and appears to know nothing about necros
Focusing an MM is indeed an awful decision. They have a minimum of 20k HP (often more like 27k) plus deathshroud, 3k armor, and around half of their utility is based on minions, most of which have instant-cast abilities. So by focusing the MM, you’re actually still allowing around half of the MMs effectiveness (minions) to do their thing, while taking a long time to kill a very tanky build.
We have objectively bad bleed stacking. It happens to be the most useful bleed stacking, because we do so at range and while applying other conditions, but it is simply a worse option than others. You can see it if you PvE, necromancers will rarely hit the bleed cap, and almost always sit around 15 at best, whereas others can hit and maintain 20+.
All you need is 4/4/0/6/0, or 6/2/0/6/0, lifesteal food, sigil of blood on axe, leeching on two warhorns, and the lifesteal traits. you want as much precision as possible but there is a video of a guy doing it naked so its not super important.
So the damage boost from Death Nova stacks with the base damage from Putrid Explosion?
No. It still activates any time a minion dies except by the activation of their skill.
The boon strip trait just doesn’t happen often enough in a real situation to make up for the loss of poison/weakness/direct damage of death nova. It needs some buffs, mainly by making it active instead of passive.
The trait deals direct damage, has a pretty severe ramping poison stack, plus bone minions self-combo off the field, and your minions will So you can very easily get 100% uptime of poison off the fields, and 50% uptime of weakness, in addition to the area denial, ability to deny enemy rezzing, and pretty harsh punishment to people mindlessly killing them.
Almost every high tier Necromancer disagrees with you. We have awful bleed stacking, bad access to any other damage conditions except Fear, which has the most counters of any condition in the game, we have no stability, no unique support, we are the easiest to focus in a teamfight, have no cleave, only burst AoE (not particularly that strong either), and subpar defensive mechanics that actively counter each other.
bhawb. on the shadow fiend I forgot to mention that its also usefull at preventing downed people from using there cc skill, makes the stomp easier.
I don’t stomp, almost ever. Dagger 1 will refill my LF instead, meaning I enter every fight with 100% LF, and Death Nova’d Putrid Explosions + minion attacks guarantee that the target can’t get up if someone is healing them.
We’re more likely to encounter a long match in this day and age than a 2-second match.
That doesn’t really apply when you ban most (you forgot rabid) of the relevant amulets.
Actually, yes you can use abilities while CCed. Thief, ele, and mesmer all have escape abilities that allow them to either break stun and move, or just instant teleport but stun remains.
Basically everything that is instant cast, which is a lot.
Your allies can heal you when you leave deathshroud then. Its not like they are forced to blow heals into your DS, they just have a knee-jerk reaction to seeing you suddenly at 20% because there is no way to know your HP vs LF. If they can see you go into DS and it looks distinctly different on your party UI, along with still showing your HP at the same time, then your allies can still heal you every bit as well as before.
The issue is I don’t think its balanced to allow 100% of all healing to affect someone with a temporary effective invulnerability to damage every 10s, even though it is generally very limited. Other true invulns get healing, but they also can’t cast any abilities or cap points, and are massively restricted by CDs. So sure ele can heal through mistform, but that’s for 3s every 75s, compared to up to 25s (50 traited) with a 10s CD.
Zerker Hambow builds are not ridiculous, they are just perceived to be. These decisions were made based on play experience and what players have located counters for.
So what you really want to say is “our rules were determined by our bias of what we perceive to be OP and don’t want to see played.” Don’t get me wrong, its fine if that is how you decide to do the tournament, but just blanket banning amulets doesn’t get rid of tanky builds. Stats alone don’t make you tanky.
Wait, what? OK, I get the Battle of Kyhlo trick, but can you explain the slopes thing a bit more?
Simply put, minions can’t jump. So any terrain you have to jump to get over, the minions have to walk around. On the center point in Khylo, this means if you’re fighting an MM, then go out the window, the only way for the minions to get to you is to walk all the way outside, up the outer scaffolding, and up to you. So walk out the window, wait for them to start walking outside, jump in, hit the MM a bunch, go out the other window, repeat.
Which in general is the only way a dagger thief should ever beat an MM is by abusing their AI. Otherwise no self-respecting MM should lose that matchup 1v1.
I think the rules should be: only Fox, no items, Final Destination.
More seriously, I dislike tournaments where things are arbitrarily banned by the organizers. Ban things that have proven to be far too polarizing (since it makes things stale), but just an arbitrary “no bunkers” (even though you didn’t actually ban all the amulets bunkers use anyway) isn’t going to make things any more interesting. I’m all for the no exploits, although you need to strictly define what you will be considering an exploit.
Btw, you might as well ban Lich form and Supply Drop if you’re going to start banning bunkers.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
On a serious note, has anyone found a good build on any profession to counter turret engi’s 1v1?
I found well Necro poops on turret engi’s pretty well, because the turrets won’t try to avoid the AoE. Basically any build that can just crap out AoE and murder the turrets very quickly does well (think: anything that counters MM, but knowing that Engi’s “minions” are completely immobile and basically all have to be on point).
Ive tried that and I found it to be a pain but it is viable.
If you decide to go with worm trade it in for the shadow fiend, they serve the same function to prevent stun chains weather you do it with shadow fiend blind or worm stun break.
I prefeer the fiend cause its damage doesnt get left behind when you need to extend a bit off point. It also annoys me to have to mess around with it when you need to move .
The issue is shadow fiend only blocks a single CC, and that’s if you get lucky on its timing (since it has a 1s animation), whereas Flesh Wurm not only can get you out of a bad situation fully, but actually allows you to do more than sit around twiddling your thumbs at home. Without flesh wurm you can’t press far or help mid, which is massively important as a side bunker.
Being a Necro, the first thing I do when I walk into a undefended cap point is look for the flesh wurm, and if present; kill it. But we’re talking hotjoins here so…yeah flesh wurm is great. idiots stand right next to it thinking they got a free cap and then poof; there you are.
This is why you should always be looking at home as an MM. Flesh Wurm enables you to beat or tie (via dark path right after porting) anyone coming home if you are paying attention. But if you don’t people will just kill it.
My 1v1 build will always be minions. The only other I’d consider top 1v1 builds (as far as necro goes) are dire terror condi, maybe spectrals, and tanky power. Things like wells/zerker can certain work, but are very quickly countered or rely too much on favorable matchup.
I highly suggest dropping either bone or shadow fiend for flesh wurm. DPS is right about the same, however the stun break is absolutely necessary for not dying against good opponents, and he enables the ability to roam which is also really important.
Is the trait for healing in DS the only thing which circumvents this?
Yes, that trait is the only way to receive healing while in DS.
The only thing barring attrition builds from working in GW2 is the lack of weapon options. There is entirely the trait/utility support (although not if you want a full siphon build) for sustain and attrition, but our weapons right now really suck for this purpose, as you only get one weapon set for it.
I think the only real annoyance about something like this is that the Engi can leave turrets then run all the way across the map and then when you go to cap the point his thief friend shows up and its a 1.5 v 1. Besides that, turrets still have loads of issues of their own.
You’re getting pretty hard countered by something that you can’t really do anything about. Its not that Necros are OP, and the way they counter you can’t really be nerfed, its just that everything you rely on both offensively and defensively they have an answer for, and you don’t really. You want to apply lots of condis, they return those back to you. You need boons to stay alive, they corrupt them.
None of the mechanics that are countering you are actually too strong, its simply that your build, by decision or lack of other options, has no way to deal with them. Does it suck? Entirely. Does Engi potentially need access to more active condi cleanse? Maybe so, I don’t know the class well. But Necromancer, by design, is the king of conditions, so a condi 1v1 against them is always going to favor Necro.
other classes can build very tanky too. why does group support in healing too much for us but not the other classes?
Because we’ve been balanced for the past nearly 2 years based on us having to be self reliant on things like healing because of DS. My MM build already survives incredibly well despite DS countering some of my own healing, let alone other people’s.
Think of it this way, as it is now, you can have a spectral build that can basically pop into DS every time its up. Now you have the same build, and every time it goes into DS it can come back out with full HP.
The big key difference between a tanky Necro and a tanky anyone else, is that everyone else plays tanky, but with their own HP bar and active defense. A normal tank is tanky by using blocks, dodges, healing, boons, things that are generally counterable (and the mechanics that are pure invulns are very very short duration and uptimes). Necromancers, however, can’t really be “countered”, you can’t just use an unblockable skill to bypass our DS, you can’t remove DS or corrupt it, you can’t poison LF generation, you basically just need to deal more damage to them. As it is now, its okay because those builds need to rely completely on themselves for their defenses, so to be super tanky they need to really spec for it. So a Necro bunker would basically be uncounterable except through constant CC chaining while burning through a 3k armor 40k HP target that can very quickly refill that HP.
Also, Necros don’t have insignificant self healing. Once DS allows all types of healing to itself, it already has a large boost to self healing.
TL;DR, currently necro DS is balanced because of how selfish it is. The only big thing that needs fixing is how different parts of Necro completely invalidate each other. But to just blanket allow all healing to work through DS would be a massive boost to survivability that would really break DS-based builds.
Just fix the UI so my team can smartly heal me, and make it so DS doesn’t counter myself.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Tho the suggestion of putting vampiric as a master (or even grandmaster, then putting deathly invigoration as the master major and vamp rituals as a master major) with 100 effective hps on one target when traited would make it a true build… or as mentioned making vampiric traits mutually exlusive/unlock vamp procs on different types of attacks thus letting the devs balance the numbers for 1v1 with a single trait and then others being effective buffs in the same way as you can further trait up a weapon/utility/profession mechanic.
I think my biggest issue is just if vampiric is a minor trait, it needs to be good for all builds. Our good minors are like this, whereas Vampiric has such a wide swing between anything with wells/WH and basically everything else (I think the rest of our weapons are actually basically even after doing some quick math).
An ICD is just I think the solution to keep vampiric as a minor trait and good for everyone, while the major traits allow you to specialize into a full siphoning build (since the tree has a whole lot more than just siphoning). Of course you could give something else that is useful to everyone there, and then have vampiric be a master major trait. But an ICD would basically say “vampiric is your 1v1 trait, rituals is your teamfight trait”.
Both work, just different ways, and both should allow vampiric builds to work in different ways.
I don’t have a necro but why not just revert dhumfire? It shouldn’t be that OP in this power -bunker meta.
The issue with Dhuumfire was that it forced Necros into it, otherwise they wouldn’t have remotely relevant damage output (due to the pretty heavy bleed nerfs we got), and it was just a random passive proc, and so there was no real play/counterplay to it.
The idea of changing Dhuumfire to a known proc was fine, the issue is that they never reverted the nerfs that went along with the old OP dhuumfire.
In that case, would you be in favor of Vampiric getting an ICD, but Vampiric Precision continuing without and both getting buffed significantly (especially in the healing power department)? I’m still not convinced that Vampiric needs an ICD, but being that trait alone, I can kind of understand.
Regardless, Vampiric would always provide a benefit to any build that has at least 3 points in Blood Magic. Protection of the Horde did not do the same as it was tied to a skill type.
Sure. I think its reasonable that precision could be tied to more niche uses like the other two.
PotH might have been a bad example, but Jagged Horror (if we leave aside the buggy issues where it actually made content harder) is a similar example where it did “technically” help all builds, but it was vastly stronger in one build than every other because of the multipliers that one specific build got.
I’m still not seeing how adding an ICD is so necessary. Make the siphoning good for the build that most needs it (the highest risk setup, which, coincidentally, also happens to be the fastest hitting), and the slower, lower risk weapons will still be able to spec into it to get extra sustain, but they generally need less and also won’t get as much.
Dagger has built in the highest sustain of any build already, by a pretty large margin. Its return for being melee is that it has better sustain than every other weapon combined.
You argue to add an ICD to avoid volatility, but siphons are inherently volatile. An ICD would fail spectacularly on that front while unnecessarily limiting what the necro can do with it.
An ICD puts every build on equal footing for a minor trait. Every other siphon can remain volatile, its good because that is how you enable a full build. But you shouldn’t be forcing a minor trait to only exist for entire builds (PotH), it should be meaningful for all builds and as it is now it isn’t remotely meaningful unless it is on specific setups that allow it to proc vastly more than others (and its not even that meaningful for those builds).
Without the ICD, we completely bar off siphoning as a defensive mechanic from every build that doesn’t run a siphon build. If that is the goal, fine, then move it off the minor trait so the support/healing tree doesn’t get shafted by a trait that only exists for one build.
Allow Transfusion (Blood …) to heal the Necromancer under DS and it will be enough or elseway allow 50% healing reduction under DS.
The devs specifically said the only reason they buffed this trait (and thus made it strong enough for use) was because of the fact that it doesn’t heal the Necro. It would have to remain as such to stay as is.
Manacraft, you have still failed on one very, very important thing in arguing for ICD’s on siphons.
Why would they be a good thing? How would an ICD actually help siphons at all, and how would that help not be possible outside of ICD’s?
The only point of including ICDs would be massively increasing the per-hit siphon without the devs needing to worry about issues of disproportionate procing between weapon and utility setups. As it is now, even if we can get siphons to a point of being good, the devs have to balance them such that they cannot be too strong; meaning that they will balance to the extreme build that has the best proc mechanics.
In this case, that would be D/WH. This means that even once they do fix siphoning, it will only ever be allowed to be good on D/WH, or whatever set is as good as it at procing. This is why specific siphon traits like VM and VR should be the main focus of being able to specialize (in AoE siphoning), and Vampiric needs gating, like an ICD, or needs to be replaced with another minor.
The entire issue with non-ICD, non-specific procs in this game is that they have no way to even them out between different builds, and without that they are forced to only allow the best setup to work with those traits, and all else will, by result, be subpar.
Technically speaking, this means Vampiric Master/Ritual need to be the large traits that enable siphoning builds (and obviously Ritual needs buffs), and Vampiric needs to be a general purpose one that is useful in every build via gating, like an ICD. Vampiric Precision is kind of in the middle, you could argue its need for precision is enough gating, or you could argue that you can still make a very tanky build with high crit chance.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
I just noticed that no one included the healing by unholy sanctuary, it’s about 130 HP per second. Take that for what you will, the way I see it, I think my death shroud lasts about 20 sec while taking heat in the average wvw fight, so it’s only about a 2.5k heal.
WvW isn’t a good source of balance decisions. Necro sustain is absolutely ridiculous there due to the number of deaths you get.
Fought a Necro today that went to DS, I took down DS and got him to half health. By that time (10 seconds? after DS was gone) DS was up again and at full…
Not sure what kind of extra healing you’d need to not be able to survive with such tools when specced for surviving of course…
Anecdotes with little extra information don’t help much. Was he full spectral build? Did he still keep up any offensive pressure? Were there other deaths happening?
The reality is that a necro build unless extremely specced for LF generation have very little else to bring except that. And even just LF generation isn’t enough to be very effective as a build. Its why you don’t see triple spectral bunkers anywhere.
snip
Fair enough. Its entirely possible that the limitations that keep VM in line would be able to keep everything else in line, and I just don’t see it because they are so weak right now that I never use them anyway.
Actually, everyone else is able to do so. The difference is that death shroud is up much more frequently than true invulnerability. Death Shroud is literally the only mechanic in the game that makes your HP unable to go up.
Oh, my bad then. I had never noticed this on other professions.
I’m still not sure that receiving all outside healing would be entirely balanced, tbh, although at the very least ANet needs to look into it.
I do think self-traited healing should be looked at though, things like siphoning. The only issue I have is that some builds of ours are already very tanky despite our mechanics right now (and aren’t viable almost entirely due to bad weapons), and this would really throw things out of balance.
Yeah that wasnt my point though. My point was condi shouldnt be highest damage for no risk. Id be ok with it if the best condi set was pure glass, but it simply isnt.
Except Condi isn’t the highest possible damage, its the highest damage in this very specific situation you brought up. Math shows very quickly that condis simply don’t deal as much pure damage as power, the only reason condis are remotely viable in the game is because of the AoE application which keeps ticking away after people have split up, and the fact that it deals most of its max damage from a single stat.
Without a complete rework of the entire condi system, you can’t do much about that.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
I think we need to be able to receive our self-traited healing mechanics while in DS, but not ally heals, simply so our defensive mechanic doesn’t counter our defensive mechanics.
But being able to receive heals form everyone is a massive buff to survivability. To my knowledge no one else is able to receive healing while temporarily invulnerable (which is effectively what DS is as far as HP goes, a very temporary invuln).
Allow self healing to pass in and change the party UI to make it obvious when I am in DS and not healable (make the HP bar green with my HP still displayed underneath).
+1 to idea of an “anti torch” torch. There are a bunch of skill sets floating around, many of them good.
Look dude, just ignore ManaCraft, he has shown that he has no prior mmo experience and that he does not understand the issue at hand.
People with prior MMO experience were the ones who made the game. It doesn’t mean kitten all that you played a few other games.
>>Ozii, you didnt get what i say.
The fact is that against a power build, you keep your evade for big attacks (and by the way, every big one is easy to avoid contrary to what you’re saying)
Against a condi build, for what do you keep your roll? exept spite signet (which is another issue but out subject) its mainly “little” attack that apply 2-3stack.
Things like DS LB can hit for 5k+ on an auto attack. Certain other attacks hit for incredibly high on very, very short CDs.
Again, you have to compare relative damage. Power builds can easily hit for 3-4k on auto attacks, these are consistent hits every second just like a dot would be, except to get a 4k dot you need to stack multiple conditions quite highly, which involves landing 4-5 skills consistently, while the enemy has no cleanses (because unlike power condis can be countered even after the skill lands). Condi is only remotely viable for one reason: AoE application.
We are lacking in the melee control department more than in the power ranged one and our profession mechanic kinda does define that point.
600 range (for decent damage) auto attack with pretty heavy need to support it in other ways does not qualify as a ranged power weapon.
What do you think about adding tridents aa “Crimson Tide” to staff? Or something like this.
Trident’s auto is basically a 1200 range scepter auto, but more focused on bleeds (1s longer bleed, no poison, lower direct damage).
Staff needs to decide whether it is a support or utility weapon, and then get itself an auto and skillset to fully support it. Atm its heavily leaning towards utility, but needs a more reliable auto that is more focused towards utility.
I actually think CPC has the same problem quite a few of our utilities/traits do. They aren’t strictly weak, but we have such a limited weapon pool, which simultaneously limits our overall build diversity, which then limits the skills we can use. CPC is a great support utility, but we don’t have a single true support weapon to support having a support build (which we actually have multiple trait/utility setups that support a support build).
I think CPC in a vacuum is fine, the only problem is it doesn’t have a build to call home yet.
You are aware that might adds significant condition damage, and is primarily abused by hybrid-scaling builds to deal not only ridiculous direct damage but also fairly good condition damage, while also being tanky. Aka, everything that is supposedly OP about a condition build, but with also high direct damage on top.
Can we make Longbow work? Yes. Necromancers already only really use their weapons (except dagger auto) as ritual tools, not as literal weapons. This could easily be applied to a bow, not to mention we aren’t wussy casters like other lores often have magic users be.
I see no reason a longbow couldn’t be put in properly. I don’t know that this is the skillset I would have it use, but longbow itself could be done.
…
Except in a 1v1, it is known the enemy is attacking you. Therefore your healing is directly helping to counter one person’s damage. Let’s assume it is balanced that your siphoning is sufficient to help out in a 1v1 where you have 1 person attacking, leaving aside rangers/mesmers/any summon build. When you take that balanced 1v1 siphoning to an XvX, the amount of incoming damage does not scale linearly like your siphoning will. You either take severely reduced damage (PvE/WvW) or it varies from nothing to far more (sPvP). When you have 5v5, the opponents do not deal all of their damage to you, they don’t even evenly split it up so that its just like 5 1v1s at once. If things scaled as nicely as that there would never have been an issue in the first place.
Siphoning is already really strong in situations like WvW where you can proc it at its maximum potential. But they will never be able to balance an offensive siphon to properly scale as a defensive mechanic if they keep it as it is. The game does not line up prettily enough to do that.
Its very easy to avoid it too.
It is equally as easy to avoid any single set of condition applications.
However how do you manage to avoid 25 skills that deal 2condi stacks ? (average)
So yeah as you said Maths are strongh, but when you simplify them and forget like half the issue, result are always bad.
Conclusion:
Yes it deals way to much damage for the difficulty to apply them and the risk (there is no risk since you’re with tanky stuff (at least dire doesn’t exist in PvP … maybe not for long …))
You don’t need to avoid 25 attacks. You get hit with 3 attacks and now you have a few bleeds, then a nearby guardian wipes his kitten and removes all the conditions from you and everyone else in the area. Then they cast a few more things and since you are a competent player you dodge them just like you’d dodge any other skill and now they’re left with barely half of what they need to maintain decent bleed stacks, and once they apply the rest you just wipe it with a condition removal.
First off, no viable bleed build that can stack 25 stacks exists in PvP. Necromancers can barely manage to get over 15, and that is if you are standing in melee range while afk, and it takes 4-5 seconds to fully stack that damage that deals 1/4th of a single power attack. Which is the point of dots, they don’t deal their damage right away, you get hit with the skill and it maintains an effect over time. Conditions deal massively less damage right away but deal strong damage if you allow yourself to consistently be hit with them and not cleanse.
So sure, I ignored reality a bit. In reality, a direct damage hit can in one skill cast hit for 4 times as much as a Necromancer, the “king” of conditions, using every single condition skill they have access to over 4-5 seconds to stack bleeds on you, and even if you eat every single skill, you can just wipe it all right after.
If i would want to redesign dark path, i would make it similar to engineer slick shoes, instead of a knockdown, the trail left behind could inflict the chill and bleed along with the corrupt boon coming from the trait.
Still far too strong for 15s CD.
They really need a much shorter/responsive “too far from master – drop combat and teleport to master” leash.
If an enemy runs over 1200 units away from me; they cease to be a concern to me in favor of whomever is still within that range.
Its currently 1920, and that is perfectly fine to me. Waiting till an enemy is already at in my range for the minions to start getting ready to attack means by the time they reach the enemy he’s at 600 range. 1920 allows me to also contribute to fights within 1950 of home point without having to leave, which gives us a unique strength.
Situation 5: You’re running and you notice that your minions are missing ? Run further away and they will turn up again (invisible leash, I don’t know what the max range was but I tought it was around 1800-2000)
The max aggro range is 1920 I believe, it was a while ago I found it out, but its in the 1920-1980 range. Them instantly teleporting is a bit farther, I’m not sure exactly how far (a bit harder to test), but not much further than that.
Let Vampiric Rituals be the AoE option (like I’ve said a billion times), where it has no ICD. It doesn’t need one because it is innately gated by the CD of wells and their ticking speed, meaning you can either choose to drop a bunch of wells to try to burst heal yourself up, or you can drop them over time to slowly keep yourself topped off. But just like minions are gated by their attack speed and uptime, wells are affected by essentially the same thing.
This way if you want AoE healing, you go wells, and you are rewarded for hitting people with wells. But Vampiric/Vampiric Precision will never be balanced for 1v1 when the numbers need to be balanced for hitting 5 targets with craploads of AoE. An ICD is the way to fix this, and then allowing things like Vampiric Rituals to cover AoE siphoning for you.
snip
Boons are not necessary for attrition, if anything condis are far more important (due to the existence of chill/poison and no equivalent boon). The issue is most builds cannot get a strong enough combination of reliable healing, LF generation, non-damaging condition uptime, consistent damage, and high defensive stats that are needed to be truly attrition.
MM manages this, some power builds manage this, and some game modes innately enable this (via deaths), but the lack of options for other builds really hampers things overall.
Becauase the only person not 4v5ing is “defending” home point
what I honestly don’t get is why they don’t at least walk up to the ledge or close to the point to lend a bit of support, it’s not kittening difficult and on almost every map there’s somewhere you can see people crossing to push home
As someone who only plays homepoint builds: there are builds where I am literally so slow, that walking to mid on certain maps can guarantee that I will be unable to prevent a decap if someone notices my absence quickly (even if I see them coming).
Now, the proper thing to do is just run to the other point and either trade home points evenly, or force them off the 4v5 mid or risk the same thing that many people try to prevent (losing home because you went mid). At worst, I just run into their own idiot sitting there, and we hit each other with wet noodles for about 5 minutes until someone decides the 4v4 circlejerk mid isn’t actually going anywhere and comes to finish the fight.
But those are all things that you learn over time by understanding the game and your own build. I’d really much prefer my home bunker stay at home if he isn’t capable of doing something better, because out of the 4 other people we have, one of us should be able to think for ourselves and press their far point, which starts to force them to do more than hold each others hands and skip to the nearest teamfight together.