Guild Wars 2

On contrary to popular belief, my main is not a Necromancer… Matter of fact, I do not main anything – the reason why I am so actively discussing the class is because they have huge glaring issues, on contrary to two of my other most played classes, Elementalist and Warrior, who certainly have their respective issues, but it is rarely worth mentioning… I like finding problems and work these out, hence my activity on the Necromancer’s side… Had I played Ranger more, I’d probably have had said a lot about those prior to the patch as well

I never played but one class, this stems from my time in GW1 where most of the time I spent was creating new builds for my alts… And boy, I had a lot of those

Rangers and Engineers got changes that were long overdue – we saw Anet acknowledging the fact that the former had immense issues within the current “meta” as well as the fact that Engineers could use some love to underused utilities, traits and skills. This blew the community out of their socks and made a lot of classes hope for the best…
They did not deliver however, the hype quickly died out after seeing class after class. Mesmer and Guardians got some notable changes, though the former had one with an extreme sour taste – which created an outcry within their and the general community

Back to Necromancer; we got the Preview of the balancing patch nearly a month ago, saying the folllowing line:

Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits as well as improving the overall effectiveness of their melee and skirmishing weapons.

“Amazing!” was the initial reaction of the Necromancer community, because the initial thought immediately went to Fixing the Blood magic since that has been a lackluster for a while (That thread was made a year ago)
It would give new oppertunities for Necromancers to drop some of the mandatory yet laughable traits and trait or prepare for more interesting stuff

And then the bad news hit the community – we were dead last together with Guardians (typical) for the Skill Bar videos, initially having only 4 days of giving feedback, if this was not changed to get this video out a week earlier… Still, this gave us only a week…
But when the Skill Bar finally hit, there was a huge letdown… “improving their survivability through utilities and traits " and “Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.” was a whopping 10s reduction on a utility and trait that were already good (Spectral Armour and Last Gasp) – giving no room for improvements on builds whatsoever…
I personally tried to tone down a huge waterfall of complaints by the Necromancer community by stating those things that seemed good; cleave on dagger and interraction in DS were some points… I feel almost “used” now for even trying to set these things straight after Discovering the harsh truth

This “hype” has made Necromancer players more sour than ever as we were tricked into believing things which ultimately were a huge letdown

It was a couple of minutes after the patch hit, I was making the video of Shroudstomping (funny enough, coping with that same “unable to stomp” issue) where I saw my theorizing mind crumbling to pieces… The “feature” was implemented in such an ugly way, that I would not ever want to bother explaining what is wrong, but will do so anyway; the Deathshroud cast interrupts the action… So what improved from exploiting the system? I’ll tell you, absolutely nothing, really, and it did not make Foot in the Grave more desirable, despite me being a huge fan of the trait…

While this was what I was the most excited for, apparently other Necromancers have found some other ugly things With an honerable mention to the following;

Well of Blood nerf – with a big glaring “WWWWWHHHHYYYYY????”
I will repeat these words since I love them; “Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits”
And this is why Well of Blood has been nerfed right? Because you wanted to improve the survivability?
This is a really bad joke, and a simple stab in the back! No words of mention at the Skill Bar where you were supposed to talk about changes exactly like these – butchering the exact line what you people stated!
“Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.” – Boy, I sure am glad that our survivability over time got nerfed at the same time it got buffed…

Some other ugly stuff are the changes (hah) to Signet of Vampirism and Unholy Sanctuary
I do not know how it stands with you guys, but a 1s time added, and a passive proc does not make these two any better…
Read about both: Unholy Sanctuary and Signet of Vampirism

“Guys, didn’t Necromancers essentially not change at all? And weren’t your builds good enough to play with?”

Sure, I have to say that the two builds, Power and Condition (Both with some itterations, I run some other forms of both), are quite a valid choice to pick and play with in teams…
I would argue however that none of these fit the Attrition play style at all (Especially the part where you “cannot get away from them”), but this is another discussion altogether

Come and pick the most popular build, that being Condition…

The Condition build is exactly the reason why Necromancers have asked for sustain options – not because Necromancer’s are bad at sustaining per se, but because this build relies on the most kittened options to surviving; Passive Procs
Reaper’s Protection and Runes of the Nightmare are the “only” reason this build “survives” (Not entirely true, but let’s pretend they are)… Reaper’s Protection was designed to overcome the Necromancer’s weakness in a fight, namely being suspicable to Crowd Controlling attacks, enabeling them to make the enemy flee so that they can safely get up and prepare for the next assualt; however, this trait is passive, unreliable and a general nuisance to people… Even a large portion of the Necromancer’s community agrees – this needs to go, because it is utterly rediculous to “counter” a weakness with this crap…. Worse, a defense gets turned either redundant when faced with Stability or Condition immunity, or turned into a 3K damaging attack(!) without tell…
Runes of the Nightmare are of course a solid option to run as for other classes as well, but this is just rediculous… What is the point of this rune if it gives one class such a major lead by it? As a defensive rune, this could’ve been done way better, in a non-harmfull way (say a daze or stun)… Does it fit the narritive? Maybe not, but it is in my humble opinion pretty sad that this is the option to surviving… A random proc

Could this be changed? Oh yes, it could’ve… If Deathshroud did not interrupt the action, running Foot in the Grave a more solid option to run, removing Reaper’s Protection, for it is arguably the better pick to give up than Path of Corruption
So what are we looking at then? Well frankly, my build , with two stunbreaks (one of your own choice) or this one

Why Runes of the Traveler one might ask, well I find the +Boon Duration to be really quite a solid choice as it synergizes well with FitG, and the +Speed helps to get the Necromancer away somewhat faster… I do miss a lot of damage, but by clever play, I can survive quite good and do not need the “burst conditions” or the passive procs…

Now this is just one example of what can be done with a slight change – just one change can make a build more enjoyable to play for the end user, and less annoying to fight as an enemy…

For Power Builds, this point is somewhat less valid, and luckily there weren’t as much complaints about it…

Yes I know, this topic always comes up, but I will keep it short… I am not going into detail at all, I just want you to know that I am a veteran of dungeons as well as Fractals up to 50;

Roe.3679:

Necro PVE

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Anet-this-is-just-wrong
-Summary: Necromancers unwanted in PVE Dungeons, this is unacceptable.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Necromancer-utility-idea-Bone-Wall/first#post4191750
- Summary: Idea that addresses necromancer’s lack of group utility in PVE groups.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvE-Necro-needs-team-support-buffs/first#post4168935
- Summary: Ideas to improve necro, needed because of lack of utility for groups in PVE and cleave damage.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvE-Necro-Sig-of-Undeath-shorter-cast
- Summary: Signet of Undeath’s cast time is too long to be meaningful and the passive is weak too.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Necro-Cleaving-Weapon/first#post4124139
- Summary: Necromancers lack cleave – only class that does.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Suggestion-Necros-stronger-as-fight-goes-on/first#post4124077
- Summary: Highlights the idea that necromancers should be stronger as a fight goes on, although they currently don’t do that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvE-Necromancer-Can-we-get-a-rebalance/first#post3995987
- Summary: Necromancer is unwanted in PVE, concerned for lack of direction.

The main reason why Necromancers uniformally got kittened off is because nothing has changed… Not for the better in combat for Necromancers, as well as the enemy… We deal with passives, underlying class issues that do not help us surviving, have an entire traitline working against our class mechanic and are generally just going into a spiral of disappointment after disappointment…

It seems as if Anet is turning away from the class, despite it being rediculous to design and implement a class you would dislike, simply of how our “feedback” is getting no fruits to improvement whatsoever…

I am the kind of person who likes to discover problems, exploit them and see if there is a solution to be made, and they can be, but with the current pacing of the balance changes and a history ever since Dhuumfire that has shown nothing but disappointments, and mind you, this is over a year now, I can understand why many players lose their patience and passion for this class… It took 6 years to make Mesmers in GW1 for PvE viable, do not let Necromancers suffer that fate within the game – show us you learned and help us making the class better…

But Necromancers have “suffered the worst” at the moment… Many classes have seemingly no direction, or seem to head a direction which makes everyone question the game (Hello PU Mesmer)…

Anet needs to communicate with members of the community better regarding classes and let us give active feedback, only then we can pull us out this weird spiral of hoping for the best, and getting slapped in the face right after