Curse

yuna of spira · Jun 02, 2006, 06:31 AM // 06:31

I am writing this post in response to the latest attack on necromancers in Guild Wars as ANET and guild wars devs seem to hate necros so much that they have now virtually taken away the reasons for being necromancer primary.

As it stood before factions necromancers were heavily unfavored as primary profession for GvG because the primary attribute for necros just wasnt good enough. In a GvG nothing is dying anywhere fast enough to get any kind of a benefit from soul reaping. The only times you ever got any kind of significant energy to make a difference was when you were already rolling a team, making tons of kills by which time the extra energy was pointless.

Also note that with necromancers they had cast times and recharges much like mesmers, yet without fast casting. Thus rangers also could own a necro in a GvG because most of his cast times were 2-3 seconds. In addition to the interruptions a necro cannot spam hexes with 2-3 second cast skills. Thus Necromancers had little room in GvGs.

So along came Guild Wars Factions and the introduction of ritualists and the use of tons of spirits, and the ability to spam them. Now you can actually make use of necros because the soul reaping is so nice. By sacrificing one character to just spam spirits you can make a large energy supply for anything with soul reaping. As I saw it some nice combinations that my guild and others came up with in using soul reaping. My guilds particular combo was using soul reaping, curses and illusion hexes to dominate warriors with things like conjure nightmare and (a skill otherwise never used) and images of remorse so that you can spam hexes (finally). The biggest combination that had people complaining or all excited about was the Feast of Corruption build originally run by EW in the GWFC using 3 spirit spammers and 5 necromancers getting all that energy.

So now, less than a week after they ran that combo and a few weeks after my guild had originally realized about the soul reaping with ritualists ANET has decided that Necromancers are somehow too powerful and that it is written down somewhere that Necromancers must not be able to gain benefits from being primary necromancers. If the whole problem from this was the FoC spike combo that EW ran (which I believe it was) this shows us one of 2 possibilities of the overlying feelings of ANETS feelings about Necromancers in GVG: ANET screwed up from the beginning and made a primary attribute too powerful unless they nerfed it hardcore or ANET doesnt want to see necromancers in GvG. Either way ANET, at the present time, doesnt like the spirit spammer/necromancer combination and doesn't want to give it a chance in the metagame.

Finally, I just want to point out other crazy combinations of skills and professions that have come about in Guild Wars history that either have not been nerfed or took a lot longer to nerf than 1 week:

IWAY: Yes, people are still running it. I, personally have no complaints about it and no feelings that it should or should have been nerfed.....but it went on for a long long time as the most dominant build to be found in HoH and sometimes even found in GvG. They nerfed the combination of minions and IWAY and tainted and orders, but as of yet they really havent nerfed it that much (even after all the times they said they wanted to).

Ranger Spike: It pretty much has only received one slowing of its effectiveness and that was making the recharge of dual shot a bit longer. And, in addition many counters were made and brought forth to counter ranger spikes (people all of a sudden bringing "Shields Up"). All it needed was some time and people were able to counter it.

Energy Denial: It dominated the game where you couldnt find any guild not using at least 1 energy denial mesmer (except maybe WM a couple months back) and now, they nerf 3 skills: energy surge, burn, and weariness. Or how about way back in the day when you could use energy denial with inspiration skills?!?! took em quite a while for them to nerf that or just to test out to see how big of a deal it was.

Fast Cast Air Spike: It still continues to be something guilds kind of do as a last resort as if theyre saying: "Ok, if we cant beat them with this build, then if we can beat them at all, it is with fast cast air spike." I have yet to see any kind of nerfing of this.

My point is I feel like this latest move by ANET against necros to nerf them is bs. I am not vouching for the nerfs or complaining about the past ones I just listed, but I'm using them to show that ANET seems to have a little soft spot in their hearts for nerfing necromancers early and not giving them a chance to get anywhere. They did not give the metagame any sort of chance to adapt or find counters to this. All the other killer combos were given a chance to be changed purely by people finding counters. And if you've been watching any GvG battles, the game is the most balanced in terms of showing of every single profession that I have ever seen. Yet the most important thing on ANET's list at the moment seems to be nerfing necromancers. When the game originally came out it was about skill level, not skills that you brought in. It was about tactics on the battlefield. And I believe spikes are still in the game and were made in the game to add the value of tactics in it. For me this nerfing of soul reaping will be taking away necromancer primaries by a lot now that soul reaping has half the benefit. As others have said before me: gg ANET.

Stabber · Jun 02, 2006, 06:42 AM // 06:42

If you're talking about primary attributes, all of them--with the sole exception of Expertise--suck dead donkey dong. Elementalists look at necros complaining about Anet hating them and laugh.

Now as to the substance of your complaint regarding the spirit nerf, I agree with you. There is once again next to no reason to play necros in GvG.

Lord Dark Genie · Jun 02, 2006, 06:47 AM // 06:47

So, instead of 15pips of energy regen from spirits, you're going to get 7.5.

What are you complaining about again ?

Falrow · Jun 02, 2006, 06:51 AM // 06:51

Divine Favor rocks if you do the math.

Expertise works great because all the skills are overpriced in the first place.

Critical strikes is effective, and very good. Only real reason a 'sin is a viable damage dealer.

And thats about it for useful primary attributes for the PvP sceen. The other ones can be usefull for gimmics.

Manic Smile · Jun 02, 2006, 06:53 AM // 06:53

I agree it seems Necro's get the bat pretty quick but I'm biased.

and what effect did the AoE nerf have on GvG or did you, Stabber, just mean Eles's in GvG in general?

Avarre · Jun 02, 2006, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Pardon, but didn't your SR power just get practically doubled with the introduction of rits and all their spirits? So it's back to normal now, the way it was before factions, only with more defensive effects from all the rit spirits at the same time?

I'm confused, where is the problem? :S

Stabber's post below : Is that why almost all gvg eles seem to run an ES Elite (prodigy!)

Stabber · Jun 02, 2006, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manic Smile

[A]nd what effect did the AoE nerf have on GvG or did you, Stabber, just mean Eles's in GvG in general?

I meant that Energy Storage is possibly the most worthless primary attribute there ever was.

Manic Smile · Jun 02, 2006, 06:59 AM // 06:59

@ Avarre yea and Nec is now back to being pretty useless in tight PvP matches.

Sagius Truthbarron · Jun 02, 2006, 07:00 AM // 07:00

It was probably all the people complaining about Blood Spike with spirit spammers. Alot of people were begging for this.

Zui · Jun 02, 2006, 07:03 AM // 07:03

Yuna, you do make decent points about Necros having almost no place in the current metagame. This is true. Their skills are the problem, not their primary attribute. Perhaps some nice skills in their primary attribute would help them out... I'm sure they'll get around to this after they finish giving Elementalists more spells like Shock Arrows(yes that there was sarcasam).

Necromancers benefiting from spirit spammers has been a long standing fotm at HA, and many bad guilds have run it on Burning Isle for months. By no means is your clam that the build is only a few weeks old valid. EW running a spirit spammer powered build it on what was the most spike friendly map ever created, just showed how unbalanced it could be. They have an essential +15 pips of energy regen from the spirits. In addition to the spirits beneficial effects. When you see two teams in the finals of a Championship, and think "how could have IB ever have won against them?" you know there's somthing wrong. The map was part of it, but the map only prevented splitting, and forced direct combat. Meaning that in any kind of direct combat, it was extremely overpowered. Look at HA, there's every single map except relic runs, and altar maps. Relic runs can be skipped. Altar maps, well necrospike can hold on them forever, devoting an infinite supply of energy to healing, and having nice protective spirit up that make doing damage very hard.

Now, let's halve that what EW had in the GWFC in terms of +regen from spirits, ok about 7 effective pips now. That's still better than what Elementalists get with Ether Prodigy. It's a skill. It's elite. It belongs to an attribute that without Ether Prodigy is worthless. Plus Ether Prodigy causes exhaustion, and doesn't give benefits like Fertile Season, Shelter, and Union.

If you think Necromancers being able to cast an infinite number of any spell that doesn't cause exhaustion is balanced, and getting massive energy from beneficial spirits is balanced. Well, there's no way you could think that a Necromancer doing a better job at monking than a monk is balanced.

Also, you still have +7 pips of effective regen. That's 11 total. If you can't do some massive spamming with that, there's a serious problem, and it's not with the game mechanics.

Irongate · Jun 02, 2006, 07:12 AM // 07:12

I'm sick of necros being nerfed.

Yogi's Pain · Jun 02, 2006, 07:14 AM // 07:14

All my thunder and hard work at a very nasty reply was silienced by a great post by Zui. Well said.

yuna of spira · Jun 02, 2006, 07:18 AM // 07:18

Zui,
I understand that Necro Spike has been running in HA for some time now....but is it really something that has become really overpowered? I will admit that in the first few weeks everybody was running it and it looked like the new ranger spike or IWAY.....but now look at how the metagame has changed. There are now counters that people bring and things that everybody understands to do against a blood spike. Its just the way energy denial was in the past. When it first came out as a monk i can tell you i thought it was the most unfair thing ever, but then i realized I could focus swap, thus a counter was born that pretty much every single monk knows about. But no one is taking the time to sort out counters to this, just that its too overpowered when i bring in the build i was using before factions. The metagame is changing. What about a distract ranger....or moving around the map a lot. My guild went against a smart team not too long ago when we were running this combination and every so often they would pull back off the flag stand and make us move out of spirits range and make us move around the map. Once they did this we couldnt handle the pressure because it requires you to get set up. People dont seem to want to bother trying out tactics on the field and instead want Arenanet to do it for them. There are counters out there to it and if ANET had given it time people would have made adjustments in GvG as they did in HoH.

Stabber · Jun 02, 2006, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

Stabber's post below : Is that why almost all gvg eles seem to run an ES Elite (prodigy!)

Prodigy is a desperate attempt to go around ES's uselessness. Think about it: all it does is pump up the regen on energy when the total energy is low, and, in fact, keeping the total energy low is the sine qua non of Prodigy builds. This should prove that the useful feature is the regen (not governed by ES), not total energy (governed by ES).

Anyway, this tangent is offtopic. Back to necros.

michaeldt · Jun 02, 2006, 07:30 AM // 07:30

I think the changes are fair. The problem with spirit spamming is not just that you get energy when a spirit dies, but that people use spirits not for the effect they provide but to abuse the mechanic which causes a spirit to "die" when another of the same type is created. In other words, spirits are being deliberately killed off to trigger soul reaping.

SAQ · Jun 02, 2006, 07:46 AM // 07:46

There was a Poll somewhere (maybe on another forum) where people voted for "Which Profession has the BEST elites", by far Necromancer got like 80% 90% of the votes, Necromancer's elites ROCK DA HOUSE!!

Btw, who won the Tournament and what build did the use!!?? Wait I remember they used necro spike with ritualist combo...

Wait! This is not called nerfing soul reaping.. before Ritualist had anyone used ranger spirit after the spirit nerf for Necros to gain energy... mmm nope I don't think so. Now with vast amounts of different spirits from the Ritualist class.. the BALANCE was inevitable.

Wait, I'll like to whine about Monk class being underpowered, their new skills from Faction won't save them...

yuna of spira · Jun 02, 2006, 07:47 AM // 07:47

Also, Zui, I didnt fairly address your full post. I absolutely agree that the necromancer has some of the shittiest skills out there in terms of making any kind of a build as a primary necro. Necro skills as of the moment are like handy dandy skills that if you take 2 of them they alone can be really nice but theres no real comprehensible combo of skills that a primary necro is meant for. So if theres no skills (especially soul reaping ones) out there for necromancers that they can really build upon as primary necros, then where do we go from here? how in the world do you come to the conclusion to bring a necro instead of a mesmer/necro? sadly enough I'd say only the soul reaping....but now theyve nerfed that. And when I say nerf it is a nerf. I dont know where you are getting 7 pips of regen, but with 1 spirit spammer you are getting the soul reaping bonus from it at the fastest 5-6 seconds (time to cast a spirit). So let me get this straight...you have to use attributes to get your soul reaping up to high enough level to make any sort of difference, which will not be giving you any sort of help for any skills whatsoever, but if you put soul reaping at 12 you can get 6 energy every 6 seconds if all your ritualist is doing is making spirits and killing them (effectively neutralizing their protective effects altogether)? Sry, thats not any sort of combo anyone will be using. Soul Reaping is dead now in GvG.

(btw if you could post how you got 7 "pips" of energy regen from soul reaping I'd like to know)

Arcador · Jun 02, 2006, 07:51 AM // 07:51

Nercros were always been hard to play, but a fine necro is always wellcome. Death magic is somewhat underused in gvg, but curses and blood have certanly their uses. A necro can join a spike very efficiently since almost all his spells are Struck ones. Also his hexes can cripple not a single player and efficiently cover it. Necros have very big potential, but the guilds which actually found that are not many.
Soul reaping may look inferior at fist hand, but it is unique. It gives you energy in time when most of the clases are out of it.

TheMosesPHD · Jun 02, 2006, 08:04 AM // 08:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stabber

I meant that Energy Storage is possibly the most worthless primary attribute there ever was.

You're gonna have to explain this one to me pal, because I don't know how you think having a huge bag of energy is worthless. If you want to use an elite other than Elemental Attunement or Ether Prodigy even (which itself wouldn't be too great with only 45-50 max nrg) than you sure as hell need the huge energy supply if you hope to have any sort of endurance in a close match vs. a good team. Regen or energy management isn't gonna cut it with the high cost spells.

If you could I'd also like to hear an explanation for the other six primary attributes that you claim "suck dead donkey dong". Without using the primary attributes, I'd like to see some builds of:
>monks who can adequately heal their teams
>mesmers who can put pressure/interupt the enemy effectively
>elementalists that don't run out of energy or get exhausted to death within 3 minutes of a match
>a ritualist build that can actually do something of worth for it's team
>a warrior and/or assassin that can do more than make a monk laugh

Necro is debatable but there are certainly many builds that take advantage of soul reaping (>.< blood spike) And though I'm sure you could pull off a few of my build demands listed above, the game is about having more than a few options when playing each character type.

Oh, and to be on topic. People have started to use 5 necs, 1 rit spam, 1 spirit spam, and 1 infuser for blood spike. Sometimes they'll just kick the monk and go 6 necs. But either way where they used to have 1 spirit spammer, they now have 2 people dedicated to throwing down spirits. The ritualist spammer can keep killing off his spirits by recasting at about the same rate the ranger spammer would, maybe even faster. So now the blood spike has at least three great things going for it I see.

1. First off you've got the new skill Vampiric Swarm. When you use this skill correctly it can really mess up the infuser.
2. They've got the QZ power. QZ is recharging their spikes in half the time as normal and also putting pressure on the enemy monks because everything costs 30% more nrg. The blood spike doesn't have to worry about energy though because now they have...
3. Twice as much energy gain from spirits as they had before factions.

All they did was bring the great nrg management from dead spirits back to the reasonable level it was at before factions. So now blood spike is still a reasonably good build, but it doesn't have super powered energy anymore. Other than blood spike I'm not sure what other builds out there are significantly affected by the half nrg nerf anyways.

coolsti · Jun 02, 2006, 08:26 AM // 08:26

Why should Rits as a class profession be delegated to producing dead spirits for Necros? That is absurd, and that is exactly what would happen if Anet didn't make changes. Thanks Anet!

If Anet does not continually modify things as such "tricks" appear, the ability to play a profession for what it is will be difficult - pressure from everyone else will force that profession to perform the "trick" as it is needed.

An example: I like to play beastmaster with my ranger, using a lot of BM skills to make a really powerful pet that does not die. And what happens? Necros start demanding that I take my pet along in a Barrage/Pet group and let the pet die repeatedly, so they can make minions of it.

Another example: Smiting as monk is fun! But have you ever tried to be a smiting monk in a PUG group? Even a partially smiting monk? Uh-uh, that don't work. As monk you are supposed to heal or protect, nothing else goes.

What the complainers out there do not realize, is that Necros are still extremely useful and extremely powerful even when they are not playing as MM and even when they do not have a seemingly infinite source of energy from dying creatures. Damage necros (blood), curse necros, interrupt necros (spinal shivers + cold damage weapon), you name it, there are many many variations.

How about less complaining and trying some different skills and tactics?