Stability is not a stun breaker.
Yes, for clarity in PvP the only time you should run with an offensive amulet is if you have designed the build for team play and the offensive setup in some way accomplishes that role. Otherwise Soldier’s is the best all around, with Cleric being good in certain setups.
So, assuming you are building your MM as a power setup (which you seem to be), build them the same way you’d build any other damage build; the bare minimum defense to survive, the rest offense. For an MM, you could likely be able to easily make it by in full Berzerker gear. Also, remember to drop Shadow Fiend for Flesh Wurm when you aren’t just running around (boss fights), he is vastly better when you can stand still for a while.
Other than that, the build is fine for what you want.
Get rid of something that was actually difficult? No thanks. PvE has hours upon hours of content that can be done by any scrub in white gear, I’m glad they are finally trying to make things that are a challenge to players who want it.
Note: not saying this particular design was good because of how unbalanced it is towards necromancers, and they have obviously not learned their lesson about designing PvE content to not blatantly favor certain classes.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Obviously Altroll’s ratings are going to be based off his personal bias about the class and elementalists, not much of a point debating them as they are his personal ratings.
I did finish that path and its the only path I ever did lol. To each his own I guess.
Also… ds crit talent/or ds crit preriod got nerfed too. I can barely crit with life blast with what should be almost 100% crit chance. Its like 4/10 hits crit >_>
Its not that I didn’t finish the path. I have finished that path dozens of times. I have killed that boss plenty of times, but I have never really fought him (hint hint, I sat under the water and auto’d him to death).
Just tooltip clarifications? Are you kidding me? Where are the improvements to Blood Magic and Death Magic? Where is the Dhuumfire replacement? What a boring patch.
It wasn’t a balance patch, it wasn’t even a “fix” patch that they have on rotation in between big balance patches, this was purely content and they were nice enough to add in some clarification and new animations.
And fury from DS entry. Those two things alone allow you to make a build with almost no precision added in, yet still do very high damage because of crit chance steroids.
I just realized that despite having done tons of CM runs, I have never actually fought the Centaur boss for real yet, and have absolutely no idea what he does.
not a balance patch so it’s normal
they will do it later this month
This. Wasn’t a balance patch, I was surprised we got so much.
Spite: Power, critical damage, axe, dagger (this makes sense for power type builds)
Curses: Precision, condition damage, scepter (main weapon for condition builds)
Death Magic: Tough, condition duration, staff (staff is also for conditions, defensive)
Blood Magic: Vitality, healing, focus, war horn, (these are support type weapons)
Soul Reaping: Life force pool, boon duration (only thing left so put these here)
Alright, so this has been done over countless times, but here we go again. Each Tree gets only one main weapon, and then generally a secondary weapon. That means each main hand weapon gets its own tree. Axe falls into Spite because it is direct damage, Scepter into Curses because it is the offensive condition weapon, staff goes into Death Magic because it is support/defensive, dagger ends up in Blood Magic because its attack speed synergizes best there (mo attacks mo stealing).
Off-hands are put in logical places with what is left. Obviously dagger off-hand is treated the same as mainhand. Staff is a two hander so takes both slots, leaving focus/warhorn. Focus is power, goes into the power tree, warhorn gets leftovers and is into curses. SR doesn’t get its own weapon.
Condition duration just doesn’t belong in death magic. Every build we have gets benefit from duration, but it makes no sense that we get an offensive stat from our defensive tree, and then throw boon duration onto soul reaping (death shroud has synergy with high crit chance).
The current trees are fine.
Minions with soldier gear is always pretty easy and strong.
And the winner was trident. Good bye trident.
Lets all be honest here, who didn’t expect Trident’s wallhax to get fixed eventually? I mean (at least in the past) you used to be able to solo land bosses while AFK by auto attacking them with trident while something was between you. I will miss AFK boss killing, but it was fun while it lasted.
Its pretty funny, imo.
They weren’t meaning what people took it to be. Every class, under perfect balance, can fill the basic roles; support, damage (condition or direct), be tanky, etc. Now, obviously some are vastly better right now, but there are things in place that, once fully balanced, will allow that to happen.
What they did not mean, was that any class could do the exact same thing. This is why Necros will never burst like thieves, who will never bunker like Guardians, etc.
The biggest difference to me, despite all the flavor and stuff, is that Necro is a much slower class in general, while eles are extremely face paced. You will be constantly swapping attunements, constantly dodging, and generally speaking you are casting a hell of a lot more spells than on Necromancer. Necro is a bit slower.
They never said that every build will be viable, they were merely talking to the fact that they want each class to have a number of roles available to it. That does not mean you can throw together some crap spec and go “BUT ANET WAI DIS SPEK NO WERK”, it means that each class has a number of viable builds and ways to play it.
And Corrupt boon. It’d be kinda funny to do that, have reaper’s prot proc, then corrupt boon them.
Only if they make a cartoony effect where he falls on his butt and stars appear and circle around his head.
I do think that they need to look at AoE reduction in PvE. However in WvW you simply need to come to terms with the fact that in large groups minions will forever remain useless, and I don’t see a way to fix it without making them grossly OP in small fights.
This isn’t for debate topic. Just fun little topic where people can take a jab at upcoming patch and possible trendy necro nerfs. There’s a lot of topics for suggestion/discussion/etc.
Anyway back to topic.
Lets keep em coming!
Watch them nerf Golem’s Charge so it can only hit a target once, because we’re too good at taking down structures.
Outside sPvP I do agree that you want to mix toughness/vitality as best you can (assuming you aren’t stacking toughness for undead runes+buffs for highest condition damage), as it gives the best overall effect.
The cap to all conditions is 100% bonus duration. Which means base duration can only be made twice of what it is normally. Lingering Curses (30 spite trait that increases Scepter conditions by 33%) however, raises the base duration of scepter conditions by 33%, effectively forgoing the cap because it does not count towards the 100% bonus cap, as it does not affect bonus duration.
I was supporting Axe 3 being a blast before it became a boon strip, but after that buff to it I’m not sure making it a blast finisher is the best option. It puts even more power onto Axe 3, which is already the strongest part of axe (outside of superglass berzerker builds using the channel).
Minions are okay now. They aren’t perfect, they still need work, but they can be made to work just fine in PvP, except teams refuse the concept of building team comps, instead of super-pug FotM builds using the exact same template and just filling it with whatever is strongest for that role. Run minions in an AoE buff comp and they do amazing in team fights; they just can’t copypasta into builds like other builds can.
That said, while they work really well in certain situations, they still need some survivability, QoL changes (HP BARS NAO!!!), still need some AI tuning imo, and need some overall tuning to allow the separate playstyles that are available to be fully supported.
I’m thinking it was possibly a macro, there are plenty of thieves that use them, and it does insane damage; and would make complete sense if your DS got “one shot” by a macro which does things in a second.
I really don’t think they are going to nerf much since PAX is right around the corner, and with qualifiers over teams don’t even have much of a chance to practice in real settings anymore.
Also, wasn’t last patch a “balance” patch? That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were maybe some minor damage nerfs to condi Necro damage.
In PvP I only get 10% increase from runes, the rest I get if I go into Spite, and maybe Master of Terror; otherwise I don’t touch duration there as it isn’t all that helpful.
PvE/WvW I go a lot more towards maxing out durations, although I forget what it is.
You were somehow 2 shot through both full DS and full HP? It didn’t happen, I don’t need pics to know that. He might have macro’d you, you might have accidently popped out of DS, but I don’t believe for a second that he two shot you through 33k+ eHP. It is entirely possible that a thief did some super combo and it did a lot of damage, that I perfectly understand as it has happened to me before, but lets just drop the pretense and all agree that it was more than two hits.
I’m not trying to make the point that thieves are OP. Just looking at your HP it makes no sense to how a thief 3 shot you through over 30k HP including DS.
Not to say necro are weak, but 2 shotting DS can and does happen in realistic scenarios (this is zerker+traits only unbuffed/amped Backstab on heavy golem).
That wouldn’t have even downed me without DS, including both backstabs and mug (3 hits), which supposedly did him, through 21k HP + DS.
I haven’t been 2 shot by a thief as a necro since mug could crit, and I was running a glass build for lulz. If you are running glass, guess what, that is the price you and every other glass build pays for running glass. If you aren’t glass that shouldn’t be downing you immediately, and certainly not through DS.
However, I realize that thief damage is way higher in WvW, but you should never go through all your DS and HP in a single thief combo. Pics or it didn’t happen, because I’m tired of “warrior does 500k DPS heer teh mathz”.
Necro always has been in the top 2-3 for underwater (depending on game mode), but that is pretty sweet.
I haven’t ever seen new weapon types overall being announced (not that they are), nor have I seen them say no. But as of now, no makes a lot more sense, because the resources to add in a sufficient number of new weapons is vastly more than to just start spreading the weapon love.
Its those two Fiends and Flesh Golem only.
I don’t actually think there is any meaningful power involved with the staff animations though. Marks can be avoided in all the normal ways (unblockable is deservingly costly), and are all skillshots, and are currently massively bugged, and can easily be avoided if you happen to miss on the initial drop, if not nullified outright by dodge rolling through them.
What power would you add back to compensate for the fact that people can now nullify Reapers mark and Putrid mark (Putrid mark which is already very weak) on every cast (with sufficiently good mechanical skill)?
We already have the precedence for spectral-like additions onto our weapons to make them look different, I’m all for that happening with other weapon sets if it makes things cooler, but please stop saying scythe.
Like blaine said, some kind of toggle is vastly preferred, otherwise you are really crapping on “dancing” builds that don’t have the luxury of adding in delays to their rotations because you fat-fingered F1.
Why do marks need to be more obvious? We really want to make them even easier to avoid?
The difference is that Mesmers in PvP can’t afford to take those CDs on the common builds (Shatter/Phantasm), whereas not only can we afford them, the big ones are what we’d be taking anyway (CC, Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm), which means we lose nothing by taking them.
I love the golem actually, I just love the old one much more.
Thats the problem though, in my mind. I can’t not think of the old one when I look at him.
The second I saw that they might be adding weapons, I said I wanted guns that “shot” minions at people.
There is some ratio, but as Blaine pointed out it is likely to be much more heavily towards HP than armor than the 10:1. Also, when I’m talking vit/toughness I’m thinking more PvP, where you can’t afford to do both, whereas in PvE you can do just fine having a little of both.
@spoj, yes it does. If you have twice the HP, then each 1% LF you gain is now double the eHP gained. So it therefore effectively increases the HP you gain.
Or you could just never show LF and only show HP like every other class, so they could do the exact same thing without having to know what your LF bar is.
1:10 has always been the case for other classes. But with Necromancers, it is vitality, assuming you are getting enough LF generation, because vitality becomes a sustain stat as well, instead of toughness having full reign over it.
To me changing the whole mechanic because of it sounds extremely stupid.
I’m hoping that it was only a minor reason in that decision.
This.
It would be interesting to know what the goal was, so far nobody has come on with a large amount of Love for the new models, or are those people just quiet?
Flesh Golem aside, the new models are better in my mind. The old Bone Minion models were god-awful, the new ones I like much better (rats fit necromancy just fine), shadow fiend is ADORABLE, and he used to be tied to DS so it fits. The only ones that I don’t like are Bone Fiend (its not bad, its just meh) and Flesh Golem.
That isn’t the point. The point is Necromancers don’t rely all that much on dodges; we only get one every 10 seconds, compared to classes with vigor that get up to double that. It means that it is holding back far less from us than it would be for other classes, comparatively.
They are usually up the next day, so sometime today most likely.
Haven’t heard, is hammer confirmed for necro, or just something generally desired?
In an interview a dev did was a third party organization, it was said that they are looking to bring every weapon to every class, as a part of their expansion of the classes. So it is not 100% that every class gets every weapon, but it is very likely that we will see at least a lot of them.
TL;DR not guaranteed, but highly likely.
As for lore, I think every weapon could fit as long as they keep the current design going. By that I mean; look at every weapon we have so far and how they work, they are all ritual tools, instruments to enact a desired spell-type effect. Not a single weapon is used to hit something on its own (we don’t stab with the dagger, the swinging causes the Necrotic Bites and whatnot to be cast, essentially). In this way, Hammer and Greatswords would not necessarily be used like normal; we wouldn’t be hitting someone in the face with a hammer, we would use it to cast close range AoE control effects, most likely.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)