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Thoughts on the Blight heal change


Trepidation Lost.3469

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29 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

On one side a big part of the people commenting in this thread just ignore that Harbinger offer an aegis

Yes, nobody considered 1 aegis for which you need to sacrifice your elite skill on 90s cooldown because it doesn't even pass off as an argument for the sustain issue. 

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22 minutes ago, Arannya.8324 said:

Yes, nobody considered 1 aegis for which you need to sacrifice your elite skill on 90s cooldown because it doesn't even pass off as an argument for the sustain issue. 

Except that this elite also grant regen, protection, resolve, resistance, vigor and stability which all add to the sustain. Also those 60s turned out to be 48s traited which was even further reduced with the alacrity given from the same skill. Even virtue of courage only grant it's aegis alone every 40s. So I do think it was good enough to be called as a sustain tool.

If people want to ignore the tools they got, I've got no problem with that. Thought I have an issue with people denying the existence of these tools. And if you don't like the elite just go for the core skill well of darkness or CPC which are effective against players. We are no longer in 2013, the 2021 necromancer offer some active defense (tremendously more than it used to).

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3 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

those 60s turned out to be 48s traited which was even further reduced with the alacrity given from the same skill.

If people want to ignore the tools they got, I've got no problem with that. Thought I have an issue with people denying the existence of these tools. 

Fyi: Elixir of Ambition: Still grants all possible boons to yourself on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and apply one stack of every damaging condition (Bleed, Burn, Confusion, Poison, Torment) for 5s to enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 15 Blight. Blight Threshold 10: Damage and condition duration doubled. Cooldown increased from 60s to 90s.

Before you say people choose to ignore tools maybe you should also check the facts and recent updates. And even with the old 60s CD it still does not pass as argument for the sustain issue.  One way to fix might be to add aegis to an elixir if they so insist on having players use that but at this point, after the mobility nerf topped to sustain issue, it's all a hot mess.

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2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Objectively, if they just wanted "numbers" to be fair they could have just reverted Soul barb to just affect strike damage. This would have dropped down harbinger to around 40k and reduced scourge to a 33k dps with support (Which would be "fair numbers"). The only one that would really lose out in this change is cReaper which isn't really popular anyway.

 

But! The topic is about Blight heal removal.

On one side a big part of the people commenting in this thread just ignore that Harbinger offer an aegis, generally more hard CC and an evade skill. Which is a lot of active defense compared to what core necro offer. People also forget that there is still blood bank and the high hit rate of harbinger skills are nice to proc vampiric effects.

What bother me most in regard of Harbinger's sustain isn't the loss of the LF to health mechanism as you can do without (even if the excuse given to remove it is "arguable"). What bother me is the loss of slow, the reduced range of the mobility skills and the increase of the elite elixir CD and I don't think that what they "gave" in exchange is worth those loss.

But not a lot of defense compared to what a glass cannon class generally has. It is an elixir that is on a 90 second cooldown. Let's look at one of the glassiest options for PvP for example, say Power Trapper Dragonhunter, it has about the baseline same defenses passively. But then when we add skills, even this glass cannon has a decent amount of defense options. On the F skills, we have a pull on a 20 second cool-down, Wings of Resolve which passively restores hp with an active that acts as an 800 range leap restores a rather good chunk of hp and removes 2 conditions on a 30 second cooldown while granting regeneration. A passive that gives you an aegis every 40 seconds, with an active that blocks all frontal damage for 3 seconds every 60 seconds while also giving 3 stacks of stability along with protection. Each of these options will also grant you resolve for three seconds when cast.

Next let's go to utilities, we have 3 trap skills, all instant cast, they each give you super speed and stealth for 3 seconds while slowing enemies for 2 seconds. One of the traps will grant you protection on top of this, and another will heal and give you regeneration for 10 seconds, and resolution for 8 seconds while blinding the enemy for 6 seconds on both on a 30 second cooldown. The offensive one is on a 25 second cooldown. Then you have an offensive teleport to target with a stunbreak effect with a 40 second cooldown. For the elite you have a 3 second immunity that will then restore the recharge of all the F skills on a 90 second cooldown. Meaning you can do the F-skill defenses all over again. 

Then we have weapon skills starting off with longbow, we have a knockback that deflects projectiles on a 20 second cooldown. A Symbol that grants pulsing vigor on a 12 second cooldown. And a cage skill that gives cripple on a 40 second cooldown. Then we move to the other weapon, which has a teleport to target along with a blind. A projectile block on a 12 second cooldown. a 4 second protection and aegis on a 20 second cooldown. Then a knock back that blocks projectiles and then gives a decent heal on a 24 second cooldown.

And this is all on something that most people would consider to be very squishy. So yes, a 90 second all boon option taking up the necromancer's best offense option on a glass cannon spec is not really the best solution, the extra 3 stacks of stability and boost of vitality from Lich form will likely even get you further.

Edited by Esorono.1039
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1 hour ago, Arannya.8324 said:

Fyi: Elixir of Ambition: Still grants all possible boons to yourself on cast. Is now ground-targeted; damage and apply one stack of every damaging condition (Bleed, Burn, Confusion, Poison, Torment) for 5s to enemies in the impact area. If you are in the impact area, gain 15 Blight. Blight Threshold 10: Damage and condition duration doubled. Cooldown increased from 60s to 90s.

Before you say people choose to ignore tools maybe you should also check the facts and recent updates. And even with the old 60s CD it still does not pass as argument for the sustain issue.  One way to fix might be to add aegis to an elixir if they so insist on having players use that but at this point, after the mobility nerf topped to sustain issue, it's all a hot mess.

I think you've superficially read my 2 post, only understanding what you wanted to understand from them. Point is that whether you like it or not Elixir of ambition offer sustain and denying this fact is ridiculous. Point is that nerfing the sustain this skill gave didn't really suit me but you didn't seem to have understood that it's what I was saying.

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Just now, Esorono.1039 said:

But not a lot of defense compared to what a glass cannon class generally has.

A "glass canon class" doesn't exist in GW2. You either build as a glass canon and have no sustain at all or you don't. Harbinger isn't a class by itself, it's a specialization of the necromancer and thus have access to most of the tools of the necromancer on top of it's own tools.

The core necromancer give him good access to protection, regen, weakness, projectile hate, blind, barrier and quite a few sources of life siphon.

Harbinger add on top of that an evade skill (that you'll always have on your kit), an aegis that can make your day if well timed, 2 more hard CC and some defensive boons that the necromancer didn't really have access to yet.

There is no point in painting the necromancer in a darker shade (or lighter) than he is. Does it sting to lose the LF to health heal? Yes it does. Does it leave the harbinger naked in regard of defense? Nope it doesn't. The Harbinger have a lot of defense if you really care to just look at what it have. If you want absurd amount of barrier as a harbinger you just have to build for it, it is easy to do. A BB harbinger build with 0 vit on gear will get 21k effective health relatively easily at full blight and that is without even the need for healing power. 

Denying this much is what feed haters like Arheundel. There is no point in delluding oneself that the harbinger "lack defense compared to other glass canon" as it is simply not true. 

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1 minute ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

A "glass canon class" doesn't exist in GW2. You either build as a glass canon and have no sustain at all or you don't. Harbinger isn't a class by itself, it's a specialization of the necromancer and thus have access to most of the tools of the necromancer on top of it's own tools.

The core necromancer give him good access to protection, regen, weakness, projectile hate, blind, barrier and quite a few sources of life siphon.

Harbinger add on top of that an evade skill (that you'll always have on your kit), an aegis that can make your day if well timed, 2 more hard CC and some defensive boons that the necromancer didn't really have access to yet.

There is no point in painting the necromancer in a darker shade (or lighter) than he is. Does it sting to lose the LF to health heal? Yes it does. Does it leave the harbinger naked in regard of defense? Nope it doesn't. The Harbinger have a lot of defense if you really care to just look at what it have. If you want absurd amount of barrier as a harbinger you just have to build for it, it is easy to do. A BB harbinger build with 0 vit on gear will get 21k effective health relatively easily at full blight and that is without even the need for healing power. 

Denying this much is what feed haters like Arheundel. There is no point in delluding oneself that the harbinger "lack defense compared to other glass canon" as it is simply not true. 

I can see we play two very different games then. As Necromancer has rather bad access to almost all of those. No point in arguing with someone who has never touched necromancer, or other classes. It's just going to go around in circles, and I am not going to waste my time on someone who does not play the game. I will just let the forums rip apart that argument for me.

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29 minutes ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I think you've superficially read my 2 post, only understanding what you wanted to understand from them. Point is that whether you like it or not Elixir of ambition offer sustain and denying this fact is ridiculous. 

What is ridiculous is insisting that using your elite skill on 90s CD as your only mean of defence counts as sustain. The elite should be used strategically to deliver a deadly blow not as your only means of survival. You talk about reading superficially and nit picking while you throw most people on this topic in the same pot as ignorant or in denial while trying to 1up them with a backhand excuse that really serves nobody. By the way, no one  had issues with sustain in the first beta hence why people are baffled by the changes topped with mobility nerf (+elite nerf, shroud 5 nerf etc).  That's all I have to say to you.

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5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Except that this elite also grant regen, protection, resolve, resistance, vigor and stability which all add to the sustain. Also those 60s turned out to be 48s traited which was even further reduced with the alacrity given from the same skill. Even virtue of courage only grant it's aegis alone every 40s. So I do think it was good enough to be called as a sustain tool.

If people want to ignore the tools they got, I've got no problem with that. Thought I have an issue with people denying the existence of these tools. And if you don't like the elite just go for the core skill well of darkness or CPC which are effective against players. We are no longer in 2013, the 2021 necromancer offer some active defense (tremendously more than it used to).

 

i dont know. the other trait, that increases condition dmg per blight was so much better, than the cdr and power trait.

now the elixir trait got "nerfed" because it doesnt apply slow anymore. i dont think i would ever play this trait for just one or two elixirs.
but we really gotta see, how those changes play out

 

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On 11/27/2021 at 12:26 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

A "glass canon class" doesn't exist in GW2. You either build as a glass canon and have no sustain at all or you don't. Harbinger isn't a class by itself, it's a specialization of the necromancer and thus have access to most of the tools of the necromancer on top of it's own tools.

The core necromancer give him good access to protection, regen, weakness, projectile hate, blind, barrier and quite a few sources of life siphon.

Harbinger add on top of that an evade skill (that you'll always have on your kit), an aegis that can make your day if well timed, 2 more hard CC and some defensive boons that the necromancer didn't really have access to yet.

There is no point in painting the necromancer in a darker shade (or lighter) than he is. Does it sting to lose the LF to health heal? Yes it does. Does it leave the harbinger naked in regard of defense? Nope it doesn't. The Harbinger have a lot of defense if you really care to just look at what it have. If you want absurd amount of barrier as a harbinger you just have to build for it, it is easy to do. A BB harbinger build with 0 vit on gear will get 21k effective health relatively easily at full blight and that is without even the need for healing power. 

Denying this much is what feed haters like Arheundel. There is no point in delluding oneself that the harbinger "lack defense compared to other glass canon" as it is simply not true. 

Can you make a slightly survivable Harbinger by running defensive stats, Blood Magic, Death Magic, Corrosive Poison Cloud, Spectral Armor and Well of Darkness (to get most of the things you list here)? Sure.

You know what else that build will do? Absolutely nothing, in any gamemode. All while still getting outsustained, outrun and, needlessly to say, outdamaged by just about everything else. 

 

Listing out all defenses of a profession (which you can't all or even mostly take if you still actually want to do anything beyond surviving) into a then still pitifully short list which pales in comparison to even the most glass cannon pure cheesy burst builds to prove that Harbinger isn't defenseless is pretty silly. 

 

Fresh Air Weaver is probably considered the epitome of pure glass burst build and would kill a "full tank" Harbinger like that in likely less than 5 seconds, all while having low cool down Reflect and Projectile Destruction, passive Block and stunbreak proc, multiple active Stunbreaks, Teleports, Invuln, passive movespeed, Swiftness, Superspeed, ranged knockdowns, Immobs, Blinds, Prot, Regen, Weakness, passive healing and Barrier. 

Aka, a build entirely made for offense which doesn't need to be in melee range for it's burst potential nor is entirely shut down by projectile hate like Harbinger, which then still isn't even considered all that good because it's so utterly glassy, has more defenses than a Harbinger build entirely and sacrificing everything for "defense" - let alone one build to do even a fraction of it's damage. 

 

And sure, Harbinger does add a 0.5 second evade in Shroud and Aegis, Prot and Stab for 5 seconds every 90 seconds to the Necro kit (at the cost of Lich).. it also loses almost 90% of necromancer's effective HP in high Health and damage absorbing Shroud with innate damage reduction in turn. Hardly building upon the core kit's defenses, which almost entirely is that large health pool. 

 

Even Reaper is considered fairly squishy in PvP due to lack of active/scaling defenses, and that has High Base Health + 69% health scaling damage absorbing Shroud with 50% baked in damage reduction, Infusing Terror for another 20% damage reduction and Stability in Shroud, Chill spam and more blinds and damage to heal conversion with Soul Eater and, although not run anymore, another potential 33% damage reduction in Rise (which used to be even 50%). 

Harbinger makes squishy easy focus targets look like monstrous tanks in comparison.

Edited by Asum.4960
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On 11/27/2021 at 6:26 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

There is no point in painting the necromancer in a darker shade (or lighter) than he is. Does it sting to lose the LF to health heal? Yes it does. Does it leave the harbinger naked in regard of defense? Nope it doesn't. The Harbinger have a lot of defense if you really care to just look at what it have. If you want absurd amount of barrier as a harbinger you just have to build for it, it is easy to do. A BB harbinger build with 0 vit on gear will get 21k effective health relatively easily at full blight and that is without even the need for healing power. 

Denying this much is what feed haters like Arheundel. There is no point in delluding oneself that the harbinger "lack defense compared to other glass canon" as it is simply not true. 

To be fair to you Dadnir, I think your point is true here (yes, there are some defensive things in Harbinger that were not common to the other specs and core toolset, which should cause players to pause and think about how they use these things). 

In all honesty, what we are told doesn't feel like it matches the implementation (because we have lots of examples of passive defenses in this game). I believe that Anet gave WAY too much defensive power to Harbinger and this whole "we don't like passive defenses for players" is just an excuse to scale it back to a more reasonable level and without the passive heal ... too much. Intended or not, the passive defenses argument feels like a ruse as opposed to an admission of a mistake.

But OK I'm past that because Anet is gonna do what they do. Moving on ... let's say the current iteration is more inline with what should have been in the first place. I have no doubt that people would be still shaking their heads here on the implementation because shroud upside doesn't appear much different in Harbinger than other spec shrouds ... yet the downside is massive in similar comparison. The only downside compensation I see is we can be healed in Shroud ... except we have little way to do that ourselves, which is going to make it feel like a spec that needs to be carried Hard to get it's full DPS potential. 

Tuesday will show if my suspicions about the inbalance between Harbinger Shroud risk/reward are correct, assuming the current shroud risk/rewards from established specs are a reasonable baseline. It's VERY easy to quantify because 5 Blight = Some amount of HP reduction and the skills that benefit from Blight Threshold have a DPS value. 

 

 

Edited by Obtena.7952
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The way they are designing harbinger courts all the disaster of elementalist design. All glass, no cannon, or the worse scenario where you tune them up to be so oppressively better than other DPS to make up for the frailty, and then have to adjust comps to support the players who feel forced to play these frail classes because they are so ahead in DPS.

 

It's pretty bad binary design. If anything, eles should have had its base HP pool raised to 15k HP, I don't know why Anet wants to retread what made elementalist an awful class after its god tier DPS was nerfed.

 

The only exception to this is thief and that's because they gave thief a metric ton of active defenses on top of 3 dodges.

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I'm fine with removing the heal as baseline, some sort of healing could be added in traits if/when they get another pass after the beta. Or, you know, reintroducing defensive abilities that scale with intentionally low hp pools - Guild Wars had this covered and I'm surprised it's not being experimented with yet.

I think cutting down mobility is a shame as that is a major thing what made Harbinger feel different than other necromancer builds and helped with staying alive.

Sidenote - changes to the heal elixir stripped it down from the PvP appeal for no reason, so I hope this gets reverted in some way. Back to consume it is.

 

 

 

Edited by Rym.1469
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What I don't understand is how necromancer is supposed to stay alive - the second health bar was a vital defense and now it's just completely gone, as opposed to partially gone. Plus necro's other 'defense' factor, a chonky base health, is cut into. I don't think this will be as bad as before (50% max to 37~% max, and you can more easily consume blight), but still.  And in exchange you get just raw damage. It sounds like they're just going to implode, and I'm not sure the compensation in damage will be enough.

 

Also, anet could just make necro's heal a low cooldown (5-10 sec) channel that has a base heal for a base cast (x,000 for 1 sec cast) then converts life force into health the longer you hold the button. Would let ppl make a decision between using their LF for damage or durability while retaining a balance between the two and giving the player more fine control over the heal. Or, heck, have it be a f3 skill.

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21 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

What I don't understand is how necromancer is supposed to stay alive - the second health bar was a vital defense and now it's just completely gone, as opposed to partially gone. Plus necro's other 'defense' factor, a chonky base health, is cut into. I don't think this will be as bad as before (50% max to 37~% max, and you can more easily consume blight), but still.  And in exchange you get just raw damage. It sounds like they're just going to implode, and I'm not sure the compensation in damage will be enough.

 

Also, anet could just make necro's heal a low cooldown (5-10 sec) channel that has a base heal for a base cast (x,000 for 1 sec cast) then converts life force into health the longer you hold the button. Would let ppl make a decision between using their LF for damage or durability while retaining a balance between the two and giving the player more fine control over the heal. Or, heck, have it be a f3 skill.

I'm just spitballing ideas about here but, let's start by assuming Anet even considers Harb staying alive while accumulating Blight is a problem in the first place (I think they do considering the change from 2% to 1.5% on the HP reduction).

If that assumption is reasonable, then I believe the idea is that the intention is to give players a VERY active spec. There are now two levels to consider to staying alive. The standard idea of simply avoiding 'bad things' AND now, the additional requirement to play in a way that balances a Blight level that individual players are comfortable with. Personally, I think it's too complicated for most players and will only really be able to shine in specific scenarios ... ironically, I believe these scenarios are at the extremes of the content spectrum; the most trivial and the most challenging. 

I don't think Anet wants to ONLY see Harb only being adopted by players for primarily these two scenarios, so I'm confident more changes are coming. On the other hand, this hypothesis is only proven out once the spec is released for actual game play and may take months for Anet to make the adjustments needed to see Harb more widely used in less extreme scenarios. 

Edited by Obtena.7952
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10 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The standard idea of simply avoiding 'bad things' AND now, the additional requirement to play in a way that balances a Blight level that individual players are comfortable with.

Personally I think if Anet wanted players to constantly have to balance Blight, they shouldn't have tied a damage modifier to it at all, and possibly should have introduced Harbinger Shroud not only as non-HP replacing Shroud, but also a no Cooldown Shroud (while adding a 5-10 second ICD to upon entering Shroud Traits). 

 

With Blight as purely negative thing, and Shroud as constantly available (LF withstanding) inherent DPS and mobility increase that in turn generates Blight (with Blight rapidly accumulating in, and rapidly draining away out of Shroud), the idea of constantly balancing Power and Sacrifice/Corruption could have been realised a lot cleaner, fun and intuitively - as well as opening up a lot more interesting and fun design space for Traits. 

 

Having gain x% increased damage per Stack of Blight Traits sends a fairly clear design message of either try to avoid Blight completely if you don't take them, or try to remain at maximum stacks of Blight if you do (with DPS likely balanced around the latter, making it largely a non-choice, and therefor non-mechanic as a DPS). 

The more you can hide that with your design language (and balance it in a healthy middle ground in terms of survivability and DPS, even if it will bench ridiculously in an unrealistic golem environment where you can drain most your HP away) the better. 

Likewise that could have made for a more interesting design space for Elixirs, either offering a mix of offensive Blight increasing ones and defensive Blight removing ones - or enabling them for in Shroud usage for more powerful, but Blight generating, effects. 

Especially the updated design with using Blight cleansing skills in Shroud which increase or add damage, while at the same time the Blight you cleanse being your damage modifier, is just such a confused mess. 

It's 3 mechanics, Blight as Health reduction, Blight as damage modifier and Blight cleansing as damage increase, all coming together to mean nothing in the knowledge of either using these skills being a DPS increase to use, in which case you will always do so, or not, in which case you won't - rather than anything being a moment to moment risk assessment in terms of Blight management. 

Edited by Asum.4960
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