They only have to drop a traitline to be chronomancer and get the F5, everything else is optional.
No.
Do we know how this will be introduced? As in, is it a trait?
My guess would be one of the three heavy professions or Necro, and probably getting a break bar after being stunned, much like the current on-CC get X effects.
Then there’s the well that is on the video. Looks like it pulses shadowsteps to its center. Good luck escaping that. Unless, you know, you’re any class but a Necro.
Couldn’t watch the video, but unless it is some new kind of effect that you can’t dodge roll during all that does is draw out a single dodge, which isn’t particularly the scariest ability.
Also we don’t share Spectral Walk. Their version is infinitely better than Spectral Walk could ever hope to be, because it reverses everything that has happened to their character since its initial activation: they return to the same spot with the same endurance, HP, and CDs they had when they activated the first time. I’ll have to see the CD, and of course there are tons of ways to screw yourself over on accident, but that is really strong.
Yes, come to the staff-less side, we’ve been waiting for you.
Its possible its just bugged, it has happened a lot before and it wouldn’t surprise me if its happening again.
The biggest problem with using Bone Minions/DN in a non-MM build is that it is a massive investment that you probably wouldn’t want to make. Condi builds can’t afford losing an extra stun break for Bone Minions while simultaneously giving up FitG, power builds can’t afford the loss of personal damage. However, once the changes come through and the third line is a bit more flexible, I think it will be possible, especially in condi Lingering Curse builds. DN + bone minions give you up to 6-8 stacks of 10s poison plus 12s of weakness, all AoE, every 16s, plus direct damage. That is insane downed-body cleave, its basically a shorter duration but faster acting CPC without the self weakness. People won’t be able to res through that realistically, and it won’t hurt them as much since they can take 10% less damage from poisoned enemies and get greater marks in the same line.
Also it is always the one closest to you that blows up with the active. Yes it is stupid, but at least it is consistent so you can plan around it.
I’m not saying it hasn’t been justified on many occasions, just that it is common.
Also makes a fair bit of sense that we’d get shouts since Ranger “taught” us how to use our greatsword, would make sense if they taught us shouts too.
Their wells actually seem significantly worse than ours for non-PvE. They are going to be long CD and a lot of the power will be tied into the very telegraphed end of the skill, meaning enemies will almost never be inside when they end.
“… delete Necro…” did I hear that in the live stream?
Yes, the devs are aware of our opinion of them, and so they made the joke we all make all the time.
Shouts dont really make sense on a necro. Id expect something completely new for us. But other options could be spirits or auras.
Orders say hi. Orders are functionally the same as shouts (as far as transitioning to GW2), and allow actual unique team support. Also, the current list of professions that could get shouts (and we know someone will) is: Elementalist, Thief (shouting stealth?), Engineer, and Necromancer. Revenant can’t get it because the specialization is getting 6 shouts (Rev gets 5 skills per specialization atm), Warrior/Guardian/Ranger already have them.
My moral is just fine, really, and people I talk to in game don’t have low moral at all. The difference is the forums are only going to have people who are passionate (either really mad or really happy), and people like me who are really happy don’t feel the need to incessantly post like people who are mad do.
And really constant kittening is pretty par for the course for the Necromancer forums.
Wells are not remotely necro-only. They could have called them whatever they want, wells are simply (now) ground-targeted AoE abilities that leave pulsing effects for a few seconds after casting. This isn’t unique to Necromancers by any means.
Also, I’m more and more getting the feeling that we could get shouts (a great way to reintroduce Orders, we know someone is getting shouts and it most likely won’t be any of the 3 who already have shouts, and we’re one of the better professions to get it), which could be a really good addition as far as getting group utility is concerned.
Honestly the only thing about Axe that I really care about is the 3rd skill. Make it a blast finisher, make it not be blocked by Aegis (boon removals should remove Aegis), fix its boon priorities a bit, and I don’t care a massive amount what you do with the other two skills, as long as 3 doesn’t change.
Fairly soon we’ll be able to do them live again when I’m back home for the summer. Let us know what you’d like for topics besides the usual covering of new announcements as they come.
Minors still have a very valid reason for varying in power, and its because of tiered unlocking. Doesn’t really affect us since we’re 80s, but Necromancers who are leveling will unlock it one at a time, so it makes sense for the minors to still be “tiered” off in power.
Though I do agree minors that directly synergize with each other are really cool.
Foot in the Grave being baseline is too strong. Lingering Curse being Master is also way too strong. Death Nova is too strong. The answer to helping the Necro traits isn’t to just make everything baseline and move everything into the “perfect” tier so that it creates the most ridiculous build possible. Also could we keep all the suggestions in one thread?
Nerf to FITG has hurt necros too much.
You mean the very significant buff to FitG? Because it is significantly better now than it ever has been since Shade was nerfed to create it.
I WANT THEM ALL!
Because some of them are blatantly OP. 50% vigor uptime by passively being hit with crits, Unholy Sanctuary at adept tier, Necromantic Corruption at Master. I’d also say Reaper’s protection is fine as it currently is, the only change I’d make to it is always fearing your enemy even if they are outside of range, or only allowing it to proc when they are in range.
Death Magic as presented to us in the preview was pretty okay. Not to say that changes couldn’t be made, but these aren’t the necessary changes either.
There is no actual reason why ANet can’t balance DS and LF. They might require much more fine-tuning of numbers to make sure it is just right without being too much or too little, but there is no innate reason that a second health bar can’t work.
The real problem is ANet seems to have a bit of a disconnect from reality with how strong our life stealing is, we don’t have enough that scales into multi-target combat, and ANet seems to refuse the idea of mixing DS with a few, limited options for more traditional defenses for the times that Necros really need it.
Dark Path is absolutely fine with its current setup. The only changes I’d ever see to it are shortening cast time and making it travel over terrain better.
The thing is axe mastery could be good if they buffed 2 to actually do burst damage. As it stands its slightly less than dagger auto attack. Its the weapon thats the real problem. Not the trait.
No, the trait is objectively worse than its current version. The weapon is also pretty bad, but the trait is garbage still.
I do like the idea of adding new ways to use LF, and because it costs something, it isn’t strictly speaking power creep, as power creep only affects when you add something for “free”. Plus, let’s face it, this entire trait change is a massive power creep for every single profession.
As for your specific idea, I don’t think a 3 use combination would happen, where each combination is separate, because it would be hard to convey. You’d end up with a pretty massive tooltip to get the point across. In addition, it gives far too many effective skills, 27 if I can math (3 slots, 3 options for each slot).
However, having LF conversion to HP I think is a great idea, and I’d say it is worth putting outside of DS, like having an F2 skill that channels, consuming LF as it goes and healing for how much consumed, possibly while giving a defensive effect. Also, I do like the idea of Rituals, although I personally prefer the idea of them being toggle-effects with degeneration (of either LF or HP) like we see on Revenant. But yeah, I’d love to see more uses for LF, and as you say it presents risk/reward and promotes better play, which is good.
It was a really dumb change, if they were going to take the easiest possible way to remove turret engi from the game they should have done it months ago.
A defiance bar is something I could see happening for Necro, it is very similar to our old shade mechanic, only with a built-in CC health bar instead of being forced to try to DPS them out of DS.
Shouts are possible, I think we’re one of the best fits for them after the three that already have them.
Its really hard to theory craft a real build right now, as opposed to seeing a few small synergies between traits, without being able to see them in game, see how the damage is, the new stats, etc.
Ex: on one hand I’ll probably be playing a cleric MM build, but there is a good chance that it won’t bring nearly enough personal damage with Death Nova gone to be able to fight on point. Might be worth grabbing something else. On a side note, I really wish they’d introduce a few more stat combination in PvP.
Parasitic Contagion needs to be a Blood Magic trait, no other build has to select between its major damage option and sustain in the same tier. Power builds can have Death Perception and Close to Death while still picking up Vampiric Rituals, MMs can get whatever they want and still get blood magic sustain, but condi builds have to choose? Makes absolutely no sense.
It was a decent idea that worked on other builds, but was an awful idea. I imagine they looked at what was happened to say Mesmer and realized that was cool, and then in trying to move the idea over someone just didn’t think too much about Axe, just that the current Axe training is pretty mediocre.
Necromancers have absolutely amazing condition removal, and it even got buffed (slightly).
Self healing needs to be base, the idea that it requires a trait is absolutely against what this trait rework is about.
Also % HP based siphoning is probably a worse idea than what we have now. Siphoning and related things are best balanced by relating them to damage (the only way to get high life steal is via high damage, so you can’t steal tons of health while being tanky), or relying on investing in tanky stats. An ICD isn’t the worst idea for Vampiric simply to keep it relevant to every build, but otherwise the numbers just need to go up flat, not rely on HP investment (which has all kinds of issues in GW2).
Guardian’s don’t give up personal defense (much) for support, they come hand in hand because the Guardian gets personal rewards for helping allies (such as applying boons to allies heals you) and can help allies while using “selfish” skills (aegis on block).
I’m not saying the idea of hurting yourself to help allies is bad, but the support we give must be very significant and unique if we have to directly hurt ourselves to do it, as opposed to every other form of support.
Signet Mastery will never proc while you are in DS
Also, those are a lot of ideas that don’t really address any of the problems with the profession, and aren’t particularly interesting gameplay decisions. Simply sit in DS for as long as physically possible (forever if you are in WvW) and get effects. That’s pretty boring.
We have defense skills, whether they are good enough or not is up for debate but we have quite a few defensive skills. The difference is we don’t tend to see “pure” defense, we see things like chill and weakness, life force gain, or healing, many of which rely on hitting enemies to active.
Life stealing is a fun idea, and is pretty core to the theme that people expect of GW Necromancers. No point to scrap it when they can buff what we do have.
Not that there aren’t ways to add active healing as well, but that tends to be in the realm of skills, not traits.
I do dislike the idea that minions have to be an entire build type. While GW1 you did have “MM” builds, the entire build wasn’t just minions, it was minions and supporting skills to set them up. I don’t particularly think we need more than 1-2 minion-only traits, as long as stuff like Beyond the Veil, Transfusion, Deathly Invigoration exist to allow a Necromancer to support the minions.
Parasitic Contagion should be in Blood Magic. No other build has to give up its main defining feature just to get sustain.
There is no “replacing” a single line, it is just a third line that you can mix and match as you want. The only special stipulation is that you can only have 1 elite specialization, and you need that specialization equipped if you want the specialization stuff.
Hopefully there wont be one at all. Would be sad if you have to use a tree to use a weapon AND use points just to make it worth it. :P Just seems to strange to me…
You have to equip the specialization to use any of the new stuff it provides.
They didn’t have condition damage, I’m almost sure he was wearing Soldier gear, these were just characters made really quickly to show off the new stuff (for Necromancer at least).
Minions don’t remotely die instantly in PvE, they have higher base HP (and in many cases armor) than players do. Utility-skill minions have base 17k HP, elite/heal minions have 22k base, and that is increased to 25k and 33k respectively. There is almost nothing in the game that does that much damage in a single hit.
The reason MM isn’t used in PvE is because the utility they bring (distracting the enemies) isn’t particularly necessary when you can just bring them into a corner and murder them in half a second. In addition, you lose the ability to run the standard glass cannon build when running minions. The first issue is an issue in the design of PvE and won’t change until we get more difficult content, at which point being able to summon 141k HP worth of meat shielding is potentially relevant. The second issue might be fixed in this current trait rework, as minions won’t actually compete too much with DPS loadouts, as you can still go two other trees and those extra trees don’t add a ton of damage.
On a side note, how is Axe Training allowed to be so bad when Warriors have Forceful Greatsword which not only affects more abilities, has much higher effective CDR, has non-conditional 10% damage increase (on more damaging abilities), but also grants might on crit. It is objectively a better trait in every single way, and yet it exists at the same tier in the same tree for Warriors.
If anything the scepter trait is just so good that Terror can’t hope to keep up as is, and could deserve buffs (like merging Master of Terror into it) to compete. I can’t imagine anyone taking a bit of damage here and there over the massive strength of the scepter trait. The main reason condi duration doesn’t usually matter in PvP is because you usually give up quite a bit for it, but in this case a single trait gets you everything.
They were both adept major death magic traits, so actually yeah we wouldn’t have been able to get both, especially since Putrid Mark was most likely created solely to replace it.
If you don’t want the new DS, don’t need the new traits, don’t like GS, etc. then that doesn’t really matter. For example if the new specialization removes DS and you were planning to build an unholy sanctuary spectral bunker, then you really don’t want to lose DS.
I do feel like forcing curses into a single tree with basically no reason to spread out the traits makes little sense. Every other build has good reasons to go other places, but condi has had all but Dhuumfire shoved into Curses.
Move Parasitic Contagion to Blood Magic GM, drop Deathly Invigoration to Master, Transfusion to Adept, merge Bloodthirst into Vampiric Precision.
You can fear people into the spectral wall if you position correctly can’t you?
Yes. It also gives you protection, and can be used for area denial.
Or make the ICD per attacker, so something like Axe 2 doesn’t kill you but it still scales into fights.
They said the cooldown reduction is baseline now. MM will be pretty decent with the changes, though I recommend you stick to Death Nova as I think minions would kill themselves with Corruption.
They transfer conditions off themselves every attack, which is at the worst 3 seconds. Also you can give them protection, and you have Transfusion, Deathly Invigoration, and potentially some other stuff to heal them. Should be very possible to keep them alive through conditions, the only worry is if they get a CC condition it makes it hard for melee minions to attack to get it off.