Loco, he was obviously referencing 30/20/0/0/20 which yes is still OP.
Other than that, no Necros aren’t UP. We’re okay, still in need of improvement but hardly UP. Its just harder to fit the other builds into a cookie cutter comp, you need a bit more thought.
It really is your mission in life to dump on anyone who wants improvements made to minions. Who cares if they aren’t ranger pets, that prevents us from having a UI with their health on it too for the sake of clarity? Simply showing their health or having an attack/defend toggle isn’t their class mechanic, its having multiple commands, taming and the ability to switch between dozens of different pets to fit any situation or preference, with tons of traits and skills revolving around pets to further customize them. I’m pretty sure now that minions don’t aggro things anymore that we won’t get an attack/defend button, but I don’t see why a hp bar would be out of the question.
Yes, it is my mission in life to dump on the build that I know more than 99% of the population about, that I have spent hours and hours testing out little tricks to maximize their use. I want to dump on the build that I have used exclusively since BWEs in PvP, the one build that I’m known for being solid at in PvP. Yeah, it makes total sense that I want to dump on the build that I know more about and can play better than almost everyone who asks to make these terrible “improvements” to.
In reality, I post these because people come up with bad ideas because they don’t think things out, and I don’t want them to ruin the build I love more than any other. I have been posting for months I want HP bar UI, but like Andele said, I don’t want the crappy ranger setup, I want the GW1 style UI that was just a simple set of HP bars and gave a very basic idea of their state. Commands are bad, there is no reason to need them at all, and adding things that aren’t necessary is bad alone. Despite that, it just isn’t how they are supposed to work.
+1 to Riot Inducer. Its also why in general I hate when they are called Pets. Pets aren’t just Ranger companions, but they are specifically meant to be quasi-equal to the ranger, and treated like an actual ally. You try to keep them alive. Minions are just something you form up, use them for their passive benefits, and then laugh maniacally when they die because it benefits you even more. They aren’t pets, they shouldn’t be treated as such.
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I think the only time I would see it being used is in a DS1 build that sat in DS a lot to pump out 1s. Otherwise I see no reason to bring it, and even then I feel its subpar to either CtD or Deathly Precision, one of which you’d have to give up.
Even if you wanted a CC build, you could have done it better. The problem is you have a CC build with less CC than you could get than if you swapped things up, a condition damage weapon with no condition damage, sigils/amulet for direct damage with nothing to deal good direct damage with, and then minions thrown on top.
My problem with the build (that maybe I didn’t get across) is that you could have done it better, with the same general setup. Drop the second scepter weapon set and pick up a staff, drop the transfer and pick up another spectral OR another minion OR a well, drop the power gear and pick up more condition related gear. You could even drop the 20 in spite (your build doesn’t really care if minions are dealing 30% more damage, they are there for CC/LF) and pick up Terror and another spectral trait.
Dropping the second scepter/dagger set won’t hurt your CC at all, but will give you an AoE fear.
The transfer is okay, but your build supports other things so much better. Especially since you’ll be frontline with the bunker, you could pick up more defense (spectral), defense and support (well), or more CC and/or damage (Bone Fiend more CC/damage, Bone Minions for burst damage).
Dropping the power gear you already understand I’m sure, but it also ties in with the next point:
Which is dropping the spite and putting at least 10 of that 20 into Curses for Terror. That gives you so much more damage and makes your CC so much scarier, plus you have 3 sources of fears now. Then the final 10 should either go to Spectrals (if you didn’t get Bone Minions) or Death Nova (if you picked up Bone Minions).
That makes your overall build do more damage with more survivability and more CC.
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Retaliation got nerfed because it was OP as hell. It used to be something that if you wanted to you could keep up 24/7, meaning it was a blanket boon that you didn’t need to use smartly, and would deal high damage back to the people hitting you. Bunkers could effectively just throw around retal themselves and paired with the high sustainability they had and the little extra damage, many people would kill themselves just attacking someone. If you want to see how strong retal still is, get a Mesmer friend to fight the Guardian, you can kill the guard without attacking him just through the use of a phantasm and retal.
It was ridiculous. Retal as it is now is in a decent spot. You can as a Necro still get very high (if not permanent) retal uptime, which does pretty decent damage back per hit, but you can’t just throw up retal and be a real damage threat without doing anything.
Minion builds are strong. Fear builds are strong. But I think for high level play Foot in the grave becomes more and more important or else you’re gonna have a bad time against cc duel classes. Power builds can get insta gibbed. But if you’re skilled enough yo can do it.
Actually if you’re running a minion build properly CC doesn’t matter too much so long as you don’t just sit there going “I HAZ MINYUNS IT DUN MATTER”. But as long as you keep playing smartly, 2-3 of your minions are still hitting 100% of the time (ranged, won’t get CCed), and Flesh Golem gets stability after charging, which means he will attack the whole time too. If you use the standard minion setup, that means the only things getting CCed are Bone Minions (which you can blow up easily because most CC spam is melee and they are instant cast explosions) and yourself.
Back before CC warriors were popular (and they were weaker, mind you), I 2v1d two CC warriors on a point for a long time before my team was able to come in and mop up two very low warriors (who I just couldn’t quite finish off, for obvious reasons) as a minion build. Simply because if they CC’ed me, all of my passive stuff was still coming in, and its not like you stay CCed ALL the time, so if you’re smart you can still get a few things off like Axe 3.
I have to agree with Bhawb. It looks as if you were going for a MM but tacked on Spectral and condition elements.
I will say for the record though, that minions can and do perform well in a variety of hybrids, you don’t need to run lots of them. Spectral (for more defense), conditions (offense and defense, depending, plus a variety of damage types), w/e you want. I just feel like you tried too many things at once.
In theory I think it has good potential though, don’t get me wrong.
Plague signet throwing conditions back isn’t that big of a deal if the offensive conditions basically do nothing anyway (no condition damage); the defensive ones you have plenty of access to anyway, just by merit of being a necro (and also you have Deathly Swarm). Also, if you want to throw back conditions your runes are working against you.
Pick up Carrion if you want vitality.
All I’m seeing is a kind of defensive, super low damage build. As long as someone can apply consistent pressure (shouldn’t be hard because you do low damage), you aren’t going to outheal it, and you have really limited LF generation. They can just consistently train you down until you run out of HP.
I see very little synergy with your build.
You’re running a condition-damage weaponset with almost no condition damage. A half-direct damage/half-defensive gear setup, but with very little to use your direct damage with and little to support your quasi defense. And a “spectral” build with only one spectral utility.
I’d suggest if you want to keep the spectral look, that you go for Spectral Armor (which will also give you pretty nice Protection) over the signet, and trait something else there. I’d also either choose a power or condition build. If you want a condition build get a new amulet and sigils, if you want a power build get a new weapon/jewel.
What do you actually plan to use this build to do?
^No thanks. Necros don’t need a rework, they need a bit of tuning is all.
With the 50 trait points invested, non-crit damage would be 7.4k, 1.7k from each Death Nova, and 2k from each explosion, as well as 12 seconds of weakness and massive poison uptime depending on how long they stand there.
That’s 7.4k AoE damage without any meaningful setup, with the cost being 50 trait points and one utility skill. If you can’t land the explosions mid-fight, you shouldn’t be playing this game, they are easy to land against any class, even evade-spam thieves can be hit relatively easily if you are paying attention.
That is way too much damage for one utility skill to do on a 16-20 second CD with little-no setup, relatively little cost, and that only in traits (which most builds using this would grab at least 20 of anyway).
You must not Duel alot on the SPvP duel servers,cause it’s the etiquette.
Also it is very easy to build LF with the right build.If you are a DS necro you spec and use skills that build it fast.I can go from 0 to 50% LF right when a duel starts.
Just because its etiquette doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid.
we seriously need a UI that lets us see there health and lets us set them to defensive/aggressive modes.
No modes, they aren’t ranger pets, stop trying, (insert elitism about how only bad MMs want this), go play GW1s MM and come back to talk minion control, otherQQhere.
Minion UI to show health is a big QoL improvement to lessen some of the “bad” microing we have to do that actually hurts how you play the builds, without needing to directly buff anything.
And seriously stop asking for modes, we don’t need them, and it removes a lot of the counterplay they have. It would be 10x easier to make 1v1s hell on mobile builds with that, and they already have it pretty bad.
Heavy burst/CC classes all agree that it’s not fair to let a necro have LF to protect themselves from burst/CC at the start of a fight.
I don’t think its fair for other people to have defensive CDs up at the start of a fight. I want to see everyone I duel use all of their defensive abilities before we start fighting so I can burst them without them being able to do anything. What’s that? That’s complete BS of an idea? So is telling a Necro not to have access to their only defensive mechanic.
Yeah, bone minions can burst really well, and if that is all you want to use them for there isn’t any reason to get death nova.
honestly after thinking about it a bit i hope they make it so death nova explosion stack with the bone minions in the next patch. it would only be 8k damage every 16-20 seconds and even if they crit that jumps up to 16k, and that’s what like 2 auto attacks from a thief?
That’s two backstabs from a full glass cannon thief who’s invested basically everything he has into a backstab build. Compared to a single utility skill + 30 points into the minion line.
Do you think its balanced that a 27k HP, 3k armor, fully defensive bunker build should be able to hit as hard as a full glass thief with maybe 1/4th of the necros eHP? It’s like going back to the BM rangers that could do 10k damage bursts with their pets despite being fully defensive.
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http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;08cZ;1kHkD0s3oI-K0;9;4J-TJ-18;229A16;2XkV7;2IBl3IsW63NQ
MM builds tend to be the best for dueling. The other builds can work, but they are much harder to pull off. For example a berzerker build (even with soldier gear mixed in) is going to tank quickly if you mess up, and if you blow Lich at the wrong time, you pretty much lose outright in all damage-heavy builds. And in PvP I just find most tanky power builds just don’t have the damage output to put down any other bunkers in a 1v1 unless they Lich properly.
The build I linked has high damage from minions and the armor-ignoring siphoning, along with still decent base power. Also tons of CC. It has worked for me for ages.
You can change it around a bit, using D/WH or D instead of staff and Soldier instead of Cleric if you want a more up-front power but less sustain.
Bleed stacks are what kill people. Dumbfire is too strong because its basically guaranteed and unpreventable damage that also doubles as a cover condition on a class with already high condition application, making it hard or impossible for many builds to realistically remove the bleeding stacks that are causing pretty massive DPS.
SPvP is a lot simpler than WvW, fewer players, less equipment, no food buffs… it’s a toned down version of what you could do with PvE gear, but just because there are a lot more variables doesn’t mean that you can’t balance it. And it’s kind of a lame approach to hugely overpowered gimmick builds or traits or runes (perplexity) to say: well, it doesn’t matter because it’s all unbalanced anyway.
sPvP is a 5v5 (not including hotjoins which they don’t attempt to balance) game mode on a set map with set ways to earn points. Everyone has the same amount of trait points, everyone has the same access to gear, and its always a “fair” fight in the sense that each team has no way to get advantages on each other except in how they play. There are a few things, like if you went in with a team of 5 on teamspeak that had played hundreds of games together against a team of pugs, but realistically speaking the overall variables to unbalance any individual match are fairly limited.
WvW on the other hand, is completely impossible to balance. You can’t assume each team has the same number of resources, they almost never do. Fights are completely unbalanced, and they aren’t even unbalanced in a balanced way, where you fighting a 30v50 on one end of the map opens up a 50v30 on the other. Oh, you also have an entire other server to deal with, and servers are perfectly capable of forming alliances to 2v1 the other server; which happens all the time.
The most they can do is make small attempts to balance builds, but how do you balance 1/10th of a game mode where the other 9/10ths by design cannot be balanced? Why would you even bother? They take away things that break the game (like a lot of PvE tools did), but they aren’t ever going to balance around WvW because it is completely impossible.
Maybe I had it confused then, does the passive siphon not scale?
Nope, not at all. Its 926 whether you have 0 healing or 1k healing.
Regardless of how easy the build is to use (and its pretty easy) you still can’t be an idiot about it or you’ll get trained down.
Oh wait, its WvW and you have 40 people there to take aggro off you, nevermind do you what you want.
Btw, never expect WvW to get much by way of balance changes except to cut back things that are ridiculous. Its an unbalance-able game mode.
Scepter will be your main weapon in any condition build. Staff is pretty much never your main weapon unless you are going for a full defensive build; its a utility/defense weapon.
I wouldn’t suggest traiting it much for PvE either, except at most 20% CDs.
I wouldn’t listen to that. If a new player were to reroll to that class he’d get dropped in half a second by any thief or warrior.
30/20/0/0/20 is a good build, should work just fine for WvW. Just be warned its a very glassy build and its meant for team fighting (or zerging in WvW), and you’ll be using wells most likely there. As long as you position yourself fine the DPS is really high though.
When you place it, it remembers the field you placed it on. So you can get a combo finisher even after the field expires. I do not know if what you say is correct, I’ll try it in just a bit and get back to you.
Hey I’m new to the game and I’ve played every profession expect for necro. I’m about to make one. What should I know about what weapons to use and what play styles come with them.
The dev idea of what a Necro should be is an aggressive always in the thick of combat fighter that sustains via making opponents comparatively weaker and eventually dragging them down to death.
We’re generally a slower class to play, we rely on debuffs (conditions), and no matter what you play its going to involve a lot of conditions.
Dagger is melee high-single target DPS with a lockdown
Scepter is ranged conditions
Staff is utility/defense
Axe is ranged single target burst
Dagger OH is ranged AoE conditions
Focus OH is ranged debuffing
Warhorn OH is melee interrupting and chasing
Overall, we’re pretty similar to some engineer and ranger builds. Slow playstyles, lots of conditions, mainly trying to outlast the opponent, rather than kill them quickly.
My problem with the build in general is you’re really not getting a big improvement from Death Nova. Essentially the only times its going to proc the damage is when Shadow Fiend and Jagged Horrors die (you lose out on damage if you let bone minions die).
I feel like its ineffective for what you are giving up. You could be doing so much more. Not saying its bad, but at a first glance I feel its giving up too much for too little; a gimmick that isn’t gimmicky enough to be worth it.
In and of itself, Torment on an auto attack is, in theory, nothing important. For example they could have a scepter-like auto attack chain where the last applied 1s of Torment; no one would care.
Also remember that torment on auto attacks brings up one extra problem that is very relevant when we talk condi necros; cover conditions. Only a big deal in PvP, but if they gave us another easy way to cover bleeding it’d be an issue. Again, in and of itself not a big deal, but they’d have to be careful.
If it lasted longer then I could see it being maybe(?) useful in doing some ninja moves, but thats it.
I’d like to see dueling implemented in HotM, but I don’t see any reason to just have it be a giant cluster-kitten free for all. Just add in the ability to challenge others to duels.
wait so death nova deals damage along with the poison field? that’s lame that it doesn’t proc when you use the active.
Death nova deals about 1.3k direct damage when a minion is killed. It doesn’t proc on active because it would have made each bone minion explosion 4k damage, which is OP.
Super mods strike again!
Yes I’ve tried minion bomber builds, but they aren’t like they were in GW1, and they aren’t worth it in general. The damage just isn’t remotely high enough to validate an entire build around having your minions blow up. Bone Minions actually deal more damage if you blow them up than if they just die.
Death Nova is more an additional strength to a build using minions, but it isn’t enough to make a build off of. You want to use it in a build that already wants or can use minions, and then it is added in to discourage people from killing them carelessly.
Training of the master does affect Putrid Explosion, I’ll check Death Nova, and they don’t stack; death nova’s damage doesn’t proc on any minion killed by you activating their skill.
Edit: Yes TotM affects Death Nova. Proc damage went from ~1.3k to ~1.7k. Btw, killing 6 minions at once with TotM and Death Nova can deal 10k damage…
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The passive is fine, but the active is barely noticeable. I’m not saying buff the base values on it, but at least have it scale with healing power some . Would also like to point out that the other classes with this type heal (with a passive and active healing portion) get healing power scaling on both parts.
It already has a 1.0 scaling on the active.
Mine heals for over 5k if I were to use it in my healing power builds (I just don’t, because CC can heal for 10k+ plus condition removal in the same build).
It doesn’t activate when placed, but it “stores” the field that you put it on for the finisher. And I believe it can activate twice, but it always needs to be triggered.
Do i have to constantly remind you that this is GW2? I have never seen a necromancer strong enough to wield a hammer.. or one to ever want it, lore-wise.
Anyone could wield any weapon in GW1. Unless in the last 250 years everyone has been getting physically weaker, I see no reason they’d be unable to pick up a hammer.
Also, Trahearne could use a greatsword. If a plant can use a greatsword, I think we can use hammers.
You can max out chill duration pretty easily with a number of Necro builds. I would never use it as a core-mechanic of a build, but more a side-specialization using runes/sigils.
Dota 2 will never pass LoL, its a great game, but it will never pass LoL in player size because of how much less-friendly it is to new players.
Also, I don’t agree that the casual playerbase has to be internal. I know a lot of people that enjoy the idea of some casual PvP, but then they get in there and go “why the hell should I do this?”. If they connected the two game modes (in both directions) in more meaningful ways, along with fixes to sPvP in general, it’d help out PvP overall. Although I do agree PvP-only accounts would be a good idea.
Other than that, pretty much agree. Except realistically you don’t need to compete with LoL in size (every day the amount of players that play LoL is comparable to the total sales of GW2), but in making sure that the fan base is solid. SC2 has a good pro scene, and has a good viewership, but it does so with way less players than LoL simply because it seems like the people who play are more willing and wanting to follow the competitive scene; whereas many LoL players have no idea what the pro scene is and are happy to keep building 6 warmogs on sona.
MM Necros don’t survive based off their conditions, nor are they built around conditions any more than just rolling a Necro makes you based of conditions. 90% of them are power-based and the majority of their damage will be direct damage. They survive due to very high amounts of siphoning, huge eHP pools, decent CC, and good condition clearing. Conditions help, but their conditions are more towards damage (via making the minions un-kite-able) and aren’t the main source of their bunker-ness.
I agree that damage needs to be toned back in PvP (only, conditions are trash in PvE), I just think ANet is in a bit of a hole as to how to do that without killing non-offensive conditions.
football high barrier of entry? all you need is an open field and a ball. Sure tackle football with pads and everything is high, but every highschool in north america has a team students can play on for a pretty reasonable fee.
Comparatively. Almost any sport can be played so long as you have the ball required and maybe one other tool (for example you can “play” hockey with a rubber ball and a hockey stick). Even the biggest entry for video games is still relatively similar to low-entry like LoL.
I also wanted to use it as a specific example because it is massively less popular in number of fans world-wide compared to say Soccer, but that doesn’t make it a bad sport, or lessen its impact to those who are fans. It has a thriving competitive scene, despite being way smaller. Not every eSports needs to be as big as LoL, and very few will ever be able to.
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- Blood Fiend – sacrifice heal scale off of healing power so it’s actually worth using rather than keeping it siphoning until it dies.
Taste of Death, Blood Fiend’s active, has a 1.0 healing power scaling. You should never let him die, ever. Its just the “easy” way to play the skill, but you can lose out on 4-5k healing if you do. He needs to be able to get in 4 attacks to offset the lost healing.
I think they could fix this skill in general with an updated UI though.
Boons tend to be far stronger. When was the last time you saw a bunker/support that didn’t use boons, and instead applied and kept up conditions? It just doesn’t work well. If they do lower condition spam, it needs to be offensive (bleeding mainly) nerf, not a nerf to all conditions all around.
Necros have tons of weakness applications and seem to have protection up half the time. Wouldn’t this just make them godly?
Necros two sources of protection for themselves. One from a trait that gives 3s per use of utilities of over 30s CDs, the other on a 60s CD.
American Football makes plenty of money despite being a very high-entry sport with relatively little following (compared to world-wide sports). Not every eSports game needs to have LoL level of success, or players.
Yeah, lets nerf condition application on the class that is basically nothing without condition application.
They need to give people more reactive ways to cleanse conditions.
Actually I’d say it does.
There is a difference between having a lot of potential builds, and a lot of builds that people play. GW1 had thousands of skills, but in reality it mostly cycled through FotM builds (which then got nerfed to hell), with some “core” builds for each class.
For example, Necromancers really stuck with a few main builds. Yes there were thousands of different combinations, but when you got down to “hardcore” PvP you generally stuck with one of a relatively few number of builds. This wasn’t because there weren’t other options, but simply that those few options were the best.
Same thing now in GW2. It isn’t that you can’t play this build or that build, its just that they tend to be a bit less optimal, or some other class can do it better. Are there less builds and less viable builds in general? Maybe so, they also have massively less options to make builds, which is good. Yes it lowers some of the fun of having so many options, but overall it makes for a better game; its easier to learn and understand, and also easier to balance. GW1 was hell to balance, and it was only ever balanced at the top end, there were always a multitude of skills that were terrible.
As for combo; they don’t explicitly state the combo-field system. In fact the example they used had nothing to do with combo fields. So yes there are good and fun combinations to use as they said. And I do feel like a good number of builds (not all) have interesting gameplay where you need to make smart choices.
Overall though, the game is still new. Frankly if they had wanted to they could have slapped “beta” onto this game like so many others and still be developing it in a way. There is a lot of potential, but they have quite a bit of time balancing before they get there.
Thief is the only class that can’t effectively bunker (unless they have some build I’m unaware of), every other class has some method of bunkering, although you can argue effectiveness.
Perma-stealthing thief bunkers are toxic to the game-mode. It shouldn’t be hard to see why fighting someone you can never see is bad gameplay.
Soon™
Net turret plox
Perfect way to make turret Engis viable, allow turrets to cap points. Nvm, they’d still be bad.
Then I want the same stuff for my Mesmer Illusions and Thiefes want probably the same for stealth…
I want Jagged Horror to be able to contest a point.
Caster =/= feeble old man with a “staff” that he only really needs because he can’t stand up on his own anymore. I’m sure Gandalf could have kicked kitten with a hammer if he wanted.
^Power rules PvE because of the much higher stat ceiling, and power scales best up in that way, plus you can’t have your power damage “overridden” by someone.
Condition rules PvP because it requires the least investment, conditions rarely get overridden, and the condi spam classes can easily outpace anyone’s removal.