It won’t happen because its such an amazing defensive utility, and the old version had the problem of theoretically being able to be kept up forever, which would have forced them to balance around that in a bad way.
Also works on minion applied conditions.
Dagger offhand just doesn’t have the same power build synergy that WH does, so its used less. Its not that its bad or anything, just slightly less common of a combination because they aren’t as nicely matched as S/D and D/WH.
I think Death Magic has a place on some builds, its mostly just an issue of needing slight buffs to actually be great. Its got a few weaknesses depending on your build that make it awkward for non-MMs, especially the Master Minor slot, which is terrible even on MM, the only build that really makes use of it.
I am especially curious though about what you think of the Plague Signet passive change, Unyielding Blast, and Unholy Fervor?
Plague: not a bad change, nice to have some extra condition damage, though I’m not sure its particularly “good” for the skill in the sense that I’m not entirely sure if it reinforces PS’s identity. But I’ve never really used the skill much.
Unyielding Blast: think this trait is fine as is. It already has a pretty good amount of synergy with other traits that makes it desirable imo.
Unholy Fervor: interesting idea that would at least make the trait far more desirable, I’d even think about lowering the damage boost but opening it up to all skills (allow it maybe like 15% at 25 stacks)
Some of these are great (Life Siphon), some are too much (Gluttony would be far too strong), and a few just don’t really fix the problem with the skill (Unholy Sanctuary).
You can’t naturally summon fleshreavers (via skills/traits innate to the Necromancer profession) so its not affected by minion traits.
Also unfortunately works in reverse, where you could target someone at the edge of the radius, but if someone is placed more optimally, it will stun them instead.
Can’t check atm, but I’m fairly certain it was at least supposed to first attempt to hit your target and if that can’t happen then check for other targets starting at the center. So unless I’m wrong (totally possible), or you meant something else its at least something you can play around.
The attack also isn’t “targeted” in the traditional sense. It is essentially an AoE attack with a 1 target limit, so even if the person you are targeting dodges, if there is some other unlucky schmuck in the area they’ll be hit by it instead.
Pretty sure only the minions you can naturally summon are affected. So Jagged Horrors from Lich, yes, rock dogs/birds/whatever from other sources no.
All % based modifiers only affect direct damage unless otherwise stated, afaik.
Yeah it really annoys me that for once Necromancers are tankier than a wet piece of paper.
The only issues with the trait line are the master minor being utter garbage, the GM tier needing an anti-burst trait instead of two traits that compete for the same basic mechanic, and the master traits need to be a bit less clunky. Overall though it works really well for a lot of builds, and for quite a few builds the only real issue is that basically nonexistent master minor.
Since you don’t have to spend points in traitlines anymore, assuming that GM traits need to be better than others is pointless.
This would be true, if ANet didn’t specifically make it not true by designating GM traits to be more impactful. The fact is that GM traits ARE meant to be more powerful than any other traits because that is how ANet has decided they want their system to work.
How did anet ignore focus when addressing anti-boon spam? The weapon is underpowered and already had an anti-boon theme that is now obsolete.
Because Focus has a much bigger problem to deal with than just adding a corruption to one slightly underperforming skill. Dagger for example is already pretty good, but Dark Pact needed a slight buff, and corruption fit.
The only real problem I have with core Death Shroud is its just a clunky disjointed set of skills. Reaper Shroud skills have a really fun and interesting flow to them, with ways to vary your combinations depending on the situation, since many of the skills have multiple effects tied to them. DS on the other hand, you just kinda press the buttons when the CD is up or you need the utility… fun.
Corrupt on AA might be a bit much, especially on a condition damage based weapon as it will allow the users to take advantage of damage conditions. However, the other ones that were buffed were on flat underpowered skills. Yes its a lot of corruption to add, however if you look at what it was added to, they were all things that needed just a bit of love, and had good synergy with corruption.
Fine with the idea of moving Unholy Sanctuary to BM (though I’d really prefer a reverse Altruistic Healing that is based on conditions applied to enemies), disagree with doing anything except deleting Unholy Martyr. Its just not a particularly compelling trait, and Death Magic doesn’t have anything in it that points to it wanting a supportive GM; it really needs an anti-burst GM.
I’m 100% not complaining about these changes, as they’re really interesting and flavorful for our class (instead of just numbers), which is really nice. I also like that they were added to skills that have been pointed out as a bit undertuned before (Dark Pact, Enfeebling Blood, traits), and the related mechanics all made sense to get corruptions, as they were already prime for debuffs. I do feel like they are a tiny bit out of nowhere, but that might be because I haven’t been exactly “involved” or “logging in” to the game recently.
And the most impressive part of all is that a lot of these were entirely ANet inspired, which means ANet internally made a majority of these changes on their own, which at least used to be rare (before Gee, at least) to get good, thematic buffs to our skills.
why not simply make the BB give full heal from self applied boons and 10-20% effectiveness from external boons
Still runs into some big balancing issues when you try to make it not broken when a Necro is on a team with Heralds, but not garbage when they aren’t. The current implementation is much easier to balance long term, because its proccing can be controlled entirely from within the Necromancer profession.
The issue was boon spam, not Soldier’s Amulet. The essentially infinite healing/life force didn’t really rely on having defensive stats, defensive stats just made it more reliable because it resisted burst (the one way to deal with the sustain). So no, until/unless they decide to nerf the ability for other professions to give every ally every boon every 3s it can’t be reverted.
I’d be really surprised if this made us OP compared to things that have been allowed in the meta for years.
So if you trait corruptions, then every time you use corrupt boon you apply at most 3 conditions to your target (IF you hit AND they have this many boons) , while you ALWAYS apply 2 conditions to yourself…
I’d love to know this magical world you’re playing in where enemies don’t have 3 boons literally every single second of every game.
I’m a little bit disappointed there wasn’t much else, like life blast reduced cast time and damage.
This is just a preview, there are other changes.
Not sure what’s so good about the corrupt boon skill change…
This is what’s good.
Glad that we wont be forced into running triple signet anymore. Corrupt boon simply couldn’t compete with the frequency in which boons were applied anymore. It’s currently a relic from a past where important boons were on long cds and not spamable or pulsing.
In PvE go full damage, death magic/reaper/spite or soul reaping, basically just slot all the mobile minions and pick up lots of damage and go to town.
Good change I think. If this was 3 years ago it would definitely be OP, but in the new meta of Oprah style boon application this is pretty necessary.
Its just the preview, so we’ll have to see the full changes.
Interesting changes, I’d say all of ours are good. The new Corrupt Boon/Scepter fits the way boons are starting to function (instead of being tied mostly to longer CD bursts of boons they’re just kinda… there), and core shroud 1 change was an obvious but good one. We’ll see what else happens, but good so far.
We’ll see what they end up actually changing. The good news is they didn’t mention anything about nerfing us, though I won’t get my hopes up for any amazing changes until I see specifics more than “hey we finally gave you guys the combo finisher interaction you should have had since the game launched”.
Also a full selfish one wouldn’t be reliant on having a specific utility type. If you aren’t wells, you’re forced to take one of two support traits, both being entirely worthless if you’re solo and don’t have minions.
I much prefer that Elites be meaningful choices, if anything I’d like to see MORE trait lines that force you to give up mechanics (a la Path of Exile), plus it helps them balance effects better. But I prefer that Elites stay as really different to the base, instead of just being able to have everything be the same but a different trait line.
I generally don’t like on kill effects. This trait has to be changed and I still see potential for “cheat death” trait replacing current, useless one.
It’d be nice if we had some kind of “cheat death” here, with Unholy becoming a souped up cheat death on top to solidify that theme in the tree.
snip
There is a ton in here I wouldn’t follow. Yes CC conditions are important, but taking a set of 5 skills over another because of ONE skill having ONE component that is better than its competition is a terrible thought process.
Speaking for MMs:
Axe AA is incomparably better than Staff’s
Axe 2 is better than Staff 2 (Staff 2 is just regen, which you get from a trait anyway)
Axe 3 OVERALL is way better than Staff 3, while chill > cripp, the boon corruption, retal, and damage are way better than another poison field and chill
Dagger 4 is just a slightly less reliable Staff 4
Dagger 5 is just really different to Staff 5, better in general use but weaker niche
Axe/Dagger is just a far more useful overall than Staff is. Staff was really only good because of Soul Reaping in Core MM.
Also, Settler’s is really subpar on MM. You want Clerics, everything you have is just way better with power than condition damage. Condi MM has always been a niche/cheese build.
Best weapons depend on situation. PvE just go highest DPS build you can manage, PvP Dagger/WH is undeniably the best set, imo followed by Axe/Dagger (debuffs enemy). Staff works but it really doesn’t do much of anything for the minions except regen, which you can get through well aimed dodges anyway.
Signet of Spite doesn’t function while in Shroud so that’s kind of a big deal.
Nerfing boon spam counters is the opposite of what should be done to the game at this point. Any group of players is basically guaranteed to sit at huge amounts of boons constantly, why would you want to get rid of one of the only ways to deal with that?
I wouldlike if they nerfed dmg by 25-30% but reducecast time to 0,7s .
That’s exactly the opposite of the entire point of the skill.
Make it an opposite Altruistic Healing of sorts, applying conditions to enemies heals you. We need a selfish option in the GM slot, and one that is universal. Parasitic Contagion doesn’t do that (its also a bad trait for a lot of play), and anything that heals allies is just competing with Transfusion, and most likely in a subpar way.
It wasn’t even that great on MM tbh, just a cheese-y setup. But yeah, it doesn’t do much atm and its a big reason I would push for a much better generic trait at that level, since Transfusion and Vampiric Rituals are both really specific to build.
If I can make people this salty by playing Necro it might be worth playing just for that sweet sodium intake.
You realize that you started with “Literally all it would need,” and then gave a long list of things it would need.
This isn’t a list of things requiring hundreds of lines of code each, these are (or should be, I can’t say for certain if ANet’s code base is actually worse than what a mentally challenged monkey could do) simple checks. On creation, the “minion” would copy these qualities if the Necromancer had them (fairly simple to check a few qualities), and from that point on all it needs little.
If Riot can cut corners in every single ability they make by coding it as a minion, I think ANet can manage to code something as a minion with a few properties that are already in the game.
Literally all it would need to do is be its own entity (and so Fears you away from it) like Line of Warding, and inherits one of very few traits from Necromancer. This wouldn’t be that hard to do, it needs your condition damage/duration, and it needs a few traits: Terror, Parasitic Contagion, Shivers of Dread, Deathly Chill, Bitter Chill.
Minions already have all the functions mentioned, the only difference is you’d need to make the Fear from the wall.
I agree it should be a QoL change, why do you think it shouldn’t be a trait option?
QoL changes are really bad to put into traits. Imagine having a profession where everything feels really terrible unless you have very a specific trait(s) (like, idk, Necromancer vs Reaper). This creates a situation where those trait(s) might not be powerful, but are still massively desirable just because it makes the profession work better. Imagine if there was a trait that allowed you to see 6-0 CDs while in shroud. It might not be strong, but you’d want it and it’d suck to have to trait for something that should just be baseline.
I’m okay with it being a major trait instead of minor but it doesn’t hurt you at all. The only thing it provide is defense when you might not want it and since it won’t drain your shroud when it drops below 25% i don’t think its an issue if its a minor
It absolutely hurts you. It drains LF in a way that makes it extremely difficult to build up a full bar. There are entire builds built around pulling in 100% LF then camping shroud for long periods to wait out CDs and repeating. But constantly losing LF passively would make that really difficult. Kind of like how Unholy Sanctuary would be a really awful minor trait because it can waste your LF when you want to save it.
I don’t think we need a 1200 range DPS weapon, though it’d be nice. It’d just be better if Axe was slightly better, and if staff didn’t feel like I was wasting half a weapon slot just to pick up one or two abilities in a power build.
Foot in the Grave gives you more stun breaking than filling your entire utility bar with stun breaks, in what nonsensical world is that weak? The only reason some don’t favor it over the other two is because Necromancer’s role in literally everything is dealing damage, so more damage (especially Death Perception, which increases our DPS in our highest DPS state for PvP) is nice. But on Condi, Dhuumfire is extremely situational, it only deals meaningful DPS when you’re a Reaper, and if you’re Reaper that means it only deals damage while melee, so any non-melee fight FitG > Dumbfire.
Anyway, FitG is absolutely fine as is. It is just not super common because of the meta Necro builds.
Dagger siphon can heal for a ton more than that, those values are without healing.
The first part is one of those things that really can’t belong in a trait imo, because it either should exist as a QoL, or shouldn’t be an option at all.
Second part is really interesting, though I’d push it onto a GM (with appropriate buffs to its effect if needed), that way you aren’t kitten by going into a line and getting stuck with a minor that hurts you a significant amount of the time.
Also, minor nitpick, Vital Persistence gives you exactly 0 defense. Literally has no effect on your actual defense, it just doubles Shroud’s passive timer.
But then how will we fear an entire zerg off a cliff in Edge of the Mists?
A lot of positions allow the same thing, the only difference is the side of the small pathway they fall off of to their death.