Guild Wars 2

Let me get something out of the way first. I do love the necromancer. And I love my necromancer. And I don’t like being negative all the time about the profession. I even posted a while back when torment was added about how much I loved(and still do) tainted shackles. But arena net is really wearing me down on this. And from what I can tell, the necro community as a whole is feeling just as bad if not worse then I am.

We are so staved for anything. Just give us something we asked for. Anything! If You did Nothing else with the necromancer next patch but let us revive allies and finish foes while in death shroud, I would be grinning from ear to ear along with quite a few other people. if that was ALL you did, You would make us happier then we have been for a long time.

For Necro’s to truly be an attrition class, we need to be able to heal in DS.

I mean their own quote says they want us to sustain ourselves through Deathshroud AND health siphons. Well how in the hell are we supposed to do that?

My build is made to sustain from Deathshroud uptime and health siphoning while out of DS… and it is really annoying that half of my traits just dont work while I am sitting in DS.

My biggest issue to date is this new healing skill. It is so pathetic and you can tell when they were introducing the new skills that they didn’t even give a crap about it. That made me mad. To hear the excitement in the Dev’s voice when he showed off the Guardian and Warrior heals, and on the Necro heal no one even wanted to say anything.. and the guy playing got owned by a Golem! LOL. He activated the new heal and got like 2k healing from it.

Honestly, as sad as it is I think most Necromancers would be satisfied with basic (non-condescending) communication.

Something along the lines of:

“We understand the Mark of Vampirism is an undesirable skill and should never have been release in its current state. As soon as we are able we are going to re-evaluate or overhaul the skill, unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until the new year.”

(Most of us will still be a little miffed that we are once again not “worth” their time, but should be able to accept that an error was made that will take time to correct.)

or

“We understand that players who use condition heavy builds are concern about traits like Diamond Skin, Automated Response, and Berserker Stance, however; we do feel that the current meta is too condition heavy and wanted some traits/skills that had the potential to push the current system.

That said this is something we are watching closely and would eventually like to adjust Automated Response and Berserker Stance to be a true 100% reduction in duration that could then be countered by the applying player’s additional condition duration.
For Diamond Skin we may end up somewhere in the middle pushing the trait to 80~85% threashold but a 100% condition duration reduction as well.

We feel this will change those skills to soft counters and adding something of a “third” stat for condition users to strongly consider."

(Again probably not the immediate correction we want, but gives us hope for the future and significantly beats being completely ignored.)

(Obviously there are a hundred other examples, deathshroud absorb, lack of active defense, putrid mark hurting Necromancer’s limited support options, etc, that I could have used as examples, but these particularly have been in the forums a lot recently.)

As much as we complain, often rightfully, the main issue is that the necromancer does not match GW2 gameplay in it’s styling, and the developers have other things to worry about, such as the company’s PvE goals.

We were built to be an attrition class with no mobility and no damage avoidance outside of a finite resource. However, this game is all about burst, poor healing, movement and positioning, and evading damage. Moreover, our skills and traits are very binary – they are either too good or too weak, and so scaling becomes horrid. The best example is Deathshroud itself – it’s scaled to be good enough in 1v1’s, so it melts when outnumbered, but if scaled for 2v1s, a single player could never deal with it.

I’m sure that somewhere, deep down in ANET’s dungeons, there is a Dev who would love to have the Necro be as awesome as the warrior – statistically, there just has to be one. But this “mystery dev” is most likely not on the balance team, and the balance team pays little attention to PvE, WvW or anything outside of the SPvP forums. And the “mystery dev” also has his own job, and his own bosses to tend to. Additionally, if we were as popular as Warriors, the flagship profession of the game, the QQ spewing out of the forums would massively outnumber what’s happening here now since awful Warriors would just start crying “NECRO OP” because they lost.

I feel like the Devs dug themselves into a hole with a lot of decisions they made, and digging themselves back out of it is not going to be particularly easy. While there are several quick fixes like stomps/rezzing in Deathshroud, I feel there are several fundamental problems that would require the complete redesign of several aspects of the class. And one possible problem with quick fixes is that once they spit out one, we’ll demand more, and we get into a slippery slope until the Necro is exactly what everyone wants it to be. Moreover, while we’re not really optimized for different game areas, you can get by since PvE is easy, WvW is numbers, and we have some semi-viable builds for SPvP.

The best thing we can do is to keep voicing our opinions. Despite whatever protest forum users may come up with, players who never drop by will continue to buy gems/play Necros, and players on the leaderboards are replaceable, so one or a few Necros deviating from the set path will not alter internal metrics.

tl;dr: I’m sure they’ve noticed how annoyed/angry/depressed we are, but several issues require very complex fixes, and they don’t put things out until “they’re ready.” Just keep trucking, and hopefully someday we’ll get the Dervish treatment and leave beta.

I guess I am too disgruntled a little, my main is a Necro (named after my GW main, also Necro) and I’ll never change that or give up on it, that’s Anet’s call. When I first heard about the new heal skill I immediately thought of Insidious Parasite from GW. I was mistaken to do so. I was so hoping that it was so and maybe upcoming skills could include things like elite spiteful spirit where I once again could play the type of Necro that I miss so dearly.

Its a mix, unfortunately. Some complaints are totally warranted, but I think a large number of complaints stem from being on this side of the player|dev divide.

Let’s just get some things straight right now. This is an MMORPG. No MMORPG has ever had “perfect” balance. Frankly, I don’t know of a single that has ever been remotely close. GW1 did not have good balance, it had playable balance only because they threw so much kitten into the game that SOMETHING had to be good.

So this idea that GW2 will ever have this magical “perfect” balance is just far too idealistic. And let’s face it; with very rare exceptions, if you want to play a class, it will not bar you from any content in the game. In fact, the only things that it bars you from are the very, very highest min/maxing of the game (setting dungeon records, tier 1 GvG, high level tournaments). And that is normal, because every MMO game ends up with slightly cyclical balance. If you want to be at the very height of play, then you will sometimes need to give up what you like playing for what is best.

For devs “not loving us”; this idea is just silly. ANet are the parents, and the different parts of this game are their babies. Necromancers have had the most issues of any class because we are “unique”. It means its going to take them a lot of time to properly “fix” us. If you dislike where we are now, play something else. Its f2p, you can just leave the game for 4 years and come back later, nothing really lost.

A lot of the things we complain about are just normal. Devs don’t have tons of contact because every post they make not only has to be very smartly filtered (look at what’s happened the last few times devs have posted about us), but they have to be very “diplomatic” about it. Every post that they make in the Necro forums needs to be reciprocated in every other forum. The exceptions are “neutral” forums, like sPvP and bug forums. Its also normal that not every class will be perfectly balanced; that is natural for an MMO. And its normal that we wouldn’t get 10000 fixes every week, because again, when all your balance work needs to be split across 8 classes, it takes time.

TL;DR, a lot of complaints are simply frustrations about completely natural (and sometimes healthy) parts of normal game development. It doesn’t make the feelings or ideas of the complaints any less valid, but simply put the majority of complaints I hear are a bit like complaining that your steak took time to cook and had meat in it.

Bhawb.7408

Devs don’t have tons of contact because every post they make not only has to be very smartly filtered (look at what’s happened the last few times devs have posted about us), but they have to be very “diplomatic” about it. Every post that they make in the Necro forums needs to be reciprocated in every other forum.

Except that this is not occuring ~ Examples of poor “filtering” began the first month of the game and continues still (The Dev Live stream when they introduced our healing signet), I have yet to see any examples of the Learn to Play/Learn to Build/Putrid Mark Posts directed at any other class.

On top of this Necromancers receive little to no reciprocation for posts on other classes. The Dev|Player back and forth discussion for Elementalist, Warriors, and Thieves was honestly inspiring…. But honestly a Dev would have to play our class in some seriousness to address our issues. Which is something that at this point the onus is on them to prove.

In the end I want the Necromancer profession to continue to develop (ideally towards the attrition class they were originally heralded as) and do not by any stretch want the class to be overpowered. I choose to approach discussion of this profession as a realist, rather then an apologist, and sadly expect the patterns established in the past to continue in the future. Unfortunately these patterns and releases like Mark of Vampirism mean that the Necromancer community have to be more demanding of the attention it deserves.

Bhawb.7408

If you dislike where we are now, play something else. Its f2p, you can just leave the game for 4 years and come back later, nothing really lost.

I agree, as this is very much “voting with your wallet”. Hopefully though, for the success of the game, the developers address these issues before players and potentially their guilds leave for greener pastures.

I can’t play NOT necro both in pve and pvp :/ And i have 4 80s, almost 5

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

I can’t play NOT necro both in pve and pvp :/ And i have 4 80s, almost 5

If you really love your profession you can do everything you want with it

For the time being I’ll just be one of those necromancers doing a silent protest, and hope that the sheer numbers will eventually get their attention.

I don’t feel as qualified to voice a Necro opinion as I would a Warrior, but I really appreciate some of the attitudes that have popped up in this thread. Namely, Balefire and Bhawb. I would love to see how certain things would play out, such as stomping in DS, being able to use heals/utilities while in DS, etc., but I also have to wonder (with my 80 or so hours of limited experience) if that would really fix what is wrong. It would make it easier, sure, and I still would love to see it happen or at least get tested. Just general musing.

Also, that being said, I’m sometimes taken aback by how quickly people melt with a Condi build, and how insanely I can screw someone over even with a simple well-placed Corrupt Boon (Typo’d “Corrupt Bono” and almost left it. I might start calling it that from now on). I sometimes find myself in situations that my Warrior could easily escape from, but after a spike of frustration, I always wonder if my Necro SHOULD be able to escape from those situations.

I can definitely see the frustration, especially with things like the Heal skill, but I haven’t looked back to my Warrior in several weeks after getting back into the game with my Necro. I can’t help but feel pretty satisfied with the class, even with some of the shortcomings.

And THAT being said, I’d still love to see some tweaking/reworking of some things.

Bhawb.7408:

TL;DR, a lot of complaints are simply frustrations about completely natural (and sometimes healthy) parts of normal game development. It doesn’t make the feelings or ideas of the complaints any less valid, but simply put the majority of complaints I hear are a bit like complaining that your steak took time to cook and had meat in it.

While I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I appreciate how well you presented your points, my concern with the profession is more meta in nature.

The Necromancer is horribly neglected by the development teams. That’s it. Every patch is PvP-centric, and PvE play takes it on the chin, and ANet seems to be perfectly okay with that. Since ANet seems to have no interest in addressing the issues Necromancers have in PvE play, I have abandoned the class.

If ANet is not going to invest in the profession, then why should I? I moved on, and I am now playing Elementalist and Guardian mostly, because ANet seems to care what happens to those professions.

PvE is an issue not because of Necromancers alone, but simply their game design. They honestly cannot fix us properly within PvE; instead they need to fix PvE itself.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

For the time being I’ll just be one of those necromancers doing a silent protest, and hope that the sheer numbers will eventually get their attention.

I didn’t notice it cost 25. Do they really think that skill is worth more than free? Can I have my wasted skill points back?

borrok.9267:

I didn’t notice it cost 25. Do they really think that skill is worth more than free? Can I have my wasted skill points back?

Apparently Anet seems to think that this terrible skill is worth almost as many skillpoints as an elite. Who are they kidding, really?

It has nothing to do with that. They are adding new skills as quasi-end game content to “farm” for. For those of us playing since launch, 25 skill points is pretty mediocre (many people have hundreds sitting around), but that is the general idea, that new skills will be things you can “farm” for.

Bhawb.7408:

It has nothing to do with that. They are adding new skills as quasi-end game content to “farm” for. For those of us playing since launch, 25 skill points is pretty mediocre (many people have hundreds sitting around), but that is the general idea, that new skills will be things you can “farm” for.

Sure, but realistically speaking, I’m paying 25 skillpoints for a skill that is worse than all of the skills that were available to me at level 2, for the price of 1 skillpoint. And this is almost as many as an elite (which are 30 skillpoints). I think the price should be some how in harmony with the quality of the skill.

Then again, I don’t think they should have given us this skill at all. I would have rather seen them take an extra few weeks to figure out how to make this skill usable for necromancers.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I don’t feel as qualified to voice a Necro opinion as I would a Warrior, but I really appreciate some of the attitudes that have popped up in this thread. Namely, Balefire and Bhawb. I would love to see how certain things would play out, such as stomping in DS, being able to use heals/utilities while in DS, etc., but I also have to wonder (with my 80 or so hours of limited experience) if that would really fix what is wrong. It would make it easier, sure, and I still would love to see it happen or at least get tested. Just general musing.

Also, that being said, I’m sometimes taken aback by how quickly people melt with a Condi build, and how insanely I can screw someone over even with a simple well-placed Corrupt Boon (Typo’d “Corrupt Bono” and almost left it. I might start calling it that from now on). I sometimes find myself in situations that my Warrior could easily escape from, but after a spike of frustration, I always wonder if my Necro SHOULD be able to escape from those situations.

I can definitely see the frustration, especially with things like the Heal skill, but I haven’t looked back to my Warrior in several weeks after getting back into the game with my Necro. I can’t help but feel pretty satisfied with the class, even with some of the shortcomings.

And THAT being said, I’d still love to see some tweaking/reworking of some things.

one thing I praise about the necro above all else is their ability to damage. You will never hear me say “Necromancers have bad damage” because it just isn’t true. Necromancers have great damage. The problem is we a lacking in all other areas and seem to be forgotten in favor of the warrior or mesmer most the time while we still have a large number of major bugs, balancing issues, poor scaling and so on.

The Stomping and rezing allies isn’t a fix to everything or even most of our problems. its SOMETHING. I’m asking for something. In this thread, I’m basically asking for scraps.

Yes, we do have good damage. And this is often where other classes get the false impression that necromancers are okay. They look at the raw numbers and think, that aint so bad compared to the damage of other classes. But then you look at the big picture, and there’s a huge lack of team support, boons, stability, invincibility, mobility, and just staying power. And also no Cleave of course.

I think a lot of necromancers would be happy to at least see something being done. If we got Cleave all of a sudden, hurray! Not the fix that our class desperately needs, but it is a step in the right direction.

But the nerf to conditions? How do you justify that? For once we’d like to see something improved, and not made worse.

The “nerf” to conditions was a single condition removed in PvP only, and Enfeeble being changed. Both nerfs that needed to happen, and basically don’t affect any other part of the game meaningfully.

Bhawb.7408:

The “nerf” to conditions was a single condition removed in PvP only, and Enfeeble being changed. Both nerfs that needed to happen, and basically don’t affect any other part of the game meaningfully.

I’m fully aware of this. The nerfs haven’t effected me. I’m more at a general unhappiness with how things are going and SoV was just a breaking point.

Lily.1935

The Stomping and rezing allies isn’t a fix to everything or even most of our problems. its SOMETHING. I’m asking for something. In this thread, I’m basically asking for scraps.

Lily.1935

I’m fully aware of this. The nerfs haven’t effected me. I’m more at a general unhappiness with how things are going and SoV was just a breaking point.

Exactly. Even though each member of the community might not agree with each other, it really does seem like we are all just asking for something, anything… Right now every patch feels like another defeat without any hope of victory.

And still we beg only for scraps… as our profession drifts so far from what it was and what it could be.

you know what is funny? Necromancer is supposed to be the condition manipulater and he has no immune condition when he has to face 3 classes with it and a bunch of dispell.

I have done a lot of solo queue that past 2 days and i can tell you facing 2 bow/hammer warrior with “berzerk stance” and one bunker engi with “automated response” in the same game when you are Conditionmancer is really boring.
The big problem is our power specs are pure crap in sPvP if you play zerker you will be killed really quickly because you don’t have any immune damage/block etc that other classes can use in that situation and with a soldier amulet you will need too much time to kill 1 guy so he will just run away or call for help.

To me the problem of the necromancer lies in the fact that practically everything we do is connected to conditions. Almost every weapon we have uses a lot of condition (exception is the dagger), the same applies to our utilities, our crowd control is the same, damage reduction too, and we should solve our movement problem with chill and criple . Normally this wouldn’t be bad and should be encouraged since we are the class of conditions, but the problem is that GW2 favors direct damage and boons over condition damage and weakening through conditions:
-the existence of zerker gear while there exists no equivalent for conditions (prec, cond duration and cond dmg)
- Condition damage has a limited dps no matter how many players there are, it’s even worse when you realize that of that maximum amount of damage we lose some of it due to direct damge dealers ( 1 phantom duelist can suck up 8 stacks of bleed due to a 15 pt minor trait in prec/critdmg trait line).
-We cannot exceed +100% condition duration, a limitation which critdamage doesn’t have.
-condition removal is very easy to acquire, while boon removal is hard to acquire and limited.
-The difference between durations of berserker stance and defy pain says a lot as well. Berserker stance even gains adrenaline boost as well.
-I haven’t even told about automated response and diamond skin (I hope they would create a direct damage equivalent for the necro but that will never happen).

As long as conditions don’t get an equal standing as boons and direct damage we (the necromancers and other condition based builds) will not be as good as direct damge dealers. It may sound harsh but it should not be denied. I found 2 ways how we can solve this problem:
-we could remove the effectiviness of anti-condition skills from both players and bosses around the game while removing some of the limitations on conditions.
-the second is that we redifine conditions as high risk- high reward type of damage: we invest damage from now so that we will do more damage in the future.
But no matter which path is taken it is important that both diamond skin and automated response should be removed from the game or be limited.
example: reduce condition duration by 50%~75%

If you dislike where we are now, play something else. Its f2p, you can just leave the game for 4 years and come back later, nothing really lost.

I agree, as this is very much “voting with your wallet”.

I’ve bought multi-copys of the game for friends, only one even bothered play long enough to reach 80.
I can happily spend $80 a month on cash shop.
I’ve played since beta. I’ve tried to main a necro all the way.
How’s it been for me and my wallet voting? Less fun, worse & worse. So that doesn’t really work out.

As for the it’s free to play argument… Who care’s? It’s the ‘investment’ of ‘time, love & enjoyment’. As soon as ‘the next actual fun thing’ comes along, it won’t matter if it’s free to play vs $60 a month subby. I’m investing in the ‘fun’.

It’s purely the ‘fun’ that matters.

This is why ‘res/stomp in DS’ has been bung up as ‘such’ a big issue. Will it be game changing, NO. Will it stop us feeling, selfish & frustrated by game mechanics over & over in a day, YES.

We just don’t want our life to be full of painful frustrations, because we try to enjoy playing a necro.

Use DS, pre-equip staff as offhand weaps don’t count in DS. Hope your friends don’t waste heals on you as it shows your life ticking away. Oh look, let your buddy slowly die, if you ditch DS ya’ll have no defense left. Oh crap, DS has no synergy with anything, your minions dead/you have conditions to cleanse/the group could have really done with that well/etc. Ok, low on life force anyway, better drop out and spam all the buttons I didn’t in the last little bit.
Oh a new CD on getting back to DS. Oh no, there’s a 2nd person in party using conditions, that means were stealing each others damage.
Or the power story of, well I’ll just run up into melee range with no safe button for another 10 seconds, and hit 1 mob at a time, while the others cleave them down around me.

It’s weird, it was playing soo nicely with others, sharing kills/nodes/buffs/heals. Non-frustrating questing/leveling.
That got me to fall in love with this game. It’s these same things in reverse that are making it un-fun for me.

Moral of the rant.
What matters most, is having fun. Fix a pile of little silly frustrations, make us play well with others.
I’d say 90% of necro’s don’t care about the ‘balance’ of the top 0.2% of our sPvP’ers for 99% of there GW2 life.
Having fun with buddy’s is what’s going to hold our love for this game.

I feel incredibly demoralised too. I left the game for 9 months and returned in October.
I’ve played an Elementalist as a main since beta. My second most played class is my dearest Necromancer.

Truth be told it seems I’m a sucker for punishment, being part of arguably the two most ignored and disgruntled class communities. Incredibly difficult trying to stay positive when presented with the utter balance abomination called the Warrior class, I feel dirty admitting that I have one.

Wow, not much to say to any of the above. Unreal how some of you let yourselves get to the point of feeling like you do. Ah well, I suppose I will continue to play with my tank necro in WvW and enjoy the steady and copious amounts of badges and loot bags I have long gotten in WvW – 77848 kills and mounting. I love my necro!

Im patiently awaiting a cleave weapon. And hopeful anet will develop the class into a spiker type class. Thats something that could easily happen with the addition of cleave and a few minor buffs and alterations in traits. Attrition is far too different to how the necro currently works for it to be the route they continue to follow.

Until then I will be avoiding my necro for the most part. I will however being attempting to break the lupi record once i finish my ascended focus. After that i probably wont have a reason to go back to it until we get some big changes.

To be allowed to use their healing skill (Six slot) while in death shroud. In this case the healing skill will heal Death Shroud Life Force Pool, but this will probably make DS to good?

Eh, we just got a crappy new skill. Short end of the stick, sure, considering there were some cool things that other classes got, but this isn’t the only new skill we’re ever going to get.

Maybe we’ll get the better skill next time, and truthfully (as far as healing skills go) it’s going to be hard to replace consume conditions no matter what the skill is.

Personally, I would just like Flesh Golem to learn how to use his flippers underwater.

Necrochild.1497:

Eh, we just got a crappy new skill. Short end of the stick, sure, considering there were some cool things that other classes got, but this isn’t the only new skill we’re ever going to get.

Maybe we’ll get the better skill next time, and truthfully (as far as healing skills go) it’s going to be hard to replace consume conditions no matter what the skill is.

Personally, I would just like Flesh Golem to learn how to use his flippers underwater.

No. I won’t make the mistake again. I shouldn’t expect anything awesome for necro and I did the wrong thing for hoping the signet will be at least good in pve for damage buff.

Bweaty.9187

I’ve bought multi-copys of the game for friends, only one even bothered play long enough to reach 80.
I can happily spend $80 a month on cash shop.
I’ve played since beta. I’ve tried to main a necro all the way.
How’s it been for me and my wallet voting? Less fun, worse & worse. So that doesn’t really work out.

As for the it’s free to play argument… Who care’s? It’s the ‘investment’ of ‘time, love & enjoyment’. As soon as ‘the next actual fun thing’ comes along, it won’t matter if it’s free to play vs $60 a month subby. I’m investing in the ‘fun’.

It’s purely the ‘fun’ that matters.

This isn’t counter to voting with your wallet ~ it just sounds like your value line is lower. As long as it offer basic amusement and there is nothing else out that you see as more “fun” then you are willing to spend money. (Investing in fun is really the core point when it comes to “voting” on an entertainment product.)

I’m actually pretty close to that only the Dec 10th patch has made me stop buying cash shop stuff. Mainly because I’m not confident in this games future (with me) when I compare its current state with new games on the horizon.

Sadly just because we spend more on the cash shop then others doesn’t mean the Devs have to do what we say. Spending money and playing is only a +1 for the current direction. Every single other player gets there vote too. Some won’t spend money because they don’t have faith in the direction of the game and others won’t spend money because they cannot afford to.

That said it’s the broad picture that matters, if the game keeps growing (concurrent logins) and increasing in quarter over quarter revenue (which it wasn’t last earnings call – but that was attributed to “normal” MMO evolution) then they are on the right path. If not they will have to read what players want and adjust the game to satisfy the majority.

Rigel.3092

Unreal how some of you let yourselves get to the point of feeling like you do. Ah well, I suppose I will continue to play with my tank necro in WvW and enjoy the steady and copious amounts of badges and loot bags I have long gotten in WvW – 77848 kills and mounting. I love my necro!

For myself at least Necromancer is 95%+ of my playtime and I still love and almost exclusively play it. I have invested 1800+ hrs and alot of money into this profession and don’t regret any of it.

That, however; will not stop me from trying to lobby for changes or at bare minimum trying to get an actual Dev (not a QA tester) to seriously play the class and make their own conclusions. (And I mean play in all aspects of the game, PvE, WvW, sPvP, Dungeons, and FotM.)

Afya.5842:

Necrochild.1497:

Eh, we just got a crappy new skill. Short end of the stick, sure, considering there were some cool things that other classes got, but this isn’t the only new skill we’re ever going to get.

Maybe we’ll get the better skill next time, and truthfully (as far as healing skills go) it’s going to be hard to replace consume conditions no matter what the skill is.

Personally, I would just like Flesh Golem to learn how to use his flippers underwater.

No. I won’t make the mistake again. I shouldn’t expect anything awesome for necro and I did the wrong thing for hoping the signet will be at least good in pve for damage buff.

Well, sorry to hear that. I have difficulties being quite so pessimistic, I remember where we were at a year ago.

Necrochild.1497

Well, sorry to hear that. I have difficulties being quite so pessimistic, I remember where we were at a year ago.

Closer to an actual attrition class? (Albeit more broken in terms of bugs etc.)

A timeline:

1. Nercos are OP in closed beta.

2. ROFL NERFHAMMER Game released with many traits (two whole useless traitlines) and axe weapon nerfed to near uselessness

3. Game released with many game breaking bugs, stuff like “only one third downed HP,” and bug not addressed for almost a year. Stuff like skills going on full cool down when cancelled still in the game.

4. Promised a fix for the bugs and the class.

5. Not until 10 months later fix comes…. Dhummfire!

(If you put aside the official descriptions and look at what the class finally is, you see the role for the class: a glassy, little sustain burst caster)

6. However, update patch is released too close to e-sports tournament.

7. Meta has not caught up to the patch and the new dhuumfire builds destroy the pre patch builds. And more importantly, the exports push fails when the e sport watchers see all the minions, ranger spirits and spell clutter on the screen and cant tell what’s going on.

8. INCOMING NERFHAMMER — immediately, without giving time for the meta to shift, dhuumfire nerfed, but unrelated skills nerfed too. The 2k damage that dhuumfire added met with about 10k damage removed from the class.

9. Anet hypes up lifesteal update: tweaks are totally meaningless

10. Anet hypes up new balance patch: all condition removal is buff, all necromancer counters buffed, necromancer nerfed.

11. Anet hypes up new healing skills for the classes: Necromancer skill is garbage and can’t ever be not-garbage.

^ Excellent summary of the necro timeline.

Those who know my posting history know I write book’s worth of pages to express what I want to say. I’ll now reverse that by writing less to say more.

I no longer have any faith in the ArenaNet balancing team. Their vision of the class as an attrition/sustain profession has been invalidated by their actual implementation. When die-hard fans and supporters of your franchise – going on almost 9 years – no longer care to muster the energy to provide constructive criticism for a game they (used) to love, that’s when you need to be listening most urgently to their silence.

Myrkr.5803:

Necrochild.1497

Well, sorry to hear that. I have difficulties being quite so pessimistic, I remember where we were at a year ago.

Closer to an actual attrition class? (Albeit more broken in terms of bugs etc.)

Are you actually arguing that we were somehow better off back then?

Necrochild.1497:

Myrkr.5803:

Necrochild.1497

Well, sorry to hear that. I have difficulties being quite so pessimistic, I remember where we were at a year ago.

Closer to an actual attrition class? (Albeit more broken in terms of bugs etc.)

Are you actually arguing that we were somehow better off back then?

Powermancers are better off now by a lot.

Condimancers have lost quite a bit of utility in exchange for a slight DPS increase, when ignoring DS changes. But I would love to have pre-6/25 condimancer back with the current death shroud.

Necrochild.1497

Are you actually arguing that we were somehow better off back then?

We have gained very little at best in the last 16+ months and most of it has been trades like Dhuumfire and Deathly Preception for our Defense (Deathshroud Absorb) or Group Support (Putrid Mark).

Better or Worse is difficult to say. It does seem that Necromancers have increased in power slower then other classes and we are further then we have ever been from the Attrition class that was originally described.

There’re so many threads similar to this I’m not sure my comment will be seen at all, and it’s probably already been said, but I honestly don’t think ANet knows what they want to do with the necromancer or how to make it an ‘attrition’ class.

People complain about how necros have a second HP via Deathshroud/Lifeforce and how necros have the highest base health pool of the light classes; if you play necro, you see that they don’t have any reliable skills available to them that can be used to disengage so a high base HP is necessary. I’m not saying necros should be like eles in any way, but I see eles and despite their low base HP, I feel (at least with D/D eles) that they have good/decent sustain via switching to water attunement, Cone of Cold, Cleansing Wave, Evasive Arcana and arguably Signet of Restoration.

I suppose you could argue that’s a different sort of sustain, but that’s just my opinion. I’m not sure if it holds any water or is particularly valid but yeah. I don’t know~

Myrkr.5803:

Necrochild.1497

Are you actually arguing that we were somehow better off back then?

We have gained very little at best in the last 16+ months and most of it has been trades like Dhuumfire and Deathly Preception for our Defense (Deathshroud Absorb) or Group Support (Putrid Mark).

Better or Worse is difficult to say. It does seem that Necromancers have increased in power slower then other classes and we are further then we have ever been from the Attrition class that was originally described.

I would say we were a stagnant mess with nonfunctioning traits galore, and deathshroud absorb did not work a year ago, it was around in beta, then they “fixed” it, then brought it back, then removed it again. I fail to see how we were any better at attrition a year ago, or better at pretty much anything other than being a source of free bags.

Necrochild.1497

I fail to see how we were any better at attrition a year ago, or better at pretty much anything other than being a source of free bags.

Nerfing Retaliation (A big part of early defensive Deathshroud build’s dps), Removal (or Re-removal) of Deathshroud Absorb and adding iCDs to Spectral Skills were all pretty huge hits to our Attrition.

So my point stands that while there have been moments between release and now that we have been closer to an actual attrition class, right now we are as far away as we have ever been.

Usagi.4835:

There’re so many threads similar to this I’m not sure my comment will be seen at all, and it’s probably already been said, but I honestly don’t think ANet knows what they want to do with the necromancer or how to make it an ‘attrition’ class.

People complain about how necros have a second HP via Deathshroud/Lifeforce and how necros have the highest base health pool of the light classes; if you play necro, you see that they don’t have any reliable skills available to them that can be used to disengage so a high base HP is necessary. I’m not saying necros should be like eles in any way, but I see eles and despite their low base HP, I feel (at least with D/D eles) that they have good/decent sustain via switching to water attunement, Cone of Cold, Cleansing Wave, Evasive Arcana and arguably Signet of Restoration.

I suppose you could argue that’s a different sort of sustain, but that’s just my opinion. I’m not sure if it holds any water or is particularly valid but yeah. I don’t know~

See it irritates me that people think of DS as a second HP pool.

DS is fundamentally different from HP; for starters it blocks hitpoint healing while in use and when you drop combat it does not replenish like hitpoints do!

Plus add in that even if DS acted exactly the same as hitpoints in all respects; extra hp means jack all against all the damage floating around in actual play without some other layer of mitigation backing it up.

spoj.9672:

Im patiently awaiting a cleave weapon. And hopeful anet will develop the class into a spiker type class. Thats something that could easily happen with the addition of cleave and a few minor buffs and alterations in traits. Attrition is far too different to how the necro currently works for it to be the route they continue to follow.

Until then I will be avoiding my necro for the most part. I will however being attempting to break the lupi record once i finish my ascended focus. After that i probably wont have a reason to go back to it until we get some big changes.

I +1 spammed this for about 15 minutes. Too bad it still only counts as 1.

spoj.9672:

Im patiently awaiting a cleave weapon. And hopeful anet will develop the class into a spiker type class. Thats something that could easily happen with the addition of cleave and a few minor buffs and alterations in traits. Attrition is far too different to how the necro currently works for it to be the route they continue to follow.

Until then I will be avoiding my necro for the most part. I will however being attempting to break the lupi record once i finish my ascended focus. After that i probably wont have a reason to go back to it until we get some big changes.

Cleave would be nice. Spike damage build no so much, for me personally. I’d like to see something going more for a sustained damage/control/attrition/mild support setup. Pretty much terrible burst/mobility but above average in everything else =D

Necro was my main from head-start until the Queen’s Jubilee patch, and comprised probably 90%+ of my play time over that period. Though I was aware of the Necro’s flaws in PvE previously, Liadri turned out to be my breaking point.

After spending too darn many attempts on Liadri on my Necro, I switched over to my Mesmer, created a new build on the fly, equipped a GS (which I hadn’t used since level 10ish), and one-shot the encounter. It wasn’t that I was better on my Mes; in fact I had power-leveled the Mes through AC farm and crafting, and barely used her since. Instead the key difference was two additional invulns, constant vigor, and blink.

Unfortunately, the core Necro design of low mobility, low evasion, no invulnerability, and support / control via conditions is directly contrary to the core of the combat system in GW2. I’ve found my Mesmer is far better for anything PvE (except tagging mobs in massive zergs), and generally more entertaining as well.

Now, my Necro is relegated for my WvW zerg character. He’s still not attrition based though; he’s a squishy backline AoE nuker, just as intended.

nekretaal.6485:

A timeline:

1. Nercos are OP in closed beta.

2. ROFL NERFHAMMER Game released with many traits (two whole useless traitlines) and axe weapon nerfed to near uselessness

3. Game released with many game breaking bugs, stuff like “only one third downed HP,” and bug not addressed for almost a year. Stuff like skills going on full cool down when cancelled still in the game.

4. Promised a fix for the bugs and the class.

5. Not until 10 months later fix comes…. Dhummfire!

(If you put aside the official descriptions and look at what the class finally is, you see the role for the class: a glassy, little sustain burst caster)

6. However, update patch is released too close to e-sports tournament.

7. Meta has not caught up to the patch and the new dhuumfire builds destroy the pre patch builds. And more importantly, the exports push fails when the e sport watchers see all the minions, ranger spirits and spell clutter on the screen and cant tell what’s going on.

8. INCOMING NERFHAMMER — immediately, without giving time for the meta to shift, dhuumfire nerfed, but unrelated skills nerfed too. The 2k damage that dhuumfire added met with about 10k damage removed from the class.

9. Anet hypes up lifesteal update: tweaks are totally meaningless

10. Anet hypes up new balance patch: all condition removal is buff, all necromancer counters buffed, necromancer nerfed.

11. Anet hypes up new healing skills for the classes: Necromancer skill is garbage and can’t ever be not-garbage.

Please do make a thread out of this so we can keep track of the kitten thrown at us.

BondageBill.4021:

Necro was my main from head-start until the Queen’s Jubilee patch, and comprised probably 90%+ of my play time over that period. Though I was aware of the Necro’s flaws in PvE previously, Liadri turned out to be my breaking point.

After spending too darn many attempts on Liadri on my Necro, I switched over to my Mesmer, created a new build on the fly, equipped a GS (which I hadn’t used since level 10ish), and one-shot the encounter. It wasn’t that I was better on my Mes; in fact I had power-leveled the Mes through AC farm and crafting, and barely used her since. Instead the key difference was two additional invulns, constant vigor, and blink.

Unfortunately, the core Necro design of low mobility, low evasion, no invulnerability, and support / control via conditions is directly contrary to the core of the combat system in GW2. I’ve found my Mesmer is far better for anything PvE (except tagging mobs in massive zergs), and generally more entertaining as well.

Now, my Necro is relegated for my WvW zerg character. He’s still not attrition based though; he’s a squishy backline AoE nuker, just as intended.

I guess I can say you didn’t master necro good enough then.. Liadri was for me a 2 attemps kill 1 to learn her tricks and 1 to defeat her..

My problem with the whole thing, mainly, is the blatantly and glaringly obvious preference they have for balancing around warriors, guards, mesmers. I know our class is going to be riddled with lots of bugs, broken mechanics, and all out nonsense for quite some time, but the care and dedication they put into those other classes is like a slap in the face to us. Do i think they hate necros and are doing it on purpose? Of course not, I’m not that stupid. But it is clear they don’t understand our class. Everyone knows the players have a much more intimate understanding of the classes they play simply because we spend more time doing it and picking away at every fine detail of it. The classes they play and spend time with are reflecting their understanding of them in the way they balance around them, rather than mixing them into the balance along with the less favored professions.

I’m sure they are banging their heads against a wall over us, but if they truly want to crank out better stuff for the necro class, they will have to hang up their warriors for a while and learn to play us. They were right when they told us necro is largely a “l2p” issue…but I don’t think it’s on our end for the most part.

BondageBill.4021:

Necro was my main from head-start until the Queen’s Jubilee patch, and comprised probably 90%+ of my play time over that period. Though I was aware of the Necro’s flaws in PvE previously, Liadri turned out to be my breaking point.

After spending too darn many attempts on Liadri on my Necro, I switched over to my Mesmer, created a new build on the fly, equipped a GS (which I hadn’t used since level 10ish), and one-shot the encounter. It wasn’t that I was better on my Mes; in fact I had power-leveled the Mes through AC farm and crafting, and barely used her since. Instead the key difference was two additional invulns, constant vigor, and blink.

Unfortunately, the core Necro design of low mobility, low evasion, no invulnerability, and support / control via conditions is directly contrary to the core of the combat system in GW2. I’ve found my Mesmer is far better for anything PvE (except tagging mobs in massive zergs), and generally more entertaining as well.

Now, my Necro is relegated for my WvW zerg character. He’s still not attrition based though; he’s a squishy backline AoE nuker, just as intended.

This exactly this..