NECRO BALANCE NOTES

Spectral Wall: This skill has been renamed Spectral Ring. It now creates a circular ring instead of a line. Its duration has been split between games modes, lasting 8 seconds in PvE and 5 seconds in PvP and WvW. This skill cannot apply fear to the same foe more than once every 1.5 seconds.Spectral Walk: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 40 seconds. It now consumes 1 condition every 2 seconds it's active (up to 6 conditions at its full duration), converting each condition into 4% life force. It no longer grants life force when the necromancer takes damage.Lich Form: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 180 seconds to 150 seconds.Reaper's Protection: This trait has been renamed Dark Defiance. It now causes necromancers to gain protection for 3 seconds when affected by control effects and causes protection that is applied to the necromancer to reduce their incoming condition damage by 20%. This trait has a cooldown of 20 seconds.Abrasive Grit: The internal cooldown of this trait has been removed. This trait now only activates from necromancer skills and traits that apply barrier. It now grants 2 stacks of might for 6 seconds.Chill of Death: The damage of this trait has been increased by 20% in PvE, and it will no longer be able to critically hit foes. The damage displayed in its tooltip has been fixed in PvP and WvW.Chilling Nova: The damage of this trait has been increased by 25% in PvE, and it will no longer be able to critically hit foes in all game modes.Death Nova: The time between jagged horror summons has been reduced from 15 seconds to 3 seconds for this trait. A maximum of 5 jagged horrors can be summoned at a time. Summoning a new jagged horror after reaching this maximum will kill the oldest jagged horror.Fear of Death: The fear-duration bonus of this trait has been increased to 100%. It no longer causes fear when the necromancer is in a downed state. Instead, it now grants 15% life force upon inflicting a foe with fear. This effect has a 5-second internal cooldown.Gluttony: The might that this trait grants has been removed. It now increases the amount of life force gained from all sources instead of just from skills.Necromantic Corruption: Fixed a bug in which minions took conditions from allies other than the necromancer. Added a visual effect when this trait activates to indicate which minion is taking the necromancer's condition.Last Gasp: This trait has been replaced with Sinister Shroud.Sinister Shroud: This trait has replaced Last Gasp. It reduces the recharge time of shroud skills by 15%.Soul Barbs: This trait has replaced Spectral Mastery in the Master tier. It grants a 10% damage increase to all attacks for 10 seconds whenever necromancers enter or exit a shroud.Spectral Mastery: This trait has been replaced with Soul Barbs. Spectral Wall, Spectral Walk, and Lich Form have been updated as a result.Spiteful Spirit: The damage of this trait has been increased by 25% in PvE, and it will no longer be able to critically hit foes in all game modes.Strength of Undeath: This trait has been renamed Soul Battery. Its bonus damage has been removed while the necromancer is above the life-force threshold. The maximum life force has been increased from 15% to 20%.Terror: Fixed a bug in which the damage that is listed for this trait did not reflect its actual damage.Vital Persistence: This trait no longer reduces the recharge time of shroud skills. Instead, it increases all incoming healing by 20% in PvE and by 10% in PvP and WvW. Its vitality bonus is unchanged.Weakening Shroud: The damage of this trait has been increased by 20% in PvE, and it will no longer be able to critically hit foes in all game modes.

They fixed Abrasive Grit. My Christmas wish came true! Thank you Anet :)

I am so happy :smile:

I am not through even half of it and am liking the changes very muchEdit: I changed my mind. They fixed some things and destroyed others.

Vital Persistance not giving cooldown decreases will lead to some really awkward rotations when raiding for a while. They're pretty ingrained in my muscle memory.

I really like the changed though.

They told you up front that the change to AG was just a hot fix until they could take the time to develop something better.

@Aktium.9506 said:Vital Persistance not giving cooldown decreases will lead to some really awkward rotations when raiding for a while. They're pretty ingrained in my muscle memory.

I really like the changed though.

-Last Gasp: This trait has been replaced with Sinister Shroud.-Sinister Shroud: This trait has replaced Last Gasp. It reduces the recharge time of shroud skills by 15%.

So in essence, it has been made baseline since it is a minor, allowing us to take Soul Barbs :D

Yeh, I guess I'll take the soul barbs 10% perma damage over the old vital persistence I guess? Ehh, I still prefer the cooldown reduction though

@Methuselah.4376 said:

@Aktium.9506 said:Vital Persistance not giving cooldown decreases will lead to some really awkward rotations when raiding for a while. They're pretty ingrained in my muscle memory.

I really like the changed though.

Oh heck. Didn't see that. That's good.

@Aktium.9506 said:Vital Persistance not giving cooldown decreases will lead to some really awkward rotations when raiding for a while. They're pretty ingrained in my muscle memory.

I really like the changed though.

CD reduction is now on a minor trait. But its 15% instead of 20%.

No more auto spectral armor though :(

More DPS out of SR for PvE folks, which is fine but irrelevant for me.

Power Procmancer is now finally dead.

Spectral Ring is nice and what everybody asked for.

Spectral Walk is great too and makes a condi cleance in the third utility slot redundant -> I will run Ring/CPC, Armor, Walk now.

Unfortunately Spectral Armor got a massive nerf as it is left behind with base functionality after the Spectral Mastery removal.

CPC was buffed indirectly as is it finally usable combined with Spectral Walk that cleanses the weakness instantly.

Blighter's Boon + Soul Eater + Vital Persistance builds got a minor healing buff, but I doubt that this is competitive to Onslaught.

Unintended but great bugfix: Spectral Walk does not go on full cooldown anymore when Spectral Recall is used.

An okay, but not great balance patch to me.

spectral ring!minions!

cant say I like the removal of last gasp. 15% shroud cd reduct is nice, but...

No more might from Gluttony, and the damage from strength of undeath has been shifted to a master major trait in the form of a buff on entering/exiting shroud. No critical hits on procs either.

Looks like spectral skills, other than spectral armor, have spectral mastery as baseline. Bonus life force from taking soul reaping, up to 20% from 15%.

Changes to reaper's protection (now dark defiance) and death nova look promising. Hopefully they make death magic more viable.

Looks like a minor nerf to damage, but a buff to survivability.

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Aktium.9506 said:Vital Persistance not giving cooldown decreases will lead to some really awkward rotations when raiding for a while. They're pretty ingrained in my muscle memory.

I really like the changed though.

Ok we get 5% less CD reduction, but we now also get +10% dmg for 10 seconds every time we go in and out of shroud. In essence we can maintain it all the time.

@Methuselah.4376 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Aktium.9506 said:Vital Persistance not giving cooldown decreases will lead to some really awkward rotations when raiding for a while. They're pretty ingrained in my muscle memory.

I really like the changed though.

Its just a shift from being above 50% LF. It makes it more usable in real life situations but wont really change the benchmark much which is what people care so much about.

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:but a buff to survivability.Not at all. It's a buff to utility but definitely not to survivability. Spectral Mastery did way more than what the spectral skills have now as base functionality. LF generation is significantly lower now and all spectral skills have a lower uptime.

@KrHome.1920 said:More DPS out of SR for PvE folks, which is fine but irrelevant for me.

Power Procmancer is now finally dead.

Spectral Ring is nice and what everybody asked for.

Spectral Walk is great too and makes a condi cleance in the third utility slot redundant -> I will run Ring/CPC, Armor, Walk now.

Unfortunately Spectral Armor got a massive nerf as it is left behind with base functionality after the Spectral Mastery removal.

CPC was buffed indirectly as is it finally usable combined with Spectral Walk that cleanses the weakness instantly.

Blighter's Boon + Soul Eater + Vital Persistance builds got a minor healing buff, but I doubt that this is competitive to Onslaught.

Unintended but great bugfix: Spectral Walk does not go on full cooldown anymore when Spectral Recall is used.

An okay, but not great balance patch to me.

Blighters boon builds got a nerf with the removal of might from gluttony. This patch is just pushing the meta even more towards onslaught.

Not that great of a patch, but fear necro might be a thing now.

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:More DPS out of SR for PvE folks, which is fine but irrelevant for me.

Power Procmancer is now finally dead.

Spectral Ring is nice and what everybody asked for.

Spectral Walk is great too and makes a condi cleance in the third utility slot redundant -> I will run Ring/CPC, Armor, Walk now.

Unfortunately Spectral Armor got a massive nerf as it is left behind with base functionality after the Spectral Mastery removal.

CPC was buffed indirectly as is it finally usable combined with Spectral Walk that cleanses the weakness instantly.

Blighter's Boon + Soul Eater + Vital Persistance builds got a minor healing buff, but I doubt that this is competitive to Onslaught.

Unintended but great bugfix: Spectral Walk does not go on full cooldown anymore when Spectral Recall is used.

An okay, but not great balance patch to me.

Not really. The fear trait does not increase the baseline fear duration. It makes little to no difference in duration for condition builds and power builds are always better off using Soul Barbs.

The loss of last Gasp is a huge nerf. Overall its a huge nerf trait wise, as nerfing all damage traits is a heavy hit giving the fact that necromancers do have a very little number skills that deal real good damage, compared ot lets say a thief / warrior / every other class in the game.

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:More DPS out of SR for PvE folks, which is fine but irrelevant for me.

Power Procmancer is now finally dead.

Spectral Ring is nice and what everybody asked for.

Spectral Walk is great too and makes a condi cleance in the third utility slot redundant -> I will run Ring/CPC, Armor, Walk now.

Unfortunately Spectral Armor got a massive nerf as it is left behind with base functionality after the Spectral Mastery removal.

CPC was buffed indirectly as is it finally usable combined with Spectral Walk that cleanses the weakness instantly.

Blighter's Boon + Soul Eater + Vital Persistance builds got a minor healing buff, but I doubt that this is competitive to Onslaught.

Unintended but great bugfix: Spectral Walk does not go on full cooldown anymore when Spectral Recall is used.

An okay, but not great balance patch to me.

Gluttony had wird ICD rules unless that changed. You arent missing a bunch of interaction between the two.

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:More DPS out of SR for PvE folks, which is fine but irrelevant for me.

Power Procmancer is now finally dead.

Spectral Ring is nice and what everybody asked for.

Spectral Walk is great too and makes a condi cleance in the third utility slot redundant -> I will run Ring/CPC, Armor, Walk now.

Unfortunately Spectral Armor got a massive nerf as it is left behind with base functionality after the Spectral Mastery removal.

CPC was buffed indirectly as is it finally usable combined with Spectral Walk that cleanses the weakness instantly.

Blighter's Boon + Soul Eater + Vital Persistance builds got a minor healing buff, but I doubt that this is competitive to Onslaught.

Unintended but great bugfix: Spectral Walk does not go on full cooldown anymore when Spectral Recall is used.

An okay, but not great balance patch to me.

Gluttony only had strange icd rules when proccing off of blighters boon, so that it wouldnt go infinite. This now forces bb builds to run spite for for the interaction.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:but a buff to survivability.Not at all. It's a buff to utility but definitely not to survivability. Spectral Mastery did way more than what the spectral skills have now as base functionality. LF generation is significantly lower now and all spectral skills have a lower uptime.

Fair enough, the nerf to last gasp is a huge hit to survivability.

So all in all no real significant changes except for maybe the the death nova trait. The rest of the changes are meh at best and spite feels more like a nerf overall now TBH.

Spectral assault build it going to have to change.

These are awful changes but I do love the amount of juggling they have done in the notes to try and hide the fact that they just nerf'd the spectral line. As it stands we lost might gain from gluttony reducing our damage, we lost protection, stun break and increased life force gain when we hit 50% health from last gasp thus reducing our survivability.

They then increased our shroud skills recharge rate by taking the 20% we now have and making it 15%. The added heal bonus for vital persistence is pretty much useless outwith of scourge, as the last time I played reaper/core we cannot be healed whilst in shroud, so its counter intuitive to the class design. Spectral Walk change is that obscure im not sure if it still provides swiftness and recall with the addition of a condi cleanse or it just cleanses conditions now. Im hoping that it is in addition because if its not the least mobile class just got even worse and I haven't even got into the fact they done all that rework on traits yet left foot in the grave untouched.

I have zero clue why they keep picking things that do not need changed as the soul reaping trait line is one of the strongest for Necro and would not have been my choice of trait lines to get an overhaul.

@Scarran.9845 said:These are awful changed but I do love the amount of juggling they have done in the notes to try and hide the fact that they just nerf'd the spectral line. As it stands we lost might gain from gluttony reducing our damage, we lost protection, stun break and increased life force gain when we hit 50% health from last gasp thus reducing our survivability.

They then increased our shroud skills recharge rate by taking the 20% we now have and making it 15%. The added heal bonus for vital persistence is pretty much useless outwith of scourge, as the last time I played reaper/core we cannot be healed whilst in shroud, so its counter intuitive to the class design. Spectral Walk change is that obscure im not sure if still provides swiftness and recall with the addition of a condi cleanse or it just cleanses conditions now. Im hoping that it is in addition because if its not the least mobile class just got even worse and I haven't even got into the fact they done all that rework on traits yet left foot in the grave untouched.

I have zero clue why they keep picking things that do not need changed as the soul reaping trait line is one of the strongest for Necro and would not have been my choice of trait lines to get an overhaul.

^This

To add here: The fear duration increase in soul reaping does not increase the base duration of the fears- means the trait is pretty useless for condi builds (not to mention that fear keeps getting weaker and weaker)

The deathmagic trait line changes are nice, though. This trait line still needs work though

The overall damage trait nerfs is just a disgrace, why do other classes get a base damage increase across all modes and necro does not? Its not like necro is already on the lower end of the damage stick

Spectral skill builds may make better use of runes with protection duration. I need to think about that, more

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:More DPS out of SR for PvE folks, which is fine but irrelevant for me.

Power Procmancer is now finally dead.

Spectral Ring is nice and what everybody asked for.

Spectral Walk is great too and makes a condi cleance in the third utility slot redundant -> I will run Ring/CPC, Armor, Walk now.

Unfortunately Spectral Armor got a massive nerf as it is left behind with base functionality after the Spectral Mastery removal.

CPC was buffed indirectly as is it finally usable combined with Spectral Walk that cleanses the weakness instantly.

Blighter's Boon + Soul Eater + Vital Persistance builds got a minor healing buff, but I doubt that this is competitive to Onslaught.

Unintended but great bugfix: Spectral Walk does not go on full cooldown anymore when Spectral Recall is used.

An okay, but not great balance patch to me.