A few changes to our skills wouldn’t have been enough either. We’re talking going from absolutely worthless in every way with not a single piece of meaningful team support, to somehow being meta, with there being absolutely nothing currently on the profession that could have been built off of to create a niche for us. They had to somehow create unique team support, and strong enough team support that we’d be worth taking over other professions, in addition to pretty significant DPS additions not based on might/fury (since most groups will provide that for us).
It was unrealistic to expect, we’re in a better spot than before, all we can do now is try to continue providing feedback, which they obviously listen to, and hope we get a bit loser next time round.
Given that the blood minion is probably the kittentest heal in the game and Signet of Vamp is rarely useful… Lol. I like you, Bhawb. But I have absolutely no idea how you continue to have any faith in ANet.
You want to honestly know my secret? I cared so little about what they could announce today that I couldn’t have been disappointed. If they totally screwed up I would have just continued not playing the game much, and if it was awesome then cool, I’ll play again. So I pretty much had no emotional investment, and realistically any change is better than suffering through another 3 years of nothing.
The new lingering curse works pretty much like the current one, only 100% increase instead of 33%, and 150 condition damage on top. Its basically just a super-upgraded version of our current one, that allows for 20 second duration bleeds on AA. I’m guessing it will be really useful for soloing.
- Was there any mention of increasing condition duration cap over 100%?
They changed Lingering Curse, it now increases the base duration of all scepter conditions by 100%. This means it works similar to how it does now, only instead of a 33% increase it is 100%. So your 5s conditions on a scepter skill are now 10s, and can then be further increased by condition duration since those are the base durations.
I partially agree but if you really look at the other professions like elementalist, engineer, and mesmer the changes just dont seem to be as balanced. Its like they gave those classes a race car and they upgraded us from horse-n-buggy to ford truck
I absolutely agree that we didn’t keep up in the power creep race.
I wouldn’t say we have as much reason to be universally joyful. Despite the fact that I am happy they listened to us in many cases, and I think these are overall positive changes for us, they aren’t perfect. I would much rather we constructively go over how we feel about the changes (though I don’t think wetting the blanket and whining is appropriate either) than get on our knees before ANet as though they have bestowed us with perfect changes.
Nah, CC’s cast time is absolutely fine, it is standard among healing skills, and it is one of the strongest ones in the game. Just no point in double nerfing it at once just because it now has a trait associated with it.
We were already garbage in PvE, traits weren’t going to magically fix that, and we’re still probably positive from where we are now. Traits can’t fix the deficit that comes largely from skills.
Team support includes ressing people, it just isn’t a PvE focused support. Blood Magic is now really, really strong for WvW/PvP support though, allies not only don’t bleed out (this is really big), they also get pulled to you so you can drop not only a full Transfusion heal on them, but also exit DS to heal them again, and then res them creating a WoB on top of them. Its really nice to actually help in teamfights for once.
In PvE we’re still probably subpar, though we still got some nice buffs with the new vampiric trait.
Overall I’m really excited with the changes. We got most of what we wanted overall, like almost everything they could have done they did. Blood Magic will actually be insanely powerful for support, to the point where I think MM might be playable in teamfights because of how much support Cleric could bring.
I didn’t love the few nerfs we got, however I understood them with the new trait pairings. Plague can now have its CD reduced by a full minute, Lich similarly plus a lot of LF, and Consume can now have a 20s CD. If I had to nitpick I’d also say I’m sad Soul Comprehension is still around.
But overall, great changes. I do somewhat worry about if we can keep up with the power creep, but I’ll talk over that all on But of Corpse soon, we’ll have a new podcast out as soon as I and Blackmoa can get together.
Epidemic is effectively buffed by the changes, because conditions will become more prevalent and it will be easier to reach the maximum effectiveness. Its already the highest potential damage of any skill in the game along with huge possible utility, by a massive margin, it didn’t need to be even stronger. If anything it just needs situations where it is actually useful.
The removal changes are fine. It is a loss to complexity, but overall it is okay. It means stability can never be “hidden” under anything, no conditions or boons can be covered, and I think this is okay for a game that is very obviously not trying to be super complex.
Twitch itself crashed due to heavy loads from E3, nothing ANet could have done about it. After it was taking a while to try to fix it they decided to just (I assume) record it locally and upload to youtube.
Sometimes they wouldn’t stay close to the opponent, so I had trouble exploding them for damage. I’ll do more testing.
One thing to note is the closest minion to you is the one that always explodes first. Make sure to use snares like Scepter 2/Dagger 5, DS 5, or Rigor Mortis to get them to land. It isn’t easy but you get used to it
I totally agree that if I just played passively and tried to have the minions do the majority of damage, it would be pretty boring.
The only people who say or think MM is passive are people who have never played the build well. Even when you talk about “passively” dealing damage, the reality is that no decent player will stand still while the minions hit them, they will actively kite as much as possible. This means to deal damage you have to be actively CCing the enemy to set up your minions to deal damage and land their actives. Everything about the build requires interplay, saying it takes no skill is like saying other Necromancer builds take no skill because they don’t combo with any fields, so they won’t teach you about one of the most important interactions in the game.
You’ll get 1271 theoretical DPS from just 3 minions, not including Shadow Fiend who would bring it to 1563 or Bone Minions which bring it to 1405-1520. So actually if you are popping Bone Minions nearly instantly as they come off CD, you’re only a tiny bit of a DPS loss to Shadow Fiend, assuming you never use Shadow Fiends active. Its also worth noting that using Bone Minions would increase conditions removed without decreasing conditions transfered (1.5s Shadow Fiend attack compared to 3s for each Bone Minion).
Its hard to say though without playing it. My personal guess would be that Bone Minions > Shadow Fiend due to their burst damage, which is 3980 direct damage every 16s, with the only loss being conditions transferred. However, this will also depend on how they work with things like conditions transferred; Bone Fiend will most likely transfer 2 per AA since he hits twice, and if conditions are pulled on summon Bone Minions might still be fine since that is 2 conditions removed on a 16s CD, compared to Shadow Fiend pulling 2 over a 20s period. It all depends on some specifics, which we’ll find out in 8 days I’m guessing.
Haunt takes three seconds to activate, for an attack that deals 1.5x damage of a normal AA. Meaning, you end up losing damage with his activation, and his active (LF + blind) isn’t good enough to warrant how unreliable it is, as people can move out of range, LoS, all kinds of stuff for it to fail. In a condi build you’re better off using Bone Minions for the added burst, though without DN its a bit weak, or a condi utility like CB.
Things with minions would be making sure to use their actives, especially with Haunt its important to be using them a lot, plus it takes 1.5s to summon minions. Though it won’t be as bad as before now that siphoning should go through DS so staying in should be okay, though you won’t really have high LF generation with scepter MH.
Just nerf both but make focus 5 have a much shorter cast time. That would be a buff in general for focus which is obviously terrible purely due to cast times which might have been close to ok at launch, but with power creep and powerful auto attacks are now worthless.
Traits
I would consider Path of Corruption, what you have now is also good, but boon removal is fairly important for MM builds.
Skills
Drop Shadow Fiend. He’s just so awful its not worth it until they fix his active
Also I’d be worried that you have no sustain. No regen, no rune/sigil heals, just consume conditions, so you basically have to burst someone (not something condi MM is good at) or lose, as MM has to spend a fair bit of time not in DS to keep up minions.
It would be a pretty big change for them to do. You’re basically asking them to completely re-do every movement skill that is affected by these things, which is a lot to do. I think its better for the game’s overall balance if they make this change and then follow up with better balance afterwards, such as giving Necromancers more/reliable/better pulls.
Thx for the help. From what I read in the wiki, the minions inherit condition damage and condition duration.
This is not strictly true. If you could open up the minion’s stat sheet, you wouldn’t necessarily see their condition damage/duration match yours exactly, though it could if ANet wanted it to. The reality is that any conditions they apply are treated as though you applied them. You can prove this with Chilling Darkness very easily, if Shadow Fiend was the one applying the Blind, it would just be a blind because it doesn’t have the Chilling Darkness trait, however Haunt will apply the chill on blind. Parasitic Contagion will also heal you for all the conditions your minions have applied; test using Bone Fiend/Flesh Wurm with CPC, they apply the poison through combo finisher and it will heal you.
So they don’t actually have condition damage or duration, the game itself treats everything they apply condition wise as though it was your own.
It might possibly because it’s flesh golem doing the interrupt and not really you. though I’m not sure, never used perplexity runes before.
Basically this. When you activated Charge, you actually just press a button that makes your Flesh Golem use a skill; the Flesh Golem is the one to interrupt them. This is counter to how conditions applied by the minions work, as they are credited to you.
Yes there will be. I understand people are pointing out that each tier is somewhat balanced on its own, but ANet still aims to put much stronger traits at higher tiers. You won’t see Mark of Evasion suddenly become a GM and Close to Death an adept.
Axe 2 is not burst, I already showed it in another thread, but the skill is objectively bad. 3 is the only good skill on the weapon, and even it could serve to be a blast finisher.
I’m not panicking, I’m reacting every bit reasonably. Movement skills in this game are already universally strong. In many cases they literally define whether a build can be played at a high tier or not, by whether that build has enough sources of mobility to distance itself from the also-mobile builds that are attacking it. Lack of mobility is a large thing that keeps Necromancer and specific other builds across the professions from being useful.
Yet despite the fact that movement is universally strong, they are removing the biggest way for immobile builds to compete. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind some kind of change. For example, if you use a 900 range movement skill and you are chilled, then you still move 900 units but you do so 66% slower than if you weren’t chilled. You still move the full range, but you don’t invalidate the only counterplay that immobile builds have. Either that, or you have to greatly increase the amount of pulls, otherwise professions like Necromancer are completely invalidated, they can’t catch up to anyone running away, and can’t stop anyone from running away, except other Necromancers.
If OH got LF generation I’d give it on the 5 skill, with 2-4% per person hit, which also ends up buffing the related trait. Otherwise I think OH dagger is pretty good, though the skills definitely need some reductions on the overall time it takes to hit. As it is right now you cast the abilities for a decent amount of time, and then it takes even longer to actually hit the target. So if it takes the 5 skill 1/4s to land after casting (or however long it is), then reduce the cast time so it overall takes 3/4s-1s to actually take effect from start of cast.
I just want them to show us how they intend to finalize the blood magic revamps and how vampiric aura will work.
This.
Also, whenever they do big announcements like this, we can fairly safely assume it will be 2 weeks, though not guaranteed. But we really need to see the changes, I was hoping there would be a second round of “see what we’ve changed is there anything from here” instead of just one round of it.
If staff’s only problem was lack of ranged DPS it would be fine. It also lacks any other kind of usefulness, except that it is less useless than whatever you’d try to replace it with.
Well first off condi/MM mix has never been good. Minions work for PvP, they’re fine unless its your plan to be on a “pro” team, and they can work in roaming for WvW, but in PvE they really only work if you get stuck in a group so awful that they need the minions to be able to tank the boss for them a bit.
Why?
Because it heals? What about Spiteful Renewal, Signet Mastery, Unholy Sanctuary, Soul Eater and Blighter’s Boon? Should they all be moved to Blood Magic as well?
Also, we don’t know what Blood Magic is actually going to look like, so it’s really too early to tell if anything should be moved there. But generally, having sustain available in specializations other than Blood Magic is good for build diversity.
Because no other build has to have their sustain directly compete with their main traits. Power builds get their main damage/utility from Spite, and don’t have to give up Vampiric Rituals for it, MMs get their main damage/utility from Death Magic, and don’t have to lose sustain options for it. Conditions are the only build right now that have to choose between sutain, or being remotely useful.
I think the big change recently is that with the community manager stuff they are getting more direct feedback they can “trust”. Its a lot easier to convince X person that Necros need Y change when you have 2 community people directly linking you it, with explanations and a concise thread on the forums, as opposed to trying to find it on your own. That, and I think they finally have the resources to make changes, whereas they didn’t before.
So the reason is because as far as the game is concerned your signets aren’t equipped while you are in DS. Its an issue of coding, probably left over from when DS was a downed state. Not exactly a “good” reason, more a holdover of bad coding decisions earlier in game design that needs to be fixed but hasn’t been.
I actually think LC vs Terror is fine, if the rest of our profession was balanced including those two traits. LC gives you better conditions over-time (it shouldn’t give condi damage imo), it makes you a longer-term threat, whereas Terror makes you a legitimate burst-threat, something “unique” to Necro (though not atm due to terror being fairly weak).
What they should do is buff Terror so it actually allows for burst conditions, and push for that difference of LC being a more utility pickup, and Terror for burst damage.
Condition removal is a really over-done and currently boring part of “teamplay”. It can be done in so many ways, including our soon-to-be shouts, it just doesn’t have any meaningful impact. It also doesn’t help perception issues, since people don’t notice who is drawing conditions, just that they don’t have any.
Not that Blood is Power/CPC couldn’t be made to more interesting team support utilities, which I think they should be, but this isn’t the way to do it.
It is much better that we get access to our actual normal utilities while in DS. It lessens the worry of power creep due to so many new things being introduced to the game, and it makes DS feel like less of a “press this button to play a different class” and more like its actually a part of your build.
Yeah, bone minions, bone fiend, and then w/e third skill you want, corrupt boon is probably good if you are going condi. Generally speaking traditional MM is mediocre underwater because you lose Flesh Golem and Flesh Wurm which are really important parts of your build, and despite us having good underwater weapons you don’t get the massive immobilize chaining.
Also, if is going to be a projectile, it should also be finisher where the grasp connects and before the pull completes.
This. The entire point of projectiles is getting the finisher out of them, at the cost of them being less reliable with LoS/projectile defense. Make it a 100% finisher, make it more reliable, and its actually a good skill.
