Necromancer Patch Notes (June 28th)

[Obtena.7952]

8 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

The Death Perception change is weird. Over the years I got the impression that Anet wanted to move away from most of the multiplicative modifiers and derived stats, as they turned more and more of those (especially weapon related) Traits into granting main stats instead. 

 

A lot of times it really feels like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing and a significant portion of "balance changes" is just shuffling things back and forth between different competing design ideas. 

 

Meanwhile I really wish, rather than bouncing around passive stats gains, multipliers and modifiers, they'd just look at upping base skill modifiers while using the Trait system to provide compelling and build defining, gameplay altering, actual options.

As @PseudoNewb.5468 posted, here is the short list of Traits on the Wiki that do indeed still seem to provide multiplicative Critical Damage buffs.

Ah OK I see that now. I didn't make the connection there. I can see why this might be a preferred way for Anet to move away from ferocity buffing. That 15% crit damage is a double edge sword .. it's is actually a DPS increase for low crit rates compared to a straight up ferocity buff, but it's less DPS than 300 ferocity at very high crit rates. 

[Asum.4960]

4 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Ah OK I see that now. I didn't make the connection there. I can see why this might be a preferred way for Anet to move away from ferocity buffing. That 15% crit damage is a double edge sword .. it's is actually a DPS increase for low crit rates compared to a straight up ferocity buff, but it's less DPS than 300 ferocity at very high crit rates. 

Multiplicative is pretty much always "better" than additive, and I actually preferred Anet moving away from it - as things can get really wonky really quickly (both balance and build craft wise) the more multiplicative modifiers you got floating around.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

16 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Ah OK I see that now. I didn't make the connection there. I can see why this might be a preferred way for Anet to move away from ferocity buffing. That 15% crit damage is a double edge sword .. it's is actually a DPS increase for low crit rates compared to a straight up ferocity buff, but it's less DPS than 300 ferocity at very high crit rates. 

No, the separate multiplier is always better than 300 Ferocity.

Let's say you have zero ferocity from sources other than Death Perception.  This gives you the base crit damage of 150%.  300 Ferocity will give you 20% additive crit damage, bringing the final crit damage multiplier to 170%.

However, 15% crit damage (assuming it works like existing traits that give crit damage instead of Ferocity) is 150*1.15=172.5% final crit multiplier.

As we add Ferocity, this becomes even more pronounced.  Without Death Perception, a full Ascended meta Power Reaper in Shroud has a crit damage multiplier of 253.67%.  Adding 300 Ferocity increases this multiplier to 273.67%, but a separate multiplier will be 253.67*1.15=291.72%

 

Both the separate multiplier and Ferocity apply in the exact same conditions, so crit rate is irrelevant in determining which is stronger.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[SummonMinion.7306]

9 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

 

Warhorn

• Wail of Doom: This skill now inflicts 1 second of fear instead of 2 seconds of daze on enemies. This skill inflicts bonus defiance-bar damage on defiant enemies.
• Locust Swarm: This skill now heals nearby allies around the necromancer based on the number of enemies hit, in addition to its previous effects.

 

Took them way too long to realize that everyone universally thought of WH as a useless weapon outside of break bar damage and finally buffed it.  However, given anet's track record when it comes to changes I'm gonna hold off on pre-emptively giving any praise to the dev responsible for this change. 

 

My main concern is that they still might have forgotten to address the glaring and obvious issue that WH only ever had 1 useful skill and was basically half an offhand. If they never addressed WH 5's tiny radius combined with its short duration, then the addition of it being able to heal allies is basically a worthless addition in any PVP or WVW scenario. 

 

I'm all for the WH4 change, but if WH5's usability hasn't been addressed then it's still just half an offhand which will only be picked up for its cc and I see no reason to pick it over other offhands. Here's to hoping that the dev that buffed WH is far more competent than the idiot who turned locust swarm into a joke.  

[Asum.4960]

46 minutes ago, SummonMinion.7306 said:

 

Took them way too long to realize that everyone universally thought of WH as a useless weapon outside of break bar damage and finally buffed it.  However, given anet's track record when it comes to changes I'm gonna hold off on pre-emptively giving any praise to the dev responsible for this change. 

 

My main concern is that they still might have forgotten to address the glaring and obvious issue that WH only ever had 1 useful skill and was basically half an offhand. If they never addressed WH 5's tiny radius combined with its short duration, then the addition of it being able to heal allies is basically a worthless addition in any PVP or WVW scenario. 

 

I'm all for the WH4 change, but if WH5's usability hasn't been addressed then it's still just half an offhand which will only be picked up for its cc and I see no reason to pick it over other offhands. Here's to hoping that the dev that buffed WH is far more competent than the idiot who turned locust swarm into a joke.  

I can't imagine this turning out well either. A 10% outgoing heal modifier on Banshee's Veil seems pretty lacklustre, considering the low amount of actual healing on Necro/heal Scourge (and Barrier not being affected by outgoing healing), especially since the Trait competes with two of the few healing options besides Transfusion.

 Locust Swarm's healing "based on the number of enemies hit" is generally code for kitten outside of extremely niche cleave situations, especially given it's radius. Plus limiting it's use cases, even if tuned around low cleave - which is unlikely given Locust Swarm's design itself already being crippled by that. 

I'm afraid this will end up in the vein of most Harbinger Elixirs, with extremely bloated skill facts that at the end of the day don't really do much of anything.

 

I'm also disappointed that they didn't touch the CD's, which at 30 seconds always felt quite a bit too long to me for what the skills do, as well as still no addition of any Fields or (Blast) Finisher's on the skills, unlike every other Profession's Warhorns. 

 

Wail of Doom getting a Blast and Locust Swarm getting a Whirl (or anything really) certainly would have been a bit more interesting. 

 

All in all, I'd much rather have them turn Dagger MH into a support weapon (where Warhorn was already attractive for it's CC, there isn't any MH option), making Life Siphon AoE - while turning Locust Swarm into a Power DPS skill akin to Whirling Axe/Defense, so that power builds finally have an off-hand that isn't just a stat stick in PvE especially, where Focus is rather pointless as well.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Asum.4960

[SummonMinion.7306]

10 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

 

Blood Magic

• Blood Bank: Now also converts incoming healing from healing-over-time effects such as regeneration into barrier. This effect now only occurs while in combat. To account for healing-over-time effects now activating this trait, the percentage of incoming healing converted to barrier has been reduced from 15% to 10% in PvE and from 10% to 5% in PvP and WvW.
•  

This change is probably the most intriguing yet confusing one for this patch. Necro as a class doesn't have much access to heal over time or "regeneration" effects (i.e. ranger's troll unguent or warrior's heal signet". We don't even have that much access to regeneration as a boon. Only other ways a necro can have better access to regen effects is to use the 6th bonus on the Dolyak rune or using food like mango pie.

 

One interesting thing to speculate is if this change will include the healing from traits like parasitic contagion or soul eater. They aren't what one might consider traditional "regeneration" effects but their inclusion would finally make blood bank a more viable gm trait rather than a complete joke.

 

Additionally, how will this trait treat over-healing with regen effects? Say I'm at full health and I got full Dolyak runes and mango pie, will I just continually generate barrier given that I stay in combat? If I'm at full health, pop well of blood, and then immediately pop into shroud, I still get the barrier conversion from the additional pulses from the well while in shroud. Will it treat the included regen effects the same way?

[Nimon.7840]

10 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Nice, someone who understands! 🙂

Fear of Death @ warhorn 4 @ 5 targets = 75% life force

For Reaper: warhorn 4 now also chills (now add all the chill related traits for reaper to each warhorn 4 usage)

I already mentioned dread, so warhorn 4 becomes a quickness and fury source.

Bye offhand focus!

yeah, but right now warhorn is extremely good in pvp modes against certain classes, because its an unblockable daze. i fear (no pun intended) that after the rework it will be blockable and it also will have more counters (stunbreak, stab, condi cleanse).
while its nice they finally do something to bad weapons, i wonder why they didnt touch mainhand dagger.
 

if values stay as they are, warhorn 5 will heal allies for 1700 per target hit at full magi gear. asuming you are hitting 5 targets for its whole duration 5seconds x 1700 = 8500 which is extremely strong.
theres just one problem. endgame content doesnt have a lot of adds. so most of the times you will only hit one target resulting in one of the worst healing skills in the game, and in pvp modes this will most likely still the worst offhand weapon to choose from, because if you are standing in 5 enemies in spsp, necro is usually dead

[Boh.4568]

5 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

No, the separate multiplier is always better than 300 Ferocity.

Let's say you have zero ferocity from sources other than Death Perception.  This gives you the base crit damage of 150%.  300 Ferocity will give you 20% additive crit damage, bringing the final crit damage multiplier to 170%.

However, 15% crit damage (assuming it works like existing traits that give crit damage instead of Ferocity) is 150*1.15=172.5% final crit multiplier.

As we add Ferocity, this becomes even more pronounced.  Without Death Perception, a full Ascended meta Power Reaper in Shroud has a crit damage multiplier of 253.67%.  Adding 300 Ferocity increases this multiplier to 273.67%, but a separate multiplier will be 253.67*1.15=291.72%

 

Both the separate multiplier and Ferocity apply in the exact same conditions, so crit rate is irrelevant in determining which is stronger.

But are we sure it's multiplicative? Ferocity translates into 1% every 15 points, so 300 ferocity is 20%. Why should this 20% be additive to the base crit damage while the new 15% is multiplicative? Are there other confirmed professions traits with this distinction between +ferocity and +%crit or is it just hopium?

[KrHome.1920]

13 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

No it's not, those are very specifically noted exceptions, such as Chilling Victory's "Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before recharging." 

Fear of Death procs once for 7/15% LF regardless of amount of targets hit, something very easily tested ingame.

 

Siphoned Power and Chilling Darkness work like Chilling Victory, so Fear of Death is the exception here. But nevermind, would have been OP anyway. 

Edited June 25, 2022 by KrHome.1920

[Zoser.7245]

Better test the skills.  Some tooltips are well done, others... not.  Sometimes even the skills does not work consistently depending against what they act or the game mode.  Also to make things even worse,  with this patch, they have started a really bad design precedent. At least in my opinion.

They are giving different boons to some skills depending of the game mode.  The more changes they'll do in that way the worse will be change from one game mode to other, from pve to pvp, for example and discover that you have to learn how the "same" skills should be used there due to the changes. Like get Aegis vs Protection and Resolution, etc.

I see it as a bad precedent that could discourage players from playing other game modes and skipping them if developers split the skills in that way and players get killed and lose often due to that, because they mainly play a game mode and only sometimes or a lot less others. The brain muscle is a double-edged sword...

Edited June 25, 2022 by Zoser.7245

[Sigmoid.7082]

2 hours ago, Boh.4568 said:

But are we sure it's multiplicative? Ferocity translates into 1% every 15 points, so 300 ferocity is 20%. Why should this 20% be additive to the base crit damage while the new 15% is multiplicative? Are there other confirmed professions traits with this distinction between +ferocity and +%crit or is it just hopium?

Probably function similarly to superiority complex and wicked corruption. Superiority Complex is the one that has the note but the word is the same so it would follow that they are multiplicative. If there was no distinction there would be no real need to differentiate and you would just apply the appropriate amount of ferocity.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Sigmoid.7082

[Zepoolpe.9217]

21 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

 

It's actually a reaper nerf for PvE.

 

And a massive one for power reaper in wvw.

[DeceiverX.8361]

3 hours ago, Zepoolpe.9217 said:

And a massive one for power reaper in wvw.

Yup, abandoning ship as one of the OG competitive coaches for reaper.  I used to play Exuberance runes when it was 50%, switched all the gear to Marauder when it was 30%, and will now just be stopping playing it altogether.  The entire premise is consistency and using Shroud as your offense.  This is just there to increase RNG and force people to play towards boons even more than before.

Why the hell the changeover to "% crit damage" makes any sense when the whole point of Ferocity was to remove and standardize all that escapes me.  Plus I'm positive it'll be additive since you can literally see the crit damage stat in the character UI unlike a general damage modifier.

Glad I didn't forge legendary armor lol.  Looks like I'm playing ranger if and when I log in.

 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

39 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Why the hell the changeover to "% crit damage" makes any sense when the whole point of Ferocity was to remove and standardize all that escapes me.  Plus I'm positive it'll be additive since you can literally see the crit damage stat in the character UI unlike a general damage modifier.

 

Similar traits are multiplicitive.

[Sarrs.4831]

So the straight Warhorn buffs are neat. I've been using Warhorn as part of my Harbinger build (Pistol/warhorn, Scepter/dagger, so I have a breakbar breaking set and a regular set), and it never hurts to splash a little bit of healing to nearby allies. Changing it to Fear makes it more interesting for Condi Reapers, and everyone taking Horror, though; I'll never complain about more interesting choices.

Honestly I'm not gonna fuss about the Deathly Perception change, that's a math problem and I can't be bothered. Without thinking too hard about it, it looks like a buff for Power Reaper and Power Harbinger, which is nice I suppose.

The Reaper buffs for WvW... gosh. Grasping Darkness and Nightfall are powerful skills, and having more of them is pretty substantial.

[QuirkyDM.2351]

Blood bank should now stack with Unholy Sanctuary. I'm not sure that's worth it, but if you are fully healed in Shroud, that provides a 400+ barrier every second in PvE. It may also be interesting if Soul Eater changes to proc Blood Bank's barrier so you can at least get some of that barrier in Shroud.

For Reaper sPvP, I was already using GS, so that's all win. I haven't been in love with Lich Form since the nerfs, so I'll likely try Chilled to the Bone, and maybe throw Augury of Death on top of that. Soul Reaping, Focus and Speed Runes can be swapped out with Spite, WH and Lynx Runes now. WH5 provides a speed boost when needed. Use WH4 with Dread and then swap to GS for quickened Gravediggers. Or have Quickness last for the next 4 or 5 seconds after exiting shroud using Terrify. (if Quickness wasn't stripped off while in Shroud) Or keep Lich Form to have quickened autos and maybe make Lich great again. Taking Banshee's Wail while already traiting Blood can keep a Speed boon up nearly 100% of the time.

At the very least, it'll be fun to try out something new.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by QuirkyDM.2351

[Linguistically Inept.6583]

On 6/24/2022 at 7:49 PM, KrHome.1920 said:

• Banshee's Wail: This trait now grants a 10% bonus to outgoing healing effectiveness in addition to its previous effects.

 

oh for the love of grenth why? banshees wail sucks because it competes with vampiric presence; why is anet trying to turn warhorn into a supporty thing without moving one of them? one will always be BiS unless theyre not made mutually exclusive

Edited June 27, 2022 by Linguistically Inept.6583

[Wintermute.5408]

21 hours ago, Linguistically Inept.6583 said:

 

oh for the love of grenth why? banshees wail sucks because it competes with vampiric presence; why is anet trying to turn warhorn into a supporty thing without moving one of them? one will always be BiS unless theyre not made mutually exclusive

Because current balancing crew will probably need to check wiki to see what Vampiric presence is.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Wintermute.5408

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

Because current balancing crew will probably need to check wiki to see what Vampiric presence is.

3 group healing traits with the same healing potential behind them competing with each other... How amusing...

Thought, like Linguistically inept.6583 (no offense to the one behind the nickname intended) said the only sin that Banshee wail carried was that it was competing against vampiric presence and life from death in a traitline that favor their design. I'd probably have used banshee wail if it was at the same tier in any other traitline (in fact I used to use it even in blood magic before they broke locust swarm by making it leech life).

[felincyriac.5981]

so wh4 is no longer unblockable and has a longer cast time.

 

But why...

[Iceflame.5024]

31 minutes ago, felincyriac.5981 said:

so wh4 is no longer unblockable and has a longer cast time.

 

But why...

Yeah, the patch notes do not say anything about changing the cast time and taking away the unblockable trait. Unblockable was a pretty huge part of this skill.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Iceflame.5024

[felincyriac.5981]

58 minutes ago, Iceflame.5024 said:

Yeah, the patch notes do not say anything about changing the cast time and taking away the unblockable trait. Unblockable was a pretty huge part of this skill.

its basically the only reason u even pick wh. 

 

Definition of an unnecessary change

[Zoser.7245]

The warhorn 5 still has the same 180 short radius. The 360 one is  only for healing area if you hit something in 180 radius around you... along all the time the ticks last. Unless your enemy is standing still you won't tick him too many times. You also lose defiance bar damage from 200 to 100 by default in warhorn 4 skill plus the longer cast time and losing the unblocable property.  So unless you use two traits to improve the warhorn is a worse weapon now.  Those are changes thinking in raid where your @ss in almost always on the boss.    Is a crappy balance patch, 90% downgrades, no sense changes and nerfs with only few good changes for engineers. 

Is profitable if you invest in the warhorn at least two traits but,  worth it for your build and game mode? What you sacrifice for make the warhorn better? Hopefully i was not using it and for now, i'm not going to change my harbinger builds. I'll review it later but is time to test my engineer that is the single one receiving funny things to test.

Either they have no imagination or are super laziness. I would upgrade the horn mechanic and make it fun to play and also an effective weapon in no time if they send me the source code, even if have to work in the animations and sound too.  But what can we do. This patch, I think, clearly demonstrates that they're way off the mark when it comes to updating things that aren't performing well or are outdated.

Sad to watch that only raid matters now balancing and also devs have now idea of what they are balancing and how it should be done, damaging the professions instead of improving them.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Zoser.7245

[Shadowmoon.7986]

appears Death Perception does not give 15% crit damage while in shroud.Whenever i prop shroud, I only get 20% from Reapers Onslaught

 

[Jijimuge.4675]

1 minute ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

appears Death Perception does not give 15% crit damage while in shroud.Whenever i prop shroud, I only get 20% from Reapers Onslaught

 

It's a +15% modifier to your total crit damage whilst in shroud, much in the same way as traits like "Superiority Complex" (mesmer) or "Twin Fangs" (thief) affect damage of crits.  Its effect is multiplicative, rather than additive.  Its effect won't show on the character sheet - even in shroud.

You can see some of the other (fairly few) ones at https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_Damage