What IS necromancer's defense meant to be?

[killfil.3472]

Tittle.

Shroud?A "second health bar" does not have nearly as much efficiency as complete negations of damage such as dodges (elementalist [mainly weaver], mesmer [mainly mirage], thief [mainly daredevil]), blocks (guardian, warrior, revenant, engineer) or invulnerabilities (elementalist, guardian, engineer), some of which you can still perform any kind of actions through like attacks/healing with semi-absolute impunity (mesmer, elementalist, warrior [defiant stance], revenant [infuse light]).A "second health bar" can be reduced to 0 in the blink of an eye, and that "second health bar" is often times not capable of absorbing full bursts, resulting in the main health pool taking a beating.

Sheer offense?While it is true that necromancer can be a very damaging force, it can be shutdown extremely easily by any hard Crowd Control effect. And while it is ALSO true that necromancers have more skills that grant stability than some classes, the cooldown of dais skills and duration of stability stacks provided renders them very inefficient in the grand scheme of things.(Foot in the Grave could make for a solid source if it pulsed stability instead of granting a single short-lasting stack and would most certainly be chosen more often as a result. In my opinion, the other 2 grandmaster traits outshine it immensely. Say, if it granted 1 stack of stability for 5 seconds upon entry in shroud and every 5 seconds while in shroud, it would be acceptable and not overpowered. I think).

Conclusion ; I have no clue.

Feel free to enlighten me. I am a vessel for you to shove your knowledge into, either it be gently or forcefully.

[Taygus.4571]

Is reaper/necro even that damaging? Its got quite low dps compared to other classes.

It's always been prettuy bad, that necros only real defense, is also theit main source offense..if opponents wait out the shroud, you're dead.

[XECOR.2814]

Some of changes that can easily fix the seemigly lack of survivability options.

1. Rework blood bond in blood magic to something else that can provide healing to both power and condi builds reliably.(its only useful for condi builds rn).

2. New blood bond could be: "gain x amount of healing when you activate mark of evasion below 75% hp. Both incoming and outgoing regen is 30% more effective".This effect fullfills the rp value too lol.

The below 75% condition is important because it ensures the healing is not wasted and we get the effect when we need it. Also we really need enhanced regen to survive as damage sponge.

3. Quickening thirst needs lots of qol but ill keep it short. Just add this effect on top of it previous effects to make it a viable option. "Dagger skills have faster animations".

4. Change Banshee's wail trait to: "Warhorn skills are more effective and last longer. Warhorn 4 now stuns enemy instead of daze and warhorn 5 grants swiftness AND vigor to 5 nearby allies.

5. Life from death needs to buffed to like twice its value to be actually comparable to vampiric presence. Add regeneration on shroud exit.

6. Protection on wells from vampiric rituals grandmaster trait in blood magic seems out of place now since death magic is pushed as main source of protection after all the reworks. Maybe it should add big healing per pulse on allies inside wells instead of protection. It can also increase all life siphon effects by 30% just to make it competitive to other gm.

7. In death magic, the trait unholy sanctuary needs to heal a lot more than it does now. It should either scale with hp and work in percentage of hp or it should be 50% more than what it is now with much more scaling with healing power.

If they make these changes i think we can have good survivability options worth taking instead of going full dps and making counter pressure as our only defense.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Unholy Sanctuary, if they don't want to change its basic functionality, should at bare minimum scale with stacks of Death's Carapcae.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

No offense, but you don’t fully understand the class to identify where it’s defense potential truly lies.

Think of it this way:

Let’s pretend that your life force bar is nearly infinite. While in shroud form you can not be killed. In this way, you can equate shroud form as being similar to an evade. You still take the hit, and the damage is done to you, but you’ve effectively lost 0 health

The above statement remains true even if your life force is not infinite. You can equate the life force pool to be equivalent to evades or invuln effects because while you are in this form you can not die, and so for example instead of dodging you can choose to get hit by an attack for an exchange of life force, just like how for dodging you exchange endurance.

In addition, your cooldowns are ticking while you remain in this form. This means that the longer you stay in shroud, the more time you give your cooldowns to come off cool down. Imagine you have an ability with a 20 second cooldown and you use this ability before entering shroud. If you stay in shroud for 20 seconds, once you leave shroud this ability will become available to you once again.

This leads to the next conclusion, which is that life force generating abilities are essentially healing abilities. Though instead of healing your HP, they heal your life force bar. So having more life force generating abilities improves your sustain.

The strategy here with necromancer sustain is managing the 10 seconds of downtime between shroud entry and exit, and all the above comes together. You need to use shroud in a way that manages your cooldowns while it grants you immortality.

So A-the more life force generation you have the longer you will be able to stay in shroud

B- The longer you stay in shroud, the more time you afford for your life force generating abilities to come off cooldown.

C-managing the 10 seconds you remain out of shroud is the most important task for sustain, since you are vulnerable to dying.

This last point is actually the reason why Unholy Sanctuary is a powerful trait. It allows you to enter shroud before dying, and also triggering shroud in a time frame that is less then the 10 second window you are normally afforded. It also has a 30 second cooldown so it can effectively be chained to reset the fight for you so long as you buy yourself enough time (preferably in shroud) to so.

[Xxnecroxx.4039]

you are not meant to have defence, you are meant to be a punching bag boon corrupt bot. nothing else. at least that is what Anet wants necro to be

[Stand The Wall.6987]

shroud, weakness, area pressure, good offense.

editoh and condi removal/ transfer.

[thehipone.6812]

Weakness, blind, shroud, siphon, and offense.

[Dadnir.5038]

In short, the necromancer defense is to mitigate damage via health point and damage reduction. The necromancer is a masochist, he take the hits, he don't block them.

Just keep in mind that some players still think that the necromancer have more survivability than other professions that are loaded with invulns, blocks, evade skills, access to vigor, stability... etc.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Let’s pretend that your life force bar is nearly infinite. While in shroud form you can not be killed. In this way, you can equate shroud form as being similar to an evade. You still take the hit, and the damage is done to you, but you’ve effectively lost 0 health

The above statement remains true even if your life force is not infinite. You can equate the life force pool to be equivalent to evades or invuln effects because while you are in this form you can not die, and so for example instead of dodging you can choose to get hit by an attack for an exchange of life force, just like how for dodging you exchange endurance.Are you aware that any damage dealt over the amount of life force you have goes directly to your health? This also ignores the 50% damage reduction from Shroud.

Say you have 2k life force. You can take up to 4k damage before depleting your life force, thanks to the innate 50% damage reduction. However, if you take 4,500 damage, you end up taking 2,500 damage to your health.

Unless Barrier is equivalent to evades or invuln, Shroud isn't either. It's just bigger and you can't be healed in it.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Let’s pretend that your life force bar is nearly infinite. While in shroud form you can not be killed. In this way, you can equate shroud form as being similar to an evade. You still take the hit, and the damage is done to you, but you’ve effectively lost 0 health

The above statement remains true even if your life force is not infinite. You can equate the life force pool to be equivalent to evades or invuln effects because while you are in this form you can not die, and so for example instead of dodging you can choose to get hit by an attack for an exchange of life force, just like how for dodging you exchange endurance.Are you aware that any damage dealt over the amount of life force you have goes directly to your health? This also ignores the 50% damage reduction from Shroud.

Say you have 2k life force. You can take up to 4k damage before depleting your life force, thanks to the innate 50% damage reduction. However, if you take 4,500 damage, you end up taking 2,500 damage to your health.

Unless Barrier is equivalent to evades or invuln, Shroud isn't either. It's just bigger and you can't be healed in it.

Barriers are equivalent, both are as I mentioned, ways of mitigating damage. They may function differently but fundamentally they do the same thing.

What you mentioned is a quirk about shroud, which is crummy, sure. But it doesn’t change what shroud fundamentally does most of the time.

The difference in functionality between an invulnerable and barrier for example, is that when you are hit by an ability, things that benefit the user upon hitting you go through where as an invuln does not. If a thief steals onto a necromancer with shroud, the thief will interrupt, steal boons and gain their stolen abilities.

This is an important thing to note about health absorption because it determines what you should dodge and what you should mitigate. You want to prioritize dodging things that benefit the user and absorb damage that doesn’t.

[KrHome.1920]

Shroud is way more flexible than a block or an evade and for that reason I like it.

Its tradeoff for that flexibility is the loss of an unlimitited damage mitigation.

Shroud has a nice scaling (offense and defense) depending on gear and skill choices. It scales up to zerg frontline capabilities on wanderer or soldier gear while you are still doing 10K soul spirals and grave diggers. The real problem necro has is its lack of a viable teleport or long range leap. A guardian without a leap or teleport is easy to lock down despite all of his blocks.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@KrHome.1920 said:Shroud is way more flexible than a block or an evade and for that reason I like it.

Its tradeoff for that flexibility is the loss of an unlimitited damage mitigation.

Shroud has a nice scaling (offense and defense) depending on gear and skill choices. It scales up to zerg frontline capabilities on wanderer or soldier gear while you are still doing 10K soul spirals and grave diggers. The real problem necro has is its lack of a viable teleport or long range leap. A guardian without a leap or teleport is easy to lock down despite all of his blocks.

Ya, I agree that it’s disengage ability and it’s lack of gap closers is where it’s weaknesses are. And it’s why I run “Become The Snow Leapord” for this very reason.

Although I have seen some necros that are just really good at using spectral wurm and spectral walk that makes me scratch my head, I feel like it really could use some love in the gap close department.

[Teratus.2859]

@Dadnir.5038 said:In short, the necromancer defense is to mitigate damage via health point and damage reduction. The necromancer is a masochist, he take the hits, he don't block them.

Just keep in mind that some players still think that the necromancer have more survivability than other professions that are loaded with invulns, blocks, evade skills, access to vigor, stability... etc.

This, speaking from personal builds and experience.

Necromancers defense is that when built to tank it can absorb a significant amount of damage and sustain itself exceptionally well through lifesteal.Tanks stats, life stealing minions and Shroud.. these combine to make something almost invincible.

[DeadlySynz.3471]

@Taygus.4571 said:Is reaper/necro even that damaging? Its got quite low dps compared to other classes.

It's always been prettuy bad, that necros only real defense, is also theit main source offense..if opponents wait out the shroud, you're dead.

Not in WvW they don't. Their Dps is usually on the upper end (if not the top) unless there are some good Rev's in the squad. That's part of the problem, Anet trying to balance the class between 2 entirely different modes

[Anchoku.8142]

Necro defense depends on three things, afaik:

1. Shroud - pool of sacrificial health on the other side of a transform and requires charging by various active and passive means.
2. Conditions - fear, chill, cripple, bind, Blind and others are meant to inhibit or shut down offense. (Does not work on PvE bosses)
3. Positioning / dodging - all professions have this.

[ZDragon.3046]

I think shroud was only meant to be a partial defense not the whole thing which is fine. buuuttttt

The bigger problem comes with the choices anet made pre HoT and going forward after the fact. Before HoT necromancer excelled at keep away if you played it right and hindering its foes down with conditions as its main line of defense. To go into a bit more detail see the below.

Fear The main "get off me / you are exposed" tool in necromancers kit it shuts down defense and offense at the same time and similarly replaces the necromancers need for things like Daze's and hard Stuns. The only real issue with this condition is that most applications are base line very short and have extremely high cooldowns. The tipping point was over time anet added additional mechanics to the game like the resistance boon which gives the Fear condition as a cc the most counters in the game as far as a cc goes.

Weakness to reduce enemy damage and limit their evades, This condition to this day is still kind of ok but overall its control to negate critical hit damage is still based on RNG in other words it works great some times and other times it does not work at all. I would like to see this updated to be less rng reliant.Blind This is necromancers best and pretty much only true damage avoidance tool. Sadly necromancer lacks great access to this. Both core skills from off hand dagger and well of darkness are outdated. While you do get a bit more of it if you take reaper Ideally blind is only as powerful as the number of fury to blind converts you can make in a given combat situation. In other words most people get themselves blinded by necromancers not the necromancers raw skills applying the blind in most builds.

Cripple to slow foes down its ok but not great by any means.Chill to slow foes down and limit how often they can use their skills allowing the necromancer more time to take action against them. This condition already struggles to stick to a target unless you really really hard core invest into it making it roughly low impact in todays standards unless you happen to be a necromancer or an ele.

The two above conditions were down graded considerably which tanked necromancers sustain with them. That said the long term of how this would lay out could not have been seen back then as everyone did way less damage overall.Back before HoT there was a patch that changed these two conditions which prevented them from effecting movement based skills that were often use to close the gap between you and your target that many classes now have access too.Chill and Cripple use to be viable keep away tools in pvp before this and once this was changed they became considerably less effective as people under the effects of these conditions can simply continue to chase you down through the use of weapon skills practically ignoring them.

Moving on overall between the addition of bonus clears, mobility skills, resistance, and other various things necromancers main defenses which are these conditions have become less effective over time as the game as evolved.Conditions like slow would have done wonders for the necromancer with the idea in mind that it wont ever get more evades, mobility, or blocks in the future. Sadly its not something we get much access too and the conversion of quickness into slow is not all that punishing and not really something thats 100% applicable to apply.

Basically conditional defense has become a bit of an unstable defensive too for the necormancer. In some patches its decent in other patches its not very good at all depending on how much condition pressure is in the game overall. When you have classes like mirage and condi thief, support firebrand running around your conditional defense is considerably less effective to the point that most people just look at shroud as the main form of defense.

But hey in the 2019 meta being more offensive is the best defensive measure..... (i still hate that about this meta)