Guild Wars 2

So about a month ago the forums were talking about necromancer and it came down to this:

1. “Everyone targets me and I don’t have the tools to survive”
2. “Necromancers are great…when I’m on my team and properly supported.”

Well, foot in the grave (seemingly due to your suggestions) has been made into a stun breaker, bringing out the build 0/6/2/0/6 (PoC and FitG). I’ve tried this build out without any utility stun breakers and so far I’ve been having a great time with it.

How do you guys feel about necromancers after this change? Anyone try this new build yet? Anyone try this with a power necro?

i’ve tried it and it’s definitely an improvement, i was playing 0 6 2 0 6 before, but with soul marks instead of fitg, so i just had to switch soul marks for this. But i still feel that trait is a bit circumstantial, as we pretty much needdeath shroud’s offensive power it ends up with me being chain stunned just like before, but that’s just me not adapting well i guess :p
i’ll need to play around a bit more, that’s for sure.
I’m personally dreaming of flesh warm not being interruptible (while still taking the same time to appear)

Oh, and another problem is, if you have, say two people going against you, you pretty much have to eat the stun, therefore take damage, to be able to somewhat move around. I feel like two stacks of stability wouldn’t be too much on the trait.

This is mostly about Condition Necromancers in this respect, as power Necromancers cannot, or would rather not use this trait…

2/6/0/0/6 or 0/6/2/0/6 – both can use respectively depending on the utilities you want to use… Upon reading, I adpoted 0/6/2/0/6 with Spectral Grasp instead of Spectral Walk – having a stunbreak with Flesh Worm and Deathshroud

I can say that it is still a bit rotation wise, as the last time I ran FitG it was when it just gave a few seconds of stability… Big plus about the trait now though is that you can escape Ring of Warding without blowing Flesh Worm, so you can avoid potential burst, and avoiding depleting your lifeforce in panic

So yea, the trait works rather well, and with another option for the utilities, you got some freedom…

I would not give up Flesh Wurm within Conquest though, since it will get you out of trouble if utilized well… Like Gizmorage said though, it might be really useful to get either a shortened or a removed casting animation for Flesh Worm, but still keeping the same delay for it to spawn…

But, this is certainly a good direction… This is a kind of “buff” that requires a sacrifice and some thought to utilize… In the Necromancer’s scenario, they lost on either Greater Marks, Reaper’s Protection or even Chill of Death – which is a decent trade-off for survivability in my opinion…

It’s a little bit harder, but, in theory, good way. You either save Shroud for CC break or use it more offensivly, trying to use PoC on cooldown. Choice between more pressure and more defense. I like this design.

Other meta builds however don’t make such choice, because both defense and offense are almost part of the standard rotation. Except of Shatter mesmer who does, but many don’t consider it that meta.

Trait is good, requires some thinking. I adore it against Overcharged Shot when Engi CCs himself, giving you free cover for some ability, like Path.
But I don’t think it’s gamechanger. Back in Hambow era, it would be. 100% sure. But currently I feel that if you get focused by two or more it doesn’t matter that much anyway and many cele meta build are not that hard CC heavy, immobilize is bigger problem.

Well balanced trait I say.

Necro is fine in terms of balance. What isn’t fine is that the necro builds have more or less not changed for 2.5 years. Terror or death shroud 1 spam are you options. Both strong. But both been played so often that it is boring at this point.

Also it is frustrating playing a necro (or anything) against things like slick shoes, turret engi, longbow ranger, stealth moa, air/fire procs, weapon swapping shout warrior dps.

But that isn’t unique to necro. The games balance is very balanced. What the games “balance” lacks is fun. That is why despite putting real money on the line anet are getting less and less people signing up for all these tournaments. People are bored and frustrating mechanics aren’t nerfed. There is no fun aspect to the way they balance, they are obsessed with their failed esports project.

Immobilize what kills me. so useless gm trait for me as a power necro.

I need mobility and survivability. or immobilize break more useful imo.

Rolisteel.1375:

Immobilize what kills me. so useless gm trait for me as a power necro.

I need mobility and survivability. or immobilize break more useful imo.

Flash Death Shroud (Stun break + stab) into Staff 4, Consume Conditions or Dagger 4 and your target is immobed and you have stability. Unless you’re seriously being trained, that should be more than enough to save you. If you really are being that trained, it’s either high level PvP and you should have wurm or you walked yourself into a 3v1 xD. I think it’s really only not good because you have to give up Death Perception on Power Necro.

Lordrosicky.5813:

But that isn’t unique to necro. The games balance is very balanced. What the games “balance” lacks is fun. That is why despite putting real money on the line anet are getting less and less people signing up for all these tournaments. People are bored and frustrating mechanics aren’t nerfed. There is no fun aspect to the way they balance, they are obsessed with their failed esports project.

I have a feeling the expansion will fix a lot of that.

The Gates Assassin.9827

“Everyone targets me and I don’t have the tools to survive”

Yeah true.. Reason why, is that the necro dishes out so much damage is such a short time that first thing on the target list is the necro. Even over the Eng & Cele builds.

Nurf damage & buff suitability instead, then you’l be less targeted.

Vieux P.1238:

The Gates Assassin.9827

“Everyone targets me and I don’t have the tools to survive”

Yeah true.. Reason why, is that the necro dishes out so much damage is such a short time that first thing on the target list is the necro. Even over the Eng & Cele builds.

Nurf damage & buff suitability instead, then you’l be less targeted.

Maybe Power Necro does that much damage, but I don’t think Condi Necro is at that level…until now. I don’t go after necros because I’m afraid of them. I go after them because I smell fresh meat without much challenge to kill. When I took only offensive utilities with the DS stun break, I felt like I had some actual damage to deal as a condi necro, but I could hold my own in a team fight. Before, thieves were making me pop stun breaker after stun breaker as I tried to survive. Now I’m holding against them pretty well.

Vieux P.1238:

The Gates Assassin.9827

“Everyone targets me and I don’t have the tools to survive”

Yeah true.. Reason why, is that the necro dishes out so much damage is such a short time that first thing on the target list is the necro. Even over the Eng & Cele builds.

Nurf damage & buff suitability instead, then you’l be less targeted.

Necro only has sustain damage even power as to sustain himself to build LF while doing mediocre damage, with condition I realized that fear does have good damage but doesn’t last long and it’s damage affects other condi sources. The first thing wrong with your response is that you give up something for that sustain already you don’t get it all.

It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough to make us, for example, on par with where dps guards are in the meta. But better, for sure.

We still lack group utility (Putrid Mark is still nerfed, limited blast finishers), and offense takes awhile to ramp up with the nerfs to grasping dead, terror, and Mark of blood, as well as no life force to start a match. But this change was solid.

Roe.3679:

It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough to make us, for example, on par with where dps guards are in the meta. But better, for sure.

We still lack group utility (Putrid Mark is still nerfed, limited blast finishers), and offense takes awhile to ramp up with the nerfs to grasping dead, terror, and Mark of blood, as well as no life force to start a match. But this change was solid.

Yo about that I just realize that Mark of Revival has blast finisher just like 2 of the minions… I rage a little and was about to put my pc in a grave but I’m more focus on my team not knowing what to do for now. The FotG was a fix due to change to stability it curved it’s purpose a bit but they didn’t buff it. Anet needs to understand we give up something to get sustain even tough we do the trade-off is miserable, all fingers on DS.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

How do you guys feel about necromancers after this change?

It was a good change. It didn’t fix every issue in the world obviously, but ANet addressed a long-existing and recently exacerbated issue in a timely manner with a really good change. Overall I’m happy with it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Anyone try this with a power necro?

It doesn’t work well. Loss of 50% crit chance is just way too much, power necro already can run into issues dealing the same damage as other power builds (barring Lich Form) you can’t just give up such a massive damage multiplier.

I think at this point ANet needs to focus on QoL, bug fixes, and Blood Magic. Minion AI is still god-awful and MM overall has some bad design decisions (too focused on passive when there could be some great active changes), we still have a lot of abilities that have far too long of cast times paired with after-cast animations or travel times, we still have bad interactions like Death Shroud invalidating an entire tree, vampiric traits need changing, and there are some other things we need here and there (for the love of god can we please get some decent finishers).

However, I think the BIG thing keeping builds down is our lack of weapons and lack of unique support. Our weapon selection is very narrow, we don’t have proper support or tanky weapons, and this limits us from being able to play builds that otherwise would work like wells support or tanky spectral. And in PvE the lack of unique support is the only unique thing we have. Hopefully HoT will address some of this (and I think it will), and hopefully they will follow up with new specializations relatively quickly. But overall I think Necro is just a few specializations, some QoL/bug fixes, and change to Blood Magic away from being perfection.

State of the necromancer? As someone that has mained both mesmer and necromancer I can say that once again Anet has given all classed that are weak to something GREAT ways to deal with that weakness except…. mesmer.

Bhawb.7408:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

How do you guys feel about necromancers after this change?

It was a good change. It didn’t fix every issue in the world obviously, but ANet addressed a long-existing and recently exacerbated issue in a timely manner with a really good change. Overall I’m happy with it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Anyone try this with a power necro?

It doesn’t work well. Loss of 50% crit chance is just way too much, power necro already can run into issues dealing the same damage as other power builds (barring Lich Form) you can’t just give up such a massive damage multiplier.

Would have been a welcome sight within the condition meta but…. this is the power meta for necro.

Seems like entire companies can be just as lazy/cbfed as one individual if it was say a month late. The only problem is the fact that it’s either a year or two years late.

The Primary.6371:

Bhawb.7408:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

How do you guys feel about necromancers after this change?

It was a good change. It didn’t fix every issue in the world obviously, but ANet addressed a long-existing and recently exacerbated issue in a timely manner with a really good change. Overall I’m happy with it.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Anyone try this with a power necro?

It doesn’t work well. Loss of 50% crit chance is just way too much, power necro already can run into issues dealing the same damage as other power builds (barring Lich Form) you can’t just give up such a massive damage multiplier.

Would have been a welcome sight within the condition meta but…. this is the power meta for necro.

Seems like entire companies can be just as lazy/cbfed as one individual if it was say a month late. The only problem is the fact that it’s either a year or two years late.

They saw full glass power necro taking over so the gave us a defensive buff primarily used by condi builds…. seems like a pretty decent balance attempt.

Power Necro is in the meta, so obviously they wouldn’t give it another buff (directly after buffing it to its current spot), whereas Condi Necro is falling out so it gets a buff. Seems completely logical to me. Also the FitG change couldn’t have been made before stability was made significantly weaker.

I honestly don’t think it’s that strong on condition necro mainly because you need to use DS for offensive pressure on terromancer. In a team fight it won’t be keeping you alive because it doesn’t actually give you any resistance to burst damage. The only real reason to run it is to get another utility, but SOS and epidemic are the only ones I’d consider and their both to weak with the amount of condition removal in the metagame currently. Having said that, I think it is a very good change and helps with other builds that aren’t even close to meta.

Now if they would just address the sustain issues necros have, we would be in a good place.

Clearly, they got the strength of the trait right if half the folks are saying it’s really good and the other half are saying it isn’t that great :p

The fact there is real debate over the merits of the trait means they did something right.

Bhawb.7408:

Power Necro is in the meta, so obviously they wouldn’t give it another buff (directly after buffing it to its current spot), whereas Condi Necro is falling out so it gets a buff. Seems completely logical to me. Also the FitG change couldn’t have been made before stability was made significantly weaker.

It was pathetic even before the stability change. Too far into the soul reaping line for such a low duration anti control affect.

I tried again… not worth it. I am still proposing stab when exiting +other issues as usual.

Off-topic, aren’t class specialists supposed to help with this kind of stuff or is it for show?

Gaile Gray.6029:

At the present time, the developers are discussing whether having profession specialists will be a viable inclusion in the program. So at this point, applications are on “hold” with another view planned in the next week or so.

Class specialists don’t exist yet.

Sagat.3285:

I tried again… not worth it. I am still proposing stab when exiting +other issues as usual.

Off-topic, aren’t class specialists supposed to help with this kind of stuff or is it for show?

I cover anything and everything dealing with PvP, from balance changes to matchmaking to just what you do in Heart of the Mists. There are certain changes added to the game that don’t spark much talk in the forums. Most of the time it is something that upsets someone or something that is REALLY amazing. Tweaks don’t get much traction, so I decided to start a thread to see what people think.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Rolisteel.1375:

Immobilize what kills me. so useless gm trait for me as a power necro.

I need mobility and survivability. or immobilize break more useful imo.

Flash Death Shroud (Stun break + stab) into Staff 4, Consume Conditions or Dagger 4 and your target is immobed and you have stability. Unless you’re seriously being trained, that should be more than enough to save you. If you really are being that trained, it’s either high level PvP and you should have wurm or you walked yourself into a 3v1 xD. I think it’s really only not good because you have to give up Death Perception on Power Necro.

Lordrosicky.5813:

But that isn’t unique to necro. The games balance is very balanced. What the games “balance” lacks is fun. That is why despite putting real money on the line anet are getting less and less people signing up for all these tournaments. People are bored and frustrating mechanics aren’t nerfed. There is no fun aspect to the way they balance, they are obsessed with their failed esports project.

I have a feeling the expansion will fix a lot of that.

WHY should a power necromancer rely on a condition/support weapon, the staff, to deal with conditions instead of any of his power weapons? Don’t you think it’s a problem axe has been this bad for so long, a measly 600 range weapon as your only power based weapon with pathetic autoattack damage, little aoe, and ghastly claws just being a much weaker rapid fire or volley.

The only condi clear a necromancer has is tied to condition weapons and a single easily interrupted long cast time heal.

It’s kinda silly how much more easily an elementalist or engineer or warrior or even guardian manipulates conditions off himself than the supposed master of conditions.

Zenith.7301:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Rolisteel.1375:

Immobilize what kills me. so useless gm trait for me as a power necro.

I need mobility and survivability. or immobilize break more useful imo.

Flash Death Shroud (Stun break + stab) into Staff 4, Consume Conditions or Dagger 4 and your target is immobed and you have stability. Unless you’re seriously being trained, that should be more than enough to save you. If you really are being that trained, it’s either high level PvP and you should have wurm or you walked yourself into a 3v1 xD. I think it’s really only not good because you have to give up Death Perception on Power Necro.

Lordrosicky.5813:

But that isn’t unique to necro. The games balance is very balanced. What the games “balance” lacks is fun. That is why despite putting real money on the line anet are getting less and less people signing up for all these tournaments. People are bored and frustrating mechanics aren’t nerfed. There is no fun aspect to the way they balance, they are obsessed with their failed esports project.

I have a feeling the expansion will fix a lot of that.

WHY should a power necromancer rely on a condition/support weapon, the staff, to deal with conditions instead of any of his power weapons? Don’t you think it’s a problem axe has been this bad for so long, a measly 600 range weapon as your only power based weapon with pathetic autoattack damage, little aoe, and ghastly claws just being a much weaker rapid fire or volley.

The only condi clear a necromancer has is tied to condition weapons and a single easily interrupted long cast time heal.

It’s kinda silly how much more easily an elementalist or engineer or warrior or even guardian manipulates conditions off himself than the supposed master of conditions.

It’s a sad joke, but champions of the necro class seem to be drinking in the anet Kool-Aid.

Necros have a lot of good condition removal skills. The difference is necros have very little trait support for condition clear, but way more than any other class through skills. Besides CC and the weapon skills you have well of power, and plague signet which are both decent skills. Being the masters of condition’s is less about removing them and more about corruption, and transfers then max removal per second.

Although necros could use more options for condition manipulation through traits. An example is unholy martyr which could be changed to be an effect on tainted shackles that transfers conditions from allies to enemies on pulse or something similar. You could also change shrouded removal to transmute a condition on entering ds. Overall though, necros have plenty of skills that can be taken for condition removal. At least we aren’t shatter mesmers that have none at all.

zapv.8051:

Necros have a lot of good condition removal skills. The difference is necros have very little trait support for condition clear, but way more than any other class through skills. Besides CC and the weapon skills you have well of power, and plague signet which are both decent skills. Being the masters of condition’s is less about removing them and more about corruption, and transfers then max removal per second.

Although necros could use more options for condition manipulation through traits. An example is unholy martyr which could be changed to be an effect on tainted shackles that transfers conditions from allies to enemies on pulse or something similar. You could also change shrouded removal to transmute a condition on entering ds. Overall though, necros have plenty of skills that can be taken for condition removal. At least we aren’t shatter mesmers that have none at all.

lol mender’s purity and shattered conditions, conflagration trait on torch, null field. Or hell, mantra of resolve.

You’re gonna argue they kitten the build in some ways but the same applies for a power necromancer who needs to use a staff that is virtually useless besides 2 skills as 3/5 skills are strictly condition related, and the offhand dagger is the same. Well of Power is a 50 sec cd, come on.

Necromancer has the same problem as ranger, a bunch of its weapons are hybrid weapons in a game that encourages stat stacking for effectiveness, basically turning those hybrid weapons into kitten weapons compared to classes like warrior and guardian and elementalist and engineer who have weapons whose weaponskills all are dedicated to the theme of the weapon instead of a hybrid setup.

zapv.8051:

The only real reason to run it is to get another utility, but SOS and epidemic are the only ones I’d consider and their both to weak with the amount of condition removal in the metagame currently.

Epidemic has it’s uses. I recently came back to testing that and surprisingly, even in celestial meta, it does work and sometimes it can work really, really well. The lack of STG of bunker guardian, PoC and the fact that celestials in your team also apply various conditions+downed cleave instead of stomping right after, Ranger pets, Engineers. Now it’s not only your conditions, they stack up really quickly. Good Epidemic+Fear might not wipe out entire team like in the old days, but it suddenly puts mega pressure, forcing cooldown after cooldown, is hard to deal with as a zerker and is on low cooldown. Not to mention if you have Ranger with EBond you can almost triple your condi pressure.

It may be not perfect for every situation or everyone though.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Sagat.3285:

I tried again… not worth it. I am still proposing stab when exiting +other issues as usual.

Off-topic, aren’t class specialists supposed to help with this kind of stuff or is it for show?

I cover anything and everything dealing with PvP, from balance changes to matchmaking to just what you do in Heart of the Mists. There are certain changes added to the game that don’t spark much talk in the forums. Most of the time it is something that upsets someone or something that is REALLY amazing. Tweaks don’t get much traction, so I decided to start a thread to see what people think.

Alright so when does the revision of class happens or am I going to have to buy HoT for a proper “necro”? I am still wondering how it will survive with GS… I know they have a rule about it but come on.

too situational .. its just dumb luck if its ready when you get stunned because its tied to our only “defence”

Rym.1469:

zapv.8051:

The only real reason to run it is to get another utility, but SOS and epidemic are the only ones I’d consider and their both to weak with the amount of condition removal in the metagame currently.

Epidemic has it’s uses. I recently came back to testing that and surprisingly, even in celestial meta, it does work and sometimes it can work really, really well. The lack of STG of bunker guardian, PoC and the fact that celestials in your team also apply various conditions+downed cleave instead of stomping right after, Ranger pets, Engineers. Now it’s not only your conditions, they stack up really quickly. Good Epidemic+Fear might not wipe out entire team like in the old days, but it suddenly puts mega pressure, forcing cooldown after cooldown, is hard to deal with as a zerker and is on low cooldown. Not to mention if you have Ranger with EBond you can almost triple your condi pressure.

It may be not perfect for every situation or everyone though.

Certainly – Epidemic compliments teamplay rather well…

Take burning for instance, a lot of Meta builds got acces to it, though not on par with a full Condi build (Balth Engi, Condi Necro) – though with Epidemic, this can be spread rather easily

And the cooldown is quite low, so you can nearly always “spam” it…

Like Rym says, it also forces cooldowns, and another big plus is that you can cast it from range with a workable casttime

It is certainly an option, especially now in this semi-bunker meta

I have personally tested SoS, SoL, Spectral Grasp and CPC, but I will get around testing Epidemic again as well as soon as I can…
Spectral Grasp is my favourite so far by the way – you can use it as a buffer for DS, or simply to pull someone off point, to make sure they do not get a (de)cap, or to kill them off point

IMO, the class just doesn’t have a diverse enough set of skills to make them feel ‘complete’. There are a lot of scenarios that Necromancers get themselves in and it feels like a square peg being forced through a round hole.

Just give the class some realistic option to handle these types of scenarios, even if it has to be quite limited. At least let the class feel like he had a choice and it was his own fault for dying.

For example:

Projectiles: The class has no block and no way to counter projectiles. This makes it quite difficult to escape ranged classes. Especially Rangers. Something as simple as making Poison Cloud destroy projectiles would at least give the player the impression that he had an option other than to brute force his way through.

Mobility: A lot of heavy CC classes and highly mobile classes really walk all over the class. Warriors, Guardians, and Rangers for example have tons of CC and mobility. While the class has Wurm, it’s quite bugged and unreliable. Walk also doesn’t hold up against these classes too well. Something as simple as making Spectral Wall causing the caster to blink forward when they walk through it would be enough.

Just small things like this so players don’t always feel like such a square peg all the time.

Sagat.3285:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Sagat.3285:

I tried again… not worth it. I am still proposing stab when exiting +other issues as usual.

Off-topic, aren’t class specialists supposed to help with this kind of stuff or is it for show?

I cover anything and everything dealing with PvP, from balance changes to matchmaking to just what you do in Heart of the Mists. There are certain changes added to the game that don’t spark much talk in the forums. Most of the time it is something that upsets someone or something that is REALLY amazing. Tweaks don’t get much traction, so I decided to start a thread to see what people think.

Alright so when does the revision of class happens or am I going to have to buy HoT for a proper “necro”? I am still wondering how it will survive with GS… I know they have a rule about it but come on.

I know as much as you do. I take feedback from players, send them to the devs and cross my fingers.

As you said Zenith, I would normally point out how useless mes is when taking any of those traits, but you know that and still persist, so it’s almost pointless to argue with you. Also, Putrid mark hits for 4k pretty easily on necro builds, I would hardly consider that useless. Soul marks is essential for life force regen on the power builds I play, staff has the highest weapon coefficient making it the best for life blasts, and staff auto hits for a not insignificant 1.5k damage pretty easily. As a necro player, it’s absolutely rediculous that you consider staff to be a waste of a weapon on any build. You then mention offhand dagger, which besides applying bleeds and transferring conditions also applies blind, and weakness which are really strong on any build.

Your complaining about “having to take” some of the strongest skills necros have, so I don’t really get the compaint. Sounds to me like you want to run d/w a/f without having to take any weapons, or utilities that remove conditions. Even if better traits opened up, you’d have to sacrifice points out of Spite or soul reaping, and I’m guessing you’d complain about that too.

As for epidemic, in a team fight against good players I just don’t see how any of those conditions will stick, but I’ll try it out cause you guys seem to be having success.

As someone who had a max level Necro but had 0 interest in Power builds, this seems like a solid change. So long as you have a teammate providing you with swiftness at the start, you can now give up Spectral Walk for something like Grasp which is good from a fun standpoint. Necro felt like Warrior in the fact that you had to dedicate most of your utilities to defense which isn’t as fun as using the offensive ones.

I still need to learn all the tricks of the class however before I can be qualified to actually say what kind of effect it had.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Rym.1469:

zapv.8051:

The only real reason to run it is to get another utility, but SOS and epidemic are the only ones I’d consider and their both to weak with the amount of condition removal in the metagame currently.

Epidemic has it’s uses. I recently came back to testing that and surprisingly, even in celestial meta, it does work and sometimes it can work really, really well. The lack of STG of bunker guardian, PoC and the fact that celestials in your team also apply various conditions+downed cleave instead of stomping right after, Ranger pets, Engineers. Now it’s not only your conditions, they stack up really quickly. Good Epidemic+Fear might not wipe out entire team like in the old days, but it suddenly puts mega pressure, forcing cooldown after cooldown, is hard to deal with as a zerker and is on low cooldown. Not to mention if you have Ranger with EBond you can almost triple your condi pressure.

It may be not perfect for every situation or everyone though.

Certainly – Epidemic compliments teamplay rather well…

Take burning for instance, a lot of Meta builds got acces to it, though not on par with a full Condi build (Balth Engi, Condi Necro) – though with Epidemic, this can be spread rather easily

And the cooldown is quite low, so you can nearly always “spam” it…

Like Rym says, it also forces cooldowns, and another big plus is that you can cast it from range with a workable casttime

It is certainly an option, especially now in this semi-bunker meta

I have personally tested SoS, SoL, Spectral Grasp and CPC, but I will get around testing Epidemic again as well as soon as I can…
Spectral Grasp is my favourite so far by the way – you can use it as a buffer for DS, or simply to pull someone off point, to make sure they do not get a (de)cap, or to kill them off point

I forget about Epidemic I have been running with 1 stun break since forever on condition necro I saw the change as a chance for no break stun. Epidemic might be good depending on your comp I guess it requires you to stay in team fights but I would need to test it because everything else I tried didn’t work out better than my standard build.

The thing that makes necro worse then other professions is that necro is the only class that can bring only dmg to the team when at the same time rest classes using one build can bring dmg , sustain , mobility , team support. This trait was a small buff to condi builds but nothing that would make necro close to other classes.

Zenith.7301:

zapv.8051:

Necros have a lot of good condition removal skills. The difference is necros have very little trait support for condition clear, but way more than any other class through skills. Besides CC and the weapon skills you have well of power, and plague signet which are both decent skills. Being the masters of condition’s is less about removing them and more about corruption, and transfers then max removal per second.

Although necros could use more options for condition manipulation through traits. An example is unholy martyr which could be changed to be an effect on tainted shackles that transfers conditions from allies to enemies on pulse or something similar. You could also change shrouded removal to transmute a condition on entering ds. Overall though, necros have plenty of skills that can be taken for condition removal. At least we aren’t shatter mesmers that have none at all.

lol mender’s purity and shattered conditions, conflagration trait on torch, null field. Or hell, mantra of resolve.

You’re gonna argue they kitten the build in some ways but the same applies for a power necromancer who needs to use a staff that is virtually useless besides 2 skills as 3/5 skills are strictly condition related, and the offhand dagger is the same. Well of Power is a 50 sec cd, come on.

Necromancer has the same problem as ranger, a bunch of its weapons are hybrid weapons in a game that encourages stat stacking for effectiveness, basically turning those hybrid weapons into kitten weapons compared to classes like warrior and guardian and elementalist and engineer who have weapons whose weaponskills all are dedicated to the theme of the weapon instead of a hybrid setup.

Yet necro don’t work with celestial armour, weapons and accessories.

We have no traits or barely any in the correct trait lines (or utilizing the right attributes to increase another attribute e.g. Death into Life) that prompt a particular attribute (e.g. condi) damage to be boosted to a useful amount (e.g. 750 condi damage to 1000 condi damage).

Elementalists have class traits that provide this (e.g. Strength of Stone) but can’t or won’t take advantage of it because of their own disadvantages which would require some sort of sacrifice within their specs.

This looks really good in theory, but I actually wonder how well it will work out in practice. I mean both power and condi necromancer uses deathshroud to deal burst damage, fear chain combo’s etc. Using deathshroud just for the stunbreaker might be counterproductive in some situations. Because as you won’t be able to put pressure on your opponent because of the 10 second cooldown on entering deathshroud which gives your opponent the chance pick you out when you are left with no relevant burst because of the cooldown. Unless your chain/burst is ready in DS so you didn’t enter it just for defensive purposes.