The damage wasn’t in direct response to OP but the other comments in the thread (plague form being a joke, plague form applying all conditions). I honestly think Necro elites are the very last things anyone should be looking at to make the class better.
I categorize Well of Darkness (and similar things that can reduce damage) under in-battle survivability. It would definitely help you run away, as you could maybe blind someone about to shoot out an immobilize, but the problem is that necromancer’s only form of escape is either totally out-thinking the people chasing you (like juking them), or just normal running.
For example, maybe I can stall out long enough that I get out of battle and waypoint somewhere, or I run long enough that I get to allied zergs or bases, but those aren’t hard escapes, it is stalling until you can make the situation more favorable. Other “escapes” could be highly situational, like using spectral walk and bringing them with you for almost the full duration, then activating the recall and running in the opposite direction. Or using flesh wurm, and running in the opposite direction then activating the blink. You could even find a really, really high place to jump off of, and use DS to tank falling damage that would kill every other class.
But besides those gimmicks, your only real hope of getting out of battle is just stalling until a more favorable situation, not truly escaping like those other roamers can.
Pretty much instantly. 5 Flesh Golem charges all at once, along with bone minion explosions, no chance.
I just watched it, I don’t think he meant what it is being made out to mean.
There have been a LOT of ai threads, not all of them are merely about fixing our AI, so he said that they are looking at balance constantly, and later, that they are always looking at what we say for possible improvements. His mention of dual-wielding greatswords is more general: everyone wants OP things for their class, and that is not going to happen. That comment wasn’t directly saying that fixing AI is going to break us.
Battle of who can blow their bone minions up the best.
Like others say, we just aren’t a roaming class. It isn’t an issue of survivability in a 1v1, as much as its an issue of if something goes wrong, you die (mesmer stealth + portal, thief steal + blinks, ele blink + semi blink). If you enjoy playing 1v1, then become a node-defender and play tPvP. I bunker for my teams, and almost all your fights are 2 people or less for each side (1v1, 2v1, 2v2).
I agree, outside of big-scale fights, necros have issues in WvW. We are great in small fights too (1-5 on each team), but once you start getting just below huge fights, and just above small ones, you hit this weak spot for Necros. We can’t as easily hide in the crowd and spam AoE in these mid fights, and we don’t have the right kind of tankiness to bunker through them. We can’t escape if we’re caught (only if you run away before they catch you), and even in fights, we can’t revive/stomp as well as other classes.
When people say necros suck in WvW, what they are really meaning is we can’t roam as well as thieves/eles/mesmers; and we can’t.
I would say there are 3 options (minions are a joke).
Haha! That was a good joke (you were kidding right?).
We are probably the strongest in large-scale conflicts. You can use builds with big regen/healing/dark fields to support your team, or you can use conditions with Epidemic to see lots of numbers all over.
While capping points can be done (especially with Locust signet speed boost), I don’t feel it is quite as strong. That said, 4x Lich + 1x Plague (to tank) would likely drop supply camps very, very easily.
I use this build for tPvP, I don’t do PvE with minions so I can’t help there:
20/0/30/20/0
Spite has reduced focus CD + Minion damage
Death Magic has reduced minion CD + increased minion health + either poison explosion or boon removal
Blood magic has 50% better siphoning + minions siphon on hit
I use boon removal if the enemy team has 2 or more guardians or elementalists. That boon stripping can completely wreck those classes because of how reliant they are on boons. If that condition of 2 or players in those classes isn’t met (and you could still debate that even with that), poison is the better option, poison fields do a bit of damage, but more importantly is that reduced healing. Taking 33% off every heal they make is equivalent to having done that damage yourself (ie: if they use a healing ability that should heal 6k while poisoned, its the same as if you just hit them for 2k).
It is a defensive elite (near permanent poison, blind, and if traited, chill, for TWENTY seconds), and you can completely change fights with it; like an elite should. If you want to do damage, don’t use plague form, simple.
It would be interesting to have a priority based removal system, the only problem is: who decides what is more important to remove? For example, I always want Consume Conditions to take out poison, otherwise it nerfs itself. Maybe you are running a ranger build with really high regen and bleeds just aren’t that big of an issue, but you really want those immobilizes gone. What if you are playing a bunker class that doesn’t really give a poop about getting stuck standing still, but who really needs that chill taken off.
Anyway, I just don’t think they’d implement a priority system, merely because my priority could be different in different situations, and different builds could want different priorities, giving some minor advantages (and in competitive gaming, which they want to eventually have, its the small things that end up mattering).
As for the x amounts of stacks, we get into the same problem we have with bleeds, to a degree. I obviously want the highest damage bleeds gone first, I could care less if I’m losing 10hp per tick for a bleed from a power build. It just brings in very complicated, imperfect coding to determine what is the “best”, and I think one thing we can agree on, is that people will never agree with each other. Its just best if they leave things as a simple system, even if it might not be ideal for one party or another.
@Bhawb It was good enough of a weapon for the Dervish ^^
Yeah, in fantasy games they make a lot of fake weapons work, just look at what Soul Calibur has passed off as “weapons” :P
Just to mention it wasnt just a farming tool, they were often used a poleaxes with a more visceral and durable but way more clumsy way by both local priests, undertakers and other importantish people in pegan villages having a giant sharp blade ontop of a stick makes you kinda stick out of a crowd also by general mythos transfered into GW2, Necro, Guardian and Mesmers would be the ones to get em, but as also said no, it would make most necromancer animations either redundant or plain confusing.
Maybe instead adding a different attack (just like a thief gets different attacks while in stealth) if you get into melee with a staff would be cool, but overall actually adding new weapons would probably make the game kinda unabalanced for a while.
The poleaxe version of scythes are not what most people think of; they are not what you get when necros auto attack with a staff. What farmers would do is take their farming implement, and move the blade part of it 90 degrees, so that it was completely straight (instead of the normal farming tool which had the blade at a right angle).
I have a feeling that we would never get a scythe, simply because:
1. Like others have said, the type we want isn’t a true martial weapon
2. Our staff turns into a scythe, and a few staff skins are already scythes
Not that I wouldn’t like a new weapon, I just don’t see it being this one.
Oh, I think someone already mentioned it, but Guardians and necros go together really well, they basically have everything we don’t (boons, ALL the boons), and that lets you spec a lot more towards damage and still being really strong.
You can have Life Transfer heal yourself, if you time it so DS runs out right after it starts.
They haven’t changed it, that hiding nook still exists. It just feels like cheese to sit in there though. (For some reason running all the dredge back and forth because they can’t quiiite catch you feels less cheesy to me.)
Oh I agree, it totally feels cheesy to just sit there spamming 1 a lot, but I really don’t play dungeons for the challenge, its more for the rewards; because lets be honest, dungeons are either really easy (when you have a decent group) or impossible (when you don’t).
I’d take being able to root all ranged minions over that, honestly. Flesh Wurm almost never dies because with 1200 range you can just put him at a good range from the action. Also, one thing I took to recently was spamming flesh wurm summon/kill in PvP to stack up LF when I’m sitting alone on point.
Unless they have changed the dredge area (its been 2 months since I played it), you can just sit on top of the carrier, or in a little nook near it, and take no damage that entire fight.
If they are busy removing conditions, they aren’t doing damage.
I can’t answer if it should be changed or not, I feel like daggers are already an incredibly strong melee weapon, and Axe’s can be strong in use (on paper they are terrible); however I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave axe’s auto attack a little cleave (but with no vulnerability on the cleave part, just the main target), and I could see it still having some balance.
I don’t think it will be changed though. Necromancers already do fine in AoE, we just don’t do it with our dagger/axe as much. Staff has decent straight line “AoE”, and even in a power build the marks can do decent damage.
They have completely different teams for PvE events and PvP balance, so that has nothing to do with it. I think it is more that ANet wants to be very careful, it is much easier to slowly buff/nerf things into proper balance over time, than if they overreact too quickly and screw stuff up; its something I imagine they learned from GW1 and also Blizzard (I’m sure other ones as well).
Wells stack effects and damage, the only thing that doesn’t truly stack is their field effect (light for WoB, darkness for all the others), and then obviously things like more than one well of darkness is wasted because of how blind works.
Cycling wells is a good thing in a more supporting build where you are using ground targetted wells to deal damage/provide fields for allies. If you are looking to nuke someone with a pull+wells+dagger, then just spam all of them down, whatever gets the kill.
Focus 4 + axe auto attacks = 20 stacks of vulnerability easily. I’ve accidently hit vulnerability stack caps when I use WoS, Focus 4, and axe at the same time.
And the fact you said that we feel cumbersome like in beta… lol? You do realize in beta that necromancer’s were unbalanced, right? Lich in a power build was instant win in any fight. 5v1? Pop lich, hit huge autos every second and watch everyone run in terror only to still die. Minion builds could 3v1 in beta with impunity, and DS was insane; there was a guy in the beta tournaments hosted by ANet that would consistently destroy people with DS tanking and lich form. It was so bad that a lot of people feel it is the reason ANet is so cautious about buffing us.
Necro-bumped (cwutididthur?). Anyway, legendaries aren’t about the stats, in fact ANet specifically doesn’t want you to need to grind too much for stats (any level 80 can have full exotic gear pretty easily), its about the looks. Unfortunately, the looks aren’t exactly great for necros; they just don’t fit very well. That said, I recall reading that they are going to be adding more legendaries? Maybe they’ll be giving us more… necro-y alternatives.
Dagger off-hand isn’t exactly rare, every condition build, and even some non-condition ones have it.
We didn’t get a video, I don’t think most of us have video software (btw, if anyone does know of decent free or cheap software let me know). However it went fine, we pretty easily cleared CoF p1 and p2, only one person died that I know of, and only a few downs throughout the runs. Even the crazy part where you need to defend Magg as he sets up went pretty well.
Just to note, necros have one really fun way to jump off walls to do some damage and get back free: Spectral Walk. I used it once when a catapult was hammering us, but no way for us to get there, I activated walk, dove off the wall, dropped all my wells/marks right on top of the thing and then used the active to jump back to the wall.
Yes, it would make sense within the enemy perspective if they constantly targetted the weakest, but that would break gameplay a lot: no need for tanks, everyone plays glass cannon.
We need to make condition specs capable of getting credit sir.
If you don’t get credit for fighting a boss, its your own fault. Even condition-heavy specs deal direct damage. It doesn’t take much to get credit on these big fights, just sit there with your weapon and auto attack.
Has anyone tested if the Ranger spirits buff minions?
Edit: just had a guildie help out, spirits do buff minions, meaning a spirit ranger+ 4 MMs could be interesting.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Because PvE content in this game is just so hard we need to make it even easier… right?
It depends on your build and where you are going. That said, I think mesmers have some good all-around synergy; we don’t have much crossover in condition builds and can epidemic their condition stacks, they can timewarp us in Lich form for the highest damage in the game.
Then ignore that bit, all are welcome! :P
I’m not saying it isn’t extra HP, its not our actual HP bar. I can die with 100% life force bar, I cannot die by losing all my life force. There is a huge difference to taking it to my LF not my HP, with one combo with a dagger, that is 6% LF back; life gain equivalent of 1.2k HP in 2 seconds. I can’t refill my real HP bar that easily.
Please explain how this helps in your situation though. You haven’t answered how getting more dodge rolls would help escape zergs. I don’t disagree that it would help avoid damage; I’m just saying we don’t need that to. However your OWN situation does not work with your own solution. You want a way to get away from zergs, dodge rolling will not do that.
What are your current traits? It would be best to keep your build as close as possible, and just change individual traits around; although yes you will need that 10 in Death Magic.
Your metaphor doesn’t work. Huge slow guns = burst damage, we don’t have burst damage. I could care less if no one is scared of me in PvP. They’ll die if they are scared or not, it makes no difference to me.
Dodging is nothing even close to RTL. You go and talk about how vigor and chill can’t save you from 10 man zergs. Guess what? Dodge rolling won’t either, it will just let you dodge a few abilities until they lock you down.
We have the ability to do the same thing that dodging rolling would accomplish: not taking damage to our actual life bar. Dodging does not fix what you want.
Major defense in this game is the proactive kind, yes. But he was saying healing power was useless on necros; it isn’t. It requires specific builds, but it has uses if you want to use it.
Another aspect of this issue is that event rewards appear to be focused around damage done as a gauge of participation.
There is some more to it than just damage done, however you are right; that is probably the easiest way for most people to get credit. Although I haven’t ever really noticed it being an issue with big bosses, since the amount of damage you need to do is so small, the only issue I could see is if you came in on the last 5% of HP and couldn’t stack up enough bleeds to get that damage credit in.
I was just about to ask for an invite when I stumbled on this:
Can you elaborate on your reason for this? The only one I can find is that it facilitates party formation (avoids confusion). But, imo, having to add NA or EU to your LFGs hardly measures up to extending the fun to the other half of the player base.
I didn’t think you could join guilds across server (I have had a number of EU players message me for an invite and then say nvm when they learned it was NA). If you can join from EU to NA, then just ignore that bit and chalk it up to my ignorance of the guild system. Its not that we don’t want EU people, I just assumed that they were unable to join because of server differences.
why do i have to be trolling just because i dont respond? im reading. everyone just lists off all of necros spells and on paper they are ok spells but you would never use them because compared to your main epidemic build they are complete crap. “with healing power you heal for a ton” uh no you dont it heals for dog crap and you just wasted a stat on healing power. i would rather have a mes in my group over a necro any day, any way you slice it.
Actually, with healing power you can have WoB heal other classes for nearly twice what their own heal will do, while providing a light field for them to use finishers on to cleanse conditions; this can be done every 32 seconds while traited. During that time, you can be spamming MoB, healing for 1k every 4.8 seconds. Transfusion trait can also be used to heal for 2k every 40 seconds. Its really not that hard to heal and support your team with healing power, especially if you can heal yourself for 13k HP, and your team for 7k HP every 30 seconds.
Why should game code state x class or x stat draws all aggro?
Its like no one has read what I put…
If you have a combination of high HP, high armor, are close to the mobs, and have done the most damage, how does it NOT make sense for you to get hit? Do you want the thief way at the back of the group with 15k hp and 1.5k armor to get aggro? No. Their aggro makes sense, it targets the person that is most capable of handling mobs (the person with the highest combo of defensive stats and damage), and then whoever is closest (otherwise there could be things like leashing to abuse).
The system makes sense, and it gives you plenty of ways to deal with aggro: back off in the fight, stop being the first in, only hit as many mobs as you can handle, or just realize you are likely to take aggro, and outfit yourself to handle it.
You are still over exaggerating. First of all you have to trait into it. When the minions die they leave a poison cloud for only 3 seconds. You can resummon all you want from the charges and let them die leaving a poison field. If there is actually anyone even standing in it. Think it through if you think its that merry against a zerg how many charges can you keep up and replace till there all gone? This is also applies if your the losing zerg as well. You also can only replace them after they died so there still a cap of how many you have out at once. With the mechanism I explained you will just be able to replace the ones that have fallen.
The problem with what you are suggesting is that it completely removes the counterplay that MMs have right now, and adds in a mechanic that is nearly impossible to counterplay against in huge fights, and far too easy to deal with in small ones. Our biggest counterplay, atm, is when our opponent aims their AoE damage to hit minions, as well as us. If they can kill off minions fast enough, our damage is halved, at least. The new counterplay is just to kill our minions a few times, and bam, useless necro until we can get some charges; and that is what they were trying to fix in the first place.
In tPvP, this would make is far too weak. Imagine Battle of Khylo, if they hit us with a treb a few times, all of our minions are gone, and we have no way of getting them back without being a huge tax on our team. sPvP would be similar, its just far too easy to burn through our charges, with no way to actually get them back.
In PvE/WvW, this makes them far too strong. It would be incredibly easy to get tons of charges, and essentially have infinitely spawning waves of minions. In PvE this would completely break it, we could go entire dungeons without being attacked because I could just keep spawning minions to hold aggro. In WvW this would just be annoying because every single necro could just go 30 into death magic (which gives staff abilities, which are amazing already in WvW), and sacrifice one skill to be able to lay down tons of fields, and potentially doing easy, easy damage. Its not like zergs are these fields of constant AoE, I guarantee you would manage to get minions through.
The problem with what you are suggesting is that it is a step backwards. This is almost exactly like what we had in GW1, except now you’ve even removed the biggest weakness we had; its now even stronger than it was. Now we have stronger minions, that we can instantly resummon on death (assuming we have charges), and don’t even need to go through the weak stage in the beginning where our opponents at least have a chance of shutting us down. And yet despite this definitely OP setup, we will still be incredibly weak in all small-team settings (outside of PvE), which was the entire reason the change from GW1 to GW2 was made.
I think your over exaggerating it with the bone minions. Their hp pool is low and your assuming that every explosion actually hits. You can sit behind a zerg but theres no guarantee your bone minions can actually live to explode against the other zerg spamming all kinds of things. I also did mention they are charges and sure you can spam the bone minions. They are still nonetheless the squishiest minions Necromancers have. You can’t assume the enemy is going to just let you use them. You also have to take into fact if there destroyed then their damage output would just be 0?
Obviously it wouldn’t be like some epic movie where I can spawn tons of CG minions to run to their death.
Actually, they don’t (although if they do its more damage, each explosion would be 2k damage), if they all die, it still leaves poison fields all over the battlefield; everywhere they die is a few second long poison field. Add that in with the generally high amount of finishers going around in zergs, and we get ridiculously easy poison spreading, plus it does mean a little damage. The main problem that I’m trying to show by being over the top (and obviously I can’t just spam minions quite like that), is that with almost no investment, no downside, I can spam tons and tons of minions, leaving tons of poison fields all over the place. It would literally only require going into death magic (which is fine, use the rest of that tree for awesome staff traits), and one utility skill. It is too much benefit (the chance for 4k damage every few seconds, and essentially covering a full battlefield in poison), with almost no drawbacks (one utility slot, 10 trait points).
I’ll log on and throw you an invite real fast before I go.
I am pretty sure I was running full tank gear (dolyak runes with soldier’s amulet), and boon stripping instead of poison. It wasn’t easy dealing with knockback, mostly just because I was trying to keep the point neutral, but it isn’t too bad if you don’t get caught. What I did was use a lot to hit one guardian hard (cripple, flesh active, focus 4, axe 2, etc), which brought him low and running off point to heal up, and that made it a 1v1 for a while, which let me hit that one pretty hard. They also tended to be really obvious with trying to use the leap to close the gap, so I would actually walk into it, making it miss completely. I also had enough cripple uptime (I run 10% longer cripples, with flesh golem’s on hit cripple, bone fiend’s occasional one, and the axe 3 it makes it very hard to close in) to keep them off me most of the time, so they could only really occasionally use knockback to hit me off point for a second, and then I’d run back in.
I didn’t have to hold it for forever, my ranger (I think) came in after a bit to help me finish them off, by then they were both low, and I probably would have won, but its hard to finish people in a 2v1, especially double guardians.
Conditions are actually stronger than power builds for the very thing you said: there isn’t much that affects their damage. It means that all I need is condition damage/duration, and I have nearly the same damage that power/precision/crit damage would do; less stats for equal damage is a win in my book.
Also, conditions (especially because of things like epidemic), are much stronger in AoE. Are conditions better than direct damage? No, they both have their roles, and I think they are fine as is. Right now, it makes you balance out; two condition damage, some direct, some support, etc. in a group, instead of just going 100% condition damage because it is stronger, or 100% direct. It is fine as is.