Guild Wars 2

Andele.1306:

striker.3704:

Bhawb is right, minion’s don’t scale with your stats at all. This is why soldier’s is so good for minions. Most of your damage comes from them, so you can stack defensive stats to be as tanky as possible.

Also like he said, if you want hard evidence, you’re gonna need to test it in-game if you don’t believe us.

Unless its pvp, no, they dont deal near enough damage to compare to a player at 80 and while soldier is the second highest power dps setup (no mix matching) chosing either zerker, knight or even rabid (since you can actually run a very good condi minion setup) usually covers the weaknesses of minions much better.
Ofc that shouldnt prevent anyone from having a soldier set of gear for taco and fractals on their necro, just its like the /worst of the good/ builds that you can pick if going minion master.

The problem with stacking damage stats as a minion master is that unlike the other specs, all of which have traits or utilities that directly benefit from getting certain stats, minion masters don’t gain as much as the other specs for getting damage stats. Sure, PvE is easy enough as is, but that doesn’t change the diminishing returns. If you run full damage, you would be better off just going for a deathshroud, direct damage, or condition build.

Balefire.7592:

Bhawb.7408:

Death Nova, Fetid Consumption.

As far as I’m concerned, the fact that both Grandmaster traits in DM are minion related is as egregious an error as PotH and Reanimator. The Grandmaster slot might as well be a second master as far actual defensive traits are concerned, which is not as it should be.

Most other grandmaster traits (including other classes) are exactly like this. Why should the death magic tree be different?

I wouldn’t bother with a siphoning build. At the moment Anet is very afraid of siphoning and is extremely quick to nerf it, but slow to buff it. Wait until we see what the “siphoning mastery” improvements are that are hinted at by dulfy.

It’s important to note that The game shouldn’t be balanced around WvWvW, at least in such major changes as removing an entire armor spec. If it was we wouldn’t see anything but zerkers running around there too since people complain about soldiers/dire/any survivability a lot.

also

Domey.9804:

The Problem is Not dire gear, its the bufffood.

This is a major major factor. Buff food doesn’t really have a place in WvWvW and really throws out specific balance factors.

Considering they’re nerfing necromancer siphoning, especially the siphoning of a spec that has only been popular in PvP as of recently for a very specific team build, and a trait type that people have been desiring a buff to since the start of the game, I don’t think they have a clue anymore. Warriors are the most vocal and numerous class, so they drown out the rest of us leading to Anet heavily favoring them.

Silhouette.5631:

The problem is there’s no stat to counter condition damage.

Yes there is, it’s called vitality. If you want you can also get food to reduce the conditions even more so, or even bring a condition cleanse!

lich form is not over powered by any means.
pros:
-high damage ranged auto attack
-AOE vulnerability
-5 jagged horrors
-a chill+purge
-a condition cleanse
cons:
-no mobility (easy to escape from and prevent escape)
-susceptible to conditions (only one 2 condition cleanse available)
-long cooldown
-cannot heal while in lich form
-easy to spike down (no defensive skills)
-auto attack can be avoided like staff auto attack

Hell, you can honestly just force the necro to leave lich if you give it enough pressure.

fellyn.5083:

coglin.1867:

Interesting. I quoted a dev post and stated how a professions current ability contradict the balance philosophy, and am dubbed a troll?

Care to actually explain how I am “stretching” anything?

It’s interesting how you take that to mean only movement impairing conditions instead of the other 8 million conditions in the game and think this is a valid reason to remove one of the more useful wvw/pvp traits warrior has.

But no no, I understand, you want warriors rooted in place from 100% hp to 0% hp. You deserve those kills after all.

Now you’re the one stretching it. TBH from that video I saw the movement abilities of the warrior are too strong period, regardless of whatever damage conditions you are bringing up that have no basis in this discussion. The thief is supposed to be the escape class, not warrior. Warriors are supposed to be the aggressive class, charging to the enemy, not away. This makes the simple and obvious solution to require a target for many of the warrior movement abilities.

Hard counters are a big no-no. Ele’s already got a hard counter to the Conditions meta (diamond skin) we don’t need even more rock-paper-scissors gameplay like that atrocity.

@OP everything was good except for the aggro changes. That would push us back into the holy trinity of tank/dps/healer, and we don’t need any of that. especially:
“lower DPS draws more aggro”
combine that with bosses naturally targetting tankier players will take us back to WoW style tactics. I’d hate to see this game become another generic MMO.

Bhawb is right, minion’s don’t scale with your stats at all. This is why soldier’s is so good for minions. Most of your damage comes from them, so you can stack defensive stats to be as tanky as possible.

Also like he said, if you want hard evidence, you’re gonna need to test it in-game if you don’t believe us.

Bhawb.7408:

Reanimator needs to go even if it had no CD and spawned 30 with every kill, protection of the horde even more so.

Reanimator and protection of the horde don’t need to be completely removed. To be honest, since they’re nerfing minion masters next patch with that blanket nerf anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if the follow up patch combined protection of the horde into flesh of the master, and did the death nova thing.

a suggestion to changing re-animator with it combining into death nova:

Death nova: upon minion death, minion explodes into a posion field dealing direct damage. (no cooldown) If a non-jagged horror minion dies, it also spawns a jagged horror. (10 second cooldown).

An easy fix would be to simply turn the mortar into an elite turret, and have it function like the ranger barrage where the shots go “up” and hit the ground targeted without hitting the ceiling.

It’s pretty obvious Anet hates the necromancer. They outright blanket nerf a spec that isn’t even considered strong, It’s only powerful in a very specific team setup and the minions aren’t even the problem.

Will death nova direct damage eventually be added to bone minions putrid explosion with them becoming blockable?

Why is the sustain of the necromancer, Specifically minion master vampirism, getting nerfed more than the warrior healing signet, when the minion vapirism requires you to dedicate an entire utility set and major+minor trait to get the most out of it, while the warrior signet is a grab and go? Hell, the warrior signet is getting a net buff since the active is getting buffed along with the nerf, and I believe there are even more complaints about it than minion vampirism!

A more shortened extension of the question above, will the necromancer ever get MORE sustain instead of damage increases?

I find it hilarious they think MM passive healing, Which to get it high requires an entire specific skill bar and major trait, on the SUSTAIN CLASS OF ALL OF THEM, is too strong at less than 200 hp per second while warriors 400 HP per second signet only gets an 8% decrease and a BUFF TO IT’S ACTIVE. This is such blatant favoritism it isn’t even funny.

Anet will you please STOP knee jerk nerfing the necromancer? It’s like you’re throwing all those years of experience out the window. you need to give the game time to settle before doing these balance changes. In fact, I remember ya’ll releasing a statement saying you wouldn’t do that, so why are you nerfing minion masters the INSTANT they become popular? It’s like you don’t even take your own advice.

You should try to keep in mind that anything based on the amount of life force you have would probably belong in the soul reaping tree.
-combine protection of the horde into flesh of the master
5- poisoned blood- conditions put onto you last a slightly shorter period (5-10% less duration) Oh, Balefire beat me to the idea. . .
15- chilling presence- chill enemies around you when hit below 50% (30 second cooldown)

If they made it so that death nova not only made minions explode into poison, but also spawned a jagged horror, I would be ecstatic.

However, it is more likely they will just leave the jagged horror summon to only be on enemy death.

The change for death nova to activate when the minion is killed by putrid explosion+the removal of the internal cooldown is a strait buff.

Minions are perfectly fine in every dungeon except for COE, Dredge fractal (they distract the boss from moving to the molten metal pouring spots), and the jade maw (wastes time taking lasers.).

consume conditions eats every condition in the game on you (except maybe the toxin one) and heals for more per. It’s a lot better.

The spray is only better when surrounded by allies who need the cleanse.

If they increased the axe auto attack vulnerability from 2 stacks to 3 stacks it would probably be a big help.

I detest all of your suggested changes, and I have been an MM for over 750 hours.

Also pet scaling isn’t going to happen, ever. Anet said something about it before (I can’t provide a source) saying that pet scaling led to minions being far too powerful in builds that weren’t centered around minions. This lead to them replacing the original trait ideas (summon 2 bone fiends instead of one, summon 3 bone minions instead of 2, ect) with traits that buffed minion flat stats.

IIRC I said it earlier in the thread, but I’ll say it again. Reanimator functionality should be changed from “when an enemy dies” to “when either an enemy or non-jagged horror ally dies”, you could also set it on a 20s cooldown or just leave it at it’s original 30s. The problem with reanimator isn’t[] its cooldown, it’s how often you can proc it when needed. The only time the every 15 seconds would be more effective is overworld trash mob slaughters or in WvW. In sPvP and dungeons, the problem with the trait is that it only really is there after the fight is finished. Most of what you fight in dungeon instances are groups of 3-5 silver enemies who usually die around the same time anyway due to stacking. In PvP It’s very likely you won’t be killing another player within 30 seconds, let alone 15s.

Long story short: This adjustment would make jagged horrors a much better trait, and even by extension make bone minions useful for other necromancer builds outside of the blast finisher effect. Other builds that didn’t have anything that really filled a utility slot could go 10 into death magic for some blast finisher and “free bleeds” goodness. This will also help the “protection of the horde” trait along but, as the math the guy above me posted shows, the trait is weak even for minion master builds.

In all honesty, I see the hammer as being pretty likely. IIRC there were necromancer NPCs in GW1 who used a hammer, and the fractal cult leader used necromancer skills while wielding his hammer.

I’d personally like to see Great sword for dat twighlight.

I’m really happy for the reanimator buff. Still useless in PvP, but I guess there’s no helping that.

CHIPS.6018:

Unlike in GW1, we can no longer curse, summon minion army or sacrifice health for major benefits.

Might as well call us attritionmancer.

All of those things though are attrition. Lots of smaller damage instances that win in the long run. The only thing we’re missing from GW1 is “health sacrifice for benefits” skills. BTW, in the concept/art book, it talks about how Anet initially tried to make those types of skills work. However, they found it to be too complicated on top of everything else, and merged it into the DS/life force generation we have now.

If some middle ground were created, I would like skills that spent life force for abilities. Like a skill that summoned jagged horrors for Life force, or a skill that sacrificed life force to heal allies around me.

tab targeting will usually select:
legendaries>champions>lieutenants>veterans>normals
This was changed in the most recent patch.

If you need to target the closest enemy, you could just click on them.

I’d probably go with shatterer wings.

They need to give a much larger “cooldown reduction” when you pick it up. Supposedly it’s reduced by 25% when you pick them up, but whenever I time it it is exactly the same.

Necros don’t get access to over all mobility because that isn’t what they were designed to have. Consistent theme is important. Our only gap closing/creating abilities are either offensive (deathly grasp, spectral grasp) or defensive (spectral walk, flesh wurm). None of them are for disengaging or fleeing though (spectral walk lets you teleport back, and flesh wurm has to be put down ahead of time and can’t be used to “get out” of a fight.)

I’d love a GS if only for twighlight, but having an off hand axe would be pretty cool too.

The wurm is more or less the minion master’s form of a stun break/get out of jail card. You set it down and either the enemy rushes it (making them easy pray for you) or they ignore it and take the 1k damage every couple of seconds on top of knowing you can stun break+teleport at any moment. I consider it to be a purely PvP skill.

Siphoning is supplementary at the moment. “Blood magic” doesn’t really exist in GW2 anymore outside of dagger 2.

According to the art/concept book, Anet actually planned on giving the necromancer skills that sacrificed health for effects, but found it to be too complicated for players. This is probably why blood magic is almost purely limited to siphoning.

Also, Siphoning in it’s current state untraited is OK. If you pick it up as a “last few points” trait it can end up being pretty good. Especially for builds who have a high crit chance. However, blood thirst is pretty garbage. 20% increase to siphoning is about, what, 32 hp (16 damage+16 healing) difference per hit? That equates to less than a single auto attack from most weapons after 15 hits. On the other hand you have passives like the elementalists free health recovery in water attunement that, even if they only spend 3 seconds in water attunement, equates to over 600-800 health recovered passively.

IMO if they reverted improved siphoning back to 50% it would make siphoning a lot better for builds that want to really focus on it. That requires a 15 point commitment into the blood line (for the passive free siphoning and improved siphoning traits) which would bar out all of the current “strong” builds as they would need to sacrifice a grand master trait in another tree for it.

Runes of the lich or bust. You’d be surprised how much the jagged horror pops in PvE. (not so much PvP)

Rennoko.5731:

striker.3704:

Actually, there are a number of boons we apply to ourselves that benefit from the boon duration. Specifically, protection from wells and death shroud, regeneration from the staff, and might from the spite tree. Most of these also come from the death magic trait line or are enhanced by it.

I did forget Rituation of Protection, but that and the retaliation on heal are the only boons specifically from that tree. Personally if they are going to say that necro must remain boon “light”, then the boon duration tree needs something specifically in it that makes us want the boon duration.

How many builds go 30 points into Death that are non-minion builds? There really should be a reason to leverage the toughness and boon duration at 30 points deep.

You don’t go into a tree for the stats it gives, you go into a tree for the major traits that buff your abilities. The 2 grandmaster traits in death are minion master too, so nobody in their right mind should go 30 points into death without them.

Even with the MM in full zerker with all his minions attacking the same target, it doesn’t compare to a great sword warrior’s DPS on a single target, let alone when you factor in cleave. As long as the PvE meta is stacking and corner pulling nothing will be able to compete with the great sword warrior.

Outside of the stack and smack meta, minions are fantastic in PvE. The MM excels in any situation where he only needs to rely on himself. This makes him very good for things like bunkering, taking small camps and fighting small skirmishes, or fighting a boss after the rest of the party wiped.

SrebX.6498:

striker.3704:

If you’re going strait power, you’re gonna need to spec into death shroud to maximize your damage. Do something like 30/10/0/0/30, picking up:
1.life blast grants might
2.Axe training
3.dhuumfire
4.crits give 1% lifeforce
5.life blast pierces and causes vulnerability
6.death shroud cooldown/death shroud drains slower (your choice)
7.50% crit chance in death shroud
bring the well of suffering, signet of spite, blood is power, consume conditions, and lich form.
these traits, berzerker gear, axe+focus/dagger+warhorn is pretty much the definitive direct damage build. You want to spend as much time as possible in death shroud. Sadly, direct damage necros lack a lot in the AOE/cleave department. This is why warriors are currently king in this cleave Direct damage meta. The best way to supplement this is to try and target the enemy in the back with life blast, and then position as many enemies as possible between you and him. This should allow you to deal as much damage as possible with your life blast.

That’s exactly my build, Only I picked Close To Death instead of Dhuumfire. I think it’s more fitting for a Powermancer and just plain better… Why did you pick Dhuumfire?

If you’re running zerker gear with the trait giving 50% more crit in DS, It almost guarantees you’ll get burning every time the trait is off cooldown, Which gives more consistent damage. However, looking at it again close to death seems like the better choice (giving an overall 10% damage boost in the long run). I always thought close to death was 20% more at 33% hp for some reason. Guess I was wrong.

Power. Vulnerability is the only thing you can do that synergizes with minions. (also weakness and chill to an extent) making axe+focus a must have.

If you’re going strait power, you’re gonna need to spec into death shroud to maximize your damage. Do something like 30/10/0/0/30, picking up:
1.life blast grants might
2.Axe training
3.dhuumfire
4.crits give 1% lifeforce
5.life blast pierces and causes vulnerability
6.death shroud cooldown/death shroud drains slower (your choice)
7.50% crit chance in death shroud
bring the well of suffering, signet of spite, blood is power, consume conditions, and lich form.
these traits, berzerker gear, axe+focus/dagger+warhorn is pretty much the definitive direct damage build. You want to spend as much time as possible in death shroud. Sadly, direct damage necros lack a lot in the AOE/cleave department. This is why warriors are currently king in this cleave Direct damage meta. The best way to supplement this is to try and target the enemy in the back with life blast, and then position as many enemies as possible between you and him. This should allow you to deal as much damage as possible with your life blast.

flow.6043:

BLOOD MAGIC

Adept Minor: Full of Life: Gain hp when you fall below a threashold is good in theory. But in case of the necro it’s too little and not often enough. Recovering health to get over the 90% mark in combat is a rare occasion, in which case the 5 sec of regeneration would certainly not have made a difference.

IIRC, this will actually proc any time you take damage at or below 90%. Making it almost free regeneration every 20-30 seconds. (btw, 5 seconds of free health is nothing to scoff at, especially if you’re running with a party who doesn’t supply a constant source of regen.)

Rennoko.5731:

Death magic as our toughness and boon duration tree should give something that greatly increases our survival, and provide at least some boons to take advantage of the boon duration (which currently is only a 5 second retaliation on heal in that tree).

Actually, there are a number of boons we apply to ourselves that benefit from the boon duration. Specifically, protection from wells and death shroud, regeneration from the staff, and might from the spite tree. Most of these also come from the death magic trait line or are enhanced by it.
Back to the topic:

Protection of the Horde: really gates out other specs, and is relatively weak outside of PvP. I think it should be combined into flesh of the master to make way for a trait that other specs can use. Or it can be swapped with the death magic grand master minor and then buffed (especially since the grand master majors are only minion related).

Reanimator: awesome in concept, and it has come a long way since launch. I think it should proc off of allies dieing though, so it spawns one when a minion dies. This should give it more use outside of overworld PvE. It should also give other specs more use for the tree as the bone minion would have good synergy with other builds.

Bloodthirst: I understand how Anet is scared of improving siphoning too much, as free healing+damage can get out of hand quickly. However a 20% boost adds up to be less than .2% damage when you take into account both the healing and damage. I think that the trait should be returned back to 50% (or more). As of now siphoning is only marginally better for builds that don’t focus on blood magic, and it needs improvement for builds who want to focus more on it.

Traits only work with skills that have the yellow text labeling it as that skill type, and only work on utilities of that sub-type. Elixer gun is a kit, and is only affected by kit traits. That primary label is what matters, not the name.

The best things they could do for engineer turret are:
1. Improve the cooldown reduction caused by picking up turrets (it doesn’t even feel close to 25% reduction, I honestly think it’s bugged).
2.Combined the self repairing turrets and 33% damage reduction traits into one (the self repair is miniscule at best and really isn’t worth picking up)
3.Make the mortar into an automated turret. (currently it’s one of the worst elites in the game).

The best Fix IMO, would be to give turrets some form of temporary lasting power, at least until their active abilities are finished casting. Once you get the turrets active ability off, the damage it deals afterwards is Icing on the cake.

They could split armor plating for PvP and PvE:
PvP: current iteration of 33% damage reduction
PvE: After deployment, turret is immune to damage for 10 seconds. This gives it time to get it’s over charge off while also letting it get some damage in. As it is now, my minion master’s minions are more durable than engineer turrets by a large margin, and they are supposed to be the disposable ones.

Another solution would be to make it so engineer turrets aren’t on the aggro table, but instead give aggro to the engineer. They could still be killed by AOEs, but this makes it so that the rifle turret/heal turret aren’t immediately killed upon creation by adds.

the +20% siphoning trait is pretty useless now. transfusion is better taken in every single instance, even solo play (heals you if you start channeling it right before running out of life force). I think they should have either just left the +50% siphoning alone, or replaced the trait entirely.

condition necromancer is still very strong in PvP.

Necromancers in EVERY OTHER SENSE suck though. For good reason:
1. Conditions in PvE are lack luster unless you are the ONLY condition damage person in your party.
2.Direct damage necromancer builds are lack luster since we don’t have cleave and the axe does kitten for damage on the auto attack.
3.Minion mancers suffer from poor AI in PvP and in PvE minions die in one blow (soon to change with the 15th patch though).

Nay of the Ether.8913:

• Blood Fiend – sacrifice heal scale off of healing power so it’s actually worth using rather than keeping it siphoning until it dies.

The blood fiend is quite fine as it is, you should only sacrifice it if it’s in danger to get the last bit of healing out of it making it one of the few minion actives you gotta think about before using. Otherwise we end up with it pre-novermber patch style where it was a crappy heal you only summoned for damage and sacrificed for the heal

As you can see in the attached screenshot, the huts are an abnormal white. They are like this at all times unless I look at them from specific angles, the same goes for ropes (like, the ropes all over the woodwork in the cliff side fractal.)

I’ve been reporting this bug since fractals have been released through the in-game tool. In the dredge fractal, the “elemental turrets” cannot be damaged by most necromancer weaponry.
-minions all get “obstructed”
-the axe gets “obstructed”
-the scepter gets “obstructed”
-the staff gets “obstructed”
-the focus gets “obstructed”
-even the focus and offhand dagger get “obstructed”