Okay i was told that this was the place to lay down my thoughts on classes.
First off i would like to say that i really appreciate Arenanet’s balancing effort. This is a mayor part of gameplay and they do this so good.
Now for my personal experience. I main a Necromancer Called Dark Nemesis. I play Necromancer because i am really attracted to death magic and blood type magic. Whilst playing my Necromancer i found that the Necromancer has a lot of built varieties. I’ve played The Minionmancer. The Glasscannon Necromancer, The Tanky Fearer, but by far my favorite is the Conditionmancer. I love the Damage over time component and it makes for some pretty fun battles. Enemies running away with a few hundred HP left and then still dying to those last 2 ticks of bleed stacks. The only problem i’ve run into with my Necromancer builds is that, from what i experienced and interpreted, Arenanet wants the deathshroud to be the Necromancer’s defence. The idea behind this is fine and i would have done the same. Except for the fact that the deathshroud is too weak to be used in such a way. More often than not am i forced to spec more into damage and kill my opponents before they can kill me because i have no way to get out of the fight once it starts. Necromancers have a movement speed signet, which in combat means almost nothing in my opinion. The trait to run 10% faster for the daggers in my hands are also not worth it because you can get better traits like the healing on well pulse. As for utility skills. you have you signets to help out your team increase your power or help you move little bit faster. i personally dont use any of them except for the passive power signet in my Glasscannon build. Further more we have a stunbreaker with some protection. some life force pool regen skills with swiftness. A pull and chill. Then we have our wells and the minions and some condition skills. ( btw Epedemic and Blood is Power are a must have). What i personally miss in there, if i look at classes like engineer, mesmer, thief, warrior, guardian. They all have some form of gap closer and movement speed increasing skills. Necromancers can only close gaps offensively. So when i’m running away from an ambush in WvW i am relying on swiftness which can be countered by boon removal, chill and cripple. When my enemies most likely will have gap closers and their own swiftness. Now i have heard people saying that i should use my Plague form, The elite skill, to gain stability so they cannot CC me and then cripple them. But if we look at the radius of plague form, we can see that if they are in range for me to cripple them. Then the enemy will also be in range to remove my stability and CC me down. So the way Necromancer stands now is an All-in class. Now i do not say this is bad and you should feel bad, not at all. It is rather great that we have so much offensive AoE capability. The only problem is that if your target(s) run/blink/shadowstep/spin/dash/rush etc. etc. away you will not be able to get back after them, while the other way around you using fears,stability,swiftness,chills and protection. They can easily chase after me and kill me. This is the only problem i am having with necromancer. Now i have been having some ideas on how to fix this and from my perspective there are a few options. These options fit the lore/stereo type abilities for a necromancer. A blood/darkness pool. You set up a pool beneath you, you sink into it and pop up at another location. Just like a Thief’’s shadowstep but then with a cool darkness/blood animation. A change to the Necrotic grasp pull thingy so that it will pull you to its max range if not hit a target ( could do the same for the deathshroud #2 skill). Final Idea, A blink like skill/Dash skill. The necromancer sends out a small swarm of death at a rather fast distance and this can apply bleeds/poison and can be used to either be teleported/pulled towards or dash along with the swarm when you first send it out.
So Arenanet i hope you read this. These are my thoughts on the necromancer. I will never stop playing this class whatever you decide to do with it because it is so epic, just like this game. All i can say is thank you for continuously putting in new things and fixes to make this game even better.
Kind Regards.
-Dark NemesÃs