Minion swap shouldn’t have to be counted on for initial LF gain. If the initial amounts are so important, make it base and get rid of a fairly obvious exploit. Those kinds of things are bad game design.
Nah, this was just a way to get newer players some common specs to use.
I actually feel the duration is appropriate as of now because of the significantly shorter CD; with the current pulse thing, its actually only one tick less, but with a whole 20s shorter CD, so only 3 seconds less of each condition.
What about reducing its pulse to 1-2 seconds, and then reducing the poison/weakness so the overall weakness/poison is the same, but it isn’t as forgiving to people inside, along with an increased radius (300, imo)? I feel like adding vulnerability makes it too much like WoS (same reason I don’t feel like blind/chill because of darkness), and it should remain mainly non-offensive.
Try it out on golems (do they have those in PvE? they really really should), and on someone in WvW if you can find an enemy that can help out.
Well, that makes me sad that they would do another ninja change. I honestly don’t care, it was obviously broken, but seriously guys stop with the BS and tell us about the changes.
Wait, Locust doesn’t scale well? Locust has (or used to) have one of the most OP scalings ever, because it ended up ignoring the 5 man limit.
I stand corrected :P
Condi Necros are the only ones that I actually feel this is a problem for. The rest all have access to the LF needed to use DS if they want to, and if they don’t want to that is their problem.
No, conditions check for damage each time they tick. I would imagine it worked the same way Might does.
Thief & Ele get Siphon with #6, no trait cost.
First, we need to make a distinction. NO other class in the game gets true siphons, none. They have heals on hit, or heals on skill usage, but that is not the same. While I wish ANet would actually make this distinction, siphons generally are heals on hit that accompany damage. Minions are the exception (for balance I assume), and only heal on hit, but the rest of our siphons always accompany a damage component.
What does this mean? Lets say an ele heals for 500 on hit. That heal itself is changing the HP difference between them and the enemy by 500. If that ele had a siphon of 500, then they are changing it by 1000, which is a significantly stronger effect.
Not saying that our siphons are in the right place, but people highly underestimate them. They are very similar to our conditions; a whole lot of very small effects that stack up to have pretty impressive effects over time.
At the scaling part. Remember that 1v1 siphons are never the only thing going on. Siphons are just one part, the rest of it being conditions, offensive pressure to force heals, our own heals, fears, etc. Very few of those things scale at all with the size of the fight. Our 1v1 sustain right now is actually very close to being okay in 1v1 builds.
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It said “condition damage”, which would imply that it works the same as the flat “damage” one does, which works off of white damage, it does not increase power.
I actually think I’ll try it out in a minion hybrid build I’ve been working on, I think it could work really well with the right setup for disgusting amounts of poison/weakness.
Edit: and I agree with Mammoth. I don’t think the skill is bad on its own, it just fails to be quite good enough akittens job to warrant the slot. What are some ways to make it work better as an area denial skill?
In theory, idea was good. In practical applications, no way, its still too low of healing compared to the damage we’d be receiving. If the trait worked through DS, then it’d be vastly better. Its kind of sad that the only siphon trait that really feels meaningful is minion siphoning; relying on the single most controversial of our skills.
Just an fyi, they probably won’t stack, in the same way that +5% damage doesn’t stack with itself.
Staff also makes (or made) LB a bit stronger.
I had a vague idea, just didn’t realize it triggered for Putrid Explosion, Haunt, and Charge like it does.
Nah, that’s silly.
Btw, after his comment about Flesh Golem I started testing. Turns out every minion damage, whether it is via their auto attack or through their active ability, all of them proc siphon. Also they can proc AoE, meaning Putrid Explosion hitting one person heals for 114 (with bloodthirst), but if it hits five it heals for 570. Charge works the same way, every time it deals damage to something it procs.
Of course I would be at school, OF COURSE
D/D is fine, although generally in PvE you don’t need the extra defense it gives.
" Each Tree gets only one main weapon" – warrior have 2-3 in same trees :/
I was speaking only about the Necromancer trees, which have fairly clear cut lines as to what goes where, although there are a few things that are a bit strange to me. Warriors have more weapons, so they need more weapons per tree, and its possible they don’t have the same scheme as us.
Going live in 10 minutes
Edit: and we’re live
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I really, really like the idea. Seems fairly balanced at first look, I love how it scales with more people, and appears to have fun and meaningful play/counterplay.
Also a note, Abyss is true black, whereas midnight dyes have a hue to them that come out in certain color schemes (and they look really weird on certain armor types, like leather). On the other hand, Midnight dyes, when they stay black, are a deep, deep black.
But overall, just get a bunch of dyes. I regularly, like every week or so, completely change my scheme.
I’ll share a few of my builds in a sec, just have to build/link them.
Just a reminder all, 6pm PST (an hour later than usual) today we will be live. We have a WvW Necro lined up, so come listen and participate!
I abuse my Abyss/celestial/blood dyes. Abyss is really worth it on light sets, it isn’t as pitch-black as the Midnight sets, but its a more pure black, and doesn’t completely obscure all the detailing in the higher end light sets.
Which is what is supposed to happen. Blocks are supposed to, you know, block things, you think they took the blocks so they could get hit anyway? No. So you have to give up 20 traits to get a very strong ability, making 4 abilities unblockable.
A weapon that summons Jagged horros= Lich Form
Most weapons don’t have 4 minute CDs.
Because many people are perfectly happy with the change. I think moving it to master was questionable, but I know a lot of people just got rid of the trait altogether and adapted to the new mark size, which is big enough.
Its not like they did that one patch and said “that’s it, game’s perfectly balanced now, we’re done”. They are still going to fix up traits and such, that just happened to be a big patch where they did it for everyone.
In PvE poison is completely unimportant against most mobs, and can be massive against the bosses that heal. Especially in pug groups, the bosses that heal can extend their fights for ridiculous amounts of time if everyone isn’t in good DPS setups or if the group starts not doing well (a few people get downed). If your group isn’t bad though, its still not that important, as you can DPS the bosses down through it often enough. But still, it is vastly better in PvP where the 33% reduction in healing is massive.
It depends on your build. I actually think Axe overall is going to give you better results in a tanky setup because A/F is huge vuln stacking, pretty much 100% cripple uptime, plus retal and a decent damage spike with Axe 2.
I had been told they did, and I was pretty sure I had checked that before… oh well.
First off, Hounds of Balthazar are absolutely devastating in my build, far more than any of our other elites by my testing. Granted I am hybrid, so both their scaling gets great, but they are still better than any other choice.
On to rad field. Akittens core, it is not better, but different. Rad field lasts 3 seconds longer, has 300 higher cast range, and has a 20 second longer CD, 28 seconds if CPC is traited; with a 25% uptime, and 18 seconds of both conditions inflicted without duration, assuming all ticks hit. CPC has a 30% uptime, 37.5% traited, and 15 seconds of both conditions assuming the same, but also self poisons.
CPC is strictly better if you look solely at the fields, with quite a bit better uptime. But the problem is, the 300 less range and self inflicted weakness really hurt its “real life” viability. I think they need to fix that in some way, either by making CPC cast at the higher range (meh), reducing the self weakness now that it is really hurtful, or (my favorite) increase the radius on it.
I think it could be really good for that purpose in PvP though. I can’t imagine anyone that would be happy to sit and fight with that much weakness on them, and that gives them a very small area to fight on while still being on the point.
I’d actually be interested to see if it would be a big change. Someone look up how much DPS 25 stacks of bleeds would do, along with about 50% burning and 100% poison uptime would do compared to what is now done by direct damage. If each person could output the same DPS or close to it, condition wins easily because of the ranged nature compared to generally melee high DPS.
Also, seriously guys stop with the conspiracy. ANet might have settled on the specific 25 bleed cap for balance reasons, but again its a technical limitation. It isn’t that they were all manically laughing in an office going “we know how to keep those idiot condition users down, mwahahah!”, they did it because of the server stress caused by having to track so many conditions. If they do ever fix it, I would imagine it would be down to a complete rehaul on the condition mechanics backend.
It really doesn’t lack much on its own, if the class finally got its mythical sustain changes, or teams in PvP finally got passed the kindergarten level team-comps, it’d be an amazing weapon.
Its problem is that for a tanky build, we don’t have quite enough sustain to make dagger as good as it could be (not saying its weak, but its just a teeny bit off great). For a glass build, you rely on your team to get you out. You will murder your target if you are playing it correctly, but then its up to your team to get your kitten out of there before you are destroyed. Also, I think the #2 needs a bit more HP/s, either through keeping the same overall healing and decreasing channel time, or by increasing HP per pulse.
Overall though, Dagger is really strong, and I’d use it in every power build I had if I wasn’t such a noob with it.
I’d love an ability that only summoned jagged horrors; as in no secondary active, just a CD based ability that summons another Jagged horror, up to some max. But I still think it could work, but they’d need to be smart about it.
Never specifically tried it on Arah, but I am generally very able of skipping mobs, even in areas where it is really challenging. Lots of movement speed stuff, plus the second you get hit with anything and lose your ooc speed, start dropping your stuff. Reaper’s mark, Spectral Wall, Chillblains, Scepter 2, Axe 3, whatever you have drop it, and drop it over time not all at once.
They could certainly make it happen and have it be fun with interesting minion actives (if they added in a few more minions I could completely see it being fun), but I just don’t think its what they want in the game. I could see complete minion off-hand weapons, or a two handed weapon with 2 skills that are minions and then more supporty main hand/1-3 skills for a 2hander to complement. I just don’t necessarily see them have 1-0 skills all being minion summons or minion-supporting (not saying that is what you meant).
In the end it falls down to: is the gameplay interactive and really fun for both sides? If they can make that happen, do it.
I think another consideration is simply that ANet doesn’t seem to want a gameplay where the person does nothing directly themselves. I think 1-2 minions on an off-hand is fine, 1-2 minions on a supportive weapon where the minions aren’t so important as their actives are, is fine. But an entire weapon that is all minions and minion support just doesn’t fit with what they want I don’t think.
“This game sucks. It’s too easy. I can just stack up scores of bleeds on an enemy, sit back, and watch them bleed out. I can solo every boss and champion in the game with my eyes closed. No challenge at all. When are they going to introduce real challenge and stop designing the game for casual baddy care-bears?”
[sarcasm]Man, I know right. Its a great thing ANet put on bleed caps to preserve the hardcore gameplay we have now. I just couldn’t imagine seeing this game becoming faceroll easy.[/sarcasm]
Specifically speaking a skill is only ever one thing, it can just have effects that are others. For example minions can siphon, Mark of Horror is a mark that has an effect that summons minions, Order of the Vampire would be an order/aura that causes siphons on hit, etc. So every skill has its main type, what it is listed as, and then extra effects, and I don’t see Corruption, Wells, or Spectrals becoming extra effects like minions.
It isn’t like they are going to change it with time, or that 3 months is going to fix it. It was a technical limitation when they built the game, it isn’t something that they will be able to just fix in a few months, it is a matter of massive server strain increase if they raise the limit.
I believe the reasoning for EA was because its "OP"ness revolved 100% around Water. No one used it for air/earth/fire dodges, they’d specifically use it for water dodges because the mass healing and cleansing was so much more wanted than what else they could use it for. (PvP, I don’t think EA is too strong in any other game mode).
MoE could easily be used to burst, the thing of “not going into melee” is completely off-point. Almost every Necro in PvP uses Geomancy sigils already, Mark of Evasion is not much closer, and you always want to finish your condi bursts with a fear to force their CDs (meaning your target will move themselves out of melee range).
Shroud has 15s ICD, btw.
Balance is a great reason to have an ICD. It is not that difficult to learn “hey, some dodge abilities have an ICD, some don’t”, it should just be well documented by tooltips when they have an ICD.
And yes, two bleeds does matter. That is 1200+ damage that they can take off of a bleed burst without making the skill that bursts absolutely useless in every other situation. As it stands now, Mark of Evasion is still a fine trait, it just can’t be used to burst more bleeds, if it could burst bleeds, it would need to be reduced in strength, making its offensive uses useless except to burst bleeds.