New Death Magic rework upcoming! (10/1 balance notes)
nikelaus.9745
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Thoughts?
Death Magic: This trait line has been reworked. Many traits now revolve around a new effect called Death's Carapace that increases toughness by 20 for each stack up to a maximum of 30 stacks. Death's Carapace stacks are applied for 10 seconds from all traits except Flesh of the Master.
Minor:
Armored Shroud: This trait now gives 5 stacks of Death's Carapace when entering shroud.
Soul Comprehension: In addition to its previous effects, this trait now also grants 1 stack of Death's Carapace for each kill the necromancer participates in.
Beyond the Veil: This trait has been reworked. It now reduces condition damage by 10% while the necromancer has at least 10 stacks of Death's Carapace.
Adept:
Flesh of the Master: Instead of granting armor for each minion, this trait now causes the necromancer's minions to grant them 2 Death's Carapace stacks as long as the minions are alive.
Putrid Defense: This trait has changed positions and its functionality has changed. It now causes poison to deal 15% more damage and grants 1 Death's Carapace stack when applying poison.
Shrouded Removal: This trait has changed positions. In addition to its previous effects, it now grants 3 Death's Carapace stacks when a condition is removed.
Master:
Necromantic Corruption: This trait is unchanged.
Dark Defiance: This trait is unchanged.
Deadly Strength: This trait has been reworked. It now causes Death's Carapace to grant an additional 10 power per stack.
Grandmaster:
Death Nova: Updated skill facts and description. Updated attack name from Lesser Poison Cloud to Poison Nova in order to indicate that it has different behavior from Corrosive Poison Cloud. Fixed an issue that caused this trait to use the minion's stats instead of the necromancer's. Fixed various issues that caused this trait to behave inconsistently with certain minions. Increased damage by 60% in PvE only.
Corrupter's Fervor: This trait has been reworked. It now grants 1 Death's Carapace stack when applying any condition. Additionally, at 25 Death's Carapace stacks or above, the necromancer gains pulsing protection for 3 seconds every 3 seconds.
Unholy Sanctuary: This trait is unchanged.
Comments
Quite interesting changes to Death Magic. But gaining toughness would send mobs beelining for you in groups, yes? Though Deadly Strenght would make a full stack of 30 give you 300 power which sounds pretty good. And Corrupters fervor is looking yummy, getting pulsing protection at high stacks, and a Reaper should rapidly stack up conditions to keep it active.
As long as the master minor remains as a 'when you kill something' trait death magic will be lackluster since you are playing with 2 minor traits. When will they learn that traits that do something when you already win (kill an enemy) are never good.
I am speaking from a pvp perspective, in pve no one will ever run a bunker trait line outside of nich scenarios such as running the radiation hallway in therminova fractal.
Its so sad that they "rework" Deathmagic and we still have 3 traitslots tied to a single set of utility skills. Combine these 3 useless minion traits into one and make room for interesting choices.
Death's Carapace? Death Magic is now a bug-theme? What is this 'quanta of toughness' stuff? At least Necro does not have to have toughness in equipment stat's but Necro still gets toughness when taking Death Magic, whether it's wanted it or not.
Reading the notes, I am skeptical that these changes will be of much value. Taking it will still mess with aggro control and I saw nothing of group benefit. The preview notes look more directed at WvW and PvP; possibly as compensation for the lower sustain Scourge will have.
No changes to minions or their traits.
Barriers will be rolled out to other professions so I expect Scourge to be deleted from pretty much every game mode. That's kind of salty of me but, because Necro brings nothing else of value...
Reading through the changes more closely, a lot of the defense of Death Magic comes into play after a bunch of conditions and such have been applied. Necro may be initially more squishy than previously when using Death Magic. The real defense comes when protection is finally applied by Corruptor's Fever at 25 stacks of Death's Carapace. There is a lot in here that looks more like a nerf.
Also, there was this:
General
When we originally created the alacrity and barrier effects, they were intended to be profession specific, but we've changed this stance after seeing how the game changed and evolved over time. While the original effects were visually iconic to their initial professions, it was a good time to update them with a look that could fit any profession.
So Necro gets heavy shade nerf. Especially for movement heavy enemies?
And gets toughness from inflicting conditions?
Goodbye Necro in raids.
Even soulless horror Necro might fall out of meta (actually it's the only boss where Necro is meta...)
delete it, please
It feels like everything we ever wrote about Scourge and Death Magic was not just wrong but dead wrong. They could have just said, "Whatever the players think of, we won't do. It's a company policy."
they need to rework all of necro or rework the game heavily for necro to not be kitten tier outside of WvW/PvP AND even in those gamemodes you are essentially a boon corruption bot, nothing else, yes you could TECHNICALLY go power reaper in PVE, but why? there are other professions that do power builds better and more consistant while also giving utility
This is hot garbage
Its arguable worse than the current version of death magic
Even the first minor GETS YOU LESS than the original
man they really should have asked for feed back on this.
No one wants a whole trait line based around a mini game of collecting stacks.
600 toughness, 300 power, and perma-protection in WVW? Drooooooooooooooooooolllll....
WvW™ - where you find more Red Rings of Death than an Xbox repair facility.
Not so fast! Remember that you will not get all that right away. You have to survive the ramp-up from nothing, first.
True, but Necro can ramp up conditions crazy fast, especially with axe and scepter. I was already using 112 in Death Magic plus 10% damage reduction food, and could catch people by surprise and watch them panic when their burst salvo failed and I kept coming. I spent one weekend hunting Longbow Rangers, quite entertaining since a Reaper with minions is supposed to be a free kill. This change might get me back to playing more.
WvW™ - where you find more Red Rings of Death than an Xbox repair facility.
So you are gonna drop what for this? its not exactly free what are you planning to drop?
Assuming wvw you are playing scourge... you gonna drop curses or soul reaping?
Assuming you go core necomancer how are you planning to quickly ramp the stacks cause it wont be as fast as you think. not to mention you are less effective still...
Is the drool from the shock of how abysmal this is?
I play Reaper and if you solo roam you aren't running full glass anyway unless you want to be downed as soon as you realize somebody else is even there. So you get your toughness from gear, food, or traits regardless. I've had a great time with Death and Soul Reaping. 30 does seem like a high number but I'm not going to judge until I see it in motion.
WvW™ - where you find more Red Rings of Death than an Xbox repair facility.
Ive ran into many necros roaming as reapers in wvw to say thats not a true statement.
i have to honestly say i have a hard time thinking you could kill anything or still dont get mowed down even with the current death magic if some one else shows up. I just cant envision this based on my experience on fighting things with necro if you got tanky (most) other professions can still out sustain and out damage you so its better just to take the damage so you at least have some chance of killing them. Ive found that offensive pressure provides more sustain than trying to "Tank it up" So i dont see this as very good. Even if we look at the maximum best case with the new stacks for toughness they ignored several traits that should have been addressed more properly. that could have provided much better results or a wider verity of builds. Several times have i dove into things with testing death magic and every time ive felt it was always lackluster for more reasons than i can count. I dont see a single thing in these notes that screams at me.
Trust me i would love to run a tank necro but you need more than toughness to be truly effective as a tank in multiple game modes. deathmagic fails to add those missing details.
Also, I really don't see maintaining 25+ stacks of this to be all that feasible, especially in pvp. This really only seems to benefit a minion master Necro, which is only used for open world and was already doing amazing.
Doc Von Doom
Wait the way they worded flesh of the master. You get a flat 40 toughness if one or more minion is alive? I guess stacking minions to get even more toughness (in addition to the Reaper's Rise damage mitigation too) isn't something they are fond of. They trying to say, one minion is enough...
I feel like bone minions/death nova will give your more stacks of carapace if you take Putrid Defense... And since death nova exists, and without the ability to stack them for stupid amounts toughness, do you really want your minions to live longer anyways? Maybe they should just delete the trait...
Unless they are saying 2 stacks per minion, but that would be a doubling of the toughens effect on top of whatever stack size bonuses you now get??? If that is the case, it could make Corrupters Ferver appealing to minion masters who don't appreciate poison clouds from minions dying and just want to sit there absorbing damage all day.
I guess stacking minions is a silly thing to do anyways and plain bad for high difficulty content, but the change to flesh of the master seems to be making a big change it in some way, that I can't even figure out with the wording.
Didn't read all posts, but with the changes to shades and how/where your shade skills trigger, we do need a "detonate sand shade" Button. As scourges you have so little defense Mechanisms that i'll hurt immensely to lose the f4 fear on you when a shade is up.
I get that we are ment to play with our shades instead of casting them elsewhere, but that loss is huge!!!
I also don't think it will be that easy to either get those stacks or to maintain them
They've reviewed and tested these changes beforehand surely..in all game modes..right? All in all it will remain subpar and the lesser played option as always. Like someone said earlier, what would you drop to incorporate this version of DM.
this death magic change feel just like focus 4 skill change we got not too long ago changing useless skill with a new useless skill .
but now we got a heavy nerf to scourge shade in PvP and PvE .
death magic in PvE give little dmg increase and give sustain which necro have enough of already if you play viper condi take Parasitic Contagion and you will never die .
in PvP there is enough burst dmg and condi dmg to one shot necro even with 600 toughness necro need stab so we dont get stun lock .
so in conclusion scourge now is kitten class in PvE . reaper remain the same .
Ive ran 2k toughness builds before and you still pretty much get 1 shot by burst meta. if not one shot your hp is knocked so low the next few hits still kill you. IF you guard with shroud you lose most of your offensive pressure because your shroud eats all the damage assuming you have life force to soak it. That said this line does not help build life force regenerate health for the necomancer itself provide any source of stability and only has real use with core necro imo.
About the best build in pvp you can make of this is
Blood magic (with wells)
Death magic (with Corrupter's Fervor: )
Soul Reaping (with what ever but possibly foot in the grave because why not)
This will give you possibly high protection up time if you play your cards right with some health restoration from the wells when people stand on them.
That sad you have no offensive pressure and no good source of stab or other critical boons that other bunkers usually have so im not so sure how well this would be in a team fight or for defending a point. All someone has to do is push you off the point for 3-4 seconds and its de capped.
Im still in total awe and disrespect at the fact that people have complained about how bad Unholy Sanctuary is and here in this rework they didnt even touch it.
They could have made the heal scale up with the number of Death's Carapace stacks or something AT THE VERY LEAST.
Thinking about it a little more, Death Magic looks like it will be nerfed. Currently, Death Magic adds toughness and power (Deadly Strength) before engaging an opponent. These changes may be very bad for all game modes but I will have to try it to be sure.
The coming changes appear to have only been created to compensate for the loss of Scourge sustain in WvW zerging builds by giving sustain for inflicting conditions with condi-dps gear.
p.s.
Theoretically, the Carapace idea could work in raids and fractals but there is still no reason to take Death Magic. It is still 100% selfish, messes with aggro, and a dps loss.
This is actually an amazing rework. Although I’m a bit sad that some things weren’t changed at least a little.
But ya I already have a build that is op for this setup.
it's goot that anet realises that there is something wrong with DM, still post rework it provides you with ramp up thoughness which depletes if you are stun-chained (since u cannot keep up those high stacks then) and no stability at all.. I dont see how any competent pvp builds would use that line
I’ll be honest here and say that the buff itself is mediocre. But anet seems to want to adopt a design philosophy which involves standardizing everything under similar metrics, and the only thing that all classes share are stats. So that’s why we see the exchange of might granting traits into “gain 120 power” traits.
But the design of DM right now makes sense when you think about it from the perspective of stats. They saw how stats redistribution opened up builds when they added 600 ferocity. So now they are adding 600 toughness into the mix with deathmagic
That should be enough information to see why this is going to be a strong spvp spec.
I give you the "standartising" thing and that its good
but anet is still not adressing the core problems of necromancer (no vigor, blocks, evades, poor mobility, long cast times,...) and as long as no traitline grants any of it it wont be chosen over an offensive one in spvp (exeption is maybe bloodmagic for ressing teammates)
in my opinion just defensively the boon rip alone from Spite is worth more than that 600 thoughness
at least in a pvp environnment where enemies run around with might and stab
Necro was already getting a significant amount of toughness for taking DM and traiting a few things. The flat damage reductions and toughness were quite good. PvP builds using DM are not looking good right now and Necro's using DM in WvW will be much more vulnerable when not in combat.
Does it though? Because for most professions it was not an increase of 600 it was considerably less but still an increase. These traits also trigger immediately and dont requires a build up of stacking an effect 30 times.
If this was Pre HoT or early HoT meta i would agree with you here but this is 2019 where burst meta is king.
600 toughness will not mean a darn thing and that assumes you have maximum stacks which likely wont be easily sustainable not to mention the time needed to build it up. Burst meta attempts to hit you before you have time to make a build up.
So will this be a strong spvp spec for necro, no probably not...
Will people test it out of course.
even assuming some one takes foot in the grave for most professions its not hard to push necro off a point with a single cc wich can be enough time to decap the point even if the necro is trying to bunker.
Lets also not forget the common focus the necro first that has become a standard for spvp. will 600 toughness alone assuming max stacks be enough to save you probably not.... overall they took a line that was very sub par and its still sub par with a small potential of being slightly better assuming the caster can achieve high stack counts.
I ran the numbers. Assuming no investment in toughness from trinkets, weapons, or armor.
The ceiling for the current death magic is -47.94% direct damage reduction, -20% condition damage reduction, and 182 power while maintaining 10 stacks of corruptor's fervor, protection, and 1 stack of poison on your foe.
The ceiling for the new death magic is -48.92% direct damage reduction, -10% condition damage reduction, and 300 power while maintaining 30 stacks of death's carapace.
This change translates to a slight damage buff from deadly strength, and better protection uptime, at the cost of reduced condition damage reduction and more stacks to maintain.
Overall I would call this change a Nerf to death magic as you used to get a bigger effect (-10% damage reduction from putrid defense) with less investment. And you also get less condition damage reduction.
Uhhh, guys? Each stack only lasts 10 seconds (aside from Flesh of the master). How the hell do they think we're ever going to hit 30 on anything resembling a regular basis? I don't even think it's possible if you're not using Corrupter's Fervor.
Plague Signet is the only skill in the game that is worse when traited.
How is that any different to how it works now?
Did I say it was? Death Magic is weak as hell now and they're nerfing it. The only thing that might be better is Death Nova, since it seems they're changing it to always deal the flat damage even on sacrifice minion active skills like Putrid Explosion.
Plague Signet is the only skill in the game that is worse when traited.
Well think about it. The GM trait proc on condi application, so one spin to win that hits 2 targets will get you 24 stacks alone...that’s ignoring every other trait. Then the shrouded removal will give you 3 per condition cleanse. If this counts external sources of condi cleanse we are talking perma uptime on this buff, from those two traits alone
How about a +300 vitality buff with death magic to go along with all that toughness.
So my happy fun minion build was nerfed? Just when I thought this patch couldn't get better...
At first glance this feels like an overall nerf to an already underperforming trait line. It seems like it would only work well with a Condi build too, since Corrupter’s Fervor seems to be the only way to ensure regular stacks. I hope it performs better in practice.
i had a build that could do well with this in PvP, but outside of that this traitline still seems too bad to switch anything out for in PvE
"Death's Carapace stacks are applied for 10 seconds..."
lolz. What the heck is that? This is already not going to work. Reiterate please.
In the beginning...there was Tarnished Coast...
This is underwhelming, regardless if it's good or not. It's pretty hard to get excited about effects that stack a passive damage mitigation stat.
On that note, the amount and durations are poorly thought out ... Even at max stacks, you only get 600 toughness and it's on the order of 10 seconds. That's pretty MEH if you ask me.
If you're on a highway and roadrunner goes "beep beep"
Just step aside or you might end up in a heap
Minions give 2 stacks of cardboard armor and no added defense of their own, so they die faster then you can summon them in WvW.
Adversity is the medium thru which strength and greatness are forged.
While you are fighting. But when you cant cast skills for kitten and getting hard focus you wont gain anything from the defense line lul.
Well my guess would be that hitting multiple targets helps stacking.
Who are you and what did you do to the obtena I know? Not defending anet choices
Just kidding.
I'm also not that hyped about the changes. Some are good, but most of them feel like someone didn't really think about the changes or didn't test them.
The core problem is, that I think they only test stuff in open world pve. Where basically anything works.
I do have something in mind for solo roaming and maybe gonna test it in pvp as well, but yeah...
Sooo... will the traitline picture be jokofied?
While I do like the stacking effect and feel that the new Corrupter's Fervor and Deadly Strength makes the line slightly more appealing to sturdy power Reaper builds, ANet missed the mark for me.
When looking at playstyles, I don't see any changes. Why the effort?
Way to much raw stats, there is no real point in making something imbalanced for the sake of leading players to use it.
Strictly speaking it's not bad. A bit of a nerf but not bad.
Like always, great in WvW, trash everywhere else.
Meh...
More passive minion gameplay...
I'm curious whether you'll gain 2 death carapace per poison stack with corruptor fervor... All in all, it's not really engaging but it follow the logic of the change...
Meh...
Still in this stupid passive minion gameplay... so disappointing. Is it because there is no hope to ever have good minion active skills?
Thanks god.
Meh... Well, as an after thought, it's a buff we got here.
P A S S I V E minion gameplay...
That's not wise in anyway... Absolutely not.
lol
So, to sum it up: Nerf of basic performances to increase potential performance, traits that needed to be changed ain't changed and huge stat powercreep that will mostly impact WvW.
True. I mean what death magic needed was more unique gameplay, but instead we got a pure stat for the buff. In the end I think it’s the buff itself that it lackluster. If they just made the buff do something else other than toughness it would be more unique and formidable. But as of right now this is their design philosophy which is like...meh.
Instead of wasting resources with class butchering balance-updates nobody asked for they should focus on adding new endgame-content to the game faster.
That was my thought as well. WvW condi-bombing is one way to build a full stack quickly. Another is against PvE bosses that allow more time to develop a stack.
Unless I misunderstood the preview notes, the purpose of the change is to make Necro easier to bag at the start of an engagement, increase the value of disengaging from Necro to reset the fight, and place more emphasis on having other professions support and escort.
Unfortunately, I feel like the changes will nerf Necro more outside of WvW zerging than it will in a zerg.
It will because for one blood magic does the job just as if not more effectively and provides more utility in other modes that are not wvw when more sustain is needed.
Secondly players have found out that offensive pressure provides more sustain in pvp than trying to invest in stats that would provide sustain like toughness. People are more likely to disengage from you as a necro if you pressure them or limit their options of attack through offensive abilities.
So yo give up offensive power for sub par / weaker / potentially weaker defensive power at early engage for slightly and i mean slightly higher potential raw toughness makes no sense.
Anet had 7 or 6 years worth of ideas here on the forums to consider while doing this rework and they took absolutely none of it into account. Its just out right disrespectful really. Our ideas will end up on another profession as they often do.
See necro focus 4 ideas ending up on guardian focus 4 when guardians were not asking for a re work to the skill. (just as an example)
About the only 2 traits that are going to be considerably better than they were before are
Deathly Strength
Not because of the potential 300 power either. IF you run a toughness build at the moment you can get 300 if not more than 300 bonus power while in shroud. ITs just the fact that you will be able to maintaine it in or out of shroud now and you dont need toughness as you upfront stat to get that bonus.
Death Nova
With the 60% damage increase assuming that the strike damage is not still BUGGED and that it will actually strike a foe. This bug has been around for a long time and i cant recall them ever fixing it. How sad it would be to see them buff the strike damage of this trait by 60% when it does not even apply the hit in the game....
Pretty good job so far.