Guild Wars 2

The trait isn’t bad at all right now. It might not be applicable in every mode (PvP you might hit this less), but its pretty reasonable.

Conqueror.3682:

Another question, also, thanks for the answers.

Why sometimes my bone fiend’s skill (rigor mortis) doesnt work?

It always “works”, however the way that it works is when you press the button it immediately roots the Bone Fiend, and modifies its auto attacks to cause the immobilize, but does not reset the auto timer. This means depending on when in the auto timing you do this, it could take up to 3 seconds for the effects to be noticed, and since the minion is rooted it is possible for it to “miss” by being out ranged, or LoSed.

Conqueror.3682:

ok, do i have to give boons to them, or by giving boons to myself they get buffed?

They do not inherit any of your stats directly (the condition thing is special, because as far as the game is concerned they are literally your conditions), so if you want to buff them, the buffs have to specifically be applied to each minion.

Anything that can buff the minions will increase their damage. Your power doesn’t increase their damage, but all conditions they apply are counted as yours, as far as the game is concerned, including damage/duration. They also have base 4% crit chance, but any crit increases will also affect their actives.

So might, fury, frost spirit, your traits, a few other AoE buffs like Venom sharing, Vampiric Presence, etc.

Necromancer has the best siphoning by far, and we’ve got multiple ways to accomplish it (wells, signets, minions).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I feel like just making it instant cast would be enough, honestly.

This. You can even make it instant but with the condition that it can’t be cast during abilities (so you can’t cast it in the last 0.1s of Gravedigger or something) to avoid some abuses, but that’s really all it needs. The shout isn’t bad at all, I used it a lot when I was playing a shout build.

Solid idea, I like it, it also has some fun combos where you can ping-pong them (since fears you apply after would push them away from you again).

Guild Wars 2 was always pay to play, now its free to play with DLC.

I love the little features™ we get to discover.

Darwec.3784:

This depends? Pvp and wvw, yes, these are weak skills. PVE, I am fairly certain they result in higher condi damage than any alternative setups. Transferring the bleed form blood is power is good damage. As for corrosive poison cloud, weakness does less than it used to, but its still useful to transfer.

Yeah, that’s a fair point, and you have an otherwise “useless” plague sending trait so in practice you aren’t losing a 3rd skill.

Darwec.3784:

you should have a trait that transfers conditions, along with 2 skills minimum

This is why its bad. These skills are just flat out not strong enough to warrant extra mechanics to mitigate their downsides. In your example, two skills (BiP/CPC) need to, once transferred, have the power of 3 skills. But they don’t, so they are bad.

On another note, I agree with Zefrost’s main point that our trait lines are too weak in some cases. Disagree with specifics, but it is true that the reason SR is “mandatory” is because most builds can’t reasonably take DM/BM/Curses, largely due to one or more tiers being “dead weight”.

No, not all builds have to use Soul Reaping or Vital Persistence, it just so happens that for most builds Soul Reaping is the next least bad option after your main two lines, and Vital Persistence just happens to be the only major trait worth taking in its tier (unless you have spectrals). If we made VP baseline everyone would still take SR, and everyone would just swap to whatever the next obvious choice was in that line.

Also adding both shrouds at once really degenerates the interesting choice of going Reaper or not. Otherwise you just obviously take Reaper all the time, since its a flat improvement for every build.

flow.6043:

Can we agree that this is just a regular skill rotation and not a burst? I mean, of course this kills someone two and a half times, but so does literally any other class/build with zerker gear if their target stands still in front of them for more than 10 sec.

This. I think Necro players are so used to long cast times and extended fights that we just ignore the fact that other professions can burst 20k HP (though a really lucky Gravedigger+sigils and CoD can 100-0 squishies) in like half a second, which is probably compounded by the fact that we’re so used to massive HP that most traditional bursts don’t 100-0 us on their own.

The only true burst Necromancer has ever had is either condi terror (now with chill), plus something like CB/SoS/PS for a huge stack of condis, or some big power hit + sigil procs which proc Chill of Death. But traditionally we don’t burst, our skills have far too long of cast times and we don’t have much we can layer in, as opposed to other professions which can sometimes use a full DPS rotation within the cast time of a single ability.

You move slower because you are in combat.

And no, minions on their own don’t attack anything. They respond to you attacking things, and return fire when they are hit, but won’t aggro on their own. Probably should change it so they don’t return fire out of combat, because its annoying, but other than that its fine.

It may or may not be balanced in that one case, but they separate elite mechanics (traits, weapon, utility, anything else) because otherwise balance would be exponentially harder with every addition to the game. Keeping it all separate just makes it way easier to balance, and considering ANet already has trouble balancing what we have, that’s probably better for us.

If I were to make any change to CB, I’d drop its CD by quite a bit, but give it a more significant cost. But the last thing I’d ever do is drop how many boons it removes, its really important that it hits a lot at once in order to function as a burst tool like it currently does.

Glad to hear its working!

WereDragon.6083:

I did supplement Bone Minions for Fiend which is working really well when fiend decides to stay at range.

Interesting idea, this is something I need to test out myself. Rise! might reduce the need for Bone Minions, plus the removal of the self combo was a wee nerf, and I really miss the crazy long immobilize chain Fiend gives. Only thing I’d be wary of is the loss of on-demand burst/poison, but I’m not sure how important that is now.

So check out the minion build I have in my sig, that’s what I use (haven’t done ranked since the league but it worked very well before) and it works well. Its important to balance offense and defense, if you go too much in either direction the build becomes ineffective. Hydro/Leeching is a really important sigil combo, its a huge burst on swap that insta procs the leeching plus adds chilling and sets up chilling victory. Energy is even less useful now that we have stab coverage. Also, staff as a weapon doesn’t work with reaper MM imo. You lose all offensive pressure to swap to it, and unlike the SR MM build you don’t have soul marks or the ability to just tank everything. You should go Axe/Dagger, which gives you improved offensive pressure, keeps the transfer, better quickening thirst synergy, and is a better 1v1 weapon set than GS. The build itself is basically fine though, its just staff/sigils that are going to hold you back from a build point of view. Otherwise its just a lot of learning the build, and especially setting up good fights, MM is harder to play than people think.

Sheobix.8796:

Well, if i’m a necro going up against you running a condition heavy build, I could roll in, executioner’s scythe your minions, then spiral them to death pretty quick since that can drop in almost 9-12k condition damage. once your “Rise!” mobs are gone, which in 1v1’s only 1-2 spawn, it’s almost nothing to fight against. Those condi necros are almost always running plague signet, and waiting to drop staff4 on you when you drop out of shroud when low.

Necro v Necro you match Soul Spirals which basically invalidates the cleave, minions return all the conditions which forces the enemy Necro to transfer, and you go through the ping pong until one of you cleanses with heal (should be MM, won’t have enough transfers) or can’t transfer anymore. Its a skill matchup, really comes down to managing transfers and CC.

Blackmoa did, definitely noticeable lol.

Bluewizard.2694:

This is something I would like to see changed in the future by allowing us to gain life force on different ways through traits of the other traitlines, of which Blighter’s Boon in the Reaper traitline is the best example.

The issue there is that Soul Reaping makes sense to be our “life force line”, and it doesn’t make much sense to get LF (except from a trait here and there, like Blighter’s Boon) elsewhere. This wouldn’t be an issue if our life force gain was sufficient though, and that’s the problem, we don’t really have sufficient LF gain baseline. Condi runs into this in a big way, but a lot of our LF skills suck, and spectrals/weapons are holding this back in a big way. If those were fixed though, and maybe a LF trait in Death Magic, we’d be fine.

HEDRO.2345:

You are comparing SELF BENEFITs/Boons/Heal compared to traited Damage/CC.

A lot of the heals listed aren’t self only. Some support allies, a number deal damage, and the dragonhunter trap can daze you. The only thing that goes through anything on this skill is the debuff and trait proc. The trait proc itself being unavoidable could be argued as an issue sure, but that’s the trait not the skill.

HEDRO.2345:

Healing sig/Sig of resto, comparing passives to actives doesn’t work either.

Don’t cherrypick “broken” mechanics then. You’re saying this doesn’t have appropriate counterplay, I listed a lot of heals that have similar levels of counterplay.

HEDRO.2345:

Enchanted daggers maybe, but it only last 15 sec with 30 sec cd.

“Only”, it lasts 2.5x longer with a lower CD (unless SoV is traited, again trait not skill).

HEDRO.2345:

The large majority of that list does in fact have counterplay… or you just said yourself, is an aoe which I agree, should not be subject to LOS as I stated in my OP.

This also has counterplay. The list has SIMILAR LEVELS of counterplay, which is generally fairly little, because almost every single defensive ability in the game (except Necromancers’) has no direct counterplay.

HEDRO.2345:

Yes it is in fact gamebreaking.
The BROKEN GOING THRU EVADE part aside… it should still be obstructed by LOS.
On a class with only 1 or 2 condi cleanses, you need to get the endless amount of chill off then kite ASAP, if you cant kite because CORRUPT thru LOS that is kittened.

If it was gamebreaking it’d be abused more, yet it isn’t. There is nothing gamebreaking about it.

Yeah, we could still use a few core-Necromancer additions to really round things out. It seems to me that the core build should at least have the basic mechanics to support the playstyles the class represents. Elites is one area we’ve got problems at, the other is weapons (heals are in a bad spot but due to balance not lack of variety).

HEDRO.2345:

This is not a thread about balance of a skills power.

unbalanced mechanics.

Balance is balance, there is no such thing as “unbalanced mechanics”, a skill is either balanced or not. There are unfair mechanics, but a skill can be balanced and be unfun or not healthy.

Now I think its plenty fair to argue about whether or not this is okay, but a LOT of skills in the game don’t have “counterplay”, and there are times when it is okay. Most defensive abilities have little or no counterplay. Many heals also have very little counterplay, especially the strong ones. Look at:

1. healing signet/signet of malice/signet of restoration
2. purification
3. withdraw
4. enchanted daggers
5. project tranquility/ventari’s will
6. shelter
7. facet of light/infuse light
8. defiant stance
9. blood reckoning
10. medic gyro
11. healing spring
12. well of eternity

Every single one of those listed is problematic by the standards you are using. They are either impossible to counter (things like instant or so short you won’t interrupt), rely on you dodging followup and not the initial cast, etc. Only difference is the allied effect, but again many of those skills are AoEs you can’t “counter”. On the other hand, most of the counterplay for those is the same for SOV, but SoV has a 1.25s cast time, whereas most of its comparable ones are instant or 0.75s.

Tim.6450:

“fall of the mighty: gain 1,5~2% damage reduction for every boon on the foe when struck” OR “death’s embrace: when in death shroud hits have 30% less crit chance”.

I’m not entirely sure how well the first would work, but I love the concept anyway. I think the second is a bit much, assuming the enemy has base ferocity and at least 30% crit, its a 15% damage reduction, and only gets higher.

Tim.6450:

Adept major:
-Putrid defense: take 7~10% less damage from foes with poison, when hit drop a patch of toxic ooze on the ground (radius 120~180, inflicts 1s of poison per second, duration 2~4s, icd 1s)

Another really cool idea, not sure about balance but still cool.

Tim.6450:

Master major:
- Reapers protection: gain 10~15% life force when inflicted with a cc (5s ICD).

See above

Tim.6450:

Grandmaster major:
- Move unholy sanctuary to blood magic ( by removing unholy martyr)
- Replace it with: shrouded resistance: when entering shroud your life force bar can’t decrease for 2 seconds, increase the cooldown off exit shroud skills by 2 seconds.

Honestly think US could be removed completely (the deny death mechanic can be recycled), and UM goes to something else.

Otherwise though, while I’m not sure about the balance of your suggestions, they’re all pretty cool ideas.

Dreaming serpent.5197:

@bhawb, What’s wrong with spectral wall with the spectral traits?

Doesn’t properly increase duration. Every other spectral skill has all its effects increased by 50% (boons on armor/walk, chill duration on grasp), but SWall only has its duration of the wall increased, the protection and fear both stay the same. Of course the skill is generally mediocre, but that fix plus the protection duration refreshing, maybe touching up the fear or wall thickness would make the skill interesting because of the protection synergy with SWall/SA.

Gamebreaking? If you LoS’d the Necromancer you’ve LoS’d any followup they have. The skill does absolutely nothing on its own besides heal the Necromancer (unless traited), it is 100% in the follow up. You could also just use any negation and the Necromancer now has an extremely subpar skill. Comparable skills on other professions also can’t be LoS’d, only difference is they apply a buff instead of a debuff.

MM shouldn’t run it anymore, before Reaper it was a tossup between Spite or Soul Reaping for your third line, depending on how you liked to play, but at this point Reaper (and more importantly Reaper Shroud and Rise!) just out performs it in every way.

However, I want to argue against the idea that VP is mandatory overall. What actually happens that causes nearly every build to take it is that:

1. Most trait lines are pretty bad, generally speaking. Only Spite, Soul Reaping, and Reaper are always good in every build and worth looking at. Curses is very specific to condi, Blood Magic is pretty much only used by MM, and Death Magic is fairly specific to MM and tanky shroud builds. This leads to point 2
2. You almost always take Soul Reaping. It was one of our best lines for a long time, and it still is. Wouldn’t really matter if VP was there or not, you’d still go Soul Reaping. And since you’re already in Soul Reaping, we get the final issue
3. VP has no competition. Even if it was bad, the vast majority of builds don’t care about the fear trait at all (its just barely better than totally worthless), and a lot of builds don’t use spectrals (on top of the fact that the spectral trait doesn’t work properly on SWall) because they aren’t really worth the slot.

So you end up not taking VP because its mandatory for all Necros period, but because why not. In fact, most people use VP and then constantly cite situations (like burst) that are completely irrelevant to VP’s strength. Its also a bit overloaded having both CDR on Shroud and passive shroud increase, but by no means mandatory as a trait overall; its just a strong trait in a common line that has no competition.

Tim.6450:

I’m pretty sure it is intended. The +% stat modifiers use base stats otherwhise we could have infinte health and power warriors.

This wouldn’t occur here. CF would increase your toughness up to a value, and then DS would increase it from there. But there wouldn’t be a loop, CF wouldn’t give more toughness based off that.

I’ll try to check though.

Yeah, if UB was just a 1s full cycle with aftercast it’d be a huge improvement. And the lack of combos plus lack of downed play mechanics is the biggest problem. If the two Shrouds were just ranged vs melee cleave with some differences due to that (but otherwise similar when it comes to having combos) it’d be more interesting to choose between them.

Rym.1469:

I like the “each condition you apply” suggestion. Could potentially make Epidemic a legit healing spike. But I wouldn’t move it to Blood Magic – you still need Soul Reaping for PvP as well as Reaper since we’re being balanced around having Reaper. That leaves you with just one option in PvP. And nobody wants healing in PvE.

Bad idea to balance around things like that. Blood Magic is our healing/sustain line, it should be the one to contain our sustain/healing. Also it makes BM’s GM tier have a legitimate selfish sustain option for all Necromancer builds, which is a huge improvement.

Reaper is only mandatory for everyone right now because of the fact that the other trait lines are so mediocre, and shroud in some cases. A proper Curses line removes condition build’s need for Reaper, and a proper Blood Magic opens up a lot of choices for grabbing sustain and some offense. And what Curses need isn’t really healing.

Rym.1469:

In general, while I wait for some next interesting E-spec for Necro (since PvE stuff has been fullfilled with Reaper, crowds got their greatswords etc.), I would be willing to drop the “Corruption” theme out of Curses completly and make some really interesting E-spec with it.

Agreed.

Dirame.8521:

I think Curses will be considered viable when a top player plays it again. Or am I wrong?

Its here because Curses is bad. No top player uses it because its bad, but it is bad regardless of whether its used or not.

Pregnantman.8259:

Master: Beyond the Veil moved to Master to get rid of Soul Comprehension and for a new spot in Grandmaster.
Grandmaster: Changed to Deadly Strength. It may be a bit too much, but when you look at all the passive %10 and %20s other classes have as candy I think this isn’t too unusual. Deadly Strength was actually the Grandmaster minor before anyway.

I don’t know that this is what our minors need in DM right now. While I get the point, and I don’t think its necessarily bad, minors should fully fit the theme, which in Death Magic is defenses (primarily damage reduction). It also has the issue of being worthless for non-toughness stacking builds, or builds that don’t deal direct damage. I’d much prefer we see something along the line of better mitigation, or even some kind of negation (AoE blind on shroud, small block when X happens, etc.).

Pregnantman.8259:

Reaper’s Protection: Swapped with Putrid Defense. In addition to its original effect, this trait now also counts finishers you do in poison fields twice – similar to Warrior’s double leap finisher trait. Reason this trait is moved to Master is it makes RS #4 very powerful when in a poison field.

Putrid Defense: Swapped with Reaper’s Protection. Reaper’s Protection’s cooldown is either halved or it places a Reaper’s Mark on you when you are CCed.

Reaper’s protection needs a rework imo. It very often has absolutely no effect, because of how easy it is to mitigate fear, especially by builds that often present issues to us (Berserker Stance Warrior, DS Ele, anything with stability), and when it does have an effect its easy for it to feel unfair because it can become a huge duration CC that can screw the enemy and their team over. I’d prefer a more proper anti-CC trait.

Pregnantman.8259:

Deadly Strength: Moved to Grandmaster minor. Replaced with a trait that allows you to absorb %20 of the damage taken by nearby allies (except minions and pets) when in shroud.

Not sure how helpful this would be honestly, I can’t think of a single build that would want to run this. It seems like something much more suited to another profession that can take the damage then use active defense to mitigate it.

Pregnantman.8259:

Death Nova: Same except for some freedom on how to summon Jagged Horrors. In addition to spawning on killed enemies, they now spawn when you fear a bleeding foe. Idea is that you still have to do something to summon the minion and its kind of thematic – your compulsion on the enemy is so great when you fear the enemy that you animate a minion using his blood.

MM absolutely doesn’t need a direct buff right now, least of all more minions and Death Nova spam.

Pregnantman.8259:

Unholy Sanctuary: Base heal increased to 200.

Don’t think this helps anything. This trait needs to not compete with Corrupter’s Fervor, and to do that it needs to have the healing part of the trait changed to anti-burst. Otherwise they’re both awkwardly trying to do the same thing (sustain) in slightly different ways.

Caine.8204:

Death Shroud currently acts very differently from other profession mechanics. Whereas other classes have mechanics that focus around “adding more” to the profession, Necromancer’s Death Shroud disables our utility skills, and is essentially a little more than a weapon swap with a new health pool.

I’d like to point out that its good that Death Shroud functions differently. I do think they should look at giving us our utilities in Shroud, and reworking shroud thereafter if necessary (like lowering its eHP by removing the 50% damage reduction), but the fact that Shroud is such a unique mechanic is great.

Caine.8204:

Death Shroud, passively, degenerates quickly, and even quicker when struck. This is fine in PvE, as you don’t get struck as often as in PvP… but in PvP, this makes the trait “Vital Persistence” essentially necessary as you are constantly getting focused.

I really need to pick at this, because I see this all the time and its a bad way of thinking. Vital Persistence’s reduced degen does absolutely nothing against burst, and in fact works the exact opposite of what you say: it only matters when you aren’t being bursted. Whether shroud’s degen needs to be looked at is another matter (I think its fine), but decreasing degen only matters when degeneration is actually occurring. This means VP only meaningfully impacts Shroud uptime when you can stay in shroud for a decent amount of time.

Caine.8204:

Death Shroud also benefits from the use of Vitality, providing a small bonus to Death Shroud when really, it shouldn’t – it makes it harder to balance an already strange mechanic.

It is treated as our HP in many ways, removing that scaling just makes toughness once again the best in every single way. The fact that we scale so well with vitality is unique and good, and helps balance vitality vs toughness.

Caine.8204:

VITAL PERSISTENCE – Make the 50% slower degeneration a passive. Increase the cooldown reduction to 20%, up from 15%.

This is the opposite of what needs doing. VP is fine as a shroud uptime increaser, it just needs competition in the burst department. Duration vs short term power. If anything VP needs the shroud CD removed/moved to another trait, because it clouds the over-time component (can have some power returned if needed by giving it another over-time component, like some LF on hit).

Caine.8204:

SPECTRAL MASTERY – Recharge changed to 33%, but no longer increase the duration of abilities. Keep the 5% life force gain. (33s on Armor, 40s on Walk, 30s on Wall)

Again, not the needed change. There are two things to do here, the first is simply fixing it to actually make the 50% increased duration actually work on everything, and then buffing spectrals. The other way is to not just be duration, but increased potency. All the effects given give 50% more LF, grasp pulls and stuns or immobilizes, armor/wall give a buff that gives 50% damage reduction instead of protection, wall’s fear is 50% longer, walk gives 50% speed boost instead of swiftness, etc. Further focuses the the trait as anti-burst (to distinguish it from VP), since their effects are even stronger, but not long duration. There could also be stability granted in some way through this trait or base spectrals, again to focus on anti-burst, since stability helps our ability to handle burst by a lot.

Caine.8204:

DHUUMFIRE Change this ability to inflict 2 burning when using Life Blast, but only 1 burning using the Reaper auto attack. This will allow non-reapers to use Dhuumfire, at least with some success.

Makes more sense to normalize (to a degree) Life Blast’s attack speed. This makes them fairly consistent on proccing effects, without erasing the differences between ranged projectile vs melee cleave.

Caine.8204:

TERROR Remove the “if the target is inflicted by a condition” modifier, and keep the full damage amount. Fear lasts , at maximum, 2 seconds, and is easily countered by stability. A Terror nuke should be that; a nuke. It’s essentially useless in its current form. Fear has too long of a cooldown, and too short of a duration, to make its main modifying trait so underpowered.

This does nothing to Terror, except remove what small skilled use it has. If fear is on the target without another condition this trait is being used really poorly. It needs damage increased (revert 17% nerf), and either the Soul Reaping trait merged directly, or put into the Adept at curses (can be made the “falling” trait by changing the on-fall to be the same as on-death).

Caine.8204:

PARASITIC CONTAGION Currently, the “Curses” tree is not very powerful in PVP. Parasitic Contagion would have to work through Shroud to make it even slightly worth it for pvp, or would need to be buffed to like 15-20% of condition damage.

PC should be reworked and moved to blood magic. Curses doesn’t need sustain in the form of healing, it doesn’t fit and doesn’t help. It needs better damage options, and PC reworked into an opposite altruistic healing works greatly in blood magic in replacement of unholy mediocre.

1. So you say its an MM build, and also mention wanting to do everything. The problem is it isn’t really worth wasting all that Death Magic traiting on minions… unless you are actually running minions. You have 2 minion skills though, it isn’t nearly enough to warrant the traiting you’re giving them, especially in PvE where those traits are mediocre. In WvW/PvP you’d definitely want to have an actual MM build, or not trait the minions much.
2. You have to rely on allies somewhat. You can’t make a good build that actually does everything, all you’ll end up with is a build that does a whole lot of nothing.
3. I really don’t get the idea that focusing on one thing is bland, but whatever works for you.
4. Yes, welcome to necro.
5. Spite is one of the best traitlines in the game.
6. Try Warhorn, Quickening Thirst+dagger, or Traveler’s runes if you gotta go fast
7. For WvW you’d need to chose an actual specialization. Generalist builds are a great way to suck at everything equally well, not a way to actually have a good build. Be a shout build, or a minion build, or a whatever else build (doesn’t have to utility type), but specialize.

Honestly though, it seems like you have a lot of strong opinions that are going to limit your build. You either need to accept that those will lead to a weaker build (which is fine if you are enjoying it), or get past them.

messiah.1908:

but 2% more dmg per condi is much better than 2% crit chance per condi…

Its what we had before, and it left the condi trait line with a trait that gave almost completely meaningless damage increases to the builds that want the line the most. Curses is the crit/condi line, keep it crit/condi.

Generally agree with others though. Curses right now just doesn’t perform as a condi build, it is “passable” for core condi builds, but that isn’t a viable build on its own afaik. One problem is Terror being so weak, and the lack of adepts outside Plague Sending, and then Weakening Shroud is the only PvP usable trait.

I’d suggest moving Parasitic Contagion to Blood Magic, replacing Unholy Martyr, and becoming a reverse Altruistic Healing (each condition you apply heals you, fixes a big problem in Blood Magic), and replacing it with a burst condition option (like moving Terror up and buffing it). That gives Curses a burst option, a duration option, and then a crit-based defensive option.

Then improve the two bad adepts, make corruptions better, and fill in the missing master trait. Simple! (okay not really)

We don’t have a charge because that’s flat non-combat mobility, which is against the dev’s design of the profession. Same reason we don’t have stealth.

Basically they finally accepted the idea that, at the very least, our own traits should… you know… work. So they went through and added most of our self-sourced as “exceptions” to the rule that we can’t be healed. There are plenty that still don’t work though that obviously should (Blood Bond), at least one that is kinda up in the air (Parasitic Contagion), and then some stuff we really should get, but haven’t (regeneration, runes, sigils, etc.).

But at this point its one of those issues where they screwed up in the core design and its really hard to go back now and allow us to be healed, since as we saw with Bligher’s Boon it creates some insane situations.

Sororita.3465:

Biggest complaint about the necromancer and now reaper is that they can be out maneuvered, seeming all that addressed that was a 600 range leap i proposing that our sustainability, through siphons, be increased.

So once again the issue is applying sustain, not the sustain itself. If you can’t sustain because people can avoid you, the answer isn’t to just buff siphoning until the rare hit you get is enough on its own to sustain you, the answer is give you counterplay against that kiting. Things like Grasping Darkness being better, Spectral Grasp, targeted gap closers, improvements to weak skills that have room for this (Dark Pact), etc.

Sororita.3465:

The problem with minion siphons in WvW is that even with 50% added hp to minions they can still be downed rather quickly. Secondly they have a hard time staying on their targets, this isnt through some fault of the AI, althought it may be, but because people just move too faster, minions are rather slow in comparison.

Then the MM isn’t doing their job. There is access to at least 6.5s of hard CC in any MM build (Dagger 3, Shroud 3/5, Charge), you can pick up another 8s from Bone Fiend, 1s from Staff, if you can’t lock people down reasonably well with that, they’ll never be locked down. And I’d be interested to know what is killing minions so quickly through 25k effective HP.

I’m also not going to argue that WvW is a place to balance around, because it isn’t. It has never been balanced, it never will be balanced, and it can’t be balanced.

Sororita.3465:

The fact is that other classes have an easier time due to their active defenses and mobility, things we sorely lack. Rather than they redesign our class, i’d prefer they buff what we have.

It isn’t a redesign to have some better mechanics. What you are asking for simply can’t happen, we can’t be able to just sustain through everything in every build. We either get better mechanics, or we stay where we are.

Sororita.3465:

You mentioned you’d want active defenses, fitting the necromancer theme, which would you suggest?

Better Unholy Sanctuary as a cheat death mechanic (look at what Berserker got)
Death Magic or Soul Reaping could have a trait that does something like “for X seconds upon entering shroud, LF degeneration is doubled, but damage does not affect your LF total”
A skill or trait with a mechanic like League’s Death’s Dance. Could function passively, where say 20% of direct damage taken is applied over Xs instead, or an effect that activates when we hit an HP threshold, or something that mitigates damage taken over a certain amount (when you take more than X% of your max HP in Y period of time, that damage is instead applied over Z seconds)
Blocks/invulns and stability on active skills, a great place would be a new non-elite tied OH weapon with one or both
An effect that allows all damage taken to be taken directly out of LF instead of HP, without being in shroud

There are plenty of ideas, many of them work well by more actively utilizing Life Force, by both granting better LF generation and some non-shroud ways to use it. Plus there is just applying certain mechanics that others get (so long as they aren’t free-mobility or running away related) like blocks/invuln/stab.

Dhuumfire isn’t good damage. You can make it good damage, but in the same way you could have used the resources used making it good to make all your other conditions significantly better; it isn’t worth it to make dhuumfire good compared to what you lose. Dhuumfire really just makes it so that sitting in Shroud and spamming 1 doesn’t totally murder your condi DPS, and the rare occasion you are in a situation to cleave and Shroud 4 is down.

Sororita.3465:

If i build full zerker as you would have me then i’d be dead in short order after not being able to damage them.

There is no possible way for balanced sustain to allow a full glass build to survive through another glass build’s burst. Which was my entire second point, sustain isn’t the issue, its our lack of ability to always apply that sustain effectively. There is a huge difference between sustain and what you are asking for.

Sororita.3465:

Blighter’s boon doesn’t do anything against people who can out maneuver you. The fact that our defensive lines arn’t as effective as other professions is worrisome, especially when we have to trait for it and most of their sustainability comes from weapons and utilities.

First we have far more sources of boons that don’t require any

Sororita.3465:

Concerning the sustain of a MM, in SPvP they have no trouble. In WvW it’s as easy as one soul spiral to kill their minions. Minions a majority of the time do not work. Even so, the healing coefficient on siphons is still extremely low.

Then the MM is running a kitten build. You can heal your minions for 10k with a single Transfusion/Life from Death, on top of their base HP which is the same as mid to high base HP for players.

Also yes, the coefficient is low per hit, but you can’t look at it on a per-siphon context. Locust Swarm alone can proc 125 Vampirics, each well can proc at least 25 Vampiric Rituals, and the damage absolutely matters within the context of how powerful the skill can be. These coefficients also build up, considering we have AoE or multi-hit on almost everything, and they can heal you while effectively invulnerable in Shroud. Look at Life from Death, a very nice support trait, which has only 0.15 healing power coefficients per second even in ideal situations. Now could they maybe have the scaling buffed a bit? Potentially, but that won’t be affecting many builds much, since MM is the only current “meta” build that uses Cleric’s anyway, and in your own example zerker would get almost nothing from scaling changes.

Blood Magic alone grants up to 6 source of sustain, most of which proc constantly, as opposed to the more occasional proc of other traits. Also, most of our sustain isn’t purely defensive, all of what you list also deals damage that ignores toughness. So every hit of Vampiric swings the HP differences by double its listed value. That isn’t to say that there aren’t specific traits or skills that need help, but sustain traits isn’t what is making us weak sustain wise when MM, shout reaper, and various other builds can pick up acceptable sustain just fine.

The thing holding us back is the lack of proper defensive options that allow us to leverage our sustain; just look at our sustain 1v1, which borders on oppressive in many matchups, compared to teamfighting. The thing holding us back now is stuff like reasonable access to stability to allow us to continue applying our sustain-granting abilities (poison, weakness, chill, healing, life force, etc.), blocks or invulns to stall for CDs or Shroud, Spectral Mastery and some Spectrals being weak which limits some burst LF/protection options. But realistically the builds that are able to leverage our sustain have insane sustain, I’ve never seen someone complain that MM couldn’t sustain enough.

It is weak. It has decent utility in condi builds if you need utility, but even a lot of condi builds don’t run it anymore (PvE goes scepter plus two offhands). While yes it offers “utility”, a lot of its utility is pretty mediocre, or easily replaceable, and it deals less direct damage on every single mark combined than a power weapon does in a single of its larger hits.

Its an okay weapon in certain situations, but overall extremely mediocre and really only sees use because we have really mediocre ranged/utility options in general.

Blaine Tog.8304:

EDIT: I tested Chilling Darkness and Bitter Chill’s interactions with the Blind on CC from Master of Corruptions, and they don’t apply to you in either sPvP or PvE.

That’s unfortunate, would have easily been the best thing since killing yourself with Plague.

Alright guys, the video is uploaded here hope you enjoy the show.

Zoltreez.6435:

the reason necro is focused is because a necro is a total game changer if you leave him alone for like 10 sec…..

I won’t argue if its true that we are game changers or not, but its 100% irrelevant to why we get focused. You focus the easy kill, not the most influential player, the only time game impact matters is when choosing between two targets with very similar priority otherwise.

Hey guys, so like the title says But of Corpse will be recording an episode tomorrow, at 10am PST. I’ll try to have it up as fast as possible afterwards on YouTube, my guess is it’ll take an hour or two, though it might be an additional 0 to ? hours depending on whether I can even remember how to log on to that channel, and how quickly I can figure out inevitable audio issues. I’ll look into doing this live on twitch in the future if there is interest.

This first episode back we’ll probably go on a high level overview of the profession, since June was our last time. Then we’ll get into more specifics as we can get guests on the show.

Besides informing you of it coming back, I figured I’d open a thread for discussion/questions, so feel free to leave questions you want addressed during the podcast, and then obviously feedback after. Also if anyone is available to be a guest on future shows please let me know through a PM.

Thanks for your time, and I hope you enjoy the show!
-Bhawb

Yeah, they just ignored the fact that revive orbs can do the same basic thing they said we shouldn’t be able to do.

Rezok.2709:

And tbh, beside mesmers and ele not many can stand their ground outnumbered (assuming the enemies are skilled).

Thief can stealth, so while they can’t directly fight who cares if they stealth and are 2k units away nearly immediately. Everyone else (besides us) have a ton of blocks, invulns, immunities, etc, all of which easily add up to 10s of negation. They might not be able to last forever, but there is a reason every other profession in the game can successfully run full glass damage builds in PvP without being instakilled, and Necromancers haven’t (with the rare Lich cheese exception).

Anchoku.8142:

do you use LfD and how often?

I use it in my cleric MM build, it has some crazy (1.5) healing power scaling. Anytime someone tries to throw out AoE I can pop Shroud, use Transfusion to heal my minions, and then leave for another heal + protection. This heals them for 8.8k-10k, plus the 3s protection. The other use for LfD is simply seeing a situation where the heal + protection is in a good spot to mitigate some lighter AoE, especially if Shroud 4 is down. The above thought process works exactly the same for non-minion allies, sub protection.

Its also a good choice for when you’ve finished a res. Transfusion and/or normal res, then dropping shroud for the extra 2.5k-3k heal is really nice.

Rezok.2709:

Isn’t being outnumbered supposted to be a struggle for EVERY profession? Otherwise you are the very definition of overpowered.

While true, every other profession can stall for pretty significant amounts of time regardless of how many opponents they face. Mesmer bunkers right now can stall for 15s+ against infinite enemies dealing infinite damage, whereas a Necromancer would be killed immediately.