An Approach to balance Necro across all Game Modes

Hey guys,i would like to bring my thoughts to the table of why Necro might be so imbalanced across all game modes. Most Necro players would already know that it is tied to the Shroud and Life Force mechanic. I hear and read arguments that we can't have more dps because our survivability is too good compared to other classes (PvE). But it highly depends on the situations. We also hear dedicated PvP and WvW players saying that we need some sort of mobility, invulns, blocks, boons etc. like other classes have. I disagree because i want necro to be a unique class with unique mechanics. We already have a class mechnic that could provide the sustain we need for fighting and brawling situations.

When is Necro strong/overtuned? Necros are strong when stuff dies around them. It is superior in spamming skills and using a second life bar for surviving compared to the other classes in Open World PvE and spamming skills in WvW Zerg fights. Scourge f-skills are so strong in zerg fights because they can spam them mindlessly on low CDs and have always max Life Force. on the other hand Necros capability on fighting 1v1 are very limited because we have near to non-existent sustain and mobility, invulns, blocks, boons as stated above.

In my head redesigning Life Force Generation (LFG) could be a key to solve all that. Removing Life Force Generation from any kills and deaths and therefore adding and increasing LFG to all (more) weapon skills and utility skills would make it way easier to balance the class overall. And it would make it easier for the balance team to balance and adjust Necros in the future because they dont have to consider every game mode and small scale to large scale situations in PvE and WvW. Furthermore to have a better self-sustain either lower CD of Shroud or give Necros a mechanic of base healing on hits. Not only tied to one trait like Blood Magic but give it more life leeching in general. We wouldn't need mobility, invulns, blocks, boons. A higher LFG and life leeching of actuall skill use and hitting stuff would even fit in lore wise to a vampiric, mastering the death arts Necro of hell xD.

Overall this could lead to a better self-sustain in small scale fights and 1v1, would decrease skill spamming in large scale fights and encourage a more thoughtfull skill usage. Further it would allow the balance team to focus more around the Necro itself when balancing and they don't have to consider all the different game modes and situations that can occur.

Thoughts?

I'll be a bit exagerating here but, you say that you want the necromancer to stay unique and then suggest a change that basically make him into a warrior with a transform skill. The way you want LF to generate is basically how warrior build adrenaline, what about your claim of wanting "necro to be a unique class with unique mechanics."

Necromancers are not "strong" when stuff die around him, necromancer just have a lot of LF gen at these moment. It serve scourges right but the necromancers and the reaper are gated behind the shroud in these moments.

The shroud is the issue of the necromancer, not because it's underperforming as a defensive ability but because it's supposed to be more than a defensive ability and fail at being such a thing. The scourge have none of the issues linked to the shroud and, yes, it overperform. But neither the necromancer nor the reaper did ever overperform due to large amount of death around them. It would have been the case if deaths gave LF while in shroud but nope, it doesn't, it never did.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I'll be a bit exagerating here but, you say that you want the necromancer to stay unique and then suggest a change that basically make him into a warrior with a transform skill. The way you want LF to generate is basically how warrior build adrenaline, what about your claim of wanting "necro to be a unique class with unique mechanics."

Necromancers are not "strong" when stuff die around him, necromancer just have a lot of LF gen at these moment. It serve scourges right but the necromancers and the reaper are gated behind the shroud in these moments.

The shroud is the issue of the necromancer, not because it's underperforming as a defensive ability but because it's supposed to be more than a defensive ability and fail at being such a thing. The scourge have none of the issues linked to the shroud and, yes, it overperform. But neither the necromancer nor the reaper did ever overperform due to large amount of death around them. It would have been the case if deaths gave LF while in shroud but nope, it doesn't, it never did.

1. it wont be a warrior because u dont have mobitly blocks invulns and boons. he has better range dmg and still the booncorrupt or removal. how on earth can u say necro would be like a warrior.
2. In some situations in pve and wvw u have infinite LF while in some instanced content in pve and in 1v1 u have near to no regain of LF or health sitting there like a duck waiting to die. how are u not stronger when u have infinite LF (health) when stuff is dying around you. im not talking about dmg or dps. im completlty fine with its dmg. Dps-wise i can see pve raiders complaining. i believe u read "strong" dmg wise? i meant it that u can either spam ur skills in scourge or as a core and reaper every10 sec u have another full hp bar. u can sustain infinitly if stuff is dying around u passivly. if not u have close to 0 LF.
3. i never said a word of necromancer and reaper overperformed at all. if anything they are still a bit weak in every aspect for the game. But im not here to make golem dps discussions or about necros beeing to weak in WvW/PvP per se. i feel the LF mechnic itself is too inconsistent. And because of that Shroud fails as a defensive tool in some situations and beeing strong in others. i can give u examples: WvW u just get hit and kited in small scale fights until u have no LF anymore and because u cant get LF reliebly back nor have a regain of health u just get slowly killed. and u have similar situations in instanced pve where u have ur 2 dodges and then u are done for.. and nothing dies arounjd u so u are screwed (happened to me for example in fractals). im not saying the letter one occurs very often tho.

1- I'm talking about the mechanisal way to gain life force which is the main selling point of your suggestion. This is the exact same mechanism than warrior.

2- You are not stronger, you just have more "supply". Does having more ammunition make a soldier stronger in a war? No.

3- Your exact words:

When is Necro strong/overtuned? Necros are strong when stuff dies around them.

Want it or not, the roots of the issue is not Life Force Generation. Life force generation is just a byproduct of the issue. The root of the issue lie in the fact that we got a tool that want to do everything, a tool on which anet pile tons of traits, power and effects, but this tool end up nerfing himself. Scourge and it's shroud skills revealed even more the glaring issues of the shroud because it exploit what the shroud should take advantage of without being shackled by any counter play.

The issue is not the LF gen. Look objectively at the shroud:

• it allow you to access a few skills for a short amount of time.
• You can't access the shroud skills readily at any given moment.
• The more you take damage the shorter the amount of time you access those skills.
• The skills are heavily supported by traits
• Damage, movement, support and defense. It's supposed to do all of those things throught this short window of opportunity.
• Prevent a part of the support from your allies

In front of this, we got the scourge can use it's skills at any moment and there is no competition between survivability, offensive, support or control. Everything flow naturally.

Do you need more LF gen for shroud? No, it was fine until now and there has been no change that would make more/different LF gen necessary for this mechanism. Do you need more/different LF gen for scourge? No, the scourge have more freedom with it's skills and is already way better than the core necromancer and the reaper can even dream to be thanks to this freedom.

I understand that you want some kind of balance between the different kind of fight you are involved into, however the necromancer is not a warrior. The necromancer feed from deaths and the life force of it's foes. The necromancer is unique because of it's relationship with death. Having an energy bar that refill by hitting with your weapon is not what make the necromancer "unique", it's a design that belong to the warrior while the revenant have an energy bar that automatically refill itself over time.

My issue with your suggestion is that you want to defend what's "unique" to the necromancer by tradding something that make him "unique" for something that belong to another profession, something that is part of what make this other profession "unique".

I do get your points. But how do u want to balance necro when LF after death is in the game. scourge literally can play the spam game because he is at full LF all the time.. sure u could increse CDs on f-skills and separate defensive and offensive abilites from skills. but then u still have the problem that every other class in the freaking game has a better sustain when it comes to 1v1 or small scale. and then u are back to the discussion to give necro blocks invulns dodges mobility

i wanted to have a talk about how can a necro be more self-sustained and better at fighting without beeing overtuned in teamfights. the post is not about necro should beeing unique. im just not a fan of simply giving him blocks invulns doges mobility. it should be done with LF/life leech.

and why is there enough LF gen for shroud? u have nothing. u dont hit rangers and thiefs with blighter boon. other classes just use blocks invulns and mobility then there are those builds who outheal your dmg while deleting you with a few hits.

i want to talk about how to balance necro and not whats unique about it. while you make really good points half of your post are of the mark.

so according to you if LF has zero to do with balancing issues for necro how would you balance it then? just letting necro/reaper bottom tier in pvp and nerfing shroud flat?

LF from nearby deaths needs to go. It's the reason that our on-demand LF generation is so bad. If it goes away, the path is cleared to actually balance shroud properly.

You want my opinion on scourge shroud skills? Scourge shroud skills lack counterplay and aren't balanced if we compare them to the other shroud skill, that's all. The issue is not in the LF gen.

Likewise thousand (probably millions) of necromancers have used the shroud with the current LF gen available for 5 whole years and the LF gen wasn't nearly close to be an issue be it 1v1, small scale battle or large scale battle. What have change since PoF in this regard? Nothing.

How I would like the to balance shroud is pretty simple. I'd like them to take their new shiny mechanism: the barrier. Put this mechanism onto the spectral skills in place of thei LF gen and remove the 2nd LF bar from the shroud mechanism.

My solution is as simple as yours, fit as much the necromancer's theme than yours and more than anything make the act of using shroud skills way easier than yours. The only drawback is that you got no longer an in built defensive mechanism and you need to take spectral skills if you want to defend yourself. On the other hand, my solution also allow the necromancer to be less wary of how good it's LF gen is making small scale and large scale fight more even in this regard.

Now if your concern is how I'd answer the scourge issue, know that I'd first put a 1/4s cast time on F2-F4 and make it so F5 is interrupt on a successfull incoming hard CC. That is the minimum counterplay needed for this e-spec. On top of that, I also think that F4 need a 30 seconds CD and that path of corruption need to only rip boons not corrupt them. Would this impact PvP/WvW? Yes. Would this affect PvE? Not at all.

The shroud mechanism is a mechanism that nerf itself due to the fact that it want to do to many thing at the same time, this is the root of the shroud issue. As for the scourge, the root of it's issues is it's uncounterable shroud skills. Remove the roots of the issues and the necromancer end up being healthier. Try to cope with problem by nerfing numbers will just lead nowhere. Touching LF gen is just that: numbers.

@Rhyse.8179 said:LF from nearby deaths needs to go. It's the reason that our on-demand LF generation is so bad. If it goes away, the path is cleared to actually balance shroud properly.

thats exactly my point. i know and read necro palyers already said that in the past. i just can emphasise again: it makes necro as a class inconsistent and necros are tied to certain game situation.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

The shroud mechanism is a mechanism that nerf itself due to the fact that it want to do to many thing at the same time, this is the root of the shroud issue. As for the scourge, the root of it's issues is it's uncounterable shroud skills. Remove the roots of the issues and the necromancer end up being healthier. Try to cope with problem by nerfing numbers will just lead nowhere. Touching LF gen is just that: numbers.

yes i agree, shroud want to be all at once. but thats why im thinking of ways to revamp necro so that it gets better to balance.

Another argument against touching LF gen is that currently it act as scaling defense and necromancer cruelly lack any kind of scaling defense. The fact that scourge basically don't care about this don't ean that it's not necessary for other necromancer's specs.

@Dadnir.5038 said:Another argument against touching LF gen is that currently it act as scaling defense and necromancer cruelly lack any kind of scaling defense. The fact that scourge basically don't care about this don't ean that it's not necessary for other necromancer's specs.

Absolutly, we lack defense. Thing is in large Teamfights u cant even make use of all the LF due to deaths because it is at 100% and stuff still dying. So LF gen is even overkill in those situations. And dont get me wrong i dont want scourge to have less LF in zerg fights it should remain the same. But yeah, lots of deaths wont even benefit us because the LF is already at max.