Sword-Wielding Necromancers Are Gluttons for Punishment

[draxynnic.3719]

6 hours ago, ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

I'm less happy than most here. Necro power weapons are actually good as they are. Either they were good from the start (gs) or had small reworks (axe, dagger).
It's condi weapons (Staff, Scepter) that are a snooze fest and lacked any melee option. But that's still not on the table apprarently.

Yeah. It is a bit weird. Power weapons are... reasonably well serviced, but power harbinger never really took off so they're pretty much only used by reapers. Condi weapons are... effective numbers-wise, at least when coupled with elite specialisation capabilities, but are IMO pretty boring to use and often feel like filler that's being carried by said elite specialisations. Kinda feels like the most likely result is that reaper will have another weaponset option and that's all the impact it will have.

We'll see, though. Maybe powerharb will have a chance. Scourge probably has Buckley's of ever having a power spec.

[vrauns.3215]

Funny how some people are arguing about something when they didn't even watch the video, like cmon.

[Bale.3851]

5 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I would actually think that the life costs for the sword leap skills are going to be very expensive compared to the amount you can leech. If they aren't, then it makes executing those skills with life costs to not have much consequence as a choice. 

I guess its more like 1k max costs. Anymore would break every zerker build. Realistically speaking its a free double skill for every Tanky necro build making this sword a good pick for every bruiser build on necro.

Remember we are seeing some nice buffs to Reaper and also Harb. With this in mind my guess would be that this weapon will be picked for power and cele roamers in wvw and bruiser builds in pvp. 

[Loules.8601]

7 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

It's a ranged weapon, I 100% guarantee you of that

Literally every ability they used in the trailer was used at a range, including the leap - not once did they actually activate a skill from within melee range

Anet isn't trying to "hide" anything - I think they made it pretty clear from the trailer

To me it’s not like this. I don’t think that we see auto-attacks at all. And in all videos we see only a few skills at most. Considering it as a ranged weapon from this - looks questionably to me. 
 

Yes, considering that they don’t mentioned anything about them as a ranged weapons - I don’t think that we should 100% consider them as such. To be honest, we have info that mostly speaks against it from text (including no mention of them being ranged) and only a few skills without context. More so, target leap - 100% characteristic of melee weapon (at least as we know them right now). 

Also, to express one of arguments: psizone mentioned engineers - IIRC it’s just a jump, not target leap straight into enemy face.

And why we even need a skill to leap into enemy on ranged weapon? AFAIK we don’t have “utility” skills on weapons that’s not connected to them: like if leap -to reach melee range for Reaper or smth. It also doesn’t make sense for Scourge - and we also don’t have weapons that straightforwardly not working on some elite specs. 
 

According to post, skill 4 - area skill (so it’s a range part on offhand), and skill 3 - melee leap. We don’t know about autos but 0 mentions about them as long range ones in text (and afaik Anet always inform us about such things). 
To be fair, I can probably agree with necro sword as ranged weapon… but offhand one. Mainhand, from all info that we know and can logically deduce - melee weapon. 

[Nimon.7840]

13 hours ago, psizone.8437 said:

Harbinger has power traits through the whole line. Pick the top choice on all traits in the Harb line, though I do still prefer the quickness GM trait over the +240 power one.

Sadly power harbinger is still bad. In PvE it gets held back by it's shroud doing not enough power dmg. And in competitive modes it's way to squishy for the dmg it does. The potential to oneshot people with skill 3+4 got nerfed heavily and you don't want to use both Mobility skills to try to oneshot people. If you miss them, you're basically dead.

13 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

Three thoughts from this:

 

1. This weapon looks fun as heck.

2. The weapons will be useless for Scourge and Harbinger unless they add traits that work with Power damage.

3. The Swords look to be completely destroying Dagger as life stealing power weapons, Greatsword for Power cleave, and Axe for power ranged.

A rare triple whammy.

It's basically as @Roadkizzle.2157said.

Scourge might benefit from it in wvw, but I can't see dps swords scourge being better than current heal scourge. Also the ranged swings could be animation locking yourself, if it's not the autoattack, which is very bad in wvw zerging.

So basically there's only power core Necro and reaper left to use those swords on, which is kinda limiting. Unless anet reworks some traits especially for harbinger.

in the Blogpost it says that skill 3 will heal yourself for each enemy struck, so basically Guardian gs3. Which is ok ish, but I don't believe there will be insane healing numbers without healing power on the Necro, since else this might just be a full heal on a Necro with healing power. Unless they make the scaling really bad.

The other skill showcased is another one that's interesting for competitive modes. But maybe not so for PvE dps. It says it's stealing life. Lifesteal is normally very low dmg and it can't crit. So unless the reactivation does a lot of dmg, you will most likely never use those skills in PvE for a dps rotation.

but we can't even say if those swords are good for PvE dps builds. They might just be intended for competitive, where, especially in spvp Necro was heavily lacking in terms of mobility.

All in all, we can say, that we don't know enough yet to say anything apart from: it looks really nice, nine new skills will make those swords feel very fresh, and the thematic is pretty dope.

But there's also a lot of questions stemming from this post. 

1. The already mentioned power harbinger rework - when?

2. Swords sound like a better mainhand dagger. So there kinda has to be a rework for dagger in the near future. But hey great news, Necros don't have a mainhand support weapon, so let's go!

3. Sine we saw a lot of ranged skills, swords might outshine axe in competitive modes, depending on numbers. But then axe has no purpose either. Which would set it up as another weapon, that needs some rework to have an identity.

Overall it sounds like this weapon is very number reliant. If the skills that consume health are not hitting hard or have other big benefits, you will never use them. What brings me to another question: how long are you able to use those flip skills. Or how long do you need to wait, to use the non flipped skill? Do the flip skills have cooldowns or do only the original skills have cooldowns. Else this might be a nightmare on guessing, when your flipped skills cooldown is ready again.

 

So many questions, guess we will see in a week.

 

Edited November 21, 2023 by Nimon.7840

[mazut.4296]

Nice, finaly got the sacrifice mechanic from gw1. Now lets hope the balance is there. Curious, if it will work in pvp or punishing yourselve will be to dangerous.

Excited!!!

Edited November 21, 2023 by mazut.4296

[Dadnir.5038]

6 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Maybe powerharb will have a chance.

Blight + Life cost is gonna make this very difficult. Unless the cost is in %age of life which would make thing even for all specializations. Still, the life cost is gonna make a glass elementalist look tanky in comparision.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Dadnir.5038

[psizone.8437]

8 hours ago, Loules.8601 said:

Also, to express one of arguments: psizone mentioned engineers - IIRC it’s just a jump, not target leap straight into enemy face.

It's a ground targeted leap that does most of its damage upon landing on an enemy. It's effectively the same thing.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

16 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

I would imagine that these swords will have to end up being a hybrid weapon that does a little bit of each of those, and if you wanted a specific function you'd still use the dagger, axe, or greatsword as it would provide greater benefits at that one thing

...that's at least how it would have to be to not muddy the design space too much - we'll have to see when the beta launches next Tuesday

Either that... Or the new weapons just obsolete all 3 existing ones... Which it looks like that's the case to me.

The only thing that there could be for the existing weapons over the swords is DPS. But if the DPS isn't high enough on the swords then they are dead on arrival. The Swords are not support weapons. If their DPS is below the meta then they won't have a place.

Why TF would anyone take daggers over the new swords?

The dagger has a lifesteal attack and a Self Bleed to Bleed the enemy... That's IT.

With the swords just what they've shown you get so much more. You get the self healing, you get damage, you get flexibility from range, you get mobility, you get self sacrifice. If the self healing is worse then dagger than it really wouldn't be worth highlighting in this trailer as a feature of the weapon.

What really does the Greatsword have? It has 2 cleaves and the AOE blinding. It has the pull but that is SO bad as to be effectively useless. The Greatsword has Whirl finishers. But Necro mainly has Dark fields so it does life steal but those are negligible. Condi Reaper loves the ice bolts but there is only one Ice Field and from experience it doesn't last long enough to use the weapon whirls and Shroud 4 is the Whirl finisher to use for that.

 

 

 

[Roadkizzle.2157]

15 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

My guess is that it will be semi-split; dagger will be for self heal and swords for support heals.

The best hope is for them to change the Dagger Life Siphon to an AOE heal and redo Dagger 3 into something useful so the Dagger will actually be a Support weapon.

It no longer has a place as a selfish Power weapon.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

15 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

It's not gonna be. 

They said Sword is gonna cost health to use their hard hitting flipskills, and only two mentioned skills of Sword set heals. Unless their auto heals or something, it's gonna be weaker than a Life Siphon Dagger in terms of sustain.

You only use the flip skills when you can afford to lose the life though. They mention in the teaser that the swords are good at keeping you alive but the flip skills give you the ability to burst damage as needed.

 

Greatsword also has Blinding Night dark field and Whirl finishers giving Life Steal. But they don't feature those abilities as sustain.

 

The life stealing on the swords was one of the most highlighted features on them. There's no way they're going to be worse than dagger.

[Roadkizzle.2157]

9 hours ago, Loules.8601 said:

To me it’s not like this. I don’t think that we see auto-attacks at all. And in all videos we see only a few skills at most. Considering it as a ranged weapon from this - looks questionably to me. 
 

Yes, considering that they don’t mentioned anything about them as a ranged weapons - I don’t think that we should 100% consider them as such. To be honest, we have info that mostly speaks against it from text (including no mention of them being ranged) and only a few skills without context. More so, target leap - 100% characteristic of melee weapon (at least as we know them right now). 

Also, to express one of arguments: psizone mentioned engineers - IIRC it’s just a jump, not target leap straight into enemy face.

And why we even need a skill to leap into enemy on ranged weapon? AFAIK we don’t have “utility” skills on weapons that’s not connected to them: like if leap -to reach melee range for Reaper or smth. It also doesn’t make sense for Scourge - and we also don’t have weapons that straightforwardly not working on some elite specs. 
 

According to post, skill 4 - area skill (so it’s a range part on offhand), and skill 3 - melee leap. We don’t know about autos but 0 mentions about them as long range ones in text (and afaik Anet always inform us about such things). 
To be fair, I can probably agree with necro sword as ranged weapon… but offhand one. Mainhand, from all info that we know and can logically deduce - melee weapon. 

The teaser videos show skills that aren't mentioned and have been showing the majority of the toolkit.

They describe the leap and an AOE devouring Life Steal.

But in the trailer they show dual waves going to enemies which seems like it'll be OH 5 because it uses both weapons.

There are also single wave ranged attacks shown.

 

If the swords are designed to be melee weapons then it seems like such a big stretch of the imagination that they would not have landed not even a SINGLE attack in melee in the trailer.

 

 

There aren't any viable Power builds for Scourge or Harbinger. There are 3 available Power weapons for the Necromancer though. Adding a 4th one will not suddenly make a power Scourge viable. And if the weapon won't be viable for Scourge then why the hell would they be obligated to avoid putting a leap on the weapon that doesn't mesh with Scourges gameplay.

 

The leap on Sword 3 will synergize very well with Sword 4.

Leap into the middle of a bunch of enemies then suck the life out of all of them before dodging back away from the melee.

If the swords are 100% range then the leap will make MUCH more sense than the Engineer jump attack. If for no other reason then to get even more enemies in range of the AOE attacks.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Roadkizzle.2157

[goldengut.9134]

for someone that works on balance how can we get a weapon set that does nothing to help balance our class out compared to other classes?  sorry but for me i wanted something that gave our class something we don't have much of atm, a block, evade, stab maybe a type of reflect, but as it stands now it seems like another useless weapon that replaces a different useless weapon. I'll have to wait and see what the weapons skills are, but honestly as of right now I'm highly disappointed that they didn't really come up with anything new.

[Teknomancer.4895]

8 hours ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

The best hope is for them to change the Dagger Life Siphon to an AOE heal and redo Dagger 3 into something useful so the Dagger will actually be a Support weapon.

It no longer has a place as a selfish Power weapon.

IDK about that, I've always found Dark Pact's immob to be useful, if situational. YMMV.

As for support vs. selfish power I've never really bought into the concept of a "support weapon" anyway.  Weapons are for damaging people, not helping them. 🤔 That should come from your stats, traits and utility skills, of which the most obviously supportive are your choice of several Blood Magic options:  Blood Bond/Ritual of Life, Vampiric Presence/Life From Death, Transfusion/Unholy Martyr.

That said, a Cleric's dagger/Magi's warhorn combo with the aforementioned Blood Magic traits is remarkably effective for self and group sustain. Honestly, the MH sword skills will need to be really shiny for me to trade it for MH dagger.

However OH dagger desperately needs a rework. It's the worst OH we have imo, both of its skills are almost completely worthless to a Necromancer. At best, they're redundant; it's not like we have any shortage of bleed or condi removal and inflicting blind is little more than a joke.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Teknomancer.4895
clarity

[Obtena.7952]

20 hours ago, goldengut.9134 said:

for someone that works on balance how can we get a weapon set that does nothing to help balance our class out compared to other classes?  sorry but for me i wanted something that gave our class something we don't have much of atm, a block, evade, stab maybe a type of reflect, but as it stands now it seems like another useless weapon that replaces a different useless weapon. I'll have to wait and see what the weapons skills are, but honestly as of right now I'm highly disappointed that they didn't really come up with anything new.

That's a nonsensical take. Seems pretty obvious to lots of people here that the mobility the sword is offering is doing exactly the thing you think we don't have much of. You might not be aware but that kind of effect has been on people's wish list for a long time. 

In otherwords, Swords are giving something the class lacks AND something people wanted. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Seis.4736]

Can't you just melee with a range weapon?

IF this ends up being a ranged weapon, can't you just stand in melee range as it is with other ranged weapon when stacking?

I'm just worried that the swords might not generate a lot of LF. It seems they're focus on health utilization instead. 

[draxynnic.3719]

22 hours ago, Loules.8601 said:

To me it’s not like this. I don’t think that we see auto-attacks at all. And in all videos we see only a few skills at most. Considering it as a ranged weapon from this - looks questionably to me. 
 

Yes, considering that they don’t mentioned anything about them as a ranged weapons - I don’t think that we should 100% consider them as such. To be honest, we have info that mostly speaks against it from text (including no mention of them being ranged) and only a few skills without context. More so, target leap - 100% characteristic of melee weapon (at least as we know them right now). 

Also, to express one of arguments: psizone mentioned engineers - IIRC it’s just a jump, not target leap straight into enemy face.

And why we even need a skill to leap into enemy on ranged weapon? AFAIK we don’t have “utility” skills on weapons that’s not connected to them: like if leap -to reach melee range for Reaper or smth. It also doesn’t make sense for Scourge - and we also don’t have weapons that straightforwardly not working on some elite specs. 
 

According to post, skill 4 - area skill (so it’s a range part on offhand), and skill 3 - melee leap. We don’t know about autos but 0 mentions about them as long range ones in text (and afaik Anet always inform us about such things). 
To be fair, I can probably agree with necro sword as ranged weapon… but offhand one. Mainhand, from all info that we know and can logically deduce - melee weapon. 

I can see your logic here, and it largely applies to most professions, but necromancer has subverted it a few times before. Core shroud, harbinger shroud, and necromancer trident all have both a gap-closer (on a flipover for core shroud) and a ranged autoattack. The theory seems to be that you can sit back and auto if you want, but all three have high-impact skills for use at close range, so there's an expectation that at some point you might want to dive in to do some heavier damage. Wouldn't surprise me if they're going for a land version of that approach.

19 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Blight + Life cost is gonna make this very difficult. Unless the cost is in %age of life which would make thing even for all specializations. Still, the life cost is gonna make a glass elementalist look tanky in comparision.

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind sometime after making the post you were quoting. All the more reason it could end up being mostly a reaper set.

[Batalix.2873]

I don't hate this but man these mechanics are janky. They make both the old weapons and the especs feel underdesigned. I hope there are plans to bring up the rest of the weapon design to this level and delete especs if this is really the direction they are going.

[mirage.8046]

I love that sword offers a vampiric-like playstyle, although that is kind of present on main-hand dagger and blood magic spec. No matter how good at positioning one is on necro, mobility is limited for disengaging or engaging.

Main-hand sword will absolutely replace dagger or axe for my power reaper. For power off-hands, sword will be a far better pick than our other weapons. For scourge, I imagine sword will not be as suicidal to use, because you can offset sacrificing your health from sword's secondary skills with barrier. Harbinger would be shaking in fear though.

[Angel Hunter D.5037]

3 hours ago, Seis.4736 said:

Can't you just melee with a range weapon?

IF this ends up being a ranged weapon, can't you just stand in melee range as it is with other ranged weapon when stacking?

I'm just worried that the swords might not generate a lot of LF. It seems they're focus on health utilization instead. 

Maybe it'll be like gunsaber and does more in melee range? Could be interesting if the life force generation required melee range but the other effects were ranged 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Angel Hunter D.5037

[Dadnir.5038]

4 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind sometime after making the post you were quoting. All the more reason it could end up being mostly a reaper set.

Curiously I'd put my bet on scourge instead of reaper. Amongst the various specializations, Scourge is the one that make the best out of the various weaponsets as it's never locked out of them due to a shroud. If barrier can substitute to the life cost I can see a good strike damage build emerging for the scourge.

[Asum.4960]

I'm cautiously optimistic about these, emphasis cautiously. 

On one hand, I've thought I'd never see the day Necromancer would get any mechanic beyond Boon Corrupt/Removal on weapons - so even just a single mobility skill (although granted, we don't know the extend of it yet, and it might get nerfed before ever seeing the light of release like Harbinger Shroud's mobility) is in a way revolutionary for Necromancer. 

On the other hand - while I don't think Swords as weapons would have been a fitting place for it, seeing how almost every profession got support elements on their new Weapons, it is pretty strange to see Necro, the one class with essentially close to absolute zero group support/interaction on their weapons (literally just some Regen and Condi removal on Staff), be one of the few exceptions here yet again. 

Additionally, it's a bit odd that they chose Strike Damage for these. If Sword/Sword turns out to be good, it essentially invalidates Axe, Dagger MH, Greatsword, Staff, Focus and Warhorn as weapons, in PvE at least, in my book, which never offered much compelling benefits to begin with, since Necro weapons largely have just been damage with little to no mechanics, like mobility, evades, blocks, boon support, projectile mitigation, cleanses, combo interactions, stealth, etc. 

With Scepter now also disappearing behind Pistol, and Dagger OH having been replaced by Torch in the Condi Landscape - we'll likely see just Pistol/Torch (Condi) and Sword/Sword (Power) as only proper "options" (with Scepter and Greatword on swap at most), with still zero dedicated Support options, and a graveyard of obsolete weapon kits. 

Now I've seen some people being optimistic here about potentially Dagger MH and Warhorn, or maybe even Staff, becoming proper Support Weapons now. About Axe reworks, Focus overhauls, and what have you. 

But I've been waiting for those for almost 11 years already, and nothing prevented a say proper Dagger, Warhorn and Focus overhaul up to this point either. Sword/Sword existing doesn't really make this more likely - unless old Weapon, Utility and Trait reworks will be the focus/"feature" of the next expansion or something. 

 

As for the Sword's themselves - I don't really share the excitement of some others about things like Health Sacrifice as a mechanic. 

Mechanics like that are usually either too punishing, too weak or obsolete/non-mechanics. It's not like they can give Sword/Sword crazy damage for the cost of health, as the kit would then overperform in group content where they can be freely used with a healer. So more likely, Necro will have to sacrifice health to do just as much damage as every other class does without that downside - which will then just screw the kit in solo play and such, without that dedicated healer by your side. Either that, or they make the cost and/or benefit so low that it doesn't really matter in either setting. 

It's like Dagger MH 3 self Bleed, or Corruption's self conditions, Blight, or comparing Signet of Mercy res vs. Signet of Undeath res, etc. - it's not like having to punish yourself makes these kits do anything fantastical above what weapon kits or Utilities of other classes can do without that downside, quite the opposite, they are often even weaker in effect despite of their downsides. You just have to pay an extra price because it's "thematic" to Necro, without any actual unique benefit or mechanical complexity.

So this isn't exactly a selling point of Swords to me - but at least a straight health sacrifice won't be a Dagger 3 "screw yourself in solo play by making you stuck in combat with a self Bleed for little to no benefit" kind of deal. 

But who knows, with them being advertised as "stealing life" as well, maybe they got the balance right and it will make for a fun little life juggling gameplay loop - let's just hope it doesn't include any Life Siphon as mechanic though, dooming the weapon kit like Focus 4 and Warhorn 5 due to not benefitting from any Damage modifiers and lack of ability to Crit. 

Last but not least, I do think these Weapons need to come with a complete overhaul or massive buff to Power Harbinger and it's top line - otherwise, from what we know so far, this is literally just for Reaper, which between >50% Shroud uptime, Nightfall and Well pre-casts into Shroud, and Gravedigger Spam below 50% (which imo does need to change as well), barely spends any time using any weapon skills. Or potentially even Sand Savant, Feed from Corruption and Nourishing Ashes making room for a Scourge Power line, idk.

Strike Damage weapon kits are pretty much the one thing Necro 1. already had in abundance (just bad and in need of reworks since a decade), 2. really has only one single Elite Spec as use case as of now, which 3. barely spends any time on actually using Weapon skills.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Asum.4960

[Roadkizzle.2157]

7 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Curiously I'd put my bet on scourge instead of reaper. Amongst the various specializations, Scourge is the one that make the best out of the various weaponsets as it's never locked out of them due to a shroud. If barrier can substitute to the life cost I can see a good strike damage build emerging for the scourge.

How would the Scourge support Power swords?

The Swords with the damage buffs from Reaper and Harbinger traitline's in mind to get the proper damage levels needed for end game content.

 

Without the Scourge having any damage buffs for strike damage how are you thinking you'll build a Scourge to make use of power swords?

I had tried making a Scourge making use of the great life force generation of the dagger and taking advantage of the AOE sand skills... But it just didn't work.

Without condi damage I just don't see the swords being better for Scourge.

[Dadnir.5038]

4 minutes ago, Roadkizzle.2157 said:

How would the Scourge support Power swords?

The Swords with the damage buffs from Reaper and Harbinger traitline's in mind to get the proper damage levels needed for end game content.

 

Without the Scourge having any damage buffs for strike damage how are you thinking you'll build a Scourge to make use of power swords?

I had tried making a Scourge making use of the great life force generation of the dagger and taking advantage of the AOE sand skills... But it just didn't work.

Without condi damage I just don't see the swords being better for Scourge.

A few points:

• Scourge is never locked out of it's weapons.
• Scourge benefit of death perception while F5 is running making it the only one that have the damage bonus applied to weaponskills.
• Scourge have the benefit of the barrier cushion.
• Scourge's shade mechanism work both at melee range and mid range (900 range).

[Tiviana.2650]

Ahh yes the perfect spec for the masochist! I can see my healer now biting her nails