Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Addressing the CORE(Necromancer Balance)


Lily.1935

Recommended Posts

Oh boy, I have not been looking forward to this one. In terms of talking about Scourge and Reaper those two are far simpler to address the issues for since in spite of how cool elite specializations are they are just an extension of existing professions and there is far less to talk about even with something as complex as Scourge. Core necromancer is not easy to talk about because generally speaking I like to address issues relating to it in small bits. Perhaps a single weapon, a skill type or specialization so we can laser focus on that one specific issue and have a real discussion. These types of posts though tend to be a bit overwhelming to the reader and most people don't bother reading them. So for that, I'm really sorry. I'll try to make this as easy to read as possible and give my reasons behind the way I feel and what I believe the necromancer needs moving forward. As with the last ones, this one will primarily be addressing PvE, however PvP and WvW will come up as needed.

Introduction

Back when HoT was announced and before the specialization change occurred I had asked the question "What defines the necromancer's mechanic?". I was referring to the importance of shroud vs life force when looking at the necromancer and what was vital to its identity. I had asked this question under the assumption that the Devs would take a long hard look at the traits and specializations and would define what they wanted the necromancer to be and what not to be. I had mentioned that what I felt was the answer was life force and not shroud. And because of this the necromancer really needed to push their identity with life force. The devs at the time didn't seem to agree with me and the specializations hyper focused on shroud as the mechanic with life force hardly being a mechanic. To this day the player base of the necromancer views life force as uninteresting, clunky and all around a chore to use without actually having any understanding of the extraordinary depth that it could have provided the class. When they made that choice I resigned myself to their position, although never agreeing with it I had mostly given up on life force ever being the meaningful mechanic I knew it could be. With the release of the Scourge, the devs seems to have shifted their position on the necromancer to close of that what I envisioned what should have defined the necromancer since day one. However they didn't do everything they needed to do in order to ensure its proper integration with the necromancer.

Life Force

The Most important aspect of the necromancer is life force. Beyond just shroud, Life force is the necromancer's primary tool, regardless of what elite specialization you use or what future one shows up. But it really doesn't have as big of an impact on the way a player preforms on necromancer as it should. It has an interesting interaction with vitality in that the more vitality you have the more life force you have. But this isn't really that meaningful when using shroud because the impact on damage you would take would be about the same if you had a comparable amount of toughness since the decay rate of shroud is percentage based and not a fixed number. Life force also has little use outside of shroud on necromancer which leaves players trying to conserve as much of it as possible taking the easiest and safest possible path to victory. The fact that this mechanic is so neglected and ignored has put people off of it for years. Even though its build rate is respectable players still feel its much too slow even though it was never intended to be a fast building mechanic.

To put it simply, life force needs to matter a lot more than it does. There are a few changes I would make to this in order to make it more meaningful and give players more control of how its used. The first is I would change the decay rate of life force from a percentage to a fixed number. This will further push players into trying higher vitality gear since their duration in shroud would last longer. The second is skills should care about the use of life force beyond just gaining it. Spectral skills especially should have effects that trigger when life force is being spent. Players should always care about this mechanic and treasure it.

Shroud

Shroud is probably the most unbalanced mechanic in the game. And I'm not saying its over powered or under powered. Its Unbalanced. In some game modes its incredibly oppressive in others its next to useless. And each of those game modes have a profound impact on the way shroud has been designed. Beyond just that shroud teaches players bad habits. Since the necromancer always has a rather long lasting panic button there is little punishment when its used wrong but the difference between using it right and using it wrong usually yields the same results. It also doesn't grant healing and many of the skills have an astronomically long cool down coupled with the fact that they tend to be fairly low quality as well as having poor synergy with the skills the necromancer already has.

Some changes I'd suggest to go along with the life force changes are quite diverse. I could go into a couple different directions from this but I think arena net had the right idea with the Alpha build of the necromancer's death shroud mechanic. If I remember correctly, shroud would both decay over time and cost life force when using skills. The decay rate could be cut since the skills in shroud would now cost life force. And since it would be at a fixed number based on your base health total it could further incentivize players to look into vitality based gear. Beyond just that Utility in shroud that requires you to spend life force on those would go a long way in providing the necromancer with utility it otherwise would be locked out of normally. These are some changes I'd suggested for both reaper's shroud and death shroud As I feel this could open up space for traits and skills to really play with shroud's identity a bit further.

There was another idea I had, but this would be a bit more of a controversial change since this would completely change the necromancer from its original intention. However, regardless of how it might sound I feel I should mention it. The idea would be to decouple the shroud skills from shroud itself. Now what do I mean by that? I wouldn't remove shroud. Far from it. But shroud would be exactly what it was always described as. A second health bar and not an actual form change. Moving it down to f5 and functioning mostly the same you'd enter shroud but your bar would not be replaced. All of your normal skills would remain. Only you'd also have an f1-4 which would be some of the shroud skills it once had moved to always have access to. My choices for this were Life blast functioning much the same way only with a shorter cast time and after cast delay and actually having a projectile finisher. Dark Path, a ground teleport rather than a projectile. Tainted Shackles, changed from a tether to a pull in a forward con that causes torment. And Doom which would remain mostly the same. Life transfer would be moved to an existing weapon, or be a part of a new mechanic I'd probably call 'death empowered skills' that could turn over when in shroud. But the idea is out there now. And I don't expect anything to come of this. If people want I can go more into detail about this at a later date. While shroud itself in this version would still function the same, this would make it so you had to choose between using your F skills sparingly to maintain your defensive shroud or to be as offensive as possible.

Specializations

Next I'd like to look at the specializations as a part of the necromancer's design since My suggestions are pushing a more life force focused narrative. Multiple specializations' and their function seems to be mediocre in a lot of respects. Other issues have come up that the community has pointed out that the necromancer doesn't have a lot of stat modifiers. Now, this is far from the truth since they have 8 on their core profession and 10 across their elite specs which is about average for all professions, it is true that some of these are not desirable in PvE. This is especially noticeable to players since physical damage isn't well represented on the selected stats one of them being restricted to reaper's shroud while the other in Death magic that requires you to build toughness. Where as on the other hand Curses has fantastic Condition damage modifiers. This isn't to say that not having a bunch of damage oriented modifiers is a bad thing, it isn't. Guardian has most of its modifiers as defenses such as toughness or healing. The issue that I see impacting us more is the lack of quality surrounding traits that really makes these unnoticeable or in some cases like deathly strength and Corrupter's fervor, lack build defining characteristics. This isn't to say that all of them are bad. Like I mentioned, Curses has amazing modifiers and Soul reaping does too even with only one. Blood magic's Healing power modifier would be superb if the necromancer had better use with healing power, but even with the scourge just isn't quite there yet. While Spite is the biggest offender in this catagory being the only specialization without a single raw stat modifier.Since I'm also pushing more of a life force focused narrative with this post I feel that the necromancer should focus more on this idea as a part of its identity. The trait should modify this or gain benefits in some way while chewing up your life force. Either through quick burns or slow ones. It should be a defining feature of the specializations to really push more focus on the mechanic to change the way people feel about it.

  • Spite: Spite is in a pretty unique post. Its not in such a bad situation like death magic, but its not good like curses or soul reaping either. It sorta sits in the middle as an uninteresting specialization that you take to improve physical damage but really only shines in Open world since it has a tone of passive might generation. While in groups it flounders pretty heavily, providing little compared to other profession's specializations that function fairly similar. While Elementalist both gains the 20% damage while foes are below 50% they also gain fresh air which really gives something to define air magic which can provide very different feel. While Spite has an identity in causing vulnerability, stripping boons and might, it doesn't really do much with those themes other than just having them. Considering how much might spite generations it'd be nice to see a grandmaster that utilized over stacking might in some way since a necromancer can very easily do that on their own, and would combo with allies in some way. Spite doesn't need to be anything other than selfish to be good, but having it function in a way that you can gain more benefit from the mundane from your allies could go a long way. I'd personally also drop rending shroud for something else. Perhaps turn it into a burst that triggers on spending life force as a means to promote more synergy with spending style that could scale off of the amount of life force spent. Further themes of spending life force could be extended on in other specializations to really push this theme. Spite myself to spite you!
  • Curses: I've praised this specialization already in this post, but that doesn't mean I don't have problems with it. It has exactly what you want from a condition specialization. Minor issues I have would be its Terrifying decent having a laughably low number of torment considering how rare fear is. Even on necromancer there are very few instances of fear to be used. I'm aware that the necromancer always has access to a fear, but you are unlikely to see more than one fear on a bar since the only one they're likely to take is the one they always have. Because of this, Terrifying decent and Terror don't preform as well as they should since the support isn't quite there. Master of corruption is another contentious trait as it is one of our best, while at the same time the cost of using it tends to out weigh its benefits at times, barring its use with plaguelands which plaguelands cost of use is perhaps a bit too lax, especially when compared to consume condition or blood is power.
  • Death Magic: Ho boy, probably the absolute worse specialization the necromancer has, this spec is literally a one note gimmick. You run it with minions or not at all. It has really poor identity being a defensive spec but going off into several directions. It has a minor poison theme, power theme, defense theme, minion theme, shroud theme and all of them coalesce into a spec with extremely poor choices. Death could use some simplification. Break it down into a couple of themes. Lets go with poison, sustain and summoning. Keep to those few and you can really fix this specialization. I also couldn't talk about death magic if I didn't mention soul comprehension. If I was going to change this trait at all, I'd probably add a bonus 5-7% life force to it. Just a flat increase to your life force pool. Simple, and it helps out its sustain. Nothing too major since I feel the minors aside from that aren't too bad. The last point on death is the minion traits. These traits honestly should be streamlined, either put into the base minions and combine into a grandmaster trait to free up more room to promote more interesting exterior identity.
  • Blood Magic: Traits are mostly solid in blood magic. It is very consistent in what its trying to do. Though some of the issues with blood are not blood's fault but rather the way that arena net decided to balance life stealing. To optimize the use of blood magic you need to run a power build. Already this should have you scratching your head because its our healing spec. But that's because the healing skills in blood don't usually matter because there isn't a whole lot of support on the necromancer for that style of gameplay. Add to that life stealing which has extremely poor scaling with healing power can be put to better use scaling off of power because the healing is so minor but dealing more damage is always good. To start with this, I'd remove the power scaling from life stealing, increase it's coefficients with healing power to scale both its damage and healing equality, have its healing and damage impacted by poison, transference sigil, monk runes to really push a vampiric style of game play. To be effective with blood magic, you should want to take healing power and this would be a good first step. To add to that, creating interesting choices for the necromancer such as changing life from death from a exit shroud trait into a spend life force trait could make for an interesting healer if it could heal around you and your shades. So while Vampiric presence could be fantastic as a DPS boost as it could scale higher there is a meaningful trait off if you take it. With life from death you could run a pretty good protection healer style of build or a vampiric aura mancer that focuses on stealing life on mass. Another thing to metion is Unholy martyr. It just doesn't work well with the future envisioned for the necromancer at this time. It was never a very good trait, however only gets even more clunky with the inclusion of the scourge. I'm not sure what to replace this with or if it should be changed to fit more of a life force spending theme. One thing is for certain though, it can't stay as is.
  • Soul Reaping: Often considered the required specialization on the necromancer it is easy to see why. Its design is pretty good. Although if I were to change it I'd take Death perception and have it grant a bonus 50% crit chance to shroud skills rather than while in shroud. it might not be that big of a deal now, but it does open the door to future elite specs that might focus more on power aside from just reaper. The other aspect of Soul reaping is the master tier trait competition is pretty decided. With Vital persistence being the clear choice between the three. Of the other three, I'd probably merg those traits with other existing traits somewhere else or move them to a trait line that could suit them a bit better. Such as moving spectral mastery to Death magic. This could make room for 2 more traits that play with the idea of life force skills in some way. Either increasing their cost to gain some benefit. Or Perhaps going to sustain. So we have consistency, sustain and burning the candle as the master themes. Really giving definition to those traits for players to really sink their teeth into.

Weapons

For the most part, I actually really like the necromancer's weapons. I have often debated others on the forums about them, usually defending them against criticism I often feel is much too harsh considering their role. Except axe, there is no defense for that. But over all they function well, feel pretty good to use and have some decent utility. This isn't to say that they don't have problems. Some weapons haven't stood the test of time as the game has progressed and have clunky mechanics when trying to use them in a practical situation. The necromancer by no means is the only profession with this issue, however It should be addressed. I wont cover every single weapon since I don't feel they all need to be addressed. Scepter for example is in a pretty solid spot at the moment and if I was going to make a change to it, it would be coupled with lingering curse which I wont get into today.

  • Axe: Okay, I dogged on axe at the start of this so lets start with that. Of all the necromancer weapons, Axe has two in game counterparts that function in fairly similar roles, all be it a bit differently. Necromancer's Scepter and Mesmer's Greatsword. In terms of Design of the skills Axe has a bit in common with the Scepter only flip it to be power rather than Condition. Neither use projectiles, both have a cripple and both have a high damage skill that grants a decent amount of life force. When compared to Mesmer greatsword though, it functions in much the same way. Damge and a bit of control. While mesmer's greatsword is over all a superior weapon, this isn't because its an OP weapons. It isn't. The greatsword just has better utility at range where as the Axe functions best at 600 range and doesn't function particularly well at that range either. Going back to the Scepter comparison, every worry the devs have about the axe, the Scepter has shown that it shouldn't be a worry considering that its the condition counterpart in many respects and has proven that it doesn't need any kind of nerfing, its good were it is. Axe could use quite a few changes. For starters its auto attack should change to be a chain skill with a decent pay off. The auto is underwhelming as it is and this could give players something besides a rather lack luster paddling animation(at least for humanoid females...). Its channel skill I feel is actually in a decent spot for damage, but its surrounding skills don't support it as well as it should. Unholy feast should likely have a aoe strike that triggers at the target's location and not your own with a reduced cast time while I feel the pay off of the axe's chain should also probably be an aoe strike.
  • Dagger Main hand: Dagger is a strange weapon. It is clearly a sustain weapon yet it bleeds yourself. Although I enjoy this identity with the dagger especially with that animation, it makes sense. but if you are going to push that them, I feel you should go further than you did. If you are bleeding for example, dark pact could turn over into a new skill that causes an aoe fear or something similar. Or perhaps Life siphon can steal life from 2 addition targets if bleeding. Something along those lines. I'd like to see you expand on this concept you started and really push it to some more interesting places.
  • Dagger Off Hand: The biggest issue with Dagger off hand is that its last skill doesn't quite have enough damage for its cast time combine with its low boon conversion as well as the fact that it doesn't provide life force. Even just a little bit could go a long way, as it did with torch. Even just that 3% on torch when hitting one foe was really helpful so if dagger could get 4% with deathly swarm this could be fantastic.
  • Staff: I've defended this weapon for quite some time since I really enjoy it. Although the community often shows disdain for this weapon to an extreme I never felt was justified considering how much utility it can provide. With that said, this isn't to say I think the weapon is perfect. Far from it. It should have a bit more damage in it, although nothing quite on the level of scepter, it would be nice if it could have a condition on its auto. Since this is a PvE post my preference would be poison. Another thing i'd like to see is putrid mark transferring conditions from allies around it as well. I want to believe it used to be this way, but human memory isn't always that reliable so it might have been some strange fantasy of mine.

Utility

I'll be talking about the healing skills and elites in this section as well as the utility in order to keep the number of categories to a minimum. Necromancer utility is mostly a miss in terms of PvE, having few skills that are actually beneficial to allies and those that are are frequently out classed by other profession's utility or even weapons skills that provide similar roles. The most useful of the necromancer's utility being corruption skills which pushes players into a condition role. Although I personally don't see that as a problem, necessarily, Guild wars was built on the promise of play how you want. And this choice becomes the most viable one to choose if you want to even have the chance of being included into a group for something like raids or fractals. Because of this, the player base seems to take a strong stance on condition specs, feeling its the only option. While this is far from the truth, their concerns aren't entirely without reason. Many of the skills have poor power coefficients, support lacks utility, and minions neither have the quantity or the aoe presence to meaningfully impact a fight.

  • Corruptions: As I've said the corruption skills are some of our best. Although really the only 3 you want to take in PvE generally are Epidemic, Plaguelands and occasionally blood is power. Although An argument could be made for Corrosive poison cloud it isn't as popular as it probably should be. Although Epidemic and Plaguelands are pretty good where they are, Blood is power which is supposed to have a support element to it, its might distance is painfully small. To really gain the benefits of this skill you need to be extremely close to allies along with the huge risk that you might not be able to remove the Bleeding and torment which can take half of your life total away if you are running a condi build. And if not, its recharge and duration don't sync up very well. To put it bluntly, Blood is power needs a much higher radius. For the corruptions as a whole though i feel they should have a stronger benefit from their trait.
  • Minions: There is far too much to talk about here to get everything in that I want to say about minions. Most of the minion skills are pretty lacking, aside from Flesh golem and Blood fiend. Of the others, the minions don't have good utility in PvE and tend to be fairly slow. There are quite a few solutions that could work to help solve their issue, such as giving them charges when you gain their turn over skill that lets you have a set max of a type of minion. So for Bone minions you could have a total of 3-5 and after blowing a couple of them up you don't have to spend all of your minions to start getting minions back, they could just automatically spawn or gain another "charge" when a creature around you dies. As for the Grandmaster you could really push this theme and have it so it grants bonus charges to your existing minion skills so that we could really see a snowball strategy with minions. Beyond just that the jagged horrors could have their 30 second life span removed. Although perhaps with the grandmaster granting extra charges to minion skills they wouldn't be needed. Either way I'd love to see a return to minion builds. I'll probably make a post on this in the future, but right now this is a start of an idea. There is always more to talk about with minions, so this is just a start.
  • Signets: Signets lack utility with each other. The direction they go in is pretty radically different. Although this isn't exactly a problem, it would be nice to see them have some buffs. Signet of spite just has too long of a cool down in PvE. Even for what it does, it just isn't worth the skill slot to take it. Signet of Vampirism on the other hand is rather clunky to us. It would be nice to see this skill changed to more of an aura since signet of suffering no longer converts boons. So the strike on this skill isn't needed. Removal of the internal cool down would be nice as well since a vampiric orders necromancer has been a requested build type for years. And this skill sparked interest in that but never quite got there. Signet of Undeath is another popular one that people like to joke about, since it could have its cast time drastically reduced and its cool down and its likely it still wouldn't be taken. Which is a shame since most revive utility don't see a whole lot of use, baring search and rescue. But necromancer just has a better option in transfusion which pulls allies out of danger and has stronger utility outside of just downed allies. Sure there is that minor bit of life force, but that's hardly motivation to take it.
  • Spectral: As I've mentioned above I'd like to see more interaction with life force skills on the spectral skills. Although I don't want to go into too much detail, there are a few changes that could aid these skills in seeing a bit more use. The first being Spectral grasp. Of these skills this one is probably the most clunky skills the necromancer has. As such I feel a function change is in order for this skill. Still grant the life force but instead of pulling a target to you it makes your next few life force spending/shroud skills cause chill. A damage bonus wouldn't be a bad idea for those skills as well, to really help the necromancer out in the DPS department. This could go a long way for reaper who could use this skill get a damage bonus, enter shroud, get another damage bonus from the 300 ferocity then get the 10% from chilled foes. Another spectral change would be with Spectral wall. I believe I've mentioned this before, but having this convert projectiles into life force could be a good way to defend your allies along with its protection while also granting you valuable life force. The last skill I really want to talk about in spectral skills would be Lich form. This skill is a mess. There really isn't much of a way to salvage this skill and I feel that it should go the way of the Guardian tomes and be removed from the game until its use can be solidified and replaced with a more appropriate elite to take its place.
  • Wells: Last on the utility list is wells and there isn't a whole lot to talk about here. The biggest thing that should be mentioned is that the damage they do for their cool down is actually pretty low. Which is a real shame since they are some of the more popular skills to use. Mostly it might just be tweaking numbers with these skills than making sweeping changes but something should be done with them. The only two interesting changes I could suggest is giving well of darkness damage and well of power pulsing stability.

Closing statement

There is absolutely a lot more that can be said about the necromancer. It is a profession with a lot of issue, and a lot of paths it could go for solutions. The major thing I wanted to point out with this post was just how many problems it actually has in PvE while still being fair and honestly about it. I don't always agree with the devs and I don't always agree with the necromancer community. My opinion is also not ridged either. I am someone who can and has changed her mind before, and I likely will do it again. But this has been a constant for me on the necromancer since its release with Guild wars 2. The necromancer has always been problematic and has always felt like a watered down version of what it could have been. And with how much professions have crept in power over the past 5 years, the concerns with necromancer of yesterday, although important, shouldn't be used as a means to not try and make progress with the necromancer's design. I am of the opinion that the necromancer could use almost a reboot in a sense, and with how much I've talked about here, it shouldn't be hard to see why I might feel that way. I understand arena net's reluctance to put int he effort, however I will mention that the Dervish from GW1 did go through almost a complete overhaul in order to make it competitive with the other professions. But even if you don't agree with my overall statement about the necromancer I hope you at least enjoyed the read. It took a bit longer to post than I really wanted to spend on it.

As always, keep discussion civil and respectful. We all love this game, and this profession is just as much our baby as it is Arena net's. And we only want what's best for her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 55
  • Created
  • Last Reply

I'd argue that most people who concretely understand Necromancer's short-coming's within the context of GW2's PvE metagame already know what 95% of your post already says. There's a reason why I sort of skip the middle man of discussion and go right into general re-works and balance changes when I talk about Necromancer. Everybody gets it: Necro is underpowered in PvE. Moreover, everyone understands why it's underpowered as well.

However, the nobody seems to consider the most important concepts when talking about how to make Necromancer relevant in PvE again: the tenants of how 5/10 slots in any GW2 raiding party are already hard-locked by Druid, Chrono, Ele and 2 Warriors. Those five classes provide party buffs while also dealing damage. The other 5 slots are just throwaway classes that only provide damage. Since Necro is within the throwaway group and provides trash DPS, it is easy to exclude outright.

This is why I proposed the Bloodthirst buff idea, and it's why I re-worked loads of traits, spectral and well skills, and the dagger/focus set all with the holistic intent to create a robust rotation which would not only provide high power damage, but also give Necromancer access to the bar-none, number one reason that a class would make its way into auto-lock tier: party-wide DPS buffs. Power Chrono existing as a raid mainstay automatically proves that low personal DPS can even be entirely forgiven in the party buff is strong enough (alacrity and quickness in the case of Chrono).

Throwing random boons and damage buffs around here and there won't save Necro's position in PvE. Disconnecting shroud skills from a dedicated shroud form (while honestly novel) wouldn't change much either (except to even further homogenize Necromancer into the mush of GW2's shallow design by taking away one of the few remaining "play-style" mechanics that exist in this game). If you want Necro to make it into PvE, you want the Bloodthirst buff I've been pitching. Maybe it doesn't have to be called that or even take the exact form of it, but that's what you want. You want a class-specific, party-DPS buff, and you want skills that don't spit on a target and then wait 20 seconds in order to spit again. You want enduring field damage with rotations that keep Necro from relying too much on autoattack spam, and you want an alacrity/Grace of the Land buff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Swagg.9236 said:I'd argue that most people who concretely understand Necromancer's short-coming's within the context of GW2's PvE metagame already know what 95% of your post already says. There's a reason why I sort of skip the middle man of discussion and go right into general re-works and balance changes when I talk about Necromancer. Everybody gets it: Necro is underpowered in PvE. Moreover, everyone understands why it's underpowered as well.

However, the nobody seems to consider the most important concepts when talking about how to make Necromancer relevant in PvE again: the tenants of how 5/10 slots in any GW2 raiding party are already hard-locked by Druid, Chrono, Ele and 2 Warriors. Those five classes provide party buffs while also dealing damage. The other 5 slots are just throwaway classes that only provide damage. Since Necro is within the throwaway group and provides trash DPS, it is easy to exclude outright.

This is why I proposed the Bloodthirst buff idea, and it's why I re-worked loads of traits, spectral and well skills, and the dagger/focus set all with the holistic intent to create a robust rotation which would not only provide high power damage, but also give Necromancer access to the bar-none, number one reason that a class would make its way into auto-lock tier: party-wide DPS buffs. Power Chrono existing as a raid mainstay automatically proves that low personal DPS can even be entirely forgiven in the party buff is strong enough (alacrity and quickness in the case of Chrono).

Throwing random boons and damage buffs around here and there won't save Necro's position in PvE. Disconnecting shroud skills from a dedicated shroud form (while honestly novel) wouldn't change much either (except to even further homogenize Necromancer into the mush of GW2's shallow design by taking away one of the few remaining "play-style" mechanics that exist in this game). If you want Necro to make it into PvE, you want the Bloodthirst buff I've been pitching. Maybe it doesn't have to be called that or even take the exact form of it, but that's what you want. You want a class-specific, party-DPS buff, and you want skills that don't spit on a target and then wait 20 seconds in order to spit again. You want enduring field damage with rotations that keep Necro from relying too much on autoattack spam, and you want an alacrity/Grace of the Land buff.

Actually, I talk about a lot of really strong and interesting changes in the post. I wouldn't skip over it. Although I didn't get too much into specifics, that's primarily because I've already done that. As for the community, most don't know what you say is obvious. So it does need to be stated. And the solutions that people give are often, like your post, just make necromancer more like profession X but not defining the necromancer using their own existing themes to promote use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lily.1935 said:

And the solutions that people give are often, like your post, just make necromancer more like profession X but not defining the necromancer using their own existing themes to promote use.

That's because the Necromancer has no prevailing functional theme: for all it's flavor, it has zero functional worth in PvE. We can talk all we want about death and blood and spirits, but none of it means a lick of difference if it all just translates to "DPS" at the end of the day (and not even enough DPS to justify its existence in any meta PvE group). You have to understand that a "class" (or role) in a role-playing game needs to have a principle function within the scope of that game's mechanic base before anyone starts coating that functionality with some fancy shapes and colors that people like to call "themes." That aside, I don't understand how a class-specific party buff called "Bloodlust" on a "Necromancer" that tosses around blood themes like candy isn't thematic enough for the average player (who would probably just rather see the class viable in PvE before they care about the shiny new name and particle effects slapped onto the function that gives them that opportunity).

I'll take a look at the rest of your post in a little more detail, though. Point taken for the need to "get the word out" to people who don't know about the Necromancer's fundamental issues in GW2 PvE, but seriously, you have to consider where you are and also the kind of posts you see on a regular basis. It's probably pretty clear that most everybody already knows what you're trying to say with that massive brick of text (and because of that, a lot of your ideas will get lost in the haze of "Wow, I already know this. Stop repeating the obvious.").

I know this all sounds super snarky, but I'm only speaking with sincerity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lily.1935 said:

The first is I would change the decay rate of life force from a percentage to a fixed number. This will further push players into trying higher vitality gear since their duration in shroud would last longer.

Vitality is a DPS loss in PvE, so this idea would have zero impact on anything. It might have an impact in PvP, but shroud would still be shroud. By merely, potentially prolonging shroud duration, you're not changing anything since there is no difference in how the actives function. We'll either see more autoattack spam, players swapping out still so they can continue the rest of their DPS rotations, or no change at all in PvP since Necros will still just get bursted down regardless of how slow you make life force passively degenerate.

@Lily.1935 said:

The second is skills should care about the use of life force beyond just gaining it. Spectral skills especially should have effects that trigger when life force is being spent.

I can tell that you wrote this with your "separate shroud skills from shroud" idea in mind, and yet you decide to introduce this idea before it. That's just bad formatting. Nobody is going to initially imagine any possibilities of Necromancers losing life force while spectral skills are in effect since

  • Nobody regularly, if at all, uses spectral skills in any game-mode.
  • Spending life force while spectral skills are in effect would imply that you are either a scourge using spectral skills (bizarre already), or you are using a spectral skill and then deliberately swapping into shroud (while that is a viable tactic, it's still a pretty forced play-style for a niche effect).

You need to be concrete with your ideas. This is why I just write the skills outright akin to tooltips you see in the game. Your idea could be absolutely anything, and all that vagueness isn't going to get Necromancer any closer to a concrete solution for its PvE woes.

@Lily.1935 said:

I think arena net had the right idea with the Alpha build of the necromancer's death shroud mechanic.

The alpha shroud had a couple of forms, one of which was: "Enter Death Shroud when you are downed," (which was an awful idea on top of how shoe-horned the down-state is already).

@Lily.1935 said:

If I remember correctly, shroud would both decay over time and cost life force when using skills. The decay rate could be cut since the skills in shroud would now cost life force. And since it would be at a fixed number based on your base health total it could further incentivize players to look into vitality based gear.

Once again, vitality will never top damage stats in PvE. You will never convince anyone of this. It's a matter of numbers. The only way you're going to make this work is if you somehow just re-set all of Necro's damage to scale based on vitality, which probably nobody would support. You could even design a bunch of traits to give global or weapon/skill type bonuses based on vitality, but on the whole, you're just further crippling the current Necromancer by arbitrarily splitting the class far and away from an already established, global and functioning system of damage calculation.

@Lily.1935 said:

I'd personally also drop rending shroud for something else. Perhaps turn it into a burst that triggers on spending life force as a means to promote more synergy with spending style that could scale off of the amount of life force spent.

This is one of the better ideas that isn't just a lot of cloudy theorycrafting or little band-aid number buffs, but even then you can't just continue to be incredibly vague about how this is supposed to work. These things need a trigger. Something like:

  • If you strike a foe while using Shroud 4, lose life force and inflict extra damage.

Followed by the relevant tooltips. You keep mentioning "spending" life force without describing any new mechanic which would allow the Necromancer to do so. GW2 is a spaghetti-code game. Every individual effect is basically coded in on its own independent most, sometimes all, other effects, so you need to be cognizant of this issue when making suggestions. I realize that Scourge exists and therefore sets a precedent for skills costing a fixed amount of life force in order to cast, but you still need to be specific about how these suggestions are supposed to work within the game itself.

Looking at the giant text wall beneath me, I realize I'm getting in over my head with this. I'm just calling it quits for the night since its late. While I agree with you about Necro needing help in PvE, I think I've already said everything I needed to say back in my original post in this thread. Necro needs its own alacrity and better DPS rotations if it's going to compete in PvE. That's it, and that's all that I've suggested happen with the couple of threads that I've put up featuring various utility, trait and weapon re-works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I kinda like your idea about spectral skills and agree with most of what you say Lily.

This is my personal point of view:One thing that I'd want to see, however, would be change on a few traitlines and skill type interaction.

  • I'd associate wells to spite and simply give to the necromancer a damage bonus when standing into a well. (I keep it simple)
  • I'd associate signets to curse, making you draw conditions from nearby allies when you use a signet and gain 50 condi damage per condition drawn for a short time (the buff work everytime you draw a condition not just from using a signet)
  • I'd associate corruptions to blood magic, making it so that the only counterpart to use corruptions skills is some bleed stacks.

I'd also fonctionnally change blood magic and death magic. Simply put, blood magic deserve more to be a "defense" traitline than a "support" traitline while death magic should logically be a support traitline (especially since it feature minions). I'd construct those two traitlines like this:

Blood magic: The goal here is a traitline focused on blood!

  • Upper traits would focus strengthening oneself through our own bleed with traits like blood armor that would reduce damage and condition damage the more bleed stacks we have on us, for example.
  • Midline traits would focus on siphoning life. (I'd like a true reform on siphon here)
  • Bottom traits would focus on bleed dealt on foes.

Death magic: The goal is a traitline focused on the necromancer and it's interaction with others.

  • Upper traits would focus on fields and combo opening new possibilities for the necromancer and adding a new minion trait that make minions skills stop summoning minions and grant instead minion's active skills to the necromancer.
  • Midline traits would focus on life force. We find here the life transfer on shroud skill#4 and a trait that grant life force to the necromancer while he is in shroud each time he receive some health from an allie.
  • Bottom traits would focus on poison with maybe an aura that grant a set amount of health to allies each time they hit a poisoned foe (this here replace vampiric presence).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Swagg.9236 said:

Followed by the relevant tooltips. You keep mentioning "spending" life force without describing any new mechanic which would allow the Necromancer to do so. GW2 is a spaghetti-code game. Every individual effect is basically coded in on its own independent most, sometimes all, other effects, so you need to be cognizant of this issue when making suggestions. I realize that Scourge exists and therefore sets a precedent for skills costing a fixed amount of life force in order to cast, but you still need to be specific about how these suggestions are supposed to work within the game itself.

I thought it was obvious, I suppose that's my fault for assuming it would make perfect sense to people especially since the scourge already spends life force. But I'll explain it.

Life force is a resource. Skills related to life force, such as shroud abilities, shade abilities and potentially utility skills while in shroud only should cost a bit of life force. Like an energy bar. This was closer to what life force's original intent was. To act as a resource that can be spent. I thought this was extremely obvious to people, so I didn't explain it that far. Especially since I have talked at length about the concept before.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As always, good post. Well thought out and reasoned. I've long thought life force should be used for other reasons than just a 2nd health bar. I'd love to see spectral skills turned into utilities that use LF for extra effects. That way Anet can beef up that whole utility group and make them useful and powerful in their own right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lobo.1296 said:As always, good post. Well thought out and reasoned. I've long thought life force should be used for other reasons than just a 2nd health bar. I'd love to see spectral skills turned into utilities that use LF for extra effects. That way Anet can beef up that whole utility group and make them useful and powerful in their own right.

Thank you. I tried to give enough of the point there without making definite and ridged changes. It was a post I promised and I could go into great detail about anything mentioned here, but perhaps another time. I would absolutely like to make a post about minions for example.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the community is bloated with ideas - quite like itand the huge amount of ideas exist for a full 5 years now - together with the furstration level.

i wonder if it would be necessary to change so much.most important: how likely is it, that we get a huge "rework"? not very likely.lets face it, most professions have trait-lines and traits that are not taken in competitive modes - ever or super niche-ee ! and thats okay.

I'd appreciate a simple approach, that is much more likely to happen (we are talking to anet, right. remember: axe +5% dmg).ONE to TWO of the following: dmg coeffitients (pve only, so it doesnt have a big impact on wvw/spvp); 7% more dmg on vuln foes (instead of 10% on axe); 5% more dmg on bleeding foes (blood magic)/extra life siphon on bleeding foes when suing a dagger.and ONE simple grp-related desirable buff that fits IN a possible dmg build (NOT again a situation of EITHER OR): minus toughness on the enemy (my favorite); a better life siphon; minions giving a spirit-like buff; whatever - everything here is just a placeholder.

none of it has to be on a chrono/cps/druid level nor on a weaver level. in fact it never should due to the simplicity/survivability the necro has to offer in pve. nor should it replace another profession entirely. but being an option that doesnt pull the group down, in the content this class is lacking the most, is just enough. the flavour the class offers still gets a majoritiy of players to play it - why change it?in a perfect world, this would mean core, reaper, scourge, power (my love!), condition, barrier, shroud would be an equal-ish option. that again is not very likely.

(edit: yes, i've changed my mind a bit during the last couple of weeks. i thought core necro needs major changes everywhere - but effective small changes are more likely to be accepted an implemented. don't you think so?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lily.1935 said:

@Xuazinegueri.3592 said:Don't we need to talk about focus?

Sure if you like, though I've tried that before and people don't seem to care for my ideas.

I dont remember what u talked about it. I kind like focus "5"(at least for PvP) but i feel skill "4" a bit weird. I would like to see more ideas for it.

Ohh, and i would like to see a casting time reduction for "5" to be the same of the utility, Corrupt Boons. Why? Even if the skill chill and deal a little amount of damage(and not poison yourself), you still need to be holding the weapon to use the skill, so we can't use anytime and we "lose 2 skills slots" and not only a single utility slot

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Xuazinegueri.3592 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Xuazinegueri.3592 said:Don't we need to talk about focus?

Sure if you like, though I've tried that before and people don't seem to care for my ideas.

I dont remember what u talked about it. I kind like focus "5"(at least for PvP) but i feel skill "4" a bit weird. I would like to see more ideas for it.

Ohh, and i would like to see a casting time reduction for "5" to be the same of the utility, Corrupt Boons. Why? Even if the skill chill and deal a little amount of damage(and not poison yourself), you still need to be holding the weapon to use the skill, so we can't use anytime and we "lose 2 skills slots" and not only a single utility slot

It was quite a while ago, probably before the change to the forum format. So i'm sure if you dig deep enough it could be found. However, even with that there isn't a whole lot to talk about with Focus. There is plenty more to talk about with other weapons that need a bit more love. Like Axe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pushing Vitality usage on necromancer is a bad idea. We are a T3 health class with poor self-healing, we have no way to replenish our massive health pool which is why we are considered squishy in PvP.

In terms of survivability, the worse your self-healing is the more mitigation you need in order to reduce the incoming damage to where it can be handled by your bad self-healing. Forcing necromancer to stack vitality in order to be LF stable negatively impacts the class since we would be far better off running toughness in PvP and of course PvE you only want offensive stats.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Swagg.9236 said:

Throwing random boons and damage buffs around here and there won't save Necro's position in PvE. Disconnecting shroud skills from a dedicated shroud form (while honestly novel) wouldn't change much either (except to even further homogenize Necromancer into the mush of GW2's shallow design by taking away one of the few remaining "play-style" mechanics that exist in this game). If you want Necro to make it into PvE, you want the Bloodthirst buff I've been pitching. Maybe it doesn't have to be called that or even take the exact form of it, but that's what you want. You want a class-specific, party-DPS buff, and you want skills that don't spit on a target and then wait 20 seconds in order to spit again. You want enduring field damage with rotations that keep Necro from relying too much on autoattack spam, and you want an alacrity/Grace of the Land buff.

You must be addressing a post made by someone else because I didn't throw around random boons. My part buffs are extremely specific to life stealing and might gen. If you bothered to read the other posts, especially the scourge you'd have notice this pretty quickly. Life stealing and might are the two primary buffs I talk about. I know life stealing isn't that great on necromancer at the moment, However I've talked at length about its coefficients with healing power and that it needs to be improved.

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that? Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed. To say that is insignificant in terms of a damage boost is absolutely incorrect. Look at the suggested barrier changes and blood magic because I have stated that the Vampiric presence should be closer to the 100s in terms of its out put rather than were it is now.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latesthttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

And just to make my self perfectly clear. When I say Coefficients I'm talking about how skills and traits scale with stats like power, healing power, toughness or what have you. In the instance of Life stealing, I'm talking about its scaling with healing power specifically. Also must mention that I'm not a exclusive raider, but play all game modes of PvE. Fractals, dungeons, raids, open world, bounties. So the changes I suggest which don't all sound good for raids, have a much wider spread use than just that exclusive game mode.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Crinn.7864 said:Pushing Vitality usage on necromancer is a bad idea. We are a T3 health class with poor self-healing, we have no way to replenish our massive health pool which is why we are considered squishy in PvP.

In terms of survivability, the worse your self-healing is the more mitigation you need in order to reduce the incoming damage to where it can be handled by your bad self-healing. Forcing necromancer to stack vitality in order to be LF stable negatively impacts the class since we would be far better off running toughness in PvP and of course PvE you only want offensive stats.

This is entirely false. Energy vs raw damage is a meaningful choice. Scourge is already incentivized to build more vitality because of the way the Shades skill mechanic works. And it would provide better sustained DPS as opposed to burst DPS. Giving players that choice is a good idea since its how we're already intended to be built. Necromancer is in a unique position in this regard where the optimum gear for a scourge would be a 4 stat gear with a vitality primary already.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lily.1935 said:

You must be addressing a post made by someone else because I didn't throw around random boons. My part buffs are extremely specific to life stealing and might gen. If you bothered to read the other posts, especially the scourge you'd have notice this pretty quickly. Life stealing and might are the two primary buffs I talk about. I know life stealing isn't that great on necromancer at the moment, However I've talked at length about its coefficients with healing power and that it needs to be improved.

Your solutions for wells include just anet number buffing, and your solution for Soul Comprehension involves just buffing LF totals by a percentage. The only concrete suggestions I've seen out of your entire line-up have been things like this. Everything else is just super airy thoughts about what something should do instead of what it does do. It's not that I can't understand what you are trying to convey, I do, trust me, it's easy to see what you're trying to do, but you aren't really doing it because you aren't giving any concrete changes. You're just tossing around vague thoughts about problems that everyone already recognizes.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that? Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

Even if that were a thing that existed (and it would be cancerous in PvP since everybody hits everyone for free because of how braindead the game is during combat onset), we have Druid which heals just fine and also PROVIDES A PARTY-WIDE DPS BUFF. Healing memes and higher vitality isn't going to get Necromancer into any PvE parties.

@Lily.1935 said:

And just to make my self perfectly clear. When I say Coefficients I'm talking about how skills and traits scale with stats like power, healing power, toughness or what have you. In the instance of Life stealing, I'm talking about its scaling with healing power specifically. Also must mention that I'm not a exclusive raider, but play all game modes of PvE. Fractals, dungeons, raids, open world, bounties. So the changes I suggest which don't all sound good for raids, have a much wider spread use than just that exclusive game mode.

  • There is no build argument to be made for open world or bounties. They are respectively so mind-mush easy (and not balanced by party member limits) that they can be completed on trait-less cleric guardians if you have the patience for such low DPS output.
  • Dungeons are so neglected that every boss melts almost regardless of build type even now. Expac specs, in particular, will one-cycle murder anything in a dungeon even without optimal gear. Everything is just pumped so high baseline that it doesn't matter.
  • Fractals start to get to the point where people expect some sort of build clarity with certain professions. However, even here it is pretty forgiving. Even so, vitality and toughness are joke stats that will never be accepted in a game as shallow as GW2. There is nothing to do in GW2 but damage. Even support and healers do damage; it's not a lot sometimes, but even if they don't bring high personal DPS, the reason they are taken as mainstay classes is because they also provide the party with DPS buffs (either in the form of percentage increases or raw stat increases) so that they can push the base DPS of the classes that don't do anything but raw damage.
  • Raids are just fractals with a try-hard aura. They are designed to be pretty forgiving and are easily repeatable once everyone learns the simon says. The only difference between raids and fractals is the name which invokes a certain level of "optimized" build requirement. GW2, as I've said, is an incredibly shallow game which means that the gap between "viable" and "optimal" is actually quite gigantic. When every class does nothing but damage, whatever extra freebie utility that some classes can bring in addition to their damage determines whether or not they make it into the raid party. Necro brings low DPS and zero party utility, so it's easy to exclude. Stop making me repeat myself about this. Your particular attempt to make a desirable Necromancer party healer isn't as remotely good a solution to Necromancer's PvE exclusion as is the way I framed Bloodthirst.

Again, the core of these suggestions not about winning arguments here--Bloodthirst can be called whatever and it doesn't even have to function exactly as I've described it--but the way I'm putting forth a Necro who can buff the party's DPS is going to be far, far, far more effective in all forms of PvE than your necro with vitality gear and some meme healing effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

Again, the core of these suggestions not about winning arguments here--Bloodthirst can be called whatever and it doesn't even have to function exactly as I've described it--but the way I'm putting forth a Necro who can buff the party's DPS is going to be far, far, far more effective in all forms of PvE than your necro with vitality gear and some meme healing effect.

Again.. Read my suggestion. You like complaining but you don't seem to understand it very well. Vampiric presence with a better coefficients would provide the DPS buff you want. Also, don't be rude. Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option. There is no "Meme" here as you say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

Even if that were a thing that existed (and it would be cancerous in PvP since everybody hits everyone for free because of how braindead the game is during combat onset), we have Druid which heals just fine and also
PROVIDES A PARTY-WIDE DPS BUFF.
Healing memes and higher vitality isn't going to get Necromancer into any PvE parties.

Read what Vampiric presence does. Now look at my post. Now read it again. Have you connected two and two together yet? I'm sorry to say, but I don't believe you have.

A flat +250 damage on all strikes regardless if their current power coefficients or attack speed is a party wide DPS boost. And not an insignificant one either. As it stands now, Yes Vampiric presence doesn't provide much of a DPS boost. However that's what my suggestions are for. Also... Read the first thing I say for your concern about PvP.

As with the last ones, this one will primarily be addressing PvE, however PvP and WvW will come up as needed.

Its almost as if this is a PvE split balance post or something. I'm not likely to keep carrying on a conversation with you since I don't like explaining the same thing over and over again especially when we're talking about the same thing but you aren't quite getting it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am insanely ok with vamp aura being good.

But we could also introduce encounters for mechanics of necro and even spellbreaker to shine.Something akin to guy with flamethrower and a knife. Each auto applies a bleed and his "cleave" is stacking lots of burning.A sb tank would resistance through this, a necro tank would clean transfer and convert the condis, and having auratemp would mean you can still use your chrono mt if you prefer.

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Murdock.6547 said:I am insanely ok with vamp aura being good.

But we could also introduce encounters for mechanics of necro and even spellbreaker to shine.Something akin to guy with flamethrower and a knife. Each auto applies a bleed and his "cleave" is stacking lots of burning.A sb tank would resistance through this, a necro tank would clean transfer and convert the condis, and having auratemp would mean you can still use your chrono mt if you prefer.

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

Fractals already has stuff which requires a lot of boonstripping why not raids?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Murdock.6547 said:

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

You realize its just telling that you're OK with being trash because Anet maybe make 1 or 2 boonbot bosses you could farm and never see others as necro?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...