Guild Wars 2

A few friends ingame urged me to post the PM I sent to Allie in the forums, so that all can view.

There are two types of damage mitigation in this game:

• Offensive Mitigation
  Weakness, Blind, Stun, Daze, Fear, Vampirism/Leeching, Condition Transfers, Boon Conversion

• Defensive Mitigation
  Invulnerability, Dodge/Vigor, Teleportation/mobility, Invisibility, Protection, Stability, Strong Healing, Block, Evade, Reflect, Stunbreakers, Passive/Active Condition removal, Self Resurrection, Condition Conversion

Now, Necromancer has limited to zero access to most defensive mitigation capabilities, however it has a significant amount of access to Offensive Mitigation. The reason why Necromancers lack survivability, is because we rely on cutting damage at the source, our opponent. Every other class in the game has high access to defensive mitigation, the problem is, the Defensive mitigation, when used properly, will ignore a Necromancer’s offensive mitigation, thus making him very easy to kill.

For example: Fear (Or in this case Deathshroud 3: Doom), is the Necromancer’s primary damage mitigation skill, because it can interrupt a burst. However if the opponent has stability, invisibility, dodge rolls, invulnerability, block, or a stunbreaker, the interrupt is simply useless. That eliminates the average Necromancer’s only source of survivability if CC chained.

Most classes have access to both Defensive, and Offensive mitigations, that will allow them to be enormously hard to kill, while still being able to deal large quantities of damage, as an example: Ranger

Ranger is currently the best tank in the game, because they have large access to defensive mitigation from high boon access, and the strongest healing in the game. Troll Unguent and Healing Spring are by far the best heals available, Troll Unguent, combined with Signet of the Wild, and Regeneration boon when built for healing power can heal for up to 1,300-1,600 health per second. Which will simply negate most damage dealt to them, while they can also evade consistently, stealth, go invulnerable, or simply escape. Not to mention the fact that with their Spirit Elite, they can self resurrect themselves.

I made numerous suggestions in the past of how to fix Necromancer, I actually compiled a list of trait fixes/changes to both nerf the ridiculous condition presence people have complained about recently, while still making them a threat, and a hard to kill threat at that, what they were (I believe) intended to be. However, I will simply state some key ideas that, if improved upon, will put Necromancer at a much higher standing, and also nerf some of the stronger metas of other classes

Now, let’s establish immediately that Necromancer does NOT need any more condition cleanses, at the moment, my Tormentor build is practically immune to most forms of condition damage compared to other classes. The main problem is white damage, and bursts. Also the fact that the Necromancer’s damage can be mitigated far too easily. What Necromancer needed before the big ‘buff’ was a way to keep people from immediately cleansing it’s damage, condition cleanses, both AoE and Self cleansing, are FAAAAAAR too prevalent on many classes, however, instead of granting us a way to keep them from cleansing it, you instead buff our damage so we now have a condition ‘burst’ which until then was only available to HGH Engineers.

• Buff Offensive Mitigation

• Weakness
  Necromancer has Weakness, but it isn’t all that effective of mitigation when opponents can cleanse it immediately. Do with that what you will, I’d advise buffing our access to it, or moving it down on cleansing queues.

• Vampirism.

Or should I bold it?

• Vampirism
  This NEEEEEEEDS a buff, and badly. This is our potential mitigation, and it could be very useful. What I suggest, is buffing Vampirism’s leeching capability by 25-40%, or by having it scale more effectively with power, or healing. Next, I’d suggest you move Vampiric Precision trait to grandmaster, moving Vampiric Rituals to Master tree, and have it siphon 20% of the damage you inflict on a critical hit as health. That wouldn’t be super overpowered, since most classes would still be able to do better, and remember that this is a class with no mobility/escapes.

• Blinds and Wells in general
  Wells are good, very good, but they are very situational too. Currently, Wellmancers are only good at fighting on small points in PvP, and worthless in WvW against competent players. Well of Darkness makes for strong mitigation, but it’s not enough to save a Necromancer. What we need, is a way to keep opponents in our wells, to stop opponents from kiting us too easily. Our only truly viable white damage builds have to involve Wells of some sort, since they allow us to burst, but our burst is incredibly easy to avoid compared to other classes. I won’t make any suggestions on this, since most of my suggestions would be blatantly overpowered, or involve removing “Dhuumfire” for longer lasting/larger/stronger Wells, all I ask is that you look into it. Blinding is by far the strongest form of offensive mitigation, and we have some strong access to it, however I’d say we could use a bit more. Though it depends on what options you decide to take for buffing our other mitigation, namely Vampirism.

• Nerf Defensive Mitigation or grant it to us

Defensive mitigation is way too strong, you cannot deny that. It’s to the point that people whine about it every day, when they don’t even realize what they’re truly whining about.

• Stealth
  Stealth is overpowered, in any game you try to put it, no matter how you try to approach it, it’s overpowered. Everyone knows it. I think you know it too. There are several ways to make this balanced, though every way will tick off the Thief/Mesmer community, but it still definitely needs to be nerfed. I’ll list a few ways:

A) Remove the ability to use utilities outside of traps in stealth, including removing the ability to heal. (Disregarding Regeneration) <- Probably the best way to nerf it

B) Buff the duration, but reduce the speed of Stealthed players by 50-66%

C) Grant Stealth debuffs to classes such as Necro, Warrior, and Guardian when a Stealthed player is hit by a stun, daze, fear, or damage greater than 5% of their initial health

• Invulnerability
  This needs a nerf. I’d advise making Invulnerability be hit by unblockable attacks, and condition based attacks such as Scepter auto, or Doom. Also, class mechanics need to be disabled while invulnerable, I’m looking at Ele mist form attunement heals.

• Dodge/Vigor
  This needs the biggest nerf of them all, this combination is enormously overpowered, and is what most players complain about, and what most Necromancer wish they had. Dodge needs to be treated as a block, not invulnerability, it also needs to last shorter durations. Vigor access needs to be reduced on ALL classes, and corrupting vigor should become Torment. OR grant Vigor, and a way to refill endurance on Necromancer.

• Self Resurrection
  Either say it’s a bug, and remove it. Or say it’s a feature and give Necromancer a good way to do it, I mean, we are Necromancers, shouldn’t we be able to resurrect something? Signet of Undeath is also very bad, and doesn’t count compared to other classes Resurrection capabilities.

• Strong Healing
  Some heals are too good. Water Attunement heal on Ele is fairly strong, Troll Unguent is ridiculously strong, and should have 10 seconds added to it’s cooldown, Guardian Heals are also too strong, combining that with all of their other capabilities, though it doesn’t bother me much.

Final Thoughts

The point of this, is hopefully to guide the Developers into making smart decisions, rather than the bad ones they’ve been making lately. I was not among the Necro crowd whining for massive buffs, and I only wanted bug fixes. The ‘big buff’ was a serious overbuff to our already strong capabilities. If we had bug fixes, and possibly a bit better mitigation, we would have been much stronger, and highly viable before the ‘big buff’. Unfortunately, the devs continue to nerf/buff on a need-to-have basis, and seem to be messing up the class in many ways, I’m constantly forced to change my build, some of my builds have become completely unviable, whereas my semi-viable builds have become completely overpowered in fights.

We still need to be nerfed, but definitely not in the ways you seem to believe we have to be nerfed. If you want my advice on how to nerf Necro, without breaking the class (Again, not for the many whiners/baddies on the forums, but for the good, esports players you look for), then I can give that as well. I don’t expect you people to take my word seriously, but hopefully it will help you. Alot of these buffs/nerfs are also classwide, as what is currently wrong with balance and the game in general.

(I posted this a while ago, after the big ‘buff’ to Necro, alot of this could be used for ideas for future buffs/nerfs, if you like)

TheMightyAltroll.3485

• Remove Fear from Spectral Wall

• Add Torment (6s) to Spectral Wall

• Remove “Dhuumfire”

• Add “Strength of the Underworld” to Grandmaster Spite tree.
  Strength of the Underworld
  Wells last 50% longer

• Make Greater Marks default on Staff

• Move Staff Mastery to replace Greater Marks

• Move “Death Nova” down to Master Traits

• Add “Vengeful Servants” to Grandmaster Death Magic tree
  Vengeful Servants
  When a Minion dies, you receive Fury(5s) and Vigor(5s) (Does not apply to Jagged horrors)

• Change “Vampiric Precision” to heal yourself for 20% of the damage you inflict from Critical Hits

• Move “Vampiric Precision” to Grandmaster Blood Magic tree

• Move “Vampiric Rituals” to Master Blood Magic tree.

• Move “Terror” to Grandmaster tree.

• Move “Withering Precision” to Master tree.

• Move “Target the Weak” to Grandmaster Spite trait

• Remove “Siphoned Power”

• Move “Furious Demise” to Minor Curses trait

• Move “Barbed Precision” to Master Curses Trait

• Increase bleed duration on “Barbed Precision” bleeds by 100%

• Add new trait “Myopathy” to Grandmaster Curses trait to replace “Target the Weak”
  Myopathy
  Apply 2 seconds of Immobilize and vulnerability when you apply Weakness (10 second CD)

• Remove trait “Reanimator”

• Move “Ritual of Protection” to replace “Reanimator” (Only applies protection once per well)

• Add new trait “Summoner” in Master Traits
  Summoner
  Summon 2 Jagged Horrors when you use a healing skill in combat. Capped at a maximum of 5 Jagged Horrors. (Remove the constant negative health effects from Jagged Horrors)

• Remove trait “Strength of Undeath”

• Add trait “Specter” to replace “Strength of Undeath”
  Specter
  You regenerate 50% of your life force when out of combat.

Above is a nerf to the OP Terrormancer you see lately, and a buff to lesser used builds, also a buff to make Vampires viable. Numerous fixes to crappy traits too.

These are all really good ideas. Vampirisim really needs a a buff but i would say leave vampiric rituals grandmaster. That trait is extremely strong i would know i use it. Necromancers don’t really need vigor or stability or any of that. What they need is a buff to their LF generation. Instead of generating 2% make it somewhere between 4-7% life force per hit and give more weapon skills life force generation. Make it easier and faster to fill up your life pool.
I disagree with you about the stealth thing. Thieves are an extremely squishy class they need stealth in order to survive. Stealth should be more defensive like almost a fade out and dodge attacks instead of a extremely offensive ability.
This is just my 2 cents

Well, firstly putting Vampiric Precision at Grandmaster and buffing it so much, while putting Vampiric Rituals as a Master Trait would mean that you can use the two together with Blood thirst for a super strong vampirism field, HOWEVER, you would NOT be able to use all three with Ritual Mastery. So you can either have super strong leeching on a long CD, or a semi-strong leeching on a shorter CD. It’s a pick and choose basis.

As for Stealth, Thieves are not squishy. S/D Thieves are infact very hard to kill, without needing Stealth at all. It would still be strong damage mitigation, but not to the ridiculous extent it is now.

Though I’m glad you put your ideas in, the Life Force idea is a good one.

You must also remember, that these do not apply to Necromancer only. Warrior has a high amount of offensive mitigation, but very little defensive mitigation, and if you look, both Necro and Warrior are considered the easiest to kill.

Whereas Guardians, Elementalists, and Rangers all have the highest access to Defensive mitigation (and even a respectable access to offensive mitigation) and are considered the hardest to kill.

Engineers, Thieves, and Mesmers all have moderate amounts of both, therefore they are the inbetween classes, and are moderately difficult to kill, depending on what form of mitigation they build for

By using this logic, we can determine that defensive mitigation is too strong, whereas offensive mitigation is too weak

I’ve seen stealth done better in MMOs before, through a system that was much more complicated.

The idea was this: each player had themselves a perception stat, and all NPCs had this stat, too. The stealth abilities granted to any player would subtract from this perception stat, and this would give the overall distance at which an enemy can be seen. So, for example, if a character had a perception of 500 feet, and stealth had a rating of 300, then the first character would see the invisible character at 200 feet.

This led to more diversity, with various classes having abilities that could increase their perception, as well as classes getting different and more powerful forms of stealth. There was even a buff item that could increase perception that was quite cheap, making it so should the situation call for it you could always see those invisible enemies should your class or build be vulnerable to them.

I think the biggest problem with GW2 stealth is that it is completely depthless. There is no counterplay other than randomly flailing feebly in the wind. There is no sophisticated method to determine of a player is visible or invisible in different circumstances. There is no active counter-skill that affects stealthed players greater than non-stealthed players, or anything of the sort. The most you can do with a stealthed opponent is to randomly guess where they might be and what they are doing, and unfortunately smart players use things like Blink and Shadowstep to insure that your guess is always wrong.

Anyway, the big problem with offensive mitigation is that, ultimately, the ball is not in your court. On my Engineer when I activate Elixir S, I’m invulnerable for 3 seconds and there is not a darn thing anyone can do about it. Because the defensive aspect of this is wholly in my control and acts irrespective of what my opponent does, you can say that I have full control over this defensive ability. But Necromancers never get this option:

Blind: Only meaningful with near permanent sustain or on critical attacks. Opponents can choose to not stand in the blind field, cleanse it away, or just fire off a useless auto attack before doing something crucial.

Weakness: Doesn’t work half the time. Can be easily cleansed away, or with the new short durations of the skill simply outlasted. Does nothing with conditions. Best use is the endurance reduction.

Chill/Cripple: only effective against enemies with limited range (melee mostly). Does nothing to ranged attacks. Can be cleansed away.

Stuns: Have to hit the target, target must not have stability, and can be broken through with stun breakers. As to whether a stun will work is merely guessing.

Death Shroud: The defensive utility of this skill lies in the assumption that your opponent will waste their attacks on you while inside of it. If they just do something like retreat and wait for the natural degen to take effect, this means that Death Shroud mitigates nothing. Requires the build up of life force in the first place.

Because of this I found most of the QQ about necromancers to be completely unfounded. In any battle, the necromancer is not truly in control over any of their defenses, and half the time over their offenses, either. The person who decides the outcome of a Necro vs. Class X fight ultimately is Class X, and as skilled as a necromancer player can get we simply lack the tools as a class in order to be top tier. So we default to spewing out a bunch of AoEs and hoping they hit, and also hoping that the other classes just happen to not be using one of the many tools that can shut us down.

Precisely my point.

However, if our survivability is to improve, then our conditions must be reduced, which is why I posted the above suggestions.

In response to your response, I basically agree with this thread. However I think the necro buff showed that Anet’s policy towards necros is going to be “a good offense is the best defense”. That means necros need to expect being focused by enemy teams and trait accordingly with the options they have available.

Other than 1v1, I do not agree that stealth is overpowered. It isn’t great in tPvp since you’ll lose points simply by entering it. It’s also basically useless for pve except as a means of mob/aggro avoidance. And as for 1v1, stealth on thieves is confusing but the classes it is placed on rely on being confusing in the first place. I’m glad anet is willing to make mechanics like this that add a lot of flavor to individual classes.

Necro does have options for defensive mitigation, it’s easy to trait a necro with a huge percent of stability uptime if you so desire. Another point is that the necro’s health pool is huge which means they don’t need as much defensive mitigation. Imagine a bunker guardian with 30k health, it would be impossible to kill. Not to mention that necro’s condition transfering/cleansing is pretty amazing.

All that being said, your proposed changes to necro seem reasonable. A well that had stability and weakness pulsing on a relatively short cool down (kind of an AoE drain ability I’d imagine would be fitting for a lich) would be very cool and could solve some problems.

I would like to see defensive mitigation nerfed on some other classes. I feel like Anet has so far created a game that places more emphasis on defensive play in tournaments than offensive, and that’s just not very fun.

infantrydiv.1620:

In response to your response, I basically agree with this thread. However I think the necro buff showed that Anet’s policy towards necros is going to be “a good offense is the best defense”. That means necros need to expect being focused by enemy teams and trait accordingly with the options they have available.

Other than 1v1, I do not agree that stealth is overpowered. It isn’t great in tPvp since you’ll lose points simply by entering it. It’s also basically useless for pve except as a means of mob/aggro avoidance. And as for 1v1, stealth on thieves is confusing but the classes it is placed on rely on being confusing in the first place. I’m glad anet is willing to make mechanics like this that add a lot of flavor to individual classes.

Necro does have options for defensive mitigation, it’s easy to trait a necro with a huge percent of stability uptime if you so desire. Another point is that the necro’s health pool is huge which means they don’t need as much defensive mitigation. Imagine a bunker guardian with 30k health, it would be impossible to kill. Not to mention that necro’s condition transfering/cleansing is pretty amazing.

All that being said, your proposed changes to necro seem reasonable. A well that had stability and weakness pulsing on a relatively short cool down (kind of an AoE drain ability I’d imagine would be fitting for a lich) would be very cool and could solve some problems.

I would like to see defensive mitigation nerfed on some other classes. I feel like Anet has so far created a game that places more emphasis on defensive play in tournaments than offensive, and that’s just not very fun.

A bunker Guardian has alot more invulnerability and healing power than a Necro. Health doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, it’s only good for mitigating condition damage, which I already stated that Necromancers are good at.

Also, if Deathshroud when traited for “Foot in the Grave” granted a stunbreaker along with the stability, then I’d say it’s pretty good. But at the moment, the few seconds of stability, while it is nice, again, highly situational. The only good defensive mitigation capaibilities that Necro has, are Protection from Wells, Condition Conversion (Again from Wells), moderate stability up time when traited.

As I said, it’s not enough.

However, while Stealth may be somewhat bad for capturing points, or large scale AoE, it is still strong mitigation, especially when built around. Prismatic Understanding Mesmers can win 1v5s in WvW, though, as you said, the only reason why they aren’t in PvP is because stealth loses points. Though, you could argue Invulnerability is bad for that same reason.

Comparing Necro survivability to a bunker Ranger is where you first went wrong.

Secondly, Necros actually got buffed with this patch, so whining about our survivability makes you look foolish.

Maybe you should test things and really understand the patch before asking for a laundry list of ridiculous changes that make no sense.

Overall, this patch was pretty good for all professions and the game in general. If you don’t see that and think “Anet been making bad decisions”, then maybe you don’t know the game as much as you think.

The game isn’t perfect and I don’t agree with zero LF out of the gate, but the profession is dialed in pretty good overall. In fact, I can play almost any profession right now and not feel totally kitten .

SPESHAL.9106:

Comparing Necro survivability to a bunker Ranger is where you first went wrong.

Secondly, Necros actually got buffed with this patch, so whining about our survivability makes you look foolish.

Maybe you should test things and really understand the patch before asking for a laundry list of ridiculous changes that make no sense.

Overall, this patch was pretty good for all professions and the game in general. If you don’t see that and think “Anet been making bad decisions”, then maybe you don’t know the game as much as you think.

The game isn’t perfect and I don’t agree with zero LF out of the gate, but the profession is dialed in pretty good overall. In fact, I can play almost any profession right now and not feel totally kitten .

Comparing a tank Necro to a tank Ranger is wrong?

Necromancers got buffed? Where? Where are the top tier Life Force bunkers?

Mmkay.

Very good for Guardian, I agree. Obviously I know nothing of the game to be making such accusations in well detailed/thought out manner.

I’m glad you can hotjoin any profession and not feel cheaped/kitten. I’m glad you can play meta builds for each class and not feel cheaped/kitten. Well done.

@TheMightyAltroll
I’m sure Anet nerfed mist form to make you unable to do anything but dodge, though I could be wrong, I don’t use this skill. You may be thinking of Obsidian Flesh, the best invulnerability, hardly seen in the PvP community though.\

I agree with some of what you say though. I especially hate stealth it is just cheap. Ever fought a Mesmer who doesn’t use stealth? It is 1000 times more fun. I wouldn’t even care if summoning a clone made you lose target, but going full invisible and using your NPCs in a PvP game is just lame (applies to both Mesmer and thieves).

What is annoying about heals is the Eles healing in Evasive Arcana when combined with water attunement heal. Changing to water and using water dodge (with both the traits on) is the same as using your heal skill. What’s even more annoying is that not going down 30 arcane and 15 water makes you so much weaker that it isn’t even funny. Even 15 water and not 30 arcane you feel so much weaker against another ele with 30 arcane. And trying to take a focus, well, you kind of need that 15 water as focus has no heal (unlike the other water 5 weapon skills)

i dont think necromancers need more access to weakness. with the conditions a necromancer can spam (even without burning) weakness is covered pretty well.

you only need an offhand dagger or the trait that casts enfeebling blood when going into deathshroud to have a good (when not cleaned/dodged 100%) uptime on AOE weakness.

i would rather nerf the access of necromancers too weakness tbh.

this vampirism idea might work but im not sure if it will work like that. i played some necromancer games myself but not enough to be able to tell how to fix the class but what i know while playing vs a necromancer is that i am weakened most of the time.

I stopped reading when you said nerf stealth. Are you kidding me? Necros are number 1 class that reveals me out of a refuge and chain fears me after stun break is down to kill me with ease.

TLDR and obvious batnut crazy.

@ OP finally someone who crystal clear explains, why Necro is lackluster. Why recent nerf, was overdone. Give it a read Anet… I know you are out there.

The way you phrase your post sounds a bit like the Necromancer is the kid in the room that has to have all the other kid’s toys. And to be honest, I don’t believe they do.

GW2 seems to have been built in such a way that if you have a hole in your build, there are several ways to fill it. Those ways being; runes, sigils, traits and most importantly (which I’m beginning to think most people are forgetting) your other teammates.

The very thing that made the Ele OP was that they could generate so many boons on their own without the need of their teammates and the very thing that makes the Necro condition build OP right now is the fact that they can generate all these conditions without the help of their teammates. In an ideal world, if the Necromancer couldn’t produce burning but could stack bleeds and torment, I would expect teams to run Sun Spirit Rangers in the team fight, enabling their Necromancer (as well as the rest of the team) to stack burning but lo and behold, that is not the world we live in.

What I’m getting at is, we should not expect any single class to be able to do everything perfectly. If the Necromancer isn’t good at Defensive mitigation, they don’t necessarily have to be. I do agree that Vampirism needs a buff though, because right now, you could try to make a build around it but it just doesn’t work out as well as the promise of Vampirism should. The Well/life steal bunker builds work but only when multiple people stand in them and apart from that situational scenario, Life steal builds just don’t work too well. I believe Vampirism should be an extra tick of damage at the end of every attack and I agree that it should scale a lot more with healing power.

About Dodge/Vigor; I don’t feel it should be changed at all. Dodge is the counter to all offensive counters. If I you were to put condis on me and I were to flip your condis back to you, you could just dodge and there’s nothing I can do about it (except maybe bait your dodge a lot earlier). If you remove Dodge, then you run the risk of making unblockable attacks run rampant.
I also noticed that when converting conditions to boons, bleeding becomes vigor. I can get a very long tick of vigor if I fight a condition class.

Self Ressurection; I call it skillful play and no, we don’t need to have it. It would be a nice addition but we don’t need it.

Strong Healing; The funny thing about this is we have something quite similar to Rangers. It’s called Well of Blood. 6k healing at the start and 5k healing over 10seconds. Throw in Wells life steal and near infinite regen and you could heal up to 10k health in just 10 seconds. Let’s also not forget that necros can stack over 22 seconds of Weakness, as well as over 15 seconds of protection (at 50% health and with wells) which helps with mitigation allowing those heals to stick.

So, yea, I don’t feel Necros need to be homogenized even more. We need less homogenization, more differentiation.

I don’t think Invulnerability or Dodge mechanics are likely to change. Dodge is very clearly set up as a cornerstone mechanic of the combat system, so it’s most likely at where Anet wants it to be. Dodging is kinda overpowered, but that’s the point. By giving everyone such strong active defense, you allow attacks to be more ridiculous.

Invulnerability, similarly, is intentionally a trump-card defensive state. There are other states which prevent fewer things, so Anet clearly wants a range of options for what they can slap on various abilities and Invulnerability sits at the very top for normal play.

Perma-Vigor is likely to be nerfed, though. A lot of professions get access to traits which grant them Vigor pretty much all the time and usually those traits are way too easy to get. Sigils of Energy are also a major culprit here, and they are pretty clearly overpowered, but Anet’s mentioned in a few SotGs that they know this. I suspect if the perma-Vigor traits were moved significantly up their various trait trees and Sigil of Energy were changed to grant 5 seconds of Vigor on swap (so it can’t stack with those traits), Dodging would be at a much more acceptable level across the board.

Stealth: Stealth needs… something. I don’t like your specific suggestions since they seem like they would mostly just make stealth feel bad to use without solving the fundamental problem but in an ideal world, there would certainly be better counterplay than “carpetbomb the area” (which works against bad thieves but less well against good ones). Stealth not allowing point capping is a lazy fix that basically only removes it from sPvP bunker builds. I wonder if giving stealth a 1-2 second fade time for foes within, say, 600 range would help things, just something to give nearby opponents a window of time in which to predict which direction the thief went and lock them down during that window. I dunno. The thief community is even whinier than the Necro community about stuff like this.

Healing: I really don’t think the problem is with Guardian or Ele or Ranger healing. Guardians are supposed to be able to bunker, the Ele has been nerfed into reasonableness, and Rangers would be fine if their evasions were toned down just a little bit (though they’d probably need other compensations as well; the Ranger in general is in a weird place). The problem is, the Necro needs healing that’s competitive with theirs and we just don’t have it. The changes to Death Shroud may be enough to cover sustain, though, since it looks like they basically doubled our Life Force this patch. We’ll have to wait and see how things play out. I suspect it may not be enough on its own but we certainly can’t propose much in the way of sustain buffs until we get used to having bigger LF pools. Vampiric Precision clearly needs a buff, though, as it’s just terrible at the moment.

TGSlasher.1458:

@TheMightyAltroll
I’m sure Anet nerfed mist form to make you unable to do anything but dodge, though I could be wrong, I don’t use this skill. You may be thinking of Obsidian Flesh, the best invulnerability, hardly seen in the PvP community though.

That’s because it’s on the worst Ele weapon.

Personally, I feel that restoring Withering Precision to its former self (25% chance on crit, no ICD) would do a bit to help (not enough, though).

But necros REALLY need better access to Blind if they don’t get any defensive mitigations.

Good discussion, gents. Too bad Arenanet doesn’t care. I was really hoping they’d read this and take it to heart, or atleast provide decent discussion around it.

I love my power/toughness shout build guardian, fits my prefered playstyle. I have a PvP buddy in my guild that always beats me in duels, I blame it on the range advantage. I do have access to a few condition cleanses, but not really viable ones suprisingly. I think my best one is a circle that I have to stand in because it pulses for 5-6 seconds and every second is one condition cleansed. Thats fine and great ya know. But heres the thing, it sucks when I pop by stability shout to get ready to attack the necro than I get feared, after I get feared I get like 6-8 conditions on me, I have to stand in a circle to clease…At this time I am slowed and 20-30% HP, and besides me elite with lets me reset by virtues for another block/heal/burn (LOL Burn) there is nothing else I can do.

The only thing I really dont like on my necro is the long cd on wells. the 50s cd wells need to be kitten . Or at least make ritual mastery an adept trait. It does nothing but lower the cd of a few very situational skills so that trait should be buffed(idk how) if it is going to stay as a master trait. Then i wouldn’t mind the 50s cd so much.

@OP

A really good post.
What I would like to add is:

Defensive Mitigation scales as the number of oponents go up. Offensive Mitigation doesn’t.

If you look everything, history, games, society, anything it can be seen that extreme specialisation or being “one sided” is never a good thing. What I mean by this is that making necro an all out offensive train is not a good thing.

I understand that they want to keep necromancer as an offensive profession with low mobility but as I said, we need some defensive mitigation. Adding more damage or offensive capabilities is just a dead end. You don’t balance a game by overbuffing things and nerfing others.

I strongly recommend to do the nerfs on a build, not profession basis. What I would like to see is more defensive mitigation in form of more mobility/vigor/stability/stunbreaks. I know devs don’t like this, but I would love to see them implemented into DS with traits.

I think minor traits should favor all builds, not just specific ones. I would love to see reanimator and protection of the horde merged into one major trait and instead something like:

DM adept minor: Vigorous shroud
- gain 5s vigor when entering Death Shroud

DM master minor: Unchained Reaper
- when stunned, break out from it when entering Death Shroud
- 40sec internal CD
(only triggered when entering Death Shroud while being stunned/dazed/feared/knocked down)

This would make more interesting to use DS and make a DS dancing tank/support build a bit more viable.

Necromancers just need some sort of defensive mitigation. Life Force is just too hard to balance for 1v1 AND 1vX situations. The 2 forms of mitigations should be available more or less for all professions inorder to balance out things.

What comes to stealth I still recommend the devs to let direct damage attacks show damage numbers even on a stealthed enemy.

And I agree with what you’re saying, but not necessarily the ideas about how to improve it. Those ideas would make us a bit too strong. I don’t want to see Deathshroud as a way to bunker things. I see Vampirism as the way we should facetank people, and simply mitigate damage by outhealing it.

DS will always be seen as a means to bunker things since it serves as a replacement of all the normal tools used to bunker. As for Vampirism, they could allow siphons to persist through DS and go from there. No regen, no heals, including wob or blood minion’s main siphon. Anet could solve two problems at once. It should help to increase survivability unless of course that even with the low return on vampirism proves too strong with DS.

Jayce.5632:

DS will always be seen as a means to bunker things since it serves as a replacement of all the normal tools used to bunker. As for Vampirism, they could allow siphons to persist through DS and go from there. No regen, no heals, including wob or blood minion’s main siphon. Anet could solve two problems at once. It should help to increase survivability unless of course that even with the low return on vampirism proves too strong with DS.

It’s certainly fair to say that Vampirism will never be enough for us to bunker until it heals us through DS.