Welcome back nemesis. People still ask about your guides sometimes.
I’ll edit this post after I watch the video.
I know it’s hard for people to accept that new and different builds might actually be viable, and I get a lot of flack for using celestial…
But time and time again, my performance with celestial exceeds anything I could do on a berserker in the same situations when focus-fired. This is the biggest point. Numbers, theories, and calculation is one thing, but when a necro gets focus-fired by a whole enemy team, theories go out the window.
The extra bit of defense and mixture of damage goes a long, long way. I’m telling you. I don’t know how else to prove that celestial on necro is viable.
Not saying zerker is worse; it’s still a good option for certain comps. But put any berserker necro in the same situations as these and they would insta-die in the blink of an eye:
In that first video, that warrior would have been down had you been a zerker necro. The you would have tore up that engi afterward even more than you already did.
Second video those players were super bad, the warrior watched you rez and the ranger ate 2 wells. Downing the engi was nice but never would have happened had your ranger not peeled for you. By the way are these the same players as last game? Is this hot join?
Last video is just tearing up rangers blowing cooldowns too early, not dodging, standing in wells, and not evading in the case of the condi ranger.
Plus you can change your skills at the beginning of the 3rd video. This is hotjoin. You’re a decent player showing videos of killing baddies like it makes celestial meaningful.
If you like the playstyle, yes. If you plan on being a hardcore pve or pvp player at the highest end, then perhaps not.
I thought 5v5 was fine.
there is already announced a new mode, where will be teams from different guilds competing against each other for a rank… this mode will have separate queue (obviously) and its game mode will be Stronghold… but you will obviously need 4 guild mates to be able to queue in this mode, more details are still missing
It will obviously have its own queue? They’ve mentioned that it will not have its own queue. Do you have a source for this?
This thread is just like the celestial necro thread. You can make something that seems good in a vacuum, but it’s absolutely not scaleable in survivability and therefore not worth the investment like it is for other classes.
Our Beta Experience:
Already feels like a fun game mode, and refreshing after years of only conquest based maps. We had a guild group (3-5) queue most afternoon, on mumble. Our members are mid-rank, so feel free to take the following feedback with a grain of salt (mix of phoenixes, bears and wolves mostly, but we even had a few rabbits try out the mode and enjoy it).Thoughts on the map/gameplay:
1) Communication is king. Premade seems like a much stronger advantage here (and would likely need a correspondingly higher mmr penalty than in conquest to keep matches competitive if pugs were to ever be put up against premades). Case in point: we are not exactly amazing, but we felt like we are able to fight above our technical skill level because of the advantages of voip.
2) Simultaneous lord fights feel amazing. Banner. Stability stomps. Boon removal and CC. Really fun moments for us in a couple of games. Unfortunately, they were quite rare. The far more likely scenario was a one-way fight at lord.
3) The map might have a bit of a snowball problem. Although the idea of two-lanes is clearly there to provide a risk-reward to pushing too kitten the enemy, this tended to fall apart. We won a lot of our games simply because we would win the early encounters. Getting down the outer gate early is a very strong change in the map, and even more so if you are able to push in numbers when it goes down.This might be because of a couple factors:
- Defending NPC’s feel a little weak. Even with active defenders, it was possible to take them down as part of a push, or have one player wreak havoc –because of this archer’s felt considerably weaker and less useful than they probably should be.
- It’s really, really hard to re-establish map presence once you’ve been pushed into a defense. I think out of the all of the matches our guild played, we only lost one match where we got inner gate down first. In part, this is because there is a huge position cost to committing to defense. The enemy will respawn and make it back onto the map too quickly for your defenders to get back out onto the map and take advantage after a successful defense (run supply/reapply pressure on their defenses). The worst part of this was that there was never a real feeling of risk to making a lord push.
- A possible comeback-mechanic/suggestion:As this map already has a ton going on, it may not be wise to add another mechanic to the map, but it feels like it could really use a strong comeback one. The heroes don’t quite do it because of the positional problems from above.
Proposal #1: increasing respawn timers.Proposal #2 : a one-time movement-speed advantage that only becomes available for use once after inner gate is down. Example: a shrine inside the home base that when channeled gives slick-shoes type speed to the entire defending team for a certain amount of time (usable once per game). This would create a way for a defending team to rapidly reestablish some map presence, without being a mechanic that helps the stronger side, while simultaneously adding a little bit of risk to pushing into their lord room. And yes, portal, but relying on one skill on one profession doesn’t make for an interesting general comeback mechanic.
Thoughts on scoring/win condition/timing:
Overall, the timing of the matches and win condition felt pretty good. There is one caveat – we had two close matches where we won/lost because points from kills even though the opposite lord was at half-health and the other inner gate was still up. That didn’t feel like a good win, and it felt like a horrible loss.Thoughts on the NPCS/Trebs:
1) Doorbreakers and trebs feel about where they should be. Fix the treb targeting.
2) Archer’s need some love. Whereas the doorbreakers feel like awesome little kamikaze tools, archers feel a bit weak. Maybe consider upping the damage from archers to guards and slightly upping the overall health of guards as well? Also, to our archers: why you run off after non-NPCs?Nitpicky-stuff:
1) Why have the gate portals close when a gate is destroyed?
2) Is red spawn a few seconds back compared to blue? Seemed a tiny bit more rushed to get to gate and stack swiftness.
Not sure if I could add anything better than this.
I didn’t feel like defending was very easy. Or to elaborate, that once the other team seems to get a foothold, it’s really difficult to make up for it. I wish I could spend supply on guards who defended. If you could do that, you could wipe an enemy push, replace the guards, and start a push of your own. Once the doors are down you can turtle and win because the points are scored and there is such a risk to have your lord killed that you can’t leave it wide open. Plus the defending npcs were very weak, IMO.
That’s the only feedback I feel comfortable giving right now, 9 games isn’t enough to really soak it in.
So far it seems like necros are in a way better spot on this map than in conquest.
The only time I got that “focus the necro” feeling is during fights over supply in the middle, and even then there’s a ton of ways to avoid line of sight or we can just go through a gate portal to completely reset if we’re defending. Besides, dying isn’t as big of a deal on this map anyway.We’re definitely doing better as defender than on the attack lane. Not just because we can’t really buff our npcs or because of our aoe damage, but what really shines is perma chilled and cripple. It takes the enemy skritt forever to even get to the end should they stay alive at all. And this is pretty much a passive effect for us, we can slow npcs down while fighting opponents because all of our chill and cripple skills are aoe, and the extra life force actually makes us more durable.
It’s probably too early to tell, but I could imagine necros actually being in high demand for this game mode for once.
If you read some of the threads in the pvp section, a lot of people are mentioning power necro.
I’m not so sure that we work as well in defense though. Maybe it’s my own build, but defending with a zerker spec doesn’t seem to work as well against anyone with any organization – although it is pretty easy killing npcs while fighting other players. I feel like more conquest oriented specs would do well defending – enough aoe to kill npcs and plenty of survivability. Realistically yo don’t need to kill the players, you need to kill the npcs, survive, and push them off. Then again, maybe I approached it wrong.
I think if necros are going to have a role, from what I can tell right now, it may be more as a midfielder, like in soccer. We have tons of ways to interrupt or disrupt hero channels, even if some guardian pops tons of cooldowns like I saw on streams last night. We have enough swiftness to assist in defense or offense, and this is where the fights should stay smaller scale and work to our advantage.
There are a lot of roles and strategies, though. There may not be one answer. Conquest is much simpler.
Ok so I played 8 games today so far, I went 5-3. Some thoughts…
- Playing condi felt so weak. I think because… it is. It took forever to kill mobs. I mean I know condi necro isn’t great in PVE, and we have even less bleeds in PvP. Plus porting around felt more difficult, but that may have just been because I was noobish.
- Loved playing power. Life force is everywhere – mobs AND doors. Plus it’s better to actually kill the NPCs. I felt pretty dominant, but I was there with a build I intended for stronghold, and most seemed to be playing conquest builds still.
- Fights seemed overall smaller to me, which is good for necros in general.
- Supporting the lord was a lot harder in person. I don’t think most of our current support is going to cut it there.
- Ranged classes seemed like less of an issue than I expected, plenty of LOS around. Thieves seemed like more of a problem than I expected. Mesmer portal plays will probably be big here.
- Now I’m super hyped for greatsword and power necro. Before I was sad because I’ve been playing condi and enjoying it, and I thought condi necro may end up as a thing of the past if it isn’t re-balanced, but now I’m super pumped. Also I’m hoping that we get some unique group support.
I’m trying out a celestial build in stronghold tonight. Just for fun. I’ll try to report back if it’s not a failure.
Wasn’t a fan… most builds I ran into had more legitimate sustain than my extra stats. I only played a few matches but I still didn’t enjoy it.
I’m trying out a celestial build in stronghold tonight. Just for fun. I’ll try to report back if it’s not a failure.
I always thought it was the best specs to fill a role.
I really like the new FITG, it’s been so valuable breaking a few extra stuns and being able to cover my heal with stability, or getting a safe stomp without blowing other cool downs. Easy swap for me to go from greater marks to FITG.
Dealing with lich form is hard?
I think most people handle the orb fine. It’s the conquest part of spirit watch that they don’t get, and how the two interact.
It also wouldn’t need to be Huttball exactly, but something like that would be really fun. I know people have made their own versions of Asura-polo where they all run around on hammer guardians and knock an asura around to score points.
Something different and creative like that would be awesome.
Yeah Huttball was a lot of fun. The other non-conquest mode was fun too, although I don’t remember what it was called.
The real skill around lich is knowing when to use it, who to pressure with it, when to swap targets, etc. I wish it had a decent #2 skill, but I think in order to get that you’d need to nerf deathly claws.
Condi Necromancer is a burst build and their burst is already absolutely insane even without burning! It’s like you guys didn’t play Guild Warts 2 when Dhuumfire was a thing and Necromancers were 100-0’ing literally everybody! 700 damage burn ticks is a lot different when in a 1000 damage/tick fear chain post nerf + 1000 damage/tick bleeds as opposed to 600 damage burn ticks with a few bleeds and confusion from a condi Engi or (lol) 2000 damage/10 seconds from a cele Engi! I didn’t think that needed explaining but I guess I was wrong!
Wahoo! Bye frands!
Right, and dhuumfire necromancers were heavy handedly nerfed. Running through a normal cele engi rotation will have lesser condition damage but will also have a 3k plus prybar and 2k plus jump shot (conservative estimates) on top of it, like I already mentioned. Overall the damage is probably pretty similar thanks to sigil of intelligence, the cc is pretty similar too. Only difference is if the damage are little numbers or big numbers.
Engineers are also totally capable of taking someone 100-0, I would know after Oeggs did it to me and inspired me to change my build and playstyle entirely. That was the first time I ran into slick shoes.
Pretty sure Vee Wee is a she. Plus I think she has some good ideas, but I want to know why passive procs are generally shunned throughout the game, but IP is somehow ok.
I think it’s because the necro has more CC? Although that’s not exactly the case if the engi is using rifle and wrench… and the engineers knockbacks can’t just be removed by a condi clear like fear… forgot about the shield knockback too and apt….
I suppose it’s because our cc is also our biggest condi spike, we load up condis and spike even harder with cc, engi loads up condis and knockback so the condis can do their job but it’s not as big as the old dhuumfire spike.
Did a necro have more cc? 2 long-ish fears, one instant, in the old dhuumfire build, compared to unblockable pull, no animation/cast time knockback and slick shoes that even melts stability stacks?
passive procs are generally shunned throughout the game
Seriously??? In no way are passives “shunned” in this game.
Wait are you serious? I mean people use to a of passives but it’s generally viewed as a no-skill feature of a build more than skill-rewarding gameplay.
Pretty sure Vee Wee is a she. Plus I think she has some good ideas, but I want to know why passive procs are generally shunned throughout the game, but IP is somehow ok.
I don’t have anything that hits even for 4k once!
I’ve hit 6k on final thrust with a shoutbow build. You must be doing something wrong if this is true. Plus you’re likely comparing a glass ranged elite to your tanky build.
Because burning from a Necromancer is much different than burning from an Engineer!
Wahoo! Bye frands!
How? Elaborate please.
Dhuumfire necros had tons of condition damage and cc if they successfully pulled off combos. Cele engineers have condition damage, direct damage, and tons of cc. The only real difference is direct damage vs condition damage. Unless you want to count that IP is a master trait, compared to dhuumfire at grandmaster, and that condition necros were a flash in the meta pan in comparison to engineers now.
Well dhuumfire was nerfed because it didn’t promote skillful play. So…
As a Necro main I’d be totally happy to nerf chill of death along with sigils and many other passive procs. But as much as I get that they are different classes, it’s hard to grasp why it was skill-less for necromancers but it’s fine for engineers.
snip
I thought these suggestions were brilliant. Good post.
I’d be fine with returning the bleed stacks to Mark of Blood and Grasping Dead if you nerf Sigil of Geomancy and change Nightmare Runes.
Corrupt Boon and Putrid Mark changes are fine, though you could argue that Putrid Mark should still affect allies with a cap. Weakening Shroud is an Adept trait, so it shouldn’t be too powerful.
It’s hard to say one way or the other about Terror.
I’d take that in an instant. Although I’m of the mindset that a lot of sigils should be nerfed.
Dhuumfire was the worst “buff” and it was both absolutely unwanted and uncreative decision. Who in the hell wanted a necromancer with burning?!
A lot of people, actually. We weren’t doing amazing in the meta, and a lot of people attributed it to the fact that we couldn’t sustain DPS on people due to a lack of burning, unlike engi.
Actually a lot of people wanted (and still want) two things for necromancer. Sustain (artrition) and Escape.
Dhuumfire didnt solve anything and in long term, it brought more harm then good to this class.Those aren’t mutually exclusive things. Quite a few people did want more damage via burning. A lot of folks also did (and still) want defense. There was even some overlap.
Plus, there were a couple other changes that came with that same patch. Some people did want burning but if they were given all the changes in context, who knows if they still would have been on board. SWalk, Swall, Sarmor buffs and tainted shackles all also came along with Dhuumfire.
But I remember a majority of the community was asking for sustain and attrition.
My thoughts so far:
Good -
Npcs will help to generate life force, can be easy to control, blind, and epidemic off of. Could see benefit in well of power, plague signet, signet of undeath. No more control points, fights take place everywhere.
Bad -
Map is long and getting around could be hard. We are weak in PVE and this has PvE elements. Vulnerable during channels.
Discussing builds seems pointless because this won’t come out without specializations, but it’s possible that our condi support could actually be useful here. Same could be said of our boon corrupts, but less so I think.
I don’t understand what I just watched. But that was definitely impressive.
If putrid mark and mark of blood nerfs were reverted I’d be soooo happy. Staff is just so lackluster. It doesn’t bring much damage and doesn’t bring much utility but in a lot of cases there really aren’t better choices because we only have 4 weapons.
I may recall wrong, but weren’t we able to swap weapons while in DS a long-long time ago? This is something I miss, assuming that weapon swap procs in such a case.
Yes. Used to be pretty fun to do.
Well that’s disappointing. Our only stomp options are Plague/Lich elites, blowing two utilities, or DS glitching?
Well FITG helps a lot now. Plus there are blinds. But yeah that’s about it.
I would imagine Rangers are the bottom of the barrel, and mesmers can make an argument too.
The real issue is that certain classes excel everywhere or most places , and others are lacking in multiple areas. There doesn’t seem to be an effort to check that disparity.
I forget if Corrupt Boon was also nerfed along with this?
yes, it was nerfed few months after dhuumfire release.
5 boons is OK for me, but i dont get why stability have lowest priority
No. It was nerfed together with introducement of Dhuumfire, Shackles and other stuff. They also changed Spectral Wall and added dperception that patch.
Yup. This.
Can you safe stomp with WoP?
Technically you could blast it for a blind, and it could give you aegis via burning, but no, not reliably. At least no that I’m aware.
- they aren’t just doing a few specializations and skill updates, they are actually giving each profession a major overhaul to fix all existing problems
Oh god, I would take back any complaints I’ve ever had about Anet if this were true.
Link or didn’t happen. I’m pretty sure that won’t happen but I’d like to be wrong.
There was an Angry Joe interview where they mentioned revisiting current professions. But how much they actually look at it is the real question. Is it just a balance patch? Or would they really rework some skills and traits across all professions? Two very different things there.
Balancing to the top introduces power creep.
You are literally comparing 2 skills to 1. Again, skull fear isn’t so great that people can complain about it being better than every fear Necros have. It’s situationally good, unlike doom which is an incredible skill.
At least complain about fear me, which is instant cast and AOE.
Its rather funny how most people think that the dhuumfire change was a nerf! I really wonder if people have actually tried it out or just concluded that the new version is worse! The burn duration was increased and the ability to pick and choose outweighs the random proc (aoe made it even worse) by far.
Not only that but lifeblast also does decent damage on a 6/4/0/0/4 carrion build. I would take dhuumfire and condition duration over POC everytime.
I am not sure where the carrion necro started but it is definitely inferior to a rabid one , carrion goes well with classes that have good damage mitigation like thief or guard but not warrior or ranger. The DS argument with vitality…really?! It’s called dhuumfire nerf because it didn’t come alone and you should always pick PoC on condition necro.
The opposite argument is that rabid tends to be best for classes that have other sources of healing. It really shines when you can recover more hit points that are worth more because of the toughness. Since necro can’t do that either, the toughness isn’t as valuable. So neither really works well, so we may as well work with the one defense we have which improves with vitality.
Plus, the damage is very comparable between the two, hence, carrion.
I believe the putrid mark changes started coming around the same time as dhuumfire. They added torment and burning to us at the same time, realized they overdid it, and instead of starting with the most obvious problem, they hit everything else we had, effectively forcing us into the dhuumfire build to maintain damage. Then they eventually nerfed that too.
I find it to be a large nerf because it’s gated behind having life force, and life blast doesn’t always land. It’s easy to dodge and the cast can be negated just by running through you which most good players know. You can’t fire it behind you or use when you are kiting – it requires having an advantage at all to even use, in my opinion. That’s why its a nerf. Control is nice, it’s nice for wvw, I think, but for pvp it isn’t even at all useful, to me.
I agree. Seperate queues by game modes instead of the current, meaningless separation between ranked and unranked.
I personally hope that they also gate IP behind tool belt skills for engineers.
Corrupt boon was taken from a full boon conversion to converting only 5 boons. Mark of blood and grasping dead both lost one bleed stack in PVP (wvw and PVE still have the normal numbers), and putrid mark used to transfer all conditions – I think, it’s been awhile – and also transfer conditions from allies in the Mark to enemies in the mark. That was nerfed a few times. Spectral skills were also buffed at the same time we got dhuumfire, but they were nerfed to have an ICD on life force gain. I believe Mark of evasion was also nerfed.
Oh and I forgot terror, which does 10% less damage now, and is now a master trait, but used to be only adept.
the map would be cool if there wasn’t any PvE content in the map and only pure “PvP skills” in the maps. But no Anet always have to put PvE content for the casuals players.
Courtyard
Excited for this.
Courtyard is really badly design and it is a snowball map where making a comeback is pretty hard. What i would like to see are maps that dont have “PvE” stuff to help your team. In that way i think that the fights will be more based on individuals and team synergy skills instead of using a skyhammer or a trebuchet to help your team win.
I’m not trying to be rude, but this still sounds like courtyard to me. Teamwork and synergy are really important there. If your team can’t recover from one death, then perhaps it’s a problem with the team instead of the map/mode.
the map would be cool if there wasn’t any PvE content in the map and only pure “PvP skills” in the maps. But no Anet always have to put PvE content for the casuals players.
Courtyard
Excited for this.
So if they blow a super important cooldown they can cast it from farther? Or if they put themselves if a rough situation (near melee range with multiple opponents) it can be better? Still not that great.
I find it interesting that some people seem to be equating more buttons with more skill required to press them. I personally don’t see it that way at all. I think running through rotations like you can with cele engi and cele Ele is very simple. They may have high skill ceilings but you can more or less mash buttons and remain somewhat effective because of the nature of the builds. They are forgiving. There is nothing difficult about playing the apex predator of PvP unless you’re doing it at the highest levels.
Most people seem to agree that mesmer is the hardest, but they don’t have many skills in comparison.
You seem to be confusing two things here: skill and effectiveness. But again, there’s a lot of that in this thread. Cele engi and elementalist seem so simple because they are so effective. Especially on ele, just going through a rotation will make you win against some players. I don’t play elementalist that much, so I just rotate the skills to stack might, and I get rekt most of the time (thank you Anet for not adding profession-based MMR). On engineer though, if you use a rotation, you’re definitely playing it wrong: heck, what’s the point of having no CD on kits if you’re gonna use a rotation anyway?
Rotations most engineers use: magnet pull, crowbar, spam Nades, rifle knockback, immobilize, jump shot, slick shoes.
More buttons =/= hard. Skill ceiling doesn’t make the class hard. Skill floor is what makes it hard.
I find it interesting that some people seem to be equating more buttons with more skill required to press them. I personally don’t see it that way at all. I think running through rotations like you can with cele engi and cele Ele is very simple. They may have high skill ceilings but you can more or less mash buttons and remain somewhat effective because of the nature of the builds. They are forgiving. There is nothing difficult about playing the apex predator of PvP unless you’re doing it at the highest levels.
Most people seem to agree that mesmer is the hardest, but they don’t have many skills in comparison.
Then you would block players you thought were bad.
Think of it the opposite way – if it were more likely to team you up with friends, people would just friend top players. Is that a good system? Isn’t matchmaking already a little rough without another angle?
The chill duration on grasp is longer.