Guild Wars 2

First of all, I have to say that I play necromancer since beta. It’s one of the most awesome classes in game, even tho it has been ignored by the developers for over half a year. We had some pretty fancy changes then, making the class more competetive and more fun overall. We didn’t have a complete class overhaul that would have been necessary as other classes had tho.

Regarding the upcoming changes that’ll ship in about 12hours (I take http://dulfy.net/2013/10/14/gw2-october-14-developer-livestream-notes/ as my reference), I have mixed feelings. This are not the complete patchnotes, but I guess it will pretty much sum up what’s happening to the classes.

When reading those livestream notes by dulfy, the first thing that really got my attention was elementalists getting a line of warding. Until now, only guardians have such a line and necromancers have “something similiar”. Our spectral wall cannot be passed without stability which makes it usefull for pretty much the same situations. I’m only talking about the offensive abilities now, not the boons granted. Why exactly does elementalist get one of those lines too? Having a “you may not pass!”-line was making guardians and necromancers special in a tactical way. Now that elementalists get the same somehow will decrease the tactical benefit you gain from having necromancers with you in WvW. Also, the argumentation why eles get a line of warding lacks in a huge lot of ways. “Staff elementalist doesn’t have enough utility”. Are you freakin’ kidding me? Smallbless, Bigbless, lots of explosion finishers, lots of other finishers, staticfield (BEST CC in game!), highest radius AoE damage, freeze, cripple, … What utility does necromancer have exactly? Well, we have a freeze and some poison. We also have cripple and one explosion finisher that only triggers if enemies are around. We have plague (makes up for tornado I guess) and we have DS#4 as heal. And, yes, we have spectral wall. So where’s our utility in comparison? Where’s our Smallbless, Bigbless, where are our combo finishers? We don’t even have a stability utility skill. Your argumentation does not make sense at all. And please, think about how the battles will be for us now. There already are a lot of lines of warding, spectral walls, statics and other “you may not pass”-things on the battlefield. Without stability, you’re merely able to move at all. And now every staff elementalist will get another “haha, you’re a necromancer”-skill. Good job Anet.

The next things you see when reading those notes is the amount of condition removals that are ADDED to the game. Guardian’s can now lower the condition duration for 20% when using a condition removal, mesmers even get more condition removals (in addition to nullfield, lol). I know that playing condition in WvW is useless, but it still is fun. Now it’s becoming even more useless and less fun. Good job Anet.

The last thing is about thieves. Well, I don’t want to make this a flame post about thieves (even tho I think the thieve-dev is just laughing the entire day about all other devs that their classes aren’t as ridiculous as his is), but seriously: Another explosion finisher AND two immobilize-removals? Immobilize is like the only thing that you can kill a “I’m stealthed and I port away for like 3000 ingame units every 5 seconds”-thieve. Why exactly does a thieve need such skills then? Because they were bugged? kitten it, make those bugs a feature kitten .

Yes, yes, this is some kind of emotional for me. I mean I’m playing necromancer for over a year now and – except for a few patches – all I see is other classes getting more boons, more condition removals, more stability, more usability. What do we get? A HUD change so we can see our lifeforce pool. Awesome. Thanks a lot.

Our changes seem to be a bit more substantial than a HUD change. In all honesty, its pointless to speculate how the meta will be affected, or whether or not our class will change for the better right now. In a couple hours we’ll have more concrete information.

As I was saying, my reference for this post were the livestream notes taken by dulfy. Of course, there will be other changes, but the feeling I – and I think also others – get aint really good at all. Yes, we will have more concrete information when the patch hits live, but this still bothers me. Especially the “staff ele doesnt have enough utility” statement just hits every necromancer in his or her face.

necros have always been the red headed step child of the game , so if rangers , engies and necros are getting the least love , while guardians , warriors , eles. mesmers , and thieves get the most love , expect a lot more people quitting the game as a result of it or more people rolling the loved classes . but to "balance " it all out they will be adding new abilities for each class in the game , maybe arena net has something planned for necros to finally get them over . otherwise we can just sit back and watch how arena net completely lay waste to a game that could of had a lot of potential . but i like to see it more as just the same old same old , history likes to repeat itself .

I also noticed that Dhuumfire is now a 2 second burn so its being reduced. Which is strange as with all the condition cleanses that are being added I would have thought they might have left it to see how it performed with the new changes.

Noerknhar.3826:

The last thing is about thieves. Well, I don’t want to make this a flame post about thieves (even tho I think the thieve-dev is just laughing the entire day about all other devs that their classes aren’t as ridiculous as his is), but seriously: Another explosion finisher AND two immobilize-removals? Immobilize is like the only thing that you can kill a “I’m stealthed and I port away for like 3000 ingame units every 5 seconds”-thieve. Why exactly does a thieve need such skills then? Because they were bugged? kitten it, make those bugs a feature kitten .

Withdrawal and Roll For Initiative always were Immobilize removals, the only thing they changed on them was that they’ll remove immobilize at the start of the animation instead of at the end of it, which will give us a gap as the utilities are meant to do.

In the patch vid we also saw in the tooltip of Shadow’s Embrace that our condition removal in stealth may increase from 3 seconds to 10 seconds, and if it’s true, this is a huge nerf for stealth-built thieves, especially against necromancers.

And there is nothing such as teleport 3000 units every 5 seconds.

Combining everything, you can do this with all 30+ seconds cooldown, besides infiltrators strike which teleports you back and forth and is “cooldownless”.
We blow 2 utilities for 900 and 1200 range, inf strike 600, and steal 900 (1500 if traited which is rare), this is 3600 units. But 3 of them requires a target, which of 1 requires you to be in range, and the 4th shadowstep is ground targeting. Sure switch to shortbow, and pull off 2 infiltrators arrows as well, and the thiefs initiative is empty.

So yeah, in this patch thieves will only get a minor buff to build variety, and possibly nerfs to the stealth-based builds, and even S/D may get nerfed. Blinding powder however will become more useful for Pistol offhand thieves.

Scarran.9845:

I also noticed that Dhuumfire is now a 2 second burn so its being reduced. Which is strange as with all the condition cleanses that are being added I would have thought they might have left it to see how it performed with the new changes.

He was in the mists that is why it was 2 seconds. Dhuumfire is reduced to 2 seconds in the mists only.

oZii.2864:

Scarran.9845:

I also noticed that Dhuumfire is now a 2 second burn so its being reduced. Which is strange as with all the condition cleanses that are being added I would have thought they might have left it to see how it performed with the new changes.

He was in the mists that is why it was 2 seconds. Dhuumfire is reduced to 2 seconds in the mists only.

Ah thanks oZii I never knew that, i really dont do alot of sPVP and spend little time in the mists. Im more WvW or PVE and only really go in there when im trying out different builds to see what they are like as its cheaper than buying the stuff.

Altho my buying armour addiction is definitely not appeased there as my bank is full to the brim with the different armour sets for my Necro. They always say the first step is admitting your addiction 8O)

I honestly taught the notes looked great from a PvE perspective. Some “minor” yet important HUD changes. And a nice buff to minions. We also receive some utility love via our Blood trait line (Transfusion, Deathly Invigoration, ect)

I mean sure its not the “fix” we were all hoping for but in PvE im excited for the possibility of running a MM build, with the buff to overall HP of minions AND the buff to Vampiric Master (now this trait makes your pets do added damage) this could be a new PvE meta and tbh if you include minion DPS Necros are on par with Warriors. Our only issue is that minions suck and die all the time.

I still say our minions need to have a buffed AoE resistance because they stand in fire, most other MMOs have done this.

Im hoping that the increased buff to all minions added with our transfusion buff will help in keeping the little terrors alive.

Thats as long as the there isn’t anything badly nerf’d with the existing traits for minions as with the 50% increase in health it should give us some pretty sturdy minions. I must admit im looking forward to testing this out the most, as I miss my one man army and would like to swap back to a minion build.

Dont know,the whole livestream as far necro looked kitten.
Transfusion pic on dulfy shows a 50 point increase in transfusion while fully blood traited.
That looks like crap wrapped on candy wrap compared to the 1200 range heal guardians toss.
Also they got more condition removal and condition reduction as if they cant get rid conditions passively.
They gave warrior the ability to knocks us off more easily,and they gave us a kitten vampiric which so far i dont see any indication that is scaleing.
Lets wait and see,patch should hit in half an hour.
Personaly i already feel cheated anyways considering the history of gw2 necromancer,this might finnaly push me to salvage the gear and use him as a storage character.
Anet is only understanding participation numbers,if necromancers drop to 0 they might get the hint.

Nothing of use to pve as usual. Mesmers however got a good buff which will affect the pve meta slightly. Warriors nerfed slightly so there will just be one build used in pve. Nice to see another pvp balance patch.

Man people whine WAY too much in here…. I’m out

Whining about whining is still whining broseph.

just increase damage for condition damage and we will be fine again. its just ridiculous how easy all other class escape from combat while we left withered (wurm is not an option, wasting one utility skill for locust signet is already dumb enough) and please remove that reanimator trait crap, its more a liability from my standpoint (i do a lot of solo roaming in wvw, and i disagree with opinion about condition useless in wvw since i dismember any class on duel)

and thief, man what can i say about thief? you don’t need skill to play thief. perma invis is just silly and it’s hard to kill thief because they can easily escape combat.

overall just cross your finger that the overhaul will be favorable to us, but don’t hope too much

Stillmoon.6894:

snip

Please be a troll.