Epidemic nerf (PvE)

Its sad to say that epi was an only reason necro was needed in a team and now you hard nerfed it. I'm saying this after I tried playing with new epidemic for some time and as a necro main for more then a year. Necro is wothless. It has lower CDPS (Mesmer has greater cdps + it offers much more to the team) and power DPS then some classes, it doesn't offer health and support unlike druid or auramancer do. Necro offers nothing that other classes cannot offer better.

I think it's rightfull to ask Anet to give necromancer something to be viable, Anet, you can even be bunch of uncreative losers and give it a lot of CDPS, it will make us, Necro mains a bit more needed.

Auramancers do not exist in pve, because they are useless there. Just saying.Back to the topic, epi needed to go. Really, it did. Bouncing was just that broken. But I fully agree necromancers should get a buff to bring them back in the game.

Auramancers should emphasize more on auras and have more duration in PvE to pump out more heals and boons.Scourges should emphasize more on barrier and should provide boons via barrier and dmg mitigation .Scourge and Tempest need better support roles and Anet should work towards that.If they nerf Epi they need to buff other things to make necro more useful in groups.A possibility to give reaper a power tank role for example or a scourge heal support that can compeed with druid would be nice.Build diversity is dire IMO and they need to adress that.Mesmer got it, so other professions can too.

Again, auramancers do not exist in pve. It doesn't matter how much boon duration and heals you have - they simply aren't needed. What's needed is the offensive support of the druid, which you can't offer.

@Feanor.2358 said:Again, auramancers do not exist in pve. It doesn't matter how much boon duration and heals you have - they simply aren't needed. What's needed is the offensive support of the druid, which you can't offer.

That's nonsense. Sure, since Sruid is so ridiculously OP, you mostly see Druids as healers, but occasionly, you have some Auramancer-Healers and they do their job just fine. In fact, in PUGs, I'd rather take an Auramancer over a second Druid if the Druid isn't needed for utilities.

@Feanor.2358 said:Auramancers do not exist in pve, because they are useless there. Just saying.Back to the topic, epi needed to go. Really, it did. Bouncing was just that broken. But I fully agree necromancers should get a buff to bring them back in the game.

Necros don't get buffs, they get nerfed further and further down, and only when they are no longer used in any game mode to we see an update like, dagger 1 now does 2% more damage to foes with 7 boons, Anet have NO idea at all where or what they want Necro to be in game, the only time they get attention is when people are shouting for it to be nerfed more and more, I swear some people wont be happy until Anet just delete necro completely,

But perma invis instant killing classes are perfectly acceptable.

Go low in difficulty enough and you can make everything work. I'm talking about where it actually matters. Auramancers will never make it to meta in their current form. They won't even make it to "viable off-meta".

@Feanor.2358 said:Again, auramancers do not exist in pve. It doesn't matter how much boon duration and heals you have - they simply aren't needed. What's needed is the offensive support of the druid, which you can't offer.

If a raid group needs heals you can play heal tempest. And one druid.Pretty good if have have issues with conditions on your team.And the heals are really big (don't know if anything changes with the last patch)

And as healtempest plays with those auras to share, it did (still does?) Exist

You're better off playing the soothing mist water/arcane/tempest staff build. Yeah, in theory you can run it as the second healer. You can also run a ventari rev for that. Wanna guess a percentage of the raid groups using either?

I'm talking about neco in PVE, I know that epi can be nasty in WvW (even tho it needs an organized party and it's not used that often since it doesn't work on gates anymore). And when was the last time you saw someone bounce epi in a raid/fractal? There is barely need for one necro in it. My solution to make necro better is to nerf other classes that have boon removal and give it a cdps similar to condi mirage/soulbeast and maybe allow nocro to give his own special boon to his team (probs a rework of Vampiric Presence would be a good idea). Again, talking about PVE, people being greedy for DPS in PvP and not running condi removal are another topic.

@Feanor.2358 said:Again, auramancers do not exist in pve. It doesn't matter how much boon duration and heals you have - they simply aren't needed. What's needed is the offensive support of the druid, which you can't offer.

This could also be provided via traits so when you apply an aura it boosts stats or gives flat dmg bonusses.As i said they beed to adress this so there is more variety in comps and builds.

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Again, auramancers do not exist in pve. It doesn't matter how much boon duration and heals you have - they simply aren't needed. What's needed is the offensive support of the druid, which you can't offer.

There's some of that, you can apply some boons like that. The problem is, they're already covered. And I seriously don't want to repeat the whole GotL story arc. I believe ANet doesn't as well, so I don't expect to see a class-specific buff tied to auras.

@Maroon.5901 said:I'm talking about neco in PVE, I know that epi can be nasty in WvW (even tho it needs an organized party and it's not used that often since it doesn't work on gates anymore). And when was the last time you saw someone bounce epi in a raid/fractal? There is barely need for one necro in it. My solution to make necro better is to nerf other classes that have boon removal and give it a cdps similar to condi mirage/soulbeast and maybe allow nocro to give his own special boon to his team (probs a rework of Vampiric Presence would be a good idea). Again, talking about PVE, people being greedy for DPS in PvP and not running condi removal are another topic.

I think it would be nore beneficial if necro get a decent core overhaul. Mainly on traits and core shroud. And scourge will be more focussed on support and dmg support. For example, allies affected by a barrier remove boons and replace them with torment (scaling of scourge condi dmg). Against bosses with boons this would be a top pic to deal dmg and kill boons. But this is just an example out of my head without any balance thoughts. The idea is mainly that scourges in PvE need a group to really shine which would defibetly give them a spot in groups if the performance is good.Reaper should focus on power and maybe some tanking. Deadly chill should be made core IMO. It would give necros more diversity and reaper a free trait spot.Atm necro roles are a mess atm i only see condi everywhere. Reaper and scourge most often are condi which is not real diversity.If they refine the roles and hive diversity through core roles it would be easier IMO to find a decent group spot.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@InsaneQR.7412 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Again, auramancers do not exist in pve. It doesn't matter how much boon duration and heals you have - they simply aren't needed. What's needed is the offensive support of the druid, which you can't offer.

Yesh thats a fair point. Harmonious conduit dmg bonus could be shared with allies maybe. Thats less spammable but increases group dmg. And would give tempest a better spot.

@"Feanor.2358" said:Go low in difficulty enough and you can make everything work. I'm talking about where it actually matters. Auramancers will never make it to meta in their current form. They won't even make it to "viable off-meta".

Hmmm no. Ele and all the other healers are "viable off-meta".Viable =/= Meta. Auramancer, heal firebrand, heal renegade, heal engi, heal scourge and even heal warrior can be played in pretty much all raid encounters, they are viable.Druid makes raids faster and have nice utility like entangle and spirit ress, that's why it's the current meta healer.

Not everyone play full meta and trying to clear the encounter in 2 minutes. Some people prefer to play it safe and get it done with 1 or 2 pulls and move on the the next encounter, that's why some people get a renegade, firebrand, engi or ele instead of a second druid on Matthias, for example.

The game is "too easy for that" already, unfortunately.

@Alehin.3746 said:Not everyone play full meta

No, of course not. Only about 90% of the raid groups use druids.

Im thinking about stopping playing with my necro (my main) there isnt even one motive to people want me on parties

Well, let's get over it. It's done now and anet isn't known for reverting changes.

In the end, the reason why the necromancer struggle in PvE is because it's utilities are designed to work in a different environment. Anet's necromancer's design is ambitious, to ambitious, leaving the necromancer with tools designed to work well against player but totally inadapted for PvE. The will to put the necromancer into a hard counter for the boon meta wasn't bad in itself but it hurted the game and the necromancer more than anything.

Be it PvE or PvP or even WvW, anet need to change they approach the necromancer. Instead of always puting him on a path that is totally different from other profession, they need to bring him in line with other. The necromancer need less emphasis on condi management which is a role that never found it's place in the game and will probably never be able to find a place.

Honestly, there is so many things to modify on the necromancer in order for the profession to mesh well with the rest of the game that it's dizzying and addressing necromancer's balance issue by "number" change like they constantly do isn't going to lead it anywhere. At best it can only give the illusion that it's more balanced but that's all.

If they really had listen to their community, power reaper would have been easily brought in line with other dps spec long ago, especially in PvE. All they needed to do was to:

• make some PvE only tweeks on chilling nova: halve ICD and reduce chill duration.
• change reaper's onslaught fonctionnality so that instead of it's current effect it make might also grant ferocity.

Instead, they made irrelevant changes. Honestly, player say that the shroud decay to fast and make shroud skill unusable and anet answer is to buff shroud skills damage while they shroud have diverted part of the damage potential out of being shroud dependant instead.

And the same goes for scourge, seriously really fixing it can only be done by removing the manifest sand shade proc from other shade skills. This has always been the first and foremost condition to fix the real issue which is the excessive amount of different conditions loaded on each skills. That gone, the spec would have long been tame.

The core necromancer lacked support and there was a trait in spite that could have made the necromancer a great asset in PvE, without breaking the game in any way. People suggested to change a trait that was pulsing vulnerability while in shroud into a trait that would have pulsed a non stackable toughness debuff. With this the reaper would have had a legit spot in raid without impacting any other gamemode. Guess what? We got Dread and a trait that make us sacrifice condi damage for power damage instead. This effectively changed nothing for the necromancer, since it addressed no issue.

Now, I think that party gameplay strayed a bit to much from it's original shape. We used to rely on field and I think that this is where we should come back. Field and combo field need better effects, they need to be what make the difference between an organized group and any other group. The game rely to much on the individual strength of each profession and that's what make balance such a pain. Each profession want to be "the best at" while cooperating can be resumed by "having the support of druid and mesmer".

The boon output of all professions need to be nerfed to the ground and the same probably goes for the condition output. Instead, player should have to rely on combo with fields to compensate. And in this regard, some underperforming field need to have different effects to give them value and some professions need more combo abilities. This is in this direction that the game should go, not in the direction where everything is basically given for free, piled up on skills that already carry way to many effects.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Alehin.3746 said:Not everyone play full meta

90% isn't everyone. Your statistics show that people play druid, not that they can't play anything else if they choose to. I am part of the 10% sometimes and it works very well, my squads rarely fail encounters.

Viable =/= Meta.

Oh sure, you can play whatever. Whether people will accept you in their group is entirely different matter.

@"Feanor.2358" said:Oh sure, you can play whatever. Whether people will accept you in their group is entirely different matter.

True. That's why i start my own squads and i suggest people to play off-meta builds with friends or with people that know how their build works. No point trying to play off meta stuff with people that have no clue how things work because all they do is go to qT/SC website and copy-paste "whatever is the best" there. :T

@Alehin.3746 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Oh sure, you

can

play whatever. Whether people will

accept

you in their group is entirely different matter.

So they dont have any clue because they choose the best option? Ok.

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Alehin.3746 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Oh sure, you

can

play whatever. Whether people will

accept

you in their group is entirely different matter.

What I got from that is that they heard and read it's the best option, and so they use it without understanding why it's the best, or how it works. (I.e not practicing rotations and not reading traits)

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Alehin.3746 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Oh sure, you

can

play whatever. Whether people will

accept

you in their group is entirely different matter.

I see your point but that guy just accused the people who use SC or qT guides, of having no clue.

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Alehin.3746 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Oh sure, you

can

play whatever. Whether people will

accept

you in their group is entirely different matter.

Choosing one of those benchmark builds doesn't necessarily mean they know how to play it or why/how they work, just like choosing a dish on a restaurant menu doesn't turn you into a chef.