(edited by Pendragon.8735)
Now that weakness will affect very popular crit heavy builds, might we look at making a build around keeping it up permanently, or as long as possible?
The reduced durations would make it difficult but increased condition duration setups can gain a lot back. At least 50% or better would be recommended.
Main sources a build would use and base length:
Weapons
Enfeebling Blood (Dagger 5): 6s.
Staff 4 Into 3 Combo: 3s.
Utilities
Corrosive Poison Cloud: 3s every 3s for 12 second – and poison field for more weakness combos.
Signet of Spite: 10s.
Corrupt Boon: Corrupts Might into Weakness (5s). Might is prevalent.
Well of Corruption: As above (5s).
Elite
Plague Form 3: Weakness 1s every second.
Traits
Weakening Shroud: 6s PBAoE weakness on entering Death Shroud.
Withering Precision: 5s on Crit (once per 20 seconds).
Transfers
Deathly Swarm (Dagger 4)
Putrid Mark (Staff 4)
Plague Signet
Aquatic Life Blast
Epidemic (enemy to enemy)
Misc
4pc Rata Sum Rune Bonus: +20% Weakness Duration.
Sigil of Debility: +10% Weakness Duration
We have a lot of sources of weakness if we want, and its not much of a stretch to tailor into a fairly traditional condition build, without much sacrifice. Question is, will it be improved enough to be worthwhile.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
You can see the idea they were going for behind it, but the damage for a lot of condi builds is just too kitten . The bonus per condition should be 10% or higher. Still it’s a lot better if you are carrion, with rabid I rarely even used the skill in my rotation.
We just let them natter on, its the same stuff over and over. If you want to see what the next 10 pages of this thread will look like, go read the last 10 of the last matchup we had together.
Terror damage ticks at the same moment as ongoing bleeds and other condition damage. Therefore if you already have bleeds going, and you cast fear in between ticks of bleed, you may get an extra tick of terror, just depends on how soon the next tick is coming up vs when you applied the fear.
If you have no conditions on the enemy prior to fearing them, it will only give you as many ticks as you have duration rounding down. So 1 second fear with 50% duration is still going to be one tick in that case.
It’s actually a pretty fair mechanic because damage will average out over time to give you bonus damage that represents the additional duration you have. Would kind of suck if you had 90% duration increase and just never got more than 1 tick unless you had 100%.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
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.
Hmm, this old test done suggests Necro’s corrupt well was opposite thieves with Stability being a last target for us. Not sure how accurate this is, but if its true, seems like we got the shaft if corrupt uses this order.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/48579-conversion-of-boons-to-conditions-compilation/
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
It should work right before being nerfed, still seems to have weird los issues where it just misses for no reason you can discern.
And no self poison if it misses has to happen.
Besides no help for healing power / siphon, and no help for Blood Magic, what makes me think these notes might be fake is Anet specifically mentioned aiding the Necro via shorter cast times, and noted how this was a big problem holding the profession back in terms of attrition and being able to sustain in a fight when everyone can kick us around and interrupt so many of our skills.
But I see no cast time reductions, actually a couple increases.
Something like Enfeebling Blood is direly in need of a shorter cast time. Reaper’s Touch is also too long to be very skill reactive.
Had a hard time before playing rabid condition necro? Well, we give you Tainted Shackles. And btw: weakness actually does smth now.
Rumple Stilts Skin made herself wet, after reading this^^
My beef with rabid was how susceptible to cleansing your DPS is. Adding more damage on condition that can be wiped in removal heavy fights doesn’t really address that.
Those that didn’t have much removal already get melted by condi builds.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
a close match up is never a boring match up……
CD/YB/EBay/Mags/Kain match up will always bring a close match up i think, and very interesting ones…..
Keep in mind that once the week rolled around, mag enjoyed a minimum of a 30k point lead on both YB and KN. Mag doesn’t have weekend warriors; we should pull ahead during the weekdays.
CD hasn’t been introduced to Mags ginormous karma train zergs. Will pile up some points on the weekdays.
Ebay is also deceptively hanging in T3 so far, and I bet that also doesn’t last. Though DB did lose a strong guild.
It may turn out burning is not worth having for condi, or depending on the type of style you play. Just because something is new and exciting sometimes people can be tricked into thinking they must have it, not realizing what they are giving up in turn.
Spite and Curses are already overused trees relative to Death and Blood Magic, and if this patch makes that even more so true, it will be a big failure in the way of diversity and improving our weaker areas, which is really supposed to be a large part of the focus of this balance sweep.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
Sure, sure. Few weeks on the rack and people love and appreciate us again. But hostilities will resume within 24 hours I predict!
Spectral Walk LF gen lasts 8 seconds, 12 if traited. It can easily get you from 0 to 100 life force right now if being focus fired by multiple enemies.
Will be a bit less if you are actually in DS of course, but still gonna be a great option to have.
except if you put it behind them and fear them into it, imagine:
cast spectral wall behind ennemy:
go into death shroud: doom
spectral wall fear 1
reapers mark
spectral wall fear 2
golem knockback
spectral wall fear 3
enemy pops stability
corrupt boons -> fear
spectral wall fear 4at 1400 dmg/fear tick that’s 9800 dmg :p
It’s good theory, but just not sure how easy this will be able to pull off, if CCing enemies into the wall becomes a known combo.
Poor players might get wrecked sure, but one dodge roll sideways when someone see a wall down in front or behind them, its all messed up.
Lots of variety in build choices will become available, but not sure the wall could dump my spectral walk off, especially as it will now continue functioning in DS.
Smart enemies will begin to learn to fear the wall (small pun) after a few bad encounters, and many may be able to avoid it.
With all the life force gain, 50% DS crit chance.
Do you think an (almost) all time DS build is viable? Using the pierce to compensate our lack of cleave.
Come out, fire off your spectral armor or walk, and it will refill right back as you go into it. LF regen is definitely looking a lot better if these changes are true, esp for condi / scepter esp.
I love the idea of two sectral walls with 100% duration and bouncing someon back and forth repeatedly… that is so troll it makes me rofl for real.
2 walls psshaw. 4 walls and make a complete enclosed box of infinite doom fear!
Think max fear duration is 5 sec though, not sure.
It’s more impactful for small fights sure, might out right wreck them, but don’t downplay the ability of this buff to greatly effect zerg fights.
Once many people get enough ranks for a whole organized team to have this buff at once, its going to allow a whole group to build extremely burst heavy, relying on the buff for sustain and just roll over any other opposing zerg that is also not organized and toting the buff.
Hard to see how it doesn’t get toned down.
Was bad enough how Ascended was implemented, but at least the difference in stats was fairly minor all things considered. This is an all or nothing case of have and have nots once it gets common.
If people can think back to how fighting players with orb bonuses used to be, it totally imbalanced every fight in WvW, and this will be just the same equal to just shy of 2 orbs vs 0.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
This is a big bottleneck to necro diversity. If you are running staff the enlarged marks are a requisite, shorting you 10 points anywhere else you might like.
If Anet is keen on diversity even within build styles, they should make them bigger by radius by default, then merge the unblcokable with the cooldown trait.
Staff is still too situational outside zerg fights anyway, because most necros just don’t like using auto-attack, outside farming up some LF vs mobs maybe, which makes it always a secondary, swap in/out weapon.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
We will have to see the implementation. A few thoughts:
Torment needs to proc in distance travelled, and not just walking. I believe the intent here is to level the playing field in match ups where Teleports, Gap Closers and Dodgerolls get overused. It is however curious to me that Mesmer and Thief are allegedly recipients of the condition as they are Teleporters, Gap Closers and in the case of thieves dodge spammers as well..
Definitely. If it doesn’t hit things like Blink, Leaps, RTL, etc, it will just be self defeating.
It does seem pretty ridiculous to go for 115 ranks with no player vs player related skills, then suddenly give you one that is massively overpowered.
One nice thing about the burning, if it procs on any critical, you shouldn’t need a high crit rate to get the most out of it. As even at lower levels, say 20% crit, you should always get one every 10 seconds.
But yeah, it encourages the hybrid build a bit too much for my liking. Would have made more sense in curses in place of Target the Weak, which is gimpy as heck for Rabid builds.
My favorite burning is still pick up an Ele fiery greatsword. No. 2 skill does over 16,000 damage for me :O.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
Lol, they will destroy WvW to try to add variety to death spvp xD.
It seems the idea of WvW is just to run in a skill less blob of 50 or more people where individual play is irrelevant if you are not a mesmer or thief, which is pretty much the only classes you see outside of zergs and already make up an inordinate portion of the WvW playerbase.
Giving these two professions torment is just a head scratcher.
You don’t actually need the 20 into soul reaping anymore once you go 30 Spite, since you get 30% duration out of that. Add runes of necromancer to hit 50% and you can easily get the 2 terror ticks without master of terror, .
Fear duration for a conditionmancer isn’t just about the 2 terror ticks, its about the extra CC time that is essential to keep the enemy controlled for, during which they cannot cleanse and neuter your condition dealing DPS. As well as for increased attrition as you need to keep damage off you while killing them slowly with conditions.
30/20/0/0/20 gives up increased sized marks, which would be a huge blow to conditionmancers aoe.
It seems the way Anet has decided to deal with conditions being on the weak side in the game, is to create more conditions, more access to conditions, in order for specifically the Necro to have better coverage and protection for their heavy bleed dependent builds.
If the leaked patch notes are correct though, this does not seem to be achieved. With Burning on a GM trait power line, this will be very difficult for conditionmancers to give up other things for. Most will figure not to have burning. At best you might go for 30/10/10/0/20 to get it and keep Master of Terror, but it is giving up a lot of condition damage only going 10 into curses.
Weakness applying abilities have also been shortened in duration due to them affecting criticals, and this then actually hurts our coverage.
The Poison increase on Scepter would be a slight help, but reality its not always realistic that you are going to reach your 3rd scepter chain attack that many times in a typical combat.
Leaving only Tainted Shackles or whatever the new DS ability is called, as a solution to cover. But considering many necros can’t get into DS more than once every 10s, and this ability looks fairly powerful and to have a long cooldown, even if you do get the easier to reach DS cooldown, I do not really see anything changed or solved with the problem of massive cleansing all over team fights.
What I was really hoping to see from the new skill / and changes was something that punished enemies removing our conditions so easily in some way.
Even as a means to lock down opponents to meet our professed philosophy, the new ability is just as susceptible to removal and hence enemy escapes, as is cripple and chill right now, which we have plenty of access to, but does not do the job.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
Yep sounds exactly like the damage that vampiric and vampiric precision do while traited with bloodthirst.
Go in the Mists, clear your traits except for Barbed Precision, and I’m sure youll see its doing your normal bleed damage.
Definitely solves the problem that i have kept trying to showcase every time i could. I even brought this subject up a few times in the podcasts i was invited to.
There are some classes that because of the mobility they possess… they fight you and win… or fight you, don’t win and run away, with absolutely no way of countering that.Finaaaaaally… no more “you either lose, or you get a chance to lose again in a few moments”..
Well until they cleanse it. Condition removal is still to strong and prevalent in this game, which I why I could never see how a Necro could lock down people purely via conditions.
If they could, then chill and cripple could already prevent escapes.
Apparently it scales in intensity, as stated in an spvp thread on torment.
So as someone else mentioned, similar to condition just punishing movement instead of action.
Hard to see too many sources of this piling up on someone though.
Hehe – I can just see a sweet bursty rotation forming….
(while running in) Focus 5, Focus 4, Axe 3, Axe 2, DS5, WoC, WoS, Dagger 1
I see it synergizing with well power builds VERY well. Right now there’s not loss for stepping out of a well, but the new condition has potential to put people in a lose/lose situation.
Seems to synergize with both power and condition to me. Because for condition you want to kite people and this will punish them for chasing.
Could be ingenious but we’ll see.
Sounds like an issue more from beta, at this point the Necro is what it is. And while I didn’t play GW1, sounds like a far cry from what it was there.
Most Necro’s now are resolved to the design mechanics already in place, but just want them to be a little better, and the profession more cohesive overall. Our weaknesses are well known and any way they are fixed effectively, regardless of thematic approach, I would be happy.
Oh, and while you’re at it: Could you please make it so that bleeds from Barbed Precision actually scale with Condition Damage? Tired of seeing 42-50 bleed ticks with over 1,600 condition damage.
Odd new specific build bug? Mine have always ticked same as all my other bleeds.
Just another boost for carrion over rabid.
If the buff to weakness doesn’t actually reduce crit chance but dmg done by crits then it won’t really make a difference to rabid builds at all.
It won’t be massive, probably 5 or 10% of your damage in a high crit% build, but its still a negative.
Even if there is a group requirement to ‘unlock’ the orb you still have the issue of a single player picking it up and flying it away.
A better system would utilize NPC’s that carry the orb to its target location.
so, a dolyak run? Only if someone can issue stop/go commands to the dolyak- maybe commanders only
Not a dolyak, way too slow, a whole server could get there before it reaches its destination. Need more of a mad max road chase vibe, regular NPC’s (maybe a veteran or champion) running at full speed.
Definitely doable, long condi duration helps on Necro.
But its annoying as all get out, what with the wandering patrols coming in, and the quick multiple respawns due to how long it takes to whittle everyone down.
The chance that players don’t show up at some point before you get done is really rare, short of a dead server or at least dead off peak time period.
Weird thing the supervisor doesn’t get upgraded with the rest of his guards.
Stealth is a pretty poor mechanic in any game that doesn’t have detection abilities to provide a skillful means to counter the stealth.
If you are going to have stealth without detection, it should not be an ‘in combat’ tactic, that forces opponents to be endlessly reacting to the stealth, and doing silly things like casting randomly at nothing hoping to hit where they lost saw a thief, or where they have to guess at where he might be.
Stealth without detection should be limited to a combat opener mechanic, or perhaps also be used to escape out of a combat, but then go on a long cooldown.
Not only is it a balancing nightmare, but even when it is balanced, it produces very un-fun frustrating fight mechanics for anyone that is not playing the stelather.
I’m sure they play, but I think there is an issue in that they don’t have dedicated developers consistently playing each profession.
They might dabble into them all at some points or another, to test things, but this isn’t good enough to establish a true undestanding of what needs to be done to keep everyone on even footing.
Condition removals are too strong and too frequent in this game. Makes condition builds weak in PVP. And the more players you get in a fight, the more condition clearing becomes powerful since large stacks get wiped at once, far outpacing that there are more conditions flying around.
In PVE conditions cannot hurt objects, and people just want to burn stuff down in dungeons due to that defensive stats have little value, since defense is all about avoiding damage altogether. So no one wants damage over time attrition builds.
Anet needs to do some serious evaluations on how to fix these things, because balance in the game is dreadfully borked.
Blind is more of a one vs one counter, outside plague 2, and our problems are more defensive in nature vs multiple opponents.
Dungeon design is a joke in this game, simplistic offense and defense mechanics. Burn down mobs as fast as possible, and just dodge damage. Defensive stats don’t really matter. if I had any interest in them probably wouldn’t be playing GW2 any more. Especially if you like playing Necro.
Don’t think its gonna change anything for all the condimancers, supposedly it will punish crits so all the crit builds are going to have a harder time.
Just another boost for carrion over rabid.
Make sure your Earth Sigils are actually procing underwater. I had repeated issues with any on-proc sigils working underwater a few months back and just stopped using them.
You can test by turning your auto-attack off and just using other attacks, or simply use auto attack on spear since it doesn’t have a bleed on it like trident to confuse you.
If they are working, and my testing indicates they are now, you should easily be able to sustain over 10 bleeds just with auto-attack trident as long as you are using your duration food.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
If you want to disengage, try using Dark Path on the chickens over there. People always forget about that skill in PvP/WvW.
People write this a lot but always seems more clever in word than deed.
The cast time of Dark Path is long for a disengage, and the slow travel time makes it longer still. Not exactly like popping mist form or blink to get out of a dire situation where you need to act instantly or either be dead or nearly so.
I think this is an oversight too that the poison procs on misses.
The self Posion lasts 9 seconds for me, it will do close to 2000 damage if running its course. Of course you would like to use a transfer there, almost have to, but sometimes its not an ideal time to blow a transfer or heal for one condition, or you simply don’t have one available and have to eat a lot of it.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
And wow that little sigil seems to be helping a lot of people, but i still have to note one thing, how does that help you over energy, hydromancy, force or any other combat sigil in general?
It’s really hard. Because most sigils you can rate out on balance by doing pure damage math based on your build and project how much they add. Based on things like your crit rate, condition damage tick, normal skill rotation, etc.
But for the para sigil, you have to figure how much additional damage (and positioning, etc) you should expect to gain during that extra CC time, where the enemy cannot return any damage at the same time.
Though of course, the para sigil is only good if you fire off your fears while having the weapon equipped that has it. If its on your off hand dagger say, but not staff, it wont help Reaper’s Mark, and won’t even help Doom if you DS Doom while holding staff.
Many players will also break CC before fears run their full course, I notice this a lot even having 2 second fears on our 2 main ones, so the chance that a 2.15, or 2.30 fear, however it is multiplying, you might not always get the extra time, or chance at more ticks.
Definitely interesting though and worth theorycrafting about.
The protection effect and the magnetic shield will bail a necromancer out of a jam time and time again.
I’ve messed with some of the ‘proc near death’ effect sets, and I really think they need to up the % at which they proc. Maybe to 40% or 50%, like our Last Grasp skill in Soul Reaping, which is always useful. Because down around 20% its easy to be spiked right through those effects before they come up and they can be unreliable.
Yaks always have less people during the weekdays, far more than a typical server split, about as sure as the sun coming up for our history.
Surprised the PVE content hasn’t hit harder actually.
Necro design is a bit oxymoronic if you think about it. They want us to have sustain and attrition but not to have any of the mechanics in the game that provide sustain.
No ready access to boons such as Protection, Vigor, Aegis, Stability, etc. No strong mobility or escapes. These are the things that create sustain in this game!
More and more health cannot alone be sustain because it does not scale with multiple opponents, lest it become overpowered vs 1 opponent. A giant health pool that doesn’t refill fast is also finite, that is not sustain. There is no skill based recovery possible when its gone, you are just dead due to lacking the common above mechanics other classes use to reset and recharge during a long fight.
The only obvious mechanic we can and do have is life steal and its weak at the moment, and doesn’t work while we are in death shroud, our actual supposed sustain mechanic. The class is just a mumbo jumbo of ideas and incongruent concepts that doesn’t really fit well together unfortunately. Further confusion in our trait trees highlight this. For example +healing is in the same line as our life steal traits, but does nothing for them…
Is it fixable? Probably yes, but they seem to be struggling mightily with it. Our fat health pools make them fear giving us any kind of sustain that actually comes close to maintaining even health with incoming damage (d/d ele at the peak of their power) because then we might become this juggernaut of pressure, that by the time you take out, your team is decimated.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
Not doing whack a mole is not the problem with balancing in this game.
The problem is in addition to bringing down the OP builds too slow, they also rarely ever help the most used builds of slightly underperforming classes, due to their desire to increase variety instead.
So in other words, imagine we have one class build at a 12 in effectiveness and another at a 11. Then we have the rest of the classes using a lot of 8s and 9s which are the most popular for those profs. What Anet does instead of bringing the 8 and 9s up to 10, and bringing the OPs back down to 10, they just pick some stuff that is not even being used by anyone, and move it from a 5 or 6 level skill to another 8 or 9.
But in most cases, these improved skills still aren’t good enough to replace the most popular ones, or at best offer new alternatives that while different still do nothing to close the gap toward overall balance been the best and then the rest of the playing field.
I.e. making reanimator suck just a ‘bit less’ isn’t fixing anything. Doubling power on Signet Spite, ok no one is using it still, becuase Necro is built around a few key utilities you pretty much can’t live without.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
I think it’s possible that they can’t figure out how to fix it.
Then you balance around it to make up for it. The length of time this bug is out there unfixed is ridiculous and puts us at a huge disadvantage anytime we are down.
Give the Necro a new downed skill that totally refills his (midget) downed health pool, or just a new or improved skill overall to help us survive longer like other classes. Maybe increase the fear to 3 seconds and make it AOE.
Or how about have our downed state revert to Death Shroud that becomes filled again upon normal death, and if we can’t kill someone by the time it runs out (sort of like warrior Vengeance) then we are dead for good when it runs out.
Either way, something has to be done. And if the new fix for new necromancers would make that too good, then revert even the new necros to the lesser pool again. Because I don’t see many rerolling entirely to 80, regearing, achievements, everything else, just to have a proper downed health pool.
Think I mentioned this in the other thread about this, but might as well repost here.
The sigil of para also appears to allow you to break the 100% cap on fear. Tested with already having 100% fear and enemies will be feared about two steps farther (seems like 15% based on distance) with the sigil on vs off, or simply swapping your sets between the one that has it vs not.
Whether this could actually tick 3 terrors, did not test, but seems like it should be theoretically possible, if very rare.
Best use of this might be simply to gain back duration vs the increasingly common builds that use lemongrass and melandru runes. Though the nice thing it still gives additional impact even on those who don’t have reduction, unlike going over 100% with any other known duration, where it would be wasted (outside lingering curses).
Though I’ve yet to be convinced that alone is good enough to make you take the sigil over other ones, if you don’t need it to reach 100%.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)