Actually in GW1 they lost HP, with it gradually increasing in severity, somewhat like Jagged Horrors (except even they have constant degen, not constantly increasing). Them not regenerating HP out of combat isn’t a bug, it was simply a design choice. Considering 3/5 minions are able to be put on CD at will, and 1/2 of the leftover ones is ranged (and thus takes far less damage). Flesh Golem needs the regen because he is an elite, and having your elite die from residual damage would be a significantly weaker elite.
It isn’t any harder to dodge a LF that takes 1 second to cast than it is to dodge daggers which hit multiple times per second. Besides that, no one is going to waste interrupts on a dagger chain, unless you are some interruption god, you aren’t going around interrupting attacks that go off in 1/4 of a second; interrupting a 1 second cast with a very obvious animation (or just dodging) is pretty easy. DPS is still the most common damage calculation, because it is assumed that you are going to be able to hit your skills. Then you can start talking about hitting reliably, which LB just can’t do as well as dagger chain.
Spinal Shivers just isn’t reliable enough to warrant its use, outside of certain builds where a dodge wasted on Shivers is worth it (like minion builds). In a high level PvP match, that 1 second wasted casting a skill that fails, and then the enemy having those 3 boons for their full duration as a result is just too big of a swing; sometimes you need that stability/protection/vigor etc. down.
All necro PvP would be interesting, like a game of hot potato with conditions.
400 toughness is quite a bit more than the difference between light armor and heavy armor, for builds like Axe main-hand that are going to spend a good amount of time channeling, that is a decent upgrade. Is it still super all-around useful? No, but like a lot of adept major traits (or just traits in general), it has its niche uses.
Why don’t they just give us a button that forces all of your minions to attack a target like the rangers have.
1) Press 1
2) Press 1 again
3) ???
4) Profit
Seriously though, just auto attack your target, and you’ll be fine. Melee minions need some work, but it is far from ruining anyone’s game with the way they respond right now. I was interested by what Dead Matrix said about pathing issues, which would possibly explain some issues (they seem to have some trouble with tiny rocks), if true.
Assuming a Necromancer with base Armor (1800ish), 750 is a 41.67% increase in armor, that is a very significant increase for a single Adept level trait. Do I think it would really make a difference in PvE with the dungeons and open content we have right now? Probably not. But it could become an issue with WvW, where it would be possible to get high increases (although unlikely to be hitting 750).
I have a feeling this might be a bit ridiculous in certain PvE areas of the game, and worthless in the rest (which is fine, since its pretty useless everywhere now). It is effectively allowing up to 750 extra toughness when you are spamming trash mobs.
Minions have an approximately 4 second delay if you auto attack the enemy only once. They have “no” delay if you attack twice, only delaying until the start of the second auto attack.
Our abilities are not nearly impactful enough to grant the long cast times. It wouldn’t be so bad if this were the case for every profession, but even comparatively we have pretty big cast times on a lot of the skills that matter (like Epidemic and Spinal Shivers).
The problem with extended duration skills in tournament or structured pvp is good players never leave up conditions for long so there are better runes to utilize.
Depends on your team-wide condition output vs their team-wide condition removal. Sure plenty of teams might have good condition removal, but it is usually 1 condition every 5-10 seconds per person removing (assuming it is spread out). That makes high single condition duration builds (like only trying to keep up chill) quite bad because it has a high likelyhood of being passively cleansed off in battle. However if you have a build with high weakness, chill, poison, and bleeds (and then consider that allies will be putting out burning, bleeds, and various conditions depending on build/class), you will see that condition application can very, very easily outpace condition removal.
The question is really can you make use of that kind of condition coverage, or are you better off doing something else?
Focus skills have ridiculous cast times, so do signets, Minions, wells, and corruption utility skills. Plus we can’t forget the 1 second cast time on DS auto attack and slow travel of every single one of those projectiles as well.
Extended CD’s along with over 1 second cast times on many of our utilities is an annoyance that no other class faces to this extent.
I don’t have a problem with minion cast times, since the best they can do is interrupt the cast and delay me a few seconds (you can’t “miss” a summon), and if they are wasting all their interrupts to delay a minion summon by 3 seconds, yay me!
On the other hand, the second you step into any decently skilled PvP, the cast times just suck. I wouldn’t mind if we had longer cast times (btw, wells have 1/4 second cast time), but almost all our cast times of 3/4s or longer need a reduction of 1/4-1/2 of a second. There is no reason that Spinal Shivers should have a 1.25 second cast time, or that Epidemic/CPC have 1 second cast times (epidemic was fine pre-patch because it didn’t have so many ways to fail, but not now).
I have to agree, our cast times are just too ridiculous right now. I don’t mind it in PvE since mobs don’t avoid things, but in PvP it completely nullifies certain weapons (like focus) from having wider use.
And to Bhawb’s point as well, I totally understand WHY things had to change, why certain mechanics like corpses had to go, and that it makes some thing more approachable and easier to learn, I get all that.
But my point still stands, that in the transfer these unique mechanics that gave the Necromacer it’s identity were lost, and more importantly not replaced with anything that carried the same spirit.
The new Necro by in large doesn’t take advantage of many of the new mechanics of the game, unlike other professions do.For example Wells, without corpses, they are only AOE DOT’s. And these are a dime a dozen. If they were instead, AOE DOT’s that came from an enemy your cursed, and went where they went, damaging their allies if they got too close, then that would be a horse of a different color.
That would have nuance.
I completely agree that we did lose certain things in the transition, especially the more obvious ways that we felt truly “Necro”-y, and while I think the new Necromancer mechanics still have a feel, it isn’t nearly as prevalent as GW1. Death Shroud definitely feels necro, many conditions feel necro, but just not in the same way that we did in GW1. Its unfortunate, although I do think the game is better off in many respects because of it, but the Necro of GW2 and the Necro of GW1 are quite different.
I can appreciate some of the complaints here. I played a necromancer a ton in GW1, and it was a lot of fun. I really understand some of the points of the GW2 system being slightly watered down in comparison, but that is just as much because we have at most 10-15% of the skill options.
Many of the problems you outlined from a point of view of fun, were taken out due to gameplay. While the Hex system had some depth (it wasn’t that deep, you just learned to rotate your hexes), the problem with having tons and tons of hexes is that anyone new to the game needed to learn dozens and dozens of debuffs that were all different. Also they could have much less hex removal because we had dedicated healers whose job it was to keep us healed, as opposed to now its much more our job to take care of ourselves.
All corpse based skills were removed because in a new game with fairly limited skill choice, skills need to be useful in as many aspects of the game as possible. Corpse based skills, however, are noticeably crap in high level PvE (where things don’t drop left and right), and smaller PvP (same deal), and then often too strong in the areas with tons of corpses. In GW1 this was fine, you still had 500+ skills that had nothing to do with corpses if you were in those areas, here if minions and wells needed corpses, that is 20% of our arsenal that is absolutely useless in big parts of the game.
Minions were changed for a similar reason; they were useless in smaller PvP and PvE, and then insanely strong in some PvE and PvP. It really had little play-counterplay as well. An MM was pretty terrible without minions, and so had very little play to help themselves besides leech off teammates. Then once they got minions, and had their time to play, counterplay was incredibly hard; god forbid you ever face one 1v1 and find yourself respawning before you even got a chance to fight.
I won’t go into everything else specifically, basically they had to leave certain gameplay mechanics behind for various reasons. I’ll agree that I miss some of them, and that at times the Necromancer doesn’t feel as “Necromancer-y” as in GW1, but I do see the reasons why they had to make some changes.
@Ramiah, it depends on the minion. Bone Minion explosion for 2k+ (per explosion) is a very strong way to surprise people with burst, Flesh Wurm port is just plain awesome when you need to get the heck out (and in certain dungeons and PvP it is a very good way to move), and Flesh Golem charge is very strong (although it gets stuck too often). I will definitely agree that the other two are slightly lackluster in feel.
Like Pin said, toughness scales much better with healing, while vitality protects against burst damage and conditions.
On that note, you have to realize that DS will also scale with vitality, so if you have more sources of LF generation then vitality scales well.
Then I would suggest finding a balance that you like. You don’t “need” a minimum amount to do it, but find the amount that suits your playstyle best. Some people are fine with having little to none so they can max their damage (enemy can’t kill you if he’s already dead), and other people like more stats so they have more leeway to make mistakes.
I don’t use any. It depends on what you are planning to do, and with what build.
Are you going to be zerging, small group, solo? Are you using a staff/scepter or are you going to be closer range than that?
Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P
Wow… this seems impressive on paper, did you tried it?
Yes, I currently use a DS build that gives me 100% ret uptime (along with some other things). With how high necromancer eHP is, you can really abuse the ret damage, even more so when you see that you can get high fury/weakness/condition removal along side it. The difficult part is using DS every 5 seconds to keep the buffs going, and also learning when to let the buffs fall off because you need to actually tank with DS.
PVT is what I use in PvP, but I don’t think you need it in PvE.
Ok so here’s the thing, I LOVE the necro class in every aspect of the game, PvE, PvP, and WvW. My issue is I don’t really know what it is I should be looking for in builds when it comes to sPvP.
I need a support/well build and a soloing build I can switch between for tourneys and hotjoins, but like I just mentioned I have no idea what it is I need to focus on for either build in PvP.
(I’d also be interested in a home point guard, like semi bunker and 1v2 focused, but i don’t even know if necro can pull that kind of build off).
So, first off, yes it is possible to home point guard, in fact if it wasn’t for our lackluster mobility, I would say we are the best class in the game for it, or at least close to it. But at low level tournies, most people don’t care about near point having mobility, so that isn’t an issue.
In hotjoins, you want big AoE builds, because lets be honest, its all about getting the most amount of glory possible. To do that, you generally want to run a staff with greater marks, and just tag as much people with AoE damage as possible so you get kill credit while you move from point to point getting caps.
In tournaments, there is a lot you can do, just be creative. I’ll post some of the rough builds I have made, they work in low level tournies, and are more rough ideas than solid builds (I’d suggest using them as a starting point or for ideas).
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdu1IjW1e3m2G9mCQqg1QF2NSxxKT9A+2RH;TwAA2CoosxYjwGrNObk2soYQxOiZEA – Is a death shroud “dancer” build. What you want to do is learn when you are able to just spam DS on and off for the retaliation/fury/condition removal/weakness, and when you need to stay in it for damage tanking. I switch between WoS and other things depending on what I’m doing at the time, and what I’m expecting. WoS allows you to gib people really easily, but if you don’t think you will be able to, it is also really good to bring WoC for home point defense because of eles.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjQat7Zaea87JAJFPj90Dy7e8IFBPMA;TsAg2Cro6y0loLbXuukdtaYEwsBA – Is a fairly standard staff/well support build. Drop your wells on allies when they need the healing/boons from conditions/boon corrupting, use your marks to lay down AoE control and regen to frontline allies, and then you have Epidemic (possibly swap out if you don’t have a strong condition applier on your team) for the AoE condition spreading. With the traits, you get another WoB when you revive an ally, which is a great way to be able to reverse the momentum of a fight by picking someone up and having a well that heals for 700 per second pop up underneath.
Nemesis probably has the best videos for newer players, I’d suggest you go watch them (they are stickied at the top of this forum). Wells vs Epidemic is a matter of preference, both are very strong.
Mesmer retaliation builds are really funny to watch against AoE builds, when they stack illusions with retaliation. The guardian in heart of the mists will kill himself with a single whirl attack if you do it right.
“Smart”. Mesmer illusions don’t have AI so much as they have auto-lock on a single target. Their functions are far more simple, and as such have much less room to mess up, and can function more efficiently.
Even if you just took the Ret on DS that would mean 4 targets would give full uptime, so… 10 points into Spite is all it would take.
It takes 30 in SR + 10 in Spite, and using an axe. I consider that easy because it takes absolutely no skill to accomplish (press your profession mechanic button twice per 5 seconds, and axe 3 when its up), no gear, no food, and can also synergize with other DS related traits for either solid damage or solid support.
“Better” is your opinion.
We are the second least played class in the game already, if the old statistics still stand.
Also, we perfectly understand he wants a boycott because he feels we are UP. I disagree, I’m not going to boycott the most enjoyable class in the game that is actually in a pretty good spot just because other people don’t like it.
Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P
You can actually build a bunker DS build for PvP, besides the normal Juggermancer build. What you want to do is use the 30 into SR 5s CD Death Shroud as a boon/cleansing/debuffing/tanking device. With it, you can get perma fury (meaning it is very easy to have highish damage output even as a bunker) plus perma retaliation, which will hit close to 400. Then you will also have about 66% weakness uptime on nearby enemies, a condition removal every 5 seconds, strong LF generation, full regen uptime with staff, and if you choose to go high healing power (instead of PVT gear), you can heal yourself and your team for quite a lot, using wells to buff yourself against conditions further, and pop boons off the enemy.
The problem with such a build (I use a few variations of it in PvP) is that it takes a lot of practice to use correctly, because you need to enter/exit DS every 5 seconds, know when to stay in DS for a prolonged period or just pop out (like you want LF empty when you hit 50% HP the first time for the Spectral Armor trait), you need to get out staff marks well; basically you need to juggle a whole lot of things all at once to really get good output, otherwise you are just a build with major traits that are useless.
Also, PVT MMs with siphoning are very tanky, and still have quite a strong damage output if you learn proper CC burst rotations.
Yeah, a terror build is a nice way to throw some damage down without needing condition stacks that you need to fight with someone else for.
Also if you use a condition build, remember that you don’t need to always do a lot of damaging condition stacking. If you find a condition ranger that can keep up a lot of damage condition stacks up on his own, just follow his target and Epidemic it every 15 seconds for easy AoE destruction, and then use something like wells or CPC to support your team, with staff to give regen and condition removal.
In WvW its much easier to not worry about max stacks of bleeds, so you can still run your condition damage and just try to find targets that won’t have much condition removal to Epidemic off of. Just know that Epidemic needs LoS now.
Cast times are usually slightly different than actual time it takes for an ability to go out because of animations.
What about recording everyone’s voices through mumble like usual, while recording the video only (or even video+game sound) via xfire, then you can overlay the sound recording later.
What is easier, bringing everyone down to Necro level, or bringing up Necro to everyone else’s level. Which will be more well received by the community?
They will bring everyone to an equal level, which means bringing a lot of builds up to the necro (and a few other builds that are in our area on other classes) level, and nerfing builds that are out of line back into place. The “community” on the forums will lament every change that doesn’t allow them to press a single button to win, and everyone else with a brain will realize the changes are smart.
Yeah, its a really easy way to find them. They also tend to be the one with all the conditions on them, and the one that doesn’t lose half their HP from an attack.
You can’t forget the LF generation aspect of the skill, which is a very significant strength.
while i personally would love this, most players would hate that.
i know so many people in gw2 who got killed underwater a bit too often, couldnt be bothered to improve (or just get some up-to-date weapons) and just decided that underwater combat sucks and is bad.
It is very likely that one expansion is going to involve a good amount of water combat, seeing as there is an underwater dragon.
In PvP Axe really falls short, in my mind. It has a really nice spot in minion builds, but outside of that, most of the time you’ll just want to use a dagger for the far better damage output it has (dagger does nearly double the damage).
But like Tak said, if you want it for damage, its all about your 2 skill. Your entire fight is going to be around setting that up and using it as often as you can.
Juggermancer builds are very strong tanky builds. Another build type that people don’t use very often, but can give pretty strong bunker potential while still doing sustained damage is DS “dancing” builds. With 30 into SR, you can give yourself permanent retaliation, condition removal every 5 seconds, and then you can choose some other things like perma fury (easy way to reach 70-80% crit) or more healing/siphoning. The only problem with them is they are really hard to use right.
If they changed the skill to work so that you only got your LF for the same time but had a longer window to port that would be nice, especially for those off-the-keep dives to kill siege.
The reason some of us don’t want one great build is because it isn’t balanced. Yes, we all know that some classes have niche builds that are ridiculous in that area, those builds are also going to face nerfs in time. Why would I want them to wreck Necromancer’s variety to give us one good build that they are eventually going to take away anyway?
Feast of Corruption is “useless” if you assume that scepter is supposed to be only a condition damage weapon. In a hybrid build, Feast of Corruption hurts, a lot.
66% chance, not 100%
I hope the meta stays so strongly towards boons. Means every pop of Corrupt boon, every drop of Well of Corruption, is just going to hit that much harder. They dug their own grave and sat in it, all I have to do is push the dirt on top.
Siphoned power is the worst of our minor traits, followed by Reanimator for non-minion builds.
Toxic Landing and Quickening Thrist are both pretty bad. The rest of our traits aren’t bad on their own, they either have better options or are related to skills that aren’t worth it (like Signet Power).
The reality is that people on the forums say necromancers are bad, sometimes. It is all about perspective; how do you see the necromancer.
In reality, we have the largest variety of builds available to us that are all well balanced with each other. We have a lot of synergy, and can pretty smoothly transition between different types of a main build depending on playstyle. If you completely disregard mobility, we are very nicely balanced right now, being very strong in all aspects of the game. The problem mostly revolves around the current meta of mobility in PvP and WvW.
I’d love to see them on land, with minor changes to make them work (like Entomb becoming a land-equivalent CC).
Spectral Armor really isn’t that bad, it is just a niche utility. The problem is that it’s niche is in builds that are rarely used.
In my opinion, Signet of Spite takes the cake for uselessness. It doesn’t increase power enough to warrant a bunch of better utilities you could use (corrupt boon can practically do the same thing, on nearly half the CD, with boon stripping on top).
Shadow Fiend would be next, since he is only remotely useful if you are brand new and microing bone minion explosions is too much, or you are doing open world content where a static minion isn’t wanted. Every other choice is better in any other situation.
Yeah, you’re right. Warrior utilities (especially signets) are actually useful and have half the cooldown of necromancer utilities.
Fun fact: on average Necromancer utilities have 4.5s less CD than Warrior utilities.
Just because there are Necromancer builds that can beat MMs in a 1v1 doesn’t make MM a bad build, it just has a weakness to that build (namely using Flesh Golem to Epidemic off of).
A guild is just a community of people, you are more than welcome to have other guilds, and in fact almost all of us do, and most of us are repping other guilds while we are online. The point of the all necro guild is to give you access to an all necro community, and all the resources that we can give you for that class. That means all necro guild runs, all necro PvP, all necro WvW (if you find people on your server), and a bunch of necros that are just willing to answer any questions you have.