The investment in this case is using the life force generation skills. Especially on Scepter/Dagger, this can be quite the limitation.
In PvE that isn’t much investment at all. You have two weapon sets and 10 seconds to get 10% LF to block the next hit.
Dagger gives that to you in 2 rotations, Axe 2 will give it to you over one full channel, Staff in 3 targets hit with staff 1 (which can be done in one auto attack), 1 warhorn 5, 1 focus 4. Its not hard at all.
I feel like scepter 3 is bugged (too lazy to go test right now) otherwise 4 conditions on the target and scepter 3 is 10% as well. There is no possible build you can have that can’t give you 10% LF quite easily in 10s, and that is assuming you’re in a boss fight with no adds. Generating 10% LF in PvE is something you can do easily in any build.
In theory that it sounds better then it actually was in practice. In theory, we should be able to tank Legendary foes with wise use. In practice this wasn’t the case. Especially note that before the change we had poor DS gain which made doing what you are saying impossible. Now you might be able to shrug off about 3k damage using this tactic which isn’t nearly enough as other profession straight up block 30k+ damage.
Here you go. Pure offensive Condition necromancer. Don’t care about staff it is a defensive weapon and you should treat it as your secondary weapon. It doesn’t deserve a trait.
Use both Dhuumfire and Terror for some quick burst damage to sustain your damage while you build your bleeds to keep the high pressure on your foe. With the 15% reduce in recharge for you Death Shroud skills you can fear and use tainted shackles more often to control your foe’s movement.
Although Well of Power is more preference then anything. it can easily be replaced by the necro’s other stun breaks. However, I prefer WoP because it can be used with Both your corruptions to get vigor and protection. Its also useful when you are being burned as it provides you with aegis.
The traits in spite aren’t as important besides Dhuumfire. Removing conditions on kill saves you a good amount of time and prevents you from needing to put a skill on cool down which is nice. Removing boons is meh in PvE but the chill is good. It really isn’t that important as you can easily chill, cripple and immobilize with out it so that can be replaced.
Blood is power and epidemic are both required for any condi build. Plague form is more for defense and if you don’t need it take Flesh golem for its crippling, decent damage, CC and meat shield.
last we have Sigil of energy for things I feel should be mentioned. You have bad defenses no mater what you do. Sigil of energy should almost always be used on your secondary weapon. And since you want to get away with the staff this works out perfectly.
Have fun. Don’t want to use this build, that is fine. Its about having fun and you should only use what you consider fun.
I can’t believe this thread is still alive.
A Zerker has a higher burst while the Condi has a higher sustain. Sustain and AOE are what I tend to value most considering how frequently I run fractals and dungeon.
Zerker necro doesnt have burst. It has sustained high single target dps and burst aoe. The burst aoe is less dps on a single target than the regular dagger rotation. Also a good player wont have any downtime on zerk necro dps in full melee.
Condi does have better sustained aoe and thats a reason to consider it for certain fractals. Everywhere else zerker is better.
They mentioned axe and staff in their talk about zerker builds so at best they might be using a 30/x/x/x/30 build and counting axe 2 and DS 4 as burst. I don’t recall them talking about dagger at all until the 30/25/0/0/15 build was mentioned by SolemnMalevolence, which apparently takes competitive fighting game type reflexes to play. If it was some kind of axe/staff build that was used it’s no wonder the DPS was low.
I’ve known people who like to play zerker with staff in WvW. I personally don’t like using staff as anything besides a defensive/control weapon. So that is why I mentioned it. My Zerker build is 30/10/0/0/30 and it is quite burst. The Dagger does match the damage of life blast if no wells are up. However, being up close in PvE isn’t ideal in most situations especially with 1.8k armor. So this is why I call it burst damage because their sustained damage is suicide. If they can do it, more power to them.
My weapon Choice for Zerker is Main weapons Axe+Focus secondary weapon Dagger+Warhorn.
That might’ve been where your misunderstanding was coming from. o: The primary zerker build is 30/25/0/0/15. At least, as far as dealing the most damage goes. You mostly use dagger/warhorn for dealing all of your damage, and there’s no burst involved. You’ll be dealing consistent damage with the dagger auto-attack. When I played it, I occasionally switched to axe/focus strictly for applying vulnerability if whatever I was attacking didn’t have 25 stacks, and maybe using axe #2, and from my understanding, that’s how most people play it.
It actually does quite a bit of damage, especially in group settings. And unlike the death-shroud centric build you don’t have to worry about life force too much and your damage output isn’t controlled by how easy of a time you’ll have staying in death shroud and controlling your life force in any given fight. Using axe/focus, or death shroud itself as the primary method of dealing damage tends to give either lesser or downright lackluster results from when I tried a build like that.
Oh the damage for 30/10/0/0/30 is outstanding! Maintaining lifeforce isn’t a problem provided you have a good team. Not only that, if one of the buffs the necro is getting is true, maintaining life force will be even easier then before. Vital Persistence going from 25% to 50% is huge. I like this build because its one of the only ones that is actually good and cares about being in death shroud for longer then a few seconds.
I’m not unhappy with the build at all. I really like it. Its just regardless of what you do, if its 30/25/0/0/15 or 30/10/0/0/30 the weakness is going to be the same and yes, you will have very bursty damage if you can’t maintain melee range. Which is often the case I’ve noticed.
I made a post a while back about how that change with death shroud put the nail in the coffin on our defense for PvE. A Dev responded “Please try the changes first before you pass judgement” or something along those lines. Well. I’ve tried the changes.. And My opinion of the change has only soured.
Honestly its not even that much of a change if they continue the skill instead of instakill type of encounters (or at least make the instakills avoidable with foresight and always visible and under full control, not buggy and fighting with the interface like liadri was), its more a thing of principle. The changes to Swalk/Sarmor and the Dhuumfire thing were way worse for necros overall.
so basically, if PvE didn’t happen it wouldn’t have harmed anything.
sigil of earth has no in game listed cool down and I have had both go off on a target. This is the only reason I run both.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Earth
2s ICD (too lazy to personally test)It does have a cool down. Unfortunate side effect of this is it negates Sigil of Energy. Which I haven’t gotten around to suggesting arena net to fix this.
I will rerun my tests tonight, yet I have not had earth sigil effect any other sigil I have uses in the past. I will run unspeced and test on mobs tonight.
It has effected me. Considering I use both the earth sigil on my dagger and sigil of energy on my staff. Test it if you like.
I did and it did not effect torment sigil. This may be an issue with torment sigil thou.
I can’t say. All I know is that I won’t get my energy back when I switch to my staff sometimes. Which has really been putting me in some undesirable tight spots as of late.
A Zerker has a higher burst while the Condi has a higher sustain. Sustain and AOE are what I tend to value most considering how frequently I run fractals and dungeon.
Zerker necro doesnt have burst. It has sustained high single target dps and burst aoe. The burst aoe is less dps on a single target than the regular dagger rotation. Also a good player wont have any downtime on zerk necro dps in full melee.
Condi does have better sustained aoe and thats a reason to consider it for certain fractals. Everywhere else zerker is better.
They mentioned axe and staff in their talk about zerker builds so at best they might be using a 30/x/x/x/30 build and counting axe 2 and DS 4 as burst. I don’t recall them talking about dagger at all until the 30/25/0/0/15 build was mentioned by SolemnMalevolence, which apparently takes competitive fighting game type reflexes to play. If it was some kind of axe/staff build that was used it’s no wonder the DPS was low.
I’ve known people who like to play zerker with staff in WvW. I personally don’t like using staff as anything besides a defensive/control weapon. So that is why I mentioned it. My Zerker build is 30/10/0/0/30 and it is quite burst. The Dagger does match the damage of life blast if no wells are up. However, being up close in PvE isn’t ideal in most situations especially with 1.8k armor. So this is why I call it burst damage because their sustained damage is suicide. If they can do it, more power to them.
My weapon Choice for Zerker is Main weapons Axe+Focus secondary weapon Dagger+Warhorn.
I made a post a while back about how that change with death shroud put the nail in the coffin on our defense for PvE. A Dev responded “Please try the changes first before you pass judgement” or something along those lines. Well. I’ve tried the changes.. And My opinion of the change has only soured.
It doesn’t show at all, considering if you did your testing, and your math you would have come to the same conclusion as most theorycrafters, because y’know math.
I go on the most average base. No cons added to the equation as they seem to warp the result pretty drastically. I also average the low end of the damage with their high end along with the duration each can maintain this damage. I have to do this because the Zerker damage dips and rises drastically based on the fight while the condi does not. This also is not including buffs from allies which also warp the equation.
A Zerker has a higher burst while the Condi has a higher sustain. Sustain and AOE are what I tend to value most considering how frequently I run fractals and dungeon.
But then again Some people might call my Condi build a Hybrid build… Which I find strange as it is the purest form of condition damage I could get. But I’ve also noticed people Call condition builds the same thing what Nemesis calls them. Which if you asked me he is using a hybrid Healing/Condition build and not a pure condition build.
Eh, from what I gather, her play style makes her more efficient with a condition build over zerker, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Honestly, as far as builds go I’d just pick the one I like the most since PvE isn’t demanding in the slightest. And from what I’ve seen her post she does have quite a few hours of necro under her belt. x:
thank you. And that is fair. I could be getting difference results based on my play style. I will submit to this concept, sure.
Also, yes. This was my point from the start. Play what is most fun for you.
sigil of earth has no in game listed cool down and I have had both go off on a target. This is the only reason I run both.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Earth
2s ICD (too lazy to personally test)It does have a cool down. Unfortunate side effect of this is it negates Sigil of Energy. Which I haven’t gotten around to suggesting arena net to fix this.
I will rerun my tests tonight, yet I have not had earth sigil effect any other sigil I have uses in the past. I will run unspeced and test on mobs tonight.
It has effected me. Considering I use both the earth sigil on my dagger and sigil of energy on my staff. Test it if you like.
We did need Burning (or something else burning was just the easy fix) pre-Dhuumfire. Our condition damage was laughable except when left to free cast, which no one in their right mind did when training a Necro was about as difficult as soloing a Rabbit. We were completely beaten out by Engineers, the only time people really ran a Necro (except for the very, very best Necros) was with an Engi there to help.
Problem was they gave us burning, torment, and a number of helpful buffs all in one patch, and it blew us right up into the #1 condition spot.
I will agree that we needed a another high damage condition like burning. I Don’t agree we needed burning specifically. This is also one of the many reasons why I Protested Dhuum fire so adamantly in the beginning. I knew this sort of things would happen. We defiantly got a tone of buffs right out of the gate that solidified one build. And if we changing Dhuum fire’s burning to 3 stacks of torment it would leave far more room for balance that wouldn’t have caused nearly as much of a problem while still giving us some cover. Although it wouldn’t be perfect we probably be singing a different song now.
I suggested raise the bleed stacks increase the attack rate and add disease as a condition. Instead we got Burning and Torment. Torment was a happy surprise but this, combine with everything else we already had sure did push us a bit over the top in PvP at least. We are still having problems in PvE thanks to that oh so lovely Death shroud Nerf.
Excuse me if I parroted some of what you said.
sigil of earth has no in game listed cool down and I have had both go off on a target. This is the only reason I run both.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Earth
2s ICD (too lazy to personally test)
It does have a cool down. Unfortunate side effect of this is it negates Sigil of Energy. Which I haven’t gotten around to suggesting arena net to fix this.
Except in pve beserker does beat condi.
It really doesn’t. I’ve done the testing and have armor and weapons for both specs. The Zerker is better then condi for one dungeon. And that is CoF. Other then that, Condi is still better.
It actually does. With something like 30/25/0/0/15 you’ll be killing things a lot faster than you can setting up all of your conditions in most groups for pretty much every PvE encounter. Not that conditionmancer is particularly bad, but it’s in no way faster than a full zerker setup. Despite this though, I play hybrid because I’m a vanity fiend and want to use my Eye of Rodgort and my fused axe in the same build while still being viable.
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I have noticed the difference actually. its very possible that you have far better reaction time then I do. Which in that case, I could see where defense isn’t as big of a deal. But in my case, I don’t have Competitive fighting game player reaction time. I have to plan out my attacks and use intelligent positioning. I did the same in GW1 and it was one of the factor why I never mained a Mesmer then.
To add, It doesn’t matter at all when you are free roaming. Mobs and events are easy enough that either build will work fine. In dungeons, at least from my personal experience, the condi has an easier time walking through them. In dungeons this changes. You have aoe fields that you can’t always dodge out of, or multiple mods that all chain immobilize you or chain knock you down. If you can handle these with out a problem, more power to you. Not all of us have the twitch reaction time or a rear view mirror in our computer to see all these signals.
Either way, I will keep with my stance that Condi has the least kinks in its armor then the other 2.
None of these have a significant advantage over the other to really call one the ultimate Superior build.
It’s like you’ve never played a necro.
I almost exclusively play a necromancer. I’ve tested and worked with all these builds. It all boils down to preference.
Except in pve beserker does beat condi.
It really doesn’t. I’ve done the testing and have armor and weapons for both specs. The Zerker is better then condi for one dungeon. And that is CoF. Other then that, Condi is still better.
It actually does. With something like 30/25/0/0/15 you’ll be killing things a lot faster than you can setting up all of your conditions in most groups for pretty much every PvE encounter. Not that conditionmancer is particularly bad, but it’s in no way faster than a full zerker setup. Despite this though, I play hybrid because I’m a vanity fiend and want to use my Eye of Rodgort and my fused axe in the same build while still being viable.
My time for Zerker and my time for Condi against a single target is about a 2 second difference, give or take. My time for a Zerker and my time for a Condi against a group is closer to 10-15 seconds With Condi on the quicker up and up. My time for a Vet for a Zerker and for a Condi is about the same. My time for a champion is a dead Zerker and a Healthy Condi. The last part is solo. Going against a legendary in a dungeon that isn’t CoF the Zerker struggles after their death shroud dies down. Depending if you are capable of getting in close with a dagger or not this can be the difference of around 3k-7k a second to 500-2k a second. The damage out of death shroud and in it for a Zerker is that different. This number is also adjusted based on the foe’s armor. Reducing its max number by a possibility of 50%. While the Condi build maintains a stable 3k-5k a second depending on how active you are with conditions. This damage is less effected by armor. You must still factor in the base damage of your skills and weapons while attacking and not only your conditions. While Condi has a lower cap, it also isn’t walled as hard by high armor foes.
Now lets talk about the defenses of the 2. The Condi build has a advantage at face value. The Condi build often has armor comparable to Medium armor Professions when you added up the values of the toughness along with their base armor rating. This means that a Condi necro can take a hit far better then the Zerker. They also have access to more condition cleansing as the common weapon set up for them is Scepter/dagger and Staff. This gives them access to 2 cleansing skills just on their weapon. Along with Consume conditions which is the necromancer’s staple heal. However the advantages of their defenses end there. The Condi necromancer has the worst life force building out of any of the necromancer’s builds. Which puts it at a defensive disadvantage against a few bosses. This can put you in a tight spot when using the condi necro.
On the Zerker side of things their defenses at face value are garbage. They have the lowest possible armor rating possible and are up front attacking at melee range far more often then a Condi. Not to mention that they need to stay within 600 range to get the full value while in death shroud. Their max range is usually restricted by their Axe as that is usually favored over the Staff but not always. It isn’t all doom and gloom for the zerker though. As they have the best possible life force gain of the necromancer builds. You can often build it 2-3x faster then the condi build which can quickly make up for the lack of armor and forced close combat. However, even with this fact if a foe can knock a Condi necro out of full ds and knock out a good 2/3s Health then the Zerker will either be hanging on by a thread or be downed.
Now lets talk about that Hybrid Condition/Damage build. I Personally don’t like these builds. I end up with both the weaknesses in defenses from both a Condi build and the zerker build with neither of their selling factor. The advantage of these builds is really only this. They don’t get walled by high armor foes or foes that cleanse since when these foes have both they tend to have a mechanic that needs to be abused. Other then that, I wouldn’t recommend a Hybrid build as it stands should, in theory, equal out to around the same damage as both a proper Condi and a Zerker build. The Hybrid is never going to cap out their damage for more then a few seconds after switching to their axe before their bleeds begin to fall off while the zerker and Condi will be able to sustain their damage for a least a decent period of time.
In conclusion, any one of these picks for PvE is mostly preference. None of these have a significant advantage over the other to really call one the ultimate Superior build. My personally preference is Condi. As it has the least gaps in its defenses and its damage sustainability is generally solid through out the whole fight where as the other two tend to fluctuate fare more.
This trait you are proposing takes conditions received in DS and copies their effects onto five targets within 240. This is essentially the effects of Plague Signet (sans the cleanse) and Epidemic (-360 radius) combined. While each individual aspect is inferior to the original skill, the new trait procs passively and does not require two thirds of your slot skills to use.
I have to point out that Contagion doesn’t pull conditions from allies. And it doesn’t cleanse conditions from yourself and isn’t a stun break. In fact, it doesn’t do anything Plague signet does. If you could use Plague signet in combination with it, it would be extremely powerful. Game breakingly so. However, this isn’t the case as signets don’t work while you are in death shroud.
Added to this, if you put a limit on how many conditions can be spread per second, lets say 2 for PvE and 1 for PvP and WvW we can prevent this massive overlap of conditions spreading between 2 full zergs just from 2 enemy necromancers.
I also can’t stress enough how much people complain about how easy it is for conditions to be perma cleansed and how useless they feel running conditions in WvW. So if this helps change up the meta game a bit this will promote a healthy gaming environment and keep things fresh and interesting.
Remember as well that I also said this skill was both elite in Guild Wars 1 and it was consider a worthless elite skill with 100% upkeep and the ability to self apply burning, bleeding and poison. Considering this requires you to be in Death Shroud, this doesn’t give you access to the Corruption skills and you don’t have Plague signet you don’t have access to either of these to spread conditions.
I actually feel that my suggestion is too weak considering. I was actually considering having it spread the top condition when you enter Death shroud to give it more ability to combo with your other skills as well as some tech.
Like I said, it’s not about condition TRANSFER which is losing a condition by giving it to someone else. It’s about the effect of doubling all incoming conditions via this condition COPY trait—>exit DS—>Plague Signet. A mere six stacks on you could be returned for 12 and then returned again for 24. If this trait is given to more than one class, condition stacks like those you see on PVE champions would snowball within fights until they landed and instakilled the one poor schmuck who couldn’t transfer them.
What’s more, think about the potential for disaster in large WvW fights. Snowballing of conditions would happen quickly and frequently. One condimancer with a well placed Epidemic or a necro simply in DS passively broadcasting conditions could infect a ton of people and wipe out chunks of a zerg instantly. That’s just unreasonable. You cannot allow conditions to double in this manner.
But, wait… It’s actually worse than this. Far, far worse, really.
Imagine two necros fighting. Both hit DS at close range and one of them pops DS 5 and DS2. Because of the way that conditions are copied onto those who are within range, this means that:
Necro1 gives 3 Torment (T) and 2 Bleeds (B) to Necro2
Necro2’s passive trait procs and copies 3T and 2B onto Necro1. Necro1 now has 3T and 2B.
Necro1’s trait procs copying those 3T and 2B to Necro2. Necro2 now has 6T and 4B.
Necro2’s passive procs again sending 6T and 4B to Necro1. Necro1 now has 9T and 6B.
Etc.Get the picture?
The torment and bleeding would bounce instantly back and forth between them until there were 25 stacks of both torment and bleeding on both resulting, most likely, in a simultaneous down.
Messy, huh? Anyhoo…
Condimancers have so many ways to apply conditions as it is. And DS will still proc Dhuum, Barbed, bleeds from Dark Path and torment. I’m pretty sure sigils will proc too. That’s a lot of conditions, especially when they’re feared and you’re pounding them in the back with Life Blast at point blank range.
Again, you are mistaken. Max of 5 targets. A zerg is, well, a zerg. And one necromancer wont be able to kill 5 people with this let alone an entire zerg. You also have to understand that this doesn’t make the necromancer immune to damage, they are still being dropped out of death shroud within a few seconds. Especially if this is a zerg. Also, addressing the issue of two necromancers. We had this same problem solved in guild wars one, I doubt Arena net would make the same mistake twice. Just put a cap on how fast this can transfer and we wont have this problem. being in 240 range of an entire zerg is death. and you wont even effect a good 10% of them.
Except in pve beserker does beat condi.
It really doesn’t. I’ve done the testing and have armor and weapons for both specs. The Zerker is better then condi for one dungeon. And that is CoF. Other then that, Condi is still better.
Condi is a far better build then Zerker. You get more armor along with higher damage. However, Zerker does have some advantages over condi. One, it builds DS much faster then Condi. 2, it works better against objects. 3, it stacks better with your allies.
The difference in damage between the 2 isn’t significant enough to really tell you to go one way or the other. If you add both of them up, Zerker looks like it has higher damage, but don’t be fooled by that. Zerker is effected a great deal by damage reduction while the condi’s damage is almost all armor ignoring.
Condi builds are actually not as good as power builds in a zerg. There’s far too much area cleanse in organized zergs and besides, the nature of the fight won’t allow you to build up conditions on a target. In this instance, the best damage is the sure damage.
Condi builds are, however, far superior to power builds in roaming. The 1v1 fights allow stacking by the single target scepter/signet.
Excuse me for not specifying. I almost always refer to PvE before other formats.
1. If it’s one condition, I certainly wouldn’t want this to replace Weakening Shroud. If it’s all conditions you’re suffering from… well… if this was combined with Plague Signet and Signet of Spite, it’d make the necros condition-proof because all conditions would be returned X2 + Signet of Spite (+Epidemic??!?!??!). Even if you eliminated Plague Signet, it’s still too overpowered on a 10-13 second CD.
Thank you for the comment. I must point out though that while you are in death shroud you don’t get the benefits from Plague signet. So this would be a non-issue. Also the descriptions states that when you would suffer a condition and not conditions already suffered. Radius also makes a difference. Although I would like a 360 radius I can’t see this getting larger then a 240 radius.
Ah, I see. Only incoming and not preexisting DS. My mistake though it’s kinda hard to discern this from the description — probably because I didn’t really play the original GW.
Anyhoo, would the condition(s) (I’m still not sure if it’s a single condition or all of them) sent to enemies or those inflicted on the necro in DS get cleansed at the end of DS? I ask because if the conditions survive DS, they can still be “given” twice — once from DS’s proposed “condition copy” trait and again upon exit via Plague Signet, dagger 4 or, if it works, Putrid Mark. This would still be fairly overpowered. I suppose they can be made non-transferrable but it seems a bit punitive since there are fewer options to cleanse and might lead to the necro’s death.
If the conditions on enemies simply expire when DS ends, this is much simpler. All you need to do is stick a timer on it and have it work like retaliation — say, three to five seconds with an ICD of 20 seconds or so to prevent too much spamming.
I would have to disagree with you. Spreading conditions in death shroud would be powerful, yes. But the point of this placement was to prevent you from being able to use dhuumfire along with this trait. Which would limit its over all power. The conditions wouldn’t fall off from your foe when leaving death shroud. That would make the trait worse then useless, it would make it detrimental to you and your entire party. And even if a change is made that would allow the use of Dhuumfire with this, its range could be a huge factor in how well this works. Because if lets say a ranger has you at 1,200 range and hitting you with conditions it doesn’t matter how powerful this is if you are not close enough to the target. Also remember that the underwater life blast for the necromancer automatically transfers a condition form yourself to your foe and that doesn’t break the game and those conditions can easily be transferred after leaving death shroud. And that removes them while this only copies them.
On that last note this might cause a power surge in the necromancer underwater. But they really need more power while under water as their condition damage is pitiful there. We also have to consider that the necromancer has a hard time applying a good number of conditions while in death shroud and unless they are getting hit for 10+ stacks of bleed, torment, burning and Grenth knows what else, this wont be OP, just good. And even then, DS will be dropping fairly quickly.
1. If it’s one condition, I certainly wouldn’t want this to replace Weakening Shroud. If it’s all conditions you’re suffering from… well… if this was combined with Plague Signet and Signet of Spite, it’d make the necros condition-proof because all conditions would be returned X2 + Signet of Spite (+Epidemic??!?!??!). Even if you eliminated Plague Signet, it’s still too overpowered on a 10-13 second CD.
Thank you for the comment. I must point out though that while you are in death shroud you don’t get the benefits from Plague signet. So this would be a non-issue. Also the descriptions states that when you would suffer a condition and not conditions already suffered. Radius also makes a difference. Although I would like a 360 radius I can’t see this getting larger then a 240 radius.
It was just an idea, not that they should or shouldn’t hit spite (although spite could use more condition traits, imo).
I think that is an interesting idea. It would probably need to be more than just on hit (otherwise constant torment application would seem really strong), but I like the idea of offensive “defense” like that.
Yeah, forgot to mention “while in Death shroud”. Which makes a huge difference.
I’d also like to point out that Death Magic should be our big defensive tree. We essentially have three trees each with a specific defensive purpose: Blood Magic (siphoning), Soul Reaping (LF generation/DS) and Death Magic (which doesn’t have a specific purpose yet). So I’d love to see more good defensive traits in Death Magic.
1) I love it. It might need specific work, but I’ve always wanted something like this (although I’ve always thought more in the context of a skill).
2) Great idea to make Protection of the Horde better without axing it totally
3) This should be in Curses, although I like the idea for Torment on crit
4) Either a Curses or Spite traitI like your ideas, I’ll post some of my own later, but I feel like some of them are actually much better off in other trees (namely 3/4), whereas Death Magic should be a defensive tree, even if some things have dual purpose (1 isn’t strictly defensive but would definitely fit).
While I don’t agree that any of these should touch the spite trait line, I will submit to the idea that the Death trait line should be defensive. How about Discord causing torment to attackers when you are struck with an attack?
I heard Arena Net talking about Death magic needing some buffs in another topic. But the topic was a bit too flooded so I decided to create a new topic in order to discuss my thoughts on the matter.
But first let me explain what death magic is to me. Death magic for me was always the line of magic that made life feel like death. Filled with disease, necrotic flesh, boils on one’s enemies. Very much about afflictions of the flesh as well as raising the dead.
Looking back to the first game we see various skills that had to deal with conditions or how high your opponents health was in the death attribute. I would personally like to continue this theme. For the most part it seems to be fairly forgotten by the death user except for the inclusion of the Staff traits.
So here are some suggestions I would have for the trait line.
1. Master/Grandmaster Trait: Contagion: While in deathshroud, whenever you suffer a condition each foe around you suffers that condition as well. (This one might need to be worked out a bit more. However, this was a skill back in GW1 that I really liked and wanted to make work. I just couldn’t get it to work in a build. It was a real shame and I would like to see this effect given to the GW2 necromancer. It might even pull me away from using spite just for this as a more defensive condi build.)
2. Change protection from the horde to Protection from Death: Gain toughness for each minion you control and each condition you are suffering. (While Protection from the horde is a nice idea, in practice it doesn’t do anything for the person who wants to use death magic but has no interest in minions. This way the player will be getting something out of it without taking something away from the minion player.)
3. Master/Grandmaster trait: Discord: While in death Shroud critical hits have a 50%-100% chance to apply bleeding/torment for 5 seconds. (I figured this could be an interesting trade off. Normally, the Condi Necro doesn’t want to be in death shroud for an extended period of time. But sometimes they have no choice. This normally kills there damage. But with this it would give them the chance to actually deal some damage while in Death Shroud. And if they took the grandmaster trait in Deathly Perception and this was a master trait this could be a match made in heaven. Granted if terror was brought to grandmaster and Lingering curse went down to master, you still wouldn’t have access to either Burning or fear for damage. But I believe this could be worth while regardless.)
4. Adept/Master/Grandmaster Trait: Weight of Death: If you attack a foe below 50% health they suffer torment from your attacks. (Although hard to figure out just how this one should go. If it was torment for each landed attack against them it should defiantly be grand master. But that also depends on how long the torment lasts. If this was 1 stack of torment for 4 seconds with a 3 second cool down I could see this being more like an Adept. Any way this one could go it would be an interesting trait to play with.)
What do you guys think? Do you like these ideas do you have your own? Please leave a comment below.
(edited by Lily.1935)
Condi is a far better build then Zerker. You get more armor along with higher damage. However, Zerker does have some advantages over condi. One, it builds DS much faster then Condi. 2, it works better against objects. 3, it stacks better with your allies.
The difference in damage between the 2 isn’t significant enough to really tell you to go one way or the other. If you add both of them up, Zerker looks like it has higher damage, but don’t be fooled by that. Zerker is effected a great deal by damage reduction while the condi’s damage is almost all armor ignoring.
Hello. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been gone the whole weekend.
I see a lot of talk about how life steal is being handled by arena net. A back and forth of it being potentially being too powerful and still not powerful enough. Unfortunately life stealing isn’t damage prevention. This is something people have to take into consideration when using life stealing. You may heal for 3k when fighting 5 guys, however most, if not all, of them will be taking 1-5k chunks out of your hide. This isn’t including conditions or knock down that can slow or remove your life stealing capabilities.
For those who have played a few RPGs, preventing damage is 9 times out of 10 far more powerful then healing. You block an attack that would deal 5k damage is better then healing for 5k. There are multiple factors that go into this. On paper they look the same. But in practice they function very differently. Blocking the damage prevents potential for being stunned, launched or having exrta conditions applied to you. Healing for 5k, although is good, puts you at a disadvantage because the action is a clean up. You take the damage, so if they stun you, you lose your stun break for a while. You get some conditions, you need to remove them(in the necromancer’s case its the same thing as using there heal.). Not to mention you put your heal on cool down because of this while the block prevents this problem from happening.
I’m not going to say change the numbers on the traits. I would prefer them to change how it functions. Having life stealing linked to 2 attributes makes it feel like garbage to use and limits what can be done with it. I would rather have Life stealing scale with healing power exclusively. And here is why. Healing power is a fairly ignored attribute. The healing from the life stealing along with its damage also doesn’t have to change. it would just change how the numbers scale. This could also mean make poison reduce both the damage output *and the healing from life stealing.
This would in turn make the necro’s dagger skill 2 a bit weaker if someone decided to use the dagger without investing into healing power but at the same time it could potentially be stronger at its peak with a stronger heal. Now like a mentioned above about Prevention vs Healing, the healing from this still wouldn’t be as good as just preventing the damage.
Take the guardian for example. I Have healing skills on her that heal for a minimum of twice what the necro’s life stealing does on top of having the ability to block a good chunk of the damage. With life stealing you wouldn’t be as powerful as a condi or power necro. And you couldn’t survive as well as a guardian even with full investment. However, a tanky necro would have an advantage over a tanky guardian. The necro wouldn’t survive as well sure, but it would be able to apply more pressure. And this is what the necromancer’s life stealing should be. It doesn’t do well at it currently.
A Life stealing necromancer will never be unkillable. I’ll try to go into more depth later, but I’ve had a really busy weekend so I need some sleep.
There are a number of things ANet needs to consider. They need to balance out a few things. This isn’t GW1, and while its based off the same universe and franchise, it does have new mechanics and goals, which will invalidate some old mechanics, and open new ones up. The other big one is simply that they have to somehow cater to both the old fans of the original Necromancer, but also cater to newer players (and lets face it there will be more new players than old, if this game wants to be successful).
I am very aware that GW2 is a different game and can’t transfer everything I loved. I Specifically mentioned Spiteful Spirit as one of those things that wouldn’t translate well. I’m not saying they couldn’t do it with that skill, they could. Easily in fact. But the major problem is its too similar to Confusion and the only way to implement it would be through a condition which would cause problems. Putting Spiteful spirit on 2 targets in the first game was a build all itself. Putting it on everyone with epidemic? There is no way to balance that. So yeah. I understand.
On another note that you didn’t touch on is that I also tried to mention the caution that arena net takes with the profession because of the necro’s history in GW1. As much as the community likes to tell the Old players that “GW2 isn’t GW1” the Devs seem to be as guilty of this as we are and need to be reminded of this. The balancing problems the GW1 necromancer had are a non-issue in GW2 and I honestly think the Devs have forgotten that. They have different problems, sure. Removing the energy system entirely created its own challenges.
I personally feel Arena Net is being a bit too cautious with the necromancer. For example. Take a look at Life stealing traits and skills. The damage and healing of these skills and traits are split between 2 attributes. Healing power and power. This to me is a sign of extreme caution. Which I mentioned above about how life stealing was causing problems in the first game. However, GW2 is indeed a different beast entirely and they can afford to try a similar direction with a twist in GW2. But instead arena net decided to take a page out of every other RPG ever made. Which is a real shame because of all the RPGs I’ve played, GW1 was the only one I could honestly say life stealing was fun to use.
You also mentioned that Awaken the blood couldn’t be translated to GW2 and I have to disagree with you there. Because it was. GW2’s Blood is Power Effectively does about the same thing minus the double sacrifice life cause. There effect on the player is effectively the same. Although Awaken the blood helped healing skills too, this minor difference isn’t really enough to say that it wasn’t translated over to GW2.
There is new territory that I would like Arena net to try that couldn’t be done in gw1. I would like Arena Net to involve death shroud into the necromancer’s abilities far more then they do. Not a Single skill outside of death shroud cares about death shroud and only a few traits have an effect on you outside of death shroud because of how full your bar is. Compare this to other professions like the elementalist or warrior who have skills that care a great deal about there special mechanic. I personally feel that DS should be a resource and not just that thing you enter to not die or pop a few skills.
But thank you for posting. I hope we can talk more about this in the future.
(edited by Lily.1935)
One thing I find extremely unsettling and interesting about the necromancer community for Guild Wars 2 is just how divided we are in terms of what we expect and want form the profession and the Devs.
On one hand we have the new players who came over from other games who have played a similar class type who want the necromancer to be more like those classes.
Then we have the veterans from Guild Wars one. These players are people who have a different expectation for the profession then the new players most of the time. They want the necromancer to be closer to the GW1 counterpart. In most cases though, the Veteran players are not as happy with the GW2 necromancer as they would like to be. Myself included.
Now I’m not going to say one side is right and one side is wrong. Both sides need to be satisfied to promote a long lasting relationship with the game. This is true with any profession people come to love, but I’m just focusing on necromancer.
I want to Focus on the Old Necromancer because I personally feel that the New players are really missing out on something the GW1 necro provided that the GW2 necro hasn’t been able to simulate. I think that Arena Net is very aware of this fact and are indeed looking for ways to improve the experience for both the new and old players. Though I personally feel that they are struggling with this on multiple fronts.
Much of the problems that happened with the necro in GW1 where related to energy and secondary professions. Early in the game the necromancer could summon an unlimited number of minions. Soon that was reduced to a cap of about 10 or 13. Necromancer would also gain energy off of deaths. This would mean that they could let there minions die and gain all there energy back. This was soon nerfed to trigger 3 times every 15 seconds. Which was still a lot. Then there where problems with life stealing skills. Now this is a strange one because this wasn’t actually the necro’s fault directly. It was the mesmer’s fast casting ability and the ranger’s Expertise that reduced the casting cost of touch skills. The reason I bring this part up is because I feel that much of arena net’s fears of the necro stems from these problems specifically.
However the necromancer had some really cool abilities that haven’t been nerfed to this day in the first game that really make them stand out in GW1 and even stand out when compared to similar classes in other games. And this is what I feel people are really missing out on. Necromancer where a support class in the first game. But not at all in the same way they are in GW2. They used debuffs on the foe, sure. However their debuffs rewarded allies for attacking your target rather then just weakening them. They had a tone of skills that literally did nothing unless an ally was hitting your target. They also had buffs for allies that where fairly different then the ones they get in GW2. They could give allies a bonus life stealing effect when they attacked, extra health or just damage increase. Many of these skills had been used throughout the lifespan of the first game and changed the dynamic of how parties where formed.
Guild Wars 2 does provide some things that the necromancer did from the first game. The necromancer was really good at stacking conditions. But strangely, this was a very small part of what it meant to be a necro in the first game. The Necro also did have direct damage as well, but this was far FAR weaker then it is in GW2. They also did have some melee capabilities with touch skills.
However its the things that Arena Net as forgotten about that really disappoints the Veteran players. We miss out spiteful spirit, Mark of Pain, Disease, expendable minions, and our orders. And I don’t personally feel that its a stretch to adapt some of these concepts into Guild Wars 2. Spiteful spirit might not be an option but we could certainly have a re-imagined condition for Disease and barbs. Minions could defiantly use a trait that makes Jagged horrors when one of your primary minions die to increase the longevity of their build. The Orders could easily be included through corruptions or giving the necromancer access to a new buff that makes allies attack steal health.
Arena Net has been taking steps to help satisfy the old players. Torment was a big addition that was defiantly implemented because of the first game. So Please arena net, keep digging into our past to improve our profession. You have a good start and I believe that the new players will love it even more then we did back in GW1.
Remember back in GW1 when life stealing was good but not at all broken unless you decided to use it with a mesmer? Good times. I miss those days when Life stealing was actually interesting and fun to use.
If the healing was on par with Consume condition it would be okay. But it isn’t. And removing bleeding, crippling, immobilize, all come up while fighting in the new content and considering this skill doesn’t remove those, even if you get a tone conditions on you with the new debuff consume condition will still be far better because its recharge is lower, it removes all conditions rather then a few and has higher base healing for both the conditions removes and its base healing.
Fixed.
I love the idea of getting into the middle of things, and so does my necromancer.
Take the pain, spread it, feed on it! Blood EVERYWHERE! Babtising the dirt with blood and death!With every laceration she will grow stronger.
I am death, I am unstoppable.
I’m the Juggernaught, kitten.I want melee cleave, I want better lifesyphon.
Deathknights, blackguards, and wights were around WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY before
WoW.
You didn’t Fix anything, You corrupted my post and put words in my mouth. You are just being an kitten now, and I don’t appreciate your method of trying to prove your point. Its childish. So if thats how you want to disguise this, then don’t bother. I’m done talking with you.
How about No greatsword. Greatswords are way over used, and harm diversity in the game. No on the Hammer as well. This is an extremely brutish weapon and I feel dirty just thinking about a necromancer using a hammer.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Necromancer_Munne
Check her trivia. ;-)
Also as far as casters go necromancers ARE extremely brutish, everything about the class is built around inflicting pain in as unsubtle and unpleasant a way as possible.
I don’t associate pain with being a bruit. Perhaps you do, but that would make every profession brutish in your eyes. I see a bruit as someone who likes to get there hands dirty. Real hands on type of person who wants to feel someone’s skull crushed under their boot, the really relish the impact of the weapon.
As a necromancer.. I’m not fond of this direct approach. Them screaming as they crawl to me to ease there pain as I lift my skirt away from them and tell them “Get away from me, You will get blood all over my new shoes.” Sadist, Yes, necromancers are Sadistic and sometimes Masochistic. Bruits? No.
You mixed up necromancer with mesmer, let me give you examples of what necro skills do and did: Eat part of the enemy and disintegrate them into blood and/or life force in 9 different ways (or 14 depending on what you count), summon a demonic shadow from the stygian pits to stalk the enemy and destroy nerves, pull out both peoples blood and mix it around, crush the skull with their targets heads skin/muscles, cause bone cancer, overflow the lungs, summon stygian demons from the hellpits to slowly eat the enemy sending the energy to you (in 3 different ways), remove/push away all heat/energy from 7 different locations including the ground under the the enemy causing their skin to frostbite stick to it essentially either ripping off their own skin if they want to move or being slowly frozen in place.
Yeah most of that is with the extension of our spectral grasps, so you cannot say that we are the type in leather outfits that whip people and drop little pieces of candle wax on their back or other parts (even if some of us did wear such leather outfits with more fancy designs).
I didn’t mix them up at all. My necromancer Likes to watch them rot. Actually touching them? No. And I don’t know of any necromancer that likes to hear bones break. Thats just not them. Listening to people choke to death, screaming and watching them rot is more their style. And necromancer’s Don’t even need to touch them to cause them bodily harm. Thats the beauty of it.
But this was never about IF a necromancer would use a Hammer or not. Its how I feel about it. And I don’t like it. Nothing you say can make me LIKE the idea of using a hammer. Just feels to dirty. If I’m going to be getting messy, I’m going to be in a outfit that is made for that in the morgue with some saws, scalpels needles and so on. Because if I’m getting dirty I’m going to make an undead construct. I’m not going to get my new lovely battle outfit dirty. A Girl has to have her priorities.
You have any idea how hard it is to find usable corpses on the battle field after some bruit with a hammer gone to town on everything? Broken bones means I have to use more corpses for a single minion which means more energy spent and more time consumed. Then if I’m collecting parts for a construct I have to find bones that aren’t broken.. Which becomes even harder after using a hammer. Its just messy, and impractical for the aspiring necromancer on the go.
How about No greatsword. Greatswords are way over used, and harm diversity in the game. No on the Hammer as well. This is an extremely brutish weapon and I feel dirty just thinking about a necromancer using a hammer.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Necromancer_Munne
Check her trivia. ;-)
Also as far as casters go necromancers ARE extremely brutish, everything about the class is built around inflicting pain in as unsubtle and unpleasant a way as possible.
I don’t associate pain with being a bruit. Perhaps you do, but that would make every profession brutish in your eyes. I see a bruit as someone who likes to get there hands dirty. Real hands on type of person who wants to feel someone’s skull crushed under their boot, the really relish the impact of the weapon.
As a necromancer.. I’m not fond of this direct approach. Them screaming as they crawl to me to ease there pain as I lift my skirt away from them and tell them “Get away from me, You will get blood all over my new shoes.” Sadist, Yes, necromancers are Sadistic and sometimes Masochistic. Bruits? No.
How about No greatsword. Greatswords are way over used, and harm diversity in the game. No on the Hammer as well. This is an extremely brutish weapon and I feel dirty just thinking about a necromancer using a hammer.
How about Main hand Mace. This could be a throwback to the old DnD days of a dark Cleric. Many clerics in DnD, including those practicing in necromancy, favored the mace as there melee weapon of choice. The mace is also a very underused weapon and the professions that can use it tend to favor the greatsword or literally any other weapon over it.
Second option? Torch. Why not, I caved. But it shouldn’t have anything longer then a 1 second burn with a 30 second cool down. Burning shouldn’t be easy for the necromancer to use. You need to work for it. I also like the torch idea because I really just want arena net to come out with a Lantern for me to carry.
For Future weapons that might end up in the game. Lets go with Whip, Scythe and Tome.
Scythe: A large 2 handed cleaving weapon with mixed physical and condition damage. Uses Pulling and crippling along with bleeds and torment in order to damage and ensnare your foes.
Whip: A Supportive weapon that steals health and regenorates allies while striking multiple foes.
Tome: A Offhand weapon that provides damage support to allies. Granting auras and might.
The scythe is debatable as they basically turn staves into scythes on necros.
And the Elementalist summons weapons. I don’t see this as an issue. And they don’t turn into scythes, they just have the image of one for a brief moment.
But perhaps you could explain it to me. Why do you want a Greatsword? Why do you demand a greatsword over a Scythe or just a normal sword as a cleaving weapon?
I could be wrong, but I think that they have said that classes will get access to existing weapons first. That’s why people are asking for greatsword over scythe. We only have access to one two handed weapon on land. That’s why people want greatsword as a melee cleave weapon. A one hand sword would just give 3 new skills where a greatsword would give 5. Granted they could add another offhand but we already have a decent number of offhands
I personally would rather wait a year for a scythe then completely bury the chance of us getting one by making the weapon redundant by giving us a greatsword. A sword would be fine, But I’m not too fond of that idea either. I would be happier with a Mace then either of those weapons as for a weapon that already exists within the game. Considering it would be a call back to the Old DnD days of a dark Cleric.
A Mace would give us a new melee option and wouldn’t take up design space that could be given to the Scythe. Its also a rather under used weapon that you don’t see a whole lot of. You Might see a Guardian with one occasionally but over all its fairly rare. Especially considering that only 2 professions can use them.
But that’s My opinion.
Minions are actually fairly limited as for what they can do. You either have 20/0/30/20/0 or 20/0/20/30/0. Those are pretty much your only 2 options. Which is fine, Minions don’t define everything that death magic can do or other trait lines for that matter.
Not at all. Those are just the only two ways to fully trait minions, but they aren’t the only ways to use them. Gibbly used a 0/0/20/20/30 build, giving himself a ton of stability to avoid CC and help his team with ressing and stomping, with the minions being decent sources of damage (30% less, which isn’t a huge deal), while he uses conditions, which don’t lose out on that much damage because of how they scale.
You can go 0/0/30/30/0 for a really bunkery build. You can go 30/0/20/20/0 for a lot of damage. You can trait almost nothing for the minions, instead traiting for yourself, and they still perform just fine (PvP). You can go 20/0/20/0/30 and have the minions face-tank for you while you deal damage.
And this is just a few of the build types. The difference is that minion builds don’t need to be fully traited, which is something people don’t understand. There is a lot of variety with how minions can be used, and how they can be traited. They are the only remotely successful build type we have that can be glass cannon, or home-point bunker 1v1, or team-fight bunker, or anti-bunker, or… the list continues. They have more variety than anything else, because they are a utility type, which literally means you can put them in any build.
PvP, sure. You must remember though, I’m a PvE player. And those options are don’t help much compared to what we get with other build. And yes, they are still very limited, even with with putting your points in other traits. Considering you sacrifice utility to use them. This might be fine in PvP if you only have to worry about 1-2 people at a time, but in PvE where bosses scale and can one shot the tankiest of players let alone minions and some bosses that actually chain knock downs, this becomes far less viable. And they still don’t work in any build in PvE because even if you just take bone minions as a couple of bombs they don’t run to your target to explode like clones do which means you will often have to wait for them to get to your target before you decide to sac them. Flesh Golem is really the only Useful one as it can Knock down a good chunk of a group and works wonders when destroying objects when you are spect for condition. Flesh Wurm is completely out classed by all the other stunbreaks the necromancer has and bone fiend’s immobilize really hasn’t ever come up in a situation where it wouldn’t be better to just enter death shroud and use Tainted Shackles or even just use Doom.
I won’t argue that it is good in PvP. I’m sure its wonderful. However, PvE is a different Beast all together.
I agree with Lily, and would specificy that each tree needs big “oomph” traits in them. For example, if you want to be a condition build, you pretty much always go Curses for your condition traits. Then you have a choice: do I go full damage by going into another damage tree (Spite)? Or do I go into the support/sustain tree, giving up damage for sustain/support (which isn’t a true option right now)? Or do I go into Death Magic for some really strong defense to keep myself alive (again, not a real option)? Or do I go into Soul Reaping for an improved Death Shroud, giving me more utility and a bit of a hybrid offense/defense mix?
The problem is, only two of these options are remotely viable. You either go for more damage by picking up Dhuumfire, or you get Foot in the Grave for a lot of utility and some defense. But there is no meaningful support, sustain, or all-defense option open. In fact minions are the only build type that have all these options. Minions get a ton of meaningful trait choices, but this isn’t mirrored in any of our other builds. I think they should look at the minion traits and see why it is they work so well (spread out through multiple trees, each tree has some options, no way to have everything you want, meaningful pure-offense or pure-defense choices, etc.), and then apply that to our other builds.
Minions are actually fairly limited as for what they can do. You either have 20/0/30/20/0 or 20/0/20/30/0. Those are pretty much your only 2 options. Which is fine, Minions don’t define everything that death magic can do or other trait lines for that matter.
The problem I see is that Curse doesn’t really play that well with Death Magic or Blood Magic. Sure they have a minor connection in wells. But That lends itself more to blood then curse and only tells you to spend 10 points in curse if you want to be more supportive with it. If you are going 30 points into Curse then you want to do something with conditions which neither of those lines provide a significant benefit to that style of play. Even just going 20 into Curse suggest you want to be playing into spite and Soul reaping.
Hell, a Grandmaster trait in Death magic that makes it so all condition on a foe that dies are transferred from them to all their living allies would be amazing to take. Slap on a 10 second cool down and we have ourselves a extremely awesome trait that would really make people reconsider Dhuumfire.
Make a Master trait in Blood that makes all your attack steal life from foes that are bleeding could be another awesome idea. Perhaps even stealing more life based on the number of bleed stacks?
Some new traits in other lines which could pull people away from exclusively going 30 spite and 30 curse would be nice. These are just some basic ideas and might not be the best options, but do give us some ideas as to what could be done.
The major problem you are going to have with minions is the sacrifice of utility. The necromancer does have the flesh wurm which will give you a stun break but the Wurm is Immobile which can be a problem when you need to be on the move or if it gets killed. You can easily put yourself into a bad situation with minions because you wont have access to your normal utility skills. And if you decide to take Blood Fiend, then if that dies you lose your heal as well. Which becomes extremely dangerous.
You then have to ask yourself if Minions are worth losing your utility skills for. I’ve asked that question myself and the answer I have gotten is no. Even after the update with the increased health, they still have a problem if they take a threshold of damage you lose a good chunk of your damage as you will have to wait for them to recharge. And it becomes a very real possibility that half your minions will be dead 60%-90% of the time which makes your damage even less reliable.
Compare this to a power build or a Condition build. With a power build you have to worry about building life force. Which becomes far easier because a power build gains life force rather quickly and allow you to hit much harder then minions and doesn’t sacrifice utility to do so. The Condi build lets you hit just as hard as a Power build but also has better armor and also doesn’t sacrifice your utility and will deal far better AOE damage then the minion set. The Big thing the minion master has over the other damage sets is your health and armor will be better because you can focus on personal health more then damage. But the trade off for utility is far greater then it should be.
Then we can compare this to a supportive set. A Support necromancer will be able to provide far better support then the minions could along with its healing and protection. Not only that, your survivability will be just as good with a support set if not better then a minion master.
That said, I wont tell you not to run a minion master. You can do whatever makes you happy.
Dhuumfire
I can safely say 80% of the condition necro have this trait. Yet, 30 points in Spite JUST for this trait. I always can’t exactly decide what to take in 10,20 points. It is for condition dmg, it should be in Curse. And Spite should have more condition traits.
I agree. I personally feel Dhuumfire needs some more competition from other trait lines as well as more option in spite. I don’t agree that it should be in Curse. Dhuumfire has a certain flavor about it that makes it so if you want to take a condition spec with Dhuumfire, you can’t go into minions. Which makes sense if you know the lore about Dhuum.
I feel that giving the necromancer another option either a master or grandmaster trait in either Blood or Death magic that would provide a benefit to the necromancer that would be comparable in power level to Dhuumfire could increase the diversity of builds among the necromancer with out completely neutering the power of the necromancer. Imagine a Master/grandmaster trait in blood that effected bleeding in some way. Perhaps a % increase of damage from bleeds. This could be worth taking over Dhuumfire. Or perhaps actually add the suggested condition, Disease and make it so the disease condition could only be applied through traits from the Death magic trait line.
Hemophilia, Lingering Curse
Amazing trait for condition necro. BUT Curse gives precision/condition dmg, and both of the traits are duration, which imo, should be in Spite.
Let me stop you right that. This actually is completely counter intuitive to increase build diversity. Right now the necromancer can reliably get 25 stacks of bleeding onto the target with the use of cons, armor and these traits without having to invest into Spite. Moving these traits over to spite actually becomes counter intuitive to build diversity and rather then opening up more options for a Condition spec would actually completely shut the door on build options. Spite is required for a high damage condition spec, but there is also the Hybrid Condition damage and support set that this change would completely ruin. With this change, that build would go from having the ability to get 25 stacks with cons to closer to 15 stacks or less with those same cons and armor at best.
Hemophilia, Lingering Curse and Dhuumfire are all defiantly in the right place to promote build diversity in the future for a condition spec provided new traits will be added.
What traits do you really like?
Spiteful Removal, Close to Death, Hemophilia, Terror, Spiteful Vigor, Shrouded Removal, Mark of Evasion, Transfusion, Deathly Invigoration, Vampiric Rituals, Unyielding Blast, Deathly Perception.
These are the traits that I like the most, but not necessarily the ones I used the most. Traits that decrease the recharge time or increase damage are good, but it isn’t exciting. So I didn’t include those because I don’t have strong feelings for them even if I us them. I like what they do, but they don’t get me excited to use a build.
What traits do you like conceptually, but feel fall short of what they could be?
Signet Mastery: I feel like this one is a strange fit. The necro doesn’t have any short recharging Signets, which this helps with. But the might just feels out of place for when you want to use a signet. Protection would be better but retaliation feels far more at home for a necromancer. I like the idea, but it just doesn’t work that well in practice. without any real low recharging signets.
Chill of Death: I really like the idea of the necromancer getting damage buffs when a foe’s health is low. As closer to death helps with there theme. But on the other hand this skill really seems to be way too random on how it does that and just doesn’t seem to be that useful when compared to the other ways the necromancer can remove boons.
Target the Weak: This trait is just in the wrong place. I personally don’t care for hybrid builds so this doesn’t seem to effect my necromancer that much. It does have an impact on my over all damage, sure, but not enough that its noticeable.
Reaper’s Precision: This trait has such a cool idea going for it. It just fails to deliver on many angles. The life force gain combine with its low chance to happen with crits just makes this trait lacking.
Lingering Curse: Yeah yeah. Lingering Curse is amazing I know. But the problem I have with it is it just doesn’t do enough. On land, this skill is awesome and you would have to be a fool not to take it if you are using a scepter. But once you go underwater its a dead skill. Why doesn’t this skill give a 33% condition bonus to Trident as well as Scepter?
Reanimator: Minion masters used to be a very amazing thing back in GW1. And this skill is kinda reminiscent of that. But its just not impressive and the damage output from this little guy is far worse then that of the Bleed you get from Barbed Precision. A cool concept, just doesn’t live up to what it could do.
Death Shiver: Again, I think this is a really cool idea. But from testing it, it just doesn’t preform the way you want it to preform and is out classed by way better death traits that have a larger impact. Especially for a master trait.
Death Nova: its funny that you don’t actually want to take a condition damage with a Minion master build. This trait is decent, but counter intuitive to every other trait the minion master has access to. The MM doesn’t get anything to help minions in Cursing.
Most life siphoning triats: I just feel that they are too weak or just don’t feel much like life steal.
What traits do you just plain dislike?
Protection of the Horde: There is a term that the Magic: The gathering developers have called a Parasitic Mechanic. A Parasitic mechanic is a mechanic in the game that plays well with itself and nothing else. Some mechanics in the game like Splice onto Arcane was a spell type that could only interacted with other spells with the Arcane type. But they only printed arcane spells in one block of MTG so these spells would only be good if you played them with spells from that specific set. Protection from the Horde has the same problem as this. As a Minor trait it should allow for flexibility for building. Major traits can be more specific because you don’t have to take them all the time. This, however, You don’t have a choice. This basically becomes a trait slot that does absolutely nothing for you if you decide to try and do a more defensive style of build using the Death magic trait line. Which Death magic does have some really awesome death magic traits that have nothing to do with minions.
Dhuumfire: I actually use this trait a lot. it does get on my nerves though because this actually limits the style of play a condition build will want to take. I primarily dislike this because it doesn’t have an equal counter in another trait line to take. This trait is so good, and the necromancer actually needs the damage this gives so bad for a condi set this becomes an auto include. Which is frustrating because it forces a certain build design. If this skill had a natural counter, such as a Death Magic trait in the Master or even grand master tier that inflicted a condition that was equally as valuable or close to it then My problem with this would be far less. Taking this becomes less of a choice and more of a calculation, which harms the real fun of the game.
Life steal cleaving greatsword.
You see, the problem I have with giving the greatsword to the necromancer is its way too common of a weapon in PvE. Its so popular with every profession that uses it except maybe for the Ranger. And even on them it seems like a fairly popular choice. Giving the greatsword to the necromancer would only serve to decrease diversity in the community as you can bet without a doubt tones of people will use a greatsword on a necromancer considering it would probably become there only cleaving weapon option for melee.
Not to mention that some of the most popular greatswords would end up getting a spike in price.
As for Flavor, Their is nothing saying that a necromancer couldn’t use a greatsword. The Problem I see is more with style. What could a greatsword do that wouldn’t FEEL better being done on a Scythe for the necromancer? Open a door to the Underworld letting out all the horrible minions to attack your foe? Which would feel better? Doing it with a large clunky sword? Or with a malicious looking Sickle cutting through to the depths?
But perhaps you could explain it to me. Why do you want a Greatsword? Why do you demand a greatsword over a Scythe or just a normal sword as a cleaving weapon?
Here is my suggestion for the skill. have it function like Ride the Lightning only make it 10% slower and make it so rather then stopping at anyone in front of you, have you bleed and chill everyone to your target as you pass through them like a ghost. Make it cause only 1 bleed to each person you pass through and 2 seconds of chill to them, then have it deal 2 stacks of bleed to your target and the full 5 seconds of chill. Reduce its cast time to 1/4 a second and we are good to go.
4 of the 8 professions use greatswords and 5 out of 8 professions use swords. Greatswords are considered one of, if not, the best weapons for PvE and there price reflects that. For economic reasons and diversity reasons I would suggest against these 2 weapons.
As for hammers. Again I’m going to say no. I do think more professions should use a hammer, but they don’t fit with the philosophy and style of a necromancer. Hammers for an Engineer on the other hand fits them very well. But necromancer? No. A sword makes far more sense for a necromancer. But I would rather not have some weapons become too common.
My suggestions would be Off hand Axe, Scythe and Tomb. Scythe has been suggested before(allot). But a Tomb has been rarely suggested. Usually called an offhand book. But I feel that a weapon as a tomb would be nice. A primarily defensive weapon on a necromancer. Not giving them blocks but giving them retaliate and protection or causing life stealing when they are struck with attacks for a short duration.
I guess I don’t care either way if we get a torch. That could be fine as long as they don’t cause more then 1 second of burning. Maybe another weapon that cause fear and/or torment. Actually a AOE 1 second fear and burning skill with a 30 second cool down sounds pretty cool.
Scythe would be cool. Especially as a melee hybrid condition/damage weapon. Give us more access to torment and some real movement skills would be nice. A Shadow step or something like that would be wonderful. Honestly, Dark Path is bad for closing gaps and has such a long cast time. It would be nice to have a GOOD movement skill for a change.
I think the warhorn is actually fairly good. Like people mentioned, the crippling and daze. Though the Staff and Scepter are both better at slowing your foe down then the warhorn is. And the staff causes fear. Not to mention the main hand dagger causing immobilize and the off hand dagger causing blind and weakness. Not to mention the focus which causes vulnerability and regenerates allies while removing boons and causing chilled. I think the necromancer’s weapons cause lots of support. Just maybe not in as direct as a way as you might like.
The Warhorn is far better at melee range then the other weapons. So that should be considered when using it. It helps to keep foes close to you, which can support your ranged allies.
I’m not even getting that anymore. Just crashing and getting the error report. I can now stay logged in as my engineer. but not my main. I can’t even connect on my necromancer for some reason.
I’ve been trying to log into the game. And each time I try to load up a character the game crashes. I’ve tried with multiple characters and looked for fixes. I can’t get in at all on my main and on my alts I can enter only for the game to crash a few seconds later. I’ve sent the report. Ever since the update I’ve been having problems with lag and stabilizing the connection to the server. And I was having lag about an hour before the game decided to crash. now I can’t get in. Is this my computer’s fault or is it the fault of the game? I would like to know so I can either take action to fix it or here a response. I don’t mind waiting to play the game, but I would defiantly like to know what is causing it.