Guild Wars 2

I must say you put yourself in a little hot water with your comment about D.S., but I understand your theoretical caution, even if I don’t agree

I want to offer you a more in depth look into the necro in high/higher end play (not that I and my guild are the best group, but we’ve played and given very close games to the current top teams, Team Paradigm and Team Legacy).

The necro in the right hands is good and I’ve played all specs Condition/Power builds/Tank Builds/Minion builds and have had fine success (I’m a good all around player and this has a lot to do with it). I have certain classes/builds that give each of these specs its own challenges and this is fine, I don’t expect to be able to beat 1v1 vrs all other classes/builds.

However when I break down what I can do vrs an equivalent it becomes pretty obvious that what the necro can offer in any of his specs is outshined by what another class can do speced the same way. I like the necro but if I really wanted to min max and go with what will win us the most, I’m better of choosing another class atm (which I won’t, I’m not at that point and I like the necro).

1. As a tank Necro (with plague form ready) I can tankkittenwell, but a bunker style Guardain or Engineer can do the same and get others off the point to keep/take a point from a group (with all their knockbacks). Our damages are about the same when fully tanked spec, but the deciding factor is knockdowns/pushbacks. Giving our fears a 2 second effect would almost help counter this and put us on equal ground (and DEAR god tone down spirit hammers countless knockdown/knockbacks).

2. A powerspec necro can do decent damage at the loss of a ton of survivability, and get some kills here and there, but its totattly outshined by a warrior/thief/ranger who actually have more survivability when specced to do damage and played well with their various outs. D.S. is not a mechanic that will save for long when speced like paper. Below is a link that gives my thoughts on how to help the powerspec options.

3. Condition necro’s are pretty deadly, but vrs a bleed/condition stacking ranger/thief and even a mesmer are outclassed because of the speed at which the necro puts out its conditions. Also necro’s having only 2 types of damage conditions and their slow application (in comparison) makes them more at a disadvantage then a counterpart due to condition removals. The necro does have an advantage vrs a ranger/thief counter part in a 1v1 situation, but offers less overall vrs all others (a mesmer can equally null conditions if speced similarly to the necro, have equal survivability and more damage).

4. The redheaded step child is actually in my opinion one of the best necro specs when minion AI is working solid. Yes it has its weaknesses in a 3v3 and greater and vrs AOE comps (which are rare), but as a point holder and assister can put out prettykittengood damage and have real good survivability.

I’ve made a post that I think would help the necro in a inadvertent way of balancing other classes as well as a small amount of damage buff to the class.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Things-that-I-think-would-improve-the-game/first#post87682

Also I’ve shared my thoughts on how the necro is most vulnerable at the start of matches due to no life force and that the plague form is the only real counter to this when focus fired (or very good team gameplay to help you).

Other things that concern the class are…..

1. Life force generation outside of Staff and traited marks is very low.

2. Corruptions and their negative effects is unwarranted (no class has this and has equal to better results with their utilities).

3. Our fears are to short. (why on earth does a thief stolen fear last for 3 seconds and ours for 1, GOD that makes me so mad).

4. Our signet choices are relatively poor with lame effects or high cooldowns (minus plague, but I personally never us that).

5. Wells are relatively so meh….

6. Reduce the casting time of Spinal Shivers, unholy feast, wail of doom and enfeebling blood (this would help a lot for fluidity).

P.S. I fact checked something you said about how all class forums are saying they are underpowered and everyone else is overpowered and that is not true https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Balancing-Guild-Wars-2 .

Only the Elementalist and Necro forums have a lot of UP threads and interestingly enough the community agree’s. You also never hear wow necro’s are OP or Elementalist is OP. I say this because I think the majority is seeing something that perhaps your team is not. I know there are a lot of cryers out there but I think at least “a partial something” can be taken from the outcrys of those professions and the fact that the other professions are not complaining about us.

Good post although I disagree on wells or corruption beeing bad. Imo fixing the current broken stuff (fixing not buffing) and maybe some small changes to cooldowns or durations could very well balance things out.

+1

In addition:
The necro might be a solid profession and everything what Jon Peters said would be right if, and thats the nub of the matter, our skills and traits wouldn’t be so buggy. In the current state of the necro it really sucks to play the profession and we can’t even say if this is due to the profession being undepowered or not cause there are so many bugs. The concept behind the necro might be fine, but we won’t know it until most of the bugs are fixed.

I completely agree with most all of the points the Op listed out.
One thing he mentioned that constantly has been bugging me lately is our condition damage. Just like OP said, why are we, supposed masters of conditions, doing less conditions and less condition damage than other classes who are specced into direct damage builds. It feels like other classes can do exactly what I am supposed to be doing AND they get the added benefit of doing better direct damage.

I have to say that as a well specced necro, I do a very decent/good job at holding a point. Not only that, but I can confidently fight on 1×2, maybe even 1×3 situations on tight spots.

I’m not sure if this spec in particular needs any love, altho I do think others do.

@Cls.9346

Didn’t exactly say corruptions were bad, but the negative damage to you is unwarrented. Yes you can use them to your advantage at times, but this game is so chaotic its not a given, and thus its more of a hurt to the class I feel.

deriver.5381

Well necro is a good tank, and with plague form can last a good bit (if you don’t have plague, Its not nearly as good), but it falls into the category of what I mentioned. There are stronger tanks w/more capture point strengths. We can tank and be godly in Spvp and kittenhardy in tpvp, but the points I’ve listed make us less functional overall.

nachtnebel.9168:

+1

In addition:
The necro might be a solid profession and everything what Jon Peters said would be right if, and thats the nub of the matter, our skills and traits wouldn’t be so buggy. In the current state of the necro it really sucks to play the profession and we can’t even say if this is due to the profession being undepowered or not cause there are so many bugs. The concept behind the necro might be fine, but we won’t know it until most of the bugs are fixed.

Its not the traits, almost all the builds I use don’t have buggy traits.

Frankly, Jon Peters has no credibility with me at this point. How anyone can say he is concerned with DS being too powerful when they have let warriors, thieves and mezmers run around destroying people with the same cookie cutter skill sets and builds that require no more than a 2 to 3 button spam is laughable. Then to say that “everyone says they are underpowered” when any fool who isn’t blind can see the obvious difference in the number and consistency of posts in our forums compared to others is simply inexcusable. Fact is, he has something against this profession and the people that play it. I can’t explain it otherwise. The overt advantage other classes have and the sheer easiness of play compared to ours says volumes. That and the fact that we have had NOTHING changed when so much is wrong is practically a siren in the dead of night saying something ain’t right. Either he has no clue how to fix us or they just don’t care. Pick one. I personally and disgusted at this point and after his last remarks, have lost respect for him professionally.

I would also like to add that Traits feel a tad schizophrenic.

They really put us into a jack-of-all, master of none. I wouldn’t actually have a problem with this, but the trade offs are generally too much. Our damage out-put drops of significantly for a relatively small increase in tank or vice versa.

I think that with some fair changes to DS, some change to make other weapons viable, and bug fixes, we will be in a pretty decent place where we can actually start to discuss Necro balance OP/UP. Until then, it seems less UP than broken.

Anyway, very good post and I hope it is read by a dev. Jon’s first post (the L2P one) annoyed me (but in his defense he did go on to make some reasonable points), and I am tired of people acting like Necro is just coincidentally the class that all of the whiner’s went to.

Finally, perhaps I have been spoiled by the phenomenal community involvement of LoL, but it would be nice to have some report on the state of the Necro.

Monarch.4026:

Frankly, Jon Peters has no credibility with me at this point. How anyone can say he is concerned with DS being too powerful when they have let warriors, thieves and mezmers run around destroying people with the same cookie cutter skill sets and builds that require no more than a 2 to 3 button spam is laughable. Then to say that “everyone says they are underpowered” when any fool who isn’t blind can see the obvious difference in the number and consistency of posts in our forums compared to others is simply inexcusable. Fact is, he has something against this profession and the people that play it. I can’t explain it otherwise. The overt advantage other classes have and the sheer easiness of play compared to ours says volumes. That and the fact that we have had NOTHING changed when so much is wrong is practically a siren in the dead of night saying something ain’t right. Either he has no clue how to fix us or they just don’t care. Pick one. I personally and disgusted at this point and after his last remarks, have lost respect for him professionally.

A little dramatic, but gets the general message across. However the changes I would make to the necro would be more of a bump in damage, a fixing to power builds, and improve fear and make it easier to get life force by other means….

Well it makes me wonder if Jon actually played a necro and a warrior at level 80. I feel as a game designer, you have to play all the classes and level them to 80, so you can have an objective look at the mechanics overall. People will always complain on the forums, and I don’t blame him for taking our posts with a grain of salt.

If he did indeed “master the DS” by leveling his necro to 80 and WvWed with it, i hope he makes a video and enlightens the noobs among us.

However, I do understand the concern with the DS giving us so much health (read: health does not equal survivablity). I personally feel that we would be a lot more balanced, and our builds would be a more diverse (read: power necro) if our base damage was increased a bit by nerfing the duration of DS (untraited).

I feel that a lot of our issues also has to do with scaling. For example, a full 30 points in the blood line gives about 10~20HP per hit. Keep in mind with 30 points in blood we’d have around 25k HP… the heal here is not scaling with vitality. (not to mention the 50% more heal trait is bugged so it gives 16% more, scaling issue here as well I suspect)

The damage of Feast of Corruption is another example.

It’s late now and im falling asleep, but if you feel the same way then by all means bring more examples to the table. zzzz

Agreed. IF the bugs were fixed then I suppose a minor buff in some less important areas would make us competitive. The thing is, even after all bugs fixed, we still would have the weakest weapons in game (even with power builds), out conditions application is by far the slowest (even with proper condition builds) and such, but those are rather minor things, adding like 30-50 damage here or +1 bleed stack per hit over there aren’t things of huge impact on how is the class played, but they are required to make us competitive. But without the bugs fixed, it is just not worth it.

Also, scaling. Mangocheesecake has it just right. Siphon health should be much higher than current 25 if we are co be competitive, and minions do need to scale more, they are quite weak already and once everyone will start wearing exotic lvl80 gear, they are too weak to be an asset. No matter how Anet decides to fix it, some tweaking is required. Hope they do it soon. Will be playing my engineer and warrior until then.