New Core Necro balance notes next week

What do you guys think of the upcoming changes?

Necromancer

While reapers were designed to be durable frontline fighters, the Soul Eater trait is providing a little too much survivability, so we're removing the ability for this trait to heal while in a shroud. We are also making some changes to core necromancer death shroud skills. These changes are aimed at improving the uptime of shroud skills to put them more in line with their elite specialization counterparts.

Death Shroud: Fixed an issue in which the UI icon displayed while in shroud incorrectly used the icon for Dark Path.Dark Path: Updated the icon for this skill. Reduced the recharge from 15 seconds to 8 seconds. Reduced chill duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. This skill now damages, chills, and inflicts bleeding on all foes in the area, rather than only damaging and inflicting bleeding on the first foe hit. The projectile fired by this skill now travels in a straight line rather than following the slope of the ground. This skill no longer shadowsteps to the target by default. Instead it flips over to Dark Pursuit when the projectile hits.Dark Pursuit: This follow-up skill to Dark Path shadowsteps the necromancer to the first foe stuck by Dark Path and increases the recharge of Dark Path by 8 seconds. Dark Pursuit can be cast for 3 seconds after the Dark Path projectile hits a target.Life Transfer: Reduced recharge from 40 seconds to 25 seconds.Tainted Shackles: Reduced recharge from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.Dark Water: Reduced recharge from 15 seconds to 8 seconds. Reduced pulses from 7 to 4. Reduced duration from 6 seconds to 3 seconds.Wave of Fear: Reduced recharge from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.Gathering Plague: Reduced recharge from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.Unholy Martyr: Fixed a bug that could cause this trait to prevent cleanup of Death Shroud boons.Soul Eater: This trait no longer heals while shroud life force replaces health.

Skritt that Soul Eater change. A copy/paste from Reddit sums up my feelings on the matter:

Hey, thanks for making it so necro can’t heal in shroud while not providing any way to be healed in shroud. PvE necros really thank you guys.

This needed to be a pvp split. Right now it’s nothing more than a massive annoyance in high end PvE to have healers be totally unable to heal you unless you totally shut down your rotation and just derp autoattack until one of their heals lands. This used to even be a common reason fractal CM groups didn’t like taking necros. To top it off, it’s not like anyone is complaining about necro tank in PvE as nobody is even using them for that.

The rest of the changes are a smoke screen to cover up the nerf to Soul Eater. Don't fall for it.

dont play Core so Iam looking forward to another 3-4months of nothing

We have the worst notes....even worse than soulbeast...which is really not that bad since they are going from OP to balanced

Meanwhile necro goes from Utter Kitten Poo to ultra kitten poo and stagnation for the next 3 months.

I think the guy who killed thief is now trying to kill necro too.

Sounds to me like deathshroud 2 is getting the nerf bat as well. Sounds like "this skill isn't homing anymore"Which would make it completely useless.

This patch, sorry to say that, is an huge "f... You, necro players" right in our faces.

Not a single issue of necro gets addressed.

Instead they nerf the only good trait that somewhat kept you alive in pve and wvw.Was it to strong? Maybe. Remove it completely? - no!

This really makes me sad and makes me wanna cry. If you look at all the fancy things, other classes get

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:We have the worst notes....even worse than soulbeast...which is really not that bad since they are going from OP to balanced

Meanwhile necro goes from Utter Kitten Poo to ultra kitten poo and stagnation for the next 3 months.

I think the guy who killed thief is now trying to kill necro too.

But at least, thief gets a rework. Necro still doesnt

@Nimon.7840 said:But at least, thief gets a rework. Necro still doesnt

We got one minor rework(off hands) and it sucked really bad. Don't ask for another one cauz it will be even worse. Let's see if these shroud 2 thing would be decent, but as you i think we might go into nerf bat territory

Soul Eater should have remained as it was, at worse reduce the heal percentage just in shroud if u really want to nerf it.Life transfer and tainted shackles cd reduction are good.

The cooldowns are nice, but since reaper got buffed death shroud can't keep up in damage and scourge can use shroud skills AND weapon skills at the same time. When reaper launched the reaper shroud damage was unimpressive and similar to death shroud, but it's way ahead of death shroud at the moment with no drawback except it has to be melee (which is seldom an issue).

Guess I'm rolling something else.

@NecroSummonsMors.7816 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:But at least, thief gets a rework. Necro still doesnt

Asking for deathmagic rework.You can't make that traitline worse than it is right now xD

@Nimon.7840 said:

@NecroSummonsMors.7816 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:But at least, thief gets a rework. Necro still doesnt

It's Anet Nimon... there's no limit on how worse can a rework be. Look at the past and despair xD

wasn't the hwal in shroud added like last year?

Removing that is a terrible change for pve...but expected, it's necro after all, we can't have nice things.

@Taygus.4571 said:wasn't the hwal in shroud added like last year?

Removing that is a terrible change for pve...but expected, it's necro after all, we can't have nice things.

It was changed on the April balance patch this year. We weren't even allowed a nice thing for more than 3 months.

Sure glad the nerf things no one cried about lol soul eater was one of the few good decisions they made when they made it heal etc and they take it away? Lmao this balance team is single handedly gonna kill this game. Maybe work on updating unused trait and trait lines and revamp old dated things like necro staff lol try improving build deversity. Seriously I hate to sound mean but restaff the balance team, no disrespect but their not up to this task.

This is a depressing round of notes.

@"nikelaus.9745" said:While reapers were designed to be durable frontline fighters, the Soul Eater trait is providing a little too much survivability, so we're removing the ability for this trait to heal while in a shroud.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/974656/#Comment_974656

Well... I was actually joking...

Marauder is trash again with that change. Demolisher is not available in wvw. Kodash is dead too.

Time to move on to other games.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"nikelaus.9745" said:While reapers were designed to be durable frontline fighters, the Soul Eater trait is providing a little too much survivability, so we're removing the ability for this trait to heal while in a shroud.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/974656/#Comment_974656

Yeah I'm glad I made that decision months ago lol

Honestly, any reasonable person saw this nerf on Soul Eater from a mile away. It was completely out of line with Unholy Shroud and it's a GM trait. Like ... CMON.

Everything else is just meh; I haven't used DS for years. Maybe it will be worth a new look.

Durable frontline fighters? Hardly. Once you lose shroud you are a sitting duck, and as already stated you cannot be healed in shroud.

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"nikelaus.9745" said:While reapers were designed to be durable frontline fighters, the Soul Eater trait is providing a little too much survivability, so we're removing the ability for this trait to heal while in a shroud.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/974656/#Comment_974656

What are you playing? I'm looking for another game, best would be no monthly payment, and a better balance team than gw2 has.

@Obtena.7952 said:Honestly, any reasonable person saw this nerf on Soul Eater from a mile away. It was completely out of line with Unholy Shroud and it's a GM trait. Like ... CMON.

Everything else is just meh; I haven't used DS for years. Maybe it will be worth a new look.Unholy sanctuary is the worst of all necro gm traits.

Besides that if they were smart they would have switched soul eater and blighter's boon. That would leave us sustain and burst options without having all at once.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Honestly, any reasonable person saw this nerf on Soul Eater from a mile away. It was completely out of line with Unholy Shroud and it's a GM trait. Like ... CMON.

Everything else is just meh; I haven't used DS for years. Maybe it will be worth a new look.Unholy sanctuary is the worst of all necro gm traits.

It sure is ... which should pretty much tell you right away that Soul Eater wasn't going to stay the way it was.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Honestly, any reasonable person saw this nerf on Soul Eater from a mile away. It was completely out of line with Unholy Shroud and it's a GM trait. Like ... CMON.

Everything else is just meh; I haven't used DS for years. Maybe it will be worth a new look.Unholy sanctuary is the worst of all necro gm traits.

No debate there ... but that wouldn't have prevented the change to Soul Eater ... healing that amount WHILE in shroud? That was never going to fly, EVEN if they fixed other stuff. That's just thematically not how LF and shroud has been described to us from Anet ... and this change just confirms that even more. Shroud isn't intended to be a mechanic that allows you ping pong between health bars.

@"Obtena.7952" said:Honestly, any reasonable person saw this nerf on Soul Eater from a mile away. It was completely out of line with Unholy Shroud and it's a GM trait. Like ... CMON.

Everything else is just meh; I haven't used DS for years. Maybe it will be worth a new look.

Was it to strong? Maybe.Was it the only real change together with the change of the scepter trait? Yes!

So one of two nice things immediately taken away again, that made necro feel fresh?Like common. Every other class gets tons of qol, buffs to unused things, nerfs to some totally over the top things (yes looking at you: sic em)So things might get played by buffing them, but necro gets: here, we nerfed the best option. But don't give anything back.And we are buffing something unused, but not as much, that any more people will use it.

Get back to your corner and be the punching bag again!This trait was the first time, that made necro somewhat a brawler, that also has at least a bit of sustain. Not to mention the completely outdated "no healing in shroud" mentality, when literally in every gamemode there are healers, but the only thing that isn't allowed to get healed is necro, that has a huge problem of self sustain?