Guild Wars 2

I’m going to keep this concise. I think that the issues with necro stem from it’s traits being very limited, it’s profession mechanic being incredibly weak for conditions (aside from the fear effectively making yourself into a 0 output brick. it’s just a stalling mechanic and necro is out shined in the power role due to lack of trait synergy and lack of powerful weapon options

1. Example of bad trait synergy:

Heres a cool example Spite, the power trait line is….well I’m trying to word it nice but it’s total trash. You are a great dev and I don’t need to explain how removing a condition on kill is a bad idea to take or 50% more damage on down is silly.

2. Death shroud is the reason necro power doesn’t work (well).
Death shroud right now is just an extra health bar, currently I hop in and out of DS like it’s another dodge roll bar. I have no decent reward for spending my lifeforce sitting in DS to attack. Weapons are balanced around lifeforce gain.

I suggest upping the base on DS #1 with low end slightly upped to 750 (was worse than staff auto) (2300pwr) and at max lifeforce 1500 (2300 power) My reasoning is that it would give value both to staying in DS and as a new mechanic…deciding if you should save your DS for effective daamge or use it as a damage buffer.

Change #2 to an instant blink rather than a projectile as it would make the advanced combos using it actually reliable

Change #3 do damage on cast…even if it’s just 400. and make the fear 2 seconds long (for synergy with the fear does condi damage trait)

JP 4 GW2 Life,
PandaraRA!

I seriously only use DS to absorb big telegraphed hits.

The abilities, especially for a conditionmancer, are just terrible. You lose a ton of DPS output by being in DS. Necro however is not bad, the only class that I feel I can’t easily destroy 1v1 is Mesmer, and that’s because they’re godmode at 1v1.

Bug Fixes and buffs to power builds, and maybe trait redistribution as well.

Ah yes, and do SOMETHING about staff 1. Either add a condition to it or DOUBLE the projectile/cast speed on it. I hate switching to staff to fire off my marks, then basically sitting there derping while I wait for weapon swap to come off CD.

I think I’ve thrown about 180+hrs of play into my necromancer, despite being well geared and if I’m modest about it, wrung the heck out of the class as a whole to fine tune and play as best I can. I’ve hit a wall which means it’ll be shelved for the remainder until repaired because the whole career is essentially ‘doing it the extremely hard way’ when other’s don’t have to do so nearly as much.
Which is sad because its a cool concept for a class but the simple facts of the matter are:

1. There is only really one viable spec line with a slight amount of deviation.

2. Close to 50% of the Utilities are fundamentally busted, 25% are essentially worthless and the remaining 25% do what they say on the can.
2a. Many utilities require you to disable yourself in some manner, yet their effects are mirrored on other classes that don’t have to do this. Why?
2b. Worse yet, the utilities on some other classes just click and work better overall than the necros!

3. Staff or Sceptre + (offhand) or go home, daggers are just as terrible as axes- which is very sad as they’re infinitely more interesting.

4. Survivability, despite the HP buffer and the Deathshroud is just awful. If I come across a Ranger, Thief or Warrior one on one with my level and gear = I die. Sometimes its a close run match that might see them at 15-25% health assuming I don’t make too many mistakes and capitalise on them making some. But I will die and there is no ‘out’ options of avoiding this despite several load-outs of utilities tested.

5. Damage over Time, is good and perfectly viable for PvE and ‘some’ WvW applications. Unfortunately Damage Per Second, which is what works in PvP is awful and there just isn’t any way of speccing your character for that, if you wanted to.

6. Minions… they are fantastically awful, to the point of forehead slapping the keyboard as they either
a: Do nothing, while you get your junk kicked in
b: Die worthlessly, using up a more viable utility slot in the process
c: Run off into mobs and get aggro from something they could never hope to beat!
I played a lot of ranger in Beta, back then I liked to think it was pretty terrible sharing space with what was essentially a drunken, violent idiot that stood in front of vendors I wanted to click on when it wasn’t causing aggro. But most of the time they could punch their way out of trouble long enough for me to deal with it… or run.
I now refer to minions as ‘those guys’

7. Its lonely out here, I think I see one regular necro on my side in WvW, a few lower level tourists, a couple bopping around in PvE and that’s about it.
Which is disturbing as most people have also realised that the class is not competitively viable in its current form, note that it’s not unplayable by any stretch of the imagination.
There are some great points to the class that have made me smile, unfortunately they’re countered by many insufferable lows.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

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.

This is the thing… the game is not necessarily balanced around 5v5. They’ve yet to come out and specifically say what they are balancing for. That said, as an 8v8 player (at least for now), I can and do expect a reasonable amount of ‘balance’ thrown my way.

It is a feature implemented in their game. It is a feature that will be used by the vast majority of players (compared to tPvP), and it is one in which (I would argue) that balance is not 100% with Necro being the most egregious of offenders. Worst yet, it will be this type of pvp by which their game will be judged (not by 5s).

Finally, I would hope that if their balance philosophy does become support for tPvP that they would do away with sPvP as 8s and replace it with a system that is 5s.

I’ve only been playing for hardly a week but here’s the way I can see it having played plenty of Necro and read most of this thread.

The Necro skill curve is an inverse bell curve. There’s a lot of people at the low end, and a lot at the high end. There’s not a ton of room in the middle.

From what I’ve read, people are still trying their silly vanilla-MMO tricks of “WHY ISN’T HE DOING 100000000000 DMG PER HIT OMG SUCK” and “BLEED <9000 SUCK”. As somebody else has mentioned, Necro has a very tiered power. He’s not meant to (although in the right hands can) waltz in and deal 16k damage. It’s similar to learning algebra in middle school:
There’s the kids who flip kittens and say “OMG WHY THIS IS STUPID. WHEN IS THIS USEFUL SUCK SUCK SUCK” (“NO DPS = SUCK”)
There’s the kids who don’t get it “You can’t add letters to numbers! It’s BROKEN! Algebra is BROKEN!” (They compare raw numbers of damage/stacks to other classes, when the Necro isn’t so much lethal for his ability to stack a million bleeds, rather to take the cons off his teammates, stack them on the enemy, and steal HIS boons.)
And the few kids who completely understand it and are busy flying spaceships and kittens with their highly advanced middle school level algebra (dealing 16k damage in 2 seconds and stealing retaliations to kill warriors).

One thing I also heard a lot of: “DS only serves as a red flag for when the Necro is about to die.”
Don’t MAKE it a red flag, use it at other times in combat, there’s a free heal bar and a little bit of damage and fear and a weapon switch, then you get back and you could even get LF back up for another DS burst if you’ve specced right and are lucky.

And lastly, YES Necro has a TON of broken things and issues, but they will be fixed as soon as ANet sorts out all the jumbles of kittens jamming up the game right now (wrongful bans/major exploits, bugs/hackers).

I would love to 1v1 against a good necromancer who can use DS well or whatever. I literally burst all necros I see with my thief in 3-5s. They just die. DS? oh great 8-10 s. I may be exaggerating the numbers but you get the idea. This second HP bar melts just as fast as the first one.

Alec Owlyear.6782:

I’ve only been playing for hardly a week but here’s the way I can see it having played plenty of Necro and read most of this thread…. bla bla…

So EVERY other class gets to have diverse builds, several playstyles, multiple roles, but the Necromancer is left in the dust with just one build, and that one role is done better by Engineers and Mesmers consistently?

I’ve tried a well-based necro, which was fantastic for anti-melee/holding points and I finally didn’t soil my pants when I knew a thief was lurking in the vicinity. I’ve also tried a condition-based necro which I’m getting the hang of and enjoying. Timing is crucial for sure to lay on the hurt and/or send it back at them. Holding my own most of the time now. It’s an interesting profession; haven’t tried minion master yet but that doesn’t really interest me for some reason.

In regards to warrior: I’ve tried 3 different layouts and I’m most comfortable with mace/mace, axe/shield set up. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with the 2-handed sword, but didn’t spend much time with it.

Dear Jon Peters,
fix the bugs, fix traits not working, fix minion AI and then, only then, we may discuss the necro having steep learning curve.
How come a game designer of such a complex game is so short-sighted, anyway?

Btw, I don’t get one thing. How can we master DS?
DS is basically the easiest thing on necro. Four skills, extra HP bar. If by “mastering” you mean “know when to press the F1 button”, then there is something wrong … Takes like 15 minutes to find out what is it capable of and another sixty or so to find out when iti s worth using and when it is not.
If you would say, for example, master weapon switching, master minion skills or master equipment choices, what would be something. But this … I don’t know, just fail.

Nixxez.8671:

Dear Jon Peters,
fix the bugs, fix traits not working, fix minion AI and then, only then, we may discuss the necro having steep learning curve.
How come a game designer of such a complex game is so short-sighted, anyway?

Btw, I don’t get one thing. How can we master DS?
DS is basically the easiest thing on necro. Four skills, extra HP bar. If by “mastering” you mean “know when to press the F1 button”, then there is something wrong … Takes like 15 minutes to find out what is it capable of and another sixty or so to find out when iti s worth using and when it is not.
If you would say, for example, master weapon switching, master minion skills or master equipment choices, what would be something. But this … I don’t know, just fail.

I made a feedback post about conditionmancer and that the deisgn is flawed in so many ways. Half the passive traits are pointless, out Feast of corruption, DS and Staff #1 auto attack are power dependent in a condition spec which does not make any sense at all whatsoever.

But hey all we need to do is master a DS right?

QSpec.4298

This is the thing… the game is not necessarily balanced around 5v5. They’ve yet to come out and specifically say what they are balancing for. That said, as an 8v8 player (at least for now), I can and do expect a reasonable amount of ‘balance’ thrown my way.

No it is not unreasonable to expect balance thrown your way for the 8v8 WvWvW side of things. The game is currently being balanced around the 5v5 format though. It’s been said by tons of people other than me, as well, if GW2 makes it to the e-sport scene, the 5v5 tournament format is how it will be taking place. Considering they want it to be an e-sport, and all these professions or builds people are saying are OP, and yet the people that play tourney mode never have a problem dealing with them, I would say it is safe to think that it is being balanced around the 5v5 format.

I really like the tanky aspect of necros with DS and their already naturally high (tied with warrior) health pools. The idea of a tanky cloth profession is rather novel.

I have been having a lot of fun with a dagger/focus and well build. I think it’s a blast to play (and is my main.)

A lot of people’s complaints seem not really to be about balance, but instead about what they wish things were. Like they want death shroud to have more of a dps role, or they don’t envision necromancers as being tanky, etc.

I think maybe what is most meant by “learning to master DS” (since obviously it is quite easy to “master”) is “learn to play the profession you have, not the one you want it to be.” If you just played what is there rather than pipe-dreaming about some entirely different profession with entirely different mechanics, then you would probably: (a) Do a better job with it, because you would be playing what is there; and (b) Feel better about things.

This is not to say that fixes would not be nice. That the greater marks trait for staff is bugged drive me crazy, for example.

Hello Jon!

First of all, thanks for posting here! I’m not really sure what you mean by mastering DS but I guess it’s the timing that is crucial. I try to get this right in tPvP, but when focused really hard (and I think it went from, kill necro last to kill necro first) I often have a serious problem because I don’t have any Life Force in the beginning of a match. That’s really frustrating and I have no clue how to fight this issue.

With that in mind I also have a change request regarding the second skill in DS form. Can you make it a CC breaking backwards teleport? DS is a great “Oh crap” button but it quickly turns into “what now?”.

Overall DS is really cool but the second skill baffles me. A necro never wants to teleport offensively into his enemy. Why should he when his auto attack in DS is ranged? I don’t get this.

Other than that, just fix our bugs and pimp our auto attacks a little, please.

P.S.: Nerf 100 blade warriors!

Sjach Darasv.3729:

No it is not unreasonable to expect balance thrown your way for the 8v8 WvWvW side of things. The game is currently being balanced around the 5v5 format though. It’s been said by tons of people other than me, as well, if GW2 makes it to the e-sport scene, the 5v5 tournament format is how it will be taking place. Considering they want it to be an e-sport, and all these professions or builds people are saying are OP, and yet the people that play tourney mode never have a problem dealing with them, I would say it is safe to think that it is being balanced around the 5v5 format.

I don’t doubt that the game is being balanced around 5v5. The question is whether it is also being balanced around 8v8s. Arenanet needs to come out and have a candid talk about how they view balance (like WoW did in Arena 2s…)

The game can and will have to be balanced around more than one aspect. It will have to be balanced (likely) around PvE, and I imagine 8s (seeing as how that will be the more popular). I can see them let WvW turn into a ‘come what may’ situation.

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.

I can’t speak to Death Shroud is it works in PVP, but it seems to me that if the design goals of DS was to provide a second health bar, and a third “weapon” it’s a particularly poor implication of it.

First, you say that it gives us a second health bar, which isn’t untrue, but at the same time guardians have a very similar mechanic of absorbing a hit ie Virtue of Courage. The core difference here is that the guardian actually blocks the hit ever 5 seconds (unless triggered) without any loss of functionality. This is a big problem with the DS mechanic. No other profession has a profession mechanic, as far as I know, that actively takes away from from the functionality of the class.

Secondly, you’re making the claim that we’re “gaining” a third weapon set, except what we get is almost utterly useless. Compare and contrast Dark Path with Life Blast. one’s a ranged attack, the other is a Teleport-to-target, something normally only seen (and normally only useful to) melee classes (or in this game, melee focused weapons like daggers). They also both have 900 range, so it’s not as if one supports the other in any fashion (that I can tell).

And again, this is while removing the ability of the player to read their status or use their utility powers.

Whether or not DS functions on a high level, or at the top of the learning curve speakings nothing to the fact that it’s the least well thought out profession mechanic in the game. This isn’t like elementalists and attuning, or Mesmerizers and shattering, it literally takes away from the profession when it’s in use.

Let me put it this way; every other class (save for elem and Engys) has to suffer through the weapon swap cooldown, and having only one hp bar. And every other class is more or less okay with this. Necros are paying for these so-called befits by having poorly through out powers and skills, all to pay for Death Shroud, which as it stands now, adds nothing of value to Necromancers, nothing that isn’t done in other professions through other means in another, better fashion.

Right now I am not UNHAPPY with necro balance compared to other classes. The only thing I seem to have trouble with are guardians. Most other classes I can hold my own toe to toe and even 2v1 in some scenarios with a lucky dodge or two. I see so many necros only using Death Shroud when they are running or for stupid kitten. You do realize the #2 had a slow, and u can pop in fear and pop out in about a second. This makes a huge difference in a 1v1 situation. Just bleed bleed bleed and never stop moving. Learn to place your abilities properly either get used to key click or double tapping.

I do believe necros deserve a small buff but they are not in an awful spot at the moment. Go check out noxxic for a good build and spend time learning your class. It’s like anything, you’re not going to be very good without putting in some work and practice.

What makes Necro useless in PvP. My opinion is:
1. Skill cast mechanic. Yes the game designers are tring to make PvP like LOL and MonsterHunter. So u could see something like MH that deferent weapons has deferent skills and a funny dodge motion. And something like LOL that all profession-skills has so long CD. But have u seen any skill in LOL should cast so long and after this if target is out of range it just waste CD? This is the way to punish fail-skill-use in action games like MH but MH skills has no CD. Please check main hand dagger skill 3.
2. Helpless in teamwork. Yes Necro has great survivability. It is so hard to knock down a Necro in 32000+health and 2800+defense while he/she has DS. But 1 on 1 is not main melody in GW2. In skirmishes if opponent throw me along and concentrate fire on my teamates. I could do nothing but to watch. Yes. I could fear them by staff 5 and DS 3 and blind them by dagger 4 (offhand). But too long CD and too short duration makes that useless. So. in this game.the only way to be a good supporter is your DPS higher than your opponent. But Necro can not be.
Please. This is a teamwork-game like WOW’s arena. We need not only the survivablity. Warlocks in TBC had been tanks(2x/3x talent) . Their opponent should put them down first since they has FEAR can control target about 8sec and no CD . If you don’t put a warlock down he/she will fear u to the end of the match. And if u concertrate fire on a warlock. He/She could prove the value of a tank. But how can I taunt opponent attack me?

The idea that people haven’t played the Necromancer enough to have mastered DS is absolute rubbish. Sorry, but there are plenty of skilled players that have smashed their heads against the necro class and all that has come of it is a mediocre class that almost always has an uphill battle.

My first class to 80 was a thief. As much as they touted it as being a complex class it is very simple. My 2nd class to 80 was a Necromancer, I loved the idea of AOE dots. My 3rd class I’m not working on is a warrior. I can unequivocally say that my warrior is leagues ahead of a necromancer. In PvE he does far more damage with a single skill than my necro could with 5. In WvW my warrior does even more damage than my necro, has a better long range single target weapon, has a better melee range weapons, and has better AOE’s. Then just to kick the necro when he is down, most of necromancers damage can be completely negated with condition removal, more than a bit of which is AOE. Where are all the abilities and combos that can completely negate ALL direct damage?

Until the game is balanced for all builds this will remain an issue. Burst builds and the classes that use them will become more and more popular until the game becomes a big round of who can burst first. I believe the warrior population has already skyrocketed as 75% of the classes I see while leveling are warriors.

“Master DS”

4 skills, all mediocre. Second health bar.

Maybe we could “master” this abomination is it didnt block out our entire UI when we used it.

The solution seems clear. Remove the health bar effect of deathshroud. Then rebalance the class.

If the fear that the ‘second easy regenerated health bar’ being too powerful is the impediment to fixing the appalling synergy in the class. Remove it. BUT. also fix the class

JonPeters.5630:

No we arent ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be.

Well, if that’s true I’m glad I shelved my necro at 72. Couldn’t be bothered to spend another day on it before I was 80. Kitten class to level out in the world.

DS is what makes the profession? A state with just four (4) buttons to press and no customization at all? Well, jolly me, too good the warrior is 31 already. At least that class is good while played in a mode with eleven (11) buttons to press that can be customized, too.

Whole lot of people undervaluing DS in here.

I have tried a lot of builds and used DS. True, DS can be great. I usually soak up some initial damage and use fear and (if viable) use life drain. Then switch right back to use my heal (alternatively I heal first when I already ate some damage and use DS to bride the cooldown of my heal).

I can survive quite a time that way and it is pretty cool to “stance dance” unnerving your enemies and wittle them down. However, that’s also the problem: often you have to kill someone fast – that also applies to group pvp.

In the end you have to ask yourself: do you want a character who can survive nearly double as long as an other clothie but need double as long to kill anything?
Also, Guardians offer sick survivability as well, have tons of dps and I dare to say outdps us.

Then you can add some cumbersome mechanics of the necro class:
1. Minions
No control – why can’t I assign a target for my minions, put them into a passive or an aggressive mode or send them to a spot to stay there. Especially when you need to change target the minions do what they want. It is like watching an episode of the Benny Hill Show. Also, WoW released in 2006 had these options…why can’t an mmo released in 2012?

Minion AI – Sorry, they have none. My flesh golem watches how I get beat up

Flesh golem – you jump into the water and your elite minion is gone and put on cd

All minions – you get turned into a bird by a mesmer and all your minions are gone.

All minions – you can use only plague cloud underwater as an elite skill…which dispels
all minions you have summoned. Now you can decide to either play without an elite skill or without minion underwater. Brilliant class design.

I guess the abbreviation MM doesn’t stand for Minionmancer but Masomancer

2. DS
It has its ups, as mentioned and can be -pretty- cool. I really have to give Mr. Peters that. However, also several downs: low dps, a fear which is ridiculous like our other fear, primary attack is too slow. And you should not forget that you often do not have the life force when you need it.

3. Bugs
We know the tons of them. I don’t want to get into that again.

Last but not least I think that this class will stay the red-haired stepchild. DS is a good and nice mechanic. However, the necro has to sacrifice too much to balance it. Add to that the cumbersome pets…and well…October is coming soon and X-Com and King’s Bounty. Let’s say I can wait and shelf GW2 for quite some time if necessary.

JonPeters.5630:

Keep in mind that some professions are harder to master than others. I believe Necro is the hardest, opinions may vary, but just keep this in mind. No we arent ignoring Necro, but once people start mastering DS, I’m afraid of how strong Necro will be. Give it some time for the average player to learn these things. For example early on in LOL master yi was dominant until people learned how to counter him.

I’ve played necro for a long time, since CBT3 back in Feb and I’m rank 24 in sPVP now at release, I also play other classes, like mesmer(e.g. when i want to win sPVP on autopilot), but my necro is the one class that intrigues me the most of all my characters. Let me just run down why death shroud won’t have any effect on necro’s “mastering” it anymore than they do so now.

1. Death Shroud interface does not show what conditions you have on your character(extremely important now that stability got nerfed to 3 seconds as a final tier trait in a trash tree [soul reaping]). Newly applied conditions to yourself are unknown, and if it’s a really bad stack and you should leave shroud and Consume Conditions or dump them off on someone with Plague Signet – it’s all a mystery. There’s no amount of player skill that can change playing blindly.
2. With full divinity/berserker’s amulet and 30 points in Soul Reaping for 30% extra critical damage, Life Blast crits for 2.5k.
3. Same-geared Engineers crit for 2300 with hip shot 1-spam (faster fire rate)
4. Warriors crit for 1500 with rifle 1-spam (faster fire rate), don’t even get me started on volley ticks hitting for over 2k and it’s a faster channel/less risky ability than rangers’ rapid fire, which allows it to be exponentially stronger when coupled with quickness
5. Rangers also more than 2k w/ longbow 1-spam, etc. (faster fire rate)
   Death Shroud is a temporary form which should give bonuses beyond your normal form. The projectile on life blast is slow, short-ranged (900 compared to 1200 or 1500 range attacks listed above), and just not even in the same tier as the aforementioned normal-form attacks for engy/war/rng, all of whom have better armor than necro’s. The bonus for wearing light armor ? Apparently it’s less damage. At least necro’s have the same beefy HP pool as warriors, that’s one positive.
6. Dark Path is serviceable – crap damage, but the chill and bleedstack is welcome, and well as the repositioning that it offers.
7. Doom is our bread and butter DS skill with Life Transfer and is one of the main reasons for dancing in and out of DS. However, there’s some unfortunate occurrences with our fear. Despite necro’s being so fearsome:
8. Warriors get a 4sec fear and it’s AE – on 60 second cooldown. However, it takes up a utility slot for them. Doom CD is 20 seconds, but single target and 4x less duration.
9. Thieves’ steal ability on a necro gives them a skull with a 4sec fear from necro’s and we don’t even possess the ability to fear someone that long, where the hell did they steal it from ? I’d like to know so I can actually use the ability that they’re smoking me with. In PVE this might be cool, but it has no business in sPVP. Same goes for the whirling axe skill that they steal from warriors. Thief version is superior in every single way than the warrior skill.
10. Life Transfer is a shining example of a risky, channeled ability with balanced damage that doesn’t floor anyone’s health bar (can’t say the same for 13k backstabs or 10k pistol whips). It has significant risk vs. reward. Being channeled, you’re susceptible to getting all damage cut off via knockdown/push/pull/stun/daze/fear (since necro has no quickness like war/thief/rng), but the reward is a welcome life force refill. Losing stability in DS severely affected this ability’s usefulness.

Finally, to sum up my problems with death shroud and not leave this hanging as just a complaint post. I will attempt to leave a solution to the problem. But first, I have to explain how Death Shroud is worth so much less in any condition spec that takes condition damage gear over power/crit.

Perhaps a fix for this would be that life blast applies a damaging condition on application, i.e. a 3-stack of bleed or a 2-second poison to make Death Shroud a more consistent experience to both power/crit and condition necro’s. There is a trait called “Terror” that gives fear damage ( a DoT, to be more precise), which scales with condition damage. The coefficient seems high, but perhaps the designers failed to realize that necro fears lasts 1 second, at most 1.5 seconds traited in a different tree. How about you increase the coefficient significantly for condition damage so that people know when they’ve been feared by a condition necro. This will sway the two necro specs more towards parity, because power/crit specs will want to use life transfer and maybe a few life blasts looking for 2500 crits, whereas condition necro’s will want to death shroud to take advantage of the conditions on life blast and the extra damage boost from a fear. Both specs will use the fear as twitchy CC, but condition specs will get more out of Doom and less out of Life Transfer, and both specs will get the same out of Life Blast and Dark Path.

Lastly, necromancers have 3 stun breaks and they all suck. If a skilled thief jumps you with devourer venom(2+2sec of immobilize) and quickness up, prepare your anus because there’s nothing you can do as a necromancer.

1. Spectral Armor: 90 second cooldown and you get one boon (Protection) and stun break. If above situation happens to you, stun break gets you out of first stun, then second, third (if needed) pistol whip re-applies stun and immobilize. If spec’ed deep into Deadly Arts, you also get Panic Strike – so you’ll apply a whopping 8 seconds of immobilize to said necro. Okay, so the necro breaks the stun with spectral armor, but is immobilized for 2+2+4 seconds. Cool)))))))))))))))))) When I play my mesmer and I get jumped by a lame quickness/pistol whip FotM thief, I simply Blink away. Blink is a stun break that gets me away. Sure, I take my immobilize with me(not cleared), but the disorientation time(for the thief to visually reacquire their moved target) and distance of the blink allows me to recover and reset the fight so that it’s not ALWAYS in the thief’s favor. Same goes for ele’s that take Lightning Flash, it’s virtually the same move as Blink. Guardians can just use Contemplation of Purity to convert all conditions to boons and break stun, which is on a 60 secoond cooldown. Superior in every single way to Spectral Armor, and on a shorter cooldown. Plate > Light armor.
2. Spectral Walk: Facepalming here
3. Plague Signet: Same problem as above, no positional manipulation(mesmer and ele with blinks, shadowstep on thieves, rocket boots on engy) OR persistent immunity to CC/incoming dmg (rangers have signet of stone on a LOOOONG 2 min cooldown to counter pistol whip thieves AND you have to really build your char around it because it’s a 30-point marksman trait, warriors have endure pain for 5sec of immunity(6 traited), engineers have elixir S for 3sec of invuln), so you just die where you are due to repetition of stuns.

Now I have painted a horrible picture for necromancer here when it comes to getting jumped by thieves or bull’s charge/hundred blades because said moves are on shorter cooldowns than necro counters, BUT to their merit, necro’s CAN death shroud during stuns even though it’s not a stun break, then once the stun is over, they can fear, which is instant and can be used during channels like a mantra(very thankful for this), but unless, by chance, you have a full death shroud bar – you can simply fear once and then get immediately dumped out of death shroud when the next pistol whip or heartseeker eats your full life force bar. If you have no life force, then you’re dirt – no simple way around this. Necro stun breaks are the absolute worst in the game, despite being some of the most plentiful – some classes only get 1 or 2 stun break utilities.

There are much more nuances to the class that I haven’t touched on, like staff auto attack being slow trash and the only life force builder on staff, forcing necro’s to take a deep soul reaping trait to get 3% life force off marks since staff will otherwise build no life force, thus leaving the necro as food. Dagger life force builder being on 130 range auto attack, whereas axe has a nice builder on a fast channel move and 600 range. TL:DR; necro weapons suck and don’t have enough damaging conditions(bleeding and poison), after all we did lose disease and deep wounds from GW1.

This post and the above 2 from me are all one post, please read in that order if you have patience

If you ask any thief/warrior/guardian which class they prefer to use their blowup on, it’s necro, because most necro’s have to run divinity/berserker’s amulet to squeeze out every last bit of damage out of these crap weapons that we can, and it leaves us with ~1200 toughness, meaning hundred blades will crit for 16-19k, kill shots for 15-16k, backstabs will crit for 12-13k, steals and heartseekers for 6k, pistol whips for 10k. All very cool stuff when necro power builds can hit no harder than 4k with any single attack, and that’s the lich form spammable 1 attack. Lich form sucks because you lose your utility and the ability to heal, so most people that bring it just toss two auto attacks for 4k crits and die. Lich form 1 skill cannot possibly be buffed, either due to quickness making this game a balancing nightmare. If a mesmer brings timewarp and pairs with a necro in lich form, people are getting gunned down by 4k 1-spam that splashes. That’s a problem with the synergy between NO OR LOW COOLDOWN MOVES + QUICKNESS <- fix this above all else. Rangers were the only class in gw1 with quickness if i recall correctly, now thieves, warriors, and mesmers get it. All classes which are top tier, due to it.

Kierstone.8294:

Please. This is a teamwork-game like WOW’s arena. We need not only the survivablity. Warlocks in TBC had been tanks(2x/3x talent) . Their opponent should put them down first since they has FEAR can control target about 8sec and no CD . If you don’t put a warlock down he/she will fear u to the end of the match. And if u concertrate fire on a warlock. He/She could prove the value of a tank. But how can I taunt opponent attack me?

Relatively easy actually. I use a well spec build and staff for main hand (only issue again with marks on the staff being broke, the only one it seems to increase radius of is the fear mark which has an obnoxiously long cd for an extremely short duration fear in comparison). But with a little above 1200 healing and getting stacks every time an enemy dies, a 21k hp pool, about 3k toughness, if the enemy isn’t taking me down, my wells are not only constantly hampering their ability to kill me or my teammates, but they are also constantly healing me for 200 or more a tick, the exception being the healing well, which has an initial heal of almost 9k, and then ticks for 700 up per second for 10 seconds, while also giving the remove condition with the staff auto attack, or area retaliation with the staff 4.

I have dagger/focus set up for offhand but rarely swat to it because it is rather unreliable. The necro has tons of combo fields to place, and between all of the weapons we can use, 1-2 combo finishers. My only complaint other than bugged traits, is the cast time length on all of the abities, with an exception of using the elite, every skill a necro uses can be interupted entirely to easily. So when getting hit by multiple foes it’s basically use your 2 dodges and try not to be in melee range of well, every melee class that has really easy to use gap closers.

I don’t consider Necro UP, but we could use some minor changes on cast time of wells. It sucks that it is my favorite spec to play but if i get focused by more than one person if i haven’t spammed out all my wells before that happens, i don’t get to cast them at all. I only really have 2 complaints about DS and that is the lack of seeing what boons/conditions we have applied to us, and that although it does give us a 3rd skillset and second healthbar (if you don’t count the thief or war that will just one shot through that entire pool), it gives us 4 abilities at the cost of 10.

[edit for + signs being around things creating underline : /]

i have no problem playing a minion build. minions aren’t necessarily meant for damage, but for cc and distraction. rebind your keys and learn to use their secondary abilities, and be ready to weapon switch a lot.

Minion build isn’t bad it’s just that minion ai is wonky sometimes. Been in combat and my golem just stood there like he was waiting to get his hair done and other times he would run off of his own accord to just go kill some random dude 2 miles away. Minions builds actually do rather decent damage, if you have ever died to a minion using necro, look at the re-cap, bet the total damage done from minions is > than the total damage done by the necro himself. It also doesn’t help that minions scale off of power, and the minion traits just happen to be in the toughness tree, and wells, which do minor damage and massive debilitation, have one of their traits in the crit tree. With the necro it’s either you go one specific way with a build or it is hopeless, with other classes it is still go mostly one specific way, but they have other viable options for that same path. Also, most other classes traits aren’t as bugged out as necros are currently.

Thresher.3049:

2a. Many utilities require you to disable yourself in some manner, yet their effects are
mirrored on other classes that don’t have to do this. Why?

I would like to speak to this, particularly.

Think of the “down sides” as “up sides” because you’re going to transfer them right away.

If you’ve played Magic the Gathering, necromancers are “black”. They have powerful effects, but at a self-sacrificial cost. E.g. destroy a target creature, but sacrifice one of your own. Most other colors, and indeed “classes” in the case of GW2, would see this as a serious drawback just as you’re doing. You’re seeing these drawbacks through the eyes of another class. I.e. you’re thinking about playing a warrior, using a similar ability a necro has, and wondering “why would I use this same ability as a necro, if I’d be getting a condition placed on myself”. You have to see it through the eyes of the necro though.

Black in MTG doesn’t see the sacrificing a creature to get a powerful effect as a downside, like another color might. Black in MTG loves sacrificing its own creatures because they usually have sweet “when this creature dies…” effects unique to black creatures, and similarly necromancers LOVE having conditions on themselves (to such an extent that if you’re stacking conditions on an enemy necromancer, you’re helping him; NOT hurting him) because necromancers easily transfer conditions from themselves to enemies. I’m actually amazed at how many people don’t realize deathly swarm (off-hand dagger #4; the locusts that bounce to 3 targets and blind them) actually transfers conditions from yourself to your enemy each time it bounces and it’s on quite a short CD (15 seconds?).

When a necromancer gets a powerful condition at a cost of putting a similar effect on himself, he elates because he’ll be transferring his own condition to the enemy as well. Double whammy. Plague signet is built around this mechanic. It passively sucks up the conditions from nearby allies and puts them on the necromancer; not because the necromancer is an altruistic good guy but because he can then activate it to move them all to an enemy (and epidemic for bonus points) using the conditions to his advantage; or alternatively he can keep the passive on the signet up, constantly draining conditions from his team and transfer them to enemies with other abilities like deathly swarm spam or staff #4.

So, ultimately, the self-afflicting condition “down sides” to some abilities are actually something your foe is going to feel, not you.

@Narmix

Agreed. I enjoy the debuffs actually. It adds character and can actually be used offensively which I think is fun.

Speaking of this, does anyone know how Confusion works with skills that remove/transfer debuffs?

If I transfer Confusion back to the mesmer, do I take Confusion damage first? Does it even get sent over?

Similarly with Consume Conditions. Does that eat Confusion with or without damage? Can I die from Confusion trying to heal myself?

As someone said above, minion builds aren’t bad – at least no inherently. However, at the moment they are just the icing on the dung pile. Ok, let’s stay constructive and see why:

1. Lack of AI – often they simply do nothing or attack a target which they are not supposed to (e.g. when you need to switch targets) or simply seem to be in slow motion when they finally decided to switch to your new target (maybe also a bug)

In PvE the Flesh Golem is the wild card. Sometimes he pulls more and more and more mobs…and you cannot stop it.

2. Lack of play control over minions
Number 1 could be soooo much easier to cope with if the player had, like already in the WoW version of 2006, some basic control over the minions.

3. Pathing
Geez, just port the minions to the necro if they slack too much behind. They take routes which are just unreal. Also in PvE, if you decide to hop down a ledge, it is funny to see how many mobs your minions can actually pull.

4. Cooldowns for resummoning
This along with the 1+2 is already enough to kill the fun of a minion spec. If you play spvp and you get killed you sometimes end up with all minions on cd. Just reset their CD after the necro dies.

5. Survivability of minions in pvp
If an enemy melee player has 2 brain cell he just pulls them behind an object and out of your line of sight then kills them in 4-6 flat. If you try to help your minions you are in melee range and you are dead, too

Often the minions die in AoE damage which is not even meant to hit them so low are their hp pools even with Flesh of the Master

6. Regeneration
Why oh why is there no out of combat regeneration for minions? You really do try hard to make this class as cumbersome as possible.

7. Minions vanishing when you enter water or change into a form
It is brilliant game desing that your flesh golems, our elite skill, doesn’t work in water. It gets even greater, though. The minion spec is basically worthless because 1 class which is played abundantly has an I-Win button against that spec: the Mesmer. If you change form, your necro pets are gone. Hey, it is not enough to be a Moa bird for several seconds, no your pets are gone, too and are on their loooong cooldowns.

But it gets even more comic. Let’s see, we can use underwater…plague cloud. Woooo…if you use it your last minions which you can use are also unspawned. Now, let’s see: underwater you have to choice to either play without minions or without elite skill if you are specced in minion. Wow, seriously…that developer should be flogged.

Summa summarum:
I have played many mmos and I have never seen a worse minion design than yours. The mechanic is cumbersome, inefficient and simply no fun to play. On top of that 1 class has an I-Win button against that spec, and underwater you have the choíce to play either without minions or without an elite skill.
How, this went through the testings…I dunno. And then your dev has the audacity to say that people just need to learn how to Death Shroud. That reflects badly upon your company.

And this comes from a person who rolled a necro just for playing with minions.

^^
Lets not forget that Lich form also de-summons all the necro’s minions.

Also

Plague form also de-summons a necro’s minions on land as well.

This thread really shows why balancing around an ability like DS is a bad idea.

It’s very much like paladin bubble in early wow: because of one ridiculously powerful ability, everything else about paladins had to be subpar. Leading to a situation where the class is subpar in every way except for one particular, extremely powerful ability.

That’s just bad game design.

They ought to get rid of DS entirely or make it a much simpler mechanism that works similar to how warrior adrenaline works: no new skill bar, just an F1 skill with 5ish levels, with greater effects at each level. Have it give 1 second of block per bar, with the bar depleting at the rate of 1 per second.

This means at full DS you have 5 seconds of block saved up that can be either used all at once or distributed across several uses or whatever combination of the two you want. Meanwhile you can still use your normal skills and arn’t pigeonholed into using a bunch of skills that are mostly ineffective for the builds most necros use.

I for one am extremely excited to see what changes they do.

Especially to traits. I really really hope to eventually see traits like 5% more dmg replaced with traits like “Chill on Blind” so I’m not cherry picking anymore. And traits actually feel like they’re doing something and changing the way abilities function.

I would love to see Staff be a viable stand alone weapon rather than a mandatory handful of utilities on a stick. Such as traits allowing staff to be a decent power weapon, or traits to let Staff be a good condition weapon.

I absolutely love that tanky, debuffing, control, attrition playstyle.

Oh and also if Colin see’s this. Dark Path swapped with Spectral Grasp, MAKE IT HAPPEN, definately fits the slow, immobile, controller type of “GET OVER HERE” and could give us a good Spectral Utility shadowstep with some interesting effects. Plus using dark path for extra bleed feels bad when I don’t want to teleport into melee, which is 99% of the time.

edit : Oh and just to add, the fact that you can’t receive any healing while in death shroud seems a bit counter-intuitive, considering Death Shroud is a way to absorb dmg, and thus survive, but so is healing, and since necro’s will usually have passive healing going (and hopefully will have more of, hint hint) you’re losing some survivability to gain, survivability.

Also the idea of dumping life force in order to do more dmg seems rather brilliant, it can be a way to give us good or bursty dmg while sacrificing our survivability, or even let us dump life force for extra control, or extra condition dmg, or even dump it into healing. Say if a blood specced necro (in the future) actually brings some decent healing to become a healing support like guardian/ele, they could dump Life Force to heal either allies or themselves, I think it could flow very well, depending on Life Force gain.

And speaking of Life Force gain, it definately should be normalized across the weapons. It would probably make sense to have life force on every weapon’s auto attack and maybe stick a large amount of Life Force gain on a cooldown attack.

Just thinking of the possibilities of this class has me all excited, I hope to see it come to fruition. =D

Well, the thing that hit me the most is the inability to control the pets. They go wherever, they are in super-aggressive mode (except when you REALLY want them to attack! Then they sit still and look at you silly!) and even in PvE it’s a chore not to aggro the whole region.

Said that, my other 80 character is an Elementalist, I suppose this is what makes me feel fairly powerful on my necro…

so here’s my necro feedback:

I leveled to 80, and saved up 14k karma, so I started poking around in Orr looking for some gear. There is no gear? everything has +power… I don’t need power…

1 mob is a pain for me.. they die so slowly.
2 mobs and I’m pushing my luck. If one is a caster I’m gonna at least lose a pet.
3 mobs and I’m in trouble, popping cooldowns, and just trying to live

… while just trying to stay alive I look over and see a guardian. He’s chain pulled 2 spark mob vets and a spark mob, and takes them all down with ease, ending the fight at full health.

So then I think I’ll try pvp. WvWvW is ok if I stay with the pack. 1 on 1 is a toss-up, but mostly I just can’t kill anyone.

So then I go to mists, and get my faced ripped off, again and again.

I have no idea what other classes are doing for damage, as this is my first 80, but my dots tic for 76ish in WvWvW, 100ish in mists… and most people seem to just ignore them, or automatically purge them…

At this point, I’m a regen bot following around other people, casting mark of blood for the regen… 176ish per tic… but no one ever talks about necro healing so i guess that’s not very good either…

Daggers seem suicidal to me.. axes seem weaker than dots…
sceptor is ok… but with the long ramp up to put on the dots, you can’t do that in melee range, and even if you get a bunch on they purge them off, and you have to face them, so you can’t kite
staff is good for mark of blood, but the damage is dismal

and pets.. sigh….
bad AI aside, the golem is hardly worth forfeiting an elite skill for
the scorpion thing dies too easily
the worms/flowers have stupidly long cooldowns
the ghost thing is.. well.. it’s there…

the two little guys are the only ones worth casting

so all in all….

I quit. Blowing 40-60 second cooldowns just for the sake of killing things at a decent pace when grinding… not killing anything in group pvp…. kiting melee classes that can weapon swap and do 2 or 3 times more ranged damage than I can…

it’s hopeless… I give up…

Yukishiro.8792:

This thread really shows why balancing around an ability like DS is a bad idea.

It’s very much like paladin bubble in early wow: because of one ridiculously powerful ability, everything else about paladins had to be subpar. Leading to a situation where the class is subpar in every way except for one particular, extremely powerful ability.

That’s just bad game design.

They ought to get rid of DS entirely or make it a much simpler mechanism that works similar to how warrior adrenaline works: no new skill bar, just an F1 skill with 5ish levels, with greater effects at each level. Have it give 1 second of block per bar, with the bar depleting at the rate of 1 per second.

This means at full DS you have 5 seconds of block saved up that can be either used all at once or distributed across several uses or whatever combination of the two you want. Meanwhile you can still use your normal skills and arn’t pigeonholed into using a bunch of skills that are mostly ineffective for the builds most necros use.

If DS would be soooo powerful I’d agree that it needs to be balanced around DS primarilly. However, when you are in a conditional spec it let’s you soak up some damage when you expect a burst from the enemy. Also because you are specced for it you trade bad dps for some soaking capacity.

In a kind of power build which uses traits for DS…well, the necro seems to scale just terrible with power. I still hit like a wet noodle in DS with Life Blast despit I gear and use traits for it /shrug

All in all the class seems to be one huge construction site to me. So many things don’t fit. Synergy is hardly there (except in a kind of cond. build – but the spec doesn’t go along well with DS). Some traits are in weird places etc.

However, in the end it doesn’t matter. I bet we will see only Guardians, Mesmers and Thieves and perhaps Warriors in pvp soon anyway.

We were promised that every profession in the game would be able to be played the way WE wanted it. The three roles that have taken over the holy trinity are “Control, Damage and Support”, which we WERE TOLD any class could spec into any role.

The necro cannot spec into ANY of these roles and be competitive with any other profession. Every other class has better Damage skills, Control skills and support skills.

PLEASE fix the necro!

Necros are my favorite profession for sPvP and I main a warrior.

Maybe, um, I don’t know, different people are different?

Necros are in a bad place, but lying about “3v1 in seconds on a warrior 111!11!111” doesn’t help make your point… unless 3 people were afk and therefore all stood in 2 hundred blades which, at best, are 8 seconds apart.

1v3 with warrior. Thread seems legit. Just kidding. Warriors are close to being the worst class for tPvP, surely you would know that since you play so much of it (accidently).
Yeah, necros are hard to master. So are engineers or elementalists. And is that bad? No, and I am super glad I have to learn and use effort to be actually good at something rather than spamming 1 ability.
Unfortunately, gaming society is so spoiled and so over their heads, that nothing really matters as long as you’re not performing well. I mean if you’re not doing 1v3, clearly the class is broken.
And for the record, if you’re doing 1v3 with warrior, it should be time to move on from target dummies.

@JonPeters

Too bad Warriors aren’t Master Yi. They’re really Irelia/Tryndamere/Olaf in one package. The effective way that is. Of-course if you’re one of those Warriors who do Frenzy + Bulls Charge > HB then yeah, you ARE Master Yi.

@deapee

“I was literally 1v3’ing people on my warrior…in seconds.”

If you can do this, please post a video. If so you’re God like and have found the class for you! I know you may not want to pick a warrior, but warrior has picked you if you’re that good with it.

I have played a necro since bw2 and have not looked back. I love it, in the 1v1 and in team play, it pwns, with high kills, big bleed stacks, dazes, a flesh golem that does a 3-4 second knockdown, and don’t get me started on epidemic. I regulary score high if not top in matches, and its now unknown for me to get 17 kills in a single match. Also, Svanir and chieftan are a joke with a flesh golem and ds or even with no ds , wont even get hit.

LOL… you say necro is terrible, then you say you always win 1v1’s?

Which is it?

And if you beat 3 people alone with your warrior, they must have been 3 blind people. I can’t remember the last time a warrior beat my ranger or my guardian.

Z

Funny, I always prefer to play a warrior in these types of game however the warrior is complete garbage for TPvP currently. I’m actually having more fun and bringing more to the TEAM as a necro.

Oh, you were talking about SPvP? My bad, I don’t do follow the zerg mode.

I find “flesh golem” to be too suggestive. Please change it to “meat golem.” Thank you.

Lol warrior.

There’s not a single class who isn’t less useful in tpvp.

Death Shroud may not be perfect, but at least it’s not crappy class mechanic like the Elementalist one.

Attunements should count as a profession disability rather than an advantage. Trading weaponswapping for 15 more skills sounds great on paper, but then you realize these skills are just individually weaker in effect and spread out, so at the end of the day you have to use several skills in order to reach the same results as some other professions with just one button press.

The game is broken when dagger melee Elementalists have half the health of a Warrior, less armor, have to play the attunement piano in order to deal their clunky ten skills combos and still manage to reach not even half of the DPS of an offense specced keyboard facerolling Warrior.

Whatever happened to risk vs. reward? If you make certain professions difficult to master, at least make it worthwhile to do so.