Lifeburn

[Clintsat]

Lifeburn is significantly better than it was prior to this expac, however the 2.5 second cast time is far too long given the amount of damage the ability produces and the related health costs associated with using the ability.

I propose reducing the cast time to 1 second if it is cast while a stack of Abominate Death is up. This would still promote timing the ability while increasing the overall damage per cast second and make the risk/reward a bit more palatable. Additionally, requiring a stack of Abominate Death would remove the concern of inadvertently affecting TLE.

 

[Xavion]

i think a cool perk to add to it is if you use it at max stacks it turns into a aoe maybe

 

[Twisty]

History lesson:

Lifeburn was recently buffed from "unusable" to "mediocre" on live servers. In the hands of Necromancers that understand their abilities and properly choose superior ones when faced with a choice what to cast, Lifeburn ends up netting about 2-4% of total DPS on fights longer than 2minutes.

Lifeburn needs to go back to what it's been (long ago) when it felt like the signature Necromancer ability. It was
a) dangerous to use
b) very strong dps in the hands of the players that knew how to minimize the danger


Proposed change:

a) make it dangerous to use by setting Necromancer's individual bleedthrough to let's say 95% for the duration of Lifeburn. Or some other solution that requires actual healing effort in majority of cases to keep the Necromancer alive.

b) increase Lifeburn damage by about 7x times; do it in such way that it doesn't effect TLE servers. Lower base cast-time to 2s if Abominate Death buff is up from someone using a Heart in raid/group. This will roughly increase total outgoing Necro dps by about 15-20% on fights where it is safe to use Lifeburn. While it'll be a strong damage output increase, make no mistake that it'll still keep Necros well behind Warlocks in dps potential - and that's even possibly fine. But it'll certainly close the wide gap that currently needs closing to be at least within reason. Currently that gap to top dps potential is unreasonable, and this Lifeburn change is a fine 2-for-1 choice to close it.

 

[Harek]

extra bleedthrough is an absolute no go, as our bruiser frequently learns, and relearns that the extra 35% bleed through on offensive stance gets him murdered (with nothing directly hitting him in raid, just aoe/surge)

 

[Xavion]

perhaps make it do tick % damage like vampire req does? in some form idk how much would be deadly since necros would be using vr aswell

 

[Twisty]

extra bleedthrough is an absolute no go, as our bruiser frequently learns, and relearns that the extra 35% bleed through on offensive stance gets him murdered (with nothing directly hitting him in raid, just aoe/surge)

Perhaps I don't understand how your anecdote with Bruiser experience makes it a "no go"? Your bruiser is dying because noone is directly healing / deathsaving him during high surge spikes and his bleedthrough is constant, which is the opposite of the scenario i'm proposing.

High bleedthrough on Necro would only be during the Lifeburn duration - making it a dangerous-to-use tool on purpose since we want to be asking for a stratospheric buff to Lifeburn. I want Necros to be dying that aren't coordinating their Lifeburn usage with healers and/or using it at inopportune times. I want to consider swapping my CB bardings to HP bardings for increasing my survivability if it means I get to slam Lifeburn more often. I want it to be bad risk if i fire it off without a deathprevent up, or cheetah or equilibrium running. Skill-diff using this ability should produce notably-better results, and what better ability to tie skill-expression to than Lifeburn? For any of these sacrifices and intelligent-usage caveats to make any sense though, we need Lifeburn in ideal scenario to be mega-worth the trouble.

And you want a Lifeburn cast to be doing FFU-scale damage because Necros are at moment stratospherically behind assasins and warlocks. Lifeburn = FFU dmg won't bring up necros to assasins overall dps potential, but it'll be at least within reason. And for that steep an ask in ability damage increase, you gotta dangle a juicy steak-worth of sacrifice to increase our take-up chances for the change. Otherwise the easy counter-argument is "well... you know... high FFU damage aint easy, you gotta work for it to be good, mk? you can't just press an i-win button"

Let's have more ideas thrown around if the bleedthrough idea gets enough pushback. But imo Lifeburn needs to be dangerous-to-use since it needs to be mega-buffed, or otherwise we're risking getting no support for it just straight-up get buffed to FFU dmg. The way healing works today, nothing short of bleedthrough route comes to mind to make it actually dangerous. Like VampReq is not dangerous, noone who actually pays attention would buy that argument.

 

[Clintsat]

I completely agree....Lifeburn should be an amazing dps ability that has an enormous risk associated with it. It should be a class defining ability and something that requires reasonable coordination.

 

[Chath]

I instinctively recoiled at the mention of anything with high bleedthrough, but I agree it'd be a great way to up the risk of using it and justify it being powerful.

If bleedthrough gets a ton of pushback, you could get similar results with 95-100% heal reduction - heal reduction is usually pointless until it gets very close to total, but when heals hit for close to 0 you start to see players even die to incremental bleedthrough from surge damage. And honestly if it was like 98-99% heal reduction it'd be kind of fun to have an excuse to finally use large single-target heals that otherwise never see the light of day.

 

[Xavion]

could make it so lifeburn lower your max hp by set %'s for a duration so any attacks could possibly kill you as another idea. EX: you got 4bil hp it lower max hp total by 30% a tick so 4b 2.8b 1.96b etc woudl also make using nay buff that give more max hp or hp in total more valuable

 

[Harek]

Perhaps I don't understand how your anecdote with Bruiser experience makes it a "no go"? Your bruiser is dying because noone is directly healing / deathsaving him during high surge spikes and his bleedthrough is constant, which is the opposite of the scenario i'm proposing.

You understand the bruiser has plenty of their own death saves x3 and damage reduction tools right? and that's at a mere 35% extra bleedthrough,
all tanks despise the extra bleedthrough on offensive stance, because even that small amount is extremely dangerous

95% is just going to mean necro smears all over the place

 

[Galorif]

You understand the bruiser has plenty of their own death saves x3 and damage reduction tools right? and that's at a mere 35% extra bleedthrough,
all tanks despise the extra bleedthrough on offensive stance, because even that small amount is extremely dangerous

95% is just going to mean necro smears all over the place

Also tanks, that are not sk's, cannot death prevents, stoneskin or relieve death prevent in offensive stance. So that extra bleedthrough is a no go for any healer.
BTW I am that bruiser, bleedthrough is absolute trash

 

[Harek]

ahh ya forgot, been on SK so much. Still the base damage reduction is 30% or so even without anything active

 

[Raeven]

So basically people are suggesting that Lifeburn only be useful when used in a group. When they have a real healer to heal them.

Personally, I think that sucks, but I don't use Lifeburn anyway, for precisely the reason that it will probably kill me while soloing, since the only way I have to heal myself is with the ascension spell Blood Contract, and Judithiana is definitely not going to keep me alive.

I have considered Lifeburn to be a useless spell for me. Which is a shame, when compared to my wizard, who can cast Manaburn and then replenish her own power.

Doesn't seem quite fair to me that the necro equivalent spell is only useful in a group.