Basis of the Necromancer
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?
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.
2 little things, Dhuum isnt even known by most humans today, not to mention was almost never worshipped being death itself, so its not only the wrong god, its a god noone would know about unless they went into whats now quite forbidden history. Thats like mesmers having a trait for the sake of abbadon, which no matter how cool it would be to summon margonites instead of clones and demons instead of phantasams, wouldnt work.
Also i myself dont know what jhorrors/bone minions should be… someone slapped a human skull on a skritt or skelk or something… yuck they need to redesign it and the flesh golem to be accurate representations. Like Bone fiend who is a slapped devourer with spider parts or wurm who (except ofc being a wurm) has some sort of feline ribcage around him to protect himself from damage.
For starters I would:
Put Dhuumfire on the staff auto, change the duration to 1 sec and CD at 5 sec.
Change the reanimator trait to a max of 3 minions with a CD of 5 sec.
Change Spectral Grasp to grab a max of 3 people in a line, shave off 1 sec of chill.
Halve the condition duration on Signet of Spite.
Halve the CD and siphon heal of Locust Signet.
Put 2 sec of vigor on Deathly Invigoration.
Have Vampiric Rituals affect allies instead of the caster.
The current Necro defensive design is pretty much made for a different game than this one. One with more statistics based mitigation than the evasion/avoidance centric design this game totes in an effort to demolish the trinity.
Which is ironic, because when you actually look at the Necromancer design; they were handed statistic tanking for defenses along with a smattering of cc/debuff that in high end pve has incredibly neutered effectiveness.
The class appears made for a different game than this one. Either the class need a remake to fit in or the entire game needs a rework to allow the class to fit in as is.
My answer will be quite general, but this is how I feel.
As someone, who played necro as a main back in GW1 and now in GW2, the biggest thing I miss compared to the old days is “feeling special”. As a necro I want to be useful in a unique way that only a necro can bring you to the table. I’m not sure what this can be, since conditions aren’t that special and they are looked down specially in PvE environment.
Since we have the damage and support part covered by other professions, I would rather like to see my necro as a pain in the kitten in our enemies eyes. A profession that can punish others for doing their own stuff, make them reconsider their moves, be a burden to them, while providing a decent sustained damage over time. You can argue that chill and fear can give you that, but it PvE situations, they are simply not that impressive, specially on boss fights.
Generally necro should be a “kill me fast or die slowly” kind of profession do deal with.
To point out some good stuff, I would say that “Epidemic” is THE ONE from the current necro skill choices, that represents the class the most for me, and I even fancy Plague form, something what should have been more fun as the DeathShroud. And we can mention the boon-condition conversions as well as a good way to go. Oh and the corruption method is a good idea, that we have to apply conditions on ourselves to get our power from.
On the other hand, for me, GW1 necro was “Spiteful Spirits + Reckless Haste”, and I want to get back at least part of that approach. Probably a special necro-only condition, that drains not exact health points but certain percentage of full health. Or give us a pending skill that punishes enemies on condition removal or heal or on stacking up boons.
So in a few words, I want necros to be special, to be the master of conditions, to burden enemies more than other classes (not necessarily by doing damage).
On a sidenote I want conditions to be a viable choice, I want them to outshine the boring zerker gears in SOME of the situations. I do not want them to be superior, I just simply want a field, when its needed. Balancing from a PvP perspective is one thing, not getting invited to dungeon/fractal groups, because you are a necro is another… They should consider that as well.
p.s.: The one thing I miss the most of GW1 is having seconday classes. That just gave us tons os versatility and creativity concerning build designs. This would single handedly solve the “go zerker or go home” approach that I hate so much.
(edited by CyClotroniC.4957)
@Mad Queen
1. Agreed. Most people feel compelled to take Dhuumfire but it seems like no one really enjoys doing so. Since the skill has such a large impact on other areas of balance, it should probably be dropped.
2. Although I can’t speak to any PvE issues (I’ve never run a single fractal so my knowledge is 0.00) and do most of my roaming in WvW with my thief, I have to say, I don’t really see a problem with the necro’s defense — at least when it comes to large group engagements. With Foot in the Grave, a maxed LF pool, high toughness, Parasitic Bond and passive defense runes, my power well necro has massive sustain. Basically, the only time I go down is if my guild gets wiped or I do something incredibly, incredibly stupid.
I don’t really have a large problem with CCs either. Between shared guardian stability, a stunbreak and FitG, it’s rarely an issue. As for stunlock builds, well, they’re tough for most classes to counter. Stuns are plentiful (ye gods, the mesmers!) but stunbreakers aren’t.
And front line build necros don’t hide in a zerg — they lead the charge as part of the hammer train inflicting mass cripple, poison, blind, boon rip, chill, daze and fear. As part of a well coordinated attack, necros are game changers.
3. First, condi removal is meaningless against Plague as it reapplies them every second. No one has that much condi wipe. You’re going to be blinded, poisoned and chilled and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. But the point of it isn’t to inflict condi damage. It’s about the damage mitigation, the CC and the healing debuff. These things absolutely mess up zergs and create inequities in damage that your side can take advantage of.
Secondly, who spams conditions and dies? Plague gives so much added sustain (and with so much going on it’s actually pretty hard to see us) that with a few judicious dodges, you can usually run through the entire length of a zerg by yourself and come out in good shape.
But, yes, in a small group v. zerg encounter, unless you’re very clever with Flesh Worm or juked them all with SWalk, you’re going to die. I know it kinda sucks but, the way I think about it, you can’t really expect a single class to be able to do everything. The necro can 1v1, small group and zerg effectively. It can ramp up DPS to massive numbers or trait for heavy sustain. It can go condi, power and hybrid. It has a wide variety of abilities and can fill many roles but there are limitations and there should be. I think that as a class, we’re in a good spot. Instead, I feel sorry for classes like rangers who are absolutely incapable of certain functions or guardians who are locked into a single attack range.