I wouldn’t care as much about Curses having a power line, but the minor traits are good for power builds and Banshee’s Wail shouldn’t get left in a line where no one will take it because of the lack of a power GM trait. Banshee’s Wail is really good and it’s marooned in Curses as of now.
They also made a comment about changing necro signets. Which hopefully includes SoV. But a reworking of signets could be great news, and could make signet mastery a very interesting trait.
^ the damage for dhuumfire was listed at 393 or something, which is about 1 second of burning. But burning is also getting reworked to stack in intensity, but either way it doesn’t seem very strong.
Hours, really? This seems like a gross overestimation of your time. I hope you don’t work as a contractor.
Apparently everyone is over-looking how Necromancer will be able to run a pure power build and still have ground targeting wells for free after the patch.
You’re overestimating the impact of that change. Plenty of necromancers don’t even like this change, and many others don’t mind it either way.
We won’t be losing death shroud, there are way too many traits that revolve around it. They’ve alluded to getting more F skills, though.
We’ll get a new trait line, greatsword, 6 new skills of which a heal and elite is included, and some new options for life force. Or maybe alternative death shrouds. Who knows right now, but that’s the most we know.
- I think Path of Corruption and terror should be reversed, putting Terror and Lingering curses on the same GM level hurt a lot of PVE necromancers (although for pvp, for example, it didn’t change anything so I missed this).
This has been mentioned by a few players, and honestly, I can’t imagine this ever happening. Imagine if Doom, Fear (necro downstate) and Reaper’s Protection was a 4s fear and Fear of Death, Spectral Wall, Corrupt Boon and Well of Corruption were 2s fears with terror! That sounds just awful to play against. I’m not totally sure why everyone is underestimating the potency of the new scepter trait.
That build has no stun breaks, and this set up also loses Path of Corruption which is one of the better upgrades we’ve seen in the last year. So that build would be on par with like, warrior rifle right now. A gimmick.
If necro downstate fear was 2 seconds, I think that’s fine. I would also be fine with Reaper’s protection being completely re-worked. One of the better suggestions I’ve seen is giving the necromancer life force when CC’d, which fits in with an earlier post that it gives pause on mindlessly focusing necromancers. Well of corruption would never work without a long immobilize to well bomb, which condi specs don’t have unless you’re really banking on Tainted Shackles landing with that condition duration.
What if you axed Master of Terror, and made the switch? Re-work Reapers Protection so it’s more meaningful to Necros, but less annoying to fight against? It is a passive proc and sometimes it just goes off on a ranger pet or something.
I also want to pause for a second and point out that terror chains do have counter play, and things like spectral wall or well of corruption are so easily avoided.
I don’t mean this in any negative way because I appreciate your effort, but this response is exactly why we can’t have nice things. “But, then necros could have this crazy unviable build and pull off something against a horrible player!” That’s essentially the game the Devs seem to have been playing for years, so don’t fall into that trap. Chaining all of our utilities for some glorious fear chain isn’t rescuing the class or fixing any problems. It wouldn’t happen, especially not against a player with a brain.
Well there’s certainly no shortage of ideas here, although I’m not surprised by that.
No excuses now.
Can you have them explain the logic behind nerfing the axe trait? I mean, why would we ever use axe anymore? The damage is crap, vuln is nothing special, given that an ele can insta stack 25, and a warrior can insta stack close to 12 with 2 clicks. Having to have an enemy crippled in your massive condi cleanse meta (in pvp/wvw) makes axe even worse, than the flat 10% increase it is now. You have essentially created a situation where no one will ever take this trait, given that this weapon is the least used weapon in the game. I use axe only in zergs, only because of 3, then i stow it, and switch to staff.
Don’t shoot the messenger, man. He’s taking our feedback, not making the decisions.
Building life force
So one fun thing about necromancer to me is actively building up my life force pool. This is almost an entirely active process – which is good. The only passive thing I can think of is gaining life force on deaths, or the last gasp trait which I personally can’t do without.
There is a reason that I feel I need that trait so much (trait that gives spectral armor at 50% health). Because almost all of our life force generation is active, or requires a fight to be going in our favor to be coming from surrounding deaths, it is super easy to deny a necro of life force. I think this is why necromancers feel so team dependent.
As an example, it’s no surprise that the Abjured is the only team that can make a necromancer work well.
We need a passive way to generate life force that doesn’t kick in when the fight is already won. The reason for this is without anything passive (and check my post history, I tend to rail against passive mechanics), an enemy actually has control over your life force generation. Popped spectral armor? Disengage for 6 seconds, and deny that necro the life force. Focus 4 can gain a ton of life force – unless they dodge the initial cast. Axe 2 is the same way. Dagger/WH can generate tons of life force, but realistically some simple kiting can negate the whole set. Don’t get me wrong, this is what I enjoy, the play/counterplay of this. But it shouldn’t be so black and white.
This actually makes staff 1 a bouncing attack super amazing. It’s also what makes Soul Marks worth taking, even though it isn’t obviously strong. Fighting, for example, a shortbow p/d thief can be lost before it ever begins. Pop spectral armor? They might even steal your protection and deal 10K damage in a moment, popping the ICD on spectral armor only once, and dodge their way to safety and stealth. If you get out dagger warhorn, they can shortbow 3 away and completely deny you of your defense and everything I outlined above.
If we generated 1% life force every 2-3 seconds or so, and reduced – or even eliminated – on death life force gain, it could go a long way. A long way.*
- Is it possible to make this a PvP only change? In PVE and WVW the deaths are hugely important, but in pvp it’s more of a problem. Just a thought.
TGA, thanks for doing this. It’s a shame more people aren’t being constructive and instead wasting time thinking that you’re just wasting time.
Anyway clearly you saw my original post in the PvP section, so I won’t repost it. But some amendments I would make:
- I think Path of Corruption and terror should be reversed, putting Terror and Lingering curses on the same GM level hurt a lot of PVE necromancers (although for pvp, for example, it didn’t change anything so I missed this).
- If Lingering Curses synergizes with the new Dhuumfire, then Dhuumfire may not be so bad.
- To their credit, it seems that they did put some time into MM specs. But I never play those and find them rather useless, so I didn’t mention that. But credit where credit is due, I suppose.
But anyway I was under the weather yesterday, and saw this post, and thought a lot about it. So if any change is up for discussion, I have a few more thoughts. I’ll save the bigger ones for last:
Weapons
The cast times are super long for Focus, I think we should have our bleeds and Putrid Mark nerfs reversed, and Axe is still bad like I alluded to before.
Blast Finishers and combo fields
We could really use more, I believe we have the fewest of any class by a significant amount, even when including underwater weapons. There are plenty of skills that could get finishers (WH 4, Dagger 5, Axe 2 as whirl, Axe 3 as blast) and some even as finishers (i.e. grasping dead could be dark).
On that note, it would be pretty cool if dark fields gave a dark aura that siphoned health when hit and siphoned health when hitting an enemy.
OOC Necros should regenerate to 10% life force
Up until the October 2014 changes, necromancers could sacrifice minions at the start of a match for some base life force, and even with this happening, necromancers were never a problem. This suggestion ensures that at very least a necro can make some use of on-entry traits (huge investments like FitG, enfeebling blood or furious demise in curses, even the new Spite trait), big defensive skills (like Doom), or just take a punch. And if a fight takes a necro to 0% life force and then the necro is OOC, it should regen to 10%. Just enough to enter and deliver some counter pressure if you needed to, to use some big traits if you need to as well. I feel like that is one of our biggest problems right now – it’s really hard to fight back once the pressure is on.
Healing in DS
Necromancers lack sustain and if you think about it, it’s actually detrimental to a team (think about the current meta too – shoutbows and eles give out a lot of heals) to bring a necromancer. If a necro is in DS when heals are coming, all those heals are wasted on a necro, but any other class would get them.
If heals are allowed in DS – and numbers could be different for PVE/WvW and PvP – I think it would be very helpful for our sustain. Heals coming from our team are no longer wasted. Necromancer defense suddenly scales a little better if your team is around. Regeneration that is plentiful in necromancer traits and weapons is no longer wasted while in DS. Blood magic instantly becomes useful. Parasitic contagion is now attractive.
Seriously, think of all the Dev time spent on this class and the blood magic line that was utterly wasted because of this anti-mechanic. Sustain necromancers could be a thing, especially if you could go DM, BM, SR.
This needs to happen, because as of right now Anet could say they are outright taking BLood Magic out of the game, and you’d only see a few people upset about it.
There is no reason not to attack a necromancer
There really isn’t, unless you count spectral armor. If I fight another powermancer, I usually just strip their protection and continue railing against them. The ICD could be lowered on this skill to actually be punishing if you mindlessly attack. Pulsing protection would be cool too.
Signet of Vampirism is the same way with a 1 sec ICD. What if the cooldown were removed? The heal could be balanced to make up for it, of course, if needed. But if you had this heal with no ICD, and a new/improved SA that I just explained, you could at very least make an enemy focusing the necromancer waste their time a bit. That would be better than any option we have now.
What if we had a trait that made retaliation 100% stronger? Like a deathly porcupine?
We don’t have the mobility to make an enemy hesitate about focusing us and we don’t have the defenses for it, either.
These are just ideas I came up with since yesterday. But we have no reason to make an enemy player or enemy team not completely focus the necromancer relentlessly.
Continued…
Yeah in pvp I never used lingering curses. I’ve been surprised to see that there has been such a reaction to it on the same level as terror, but I suppose it is important for pve.
I can’t see power necros taking anything other than the specialization plus the new trait tree. I suppose DM is the next best choice, but curses would actually be better if it had a power GM option.
Roe, did you see they moved terror to GM? How is this a GM trait without any improvement? WTF???!?!??!
I did but they moved PoC down one too, so not a big change if you consider them both.
More problematic is how there’s not really a good 3rd trait tree for condition builds. Maybe DM? I don’t know but not being able to choose because they are all lackluster isn’t really the idea here, I think.
Gates, fogive my lack of faith in anet right now.
I fully understand why you’re worried, but you have to understand the situation we’re in. They’re working on an expansion and they’re given free reign to fully rework everything in every single class. They’ve never really had that chance as the motto of the company was “very little changes over long times”. They are HEAVILY looking for your feedback and the information I send them has had a large affect on what they’ve done. Did you know that the reason they changed Foot in the Grave to a stunbreak was because of the forums? Turret engi nerf? Forums.
If players post me some good feedback and suggestions, it’ll get to the devs and things will change. Watch.
Honestly their time would have been better spent just reviewing Engineer and Mesmer if that’s how they were. But if I have any opportunity to affect how necromancer traits are still reworked, here goes:
Overall:
Necromancers are out of the meta for a lot of reasons, but a lot of those reasons are (and I believe many of these affect PVE too): lack of mobility, lack of sustain, lack of group support. Some other things, like having by far the fewest blast finishers, or the only class with no vigor don’t help. I also believe, for pvp, that our long-ish casts, long cooldowns, and lack of an uninterruptable heal – that isn’t garbage – hold the class back as well.
Spite
The good
- Reworked the minor traits, the current minors are awful.
- Unholy feast on DS seems interested
- Reworked adept traits which are also very “meh” right now
The bad
- No one is going to take death shiver, maybe in PVE? I always thought Death Shiver should give another condition, like blind, or chill, or weakness.
- Axe training isn’t baseline? Really? Axe is so bad already, another 10% damage isn’t going to make it OP or really even that good.
Idea:
To give necromancers some more unique support, what if unholy feast didn’t give retaliation, but instead applied moderate duration weakness? What a great way for a necromancer to give some group support. Plus, it will make Unholy Feast vs. Close to Death a tougher decision.
Curses
The good
- I suppose you didn’t delete any great traits
The bad
- Changing Target the Weak had an effect on power builds. This should be moved to master spot, and bring furious demise up to GM – then make it party wide.
- Enfeebling blood nerfed due to the cooldown, although I’m assuming that may not be accurate. As it stands though, it’s bad
- Chilling darkness isn’t too exciting, definitely thought that was getting merged somewhere.
- Reaper’s precision is super bad as it is now, no idea why it was moved to Curses Master without a significant buff.
- No one will take Parasitic contagion with the traits it competes with. Because the buff to 15% is nice and all, but you’ll give up most of your sources of damage to have it. Still gives 0 heals in DS.
- No power based GM trait.
Death Magic
The good
- Some interesting ideas seem to have come up in this tree
The bad
- Beyong the Veil sounded amazing… until it was only to minions. Why can’t this be AOE to party members? Doesn’t a defensively specced necro deserve to give defensive support?
- No healing in DS means that no buff to Unholy Sanctuary healing is sort of a joke
- No changes to the oft complained about Reaper’s Protection. Best Idea I’ve seen is grant life force when CC’d, no ICD.
-Deadly Strength will provide very little power because this tree used to give toughness, but now it doesn’t. 70 power isn’t worth this spot.
- Soul Comprehension is not a big change. 10% on death to 12% is 1 more second in DS even if you trait for reduced DS erosion.
Blood Magic
The good
- Seems that some attempt to make this attractive to power necros was made with dagger and well traits.
The bad
- No healing in DS makes this whole line worthless
- Bloodthirst isn’t baseline? Really? It’s still not even good when taken.
- Regen as a minor trait? Seriously? Most boring minor trait.
- None of these major heal skills affect the necro at all (i.e transfusion, deathly invigoration).
This was a joke, honestly. It’s one of the worst trait lines in the game. Something needs reworked here, either the traits, or DS.
Soul Reaping
The good
- Combining soul marks and staff mastery was great
- Combinin vital persistance with DS cooldown was great.
- Some very interesting choices in this line in Adept and Minor spots.
The bad
- Appears that Dhuumfire gives 1 second of burning per cast. What’s the point in this? Unless life blast is getting a seriously faster cast time, which seems unlikely because of power builds, there is no point in taking Dhuumfire because scepter 1 will deal comparable damage. I think it’s time Dhuumfire was scrapped. Great opportunity for another interesting GM in SR.
I am annoyed that wells are ground targeted… As a PTV necro I like the wells to be centered on my and now there is extra clicking/worrying about mouse position to double tap skills.
Did i miss see it, or is it now going to be a choice between death nova and fetid consumption?
I believe that is accurate.
I used to take a power build that went well into curses, but now it won’t work with these changes. DM also seems so focused on minions, so that is out too – what would a power based GM trait be in that line? 6/0/0/6/6 for power necros? I suppose I could see taking the dagger and well traits, but I don’t think it would equal much survivability unless siphons were buffed, but I didn’t think they were.
Spite is cool, but curses had so many great traits and now the choices are very limited.
Aren’t you missing the spectral trait merge?
Seeing these changes, it seems to me that power necro will use the new trait line and spite and SR; blood, DM and curses won’t do it. Hopefully it will be really mind blowingly awesome.
Bloodthirst still exists and isn’t even baseline. I think that summarizes everything.
Blood Magic was buffed. Not by a ton, but it was absolutely objectively buffed.
A 100% improvement on 0 is still 0.
What was solved?
Edit: low mobility, low stability, low sustain, low support, low utility.
I suppose MM got buffed.
(edited by Roe.3679)
It sounds good on paper, but this doesn’t impress me at all because in anything but pve this sounds impractical. Again, they didn’t change anything for group utility. I thought maybe that Death Magic trait would give aoe protection but nope – just to minions.
None of this changes anything significantly because the core flaws still exist.
Uh… we got some really big changes. Dhuumfire now stacks on its own, it will stack 3 burning on AAs, and has no ICD. Minions saw what is most likely a decent buff (hard to tell), Spite is absolutely better now, there were actually a lot of good changes.
Blood magic is still bad, they hardly changed anything in one of the worst lines in the entire game. Minions aren’t really anything other than a niche build. No changes to the things that really hold the class back.
Dhuumfire stacking? Good luck getting off casts while you’re still being focused and with few ways to escape in PvP. Plus you have to choose between that and FitG.
This is essentially the types of changes I was expecting because – surprise! – they don’t know how to balance necro. They just don’t.
So necros still can’t heal in DS and got essentially no trait changes. No team support.
inb4 we get eaten alive by our new mesmer overlords.
I hate to say I told you so, but…
Ok after seeing the last couple classes on the ready up, I’m expecting big big changes to traits.
I don’t know about anyone else, but in the old queue I waited about 6 minutes, now I wait about 5.
I’d rather wait another minute or two for a better chance at a good match, then spend all this time to get rekt by a premade with new players on my team.
Spite losing the stats does definitely make it less appealing. I think it’s good to focus just on traits, although personally I only used stats as a tiebreaker of sorts.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with this. It’s definitely been brought up before.
^ so if you can still queue into team queue if it reverted, why do you even care if solo was brought back? It’s still an option for you in that scenario.
If I’m on my power necro I will always attack because I can build life force that way. But unless you have poison and cool downs and a numbers advantage, it’s almost always better to stomp ASAP.
Unless they are off point.
i like the idea and hate it sometimes
on one side its anoying beyond words when you go up against a 4-5 premade team while yorus is nothing but pugs youo know its a garanteed loss
on the other hand however this is exactly what unranked is for to practice with friends and get better or just enjoy a couple quick rounds .
the question remains though are there technical limitations or simply not enough time available to divide matches thus making solo queue random and having a party queue ?
i guess it could harm server performance as each pvp lobby would then split into 3 threads per players ontop of all the overflows
Team queue used to function the same way that both queues do now. But the difference is that you knew exactly what you were getting into, and if you wanted solo queue, you could still do that too.
Now, unless you hotjoin, you can solo queue, and get pulled against a high level organized team with pugs because the system just didn’t have a good match, and they’ve been in queue for 8+ minutes, so it widens its net to the point that it’s a landslide match.
Evan, could you also look at my games? And my mmr? I know I won 2 games against teams with more grouped players, but one of those groups was just bad – landslide win. But I’ve also lost a bunch of games against grouped players. Or so it seems.
I’d really like if you could check out my games from the last week or so and let me know if this is just me, or if it’s accurate. Because I don’t enjoy playing games as a solo player against high level tournament players grouped up with their high level friends.
Hey seriously could you do this? I’m like 3-10 this week and I know a lot of those losses were when the other team had more teamed up players. Just lost another match with full pugs vs. duo queue and a top player on their team. How this matchmaking is working is beyond me, so I’d love an explanation.
Warriors and guardians already have shouts. So no.
Its impossible for them to not go over them. Doesnt mean the line will suddenly become good. But they are getting a big pass over. Im sensing thats where we are misunderstanding each other.
I fully understand they will consolidate traits. That does not mean that they are buffing along the way.
They are getting a massive pass over because they are being combined and cut down into 9 traits total per line. Those example traits looked the same because they were basically all the current water traits combined together or the good ones left alone.
That’s exactly my point. They could just do the same changing-but-not-really for us. I would hope that because ele water is a very strong trait line that it didn’t need much updating, but it could also just be that they aren’t changing a lot.
Evan, could you also look at my games? And my mmr? I know I won 2 games against teams with more grouped players, but one of those groups was just bad – landslide win. But I’ve also lost a bunch of games against grouped players. Or so it seems.
I’d really like if you could check out my games from the last week or so and let me know if this is just me, or if it’s accurate. Because I don’t enjoy playing games as a solo player against high level tournament players grouped up with their high level friends.
Traits are getting a massive pass over, I wouldn’t count on that too much.
You’re assuming that traits are getting a massive pass over, but they may not be. Those ele water traits already shown sure don’t seem very different from what already exists. We’ll find out tomorrow if we’re also getting the same traits just rearranged too. I hope not, but these traits have existed for 3 years already.
I think support for some classes is a little too simple, so I’m on board. It isn’t fun playing a condi class when a shoutbow shows up because they supplement multiple players’ condition removal.
We’ll find out everything tomorrow ok the ready up.
Cool. Thanks for the update. Looking forward to it.
I’m NOT happy about all wells becoming ground targeted. Personally, I prefer having them cast at my feet without requiring 2 clicks or 2 button-pushes…
If you change the way ground targeting works in your settings, you can still do this but you will have to click it with you mouse. It is the second option down. As in, you press the key for your wells and it places the well at your cursor position; once the key is released it drops it. Still only 1 button push. If you ‘click’ with you mouse on the actual well skill, it just drops it at your feet. 1 click still, but need to use the mouse to press it, if you want it at your feet. Otherwise it is just a 1 button push wherever you point your cursor, which could be pointed at your feet as well; it just might be if a bit off centered (if that matters to you). So either 1 click with mouse pointed near your feet, or perfectly under you (as it is now) by clicking it with your mouse.
I disagree. If our defensive traits were meaningful we’d already be using them. We’ll be better off making full spite/curses/soul reaping for both power and condi than going into blood or death magic as they stand now.
I mean there are other changes that we don’t know about but our traits are generally weak, opening up more isn’t going to help us, it’s going to hurt us because most other classes have stronger traits.
Another pretty major advantage to the new system. Necro can now trait for supportive and defensive stuff without losing all their damage. Currently investing in blood or death magic completely tanks your damage. With the new system that wont be as big of an issue. You wont lose any stats to gain defensive traits.
Won’t every other class get the same advantage? You could literally have fresh air eles with maxed out water and arcane lines.
It sounds like they are actually reworking some professions. Which is really good because in our current state, at least in pvp, I don’t think a greatsword will do much. We’ll need new traits and skills that all hit the nail on the head, and an improved death shroud could also actually make us competitive.
I’ll stay optimistic about it.
Burn is already so strong and prevalent in pvp, why does it need to be reworked? I mean it’s a 5 man group in pvp, can’t see how all this burn isn’t being effectively used. plus burn is already used by the classes/specs that are basically the strongest in pvp, I don’t think they need buffs.
Of all my losses (right now Im only playing unranked) I end up either top scorer or second to top. They are still loses for me though. In those I question, what else could I have done to better my personal stats in that?
Thus I think individual player win//loss ratios mean nothing and if they meant less to individual players then the match up’s against premades would be less of a problem.
It would be more about how well you played that match personally than whether the team you ended up with won or lost.
Just my 2.
Player performance is impossible to judge under any system without having actual people spectating each match.
If someone holds a 2v1 for 10 minutes on the far point without killing either of them, he will gain no personal points from it but is being incredibly useful to to his team by allowing them to outnumber across the rest of the map. How can you judge this under any system?
Now compare this to a thief that runs round decapping points then leaving again and using heartseeker on low targets and then leaving those targets as soon as they go down. He’ll automatically get top points because he contributed to all the kills and point captures/defences regardless of how good the other players were.
True.
Which brings me back to my original idea of not playing ranked unless Im on a premade. Because well, luck of who and what you end up with makes all the difference and the leaderboard really means nothing to solo querers.
The leaderboard doesn’t mean anything, period. And this problem comes up in both ranked and Unranked.
I’ve said this before: the queue as it is now makes no sense. Both queues are the same except for some maps, and if they were combined it would make a larger pool to match players and just have one queue and one leaderboard. Or they could just bring back solo queue and have 2. Now it’s just some weird mix of both where teams commonly farm pugs.
And Random Weird Guy, you’re absolutely right that some teams get matched against top solo queue players, but top players are very cliquey and regularly team up together, and I’d personally be interested in knowing how often they play other quality parties, because I’ve been on the receiving end of plenty of those pug smashing sessions that result.
I played 6 games yesterday, every one was against a team that had more people joined up than mine. Then I played 2 matches with a friend and all of a sudden it’s all solo players and our party. It really felt like the system was specifically trying to put solo players against a team, even though I’m sure it was just chance at the end. But playing with all solos against half of Apex or a groups of high end tournament players is sincerely not fun and wrecking Pvp for me. I wish I could lower my mr or something? Because it happens every few games.
This does really suck when you are trying to get in the mood for a fun night of pvp, I’ve reported this and brought it up numerous times. Just in the same position as you guys are, just waiting for a response.
If you can think of any ideas feel free to toss them out, make sure they are constructive so the thread doesn’t get closed.
Who knows? maybe we will hear something!
It’s simple – bring back solo queue. They essentially made both queues into team queue, except one has more maps. If this same system is still in place for stronghold it will only get worse.
Courtyard is fun. Change your build to something applicable to TDM and enjoy. Remember that if your team is getting rekt that they would have very likely lost on a conquest map too, so be thankful that courtyard ends even faster.
Nope it is actually that bad.
It does alot for your LF, and it also takes the Stab over the 5sec mark. You can later it as you feel tho.
Spectral attunement would do ten times more for your life force, especially since you have last gasp. The 5 second mark is interesting but the boon will already last a really long time, high 4 seconds is comparable to 5, plus it’s only one stack now so I think the difference is negligible.
Just an observation. Seems like an interesting build. If you are someone who likes to record I’d watch a video of it.
Why take DM 3 when you can get spectral attunement in curses instead?