I was really disappointed in the blood magic/death magic changes.
Oh wait there were hardly any.
After 3 years we’re still going to have the pathetic siphoning that can be outhealed by a simple regeneration boon?
“This hasn’t changed, neither has this, or this” <——sums up the necro stream
Necromancer gets trolled confirmed.
Relax. Numbers will change. Devs confirmed this every 5 seconds.
Who cares about the numbers when necros functionality is utter kitten.
Lingering curse could do 5,000,000 damage on auto attack and that would make necro’s god tier. That is why you should care.
I still don’t care cause they would never do that and you know it. That’s a pitiful argument, and your grasping at straws trying to be positive. Necros, the class that needs the most work got very few actual changes, while engies got a boatload. We have two traitlines dedicated to living longer that do very little if anything to make you live longer.
I was really disappointed in the blood magic/death magic changes.
Oh wait there were hardly any.
After 3 years we’re still going to have the pathetic siphoning that can be outhealed by a simple regeneration boon?
“This hasn’t changed, neither has this, or this” <——sums up the necro stream
Necromancer gets trolled confirmed.
Relax. Numbers will change. Devs confirmed this every 5 seconds.
Who cares about the numbers when necros functionality is utter kitten. They said, “It’s all about functionality right now, don’t worry about the numbers.” I’m telling you right now, with these changes condition necro in pvp will be dead, necros will still be the worst class in pve(vulnerability isn’t group support when eles can get 25 stacks in 2 seconds), and still the worst roamer with no resistance to getting ganked and 0 disengages.
They put the most work into a class that is great in 4 out of 4 gametypes (pvp, wvw roaming, wvw zergs, and pve), while leaving a class that is bottom tier in all but one with very few actual changes. Furthermore, you can tell by their demeanor that they don’t care about the class, even the guy who they brought in to talk about it looked bummed the whole time. In all honesty they should just delete the class, they don’t want to put the effort in to give necros the mechanics that make other classes work (i.e. sustained healing, burst skills, group support, boons, reflects, invulns, blocks, and evades), and it would remove one more thing that even has a chance against a well played engi (who they are very clearly having a love affair with).
Ok, I think you guys are looking a little to much on the raactions.
Also things can and will change.
instead of crying doom and such. Why not give feedback on what is there? Like bloodline changes that could make it better? (maybe healing while shroud as a blood thing?)
There is a lot of good stuff that could happen.
We’ve given enough feedback on these forums to build 3 of this class from scratch. I’m tired of giving feedback that gets ignored. No amount of feedback will change how they feel about the class, which is a literal step away from literally just deleting it (when you joke so casually about deleting a class it says something).
It’s a massive slap in the face. Blood and death magic will still be the two worst traitlines in the whole game for 3 years running. I got so hopeful after seeing the other classes changes. They need to hire someone who actually cares about the class. It is pretty evident from the stream none of those guys care at all. We will still have the exact same problems we have now, didn’t see any buffs to mobility, didn’t see any extra resistance to cc, we will still have terrible access to boons.
“I haven’t seen more than half the classes changes, but this will be super OP” ResJudicator
I just want to note, spectral wall is bad against good opponents. You won’t be getting them to run through the wall unless you really catch them with no cooldowns, so it’s 5 seconds of protection on a 45 second cooldown and maybe some chaos armor and a stack of confusion. Even then, you rarely want to use putrid mark for anything other than condition transfers, so unless you conveniently have conditions on you and wall down you won’t get chaos armor. That isn’t worth it over well of power, or spectral wurm. Also note that this isn’t me disliking the skill, I love spectral wall, but it isn’t effective against smart players.
As long as they actually balance all the traits this will be a great change. It will allow every build to be like the meta builds now where their is a nice balance between damage, support, and survivability.
-snip-
You bring up some very good points and contrasts. The issue is compounded by the fact that clones die so easily, so the set up has to be even more surgical to pull off properly. What I see is a lot of Mesmers depending on is their synergy with Thieves and stealth which creates a symbiotic but potent relationship between the two.
I don’t think an execution should be so labyrinthine that you need an above average skill cap to pull off your main damaging move when fighting a good player.
In 1 v 1’s against a good player, it’s stupidly complex to pull off.
I actually enjoy that it is kind of hard to land shatters. Makes it higher risk and reward. Another thing I noticed that’s a problem is how necro mesmer and ranger profession mechanics don’t scale with the number of enemies. More enemies=more AOE, that means clones will die way faster, DS will go down way quicker, and the pet will die more quickly. other profession mechanics remain equally effective regardless of number of enemies.
Overall, mesmer build diversity is bad for several reasons:
1) Low clone generation without DE, and how easily clones die. This can be addressed by putting more clone generating traits in underutilized traitlines and/or making clones less susceptible to aoe.
2) Dependence on blink, portal, and decoy. This can be fixed by giving buffs to inspiration and chaos, and allowing mesmers to be tankier with group support because then they won’t be dependent on those utilities for survivability and in the case of portal group utility.
3) Other builds being to easy, clone death and phantasms specifically are relatively easy. If they were stronger people would complain about it being braindead and rage. The solution here is to increase the skill cap and effectiveness on these builds.
The problem with mesmers is the same problem rangers and necros have. They have to work way to hard to use their profession mechanic to its full extent and its effectiveness isn’t higher than the 5 classes that don’t have to work hard. They should add in more traits that create clones. Clone on shatter usage and clone on mantra usage (with an icd) are just a few options.
Just to expand on my original thought.
Eles: changing attunements requires no work
Guardians: Virtues don’t require work just one more instant active skill
Engineers: Kits and toolbelt skills are just more skills they get for free
Warriors: Bunch of different ways to generate adrenaline, not just hitting foes
Thieves: steal is an extra instant cast skill, initiative is a different mechanic, no work required
Contrast this to the following
Rangers: have to worry about the pet dieing, have to make sure it’s attacking to deal 100% damage
Mesmers: shatters require clones so you better make sure your clones aren’t dead, and that they are positioned correctly.
Necros: You have to actually generate life force by landing specific skills, no passive regen or skills that give instant LF like warrior.
Engi, Ele, Guard, and Warrior are all relatively easy to play and have a plethora of good builds. Thief is harder, but also very strong. I wouldn’t recommend Necro, Mes, or Ranger to anyone who wants to solo queue and do decently well.
Some PVE changes to give us all the buffs.
What: Siphoned Power
Suggestion: Change to instantly cast life blast when entering DS
Why: Someone suggested this a while back. It would fit in well with the DS flashing PVE build, and give us a nice 5k damage or so every 10 seconds with the reduced damage on LB from the quicker cast time.
What: Parasitic Bond
Suggestion: Gain 1 stack of aoe might for 20 seconds when entering DS
Why: trait is useless, this would be a small buff to might stacking builds
What: Spiteful Marks
Suggestion: Remove it and put Death Shiver where it is, make a new trait in Death Magic (I’ll probably make a suggestion about this later)
Why: this trait sucks, and is bad
What: Mark of Revival
Suggestion: Remove cause its a filler trait. Replace with:
Ferocity of Death: gives allies 150 ferocity (I think this is the number for spotter and empower allies if not whatever that number is)
Why: cause we need party support, and this trait isn’t used currently
What: Blood is Power
Suggestion: Make the might aoe.
Why: cause it’s weaker than might stacking options for other classes
What: Life Blast
Suggestion: change the cast time to 1 second including the pre and after cast adjust damage accordingly
Why: It’s a hilariously long cast of 1.5 seconds for an auto
What: Reaper’s Touch
Suggestion: Change the regen to be fury and reduce cast time to 1/2 second
Why: offensive group support and with travel times it’s slow
What: Spinal Shivers
Suggestion: Reduce cast time to 3/4 seconds and buff damage to be worth casting in boss fights
Why: really stupid long cast time currently
What: Life Siphon
Suggestion: Reduce cast time+pre and after cast to be 2.5 seconds
Why: SUCH LONG CHANNEL
What: Dark Pact
Suggestion: Make it deal big damage. Its got a big cast and long cooldown
Why: Dagger is a single target high damaging auto with 2 non high damaging other attacks, it has very little synergy between skills
Hopefully this would make us at least viable in PvE, maybe they would have to reduce the damage on LB in pvp, but there is no reason we shouldn’t have real burst.
Well for one, unholy sanctuary is bad. This isn’t my opinion this is an objective fact. 185 healing per second in DS translates to at most 90hps (you aren’t spending 50% of your time in DS, but in an ideal scenario you could). For a grandmaster trait that’s a massive joke because eles soothing mist heals for about the same amount on a single target, and it’s an adept minor that applies in aoe. Mark of evasion would also be way stronger and it’s an adept trait as well.
Also, I can never justify axe in any build that isn’t WvW zerging. The 1 and 2 skills are still terrible after all these years. Dagger is way better, giving a good auto attack and healing on the second skill (although this still needs to be buffed). Besides that, I wonder do you actually kill anyone 1vs1 with this build? I don’t think there is enough debuffing(boon corruption) or damage traits to kill the sustain classes in the game currently. I’d suggesting trying to put more points into spite or curses, and seeing if you don’t have a better time.
What: Spectral Wurm
Suggestion: Both parts instant Cast
Why: Mobility
What: Spectral Walk
Suggestion: Make the first activation a 1200 range port
Why: Mobility
What: Speed of Shadows
Suggestion: grants 7-10 seconds of swiftness on entering DS
Why: Mobility
What: Dark Path
Suggestion: Ground targeted 900 range port, 240 aoe
Why: Mobility
We aren’t any tankier than eles, or warriors yet have way lower mobility, no reason for this. There is no rule that says necros should be slow.
The problem is all these traits provide basic needs for a lot of builds. For example, if mesmers had a trait that generated clone on shatter in another trait line they wouldn’t always need deceptive evasion. Don’t tell me they would be op if they took both cause they’d run out of shatters. Anet needs to not be afraid of a little power creep, and making something too strong. All I here for reasons unused builds shouldn’t be buffed are because of power creep or it would be OP. I’d much rather have that then all the useless traits that exist now.
Yea pretty much sums it up. We do have a few mechanics that scale with the number of enemies, but their either woefully underpowered or niche. I personally think necros should be as fast as eles (dark path ground targeted, wurm instant cast, walk teleport at the front end, dark pact movement skill). One of the problems is that against new players necros look like a wall of unkillable HP because of DS. Regardless of reality, that holds the class back a lot imo.
They could also change DS to be an energy bar, and make all 5 skills cost energy. Then, they could give us proper mechanics like every other class has.
Toughness doesn’t actually scale as well as other classes since most of them are getting constant heals which is also why hp isn’t great. Sacrificing dp for fitg is nerfing yur damage even further as is not using air/blood/fire. necros do tend to get focused so ramping up damage with might isn’t as effective as instant spike damage. Bleeds acct for our constant pressure on a condi necro but again it’s the spike damage that makes it viable and terror is what gives a necro their spike.
The point of a cele build generally isn’t to nuke everyone with damage, except engis. If your trying to deal a ton of damage on a cele build your doing it wrong, and would be better off running power or terromancer. Fortunately, that isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about an actual sustain build like eles and warriors have. We have plenty of skills and traits that add healing and sustain, they just currently don’t do enough to make it competitive with ele and warrior as far as damage though we are fine.
Honestly, necros are one of the few classes that can use all the stats in the same build. The problem is necros don’t bring group utility and healing. If their were some buffs to deathly invigoration (200-300 more healing baseline), unholy martyr (make it convert 3 conditions on allies into boons when using tainted shackles), blood is power(aoe 6 stacks of might), well of blood (bring back proper scaling), and/or dagger 2(reduce channel to 2.5 seconds). Overall, necros have good access to regen through mark of blood, and mark of evasion, dagger 2 scales well with Healing power, and dagger and life blast deal great damage, so with some more group support necros could easily play the same role as shoutbow, or and ele.
So since necros can make the best use of all the stats as you are stating, a cele necro would beat a zerker necro 9f equal skill? Or even a cele of slightly lesser skill would be able to beat a zerker? No. We make horrible use of hp. And toughness really isn’t that great on a necro and since we can’t might stack without using a utility to do it the power and condi dmg is kitten especially the condi damage, without terror our condi damage is absolute kitten mostly due to old nerfs due to dhuumfire.
I didn’t say anything about zerker vs cele necro at all, you shouldn’t put words in other peoples mouths, and make big jumps in logic like you did. I could be like you and say, oh so you think we should bring dhummfire back to the way it was, but I don’t because I actually read what you said instead of being a kittened off kitten.
Now to address your points. Vitality scales better on necro than any other class in the game because it effects DS and our health bar. Toughness is just as good on necro as any class as well, in fact it probably has higher returns than a class like warrior who already has high base toughness. Yes you do have to take a utility to stack might effectively, but along with reaper’s might and sigil of battle you end up with a really good amount of might and you can sacrifice a stun break because of fitg. Our condition damage is not even close to absolutely kitten without terror or dhummfire. Even with terror the bulk of your damage is still from bleeds, and we can stack a lot of bleeds with staff, mark of evasion, crits, and Dark path. Plenty enough to make use of the condition damage on celestial.
Honestly, necros are one of the few classes that can use all the stats in the same build. The problem is necros don’t bring group utility and healing. If their were some buffs to deathly invigoration (200-300 more healing baseline), unholy martyr (make it convert 3 conditions on allies into boons when using tainted shackles), blood is power(aoe 6 stacks of might), well of blood (bring back proper scaling), and/or dagger 2(reduce channel to 2.5 seconds). Overall, necros have good access to regen through mark of blood, and mark of evasion, dagger 2 scales well with Healing power, and dagger and life blast deal great damage, so with some more group support necros could easily play the same role as shoutbow, or and ele.
It’s funny when people joke about 2000 damage every 10 seconds that’s automatic and undodgeable. Terrormancers are only dealing that much on average but one of their fears is dodgeable, and they are in carrion instead of celestial. That to me means you think IP on cele engineer is stronger than terror on terrormancer, which is exactly my problem with it and why it needs to get nerfed.
Necros:
CPC – absorbs projectiles
Blood is Power – applies 4 stacks of bleeds for half duration to enemy, same 2 bleeds to yourself and 6 stacks of aoe might for 12 seconds.
Well of Blood – reduce CD to 35 seconds, increase healing power scaling back to prenerf levels
Well of Darkness – reduce CD to 30 seconds.
Well of Corruption – Now an ice field
Signet of Vampirism – Back to the beta version of this skill that was actually useful and had an impact before Anet changed it to kitten then balance the numbers, not the effects.
Plague Signet – reduce cooldown to 50 seconds
Signet of Locust – reduce cooldown to 30 seconds
Minions – 3/4 second cast time, immune to conditions and crits (simply die to easily to aoe)
Blood Fiend – Active now removes 3 conditions
Spectral Wall – reduce cooldown to 40 seconds, make it wider so that it’s easier to blast.
Yea that’s the bigger issue for me as well, I don’t really care who is bottom. You could make an argument for rangers necros and mesmers, but what’s dumb is how 3 classes can be so lackluster over wide areas of the game while eles, warriors, and guards are meta at everything. Even thieves, and engies are only subpar in a one area (wvw zergs), while the 3 amigos (necro, mes, ranger) are subpar in more than half the game.
For crippling shot, the rational is that 2 stacks of torment while moving is pretty close to 3 bleeds, so the damage would be about the same. I get what your saying about concussion shot, but you would still be better off using it as an interrupt. Maybe a nice compromise is it could apply 3 stacks if you interrupt a foe. Thus encouraging skillful play. Also, yea it’s kind of funny, but that’s what you get with general effects I guess.
I’m a necro main, but have all classes to 80, and recently started playing ranger a lot more in pvp. I see a few problems with some of the setups especially, so with that in mind I’d like to propose a few changes and hear what you all have to think.
Shortbow:
Crippling shot: your pets next 2 attacks inflict torment 6 seconds.
concussion shot: now applies 3 stacks of confusion 5-7 seconds.
Ranger condition builds need more condition diversity, not enough to be pure aids spam like engineer condition builds, but enough to force smart usage of removals.
Storm spirit:
Changed to give allies a chance to apply blind(3s) on attacks.
Spirit builds are in essence bunkers, and this spirit is pretty much useless as far as I can tell.
Axe offhand:
Whirling defense: can now move while channeling
Obvious imo.
1) Is really unnecessary, and would never happen.
2) Wouldn’t change much imo.
3) 1% percent per target would be good.
Now I’ll pick three changes.
1) Make grasping Dead apply 2 stacks of torment instead of 2 stacks of bleed
2) Either make spectral wurm 5-10k range, or make it instant cast
3) CPC now blocks all projectiles
I’ll change one utility on every class a little bit.
Necromancer:
Spectral wurm: now instant cast (double tap for instant port), or now 5-10k range.
Elementalist:
Arcane Shield: reduced to 60 second cooldown.
Engineer:
Slick Shoes: won’t knockdown if you aren’t moving.
Mesmer:
Signet of Midnight: passive now gives 25% movement speed
Guardian:
Sanctuary: Reduced cooldown to 90 seconds.
Ranger:
Storm Spirit: Grant allies a chance to apply blind when attacking.
Thief:
Roll for initiative: reduced cooldown to 50 seconds.
Warrior:
Stomp: applies 3 stacks of stability for 5 seconds.
(edited by zapv.8051)
Arguably yes necros are the worst. Worst in PVE by far since launch, good for wvw zergs but one of the worst roamers (not because they can’t win fights, but because they are slow and can’t disengage easily), always been mediocre in pvp (maybe not the worst but close to the worst).
Yea I agree, if zerker builds aren’t doing enough damage to kill people reasonably quickly then the non-auto attack skill should be buffed to deal more damage.
They should bring back 3 bleeds on mark of blood, make grasping dead 2 stacks of torment instead of bleed, and make putrid mark transfer 1 condition from allies and 2 from the necro. I also think mesmers should have better confusion access, and that engi’s IP should be nerfed and their auto attacks buffed to compensate (that or give a little buff like sigil of doom, but make it avoidable).
Dawdler and the OP just made it clear as to how bias can destroy someones judgement as Sabwa said.
I thought about a trait like that a while back, but it would probably be too strong, and we already have terror. Also, this is another reason to put an ice field on one of our wells, more aoe denial.
hahahahahaha okay get your friend and 2v2 me on medi hammer and see how easy it is to deal with in skirmishes
You have to follow the context; your personal skill with the build doesn’t matter. I’ve never contested that it is very powerful in the hands of a smart player, but it’s a riskier build for players to pick up because you can get locked into situations where you can’t do anything and the enemy can burst you down with ease. That’s sort of the whole point of this thread’s discussion.
If your in a situation on that build where you can’t do anything it’s because you miss manage your cooldowns. Yeah you’ll die quickly at that point, but medi guard is an extraordinarily forgiving build. Tons of heals, bunch of aegis, invuln, and blind. There is simply way too much defense for me to consider that a hard build. The burst is also way easier to land than many other builds.
This is the point I was making earlier. Just because you die easily when your out of cooldowns or afk doesn’t mean your build is hard.The burst is easy to land, and you have a ton of defensive cooldowns. It’s harder than a warrior that has a bunch of passive defense, but saying it’s on the same level as a shatter mes, or fresh air ele that have way less healing, condition removal, and defensive cooldowns, and less armor is kind of silly imo.
As you said Zenith, I would normally point out how useless mes is when taking any of those traits, but you know that and still persist, so it’s almost pointless to argue with you. Also, Putrid mark hits for 4k pretty easily on necro builds, I would hardly consider that useless. Soul marks is essential for life force regen on the power builds I play, staff has the highest weapon coefficient making it the best for life blasts, and staff auto hits for a not insignificant 1.5k damage pretty easily. As a necro player, it’s absolutely rediculous that you consider staff to be a waste of a weapon on any build. You then mention offhand dagger, which besides applying bleeds and transferring conditions also applies blind, and weakness which are really strong on any build.
Your complaining about “having to take” some of the strongest skills necros have, so I don’t really get the compaint. Sounds to me like you want to run d/w a/f without having to take any weapons, or utilities that remove conditions. Even if better traits opened up, you’d have to sacrifice points out of Spite or soul reaping, and I’m guessing you’d complain about that too.
As for epidemic, in a team fight against good players I just don’t see how any of those conditions will stick, but I’ll try it out cause you guys seem to be having success.
Necros have a lot of good condition removal skills. The difference is necros have very little trait support for condition clear, but way more than any other class through skills. Besides CC and the weapon skills you have well of power, and plague signet which are both decent skills. Being the masters of condition’s is less about removing them and more about corruption, and transfers then max removal per second.
Although necros could use more options for condition manipulation through traits. An example is unholy martyr which could be changed to be an effect on tainted shackles that transfers conditions from allies to enemies on pulse or something similar. You could also change shrouded removal to transmute a condition on entering ds. Overall though, necros have plenty of skills that can be taken for condition removal. At least we aren’t shatter mesmers that have none at all.
CPC isn’t great so it’s not exactly the skill that you want to model others after as far as I’m concerned. Also more healing is very rarely bad, more blind is just wasteful if they already have blind. That’s a really good point about pve though sublimatio, but they don’t balance around pve very often so its probably moot. I just think it would be cool to see more ice fields considering how rare they are, they could throw it on any of our dark fields and I’d be happy.
I can’t see well of DARKness being an ice field instead of DARK xD maybe one of the wells could be a smoke field
I addressed this in my post dude, read more thoroughly for your own sake. It’s just dumb that blasting a skill gives the same effect as the skill itself.
Well it all comes from personal perspective and has many others have said, a lot of people think everything they don’t play is easy and everything they play is hard. Another common misconception is that burst builds are hard to play, I find this is rarelly true. For instance, medi guard is one of the easiest builds to play effectively, yet may people list it as being harder than many other builds that are way harder to play imo. Just because you die easily when your out of cooldowns doesn’t make the build hard to play, many builds don’t have those cooldowns in the first place and can be considered significantly more difficult. This is also why thieves are often vastly overrated in their skill level because people say, “oh well you die so quickly if they catch you.” Well when your on a class that has about a hundred ways to prevent getting caught that isn’t impressive. It would be way more impressive if a power necro could survive a whole game than either meta thief build, while still having an impact.
(edited by zapv.8051)
I would rather have wail of doom being blast finisher than locust swarm. imagine blasting a smoke field just to get revealed 3 secs later
i would rather have dark path as ride the lighting, there is even an animation for that (see risen mobs in cursed shore)
Agreed on both counts. Also, I want to note this would be great for necro build diversity because all of our utilities that are fields would be indirectly getting a huge buff. On a side note, I think well of darkness should be an ice field (along with getting a lower cooldown). Obviously not because it doesn’t fit thematically, but because blasting a field that applies blind to get more blind is reduntant, and ice fields barely exist in the game.
I honestly don’t think it’s that strong on condition necro mainly because you need to use DS for offensive pressure on terromancer. In a team fight it won’t be keeping you alive because it doesn’t actually give you any resistance to burst damage. The only real reason to run it is to get another utility, but SOS and epidemic are the only ones I’d consider and their both to weak with the amount of condition removal in the metagame currently. Having said that, I think it is a very good change and helps with other builds that aren’t even close to meta.
Now if they would just address the sustain issues necros have, we would be in a good place.
If your gonna complain about some passives, you have to complain about all of them. That means everything that happens automatically. As a necro, I’m all for removing Chill of Death, but the means IP and a slew of other things have to go aswell. The problem is one, this requires a lot of work, and two, how do you differentiate between passive and uncounterable stuff. For instance, COD is completely passive, but at least you know it’s coming at 50% health were as a medi guard damage isn’t passive, but is completely uncounterable against someone who knows what they are doing. As developers, were is Anet supposed to draw that line because I’d argue meditation guard is far more unfair than COD.
Turret engis are OP because they deal respectable damage, while being tanky due to their amulet and the passive buffs from the turrets within 600 range. They also have a lot of cc, and are really easy to play because the turrets are constantly attacking for you so you don’t have to worry about offense and can focus on defense. Basically, they are OP because everything is passive apart from setup, and they are really strong relative to the effort/skill/work required.
Been running this, it’s decent enough, but doesn’t have the aoe healing to be on par with ele, engi, warr:
cele nec
You do bring boon corruption to the table though, and it isn’t rare to get 3k life blasts if you can stack might well.
Well I agree with a lot of what you said, but the part about longbow rangers and necros isn’t really legit. The problem with longbow rangers is the range is too high, if it were actually 1500 it would be better, and if it were 1200 it would be completely fine. Pretty easy to play, but they get shut down really easily. Necros on the other hand are not easy to play well, the difference between a good and bad necro is really easy to see. I’d say most of the meta builds are easier to play. Also, neither of those builds are really meta. Besides that I’d say the combination of fire and air are really annoying because the added 2-3k damage is too much and has no counterplay. If all sigils gave a little indicator, and where avoidable it would be fine.
I’d say it’s more balanced overall because a lot of old builds still work pretty well, but their are a few specs that are meta and way more common for one reason or another. Turrets are really strong, dealing really easy hard to avoid damage, while applying boons to nearby allies (braindead easy build). The celestial meta is dominant in the high levels with builds that bring aoe healing, a fair amount of tankiness, and decent sustained damage with both conditions and direct damage. The meta roamers are thieves, and meditation guardians. This is all due to the changes last year around this time.
this is what I’ve been doing in hotjoin.
It goes without saying that these traits are currently subpar. These are my suggestions for changing them to be more effective while providing significant group support.
Vampiric: This is the trait that is going to be built around. My suggestion is to change it to apply an aoe buff, similar to soothing mist (ele adept water minor), that allows all allies to siphon health on hit. It’s effects now work through Death Shroud. AOE limit of 5 people. 10 second buff applied every 3 seconds.
Vampiric Precision: This trait would be moved to master tier, it could be switched with Deathly invigoration, Quickening Thirst, or Ritual Mastery. The functionality would be that it increases the effect of Vampiric on Critical hits by 2X.
Vampiric Master: This trait would make minions not count towards the aoe limit, as well as making the siphon healing apply to the master and the minions. Basically you would get one small heal per minion hit for you and your minion.
Vampiric Rituals: I’m skeptical about this one, so suggestions are welcome, but it could just be increased effectiveness while standing in wells.
Bloodthirst: I don’t really think bloodthirst makes sense. It’s kind of dumb that you have to take a trait just to make siphons even close to useful. I would personally make the effects on siphon traits baseline, maybe you could keep it because it still effects SOV, SOL, and life siphon, but imo it could just be replaced.
I think with changes like this our group support could be increased while keeping the necro feel, and not stepping on other classes. Changes like this might also be worth it in pve, because 100 blades and stuff would get an extra 200 damage per hit or something.
It’d be good if it applied an aoe buff like soothing mist to all allies, and worked in DS.
Cele engi is possibly the most annoying build in the game. Tons of cc, and the unavoidable burn proc, along with high power damage, and high sustain is rediculous to fight against.
Ya I agree with Bhawb, if spectral armor gave stability for 6 seconds it would be flat out superior to armor of earth in every way (lower cd, bigger effect). Providing stability through traits would be way better because it wouldn’t be a flat buff to the current builds. I was also thinking about spectral walk, it would be cool if spectral walks activate skill was a 1200 range port, and then you had 8 seconds to port back to the origanal location (basically making it work like shadowstep on thieves). The longer cooldown justifies the LF gain, and full teleport back.
The dream scenario for a condition necro is that you apply burning and a few bleeds to us. Then we stack a bunch of bleeds on you, transfer your conditions back to you and fear chain you. The goal is to bait out all of the enemy condition clears and stun breaks before this. In that scenario your probably taking 3k damage per second for 3-4 seconds while being cc’d. That’s basically the end of the fight for most builds.
Why does the necro not have the endurance to dodge? Do they not gain Endurance back while in death shroud? Can you not make them blow there teleport before you place the well down?
Also what would it matter if you blow a fear on them to toss down a condition cleansing / stability well? This method even secures a safe heal unless you get insta bursted down.
Spectral walk is a movement skill + teleport, Worm is also a teleport, as well as DS2. What is the need for blocks when you have blinds? The things that are being asked for right now seem as they would cause a balance issue since you basically have 2 hp bars. Id also would like to know what class has this much CC to be spamming on you, besides thieves and mesmers. I could understand elementalist, but witht here HP pool that is truly understandable.
Starting with full life force in itself wouldnt really be fair unless it was atleast half the bar. Other classes would have to literally burst you down 2 hp bars from the beginning of the fight, ontop of the high damage a power necro could really be doing.
They do regen endurance, but during the 3-5 seconds your in DS you regen less endurance than any other class does while blocking or invuln therefore less dodges. Yes you could make them blow the teleport early, but for one good players are smart and won’t waste things unnecessarily. Also, mesmer, fresh air ele, guard, and thief don’t have to worry about things like that just to land damage. Why take a necro when other classes get the job done with less effort.
It isn’t a stability well, it applies 1 freaking second of stability because it is a stunbreak with a 1/4 second cast. Also, necros one decent heal has a stupid long cast time, 1.25 seconds. Even if you fear them, they could easily stunbreak and still interrupt your heal.
Like I said, two underpowered ports. Walk only breaks stun one way and has a very clear visual tell on the port locations. It also isn’t a movement skill, movement skills are skills that actually move you as part of their animation (this is different from ports). Wurm has a 1.5 second cast on a 40 second cooldown and is therefore inferior to other ports. The only advantage is that it can deal damage, but if it’s in range to deal damage it will get mowed down by aoe. Dark path actually teleports to your target and therefore doesn’t help at all to avoid cc. It can also be outran with swiftness, so it isn’t that good for chasing people.
When you mention blinds, I know you have no idea about the class. Necros have very sparse, very limited access to blinds in actual combat. Well of Darkness is a 50 second cooldown, plague is 180 seconds, Shadow fiend is terrible. The only good necro blind is deathly swarm, which has a slow travel time, and certainly can’t be considered consistent access to blind. Necros have terrible damage mitigation, that isn’t an opinion that is an objective fact, DS doesn’t mitigate damage it just facetanks it which doesn’t work out when you consider the level of scaling between fights.
Also, necros don’t have two HP bars, they have a health bar and Death shroud. Death shroud is very different from a health bar, while it does eat damage like a health bar it also acts as a resource because necros need it just to cast 5 of their skills, and activate many of their traits. It also requires build up, which is very different from a health bar. Your saying buffs would be op, but you don’t even understand the class.
LOL at you thinking their isn’t that much cc, engi, ele, mes, guard, and thief all have a lot of immobilize and cc. More than enough in a group fight to keep you permanently locked down, which is where necros get wrecked currently.
I didn’t ask for a full LF bar at the beginning of the match, 30-50% would be a good start. Also, it wouldn’t be nearly as op as you think, without any other changes necros would still get cc chained to death, and not be able to do anything about it. Necros need sustain, and a way to mitigate damage when underpressure (recommend huge changes to the death and blood magic trait lines that have been terrible for sustain since launch). Along with buffs to some of the weapon skills that are currently really weak (looking at you dagger 2 and 3, axe 1 and 2, and focus).
I also want to say that most necros would gladly trade their high HP pool and DS for anything even resembling good sustain, and team support. That should tell you how powerful they really are.
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