Change of Playstyle

[Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046]

> @"Esprit Dumort.3109" said:

> Aside from the elite players, most people should not consider Necro as a roaming class. It just does not compete with high mobility high damage classes like Thief, Mesmer, Warrior, Ranger, and Ele (or the rest). Perhaps that was never the intent from Anet, to allow necro to be a solo roam class (in WvW/PvP)

 

Roaming on necromancer is all i do.

 

Power: Has never been viable in WvW tbh, ever. (except the first week after a patch, when everyone is figuring out stuff, necro's only have to take al the standard power stuff and be ready to go.)

Conditions where viable when you had enough transfers to keep up with the overpowering conditions other professions trow at you.

iow roaming conditionmancer was mostly sending opponents conditions back at them with a few extra bleeds and some corrupt.

 

Now:

Power: Not viable at all for roaming. forget about it. any sort of capable player can dance around you without problem.

Condi: Only viable versus melee or a thief that didn't finish his combo to one shot you also a vanilla recruit ranger can AA you to death without even moving.

just by using their weapon skills as intended.

 

What is left?: I have no idea Anymore. Things that sort of worked in the past are now scrap. (see trait lines and synergy for conditions)

 

Necromancers depend of their conditions as the only real way to defeat other professions. take away the conditions VITAL to necromancer builds. Chill/bleed/blind/poison and you are left with ... i don't know. not much.

 

wasn't Necromancer supposed to be the master of corruption? The weaver of conditions? The be all that ends all when it came to attrition? The longer the fight went on the more powerful necromancer became?

I remember that being the description of necro years back.

[DeceiverX.8361]

Since you linked me back to this thread asking for more info, Eremite, a few things to note when in this matchup:

 

Dodging steal is obviously ideal, but in the cases where you don't, the thief's build and how you respond can be a critical part in determining how both they will play and how you can use their own strategies against them.

 

While DA has fallen off in use, any thief using DA (often still at the top end of players) will press an advantage they have from Lotus Poison's application of Weakness. This has huge implications in terms of how you can beat (or lose to) a thief: Weakness cuts endurance refilling, which means you have fewer chances to dodge key burst attempts, but more importantly, it reduces outgoing critical/power damage by a huge amount, meaning your retaliatory combos with Soul Spiral, Charge/Scythe, GS AA1/2, and Axe 2 may fall short of being able to land a killing blow. Upon being hit by steal, you should use Suffer! immediately to cleanse the weakness, since the condition removal component will prioritize the weakness, deal damage to the thief, and chill them, hitting their utility skill/endurance refunding cooldowns, slowing them down with chill allowing you to catch up, or simply forcing one of the very few cleanses thieves have access to.

 

Comboing your hard CC when they come back to fight you is also good to do, especially if you force their primary forms of escape early. A good GS5 pull can force shadowstep, and most thieves will need to re-close that gap back into melee. GS5 -> Shroud -> S2 (their Shadowstep)>S5>S3>S4>S3 (Fear) will force their hand into the return while still leaving you on lower cooldowns, and even if half of this hits, they're likely still going down.

 

Against P/P, you want to really just take full advantage of not giving them a full channel of unload by at the start of the fight, taking the first few hits of the first unload but dodging the end; the initiative cost goes from 2 to 5 if not every hit lands. Dodge the second unload (they'll cast it again) or use DCharge to deny projectiles if they use Body Shot to immobilize you. They *will* have enough initiative to cast four consecutive times if they do things correctly, and since every hit of unload also gives them might, it's essential you maintain some resources to negate the final two, which is why I suggest keeping DCharge on reserve and using Suffer to transfer any immob you might have early from Body Shot or Panic Strike, and since most do not run Dash since the nerf given Bound's synergy with P/P, this can make for a great punishment opportunity. If you save DCharge for Unload #3/4, you can negate their high-coefficient incoming hit at 25 might and also reach them by closing the gap from DCharge itself, and if they're unskilled and spam use of Unload again, the blind from Charge will negate the first hit and thus also consume the full initiative cost of the ability.

[Justine.6351]

If so many necromancers hadn't been treating shroud like a second life bar for the past 5 years maybe anet would have rebalanced it differently.

 

It's a rechargeable damage shield with a fresh set of skills. If it is possible to facetank in it for a duration then exit and quickly recharge, it would be kind of broken. And that's what people want?

[DeceiverX.8361]

I don't think that's why they made the changes they did. They said they were due to raid DPS, which shroud had zero purpose in using because it was a damage loss, which people complained about. They made the changes they did to shroud uptime because buffing the damage by that much and keeping the durability in shroud the same would have been too much for the PvP/WvW formats. At the end of the day with ANet, pretty much all balancing is made for PvE. Confusion DoT, thief dagger AA buffs and thief traps/ghost thief is all the proof we'll ever need.

 

IN making the changes they did, RShroud is now just a tool to spam off cooldown and run your fingers across the keyboard with at this point because with the removal of SoS odds are you're only getting one at most two casts per fight, now. The issue is that they didn't address the real problems with PvE DPS on the necro and while this change "works" for Reaper, the problems with core necro still persist, and they removed playstyles and builds based on shroud uptime (like mine) as a consequence. Onslaught was also fantastic on-kill, too. It gave the trait tons of value in outnumbered fighting whereas now it's a strictly worse pick than BB and super boring because you're rewarded for just spamming 1 whenever you have LF, rather than trying to combo into generating downs in the middle of shroud or making the decision not to spike shrouded to gain back LF instead.

 

Really, less-drastic buffs and just making the RShroud AA better by like 20-30% would have brought the profession to be much more consistent and generally fun to play against. At the moment it's pretty much no-skill-kills in Soul Spiral etc. or be completely dumpstered by anyone who can bait shroud for a few seconds due to how absolutely insane the damage is and how stupidly short shroud lasts. Overall, reaper is now super one-dimensional and quite frankly, not very fun.

[dceptaconroy.7928]

> @"Justine.6351" said:

> If so many necromancers hadn't been treating shroud like a second life bar for the past 5 years maybe anet would have rebalanced it differently.

>

> It's a rechargeable damage shield with a fresh set of skills. If it is possible to facetank in it for a duration then exit and quickly recharge, it would be kind of broken. And that's what people want?

 

So we wrk to earn our lf/defense back other classes wait on a cd and have many to cycle through. LF gain in ratio to shroud degens not what it used to be coupled with 10 sec issue = not as fun as before. So i dont think that heads here are asking for anything over the top or broken. Previous degen, 7 second option, current dmg output, end of. I dnt think thats silly, do you consider that combination broken? Theyll never incorporate any new defense ever nor escapes or anything of the sort so its left to shroud..see we werent ever given a true option.

[Justine.6351]

> @"dceptaconroy.7928" said:

> > @"Justine.6351" said:

> > If so many necromancers hadn't been treating shroud like a second life bar for the past 5 years maybe anet would have rebalanced it differently.

> >

> > It's a rechargeable damage shield with a fresh set of skills. If it is possible to facetank in it for a duration then exit and quickly recharge, it would be kind of broken. And that's what people want?

>

> So we wrk to earn our lf/defense back other classes wait on a cd and have many to cycle through. LF gain in ratio to shroud degens not what it used to be coupled with 10 sec issue = not as fun as before. So i dont think that heads here are asking for anything over the top or broken. Previous degen, 7 second option, current dmg output, end of. I dnt think thats silly, do you consider that combination broken? Theyll never incorporate any new defense ever nor escapes or anything of the sort so its left to shroud..see we werent ever given a true option.

 

I do think shroud should have a reduced cd. It is the classes defense mechanic. Not being able to "dodge" for 10sec is kind of wrong.

[Umbramare.9156]

> @"Justine.6351" said:

> > @"dceptaconroy.7928" said:

> > > @"Justine.6351" said:

> > > If so many necromancers hadn't been treating shroud like a second life bar for the past 5 years maybe anet would have rebalanced it differently.

> > >

> > > It's a rechargeable damage shield with a fresh set of skills. If it is possible to facetank in it for a duration then exit and quickly recharge, it would be kind of broken. And that's what people want?

> >

> > So we wrk to earn our lf/defense back other classes wait on a cd and have many to cycle through. LF gain in ratio to shroud degens not what it used to be coupled with 10 sec issue = not as fun as before. So i dont think that heads here are asking for anything over the top or broken. Previous degen, 7 second option, current dmg output, end of. I dnt think thats silly, do you consider that combination broken? Theyll never incorporate any new defense ever nor escapes or anything of the sort so its left to shroud..see we werent ever given a true option.

>

> I do think shroud should have a reduced cd. It is the classes defense mechanic. Not being able to "dodge" for 10sec is kind of wrong.

 

Pretty sure that the average necro player doesnt even know that dodging exists and thats why this nerf hits so hard.