Curse

Kunder · Dec 07, 2010, 04:02 PM // 16:02

Its amusing seeing the constant flip flop between 'don't just consider discord on its own, consider the whole build' and 'discord taking up 60% of the necros time isn't a big deal, you don't have to use it constantly'. Either you are making full use of your skill bar or you aren't. If the elite skill on the bar takes the majority of the Necro's time to use the others must be easy to cast within the downtime or they are wasted. Contrariwise, if the elite skills is a short cast or infrequently cast spell, the other skills on the Necro's bar have more time available and become exponentially more effective. Since we agree that the main power of a Necromancer's bar is the overall combination of strong skills available within the death/curse line, taking those skills and not being able to use them to their fullest effect is foolhardy.

Its hilarious when I see people in PvE running Discord along with minion skills (god help them if they run minion bomber skills, 2s cast death nova rofl), healing skills (sorry cant heal cause I'm killing things), or long cast-time hexs. The bottom line is that all 3 heroes HAVE to be ready to cast Discord simultaneously, and they will have to interrupt other skills, especially long cast time skills, constantly. To not do this means that the spike fails and instead of Discord being a decently impressive spike it turns into a mediocre DPS spell. Obviously only a fool would take Discord as a DPS spell, so if you want to actually use it well you have to spike, presenting the problem outlined above.

Show me a decent Discord hero set build in which the skills the builds contained are actually usable within the build and I will contend that Discord becomes a very effective skill. Shouts/precast spirits/maintained enchantments/.25s skills or what ever.

Daesu · Dec 07, 2010, 04:33 PM // 16:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Its hilarious when I see people in PvE running Discord along with minion skills (god help them if they run minion bomber skills, 2s cast death nova rofl), healing skills (sorry cant heal cause I'm killing things), or long cast-time hexs. The bottom line is that all 3 heroes HAVE to be ready to cast Discord simultaneously, and they will have to interrupt other skills, especially long cast time skills, constantly. To not do this means that the spike fails and instead of Discord being a decently impressive spike it turns into a mediocre DPS spell. Obviously only a fool would take Discord as a DPS spell, so if you want to actually use it well you have to spike, presenting the problem outlined above.

Show me a decent Discord hero set build in which the skills the builds contained are actually usable within the build and I will contend that Discord becomes a very effective skill. Shouts/precast spirits/maintained enchantments/.25s skills or what ever.

It is not as bad as you think.

Heroes would not cast heals if you don't need heals otherwise they would be constantly healing you even at full life. Why do you need to heal when you are at full life? They only heal when the AI deems it is needed, otherwise the AI should be attacking, i.e. casting discord. Similarly they would not (and cannot) cast animate minion spells if there are no corpses to exploit. The only exception to this would be the discord MB which has death nova which competes for casting time with discord because minions are almost always dying.

However, one, a discord MB doesn't have many minions anyway (compared to a Aotl MB), and two, you still have the other 2 necros who can use discord properly. Furthermore, the recommended use of discordway is to bind discord to keys and manually spike when needed.

Discordway obviously works well whether you believe it or not.

Kunder · Dec 07, 2010, 05:22 PM // 17:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daesu

It is not as bad as you think.

Heroes would not cast heals if you don't need heals otherwise they would be constantly healing you even at full life. Why do you need to heal when you are at full life? They only heal when the AI deems it is needed, otherwise the AI should be attacking, i.e. casting discord. Similarly they would not (and cannot) cast animate minion spells if there are no corpses to exploit. The only exception to this would be the discord MB which has death nova which competes for casting time with discord because minions are almost always dying.

However, one, a discord MB doesn't have many minions anyway (compared to a Aotl MB), and two, you still have the other 2 necros who can use discord properly. Furthermore, the recommended use of discordway is to bind discord to keys and manually spike when needed.

Discordway obviously works well whether you believe it or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZephyLynx

Just because you can vanquish with discordway does not make it the best build. I once did THead Keep (back when it was proph only) with an empty skill bar and 7 henchmen and had no problem. Does that make an empty skill bar + 7 old proph hench good?

No one is arguing whether Discord works, they are arguing over whether Discord is overpowered. Nothing about Discord is overpowered, what is overpowered is Soul reaping, minions, spirits, and curse spells. Combine 2, 3, or all 4 of those and any build is pretty damn strong, Discord has nothing to do with it. In fact, other elites actually combine better with those skills.

FengShuiDove · Dec 07, 2010, 05:26 PM // 17:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

-snip-

You're incorrect. Plain and simple. Using your logic, no one would ever use optional elites that enhance the overall build because they don't contribute to one single aspect of gameplay. No Smite support hero should ever use Tease or Signet of Removal because those skills don't provide the Divine Favor bonus from Smiter's Boon, or in the case of Tease, doesn't Prot OR do damage. You think far too one dimensionally in a PvE meta where hybrids are both dominant and effective.

Boogz · Dec 07, 2010, 10:35 PM // 22:35

He's argument is only right at the point where discord + death nova fails, wich is quite true, since heroes will stop casting discord to keep bombs on minions up. otherwise, it fails.

How do you guys think discordway would be with 7 heroes? 5 Discord (3 N 2 Me/N) and 2 Rt spirit spammers? would frontlines be needed?

Riot Narita · Dec 07, 2010, 11:02 PM // 23:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boogz

How do you guys think discordway would be with 7 heroes?

1 player and 7 heroes from a single account? Probably not as good as the 1 player and 6 Necro heroes from 2 accounts, that people have been using for ages already... either by multi-launch, or by getting a friend/guildy to enter a zone with you (they can zone out again immediately after, leaving their heroes to follow you).

lishi · Dec 07, 2010, 11:07 PM // 23:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Its amusing seeing the constant flip flop between 'don't just consider discord on its own, consider the whole build' and 'discord taking up 60% of the necros time isn't a big deal, you don't have to use it constantly'. Either you are making full use of your skill bar or you aren't. If the elite skill on the bar takes the majority of the Necro's time to use the others must be easy to cast within the downtime or they are wasted. Contrariwise, if the elite skills is a short cast or infrequently cast spell, the other skills on the Necro's bar have more time available and become exponentially more effective. Since we agree that the main power of a Necromancer's bar is the overall combination of strong skills available within the death/curse line, taking those skills and not being able to use them to their fullest effect is foolhardy.

Its hilarious when I see people in PvE running Discord along with minion skills (god help them if they run minion bomber skills, 2s cast death nova rofl), healing skills (sorry cant heal cause I'm killing things), or long cast-time hexs. The bottom line is that all 3 heroes HAVE to be ready to cast Discord simultaneously, and they will have to interrupt other skills, especially long cast time skills, constantly. To not do this means that the spike fails and instead of Discord being a decently impressive spike it turns into a mediocre DPS spell. Obviously only a fool would take Discord as a DPS spell, so if you want to actually use it well you have to spike, presenting the problem outlined above.

Show me a decent Discord hero set build in which the skills the builds contained are actually usable within the build and I will contend that Discord becomes a very effective skill. Shouts/precast spirits/maintained enchantments/.25s skills or what ever.

I find minion quite usefull as bomb.

Think a normal team setup

2 healer / prot
6 between support / damage (probably with 1 MM)

With discord you have

2 n/rit healer discord
1 n/mo prot semi MM
5 between support / damage ( i mostly go only damage unless i face some area with some heavy healing)

If you play right with most group you will be pretty much calling killing and tabbling to the next target.

Sometime the 2 healer will have to spot to heal but you wont have problem killing even without 1 or 2 of them.

I moved away from the standard discord build as i'm using 2 account now and with 6 hero the thing become much more open.

But discord is just the best choice out there.

You probably can do better with flagging, wall blocking and a lot of AoE. But it took much effort to pull that while you are watching a film on the second monitor.

lishi · Dec 07, 2010, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riot Narita

1 player and 7 heroes from a single account? Probably not as good as the 1 player and 6 Necro heroes from 2 accounts, that people have been using for ages already... either by multi-launch, or by getting a friend/guildy to enter a zone with you (they can zone out again immediately after, leaving their heroes to follow you).

I found that 4 necro(2 discord healer, 1 discord prot, 1 ss) 2 rit work best.

and for those who are saying Spirit spamming eclipse Discord, yea their are good, but normally when the ritualist lay the first 1-2 set of spirit i already killed few target with only the 4 necro.

Illusions of Fate · Dec 07, 2010, 11:21 PM // 23:21

I would continue my pve life as is, have fun with my heroes instead of meta BS. IMO fun>best.

'Nuff said.

Jeydra · Dec 08, 2010, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Its amusing seeing the constant flip flop between 'don't just consider discord on its own, consider the whole build' and 'discord taking up 60% of the necros time isn't a big deal, you don't have to use it constantly'. Either you are making full use of your skill bar or you aren't. If the elite skill on the bar takes the majority of the Necro's time to use the others must be easy to cast within the downtime or they are wasted. Contrariwise, if the elite skills is a short cast or infrequently cast spell, the other skills on the Necro's bar have more time available and become exponentially more effective. Since we agree that the main power of a Necromancer's bar is the overall combination of strong skills available within the death/curse line, taking those skills and not being able to use them to their fullest effect is foolhardy.

Its hilarious when I see people in PvE running Discord along with minion skills (god help them if they run minion bomber skills, 2s cast death nova rofl), healing skills (sorry cant heal cause I'm killing things), or long cast-time hexs. The bottom line is that all 3 heroes HAVE to be ready to cast Discord simultaneously, and they will have to interrupt other skills, especially long cast time skills, constantly. To not do this means that the spike fails and instead of Discord being a decently impressive spike it turns into a mediocre DPS spell. Obviously only a fool would take Discord as a DPS spell, so if you want to actually use it well you have to spike, presenting the problem outlined above.

Show me a decent Discord hero set build in which the skills the builds contained are actually usable within the build and I will contend that Discord becomes a very effective skill. Shouts/precast spirits/maintained enchantments/.25s skills or what ever.

Lol ...

Name me some good skills in the Curses line in the hands of a hero. There's ... um ... Rend Enchantments as a spike skill. Mark of Pain, if you don't mind the 20s cooldown since the hero cannot AP well (will also need to execute some aggro techniques / micro). Barbs if you're relying on physical damage for some reason. And then what? Desecrate Enchantments / Defile Enchantments don't deal much damage for 2s cast. Enfeebling Blood is way overhyped. I call the skill completely outclassed. Faintheartedness / Reckless Haste are also weak. Insidious Parasite is a bit better because it does damage. Weaken Armour is decent, but no more than that because not many builds rely on armour-sensitive damage in HM. Well of Darkness + Suffering I guess, except that's more scraping the barrel than anything else, and it's still weaker than Enfeebling Blood / Reckless Haste / Faintheartedness. And you call this "overall combination of strong skills". I've tried making a good Curses hero bar several times and there never were enough good skills to use.

And then there's Death Magic. Name me some good skills in the Death line in the hands of a hero, that you can stack in teams. All the animate spells (including AotL) decrease in power once you start stacking them in teams. What are you left with? Rising Bile and Putrid bile, obviously. Death Nova maybe, same with Blood of the Master. Discord. What a strong collection, there aren't 8 skills worth using.

Conclusion - if you're going to make a Necro bar that deals damage (+ does not rely on minions - you can only use one minion master in a team), you are going to rely on Discord. There are no other options. If you disagree, then name me one Necro skill that does more DPS than Discord, and don't give me stupid crap like "I put Suffering + Life Transfer on 10 targets I balled up nicely = 20 DPS x 10 = 200 DPS".

Daesu · Dec 08, 2010, 03:24 AM // 03:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Name me some good skills in the Curses line in the hands of a hero. There's ... um ... Rend Enchantments as a spike skill. Mark of Pain, if you don't mind the 20s cooldown since the hero cannot AP well (will also need to execute some aggro techniques / micro). Barbs if you're relying on physical damage for some reason. And then what? Desecrate Enchantments / Defile Enchantments don't deal much damage for 2s cast. Enfeebling Blood is way overhyped. I call the skill completely outclassed. Faintheartedness / Reckless Haste are also weak. Insidious Parasite is a bit better because it does damage. Weaken Armour is decent, but no more than that because not many builds rely on armour-sensitive damage in HM. Well of Darkness + Suffering I guess, except that's more scraping the barrel than anything else, and it's still weaker than Enfeebling Blood / Reckless Haste / Faintheartedness. And you call this "overall combination of strong skills". I've tried making a good Curses hero bar several times and there never were enough good skills to use.

To be fair, people dont usually bring curse necros for their DPS, unless they are synergizing it with physical through barbs or MoP or weaken armor. Curse necros are more commonly used for their debuff like enfeebling blood or shadow of fear. If you are looking for curse skills that do DPS on its own, you would probably be looking at skills like Spiteful Spirit, but I wouldn't look at a curse necro in the same way as looking at an ele.

Horace Slughorn · Dec 08, 2010, 03:37 AM // 03:37

I don't do anything anymore that requires heroes. Except festival quests, but it hardly matters what builds my heroes run for those (besides some sweet incoming/fallback action)

Boogz · Dec 08, 2010, 09:46 AM // 09:46

just to remember, heroes, unfortunately, can't use Feast of Corruption well. So, curses is pretty much Spiteful Spirit, also Lingering Curse is useful on some specific areas. For death magic we have, AotL and Discord (no, jagged bones suck, doesn't matter what you're gonna say, it has 15sec recharge.). I don't see a single blood elite worthful to bring (yes, life transfer still suck, coz in HM it does pretty much nothing)

Although necroes heroe have very little option @ PvE they're all powerful options. So, based on this, are they underpowered, overpowered or balanced?

ogre_jd · Dec 08, 2010, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boogz

I don't see a single blood elite worthful to bring (yes, life transfer still suck, coz in HM it does pretty much nothing)

...except put 8 pips of health degeneration (16 health per second) on multiple foes and, usually, cap you to 10 pips of health regeneration (20hps). Quite useful, unless you think that only Rangers should do degeneration and that everyone should rely only on Monks or Ritualists for healing and never their own skills.

Blood is Power, Life Transfer, Order of the Vampire, Ravenous Gaze, Soul Leech, Spoil Victor and, if you like Wells, Well of Power are all useful Elites.

Xenomortis · Dec 08, 2010, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by ogre_jd

...except put 8 pips of health degeneration (16 health per second) on multiple foes and, usually, cap you to 10 pips of health regeneration (20hps). Quite useful, unless you think that only Rangers should do degeneration and that everyone should rely only on Monks or Ritualists for healing and never their own skills.

Since when did we start caring about degen in PvE?

Morphy · Dec 08, 2010, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

Its amusing seeing the constant flip flop between 'don't just consider discord on its own, consider the whole build' and 'discord taking up 60% of the necros time isn't a big deal, you don't have to use it constantly'.

There is no "flip flop", these two concepts can coexist without issues. If the most vital roles can be fulfilled in the remaining 40%, then there is no issue.

Quote:

Either you are making full use of your skill bar or you aren't.

This is irrelevant. You don't need to make full use of your skill bar. Overlap like this can certainly lower the effectiveness, but in the case of Discordway this overlap is neglectable (as I will show below) and certainly not enough to make it a bad team set-up.

Quote:

If the elite skill on the bar takes the majority of the Necro's time to use the others must be easy to cast within the downtime or they are wasted.

True and they are. The heals take 3/4 seconds to cast and the minion spells are used when foes die, ie at the end of a battle when discord damage isn't needed

Quote:

Contrariwise, if the elite skills is a short cast or infrequently cast spell, the other skills on the Necro's bar have more time available and become exponentially more effective. Since we agree that the main power of a Necromancer's bar is the overall combination of strong skills available within the death/curse line, taking those skills and not being able to use them to their fullest effect is foolhardy.

Again true, of course up to a certain point. Fortunately for us, once every 3 seconds is infrequent enough.

Quote:

Its hilarious when I see people in PvE running Discord along with minion skills (god help them if they run minion bomber skills, 2s cast death nova rofl), healing skills (sorry cant heal cause I'm killing things), or long cast-time hexs.

As I said above, this is false. The Minion spells will be cast when Discord isn't needed and vice versa, Aegis has a 30 sec recharge and the rest of the skills cast quickly. The healer build has short cast time heals that won't get disrupted. The Curses spells on the second healer practically only need to be cast at the start of the battle and after that, same story about the heals. Discord just isn't time consuming enough to gimp other skill usage.

Quote:

The bottom line is that all 3 heroes HAVE to be ready to cast Discord simultaneously, and they will have to interrupt other skills, especially long cast time skills, constantly. To not do this means that the spike fails and instead of Discord being a decently impressive spike it turns into a mediocre DPS spell.
Obviously only a fool would take Discord as a DPS spell, so if you want to actually use it well you have to spike, presenting the problem outlined above.

This isn't a bottom line, this is a new point and again, it's false. You don't need a clean spike, you just need a couple of Discords to hit a single target enough for you to finish it up, so it really doesn't matter when the Discords start hitting, just that they do. You don't have to deal with pr0 infusers in PvE.

Quote:

Show me a decent Discord hero set build in which the skills the builds contained are actually usable within the build and I will contend that Discord becomes a very effective skill. Shouts/precast spirits/maintained enchantments/.25s skills or what ever.

Discordway. Wow, that was easy.

Premium Unleaded · Dec 08, 2010, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by ogre_jd

that everyone should rely only on Monks or Ritualists for healing and never their own skills.

Other than also ERs and blood bond, if you're running a high-sac bar like mm w/ botm and don't quite trust your backline, or if there is a valid reason for you to be splitting from your party, yes. Don't bother wasting valuable slots with junk skills, even moreso if the party's got some degree of prot present in there.

Also, there are only 2 useful blood elites in pve, SV and BiP, one of which is very situational. OotV is borderline because of its non-stacking clause. The others are for the most part, just bad. Taking something like empathic removal, or god forbid UA, would be a better choice than most of the ones in the line.

Boogz · Dec 09, 2010, 03:26 AM // 03:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by ogre_jd

...except put 8 pips of health degeneration (16 health per second) on multiple foes and, usually, cap you to 10 pips of health regeneration (20hps). Quite useful, unless you think that only Rangers should do degeneration and that everyone should rely only on Monks or Ritualists for healing and never their own skills.

Blood is Power, Life Transfer, Order of the Vampire, Ravenous Gaze, Soul Leech, Spoil Victor and, if you like Wells, Well of Power are all useful Elites.

BiP is not a "general PvE" elite for your heroes, they suck at using it. always.
life transfer is not that good, only good at NM
OotV is still usable, but too specific, since you'd have to run a full physical party to make good use of it.
Ravenous gaze is a mediocre skills, not even worth commenting
Soul Leech is bad, SV is only good for farming.

WoP on the other hand is quite good, I had completely forgotten about it, thx for the remind

mrmango · Dec 09, 2010, 04:52 AM // 04:52

Lol @ LT fanboys. Always.

wilebill · Dec 09, 2010, 06:14 AM // 06:14

"I think at least half of the people playing the game would all of a sudden suck."

Never used Discord. Use my own variants of Sabway and sometimes other hero configurations.

Even so, I suck. And it's not been all of a sudden. Sucked ever since I started playing, and even before that. With me, it's genetic. I blame my heritage.

Seriously, I do feel sad for those who think that Discord is the only true way. They limit the fun they could be having.