Every Necromancer has Consume Conditions which is one of the best removals in the game. Most weapon sets have at least one condition transfer even if they can be dodged. MM Necromancer removes 5+ every 10 seconds just by afking.
I did say “typical” builds don’t have more than three cleanses. Yes, virtually all of them run Consume Conditions, which I will happily accept being told it is one of the best heals in the game (it really is).
MM necros do have to choose 2 of Fetid Consumption, Death Nova, and Training of the Master, though. If they chose Fetid Consumption, they’re losing damage somewhere for that cleansing. Still insane cleansing ability, but it’s not quite as typical as you would think.
Okay, back on topic: Mending could use its base heal boosted some, but other than that, I think it’s already in a fine place. It doesn’t need to be a total clear, and I think its cooldown is probably fine. The issue is that Cleansing Ire/Healing Signet is such a powerful combination that Mending just gets left in the dust, never to be equipped.
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I like Hidden Pistol, but that’s mainly because as a necro, I have no other sources of evades/blocks/invulnerabilities (other than two basic dodges). Reliable combo finisher is kinda nice too. Shrapnel Mine is also handy at times. Same with Battle Roar if you aren’t warrior or ranger.
Actually, I like all of the charr racials except Artillery Barrage.
Typical necro builds currently don’t run that many cleanses (typical condimancer runs 3, two of which can be dodged, none on shorter than 20 second cooldown). They’re just much more likely to sit on their conditions to get rid of larger stacks at once.
As it stands, people are forced to dodge randomly because it’s hard to tell whether it’s a Reaper’s Mark or a Mark of Blood
It’s actually quite easy to tell which is getting cast. Reaper’s Mark has the necro thrusting their staff out, then pulling it back.
Now, Mark of Blood vs. Putrid Mark I could understand. Those two are extremely similar animations.
Signets are likewise not an issue, since the signet image appears above the caster’s head when activated.
I’m sorry but I completely disagree. Trying to identify which mark they’re casting from a 1200 or even 900 range is ridiculous. Then there’s the issue of your opponent being an asura in which you can’t even tell if he’s casting a mark or not in the first place.
This game really needs some work on animations and untelegraphed instant bursts. It feels like a mess in comparison to many others.
Disagree all you like, but the animation for Reaper’s Mark vs. any other mark really is quite obvious. The Asura is the issue here, not the skill animations.
As it stands, people are forced to dodge randomly because it’s hard to tell whether it’s a Reaper’s Mark or a Mark of Blood
It’s actually quite easy to tell which is getting cast. Reaper’s Mark has the necro thrusting their staff out, then pulling it back.
Now, Mark of Blood vs. Putrid Mark I could understand. Those two are extremely similar animations.
Signets are likewise not an issue, since the signet image appears above the caster’s head when activated.
I wouldn’t say minion skills are terrible. Traiting makes them better, but even at baseline, they’re decent. The traits for them are also all good (save Corruption).
Besides, the Ferocity change won’t affect PvP gear at all (perhaps Celestial amulet/jewel gets buffed, though). Yes, the stat will be “Ferocity” instead of “Crit Damage”, but the multiplier will be the same.
Condition spam is dominant in pvp at the moment, nerfing direct damage will indirectly buff it making things even worse.
CC spam is dominant and condition builds are on the decline. I suggest you keep current if you post things like this.
That said, there is no reason to add a “crit reduction stat”. That’s what Toughness is for.
It should be fixed now. Try this.
45% think ritual of protection is Subpar or Terrible. What?
I think the trait could give 1 second more of protection base. The issue is more along the lines of well builds not generally going into death magic, as well as its terrible uptime (though that is due to well cooldowns).
You have Focused Rituals on in PvP, but not PvE.
The cleansing in Water Magic is a bonus, though, not your main target. That’s what I was saying.
A necro with Dhuumfire wielding a scepter and a dagger, equipping Spetral Wall and Bone Fiend can already apply every condition in the game with no outside help. Once Dhuumfire gets changed to being on life blast, they can even do it without any RNG determining it.
Spectral Wall+ Bone Fiend is far more reliable than staff. Double the effect, too.
Why trait water when you can get damage and get all the same cleansing? It’s a two-way street.
The issue with Ele traiting is that regardless of your personal reason for traiting into Water Magic, you trait there because you NEED what the traitline gives. You may say “well, I trait water to get condition cleansing”, but you don’t actually. You trait water so you can get the same condition cleansing and run something else in your skills. This isn’t wrong to do, but saying that you need to trait there for that reason is faulty.
Focus and off-hand dagger also have decent condition cleansing abilities on them, and Cleansing Flame is always forgotten. Yes, Ether Renewal is easy to interrupt, but so are most heals in the game. Armor of Earth, Arcane Shield, Rock Solid, blinds (most of which are instant-cast for eles), CC, and even the focus invulnerability all make it fairly easy to complete, though. Heck, the focus invulnerability brings even more cleansing.
For death shroud, the fact the guy just turned all black and shadowy isn’t enough of a head’s up? Never mind the health bar changing color?
Sounds to me like you want the most telegraphed things in the game to be even more obvious, in case people were watching the target’s health bar instead of of their opponent.
On an Ele you have no choice but put at least 20 points in Water to get any form of cleansing other than a kittenty signet and mediocre heal. These changes don’t do a whole lot to promote build diversity. You can’t really use anything other than cantrips and arcane skill either since Glyths and Signets really kind of suck.
Bull. I stated it before, but eles have great condition cleansing even without traiting for it. Water Magic is mandatory for the extra 2k-3k health and the healing options. The fact this line also gives additional condition cleansing is gravy. It is not the reason to spec water magic.
There are really only two things I would do to staff:
1. Merge some of the traits together. No other weapon in the game has more than 2 traits relating to it, and some of the Staff traits are rather lackluster. Spiteful Marks could be merged with Staff Mastery and it honestly wouldn’t be a big deal. Soul Marks could be merged with Greater Marks as well and likely still remain balanced.
2. Improve auto-attack. Make it move faster, bare minimum. I’d like to see something like gaining 1 second of retaliation as well with it, but the primary issue is the slow projectile speed.
Guess I just never ended up in a situation before where I was using life blast with frequency. I recently got the Zodiac armor skin to put on my power set, so now I’m no longer embarrassed by the crafted exotic armor.
Dark Path is homing, but I don’t recall life blast being homing. Even if it has been, I’ve never seen it do a 60 degree turn mid-flight to hit my target before.
I think there is more to it than just that. Last night, I’m positive I saw my life blast swerving to hit an aetherblade that jumped to the side after I fired. This happened multiple times, so I think Unyielding Blast (at least in PvE) is currently homing.
Slotting an off-hand dagger/focus and Ether Renewal already gives similar condition cleanse ability as most necro builds, so I wouldn’t say you need 30 water for condition cleansing. Conditions do pose more of a threat to eles due to their lower health pool, but there are options outside of Water Magic for condition cleansing.
No, why 30 Water Magic is so necessary is the health and healing you get from the line, plus the cantrip traits.
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No, it means nothing at all because this “leak” is fake. I literally just posted the link to ANet’s confirmation about them being fake right above you.
Pretty sure the balance patch is right after the last LS patch. The break they’re taking is a content break, not update break.
It’s official: these notes are fake.
Good! I’d like to see a couple of those changes, but I’m overall glad those aren’t real (other than those confirmed by the devs in the preview thread)
Part II.
Traits
Spite IX—Training of the Master: This trait now increases minion damage by 25%, down from 30%.
As stated by the devs on stream.
Spite X—Chill of Death: This trait now deals 12% less damage.
Ummm…why? Powermancers are in a bad enough spot, so why nerf them? Because one person whined about this trait?
Spite XI—Dhuumfire: This trait now causes Life Blast to apply 3 seconds of burning on foes on a 10 second recharge time.
As stated during the dev’s stream. Not convinced that it is still deserving of a Grandmaster slot, though.
Curses VIII—Banshee’s Wail: This trait now functions correctly with Locust Swarm.
Bug fixes are always good, even if they make us weaker. This is one that makes us better, so I’m quite happy
Curses XII—Withering Precision: This trait now also applies 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds on critical hit.
So Withering Precision would now be “on-crit, inflict 5 seconds of weakness and vulnerability (5 stacks), 20 second cooldown.” Better than it was, but still terrible. If this is the best they could come up with to bring this trait up more often, color me unimpressed.
Death Magic VII—Greater Marks: This trait no longer increases the radius of marks.
This trait is no longer worthy of Master tier.
Death Magic XII—Necromantic Corruption: This trait now grants minions 100% chance to remove a boon on hit on a 20 second recharge per minion.
Good buff to reliability, bad in that I can almost assure you that it will proc with no boons on the target. Because why should necro grandmaster traits be useful?
Blood Magic 15—Vampiric: This trait’s life siphon healing now scales with healing power.
Already happened. Scales horribly, but it does scale.
Blood Magic III—Mark of Evasion: This trait no longer has a recharge time. The mark of blood placed by this trait now applies one stack of bleeding for 6 seconds to foes and 3 seconds of regeneration to allies.
I guess Blood Magic adept major slot is now locked into Transfusion. Blood Magic needs more incentive to take, not less.
[/quote]Blood Magic V—Vampiric Precision: This trait’s life siphon healing now scales with healing power.[/quote]Again, already does. It’s notes like these that make me really hesitant to believe these.
Blood Magic VII—Vampiric Master: This trait now deals 10% less damage and heals for 10% less. This trait’s life siphon healing now scales with the necromancer’s healing power.
Fair enough, so long as it isn’t “scaling” like Vampiric currently has.
Soul Reaping III—Path of Midnight: This trait now reduces recharge time on Death Shroud skills by 20%, up from 10%.
About time, since it’s the only 15% CDR trait in the entire game.
Soul Reaping XI—Foot in the Grave: This trait now applies 4 seconds of stability, up from 3 seconds.
Won’t complain about enough stability to cover a stomp without boon duration. Could result in an interesting DS flashing build with perma-stability now. Durability would have to come from elsewhere, though, so it’s definitely not without cost.
My take on everything, Part I.
Necromancer
Weapon Skills
Mark of Blood: This skill now has a radius of 180 units, up from 120 units.
Chillblains: This skill now has a radius of 180 units, up from 120 units.
Putrid Mark: This skill now has a radius of 180 units, up from 120 units.
Reaper’s Mark: This skill now has a radius of 180 units, up from 120 units.
Not sure what’s going on here, since this change happened a while back.
Healing Skills
Summon Blood Fiend: The healing provided by the blood fiend’s attacks now scales with the necromancer’s healing power.
Glad to see this. Hopefully, they don’t give it “scaling” like Vampiric or nerf the base value.
Signet of Vampirism: This skill’s passive effect now siphons health from foes when struck on a 1 second cooldown. The active effect no longer has a cooldown and summoned allies are able to benefit from the active effect. The active effect’s life siphon damage has been decreased by 10% to compensate.
I’d prefer the passive ICD be shifted to per-attacker, but at least now that portion gets affected by Bloodthirst and does something more than just damage reduction. Not sure summons really need to proc the active portion, but removing the ICD needed to happen. Not upset about the damage loss, as it’s really not large.
Utility Skills
Putrid Explosion: This skill is no longer unblockable.
Confirmed from the dev stream, and understandable.
Elite Skills
Marked for Death: This skill now has a radius of 300 units, up from 240 units.
Mark of Horror: This skill now has a radius of 300 units, up from 240 units.
They were already plenty large IMO. The issue wasn’t landing them, the issue was why bother? Marked for Death is the biggest “why bother” on Lich Form. In the situations where it’s worth using, the target already has max stacks of vulnerability usually anyhow.
Summon Blood Shark: This skill is the underwater replacement for Summon Flesh Golem and is on a separate recharge timer to allow quick re-summoning when entering water. The Blood Shark applies 3 seconds of bleeding on hit.
Charge: This skill causes the blood shark to charge the target foe, stunning them for 1/2 second.
About time we got an underwater elite that didn’t kill minions. We better get it automatically if we have unlocked Flesh Golem.
(to be continued)
Healing skills need to have cast times so that there is an opportunity for the opponent to interrupt or prevent it.
They have a cast time so there is play and counterplay. Long cast times mean that they can be interrupted, and that is the counterplay. Defiant Stance is different, however, because it’s counterplay is in how much damage you take during the activation duration. Thus, it could viably (and fairly) have no cast time and create just as expert a play/counterplay interaction between two or more players.
It needs to keep the cast time so people can prevent you from using it. It does some decent healing right up front, so even if it doesn’t get interrupted (and with a 1/4 second cast, interrupts are the result of luck, not skill), an instant cast would make it far stronger because it can’t even be prevented via CC. As it is, it is still a 3 second base invincibility with some up front healing. Counterplay after activation is limited, since you are still guaranteed no damage taken during that time.
If Defiant Stance were instant cast, opponents have no real counterplay. They can’t CC you to prevent the heal from going off. Oh, but they can stop hitting you for 3 seconds! That’s…not actual counterplay. It gives you free reign for that time. Instant cast would also mean you could do it in response to a big hit (like Eviscerate) without stopping whatever it is you were doing.
So no, the skill needs to keep its cast time for balance purposes. Making it instant would break the skill horribly.
Light armor is the best. I’m wearing it now, combining it with the chimeric prism focus and, in the future, shattered holo wings and Frostfang.
In the meantime, I get to pretend I’m Nicol Bolas with my wings of the sunless (working on a second ascended backpiece to put the shattered wings on).
Zodiac armor is better than most of them. Tail still clips, but the shoulders are actually quite good. Helm I’m iffy about, but I have smaller horns anyway, so I can just pretend they’re inside the headdress.
Keep in mind, this is the light armor. I haven’t bothered previewing the medium or heavy.
Im soooooo Happy they nerfed this trait.
I’m happy they’re changing it. Not so happy the nerfs they made because of it are most likely staying.
Moa is fine as it is. The only thing related to it that needs to get fixed is minions dying to transforms (which is a necro issue, not Mesmer). Yes, it is a bug, no, the issue is not with Moa.
Healing skills need to have cast times so that there is an opportunity for the opponent to interrupt or prevent it. Even over elites, healing skills have the largest impact on the game. Having a healing skill with 0 cast time would negate any counterplay opportunity.
Yes, Defiant Stance has some opportunity after activation, but not as much as you would think. It’s especially effective against condition damage builds as they cannot prevent themselves from healing you. Even so, it still gives okay healing without a dumb opponent. Removing the activation time would also remove the opportunity cost associated with other heals (which is part of why healing signet is too strong right now).
It already has the shortest activation time of any healing skill by at least .5 seconds. Deal with it.
I really hope these aren’t true. For one, most of them are already in the game. Two, nerfs to Powermancer? Seriously?
Necromantic Corruption would be useless. The boon-strip would proc on their first hit, when the target usually doesn’t have many boons. Sure, we can hope that it doesn’t proc if the target has no boons, but why would ANet bother implementing that?
Mark of Evasion would become a waste, so I guess blood 10 would be a choice of Transfusion or Dagger mastery… That tree needs more incentive to take, not less.
Given the “patch notes possible” is about half notes that were already implemented, I’m not inclined to believe it.
Would end up being another Diamond Skin. Worthless most of the time, horribly broken on those rare occasions it does something.
This is possibly the furthest thing from diamond skin on every level…
How so? It’s completely useless against half of the professions and the vast majority of NPC’s. Against two of the professions it can even affect, it still doesn’t mean much of anything. Against thieves and mesmers, though, it shuts down entire builds. Likewise, Diamond Skin is useless in PvE and does nothing against the majority of builds. Condition necros are the only ones shut down entirely.
In function, perhaps the proposed trait and Diamond Skin are completely different, but from a design perspective, they’re both terrible ideas for exactly the same reasons.
Would end up being another Diamond Skin. Worthless most of the time, horribly broken on those rare occasions it does something.
What is OP though is that several classes can pick up decent condition removal easily while other classes have to sacrifice more just to get some spotty removal.
Well, conditions were intended to be a weak spot for mesmers and warriors. Unfortunately, now it’s just mesmers and non-AR engineers. Despite the gripes coming from elementalists, their condition resistance is actually fairly high. Not Warrior-high, but high.
I don’t think ANet really minds about us complaining about bugs. Sure, we might get a little nasty, but they want a properly functioning game as much as we do.
Charr don’t follow gods, Norn see them as spirits (Grenth would be spirit of death), and Sylvari have no real clue what the heck they are, so the name would need to be something different.
Honestly, the signet doesn’t need a total rework to be good. The ICD on the active has to go, however (it’s already limited by the 25 stacks). The passive, bare minimum, needs to be a per-attacker ICD, not total. Ideally, the passive ICD goes away entirely and numbers get tweaked (such as a max heal of X% of a hit’s damage, so mesmers don’t whine about how they “can’t beat” a necro with it)
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What I’d like to know is, if they have this bug fixed in a build, why don’t they just hotfix it? Bugs with profession mechanics (especially major ones like this) really should just be hotfixed in.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled it’s finally getting fixed, I’m genuinely curious as to why it has to wait, though.
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I think they took it off because of an unintended effect when you had fights with 3 or more factions. If you had two enemies that are also enemies of each other, it would transfer conditions between them. My guess is that this is the real reason why they removed the ally transfer.
I may not play an ele at all, but I do think that cantrips are actually the least important to buff of the utility skills. Other than cantrips and a couple of arcanes, there’s Ice Bow and…well, nothing, really. At least, nothing good.
Cantrips and arcanes have okay effects, their real strength coming from the instant cast. The glyphs, signets, and conjures all need attention to make worth using. Make these skills worth their cast times and utility slots, and I think eles would have build variety again.
Regardless of if each bleed tick counts individually or gets lumped together on those logs, 83 ticks is impossible to happen in as short a time as he’s claiming, which was my main point.
I never look at the kill logs anyway, so I’m not exactly familiar with them.
I also realized I said “2 seconds” when I meant 3. Typo on my part that’s been fixed.
it shows more because of downed state but i died in 1 fear basically
it was dhumfire necro obviosly
my stunbreak is on 1 min cd…
So even with the automatic total condition cleanse on downed state, he somehow feared you another 5 seconds, including the fact that downed players can’t be touched by Spectral Wall, nor set off Reaper’s Mark?
Either A, you’re lying to us about how long it took (most likely, since the most possible bleed ticks in 3 seconds is 75, and that’s if you suddenly had 25 stacks applied all within 1 second, yet you’re showing 83 ticks) or B, you’re lying to us about how many opponents you had (and how long it took)
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this was done in 3 sec, gl dodging all that aoe while being feared non stop
1. Nice try, but there is no possible way to apply that many conditions in 3 seconds, even on a necro. Perhaps if cast times weren’t taken into account or there was more than one opponent (in which case, power builds would have taken you down just as quick).
2. So…stunbreak the fear? If you’re doing any form of PvP and you aren’t packing a stunbreak, you’re going to lose hard at some point.
My best solution (well at least for necro’s) is to nerf Sig of spite by giving it a 2s cast time and a nerf or removal of dumbfire.
Dhuumfire is getting changed to be tied to life blast. Signet of Spite needs no nerf. It’s already a 1 second cast with a massive animation. Try taking the easy dodge instead of asking for it to be even easier.