I totally agree they barely touched our bugs, and ended up introducing a new one that is worse than any they fixed. So if you are going to complain, base your complaints off of that, a totally legitimate reason, and not the fact that this isn’t a balance patch, which it was never going to be.
Anything not named Blood Fiend or Shadow Fiend has a place in hybrid builds. Bone Minions can be used as decent burst in power builds, a source of poison fields for condi builds, and also is nice to use just as blast finishers in general (if you have team coordination this can be nice). Bone Fiend also has decent finishers with its 2x projectile finishers and control, Flesh Wurm also has a projectile finisher, stun break, and life force, and then Flesh Golem brings a good amount of control and damage.
The main ways I see them used are as control, damage, finishers, and a bit of survivability.
And yes, the patches since launch have greatly improved them.
They specifically state, multiple times, this isn’t going to be a balance patch but a bug fix patch; people complain about them not touching balance. There’s a nice statement of what the forums are.
I figured this was like the majority of Andele’s posts that I completely miss the joke on, but still get this vague idea he must be joking.
This has been an issue since launch, I think. I believe they have said it is not intended, the tooltip fix was merely to give clarity, and hopefully it will be fixed. Maybe.
Put them directly below the ones you already have for your team, or allow it to be a moveable window. GW1 had a lot larger box and it was never obtrusive (and again, it should be hide-able).
Definitely the need for a hotfix here, this is ridiculous.
This was something that was implemented in GW1 after a while. Basically, allow the option for at least the owner of summoned creatures to see their HP bars just like we see other party members. For example, when I summon Flesh Golem, his HP bar will appear in a secondary spot just under the current Party tab-thing, and will track boons/condis just like it would for a normal party member, until he dies.
However, I do think it should be optional; not all of us need/want to see when Jagged Horror is about to die, but for those of us using Minions it could be very helpful.
Thoughts?
WvW I would highly suggest not using MM builds unless you are planning to solo supply camps, their AI bugs out hardcore in WvW and they get cleaved down by ever present AoE.
tPvP MM builds are fine up to a point, they work nicely on side bunker, but generally speaking you are going to want to run hybrid minions at most (either condi or power with some minions). Again AoE is going to hurt you, and the pressure you can put out with a bit of hybridization is much better than what you’ll get by running all minions.
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Our rez still has a place, as it is a hard rez, unlike Illusion of Life which gives Vengeance, or Shadow Refuge which can get AoE bombed.
Wait, are we complaining about dedicated heals? We have, arguably, two of the best healing skills in the game; one that can heal you for more HP than many players even have (and more than their own healing skill) and another that wipes conditions and heals a huge amount as well. Signet of Malice’s per hit heal is approximately 5 more per second than traited Flesh Golem (I haven’t tested Flesh Golems attack speed in a while so I can’t remember exactly what it is), and is out-performed by Consume Conditions (assuming you remove at least one condition).
I completely agree that minor traits that don’t benefit all builds at least a little are bad and need to go, and frankly because of the existence of so many minion traits I think they just need to axe the traits overall and give us better ones (especially to help resolve some of our PvP issues).
Reanimator has the potential to be a good trait, but I don’t think they could ever balance it to be so. The problem right now, is thakittens bad right now. Yes on a rare occasion an MM can make use of it because of the traits, but its uncommon. Why is it hard to balance? What if you lowered the CD, now MMs have fodder for condition removal/death novas, a little condition output (its going to cover other conditions often enough); same problem for any kinds of buffs (which are even worse since MM’s buff base stats). This trait will forever remain too weak because of the threat of the MM trait combination.
Protection of the horde needs to go as well, for similar reasons. If it is buffed to be useful on non-minion builds, it will become OP for minion builds. Remove it, and give some other stat buff.
Otherwise, I’d only say that a lot of these were too opinionated to really be paid attention to as an actual rating and more an opinion of it (not bad, just something to note). Edit: I noticed you said it was all opinions in another one, so obviously if you don’t like minions you aren’t going to like the traits.
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Even if we can, say, siphon 300HP/s constantly with Cleric/Shaman gear, its not a big deal DPS wise. You’ll be giving up quite a bit more damage than you’ll be getting back, so you can’t make a glass cannon build that will heal for any decent amount.
Love the idea, and thank you for the work. I’ll look through each of the posts (I’m assuming you are going to do one for each) and give any thoughts.
The only difference between tier 1 and the lowest tier is the amount of people online, and the quality of commanders. WvWers in general are pretty terrible players.
I agree they need to be able to be stronger, but being bursty isn’t the way to go. You can “burst” siphon with dagger 2 (procs siphoning each hit).
We need a more bursty siphon skill, that is what pays off in fights, not 30 or even 50 ticks per hit. Especially if you aren’t using MH dagger, its just really weak.
Reducing signet of the locust cooldown might be a good start.
If you want bursty siphons, go for the sigils/runes for it. We aren’t going to get much bursty anything, especially not siphons which are for attrition.
I’m not sure that they don’t need to die, it really makes it so that MMs are pretty much immune to Moa overall. I would like if they removed the CD however (so they were up right away after coming out). That way Moa still hurts, and its still a shutdown, but it doesn’t put everything on CD (imagine if every utility went on full CD in any other build).
And I’m not saying you can’t destroy someone in a fight with moa, but an MM is not the target you’d want to blow that on in a team fight, they are going to require the most CDs and have the lowest teamfight impact considering how much its going to cost you; compared to a Guardian who will take similar CDs to kill, but is much more impactful, or a glass who will just drop. 1v1 however, you aren’t killing an MM with Moa unless they get outplayed.
Yeah but its another game when you fight people that did not just make their class an hour ago. A mes will take the node or kill a MM necro after a Moa thats hardly a waste of an elite.
@ the OP the minion build you listed is not the correct one, the condition build should be 0.30.10.10.20 or something close for soul marks with corrupt boon and epi. Well builds can be tricky in tpvp but with a group on TS/vent will work.
1v1 its fine, but it doesn’t put much more pressure on an MM than it does on another class; we have relatively small CDs. Everyone has to run away after that, but I’d be interested to know how you kill someone with 3k armor and 27k HP in the time that Moa takes 1v1. Look at the players in the tournaments recently, even a guardian with half our HP can get out.
Sure, the cap gets neuted, but they can only use it 4 times per game, and that is a very significant loss in teamfight ability if they go around using it just to get a neut in a 1v1.
Honestly, if someone is wasting Moa on an MM, all the more power to them. Its not that great of a use of the ability unless you are relying on Flesh Wurm to get back to defend back point or something. Otherwise you should be more than able to get out of the fight alive (even Guardians can do it with half your HP), and then with Minion CDR, your non-elites will be up within 20 seconds of coming out of the morph. Its annoying, but its not a good use of the ability.
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Aren’t necros good at healing and condition removal? Isn’t that good enough to warrant a spot in a group?
Dungeons aren’t really geared towards needing the healing right now, and I can’t think of any boss that makes me think “man I wish I had more condi removal”. Which is the problem, we have plenty of awesome things to bring to a group, its just that they aren’t needed with current dungeon mechanics.
D/D is a very strong build all around, although you could probably drop it for something for more damage when in PvE (since condis aren’t that much of an issue, and staff transfer works fine).
The key to finding a place for Necro is making a strong build with a good niche, and then forcing that niche to work by building a team around it. For example MMs with AoE buffs, Condi necros with other condi classes, Power Necros with the right team support, etc. The problem is we can’t just copypasta into a comp, you need to tailor it.
10/10 for fun. I have an absolute blast playing Necromancer.
Also like Keyce said, if you are ever having a bad day, equip Flesh Golem and go do hotjoins. The Charge is priceless.
The problem with a hundred blades is that since I got moderately good no single warrior has been able to land it on me.
Only when I’m spammed with cc it’s possible, and then you are pretty much kittened… A hundred blades or not.
That’s why Warriors are god-tier in PvE and lowest tier in PvP.
@Bhawb.7408
What? arent you kinda disagreeing with yourself?
Fine in high level pve -> higher level fractals don’t really need what necros bring??? Which dungeon needs what necro’s bring anyway :<.Your not holding your party back -> slightly longer runs. Okay fair enough your not holding your team back your only slowing em down.
So Bhawb pretty much answered your question yes people would rather have other classes.
What I’m saying is that we aren’t inherently underpowered, but rather the higher level PvE mechanics don’t favor us. Realistically speaking, you have no reason to want another class besides warrior, guardian, and mesmer at the highest level of PvE because their mechanics are more suitable than ours. If ANet changed the mechanics so they didn’t blatantly favor certain classes (the need for a lot of damage nullifying and projectile reflection, and favoring boons over conditions). Frankly they seem to have made dungeons specifically so we wouldn’t have much that was special to bring.
Holding back I’m simply saying the run doesn’t become any more difficult, it just takes a bit longer than if you subbed in another warrior, for example. And this really only applies to speed farming and fractals, other dungeons its debatable.
Also, his class choice was Ele or Necro. Ele isn’t in a better place than Necro in dungeons; they’re both behind war/guard/mesmer
Necros are fine in high level PvE, the problem is the mechanics of the higher level fractals and dungeons don’t really need what Necros bring. You could say the same of elementalists though. That said, if you want to play Necro, you might get a bit of QQing from elitists, but its really not holding your party back if you are playing to our strengths, it just means slightly longer runs.
Play whichever you enjoy most.
Because a lot of people have fun playing Necromancers, most people who don’t just move on to another class and have fun there. Not to say there aren’t minor fixes that they could do for us, but mainly what they need to fix is balance related.
And really PvE isn’t something they can fix us in. It isn’t that Necromancers are bad, its that what we bring to the table isn’t necessary right now. We’re godly in trash mob situations, but those situations aren’t challenging enough to matter. We can punish boons on enemies and conditions on allies, but both of those are very rare. We can stack a bunch of conditions on enemies, but that is outclassed by boons on allies, and multiple bosses just remove condis anyway (and don’t punish boons). They’ve pretty much made PvE to make us unwanted, and in the future they need to introduce mechanics that you need a Necromancer for (and do that for every class).
So, a stun breaker on a 10s CD (5 if traited) and 20-30% invulnerability uptime. Its OP.
why we have zero useful stunbreakers and zero escapes. so why the heck not?
That logic could be used to say “we have 0 AoE instakills, so why not?” Why? Balance. That would make us immune to being focused in any form, we’d be pretty much unkillable in a team fight, and I’m pretty sure that everyone can agree being unkillable isn’t very balanced.
So, a stun breaker on a 10s CD (5 if traited) and 20-30% invulnerability uptime. Its OP.
This has been said before. It was a terrible idea then, its still a really bad idea.
There is no such thing as burst for MM Necromancer and team healing isn’t exclusive to MM.
Nothing in that said team healing was exclusive, and if you don’t think MMs have some burst then I’ll just let you continue on with that laughable ignorance.
Would rather just a flat buff to the base siphoning rather than scaling. But if they do implement scaling I will be seriously kittened off if they reduce the base healing from what it is now.
Base increase to siphoning doesn’t fix anything, it just hides the problem with numbers.
Funny thing I noticed today, Wells actually do attain aggro, at the very least when hitting 1 target. I’ll be doing testing to figure out what happens when you hit multiple.
Edit: also, this was WoS, which probably had something to do with it.
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Full MM Necros are incredibly strong 1v1, the problem is that most teamfights they will get cleaved down. My suggestion is to use them in hybrid builds, and make use of the amount of finishers you can get with them. For example Cleric gear with WoB, WoS, Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, and Flesh Golem brings a lot of CC to a fight, retains decent burst, and brings some nice team healing.
Also, something to think about. One problem with implementing a brand new weapon is having to design a bunch of skins for it, make it useable on multiple classes, and similar issues of resource management. What about having it be Greatsword, but with a similar effect to staff where it has a large axe-blade particle effect (or something similar)?
I thought about this before and came up with a kind of “power to the horde” weapon, used to lead the charge with a bunch of minions or allies and toughen them up in close-combat.
1: Reaper’s Strike – Wide cleaving attack chain. Third hit strikes a 360-degree area around you, briefly weakening and stealing life force from everything hit.
2: Bloodbath – Damages and bleeds nearby enemies and grants fury to nearby allies. Possibly a whirl finisher but I never did figure out the consequences that would have.
3: Siphon Speed – Cripples foes in the target area, and grants nearby allies swiftness for each enemy you hit.
4: Dark Apostasy – Blocks an incoming attack, stealing health and a boon (or two) from the attacker. If nothing hits you or you cancel it early, it blinds nearby foes instead.
5: Guillotine – Deals massive damage to a single target. Damage is increased by 1% for each % of max health missing from the target. If this kills the target, your minions receive a substantial heal.
I actually really like the idea of this, although obviously things would need to be tuned for balance. The #5 skill I would say should be an AoE heal around the target, that way it could benefit not just minions, but also allies (so you aren’t losing benefit by not running minions). And the #4, while I like the idea of a block, probably shouldn’t be a block; they just don’t want us to have one. I do like the idea of stealing boons though, what about an aura that stole 1 boon per hit, short duration?
I don’t play a necromancer, so correct me if I’m wrong. The problem I see with siphon not scaling with anything is that slower attacking weapons can’t benefit from it as much as quicker attacking weapons. Or is my inexperience with the profession and ignorance on the mechanic clouding my view?
Correct, the more times you cause damage the more you can siphon. Dagger/Warhorn with minions gives the most siphoning HP/s against single target, and wells giving the best against multiple opponents. Axe also gives fairly decent siphon potential with the Axe 2 channel siphoning on each strike.
However, that isn’t really much of an issue. As siphoning and trait trees stand right now, there is almost no reason to go into Blood Magic as a condi necro unless you are an MM/condi hybrid (in which case minions are siphoning a lot for you). So realistically if you wanted to siphon anyway, you are going to be a power build, in which case dagger/axe are your choices.
The problem with it not scaling is that the values are fairly small. Scaling would allow someone to have Healing Power and turn siphoning into a viable healing mechanic, while keeping it balanced because they would lose out on damage overall. Scaling itself is a huge benefit to balance in general, because it supports the core ideas of balance; sacrifice of one area at the benefit of another.
I agree fully with Kraag, great post on how the mechanic can self balance and why scaling is really needed here.
The difference being those 2 classes with “no weapon swap” actually have the best time procing swap sigils because they have low CD things that count as swaps, that are either built into their fighting (eles swap constantly as part of their rotations anyway) or easy to incorporate (toolkits have no CD).
The reason we want scaling with siphoning to work is so Necromancers can effectively use siphon without relying on minions and/or wells. The problem right now is essentially that outside of very specific builds using WoB/staff/DS based heals, we don’t have much reason to use healing power based gear.
Now, I don’t think we need more ways to do AoE team healing (our team healing is actually amazing), but a small healing coefficient, even something incredibly small like an extra 10 HP per hit at 1000 healing power, would make siphoning Necros more viable. I think it should be very incremental, because I totally agree it has the potential to be OP, but even if they start off at just a 0.01 scaling coefficient they can see how things go.
Moa 1v1 hasnt defeated me yet, it is pretty mean in say 2good v1 or 3v1, but I think this is true for all classes and builds. If you really are concerned about it (As in you see mesmers on the enemy team using it constantly) then my advice is to run half minions up and summon the other half after the moa. What Bhawb said is not necesarily true, a proper minion master something hybrid can bunker very well and can take out bunkers very well as well so it can be a pretty high value target.
Problem being that the majority of MM builds, even hybrid ones, have high HP and toughness. You aren’t going to burst down a 22k+ almost 3k armor target very easily, at best you are shutting down an MM for 25-30 seconds (and even then, more like 15 seconds for hybrids), and you aren’t going to get a down. On the other hand, any glass cannon is a guaranteed down, and Guardian/Ele bunkers are most likely going down.
I did put in the caveat; glass MMs, which are rare. Otherwise, you’re priority is behind any glass the mesmer can get (because they go down easier) and guardian/ele bunkers (who get totally shut down). They just are far more viable targets to use in a team situation.
Moa is a waste on an MM unless they don’t have soldier amulet. If they do, you aren’t going to get them down, so all you’ve done is taken away about 60% of their damage and a bit of survivability for about 25 seconds. You’re also using an amazing shutdown utility on a build that isn’t worth it, Moa is much better used to shutdown a bunker (especially low HP bunkers) or to shut down glass builds.
So yeah, while Moa shuts down MMs for a while, it is a waste in the majority of situations to use it.
Play whatever the hell you want, screw the haters. Neither are bad enough in any of the game modes to force you to re-roll.
Longbow push doesn’t work at 900 range, so I find it unlikely that that was it.
Yes, curse at me for offering a valid way to work around the bug until they get it fixed. I said nothing about not having them fix it, but offered a way so you don’t miss out on “10,000” damage from missing auto attacks.
It takes you 2 seconds to turn on auto attack?
Press 1 a bunch (queues up auto attacks) then Ctrl+right click the skill, you shouldn’t lose a single auto attack.
Toughness is included in the aggro tables, however it is the lowest priority of them all, which means aggro rarely comes down to toughness when calculating. Proximity and damage are much more effective ways to control aggro.