Guild Wars 2

We have lots of threads complaining about skills, traits, design decisions, balancing a playstyles, and a lot of them have really good ideas, while others have some not so good ideas. A lot of people seem to think the conceptual design of this profession is bad, while others fault Deathshroud, and some think that everything is fine but our skills/traits/numbers are just subpar. What interests me is the first group, as the “idea” of a Necromancer lays the foundation for all subsequent decisions.
Hence, I was wondering, if we as a community could re-design everything about from the ground up, what would we end up with? What fundamental design decisions would we change about the design of profession to improve our current state?
I’m not really looking for answers like “Oh, put that bleed back on Signet of Spite” – numbers and skill parameters can be changed with ease and are things that come in down the line. What I’m interested in hearing is more of conceptual design – things like “putting an attrition class in game built around big hits is not clever” or “having a family of unrelated skills that increase Life Force as added function seems disjointed and unimpressive.”

What the necro needs to really function as an attrition class is a way to stop people from running away. Realistically, this means adding a couple immobilizes (to counter the numerous dashes) and improvements to Dark Path and Spectral Grasp to make them more reliable. We already have pretty good access to poison and weakness to limit healing and dodging, though a bit more weakness wouldn’t hurt.

We also need shorter cooldowns and cast times on a few key skills (not all of them). Corrosive Poison Cloud, for example, could easily have both parts lowered by about 25% (3/4 second cast time, 30 second recharge). Spinal Shivers could use a 1/4 second shaved off of its cast time as well. Well of Darkness could stand to have 5-10 seconds shaved off of its cooldown. This makes it harder for opponents who are able to disengage to come back in while we are still on cooldown.

I feel necro is close to being in the right spot, but a couple of things need to be tweaked to make us the masters of attrition we are meant to be, namely more/more reliable snares/torment to prevent our targets from just running away.

To me, it seems like there’s a fundamental issue with the class nomenclature versus practice:

1. The concept of a Necromancer is one who throws an inexhaustible army of undead at a target. These undead needn’t be particularly resilient, but should be easily replaceable. Herein lies the issue with the current Minion Master, in that the minions are neither easily reproduceable or numerous. The Mesmer is what the Minion Master should be. If the Necro were to function properly, it’d need a lot of rework toward the end of producing a lot more minions.

2. The present iteration of the Necro is more akin to a attrition-focused Cabalist, but even in this it’s not quite right. My conception of an attrition-class is one that makes anyone that tangles with it pay for the encounter. Victories against this kind of Necro should never be clean. Doable? Most certainly. Clean? Never. Whether it’s a Power or a ConD build, the attrition class needs to be constantly and consistently shaving off the opponent’s health and ability to act. The longer the fight goes the harder it is for the opponent to get an upper hand.

Both of these concepts, however, would require a fundamental re-design of the Necro at the worst, or some serious trait/utility revamping at the best. The Necro at the moment is a burst class, whether or not we like it. Prolonged engagements spell defeat, not victory, for the class that’s supposed to take a messy beating and come out on top—adding the enemy’s corpse to his own army…

Phenn.5167:

To me, it seems like there’s a fundamental issue with the class nomenclature versus practice:

1. The concept of a Necromancer is one who throws an inexhaustible army of undead at a target. These undead needn’t be particularly resilient, but should be easily replaceable. Herein lies the issue with the current Minion Master, in that the minions are neither easily reproduceable or numerous. The Mesmer is what the Minion Master should be. If the Necro were to function properly, it’d need a lot of rework toward the end of producing a lot more minions.

2. The present iteration of the Necro is more akin to a attrition-focused Cabalist, but even in this it’s not quite right. My conception of an attrition-class is one that makes anyone that tangles with it pay for the encounter. Victories against this kind of Necro should never be clean. Doable? Most certainly. Clean? Never. Whether it’s a Power or a ConD build, the attrition class needs to be constantly and consistently shaving off the opponent’s health and ability to act. The longer the fight goes the harder it is for the opponent to get an upper hand.

Both of these concepts, however, would require a fundamental re-design of the Necro at the worst, or some serious trait/utility revamping at the best. The Necro at the moment is a burst class, whether or not we like it. Prolonged engagements spell defeat, not victory, for the class that’s supposed to take a messy beating and come out on top—adding the enemy’s corpse to his own army…

Its interesting, because in spvp we are indeed more of a burst class, while in wvw in zerg fights we are quite resilient if players die, and in there is the only instance where siphon builds are not subpar (our attrition build). But even there, our burst specs are in an atleast equeal postion.

Muchacho.2390:

Its interesting, because in spvp we are indeed more of a burst class, while in wvw in zerg fights we are quite resilient if players die, and in there is the only instance where siphon builds are not subpar (our attrition build). But even there, our burst specs are in an atleast equeal postion.

What’s so vexing for me is that the PvE Meta calls for heavy spike DPS, so a true attrition build would do little to promote Necros in dungeon runs, etc. A proper Minion Master, maybe, but only in the potential to hold off and deal with trash single-handedly.

Phenn.5167:

Muchacho.2390:

Its interesting, because in spvp we are indeed more of a burst class, while in wvw in zerg fights we are quite resilient if players die, and in there is the only instance where siphon builds are not subpar (our attrition build). But even there, our burst specs are in an atleast equeal postion.

What’s so vexing for me is that the PvE Meta calls for heavy spike DPS, so a true attrition build would do little to promote Necros in dungeon runs, etc. A proper Minion Master, maybe, but only in the potential to hold off and deal with trash single-handedly.

I dont know how good our zerker spec does in pve content (i am a wvw/spvp player), but i alway thought that our problem was that the bosses tend to have one shot skills, which we cannot handle do lack of vigor, block etc, not the damage output ( dagger+wells).

Define attrition please. Low damage class with sustain so it can outlive the opponent and kill it slowly?

@Muchacho This is a problem, but frankly most experienced players can stay alive just fine, or as well as anyone else. The problem is that you cannot match the DPS of a Warrior

I am actually fine with the overall idea of the Necromancer as it is. It is still very much similar in idea to the GW1 Necromancer, which is actually the core basis of what we are as a class, but adapted to a much more active combat system with a simplified buff/debuff system and no “direct” supporting.

It is only the details in how they have executed on that idea that bother me.

Their conceptual design for the Necromancer goes completely against 90% of the mechanics that the other classes have access to. Their philosophy on our class should just change imo.

Bhawb.7408:

@Muchacho This is a problem, but frankly most experienced players can stay alive just fine, or as well as anyone else. The problem is that you cannot match the DPS of a Warrior

I am actually fine with the overall idea of the Necromancer as it is. It is still very much similar in idea to the GW1 Necromancer, which is actually the core basis of what we are as a class, but adapted to a much more active combat system with a simplified buff/debuff system and no “direct” supporting.

It is only the details in how they have executed on that idea that bother me.

Mmhhh i agree with that, so more damage output would help necros in pve?

No, redesigning PvE would help. We can’t realistically outdamage warriors, they just need to make PvE harder so it can’t just be 5x berzerker builds maxing DPS.

Muchacho.2390:

Mmhhh i agree with that, so more damage output would help necros in pve?

Devs stated that warriors should take and make the most damage, so group utility or / and unique mechanics would be better.

It is not only our own basis that need to be considered. Our EFFECTIVENESS needs to be front and central, not just our potential theoretical outputs.

The ever increasing counters to our abilities that the other professions are getting is heavily impacting on our viability…. apparently without any/a lot of regard to the impact that has on the necro meta and effectiveness in actual gameplay.

While on paper our list of abilities are impressive, they are, in real play, actually significantly neutralised or minimised by the other classes, or are so heavily gated (prerequisites, cds, elites etc) as to be viable only usually a once a fight while the opponents recovery is much quicker.

Focussing on only one side of the equation will always lead to lopsided results that will inevitably end in the roller coaster syndrome of buffs and nerfs.

Dalanor.5387:

Muchacho.2390:

Mmhhh i agree with that, so more damage output would help necros in pve?

Devs stated that warriors should take and make the most damage, so group utility or / and unique mechanics would be better.

Well thats what they were trying with the new signet…
I think the problem with unique mechanics is, ether they are too strong thus mandatory or not quite there which wouldnt help necros. A balancing nightmare^^

I actually really like Anet’s concept of a Necro.

- Master of Condition damage
- Master of Manipulating Conditions
- Master of Attrition
- Spectral direct damage / Death Shroud

However, while the concept is awesome, it feels like the team who designed the Necro were let down by how the game actually plays.

i.e.
- Master of Conditions is useless in PvE with the cap. Deathshroud doesn’t play nice with condition specs.
- Master of Manipulating Conditions in PvE is useless when 95% of mobs don’t have boons or cause condition damage.
- Master of Attrition – I would imagine this was supposed to be the blood tree. However it just doesn’t work, and we actually have the least attrition of anyone.
- Spectral direct damage – this actually works, DS dps is nice. But it doesn’t work with most of our skills and talents. No utilities, no healing – pretty much the entire blood tree is pointless.

Since the original design doesn’t work with how GW2 actually plays I would rework it to the following:

- Master of damage boons (wells that give might/fury etc – leave protection boons to the guardian)
- Master of attrition – maybe rework the blood tree?
- Spectral direct damage – more useful spectral skills / allow healing in DS
- Master of Ice – more cold based moves that help limit mobility
- Minions

Ghostextechnica.3270:

- Master of Ice – more cold based moves that help limit mobility

I would love to see this. And it’s probably one of the easiest to implement.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

- Master of damage boons (wells that give might/fury etc – leave protection boons to the guardian)
- Master of attrition – maybe rework the blood tree?
- Spectral direct damage – more useful spectral skills / allow healing in DS
- Master of Ice – more cold based moves that help limit mobility
- Minions

I totally agree, especially on being a MINION MASTER. Maybe I’m more accustomed to liches and whatnot, but when I think of a necromancer, I think of someone who can RAISE THE DEAD. And yes, the Necro currently can do that… but it’s pathetic since the only good ones are the Golem and either the Bone Minions or the Wurm depending on your taste.

Like, why not something like this: Minions raised literally take some of your health (a % of it, so it never kills you directly) and becomes its own. For a cost of good CC and damage, the minions are very squishy themselves, and the more minions you raise, the squishier you get. “But then you’d have Necromancers stacking Health!” Health is literally such a useless stat to stack EXCEPT in this one specific scenario, and most Necros IMHO would prefer Toughness anyways. Ultimately, I’d like more variety in minions. Let me pick and choose which CC-on-a-body minions I can have so that I can go full deeps, or CC-based…

But the simple matter of “CC hard cap” hurts Necros the most. Make it a soft cap? Like, different “CC stacks” based on who’s casting it, and different classes have different CC caps (and Necros will still have the lowest ones because ANet just believes with alllllll their heart that we’re 2good4buffs). orz

No. Necromancers are not liches, we are not warlocks, this isn’t WoW.

Also, HP scales the best on Necros of any class in the game, and if you have to have one defensive stat over the other, vitality tends to outperform toughness.

Bhawb.7408:

No. Necromancers are not liches, we are not warlocks, this isn’t WoW.

Problem is we’re not Necromancers either. Or rather, we’re poor excuses for them…

Bhawb.7408:

No. Necromancers are not liches, we are not warlocks, this isn’t WoW.

But what is a necromancer, then? What differentiates it from a Lich, or a Warlock?

Phenn.5167:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

- Master of Ice – more cold based moves that help limit mobility

I would love to see this. And it’s probably one of the easiest to implement.

Actually we can already permachill… its just not fancy looking nor can we do anything off that fact.

BTW we are liches, all of us who got over 30, by unlocking the move you are a undead (hell probably just by using DS you are already half spirit/demon/monster thingy from the UW like the friendly neighbourhood rapper shady b).

Lore-wise, a necromancer is an alive human who dabbles in the dark art of raising the dead. The word necro-mancer – literally means “Practitioner of death magic”

A lich is a dead practitioner of magic who has risen as undead. These are often necromancers who have killed themselves to become immortal as an undead lich.

A warlock is traditionally just a male witch – nothing to do with necromancy. However some mythologies associate warlocks (and witches) with summoning demons.

Balefire.7592:

But what is a necromancer, then? What differentiates it from a Lich, or a Warlock?

Necromancers in “popular” culture have come to be simply summoners of undead minions. This isn’t the full scope of Necromancy, nor is it what Necromancy is in the Guild Wars universe (where we are banned from truly raising the undead, that is what Zhaitan does).

Someone like Lily or Andele could probably do the lore part of this better than I will.

However, Necromancy has three parts. The raising of undead (NOT zombies, but literally golems of flesh), the summoning of spirits, with their source of power being life itself.

The only connection Warlocks have with Necromancers is that both magics are considered “dark”, and depending on the mythology you are sourcing, there are some loose similarities in their powers. Warlocks summon demons while Necromancers summon spirits and make undead golems. Warlocks use fire magic while Necromancers (in GW) use ice magic.

Andele.1306:

Phenn.5167:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

- Master of Ice – more cold based moves that help limit mobility

I would love to see this. And it’s probably one of the easiest to implement.

Actually we can already permachill… its just not fancy looking nor can we do anything off that fact.

Permachill for sure. But I was thinking along the lines of something where we get bonus damage to chilled targets. Or we siphon over time from anything that we’ve applied the chill condition to for the duration of the chill. Or chill itself becomes a dot like Terror. That kinda thing.

More play off chill would be nice, it has been more traditionally core to what we are than fear.

I currently see a few problems with our class:

• We have dozens of useless traits that are simply underpowered or have rubbish effects
• We have no role in PVE (or the role they picked for us, does not combine with the PVE game they’ve designed, for this PVE must change)
• We lack proper defense
• We lack offense to be as good at DPS as other classes (a problem with the PVE game itself, and with our actual damage output)
• We need more viable builds (not just Dhuumfire).

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick… and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

The worst part of it all, is that they keep balancing the necro for pvp, and ruining our effectiveness in wvw and PVE in the process. That kills us. You can’t keep trying to keep these radically different parts of the game in line. This was already obvious in GW1 with the splitting of skills. Why did we not learn that lesson?

For GW:
Warlock – Minions are lesser demons, uses souls/part of a persons consciousness as fuel for attacks, can make pacts with bigger demons to get more power, Varesh being a good example of the closest thing GW has to a warlock.
Necro – Minions is anything that used to be (hetertrophic) life and anything whos spirit can be bound (so yes a necro can bind a demon… he would need to be dead for that to work but we can; our shade being a example of it), we use any sort of energy related to fueling said things or creating a absence of energy as weapons (so blood, souls, pieces of the underworld if you work for grenth n co, etc or chilling, asphyxiating and distilling said previous blood till just plasma remains, etc), Good old Eve being a real example of a necro with master over most elements.

Another important thing is, warlock “boons” are often hexing your allies into monsters, our boons are created by depressive walks (which may or may not be on the beach depending on the situation), cute drawings and cutting our wrists, AKA being emo as kitten for some reason… unless we do the second thing and just kill our friends using their spirits as food or super overpowered wells and turning their remains into a giant death monster… but thats kinda not allowed anymore.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick… and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

Wont bother with the whats lacking and how they are shoving jhorrors in our face. But the base concepts we got are all good, thing is they got stripped off. Its not that they didnt throw stuff at the wall called necro, they threw way too much then ripped off most of it but some remains of it didnt fall off.
Also the pvp attrition thing could plain be remade for pvp into facetank kitten so hard that bosses cannot focus your allies. Think about it for a second how cool would it be if you could taunt with dark path or aggro wipe your allies by using spectral graps OR even better, while in DS bosses being unable to use aoe skills? We had such kitten (well the N/Me did) combined with punishing everyone for 1 persons mistake, thats what needs to return not some dopey oh we let you make someone run off a cliff from how ugly you look and hey you are immune to damage in 1v1 which noone cares about.
Think for 3 seconds how cool and confusing old DS would be which drops your body off in a invul state at a location and you hover around as a ghost which on leaving ds would rewind your location to your body OR you could drain your remaining life force to pull your body back to you (maybe chilling shiz on the way to you too)?

I’m currently really missing the cool profession combos that the necro was a part of in GW1. Teams always wanted a necro along with Spiteful Spirit, Blood Ritual, Minions, Blood is Power, or Barbs. There were multiple meta builds that had their use, and people really wanted a necro with those builds along. They made a noticeable difference in PVE. You wouldn’t even try The Deep without a BiP to keep your monks up and running. Or go head to head with the Bladed Aatxe in the Underworld without an SS. And for something like Defend Lion’s Arch, or Thunderhead Keep you’d definitely want a minion master. For fighting Shiro, you’d bring a necro with Spoil Victor. Our elites made that much of a difference.

We had a place in PVE. What is our place in GW2’s PVE? No one seems to care what the necro has on his skillbar. No, what matters is your gear. That is the real problem here. The game has lost its focus on skillbars, and in the process the necro has lost it’s role.

Compare the general difficulty of GW1 to GW2 and you’ll see why we fell off.

Andele.1306:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick… and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

Wont bother with the whats lacking and how they are shoving jhorrors in our face. But the base concepts we got are all good, thing is they got stripped off. Its not that they didnt throw stuff at the wall called necro, they threw way too much then ripped off most of it but some remains of it didnt fall off.
Also the pvp attrition thing could plain be remade for pvp into facetank kitten so hard that bosses cannot focus your allies. Think about it for a second how cool would it be if you could taunt with dark path or aggro wipe your allies by using spectral graps OR even better, while in DS bosses being unable to use aoe skills? We had such kitten (well the N/Me did) combined with punishing everyone for 1 persons mistake, thats what needs to return not some dopey oh we let you make someone run off a cliff from how ugly you look and hey you are immune to damage in 1v1 which noone cares about.
Think for 3 seconds how cool and confusing old DS would be which drops your body off in a invul state at a location and you hover around as a ghost which on leaving ds would rewind your location to your body OR you could drain your remaining life force to pull your body back to you (maybe chilling shiz on the way to you too)?

So much of all of this.

Adding to what I was saying before regarding our effectiveness, the condition cap and its impact on one of our primary roles MUST be taken into account. How many times have we seen on these forums QQ about the cap and how it basically neuters condi necros…potentially our strongest meta and the game engine itself hogties it. (PVE). If the condi cap is immutable then our conditions must take that into account. For us to be able to perform at least on a relative basis we cannot be left with the lame excuse “sorry the class design isn’t compatible with the game engine”.

Oldbugga.7029:

For us to be able to perform at least on a relative basis we cannot be left with the lame excuse “sorry the class design isn’t compatible with the game engine”.

That’s what we’ve been getting in PvE from the get go though. CC doesn’t work on bosses. Debuffs are neutered. ConD is capped. Mobs tend not to stack boons. AI is a 50/50 at best. And the number one response from the dev team? It’s balanced in PvP.

PvE has a systemic problem. The devs designed a game wherein only a few classes and builds are viable. I’m just impressed (and proud) that the Necro community has held on for this long.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I currently see a few problems with our class:

• We have dozens of useless traits that are simply underpowered or have rubbish effects
• We have no role in PVE (or the role they picked for us, does not combine with the PVE game they’ve designed, for this PVE must change)
• We lack proper defense
• We lack offense to be as good at DPS as other classes (a problem with the PVE game itself, and with our actual damage output)
• We need more viable builds (not just Dhuumfire).

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick… and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

The worst part of it all, is that they keep balancing the necro for pvp, and ruining our effectiveness in wvw and PVE in the process. That kills us. You can’t keep trying to keep these radically different parts of the game in line. This was already obvious in GW1 with the splitting of skills. Why did we not learn that lesson?

This is the best post – agree so much.

Andele.1306:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick… and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

Wont bother with the whats lacking and how they are shoving jhorrors in our face. But the base concepts we got are all good, thing is they got stripped off. Its not that they didnt throw stuff at the wall called necro, they threw way too much then ripped off most of it but some remains of it didnt fall off.
Also the pvp attrition thing could plain be remade for pvp into facetank kitten so hard that bosses cannot focus your allies. Think about it for a second how cool would it be if you could taunt with dark path or aggro wipe your allies by using spectral graps OR even better, while in DS bosses being unable to use aoe skills? We had such kitten (well the N/Me did) combined with punishing everyone for 1 persons mistake, thats what needs to return not some dopey oh we let you make someone run off a cliff from how ugly you look and hey you are immune to damage in 1v1 which noone cares about.
Think for 3 seconds how cool and confusing old DS would be which drops your body off in a invul state at a location and you hover around as a ghost which on leaving ds would rewind your location to your body OR you could drain your remaining life force to pull your body back to you (maybe chilling shiz on the way to you too)?

So then what could be done to change it?
Reading from the lore as given above, I would, for example, be in favor of changing the Spectral family into, say, utility skills that expended health in reward for larger benefits. Maybe “Armor of Blood” would eat 1/5th of your health and provide really long protection and stability on a short cooldown. Or maybe we could take the chill angle – Make “Well of Rime” and reverse Chilling Darkness, or “Hypothermia” instead of Terror.

Thematically, what changes would (A) make sense, and (B) improve our current situation?

@Mad Queen
I don’t understand why you feel that Dhuumfire is the only valid necro build. I run 2 condi, a heal, a quasi-mm, a hybrid, a fury-based semi-glass cannon and about 5 versions of the wellmancer and they all work fairly well. None of them is a do-it-all, but there’s a ton of versatility in the class. Much better than, say, a guardian.

Your dismissive attitude about defensive traits is odd, IMO. Sustain is the heart of every front line build and necros have it in spades. DPS crazy builds much of the time are simply rallybait that overvalue their contribution because of a few big numbers.

I have no idea about PvE (whatever I do in PvE, I do with a warrior because I world completed with it) but the fact that you feel the class is ineffective in WvW also strikes me as odd. Necros are middling roamers because of our lack of disengage skills but no class can solo nuke a camp faster which is invaluable if you need to flip one quickly to deny an enemy zerg a resupply. In large group play, as both back line and front line, necros bring critical boon stripping, CC and the almighty Plague, arguably the most effective skill in the entire game.

Balefire.7592:

Andele.1306:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick... and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

Wont bother with the whats lacking and how they are shoving jhorrors in our face. But the base concepts we got are all good, thing is they got stripped off. Its not that they didnt throw stuff at the wall called necro, they threw way too much then ripped off most of it but some remains of it didnt fall off.
Also the pvp attrition thing could plain be remade for pvp into facetank kitten so hard that bosses cannot focus your allies. Think about it for a second how cool would it be if you could taunt with dark path or aggro wipe your allies by using spectral graps OR even better, while in DS bosses being unable to use aoe skills? We had such kitten (well the N/Me did) combined with punishing everyone for 1 persons mistake, thats what needs to return not some dopey oh we let you make someone run off a cliff from how ugly you look and hey you are immune to damage in 1v1 which noone cares about.
Think for 3 seconds how cool and confusing old DS would be which drops your body off in a invul state at a location and you hover around as a ghost which on leaving ds would rewind your location to your body OR you could drain your remaining life force to pull your body back to you (maybe chilling shiz on the way to you too)?

So then what could be done to change it?
Reading from the lore as given above, I would, for example, be in favor of changing the Spectral family into, say, utility skills that expended health in reward for larger benefits. Maybe "Armor of Blood" would eat 1/5th of your health and provide really long protection and stability on a short cooldown. Or maybe we could take the chill angle - Make "Well of Rime" and reverse Chilling Darkness, or "Hypothermia" instead of Terror.

Thematically, what changes would (A) make sense, and (B) improve our current situation?

Can we keep to the stuff that used to be on necro so: Shade (stability/partial cc immunity in DS), Aoe shared wifesteal, real condi manipulation, ds absorb, skills that aint limited in functionality by random limits or make the change from one type of skill to another be gradual (like instead of being 8% lf pre second on Sarmor when hit, its 4%+2% each time hit additionally in the second being increased to 5+2.5 if traited, bonus being doubled if not in DS), allowing us to use all DS skills/have like a pool of like 15 (tank, power burst and condimancer pre slot) with us slotting em in ourselves.
In terms of hypothermia, something like a shatter effect (dealing additional damage at the end of the chill duration so that players aint kept permachilled and that you have a reason not to keep mobs permachilled giving devs more space to make good zerg encounters) or something like that mob loses stats equal to your bonus stats, thus a tanky necro with it would make enemies take more damage while a damage dealing necro would reduce their targets damage (cond and power being counted the same), you know kinda like a less punishing for pvp but mob better version of Atrophy; hell even a interrupt current enemy casts if the enemy has chill duration of x+ on damaging them.

Hello fellow Necromancers! This is my first time posting on the forums, so please be gentle.

So first off, I LOVE THIS CLASS.
I also read most of the posts above and agree to pretty much everything.
My take on the current Necromancer and the game in general is, lack of dynamics (atleast as I see it). I would love to see stuff change in PvE to promote better gameplay, but I realise that is quite hard to achieve as all classes need to be balance at the same time, but I’ll post what changes I feel would help.
By better gameplay, I mean stuff like double-edged skills, actual thinking required by the person behind the keyboard whether to use a skill/trait in a certain situation or not.
Ex:
Skill – Blood is Power: Gives 8 stacks of Might for 10 sec. Get additional stacks of Might upto 16 based on current LF or maybe HP. (suitable LF or HP gradient here).
Skill – Corrupt Boon: Convert X boons to coditions on target. If target is above 75% health, siphon 2x (MaxHP- CurrentHP).

Ex: Trait – Master of Corruption: 20% CD reduction in Corruption skill types. Activates additional effects for skills:
a. Blood is Power: Additional Might stacks shared with upto 5 players in a 400m radius.
b. Corrupt Boon: Double the current duration of Boons converted. Siphon heals allies is an AoE of 130~200m radius around Caster.

I think changes made on these lines will help out with our lackluster PvE utility too. Ofc. general changes in PvE like Defiant changes would go a long way in improving the … I think substance on the game (dunno how to put it).

And to demote the absolute about DPS > all in Dungeons, having random skill cast timings (not fixed on % HP remaining); resetting conditions with a cleasne/tranfer/convert to allow re-stacking along with higher a bit of healing skills by Bosses; or dishing out (sum total of damage recieved by boss upto some threshold)/5 on all players (maybe make it unblockable? so only dodge or invul works) would force people to think out different strategies based on the encounter and avoid blind DPSing while keeping things pretty interesting

The necromancer community still holding together, it tells me there is hope!

Nagato no Kami.4980:

@Mad Queen
I don’t understand why you feel that Dhuumfire is the only valid necro build. I run 2 condi, a heal, a quasi-mm, a hybrid, a fury-based semi-glass cannon and about 5 versions of the wellmancer and they all work fairly well. None of them is a do-it-all, but there’s a ton of versatility in the class. Much better than, say, a guardian.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to claim that Dhuumfire is the only valid build for the necro. But the devs so far have been going out of their way to nerf everything but Dhuumfire, in a futile effort to balance it. It is as if the devs do not realize that some necromancers don’t want to use Dhuumfire. Yet every skill and trait that has nothing to do with Dhuumfire, seems to be the target of nerfs to further weaken their use in PVE.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Your dismissive attitude about defensive traits is odd, IMO. Sustain is the heart of every front line build and necros have it in spades. DPS crazy builds much of the time are simply rallybait that overvalue their contribution because of a few big numbers.

The necromancer’s defense is the most rubbish defense in the entire game, hands down. It doesn’t protect us against spike damage or focused fire, we still can be CC’d around, and get immobilized and hit by conditions, we can’t heal, or use any of our healing skills, and after leaving DS it temporarily disables our skillbar. And on top of that, we need to build up life force to use it.

DS in it’s current form does not hold up against the damage the necro has to endure in both PVE and WvW. DS gets obliterated in an instant in WvW, because the necro is prime target numero uno, and has no defense against CC spam. You can easily keep a necro stun locked, and his DS is gone in 1 second. The main strategy for WvW seems to be, hide behind a bigger zerg than your opponent.

Further more Toughness does not scale well enough in PVE. Various bosses will instantly wipe the floor with you, whether you are wearing full toughness gear, or cardboard armor. It doesn’t make enough of a difference, which is why zerker gear is dominating the game.

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Necros are middling roamers because of our lack of disengage skills but no class can solo nuke a camp faster which is invaluable if you need to flip one quickly to deny an enemy zerg a resupply. In large group play, as both back line and front line, necros bring critical boon stripping, CC and the almighty Plague, arguably the most effective skill in the entire game.

It is a good skill, I’ll give you that. But it hardly makes you invulnerable. And lets not forget Anet’s current trend to give other classes more and more ways to deal with conditions. Conditions can be removed party wide at the click of a button. Playing a necro should not be about spamming conditions and then dying. We should have a way to survive an encounter with a zerg, like pretty much every other class in the game. Zergs dominate WvW, it is what WvW is all about. I’ve been in tons of teams where everyone just merrily clicked their invulnerability button and escaped an incoming zerg, while the necro gets obliterated and is off to repair her armor again.

Give necro more aggression, cleave and spike damage and you have a good class for nuking large groups of mobs. Its not far off that point already. And im really dissapointed that gw2 necro is so bad compared to gw1 necro.

No matter what the devs say its not an attrition class. All other classes are better at attrition due to sustained defense mechanics. What necro is, is an all in spiker with low mobility and defense options. Cooldowns and cast times are proof of that.

From a lore perspective, fire is the totally wrong god. If we don’t re-animate dead things, why dose Bone Fiend look exactly like a dead mob?

What I dreamed of when I started playing, was a attrition class. A master of condi manipulation. All with a double edged sword game play. Weighing up every click’s risc vs reward.
I dreamed that the big life tank, and pulling condi’s off allies, with healing minions. Would make me balance incoming conditions vs healing, with throwing them all back to a target.
The no fighting for a mining node, or to tag a mob, sharing type game. Would allow me to have my siphons heal others. My death shroud would be a ‘shield’ for when I had to run out from the back lines to go res a fallen player.

From what I heard of GW1, I’d be controlling a swarm, debuffing targets so my allies would do more damage/take less damage. That my only burst, would be a long CD, huge dam but huge siphon heal that would change the coarse of battle on a wipe to a win.

But, fighting others for condi stacks. Minions that didn’t work & just died to all the 1shot mechanics. Minions that died when wet?! Siphons that didn’t keep up with other class’s aoe passive heals, and didn’t heal allies at all. Ohh the forced selfishness! The only double edged sword play, was I have to give up all my defense to go res someone, or leave them.

Anyway, none of this worked in game. So I moved onto the ‘death shroud’ mastery. Sure it has no synergy with anything, excluding power & death shroud, but it was fun. I even made up that my dagger & axe were kept blunt, that’s why they didn’t cleave.

But then, DS & Spectral nerfs, killed our attrition. Res signet got slowed down to not be best. That killed master of death/save the wipe role. Putrid Mark no longer helps allies, removing any role we did.

So now, my necro AoE tags in WvW zergs. Or farms trash mobs for countless hours, in a game with ‘no grinding’, painfully grinding for skins. Legendarys for alt’s as they now get played more than my necro main, and the legendarys don’t suit the necro, except the axe, which is such a bad weapon.

Necro in GW1 actually had obscene burst ability, especially in PvE. Discord+Necrosis was immense amounts of armor-ignoring damage with low energy costs and very short (2 second) cooldowns.

Necrosis was a PVE only skill though, and you could not equip too many of those. But even without PVE-only skills, the necromancer was really powerful in GW1. The best example of that was Spiteful Spirit, which made the necro almost a guaranteed part of any dungeon team. In GW2 it is quite the opposite situation for necromancers. I really want them to fix this situation.

And please devs, please don’t let it take several years, like you did with the mesmer in GW1 (who didn’t receive a change to the Panic skill until long after Eye of the North was released, and finally they were desired for dungeons).

Even without Necrosis, Discordway was still a popular build for PvP. Necros who built for burst could do some serious burst.

Actually, necros who built for any particular role could do pretty well. Hex removal was terrible, but that was about it.

Every time I hear/read vets talk about GW1 Necros I get chills. If the GW2 Necro was even half of that it’d be the most epic class in the game.

And yet, it leaves me with the soured gnawing of disappointment when reality has shown the devs have no interest in developing the class to that level…

4am, Prob didn’t make my story very clear.
It’s not a GW1 necro I want. It’s just a re-envisioned version.

I’d be so very happy, if we didn’t lay down the damage. But if we added soo much damage/not get damaged to others, that we were wanted/hugely beneficial to a group.

If were suppose to have no escape, and now have our ability to face tank taken away. We should have the group want to protect us & peel off us.

I guess, what would be very cool in a GW2 way… Would to be, to have lot more life force manipulation. Where DS was more powerful like Litch/Plague. But have it either give us more DS, or allow us to spend it on helping allies. Master of life force, taking it from others giving it to those we chose. That sort of thing.

Bweaty.9187:

4am, Prob didn’t make my story very clear.
It’s not a GW1 necro I want. It’s just a re-envisioned version.

I’d be so very happy, if we didn’t lay down the damage. But if we added soo much damage/not get damaged to others, that we were wanted/hugely beneficial to a group.

If were suppose to have no escape, and now have our ability to face tank taken away. We should have the group want to protect us & peel off us.

Quite applicable in all gametypes, methinks. And yes—I would be content with that kind of play style. It’s not unprecedented, either, given the other classes’ access to traits that buff whole parties, etc.

Partywide damage mitigation, partywide DPS boost (either in spike format or in slow ramp-ups), etc. In a way, it’s kinda what the Venomshare Thief was supposed to do (though that’s its own horrible mess). But it could be so much better.

Spite: Unique debuffs like localized Retal stacked on target, a more developed Torment, skill-specific CD extenders (hit a boss mob’s TKO with it and now he can’t use it for x amount of time), etc.

Curses: ConD manipulation pure and simple.

Death: Sacrifice minions to rally allies, assign minions as meat shields for allies, etc.

Blood: Life manipulation fueled by DS.

Soul: The ultimate last-ditch stance taking all party damage for a time, rezzing players completely out of reach, etc.

That kinda thing?

Phenn.5167:

Every time I hear/read vets talk about GW1 Necros I get chills. If the GW2 Necro was even half of that it’d be the most epic class in the game.

The necro was really in a great spot in GW1. If a necromancer slapped Spiteful Spirit on an enemy, it would deal damage to itself and its nearby allies with every attack. Great for taking out fast enemies with lots of health. This was one of the most popular necromancer elites. It was an excellent way to support your team, because it effectively multiplied their damage.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Spiteful_Spirit

If a necro cast Mark of Pain on an enemy, their party members would cause extra damage to nearby allies of that monster, when ever they struck it with an attack. This skill multiplied the damage of the party. The skill was a lot like Barbs, but on more than one enemy.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mark_of_Pain

If a necro cast Barbs on an enemy, it would simply take extra damage from attacks, which was a great single target way to support warriors. This is what the new heal signet could have been like.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Barbs

If a necro really wanted to do massive aoe damage, they could support their spellcaster allies by using Feast of Corruption, which dealt massive damage to large groups of enemies if they were under the influence of a hex. This was one of those elites that just worked really well together with other hex-builds on other classes. If you had someone who could quickly spam hexes on large groups of monsters, this elite would provide extra damage on top of that.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feast_of_Corruption

And then there was Spoil Victor, which was the perfect weapon against bosses with large health pools. As long as a boss had more health than the person it was attacking, this skill would deal massive damage to the boss when ever it attacked. Again, a good example of a skill that supports the party in a unique way.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Spoil_Victor

Now I’m not saying the GW2 necro should go back to what it was in GW1. But what we need is for the GW2 necro to work together with the other classes. Right now it is a completely egocentric class. The blind spam is nice, but that’s about it. What about support damage, like spiteful spirit did? What about skills that really work well alongside the DPS builds on other classes?

Bhawb.7408:

No, redesigning PvE would help. We can’t realistically outdamage warriors, they just need to make PvE harder so it can’t just be 5x berzerker builds maxing DPS.

Harder? Nah. But make evade and DPS a option, not the only viable build. Right now the damage pattern of most mobs are a basic attack that individually barely tickles, a telegraphed spike attack that do 4x+ that of the basic, and in the later zones a virtually unlimited supply of CC.

I think a massive issue with necromancer is that attrition and tank are closely related. And ANet specifically designed the game to make it impossible to tank. And the SPVP relative, the bunker, are also being slowly dismantled to make SPVP more “exciting” for spectators.

Bweaty.9187:

If we don’t re-animate dead things, why dose Bone Fiend look exactly like a dead mob?

Design shortcuts. They already have the animations and rigging in the game, all they need to do is change the “skin”. We literally take the dead-parts that are around us at the time, and we mash them together to make our minions. They are literally golems of flesh.