You know the only problem with this idea is that some Dev will go. “Hey, that sounds like a pretty fitting trait name for a Mesmer! We just need to swap it around, because Mesmers really can’t inflict Chill, so it is chill on Confusion application!”
It’s Dredlord. He never has anything constructive. Best to just ignore him.
Hammer Guardians get 100% Protection uptime just by auto-attacking, so nobody has comparable uptime to a Guardian.
For one, that nerf is only in PvP, where most necros don’t care.
Two, while we agree the nerf is pointless, it just doesn’t seem that big a deal; not when there are other things that are honestly a higher priority to change,
Plus, DS absorb didn’t block any CC or conditions (or any other effect) applied by the hit, only the direct damage.
I think ANet should do some testing with keeping siphon numbers where they are, but allow siphoning (not other healing) to work through Death Shroud. The siphoning could still probably use a boost, but it’s something they should look into.
I think he was referring to the overflow changes and the lack of a one hit kill block mechanic.
This needs to be reversed if only in PvE for dungeons.
The lack of a one-hit block mechanic I agree needs to change. But no class in the game should be able to, without a single investment of any kind, be able to block one hit of infinite damage every 10 seconds.
The investment in this case is using the life force generation skills. Especially on Scepter/Dagger, this can be quite the limitation.
And the air sniff… Looks more like “looking around” to me… :/
Zoom in to watch it. You see the nostrils flare as they sniff.
Your post 2 and 3 are the exact same text, there.
Two serious potential problems with the proposed Ele changes. ~snip~ Do not force me to spend hard earned gold to fix the mess you create by changing the rules to the game.
Go to your class trainer and ask to retrait. It costs a little over 3s. You DON’T need to buy a new book, or spend “hard earned GOLD.”
I shouldn’t have to pay period because they changed the rules and 3s is a lot of money to pay to re-trait!
Last time they did big trait shuffling, they refunded trait points for free. I’m sure they will this time as well.
Flesh Golem is pretty good against thieves. Not his actual attacks, but Charge. Don’t use it to start the fight, let them think they are doing well against you first. Then use Charge. They’ll usually dodge at the end of your cast animation, but that’s too soon to avoid the Golem. Once they’re on the ground, they’re done. Lock them down with Fears and pile on the damage.
I think it would be fine if the cast time was reduced (say to 1/2 second) and the projectile speed increased by about 30%.
Honestly, though, this trick has been pretty widely known for months. I’ve been using it to res people that die in Cliffside Fractal, for example (or to reset when the stupid wind knocks me off). I’ve been using it as an escape mechanism in WvW.
Honestly, since the skill is (now) pretty useless in combat, it’s wonderful that it has so many uses outside.
I use Mistfire Wolf when I want burst damage in an open area. It’s pretty good at that.
But I can definitely vouch for Artillery Barrage being the worst elite in the game. For everyone.
I have been saying this for a bit now…
Dagger 2 should be AOE with life siphon ticking per target; and Axe 2 should also be AOE, akin to the thieves whirling thingy they do.
I have to disagree with Axe 2, mainly because if they made it AoE, they would have to brutally murder the life force generation on it. If they change any skill on Axe to be AoE, it should be the auto-attack.
I personally don’t mind if Dhuumfire stays as a trait, but it cannot stay in its current implementation and be balanced. Either the method of application must change (which the devs are considering) or the condition applied must change.
I would also like to speak up and say that 2 second base Weakness on Weakening Shroud feels too short. While a shroud-dancing necro could have very high Weakness uptime, he also has completely forgone Death Shroud as a defense. I think that is a fair tradeoff. In the meantime, a 3 second base would allow necros to mitigate those damage chains a little better, but not so much that it would work out to be anything more than burst mitigation.
45% to 50% is optimal but like Dranor says, around 35% with fury every so often procs fine too. The scepter hits fairly fast so you’ll get plenty of chances to apply conditions.
Just curious, does anyone have any data for this?
Not really. This is more of a case of preference. I have no complaints with the proc rates at a 37% crit chance (57% if I just hit DS in the last 5 seconds).
- Master minor: Fetid Grasp – Staff’s Necrotic Grasp has X% chance to apply Y sec of Poison
No. No minors should be specific to a single skill, type of utility, or weapon. Ever.
No point in trying to say what happens to Reanimator, as that much has been announced. Protection of the Horde likewise will no longer be a Minor trait.
As much fun as it would be to discuss how either should function after their moves, let’s please keep the topic solely on the 5 and 15 point minors that will replace them.
We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .
Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.
Thanks,
Jon
We got this post today, and Jon is pretty clearly asking for our thoughts on the matter. I figured it would be a good idea to have a dedicated thread for this discussion.
My personal view: Either Spiteful Vigor or Shrouded Removal should be the minor 5 point trait. Spiteful Vigor, because it makes use of the Boon Duration stat we get from Death Magic, Shrouded Removal because it is a good general-purpose defensive trait. I shy away from using Dark Armor as a minor because necros really don’t have a whole lot of channels. If you aren’t running axe or dagger main hand, you’re stuck with only Life Transfer, which is on a 40 second cooldown. If the trait gave 2 seconds of stability on a channel, however, I would be on that in a heartbeat for a minor trait. Still limited use, but it ensures our channels get to go off.
The 15 point minor is more difficult to place. Reaper’s Protection is always handy, but it doesn’t synergize quite as well with the other traits in the line or the stats we get. I feel a new trait is necessary here.
Eles get:
•Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
That can hurt us…
God forbid Eles have a chance to actually do good now >_>
The issue isn’t that Eles are getting some new anti-condition toys. The issue is that the toys they are getting negate conditions entirely instead of providing strong resistance.
If, for example, Diamond Skin was instead “While above 75% health, conditions applied to you have -50% duration”, I would find that to be much preferable. It would still make the eles with the trait resistant to condition builds, but it would do so in a way that allows for some actual interaction with a condition damage build.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
On top of that, if you’re tagging 100 people and you aren’t dead, then you’re not alive because of the siphoning. You’re alive because nobody is attacking you.
I respectfully disagree. We are a ranged class with DS to sponge some damage as well as plague form which is beastmode in WvW.
If you are staying at range, then Locust Swarm and Plague are both useless to you.
Again, if you are siphoning that much, then you are right in the danger zone. It’s not the siphoning that’s keeping you alive in that scenario, it’s the fact you aren’t being attacked (and the fact Plague is stupidly tough to kill anyway, regardless of siphons)
Its not rocket science. Pick a duration, say a month. got to each professions sub forums and count the dev post.
When you see there are two professions with less dev post then the necromancers and 3 that tie with the necromancer. You will then understand why Some of use find it hard to care about the OP.
So, you’re saying you don’t want the Devs to communicate with you about your profession? “hard to care about the OP” in this situation means exactly that.
On top of that, if you’re tagging 100 people and you aren’t dead, then you’re not alive because of the siphoning. You’re alive because nobody is attacking you.
Jon, might I suggest a new 15 pt minor then?
Deathly Defense – Gain protection whenever a source of damage would deal 10% of your total lifeforce while in DeathShroud. Duration of the boon and ICD for this trait needs to be playtested.
We don’t have that many boon sources to synergize with the boon duration from Death Magic and more protection is always welcome for the class.
Alternatively, Retaliation. I do feel like Retaliation is a boon that necros could use a bit more access to (as we have only one skill that causes it and two traits).
Also, Jon, while you are correct that there is an issue with Dhuumfire, the issue is that it is a cover condition for that bleed stack that is buried so deeply, not its accessibility. Adding Burning to our repertoire means that bleed stack (where the damage is really coming from) gets buried deeper and is even harder to remove.
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By the way, charr do sniff the air when idle.
Perhaps levels do segregate the game world, but you know what? It makes perfect sense here.
Let’s say you are a Human character. Do you really expect on your first day of adventuring to be able to run down to Orr, the stronghold of an Elder Dragon where literally everything is hostile to you, and be all right? No, you stay in Queesndale and hone your technique, eventually traveling to the rest of Kryta.
Yes, leveling does segregate the game world, but what makes less sense? The fact that you can’t go someplace because enemies are too strong for you, or that you should walk into the most hostile place in all of Tyria after just starting out?
We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .
Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.
Thanks,
Jon
This right here, ANet. This is what we want more of. Communication of plans and acknowledgement our complaints, suggestions, or observations are being heard.
While this post is Necro specific, I’m sure people of any profession want more posts like this. It makes us, the players, feel involved. It lets us feel like we are helping the game become something we truly want to play even more than we already do.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
We will talk today about changing duration on weakening shroud instead of cooldown .
Also we have some plans for death magic including merging reanimated with death nova, and moving Protection of the Horde to be a major trait, and then reworking the minors in this line. This kind of change is not going to happen for dec 10 for 3 reasons.
1) testing time
2) implementation time
3) most importantly: if we rework this we want to make sure it is correct the second time around so we will take our time deciding on the “right” design.Point 3 is something I’m happy to discuss here to list some ideas and break down some pros and cons.
Thanks,
Jon
Thank you, Jon. This gives us two things we wanted: confirmation that you are actually listening to us (I know, we can get whiny at times) and a definite plan on what you are doing. It is extremely reassuring when we get posts like this.
I wouldn’t expect any changes like that to be in the next big patch. Changing values on traits/skills is one thing. Programming new ones is a totally different monster. Even so, I think I speak for all necros that we are glad there is at least a plan that is being worked on.
Haunt range: 1200
Bone Fiend range: 900
Blood Fiend range: 900
Flesh Wurm range: 1200
Everything else: melee.
The tooltips have always said these for me and it’s been consistent with observed behavior.
Honestly, for values, I think a 50% increase on our siphons across the board (except Vampiric Master) would be a good start. I would love to see siphoning made more interesting, but altering values is much easier than changing how it works.
Condi builds could really use life force generation on Grasping Dead, though.
at my condi dmg when I run 30/20/0/0/20 is 1890 with will equal about 801 burning dmg per second!
now combine that with:
10 stacks of bleeds – 1370
poison = 269
fear = 1k+no add that together and you get around 3440 dmg a second for lets say 3 seconds thats 10,320 dmg!!
so please tell me again how that is not High dmg?
And how many attacks/skills do you need to get all that conditions up?
About 4 skills which can all be delivered in 3 seconds.
The problem with vampiric is AOE.
This is a good point. Even if siphon were buffed to acceptable levels, it wouldn’t do much if you aren’t running dagger or axe, meaning not much for condi, who also needs real sustain and attrition.
They need to move siphon to some kind of more timed application. Whether one big siphon on crit, then a cooldown, or perhaps siphoning off a particular skill which is already limited by the skills cooldown, something like that. Maybe the trait triggers at a certain percent, for instance at 75, 50, 25, percent health, the Necro gains the life steal buff and on next attack steals 500 health or whatever. Something less dependent or abusable by AOE, which Necro has vastly different access to based on build.
See, I don’t feel the AoE is an issue. Necros embody Aggression magic and want to be in the fray as an extension. Right now, Siphoning is one of the very few things we have that rewards us for engaging multiple foes.
Yes, we can get some strong siphoning in the absolute perfect situation (which will never happen, even in PvE), but anything should be strong in the absolute perfect situation. That is not something to balance around. Necro’s biggest issue on the sustain side is multiple opponents and having life siphon apply on everything hit means they can actually have some sustain when faces with more than one foe.
Even in the perfect situation that Bhawb calculated, the necro gains about 3k health per second (pretty sure it’s less). While this is a lot of life regen, it also is nowhere close to the damage output of five enemies in melee range. It might buy the necro another second of lifetime.
If siphons were made to be significant (not “hey, you ignored me for two seconds so I’m at full”) against one target, they would auto-scale with AoE against multiple opponents. The effectiveness of this is dependent on player skill.
Necro:
+ thanks for toning down their multi-condition vomiting
They haven’t turned that down at all. After the patch, necros will still be putting out the same number of conditions, just lower intensity on the bleeds. In fact, Jon has been talking about making our Burning even more accessible than it is now.
Maybe I’m completely out of line here, but I think the necromancer is the best it’s been since launch. That is to say, at launch, I found my necro completely unplayable. Now I see them in every form of the game. They can do well in SPvP, they have their place in WvW (I love using a staff and stacking marks on bridges to keep the enemy zerg at bay), and in PvE it’s probably my favorite farming profession at this time.
Are there problems? Undoubtedly. There are problems with every profession. There will always be problems with every profession, if you look only at the downside.
And Anet can’t make changes in a vacuum. They can’t change the necromancer without making sure it’s going to fit in with all the other professions.
I think people who live in the profession forums are too tightly focused on the trees and sometimes they miss the forest. It’s nice out here.
The state of the necro is not what this thread is addressing. What it is concerned about is the utter lack of communication the devs have had with the Necro community. It’s impossible to know if our suggestions, complaints, or critiques are even being heard when we get no response at all to any of it.
I’m presuming you mean to exclude the swiftness part, but keep the 2 second(without condition duration) cripple and 2% life force per target hit? This could indeed help sustain yourself for a few more moments when under focus fire. I say under focus fire, because naturally you don’t want to be in melee range while in deathshroud unless your shutting down your target with cc.
Definitely a possibility tho, but this idea would need siphons to work while in ds (actually healing your health) to show its true potential.
No, Swiftness included. You can flash it briefly out of combat for a speed boost (you should be able to avoid mobs within 5 seconds if you want to) In combat gives you a little bit of chase or gap-making, or even just a bit of life force sustain.
What if instead it gave us a Locust Swarm (say 3-5 seconds) on entering Death Shroud?
Pretty soon, thieves. Everyone will counter thieves.
Then thieves might actually get some skill instead of hiding behind perma-stealth/evade and laughing at the “noobs.”
To be fair, I have had fights against skilled thieves before. They were tough fights and it was clear that either one of us could have won if the other made a mistake. Frequently, I was the one that made the mistake.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Condition cleansing is a soft counter to condition builds and there, it was a case of “you always had the tools to counter the tools we always had, you just chose not to use them”
…
“you always had the tools to counter the tools we always had, you just chose not to use them”
… like… direct damage?
… and something about condis making toughness worthless…
This is “you’re getting a new tool in addition to the tools you already had to counter the tools we always had, but your new tool can make our tools useless rather than less effective.”
Eles have never had issues with numbers of condition cleansing (the D/D heyday proved that). As I said before, the issue isn’t breaking that immunity, it’s keeping it broken. Most of the ele’s heals also remove conditions, so whenever they break the 90% threshold, they’ll almost always be condition-free.
As for Toughness not applying against conditions, that’s how conditions have worked. As you so gleefully point out, condition-applying skills (short of Corrosive Poison Cloud) do actually have a direct damage component (though small). Toughness does work against that. However, if conditions didn’t bypass Toughness, then it is the ultimate defensive stat with no actual counter. Conditions are balanced bypassing Toughness because they can:
A. Be cleansed to stop the damage early.
B. Have the applier be killed before they deal enough damage.
C. Be mitigated by regeneration effects and healing.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Thanks for opening the discussion though, I think its helpful for us (and devs) to have limited trait discussions to keeping functionality.
Yeah, I figured it would be a better idea than just asking people what they wanted flat-out. A lot of the bad traits we have, I really like the idea behind, but the execution is terrible. On a number of them, I don’t feel we need a new trait to replace it, just a tweak to make them worth taking. I was curious to see how many felt the same way and what ideas there were to accomplish it.
I would also like to second the disappointment at the utter lack of developer interaction with the Necromancer community. When we recently got a response about staff bugs (after four months of non-stop reporting), the response we got was basically “We don’t know what’s causing it, but you’re not worth our time to fix things on.” That’s how I interpreted it, at any rate. The actual response is this:
We are changing the tooltip to clear up the confusion for this skill. It is a 3 condition transfer from self to foes when they trigger it. None of the other issues are bugs.
Hope this clears things up. This skill has undergone major balance renovations.
It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.
If this is the case, why did it take four months to get anything at all as a response? What we could have accepted is “We changed the functionality, but forgot to change the tooltip or mention it in the patch notes,” assuming the response came shortly after the patch that changed it. Alternatively, that post could have read “We are aware of this bug, but cannot seem to find what is causing it. In the meantime, we will change the tooltip to reflect its current functionality”
All I can say is vote with your wallet. My wife and I play and our investment in the game directly relates to the amount of money we are willing to spend on it.
Being that Necromancer is my main – that investment is pretty low right now.
(Even if Necromancer is the least popular class they are still losing money on easy fixes. Fixes that we have provided in great detail.)
There’s no subscription fee. Voting with your wallet doesn’t do anything.
I do recognize that this trait is not anywhere near as strong as Automated Response System on Engineers. The issue is that outright immunity with no duration is just saying “no, that strategy doesn’t work. Period.” Rather than “That strategy isn’t your best move.”
Automated response is by far the weaker trait. You can frontload lethal numbers on the board against it. When the AR kicks in and you played your cards right, you got enough damage to ensure the kill. If you didn’t then the engi can’t heal up if he wants to maintain the immunity which means that the similar direct damage that would allow you to start applying conditions on the elmentalist, kills the engineer.
Standard Engineer MO is to save all condition cleanses until they hit 25% and are immune to new conditions, then clearing themselves. From there, just a bit of regen (or the Backpack Regenerator trait) is enough to make them completely unkillable by condition builds. That is why ARS is the stronger trait. Diamond Skin, there is at least something the necro could conceivably do to deactivate it. You can’t heal an enemy engineer to break their condition immunity
The problem with vampiric is AOE. They are balancing vampiric around fast hitting attacks that hit multiple times and aoe abilities. These abilities include axe 2, staff auto (pierce), all staff marks and all wells. This makes single target siphons weak because if they upped the scaling then healing from aoe would be too strong. You can potentially tag 90 targets in 7 seconds with wells alone (7 pulses x 5 targets=35, 6 pules x 5 targets =30, 5pulses x 5 targets 25). Throw in all staff marks and a few auto attacks and you can potentially tag around 120 targets in 10 seconds.
The devs could man up and address the scaling problem head on or just claim that this continued band-aid fix is working.
Or, you could realize that the siphoning the necro gets from tagging that many doesn’t even come close to helping him last longer against the incoming damage that those enemies provide. Siphoning is one of the things that actually rewards us for aggressive play, hitting as many things as possible. Given Necromancers embody the school of Aggression, I think that’s fitting.
Necro’s biggest problem defensively is that what we have doesn’t scale beyond one opponent. Siphoning is the only thing we have that actually does. If they increased siphoning to be significant (note I did not say “enough to counter”) against one opponent, it is automatically correct for multiple opponents.
Getting them below the threshold won’t be a problem. Keeping them down there definitely will be.
I have been trying to find red weapons for my Necro and finding a red axe/warhorn, scepter/dagger is impossible
Malefactryn is pretty cheap on the trading post and is VERY necro in appearance. On the very expensive side, there’s Eye of Rogdort for scepter. Both are necro-suitable and predominantly red.
Axe-Warhorn is indeed more difficult.
I feel like gaining Might is preferable in the Necro’s case as % damage increases only apply to straight damage while Might applies to both straight and condition damage. It also indirectly boosts the 15 point minor by giving us more Power to convert.
As far as gaining Might on low health, that alone I don’t see as a problem, it’s the fact that the Might we do get is so pointless in intensity. Hence, my suggestion in the OP of having the initial threshold much higher, but getting geometrically increasing stacks as we get lower on health.
What’s more, I could be wrong but I don’t believe there are any other classes which receive a mastery-type trait at so low a cost, or as a minor for that matter.
Only one I can think of is Illusionist’s Celerity for Mesmers, but that affects a wide variety of skills (all clones and phantasms) and it is impossible to make a Mesmer that doesn’t have illusion access (since all weapons have them).
On the note of Siphoned Power, what are thoughts on my suggestion in the OP?
Vampiric – Recover HP whenever you gain LifeForce. 50% of gained LifeForce is added to your current HP but HP recovered is capped at 50% of your current HealingPower (If you gained 2000 LF but had only 1000 healing power you’d be healed for only 500 HP).
1 Second ICD.Might as well gain life when you gain lifeforce.
While I like the idea, I don’t think it should have an ICD. That would punish Dagger and Axe users unfairly. On Dagger, the trait would proc on the 2% life force gain in the third swing of the chain, then be on cooldown for the 6% gain on the fourth hit. On axe, it would proc once on a single 1.5% gain, then proc again on a second 1.5% gain. While they gained 12% life force, they only would get the healing from a quarter of that.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Signet of Restoration would be the obvious companion as it would allow everything else the ele does help in keeping them above the threshold. That does, however, get significant boost from Written in Stone, which can’t be taken alongside Diamond Skin (thankfully). Alternatively, Aether Renewal clears the conditions from them as well as gets them back above the threshold.
Most of the rest of their sustain is from traits. Most eles take points in Water Magic, which means they have health regen while attuned, and Healing Ripple for a burst of healing on-attunement (plus condition cleanse from Cleansing Wave) . Balancing between Earth, Fire, and Water attunements allows for good healing, condition clear, and survival skills. The X/X/30/30/X bunker build that I am certain we will see will be nigh impossible to take down as a condition necro.
I do recognize that this trait is not anywhere near as strong as Automated Response System on Engineers. The issue is that outright immunity with no duration is just saying “no, that strategy doesn’t work. Period.” Rather than “That strategy isn’t your best move.”
I’m not sure you get it. The problem with the minor traits right now is that they only really work for one kind of build (using minions). What you propose is bad because it does the same thing (only works for using staff). You may like it more, but it still creates the same problem, just with a different culprit.
No, i dont think you get it.
There traits that are bound to a build type/ utility type (minion master) staff is a weapon type that is used in almost all builds and is much more flexible then having to be a minion master to use these traits. Any decent Necromancer will tell you the only incentive to go into Death Magic at the moment is Greater Marks and Deadly Strength.
Replacing them with non-specific traits would see this tree have no obvious purpose, and I’m not sure if you noticed but every trait line on every class is themed.
The trait line is themed. The minor traits are not. Minor Traits need to either be generic (the stat conversions, for example) or self-supporting (Barbed Precision) Even though the staff is a general-use weapon, minor traits related to only it are a bad idea. It forces you to use Staff or have useless minors (in this case, the current ones are actually better since they are only mostly useless without a minion build, not completely).
On other classes, the closest we get to having skill-specific minors (either utility or weapon) is the Guardian Zeal line, which influences symbols on its minor traits. However, 4/6 main-hand weapons have a symbol skill, which provides much more variety than being locked into Staff to get any use. Even if a Guardian runs Sword and Scepter in their two weapon sets, the minor traits at 15 and 25 aren’t useless because the 5 point minor creates a symbol itself!
What you are suggesting may be an improvement in your eyes, but it is no better than the current minors we have in that line and, in fact, is worse. While I agree that we need different minor traits in Death magic, at least Reanimator means Protection of the Horde still does something, even if we don’t run any minion skills. With what you are suggesting, then it’s Run Staff or GTFO of Death Magic. You want Shrouded Removal, Reaper’s Protection, or any minion traits? Well, you’re locked into staff as one weapon.