At this point I dont care if giving necro mobility is not what Anet wants, its what we need as a class and there are ways to do it so it doesnt make the class OP.
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.
Yeah thats true. I’m glad this was merged though, so that when/if the devs do read it for feedback, it will be in one convenient yet cluttered place, and no thread is lost in the dust.
I’m fine with not having a response, I just hope they’d consider some of the feedback posted here, such as my giant rant on page 2
There was a big reaction to mesmer scepter changes and they took action against the real issue which was PU. So that worked. I don’t really care if we get a response either, but if only these changes to through its sad.
I wish we didn’t only have a week to pray that they make improvements.
looks like the necro criticism is getting the Skyhammer treatment, were they just spam merge and don’t give a single response…
It was merged by moderators, and honestly people were just creating more and more threads when it was unneeded. It’s a holiday weekend, be patient and keep the discussion going, maybe it will end up helping us.
Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits as well as improving the overall effectiveness of their melee and skirmishing weapons. You’ll see that the dagger auto-attack will now hit two targets, while the axe’s animations have been tuned to be more fluid. Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.
Am I over-interpreting this or do I have a feeling that there would be more changes?
To me, the phrase “utility skills have been updated” would translate to more than just a lower recharge on spectral armor and “traits” would mean more than just a functionality update on unholy sanctuary. Are there going to be more changes or is it just bad wording/interpretation?
I made a thread that is somewhere in this thread that literally called out the same thing. It it literally worded in a way that implies there would be more than one utility changed. The thing is, if they just spread the cooldown reduction treatment around more, it would really improve the patch.
What I think is really fascinating though, is that they increased swiftness on warhorn. Why not give it group utility and group swiftness? I mean realistically that is a buff but it changes so little that it isn’t meaningful because we could already have perma swiftness.
I also want to take a second and point out that many of the complaints are coming from a pvp and PVE perspective. Necros are ok in WvW. But it isn’t the same. Please consider that before saying necros are fine.
Again, let yourself be heard, let Anet know you are discontent, but don’t shove this off as if this “was nothing”… it is not, if anything, this can be a start of something good!
If this was a balance patch that we got after 2 months, I’d be crazy excited. But it’s taken 5 months.
Again, I feel the same, do not ever assume I do not… However, I look at the past, and I look at the changes given, and trust me, that past does not look as pretty as this… We had nothing that could lead to a path of improvement, unlike now… Yes, Blood Magic did not get touched upon, but do you have a general idea how it should work? I usually think back about the Necromancer’s blood magic in GW1, and realize that there was way more to it (Losing health to damaging enemies is a good example), and there is no way to implement this well within the current traitlist…
In order for more builds to work, there needs to be done more than polishing and branching from existing skills, and considering we got nerf after nerf for a year, did you honestly expect them to completely overhaul Blood Magic so it would work? Well, neither did I…
For PvE… I stopped playing it simply because of how frustrating it was to have to deal with the fact that I like my Necromancer so much… Give me the Mark of Pain as a PvE utility, and I’ll be jumping out of my chair out of excitement… Will they do that? Probably not… But if we are just going to say “Well you don’t like us” I’d personally stop bothering at what is suggested at the forums…
What makes me the most sour is the fact that we have little time to influence Anet to change things if needed, but if anything, that would’ve never happened anyway…
Know where I came from, I feel just as bad as most of you, but you should at least try to be more vocal in a less depressing way! Things need to be changed, but not with the “amagawd Anet, y u no lisn! I de-install an paly willstar!” attitide…
I wasn’t purposely assuming anything about your opinion of the changes, I apologize if that came across.
I, however, am extra sour because I made a post in the balance forum that gave links to every great thread pointing out a necro problem and almost all gave solid suggestions on how to improve. It took hours to read the threads, format the post, etc. as my goal was to get actual Dev attention because I know they respond to that, usually. It is now merged with all the necro complaint threads, but the OP and 2nd post are still there. I mean all those posts linked to in that thread, my post….almost all ignored.
Again, let yourself be heard, let Anet know you are discontent, but don’t shove this off as if this “was nothing”… it is not, if anything, this can be a start of something good!
If this was a balance patch that we got after 2 months, I’d be crazy excited. But it’s taken 5 months.
I’m happy with the changes we got…. they were just far, far too little and they hardly attempted to actually improve sustain like they said they would in the preview.
The preview literally said utilities. As in more than one. Unless there are way more improvements to other skills that they just didn’t mention, it’s a big joke. But the thing is, if they actually gave spectral walk, flesh wurm, plague signet and well of power the same treatment as spectral armor (and maybe in return making signet of spite a little more visible), it would be a solid patch. But that didn’t happen as far as we know.
I bought the dagger cause I love the way it looks, and noticed in pvp today that I couldn’t see my life blasts. I thought it was a lag issue of some sort, but I suppose it was the dagger.
Am I the only necro that likes most of the changes?
I like the changes. What I don’t like is the fact the Blood Magic line was 100% untouched. You know, the traitline where, out of 16 total traits, only 2 don’t contribute to sustain at all? Why was this entire traitline untouched on a patch focusing on sustain primarily?
The changes they made are good, but it’s not going to shake the necro meta or necromancer’s ovedrall standings in pretty much anything.
Necro’s probably needed the 2nd most love in this pacth (according to that poll done a while back on which classes needed it the most) and didn’t get it, despite literally thousands of posts of feedback.
All invulnerability skills have absolutely 0 counterplay.
But Iwould have thought that condition removal was counterplay enough to corrupt boon. Since they made it 5 boons that does not prioritize stability in the least, I would have thought this skill didn’t need further changes.
But it doesn’t matter because it’ll happen so quickly that it doesn’t introduce actual counterplay.
Reducing the CD of spectral armor, combined with the ability to res/stomp in DS makes Foot in the Grave incredibly strong. You can get about 50% uptime in stability with tons of life-force generation due to 2x spectral armor with a shorter CD (take the right traits and you can have spectral armor for about 50% of the time).
Really do some theorycrafting and testing after the changes before you start crying.
Why bring up FitG? It will remain just as lackluster as it is right now. And spectral armor change is positive, but in no way effects the class-wide issues with generating life force and being focused. That type of change needed to happen across many more utilities, not just one.
perhaps they’ll give you something in 6 months time.
there were some good changes, notably the deathshroud downing/rezzing.
but the nerf to lich was incredibly harsh,
cutting the duration by a third and cutting the damage output considerably.
atleast this should stop thieves and eles complaining about getting the biggest kick in the teeth
That change to lich’s damage was fine, since that damage scaled with fire/air/chill of death procc and was just crazy. But I don’t know why the duration had to be changed, with the same 3 minute cooldown.
I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.
(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)
There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…
No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.
Most times when I’m about to die, I’d rather just start over with life force.
I can see this being useful for PVE perhaps, but I’ll never take it, just like I didn’t take it before.
So this brings up a fascinating question….
What about those huge 1-shot kill situations in PVE and PVP. If I have say 5k DS left, and 100 HP. I get backstabbed for 6K, so it autoprocs DS. Does the additional 5900 damage overflow into DS?
Because if it did, that would be pretty comical…. surprise!! you just wasted 25% of your DS for no reason.
Well we know it bleeds from DS to HP, but who knows if damage bleeds the other way.
Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits as well as improving the overall effectiveness of their melee and skirmishing weapons. You’ll see that the dagger auto-attack will now hit two targets, while the axe’s animations have been tuned to be more fluid. Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.
So reducing spectral armor’s cooldown by 10 seconds counts as the utilities (hint: plural) that were improved? That somehow addresses necro sustainability?
No change whatsever to siphons, signet of vampirism’s passive, life force generation, stability access? Nothing?
I was quite excited after seeing the Guardian changes as it seems like they got changes based on feedback guardians had given. Necros got some slight buffs and interaction in DS, which never should have been an issue to begin with. On top of it, Lich form got a 33% uptime reduction. Overall I feel nerfed from a bad spot to begin with.
I am really disappointed in these changes, and also fairly certain that Necromancers are bottom of the barrel in pvp since many other classes were improved. For shame, Anet.
Yes but it’s a 5 second stack and when you leave death shroud, you’re still in a lot of trouble. If they upped the duration and HP threshold it would be be a lot better.
@Narkodx
I’m having a hard time figuring out if you’re being sarcastic or not.
These suggestions make no sense at all. If you’re for real, have you even thought about these things or are you just typing something as you go along?
Try looking at PvP as objectively as possible, and refrain from craving buffs to your main profession if not necessary.
You’re making the assumption that this is strictly asking for a buff. More experienced necro players are fully aware of a necro having 100% life force being an issue especially in 1v1, but a necro with no or little life force is a sitting duck. It’s unbalanced for someone at both ends. Most suggestions involve leveling that out by reducing life force hp but improving generation, as opposed to a flat buff to necromancers.
I agree with this. Scepter #1 and #2 chain should shoot out red orbs and scepter #3 chain should be a green orb. They should then become 20% physical projectile finishers which adds counterplay and is a buff and nerf in one.
As much as scepter needing animations is an issue, making scepter have orbs is going to give it the same issue as every other projectile in the game in that it will now be sidesteppable. Only if they were super fast in travel and/or homing like life blast would it be reasonable without expecting a massive drop in dps.
Necros need more sustain?
I sure dont hope you actually mean sustain. Necromancers already have 25k HP and in a standard fight 2x Death Shroud which is additionally around 30k HP (I’m not really sure about the exact numbers).
If Condimancers got extra sustain they would be unstoppable, and we would like to avoid that.
Power Specs just need some mobility and escapability. But it’s a difficult issue to solve, because doing it wrong, condition specs will benefit from the increased escapability and become too strong. Arenanet really has to make sure the necro buffs will not affect condition specs.
Some Necromancers will probably want condition buffs, but mark my words, we are treading a very fine line here between Necromancers being OP.
In what game do necromancers fill a life force bar twice in a single fight? Because it sure isn’t GW2. That’s a gross exaggeration of life force regen.
I would rather jump around this mists than do any of the things you just said.
So you would rather demand map expansions which we know takes massive resources and time instead of playing any of the multiple options available to you that I mentioned, but did not include PvTP, karma converting, duel servers, map completion, etc. etc. etc.
Here’s to hoping posts by myself and my necro brethren have been used as inspiration. I shall make an in game sacrifice of players and critters to make it so.
All classes need silk, it probably won’t be affected much. But if this means my necro gets less leather and mithril and more silk and wood, I’m certainly interested. But lets not assume that we know this will change a lot and how.
The best you can hope for is to communicate, using team chat, use pings, call targets and try to bring some organization to your ragtag team. Check your team comp and theirs, try to bring in some basic organization. I like to start games saying where I’m going to go, and asking who can grab home.
Other than that, play your spec the way it needs to be played. Know where to be and where not to be. You can really only bring slight influence to the way others play, so play your best game and that’s all you can worry about.
Also it’s soloQ so sometimes you’re going to get baddies on your team, or get matched against really good players. It happens to everyone and it doesn’t reflect on you unless your win rate is bad over a long period of time.
^ I’m not sure how possible that is but it’s an interesting concept. Chat is good but hard to do if you have no time, and you can see chat after the fact and not be sure if it still applies. Map pings are good but I find a lot of players don’t check the map. A voice could be really interesting, although it seems like a lot more work for the devs.
Randomized assignment of individual people to EotM maps at the moment they join EotM. (Smallest teams get the next).
Completely ignoring the wvw-color and wvw-server, they have nothing to do with EotM, respect the guild and party as in Megaserver-assigment in PvE.
Auto-balance of EotM-teams (due to unequal amounts of people leaving, when none joins in) as in random PvP.
So I could end up killing my server mates in EotM, or fighting my own server’s commander? That doesn’t sound good to me, but perhaps I don’t view EotM as a massive karma train.
Plus your way requires some way to implement assigning teams. Seems easier to change color.
You may have to accept that there are 3 groups and imbalance will happen.
No, my proposal was to separate EotM team assignment from WvW team color and even from the WvW-Server you are enforced to choose even if you don’t want one.
So my proposal will have 0 influence on your WvW color.
So what is your proposal then? All I see is randomize the assignment. Wouldn’t randomizing the color achieve this just as effectively?
For WvW. It comes up sometimes where someone complains that they are always X color, and can’t get map completion. If colors were randomized it would address EotM and this issue.
Because power builds are objectively better in every scenario except roaming against bad players or players whose builds are too specialized to bother with defense, where it equals power builds.
roaming against bad players?
there is no matchup where a condi necro or mesmer wouldnt have the advantage over a power based class, regardless of whether the power based player is good or bad or how they are specced.
even a cleansing ire longbow warrior, or a ranger who takes empathic bond, fittest, renewal signet and healing spring, or a guardian who takes purity, purging flames, smite condition and absolute resolution, none of those classes have enough condi removal counter the condi meta and they are currenty the best condi removal classes in the game (although warriors probably shouldnt be, but thats another story). that should tell you something.
notable exceptions might be power necros and ether renewal ele’s, but the first barely exists and the second is easily interrupted and killed.
condition spam is unquestionably out of control and needs to be brought in line.
perplexity needs to go.
the amount of cover conditions needs to be reduced.
condition +/- duration food needs to go.
So no class can completely, 100% negate the damage of another class/spec is what you are saying? Should that be possible?
All I ever hear with this argument is that you think you should be immune to conditions instead of losing to players who use them. It has been proven over and over and over again that power builds deal more damage than condition builds and there is not a single good argument that states otherwise.
Oh and also, prove the existence of a condi meta. Please. I’d love to hear how it exists somewhere despite absolutely no evidence of such a thing.
There is one mechanic in play that makes this matter worst.
As one colour fills up their overflow, new overflows are made to accomodate the rest, etc.
However, the outmanned side doesnt fill up one overflow. They get spread out across the other overflows.
Example:
Say one overflow can hold 50 players per side. Green is 150 people, Red is 30 people, Blue is 45 people.
There will be 3 overflows, each with 50 green. But, the Red and Blue get spread out aswell. So instead of having one instance where the sides are somewhat balanced, with 50 green, 45 blue, 30 red.
The reality is there are three overflows. All with 50 green, 10 red and 15 blue.
The outmanned sides are spread out just to give the overstacked colour atleast something to beat on.
In my opinion, it should be the otherway around. Colours fill up the first overflow. And if this means the overstacked colour gets empty overflows with nothing to do, so be it.
Atleast that way only 1/3ths of the servers has to deal with bad matches, as oppose to 2/3ths that have to deal with bad matches now.
And it is still possible to get a good fight if you’re on that overstacked colour, if you get into the first or second overflow.
Unlike now, where no matter where you end up as unstacked colour, you will get stomped. No chance of a decent fight.
If this is true then this needs to be changed.
Random using server color would help too, plus then it also can help all the people who want map completion relax a bit.
Because power builds are objectively better in every scenario except roaming against bad players or players whose builds are too specialized to bother with defense, where it equals power builds.
That’s not a very logical train of thought. How do you compare buffing AI summon pets, for a lack of a better term, to buffing the over all defense of an entire profession? Boon stripping and as high an uptime as any profession on protection, combined with the ability to clear conditions better then any profession in the game, plus a second health pull sums up to be extremely defensive for me when I am a commander in WvW on my necromancer.
I can do those things on my necro, but they are all long cooldowns, and take up all my utility skills.
So if I do that, I can’t do the boon corruption or have any of our debatably effective escapes. Which are also on longer-ish than they deserve cooldowns.
^ There are going to be things that can’t really be included, I think, and these may qualify. So just using the treb example, you could add: “Use our treb,” “Kill their treb,” “inc treb shot,” “inc to our treb,” “repair our treb”…. So on and so forth b
So I think bare, important basics are all you need. Because anything else may be too situational to really need to include as an option.
I would love to see simple rotation requests as an option. “Rotate to home from spawn” and “Rotate mid from home” would be great, and so would"Hold" and “on my way to A, B, C”
Probably no more than 8 options would really be needed but simple stuff to make communication easier would be cool.
For suggestions like these. What happens if the new game mode has no capture points? Do those options just get replaced with other things?
I suppose they would have to be replaced by other things that are very relevant to that game mode, like killing a flag carrier or guarding them, or etc. etc. that applies to said game mode.
I’m certain for Anet, giving necromancer a dagger that cleave (sadly 2 foes instead of 3) is their reason to say that they buff necro defense. With this our siphon will double against 2 foe isn’t it an awesome buff? Dagger LF generation will also double on auto attack.
I think that’s what lead them to say that they will buff Necro defense.
Will this be enough? absolutely not. Will this be a balanced change? I think so.
There is no guarantee it would double life force generation.
I would love to see simple rotation requests as an option. “Rotate to home from spawn” and “Rotate mid from home” would be great, and so would"Hold" and “on my way to A, B, C”
Probably no more than 8 options would really be needed but simple stuff to make communication easier would be cool.
We don’t need mobility. Dark Path could use a tracking buff and Spectral Grasp could use a reliability change, but we really don’t need mobility.
I wonder if it is enough. I mean you could still dodge dark path and deny so any chances of chasing for the necromancer (we are supposed to hard to get away from). While i also dont think that necromancer need mobility skills that work without targets, having some reliable gap closers would be nice, especially for mainhand dagger. Personally i would change dark pact to be something like teleport (or a leap for more counterplay) to your target and immobilize it for 2 seconds but it would need a target to work. Something similar to the teleport of the guardian one-hand sword. I think comparing things to guardians is the most reasonable since they also not supposed to have good mobility.
But as you said our defensives are, at the moment, more important.
I really don’t see that as necessary. I never have problems closing on a target even without a gap closer.
Also that skill you described is essentially the mesmer sword #3 skill.
Yeah it isnt necessary and i also dont expect any major change in that direction but netherless it would be nice.
Please let me dream a little bit…
I’ll admit, I am trying to push the idea of tempering expectations so we don’t get people having bad reactions to what could be a solid patch for us. I’m expecting good things.
We don’t need mobility. Dark Path could use a tracking buff and Spectral Grasp could use a reliability change, but we really don’t need mobility.
I wonder if it is enough. I mean you could still dodge dark path and deny so any chances of chasing for the necromancer (we are supposed to hard to get away from). While i also dont think that necromancer need mobility skills that work without targets, having some reliable gap closers would be nice, especially for mainhand dagger. Personally i would change dark pact to be something like teleport (or a leap for more counterplay) to your target and immobilize it for 2 seconds but it would need a target to work. Something similar to the teleport of the guardian one-hand sword. I think comparing things to guardians is the most reasonable since they also not supposed to have good mobility.
But as you said our defensives are, at the moment, more important.
I really don’t see that as necessary. I never have problems closing on a target even without a gap closer.
Also that skill you described is essentially the mesmer sword #3 skill.
There are a lot of conflicting opinions in his thread, a lot of which I really don’t think are accurate.
I think issues with these types of threads are that people come in from different viewpoints (WvW roaming, hot join, solo and team Q) and different classes and always think one thing is low risk when another is not.
On some level you can point to any class and build and accuse it of being low risk.
