I don’t think they’d all be nerfs, but some definitely would be yes.
My main issue with this is that in certain cases there seem to be changes not necessarily because there is anything wrong with the way things are, but simply changes for the sake of it. I’ll look at stuff a bit more indepth though in a bit, I really like at least the change to our newest Soul Reaping trait
Wells are perfectly easy to finish her with.
I can’t imagine it would be intended? It seems like it would be more a side effect of how their immune but not really immune buff is working more than anything.
In either case based on that video it seem to take longer that way…. and you still have the risk of being pulled into an orb…. I don’t know that it is really that much easier.
It has been said by anet as fine. It is a really, really easy way to win the fight. Orbs are very easily dealt with (axe 3 clears them instantly), Well of Darkness mops up unwanted visions, and the rest of the fight is just pressing buttons on CD>
Portal and timewarp are both entirely unique mechanics that mesmer brings that no one else can. Portal might not be as strong as it once was now that people are far smarter about checking keeps for hiding players, but you can still potentially steal an objective away from an enemy team without touching a single wall, faster than they can react (or with so few players they don’t know its happening, assuming the sword thing is still true). That is incredibly strong utility.
They also have invis, pulls, and are strong roamers. Power Necro has good ranged AoE DPS yes, but so do other professions like staff eles. Ranged AoE is not unique, we just might happen to have the best version of it right now.
Locust passive is fine as is, its the active that needs fixing (there have been plenty of ideas).
I disagree with your opinion, whole heartedly. Such broad statements of this nature that are so for from the truth, are why posters who are not familiar with the necromancer, should not post about them
I know the profession very well, thank you. It isn’t an opinion that we don’t bring unique utility in PvE and WvW except the very limited things I posted, it is simply a fact. Everything we do someone else can do, while bringing extra utility that we cannot.
Focus 5, and any skill that strips boons, will always prioritize aegis first. Like Flumek said though, boon strips like Chill of Death will simply not happen until the next hit.
And then things like Path of Corruption are tied to unblockable skills, and so ignore it completely I believe.
So what’s the smarter Choice
Dagger or Scepter?
Neither, imo, although dagger should be your choice above scepter. The minion build I use uses the deathly perception trait because otherwise I just don’t deal all that significant of damage, and going melee really negates the point of having all these minions tanking the boss’ aggro. Also since the minions will hold aggro you can basically sit in DS nearly forever.
So I tend to use staff (for LB) and dagger/focus for when I have to jump out.
Leveling with minions is easy mode. You can use minions in dungeons, fractals, and open world content that isn’t champ boss farming, but I’d suggest only doing so in dungeons that don’t punish minions (Lupicus) and ones that don’t stack every fight (Ascalonian Catacombs). But for general pug groups fighting bosses by kiting and stuff, minions make the fights far easier.
But don’t go a full minion build once you hit 80. You really just need 4 points into Death Magic for increase HP and reduced CDs, and the rest should be into damage trees.
This entire thread is precisely why people can’t take MMs seriously. Come on guys, you need to know the build better than that :P
PvE power necro is the least useful build to have on your team. Everyone else will bring something more to an organized group. WvW is a similar issue, you bring nothing unique that someone else couldn’t do much better.
Just because you have some success on something doesn’t make it good, it just means you have some anecdotal success. I can make MM work in every game mode, its still not a top tier build at all except against mid-tier players in soloQ.
Play a Mesmer.
Then ask yourself again what class really doesn’t have a place in, well, anywhere.
Except mesmers bring a lot of utility, including some unique utility that no one else can. Far more desirable in PvE content, always have a unique place in WvW, and while they might be a bit undertuned in sPvP atm, Helseth proved they aren’t too weak when he won ToL on mesmer.
Not saying they don’t need some balancing, but Mesmer brings unique utility, and as long as that utility is useful (and it always has been at least to a degree), they will always have a unique niche to fill. Necromancers bring nothing that can’t be done by someone else except burst boon removal (the only reason you can justify necro in tPvP atm), and in WvW plague form.
Also, out-condi’ing someone has nothing to do with a 1v1 against another condi build. It has to do with the fact that Necromancers, the king of conditions, actually put out less condi pressure right now than engineers, who are also more mobile and tankier at the same time. And even engis are still a bit weak in the meta afaik.
First off, MMs “problems” about them being too easy could be fixed very easily. I keep wanting to make a post about how to do it but get lazy. Basically remove all the offensive passive buffs they get (Training of the Master and Necromatic Corruption) and move them to their active skills, and boom MM takes relatively similar skill to other builds.
And no, MM is basically in its own little bubble for reasons that were pointed out above. To get the full MM build everyone knows requires a full investment of every trait, with the only exception being 0/0/6/6/0, which still only gets an adept trait (big whoop). 4/0/6/4/0 doesn’t even get “free” adept traits, you have very specific options you would take, Transfusion/MoE are always better than what people always cite (“omg but wut if necro took bloodthirst with better siphons they’d be OP zomg!”… no), and Spite has the focus trait/SS.
The MM builds even go further, because you have to run specific sigils/runes/amulets (depending on exactly what niche you’re focusing into), so they don’t even get wiggle room there, because MM has to be tanky and it has to have certain things or it just doesn’t work.
Generally speaking, unless you buff Necromancer base (like making DS stronger), MMs won’t be affected. And if MM somehow gets buffed, they’ll just nerf it (they really love nerfing MM). So why remove an entire build, especially one of the the few builds we have that are actually viable and has a ton of interesting build variety, just because of something that will never actually happen.
Note: This build will cost you upwards of 1200g to fully realize. You will need to do a lot of farming to get enough gold for this.
Its also an awful build and you shouldn’t try to make it, which I basically pointed out. It was simply the highest condition damage stat possible.
Torch – based on an “anti” torch. AoE control weapon that involves chilling.
Hammer – melee control/support
Pistol OH – shoots jagged horrors
I could come up with quite a few basic themes for basically everything except bow, which I really don’t see having anything past condition arrows, which are kinda boring imo.
Basically, its not that Necros can’t use any weapon, but the weapons become more and more trivial to the actual effects they are causing. This is basically true of all the caster classes, they can just use magic with the “weapon” as the casting of that magic, but at what point does the weapon itself become completely meaningless except as “thing I can cast magic with”.
For example you could use a mace to cast magic, but is there anything actually special about what the mace is doing that, say, a spoon or a candy wrapper couldn’t do in its place? Bows are even more in this, because you can only have so many things that shoot arrows before you hit “necros shoot spooky ghost arrows because we’ve got 12 other bow weapon sets and thats the only thing left and its like 2am and I want to go home”.
That said, people who use magic are really able to do whatever the hell they want because ANet can just create a set of spells that very, very loosely extend from the physical object (as far as GW is concerned), and people would be happy (ex: ele dagger).
Bosses are already trivialized, there is nothing more trivial about a boss that you can lure into a corner and maul for about 30s without doing anything but spamming attacks.
I didn’t say their DPS was bad, I said they can’t stay in prolonged fights. S/D thief is the only one that can actually stay around in the middle of a fight and not be the first one dead every single time, and even then they can only do that because of constant evading, dodging, and teleporting.
Power necro can do just fine, They can get some very nice Vul stacks out through traits and Axe and the chill from Focus (iirc) is very useful as well. Necromancer DON’T need to spam conditions.
And the last time power Necro was seen as high tier in coordinated play was September 2012, in large part because Necromancers are so heavily focused around conditions which either don’t do well (tPvP) or don’t really add much (PvE). You’re too easy to deal with because you rely on conditions for everything that other people do better with much more difficult to counter mechanics.
Every viable (meaning it isn’t doing something dumb like only running staff) power build has at least fear, bleed, chill, immobilize, vulnerability, and cripple. Weakness and to a slightly lesser degree poison are also pretty common to see.
Agreed. It allows for smarter decision making and brings it more in line with other comparable profession play (attunements/weapon kits) but without actually directly buffing Necro in any way.
We don’t get free escapes because Necromancer is supposed to be one of the strongest in-fight professions. Meaning we get into the thickest part of the fight and thrive more than anyone else because we scale best in that situation through life stealing, conditions, LF regen, etc. You can see this in WvW where we are at our strongest and deal pretty high damage while retaining near bunker-levels of tankiness.
Unfortunately things don’t translate so well out of that in many builds. However assuming they balance those issues, you can’t have a profession be amazing in the thick of fights that is then also able to escape the second things get bad. That is why Thieves have such amazing mobility, it makes up for the fact that they are actually quite bad at fighting for extended periods of time. They get in, deal their damage, get out and wait for another opportunity. In this case they should be polar opposite to us.
The reason things like SWalk and Flesh Wurm are okay is because they are extremely limited in allowing you to only return somewhere you were already, with other limitations like the window of time you have and how far they take you. Both of them also uniquely allow you to go even more ham than you could without them (SWalk can let a glass build jump into a fight, blow their load all over their enemies, then warp out until they can get their stuff up again).
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That is the highest fully possible. Note that technically speaking healing/utility skills don’t “matter” as far as highest condi damage, they just make it more realistic to get there/use it. That is 3817 condi damage with full might/sigil while in plague, you could potentially get it slightly higher through certain passive effects that would raise toughness/vitality as well, and it is 2181 with no buffs (just food) and out of plague.
Also important to note is that the build listed is not the highest damaging condition build, but the one with conditions that tick for the most. Those are very different, as one is more efficient at dealing the damage while the other just has a higher condition damage stat.
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Isnt staff 1200 range?
I think the autoattack only needs to hit more reliable (faster projectile speed and maybe also a shorter aftercast). Yes, one could argue it is not a pure power weapon but it is still 1200 range and if the aa would hit more often i think necros wouldnt need an extra 1200 range power weapon.
Its not just not a pure power weapon, it only has one pure-direct damage attack, and one that scales decent with power. Scepter deals better direct damage, but it isn’t a power weapon. Staff is a condi utility weapon that is only in non-condi builds because we have no other good option. If we had a different option to use at higher than melee range for power builds staff would see a huge drop in play.
It’s kind of ridiculous that we’re worrying about how magic ‘works’ inside a video game.
Its actually very important. If Yoda took out a wand and started using magic, or if Harry Potter pulled out a lightsaber and started waving his fingers around using the force, there would be legitimate backlash, because internal consistency is very important to all decent games. The reality is that the way things “work” is very important, you can see this in literally anything that involves “magic” of any kind; the second they violate this rule things start sucking (cough Naruto fillers cough).
This is why Necromancers won’t start using purple clones or shooting white lasers of healing, and why Warriors won’t start farting magic rainbows from a staff. Yes there are grey zones that are debatable, like exactly what weapons can and cannot by used by X profession, but there are things that just aren’t allowed because they are not consistent.
Except Necromancers need conditions or we’re worthless, and condi necro isn’t at all that strong right now except in soloQ. Conditions are the majority of our offense and defense, even in a power build you need conditions or you might as well play any other power build (notice how power builds are never played in organized settings, and necro in general is bad in PvE).
Conditions have as much if not more counterplay than direct damage. You can avoid the application itself or cleanse it afterwards, and generally speaking each individual hit isn’t all that important as long as you don’t let them ramp up.
At most some professions need more accessible ways to clear damaging conditions only.
Necromancer conditions are problematic because every build relies so heavily on defensive conditions to operate, which can often be cleansed far too easily because they are high duration on long CDs, instead of low duration low CDs, and also because Necromancer damaging conditions are either the easiest to counter in the game (fear gets countered by stability and stunbreaks in addition to normal cleansing) or because they are fully focused on very slow to build up bleed stacks that don’t even max out as well as other builds.
But then again the entire condition system in the game is a bit weird. However, if you want the easiest way for Necromancers to be better with conditions is to make our applications slightly more readable (staff marks largely), revert the nerfs that dhuumfire brought to our profession, and then change some bleeds over to torment.
Actually no, again all red posts and talk about future content in terms of weapons wnt along like: http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/18/guild-wars-2s-colin-johanson-outlines-big-plans-and-course-cor/ Some more existing weapons, some new ones.
This isn’t strictly true, its just what they are saying right now, likely because there are a ton of people who want new weapons. However he did state in an interview ages ago that they were attempting to give all weapons to all professions (no promises, just that they are trying). Its possible they changed their mind, or just changed their public stance, but there is reason to think a lot of weapons will be shared (since only very few make absolutely no sense).
I wouldn’t expect things like warrior getting scepter/focus, but generally most weapons “can” fit, although lore might prevent them for reasons. However ANet seems to not care so much about lore compared to having gameplay fit their desired theme.
the scythe shoots bhawbs.
This is something I wouldn’t want to inflict on my worst enemy.
Yep, I saw a noticeable improvement in DPS when I went from 6/2 to 6/6 in organized groups. I still swap back to a LB build when my group totally sucks, but thats it.
Detargeting is completely against our playstyle, as is invis and things like that. Invulns aren’t all that great imo largely just because of PvP and the fact that it stops counting for capping a point, otherwise I wouldn’t worry.
A nice improvement to the worm would be being able to cast it 1200 away and instantly exchanging places with it. the worm explodes in a gas cloud poisoning and crippling whatever walks through it. that way maybe, you’d have a chance of escaping a zerg for once.
We’re specifically not supposed to have escapes, I’m not sure why people hear this and say “ya… but what if we just had a really quick movement ability that we could use to get away from a fight”. Flesh Wurm is only allowed to be as strong as it is now because it is weak without being pre-set.
I’d prefer that, instead of killing the wurm, using the teleport ability just switch necro’s and wurm’s places.
This could potentially artificially increase the CD of the skill. It doesn’t particularly accomplish anything special, except delay the time it takes for Wurm to die and put the skill on CD, and if you were in such big trouble that you had to TP out, wurm is unlikely to live the full duration to give you a second TP.
I don’t really see the point in having it when it overlaps so heavily with CPC. There is nothing wrong with CPC as it is now, people just don’t bring it because it doesn’t fit well into the meta skill bars.
Its possible they will raise the level cap, they have been fairly noncommital about it. As to what the new cap would be no one knows.
To your other ideas. No thanks. More minions isn’t necessarily bad, but it doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do with less minions except that there would be more minions with crappy stats instead of a few with good stats. Having zombies not only goes against what they’ve set as our lore (we are capable but generally don’t because its considered naughty), but also against their no-corpse mechanics. Plus just having things that sit around and passively attack is boring for this game. There is no way to actively interact (like GW1) so you literally just raise some minions and then they do their thing until they die. No thanks.
The issue isn’t moving in a small area, the issue is that pathing is what bugs their AI. If you stay in a fairly limited area (like a capture point) you limit the chances of their pathing getting messed up. You can also generally work around this by leaving melee minions dead if they are not needed (this is a good practice anyway), and so if you leave one point while the minions are dead and summon them at the next fight they do quite well.
Playing an AI build is at least 50% learning how to use and abuse their special mechanics (including bugs) to your advantage.
Necros need melee cleave arguably more than we need ranged power, depending on what game mode you’re in, so that isn’t exactly the best argument to make.
#LetMeShootMinionsFromAPistol
If they eventually fixed life stealing that could be an option for sPvP maybe, but it’d still be awful in PvE. PvE needs something you can get while still going dagger w/ 6/6/0/0/2
“I want to be able to attack everything without ever having to actually think about it”. The game already has very few punishments for spamming abilities, retal does a nice job of filling that. If anything just nerf its uptime on builds that abuse it too much.
Cull – Mark a target for death, increasing all damage to the target while active
Reap – Deal massive damage to a target, if the target is marked for culling the range of Reap is increased
Gives us some unique utility for PvE, gives us actual burst in PvP but with counterplay, plus it plays a bit with the idea of an executioner’s axe.
I don’t think off-hands should be made to specifically fit with a weapon, but instead fit a niche, and then that niche can work itself out. As it is now we have 3 offhands which can find at least some use with every 1h weapon we have.
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Had no AI and required you to control every single action they do?.. this will make the build require more skill to play and probably more effective in a pro players hand. Many competitive games that i shall not name do this in order to make the game not so brainless.
Summons do almost nothing on their own already (or are gated in some other way), and frankly this wouldn’t fix anything. People would still complain that people are using “AI” to fight for them.
The real fix is to keep pushing the strength of them onto skill-needing actives. Look at how minions operate, and push the summons that can support full builds (things like elementals need no real changing) towards that, along with removing most traits that are just flat passive buffs and instead pushing those buffs towards the active skills.
Death Shroud can’t be a ranged power weapon unless they increase its 1200 range damage, and DS doesn’t degen. It just doesn’t do much, at 1200 range it is literally just an auto attack and doom, plus it already restricts us from using DS for anything else, and we have awful 1200 range LF generation.
We need an actual power weapon at 1200 range, I’d even take as low as 900, but we need a full skillset that is a true ranged power weapon above 600. Also that weapon restriction, even if ANet is still going to run with it, has not been maxed out on. Trahearne runs around with a greatsword, there are Necros (technically undead but use Necro magic) who use hammers. So even if we can’t use bows, there are sufficient weapons still in the game that we should be able to use.
Like aura wifesteal?
It depends on how easily accessible it was. If it was a utility skill or elite (that didn’t lock us out of our skills) then yes, but if it required significant blood magic investment (and it would probably have to to be balanced) I don’t think it’d be worth the DPS loss of not having close to death or target the weak.
You’re right I don’t have everything detailed. Which is why I made this thread to get people’s opinions on whether they’d be okay with paying an entry fee to expand the prizes.
The problem is that the full details of the tournament are big determinants of whether I’d pay or not. I’d highly suggest that you start off with basically “for funsies” easy buy in tournaments (in game money, not huge amounts), at first with no rules. Then after a tournament where you can see what absolutely dominates, ban the key parts of that spec that limit as few others as possible. Then you continue iterating on that with subsequent tournaments until you feel that the rules and system make it competitive enough for real money.
Especially do the first few just with people in game and no prizes (just for fun). The key is being able to say definitively “I banned ____ because ____ build uses it and was too dominating”. For example you ban lich because it two shots people and has too few counters, that aren’t easily accessible in 1v1s.
Aoe passive blind is a little crazy even if it’s only a second, couple with our other blinding skills and blasting dark fields… that’s a ton of blinding.
Except we actually have really limited blinds. Plague is an elite, Well of Darkness is the only actually accessible blind, and the rest are far harder to use as actual blinds.
I’d much prefer that they increase the range a bit. We’re not supposed to have general mobility, but having very limited mobility like this would make things much better. It also has the added effect of essentially what you want, but trading a faster teleport for a longer one.
We need unique buffs. Boons and just general healing don’t cut it, we’d need something that no one else can give, and it has to be (at least somewhat) offensive in nature.
Much like MM so is.so advanced, you minions will.swarm me even without.you wanting.them to, and.we’ll will eat them up. Healing me in the.process, not to mention I can.force.people.off points and hold a point 1v2-3
Pull you in wells immobilize you in and and.watch you melt. And as a bonus.I don’t even have to be.in my well to get heal from it.They are by no means op, but drastically under rated. Which in turn makes them devastating
Have fun doing that through charge, wail of doom, doom, and multiple fears while perma poisoned and only dealing damage to flesh golem.
Power Necros are only annoying because they get LF from minion death as well, and if you have mostly melee minions. There is more than enough CC, weakness, poison, and other conditions to demolish a power necro.
The more I play other professions the more I think we need access to stability on utility/elite (that doesn’t involve a transform). I mean hell, my flesh golem has better stability than I do.
Then they don’t know how to play MM.
Quick question.
Turrets are immune to crits and immune to conditions.
Good or bad design? It’s changeable, I think; the boss in new Queen’s Pavilion is vulnerable to condis and crits. JW what people think.
If they did change that it would need to be accompanied by a (slight) increase in health I think, but its definitely something to consider.