Necro changes previewed for Feb 3

[Vaiye.5709]

edit: removed my feedback since it was bad

Edited February 6, 2023 by Vaiye.5709

[Infusion.7149]

47 minutes ago, Vaiye.5709 said:

I'm a casual PVE player that does fractals and raids that also loves to do open world stuff. There is better feedback out there for sure, but this is an idea of things I'd like to see on necro. I don't theory craft so much to understand what to really suggest in terms of traits (which definitely needs updating), as well as utility skills.

To give a slightly better understanding about who is giving this feedback, I can do reaper 31k, scourge 32k, and harbinger 34k on golem. 

I have 2 primary issues: (1) losing so much damage when losing shroud, and (2) the inability to compete with superior damage classes in raids. The gap is pretty tremendous.

Anyway, here's my input of what I'd like to see:

Necromancer
• Generate life force out of combat. (Like virtuoso blades. Tremendous QOL. Undeath will still generate in combat.)

 

Reaper
• Increase damage in shroud overall. (Improved burst. Doesn't have to compete with current meta specs, but something to be considered viable.)
• Ability to use utility skills in shroud. (at cost of life force?)
• Toggle to take damage to health pool instead of life force. (Life can be healed in shroud when toggled.)
• Shroud 5 finishes downed enemies.

 

Greatsword
• Increase greatsword auto attack speed. (GS 2 and 3 feel a little to slow as well..)
• Make death spiral a 360 degree radius.

Axe
• I would like to see this compete with staff in terms of damage. This way we can opt for staff for cleave, or axe for single target.

Scourge
• Change F1 to not pause your auto attack chain (similarly to F2-F5). (Doesn't feel good to me how it works now, maybe intended... just me?)

Scepter
• Change first two auto attacks to apply torment instead of bleed. (I'm not sure if this is a buff or nerf honestly.)
• Change the third auto attack to apply 2 stacks of torment to promote not interrupting your auto attack chain.

Harbinger
• I'm not sure how to do this, but would be nice to have a viable power quick harb variant.

A few things to note:
Core stuff

• scepter is probably not getting buffs as it is used in every mode
• I actually thought Arenanet would increase the necro axe strike damage in PvE only, but instead staff strike damage was massively increased (sometimes up to a factor of 10) instead of giving it bleeding on the auto and other condi stack sources to give core necro another condi weapon. I suspect it is due to people in openworld using staff to tag things, I'm not sure about the demographics since I'm not privy to that information. Arenanet has a dilemma after they changed rifle on engineer, longbow on ranger and DH, greatsword on mesmer, scepter on ele, and axe on ranger. Instead of expecting players to swap weapons for instanced content they just revised weapons for the content. Ranged damage weapons are sometimes actually competing with melee ones and it is a prospect that melee weapons may be phased out of the meta as a result. For now reaper has to contend with greatsword+staff when previously it would run axe in place of staff.

Reaper

• Life force generation on reaper was significantly improved in a prior patch (Nov 29). Reaper is unlikely to be improved further in terms of passive life force generation. If you want passive lifeforce you are probably better off with signet of undeath and running the Signets of Suffering trait.
• Greatsword is meant to be a slow weapon, it is more likely Arenanet would increase coefficients than increase animation speed.
• Allowing people to see cooldowns of utilities (greyed out or otherwise) would be an improvement in accessibility of the reaper spec but adding utility skill use in reaper shroud would nullify a main drawback to shroud which is being able to get CC-ed if your stability has expired.
• I don't think that increasing the DPS in reaper shroud is the answer if you are saying life force is a problem. Arenanet tried to make Reaper Shroud more available by adding life force gain on Greatsword in the recent November patch. The cooldown of Gravedigger was reduced to nothing <50%.

Scourge/Harbinger

• F1 on scourge is a skill cast from the scourge while the other skills are using the sand shades and the scourge to do the effect. There is probably a technical reason this interrupts auto.
• power quick harbinger needs a bit more pDPS and access to boons other than quick+fury+might , I don't see it gaining popularity if it is so far behind the condition variant

Edited February 6, 2023 by Infusion.7149

[Dadnir.5038]

14 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

A few things to note:
Core stuff

• scepter is probably not getting buffs as it is used in every mode
• I actually thought Arenanet would increase the necro axe strike damage in PvE only, but instead staff strike damage was massively increased (sometimes up to a factor of 10) instead of giving it bleeding on the auto and other condi stack sources to give core necro another condi weapon. I suspect it is due to people in openworld using staff to tag things, I'm not sure about the demographics since I'm not privy to that information. Arenanet has a dilemma after they changed rifle on engineer, longbow on ranger and DH, greatsword on mesmer, scepter on ele, and axe on ranger. Instead of expecting players to swap weapons for instanced content they just revised weapons for the content. Ranged damage weapons are sometimes actually competing with melee ones and it is a prospect that melee weapons may be phased out of the meta as a result. For now reaper has to contend with greatsword+staff when previously it would run axe in place of staff.

Reaper

• Life force generation on reaper was significantly improved in a prior patch (Nov 29). Reaper is unlikely to be improved further in terms of passive life force generation. If you want passive lifeforce you are probably better off with signet of undeath and running the Signets of Suffering trait.
• Greatsword is meant to be a slow weapon, it is more likely Arenanet would increase coefficients than increase animation speed.
• Allowing people to see cooldowns of utilities (greyed out or otherwise) would be an improvement in accessibility of the reaper spec but adding utility skill use in reaper shroud would nullify a main drawback to shroud which is being able to get CC-ed if your stability has expired.
• I don't think that increasing the DPS in reaper shroud is the answer if you are saying life force is a problem. Arenanet tried to make Reaper Shroud more available by adding life force gain on Greatsword in the recent November patch. The cooldown of Gravedigger was reduced to nothing <50%.

Scourge/Harbinger

• F1 on scourge is a skill cast from the scourge while the other skills are using the sand shades and the scourge to do the effect. There is probably a technical reason this interrupts auto.
• power quick harbinger needs a bit more pDPS and access to boons other than quick+fury+might , I don't see it gaining popularity if it is so far behind the condition variant

In term of weapon, the true pain points of the necromancer are:

- Dagger main hand: Contrary to the "answer" that the dev offer in the next patch, the issue is that the AA have a one long aftercast that break it's attack speed in an unsatisfying manner and dark pact take so long to cast that it is worthless in most content, even in small scale PvP, this skill is seldom worth using due to it's unresponsiveness.

- All core off hand: Neither WH nor Focus have any value dps-wise while the support and sustain they provide is hardly significatif. Dagger off-hand lack a mean to provide life force but the skills themselves fit well for a condition damage setting.

Reaper's pain point:

- It's greatsword is slow and that's frustrating. The main issue being that there is no alternative to GS due to Dagger main hand and core off hand being lackluster. (I can remember that, in the early days of HoT, GS and Dagger used to be on par dps-wise and the result was that GS was mostly discarded by the playerbase)

- The shouts are 1 time hits on medium CD and as such do not contribute much to the dps. I do have a hard time understanding why ANet is trying to make them more popular through dps, on one side they will never be competitive against Wells in term of PvE dps and on another side, inflating damage number could possibly lead to issue in PvP as they could bring excessive AoE burst. The preview suggest that the necromancer will need to be even closer to it's foe to gain the utility those shouts provide, from my point of view it feel that, hidden behind promise of higher damage numbers and a lower baseline CD, they are making shouts worse than they already are.

Harbinger's pain points:

- Strike damage: Yes, those are low. Why are they low? Necromancer lack good strike damage weapons, see "Dagger main hand and all off-hand" issues.

- Elixirs: Way to much focus on them. Amusingly enough this focus is also responsible for part of the strike damage issue as you do have to chose between taking elixirs to keep up your Blight (and thus your damage bonus) or take your best damaging utilities (Wells). It's a lose-lose trade-off that keep power harbinger into mediocrity. (This trade-off also exist for condition damage but harbinger compensate well for this in other area of it's skill kit)

Scourge's pain point:

- It's mainly it's history. Everything it now suffer is due to how dominant it has been through most of PoF era. (Even the visual  noise).

[Shadowmoon.7986]

I did not watch the stream, did they show what type of bonus damage shouts are getting. I am really hoping it is not life steal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

6 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

I did not watch the stream, did they show what type of bonus damage shouts are getting. I am really hoping it is not life steal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't think it was ever stated, but it was implied to be strike damage.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

10 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

did they show what type of bonus damage shouts are getting

shouts will just do extra damage when hitting targets at melee range. Probably like hitting twice (or current damage x2).

[Nimon.7840]

6 hours ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

shouts will just do extra damage when hitting targets at melee range. Probably like hitting twice (or current damage x2).

I'd really like to know, why they didn't just put the numbers for the shroud changes in the patch.

How are we supposed to give feedback if we basically know nothing?

That being said: only need to wait around 8 hours, then the patch will be live

[Greviathan.6107]

2 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

I'd really like to know, why they didn't just put the numbers for the shroud changes in the patch.

How are we supposed to give feedback if we basically know nothing?

That being said: only need to wait around 8 hours, then the patch will be live

The bonus damage in melee range (probably 130) is for shouts, not for the shroud! Anyway little changes, they didn't provide data so we can't really give real feedback on this. Furthermore, as has been pointed out by others, there is something that suggests that some of the things reported are only on the PvE side:

 

Quote

"Rise!": [...] Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 32 seconds.

Rise in WvW/PvP is 50 sec CD, not 40
 

Quote

"Chilled to the Bone!": [...] Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 36 seconds.

Chilled to the Bone in WvW/PvP is 60 sec CD, not 45

There are 3 options that come to mind:

1. Omitted WvW/PvP data in patchnote, but lowered cooldowns accordingly.
2. Cooldowns have not been touched in WvW/PvP, which means a nerf due to the change to Augury of Death.
3. Cooldowns have been standardized between PvE, WvW and PvP. In this case it would be a nice buff for shouts.

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

3 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

How are we supposed to give feedback if we basically know nothing?

pretty sure this is like that time they gave us meaningless changes to GS and then, the next patch they actually gave us a real boost.

I'm sure the balance team do this to understand how those changes affect a specific skill and to give us the same chance so we can give proper feedback for the next patch.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Since the Reaper changes were lacking in numbers:

"Melee range" is 130.

All shouts deal 50% more damage in melee range.

Augury of Death doubles its life siphon effects in melee range (still totally worthless trait now)

"Your Soul is Mine!" gives 3% additional life force
"Nothing Can Save You!" gives 5 stacks unblockable baseline, plus 2 for each melee hit.  No stacks for hits further than melee range.
"You are All Weaklings!" gives 1 additional stack of might.

"Chilled to the Bone!" gives 1 second longer stun and 10 seconds of quickness in PvE, 6 seconds quickness in PvP.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Obtena.7952]

8 hours ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

pretty sure this is like that time they gave us meaningless changes to GS and then, the next patch they actually gave us a real boost.

I'm sure the balance team do this to understand how those changes affect a specific skill and to give us the same chance so we can give proper feedback for the next patch.

I think people need to remember that the test server is the same as the live server here. The valuable feedback is going to be given after the changes are in the game and people can play with them, not before. 

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

ok, shouts are so worth taking in OW and some non-elite content now. Not the best DPS of course, but definitely feel much better now (tried them in Honor of the Waves and literally melted those elite groups and some champs way faster than with my best DPS build). So, for solo play, they're definitely worth taking (if would be nice if hitting targets on melee also reduced the recharge time).

now, just as I said before, our main problem is still how easily we die. Life Siphon is still useless in that regard (even with Augury of Death and hitting 5 targets, the healing was pathetic).

either revert "Rise!" and RS to 50% damage reduction or boost Life Siphon so it become somewhat useful (like I said, reducing shouts recharge on hitting melee target might help with that, maybe adding that extra effect to Augury of Death?)

oh, and I forgot to say that on the Golem (with my Berserker gear and Augury of Death), I do about the same damage than with my Marauder/Dragon gear and my best DPS Build (Wells), BUT with Chilling Victory, I do almost the same damage than with full Berserker and my Wells Build (took me 1 extra second to kill it).

Edited February 14, 2023 by Arianth Moonlight.6453

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Right now, I'm just wondering if Signet of Spite will get replaced by "You are All Weaklings!" in raids.  If the DPS is close enough between them, I will probably make the switch anyway just to have a stunbreak on the build.