elementalist won
y’know because being junk for two years is mathematically improbable that they’d remain junk for even longer… right?
Yeah man, definitely aren’t any Eles in PvE. And we’ve never had a meta that was dominated by elementalists so hard that people would jokingly point to whichever team had the most eles as the winners. Right? Oh wait.
If we got heals in ds we would he ridiculously op in pvp.
If they started with self-traiting only, not at all. DS is awful at procing our siphoning, its weaker than literally every other weapon we have.
Perma weakness and cripple are both extremely easy to get. Weakening shroud is base 20%, enfeebling blood is about 25%, bone minions + poison field is 50%, CPC has 37.5%, SoS is 16.7%, Withering Precision is 25% uptime. We have a lot of uptime, and very easy ways to get 100% uptime.
As for Cripple, just Flesh Golem + some condi duration is 100% under ideal conditions.
hey bhawb part(s) of cpc make it insane the general idea, the condition duration, the cast time
Id like to point out that it only applies those once
doesn’t create a field or anything
7 seconds of weakness on a 20s CD means with 100% condition duration and master of corruption you get 14s of weakness, blind, and vulnerability on a 16s CD. That’s too much.
I don’t think the changes are the issue, I think the lack of changes is.
Just look at the massive buffs to most of the other classes,
Power-creep will leave necro pretty low on the food chain.
Its not like Hambow or S/D thief got buffed, in fact they were nerfed. The overbearing builds were nerfed, with weaker builds getting all the buffs. Power creep happens when buffs aren’t accompanied by nerfs.
http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/2014/04/now-consulting-at-arenanet-on-guild-wars-2/
While this isn’t a promise that everything will be perfect, there is actual hope.
The first step to making Blood Magic good is making all self-traited sources of healing heal your actual HP pool while in DS, as well as regen.
Note that Transfusion would be changed so that it didn’t heal you, only allies.
Focus doesn’t need to be condition friendly, its a power weapon. Warhorn is also perfectly strong as is, and the change to CPC makes it completely insane.
If we had decent finishers then weakness wouldn’t be such an issue. Blasting poison fields would be a great way to add weakness uptime without making it free.
Well I can see this thread is going well.
To OP: the second you mentioned the profession is viable in all game modes you lost credibility. You make it seem like every single Necromancer player is just somehow missing this magical little thing only you are aware of, which frankly comes off as arrogant at best.
That could be a little bit much.
Besides wouldn’t you prefer ALL heals get to you at 25-35% effectiveness instead of some life siphons.
Not really, the skill itself is entirely counterable, just whack the person with one CC and its over. And no, the first thing should be to get all self-healing to work in DS at 100%. There is absolutely no good reason that any profession should have mechanics built in that hard counter each other like that. If its a balance issue then make the change then balance our traits to the new mechanics.
What if rather then life stealing working normally in death shroud, what if it generated life force? Personally, I hate this idea. But its better then it just being an insignificant damage boost.
I think keeping them separate is best. Anything that starts to look like the beta Necromancer who is impossible to get out of DS is going to scare ANet away, and making them cross over like that has balance implications (LF is defensively worth more than HP on a 1 to 1 basis, plus the ability to “permanently” stay in DS has issues with Unholy Sanctuary).
Tooltips shouldn’t be trusted for 100% accuracy on certain things, condition duration being one of them. Master of Terror is just a 50% bonus fear duration, I’m very certain it adds towards the 100% cap, its just possible that you have 125% (or close, since the game rounds to quarter seconds on tooltips) duration and the tooltip isn’t obeying the duration cap, even though the skill itself still does.
Depends on the game mode. But Emapudapus has it right, the issue isn’t entirely related to balance (although it would make certain builds better in PvP, builds that are currently subpar), it is more the fact that no one should have forced mechanics that counter each other. It is one thing for Lich/Plague to desummon minions (mechanics countering each other) it is another for our very profession mechanic and our main source of defense to actively counter an entire trait tree and another defensive mechanic.
1) Its basically unnecessary to have a healing support in PvE, and in PvP its more an incidental side effect of running elementalist or guardian support builds. Necromancer doesn’t have good support builds.
2) If you want to force yourself into support, despite it being subpar (its fine if you just want to mess around and have fun, just realize its subpar), then healing power/toughness and either power or condition damage are the stats you want. You pick one or the other depending on your weapon/trait choices.
Necromancer support isn’t bad because of traits, in fact we have really nice traiting for it, its bad because we have not one true support weapon. As long as we are stuck with that, support won’t be able to work.
Plague is a 30s AoE blind that completely shuts down melee damage output. Its more than just stalling for a heal, it allows an otherwise fully glass necromancer to easily solo hold a point in PvP for 30s. It is the exact opposite of lich, it gives you an incredibly strong defensive boost (which is the point) via condis.
i think he also meant ranged skills with no tell or travel time i.e marks / scepter 2 and auto etc.
There is a tell, a casting time. Yes its not possible to tell where they are being aimed, but there is definitely a tell to all of them. Not every single tiny ability in the game needs a 1s cast + travel time + aftercast animation.
These are way too much. A lot of these skills are just fine as is.
Could you at least consider this, a more reliable and consistent way to apply weakness and perhaps cripple to our enemies in combat. And if you’re feeling generous also 1 or 2 more options to apply immobilize?
We can easily get perma weakness if we want, cripple as well, and while immobilize would be nice we also have 3 sources of that, one of them built into the profession.
Lingering Curse doesn’t add bonus duration, it changes the base duration of your scepter skills’ conditions. It is the only thing that effectively raises you past 100% duration.
Transfusion is very very strong on its own. DI isn’t weak, it just doesn’t fit any builds because support Necro isn’t a thing.
They can’t force aggro, but they tend to get it anyway. Just let them melee and use a ranged weapon if you need them to get aggro.
You should have 50% fear duration from your 4 point in Soul Reaping, which would give you 120% (obv only ends up being 100%) duration on fears.
You want less instant cast things, and then immediately name some things that aren’t instant cast at all. Wat.jpg
How does it have bad synergy? Dagger is not a pure DPS weapon, despite what the lack of one on Necromancer might tell you. It happens to be our best DPS weapon, but at its core it is a melee sustain weapon, and Dagger 2 gives very nice sustain.
Not sure how well bear tanks. But you can have up to 6 minions which will give you a lot of HP, considering the average is about 10k HP + 50% when traited, and + 71(ish)% extra in PvE. Blood Fiend and Flesh Golem both have base 13 instead of 10k.
Yes, you entirely can. Microing your minions doesn’t mean you have to start orb-walking them, it applies to the various levels of extra management that you need to make. This includes healing them when they get low, using their actives before they die, setting up CC so they can hit, keeping track of their positioning and who they are attacking, using their abilities at the right time to maximize effectiveness.
For example, if Flesh Golem was simple “knock down players in a line” it would remove all the necessity of setting up CC so he can hit enemies, it removes the need for me to constantly weapon swap to heal him with renewal sigil and use Transfusion to keep him alive even through large AoE, of making sure he’s in the right position before activating him so that he even reaches the target and isn’t stuck on a pebble or immobilized. Its even possible to use his active as a way to get him out of danger while also dealing damage, or for him to catch up to a target.
With Bone Fiend it means I have to make sure I don’t activate him when he’s too far away or during the wrong point of his AA cycle (because it makes the difference between two shots of Rigor Mortis as opposed to one), and making sure I aggro at just the right time so that I don’t get aggro issues with melee minions, but so that he stays at range.
With Shadow Fiend it means using his active to gap close for him, while making sure he’s still in range.
With Bone Minions it means making sure that they are in the right area when I blow them up, because the closest one to me is the one that explodes when both are up (meaning I better know where they both are or one of them will blow his load way off target).
With Flesh Wurm I have to make sure to place him far enough away from the fight to keep him alive yet close enough to still help. When I’m far away (its common to leave him on a point when you rotate) I can watch his area of the screen to tell if a thief is trying to sneak a backcap by killing the wurm before getting on point.
All of these require you to have a unique focus on their actions as well as your own, and cannot happen without the existence of them as separate units. All of those things involve Micro-management.
Necromancer doesn’t need torment on an AA. Staff AA just needs a slight reliability buff (mainly a speed increase), it is a utility weapon not a condi pressure weapon, despite what ANet has done to it.
More sustained pressure on condi Necro has to come at the same time or after they nerf our ability to nuke someone with a fear/condi bomb.
You know, back in the days before forums, when pointless arguments happened on Usenet, there was 1 topic that was sure to recur once every few months on rec.books.tolkien and spawn virulent flame wars: whether Balrogs have wings.
This topic is far less interesting and occurs even more often! :p
Had wings in the movies, it must be true. /thread.
Also I’ll solve this thread for all of you. kitten you all, I’ll equip whatever the hell I want, and you know where to shove your “math” and your “facts”. Now everyone hug and kiss and go back to trash talking each other in the PvP lobby.
This is the issue though: what keeps the community honest? What does the community know about builds? The “community” is just a group of people, people who may be absolute garbage at PvP and think 0/0/6/6/2 is the best power necro build, people who are rated 10% in team/soloQ, or just someone who doesn’t like the build because its run by someone they don’t like. Especially with an automatic system like this.
I mean seriously, the killshot build made it very far in the single largest tournament up to that point, and yet it got a sub 2 star rating. That makes absolutely no sense. There needs to be a split between “pro” submitted builds and just random player builds submitted by some scrub like me. Obviously something I submit would be subject to testing, because I’m not a high level PvPer who has proven the build in high level tournaments, but if the build has been seen and had success in high tier play its just silly that it’d be deleted.
The buff is good for the kind of builds that would run this trait. A spectral build could very easily build enough LF in between the 10s CDs, considering things like Spectral Grasp can give you the 10% needed instantly. Also why are we assuming that you entered DS at 5 HP and used all of your LF before? There are plenty of builds out there that can deal 10k+ damage fairly quickly.
What if you entered DS at 10k HP because the enemy was about to stomp your teammate and you needed to clutch Doom them away, but then after you leave (because you need to stay in your normal mode to pressure that person), a Thief comes up and bursts you. You still have plenty of LF, but you just didn’t have the CD. Now this procs and you get pulled into DS, your HP starts filling, and you have time to try to heal up and delay things.
Does this make it worth taking the trait? No, because this trait relies on a high LF generating build, likely a spectral bunker, but that isn’t that good of a build for completely unrelated reasons.
Isn’t there some trait that buffs our toughness while channeling? And isn’t there another one which turns a % of our toughness into power? I seem to remember something like that a while back concerning the viability of an axw/ x dagger/x build.
Dark Armor = 400 toughness while channeling (axe/dagger 2 and DS 4), and 10% of toughness into power is the 5 point death magic trait.
Then why can’t they just take the next step, and get rid of the AI part altogether? If they’d just make the spirit weapon active abilities the skill itself. A ground targeted CC blast finisher for the hammer, or a healing rain that cleanses conditions for the bow, or a projectile blocking dome for the shield. Just adjust the parameters of the skills accordingly, and not have to worry about how faulty the AI programming is.
I’d much, much rather see that than any sort of buff to the current skills.
Because some of us enjoy (gasp) having to micro manage the summoned allies. In Guardian’s case some of the strength of having them out is their sustained presence, which you can’t replicate. Hammer gives some decent CC while you keep it out, bow gives condi removal, sword has damage, shield does… something. You couldn’t just remove the AI without completely changing how the skill worked.
Am I the only person that wants a bone minion plushie?
I’d buy it. I’d probably go for Blood Fiend first though.
The target’s armor won’t make differences due to coefficient no. Damage done = all power multipliers (power, weapon damage, weapon coefficient) divided by armor. So it doesn’t matter if the coefficient is high or low, as long as power and weapon damage are proportionate. For example if your power is now half of what it used to be in lich, but lich’s skill coefficients are doubled, everything will be the same for Lich skills.
Dagger 2 is useful when you can’t melee for a little bit, and it heals me for 2.7k per cast, plus 9 procs of Vampiric for 38 each, so just about at the 3k mark. That is completely reasonable, the only buff I’d do to it is reduce its cast time by 0.5-1s.
Make it a bit faster, it isn’t remotely a high damage ability so its not a huge deal. Otherwise I think its basically fine.
1) Too strong. SA is already a very strong skill, giving it stability on top is too much.
2) Removing passive CD potentially makes the skill a bit too strong against channeled abilities. I’d start off by giving it the 1s ICD per enemy, instead of total. It also needs to siphon not just heal.
3) Axe doesn’t need bleed, its a power weapon 100%
4) Seriously no. Dagger 4/5 are extremely strong, 3 could potentially use a slight reduction, 2 needs a cast time reduction not CD reduction.
5) We’re not supposed to have OOC mobility. This skill is very strong and taken a lot as is.
6) Agreed.
7) Condition removal is useless in PvE, not to mention just a wee bit of might isn’t that good when LH ele can bring 22 or PS warrior can bring 25 on their own.
8) a) Agreed
b) Agreed
c) Agreed
d) What? Minions siphon now already, unless there is a bug I missed. Could you list which ones you don’t see siphoning?
e) This trait’s HPS is already fine, the reason it isn’t taken is more because we can’t live very well without DS and a support Necro isn’t a thing
f) I don’t feel like this fixes the issue, but it might so I’ll back it simply off the basis of the trait being awful
Note: telling ANet to “listen to the community” when the community itself agrees on absolutely not one single detail of how to change the class isn’t possible.
I agree a reduction in CD to go with the reduced duration but have to wonder if Plague form could not have used a bit of buffing. I never use it outside of WvW because it does not seem to do much of anything in most other situations. Don’t even get me started on racial elites.
Plague is extremely strong in all game modes for its uses. You could buff the two forms that are basically never used (the non-blind ones), but otherwise the blind spam is very relevant all the time.
One day, I hope, dagger two will not be literally useless. Ideally by completely removing what is there currently, and putting something useful in there. Like a small gap closer, or like, anything that isn’t an awful channeled ability that wastes valuable AA time.
I use dagger 2 all the time. Just because it isn’t part of a DPS rotation doesn’t mean its useless.
Same can be said for minionmancer, most of its power comes from its passive minions.
This is blatantly false. MM has a max of 1.5k damage from its minions, and besides that all you get from them passively attacking is a tiny bit of HP/s and a bit of soft CC. That’s using every single minion available (including Blood Fiend which is absolute garbage), and blowing Bone Minions up, because for every second they are alive you lose DPS, plus its assuming you have all of the relevant traits, and that your enemy’s keyboard has become disconnected and is no longer able to move.
MMs strength comes from how difficult it is to kill it in 1v1/2v2 due to its ability to spread non-damaging conditions, CC, regain HP/LF, and overall outsustain just about any build, and then slowly wear them down through fairly low but consistent sustained DPS. The minion’s passive attacking contributes almost exclusively to the sustained DPS. However to get them to land any attacks at all against an enemy capable of pressing any combination of W, A, S, and D, requires you to actively land CC abilities (all of which are active). To get the minions to stay alive long enough to deal any damage requires active use of abilities to reduce enemy damage/heal minions. If the MM does not actively contribute to the fight, you can very easily infinitely kite all of the minions, and either kill them or just ignore them and go for the MM.
What’s worse is that I think Necro’s ability to shroud stomp in PvP/WvW will lead to stability stomps being considered OP and Necros will end up having their stability nerfed.
And when Anet nerfs, they nerf into the ground.
Stability stomp was already possible in the way that mattered. The lag exploit you could use to stab stomp right now was never used still, because its awful. This won’t change anything.
1) 1s ICD per attacker
2) Passive now siphons HP, not just heals (can be reduced slightly if needed)
3) Passive works while in DS
There are a variety of skins that do this, including legendaries.
Just because there are two targets doesn’t mean an AA should generate 12% LF while dealing reasonably high damage. You’re dealing pretty reasonable DPS, while also gaining around 1.2k LF base per chain.
We do need a bit of AoE scaling LF generation, but 1v1/2v2 isn’t at all bad as far as LF is concerned, its the 3v3 up till zerging starts that we need LF help on.
I disagree with adding utilities/heal to DS. This creates a mass of balance issues without particularly solving any on its own. The only core issue with DS is that it wastes your own traits, and can trick your allies into wasting theirs. So allow self traited healing/regen to go through DS at 100%, fix the party UI so allies can know what’s going on, and then give DS some proper AoE scaling. That’s really all of the core changes to current mechanics we need besides some number tweaks here and there.
Outside of that Necromancer needs new mechanics (utilities/heals/elites/weapons/traits) to fix our other issues like lack of build diversity, badness in PvE, etc.
1) All Necromancer traits + regen heal your actual HP while in DS
2) Minion AI is changed to only attack targets that you tell them to (no more self-aggroing, the Necro has to initiate their aggro with an attack), and is fixed to work 100%
3) Add new weapons
I think the CD should be lowered a bit. They removed the biggest thing that warranted the CD, which was the ability to insta-gib someone. Right now there is no way that you are going to 1 shot someone unless they are incredibly squishy.
I tried it but i just cannot love the minions they are all so ugly…
Whoa! You can’t say that out loud, they might hear you. They are very sensitive, I mean just look at Flesh Golem picking flowers.