Guild Wars 2

Anybody who has played necro realizes there is an abundance of traits, utility skills & weapon attacks which are either quite under par or just plain broken compared to meta skills.
The basic idea of this thread is to list said skills/abilities & suggest balanced suggestions for fixes that will bring the necro more on par with other classes & hopefully make the necro more of a viable option in PvE where it is seldom taken.

1: The axe. Everyone knows it is far less viable then daggers for damage, has no real utility like the staff & only excels at stacking vulnerability.
My suggestion would be to increase the damage of the axe number 1 by about 10% at base & make it cleave enemies near the primary target.

2: Corrosive Poison Cloud it’s underwhelming.
My suggestion, make it destroy projectiles.

3: Spectral wall, useful at times but again can be underwhelming.
My suggestion again, make it destroy projectiles.

4: Signet of the locust. Very underwhelming & you never want to activate it because of the long CD.
My suggestion, make it grant stability (5 seconds) & break stuns on use.

5: Minions, they tend to be very hit or miss due to the AI. Please improve it.
They & all pets for everyone (both permanent & temporary) could also stand to scale more off owners stats.

Now for traits.

1: The trait “Axe Mastery”. Seeing as how the damage from this trait is now base, instead have this trait reduce axe CD’s by 20% and increase axe range by 300 units.

2: Spiteful Spirit, make it grant retaliation to all nearby allies.

3: Spiteful Marks, Very very bad trait.
My suggestion, Change it so that it increases the duration of conditions applied by the staff by 20%.

4: Siphoned Power, pretty much useless as is.
My suggestion, Make it grant 5 seconds of might when you strike an enemy at or below 50% health.

5: Reapers Precision. Pretty underwhelming as is.
My suggestion, make it have a 100% chance to grant .5% life force on crit.

6: Furious Demise, alright as is but we want the ncero to have more reasons to be brought in a party.
My suggestion, make it grant fury to all nearby allies (240 units) on death shroud activation.

7: Full of Life. Given the problems necromancers have with self healing while inside death shroud this trait is often wasted.
What if instead it granted you a 500 point health steal that healed through death shroud when you are struck while under 80%. Then the Cd could be adjusted to around 15-20 seconds.

8: Vampiric & Vampiric Precision. Much of the sustain these traits offer is wasted due to death shroud. What if they healed through death shroud.

9: Vampiric Rituals, Alright as is but kinda meh for being a grandmaster trait.
My suggestion, change it so it causes all attacks to siphon health & shares that health with nearby allies (600 unit radius).

Now I understand the changes to sustain may require death shroud to be slightly adjusted however I believe should these changes take place & death shroud be adjusted accordingly it would end up being a much more balanced product then is now.

1. Axe only real purpose is the utility that #3 has in boon stripping,retal getting, and hitting stealth opponents before you jump into DS to make use of the retal.
2. Would like to see CPC destroy projectiles and replace the weakness on it with torment since you really wouldn’t need the weakness in pve and torment would be more useful in most situations.
3. Yes to this but doubt the devs would make it happen.
4. Most of the signets need looking into due to most of them being underwhelming as they are with maybe an exception to spite.
5. Don’t know how much more can be said that pet ai needs fixing before the devs actually do it.

Traits
1. Yes to the cd reduction but would have to see the range increase in action before really critiquing it.
2. Rather keep it as is but increase the duration to 5s and make furious demise the party wide buff.
3. Same as above #3
4. This would have the same problem as close to death as in its inactive in the beginning of a fight where the boosts would be most effective.
5. Can get behind this one as you would still need a high crit chance to get the effect to proc more often which is a boon to the investment you made in going for that crit chance.
6. Love it and wish it was already in the game
7.That 500 hp steal is wasted if during the interval for the trait your being hit for over 2k or more damage from one or multiple opponents. If the cd was maybe 10s then yeah this might be useful.
8. We both know the numbers on the siphons would need to be fixed to make them more worthwhile.
9. As with 8 the numbers on the health steal would need to be adjusted to make it worthwhile for going so deep into blood magic. At least your suggestion makes this grandmaster worthy instead of another trait to just stare at and wish it was better.

from a wvw viewpoint, Axe is fine (traited mind you).. gives you range and hits as hard as dagger.

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The only time axe is useful is in a zerg v zerg scenario where jumping in melee with a dagger is essentially suicide you can always just Lifeblast/Wells from range anyway

Axe needs more than just damage – it will always be inferior to dagger as far as damage is concerned which is why it should have something else like better utility aka Whirl Finisher for #2 and Blast Finisher for #3

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The game is not balanced about PvP.. That is the LAST area of the game that they use for balance..

Axe is 100% viable for wvw and pve.. So fine in 2/3 of the game.

Siobhan.3582:

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The game is not balanced about PvP.. That is the LAST area of the game that they use for balance..

Axe is 100% viable for wvw and pve.. So fine in 2/3 of the game.

no… you’re wrong the game actually is balanced with PvP in mind

Axe is “viable” anywhere in the game

The main problem is the Axe is not OPTIMAL in any part of the game

Siobhan.3582:

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The game is not balanced about PvP.. That is the LAST area of the game that they use for balance..

Axe is 100% viable for wvw and pve.. So fine in 2/3 of the game.

Given the axe is single target where as the dagger can cleave & the fact that the dagger does more damage even when you trait for the axe I’d say the axe could use “some” love.
Hence why I suggested they bake the damage from the trait “Axe Mastery” in at base & change axe mastery so it increases axe range into that of an actual ranged weapon (900 units)

Now as for the conversation. This thread is for talking about the underwhelming/brokenly bad necro traits, utility skills, weapon abilities & ways they could be improved.

Narkodx.1472:

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The only time axe is useful is in a zerg v zerg scenario where jumping in melee with a dagger is essentially suicide you can always just Lifeblast/Wells from range anyway

Axe needs more than just damage – it will always be inferior to dagger as far as damage is concerned which is why it should have something else like better utility aka Whirl Finisher for #2 and Blast Finisher for #3

This ^.

Giving axe a blast finisher could work well. & allowing the trait “Axe Mastery” to increase range to 900 could make it into a decent ranged power build option.

Narkodx.1472:

Siobhan.3582:

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The game is not balanced about PvP.. That is the LAST area of the game that they use for balance..

Axe is 100% viable for wvw and pve.. So fine in 2/3 of the game.

no… you’re wrong the game actually is balanced with PvP in mind

Axe is “viable” anywhere in the game

The main problem is the Axe is not OPTIMAL in any part of the game

Ok only one weapon can be optimal. That is why it is optimal. But depending on the situation (pvp wvw, pve) and what you are doing in that situation (group, solo, zerg etc) each weapon has a point where it IS optimal

The weapons are fine. maybe not for the ONE area you want, but oh well

Siobhan.3582:

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The game is not balanced about PvP.. That is the LAST area of the game that they use for balance..

Axe is 100% viable for wvw and pve.. So fine in 2/3 of the game.

The game is balanced around pvp. Axe is actually the least viable in wvw and pve. It’s actually more viable in pvp than it is anywhere else and it’s still sub par.

Siobhan.3582:

Narkodx.1472:

Siobhan.3582:

zapv.8051:

Siobhan.3582:

hits as hard as dagger.

That is blatantly not true. Also, the game isn’t balanced around wvw it is balanced around pvp where axe is very poor.

The game is not balanced about PvP.. That is the LAST area of the game that they use for balance..

Axe is 100% viable for wvw and pve.. So fine in 2/3 of the game.

no… you’re wrong the game actually is balanced with PvP in mind

Axe is “viable” anywhere in the game

The main problem is the Axe is not OPTIMAL in any part of the game

Ok only one weapon can be optimal. That is why it is optimal. But depending on the situation (pvp wvw, pve) and what you are doing in that situation (group, solo, zerg etc) each weapon has a point where it IS optimal

The weapons are fine. maybe not for the ONE area you want, but oh well

Nope. Axe is not fine. It does more dps than staff, but staff wins in pvp and in wvw due to its utility. You shouldn’t be using it in pve unless it’s a very niche battle where you cannot melee. You will lose dps by doing anything other than spamming dagger auto and lifeblasting.

Only thing Axe is good for, is that 10% damage bonus trait for Death Shroud builds.

And it’s pretty much pointless since you would get the same damage from staff….

NeXeD.3042:

And it’s pretty much pointless since you would get the same damage from staff….

Huh? Explain, please.

Base damage on staff is higher than the other weapons so lifeblasting while on staff is the same as axe traited.

NeXeD.3042:

Base damage on staff is higher than the other weapons so lifeblasting while on staff is the same as axe traited.

Hmm, I’ve always ignored the weapon strength stat. This is true? Wow…

Is the staff + DS still stronger in pvp? did it keep its higher attack stat value after the april patch?

Yes. Weapon strengths haven’t changed since launch.

1. Axe is fine: Only problem is that axe 1 does too little damage compared to other sources of vulnerability (eg Greatsword 1). And there is a condition cap.

2. Corrosive Poison Cloud just needs a cool down reduction so it can be the necromancer version of theif short bow 4. It’s effect is decent.

3. Spectral Wall is a WvW only skill. It’s Ok.

4. Signet of the locust needs to have a STUNBREAK. Then it’s ok.

5. Minions, AI issues aside, will never be good due to anet philosophy of promoting active over passive gameplay. They are perfectly useable, which is about as good as you can expect.

The Traits: there are too many traits to make the horrible down state useable. They should be eliminated and some should be made standard. There are too many death shroud promoting traits, anet has to balance us as if we have them all.

Blood traits need to do something in Death shroud.

Death shroud should refill on respawn and they can balance us based on that. This would mean nerfs, but would make the profession less “snowball.”. And finally, the GW1 necromancer was the 3rd best party supporter and needs to reclaim its role. If new skills can’t be added, then one of the traits needs to act like “spotter.”. Spiteful Spirit as a party AoE retaliation on activation would be nice. Finally boons need to be nerfed and necromancer ought to be better at removing them. A good way to buff boon removal would be to lower the cast times of Necromancer focus skills (longest skills in the game to cast & underwhelming effects)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

4: Siphoned Power, pretty much useless as is.
My suggestion, Make it grant 5 seconds of might when you strike an enemy at or below 50% health.

I tend to agree with Nekretaal about his comments. Mine are below.

1. Axe is very group dependent. You should be able maintain 10 stacks of vulnerability on a target. That is like 10 might for every ally. If vulnerability is capped in PvE without your axe, do not give it another thought. Otherwise, axe is a very good damage boost for allies, not the Necromancer. If you have no allies or minions, axe is less useful. Watch the stack of vulnerability unless you are 1v1 in PvP where soft controls like chill, blind, and cripple become much more important than vulnerability or might.

2. CPC feels like it needs something more. Its only use seems to be a really soft area denial skill but it just does not have enough effect to make a difference in PvP. It has no use whatsoever in PvE, as far as I can tell, and can just be avoided most of the time in WvW. Maybe if its radius was 600, the weakness was twice as long, or its cool down was shorter. Right now it seems like it is too small and weak for its mechanic.

3. Spectral Wall is only good at one thing. It is like Epidemic that way. One more odd tool in the tool box that is either very good or completely useless. Choose when to use it. We can retrait out of combat for free, any time.

4. All signets have issues. What they need is a grandmaster trait that adds a further cool down reduction on top of Spite’s adept signet mastery trait. Locust is better than Vampire, Undeath and almost as good as Spite. They just all cost a lot to run versus their long cool downs.

5. Minion AI is better than it used to be but not as good as before the Chinese patch. Eventually, the patch will be patched but do not hope for 100% productivity from our class Easy Button.

Traits

1. Axe – I prefer the 10% damage boost on axe mastery to an additional 300 range. Staff has more utility than axe/whatever so i see little reason to compete axe with staff as a utility weapon. However, if you want axe to fill a long range single target weapon slot, i do understand where you are coming from. The profession needs an alternative to staff in the 1200 range category because staff is heavily AoE soft crowd control and not well designed for single, high-value targets. If that is what you are thinking, another weapon seems like a better choice because axe is a vuln’ applicator and caps on world bosses are quickly reached.

2. Spiteful Spirit – Maybe I am too selfish but Necromancer has so little access to retaliation I would rather not hand it out like candy to professions that already have plenty of solid access to it. If it needs to be better, let its duration be extended by 1 more second.

3. Spiteful Marks is not very good because staff is not a dps weapon. It is a utility weapon. I would rather have it strengthened in damage, regen, or condition transfers than extend condition duration, which we can do easily with food..

4. Siphons from Vampiric traits, we all agree, are horrid. They need to work both in and out of Death Shroud for starters. The tiny amount of healing in DS is a very cautious place to start and, perhaps, we can make a case to improve the healing ratio. Blood Magic is the worst performing trait line. I doubt even Arenanet will dispute that.

5. Reaper’s Precision should be deleted and replaced with something else so we agree there, too. The only reason to run RP is if running scepter but then it conflicts with Hemophilia. Personally, I would roll the two traits together.

6. I like your suggestion to “shout” Furious Demise when entering DS and agree Necro has little to offer in traditional dungeons due to Unshakable.

7. Full of Life ought to be a constant regen as a reward for putting any points at all into Blood Magic.

8-9. See 4

More traits I think can use a bit of help

11. Dhuumfire should be a straight damage boost (%) on Life Blast or Plague Blast and add a second of chill on each hit. Just get rid of the burning condition, altogether. Necro has nothing that synergizes with it besides condition damage and that is in another trait line.

12. Death’s Embrace and Toxic Landing are just wasted slots. I am sure we can think of something better to use the slots on. Maybe use them to modify underwater weapon damage or skills.

13. Spiteful Vigor should at least apply Vigor in addition to Retaliation.

14. Ritual of Protection should have an extra second or two added to make up for being a lackluster trait for wells

15. Shrouded Removal should get rid of two conditions on entering DS, not one, to make it more attractive. Necromancer already has many options for condition removal but this one conflicts with many builds.

16. Dagger Mastery – I would add one more target to cleave in addition to the cool down reduction for a total of 3 with this trait.

17. Deathly Invigoration needs to be stronger. Make it lay a field or AoE regen… something.

18. Quickening Thirst is an awfully high price to pay for swiftness. This trait could be totally reworked. Placing 4 in BM just for this is a bad deal.

19. Unholy Martyr is too little, too slow. One condition from one target every 3 seconds while in DS is weak. Make it 1 condition from 5 targets every 3 seconds at the minimum.

20. Speed of Shadows I never seem to use. Consider replacing it with something that supports the main DS traits’ purposes like extending bind duration and Torment stack on Tainted Shackles.

21. Renewing Blast does nothing to increase Necromancer’s group viability. I like the idea but there ought to be something more because the group will rarely need healing from a Necromancer. Consider changing it from a heal to a huge life transfer.

Group utility is still lacking. Necromancer is not good a taking advantage of fields and group heals

In addition to what others have said. I really, REALLY, think Unyielding Blast, the trait that gives Life Blast piercing, should exist to Life Blast by default. It’s a really good trait, but only because I’m basically required to have it if I want Life Blast to hit anything besides mesmer clones and the millions of pets that exist in this game.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Traitworks-Dead-Last/first

This is the great work many of us made months and months ago.

Remember whatever and however if you waste time on this kind of theorycrafting it will end up like this.

Free good work left to waste.

The Curses master trait Terror states that fear does damage. However Using the skill Spectral Wall does not apply damage when combined with this trait.

Yeah it does. It always does.

I find it hilarious that people still think axe is a decent weapon. It is only good for the 3 skill and generating life force. The 2 skill is way to easy to avoid, and the auto is terrible. It needs to be 900 range, do significantly more damage, or have more utility. The OPs changes do just that. It would also be nice if Life blast worked the same as Plague Blast. This would be a nice buff to axe because you generate more LF with axe.

The problem with most of the signets is that their cooldowns are too long. Classes with good signet builds have signets with sub 40 second cooldowns traited. Signet of Spite is the only one that has a good cooldown. Plague signet should be lowered by 10 or 20 seconds (not as strong in a normal usage scenario as you might think), Signet of Undeath just needs a full overhaul, Signet of the Locust should have a sub 30 second cooldown, and Signet of Vampirism should have a sub 30 second cooldown base.

Blood is Power a super weak version of empower. It should apply to all allies, or give a permanent 10 stacks of might. CPC has a myriad of changes that would make it better, Anet could add torment, make it absorb projectiles, or even just apply cripple. Spectral grasp would be great if it wasn’t so buggy. Spectral Walk could use a slightly lower cooldown (50 seconds like Armor). Well of Darkness, Well of Power, and Well of Blood would be great if they lowered the cooldowns, and number of pulses a little bit. Flesh Wurm should be an instant skill like all the other ports.

Daggers are great, the only thing I would change is to make life siphon have a slightly shorter channel (2 3/4 seconds or so). Scepter is also pretty good although the 3 skill could use another effect of some sort. Staff just needs less traits. Focus needs lower cast times, and warhorn is great.

Necro traitlines are a mess, blood magic is terrible, death magic isn’t much better. Spite, Curses, and Soul Reaping are good but are still littered with useless traits. My changes to all of the trait lines would take an hour to write up, but Dhummfire should apply one condition on every single life blast. It could apply one second of burning, or 5 seconds of torment. It should also swap places with withering precision. Then withering precision should proc on application of bleeding, and its ICD should be per enemy instead of global.

zapv.8051:

I find it hilarious that people still think axe is a decent weapon. It is only good for the 3 skill and generating life force. The 2 skill is way to easy to avoid, and the auto is terrible. It needs to be 900 range, do significantly more damage, or have more utility. The OPs changes do just that. It would also be nice if Life blast worked the same as Plague Blast. This would be a nice buff to axe because you generate more LF with axe.

The problem with most of the signets is that their cooldowns are too long. Classes with good signet builds have signets with sub 40 second cooldowns traited. Signet of Spite is the only one that has a good cooldown. Plague signet should be lowered by 10 or 20 seconds (not as strong in a normal usage scenario as you might think), Signet of Undeath just needs a full overhaul, Signet of the Locust should have a sub 30 second cooldown, and Signet of Vampirism should have a sub 30 second cooldown base.

Blood is Power a super weak version of empower. It should apply to all allies, or give a permanent 10 stacks of might. CPC has a myriad of changes that would make it better, Anet could add torment, make it absorb projectiles, or even just apply cripple. Spectral grasp would be great if it wasn’t so buggy. Spectral Walk could use a slightly lower cooldown (50 seconds like Armor). Well of Darkness, Well of Power, and Well of Blood would be great if they lowered the cooldowns, and number of pulses a little bit. Flesh Wurm should be an instant skill like all the other ports.

Daggers are great, the only thing I would change is to make life siphon have a slightly shorter channel (2 3/4 seconds or so). Scepter is also pretty good although the 3 skill could use another effect of some sort. Staff just needs less traits. Focus needs lower cast times, and warhorn is great.

Necro traitlines are a mess, blood magic is terrible, death magic isn’t much better. Spite, Curses, and Soul Reaping are good but are still littered with useless traits. My changes to all of the trait lines would take an hour to write up, but Dhummfire should apply one condition on every single life blast. It could apply one second of burning, or 5 seconds of torment. It should also swap places with withering precision. Then withering precision should proc on application of bleeding, and its ICD should be per enemy instead of global.

I would agree with almost all of this. The only exeptions would be that i also would change the passive of SoV into something more agressive like life siphing on hitting you oppenent. Also i think withering precision is fine where it is. It only needs a icd per target like you said and maybe even a icd reduction.

Axe is a power weapon like dagger, the only other MH power weapon Necro has, but it is designed to benefit allies and minions more than the Necromancer. That is why it seems unsatisfactory.

Just using AA to maintain 10 vulnerability on a target is like maintaining 10 might on every ally. That makes axe powerful in team fights but lame in 1v1. The more allies taking advantage of your vuln. stacking, the more powerful the weapon becomes.

Axe is not a solo weapon unless you are using a MM build. Then, you sacrifice your own damage output to increase minion dps.

Dagger is still better in teamfights. No one ever autoattacks with an axe kitten that noise about vuln = might.

In a team fight with, for example, 2v2, axe is bad because you only have one ally taking advantage of vulnerability.

In small team fights, might and vulnerability are the weakest boons and conditions. They are only significant in quantity through large stacks or allies.

Anchoku.8142:

Axe is a power weapon like dagger, the only other MH power weapon Necro has, but it is designed to benefit allies and minions more than the Necromancer. That is why it seems unsatisfactory.

Just using AA to maintain 10 vulnerability on a target is like maintaining 10 might on every ally. That makes axe powerful in team fights but lame in 1v1. The more allies taking advantage of your vuln. stacking, the more powerful the weapon becomes.

Axe is not a solo weapon unless you are using a MM build. Then, you sacrifice your own damage output to increase minion dps.

Axe is ok for minion builds, but that doesn’t make it a good weapon. Minion builds aren’t that strong anyway, the only thing they can really do is home point bunker, but turret builds do that way better (as far as easymode AI builds go). Also, in a team fight the dps increase for your teammates is less than the dps loss you take by using axe auto. Furthermore, mesmers can burst stack 25 stacks of vulnerability, and engineers can burst a decent amount of vulnerability as well. It is a subpar weapon in pve because its dps is terrible and the only place it is good is wvw. The only reason people even take it in wvw is because we don’t have other ranged power options, ghastly claws is way easier to hit in a group, and unholy feast is incredible in a zerg fight.

No argument there from me, zapv. Your points are all valid. Axe can be rendered useless by the 25 cap and has diminishing return as the cap approaches or as fewer allies target the same player or mob. Always think of axe as a weapon you sacrifice your own dps for on the chance your allies can make it up, and more.

Personally, I would rather have vulnerability dropped from axe and have raw damage buffed to compensate.

If axe had to do something besides raw damage on AA, I would prefer a siphon-cleave for crowd control.

Instead of more dmg/range let it cause more tics so barbed precision and blood magic leeching have a weapon they benefit more.

Increase tics to 5/sec. Reduce duration of vulnerability to appropriate level.

Not really a trait or skill, but I have to gripe about the death shroud activation mechanics, if you rapidly tap it to enter ds there is no cd once you are in ds to go back out but there is cd on going back in. The consequence is very battle changing especially in spvp, I will try to save my life by freaking out and hitting f1 (usually more than once) and go in and out of ds immediately and have a 10s cd and be dead in 2s. (I don’t use Unholy Sanctuary because I don’t trait into Death Magic and even then I feel there are more useful traits).
To me it’d be more intuitive if there were a small cd on going back out of death shroud seeing as if you go into it it’s usually to mitigate any further dmg to your hp and to eat the remaining timers on any condis and ofc the dmg and utility of ds. I personally use it until my life force is gone or until i’ve killed everything around me, so the idea of being able to leave ds immediately after going in it is a non-issue and it’s even more of a burden than anything when it can change the outcome of a match in the enemy’s favor.

I can agree with in/out of ds in a blink. Its annoying. Im not sure on a fix or if it really is just a l2p thing.

It’s a l2p issue some people do exactly what he is talking about on purpose. “Flashing” ds. It can be useful sometimes so I don’t want to see it out if the game.

I also don’t want to see cd on going out of DS o.O That would mess with PvE meta build