And stunning and interrupting and weaponstealing and knockbacking.
I was talking about SoloQ btw. And I am not saying this trait is a good grandmaster trait, but if you aint a full power build the other grandmaster traits than this one are pretty much way more useless than Unholy Sanctuary.
The problem with unholy sanctuary for me is that it heals for far less than traits like adrenal health, or backpack regenerator over the course of a fight. Those traits are pretty close to always on, while a necro is going to get at most 50% uptime on DS. Those traits also don’t require you to build around them to make them effective, and are one tier lower than unholy sanctuary. Besides, a necro with a clerics amulet is pointless anyway. You might be able to survive much longer than your used to, but you aren’t going to be doing enough damage to contribute to your team, and you aren’t giving many group buffs to make up for your lack of damage.
Disagreeing about the cleric amulet, it runs with power + thougness, and the thoughness buffs the power with 5 points in Death magic. Full power necros have a decent damage but are not really viable anyway, with this amulet you have way more survival/node defending options while doing still some close range damage if you wear daggers.
Life siphon ain’t worth it.
<——-Pvp rank 52 necro. I really lold at this one. I’d put necro over, warrior, guardian, thief, ranger definitely and maybe ele, but lets just say below ele. Only engi and mesmer i would really consider over necro. Both in spvp and WvW.
Difficulty really depends on the person but i wil say it is hard not medium. Been playing it for 2 years and i still have to pay very close attention to my skills timing or im skrewed by thief especially.
Depends on the situation ofc, but necro is at the bottom PvE-wise (which is included in the OP). Furthermore necro’s can be very decent in TeamQ but in SoloQ I’d rather chose a warrior or guardian over a necro, and yea, the choice between ranger and necro might be 50/50.
If you find the trait pointless then you are using it wrong. It is to reduce the risk of dyying while deathflashing to burst with a power build. Look at the trait line, dark armour which instantly bump toughness while channelling, then the grandmaster minor which bumps power according to your toughness. So now assuming you have the furious demise trait i will spell out how the trait is useful in the following steps:
Step 1
Deathflash for the fury to bump your crit chance to at least 70% if you are statted right.Step 2
use a channel skill such as ghastly claws and life siphon which bumps both your power and toughness so both your damage and armour increaseIt is most useful if you want to mantain high pressure on a target to finish em off while your health is low. Life blast is slow so you dont benefit too much from it against someone who kites, evades, and hits more with crits. With the channels you can immobilize first, deathflash and get dem crits in.
If you are able to down the player and the trait kicks in, you can combine it with spec recall ((which i cannot stress enough how glorious that skill is) then heal up. Depending on the situation, you can go back to finish or leave your teamates to finish.
I know for a fact that it has become increasingly difficult for me to get killed in pvp after combining the new necro updates. Even the ability to finish and revive while in ds has greatly improved my survivability. I take a lot more risks now, which is nice.
How good the trait is heavily dependant on your judgement, if you aren’t a good necro, the trait will be next to useless alot of the time. If you are ok, it will work for you sometimes, but if you are an unkillable killing machine, then you will find this thing can be a serious life saving trait. Just wait for the videos of all the OP necros out there posting their escapes thanks to it.
I agree that Unholy Sanctuary aint pointless at all, but might be needed to get a little buff or removed to blood magic traitline. I use cleric amulet atm in pvp cuz of this trait. I might be running almost the same build as you but I chose staff mastery instead of dark armor. I like the trait, but I feel like if it was more effective before the patch, but that could as well be nonsense.
Most necro builds aren’t really useful in SoloQ when it comes down to defending a node I think. And the comparison above between warriors adrenaline and necro’s deathshroud is simply ridiculous. But to return to the OP: Necro’s didn’t really improve but also didn’t really get any worse, so they are not hit the hardest with the patch.
I think you need to have more healing power for this trait.
The ability to interact while in Deathshroud that came with the last patch is a good one.
Running a 0/0/6/2/6 build atm with daggers with this grandmaster trait equipped. Though this build seemed to work better before the patch, probably because the LF gain on daggers has been altered?
1. Engi
2. Ele
3. Mesmer
4. Warrior
5. Ranger
6. Guardian
7. Necro
8. Thief
This is my opinion in sPvP. Though there was a thief build that I found hard to kill 1vs1, thought it was S/D.
The OP mixes a few things up, probably just trolling for attention. It is not the fact that people who dislike the map are playing bad, they just don’t want to alter their builds to use a few skillless utilities to pull people over a platform. It takes no skill to kill someone here, and you say it does, which is a failure, and I bet you will be outplayed on every other single map. No skill needed/boring/unbalanced/highly depending on your team and professions are just out of it’s range on SoloQ. The map is broken, not to mention you sometimes need to be killed by those worms when youre in downstate if you fall trough a platform. Go kitten on hotjoins, a perfect troll map belongs there.
I would argue OP: necro > engi > ele > ranger = guard > war > mesmer > thief
That is my chain of OP.
Go troll somewhere else lol.
Further more the necro didn’t really get badly nerfed (except WoB) but also didn’t get buffed properly, something every profession but especially the necro was hoping for. Mainly if you take into account that they were going to buff the necro’s survivability when they announced the patch. Sadly this did not happen, and necro’s can be disappointed for a true reason.
Out of my now six 80 characters. I can tell you from my experience that there is no “class to beat” on Skyhammer. I seem to do well with any class I choose on this map and pretty consistently.
If you are well versed in PvP and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your PvP builds then you should not have any trouble with the map.
Some builds are obviously more effective than others but skill, timing, experience, and player awareness are very big factors. It is time for some of you to develop an athlete’s mentality and stop making excuses for you failures. The more I read this thread the more I feel that some of you are just not cut out for PvP. I can understand if you are disputing game or map mechanics, but for 90% of these posts, that’s not the case.
I know I sound really harsh, or arrogant to some degree, but real PvPers do not cry because they are outplayed. I can understand the rage factor associated with the competitive nature, but I implore you to study the game. Learn the game mechanics, your class mechanics, the pros and cons for the builds that you run and just get better…
You are ignoring the fact that the biggest noob can easily kill someone on this map that is way better. You just see people nowadays trying to pull you on a platform, and if it did not work because of for example stability they run off, trying it again when the cd runs off. It is even boring to play. You can try to learn the mechanics as you say, but you can also just dislike the mechanics. Which the majority does. More whining about this map than about Capricorn says enough, many people liked Capri while they still removed the map. There is no reason to keep skyhammer then.
In SoloQ the necro’s problem is more its role in the game itself if you ask me. The strong side of the necro is using conditions to manipulate the enemy team, but with a scepter/staff build you do not want enemies to get close to you; so you wont be good in defending a node. So you require decent teamplay, which you don’t see a lot of times in SoloQ with ignorant non-communicative players. Further more you can’t play like a thief, mesmer or ele by roaming around the map due to our few escaping abilities and limited stability uptime (6 trait points for 4 secs of stability is kinda much for Foot in the Grave). It is just that for bunkering you got other professions that do better, and for power builds you have also other professions that do better. Probably another game mode would have been a bigger buff for the necro’s than all those ’’buffs’’ from the patch combined. And yes, I refuse to play a lame MM build.
Especially staff AA lol.
What I do like though is that we are able to interact/rezz/stomp while we are in DS now, that’s probably the only decent upgrade we had.
Does it only activates automatically when youre at 0 HP? Cuz it did not seemed so when I played PvP…
Please, remove the auto DS cast on this trait, it pretty much ruins it for me. I dont know why it is added in the first place, but a player should determine himself when to go into DS. Instead of moving this skill to the proper traitline you just made it worse. What’s left of the ‘’better survivability’’ promised for necro’s? SA cooldown reduced with 10 secs? Made me laugh.
The 30 sec cooldown on Unholy Sanctuary will make this trait completely useless?
As a necro I think Lich is just an ugly skill, instant winning a 1vs1. I would rather see a completely different elite skill with a shorter cooldown.
So, use Flesh Golem?
I used to do that but Flesh golem seems still bugged (it does not do anything, except the special knockdown, which is quite poor for an elite skill), so I normally use Plague, just because it doubles ur hp and a nice stability to keep that point longer in ur team’s posession. Though that one is only truely effective on condi builds, althought #2 with the blinds is pretty nice.
As a necro I think Lich is just an ugly skill, instant winning a 1vs1. I would rather see a completely different elite skill with a shorter cooldown.
Move Unholy Sanctuary to Blood Magic trait line, and more access to Vigor/Stability would do a great deal.
1vs1 it is kinda OP, in other situations it is not. That’s why I rather use Plague.
I am experimenting with Unholy Sanctuary in sPvP right now. It does not seem as useless as people claim at first sight. I am trying to find a way to increase my Healing power though. The synergy problem is there indeed, they should have put this as grandmaster trait in Blood Magic, not Death Magic.
Then nerf the combo of Healing Signet and Endure pain as well. Most necro’s pretty chanceless against this. Especially if you need to defend a cap point ofc.
Condi Necro’s might not be very useful at bosses, but are pretty nice in PvE versus bigger groups of mobs (scepter/focus + staff and Epidemic). In PvP necro’s seem to become less and less useful.
Nice post, especially the lack of decent grandmaster traits annoys me as a Necro.
Im using the warhorn at the moment, but I think #4 isn’t a really good skill. Might changing back to focus… but then I don’t have the swiftness from warhorn #5 anymore. Dilemma!
I think Axe could get finishers just as a base buff to its skills, since it is pretty much awful as is, although I don’t think finishers would change that. I’d rather see an Axe rework over that.
The other weapons though I think are well balanced as is
The staff AA needs a change I think though.
Hambow for me too.
Nothing wrong with the buffs.
First you claiming certain builds on certain classes are boring to fight and take too long to kill, later on you claim 5 professions to be like that. At least you managed to make a more boring and uninteresting post than sPvP itself.
Necro’s dont really need extra offensive skills/traits or whatever. Rather they should improve survivability a bit.
In my opinion conditions in a random 1vs 1 situation are good, but if you need to capture a capture point, the whole situation is different. You need to stay in a small circle, otherwise the enemy will capture the point. This makes crippling/freezing way less useful, since the enemy still can reach you very fast. ‘’keeping the enemy off you’’ is not working very well with conditions, except fear (while the enemy ofc shouldnt have stability). This is the main reason I dropped my scepter and focus, and started with a d/d well-build.
This build looks better at surviving inside a capturepoint, but now problems are rising with ranged classes that attack you. The scepter does not work with a power d/d build, and the staff auto attack sucks too hard to be viable. Oh, and let’s not forget about the lack of stability and stun breakers. Honestly, I think that this last complain is the main reason why there were so less necro’s at ToL. They simply have a low chance against all those warriors.
dancingmonkeyLuke.4562:
These aren’t utilities.
Okay, so now after pages of demands for stability and repeated claims that you do not have any, 17% and 11% up time on stability, seems pretty good to me Warriors balance stance is only 20% and Guardians stand your ground is only 17%. SO now we went from necromancer has NONE (because that is specifically what is in the statement he quoted and responded to) on over to claiming having 11%-17% uptime is not good enough.
Luke.4562:
30 pts in Soul Reaping to get stability isn’t worth at all.
I see. So it is worth demanding skill redesign for, but not worth an investment to earn. Seems to me as if you actually do not want it that bad if your unwilling to invest traits for it.
Luke.4562:
Thief has another style of play it’s extremely evasive whith perma evades and stealth which garants him more control and more damage soaking.
This point is… pointless.
Ah, I see, so when others suggest what they feel is a play style with a professional mechanic and abilities that make it imbalanced to give the more stability , such as the necro, then the objection suddenly become irrelevant. Yet when applying the same reasoning to another profession, all of the sudden it is valid. It either applies to all or none.
Sarrs.4831:
If you pick a fight with a Necromancer at the start of a match and dodge their key lifeforce generators, you can put them in a tricky spot.
And?
I do not understand how this makes the necro special. Isn’t that the point of dodges?
If you dodge VoJ, Earth Shaker, BoB, any ranger F2 CC ability, steal, or any shatter, then you just negated 5 other professions mechanics entirely. If you expect sympathy because dodging key skills lessens your professions effectiveness, you won’t find any.
alamore.1974:
My well build does.jot.benefit. from DS saying that all necros build around Ds is ignorant.
I read the post, I do not see where he said this at all. Feel free to quote his post in which he said anything about “building around it”.
Ofcourse you don’t spend 6 points on Soulreaping to get 3 seconds of stability, WHILE you’re in Death Shroud. That is a pretty bad grandmaster trait actually. Likely, only terrormancers will put that much points in that traitline. It is kinda sad that you say that we ‘’apparently do not want stability that bad’’ if we are not willing to get 6 into Soul Reaping. Do you want to get into the ToL finals but give up your own car? I hope not.
And yes, an elite skill is not comparable to an utility that might give stability. Further more your percentages are not right, it is 14% for Lich and 10% for Plague (and then you still have to use the elite skill immediately when it is available, which happens only theoretically.)
And also that guy made a comparison between Thief and Necro; ‘’Thief has even less stability than Necro’’. Which might be true, but Thieves can dodge and escape WAY more than the Necro. Read the whole context please.
However, what build is your Necro?
(edited by Moderator)
You’re actually doing the same as him, cuz certain necro builds have a very limited access to Death Shroud. People see it as another 20k of health, in fact that bar is empty way more quickly than they think. Necro’s do not have continuous access to Death Shroud, while some other professions have very low cooldowns before they have access to stability again. This is one of the reasons that the downstate of necro’s is pretty bad. This topic is not meant to become the same as a warrior or guardian, but the necro have NONE access to stability. And that, you can consider out of balance.
So which necro build do you use that does not have access to DS? Unless you can explain that, Those two are no where near suggesting the same thing.
The opinion of the down state for the necromancer is subjective. Personally I feel it is the 3rd best, behind thief, and mesmer, of coarse the situation and location of where you are downed can change the value greatly.
Now as far as your statement that :
necro have NONE access to stability
Well of power pulses it.
Lich form offers 30s of stability.
Plague form grants 20s of stability.
Foot in the grave grants 3s of stability when in DS.With boon duration build you can have 5 seconds of stability upon entering DS.
I see one of two problems here. Either you still have a bit of learning to do of your profession, which happens sometimes when you are new to it, but also means you probably shouldn’t lecture on it, or you are intentionally making false suggestions for the sake of your argument.
You claim not having stability or limited access to it is out of balance, so are you suggesting thief needs more stability? as necros have more then thief.
You have to learn as well, cuz WoP does not pulse stability.
Second, thief has way more options to dodge. The Necro doesn’t. No Vigor either.
Further more you say that I’m stating that certain necro’s do not have access to DS. Please quote me where I said that. Read better next time, I’m not saying that.
The downstate of the necro is hardly subjective, because the graphical image of the fear attack is very obvious and slow, and ofc not working on players with stability. The #1 attack on downstate hits very low, and the healing is too low, you’ll lose any ‘’down state battle’’ to another profession. And the fact that you don’t mention the ranger down state above the necro downstate in your top 3 makes me even more doubt your arguments.Oh and wait. Stability on an elite skill with those cooldowns? -.-
Drarnor Kunoram., none of that is true at all to be totally honest.
You are stating professions as a whole do this or that. This is untrue. Your listing very specific weapons or utility choices, and using them to define the profession. For example, you mention engineer shield or ele focus. What does this have to do with a P/P or rifle engineer, or D/D or staff ele. Staff+scepter/torch mesmer (which is very popular as far as I have seen) cannot do anything close to what you mention with swords.
It becomes a slipperly slop when we start trying to define balance in one profession based on its comparison to very specific builds in other profession.
Find me an engineer that wouldn’t love the ability to cleanse conditions and send them back to the opponent.
Are you for giving engineers the ability to cast their condition off and on to their opponent?
Are you for giving guardians equivalent HP pool to that of the necro?
Why not give thieves minions, that seems fair right? Necros get them, there for it justifies every other profession access to it. right?
I do not see it as necros taking anything in the face. The death shroud takes it for the necro. A large portion of the skills you listed are blocks, or classified as blocks in the game. Necro has a rare ability to make an entire weapon set unblock able. Sure seems odd to me, that a profession that can make skills unblock able, would use the other professions block ability as a balancing argument.
You’re actually doing the same as him, cuz certain necro builds have a very limited access to Death Shroud. People see it as another 20k of health, in fact that bar is empty way more quickly than they think. Necro’s do not have continuous access to Death Shroud, while some other professions have very low cooldowns before they have access to stability again. This is one of the reasons that the downstate of necro’s is pretty bad. This topic is not meant to become the same as a warrior or guardian, but the necro have NONE access to stability. And that, you can consider out of balance.
Then the whole system involving condition damage should be changed, not just the auto attacks of certain professions. Some professions don’t even need an auto attack to stack a huge pile of condis on you.
Warriors are in a good position right now.
Staff + d/d seems decent for PvE. You might want to change the daggers for scepter/focus with the utility Epidemic if you face big groups of enemies.
Stealth I think. Fear only might come close when it is traited to do damage aswell. But only a necro can do that.
I like Spirit Watch as well, unless you have a team that only rushes into orb. And yes, I hate skyhammer xD
Well considering that, Scepters should not be used at all then (for necro’s). Holding and capping a point will win you a game, if you cannot do that on your own in certain situations you might lose. Ever wondered why there were so less necro’s in the ToL?
So what? You guys are pounfing on other points that this should not be balanced around 1v1, then everyone starts mention hambow only. No one cares about hambows, get help from your team. If your team Is leaving the necro to take on the hambow, then the problem is that you need a better team, not that Anet needs to redesigns skills because your incapable of dealing with one build on one profession.
Hambow was just an example. The core af that post was just pretty obvious. We are talking about class balance here. A way to bring up necro’s more into balance, is adding some more stunbreakers. This has nothing to do with teams.
You are futher more talking about spvp on a low skill level; ‘’spreading conditions and ripping off boons, and using cripples and blinds to aid control of the flow of battle’‘. Good luck with that. I dont know if you have seen the streams of ToL, this won’t be the way to reach those skill levels. You need to be able to cap and def a capturepoint by yourself. I’ll give you applause if you can do that with your scepter/focus condtion spreading and corruptbooning. Applying conditions in the most effective way, which is a combination of staff + scepter/focus in my opinion are effective ways to win a low level hotjoin. Not a good PvP match.
(edited by HeadCrowned.6834)
I just switched to trying the axe. It doesn’t seem very bad nor very good, but the auto attack is pretty weak. Though you can do pretty much damage with #2.
I made a comparable build recently too. Though I would change Blood Magic III for Blood Magic II. I made a power build myself but with d/d instead of staff. When you are a wellomancer, you want the enemy to be within your well so you need a weapon with close range attack. You got youre axe/warhorn for medium range already. And you might want to change Well of Darkness for Well of Power, since you don’t have a stun breaker atm.
Well of Darkness is a bad utility. The cooldown is way too long and even traited so that blindness also inflict chill, I chose Well of Corruption over Well of Darkness. Anyway, Necro’s have a too low amount of stunbreakers. Against a hambow warrior, a necro is very vulnerable, beïng pingponged all over the map.
Again I see here people complaining about the conditions a necro can cast. The most conditions can be spread by the scepter/focus combination, but you tried to capture a capturepoint with that?
Out of all of your examples, the warrior’s main hand sword is the most balanced condition-on-autoattack.
The most imbalanced condition-on-autoattack is in the form of long-range autoattacks with no avoidable projectile, i.e. Necromancer’s scepter.
Try capping a point with a Necro scepter. Nerfing this weapon for necro’s means it won’t be used.