Should core Necromancer become a 3-target spec?

[Anchoku.8142]

To better differentiate core Necro from its elites, what do you think of limiting its skills to a maximum of three targets, then improving its damage output? The hope is to focus core Necro further on power or condition dps in exchange for lowering target caps on AoE skills.

A target cap of 3 would affect siphons, marks, wells, transfusion, shroud and weapon skills and other AoE. This would still allow Necro to cleave large hit boxes but cut down on WvW AoE stacking.

In exchange for reducing the 5-target cleaning AoE on core, some skills can be buffed to increase core dps for both power and condition damage builds.

• Dagger MH and OH targets increase or decrease to a maximum of three. For example, the AA increases to 3 targets but Enfeebling Blood decreases to 3 while others are unchanged or increase to either 2 or 3 targets.
• Limit staff on Core to 3 targets but increase their effects slightly.
• Axe and scepter AoE skills drop to 3 targets in all game modes from 5 but with increased effects in PvE.
• Death Shroud's Life Siphon and Tainted Shackles target count drops to 3 but with increased effects in PvE.

These were a few examples to highlight the relative ease Arenanet could rework core Necromancer so that it still maintains its low-cleave flavor while reducing stacking potential in WvW and increasing its PvE potential.

Managing PvP vs WvW vs PvE balance by splitting "numbers" rather than reworking skills makes life easier for developers, as they often say.

This post was to get feedback on an idea to add further definition to the purpose of core Necromancer and trim back some of its stacking ability in WvW allowing it to grow in PvE and be more easily balanced between game modes.

[jpsssss.7530]

Man I'd just be happy if they stopped gutting grandmaster traits or replacing them with actual cow feces.

[Bezerker.2379]

No just stop touching it core is fine. Stop gutting the traits that make it work. :(

[Shroud.2307]

@Bezerker.2379 said:No just stop touching it core is fine. Stop gutting the traits that make it work. :(

This please.

The overhaul to Dread and the cast time added to Doom were some of the most depressing changes to me. I don't want anything else done to it.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

@"Bezerker.2379" said:No just stop touching it core is fine. Stop gutting the traits that make it work. :(

This please.

The overhaul to Dread and the cast time added to Doom were some of the most depressing changes to me. I don't want anything else done to it.

I think warhorn overhaul was pretty depressing as well (even imagining it put at 3 targets creep me)... And I'm still not a fan of the focus overhaul...

This post was to get feedback on an idea to add further definition to the purpose of core Necromancer and trim back some of its stacking ability in WvW allowing it to grow in PvE and be more easily balanced between game modes.

The number of targets hit by the necromancer's abilities have no relation with it's purpose. It's purpose is to remove boons/debuff and "rule" over conditions, 2 things that have absolutely no meaning in front of a PvE end game boss due to defiance, NPC design in general and encounter design. Fix PvE and you'll fix the necromancer, don't try to fix the necromancer for PvE it can only break things in other gamemodes.

[Shroud.2307]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

@"Bezerker.2379" said:No just stop touching it core is fine. Stop gutting the traits that make it work. :(

This please.

The overhaul to Dread and the cast time added to Doom were some of the most depressing changes to me. I don't want anything else done to it.

I think warhorn overhaul was pretty depressing as well (even imagining it put at 3 targets creep me)... And I'm still not a fan of the focus overhaul...

I've grown to like the focus changes, but I do miss my "opener" skill. I used to toss a focus 4 at people first thing in most fights because it could do pretty high damage so it was a good way to either force a dodge out of people to to land a decent crit straight away. But as it is now, the Life Force gain is nice, I just wish it had a bit more utility outside of that.

Warhorn though, yeah... I never liked warhorn much to begin with, but now it's just straight garbage and I don't use period.

The cast time to Doom was just stupid. All it has done is remove the strategy to the skill and make it clunky to use. ANets reasoning and why a lot of people complained was because it was a 1200 range CC with "no animation" but it has always had an animation with a cloudy Reaper that appears over the Necro's head. People still get hit by it just as often as they did before it had a cast time except now you can't really use it strategically and I hate it so much. Sorry, mini rant, but that was one of the few changes that made me incredibly angry.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I think warhorn overhaul was pretty depressing as well (even imagining it put at 3 targets creep me)... And I'm still not a fan of the focus overhaul...

I've grown to like the focus changes, but I do miss my "opener" skill. I used to toss a focus 4 at people first thing in most fights because it could do pretty high damage so it was a good way to either force a dodge out of people to to land a decent crit straight away. But as it is now, the Life Force gain is nice, I just wish it had a bit more utility outside of that.

Warhorn though, yeah... I never liked warhorn much to begin with, but now it's just straight garbage and I don't use period.

The cast time to Doom was just stupid. All it has done is remove the strategy to the skill and make it clunky to use. ANets reasoning and why a lot of people complained was because it was a 1200 range CC with "no animation" but

it has always had an animation

with a cloudy Reaper that appears over the Necro's head. People still get hit by it just as often as they did before it had a cast time except now you can't really use it strategically and

I hate it so much.

Sorry, mini rant, but that was one of the few changes that made me incredibly angry.

I loved WarHorn (specifically locust swarm), it was a cornerstone of my gameplay in WvW... For me the change on it wasn't a single nerf, It was a triple nerf. Shorter duration, no proc/crit and well, it no longer proc vampiric and vampiric presence (I could live with the loss of cripple thought)... It killed the weapon for me. The fact that we lost the spectral trait as well didn't help either...

I did use focus the same way you did, it used to be the only possibility to really burst with a necromancer.

Doom used to be a life saving skill, it's just a clumsy skill now, I understand your pain. Honestly, GW2 have a huge issue with the design of it's hard CCs and the counter to these hard CCs. Changing the way stability used to work to the way it currently work was one of their worst mistake.

[Infusion.7149]

Shroud was changed to have piercing so it isn't nearly as bad as before that change. If you really want something that helps core necro and only core necro, then Dark Path and Life Transfer base PVE cooldowns could be dropped a bit more. No need to make such complex changes such as conditional target caps on weapons.

Wells also had a cooldown decrease and that is a core necro skill type.

Staff already hits 5 targets, the only caveat is the auto attack doesn't apply condi so essentially it's more of a hybrid weapon.

There's a few oddities for core necro such as warhorn (life steal rather than damage so no crits) and focus generally being weak in PVE but due to prevalence of core necro in PVP in the past I would not think it is a good suggestion to mess around with core necro too much.

Ultimately core necro is stronger in a hybrid/condi spec due to being able to run dhuumfire (soulreaping) , spite (might gain), and curses (Crit chance) at the same time. With a power build you're relegated to axe , dagger mainhand, and shroud with Death Perception.

Another thing is Arenanet could have added more mobs with boons to corrupt and have boon corrupts do breakbar damage.

[Dadnir.5038]

@Infusion.7149 said:Another thing is Arenanet could have added more mobs with boons to corrupt and have boon corrupts do breakbar damage.

Having boon corrupt only interacting with breakbar and not the whole defiance mechanism would change absolutely nothing of the problem of the necromancer in PvE. Defiance effectively take on the role of stability, vigor and resistance to a few conditions, boon corruption need to punish that not just punish the short time frame where this overpowered mechanism is vulnerable.

[Shroud.2307]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:I think warhorn overhaul was pretty depressing as well (even imagining it put at 3 targets creep me)... And I'm still not a fan of the focus overhaul...

I've grown to like the focus changes, but I do miss my "opener" skill. I used to toss a focus 4 at people first thing in most fights because it could do pretty high damage so it was a good way to either force a dodge out of people to to land a decent crit straight away. But as it is now, the Life Force gain is nice, I just wish it had a bit more utility outside of that.

Warhorn though, yeah... I never liked warhorn much to begin with, but now it's just straight garbage and I don't use period.

The cast time to Doom was just stupid. All it has done is remove the strategy to the skill and make it clunky to use. ANets reasoning and why a lot of people complained was because it was a 1200 range CC with "no animation" but

it has always had an animation

with a cloudy Reaper that appears over the Necro's head. People still get hit by it just as often as they did before it had a cast time except now you can't really use it strategically and

I hate it so much.

Sorry, mini rant, but that was one of the few changes that made me incredibly angry.

I loved WarHorn (specifically

locust swarm

), it was a cornerstone of my gameplay in WvW... For me the change on it wasn't a single nerf, It was a triple nerf. Shorter duration, no proc/crit and well, it no longer proc vampiric and vampiric presence (I could live with the loss of cripple thought)... It killed the weapon for me. The fact that we lost the spectral trait as well didn't help either...

I did use focus the same way you did, it used to be the only possibility to really burst with a necromancer.

Doom

used to be a life saving skill, it's just a clumsy skill now, I understand your pain. Honestly, GW2 have a huge issue with the design of it's hard CCs and the counter to these hard CCs. Changing the way stability used to work to the way it currently work was one of their worst mistake.

The change to Doom followed by the rework to Dread completely killed my favorite build I've ever played. Properly timed interrupts could stack a lot of Vulnerability with Rending Sigil and with the damage increase from Dread I could do some insane bursts. I wouldn't say it was the most balanced thing in the world being able to spank people for 10 - 15k Life Blasts under the right circumstances, but at least there was strategy to it through choosing the right times to commit that burst and use Doom.

I'm still sad about the changes, but I'd be lying if I said I thought it wasn't a little OP. Dread just needed to have the Vulnerability on Fear removed and maybe reduce the damage to Feared targets to 20% and it would have been fine. The added cast time to Doom just made it practically unusable because of the aftercast on Life Blast as well as removing any potential to actually use it more thoughtfully. Now it's basically one of those skills you just use because (I'm exaggerating, you can still use it strategically of course, but you get my point).

I'll never get over my frustration about those changes because to me they were two that affected so many things and felt so unnecessary to be nerfed.

RIP Doom

[Anchoku.8142]

Core Necromancer is disappointing. The nerfs to satisfy WvW and PvP balance objectives did not help give core builds purpose. Personally, I would not mind giving up the small amount of five-target AoE on core if Arenanet fixed core to actually be good at something the specializations are not.

The only thing core can claim right now is bunkering in PvP and that is nothing to be happy about.