Whole different thing, whole different use cases. Just because we also need a completely different thing doesn’t mean that this thing is not a thing we need!
So it seems like you’re infavor of adding more stability, just not to skills tied to deathshroud, which makes a lot of sense to me. Tying more things to death shroud seems pretty bad. I mean im all for the class mechanic being useful, but just throwing more things on top of DS probably wont do a good job at making it better.
Last time i tried, Entering or leaving death shroud interrupted a stomp. Most notably, i was DPS’ed out of death shroud mid stomp and it interrupted it.
Stomping is extremely crucial when you’re in a team fight and both sides have players down. Obviously, it only works against warriors, rangers, guardians, engis, and necros. Recently ive been taking double dagger and dagger warhorn and using blind to stomp those classes instead of stability. A successful stomp can turn the tides of battle in a team fight. So yeah its kind of important.
BUT if you’ve already one a team fight, leaving one or two dead to bleed out is preferable
Honestly, I also think that FitG is better than ever. Having a stunbreak on a 10" CD (!!) is incredible!
I agree that 1 stack of stability for 3" is pretty puny, especially now it’s been nerfed. But it’s enough to make it reasonably safe to shroudstomp, or to flash and get off your heal. Yeah they can still interrupt you, but that was already the case if there was another necro on the enemy team (I’ve interrupted many a stability stomp with corrupt boon).I’m going to disagree with that 100%.
I don’t want a stunbreak. I already got a lot of stunbreaks on necros. I already got tons of stun defenses like Rune of the Nightmare, doom, reaper’s protection.
I need stability. Something that lets me stomp safely. I’ll trade that worthless stunbreak for more stability. DS breaks stomp channel, so I can’t just watch the 2 downed skill animation.
This depends entirely on your build. You can trait a necro for 3 seconds of stability every 7 seconds in PVP, which is why i doubt they would change it any further. Thats a crazy amount of stability uptime even if its only onestack.
Does life siphon damage change with the targets toughness? Or is it just…applied?
It ignores armor. This is why in a number of cases it bugs out, because sometimes ANet decides to code enemies with 10000000000000000 armor instead of actually making them immune to damage, and then life stealing still applies at full strength, effectively ignoring damage immunity.
Thats what i thought but i wanted to be doubly sure.
Curses is strictly for condis currently because you can’t afford to literally waste a GM tier trait to pick up a few nice power build traits when there are really attractive power options in other tiers (Spite/BM/SR is way better than wasting a GM in curses).
If they fix that then it is fine.
There are no better options.
Remember we get 3 lines now.
So of course take spite, the power line.
Take Soul reaping, the 5% damage mod, speed of shadows, and food in the grave is good.
Maybe consider blood magic, but probably not.
Death magic is worthless in pve
Leave curses with fury, chilling darkness, and banshees wail.
Hands down, curses is the second line for a PVe power build to take, with a toss up between blood magic and soul reaping.
What traits in death magic would you want?
The minors are useless. The adepts dont help in damage dealing. Greater marks is argueably useful, but staff isnt your optimal dps weapon. The grandmasters are useless in PVe unless you run minions.
Blood magic: adding life siphon damage ontop of your normal damage is nice because its a free source of extra damage. So that I could accept as a replacement for either curses or soul reaping, but its still a toss up? Fury, vulnerability, banshees wail might argueably be better than added life siphon damage which is all you really get out of blood magic for a power build.
For a strict damage dealing power build, the choice is obviously spite, curses, soul reaping.
Edit: I totally forgot the changed the minor trait to be 2% cirt per condition instead of 2% damage per condition for curses. So given that change, if you have an ele properly stacking fury for you, blood magic is better, if not, curses.
(edited by Darwec.3784)
Seriously, why do people keep saying curses is strictly for condis now? Just because the grandmaster traits suck for power-damage? The other traits in the line + the minor makes it amazing for power-damage builds. This claim is really confusing me. Banshees wail is really good for either power or condi builds, curses is…kind of ok for both power and condi builds? There fore, keep it where it is?
Does life siphon damage change with the targets toughness? Or is it just…applied?
Seeing proposed changes like these is so hard to read >.< Id rather just see a proposed list of lines with their minor, adept, master, and grand master traits listed out neatly.
That said:
I am actually really looking forward to stability spaming FITG with the way it is now using 3 grandmasters. i totally misread that, you proposed it baseline. Yes that sounds awesome. Im so sorry.
Moving the fury trait out of the Crit line seems counter productive.
I like the idea of a curses GM trait that causes a group to do mroe damage to a target with condis.
I have always been of the opinion that Necro needs to put out more weakness and chill. Sure as a class we can’t aegis or block or dodge, but we have good health pools and DS and we are a condition heavy class so lets use that to mitigate what people can do to us and our party.
This. More on demand blinds would also be nice.
You already get chill and blind from well of darkness, along with upcoming added vuln. And from staff. Aoe weakness from staff and dagger offhand? So its a decent amount. You just kind of have to pick between bringing chill or bringing weakness. Currently you can bring lots of weakeness from DS’ing but i think thats getting nerfed? So maybe…they shouldnt nerf that?
Necros sustained damage is one of the lowest in the game. But a necro using locust swarm > reapers touch > tainted shackles > WoS > WoC > Lich is very good burst. Its an incredibly frontloaded rotation. If you take out staff ele and icebow i believe its the highest burst in the game. Thats for about 10 seconds atleast. Some of the other classes might catch up once your wells run out and you are just spamming lich auto.
If you are talking about 3 second or less burst (PvP style burst) then obviously necro doesnt have it very good. But in PvE good burst is considered in a time frame of around 5-15 seconds.
OK just wanted to make sure I was understanding correctly. Most bosses dont last longer than 10-30 seconds in Pve though Correct? So if its one of the longer boss fights, coe or hotw, i can see this being a problem, but in COF, AC, SE, CM, boss fights with a good party should melt in those 10 seconds of burst? It just seems that in some of the faster dungeons in a good dps group, necros could do….acceptably?
Necro has more burst and less sustained damage though. :P
Sorry, little confused, but how does necro have more burst that sustained? Due to the wells?
The only thing we do is damage. But we dont even come close to ele or thief. And thats not just in practise. Its also in theory. Eles and thieves have around 10 separate damage modifiers. Necro has 3 in traits (currenly can only use 2 at once) and the 3 every class has (potions, runes and sigils). Necros dont even compete for middle ground dps when doing the math. And its all because of the lack of damage mod traits and high coefficient skills. Lich form is our only saving grace and that doesnt compete with staff ele.
I agree…but i think that asking to be top or close to top DPS wont be a thing that happens, since thats the thief general role. I also dont think we will be given good support. Necros are supposed to be the condi class, pulling life siphons and condis out. So asking for big changes seems like too much, but asking for small changes knowing full well they wont make the class even close to others seems like a good baby step? I like baby steps.
Ele received a nerf, iirc, to ice bow and hammer that should trim it’s PvE advantage.
The lift in cap limits will make Necro scepter useful as well as changing poison to stack. Cond builds were horribly handicapped by dungeons and fractals. If vulnerability has its cap raised, axe will get better in PvE, too. Of course, other professions will have their condi builds buffed, too.
Ok so people keep pointing this out, but i have a serious concern with it. First of all, they have dropped the damage on poison and burning to account for the raised cap. So even though you can stack hire, its doing less damage per stack. Second of all, I doubt that in a dungeon you will stack enough condis quickily enough for it to matter. Zerk groups in dungeons can burn a boss in 30-45 seconds, not long enough to stack up condis and let them deal their damage. Yes, on world bosses, this is a major buff because condis shine on longer boss fights, but in a dungeon on trash mobs that die quickly or on bosses that only last maybe a minute, condis wont have the ability to deal their full damage and zerk groups will out power the condi builds.
So in dungeon groups necros run into a problem that we dont bring anything to the party that another class doesnt already do better. For just straight up damage, the best played necros can in THEORY keep up with thieves, but in practice thats not happening in all likely hood. In support, we can bring chill weakness and vulnerability. Weakness only helps in reducing damage, and parties have already learned to clear dungeons without that damage reduction. Chill only helps to keep bosses in place with some damage reduction. Again, no need for that damage reduction, and most parties can keep bosses in place already. Vulnerability can be stacked better by other classes. Eles do more aoe damage, even without icebow.
So assume a party with the current meta-ish build (theif, guardian, 2 ele, ps warrior). We dont put out the damage of a thief nor do we bring any stealth, so we cant replace a thief. Our group support comes at a cost of DPS, and we cant really keep the potection/regen of a guardian up. More importantly we offer no reflects or real damage mitigation of that kind. The group fury, the might stacking, or the icebow of an ele (even if ice bow gets nerfed the others are a problem). We dont have the might stacking of a phalanx warrior.
Of these, the closest we are able to replace is the ele. We can bring some level of AOE damage with wells and warhorn locust storm etc. We can keep up damage if we try hard. Ice bows are getting nerfed so we dont have to contend with that. We can maintain personal fury uptime of 70% (elese can do group fury of 100%). Ice stacking isnt neccessary if you have a phalanx. So if our fury trait applied group fury (or if we had a grand master that turned our minor in to a group fury) we could atleast push our way into a group if they cant find two eles. This is not a terribly overpowering pvp change, and not at all over powering in PVE. IT still makes us a second choice to elese, but atleast we could be a substitue. And then this one change to a minor trait would take us from being the useless selfish dps to being “hey you have a necro, i guess you can help out a little”
In short, AOE Fury plz?
^ you can only use 3 trait trees.
I know. Sorry i should have been more clear i meant: I would always uses spite and curses and choose between blood magic and soul reaping based on situation. I think the life siphon damage from blood magic MIGHT make up for that 5% bonus + extra 20% fury uptime you get from soul reaping, but soul reaping also gives stability. But it would depend and might take testing to see? In the end, its always spite and curses. Likely taking soul reaping. Maybe that set up for blood magic would be better that that set up for soul reaping. That is what i meant by the 4 lines i listed.
Power Necro:
Spite V^o
Curses VVV
Blood Magic oo^
Soul Reaping Vo^
Soul reaping grants stability, 5% damage, and increased fury uptime.
Blood magic does lifesiphon damage on every hit from every skill + extra life siphon damage on crits and well hits. Life siphon damage ignores armor, so it would add up. Not sure which is better, but leaning towards soul repaping for the stability.
Bitter chill and Chilling darkness and Well of darkness would stack vulnerability quickly along with chill and blindness making well of darkness amazing.
So I looked at a few of the power builds here, and what people were proposing to take given the proposed changes (I dont like running codi, so I wont comment). I thought after reading theirs, I would list mine and ask for suggestions/thoughts.
I usually run dagger/warhorn and axe/warhorn. The axe gives a little range when things go bad.
For utilities I’d run signet of spite (passive power), well of suffering( damage), well of darkenss(cover later), and lich.
For traits i would either run spite, cures, soul reaping OR spite, curses, blood magic.
In spite: Bitter chill, chill of death, close to death.
In Curses: chilling darkness, banshees wail, and i guess terror? I dont know how to handle the curses grand masters.
In soul reaping: speed of shadows, vital persistence, foot in the grave.
In Blood magic: blood thirst, Vampiric Percision, Vampiric Rituals.
First of all, well of darkness: By taking blinds apply chill, chill applies vulnerability, and well of darkness, you can stack chill for 8 seconds, vulnerability, and blindness, helping a little in survivability with chill and blind, helping a little in damage with vulnerability and helping to make sure the boss stays where you want it to stack and kill bosses.
Second: Soul reaping with speed of shadows and foot in the grave could give quite a bit of fury and stability uptime.
Third: Blood Magic might not be too terrible for a DPS build. You lose the fury uptime and 5% damage, but you gain life siphon on all hits, on crits, and on well pulse. Life siphon is armor ignoring damage, so little bits of life siphon here and there will add up quickily, and with the warhorn 5 skill hitting 15 times, and two wells pulsing, that should, in theory, be between 25 and 50 life siphons in close to 15 seconds. Its not over powered damage, but its a decent bit, possibly enough to make up for the loss of 5% damage from strength of undeath?
My problem with a lot of the other builds is recommendations to take spiteful talisman in spite, or weakening shroud in curses. I dont think the 6 seconds of weakness and bleeding every 25 seconds is super fantastic. Increased damage to foes with no boons may be better than vulnerability in parties that already stack ample vulnerability, but should your party be lacking, taking bitter chill will apply 25 stacks in 5 seconds for 8 seconds. (neither bitter chill or chilling darkness have an internal CD at this moment from the screenshots). Even if you take Spiteful talisman over Bitter chill, i think chilling darkness is a stronger skill than weakening shroud.
My biggest problem with necro skills on the hole is that im making awkward decisions to bring chill and vulnerability over that 5% damage so that i am not a greedy dps. Minor changes to deathshroud skills might make necros tremendously more useful, like Furious Demise being an AOE fury (though that seems too good), or Siphoned power being a better might stacker (2 stacks of might for 5 seconds on a 5 second CD is useless when phalanx warrirors exist). Deaths embrace is nice, but spiteful renewal will likely proc only once per dungeon boss. Necro curses was advertised as the “crit” line in the AMA live stream, but the grand masters have no crit traits. Blood magic can be twisted for a little extra armor-ignoring damage but in all likely hood it wont be enough added damage to make necros relevant, and the only skill im truly happy to have access too now is foot in the grave because it finally addresses necros total lack of a reliable stability skill.