The design philosophy of Necro got broken in PvE

Hello fellow Necros,

I would like to remind the designers and the community why necromancer is broken and keeps being unbalanced until the current day.

The original design philosophy of Necromancer at release got broken by implementing the breakbars on bosses. That is actually the most important reason why AreNet fails to put the Necromancer into an acceptable state in all game modes.Necromancer got designed as a "support class". Just the same way Guardian is. But instead of using enhancing buffs on allies and curing debuffs, the necromancer dispells buffs and "curses" enemies to become weaker. You can see this working rather nicely in PvP, but often overlooked. Sure, not perfect and not always ideal, but being able to take off boons of the enemy like stability and protection and even turning them has always been strong and gotten stronger since the release of HoT. The other part of the "support" is using weakness, poison etc. to reduce enemy damage and effectiveness, which at release was one of the staples of the class.I think ArenaNet has missed to balance debuffs as much as they increased availability and effectiveness, the actual problem lies in PvE. While Necromancer can use these abilities in PvP to get itself and their team an advantage, this has been completely negated in PvE - or at least in any important PvE - where we fight bosses with break bars that are otherwise immune to any debuffs and scripted to get stunned in the end, without the effects of debuffs ever taking place. The Necromancer abilities just do a little bit breakbar damage but are not working as originally intended by supporting the team in an efficient manner. Other classes buff their team with 100% efficiency, heal their team or deal great damage, while the Necromancer part of debuffing the enemy is nearly completely negated. Also, having bosses with boons that can be efficiently stripped or converted is rare or of no consequence.

For this reason the necromancer community is calling for damage increases to become comparable in PvE as a damage class, which in turn would make (or makes) the Necromancer too strong in PvP situations. For more damage, the necromancer would have to sacrifice their debuffs, which would make them not longer necromancers.

While I do not think that ArenaNet will change the breakbar mechanic to make debuffing worthwhile and a meaningful slot in parties (even though this should be the case ~ the rebalancing of all bosses would take ages), there might be other alternatives for PvE:

• Most simple: Give the necromancer more damage on enemies that do have breakbars, if they are debuffed with weakness, blind or whatever. This is not a good solution, but it would balance the situation. (I.E. Rune of Ice gives 10% more damage on enemies that are chilled)
• Another solution would be, to give the Necromancer an inherent ability to take profit of enemies with breakbars that get debuffed by the Necromancer by giving the necromancer or the party a buff for debuffing an "immune" enemy.*Another option would be to give the necromancer a special ability, that works as a debuff even on breakbar enemies and gets stronger the more debuffed the enemy is. This could also work on other classes in similar situation, even though Necromancer is the class being in the worst situation. But this might make the class a must take, which should not happen either.

I do realize that Anets solution to this situation has been to introduce condition damage as an actual alternative damage type, but it clearly came short of the expected outcome and lead to new complexities. This is simply because the Necromancer still has the basic tools of a debuffer as well as the defense mechanics of one and together with condition damage in PvP becomes vastly uncontrollable while still being too weak in PvE to compare to other classes. Even after many changes of traits and loosing half of the original design philosophy this still is a problem. Also, reducing the Necromancer to a simple bleeding machine or Scythe Warrior is against what (I believe) the necromancer players want. Seeing as the Scourge feels already far off from anything that has to do with necromancers in lore of GuildWars, while still being wildly critized through the community for various reasons.

I'm not sure necromancers were in a good place in PvE (design wise) before they introduced the breakbar...2 silly points:

• There is few "debuffs" that the necromancer have and other professions don't, the necromancer is only good at landing a lot of them in a short moment notice.
• "Debuffs" ' worth vs breakbars is in their ability to deal damage to the breakbars, which in itself make the debuff somewhat usefull even if unnecessary.

The problem isn't the necromancer's reliance on debuffs. The first issue of the necromancer's design is the shroud which make necromancer difficult to balance due to it's duality as a DPS tool and defensive tool. For balance's sake the DPS have to be kept in check because the necromancer is in a state of simili-invulnerability while in shroud while at the same time the DPS is seriously hurt due to the defense mechanism eating the DPS uptime of the shroud.

The second issue of the necromancer's design is that the necromancer's tools are not adapted to PvE. Be it boon corruption, condition manipulation or even life siphon all of those effects aren't showing half of their potential in PvE group fight/solo fight which sadly impact the necromancer's support and condi dps.

The third issue of the necromancer's design could be said to be minions. Except maybe for mesmer's clones, any minion in GW2 could be said to be awkward at best. In case of the necromancer a lot of traits are invested into minions which don't really grant results justifying the investment for most of the game. DM which host most of those trait is litteraly crippled due to that.

The last issue of the necromancer's design is that ANet chose to put utilities on the weapons skillset and the more offensive skills onto the utility skills. This was probably done to accomodate the minions skills as utility skills but ended up crippling seriously the necromancer's ability to deal damages.

On top of those are piled up quite a few design flaws that can easily become dangerous if unbridled things like the sanctuary runeset are introduced in the game. The only saving grace of the necromancer is that the thematic is appealing and a lot of players are drawn to it. A necromancer is in any game an interesting asset that draw out a large number of players and contribute to the success of fantasy games.

So the break bar is the reason you think Necro is suffering in PVE? That doesn't really make sense to me because you don't need to play Necro as a 'debuffer', nor is it pigeonholed as such either. I don't think it's true to state factually that Necro was designed as a 'support' class, then say that it can't fulfill it's role because of breaker bars and therefore conclude this is what's wrong with it. So many things wrong with that thinking.

Here is an alternative line of thought; Anet simply designed a bunch of classes with theme-appropriate effects in a game (originally) designed with no specific roles for classes to fill. Some of those theme-appropriate effects are strongly suited to different game modes. You, as a player, are allowed to choose a class for ANY reason you want. It's not that Anet designed the game wrong; it's that people have unreasonably expected some complex implementation that would ensure that all theme-appropriate effects are equally valid in all game modes for all classes. Anet has given us no reason to think that's the case ... and continues to not give us any reason to think that for 6 years now.

So what happens is that people label that a balance problem. No, it's really a player-expectation problem. If you didn't impose your own ideas about what the class should be able to do and perform a certain way, you wouldn't assume it should be able to do things at a level of performance you expect. The reality is this; the theme of the classes restricts it; it's always been that way. That's not unique to GW2 either. The only reason that 'not-balanced' is a problem in GW2 is because Anet hasn't fed you with the idea that your class is supposed to do a specific role and this concept is so abstract to you, that you feel you must impose one on it.

Necromancer was, indeed, designed to be a support class; an offensive support class. That is, a debuffer, and selfish at that.

Shortly after the game release in 2012, all boss mobs were given immunity to cripple, chill, bind, blind, fear, and all control effects. Defiance nerfed the daylights out of Necromancer. The break bar is a functional way to return some of that lost value. The increase in stack counts of conditions helped, too, because we were all just knocking each others' conditions off the stack for a huge dps loss.

I wish it were different, like if boons, conditions and control effects used profession and trait variables as well as equipment stats to calculate strength and duration but that is another layer of complication for the developers. For example, Necromancer and Thief could have blinds that have a higher chance of "sticking" to a high-level mob, if traited and equipped for it. That would return a bit more of the "debuffing" value lost by Defiance and group PvE might not be quite so driven by boons and dps.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:Necromancer was, indeed, designed to be a support class; an offensive support class. That is, a debuffer, and selfish at that.

Shortly after the game release in 2012, all boss mobs were given immunity to cripple, chill, bind, blind, fear, and all control effects. Defiance nerfed the daylights out of Necromancer. The break bar is a functional way to return some of that lost value. The increase in stack counts of conditions helped, too, because we were all just knocking each others' conditions off the stack for a huge dps loss.

I wish it were different, like if boons, conditions and control effects used profession and trait variables as well as equipment stats to calculate strength and duration but that is another layer of complication for the developers. For example, Necromancer and Thief could have blinds that have a higher chance of "sticking" to a high-level mob, if traited and equipped for it. That would return a bit more of the "debuffing" value lost by Defiance and group PvE might not be quite so driven by boons and dps.

It would be nice if breakbars were just for hard CCs.

For most duration-stacking soft CCs, it seems feasible to give it the normal effect, but reduce the duration substantially, based on player scaling. So, say, defaults to -80% duration, with ten players it's -90%, with 100 players it's -99%, something like that.

For blind, keep the duration the same, but drop the chance to miss from 100% using the same logic.

For special cases where a specific condition might break an encounter (I can see cripple possibly being an offender here), then just convert it to breakbar damage and provide an icon indicating that this happens. But that shouldn't matter for your typical champ.

For some bosses, it could make for an interesting tactical change -- for example, for bosses who give a breakbar and charge a big attack, hard CCs deplete the bar, but Slow would give the group longer to break it. Actually, that's true even of some non-bosses with this mechanic (e.g. Mordrem Punishers).

Of course, in some cases it might be detrimental for condi users. For example, immob would no longer serve any purpose against stationary bosses -- but, well, that sort of makes sense.

Seems I can't edit my own post, so I will write here...

Trying to rephrase, because it seems that my former argument was badly presented and misunderstood.There are two major points that make necromancer difficult to balance or rather broken from a game mechanic pov and therefore impossible to balance over all modes.

1. Point:Necromancer was and is meant as a profession that debuffs it's enemy. Contrary to the guardian which was meant to buff their allies (Which still works fine).Necromancer has access to a lot of weakness, poison, chill and so on. This is often called soft CC. Weakness reduces directly the incoming damage, poison reduces enemy healing, chill reduces greatly skill recharge and enemy movement etc. All in all it reduces incoming damage and enemy survivability.This is very effective in general pve, pvp, wvw but often overlooked. Still, this is or was a major thing of the necro profession.But as strong as it is in general pve and pvp, this is completely negated on bosses by only doing low break bar damage and not reducing incoming damage, enemy healing or enemy skill usage at all.

2. Point:Necro has a niche ability (at launch niche) to take enemies boons away. Even better, converting them to conditions.But here it's the same situation as in point 1. Very strong in spvp and wvw, but nearly useless in pve.In pve enemies rarely have boons. Simply making this niche pretty situational again in pve. And even if bosses have boons, the application rate is usually very high, which makes these abilities rather meaningless. This is especially true because

   • necromancers need mostly to use a utility slot for this ability and have to miss out on something else
   • converted conditions are often meaningless (see point 1) or not much damage on power classes and if condition specced... well mostly conversion was redesigned to convert to vulnerability which is stacked on bosses anyway
   • other classes now have the ability to take boons faster (mesmer auto on sword) without loosing anything over it (like a utility slot)

3. Point:Death shroud is an ability that makes necromancers very sturdy. But they miss out on other defenses.While DS makes a necro rather hard to kill in 1:1 in pvp, having no access to scalable defenses makes the necro an easy target in group battles. Which is fine I guess. Also, DS needs to be fed and loaded first via kills or skills to become usable while also having a CD and degenerating automagically.And also, damage is bound to ds uptime (reaper) which makes it kind of wasteful to use it defensive. While DS is rather good in pve as it can save ones life at the cost of damage, DS is comparably weaker in wvw and to a smaller degree in group situations in pvp. But this is fine, as the Necromancer is still strong in these formats.

Sooo, in the end:Why do I say breakbars are the fundamental problem of necros?Because with the introduction of breakbars necros big profession niche (no.1) got not nerfed but made meaningless in pve while still being very good in pvp. Also, it reduced the already bad state of boon conversion in pve into even less effectiveness. While boons got pushed with the release of HOT, making them accessable for everyone in PvE, an increase in Soft CC for the Necro (chill) went on without effect in PvE.

Buffing necro in any way to make him comparable in dps/utility/survivability makes the profession over the top in pvp as seen time and time again over the last years. Because it is basically a balanced profession! It's strong suits are just completely meaningless in pve (Bosses - the only point where it counts) due to breakbars!

That is why, to actually unbreak the class mechanics situation, breakbars would have to go (Breakbars won't be touched, too much work to rebalance the whole game) or necromancer needs a way to make it's specials meaningful even with breakbars. I do think anet tried to do this with the barrier mechanic and it works to a degree, but only for scourge and that with a lot of different mechanics of sandshades without a real shroud and so on.

But what we could get and might work, would be a special buff like in this example:

Chill: slows target movement and skill regen by 66%. If enemy is immune (read: has a breakbar), enemy instead gets debuffed with soullech for the same durationSame for weakness, poison and so on.

Soullech: Takes 1% more damage per stack (max 25)orSoullech: if hit, player gets healed by 1% of damage doneorSoullech: reduces damage done by 0.1% per stack (max 25)or very lazy and what they tried with dhuumfire and bleeding on chillSoullech: Deals xxx damage every second per stack to enemy breakbar, if breakbar is down deals xxx damage directly to the enymy instead

This mechanic could also be used by other classes that have heavy access to soft cc.

Other ideas like the one from

@perilisk.1874 said:It would be nice if breakbars were just for hard CCs.

For most duration-stacking soft CCs, it seems feasible to give it the normal effect, but reduce the duration substantially, based on player scaling. So, say, defaults to -80% duration, with ten players it's -90%, with 100 players it's -99%, something like that.

For blind, keep the duration the same, but drop the chance to miss from 100% using the same logic.

could also work, but I guess this was tested by ANET while developing Breakbars in the first place.

Also, make boon conversion negate the next boon that would be applicated to the enemy if it's a Boss (read : has a breakbar).

These two mechanics (not their values) would make it possible balance debuffs for all formats again. Also, there are so many unique buffs (banners/spirits) why doesn't the most gutted class have more of this for pve than only a bad life leech skill?

Appended:One more thing: Distortion???? Doesn't this sound like a Deathshroud skill? Even the animation and the mechanic sounds like it was made for Necromancer Deathshroud (I bet it was). Make DS get Distortion ANET, it already has the graphics for it and would give Necromancers a scalable defense!

Buffs, debuffs, and break bars ARE not the problem. Necromancer suffered from start. Break bars were introduced in HoT. The centeral problem is Shroud, as it acts as a second life bar. This is one of the reasons why straight DPS buffs aren't going to work. The other, inherent, problem is that the community itself is imposing a balance issue on Necromancer that ANet will see no reason to fix with straight up mechanical changes. Things get buff when they are underperforming. However, Necromancer can do the PvE content. What it fails to do is perform at the top top top top level that PUGs want. In that regard, Necromancer is not the only one that gets left out. There are a lot of professions, Elites, and build types that get left out because they don't perform at an artifically determined level.

@"sternenstaub.8763" said:Seems I can't edit my own post, so I will write here...

In order to edit a post, look at the right top corner of your post. You'll see a "round" thing right next to the date/hour. clic on it and it should give you the ability to edit.

@Dace.8173 said:Buffs, debuffs, and break bars ARE not the problem. Necromancer suffered from start. Break bars were introduced in HoT. The centeral problem is Shroud, as it acts as a second life bar. This is one of the reasons why straight DPS buffs aren't going to work. The other, inherent, problem is that the community itself is imposing a balance issue on Necromancer that ANet will see no reason to fix with straight up mechanical changes. Things get buff when they are underperforming. However, Necromancer can do the PvE content. What it fails to do is perform at the top top top top level that PUGs want. In that regard, Necromancer is not the only one that gets left out. There are a lot of professions, Elites, and build types that get left out because they don't perform at an artifically determined level.

Considering my mesmer can mitigate way more damage through dodge/distortion than a second life bar could ever provide, or my warrior has the same HP as a necro, more armor, and way better heals while also having more evasion tools doesn't help the argument.

The myth that necro is somehow super more survivable is ridiculous.

The only remotely glass cannon pve class is elementalist. My daredevil has so many dodges, hisinitiative use restores endurance, and if that wasn't enough with critical strikes 15% of my crit damage gets turned into healing on top of my healing signet to keep me up through anything.

Not to mention that Necros have no way to close the gap effectively unlike many other classes. A 3 second immune is far more useful then a second life bar.

I just don't see why we can't have endure pain innate on shroud since you can't physically hit a ghost/specter yet conditions/cc would still be in effect or/and haveout of combat shroud regeneration since shroud is so integral to our performance yet other classes have their class abilities at start or are more powerful in general.

It's just strictly not fun fighting 2 battles, one against the enemy and the other against our own LF bar.... It's like when thirst was added to Elona.

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Dace.8173 said:Buffs, debuffs, and break bars ARE not the problem. Necromancer suffered from start. Break bars were introduced in HoT. The centeral problem is Shroud, as it acts as a second life bar. This is one of the reasons why straight DPS buffs aren't going to work. The other, inherent, problem is that the community itself is imposing a balance issue on Necromancer that ANet will see no reason to fix with straight up mechanical changes. Things get buff when they are underperforming. However, Necromancer can do the PvE content. What it fails to do is perform at the top top top top level that PUGs want. In that regard, Necromancer is not the only one that gets left out. There are a lot of professions, Elites, and build types that get left out because they don't perform at an artifically determined level.

Did I say that Necromancer was super survivable? No. What I said was that you can't lay the blame at the feet of the introduction of the break bar. Many of these problems have existed well before the introduction of break bars. The Shroud mechanic does give Necromancer a stronger chance of survival, especially when you have Unholy Sanctuary traited. With that, your Shroud can auto-activate and save you from death. However, this very same mechanic also deforms other sources of damage mitigation and resistance that Necromancer could get. If Shroud did not work the way it currently does Necromancer would likely have better sustain abilities.

All of which I said the first time.

Nobody uses Unholy Sanctuary in PvE, though, as it makes the necro's already dreadful DPS even worse.

Reaper does well in open world PvE and that's about it. In any other content the issue of shroud is a total red herring.

Necro is weak for the same reason power revenant is weak in PvE. It's a matter of their totally inconsistent and glacial pace of balance. Power ranger rotted in mediocrity hell until very recent soul beast improvements and there was no mechanical red herring to excuse it. It's a simple matter of necromancer being weak for the same reason power mesmer in PvE was weak for so long; Anet simply did not bother to fix the specs or they didn't want to take on the project of buffing an underperforming spec in PvE because it would mean tweaks for PvP.

And that really is the main culprit for why many specs suck in this game, because they don't competently PvP split like they did in GW1, so we have specs left in neglect for many years.

@Zenith.7301 said:Nobody uses Unholy Sanctuary in PvE, though, as it makes the necro's already dreadful DPS even worse.

Reaper does well in open world PvE and that's about it. In any other content the issue of shroud is a total red herring.

Necro is weak for the same reason power revenant is weak in PvE. It's a matter of their totally inconsistent and glacial pace of balance. Power ranger rotted in mediocrity hell until very recent soul beast improvements and there was no mechanical red herring to excuse it. It's a simple matter of necromancer being weak for the same reason power mesmer in PvE was weak for so long; Anet simply did not bother to fix the specs or they didn't want to take on the project of buffing an underperforming spec in PvE because it would mean tweaks for PvP.

And that really is the main culprit for why many specs suck in this game, because they don't competently PvP split like they did in GW1, so we have specs left in neglect for many years.

I didn't say anyone used it in PvE. I stated that the trait supports having a second life bar which in turn deforms the sustain mechanics that Necomancer could have had. Call it a red herring all you want but Shroud does have bearing on the defensive mechanics that Necromancer gets.

At any rate, I'm finding this to be pedantic so I'm done here.

@Dace.8173 said:

Did I say that Necromancer was super survivable? No. What I said was that you can't lay the blame at the feet of the introduction of the break bar. Many of these problems have existed well before the introduction of break bars. The Shroud mechanic does give Necromancer a stronger chance of survival, especially when you have Unholy Sanctuary traited. With that, your Shroud can auto-activate and save you from death. However, this very same mechanic also deforms other sources of damage mitigation and resistance that Necromancer could get. If Shroud did not work the way it currently does Necromancer would likely have better sustain abilities.

All of which I said the first time.

Hi Dace,

I even agree with you that Shroud was the biggest offender after release. This mechanic makes balancing a nightmare. Me and some others vehemently asked for a rework right after release to something that is very near to what Scourge now has, with independent F-Skills that feed of life force without a second HP bar.But I still believe that it might have been possible to balance Necro before, but the break bars made that impossible. Btw. the current iteration might have been added with HoT, but the first tries were introduced with Southsun Cove a few months after release. Also true, Necro tools were already bad at that time, because pure stun of bosses was the way to go, soft CC was already meaningless in better groups and there just werent any boons to rip~ The only option after that introduction (without changing it again) was to break the Necromancer Design Philosophy for PvE by taking away the heavy debuff stuff (or rather not buffing it up with the rest on HoT release) and increasing Damage to be on par with other classes, giving access to boons like Stability, Might etc. And thats exactly what happened, but very laziliy. Thats why I am saying Break Bars broke the Necromancer philosophy, as those made Necromancers intended strengths, available in PvP and open World, irrelevant in PvE instead of pushing those strengths to be balanced with those strengths of other classes.

And with the introduction of a heavy condition and boon rip Scourge we saw what an ocean of tears looks like when necromancers are allowed to play it`s strengths in PvP while being just or not even on par in PvE. It was chained shortly after.

@sternenstaub.8763 said:

But I still believe that it might have been possible to balance Necro before, but the break bars made that impossible.

Don't hyperbole, it's kinda silly in this case. If it were impossible, what would be the point of this entire discussion?

While I don't hate your actual suggestions, it's not Breakbars that are the issue....(to be continued)