Blasts do more than just stack might. Its really as simple as being able to contribute to quick boon blasts. In an organised run people drop lightning fields and blast 1 or 2 times per class to stack swiftness. Same thing for stealth. It needs to be fast and quick. If one class in the group cannot contribute to that it can cause problems (especially with stealth). Thats why just one blast on axe 3 or warhorn 4 would be enough to improve necro quite dramatically.
Also from a necro perspective. Its pretty awkward when your group drops a field and starts blasting while you just stand there and twiddle your thumbs. Id like to help out even if its just 1 measely blast. Instead of doing nothing and leeching the effects.
Thats an old record. This was current and a duo so its in a different category. If you look at restricted all time records you will see a 1:20 by SC/vC and a 1:14 by SC. Its all on there dont worry.
It does work on skills that actually have cooldowns. But there are a lot of PvE mobs with attacks on no cooldown.
Which hopefully changes in HoT. Pve mobs should have some skills with cooldowns, in my opinion…
Its just auto attacks that are not effected (most old mobs only auto attack). If its true that the current mordrem dont have cooldowns on their other skills thats very odd. Chill definitely effects big cooldown attacks. But its largely a useless amount of reduction.
1. No power GM traits in Curses. I’d still like to see terror moved and another GM take its place.
2. Still no projectile reflect
3. Still no blast finishers
4. Still low mobility
5. No way for Reapers to defeat thieves. One thief could literally kill 5 reapers without getting hit. No stab + no effect of chill on thieves + slow attacks = thief wet dream.
6. Loss of access to torment if we take reaper… torment… the condition invented JUST for necros in the first place…
Just to address a few of these:
Power Curses Traits – There’s no need for this. Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper is more than enough for a power build.
Projectile Reflect – Maybe on RS2? I don’t think this is definitely necessary. Other classes do just fine without this in particular.
Blast Finishers – It’s not happening. It’s super not-necro like. There are other ways to be viable.
1. This pigeon holes power builds. And with decimate defences deathly perception is not worth the pick.
2. Projectile reflect might not be necessary in PvP. But it is a huge part of PvE. Not having any extra active defence is also a problem. Projectile defence is a relatively weak compromise to this issue.
3. Blasts are a combo finisher. They are not class themed. We do not have useful fields like fire fields and thats fair enough. But 1 or 2 extra blasts wouldnt hurt. And would go a long way to improving the class in all gametypes with group interaction.
Also finishers are a hugely core part of the combo system. Just like active defence. I think weve all stressed this enough already. Hopefully it gets looked at and resolved even partially in the core specs.
Shouts cast times for some seem over the top. They could do with cutting down the cast times a solid bit, especially chilled to the bone. Shouts could also use some buffs generally, making one of them a blast finisher would go a ways to improving them.
This is a good point. At the moment they seem far too dependant on taking that trait and hitting multiple foes to be useful. If they had lower base cooldowns then even the much weaker effects on single targets would make them a little more popular. You can obviously reduce the reduction per hit on the trait to compensate.
Basically reduce base cooldown but also nerf the trait slight. In fact im not even sure i like that trait at all. Its almost like it should be baseline. Or it should reduce the cooldown of other shouts and not just the one cast.
Due to the low CD on the ability giving it reflects would definetly be too much, at least at baseline.
But adding it in as part of a trait (so you have to sacrifice something else to get it), now that could work. I do like the idea, and the visualization of it too.
There are plenty of low cooldown reflects and projectile blocks already in game. And by low i mean really low.
Much better than i was expecting. Im very happy about the spec. The choice of defence and offense and solo orientated traits is really nice to see. And finally we get a might trait that isnt locked behind a broken ICD. Please keep that as it is! The numbers on it look good when you compare it to forceful greatsword.
The mention about blood magic and core specs is really encouraging. Little disappointed about the lack of blasts and active defence but maybe they can address that somewhere else.
The thing is the wells still do more than the shouts for groups of trash. And the shouts are terrible for single targets. You would use 1 shout max with 2 wells for trash pulls. If the shouts had blast finishers they might be a little more favourable.
Looks really strong and fun. And some of those traits are really nice. Like the might when hitting chilled foes (gonna be good for soloing).
The biggest things are the sustain and stuff working through DS. The shouts are incredibly disappointing in PvE. Except for the heal. The elite could be good if the cast time was a bit shorter.
But it still comes down to damage numbers. I really like the DS attack speed and the GS skills though.
My essential position is that Anet, and many players, have a different set of criteria than the dungeon does, and that (as the designer said) forums aren’t very trustworthy as they’re powered by pure concentrated tears.
And this is completely untrue. Always love it when people fall back to the forums arent trustworthy arguement. Almost the entire necro community (PvE, PvP and WvW) all agree on the same problems and similar solutions to fix those. Anet has ignored our concerns and never attempted to address them because they have stuck to their original design philosophy despite it not working with games core systems. This is why there is no faith. Because its been left in a terrible state for so long. And things like the lupi auto attack change make it even worse by further alienating one single class.
Anet have been stubborn about necro for a long time. Why should i think they have suddenly changed their ideas. The reaper certainly doesnt support that they have.
What i mean by giving a proper counter arguement is give me reasons why the necro should have these major disadvantages which contradict the games core systems. With no compensation and with no other class suffering from the same issues.
Rising gave you a reason. We cant verify the time with the quality of those videos. Not to mention the other issues.
Im happy to accept a record that is submitted properly. Instead of complaining and accusing us of corruption why dont you record another run? Its not like you put any effort into this one so there should be no issue with recording a second surely?
Only if you can actually give a decent counter arguement or reason. Sadly you seem to fail at that most of the time.
My position on this would be to carry on about the narrowness of vision. You not liking my answers doesn’t mean they’re not good, which is a pretty important distinction.
You didnt counter my arguement. You just accused me of persecution and tried to justify their balance decisions by mentioning a completely unrelated and untrue statement that the other classes have barely changed aswell.
Only if you can actually give a decent counter arguement or reason. Sadly you seem to fail at that most of the time.
Right because saying “anet hates necros” is a logical/reasonable argument.
Literally the worst part of the necro class are all the negative forum posters. If it’s fun to play that should be what matters. If you don’t like it, play another class but don’t get kittenty because the developers don’t want to do something 100% the way you would like.
So I finally had to say something about the dungeons on this game. Early it was interesting when people didn’t figure out the meta of the game yet. (early I mean when the game launched)
Then people without the knowledge of the meta were able to finish the dungeons without having a hard time in 30 minutes
Then people figured out that zerker win and I de-installed the game because all the fun was gone.
During the this time I’ve been on and off on the game, and whenever I came back hoping they would have fixed this rushing past dungeons by stacking and killing all… much to my surprise they haven’t
To me that says something more deeper about the philosophy of Anet about the direction of the game, they don’t want you to experience a challenging game but a race to collect content.
At this poin I rather stick to MOBAs, because at this point they are the only games that see competitive balance as an attraction (like GW1). Having constant rebalancing of the meta game should be a priority, and it also keeps the game fresh, keeps people interested and always looking for new things and not cookie cutter builds.
I REALLY hopped for GW2 to follow on the footsteps of GW1, too bad that just wasn’t the case.
Happy Trails
People speedran dungeons in gw1 within minutes aswell.
They addressed a number of the mesmers core issues with the chronomancer. So its not unreasonable to expect them to do the same for the necro. Unfortunately it looks like they are going in a different direction with Reaper.
Im telling you I have problems with twitch playback. It freezes the video and skips ahead. While the sound plays normally. Might not be as bad for everyone. But that plus the fact that i have to wait for it to fully buffer before i can even attempt to watch it normally is a big reason i wont do it.
Yes the rules need better clarification. And Weth has ideas on how to resolve that. Changes will definitely happen ready for HoT. Things are slow at the moment so you cant really expect us to organise meetings and such when noone is interested in records currently.
Twitch is valid apart from the fact that i cannot watch it myself without it freezing and skipping every second. So i personally cannot approve it. I cannot force someone else to do it either. And i dont fancy sifting through a huge vod of a whole tour just for an f11 with glitchy vod playback.
If you are really genuinely interested in submitting a record why dont you record a CM p3 on your next tour with the rules in mind? That way you make it easier for us by giving us all the info and you avoid all the complaints.
Im personally uncomfortable about using my free time to approve half ***ed records just because theres no prev record posted. And there are others who dont seem to like it either. Were being put in an uncomfortable position with this.
Ritual of protection gives 3 seconds of prot just for the initial cast of the well. If you run 4 wells you can get around 12 seconds of prot and then you have to wait for your long cooldown wells to come off cooldown. Its hardly a good trait. And its a negligible amount of prot. If it was prot on pulse it would be different.
I would if i could. But i cant watch twitch vods and i cant see the f11. If they want to re-submit it properly with all the info then they are free to do so. I recommend creating a new thread for that.
If it was posted properly we would have no reason not to approve it. Even though i personally dont agree with approving casual runs which are slower than others out there. Its a matter of principal.
New confusion ticks low damage every second and spikes on skill use. There are definite ways to make spiteful spirit work. But looks like they are keeping it retal based. Its now axe 3 on DS entry.
I would be more interested in reckless haste. And a trait to make confusion use power to calculate damage while also giving us confusion.
Sounds to me like people are offended because their 12+ hours of practicing ( lol, you kitten serious?) isn’t going to mean they get some eternal hall of fame place.
10g to post a record ey??
Well that means only glory hounding snobs will even bother..
All this just screams elitist exclusive club. For all I know a time beating the all time records has been ignored, simply because it wasn’t set by a preferred speedrunning group.
The corruption this thread has highlighted renders the records kept completely moot in my view.
Have fun rubbing each others egos though. ( 12+ hours.. rofl..)
It was a joke….
PS. The biggest issue i have with this is twitch vods. Twitch is god awful for playbacks and freezes and skips ahead every second. So i cant even properly watch them. x)
I do think its really cool im just disappointed that it doesnt address any core issue apart from mobility (lowest priority issue imo).
And i think people are still bitter and untrusting about the core specs and base classes faults. Which is completely understandable. I know i cant be fully hyped about this with the current state of the core specs and the lack of issues addressed with the elite spec.
The core issues i outlined have nothing to do with dungeons or speedruns. They are core issues that effect multiple gametypes.
The game is an action reflex based game where active defence is a core part of defence. Necro doesnt have any any active defence and DS does not scale (important in PvP) or work as reliable defence on bosses.
The game is about teamwork and group interaction. A major feature of that is the combo field and finisher system. Why does one class have a severe lack of finishers?
How is acceptible that a class mechanic hard counters an entire traitline and set of utilities?
These are issues that players that dont even PvE have been complaining about. Its not just me or other PvE players. You could read all the topics in the necro subforum over the last 2 years and see that.
And im not persecuting them. Im saying i dont trust them. Theres a clear disconnect which hasnt been resolved.
And i dont usually like to mention this. But other players have pointed out a lack of dev enthusiam when presenting necro stuff in the past. Which makes you wonder…
Open world isnt really an arguement because everything is fine in open world. Necros are good in WvW zergs (Impressive!). They are not good anywhere else.
A class that lacks the key features of the games combat system is a big design oversight. By key features i mean finishers, active defence and meaningful group interaction of any kind. And its no wonder the class is bad in so many areas when they have stuck to their design philosophy so strictly.
Thats not even mentioning the fact that the necros own class mechanic hard counters the entire blood magic trait line and signets. And what about the poor alternative to active defence (DS)? It doesnt work properly as defence in most situations and with no alternatives it creates a huge amount of problems for the class and restricts balance. In extreme situations DS + active defence could be too strong. But in most situations just DS is too weak. Balancing on unrealistic extremes for necro is something anet does too often.
These are all issues that have been discussed extensively for the past 2 years. No effort has been made to fix them. Weve had bandaid buffs we didnt ask for (dhuumfire). Theres a major disconnect between the players and the devs. And theres countless more issues that i couldnt possibly fit in a single post so i will leave it at that.
/end rant
tl;dr
We have good reasons to doubt anets intentions for the necro.
Im fine with allowing it. And its not even like its being abused to get both elites at once. The golem despawns when you unequip (atleast it should because necro flesh golem does). Theres lot of skills which are used like this because of secondary effects. It would be like banning the free blast on bone minions or banning using weapon skills and then swapping weapons.
Yeah i would love a reflect shout. Im just not optimistic. They have refused to give necro even a slight help with the core specs so its kind of hard to have faith in anything at this point.
In you guys opinion, what kind of damage/debuffs/special would they need to put on the shouts to make them meaningful?
Something along the lines of reducing mobs armour (different to vuln). Unique effects. Or just make them really strong for damage and debuff conditions applied. So even if they arent anything especially unique they make up for it in raw power.
Currently as long as you have 1 guard,1ele,1thief,1warrior, dungeons will be fast regardless of what you bring as a 5th. Yes necros will be slower than everything else but by how much? Probably less than 10 seconds in a casual run compared to the other 2nd tier classes(mes,ranger,engi). And probably 30seconds compared to a second ele. A large part of dungeons in todays meta is really just running from point A to point B. DPS is hardly a huge factor as most of you think.
TL:DR necros are viable to bring to casual runs. Gimmick allows necros to be viable in record runs.
Do you really believe that all of the people (or at least most of them) complaining about Necros not being viable are doing so because it’s not viable in a record run? And especially ones that actually have the “meta shell” of the 1 Guard/1 Ele/1 Thief/1 Warrior?
While there are many irrelevant complaints towards the problems that necros have, as there are always people who strictly want to see their class be on top and don’t care about anything else, a fair amount of the complaints are done from people who want a good enough reason to log onto their Necro for serious-ish play. They aren’t the people that will ever do a speed run in real terms (only a pale shade of what is actually done), they’re the people who will just PUG up a dungeon and go from there. Their goal? Not to get banned (and while I’ve never actually seen it happen in my hundreds of runs, I’ve never played one of the classes that it would be a problem in), and to be a indisputable part of a team in terms of being relevant.
And you’re right about them being fine in a casual setting. It’s why I’ve never banned the thousands of Necros that I’ve seen in dungeon runs (the record for that being three Necros on a single team, with the other not-me person being a Ranger). However, that doesn’t change the perception of the class, nor does it change the fact that they’re the only class that doesn’t fill a relevant role in any dungeon composition. In this game, the meta is perception, and Necros are easily in the worst spot as is.
I don’t know what to say, there really is no meta in pugging. It is all over the place. If you are talking about the “berserkers only or I kick” pugs in LFG, those guys are usually pretty bad at the game and are just sheeps that try to copy what Nike runs on stream.
I think the fact that necros are the worst of the 8 classes, this makes good players more likely to not want to play them. What then happens is the reputation of necros is pretty much soiled by alot bad players playing them. I know for the longest time I hated thiefs and thought they were total garbage because of the players running them in pugs.(I still hate thiefs in pugs more than I hate necros.)
On EU necros get kicked from regular groups that dont advertise specific stuff. Theres almost no tolerance left for the class anymore.
Another thought: We don’t know the heal yet (although the stream I can’t watch is going on right now so maybe we do), but from what I’ve heard it’s also a shout. That’s interesting.
On the shouts, as I Think more it’ll probably be teh third leg of a triangle.
Its incredibly important if your teammates wont help you. Like for example 5 necros versus lupi. Which one is going to block all the auto attacks for the group? Oh wait. Or you have teammates that refuse to use certain skills to help the group because “its not part of my build”. Thats a reference to those classic pug guards that refuse to slot WoR.
Its hardly important in meta/organised runs because you know your teammates will help you. The issue with meta runs is you might feel like a dead weight dragging them down. But if you can get past that its fine. And you only need one minor thing like top damage to be ok in that type of group. But being just top damage isnt going to help you in groups that dont help each other out because you will die and you will not be self sufficient.
Id be fine if bitter chill was reduced to 3 stacks of vuln with 10 second duration. It would be the same as blind exposure that way. Burst vuln is no where near as good as sustained vuln. So its certainly an improvement for PvE. But just having vuln wont be enough especially considering how much other classes already have and the extra guard is getting. So we need the damage aswell.
Yeah it might be useful with slow and blind on trash pulls with rapid attack rates. But that doesnt mean ele wont be able to do that. Frozen ground and glyph of storms is a lot of chill for a trash mob burst.
what makes you think certain bosses wont get rapid attack rates?
Did i imply that? I dont believe i did. Anyway how is that relevant to what i said? You cant blind bosses so slowing them down to make blinds work better isnt going to make a difference. And chill isnt unique to necros.
I wonder if necro will have more than 5 enemy-cleave restriction considering their attack will have a huge windup and scale up with the more enemies they cleave. Hmm… hmm…
On the other hand, the pulse rate of blinding utilities is not reliable when mobs have fast attack rate. From the look of the new mobs (i.e. dinosaurs) in the demo, maybe chill (and slow) will be a new form of protection.
yeah, i think enemies are going to have more skills, higher attack speed, more mobility.
focused bursts will probably require breaking the bar first.
essentially, im thinking those things alone will change the meta a decent amount.
I don’t personally care as much about meta as about interesting game play. If it is fun to play, we may be lucky to see a few new solo record here and there, along the line of what Sandy has achieved with his mesmer. We all play the meta for gold, but only fun play will last and inspire. Necro needs that face lift.
Problem is soloing doesnt look like a favourable thing with active defence still not being addressed. Thats always been the barrier which prevented me from doing loads of solos. That and the abominable solo dps. Maybe ill do some easy solos with the better damage. But i dont really feel too proud with setting the bar low like that.
chill dmg mitigation could be large, combine that with say protection, and some decent heal over time, or vampiric skills, and you may end up a lot more survivable.
we ll see tmr, but the concept they talked about is like horror movies, hard to kill, with big deadly moves.
its unlikely they would throw them into the mix as a brawler without some ability to mitigate damage.
Damage reduction doesnt work so well on bosses unless you go for defensive gear. So no im not optimistic with just those traits. Perma chill doesnt stop lupi from hitting you every 2-3 seconds. In groups we will be fine because we always have been when we get carried by classes with group defence. Solos less so.
And even if the damage reduction was good enough. We dont have enough sustain to supplement it. This is exactly why necros can no longer solo lupi. Im not optimistic about real active defence. But we shall see.
mitigation defense is just about number crunching.
lets say chill reduces dmg by 50% throw on protection 33%
2000 dmg becomes 660.
combine this with death shroud, evasion, regen, etc you may be able to survive indefinately with well timed chill applications and other active defenses.
Where are you getting the prot, regen and where are you getting the other active defence? Im telling you right now as i have tried it out its not enough if we get more fights that require as frequent avoidance as current lupi.
The chill damage reduction will probably be 10% just like putrid defence. And 2k damage is pretty weak for a boss hit.
