Addressing the CORE(Necromancer Balance)

[Lily.1935]

@Murdock.6547 said:I am insanely ok with vamp aura being good.

But we could also introduce encounters for mechanics of necro and even spellbreaker to shine.Something akin to guy with flamethrower and a knife. Each auto applies a bleed and his "cleave" is stacking lots of burning.A sb tank would resistance through this, a necro tank would clean transfer and convert the condis, and having auratemp would mean you can still use your chrono mt if you prefer.

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

Even if Arena net introduces those elements with new raids this doesn't change the fact that we'll still struggle to find groups in other raids. Which is still a problem.

[Dadnir.5038]

@Murdock.6547 said:I am insanely ok with vamp aura being good.

But we could also introduce encounters for mechanics of necro and even spellbreaker to shine.Something akin to guy with flamethrower and a knife. Each auto applies a bleed and his "cleave" is stacking lots of burning.A sb tank would resistance through this, a necro tank would clean transfer and convert the condis, and having auratemp would mean you can still use your chrono mt if you prefer.

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

Imagine that there is a someone that got a fresh cut on it's hand. You don't disinfect it and just put a band aid on top of it. 2 day later the hand changed color and the guy can't move all it's fingers. What would you do? Put another band aid on top of the first and think that it will be fine?

Doing what you suggest is exactly the same. The necromancer is a rotting wound that need proper treatment not another mindless band aid.

[Swagg.9236]

I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to play the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all actually heal people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

[Murdock.6547]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Murdock.6547 said:I am insanely ok with vamp aura being good.

But we could also introduce encounters for mechanics of necro and even spellbreaker to shine.Something akin to guy with flamethrower and a knife. Each auto applies a bleed and his "cleave" is stacking lots of burning.A sb tank would resistance through this, a necro tank would clean transfer and convert the condis, and having auratemp would mean you can still use your chrono mt if you prefer.

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

Even if Arena net introduces those elements with new raids this doesn't change the fact that we'll still struggle to find groups in other raids. Which is still a problem.

you're right, it's still a problem.But frankly? It's not as much of a problem (in my opinion) as everyone is making it out to be.I'd much rather have encounters where some classes flounder and others excel. Necromancer being mediocre to bad (in more cases than people realize it's actually quite good due to epidemic obliterating adds) and then insanely strong (but not mandatory) would be ideal imo.It's just right now there is an absurd bias against necro in the encounters.

I respect people who will stick it out through thick and thin for their most favorite class; but wanting to be not just okay, but optimal in all encounters? That's asking for far too much.Necro is "okay" in most encounters. Not fantastic, and definitely not speedclear material. But "okay". Their single target dps is suffering atm, but they'll be brought up hopefully with the next patch.

I'm still optimistic. Even if its foolishly so...

[kKagari.6804]

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

I'm with you man. I've always been an advocate for more active gameplay, had this same argument with Lily before too. Lily favors the passive stuff. I see a place for party wide state buffs though, its offering that niche that min maxers want in their raid atmospheres, but in all other purposes of the game its essentially useless; you can be giving someone 150 strength but they are running a support build, or they didn't eat food and you're simply covering for someone's lack of preparation.

Party wide stat boosts are a very common low denominator kind of approach to class acceptance; it'll do a little bit to please everyone but it has very little fulfillment to the actual player using it.

[Lily.1935]

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latesthttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

[Lily.1935]

@Murdock.6547 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Murdock.6547 said:I am insanely ok with vamp aura being good.

But we could also introduce encounters for mechanics of necro and even spellbreaker to shine.Something akin to guy with flamethrower and a knife. Each auto applies a bleed and his "cleave" is stacking lots of burning.A sb tank would resistance through this, a necro tank would clean transfer and convert the condis, and having auratemp would mean you can still use your chrono mt if you prefer.

I dont want to get too off topic; but we should wait for another raid wing and see how things pan out. I'm optimistic for both pve scourge and spellbreaker.

Even if Arena net introduces those elements with new raids this doesn't change the fact that we'll still struggle to find groups in other raids. Which is still a problem.

you're right, it's still a problem.But frankly? It's not as much of a problem (in my opinion) as everyone is making it out to be.I'd much rather have encounters where some classes flounder and others excel. Necromancer being mediocre to bad (in more cases than people realize it's actually quite good due to epidemic obliterating adds) and then insanely strong (but not mandatory) would be ideal imo.It's just right now there is an absurd bias against necro in the encounters.

I respect people who will stick it out through thick and thin for their most favorite class; but wanting to be not just okay, but optimal in all encounters? That's asking for far too much.Necro is "okay" in most encounters. Not fantastic, and definitely not speedclear material. But "okay". Their single target dps is suffering atm, but they'll be brought up hopefully with the next patch.

I'm still optimistic. Even if its foolishly so...

Should that always be the necromancer though? Because that's how it is now.

[Axl.8924]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

Question would you be opposed to a necro build specifically only for dps? you are talking about being a buffer.

Also:If necro has these limitations, shouldn't it also fall under other classes 2? we would need to nerf ele mesmers warriors rangers etc to all have their niche areas and not desired in others.

[Lily.1935]

@Axl.8924 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

Question would you be opposed to a necro build specifically only for dps? you are talking about being a buffer.

Also:If necro has these limitations, shouldn't it also fall under other classes 2? we would need to nerf ele mesmers warriors rangers etc to all have their niche areas and not desired in others.

In terms of the problem professions, I'd say that's Warrior, Ranger and arguably Mesmer. The tend to do too much in terms of party support which makes them the clear choice. Warrior for example could lose phalanx strength and would still be taken for just about every raid group.

[kKagari.6804]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

[Axl.8924]

@Lily.1935 said:

@Axl.8924 said:

In terms of the problem professions, I'd say that's Warrior, Ranger and arguably Mesmer. The tend to do too much in terms of party support which makes them the clear choice. Warrior for example could lose phalanx strength and would still be taken for just about every raid group.

Do you really think for an example necro(scourge specific would be really capable of actually giving healing on similar levels to tempest? I heard on this forum that a necro in healing gear and with the right build and with buffs could actually do levels of healing maybe at possibly even above tempest.If that is true, then that is impressive, and might actually make us worthy as a off healer in raids.

Do you think we will get next a elite spec for healing?

[Lily.1935]

@Axl.8924 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Axl.8924 said:

In terms of the problem professions, I'd say that's Warrior, Ranger and arguably Mesmer. The tend to do too much in terms of party support which makes them the clear choice. Warrior for example could lose phalanx strength and would still be taken for just about every raid group.

Do you really think for an example necro(scourge specific would be really capable of actually giving healing on similar levels to tempest? I heard on this forum that a necro in healing gear and with the right build and with buffs could actually do levels of healing maybe at possibly even above tempest.If that is true, then that is impressive, and might actually make us worthy as a off healer in raids.

Do you think we will get next a elite spec for healing?

Absolutely. Back in gw1 there was a similar build it to what I'm suggesting that acted as one of the group healers for tomb of the primeval king.... I wasn't playing at the time but from what I've heard it was pretty bonkers. I believe the build was called orders a d would cause massive numbers of life stealing that would out pace the monk.... It was nerfed into the ground, but let's ignore that.... He he he he.........

As for your second question, as much as I would love to get a healing spec (ritualist) I highly doubt arena net will do that right after scourge. So far Anet have been trying to give the community what we've asked for and in terms of popularity, a minion master spec is the most popular choice, although not my personal choice.

[Lily.1935]

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

[kKagari.6804]

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

You're rather combative when people don't agree with your ideas. Flat number increases is a terrible way to improve the class, especially since its just reaching into the arms race approach of balance, in fact, these party wide stat buffs across the board is another reason why raids are getting these 'preferred' classes even though min maxing is pointless to the majority of people. Its simply lazy design when you can be 'benefiting' your team simply by whacking an aura on.

And I didn't make the argument that the numbers were not good enough, I agreed with the other poster in the point that passive buffs are bad.

[Lily.1935]

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

You're rather combative when people don't agree with your ideas. Flat number increases is a terrible way to improve the class, especially since its just reaching into the arms race approach of balance, in fact, these party wide stat buffs across the board is another reason why raids are getting these 'preferred' classes even though min maxing is pointless to the majority of people. Its simply lazy design when you can be 'benefiting' your team simply by whacking an aura on.

And I didn't make the argument that the numbers were not good enough, I agreed with the other poster in the point that passive buffs are bad.

I'm combative when the criticism isn't constructive. And from what I've seen of your post, you have a double standard. As He has been posting about flat number increases. And not just that, I have the bulk of that DPS increase tied to Barrier, not to the aura. But allow me to explain what I mean. Neither of you have come up with an alternative to my suggestions. He said a % increase through traits, which you agreed with. So, no I don't see your point. And as you say its a "Terrible way to improve a class" you give no alternative. Beyond just that, I didn't just talk about flat numbers, but thats the aspect of the conversation we got stuck on because you two are the ones who are interested in that side of the conversation. So I'm trying to come at this through a method you two will understand. And failing at it apparently. Because all I'm seeing from you two is "No I hate it, we need flat number increase not your weird vampire stuff!" I'm paraphrasing, but either way if this is your stance you don't even agree with him.

As for the bulk of the suggestion? Its focused on life force and its uses, which he absolutely had no idea what I was talking about which I had to explain it to him. But you blindly agreed with him, but now you're statement is contradictory. What I'm pointing out in this forum post is possible ways to improve the class. And I've criticized the community in it as well as the devs, but in that criticism I offer potential solutions. You, especially, have not. This is about building a conversation not just going "No.. No.. NO." I expressed why I didn't care for his idea. And my reasoning was not respected. Which was I didn't want necromancer to become too similar to other professions, of which he didn't provide a solution for. Saying the equivalent to "Well it works for those other professions.". We are not those other professions.

And even when you respond you don't get what the suggestion is right, aka half listening to what I have to say. So yeah, its absolutely frustrating talking to you two. But I shouldn't get that way... I'm mostly just frustrated because I'm freezing since we don't have heat right now... Beyond that, if there is anything that you guys are confused about I'll explain it again. In far more detail than What I did up there.. I don't want to keep talking past you two, as it gets us nowhere.

[kKagari.6804]

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

You're rather combative when people don't agree with your ideas. Flat number increases is a terrible way to improve the class, especially since its just reaching into the arms race approach of balance, in fact, these party wide stat buffs across the board is another reason why raids are getting these 'preferred' classes even though min maxing is pointless to the majority of people. Its simply lazy design when you can be 'benefiting' your team simply by whacking an aura on.

And I didn't make the argument that the numbers were not good enough, I agreed with the other poster in the point that passive buffs are bad.

I'm combative when the criticism isn't constructive. And from what I've seen of your post, you have a double standard. As He has been posting about flat number increases. And not just that, I have the bulk of that DPS increase tied to Barrier, not to the aura. But allow me to explain what I mean. Neither of you have come up with an alternative to my suggestions. He said a % increase through traits, which you agreed with. So, no I don't see your point. And as you say its a "Terrible way to improve a class" you give no alternative. Beyond just that, I didn't just talk about flat numbers, but thats the aspect of the conversation we got stuck on because you two are the ones who are interested in that side of the conversation. So I'm trying to come at this through a method you two will understand. And failing at it apparently. Because all I'm seeing from you two is "No I hate it, we need flat number increase not your weird vampire stuff!" I'm paraphrasing, but either way if this is your stance you don't even agree with him.

As for the bulk of the suggestion? Its focused on life force and its uses, which he absolutely had no idea what I was talking about which I had to explain it to him. But you blindly agreed with him, but now you're statement is contradictory. What I'm pointing out in this forum post is possible ways to improve the class. And I've criticized the community in it as well as the devs, but in that criticism I offer potential solutions. You, especially, have not. This is about building a conversation not just going "No.. No.. NO." I expressed why I didn't care for his idea. And my reasoning was not respected. Which was I didn't want necromancer to become too similar to other professions, of which he didn't provide a solution for. Saying the equivalent to "Well it works for those other professions.". We are not those other professions.

And even when you respond you don't get what the suggestion is right, aka half listening to what I have to say. So yeah, its absolutely frustrating talking to you two. But I shouldn't get that way... I'm mostly just frustrated because I'm freezing since we don't have heat right now... Beyond that, if there is anything that you guys are confused about I'll explain it again. In far more detail than What I did up there.. I don't want to keep talking past you two, as it gets us nowhere.

You're dismissing his arguments just as easily as you claim he is dismissing yours. But I won't argue on his behalf. As for a solution? I'd get rid of all the party wide buffs for starters. Not stuff like GotL, that actually requires activation. Heck, I'd even make a necromancers version of GotL, smaller scaling, higher stacks. That way you actually create the dynamic of increasing party DPS through the momentary loss of yours, since several of the shroud skills are a loss in DPS. The skill component will be in the upkeep of the effect while still keeping your DPS high. How is that not a more interesting change compared to yours.

And as for constructive criticism? You're advocating a passive buff that gives a disgustingly good armor ignoring effect that is more than half of what the renegade can achieve via a freaking elite skill that has upkeep. Sure, necromancers will be the life of the party, but that doesn't make it good balance.

Banners, party wide buffs, they are all elements of this game that enforces players to play really confined builds, for the greater good of the party. GW2 should be heading in a direction where class DPS parity is only the base point of the balance. The rest should be skill activated. Every class should be able to flourish because the abilities of the player allows them to, not because a billion stacked passive buffs tells everyone else you have the right thing equipped.

GW1 had close to no passive effects, you get a few in GWEN for killing certain enemies and I chalk that down to the developers creativity gone bankrupt but the majority of the game was, pick 8 skills, deal with it. WTF has this game gone to?

[Lily.1935]

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

You're rather combative when people don't agree with your ideas. Flat number increases is a terrible way to improve the class, especially since its just reaching into the arms race approach of balance, in fact, these party wide stat buffs across the board is another reason why raids are getting these 'preferred' classes even though min maxing is pointless to the majority of people. Its simply lazy design when you can be 'benefiting' your team simply by whacking an aura on.

And I didn't make the argument that the numbers were not good enough, I agreed with the other poster in the point that passive buffs are bad.

I'm combative when the criticism isn't constructive. And from what I've seen of your post, you have a double standard. As He has been posting about flat number increases. And not just that, I have the bulk of that DPS increase tied to Barrier, not to the aura. But allow me to explain what I mean. Neither of you have come up with an alternative to my suggestions. He said a % increase through traits, which you agreed with. So, no I don't see your point. And as you say its a "Terrible way to improve a class" you give no alternative. Beyond just that, I didn't just talk about flat numbers, but thats the aspect of the conversation we got stuck on because you two are the ones who are interested in that side of the conversation. So I'm trying to come at this through a method you two will understand. And failing at it apparently. Because all I'm seeing from you two is "No I hate it, we need flat number increase not your weird vampire stuff!" I'm paraphrasing, but either way if this is your stance you don't even agree with him.

As for the bulk of the suggestion? Its focused on life force and its uses, which he absolutely had no idea what I was talking about which I had to explain it to him. But you blindly agreed with him, but now you're statement is contradictory. What I'm pointing out in this forum post is possible ways to improve the class. And I've criticized the community in it as well as the devs, but in that criticism I offer potential solutions. You, especially, have not. This is about building a conversation not just going "No.. No.. NO." I expressed why I didn't care for his idea. And my reasoning was not respected. Which was I didn't want necromancer to become too similar to other professions, of which he didn't provide a solution for. Saying the equivalent to "Well it works for those other professions.". We are not those other professions.

And even when you respond you don't get what the suggestion is right, aka half listening to what I have to say. So yeah, its absolutely frustrating talking to you two. But I shouldn't get that way... I'm mostly just frustrated because I'm freezing since we don't have heat right now... Beyond that, if there is anything that you guys are confused about I'll explain it again. In far more detail than What I did up there.. I don't want to keep talking past you two, as it gets us nowhere.

You're dismissing his arguments just as easily as you claim he is dismissing yours. But I won't argue on his behalf. As for a solution? I'd get rid of all the party wide buffs for starters. Not stuff like GotL, that actually requires activation. Heck, I'd even make a necromancers version of GotL, smaller scaling, higher stacks. That way you actually create the dynamic of increasing party DPS through the momentary loss of yours, since several of the shroud skills are a loss in DPS. The skill component will be in the upkeep of the effect while still keeping your DPS high. How is that not a more interesting change compared to yours.

Banners, party wide buffs, they are all elements of this game that enforces players to play really confined builds, for the greater good of the party. GW2 should be heading in a direction where class DPS parity is only the base point of the balance. The rest should be skill activated. Every class should be able to flourish because the abilities of the player allows them to, not because a billion stacked passive buffs tells everyone else you have the right thing equipped.

Okay, now this is more interesting of a conversation. I'm wondering how you'd do something like that. Would you have all of the buffs some form of targeting system? Nothing passive going out for all forms of buffs? I don't mind getting another perspective on this, as if i'm reading that right, I could see that working. It did alright in GW1 although they did have party wide buffs though they were mostly either extremely short term, requiring a lot of upkeep or a one shot. If I'm understanding you correctly?

[Axl.8924]

You're dismissing his arguments just as easily as you claim he is dismissing yours. But I won't argue on his behalf. As for a solution? I'd get rid of all the party wide buffs for starters. Not stuff like GotL, that actually requires activation. Heck, I'd even make a necromancers version of GotL, smaller scaling, higher stacks. That way you actually create the dynamic of increasing party DPS through the momentary loss of yours, since several of the shroud skills are a loss in DPS. The skill component will be in the upkeep of the effect while still keeping your DPS high. How is that not a more interesting change compared to yours.

Your talking about passive effects?I have a problem and i keep wondering the more people talk if its possible for this game to ever be balanced even if necro had gotl.I was reading fully on how bosses should have buffs on them and debuff others, and i think complexity would really bring necro out and make them desired, especially if we could do something like spell stealing in wow, and have a fight revolved around a strategy of stealing immunity to poison and giving it to the team to avoid raidwide death.

And as for constructive criticism? You're advocating a passive buff that gives a disgustingly good armor ignoring effect that is more than half of what the renegade can achieve via a freaking elite skill that has upkeep. Sure, necromancers will be the life of the party, but that doesn't make it good balance.

I'm going to root with what lilly said personally in buffs that make us decent buffers, because if something like this goes through, its a huge deal that would make us amazing buffers, and don't tell me it wouldn't be large enough.Also:If barrier gets buffed, that too could be helpful.

Banners, party wide buffs, they are all elements of this game that enforces players to play really confined builds, for the greater good of the party. GW2 should be heading in a direction where class DPS parity is only the base point of the balance. The rest should be skill activated. Every class should be able to flourish because the abilities of the player allows them to, not because a billion stacked passive buffs tells everyone else you have the right thing equipped.

GW1 had close to no passive effects, you get a few in GWEN for killing certain enemies and I chalk that down to the developers creativity gone bankrupt but the majority of the game was, pick 8 skills, deal with it. kitten has this game gone to?

[kKagari.6804]

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

You're rather combative when people don't agree with your ideas. Flat number increases is a terrible way to improve the class, especially since its just reaching into the arms race approach of balance, in fact, these party wide stat buffs across the board is another reason why raids are getting these 'preferred' classes even though min maxing is pointless to the majority of people. Its simply lazy design when you can be 'benefiting' your team simply by whacking an aura on.

And I didn't make the argument that the numbers were not good enough, I agreed with the other poster in the point that passive buffs are bad.

I'm combative when the criticism isn't constructive. And from what I've seen of your post, you have a double standard. As He has been posting about flat number increases. And not just that, I have the bulk of that DPS increase tied to Barrier, not to the aura. But allow me to explain what I mean. Neither of you have come up with an alternative to my suggestions. He said a % increase through traits, which you agreed with. So, no I don't see your point. And as you say its a "Terrible way to improve a class" you give no alternative. Beyond just that, I didn't just talk about flat numbers, but thats the aspect of the conversation we got stuck on because you two are the ones who are interested in that side of the conversation. So I'm trying to come at this through a method you two will understand. And failing at it apparently. Because all I'm seeing from you two is "No I hate it, we need flat number increase not your weird vampire stuff!" I'm paraphrasing, but either way if this is your stance you don't even agree with him.

As for the bulk of the suggestion? Its focused on life force and its uses, which he absolutely had no idea what I was talking about which I had to explain it to him. But you blindly agreed with him, but now you're statement is contradictory. What I'm pointing out in this forum post is possible ways to improve the class. And I've criticized the community in it as well as the devs, but in that criticism I offer potential solutions. You, especially, have not. This is about building a conversation not just going "No.. No.. NO." I expressed why I didn't care for his idea. And my reasoning was not respected. Which was I didn't want necromancer to become too similar to other professions, of which he didn't provide a solution for. Saying the equivalent to "Well it works for those other professions.". We are not those other professions.

And even when you respond you don't get what the suggestion is right, aka half listening to what I have to say. So yeah, its absolutely frustrating talking to you two. But I shouldn't get that way... I'm mostly just frustrated because I'm freezing since we don't have heat right now... Beyond that, if there is anything that you guys are confused about I'll explain it again. In far more detail than What I did up there.. I don't want to keep talking past you two, as it gets us nowhere.

You're dismissing his arguments just as easily as you claim he is dismissing yours. But I won't argue on his behalf. As for a solution? I'd get rid of all the party wide buffs for starters. Not stuff like GotL, that actually requires activation. Heck, I'd even make a necromancers version of GotL, smaller scaling, higher stacks. That way you actually create the dynamic of increasing party DPS through the momentary loss of yours, since several of the shroud skills are a loss in DPS. The skill component will be in the upkeep of the effect while still keeping your DPS high. How is that not a more interesting change compared to yours.

Banners, party wide buffs, they are all elements of this game that enforces players to play really confined builds, for the greater good of the party. GW2 should be heading in a direction where class DPS parity is only the base point of the balance. The rest should be skill activated. Every class should be able to flourish because the abilities of the player allows them to, not because a billion stacked passive buffs tells everyone else you have the right thing equipped.

Okay, now this is more interesting of a conversation. I'm wondering how you'd do something like that. Would you have all of the buffs some form of targeting system? Nothing passive going out for all forms of buffs? I don't mind getting another perspective on this, as if i'm reading that right, I could see that working. It did alright in GW1 although they did have party wide buffs though they were mostly either extremely short term, requiring a lot of upkeep or a one shot. If I'm understanding you correctly?

Hmm well, just spitballing, my thought process for something like a necromancer GotL is something like this:

Based on what we have currently for shroud skills, it isn't support minded, so a straight up copy of GotL wouldn't really work. A necromancers version could perhaps be more of a offensive debuff rather than a team buff. For a grandmaster trait I think this could be interesting:

For every unique condition you apply to an enemy they receive a stack of this debuff, which causes them to take 2% extra damage and condition damage, up to 7 stacks. Can only affect one enemy at a time, will always apply to the enemy you have targeted (in the case of AoE).

Basic deathshroud can inflict, chill, bleed, fear, torment and immobilize. Reapers shroud has blind, fear, chill, poison. So to get 7 stacks you'll need some other traits or perhaps some creative use of sigils. I think 7 stacks is in a territory where you need to 'make an effort' to get it and spec for it.

Also, I'll apologize I think what I suggested is contradictory to what I said earlier, that even a suggestion like this, if it aids min maxers we're always going to get into a situation where a class is brought along for a particular skill that benefits the entire party, rather than a player being brought along for their skill in gameplay. And frankly, I'm not sure anything can be done with that in regards to GW2. Perhaps it is prevalent in all games; there were semblances of this in GW1 for areas like The Deep, and perhaps it is disgusting that raids have entered the atmosphere in which we balance our classes.

So as a TLDR: if we are discussing ways to improve the necromancer in a party-buff method, I'd suggest the above, over simply passively improving the party. It isn't entirely more complex, but it is still slightly more complex none the less and it still does require management. But even though i made that suggestion I still think party-wide buffs as a means of distinguishing a class is not ideal. But big picture? You're probably right, if the developers ever wanted parity and achieve a state where every class is included it will go the way of party wide buffs.

[Lily.1935]

@kKagari.6804 said:@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:I'm not trying to be rude, I'm arguing with you about why your idea because it's concerning. I'm concerned, and that's probably just making me say things out of desperation so you can see the reality of what you're trying to suggest.

@Lily.1935 said:

Consider this, with the buffs i'm suggesting between these three posts, The necromancer would gain wide spread use. You think % numbers are the only way to do that?

Considering that the entire game's DPS support is centered almost exclusively around powerful percentage-based and stat buffs, yes, it seems to be a working system.

@Lily.1935 said:

Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to think a bit more outside the box, since that isn't the only way. With the coefficients I"m suggesting a healer necromancer would allow allies to gain close to 200-250 health and 200-250 damage from each strike landed.

You keep telling me to read your original post, but you never mentioned any numbers or coefficients whatsoever despite pulling out this "+250" number. "It would provide a DPS boost" tells nobody anything given how pretty-well documented all the coefficients and percentage bonuses in this game already are at this point. Moreover, even with the +250 damage boost--which, you're right, isn't insignificant--you're still hurting the Necromancer's personal DPS in order to obtain it (talking about stacking healing power gear and runes) and you aren't doing anything for Necromancer's already sub-par skill pool. Your vitality/healing power-centric design doesn't change anything about how the Necromancer plays, and considering the Necromancer would have to dump stats into vitality and healing power in order to be optimized for your design, that kills its DPS worse than Commander's gear on Power Chrono (without providing a powerful off-set like perma party quickness and high alacrity up-time). Collectively, Necromancer might just end up pulling even with what a Druid could provide, except that the Druid could not only deal more personal DPS, but the Druid could still actively heal people because "heal on attack" isn't something that the Necromancer actively does with Vampiric Aura. It's a passive AoE effect that the player can't actively exert or improve.

And don't you dare tell me to think outside of the box when the only DPS buff you have to offer here is a functional copy of "Empower Allies" (the most passively, constant-in-play, boring, no-style type of buff possible in GW2). If you look at Bloodthirst along with its related skills and traits, you have:

• +150 power, +150 precision to nearby party members
• +10% outgoing party damage
• +150 power, +150 condition damage to nearby party members
• Around a 40% up-time on 15% increased damage to party targets in a fractal/raid environment
• Re-works in order to implement a non-existent power rotation with respectable damage outputs and free-form usage (does not rely on having a selected target)
• Re-balanced sources of life force so the Necromancer can efficiently generate LF throughout its rotation and provides more consistent options of LF outright
• All this and the Necro still wears Berserker armor so as not to sacrifice personal damage stats

Not only all that, but the Necromancer has to

play

the game in order to maintain all of those buffs. Vampiric Aura turns the Necromancer into a banner. The player wouldn't even have to do anything but stand still in order to achieve its maximum effect. Nothing about how the Necromancer plays changes because your design is so focused on stats to do all the heavy lifting. Players don't activate stats. Players activate skills, and activating skills is what makes the game engaging.

Not only this, but you also try to argue:

@Lily.1935 said:

Healing builds have proven to be effective on elementalist, Revenant and Ranger, so the suggestions would make necromancer a viable option.

Except that:

• Healing on strike would not make a viable healer considering how some players must break off attacks once they are low on HP.
• Forcing more and more healing specs can easily create the same issue we have now with the over-saturation of DPS specs.
• The healing specs you listed (except for Revenant which has effectively zero use--barring an incredibly, super-niche role in one encounter--outside of sub-par point trolling in PvP) all
  actually heal
  people instead of relying on them constantly hitting in order to make up for thousands of health lost from single attacks or poor positioning. Tempest healers also still bring massive cleave and respectable damage while Druids provide a massive party DPS buff. You're just giving Necromancer a DPS buff and taking away its damage (without even changing anything about Necro's bad core weapon options and skills). It's just a bad idea.

Healing spec Necro isn't going to get it into PvE. It needs multiple things which I all address with Bloodthirst and a bunch of trait/skill reworks. Necromancer isn't going to become magically useful and fun to play if all it gets is a banner effect on itself.

You're going to probably say something like "That's not all I suggest, though," now, but nothing you suggest has any concrete coefficients or descriptions to go along with it. You have a bunch of ideas, but they have no applicable form within GW2, which makes them difficult to talk about (especially when you just pull numbers out of nowhere because they're in your head but not anywhere in text for other people to see). Besides, I'm pretty sure the time to theorycraft new, vague ideas for GW2 ended back in 2013 when everyone realized that the game is just a big DPS race no matter which class you play. The game is established and people know how everything works. Now it's time for you to think outside of the box and make something up that isn't just a healing power dependent version of Empower Allies.

Have some style when you make a suggestion. Don't be like anet and just make passives carry everyone's output. We're here to play a video game, not watch a movie.

You seem to assume the necromancer exists in a vacuum and that I didn't also post 2 other whole topics that address your concern. Again, we're talking past each other. I understand your concerns and have addressed them in the post. however my soul reason for making these posts isn't to have exclusive support specs, but DPS as well. If we some how get a tank out of it (very unlikely) so be it. So when I say a 250 number. its refering to two buffs across the 3 posts. Which you haven't read. And I can tell based on your response. You, again need to think outside of this small little box of yours and stop asking the necromancer to be like a warrior or ranger. Its not going to happen. We need to use our themes to our advantage.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11840/scourge-balance#latest

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/11999/reaper-balance#latest

Read them. With the changes suggested necromancer would be able to get 25 stacks of might on allies without the need of a carbon copy of Phalanx strength. In fact, the necromancer can do that now the issue with it is how short the range is and its duration. If that was fixed we'd have our own might stacking build. And wouldn't need some gimmicky blood magic trait that was suggested earlier.

About a scaling of 100 life per strike from Vampiric presence is a significant increase from 38 life a hit. 100 being my top healing investment for that trait, however I've also suggested further life stealing from Scourge on barrier application. OH LOOK! a build that already wants healing power also combos with barrier? Looks like the scourge is getting a lot of millage out of that healing power. Beyond just that we can also build up might. The scourge suggestion was rough numbers of scaling to 150. Slightly stronger than Vampiric presence but I also mentioned its impact from runes and sigils to further increase its potency. Its on theme, its powerful, and you need to consider that.

Now lets look at what that actually means. that's 250 damage per strike, armor ignoring, flat damage. You could combo that with professions that strike multiple times in a second. Necromancer doesn't get as much benefit from it, but other professions sure do. Take a look at icebow ele for example. For ice storm that's potentially a 6,000 damage increase. Just on Gurdian with their axe auto attack, that's giving them an extra 1,000 DPS a second. Now push this across 5-10 players since if they fix the way that the shade and player stacking works along with the barrier changes I've been suggesting, Necromancer healing would absolutely be meta for at least some of the fights in Raids. Since you've stated thats the only thing you're concerned about. As for DPS roles, I've already put a lot of strong changes in across the 3 posts that would make that an easy fit. So even if, in some bazaar fantasy land where my suggestions were not enough to give necromancer an extremely strong position as a support they'd still have the damage boosts to be formidable as damage. Oh, and I also suggested a signet of Vampirism change as well which would give us even more burst DPS potential for allies. these suggestions absolute worst its a 500 damage increase. This makes the assumption that the necro is only running vampiric presence and you and your other 4 allies effected by it are doing 1 attack a second. That's at its absolute worst and considering how raids go, that will never be the case. If its being executed properly we could expect a DPS boost across all party members of about 12,000 without taking personal DPS into consideration or the might stacks, or the barrier and healing the necro is also providing. Not to mention that healing druid and condi druid's personal DPS is extremely low. Going beyond just that, Healing revenant's personal DPS is extremely low and Chrono tank's DPS is extremely low. Also that number? I'm low balling it, assuming that people are going to be auto attacking with quickness.

While that might help with propping up the necromancer 'dps contribution' it'll just end up being another must have spec line because nothing else compares, not to mention a completely boring way to balance a class, and it will actually throw raid balance out the window, an ele getting another 6000 dps over what they have now?

There just is not pleasing you two. You both say it isn't good enough, I crunch some numbers and show that it better than you both think and now you complain it's too good. It's like I'm arguing with a wall.

Also, that 6,000 was added to ice storm, not a consistent spa increase. I suspect it would be closer to 18 across the party if the scourge is pushing it. Note, not 18K per person, total. So if the scourge is hitting a personal of roughly 10-12 they're in good shape. Now this is all theory and not practice. Plus assuming you have alacrity and quickness. To me, it sounds like an alternative that would help a new party set up that could be competitive with the common core rather than usurping it.

As it stands now, the scourge is in a good spot to create alternative groups. It's barrier was something I was excited about for fractals specifically due to some professions struggling at higher ends than others. Until I found out that agony makes barrier useless. But that's a story for another day.

Think outside the box. GW2 is not as different from other games as you might think. Even table top games and other genres have quite a bit in common with it. So you absolutely do not need to look internally to find a solution to an existing issue. You can look at what other games did right and wrong. That's what I do. It helps me from getting too narrow of a perspective on my suggestion.

You're rather combative when people don't agree with your ideas. Flat number increases is a terrible way to improve the class, especially since its just reaching into the arms race approach of balance, in fact, these party wide stat buffs across the board is another reason why raids are getting these 'preferred' classes even though min maxing is pointless to the majority of people. Its simply lazy design when you can be 'benefiting' your team simply by whacking an aura on.

And I didn't make the argument that the numbers were not good enough, I agreed with the other poster in the point that passive buffs are bad.

I'm combative when the criticism isn't constructive. And from what I've seen of your post, you have a double standard. As He has been posting about flat number increases. And not just that, I have the bulk of that DPS increase tied to Barrier, not to the aura. But allow me to explain what I mean. Neither of you have come up with an alternative to my suggestions. He said a % increase through traits, which you agreed with. So, no I don't see your point. And as you say its a "Terrible way to improve a class" you give no alternative. Beyond just that, I didn't just talk about flat numbers, but thats the aspect of the conversation we got stuck on because you two are the ones who are interested in that side of the conversation. So I'm trying to come at this through a method you two will understand. And failing at it apparently. Because all I'm seeing from you two is "No I hate it, we need flat number increase not your weird vampire stuff!" I'm paraphrasing, but either way if this is your stance you don't even agree with him.

As for the bulk of the suggestion? Its focused on life force and its uses, which he absolutely had no idea what I was talking about which I had to explain it to him. But you blindly agreed with him, but now you're statement is contradictory. What I'm pointing out in this forum post is possible ways to improve the class. And I've criticized the community in it as well as the devs, but in that criticism I offer potential solutions. You, especially, have not. This is about building a conversation not just going "No.. No.. NO." I expressed why I didn't care for his idea. And my reasoning was not respected. Which was I didn't want necromancer to become too similar to other professions, of which he didn't provide a solution for. Saying the equivalent to "Well it works for those other professions.". We are not those other professions.

And even when you respond you don't get what the suggestion is right, aka half listening to what I have to say. So yeah, its absolutely frustrating talking to you two. But I shouldn't get that way... I'm mostly just frustrated because I'm freezing since we don't have heat right now... Beyond that, if there is anything that you guys are confused about I'll explain it again. In far more detail than What I did up there.. I don't want to keep talking past you two, as it gets us nowhere.

You're dismissing his arguments just as easily as you claim he is dismissing yours. But I won't argue on his behalf. As for a solution? I'd get rid of all the party wide buffs for starters. Not stuff like GotL, that actually requires activation. Heck, I'd even make a necromancers version of GotL, smaller scaling, higher stacks. That way you actually create the dynamic of increasing party DPS through the momentary loss of yours, since several of the shroud skills are a loss in DPS. The skill component will be in the upkeep of the effect while still keeping your DPS high. How is that not a more interesting change compared to yours.

Banners, party wide buffs, they are all elements of this game that enforces players to play really confined builds, for the greater good of the party. GW2 should be heading in a direction where class DPS parity is only the base point of the balance. The rest should be skill activated. Every class should be able to flourish because the abilities of the player allows them to, not because a billion stacked passive buffs tells everyone else you have the right thing equipped.

Okay, now this is more interesting of a conversation. I'm wondering how you'd do something like that. Would you have all of the buffs some form of targeting system? Nothing passive going out for all forms of buffs? I don't mind getting another perspective on this, as if i'm reading that right, I could see that working. It did alright in GW1 although they did have party wide buffs though they were mostly either extremely short term, requiring a lot of upkeep or a one shot. If I'm understanding you correctly?

Hmm well, just spitballing, my thought process for something like a necromancer GotL is something like this:

Based on what we have currently for shroud skills, it isn't support minded, so a straight up copy of GotL wouldn't really work. A necromancers version could perhaps be more of a offensive debuff rather than a team buff. For a grandmaster trait I think this could be interesting:

For every unique condition you apply to an enemy they receive a stack of this debuff, which causes them to take 2% extra damage and condition damage, up to 7 stacks. Can only affect one enemy at a time, will always apply to the enemy you have targeted (in the case of AoE).

Basic deathshroud can inflict, chill, bleed, fear, torment and immobilize. Reapers shroud has blind, fear, chill, poison. So to get 7 stacks you'll need some other traits or perhaps some creative use of sigils. I think 7 stacks is in a territory where you need to 'make an effort' to get it and spec for it.

Also, I'll apologize I think what I suggested is contradictory to what I said earlier, that even a suggestion like this, if it aids min maxers we're always going to get into a situation where a class is brought along for a particular skill that benefits the entire party, rather than a player being brought along for their skill in gameplay. And frankly, I'm not sure anything can be done with that in regards to GW2. Perhaps it is prevalent in all games; there were semblances of this in GW1 for areas like The Deep, and perhaps it is disgusting that raids have entered the atmosphere in which we balance our classes.

So as a TLDR: if we are discussing ways to improve the necromancer in a party-buff method, I'd suggest the above, over simply passively improving the party. It isn't entirely more complex, but it is still slightly more complex none the less and it still does require management. But even though i made that suggestion I still think party-wide buffs as a means of distinguishing a class is not ideal. But big picture? You're probably right, if the developers ever wanted parity and achieve a state where every class is included it will go the way of party wide buffs.

You're going to be hard pressed to convince arena net that we need hex like effects. The reason they were removed in the first place was because of their overwhelming complexity. Aside from that, your suggestions isn't too dissimilar to vulnerably. A condition that already exists in the game. As for my stance on that, I don't agree that we really need hex like effects quite like that although I'm not whole opposed to them, I am opposed to flat number increase hex like effects.

As for my suggestion? You keep saying its passive. However only one trait was a passive buff and it's not a change of function to what it normally does. I am fine with passive buffs as long as its moderation. And VP is the the only one. As for the bulk of our party support it's active with most of the party buffs geared towards active rewards. Increasing the might range from example to combat the stacking nature people want to do and tying most of the buffs to the shades for easy placement to allow greater movement. You can't stop people from trying to stack. All we can do is improve the range on buffs to make it less appealing.

[kKagari.6804]

Hmm, funnily enough I originally started writing something along the lines of hex and enchantments when I responded last night. No, I'm not advocating for them to be reinstated into the game, and if anything, GotL is essentially an enchantment. I do notice with PoF came stuff like Kalla's Fervor, Attacker's Insight, Soulbeast buffs etc, its almost as if Arenanet decided the whole boon and condition system isn't working anymore.

Anyhow, here is my train of thought today; I'm thinking why the current raid meta has reached for partywide buffs to begin with, and I think the problem is because of how easily might is capped, and shared. Necromancers actually have a pretty good access to might, but it won't reach the level of Phalanx Strength, therefore necromancers are not considered for the might stacking role. And because the warrior can reach 25 stacks of might alone, and the mesmer can share it, the next avenue for teambuffs is the partywide passives.

Suppose the buff target cap was 3 instead of 5, and 25 might or 25 vulnerability wasn't so easily achievable we may see a higher demand for other classes. Sure, it doesn't stop a raid team from just getting several warriors but viability could be improved for all other classes.

[Lily.1935]

@kKagari.6804 said:Hmm, funnily enough I originally started writing something along the lines of hex and enchantments when I responded last night. No, I'm not advocating for them to be reinstated into the game, and if anything, GotL is essentially an enchantment. I do notice with PoF came stuff like Kalla's Fervor, Attacker's Insight, Soulbeast buffs etc, its almost as if Arenanet decided the whole boon and condition system isn't working anymore.

Anyhow, here is my train of thought today; I'm thinking why the current raid meta has reached for partywide buffs to begin with, and I think the problem is because of how easily might is capped, and shared. Necromancers actually have a pretty good access to might, but it won't reach the level of Phalanx Strength, therefore necromancers are not considered for the might stacking role. And because the warrior can reach 25 stacks of might alone, and the mesmer can share it, the next avenue for teambuffs is the partywide passives.

Suppose the buff target cap was 3 instead of 5, and 25 might or 25 vulnerability wasn't so easily achievable we may see a higher demand for other classes. Sure, it doesn't stop a raid team from just getting several warriors but viability could be improved for all other classes.

Necromancer can already share 25 might with allies. The issue with it is range. But in terms of what I'm seeing with this suggestion, if revenant was given access to more alacrity you could theoretically creature a guardian, necromancer, revenant core as opposed to the warrior, ranger and Mesmer core we see now.

[Sieghilde.7632]

As long as we're talking about class thematics, it makes more sense to me for Necro to provide substantial raid-wide debuffs to enemies instead of being another buffer. Giving Necro the opportunity to bypass the Vuln stacks limit and provide additional damage taken+ effects to an enemy would be very useful for the raid in the same way Empower Allies and GoTL bypass the Might cap.

[Allarius.5670]

Disclaimer: Non-raider, primarily sPvPer

I've always thought of the Death Magic themes as twofold: minions and personal defense (shroud and other).

It feels inconsistent that three traits are dedicated to a singular utility type (minions) rather than the standard 'one trait slot'. Inconsistency is fine, but Minions are required to get practical use from all three traits and the traitline does not inherently make these specific traits indepently functional (provide Minions).

The emphasis and reliance on staying in shroud for some of the traits feels like Death Magic loses its identity to Soul Reaping. Shroud trait synergies of other traitlines feel more active and/or thematic.

I have thought for a while that a rework of Death Magic should (1) reduce the Shroud theme to a minor one like other non-Soul Reaping traitlines, (2) build itself on an underlying reanimation theme, and (3) continue with a defensive focus.

To better explain what I mean, here is an example just for illustrative purposes:

Adept Minor: Reanimator - Spawn a jagged horror when you strike a foe. Spawning a new jagged horror destroys the oldest. (10 sec interval, 1 jagged horror per spawn, 3 jagged horror cap from this trait)

Master Minor: Death Cycle - Gain life force when a jagged horror is destroyed. (5% life force per jagged horror)

Grandmaster Minor: Borrowed Flesh - Damaging a foe reduces the remaining cooldown of Reanimator. (1 sec cooldown, 1 sec cooldown reduction)

Adept 1: Defense of the Flock - Take reduced damage for each jagged horror you control from Reanimator. (3% reduced damage per jagged horror)

Master 1: Reanimator's Sustainment - Jagged horrors take conditions from you when they spawn and transfer conditions on them when they attack. (1 condition per spawn, 1 condition transferred per attack)

Grandmaster 1: Flesh of the Master - Minions have increased health, deal increased damage, and have reduced cooldowns.

Adept 2: Cannibalize - Using a healing skill consumes your jagged horrors and grants (endurance, health, barrier, or alacrity) for each jagged horror destroyed.

Master 2: Necromantic Fortification - Using a healing skill consumes your jagged horrors and grants stability and protection for each jagged horror destroyed. (1x5 sec stability and 1x1 sec protection per jagged horror)

Grandmaster 2: Death Nova - Create a minor Poison Cloud and corrupt a boon on nearby foes when you are downed or one of your minions is destroyed.

Adept 3: Feeding Frenzy - Your jagged horrors gain superspeed when you spawn a jagged horror using Reanimator. (3sec superspeed)

Master 3: Strength of Death - Each of your jagged horrors increases the power and condition damage of nearby allies when they attack. (Strength of Death [stacking buff] - 15 power, 15 condition damage, 5sec, 600 range)

Grandmaster 3: Verata's Aura - Increase the maximum number of jagged horrors you can control from Reanimator. Jagged horrors from Reanimator no longer degenerate health. (5 jagged horror cap from Reanimator)

[Lily.1935]

@Sieghilde.7632 said:As long as we're talking about class thematics, it makes more sense to me for Necro to provide substantial raid-wide debuffs to enemies instead of being another buffer. Giving Necro the opportunity to bypass the Vuln stacks limit and provide additional damage taken+ effects to an enemy would be very useful for the raid in the same way Empower Allies and GoTL bypass the Might cap.

Yes, we all would like Hexes to return. And I've suggested other debuffs to be included into the game. But flat damage increases like that were never something the necromancer did outside of a condition. For GW1, Cracked armor, for GW2 vulnerability which are effectively the same thing. But! even beyond that the necromancer has always buffed allies to great personal cost of course. There was damage increase from Hexes, but they were not ever linked to the DPS output of an ally. The could be dealing 1 physical damage or 100, the output would be the same. But to see what I mean, here.

Spells that target allies or buff them:https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_Ritualhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_is_Powerhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dark_Furyhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Death_Novahttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Order_of_Apostasyhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Order_of_Painhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Order_of_the_Vampirehttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Tainted_Fleshhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Well_of_Bloodhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Well_of_Powerhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Withering_Aura

Spells that Debuffed Foes but benefited from allies striking them:https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Barbshttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_Bondhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mark_of_Furyhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mark_of_Painhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Rigor_Mortishttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shivers_of_Dreadhttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Soul_Barbshttps://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Spinal_Shivers

Yes, it is a part of the necromancer's theme, and I'd love to see barbs return in some capacity. Since it was in my opinion one of the most fun Hexes to use along with its sister spell, Mark of pain. However it absolutely should not be overlooked that the necromancer used to have an extremely strong offensive support theme geared around aiding allies. Especially around condition control and life stealing. Now, necromancers used to do a lot of energy regeneration for allies, something that was pretty unique to them for the most part and something they lost in the transition between the two games. And it has also been something I've been looking to replace in some capacity. The closest thing I could think of was Alacrity, however just on its name alone, it doesn't fit out theme. Its an issue I couldn't quite figure out. I loved Blood is power in GW1. But in GW2, it just doesn't have that same flavor.