Guild Wars 2

One issue: Many of the leap finishers apply auras or boons to whatever does the leaping. Does it really give the necromancer a leap finisher if the fire aura / retaliation / chaos armor is on the highly vulnerable shadow fiend?

There’s a sort of ‘transparency filter’ that makes areas at your depth render on the map when underground / underwater, so that you see tunnels and such instead of the mountains on top of them. The borders around this area use the typical GW2 painterly aesthetic like the rest of the UI, so there’s brush strokes and spots that move around uniformly with the character.

I would have never seen the skull in it, but I hope that explains what it is. Try watching the map slightly zoomed out when in a large underwater area, I think you’re more likely to see all the edges at once that way.

Personally, I do think that Protection of the Horde is there because of Reanimator.

In general, across all classes, minor traits are useful to every build. Those that aren’t universally applicable tend to be useable on at least half of the weapon combinations available to that profession. Protection of the Horde bucks this trend, because if the necromancer does not have a single minion skill available from weapons or their profession mechanic, and is forced to choose from a specific category of heal / utility / elite skills to receive any boost from this minor trait.

Except for Reanimator.

Because Reanimator exists as a minor trait earlier in the Death Magic line, there is guaranteed access to one minion, so technically every Necromancer does have a way to utilize protection of the horde. I’ve theorized for a while that this was the justification that let PotH keep its minor trait spot even after drastic changes to the role minions play in the necromancer profession. Or, in a reverse of what I expect, it forced the creation of Reanimator as a minor trait since minions were no longer a given or near-given thing.

As it is, I’d like to see both traits reworked into (existing) majors with others taking their place as minors.

Moleless.1462:

Softspoken.2410:

Like Arashi noted, the precision will not make up for the complete lack of power in the stats: your damage will drop significantly. No matter what, switching to Magi’s will necessitate a change in your play style, switching you from a durable damage dealer to a healer / boon giver.

Something like Empowering Might + Altruistic Healing could be pretty nice, especially with the combo that vigorous precision & selfless daring provide. Again, it’d be more about boosting your allies’ damage than your own.

Of course, mixing armor types is a thing you can do, rather than taking pure Magi’s.

Are you speaking from experience or assumptions? I think my survivability will be extremely high with a healing power set, so durability isn’t really in question. I’ll still be rocking full cleric trinkets, and probably soldier runes, so there will still be a bit of power there. I honestly think high precision will make up for that. I hit like a wet needle as it is, damage is not a big part of my build, cause my damage already sucks. I’m failry sure a raise in precision would increase that, not to mention help a lot for an AH build.

A bit of experience, but mostly theory. Your survivability will be pretty good since you’ll be able to recover from damage quite well, and you’ll have enough health that getting bursted isn’t too likely, but since there’s very little toughness there, you’ll take bigger hits from direct damage than before when you were running PVT. All in all, it could work out, as long as you aren’t under too much pressure yourself.

But on another point: if you ever have an equal choice between power and precision, equal points of power will translate to more direct damage than equal points of precision*. Precision looks like it’s about damage, but really I think it’s about proccing unique effects. (Like giving all your allies might or yourself vigor)

That said, if you don’t care much about the direct damage you do, then you can maximize precision to get those other neat effects.

bladie.5084:

This battle situation was created in response of OP’s thoughts of how a S/D is played. With some realism choices into play and the myth of FS spamming.

You’ve been trolled for not realizing that.

The battle situation was so poorly played I couldn’t take it. Even for someone focused on spamming 3, the play decisions didn’t make much sense. Still, you’ve announced that you intentionally were playing it incorrectly, so I’ll stop trying to understand and just move on.

Anyways. The primary way that it’s OP is that it’s still too much of a punishment & reward swing. If a profession uses their most valuable / longest recharge for a set of excellent boons, and the S/D then steals them, not only do they get to deny that long recharge skill, they also get to use the power of it. In some situations this is letting a Thief steal elite skills, for 4 initiative. Denying something like that is powerful enough, but essentially getting to use that strength yourself is just too much for something that can be up so frequently.

It’s situational, obviously. But I think there’s a frequent enough situation where it is simply too strong of a skill for too small of a cost.

On another topic:

sorrow.2364:

Something nobody mentioned is that LS is incredibly similiar animation-wise to the 3rd sword autoattack and, you know, nobody wants to dodge the autoattack.
Also, consider that arm animations are fairly hard to notice, expecially if the Thief is an Asura which has a model 70% smaller than any character, which bring us to another flaw of this game.

evilapprentice.6379:

Ls is telegraphed in 2 ways.
If you just watched the thief use FS, you know he has LS available.
If you watch the thief pull his sword arm back, 1 of 2 things is coming – Crippling strike, or LS (both with kitten cast time)- They’re both swings you’re probably going to want to dodge.

The line about dodging crippling strike got me to raise an eyebrow the first time, but who am I to criticize burning a dodge on an ability that’s up every 2 seconds without an initiative cost?

Like Arashi noted, the precision will not make up for the complete lack of power in the stats: your damage will drop significantly. No matter what, switching to Magi’s will necessitate a change in your play style, switching you from a durable damage dealer to a healer / boon giver.

Something like Empowering Might + Altruistic Healing could be pretty nice, especially with the combo that vigorous precision & selfless daring provide. Again, it’d be more about boosting your allies’ damage than your own.

Of course, mixing armor types is a thing you can do, rather than taking pure Magi’s.

YourOwnFear.2743:

Softspoken.2410:

So does nobody use flanking strike, then wait for a clear opportunity to use larcenous strike? Because the 5(?) second window you have to use it sort of encourages that tactic, rather than just mashing 3 twice.

I ask because I’ve seen it implied a few times that LS is actually easy to dodge / bait because FS telegraphs it, but… Strictly speaking, it doesn’t. You can do a couple things between FS & LS.

Because LS takes the current duration of the boons on the target so the average thief tries to get as much out of those boons he is stripping as he can. When FS lands and you are in range to LS, why not use the unblockable attack? It runs the risk of being dodge but if it lands you’re rewarded with longer duration boons, hurting your target more. It is a gamble either way so when people say its easy to dodge they are referring to the people complaining about FS/LS spamming. If the thief isn’t stripping your boons right away and waiting almost 5 seconds then you’re getting to use those boons for most of its duration and its not that detrimental getting them stripped so there is nothing to complain about.

The point about the boons ticking down is a good one, since generally people use flanking strike to set up larcenous strike after boons become apparent. Of course, there’s nothing to say the opponent wouldn’t put up more boons in that duration, or that the thief wouldn’t only bother with the chain unless the boons would be worthwhile three seconds later.

YourOwnFear.2743:

On top of that LS has a 1/2 second animation. Average reaction time is 1/4 second. You have double the average reaction time to dodge LS once you see the animation start.

evilapprentice.6379:

Ls is telegraphed in 2 ways.
If you just watched the thief use FS, you know he has LS available.
If you watch the thief pull his sword arm back, 1 of 2 things is coming – Crippling strike, or LS (both with kitten cast time)- They’re both swings you’re probably going to want to dodge.

Not really buying the “1/2 activation means someone can always dodge it” though, since that applies to a large percentage of weapon skills. It’s an especially suspect argument with the presence of immobilize on Infiltrator’s Strike.

So does nobody use flanking strike, then wait for a clear opportunity to use larcenous strike? Because the 5(?) second window you have to use it sort of encourages that tactic, rather than just mashing 3 twice.

I ask because I’ve seen it implied a few times that LS is actually easy to dodge / bait because FS telegraphs it, but… Strictly speaking, it doesn’t. You can do a couple things between FS & LS.

bladie.5084:

Don’t underestimate the cost of Infil strike, The skill as a whole costs 5 initiative. So lets add it all up. Infil strike as opener [2 init], CnD + steal [6 init], auto attack daze, 1st flanking strike attempt failed [4 init], 2nd one hits [4 init], does another CnD [6 init] daze and pulls off another flanking strike [4 init]. Oh shi shadow return is running out, lets return [another 3 init]. So in a time frame of 9-14 seconds you’ve burned this much init already. And lets keep in mind that the boons you work so hard to steal will vanish in a matter of seconds. So you are now back to square 1 with low initiatives and usekitten ons that aren’t helping you regain init any faster. And you know what sucks? The other class can re-apply their boons within seconds. Not all of their boons but most of them. Lets assume you are specced into regen inits. Lets take all the initiative and half it. But lets also assume… That you’re fighting an actual decent player who’s knowledgeable in how to trait their class and the right sigils/runes/foods to use.. Well. kitten.. Back to square one? CCing plays a huge role in any games, It’s like you’re underestimating it. It’s what other players use to pressure thieves. To get them to spam infil strike and return.. and again and again. or get them to cnd or D/P trololol stealth. I was in no way directly/indirectly implying that we should have boon ripping skills because we lack CC’s. Also, a knowledgeable player should always try to be aware of the position where the sword thief left to infil strike. You always want to pressure him to go in the direction of his spot. There fore if you pressured him to return, you can maintain your dps and CC. Why let the thief control the fight, why not start thinking outside the box?

What the unholy Tartarus is this anecdote.

• IS as an opener is 3 initiative, not 2
• Why are you possibly burning C&D and steal if you are already within range (because that’s why you would burn IS as an opener) and your foe is immobilized?
• You failed a Flanking Strike attempt, so either you lost the 3 initiative for the first hit, or the 1 for the second. If you miss both halves of that chain, you probably need to push less buttons.
• But you reliably pull off a C&D -> Daze. Okay.
• Using Shadow Return just because it was about to run out, not because you had conditions to cleanse / needed the stun-break.
• Shadow Return (From the sword skill) is only 2 initiative, not 3.
• You didn’t even total up the initiative used in your own scenario. (It’s 30.)
• If the boons you stole are useless, why were you even attempting flanking strike instead of just the 1-chain of the sword?

As it is, you’ve stolen 4 boons in that scenario, which determines a lot of the “Was this worth it?” factor. If you stole boons that weren’t really useful to you though, that’s still your strategically poor choice.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I find a lot of necro traits to be lackluster.
Spite Minor:

Grandmaster: Siphoned Power. At 25%, an opponent is about to kill you. In PVE you’ll get 1 stack of might if you are lucky before going down. In PVP they’ll burst you to death at this point. The might doesn’t last long enough to heal up and use either, since the heal will eat up a third of the might’s duration.

In Curses Major:

Reaper’s precision: a 1/3 chance to get 1% life force on a critical hit. If you have, say, a 50% crit chance, then you have a 16.6% chance to gain life force with each attack. The problem here is that this trait is only useful if you are running a pure Scepter/Dagger build, which as an extremely slow attack rate. There’s so many better ways to invest points to get lifeforce that this trait will always be on the bottom of the totem poll.

Blood Magic Major:

Master: Deathly Invigoration. The amount this heals for is so low that it isn’t noticeable. 260 points every 10 seconds makes it far inferior to… pretty much everything, really. I think this trait wins the award for worst healing trait ever, since parasitic bond has at least some use when fighting endless hordes of enemies: not wasting 2 seconds on a healing skill.

Soul Reaping Minor:

Adept: Gluttony. Life force generation works in such paltry amounts that a 10% increase doesn’t do anything for a player’s offense or survivability. Either they have a build that generates life force, or they do not. This trait will not tip the scale in any direction, and the effect even in long term is negligible. When, in any fight, has any necromancer ever thought “Gee, I wish I had 10% more life force, because then I could win” and not already been at maximum? Never.

Siphoned power isn’t great, but it’s close. I’m of the opinion changing this trait to give longer duration might stacks would massively boost its effectiveness, especially in PvE since you could dip below 25%, tank some multi-hits with death shroud, drop out of death shroud, heal and continue on with a bonus of 5 might stacks. If there was a more reliable way to sit in death shroud for a while you wouldn’t even need to heal to make use of them, but that’s a different issue.

Maybe Reaper’s Precision just isn’t for Scepter / Dagger? Something with high crit volume (D/W maybe?) would make use of it to boost its LF generation even more. I’ll admit I think this trait is under-tuned (1% just doesn’t seem like enough for the stacked %s to crit and proc, even in the best-case scenario)

Deathly Invigoration is the attempt to give the Necro another group-heal trait alongside Transfusion. Unfortunately Near to Death defines it a bit too much. I kind of wish they would buff these traits and add internal cooldowns, so you didn’t have to take Near to Death to maximize their use.

I feel like Gluttony is just “ok”. It isn’t strong enough to be really good, but the idea fits perfectly with its placement, and 5 point minor traits don’t really need to be powerful, in my opinion. So while they could probably buff it without making it OP, I don’t think there’s much of reason to buff it besides “because we can.”

For my own personal least-favourite trait:

Death Shiver. 10s of vulnerability every 3s to all nearby enemies. Compare this to Unyielding Blast, which is an adept trait rather than a master. Unyielding does 2 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds with every (piercing) attack of life blast, which is:
More vulnerability per application, applied more rapidly, without requiring you to sit beside your enemy.
Death Shiver can out-do Unyielding, but it requires you to go into the middle of a crowd, while in Death Shroud, and stay there without them forcing you out of Death Shroud, which seems pretty niche for a relatively minor effect.

Rrgh, I can come up with ideas, but I’m not sure they’re any good. Have you considered a variation on wells with this? It seems like the direct-damage style of wells would still have enough power from your build, and the siphons could work nicely with your high toughness. Maybe even take Ritual of Protection so that after you clump up your enemies and start chaining wells you’re nigh-unkillable?

Another idea (that’s admittedly pretty silly) is taking 30 in curses for the weakening precision, weakness on death shroud and banshee’s wail traits, along with a warhorn off-hand instead of your current dagger, and basically pursuing a debilitating condition strategy.

The problem with a lot of these is that I end up leaving your staff completely out in the cold.

I still find it amazing they allowed this skill to steal 2 boons at full duration. I mean, spammable boon removal can be a pretty strong denial mechanic as is, let alone claiming that power for yourself.

I do think the skill is too strong, just because the reversal is too drastic. Grabbing someone’s elite skill stability and another boon (if they have one) is pretty strong: being able to do so again immediately is even stronger. I don’t even care about the damage on the skill, it’s just too much denial and empowerment.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Softspoken.2410:

I think I agree with Eudoros.

…Now I could be mistaken: A siphon (not minion, just siphon) based bunker build could currently be viable in PvP right now. But I think to make such a thing viable, there needs to be the opportunity to invest, and allowing investment allows the numbers to become significant without becoming overpowered due to the stat cost of something like healing power.

If they had to reduce the current siphon such that you need, say, 400 healing power to break even I’d be a fan.

Naw, necro needs more than better sustain to be viable as a bunker. A cleric or shaman ammy Necro can get decent sustain with smart utility selection until a CC chain gets thrown at them. To bunker there needs to be an alpha stun break like “Stand Your Ground” that is on a short re-pop, some other source of stability besides ridiculous investment in the crit damage line that you will never proc, and some form of knock back (fear really doesn’t cut it). A good necro built to bunker can stay alive 1v2 against inferior talent right now, but the point still gets neuted on them (unless the opposition is horrendous) because they lack these things. Fixing the sustain issue would be one step toward a viable necro bunker, but it doesn’t complete the puzzle.

Ah, thank you so much for telling me why I was wrong about scaling not being the fix to make a viable bunker. The whole thing solidifies to me that scaling should be added. As it is, a necromancer is quite vulnerable to control effects, and siphoning really only works as long as the necromancer is free to attack: controlling them (daze, stun and the like) is not only a correct response to the strategy, but a fairly easy / doable one at the current game state. (Heck it’s probably the default response.)

If they ever ‘fix’ the Necromancers vulnerability to controls, I’d hesitate on offering stronger siphoning options, but seeing a clear and evident counter play already existing in game makes me confident adding scaling would be beneficial.

I think I agree with Eudoros.

At base, the current siphon doesn’t bother me. But there’s no way to invest in that idea, and given the frequency of siphon build threads that pop up anyways, the demand is there. But also given how those build threads tend to get shot down, the capability for that style is not. I think that you could create that defensive viability by requiring significant investment in a defensive stat that otherwise sees little play: healing power.

Now I could be mistaken: A siphon (not minion, just siphon) based bunker build could currently be viable in PvP right now. But I think to make such a thing viable, there needs to be the opportunity to invest, and allowing investment allows the numbers to become significant without becoming overpowered due to the stat cost of something like healing power.

If they had to reduce the current siphon such that you need, say, 400 healing power to break even I’d be a fan.

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t see an issue with someone getting downed. It’s the frequency that would bother me.

Yep. Getting downed once or twice? It happens. Getting downed every fight? You’re doing it wrong.

That said, you should try to help up your allies whenever feasible, and being a jerk about their death (which they are already probably feeling kind of terrible about) doesn’t help.

I think that bolding entire paragraphs isn’t helping you present your case.

Andele.1306:

Softspoken.2410:

Every single weapon skill in the game uses a similar formula to calculate the damage applied, not taking into account criticals.

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / Armor

Given this formula, doubling your power doubles your weapon damage, because every single factor in there is multiplicative. Weapon skills don’t have a base static damage number and then additional amounts added on to that, they have a multiplier coefficient that determines how much of your Power * Weapon strength score you get to use. So while certain weapon skills will scale better than others, doubling your power will double the damage done by any weapon skill.

Please learn to play: Skill Coefficient = ( Tooltip Damage * Target’s Armor ) / ( Weapon Damage * Power )

You rearranged the formula I referenced from the wiki.

Relevance?

If it doesn’t get resolved in this patch (28th May), I am going to pursue the Words Can’t Express My Disappointment campaign and create a video for every bug on the list, starting with this one. Because this one has been around, and reported, and obvious for too long.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Osiris Shadow.5890:

So, since it seems people didn’t catch this detail the first time I said it: only Necrotic Slash. Just the first move in the auto-attack chain. This would avoid pumping up life-force that you get from Necrotic Stab and Bite (2nd and 3rd in chain).

Skills generating life force fill a percentage of your life force bar, not a percentage of the damage dealt.

I think the point is that skills that generate life force tend to do so per target hit. You can see it with locust swarm, necrotic grasp, marks with the soul marks trait, and life transfer, at least. So adding cleave / multiple targets to the 2 & 3 steps of the chain would make it so one dagger chain on stacked enemies could conceivably generate 18% life force, regardless of damage.

Edit: I was wrong about Soul Marks, which is only funny to me because of whose post it was that mislead me on that count.

I will gladly take a thief anywhere if they slot shadow refuge or smokescreen when appropriate. Both of those can give players a lot breathing room right when they need it in a fight, which I think counts for a lot when trying to be a support.

The wiki just copies the tooltip verbatim, and the tooltip is misleading. As someone who uses this trait I can confirm that as long as you’re below 90% health, this trait will trigger every 30 seconds when you get hit.

To my knowledge, all traits that reference health levels behave like this.

Edit: I honestly prefer using Regeneration instead of an additional buff because I feel like adding new buffs and debuffs instead of using existing boons / conditions will just lead to too many icons and prevent clear play / counterplay. As it is Soothing Mist still irks me a bit.

flow.6043:

I tested it in WvW and Cursed Shore, the siphoning amount was the same.

The WvW bonuses also apply to PvE formats, unless you guest to another server. It’s to try and motivate PvE players to fight for bonuses for their world, I think?

All I know is, it makes gameplay before the reset a bit easier / more profitable. Save your crafting for Fridays.

I suspect that all Necro skills are already balanced around the possibility of epidemic, such that you’re slightly penalized if you don’t take it in any situation with multiple opponents. Rather than adjusting every skill the necro has with conditions on it, I’d love to see Epidemic made universally available, and put on Death Shroud.

The problem with this is that with its current iteration, you could epidemic the fear from doom too easily. As it is, I’m pretty sure going into death shroud interrupts the cast on epidemic.

I don’t feel like corrupt boon is nearly as much of a problem, because while it can leverage a lot of power, it has a more tightly defined scenario in which to do so (Enemy boon spike), and similar effects can be accomplished via other skills (Well of corruption, spinal shivers, possibly even the Necrotic Corruption trait for minion boon removal, to keep it all within the necromancer). That said, I could probably be convinced otherwise.

But what epidemic does is very much unique to that skill, and changes how a lot of the game plays.

Andele.1306:

Softspoken.2410:

Doubling your power doubles the damage component of life siphon.

Edit: just like every other weapon skill in the game.

I ment the aa chain, it has a high base damage, but its total power scailing is quite weaker than from most other auto attacks (a lot like with Lichs Deathly Claws), you dont notice it till you do the comparisons of power does between steady weapon and normal weapon damage (not the full damage done just the increase in damage after you add more power to your stats).
And no life siphon is one of the rare skills that has a 1:1 relation to power in total.
Example of a low scailing high base skill is deathly claws (under 0.3 scailing), to a low base of 18 damage but high max scailing from our dear 100 blades warrior channel (over 3.1 – most of it being in the last hit). Its like in LoL Veigar vs LB, sure LB has higher early game damage/good base, but veigar will just be better the more stats (ap in their case power in our) he gets.

Ofc tooltip damage does double since tooltips are derpy and dont say everything (they even think all our enemies are in medium armor, what is kinda true for mobs, but still stupid to do instead of having a option/toggle for full calculation).

Every single weapon skill in the game uses a similar formula to calculate the damage applied, not taking into account criticals.

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / Armor

Given this formula, doubling your power doubles your weapon damage, because every single factor in there is multiplicative. Weapon skills don’t have a base static damage number and then additional amounts added on to that, they have a multiplier coefficient that determines how much of your Power * Weapon strength score you get to use. So while certain weapon skills will scale better than others, doubling your power will double the damage done by any weapon skill.

I do not know if all utility skills follow this same trend: I have heard many times that minions, for example, do not scale with your power and I am inclined to believe it.

Do not bring LoL up again. Just. Don’t.

Andele.1306:

My wishes for dagger are: Dark pact going to a 1/2 cast time (so that well bombing gets less reliant on ally cc/golem kitten charge), Life siphon to lock onto the closest enemy/not be castable without a target (but continue the channel if target goes away) and maybe a bit better actual power scailing (base damage is fine, so it works with critting, but it doesnt even double its damage when your double your power).

Doubling your power doubles the damage component of life siphon.

Edit: just like every other weapon skill in the game.

vicious.5683:

Softspoken.2410:

vicious.5683:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Siphoned_Power

this is maybe the WORST trait of all classes in the entire game!!! (including future expansions, I mean, I doubt they could design a worse trait)

5sec might when you are low hp, its ridiculous, and its a 25 point trait.

just look at this thief counterpart trait.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exposed_Weakness

The necromancer counterpart to the thief trait Exposed Weakness is Target the Weak and the comparison of the two is a conversation in and of itself.

I don’t know of any other traits that trigger continuously when hit under a certain health threshhold: all others seem to have cooldowns, so I can’t come up with good comparisons. And really, I like the idea of Siphoned Power, it just needs a longer duration on the might stacks, in my opinion.

you can’t actually take advantage of it.
no one hits you, no trigger —--> useless
few hits on you, few triggers —--> almost useless (I could get 5stacks max on tests) and if you are low hp you get focused and die or try to heal o survive, anything except attack.
lot of hits on you, you’re dead —--> useless.

You can take any of the GM minor traits on thief or any class and it will be better.

Learn to use Death Shroud.

natsos.3692:

Actually “exposed weakness” can’t really be compared with “target the weak”.

Exposed weakness needs one condition to boost your damage by 10%(so you make 10% more damage nearly the whole fight) and the trait is properly placed in the power trait line .
Target the weak needs at least 5 conditions to be equal with exposed weakness(it is not that easy to have constantly 5 conditions on the enemy, on any proffesion).
Necromancer will probably have 1-2 condition on the enemy for the biggest duration of the fight so it is pretty much a 4 to 6% boost, also our trait is in the condition damage trait line.

This makes the necromancer even more “group depended” for a misplaced trait.(it would be fine if the trait was on 15 points so it could be gained in a power build that is not fully glass cannon).

As for siphoned power, it has a good concept, you can go into DS when under 25%, get hit 10+ times and have some nice stacks of might,but the duration is just 5 seconds..in 5 seconds you are going to make kittens in the best senario, but lets face it, when you are as close to dying as this, you won’t focus on damaging but trying to survive, so you will either start dodging away,healing,teleporting etc. making the trait completly useless the way it works(on necro).

I would definitely love to see it as something like:
When under DS ,hits that take you lower than 25% LF gives you might for 5 sec.
This would actually worth.

All that I need to make that comparison is that Target the Weak and Exposed Weakness they both give additional direct damage based on conditions on your target. That is literally all I need . Also, you actually put “group depended” in quotation marks without realizing you wanted the term ‘dependent’ as in “clear communication in a written format is highly dependent upon correct spelling and word choice.”

And like I said, the comparison between the two is an entire conversation. I’ll make it clear I have no intention of actually entertaining that conversation here, and note that you just compared the two extensively.

ANYWAYS.
Since we’re now fully in the suggestions forum:
A trait that makes endurance regenerate 50% faster while in death shroud.
Or: A trait that makes gaining life force also gain endurance, so generating 50% life force would also grant an extra dodge.

I’m of the opinion unload needs something. And it should be unload, not vital shot, since it’s P/P that nets the most complaints, and unload is the focal point of that weapon set by virtue of being its dual skill.

In my opinion, they need to add some gimmick to it (Evasion? Vigor or swiftness as you’re channeling? 6 shots but 100% combo finisher?) since right now it’s only about the damage, and that obviously just isn’t enough to keep the set interesting to play.

The first two minor traits of Death Magic.

At least one of them becomes something to do with endurance generation, be it vigor or just increased endurance speed if certain conditions are met, and those conditions are not related to minions.

Edit:

Allow healing of our health pool while in DS. Or at least allow me to use the F button while in DS. I want to cloak up to healed downed allies darn it.

I change my answer. This this this

MeGaZlo.9516:

Hi! Dear devs, when will you fix a bug with animation of Frozen Abyss (trident 5)? The first tick is operating normally, but subsequent explosion animation is not there. It creates an impression that the ability simply does not work. I suppose bug somehow connected with the movement.

Huh. I hadn’t noticed this before, but that does explain why I don’t always see the ‘blast’ animation at the end of the channel: the next attack (crimson tide) tends to cancel it immediately. On the bright side, the attack still lands… You just don’t get to see it. :/

Flowerpower.6795:

The problem is that you don’t want this low hp bar. Normally you use your heal at 40% hp or sth like which means the time you get those mightstacks you normally go down and can’t profit from them.
Would be better if it would be like “you get 10 stacks might for 10sec if your hp are <50%” with an internal 90sec cooldown or sth like that..

Nobody wants to be at low health, but look at how often it happens anyways. The idea of the trait is making the Necromancer more dangerous when they’re near death, which is something I dig.

Anyways, you’d probably gain the might stacks while in Death Shroud and locked at say ~15% health and waiting for your heal to come off recharge. I seriously question your understanding of heal timing, but suffice it to say it’s very feasible for your heal to have less than 4 seconds of recharge remaining when you drop below 25% health but have a good amount of life force remaining. It’s not something I’d build around, but it is a nice bonus that can encourage some interesting play and choices. (Do I delay my heal skill for a few more seconds and try and get more might stacks?)

You could probably change the trait to be Blood Is Power with a cooldown and no bleeds, sure. I’d still say it should proc at a low health level though.

vicious.5683:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Siphoned_Power

this is maybe the WORST trait of all classes in the entire game!!! (including future expansions, I mean, I doubt they could design a worse trait)

5sec might when you are low hp, its ridiculous, and its a 25 point trait.

just look at this thief counterpart trait.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exposed_Weakness

The necromancer counterpart to the thief trait Exposed Weakness is Target the Weak and the comparison of the two is a conversation in and of itself.

I don’t know of any other traits that trigger continuously when hit under a certain health threshhold: all others seem to have cooldowns, so I can’t come up with good comparisons. And really, I like the idea of Siphoned Power, it just needs a longer duration on the might stacks, in my opinion.

Copenhagen.7015:

I posted this in the pvp thread. The bold fonts didn’t carry over from the copypasta sorry it looks like a huge wall of text now.

On the topic of Vigor. All classes except Necromancer have atleast 1 source of Vigor and other ways to restore endurance.

-The List-

Edit. I had no idea how bad we really had it until I typed this up. Elementalist has 7 ways to gain Vigor or regain Endurance, we have 0. What am I missing here? How did this go un noticed?

Believe me, I’ve been aware of this for months now, and it’s bothered me. Every class has some way to play with the endurance bar, and many have traits that respond to how full / empty it is; the Necromancer does not.

I don’t even need / want Vigor, if ANet has a problem with the Necro having access to a lot of boons. I just want something (On either an adept or master level minor trait) that lets us access more dodges at the expense of more aggressive options. The idea of gaining endurance as you gain life force has been rattling around in my head for a while now.

If block / invuln / reflect / evasion / endurance abilities ever come in for the Necromancer though, I think they should show up in Death Shroud or minor traits. It’s the sort of thing that has the possibility of “too good to give up” just by nature of actually being a block, etc, so forcing people to sacrifice utility slots / major traits for them seems like a step backwards.

KarlaGrey.5903:

I’m afraid you missed the point.

It’s harder to hit a moving target.

The most intriguing part of this change to me is making the 3s of poison and weakness apply every second, allowing for fairly rapid stacking.

I would decry this as overpowered, but one other skill seems too relevant to ignore, especially when you consider its synergy with a particular minor trait that thieves have access to.

And after a little thought, I like the idea of a larger AoE. If nothing else it would help differentiate CPC from wells.

Doing all of this together seems like too much, but some combination of “applies every second” and “has a huge area” seems appropriate.

@Skyro: About Necro poison application: I’d love to see it more thoroughly available on a couple weapon skills as well, especially after ANet brought up ‘poison application’ as a defining characteristic of the Necromancer, somehow.
But I think it’s essential that there is at least one utility skill that has poison as its emphasis, so that someone with the ‘wrong’ weapon sets still has the option to give up a utility slot for poison when the situation calls for it.

Minions switch on the first mark huh? Not sure I like that, but seeing as I didn’t know about it I can’t really complain.

Also, some of the best (worst?) Minions That Don’t Do Anything videos that I remember came out of the tidal pools / beaches of Southsun. (The northern parts, I think.) I always wondered if all the ankle-deep water messed with the Flesh Golem’s head, since deep water is instant death for it.

It amazes me how much you can both read and not read what I’m saying.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Softspoken.2410:

Brought up an oft-repeated sentiment of “The AI is already there on other classes why not minions?”. It bothers me, because people are ignoring reasons that minion AI not only is different, but must be different from Ranger pets and illusions. So I felt compelled to post.

Minions have horrible, unresponsive AI yet need to fulfill the role similar to that of the Ranger’s pet. Minions are obviously meant to be disposable since ANet refuses to give all of them regeneration after combat, but they are also supposed to maintain continuous fighting like the Ranger’s pet.

I very much agree here, in that minions seem conflicted about what they’re supposed to be. I kind of wish every minion skill resulted in the death of the minion (and was upgraded appropriately) just for thematic solidarity, but that would interfere a lot with what minions are currently used for.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Softspoken.2410:

No, but health has a bearing on the role of the summon, and as such how its AI is designed and coded.

You’re wrong. Health has no bearing on AI. Educate yourself on what AI is. It sounds like your confusing AI with functionality. Think about it: would increasing the health of the minions improve their AI? If that were the case, some Ranger’s pets would be smarter than others.

I’ll restate this as explicitly possible.

You are correct, AI doesn’t determine the health of the summon. What I was getting at is the functionality or role of a summon. I think that health / lifetime is a very important characteristic that informs the player of their designed role, and whatever that designed role has probably determined how the developer codes the behavior of the AI.

The reason I mentioned health totals in the first place was to imply what that said about the roles of the two profession summons, while still being referring to something empirical about them.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Softspoken.2410:

If you want to tell me to get back on topic, feel free! Just start talking about the topic and I’ll follow that conversational thread.

Please do. As I stated, you’re confusing yourself and are going off topic.

I personally would not prefer minions switching target on the first attack on each target. I’m worried that this behavior couldn’t be properly implemented in fights against multiple opponents: if a minion is no longer allowed to ignore any hits, it has to switch targets constantly, which may mean re-acquiring pathing or position every time you hit a target you’re not actually focusing on. From there you can run into minions dashing back and forth between targets if a necrotic grasp or mark goes awry, and not doing any attacking at all if melee.

Or say you use a large AoE attack but your opponent dodges or becomes invulnerable, such that the target you ‘hit’ was a secondary attacker. I’d rather the minion wait out the dodge / invulnerability period and stick to the mark than switch to something I’m leaving for later.

Basically, I like that minions take a bit of cajoling to switch targets in combat.

Edit – Quote names got really messed up. Should be fixed now.

1.) The way that corrupt boon can ruin so many elite skills.
2.) Plague lets you sit wherever you please, especially in PvE.
3.) The individual symbols for each Well.
4.) How casual 100% uptime on chill is for a Necromancer.
5.) Throwing the conditions you ‘cursed’ yourself with from corruption skills onto your enemies.

Spectral walk’s 3% life force on being hit effect is also removed when you enter Death Shroud.

That said, I think spectral armor needs some sort of adjustment.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

If Bhawb and Softspoken want to improve on Mesmer’s illusions, the Necro forums aren’t the place.

I feel like there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of why I posted. This post, immediately above my original one:

Undertow.2389:

Undertow.2389:

In fact, the correct AI is already in the game.

Mmm yes, Ranger pets don’t seem to have near our problems dishing out damage, and not being braindead. Similar Mesmer illusions, you notice they are quick and unerringly zero in on targets. Are Necro minions being mush upstairs intended?

I don’t know but I could never stand any A.I companions in any games that are not responsive or buggy. Unpredictability gets you killed in fights, when you can’t depend on a creature to do what its supposed to.

Brought up an oft-repeated sentiment of “The AI is already there on other classes why not minions?”. It bothers me, because people are ignoring reasons that minion AI not only is different, but must be different from Ranger pets and illusions. So I felt compelled to post.

Edit:

AI has no bearing on health.

No, but health has a bearing on the role of the summon, and as such how its AI is designed and coded.

If you want to tell me to get back on topic, feel free! Just start talking about the topic and I’ll follow that conversational thread.

Shadow’s Embrace activates once immediately on going into stealth.

Can I ask how much Power / Precision / Crit Damage you have?

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Perhaps in the mist this is true, but in WvW and LA I tested it and it’s confirmed to be 25% movement boost exactly like Signet of the Locust. I tested it when I wrote my post.

It wouldn’t be the first time that something works in sPvP but not in PvE/WvW; focus trait for example.

Just tested it in Lion’s Arch and

D/F travels a significantly lesser distance in 12 seconds than D/D with Quickening Thirst equipped.

You owe me 3.5 silver

Edit: The distance traveled in 13 seconds using D/D with Quickening Thirst with and without Signet of the Locust were the same.

While I’m not sure about WvW (I’m told conditions have a lifespan of a few seconds there, don’t really care enough to find out if it’s true) duration in PvE is very good, since it’s a strict multiplier to your damage, so it can be more helpful to your damage than certain amounts of condition damage.

Food is very biased towards duration. 36% duration food can be equivalent to more than 360 condition damage in a full build that already has 1000 condition damage.

I can show a difference in speed between D/D and D/W (with Quickening Thirst) in the Heart of the Mists. Get a long clear stretch, run for 10 seconds (watch / stopwatch) then stop, hit the about-face button, switch weapon sets and run for another 10 seconds.

Repeat with a couple runs where you don’t switch weapon sets, and you’ll note that when you don’t switch you end up exactly where you started. If you switch from D/X -> D/D you’ll end up behind your original starting point, with D/D -> D/X you’ll end up in front of it.

There’s better, more formal testing listed on its discussion page at the wiki, but I’ll admit it was a few months ago.

natsos.3692:

I don’t get it , why staff should be an “All marks” weapon?
Name one other weapon that works this way, have you seen an “All Illusions” mesmer weapon? Have you seen an “All Stealth” thief weapon? Nop, because they don’t make sense! The build diversity starts from weapon skills !

While I don’t really mind that the staff is all about the marks, I’d like to note that this change probably caused my major problem with the staff: there’s four distinct spread-out traits for it. In reality there’s only one trait that spells out ‘staff’ (Staff Mastery, for 20% reduction) and all the others reference marks. So my bet is that those traits were made & placed while marks were a general weapon skill that you tended to have one or two of on any given weapon set, then kept exactly as is and where they were even when marks were changed to all be on one weapon and nowhere else.

So on this note, I’d like to see those traits changed to explicitly reference staff and be merged together into 2, maybe 3 traits.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT

Stop equating necromancer minion AI to mesmer illusion AI!

Mesmer illusions have minimal amounts of health and are capable of attacking the one target they were cast on. Necromancer minions are NPC allies with moderate amounts of health that persist between fights and must switch targets within combat.

HiSaZuL.2843:

No contempt so you are free to take it or leave it. Explain wall of text… people do love throwing that one out when they have no argument.

To explain 20 stacks of vuln from focus its 5 possible bounces, with no other targets nearby it will bounce 5 times on the same target stacking 4 vuln each time. So you get 10 seconds of 20 vul stack at base cond duration.

About pvp and pve… PvP is integral part of the game to exclude it bluntly from conversation serves no purpose because original poster asked for advice.

Also softspoken you are a bit wrong about shadow fiends out damaging bone fiend. Bone fiend has finisher with constant poison fields and dual projectiles poison adds quiet a bit of damage also unlike shadow fiend over time he never looses on effective dps, for all the times terrain forces most minions to stand about doing nothing and for all the time sf gets 1 shoted by aoes. True it isn’t that much of a difference early on but on later maps and especially dungeons and dragon events difference is like earth and sky. One is dead more often then not the other is ranged and if you play your placing game properly will stay put of the way. Heck in dungeon there is hardly even any point in having sf out instead of running bf,bm,bf,fw,golem. There are some events and dungeon spots where is aoe blind is pretty nice to have around but if you really need aoe blind there are better alternatives granted they are not minion related sadly.
Edit: For minion healing purposes transfusion is the best way to go about. Yes it doesn’t scale, yes it requires 1 trait slot but it doesn’t take utility slot and its moving aoe heal with heavy aoe damage on top.
Edit2: Since nobody explained this part. Let take base minion master pve build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjEal6ta2a07JApHRT90TK4GcIF5KNA-T0Ag0CnIWStkbJzSylsLNwYFxBjpIvIA once you have your minions healing you with every hit you will generate over 1k health on every attack round from minions at 80(its less noticeable on lower levels). And them acting as a meat shields. So you get a lore of survivability as long as they are alive. Even against karkas you have a lot of leeway and they hit HARD. In other scenarios lets say you are in Fireheart Rise map… all the flame legion shamans have a cone fire aoe which does quiet a bit of damage due to how fast it hits, lets say you run into one throw your shadow fiend with his active way ahead of the pack while rest are following to your sides he gets hit with that aoe, you pop axe #3, you are getting hit with that rapid aoe while rest of minions on the side, shadow fiend dies almost instantly but retaliation against that attack will lop ~40% of enemies hp while minions that didn’t walk into that aoe will make sure you stay topped off. Minions make running berserker gear with no defenses actually bearable.

With all due respect HiSaZuL, your posts could do with some formatting / breaking up. Double line breaks make a post more digestible, and your abuse of the ellipsis can be frustrating.

Also, reaper’s touch doesn’t bounce on a sole target. If you have a completely isolated target and you’re out of range, it’ll just hit once for 4 stacks of vulnerability. Since it has to go from one target to another, at most 3 of its 5 hits will be on a single enemy, for 12 stacks of vulnerability.

The title of the thread is “Minion PvE question”. Excluding PvP oriented advice is rather understandable.

As for combo finishers on Bone Minions: I’ll admit, I didn’t take that into account, and given a few comments about dungeons and groups from earlier, combo fields are likely to be present. Although I’d like to note that if we’re talking about early PvE, you won’t have Death Nova.

Your scenario is sort of an odd one: against an enemy that you know applies a lot of rapid damage directly in front of it, you’re going to make sure to send the shadow fiend in early? That seems like trying to use it as a tank, which doesn’t really fit its strengths. Wouldn’t you just let it run up and attack after you pull aggro with Axe 1, then use the aggro to turn the shaman so his flame thrower is only pointed at you instead of spraying across the crowd?

I mean sure, maybe the shadow fiend is more likely to die, but if the bone fiend is standing at your heel when you’re taking a flame bath, isn’t it in sort of a danger zone as well? You can take efforts to position both of them.

Even with its smaller health pool, It’s probably much easier to keep the bone fiend alive due to its range, but you still need to do some positioning with it, similar to shadow fiend.

Nervs.6702:

When entering DS and then coming out of DS there seems to be a delay of 1-4sec of delay before any of your utilities show up which between the spaces of that delay I cannot cast any of the abilities. Now i don’t know if Anet meant to do this, but i believe its a bug or i am i coming out of DS too fast ?

I know exactly what bug you’re talking about, and I’ve got it on the list, but I can never get it to occur consistently on my character. Also, are you serious about a 4 second delay because that’s a really long time compared to any observations I’ve made on this.

Mm, because of the way the damage formula works out (everything is multiplied) generally you need over 1200 power at level 80 (1200 * 0.15 = 180) for the active to give you more damage. But you probably have at least 1800 power, so at that point the passive is a 10% boost while the active is 15% (Equivalent to 270 power).

At least, that’s how I think it works. If anyone has knowledge to the contrary, feel free to correct me.

In any case, a lot of the point of Assassin’s is using it when you need a spike of damage, like to ensure that someone low on health gets finished off before they heal, or to maximize the spike damage potential of something like a Hidden Killer enhanced backstab.

The only misinformation there was that Focus 4 heals minions. It does not, though its description implies that it does and is pretty misleading. If you’re running healing power & dungeons though, bouncing regen to your allies is worthwhile. Also, if the vulnerability from Axe’s auto is enough to get you to recommend it, the stacks of vulnerability from focus 4 should be good enough as well.

Edit: Hey guess what I found out? Focus 4 can actually hit minions now! It will never target them though, even if nothing else is in range. The minions have to bodyblock / intercept it.

One thing about shadow fiend: it out damages bone fiend rather significantly, considering their relative attack speeds, so it might be worth trying to keep alive. Over time the damage can be pretty comparable to that of bone minions, if you don’t have Death Nova.

Oh, and Haunt (Shadow Fiend’s active) is a small AoE, so you can use it to group-hug clumped up enemies.

Been testing it, and I was wrong. Your character doesn’t say the chant every time like I remembered.

Lyssa tends to apply a poison or a single bleed the most often. Burns are pretty rare, then there’s blinds, blind/chill, cripple, cripple/chill, weakness, and sometimes a single stack of vulnerability or vuln/chill. I have yet to see immobilize or confusion.

The boons for yourself are kind of nice. In fact, there’s a chance to get vigor! It’s an abysmally low chance and it only lasts for about 3 seconds (applied with 3 seconds of swiftness), but vigor! Otherwise though you’re fairly likely to get aegis or retaliation.

In any case, I’d rate the ‘random boon’ part of this skill much more highly than the ‘random condition’.

tl;dr – For a Necro, the condition from Lyssa is often worthless, but the boon can be a nice surprise. It’s unreliable though, so while it adds a little general survivability, it’s equally likely you’ll get a boon you can’t make full use of.

Somewhat off topic: Blood is Power on a conditionmancer is all about the 350 condition damage, imo. The long duration bleeds that will kill an opponent incapable of cleansing them is an excellent bonus, but secondary to the extra damage you’re doing with all the conditions you already stacked.