Stop trying to put us “on par” with other classes, when we don’t function in any way close to them. Its like asking for a Rook to get buffed because it doesn’t function like a Bishop in chess; of course they function differently, they are supposed to.
You are asking either for bad changes, or homogenizing changes. Both of which are, in the end, bad.
Holy crap, I’ve never seen so many bad suggestions in one place before.
When talking about WvW, balance shouldn’t be brought up much. At its very core it will never be balanced, ever. Obviously some really extreme cases need to be toned down, and stealth is one of those.
But I was responding to people saying that we need things like DS 5 to show us exactly where the thief is through stealth. Which would absolutely kill a lot of stealth applications, instead of just allowing you to catch a thief more easily in a fight before they perma stealth away.
No.
First off, Axe as it is now, it doesn’t matter if it cleaved 10 targets, it would still be a really bad weapon in general. It needs a rework, not minor changes.
WH changes don’t make sense. A PBAoE is way too strong, and the 5 skill already siphons LF, which works while in DS.
DS
No. Stop asking for base buffs to everything, base buffs are not helpful, they only encourage power creep. DS 1 is very strong already.
Spectral Grasp
No. It needs some increase in reliability, but that is it.
Spectral Walk could use a slight change to being better, but it needs that on its LF generation, not its movement (which is fine). Reverting it back to its old form would be way better, and give it distinct differentiation from SA.
Spectral Armor
No. This skill is amazing now.
Plague Signet
No. Read above.
Locust Signet
No. This heals more than a real healing skill if used right.
And yes DS delay needs fixing.
Actually, Necromancers don’t have a lack of utility overall, its the kind of utility. Warriors bring great team utility for turning already easy fights into even faster, easier fights.
But, if they actually made dungeons hard enough that rolling your face over the keyboard wasn’t enough to win, Necromancers would very quickly find a place on any team.
If you take a build that has 0 LF generation, that is your fault, not ANet’s. Just like you can’t complain if you somehow make a Necro build that can’t remove conditions.
The no healing in DS is because DS is not your HP bar. It is a secondary defensive mechanic, yes, and there needs to be a UI change so teammates stop blowing all their healing on me, but besides that DS base doesn’t need healing. It works very well on its own already. Its not like Necros can’t build very defensively already, our issue is far more that we can’t also support allies while building this. But that is an issue of our traiting far more so than DS itself.
At most, the ability to self-heal your HP while in DS should be a GM Blood Magic trait (maybe minor?) that allows regen, traited siphoning, and those sort of self-heals to go through DS and heal your actual HP bar. Maybe even a Master.
Because Soul Marks makes just as much sense in the Soul Reaping tree as anything.
Learn how to leave fights before they happen. Positioning is key on Necro, and allowing yourself to get caught by a zerg is due solely to your bad positioning.
Warriors.
Oh wait, you wanted a Necro build. I think Spoj’s build is probably the best for dungeons. Basically dagger builds. DS LB builds using Deathly Perception and LB spam are maybe more popular, but I think they underperform compared to his.
Also I think minions are becoming a lot more common, but unless you go hybrid minion/DPS power you kitten yourself too much. And while hybrid is probably the easiest as far as pugging goes, it definitely isn’t the most optimized build.
Just go find a spoj post and check his sig, that’s the best route.
I guess I was wrong then lol. Mobs seem to melt away when I’m playing my necro compared to my alts. Maybe it was just in my head! Still love the play style though so I’ll continue to main him and hope for some buffs here and there.
Mobs do, yes, because the right Necro build has pretty awesome AoE burst against trash especially. But its on very long CDs, is very selfish, and doesn’t compare to the more “sustained” bursts that the common classes can do. One WoS every 35s doesn’t really compare to 100b on a fraction of the CD.
The most optimize group in this game is always the one that will offer the fastest boss-clear times, while retaining cleave for clearing trash mobs, and just the bare minimum of defenses to not die.
Necromancers don’t generally bring this capability to groups. They can potentially reach the damage of a Warrior, but lack the cleave, and group buffing. They might be able to match the general support of a Guardian, but lack the extra utility. So if you are going for the speed-running record, it is very unlikely that you will bring a Necro.
That said, 99.999999% of the community isn’t good enough or doing content difficult enough for that to matter.
Necros have bad aoe DPS? This news to me.
In PvE yes.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
Ogre, Melandru, Lyssa, and Vampirism are the only ones you should be using in a standard MM build, unless I’m forgetting one. If you are going condition, then Nightmare is also fine.
If you are going a more niche setup (like a chill-based MM) then sometimes other rune sets that more appropriately help your secondary goal are fine.
What is actually embarrassing is that you didn’t understand this mechanic. This is true for tons of traits. Not everything updates your character sheet, it has nothing to do with being Necro.
Stealth is such a major mechanic to thieves almost non existent defenses that having many anti-stealth mechanics would be far too punishing.
My Flesh Golem can 1v1 a thief that doesn’t spam evades or stealth, god forbid that I can help him by knowing exactly where they are at all times.
Flesh golem should turn into a zombie voodoo shark when it hits the water.
You named two things that are completely not Necro. We don’t raise zombies, nor do we use voodoo.
It is probably one of the easiest methods to bot, since in PvE the only thing you really need to do is keep them all summoned and press 1.
This skill is bad, and ANet should feel bad for releasing it as is.
Seriously, if anyone actually wants to see how underwhelming the skill is, go back to the livestream where they previewed them all, and watch how excited they were for the other heals. They went through different tests, got all excited, showed off something special about it; but the Necro skill? They were visibly bored. The best thing they had to say about it was that it had a massive and obvious cast animation, and that the opponent could negate it’s entire usefulness if they weren’t brain-dead.
This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.
I wouldn’t touch mark animations at all. All you need to know is that its a “necro red circle” its bad for you, so don’t be there, or if you are out of dodges, get out ASAP or if immobilized in it, use well of power or purging flames or other alike ability on top of it to counter.
I certainly dont want any more elaborate animations if it contributes to lag and wastes dev time which could be spent adressing much bigger and higher priority issues.
The problem isn’t so much the red circles, its that a Necro can cast 1 of 3 marks on top of your head, without you being able to know:
1) Where the mark is going
2) Which mark is being cast (until it lands)
3) If the mark misses or fails by getting proc’d without taking effect, which mark just went on CD
Those are very key things to understand in a game with no cast bars and that is all around managing few but key CDs. If a Necromancer is about to cast Putrid Mark, I need to know those things, because it will drastically change my response to say, Mark of Blood.
The cast times don’t need to be longer, or more “HOLY CRAP HE’S CASTING SOMETHING RUN”, but even a very toned down but different animation between all 4 marks would be really useful. Look at Reaper’s Mark, you won’t notice what is being cast unless you were already looking, but it still allows you to know what’s happening. And it hasn’t made it any weaker at all.
The good news for people who want UW content is that one of the dragons is underwater, so there is a very good chance that expansions to the game will add significant UW content with that.
Yes, my bad, wrong terminology :P
Well it SHOULD be important. Having to change my elite right before i got into water just so it isn’t killed and i a stuck with a 60second cool down is rather annoying, not to mention Plague under water SUCKS.
No, it really shouldn’t be. In general, people spend maybe 5% of their overall gameplay actually fighting underwater. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even less than that. I only play underwater when its one of the underwater dungeons or fractals, and that’s really it. Why use a fairly significant amount of developer resources to make all the elites work underwater, when it is such an unimportant part of the game.
Parasitic Bond would be much better if they’d make the change that I’ve proposed a few times to all on-death traits: they need to trigger on enemy down in sPvP (not death), minion death, and ally death. Obviously they would need tuning, probably slightly lowering the numbers (and imo minion death would be a much smaller proc, with other deaths being bigger). But on-death traits just are too situational right now.
But that is an issue with quite a few traits, including siphoned power. They might work well, but only in very few situations, and that isn’t good for minor traits. Minor traits need to always be useful to every build going into that line, in every situation. This goes for all classes and all trees. There will obviously be situations where it is slightly stronger, but there are too many traits that are absolutely useless in large sections of play.
Lines have very clear roles, but people either don’t agree with them, or don’t see them. They have one major role, and then various secondary ones that “fill” it out.
Spite: primarily damage line, secondarily axe, focus, and signets
Curses: primarily condition damage line, secondarily crits, warhorn, scepter, corruptions
Death Magic: primarily raw defense (it fills this job terribly, which is a major issue with the tree), secondarily staff, minions, raw defense support
Blood Magic: primarily healing defense, secondarily dagger, wells, healing support
Soul Reaping: primarily death shroud, secondarily fear
They are pretty clear cut, and any “deviations” are because one tree’s primary purpose more accurately fits. For example, even though Death Shroud is the main staff tree, Soul Marks gives LF, and Spiteful Marks deals more damage, so those two traits belong in the trees that support those functions. Same thing with most deviations, although there might be one or two that are just… there.
All elites that are capable of use underwater (as in, don’t have some obvious reason for not being useable underwater) should be capable of underwater use. This should be true across every class.
Flesh Golem and Lich essentially just need underwater rigging and animations and they’d be fine. But that is valuable resources going to something that, let’s be honest, isn’t really all that important in game.
The daze is one of the best 1v1 tools we have, because it will completely negate someone’s block (including guardian shelter). It also has an equal or shorter CD than all the block skills that it will negate, and the 2s of daze makes it really easy to chain more CC right after.
This skill isn’t weak, it just needs tiny buffs (mainly to cone angle/tracking) to make it more reliable.
Its fine as is. It is AoE, although they need to be fairly clumped up to hit many, and it is an unblockable 2s daze.
No need to completely change it. The only thing I would do is slightly increase the cone angle.
Healing bunkers almost always require high poison uptime to stop. Bunker Warriors, some guardians, some eles, rangers, basically any build that has a decent amount of its “bunkerness” strictly from regen will almost always require poison to take down.
No one wants longer cast times. We want the exact same cast time, with an animation that will actually show the enemy what I’m casting. It’s stupid that three skills on the same weapon have almost the exact same animation.
Its also dumb that there is no way to tell where the marks are going. This is simple readability stuff that should be done. If it makes staff too weak then buff it, but this is basic game design.
Death Nova + Bone Minions gives pretty good poison (and weakness) uptime, but most power builds don’t want 30 in death magic.
100% poison uptime, actually, if they stand in the left over field for a second or two, and around 50% weakness. Although yes most people don’t want to go that deep atm because you won’t really get much else out of it.
Hounds of Balthazar, however, is really strong for bursting targets down.
Mark stacking has a fairly noticeable effect as well (very muddle center, outsides are usually much brighter than normal).
And I like the idea of them having a seen casting location. As it is now you kind of need to assume the Necro is going to hit you, which isn’t good play either.
Why would you ever purposely walk over a mark? You wouldn’t, ever. So knowing what mark it is (which you already do) doesn’t do anything.
He’s asking for casting animations, which is important. You can’t count CDs if you don’t know the mark that you just avoided, you can’t avoid what you should if you don’t even know what you’re being hit with. Imagine if every warrior GS attack had the same animation, so instead of dodging away from 100b, you dodged away from a little crap attack. Readability is huge for this game, and staff is a big problem in this area.
It does make me giggle when I can heal my teammates for more than their own healing skill with the single highest scaling healing skill in the entire game.
Yes. Almost all AoE will hit you regardless of whether you are stealthed or not, because it affects an area, not a target.
Drop Blood Fiend if you need condition removal. Honestly he isn’t worth it in PvP; consume conditions will not only often heal you for more outright, but also ends up preventing a lot of damage. Unlike PvE blood fiend won’t usually have the side effect of tanking a significant amount of damage.
That said, you want to drop a bloodlust in that setup. The build is fine otherwise, but you generally just want bloodlust on the weapon you have out to finish people, which should always be dagger (auto attacking a downed target is a great way to build up LF). Frees you up for basically anything but Force on the axe set.
The complaints against an attack getting better readability is absolutely insane. Nobody is asking for them to have after-cast animations, no one is asking for longer cast times. All that is desired is that you can tell what mark is going your way to make an intelligent decision then or later. As it is now, you can’t even tell what mark the other person is casting unless its reaper’s mark.
This is simply an issue of increasing counterplay in a very healthy way. Holy crap.
100% agree.
I have always run MM in PvP and we’ve always been fine. Just under top tier for highest level tournaments, but always viable and always strong in some way.
Some suggestions to your build without drastically changing it: Swap Dagger Mastery for either MoE or Transfusion. The first gives the best self-healing and damage, the second gives the best team/minion support.
Swap runes for one of the following: 6x Melandru, 6x Lyssa, 4x Vamp 2x Melandru. You also want to roll with a tankier amulet (MMs aren’t about self-damage but attrition), clerics, soldier, even valkyrie (preferably one of the first two though).
Sigils should be 2x Leeching or 2x Hydromancy or 2x Energy, with Bloodlust on your dagger set and kind of whatever you want with Axe (I use hobbling). Force sigils do not stack, btw.
OR completely contrary to that, you could try for a more offensive MM, in which case:
6x Ogre/Ranger runes, Bloodlust/one of the swap sigils on axe set, Force/one of the swap sigils (you want to mirror them on both sets)
Take 10 from blood magic, put it into Spite and pick up close to death, and swap out shadow fiend for Well of Suffering.
Either way works, both are fun builds. Your build isn’t bad, except the sigils, I just think you could optimize it a bit.
Nothing against his build, its okay, but I wouldn’t really consider it a great MM build.
Any conditions inflicted by the minions uses your condition damage/duration, and that is all.
Reaper’s Touch only issue is imo the regen is bad, but as it is now its a fine skill in need of now changing.
MoB also is a fine skill as is.
The Deathly Invigoration change is fine, but far too complicated. If it will have distance, make it just two, above or below 600 range. And it needs to be more healing than damage, and still affect allies. Essentially similar to how it is now, but scaling with how many enemies are around and how close they are.
No content in PvE is hard enough to need a full MM build if you can play MM. Ever. PvE is all about damage and living long enough to deal that damage, hence my build: which has 200 more power, plus self-might stacking, 50% higher crit chance in DS, 40% more crit damage, and just as much minion survivability. More damage, just as much not-dying (PvE isn’t hard).
I’ve solo’d bosses with this build when my entire team died, picked them all back up, and finished the fight, and 4 man’d fractals (low level). The minions tank everything for you, you will only get hit by random AoE crap that isn’t even aimed at you. While they tank for you, you spam 1 in DS and then get LF after coming out so in 10s you’ll be right back in.
Not sure if its fully optimized, but every crit while in DS, which should happen often with a 92% crit chance, vital persistance, and minions to tank for you, will hit for 4-6k, depending on might/bloodlust/vuln.
Open slot should be WoS, SoS, or Wurm. If you’re in an organized group with a lot of fields that you want to take advantage of you could also go bone minions.
Honestly, the proof is in what high-level teams run. When a high level team is setting up their team, and they want someone to deal massive condition DPS, they always go for Necromancers, unless there is specifically something about the current meta that makes Necromancers unviable. The Necro would still vastly out-damage someone else, but sometimes (an engi for example) can sustain themselves more easily, and that fits the team better. However the engi isn’t picked because it out-condis the necro, but because it out-lives it.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter if a Warrior could burst 10000 bleeds onto a target, if that was all they applied, because a single condi removal would wipe it all. The reason Necros are the king of conditions is because one quick burst rotation will stack you with enough bleeds to put you in deep kitten, while covering them with basically every condition short of confusion. Not only can you do this, but you can do it every 20 seconds or so, and then auto attack with the strongest condition AA chain in the game that will apply 3 conditions easily.
You might find Necros boring, but we are undisputed best condition class overall.
It used to be that you could remove blind just by casting an attack, regardless of whether it would do anything or not. So you could get blinded at 1200 range of any target with a 130 range melee weapon, swing it once, blind gone. Now you need to “hit” the target to wipe the blind.
Yes, it does. It is just a buffed Bone Fiend auto-attack, so its just the minion “casting” its normal auto attack with a buff.
Blind in its old state wasn’t good, because unless you were mindlessly spamming your important attacks without paying attention, it was pretty useless since you could just auto once and clear it. As it is now, it is actually a punishing condition, which is the point.
That said, blind is just fine as it is now, although there are some times where blind is far too spammable (looking at you thieves).
The Necromancer has plenty of very active playstyles if you want them. However, the class has a much slower feel in general than almost any other, so you aren’t going to get the feeling of fast-paced combat like with an Ele.
Also, Necros are the undisputed master of conditions in every possible way. The only reason other classes are ever better is because there is something besides their conditions that makes them better suited to the meta of whatever, and doesn’t have to do with the conditions themselves nearly as much.
If you know how to use Flesh Golem he will hit the vast majority of the time. You just need to watch his positioning.
Again, look at what I posted. The stability is not supposed to be “real” stability, its to cover the cast time of a stun break. They specifically stated this when they changed it, well of power is not a stability skill, its a stun break with a cast time, therefore it got a cover stability.