Just what is the point of necro anymore?

[Valisha.8650]

On 8/13/2022 at 5:45 AM, Matthius.9104 said:

Im just glad to see necro suffer after years of its kitten in pvp. Feels great

PvE is where the gemstore money for anet is at

[Dib.4612]

Logged in on my phone just to updoot this post. Honestly I've tried liking necro for the longest time. I am really big into the theme of it, but the gameplay is so lackluster.  

The class' main theme of necromancy consists of minions of which all but the elite are incredibly dull. The traitline of summoning these tiny useless rats also isn't any fun.  Furthermore I don't understand at all why they didn't make minions a profession mechanic from the getgo rather than this shroud. Using lifesteal to raise the dead and/or use their active skills.  

Life Steal/Blood Magic in my opinion should become active only, all passive lifesteal must be removed from the game, including the food. Then they should design some cool skills that both drain the enemies health and heal allies. Perhaps use the tether mechanic in the game to make 'Blood Bonds'. 

What you say about Harbinger is exactly right. Reaper looks cool but is also fairly boring mechanically, still somehow the elite spec I like the most.  

Basically the core features, Blood Magic and Death Magic as well as weapon skills need some massive rework, many utility skills too. The entire class needs to become mechanically and thematically interesting again.

 

[Dadnir.5038]

9 hours ago, Dib.4612 said:

Furthermore I don't understand at all why they didn't make minions a profession mechanic from the getgo rather than this shroud.

That's because there are already 2 professions with minions as their main mechanism (ranger and mesmer). I'd also like to point out that both of these professions have and are still suffering from being tied to minions. Keep in mind that minions are:

- bad in WvW (no matter whether it's ranger's pet or mesmer's clone or engineer turret, elementalist's elementals or necromancer's minions, all of them are thoroughly useless in front of a zerg)

- Hated in PvP (the devs have been balancing the game mainly based on the feedback from the sPvP subforum and the players that focus on this gamemode have prejudice against fighting AI... In fact they just can't stand being defeated by or through AI)

- Problematic in PvE end game (Be it pathing, responsiveness, resilience, balance of damage output or even general usefulness, pets have a long history of having a hard time being in a good spot in PvE end game as well)

The shroud isn't a bad idea in itself, nor is it a bad fit thematically as it make the necromancer a pseudo-undead. The issue lie in how it has been implemented and how the core tenets of the necromancer have been built around it. Ultimately you could say that the main mistake of the shroud is it's "2nd life bar".

10 hours ago, Dib.4612 said:

The entire class needs to become mechanically and thematically interesting again.

It is already mechanically and thematically interesting. The fact that it doesn't focus on minions doesn't make it uninteresting. Life siphon is probably the most active main of sustain that the game offer. The thematic aspect isn't bad either.

No, the main issue that the necromancer face is it's tools design. Fact is that the tools on which it focus have little to no appeal to the PvE meta while, at the same time, they can be very potent in the competitive meta. The devs tried to give some appeal to those tools which is the reason there is the "little" in my "little to no appeal" but it does have an abysmal impact on the appeal of the profession as a whole. Harbinger bring things that feel more essential for the necromancer to be appealing but, objectively, this spec is a bloated abomination (it's simply unreasonable to force the whole boon package onto a single e-spec).

 

That said, if one want to answer to the question that give the name of the thread: "Just what is the point of necromancer?"

The answer is simple: Boon conversion! The necromancer is still the single best profession one can play to get rid of the boons of an opponent in competitive modes. And the fact that it convert them into conditions make it the best boon ripping mechanism of the game.

[Raizel.8175]

I really can't be arsed to write this anew, so I'm simply going to copy what I wrote in another thread:

Objectively speaking, at least concerning instanced PvE, Necromancer is easily one of the worst classes in the game. The general design is a joke at this point.

• Reaper is the only truly viable pDPS build Necromancer has and it's botched by several factors - one of the main problems (as you've already said) being the lack of decent weapons beside Greatsword. Necromancer literally has no decent pDPS weapons to begin with. Axe is not fully garbage, but the off-hands are all crap. Core Necromancer and Reaper both need a rework here alongside Necromancer weapons - Greatsword is pretty much fine apart from how Gravedigger works.
• Scourge is a mess at this point. The utility as rezz bot is only really nice for low tier gameplay squads; Scourge is and probably can never be a true healer though. Other than that, it's a somewhat situational, rather lower tier DPS that's being kept afloat thanks to the changes to Torment. Its saving grace is that it's rather easy to play and quite consistent - much like Rifle Mechanist just less reliable and, well... weaker. Scourge could probably use a rework. At this point, they could just steal the "sands of time" theme from Prince of Persia and enable Scourge to be either played as cDPS or condition-focused Alacrity Support.
• Harbinger is just a big fail. It's fun to play, but very, very restrictive due to how it works. While Blight is a somewhat interesting mechanic, having to juggle two diminishing resources with a rather strict rotation for proper DPS doesn't work that well in more mechanic-focused encounters. The overloaded elixirs and how Quickness works on Harbinger is also a mess and means that you can't use skills reactively, meaning you're only a 2nd rate support to begin with.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Raizel.8175

[Raizel.8175]

On 8/11/2022 at 4:38 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

Initialy the reaper's role was to be a "tank" and players push to have it become a "strike damage dps" because, not having block, good amount of stability and decent support made the reaper an unattractive "tank".

Reaper was never designed as "tank" (at least if you take into account how instanced PvE works - even back in the day) - Reaper simply lacks the tools to tank properly. Just popping Shroud to eat damage doesn't do the job. Reaper was always designed as a not-so-squishy Melee Bruiser.

On 8/11/2022 at 4:38 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

Yet, while the damages managed to reach an acceptable height, this never made reaper especially attractive for a group.

There are other reasons why Reaper was never popular. The main one being that most Reaper players back in the day performed - on average at least - rather poorly, which is why Reaper (and Necro by extension) always and still has a rather bad reputation. One of the reasons why several people perfomed poorly is the inherently stupid Greatsword skill design with Gravedigger. The average Reaper player back when these prejudices formed mostly spammed Gravedigger without bothering with the intricacies which are necessary for a decent Reaper rotation. People thus always had the (first) impression that a Reaper will more likely than not be a hindrance. I do remember the days when you were insta-kicked from fractal or raid groups/squads if your class symbol was Necro.

On 8/11/2022 at 4:38 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

- Reaper will never be accepted as a dps simply because if it got high enough dps to be competitive a part of the playerbase will just complain that it got to much survivability and "it's unfair".

Solution proposed by me in another thread: Make a trait for a DPS build which makes Reaper Shroud work like Harbinger Shroud. Boom. Survivability gone. Not like Reaper Shroud is awesome in instanced PvE anyway - it's more of a hindrance than a benefit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Was this thread necro'd? D*kitten, your posts are already three months old.

[Dr Meta.3158]

The arguments in these threads are a great reminder to me that US politicians are still definitely above average in communication skills.

[Dadnir.5038]

9 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Edit: Was this thread necro'd? D*kitten, your posts are already three months old.

The thread has been an on-going one, you could even merge it with the various "reaper need a buff threads" of these last few months.

9 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Reaper was never designed as "tank"

It was designed to outlast it's opponent and prevent them from escaping (from my point of view such design is closer to a "tank" than a "dps"). It's true that strictly speaking it lacked the tools to "tank" in PvE (even if it did have a reasonable access to stability at that time, the meta "tanks", chronomancer, were asked to provide "valuable" support, read alacrity/quickness, which the necromancer didn't) but it doesn't change the fact that it wasn't initially designed to be a "dps" in PvE either (peaking at 25k dps at release where other dps were reaching 35k dps).

10 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Solution proposed by me in another thread: Make a trait for a DPS build which makes Reaper Shroud work like Harbinger Shroud. Boom. Survivability gone.

I think a few years ago a dev talked about that in a long lost thread, saying that they couldn't easily temper with the main mechanism of a profession. From their point of view the kind of trait you suggest was equivalent to a whole new e-spec.

From my point of view and probably yours, it's just a copy-paste of the reaper's shroud skill from a traditional shroud transformation template to a Harbinger's shroud template and attaching it to a trait, but I'm pretty sure it's not that simple from the devs own point of view.

[Raizel.8175]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

It's true that strictly speaking it lacked the tools to "tank" in PvE (even if it did have a reasonable access to stability at that time, the meta "tanks", chronomancer, were asked to provide "valuable" support, read alacrity/quickness, which the necromancer didn't) [...]

Well, it's not just Alacrity or Quickness, it's also fundamental tanking tools like blocks or Aegis. Imagine tanking bosses like Xera as Reaper.

2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

From my point of view and probably yours, it's just a copy-paste of the reaper's shroud skill from a traditional shroud transformation template to a Harbinger's shroud template and attaching it to a trait, but I'm pretty sure it's not that simple from the devs own point of view.

Well, they're developers. It's their job to... well... develop stuff. Being difficult/not so simple is basically a non-argument.

 

 

 

 

 

In all honesty, it's not just Necromancer that's a mess currently. Thief is also in a weird position. Elementalist is at the very least functional. Binding Quickness and Alacrity to core skills (Spirits and Banners) is still an at least questionable idea.

[felincyriac.5981]

they really need to overhaul some of the core weapons/traits. That would benefit all specs.

 

main hand Dagger for example is completely outdated.

[Axl.8924]

2 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Well, it's not just Alacrity or Quickness, it's also fundamental tanking tools like blocks or Aegis. Imagine tanking bosses like Xera as Reaper.

Well, they're developers. It's their job to... well... develop stuff. Being difficult/not so simple is basically a non-argument.

 

 

 

 

 

In all honesty, it's not just Necromancer that's a mess currently. Thief is also in a weird position. Elementalist is at the very least functional. Binding Quickness and Alacrity to core skills (Spirits and Banners) is still an at least questionable idea.

Elementalist has its issues too being that its balanced around having at all times all elements and sometimes ARENANET forcing eles to go into melee range while limiting options for blocks its pretty strange way to handle. Right now plenty of people are squabbling over who deserves to be viable and what build is too easy but our fighting just makes everything harder for the guys who work at arenanet to balance everything out. we fight over petty stuff and yet warriors aren't happy thief mains are also pretty annoyed as are some ranger mains sure druid was improved but there is always something to improve.

 

One thing is for certain: There should be split between wvw and pve and just because something is good in pvp doesn't mean it gets to be uselesss overall in pve.

 

So don't go denying that eles don't have their issues. Eles had issues in spvp when it comes to balancing viability not too long ago and WVW

Edited November 5, 2022 by Axl.8924

[Dadnir.5038]

9 minutes ago, Axl.8924 said:

One thing is for certain: There should be split between wvw and pve and just because something is good in pvp doesn't mean it gets to be uselesss overall in pve.

Nowaday there are split between all three gamemodes. Scourge is a good example of that as it got different CD, barrier value and number of target for it's shades for each gamemode.

[xavios.3601]

On 8/1/2022 at 10:11 AM, Valisha.8650 said:

Most things work in open world.

Condi Virtuoso is even easier, with bigger DPS numbers.

Interesting that your view of Reaper's value to the game is whether or not its top DPS. Can someone clear all content with power Reaper? If the answer is yes, then Id suggest leaving the silly comparisons in your head. 

[TheJmandude.1548]

At this point I'm asking the same question: Why play a class that has tradeoffs when you can just play a class that can be any role and fart out every boon in the game? Despite investing so much time into necro, I can't help but feel like a detriment to my guild because even boon corrupting is a struggle when the enemy can just pop it right back on. Scourge barriers are trash so I can't even play support, especially when Scrapper and Firebrand exist, dpsing is discouraging when my core Guardian guild leader can 100 to 0 an enemy; meanwhile my burst damage is locked behind shroud (which locks out my utilities) so when I'm trying to build it back up I hit like a wet noodle in comparison, and condi is also not worth it when Torment is objectively the weakest condition in the game aside from bleed. At this point I'm thinking about just biting the bullet and re-rolling Guardian since that's what the devs seem to want me to play.

Edited November 11, 2022 by TheJmandude.1548

[Obtena.7952]

You can ask, but the answer doesn't change. If it's not fun for you, don't play it. If it doesn't perform at the level you want, don't play it. If something does something that's more appealing to you, then play it. People have to stop pretending that the only reasons to play a class are the few they think are relevant as some compelling reason to get change here. 

I think today's patch release notes are pretty telling ... there isn't some 30% DPS increase incoming. The toolset we got is still the toolset we going to have. Anet is still trying to make what we have work in the context of the current design. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

On 11/11/2022 at 6:24 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

You can ask, but the answer doesn't change. If it's not fun for you, don't play it. If it doesn't perform at the level you want, don't play it. If something does something that's more appealing to you, then play it. People have to stop pretending that the only reasons to play a class are the few they think are relevant as some compelling reason to get change here. 

I think today's patch release notes are pretty telling ... there isn't some 30% DPS increase incoming. The toolset we got is still the toolset we going to have. Anet is still trying to make what we have work in the context of the current design. 

 You're right so the alternative is just leaving the game for another MMO that actually has a real passion for balance. This isn't about not keeping up with the other classes it's about a class/elite spec that was introduced and was competitive being trashed over the years to become a shadow of it's former self and the Dev's not caring enough to refurbish it to it's previous functional design. This was the last straw for me, as since it seems there is no definitive will on behalf of Anet to fix it, I don't enjoy any of the other classes/elite specs so there is no reason to stay. I'm bloody sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[Obtena.7952]

6 hours ago, Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

 You're right so the alternative is just leaving the game for another MMO that actually has a real passion for balance. This isn't about not keeping up with the other classes it's about a class/elite spec that was introduced and was competitive being trashed over the years to become a shadow of it's former self and the Dev's not caring enough to refurbish it to it's previous functional design. This was the last straw for me, as since it seems there is no definitive will on behalf of Anet to fix it, I don't enjoy any of the other classes/elite specs so there is no reason to stay. I'm bloody sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Well, maybe that's your alternative, but it's not the only one. I mean, nothing stops people from playing Reaper ... except themselves. What is weird is that people who have such a hyper focus on a game being balanced for equivalent performance between classes ... still playing THIS game that have never been balanced around this.

Sounds more like a 'not-Anet' problem. 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Hindenburg.3415]

2 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Well, maybe that's your alternative, but it's not the only one. I mean, nothing stops people from playing Reaper ... except themselves. What is weird is that people who have such a hyper focus on a game being balanced for equivalent performance between classes ... still playing THIS game that have never been balanced around this.

Sounds more like a 'not-Anet' problem. 

 

Exactly.

Every spec in the game has enough damage to complete any content in the game. Heck , people even do solo hardest fractals and some strike missions.  Dps checks are almost non-existent here.

 

But forums usually full of balance experts ( most of whom have no idea what they are talking about ).

 

 

 

[Radina.6057]

Imagine using that logic on all the specs.

"What do you mean with Iam not a Quickness support! I had 33% uptime on myself!"

 

[Axl.8924]

Reaper exists as a DPS check as someone else said check your DPS to compare if you are lower you are prob bad at the game if you are a reaper well sorry ARENANET doesn't want you to be good so in the trashbin you go no power DPS for necro.

[Bookah pls.9352]

It's actually kinda wild that even after 3 elite specs have been introduced the only accepted and desired power necro spec in any content is actually scourge in wvw.

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

It's actually kinda wild that even after 3 elite specs have been introduced the only accepted and desired power necro spec in any content is actually scourge in wvw.

Smart choice of words.

I could have argued that power reaper is accepted in sPvP but I can hardly argue that it is desired since it is sPvP... Let's settle on the fact that it doesn't generate hate on the sPvP subforum so it's probably not strong enough to be "desired" there.