(edited by digiowl.9620)
Well i was not present at the time, but from what i read it could take whole groups of opponents to take down a single necromancer. So i guess the pendulum swung a bit far the other way in response, and is likely to swing back a ways at time goes on. Just mean we need to maintain patience.
Also, i find that MH dagger can be nasty in PVE when i manage to mix in some DS properly. Still get flattened by concentrated groups of mobs tho, but i can often clear out a dredge mining suit and friends even when i forget to target the suit first.
put DS on alt as a alternate bind, so i can hit it with my thumb quickly btw. sped up my ability to go DS and fire of 2 and 3 as comboes considerably. Should play nice with engineer and mesmer alts as well as it means i have the heal or shatter within quick reach.
While it will do a lovely bit of damage, it can for a large part be reduced with a single condition wipe. If you want to spread a bit of mayhem you can always replace WoC with Epidemic.
I guess the bleed is an inheritance from the Lich transform, as there you summon 5 of them with a single mark.
Crazy thing is that is makes a fair bit of sense. Get mobs and such to focus on you, while your minions nibble them to death. Then you use traits like minion health stealing and condition consumption to keep yourself alive. Still, the games current opaque aggro system makes for a less than simple play style.
Remove bleeds entirely from Necro and give us Necrosis stacks instead.
in Necromancer
Posted by: digiowl.9620
Not so much we need it as it is either that or a boost in direct damage performance.
This because our non-DS direct damage lags our condition damage ability.
From what i understand, BW2-3 necro was very difficult to kill thanks to DS. So Anet nipped and tucked between BW3 and release, and the result is what we are playing right now. Necro can still be difficult to kill, but it will require jumping in and out of DS nearly as often as cooldown allows. This to spread the damage between LF and health, while picking up various boons and such from the transition.
The thing about mesmers is that they are very strong in PVP but so so in PVE. This because mobs can, and often will, ignore a mesmer clone. But players have a very hard time telling one from the other, and the targeting tools are not helping beyond the “call target” trick when first encountered.
When a thief stealths to break lock, opposing players can basically auto-target them the moment they re-appear, unless there are other enemies in the area. With a mesmer, once a target lock has been broken, there are 3-4 targets in the area to sort thru before one consider the issue of other enemy toons.
Mobs however maintain a perfect situational awareness at all times and can tell who the mesmer is and who the clones are continually. It is actually harder to build a realistic game AI than one that can stomp all players at all times.
As such mesmers, even more so than thiefs, rely on playing the meta-game. They bypass the stats and mechanics and play the human element.
Remove bleeds entirely from Necro and give us Necrosis stacks instead.
in Necromancer
Posted by: digiowl.9620
If they make a new condition, I’d really like for it to be able to affect objects. Attacking turrets/generators/gates/cells with a condition build is hell.
Well “necrosis” could tie into that as a kind of accelerated decay. So when hitting inanimate objects they would rot or rust, and hitting living beings they would kind of age rapidly (More accurately, cells would die faster than they could be replenished. But outwardly it would take on the appearance of aging. if the engine had allowed such detail that is).
Remove bleeds entirely from Necro and give us Necrosis stacks instead.
in Necromancer
Posted by: digiowl.9620
Or how about having some kind of mechanic for when the bleed stack overflows?
Anyways, i think the real issue is how events deal out rewards. You can’t really do anything but hurt the event mobs or else you get a bronze. Bump into the condition stack roof, revive fellow toons, or do anything but hurt the mobs and you see your end reward slip.
Ugh, i so wish they did not have two mechanics that was so similarly named and behaved. People seem to conflate or confuse the two all the time (for time to to time i have to remind myself that the underwater weapon effects are life siphon, not health siphon).
Oh and that guardian trait looks like an insult to guardians. 25 heal only with a GS? And it is one of their two grandmaster majors for that trait line? I really do wonder how many guardians actually use it as part of their build.
I suspect most would simply ignore the skinned rat if it didn’t trigger the customary summoning sounds each time it spawned and died.
yep. PvP have the always removed issue, whil PvE have the maxed stack issue.
Indeed. The damage reported on a condition tooltip is what you can expect done once the duration has run out. In comparison the direct damage is done the moment the attack animation completes playing.
Thing is that this ends up being less about character skill and more about player skill.
“Bad link” is bad and you should feel bad!
It’s called copy and paste. Well known issue gw2skills sometimes results in bad links.
For some reason this forum insists on converting / and friends into % codes.
So in essence necro works fine as long as we run in circles like a duracell bunny hit by a lightning bolt.
Yet again it seems we are talking past each other, as some are talking PVE, some WvW, and yet others sPVP. The focus of the game balance so far appears to be the latter, sPVP. And no wonder, as it is designed to be highly level playing field in terms of gear and stats, leaving the outcome more to player skill than anything else. PVE and WvW is more gear based, as you bring what you have scavenged or bought.
(edited by digiowl.9620)
(NB0093) Deathly Swarm (Dagger 4) removes three conditions from the player and applies them to ALL targets hit.
Not seeing this in PVE. I had both a bleed and a cripple on me and hitting one target with dagger 4 removed only a single condition.
Honestly i fear the game code is a copy and paste mess at this time, where the same issue shows up multiple places.
Ya I remember that. At low level the thing is worthless because I believe it scales with your life.
When you get ~20k+ it lasts closer to the dev’s 11 seconds.
But at low levels it barely stays alive. Dying in less than 5 seconds.
Cause the bleed it does to itself is constant, while the life it has is tied to the amount of health you have.
Yet another reminder that the focus is sPVP, where everyone is 80 and exotic, not PVE…
@brokenforlife: it is not about the keybind itself, but that i have to hit 2-3 keys just to insert a quick gap closer in my sequence.
I sometimes wonder that what is holding me back from combing more with the DS abilities are that they hide on a whole different sub-menu. That is, i can’t simply hit a single key and fire of 2-4, i need to hit F1 first, then 2-4, and then F1 again to get back to using the skill set i have traited for. End result is that i go into DS for two reason, LB when 51%-100% for the damage output (rivals anything i have but Lich) and at any point as a panic button.
And there is a live talk coming up over at mmorpg.com, so i am speculating that they will hold off until then.
Give the horrors the ability to leap to their foes. As it a stands a slow moving slug that reaches its target with 1 second of life left is not verry horrific.
That or a range attack would indeed help, as then it spends less time chasing down its target and bleeding out in the process.
Axe plus dagger combination can be quite nice. 5-6 attacks with axe, switch to dagger and you will pull of some nice damage.
outside of the maintainability of the damage increase you get pretty much the same benefit from BiP now that it grants might. And said might goes with you if you switch target, vulnerability does not.
Also, you’re giving up our best source of AOE, the staff, to carry two fairly short range single target weapons.
You better go with offhand focus and Well of corruption for Vuln, especially because Focus4 also gives LF and Health as well as a good ammount of dmg.
Ah yes, the focus. That is another “huh?” in my book. i can’t figure out why they gave focus 5 a 1 second windup. Sure, it strips boons. But we are necromancers, if we want to mess with boons we use one of our utilities that will convert boons into conditions. The thing also has a 15 second recharge so it is not like we can go spam it everywhere. On most of the PVE stuff it is a single target chill and a soso damage ability.
I honestly do not get it, it does about as much damage as staff on auto.
The vulnerability amounts to basically zero. 10% increase in damage when we manage to keep the stack going? big whop. that adds about 100 to every 1000 damage done. BiP gives that much in a single go, plus the bleed.
And talking about bleed. Once scepter has the stack up, it does double the damage of axe main in bleed alone. And it has greater range. And you can spread the hurt around with epidemic.
And if you want to generate LF, go dagger. Possibly with warhorn for 5 and spectral walk on a utility. Never mind that the damage will be insane as auto attack sequence will do more than axe 2, and with no cooldown.
All in all, i do not see where it fits in the grand scheme of things.
It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.
I’d rather have all minions aggro random mobs than them being idle like they are now!
The funny thing is ranger pets and elementals not having those issues. Its a Necormancer exclusive.
This and other odd differences between profession abilities that one would think shared code hints towards a severe case of copy and paste during the development of this game.
That something makes it to release in a certain form does not indicate that it works as intended. Just as likely it was overlooked for some reason or other.
Sure, marking it as a bug may be overstating it a bit. But that you need to take up with the maintainer of the thread, not me.
And what kind of flexibility would it loose exactly? i see only win in that i could then drop in under dragon feet and expect to hurt the beast, or drop it on various breakables and actually make a difference.
So basically the idea is to stack retaliation on the minions and wait for someone to drop a multi-hit AOE on them?
Huh? Not sure i see the “problem” with NB0008 as right now going into DS heavily limits my situational awareness. This while going into any other transform retains this info.
As for NB0081, when marks do not trigger on “objects” it severly limits the usability of staff in various events and encounters.
As for fixed bugs, feel free to report them in the thread.
Them database sites really need to get the PVE and sPVP gear sorted.
Made the mistake several times.
Tho i guess you can to some degree tell the PVP item by it having no attribute modifiers.
(edited by digiowl.9620)
I give up, too much cross talk.
Thing about mesmers is that they can be tanky or squishy depending on the mobs going for their illusions or not. If the mob makes a b line for the mesmer he will be flattened, but if not he can keep the mob occupied at little harm to himself.
Also, those illusions gain stats directly from the mesmer himself. So the more power a mesmer can equip, the harder the illusions hit.
Given that they are running their halloween event at present, i suspect there will be no patch. This because the last act of the event starts on the 31. and so they are likely all focused of getting it working as smoothly as possible.
From what i understand, it does not affect dagger 2. It only seem to affect the various Blood Magic traits.
Or perhaps swap the ranges on scepter and axe? The more i think about it the more i feel i put myself in too much of a harms way for what i get out of the axe vs going scepter.
The bug is with the vampiric traits. And its related to downscaling. Bascially what seems to happen is that the damage scaling end up turning a high level toons vampiric drains into a heal instead when visiting low level areas. Best guess, someone coder forgot to define the variable for the damage value as unsigned, so it ends up going negative when the scaling is applied rather than stopping at zero.
The present aggro system is opaque to the point of RNG.
So, if you are thinking of quitting, what would have to be in the next patch to change your mind?
in Necromancer
Posted by: digiowl.9620
Either turn weakness into a fixed % damage boost, or make axe 1 stack might on us.
At least with scepter and epidemic i do not have to time it to the exact moment before i switch target if i want to carry the effect over to my next “victim”.
I hope you mean a fixed damage reduction . Also technically it already is.
50% reduction when it procs. It averages out to a 25% total damage reduction.
Actually i got weakness and vulnerability (what a word) crossed. Swapping the latter with might on a one for one basis seems to do just about the same in terms of damage, but removes the issue of sudden drops in damage each time you switch target.
Anyways, i did some numbers and actually the axe on paper seems to do comparable damage to comparable weapon sets from other professions. Thing is that i am unsure where it fits between MH dagger and scepter because the first out damage it, while the second may also out damage it (once the bleeds gets stacked) and also out-range it. And that is before taking into account things like epidemic where suddenly scepter becomes a AOE bleed source (never mind that is has a AOE cripple/bleed as a intermittent attack while vulnerability on its own does little.
On that note, perhaps axe 1 should get a small (120?) aoe effect rather than replace the condition.
Seems to be the case when using Well of Power at least:
So in essence wells work for two scenarios, PVE with mobs stacked around you like wood (except i thought the default necro MO was to kite kite kite, them some very tight turns) and PVP as point defense.
So, if you are thinking of quitting, what would have to be in the next patch to change your mind?
in Necromancer
Posted by: digiowl.9620
Either turn weakness into a fixed % damage boost, or make axe 1 stack might on us.
At least with scepter and epidemic i do not have to time it to the exact moment before i switch target if i want to carry the effect over to my next “victim”.
Heh, torch could work if its attacks produced a green/black flame.
I’ll back up the claim about range. A common stack from a single scepter necro is 10 bleed. That is on par with a warrior running around with various melee weapon auto attacks, even before considering things like the potential of maintaining permanent critical and doubling damage output (or more) via the critical damage modifier.
And that is the big thing here, condition damage do not crit. A single landed critical hit will remove several thousand health. But a stack of bleed only have the potential to do that damage. It still needs to run its duration for that to happen. And at any point during that duration it can be removed by the target or an ally of the target. As such, any increase in in condition duration is a lesser modifier when going for damage via conditions.
in other words:
Direct damage attack = realized damage
Condition damage attack = potential damage
Honestly, i wonder why PVE mobs do not use boons more. They seem downright incapable of doing anything more than push, pull, launch and fear.
So ye ol’ benny hill.
That is a lot of firepower to bring into action to take on a single thief.
Edit: 6k…6000dmg…Six-thousand. The number makes me sick when I see the highest I have done, ever, was 3.3k with DS#4 on my 20/25/25/0/0 with power, precision, and condition gear.
I can see how that works, as the warlock gets 10% extra damage pr condition on the target. Then there is the 10 point in Domination that give it 15% extra, and 10 in Dueling that give it continual fury. Meaning that if all conditions are in play it get 110% from them, 15% from the trait and 50% from the critical.
So some 175% damage boost right there. And at this point the target may well be deep in weakness, giving some 20% on top of that. Not sure how mesmer stats interact with illusions tho, but they can benefit from boons. So if they have a stack of might going…
Btw, i find the inherent 10% pr condition jarring. As the closest the “master of conditions” have is 2% pr condition on target, and that costs us 25 trait points. That is on par with our 15 point vampiric getting 50 health pr attack (if we put in the 50% boost from Blood Magic 10) while the thief can get 100 from a signet passive (and it benefits from healing power).
Honestly Anet, are you people that scared of our DS potential?
with the odd sprinkling of ranger (tho i wonder if there are more ranger bots than ranger players at present) and engineer?
I am not surprised tho. Thiefs can deliver as much hurt as warriors, but without the issue of being spotted from far off. Guardians are simply tanks, no ifs or buts about it. Mesmers however are something of a odd duck, as they can be a pain to play in PVE because the mobs are not as easily fooled by the clones. But in PVP their fellow players is likely to have a hard time keeping track of where the actual mesmer is in the middle of any sizable group.
Bumped into a little something, that while not a bug is at least annoying.
Basically, putting the mouse of the target info ui up top results in marks and other ground targets being dropped centered on the necromancer.
This is annoying in groups where i want to stand a bit back and drop marks, but to see the ground i am targeting i have to tilt the camera forward. end result is that the target may well be behind said UI…