To put it into perspective they would have to do something like 1.1, 1.1 and 1.4 for the chain. Thats ridiculously high.
They certainly won’t considering that the attack chain finishes with a chill. If it had no other effect, I might accept really high coefficients, but because it does have an effect I expect pretty mediocre ones.
Funny you should say that. While i do agree especially as the extra effect is chill. The guardian actually has fairly high coefficients on its greatsword auto. And that gives might on the final hit. It does about 1.12 cps. Which is really not much lower than the guardian sword auto which is 1.24 cps. Obviously sword has a better damage mod trait though.
Basically guardian greatsword has the highest coefficents of any greatsword currently. Id expect necro to have about equal or slightly lower to be honest. We have less damage modifiers so we can maybe expect slightly higher coefficients on some weapons. Although we can only see evidence of that on the dagger so far.
Id find that highly unlikely considering weve seen that the auto attack looks just like the rangers. So in terms of attack speed it wont be any higher than other greatswords. And it would be rather strange to give really high base numbers on just one auto attack. To put it into perspective they would have to do something like 1.1, 1.1 and 1.4 for the chain. Thats ridiculously high.
Actually no build depends on gear (excluding runes/sigils). Gear contributes to its effectiveness and nothing else. Obviously using condi gear for a healing build doesnt make sense. But it does still work. Its just far from as effective as it could be if you used appropriate gear.
Theres nothing wrong with the gear stats in the game currently. Variation in traits, weapons and utilities is enough for a healthy game. Improved encounters will encourage this variety. But in terms of balance its mostly fine already. Theres just not enough well designed encounters yet.
The only problem which wont be solved by better encounters is condition damage. And thats not really because of gear. Thats simply because conditions are poorly designed. They do not reach as high potential damage as direct and they suffer from the stack limit, overwriting and slow build up time. They are very poor in open world. And this is something thats unlikely to change due to technical limitions.
I speculated on a number of skills in the past. Cant really be bothered to dig up those old posts. But im curious to see if any of my ideas got implemented in any form. They were most based on the guardians greatsword but with tweaks to be more about control conditions and less about mobility.
To put it in perspective. Ive been playing since beta. For about a year and a half ive been able to fully enjoy dungeons due to leveling new classes and trying them out in each dungeon. It gives some freshness to the experience. But after a while they do become boring. The reason i still do dungeons is not because i find them fun. Its because i find them rewarding and less irritating than open world. This is the key point. I absolutely hate zerging content and so i am stuck recycling old instanced content. Even if i enjoy the mechanics and mobs in silverwastes. I avoid it because the open world experience completely kills it for me.
My favourate part of PvE is fractals. And at this point i have started to feel a little boredom with some fractals. The rewards for fractals are so bad that i feel forced to suffer through dungeons to get my gold. This is one of the reasons i dont log on as much. I want to play. I want to work towards new skins and i want to enjoy small group content with my friends. But the best of it is highly unrewarding and the rest is really old and stale. Bare in mind there are still some old dungeons and parts of dungeons that i do still enjoy very much. But i tend to enjoy them in solos, duos or trios where i can appreciate the encounter more.
I got most of my skins before fractured and then the rest shortly after. Since then ive barely gotten any. Im only missing mace, greatsword, harpoon and rifle. Last skin i remember getting was about 6 months ago. And that was like my 7th scepter or something.
Thief dagger auto is much lower. But backstabs and heartseekers make dagger thief really strong. If you pure dagger auto on a thief its lower than a necro and lower than a sword thief.
Necros dagger auto does about 1.33 coefficients per second. Thats pretty good for an auto attack. Warrior axe is 1.72 cps. Ele lightning whip is 1.47 cps. Thief pure dagger auto is about 1.09 cps. Thief sword is 1.15 cps. Guardian sword is 1.24 cps. Ranger sword is 1.06 cps. Mesmer sword is 0.93 cps.
So as you can see its the third best auto attack of the ones i listed. These numbers might be slighty out as the coefficients and chain times were taken from the wiki. But they seem about right. Obviously classes with more damage modifiers on traits will be able to boost these up further. But in terms of base damage without trait mods these are the numbers.
No greatsword on other classes has a decent auto attack. Warrior and guardian greatsword dps comes from the other skills. This is why guardians use a greatsword + sword focus rotation. Because the sword has a higher dps auto attack.
I expect the necro greatsword to be similar. It will have burst skills on the other skills. Dagger auto attack is one of the strongest auto attacks in the game so i find it highly unlikely that a slow greatsword auto attack would do more damage. Especially when all other greatsword autos are low. We might find we get an interesting rotation like the guardian where we constantly swap to take advantage of the burst skills on GS and the auto attack on dagger. Or we might find that we start off on greatsword, use the burst skills then stay on dagger for the rest of the fight.
Or the third option; greatsword turns out to not be very dps orientated at all and just becomes a utility control weapon. So it would only be used when that is needed.
See i used to get 1 or 2 every 49/50. Ive actually only had 1 or 2 drop for over 2 months. And ive done a load of 50’s, 40’s and 10’s. Im guessing its just RNG. But its odd to go from seeing them drop almost every run to pretty much never getting them. And this happened around the time we started always doing 50’s instead of 49’s.
In fairness. If the specialisation turns out to be good. We will probably still lack finishers. Because all our current weapons currently lack finishers. So its a necessary addition that I hope they will address. But i dont have much expectations for it.
Hence why i said tones and didnt accuse you of directly being condescending. Although its very hard to believe you arent being condescending with some of your posts directed at other people. :P
Buff them with fury and they get a whopping 24% crit chance!
In all seriousness ive never understood why we dont have some stat sharing with minions. And traits which give minions boons or just copy our boons to them. Mesmer has plenty of traits which give clones boons.
Generally speaking I would worry that sharing stats would lead to a nerf of the base stats of minions, which would severely hurt their viability. Mesmer clones/phantasms are extremely different playstyle wise than minions.
For example, if Bone Minions used your crit chance, someone would do some cheese zerker MM build and when putrid explosion his for 4k each and all of a sudden I guarantee ANet would end up nerfing them, or never implementing the necessary changes that have to be made to make MM good (stat sharing isn’t the problem keeping them from working).
Similar problem with boon sharing, although it would be much easier to limit the extent of boon sharing without having issues of different builds getting different “use” out of it, so it would definitely be possible to work it in.
Oh of course i agree. Thats why i said some stat sharing. Our minion effecting traits are pretty lacking though as im sure you can agree. All we have is a flat damage boost and a health boost. Those are so boring and have no counter play. If we had boon traits then they could actually be countered with boon removal.
My main gripe is theres just no way to make minions reliably crit. Which is disappointing to me. I want minions to atleast share my base crit chance. And i want a trait to give them fury or maybe some might or even a trait which makes them use your precision. Or maybe something similar to rangers fortifying bond. Those are certainly more interesting traits.
Plus i think 4k putrid explosions is pretty modest even in PvP. We could actually have a different type of burst spec if we could do that.
Buff them with fury and they get a whopping 24% crit chance!
In all seriousness ive never understood why we dont have some stat sharing with minions. And traits which give minions boons or just copy our boons to them. Mesmer has plenty of traits which give clones boons.
It would be pretty bad if runs were dictated by whether the game was on ssd/hd or whether there were lots of people outside the dungeon.
Actually i believe this was the reason. People with an ssd would have an advantage. Still its only worth it in one place and im not too sure its a good enough reason to disallow it.
The only time ive actually seen it in a record was in AC p1. I dont remember exactly why people decided to make a rule against it. But it might have been something to do with not being able to see what they were doing. Which is a bit absurd to be honest.
I really dont understand why they cant just say whether we are getting instanced content or not. Or whether this new challenging content is open world. Being intentionally vague is really frustrating.
If you look at exalted lore and itzel lore it hints at access to champions. These might be instanced stuff. The negative is that they are locked behind masteries. But if they are genuinely challenging and instanced. We may atleast have some new stuff to do.
10 Mastery Points: Exalted Purification – You’ve become honored among the Exalted. You can now challenge their Champion each day and unlock their finest treasures within the Golden City.
Sounds like a boss instance or a mini dungeon. Skeptical how this is going to turn out. Anet are being intentionally vague about challenging group content so im struggling to look at these hints positively at this point.
For sifting through all the crap for tiny details go here:
USgamer: Heart of Thorns has mentioned a number of features, but i’m not seeing anything about Dungeons. Can we expect more Fractals in the expansion?
Matt: We’ve talked about all the major features of Heart of Thorns. We have talked [internally] about what we’re doing for Fractals and other content systems that are part of the base game. We don’t have any specifics on dungeon right now, but we know a lot of people play dungeons. It is something that comes up. If you look at the Mastery line the demo, there is one for Fractals. We can’t really comment a lot, except to say we looking at all of those things.
Kristen: Challenging group content is definitely something that we want to do. How that manifests, we’ll talk about that more soon.
Glad my hype died down already. I kind of had a hunch that the fractal stuff we get is gonna be really minor. Maybe some adventures will be decent.
Well thats the thing. Because the gear itself isnt out of balance. So you really shouldnt say it is. We have enough people insisting it is, we dont need more people saying it. Defensive gear is just as op at surviving as offensive gear is op at doing damage.
And yes it seems they are addressing the issue through the content without forcing roles, gear types etc. Which is good. Unfortunately we still get constant threads like this where people keep blaming the problems on a gearset.
Well we do actually already have some examples of what Weth is talking about. Some fractals + instability combinations are ridiculously hard. Not unbeatable. But most casual groups would definitely give up and try to avoid that map. For example fractal 44 when you get volcanic. My group was fortunate enough to get this when we were rushing to 50. It was the hardest thing weve ever done and not because we were unfamiliar with the encounter. It was because the instability completely counters the imbued shaman fight.
If rewards are improved that should be enough to keep people playing without RNG.
But at the same time you could also just remove the map tiers and use the PvP map vote system. That way you keep a small amount of RNG but you give players a little more choice. It allows groups to avoid getting the same fractals when they repeat tiers. Im sure you can imagine how irritating it is to get cliffside on 30, 40 and 50 in a single day.
Dunno if this has been already suggested, but Zommoros might be of some help in the FotM skin problem. Just add the possibility to throw 4 skins into MF and get a random one in return. Usual stuff. That way it’s still grindy and rare, but if you happen to be extremely unlucky with the FotM drops themselves, you get a few extra chances in the MF depending on how much other skins you have hoarded.
The problem with these sort of MF ideas is they dont really solve the problem. Chances are you wont get what you want anyway. And also for some people that have all the skins they want its a total waste. Best to just offer trade in options or make rewards vendorable for decent prices. Rewards should always feel rewarding even if you already have them. Which is why they should either be tradeable, vendor for a good price or have the option to trade them in for something else we can use.
For the second approach. The bare minimum to get me to not feel guilty about playing necro in PvE would be to give us more finishers, a projectile defence skill and more AOE control conditions such as chill and immobilise.
Weird of you to say that. The necro does have aoe chill (traited with chilling darkness). I use it when i want to troll players in spvp. (otherwise i prefer to auto troll myself with the flesh golem that watches as i get ripped to pieces not even charging when it’s told to)
Yeah its not very effective though. Its radius is so small it may aswell be single target. Not to mention if using on a group it will probably get body blocked and only chill the mobs at the front of the pack even if you are trying to hit one in the middle.
And all the rest of our chill is single target except for staff. When i think of AOE chill i think of frozen ground on staff ele.
For arah skips you want to just take condi cleanse, time your dodges and use DS properly. Plague blind also makes things easier. And for p1 you can flesh wurm up the cliff and completely avoid the first group of drakes before the oozes which also increases the gap between you and any following risen elites. Also you can make it really easily by using stealth consumables and executioner axe toy.
Yeah being able to trade in unwanted fractal skins needs to be implemented in addition to unwanted rings. Trading in for relics is fine. Then add new stuff to buy with relics such as unique food recipes. You could even add relics to the recipe to provide fractal runners a steady income from crafting and selling exclusive fractal food.
Currently we have an exclusive rune and sigil. But those are made from quite rare drops (mist essence) and the profit gain is very minor considering the material cost. So food would be a nice addition. Also can we please trade in our duplicate recipes for relics or vendor them?
Totally agree that increased mechanics is the best possible solution. But id say gambits is better than instabilities and would be a nice extra feature for increased rewards. But should not be the method for progression.
I like Nikes proposal. Even though i think the final tier might be a bit too rewarding. 100% chance for ascended gear box is a bit much. The suggested gold reward seems ok considering the estimated completion time.
And i understand many players want to keep RNG to stop people only running the shortest maps. My solution to this would be to use the PvP map vote system to keep RNG as a factor but give the players a little more choice and also an easier time to roll for specific fractals when attempting records. Id also love to see a no reward practise instance feature where you can select the instance and maybe customise it more than usual.
Id certainly prefer not to have instabilities which people just try to rush past for progression. I would also prefer a gambit system which gave increased rewards based on the gambits. That would certainly be more interesting in my opinion.
I brought it up originally because it seems like this sort of thing is really questionable and people are going to almost do it out of habit in some records. Just like this one (maybe?). I was just venting and trying to understand why people voted for it. Its a difficult subject for me to drop simply because i cant stand inconsistancy. I am sorry about voicing it here but theres not really anywhere else and im pretty sure noone really wants to have the endless debate again. :P
I said i dont think its worth discussing in the next post because i realised my mistake of bringing it up in the first place.
Yeah. Dont really think its worth getting into this discussion again. I just dont understand this whole idea of not using something just because it can be manipulated to achieve its maximum effect. Its like choosing to not use fgs rush against a wall when it worked or not using icebow on a max sized hitbox.
I accept people want it that way. I dont agree with it and i dont fully understand the logic behind it because its based on inconsistancy.
Yeah its fine. It didnt work so no need to take action. Cant even be sure if he was attempting to do it on purpose either. It almost looked like he was dodging back ready to steal to dodge the killshot. Or just dodging backwards mistaking the killshot tell for the pistol spin.
Dont really get why that rule was implemented. But it was voted for. People seem to enjoy having so many pointless rules i guess.
Like i said i didnt need any of those tools the thief has available.
Id love to but i cant really guarantee ill do it due to how long it takes to get to that point in the path and my current activity. Plus i need to persuade someone to do the switch platforms with me at the start. You do realise what you are asking is a pretty mediocre challenge as far as necro boss solos go? Im predicting ill have a harder time killing the 3 bosses before the mouth lol.
Ill see if i can get some time for it this week. Been looking for something to get me back into necro solos.
I actually pretty much solo’d mouth of zhaitan yesterday on thief in melee because my group wiped while i was pugging storymode (camped d/d and had no extra traited endurance regen or energy sigils). Hes easily melee friendly. You just have to dodge and throw fireballs in his mouth when he channels.
Also I solo’d cof story on thief the other day aswell (no groups on lfg for it so i thought why not?). The endurance gain from dagger auto attack is enough to dodge everything from the fire effigy so energy sigils would be more than enough. The problem with that fight is sustaining the burn which i had invigorating precision to do that. Not sure how i would do it on necro but having enough dodges for all attacks is not the issue. And ranging doesnt help because you still get burned and have to sustain while doing less damage than meleeing.
Necro is just bad at mai trin full stop because of no blocks. But that doesnt mean you need a ranged weapon. I pug a fair amount and i rarely see people ranging bosses anymore. I used to see it a lot 2 years ago. Not anymore.
Well i can tell you the answer you would get in the dungeon forums. To save you the trouble.
“I would never take one.”
The question you are asking is kind of difficult to answer because the whole reason it needs to be answered is because noone wants to take necros. I would personally rephrase the question to be “What would make you take a necro in your groups? And if you already do then why?”.
That way it’s still grindy and rare, but if you happen to be extremely unlucky with the FotM drops themselves, you get a few extra chances in the MF depending on how much other skins you have hoarded.