Necro spear- a missed opportunity?

[Funky.4861]

When i saw the teaser video for necro spears i thought it was all fine and dandy, until it occurred to me- there are no melee condi weapons. I know it's too late now since they are already fine-tuning skills, but i wish we had a decent melee condi weapon and an alternative main hand to sceptre/pistol, both of which are ranged.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

The main advantage to having a melee condi weapon is that it bypasses projectile hate.  Our main condi weapons do that anyway.

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

On 6/9/2024 at 12:19 AM, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

The main advantage to having a melee condi weapon is that it bypasses projectile hate.  Our main condi weapons do that anyway.

Pistol is literally all projectiles, what are you talking about?

The only one that does that is scepter, which while it does have some cleave skills, the auto attack is single target.

Having a melee cleave condi weapon would be very welcome.

[Nash.2681]

If only the spear was a one-handed ranged weapon and we'd get ye good old Barbs spell back... good memories...

[andreiblue.8231]

On 6/8/2024 at 9:20 PM, Funky.4861 said:

When i saw the teaser video for necro spears i thought it was all fine and dandy, until it occurred to me- there are no melee condi weapons. I know it's too late now since they are already fine-tuning skills, but i wish we had a decent melee condi weapon and an alternative main hand to sceptre/pistol, both of which are ranged.

It would be much worse to have no ranged condi weapon. Anet doesnt usually dont consider range when balancing so a melee condi weapon would do the same or maybe even worse dps than ranged ones.

[Funky.4861]

59 minutes ago, andreiblue.8231 said:

It would be much worse to have no ranged condi weapon. Anet doesnt usually dont consider range when balancing so a melee condi weapon would do the same or maybe even worse dps than ranged ones.

Unlikely- melee usually does higher damage/is more utilitarian than ranged weapons to compensate for higher risk. Unless you run the meme chill->bleed GS reaper condi build, you are stuck with sceptre and (if you have soto) pistol with off-hand torch. That's it, for every necro condi build. You could include off-hand dagger for the condi throw, but that's contextual. A melee condi spear would have given anet the chance to shake-up the whole professions' condi builds without touching a single trait.

[andreiblue.8231]

8 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

Unlikely- melee usually does higher damage/is more utilitarian than ranged weapons to compensate for higher risk. Unless you run the meme chill->bleed GS reaper condi build, you are stuck with sceptre and (if you have soto) pistol with off-hand torch. That's it, for every necro condi build. You could include off-hand dagger for the condi throw, but that's contextual. A melee condi spear would have given anet the chance to shake-up the whole professions' condi builds without touching a single trait.

Are we playing the same game? Compare main hand sword with dagger on mesmer. Balancing around dps is always done by Anet only with numbers and without taking cc or range in consideration.

[Magmi.6723]

22 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

Unlikely- melee usually does higher damage/is more utilitarian than ranged weapons to compensate for higher risk. Unless you run the meme chill->bleed GS reaper condi build, you are stuck with sceptre and (if you have soto) pistol with off-hand torch. That's it, for every necro condi build. You could include off-hand dagger for the condi throw, but that's contextual. A melee condi spear would have given anet the chance to shake-up the whole professions' condi builds without touching a single trait.

Melee does the highest damage, while the most meta DPSers are ranged? Lol

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

On 6/12/2024 at 9:17 AM, andreiblue.8231 said:

Are we playing the same game? Compare main hand sword with dagger on mesmer. Balancing around dps is always done by Anet only with numbers and without taking cc or range in consideration.

Dagger on Mesmer is kind of the outlier right now. It's just that powerful. It's not fair to compare to it

[Funky.4861]

On 6/12/2024 at 8:17 AM, andreiblue.8231 said:

Are we playing the same game? Compare main hand sword with dagger on mesmer. Balancing around dps is always done by Anet only with numbers and without taking cc or range in consideration.

A better comparison for mesmer would be main hand sword with sceptre or greatsword- expansion weapons (or the elite spec traits relating to them) are often better than core as a selling point of the expansion. For necro, this would be comparing main hand dagger with axe (core) or in this case- spear and greatsword. Necro swords were made to offer mobility rather than pure dps and anet admitted that they were undertuned.

[Magmi.6723]

17 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

A better comparison for mesmer would be main hand sword with sceptre or greatsword- expansion weapons (or the elite spec traits relating to them) are often better than core as a selling point of the expansion. For necro, this would be comparing main hand dagger with axe (core) or in this case- spear and greatsword. Necro swords were made to offer mobility rather than pure dps and anet admitted that they were undertuned

Spears competitive to great sword won’t be relevant though, as we have weapon swap, even if great sword remains stronger, spear will used with it providing its better then the other existing options.

greatsword tends to mesh well with shroud due to being able to drop down the finishers from its abilities which we can whirl in for higher damage. While spear offers a free reset coming out of shroud. It’s possible we will end up using GS + spear. I can’t see these competing against one another really 

[Magmi.6723]

On 6/13/2024 at 3:01 PM, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Dagger on Mesmer is kind of the outlier right now. It's just that powerful. It's not fair to compare to it

What about willbenders pistol build? There’s many ranged builds which snow crows put in line with melee builds. 

ranged vs melee isn’t balanced that well, but then again does the game really have proper ranged to be balanced as even ranged builds have to stand in the cluster to benefit from boons 
 

 

[StraightPath.3972]

Perforate will deal bonus damage to low health targets and any soul shards you gather will only add to the effect.
That's a very big tip spear wants to be the execute weapon that will not easily pass the job over to gs.

That being said it looks like spear will be more spvp oriented with strong chase potential contrary to rather grounded gs.

[Magmi.6723]

2 hours ago, StraightPath.3972 said:

That's a very big tip spear wants to be the execute weapon that will not easily pass the job over to gs.

But spear has the continuous ability to reset its CD by several methods also

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

7 hours ago, Magmi.6723 said:

But spear has the continuous ability to reset its CD by several methods also

We know spear 4 resets cooldown when you leave shroud, spear 2 resets when you use the shadowstep on spear 4.  Curious to see what else we get, as I think Spear will be the first necro weapon to have an actual rotation rather than skill priority.

[Sigmoid.7082]

11 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

We know spear 4 resets cooldown when you leave shroud, spear 2 resets when you use the shadowstep on spear 4.  Curious to see what else we get, as I think Spear will be the first necro weapon to have an actual rotation rather than skill priority.

On top of this in interested in the attack speed and the damage coefficients. I know in the video it's slowed down by around 20%. Also want to see if it's going to be the general 50% at 50% or if it's closer to executioner's scythe. Overall looks fun to me. 

Also interested to see how it differs from great sword. 

Edited June 15 by Sigmoid.7082

[Player.2475]

The spear reveal just looked like the regular underwater skills but outside of water -- nothing groundbreaking.

[StraightPath.3972]

@Player.2475 I beg to differ. Sometimes a slight change can produce massive results.
And the land spear has these giving it a clear identity. Identity that can be build defining.

For example the incrased healing when low encourges you to stay in the fight and take risks for sake of pulling a clutch perforate for both big damage and heal.
Enter Unholy Sanctuary which rarely sees play otherwise. It's a perfect safety net for such do or die approach.

Meanwhile the execute mechanics on both Perforate and Soul Shards strongly lean into Spite and Close to Death trait.
But then again.. Perforate is a channel. Something that will get massive value from quickness, Dread being one source of it.

And let's not forget shroud exit resets Isolate (spear tag & teleport skill).
This may encourage shroud flashing vs particularly slippery targets. Again something you may build around.

And that's just some brainstorming after getting to see 3 outta 5 spear skills.
 

Edited June 16 by StraightPath.3972

[draxynnic.3719]

On 6/9/2024 at 8:19 AM, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

The main advantage to having a melee condi weapon is that it bypasses projectile hate.  Our main condi weapons do that anyway.

Melee weapons also typically have more damage, defences, or both than their ranged equivalent - especially when the ranged equivalent is projectile-less.

It's honestly getting a bit silly when necromancer, a profession that has traditionally been more oriented towards conditions, is now getting to the point of having three melee weapons that are all power.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Melee weapons also typically have more damage, defences, or both than their ranged equivalent - especially when the ranged equivalent is projectile-less.

It's honestly getting a bit silly when necromancer, a profession that has traditionally been more oriented towards conditions, is now getting to the point of having three melee weapons that are all power.

To be fair, the only holes we have are "defensive" and "support" weapons and ANet doesn't seem to want us to have either for some reason (though mainhand dagger does work well as a sustain weapon).

Granted, core and Reaper have shroud as a "defensive" weapon set.

Still, there's only so much we can get that isn't overlapping in role with something else.  We don't need more damage on our condition builds.

Edited June 17 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Nimon.7840]

2 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

To be fair, the only holes we have are "defensive" and "support" weapons and ANet doesn't seem to want us to have either for some reason (though mainhand dagger does work well as a sustain weapon).

Granted, core and Reaper have shroud as a "defensive" weapon set.

Still, there's only so much we can get that isn't overlapping in role with something else.  We don't need more damage on our condition builds.

To be honest. Swords and dagger both offer quite some "defense".

I already made a wvw roaming build for the spear to test with even though we don't know 2/5 skills. 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAUWBbh5xyYlYRL512B-e

With sword/focus, dagger/sword. Right now. And I have to say, I might even keep it as it is, instead of swapping to spear. But we will see after testing the spear.

It's even capable of fighting cele builds (not all of them, but quite a few)

[draxynnic.3719]

5 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

To be fair, the only holes we have are "defensive" and "support" weapons and ANet doesn't seem to want us to have either for some reason (though mainhand dagger does work well as a sustain weapon).

Granted, core and Reaper have shroud as a "defensive" weapon set.

Still, there's only so much we can get that isn't overlapping in role with something else.  We don't need more damage on our condition builds.

A melee condi weapon would potentially mean that if they feel the need to tone down condi builds, they have the option to nerf the ranged weapons and present the option to choose between full range or max DPS. The alternative would be just slapping a damage reduction, if needed, without there being another option to take.

Power mesmer, and virtuoso in general, has a similar issue due to mesmer sword being balanced as a defensive weapon.

[Sigmoid.7082]

3 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

To be honest. Swords and dagger both offer quite some "defense".

I already made a wvw roaming build for the spear to test with even though we don't know 2/5 skills. 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAUWBbh5xyYlYRL512B-e

With sword/focus, dagger/sword. Right now. And I have to say, I might even keep it as it is, instead of swapping to spear. But we will see after testing the spear.

It's even capable of fighting cele builds (not all of them, but quite a few)

Interesting. How do you see spear fitting in here? Replacing dagger? 

From what we gather so far spears play style would be much more aggressive, or have greater opportunity for bursts of aggression, with the resets on perforate. With that in mind would you anticipate any changes off the bat or would this still be the same starting point? 

Always interested in people's build craft and thought process.

Edited June 17 by Sigmoid.7082

[mirage.8046]

12 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

A melee condi weapon would potentially mean that if they feel the need to tone down condi builds, they have the option to nerf the ranged weapons and present the option to choose between full range or max DPS. The alternative would be just slapping a damage reduction, if needed, without there being another option to take.

Power mesmer, and virtuoso in general, has a similar issue due to mesmer sword being balanced as a defensive weapon.

Bringing nerfs to existing weapons, ranged or melee, to make room for the new role only shifts the power onto that new weapon. DPS would drop a bit on the ranged weapons I guess.

As for my thoughts on existing weapons: Power necro wasn't hot until reaper came along. I was never around in the 2012-2015 era, but I'm sure players made it work what with wells, mh dagger, focus or warhorn, and shroud.

Heck, not even power harb which was branded to be a hybrid espec did not succeed well in PvE. Prior to SoTo, power harb lacked cleave and relied heavily on its shroud. Main-hand dagger felt like a poor substitute for greatsword. Staff and focus were all you had for power. Warhorn was kept for CC emergencies.

WvW and PvP had different success rates though. Power scourge did not exist outside WvW zergs either. It took weaponmaster training + dual swords to popularize power harbinger, yikes.

I'm glad power necro has gotten more choices for power, especially power melee. Condi necro has fared well in recent years, and SOTO has enabled many more condi builds than the old, slow core weapons. The same holds for power necro because axe, focus, warhorn, and daggers are outdated and old-fashioned. Staff is great though. How ironic a lot of the weapons are 'dead' in a class that focuses on death and revivals.

[Nimon.7840]

18 hours ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

Interesting. How do you see spear fitting in here? Replacing dagger? 

From what we gather so far spears play style would be much more aggressive, or have greater opportunity for bursts of aggression, with the resets on perforate. With that in mind would you anticipate any changes off the bat or would this still be the same starting point? 

Always interested in people's build craft and thought process.

Yes, it was the idea to swap out the dagger/sword set for spear.

And I was going for a build that tries to get more healing in Form of barrier from blood bank. Though that all depends on the amount of healing the spear offers.

If it's not good enough I am going to switch to unholy martyr. 

And overflowing thirst will change to blood bond since the thirst trait will be useless without a dagger and with mark of evasion and barbed precision you are very likely to apply enough bleeds for blood bond to trigger, giving you more healing and some dmg, when you hit an enemy