New Core Necro balance notes next week

[Obtena.7952]

Honestly, WHEN are you going to realize these things about how Anet balances the game that I have been telling for you for years? No one here can honestly say that the healing we were getting from Soul Eater in shroud wasn't ridiculous. I mean, I was healing MORE when I was in shroud than not ... pretty sure that was an oversight.

Personally, I think the change was reasonable ... I was almost NEVER dying. It actually made Reaper feel boring that all the risk was removed from it. To say we were hard done by this patch ... that's just a guilt trip.

[KrHome.1920]

The pressure/sustain ratio is horrible on reaper without soul eater.

When talking about pressure I am not talking about damage in general as the melee damage is insane. But it's so easy to kite a reaper that we are at the same spot again where we were in 2017 when they removed the shroud cooldown reduction. Being a 10s punching bag does not work by just adding 50% of damage to every shroud skill, when even my grandma can avoid shroud.

Two years and they are still clueless about that...

[Nimon.7840]

@KrHome.1920 said:The pressure/sustain ratio is horrible on reaper without soul eater.

When talking about pressure I am not talking about damage in general as the melee damage is insane. But it's so easy to kite a reaper that we are at the same spot again where we were in 2017 when they removed the shroud cooldown reduction. Being a 10s punching bag does not work by just adding 50% of damage to every shroud skill, when even my grandma can avoid shroud.

Two years and they are still clueless about that...

The only thing they will achieve by this patch is killing build diversity once again, forcing everyone to play scourge if you want to have something useful in pvp modes -.-

[Psycoprophet.8107]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@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

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.

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

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

I've been playing city of heroes home coming server and having a blast. Be warned it is one of the worst games if u have altitis lol it's a super hero mmo.

[Obtena.7952]

@KrHome.1920 said:The pressure/sustain ratio is horrible on reaper without soul eater.

When talking about pressure I am not talking about damage in general as the melee damage is insane. But it's so easy to kite a reaper that we are at the same spot again where we were in 2017 when they removed the shroud cooldown reduction. Being a 10s punching bag does not work by just adding 50% of damage to every shroud skill, when even my grandma can avoid shroud.

Two years and they are still clueless about that...

Allowing Soul Eater to break that ratio isn't an option, no matter how bad that ratio is without it.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

I have literally have only seen obtena justify or stick up for every class nerf except for his main which I'm guessing from his posts in warrior forum is warrior. Gues it's ok for him to not like the direction anet takes his class lol.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@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

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.

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

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

Funny thing this game is owned by ncsoft but was shut down but had such a following people kept it alive on a private server which is now live and now has multiple full servers. U can tell it was owned by ncsoft to cuz I've recognized almost every skill name in coh that's been used later own in gw2 lmao shadowstep,assassin strike, to name a few,its like the gw2 team just recycled ability names from city of heroes for their skill names,the laziness isn't surprising tho.

[Obtena.7952]

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:I have literally have only seen obtena justify or stick up for every class nerf except for his main which I'm guessing from his posts in warrior forum is warrior. Gues it's ok for him to not like the direction anet takes his class lol.

You simply haven't been around long enough ... The fact is that regardless of the game or the devs, I have YET to see a situation where a broken tool will be allowed to persist to maintain some sense of balance. That's only even more true in the case of a bug or a forgotten implementation, exactly what this appears to be. If you think Anet was actually to allow this or intended for it to work that way, then you really aren't very aware of how this game works.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:I have literally have only seen obtena justify or stick up for every class nerf except for his main which I'm guessing from his posts in warrior forum is warrior. Gues it's ok for him to not like the direction anet takes his class lol.

You simply haven't been around long enough ... The fact is that regardless of the game or the devs, I have YET to see a situation where a broken tool will be allowed to persist to maintain some sense of balance. That's only even more true in the case of a bug or a forgotten implementation, exactly what this appears to be. If you think Anet was actually to allow this or intended for it to work that way, then you really aren't very aware of how this game works.

Sure :)

[Nimon.7840]

Necro gets something good: let's immediately take it away again. Just like a parent giving it's child a lolly pop, unpacking it, but right before the child can lick at it, take it away, stick it in your own mouth and saying " lick at your diaper full of pop, that's all you get

[Lily.1935]

These changes don't honestly change the core necromancer's position. Their skills were bad from the start, and this doesn't solve the underlying problem with death shroud. The changes to cool down is nice, but when you highest damage output comes from auto attack even when the other skills are off cooldown this isn't really much aid. Dark path might be worth using now, but I highly doubt that considering its damage wasn't good enough before hand.

It isn't just the cooldowns for these skills that are the problem, it's their dps, their lack of utility, their design.

[dceptaconroy.7928]

No healing in shroud, cool I'll remember to not activate it as my oh 'oh snap' button, and only when I've access to decent hp which'll be melted in moments. Lucky I've got that wurm to dart out of danger. Just hang on a bit while I cast it. My Necrodamus senses knew this was coming. Buffing DS and underwater skills bahaha. Worth taking a look...tell me how that goes. Anet nice wrk again! Consistency lads that's what we've got here.

[Kuulpb.5412]

@Obtena.7952 said:Honestly, WHEN are you going to realize these things about how Anet balances the game that I have been telling for you for years? No one here can honestly say that the healing we were getting from Soul Eater in shroud wasn't ridiculous. I mean, I was healing MORE when I was in shroud than not ... pretty sure that was an oversight.

Personally, I think the change was reasonable ... I was almost NEVER dying. It actually made Reaper feel boring that all the risk was removed from it. To say we were hard done by this patch ... that's just a guilt trip.

I think you never dying is because reaper shroud was doing more damage per second than out of shroud, especially if you took the quickness + ferocity trait

[Haziq.3907]

Soul Eater made me pick up my reaper for PvE. Time to put it back in the trashcan where it rightfully belongs.

[Sigmoid.7082]

I'm really confused as to why this is a surprise. This is how i expected the trait to work to begin with so no fuss. I mean its just a strike damage version of Parasitic Contagion and that doesn't heal in shroud either.

[dceptaconroy.7928]

It's not so much just a surprise as it was something we liked that was the only shining light in that patch where it was introduced and now it's gone. No fuss to you, to others.. maybe a little fuss.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@dceptaconroy.7928 said:It's not so much just a surprise as it was something we liked that was the only shining light in that patch where it was introduced and now it's gone. No fuss to you, to others.. maybe a little fuss.

I mean people liked chill damage but look how busted that was. If this trait was introduced with the function its going to have from Tuesday onward originally people would have heralded it as the best thing and its still an incredibly powerful trait.

But again I'm not sure what people expected. Especially with Anet trying to, and slowly but surely, decreasing the gaps between elite specs and the base classes. Considering how few other changes we got its safe to assume Anet still hold their view that necros are well represented and fairly balanced.

[Endless Soul.5178]

They just killed my necro main, my account workhorse for 4 years for apparently no reason at all.

Perhaps it's time to look for another game and spend my money on that.

[XECOR.2814]

Pve players justifying nerfs and pvp/wvw respawning from spawns.

[dceptaconroy.7928]

People dont know what to expect at this stage. It's a lottery of sorts. I agree with you Sig on the fact that Anet think that we're in an overall solid state, no doubt that's shown in the resulting balance patches.^ +1 XECOR

[Shroud.2307]

I am very excited. I've always preferred core Necro and still do. Seeing it get some love makes me very happy. Although I think it could still use some more significant changes, I'm also glad they didn't go overboard reworking it in to something some of us might hate.

I very much look forward to trying it out. Right now, I'm primarily interested in knowing how damaging Dark Path will be with it's AOE attack on a glassy power build. It could be a very strong combo skill for Dreadmancer.

[Ravezaar.4951]

I play WvW roaming, big scale and PvP and I wreck Core Necro on my other Nec-versions, its behind so ofc its good it gets some love wont ever come inline with Powercreep of Elites tho I think. However what annoys me is the TOTAL neglect to Reaper & Scourge I ment nothing is done at all, in Socurge case maybe thats a good thing but till since April nothing and now waht another 3-4months of nothing.

Also all other classes get reworks, what about Deathmagic ? If any fcng traitline in the game on any classes needs rework its Deathmagic, does any respectable Necro use it ? Maybe roleplayers.

[Taygus.4571]

@Lahmia.2193 said:

@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.

Omg, only 3 months and they panic remove it. Rediculous.

[Dadnir.5038]

Well the changes are fine, thought the claim that reaper is designed to be a durable melee bruiser might be a little outdate since they already removed almost all durability out of the specialization.

• Dark path CD and area of effect are nice, there is nothing to complain about those.
• Dark pursuit on another hand feel like an unecessary bad joke.
• Life transfer CD reduction finally made it to a patch note (thanks grenth!)
• Tainted shackle CD reduction is a nice bonus.
• Underwater shroud skills change feel like ANet saying "Well, we don't want to meddle to much with the necromancer so here is an underwater skills update!"
• Unholy martyr bug fix.
• Soul eater nerf isn't surprising.

All in all it's pretty nice and shouldn't generate as much hate from other profession than it does right now while dusting out the core necromancer.

[Anchoku.8142]

To me, the patch preview reads something like this:

NecromancerWe needed something to put here besides reverting Reaper's previous Soul Eater change and decided to experiment with core Necro's Dark Path and trim some Death Shroud cool downs. On reviewing player feedback about core skills and traits, we determined it was safer and easier to limit changes to giving core Shroud skills a tiny nudge and see how PvP shakes out.

• Soul Eater: While relatively few players actually used this, it is clearly broken giving Reapers too much sustain potential so we are reverting the capability to accept incoming heals. Necromancer and its Elite Specializations are not meant to have functioning rotations.
• Dark Path: An investigation revealed this skill is not as reliable as we expected so we separated the damaging aspect from the mobility, increasing the former while holding cool down for the later near its current value and adding a random aspect to its function.

Reading through some of the other professions' notes, the good news is that Necro did not get nerfed harder. Arenanet may be trying to mash some of the elites back into the roles they originally designed them for.