Curse

Riotgear · Nov 23, 2007, 10:44 AM // 10:44

With Curses nerfed and everything else sucking, the last refuge of Necromancers in real PvP has become Soul Reaping abuse, which just got smacked with the nerfbat again.

Personally, I think Soul Reaping is just in dire need of an overhaul. The condition is simply too unreliable in PvP for regular use, and the effect is too powerful to be balanced when builds are made to exploit it.

So the question is: What do we do with Soul Reaping?

ensoriki · Nov 23, 2007, 11:49 AM // 11:49

No longer make it passive?Keep the no spirits thing though.
Soul reaping whenever you use a skill you get energy from the nearest corpse (exploits the corpse, does not exploit on Minion skills) you can collect this bonus 4 times every 10 seconds

Just a suggestion. Necromancers won't be able to just surge some energy out of nowhere, so if they used it up, they can't get the soul reaping bonus because you need to use a skill (most skills cost energy) thus they have to wait until they have the energy to cast a skill to soul reap.

This also functions like a version of expertise as they get energy back (somewhat)

Bankai · Nov 23, 2007, 12:16 PM // 12:16

With that change, more than half of the death mastery line becomes bad, and there will be a huge protest of PvErs.

And I don't mean just huge. I mean gigantic.

Besides, it's still completely useless in PvP, which Riotgear wants to change.

ensoriki · Nov 23, 2007, 12:28 PM // 12:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

With that change, more than half of the death mastery line becomes bad, and there will be a huge protest of PvErs.

And I don't mean just huge. I mean gigantic.

Besides, it's still completely useless in PvP, which Riotgear wants to change.

In pve signet of lost souls would toggle it =P

But okay >.>

So lets again give it a somewhat active//passive effect.
Soul reaping, whenever you use a skill on a foe below 50% you get 2 energy for every 4 points in soul reaping.
Whenever something does you get 1 point of energy for every 2 points of soul reaping. Remove the timer or decrease it.

In PvE its not a large nerf, Means the minion master has to just carry some form of skill that targets someone below 50%.
They'd still get points for deaths its just decreased.
Without the timer though they can still get hordes of energy in pve.

In PvP this also helps the necromancer as below 50% is a much easier clause then simple death, and if you kill them they get energy again.

Idea needs work though.

TLLOTS · Nov 23, 2007, 12:29 PM // 12:29

I'd recommend taking Soul Reaping in the Strength direction, e.g. crap effect, but good skills.

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 23, 2007, 12:58 PM // 12:58

The problem with Necromancers isn't Soul Reaping. It's an attribute that's useless most of the time, but allows the necromancer to go into overdrive when deaths are happening. Its inherent effect is miles ahead of Strength, and the only thing it's really lacking is a decent selection of non-elite skills.

The problem with necromancers, basically, is that none of their attributes have enough interesting skills to make a character out of.

The Blood line has a whole lot of shitty life-steals and DDs, which is inherently a weak mechanic. The only passable utility skills in the line are the party-buffing skills Order and Dark Fury, which start to look good with large numbers of physicals. Unfortunately, you need a high spec to make Order work, and there aren't any other skills in the Blood Line you want to use.

Death is a similar situation, in that you bring a Death guy because you want Disease. Disease is a powerful condi-degen effect that's made better by the weakened party heals, and Taints are really the only way to keep it from backfiring on you. The problem, again, is that most of that character's other skills tend to sit useless on his bar when things aren't dying, which is why death necros have only seen serious play in degenerate builds where corpses are appearing regularly.

Curses is a hex line, and hexes are a design trainwreck. Do the math.

Basically, if you want necromancers to start seeing play in non-degenerate builds, you need to give them more skills that actually do something. Maybe rework a lot of the Blood skill so they steal health for other allies, similar to the way Weapon of Remedy works. I can see Necromancers working as a party buffing and defense character with lifesteals, in the same way the Rit does now.

Shuuda · Nov 23, 2007, 01:16 PM // 13:16

I totally agree with Squidget, the main problem with necros is that they don't have much good things out side of degenerate builds.

As for soul reaping, maybe they could add some bonus to it revolving around scarficing health? Maybe something on the lines of:

- For every point in soul reaping (Or maybe every 2 points if 1 point is overpwered), you scarfice 1% less health on skills.
- For every 2 points in soul reaping, you gain 1 energy everytime you scarfice health.

If this was to replace the current SR, buffs to necro energy management would be needed.

Ok, lame ideas. But the first idea could be decent for Cultist fervor. But yeah, most likely retarded idea.

shoogi · Nov 23, 2007, 01:48 PM // 13:48

Since the start there was something wrong with necros, because they kept seeing use in almost only degenerate gimmicks. That something was soul reaping, an enormously mis-implemented mechanic (we got so many mis-implemented mechanics in this game don't we) that was crying for a nerf. Instead, Anet decided that instead of dealing with the real problem (SR), the necro's normal skills, which weren't overpowered, got weakened. Since the necro's skill attributes (blood, death, curse) all suffered heavy nerfing, but the main problem wasn't fixed, necros were seeing use as ritualists, monks and even eles, all of the above were merrily abusing soul reaping. Therefore, necros were still used only in exploit gimmicks. And now, Anet finally realized that the problem lies in soul reaping's inherent effect and nerfed it. So what are we left with? Every single of the necro's attributes got a nerf that made the profession entirely useless. gg Anet, that's a really good example of game balance.

What's the solution? Now that the necro problem finally got fixed, the wrong and un-needed nerfs to necromancer skills can be reverted, and hopefully necromancers will at last see some good use.

Lorekeeper · Nov 23, 2007, 01:59 PM // 13:59

how about this for a radical idea.

Necros can access the ''souls'' of their party members including their own. Every party member has a ''soul'' bar... which the necro can use to augment its own energy.

Lets say every party member has 15 ''soul points''. Noone can increase or decrease their own ''soul points'' apart from necros. ''Soul points'' regenerate over time at a rate of 1 point every 5 seconds.

For every point in soul reaping a necro can 'reap' energy from a party members ''soul'' points using the soul reaping skill ''reaper of souls''.

So at 10 soul reaping you could steal 10 energy.

Reaper of Souls. Soul Reaping Skill. 3/4s cast. 10s recharge. You steal 1 point of energy from target ally's ''soul point'' bar for every point in soul reaping.

If target ally has no soul points left that ally suffers from 1% death penalty.

You could create entire necro skills dedicated to the use of party members soul points. Curse necros could reduce the amount of soul points of target foes. They could reduce the amount of energy that target foe necro reaps from soul reaping. They could increase the DP suffered from having 0 soul points. Blood necros could convert soul points into health... and heal allies or themselves. They could convert enemy soul points into lifeloss... or convert enemy soul points into lifegain for party members.

Ritualists could be the soul point buffers of the game. They could increase the rate of soul point regeneration. They could convert soul points into energy or health... they could buff the amount of energy necros gain from soul reaping.

complicated? yes
well thought out? no
possible? probably not

just theorycrafting after all.

frojack · Nov 23, 2007, 02:04 PM // 14:04

It's really a shame. There are some cool skills in there, but they tend to sit next to degenerative crap. Mark of Subversion for example, could be pretty good if it didn't share a house with B. Spike. It needs to sit at 30 seconds and a 2 second cast just to not be over-powered in any retarded Blood template.
Defile Defenses might be usable if the rest of the character didn't have to be hexes. To be honest, it's a much better look for curses in general (even if it could use a slightly more aggressive recharge). 1-time use skills that are debilitating enough to be a concern but don't bog games down (ala Diversion).
Blowing people up with stuff like putrid would be great, but... Yeah.

I guess the class is a relic from the time when hex stacks were 'okay'. I don't think hexes would be a major problem if they looked more like Mark of Sub and Defile Defenses, rather than Faint or Price.

Doji · Nov 23, 2007, 02:53 PM // 14:53

I think reckless, price and faint all need buffs to make necromancer viable again

Riotgear · Nov 23, 2007, 07:26 PM // 19:26

Wow, I come back and the thread's a flame war, great.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

The problem with necromancers, basically, is that none of their attributes have enough interesting skills to make a character out of.

I thought about this after posting the thread, and kind of reached the same conclusion. Curses has been severely weakened, Blood/Death aren't really cohesive with PvP to begin with, Soul Reaping itself has some solid skills that demand heavy attribute investment and don't carry the class's weight by itself.

However, I targeted Soul Reaping largely because its unreliability combined with the high skill costs balanced against it makes it difficult to get things to a balanced point, because either things are too expensive normally, or they're too cheap when Soul Reaping starts kicking in and then you get shit like 5+ necro teams that exploit it to power out whatever they have that does work while rolling in free energy.

One thing I think really NEEDS to happen is that it needs to not scale so well. No other primary except Leadership (which makes more sense since Paragons were designed to work with larger groups) becomes more effective as the number of enemies you encounter or the number of that primary you put in your party grows.

And yes, its inherent effect is much better than Strength. I think every inherent effect except maybe Spawning Power's is better than Strength. Strength has always been more about the skills in the line than the inherent effect, and given the power of Rush and Bull's Strike, that's probably fine.

Quote:

Curses is a hex line, and hexes are a design trainwreck. Do the math.

I think Curses is the most salvageable of the lines. Long-duration hexes are indeed a mess, but Water has been getting away with sporadic short-duration hexes and Illusion has been getting away with various more lengthy hexes without being a disaster.

Quote:

Maybe rework a lot of the Blood skill so they steal health for other allies, similar to the way Weapon of Remedy works.

I've wondered if Blood Bond would be a decent starting point for something like that. The ability to transfer health to allies would make life steal a bit more meaningful than just a prot-cutting DD.

Death is a PvE line, so who gives a shit?

Wasteland Squidget · Nov 23, 2007, 10:26 PM // 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

However, I targeted Soul Reaping largely because its unreliability combined with the high skill costs balanced against it makes it difficult to get things to a balanced point, because either things are too expensive normally, or they're too cheap when Soul Reaping starts kicking in and then you get shit like 5+ necro teams that exploit it to power out whatever they have that does work while rolling in free energy.

The mass necro teams haven't been exploiting their own skills with Soul Reaping for quite a while. With all the major gimmicks, its been about pumping out ritualist and monk healing skills.

Riotgear · Nov 23, 2007, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

The mass necro teams haven't been exploiting their own skills with Soul Reaping for quite a while. With all the major gimmicks, its been about pumping out ritualist and monk healing skills.

Of course, but the benefits of Soul Reaping are naturally factored into a good number of the skill costs, and the nerfs to Curses were done before the latest round of SR nerfs hit.

Whether Curses abilities are reasonably priced or not considering the massive effects they provide is up for debate, of course, especially with GoLE. I'd say they're not, Curses' staples are a bit overpriced at the moment, which is a hard situation because cost adjustments (i.e. to Spiteful Spirit) have not really produced favorable results.

Ensign · Nov 24, 2007, 12:13 AM // 00:13

It doesn't matter at all if Soul Reaping is bad in PvP, that's not what keeps Necromancers from seeing play - it's the skills. Contrast with the Ritualist, which makes minimal use of its primary attribute but is a strong character because of a selection of strong, versatile skills.

Neither Death nor Blood make for a functional primary line; Blood is stuffed with overcosted DDs that are only attractive as part of a prot-ignoring spike, and Death is too corpse dependent to be a main line outside of an environment with abundant corpses. Curses is the only deep line, but it's stuffed with sticky hexes - hexes that need to stay on a target to be effective - that requires a serious hexing build to be viable, and the line has seen several nerfs because of what a problem that archtype is.

If Necros are to find a place in any sort of balanced build, several skills are going to need to be reworked. Soul Reaping isn't going to be part of the equation. If SR is good as an energy engine, it will be used to power secondary spells, as we've seen. The key is in the skills.

Riotgear · Nov 24, 2007, 12:37 AM // 00:37

Maybe I should retitle this thread "how could Necromancers be fixed?" :P

Riotgear · Nov 24, 2007, 02:18 AM // 02:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

I was being sarcastic........

anyway necro's had curses, that was voted gone like a park ranger playing Survivor, no one wants to see blood or death be useful, so why not remove necros from the game and get it over with.

Curses can probably be salvaged if it can be moved away from its current nature of depending heavily on lengthy hexes and more on short, powerful effects. The recent buffs to Curses' enchantment hate may further assist with this.

Blood is has some fundamental issues as well (namely, caster DDs suck, and if the game is to be healthy, always will suck, especially prot-ignoring ones), but could be made more interesting if the secondary effect was more useful, that is, stronger effects with life loss as a major drawback.

Death is overly dependent on corpses, which was usable when thumpers were providing fuel with pet corpses, became less-useful when thumpers fell out of favor, and now with the pet corpse nerf, is essentially buried. Even with fuel, minions are about as dumb gameplay-wise as spirit shitting, and the rest of death's usefulness really ends at Tainted Flesh and Well of the Profane.

wuzzman · Nov 24, 2007, 06:33 AM // 06:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Curses can probably be salvaged if it can be moved away from its current nature of depending heavily on lengthy hexes and more on short, powerful effects. The recent buffs to Curses' enchantment hate may further assist with this.

Blood is has some fundamental issues as well (namely, caster DDs suck, and if the game is to be healthy, always will suck, especially prot-ignoring ones), but could be made more interesting if the secondary effect was more useful, that is, stronger effects with life loss as a major drawback.

Death is overly dependent on corpses, which was usable when thumpers were providing fuel with pet corpses, became less-useful when thumpers fell out of favor, and now with the pet corpse nerf, is essentially buried. Even with fuel, minions are about as dumb gameplay-wise as spirit shitting, and the rest of death's usefulness really ends at Tainted Flesh and Well of the Profane.

bleh. Even if anet makes the blood line interesting, it would be like the deadly arts line except with none of the weakness. That will get people to nerf it back to hell eventually.

Even if the curse line was made like the dom/illusion line, you do know that people are already complaining about clumsiness 4 sec recharge. And when it comes down to it, your not going to put the defense of your entire build on a single ineptitude/clumsiness mesmer, which keeps builds that have ineptitude mesmers from going beyond the dual clum set up. In the end, hex'es severing as anti-melee is not what people want and that will ultimately shuffle the class into non-existence or RA/AB folder.

And death, well you can look at the pet nerf and see were that and soul reaping is going

I know there is a lot of people who want to see more options in the game, unfortunately they aren't as noisy as the make everything worthless crowd. The community counters what it wants to counter, gone are the days when you approach different builds with different strategies. Even if you do make something usable, players will find something terribly broken about it and sure enough we will be back to "how can we make this class usable" threads.

Riotgear · Nov 24, 2007, 07:31 AM // 07:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

bleh. Even if anet makes the blood line interesting, it would be like the deadly arts line except with none of the weakness. That will get people to nerf it back to hell eventually.

Blood doesn't have a PS/SB-ignoring 99-damage 5/0.67/3.33 DD, a 5/0.67/8 hex with no aftercast that turns into a DW right when you need it to blow someone up, or a fast-casting KD that lets you smack someone with a fast-casting 94-damage armor-ignoring packet before they can stand up, all without an elite.

Right now Blood is basically a bunch of overpriced DDs, the price being justified by a self-heal aspect that is both weak and generally irrelevant. If there were better effects limited by life sac, it might have use, but then again, if that were the case, they'd probably just find a way to pack Mystic Regeneration and call it a day.

Quote:

Even if the curse line was made like the dom/illusion line, you do know that people are already complaining about clumsiness 4 sec recharge.

More like they're complaining about the long duration that lets you throw it on someone even while they're busy switching targets and there's basically no way to deal with it except gimp yourself or eat it.

Inept/Clumsy isn't really the best archetype of a good anti-melee hexer, Water is.

frojack · Nov 24, 2007, 08:27 AM // 08:27

@ Wuzzman
Fair enough. I see where your coming from. However theres no need to create other versions of Clumsiness just to make short, debilitating melee hate. There are a few things you can do to gimp warriors without complete interruption.

We all know what warriors do. They are effective because offensively they have high damage, high frequency relatively 'free' attacks, can instill utility on bars along with real killing power blah blah.... Those are things you can attack;

1. High damage

2. High frequency

3. Utility skills

4. Killing power

They are all related. Screw with certain things, and screw them all. The reason everyone dreads Faint most of the time right? Right... Nobody likes Faint. It screws with number 2 and I think we can all agree doing that is bad. Just like miss hexes, it screws everything a war does. Even after nerfing it lasts a hell of a long time, but then it needs to or it's rubbish. It's a stupid hex.

So why not attack the other less over-arching parts? For instance, forcing attack skills out of play for 5-6 seconds would be strong enough but not need to last a shit load of time.
Something like "If target foe uses an attack skill, all attack skills are disabled for an additional 6..30 seconds" 3/4 cast, 1...6 d, 20 recharge. The skill can still go through (I HATE getting interrupted by Clums) if you really, really need to D shot something, but it comes at a heavy price. Ok I know it's just Diversion 2, but it can remove Eviscerate and Executioners after a Bulls from play, killing a spike or rather forcing a spike outside of a window. While not gimping the Frenzied auto-attack so the war can still maintain dps and not be totally useless (unlike under typical hex hate).

Obviously this completely removes non-dps physicals, but whatever really. It's only 6 seconds and they aren't as dangerous as warriors anyways. So sins become useless for 6 seconds, rangers can't interrupt (unless they have to), and Paragons can't use Spear of Lightning or whatever. It's still far less annoying than Faint, and won't yield anything without proper application...

You could gimp attack damage like Siphon Strength, but for shorter lengths and something silly like -50 or 60 damage for 6 seconds. You could lock the miss on Price to 50% and up the damage to silly levels like 80+. Which would probably remove Frenzy from those 6 seconds. On a 20-25 second recharge, it wouldn't be so bad. All with faster casts naturally.
People could still try and hex stack with multiple necro's but those slots become wasted if you can only control something for 6 seconds and the threat of HEV being ever present.

Fair enough, HEV still hammers most hexes, but even if it screws water guys, it doesn't mean the water guy is generally a bad character.