Guild Wars 2

US probably isn’t what needs changing, Death Shroud and life force generation in general are.

The problem I’ve heard is that they aren’t fully blocked, but simply don’t apply their full effects. Have I tested this? No. Am I talking out of my kitten Maybe.

Khristophoros.7194:

Well considering that this thread is about adding torment to help condi necros, it doesn’t seem like the right place to talk about buffing staff because staff is really the utility weapon and it would overshadow scepter too hard if it was any better at condition damage.

Scepter needs to be better at condi anyway, so that’s not an issue. And staff hasn’t been a proper utility weapon for all builds in 2 years, pushing it more towards condi isn’t an issue, because its been an awful weapon all around for too long. If they fixed Axe up and gave it 900 range we’d not need staff for power builds anyway.

zapv.8051:

Unholy Sanctuary should still heal for more.

No. No, no; no! Unholy Sanctuary heals for way too much right now in Cleric builds, it literally resets the fight completely with one usage of Death Shroud in 1v1s. The problem is it, like so many other sustain traits, has no scaling into teamfights because Death Shroud doesn’t scale into teamfights. Increasing its healing just makes it too strong for 1v1s and still not sufficient in teamfights.

Cecilia.5179:

His Utility Belt would be quite useless if he couldn’t grab anything in it, which would make it rather impossible to compete with super heroes. I think I have a fairly good understanding of Batman.

Batman is part of the Justice League, the organization created to protect earth from intergalactic threats that contains all the people you mentioned, precisely because he can fully stand with those other heroes. His “super power” is and always has been his intellect, specifically planning and forethought. Think of it this way, Lex Luthor’s only super power is being smart, yet he manages to be Superman’s #1 consistent enemy, despite Superman literally being an overpowered piece of crap.

Batman doesn’t have to punch people to be a good hero. He literally has a plan to deal with every single member of the Justice League (except Wonder Woman, his plan is basically “hey Superman beat her up hope you win”) including himself. The utility belt is just a way for him to have tools to deal with a massive variety of situations, same with his massive toy collection, including suits he’s made to fight superheroes like Superman.

So no, you don’t understand Batman.

Just like giving more might, vuln is one of those shared support mechanics that basically everyone brings and just about any group will max out on, so adding it to Necro won’t help any. We need unique support, things no one else brings to create a niche, nothing short of that will work.

Shouts absolutely need some stun breakage. Cast times are okay, though they should be small and primarily on ones that have strong effects on the enemy immediately, like the one that converts boons, not ones like might+weakness which are all about the followup.

Death Magic desperately needs a damage negation. Invuln, aegis, something. Corrupter’s Fervor and Unholy Sanctuary are both pretty good traits, but they overlap far too much. Reaper’s Protection just isn’t a very good trait, it was only good because of terror builds.

Reverting AI to release won’t work, it was changed for good reason, namely that it was a complete pain in the butt to work with.

The first thing they need to do is implement AI that just flat out works. The current system would be close to fine if it just simply never bugged out, fix that first. After that I honestly think minions would be fine, there COULD be other changes, but I think they would be unnecessary if minions just attacked consistently.

Most of the problems with MM builds being too strong have literally nothing to do with minions and everything to do with the fact that ANet has a fetish for throwing more and more sustain at us instead of giving us other forms of defense. After a certain point this becomes unkillable in 1v1s, you regain HP/LF too quickly for an enemy to burn through it, and all you need is a useful set of utilities to 1v1. MM happens to bring a good set of 1v1 utilities, but it isn’t MM that’s the problem, its all the crap ANet keeps throwing at us for sustain that only adds to 1v1 sustain.

Torment doesn’t make axe better in any way at anything it needs to be better at, nor does it help condi builds in any way.

Khristophoros.7194:

What are the damage ratios on GS skills? The wiki doesn’t have the actual ratios listed.

I noticed that the numbers listed on the wiki look extremely high but without knowing the power ratio those numbers could mean anything really.

The ratios are currently quite low for a slow weapon. For comparison, Gravedigger spam under 50% HP when it resets on hit is actually lower DPS than dagger AA.

You clearly don’t understand Batman at all.

I wasn’t even aware it was a thing tbh.

Its already been nerfed because of condi, it would be useless for power if not for the fact that power needs the range. Might as well make it good for condi, not as high damage as Scepter, but decent.

Silverkey.2078:

Condition reaper will depend a lot on how strong the chill is. With all the increase crits from traits, I can see a powerful hybrid Carrion chilly-terrormancer or something similar.

The big thing will really be the return of Terror cheese, and if Deathly Chill can act like the old duration stacking burning. If Deathly Chill is enough to cheese people with Terror it will probably be a strong condi build since every Fear = Chill, which is a guarnateed Terror + Deathly Chill combo for full Terror damage. The only other thing I’d see is the potential for Deathly Chill to act similar to giving us perma of the old Burning damage, plus Dhuumfire in Reaper Shroud for a really effective way to have 4 different major sources of damaging conditions.

Pretty sure dagger 1 isn’t even the highest DPS AA in the game

You made it sound like we didn’t. There is nothing forcing us to only have one, but condition damage would be even worse for group play than the one we have which isn’t making a big difference in our PvE status.

1. We have one, Vampiric Presence
2. A bit of AoE condition damage wouldn’t do anything for our group play

^This. Projectile’s shouldn’t just be randomly put on skills, if it isn’t a projectile finisher why does it have the negative consequences of projectiles.

Bone Minion putrid explosion has always had a delay, and IIRC its actually 3 seconds. Just go somewhere and use them and wait for the second “blast” that is really noticeable.

You can give the math of how many things other professions have, and then throw a 0 next to Necro.

Funnily enough all the math I’ve done for MM and yet still no changes…

We don’t have a melee condi weapon, but making a garbage one with a trait isn’t a good fix. We already have two solid-ish condi weapons, fix those first, then eventually we can get a spec to address it.

By the time we play Reaper in beta, it will have been just shy of 3 months since it was revealed, those codes could be very old.

Aktium.9506:

First the 1½ cast time to summon and then the 2s delay on the actual combo blast after using Putrid Explosion.

That’s useless for a lot of short duration fields.

The combo is saved, so the field can expire.

Khristophoros.7194:

I suggested this in another thread. Add a trait to apply torment with dagger skills.

Quickening Thirst: +25% movement speed while wielding a dagger and all dagger skills apply 1 torment for 5s.

Move it to Curses to replace Chilling Darkness, and add a brand new Blood Magic trait to replace it.

This makes no sense, dagger isn’t a condi weapon, why make it hybrid for no reason.

I would mention that chat codes aren’t useful indicators, remember what happened when we put too much stock in chat codes with SoV?

Lich wouldn’t be seen on any good MM build, Flesh Golem is too important.

DM needs a better master minor trait, and it needs better defensive traits. The problem right now is too many of the traits don’t have any kind of actual defense increases. Deadly Strength has no defense, Reaper’s Protection doesn’t even work a lot of the time because of how easily mitigated its effect is, and Corrupter’s Fervor and Unholy Sanctuary are both sustain mechanics, not flat out defensive measures.

Anet is still scared of giving us damage negation, and as long as that is true DM will never be tuned to give us the defense we need.

Do these changes:

1. 100% projectile finisher (if its treated as one it should get the benefit too)
2. Increase its speed so that range issues aren’t as common and its more reliable, but still slow enough to dodge
3. Make it home

Grasp doesn’t need to be actually stronger, except the finisher which is just one of many QoL improvements the profession could use, it needs QoL improvements so that it actually lands.

Sororita.3465:

I dont know why everyone is against jagged horrors on " Rise. "

They actually seem to stay on target, apply a steady stream of bleeding for condi necromancers and can be a great burst with the death nova trait.

They are too similar to Bone Minions, Rise! is directly worse than Bone Minions in every situation, even when you hit 5 targets, except for a Condi build and for cheesing with Death Nova. They also don’t work well for full MM builds because of the disparity between what Rise! needs (5 targets) and what MM needs (as few enemies as possible) to be fully effective. So the only time Rise! will be useful is for condi MM, a really niche build that probably doesn’t want to go Reaper, and maybe cheese builds using both Rise! and Bone Minions.

Rise! just doesn’t work with current minions. Most of the utility minions would just be too strong, Bone Fiends would give 10 projectile finishers every 3s for example, Flesh Golem would be insane, and Jagged is took weak.

Either way we’ll see in less than a week what they’re up to.

Nooooooooooooooooo, reducing the duration is awful

Axelwarrior.9084:

For us to be better, we either need PvE to change (which is not gonna happen, most likly)

I wouldn’t be so sure, Colin has talked about wanting PvE encounters to change, and we’ve got other things to build on that like difficult PvE content, AI reworking, etc.

Reaper Shroud 5 also has hard CC that isn’t fear based, as does Chilled to the Bone, but those are also chill effects so it wouldn’t matter.

Reaper is actually fixing a few of our problems, just not for the base profession. Might stacking wouldn’t help us, a single warrior is 100% 25 might uptime, we wouldn’t push that out. Mobility isn’t a problem so long as we have appropriate counter-mobility, and new Reaper has a pull on GS, one of the highest movement over time skills in the game. You’re basically saying “why doesn’t Necro have the same things as other professions” and its because we aren’t those other professions, trying to make us viable by making us the same won’t work.

Our actual issues are related to a host of issues with Death Shroud, weapons needing changes, a lot of clunkiness in the rest of our kit, things that take the core theme of Necro and retain it, while updating it to work with itself and the wider combo system in the game.

I wouldn’t run Axe or Focus in an MM build over Dagger and either WH or Dagger offhand. You lose a lot of damage, healing, and immobilize for CC chaining, and for OH you lose either a source of bleeds for Blood Bond + condition removal or CC + massive LF generation and swiftness. A/F just doesn’t make up for it, focus 5 is too long of a cast to be useful, so all you really get is a ranged AA and Axe 3/Focus 4, which don’t compare to how much D/WH or D give you. The real test will be if Greatsword and double melee will work, if not you’d probably go A/D + D/WH.

It’ll be really interesting to see how much sustain Reaper brings, it could possibly replace Blood Magic for non-clerics builds, though I’m not sure how viable they will be without the ability to keep minions alive. I’m guessing DM/BM/R could be good, and either Spite or SR to replace BM could work if more selfish Soldier builds are supported by the new traits.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Charge say hi.

Charge doesn’t proc interrupts.

GS and dagger won’t compete, look at other professions which have a ton of melee weapons. If anything I’ll be using them both in the same build, as will a number of people.

Going to be trying Reaper MM if I end up caving and buying the game.

I want brain freeze solely for the trait icon.

We were given first access, never guaranteed to have the most access though. It would fit us strongly as an anti-mobility setup however.

Dadnir.5038:

Hey there! It’s a long time idea that I’m suggesting here : Granting a new life to these skill that are not so used due to a wide variety of issue depending on each gameplay.

The principle would be pretty simple, making a trait (most likely a GM trait to balance this out) that would just remove the “minion part” of the skill and allow the summoner to use the skill in place of the minion. Each and every time, it would become a gamedefining trait.

Necromancer :

Trait : Flesh of the abomination : The necromancer can’t summon any minion, minion active skills are available to the necromancer.

Taste of death : heal the necromancer. CD 16s
Rigor mortis : The necromancer shout 2 projectiles that damage and immobilize it’s foe. CD 50s
Haunt : teleport the necromancer to it’s foe, blinding it. CD 20s
Necrotic traversal : Break stun in a blast that poison foe around you. CD 32s
Putrid explosion : hurt the foes around you with a powerful blast. CD 16s
Charge : the necromancer charge it’s foes. CD 40s.

Would be a very interesting trait, though it would require a lot of the skills to be fixed. Haunt for example is great for the Necro until you realize it takes 3 seconds to activate. Also Rigor Mortis would be difficult to transition, seeing as it immobilizes the minion for 4-5 seconds while it fires off up to 2 volleys of 2 projectiles, each individual projectile immobilizing for 2s (its 8s of immobilize which people don’t notice).

Really cool idea though.

Torment would be nice, but it isn’t what is holding Condi necro back.

We had weapon swap until it was bugged and left as a feature. Only complaint I had with it was the ability to waste procs of healing sigils.

ArchonWing.9480:

Why does chilling darkness have a cd? When did this happen?

Two patches back IIRC, just after the spec update. I wouldn’t listen to the conspiracy theorists, Peters mentioned it was “maybe too strong” for an adept ages ago and its not surprising to see it be nerfed despite literally only being good with WoD/Plague.

Al Masone.1274:

Hi Bhawb, this goes to you…
So far, I’ve seen you in lots of threads, and it looks like you know more than something about necros. Makes me guess you’re kinda skilled with them, or at least know a couple tricks.
So could I ask you how you play necromancer? Either in wvw, pvp or pve, depending of what you usually play.
Of course, you’re not forced to answer, but i’m getting the idea that you’re one of the elder necros here, so i’d like to hear something about the class from you
And I’m making this a thread cause others may be interested as well
Cheers!

I’m honestly probably worse at playing Necro than a lot of people, only thing I’m remotely good at is theory and MM.

Grandmaster Lee.9568:

Just put on some minions and you’re good to go

This guy pretty much gets it though. I’m known for two things really: MM and forums. MM wise this is the build I was using in PvP after specialization patch, but with the recent effectively double nerf to SoV its possible Consume Conditions is better. It would also work for WvW roaming/dueling, though you’ll have to be really careful to avoid large groups.

Things to note about the build and minions in general:

1. Minions bug out far less if you don’t aggro them unless there is a clear path to the target that they can take.
2. Use CC chains, Dagger 3, Death Shroud 3/5, Flesh Wurm active, Flesh Golem active is 3s Immobilize, 1.5s Fear, 1.5s Immobilize, 8s Immobilize, 1s Knockdown, for a total of 15s of “hard” CC
3. Swap weapons on CD to proc a lot of healing/damage
4. This build is not immobile like a lot of MM builds, you have 100% swiftness uptime + Flesh Wurm active which doesn’t need to be saved for fights, use it to out rotate your enemies and try to pressure the enemy to force them to split up, don’t opt into anything bigger than 3v3 unless your team is going for the 3 cap and they already have 5 there.
5. When you do end up forced into teamfighting, save minions for utility and act like a support bunker. You have a lot of healing and support to give, save Bone Minions for final bursting and dropping on downed enemies for cleave, Bone Fiend for his immobilize, Flesh Wurm should be fine if you place him away, and use Flesh Golem for the CC, but don’t just summon minions just to have them up if they’ll die without providing utility.
6. WH 4 is for interrupting blocks and especially guard heal, don’t use it unless you have Doom up

I’m sure there is more but I’m drawing a blank. Most things that are “special” to MM is taking care of minions and being aware of their weird interactions, and making sure you are properly rotating your abilities while minding their special utility.

Things like making sure you get two rounds of Rigor Mortis off, knowing that Bone Minions explode according to the one that’s closest to you, making sure Charge doesn’t get stuck on a rock, Necromantic Corruption takes 10s minimum to take effect, stuff like that.

Edit: as a side note, I might be streaming MM soon, its just hard to make myself want to play honestly.

Khristophoros.7194:

It also basically admits that reaper is indeed an upgrade.

I mean honestly if Reaper was just our base profession we’d have nothing to complain about. It is literally the same thing as our core theme, but without a lot of the design failures that plague our profession.

I won’t be using staff. I don’t care if I end up going full melee with dagger and GS I won’t be using staff until the weapon isn’t a boring PoS to use that’s been gutted because of condi builds.

There is no real way MoC can be made to compete with Terror and PoC without it getting a really strong effect of some kind.