Guild Wars 2

I find there is a serious lack of both self-sufficient and worthwhile combo fields and especially blast / projectile finishers on the Necromancer.

The wiki provides a simple table: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_necromancer_combo_skills

“Axe, daggers, scepter, focus, and warhorn have no combo effects.”

Consider the diversity some other classes have access to and be amazed why Staff is considered a must.
Staff #1 is our only common projectile, however it suffers from slow projectile speeds.

I’m mainly speaking about my experience in SPvP as a Necromancer, where they are considered bottom tier currently.
But I hope to bring this to general attention as it can be an additional method of increasing viability and overall value in adding a Necromancer to your party.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

For example:

- Spectral Wall, a largely underused utility, is a rare Ethereal field, which grants Confusion. A condition the Necromancer is uncapable of applying otherwise.
Right now, the long cooldown paired with our lackluster projectiles make it hardly viable, though.

- Siphons are another example, they are unique to the Necromancer, but somehow don’t work as combo’s. Making them even less viable.

- Also Life Blast is not a projectile finisher, which makes combo’s hard when we are forced into Death Shroud to sustain.

There was a relatively fresh thread about this under 2 weeks ago. Can’t find it for some reason. Yeah we definitely lack combo finishers, looking at the early beta build each of our marks was a blast finisher and there was a trait that made our staff #1 track the target(I would assume that was why it was designed to be this slow, so you could use the trait for it to be homing. With the current kit we have it’s just crap.)

Fully traited spectral wall is actually amazing, it has a 32 second CD with a 15-16 second duration(base duration is 9 seconds). Problem is it’s combo field is bugged….. it expires after the base 9 seconds and doesn’t have the combo field anymore for the extended duration from the trait which is a good chunk of 6-7 seconds……….. =/

Bone minions with the CD reduction trait are actually good blast finishers if you mostly summon them and then blow them up instantly. Problem is there’s a 3 second delay for the blast combo effect to take place after they exploded.

Bugs, they are ruining a lot of stuff from release. Unknown bugs are still being discovered from time to time as well.

I’ll look again, but didn’t find anything recent.

I agree with the examples you gave, Iceflame. I read on the wiki the location of the combo field is also bugged for Spectral Wall.

Bone Minions are too unreliable to be decent blast finishers: AI, slow moving, obvious for opponents in PvP, bugged, uncontrollable, …

They would be more interesting if the explosion skill was ground targeted.

I think these are important ideas to add to Necromancer viability, though.

Bone Minions should act like Mesmer clones when they are exploding, imo. Since getting them in one of our combo fields is so hard anyway, at least that way they would actually land their explosion more often.