(edited by Overkillengine.6084)
In its current state it is effectively an anti team support tool because your team will have to pick you up a lot more if you use it, thus not only losing their dps output but making them sitting ducks.
Because Necros totally already get didn’t focus fired a lot or anything silly like that, oh no.
Problem is we gotta keep complaining so that they don’t forget/“accidentally” de-prioritize it.
Just do the comparative math, and try not to get whiplash from shaking your head.
Yeah I’m enacting a personal moratorium on giving them any more money until they pull their head out of their 4th point of contact when it comes to Necromancers. I don’t even main one anymore and this is bullfeces.
The current Necro defensive design is pretty much made for a different game than this one. One with more statistics based mitigation than the evasion/avoidance centric design this game totes in an effort to demolish the trinity.
Which is ironic, because when you actually look at the Necromancer design; they were handed statistic tanking for defenses along with a smattering of cc/debuff that in high end pve has incredibly neutered effectiveness.
The class appears made for a different game than this one. Either the class need a remake to fit in or the entire game needs a rework to allow the class to fit in as is.
Yes, the skill slot is an apple. We were handed an orange.
Oranges are nice and all, but we needed an apple.
No they just polished the kitten a bit; there is still a horrible and obvious gap in effectiveness between the Blood line and other trait lines.
And this is coming from someone masochistic enough to try to make a primarily Blood and Death based Necro work for nearly 9 months.
Technically, it does work….if you ignore that almost every other spec option works far better.
So the phrase reeks of spin doctoring the profession has very little need for at this time.
3. They actually do support those statements.
You mean like when they said Necros were starting to feel like blood magic was in a good place?
Yeah that was a facepalm moment for me too.
Are there any other classes with skills that currently have range indicators? I can’t think of any…but sometimes it’s just difficult to guess how far you can go and I have seen so many instances of golem ports that don’t activate because the exit is out of range (including my own).
Easy, you already have a range indicator on all skills. If a target will be out of range, a red bar appears. If this bar appears on the second portal icon the instant you run out of range, you notice and can go back. Problem solved ._.
This. I’d be happy with a red bar on the icon so that I don’t have to screw with my mini map as a jerry rigged range finder when I need that zoomed out for emergency waypointing as much as possible.
Or at the very least we’d get more chances to point out when their data mining and simulations don’t jive up too well with “in practice” results due to factors that may have not been considered initially.
#necroissues
#15charlimitpreventsbrevitythesoulofwit
Up hill both ways just to get within soul Reaping range!
build diversity
give them a stealth nerf in patch
tool tip correction
The key “theme” of the skill was being able to drop guaranteed burst healing that a heal would normally give you, and in return have an incredibly aggressive, damaging heal. High risk/reward.
We’re already the best in
kill orbe killed scenarios, giving us this would just be too OP.
We’re too OP in the get killed category, we deserve some nerfs!
Simple; swap to another class. Mesmer treats you pretty good if you want to play condition/support.
The problem is I absolutely love Necro MM, and no other class is remotely close.
One learns that not all love is good for us.
/Stockholm Syndrome
Simple; swap to another class. Mesmer treats you pretty good if you want to play condition/support.
I am so sick of their obsession with that game mode leading them to take a steaming dump on the rest of the game which appeals to far more people. The sad part is the demographic they are trying to grab with that mode are playing other games that do it better instead.
Next patch: Dagger 2 healing reduced to less than Vampiric Signet to increase build diversity.
Edit: But it won’t be in the notes for about 5 months then added as a tooltip correction.
Turns out, no retal damage from this signet.
Yep. The passive part of this skill is basically a flat damage reduction for however much its listed as, at the low low price of not getting a healing skill.
And even then, only against the first attack each second.
APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!
We’d be better off if they’d just rework DS to not be a friggen transformation with all the associated issues. It’s a class mechanic that actively interferes with a lot of our other mechanics due to that.
Yeah thinking of making a build where I can swap Locust signet out for Blood is Power once make a set of gear with those.
Ok..but why would a thief be in the front line?
…because their best damage is melee?
Honestly though, there’s no reason for a venom share thief to care about being in the front line. People further back like the venom benefits too. Besides, Havoc Squads are always diving into the enemy territory and are small groups. Pretty hard not to be on the front lines when you only have four friends with you.
This. My Mesmer doesn’t even have a melee weapon but I often end up in near point blank range dancing around the enemy to misdirect them as much as possible.
Hmm if they did that they’d have to make all the signets work just to be fair. I don’t trust them to not nerf them even further in a fit of blind terror if they actually made them work at the same time.
So then just fire it off shortly after the initial alpha and the enemy has recovered from shock enough to fight back, and your melees are needing a touch of sustain to finish them/stay up.
Another idea:
Passive: gain life force when struck.
Active: large single siphon of health from target enemy. Stuns on hit.
And give it a short enough cool-down that encourages actually using it.
lollers, venom share
You know venom share has a radius of 350
how many times is your whole team in a 350 radius.
Stand next to an MM, boom full effect.
Mesmer clone spam as well, iirc.
A 350 radius isn’t horrible for an effect you don’t have to stay within range for an extended period to get the benefit of. A decent team can flow together for a few moments to get a couple buffs and then spread back out; assuming they care to bother coordinating such things. This looks like a possibly good thing to fire off when doing a quick stack for a havoc team stealth bomb.
(edited by Overkillengine.6084)
They could get away with no ICD if the siphons were not a flat damage effect but were instead a percentage based on the attack they piggybacked on instead.
It’s either that or a flat base with a scaling bonus plus an ICD to keep rapid AE attacks from being OP as hell once they finally get around to buffing the base value and bonus stat scaling to something actually worth using.
…. They’ve retricted it in too many ways for it to be remotely useful in any situation.
Necro balancing in a nutshell.
(edited by Overkillengine.6084)
so what purpose is the thief one?
Venom share builds. Properly done, could be disgusting fun.
Yeah outside of niche builds I don’t think this will see much use if it has a ICD; unless the devs reverse themselves and finally allow HP healing while in DS.
If that were to happen even the current level of life-leech before adding this new skill would become much more worthwhile, as well as allow allies to actually help us when getting focused by being able to heal us some.
We have enough cleanse options that changing one from self only at max range to team and self if near the mark is not a bad trade.
Unless you deliberately avoided all the other methods and were only using staff I guess.
Edit: Plus the team transfer to an enemy target had incredible synergy with epidemic, and it worked better than a certain signet. Losing that was a pretty harsh nerf too.
I found the system in CoH to be wonderful; I think it was refined to no one could send whispers/tells to you unless they were already on your contact list.
Disabling that security layer long enough to add someone to that list was a more than fair exchange for the lack of spam.
Look at it this way:
1) Not being in range is a 100% damage debuff for you. It also means you cannot help allies with any support skills.
2) WvW has a lot of open ground to cover.
3) When roaming/running havok, swiftness isn’t always available. Zerging is another matter entirely.
Yup, got to watch what they have active or you just waste it.
Edit: That being said, Necro could really use more boonhate options besides Corrupt Boon and Well of Corruption.
Even just reducing the cool down would do a lot to mitigate how unreliable the slow projectile makes it, since if random terrain glitches eat it or the enemy sidestepped, you still have a chance at catching them ready again. Something like 10-11 seconds so that even with 100% condition duration you aren’t completely able to perma chill…
..actually no. Make it even shorter if you want. An enemy allowing a Necro to stay in Death Shroud that long deserves nothing less than a humiliating death from being chased down and killed. If a Necro isn’t able to run away they should be at least be able to effectively stick to an enemy and ruin their day unless they actually kill the Necro.
Trading the double blast finisher to get the group condi transfer back is a favorable trade in my opinion.
Probably not going to happen though. I get the feeling that the real reason they removed the ally to enemy condi transfer is due to bugged targeting issues they could not/would not spare the resources to fix.
Another option I’ve seen used is to only allow characters to send tells/whispers once they’ve reached some milestone that is highly inconvenient for disposable spam accounts to achieve, such as minimum level or perhaps achievement points or karma, etc.
It doesn’t totally prevent then from making a throw away account, leveling a character high enough to finally send gold spam, and then getting shortly banned, but it does make it take so much time invested as to make it not worth doing so. Time = money, even for gold sellers.
And that also means you also were not doing much other than slowly spamming life blast since every other DS tool has a not inconsiderable cool-down and costs life-force to boot.
The design just comes across as schizophrenic frankly.
No skills cost life force.
Sorry, meant “and it costs” as a way to refer to the degen.
Since it seems that ANet really doesn’t want to give us health siphon in DS, I have an alternate suggestion: activate the heal function button and allow it to convert life force into HP. This way, we aren’t given “unstoppable perma-healing” but rather, provided with the option of using the life force/HP that we have earned in a more flexible manner and a small rise in sustain.
alternate alternate suggestion: do away with the clunky transform mechanic altogether, and give us the DS skills as Function button skills:
f1: Life Blast (unchanged)
f2: Dark Path (unchanged)
f3:Doom (unchanged)
f4: Life Transfer: Damage nearby foes and steal their health.
f5: Tainted Shackles: (unchanged)This would require reworking a lot of enter/exit DS transformation traits though so will likely never happen.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with DS mode. To me, it’s not clunky at all. Actually, I kind of like it. It makes the class play differently than the others and variety of game play counts for something.
And, your suggestion brings up fundamental concerns. For example, you couldn’t leave the DS skills unchanged because they overlap/replace regular weapons skills. I mean, who would ever use staff 1 if they had unlimited access to Lifeblast?
I would. Life Blast by default does not pierce, and it consumes precious life-force I’d frankly rather save for one of the other skills especially if playing a condition spec.
Since it seems that ANet really doesn’t want to give us health siphon in DS, I have an alternate suggestion: activate the heal function button and allow it to convert life force into HP. This way, we aren’t given “unstoppable perma-healing” but rather, provided with the option of using the life force/HP that we have earned in a more flexible manner and a small rise in sustain.
alternate alternate suggestion: do away with the clunky transform mechanic altogether, and give us the DS skills as Function button skills:
f1: Life Blast (unchanged)
f2: Dark Path (unchanged)
f3:Doom (unchanged)
f4: Life Transfer: Damage nearby foes and steal their health.
f5: Tainted Shackles: (unchanged)
This would require reworking a lot of enter/exit DS transformation traits though so will likely never happen.
+1 for signets working in Deathshroud…. Still don’t understand why they break on DS entry.
As all transformations, they replace your skill bar, only that they are empty at the utility n heal slots.
I understand that, but DS isn’t a standard transformation (like plauge/tornado), it is our class mechanic. How many other classes have to fight with their class mechanic stopping their signets from working?
This. Being denied our utilities while in DS is a huge handicap. I said it months ago and I’ll say it again, for many builds the best use of DS is to use it as little as possible by flickering into it to either ablate a hard hit or use some of the abilities and then immediately leave.
The only good reason outside that to stay in DS is to run down a timer on your heal or a vital skill; which can be tricky since you can’t see those timers while in it. And that takes the risk of not having enough life-force or the recharge of DS ready if you need to go back into it again to ablate another hit. And that also means you also were not doing much other than slowly spamming life blast since every other DS tool has a not inconsiderable cool-down and costs life-force to boot.
The design just comes across as schizophrenic frankly.
Atm i wouldn’t play any mesmer (and guardian, for the matter) roaming build without either these or speed runes. Mobility is somewhat required in WvW.
Heck, i would probably use them on any class except engi and warrior to open the 3rd utility spot.
This. I even have them on a Thief of mine just to free up a utility slot. There’s a reason those runes go for so much even outside of the anemic supply.
1) Aesthetics of the trait are a bit off; especially for non human Necros.
2) Any non Dhuumfire condi spec is getting reamed by shaving done because of how nasty a Dhuumfire augmented condi burst can be. Less build diversity = bad.
3) Resources focused on shaving Dhuumfire specs is resources not focused on improving lackluster trait lines like Death and Blood.
That being said I would not have minded reliable access to Burning; but more on a weapon like torch instead of a trait that can be stacked with anything.
No use, PU mesmers and instagib thieves will make your life miserable ^^
What the hell is one doing that those are giving a Necro, especially a Condi one, issues outside of focus fire and unbalanced numbers?
A PU mesmer should have crap condi removal and usually be glass (comparatively); all you have to do is Mark kite them and their illusions and they’ll either melt or run eventually. And Mesmers tend to suck at chasing if you decide to leave.
And glass thieves you just either use DS or Plague to eat their initiative burst and then you just condi spooge all over them once they are on empty. Your main worry there is if they disengage and come back at full health while your stuff is on cool down. Or they actually know where a button other than “2” is.
Now if you are getting teamed up on by more than 1-2 of those while roaming; then it’s more the issue is once again, Necromancers suck at running away when the odds go bad.
BiP + offhand dagger transfer and/or putrid mark is great if you are running conditions.
That’s why you see so many Necros running Staff and */dagger with those utilities.
Those and Consume Conditions are also a decent synergy that should not be ignored.
You can easily spend the first portion of the fight sending conditions enemies put on you right back on them then once your transfers are down you can eat the rest to top off your health. Rinse, repeat.
Edit: The great part is you don’t have to be running condition to make use of those; you could just be running an odd dagger/dagger + staff power build and you’ll still screw up the enemy strategy if they are relying on conditions to kill you.
(edited by Overkillengine.6084)
I think the issue OP is having will happen regardless of build while playing Necro in WvW, though understandably the initial reaction is to do a build check to see if any important tools were overlooked/look for alternate builds.
Certain clones (such as from staff) deal next to no power based damage but have the ability to cause/inherit your condition damage and precision, and thus with the right traits and gear can actually deal semi decent dps.
I dunno, this guy seems to pull off 1vX’s pretty well. He’s full condition.
Pretty much what I was talking about.
(Note how all the utilities used had at least some offensive application; kill them before they kill you/reset portion of my advice. Unfortunately the video does not show much of the initial approach & evaluation performed prior to engagement so using it to illustrate my other points is difficult.)
Necros roam decent in small relatively even numbered fights; but once it goes sour numbers-wise if you aren’t already halfway over the hill by the time speedier companions are deciding to pull out (or dead) you’ll get gang-banged. Happened to me a few times before learning to either pull out early or get left behind to die. Or roll something that could get away with sticking around longer to get that one last stomp.
So OP, it really depends on your environment you are roaming in whether either power or condi builds are going to work for you. Either way, you are going to have to pay a lot of attention to what is happening as Necro because your point of no return comes a lot sooner than it does for other classes in an open field in WvW. It’s the mobility of the class that is the issue there, not whether it was power or condition spec.
Mixing Rabid and Carrion or full Rabid does ok but for wvw roaming you are better off with another class unless you have a way of forcing 1v1 cage matches and get a condi kitten off faster than the enemy can cleanse it.
Or your roaming team knows that they either have to support you when you get focused or be ok with you pulling out the moment the fight doesn’t look good/your goodies are on cooldown.
The other option is hide in a zerg and leech off their boon spam. Works for most any spec.
Basically get used to having to play as an odd mix coward and lunatic no matter the spec, lurk and avoid getting pulled too far in if possible, but if you do pull out all the stops and kill them before they focus you or reset the fight and kill you while your tools are on cool down. Always be mindful of what is nearby to use as a shield/break line of sight, etc.
Always been one recipient target from my memory. In fact, there was a bit of an issue a while back shortly before the stealth nerf where Putrid Mark was messing up the total number of stacks in pve (possibly wvw too) if there was someone hostile to both the caster and the chosen target/trigger within the transfer effect radius.
Given the timing of that bug thread and what happened shortly after it feels like they took the lazy way out of fixing that bug.