How can we make Death magic more desirable? Some suggestions

[Lily.1935]

I've probably posted dozens of threads on this topic over the years with mixed reception. But its something I'm very passionate about and I do feel some of my solutions would be very good for the necromancer as a whole. And I'd ask you to consider them before outright rejecting them. For me, death needs to hit on 3 areas effectively. Summoning, defense and group utility. And currently it hits the defense mark but none of the others. Its not designed with group utility being the only design I'd say would be new space for it to fill. I also like the sub theme of poison in the spec but we'll get to that. I also don't think the way death handles defense is the healthiest for the game either because a lot of it is rather passive like just having extra toughness for each minion, losing conditions and gaining toughness for being in shroud or just having a grandmaster trait that is actually a trap for new players as well as it frequently just not working. I'm looking at you Unholy Sanctuary. As for Summoning, I do believe that this should be a fundamental part of death magic but having it locked to just minions isn't great for future proofing death magic. What would happen if Necromancer got spirits, turrets or a pet? Death currently offers nothing to those specs so I'd like to suggest some changes to help with this in case necromancer gets a new type of summon.

I'm not going to be making a complete overhaul of death magic here just posting a few general ideas.

Defense
Lets start here. First off we need to do something about death carapace. It giving toughness is an issue for raids and the amount of toughness it gives has proven to be a bit much for. What I might suggest for this is to keep the stacking feature of it, remove the duration on it completely so you can keep the stacks from fight to fight. Then have it provide no benefit whatsoever until you hit max stacks. Once you do, the stacks are consumed for a a short duration of flat % defensive buff for a short duration. This way you can also have traits that play off building the stacks as well as give a bonus to its eventual consumption. Like shrouded removal could play off of that function to make it more active in use.

Summoning&Support

For this we need to look at the minion traits. I personally feel that one dedicated minion trait is great! And having it the most interesting of the 3 traits, Death nova, seems like the perfect fit for this. I've made a suggestion about death nova before. Giving it the added function of summoning jagged horrors on using marks and adding a mark skill to both dagger and focus. Other such changes I'd be looking at is Having some nice traits on Summoning something. Be it minion, shade, turret, pet, golem(from a rune) that grants allies Resolution and perhaps a stack of stability for 3-4 seconds with a 5 second cooldown. This could give death some much needed utility.  As for the lost minion traits I'd suggest giving each minion a boost in their damage and health to compensate for the loss. However, with that I'd also suggest this to be based on game mode as well as this could get out of hand. There are other suggestions for summoning we could do, but giving a bit of extra utility to them would be nice. It could be nice having them as an active boon field like perhaps a non stacking pulsing aura that grants might.

Poison Sub theme
I do honestly love the trait Putrid defense. And in combination with some other reworks it could be quite the fun trait to play with on a more condition bruiser style of build. And with my suggestion for a carapace change we could see this function with another trait that bursts out poison and perhaps increases the necromancer's resilience against conditions.

 

The struggle for me with death magic is that there isn't a reason to take it in pve if you want to do end game content. But if it could provide some useful support like stability, resistance, protection, resolution to allies it becomes a tempting proposition for some support builds. Scourge would have to choose between Soul reaping and death and we could finally see a build that doesn't automatically pick soul reaping on necromancer. The sacrifice is pretty major though and choosing it over blood magic might be a hard sell but we could see that happen as well.

I'm just floating ideas right now. As a necromancer main for 9 years I have a few very strong desires I thirst heavily for. More options for support and utility and Summoning minions or other creatures. And this desire hasn't died in all that time, I still strongly desire this.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Lily.1935

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Death magic is the defense traitline, it should specialize solely on defense options. The fact there are dps traits in there is a problem with necro as a whole, its offense is also tied to its defence, making it hard to balance.  I would rather them make the traitline more specialize for defence, so the only reason you would take it in end game is for a rank role.

[Kaladel.1670]

I'm all for summon options on weapons and jagged horrors are perfect for that. (I even tried a build based on Reaper (Rise), Lich Form (Summon Madness) and Death Nova + Putrid Defense for fun during one of the beta. It wasn't good, but there is untapped potential for a fun playstyle there)

But, why should those be marks? You don't expect Soul Marks to stay the same after that kind of change, right?

[XECOR.2814]

1. Remove toughness and provide equivalent % damage reduction from death carapace everywhere.
2. Buff poison damage potency increase trait to 20% in putrid defense or even more. ( To compete with curses a little bit as damage option, will give more option in pve )
3. Unholy sanctuary should just give max barrier(50%) on death blow instead of going in shroud. ( This fixes interaction with harbinger where this trait just doesn't work )

These are my suggestions for death magic but I don't think it needs much changes.

 

[Lily.1935]

3 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Death magic is the defense traitline, it should specialize solely on defense options. The fact there are dps traits in there is a problem with necro as a whole, its offense is also tied to its defence, making it hard to balance.  I would rather them make the traitline more specialize for defence, so the only reason you would take it in end game is for a rank role.

Not a single defensive specialization across any class only gives defense.

[Lily.1935]

2 hours ago, Kaladel.1670 said:

I'm all for summon options on weapons and jagged horrors are perfect for that. (I even tried a build based on Reaper (Rise), Lich Form (Summon Madness) and Death Nova + Putrid Defense for fun during one of the beta. It wasn't good, but there is untapped potential for a fun playstyle there)

But, why should those be marks? You don't expect Soul Marks to stay the same after that kind of change, right?

I don't think it would be that big of a deal. You'd need both Soul reaping and Death to achieve that which would mean you don't get access to curses if you're using an elite specialization. Why I say marks is because marks were originally going to be somewhat similar to symbols on guardian. And having a few more ways to give utility with marks sounds like it could be nice.

Also, yeah the Minion master Reaper build after HoT launched. So what happened there was that it was actually really strong. It was a Meta build in raids for a while. Although Rise wasn't often taken due to it producing shambling horrors. The Jagged horrors cause bleed. Druid and Chronomancer used to make the build capable of maintaining over 100 bleeds.  Don't know if you where playing at that time, but boy was that build fun.

In another post I suggested that the number of jagged horrors one could have at any given time would be capped. 6-8 is probably enough.

[Kaladel.1670]

1 hour ago, Lily.1935 said:

Also, yeah the Minion master Reaper build after HoT launched. So what happened there was that it was actually really strong. It was a Meta build in raids for a while. Although Rise wasn't often taken due to it producing shambling horrors. The Jagged horrors cause bleed. Druid and Chronomancer used to make the build capable of maintaining over 100 bleeds.  Don't know if you where playing at that time, but boy was that build fun.

Yeah, I know about that. My idea was probably a bit different. More "a burst of explosive minions" (and the burst wasn't too bad on Lich, just... the CD of this skill is an abomination - it should be 90s top in PvE) than "let's remember the goods day of Guild Wars 1". Now that I think about it, your suggestion is a bit like playing a clone build on mesmer...

Edited July 8, 2022 by Kaladel.1670
typo

[Lily.1935]

6 minutes ago, Kaladel.1670 said:

Yeah, I know about that. My idea was probably a bit different. More "a burst of explosive minions" (and the burst wasn't too bad on Lich, just... the CD of this skill is an abomination - it should be 90s top in PvE) than "let's remember the goods day of Guild Wars 1". Now that I think about it, your suggestion is a bit like playing a clone build on mesmer...

Maybe, but I'd leave a proper minion bomber to an elite spec. At the moment, my idea was to give minion masters a bit of utility in group place along with other general support options in death magic.

I do love GW1 necromancer. I was a big fan of the Minion bomber for both necro and ritualist as well as the minion spammer on core necro with aura of the lich. Few games make minion builds so much fun.

[SleepyBat.9034]

On 7/8/2022 at 12:55 PM, Lily.1935 said:

Defense
Lets start here. First off we need to do something about death carapace. It giving toughness is an issue for raids and the amount of toughness it gives has proven to be a bit much for. What I might suggest for this is to keep the stacking feature of it, remove the duration on it completely so you can keep the stacks from fight to fight. Then have it provide no benefit whatsoever until you hit max stacks. Once you do, the stacks are consumed for a a short duration of flat % defensive buff for a short duration. This way you can also have traits that play off building the stacks as well as give a bonus to its eventual consumption. Like shrouded removal could play off of that function to make it more active in use.

I disagree, I think this change would make it excessively complicated and less interesting and I don't see why you would want to run Death Magic in Raids anyway? (I don't play raids so maybe there's a reason that I don't know about). I also want to point out that Harbinger needs the defense from Death Magic to make up for the loss of damage reduction in shroud.

[SleepyBat.9034]

On 7/8/2022 at 1:44 PM, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Death magic is the defense traitline, it should specialize solely on defense options. The fact there are dps traits in there is a problem with necro as a whole, its offense is also tied to its defence, making it hard to balance.  I would rather them make the traitline more specialize for defence, so the only reason you would take it in end game is for a rank role.

That isn't a good idea, no traitline in the game has a single focus so why would you lock Death Magic into a defense only position? I don't see why having dps traits in Death Magic would make it hard to balance, I think it adds a lot of synergy that is very fun to play with.

[Bookah pls.9352]

One sure fire way to make death magic more popular without actually doing any gameplay changes to it would be to actually give us different cosmetic options for minions. 

If i had the option of having something like a skeleton army skin for my minions i'd absolutely have a template reserved for death magic minion plays and i don't think i'd be alone in that.

[Lily.1935]

10 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

I disagree, I think this change would make it excessively complicated and less interesting and I don't see why you would want to run Death Magic in Raids anyway? (I don't play raids so maybe there's a reason that I don't know about). I also want to point out that Harbinger needs the defense from Death Magic to make up for the loss of damage reduction in shroud.

So I do raid a lot. And the big thing about death magic and why it isn't taken is because toughness messes with aggro. And tanks typically want to run as little toughness as possible to maintain aggro. The way Carapace works now is it has a scaling toughness going up to 600 extra toughness. Most tanks typically have less toughness than that, usually not going past 500. So this means the necromancer, who is a fairly bad tank because of lack of stability, invulnerability and blocks, is stealing aggro from your tank accidentally. This isn't the case for all raids, but it does happen in a handful of them. So having it a flat damage percentage would be better. BUT that runs into some issues when flat percentages can be far stronger than raw toughness. Take a look at protection. It is a very strong boon. Death magic currently has both easy access to damage reduction from protection on top of toughness on top of 10-30% condition damage reduction which is quite a lot.

Harbinger itself doesn't need the defense from death magic. It doesn't use it in PvE hardly at all. In PvP and WvW, sure, but harbinger is extremely strong in both of those right now.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Lily.1935

[Rhingeim.3974]

I wish ANet will overlook all core necro trait lines according to actual gameplay. 

Buffing minions damage (extra percent from carapace per stack, why not?). 

Some group utility (at least reaper can benefit from this, to give something to group). 

 

[Lily.1935]

On 7/12/2022 at 2:36 PM, Rhingeim.3974 said:

I wish ANet will overlook all core necro trait lines according to actual gameplay. 

Buffing minions damage (extra percent from carapace per stack, why not?). 

Some group utility (at least reaper can benefit from this, to give something to group). 

 

There are certainly some key traits I feel arena net should consider looking at. Such as Spiteful Spirit in spite and of course ALL of death magic and some others like blood bond, terror, weakening shroud and spiteful renewal. Blood magic's Master tier needs to be looked at pretty heavily since Wail of Doom and life from death are very similar in function.

[Rhingeim.3974]

Well, my main feel of DM updates needs is based on fact, that necromancer kind of lack effective minions build, where they damage/usability can be significantly improved with tradeoffs in defense. 

So far DM not only protection only line, it allows to build up defense to almost god-like level, with carapace, condi transfer.. But at the same time, there are almost no option to trade this protection for boosting minions to the level of ranger or mechanist. And while I'm agree that ranger and engi heavily relays on their pets, it makes me sad that necromancer's most efficient builds are almost non-minions setups, because for full minions we sacrifice whole utility skill slots, while both ranger and engi can benefit from having useful pets and some skills. 

 

Looks strange for class with so much vibe around minions and commanding large groups of minions. 

[Devas.8104]

"We at Anet would like to address the overperformance of Necromancers in sPvP and bring them more inline with other support classes, as well as allow for more weapon/trait synergy with the recent Warhorn rework.

A key factor to their current position in the meta is the thoughness and protection granted by the Death Magic trait line. As a result, we have decided to enhance their survivability through the following changes:

•  Carapace stacks now grant Healing Power instead of Thoughness or Power,
•  Death Nova: changed into "Life From Death", minions now heal nearby allies on death instead of inflicting poison,
•  Dark Defiance and Corrupter's Fervor now grant Resolution in a small area instead of Protection.

This amounts to an overall buff thanks to an overall 15% survivability increase.

In order to keep the Scourge specialization competitive, we have also come up with the following change:

•  Manifest Sand Shade: count recharge cooldown increased from 8 seconds to 12 seconds."

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Devas.8104

[jpsssss.7530]

In terms of WvW it probably needs a nerf. It gives harbinger the option to rock 4k armor and have permanent protection, drop a condi every 3 second or 2 with antitoxin runes and have -30% condi damage taken.

[Kaladel.1670]

I had random thought concerning the minions traits :

So, minions are passive and that's not great. But, what if we had a minion trait that rewarded active usage of minions instead of the trio we currently have. Something like : remove the first two traits in the top line - and make the stat boosts baseline - (put whatever instead, not the scope of this post), change Death Nova to be something like :

• Hunger from Beyond (or whatever, I don't really care): When you use a minion flip skill [things like Rigor Mortis, Taste of Death, etc.] all your minions gain Fury (2s), Quickness (2s), Might x5 (2s). Summon a jagged horror when you kill a foe.

Could something like this be interesting?

[Rhingeim.3974]

13 minutes ago, Kaladel.1670 said:

I had random thought concerning the minions traits :

So, minions are passive and that's not great. But, what if we had a minion trait that rewarded active usage of minions instead of the trio we currently have. Something like : remove the first two traits in the top line - and make the stat boosts baseline - (put whatever instead, not the scope of this post), change Death Nova to be something like :

• Hunger from Beyond (or whatever, I don't really care): When you use a minion flip skill [things like Rigor Mortis, Taste of Death, etc.] all your minions gain Fury (2s), Quickness (2s), Might x5 (2s). Summon a jagged horror when you kill a foe.

Could something like this be interesting?

This sounds quite interesting. 

Minions should scale from character stats, each minion can have its own multiplier. 

With that, DM can be split between going passive defense (kind of how it's working now) and active offense (like was proposed). This will give some benefit to expandable minions, to boost our more powerful ones, and Lich Rune set will also provide some buffs sustain due to timed horrors. 

At the end, DM can fulfill 3 roles - buffing non-minion builds through carapace on conditions, and give two options for minions setups. 

[Lily.1935]

5 hours ago, Kaladel.1670 said:

I had random thought concerning the minions traits :

So, minions are passive and that's not great. But, what if we had a minion trait that rewarded active usage of minions instead of the trio we currently have. Something like : remove the first two traits in the top line - and make the stat boosts baseline - (put whatever instead, not the scope of this post), change Death Nova to be something like :

• Hunger from Beyond (or whatever, I don't really care): When you use a minion flip skill [things like Rigor Mortis, Taste of Death, etc.] all your minions gain Fury (2s), Quickness (2s), Might x5 (2s). Summon a jagged horror when you kill a foe.

Could something like this be interesting?

I think that's something I'd more like to see from an elite spec than core. My position is to reduce the number of traits that only benefit minions, reducing that down to 1 grand master trait. That trait probably wouldn't be strong enough either. to make minions desirable in pve and might be TOO strong in PvP.

Edit: For people who are confused.

Minions are frequently completely destroy newer players with their master having extremely high resilience and the minions providing decent pressure. Newer players tend to struggle very hard against AI and a player at the same time which leads to quick frustration. Giving Minions a sudden burst of damage would easily overwhelm players even more especially with minions that do not have a timer on their life span.

In PvE its just the opposite. Enemies have an easy time crushing minions and the damage added from minions is negligible. Even with quickness they don't have enough power to push forward as a solid DPS option when you're giving up close to 30-35% DPS to take them.

So although it would be interesting, its not good enough where it needs to be and too strong where it shouldn't be.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Lily.1935
People are confused.

[Kaladel.1670]

Quote

My position is to reduce the number of traits that only benefit minions, reducing that down to 1 grand master trait.

It's what I just did in the above post, isn't it? Unless you thought my "put whatever instead" was suggesting to put other things for minions in those slots?

If you mean 'endgame instanced PvE' by 'PvE',  then yes, you are right. But minions might need more than a trait to be viable in this environment. A more in depth rework we'll probably never see.

Concearning competitive game modes, is this really an issue when we can split traits?

Edited July 20, 2022 by Kaladel.1670
too much space below the text

[Lily.1935]

On 7/20/2022 at 2:38 PM, Kaladel.1670 said:

It's what I just did in the above post, isn't it? Unless you thought my "put whatever instead" was suggesting to put other things for minions in those slots?

If you mean 'endgame instanced PvE' by 'PvE',  then yes, you are right. But minions might need more than a trait to be viable in this environment. A more in depth rework we'll probably never see.

Concearning competitive game modes, is this really an issue when we can split traits?

What overpowers the trait in PvP is the quickness, fury and might. The Jagged horror on enemy deaths is already there and doesn't help in either PvE or PvP even though its flavorful. As for PvE I run a lot of different builds for necromancer. And I experiment with new ideas all the time. Minion master builds have never managed to prove useful in those situations because in Open world they don't have the aoe to really benefit you against large mob events and they die much too quickly in the harder events which just means you're less effective than a necromancer who runs only signets. Unless you're afk farming but that's a separate issue. As for "End game" like fractals, raids, strikes, DRMs, minions just don't cut it there either. Although there they're better than just running signets often times they fill slots for specific utility from their active which both Shadow fiend, flesh golem and flesh wurm have good active skills. The issue we see is by taking death magic you provide your allies no utility and cut your personal DPS by a lot. Even with the short burst of quickness, fury and might you just don't have the numbers or the quality of minions to really benefit you in any significant way.

In order to make minions work you either need them to be very responsive and inherit stats like the Mechanist's Mech does or you need to overwhelm with quantity. My position for a core minion master build is to overwhelm with Quantity so we can get the quality for an elite spec later. Death nova works perfectly with quantity of minions to build into the idea of them being disposable. But we don't have the quantity or the quality to do either and pushing the quantity direction would work better with how they work now.

As for an Elite spec, I DO think a quality Minion master spec could be very interesting. Using Utility skills to buff minions and F1-5 skills to command them to preform actions would be fantastic. Building it into the minions that are already there wouldn't be as interesting or as useful with your idea. Half the minions die when you activate their skills and one of them can't attack right after it uses its active. In PvE that's a problem if you're trying to rely on minions to supplement your damage that way.

As for the part about one minion trait thing. Sorry, that's my mistake.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Selfish. Passive. Versatile -  these 3 words define nature and purpose of Death Magic for me.
 

Imho it just needs a bit of balancing and a nudge to undo the sustain harm done to necro. So:

1. When traiting DM shroud reduces incoming damage by 50%, like pre-nerf.

2. Carapace stacking is wonk. One grandmaster trait hogs it (Corrupter's Fervor), other grandmasters do nothing, adept traits are too weak. This should be addressed.

3. Poison nova could use more poison. And less reliance on minion count. Like you inflicting an poison aoe with your next attack every 10s, where number of poison stacks inflicted scales with stacked carapace. Would be also a nice counter-balance to Deathly Strength - somthing for condi builds from carapace stacking!

[Junkpile.7439]

Yes let's ruin best trait line because of PvE. Where you even get these ideas.🤦‍♂️

[Kaladel.1670]

5 hours ago, Lily.1935 said:

What overpowers the trait in PvP is the quickness, fury and might.

Yes, after researching a bit, I see your point here.

I barely use them in anything serious nowadays, so I missed that point.

I agree with most of your answer, so I won't waste our time by answering every detail.

I'm just very doubtfull we'll see a full minions rework. It would require an investment we've rarely seen in the past 10 years, after all. And that's a shame, since minions are probably the most appealing thing to new players when they pick necromancer. This is a big part of the class fantasy and I bet most people who picked this profession as their first did so because of the minions, only to get disapointed afterward.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Kaladel.1670