The issue isn’t that you can’t run multiple Necro builds in PvE, or that X is bad. Minions can be run in PvE (although they scale events so…), power can be run, condi can be run. In fact, power necro has the highest DPS of any build I know of.
The issue is that Necros bring AWFUL group utility, and don’t have anything to make up for it.
Necromancers need to be able to exist as a singular entity on a team. With the exception of when we had so much offense that we could guarantee whoever was the first person to target us would die faster than we would, it just doesn’t make a ton of sense for a standard team to use up two slots for a profession that can’t carry hard enough to justify it.
Yes, due to dumbfire. Essentially the only time Necromancers have seen significant representation is when we were stupidly OP.
EVERY Guild wars 2 PvP competition since launch has had a lack or complete absence of Necromancers. I believe this topic deserves a dev response.
Devs respond to a Necromancer thread? Funny joke.
It seems like a lot of people missed the months and months of time where condis were just non-existent in PvP.
I’d love to see bunkering spread out among the different classes. There should be valid reasons to bring a Warrior bunker, Necro bunker, Ranger bunker, Engi bunker, or Ele bunker, instead of it just being a known thing that a Guardian bunker is needed (since Mesmers don’t seem to have the mechanics for it, and Thieves simply will never bunker).
+1, really hope ANet sees the issues and makes healthy changes in some way. I’d love to see Necromancers viable at the top tiers, but not because of toxic mechanics like Dumbfire.
In this case, maybe teams just couldn’t come up with it right away, or didn’t have a player who could play decap engi well enough, so they just stuck to their guns. That is what happens when you have a tournament fairly shortly after a patch and someone finds the new big thing right before, teams who aren’t playing all the time just don’t adapt fast enough.
MM is strong in soloQ in the same way that all bunker builds are; it can sit on a point and it takes significant effort to dislodge it. If the team is smart, they simply ignore the point, or zerg it down with multiple players (note that MM, unlike actual bunkers, melts instantly against 2-3+ players), aka they use smart rotational play (MMs are also as mobile as a dead turtle). However this is difficult in soloQ, especially lower levels, where people have this idea that they have to constantly 1v1 that build that’s already destroyed them 3 times in a row. Its not that MM is strong itself, but that the intelligence/team play required to beat it doesn’t exist in soloQ in general
If you want to make MM take a bit more skill though, simply keep loading more onto the active skills, a la bone minions (which are the best non-elite minion and awful without landing the active), and increase the visibility of things like Rigor Mortis and Charge, which are very hard to see and react to.
yeah i think last post from dev here was when we got dhumfire :P
Even if they notice this they wont do anything …
No, the most recent post was around the time that huge embarrassment happened where it took them 4 months to publicly announce Putrid Mark had been nerfed.
You can’t really fault them for using the builds they did. They used the most effective comp. Do I like their play style and builds? No, it’s boring to play and watch, with a very low skill cap. However the point of a tournament is to win, and they did what they had to.
No, they simply used the easiest builds to get them the win. Completely understandable, its how competition works, but this wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of competition either. The final was like watching a Brazilian server LoL “championship” game. Sure they’re the best in their region, but that doesn’t mean much.
Maybe this thread should be linked in the Profession Balance subforum?
Not a bad idea, but frankly I don’t think ANet will notice it anyway.
If ANet went f2p they’d need to massively expand their support. They’d be handing out bans 5x more often than they do now, the abuse would be crazy. I can just imagine how quickly people would be able to grab black lion keys with a bot and craploads of accounts.
The saddest part to me is that MM already has like 90% of the things we need (although its still unviable because mobility>everything), but they refuse to adapt the ideas that make MM work (decent HP sustain, high CC, high uptime of debilitating conditions) as an attrition build. Instead, we got pushed further and further into dealing mass damage through spam and having none of the mechanics we’re supposed to.
That’s what happens when people extrapolate stuff they know nothing about. Warrior is the best for PvE? Haha!
You wanna know the meta-speedrun comp at the moment? Hint: it includes 2-3 Eles.
Yes, elementalists. Now cut the crap and learn to separate PvE from PvP,
Everyone alert the authorities. After a complete domination of PvE for 20 consecutive months, warriors are not the go to choice for speed runs.
It feels like ANET is unsure about how they want to get the necromancer to where it is supposed to be, or if they even know where that is. It has been a roller coaster ride ever since dhuumfire was implemented. And now we are stuck with something worse than pre-dhuumfire.
Unfortunately they have no one who understands the profession at all, past maybe a very light idea of how condi works, and refuse to listen to anyone who knows the class. All they do is browse the sPvP forums, where people, at best, barely understand the meta builds. There have been hundreds of posts of great feedback, multiple sets of threads collecting and putting forward balance ideas, and at the end of the day, we don’t get a shred of the changes needed.
Technically possible, however the issue is that those classes tend to have buffs to cover other losses. They can stack their own might/fury, increasing damage, things like that. We don’t have that easy of access to those things, like at all, so its a matter of if the amulet alone is enough, and I don’t think we really have the mechanics to support celestial.
The issue is that Axe 2 will never, ever, work as a damage weapon in PvP, unless other things are absolutely broken. Just like how 100000blades warriors don’t work unless the rest of their profession is broken, due to how stupidly easy it is to negate a skill that is basically useless unless you allow it to hit you consecutively for a few seconds.
I mean, think of it this way, Axe 2 is such a bad DPS skill that it gets out DPSed by auto attacks. I mean, Life Blast alone, in a decent build, can in ONE shot deal comparable damage to a 3s channeled attack on an 8s CD, while having no CD, blasting more often, and having the utility of stacking might, piercing, and stacking vuln. Axe just doesn’t cut it outside of minion builds.
War vs necro is actually pretty even, if the necro is not terrible they can avoid all of the key warrior skills: pindown, evic, shieldbash, earthshaker, backbreaker. Then the necro just needs to maintain weakness or cripple to kite or ignore the rest of the warriors damage.
Oh no problem. Let me just fear the warrior… oh wait stability. No problem though, I have corrupt boon, right? Oh, hey, look, its skill stance. No worries though, I can just wait it out with a few defensive CDs, you know pop a block here, an invuln there, maybe kite him with some conditions… oh wait.
Obviously exaggerated, and Necros have had their fare share of being stupid to fight against. But it doesn’t make the warrior any more balanced, or some of their skills any less toxic.
Yep. Also the warhorn issue where it will put you in combat for hitting a box is really annoying. There are situations where I could very easily rotate to their home point before they can make it to mine… except I run past a box and it puts me in combat and I slow down to the speed of a fat person at walmart whose chair just ran out of juice.
Says the necromancer main, warriors are designed to counter your kitten
Ah yes, must have forgotten we were playing rock paper scissors.
They should just go all the way and have a finisher that simultaneously plays every single skill effect in the game.
THE meta build right now is:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-34;0kHFC0;0oIkJ0;9;5T;0J;138C;428;7hoHAhoHAV
The last 4 points either go into Spite for Chill of Death, or Death Magic for Reaper’s Protection. Amulet is Carrion or Rabid (both are basically equal in every way, swap based on preference/opponent’s team comp), sigils should generally involve energy/geomancy, but you have flexibility.
Also you can go for dhuumfire, in which case I highly suggest going Balthazar runes, you can pick up hemophilia instead of weakening shroud if you are going for a longer range build, Soul Marks instead of Terror if you went into Spite, and some people pick up Focus instead of Dagger since the boon removal is really prime in this meta.
I’ve heard of people running a somewhat tanky power/LB build as well at higher rankings. And of course if you know what you’re doing MM is always strong.
The last time teams were running double anything with frequency was back when D/D eles were insanely broken. There is a reason double warriors were so prevalent, and its not because warrior is balanced. They don’t need to nerf it with an orbital bombardment, but it still needs tuning.
I just think it should be the same as the condition system. The most recently applied boons get ripped first, then down the line. This way people can’t just throw on stability at the end (means reactive stability will always get pulled), however with actual intelligent use they can still try to cover it and things will work just like they do now. The reality is that there needs to be the same play that we get for conditions, which have at least a marginally better system than the boons do.
If not that, then they need to all follow the same priority system, and ANet needs to release it.
…And this game isn’t simple?
Slapping a soldier amulet on a build does not make you a bunker…
The issue is that the condition system is all singular. All cleansing (with very few exceptions) cleanse any condition. This means those useless bleeds that a warrior puts on you get cleansed with the same priority as a fear dealing 1k damage which has the same priority with conditions that are necessary for a build’s defense.
They really need more specific cleansing in the game.
What would you guys say if they fixed the ai? would a minion cleric build be viable on certain maps?
Cleric MM has the same mobility issue every necro does. I got to 184 in yoloQ pretty quickly with my build, and IF they increased my mobility just enough that I could rotate mid fights without losing home, then I’d say I could make the build work very well. All they’d have to do is increase Flesh Wurm’s range a bit, and fix Warhorn 5 so it didn’t put me in combat off of boxes.
I do extremely well at holding home point, but the issue is that if I want to guarantee I never lose home, the only way I can do that is never get involved in mid fights. So my team has to win the 4v5, or their team has to be dumb enough to constantly send people at me. In lower organized play I can “cheat” a bit because while other people try to teamfight somewhere, I’ll just sneak around and backcap their home, and basically try as much as possible to force them to send people to deal with me. But again, at the highest levels of play my playstyle just wouldn’t work because they wouldn’t get out rotated like that.
Indeed you can. In fact if we had more traits of varying power and accessibility that gave us stability like FitG did, we wouldn’t need this thread at all…
Yeah its really vulnerable in situations where you have no lifeforce or in some 1v1 fights. But I always assumed the teams that take necro always make sure they support it. Its a pretty effective build with good support from teammates. Has a hell of a lot more pressure in the current cleanse heavy meta than full condi and you dont have to go full melee to nuke someone (lifeblast, life siphon etc).
Not really anymore. That was a big thing a while ago, where you had like a D/D ele to peel your Necro, but not so much anymore. However, with the new rise of eles (although I don’t know their meta), you might be able to get people to peel you when you need it, and also a well place Flesh Wurm could get you out of trouble really quickly too.
Plus you still hit probably THE biggest issue with necros, we’re just so slow. NA its not a huge deal, but EU has such good rotations that having a Necro can be a liability. I’d love to see you make it work though, I’m sure its possible with the right setup.
Because it has the same general weaknesses as every other Necro build, plus you increase their chances to counterplay you by going melee and centering your damage around avoidable things. Not that its bad, or any worse than some builds I saw, but once you get into the better teams it seems like it’d be too easy to train you down before you do anything worthwhile (especially in a heavier bunker meta).
Ya, I was just responding to the two threads which said there weren’t any Necros, when I was literally in the middle of watching you and your team win your round of 8 game.
Uh… except for Necitor?
What happened to Team Lonely? Did Necitor decide to just not play Necro despite 2-0ing their opponents yesterday with him on Necro?
Yes, although that also applies to all Necromancer siphoning now, traits and skills both.
Lich might be a fun stability move, but the second you are against a thief/mesmer/necro you’re boned. I can’t tell you how many other necros I’ve totally screwed over by corrupting/removing their stability then hard CCing them into oblivion.
I think they should take the #2 skill, and add it as a chain to the auto attack, but with only 2-3 hits, make it cleave, and then re-balance it with that in mind. Then make the #2 skill a frontal cone burst skill.
MM is not viable in high tier. The single issue that cannot be solved no matter how good you are with the build, or how you tweak a standard MM to fit within high tier play is that simply you have no ability to rotate. You can sit on home node permanently sure, but you can’t afford to move off home or a thief will decap it and be back in a fight before you’re even able to get to the point, leaving your team 4v5 for 10-20 seconds. If they increased our ability to rotate then it wouldn’t be such a big deal, because I could rotate for a teamfight mid, or go and contest their home point, without being out rotated 100% of the time (and you can’t afford runes to do this).
1.) Low mobility.
Agreed.
2.) Bad downed-state.
Agreed again.
3.) No sustain.
Not 100% accurate. Meta Necro builds have no sustain, however there are an entire set of builds (MM, spectral, tanky power, support condi) that have amazing sustain and attrition, but cannot fit high tier for some other reason.
4.) Toxic gameplay.
I don’t think this is always the case. Again this is meta builds, condi necro definitely feels toxic, especially during the height of the dumbfire days. However other builds have plenty of potential counterplay, although in some cases the counterplay needs to be made stronger (MM for example has the potential for counterplay, however at the moment all the skill reads are non-existent)
Proposed changes to achieve this:
1.) Increase range of Flesh Wurm and make it exchange place with the necromancer on reactivation instead of killing it.
I wouldn’t have it exchange places, and especially not with an increased CD. The issue is that a really smart team would just avoid killing your wurm for as long as possible, meaning you wouldn’t have what is now a 40s CD stun break, you’d have a 40s+just short of however long the CD of Necrotic Traversal is. For example if you could reactivate the swap every 30s, a good team would just wait 20s then kill it, and now the CD was made effectively 60s.
I’d leave the function as it is now, but with a slightly reduced cast time, increased range, and swap the poison explosion from where the minion is to where the Necro is. To balance this increase the CD to 50 or 60s.
2.) Give necromancers a way to prevent a stomp.
Make it an AoE fear. Combined with the trait, it’d mean we’d have two chances to fear our targets away. I realize this isn’t as strong as certain classes who can just move away, but it brings us up to bar with Guardians, who are in many ways our counterpart.
3.) Flavorful access to vigor.
Make the 25 trait steal endurance on boon removal, or give us access to boon stealing. Your idea is fine as well, but I think the idea of siphoning endurance has been thrown around a lot and would be great.
4.) Remove fearstacking and immobilize stacking GW2 is literally the last game on the planet to not have DRs for CC of any kind. Just don’t make hard CC stack on itself, it should either overwrite what is already applied if of the same type (for example a 2s fear on a 1s feared target should just give it a 2s fear), or be applied at significantly weaker effect (the 2s fear would have 50% efficiency and add 1s).
Remove the stacking but don’t touch anything else. Fear is still a condition, it still gets double-hit by the fact that it is both a stun and a condition and so is hampered by anti-stun and anti-condition mechanics. Make it bad in some other way, but making it not a condition really hurts fear.
Besides that they need to increase the telegraphing of some of our skills, reduce cast times on others, and make attrition available to all builds, not just MM. Take the mechanics that make MM work via traiting, and put it into other trees. Put traits in that add finishers to skills, that add CC condis like cripple/chill/immobilize, add certain fields, fix our siphoning, etc.
I assume you mean how do you make the healing and damage numbers larger, in which case the healing half scales off healing power, and the damage off power, and can also crit with precision/ferocity.
Because rotations at a high level are a team based thing. You can’t properly match a really good team’s coordinated rotations with a bunch of essentially yoloQ players just doing what they think is best. NA just doesn’t have the team experience that EU does; EU just strictly has better teams and team players.
And there is no good way to combine EU/NA. One group ends up with ping issues, and while it might not always be an issue just in queues, you can’t have a competitive tournament where “half” of the teams are forced to play with 150-200 ping. Not to mention it’d require who knows how much work on ANet’s part to combine things (probably a lot, considering how awful a lot of their coding is), and months of bugs as a result.
Exceptions do not make a rule, especially with how many archaic systems they’ve tried to put in one. I’m not saying they’ve done a perfect job, but each tree has certain themes they tend to stick to in a majority of their traits, and some exceptions, especially for balance reasons (like why Dhuumfire could never have been in Curses GM, despite it fitting that spot far more than Spite).
It seems US teams like rolling a lot tankier, compared to the “superior rotation” strats that top EU teams have.
It’s a shame we don’t see more EU style comps.
Rotation comps require a lot better team strategy, and most NA teams form and break very quickly. So it makes sense to run a meta that has high success with lower teamwork. You can see it in their rotations (or really lack thereof).
I love NA, but we really just have never had the top tier PvP scene EU has.
And… so what? Dying with 25 stacks of might isn’t any more helpful than dying without them.
Interrupting lord heal 2 complicated for NA.
Let’s be honest, did we really expect level 2 PvPers to do the most basic PvE possible? Obviously AI is just too strong.
The current trait ideas are fine. Each tree has a theme, although some are loosely defined and need fixing, and certain mechanics associated with it. For example while Death Magic is partly the minion tree, Spite has +minion damage because its the damage tree, and blood magic has the siphon trait because it is the siphon/healing tree.
Same with staff, death magic holds the general staff traits to make the base weapon better, spite holds the trait to give more damage, and soul reaping has the LF trait, because those two traits fit those trees.
Dear god the forums show nicely how 40% of the community needs to be permabanned from real games for lack of game design sense.
Good thing game design isn’t democratic.
I managed to load it on youtube just fine
15 (or 3 now, I keep forgetting) isn’t useless, although it isn’t amazing. You always have a healing skill, and consume conditions scales really well with healing power, and it also makes the previous minor trait stronger. Its certainly not as useful as, say, if it converted it to vitality, but it still gives something.