Guild Wars 2

problem is Necro is quickly become the least desirable profession in the game in PvE and PvP since our jobs are easily reproduced by other professions MUCH better then we can and then pretty much the only communication on our problem is that message, Its not a nice turn of events when we were told our profession needed some love.

I’ve followed GW2 for a long time so I understand why he is worried.
Necromancer used to be nearly invincible when played well!

Having two life bars is extremely useful.
The best players can enter Death Shroud to take a dangerous hit they can’t dodge and then pop back out of it.

This is probably why the Death Shroud cooldown reduction trait is a Grandmaster level trait.
While to most of us it’s pretty useless it’s incredibly useful for a very good player in PvP. (And maybe in Dungeons?)
That’s also why you cannot enter Death Shroud at low Life Force.
It’s pretty pointless to most of us but it’s actually a nerf to good players.

Personally I use Death Shroud a lot in PvE with the trait that grants me Might every time I use Life Blast.
Might boosts Condition damage even if it’s something you’ve already put on enemies.
Everything I’ve already spread conditions on just magically starts taking more and more damage.
If you are sitting at 100% Life Force all the time there’s probably something you are doing wrong.
It’s your Profession mechanic: Use it. Specced or not.
I won’t comment much on PvP because I don’t know too much about it.

Jon is probably worried that after they fix all those bugs Necro shoots up from somewhat weak back into overpowered in the hands of really good players.

It’s probably the same with the Elementalist.
If you give them high damage a good player lands every darn skill one after another for an insane burst.
If you nerf them you force everybody to use their keyboard like a piano to deal decent damage against anything that fights back.

While I know WHY he’s worried I’m still surprised that he is!
I thought that they just nerfed the Necro too much and went into “whoops” mode.

To me it’s encouraging that he’s still worried.
It probably means I’m overlooking something important.

Demonical.1039:

His first line basicly tell us Necro is hard to master, hence most problems arise from our ability to properly play it,

Not the ability to properly play it but to experiment and see how well various builds can work. I’ll use Thief for my example here. Toughness is big stat to reduce incoming damage so one would think, Toughness = More Survivability. However, for the Thief, since it is so mobile, I have personally found that having a bit more Vitality and focusing on improving it’s mobility even moreso helps it’s survival a lot more than stacking Toughness. That has absolutely nothing to do with how I play but with how various Weapons, Traits, and Utilities work together.

Demonical.1039:

he also said Once people start mastering DS, “He´s afraid of how strong necro´s will be” Thats in our current form,

Correct. He’s saying here that he hasn’t seen anyone play the Necro to it’s full ability just yet. And considering Anet has been playing the game a lot more and a lot longer than the rest of us, his opinion holds some merit. During BWE2 people thought Thief would be useless in TPvP. Then Lowell posted videos of himself as a Thief and Super Squad beating other top reputed teams then suddenly people realized the strength of Thief wasn’t just Glass Cannon bursting. Necros similarly felt they were very underpowered in BWE2 until people started utilizing Condition Specs more heavily. Now Condition Necro is considered one of the only viable specs (when Traits and such aren’t buggy anyhow).

Demonical.1039:

then follows it up with we just need to give it time so us “Average” players learn to play it, Where in that message do you get the message that we arent “fine” according to him after we learn how to play using DS. I didnt get a hint that we were gonna get any fixes like that “Love” they said was coming our way, ( Followed up with a few days later a big nerf to condition builds )

It was in the part that you act as if doesn’t exist where he said “We aren’t ignoring the Necro.” The fact is the game isn’t as straight forward as many others and they haven’t put in Deathmatch PvP modes for a specific reason. The classes aren’t built to support that evenly. Any given class should have one or two DPS roles, one or two Support roles, one or two Defense roles, and a myriad of mixing and matching of those roles if everything is working properly. But all the average player wants is the ability to DPS the other guy faster than he’s DPSing them. He’s saying take the time to learn the nuances and he thinks you’ll find there is more to the class, even as it is right now, than you think.

LastDay.3524:

The best players can enter Death Shroud to take a dangerous hit they can’t dodge and then pop back out of it.

Exactly. I love immobilizing a target with MH dagger, dazing it with my warhorn, swapping to staff, going into DS to fear the guy when the immobilize ends, going out of the DS and throwing Reaper’s Mark under his feet. This is an example of creative DS usage. This can be utilised to neutralise a point or keep a guy from stealing your buff.

Of course, you would just press one button as an engineer or guardian to gain similar effect, but I don’t care.

Meanwhile at the Warrior side OMG Nerf dodge, they yust avoid all our attacks? Except for that Necromancer, he was yust doing weird stuff

XD not badly meant ofcourse

Mr. Peters, please read my post on why Death Shroud is very limiting at the moment and puts Necromancers in a vulnerable position to anyone familiar with the Necromancer class.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Let-us-see-our-boons-and-conditions-in-death-shroud/first

/wipes tear away
That Mr. Peters is a cool guy.

JonPeters.5630:

Let me try and clarify myself a bit more. Death Shroud is very powerful because it gives Necromancer access to a secondary health bar which is is much more reliably renewable than normal health is for other professions. On top of that it essentially also gives them a 3rd weapon set that they can use to circumvent the basic weapon swap cooldown to reliably bounce between powerful skills in 3 different sets. For both of these reasons, Necromancer has a high power ceiling but also an extremely high learning curve.

In the current condition heavy meta-game, there is a lot of condition removal. The problem this is causing for Necromancers is that they do not have a lot of build diversity in this meta, because they don’t have any great power builds they can turn to. What I would like to try and do is increase build diversity without increasing effectiveness because I don’t believe we have really seen what strong Necromancers can do yet.

Hopefully that explains a bit where we stand. We are still working towards getting rid of all of the bugs in everyone’s skills and traits at which point we can get a much better idea of where everyone stands. That time will also give us the chance to see where the large amount of current players actually takes the meta game.

Jon

/slowclap

Warrior is in a better spot than necromancer. Nuff said. Arguing with people that have already made up their minds or are heavily biased is pointless.

Indeed Dxx… indeed.

I wouldn’t say necros themselves are overly weak. Its more they compete for a similar role as condi engies and just lose out in that comparison. Engies just have some things that are obviously out of line when compared to their equivalents. Bringing those in line a bit more would make necro more of a tempting choice.

There are just a lot of tier 1 options atm that are above where they should be and necros don’t have a build that falls in that category. They could probably use very minor buffs but its mostly how well they compete with other classes for a similar role.

Oh and I wouldn’t say warrior has a tier 1 spec either, they are in a bit better place then nercos as other tier 1 specs don’t directly compete for the same role. Warriors steam rolling people is just more of a ltp issue.

@JP: One good way to start making more power builds viable, don’t make minions give sigil stacks whenever YOU explode them. See: Bone minion, Wurm minion.

Sigil stacks are very common nowadays, and now that they get 5 stacks per kill, having bone minions is a big no-no.

JonPeters.5630:

Let me try and clarify myself a bit more. Death Shroud is very powerful because it gives Necromancer access to a secondary health bar which is is much more reliably renewable than normal health is for other professions. On top of that it essentially also gives them a 3rd weapon set that they can use to circumvent the basic weapon swap cooldown to reliably bounce between powerful skills in 3 different sets. For both of these reasons, Necromancer has a high power ceiling but also an extremely high learning curve.

In the current condition heavy meta-game, there is a lot of condition removal. The problem this is causing for Necromancers is that they do not have a lot of build diversity in this meta, because they don’t have any great power builds they can turn to. What I would like to try and do is increase build diversity without increasing effectiveness because I don’t believe we have really seen what strong Necromancers can do yet.

Hopefully that explains a bit where we stand. We are still working towards getting rid of all of the bugs in everyone’s skills and traits at which point we can get a much better idea of where everyone stands. That time will also give us the chance to see where the large amount of current players actually takes the meta game.

Jon

And you can assume people that are playing a necro for a while catch up to this mechanic. I do understand how it is supposed to work and it definitely does when tankability is concerned. My necro can soak up a lot of damage over time and has a great survivability as long as he is not bursted down. But that is not the problem and nobody complaint about that.

The problem is that the DS shroud mechanic does not much for DPS. Yes, I can essentially use three skill bars however that does not help if all three skill bars only have skills which offer a subpar DPS compared to other professions. I can use all my skills on two weapon sets plus DS Drain Life on cooldown and still my DPS is terrible. You do not even have to do PvP for this – simply try it on a target dummy.

Nofe.7269:

JonPeters it was the cleanse nerf that countered Master Yi. It used to give 3 seconds I believe of CC immunity which was more than enough time for Yi to blast whoever he wanted

Actually that was the second time when Yi was viable. Way back when, ASPD stacked multiplicativly instead of additively. This meant that a Yi with Greaves + Ult capped ASPD (2.5), so they could burst down a squishy before they could react and hard CC him.

JonPeters.5630:

Let me try and clarify myself a bit more. Death Shroud is very powerful because it gives Necromancer access to a secondary health bar which is is much more reliably renewable than normal health is for other professions. On top of that it essentially also gives them a 3rd weapon set that they can use to circumvent the basic weapon swap cooldown to reliably bounce between powerful skills in 3 different sets. For both of these reasons, Necromancer has a high power ceiling but also an extremely high learning curve.

In the current condition heavy meta-game, there is a lot of condition removal. The problem this is causing for Necromancers is that they do not have a lot of build diversity in this meta, because they don’t have any great power builds they can turn to. What I would like to try and do is increase build diversity without increasing effectiveness because I don’t believe we have really seen what strong Necromancers can do yet.

Hopefully that explains a bit where we stand. We are still working towards getting rid of all of the bugs in everyone’s skills and traits at which point we can get a much better idea of where everyone stands. That time will also give us the chance to see where the large amount of current players actually takes the meta game.

Jon

This is a bit disappointing.

Death shroud is the antithesis to the major deciding factor in every fight, TTK. DS prolongs your inevitable death without offering any sort of condition-based damage (the only thing we can sorta do well) or (if you were foolish enough to go crit/power) offers any serious DD dps. In PvE, it’s a great tanking ability. In PvP, it’s a red flag that a necromancer is about to die.

Also,

*What about our poor weapon-skill abilities/damage?
*Broken minions?
*Auto-attack speed of staff?
*Lack of any synergy in trait lines?
*Useless traits (jagged horrors and Shrouded Removal come to mind)?

And the list goes on. It’s not just bugs, it’s the class itself.

I rerolled and won’t be going back until they fix this profession I’m disgusted with the lack of choices we can make and GW2 is all about choices right? DS is weak the damage is weak and having a second health bar means nothing if you can’t even kill someone.

Great i have 25k hp plus DS which is anywhere from 15-25k extra but when my best attack only does 2-3k damage and it’s rare I even see a number higher than 1.6k.

Funny thing is my level 12 engineer does more damage than my level 80 necro in WvW and my necro has half exotics and half rares.

I tried axe – it’s to slow and the damage is weak
Staff – is to slow and the damage is weak and the condition damage is weak
sceptre – is slowish and has low damage and the condition damage is weak
DS – low damage slow attack and offers nothing but a weak shield.
Minions – AI is terrible and offers the enemy free sigil stacks making it worst for me.

Hrm difficult to Master you say?

/Challenge accepted.

I really don’t want to sound big head but, I’m not an “Amazing” PVP or a top renown pvper but I play Necro Condition builder, with Staff, Scepter + Focus, and I have had NO problems PVPing with it at all, in fact I’ve even used a Minion build too.

One time I took on 4 – 5 people underwater and Killed 3 of them (I’m not saying this for praise or WE, I’m just making a point) I played against some of my guild mates 4 on there team and just me with some strangers they were all in on Team speak working together, and my team managed to win with me on the top of the team mostly from kills.

The list goes on of random things I’ve managed to do in PVP as a condition build, so I really don’t see where all this negativity for Necros comes from.

wait… so necros are supposed to be tanks? like, were banging our heads trying to kill people out there, but the reason we cant is not because were underpowered, but because were not meant to kill?

im sorry, but i dont want to play a tank =/ i expected the necro to be this evil warlock dragging souls to the pits of hell with the grasping hands and bleeding them out, throwing flesh constructs at enemies and making them bend the knee, not a dark cloud that takes alot of hits.

Also, if were supposed to spend most (lets say half) of our combat time in DS isnt that just limitng our play to 4 skills? and then like get out of DS for some utility? atleast make DS more apealing than a green healthbar and a 1s fear

I played a thief all through BWEs and got her pretty high leveled. I’ve tried many of the other classes (albeit in beta). Now, I have been playing Necromancer since Headstart. She is my primary and I absolutely adore the class. (The DS mechanic, if you spec it right, is just amazing!) She’s much more versatile than my thief was and I can do just about anything and adapt to different playstyles on a whim – it just takes a little creativity. I find her much more powerful and enjoyable to play than my elementalist, ranger, or guardian.

That’s not to say that balancing should not or does not need to occur. However, I do think that Necromancer is very far from being “broken.” Let the meta game settle, then see where we stand. In just about every released MMORPG, Warriors come out strong in the beginning. Why? Typically the warrior/fighter is your most straightforward class.

(cough IWAY cough —- oh, memories!)

Anyways, you should remember that this is ANet. Did you play the first GW? Do you remember just how painstakingly hard they monitored the metagame and just how frequently, for years, they would re-balance skills? It was amazing how much thought, work, and care these guys put into the game.

They’ll do it again. (And likely better, given how many more resources they have this time around.) Relax, I think we’re in good hands here. — S.

I basically Agree with Shazirah

Pet AI is awful

Our traits are a disaster

Death Shroud, no matter how strong it is, is boring

Axes are bad

I agree with Jon Peters. However I think we have seen a handful who use the Necro correctly. Not going to name drop but there are a few. And Power needs a lot of work.

Death shroud is a 3rd weapon set as disappointing as all our other ones, all of the abilities are lackluster and the only reliable weapon to build up DS life force is Staff, the one that builds it up on scepter is a ability no necro uses since its dmg is laughable and high power ceiling? how high is it when we stack power yet our ultimate lich ability still hits for laughable 3-4k while the warrior next to us is hitting for 10+ k with each hit? you know how depressing that is? Or how Engineers or Warriors apply bleed faster and maintain them longer then we can makign that build about as equally depressing to use, Our Minions are not usable at all at the moment, Daggers our power weapon do lackluster dmg and force us to melee for that lackluster dmg or our axe wich is the uttermost crap you can find at the moment, All this is made up by our DS? Our main job seems to be the tankiest mage around hittign people like gnats, Yay we can wear people out doing lower dmg and jumping into DS with Horrible abiltys cuts us off from our utilitys and elite and you just tell us your gonna increase our build viability but not increase our effectivness so basicly if you want to be able to DMG other players using a power build play something else. Same thing with conditionmancer we get to pick, We can be a tanky lackluster conditionmancer or roll another class less tanky but can dish out more condition stacks and dmg.

JonPeters.5630:

Let me try and clarify myself a bit more. Death Shroud is very powerful because it gives Necromancer access to a secondary health bar which is is much more reliably renewable than normal health is for other professions. On top of that it essentially also gives them a 3rd weapon set that they can use to circumvent the basic weapon swap cooldown to reliably bounce between powerful skills in 3 different sets. For both of these reasons, Necromancer has a high power ceiling but also an extremely high learning curve.

In the current condition heavy meta-game, there is a lot of condition removal. The problem this is causing for Necromancers is that they do not have a lot of build diversity in this meta, because they don’t have any great power builds they can turn to. What I would like to try and do is increase build diversity without increasing effectiveness because I don’t believe we have really seen what strong Necromancers can do yet.

Hopefully that explains a bit where we stand. We are still working towards getting rid of all of the bugs in everyone’s skills and traits at which point we can get a much better idea of where everyone stands. That time will also give us the chance to see where the large amount of current players actually takes the meta game.

Jon

Understood mate and I believe this is on the right track

With proper use of DS and Bleed stacking I am extremely hard to beat 1v1.
Add in an “always up” elite skill like Flesh Golem which also adds tremendous DPS and utility

the only classes the I find really tough to beat are bleed Rangers with quickness
because they do the same thing in half the time and well played Mesmers

I guess any player that is thoughtful about condition removal and is a good player can do quite well against me..but that is balance right?

The problem is Scepter/Dagger and 20+ points in Curses is mandatory
any time I switch to Axe or Dagger main its like stabbing myself in the eye with a rusty fork.

this also means that staff is the only decent weapon swap available

the other of hands offer little next to dagger with its extra bleeds and condition transfer and there is no clear reason to choose focus over War-horn either as access to swiftness is just so kitten important
I already dedicate a whole utility slot just to having a functional movement skill
“spectral walk”

/feedback

Foomnz.6954:

I already dedicate a whole utility slot just to having a functional movement skill
“spectral walk”

/feedback

Spectral walk is useful but it sucks that in order to keep any distance gained by it we have to give ourselves vulnerability and break it early. No other class that grants themselves increased movement speed with a stun break makes themselves easier to kill to do so. It seems just a little unfair that our best escape mechanic makes us easier prey to use it in the manner of map travel.

Why do we call it a necromancer then? Shouldn’t we call him Mr Death Shroud?

I would really like to hear from Mr Peters his tips on how to utilise this powerful Death Shroud while fighting very skilled Mesmer? How do you outplay Mesmers with DS? How do you skirmish against a skilled engineer? I’m sure Death Shroud will do…

The community is just too average bunch of players to be able to see the endless possibilities tied to a proper and skillful use of DS do it right now.

Can someone tell me how I am supposed to master minions that are absolute trash, refuse to attack anything, and dont regen health?

DS use is not to complicated to grasp, it is an extra life pool if needed, a semi decent CD on fear, and it may only be 1 sec but traited it can be a 2 sec fear that does damage, an ability that channels damage and if exited out of shroud at the right time will channel while not in shroud refilling your life force pool while giving you access to your other abilities. You can also weapon swap while in shroud regardless of whether your swap is on CD or not so it can be used for a combo chain 2 with a staff swap to scepter/whatever to stack more bleeds, DS fear, swap back to staff before the cd would normally be back up exit shroud and 2 again to put even more bleed on them and fear with 5, not to mention if chained properly, 3/4 will combo hit. Well mastery with ground targeting, convert their boons to conditions another well to convert your own conditions to boons. There is so much possibility and utility with it, you have to try out the different ways it can be used and find which style of it suits you.
[edited for typos >.>]

Yet agian the quote function have vanished.
Jadda.1753:

Ezekeel.2837:

The OP is 100% correct. The damage with the necro is just pathetic compared to other professions. DS does not give any significant damage boost, so telling people that they just need to learn to properly use DS is complete nonsense.

You are responsible for the balancing and you failed. Stop patronizing us, stop talking nonsense and do your job!

Yesterday I went up against a necro who spent 2 seconds going throu his rotation wich afterwards melted my 16k hp in a matter of seconds. I dont see how this is pathetic dmg. Yes 16k is not much, it is very low but still it melted away and he was really tanky. Necroes do good dmg in right specc. But again from what I have heard there are very few viable speccs a necro can run.

The is no way a necro can dish out 16k damage in 2sec in PvP – not even with lucky crits. That is simple math. If you do not believe me roll a necro and try yourself.

He didnt kill me in 2 seconds but he went throught his rotation in 2 seconds. Laid a kittenload of conditions on me and melted me away in like 5 seconds.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

DS use is not to complicated to grasp, it is an extra life pool if needed, a semi decent CD on fear, and it may only be 1 sec but traited it can be a 2 sec fear that does damage, an ability that channels damage and if exited out of shroud at the right time will channel while not in shroud refilling your life force pool while giving you access to your other abilities. You can also weapon swap while in shroud regardless of whether your swap is on CD or not so it can be used for a combo chain 2 with a staff swap to scepter/whatever to stack more bleeds, DS fear, swap back to staff before the cd would normally be back up exit shroud and 2 again to put even more bleed on them and fear with 5, not to mention if chained properly, 3/4 will combo hit. Well mastery with ground targeting, convert their boons to conditions another well to convert your own conditions to boons. There is so much possibility and utility with it, you have to try out the different ways it can be used and find which style of it suits you.
[edited for typos >.>]

And this is exactly why he said it’s a difficult class to master and to take the time to figure it out. The problem is the people complaining don’t want to have to use such a complicated “rotation” to get the damage they’re looking for. On one hand people want “skillful” play but on the other they want basic skill usage to see big damage numbers.

Yet the elementalist can pump out the same kind of damage we can with this build and they have to use an even harder rotation and timing of the enemy to do so. Necro’s aren’t bad or kittened it’s just like with the elementalist it’s more of a learning curve on a multiple ability rotation, than say a thief or warrior ready up a couple utils charge in hit a couple of buttons get out glass cannon build.

Bro, just Anet do not love necro. It’s a Thief Wars 2

I really believe that Death Shroud’s advantage as explained by Jon is negated due to the number of immobilization skills (cripple, snare, knockdown..) that seems to be common in PvP nowadays. As a game where dodging and maneuverability is the best way to keep yourself alive, Necros have no reliable ways of escaping or dodging; Swiftness is RARE on Necros, and Signet of the Locust is incredibly lackluster for both +MS and Active. Coupled with this fact is Death Shroud’s ‘extra life’ mechanic, which makes me think that Necros are intended to stand there and eat damage like a tank.

Except, you know, they’re the Scholar profession, so they’re all health and no damage mitigation.

No damage mitigation, with a toughness/vitality build necro with at least a semi decent focus on damage I have about 2800 toughness with 21k health, couple that with DS and ground targeted wells on a 20% reduced CD you have plenty of damage midigation, not to mention plague form practically doubles your health, can spam blind, cripple, or bleed with a poison also raises my toughness up to over 5k. No sir, we have no damage mitigation whatsoever.

I posted this in a thread in the Necro sub-forum of what I think about Death Shroud.

I think Death Shroud is good, but not great. It does seem that in PvP, sometimes all it does is delay the inevitable. As a Curses Necromancer, a lot of your damage falls off when you’re forced to go into Death Shroud. It became better since they added the bleed to Dark Path but now all it is is another stance to kill time in after you dropped your marks so don’t have to deal with Staff auto-attack before switching back to Scepter.

The best way to utilize shroud right now is still to absorb the burst, wait for cool downs or weave in and out of it regularly so that they don’t touch your life bar much increasing your life span, and that kind of creates pauses in your output all throughout the fight. If you Dark Path + Fear right away then swap to your other weapon set, your bleed stacks will be high but the trade off is you’re locked out of DS and are more vulnerable just to get 3 stacks of bleed. If you wait to absorb a few hits THEN hit Dark Path just as you exit, you’re now next to the person (not always ideal) and you’ll still have pretty low stacks of bleeds as some previous ones would have fallen off.

Our method of stacking bleeds is utilizing the multiple bleed stack abilities in succession while using Scepter as a filler and with the need to jump in-n-out of DS, we essentially have the lowest uptime on respectable levels of bleeds compared to other condition builds. They balanced it this way because the Necromancer can convert and transfer traditions back and forth but in practice all, our damage is very lackluster against direct damage builds while they can take chunks out. Our damage is negated further when we play against condition resilient builds. The only time where it all works is if you’re playing against a condition stacking build that doesn’t pack solid removals, which isn’t a lot of the cases. Mesmers, a very similar class with a twist on the playstyle does not suffer from this problem at all and is a lot more efficient in all aspects of PvP as of now.

It most definitely increases your life span but at what cost to the class? Because of this mechanic, the trade off is that our mobility is essentially the worst in the game. We’re expected to sit things through and tank our way to victory and not disengage, hence the lack of teleports (Flesh worm and Walk make it painfully obvious where we’ll go), shadowsteps, or even leaps for the matter. They didn’t give the Necromancer a lot of stun-break abilities because Death Shroud used to break them and added none since removing that. Yes you can still go in and fear them away while knocked down, but you still cannot move.

Our most useful stun break is Plague Signet (currently bugged and doesn’t always remove conditions from allies but STILL copies it over) and blowing this cool down just to break the stun isn’t the ideal way to utilize the skill. You lose out on your best way to support your team if you need to break stun with it and a self cleanse, once again, no other is placed with such a heavy choice.

Spectral Walk is essentially trash, it might be helpful solo but doesn’t do a whole lot for a tPvP team; and Spectral Armor while a very decent skill shares the same cool down as Endure Pain and is longer than Mist Form, both of which grant their users invulnerability. Spectral Armor gives us Life Force yes but it still requires you to take damage and all they give you for that is Protection. Necromancers don’t need an invul button but the cool down on Spectral Armor seems excessive considering you can’t even jump straight into DS after popping it as the buff to gain LF will just fall off. All other classes have access to a stun-break under a minute cool down except us.

Lastly, just what kind of ideal range do you want Shroud to be? It’s a bit mixed now that Fear is a single target 1200 which is great. But Dark Path porting us into melee made more sense back when Fear was a PBAoE and Life Transfer rooted you. Now that both those things are untrue, if only Dark Path was replaced with a Spectral Grasp that bled, now that would be cool. Also, I’m actually ok with the 1s fears, we get to pop this more frequently than ANY OTHER CLASS, treat it as an interrupt and not a CC.

Ever since I swapped to a more defensively oriented build, I’ve taken a bit more likening to Death Shroud thanks to Transfusion. I think it’s a cool mechanic and has a cool aesthetic to go with it, just I feel we’re tacked on with a lot of downsides for our mechanic compared to the more polished professions.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

No damage mitigation, with a toughness/vitality build necro with at least a semi decent focus on damage I have about 2800 toughness with 21k health, couple that with DS and ground targeted wells on a 20% reduced CD you have plenty of damage midigation, not to mention plague form practically doubles your health, can spam blind, cripple, or bleed with a poison also raises my toughness up to over 5k. No sir, we have no damage mitigation whatsoever.

… I don’t think you know what ‘mitigation’ is judging from the fact that ‘Toughness’ is the only mitigation-related thing you said in your entire paragraph.

PS: All professions share the same base attributes. The only stat-wise difference between them is the armour class. Soldier professions can always do you better at tankiness.

Right so the ability to put down a well that constantly blinds the enemy doesn’t mitigate damage, the one that pulses and turns theirs boons into conditions also doesn’t mitigate damage, the one that turns your conditions into boons isn’t mitigating anything either, nor the fact i’m traited to get toughness upon casting a well and leach health with each pulse of them either. I’m not trying to say a necro will out tank a def specced guardian or warrior, but with the mitigation I can pull of all the while dealing a decent amount of damage and having an extra pool of health with a teleport and refiller on as well as fear and weapon swap reguardless of whether your swap is on cd or not.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

Right so the ability to put down a well that constantly blinds the enemy doesn’t mitigate damage, the one that pulses and turns theirs boons into conditions also doesn’t mitigate damage, the one that turns your conditions into boons isn’t mitigating anything either, nor the fact i’m traited to get toughness upon casting a well and leach health with each pulse of them either. I’m not trying to say a necro will out tank a def specced guardian or warrior, but with the mitigation I can pull of all the while dealing a decent amount of damage and having an extra pool of health with a teleport and refiller on as well as fear and weapon swap reguardless of whether your swap is on cd or not.

The last part of your comment was the only thing I really meant. Necros can never outdo Warriors or Guardians because of the silly ‘armour classes’ are imposed on Necros and Eles and Mesmers.

My peeve is, why? It’s a dead tradition from older RPGs and GW1; there isn’t too much reason in having Warriors tank more damage NATURALLY, when GW2 is such a mobility-heavy game, and everyone is very capable of jumping in front of someone’s face with a bit of a quick thinking and spell uses.

Necros have to be somewhat tanky due to their lack of mobility, it is part of the learning curve that comes with them. They are not really meant to be a class you solo with but a class that has survivability, damage, and some obnoxious quirks all at the same time. It has always been like this for the “dark art” using classes. Look at the warlock in WoW, sure you could spec it to be a mage using shadow pre wrath, but it shined when specced affliction and putting down the DoTs and curses hampering the enemy. Go back to the black mage way back in FF1, certainly it had some nice damage spells, but it also had so many options to just cripple and take enemies out of the fight weakening them to the point of uselessness. It’s the same thing with the necro here, you play it properly with your team and you have a higher chance of succeeding with all the buff/debuff control you can bring to a fight.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

You can also weapon swap while in shroud regardless of whether your swap is on CD or not so it can be used for a combo chain 2 with a staff swap to scepter/whatever to stack more bleeds, DS fear, swap back to staff before the cd would normally be back up

Actually that is not true. I just tried it. DS does not circumvent the weapon swap CD. However it offers the benefit of having another skill bar on an independent CD.

Jadda.1753:

Yet agian the quote function have vanished.
Jadda.1753:

Ezekeel.2837:

The OP is 100% correct. The damage with the necro is just pathetic compared to other professions. DS does not give any significant damage boost, so telling people that they just need to learn to properly use DS is complete nonsense.

You are responsible for the balancing and you failed. Stop patronizing us, stop talking nonsense and do your job!

Yesterday I went up against a necro who spent 2 seconds going throu his rotation wich afterwards melted my 16k hp in a matter of seconds. I dont see how this is pathetic dmg. Yes 16k is not much, it is very low but still it melted away and he was really tanky. Necroes do good dmg in right specc. But again from what I have heard there are very few viable speccs a necro can run.

The is no way a necro can dish out 16k damage in 2sec in PvP – not even with lucky crits. That is simple math. If you do not believe me roll a necro and try yourself.

He didnt kill me in 2 seconds but he went throught his rotation in 2 seconds. Laid a kittenload of conditions on me and melted me away in like 5 seconds.

In 2sec you can at maximum cast 2 different spells. You want to tell me that these 2 spells caused 16k on condition damage? Sorry but that is not realistic.

I have thought about it for a while and I can see why Anet is cautious with what they do with the necro because he already has a great survivability due to DS which is pretty much independent of the build. And they probably are afraid that this good survivability combined with more damage might turn him into a PvP monster.

I think the way to go is to offer the necro player a way to sacrifice some of this survivability for greater damage output. And I think this could be best implemented as some additional skills usable while in DS which consume a certain percentage of life force for some useful effect or direct damage. For example the simplest solution to give the necro a boost in damage while forcing him to sacrifice survivability for this would be to add a skill which consumes all the current available life force to cause one high direct damage hit (dmg depends on available life force). This would give the necro the needed burst ability for PvP and the increase in DPS for PvE. One the other hand since it would kick the necro out of DS and leave him with an empty life force pool he would be extemely vulnerable thereafter.

Ezekeel.2837:

Sjach Darasv.3729:

You can also weapon swap while in shroud regardless of whether your swap is on CD or not so it can be used for a combo chain 2 with a staff swap to scepter/whatever to stack more bleeds, DS fear, swap back to staff before the cd would normally be back up

Actually that is not true. I just tried it. DS does not circumvent the weapon swap CD. However it offers the benefit of having another skill bar on an independent CD.

Jadda.1753:

Yet agian the quote function have vanished.
Jadda.1753:

Ezekeel.2837:

The OP is 100% correct. The damage with the necro is just pathetic compared to other professions. DS does not give any significant damage boost, so telling people that they just need to learn to properly use DS is complete nonsense.

You are responsible for the balancing and you failed. Stop patronizing us, stop talking nonsense and do your job!

Yesterday I went up against a necro who spent 2 seconds going throu his rotation wich afterwards melted my 16k hp in a matter of seconds. I dont see how this is pathetic dmg. Yes 16k is not much, it is very low but still it melted away and he was really tanky. Necroes do good dmg in right specc. But again from what I have heard there are very few viable speccs a necro can run.

The is no way a necro can dish out 16k damage in 2sec in PvP – not even with lucky crits. That is simple math. If you do not believe me roll a necro and try yourself.

He didnt kill me in 2 seconds but he went throught his rotation in 2 seconds. Laid a kittenload of conditions on me and melted me away in like 5 seconds.

In 2sec you can at maximum cast 2 different spells. You want to tell me that these 2 spells caused 16k on condition damage? Sorry but that is not realistic.

I have thought about it for a while and I can see why Anet is cautious with what they do with the necro because he already has a great survivability due to DS which is pretty much independent of the build. And they probably are afraid that this good survivability combined with more damage might turn him into a PvP monster.

I think the way to go is to offer the necro player a way to sacrifice some of this survivability for greater damage output. And I think this could be best implemented as some additional skills usable while in DS which consume a certain percentage of life force for some useful effect or direct damage. For example the simplest solution to give the necro a boost in damage while forcing him to sacrifice survivability for this would be to add a skill which consumes all the current available life force to cause one high direct damage hit (dmg depends on available life force). This would give the necro the needed burst ability for PvP and the increase in DPS for PvE. One the other hand since it would kick the necro out of DS and leave him with an empty life force pool he would be extemely vulnerable thereafter.

DS doesn’t really do much of anything and I have 15 points in soul reaping. Necros were suppose to be able to wear someone down but in it’s current state about time you get someone to half hp you will have either

A. Popped DS already and you lack LF now
B. Used your heal already

Worst case is you can’t damage a guy fast enough and his deal is up every time you get him to 50% because conditions don’t hit for jack and the direct damage is crap.

Thank you for posting. Having no news has been disheartening.

I agree that classes have varying skill caps. I agree that necro is one of the hardest.

I also agree that a huge portion of Necro problems in PvP is being forced into a condition build which is easily counterable.

That said, I think you are seriously overestimating Deathshroud. Yes, it can, situationally, be good. I have a few pride moments where i escape from absurdly large groups due to good use of DS. Generally, it is a problem mechanic. The skills are out-of-line with necro gameplay. More importantly, the skills don’t mesh with every build (1 is worthless for conditionmancer, generally. 4 is worthless for a power build, generally. 2 is very situationally good. 3 is a waste of time to even cast short of saving a downed teammate).

DS also disappears rather quickly (I rolled thief and I often don’t even notice when a necro uses it). And worse yet, contrary to what you posted, it is not reliably renewed for any class other than staff (I haven’t even addressed how staff is a must have in literally every single build) aside from 1 skill.

More complaints, it feels as if we are okay at most things and not really great at any.
Sure we can take damage, but not as well as Warriors/Guardians.
Sure we can stack conditions, but not as well as Rangers/Thieves.
Sure we can do some burst, but not as well as (insert class here).
You get the idea.

PS Our Elites are underwhelming.

Wow, I was just checking out the dev tracker as part of my first exploration of these forums. I’m surprised that the devs even respond to people who speak with such indecency, and most likely only because they are hidden behind a keyboard.

Really sad, especially since the devs respond like a normal human being even though they put countless hours into making the game and the people speaking with such disdain have only played it for a week or two max.

For my part, I’ve enjoyed the necro a lot. Necro was the most fun (along with 1 or 2 other professions) class to theorycraft for me. From minion master, to condition damage (not so hot with all the condition removal), to Death Shroud focused, and, my favorite, dagger/warhorn focused.

Our elites our underwhelming huh, go condition with plague and spam one and watch the bleeds stack up, be supporty with it and spam 2 and keep the enemies blinded, need to escape spam 3 and keep them crippled. Go power with lich form, auto attack crits for 3-4k, get a mesmer with time warp on your team and melt the entire enemies face off, that 3-4k crit hits multiple enemies grouped up. Our only minion that regens health, though the cd on the ability may be long that knockdown is quite useful. DS is not useless unless you just stay in it. As I said with traits specced into the extra 1 sec on fear, and fear does damage, 3 in it becomes a useful cc. 4 is great for providing a short health buffer against an enemy team pop out of it or swap weapons if your skills on the wep are on cd, and so is your swap. The necro is not a useless class by far, neither our the elite skills. Yes some classes excell at 1v1 or quickly bursting down 1 person in a group, after that they become relatively useless until all their cds come up. With the necro if you play it right you can keep a sustained support for your team, i tPvPed as a support necro and it got to the point where the enemy would focus me on sight because they couldn’t do squat to my team if i was alive near them. Also a necro may not be able to out tank a guardian, but they can sure make a guardian wish they weren’t at the same point you are. fear mark on that ground gets rid of that lovely little projectile bubble they hide behind, well that turns their boons into conditions makes them wish they didn’t spec to boon up every couple of seconds.

Question Jon: if you’re shooting for more build diversity for many professions, does that mean we can expect to see a lot of trait revisions and changes in the future after bugs are worked out?

I like the trait system, but I feel that many traits could be more effective, interesting, or consolidated in some cases.

Yes, they have uses. I have gotten to use Lich form with 0 pressure and just decimated. But generally you become a big target (literally) and can actually be brought down pretty quickly. Ever been Moa’d in Lich? That is a personal favorite of mine.

Plague form is my favorite and the one I think is in need of little to no change. It can have quite an effect on a team fight. That said, it is a skill that puts you right in the middle of the action… in many cases you are nearer to the thieves, warriors, etc. than are your own thieves, warriors, etc. In any case, it is a fun as hell skill and the one I use almost exclusively.

Flesh golem, on the other hand? It is crap. Sure, it has a place. It has a nice skill that comes along with it. It also has that really interesting passive of ‘standing right next to you doing nothing while you get beat on’. Have you tried using that awesome skill when there is a hill the size of a pebble in the way? He slams right into it and starts up the cooldown.

Remember, I said underwhelming elites… not useless elites.

As for DS… yes, you can trait to get more time (.5 seconds actually). Yes you can trait to get some damage ( < 400 if my tests were accurate). In both cases it DS skill #3 marginally useful. I think the reason I dislike it so much is that the extra second I buy using the skill doesn’t really allow me to do much in the way of adding on damage (given the cast time on skill #1), so it is instead part of the problem others have already mentioned. Namely, Deathshroud feels like the place Necros go right before they die. That fear feels like my last ditch effort to do… something.

Yes, some cheese builds are as you mentioned. I’ve messed around with PW Thieves, and no doubt 100b Warriors are the same. There are legitimate burst builds that are viable long term, Backstab Thieves come to mind as do Rangers.

I also don’t think I am worthless. I think I am underwhelming. I often rely on my opponent just being dumber than me (which works surprisingly well), not knowing my class, or not targeting me. If left in the back, I can get my stacks up. I can spread them around. I feel pretty good about it. That is the most ideal of ideal situations, and I still feel a little underwhelming.

And I agree about guardians. They are the class we counter hard (assuming of course that this is a conditionmancer build… and who are we kidding. {I roll axes quite a bit, but I like to brood so it works}). They don’t get their nice heals off due to scepter poison. Our bleeds ruin them since they are a toughness class not a vitality class, and what you mentioned.

Also, in tPvP the situation might be better. The 5v5 format of it changes a lot of things. I can’t speak with any authority on it, so I won’t. Necro could be the most broken class there for all I know. I speak about sPvP (I think we do fairly well in WvWvW too) as a casually competitive player, only.

Remember:
Necro != Useless
Necro = Underwhelming

It probably is underwhelming in the zergfest that is WvWvW and the 8v8 sPvP, I have been there myself and seen it. But the game is balanced around tPvP and PvE dungeons, and the group synergy a skilled necromancer can bring to a well co-ordinated team is scary. Like I said, if I’m alive my team is practically untouchable, and while no, I have not been turned Moa in lich form, I have been turned Moa in plague, sucks worse when your spamming 2 and next thing you know your channeling some sub par useless ability and being pounded on my phantasms lol. However in a team of 5 environment a good support/conditionmancer brings alot to the table. Sure our auto attacks with weapons blow, but, I for one, could care less, with the rotation of skills on staffs and wells, and the use of death shroud for a fear slight health buffer to pop back out, you are constantly using every ability to hinder your opponent anyway so auto attack become moot.