Except burning — or torment, which I think should replace burning on Dhuumfire — is necessary for coverage. Otherwise necromancers would require engineers to do decent damage again.
So since Dhuumfire has to stay, Terror has to go. Or at least be nerfed.
It’s not whether or not you are saying necros are OP. Most would have to be blind (or want the biggest advantage) to say they are. But saying being on leaderboards is an absolute necessity to have an opinion is a little ridiculous.
I never said that, either.
I think you guys are taking my comments too personally, and it’s making it difficult for you to interpret what I’m saying. I’m sorry if it’s offending you, but it is what it is.
I have no idea who you’re arguing with. I’ve been saying necromancers need nerfs and Terror is overpowered since the patch went live.
All I said in those posts is that low-level players are jumping on the bandwagon without really knowing what they’re talking about.
Dhuumfire giving torment would make it even easier for two necros to epidemic torment stacks, would it not? It seems as if it would make the problem even worse.
No, because there would be less coverage. It would be a lot easier to cleanse.
Terror without a condition still does 600 to 700 damage. Maybe more.
This is a good idea. I approve.
Check my edited post. That response wasn’t meant for you.
Really. You judged us on rank. So I decided to run in a team just for a few hours. Pretty easy to get up from 95% to on the leaderboard. So now can I make comments?
Seriously. Get a grip of yourself. Rank means nothing.
I’m not judging you on anything. You’re taking what I said too personally. I’m simply saying that is impossible to fully grasp a class’s balance and skill level at low-level play.
Also, you’re not ranked anywhere on the ladder, as far as I can tell.
Alot of players don’t have the time to get on a dedicated team in order to increase their ranking on the leader board. Also a lot of people on the leader boards don’t have very many games under their belt which sort of makes leaderboards laughable. Being in the top twenty on the leaderboards with only 40 tourney games does not make their point any more valid than others.
It seems like those players are just making a lot of excuses. I’m rank 489 right now, and that’s only with solo and duo queueing. I’ve never been in a full team.
Your comments indicate you don’t understand how ELO works. If someone beats the top players, he deserves to be high ranked, even if he only has 40 games.
But this is getting increasingly off topic. Let’s drop it.
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Torment duration is not the problem. The problem is the combination of extended fears and access to Terror, torment and burning all at once.
To address all those problems, I would do the following:
Change Dhuumfire to apply three stacks of torment for four seconds instead of burning. Keep the 10-second inner cooldown.
Switch Terror and Withering Precision in the trait line. Nerf Terror by 10 percent to 20 percent.
Make Doom’s fear last 1 second default no matter the range.
Make Spectral Wall apply three stacks of torment instead of fear.
Honestly, Dhuumfire makes no sense to me.
Top priorities before the patch were:
1 – reliable escapes and mobility to roam or survivability to defend one point.
2 – the ability to do sustained damage by covering our bleed stacks.Instead, they have effectively made Necromancer into Engineer with Burning on crit.
Assuming Necromancer will now run Rabid’s amulet, we have even less lifeforce / defenses and rely solely on raw damage output and triple fears in fights.
You explained why Dhuumfire was added in the No. 2 priority you listed. The only options for addressing No. 2 were burning and torment. For whatever reason, ArenaNet took both.
That’s not what I said. There are plenty of great necromancers saying the class is too strong right now. I like to think I’m one of them.
But if someone is below 70 percentile, I’m not sure he’s fit to declare his class “so freaking overpowered.” At that level, individual skill plays a much bigger role than class mechanics.
Balance just means something different at lower skill levels, but it isn’t irrelevant. The top tier players are comparing the relative strengths of various builds played near the skill cap where the rest of the population are comparing relative strengths at some percentage of the skill cap that is substantially lower.
While it is more critical to balance at/near skill cap the state of balance in lower skilled play cannot be ignored, because it would put the game in a state of “un-funness” for the majority of the population who will never play at/near the skill cap for various reasons. If these lower skilled players aren’t having fun, then they aren’t playing the game and no one is spectating the top tier players. When this happens population shrinks and the game dies.
That is why the perceptions of “lower tier” PvP players are relevant. Though you are spot on that the variance in skill level can be a major contributing factor in PERCIEVED imbalance where none or only a little bit exists.
That last paragraph is my main point. I’m OK with nerf aimed at balancing lower levels if there are proper buffs to outweigh the changes at higher tiers of play. I’m just saying that it’s really weird for poorly ranked players to declare a class faceroll and extremely overpowered when these same players don’t and can’t have a full grasp on the metagame.
That’s not what I said. There are plenty of great necromancers saying the class is too strong right now. I like to think I’m one of them.
But if someone is below 70 percentile, I’m not sure he’s fit to declare his class “so freaking overpowered.” At that level, individual skill plays a much bigger role than class mechanics.
How would replacing burning with torment not make sense? Neither scale with power. Both scale with condition damage. In fact, three stacks of torment do about the same damage on a moving target as burning, regardless of condition damage. (I recommend looking up how abilities and conditions scale in this game if this seems like a wrong claim to you.)
It would obviously be a nerf to coverage, but that’s the point. Ncromancers are currently applying too many conditions in one or two attacks. Throw in Terror and the damage is unmanageable.
By the way, Close to Death is objectively better for power builds than Dhuumfire. It’s way more DPS and burst. It’s not even close.
Anyway, I agree with the people questioning the buffs to fears. I think fear is literally the last aspect of the class that needed a buff.
My overall suggestions:
Change Dhuumfire to apply three stacks of torment for four seconds instead of burning. Keep the 10-second inner cooldown.
Switch Terror and Withering Precision in the trait line. Nerf Terror by 10 percent to 20 percent.
Make Doom’s fear last 1 second default no matter the range.
Make Spectral Wall apply three stacks of torment instead of fear.
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That’s the whole point. Our coverage is too strong with both burning and torment. Throw terror in there and the damage is unmanageable.
Funny how the necros who did good and actully knew how to play seem unhappy now thanks to the patch..
I’m happy with the patch. The class is more fun.
I think most of the unhappy necromancers just want the class to go in a defensive direction that wouldn’t be viable in the metagame. If the developers had taken that approach, necromancers would have continued to require engineers to do decent damage.
To clarify, I was top 1,000 before the patch and I’m top 1,000 after the patch, even though I only solo or duo queue.
Also, I recommend looking up some of the people crying OP on the leaderboards. One of the necromancers claiming he’s so overpowered in these threads has never been above 70 percentile, as far as I can tell. Another isn’t even ranked. Not exactly the proper experience to make a judgment.
With all that said, I do want Terror, close-range Doom and Spectral Wall nerfed. I would also like to see the developers turn Dhuumfire into three stacks of torment instead of burning.
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Funnily enough, thief’s Larcenous Strike prioritizes stability above everything else.
Doom was buffed in close range this patch. Spectral Wall now fears. Those are two huge buffs to necromancer’s fear capabilities, especially when condition duration from runes and the Spite trait line are taken into account. It’s too much crowd control.
Both of those changes, along with Tainted Shackles and Dhuumfire, also put Terror over the top. The reason necromancers had Terror to begin with was because the class didn’t have a secondary DPS condition. It now has torment and burning, which effectively make Terror overboard in terms of damage. Conditions shouldn’t be doing as much burst as Terror allows.
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I’m already seeing more people focus down necromancers and destroy them today. That weakness is still very apparent in the class.
While I would be OK with a nerf to Terror, Doom and Spectral Wall, I think it’s something that has to be approached carefully. If people continuing focusing necromancers down as they should, then necromancers need massive counter-pressure to be able to respond, particularly since the class doesn’t have mobility and isn’t supposed to.
Remind me of affliction warlock back in cataclysm/lich king pvp. Warlock had the extremely powerful combinaison of fear+ unstable affliction+dot which gave them the best control in the entire game. It was also a class with the worse mobility in the game. If you leave them alone, they put insane pressure on your team. Once focused, they can hardly spread unstable affliction and fear without getting interrupted which lower the pressure they put on the other team.
Yes. Another WOW comparison is Death Knight, which has awful mobility but amazing damage if left alone.
That’s the theme of the necromancer, and this patch was a great move in the right direction, even if the buffs to fears and Terror were too much.
But that needs to be clear: The problem is Doom’s close-range duration, Spectral Wall and Terror. Nothing else. Dhuumfire is necessary in the metagame.
I posted this on the structured PvP forums, and I think it’s relevant here:
I already saw more people today focus down necromancers and destroy them. That weakness is still very apparent in the class.
While I would be OK with a nerf to Terror, Doom and Spectral Wall, I think it’s something that has to be approached carefully. If people continuing focusing necromancers down as they should, then necromancers need massive counter-pressure to be able to respond, particularly since the class doesn’t and shouldn’t have mobility because it would defy the class’s theme of attrition.
The people calling for a nerf to Dhuumfire are simply wrong, though. Burning is necessary for condition builds in the metagame. That’s why necromancers had to run with engineers last patch. It’s not even about the damage, although that is quite nice; it’s about splitting the class’s source of condition damage so it isn’t all on one condition that can be easily cleansed. To that end, Terror would have to go before Dhuumfire.
Still, Dhuumfire could definitely be replaced with a trait that applies three stacks of Torment on a critical hit on a 10-second cooldown. That would be a slight nerf, and it would fit with the theme of the class.
I already saw more people today focus down necromancers and destroy them. That weakness is still very apparent in the class.
While I would be OK with a nerf to Terror, Doom and Spectral Wall, I think it’s something that has to be approached carefully. If people continuing focusing necromancers down as they should, then necromancers need massive counter-pressure to be able to respond, particularly since the class doesn’t and shouldn’t have mobility because it would defy the class’s theme of attrition.
The people calling for a nerf to Dhuumfire are simply wrong, though. Burning is necessary for condition builds in the metagame. That’s why necromancers had to run with engineers last patch. It’s not even about the damage, although that is quite nice; it’s about splitting the class’s source of condition damage so it isn’t all on one condition that can be easily cleansed. To that end, Terror would have to go before Dhuumfire.
Still, Dhuumfire could definitely be replaced with a trait that applies three stacks of Torment on a critical hit on a 10-second cooldown. That would be a slight nerf, and it would fit with the theme of the class.
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It’s literally impossible for burning to be permanently applicable. Condition duration only goes to 100 percent, burning is a four-second duration default and its cooldown is 10 seconds.
I don’t get the complaints about wells. Nothing changed about them minus one easily accessible trait moving down. Wells are still really easy to avoid.
I agree. I would also switch Terror and Withering Precision in the trait line. The mix of Dhuumfire and current incarnations of Doom and Terror are too much.
But I think balance problems are being overblown. Necromancers still fall over to focus damage more so than any other class.
The mix of burning and terror pushes necromancers overboard, but I’m not sure about tier S just yet. The class still falls over to focus fire like no one else.
CONDITIONmancers can now burst just as fast as a glass cannon thief or warrior and with DS, great peels, CC and a buffed weakness, you have more survivability than these two, something is just wrong with this. Speaking of strictly sPvP.
I agree our damage is high, but your claim about survivability is wrong. Necromancers still drop to focus fire faster than anyone else. It’s not totally unmanageable, especially with proper peels, but it’s a big weakness.
Conditions just aren’t supposed to be so bursty. The combination is too much, mostly because Terror is too accessible and probably a little too effective at the moment.
Because of access to torment and how we can force movement with fear, we would still be the top condition damage even without Terror. I don’t think a slight nerf to it would be the end of the world.
tbh i think it should apply like 2 stacks of torment instead of burning.. necros didn’t need burning imo
I’d say three stacks, but this makes perfect sense. I have no idea why the developers didn’t do that instead.
Well, saying Dhuumfire should be removed is completely overreacting. If there’s any problem, it’s how it interacts with Terror, but that’s more a problem with Terror’s placement and overall effectiveness than Dhuumfire.
Spectral Wall does not work if you drop it directly on someone. So if you’re getting chain feared by it, you’re walking into it.
Also, you can dodge through it.
To be honest, Spectral Wall is kind of bad. It sounded a lot better in theory.
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I would just switch Terror and Withering Precision in the trait line. Then I would maybe nerf Terror by about 10 percent.
If you’re worried about damage, you should go into Spite to begin with. It’s fair to require people to give up survivability to maximize damage.
I just played a bit more. Some thoughts:
Terror is overpowered. It pushes our damage over the top. Our damage is fine otherwise as power and condition builds.
Our survivability is as awful as it was before the patch — maybe even worse because we have to give up Soul Marks to be viable. (Although I do find it more engaging and interesting, from a gameplay standpoint, that we now have to properly time and maximize Feast of Corruption to get life force.)
I agree with Gabi. Necromancer damage is huge now, but not that much changed in the way of survivability, with the sole exception of Spectral Wall.
This was immediately noticeable to me last night, which makes it all the more comical that people missed it to begin with.
No, realistically with the new buffs, the offensive pressure that burning + terror can put out, along with DS 5, and all of what we used to do, its crazy strong. What really remains to be seen is if a 30/20/X/X/X build will actually be able to accomplish that pressure without being too vulnerable to focus fire.
He’s symbolic, PvPers want to hear what he says, lol.
Just to be picky, it’s 30/20+/10/X/X. Still need 10 points for Greater Marks.
I feel like it holds up fine. Spectral Wall is a massive survivability buff.
The only thing I might call overpowered at this point is Terror. It might be unnecessary with Dhuumfire and torment. But I’m not sure it needs much of a nerf, if one at all.
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Necromancer damage is a lot better because it actually sticks in PvE and PvP situations, even as a condition build in PvE since the damage relies less on bleeds.
But I think it balances out because necromancer survivability is still the worst. Life force generation was barely buffed for condition builds, and it still requires proper play and timing, at least with Feast of Corruption.
In fact, the biggest survivability buffs came through weakness, which is now incredible. The upside is that also gives necromancers a much-needed niche in PvP and PvE groups.
Overall, I think necromancers are in the perfect spot after this patch.
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I’d put it below Molten Facility, but it’s pretty amazing.
Well, it was only a matter of time until people complained about the game getting too many content updates.
It’s not. My PUG did it the second try.
Play a single-player game.
LMAO. This is ridiculous.
I’m going 30/30/10/0/0 with rabid gear.
The leaked patch notes have already been confirmed by media outlets.
Too vague, and the cast time is wrong or the skill tooltip needs to show a duration.
30/30/10/0/0 will be incredible in PvP and PvE next patch.
A fix for this, along with the bleed cap, has been in the works, according to the developers, since launch. When is it going to happen?
Steal is incredible in PvP for the actual stealing ability. Most thieves don’t know how to use it properly, though.
Dispelling boons does have a priority system on some skills. More info here.
It’s unclear what Corrupt Boon’s priority system will be, though.
Are u sure those patch notes are real?
I think so. The leaked notes were live before the official blog post, and the leaked notes correctly named “torment.”
The leaked notes are probably outdated and partially unfinished, though.
It seems like the initial e-sport hype that came with custom arenas has greatly diminished, with tournament streams typically sitting at 1,000 viewers or so. (The streams used to get about 5,000, which wasn’t great, but it was at least a decent start.)
What’s next? Does ArenaNet have plans to revitalize some of that hype?
‘tis quite a lot of trouble to go through just to put up some fake notes though.
but again, i guess we shouldn’t be surprised what some people would do for.. whatever reason.
This is the biggest thing.
Plus, all of the notes match what ArenaNet has been saying, and the notes are all the token level-headed approach ArenaNet typically takes with balance changes. Fake patch notes typically give themselves away by breaking philosophical concepts and going overboard, and these notes do neither.
I think it’s more likely the notes are outdated, not fake.
None of the notes are overpowered if you understand the overall metagame and what actually makes necromancer underpowered.
I think people are overreacting to power builds in general. They’ll still be very squishy.
Bunkers might be more viable, though.
What they supposedly did with condition necromancers is very smart, too. They slightly buffed survivability through life force generation, but they buffed our survivability more by buffing condition damage, particularly through torment, burning and the new Signet of Spite. That will let condition necromancers play a game of attrition in a much better way.
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