Guild Wars 2

I got a lot of support for this on the guru forums, so here’s hoping Anet’ll see this and consider it as an option to improve the necromancer profession and PvE itself in the ways suggested.
These suggestions should be taken as guidelines, not concrete demands. What’s important is the idea being conveyed, not the exact wording and functions themselves.

Intro
Necromancer in GW2 is facing quite a few problems. Hell, the game itself is facing quite a few problems, but those are being worked on, and they’ve all been highlighted already, so I won’t waste my time suggesting an overhaul of the game, rather I’ll suggest an overhaul of the necromancer itself, and a few key gameplay elements that hit the necromancer hard.
The complaint is generally that the necromancer doesn’t feel like the necromancer from GW1. Obviously, we can’t go and ask for a duplicate, as there are too many differences in game mechanics between GW1 and GW2, but we can at least make an effort to make the necromancer actually feel like a necromancer.
Summaries
1 – Armor: In GW1, each profession had its own specific armor, giving them each their own flavour. In GW2 this becomes much more difficult as all professions share their armor with at least one other profession.

2 – Living up to the name: In GW1, necromancers had a strong bond with death. We required it to cast many of our spells, and whenever it occurred we’d find ourselves a little bit stronger than we were a moment ago. In GW2, our relationship with death is barely there.

3 – General problems with the game: GW2’s not perfect, and there are a lot of things that need to be fixed. Some of these things hit necs a little harder than other professions.
3.1 – The “focus” of necromancer is to (in Anet’s words) “win a slow war of attrition”. This is the worst possible tactic for PvE, especially with how PvE is right now. Let’s instead change the focus to “destroy/bypass enemies’ defenses”
3.2 – The necromancer’s durablity is meaningless in PvE due to high-end PvE bosses utilizing OHKO attacks on a long cooldown, rather than a constant barrage of smaller attacks. Couple this with the lack of dodgeability and stability and you get a profession that is doomed from the start
3.3 – Condition stacking is broken. I’ve got one idea for it, but there are plenty of other good ideas out there, too.
3.4 – Necromancer direct damage is almost exclusively single-target, with condition damage being the only real aoe choice. Conditions are in a horrid state altogether right now, but I will suggest a few small ideas that may remedy the situation.
3.5 – “Punishment skills”
3.6 – Enemies in PvE on average have very few conditions and boons, which makes the nec less useful, as condition management and boon removal are things that necromancers specialize in.

Armor
In GW1, elementalists were exotic wizards, mesmers were either in underwear or dressed for the theatre, and necromancers… well necromancers were the oddballs covered in the stuff of nightmares. From tongues and tendrils to bondage and fetish to tribal shaman; the necromancer stood out more than anyone else. In GW2, we’ve lost this, and we now share our aesthetics with other professions. Unfortunately, Anet seems to have almost completely abandoned the style necs had in GW1, and leaving us with few choices if we wish to recreate the unique look necs used to have.
Obviously, it would be very difficult to go back to the old way, and probably a bad choice overall. Each profession having its own armor means either more time spent developing armor, or fewer choices of armor for us, or both. I’m not proposing we go back to GW1’s sytem, it’s just that I’d like to see some things in GW2 that remind me of elite Canthan nec, ancient nec, or elite Luxon. Yes, we have profane in GW2, but I’m pretty sure we’re all aware how horrendous it looks compared to GW1’s profane, espeically on males.

(cont in next post)

Living up to the name
In GW1, we had tons of spells that required a corpse to consume. Obviously, this creates problems and this system won’t work in GW2. However, it does create a strong bond with death, and was an interesting (if incredibly difficult to balance) mechanic. Were we to integrate this into GW2, we’d find necs being ludicrously powerful during huge world events, while feeling especially weak and slow otherwise. The solution? Something crazy.
Seeing as how life force is our one bond to actual death in the game it seems like a good place to start. Let’s make the life force bar multi-purpose. Instead of life force being a charge for a 2nd health bar and a set of skills that might be completely useless in some builds, let’s allow it to double as a resource and rework a ton of necromancer skills to go along with this. We will also have to make changes to the life force bar so that it registers as over 100%, instead of it just changing how much health the bar has. For example, with 25 points in soul reaping, a maxed out life force bar would read “Life Force: 125%”, instead of 100%. The reason why will be clarified below.

The general rule: Weapon and spectral skills charge life force, non-spectral utility skills use life force. Add F2, F3, and F4 button, with each appearing above the 7, 8, and 9 utilities, respectively. The #, X, Y, and Z in the examples below represent variables which can be adjusted for balance.
Minions: Minions in GW2 don’t feel like undead minions at all; you don’t use a corpse to make them, they just kind of… appear there, like any other summon. Let’s restore this bond with death by making minions cost life force and completely revamp how they work altogether.
Under this new design, minions would be spammable; you’d be able to create many minions at once, up to a certain minion cap. This would restore the “steamroll” feeling minions had in GW1. The upside would be strength in numbers, the downside would be using up your utility slots and being in a bad position should your minions die off. Here are some examples:
Bone minion: # sec cooldown, costs X% life force(This cost is the reason why the life force bar should change how it counts, as mentioned above). Raises a bone minion with stats based on your stats, it lasts until killed. Maximum of 2 + Y, where Y is 1/10th of the number of trait points invested in death magic. For example, 10 death magic would yield 3 max, 29 would yield 4 max.
Hit the respective F key to detonate the minion you are targeting. If you are not targeting a specific minion, destroy the one with the lowest health instead.
Bone Fiend: # sec cooldown, costs X% life force. Raise a bone fiend with stats based on your stats. It attacks from range and lasts until killed. Maximum of 1 + Y where Y is 1/15th the number of trait points invested in death magic.
Hit the respective F key to cause the target bone fiend to tunnel towards your target and detonate, causing bleeding and damage. If you are not targeting a specific minion, destroy the one with the lowest health instead.
Shadow Fiend: # sec cooldown, costs X% life force. Raise a shadow fiend with stats based on your stats. It attacks in melee and lasts until killed. Maximum of 2 if Soul Reaping is greater than 20, maximum of 1 otherwise.
Hit the respective F key to cause target shadow fiend to detonate, causing damage and blind in an aoe. If no minion is selected, instead detonate the shadow fiend with the lowest health.

Wells and corruptions could be just as they are now, but with an extra “kick” added to them if you choose to pay a life force cost.
Examples:
Well of power’s boons last twice as long if you can pay X% life force
Well of suffering would have increased duration if you can pay X% life force
Well of corruption converts two boons per pulse if you pay X% life force
Corruption examples:
Epidemic also spreads conditions from surrounding enemies to the target before applying the normal aoe effect, at the cost of X% life force.
Blood is power also grants 10 stacks of might to allies in X radius at the cost of Y% life force.
Corrupt boon: Hit F# to instantly recharge at the cost of X% life force.
Corrosive poison cloud also causes vulnerability and has increased radius at the cost of X% life force.
F2, F3, and F4 keys would cast using life force(with the exception of corrupt boon). 6, 7, 8 would cast normally.

(cont in next post)

Spectrals:
Cast with F# keys to increase potency(life force gain, duration, etc) at the expense of a longer cooldown.
Examples:
Spectral grasp travels twice as fast, is unblockable, and strips two boons, but takes twice as long to recharge if cast this way.
Spectral armor instead causes you to turn invulnerable and gain X% life force whenever you would take damage for the duration. Lasts half as long and takes twice as long to recharge if cast this way.
Spectral wall gives X% life force for each ally that passes through it(once per ally) and Y% life force for each foe that passes through it(no limit per foe). Takes 75% longer to recharge if cast this way.
Of course, all of the above means that necs will need some sort of cap on how often they can get life force from deaths, to avoid necs becoming ridiculous during large events.

General problems with the game
I’m not going to say much here, largely because other people have already made very good points on some of the problems I can imagine. I still have a few ideas, though.
“Slow war of attrition” – The idea of winning a slow war of attrition is an interesting one, and would work great in some games, but it’s just not wanted at all for GW2 PvE, as the goal is to kill as much as fast as possible. Instead, let’s shift the focus more towards bypassing enemy defenses. Let’s make nec attacks ignore protection, go through block, and maybe even one or two that can do something like KD an invuln target. This would not be all that great for current PvE, but for an ideal PvE where profession diversity and proper tactics are required, it would be invaluable.
Meaningless durability – The current trend for PvE bosses seems to be to hit once in awhile with a OHKO. The best example is Alpha from the teleporter path in Crucible of Eternity. There are a couple reasons why this version of Alpha is a nightmare for necs, but the main one I want to focus on is his ice attack. The attack happens, covers a huge area in a large number of simultaneous attacks, and you need to dodge. Dodging isn’t difficult, and sometimes you can walk out of the way, but it’s the fact that you HAVE to dodge that’s the issue. There have been times where this attack has taken me from full health, full death shroud to downed in one attack, and that can only happen if it’s more than one hit, and those hits are enough to knock off 40k total hp. What is the point in having different health pools for different professions if all of the big bosses will kill you in one shot regardless? Even with the nec’s high health AND death shroud on top of it, Alpha can still OHKO you with an attack he spams endlessly. He has no small quick attacks, and no ways to lightly wittle away at your health. It’s just the one massive attack that’s a dodge-or-die situation. Alpha isn’t alone either. Giganticus Lupicus, any boss from level 20+ fractals, some of the new(and completely ridiculous) versions of the Ascalonian Catacombs bosses, and many more can easily one-shot anyone, regardless of their profession. This means that the profession that dodges the most is the one that survives. Guess which profession dodges the least. I’ll give you a hint, it’s the one this thread is about. This sort of things needs to change, not just for necs, but to make PvE more interesting. If we are all memorizing the big attacks and just waiting to dodge those, then the game becomes a very boring routine, and there’s little need for thought once you’ve got the pattern down. If Anet makes the attacks faster and weaker, we’ll need to think about when to dodge. It will never be a dodge-or-die situation, but rather a dodge-to-avoid-the-most-damage-possible situation.

(cont in next post)

Condition stacks – We all know this is an issue. One solution I thought of would be to reduce the # of stacks certain skills cause while buffing those conditions, allowing for the same effect with a greater ceiling. For example, make bleeding twice as strong per stack, but reduce a skill that causes two stacks to just one stack. Alternatively, they could also remove the cap altogether, but I suspect it’s there for some programming reason (server strain?) and I honestly don’t know a whole lot about programming.
Direct damage – Necromancer direct damage(that is, damage done with power and crits rather than condition damage) is… rather weak. There’s no cleave on land, and even for single-target it’s still not very strong. So let’s find a way to make it useful while still allowing it to be unique. Let’s take another look at the idea of necromancer bypassing/eliminating enemy defenses. We could make the attacks unblockable, and add other effects such as “X% more damage if target is under the effects of protection”, or “X% more damage for each ally of the foe you’re targeting within Y radius”, etc. Seeing as GW2 doesn’t have the damage type system that GW1 had, it’s a bit difficult do much with this part, but I feel like there should be something.
Punishment – Necs in GW1 had a lot of punishment skills. It was something necs and mesmers were both well-known for. In GW2… the nec is completely lacking such things. Punishment hexes have been effectively replaced with confusion, which is very much a mesmer condition, at least in the name. I would suggest Anet just change the name to be a bit more generic, such as “backfire”, or “pain”, and then add this renamed condition to a few necromancer skills and traits.
Conditions and boons from monsters – One thing necs do really well is managing conditions on allies and boons on enemies. We don’t just remove them, we flip them, or we transfer them, and we turn a leg-up into a crippling limp. The problem with that is that it’s just not very useful in PvE as most monsters don’t bother with these things to any extent worth countering. Protection is worth removing, and some enemies can lay down some hefty conditions, but these things just aren’t common enough to care, and you can usually just brute-force your way through these problems. The game needs more condition-spamming enemies, fewer OHKO’s(This was really well explained by a user named Kaaboose on the guru forums, and in his video detailing it), and more enemies that depend on their boons. This isn’t just about making nec more useful, this is about making the game more interesting and forcing players to think rather than charge at full speed and faceroll.

In closing
The overall effect of this is that it would greatly raise the skill ceiling for necromancer, allowing for more thoughtful and adaptable gameplay, as well as making the necromancer a more fun profession to play. The changes to PvE in general would yield the same effect on parties and most professions.

PS: I am dying for greataxe to be added for the game and for necs to be able to use it.
PPS: Sorry for the multiple posts, but there’s a lot to say here.

I really like the idea of using death shroud to power skills. It would contribute to feeling the connection to death theme.

What if minions worked via a point buy system. 5 points of minions available at any time, +1 for a master trait, +3 for a gm one. Minions take points to summon, returning them when they die. Bone minions low point value, bone fiend, shadow fiend, and flesh wurm medium points, and flesh golem high points.

I think your suggestion should look a little at PvP balance considerations as well.

Necromancers and engineers definitely need more armour/weapon skins tailored towards their professions/class’s.