Guild Wars 2

Zetsumei.4975:

Rym.1469:

Maybe it’s that we kinda like to get to our downstate quicker so we can do more damage as power?

My mate n I were thinking, it is kinda necro themed.. You know we’re at our strongest when we’re close to death xD

And we don’t lose much in mobility for such trade.

I don’t see it as bad as described: I currently like how Necro plays: It’s the class that feels most like I’m playing GW1: I absolutely love Path of Corruption and Corrupt boon – so fun and skill-intensive to use (especially in teamfights, where you really have to look for stability and keep CD’s and procs like for example earths embrace in mind). I also think Terror-Necro is kinda underplayed.

Having looked at all the stuff they’ve talked about in the rdy up thingy, I think Necro (or rather the Terror-necro build) got a few direct and indirect buffs:

- Quickness is now a boon: depending on how things work out, it could be another high-impact boon like stability that you really want to get rid of and turn into slow (I guess that’s how it will work with corrupt boon and PoC).
- If I’m not mistaken, Poison will now stack in intensity: this could give the Necro the ability to deal dps a little bit faster.
- You will be able to get dhuumfire on the terror-necro build (with the 16 trait-points), or you’ll be able to get the stability – both in the soul reaping tree. That’s IMHO a pretty big buff.
- You get the 20% bleed-duration for free.
- You get the fear on downed for free
- instead of 15% recharge on deathshroud, you get staff-recharge and LF on the marks, which also frees you up to take sth. else in death magic…. not sure how good putrid defense is gonna be… or you know, just 1 less condi every 10s – pretty standard for an adept trait.

Not gonna lie though – other classes seem to have been buffed pretty heavily, but others on the other hand look kinda weird, like the Ele. Necro is somewhere in the middle I guess: I’m just glad that it looks like it’ll still be fun and skill-intensive to play. That’s for me the most important thing: balance can always be achieved by tweaking the numbers afterwards, but if they would’ve messed with PoC or sth. I would’ve lost my kitten. ^^’

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t see it as bad as described: I currently like how Necro plays: It’s the class that feels most like I’m playing GW1: I absolutely love Path of Corruption and Corrupt boon – so fun and skill-intensive to use (especially in teamfights, where you really have to look for stability and keep CD’s and procs like for example earths embrace in mind). I also think Terror-Necro is kinda underplayed.

Having looked at all the stuff they’ve talked about in the rdy up thingy, I think Necro (or rather the Terror-necro build) got a few direct and indirect buffs:

- Quickness is now a boon: depending on how things work out, it could be another high-impact boon like stability that you really want to get rid of and turn into slow (I guess that’s how it will work with corrupt boon and PoC).
- If I’m not mistaken, Poison will now stack in intensity: this could give the Necro the ability to deal dps a little bit faster.
- You will be able to get dhuumfire on the terror-necro build (with the 16 trait-points), or you’ll be able to get the stability – both in the soul reaping tree. That’s IMHO a pretty big buff.
- You get the 20% bleed-duration for free.
- You get the fear on downed for free
- instead of 15% recharge on deathshroud, you get staff-recharge and LF on the marks, which also frees you up to take sth. else in death magic…. not sure how good putrid defense is gonna be… or you know, just 1 less condi every 10s – pretty standard for an adept trait.

Not gonna lie though – other classes seem to have been buffed pretty heavily, but others on the other hand look kinda weird, like the Ele. Necro is somewhere in the middle I guess: I’m just glad that it looks like it’ll still be fun and skill-intensive to play. That’s for me the most important thing: balance can always be achieved by tweaking the numbers afterwards, but if they would’ve messed with PoC or sth. I would’ve lost my kitten. ^^’

See, that is where as a necro main, I’m going to have to completely disagree with you. Necro’s are and have been, since launch, in a terrible spot.

Read this post for the state of necromancer and hopefully you will at least get why necromancers are a bit peeved off at the changes. They are far from buffs/debuffs. Yes, some traits got buffs but the real issue is that they fixed absolutely nothing while conflicting traits in other lines (e.g. curses) as well as doing absolutely nothing about the issues mentioned in the post I linked.

Why is it that Engi gets a baseline of 50% more grenade damage now but necro’s still need to trait for fear to do a small amount of damage? Makes no sense to me.

My issue isn’t that we didn’t get buffs, we did, but other classes got buffed a lot. Necros currently have and ton of really bad traits, merging them into decent traits creates a good trait. That sound nice, but other classes had 2 traits that are decent or good already get merged meaning their traits are now either great or down right amazing. That means overall it is a net nerf. The net effect is that necros get a few extra decent, or ok traits, while other classes are getting a few extra amazing traits.

Also, blood magic and death magic are still bad and terrible relative to every other classes sustain traitlines. I’d recommend going and looking at what other classes got because anyone saying we got “buffed” isn’t considering that every other class got better buffs. Merging 2 bad traits vs merging two decent traits is a big difference. For instance, Powerbottom mentioned the fear on down, to me that’s a very weak buff because I don’t want that trait now, so it’s just more stuff I don’t want. Meanwhile, my mesmer got all 3 signet traits merged. That’s 3 traits I actually want on the same build that only require one trait now. In effect, the necro changes feel like decent trait+bad trait while other classes are getting decent trait+decent trait+decent trait, or good trait+decent trait. Necros need new stuff, we don’t need mergers between the decent stuff and all the bad traits no one wants.

Zelkovan.2630:

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t see it as bad as described: I currently like how Necro plays: It’s the class that feels most like I’m playing GW1: I absolutely love Path of Corruption and Corrupt boon – so fun and skill-intensive to use (especially in teamfights, where you really have to look for stability and keep CD’s and procs like for example earths embrace in mind). I also think Terror-Necro is kinda underplayed.

Having looked at all the stuff they’ve talked about in the rdy up thingy, I think Necro (or rather the Terror-necro build) got a few direct and indirect buffs:

- Quickness is now a boon: depending on how things work out, it could be another high-impact boon like stability that you really want to get rid of and turn into slow (I guess that’s how it will work with corrupt boon and PoC).
- If I’m not mistaken, Poison will now stack in intensity: this could give the Necro the ability to deal dps a little bit faster.
- You will be able to get dhuumfire on the terror-necro build (with the 16 trait-points), or you’ll be able to get the stability – both in the soul reaping tree. That’s IMHO a pretty big buff.
- You get the 20% bleed-duration for free.
- You get the fear on downed for free
- instead of 15% recharge on deathshroud, you get staff-recharge and LF on the marks, which also frees you up to take sth. else in death magic…. not sure how good putrid defense is gonna be… or you know, just 1 less condi every 10s – pretty standard for an adept trait.

Not gonna lie though – other classes seem to have been buffed pretty heavily, but others on the other hand look kinda weird, like the Ele. Necro is somewhere in the middle I guess: I’m just glad that it looks like it’ll still be fun and skill-intensive to play. That’s for me the most important thing: balance can always be achieved by tweaking the numbers afterwards, but if they would’ve messed with PoC or sth. I would’ve lost my kitten. ^^’

See, that is where as a necro main, I’m going to have to completely disagree with you. Necro’s are and have been, since launch, in a terrible spot.

Read this post for the state of necromancer and hopefully you will at least get why necromancers are a bit peeved off at the changes. They are far from buffs/debuffs. Yes, some traits got buffs but the real issue is that they fixed absolutely nothing while conflicting traits in other lines (e.g. curses) as well as doing absolutely nothing about the issues mentioned in the post I linked.

Why is it that Engi gets a baseline of 50% more grenade damage now but necro’s still need to trait for fear to do a small amount of damage? Makes no sense to me.

Well, afaik, one of the teams winning the most (or nearly everything) atm is running a terror-necro…. can’t be that bad. ^^’

It’s atm also my favourite class/build to play and it feels pretty strong to me… but hey, what do I know, right? Cuz everyone not whining about the balance just doesn’t have the deep understanding you guys have. :P

The biggest mistake most ppl on the forum seem to make is that they have no clue what situations they should search out and what to avoid. Do I go roaming like crazy with my Necro and make the sub-par mobility come into play? – nope. Do I search out 1v1’s against classes that outsustain me? – nope. Do I still Pointguard home like in the good old days? – nope. Teamfights is where the Necro belongs IMHO. And yes, you’ll have to stay in the backline and LoS like crazy, but the boonstrip and AoE-CC and DPS is just amazing.

PowerBottom.5796:

The biggest mistake most ppl on the forum seem to make is that they have no clue what situations they should search out and what to avoid. Do I go roaming like crazy with my Necro and make the sub-par mobility come into play? – nope. Do I search out 1v1’s against classes that outsustain me? – nope. Do I still Pointguard home like in the good old days? – nope. Teamfights is where the Necro belongs IMHO. And yes, you’ll have to stay in the backline and LoS like crazy, but the boonstrip and AoE-CC and DPS is just amazing.

I cannot help to feel insulted…

Also, good job on staying in a teamfight on the ledge when there is a Shoutbow/Celementalist on point nullifying your Terror Spec… The effectiveness of the spec really went down the drain a lot as of late

Besides, and do not quote me on this since I do not like to be quoted, doesn’t Nos run Power now?

More Boons equals PoC and Corrupt Boon working even worse.

Even now, our corruptions can’t just pierce through massive boonage in meta.

Corrupt Boon nerf should’ve been reverted long time ago to make it something to be afraid about.

As for Terrormancers – with PoC I believe we were supposed to be “the counter” to celestial boonage. But with all Medi Guards, Celementalists and Shoutbows around, we’re maybe left with extremaly low windows when we can actually do something and not get cleansed before first fear ends.

Sometimes you’d be better off going power with that scepter, because you’re just constantly giving everyone vigor and regeneration in teamfight…

PowerBottom.5796:

Well, afaik, one of the teams winning the most (or nearly everything) atm is running a terror-necro…. can’t be that bad. ^^’

It’s atm also my favourite class/build to play and it feels pretty strong to me… but hey, what do I know, right? Cuz everyone not whining about the balance just doesn’t have the deep understanding you guys have. :P

The biggest mistake most ppl on the forum seem to make is that they have no clue what situations they should search out and what to avoid. Do I go roaming like crazy with my Necro and make the sub-par mobility come into play? – nope. Do I search out 1v1’s against classes that outsustain me? – nope. Do I still Pointguard home like in the good old days? – nope. Teamfights is where the Necro belongs IMHO. And yes, you’ll have to stay in the backline and LoS like crazy, but the boonstrip and AoE-CC and DPS is just amazing.

The necro can 1v1 for sure. The issue is team fighting and mobility. Like you’ve pointed out the necro can neither bunker nor be roamers. However, they can’t team fight. Literally if 2 or more people jump you then you’re dead. You can’t run away because we have no mobility skills, we can’t tank the damage because we don’t have scaling defensive skills and we have no easy access to stability. Why bother bringing a class that is dependent on other classes to keep it alive and can’t fulfill two roles and can’t defend itself when I can bring an ele, gaurdian, engi or any other class that fulfills those roles better, contributes to the team more, and can survive on its own.

Also, what CC? Do you mean the two low duration fears (unless you are condi, in which case it totals to about more or less 4 seconds) and the chill effect we have? Because we can’t lock down classes like engi can. The boon strip that is very easily avoidable through dodges, can only remove 5 boons on one target and has a 40 second cooldown? Yeah. Very strong team presence. Your not an asset to your team if you play condi necro you are a reliability because your team has to babysit you because you can’t do anything if anyone decides to attack you. Sure, you do nice damage if your ignored, but that is a moot point because the second you are focused your a dead man (no pun intended).

Also, a competitive team lost in a previous tournament because the enemy team every time went after the necro and fights would turn into disadvantages for them. Everyone who has played pvp for a while knows that necro’s aren’t that scary and are more often than not free kills for an organized team.

Zelkovan.2630:

Also, a competitive team lost in a previous tournament because the enemy team every time went after the necro and fights would turn into disadvantages for them. Everyone who has played pvp for a while knows that necro’s aren’t that scary and are more often than not free kills for an organized team.

As a Necro so many tears for what i know to be true..

Unfortunately the changes do feel like a cop out rather than actual improvement. ‘So we have to look into necros too. Well, let us just get over with it quickly without breaking too much so we can move on to things that might actually be worth making an effort’. For some reason it seems very easy to give even more boon generation/AOE condi removal/survivability to professsions which already have superior access to these things while necros seem destined to remain green meat bags.

If you look at all the changes for the different professions, then what is happening is mostly consolidation: making the most frequently used traits baseline, merging useful ones and removing useless ones. Thing is, if you simply do this with the current necro traits, you will end up with two empty trait lines and barely 10-15 traits in the remaining ones. The reason being of course that necros have received less care since release than any other class.

I kinda agree with you. They force necro to make choices by moving all good ones to Grandmaster Slot.

On the other hand, Warrior and Guardian get a flat buff in damage modifier and dps traits, while thief gets that insanely OP shadow art and new deadly art.

Zelkovan.2630:

The necro can 1v1 for sure. The issue is team fighting and mobility. Like you’ve pointed out the necro can neither bunker nor be roamers. However, they can’t team fight. Literally if 2 or more people jump you then you’re dead. You can’t run away because we have no mobility skills, we can’t tank the damage because we don’t have scaling defensive skills and we have no easy access to stability. Why bother bringing a class that is dependent on other classes to keep it alive and can’t fulfill two roles and can’t defend itself when I can bring an ele, gaurdian, engi or any other class that fulfills those roles better, contributes to the team more, and can survive on its own.

Also, what CC? Do you mean the two low duration fears (unless you are condi, in which case it totals to about more or less 4 seconds) and the chill effect we have? Because we can’t lock down classes like engi can. The boon strip that is very easily avoidable through dodges, can only remove 5 boons on one target and has a 40 second cooldown? Yeah. Very strong team presence. Your not an asset to your team if you play condi necro you are a reliability because your team has to babysit you because you can’t do anything if anyone decides to attack you. Sure, you do nice damage if your ignored, but that is a moot point because the second you are focused your a dead man (no pun intended).

Also, a competitive team lost in a previous tournament because the enemy team every time went after the necro and fights would turn into disadvantages for them. Everyone who has played pvp for a while knows that necro’s aren’t that scary and are more often than not free kills for an organized team.

This is the build I run atm:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW7Yjc0UebtN+1wfbighSyWoDi+ACgzlykIKA-TJxHABnt/wRlBA4JA87FBAA

(doesn’t seem to work: rabid-amu, sigil of energy and sigil of torment on both, rune of the traveler, corrupt boon, wurm and spectral armor, rest pretty standard, except I run greater marks instead of the fear-proc msot of the times)

2700 toughness
1800+ health
insane amounts of LF when focused
heavy condition-removal

> if you have anything that helps you out with the sustain (like shoutbow) in the teamfight, you’ll be about as tanky as it gets. Shoutbow is probably anyways one of the best ally’s a Necro can have: He gives you vigor, heals, can banner-rez you, has burning thats very hard to remove cuz it’s reapplied like crazy and he can help you hit your important stuff with immobilize. The Necro on the other hand has the heavy CC and skills to deal with many of the sustain-heavy builds.

dodges aren’t a problem, because you can easily fake the important skills and bait out dodges.

I really don’t understand ppl than run carrion amu and no real defensive CD (cuz they need to use both spectral walk and often the wurm for mobility) and then complain about being focused down in teamfights.

Also, they run nightmare runes, which just suck in teamfights: guess what? a ranged dps will just hit you before the thief goes in or whatever and your random BS-proc just did absolutely nothing. Same thing goes for reapers protection – it’s a little bit more reliable and against some comps I use it, but greater marks are often just way better for teamfighting.

I also run the sigil of torment for an extra AoE-condition, so it’s harder to be removed.

PowerBottom.5796:

snip

First off, that build is not reinventing the wheel… slapping Sigil of Torment and Traveler Runes on a standard PoC Terror build does not make it something magical – it is literally what I ran for nearly a year aside the torment sigil, only without MoT since you will have 0 benefit from it

And this does not debunk anything said previously…
A Shoutbow’s purpose is cleansing and stalling (sometimes even killing) – an object who literally has so many AoE cleanses that it can nullify any condi-build. Not just Necromancer, but Ranger (probably one of the best for 1v1’s) and Engineer as well
You say it yourself, it is your best ally – but why restrict yourself to getting help from a Shoutbow as a Necromancer? Why not take it further and, you know, pick something else up? Does that suddenly change the strength of the Shoutbow? Probably not, so saying that the Shoutbow is your best partner is like saying Grass is Green, cannot argue with it, it is true – but irrelevant for the discusion

Reason why people pick up Carrion vs Rabid is an issue with what you face… More health is a better defense against Conditions (Celestials also use Condis as a main source of damage) – where Rabid is better against pure power
Also, Rabid or Carrion, being focussed down means death… I do not know where the mythical “More armour > More Health” came from – but I can assure you that you will not be capable of defending yourself against a Mes+Thief engaging from Stealth relying solely on your Amulet… The only thing you can do is use your Flesh Wurm (pre-casted) to disengage, as Necromancers have no reliable way of defending themselves against numbers (this has been discussed to death)

As for Nightmare Runes or Scavenging even vs Traveler – what is the purpose of your build? Do you use Traveler to survive better? Because if not, this meta surely doesn’t lack AoE Swiftness, so you do not need to rely on an amulet unless you run in an uncoordinated group – and even then the effectiveness of Travelers do not beat the pure power boost the other Runes give vs Traveler…
The reason some (and I) ran Travelers for a long time was because it worked with the previous itteration of Foot in the Grave – making it possible to safestomp or saferess without getting interrupted (+Boon duration), however this was effectively gutted as the meta changed, and eventually FitG itself, being reborn into something new that is not like his old self
Reason people pick up RP is because it is a reliable way to avoid being bursted with a Thief engaging with Basilisk Venom from stealth – as the counter Fear makes them flee, effectively saving you from losing 75% health… Whether you want to pick it up yourself or not is personal preference, as there are a plethora of good options to pick up instead

Sigil of Torment, once more personal preference – I like Geomancy as it adds to something a Necromancer can already reliably stack
However, Tormenting and Travelers do not mix together, aside from filling the bar with a condi you already have, it does nothing that will shock the enemy

All this being said; Do you have moderate succes on your build? Kudos – but do not pretend as if you are somewhat of a Special Snowflake and you got the magical key that no-one found out yet… If anything Ventari from previously [BooN] ran Travelers at the first ToL, and Sigil of Torment is obviously discussed on the Necromancers’ forum
That your perspective seems vastly different than others is nothing more than an experience issue… As it stands now, and it pains me to say it, Terror PoC is simply not worth taking… The effectiveness declines rapidly decreases when faced against coordinated groups

GoogleBrandon.5073:

And this does not debunk anything said previously…
A Shoutbow’s purpose is cleansing and stalling (sometimes even killing) – an object who literally has so many AoE cleanses that it can nullify any condi-build. Not just Necromancer, but Ranger (probably one of the best for 1v1’s) and Engineer as well
You say it yourself, it is your best ally – but why restrict yourself to getting help from a Shoutbow as a Necromancer….

Okay, I may have painted the picture a bit one-sided: The Necro does a lot for the Shoutbow too: Shoutbow doesn’t have too much CC nor stunbreakers, so the terrornecro can fear ppl that try to focus and stunlock the warrior. Also, the fears of the necro are good set-ups for bow5 or sword3 and the snares of the necro make the bowF1 a bit more effective. Also, the Necro gives the war a bit of regen. So they both complement each other pretty well IMHO.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Reason why people pick up Carrion vs Rabid is an issue with what you face… More health is a better defense against Conditions (Celestials also use Condis as a main source of damage) – where Rabid is better against pure power
Also, Rabid or Carrion, being focussed down means death… I do not know where the mythical “More armour > More Health” came from – but I can assure you that you will not be capable of defending yourself against a Mes+Thief engaging from Stealth relying solely on your Amulet…

Toughness makes you by design better at sustaining health, because your healing skills will heal for more effective HP, at least when not battling conditions. An the Necro has some pretty good anti-condition skills. Rabid has always seem like the much better choice and the only reason why it wasn’t THAT much better, is because you used to have too little on-crit-procs, which got better with the torment-sigil.
And yes, of course you can use the flesh-wurm defensively – no1 said otherwise. But srly, if you have good positioning, LoS’ing, good Life-force management and use fear defensively, you don’t have that much less tools against being spiked than other classes. But you have much higher toughness and healthpool than many DD’s, which, at least against being spiked, is more important than sustain.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

As for Nightmare Runes or Scavenging even vs Traveler – what is the purpose of your build? Do you use Traveler to survive better? Because if not, this meta surely doesn’t lack AoE Swiftness, so you do not need to rely on an amulet unless you run in an uncoordinated group – and even then the effectiveness of Travelers do not beat the pure power boost the other Runes give vs Traveler…

I run traveler because I don’t wanna use CD’s for swiftness. plain and simple. I use plague-form for safestomps – ye, it’s not much, but it’s something. If you have enough swiftness on your team, go for another rune-set, but I just don’t think that you should pick nightmare rune, simply because it has a fear-proc.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Reason people pick up RP is because it is a reliable way to avoid being bursted with a Thief engaging with Basilisk Venom from stealth – as the counter Fear makes them flee, effectively saving you from losing 75% health… Whether you want to pick it up yourself or not is personal preference, as there are a plethora of good options to pick up instead

It’s a completely unreliable way. Do you really think good thiefs will engage on you knowing you have RP up? they just throw out one headshot (or another class fires some CC) and laugh about your useless proc. Srsly, the fear-procs just suck, just like many other procs.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Sigil of Torment, once more personal preference – I like Geomancy as it adds to something a Necromancer can already reliably stack
However, Tormenting and Travelers do not mix together, aside from filling the bar with a condi you already have, it does nothing that will shock the enemy

Geomancy means you’ll have to be close to do sth and since I desperately try to do DMG from far, I’d much rather have an on-crit effect. If you like bleeding better, go for sigil of earth.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

All this being said; Do you have moderate succes on your build? Kudos – but do not pretend as if you are somewhat of a Special Snowflake and you got the magical key that no-one found out yet.

Never said any of that, I also don’t wanna make it sound like Necro is the best build out there or sth. (I personally like it the most atm and I think it’s underplayed, but nothing more). Also, most of your points have a certain validity to them, I just think that you might paint the picture a bit too black.

PowerBottom.5796:

Never said any of that, I also don’t wanna make it sound like Necro is the best build out there or sth. (I personally like it the most atm and I think it’s underplayed, but nothing more). Also, most of your points have a certain validity to them, I just think that you might paint the picture a bit too black.

I don’t want to come off as raging at you or trying to down play your opinion, for clarification. It’s just I can sometimes get a bit frustrated when people try to argue the class is in a good spot or above others. It isn’t. It isn’t at the level of unplayable but its never touched the “good” level. So yes, it isn’t as “black” as I’ve been trying to picture it. However the issue still stands that compared to everything else in this game the Necro synergizes least with the beautiful combat system in this game. As Nemesis says…“It’s like they made an amazing combat system and forgot to invite the Necromancer”!

That being said I still enjoy the class itself and can find it very enjoyable. Frustration stems from the fact that everything on the class seems to be downplayed by every other class in terms of traits and skills and how Anet hasn’t even attempted to address it in three years. That and the recent “revamp” was shoddily done for Necro’s in comparison to every other class.

So, sorry if I came off as a bit conceited there!