(edited by Bhawb.7408)
The only melee with no escape? facepalm
What other melee has 1 way to get out of the fight (besides pressing W), with no ways besides our two dodges to avoid damage?
Thieves, Eles, Mesmers, Warriors, Rangers, and Engineers all have better and more reliable ways to escape. The one except is Guardian, who is our “sister” class in many respects.
Necros are not great as they are now. One singular build-type is fine, if not a little strong due to other class’ lack of cleanses, the rest are okay, but still need fine tuning to be as good.
But CC/stability isn’t the problem there. CC and focus fire in general will always be the weakness of an attrition class, but what we need is more realistic (and skill-based) ways of surviving focus fire.
You can pretty much solo whatever you want in pretty much every part of this game, as long as it doesn’t have forced mechanics (like CoF p1) that make it impossible.
Also, don’t waste your money on buying gear till you’re level 80.
^It isn’t a condition damage or power damage weapon. It is a support and utility weapon; most classes have at least one. In our case, it uses conditions and condition control to do this. Power classes use it because the utility is amazing, and at least it does some damage from range. Condition-damage classes use it because it gives access to more damage conditions, and dat sweet utility.
But that is always what it has been. It has never been a damage-based weapon, nor should it become that. Frankly, I’d be happy if they just got rid of the mark-damage trait and made it something totally new.
Uh, no. What part of utility weapon are you missing?
Siphon necros have no escape of any kind except for utility skills, and even only 2 at that, and both of them very counterable.
Want to deal with a siphon necro? CC warrior.
No they aren’t… there are numerous weapons in the game which are utility or defensive, not offensive. Staff is a utility weapon.
Why precision? I realize it will “help” both offensive setups, but staff is innately a support/defensive weapon, not offensive.
It always transfers remaining duration. It essentially “copies” the condition with remaining duration onto the person transferred to, then removes it from you. Your own condition duration has no effect.
Engi and Necro have very similar playstyles (if you play condi). Some things will be different, but overall it will still feel similar. If that is what you want, Necro is good, if you want something different look somewhere else.
Your aggro is determined by a few things. Its been ages so I don’t recall what priority was, but Armor, Vitality, Damage dealt, Proximity, and being a Guardian all are included. If you don’t want to have aggro, generally speaking for a Rabid Necro, wait for the rest of your team to start the fight then start dropping your damage at max range.
Its pretty obvious the changes made are purely because of pvp. Dont tell me you cant see that? Class balance is completely focused around pvp and for the most part it has resulted in nerfs to pve in many areas.
They have made some PvE changes, and changed some things to affect only PvP. If you want to be totally honest, the reality is that PvE’s balance is kitten not because of skills themselves, but because of terrible PvE design. They could change a lot of fights to make PvE far more balanced and it would be a lot easier than changing a couple dozen skills instead to make balance better.
I think they realize it too, but the reality is PvE balance will be crap until they actually rework a lot of dungeons and the general design of things, and make it harder. But for now, PvE will remain max DPS and boon-spam builds with reflection being top tier. “Perfect” balance in PvE would only mean they made every class exactly the same; high direct damage spikes, boon spamming, and reflection.
Putrid mark is still better than off-hand dagger 4, its just not as good as it was.
I have never heard that the balance team is PvP only…
That would essentially mean they split between PvE and PvP, which they have said many times is not a road they want to go down at all.
The current way they are doing things is generally okay, as it doesn’t necessarily benefit any one side more than the other. Everyone can use all the skins they release, or minis.
Necromancer’s pets are fine. If this is an idea for a skin-shop item then yeah its fine, everyone wants skins.
If this is base? Hell to the no.
I think it has been left up to the players to keep it alive, and there hasn’t been enough interest to.
So essentially a skin idea?
Its PvE simply because there are more PvErs. I think proportionally it is likely equal, if not favoring PvP slightly because PvP players really like the new skins, and its one of the best ways to get nice looking skins without being rank 80 or spending gold (which many don’t have), while a lot of PvErs can probably not only go without the new skins but also buy gems with gold.
I’d be an interesting figure to see though.
Shade as it used to be can’t be re-introduced into the game; although it is incredibly weaker than it once was. I think the current stability on entry has essentially replaced it.
What I would really like to see is an Aegis on-DS entry with an ICD, or even a short duration invuln/block on DS entry, but with an ICD to compensate for an obviously strong ability, as a trait. I feel like there are a lot of unique ways they could continue molding DS into our major defensive tool without resorting to just slapping boons all over us (I realize I just said Aegis, but w/e).
I like the concept of endurance stealing, I just don’t know how they’d implement it, because it would be really strong if we just straight stole endurance from some classes. Maybe a skill that creates a “spectral bond” between us and a target, where a certain % of their endurance used is given to us?
I’m assuming its just showing the guy camping that location to “abuse” fear to get easy kills, since people might not see him as they go by that location, and he’d see and chain fear them off from there.
For PvE I’d suggest Berzerker, with mixed in defensive stats if you need them, but only as much as you need. Healing doesn’t really benefit them enough in PvE imo, unless you are trying to make a support build that uses WoB and has minions as a side.
Oh, I just realized I totally read the post wrong.
Yeah you can do Necros just fine without staff or minions. You’re looking for power or hybrid builds, neither of which need staff.
Most classes have some source of CC that can do the same thing if they want to use it.
You don’t even need to wait to reach them. Minions will aggro at 2k range or so, just by pressing any targetted ability, or hitting someone with an ability. It is really easy to get them to attack, and they are really responsive, you can mash dagger 1 at 2k range and they will run off to kill people.
The weakest minions are bone minions, the only ones below 10kish HP base. They each have around 5.2k HP base, 7.8k HP traited (and if you’re an MM you should have that traited). All other non-heal/elite minions have ~10k base, 15k HP traited. The heal/elite minions have 13k base, 19.5k traited. Unless you are talking WvW/PvE, I don’t know anyone who can spam out an instant 15,000 damage AoE. And if you’re talking PvE/WvW, then just wait till the patch where they are going to increase their base HP (massively, if the leaked notes were anything to tell by).
As for damage, minions deal actually pretty high damage if you know how to keep them on their targets.
It really doesn’t need that much work. They are patching Vampiric Master, which will greatly fix some issues. Besides that, MMs just need them to continue to make the siphon system better, and they need to make Necromatic Corruption less crap.
PvE is far harder to balance, and until they make it any bit meaningfully hard, then balance really only affects how quickly you can kill stuff. Even with how un-competitive PvP is made out to be, PvE is far less so.
Any gear can be used for MM. You can condi MM, you can full tank MM, you can glass cannon MM, it doesn’t matter. For PvE I’d suggest berzerker gear because power is the best damage source and you shouldn’t need any more defense than it anyway.
Like flow said only actions. So if you get quickness for a decent duration, its time to pop Lich form.
Hi i want to make a necro without staff or minions, is that even legit or will i just be an ice cube in hell? I was thinking if going with D/F and S/D and i was wondering if this is even a good idea or will people think i am an idiot? please help and forgive my eng.
I don’t use staff in a number of my minion builds, it is perfectly fine. What game mode are you intending to use this in? (WvW/PvE/PvP?)
I don’t. To get much out of any of those traits you need to give things up, besides just the trait investment.
Want to get use out of Vampiric and Vampiric Precision? You have to hit as many people as possible as often as possible with as high of precision as possible. That precision requirement is a trade-off; less defensive stats. Hitting a lot requires certain setups that are all centered around melee range AoE, opening you up to a lot of counterplay. It is a very specific playstyle that is massively weak to CC based focusing and requires heavy investment, and that is healthy.
Not really. Vampiric Master has a very low actual rate compared to other traits, because the other traits work on your hits and crits, and you hit a lot more than just one target per second.
The only time it really shines above and beyond is Putrid Explosion and Charge hitting multiple targets.
Sure, but that is the point. Training of the Master increases damage (more than Vampiric does), and Vampiric Master increases healing via siphoning, which happens to also add a bit of a DPS boost.
Training of the Master does quite a bit more damage than the increase that Vampiric Master would have.
They are going to make healing power better next patch.
If you are using healing power, you need to be using more than just siphons. Remember that we have some of the best scaling healing skills in the game.
^You can do all of the vampiric stuff in addition to having berzerker, in fact it helps because you can grab siphon on crit both the trait and sigil.
^No. No. Nie. ??. Ez dago. ??. . Non. ?.
Disclaimer: If any of the above translations are incorrect I assume no responsibility and blame google translator. Edit: apparently the forums don’t accept foreign letters. Oh well, just assume those question marks are more ways to say no.
As for why its a bad idea, its because the only real weakness of MMs is when their minions are down. For example, lets say you are in PvP, you summon minions at start of the match, and capture home point before heading to the teamfight mid (a very normal situation). All of your minions are off CD at this point, giving you essentially a full new bar when the first goes down. You go into the teamfight, many large AoE attacks are already blown anyway, and then when they see the MM they use the rest to take you out of the equation. Except wait, not only do they deal massive damage to themselves by proccing tons of Death Novas, but every single minion is alive again!
They have to deal over 75k damage twice to kill off all your minions. Wut? That is 150k damage required, assuming the minions get absolutely no healing (which should never happen) to open a realistic opportunity to kill the MM. That is ridiculous.
No, it does not scale with Healing Power. It’s treated as a Minion trait and is static values. The only thing it scales with is (strangely) Bloodthirst and the WvW Medic buff.
While on this subject though, am I the only nutjob that thinks that Vampiric Master is going to be far too strong of a Master trait if the actual siphon damage is implemented?
Its a buff at most 114 damage per hit, with minions averaging a hit every 3 seconds in ideal conditions its a DPS buff of 38 at the highest possible value per minion, or a total DPS increase of 228 with a full 6 minions and perfect conditions. That isn’t much.
On the other hand, no it does not scale with healing power, although I believe they are going to slowly take it that way along with all other siphon traits.
Warriors. Even when warriors were terrible they were really common in hotjoins.
Exactly what Lux said. Sometimes even though what you are doing is technically not quite optimal, the simple fact that you are used to it will make it better than it would be if you swapped over.
Not always the case, but often times with things like keybinds it can be.
I’d like ice fields, simply because I could apply so much Frost Armor to my minions…
I have movement and skills on keyboard, with targeting related things and profession mechanics on my mouse.
Dark fields are not useless at all. As a combo field it is only subpar in coordinated WvW zerging if you are using them on your own zerg, because you will be messing up the buff rotations your zerg is doing. But that is a single well that isn’t really that great for WvW anyway because it is condi removal, where your zerg should be spamming that out anyway.
Other than that, dark fields are really strong. Yes some people are stupid and complain, but they are stupid. There is no situation where spammed blinds and a healing/damage buff isn’t good.
Gamebattles also supports Runescape? WTF
We all know that hardcore wildy PvP is some high level eSports.
No, see the problem with this picture is that you still have skills off CD. What you should be doing is spamming everything on CD, and auto attacking in between. Because skill.
It’d be 15 seconds, its got an ICD
It makes the most sense in a way, but if anything they could just make it not apply the blast finisher.
I think it might be prudent to give us 1 finisher or so per weapon set. Although its obvious that it wasn’t how ANet planned things, I think its obvious that finishers are just so necessary that we really need them, even if its very limited because of our field amount.
Because while I “get” the idea of all on utility, you only get 3 utility skills plus one heal (and I don’t think any heal is anything but a field), so that is very, very little actual chance for finishers.
I was hesitant to want pistols only because I want to avoid being too much like mesmers. But the ideas I’ve been reading here have changed my mind. A phantasmal duelist is very different from the dark soul hunter we’d become. Something a la unholy Alucard would be insane, casting marks that would curse an area, firing corrupted bullets, blanketing an area in choking dust, etc.
I want off-hand pistol to “shoot” jagged horrors. It is my one and only wish, and I will give all of my monies to ANet to make it happen if I have to.