Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Necromancer

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

2 hours ago, Decinomicon.4619 said:

Sword skill one SHOULD NOT adopt the skin of the legendary being used, it makes it impossible to see how wide the attack is when using a legendary.

Absolutely agree with this. If they want the Legendaries to give VFX they need to make it specific to this skill and still have the width

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

feedback time!

#1: weak as a kitten. Basically, a ranged Greatsword #1 with some healing. The animation is okay, but I'm not a fan.

recasting: Aside from #2, all others are incredibly nonintuitive. If you hold the key, you cast both immediately (except for #4), but then, what's the point? If you wait, you basically lose the chance to recast due to the short window you have (just like DS#2).

#2: basically GS#2 2.0. Like Gravedigger, you use it off-cooldown, then use #1 to heal yourself, I guess. The damage is not impressive considering its attachment to heal sacrifice.

#3: OMFG! Don't know about PvE, but in WvW? HOLY COW!!!

#4: technically Dagger #5 but clunkier with a recast that's more like a "why?".

#5: okay, this one is really confusing. If it hits, you won't be able to recast, so you only fear if you hold it and you're on top of something, which makes it being ranged completely pointless. As a melee skill, I see many uses in both PvE and WvW, but then again, why make it ranged in the first place?

so far, #3 is a blessing for WvW, and since I'm used to killing (a lot) mostly with Reaper Shroud and utility skills rather than weapon skills, I'm having a lot of fun, even if I don't understand the other 4 skills.

of course, this is a beta, so they just can't give us a high DPS weapon to demolish everything. We'll have to wait and see the final form but try to provide more comprehensive feedback rather than just saying "it's too weak".

Edited November 28, 2023 by Arianth Moonlight.6453

[Raught.3294]

55 minutes ago, mazut.4296 said:

None of the skills are finishers. Could use at least one, please! Path of Gluttony or Hungering Maelstrom could be blast?!?

+1 to this, Necromncer could really use some combos.

Path of Gluttony should be leap, and Gormandize and Saitate should be blast

[KrHome.1920]

WvW duelling and smallscale perspective:

Sword/Warhorn will replace Dagger/Warhon. It's better in everything, but not because sword is so good (it is quite lacklustre, no combos, no boons, very few conditions), but because mainhand dagger is so bad.

Blood Bank synergizes well with the health costs of the secondary attacks and keeps them on an accepatable level.

As expected after having seen the promo video a few days ago: GS + Sword/Warhorn Reaper plays great and looks great.

Core necro got some minimal mobility. It's still a trash spec for competive gaming but at least got a bit better.

Edited November 28, 2023 by KrHome.1920

[Raught.3294]

So far I'm loving Pistol/Sword Scourge in sPvP

[Asum.4960]

My expectations were fairly low/cautious for these, but I have to say, my first impression was quite the disappointment nonetheless. 

Largely PvE perspective:

The weapon(s) imo feels quite slow and clunky. Damage feels quite low. Lifeforce feels quite low. The whole health sacrifice mechanic, as expected, imo feels like an annoying tacked on Necromancer theme tax at best. The mobility, while quite nice to finally have on a weapon, feels misplaced on this one - this is what Dagger 3 should have always been, not on this ranged kit. 

More specifically:

1. The AA: I just simply don't like AA's with harsh cadence breaks in them. Much like with Guard Hammer AA (which at least has a significant pay-off on the final Hit) this immediately makes a Weapon feel clunky to me. I much prefer AA's to distinguish themselves in visual, icon and audio design (see Necro Scepter) than feeling like a stutter to play. Also too much visual noise around character.

2. Just feels pretty floaty and boring - but while Ravenous Wave is fine, the flip over isn't. Satiate doing less damage than the (already lacking) AA, unless the target is below 50% health (do we need more of this after Gravedigger, Unholy Feast, Close to Death and co.?) - at which point it just does Ravenous Wave's damage again, except with a higher cast time and no LF gain, while also chunking your health.. what, why?

3. Path of Gluttony is Mobility on a Necromancer Weapon, so obviously amazing. Also has decent healing, very nice. The flip over is just the same again but with Boon Corrupt, so, cool. But the Life Cost negates all the healing of both uses and then some, just because Necromancer apparently always needs some arbitrary downside to get what others get for free. Meh. It's still easily the best thing about this weapon by far - but as mentioned above, this weapon doesn't feel like the place for it. The health cost, and the fact that it puts you into combat for a moment when used for mobility (and the inherent speed debuff of that) is just counterintuitive, unnecessary and feels bad, across the kit, but especially here. Could also be an evade or at the very least leap finisher.

4. Hungering Maelstrom feels incredibly slow and I don't really see the payoff. This feels like someone just looked at Focus 4&5 and decided to make it one skill - and it somehow feels worse than both of these, which both are already lacking and underwhelming. The only upside is it's AoE and has a cool Skill Effect - making good use of that nice Axe 3 crunch. 4k HP cost though? For what? These extra Life sacrifices are just not justified for what the kit does (or rather, doesn't).

5. Devouring Visage is.. fine, I guess? Could use more damage over a longer duration and then be a nice Shroud-Entry pre-cast along with Wells to benefit from Death Perception and Reaper's Onslaught. But as is, somewhat underwhelming - although arguably the least clunky skill of the kit, flip over notwithstanding. A Fear on Consume is nice, but not so much at an almost 5k HP cost. LF gain seems too low, along with just Ravenous Wave. Get's hard deleted by any projectile mitigation. All in all just a far worse Reaper's Mark with extra steps, counters and a steep life cost.

 

Generally, once again no Boons, Evades/Blocks, Combo Interactions (Fields/Finishers), Projectile Mitigation, etc. is disappointing. Especially with how niche the weapons as Power Kit already are to just Reaper. Power Harb is still awful, and even if it wasn't, the health sacrifice mechanic would be even much more punishing there. The healing here and there on the Weapon would be fine, if the sacrifices wouldn't take away as much multiple times over. The Kit doesn't really have any satisfying builder/spender loop, rather than it just takes, without payoff.

Outside of Path of Gluttony, I'm not particularly looking forward to using these for anything in this state (and I likely will always wish that had just been a Dagger 3 rework instead). Other's having observed pathing errors/terrain clipping on some of the skills, which knowing Skills like GS5, RS2, etc., likely won't be fixed for a decade to come, is even more concerning. 

P.s.:

And after Harbinger's Elixir's, I hope these Placeholders really don't stay as the final Skill Icons for Necro this time 😉

Edited November 30, 2023 by Asum.4960

[SoulGuardian.6203]

Most probably the best weapon of the lot.

Though, a lot of the animations are copies of other weapons. 

Do you mind very much placing a health syphon in one of the skills?

Maybe in skill 3 or so?

That would be so good and amazing.

[KyiuTec.7926]

To be honest, I'm disappointed. The weapons themselves are really good, but the damage is really bad. At least it wouldn't find a place in PvE. The animation and attacks are also very slow. Even the "bugged" autoattacks are slower than those from the greatsword. By the way, according to the description, there is supposed to be "life" in abundance, but that's not the case. In my opinion a very big disadvantage. You just can't heal up with the slow attacks. By the way, I noticed that there is only one attack to charge the shroud.

The weapon is made for the Harbinger, but you can just lie on the ground. 4k life drain from an attack and 25% from Harbinger.

[XECOR.2814]

- low damage in competitive game modes on all skills.
- sword#1 chain projectiles fly very low in height and can be jumped and avoided which might not be intended interaction.
- sword#3 doesn't have leap finisher. 
- sword#5 initial cast is very low impact and you cant use it by targeting an enemy behind you (bad qol it fires in front of you even if you target enemy behind you).
It would be better if it worked even while facing away from enemy cause thats when this skill is required, for peel.
Imo it should do the fear on both casts.
If you want to make offhand sword viable for any scenario instead of focus or torch, at least this much is required.

Some common points of feedback:
- In a typical necromancer fashion there is no access to any kind of boons that could've been there to assist the power based gameplay namely (swiftness, might, fury, quickness, resistance).
We are still stuck in Spite, Soul Reaping setup for all power based setups because of low critical chance(so forced into soul reaping) and no might generation(hence forced into spite).
- Similarly, no condi cleanse, evades or any kind of movement impairing cleanse to facilitate going in close range with leaps while giving up hp which is a death sentence for all necromancer specs even reaper.
- The tradeoffs of casting flip skills feel very bad atm. The damage is not enough and in reality most of the times just doing more damage is not enough, you really need some kind of boons, conditions or anything else to confirm you pressure enemy especially when u are giving up your hp to do these effects.

Edited November 28, 2023 by XECOR.2814

[Apokriphos.7042]

My comments are from a WvW perspective.

I really wanted to like these weapons. The flip skills add some sorely lacking complexity to necromancer play, but they need a lot of work.

1. Auto-attack projectiles at 900 range are useless in any large or medium comp/zerg fight due to pervasive reflect/block with 100% uptime. Even worse, the third chain of the auto attack gets absorbed by any bump in the terrain. It is functionally useless. The projectiles are also very slow traveling, and most classes simply outrun them with swiftness, let alone superspeed.
2. As others have already said, in actual fights - the attacks are extremely low impact/weak, lack function, boons, and any sort of finisher - in comparison to all of the classes I fought so far today - which admittedly also were given new sources of damage avoidance, not just 2 450 leaps - which should probably be moved to 600 range each. Bare minimum there should be % projectile finisher on all projectile attacks, and a blast for 4,5, and leap for 3.
3. The 1 boon corrupt is reduced from the 2 shown in the preview stream. This needs to be returned to 2 boon corrupt. It still will barely ever be used anyway because the necromancer rarely uses the flip mobility skill to intentionally leap into an enemy but instead for running away, but will add meaningful risk/reward to the flip skill. It is already rough when you transition to combat speed due to the lifeloss mechanic. No block on the weapon set makes running double sword with its tepid life-sacrifice trade-off exceptionally risky and definitely not worth it at the moment.
4. You would think this would be a match with the newest prestige class - Harbinger - but their synergy with life sacrifice weapons is really bad. Their mechanic makes discrete life loss utterly devastating in a fight (25-30% of total health per use at high stacks) when they are already being targeted (because of no shroud protection). Having your own weapons weak flip attacks require life sacrifice made them unavailable for me during almost all intense fights. 

Ultimately, I think this is a good idea with lackluster execution. The damage needs a significant buff to be worthwhile, in attack speed, projectile speed, and overall skill impact should bring some unique or unusual flavor on the fight. Some examples to make flip skills more interesting - reflect bubble on skill 4 post use, condi cleanse on skill 2, a pull on skill 5 flip. Right now its just boring variations on strike damage + 1 non-dmg condition, and is really only additional mobility - which is worse then all of the other new weapons atm. 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Apokriphos.7042

[NecroSummonsMors.7816]

This is my feedback (PVP prospective: berserker amu-dragon hunter rune-Soul Reaping with Death perception-harbinger with implacable foe or reaper power traits):

1) Auto attack chain: dmg is decent enough. Big problem is that if u try to attack from a ledge, for example Battle of Khylo to down below on the ground, you cannot hit anything unless it's it's distant from right below the edge. Attack will all miss. This is a big problem. Need fixing i should be able to attack right below the edge of a ledge. Big sad that the auto is reflectable/blockable by anti projectile domes. It makes weapon useless vs classes that already necro has a hard time against. At least a couple of life force gain % on each auto should be added, idk maybe 1%-1%-3%? Also idk why even with quickness auto doesn't seem to get that much faster...maybe increase baseline projectile velocity

2) Ravenous Wave: I think the dmg is meh (2.7-3k no might stacks), and Satiate (2.6-3k no might stacks) never really seems to be so impactful

3) Path of Gluttony: 450 range seems short too me, for the rest i guess kinda ok sustain?

4)Hungering Maelstrom: takes way too long to cast, the flip skill does too little dmg

5)Devouring Visage: low dmg considering the cooldown, seems that to get the orb back you have to press the skill right away or u get no orb. Also really only fear on way back? No dmg at all? This skill should really be unblockable it has no impact otherwise, since it's reflectable and it seems to kind of be a cc ?

Generally I'm liking the sword, theme seems good the auto seems to be nice cleave and not too obstructed by terrain, I only wish sword off-hand was more impactful. And in flip skills are lacking in strenght. I have to admit it fits well with reaper kit, but it lacks dmg

Almost forgot: pls adjust the scaling with healing power on siphoning heal effects, because if I invest in healing more to heal more I should get some sort of significant return.

Edited November 28, 2023 by NecroSummonsMors.7816
Clarity and things I forgot lol

[TwistedAlga.4235]

It feels and looks very cool, actually. I like it.

[Izaak.3945]

Useless for anything other than a power build.  As a scourge who dabbles in harbinger now and then, I would never wield them; No cleanses and still susceptible to reflects.  Not sure what the intended build is for these.

[Arladk.8654]

I have two complaints with the vfxs:

1. The third auto attack (Deathly Enervation) have some particles "backfiring". It is disruptive, if you happen to have the camera at a fairly low angle, as it fills up a considerable amount of your screen.
2. Sword skill 4 (Hungering Maelstrom) is abnormally large. For a skill that only does damage and applies 5 stacks of vulnerability, it hardly needs to command so much attention.

Obviously, this is coming from someone who wants nothing more than to reduce visual clutter (I'd even add an option to disable backpieces, effects and minis, if the decision was left up to me). On the flipside, the animation and vfx of sword skill 2, 3 and 5 are all great imo.

 

My last point pertain to PvE balance and sword coefficients.

• Sword main- and offhand coefficients are very underwhelming.

Swords do very little damage AND have a cost associated with them (that also reduce writ uptime). This basically means that swords will never be used by power necro DPS builds in PvE, since they lower your potential damage ceiling and increase the chance of you going downstate. PUGs play safe comps and builds. Statics play more risky comps and builds, but with an emphasis on effectiveness. This effectively leaves little room for necro swords. I am of course overexaggerating to illustrate my point. Regardless, as I see it currently, swords will almost exclusively be played for its utillity (leaps, corrupts, healing) on support builds. This is only made worse by the fact that necro is severely lacking in the power support department (which swords had the opportunity to change).

Conclusion: Sword coefficients need to be looked at to make it stand out and have a clear-cut use-case.

[Swagger.1459]

These swords are fun to use, really excited to test them out more! 

[Allium Cepa.6927]

I like that health sacrifice is back. But it feels lacking. 
Back in GW1, the main benefit of life sacrifice skills was most of them were way less energy expensive compared to other similar skills. GW2 does not have an energy resource (ignoring rev), so there needs to be some other benefit for the sacrifice. A new/updated trait or two that trigger when sacrificing health would be my choice. Flip skills should be available a couple seconds longer after using the main skill.

From PvE perspective.
Sword 1: This feels fine. A little less damage than axe, but get chill and healing. It can hit multiple targets but is a reflectable projectile. I like it.
Sword 2: When using both main skill and flip, the damage is a bit low, or needs to do something extra.  It has about the same damage as Axe2, but has less life force gain, a health cost and enemy health threshold requirement. The only benefit being it can hit more than one target. Flip should be instant cast.
Sword 3: I like it. But it is strange having a gap closer on a raged weapon. I guess it's fine on a reaper before they hit shroud or something. It just feels like a good skill on the wrong weapon.
Sword 4: On paper, this skill looks fine. But it feels a little off when I use it. My gut say the flip should be unblockable and faster cast.
Sword 5: I don't like it. The base skill has the same damage as reapers mark (staff 5) but longer cooldown and is a projectile. The flip skill has a high health cost for only a fear, something reapers mark also does, without health cost. In PvE fear isn't that important, even though it is an impressive 2 second base duration.

[TheTrinian.3291]

What if the flip-over skill caused am equal amount of blight instead of direct health drain? Harbingers would have their power blight stacking weapon that would just keep them weakened and core/reaper/scourge would still be "sacrificing" health temporarily until they can get back into shroud and it would make the really poor healing from sword 1 and 3 make sense with the sacrificed health eventually coming back after 10 seconds. 

[HotDelirium.7984]

It was a good try on reusing effects but it needs new ones. That bladesworn auto attack is so noticeable. The effects should be a bit more edgy and gross, the lines are too cut and pretty. The second skills don't really feel connected to the first visually.  If we infused them with green necro enermy let that then come from then not just give us these green effects on us only. Feels disjointed. I want to suck the life from their essence not just see a lil effect. I want to feel something.

Skill 5's bullet is so wierd. It needs to be a different effect or concept or maybe even a running zombie/creature instead of a green bullet ball.

PLEASE, new effects and actual substance not just flashes.

[Tidalwave.9384]

I was really excited about the swords but overall I have very little positive to say about them after playing for a while in WVW.

As more common notes, I  found the health costs to be fine where they're sizable but not suicidal though the effects themselves are another story. Also, I hope the flipover skills have noticeably different icons than the normal ones. The placeholders highlight that you need clarity on which skills you're about to activate, which might be missed due to the mass of particles flying around. All of the flip-over skills could use a few more seconds timer to activate as currently, it feels like you cannot sit on the flip-over skill at all.

For the specific skills

• auto-chain: The chain has two main problems; first, it's incredibly slow making it incredibly awkward to use. With quickness, it felt alright but this seems to be the trend with essentially every necro weapon skill.  Second, the projectiles themselves are unreliable. They can be easily sidestepped and since they follow the ground they get obstructed by just about anything making the actual range of it irrelevant since you're not hitting anything after like 450 range. The heal is nice but with how slow the attacks are and how much stuff there is to cast with the weapon overall there seems to be very little time to focus on the healing aspect instead of doing something more impactful. The projectiles themselves look very good but they might be too busy for just an auto attack since the game suffers from too much visual clutter already.
• #2:  Overall feels good to use. It's surprisingly and refreshingly fast for a necro skill. On the downside, the flip-over has a long aftercast, especially compared to what it does. The vfx of the skill does make the range and the hitbox of the skill feel a bit unclear.
• #3: Mobility? On my necro? By far the best-performing skill of the bunch. There seems to be a weird aftercast once the leap is over and the life-drain vfx kicks in which could use cleaning up to make the skill more fluid. Similarly, leaping on fast-moving targets looks incredibly weird currently but the leap has a large enough aoe to hit things despite this.  Also, having the traditional #3rd skill boon corrupt on the flip-over skill makes it incredibly committal to use for the boon removal, it would likely be better to switch it into the first leap or have it on both. However, the main problem with this skill is the kit it's attached to. Sword has no other skills to benefit from being in melee and if anything, you want to stay at range so why does it have a double leap skill in its kit that benefits from leaping on top of a target? This makes the weapon disjointed in what it's actually trying to do.  You could swap dagger #3 with this and both of the weapons would have a stronger identity in what they're trying to do. My one hope is that Anet does not fix this by just making the other skills hit twice in melee as it would solve none of the other issues the weapon has.
• #4: way too long of a cast time for what it does. The flip-over skill is fine but hitting a moving target with the first one is hard enough with a weapon that has no control tools attached to it. Outside of that, there's very little to say about this skill, which is not a good look for a skill with a 20-second cooldown. It just has very little impact.
• #5: if dagger #4 does not see play due to its unreliability, this gets added to the same pile. Unlike mesmer shield #5, having asymmetrical skills on the orb passings will be problematic, especially since the utility part is in the return portion, which is harder to hit. Having a high skill cap on a skill is fine, but the payoff needs to be there, which it currently just isn't especially compared to the cost. Moreover, people will default to an easier-to-use skill if there are two similar ones. If you wanted an off-hand CC weapon, you would take warhorn in every scenario where that CC needs to land when you cast it. Currently, you can't really get the fear off even in melee range reliably and the further you are the more unlikely it is for the orb to land to even have a chance to fear somebody.

This all is with ignoring the massive elephant in the room for both weapons, which is that neither of them deal any damage nor do they provide any real utility for a class that is absolutely desperate for it. Straight damage numbers on both of these would need to go up considerably (like around 33%) if they wanted to fill the niche of pure-damage weapons. For utility, the leap is all you're getting. There are no debilitating conditions outside of short chill, boons, blocks, reflects, finishers or anything else that would allow for skill expression outside of just landing the skills for damage.

As it currently stands, the main-hand sword would likely just replace the axe since they fill similar enough design space and mobility is way too valuable to skip and you would rely on the shroud to deal damage. For the off-hand sword, the only place I can see it being used is in PvE where it would fill the niche of pure direct damage off-hand which necro currently lacks, which speaks volumes as the weapon hits like a pool noodle now. In competitive modes I'm highly suspicious it would ever see play as it's simply too unreliable and other off-hands do its job better, which was already a low bar to beat. I also don't see a reason to play sword/sword as the weapons do not complement each other at all though I'm not sure if this was intended or not.

Compared to the other weapons the different classes were getting, it feels like necro just threads the same ground it has always been on while others are getting new tools to open up their repertoire. IMO the swords need an overhaul or all they see are very niche use cases.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Tidalwave.9384
slight touch-up

[DarkLancer.1902]

I was super excited for this, but WOW, what a let-down. Low damage, slow, clunky, clearly meant to operate exclusively at maximum range... with a bloody useless gap-closer tacked in for no reason. It works with a swarm Reaper build, but nothing else can make it viable. The concept was good, but execeution was lousy.

0/10 overall. Scrap and rebuild from the ground up.

[Valefal.8192]

When attacking without a target selected, the first attack in the autoattack chain has a ridiculously long aftercast. It's roughly a second long, and bumps the chain to take longer to complete than the Greatsword chain does.

Quote

It seems there's an issue with auto-attacking at range where the projectile has to dissipate before the next cast can begin.  This makes it very slow at range regardless of quickness.  Speeding up the projectile should help with this problem as well as its lackluster performance against moving targets.

This, from Drarnor Kunoram, is closer to the actual issue. It seems more likely that the problem is that the projectile has to hit your target (and a target is required). This is observable by being in melee range and selecting/unselecting a target and going through the AA chain.

What I had not noticed before about this was that if a target is selected and you use the AA chain at range, it also slows down.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Valefal.8192
Original assessment of the problem was incorrect.

[Teknomancer.4895]

Aside from the very nice visual effects and the much-needed mobility, it seems underwhelming. I just don't see any compelling reason to choose this over any other MH weapon.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

It seems there's an issue with auto-attacking at range where the projectile has to dissipate before the next cast can begin.  This makes it very slow at range regardless of quickness.  Speeding up the projectile should help with this problem as well as its lackluster performance against moving targets.

The fact the projectiles all behave like Deathly Swarm where they travel along the ground makes the entire weapon useless if you have defenders on a wall in WvW, and since this is seemingly intended to be paired with greatsword, that leaves the necro with no way to hit targets up top, despite having a weapon with sufficient range to do so.

Path of Gluttony/Gorge would indeed fit much better on dagger 3 than sword and Dark Pact would fit better on sword than dagger.

Even in PvE, I was really feeling the lack of utility on the weapons, and Necro weapons are not known for utility.  Maybe there needs to be some additional boons or conditions.  Devouring Maelstrom needs to have it's short cooldown before being able to cast Gormandize removed.  Consume DEFINITELY needs to do something more than just 2 seconds of Fear.  It is nowhere near worth the 5k health cost.

[felincyriac.5981]

why is it so slow and clunky? And it hits like a wet noodle...

[Apok.1623]

lackluster slow and clunky ranged damage :(  better options on other kits.