12/11/2018 Patch for necro

I can understand the nerf to chill of death but then, spiteful spirit and weakening shroud made to noncrit? traits that can barely crit for 1.5k in PvP I don't understand the spectral mastery change I'm a power necro main and I spectral was apart of my build and you took that away why. You gave necro all of these boons now I can't just zerg the way I want to because I have 5 million years of slow on me. Why do you make other traits useless just to make certain people happy? I knew from the time shroud recharge was removed for reaper and base necro it was the end of my fun on Necro. All of the other specs get to jump flip and port, and jump around like monkies and yet necro is the one who gets its mechanics tampered with?

Anets moto with necro, if its somewhat viable we better nerf it into the ground then nerf it some more, necros are only supposed to be boon corrupt bots NOTHING ELSE

If we can have a revert option linked to patch dates I'd eat my monocle and top hat. This patch is pure tomfoolery.

From a design perspective it's reasonable. Offensive procs in general can be problematic because most of the time they are fine, except that one time when all 3 go off at once and instantly vaporize someone.

The problem with the changes is that they leave reaper with no quick damage, as everything else on reaper other than the trait procs has disproportionately long casts & animations relative to other classes. Reaper has been leaning really heavily on trait procs in order to be able to land consistent damage against opposing classes that have ever increasing amounts of avoidance and mobility. With the annihilation of the trait procs reaper is really struggling to handle matchups.

@Crinn.7864 said:From a design perspective it's reasonable. Offensive procs in general can be problematic because most of the time they are fine, except that one time when all 3 go off at once and instantly vaporize someone.

The problem with the changes is that they leave reaper with no quick damage, as everything else on reaper other than the trait procs has disproportionately long casts & animations relative to other classes. Reaper has been leaning really heavily on trait procs in order to be able to land consistent damage against opposing classes that have ever increasing amounts of avoidance and mobility. With the annihilation of the trait procs reaper is really struggling to handle matchups.

There's also engi and ele. Where they nerfed damage of instant procs, but at the same time gave them 100% more crit damage.

And that's the real problem I have with this, not being consequent.Info can trigger it's static discharge 4-5times in a row, without icd.

Necro had to use shroud for 2 of his procs.And had an icd on both others.

Sure if they all came together, this was some really nice burst.

But pve wise, I guess it was a nerf once again for power reaper

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:From a design perspective it's reasonable. Offensive procs in general can be problematic because most of the time they are fine, except that one time when all 3 go off at once and instantly vaporize someone.

The problem with the changes is that they leave reaper with no quick damage, as everything else on reaper other than the trait procs has disproportionately long casts & animations relative to other classes. Reaper has been leaning really heavily on trait procs in order to be able to land consistent damage against opposing classes that have ever increasing amounts of avoidance and mobility. With the annihilation of the trait procs reaper is really struggling to handle matchups.

You'd have seldom taken those traits for PvE anyway. ANet introduced better options for PvE in the previous patchs this year. The only real thing that hurt all gamemodes is the loss of last gasp which mainly hurt the necromancer's sustain. I'm guessing that with this change ANet try to balance SR passive defense so that DM become a bit more attractive.

The synergy they created between fear of death and beyond the veil is nice and I guess they expect soul comprehension and glutonny to make up for high LF gen. However I doubt it's nearly enough right now to really make DM come out of the trash can. The fact that they try to continue to force minion onto us when playing DM don't help them to make DM attractive either. It always feel like they don't understand that minions aren't fit for playing against players and that outside of WvW zergfeist LF on death isn't great.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:From a design perspective it's reasonable. Offensive procs in general can be problematic because most of the time they are fine, except that one time when all 3 go off at once and instantly vaporize someone.

The problem with the changes is that they leave reaper with no quick damage, as everything else on reaper other than the trait procs has disproportionately long casts & animations relative to other classes. Reaper has been leaning really heavily on trait procs in order to be able to land consistent damage against opposing classes that have ever increasing amounts of avoidance and mobility. With the annihilation of the trait procs reaper is really struggling to handle matchups.

I feel like the old death magic was fine the way it was vulnerability to enemies that would get close to you on an interval and a little bit of free power for taking another option.

Now that they have nerfed necros damage that really helped vs bad matchups can base and reaper get recharge back

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:From a design perspective it's reasonable. Offensive procs in general can be problematic because most of the time they are fine, except that one time when all 3 go off at once and instantly vaporize someone.

The problem with the changes is that they leave reaper with no quick damage, as everything else on reaper other than the trait procs has disproportionately long casts & animations relative to other classes. Reaper has been leaning really heavily on trait procs in order to be able to land consistent damage against opposing classes that have ever increasing amounts of avoidance and mobility. With the annihilation of the trait procs reaper is really struggling to handle matchups.

If they would at least make it, that increased toughness from armored shroud and corrupters fevor would be affected by deadly strength. So you gain a little bit of extra power from it... But deathmagic just sux right now.There's literally one Condi build which is cancer mirage in wvw roaming, everyone else is playing power except for very few condirangers

And this is mostly about defense. But why bother taking any defense if almost every class can almost oneshot you, because you have no blocks or invulns?Just kill them before they oneshot you. That's at least how I try to play, because you won't win any sustain fight.

The problem is everything necro is condensed to certain specific areas. If they put utility on weapons and move some damage utility skills we would be fine. But this is never goong to happen.

Btw i was watching a mirage stream and apparently sceptre3 hits for 6k on sage amulet. Must be nice. Later i saw mirage doing unimaginable amount of damage in teamfight and easy escape on outnumbered against soulbeast, holo and warrior and he killed a reaper on the way to mid node. I guess he was just a better player.

@"Morde.3158" said:I feel like the old death magic was fine the way it was vulnerability to enemies that would get close to you on an interval and a little bit of free power for taking another option.

The vulnerability was in spite with rending shroud replaced by awaken the pain. Objectively DM is and has always been lackluster since the "specialization" system, it never was "fine".

@"Nimon.7840" said:And this is mostly about defense. But why bother taking any defense if almost every class can almost oneshot you, because you have no blocks or invulns?Just kill them before they oneshot you. That's at least how I try to play, because you won't win any sustain fight.

I know it's a pain but just put yourself in ANet's shoes. On one side there is a need to make each line worse it's nuts bag and on the other they need to avoid power creep. One of the reason DM is/was trash is that SR owned most of the necromancer's survivability, some mandatory utilities and loads of damage. All in all, SR was the superior choice if you wanted to survive while DM relying on minion and having no relationship with the spectral skills just couldn't hold a candle to it.

I know it's painful to hear it but the necromancer way to defend itself is by using HP to counter damages. The DM traitline just follow this line of thought (which isn't really great) adding mitigation to our defense when we beg for some kind of avoidance.

That said, not so long ago, when they increased reaper's damage, most meta build weren't even beginning to think about using spectral armor. Yes SR was used but spectral armor as well as last gasp and spectral mastery weren't seen as necessary tools. The builds focus were different and the meta was condi heavy but the necromancer could still hold it's own at that time without the "spectral's extras". Which mean that there is still room to adapt even if we don't like the changes.

In my opinion, there is room for well builds in a BM/SR/reaper setup, however, this would be a build that forsake support for survivability, I'm pretty sure we can still spike someone to death with traited wells. This sure is a build with burst on a long CD which hurt in responsivness compared to the prepatch meta build but, it's a viable possibility.

I won't say DM is now in a good enough place to be a favored choice because I don't like to lie, however ANet showed that they are aware that the traitline is behind other traitline and they try some "balance" tweeks to push it in a better place. The fact is that they reduced SR defensive potential and increased DM's own potential to achieve this result and from an objective point of view that was a smart first move. At the moment, this move put the necromancer in a precarious position when it come to defense and ANet will most likely have to put some work to improve things more. I definitely don't think it's a bad thing.

NB.: ANet probably wouldn't agree with me but I think Dark defiance need to see it's ICD removed and prot duration reduced to 2 seconds. An ICD on an incoming CC effect for a few second of protections without stun break just don't cut the line.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Morde.3158" said:I feel like the old death magic was fine the way it was vulnerability to enemies that would get close to you on an interval and a little bit of free power for taking another option.

@"Nimon.7840" said:And this is mostly about defense. But why bother taking any defense if almost every class can almost oneshot you, because you have no blocks or invulns?Just kill them before they oneshot you. That's at least how I try to play, because you won't win any sustain fight.

They can at least have spectral mastery built in instead of just throwing something together like they did 40sec on armor 40se on walk 35 on pull. The spectral ring I can understand that cd because it can be abused but the other cooldowns are too high.

@"Morde.3158" said:They can at least have spectral mastery built in instead of just throwing something together like they did 40sec on armor 40se on walk 35 on pull. The spectral ring I can understand that cd because it can be abused but the other cooldowns are too high.

40 second CD on spectral armor isn't too "high". There exist worse skills on way longer CD. 40 second on spectral walk is also fine, now it can even be used to remove a few conditions on top of being a "save point", 40 seconds is in line with a lot of movement utility skills. Spectral grasp pulling 5 targets on a 35 second CD also isn't really disturbing for it's effects.

We've lost some QoL and it is disturbing but this is not the end of the world and it doesn't mean that the necromancer suddenly became unplayable. Some players didn't use SR before the patch and were still successfull.

In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

@RisenHowl.2419 said:In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

It did get harder for reaper, but there are builds you can still play.

As for holo and boonbeast, both were nerfed the last patch. Holo lost access to SRD and toss elicir U no longer gives quickness. Boon beast received longer cds on moa stance and reduced stab and prot uptime from plasma. Cant speak much on mirage. I know chrono received some nerfs.

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

Mesmer got a huge portal nerf. That alone is a big hit due to how strong it is. Honestly pretty much all the meta builds took hits in one way or another. Core guards, spellbreakers, revs etc etc. This is not nerf in a vacuum.

@Warscythes.9307 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

They all got compensation as well, necro did not.

Static discharge buffed, superspeed is arguably more useful than quickness on toss elixir u for kiting, SRD is almost as good and a damn sight better than just losing the defensive proc completely.

Have you seen dolyak stance's nerf? Real impactful. The nerf to moa stance is negligible, it's had no effect on any of the boonbeasts I've fought this week

The only change that meant anything to mirage was losing a charge of jaunt. Fortunately, they gave chrono a huge buff with lost time.

Necro was barely Plat material before, then we got straight nerfs.

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Warscythes.9307 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

Oh i agree necro got the short end of the stick in this patch. However, saying other classes were only buffed is false. Elixir E is not better than SRD. Static discharge base damage was nerfed (it does the same damage as before if you crit). A 40s cd for 3 s of superspeed is not as good as 12 s of team quickness.

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Warscythes.9307 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

Zex said what I wanted to say. The sky's not falling people. Scourge for example actually got a sizeable change with the fear trait. Posi's giving it a shot and it looks ok as the LF gain is pretty decent with terror. As for reaper, worst case scenario is that we go back to blood well which is relatively unchanged.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Morde.3158" said:They can at least have spectral mastery built in instead of just throwing something together like they did 40sec on armor 40se on walk 35 on pull. The spectral ring I can understand that cd because it can be abused but the other cooldowns are too high.

I used to not use soul reaping back in the day when the traits had the stats on it. Anybody still playing like that now is very questionable.

@Warscythes.9307 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Warscythes.9307 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@RisenHowl.2419 said:In Plat +, reaper is dead. You can have sustain and not enough damage to secure kills or you can have 0 sustain and okay damage.

Either way, it's hard countered by boonbeast, holo, and mirage- all of which were just buffed.

Try playing some terrormancer scourge, it has 0 sustain and is shut down hard by any meta class. You can nuke someone down, but if they cleanse, stunbreak, or invulnerable you lose

Reaper lost auto SA, which was a big part of its sustain. You either end up too squishy or deal bad damage regardless of traits choices, you get one or the other