Guild Wars 2

Necromancer already has some of the more unique methods of supporting.
Blood magic’s life siphon for the group is free bonus damage and healing on hit. If it did more damage/healing or even had better coefficients it could be cool as hell to see a support(dps?) necro.
Or what if— crazy thought here— necro had a grandmaster that let them apply actual weakness to raid bosses. Suddenly they’d be useful. Maybe not mandatory- No class should ever be mandatory in anything.
But 50% fumble for a raid boss would be intensely good for groups that struggle with survival.

… Scratch that last one. That might be too much.
Who friggin’ knows man.

Necro doesn’t have to be a dps to be raid viable though. It’s silly that everyone is so hung up on that idea.

I’m not a raid player but if more mobs had boons in general pve then the necromancer/reaper would be pretty amazing.

Maybe they should consider that going forward,

Reduced hp/toughness → protection
Less breakbar → stability/resistance
Reduced damage → might/quickness

That sort of thing in a balanced way.

Justine.6351:

if more mobs had boons in general pve then the necromancer/reaper would be pretty amazing.

just keep using mesmers for boon removal and party support

Omatsuri.4250:

Justine.6351:

if more mobs had boons in general pve then the necromancer/reaper would be pretty amazing.

just keep using mesmers for boon removal and party support

I suppose on stationary targets sword AA/quickness would be enough. Ohwell poor necromancers ;-(

Maybe it can work if they make the boss breakbar giving immunity to boon removal but not on boon corruption.

Vitali.5039:

Maybe it can work if they make the boss breakbar giving immunity to boon removal but not on boon corruption.

Or perhaps add herald type foes that pulse multiple boons that cannot simply be removed fast enough by meerly sword AA.

New Foe Type
Herald PvE Mob,
Pulses multiple boons to nearby allies,
Regeneration/ Swiftness/ Might/ Fury/ Protection

Just a thought anyhow.

Justine.6351:

Or perhaps add herald type foes that pulse multiple boons that cannot simply be removed fast enough by meerly sword AA.

this will be a nice reason to bring one more mesmer for more boon removal, quickness and alacrity

Omatsuri.4250:

Justine.6351:

Or perhaps add herald type foes that pulse multiple boons that cannot simply be removed fast enough by meerly sword AA.

this will be a nice reason to bring one more mesmer for more boon removal, quickness and alacrity

2 mesmers already bring 100% on quickness/alacrity as I understand it. Adding a third wont really improve anything there, creating a space for a reaper who can focus dps and boon corrupt in conjunction with the 2 mesmers in the current lineup. Maybe Mesmer sword AA = more dps than reaper idk.

But I don’t raid, this was more a general lvl 80 post HoT pve suggestion,
Boons in place of inflated hp/toughness/breakbar/damage.

I think people still want to see a health-sacrificing support necro build similar to gw1, where you would sacrifice a % of your hp to add special support effects to your allies.

Let’s just wait for the Uber skillset that will be crap in PvP and give a place in raid to the necromancer : The spirits!

The spirits have the exact same design that the ranger’s one except that this set fit the necromancer design.

Healing skill :
Bloodthirsty spirit : passive 75% chance to trigger a 200 life siphon. Active heal yourself and drain life force in an area (be happy, if no foe is hit you still gain 10% from the spirit death!!!)

Utility :
Vengeful spirit : Passive 75% chance to gain 2s retaliation when hit ICD 10 seconds. Active inflict 3 stack of torment for 20seconds on foes in the radius.
Dreadfull spirit : Passive 75% chance to apply 2s weakness on hit ICD 10 seconds. Active 1 second aoe fear.
Malicious spirit : Passive 75% chance to transfer a condition on hit ICD 10 seconds. Active transfer up to 1 conditions on you to up to 5 foes in the radius (you can lose up to 5 conditions if there is enough foes, that’s huge!)..
Corrupted spirit : Passive 75% chance to corrupt a boon when you hit a foe ICD 10s. Active explode, dealing damage and living a poison field that poison and weaken foes.

Elite :
Spirit of resentment : as long as foes in radius are affected by this spirit their toughness is reduced by 180. Active Copy all conditions that are currently on the necromancer on nearby foes then cleanse all conditions on the necromancer. (Yeah I wanted a true elite skill for once)

Skill set trait : Spirit devourer : gain 1% life force each time a necromancer’s spirit buff is applyed on you.

Edit: Oh! yes I forgot… Yo’re only taken in raid for the elite which don’t have a 100% uptime.

Justine.6351:

2 mesmers already bring 100% on quickness/alacrity as I understand it. Adding a third wont really improve anything there, creating a space for a reaper who can focus dps and boon corrupt in conjunction with the 2 mesmers in the current lineup. Maybe Mesmer sword AA = more dps than reaper idk.

my point is if 2 mesmers couln’t handle with boons how could 1 necromancer do it? Currect PVE meta is all about max DPS: you should be a damage dealer or provide a vital buffs for the highest dps with maximum uptime.
For example, necro should be able to sacriface Y amount life force with new\old “skill X” for decent amount of quikness, might, fury, alacrity, +10% damage aura or whatever.. Currect active effects and cooldowns of signet of spite or signet of undeath may be change for this.

Omatsuri.4250:

my point is if 2 mesmers couln’t handle with boons how could 1 necromancer do it? Currect PVE meta is all about max DPS: you should be a damage dealer or provide a vital buffs for the highest dps with maximum uptime.

The boss would have such a profundity of boons as to require 2 mesmers + a necro.

The raid will be taking 2 memsers period. If those two mesmers don’t have enough removal the you add necros until you do.

Also the raid meta necro is packing a large amount of corrupts even without taking CB. (Scepter auto, Enfeeble, Nightfall)

Crinn.7864:

The boss would have such a profundity of boons as to require 2 mesmers + a necro.

Or use the same group composition without any necros but some members use Sigil of Nullification
It’s more easier to make some changes to necro than rework every single boss in this game just for making 1 class more viable.

@Murdock:

Fist bump, bro! I also vomit this “top dps or go home” attitude in raiding parties. And the fact that some classes are shunned just as bad now in raids as it was in the old days in dungeon lfg. Plus awesome nick, loved Murdock from A-team

As for necro the potential is there, just that A-net is too afraid to let it bloom. The main appeal of necro in raid is “I can do support, while not losing much of my dps” unlike most that take hard blows to dps if they want to heal/tank/support.

Problem is a-net is too scared to take the plunge and let that be a real thing in raiding scenario. The two most obvious extra roles necro can take is healing and condi cleansing/transfers.

Healing fails becuase his healing sources aren’t numerous/strong enough. Signet of vampirism is not meant for group of 10, but of 5. Vampiric presence can free up druid’s dps by a lot (no more forced heals to charge celestial) but druids don’t have that much dps anyway. Transfusion in pve may get sweet cooldown cuts while killing mobs but you can forget that vs one big tough raid boss.

Condi pulling off allies screams “awesome raid tool” as it can turn simple condi cleanse into strong dps boost (transfer it back into boss with epidemic follow-up when needed). Least it would, if necros weren’t stuck with pathetic 1 condi off one person every 3 s (correct me if i’m mistaken). That doesn’t do jack, neither for dps, nor for cleansing the party. While both are passives (signet of plague and unholy martyr) no active that would do mass condi pulling for big transfer exist! Again a failed aspect that could shine.

And there’s boon corruption which doesn’t exist in raid setting and is a huge, defining part of necro kit. Here i actually feel like this game has 8 professions…and a necro. As the gameplay of other 8 is “apply condies or cleanse them”. Only necro has real condi manipulation options that go beyond that yet see no play vs raid bosses, and that sucks.

What i would like to see are boss boons that are corruptable, and upon corruption do affect it. Currently player condies such as weakness, immobilize, chill etc cannot affect a raid boss. Let’s say he’s got imaginary “anti debilitating condi armor” that negates all outside attempts at applying these condies. But it’s boons are something that comes from inside, and by corrupting these he could be affected.

Now that may need some tweaking (to not become overly powerful), but by using boss’ own boons for that effect a-net already gets a lot of control over what condition and at which times can be applied. There can be some special modifications or effects upon corruption for balance purposes (for example corrupting protection makes boss take 20% more damage) instead of applying vulni stacks which are usually at cap all the time, ergo such corruption would be no different then just boon removal in real fight.

At any rate the current necro & raid boss design makes necromancer the class which underperforms or flat out doesn’t exist in areas where his kit should shine.

Omatsuri.4250:

Or use the same group composition without any necros but some members use Sigil of Nullification

Except a necro gains dps from corrupting boons, while equipping nulli sigils is a dps loss.

It’s more easier to make some changes to necro than rework every single boss in this game just for making 1 class more viable.

You wouldn’t need to rework every boss, just a couple. We already have certain bosses that ridiculously favor certain classes.

Crinn.7864

Except a necro gains dps from corrupting boons, while equipping nulli sigils is a dps loss.

and most conditions deals 0 damage. On top of that it is almost impossible to corrupt aegis in group fight and u will never find mobs with vigor…
Ussually taking necro to the party is already a dps loss. If we are talking about corrupting regeneration and retaliation it would be better in most scenaries just remove boons whatever way u like (sigils, mesmers) than taking necro for extra posion stack or confusions stacks.
Making Bosses with pulsing vigor just to increase necro’s dps seems weird.

I reckon not everyone wanted to read my wall of text so long story short:

If a-net would care to stop joking and get serious with necro’s “transfer condies off allies to self, then into enemy + epidemic” we’d have a real, necro-themed dps boost option.

Currently that’s just wishful thinking as the only two ways he can do it are passive and very weak (1 condi per 3s on one person if i remember right). What he needs is a big active like ranger’s signet or reneval, or guardian’s “Save yourselves”, paired with bit of resistance to not kill himself on the spot (be it from skill itself or another potential source in his kit).

There are many more great ideas here in this forum how to fix the necro. Wish we’d see some red replies to them..

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I reckon not everyone wanted to read my wall of text so long story short:

If a-net would care to stop joking and get serious with necro’s “transfer condies off allies to self, then into enemy + epidemic” we’d have a real, necro-themed dps boost option.

Currently that’s just wishful thinking as the only two ways he can do it are passive and very weak (1 condi per 3s on one person if i remember right). What he needs is a big active like ranger’s signet or reneval, or guardian’s “Save yourselves”, paired with bit of resistance to not kill himself on the spot (be it from skill itself or another potential source in his kit).

There are many more great ideas here in this forum how to fix the necro. Wish we’d see some red replies to them..

As much as I don’t want to justify the balance team of A-net… There is actually a reason for the small amount of conditions that the necromancer can draw. And this reason is Unholy martyr.

In a not so distant past, minionmancer used to exploit a bounced condition effect with this trait to achieve an over-the-top LF generation allowing them to sustain the shroud and give them an okish survivability that was problematic in PvP. Giving the necromancer the ability to draw more condition than they do at the moment would most likely revive this “issue”.

To be honest, I can’t help but understand that the dev are on a tight spot when it come to the necromancer. In truth, some of the necromancer’s mechanism have overwhelming potential and monstruous synergy and they just can’t allow the once every 40th of the month situation to happen. This lead to the different weak traits that shackle the encromancer.

But, this is also why I want them to tweek other thing so that without having to look for the “once every 40th of the month situation”, the necromancer can still hold it’s own and being valuable on a party.

You know, vampiric could easily get higher numbers, benefiting all builds possible, if this trait didn’t applyed to the minion’s damage. On another hand, a lot of the necromancer’s survivability would be lost that way.
Parasitic contagion could give us a stacking buff depending on how many condition are on us instead of being in this tight spot where you will never take it over the condition duration of the scepter which is your primary source of conditions.
Unholy martyr could have an ICD on the LF gain and draw conditions on 5 allies in order to impede the survivability of necromancer but improve it’s utility for the party.
Vampiric rituals could be totally reworked the spihon on this trait is anecdotic at best. Even at it’s best, vampiric rituals‘s siphon wasn’t enough to allow a necromancer to survive some decent focus.
Soul comprehension give 1% life for each death around you… Come on, either you’re downing in life force or you gain so little LF that it’s simply a waste of a trait. Let’s make it give 1% Life force every 3 seconds while in combat. (EDIT : forget it, it would becme a new vital persistence. Best would be to just totally change the effect)
Vital persistence presence in the soul reaping traitline is overwhelming to the point that few player want to give it up. The problem being the degeneration decrease of the trait. Let’s just replace this effect and it will not be an issue anymore, opening more build diversity.
Lich form and Plague form could also be reworked in order to remove the gimmicky factors and give them some quality of life change so that one will be more willfull to use them. Lich form may become lich aura, strenghtening allies around you. While Plague form could be a buff that copy incoming condition on nearby foes for a certain duration (which would have a truly great synergy with corruption).

There are so many minor tweeks that could benefit the necromancer without hurting it’s identity or making it broken. Yet nothing is done except dps change that more than often end up nerfed afterward.

Honestly, it would be easy to design an encounter that almost screams for necros. Just make a breakbar phase where the boss starts healing, pulsing stability(that would prevent BB damage until removed) and dealing PBAoE damage. Where other professions remove boons, only necromancers corrupt stability into fear. It’s a boon rip and breakbar damage all in one neat package.

I think it’s even easier: boss inflicts a condition to one person in the party and has to be transfered back to him, meanwhile he is invulnerable. Do it quite often, in a random time so that’s unexpected. Necros would shine attracting the condition from its party members and sending it back easily.

Is the goal to create unplayable content for any profession except necro?

Well to make content playable (for both necro and revenant) you could start by introducing bosses with some serious condi pressure, rather then direct damage all the time. Mallyx reve and condi-transferring necro would defo get to shine more, without turning the fight on it’s head to achieve that goal.

Omatsuri.4250:

Is the goal to create unplayable content for any profession except necro?

I think the point is having some bosses with different mechanics than let specific roles shine. There are already bosses where pure dps (Gorseval, KC), projectile hate (Sloth, Cairn), sustainanility (Deimos), boon stripping (VG) and even confusion and torment (Matthias, Cairn) are needed or sought after. So why condi manipulation can’t get the same treatment? That would put Necromancer or maybe even Condi Rev in a good spot, but that doesn’t mean that new specs could fulfill the same role.

But if the fight can go on without dealing with the mechanic, why implement it? To this day, I still don’t understand why green areas in VG can be distorted. But then again, I think they learnt, looking at Deimos.

Akeno.4962:

I think it’s even easier: boss inflicts a condition to one person in the party and has to be transfered back to him, meanwhile he is invulnerable. Do it quite often, in a random time so that’s unexpected. Necros would shine attracting the condition from its party members and sending it back easily.

no. just no. absolutely not.
this would mean that ONLY necro would be good here. or builds would have to gut themselves with sigil of transferrance.
that’s not how anet makes encounters; nor is it how they should.

I need everyone to understand that making encounters that necro would shine in is an okay idea; but that’s not the point of this thread at all.
the point is to want necromancer have something unique AND useful (or at least useful)
It doesn’t have to be dps. There’s already so many dps in this game that will ALWAYS be better than necro unless the numbers are absurd.

And keep in mind necro’s traits. They have some insane synergies between eachother.
Just look at the icegun gimmick. Chill inflicts vuln>vuln gives 2% crit per stack>chill adds 3 bleed. The fact that the icegun chills on crit means that at 100% crit (50% base with 25 vuln) you just add chill on every tick which adds 3 bleeds per tick. Not to mention the minor in corruption that adds crit for every condi. Meaning that you’d need fewer precision points and thus you can use quad stats with precision minor (VIPERS) and have no downsides.

I’m almost certain its due to these intense synergies that Anet is really scared to give necro anything serious.

Heck, even life siphon has some startling synergies. Vampiric aura stacks with vampiric minor master trait. last rights increases healing power by 450 at under 50% hp. And quickening thirst reduces dagger skill cooldowns when health is above 75% hp. Luckily it applies the reduced cooldown on “if activated above” rather than “if ending at” because if they didn’t dagger siphon would be ABSURD. It’s already a second heal skill with vampiric and vampiric aura.

I do still think life siphon would be a cool mechanic if it was made an actual mechanic that mattered … but buffing almost anything in necromancer’s kit (especially on the trait side) is playing with fire.

Murdock.6547:

Akeno.4962:

I think it’s even easier: boss inflicts a condition to one person in the party and has to be transfered back to him, meanwhile he is invulnerable. Do it quite often, in a random time so that’s unexpected. Necros would shine attracting the condition from its party members and sending it back easily.

no. just no. absolutely not.
this would mean that ONLY necro would be good here. or builds would have to gut themselves with sigil of transferrance.
that’s now how anet makes encounters; nor is it how they should.

Yeah that was a bit of an overkill, i don’t know what i was thinking of. But it’s also true that it’s a shame that already ingame implemented mechanics have so little room to shine in pve.

And yeah, Necro could use more support.

Murdock.6547:

Akeno.4962:

I think it’s even easier: boss inflicts a condition to one person in the party and has to be transfered back to him, meanwhile he is invulnerable. Do it quite often, in a random time so that’s unexpected. Necros would shine attracting the condition from its party members and sending it back easily.

no. just no. absolutely not.
this would mean that ONLY necro would be good here. or builds would have to gut themselves with sigil of transferrance.
that’s not how anet makes encounters; nor is it how they should.

You wouldn’t need transferrance.

All you would need for that mechanic is 1 necro with Plague Signet since Plague signet’s passive will pull the condi off whichever players get it.

Crinn.7864:

Murdock.6547:

Akeno.4962:

I think it’s even easier: boss inflicts a condition to one person in the party and has to be transfered back to him, meanwhile he is invulnerable. Do it quite often, in a random time so that’s unexpected. Necros would shine attracting the condition from its party members and sending it back easily.

no. just no. absolutely not.
this would mean that ONLY necro would be good here. or builds would have to gut themselves with sigil of transferrance.
that’s not how anet makes encounters; nor is it how they should.

You wouldn’t need transferrance.

All you would need for that mechanic is 1 necro with Plague Signet since Plague signet’s passive will pull the condi off whichever players get it.

So in that case, we’d have 1 boss where people would bring a single necro just for that but in most other fights, necro would still be ignored by most groups. Bad idea is bad.

Not to mention that necromancer’s transfert spell would have to be changed in order to include this specific condition. You could also end up passing the wrong condition… etc.

I agree with the fact tht this is a bad idea.

Dadnir.5038:

Not to mention that necromancer’s transfert spell would have to be changed in order to include this specific condition. You could also end up passing the wrong condition… etc.

I agree with the fact tht this is a bad idea.

That’s only a problem if other conditions are being applied by the fight. If the boss isn’t applying any other conditions then the only condition that Psig could pick up would be the mechanic one.

And if the boss is only applying that 1 condition then Psig’s active will always work as a transfer since necro will never self-condition more than 4 unique condis.

On a different note, it would be interesting to actually see more condition based foes (like the blight cat golem in the Chaos fractal).

Crinn.7864:

Dadnir.5038:

Not to mention that necromancer’s transfert spell would have to be changed in order to include this specific condition. You could also end up passing the wrong condition… etc.

I agree with the fact tht this is a bad idea.

That’s only a problem if other conditions are being applied by the fight. If the boss isn’t applying any other conditions then the only condition that Psig could pick up would be the mechanic one.

And if the boss is only applying that 1 condition then Psig’s active will always work as a transfer since necro will never self-condition more than 4 unique condis.

Well, this does not change the fact that this is a bad idea. From my point of view it’s like saying :

“The dev should design the raid in such a way that you need an elementalist to give a Lightning hammer to a mesmer so that mesmer can set a portal allowing an engineer and a ranger to put a turret and a spirit at a very specific spot while being stealthed by a thief so that the necromancer can draw from them (turret and spirit) a very potent condition necessary to kill the boss”.

That’s an horrid design.

Next to that, the warrior just chukkle while thinking that they will always be welcome because they just need to swing their greatsword a few time to grant 25 might stacks with 100% uptime whatever the boss in front of them. Even without that, they very easily empower their allies (EA trait) and support everyone with an almost passive effect from their banners.

But yeah, let’s do that, let’s design encounter where you need to draw a condition given by a boss to one of your ally before sending back this condition to the boss so that your raid can do damage to the boss… I hope you understand how ridiculous this is in a game whose selling point was that you wouldn’t have to take a specific profession to go through the content.

I think transfering conditions would be a stupid mechanic for a boss, as ONLY necros can really do it en mass. Boon stripping is better as it can be done by many other professions as well. However necros just do it better.

Many people will disagree but… I feel there’s almost no difference between “mechanics that require a specific class” and “meta raid requirements”.

For example, KC and Gorseval require a great dps check. Might helps archieve that if you have a constant and many stacks and from what I know only warriors can provide 25 reliably (and tempests to some extent or so i’ve heard?). And they don’t only provide might, they have banners and EA. Therefore, I haven’t seen any videos of raid groups beating them without a warrior (but if there are, I’d be glad to watch them). And that dps check is actually something close to one of their mechanic, so… no one complains about being forced to take TWO because you can damage the boss and try to beat him tho it’s quite probable you won’t archive it?

On the other hand, boon stripping can be done with chrono’s sword auto. Can necros boon strip faster than a third skill in the chain or strip multiple boons at the same time ? (I really don’t know) Because I’ve never seen a necro in blue Guardian because of having troubles with the stripping the boon.

And I reassert my previous statement: group support spec would be a nice change of path for selfish necro. I hope it comes some time, and I hope it is based in debuffs instead of HoT’s group buffs meta.

Akeno.4962:

And I reassert my previous statement: group support spec would be a nice change of path for selfish necro. I hope it comes some time, and I hope it is based in debuffs instead of HoT’s group buffs meta.

Orders! ORDERS! ORRRRRRRRRRDERS!

@ akeno – Truer words were never spoken. The balance it outta whack.

Warr can stack party might like crazy, drop banners and all that while doing respectable dps.

Chrono holds almost an exclusive monopoly on quickness and alacrity (both huge damage boosts) without any real competition (or much of an alternative for chrono as bunker because their damage sucks and are unfit for other roles).

Come on a-net get busy with some balancing. A raid group that does not rely on druids, ps warrs and chronobunkers should not be doomed to be “niche or extremely offmeta”. Such a group should also be able to get it’s defense, heals and damage going as long as people know what they’re doing and build their characters for it.

Give mesmers real damage options so they’re not shackled to the bunker role 24/7.
Give someone who’s not a warrior a good option to stack might without completely screwing over his role (be it healer, tank or dps).
Non chornomancer party quickness could be a great boon, preferably on a tank or power dps since we already have alacrity healer (rev), and huge demand for condi classes.

While we’re there how about a little brainstorm about tanks and healers? Guys like ventari rev, guardians, elementalist are waiting for their fair chance at being party healer.

Not to mention tanks such as Jalis revs, reapers, eles (again) that are just waiting for effin chronomancers to move and let someone else get the tank spot for once in a millenia or two…

Gonna agree with Zeft. Multiple classes should be able to take on roles equally well so that there is no monopoly on support (druid) and tank (chrono) to improve balance. . Same thing with boons. Chrono and warrior should have some competition in applying their respective boons.

Class diversity in raids is part of what makes it fun. I would love to see the day when every class did roughly equal dps if they spec’d one way or was just as effective as another class at support or tanking if they spec’d another. It would be great if classes filled roles equally but had a different way to achieve it.

Gonna bring it back to the opening topic. The problem for necros in raids is they are a poor choice for every role. The reason people ask for DPS vs support is purely player preference. Both need help and fixes in either one would help make necro raid viable.

Personally, I hope they revamp core shroud to fill a DPS role, tweak reaper to be a viable alternative to chronotank and have the new sand shroud elite cater to support.