[idea] How to give make core Necromancer meaningful in support.

[kKagari.6804]

Having gone through a few topics today such as the 'Necromancer's Depth' and 'Main Hand Dagger condi' (was also keeping track of them in the old forum) I happened upon what I think is a solution, and maybe even a bit of a _elite speculation_.

 

The premise is this, as a core Necromancer, we are:

1. Neither here or there in regards to our support capabilities; we'll never be the main healer in a raid, never be the backbone support in SPvP.

2. Neither here or there in terms of sustain in SPvP.

3. Losing that 'attrition' identity that we were advertised with back in 2012.

In terms of balance, its become easier and easier to apply boons and conditions, across the board for all classes. Its become a bit of an arms race in this respect, certain classes are getting abilities that apply a multitude of boons or remove conditions much more rapidly than before. This isn't to say that things are becoming unbalanced, these things can be tweaked until they are deemed satisfactory. If a S/D thief can apply 3-4 conditions with infiltrator's strike, it seems valid that the weaver can lose 6 simply by applying superspeed.

 

What I don't want to see, is the necromancer chasing that arms race. From the beginning, necromancers had 3 identities that were somewhat unique to us: corruption, life siphoning, condition transferring. While corruption has been properly remembered every time there has been substantial updates to the game, e.g. scourge, the other two facets of the necromancer's identity has been forgotten.

 

The last time we got a condition transfer update was Suffer. Life siphoning has fared a bit better, with improvements across the board happening slowly.

 

My suggestion is this:

Arenanet should take these ideas further. A necromancer should be able to achieve a level of support similar to that of a D/F elementalist in SPvP, albeit by a more offensive means, if spec'ed to do so. We should have skills that apply buffs to allies to allow them to steal health on their next attack, akin to the Order skills in Guild Wars 1 and Sigil of Blood. If an elementalist can heal their team simply by applying an aura, we should be able to heal to a lesser extent if a mender's amulet was used. Vampiric Aura simply isn't good enough because not everyone can take advantage of fast attack speed.

 

A simple tweak could be:

Remove vampiric aura, Life from Death now applies a once-use vampiric effect when entering or exiting shroud. This gives the necromancer a more active means of supporting the group. And it shouldn't have to stop there either, the once-use vampiric effect could be applied to other skills too, like Blood is Power or Signet of Vampirism. Ideally, as a unique effect to the necromancer, it should be available in one instance across all skill types, almost like how all weapons can corrupt. Having this unique effect also lets traits create synergies that reference it directly, much like the Deadeye's malice, or the ranger's Opening Strike. Traits can be tweaked so that we can apply the vampiric effect when certain conditions are met, like blood bond, but also on traits like Vampiric Rituals, or say, life siphon, if the skill completes its channel on an enemy.

 

The same solution should be applied to condition transfer, and perhaps be a hallmark of the death magic specialization (we know death magic could use some love). Main hand dagger could use an effect like this, at the end of their auto attack chain. Also, people have been begging death blast to be upgraded into plague blast since _forever_. It makes a lot of sense; gives unholy martyr a purpose, as well as the enhanced plague signet. Spiteful renewal could easily be 'your next attack after you use a heal skill transfers one condition and steals health'.

 

Corruption skills generally get a bad rap for how devastating the self applied conditions can be, and it would be great if there were simply more ways to transfer conditions. More active ways. They don't need to be in bulk, like plague signet, but their should be more avenues to do it. Necromancers could have a lesser emphasis on removing conditions, if there was a more plentiful emphasis on getting rid of them. Shrouded Removal, perhaps, can load up your next attack to transfer a condition at certain intervals.

 

## TLDR

Core Necromancer should and could be improved to the potential of a support elementalist, although played differently. Instead of applying heals and condition cleanses to the team, the current abilities to life siphon, and transfer conditions should be improved to achieve this. It should never get to the point where life siphoning and condition transfer becomes on par with healing and cleansing, but it should come close. The necromancer shouldn't chase the arms race and be mundane with skills that heal and cleanse, it should strike out on its own with life siphon and condition transferring effects, to follow the attrition playstyle.

 

 

[mazut.4296]

Not gonna happen, because it will become god mode with Barriers and scourge, think of the balance nightmare.

[kKagari.6804]

It'll just be a matter of tweaking numbers. Nothing about scourge in irreparable in terms of what it can do, and how it can be toned up or down.

[mazut.4296]

But then scourge/barriers will be way to weak without blood magic, its a dead circle you can't escape. I would love to see better siphons, but its not realistic at this point imo. Right now I don't see Anet allowing 2 fully fleshed support trait lines being used at the same time. As it is blood and scourge supplement each other without being to powerful together. Imagine Druid and auramancer in one, what a creature could be born out of such combo :D

[Dadnir.5038]

Siphon effects are a very dangerous mechanism for the balance of the game and in order not to make them to strong they are kept at their current value even if it feel pityfully low from our eyes as players. Back in the days, we had done some math about the necromancer's siphons on the forum and discovered that if all conditions were met, the sustain given was already very strong.

 

All conditions are realistically never fullfilled in reality but the siphon effects are balanced around those perfect conditions. Adding more siphons to the necromancer wouldn't do him any good. It's better to make things simple :

 

The necromancer lack offensive support in PvE, a simple change on _rending shroud_ (PvE only) can ease this a lot. Just make rending shroud only reduce toughness in pve only in stead of applying vulnerability and you got a perfect offensive buff or debuff here that oes along the necromancer's design.

 

> @mazut.4296 said:

> But then scourge/barriers will be way to weak without blood magic, its a dead circle you can't escape. I would love to see better siphons, but its not realistic at this point imo. Right now I don't see Anet allowing 2 fully fleshed support trait lines being used at the same time. As it is blood and scourge supplement each other without being to powerful together. Imagine Druid and auramancer in one, what a creature could be born out of such combo :D

 

Well, I can fairly easily imagine druid with skirmishing for _spotter_ and nature magic as dedicated support traitline...

[kKagari.6804]

I have some excellent (imo) responses for these replies, I'll write them out soon! This new forum has me giddy to write stuff.

[kKagari.6804]

 

> @mazut.4296 said:

> Not gonna happen, because it will become god mode with Barriers and scourge, think of the balance nightmare.

 

Ok, first of all, I think Arenanet is making it harder for themselves in terms of how vampiric presence works at the moment. It obviously favors high attack speed builds, but at the same time, you can't really gauge how much someone can benefit from the skill, because the more you are required to hit, the more likely a lot of those hits don't connect. Also, you're almost locked into using a dagger auto attacking for fast attack speed, which isn't something that you want to do to begin with, since using other attacks breaks how much you can reap the benefits of the skill.

 

I think a one-use vampiric attack is great because it normalises the benefit across the board, every ally can benefit from the attack, and you know exactly how much extra damage and healing you can provide. Also, counterplay wise, all you have to do is blind/block that one attack. It isn't overpowered by any means.

 

So what I'm proposing is, suppose you take an average of how much vampiric presence lets a teammate heal/damage currently over a 10s period of time, and apply it as a buff every 10s. You're likely going to get a number thats similar to what an aura tempest can get currently, simply changing and overloading every 10s or so. This way, you have a more normalised way of supporting, and the numbers haven't changed. A scourge now with blood magic will be the same as a scourge with this change. It is simply front loading the effect for more control.

 

> @Dadnir.5038 said:

> Siphon effects are a very dangerous mechanism for the balance of the game and in order not to make them to strong they are kept at their current value even if it feel pityfully low from our eyes as players. Back in the days, we had done some math about the necromancer's siphons on the forum and discovered that if all conditions were met, the sustain given was already very strong.

>

> All conditions are realistically never fullfilled in reality but the siphon effects are balanced around those perfect conditions. Adding more siphons to the necromancer wouldn't do him any good. It's better to make things simple :

>

> The necromancer lack offensive support in PvE, a simple change on _rending shroud_ (PvE only) can ease this a lot. Just make rending shroud only reduce toughness in pve only in stead of applying vulnerability and you got a perfect offensive buff or debuff here that oes along the necromancer's design.

>

> > @mazut.4296 said:

> > But then scourge/barriers will be way to weak without blood magic, its a dead circle you can't escape. I would love to see better siphons, but its not realistic at this point imo. Right now I don't see Anet allowing 2 fully fleshed support trait lines being used at the same time. As it is blood and scourge supplement each other without being to powerful together. Imagine Druid and auramancer in one, what a creature could be born out of such combo :D

>

> Well, I can fairly easily imagine druid with skirmishing for _spotter_ and nature magic as dedicated support traitline...

 

I think I've seen this suggestion over at the old forum. I think people take vampiric presence in raids because of the free packets of damage, so I think my suggestion will do the same, you can take utilities that apply the one-use vampiric effect (lets call it vampirism), for extra packets of armor ignoring damage during burn phases. And again, the numbers arent changing, they are just grouped into one for ease of balance. We're talking about 300ish here, with a smaller healing power scaling than that of Elemental Bastion.

 

This obviously calls for updated traits like say, a vampirism variant of Powerful Aura: whenever you gain vampirism, your allies gain it too., with an ICD. You can also start creating synergies with other specific necromancer mechanics. Such as, gain vampirism whenever you fear an enemy.

 

*TLDR*

I'm not proposing to siphon more, or less, but a more standardised one off siphon applied to your next hit. It makes balancing easier. As a unique effect, it gives the necromancer more identity, and more control support-wise.

[mazut.4296]

So you want a skill similar to Signet of Vampirism? I don't really understand what you mean at this point?! A single support skill that allow 5 players to siphon large amount of hp? Or maybe periodic buff that allow your party to siphon large amount of hp, with icd?

[kKagari.6804]

No, i want a singular effect like signet of vampirism, instead of requiring several hits, only requires one. And I want this effect to be achievable via several means across the board for the necromancer, like auras, superspeed, opening strike, etc.

 

Meanwhile, removing the current vampiric and vampiric presence.

[Dadnir.5038]

Well... I think you don't get the crux of the issue.

 

Siphon are a huge issue for balancing in PvP only. In PvE, siphon damage and heal are just meaningless because they do not take into account the various increase on damage given from boons (might), specific traits and ferocity. The only reason for taking _vampiric presence_ in a raid at the moment is that it allow your druid to refill faster it's avatar's ressource. Siphons are way to limited as a support for PvE and way to dangerous in PvP, the best option is to never touch this pandora box.

 

And let's be honest, as long as WvW will be balanced as a PvE area, PvP will matter for class balance in PvE.

 

When I suggest a change on _rending shroud_ in PvE only, it take into account the WvW issue since this change would have almost no impact on this gamemode but on another hand, it would sensibly help a whole raid group in PvE where the larger damage you do the heavier this change would matter.

 

The necromancer absolutely don't need more help in support in WvW or PvP. It's tools are designed for this. Where the necromancer need help is in it's support in PvE.

[Kaladel.1670]

> @Dadnir.5038 said:

> And let's be honest, as long as WvW will be balanced as a PvE area, PvP will matter for class balance in PvE.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like this is the source of most of our issues. We are good in WvW, but the strategies that work here don't translate easily in PvE since mobs clearly don't work like players (changing them to do exactly that would probably be ideal for balance purpose, but it's asking for a lot of work from Anet without adding new content, so pretty unlikely to happen).

 

 

 

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

I want to touch upon the neglected condition transfers.

 

Condition transfers are rewarding mostly for condition builds - for extra risk of having to land your transfer on an enemy, you are rewarded with extra DPS from them if there were damaging condies in the transfer.

But what about power builds? They don't have condition damage and at the end of the day a transfer is just a cleanse, but with more risk.

 

I have few ideas to change that, so that condition manipulation is also a viable part of power necro play.

 

* give condi transfers low base damage, but very high power scaling, that gets higher with amount of conditions transferred.

* introduce a trait in non-condi line that will apply slow on successful condi transfer. This will lower their condi application speed, giving you an edge in the "who drops the other first" race.

* grant stability on successful transfer. Stab is huge for power builds, as they have very impactful of "big windup/channel for big reward" skills. Gravedigger, Life Siphon, Ghastly Claws,. Condi weapons don't deal with any of that, so it would be less impactful on them.

 

The change they made for dagger (self bleeding = stronger life drain with Life Siphon, enemy bleeding = stronger damage on it) is a start and step in the right direction. I'm looking forward to more changes that make condition manipulation also a viable part of power necro's kit!

[Arzurag.7506]

Look forward to the next expansion, the one after Path of fire beacuse in this expansion we probably won´t get any major changes to omprove reaper, necro or scourge.

Tbh, scourge seems promising to make necro overall better or at least on par with other classes.

[kKagari.6804]

> @Dadnir.5038 said:

> Well... I think you don't get the crux of the issue.

>

> Siphon are a huge issue for balancing in PvP only. In PvE, siphon damage and heal are just meaningless because they do not take into account the various increase on damage given from boons (might), specific traits and ferocity. The only reason for taking _vampiric presence_ in a raid at the moment is that it allow your druid to refill faster it's avatar's ressource. Siphons are way to limited as a support for PvE and way to dangerous in PvP, the best option is to never touch this pandora box.

>

> And let's be honest, as long as WvW will be balanced as a PvE area, PvP will matter for class balance in PvE.

>

> When I suggest a change on _rending shroud_ in PvE only, it take into account the WvW issue since this change would have almost no impact on this gamemode but on another hand, it would sensibly help a whole raid group in PvE where the larger damage you do the heavier this change would matter.

>

> The necromancer absolutely don't need more help in support in WvW or PvP. It's tools are designed for this. Where the necromancer need help is in it's support in PvE.

 

Suppose I did misunderstand the use of vampiric presence in raids, what I'm suggesting wouldn't change it though. You'd take a trait that gives a vampirism buff which will give you life stealing equivalent of what you get now, but as a singular packet over a period of 10 or so seconds. What makes this good is that, as a single use effect it can be added to other skills and traits to give the buff more frequently if the necromancer traits for it.

 

As it stands now, the extent of support a necromancer can give based on life siphoning is just the aura, which only affects people with high attack speeds.

[kKagari.6804]

> @ZeftheWicked.3076 said:

> I want to touch upon the neglected condition transfers.

 

> I have few ideas to change that, so that condition manipulation is also a viable part of power necro play.

 

> * introduce a trait in non-condi line that will apply slow on successful condi transfer. This will lower their condi application speed, giving you an edge in the "who drops the other first" race.

> * grant stability on successful transfer. Stab is huge for power builds, as they have very impactful of "big windup/channel for big reward" skills. Gravedigger, Life Siphon, Ghastly Claws,. Condi weapons don't deal with any of that, so it would be less impactful on them.

>

> The change they made for dagger (self bleeding = stronger life drain with Life Siphon, enemy bleeding = stronger damage on it) is a start and step in the right direction. I'm looking forward to more changes that make condition manipulation also a viable part of power necro's kit!

 

I actually really like this idea. Even if it was something simple like apply immobilize or 10 stacks of vulnerability.