Main Hand Dagger Condition

[Obtena.7952]

Again, you want to make this into a argument about how dagger NEEDS a bleed because other weapons create and take advantage of the same condition. It's a moot point. those other weapons are not a REASON for dagger to get bleed. Thought they don't exclude the possibility that dagger could get a bleed, there are many other reasons it shouldn't, including the idea of skillful use. I'm going to hammer that one home. The idea of condi dagger itself flies in the face of skillful use of the Necro toolset. It's a dumbing down.

[Crinn.7864]

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> Again, you want to make this into a argument about how dagger NEEDS a bleed because other weapons create and take advantage of the same condition. It's a moot point. those other weapons are not a REASON for dagger to get bleed.

 

Seriously? You've where preaching about consistency two posts ago, yet now it's perfectly good for thigns to be inconsistent.

 

Dude you flip-flop your rhetoric more than a Politian on a election year.

 

[Obtena.7952]

You're simply taking what I said out of context. I said Anet had a very consistent approach to how they make game changes, which is why I was pretty certain this idea wouldn't happen over a month before the pre-release notes were even released.

 

How you associated that with some comparison of weapon skills ... I guess that's just creative thinking on your part? I didn't even elude to those comparisons. You simply throw it in my face as a deflection when I point out that this weapon skills consistency you speak of is irrelevant in justifying bleeds on dagger. Are you telling me that you just grasp onto a hot word and ignore the content of the post to attack people? Seems like.

[Lily.1935]

Why I made the suggestion to include blood in this is to promote build diversity. MH dagger is our lowest skill weapon and offers quite a substantial amount of life force on its own. The idea of just giving it bleeding with no cost to doing it is something I'm opposed to doing. Considering its a very high sustain weapon already it serves its purpose very well in doing so.

 

When I made the blood suggestion is to promote the player in making difficult choices. You can get that option to make the dagger bleed foes, but by taking it with quickening thirst, (Which I'd suggest making a GM if bleeding was added to it and just remove unholy martyr entirely) would be a good solution. Condi necromancer doesn't need the dagger for the DPS, scepter works well for that, and assuming that We'll have a good way to generate life force through our Off hand this isn't a question of Damage. So its a question of variety.

 

Blood Magic currently needs some work. It has a minor bleed theme to it but doesn't dedicate to that theme with any one of its trait lines. Worse still its blood bond is competing with Quickening thirst, which are both things you'd want on a dagger bleeds build. So the suggestion is to keep to the dagger's theme of sustain by linking it with blood magic, forcing you to take blood if you want this interaction. This way you can use your dagger to fuel your sustain as you're supposed to while still getting your bleeding theme.

 

This is probably not what you want. Feeling that you shouldn't be forced to take blood magic. But having a diversity of options for your builds gives meaning to playing the class. My thoughts on this is restriction breeds innovation. Not too much restriction of course, but enough to make the player have to really consider their choices.

[Aktium.9506]

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> The whole idea that Anet would take a condi dagger route to solve a LF regen problem on Scourge made no sense, primarily because having condi on dagger doesn't do anything different for LF regen than vanilla dagger does. That should be obvious and it seems to me that Anet did recognize the LF regen on Scourge ... but they sure did take a much more sensible way to solve it.

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> Again, you want to make this into a argument about how dagger NEEDS a bleed because other weapons create and take advantage of the same condition. It's a moot point. those other weapons are not a REASON for dagger to get bleed. Thought they don't exclude the possibility that dagger could get a bleed, there are many other reasons it shouldn't, including the idea of skillful use. I'm going to hammer that one home. The idea of condi dagger itself flies in the face of skillful use of the Necro toolset. It's a dumbing down.

 

It does make sense. You have had it explained to you several times by now. Introducing Bleeding to Dagger may not be entirely satisfactory, but it is the easiest and most efficient way to solve several issues. It is by no means the most satisfactory solution. But it is the best that can be done on short notice. I will try to explain the reasoning behind, once more.

 

Let's start with the biggest problem, which is Raids. The first part of this is that Core Necromancer and Scourge do not have access to Deathly Chill. This results in a _massive_ decrease in DPS. This on its own is not inherently wrong as Scourge has an element of Support to it that Reaper does not. It would make sense that a specialization focused on doing damage should have higher DPS than a Supportive one. Unfortunately it doesn't take much thinking to come to the conclusion that Barrier has no use in Raids. It adds nothing that Druid and Chronomancer doesn't already cover. They could of course implement Raid mechanics such as completely unavoidable/undistortable/unblockable 100% health attacks making Barrier _required_ to clear the content. But I hope you will agree with me when I say that this is maybe one of the laziest and most ham-fisted things they could possibly do.

 

So we have now established that Barrier has no real use in Raids. That rules out a Supportive role for Necro. It's also very unlikely that Scourge will mantle the role of Tank that Chronomancer currently holds. That leaves the DPS role. There have been rumours that Deathly Chill is going to get changed into a Power trait to try and force Reaper into being mainly a Power DPS specialization. We will find out the truth of this in about 16 hours, maybe nothing will change and I'm wrong and we can keep playing Condi Reaper. But assuming they do change Deathly Chill to a Power trait. Where does that leave us? Power Reaper currently benchmarks at around 24k with realistic buffs. That's almost 10k less than the Condi build. Power Reaper would need to do almost **50% more damage** than it currently does to be at the same tier it is right now, which is barely in the upper half of DPS builds. Do you yourself think it's likely they're going to slap that much damage onto Power Reaper? I sure don't, I think they will be very conservative with any Power DPS buff, leaving Reaper very much in the gutter.

 

So that leaves us with Condi Scourge for a DPS role. Replacing the massive amount of Bleeding that Condi Reaper churns out with a more varied repertoire of conditions like Burning and Torment. The tools for it are definitely present in the specialization through Fell Beacon/Sadistic Searing/Demonic Lore and Dhuumfire interaction with Shade skill usage. But unlike Condi Reaper where Life Force is not even remotely an issue, the Life Force cost of Shade skills are nothing short of staggering. Life Force is not a problem for Reaper in equal parts because you only enter Reaper Shroud to do a few cycles of Dhuumfire and then your Executioner's Scythe > Soul Spiral combo before leaving as well as the fact that Greatsword is almost as good at generating Life Force as Dagger. Lets also not forget the fact that Greatsword as it is used in the Condi Reaper build effectively makes it into a Condi weapon due to Deathly Chill.

 

But with Scourge we lose Greatsword and rate at which we would need to use Shade skills to trigger Dhuumfire to make up for the loss of Deathly Chill is simply not feasible with anything less than Dagger's Life Force generating capabilities, even with Dagger it's cutting it close. Of course nothing is stopping us from using Dagger as is to generate Life Force, except the little part where switching into Dagger on a Condi Scourge to generate Life Force so you can use Shade skills will _cost_ us damage instead of increasing it. So instead we're better off camping Scepter/Dagger + Scepter/Torch to keep the conditions flowing and simply using Shade skills whenever me managed to scrape together enough Life Force to actually use them.

 

Do you think this is somehow better? Do you think camping Scepter and only using Shade skills when we can eke out enough Life Force from Feast of Corruption and Harrowing Wave to actually use them is skillful use of the Necromancer toolset. Do you honestly and truly believe this? Do you not see the incongruity in not wanting to dumb the game down but accepting the end result of having to camp a single main-hand weapon set resulting in even lower APM and general player input required.

 

You have stated you would rather see the issue of insufficient Life Force generation redressed by changing Nourishing Rot to help us generate Life Force. Your basis for this was that it would be adding meaningful choices to picking traits. It has been explained to you why this is wrong. My personal stance on this is that all you accomplish by doing so is making a must-have trait akin to what Warriors had in Cleansing Ire for the longest time. Thus having the opposite of the desired effect.

 

I want to make this clear once more. I would rather see a complete rework for Staff or simply another weapon like Mace or Sword added to Necromancer's arsenal to to fix the aforementioned glaring flaws in Scourge rather than adding power creep to Dagger. But as you've complacently remarked, you know how Anet works. And I want you to ask yourself; can you see Anet putting down the man-hours and the work required to create an entirely new weapon with its own identity for Core Necro or completely reworking an existing one to better fill the required needs? Once more, that is as improbable as it gets.

 

So instead I proposed that Dagger gets a damaging condition. And the conclusion has been reached that since Dagger is closely tied to the Blood Magic traitline and Bleeding is unsurprisingly concomitant to Blood Magic, both thematically and mechanically, it would be the most fitting to have Dagger inflict Bleeding. It is not perfect. But I would not be disinclined to claim that it is one of the better alternatives available to us. Both for the ease of implementation and the non-intrusive nature of the change.

 

Lastly, this change is of course centred around a Raiding perspective. But taking both PvP and WvW into account, we both know Dagger isn't used to any significant extent in either mode and as such the proposed change would not adversely affect either game mode.

[Crinn.7864]

 

 

> @Lily.1935 said:

> Why I made the suggestion to include blood in this is to promote build diversity. MH dagger is our lowest skill weapon and offers quite a substantial amount of life force on its own. The idea of just giving it bleeding with no cost to doing it is something I'm opposed to doing. Considering its a very high sustain weapon already it serves its purpose very well in doing so.

But it's purpose has no value. It's worthless in WvW because it doesn't cleave. It's worthless in PvP because completely gimping both your stickiness, overall damage, and boonhate to get slightly more sustain (while still leaving your sustain behind other classes) is a bad trade. It's worthless in PvE because it's damage makes shortbow thief look good.

 

Also if you think dagger is "easy" I suggest you take it for a spin in either of the PvP gamemodes, see how long it takes you to change your mind.

 

> When I made the blood suggestion is to promote the player in making difficult choices. You can get that option to make the dagger bleed foes, but by taking it with quickening thirst, (Which I'd suggest making a GM if bleeding was added to it and just remove unholy martyr entirely) would be a good solution. Condi necromancer doesn't need the dagger for the DPS, scepter works well for that, and assuming that We'll have a good way to generate life force through our Off hand this isn't a question of Damage. So its a question of variety.

But it's not a difficult choice. **If I have to kill my build's effectiveness in order to pick up dagger, then I just won't pick up dagger.** This is why nobody uses dagger in the first place.

 

But it is a question of damage. Offhands have really bad life force generation as a rule. For reaper this doesn't really matter since with shroud you don't need much lifeforce generation to do your stuff (in PvE), so you can just take scepter without having to sweat about LF. [Condi Scourge however is completely starved for life force.](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/2117/scourge-pve-life-force-costs-analysis-updated/p1) That's just for PvE though.

 

Meanwhile in sPvP even condi reaper is lifeforce starved most of the time, which results in condi reaper needing a dedicated pocket support to sustain them since condi reaper doesn't have the personal LF gain to self-sustain.

 

> Blood Magic currently needs some work. It has a minor bleed theme to it but doesn't dedicate to that theme with any one of its trait lines. Worse still its blood bond is competing with Quickening thirst, which are both things you'd want on a dagger bleeds build. So the suggestion is to keep to the dagger's theme of sustain by linking it with blood magic, forcing you to take blood if you want this interaction. This way you can use your dagger to fuel your sustain as you're supposed to while still getting your bleeding theme

But Dagger even with bleeds will never be worth dropping curses, and dropping Soul Reaping for it defeats the purpose of taking a life force generating weapon in the first place.

Besides Blood Magic has no synergy with condi builds. Yeah blood bond requires bleeding to proc, but blood bond isn't useful to a condi build anyways. Nothing else in the traitline has to do with condi builds at all. However if we where to say make a few bleeds baseline to dagger, then dagger wielding power builds would be able to use blood bond, and power builds do get benefits from blood magic.

 

> This is probably not what you want. Feeling that you shouldn't be forced to take blood magic. But having a diversity of options for your builds gives meaning to playing the class. My thoughts on this is restriction breeds innovation. Not too much restriction of course, but enough to make the player have to really consider their choices.

But you're not breeding innovation. If solving life force problems requires neutering our damage, then we will just continue running scepter 24/7 like we have been doing for years.

 

Also dude, we aren't asking to make dagger the 1 stop weapon for condi necros. Dagger with the proposed buffs will still be behind scepter. We just want dagger to be useful enough to be considered as a off-weapon on more LF dependent builds. As it stands now even builds that are completely life force starved still will not take dagger, because dagger is that bad. Requiring blood magic to fix dagger won't change that.

 

 

 

> @Aktium.9506 said:

> ....... fix the aforementioned glaring flaws in Scourge rather than adding power creep to Dagger......

For the record, straight buffing dagger doesn't qualify as power creep.

 

Power creep is when a change to a game mechanic results in a overall increase to the power level of the game. However since dagger is well below the power level of other necromancer weapons, and necromancer itself is below the power level of other classes, buffing dagger does not constitute power creep.

 

[Obtena.7952]

> @Aktium.9506 said:

> > @Obtena.7952 said:

> > The whole idea that Anet would take a condi dagger route to solve a LF regen problem on Scourge made no sense, primarily because having condi on dagger doesn't do anything different for LF regen than vanilla dagger does. That should be obvious and it seems to me that Anet did recognize the LF regen on Scourge ... but they sure did take a much more sensible way to solve it.

> > @Obtena.7952 said:

> > Again, you want to make this into a argument about how dagger NEEDS a bleed because other weapons create and take advantage of the same condition. It's a moot point. those other weapons are not a REASON for dagger to get bleed. Thought they don't exclude the possibility that dagger could get a bleed, there are many other reasons it shouldn't, including the idea of skillful use. I'm going to hammer that one home. The idea of condi dagger itself flies in the face of skillful use of the Necro toolset. It's a dumbing down.

>

> It does make sense. You have had it explained to you several times by now. Introducing Bleeding to Dagger may not be entirely satisfactory, but it is the easiest and most efficient way to solve several issues. It is by no means the most satisfactory solution. But it is the best that can be done on short notice. I will try to explain the reasoning behind, once more.

 

I appreciate the effort but there isn't anything here that hasn't been explained or understood. It certainly seems like a well constructed argument. The problem is that what I said is not wrong: Condi dagger gives no more LF regen than vanilla dagger, so the premise that adding a condition to it makes it better than vanilla dagger at LF regen on Scourge, which IS the most pertinent given the timing of the suggestion, makes no sense.

 

You can heap a whole bunch of other reasons onto why a condi buff on dagger is a good idea to that, but this isn't a balance patch, it's an expansion release. It's simply not a practical suggestion (forget the fact that conditions do not give you LF in the first place) to address LF regen on Scrouge considering they were a week away from releasing PoF. That's evident by Anet's attempt to buff LF regen on Torch ... which by the way, was inline with what I had said in the first place; fixing a Scourge-related LF regen issue requires a fix to a Scourge-related tool.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Because you are purposely missing the point. The issue was never that Scourge can't generate life force. The issue that the cost of doing so is far too high. When a Spec can't use it's mechanics in **the exact kind of build it was intended for use in** there's a serious problem.

 

The idea for dagger getting bleeds goes well beyond just Scourge, though, improving the weapon in many areas that it does need improvements in.

[Obtena.7952]

> @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

> Because you are purposely missing the point. The issue was never that Scourge can't generate life force. The issue that the cost of doing so is far too high. When a Spec can't use it's mechanics in **the exact kind of build it was intended for use in** there's a serious problem.

 

... and somehow you guys have all concluded that dagger WITH a condition is the only answer to addressing the cost of LF on Scourge skills being far too high. That's an interesting position given that it doesn't do that ANY better than the vanilla dagger does. If cost of executing those skills is too high EVEN for condition builds that you indicate Scourge was intended for, then the answer lies in the Scourge toolset, as Anet has demonstrated with the buff to Torch 4.

 

See, I don't buy it because you CAN use the mechanics of the spec in the build it was intended to be used in. It simply requires you to swap, which you already acknowledged would be necessary for a dagger build in Scourge anyways, with or without conditions. Mind you, that's also inline with Anet's desire to enable players skillful use of necros existing toolset as well, again something I had previously mentioned.

 

Whether bleeds on dagger is useful beyond Scourge is neither here nor there. There are LOTS of ways to improve dagger.

[Lily.1935]

> @Crinn.7864 said:

>

>

> > @Lily.1935 said:

> > Why I made the suggestion to include blood in this is to promote build diversity. MH dagger is our lowest skill weapon and offers quite a substantial amount of life force on its own. The idea of just giving it bleeding with no cost to doing it is something I'm opposed to doing. Considering its a very high sustain weapon already it serves its purpose very well in doing so.

> But it's purpose has no value. It's worthless in WvW because it doesn't cleave. It's worthless in PvP because completely gimping both your stickiness, overall damage, and boonhate to get slightly more sustain (while still leaving your sustain behind other classes) is a bad trade. It's worthless in PvE because it's damage makes shortbow thief look good.

>

> Also if you think dagger is "easy" I suggest you take it for a spin in either of the PvP gamemodes, see how long it takes you to change your mind.

>

> > When I made the blood suggestion is to promote the player in making difficult choices. You can get that option to make the dagger bleed foes, but by taking it with quickening thirst, (Which I'd suggest making a GM if bleeding was added to it and just remove unholy martyr entirely) would be a good solution. Condi necromancer doesn't need the dagger for the DPS, scepter works well for that, and assuming that We'll have a good way to generate life force through our Off hand this isn't a question of Damage. So its a question of variety.

> But it's not a difficult choice. **If I have to kill my build's effectiveness in order to pick up dagger, then I just won't pick up dagger.** This is why nobody uses dagger in the first place.

>

> But it is a question of damage. Offhands have really bad life force generation as a rule. For reaper this doesn't really matter since with shroud you don't need much lifeforce generation to do your stuff (in PvE), so you can just take scepter without having to sweat about LF. [Condi Scourge however is completely starved for life force.](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/2117/scourge-pve-life-force-costs-analysis-updated/p1) That's just for PvE though.

>

> Meanwhile in sPvP even condi reaper is lifeforce starved most of the time, which results in condi reaper needing a dedicated pocket support to sustain them since condi reaper doesn't have the personal LF gain to self-sustain.

>

> > Blood Magic currently needs some work. It has a minor bleed theme to it but doesn't dedicate to that theme with any one of its trait lines. Worse still its blood bond is competing with Quickening thirst, which are both things you'd want on a dagger bleeds build. So the suggestion is to keep to the dagger's theme of sustain by linking it with blood magic, forcing you to take blood if you want this interaction. This way you can use your dagger to fuel your sustain as you're supposed to while still getting your bleeding theme

> But Dagger even with bleeds will never be worth dropping curses, and dropping Soul Reaping for it defeats the purpose of taking a life force generating weapon in the first place.

> Besides Blood Magic has no synergy with condi builds. Yeah blood bond requires bleeding to proc, but blood bond isn't useful to a condi build anyways. Nothing else in the traitline has to do with condi builds at all. However if we where to say make a few bleeds baseline to dagger, then dagger wielding power builds would be able to use blood bond, and power builds do get benefits from blood magic.

>

> > This is probably not what you want. Feeling that you shouldn't be forced to take blood magic. But having a diversity of options for your builds gives meaning to playing the class. My thoughts on this is restriction breeds innovation. Not too much restriction of course, but enough to make the player have to really consider their choices.

> But you're not breeding innovation. If solving life force problems requires neutering our damage, then we will just continue running scepter 24/7 like we have been doing for years.

>

> Also dude, we aren't asking to make dagger the 1 stop weapon for condi necros. Dagger with the proposed buffs will still be behind scepter. We just want dagger to be useful enough to be considered as a off-weapon on more LF dependent builds. As it stands now even builds that are completely life force starved still will not take dagger, because dagger is that bad. Requiring blood magic to fix dagger won't change that.

>

>

>

> > @Aktium.9506 said:

> > ....... fix the aforementioned glaring flaws in Scourge rather than adding power creep to Dagger......

> For the record, straight buffing dagger doesn't qualify as power creep.

>

> Power creep is when a change to a game mechanic results in a overall increase to the power level of the game. However since dagger is well below the power level of other necromancer weapons, and necromancer itself is below the power level of other classes, buffing dagger does not constitute power creep.

>

 

First, lets get this out of the way. Necromancer's lack of movement control and movement themselves harms the dagger's use in PvP, not the need for bleeding. its not the dagger's fault in this regard at all, but the surrounding skills. This doesn't make it a more "Skill intensive" weapon. So, no, you're wrong here.

 

It does make a difficult choice for you. The benefit is you gain that sustain, but need to sacrifice something for that sustain. Why should we get it for free with no cost to us? This is asking for perfection without understanding what the consequences of that perfection would be. Also, I recognized that "Just dagger bleeding" wouldn't be enough to justify it so I also suggested on top of that trait increasing the bleed damage as well as alluding to other synergies in blood. Talking about a rework. Right now there isn't a choice, you take soul reaping. No questions asked. you do this, or else.

 

That's really just offhand Dagger that has poor life force. Focus and Warhorn do quite well for themselves, especially focus. So that complaint doesn't really hold water. The issue is the over all cost of skills on scourge, not life force gain. What you guys are asking for is not to think while playing the game, and I can't agree with that. I think that Blood should be desired in builds as some form of support condi spec. And dagger would fit that bill fairly well, but why close the door on a support spec even more than it already has been?

 

The issue with reaper's Life force isn't a matter of Needing more life force but needing more scaling defenses. Which the necromancer lacks. Necromancer frequently gets focus fired in PvP because its easy to take down. Giving dagger bleeding wont help you in this at all, so the suggestion from my standpoint is purely a PvE one as people are still just going to take something like staff or axe over dagger anyway.

 

Dropping curses or soul reaping? Well, that's not entirely true. Warriors have far better DPS options in their traits but they take Phalanx anyway because its better party support. So, losing personal DPS for improved party DPS is actually a fair trade.

 

Blood magic has no synergy Except? Um, you contradicted yourself there. Either way, the synergy with condi is actually intended for Blood magic, you got a dodge that drops mark of blood, quickening thirst and Blood Bond. its poorly executed sure, but you once again fail to actually read what I was suggesting. I wasn't saying "One trait will fix this all." But a real look into blood to define itself as a specialization. You guys have to stop thinking so 1 dimensionally and start looking at this from a 3D perspective.

 

One stop? What? No, never suggested you were. But the only reason to have dagger apply bleeding is for sustain on Condition builds. Which isn't honestly needed. We'll have plenty of that in PvP come scourge, trust me. The life force gain is there. And reaper? Well, reaper wont likely be running much of a condi build and it was never really designed to. It just sorta happened to fall into that role since Necros really only had good traits and skills for condi.

[Aktium.9506]

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> You can heap a whole bunch of other reasons onto why a condi buff on dagger is a good idea to that, but this isn't a balance patch, it's an expansion release. It's simply not a practical suggestion (forget the fact that conditions do not give you LF in the first place) to address LF regen on Scrouge considering they were a week away from releasing PoF. That's evident by Anet's attempt to buff LF regen on Torch ... which by the way, was inline with what I had said in the first place; fixing a Scourge-related LF regen issue requires a fix to a Scourge-related tool.

 

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> ... and somehow you guys have all concluded that dagger WITH a condition is the only answer to addressing the cost of LF on Scourge skills being far too high. That's an interesting position given that it doesn't do that ANY better than the vanilla dagger does. If cost of executing those skills is too high EVEN for condition builds that you indicate Scourge was intended for, then the answer lies in the Scourge toolset, as Anet has demonstrated with the buff to Torch 4.

>

> See, I don't buy it because you CAN use the mechanics of the spec in the build it was intended to be used in. It simply requires you to swap, which you already acknowledged would be necessary for a dagger build in Scourge anyways, with or without conditions. Mind you, that's also inline with Anet's desire to enable players skillful use of necros existing toolset as well, again something I had previously mentioned.

>

> Whether bleeds on dagger is useful beyond Scourge is neither here nor there. There are LOTS of ways to improve dagger.

Read the fifth paragraph of my previous post, since you obviously must have missed it. I explain exactly why using Dagger without conditions in a Condi Scourge build is not a valid option.

[Zefiris.8297]

> @Aktium.9506 said:

> Let's start with the biggest problem, which is Raids. The first part of this is that Core Necromancer and Scourge do not have access to Deathly Chill. This results in a _massive_ decrease in DPS. This on its own is not inherently wrong as Scourge has an element of Support to it that Reaper does not. It would make sense that a specialization focused on doing damage should have higher DPS than a Supportive one.

 

Unless, of course, one is a warrior, in which case one gets the best support in the game AND more DPS than a reaper.

 

> Do you think this is somehow better? Do you think camping Scepter and only using Shade skills when we can eke out enough Life Force from Feast of Corruption and Harrowing Wave to actually use them is skillful use of the Necromancer toolset. Do you honestly and truly believe this? Do you not see the incongruity in not wanting to kitten the game down but accepting the end result of having to camp a single main-hand weapon set resulting in even lower APM and general player input required.

 

I genuinely see this coming now. The increased life force cost will likely force us to camp scepter and only use F5 consistently. A good part of our play will be autoattacking.

The people crying that weapons should not be made useful are, in the end, arguing for the removal of choice or valid alternatives.

 

I guess some people really do want to autoattack for the most part.

 

>@Obtena.7952 said:

>then the answer lies in the Scourge toolset, as Anet has demonstrated with the buff to Torch 4.

 

This argument is just plain bad. Torch 4 was "buffed" in a way that leaves us still weaker than before, because the most important shade skills were made much more expensive. So no, Anet has not "demonstrated" what you claim, Anet has demonstrated that we should be a low APM class.

[Muchacho.2390]

Honestly the important thing is that mh dagger gets some improvement because currently it isnt really good.

 

I really like the idea of adding a bleed to the auto for the synergy to the other dagger skills (and to open up the option of hybrid builds for the cool d/d playstyle) but it isnt the only way to improve it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lily.1935]

> @Muchacho.2390 said:

> Honestly the important thing is that mh dagger gets some improvement because currently it isnt really good.

>

> I really like the idea of adding a bleed to the auto for the synergy to the other dagger skills (and to open up the option of hybrid builds for the cool d/d playstyle) but it isnt the only way to improve it.

>

>

>

>

>

>

 

They could play with the whole self bleeding theme a bit more. I wouldn't mind if they increased the bleeding stacks to 3 and super empowered all the skills to have some kinda of turn over effect. Like some kind of Awaken the blood type play. But that's probably asking too much.

[Ghostt.1293]

i rather have aoe torment on axe ...

[Obtena.7952]

> @Zefiris.8297 said:

> >@Obtena.7952 said:

> >then the answer lies in the Scourge toolset, as Anet has demonstrated with the buff to Torch 4.

>

> This argument is just plain bad. Torch 4 was "buffed" in a way that leaves us still weaker than before, because the most important shade skills were made much more expensive. So no, Anet has not "demonstrated" what you claim, Anet has demonstrated that we should be a low APM class.

 

So buffing LF regen problem in Scourge directly as a way to solve LF regen problems on Scourge is a bad idea .... BUT adding a condition to dagger, which doesn't give you more LF than vanilla dagger ... that's an amazing idea. OK got it.

 

> @Aktium.9506 said:

> Read the fifth paragraph of my previous post, since you obviously must have missed it. I explain exactly why using Dagger without conditions in a Condi Scourge build is not a valid option.

 

I see NO problem with it costing some damage to get the BEST LF regen available; this is not a valid reason to put conditions on dagger. It's a choice you make to get an advantage over some other choice you made that gives you a different advantage. That's exactly what Anet means with skillful play and use of skills.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> > @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

> > Because you are purposely missing the point. The issue was never that Scourge can't generate life force. The issue that the cost of doing so is far too high. When a Spec can't use it's mechanics in **the exact kind of build it was intended for use in** there's a serious problem.

>

> ... and somehow you guys have all concluded that dagger WITH a condition is the only answer to addressing the cost of LF on Scourge skills being far too high. That's an interesting position given that it doesn't do that ANY better than the vanilla dagger does. If cost of executing those skills is too high EVEN for condition builds that you indicate Scourge was intended for, then the answer lies in the Scourge toolset, as Anet has demonstrated with the buff to Torch 4.

>

> See, I don't buy it because you CAN use the mechanics of the spec in the build it was intended to be used in. It simply requires you to swap, which you already acknowledged would be necessary for a dagger build in Scourge anyways, with or without conditions. Mind you, that's also inline with Anet's desire to enable players skillful use of necros existing toolset as well, again something I had previously mentioned.

>

> Whether bleeds on dagger is useful beyond Scourge is neither here nor there. There are LOTS of ways to improve dagger.

 

Once again, you fail to grasp a simple concept despite it being spelled out in terms my five-year old nephew understands.

 

It's not that condition Scourge is completely incapable of getting the requisite life force, it is that the cost of getting said life force is far too high. When you are overall less effective by any stretch of the imagination by making the choices required to get the life force, then it is not a viable option.

 

Lowering life force costs on Scourge would also be nice, but makes the abilities far more spammable in builds/areas that have plenty of life force and where Scourge will probably be fine. So, that's not a good way of solving the issue.

 

On the other hand, we already have a high life force weapon that has a bleeding sub-theme partially implemented that currently sees no use in any area of the game. Adding bleeding on to it doesn't make Scourge stronger when it already has plentiful life force, but does reduce the cost of using the weapon to the point where it might overall improve effectiveness **and** allow use of the profession mechanic.

 

In addition, since this would be a Core Necromancer change, future elite specializations don't have to keep solving the life force issue yet again. They have an answer that works in all builds, allowing more freedom in design.

 

This change would also help core builds (Greatsword already does a better job for Reaper), as condition builds have always had trouble with gaining sufficient life force in PvP and WvW. Even Power builds benefit, as they stack Might quite easily, which also gives condition damage.

 

But, again, my five year old nephew is having no troubles grasping the concept. If you can't, it's either on purpose, or you're just a moron.

[Obtena.7952]

> @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

 

> It's not that condition Scourge is completely incapable of getting the requisite life force, it is that the cost of getting said life force is far too high. When you are overall less effective by any stretch of the imagination by making the choices required to get the life force, then it is not a viable option.

 

You have to make choices all the time in this game that are tradeoffs between different factors. So your reasoning to condi buff dagger is that you don't like making choices and having to deal with tradeoffs. That's a most ridiculous way of thinking since making these kinds of choices is obviously intended by the design of the game. You are not OVERALL less effective when you swap to dagger because you are doing so to get arguably the best LF regen you can to use shades more often.

 

If the cost of getting LF is too high to use in a Scourge build, then obviously that's a problem with the value of shades and again ... a Scourge related fix.

[Aktium.9506]

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> I see NO problem with it costing some damage to get the BEST LF regen available; this is not a valid reason to put conditions on dagger. It's a choice you make to get an advantage over some other choice you made that gives you a different advantage. That's exactly what Anet means with skillful play and use of skills.

 

It is not even a choice. The effects tied to the Shade skills are entirely undesirable in raids. They are utterly and completely pointless in that setting. You only press them to trigger Dhuumfire for damage, no more. And since your role will be DPS, the damage you get by doing that is _all_ that matters. Anything that **costs** you DPS for no actual benefit when your entire fucking role is centred around doing damage is bad. There is no advantage to using Dagger at all at that point because the Shade skills themselves are nowhere near as valuable pure damage. How is this so hard for you too understand?

[Vitali.5039]

Seems > @Obtena.7952 said:

> > @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

>

> > It's not that condition Scourge is completely incapable of getting the requisite life force, it is that the cost of getting said life force is far too high. When you are overall less effective by any stretch of the imagination by making the choices required to get the life force, then it is not a viable option.

>

> You have to make choices all the time in this game that are tradeoffs between different factors. So your reasoning to condi buff dagger is that you don't like making choices and having to deal with tradeoffs. That's a most ridiculous way of thinking since making these kinds of choices is obviously intended by the design of the game. You are not OVERALL less effective when you swap to dagger because you are doing so to get arguably the best LF regen you can to use kitten more often.

>

 

If "the best LF regen you can to use cats more often" lead to lower dps compared to camping scepter then yes, is "OVERALL less effective".

 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

> @Obtena.7952 said:

> > @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

>

> > It's not that condition Scourge is completely incapable of getting the requisite life force, it is that the cost of getting said life force is far too high. When you are overall less effective by any stretch of the imagination by making the choices required to get the life force, then it is not a viable option.

>

> You have to make choices all the time in this game that are tradeoffs between different factors. So your reasoning to condi buff dagger is that you don't like making choices and having to deal with tradeoffs. That's the most ridiculous way of thinking I have heard. You are not OVERALL less effective when you swap to dagger because you are doing so to get arguably the best LF regen you can to use kitten more often.

>

And by doing so, you lose so much of what you were looking for in the first place. Gaining more life force at the cost of what you were going to use that life force for is pointless unless you can come out ahead.

 

News flash: you can't.

 

Everyone has said that there should be a trade-off by weapon swapping. But when you lose significantly more than you gain, it's a bad trade.

[Obtena.7952]

> @Aktium.9506 said:

> > @Obtena.7952 said:

> > I see NO problem with it costing some damage to get the BEST LF regen available; this is not a valid reason to put conditions on dagger. It's a choice you make to get an advantage over some other choice you made that gives you a different advantage. That's exactly what Anet means with skillful play and use of skills.

>

> It is not even a choice. The effects tied to the Shade skills are entirely undesirable in raids.

 

Right ... so condi buffing dagger fixes that ... Sure.

[Obtena.7952]

> @"Drarnor Kunoram.5180" said:

> Everyone has said that there should be a trade-off by weapon swapping. But when you lose significantly more than you gain, it's a bad trade.

 

Again, if the value of shades is so low that making this swap, even to the BEST LF regen weapon, makes no sense, then that's a problem that is addressed with SCOURGE-related toolset.

 

> @Vitali.5039 said:

> If "the best LF regen you can to use cats more often" lead to lower dps compared to camping scepter then yes, is "OVERALL less effective".

>

No, that happens ALL the time in this game. DPS is not the only factor that affects people's choices in weapons ... clearly. People use 'overall less effective' builds to gain advantages all the time.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

What is it that you think dagger offers besides damage? Why do you think anyone is wanting to use shade skills more often?

 

The answers most people give are "nothing useful" and "damage."

 

So, if swapping to dagger to use shade skills decreases your total damage, and dagger offers nothing else of value, why would you do it? Why would you bother trying to use the shade skills more often when the attempt puts you further from your goal?

[Maunzi.3764]

A simple scenario:

* [skill] costs 40%

* You gain 2 per second

 

You need 20 seconds to use [skill]

 

SUDDENLY!

* [skill] now costs 50%

* You still 2 every second, but also gain 3% per enemy hit (cooldown: 16 seconds, 12 seconds with Alacrity, which comes down to 3%/12 per second, for a total of 0,25% per second). This means your LF gain was buffed to 2.25% per seconds under ideal conditions.

 

You now need 22,2 seconds to use [skill], even though your LF generation was buffed.

Despite the "buff", it is a clear and direct nerf overall.

 

This simple scenario should allow even Obtena to understand the situation.