacking on the Necromancer. But, their tells are very much about their body; bone fiend’s tell would be impossible to see with him smaller (its already never noticed), and Flesh Golem charging would be harder to see.

What they should do is reduce the size of the offenders, which we can all agree is almost all just spirits, and then increase their specific tells. This should be the case for most things in the game really. Small damage/effect skills should have relatively small special effects, big skills should have big effects.

So, in this case, keeping the res spirit big makes sense, he’s noticeably kill this ho now, and his res has a tell. The others could serve to have their sizes reduced, but also they really need to have their shiny-ness reduced. They shouldn’t be nearly so eye-drawing.

Take a note from League of Legends, which has really mastered the art of making things nice to see, and easy to follow. Even someone who has never played or watched LoL can follow and appreciate the action. Whereas even most people who play GW2 can’t tell what is going on half the time.

oZii.2864:

Dhuumfire really has nothing to do many complaints about necro alot of it is more ignorance. Many people think all necro’s are condis because alot of necro attacks have some kind of condi modifier on it and deathshroud has condis regardless of the build.

People will always call for nerfs regardless.

Every legitimate complaint about Necros (and there are some) have to deal with Dumbfire in some way.

1) New skills to increase diversity
2) Vastly improved skill and effect clarity
3) Rewards and Progression

(From a Necromancer point of view)
The Good:
- New casting
- New condition floaters
- New tooltips
- Most Necro changes were really good and in the right direction
The Bad:
- Tooltips are blatantly false in many situations. For example Death Nova (both the listed damage is wrong, and it shows to scale with power, which it does not) has the wrong damage, Vampiric Master’s healing tooltip is incorrect
- Quite a few new bugs introduced, see above.
- New changes just weren’t enough (in context to Necro) for self-sustain. Full-investment siphon builds have never been good enough, and they barely got touched at all with the Bloodthirst nerf
The Missing:
- Putrid mark still doesn’t remove as many conditions as it used to, it still doesn’t remove a single condition from allies
- Marks still go on full CD when interrupted
- No change to Dhuumfire, which still condenses all condition builds into “press 1 until the enemy is overwhelmed because my auto attack stacks three conditions”
- Still no changes to Reanimator, Protection of the Horde, Deathly Shiver, Necromatic Corruption, etc. etc. there are still tons of traits that aren’t just niche, they are outright bad, either for the cost or overall. We are in dire need of a trait rework again, and even very small pushes in the right direction would have been massively appreciated.

Transfer skills do work in multiple stages. It cleanses you of the conditions, and then applies them to your target. It isn’t a singular “transfer” function.

For example, if you were to give your $1 to someone through this system, what actually would happen is you would magically create a second dollar bill, give that one to them, then violently (for comedic effect) tear yours up. So its possible that the tearing stage is working just fine, but the dollar-giving is somehow failing.

Dhuumfire’s problem isn’t duration. It’s that it added guaranteed damage, another condition to cover bleeding, and it lets our auto attack scepter spam stack three conditions on its own.

Pressing 1 can actually put out enough pressure with Dhuumfire to push people off points because it stacks bleeds, the poison reduces healing, and burning deals pretty high damage. If you blow condition cleanses? Good luck surviving a full bleed burst into fear-lock with enough cleanses left over to pull of 6-7 conditions before you get down to the bleeding.

In that respect, Torment would do much better. It’d remove one cover condition and is more easily balanced.

flow.6043:

If you create a scenario with an unviable necro build using WoB and 4 additional players who park in the well for 10 seconds, then you might as well asume that an elementalist uses all his aoe heals at once including waterfields and all other 4 players use their blast finishers on it. That is not only a realistic scenario, but the healing of WoB pales in comparison.

You might as well say “Heal X” is good because it heals for 100k hp, but the cooldown is 5 min and it’s the only heal the necro has. No one would use that, the fact that it is one skill that heals for a high amount doesn’t make it acceptable.

Cleric’s isn’t unviable, regardless of your opinion about it.

Flesh Golem + You + your bunker in PvP = 3 people healed = 27,000 healing done in one drop, which is an entirely realistic scenario (your bunker needs to stay on point, WoB essentially covers the whole point).

In PvE it depends on boss. How often do you have 5 people melee-stacking? A hell of a lot. Instantly fully-realized healing potential. Same in WvW, its not that difficult to have 5 people stand in a well unless the enemy zerg is really smart and drops some heavy AoE on it.

krippler.9826:

Can’t escape. You can say I never should have hung around at the start, but still…

That’s exactly the point? If you have terrible mobility, you don’t allow yourself to be put in situations where you couldn’t run.

Also, the person in that video saved marks multiple times that it would have given them more space (fear, chill, remove and transfer immobilize), rarely if ever swapped to another weapon set (axe cripple, dagger immobilize, scepter cripple, OH dagger transfer+blind, OH focus chill, OH warhorn daze + cripple + swiftness) and a few times ran back into people chasing them. Not a great video to show off how we can’t escape when it would not have been difficult to escape that.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

@Bhawb: While that range sounds about right, how did you actually test that?

I turned off fast-casting and went into heart of the mists. I first acquired aggro on a golem by auto attacking with staff out until my Bone Minion ran off to kill him, then I ran back until he de-aggro’d (hit the leash range) and ran back to me. At that point, I very slowly walked forward step by step until he went back to attacking (they “remember” their aggro if you leave range), finding the exact spot where the leash is at max range.

Then I used a mark, and placed it at max range, using the green/red indicator to place it right on the 1200 range. I walked forward to the middle of the mark (still quite a ways away) and swapped to my axe/focus off-hand, and started walking back to the furthest from the golem edge of the mark, and saw that the right where the range indicator for the focus skills being in range was the very edge of the mark, so:

Leash Range = (1200 range – 180 mark radius) + 900
Leash Range = 1920

Actually, the Necro does fine in sPvP with that view, because disengaging from a fight on a node is a win for whoever is still on that node. We’ve always had really strong 1v1 potential in sPvP for that reason. However for the same reason we suffer in 1v1 in WvW because running away doesn’t lose you anything there.

Leash range is 1920.

manveruppd.7601:

I don’t get why Bhawb thinks the well is fine: when even in WvW group fights (where the Well should shine!) people bring Consume Conditions instead, it’s clearly underpowered (or CC is overpowered).

It isn’t used in WvW group fights because Necros don’t usually bring any healing power (makes it really weak), and because its a light field, which screws up the water-field rotations. Plus no condition cleansing, which is really its main weakness and what I’d prefer to see changed to bring it in-line with CC.

flow.6043:

The self heal adds 1:1 for healing power, and 0,4 of healing power to each puls. So with 1200 healing power that would be 6440 hp initial healing and 11 pulses for 632 hp.

.4 healing power over 11 ticks ends up with a scaling of 4.4, 5.4 on yourself. Math.

flow.6043:

It is definitely not the strongest heal.

Heals me for 13,000, and heals for up to 41,000 total. Its your opinion that it isn’t the strongest heal, but it still heals for the most of any healing skill. You can debate that there are better ones all you want, have fun, there isn’t any point debating it.

runeblade.7514:

20% chance to do combo finisher

3x 100% projectile finishers with minions.

I believe the tooltips are correct, in that they show what it is supposed to be, and what is actually bugged is the traits themselves. But for now the tooltips are not showing the accurate value.

If you plan on running around in WvW without a zerg, you spend a lot of time running away on any class. But if you insist on doing it, then pay attention to the map and your surroundings and it isn’t all that difficult to get away a majority of the time. Just don’t let the big swords show up over your head and as long as you’re positioned on the map intelligently you won’t even see most zergs until they die off or you have flipped something.

Not MM for WvW.

That’s fine if that’s your opinion. It’ll also never happen as per dev’s philosophy on our class.

Edit: not to be mean or anything, its just not how the devs envision the class so it won’t happen, likely no matter what.

Lightsbane.9012:

it’s even more lost once you transition into wvw. you need as many escapes as possible.

Not particularly, if you’re paying attention. I’ve always been able to get away just fine, just so long as I don’t let the zerg actually get close enough to get me into combat.

Its odd that their massive tooltip rework included completely buggering up a few of the tooltips, yeah.

They aren’t supposed to attack separate targets than you.

Still 926, just tested in Heart of the Mists.

Nope, unchanged completely. The tooltip just is god awful at showing it, but his damage is the same.

We’re not supposed to have a lot of mobility. At most we get swiftness, otherwise all of our “mobility” skills are designed solely to chase, or create distance while in a fight, but not leave it completely.

And pressing another button makes it skillful?

flow.6043:

But that was the point, Well of Blood is not fine, non of our healing skills are fine. They should all get buffed by a significant amount. And making WoB a water field would just be a start, at best.

There are a lot of people who also say that we have two of the best healing skills in the game (Blood Fiend would be up there for passives except he can die). Well of Blood already has a 5.4 self scaling and a 4.4 allied scaling AoE.

Those are both opinions.

Would making it a water field be strong? Of course. But I just don’t see the strongest heal in the game (single and AoE) in terms of HP healed per use getting even more healing added on.

I’m all for ANet testing it out and looking at it, but I don’t want them to end up nerfing its healing (which they would), just to give us a water field that would go unused a lot of the time.

Arvid.3829:

So your point is that a 6.9k aoe heal+blast heals on a 40 second cooldown would be completely OP, based on some hypothetical situation you justed kittened up?

Meanwhile, for the same investement in healing power, engineers have a 3.1k aoe heal on a 15 second cooldown
+5 seconds aoe regen (another 1400 healing)
+2 conditions removed in aoe
+water field
+all instant (no need to stand in that area for 10 seconds)
+a ton more blast finishers
That’s in the game now… and no one is turning it into some OP beast of a heal in whatever niche situation.

Engineers also have Dhuumfire, and no one bats an eye. I’m suggesting that a flat healing buff to an already strong healing ability isn’t going to happen. Well of Blood already exists and works fine on its own; you don’t buff things that are already fine. Turning it into a water field would result in a nerf to its overall healing to compensate, and that isn’t worth it unless you’re in WvW and you want to play water-fields with your friends.

Bawi.9541:

Chill of Death proccs at lower than 25% hp (from what i can tell. It happens to finish off guardians sometimes )

Chill of Death (and most similar things) actually trigger on the next hit after dropping below 25%. So dropping below 25% HP itself “primes” the trait to be used on the next attack.

Nudd.2970:

I really think we should have an attack button for the minions, but NO stop attacking button. Attack button for directing them, but they are mindless undead things. When a zombie starts eating brains it doesn’t want to stop. So why should my minions not enjoy juicy brains?

The attack button is any button that has a targetted skill. Basically, your 1 is a target button.

Arvid.3829:

To put it into context: that’s about what warriors get passively through healing signet (no risk of it being interrupted, no need to stay in the aoe, etc.) without any investment in healing power.

The difference is well of blood can out-heal most people’s own healing skills with the suggested changes. It gives anyone in your group another healing skill.

Stop looking at it in terms of your own healing, that part is strong but a bit insignificant when you consider that Well of Blood doesn’t just heal you for the most of any single skill in the game (albeit on a higher CD), it heals allies for around as much as their own healing skill. As it stands now, you can get 41,000 healing done with one WoB, across a full 5 targets.

And that is the point. No one taking Well of Blood cares if someone else has better healing on their own skill, its the fact that I can then heal them for another healing skill worth, and its costed them nothing. For those referencing minions, niche power is an important thing to consider. If a skill is only unbalanced in one situation, it will still get nerfed or changed because of it.

I have a build that could easily put out high numbers (though not quite max depending on team) just by standing with my team’s main bunker on point, dropping WoB, chain exploding the minions (if you can’t aim Putrid Explosion you need to unequip minion skills and never ever look at them again), and then doing what I normally do on point. WoB mostly covers the point, if their bunker sits there, I’ll be healing myself, my bunker, Flesh Golem, and possibly one more minion. My bunker is going to get 10 seconds to wait for his CDs without a worry because of the healing, my Flesh Golem is going to be sitting at full HP again, and I’ll be on high HP. And then I can pop transfusion a few seconds later once WoB wears off, and heal up any AoE spam they do.

Is that niche? Yes, its a specific build type. Does it matter? Not a kitten bit, because niche scenarios very often are the only reason things become unbalanced.

ronpierce.2760:

Careful saying that though, people might draw an improper conclusion. They also can’t dodge (and don’t dodge with the master), tend to have lower toughness, and don’t worry about positioning/being in aoes so, there’s quite a huge difference when it comes to EFFECTIVE hp :P

You also can’t resummon a player after he stupidly walks into an insta-kill AoE, whereas my minions are back in 30ish seconds.

MandJ.8965:

No they are great in making AoE dmg. With epidemic, the ds #4 and the signet of spite (don’t know the right word of the skill in english) you make awesome damage. With another necro, i’m hybrid he full condi, we tried it on an camp. Was in 10 secondes done.

Context is everything. That was in reference to minions, not Necros.

Generally speaking for each game mode, every class has their dominant heal, then their other two heals are situational, to varying degrees (usually one is highly situational or just bad, the other is just situational).

In our case, its not that WoB or Blood Fiend are weak in any way, in fact WoB has the best scaling of any healing skill in the game and Blood Fiend dishes out amazing healing over time, its that consume conditions is just amazing for your main heal. The only game mode where it isn’t blatantly the best choice in most builds is PvE, where conditions aren’t that big of a deal, otherwise having a full condi cleanse on a 25 second CD on an already really awesome healing skill is just generally too good to pass up.

Its got nothing to do with WoB being bad (again, strongest heal in the game with healing power), it has to do with Consume Conditions being such a great heal.

Kashijikito.1864:

I still feel that this skill is underused however, would you suggest any change to make it a more compelling alternative to consume conditions?

Get rid of conditions and it becomes a lot better. Otherwise you’re losing the easiest source of condition cleansing in a condition heavy meta. It is our general-use heal, which is fine and the point of it. WoB and Blood Fiend should be niche skills, one for massive AoE healing with a healing power build, the other for sustained healing. CC will always be the most used unless they over-buff the other two.

Kashijikito.1864:

Blast finisher heals heal for 1320 each. That brings the maximum healing that Well of blood can do to roughly ~9k.

I get what you mean when you say that the healing would be ridiculous, but it’s not like necros scale well with healing power anyway.

My guardian can heal for 10k hp with her heal alone, she has roughly 1200 healing power last time I checked, and her heal is on a much shorter cool down. Never mind that she has crazy passive regen and she heals on dodge AND she as easy access to regen.

See here’s the thing. With 1200 healing power (just sPvP clerics gear, bit of traiting), Well of Blood heals me for 13,000, and heals my allies for 7,000. Each explosion would then heal both of us for another 1500 each for 3000 total.

Now, looking at that again:
Self healing – 16,000 – 40s max CD
Allied Healing – 10,000 – same CD

Don’t even bring up regen, just pressing 2 with staff out = max regen uptime on my entire team (theoretically).

For even more fun, transfusion, 10 traits into Blood Magic, can heal for 4,500, which brings my allied healing to 14,500 healing.

Do you see what I’m meaning here? The numbers you are using are severely lowered for the Necro. Well of Blood has the highest (to my knowledge) of any healing skill in the game, with a scaling of 5.4 for yourself, and 4.4 to all allies.

Well of Blood heals for over 13,000 to you over its duration with Healing Power.

I’d love to be healed for 15,000 HP, and be able to heal my allies for 10,000 HP with only two CDs, neither of them amazingly high, but that just isn’t realistic to ask for. You’re asking to buff WoB by 3k healing in certain builds, with 0 trait investment necessary, all you need is healing power and two utility skills, all three of which are just fine, so its not like you lose anything really.

I mean with this + transfusion alone, I could heal anyone short of a Warrior/Necro for their entire HP bar.

Anyone in specific who’s mic isn’t great? More specifically, is it mine or tenderly’s since those are the only two we actually control.
(No one makes any kind of money from anything we do, although maybe Bas gets a wee bit just to cover the site, but I don’t think that’s making anything yet.)

Lol, silly forums. Thanks, I’ll try that out, maybe get us a better background image going.

I don’t see it happening. Bone Minions + WoB turns the thing into a monstrous heal. Changing it to a water field would result in a nerf to its healing overall, which I don’t want.

It’d be a difference of over 10,000 HP, so I’d imagine it wasn’t super hard to test even through fairly “imprecise” means.

Like I said, I couldn’t even figure it out. I used MS Paint not because it was better, but because I couldn’t figure anything else out :P

I own plenty of programs to use to help things out, I just don’t know what exactly needs helping, which is why I ask for feedback. I’m not sure what needs fixing.

Indeed I stand corrected.

By the way, I forgot to announce this, tomorrow at 6:30 we’re doing a podcast with Rennoko to talk conditions!

That’s what I figured would happen. The all-MM zergs in WvW did not need a 70% HP buff to their HP.