Guild Wars 2

Hey, everyone. After talking to some other Necromancers, non-necromancers and doing some own reflection, I wanted to throw in a my few cents on a couple changes I feel that could tidy up the class a bit and I’ll try my best to explain my reasons. (Note: For this post, I’m going to try to keep it relatively short and sweet, nudges and fixes that could make what we have going for us now more solid, without significant reworks.)

Issue 1: Shifting some LF outside of Soul Reaping.
a) Soul Marks: Move 2% life force gained from marks to the baseline skills. Change Soul marks to: “Marks are unblockable and increase the LF gained by marks by 50%.”

b) Vital Persistence: Baseline 3% life force degeneration. Change Vital Persistence to: “Shrouded Persistence – Reduces the cooldown on shroud abilities by 15% and reduce natural LF degeneration by 33%.”

Reasons: There are a couple reasons for these changes. First off, these changes would not benefit our standard builds at all, but we find ourselves commonly using these two traits in a majority of our effective PVP builds. I wanted to retain a bit of that LF focus on the trait line, but reduce the impact of giving up Soul Reaping. Ways this becomes beneficial is by opening up some diversity options, specifically for Spite/Curses/Reaper condition builds and Spite/x/Reaper Power builds, including allowing just enough freedom to take a broader range of choices in Soul Reaping, allowing Unyielding Blast to be coupled with Decimate Defenses or taking Spectral Mastery over Vital Persistence. All would be more viable and fit well as small but impactful changes to our side builds that are close but not quite there with the heavy reliance on these two traits.

Issue 2: Deathly Chill…
a) Deathly Chill: Change from 1 bleed (8s) to (either):
- Inflicts 2 torment for 8 seconds on chill.
- Chilling an enemy inflicts 2 torment for 5 seconds. Striking a chilled foe grants Chilling Assault (name) increasing condition damage dealt by 2% for 8 (or 10) seconds, stacks up to 5 times. (New stacks do not refresh the entire stack.)

Reasons: There has been a lot of talk among the community. The Developers openly admitted the reason they went with bleed is to ensure it was an offensive trait, thus poison was not a contender for the condition applied. Many of us felt the most obvious choice would be Torment, as Reaper lacks access to the trait and the condition fits thematically with the class style perfectly. There are other technical considerations too wordy to need spelling out.

Additionally, some felt it would be an interesting place to work in a modifier, and I tend to agree. I personally would support the second option most, but the first option is easier, so I put both as this is intended to be more “easy” solutions to problems without major reworks.

Issue 3: A few Shout touch ups.
a) “Your Soul is Mine!”: Slight touch up on healing amount. While I understand there is a Life Force component, the skill falls short of being competitive against a traited CC (and often a non-traited, considering the additional health gained in addition to damage removed from conditions). The skill falls just short to other short cooldown heals (Ether Feast, and others) that I don’t feel is made up for by the Life force alone, especially in smaller scale battles. One possible solution would be to move more of the LF into the heal itself.

b) “Rise!”: Rise is almost perfect, yet AI and AOE still sells the skill short. My suggestion to bring it in line with other similar 50% absorption effects (Guard, Phantasmal Defender/MD, Bulwark Gyro) is to reduce the Max duration of the minions to 20 seconds, but reduce the cooldown from 40 seconds to 30. I feel this is important because the skill is very useful to survive heavy pressure that is common for Necromancers to face, but the cooldown is long and the pets die quickly or are easily kited. A more frequent button press with no other practical gains would make it a more well rounded skill and fit better against other similar skills.

c) “Chilled to the Bone!”: The change to Deathly Chill, I feel, left this skill feeling quite a bit less impactful, especially when you consider the chill duration nerf it took along with the damage loss. I think it’s time to make the leap to a shorter cooldown to allow it to function as a more frequent CC than the old Chill spike it once was. I suggest:
- “Chilled to the Bone!”: 1 Second cast, 60 second cooldown. Damage and freeze enemies around you inflicting 4 seconds of chill and stunning them for 2 seconds. Gain 1 stack of stability for 8 seconds per target struck."

Closing notes: I realize there are a lot of other issues with Necromancer and Reaper, many of which are very well known and noted. Unfortunately, a lot of other issues require deeper investigation and more development time, which is not the point of this thread. I just wanted to get out a few to-the-point changes that could get us out of our slight rut (mostly funneled into signet builds or corruption builds, lack of diversity and slight help for Power builds via diversity).

Please, let me know what you think, like, dislike or would just like to add. Thanks a lot, Reapers and Necromancers.

ron you naild it plus 1

I’m the last person to want power creep, but I feel like the active skill on minions need to be updated to do something more than what they do today, preferably something utility like.

I also feel like Wells damage component is lacking since HoT but just adding more damage doesn’t feel like it would be a good idea either. I just don’t know man.

I do think these would be quite good changes. Especially the soul reaping ones. However I do think it’s time to rework deathshroud in some way. It’s clear we can’t have nice things as we are inherently tanky and strong in 1v1’s. I would be a shame as I like the way it works now but it’s hard to trust Anet to know what to do as they’ve kinda failed for 3 years. I’ve been trying to think of a way to do this but not sure if I got a good idea yet. The best I’ve had so far is:

Make Shroud not soak up all the dmg we take but maybe 50% of it while the rest goes on our actual health. If this means we could get more quality of life (like more stab, blocks, invuls and even heal through shroud) Anet might be able to actually balance this class.

There’s probably a better slolution then this but I do believe the tankyness of shroud is what Anet can’t balance around even if it’s quite easy to play around. Necro being tanky is only a problem in low tier pvp.

First I think that reaper needs some if it’s nerf reversed back or partially back. The kneejerk reaction to the whine of pvp’ers and probably core symphatisants, screwed over a lot of builds which were actually considered very close to balanced. It also messed with the theme of the reaper combined to the necro, when your of your top 4 longest chill duration skills 3 of them lie in core and your elite skill lies in the top 8 you might think there is something wrong with being called specialised in chill.

So I suggest , reverting back the excecutioner scythe field to five seconds and increasing the shout elite back to at least 5 seconds of chill. The last nerf I want to partially revert is the infusing terror and revert it’s duration back to at 7~8 seconds.

For the rest yeah I aggree with your changes in the idea maybe not the numbers.

I agree with your suggestions of issue 1. More specifically the suggested change to Vital Persistence is a suggestion more people have made and it’s quite unfortunately that we haven’t had some form of communication from the devs to know why they dislike the suggestion or why they see no need for change.

Concerning your second issue, I’m gonna be quite honest. Never really used the trait as I play more as a power Reaper, but I can most certainly understand your way of thinking. Would have no problem with one of those changes.

However, I don’t agree with the conclusions you make concerning your third issue. Yes, I agree the healing skill could have some increased healing. Yes, I agree Rise is very important when dealing with heavy pressure. And yes, I would like to see a small decrease in cooldown from Chill to the Bone, mainly as I use the skill in WvW to get my stability. However, I dislike the idea of giving free, baseline gifts. I truly believe there are other ways to tackle the problems you describe, and I personally think that one of them would be to look at the trait Augury of Death. Currently, we get a baseline 10% reduction, and an additional 5% for every foe we hit. Maybe it would be more interesting to increase this to 6%, meaning that if we hit 5 foes we get a cooldown reduction of 30%, instead of the 25% we get now. This way, we get more healing over time (even in general through all shouts), can use Rise more often, and have an elite skill that will be more impact full without losing the main idea behind the shouts, and more importantly: without giving free gifts.

Thanks for all the feed back, a few things I’d like to address.
1. Numbers are obviously not final, but they help show the idea. We’ve seen With Deathly chill that numbers can make all the difference, so I felt it was important to express the track I’m on. If you have any specific numbers you’d like to discuss, call them out. I’m happy to do the numbers game.

2. Yes, I realize there are deeper concerns with Base Necromancer. Like I said in the OP, I’d love for those changes to come, but they are much more involved than a few simple number fixes. Functionality changes are usually set up for major patches, these are more short term changes that are easier and more to the point of our current build layouts.

3. Feel free to add more in depth thoughts on Shouts. The above still sums up my ideals, and if not for the numbers, the issues with them are at least expressed. I’d love a few touch ups on the above skills because I feel shouts are borderline, but not QUITE there yet. Most specifically, I do feel the heal could have more to the healing itself as the group scaling isn’t bad, but it falls short in small scale fights. Lastly, the shout trait is very bland, and I realize this. Again, this is a case of wanting smaller easier changes to increase functionality. I’m not really a fan of the way Augery was handled in the first place, but that’s best left to its own discussion, since it would require some deeper changes.

@Bluewizard, the reason I suggest these “free gifts” as you put it is because these would more greatly impact smaller scale fights (save the case of CttB, which effects both a lot). Shouts are actually not bad against multiple enemies as it stands, but need some sort of slight boost when dealing with fewer enemies. As for “Rise”! It’s just more practical and brings it in line with other similar effects, most of which are between 20 and 30 second cooldowns as it stands, Rise has a significantly longer cooldown. I believe the main reason for this is that it was designed when the pets didn’t have a max duration, now that we have a max duration we can toy with, I think bringing it down to 30 second cooldown would be a sweet spot.

Bluewizard.2694:

Maybe it would be more interesting to increase this to 6%, meaning that if we hit 5 foes we get a cooldown reduction of 30%, instead of the 25% we get now. This way, we get more healing over time (even in general through all shouts), can use Rise more often, and have an elite skill that will be more impact full without losing the main idea behind the shouts, and more importantly: without giving free gifts.

If we hit 5 foes currently with a traited shout, it has a 35% total cooldown reduction.

I think that :

Issue 1, is not an issue. Mainly your shifting nothing from soul reaping, you are just making some LF gain baseline. Why? Traits are here to allow players to choose their gameplay. trait that help with LF on necromancer do exactly that. The issue is more that players are slaves of a quality of life granted by these trait and they do not wish to part with it.

Issue 2, I agree that deathly chill feel disappointing now. At the same time, I feel like the issue ain’t really the damage provided by the trait but the identity of the trait. Simply put, now, It lack personnality. It probably would be better to change it into a trait that increase the necromancer’s condition damage on chilled foes. And in fact it would be even better if this trait was increasing both power damage and condition damage on chilled foe. Another idea, change it into : Chilling victory, grant 2% condi damage and power damage for 5-8s when you stuck a chilled foe, stack up to 5 time.

Issue 3, I totally disagree. Shouts are balanced at the moment they don’t need any buff or tweaks.

All solid ideas. I don’t personally feel like any of these are the “big” issues that plague the profession, but they’re small ones that are relatively easy to do with some nice payoff.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bluewizard.2694:

Maybe it would be more interesting to increase this to 6%, meaning that if we hit 5 foes we get a cooldown reduction of 30%, instead of the 25% we get now. This way, we get more healing over time (even in general through all shouts), can use Rise more often, and have an elite skill that will be more impact full without losing the main idea behind the shouts, and more importantly: without giving free gifts.

If we hit 5 foes currently with a traited shout, it has a 35% total cooldown reduction.

I know, but I was only talking about the additional reduction we get from hitting foes.

I agree with the suggestions for Issue 1 and YSIM, but not with anything else.
These Deathly Chill suggestions would make it better than before. It should be 2 Torment/Bleed for 4 seconds. A nerf from the old Deathly Chill, but still good.
Rise and CttB need no changes. They’re both very good skills. CttB is still the best elite skill we have and Rise is still a very good and reliable utility.

I have less of an issue with the Deathly Chill and CttB changes, but would like to see the field on RS5 changed back to be longer, so we can interface with it more organically, especially since Frost Armor/Aura means more than ever for a DC build. Right now, the field doesn’t last long enough unless you were melee range when you turned on shroud (no shroud→charge→drop field→spin→charge as easily anymore).

I disagree with 3A, but I basically love YSiM and all the life force it gains me. If anything, I would like to see the lifesteal hits from Augury be bigger.

3B I can agree with simply because equivalent abilities on other professions are so good. Rise! performs double duty by popping traps and soaking up aoe hits (a double edged double duty…) along with reducing damage taken directly, though, so I’m not sure it needs much in terms of tweaking. I’d like to see it work with the condi transfer from Necromantic Corruption, though.

The soul reaping suggestions and YSIM are good, but I disagree with the rest:

1) DC needed a nerf, not a buff, but your 2x torment suggestion is a flat buff over the old DC.
2) Rise already has a low CD, lowering it more just feeds the powercreep that has made the post-HoT game more spammy and less thoughtful. Imo, Rise and all the other 50% damage reductions (e.g., bulwark gyro, illusionary defender) should be nerfed to a 33% damage reduction.
3) CTTB is a 600 radius AOE stun that provides stability, has a massive damage coefficient, and chills, all on a 90s cooldown that can get as low as 58s in a teamfight. That sounds balanced to me. It doesn’t need a lower cooldown—the last thing any elite spec needs is more CC spam.