Nerf Necromancer

[mortrialus.3062]

I used to play the game a lot more in the past, but this is the first season since Megabalance I really spent a decent amount of time playing ranked and the entire time the state of the game has been an absolutely disgusting display to witness. 

Out of the ~120 games I've played this season, I genuinely do not think I ever saw a game dip below 30% representation necromancers of at least some variety.  And most of the time games had 40% necromancer representation and would every so often hit 50-60% necromancer.  They are overrepresented and overperforming to a degree that even POF release scourge wasn't hitting.

Infamously, the last MAT finalist match had Minionmancers both teams the winning team had a Reaper and a Minionmancer.  Minionmancer, long considered an unviable meme build as minions were massively hit back in Vanilla GW2 as both the playerbase and Arenanet agreed that the Zoo Meta was bad for the game and that builds as automated as Minionmancer and Spirit Ranger shouldn't be incentivized in PvP.  And it stayed that way for years until we have finally hit a point balance is so atrocious that Minionmancer is officially meta.  I genuinely cannot say anything more scathing about the current state of balance than pointing out the fact that Minionmancer won the MAT.  I think that speaks for itself, but all flavors of Necromancer are too powerful right now and if you don't have a minionmancer in a ranked match, you have four necromancers of some other variety.  The class has been dominant in ways it has never been since megabalance nonstop and serious measures need to be taken in regards to it.

 

Specific to minionmancer they need to have Necromantic Corruption's condition transfer absolutely nuked.  We are talking 60-70% efficacy nuke.  That might sound extreme, but we are talking about an extremely overtuned trait. Necromantic Corruption can hit over 30 condition cleanses per minute even when you take the built in delay into account.  That is madness.  

Grandmaster traits do not compare to the insane level of resilience that one master trait provides to conditions.

Ranger's Wilderness Knowledge, the ranger grandmaster which gives 2 cleanses when you use a survival skill, if you run full Survival utilities peaks out at 18 cleanses on a grandmaster trait that is widely considered very strong a staple of every good ranger build. 

Mirage with Elusive Mind and Energy Sigil spamming dodges as much as possible peaks out at 18 cleanses per minute. 

And Minionmancer with Necromantic Corruption is nearly doubling those.  And the build is loaded with additional ways to deal with conditions. It has shroud to just face tank conditions.  In addition to having Putrid Mark on staff transfer conditions.  In addition to having dagger's Deathly Swarm transfer conditions.  In addition to having the Plague Sending trait transfer conditions.  In addition to having Unholy Martyr convert conditions into life force when you leave shroud.  In addition to Beyond the Veil trait giving an additional 10% damage reduction to shroud's existing damage reduction specifically for conditions.

That is at a point where this thing is genuinely neigh indestructible to an entire half of this game's damage.  And they are incredibly durable to direct damage with Death's Carapace and Shroud's inherent damage reduction. 

 

Next, even if you smiter's boon minionmancer, all flavors of necromancer are too strong  right now  and absurdly overrepresented in ranked, it's just minionmancer is the most notable for being absolutely braindead automated of the bunch, and again years ago the community and the developers had come to an agreement that it should never be allowed to be actively good in PvP ever again.

 

The devs need to finally remove Shroud's built in damage reduction.  Necromancer has been dominant in ways it has never been in the entire life of the game's history since megabalance nonstop even with nerfs to various traits or utilities that were overperforming initially like Signet of Undeath. 

The damage numbers are too low to deal with what they are capable of defensively to the point where they are breaking the game.  All classes suffered genuine nerfs to their defensive cooldowns from megabalance.  Lowering everyone's damage by 30-50% across the board massively and uniquely improved necromancer's built in survivability and necromancer's alone.  And while scourge I think wasn't good at the time due to no longer having self shade, just before megabalance both core necromancer and reaper were plenty tanky, viable, and meta builds.  Popular choices in ranked and with multiple MAT wins under both their belts.  Perfectly strong defensively and meta when everyone was hitting for 30-50% higher than they are post megabalance.

It's time to straight up remove shroud's damage reduction in SPvP and it might actually make necromancers merely meta and not 40-60% necro representation in a ranked levels of dominant.  Necromancers should have some degree of facetank, sure, but they've been absurd in this regard ever since megabalance.  The game is not simply balanced around them having this level of face tank.  Even Vanilla had an environment where thieves were hitting 10-12k Backstabs with Assassin's signet and Warriors were Hammer F1ing for 6k straight into 20k Hundred Blades. 

 If you remove shroud's damage reduction which will mirror everyone else's 30-50% nerfed damage necromancer will be where it was before the megabalance where it had good capacity to soak up damage but still had to care about actively not putting yourself in danger and actively trying to get the most value out of shroud.

 

Finally, necromancers are too defensively mobile and either Spectral Walk or Flesh Wurm or both should get a hit to where they only maybe take one of those, and certainly never both. 

Necromancers with Spectral Walk and Fleshwurm are running around with 3690 units of blink per minute, viably I might add, on multiple of their meta builds in SPvP.  To put this in perspective a Mirage with both blink and jaunt have 2957 units of blink per minute.  If the Mirage has Master of Manipulation they have 3300 units of blink per minute.

And you can say "Well Mirage can use those for roaming while Necromancer's blinks are purely defensive." and that's true.  But necromancer is also the team fight carry class.  It's the biggest threat in team fights as well as the tankiest class in the game.  They shouldn't be charging into fights multiple times back to back able to port to safety the second something is wrong like they're a mesmer or a thief. There's no reason they should be running around with more blink travel in any capacity than a mirage.  That's just absurd.  Hit both of these skills, but hit one of them especially hard so that they only ever maybe take one of them so that necromancers need to play a lot more intelligently with their positioning or else they risk getting actually punished.

TLDR

1.  Delete minionmancer.  Start by nerfing Necromantic Corruption's transfer interval by 60-70% and moving on from there. 

2.  Remove shroud's damage reduction, which will merely put them on the same ground as everyone else who had 30-50% damage nerfs across the board from Megabalance.

3.  Hit either Spectral Walk, Flesh Wurm, or both hard enough to the point where they maybe only take one of those in their build, as they are too defensively mobile right now for being both the best team fight carry and the tankiest class in the game.

 

A lot of people might wonder why I didn't mentioned scourge.  Maybe they also need to be looked at.  But during this last season of ranked I found them to be dwarfed by the amount of Minionmancer, Reapers and traditional core I don't have as good of a feel for them to make any judgements.

 

Edit:  9-21-21 Update

Quote

 

Necromancer

• Summon Blood Fiend: Reduced the blood fiend's base health from 13,306 to 9,315 in PvP only.
• Summon Shadow Fiend: Reduced the shadow fiend's base health from 10,814 to 7,571 in PvP only.
• Summon Bone Fiend: Reduced the bone fiend's base health from 7,036 to 4,926 in PvP only.
• Summon Bone Minions: Reduced the bone minions' base health from 5,149 to 3,605 in PvP only.
• Summon Flesh Golem: Reduced the flesh golem's base health from 12,706 to 8,895 in PvP only.
• Jagged Horror: Reduced base health from 8,922 to 6,246 in PvP only.
• Eternal Life: Reduced life-force threshold from 20% to 10% in PvP only.

 

Wow, you guys hit 100% all of the wrong stuff and didn't address literally anything. 

Edit for 9-28-21

Minionmancer won the September MAT, giving it 2 back to back wins now after the nerfs, which like I suspected would not accomplish anything.  

Minionmancer is still META.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by mortrialus.3062

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

@Cal Cohen.2358, @Cal Cohen.3527, @Josh Davis.7865

 

please listen. And then offer this guy a job.

 

Great post, @mortrialus.3062! Thanks for putting this together. I appreciate your in depth analysis as well as actionable recommendations for change. Well done!

[Leonidrex.5649]

I bet I said it 20 times by now, but shroud should be nerfed as all other sustain tools were nerfed in feb patch.
tick tock tick tock, just do it already ....

[KrHome.1920]

... or just increase shroud degeneration of core necro to reaper levels.

Seriously, OP,  you are listing a million sustain options and adressing these would completely mess up the whole class.

Core necro can afford to run 3 defensive traitlines. It it obvious that also having the lowest shroud degeneraiton of all necro specs causes problemes in a static capture based game mode, where poor mobility does not matter.

[mortrialus.3062]

1 hour ago, KrHome.1920 said:

... or just increase shroud degeneration of core necro to reaper levels.

Seriously, OP,  you are listing a million sustain options and adressing these would completely mess up the whole class.

Core necro can afford to run 3 defensive traitlines. It it obvious that also having the lowest shroud degeneraiton of all necro specs causes problemes in a static capture based game mode, where poor mobility does not matter.

I cited 3 things to hit dude. 

1. Necromantic Corruption because it is an absurdly overtuned amount of condition cleanse compared to even other classes' grandmasters.

2.  Shroud damage reduction.  Necromancer and Reaper were already good and viable and meta before the megabalance when everyone suffered a 30-50% damage nerf across the board.  That 30-50% damage nerf due to the mechanics of shroud directly translates into a 30-50% damage buff for necromancer.  Which they absolutely did not need.    

The difference between core and reaper is that core shroud will take 25s to degenerate from full while reaper will take 20s to degenerate from full.  Even if you put core down to reaper's level that's still 20 seconds where you're turning people's huge 5-6k main damage crits on 8-12 second cooldowns down to 2.5k-3k crits. 

The problem is that shroud's defense reduction compared to the current state of damage makes it nearly impossible to punch through period and you're just waiting on shroud to decay.  Making it decay 5 seconds faster doesn't change that.  Shroud should allow you to absorb a number of attacks, cancel out a main damage skill here, help you if you get stunned or immobilized and focused during a team fight.  It shouldn't be a 20-25 seconds "you attacks are basically worthless" button. A reaper with a full bar of shroud is has effectively 32k damage before you can even start attacking their real life bar and that's just too much health to have to punch through when people are running around with 4-6k crits on berserker's amulet.

It's a simple equation.  When damage is very very high active mitigations like channeled blocks or invulns or evade frames become very valuable, as there's theoretically no limit to how much damage those can completely nullified.   When people are throwing around 12k crits and 20 stacks of bleed like candy on halloween, a 3 second channeled block or dodge can when used well will allow you to frequently avoid lethal damage.

When damage is very very low, which it is right now, active mitigation becomes less valuable compared to raw capacity to face tank as you're very unlikely to get more value from a 3s dodge ever compared to just having nearly 60k effective HP.

It's the damage reduction in shroud.  It's been the damage reduction in shroud since megabalance.  It's too much survivability for how low damage is right now.

3.  Either Spectral Walk or Flesh Wurm to the point where they only run one of those are they are too defensively mobile for being both the tankiest thing in the game and the single biggest threat in team fights. 

Edited September 19, 2021 by mortrialus.3062

[Telgum.6071]

Core Necromancer with or without minions is disgusting. Before moving to Reaper (not as good but way more fun) I used to play a lot of Condi core Necro on both sPvP and roaming on WvW.

Is just unfair to have two heal bars and not even needing to dodge, because you tank and slowly melt your enemy through conditions. In WvW is even worse because the Trailblazer stat. And in sPvP you can just sit on the capping area and put AoE pressure + wells. This is even worse with Scourge.

Scourge on sPvP is horrid too on its support variant. You overheal everything through barriers and healing. Conditions on you? F2. Damage on you? Heal+Barrier or F3. More damage on you? TP away with Wurm. Fearing enemies, spamming conditions, corrupting and even taking downed allies away from damage. Not to mention the trait that heals downed enemies.

I just don't understand why Core and Scourge are still like that on sPvP and WvW, and OP is so right about Necromancer representation, is just not rare anymore to see two Necromancers on each team.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Telgum.6071

[ArthurDent.9538]

I think scourge is not really strong anymore and reaper is pretty healthy aside from how cheesy lich is. Core minions and condi on the other hand are both absolutely obnoxious at the moment.

[Vancho.8750]

Can we nerf those pesky mesmers also, I can't play my warrior cause they just spew conditions and dodge/block and my condition management option are kinda kitten. 

Can we nerf those eles cause they burn allot and do the twirly things and I can't hit them, or they do that brrr lightning thing and everyone is stunned and start using invulns and i'm sitting there waiting. 

You know lets nerf thieves too, I cant keep up with them at all i have to sit there on points cause the moment i move they decap the node also why do they get to stab me when i'm fighting some other guy bloop 4k out of nowhere and I can't hit them cause they go woop woop woop and disappear, or DE comes and does pew pew and I just die.

Man I hate rangers and DEs when I play reaper pew pew and I can't do kitten about it, and rangers are worse with the kitten imobs.

Or Lich ou hot kitten when I don't run projecitile defense this kitten sucks the necro goes pew pew and im there sucking dirt fuc k out of here. 

Or when i play my condi trapper ranger I really hate spellbreakers, kitten kitteners can't be imobalised how is that fair.

Or some revanant teleports on you stabs you in the kitten and you just die how is that fair kitten that too.

Or those guardians that go invisable or the ones that heal for 10k a second.

Did I make my point?  The meta has probably reached some kind of equilibrium finally(well warrior is still kinda kitten, but SpB can still be played if some classes are missing in a game but that is fixable).

Necro has damage reduction cause it doesn't have blocks and it isn't dodging like the rest of the jumping jalapenos cause it has base dodge rate and no way to increase it on its own, it has prep teleport cause it doesn't have invuln, and then there are those pesky CCs. Also there are more necros cause it is the only teamfight carry in the game for some reason and teamfighting wins games . There is also a big chance that the enemy necro just got knocked of the carry train since it played scourge before the nerfs( it is finally manageable who knew that CMC could pull that off), and most probably sucks kitten. Minion mancer is annoying cause there isn't an AOE sidenoder ATM but that is also fixable, maybe ask for buffs here for something instead of nerfs I wonder if FT scrapper could go through minion mancer considering all the free barrier, sidenodes  seem to be really rock, paper, scissors these days. There is also that necro has several good builds for pvp, I usually see 2 different specs of necros per game, maybe the rest of the professions are kind of kitten since only one build or elite that works. 

 Maybe it is time to ask for some fixes on your class cause it sucks at teamfighting. I get that everyone wants to be the Killer and gank people, but when I get into a full roam vs roam matchup it sucks cause everyone is too much of a kitten to fight and everyone is in mexican stand off, waiting someone to step on the wrong spot.  I kind of prefer the necro support thing, cause I get to hit stuff over the hit and run tactics, but that is personal opinion, maybe people like to be a little kitten and run away from fights all the time. 

I think it is time for Buffs and reworks at this point, the game is deflated enough. 

[mortrialus.3062]

53 minutes ago, Vancho.8750 said:

Did I make my point?  The meta has probably reached some kind of equilibrium finally(well warrior is still kinda kitten, but SpB can still be played if some classes are missing in a game but that is fixable).

There's no equilibrium going on.  Minionmancer was on both teams of the MAT finals.  I cannot say anything more scathing about the state of balance than pointing out that simple fact.

53 minutes ago, Vancho.8750 said:

Necro has damage reduction cause it doesn't have blocks and it isn't dodging like the rest of the jumping jalapenos cause it has base dodge rate and no way to increase it on its own, it has prep teleport cause it doesn't have invuln, and then there are those pesky CCs.

Necro's damage reduction was enough to make them meta before the megabalance when everyone got a 30-50% damage nerf.  As I already explained to KrHome, when damage is super high it favors active mitigation skills like dodges and blocks.  When damage is very low, those dodges simply cannot come close to the value of just having 60k effective HP. 

And damage now, is by and large significantly lower than it was in Vanilla GW2 when shroud was originally balanced with the damage reduction.

Megabalance was an inadvertent 30-50% buff to necromancer's survivability, one that they objectively did not need as they were already top tier pre-megabalance and should be finally addressed in full.

It's also been meta in the past without running double ports.  It does not need to be running around with more ports than Mirage.

53 minutes ago, Vancho.8750 said:

Also there are more necros cause it is the only teamfight carry in the game for some reason and teamfighting wins games .

There is also that necro has several good builds for pvp, I usually see 2 different specs of necros per game, maybe the rest of the professions are kind of kitten since only one build or elite that works. 

When builds are dominant they start seeing increased representation.  Power herald becomes the best build?  People bandwagon and it starts clogging up games and starts winning MATs.  Condi mirage is the best build?  TPeople bandwagon and it wins MATs. Holo best build?  It starts clogging up games and winning MATs.  

Necro is clogging up games because it's the best thing in the game right now.  Simple as that.  It's not rocket science. It's been the best or among the top 3 since megabalance. 

Sure, team fighting wins games.  Sidenoding well wins games.  Roaming well wins games. Supporting well wins games.    Seeing 40-60% necros is not normal, and has never been normal.

Also when you start seeing like 3,4, 5 top tier builds on a single profession in PvP, there's usually something fundamental going on that suggests it's over powered and the exact specifics of the build are less relevant due to being carried by common overpowered factors beyond what they would be on merely good class.

53 minutes ago, Vancho.8750 said:

I think it is time for Buffs and reworks at this point, the game is deflated enough. 

I'd like to see Megabalance reverted, but literally nothing players can do would convinced ArenaNet to do that.  The only thing that might happen is necromancer's getting toned down.  

Edited September 20, 2021 by mortrialus.3062

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

40 minutes ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

Megabalance was an inadvertent 30-50% buff to necromancer's survivability,

The actual "buff" was much higher due to cumulative effect.

[crewthief.8649]

Yes please, they are so exhausting to fight and just sit on node spamming AoE. Especially Minionmancer (how on earth is this a thing). Honestly, when I run up on node and see a Minionmancer sitting on it while on my Warrior, half the time I just turn around and find somewhere better to be. Even if you manage to win the 1v1, it takes so incredibly long that by the time you down the Necro, here comes a teammate to rez him/her. 😭😭😭

[Meteor.3720]

Agree that minionmancer needs nerfs even if your point about necromantic corruption assumes that all minions remain alive the entire time which is unlikely after sustain nerfs, and shroud damage reduction could take a hit although removing it entirely would be too far imo.

 

But saying that necro mobility (spectral walk and flesh wurm) needs to be nuked and then comparing it with mirage mobility is just stupid. Wurm bugs half the time, and they are needed for a class with no in-built blocks/invuln/stab/extra evades otherwise you get stunlocked even through shroud.

[Fueki.4753]

I am definitely in favour of nerfing Necromancer in sPvP.

But I can't see Arenanet giving it nerfs that amount to more than slight slaps on the wrist.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Exile.8160]

17 hours ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

I used to play the game a lot more in the past, but this is the first season since Megabalance I really spent a decent amount of time playing ranked and the entire time the state of the game has been an absolutely disgusting display to witness. 

Out of the ~120 games I've played this season, I genuinely do not think I ever saw a game dip below 30% representation necromancers of at least some variety.  And most of the time games had 40% necromancer representation and would every so often hit 50-60% necromancer.  They are overrepresented and overperforming to a degree that even POF release scourge wasn't hitting.

Infamously, the last MAT finalist match had Minionmancers both teams the winning team had a Reaper and a Minionmancer.  Minionmancer, long considered an unviable meme build as minions were massively hit back in Vanilla GW2 as both the playerbase and Arenanet agreed that the Zoo Meta was bad for the game and that builds as automated as Minionmancer and Spirit Ranger shouldn't be incentivized in PvP.  And it stayed that way for years until we have finally hit a point balance is so atrocious that Minionmancer is officially meta.  I genuinely cannot say anything more scathing about the current state of balance than pointing out the fact that Minionmancer won the MAT.  I think that speaks for itself, but all flavors of Necromancer are too powerful right now and if you don't have a minionmancer in a ranked match, you have four necromancers of some other variety.  The class has been dominant in ways it has never been since megabalance nonstop and serious measures need to be taken in regards to it.

 

Specific to minionmancer they need to have Necromantic Corruption's condition transfer absolutely nuked.  We are talking 60-70% efficacy nuke.  That might sound extreme, but we are talking about an extremely overtuned trait. Necromantic Corruption can hit over 30 condition cleanses per minute even when you take the built in delay into account.  That is madness.  

Grandmaster traits do not compare to the insane level of resilience that one master trait provides to conditions.

Ranger's Wilderness Knowledge, the ranger grandmaster which gives 2 cleanses when you use a survival skill, if you run full Survival utilities peaks out at 18 cleanses on a grandmaster trait that is widely considered very strong a staple of every good ranger build. 

Mirage with Elusive Mind and Energy Sigil spamming dodges as much as possible peaks out at 18 cleanses per minute. 

And Minionmancer with Necromantic Corruption is nearly doubling those.  And the build is loaded with additional ways to deal with conditions. It has shroud to just face tank conditions.  In addition to having Putrid Mark on staff transfer conditions.  In addition to having dagger's Deathly Swarm transfer conditions.  In addition to having the Plague Sending trait transfer conditions.  In addition to having Unholy Martyr convert conditions into life force when you leave shroud.  In addition to Beyond the Veil trait giving an additional 10% damage reduction to shroud's existing damage reduction specifically for conditions.

That is at a point where this thing is genuinely neigh indestructible to an entire half of this game's damage.  And they are incredibly durable to direct damage with Death's Carapace and Shroud's inherent damage reduction. 

 

Next, even if you smiter's boon minionmancer, all flavors of necromancer are too strong  right now  and absurdly overrepresented in ranked, it's just minionmancer is the most notable for being absolutely braindead automated of the bunch, and again years ago the community and the developers had come to an agreement that it should never be allowed to be actively good in PvP ever again.

 

The devs need to finally remove Shroud's built in damage reduction.  Necromancer has been dominant in ways it has never been in the entire life of the game's history since megabalance nonstop even with nerfs to various traits or utilities that were overperforming initially like Signet of Undeath. 

The damage numbers are too low to deal with what they are capable of defensively to the point where they are breaking the game.  All classes suffered genuine nerfs to their defensive cooldowns from megabalance.  Lowering everyone's damage by 30-50% across the board massively and uniquely improved necromancer's built in survivability and necromancer's alone.  And while scourge I think wasn't good at the time due to no longer having self shade, just before megabalance both core necromancer and reaper were plenty tanky, viable, and meta builds.  Popular choices in ranked and with multiple MAT wins under both their belts.  Perfectly strong defensively and meta when everyone was hitting for 30-50% higher than they are post megabalance.

It's time to straight up remove shroud's damage reduction in SPvP and it might actually make necromancers merely meta and not 40-60% necro representation in a ranked levels of dominant.  Necromancers should have some degree of facetank, sure, but they've been absurd in this regard ever since megabalance.  The game is not simply balanced around them having this level of face tank.  Even Vanilla had an environment where thieves were hitting 10-12k Backstabs with Assassin's signet and Warriors were Hammer F1ing for 6k straight into 20k Hundred Blades. 

 If you remove shroud's damage reduction which will mirror everyone else's 30-50% nerfed damage necromancer will be where it was before the megabalance where it had good capacity to soak up damage but still had to care about actively not putting yourself in danger and actively trying to get the most value out of shroud.

 

Finally, necromancers are too defensively mobile and either Spectral Walk or Flesh Wurm or both should get a hit to where they only maybe take one of those, and certainly never both. 

Necromancers with Spectral Walk and Fleshwurm are running around with 3690 units of blink per minute, viably I might add, on multiple of their meta builds in SPvP.  To put this in perspective a Mirage with both blink and jaunt have 2957 units of blink per minute.  If the Mirage has Master of Manipulation they have 3300 units of blink per minute.

And you can say "Well Mirage can use those for roaming while Necromancer's blinks are purely defensive." and that's true.  But necromancer is also the team fight carry class.  It's the biggest threat in team fights as well as the tankiest class in the game.  They shouldn't be charging into fights multiple times back to back able to port to safety the second something is wrong like they're a mesmer or a thief. There's no reason they should be running around with more blink travel in any capacity than a mirage.  That's just absurd.  Hit both of these skills, but hit one of them especially hard so that they only ever maybe take one of them so that necromancers need to play a lot more intelligently with their positioning or else they risk getting actually punished.

TLDR

1.  Delete minionmancer.  Start by nerfing Necromantic Corruption's transfer interval by 60-70% and moving on from there. 

2.  Remove shroud's damage reduction, which will merely put them on the same ground as everyone else who had 30-50% damage nerfs across the board from Megabalance.

3.  Hit either Spectral Walk, Flesh Wurm, or both hard enough to the point where they maybe only take one of those in their build, as they are too defensively mobile right now for being both the best team fight carry and the tankiest class in the game.

 

A lot of people might wonder why I didn't mentioned scourge.  Maybe they also need to be looked at.  But during this last season of ranked I found them to be dwarfed by the amount of Minionmancer, Reapers and traditional core I don't have as good of a feel for them to make any judgements.

 

Yes yes and yes to all of this. Ive been saying this since the feb patch (but never as good as this). They are overtune so either buff the rest or nerf necros but this can not go on specially whem EoD comes out.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Exile.8160

[greedywholesome.9081]

@mortrialus.3062

 

You rock! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this honest and unbiased post. 

/bow

[KrHome.1920]

12 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

The actual "buff" was much higher due to cumulative effect.

You seem new to the forum despite your 1000 posts. Otherwise you would have noticed the countless nerfs to necro sustain skills

from signets (undeath signet LF generation cut in half, heal signet got a nerf rework)

to blood magic traits (life force generation and healing cut in half)

to spectral cooldowns (20% increase)

to death magic traits (toughness cut in half)

to weakness uptime (weakness duration cut in half)

to boon corruption (cut in half).

The sustain is a lot lower than pre damage patch.

And speaking about 4 necros in every matchup like some people state: these are either bots (which run minion master since 2012) or scenarios where you of course pick reaper to counter minion master (one minion master in each team leads to one reaper in each team) as reaper has the best aoe. But you don't pick reaper because it is overpowered.

Nice reality denial in this thread!

Maybe start understanding the game before you talk about nerfs?

Edited September 20, 2021 by KrHome.1920

[Exile.8160]

3 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

 

Nice reality denial in this thread!

Maybe start understanding the game before you talk about nerfs?

 

Talk about irony huh?

Defends necros but doesnt see the amount of them in matchs and MAT's. Which is clear signs of an overperforming class.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Exile.8160

[Psycoprophet.8107]

16 hours ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

I used to play the game a lot more in the past, but this is the first season since Megabalance I really spent a decent amount of time playing ranked and the entire time the state of the game has been an absolutely disgusting display to witness. 

Out of the ~120 games I've played this season, I genuinely do not think I ever saw a game dip below 30% representation necromancers of at least some variety.  And most of the time games had 40% necromancer representation and would every so often hit 50-60% necromancer.  They are overrepresented and overperforming to a degree that even POF release scourge wasn't hitting.

Infamously, the last MAT finalist match had Minionmancers both teams the winning team had a Reaper and a Minionmancer.  Minionmancer, long considered an unviable meme build as minions were massively hit back in Vanilla GW2 as both the playerbase and Arenanet agreed that the Zoo Meta was bad for the game and that builds as automated as Minionmancer and Spirit Ranger shouldn't be incentivized in PvP.  And it stayed that way for years until we have finally hit a point balance is so atrocious that Minionmancer is officially meta.  I genuinely cannot say anything more scathing about the current state of balance than pointing out the fact that Minionmancer won the MAT.  I think that speaks for itself, but all flavors of Necromancer are too powerful right now and if you don't have a minionmancer in a ranked match, you have four necromancers of some other variety.  The class has been dominant in ways it has never been since megabalance nonstop and serious measures need to be taken in regards to it.

 

Specific to minionmancer they need to have Necromantic Corruption's condition transfer absolutely nuked.  We are talking 60-70% efficacy nuke.  That might sound extreme, but we are talking about an extremely overtuned trait. Necromantic Corruption can hit over 30 condition cleanses per minute even when you take the built in delay into account.  That is madness.  

Grandmaster traits do not compare to the insane level of resilience that one master trait provides to conditions.

Ranger's Wilderness Knowledge, the ranger grandmaster which gives 2 cleanses when you use a survival skill, if you run full Survival utilities peaks out at 18 cleanses on a grandmaster trait that is widely considered very strong a staple of every good ranger build. 

Mirage with Elusive Mind and Energy Sigil spamming dodges as much as possible peaks out at 18 cleanses per minute. 

And Minionmancer with Necromantic Corruption is nearly doubling those.  And the build is loaded with additional ways to deal with conditions. It has shroud to just face tank conditions.  In addition to having Putrid Mark on staff transfer conditions.  In addition to having dagger's Deathly Swarm transfer conditions.  In addition to having the Plague Sending trait transfer conditions.  In addition to having Unholy Martyr convert conditions into life force when you leave shroud.  In addition to Beyond the Veil trait giving an additional 10% damage reduction to shroud's existing damage reduction specifically for conditions.

That is at a point where this thing is genuinely neigh indestructible to an entire half of this game's damage.  And they are incredibly durable to direct damage with Death's Carapace and Shroud's inherent damage reduction. 

 

Next, even if you smiter's boon minionmancer, all flavors of necromancer are too strong  right now  and absurdly overrepresented in ranked, it's just minionmancer is the most notable for being absolutely braindead automated of the bunch, and again years ago the community and the developers had come to an agreement that it should never be allowed to be actively good in PvP ever again.

 

The devs need to finally remove Shroud's built in damage reduction.  Necromancer has been dominant in ways it has never been in the entire life of the game's history since megabalance nonstop even with nerfs to various traits or utilities that were overperforming initially like Signet of Undeath. 

The damage numbers are too low to deal with what they are capable of defensively to the point where they are breaking the game.  All classes suffered genuine nerfs to their defensive cooldowns from megabalance.  Lowering everyone's damage by 30-50% across the board massively and uniquely improved necromancer's built in survivability and necromancer's alone.  And while scourge I think wasn't good at the time due to no longer having self shade, just before megabalance both core necromancer and reaper were plenty tanky, viable, and meta builds.  Popular choices in ranked and with multiple MAT wins under both their belts.  Perfectly strong defensively and meta when everyone was hitting for 30-50% higher than they are post megabalance.

It's time to straight up remove shroud's damage reduction in SPvP and it might actually make necromancers merely meta and not 40-60% necro representation in a ranked levels of dominant.  Necromancers should have some degree of facetank, sure, but they've been absurd in this regard ever since megabalance.  The game is not simply balanced around them having this level of face tank.  Even Vanilla had an environment where thieves were hitting 10-12k Backstabs with Assassin's signet and Warriors were Hammer F1ing for 6k straight into 20k Hundred Blades. 

 If you remove shroud's damage reduction which will mirror everyone else's 30-50% nerfed damage necromancer will be where it was before the megabalance where it had good capacity to soak up damage but still had to care about actively not putting yourself in danger and actively trying to get the most value out of shroud.

 

Finally, necromancers are too defensively mobile and either Spectral Walk or Flesh Wurm or both should get a hit to where they only maybe take one of those, and certainly never both. 

Necromancers with Spectral Walk and Fleshwurm are running around with 3690 units of blink per minute, viably I might add, on multiple of their meta builds in SPvP.  To put this in perspective a Mirage with both blink and jaunt have 2957 units of blink per minute.  If the Mirage has Master of Manipulation they have 3300 units of blink per minute.

And you can say "Well Mirage can use those for roaming while Necromancer's blinks are purely defensive." and that's true.  But necromancer is also the team fight carry class.  It's the biggest threat in team fights as well as the tankiest class in the game.  They shouldn't be charging into fights multiple times back to back able to port to safety the second something is wrong like they're a mesmer or a thief. There's no reason they should be running around with more blink travel in any capacity than a mirage.  That's just absurd.  Hit both of these skills, but hit one of them especially hard so that they only ever maybe take one of them so that necromancers need to play a lot more intelligently with their positioning or else they risk getting actually punished.

TLDR

1.  Delete minionmancer.  Start by nerfing Necromantic Corruption's transfer interval by 60-70% and moving on from there. 

2.  Remove shroud's damage reduction, which will merely put them on the same ground as everyone else who had 30-50% damage nerfs across the board from Megabalance.

3.  Hit either Spectral Walk, Flesh Wurm, or both hard enough to the point where they maybe only take one of those in their build, as they are too defensively mobile right now for being both the best team fight carry and the tankiest class in the game.

 

A lot of people might wonder why I didn't mentioned scourge.  Maybe they also need to be looked at.  But during this last season of ranked I found them to be dwarfed by the amount of Minionmancer, Reapers and traditional core I don't have as good of a feel for them to make any judgements.

This^ I honesty don't know wtf these devs are doing. Sure cal if ur busy with eod I get that frequent significant balance passes won't be happening till after EOD but for a issue like necros is currently maybe u should atleast devote a small amount of time to apply some much needed nerfs to necro's who are no joke a big factor in why pvp is such a massive gong show currently, not the only factor but definitely a significant one.

[crewthief.8649]

38 minutes ago, Meteor.3720 said:

But saying that necro mobility (spectral walk and flesh wurm) needs to be nuked and then comparing it with mirage mobility is just stupid. Wurm bugs half the time, and they are needed for a class with no in-built blocks/invuln/stab/extra evades otherwise you get stunlocked even through shroud.

He used actual data to quantify his comparison of Necro mobility to Mirage mobility. Nothing stupid about using data. What are you using to quantify your position that the comparison is stupid?

Edited September 20, 2021 by crewthief.8649

[crewthief.8649]

18 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

You seem new to the forum despite your 1000 posts. Otherwise you would have noticed the countless nerfs to necro sustain skills

from signets (undeath signet LF generation cut in half, heal signet got a nerf rework)

to blood magic traits (life force generation and healing cut in half)

to spectral cooldowns (20% increase)

to death magic traits (toughness cut in half)

to weakness uptime (weakness duration cut in half)

to boon corruption (cut in half).

The sustain is a lot lower than pre damage patch.

And speaking about 4 necros in every matchup like some people state: these are either bots (which run minion master since 2012) or scenarios where you of course pick reaper to counter minion master (one minion master in each team leads to one reaper in each team) as reaper has the best aoe. But you don't pick reaper because it is overpowered.

Nice reality denial in this thread!

Maybe start understanding the game before you talk about nerfs?

The irony (and lack of self-awareness) in this post is actually difficult to wrap my head around. 🤔🤣🤣

[Aeolus.3615]

13 hours ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

There's no equilibrium going on.  Minionmancer was on both teams of the MAT finals.  I cannot say anything more scathing about the state of balance than pointing out that simple fact.

Necro's damage reduction was enough to make them meta before the megabalance when everyone got a 30-50% damage nerf.  As I already explained to KrHome, when damage is super high it favors active mitigation skills like dodges and blocks.  When damage is very low, those dodges simply cannot come close to the value of just having 60k effective HP. 

And damage now, is by and large significantly lower than it was in Vanilla GW2 when shroud was originally balanced with the damage reduction.

Megabalance was an inadvertent 30-50% buff to necromancer's survivability, one that they objectively did not need as they were already top tier pre-megabalance and should be finally addressed in full.

It's also been meta in the past without running double ports.  It does not need to be running around with more ports than Mirage.

When builds are dominant they start seeing increased representation.  Power herald becomes the best build?  People bandwagon and it starts clogging up games and starts winning MATs.  Condi mirage is the best build?  TPeople bandwagon and it wins MATs. Holo best build?  It starts clogging up games and winning MATs.  

Necro is clogging up games because it's the best thing in the game right now.  Simple as that.  It's not rocket science. It's been the best or among the top 3 since megabalance. 

Sure, team fighting wins games.  Sidenoding well wins games.  Roaming well wins games. Supporting well wins games.    Seeing 40-60% necros is not normal, and has never been normal.

Also when you start seeing like 3,4, 5 top tier builds on a single profession in PvP, there's usually something fundamental going on that suggests it's over powered and the exact specifics of the build are less relevant due to being carried by common overpowered factors beyond what they would be on merely good class.

I'd like to see Megabalance reverted, but literally nothing players can do would convinced ArenaNet to do that.  The only thing that might happen is necromancer's getting toned down.  

Wich will probaly happen after EoD since most hoT and Pof specs can win over EoD specs (its not even a matter of rock/paper/scizor).

Later expantions specs are way more tankier and initialy burstiers than PoF, scrapper providing to much basicly everuthing in defense, reaper, scrouge IMO has entered the messfest wich Druid is in, they kinda lost their initial theme.

Minions, well i would say  bring back gw1 minions and their mechanics would be a decent update IMO, i miss the range minions and the gw1 minions were more easy to identify wich is a good thing for pvp oriented game (they were also stronger than gw2 ones).

Sand shade, make it wortk like a ventari tablet on the F keys on scourge this would make players have more control of the barrier and shades and recolocate them where needed.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Aeolus.3615

[greedywholesome.9081]

27 minutes ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

This^ I honesty don't know wtf these devs are doing. Sure cal if ur busy with eod I get that frequent significant balance passes won't be happening till after EOD but for a issue like necros is currently maybe u should atleast devote a small amount of time to apply some much needed nerfs to necro's who are no joke a big factor in why pvp is such a massive gong show currently, not the only factor but definitely a significant one.

 

Devs prolly out fishing. If they read and took our OP's suggestion, I guarantee, pvp population will rise, even if only temporarily. 

 

Its not toxicity that's killing the mode, it's the crappy meta!

[Psycoprophet.8107]

27 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

You seem new to the forum despite your 1000 posts. Otherwise you would have noticed the countless nerfs to necro sustain skills

from signets (undeath signet LF generation cut in half, heal signet got a nerf rework)

to blood magic traits (life force generation and healing cut in half)

to spectral cooldowns (20% increase)

to death magic traits (toughness cut in half)

to weakness uptime (weakness duration cut in half)

to boon corruption (cut in half).

The sustain is a lot lower than pre damage patch.

And speaking about 4 necros in every matchup like some people state: these are either bots (which run minion master since 2012) or scenarios where you of course pick reaper to counter minion master (one minion master in each team leads to one reaper in each team) as reaper has the best aoe. But you don't pick reaper because it is overpowered.

Nice reality denial in this thread!

Maybe start understanding the game before you talk about nerfs?

It's true necros have seen their share of nerfs but that doesn't change the fact that the Feb patch due to what it nuked and what I didn't left necro in a overtuned spot due to the class design, same thing occurred to warrior but on the opposite side of the spectrum. This is why blanket nerf nukes on certain aspects of a games proponents while leaving many other aspects intact is in no way a good way to balance a game, there's little thought to how interactions between it (patch) and individual classes will pan out resulting in a clown show like we have today.

[Disney.7826]

Forget about it, we already lost hope for nec nerfs.

The team with more nec has better win chance by default. No matter core, scg, reaper. No matter s3, g3, p3.

 

The only way is to become necro main and queue as something else so u can get more necros in team.

 

You can say “u are unskilled, cant kill nec…” no, i can kill it ez, but compare how much time does it take to kill s3 nec vs g3 player on any other class.

Im wasting time killing terrible player while i could kill 2 better players in that time.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Filip.7463

[crewthief.8649]

1 minute ago, Filip.7463 said:

Forget about it, we already lost hope for nec nerfs.

The team with more nec has better win chance by default. No matter core, scg, reaper. No matter s3, g3, p3.

 

The only way is to become necro main and queue as something else so u can get more necros in team.

 

You can say “u are unskilled, cant kill nec…” no, i can kill it ez, but compare how much time does it take to kill s3 nec vs g3 player on any other class.

There are so many situations where a Necro escapes certain death (to literally any other class in the game) and I’m left just sitting there shaking my head. You can see these Minionmancers, tanking two players on node, keyboard turning in the middle of their minions. So ridiculous…