You were saying that minions become a liability, you can easily burst down a thief with the above combo, big parts of which are based on minion CC, and also using minions allows you to go full Soldier gear while retaining the burst; something you can’t do with any other utility.
Okay, I’ll concede that he might still be alive; but I’ll retain that if you lose the fight its your fault with an easy 10 seconds of free wailing on him. I usually axe 2 at the end also, more damage that way and I can save my DS for when he comes to burst me, Doom→life transfer.
Dark Pact, Wail of Doom, Charge, Rigor Mortis, and Doom. If he’s still alive by the end of that then you messed up somewhere and it’s your fault you lost.
I’m not debating that we can do a build like that, but again you are comparing what a specialized build can do vs what a Necromancer gets out of the box.
The best access to hard CC is with hammer, in builds that do no damage.
It’s an interrupt, to interrupt things. For interrupting purposes 1 second is more than enough time; you are confusing something every necromancer can do with something a build built specifically to CC can do.
Because phh no one runs with stability hidden under 200 boons right?
Corrupt boon, don’t even need to waste your fear then too, their stability does it for you.
I like this idea. Rennoko – did you see my bunker build in the most recent All-Necro tPvP. It works really well, though I have to find another way to gain healing, and Foot in the Grave is more important than 50 percent CD on DS for bunkering.
Only true with the build you were using. You can get 100% ret and fury uptime, 60% weakness and 2 bleeds uptime, and a condition removed every 5 seconds if you are traited for it. You didn’t trait for on-DS effects, nor were you running a vitality bunker build, so in that specific build’s case yes; but there are builds that abuse that for a lot of extra damage, control, and survivability.
Yeah, you didn’t have anything that made 5s CD really worth it, the stability would have helped more for securing stomps/res.
Just make their current AI a bit more reliable (fix whatever is glitching them out on the rare occasion), and they’ll be solid. It is already one of the single strongest builds in the game, the only ones that can beat them 1v1 are a few very select high AoE burst damage builds.
In team fights they get a bit weaker as there is going to be more AoE and a harder time hitting the target. For example a soldier MM will murder any glass build that can’t instantly kill off your minions, but those glass builds in a team fight have a better chance from allied support and presence of AoE. Like an epidemic Necro; they have no chance in a 1v1 but can really hurt me in a team fight where I can’t just single them out.
You’re complaining that thieves aren’t good enough in WvW, you aren’t going to get any sympathy here.
I’m all for the idea of making things more interesting/involved, the only problem I see with this is how to implement it in game (I don’t know of any similar system in place, so it would have to be done from scratch), and then of course keep it balanced. The balance part is just around the fact that you are going to be adding abilities to existing things that are arguably balanced (or close to it, at least), you just want to be sure that it doesn’t throw anything off.
Cool idea though, I could see it being fun in game.
Look up Nemesis’ Terror build. It is an all around strong build for PvP, can fit into teams easily, and is strong in 1v1 and group fights. That is the easiest thing if you are planning to just do hotjoins and pug tournaments. If you are doing pre-made groups, then let us know what the group already has, and what they are wanting, and that can narrow down what you could use as a Necromancer.
If the only change you make is, for example, making a rabid gear have vitality not precision, then just like with PVT vs Knight gear, you are gaining some defensive stats, at the cost of damage. Precision still ends up boosting damage via on-crit bleeds, and it would still be a trade-off, just like everything else.
Besides, there exist Shaman gear already, which has healing power instead of vitality, and effectively means the same thing in a fight (instead of higher starting HP you just effectively get it via healing). If that is balanced, I can’t see how CTV wouldn’t be.
For point b, that would be your own fault. If you are going to equip CTV gear, then you should be able to figure out you won’t be dealing any damage to structures.
Fair point. I don’t personally feel like I am perfect enough at my gameplay yet to blame it on my minions (when I think over the few fair fights I do lose, I can usually point to myself every time), but I do understand that they are unreliable. I guess in my mind I don’t see them being any less reliable than say a well, that someone can walk out of, or any other build, which has similar weaknesses; a weakness of minions is that they go full kitten sometimes.
I tend to just work around their issues, instead of worry overly about them. I would love it if they would make AI more solid, especially before they go changing things (that aren’t revolving around making existing things more usable, like changing Charge), but again I just don’t really treat it any different than a lot of other utilities we have.
That is what I was thinking. Maybe it is something they will implement over time, as they release new armor sets, but it is a bit annoying that it can’t be used right now, because it is killing certain build types.
As much as I love the necromancer, I don’t think we are OP.
I don’t attack them, I’ve consistently tried to help them out. Its people who refuse to try anything that I lose patience with; it annoys me that people obviously don’t give a crap about trying to understand their build in the slightest and instead feel that it obviously must be the game’s fault, instead of spending even a little bit of time actually learning something.
You can’t convince someone of something they don’t want to know. There are a lot of people that are dead-set on the idea that minions are terrible, and even if I posted hundreds of hours of me doing great with them they’d still say they are terrible.
If you are asking for changes, the burden of proof is on you to prove that minions are in need of the fixes you are asking for. I agree they could use some AI help, that their actives need work (fine in concept, just not execution), and that possibly reducing base stats in favor of scaling could work. I agree that they could use a reduction on AoE damage taken or possibly some reduction of damage they can take per hit max to make them more viable in PvE. But if you ask for bad changes that are going to throw us out of balance, I’m going to call you out on it.
Go ahead and think that, MMs are already one of the strongest 1v1 builds in the game and you want to remove one of two counterplay options we have.
sorry man, bahb’s 10 hours of testing trumps everything, the rest of us are either blind or liars or we don’t know how to press 1.
/thread
There you go, now you’re getting it.
Melee minions have issues with pathing a lot of the time, since they have to get aggro, then get in range, then attack; whereas ranged minions need to only be in range, and have LoS.
They are going to be bad in big fights, it is a fact of how summon-type classes work.
I’ve run them in WvW. They bug out in huge team fights (they’re terrible there anyway, why the heck do you have them?) as you would expect; there would be so many different things going on it wouldn’t be surprising for them to get confused. I’ve never seen them bug out in strange ways otherwise.
When you are fighting a real target, that target attacks you, and just like magic, your minions aggro. The only time getting them to aggro is an issue is when you want to focus a specific target, or start a fight. In which case my knowledge of aggro is very much important.
As for it being a “waste”, knowledge, especially of the mechanics of how things work, is never useless.
He’s talking about the actual flow of battle. Unless you are using a power build, our game flow is pretty slow compared to other classes; not that we walk around slower.
Why do I test in HotM? Because that is the only area where you can get remotely conclusive “scientific” data. Any data you get in PvE is “corrupted” by the fact that everything there is going to attack back, and that causes aggro. Same in WvW, they are going to have corrupted testing because you are fighting an actual target.
So far, all my testing has held true, just obviously what works in perfect lab environments doesn’t translate perfectly to the field, as is the case with everything. It doesn’t mean what I know isn’t valid, it just means that things get muddy in the field.
Ever hear of something called user error?
We did the video in PvE, and I did my testing in PvP. Are there occasional glitches? Of course, ANet isn’t that great at doing AI programming. Are there repeat offenders? Yes, Bone Minions and Flesh Golem are pretty notorious for staring you down while you die.
That said, if you are having issues more than 10% of the time, its your fault. Realize that the coding isn’t perfect, learn how they work, and work with them. It isn’t an ideal scenario, but suck it up and deal with it.
Yes, a video and multiple hours of testing is trumped by a single minute.
It does work, I’ve sat in Heart of the Mists for over 10 hours testing minion aggro, and Bas and I release a video via SOAC that showed it in action.
Step 1: Target enemy
Step 2: Press 1
Step 3: Press 1
There you go, minion aggro.
They “can’t” fix this because it isn’t an issue, there are rare glitches with Flesh Golem and Bone Minions where they will “stick” to an old target, or miss the aggro cue, but if you’re around 50% attack rate, its your fault for not knowing how to control your minions.
I don’t mind the mechanics at all. I brought the mechanics up merely because the trait so obviously clashes with them, so they should change either the trait or the mechanic to fit the other, or just take an outdated trait and replace it (the trait used to be good I’m sure back when DS was maintainable).
They do attack, learn to control your minions.
Marks will make them aggro, by the way. The first mark will acquire aggro, any marks after that will effectively “tag” the targets affected to be hit next, after the initial target is made invalid (dies, goes out of range).
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
I would say don’t even fix the trait, unless you are going to change Death Shroud mechanics overall. Death Shroud in its current form does not encourage staying in for much more than 3 seconds (unless you are super low and are just delaying all that you can), so either change traits to reflect that (make Shivers apply vulnerability on entry, have persistance negate the first 1 or 2 degen ticks), change Death Shroud to support that style, or just get rid of the traits entirely and give us something different.
Maybe a slight reduction in their base stats, and then have their damage, HP, and armor all scale with the Necromancer’s. I’d also say Blood Fiend’s siphon should heal itself/other minions (even at a % reduction) in some way, and I think there is room for discussion about them not being able to take more than X% of their max HP in one hit, or having AoE damage reduction, or something (can be split in PvE/PvP).
AI is always going to be an issue, and as long as they slightly improve the reliability of the non-ranged minions, then that is good enough.
We’re running 5 MMs, I think winning is kind of a secondary point :P
The Life Blast traits are fine, you just don’t sit in DS for them (fire 2 then leave for a while). I agree about the rest though, and it isn’t an issue that they are too weak themselves, if you know where Death Shroud used to be you’ll know why those traits exist. Basically speaking, they are relics of a time when Death Shroud could be maintained permanently, and was more about staying in as long as entirely possible, not flashing it like we do now.
Just go ahead and play Necro and see if you like it. I would warn you though, Illusions and Minions in anything other than PvE are absolutely different things. There is no other playstyle quite like MMs in this game, and if you go that route it takes a lot of practice (again, PvP, PvE you just summon them and they do w/e till they die or blow up).
Too strong. In PvP you’d easily come into every fight with basically instant minion replacements. I don’t know how big of an issue it would be for minions like bone fiend, but it means you get two stun breaks via Flesh Wurm and 4x bone minion explosions (which is 10-12k damage), along with removing our biggest counterplay.
Plague isn’t ever used to deal AoE condition damage, you are better off just using an Epidemic, it is used for the AoE blind/chill, with the things Ascii listed as being nice side-benefits.
A build revolving around CC has more CC? Please go on :P
I did say that we have more CC barring a few specific builds. I realize that warrior/guardian hammer builds, and certain engineer builds have the ability to do better, but those are entire builds around CCing enemies, our CC is just gained via picking Necromancer in character creation.
Bhawb and Softspoken — Thank you for your time in reading my post, and I apologize if it sounded like I was overly complaining about the traits, as that was not my intention. Regardless, your insight and views are greatly appreciated, and you are absolutely correct in your assessments. Take care and have a nice weekend!
No worries, I didn’t think you were complaining too much, just trying to explain my thoughts on why there are a significant number of traits overall with what you were talking about.
Trait trees aren’t there so you can play Dress Up with your necro, thats what dyes, armor, and weapons are for. Trait trees are for the stats side of the game, where you make your build more efficient at what it does. If that is a straight statistical increase, fine, if that makes something a bit flashier like Death Nova, cool.
But they are there to define your build and allow you to fine tune exactly what you want from what you are doing. If you want more utility, then grab some traits that give utility, if you need more damage grab some traits that pack a punch, if you need to survive longer then pick up something along those lines. Traits are the other pieces of the puzzle that fit in with your runes, gear stats, weapons, and utilities to define your build, and just like the rest of them, they have trade offs. If I pick up a minion trait, I can’t grab that bit of personal damage or defense. If I pick up reduced well CDs, maybe I can’t get stability. That trade off keeps builds from being OP.
Like Softspoken said about me, certain traits are meant to cement your build, to be that last little bit of min/maxing, while other traits (like Terror) define the very essence of your build. They both have meaningful places.
TL;DR, you’re complaining about the very nature of how traits work. I agree that a few traits could be swapped around, but not in the way you are talking about.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Make them more meaningful (more jagged horrors, or stronger ones), or just axe them.
Cripple and chill are soft CC’s, immobilize is arguably a soft CC as well (maybe weakness to a degree). Then fear, any forced displacement (knockup/knockback/pull), daze, and stun are hard CCs. Every necromancer has 1 hard CC, Doom, and 1 soft CC, Dark Path’s chill. Then there is only 1 weapon (dagger offhand) without any CC, every other weapon has at least 1 CC, meaning the lowest amount of CC you can possibly have as a necromancer is 1 chill, 1 fear, and 1 cripple, whereas most will have at least 1 more.
Yes, we have more CC than anything barring a few specific builds (like hammer builds).
Essentially speaking, yes. There is, of course, a lot more factors to the debate, but it boils down to whether the increased “healing” and vitality scaling outperforms the way toughness scales with healing.
Keeping so much of the traits focused on a single type of skill is not constructive for diversity. That this specific type of skill is generally considered underwhelming is even worse.
Removing the excessive amount of minion traits, by combining them or outright removing and instead implementing traits for other utilities would have a great effect in making the choice of such skills a more rewarding option.
ANet keeps saying they want more build variety and making undesired skills more appealing, I’m just pointing out a good way to that for the Necromancer, by uncluttering our traits from minions.
Bhawb, you didn’t actually defend the number of minion traits, you just stated that because we have so many minions are vastly customizable, that is because we have so many traits. That in itself doesn’t justify the number of them.
Adding traits for increasing AoE and extra conditions on wells and corruption skills, extra effects on use of signets, different boons on use of spectral skills would also make those skills more customizable, as minions are right now. Since we can’t have new traits without removing old ones, I’ve pointed out that minions do in fact have more then their fair share of the traits.
Minions aren’t vastly customizable, their very nature as allied entities makes them more able to have buffs, and in fact many of their buffs are things that the utilities you are talking about already have. I need to trait minions to take off boons, corrupt boon and well of corruption do it automatically. I need to trait minions to lay down combo fields, spectral wall, all wells, and CPC do that automatically. I need to trait minions so their direct damage is noticeable, well of suffering and BiP already have high base damage. Minion health is exclusive to summons, but comparing it to duration, you couldn’t increase the duration of wells or corruption abilities without making them too powerful (spectrals have that option). All of them can be traited for lower CD. Spectrals and wells can be traited to be activated without using the skills, just like Jagged Horror.
You are basically complaining that minions need trait points to do things that those other skills already do or simply cannot do, for balance purposes.
Death Shroud is 60% of your HP (or that is what is currently believed to be true), meaning your vitality gets an extra 1.6 scaling, up to 1.78 scaling with 30 SR. In addition to that, LF gain is done via percentages, meaning high LF pools scale very well with LF generation. So, for example, a normal necromancer has about 18k HP, with 28.8k eHP with LF added in. Increasing your vitality up so you have base 28k HP (knight gear) raises your eHP up to 44.8k eHP. At that level, a 3% LF gain is an eHP “heal” of 500 eHP.
Toughness is going to reduce the damage while in DS, so it is going to have a similar effect to normal, but of course doesn’t have the additional scaling that necromancers get via DS.
Realize that there is no consensus as to which is better, it is merely how well you feel you can utilize each stat in your build.
I would think it would keep abuse down if his summon was fairly height restricted, but I don’t know how it would affect WvW or PvE