...below the health threshold...

Can we talk about the excessive amounts of traits and weapon skills on power necromancer that require health thresholds to work?

Traits:Death's Embrace (spite minor) requires target below 33%Chill of Death (spite major) requires target below 50%Siphoned Power (spite minor) requires target below 50%Close to Death (spite major) requires target below 50%

Weapon skillsRending Claws (Axe auto) requires target below 50% for extra vulnUnholy Feast (Axe 3) requires target below 25% for secondary strikeGravedigger (GS 2) requires target below 50% for cd resetExecutioner's Scythe (RS 5) damaged based on health threshold.

While I understand power necro seems to be big on the "executer" theme, this extreme emphasis on sub 50% bonuses results in the class being extremely gimped when faced with a opponent that is above 50%. This isn't too much of a problem in PvE, but in PvP it results in power reaper horrendously underperforming compared to other power classes. Power reaper loses every single matchup against other power classes because power reaper cannot apply meaningful damage until the target is below 50%, but by the time your force a target below 50% the reaper has already taken so much damage as to be on the verge of death. And of course classes with high self-healing such as Warriors and Guardians can straight up prevent a reaper from dropping them below 50%. Moreover there isn't really a benefit to having a "executor" class in PvP. Generally speaking if you can apply enough damage to drop someone to 50%, you can apply enough damage to down them. Bringing a class that is only effective against low health opponents is not useful.

The sub 33% and sub 25% effects are even worse. I can easily go several PvP matches without ever seeing Unholy Feast's secondary strike go off, and when I do see it go off it's almost always on a clone or minion. Death's Embrace is even worse. Vuln at sub 33%? Just why??

While I think having some health threshold effects is fine, the sheer amount of them on power necro needs to be cut back some. We should not have our might and vuln generation be dependent on the target having low HP.

What I would like to see:Unholy Feast's secondary strike should proc at <50% (up from 25%)Siphoned power and Death's Embrace should not have health threshold requirements. (if the stack amount/duration has to be nerfed in compensation, so be it)Executioner Scythe's <50% base damage should become it's baseline base damage.Executioner's Scythe's <25% base damage should become it's <50% base damage.Executioner's Scythe should lose the <25% damage tier.Rending Claws should always apply 2 vuln.

The inconsistency in those %s is annoying af. It should be always 50%.

It could be worse, we could have traits that grant us a low chance to proc an effect with an ICD when below the health treshold...

@Crinn.7864 said:Can we talk about the excessive amounts of traits and weapon skills on power necromancer that require health thresholds to work?

Devs think that those Spite traits are needed for the "theme of self rally" in open world.

There is a lot of dependency on opponent health in Necromancer. I suppose it is there to punish opponents who do not kill a Necromancer fast enough.

The worst part is all those traits are in our Damage line. Theme over usefulness as always.

@Anchoku.8142 said:There is a lot of dependency on opponent health in Necromancer. I suppose it is there to punish opponents who do not kill a Necromancer fast enough.

Except for the slight issue that necromancer damage below 50% is on par with what other classes do. Essentially power necro is thrash above 50%, and competitive below 50%, while other meta power builds (SB, core warrior, DH, core guard, all thief variants, Holosmith) are competitive all the time, at least as far as PvP is concerned.

Heck core power warrior, core valk guardian, and Holosmith outright do more damage to sub 50% opponents while also doing that damage to above 50% opponents.

If necromancer's sub 50% mechanics and traits where extremely strong, then I can see the restrictions being warranted, but (most of) the <50% effects aren't even that powerful. A few stacks of vuln and might aren't worth as much as you would think, but at the same time with our base damage being so poor, we need all the vuln and might we can get our hands on.

@Anchoku.8142 said:There is a lot of dependency on opponent health in Necromancer. I suppose it is there to punish opponents who do not kill a Necromancer fast enough.

lol, this made me laugh. How many classes can go invuln, become immune to dmg, become immune to condi's and can full heal very quickly.

To the OP, there is a ton of power dependancy on health of the target, which makes the necro horrible at early burst for raids, which is usually the easier part of a fight and where most people get their dps. Because of this power necro (all specs) underperforms when compared to a lot of other classes. I really do with they would rework spite and even curses trait lines to passivly buff power reaper and condi scourge.

If nothing else necro mains are the "hope beyond all hope" players

@Crinn.7864 said:What I would like to see:Unholy Feast's secondary strike should proc at <50% (up from 25%)Siphoned power and Death's Embrace should not have health threshold requirements. (if the stack amount/duration has to be nerfed in compensation, so be it)Executioner Scythe's <50% base damage should become it's baseline base damage.Executioner's Scythe's <25% base damage should become it's <50% base damage.Executioner's Scythe should lose the <25% damage tier.Rending Claws should always apply 2 vuln.I like these ideas with one exception. When Unholy Feast was updated I wrote the same day in this forum that the 25% threshold is garbage. But then I realized that the skill works different than all the other threshold skills.

It procs when the first strike brings your target below 25% HP and not when you hit a target which already is under the threshold.

E.g: Your target has 15k HP and UF deals 2k damage. 2k is about 13% of 15k. This means if you hit your target on 37% HP you proc the secondary strike (37 - 13 = 24). A 50% threshold would be a bit too much for the cooldown and the other effects of the skill as this would be a double strike almost every time - especially in a team fight.

Okay would be: either a 33% threshold or a 50% threshold and a rework of the skill mechanic to function the same way as the other threshold skills/traits.

I think a good change to Siphoned Power would be to gain might when you gain life force with an (?) ICD. This would have so much synergy with a lot of thing necromancer does. Staff, for a change will not be a useless weapon and will have more purpose to it than just gaining some life force. Dagger would see a major boost to it (which I think it sorely needs). Nourishing Rot and Unending corruption from Scourge line will benefit greatly from it for power Scourge variants. Spiteful Spirit and Weakening shroud from core necro lines will benefit from it. Both Axe and scepter would get some benefits out of it. Over all, it will boost the might generation of necros by a lot and would not depend upon health threshold or doing Reaper shroud 5+4 combo or spamming shroud auto attack.

@Rudra.6932 said:I think a good change to Siphoned Power would be to gain might when you gain life force with an (?) ICD. This would have so much synergy with a lot of thing necromancer does. Staff, for a change will not be a useless weapon and will have more purpose to it than just gaining some life force. Dagger would see a major boost to it (which I think it sorely needs). Nourishing Rot and Unending corruption from Scourge line will benefit greatly from it for power Scourge variants. Spiteful Spirit and Weakening shroud from core necro lines will benefit from it. Both Axe and scepter would get some benefits out of it. Over all, it will boost the might generation of necros by a lot and would not depend upon health threshold or doing Reaper shroud 5+4 combo or spamming shroud auto attack.

The problem with this is that blighter's boon exists. Even with a ICD you'd still have blighter's boon periodically "double tapping" with Siphoned power, which would mean they would have to balance Blighter's boon on the assumption of having Siphoned Power, or balance Siphoned Power on the assumption of having Blighter's Boon. Which would result in one or both traits ending up trash when used on builds not containing both traits.

Siphoned Power might do better to be a stacking damage buff on the Necro when he hits a target. Could have it be a short-duration buff (say 5 seconds) where each stack gives 3% damage increase. Stack it up to 5 times (or 10, if you really want to reward the necro for going aggressive), and you're good to go.

@Lahmia.2193 said:The worst part is all those traits are in our Damage line. Theme over usefulness as always.

This could not be a bad thing.. if all the other professions did the same with their trait lines. But they have done the right choice of mixing theme with usefulness.