Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Edit: softspoken you do make a good point about the lack of corruption traits. There should be more for those skills. But complaining about the grandmaster traits both being centered around minions is a bit lame. Someone could just as easily say they were mad about both grandmasters in SR being for DS. If you dont want those traits then pick something else. If there is nothing else why are you still going down that line? They cant give us everything in every trait line otherwise the whole trait system would be pointless. Picking and choosing what you want comes at the price of sacrificing something else in another area.
One major difference is that SR boosts death shroud intrinsically in one of its attributes, and that every build (like it or not) has death shroud. High toughness builds exist without being minion builds, and boon duration doesn’t seem relevant to minions in the slightest. Plus it’s a lot more feasible to have a build without minions than a build without death shroud.
It’s not a big deal though, because it’s literally the last thing in that line. I’d rather have the grandmaster traits be niche than almost anything else in the tree.
Make them more meaningful (more jagged horrors, or stronger ones), or just axe them.
I agree. I like some of the concepts behind them, but just feel like they could be made more impactful and thus, more interesting. I have ideas for this but they’re not well formed and probably better placed in a different thread.
My personal “gripe” with our traits is how absolutely boring most of them are. This is slightly in line with what Softspoken has mentioned, in that it seems a large portion of the traits available simply are “Percentage Based” traits. What I mean by this is that traits aren’t creative, but rather along the lines of “X does Y% more damage” or “X recharges Y% faster”. While inherently useful, these traits don’t tend to reward creativity or ingenuity, which is how some new builds tend to be formed.
Let’s perform a quick count of “Percentage Based” traits (excluding minors, since they are obtained without choice)
-list snip-
I’m certainly not against Percentage Based traits at all. My concern is that many of these traits don’t particularly allow for great levels of diversity and creativity. In their design, they “tell” you how to use them. "This one decreases recharge times, so you use the same skill(s) more often! Spam that skill and feel the non-monotonous creative juices bubble within you! "
First, I meant in the context of minion traits, although I’m starting to second-guess my judgement on that.
Second, while I agree that most of these % boosts are boring, others really aren’t. Death’s Embrace is a massive boost in damage, in a very restricted, edge-case environment. I honestly feel like it has an interesting role. Near to Death also counts, since the 5 second DS enables the double-tap builds that keep really high uptime on fury and retaliation, or other such gimmicks like consistent healing from Deathly Invigoration.
I’m now on edge about Flesh of the Master and Training of the Master though. Both are pretty drastic boosts, and could be used to define if your minions are there to soak damage or to deal it.
So I feel like % changes can be really interesting when they’re quite dramatic. Otherwise yes, I agree they can be boring. Effective, but a little boring, because they don’t change/form your playstyle so much as they just cement it.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
LOS does have an effect on it, please just go try it on the arch near Greenwater. You stand near the flag guard, cast it on the top of the arch, and if you dont look at it, you will port directly under it. While you’re not looking at it, the Red Bar for Out of range is active, and when looking at it, the red bar is removed and you teleport on the archway. I’ve tested this numerous time while waiting for dolyaks/roamers to kill.
The spell will still work even if you dont see it, but you won’t move up or down, only in the direction the wurm is.
So I played with it on this particular arch: I could actually get the skill to work without looking at the wurm, while the indicator was still red. (Teleported from the ground up to on top of the wall / arch). So it’s weird all around. :/
And regarding the Arah example: I’m sorry man, but I don’t run Arah, and I’m not gonna stop a pick up group so I can test shadowstep pathing in that segment.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It may not be the focus of the thread, but I’m glad the discussion of the Necromancer trait tree is growing into something more focused and thoughtful than “The tree’s a mess!” and “No it’s not!”.
Anyways, I agree with a few of the complaints about the death magic tree. Having both grandmaster traits be minions only is kind of bleh, but I can live with it since you can invest 20-25 points in a trait line if you just want the stats before grandmaster traits are a problem. What really bothers me is how the first two minor traits are minions only. (Protection of the Horde actually bothers me more than Reanimator. In a non-minion build, while reanimator is of severely limited usefulness, protection of the horde is only good for 20 toughness at level 80 while your jagged horror is alive. Yet it’s a minor trait, despite how very niche it feels.) I feel like minions are just not necro-wide enough to justify minor traits made for them. This is especially because minion builds benefit so much from going all minion traits, and other builds tend to hurt themselves a bit when they throw in a minion just for the heck of it.
I also think necromancers should have the option to invest more heavily in corruption skills but I don’t have a really solid idea on how that would work. I’d like to see the trait(s?) outside of Curses though. The idea would be to make corruption skills a little more attractive to non-condition damage builds they, if you take a certain interesting trait. (Make it more attractive for power builds with a power-focused trait in Spite, for example?)
I’d actually support having a few minion traits removed if the minions were buffed accordingly. There really are a lot of them everywhere, and some of them are sort of boring (I’m talking about flat stat boosts. Death nova, necrotic corruption, fetid consumption, vampiric master are all interesting and alter what minions are for, which is just what I want out of traits.) so I wouldn’t mind them being moved aside for more gameplay-altering traits.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Corrupt Boon being unblockable and not being blocked by Aegis would be a dream come true for most Necromancers.
Does this still happen? I remember a patch (I think last October or November!) that explicitly noted corrupt boon should now rip aegis instead of getting blocked by it.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Jagged Horrors are literally scaled down Bone Minions. Change one or the other. (I suggest changing Bone Minions, since they seem to get a lot of complaints already for other reasons. Maybe something based on a skeletal canine / wolf, rather than a skale?)
Jhorrors and Bone minions are undead rodents with a human skull pasted on them, a skale have a skeletal fishy head and long tail. Wurm is wurm, Blood fiend is Wind Rider, Bone fiend is a devourer, but bone minions are in no way related to skale!
Even if they somehow are it just shows that the artist was on a wild party got drunk, probably created some roadkill that he then took home, made a picture of it while on crack and then used photoshop and said picture in a very creative way and just slapped undead skale under it the next day with a massive headache and a new plush toy.
The reason I say that is, they have very similar animations. I suppose in that vein they could also be based on gravelings.
I don’t really mind that they’re based on other animals in the game, (although I lost some of my respect for blood fiend after I saw my first wind rider) my main beef is that those two minions are the same model, at different sizes.
Regarding blood is power and corrupt boon: Both of these actually have visual effects, they’re just subtle. I like them; corrupt boon’s reminds me of consume conditions, and the white / black of it implies the dual / converting nature of the skill, while blood is power is a dark explosion at the center of the character. It’s just a deep cut, which is all it does to them, really. Maybe something similar on the Necromancer but with something to indicate an influx of power would work, but it doesn’t feel that necessary.
Those 2 are from GW just remade, BiP (yay for battery) was self cut (the hp cost, in this case self bleed) while Corrupt boon (seems like it) gets its animation from Rip Enchantment or pretty much every other enchantment rip (sparkle and then green/black splash as necro hit animation).
Oh, that’s kind of cool. Neat to see visual cues carried over, instead of just spell names.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I think they’re good visual suggestions, but I also think there needs to be some more for other skills that are more often used. I’m really sick of Necrotic Grasp, I have to sit there using it 10,000 times a day and all I see is this weird and out of place claw coming out of my bloody scythe. Why would Necromancers shoot disembodied hands at people? I mean, it’s just out of place. I can understand spectral grasp, I can even understand Dark Path, but… WE HAVE TOO MANY SEVERED HAND THEMES!!! Not enough mythical, too much cartoony. Next I would improve some of visuals of corruption skills, they seem so lackluster just “They’re there now!@$! I think…” Blood is Power could use a visual effect of some sort, as well as Corrupt Boon.
I think the hands thing could be better done, but I like the idea behind it. Sort of the mental image that the Necromancer has a death grip on their opponent, dragging them down to the grave. Necrotic grasp could probably be salvaged if more was made of it ‘stealing’ the life force from opponents it hits, but I agree that it doesn’t really invoke that close-up, grabbing feel something like spectral grasp cashes in on. But things like grasping dead, and dark path are good as is. I’m not gonna fight the hand that bleeds.
Regarding blood is power and corrupt boon: Both of these actually have visual effects, they’re just subtle. I like them; corrupt boon’s reminds me of consume conditions, and the white / black of it implies the dual / converting nature of the skill, while blood is power is a dark explosion at the center of the character. It’s just a deep cut, which is all it does to them, really. Maybe something similar on the Necromancer but with something to indicate an influx of power would work, but it doesn’t feel that necessary.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
As much as I like the current iteration of the Necromancer (seriously I think a ‘rework’ would be overkill) there are definitely skills I want to be improved. I’m not totally comfortable preaching about skill balance (Edit: Except Signet of Spite, that needs some changing, and I’m inclined to say a shorter recharge and maybe removing the bleed) so I’ll just stick to visuals.
So everything else in this post is about visuals.
Things I’d like, in order of personal importance:
Corrosive Poison Cloud has practically zero visual impact. When cast it kind of blotches up the ground. It actually reminds me of a well, if you take out the “Blighting the earth” (Blindness, corruption, suffering) and “Arcane symbol” parts of a well’s visual themes. AKA the coolest, most distinguishing parts.
Make CPC have a vertical graphic / particle that gives it an actual horizontal profile, possibly similar to poison clouds used by NPC enemies. Also, scale the poison-y effect to fill the AoE circle. The current one is pretty dang tiny.
Jagged Horrors are literally scaled down Bone Minions. Change one or the other. (I suggest changing Bone Minions, since they seem to get a lot of complaints already for other reasons. Maybe something based on a skeletal canine / wolf, rather than a skale?) Edit2: Actually, maybe make jagged horrors a scaled down bony canine, Fighting on for you loyally to their last breath. And don’t forget, in great stories, the dog always dies.
Skills that generate life force should also generate green orbs, similar to (but probably smaller than) when you kill a foe. Then you can let things like ghastly claws give multiple orbs if the channel completes, or feast of corruption could show an orb for each condition. Just another way to visualize an in-game mechanic.
Dark Path could stand to regain its AoE Chill on arrival graphic, (Visible in some old beta videos, similar to Sigil of Hydromancy) tinted a lot darker / with black. Really show off that “Boom here I am” gimmick.
Mark of Blood has one issue: the particle effect when it triggers is more like “Mark of Water”. Well of blood has the same “blood is light blue” problem too, but I can give it a pass because it’s a persistent healing area. By the time mark of blood has triggered, your allies can’t really act on that light blue cue, so we can go for the dark reds of blooood. Also it matches the bleeding half of the skill.
Mark graphics are good and bad. I love the ones that are there, I just wish the skill icons actually matched them. Also reaper’s mark could use its own graphic symbol, it currently shares the same one as chillblains. Greater marks could also scale up the size of the marks, rather than putting tiny symbols in huge circles.
Spectral Wall needs something. I can’t for the life of me think of what though: adding symbols to the dark flames just seems over-the-top, and I can’t think of how to communicate both Protection for Allies and Vulnerability for Foes.
That’s all of them. Anyone like these, or think they’re too much / the wrong direction?
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Are your stats more aggressive (power/prec/crit damage) or defensive (toughness, vitality)? If you’re defensive, definitely don’t take 30 in spite: your role isn’t going to be doing damage when well/staff supporting, and the trait won’t help your minions, so traits that are mostly just More Damage aren’t right for you. If you’re really aggressively statted then I question your overall strategy of switching to support mode, but then 10 points in spite would work.
Otherwise the death magic traits are pretty solid, in my opinion. I’d only take the blood magic traits if you’re finding yourself having more trouble with conditions than anything else while in minion mode.
tl;dr – Go death magic unless you’re a power build in disguise (then go spite) or you can’t handle conditions with your minions (then go blood magic).
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
LoS has nothing to do with it, the problem is it is finicky about moving you through unpassable terrain, or to/through places you couldn’t easily walk through.
But its not just that. Its buggy on un-level ground aswell. Sometimes it teleports you most of the way but then stops 300-500 units short of the max distance even though that last stint of distance is completely smooth, somehow doesnt have an issue with the bumpy part of the terrain until your past it.
Could you give an example of where you’re seeing this? I’d like to examine it and it’s nice to know where to look.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Okay, I tested this a bit. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but I’m adding it to the list at the top of the forum.
One thing to note: your spreadsheet makes a point of the health per tick : total health ratio, but it doesn’t point out that between professions a tick of health constitutes the same percentage of their downed state health. As it is I was confused for a bit because it implied that necromancers take less damage than other classes from the downed state degen. (On a static scale they do, but on a % scale relative to their downed health pool, they’re the same as all other professions.) Maybe you could add another row that shows the size of the downed health pool for each profession, and compare that to their ‘standing’ health pool?
Edit: For the record, does this show up in WvW as well? It tends to use the same numbers as PvE, but there have been exceptions to that rule.
True enough, it could be confusing. I pointed out it was wrong later on that post. It isn’t included in the spreadsheet either because I don’t have accurate information for all classes regarding to that. Just necromancer and elementalist. Still, dying after same amount of ticks (precicely 30, but in reality 31 as ticks are rounded down), and assuming your first downed state starts at 3/4 of your downed health, we can say clearly how things are. As necro doesn’t follow same rules as other professions, there might also be another profession which does not follow these rules same way as other professions and my test wouldn’t detect all of those. This is just enough to know that necromancer downed state in it’s very basic calculations is in serious disadvantage compared to elementalist and VERY (99% sure) likely compared to other professions.
And yes, it applies to PvE and WvW as those follow almost same rules.
As it is, I think your information is sufficient as long as the 30 ticks of degen to die rule is constant. (Or at least near-constant, give or take say 2 ticks.)
And I’ll note that it’s in WvW in my thread. Also, this could explain some of the ‘instant death’ effects people are seeing in other threads: say for a particular profession, taking 5000 damage between dropping into downed and the UI makes them ‘start’ at 1/2 health. Doesn’t sound too crazy, right? But for a necromancer with similar health, that same damage would drop them straight to defeated, before the UI even pops up.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Just tested this, and yes, the Necromancer’s downed pool is significantly smaller in PvE than other classes / in PvP.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Okay, I tested this a bit. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but I’m adding it to the list at the top of the forum.
One thing to note: your spreadsheet makes a point of the health per tick : total health ratio, but it doesn’t point out that between professions a tick of health constitutes the same percentage of their downed state health. As it is I was confused for a bit because it implied that necromancers take less damage than other classes from the downed state degen. (On a static scale they do, but on a % scale relative to their downed health pool, they’re the same as all other professions.) Maybe you could add another row that shows the size of the downed health pool for each profession, and compare that to their ‘standing’ health pool?
Edit: For the record, does this show up in WvW as well? It tends to use the same numbers as PvE, but there have been exceptions to that rule.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Sword mainhand. Save your initiative for infiltrator’s strike and shadow return, and you should be able to cleanse the poison before it drags you down. I can’t remember if Doc “I’m a dangerous woman” Howler buffs herself: if she does, take dagger offhand for flanking strike. Otherwise take pistol offhand and pistolwhip her if you have the initiative.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Do you move at all, even a few steps, when you activate the teleport? Also, can you walk to its location without jumping or falling / sliding?
lol
is wurm teleport the only one you have to stand still for it to be reliable now?
its funny to see the lowered expectations alot of people have for this class.
I meant does the active skill move the character at all. I wasn’t asking if they were walking/running when they used the activated skill.
It’s not lowered expectations, by the way. I’m trying to troubleshoot / debug, and for that I need more details about the situation. As it is, I don’t tend to get many problems with the teleport on this skill.
Edit: Trying to push at the edges of this skill now. Being a little out of range isn’t a big problem: if the path could be completed at all, you’ll be pulled 1200 distance towards it. Necrotic traversal can short-cut past stairs and ramps in interesting ways, but seems to have some trouble with large gaps. Even if there’s a path around the gap, NT doesn’t always pull. I may try to figure out if this is based on a distance restriction, but I won’t have the spare time required in the next few days.
As expected, the skill doesn’t do well when either the worm or the player are on platforms you cannot walk between. Although it seems NT is much more willing to pull the player towards an unpathable platform than it is willing to pull them across an unpathable platform.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Do you move at all, even a few steps, when you activate the teleport? Also, can you walk to its location without jumping or falling / sliding?
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
We have Stability in Lich form…oh wait…Lich moves at the speed of a glacier.(fitting because the “chill of death” right?)
Lich form doesn’t alter your movement speed.
As to Stability: I think it’s the same reason damage mitigation boons (Vigor, protection) are sparse on the necromancer. The naturally huge health pool and potential replenishability of death shroud means that a few too many extra boons (Like ignoring CC via stability) and the necromancer becomes too much of an immovable object.
I’m not sure I agree with that rationale / balance decision, but that’s my guess as to the reasoning behind it.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Is anyone else getting the focus “out-of-range” thing with focus abilities? I haven’t really noticed this, but most of my sPvP experience is in Heart of the Mists rather than actual matches.
@alex: I’d love to see the video! Although, minions having a delay isn’t that surprising to me. I think minions require a few attacks to land from the necro before they ‘lock on’ to a target, to prevent them from randomly chasing after anything hit by a stray attack. My guess is that in the circumstances you’ve outlined, you’re having trouble landing those first few attacks, leading to the minions not engaging on your target.
1ST i use dark pact(imobalize) i get up and close start hitting like crazy the skill ends we start the dance of DEATH and the pets enjoy the show for a while then after there nap they wave at the enemy and after tea they start atacking…
Should have bolded this:
@alex: I’d love to see the video!
Because quite frankly? That’s what I want here: a video that I can actually pick apart and analyze. Textual re-enactments don’t do well when it comes to minion issues.
Issues with minions are fairly widely reported, but tend fall into one of two categories: AI issues that affect all NPCs, or bugs that to be difficult to reproduce 100% accurately.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Not sure if this is a bug or not. But a thieves steal on a necromancers fear is longer then a necromancer fear. Shouldnt it also be half a second?
… No?
The thief steal creates a skill depending on the target. Information about the one corresponding to necromancers can be found here.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
You do realize that during all that, the Ghost Eater is constantly attacking you with wells that can drop you in seconds, right?
In addition to this, depending on the amount of oozes around, and their proximity to the traps and the Ghost Eater trying to kill you unless it bugs out for a moment, this requires coordination that simply isn’t possible with the in-game chat system.
The wells are dangerous, true. But I wouldn’t call them constant, and I would definitely call them avoidable. You can actually see them being spat at you, so there’s a bit of a heads up to start walking / prepare a roll. Personally I’m more afraid of his vapor blade x 7 attack.
As to coordinating on oozes: CALL A TARGET. That function (Along with Assist Target, for which the keybind will show up in your chat log when someone calls a target) is in the game for this exact reason.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.
I hear similar reasons for alot of necro stuff being the way it is.
Usually something like…
“well ability A was like this and because of that, ability B could not be that powerful. Then we had to nerf ability A but we forgot about ability B because we were too busy trying to figure out how to make mesmer GS AA into a piercing attack.”
Of all the ways to end that sentence, you picked spatial surge?
Do you have any advice for how to make a 1vMany build for the Necromancer?
yeah because I found it totally kittenin ridiculous they were working on something like this rather than virtually anything else with nearly any other class. It just shows how disconnected the devs are with their game.
Personally I thought it was an interesting change that increased the value of positioning for both the mesmer and their opponents. All in all, it’s a Good Thing, and I won’t frown on that kind of change.
And I take it that’s a “no” on the second question then.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.
I hear similar reasons for alot of necro stuff being the way it is.
Usually something like…
“well ability A was like this and because of that, ability B could not be that powerful. Then we had to nerf ability A but we forgot about ability B because we were too busy trying to figure out how to make mesmer GS AA into a piercing attack.”
Of all the ways to end that sentence, you picked spatial surge?
Do you have any advice for how to make a 1vMany build for the Necromancer?
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
My text only applies to conditionmancer, not power glass which I mainly play and I agree with all of that.
Ah, my mistake. I just have too many fond memories of playing with that golem’s boons.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
At the risk of sending you to an early grave, have you experimented with retaliation from the axe in a high power & toughness build? Retaliation is kind of the definition of a one versus many condition boon, and necromancers have surprisingly good access to it.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Problem with CoE is that the main boss you fight many times each patch, in all except path 3 spams total condition removal on himself every 5 seconds, making condition damage lacking. In addition there’s another boss which has a turret spamming him condition removal constantly. As for the power glass cannons, they work wonders there, and in every dungeon.
I find that boss an odd example, since I feel like necromancers can actually counter it rather well. Wells can damage the boss + two turrets simultaneously, and Life Transfer can hit all the turrets + the boss if you stand in the right spot. Piercing life blast (questionable, admittedly) and staff auto can also hit a turret + the boss. So a power-based necromancer can actually attack at least one turret of their choosing without sacrificing that much damage.
So you can take out the cleansing turret yourself, then use corrupt boon on the boss to give it vulnerability, confusion and poison that lasts about until the turret comes back up anyways. If you manage to get the cleansing turret and say, the protection turret down at the same time, you can drop well of corruption instead.
For me, the most difficult part of CoE in general are the subject alpha fights, and the difficulty there has very little to do with your profession. (It’s about if your team can coordinate enough to stack properly while having someone lure the ice blast, or group dodge at the same time while properly clearing crystals.) I’d wager the kick was at least as much because you were new to the dungeon than because you were a necromancer.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Personally I have my movement keys on ESDF, strafing with C as a turn around key. (I should probably bind D to the about-face, since I’m pretty sure backpedaling is always bad.) I have a hand on the mouse constantly to choose direction though.
All my skills are cluttered around there. It’s QWR|TG B 123 4. Dodge on V. And F1 is doubly-bound to Ctrl, since on a few of my characters it’s basically the only profession key I need to hit quickly / frequently.
Edit: The only unusual bind I have on my mouse is pressing the middle button to call out targets.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I’m of the personal opinion that red posts are pretty rare in most profession forums, but that staff / devs do read most of the threads. It’s just that the instant one of them posts, the thread will basically explode because quick now’s our chance ask him about everything.
I wish I had a better reason to give you, but it’s just my suspicion.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
yes when i’m playing ranged, and there are warriors and guardian in there it still goes after me, and i’m in full zerker and rabid on my chars.
Welp, I’m out of ideas then. Do less damage?
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Do you have much toughness on these characters? One theory (fact?) running around right now is that higher toughness boosts a character up the aggro table.
Another thing is that aggro is proximity based: unless you have a teammate running in directly on top of the boss and attacking it while you’re running, it probably won’t switch. Ranged attackers just don’t draw mob focus that well.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Consistency is a mark of great skill, and the better you are at a fight, the easier you make it look. It reminds me of watching speed runs. It looks fairly simple, but the actual execution and especially the length of time required where you absolutely cannot screw up tend to be much more difficult than it seems.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I had a post here about pros/cons of plague signet, but I wasn’t sure about it and mostly I’m just glad to see someone recognizing that plague signet is functioning correctly.
As long as i know ,Signet was allways work’d correctly.
Well it started off being a condition cleanse with stun break, then a transfer, then a targeted or nothing happens, then targeted, but stunbreak tends to work most of the time, the passive was pretty much copy all conditions onto you, copy 1 condition onto you pre 10 seconds, transfer 1 condition pre 3 from allies to yourself.
Yeah, it’s had a history. But it has functioned correctly for months and people still tried to bring it up on the bug list. :/
Anyways, my favourite usage of plague signet is to collect duration-stacking conditions from allies, like long duration burns or especially poisons. If I pull an 8 second burn that they can’t handle while I’m already burning for 5 seconds and about to cleanse, it doesn’t actually hurt me if I cleanse the burn stack within 5 seconds. But it can save them from having to suffer through that burn because they can’t afford to use their cleanse yet because the boss has a nastier trick waiting.
Pulling big stacks of bleed (15+?) can be pretty o_o though.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I had a post here about pros/cons of plague signet, but I wasn’t sure about it and mostly I’m just glad to see someone recognizing that plague signet is functioning correctly.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
The shortbow has a low-damage auto attack because 1) it hits hilariously quickly and 2) it has the potential to apply bleeding, which splits its damage.
But anyways, which warrior auto-attack are you referring to specifically? Keep in mind that melee weapons often / always do more damage because of the increased risk.
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DEATH SHROUD lackluster? “I only use it when I’m close to dying / to escape.” SERIOUSLY?
it’s an additional stun break (F1 – 3)
it’s an additional “life bar” to absorb your enemy’s burst
it’s a gap closer + aoe chill
and for frak’s sake get out of it (F1) if you’re a conditionmancer after using 3 and / or 2 to continue with your rotation …
Just for the record, doom isn’t a stun break. You can use it while stunned / knock-downed, but it doesn’t actually clear the control effect from you.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
That said, I do feel like the Necromancer’s poison access could be improved. The auto-attack on scepter could really benefit from a one-second increase in duration (and a corresponding nerf to the attack damage) just to make it possible to keep the poison stack going without a pile of bonus duration. As it is though, the skill is very good at prolonging an existing poison, and only gets better with build investment.
What I find more important is that corrosive poison cloud is not a good skill for stacking poison. It stacks slowly, has built-in hassle because it’s a corruption skill (your build has to deal with the self-applied weakness in some way, so it’s a rather specialized skill), and the base recharge is kind of long. (40 second recharge for base 15 second conditions, if your target is forced to stay inside the field.)
This is not to say corrosive poison cloud is awful, but it isn’t a skill that you can slot just because you want some AoE poison. You have to build around it a bit.Another way I think you could kill a few birds with one stone is to make Death Shroud somehow have access to poison. Maybe putting a 5 second poison on doom? Or a 1-2 second poison on life blast (Depending on how much life force you have) and make it a little bit hybrid?
CPC is a great skill, but only because it has a lot of synergy with Death Nova, Bone Minions, Chillblains, and Putrid Mark.
Those skills stack together very well, and can still be broken apart (meaning you don’t have to use them all at once). You don’t just stack poison, but you stack poison and weakness in tandem. Using minions to finish Chillblains or CPC, or using Putrid Mark to finish CPC or Death Nova fields, is a very effective way to keep both poison and weakness up on lots of targets. And because so much of it is pulsing, cleansing is of limited value because the effect will just get put right back on. Finally, because you’re often using multiple stacking poison fields the poison duration ramps up relatively quickly and scepter is decent for maintaining that duration until the inevitable cleanse.
Is this super-awesome? No. But it’s not bad, and there’s definitely some interesting synergy there.
Excellent points. I think that I agree CPC is a good skill, but you need other skills to take full advantage of it. In your example, CPC was part of an area-denial suite that had a few other poison fields included.
My intention in my first post was to say that if you decide you want to add poison application to your build, just taking CPC won’t suffice. This is compared to a thief taking shortbow or spider venom, or a ranger taking an off-hand dagger or viper trap. Both of these classes have focused “Take this skill for poison” choices, whereas the necromancer tends to get theirs bundled with other things. (Minions, chill, weakness)
I’ll admit this probably isn’t a huge cause for complaint. After all, the things poison tends to be bundled with are kind of great! But I must assert that Necromancers don’t have solid access to poison without moderate investment in other things at the same time, in comparison to thief / ranger which can have solid access to poison for very minor investments.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
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I think I know what you’re talking about. As Wethospu said, you don’t need to aggro the first giant group in path 1 (I think you can avoid it in path 3 as well, but I’m not sure if you can hop onto the ramp railing without pulling aggro anymore.)
You can skip a lot of those groups with stealth runs, so a thief with shadow refuge can make a lot of this dungeon much simpler.
If you want to do it without running past / skipping mobs (lack of thief, personal philosophy, w/e) One person sticks to the left (hug the wall, go behind the pillars) and pulls that group of 4 back to those giant doors you came in / left your group at. There you can deal with them fairly safely.
After that, you need to aggro those two riflemen guarding the tunnel without pulling the patrolling pair behind them. If you pull the extra patrol, you can still win the fight, but focus on the Thug if possible because his heals are really annoying. Get everyone into the shed on the right hand side of the tunnel entrance, then behind a corner inside it. The reason for this is it’ll force the 2 riflemen into near-melee range so they have line-of-sight, and the 4 other riflemen that spawn later will also be pulled to near-melee. If you stay out in the open, they spawn and just shoot you from relatively safe positions at least 1200 away, and are a huge pain to deal with. But if you all go in the shed, they have to follow you to get line of sight, where you can jump on them. It can be a tricky fight to set up, but you get a chest for it, so that’s nice.
After that, clear the first patrol (Archer & Thug) if you haven’t already. Then send someone to pull the group behind the riflemen on the scaffolding, then run back to a safe distance so you don’t have to deal with the riflemen simultaneously. This fight is harder, but a lot of the mobs in that group aren’t veterans / silvers, so it’s more doable than it looks.
After you clear them, run underneath the scaffolding the riflemen (enforcers?) are standing on (Dodge the kill shot!), recover your health if necessary (They won’t be able to shoot you until you’re up directly beside them), climb the ramp, and kill the two riflemen. From there you can walk safely across the scaffolding to near the cave exit. At that point, jump off the wooden platform, then another jump over the wooden fence outside the cave, and run up the riverbed towards the closed gate until you drop aggro. (You can also try to kill these groups, but it really isn’t necessary. This skip doesn’t require swiftness, stealth or stability, really, since once you’re over the fence the mobs take ages to path to you, and drop aggro once you’re in the back corner.)
All in all, you can get through this by sneaking around the really big groups, and pulling the smaller ones in pretty controlled ways. Or you can use group stealth to run past, if available, but I prefer more universal approaches, myself.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
From what I’ve seen of this, heavy life stealing is nice, but it won’t replace your active heal or anything. It’s fun, but it can’t be your entire build.
Also, I think that Bloodthirst won’t have any effect on the life steal effects from runes, sigils, or food, just as a heads up.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I went from 2900 and change to 2701 I really haven’t noticed much of a difference.
Just going to use these numbers as an example for the thread, if that’s okay! Although I’m going to change 2701 to 2700 for pretty numbers.
If I understand the formulas correctly, dropping from 2900 to 2700 defense (armor + toughness) would be mean you’re taking 107.4% the damage you were before, or 7.4% more damage. (2900/2700) So now you can take your previous # of hits taken and divide it by 1.074 to find the new number of hits you can survive. So if before you could take 20, now you can take… 18.6. So the difference you feel in combat isn’t particularly high. (for every 10 hits you could take before, now you can only take 9 of them)
Something I find interesting is to find how much of a damage increase you’d get if you shifted those 200 points to power. To find it as a % increase means you need to know the previous power. So say you had only 1200 power originally. This would make you deal 1400/1200 = 1.167 = 116.7% of your former damage, or 16.7% increased damage, compared to the 7.4% increased damage you’re taking. But what if you had a much higher amount of power, say, 2100? 2300/2100 = 1.095, so 9.5% increased damage in exchange you deal in exchange for the 7.4% increased damage you take.
For the curious, the two will break even when the transfer makes them switch places: if you originally had 2700 power, and gained 2900, that will create a 7.4% difference to match dropping from 2900 to 2700 armor.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Is anyone else getting the focus “out-of-range” thing with focus abilities? I haven’t really noticed this, but most of my sPvP experience is in Heart of the Mists rather than actual matches.
@alex: I’d love to see the video! Although, minions having a delay isn’t that surprising to me. I think minions require a few attacks to land from the necro before they ‘lock on’ to a target, to prevent them from randomly chasing after anything hit by a stray attack. My guess is that in the circumstances you’ve outlined, you’re having trouble landing those first few attacks, leading to the minions not engaging on your target.
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I’m explaining that Necro and Thief have limited access to Poison (Our best coming from Staff 3 and CPC), when other classes have larger access to it, which makes no sense.
I can’t take the “thieves have limited access to poison” statement seriously.
Spider venom is a 0 second cast time poison, as long as you have a utility slot open. On a single target, it grants a base duration of 30 seconds of poison for a 45 second recharge, if all attacks with the venom connect. If you have dagger, you can get some poison on the auto-attack, which I’ll admit is nice, but not that great. But if you have shortbow. Well.
Choking gas is AoE poison that also creates a poison field for your bouncing projectile finisher auto-attack. It applies 5 seconds of poison immediately, and applies another 5 seconds every second after that. Granted, this requires the target to stay in / re enter the poison field, but a thief can rack up at least 8 extra seconds of poison within 2 seconds with absolutely no bonus duration at a cost of 4 initiative.
And if they actually want to focus on poison application? There’s a trait for that. Oh and one to add it to Steal as well so it’s even more weapon independent. (Also note that last one is a minor)
I’ll admit, most of this is a statement that Choking Gas stacks poison far too well, rather than thieves having too much access to poison. But as it is? I cannot seriously consider poison access a problem for the thief.
So there’s my argument about thieves having more than sufficient access to poison, between a utility skill that works adequately on most builds, a pair of specialized traits and one exceptional weapon skill.
That said, I do feel like the Necromancer’s poison access could be improved. The auto-attack on scepter could really benefit from a one-second increase in duration (and a corresponding nerf to the attack damage) just to make it possible to keep the poison stack going without a pile of bonus duration. As it is though, the skill is very good at prolonging an existing poison, and only gets better with build investment.
What I find more important is that corrosive poison cloud is not a good skill for stacking poison. It stacks slowly, has built-in hassle because it’s a corruption skill (your build has to deal with the self-applied weakness in some way, so it’s a rather specialized skill), and the base recharge is kind of long. (40 second recharge for base 15 second conditions, if your target is forced to stay inside the field.)
This is not to say corrosive poison cloud is awful, but it isn’t a skill that you can slot just because you want some AoE poison. You have to build around it a bit.
Another way I think you could kill a few birds with one stone is to make Death Shroud somehow have access to poison. Maybe putting a 5 second poison on doom? Or a 1-2 second poison on life blast (Depending on how much life force you have) and make it a little bit hybrid?
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It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Part of it is the duration of the knockdown. Not only have you been interrupted, but you’re laying helpless on the floor in excess of 5 seconds if your stunbreaker is still recharging. It’s disproportionately long coming from a typical / silver mob.
Edit: Regarding the Ghost Eater, most of the coordination is managing his oozes and location. Once his shield goes down, he’s pretty helpless, and it’s pretty easy for everyone to see the “Now we hit as hard as we can” signal, what with the colour change, buff icon removed, and giant flash filling the screen.
As mentioned, he’s not particularly dangerous if you just make sure to keep out of his AoE pools, but I agree that it’s a long fight if you can’t fill & trigger traps quickly, or if you have to trigger too many. (imo, a group should be able to do it in 4 traps, 3 if they’re good at it, but if it takes 5 or 6 traps, the fight really drags on.)
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(edited by Softspoken.2410)
I suppose my point is that skipping is awesome, and I like being able to save time since it takes so many runs to get enough tokens for armor, etc. but I think it would be nice if more people would, in the event that one or more party member was really struggling with skipping, consider taking some time to clear some mobs to help them out.
Or at the very least, make a concerted effort to pull that member through. Too often I just see groups waiting while someone makes attempt after doomed attempt from the waypoint, growing impatient even though it’s obvious it’s not going to happen unless the group goes back and helps in some way.
(On this note, I <3 clever thieves)
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wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats
Specifically, exotic rabid equipment can be acquired from three different dungeons: Caudecus’ Manor, Twilight Arbor, and Honor of the Waves.
Edit: I’m partial to the HotW armor, myself.
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(edited by Softspoken.2410)
All I ask is that if your group fails the skip two or three times in a row, you stop and try something else because it isn’t going to happen.
I’m of the opinion that if the group can actually skip then fine, go for it. Shadow refuge runs are a great example of this, because they actually tend to work pretty well, and can be clearly explained. “k evryone run here” in a PUG does not.
What’s surprising to me is that often these groups are capable of killing the silvers that you can pull in small groups safely, to make a clear path, but they want to skip them because it’ll save time. Even though the group can’t actually get past without dying, so it doesn’t save any time at all.
Edit:
The thing that blows my mind is that sometimes dungeons are set up specifically to encourage the players to skip certain parts. Every time I play TA explorable, I get the not-so-insane feeling that certain parts were meant to be skipped just by how the terrain is setup and what the enemies’ attacks are. I think skipping in TA is about the only thing that makes the dungeon fun!
I couldn’t disagree more. Volatile blossoms are only dangerous when you’re running full tilt at them. If you go slow, you can easily clear them without setting them off, but if you’re being chased, it’s a lot more difficult.
Nightmare Court Knights and Hounds and the like seem to have knockdowns, cripple, and the occasional immobilize, all of which are effects that specifically keep someone in the fighting zone.
Honestly I feel like TA is set up to discourage running through, but people are figuring out how to do it anyways. Which is fine, really! But don’t be surprised when teammates (especially PUGs) have trouble with it.
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(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Whenever I have tested this, it has functioned correctly. I also think that it pulls a condition much more frequently than the wiki implies (3-5 seconds, maybe?), but it does cure the condition on allies you pull it from.
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I never catch it the first time, but if I’m running a finisher-heavy weapon set I start saving finisher skills (Especially blasts and whirls) for whatever fields I’ve noticed being put down that our group doesn’t have. If we’re already loaded with burning and might, I don’t save it for fire fields, I’d rather blast finisher into an ethereal field for chaos armor on everyone. If there are a lot of conditions flying around I’ll save whirl finishers for light fields, etc.
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Yes this was a design choice. That’s what I’ve stated all along. I simply failed to see why it was a “Good” design choice.
It was not my intention to disagree, just to clarify on my practices regarding the bug list.
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@DelOnasai
I doubt this is a bug since most players don’t even view it as a bug. Most have just accepted it as how things work.
It’s not even included in the Necro Bugs Complilations sticky. I think the chances of it ever getting “fixed” are slim to none.
For the purposes of the sticky, only mismatches between explicitly stated behaviors and actual observations are listed as bugs. (With rare exception.) Since there’s nothing to explicitly state that minions should be gaining regen, and the only precedent for necromancer minions regaining life outside of combat is an elite skill (the sort of skill that tends to break general trends / rules anyways), I’m disinclined to include it.
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So i could drop it and a 10 people could run through it in a 2 second window and not even get a pulse? 3 second pulse is way too long…
Correct. I was just testing this in Heart of the Mists with the running golem. If you place CPC across a part of its path with correct timing, it can run into the cloud and run out again without receiving any of the conditions.
That said, it’s not like that 3 second window starts for your opponent once they run in. Even with excellent timing, it’s more like a 2.5 second window. And even then there’s no visual indicator of the pulse, so you’d have to note exactly when it was cast / see someone get hit to know when the pulses were.
Edit: Basically, it’s theoretically possible, but they have to get through CPC very quickly and get a little lucky.
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(edited by Softspoken.2410)
Necromancer needs something unique that sets them appart from other professions beside DS and epidimic. And fear should be one of them.
Grenth says:
Do not practice Necromancy on forum threads! I can’t allow every pointless resurrection you can dream up!
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