Necro Spear, Sustain Mechanics, and a Harbinger rework that eats its OWN life energies.

[Vooksa.2941]

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Like I said in my previous post, it's already been proven to strong of an effect for the game, nerfed 2 day only after the player got access to such thing. The point is that you're comparing the gain of a boon every 3 seconds to a potential 10 to 20 cleanse per second (which is beyond insanity).

The issue there is that you aren't grasping what I write.

Like I said in MY previous post, "This interaction is too strong" isn't a good enough reason to delete the interaction altogether. There are plenty of precedents to indicate that [Blood Bank] could be made to interact with Scourge traits on a 10s or even 20s iCD, including several "automatic"-style traits or trait interactions, and getting spooked by what's an obviously overpowered application of barrier tech isn't an excuse to say "uh, this isn't actually really barrier". It's inconsistent, doesn't communicate it in the tooltip to players, and sucks.

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

On another hand skills and traits can be changed at will or even removed without causing any issue in the game.

Other than Harbinger's shroud mechanic, which I consider to lacking in unique tech or creativity to be a meaningful addition to the game as an elite spec, especially given that we're unlikely to get more elite specs in the future, everything that I recommended is a trait change. All of it. 

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

You're flaunting Signet of undeath but the part of the skill that sacrifice health is unpopular while the the swords are balanced in such a way that the health sacrifice are inconsequential (The reward of the health sacrifice of the swords is the sustain of the sword and the produce risk/reward is null).

As for the last rite bonus, let's be fair, nobody ever said: "Wow! I was saved by this trait's healing power increase!"

Like I've said before: If health sacrifice, something that Necromancer is in a unique position to adopt as a build mechanic, is something that Necro is expected to offer as a build mechanic, we simply don't have the tech right now to make it viable. I'm not saying Signet of Undeath, sword life-sacrifice, and spear low-health sustain is good: I'm saying that right now it's bad, and we do not have the tech to make it good, or make it make sense.

It ends up being random shots in the dark rather than a cohesive, intelligent design, a design that I believe the designers should investigate more than they have been, and more strongly than these halfhearted jabs.

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Well, indeed, nobody asked for a melee strike damage weapon but plenty asked for a melee condi weapon (and, well, some sustain and a gap closer would be more than welcome on such a weapon). We still don't really know what the AA does, maybe it apply bleed, poison or torment on hit. The same way, there is stil 2 undisclosed skills that could very well feature some condi burst. In fact, are we sure that the spear skill#2 isn't a skill that apply condition? The description say that the skill and shards deal more damage on foes with low health but it can also mean that the conditions it apply last longer.

We have been told, in no uncertain terms, verbatim, "This spear is a melee power damage weapon that brings disruptive elements, a bit of mobility, and some strong burst potential through cooldown resets." This entire paragraph is wishful thinking. And believe me, I would be THRILLED if spear was a unique 2H condi melee, I've said as much even back in my original post, but the sad fact is, there's been no indication that Necro spear engages with Necro's core or elite traits in a way that fundamentally makes it different than weapons we have already. If there was, I imagine they'd have mentioned it, like Ranger spear getting stealth, or Guardian's spear symbol "illuminates for as long as the symbol lasts, including the bonus duration granted by Writ of Persistence, an existing Guardian trait."

Let's use Curses as an example point. Necro spear could, theoretically, make use of Curses, to be a hybrid damage weapon, but outside of competitive, Necromancer doesn't care about hybrid damage (So, maybe this is supposed to be a WVW weapon, but that makes it all the more disappointing to me, since Necro wasn't really demanding a new WVW weapon).

• [Barbed Precision]'s 33% chance to bleed on crit could make use of Perforate's multiple hits, but so could greatsword3 or even mainhand axe2, but Soul Shards "are only consumed by the skill's second ability", and "deal increased damage to low-health enemies", not crit chance or guaranteed crits, or condi duration.
• [Insidious Disruption] inflicting torment on disable might work, but there's been no report spear even has a source of fear, much less being a disable weapon like what Ranger's been getting on maces and hammer.
• [Parasitic Contagion] healing you off condition damage could make use of spear's low-health bonus healing, but again, there's not a lot of condition damage here, especially via bleeding, and not a lot to indicate Necro is meant to play at low health.
• [Target the Weak]'s bonus crit chance based on number of conditions could help, but only if spear miraculously found a surplus of conditions, and the only one we've heard about is chill on spear3. The post reads "some disruptive elements", but doesn't say what they are.
• Said chill could make use of Reaper's [Deathly Chill], but not often enough to be taken seriously (even cDPS Reaper is considered a bit of a meme build at this point), not compared to greatsword and sword inflicting chill on autoattacks or with a chill-field whirl, and with no listed source of fear, Reaper couldn't use that for bonus chill, and Curses couldn't use it as a source for [Terror] dps, and [Lingering Curse] is explicitly a scepter trait.
• If there was a source of blind, [Chilling Darkness] could be another source of chill, but again, only Reaper cares about that.
• Blood Magic's [Mark of Evasion] bleeding is when you dodge, not when you evade, so any evasion tech that could be on spear is null.
• No Necro trait grants any weapon mechanic a source of poison; Harb shroud 2, yes, but not weapons, and even Relic of the Demon Queen needs disables.
• Confusion? Nah
• Torment? No traits except Insidious Disruption's disables
• Burning? Scourge inflicts it with torment, see above, but otherwise no non-shroud/weapon interactions

None of the above would possibly displace Soul Reaping x Spite as a pDPS.

What'd need to happen is,

• Spear3's flip, Distress, inflicts Fear and Immobilize.
• [Insidious Disruption] is changed, to "Barbed Precision's bleed chance on crit increases to 100% for 3s after disabling a foe."
• [Lingering Curse] is amended, "Conditions inflicted with strikes of a scepter or spear have longer durations, feast of corruption blah blah blah"
• Both of the other spear skills need to have some kind of hard-CC to proc disable tech

At that point, a hybrid-DPS burst spear could throw, flip and fear, rooting the target so that they don't run, gaining a minimum of +6% crit chance from [Target the Weak], then Perforate with seven critical hits that, striking a disabled enemy with [Insidious Disruption], could inflict seven stacks of bleeding, with the whole setup reset by flickering into shroud and back. And even then, it STILL would be considered an underpowered meme build, because of how ludicrously strong Soul Reaping is, and that the weapon is, again verbatim, "designed as a power weapon" that would benefit from Spite more.

So, like, if the above is what you consider a viable "2H condition weapon", then congrats, this is what you're getting.

 

[Vooksa.2941]

As an amendment to the above: Having thought about it, I really wonder if spear isn't being designed with Curses in mind. Or, at least, a possibility. It feels weird, that Ranger's spear advertises stealth, something Ranger uses often in WvW, and Guardian spear mentions "[Writ of Persistance], an existing guardian trait", but Necromancer's text doesn't seem to want to connect spear to Necromancer, more than "exit shroud to reset the burst" and the fact it has chill on it.

EXITING shroud isn't really a Necromancer feature too much; 90% of Necro's effectiveness is tied to getting into, and being IN shroud. Curses could theoretically be used in a way to flicker shroud for value, resetting cooldowns and gaining fury and blasting weakness and bleed, but those traits aren't strong enough to carry spear by itself. The only way spear displaces shroud as DPS is if the numbers are cranked so absurdly high that everybody goes googley-eyes and gives it a free pass. Anything less renders it a meme build, tossed on the same pile as dual swords.

I genuinely hope that there's some great tech coming with the other two Necro spear skills, but with a Soul Shards mechanic, a cooldown reset loop mechanic, and burst-pDPS, anything left will be either not as complicated, or make the weapon even more complicated.

[XECOR.2814]

Both scourge, harb and reaper are settled in their mechanics rn. There is no point or chance of changing them.

They have their 'dont use this skill/trait' but thats it. harb gms, reaper shout trait, scourge big shade etc. They are settled in their niches. Many more can be made and they are obvious but what can we do.

What's sad is that new weapon is again life steal, life leech kind of weapon so it will just be bad because it is never pumped up to a relevant level on any necro build in competitive modes. Not to a level that gives you visual feedback of health goin up.

The chill is just stacked on even though its redundant with greatsword and swords and boring. I dont have a problem with chill, but the thing is you know it will be similar case to swords where you have 0 boons and 0 other conditions to help you pad in any shape or form. Keeping the weapon bland and tasteless just like their content and general philosophy nowadays.

The porting to enemy is just underwater spear#5skill that will be copy pasted.

The only cope is that maybe the port skill is low enough cooldown to spam it twice everytime you leave shroud so you can keep on hunting people. 

Funny thing is that because of soul shard mechanic and life steal/leech whatever the power budget for damage skills will go down and they will do lukewarm damage too lol. Necromancer is not an execute class. The port is mostly useless even on reaper since it doesnt do 1shot damage. It more of an interval of high damage. Also there would be no support boons after u port so u would just be standing target for cc's and random immobs, chill, cripple, blinds lol. It will be funny to see how another weapon comes out as dogsh garbanzo.

Btw guys the underwater spear sucks too. Can we get an update on that too while we are at it??

Edited June 13 by XECOR.2814

[Vooksa.2941]

3 hours ago, XECOR.2814 said:

Both scourge, harb and reaper are settled in their mechanics rn. There is no point or chance of changing them.

They have their 'dont use this skill/trait' but thats it. harb gms, reaper shout trait, scourge big shade etc. They are settled in their niches. Many more can be made and they are obvious but what can we do.

More than anything from this thread, even dressed up and disguised as "this class shouldn't be changed", seems to be an overall atmosphere of defeat. I've seen one or two people around generally interested in the burst-DPS loop, but nothing resembling real excitement anywhere, and everyone else appears to have just resigned themselves to the idea that Necromancer has problems, but that they won't, can't, or shouldn't be fixed, or showing an overall lack of faith that if any changes were to be made, then they'd almost certainly be for the worse.

Like, come on guys. Necromancer has gotten the bad end of the stick for years. Whenever we're seen to be too strong, we get knocked down, until we're unplayable, and then when public sentiment against Necros gets bad enough, we get a massive boost, making us be perceived as too strong again.

Sword healing and spear lifesteal are bewildering tech for the class with the highest working health pool in the game, and we can't realistically get more powerful because of how hard Necros are to kill in the first place. Harbinger is the only spec that even entertains the idea of trading that survivability for extra power, but it has no skills in it's kit that even begins to promote a playstyle. We wouldn't have called Guardian a chase/execute class before Willbender, per say, and we wouldn't have called Thief a healer before Specter (or after, apparently..), but if Druid can get updates that let it play as a CC/immob bleed cDPS, when it's entire identity was once that of a healer's, or Virtuoso can trade Mesmer clones for blades, why can't we hold Necromancer and Harbinger to stronger creative account?

"Blight lowers maximum health bar" literally only synergizes with [Blood Bank], converting excess healing to barrier. It's the only trait interaction: not boons, not conditions, not life force, not barrier, not CC, not mobility, not range, not melee, not minions. Elixirs having boons and cleanse doesn't mean anything, and none of the conditions applied are enough to form a playstyle, not like chill on Reaper or torment/burning on Scourge. Self-blight on impact as an alternative source of blight that doesn't require sitting in shroud is nice, but consuming blight as an emergency way for you to get rid of your stacks? For what? Double mediocre damage, and double duration of mediocre conditions? How is that considered a payoff?

Doing something as basic as "Harbinger adds your shroud hp to your regular hp, shroud skills consume health, lifeforce heals you" would instantly rocket all the lifeforce, self-sustain, and defense tech that we have available on Necromancer already into the realm of real tradeoffs and value. ArenaNet doesn't have to be so scared of giving Harbinger, swords, and spear some real punchyness, and Harbinger gets to stop feeling like "Core Necromancer, with extra steps". Does it make Harbinger vulnerable? Sure! Does it make it MORE vulnerable than it currently is? Debatable. Does it mean that we have seven different ways to play Harb, instead of the same tired pDPS, cDPS, or "throw elixirs and sit in shroud for group quickness" builds that it currently has available? Absolutely.

[Purple Effects.2503]

51 minutes ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

More than anything from this thread, even dressed up and disguised as "this class shouldn't be changed", seems to be an overall atmosphere of defeat. I've seen one or two people around generally interested in the burst-DPS loop, but nothing resembling real excitement anywhere, and everyone else appears to have just resigned themselves to the idea that Necromancer has problems, but that they won't, can't, or shouldn't be fixed, or showing an overall lack of faith that if any changes were to be made, then they'd almost certainly be for the worse

How have you reached this opinion lol?

has it occurred to you, maybe players don’t want necromancer to change? 

necromancer has problems? No. lol it’s the second most popular class in the game for a reason. Classes with problems, are the classes that are low pop, that’s as simple as it is.

the majority flock to the strongest classes. Guardian and necromancer. People tend to not play classes considered weak or problematic, I.e warrior and elementalist. 

sheer statistical data kinda proves you wrong. There wouldn’t be This many necros if people agreed with you lol 

necro by sheer design philosophy, is one of the largest successes in GW2 class design. I’d make an argument it’s the most popular, given its open world popularity. It’s just they don’t do gw2 efficiency so aren’t tracked

Edited June 13 by Magmi.6723

[Vooksa.2941]

2 hours ago, Magmi.6723 said:

How have you reached this opinion lol?

I'm not even arguing that Necromancer isn't popular, but the only way we have to really prove that is through hearsay, anecdotal evidence like threads recommending Necromancer to players "new to the game and I die a lot", or "my kid wants to play, what's something easy", and GW2wingman and GW2efficiency, which runs exclusively PVE data, and even then, is skewed by only representing people who plug their APIs into their database. But overall, people play what's easy; it's the same reason why these statistics list Virtuoso alone playing strikes more than all three Necromancer elite specs combined, and why at one point Mechanist represented 33% of all raid and strike activity before it was reigned in. Necromancer is easy.

EVEN I don't want Necromancer, at it's core, to change; I'm not recommending taking away the way that people currently play the game. Like I've said, I've played the class for a decade. You don't just do that on a whim. But in a period where almost every other profession is getting thoughtful additions to help round out their kit, that have meaningful interactions with the profession's core mechanics or even introduce a brand new mechanic altogether, "lifesteal pDPS melee spear" was really not what I wanted to see on the list. Harbinger is the closest thing we have to a low-health-sustain elite spec in the entire game, but nothing Harbinger has remotely uses the skills listed on Necro spear in a meaningful way. You could have replaced this weapon with whipping tiny rocks at enemies, and it'd have about as much thematic or mechanical relevance.

Necromancer as it currently exists doesn't need to change, but I'd really appreciate if MORE options and playstyles existed, the same way as every other profession is either developing underused playstyles, or gaining brand new ones.

[Purple Effects.2503]

15 minutes ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

You could have replaced this weapon with whipping tiny rocks at enemies, and it'd have about as much thematic or mechanical relevance

Except that’s not really true.

our entire mechanic is ripping life force from the enemy to empower ourselves? 

we also have several utilities which physically put condis on ourselves the concept of taking damage for power or life force has kinda been a theme throughout the class. 

16 minutes ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

Necromancer as it currently exists doesn't need to change, but I'd really appreciate if MORE options and playstyles existed, the same way as every other profession is either developing underused playstyles, or gaining brand new ones

Well yeah shroud kinda puts a hole in this. 

if you give necro a boon weapon or a healing weapon. Ur going to lose ur role everytime you shroud. That’s just the sheer concept there. Or a healing weapon and wasting overcapped life force. 

introducing roles via the physical weapon itself for any spec apart from scourge would actively cause overlap and bottle necking of necromancers core mechanic, which is extremely degenerate. 

that is why you see them put the power into their mechanics instead of weapons, necromancers weapons by default tend to be fairly bland in what they do for this reason. But that’s the active concept of a builder spender. 

your gameplay loop and strength is in that spending, and that theme is kinda spread into spear going hand in hand with another builder spender type gameplay try to make it actively work around shroud. 

[Vooksa.2941]

3 hours ago, Magmi.6723 said:

Except that’s not really true. our entire mechanic is ripping life force from the enemy to empower ourselves? we also have several utilities which physically put condis on ourselves the concept of taking damage for power or life force has kinda been a theme throughout the class. 

Shroud kinda puts a hole in this.

Yeah, past this, I'm ignoring you. It's one thing to say "I'm a fan of Necromancer and how it plays, and I don't believe your suggestions are necessary to improve it", because that'd be like. That's just your opinion, man.

But "giving a class a boon or healing weapon loses access whenever you enter shroud" is just-

Do you hear yourself?

Do you hear yourself describing Druid avatar, Revenant legends, Elementalist attunements, Specter Shroud, weaponswap, NECROMANCER shroud ITSELF-

My dude, you're describing the concept of cooldowns. In general. Literally, "if I alter my state, I will gain the advantages of the new state, and lose the advantages of the old state." Even Scourge exists, as an obvious and blatant exception to that rule, because you don't even alter state by getting into shroud.

What are you even talking about.

If lifeforce doesn't exist except to enable the bottleneck that is entering shroud, then weapons that spend lifeforce, and weapons that grant boons, are an obvious way to instantly double, or even triple, the number of builds a Necromancer could have. Every other profession in the game has elite specs that plays with or even eliminates the core class mechanic entirely, but Necromancer is apparently just allergic to that. Enjoy that mechanic if you want, but I want some more diversity.

 

Edited June 14 by Vooksa.2941

[Purple Effects.2503]

7 hours ago, Vooksa.2941 said:

Do you hear yourself describing Druid avatar, Revenant legends, Elementalist attunements, Specter Shroud, weaponswap, NECROMANCER shroud ITSELF-

My dude, you're describing the concept of cooldowns. In general. Literally, "if I alter my state, I will gain the advantages of the new state, and lose the advantages of the old state." Even Scourge exists, as an obvious and blatant exception to that rule, because you don't even alter state by getting into shroud

. 

Don’t reply if you like, but those comparisons are ridiculous lol. 

It’s not a cooldown to state the shroud form is completely useless to a healer or boon role. They litterally do none of the above, our shroud lacks the versatility these other things you mention have built in via traits and default functions to validate its use in other roles

shroud is a pure DPs function and as a healer or a boon support it by default is redundant. Which creates situations where u suddenly have to waste life force to output ur primary role, a problem none of ur examples share. 

Druids are healers and built to be exclusively healers, DPs druid has the same downfalls as I classify here as being a secondary role to the spec

elementalist attainment swapping has power built into doing exactly that and is built to cycle through at speed. 

spectre provides barrier and more through its shroud which makes it useful in a heal role. 

weapon swap, many classes have more then 1 healing weapon which makes these added healing not taking away. 

necromancer outside of scourge has none of the above. It’s exclusively built to do dmg and unlike these other things don’t carry traits and utilities to support this role.

scourge is already a strong healer. I don’t get why you want the one spec that already has the role.. to be given this role for diversity and saying 1 spec of a entire class could benefit from it is a really silly argument to make for a weapon that’s susposed to enhance necromancer. Not scourge 

this is a wasted concept if it’s only use is 5% of content. 

Edited June 14 by Magmi.6723