Necromancer Skill Balance Suggestions - Blood Magic Focused

Ok, we all know that the blood magic line of necros is really lacking. It's damage is nearly useless in pve and rarely will you find decent builds for pvp. The only skills from blood magic that are really being used in pve are, orders, br, and bip. One of the problems is that it's all armor ignoring damage or life steal which could make unbalanced spikes and the sacrifice of some skills is too much. So here's a few suggestion for the blood magic line along with a few other skills.

[awaken the blood] This skill is like a terrible necro version of glyph of elemental power as it has a long recharge time and increase's sac by 50%. Functionally change to, (10e, 1c, 20r) "For 1...15 sec, you sacrifice 50% LESS (EDIT) health and have a +5 health regeneration. No effect while under another necromancer enchantment."

[barbed signet] Terrible casting time and recharge as it also sacrifices health. Reduce cast to 1 second and recharge to 15 seconds.

[blood drinker] Bad casting and a bad alternative to signet of agony to combine with angorodon's gaze. Reduce casting time to 1 sec or functionally change to (5e, 1c, 8r). "If target touched foe is bleeding, you steal 29...65 health."

[blood of the aggressor] Weak damage compared to its health sacrifice. Increase damage to 7...46 and if target foe was attacking, you sacrifice 2% hp instead.

[cultist's fervor] Way too much hp sac to gain back, damage from spamming skills isn't worth it. A vampiric spirit, agorodon's gaze, vampiric gaze, signet of agony spam is way more effective for damage with also plenty of heals. Fuctionally change to (5e, 1/4c, 20r) "Sacrifice 25% health. For 1...16 seconds, whenever you are wielding a vampiric weapon, your attacks steal 5...20 more health, but deals 20...5 less damage." Thought this could be a little interesting :P

[dark pact] Needs a superior blood magic rune to deal more damage that what hp is sacrificed. Increase damage 15-45, if target foe has more health than you, you sacrifice 5% hp instead.

[jaundiced gaze] Health sacrifice is too high to gain health. Change to sacrifice 5% hp if target foe has more hp.

[mark of subversion] Can be a great finisher on monks, but casting time and recharge are too long. Change to (15e, 1c, 20r)

[vampiric touch] [vampiric bite] Terrible skill for necros, good for rangers, makes no sense. Sacrifice 5% health (to combine with masochism and dark aura). Increase recharge to 8, increase stolen health to 29...80.

Ok I don't feel like going into a bunch of other skills but here are 3.

[enfeebling touch] Bad skill, bad damage, touch range, get my point? Functionally change to (10e, 3/4c, 8r). "Target touched foe suffers from weakness for 5...12 seconds. If target foe was already suffering from weakness, that foe is knocked down.

[weaken knees] Don't need to say anything here. Functionally change to (5e, 1c, 5r) "While target foe is suffering from weakness, that foe moves 50% slower and is knocked down when struck by an attack. Hex ends when foe is knocked down and weakness is cured."

Order of the Undeath. Ok ya it seems this skill is kinda pointless in pve now. For pve (not a big supporter of split but...) functionally change to (5e, 1c, 15r). All but 3 non-elite minions die. For 20 seconds, those minions deal +5...30 damage and attack 33% faster, but they are weakened and crippled when this skill is activated. (Please make verata's sacrifice useful again)

These are the only 2 skills that I can agree with you on. The others is meanless imo.

Kill life stealing and then we can talk.

barbed signet needs to do bleeding >_>

If you want to make blood work in pve as well, you'll to give it some more aoe effects. Life transfer was a step in the right direction, but offensively it is a mockery compared to ether phantom.

example:

Oppressive Gaze: (15e 2c 7r) "Steal 5...41 health from target foe. If that foe is suffering from weakness, that foe and all nearby foes take 18...52."

I also like the idea of some more blood magic skills inflicting bleeding, deep wound, and maybe cripple. That way each Necro line would sort of have its own set of conditions.

I dont know if i agree with your buffs but I do agree that blood magic needs a boost.

one of my main bitches is that alot of the skills that require sacrifice deal more damage to you than the enemy.

~the rat~

Weird, i've been seeing more necros running blood in ra than in the past. If it is that weak of a line, why am I seeing more people running it?

Because the average person in RA thinKs 1+1=3

i like [awaken the blood] tho
good for sum [spoil victor] action against bosses 'n stuff
and with the recent buff of [life transfer] and [vampiric spirit]
i think it's okay

In RA, there are lots and lots of bad players.

The amount of people playing X build shouldn't influence how good a certain skill line or individual skill is.

the answer is simple, Unless you team up with friends the chances of getting heals are very low.

Blood line at least offers "some" self survivability and it does it in the form of damage. Unfortunately it kinda sucks at both....but hey.

[blood renewal] already exists. There are enough cloned skills out there (Factions cloned many of Prohpecies skills). I see no need for a repeat.

Well the point of that skill would be at least to reduce the sac while br heals much more. Maybe anet needs to balance blood magic to steal more health, but to sacrifice more to balance out the healing, but they also have to do it so we don't have a problem with blood spike. Honestly, I don't really see blood spike working in at least gvg because they won't be able to effectively split, but I dont really gvg. 6 Man HA teams ftw... >.<

Edit - What if they increase the health stolen by a bit, but you can only steal health up to your maximum health. So if you have 490/500 hp, you cast vamp gaze you can only be healed for 10hp, which you can get down by using hp sac skills.

blood magic will never be worth specing into as long as 1) low damage output from skills (irony is that blood is suppose to be the necro's damage line) because of the life stealing mechanic. 2) current sacrifice mechanic, particularly with those skills meant for defense.

there is no need to balance blood skills as long those two issues are on the table.



Jayce Of Underworld

a lot has been covered here (and in other threads)...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10316715

then why is this thread still open?

/close

eep!, i actually have a very good blood/curse magic build that i use to defeat glint in Tomb (normal mode) but did not think anyone would be interested , think Angorodon build and bring Atrophy (curse)

i think its blood/curse/soul reaping N/Mo and actually could use to spread diseases fastly.

tested briefly, vanquished one sparkly swamp in HM. I'll post the build when i can.

Atrophy (could save you from irritating elementalist boss that otherwise won't die like Joffs the Mitigator in HM) and Masochism so you could spam mwahahaha , those two skills are a must in the blood necro build. bleh, can't get build now. :|

work along those, if i remember correctly.

Are you retarded? I stopped reading your "suggestions" after your horrible proposal to Awaken The Blood. The point of that skill is to boost your attributes. Blood Renewal already does EXACTLY WHAT YOU PROPOSE.

I don't even think you've ever played Necromancer.

You're an idiot.

Agreed.

OP,Even if you have played necro, Anet wouldn't change the skill this late in the game, waste your breath somewhere else.

And where is the benefit of the attributes? Your suggestion makes it litterally worthless.

Too limited. You have to make it bleed in order to steal health. How about "Inflicts bleeding on target touched foe. If target is already bleeding, steal 29...65 health."

uhm. The last part makes no sense. If target foe was attacking, you lose 2% hp INSTEAD?!? So if your fighting a warrior... this skill is literally useless. How about, "Steal 7...46 health from target foe. If target foe was attacking, you also sacrifice 2% health."

what the HELL? Necromancers don't even have a vampiric weapon mod. This is basically stripping it from the Necromancer use and putting it right into the hands of attackers. Most likely going to be Assassins or just not used.

I think it should be (15e, 1c, 15r) to be balanced personally.

Compared to the other enfeebling skills, this is well balanced. To compensate for the touch range, you add damage. [enfeeble] only gives weakness, [enfeebling blood] spreads that weakness, but you sac life. All three, compared to each other, are relitively balanced.

just change the and to an or, and I got no problem.

They put the skill back for PvE and PvP today, no need for this big of a change. (They should have kept the single minion way for PvP, imo).

If I didn't mention it (which I think was only one or two skills) I don't mind the proposition.

Oh, and btw, Blood is really useful all all around. I use it in PvE and PvP and I do fairly good. I only AB for PvP mind you, and I only die when I get dazed or mobbed. In PvE, I don't even know if I died while paying attention with a blood build.

1) Awaken, +2 atts typically sucks when it just replaces a potentially useful skill.

2) Blood drinker sounds fine

3) No like, u sac 2% instead of 5%

4) Lol just thought that would be kinda cool hahah, right now cultists fervor is useless though

5) Maybe for mark

6) Enfeebling touch deals like 41 damage in melee at 12 curses, very weak, poor team support which is the main role of necros. Possibly the old version could synergy with some sort of hammer war...

Ok the thing with blood magic, is that its good at surviving because it self heals, but if you dont want to deal more damage and eliminate the self heal, you really can't do that with the available skills. Even with cultists fervor and spamming skills, you're damage output won't be that great. You can't combine awaken with that skill unless you wanna just kill yourself. The suggested awaken and the current cultist's fervor would be great though.

If you're too big of a pussy to deal with the additional sac that Awaken causes, pair it with skills that don't require a sac. The problem is solved from your end and we get a reprieve from your bullshit suggestions because I've just made you a better Necromancer.

Oh, wait, you don't play Necro. Nevermind.

This.

Also, your changes would bring back BS to life. So keep them on PvE

PD: BS FTW!!!!!!!

1) Um, I have been playing necro for over 40 months, and this skill is a waste. First thing, that skill I was talking about that you quoted was cultists fervor. Awaken + Cultists = Death.

2) Ok, so you wanna know why this skill sucks? For pve, it might be useful with SS or SV, but wow, like 10 more dmg on sv, 4 more on ss, its more beneficial to bring other skills such as enfeebling blood, sig of loss souls, etc. For pvp, pretty much all skills require some hp sacrifice that deal damage or that are useful, unless you wanna run some awaken/sv pvp build for like RA or something. The long recharge time is too vulnerable to an enchantment strip. Honestly I haven't seen one good necromancer in pvp use awaken the blood.

3) STFU I know how to play necro. Ya, I may not be a pro skill balancer like izzy (lol), but here's just some suggestions that I think would improve these skills from my experience.

Ya okay, I was just looking at this skill as far as damage output would go if you just spammed blood skills as much as you can. Vampiric gaze, angorodon's daze, vampiric spirit (with bleeding for e management). It would do approximately 3 additional life steal per sec... wow gg... Oh ya, don't forgot to not cast blood renewal with that skill on... ha

1. Awaken is more for a Blood/Curse combo necro, not a Blood only necro. A Blood only necro can have 12-16 attributes, awaken then is useless. A Blood/Curse necro with balanced attributes would have 10-14/11-15 in one and 10-13/11-14 in the other (assuming SR is the only other attribute and they are, as I said, balanced in numbers). With Awaken, you get 12-17 in each. That's a big enough difference with the amount of time you get for the enchant. But, yes, it does need to have a faster recharge (maybe 15/20/30 seconds instead of 45).

2. Ok, so cultist's could use a redo, so can a ton of skills, but your suggest made it from not-so-usefull (I have found use for it before) to 250% useless. So instead of redoing what the skill does, reduce how much you sac. It's not that hard to figure out. (although, with it being an Elite, I don't know why there is even a sac on it).

[Cultist's Fervor] I got a suggestion for Cultist's Fervor: (5e, 20%hp, 1c, 30r) "For 5...30 seconds, you gain +1...4 energy regeneration. Sacrifice 50% more health than normal."

Reasoning: The energy cost is low because of the sacrificing cost. The skill cannot be maintained to give an infinante 5-8 energy regen. And the sac cost was added to replace the sac of other skills with it on, to make it more useful, while adding the same drawback as Awaken the Blood to prevent major spamming of blood sacrificing skills (which usually have a faster recharge). This way, the skill would allow for spamming of skills, which was the intent, without too much drawback. And with the sacrifice 50% more health, that would discourage using the skill while it is already on.

Drawback: With Awaken the Blood, skills that sacrifice health sacrifice twice as much health. (SO DON'T USE HEALTH SACRIFICING SKILLS!)

3. Enfeebling touch does little damage, but compare it to the other Enfeeble skills. It does damage to compensate for it's touch range, the other Enfeeble skills don't do any damage. B-A-L-A-N-C-E.

If you want to do more damage and eliminate self heal. You need to go to Curses and Death. Blood is meant for the healing. Not for the "wtfpwning" damage like elementalists. Not everything in the game is just about sheer power ya know.


You obviously don't know how to use Awaken the Blood. It's rather simple. DON'T USE SACRIFICING SKILLS! Maybe don't even use Cultist's with Awaken. Ever thought of that? Or, just go with what I suggested (and I know you will argue that my suggestion is just as flawed).

Curses and death for awaken the blood? Why death, do u mean blood cause you need atts for awaken the blood? If you are going curses, imo the extra 2 atts still isn't worth it, adds on like 2 secs for your hexes which is not that big of a deal considering you can throw an extra skill in there for support. The only reason why I ever brought that skill, is because I have an empty slot and I don't really know what to throw in it.

On enfeebling touch... have you actually seen anybody use that skill? The only potential use for this skill is to use it if you got melee on you. You're not gonna run all the way to help your monk who might be getting hit by shock war, and its a long way to run to use it on a ranged attacker. Yes wow, armor ignoring damage, it's nothing that significant, considering most necros don't rely on going into melee for damage.

Edit - Ya I can see the 5 sec recharge time being useful for cheap dmg though if you're gonna get that close...

In what you quoted, and what I was responding to in the quote (which I will soon fix to prevent future confusion) I was not talking about Awaken the Blood. I was talking about this:

Like I said, if you're a necro, and you want more damage, you need to go into Curses and Death, which focuses on dealing damage over self/party survivability.

Blood Magic, as a whole, is made from the idea of stealing life from others -and giving it to yourself - or stealing life from yourself and giving it to your allies or dealing damage to your enemies. In order to keep that line balance, Blood Magic shouldn't be able to be spammed without consequence. Hence Cultist's Fervor's backlash. And hence why the Blood Magic skills don't do a lot of damage. You have the life stealing too high, and the sac skills are basically worthless (as a smart person would know to use a sac skill then a life stealing skill, something that, through your arguments, doesn't seem to stick to you). And if you have the damage too high, then the "risk" that is meant for the profession becomes naught. Elementalists have high energy and damage, but their skills cost a lot of energy and cause exhaustion. Ritualists and Mesmers don't have energy gain from their primary. All casters have drawbacks that are meant to balance the profession (as a whole) out.

When you combine, oh say, [dark pact] with [vampiric gaze], the health lost from dark pact is back with vampiric gaze. With Blood magic, you cannot look at single skills and say if those skills are balanced, but look at the possible combinations to consider them balanced or not.

If the skills steal too much health, or deal too much damage, or even not sacrifice enough health, then the line becomes too powerful (and will then be nerfed to oblivion like [Smiter's Boon]).

Monks should be behind the Necromancer first of all. Second of all, there will always be skills that are more useful as a secondary necromancer then a primary necromancer, same for all professions. Enfeebling touch is the version of the other enfeebling skills that is meant for those going into necromancer for a secondary.

I'm pretty sure [shield bash] and [disciplined stance] > [enfeebling touch] for secondaries

I'm pretty sure we > you for Necromancer knowledge.

Neither of the two skills you offered deals damage or gives weakness. Try again.

Ya stop with the pathetic flaming because it only shows immaturity. If you have a valid argument, please post it.

Weakness isn't that great of a skill as it doesn't stop attacks or reduce the addition damage dealt by attacks and the -1 attributes won't make much of a significant increase. Yes I know it does dmg, but what profession is going to use this as a secondary skill to deal damage? You mentioned that this is a better secondary skill, so what secondary is going to use it? Not monk, weakness will have no or little effect on stopping a sin spike. All other spell casters and paragons won't benefit from using this than necros. Rangers are gonna try to go touch way with this (god i hope not lol). Assassin's wont use this because weakness doesn't combine with any of their other skills and the damage is weak compared to all of their other skills. I guess derv's could use this along with that enchantment that reduces damage they take from foes suffering from a condition, but tanking in pvp is useless and its weak damage compared to melee attacks. The other skills that work off of weakness are hammer skills, earth skills, and oppressive gaze. No way an earth ele is going to run up into melee to use stoning to knock down targets and I highly doubt warriors are gonna use this skill to combine with other hammer attacks. So what secondary are you talking about?

I don't think I need a valid argument. Your suggestions are all such crap, I could post 3,000 words on why hygiene is important and it would STILL be a valid counterpoint for your bullshit.

Wait, no one likes enfeebling touch? It's of my my staple skills along with Insidious Parasite. It's recharge is only 5 compared to Enfeebles 10. (at least in PVP)

Touch range isn't a big deal since the only people I really need to put weakness on are people meleeing me. The added damage is pretty nice since it's considered health loss, and cannot really be avoided.

Rangers adding that to Touch can work out. Putting it to a Axe Warrior can work as well (as some need weakened for extra effect... or was that Deep Wound *I don't play war much*) And Hammer Warrior can use it as well (Warriors already use Plague Touch, adding Enfeebling Touch, which is in the same attribute line, would work for adding weakness).

Also, Enfeebling Touch would be against melee. So you use it when a warrior or dervish is attacking you, as Professor Yoshi said.

You don't need to go to melee range. Melee professions do, which would allow you to use it on them.

And weakness is mostly used on melee (so using it on a sin spiker would be beneficial), not for the attribute deduction, but for the 66% less damage in attacks. Putting weakness on a caster is, as you said, dumb.

Someone seems to be a little angry over a game. Chill out

Ya true, it does have the 5 recharge but again, necros won't always be the first one targeted. Most good RA/TA/whatever teams have monks and its usually them who are being pressured and targeted more, so you can be limited when you use this. So only under certain conditions this skill will actually be useful.

No rangers will never add that touch skill because it will stretch their atts way too much with expertise, blood, and curses. Enfeebling touch needs a high attribute to deal the damage. Weakness has no effect on axe attacks, although one axe attack causes weakness if target has deep wound so this skill is useless for them. I don't see a reason why hammer warriors will need this while a simple [Staggering Blow] will do the trick without the energy or atts while provide armor penetration from strength.

Again, enfeebling touch isn't completely terrible, but I think it needs to be buffed a little bit to be more useful in more situations. I think someone on wiki suggested that it causes the caster to be weakened as well, so that way you can use plague sending to send it to others... think that would be a better buff IMO.

I said they could, not will.

Like I said, don't play warrior much. So sorry about the Axe Warrior, I mistook the weakness requirement with the deep wound requirement.

If you buff Enfeebling Touch, you need to buff the other two enfeeble skills. That way they are balanced. And that wiki suggestion that you said, is more of a nerf then a buff. That is forcing you to carry another skill with that skill, and requires multiple targets as well. Not a good idea, imo.

Well ya it might require another skill, but the whole point about builds is linking skills together. Like who would ever bring headbutt without plague touch? With that buff, a simple, enfeebling touch, foul feast, plague sending build could be good along with other skills.

Everyone seems to be reading this as:

Sacrifice 50% health. For 1..15 seconds, you have +5 health regeneration. No effect while under another Necromancer Enchantment.

I think it is just not very well worded, and is supposed to say:

For 1..15 seconds, you have +5 health regeneration and sacrifice 50% less health. No effect while under another Necromancer Enchantment.

...which makes a heck of a lot more sense, considering what he was saying about the skill.

That said, I think that would do better as a different skill entirely, rather than replacing Awaken the Blood.

Still /fail

Honestly unless you use blood spike(slow and ineffective in pve, mes/ranger food in pvp) the new version MIGHT be better.(not sure whether I want the +2 in skills or 50% less sac) Otherwise the older version is still better

No blood spike would actually go with the +2 atts. Other than trying to deal high damage, I don't see the point of adding 2 atts to make hexes last like 2 secs longer. If you have a curses based build or a curses/blood, I'd think that throwing in any hex to assist your team will be way better than awaken. Awaken also requires blood magic attributes to be efficient. I think the 50% less hp sac stacking with the currently cultist's fervor might actually make that skill useful.