Guild Wars 2

Lightsbane.9012:

Roe.3679:

Lightsbane.9012:

Xae.7204:

Lightsbane.9012:

Xae.7204:

I’ve been doing some serious drinking Thinking.

I’ve reached a startling conclusion that makes some sense.

The biggest problem with Necros is that Staff.

It is a boring weapon that doesn’t fit into a Power or Condition build, but everyone takes it because it is still pretty good.

Necros need a second 2 Handed weapon. Or we need a way to “focus” (GET IT??) Staff into either Power or Condition weapon. Replacing one of our ahhh… Subpar Talents with something that Dramatically changed all the Staff Skills might work…

we flat out need more ranged power options. i’ll take a frisbee at this point.

Right. Staff is great.

But staff is not great enough to be Necro’s Only 1200 Range weapon, only Two Handed Weapon, only “AoE” weapon and still work with all Condition AND Power builds!

Nothing can do all of those things. And nothing SHOULD do all those things.

staff is 80% useless for power builds. I do not care about any of the conditions on it.

Poison, chill? AOE fear and a big hitting condi transfer?

Mark of blood isn’t that great but the rest is still useful. Personally I like it better than axe, although I’d assume that’s different for others.

poison and chill i can do without since if someone wants to chase me it’s gonna happen
aoe fear i surprisingly don’t use much, since i am a frontline necromancer in wvw fearing targets away from me means i can’t kill them(exception being death shroud fear, that’s incredibly useful)
the condi transfer is why i said 80% useless. it’s the 20% of the skills staff offers that is useful…granted when i’m stationary.

Oh you mean WvW. Well that makes sense.

I almost feel every thread should say PVE, WvW or pvp in front of it, so people can answer in context. Not a statement against anyone in the thread, but it applies to necros since we’re great in WvW, ok in pvp, and bad in PVE. So sometimes I say things that don’t apply without knowing it.

I’ve noticed I mostly use staff in zerg fights to harass and keep people in combat.

Lightsbane.9012:

Xae.7204:

Lightsbane.9012:

Xae.7204:

I’ve been doing some serious drinking Thinking.

I’ve reached a startling conclusion that makes some sense.

The biggest problem with Necros is that Staff.

It is a boring weapon that doesn’t fit into a Power or Condition build, but everyone takes it because it is still pretty good.

Necros need a second 2 Handed weapon. Or we need a way to “focus” (GET IT??) Staff into either Power or Condition weapon. Replacing one of our ahhh… Subpar Talents with something that Dramatically changed all the Staff Skills might work…

we flat out need more ranged power options. i’ll take a frisbee at this point.

Right. Staff is great.

But staff is not great enough to be Necro’s Only 1200 Range weapon, only Two Handed Weapon, only “AoE” weapon and still work with all Condition AND Power builds!

Nothing can do all of those things. And nothing SHOULD do all those things.

staff is 80% useless for power builds. I do not care about any of the conditions on it.

Poison, chill? AOE fear and a big hitting condi transfer?

Mark of blood isn’t that great but the rest is still useful. Personally I like it better than axe, although I’d assume that’s different for others.

You should probably be advocating for a reversal of the retaliation change before nerfing a class.

Poplolita.2638:

No, It’s not fun anymore because I simply don’t like the direction they are taking with necromancer.

My point is that anet doesn’t care about their necromancer design goal anymore.

Also, please avoid assumptions, I don’t recall telling you I had problems against meta thieves except agaisnt Lady Nag Nag Nag, Sizer and Rom obviously (Talking about pre-patch, don’t know about their current state)

And I don’t care about how you do against them, this is simlpy a bad argument. Keep in mind that I’m talking from a design perspective.

3 months ago=2 years?
http://dulfy.net/2014/06/13/gw2-june-13-balance-philosophy-dev-livesteam-notes/

I wasn’t trying to say you have issues with thieves, but that necros in general don’t have issues with thieves. Because we have a lot of AOE. By design.

Plus all I see in your link is player feedback that the devs restated. That ultimately doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Poplolita.2638:

Roe.3679:

This probably would have ended up on some skill I would never take anyway, like corruptive poison cloud. It wouldn’t be enough to justify your utility slot.

Necromancer is supposed to be the de facto best offensive attrition/debuff profession class. Based on necromancer design goals, we should be the one class with every possible tools that prevent our opponent to escape no matter what.

It doesn’t matter if it’ll be useful or not, the fact that they are giving those tools -I’m also talking about torment- to classes who already have access to:

(Mesmer-ranger-engi)

-Stealth
-Evade
-Vigor
-Immunity
-Substain
-Aegis
-Mobility

is not right.

Our design intent was to stay on our target indefinitely, but in order to do so, without what I just listed above, it is simply natural to at least give us the best debuffs in order to help necromancer to prevent any attemps at escaping in a fight.

Why should we just be average in the anti mobility departement? And don’t get me started on how our attrition is non existant… This was supposed to be anet design intent, but clearly, they forgot.

Anyway, I’m glad I uninstalled this game, it’s just not fun anymore.

Maybe it’s not fun because you’re hanging into this pre-launch idea of what the necro was planned to be 2 years ago, that hasn’t been true and is no longer implied to be true.

Also I have more than enough tools to deal with thieves in my build, and on any build I run. It’s not worth being upset over that we didn’t get reveal on some useless skill.

Shanks.2907:

Yeah I’m glad all the QQ shifted away from medi guard when the patch went live. There were countless threads about their “buffs” before the patch but none of them are significant. Cooldown reduction and small heal on renewed focus, along with smoke and mirrors on merciful intervention which NO ONE will ever use seriously.

And in fact, as a medi guardian main, I’m disappointed by the changes. Those “buffs” are justification enough for ANET not to give us any soft CC or mobility to stay in a fight. A niche shadowstep and 18 seconds.

The soft CC is a guardian weakness by design. It’s the same with, for example, engineers being weak to conditions or necromancers with mobility.

If it were improved, medi guards would be much more difficult to fight and could launch them to OP status.

So I play a lot of solo and mostly unorganized team Q which I really enjoy, and I’ve had multiple matches without a single warrior, but many more rangers. S/D thieves are less common, so less worrying about getting jumped between points. Lich was changed but it didn’t break the skill.

As much as the changes failed to open builds and be interesting, I’m actually quite happy with my necro right now for pvp, and WvW is unchanged.

If I were a PVE necro I’d still be raving mad, but for pvp I think we are doing ok.

This probably would have ended up on some skill I would never take anyway, like corruptive poison cloud. It wouldn’t be enough to justify your utility slot.

The QQ about this has been hilarious. Literally you have 1 thing to watch for from a power ranger at range. Dodge it.

At high levels I’m sure things will be the same, but in solo and team Q it seems the bad players moved from warriors to rangers, at least for now.

I think it will mostly be the same in the end, though.

I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere, but I’m seeing a respawn timer when I die in WvW. 5 minute cap before you respawn.

Seems like elite skills are having some tooltip issues. May not actually be nerfed.

dancingmonkey.4902:

zapv.8051:

They should have given it equivalent healing in the 5 second duration.

Didn’t they?

Nope, would have needed a 100% buff to the over time healing to keep it on par, but they only gave it 50%.

Why in the world would you delete your toon on a free to play game?

Just take an extended break. Come check things out in the future. Make a judgement then.

Seriously I get the disappointment, but this is getting out of hand.

Also want to point out that while our builds didnt change, warriors and thieves got some nerfs this patch, which improves our standing indirectly.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

No, because I still feel that Necromancers are fine – the only problem I have is that we have had almost no shift or reason to shift in 6 months, even though I wished to believe this…

Though I hope that someone jumps up and comes with a new build that is worth testing…

You can’t make a new build out of the same skills and traits. That’s the whole problem with this patch. If anything I feel more pushed into my builds.

Muchacho.2390:

Roe.3679:

My spec is actually stronger at the end of the day for spvp, so I won’t be changing classes. However, I still expected much more from Anet in terms of improving the class.

I will, however, be much more wary of rangers in hard to reach places.

Mhh the only spec that could have become stronger is a spectral build.

So you run a spectral build?

I run dagger (buffed), warhorn, (buffed), and spectral armor (buffed). Then DS interaction is nice, of course.

The patch was extremely disappointing for a lot of reasons, but it didnt hurt me at all.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I strongly disagree that Reaper’s Protection needs any change other than arguably a buff icon (which all “when CC’d” traits should get, though that may relegate the trait to total trash tier). Nightmare Runes being more useful for necros is no different than Ranger runes being near useless for Warriors: not every profession can use every rune to the fullest extent.

However, the main point, which is ANet saying one thing and almost entirely going back on what they said, well, yeah. That will make people feel neglected.

I don’t disagree with any of that, but as long as there are top players complaining about that stuff, and there are, it will hold the class back.

My spec is actually stronger at the end of the day for spvp, so I won’t be changing classes. However, I still expected much more from Anet in terms of improving the class.

I will, however, be much more wary of rangers in hard to reach places.

NeXeD.3042:

Since when have channels been stopped from taking damage?

Channels on temple of the silent storm will end with damage.

Our elites all got hit but we still don’t have the worst elites in game. Please don’t just QQ for the sake of it.

Well that certainly took a turn I wasn’t expecting.

Just something to point out – now that we can stomp in DS, Dark Armor provides 400 extra toughness during the stomp channel. So with the Death Magic 5 minor, the toughness from death magic, and Dark Armor, you can reduce incoming damage by 20% if you stomp in DS.

An indirect buff (I think), and I likely still won’t use the trait myself, but I just wanted to point that out.

Edit- I realized after posting that this has always been true, but now that we can use DS to stomp, stomping is a little more common for me.

It is a little sad on their part that they said they would buff multiple utilities and improve our sustain and at the same time nerf well of blood and improve a single utility skill.

I mean I get the buffs they gave and I’m thankful for them, but they didn’t bring the class up in any situation and really they nerfed the class in PVE, where we needed the most help.

The thing is I don’t think anyone is really asking for over the top improvements to Necros, most of the people making posts have been around for the entire Dhuumfire ride which overall wasn’t fun for anyone in the game. No one wants to repeat that. But for some reason they won’t even buff us according to their own descriptions, and the changes they do make force us more into our current builds instead of opening more doors.

They also should have nerfed nightmare runes and reaper’s protection and buffed the class in other ways. But these little things will keep certain builds strong, and annoying to play against, and really hold the class down as a whole.

Tman.6349:

Roe.3679:

I’m under the impression that they thought if they reduce the duration by 50%, that they then have to buff the heal by 50%. Because otherwise the numbers seem arbitrary.

But, you know… Math. So that resulted in a nerf.

That would still be a nerf…

Yup, just like I explained.

Really no reason to nerf what is potentially the best PVE utility skill we have on the class that majorly lacks PVE utility.

I’m under the impression that they thought if they reduce the duration by 50%, that they then have to buff the heal by 50%. Because otherwise the numbers seem arbitrary.

But, you know… Math. So that resulted in a nerf.

If the scaling wasn’t improved that’s a nerf. It would have required a 100% buff to the well heal to make up for the 50% reduction. Not 50% for 50%.

wiredrawn.7298:

yeah ouch indeed. Stacked ferocity(sigil of cruelty), chance to cripple on critical hit(sigil of incapacitation) and removing a condition on weapon swap(sigil of cleaning) .. tis a sad day for the necromancer.

Why does ferocity stacking matter? Cripple is unfortunate against some set ups but generally we’re strong to conditions as it is (I bet the cooldown is big or duration is low) and the weapon swap sigil probably isn’t as effective at keeping conditions clear as it seems. There is already a sigil to remove conditions when hitting an enemy. I think if anything this sigil will be good for some engineer specs, which is help they need.

Maoamite.1387:

Ohh …! That’s really kind of annoying now, since I use fear to repel thieves…not sure pure condi is that good anymore

If you make a thief swap their weapon set because of a fear, that’s far more valuable than what the fear would have given you, unless it is some s/d set that switches to the same weapon for initiative.

If they have this sigil then they lose a dps focused sigil, and being on the wrong weapon set is a bad thing during a fight where that one condition matters.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it n

Yes, there is little more satisfying than interrupting shelter. Most guards think they have about 4 secs of immunity with that and their elite. But interrupt it and they are in super big trouble.

I realize people hate playing against all those fears, but playing a terrormancer without that set up is a vastly different experience. Try it for yourself. The issue is that the class needs some improvements overall to survivability and/or damage and then nerfing or changing the runes and reapers protection to keep it in line.

Guards have almost no soft CC like cripple of chill. Pop wells, pop warhorn 5 if you have it, and kite. Remember dagger 2 can be cast, then you can turn and kite. If you use staff or axe, a lot of those skills can make a difference too as they can be effective while kiting.

If they are hammer/GS like you outline in your post you will need to blow dodges to avoid the big damage, but otherwise lay your damage and kite them through it.

Don’t try to go shot for shot with them, they have heals, blocks and blinds to mitigate a lot of hits. So take advantage if their weaknesses.

Can my death shroud fill with hardly thinking about it, too? Can I also have healing signet and heavy armor, and super strong traits in defensive trait lines?

Can I have more than 4 main hand weapons? And 5 sec weapon swap? And invulnerabilities and stability?

If so, then sure, nerf death shroud.

I think the changes to axe make it more desirable in pvp, especially depending on what classes you’re up against.

Also you could always hit thieves in stealth with dagger. Cleave doesn’t really change that. It is a nice change for downed state people though, as is the death shroud change (obviously).

Life siphons working in death shroud could really have great synergy with the new unholy sanctuary. Too bad they didn’t do that. Could allow necros to trait defensively and not be terrible at it.

It’s easy to nitpick Karl if you expect them to have spent tons of time on this, but realistically they probably film it relatively quickly, throw it together and play it on the stream.

Like they said, do you really want the game devs spending all their time on this? Geez.

Also try to legitimately read a script in front of a camera and not make some sort of mistake. It doesn’t seem that hard, but it isn’t as simple as it seems.

Ascended armor is only a 5% difference from exotic, so yeah the gear has changed, but not really. I would first make sure your set up is ok, and then make sure you’re not comparing your numbers against some organized zerg that has a soldier geared hammer train along with some zerker ele back liners that are hitting you so hard.

Bhawb.7408:

Death Shroud at its core is absolutely fine as a concept. The only reason it has issues is in mid-scale fighting (larger than 4 players but less than zergs) because the AoE scaling doesn’t do very well until you just get showered in LF from death, and because it blocks other Necromancer mechanics.

Increase AoE scaling LF that will give you more LF for hitting multiple targets, and allow self-healing and regen to go through DS and its just fine.

This.

^ that’s a very hyperbolic description of how death shroud works and refills. Blatantly overstating the “ease” at which it refills, on top of how much damage you’re doing while in it. I guess none of those other players in the situation you laid out are dodging, healing, etc.?

Bhawb.7408:

POST ALL THE THREADS!! Seriously though, they are just going to merge this one, they’ve done it with all the others, and we don’t need 500 of them to get the point across.

Frankly, what do you expect? No one’s saying “hey guys, feature patch here, this is the last balance patch we’re doing, starting work on GW3 so in a few years you can just play a new game!”, they just made a few changes, which all were completely reasonable, but they couldn’t really change the entire profession in a feature patch.

With all due respect to you and Anet, they didn’t do a very good job. They actually hardly did what they described in their own preview of the changes. Hence the 500 threads.

Close games for sure. Close games are fun, and can leave you thinking, “what could I have done better? How can I improve?” Whereas losing by a blowout is often a result of poor match making or a 4v5 or just a bad overall team that makes obvious and easy to avoid mistakes. The thing is that when most of a team is bad, or playing bad i should say, it’s almost Impossible to even play like you’re a good player, which isn’t fun and leaves you annoyed.

We can’t speculate what you’re comfortable with, really. Good suggestions here though.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

And by saying Bhawb, who is one of the figurative “heads” of the necro community since launch, is probably one of those that used necro for a few months, didn’t understand it then switched to warrior or some other “meta class," You have completely lost all credibility.

Yeah, Bhawb isn’t on 50+ hours of necromancer podcasts or anything. He probs plays warrior.

I have 2 ascended rings from WvW that I don’t use, but aren’t the worst stats. I have gotten way more ascended drops from pvp reward tracks.

Riccardo.7254:

Xaragon.3520:

Roe.3679:

wiredrawn.7298:

I’m just throwing this out there, but developers could you also please consider giving us a more reliable/consistent way to apply weakness to foes more often.

More weakness would be a good and fitting way to improve necromancer survivability.

Riccardo.7254:

http://poll.pollcode.com/73368454_result?v

just to be sure that “maybe” someone from ANET will see the results of what they proposed..

Being honest I’m not sure Anet really cares about the poll. What is more effective is discussion that supports our unhappiness, instead of just saying we’re unhappy with these changes.

I edited the OP again to try to explain the thread better.

I dont think having the poll in there is a bad thing(unless you have been told otherwise).

We have made numerous threads, from helpful suggestions to rant threads and everything in between.

Having the poll documents how everyone feels with the class and im not sure about you but having 25% of people considering leaving the game would make me do more then a rant thread.

+1

You’d probably see similar poll results from thieves and warriors. All the poll means is “We didn’t get what we wanted.” Which is not meaningful.

That’s why I changed the OP and left the links to many of the big necro discussions that took place in the months before that post, to show that there are still many concerns and themes that were unaddressed with the changes announced last Friday.

The discussion should focus on "Necromancer was a mid to lower tier class that still has issues like being very strong in 1v1s, and this is how we can improve the Necro for the Necro mains and the rest of the player base, " which again is what I tried to do with this thread to begin with.

I think sometimes Necro-main players have a habit of making points that from certain perspectives sound like whiny, make me OP posts, which they aren’t. For example, in WvW (where life force is plentiful. condition duration is longer, bleeds weren’t nerfed, etc.), or from the perspective of a new player where Lich form and death shroud seem like too much to overcome, buffing the class is insanity. But from high tier PvP and PVE perspectives, the class needs desperate help. So we need to do better at making points that don’t make us OP to a newbie or in WvW, for example.

Blood Magic offers vitality and healing power (which necros have plenty of and make little use of, respectively) and siphons are so weak that more offensive traits are much more valuable.

Plus, the times you would need those heals the most, you’re likely in death shroud which negates the heals. It makes the whole trait line rather useless.

They should either attempt to make blood magic a thing or just re-work the whole trait line.

wiredrawn.7298:

I’m just throwing this out there, but developers could you also please consider giving us a more reliable/consistent way to apply weakness to foes more often.

More weakness would be a good and fitting way to improve necromancer survivability.

Riccardo.7254:

http://poll.pollcode.com/73368454_result?v

just to be sure that “maybe” someone from ANET will see the results of what they proposed..

Being honest I’m not sure Anet really cares about the poll. What is more effective is discussion that supports our unhappiness, instead of just saying we’re unhappy with these changes.

I edited the OP again to try to explain the thread better.

You can’t identify most WvW roamers in PvP. But when they run PU mes or d/p thief and generally aren’t helpful to the team, it stigmatizes the label.

Flumek.9043:

The tourny signups close this friday. Grouch already axplained that things are going at a fast pace, which i find great from arenanet.

They changed numbers and added a random from 5 instead of random 3 boons for mesmer.

Im hoping, but i just cant see them remodeling 2-4,5x animations for our weapons to be faster, in a week.

A good fast thing would be nightmare rune nerf to 1s fear, and revert of staff/scepter bleeds.

I think that’s reasonable, for sure. I would also promote giving better animations to signet of spite if we can get those bleeds back. Which should probably happen either way. But I am all for changing anything that people (both necros and non-necros) percieve to be spammy, skill lacking abilities.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Roe.3679:

I really wish they would decrease cooldowns on our other stunbreaks after spectral armor. If they decreased the cooldown on spectral walk and flesh wurm (amongst the other stunbreaks) it would improve sustain through life force and offer more teleports.

Those changes alone could address sustain and improve our own mobility and make this a better patch.

Thats great, I didn’t think simple when addressing necro sustain but yeah it makes sense. I was thinking something like dagger #3 and maybe focus #5 with the mastery trait teleport the necro to the target. Not being a smartguy more stunbreak+teleport is a good idea.

Thanks for the support on that idea, I was thinking about it more and I see it as a better idea than when I first posted it just because those are changes they can probably make in a week.

Holl.3109:

Also, I never said that this was a good trait, that it helps me, that it is worth being a GM minor, etc. all I did was explain how it works
I too think it is not good.

glad I helped some people out though.

Might want to change the thread title then, because it explicitly says the trait is good.