Lackluster Weapon Skills Need A Buff

[SummonMinion.7306]

I feel like Anet made necro weapon skills feel less impactful and rather lackluster in combat compared to other classes to balance out the shroud mechanic which is completely understandable. However, I feel like there are certain weapon skills that are too weak and in desperate need of a buff.

Necrotic Grasp

Please buff the combo finisher chance for this skill to 100%. Necro has so many fields but very little options to synergize with those fields.

Necrotic Slash (Entire AA chain)

The damage and life force gain you get from this auto attack chain doesn’t justify a necro ever getting close enough to make use of it in a competitive setting. Either increase the damage and life force gain or change the auto attack chain to have a greater range (mirror one of ele’s dagger autos).

Locust Swarm

New locust swarm isn’t even a side-grade, it was an unjustified nerf to warhorn overall as a weapon. Warhorn was a utility off-hand that people went from using in niche situations to completely dropping out of use outside of break bar damage in PvE. Old locust swarm synergized with Vampiric and Vampiric aura so it could provide a small amount of healing while in shroud. New locust swarm does not synergize with those traits and punishes you for going into shroud because you can’t heal while in shroud with this skill. Old locust swarm’s cripple application and long duration allowed the skill to be used both defensively and offensively to escape or chase. New locust swarm is useless in any competitive game mode where your opponents have access to their keyboard thanks to the tiny radius and duration. The only time this skill is noticeably ok is when you take Banshee’s Wail. How is it good game design to be forced to take a trait to make a skill useable (emphasis on useable and not good)?!

Buff the duration to at least 8 sec, buff the radius to at least 240, or both. I doubt the dev team will revert Locust Swarm to its old useable design, so at least buff the current design to make it useable.

Soul Grasp

I’m a fan of how Soul Grasp provides more reliable sustain compared to Reaper’s Touch. However, I’m not a fan of the massive loss in potential DPS and the weakening of the focus’ identity as the power damage off hand. I suggest having Reaper’s Touch activate as a bonus effect (like Unholy Burst) when Soul Grasp strikes a foe either with or without boons. Without boons to synergize with Spinal Shivers or with boons to solidify focus’ identity as the boon spam punishment option. The bonus Reaper’s Touch will be a lesser version of the original so that the skill doesn’t become too OP.

[Tobias.8632]

+1 for buff staff auto. Make it a 100% combo AND change its damage to fire so it can be a proper condi weapon rather then this weird hybrid. I wasn't even aware that they had nerfed locust swarm, that is horrible. With an upcoming mainhand weapon elite specialization we really need to talk about the issue that literally the only good offhand weapon necro has is torch which is locked to a different elite the new one won't be able to use, if mainhand pistol is power then we'll be taking focus and/or warhorn which both offer practically nothing in pve outside of warhorn's breakbar damage.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Tobias.8632

[Pooh.6897]

We absolutely need Arenanet to look at mainhand dagger and staff and they need to make a choice what they want these weapons to be, both in PvE and in PvP/WvW. I've made a post about staff in the past and that didn't do anything. Even though I would be a big fan of big changes for these weapons, I'm past the point where I actually expect Arenanet to listen to these types of posts anymore. It has been so glaringly obvious that staff is lacking in PvE for anything outside of farming and that mainhand dagger is somehow even worse. Even though you're taking more risk with mainhand dagger, your damage output is worse than axe and miles behind greatsword. Mainhand dagger is easily the worst weapon for necro and it requires some big changes before it becomes viable enough to consider it over the absolute dominant position of scepter and greatsword. I would propose to change lingering curse so that its effects are no longer tied to scepter only and to make it so that every third weapon skills gets a boost, not just the one on scepter.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Staff absolutely needs to have the projectile finisher chance buffed.  Given its slow attack and projectile speed, there's no reason this can't be a 100% projectile finisher.

 

Mainhand dagger could be improved drastically by reducing the aftercast on Necrotic Stab and Necrotic Bite.

 

Warhorn needs a Locust Swarm revert.  New version is totally useless outside of PvE Swiftness in those places you can't use mounts.

 

Focus needs some damage put back into Soul Grasp.

 

Offhand dagger needs...something.  It's lackluster, but unlike the other two offhands, there's not a useless skill on it.  Could use some life force gain, though, since it's the only Necro weapon that lacks it entirely.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Nephalem.8921]

4 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Staff absolutely needs to have the projectile finisher chance buffed.  Given its slow attack and projectile speed, there's no reason this can't be a 100% projectile finisher.

 

Mainhand dagger could be improved drastically by reducing the aftercast on Necrotic Stab and Necrotic Bite.

 

Warhorn needs a Locust Swarm revert.  New version is totally useless outside of PvE Swiftness in those places you can't use mounts.

 

Focus needs some damage put back into Soul Grasp.

 

Offhand dagger needs...something.  It's lackluster, but unlike the other two offhands, there's not a useless skill on it.  Could use some life force gain, though, since it's the only Necro weapon that lacks it entirely.

You are wrong about Locust swarm. The new version is completely useless in pve aswell since there are way better options for movementspeed that cant put you accidentally in combat.

I really want to know their reasoning behind making all offhand skills lifesteal. This made them completely useless in pve. All of them are a dps loss over aa even with axe mh. They are pure utility. Extremely niche utility aswell. Wh is kinda the most useful one because it does cc. I thought they went past the design that pressing buttons is a dps loss over aa? Wasn't that the reason why they buffed all warrior axe skills and ranger axe 5?

Current core/power pve necro is 90% aa because most of the skills have just 2012 warrior axe numbers. Lifesteal is bad and the amount is laughable aswell. 37 per tick on wh? who tf balanced this? Ren heals himself for 10 times as much with balanced battle scars which also procc way more often. It does less than 300 dmg per tick -> below 3k total dmg with 25 might and all hits per target.

Revert the lifesteal changes. Lifesteal with icd is incredible useless in pve. Wh 5 heals for 370! vs a single target. 1.5k vs the maximum amount of targets.

[Dadnir.5038]

59 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I really want to know their reasoning behind making all offhand skills lifesteal.

 

Unfortunately I can answer that... Pre feb 2020 patch the necromancer's defense was extremely lackluster and the necromancer's community had been beging for years to get some decent active defense. ANet's devs reasoning was that the necromancer soak damage through health point and thus it's through health points that this active defense would be granted.

 

ANet's devs proved that they are able to even make poor weapon worse than they already are with good intentions. That's why I'll always be against talk about a rework of the core weapons. Some little tweek here and there to improve their QoL? I'm all for it. A rework? Hell no!

[SummonMinion.7306]

On 8/10/2021 at 11:21 AM, jiggle puff.9347 said:

We absolutely need Arenanet to look at mainhand dagger and staff and they need to make a choice what they want these weapons to be, both in PvE and in PvP/WvW. I've made a post about staff in the past and that didn't do anything. Even though I would be a big fan of big changes for these weapons, I'm past the point where I actually expect Arenanet to listen to these types of posts anymore. It has been so glaringly obvious that staff is lacking in PvE for anything outside of farming and that mainhand dagger is somehow even worse. Even though you're taking more risk with mainhand dagger, your damage output is worse than axe and miles behind greatsword. Mainhand dagger is easily the worst weapon for necro and it requires some big changes before it becomes viable enough to consider it over the absolute dominant position of scepter and greatsword. I would propose to change lingering curse so that its effects are no longer tied to scepter only and to make it so that every third weapon skills gets a boost, not just the one on scepter.

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I am largely fine with the current design choices Anet made for Staff and MH Dagger. They both seem to be balanced around being utility options rather than being direct damage options. There are just certain aspects of these weapons design-wise that I don't agree with.  

Staff AA should have 100% combo finisher chance given how slow it is (this buff would not have any meaningful impact on necro's combat ability but would still be a nice buff). We have so many combo fields baked into our kit but core necro literally only has 2 options with interacting with these (both of which are locked into staff), reaper has 2 options with greatsword and shroud dash, and scourge has 0 options. 

MH dagger design-wise is pretty combat effective outside of PVE (excluding the AA chain). They could do a competitive split in terms of damage and scaling to bring it in line with the other MH weapons if they feel like they want necro to have more variety of viable weapon options in PVE. The AA chain on this weapon is the only glaringly bad skill on this weapon. The fact that necro was balanced to have very limited survivability outside of shroud kills any reason for the necro to get close to an opponent without there being a payoff. MH dagger doesn't have great damage, scaling, or an active defense option (pulsing blindness) like with greatsword. With greatsword, it makes sense to get close to your opponent. With MH dagger, there is 0 reason to ever go in for AA'ing outside of LF regen in PVE. The current measly LF regen in competitive gamemodes is not rewarding enough to ever use it. Anet needs add incentive for necro's to AA with MH dagger by either adjusting the numbers in competitive gamemodes, increasing its range (like ele dagger autos for all of their elements), or by attaching a rewarding mechanic (like a boon rip/corruption on the 3rd chain similar to an old version of scepter AA). 

[Nephalem.8921]

1 hour ago, SummonMinion.7306 said:

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I am largely fine with the current design choices Anet made for Staff and MH Dagger. They both seem to be balanced around being utility options rather than being direct damage options. There are just certain aspects of these weapons design-wise that I don't agree with.  

Staff AA should have 100% combo finisher chance given how slow it is (this buff would not have any meaningful impact on necro's combat ability but would still be a nice buff). We have so many combo fields baked into our kit but core necro literally only has 2 options with interacting with these (both of which are locked into staff), reaper has 2 options with greatsword and shroud dash, and scourge has 0 options. 

MH dagger design-wise is pretty combat effective outside of PVE (excluding the AA chain). They could do a competitive split in terms of damage and scaling to bring it in line with the other MH weapons if they feel like they want necro to have more variety of viable weapon options in PVE. The AA chain on this weapon is the only glaringly bad skill on this weapon. The fact that necro was balanced to have very limited survivability outside of shroud kills any reason for the necro to get close to an opponent without there being a payoff. MH dagger doesn't have great damage, scaling, or an active defense option (pulsing blindness) like with greatsword. With greatsword, it makes sense to get close to your opponent. With MH dagger, there is 0 reason to ever go in for AA'ing outside of LF regen in PVE. The current measly LF regen in competitive gamemodes is not rewarding enough to ever use it. Anet needs add incentive for necro's to AA with MH dagger by either adjusting the numbers in competitive gamemodes, increasing its range (like ele dagger autos for all of their elements), or by attaching a rewarding mechanic (like a boon rip/corruption on the 3rd chain similar to an old version of scepter AA). 

You are totally wrong about dagger in pve. The aa is the ONLY good part about it. Support scourges use it for lf gen while power necro for dps. Axe 2 and dagger aa are the only power weapon skills necro has. Everything else is utility.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Staff Auto could need a speed buff.  (projectile speed). 

 

Offhand Dagger 5 could need a slight CD reduction.