Any time you transfer conditions, the damage is based on your own condition damage.
Yes maximum HP in DS is related to Vitality, however I’ve read tons of different guesses, all with numbers, as to how exactly it affects you (anywhere from about 2/3rds of your HP up to 1.2 times your HP).
Oh, if you really want to have fun in PvE, get a group together of all engineers running turrets, necros running minions, and then one ranger with all spirits. Good times, man.
The sheer variety of builds that we can use, without feeling completely kitten I also love Death Shroud, and the amount of conditions we have access to.
Staff 2 and Well of Blood are your only real solo options for healing. Focus 4 gives regen, but it doesn’t seem to like to bounce to minions.
Basically only way to give minions boons by yourself is by using blast finishers (bone minion, flesh wurm, staff 4) on top of a combo field like the one Well of Blood gives.
Just use traits, 20 into spite and 20 into Death magic gives the one’s you need. Nothing else, except vulnerability and boons applied to the minions will increase damage.
As for stuff to keep in mind; don’t worry about healing/buffing minions. If you really want, you can run with a spirit ranger to have super-minions in PvE, but it just isn’t really worthwhile to do all this to keep minions alive, imo. Just get the reduced CD and let them die.
DS 1=900 range power weapon.
tPvP powermancers exist? Gasp!
I actually run 3 spectral skills in my bunker build. Spectral wall + Spectral grasp right away forces the enemy to go through the wall, plus gives me LF (and I can easily walk through it myself for protection, twice). Spectral armor is my go to skill when I am low on LF and need to tank through attacks and gain tons of LF fast.
Necromancer has a lot of good builds, it really comes down to play style. The main builds are Condition (damage)/Power/Hybrid/Minions. Every necro build will have a lot of conditions, even power builds will be dropping quite a few conditions down, just not for damage.
I suggest you start with a condition build. It is the most accessible build we have. As for gear/stats/build, look up Nemesis’ tutorials, he should be able to help a lot.
Spectral armor is incredibly strong, when you are traited for it. It completely negates what happens in most fights against thief, you pop it the second they come in and stun you, and you have protection to reduce the damage, and spectral armor will give you pretty huge amounts of life force.
Not to say that it could really use some seconds shaved off its CD, but it still has some uses in bunker necro builds.
I actually use a base of 10/10/10/0/30, with the last ten switching between Curses and Death Magic. I’m still not settled on whether I like the Fury and longer spectral skills (I use all spectral utilites), or the easier retaliation upkeep. The reason it is all so spread like that is for all the different abilities that work when you enter DS, most of the fight what I do is enter and leave DS immediately, and every 5s when it comes off CD again I repeat.
Actually, you can get 100% retaliation uptime using a different build; one that I made and have been using recently. That aside, looks like a solid build.
I use spectral armor in my vitality DS based bunker build. Traited, it is on a 72 second CD, and if you use it when you are at decently high HP with low LF, it can actually often bring your LF to near full if you have 2+ people attacking you, and that protection helps soak up damage. It isn’t underrated, it just isn’t worthwhile in most necromancer builds, far too long of a CD for just a stun break, you need to be able to make use of everything it offers.
I appreciate that you have put thought into making the class better, it really is good to have people who care for the class and honestly want to make it better. That said, I honestly think that when you are releasing things like suggested buffs, that you really, really need to look at yourself and think, “Do I really understand the class, and how it is played in the various game modes, and the highest levels of those modes?”. If you cannot answer a yes, or at least a kind of (where you know how necromancers and their skills work in a single game mode), then you should hold off on posting these things, or you will receive some hard flak from people.
The problem with what you posted, is that it is glaringly obvious you cannot answer yes to the question I listed above. The really generic things you listed, some of those are okay suggestions. The real problems are things like your minion buffs. It seems like you don’t understand the real intention for how some things are to be used. Warhorn is an absolutely amazing weapon for dagger mainhand users, and any bunker. Minion skills are actually very good as is.
So just take some time off from thinking of how to improve the class and posting it, and instead doing what you can to talk to more skilled and knowledgeable people, and then once you have the expertise, you can make posts like this and do well.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
One Spite, both Curse, both Death Magic, both Blood Magic, and both Soul Reaping 30 traits are worth it. The spite axe training isn’t worth it because it just isn’t enough of a damage upgrade IMO, but I would imagine if you are using axe as your main weapon in a power build, it might be worth it.
Still, 9/10 good traits are definitely a lot better than most other classes have it.
Keep the ability to hit people, but make it more reliable is all I ask.
If you have both, and you crit, you will siphon twice.
Minions not scaling is the beauty of them. It means the necromancer can use any gear and still the minions have the same damage. It means my 27k HP, 3k armor necro can do similar sustained damage to builds with a lot more damage investment.
Shhh, I tried to delete it before anyone noticed :P
I don’t know about conditions, I haven’t paid attention often enough to notice, but I don’t personally see my HP drop because of them. However direct damage definitely cuts down your LF %.
You can easily have one person talk for 15 minutes about a very small part of the game, it doesn’t fit well into a 2-3 person podcast unless you are incredibly concise, and the scope is very, very limited. To give an idea, I could easily talk for 15 minutes about Epidemic and all its uses.
We know they are on the long side, but the information is good to hear, even if you prefer to listen to it in small chunks. And we have no lack of content such that we would need to only release 15 minutes per week.
I rarely use staff in PvP, the only time I do is as an off-set in condition builds, and in those builds it is saved solely for fearing people away from stomps/rez and objectives.
I like to think of the DS decay as a scaling debuff that is always on you when you enter DS. Stack more vitality, and the debuff just hits you harder. At 30k HP, it is similar to having the terror debuff on you constantly dealing damage.
Actually, VIT tank builds for necros are semi-popular. Yes the degen hits fairly hard, but when dagger can get LF back as fast as you degen it in DS, it really doesn’t make a huge difference. You can still have a high amount of DS uptime with the right build.
DS could use UI update, but everyone agrees on that. Learn to manage your CDs when they are invisible, if an elementalist can remember 15 skills and their CDs, you can manage too.
Minion skills are amazing, period. They are one of the single best 1v1 builds in the entire game, the only thing they really need is a slight fix on Flesh Golem’s AI, because he gets stuck every once in a while (very rare, but still). The rest of the minions have very responsive AI
If you can heal in DS I already have a build that would pretty much allow me to be unkillable. You can have a pretty good amount of healing as a necromancer in a crit build, if you go high vitality+crit, you can get 2 siphons per hit, plus 40k HP in DS, and the minute you pop out of DS you can pop spectral abilities to gain tons of life force (grasp alone gives 15% traited). You would never die.
Definitely need a UI update for it though.
And no thanks to anything else specifically suggested here. Certain things could be enhanced to give some more fun, but the ideas here aren’t good.
Actually, I have been using a new DS build I made. It is incredibly powerful when you use a vitality tank build. For example, you can get 30k HP using +vit gear and maybe Blood Magic trait line. Now, assuming that Death shroud has equal effective HP to your HP bar, and with 30 SR, you can have 39k HP, or a total of 69k HP. Along with spectral skills, and certain LF building mechanics, you can have ridiculously huge HP bars that refill very easily.
Pair that with certain Death Shroud traits, and you can really turn DS builds into powerhouse tank builds with still very good damage. I’m terrible with my new DS build, but even then I have tanked 4v1, got 3 of them to half HP, and got 1 downed before I died.
To my knowledge, all PvE gear (not including ascended) only has 3 stats, so Berserker (having 4) does not exist. I believe they have the same thing, but with no vitality.
Yeah, it is much more beneficial for them to apply to the wells themselves. Not that it wouldn’t be nice for the necro to get it regardless, but I don’t think it’s breaking the trait.
1) No, it isn’t cooler. Death shroud is amazing.
2) GW2 sales are actually not the biggest point in their model, and having a totally unbalanced mechanism such as this would destroy the truly big area where they get money; microtransfers.
Actually I think Spectral grasp would be quite good in that group setting. I don’t care who gets in, you pull someone dead center in a group of 10 people and they are going to find themselves respawning very soon.
It isn’t random, I’ve done hours and hours of testing to see that. The reason they don’t attack on first auto attack is because of pulling, I imagine. You wouldn’t want to try to pull a mob only to have all your minions charge directly at him.
F4 puts the necromancer into a long anime cutscene where he is impervious to damage, gets huge blonde hair, and slowly charges up a super move over 5 episodes that will destroy all life.
Seriously though, these are insanely OP.
Actually, while necromancers personally have few finishers (staff auto, staff 4, bone minions, flesh wurm), you need to remember that both of our ranged minions have 100% projectile finishers, with bone fiend having two per attack. We also have an absolute crapton of fields we can lay down.
While it doesn’t help us on a personal level, we can lay down a lot of fields, which support our team. It would make sense that the class with not only a lot of fields, but some of the strongest ones, wouldn’t be able to personally abuse them all.
I think that people forget that while scepter is a “condition” weapon, it is actually very strong as a hybrid weapon because of its 3 skill, and the cripple/poison.
disagree for a necro who has specced and geared for condition damage and duration you should be able to easily keep up poison if you carry scepter. You should even have time to use a couple of other abilities and not worry that your poison stack is gone.
If you are using scepter right you will have close enough to 100% poison uptime that any tiny gaps won’t really matter.
2) Keep the box thing. It is the easiest way for a bunker necro who has to sit on point to gain LF without having to leave point.
3) I agree we should be able to stomp, or that they shouldn’t.
You can’t have 2 classes that deal condition damage in one team without harming individual dps(yes i can get to 25 stacks on my own, and yes, nearly every class will inflict some bleedings if they want to or not) and structures just laugh at conditions.
Necromancers are one of the only classes that can work with another full condition build, because you can effectively go hybrid, and just epidemic their target every 12 or 15 seconds. It will do insane AoE, and you aren’t pushing their conditions off.
Because 100% poison uptime shouldn’t be super easy, it is an incredibly strong skill against anyone who has heals that don’t remove conditions.
It has the lowest damage of every weapon we have, has regen on a 6 second CD, along with a way to transfer all your allies conditions to enemies, a chill/poison with a field, and a fear. It is in every way a support weapon. Yes you can stack up power or condition damage to force it to be a damage weapon, but scepter outdoes it for condition damage in every way, and even axe outdamages it for power builds. Dagger vs Staff damage isn’t even comparable.
Death magic gives toughness and boon duration. Toughness is never a bad thing, and boon duration makes plenty of sense for the weapon with a boon on a 6 second CD. Again, staff is a defensive/support weapon, so is in the defensive/support tree, with defensive/support stats.
Yep, the problem was the necromancers were stupidly OP during closed beta, and still even into open beta we had a few balance issues (I mostly noticed on minions). They had to nerf/change them, and didn’t have as much time as they would have liked to make all the changes and test them.
From what I read, that is just some guy that happens to play ranger, he is not an official rep. Devs have posted here before, it instantly backfires on them.
Scepter is a good condition damage/hybrid damage weapon, that’s it. All our weapons have their uses, and I’d say staff is a much more universal (and better overall) weapon.
It wasn’t meant to insinuate that you aren’t good. However, the idea that necromancers are in need of more than just a bit of number changes here and there, and bug fixes, is laughable. We are well balanced, with a number of viable build paths, and quite a few specific builds within that are all completely viable. We just happen to require a bit more thought than “well I’m going offensive, so slap 30 points into spite, throw some others in curses, and the rest in blood/death and boom, build done”.
As for the age of the game, it matters a lot. No game is going to be completely balanced on release, its impossible for them to anticipate what hundreds of thousands of people playing for hours a day are going to discover, even if they beta tested for 3 years. The core mechanics of the game, the part that really matters, is solid. At this point they are just trying to adjust the things that are much more minor in detail (like numbers on skills, and fixing bugs).
You’re missing the point and trying to blindly complain about necromancers when it has minor issues.
As for PvP, I play it almost exclusively. I only go into PvE for fun, to level characters, and to get gold/gear for WvW. If I did PvE exclusively, I’d probably have a much worse opinion of necros, we are much better in PvP than we are in PvE, imo.
Gasp, a whole half year! Because we all know that every MMO was perfect at launch, right? They readily admit certain mistakes, along with the reasoning behind it.
Other times, such as in the case of most professions, people just complain because they got completely crapped on in some aspect of the game, and [sarcasm]obviously the player could never be at fault, it must be ANets fault for making a terrible game. I mean, who makes a game that requires skill, or thought? Certainly we don’t want a game with any shred of diversity or difficulty.[/sarcasm]
There are a number of ANet employees that post on other forums, but to my knowledge none of them are doing so as “official” representatives; they are just doing it because they happen to enjoy that class or feel they can contribute to the conversation. Frankly, if I were a dev I’d never post here, the amount of outright hostility they would get is enough, not to mention the unceasing questions/criticisms.
1) Mesmers are far from overpowered, they are just annoying.
2) The only thing we are lacking in this area is a reliable stomp/res.
DS is an effective invulnerability, the problem is that we can still be CC’ed in DS, and shroud stomp/res is a glitch. It would be nice to have some better form of stability than needing 30 into SR.
That said, it really isn’t a huge issue, any decent PvP team will have other people to do that job instead, while the necromancer deals with people who are still alive (in team fights) and in 1v1s you actually get much more benefit leaving them downed for longer and using auto attacks/abilities to fully charge your LF. Same with reviving teammates, any decent team should have someone else there to fill that role (and you can still very often get away with it anyway).
Other downed states don’t have “stronger” options, really. Again, downed state in PvP (in PvE you can pretty much solo mobs in downed state) is a team mechanic. The fear is to prevent any fast stomps by 1 person, and the drain makes you very hard to kill without focus.
Other classes just have different ways to delay stomps, not necessarily much better or worse, and some classes can’t really do anything to stop stomps.
Yes, Nemesis has somewhat recently come over to PvP, I think he was in the rank 20s, and he has at least 1 tPvP team/guild that he plays with. I’ve never played against/with him because he is EU, but he certainly knows plenty; just he used to PvE a lot and is much newer to PvP.
Except that elementalists and necromancers are completely different classes. Never try to balance things by “Well if that class has it, we should too!”.
Fetid ground is absolutely crap-your-pants amazing. If your opponent is relatively low, you have a good chance to getting them downed via Fetid Ground, not including the HUGE benefits the field gives your team. Remember that downed state isn’t meant to give equivalent damage to being up, it is to add a little extra strategy to team fights, and make death a bit less meaningful. It is annoying at first, but with a good team dynamic, it actually becomes a really cool mechanic to team fights.