I just finished reading these from an outside source. IF they are true, this is very exciting, going to be a lot of theory crafting going on.
I don’t know anything about Magic, nor do I care about it, so sorry but those examples fall flat on me; I have no idea what you are talking about.
Burning is only supposed to help condition damage builds. And no it doesn’t have to be burst. 1s of burning every 10 seconds isn’t bursty at all, it spreads out the pain over time (and is much less bursty than Terror is), just like 3 stacks of long duration bleeds would; except that burning will actually damage the target because it won’t be removed in 2 seconds and fall flat on its face accomplishing its task of damage. It gets in, does its 1 tick for a good bit of damage, and ends. There are plenty of ways they can introduce burning without it being bursty at all, and until they release numbers, we don’t know anything.
We don’t actually know anything about numbers or the new ability yet, besides some very general things. Burning, for example, helps power builds still because of its high base damage and relatively low scaling. This damage on moving will also punish people for trying to get out of wells, and get out of dagger range.
And again, we don’t know what DS 5 does yet. Conditions are not bad with power builds, in fact vulnerability directly benefits power builds the most. We need to see details.
We have SoftSpoken, a PvE necro slated for tonight. We will be touching briefly on what was announced today as well, but mostly we will leave talk of patches for next week when they are live and we can talk numbers.
It used to give swiftness, and you could use it with your minions to give yourself free swiftness (and a nice amount of it) at any time, because the initial cast would send it out, it wouldn’t find an enemy so it would bounce between you (because you are prioritized, I believe) and a minion. I used it in Beta as a really nice speed boost to start matches and get from point to point, but I guess they decided it was too strong (or regen was better) and swapped it out.
Agreed man. Lily, is there a decent way to catch up on the lore or did you just learn it all from GW1?
I bring up the GW1 wiki and go surfing. Pick an article, open the links that are in there that you don’t already know, and let the wiki take you on a journey. Not quite as well presented as this might be, but the lore is generally there.
I might not agree with excluding burning because I believe it helps gameplay, and for me gameplay > lore (although I can totally see why people would disagree), I love reading these threads because the lore for this game is interesting (shame they did such a terrible job presenting it).
Also, its been confirmed we aren’t getting Disease, at least for now. Torment is the new condition, although it might be possible Disease makes its way in in the future.
But tbh, I run fractals 50+ and while there are problems (downed state anyone?) the necro isn’t bad. I contribute with my necro in many interesting ways.
We aren’t bad in PvE, we just aren’t ideal. Debuffing is the one thing we do best, and it isn’t rewarded (and in fact discouraged) by most dungeons/bosses.
As for Torment. Remember it is a condition, and it is on three classes, two of which are going to be hit hard by it. What can Necros do with conditions? Throw them back on enemies. I am not worried by a thief getting torment, because it means I now have two ways to Torment a thief; my own, and throwing his back at him.
Nothing here to help our PvE problem.
Honestly, I don’t think PvE will be fixed until they revamp PvE boss mechanics.
Thieves, to my knowledge (and I’m not an amazing thief mind you), need some help sticking to targets in certain builds without being forced to use their escape mechanics (shadowsteps) to do it. Mesmers, idk, maybe in some of their less used builds.
Edit: also, this will be interesting due to the forced movement we can cause with fear. You can Torment someone, then chain fear them and they are forced to eat the damage. MWAHAHA… but yeah, this will be interesting for sure.
Just an off-note, thank you Devs for giving us something really easy to talk about on the podcast tonight :P
My reason for wanting change is down to wanting to see the game succeed. I loved GW1, and I really like what ArenaNet has been trying to do (break some of the molds of classic MMOs that have been holding the genre back for a decade). For this game to really succeed, and not just do fairly well (much like GW1 did), is for them to bring all the different portions of the game to about as perfect of balance as one can reach, and do so while maintaining strict differentiation between the classes. I hope they can do it, because at the core this game is great; in theory this could be one of the best MMOs to date, but they need some time to bring it there, and need to do the right things.
That is the core of why I want Necromancer balanced; I want every class balanced. It creates more interesting gameplay, where you can take any class into any group and feel meaningful, instead of being forced into FotM (zerk warrs only, ping gear or kick), and it makes the game much more personal, because I can play the way I want to (within bounds) and be competitive. I also love the Necromancer, and the whole theme of debuffing enemies and slowly pummeling them into submission.
As for how, I think there are multiple ways to enact change in each area of the game. PvE needs to have more “neutral” mechanics that don’t blatantly favor one thing (like reflection) and discourage something (like debuffs), or if they do, it needs to be done a la Fractals, where you need a team with everything to be able to handle it all. They also need to redo a lot of PvE “end-game” content so that every class has a reason to be taken. In the case of Necromancers, Bosses might stack a bunch of long duration boons every minute or so, or they might take increased damage per condition, do less burst damage and more small hits, there is a lot they could do here for us.
PvP (and some overall stuff) they need to tighten up trait lines. Some traits need combining, some need to be innate (mark size), some need to be replaced, but they need to tidy this all up and reform it a bit.
– The trees, themes of the trees, and stats are fine, just needs a bit of work.
– We need siphons to scale with healing, and we need sustain that scales with # of people, and proximity to them.
– Our “chase” mechanics need to be better, Dark Path and Spectral Grasp specifically. – Condition damage builds need a way to make conditions “stick” better, so they aren’t nullified outright by cleansing.
– We need some way to deal with CC, no amount of sustain in the world can fix this
– Axe needs some kind of buff, and something that retains it’s uniqueness (as in, don’t just do more damage)
– Minions need slight survivability buffs, but mainly they need their activation times reduced, AI needs to be spot on (I’ve noticed it working even worse recently), and Shadow Fiend needs some reworking
– General bug fixes to fix up all the remaining bugs
– A few skills need to be slightly changed
I think that is mainly it, although I am sure I left something out. I want them to keep the Necromancer flavor, not necessarily trying to reincarnate GW1 but at least keeping the heart of what a Necromancer is.
I’ve heard things about the upcoming patch. Very good things :P. And yes, Jon Peters was there and did say that Necromancer players will probably like the upcoming patch.
Don’t expect this to fix every problem we have, but from what I have heard, it is a nice step in the right direction.
Hey guys, just putting it out that if you feel you have some interesting gameplay experience, or something interesting to be able to share (like Ascii was a wvw commander, Nemesis was well known for PvE guides, etc) we are always looking for potential guests, especially in PvE, and to an extent WvW.
I had used a WoB build before, I just got destroyed by conditions when I used it. I will need to try it out with the minions draw conditions though.
I wouldnt go with well of suffering, I’d just add another minion. Also cleric does terrible damage imo even with a minion build. Once your minions are down all your dps is gone. And the only stuff that benefits from your heal is the Mark of bloods and your heals. The well of revival is such a long CD I don’t think its worth it either. kitten ICD and it only heals you for the initial and then people never stay inside for the 10s tics. I would just go minion siphons.
Well of Suffering does 651 per tick, so long as I am using Focus with it, which means 4.5k damage. Add in Flesh Golem hitting for over 1k DPS, and each of the other minions plus pretty decent damage from abilities (remember how much vuln adds) and it turns out nice. WoS also causes AoE Blinds with Bone Minions, and Bone Fiend siphons 402 HP (also means 402 damage added on) because of the combo field. Anyone else on my team will also be able to proc those effects. It will also keep up Vulnerability, which ofc benefits my minions. The only thing to see is how I feel about those effects, vs what I could get from Flesh Wurm (the only minion worth using in that third slot).
Well of Revival is the same ICD as the skill it comes from. Its just a personal thing I guess, I really like it when you have high healing power like I do. Also, yes my regen and two heals are the only things that scale, but that is 260 HP/s regen, and Consume Conditions can pretty easily heal me for 10k, along with the 13k possible heal from WoB. Necromancers and healing power isn’t a matter of quantity, but quality.
But anyway, I think a lot of what I have is just personal preference. There is a lot I’m sure others could change to be more comfortable with the build, and I will definitely look into some of these things to see if I really like where the build is now.
Could you please specify what you mean when saying “Staying in DS for extended periods is dangerous.”?
Dangerous for balance. They had DS tanks that could stay permanently in DS (you know, where you don’t take any damage to your real HP bar, but can still do damage) and stand on point with impunity through things that even a bunker guardian would not do. That build at the time was OP. That isn’t to say extended DS is OP now (Shade, a main problem with that build, is gone), but that it is potentially dangerous. I think they should look at it, I completely agree, I was merely mentioning that it is a potentially dangerous thing.
We do outperform people in areas, the problem is those areas are useless in PvE. Rennoko talked about it in another thread, but the reason you bring Necromancers in PvE is for debuffing, which we do better than any other class; except no mechanic requires debuffing, and in fact many mechanics make it hard to debuff, and actively favor other mechanics better.
Unfortunately, PvE will not be fixed by any changes they make to Necromancers, most likely. The problems are in the PvE mechanics themselves, not Necromancers.
There are a number of things they could do with Blood Fiend to make him better for PvP, but it would be difficult. Any changes would basically need to make him “OP” on his own, to make up for the fact that it is very dangerous to have a heal with an HP bar.
Actually, if I find that Mark of Evasion isn’t meaningfully raising my regen uptime, Minions siphon health will be making its way back into the build. It was just that my regen was ticking for comparable HP/s, but with no reliance on minions.
Chaplan is known to be fond of Necros
I believe Andele knows it better than I do (since he actually played it), but it was a DS tank, with 100% DS uptime.
Staying in DS for extended periods is dangerous. Not saying it is inherently OP, but that is one of the ridiculously OP builds that we used to have during Beta.
Gibbly does stream, and he is pretty awesome. Besides that, I’m going to start streaming and I am okay at using Minions, completely terrible at everything else.
Also, the Bone Minions self-combo with their own Death Nova for about 15 seconds of poison and some weakness.
@Tenderly – First, thanks for your opinion. I think the main difference is I was trying a very team-oriented healing focused build. I do have other builds that I have used for more personal sustain/damage (although I am totally going to start using Knight’s in my damage based build); but I wanted something that could do well in a team-fight situation.
I might try out Wurm, I haven’t been needing it currently, but I’m not against high ranking teams often. I much prefer the current setup, but I will see if the stun break really makes me feel better about the build (and it might be something I sub in when I queue with higher level players). I also will see how the DPS compares between it and WoS (loss of downed pressure is probably negligable with how hard Putrid explosion hits). Just a note for WoS though, Bone Fiend immobilize active is 9.6 seconds total in this build, which is more than long enough if they don’t cleanse it, or I save it to drop on downed players to make it very hard to get them up.
As for the healing/minion CD stuff. I do think there is the opportunity to change the trait and put those points somewhere else, it is just my personal preference to have it. It reduces the amount of time that you are weak by quite a bit, plus increases your effective damage from Bone Minions.
I think a bit of the differences in my build are just personal preferences. Also for Cleric’s, as I was going for a healing build, it was pretty much the only option :P I would have liked vitality, but questionably this build does better with toughness because I have very high healing (Consume Conditions can easily hit 10k per heal).
I will definitely pay attention to the Mark of Evasion though. I’ll see if I have perma regen without it (I think you are right that I will, or close enough) and swap it out for something else, so thanks for that tip.
And if you have a minion build I’m always interested. I almost exclusively run them, and I always like seeing new ones.
@man
Learn to use Bone Minions. They are absolutely incredible, because with many MM builds you can spam down 25 stacks of vulnerability and they will explode for over 3k damage each, and if you use either Death Nova or Chillblains, they will combo field for over 30 seconds of poison. During a fight a few days ago, I tagged a shatter mesmer with so much poison (I guess he didn’t have a cleanse) that after I had chased him off point, capped it, and was going mid, I could still see the little numbers as he went to his home point.
Vampiric is great. If you don’t have healing power, then those few traits (and then either 50% better siphon or siphon on crit, you can do the math to which is better), are really strong. I didn’t take them because regen is really strong with all my healing power; however with the note about me already probably having 100% regen uptime, I might swap it out. Also, WoB in my build makes rezzing one person a potential huge turn around in a fight, because it will heal my team for 7k in that area. And yes, I believe Ritual of Life works with Undeath.
Essentially yes, this is a team oriented build. I already had a 1v1 home point bunker build (this started as a variation of that) that I liked, but I started making team-oriented variations when I queued a few times with higher level players, where having a Necro back point isn’t too desirable.
I don’t know that it is realistically possible for you to kill him if you didn’t get him very close to death with the lingering conditions you had. Thankfully (to my knowledge) almost no one actually runs this trait, but it is an issue that will come up eventually.
This severely limits the class, it’s potential builds, potential roles, and, as a consequence, makes the class a shallow one to play.
You couldn’t pay me enough gold to roam as a Necro instead of my Thief.
Creating more viable choices creates depth in a competitive game – something I am beginning to suspect Anet are not moving towards.
Every single class has its own unique way to accomplish things. Staying in the fight and gaining power as we debilitate our enemies is our unique way to accomplish things. If you are not okay with the idea of being a high sustain, stay in the fight class, then this will not be the class for you. And yes, you should roam on your thief, it is literally built around the core mechanics of roaming.
I don’t expect them to change tons with the patch, so it is unlikely I will be disappointed since I don’t actually anticipate much. I will be disappointed if the trait changes aren’t in the right direction though.
According to the link, in Soul Reaping it has Soul Marks. But it should be Foot in the Grave for Deathhroud stomps/rezzes.
Source: Know Necro and Gibbly.
I suppose I should note that that was a small change from his own build. However, it makes the build significantly easier to play (more LF generation) and takes off the requirement to do DS stomp/rez which are fairly difficult to learn if you don’t know the timing.
Not yet, next week is the next big balance patch though.
Look at Gibbly’s build (it is the generic condi damage build that most people use), it isn’t really difficult to use at face value, has a lot of growing room where you can expand towards the skill cap that the build allows.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMat7xbib87JApCPH944gNm6B8pzOA-TsAgyCuI+S9l7LzXyvsfN8Y5xeBA
Terror is the single highest damaging condition in the game. 1 Stack of bleeds isn’t that impressive either, but when you combine it with all the other dots you can put on top of it, all of a sudden it makes a difference; and becomes the reason that condition removal is absolutely necessary in PvP or you get instantly melted by any condi comp.
It pops up very obviously just like any other condition, and it is a bit hard to miss the one condition hitting for 4 digits when the rest are hitting 3. Do you actually have Terror (the trait) traited?
Terror is a trait in the Curses tree that makes Fear have a secondary damage component, along with its CC, that has the highest ticking damage of any condition in the game. It is not the same as the Reaper’s Mark damage.
As in, he cannot reschedule the tournament that is taking place on the 19th, 18:30pm GMT.
I’ll sign up as a backup, or fill in on the off chance we don’t end up with enough people, but I’d like to give others a chance to have fun since I’ve already done this.
Maestra De Muerte
Bhawb.7408
18
TheAdventuresofBhawb
So as pretty much anyone who knows me knows, I run minions in PvP. I know this isn’t necessarily the most viable Necro PvP build out there, I run minions for fun, but I’d like to at least have as strong a build as I can to use.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3djMal6taWa07JApHPHN1TK+mcIF5KNA-TsAgzCmIcS5kzJjTSjsGNCZBxOEA
The build is currently based around the idea of having a lot of healing, with high sustained damage. It does have decent burst, and pretty strong downed pressure against people trying to res teammates. I’d like to know anyone’s feedback on it, as I am sure there are things I could fix, and also feel free to ask questions to clarify why I took something (this way I don’t have to write out a huge guide that will likely spell out many things anyone can see).
Just a note, with 20% condition duration, just a single Bone Minion explosion with Death Nova gives over 15 seconds of poison. Which means with Death Nova, you can keep up 100% poison uptime, and about 50% weakness uptime, with only using the Bone Minions.
Fun fact: there is a lot more to conditions than doing damage with them. Don’t take a Necromancer at all if you are looking for single target condition damage in PvE, but a condition MM can keep up near permanent poison, weakness, and cripple in addition to some decent chill and bleeding.
In PvE you generally want to go full damage with minions (support works as well), either Rabid, Rampager, or Berzerker should work. The minions will give you the defense, so just stack up all the damage you like of whichever of the three ways to deal damage you want.
If you go support, then I’d suggest any of the healing power sets. With WoB, some healing/support traits, and a bit of thinking you can put out tons of healing onto allies and minions, while they all soak up a lot of damage.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
You are talking about current mechanics not helping us. You have no idea (as well as I) what staying in the fight will mean post-buffs. We already have mechanics that greatly favor us staying in fights (LF generation and life stealing). We don’t need mobility to be able to fight. Want to do more damage? Guess what, you’ll need to play smarter since you will have less sustain.
As for escaping, only one class is guaranteed an escape from any situation that they react with any reasonable speed to; thief. Any other class is still very capable of being caught and killed, we just happen to be one of the easiest. You aren’t going to get any extra mechanics. It sucks, but you just need to learn how to play around it, because it doesn’t fit into our class “theme”.
Whack a mole is bad balance philosophy, period.
That is why they said they are going to be buffing how to manage staying in the fight. We aren’t going to get more escapes, it isn’t what they want for us.
It is possible to fight Eles, but beating a tanky ele 1v1 is really annoying. You need to interrupt key parts of their rotation, especially if you can delay their heals. Besides what people have said already, you want to save your bursts for right after they leave water. If at all possible, you want to at least put down small condi bursts every single time they leave water, because it is their main tool with dealing with condis. And if you put out enough pressure when they are out of Water attunement, they are forced to scrap a lot of offensive rotations and just continuously drop back into water every time it is up; which means little to no offensive pressure from them (if they don’t deal damage, you won’t lose).
Generally, the key to beating Ele is stopping their heal, and messing up their rotations whenever you can. talk to any ele guildies you have that you think are competent in PvP, or watch good eles play, and learn their rotations. Interrupt their offensive rotations, delay them from being able to get into water often, and they can’t win. Just never allow them to keep cycling through their skill rotations freely.
So here’s the thing. There isn’t really such a thing as a “retaliation build” for Necromancers, because we can get 100% retaliation uptime with a single ability (Axe 3) in good conditions. If you want to use Retaliation, I’d suggest you make a tanky power build that uses either Axe or Near to Death + Spiteful Spirit, and that is really all you need.
I think it is a bit smoother now; I’m not 100% sure but I think it made it go out faster too.
Yeah, I just go into the mists and try stuff on. It isn’t everything (especially weapons wise, pls Anet, include some of the really cool weapons), but its pretty good.