Guild Wars 2

We have a thread dedicated to the Warrior, so I figured we might as well bring up the other elephant in the room.
Before this boils down into a discussion about how Necros are “faceroll easy”, “spammy” and “OP Condi” let me point out that the Necromancer subforum is not happy with the current state of the Necro either. Most of us were blind-sided by Dhuumfire (which we still dislike), and believe that the profession is not currently what it was meant to be. The running gag in the Necromancer subforum is that our profession is a bug that will be patched out sooner or later.
As a reference, here is the original balance philosophy for Necros:

JonathanSharp:

The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Currently, the necromancer is one of the worst professions for attrition in the game.
As stated by Dictionary.com – at·tri·tion [uh-trish-uhn]: a wearing down or weakening of resistance, especially as a result of continuous pressure or harassment. In SPvP, Necros typically win fights via fast condition bombs, not the slow drawn out affair that was originally advertised. And often, little “raw damage” is involved.
Necros also have a very difficult time catching fleeing foes. While flight might be seen as a victory in the frame of SPvP, as stated above, Necros are meant to be able to stop it. As far as disables, one could argue the exact meaning of what was said, but I would like to believe the intention was to have chill, fear, cripple and weakness slow down fights into the attrition battle Necros were meant to be good at.

JonPeters:

We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

In my experience, while DPS has been reduced, the condition burst can still be oppressive, and over time, the condition resistance of some professions have been buffed to try and match condition bombs. Not all professions, mind you. This has created an awkward balance scenario where:

• Those without immunities are still complaining about condis;
• Other professions have a more difficult time running condi builds;
• Non-condi Necros are complaining since they can’t land control conditions like chill;
• Many of those that have immunities feel the things are all ok since they can “spank” Necros, who were running amok for too long.

Overall, very few people seem to be satisfied with the Necro is at this point in time. Many Necromancers feel that this profession isn’t what they signed up for, and many non-Necros feel the class is/was broken/OP and/or deserves bigger nerfs.

Given all of these, I figured I’d steal the “Let’s Talk” tag and create somewhere we can try and rationalize what people do/do not want the Necromancer to be, and what steps we would like to see be taken towards achieving that. I also personally believe that we should have running community thread regarding the state of each profession, but that might just be me.

tl;dr: Both the Necro and SPvP community seem unhappy with the state of the profession. Necromancers were advertised as attrition fighters, not condition spammers. Where would the community like to see the Necromancer go?

“Necromancers were advertised as attrition fighters, "
yeah my rabid amulet zerker jewel warrior in sPvP feels more like an attrition fighter.

i try to keep myself alive while burning bleeding my foes to death. it works nicely though.

Just look at MM Necros. That is what Necros were advertised to be, the entire thing feels just like what we were promised.

High HP? Got that
Craploads of poison? Check
Both direct and condition damage? Sure
Interrupts? Hell ya
Movement disabling abilities? Just look at Flesh Golem
Ways to win attrition? Definitely

Yet somehow they took everything that went “right” with minions (despite plenty of other issues) and didn’t translate any of it around. I very rarely “feel” like a Necromancer in any other build, not because I lack minions, but because the entire playstyle feels wrong.

A major part of the issues is that they have us relying so heavily on conditions. This either means that the important conditions to keep on need to be low-duration, often-applied (to keep them up while still allowing the big damage condis to be removed), or they need to separate removal. If X class/build is having trouble because of bleed stacks, why the hell do you just say “well lets give them some more generic cleansing” instead of giving them a cleanse that specifically targets the issue. This way classes like Necromancers can still apply their control (which can still be removed by your generic removals), but classes can also manage to avoid certain problematic conditions through more specific but weaker cleansing.

Lack of balance is not what’s killing the GW2 necromancer. It is the lack of theme that’s killing it.

You know what, let’s totally forget balance and attrition for a second. I don’t even care about balance by this point. My concern: Where is the theme? I have played GW since GW1 beta, and TBH right now the GW2 necro doesn’t even feel like a necro at all.

The devs seems to have forgotten what the GW1 necromancer even was. And at the same time they cannot figure out a new theme for the GW2 necromancer to replace the missing themes.

Attrition is NOT a theme. This is how we win, not a theme. Theme is totally different.

Look:

Without those 5-33% life sacrificing skills, GW2 necro will never be the high risk/high reward class it was in GW1. And this was a huge theme, gone.

Without GW1’s version of Spiteful Spirit, Insidious Parasite and Spoil Victor, necro have no spells against physical attacks. And this was a huge theme, gone.

Without the ability to summon more minions as death happens, necro cannot summon a minion army. That’s why minions are so useless in dungeons. Back in GW1 I wouldn’t care if my minions dies. I just summon more. Another huge theme, gone.

Now let’s talk about Death Shroud. This was the most painful part of all.

Death Shroud was such a cool concept. Fight with spirits is like the coolest thing ever. It came from the comic series The Darkness. It really blows my mind how they can take a concept so cool and make it so, non-cool.

Ladies and gentlemen, watch how the real Death Shroud should fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6WKYAZXlCA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BakIFkhZ_TE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2xSqL80Zvg

Necromancers are monsters. We always have been. Other classes have very real reasons to fear our powers.

I wish they would add hexes back into the game. They’ve made our class too dependent on conditions, and conditions suck. It’s a terrible mechanic. It causes constant balance issues, where they are either too ineffective (in PVE) or too effective (in PvP), or players are completely immune to it (Diamond Skin).

They’ve also made our class revolve about the two main things that PVE is explicidly hostile against: Conditions and control. Hello Defiant! Talk about an elephant in the room.

I also agree that our class does not feel like what a necromancer should feel like. It feels like Dhuumfire is literally being forced upon us. Is it the only way to make a viable condition build now? I don’t want to use it, I don’t like it!

Worse is our lack of access to mobility, stability, reflection and invulnerability. We were able to survive 1-hit kills in DS before, and they removed it for NO REASON.

There’s threads in the necromancer sub forum about people abandoning the necromancer, and I believe they are right, because it feels like the developers already abandoned this class long ago. I’ve honestly considered it myself, which is painful, since I have been playing this class, and nothing else, since GW1’s release. It is a common joke in the necromancer sub forum how no dev ever visits it.

Although certain hexes made a comeback in the form of conditions (torment=movement-punishing hexes such as weaken knees), I cannot see Anet ever implementing hexes (or the concept of energy) again, one reason being how they got out of hand on GW1. Although now we have conditions going out of hands instead, so yea. Same issue, different form.

Insidious Parasite can still return, Spoil Victor can still return, Spiteful Spirit can still return, its just a case of can Anet do it without reverting back to the notion that they would make the game too complex?

They introduced Torment which functions a lot like a hex in GW1 that the Ele could put on you which would make you take damage for each second you’re moving. Things like Spoil Victor and Spiteful Spirit could be skills in a new weapon set and they could function like their old counterparts.

I do miss the blood sacrificing and the life-stealing builds (I had a cultist’s fervour build way back when) and the hexing builds.

The whole combo to get dhuumfire is OP, burn+300 power + 30% condi duration and then theres terror. This makes us have OP condis while dealing nice direct dmg.
But without this OP thing necros would be out of pvp at all. What else we have? All other builds play similiar just lack in something, be it condi dmg/DD or survibility.
IMO in first half year of game necros were fine, but over time all other classes have developed something OP and now necros cant compete without dhuumfire.

Dat powercreep.

Dirame.8521:

Insidious Parasite can still return, Spoil Victor can still return, Spiteful Spirit can still return, its just a case of can Anet do it without reverting back to the notion that they would make the game too complex?

They introduced Torment which functions a lot like a hex in GW1 that the Ele could put on you which would make you take damage for each second you’re moving. Things like Spoil Victor and Spiteful Spirit could be skills in a new weapon set and they could function like their old counterparts.

I do miss the blood sacrificing and the life-stealing builds (I had a cultist’s fervour build way back when) and the hexing builds.

SS and SV exist already as confusion.

Leeto.1570:

The whole combo to get dhuumfire is OP, burn+300 power + 30% condi duration and then theres terror. This makes us have OP condis while dealing nice direct dmg.
But without this OP thing necros would be out of pvp at all. What else we have? All other builds play similiar just lack in something, be it condi dmg/DD or survibility.
IMO in first half year of game necros were fine, but over time all other classes have developed something OP and now necros cant compete without dhuumfire.

Game needs to be leveled. Harsh nerfs to op specs, re-focus each class on core mechanics, stop with the buff balancing.

I think instead of nerfing things, they need to bring the other aspects of our class back on par with everything else. And they need to refocus our class on what a necromancer should feel like. Most important of all, they need to give us a purpose in PVE. That means finding a suitable role, but also dealing with the big elephants in the room: Defiant and the condition cap.

Also, it would help if they visited the necro forum every now and …ever.

I am wondering if you can determine balance of classes trough specific build themes..

let’s take signet builds as an example..
If all these signets are in the game and all professions having them can compose a build that can preform reasonably well with these signets, should these signet (themed) builds be on par with eachother?
“Just wanted to note this as i would assume they would be on par.”

I’m not sure if that would work. Skills should always be compared to the other skills they can be combined with. A skill that causes poison for example may seem weak, but when combined with epidemic it suddenly spreads to dozens of foes. So doing signet to signet comparisons doesn’t seem realistic to me.

I think instead you should look at what the idea behind the class is, and see if the skills and traits are in line with that goal. For example, the necromancer was intended to be an attrition class… so where are our skills to stay alive to make attrition work? Why do classes that already outshine us in team support and DPS, also have superior staying power compared to us? Something is clearly off here. Attrition is a burden on the class whose mechanics depends on it, so there has to be something back in return that makes it an interesting form of combat. We’re forced into chasing down opponents and waiting for them to die… so don’t we need ways to chase them down, and ways to stay alive while we wait for them to die?

I know the devs have been comparing conditions to the worst case scenario, which is Dhuumfire and a purely condition damage focused equipment… but what about the in between builds? What about scenarios that are not a worst case? Are conditions completely useless to the necromancer unless he specs towards it for the full 100% and brings Dhuumfire? I should be able to be effective and stay alive, even if not all of my runes are tuned to maximizing condition damage. All this min/maxing really hurts build diversity in my opinion.

The only real problem I have with the state of Necros in sPvP is life force.

always starting at zero puts a huge damper on early round play and it doesn’t really make sense compared to other classes.

the easiest solution would be to throw in a few ambient creatures in each spawn, not enough to fill the meter but enough so we can at least have something before our first fight.

milo.6942:

Dirame.8521:

Insidious Parasite can still return, Spoil Victor can still return, Spiteful Spirit can still return, its just a case of can Anet do it without reverting back to the notion that they would make the game too complex?

They introduced Torment which functions a lot like a hex in GW1 that the Ele could put on you which would make you take damage for each second you’re moving. Things like Spoil Victor and Spiteful Spirit could be skills in a new weapon set and they could function like their old counterparts.

I do miss the blood sacrificing and the life-stealing builds (I had a cultist’s fervour build way back when) and the hexing builds.

SS and SV exist already as confusion.

It was interesting that they didn’t give necros confusion. In GW1 mesmer and necro goes hand in hand with skills like Empathy.

I remember back during the BWEs, Chilling Darkness didn’t exist and in it slot was a trait that caused Confusion on Blind. Clearly, Confusion had been considered for necros.

I won’t comment on balance on this case, but it may be good if ANet can find a way to implement low stacks of confusion on the necro to punish their enemies for bursting. While Confusion and Retaliation are two sides of the same coin, the necro, thematically, is the profession that should have pretty decent access to both (or very good access to one).

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

I am wondering if you can determine balance of classes trough specific build themes..

let’s take signet builds as an example..
If all these signets are in the game and all professions having them can compose a build that can preform reasonably well with these signets, should these signet (themed) builds be on par with eachother?
“Just wanted to note this as i would assume they would be on par.”

Game balance and theme are different and separate topics.

Game balance, we would be talking about berserker vs PVT gear. We would be talking about necro’s high health vs lack of blocking and dodging. We would be talking about necro staff 2 vs elementalist staff 2, etc

In general, game balance discussions are much more direct and related. The hard numbers are all the matters.

Themes, we would be talking about summoning strong elementals vs summoning weak but numerous flesh minions (both are summons, but the theme is clearly different). We would be talking about Death Shroud vs stealth. We would be talking about wells vs elementalist fields.

In general, theme discussions are much more theoretical. The hard numbers doesn’t matter as much.

The stuff I mentioned earlier (life sacrificing, curses, minion army, death shroud) are theme related discussions.