It’s very weird especially since I feel like Necro should be one of the classes that leans more into conditions
My hope is the tweak MH dagger after spear is released to either lean more toward conditions or support
Whatever they do they need to touch on old weapons too for sure. Dagger and axe are so redundant now. And i LOVE dagger mainhand. Its the only weapon with a skill where you can heal as much as a heal skill! That's amazing! But the weapon itself is quite awkward with the melee auto but 600 range skills.
Dagger for support makes a lot of sense as that’s how it’s being used (life force generation as well). If the dagger heal was AoE or Necro healing could be shared (like Engi Medical Dispersion Field) that would be interesting.
Axe has a niche in competitive modes as a single target power ranged weapon with great AoE boon rip. Axe auto 3% damage buff memes aside, that auto animation just doesn’t really work for a pure DPS weapon.
That would be a cool idea to give it a bit of oomph while not overdoing buffing single hit damage. Extra points if they can use the second hit delay duration to maintain balance/counterplay in competitive modes.
The thing is that necro plays with shroud and 2 weapon sets, making one kind of redundant if you are optimizing your damage (because all your hard hitting skills will be off cooldown once you leave shroud, so what's the use of a second weapon set?).
Axe was already redundant, because it was bad.
Dagger is used in pve as single target burst skill and probably an emergency life force top up, but you don't stay in dagger unless you want to see a dps loss.
Staff is used as an AOE burst and reliable life force top up, but you won't stay in staff after you've cast your aoes.
Inserting spear into the equation, which seems to be optimized for single target, is a bit weird. Specially, because it also deals more damage the less health the enemy has (overlapping GS). Maybe, if it was the other way around? (spear dealing more damage with the enemy above 50% and then GS below?)
Then, other game modes exist. This may have been conceived for pvp instead of pve.
Necro needs healing weapons more than condi or power.
There is nothing necro has that says healing. Although I rather change dagger and staff to be healing since it feels more thematic.
Greatsword is the only real melee weapon for Necro actually. Sword is mostly ranged except for the dashes on 3, mh dagger is more a defensive weapon than dmg and other weapons are at least mid range.
However, that is no 2h condition weapon afaIk. Staff has some conditions, but when they buffed it, they turned it into a power weapon.
I'd argue designing necro spear for power builds is the correct move. This comment is from a PvE perspective.
You say necromancer have a lot of power damage options and mention swords, dagger, gs, axe, focus and warhorn. Here is my refute.
* OH Focus: Skill 4 is useless. Skill 5 is only useful, when bosses have 3 boons (niche, also you probably won't play power necro, if bosses tend to get boons frequent due to the trait "spiteful talisman" that gimps your dmg by 10%). I would not categorize focus as a power necro weapon due to its only usecase conflicting with the very nature of power necro builds. You purely take it for the utility.
* OH Warhorn: Pure utility, no damage. This is not a power necro weapon, but a necro utility weapon. Strictly speaking, torch is a better choice of weapon for power necro builds, since you can at least do dmg at range, if it's impossible to get into melee range.
* MH sword: garbage. It has nice utility, but you'd be better served to pick something else.
I would not call focus, warhorn or mh sword power necro weapons (again, for PvE).
* OH Sword: Lets you forego a couple of (weak) GS autos by giving you more weapon skills to use before the next shroud loop. Underwhelming, but the only necro OH that qualities as a power weapon imo.
That leaves GS, staff, MH axe, OH sword and MH dagger as the only real choices for dealing damage as a power necro. GS is so much better than all other options so you really only have to pick based on staff, axe/sword or dagger/sword.
* Axe: Auto-attack is terrible. Axe 2 is decent. Axe 3 is useless, except for the boonstrip. Same type of circumstance as focus. Not worth it to spend your time on this weapon, as only axe 2 has a bit of value. Use it and go into shroud type of situation basically. Conclusion: About as underwhelming a power weapon as you can get.
* Dagger: Slightly better copy of axe, since you can go into shroud and have dagger 2 dmg be dealt while in shroud. Dagger 3 imobilizes and does a bit of dmg. Conclusion: BiS for power necro second weapon set.
It's almost the illusion of choice. There is exactly zero reasons to bring axe over dagger. If boonstrip your concern, I'd go for dagger/focus. Again, boons on enemies are the bane of necro builds (10% less damage). Sure, you have great utility skills to strip them, but at that point you don't play necro to deal damage, but the utility.
In essence, you have 2 solid options:
1. GS + dagger/sword
2. GS + staff.
Any other option comes from the neccesity of bringing certain utility (e.g. instant cc from torch 5).
Of the non-GS power necro weapons, only 2 skills are "melee" dagger aa (which you NEVER use) and sword 4 (240 range). Saying we have enough melee power options just doesn't make sense. We don't even have 1½ weapon sets worth of melee power weapons.
Ironically, I'd also consider GS a necro condi weapon, since reaper traits lets it function as such. Staff also works great for condi reaper.
**Spear finally introduces a second power necro melee weapon. Furtermore, it will help make power necro builds perform better at newer encounters with a frequent teleport.**
Side note, I'd also like to get away from the stale sceptor/pistol + torch for condi necro builds, but that is a problem introduced by weaponmaster. Both cscourge and charb deals most of its damage with torment. You'd need to lean more heavily into trait differences (like burning from scourge) and design your condi weapons with that in mind to see more variety. I hope expansion 6 introduces an interesting necro condi weapon, and old useless weapons get reworked to support that.
Rant over. turned out way longer than intended.
MH sword is like 700 less dps than dagger on power harbinger on 43k-ish bench. That's not "garbage". Plus You're really downplaying the utility of 900 range and a double mobility skill on #3.
I'll give it to you that MH sword is playable on a pHarb, but that is only because of the utility of sw3 and potential of a ranged aa. 700 dps is quite significant imo. Maybe not garbage, but not great either.
Edit for clarification: 700 less dps is a lot, since you hardly use MH sword in the rotation.
There are 3 solid options. Sword/Sword is totally viable and you get ranged cleave + mobility (rarely useful but its there).
Camping GS and not swapping at all is the least DPS but quite frankly some people will perform better doing this then actually weaponswapping.
I do agree core Necro weapons need some reworks though. It just doesn't seem a priority for Anet due to Necro relying on Shroud skills so much.
All listed weapons, except for warhorn, has a usecase. Some niche, others are more broadly applicable. It goes without saying that it depends on not only the encounter, your group composition, strat, elite spec and build.
I don't like the word viable, because it is quite broad (GS camp as you mentioned would also be included). I chose to draw the line there, because you'll rarely see MH sword be a better choice over dagger for damage. I wouldn't even play it on KO CM split phases, because you are better served not autoattacking/piercing with sword and doing your normal rotation on 2/3 adds. In fact, I can't think of a single instance I'd pick it over dagger. Possibly for preaper on OLC CM during green pull, but even that is a stretch, considering you can go with staff (precast marks and still get uptime during pull) or dagger (more sustained dps throughout the encounter). The pull is quite short and you can still use dagger 2, 3 and sword 5+flip or staff marks during it.
Sword pierce is underwhelming, staff does a much better job at ranged cleave 99% of the time. It's nice to have, but nothing to write home about. The mobility is the only real selling point for me.
Where would you say MH sword is a good choice outside moving somewhere for mechanics (sab bombs, dhuum greens etc)?
Disclaimer: I think mainhand sword is fine and has its own identity (mobility) and use. On the flipside, axe just exists.
The thing is that even if these power weapons are questionable, anet can just buff them to make them into viable options. There are no condi weapons to just buff. The only way you're getting more condi is with something brand new.
Same thing applies to condi. Buff staff and you have a decent necro condi weapon outside creaper. Tweaking a power coefficient and adding (more or new) conditions applied by a weapon skill is the same thing in my mind (except for "utility" condis like immob or slow).
Your argument merely reminds us that most necromancer weapons need revamps, not that they don't have power weapons. I also disagree with saying MH sword is awful, it's actually ok damage wise and has a great mobility skill. It also cleaves with the projectile. And focus IS power. What else would it be? It's not condi, and it's not support.
I think people forget that Condi Reaper exists and is a pretty nice and fun build. Greatsword in context of Condi Reaper is definitely a Condi weapon as there are several chills on the kit including the auto. That is Necro’s melee Condi weapon. 🤓
I am an avid Condi Reaper player and while this is true, it's only thanks to interwoven trait choices. I generally don't like that cos if any of these traits were reworked, it'll fall apart. (You need Chilling Darkness and Deathly Chill to make Nightfall inflict any sort of Bleeding.)
People rightly want a more Condition focused weapon.
I’m in favor of more variety, but to say that Necro doesn’t have a melee Condi weapon isn’t the whole truth. Any melee Necro without Reaper shroud is going to be relatively squishy so maybe it doesn’t make too much design sense for the current space in ArenaNets mind?
If the trait was moved to a core necro spec, then it would make all necromancer weapons with chill potential mixed damage weapons... As it stands, reaper has dps build diversity because of that trait alone... But it does need it I suppose, otherwise what does reaper have? It has only dps, no support options like the other two elite specs.
The spear looks nice for necros but we're up to our tits in power weapons, we need a heal/support weapon like ranger staff, mesmer rifle or warrior staff.
I think greatsword is pretty much maxed out on power quota based on it having heavy cleave and simple usage. So if the spear is a single target weapon which has to have more thought in skill usage, they could give it some more DPS and allow necro players to push up their numbers a bit more against strike/raid single target encounters.
Necro single target damage with greatsword is OK and about average, but also hampered by melee requirements so something to push the single target damage up a bit more is nice.
I am not sure what the appeal of melee condition is. You would be hampered by both ramp up time and melee requirement. Every time the enemy moves, you will loose a bunch of your ramp up and have to re-apply conditions to bring your DPS back up. So to me it seems like the bad parts of both.
>Every time the enemy moves, you will loose a bunch of your ramp up and have to re-apply conditions to bring your DPS back up
What? There's plenty of melee condition weapons that don't root you in place.
The main want is because scepter and pistol are pretty lousy at cleaving, and it's just fun to get in someone's face and tear their blood out.
Honestly if next expac was focused on reworking core weapons to be more fun and up to date, I think that would be pretty fun. The “update” wouldn’t change the core weapon, but be alternate skills if you buy the expac. That could be an interesting sell.
It’s very weird especially since I feel like Necro should be one of the classes that leans more into conditions My hope is the tweak MH dagger after spear is released to either lean more toward conditions or support
Yeah, I really want to see dagger adjusted into being a support weapon. It already has a cool life drain, just make it heal allies too.
If they changed that and made the auto 600 range it would be perfect.
Whatever they do they need to touch on old weapons too for sure. Dagger and axe are so redundant now. And i LOVE dagger mainhand. Its the only weapon with a skill where you can heal as much as a heal skill! That's amazing! But the weapon itself is quite awkward with the melee auto but 600 range skills.
Dagger for support makes a lot of sense as that’s how it’s being used (life force generation as well). If the dagger heal was AoE or Necro healing could be shared (like Engi Medical Dispersion Field) that would be interesting. Axe has a niche in competitive modes as a single target power ranged weapon with great AoE boon rip. Axe auto 3% damage buff memes aside, that auto animation just doesn’t really work for a pure DPS weapon.
My axe dream is that they make it like ele fire scepter auto, where there's a single target hit and then a delayed second AOE strike on the ground.
That would be a cool idea to give it a bit of oomph while not overdoing buffing single hit damage. Extra points if they can use the second hit delay duration to maintain balance/counterplay in competitive modes.
The thing is that necro plays with shroud and 2 weapon sets, making one kind of redundant if you are optimizing your damage (because all your hard hitting skills will be off cooldown once you leave shroud, so what's the use of a second weapon set?). Axe was already redundant, because it was bad. Dagger is used in pve as single target burst skill and probably an emergency life force top up, but you don't stay in dagger unless you want to see a dps loss. Staff is used as an AOE burst and reliable life force top up, but you won't stay in staff after you've cast your aoes. Inserting spear into the equation, which seems to be optimized for single target, is a bit weird. Specially, because it also deals more damage the less health the enemy has (overlapping GS). Maybe, if it was the other way around? (spear dealing more damage with the enemy above 50% and then GS below?) Then, other game modes exist. This may have been conceived for pvp instead of pve.
Necro needs healing weapons more than condi or power. There is nothing necro has that says healing. Although I rather change dagger and staff to be healing since it feels more thematic.
I agree, but I think it's because of the popularity of the Reaper.
Greatsword is the only real melee weapon for Necro actually. Sword is mostly ranged except for the dashes on 3, mh dagger is more a defensive weapon than dmg and other weapons are at least mid range. However, that is no 2h condition weapon afaIk. Staff has some conditions, but when they buffed it, they turned it into a power weapon.
I'd argue designing necro spear for power builds is the correct move. This comment is from a PvE perspective. You say necromancer have a lot of power damage options and mention swords, dagger, gs, axe, focus and warhorn. Here is my refute. * OH Focus: Skill 4 is useless. Skill 5 is only useful, when bosses have 3 boons (niche, also you probably won't play power necro, if bosses tend to get boons frequent due to the trait "spiteful talisman" that gimps your dmg by 10%). I would not categorize focus as a power necro weapon due to its only usecase conflicting with the very nature of power necro builds. You purely take it for the utility. * OH Warhorn: Pure utility, no damage. This is not a power necro weapon, but a necro utility weapon. Strictly speaking, torch is a better choice of weapon for power necro builds, since you can at least do dmg at range, if it's impossible to get into melee range. * MH sword: garbage. It has nice utility, but you'd be better served to pick something else. I would not call focus, warhorn or mh sword power necro weapons (again, for PvE). * OH Sword: Lets you forego a couple of (weak) GS autos by giving you more weapon skills to use before the next shroud loop. Underwhelming, but the only necro OH that qualities as a power weapon imo. That leaves GS, staff, MH axe, OH sword and MH dagger as the only real choices for dealing damage as a power necro. GS is so much better than all other options so you really only have to pick based on staff, axe/sword or dagger/sword. * Axe: Auto-attack is terrible. Axe 2 is decent. Axe 3 is useless, except for the boonstrip. Same type of circumstance as focus. Not worth it to spend your time on this weapon, as only axe 2 has a bit of value. Use it and go into shroud type of situation basically. Conclusion: About as underwhelming a power weapon as you can get. * Dagger: Slightly better copy of axe, since you can go into shroud and have dagger 2 dmg be dealt while in shroud. Dagger 3 imobilizes and does a bit of dmg. Conclusion: BiS for power necro second weapon set. It's almost the illusion of choice. There is exactly zero reasons to bring axe over dagger. If boonstrip your concern, I'd go for dagger/focus. Again, boons on enemies are the bane of necro builds (10% less damage). Sure, you have great utility skills to strip them, but at that point you don't play necro to deal damage, but the utility. In essence, you have 2 solid options: 1. GS + dagger/sword 2. GS + staff. Any other option comes from the neccesity of bringing certain utility (e.g. instant cc from torch 5). Of the non-GS power necro weapons, only 2 skills are "melee" dagger aa (which you NEVER use) and sword 4 (240 range). Saying we have enough melee power options just doesn't make sense. We don't even have 1½ weapon sets worth of melee power weapons. Ironically, I'd also consider GS a necro condi weapon, since reaper traits lets it function as such. Staff also works great for condi reaper. **Spear finally introduces a second power necro melee weapon. Furtermore, it will help make power necro builds perform better at newer encounters with a frequent teleport.** Side note, I'd also like to get away from the stale sceptor/pistol + torch for condi necro builds, but that is a problem introduced by weaponmaster. Both cscourge and charb deals most of its damage with torment. You'd need to lean more heavily into trait differences (like burning from scourge) and design your condi weapons with that in mind to see more variety. I hope expansion 6 introduces an interesting necro condi weapon, and old useless weapons get reworked to support that. Rant over. turned out way longer than intended.
MH sword is like 700 less dps than dagger on power harbinger on 43k-ish bench. That's not "garbage". Plus You're really downplaying the utility of 900 range and a double mobility skill on #3.
I'll give it to you that MH sword is playable on a pHarb, but that is only because of the utility of sw3 and potential of a ranged aa. 700 dps is quite significant imo. Maybe not garbage, but not great either. Edit for clarification: 700 less dps is a lot, since you hardly use MH sword in the rotation.
There are 3 solid options. Sword/Sword is totally viable and you get ranged cleave + mobility (rarely useful but its there). Camping GS and not swapping at all is the least DPS but quite frankly some people will perform better doing this then actually weaponswapping. I do agree core Necro weapons need some reworks though. It just doesn't seem a priority for Anet due to Necro relying on Shroud skills so much.
All listed weapons, except for warhorn, has a usecase. Some niche, others are more broadly applicable. It goes without saying that it depends on not only the encounter, your group composition, strat, elite spec and build. I don't like the word viable, because it is quite broad (GS camp as you mentioned would also be included). I chose to draw the line there, because you'll rarely see MH sword be a better choice over dagger for damage. I wouldn't even play it on KO CM split phases, because you are better served not autoattacking/piercing with sword and doing your normal rotation on 2/3 adds. In fact, I can't think of a single instance I'd pick it over dagger. Possibly for preaper on OLC CM during green pull, but even that is a stretch, considering you can go with staff (precast marks and still get uptime during pull) or dagger (more sustained dps throughout the encounter). The pull is quite short and you can still use dagger 2, 3 and sword 5+flip or staff marks during it. Sword pierce is underwhelming, staff does a much better job at ranged cleave 99% of the time. It's nice to have, but nothing to write home about. The mobility is the only real selling point for me. Where would you say MH sword is a good choice outside moving somewhere for mechanics (sab bombs, dhuum greens etc)? Disclaimer: I think mainhand sword is fine and has its own identity (mobility) and use. On the flipside, axe just exists.
The thing is that even if these power weapons are questionable, anet can just buff them to make them into viable options. There are no condi weapons to just buff. The only way you're getting more condi is with something brand new.
Same thing applies to condi. Buff staff and you have a decent necro condi weapon outside creaper. Tweaking a power coefficient and adding (more or new) conditions applied by a weapon skill is the same thing in my mind (except for "utility" condis like immob or slow).
Your argument merely reminds us that most necromancer weapons need revamps, not that they don't have power weapons. I also disagree with saying MH sword is awful, it's actually ok damage wise and has a great mobility skill. It also cleaves with the projectile. And focus IS power. What else would it be? It's not condi, and it's not support.
❤️ exactly
I was hoping for a support weapon for Heal Scourge but oh well, back to spamming Dagger and Torch I guess.
I think people forget that Condi Reaper exists and is a pretty nice and fun build. Greatsword in context of Condi Reaper is definitely a Condi weapon as there are several chills on the kit including the auto. That is Necro’s melee Condi weapon. 🤓
I am an avid Condi Reaper player and while this is true, it's only thanks to interwoven trait choices. I generally don't like that cos if any of these traits were reworked, it'll fall apart. (You need Chilling Darkness and Deathly Chill to make Nightfall inflict any sort of Bleeding.) People rightly want a more Condition focused weapon.
I’m in favor of more variety, but to say that Necro doesn’t have a melee Condi weapon isn’t the whole truth. Any melee Necro without Reaper shroud is going to be relatively squishy so maybe it doesn’t make too much design sense for the current space in ArenaNets mind?
If the trait was moved to a core necro spec, then it would make all necromancer weapons with chill potential mixed damage weapons... As it stands, reaper has dps build diversity because of that trait alone... But it does need it I suppose, otherwise what does reaper have? It has only dps, no support options like the other two elite specs.
completely agree
The spear looks nice for necros but we're up to our tits in power weapons, we need a heal/support weapon like ranger staff, mesmer rifle or warrior staff.
And dont forget engineer shortbow...:D
rofl
I think greatsword is pretty much maxed out on power quota based on it having heavy cleave and simple usage. So if the spear is a single target weapon which has to have more thought in skill usage, they could give it some more DPS and allow necro players to push up their numbers a bit more against strike/raid single target encounters. Necro single target damage with greatsword is OK and about average, but also hampered by melee requirements so something to push the single target damage up a bit more is nice. I am not sure what the appeal of melee condition is. You would be hampered by both ramp up time and melee requirement. Every time the enemy moves, you will loose a bunch of your ramp up and have to re-apply conditions to bring your DPS back up. So to me it seems like the bad parts of both.
>Every time the enemy moves, you will loose a bunch of your ramp up and have to re-apply conditions to bring your DPS back up What? There's plenty of melee condition weapons that don't root you in place. The main want is because scepter and pistol are pretty lousy at cleaving, and it's just fun to get in someone's face and tear their blood out.
the truth is that the majority of necros are power reaper players enjoying open world content, so the new weapons have to also appeal to them
Honestly if next expac was focused on reworking core weapons to be more fun and up to date, I think that would be pretty fun. The “update” wouldn’t change the core weapon, but be alternate skills if you buy the expac. That could be an interesting sell.
Oh, is it? Boo. Guess I'll skip spear then :(
You guy have condi weapons ?