Guild Wars 2

@Kitedyou:

Why would you go out of your way to attack another individual on these forums?

As a community aren’t we trying to fix the perceived problems with necromancer?

Up to now I haven’t seen any of your recommendation as to what needs to be looked at or doesn’t need to be looked at. The only thing I can garner from your posts is that everyone else need to L2P and that you like calling out community members as arrogant.

Those food buffs are used all the time, especially in a zerg. It sounds like you don’t play in that format but are probably a roamer. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t mean that because you haven’t seen it, that it isn’t used often. I see it being used everyday.

also:

“The issue is people don’t want to take the time that is required to learn a Necro and how to best use them in certain situations. So they whine and complain until things get screwed up for the people that seriously love the class.”

According to you necromancers are fine and don’t need nerfs or buffs we are perfectly balanced and it’s simply a L2P issue for the rest of us.

Just to name a few,
Ascii, Nemisis, Rennoko, spoj, Bawh

All of these guys need to learn the class better? They simply don’t understand necro? I find that very hard to believe.

It does bother me that necro has the least utility and defense and is the most selfish class yet its not the strongest for damage. Honestly if the devs want us to be so selfish they should buff the dmg in power builds to be much stronger than other classes. Then necros would atleast be taken for a strong dps role.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’ll state the obvious:

And as a previous poster stated, wells should work under water. Make it a bubble instead of a ring. Underwater combat is lacking for all classes across the board.

Meanwhile in PVE

Meanwhile, the necromancer is one of the poorest classes in PVE. Our damage output is poor in Fractals and dungeons. And then one balance patch later, we do even less damage. One more balance patch, we have longer cool downs, and do even less damage. One more balance patch, we lose our Death Shroud’s ability to survive insta-kills. Yet another, even lower damage numbers and longer recharge….

Is anyone paying attention to what is happening to this class in PVE?

Maddie, Wells already are domes, just as poison fields, you can see it on downslopes at taco if you cast a well at the edge, it will be a dome in the water, they just arbitrarily limited them (like a lot of skills, if its focused rituals thats the problem, plain disable it underwater).

Also our damage isnt really that low, its the lack of reflects and direct damage invuls (aka removal of DS absorb effect).
Stuff like keeping the entire dredge armada frozen, weakened, crippled and poisoned is quite a nice thing, WoB saved the kitten of so many idiots during blue man, where swalk and wurm are nice for skipping/pulling the hammer around, etc so utility really cannot be argued about, its about how flashy it is (e.g. like supports in lol, noone really notices that + 30 armor and + 50 mr you give or the movement speed or the 20 ad and lifesteal, etc, what is noticed are heals, shields and cc there).

Id like to see them give necro the reflect bubble the toxic krait have been using in the latest Living story release. Would definately solve the pve balance issues thats for sure.

I agree with Andele and Spoj. Giving the necro access to reflects would solve a lot of balance issues in PVE for our class.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I agree with Andele and Spoj. Giving the necro access to reflects would solve a lot of balance issues in PVE for our class.

Giant Green Reflect bubble would be sweet. Give life force per projectile reflected too!

Overkillengine.6084:

In short:
Stop nerfing Staff. We use it because of lack of options. Your metrics are flawed when it comes to actual play.
Death is too minion focused, and it sucks.
Blood sucks. No really. It does.
Deathshroud is blatantly inferior as a defensive option compared to other mechanics in any non sPvP cagematch format. Double whammy when it comes to having little useful mobility as well within the class.

You want us to be about sustain; yet the above issues that would actually enable that paradigm are either getting nerfed, ignored, or shelved indeterminately as too much work to fix.

These complaints did not arise from a vacuum. They are the results of thousands of combined hours of play amongst us.

So please forgive us for being a bit hostile when giving this feedback and often the best we get is platitudes, metrics, and barely hidden “L2P”.

THIS. ALL OF THIS. Especially the last paragraph.

I applaud you good sir.

RashanDale.3609:

But 1v2/1v3 is one of the scenarios where necro has the most problems, since its main defence only blocks a fixed amount of damage, unlike said blocks, evades and whatnot (there are some suggestions to limit the amount of life force you can lose in a certain amount of time, but thats probably not gonna happen. just like the healing/leech while in DS).

And thats were lifeleech could help, especially because they scale with the number of enemies. Spectral had that too until it got butchered with that internal cooldown.

Only put ICDs on Vampiric and Vampiric Precision, because those are traits that most builds who want siphoning would want to take. That opens them up to far more builds, so any necro can have Blood Magic sustain. Then keep Vampiric Rituals as no ICD, because those traits are “gated” by how many wells you take and the duration of those wells; just like minion traits are gated by minions, and as such can have high siphoning without it becoming an issue.

Pendragon.8735:

Necros are going to be sorry when Dhuumfire / Terror gets nerfed at this point and the class is back at the bottom for likely months due to the constant whittling away they’ve done to all other trees and skills the last couple months to already account for this combo.

Considering how much more cleansing and condi counter has come into the game since that point, Necro cannot go back to pre-dhuumfire builds, because they’ve all been nerfed in addition to the above realities.

Bleeds as a primary source of damage aren’t going to cut it ever again.

There appears to be lots of developer confusion about not just how to get this class where it needs to be, but even about what it should be.

Necro has never successfully been attrition in this game (well since beta) and never will be as long as they stick to the complete hardline about our only defense being facetank, with rare stability, no invuln, block, etc. Calling for nerf of our burst is pointless without a simultaneous solution about how to gain real attrition.

I think we have to give up on condition at this point. But as I always say, we need direct-damage alternatives to staff/scepter-dagger. We need new weapon types asap.

Hi Jon!

Are you sure this isn’t a “double whammy” of changes?

The current warrior meta is CC-heavy.

The 12/10 changes, I believe, will not reduce the amount of CC. It appears as though it may increase the amount of CC (elementalists and mantra mesmers becoming more viable) in tPvP.

From what I can tell, the 12/10 changes will also introduce more condition reduction as well as more condition immunity (Diamond Skin) to the game.

It seems that these changes will have a strong, negative impact on Necromancer viability in tPvP, then you’re layering reduction in condition damage output on top of that.

Umut.5471:

Pendragon.8735:

Necros are going to be sorry when Dhuumfire / Terror gets nerfed at this point and the class is back at the bottom for likely months due to the constant whittling away they’ve done to all other trees and skills the last couple months to already account for this combo.

Considering how much more cleansing and condi counter has come into the game since that point, Necro cannot go back to pre-dhuumfire builds, because they’ve all been nerfed in addition to the above realities.

Bleeds as a primary source of damage aren’t going to cut it ever again.

There appears to be lots of developer confusion about not just how to get this class where it needs to be, but even about what it should be.

Necro has never successfully been attrition in this game (well since beta) and never will be as long as they stick to the complete hardline about our only defense being facetank, with rare stability, no invuln, block, etc. Calling for nerf of our burst is pointless without a simultaneous solution about how to gain real attrition.

I think we have to give up on condition at this point. But as I always say, we need direct-damage alternatives to staff/scepter-dagger. We need new weapon types asap.

My initial thoughts are in agreement with you. Right now it seems like condi engineer will be a better fit in the upcoming months.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.

(For a 6 second cool down I always thought this power was strong in PVP. I would rather lose some damage here then in other areas.)

• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.

(Signet of Spite is still very strong, and most good players recognize it by now and will attempt to dodge it.)

• Spite 15 – Death into Life.

Increased conversion from 5% to 7%

(The scaling on Necromancers healing is so low that this buff will have very little impact on anything. At a minimum the conversion should be 10%. It would be nice if the trait was reworked to combo off of Parasitic Bond, Vampiric traits or the Blood Magic line. )

• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.

(I’m indifferent about this. A single target is most likely to attempt a flee when he is down on health. I guess it has the potential to activate more often. So its not a bad change.)

• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.

(I really like this power, but hardly use it anymore due to the current meta of WvW, and PvP. I’m sure it will still get some use in both WvW and GvG.)

• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.

(I really wish this was Path of Midnight! Nice to see our traits are more in line with other professions.)

• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.

(Not sure what the viability of Minion Masters are in PVE. What if this power summoned 2 Jagged Horrors instead of 1?)

• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.

(A solid improvement.)

• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.

(Very nice for several builds in all forms of game play.)

• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.

(Its nice to see adjustments are still being made to Blood Magic. I occasionally run Blood Magic over Spite in WvW depending on the match ups. Hoping this trait line will see a buff eveyr month.)

• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

(I just might consider Vital Persistence for SMC and Gari claims in WvW.)

The changes aren’t bad.

Jon if you guys are going to keep the Death Shroud as it is (damage spills over to hp), can you please at least remove that 0.5s-1s cooldown on the skill bar when coming out of DS? We need to be able to use our skills right away if we are going to survive. I lost count how many times my LS ran out, so I was forced out of DS, and I died before I can even use my healing skill because I was stuck on that cooldown on my skill bar.

Jon, I also have a question that I asked many times but never got an answer. Since you are actively reading this thread, I would really appreciate it if you would answer this for me:

Have the development team considered reintroducing the idea of life sacrificing back to the necromancer? These skills costs can range from 5% life to 33% life usage. And once these are implemented it will be much easier to balance the necromancer. Any sort of overpowered skills can be justified by the high risks that they involves, so there is less need to nerf skills and traits. You can also buff necromancer healing abilities and life siphoning to match the necromancer’s health sacrifice usage.

Bhawb.7408:

Only put ICDs on Vampiric and Vampiric Precision, because those are traits that most builds who want siphoning would want to take. That opens them up to far more builds, so any necro can have Blood Magic sustain. Then keep Vampiric Rituals as no ICD, because those traits are “gated” by how many wells you take and the duration of those wells; just like minion traits are gated by minions, and as such can have high siphoning without it becoming an issue.

this would only benefit well users while leaving all other necro specs still in a bad spot in that scenario.
necro has quite a few AoE-attacks besides the wells, like staff, whorn and life transfer and shackles and with these, other necro-specs could get a good increase in sustain against multiple opponents via lifesteal.

an internal cooldown would also severely cut the siphons of dagger and axe. these weapons have lower range than staff/scepter so i think it’s only fair when they leech more. currently, they could do that thanks to their fast and often hitting attacks (some (more) aoe on them would be useful tho for more siphons); an internal cooldown would break that.

RashanDale.3609:

this would only benefit well users while leaving all other necro specs still in a bad spot in that scenario.
necro has quite a few AoE-attacks besides the wells, like staff, whorn and life transfer and shackles and with these, other necro-specs could get a good increase in sustain against multiple opponents via lifesteal.

an internal cooldown would also severely cut the siphons of dagger and axe. these weapons have lower range than staff/scepter so i think it’s only fair when they leech more. currently, they could do that thanks to their fast and often hitting attacks (some (more) aoe on them would be useful tho for more siphons); an internal cooldown would break that.

It wouldn’t hurt anyone unless they remained the same HP per hit (which they wouldn’t, the point is the ICD allows them to control HP/s, and then buff it now that they don’t have any ridiculous situations with wells/AoEs). It sets up Well specs as the only ones that can siphon AoE. Dagger specs could have the same or increased HP/s siphon gain that they have now, the only difference is that staff/scepter wouldn’t be sitting at half or less of the gain just because they attack slower.

Also, staff actually has very high siphon potential, because 5/5 of its attacks can hit multiple targets, as does the general scepter build because it will have multiple AoEs.

The only way reducing bleeds would make sense is if they reduced the ridiculous amount of condition cleasnes in this game, or at least how fast/often it can be done.
Instead it seems they went the exact opposite by giving more condi cleanse and even condi immunity to some classes…..

I will be scratching my head for a long time over this one for sure….

Even if you do not play a MM necro, reanimator could be useful if the minion stayed with you till it either dies or was replaced by your next kill.

Goodbye My Love Goodbye(Necro) …..if these changes will take place with no buffs i think is time to move from A-net games .

I have (necro/thief/war/mesmer) but no class compare with necro as play stile .I played 1700 hours as cond necro pve and spvp and when i see no change to our big problems make me sad .
No cond buff in pve , the 25 bleed cap is killing us, beside no reflect no block or other mitigation then Ds and in spvp u let us " ROOT IN PEACE WHILE FOCUSED " since we can’t disengage and now u cut or dps even more.

Just my opinion u killing this class and u don’t listen what we want. Remove Dhuumfire and give torment instead is that hard to do it?? and don’t touch staff mark, Curses IV – Weakening Shroud and bring us back our old Corrupted Boon .

To all devs wake up and read what ppl want for our class , not what other wanted nerf.

Bhawb.7408:

It wouldn’t hurt anyone unless they remained the same HP per hit (which they wouldn’t, the point is the ICD allows them to control HP/s, and then buff it now that they don’t have any ridiculous situations with wells/AoEs).

it would because it reduces daggers steal by a lot.

It sets up Well specs as the only ones that can siphon AoE.

yes, exactly. thats what i said and critisised the idea for. this shouldnt be limited to wells.

Dagger specs could have the same or increased HP/s siphon gain that they have now, the only difference is that staff/scepter wouldn’t be sitting at half or less of the gain just because they attack slower.

yep, thats what i said ._.
and thats fair since scepter/staff has a range of 900/1200 and can kite while a dagger has to go into melee range, take a risk and eat more damage.

instead of an internal cooldown, they could still cap the maximum amount of lifesteal within a given time so things wont get out of hand

Bhawb.7408:

Reanimator has a built in cap, people don’t realize it because its near impossible to keep that many up. Its 5.

And no, Reanimator will still be bad. Less bad, because they are finally fixing one of its issues, but they are fixing the smaller of its two biggest issues, which is that it will still not trigger when you actually need it in the majority of difficult encounters. It just means you’ll get a few more of them from trash mobs.

And it’s completely useless in WvW.
Please get rid of that crap trait

I had a suggestion for a solution to the Reanimator/PotH problem. I had posted this in another thread, but since we have Jon watching this thread, I figured I’d repost it here:

Take Reanimator and merge it with Minion Mastery, only the effect this time will be “Reduces recharge on minion skills. Summon a jagged horror whenever a minion dies.” No more cooldown on jagged horrors and they don’t summon new horrors on their death. Minion Mastery is bumped up to Master tier.

Next, Protection of the Horde is merged with Flesh of the Master. New effect would be, “Minions have increased health. Gain toughness for each minion you control.”

The idea behind this is to allow for MM to decide between either selecting traits to keep their minions alive or to use them as bombers against their foes. Someone who is going pure MM would probably take Minion Mastery and Flesh of the Master, and have no interest in taking Death Nova. A Minion Bomber would take Minion Mastery and Death Nova, and get shorter cooldowns on their minions, plus a poison field and a new minion every time one dies (which also leaves a poison field when it dies too). We’re trying to kill our pets, so something like Flesh of the Master wouldn’t be optimal in this sort of build.

Obviously they’re going to need to restructure a lot of the major traits to do this, and add two new minors, but it’ll be for the better in the long run.

Weapon Skill Traits

One thing I’d love to see normalized through entire professions is with the weapon skill traits that reduce cooldowns. For many (not all) of these, there are secondary effects. For example, my two main professions are Mesmer and Necromancer.

For a Mesmer, every single weapon skill cooldown reduction trade has a secondary benefit, such as condition damage, toughness, condition removal, reflect, precision, power, or increased range.

For the Necromancer, there are still several that miss these additional benefits and feel a bit lackluster. We do have a few that are already there and are looking solid — Axe, Warhorn, and Focus. However, the Scepter, Staff, and Dagger still are lacking. There already exists additional traits that might be easy fixes to merge:

Staff: Mastery and Greater Marks
Dagger: Mastery and Quickening Thirst
Scepter: Mastery is only one, but wouldn’t be too hard to add cooldown reduction here too (more preferably increased range, but that might be deemed too powerful).

And while we are discussing weapon traits — can we get the Scepter trait off the GM line? (not that anyone would really take it at Master either, but just for uniformity)

Just a throw away thought, not even sure it’s the right place for it, but what if…

When we run out of HP, but have sufficient Life force, we enter DS instead of going down (heh, what DS was originally intended for). It could even work in a similar way with DS → HP where hits to us at low health overflow into the DS we have.

If it could be coupled with HP regen while in DS (even a hugely reduced amount, like 50% effective), it would give us the sustain we need.

HorridForm.5926:

• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.

(Not sure what the viability of Minion Masters are in PVE. What if this power summoned 2 Jagged Horrors instead of 1?)

a jagged horror has 0 use. 2*0=0
wont change a thing.

alanis.6094:

Staff: Mastery and Greater Marks
Dagger: Mastery and Quickening Thirst
Scepter: Mastery is only one, but wouldn’t be too hard to add cooldown reduction here too (more preferably increased range, but that might be deemed too powerful).

You forgot Soul Marks and +10%markdamage (i forgot the name). could be merged aswell.
hell, it boggles my mind how something like this can still be in the game… 4 traits, spread across 3 different traitlines. just for 1 kittening weapon.

I personally am still sad that “Siphoned Power” has yet to see a revamp. Such an utterly useless minor trait, and it’s a Grandmaster minor at that. A chance of kitten might on hit would actually bring it into a real use level – you don’t have that power on opening (as it’s too short duration), but are siphoning it as you hit the target(s).

As for the other changes, I’m also not a fan of the bleed shaves, but at least the staff is limited to sPvP. Signet of Spite is a minor change due to the bleed only being a small part of the condition dump. My bigger concern is that if Dhuumfire is indeed changed/nerfed in any way, that these skills are brought back to what they were. Other changes are nice or not enough, but at least the right direction on bringing the traits to usefulness.

Bhawb.7408:

RashanDale.3609:

this would only benefit well users while leaving all other necro specs still in a bad spot in that scenario.
necro has quite a few AoE-attacks besides the wells, like staff, whorn and life transfer and shackles and with these, other necro-specs could get a good increase in sustain against multiple opponents via lifesteal.

an internal cooldown would also severely cut the siphons of dagger and axe. these weapons have lower range than staff/scepter so i think it’s only fair when they leech more. currently, they could do that thanks to their fast and often hitting attacks (some (more) aoe on them would be useful tho for more siphons); an internal cooldown would break that.

It wouldn’t hurt anyone unless they remained the same HP per hit (which they wouldn’t, the point is the ICD allows them to control HP/s, and then buff it now that they don’t have any ridiculous situations with wells/AoEs). It sets up Well specs as the only ones that can siphon AoE. Dagger specs could have the same or increased HP/s siphon gain that they have now, the only difference is that staff/scepter wouldn’t be sitting at half or less of the gain just because they attack slower.

Also, staff actually has very high siphon potential, because 5/5 of its attacks can hit multiple targets, as does the general scepter build because it will have multiple AoEs.

Hell, they could alter the siphons base leech amount to be % based on the power damage the weapon or skill deals (de facto power scaling) with a scalar additional bonus for healing power. Would open up Cleric’s gear as a more viable spec option at least. Faster weapons like dagger and Axe leech more often this way without being blatantly superior or inferior to slower or AE weapons.

I’m really sad to see they still haven’t made minions more viable. I adore being a minion master for PvE and just for fun, it would be nice if the minions could be controlled or at least a little bit smarter.

RashanDale.3609:

You forgot Soul Marks and +10%markdamage (i forgot the name). could be merged aswell.
hell, it boggles my mind how something like this can still be in the game… 4 traits, spread across 3 different traitlines. just for 1 kittening weapon.

It’s not about the weapon, it’s about what the traits can do for you.
Staff Mastery and Greater Marks belong in the same line, which they are.
Soul Marks improves lf regen so naturally it’s in Soul Reaping.
Spiteful Marks is in Spite because it increases damage. But this trait is so weak that no one ever picks it anyway, you might just argue that all relevant staff traits are in 2 different lines, and that is pretty normal for any type of traits.

flow.6043:

It’s not about the weapon, it’s about what the traits can do for you.

what does this even mean? the soul marks in soul reaping make sense, true. still, it’s 3-4 traits for one single weapon, which is too much.
other classes get roughly the same benefits for one weapon with less traits.

and while spiteful mark is pretty bad, it still exists and easily couldve been merged with one of the other traits by now. or removed.

spoj.9672:

It does bother me that necro has the least utility and defense and is the most selfish class yet its not the strongest for damage. Honestly if the devs want us to be so selfish they should buff the dmg in power builds to be much stronger than other classes. Then necros would atleast be taken for a strong dps role.

I thought we had the highest DPS in the game? The only profession that can pour as much damage as us onto the field at 1 time is maybe the elementalist.

RashanDale.3609:

HorridForm.5926:

• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.

(Not sure what the viability of Minion Masters are in PVE. What if this power summoned 2 Jagged Horrors instead of 1?)

a jagged horror has 0 use. 2*0=0
wont change a thing.

alanis.6094:

Staff: Mastery and Greater Marks
Dagger: Mastery and Quickening Thirst
Scepter: Mastery is only one, but wouldn’t be too hard to add cooldown reduction here too (more preferably increased range, but that might be deemed too powerful).

You forgot Soul Marks and +10%markdamage (i forgot the name). could be merged aswell.
hell, it boggles my mind how something like this can still be in the game… 4 traits, spread across 3 different traitlines. just for 1 kittening weapon.

Jagged Horrors can proc Death Nova, Necromantic Corruption, and Fetid Consumption. These traits are useful for MM Bunker in PVP.

RashanDale.3609:

snip

You’re misunderstanding me.

New Vampiric/Vampiric Precision
1s ICD, applies on hit
Siphons 300HP per hit – way too much, but it proves the point that an ICD doesn’t mean anything on its own, besides the restriction to AoE, which is a necessary component if they ever want to make siphoning available to all builds semi-equally

Guess what, even with an ICD, these traits now work better in most situations for every single build, whereas right now siphoning is complete kitten for any non-minion build, or any build without 30 points invested, 4 wells, and dagger/warhorn (which makes no sense at all). They give you decent, but not overbearing sustain and pressure, which is something people seem to forget.

If you want scaling siphoning to be able to have decent sustain in team fighting, you have to invest 30 trait points, and be at melee range. If you don’t want melee range, that’s another 10 trait points, and you’re assuming that the target will stand in the well.

What’s being ignored is the fact that as it currently stands with no ICD, siphoning will always have to be balanced to what a dagger/warhorn build with 4 wells and 30 traits invested will do, otherwise those builds will become OP. What does that mean? It means anything that isn’t that build cannot be sustain. It makes no sense that one defensive measure should be useless to all builds but 1.

Bhawb.7408:

New Vampiric/Vampiric Precision
1s ICD, applies on hit

I mentioned this before, unless its a big skill, internal cooldowns are a very bad thing for sustain skills. Like if vampiric procced once every 3 seconds siphoning for like 20% of the damage delt to the necro since it last procced, it would be fine, if it was every x seconds you siphon for x00% of the next skill without cooldown (so auto attack), it would be fine, but flat numbers+internal cooldown+current hit system = kitten.

Andele.1306:

I mentioned this before, unless its a big skill, internal cooldowns are a very bad thing for sustain skills. Like if vampiric procced once every 3 seconds siphoning for like 20% of the damage delt to the necro since it last procced, it would be fine, if it was every x seconds you siphon for x00% of the next skill without cooldown (so auto attack), it would be fine, but flat numbers+internal cooldown+current hit system = kitten.

They could do it much better, like a consumable buff (like how the sigil/rune siphons work) that comes up, like you said. But let’s not give ANet too much work now.

My thoughts:
This patch pushes necros even further away from rewarding skillful play:

• Dhuumfire is here to stay? Maybe even made more accessible?
  Please for the love of god no. It’s so mindless, it’s unavoidable, it’s a ‘high’ damage cover condition. So even if you get the bleed stack cleansed somehow you have burning ticking. It’s zero fun, it scales really well with #1 spam. It’s outright horrible – whichever way you look at it.

• Reapers Protection: … really, more passive effects? Could be fun on a +100% condition duration 30/20/20/0/0 wvw troll build for minimum skill / maximum trolling. That can’t be the design goal now, eh?

• Spite: Good traitline for power and for condibuilds. 30 Spite is a must-have for every single power build, which makes sense I guess. 30 Spite being incredibly strong for condimancers – in combination with 20-30 Curses being obligatory – leaves little room for experiments and creative builds sadly.

• Curses: I agree that the curses trait line is flooded with amazing major traits. Which is a good thing imo, you can pick the traits you like best, but you always have to make tradeoffs. That’s what every traitline should be like imo. Curses is amazing!

• Death Magic/ Blood Magic: I won’t go into commenting on Death/Blood, as I have too little experience with them. For my intents and purposes necro has 3 traitlines, plus the chance to go 10 points into either death or blood. That’s how worthless I think those two lines are. Did I mention they are zero fun and mindless? E.g. what is the point of unblockable marks when you can just dodge-destroy them?

Soul Reaping: I think this traitline has a lot of potential for skillful defensive play (spectral cooldowns, foot in the grave, strong but passive: last gasp, etc) and making our class mechanic actually fun and strong (foot in the grave, larger hp buffer, quicker recharge etc). Plus it offers some fun or cheesy builds: 30/10/0/0/30 DS build, 100% crit well bomber. This traitline suffers heavily from being outshone by must-haves in Spite and Curses in my opinion.

• 30/20///20 is the obvious condimancer pvp build choice, while there could be more skill-sensitive builds out there (I’d love to see 0/30/0/0/30+10 work, full curse plus foot in the grave). +100% duration terror plus dhummfire is just needed to even have one viable build.

• Keep Spite + Curses + Soul Reaping the pve traitlines. There is no future for Blood/Death (the defensive traitlines) for damage. How shall they be balanced for damage, when they inherently offer better defense? It is just not possible, so please don’t waste further time and credibility trying to make it (look like it would) work.
  If that means siphoning has to stay bad, then that’s what it is. Siphoning can never be good sustain, good damage and balanced at the same time; why pretend it can work?

• Weakening Shroud. The ICD change will make necro even more susceptible to burst-disengange-finish tactics than it already is. And it doesn’t touch the bleed burst potential, it just increases the time in between bursts. Plus it weakens one of the last defenses necro has against being trained – not that it was particularly effective in the first place.

• Please look into the bug where upon exiting death shroud the normal skill setup takes ~1 second to load.

• If you are out to make staff unusable, at least offer a second weapon set for condition builds.

• Can we get some dungeon utility? Maybe some projectile block tied into an untraited minion skill, or something along those lines? Or weakness uptime?

Bhawb.7408:

You’re misunderstanding me.

Im not misunderstanding you, i just dont agree with you.

Guess what, even with an ICD, these traits now work better in most situations for every single build, whereas right now siphoning is complete kitten for any non-minion build, or any build without 30 points invested, 4 wells, and dagger/warhorn (which makes no sense at all).

O RLY? why do you even mention this? Pretty much everyone outside of Anet’s balancing department knows that. I never said that the current vampirism and its numbers are good in any way, im just saying that an ICD is a bad idea.

What’s being ignored is the fact that as it currently stands with no ICD, siphoning will always have to be balanced to what a dagger/warhorn build with 4 wells and 30 traits invested will do, otherwise those builds will become OP. What does that mean? It means anything that isn’t that build cannot be sustain. It makes no sense that one defensive measure should be useless to all builds but 1.

Giving all vampirics except vampiric rituals that internal cooldown just shafts many other builds and brings every weapon and playstyle besides wells down to pretty much the same amount of life siphoned, no matter the weapon, attacks and most importantly, no matter how many enemies youre dealing with. Which, again, is not how it should be in my opinion; weapons with lower range and more risk should be able to siphon more (only issue here are the staffmarks) and necros with more enemies around should be able to siphon more, even without wells.

If youre so afraid of a 4wells+vampire-combo (or any kind of build that can generate a large amount of lifesteal in a short time), a (high) capped amount of lifesteal in a certain time would keep that in check just as well, without hurting other builds.

And please stop highlighting random words in your posts, makes it a pain to read them.

Still waiting some buffs to axe#1

Few things have indicated they’re going towards sustain.

• Vital persistence?..great so now we can idle around in DS more. That’s honestly all it accomplishes. Great for those hard to get screenshots I guess. Now have that trait reduce some damage while in DS, say 25%, as well as lowering LF degen, I’d say they nailed it.
• The warhorn changes are probably the only true sustain change they’ve done, and even then it’s not that significant of a change. Yes it’s good, but it doesn’t even begin to address the core problem.
• Removed bleeds on the weakest weapon we have (now that it’s been cut off at the knees with the mark changes). Staff was never the problem weapon. It was already a a dump-n-go. Now it’s a dump-out-of-my-inventory weapon.
• Blood to power- I don’t think anyone ever did, or will after these changes, say “that’s a trait worth having”. We get it because it’s in our way to get to the grandmaster trait
• Weakening Shroud- so rather than take a bleed off this powerful skill, they snipped off the staff instead and gave this a longer cd. No response.
• Reanimator- I may be one of the few people who like the idea behind this skill, but I find little use for it other than open world pve. It’s useless in wvw, and in pvp, it’s only showing up long enough to cheer you along to your next kill- it surely isn’t going to make it long enough to affect the outcome of that next fight, another of those “well it was in my way to get to something better so I have no choice”. There’s been so many good ideas on how to change this without removing it entirely.
• Death Into Life- a whopping 2% increase. I get why this trait is here, I really do, but having it or not makes little to no difference, and a 2% increase won’t change that. Yet another trait that just “gets in the way”
• Signet of Spite- I was unaware it was so op before. this will sure show that signet active ability that’s so crucial to fights who’s the boss!
• Reaper’s Protection- Yay now I can watch everyone who can roll near-perma stability ignore this trait every 60 seconds instead of 90.
• Deadly Strength- Nice change I will have to admit. If anyone bothers to go that deep into that line for, it will benefit them nicely.
• Finally that leaves Chill of Death- The change is nice, where it was at 25% (bugged most of the time to only 15%) really made this trait a bad one to rely on. If the bugs are ironed out of it, I can see this helping a tad for sustain, but imo it still falls more under the dps buffs because it’s not really benefiting our own longevity for sustain, only making it easier to kill people who boon stack and spam heal.

Finally my 2 cents for changes:

• Focus more on sustainability. Get rid of the one true problem trait which is Dhuumfire. We never wanted that. We never needed it. I myself fortold it would be problematic the day it was announced to be added. That will free up room to add survivability without making a high dps tank-monster.
• Revert the DS overflow in WvW and PvE. It can stay in PvP. But with the massive amounts of AoE damage that requires zero skill that flies around in WvW, coupled with the ease with which we can be immediately ganked out of DS because of the sheer targets to keep track of, DS overflow is pointless there. It was always pointless in PvE. It was our only true survival mechanic, and a gimmicky one at that. Now it’s guaranteed not to work.
• Please please go read some of the awesome ideas people have made about reanimator. Test those ideas in your test servers, not just number crunching on paper….
• If you want true sustain, siphons need to be brought up to speed, for real. Put an ICD in. If they’re brought up it will be needed. But they need to be brought up to compete in the current state of the game.
• Remove ICD on Weakening Shroud (the changed version), reduce the bleeds on it if you must, but the original cd was paramount to it.
• Fix staff. Stop chopping it up for the winter fire. The longer this goes on, the less it will be used until we stop using it entirely. Then what will be the point?
• Start looking at reducing the mindless spamfest of condition removal. It’s out of control. If you do insist on chopping up bleeds and other condi damages, then the condi removal frequency needs to be addressed too. Competent players that know how to actually bring condi removal are already pretty immune to them. Now we’re adding in true immunity (situational of course, but immunity nonetheless) and even more condi cleanses on top of reducing condi damage. Need to pick one or the other. Which brings me to my next point:
• The real reason people are upset about the single bleeds being removed is it’s steadily been that every time condi gets hit. Little here, little there, but there’s been no counterbalance for it. It’s scary to think how it will be down the road if it keeps getting nerfed. Next thing we know the durations of all our bleeds will be cut in half, and casting times increased on them, and the bleeds that have been chopped down were on weapons or skills that couldn’t be considered overpowered by any stretch. there were far more powerful places they could have been shaved off of with similar results without screweing over builds that had nothing to do with the original problem.
• just to show I’m not a total troll, I do see some good potential in the changes, as I mentioned above. I know the right balance is there, I just think you guys are looking in the wrong places for it.

Over 24 hours now since the Dev Post in this thread, and every single other profession has recieved at least one (if not multiple) Dev responses to the issues that they have brought forward.

It is difficult to not feel like Necromancer are being straight out ignored compared to other professions, especially after 14 months of failing to address basic issues with our class.

~Zero Active Defense (Evade/Block/Reflect/Invulnerable) cropped up in the August balance patches.

~Two mostly useless/completely useless Trait Lines that exist because all discussion about them “end(s) up with more work than we have time to build”.

~Attrition. How can we be an attrition class if we cannot survive the damage levied against us, keep the foe in combat with us, or catch up to the enemy as they flee.

~Deathshroud as a Defense. This is our entire defense system and it is balanced for 1v1s in a MMO. (thats massive and multiplayer as the first two M’s) It also completely shuts down all healing when we are in it, effectively rendering one of our own trait lines useless. (Ever watch Deathshroud eat a guardian book full heal in a fractal 40?)

~Extremely limited Team Support. the putrid mark “working as intended” is just another hit.

~General Condition damage issues. Capping, Clipping, and Scaling

At this point I would love to extend any developer who wants the option to run, on a Necromancer, any 30~40 Fractal or decently difficult dungeon with my guild and I. I would love them to experience Necromancer first hand. We primarily use mumble but I can rig up pretty well any VOIP service required. Hopefully you will finally understand what it means to ONLY have “Two dodges”, maybe you will even figure out the gimmicky utility combos we need to set up in order to ensure basic survival.

If not your also still welcome to face our PvPers and see how Deathshroud holds up even 1v1.

As a final note I love necromancer, 1700+ hours played on it, and I have done every drop of content that has been released. It can be done, but many fights are unnecessarily hard compared to other classes. So each month that I see “balance” patches that ignore the fundamental issues with the class, kills my faith of it ever being fixed.

I truly believe that the majority of the commenters in this thread have more issues with what is NOT changing, what is still NOT being fixed, then with what is.

JonPeters.5630:

Some internal thoughts on the discussion about Necromancers.

I think the preview changes are ok. But after reading your post I’m deeply worried that you guys dont really know how to make the necromancer a more viable and diverse class. And that worries me very much – I for myself dont have an answer too, but I still have some hope left :/

Just one thing I have a wish for: greater marks. Please consider a split for pvp and pve/wvw. From my pov normal marks are so rediculous in pve (open world) and wvw.
I think that was one of the worst decisions that could be taken. I love the staff, but since the master patch its just sad. I play a lot WvW as well as PvE and in both areas is the standard mark size too small. In PvE I encounter only half of the mobs compared to before/with trait, most are just little out of range. In WvW, where these days every second player is a guardian, I encounter not only half as much, it will also one half be blocked. The problem is also, that 2 and 4 is much harder to utilize for yourself. As also combo 3+4 is pretty hard to succeed, especially if you also try to throw back conditions and keep moving… And as you said yourself you can hit 5 foes and alies, but I doubt this happens outside of pvp or zergs very often.
Compared to other two-handed weapons, without traits? Completely underground ….

edit: after thinking a bit about those two problematic lines:
blood magic – healing is a problematic thing in gw2, because of the missing trinity. however i think their is a great chance for team builds. since blood magic goes along with vitality i think some kind of team healing / healing over time would be great. but it has to be very effective (like water+explo) and the tradeoff is that you have to pay with your own lifepool for it. a team base line could be a great solution for some probs i guess.
death magic – biggest design flaw of the nec are its minions. minions were really great in gw1, but of course this kind of system would not work. i have only one idea on that : maybe with a hugh content patch you could introduce some kind of reduced ranger pet system, just with risen creatures. that would allow you to give us more options on what those minions can do.

Just my two cents, good luck with the nec!

The main post about changes was updated twice today and within the next day or so we should hear some more feedback from them. By the end of the week they are locking that thread more or less all input they can receive will be locked down by then as they need to get to work on testing whatever changes they plan on making.

As stated, after the Necromancer focused post:

(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/22#post3143059)

There has not been a single Dev response related to Necromancer concerns in either the Necromancer specific thread or the main thread. There has however been multiple Dev responses to other professions concerns. Some within minutes of the focused post.

If you want to buff power please change Siphoned Power into something useful. This has to be the worst grandmaster trait in the game. People dont spec into Spite for this, its just in the way of Close to Death and Dhuumfire.

Myrkr.5803:

As stated, after the Necromancer focused post:

(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/22#post3143059)

There has not been a single Dev response related to Necromancer concerns in either the Necromancer specific thread or the main thread. There has however been multiple Dev responses to other professions concerns. Some within minutes of the focused post.

It’s to be expected if history has taught us anything with this class.

The red-headed step child of guild wars 2.

How can I say this… It seem in this state that you have a general Idea that damage conditionmancer are a bit too powerful. But it also seem that you are totally in the dark about death and blood magic. (Except that you’re right, death magic is too centered around minion and that kill it.)

About spite and curse, there are change that certainly have to be done. But what you’re doing seem to be always out of place. What’s needed is to tone down condition damage builds and buff a bit power builds. (warning! What i’ll suggest will probably feel like massive nerf)

- First, swap terror and withering precision : Weakness is overestimated and anyway, there ain’t a class that can’t apply it almost 100% uptime.

- Change Dhuumfire (to maybe a five seconds cripple on crit with a 5 seconds cool down) and swap it with an improved version of chilling darkness (maybe you can add a damage fact or enhance a kittenill duration)

- As for axe training, It’s far from being worth grandmaster tier. We fought for month so it come down where it belong and it’s fine like this. A lot of us think that this trait is still not worth taking it. The simple fact that you mention it to return in grandmaster tiers creep me. But yeah, if you want to actually improve this weapon trait, just get rid of the damage enhancement and replace it with a 100% might on crit. This could open some possibility.

Death magic :
This trait line feel closed for build variety. Change this trait line would really imply a lot of work. What hurt me the most is that you tied boon duration to this traitline.

Blood magic :
Let’s be blunt, you got a false idea on the actual viability of this traitline and more about siphon. Right now, you can’t rely on siphon for sustain even in the best case you seem to fear.
I’m a siphonmancer since already 9 month and my survivability droped down a lot during all this month. Every patch you’ve released since the “dhuumfire day” i’ve seen my deathshroud losing in reliability, my spectral utility dying and my siphons weakening. You certainly think you’ve improved all that but in fact, out of spvp tankmancer has been hit and hit again by the nerf bat. Situations where I had the upperhand 9 month ago, i’m just being destroyed now (With the exact same build and gear please!).
Here is what I suggest to make siphon and the blood trait line a bit more viable:

- Move down Fetid consumption to master tier (here he will compete with vampiric master so it won’t be an issue. Minion master are the only one who realy rely on minion and they will still take 30 point in Blood magic if they want this 2 trait together)

- Move down deathly invigoration to adept tier (this trait certainly ain’t worth master tier)

- Move up vampiric precision to grandmaster tier but here are the change that are needed. Base heal/damage 10. Squale to 8% on Healing power for heal part and 4% on power for damage part. This way power geared build will gain a bit more damage with the same sustain as now and healing power build that will need to focus on precision and healing power shouldn’t gain enough sustain to be overpowered. But siphon should be in a way better position then now.

Soul reaping :
This trait line feel balanced enough right now.

I also would like to invite the devs to join us on a dungeon or Fractal run. I’m on Aurora Glade, and we have our own TS server. Please, just join us and experience what it is like to play a necromancer in high end PVE for real. See what compromises we need to make to stay alive at all. I know several bosses that would be an excellent example of a necromancer being forced to spend most of the fight on the ground.

On release the necromancer was already in a sorry state, due to all our traits and skills being bugged in some way, or not working at all. Since then, all the countless balances in favor of pvp have gradually weakened the class even further, to the point where we are the least popular class in PVE. The only good changes we’ve had since release, is fixes to skills and traits that should have been working on release to begin with, the addition of the torment condition, the buff to Spectral Armor, and the change to Spectral Wall to make it less useless. However, all our cool downs have gradually increased, number of conditions have gradually been reduced, and our only defense has been nerfed so that we have NO defense against spike damage what so ever. We are the only class that has this weakness, and we have no better offense to show for it. We don’t have reflects, we hardly have any access to stability, our healing is slow and subpar, none of our control skills work against bosses/champions, we are reliant on conditions, to which also all bosses/champions in the game are resistant, world bosses count as structures so that’s also a problem in regards to condition damage, and lets not forget the condition cap which we hit at every fight. Literally everything about our class is poor in PVE, and still we are getting nerfed with each “balance patch”.

I seriously feel the skill balance team is “balancing” with a blindfold on in regards to PVE.

The main things I want to see changed and really do need to be changed especially for pve’s sake.

Spite minors need a major rework. Siphoned power is awful and is just in the way of close to death. My suggestion would be to make it a might on crit trait or another flat damage modifier (10% on vulnerable foes?). Death into life doesnt really fit the tree its in, I think it should be totally reworked but im not totally bothered. The main issue is siphoned power as ive already mentioned, it should not be a 25 minor (not even a 5pt minor to be honest) and its a joke that its even a trait at all.

Curses is actually really good with the minors in my opinion. Im not happy with the weakening shroud nerf. This kills weakness application in pve (the only good thing necro had going for it). I can see why you did it, it was too strong in spvp. But its an issue of pve taking a big hit again and its widely known that necro is the worst/weakest class in pve in terms of usefulness and group contributions. The one change I want in curses is withering precision fixed (would balance out the weakening shroud nerf in pve). Im fine with it staying a grandmaster so long as the icd is dropped/reduced and made to be per target. This way it could be actually good for pve because you could apply it to more than 1 trash mob every 20 seconds. At the moment noone takes it in any gamemode because if your condi there are better choices and if your playing power in pve the icd kills the trait.

For blood magic I would actually swap vampiric with full of life. It seems strange that you can take a trait like bloodthirst but unless you get an extra 5 pts in blood magic you dont get any use out of it. Its ordered wrong. Im also still of the opinion that vigor is acceptible for necros, it would fix problems in pve and wouldnt unbalance the class in pvp. I can only see it as a improvement to help necros power through a fight for longer with attrition. So I would add some vigor trait into blood magic. Vigor on crit for an adept trait or something along those lines.

Soul reaping is fine as it is for the most part. The buff to strength of undeath should of happened a long time ago. Necro has the least damage modifer traits of any class and it also has the weakest ones (5% where other classes have 10%). Glad you’ve normalised this trait in comparison to other classes at last.

ps. I also agree fully with Mad Queen Malafides post above me. Our control conditions have poor enough uptime as it is and bosses are either totally immune to them or unshakeable reduces the duration by half which completely destroys our classes viability.

Just a warning this is gonna be a long post.

But I’m going to flat out state that with the exceptions of Wellmancers, Minion Mancers and the Duumfire Terrormancer we are in a worse position then we were pre-duumfire. Since Duumfire we have had our bleeds constantly shaved, Internal cooldowns slaped on our spectral skills, Lost deathshroud block and putrid mark which crippled our survivability in PvE and WvW. Greater marks may as well be gone. To Sum it up Our Group Utility and survivability have been destroyed in a futile effort to balance the Terrormancer. By the time you finally get around to dealing with the Duumfire/Terror our class will be all ruined. You did the same thing with Perma-stealth instead of actually killing perma stealth you nerfed every thief weapon in a futile bid to balance it so now that its finally getting fixed Thieves are left with nothing as far as I can see (I hope I’m wrong). That will be the fate of the necro unless you get rid of Duumfire now or slap it and terror both into the curses grand master so neither can be taken together. Stop tweaking and just fix it.

We have become a class of contradictions. We are the masters of Conditions yet have no immunity to them, We are the masters of aggression yet our enemies always escape, We have more stability then any other class yet get knocked around like a ping pong ball. We are the masters of sustain yet cant survive a insta kill attack. Why so many contradictions?

Now not everything in the patch is bad Chill of Death, Vital persistence, Deadly Strength, Re-animator and death into life are welcome boosts. However they don’t address any of the core issues we have and only bring Well and minion mancers closer to the Terrormancer in power while doing little to help builds killed by previous nerfs. What can be done to fix up some of the issue’s you ask while staying in theme. I have a few suggestions

Vital Persistance: For PvE and WvW only apon entering deathshroud in addition to the 50% reduced decay you also gain 1 second on invulnerability apon entering. Not much but with skilful use it’ll stop that backstab and insta-kill attack finally giving us a defence. Not everyone gets it since you would have to trait for it but the option would be there without making us immune to fall dmg.
Make Siphons work in Deathshroud: At the very least either allow bloodthrist to give us the option or make it so that blood to power when your below 75% health siphons health in deathshroud. Either one would be fine.
Reduce the cooldown on Putrid Mark: Since the nerfed version is here to stay the least you can do is reduce the cooldown. I would like 15 seconds but 20 would be ok so at-least we can proc some combo’s and have a steady source of condi-transfer cause as of right now Its pathetic and far from being the ‘’best skill in the game’‘. This would be fine in both PvE and PVP.
Swap Protection of the hoard and Repears protection: This move alone would make deathmagic a wanted tree. It would allow us to be more aggressive without fear of focused Ping-Pong. You stun us bam we can now escape or attack you. Simple and effective.
*Give the class more access to chill and Cripple: We are the attrition and aggression class yet our enemies always get away. I’m not sure how I would go about this in such short time but the easiest thing to do would be to add either a 3rd chain on axe auto or add it to auto dagger which grants 1.5 of cripple to a 1 enemy. This would encourage players to get up close and with all the cleansing now available in game it would be balanced.

Even just 1 or 2 of these would do a lot to alleviate the core problems of our class without effecting balance to much (I.E they don’t buff the Terrormancer). A lot more work is needed but I realistically don’t think anything more then 1 or 2 suggestion’s could be added to the patch this time around due to time constraints. I will ask tho that when Duumfire is fixed that we get our bleeds and spectrals get reverted back to previous levels and That our classe’s core issues get looked at. Anyway that’s enough from me. Thanks for at-least giving us the chance to debate and have a say and that I hope I get a reply

It might be an idea to consider separating Terror from condi builds, both could create strong builds on their own, giving more variety, and hopefully being able to more easily balance.

Terror moved to GM in Spite, and it’s damage based off power, either as a single packet of damage when the enemy is feared(so even if the fear is removed, the damage happens, thought that might be too evil) or DoT while feared as it is now. A 30/x/x/x/20 power build would leave 20 to spend, and with plenty of choice where to spend it.

Rename Dhuumfire and move it to GM curses, so now the necro has a choice there between burst condition or longer duration conditions. The way the trait works is not too fun, alternative suggestions(with no ICD):

1) Life Blast adds 1s of burning.
2) Crits on Life Blast add 2s of burning.
3) Hitting a target within 600 with Life Blast has a 100% chance to add burning, 50% chance at range greater than 600.

EDIT: Obviously to prevent Carrion from being OPed, the burn should trigger on crits, and it would mean 30 in Curses and 30 in Soul Reaping for +50% crit would be a nice build and break away from all condi builds being 30/30/… these days.

Condi specs need more reason to cast Life Blast. It would be fun to stack bleeds, then drop into DS to add burning and finish an opponent off. Using Life Blast as the source of burning is more counterable than how the trait currently works.

Remove Withering Precision and add a new master trait in Curses, something to do with fear, two suggestions whichever a necro needs more:
1) Fears add 2 stacks of torment for 2s (making up for changing Terror to a power based trait)
2) Fears add 7-8 sec of weakness (this would a good alternative to Weakening Shroud)

Why two Condition traits as Curse Grandmaster? So it is not worth spending >25 points with a power Build. I think this is a bad idea. Same for the MM focus in Death magic. This line is not interesting for other builds, because it feels like doing something wrong, when you spend pints there.

I would like to be able to apply more Conditions while in Deathshroud. because DS is only used to prevent some damage in a condition build and that got nerfed.

I think Death into Life could be in the right place, if we get a viable Siphon Build. Right now all healing and especially siphon traits dont scale well with healing power. Why not improve this, so we are able to get a good amount HP/s from siphoning. (as mentioned few pages before) In addition, reduce the healing from our healing skills per siphon trait, so we need to be aggressive and hit the enemy to survive. Right now those siphon only cover our bad scaling with healing power.