Guild Wars 2

First, sorry for my lenguage. English is not my mother tongue, and thus I apologize in advance for any butchering of your lenguage that I may do…

I’ve been playing since beta. I usually read the formus, but I’ve never posted anything else, though. I’ve seen the rise of the zerker meta, I’ve seen the good and the bad, and currently, the game is not where it should be, not in 2 years now.

But many people’s suggestion are definitely unfounded, or just plain wrong (or impossible to implement).

What it’s worst, I haven’t met yet somebody who knows what is the reason for many of the current profession specific issues.

Rant ahead,you have been warned.

NECROMANCER:

Why do I start with the necromancer? No, it’s not my main class to play. But it’s by far the profession that is in the worst ¨Design¨ state. Any necromancer can see it.

Condition necromancer has nothing to do with attrition, or at least,it has WORSE sustainability than the power necromancer. How is that?

The power necromancer weaponset is the best at generating life force. Why, if the highest DPS for such build is without DS?

At the beginning, DS didn’t work as it does now. It acted as a ¨third downed state¨.
When the necromancer’s HP reached 0, it transformend into DS, instead of going into the downed state.This was true for the 31 of May,of 2011.

This explains everything, doesn’t? If not,let me explain it for you:

-Necromancer’s downed state is by far the worst. #1 does very weak dmg, and heals even less.#2 is way too short,#3 does NOT help at all in a downed state,#4 is common to al classes. This was in exchange for having death shroud, a much more powerful ´Downed state´

-This was changed because it made necromancers way too hard to beat. I actually like that change. The real issue is, the weapon skills, and traits of the necromancer were not changed back to reflect this CORE MECHANIC change
That does not mean that the necromancer is useless, that’s why anet has not changed it yet…
But take a look.

Glass cannon necromancer has very low passive and active defenses.Low armor, 18k healt,no vigor,very little access to protection,little regeneration,no blind, ect…In exchange,they generate life force faster than any other build (Axe faster cooldowns,faster lf generation) so they could survive the burst while they have been doing high damage (Dagger auto,axe #2,focus #4) and making the necromancer’s oponent weaker (Vuln) to then,in the verge of death, come back and destroy his/her oponent with lifeblast (power,+vuln) to finish its oponent off and survive

Condition necromancer sinergizes well with blood magic.Heal on hit,heal on crits.
It has much more proactive defenses (Weakness,blind,more chill,more fears,more cripple) and has higher toughness. But his/her weapons generate a lot less life force: they are supposed to sustain themselves during the fight,and having a weaker death shroud (so the constant damage never ends kicking in,and if the condimancer needs a condi burst,you get extra chill,extra bleeds and extra fear)

It makes sense doesn’kitten But not only are this weapons and traits designed to fit that mechanic, MOST of a necromancer’s skills,traits and weapons are DESIGNED with that in mind.But they changed it,and now power necromancers have more sustain and death shroud uptime than condi necromancers. That’s why you dont get healing while in DS.You were not supposed to,not as a condition/minion necromancer,because you were supposed to sustain yourself long enough before you could have your DS ready.
Power necromancers could not abuse death shroud,because it has a cooldown, neither could condition necromancers, because they had to sustain themselves until they got DS,and a weaker version of DS.

Just take a look at those traits.
+30% in downed state
+Heal when exit DS
+Weaken when enter DS
+Fear when downed
+Life transfer healing allies,support becoming stronger when about to die,
+STABILITY WHEN ENTERING DS,
+SLOWER DS LOSS per SECOND
+etc…

Agree?Disagree?

Next ¨episode¨, warriors.

Halbatros.5173:

…

The focus of your attempt to an explanation seems to be very PvE-centric, I think.

I don’t main necromancer as well, but since it has several hard- and soft-counter builds to some of my elementalist builds in PvP and WvW, I already learnt a lot about the profession, and recently started to play power / chill necro builds myself.

Halbatros.5173:

Condition necromancer has nothing to do with attrition, or at least,it has WORSE sustainability than the power necromancer.

That’s very much untrue. Condition necromancers are mostly ranged and have several ways to keep distance (chill, cripple, fear, torment pressure), boon control (boon ripping and corruption) and ways to heavily reduce both direct damage (weakness, blinds & crowd control abilities) and condition damage (condition transfer, consume condition and all the counters which also apply to mitigation of direct damage).
A conditionmancer may use deathshroud as a damage sponge or to apply some conditions via #2-#5 (and maybe dhuumfire via life blast), but life force isn’t usually used for life blast, so after all you got more life force to play sitting duck in deathshroud than power builds which require you to use life force for damage.

Halbatros.5173:

The power necromancer weaponset is the best at generating life force. Why, if the highest DPS for such build is without DS?

Dagger mainhand and warhorn offhand both require you to be in your enemy’s face to gain LF. High risk, high reward. Axe only provides mediocre LF regeneration but has more sustain via medium range. DS gives power builds some ranged damage abilities which they need to keep up with enemies who have better access to swiftness and leap abilities, but that also reduces the LF available to soak up more damage (trade in survivability for damage). Also there are several traits which enhance direct damage output e.g. via vulnerability and piercing life blast, higher crit chance and lower passive LF degeneration which are more in favour of the active usage of LF in power builds than in most condition builds. Again: DS sponge vs DS damage.

Halbatros.5173:

Glass cannon necromancer has very low passive and active defenses.

Your assertion about low active defense isn’t quite correct. If you take dagger offhand (very viable in tPvP), you got blinds and weakness. If you take warhorn, you got a strong daze and interrupt plus cripple. Focus is able to rip boons like might, fury, stability and vigor. Staff is also great for keeping your enemy at distance.

Halbatros.5173:

But not only are this weapons and traits designed to fit that mechanic, MOST of a necromancer’s skills,traits and weapons are DESIGNED with that in mind.But they changed it,and now power necromancers have more sustain and death shroud uptime than condi necromancers. That’s why you dont get healing while in DS.You were not supposed to,not as a condition/minion necromancer,because you were supposed to sustain yourself long enough before you could have your DS ready.

A condition necro is quite capable of sustaining her- or himself for quite some time until the first CC hits. This is when passive defense (e.g. armor) kicks in, which power necros usually don’t have too much of.

I don’t see what you aim for with your latter observations, as I have to assume you want to show how the stuff you describe don’t work anymore. But this is just how it works, and it works quite well so. There’s one thing which bothers me as well, which is that you can’t be healed when in Deathshroud e.g. via siphoning, but on the other hand necro is still very strong in its offensive capabilities (both direct damage and condition damage). It’s not its core functionalities which are broken, but you are more reliant on your team for defensive support, while other classes can have better self sustain, but also lack the offensive abilities necros have.

As a necro, I think this thread deserves some more attention.

maeggle.6021:

That’s very much untrue. Condition necromancers are mostly ranged and have several ways to keep distance (chill, cripple, fear, torment pressure), boon control (boon ripping and corruption) and ways to heavily reduce both direct damage (weakness, blinds & crowd control abilities) and condition damage (condition transfer, consume condition and all the counters which also apply to mitigation of direct damage).
A conditionmancer may use deathshroud as a damage sponge or to apply some conditions via #2-#5 (and maybe dhuumfire via life blast), but life force isn’t usually used for life blast, so after all you got more life force to play sitting duck in deathshroud than power builds which require you to use life force for damage.

No, its very much true. This may be how ANet sees it on paper, but in practice, the necromancer is the least attrition class of all the classes currently. I’m not gonna say necromancers are so broken that they can’t be played. Its got some decent builds, and it is workable, but this class is very, very badly designed. The last minute changes that completely redesigned Death Shroud at the last second saw to this.

Once someone gets on top of a necromancer, there is very little they can do to keep them off. Fear bombing someone with terror isn’t exactly reliable against anyone who understands the games mechanics, since it double dips and is broken with both condition cleansing and stun breaks, and is also reduced by condition reduction food/runes.

Warrior is far better at attrition because of Healing Signet and their high base toughness. Thieves are actually the best attrition class in the game right now because of the Shadow Rejuvenation trait. A condition built thief with this trait is the ultimate attrition build. Rangers have superior attrition builds because of the bajillion evades, insane synergy with Apothecaries/Settlers stats, and 100% vigor up time they can achieve. Plus their pets do fixed amounts of damage regardless of what stats they’re using. A properly traited and built mesmer has some pretty insane attrition thanks to invisibility and the general confusion (not the condition) they cause with clones and good positioning. Engineers are the second best attrition class in the game, hands down. Healing Turret plus all the leap skills they get can boost them from near death all the way back up to full every 16-20 seconds. Nearly everything Guardians have is built for attrition in mind. Practically half of their builds/skills have built in healing components to them, along with skills that grant invulnerability/blocks/aegis. Elementalists still offer up greater amounts of attrition than a necromancer.

Necromancer is the class I’ve devoted most of my time too. Necromancers are not an attrition class. They’re a burst damage class. Yes, even the condition builds are all about delivering condition bursts. If the burst fails, or your opponent brings enough condition clears, a necromancer simply flails its arms around until they eventually die. Necromancers do not have the sustain for prolonged fights. Siphoning is terribly broken and underpowered for this purpose. Blood Magic is the worst trait line necromancers have, and death shroud scales horribly against multiple targets. The more people there are in a fight, the worse death shroud becomes. The necromancer heal skills are dreadfully underwhelming against classes that aren’t necromancers. Condition builds on other classes stack mostly one or two different conditions. Maybe a third with a lesser degree of up time. This leaves necromancers with a huge health pool, but only a 5-6k heal to compensate. The other classes get massive 7-8k heals, some of which are on a shorter CD than Consume Conditions. Well of Blood wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t have that 40 second cool down attached to it. That skill is clearly designed around the well cool down trait, which you guessed it, is located in the worst trait tree and requires at least 4 points to get. If that isn’t enough, healing power as a stat is completely useless to a necromancer because they have some of the worst healing power co-efficients attached to their skills thanks to death shroud. Oh, and death shroud prevents all active healing and healing over time effects. So much for attrition.

In condition builds, death shroud is actually a DPS loss, since none of the skills are capable of sustaining themselves with any degree of reliable up time. Necromancer condition builds having the worst LF generation. That makes it impossible to recover from you run out in of LF in a fight, which is extremely easy to do. Once a condition necromancer has run out of LF, they’re dead in the water and very easy to kill.

Ok I’ve ranted enough.

In my opinion bloodmagic is the worst traitline necros have because healing and DS dont work together until this is fixed we will rarely see any necro that skills into bloodmagic (exeptions would be mms since they have some decent traits in bloodmagic).

A wery good topic about necro in gw2
After so many fights i must agree with Halbatros.5173 in most about necro in gw2.
Necromancer is NOT attrition class here- or its bad designed.
With all my fights with a good enemy players is thesame- the longer the fight the lowest my chance to win. So i need kill enemy pll fast or i will lose.
And its NOT hard to escape from necromancer- how hard is to escape from the slowest class in the game?
For now i enjoy muth more playing other class here (warior, guardian, mesmer, thief).
When i play sometimes necro i fell that someting is wrong with this class.
We will see what dev will do to necro in the future- but in my opinions 2 years after relase is enought time to fix this class after ds change long time ago.

Thanks for the replies…Im on my tablet now so I’ll keep it short.
Either Wednesday or thursday I’ll post about warrior

@maeggle: Reality is very different as kravick said.
Ranged? Leaps, mobility…
Proactive defense through conditions? Anybody fighting a necro will bring cleanse, so bye bye defense. What’s left? Healing is sub-par cooldown wise.Blood magic is the weakest healing per second heal in the entire game, behind guardian’s greatsword traited heal per hit, because it cleaves and pulls enemies, on top of having 4 AOEs
Only deathsroud, toughness and vitality are left, on top of two dodges…if the necro is not CCed.Block, invuln, distortion and dodge avoid 100% dmg, may it be against 1 foe, 50 foes or 10000 foes.Deathshroud does not.And necro axe #2 can hit 4-6k and generates 13% lf…ON A 6 SECOND COOLDOWN.

The condition necro, “king of attrition”, becomes weaker and weaker as the battle goes on.If he/she doesn’t condibomb +fearchain his/her opponent ASAP, he/she dies shortly after.
That, if it survives playing ping-pong…as the ball

Meh. The game don’t do attrition, period.

digiowl.9620:

Meh. The game don’t do attrition, period.

Warrior axe+shield 6/0/6/0/2 full stances and healing signet says hi.
So does Boon Bunker and Defensive Meditation Guardian, Thief venoms, Thief condi, permaregen ranger, d/d bunker ele, turrets engineer, and mesmer’s chaos maestro, specially War maestro in knights (2700+ armor,with 2k heal+1.5k dmg every 3 seconds)

take a look at ranger, just take one peek at ranger!

then you will know necros are not only one who straggle to be not hated.