Anchoku.8142

Supporting with Blood Magic in WvW without using Transfusion is not too bad. Ritual of Life, Life from Death and Unholy Martyr are good traits in their own right and others will be main healers, anyway.

Now that the three game modes receive separate balance adjustments, all Arenanet has to do is add duration or quantity to bleeds in PvE; a "numbers tweak" as they say.

> @"General Ablon.9760" said: > > @"Anchoku.8142" said: > > I tend to start with the question, "What does it need to do," when thinking about the next e-spec. > So, what do you think of my edited design? As far as I can tell, a lot of what you want it to be is covered, right? Anyway, specific damage output is up to a balancing team. I just looked into concept design, and "suggestions" for skills and names, some of them strong suggestions, others just placeholders. Thoughts on your revised design * Because condi-dps builds rely on condition damage and expertise stat's power damage can be nearly zero and it is better that way considering Necromancer condi-damage min-maxing. Skills need just enough power to proc' on critical hits. * Melee condi dps should rely on precision and proc'ing crit's. This is where equipment stat trades come into play. Core Necro has little crit dependency in Curses. Make condi-dps depend more heavily on landing a critical hit through the new elite skills and traits to force the new spec' to require high precision. Power and Ferocity will not benefit so critical hits must trigger condition processes. * Self-inflicted conditions are still weak for Corruption trait skills so few players bother with the effort of tracking the conditions on themselves and performance boosts when using Master oof Corruption. If you want to make self-inflicted condi a legitimate Necro play style, look hard at rewards and penalties. Make them have more impact and tie in directly with MoC. * Curses is the trait line a bleed spec would expect to rely on. This does not have to be true but interactions with two other trait lines should be considered. As a developer, you can e-spec to reward _or_ penalize trait lines and specific traits within them. Does SR provide too much benefit? Does Death Magic? Is there something in Spite that can be made less bad on a pure condi spec? * I really like the enhanced condition management features you added. Some form of group support through condition transfer or flipping into boons is a key part of a melee spec. Each elite specialization should be designed to support two roles. Damage output, healing, buffing, debuffing and crowd control; in your design, condition damage and condition management are highlighted. This is a crowded field among professions, though. * Boons like stability and resistance are not part of Necro's design style. Arenanet sets the (arbitrary) framework all professions work within but can change the rule at any time. (Necro has bad ranged dps, low mobility and no stab, etc.) A convincing e-spec design might sway them but who knows for sure. * Arenanet seems to like trading dps for sustain. If the encounter's damage output is high, sustain skills and traits should be low. Try not to allow the best of both world in a specific build. Utility is one thing but alternating between bunker and dps is another so please also discuss the weaknesses for all game modes. Overall, your design is getting more mature. Thank you for taking the time to describe it.

I tend to start with the question, "What does it need to do," when thinking about the next e-spec. In this case, a melee bleed spec on my wish list for many years (back in the old forum) is a bleed burst alternate to scepter auto-attack. Necro has always had a slow dps ramp up on scepter's AA chain. This results in players having to camp it or lose stacks of bleed. The melee bleed-burst concept would is a short range alternate to scepter that would, using one or two of its skills, dump 20 or so short duration bleeds on a target quickly to jump-start dps. The weapon would also have a sustain-type skill. Some kind of gap-closer would be nice, too. Whatever the new main-hand weapon looks like, it should offer maybe 15% greater average bleed damage output using condition damage gear, Curses, it's new elite traits and scepter or or staff as lower-output ranged alternates. Playing the new condi dps weapon should have more risk and potential reward so it is not benefit from stacking in WvW and is risky enough in PvP without an ally to buff and sustain. The weapon should also apply bleeds to at least 3 melee targets at one time to support large hit box dps and trash mob cleaving.

@"Shroud.2307" Consider being ready to swap build or professions when asked. Many raiders' complaints are about others feeling they are entitled to play a role the squad does not need. Have more than one ready if the squad demands it. @"KrHome.1920" Epidemic went a long time without its dps being nerfed because Necro had no other condition cleave with decent output and Epi does not damage its target so I would argue its nerf was for raid balance rather than being an exploit. It already had a mild nerf to remove its instant proc' due to WvW Necro-stacking.

In general, this has similarities to a bleed-burst melee elite discusses since before HoT. Necro has always needed a melee alternative to scepter. Please work it harder.

@"Black Storm.6974" Please report this bug in the bug report sub-forum. Great job identifying it!

> @"duell.4518" said: > Any builds you can recommend? Is healing scourge still meta? Thanks! Heal Scourge is not as meta as Druid. If you want to play the one, most important, heal slot in a raid, develop Ranger into Druid. Scourge is an "Oh, bugger, we need a secondary healer," profession. Now, this is less true in 5-man instances where there might not be a main healer but then your problem as heal-Scourge is giving up dps for the group, which slows progression. However, being able to swap to heal-Scourge when a group has problems is a solid way to clear the content.

Core Necromancer still has the problems that made it bad for instanced PvE in 2012. 1. Death Shroud is designed for 1v1 power build support so it has low value on any condi dps build but stronger on low-cleave power builds, which are bad on large hit box bosses. Core Necro has a lot of low-damage area-denial and can 1v1 but is very bad versus bosses. Points 2 and 3 help explain. 2. Core has very low cleave dps (power or condi), not just a little low but very low, and has poor group utility without barrier or other buffs to make up for it. Running core Necro in instanced group PvE is asking to be carried. It is only viable if squads become happy to carry even top-skilled Core Necro's who do not want to switch to a meta prof/spec for whatever reason. 3. Indomitable/Defiant is a direct, hard-counter to most of core Necro's soft-CC condi output. Only scepter's auto attack chain has any significant damage output and Epidemic bouncing is dead. This is an 8 year old problem and, therefore, must be exceedingly difficult to fix. Scourge is kind of like a Druid that was nerfed even harder. It has limited use in instanced PvE because of that and is why I suggested a trait to swap between barrier and dps would be nice. Scourge's condi dps in PvE was nerfed severely from PoF release before PvP and WvW balancing was separated from PvE so right now Scourge dps is what makes barrier-slave Scourge competitive in instanced PvE. That restricts Scourge to a specific squad slot and build. If it had a way to "turn off" barrier sharing and increase dps, Scourge could switch to a condi-dps build with condi-cleave like Reaper has with power cleave. Right now, swapping to power-Reaper via build templates is the only way to stay with the profession and be acceptable in a dps slot. In contrast, core Necro may not be meta in WvW like it was before Scourge replaced it and the expansion's other elites were added but it still has fair value. Also, Core Necro actually gained sustain in PvP with damage being removed from control effect skills making core shroud strong enough to need solid nerfing. Finally, core Necro is fine in open world PvE where taking a long time to solo a boss allows other players time to join. It is only in instanced PvE where core is so bad that using it at all is stubbornly asking the group to carry you and I hate seeing any profession in that state.

This is only a side-note on some jargon: Necromancer has a high low-skill floor for both dps and sustain. What I mean by that is if a new player does a little research on builds advertised as meta newbie builds in whatever game mode, that new player will enjoy fair damage output and sustain despite the low skill level. This is the high skill floor with the word "low" already implied by "floor" and, therefore, redundant. It is not a low-skill floor because the floor can always go lower like, for example, deciding to solo roam WvW in greens and yellows as a core condi Necro. The high skill floor represents the best a new player with little experience can hope for and is one reason why players with less skill like it. Compare that with success and survival using random button-mashing on Ele with all ascended equipment. The skill floor would be lower, in that case; meaning the new Ele may jump into the game with a meta noob build but still be easily trounced.

Necro was notoriously hard to balance between PvE and competitive game modes because Defiant is a hard counter to Necro's core strengths. Now that balance is being maintained partially separate between game modes (same mechanics for skills and traits but different scalers), balance is better and should improve further when the next expac comes out and is inevitably patched.

While I like many of the skills and traits finding a place for a specialization like this that does not overlap too much with other professions' specializations is a problem. Imagine Ranger and Elementalist mains' reaction. Competition for a heal support slot is already tough because group dps is so important that healer slots are minimized. Healers are necessary "overhead" but they cost dps unless they also bring needed buffs.

Having a rough equivalent of a block/immunity skill available almost instantly with a 1 sec CD is very over-powered. Your point about needing to decide whether to use all should skills or exit without them is part of an intentional trade-off, too. Players are _meant_ to make a tough choice on whether to burn Necro's only block and skill transform, dodge, or eat the incoming skill knowing shroud would be on a 10 sec cool down when they exit. Shroud has to have an opportunity cost.

> @"kharmin.7683" said: > Nothing is preventing the OP from buying gems with cash every time a LW episode is released. In fact, I encourage it. And the OP (me) does make a point of buying gems with real money periodically to support continued game development. ;-) The sad reality is that free cash flow matters a lot. If Arenanet has to change the rules to get it, I expect they will or slow/halt development, cut staff and move into a smaller office. Some of you might think, "Well, if retail gem sales slow down, they just cut working hours or don't make as much," but that is not going to work. If you love the game, pay a little real money once in a while and play the game a lot. Thank you all for reading and participating in this discussion. It shows you care about GW2 and it's future.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > @"KrHome.1920" said: > > Additionally to that: people do often confuse "player, who produces a lot of cherrypicked video content" with skill. Both things have nothing to do with each other. > > True, sometime you take a look at those so called "best players" and the truth is that they just throw the match after a minute because team comp isn't to their liking while when they actually play they do nothing that really impact their match, trying more to look good than actually being good. True; having the right build, right team comp' with advantage over another team's composition matters more than it probably should in GW2. I have often thought that activities ought to have PvP reward tracks.

Marks work like traps and are gone after being proc'd or leave a combo field. Shades leave markers. Maybe shades _are_ markers for F-skills to proc at. What part of marks did you want shades to have?

Iirc, Necro got VP back in 2015 before any elite specializations and it was weak-sauce even back then. I do not recall it being buffed after HoT. Unlike other shared buffs, Vampiric Aura (not a real aura) did not scale very well with the expansions and power creep because it is a life-steal and Arenanet keeps that mechanic under tight control.

Thoughts on future elite ideas Shield - core Necro sustain is not lacking and Scourge can add to group sustain. Why add another sustain option? Long range dps - core Necro has some pretty good area denial capability from short to long range so Arenanet will have to be careful adding ranged dps. Imagine if core Necro had potential to get 30k dps on staff. As Dadnir suggested, something has to change with sustain to pay for dps without getting into melee. Personally, I am hoping for either a better core Necro (low-cleave melee) or a dedicated condi elite capable of group/squad condi management to make up for Scourge being nerfed into PUG barrier support.

> @"Randulf.7614" said: > But the lay offs were not known to be connected to gw2s finances, they were connected to what appeared to be unviable side projects Those side projects lost their funding and the reason is understandably filtered but, if Arenanet was well-funded, the staff would have been moved to other priorities.

> @"Adamixos.6785" said: > > @"Anchoku.8142" said: > What do you have against poor gamers, bro? Nothing, specifically, but if a player cannot afford, for example 1 USD + 100 gems to play a LW episode and farm a new map, there not many good excuses that I can think of.

> @"Randulf.7614" said: > Beacuse they likely have always generated enough through gemstore microtransactions which are pretty heavy to allow us free content. Personally I prefer this method of funding and I think making it both would damage the population of the game and be unsustainable because essentailly the game would be one step from being a sub based game if you had to buy every content that drops. > > It also encourages a loyal fanbase to login more often And yet there were layoffs... What players _like_ is absolutely free new content and servers that do not lag. There is no such thing as a free lunch and the fact that lots of games require subscription or are pay-to-win should be enough evidence that revenue is kind of necessary. Arenanet probably borrows funding for expac development from NCSoft or lenders so paying it back with real money (not gems) from expac sales is important. Free cash flow is something they have to worry about constantly.

Last time I used Terror was on condi dps Scourge before multiple nerfs in PvE (for PvP and WvW balance) left it in such a poor state that Scourge was only useful as a barrier-slave with condi being second priority. Edit: It is frustrating how competitive play balance has gotten attention outside of Living World's free content while PvE core and elite professions have to wait for an expac. Why provide so much free PvE content and ignore its issues when players could pay a fraction of an expansion's cost in real money for better PvE? I have never understood Arenanet's utopian business model.

Necro is less affected than other professions, though wells are a staple of WvW. Sould be no surprise that PvE remains untouched while Arenanet continues working the expac.

Thank you for sharing this concept. Unfortunately, there may be a problem with this. To be viable as a low-damage tank, some value to a group is necessary and there must be a weakness for competitive game modes to exploit. Tanking in PvE is best with stability access so boss control effects do not cause the tank to lose boss position control. For low-damage builds, significant group support will be needed aside from the tanking role; e.g., healing, boons, condition management, resurrecting, etc. No small-time support will make up for a low dps. In PvP, a more unkillable and ineffectual version of core Necro would not be highly regarded so maybe think about how the concept can be a winner versus some builds and loser vs others.

It looks nicely detailed and thought out. Some aspects may be problematic but may be fixed with scaling numbers. What are your thoughts on LF generation by enemy deaths at 1200 range? Regarding the Mesmer and Thief or Engi-like skills, do you think there is a space for Necro to have them?