Guild Wars 2

This post is about the non-mechanical issues with the Necromancer class – things that don’t deal with stats, performance and bugs, but instead look and feel, visual issues, or general “quality of life” matters.

Note: I know some people don’t think these things are important – but some do, so let’s agree to disagree ahead of time.

1. Jagged Horror needs a new model. This is open to preference of course; some people probably like that it is a little bone horror. To me, it looks like a placeholder. The Jagged Horror should be it’s own little critter.

2. Life Force orb absorption needs to cause Necros to glow, or animate as absorbing into our bodies, or something to show we are taking in this energy. Currently, the orb just approaches our body and disappears – it’s like one final animation or glow effect or something is missing. Looks a little low-rent right now.

3. Liche Form – needs a female model. I’ve only tested Liche Form in PVP so far, so I don’t have the actual skill myself yet, but when I tried it I immediately turned into a big, hulking, male liche. Problem is, my Necro is female. She needs to be able to turn into a female liche.

4. Need ability to turn off minion “banners.” I.e., the names, healthbars and guild abbreviations. When I have out all my minions I feel like I’m surrounded by a mass of billboards. Very distracting. If I want to see my minion’s health status, I prefer to do it on mouse-over.

5. Clipping – I LOVE the harajuku look of many of my Necro’s gear, but the flouncy nature of some of these garments leads to some clipping. For example, I currently have on the “Ravaging Magician Coat of Honing” and the “Ravaging Cabalist Legs of Strength”, and the legs clip a bit up into the coat. This’ll never entirely be eliminated, but I hope Anet is going to continue to clean up these things over time.

6. Staff sounds – I wonder if Anet could throw in just one more sound variation, just to mix it up a bit? That “AaaaaaWHOOOOO” sound repeats quite a bit, as has been noted by others….

7. Plague – should we turn entirely into a cloud? Other “transform” skills seem to keep some resemblance to human form – DS, Liche, etc. Maybe tweak so that the visual effect is the same, but Necros retain a ghostly form within? Just a thought.

Keep up the good work Anet, this game rocks.

I dont really have too many QoL issues. The glowing thing sounds cool. I personally just would like to look a little more evil in our forms. A nice touch to Deathshroud would be some green glowing eyes shining out from that cloud of blackness around us. Also nice to throw onto Plague. Kinda weird how it looks like I am stealth inside of a black bug swarm too. Wouldn’t mind that being removed entirely and just keep the swarming black cloud flying around.

As odd as this will sound, that “AaaaaaWHOOOO” sound doesn’t really bother me. I am most of the time looking at buffs and debuffs and not entirely focused on my character so the sound at least lets me know im still attacking.

XXVI Red.5718:

I dont really have too many QoL issues. The glowing thing sounds cool. I personally just would like to look a little more evil in our forms. A nice touch to Deathshroud would be some green glowing eyes shining out from that cloud of blackness around us. Also nice to throw onto Plague. Kinda weird how it looks like I am stealth inside of a black bug swarm too. Wouldn’t mind that being removed entirely and just keep the swarming black cloud flying around.

As odd as this will sound, that “AaaaaaWHOOOO” sound doesn’t really bother me. I am most of the time looking at buffs and debuffs and not entirely focused on my character so the sound at least lets me know im still attacking.

Use staff autoattack in a large crowd. Most likely your staff will generate the most loud and annoying sound within 2000 range.

1. staff autoattack sound. cast time. projectile speed. fact projectile is only 20% chance (why??)
2. no ae melee autoattack.
3. Long cast time on locust swarm (and other spells). Long cast times in general.
4. Minions not regenerating hp so after a battle they remain low hp, sometimes almost dead, but you have no way to desummon them.
5. Blood fiend heal is LOW i.e. like a signet to balance the constnat heal however there is no accounting for the large risk you entail by having your heal be killable. Almost no one uses this heal for a reason.
6. Lack of power ae. Wells due to their other effects are too long cd. DS 4 is too long cd. Piercing attacks suck (as compared to, say, bouncing attacks).

I don’t think changing any of these things would change pvp balance.

I wish that the Death Shroud appearance seemed more focused. It’s just an uninteresting dark cloud right now. I wish it was maybe like a dark figure following your character around or something more akin to the look of Grenth or something. And related to that, I wish that Life Blast wasn’t just some green missile. It doesn’t really mesh with the dark look of DS. I also wish Life Force didn’t look like floaty green orbs, but more like a wispy soul thing or something. I always say to myself during Life Transfer “I’m stealing yer balls!”

I’m fine with most of Necro’s non bug-related / trait related issues that other people have posted.

What I would really like to see is some darker / evil looking legendary weapon skins. I like the models they have, but on a necro with some pretty dark themed armors it looks quite jarring to have a weapon with swirling clouds, light, and rainbows.

Seriously, it makes me not want to work for any of them just because the look would clash so much.

Another thing that has occurred to me:

I’d love to see makeup effects get separated from head selection. I didn’t like the face that went with the “creepy drippy makeup” option when building my female human Necro, but it would be nice to give her some black lipstick or whatever later.

Of course, you’ll need a barber shop for that…

Expect any appearance mods to show up in the gem store, for a solid stack of gems.

Really, just minions attacking when I attack/am attacked would be a good enough change for me. Would definitely improve my QoL when I decide to pull them out.

Squeesidhe.4761:

4. Need ability to turn off minion “banners.” I.e., the names, healthbars and guild abbreviations. When I have out all my minions I feel like I’m surrounded by a mass of billboards. Very distracting. If I want to see my minion’s health status, I prefer to do it on mouse-over.

For the minion’s health bar we should have several options:

Show Minion Health: Always, Never, or Show at X% health
(where X is selected by the player)

Another option would be to have a red skull pop up over the minion’s head when it’s health falls below X.

Perhaps a colored dot above their heads that changes colors with gradation from green to yellow to orange to red according to minion health.

Re: lich form, I’d like to alter 2 things:

1). Size. Lich is too big at the moment. I have camera issues when using Lich Form in tight spaces.
2). Gender specific. It looks like a male creature. Either make a female lich for female necros or make another model which looks like a genderless creature.

Oh, and “VaaSSHHooooooooHHHH”