Okay, just changed my OP for a better version of Ghoulfire. A little weaker, perhaps, but at least more in line with Necro’s current design. I did, however, up the radius by 50% to make the skill more reliable.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
It’s expensive, but you might like Abyss dye.
Besides, if I’m not mistaken, Necros already have the most unblockable skills in the game (three wells, five if you have siphoning wells, Dark Path, all Corruptions but Blood is Power).
I do believe that they should have merged Staff Mastery with Greater Marks when they moved it to Master tier, but I don’t have an issue with having to invest 20 points to make 6 skills unblockable (remember the two on Lich Form, though Mark of Horror doesn’t matter if it’s unbockable or not)
Hilariously, the bit including the gorilla boss had everyone but me unable to skip the mobs with ease last time I did it. Part of that was people not bringing the right skills, part of it was that I would just tank through the fireballs.
Still not entirely sure how the necro had the easiest time skipping that segment.
I think the most likely skill we’d see on a weapon that summons a minion would just summon a jagged horror. That way, when we swap weapons, we don’t lose it.
Jagged Horrors are actually pretty good, people just don’t like Reanimator because of when it gets summoned relative to when it would be useful.
One minion on a weapon is good. If it’s on a two-handed weapon, then I would like to see two minion skills on that weapon and no others.
The main thing to remember is that right now a necro can make himself extremely durable to AoE with the minions he can already get. Every AoE hit on a minion master with his clumped minions only has about a 5/7 chance of even hitting the necro (5/8 if they picked up a jagged horror). A necro with, say, 10 minions only has a 50/50 shot at even being hit by AoE when in his army. We are the only class in the game that can use the AoE cap to our advantage while solo. Too many more minions may cause the MM to be unbalanced in the wrong direction.
What trait line do you think the torch will compliment?
Either spite for condition duration or Death magic for themeatic purposes, since any sort of “fire” a necro is rightfully channeling is related to the underworld and spirits.
I would think that any Torch the necro gets actually shouldn’t have a ranged burn skill. It’s boring. Everyone burns with torches, so let the necro have their own twist on it and do necro-y things.
I do, is that why I see this?
Yeah, it’s a visual bug. Any time you have a translucent model with those bracers, you get the face. To my knowledge, this only applies to Spectral Walk/Armor and Mesmer phantasms as stealthed characters don’t have any effect renderings.
Looks like you have the Brilliant armbands from your achievement points, would I be correct?
Point taken. I just picked boons because it used existing mechanics and other than the Chill/Fury and Immobilize/Might, it is a pretty decent “siphoning” setup.
Really what I like most on this idea is the “slow to a stop” punishing aspect.
Thanks to Occultist’s Flame, I once again have Torch on the mind for a possible necro weapon. There is no way you can look at this torch and say “not fitting for a necro”.
Now, there are some arguments in favor of a torch. It could give the necro access to burning without the heavily controversial Dhuumfire, for example, leaving necros the ability to cause every condition in the game unassisted (Confusion takes either Runes of Perplexity or comboing Spectral Wall) without the issues of the trait.
However, I have an idea for the #5 skill (assuming it was an offhand) that may work out better for necros.
Ghoulfire
Cast time: 1/2 second
Radius: 360
Recharge: 40
Combo Field: Ice
Starts a Ghoulfire at the Necromancer’s location. Each second, the Ghoulfire pulses a condition, giving the Necromancer 1% life force for each foe struck.
1st second: 5 seconds of Weakness.
2nd second: 4 seconds of Cripple.
3rd second: 3 seconds of Chill.
4th second: 2 seconds of Immobilize.
5th second: Stuns for 1 second.
The idea for the skill is an area that saps more and more of an enemy’s strength, feeding it to the necro. The purpose is really area denial. However, the longer you stay on the field, the harder it is to escape it. Other than in PvE, the 4th and 5th tick would probably never occur outside of the necro using good play. The possibility of 25% life force from a single skill is pretty nice, but since it involves having five enemies on a small area for 5 seconds, it should be!
Thoughts? Also, any suggestions for a partner skill on the torch? I’m thinking something like “Lifesight” where, among other things, it applies the Revealed debuff (like 1 or 2 seconds) to enemies caught in its area.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
It isn’t accurate that we bring nothing unique that we excel at in PvE. It is the exact same stuff all Necromancers excel at. The problem is there is absolutely no need for it in PvE, and that other mechanics can accomplish the same or better effect more easily.
For example, Necromancers excel at conditions, yet boons are superior in every way in PvE. We had (ANET FIX PUTRID MARK FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS COLD AND DEAD) amazing class-wide condition removal and great sustained healing, but rarely do you need a lot of condition removal (more than a character can handle themselves) or sustained healing (you either dodged it or it 1 shot you, little in between). Its not an issue of everyone doing things better, its an issue of ANet made terrible mechanics for DPS Races 2, and seem to refuse to admit that their content is so badly designed that it blatantly favors three classes over all others.
This. Necros have their strengths, and are very good at those strengths. However, what I said earlier wasn’t false either. We do a lot of things okay, but what we’re great at is inconsequential in PvE due to enemy design.
If more enemies had liberal use of boons (right now, it’s only some Dredge) and conditions (the occasional Risen, but they only apply one or two conditions at a time), then a Necro would go from being general trash tier in PvE to being a much-wanted profession.
Oh, and a revamp on many bosses. It’s bad enough so many bosses have Stability that can’t be removed, but do they really need Defiant too?
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Truthfully, other than the Flavor-of-the-month Dhuumfire Terror build, necros aren’t really great at anything, but they do a lot of things okay.
Yeah, I agree with you, Blaine. Whenever we’ve faced Maguuma, they really haven’t been that much of a problem.
I’ve also noticed a distinct lack of flame ram placements from them lately. Kind of odd.
That said, I hope they do this again this week. Would be fun to see.
Yeah, multiple arrow carts are the only answer to a zerg of MM.
I feel that our sustain should require us to interact with our opponents, actually, not ignore them. Necromancers are supposed to be the class that embodies Aggression magic. If a necro isn’t aggressive, they should not be effective. I am fine with a necro built for sustain to be nigh unkillable if it also requires them to constantly be jumping down his opponent’s throats to keep that up.
Aggression and noninteraction are not actually mutually exclusive. Ideally, our sustain should be the result of outplaying our opponents. If your defenses are simply too good to let you die, you don’t have to do that. You just keep attacking until your foe dies while you have little chance of dying yourself.
A necro in the middle of your team should ideally be the most annoying thing in the game to deal with because he keeps screwing up what you are trying to do and you can’t really focus him without giving his team free reign to pound on you.
This simply can’t happen. You’re asking for the Necro to both deal a crazy amount of damage and also be extremely difficult to kill. D/D eles in their heyday were hard to kill but brought relatively little damage. As Necros are tuned now, they deal really, really high damage but are too easy to kill.
Necros should be hard to kill, but we should be possible to kill if you outplay us, and our damage should take some time to get out as compensation. Having a Necro on your team shouldn’t leave your opponents with no good options, which is what it sounds like you’re asking for. Or have I misunderstood you?
I believe you took what I was saying too far.
First off, I never said a necro should deal tons of damage and be able to tank through everything. Heck, I suggested the opposite. Damage and durability need to be a continuum, but if you build for one, you should be good at it.
The presence of an aggressive necro in a teamfight should not be an auto-win, but they should make life much harder for the opponents. The ideal place that I feel for the necro is that you can out-play them, but the simple “he’s a problem, focus him down” should create a lose-lose situation for the necro’s opponents. The necro can be focused down, but it takes too much effort in an even fight for it to be your best first move. A necro going all-in should be a legitimate problem for his opponents. Like everyone else, you need to out-play him. That is where I feel they should be.
And yeah, aggression and non-interaction are mutually exclusive. You can’t be aggressive without interacting with someone. How they react to your aggression is also key to the fight outcome.
I feel that our sustain should require us to interact with our opponents, actually, not ignore them. Necromancers are supposed to be the class that embodies Aggression magic. If a necro isn’t aggressive, they should not be effective. I am fine with a necro built for sustain to be nigh unkillable if it also requires them to constantly be jumping down his opponent’s throats to keep that up.
A necro in the middle of your team should ideally be the most annoying thing in the game to deal with because he keeps screwing up what you are trying to do and you can’t really focus him without giving his team free reign to pound on you.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
I think it has more to do with the coding. Fear doesn’t actually interrupt, it overrides your actions. That is, you don’t interrupt a skill, you just force the target to cancel any skills they were casting.
I agree that Fear really should be an interrupt, but it may very well be coded so that it just overrides your actions instead of actually interrupting.
Honestly, I would much rather a necro built for it to be a nigh unkillable tank monster that very slowly depletes the health of his opponent. At least then we would be the master of attrition we are supposed to be.
For Blood Fiend, it procs on both summoning and sacrificing.
Not quite. It’s bugged everywhere to transfer 3 conditions per target (still none from allies).
Well, the only skills that can be used while Feared can also be used while stunned.
That said, Fear currently only behaves as a condition, save that it can be removed by stunbreaks. This is actually very good for balance purposes.
Flying through the air is only referring to our stunbreaks not being useable at certain times. The delay upon exiting death shroud is a very large concern, but still a separate one.
Another big problem are the necro stun breakers (SA and SW) They don’t break stuns like “knock down” that makes it so much useless again.
Actually, what you’re seeing is a timer for when you are still flying through the air. This seems to be a new addition and I find it very welcome. No stunbreak works if you are still flying from a launch or pull effect and that timer prevents you from wasting it before it would have any effect as a stunbreak.
Most Torches have a generic ‘throw torch and apply burning’ skill unfortunately so if Necro did get torch, this would be what I’d expect to see. I’d love to see it as a group utility option though, or have a sweet finisher somehow worked in, like blast, if it grants a fire field on the other skill.
I’d rather see an ice field, personally.
Perhaps it would be best to revert the change in only PvE and WvW? WvW, it’s only a concern with escaping off of cliffs, really, as you can’t block an important attack with it without serious luck.
I will sign this petition. PvE content that is actually challenging became significantly harder for a necromancer than any other profession after this change.
Well, Malfactryn already works well for necros on a dagger.
Thanks for the clarifications. Think I will make the Longbow my ranged weapon of choice, especially in WvW.
Still makes me wonder why it isn’t seen more often, but at least it doesn’t seem like it is just a sub-par choice.
Plague does have an advantage, though, in that even if you are CC’d, it continues to pulse anyway, so knockdowns, dazes, and the like actually don’t affect your output in Plague, even if Stability is removed.
Yeah, I was most disappointed too when I saw this. It is absolutely perfect for a necro, but we can’t use it. (for those of you too lazy to look through, look for “Occultist’s Flame”)
There’s a hammer (Entropy) that’s perfect too, for that matter.
Anyone done any real testing beyond thoughts and feelings? I will do some today once I find the time.
Those that have are reporting that there was no change in death shroud. Everyone that thinks there was is going off of a feeling.
Though more testing is good.
Easiest way to test Deathly Perception is to get 50% crit chance out of death shroud, then just hit things a lot with life transfer and such, see if any hits don’t crit.
The new runes that convert Vitality to everything might actually do okay with full soldier’s gear.
Actually, could be interesting with Blood Fiend and Minion Master trait. A 16 second cooldown on a heal skill is fairly short, and that is a 16 second cooldown on two activations of “on heal” procs.
Hate to burst your bubble, Blaine, but that mouseover has been there for a couple months now.
One interesting change they made was that you can mouse over your DS bar to see what % of LF you have left. I could be wrong, but I think that that’s new. It’ll make calculating our LF much easier.
That’s not new, I’ve been doing that for a couple months now.
I think you can under the Crafting tab of your hero panel. None of my characters have more than 2 disciplines, though, so I can’t be sure.
Necromancer:
Fetid Ground: Added a radius skill fact.
Well of Blood: Added a radius skill fact.
Wail of Doom: Increased the spell effect to better represent the actual spell area.
Tainted Shackles: This skill’s damage tooltip now displays the appropriate damage.
Doom: Added an effect that plays on the necromancer when this skill is used.
Reaper’s Mark: This skill now uses a distinct animation compared to the other mark skills on staff to help improve readability when this skill is cast. The timing and effectiveness of this skill remains unchanged.
Summon Bone Fiend/Rigor Mortis: Added a range fact to these skills.
Reaper’s Touch: Updated the skill fact to display the proper regeneration amount.
Crimson Tide: Fixed a bug that allowed this skill to ignore line of sight.
Only actual mechanical change was Crimson Tide now requiring line of sight (rather sad on that one, but it wasn’t unexpected for it to change at some point). Everything else was just tooltip updates and a couple of visual changes for identification purposes.
I can live with this.
Condi duration doesn’t affect Daze, but Banshee’s Wail + Sigil of Paralyzation does mean an AoE 4 second daze, which is very often overlooked.
No, we won’t get nerfed, we’ll get “buffed” :
" *Necromancer casts a toxic cloud, enveloping enemies. All enemies are pulled to you and you are knocked down and dazed. All boons are removed from you and transferred to the target. ……
You gain 3% Life Force.* "
What else could we ask for?
Nah, that would synergize too well with Reaper’s Protection.
I agree with Bhawb. While it would be fitting for a blast finisher, I feel the boon strip makes it good enough that the finisher isn’t necessary.
What I would like to see is possibly a whirl finisher on axe 2 and a projectile finisher (even if small) on life blast.
I will come in now and say that the build is definitely not OP. I play a non-Dhuumfire Condition necro as my primary build. When I run into a M/S-GS Warrior in WvW, I know I am in for a tough fight, but not a totally unwinnable one. I (and every other necro) rely almost entirely on conditions to kite, and the popular build reduces snare duration by 98%. I have a very, very difficult time kiting these Warriors (Signet of the Locust is the only reason I can). My build only has room for one stunbreak and even that usually gets dropped for zerg battles. I have no stability whatsoever (Flesh Golem for elite)
But I can still manage to beat this build, even with Lemongrass Soup + Dogged March + Melandru runes. It is as close as you can get to a flat out hard-counter to my build, but it is still possible for me to win if I outplay the Warrior. Very difficult, yes, but possible. If I lose (which happens a lot), I don’t think “He’s using such an OP build”, I think “Well, he sure exploited my weaknesses. How did I last as long as I did?”
Thieves should have no issue with it at all with the ease they have disengaging, dodging, and kiting.
First off, a disclaimer that I play Necromancer primarily and, while I have a Warrior, do not play him often.
The thing is, I pretty much never see Warriors with longbows, either in PvE or WvW. Due to their AoE, I would think it would be more common in WvW, but I can count the number of Longbow Warriors I’ve seen there on one hand. Is there something that I am missing about this weapon? Is it just plain bad?
While I do understand the change to make it not teleport you more than 1200 distance from the point it was fired, it did hurt the necro’s ability to keep people from escaping. That’s an ability we are supposed to have, but everyone else has the tools to just escape regardless of what the necro can do. (save other necros and non-GS Guardians).
I really wish ANet would look better into making the necro actually difficult to escape from, but really, that requires nerfing the other classes or giving the necros brand new mechanics.
The only ones that do not OOC are Blood Fiend and Bone Minions.
Flesh Wurm doesn’t either, sadly.
Blood Fiend really should, though.
1. No, Death Shroud’s level doesn’t trigger “at X% health” conditions. Only your actual health matters for that.
2. Not based on Death Shroud, but if the necro has 25% health and full death shroud, the Heartseeker will deal the bonus damage for the target being at 25%, even if the necro is in death shroud.
It converts 1 boon immedietly, then 1 per second for 5 seconds. It is only 1 boon per target per pulse, but it pulses 6 times.
Well, the closest a necro stunbreak gets to a major effect like that is Spectral Armor, followed immedietly by Death Shroud. Still not invulnerability, but it is very hard to kill 1v1. Also on a 60 second cooldown with Spectral Walk and Plague Signet.
So yeah, I feel your pain regarding the usefulness of some stunbreaks compared to their cooldown.