Guild Wars 2

It would seem I need to bring out this informative graph once again.

I’m not against making more viable builds for PVP or PVE, but the point of making a variety of viable builds is to have the already viable builds become NOT viable.

They have, essentially speaking, gotten rid of any connection already, with their most recent suggestion. It still resembles Enfeebling Blood, but in no way are they connected anymore.

LezardValeth.9453:

It would seem I need to bring out this informative graph once again.

I’m not against making more viable builds for PVP or PVE, but the point of making a variety of viable builds is to have the already viable builds become NOT viable.

Haha.. i love it

Bhawb.7408:

Random blind procs are praying to the RNG gods to save you. You might get lucky and blind him right before he backstabs, or you might blind an AA. But weakness is a guaranteed overall reduction in damage.

Also, weakness has much less counterplay. If you’re facing a smart player and they get blinded, they will use an AA to clear the blind before going for their real attack. You can’t just “wipe” weakness like that, except by cleansing.

Don’t forget that we are talking about weakness with 2s duration. With such a short duration there is no place for guarantees (50%chance on hit) or cleansing skills.

but if there’s no ICD suddenly to weakening shroud, near to death becomes quite good, 2s base weakness every 6 seconds isn’t too bad imo.

I am of the mind that they should just pick what they want weakening shroud to be – all damage or all defense.

I would opt for all defense because I think the consensus is that we are not lacking in damage but need sustain raised up a bit.

Ideally, I would like to see weakening shroud apply weakness for 3 seconds and a short duration blind on a 10 second cooldown. The weakness would be primarily for PvP and WvW. I may be wrong, but it is rarely one shot mechanics that kill us in those settings and I dont think one blind would be powerful enough. The blind would be primarily for PvE. This should be a guaranteed blind so that bosses are guaranteed to get it. It would be our form of block/aegis/evade/dodge.

Few ideas:
Withering Precision: Your marks convert boon into condition(same mechanic like Corrupt Boon)
Lingering Curse: also reduces recharge on scepter skills by 30%
Target the Weak: Increases damage by 4% for each condition on a foe(for the purposes of pve)
Dhuumfire: critical hits chill for 5 sec(20 sec recharge) and increases dmg on chilled target by 5%
Vampiric Rituals: every 1% of life force you are healed for 35+(str+healp)*0,03
Weakening Shroud: i like idea with blind(but it should act immediately)

Sorry for bad english ;]

One should consider two things when making any nerf to condition damage:
1. How many builds are out there with troublesome condition damage. If certain skills are nerfed, how are they gonna affect the non-op builds out there?
2. Considering the sheer amount of condition removals already in the game, any nerf to condition damage could equal to removal of this play style from pvp unless they also tone down the condition removals.

Nerfing both condition removals and condition damage would have one benefit: Condition heavy builds vs condition removal heavy builds are gonna stay almost the same, but builds low on condition removals aren’t gonna get devastated by conditions as they are now.

Sustain and attrition will never work on the necro. It was really hammered in tonight for me well roaming.

we have no way to stop an assist burst on us. Even if we see it coming. It was a good setup by my enemies and I was the right target to call for the simple reason I have no way of surviving focus fire from high dps classes.

We do have ways of stopping the chain CC. The problem is that it is all on far too long of cooldowns because we must eat the attacks. Reaper’s Protection is one of the best methods, the other being Plague. Both are extremely effective at stopping the CC-train. However, at a minute and a half and three minutes respectively, they don’t do it often enough. Reaper’s Protection is at least getting dropped to 1 minute on Dec. 10, but we still need things like that available more frequently.

This might be out of context and not for this topic, but did anyone mention adding a blast for axe 3? It is a blasting animation, and good for people who don’t run MM to have 1 more blast.

DownPour.5903:

This might be out of context and not for this topic, but did anyone mention adding a blast for axe 3? It is a blasting animation, and good for people who don’t run MM to have 1 more blast.

Tbh, I think the only people that regularly run Axe are MMs, lol. Not that it’d be a bad spot to, the animation looks like it could blast, but I feel like that skill on its own is actually really good. Unfortunately all the “blast” looking skills we have are already pretty great.

Some people have said to add whirl to axe 2, which wouldn’t be a terrible idea.

Making axe 3 a blast finisher would be a massive step forward for necros in pve. Heck making warhorn 4/5 a blast finisher should also be considered.

“Foes trying to move across the Line of Warding (Spectral Wall) will be knocked (feared) away slightly in the opposite direction of their movement.”

It would be nice to see something like that on SW, right now SW is pretty useless when it comes to stopping opponents from running away.
———
“A minimum of 10% life force is required to enter Death Shroud.”

I think that its a good time (we cant block dmg with life force anymore) to remove that restriction from DS

spoj.9672:

Making axe 3 a blast finisher would be a massive step forward for necros in pve. Heck making warhorn 4/5 a blast finisher should also be considered.

Making warhorn 4 a blast finisher would be interesting, and I think perfectly fine.

Not saying that Axe 3 shouldn’t be a blast btw, just feels a bit strong already. I feel like axe needs more help than that (axe AA needs to be reworked).

Bhawb.7408:

spoj.9672:

Making axe 3 a blast finisher would be a massive step forward for necros in pve. Heck making warhorn 4/5 a blast finisher should also be considered.

Making warhorn 4 a blast finisher would be interesting, and I think perfectly fine.

Not saying that Axe 3 shouldn’t be a blast btw, just feels a bit strong already. I feel like axe needs more help than that (axe AA needs to be reworked).

I honestly think Axe 1 should be a 3 part chain.

1 and 2 would be quick attacks that deal the crap damage it deals now, but provide vuln still, and the 3 would be a mini version of Axe 2 as it is right now. Then you could rework axe 2 into something else, possible an AOE/frontal cleave manuever. Call it blistering slash and have it apply like a 2 second burn or something in a 90 degree frontal cone (or 180) at 600 range and deal good damage.

I like that idea. It would make Axe a more consistent weapon overall (as far as its identity) and give power builds a better range weapon.

I don’t think it needs burning though, just because its a power weapon (burning would confuse that). Deal strong frontal AoE damage, and apply a condition.

Bhawb.7408:

I like that idea. It would make Axe a more consistent weapon overall (as far as its identity) and give power builds a better range weapon.

I don’t think it needs burning though, just because its a power weapon (burning would confuse that). Deal strong frontal AoE damage, and apply a condition.

I vote for Blind to be that condition.

After i skimmed all those posts, i felt like maybe someone might like my thoughts for the Spite – 30 trait.
Since Spite is about Condition Duration and Power i feel like burning is just in the wrong place in that traitline (don’t condemn me for that – i would love to see burning in Curses rather than Spite, it should be balanced though ).
I don’t remember where i read it, but i think John stated somewhere that Necs should increase their survivability though controlling the opponent (sort of how they compensate the lack in mobility).
Out of that i conclude that a possibility to freeze our opponent would be in the right spot there. Of course the necessity to keep it balanced is there – if not this is definitely OP .
Just that this sort of control synergizes very well with power builds (or others) – where you depend more on the “direct access” to your opponent.

Again, it should not get something too strong (since we won’t players to take 30points in power if they play on conditiondamage only because of that, right?).

Additionally i just want to say that – for me – definitely DS is why i love the necro playstyle – so i would not bother if that 30 Trait gets bounded to entering Shroud like a freezing Shroud (similar to the weakening Shroud [my first idea was like a burnig shroud instead of Dhuumfire, but i think freeze is in a better place here —> Spite]). That might lead to some sort of more action-playstyle.
And as it’s freeze (since power-Necro seems pretty single-target"ish" to me), it would be great that beeing AoE (so it has some Point in PvE too, i mean a like 1-2s slow on only one target out there -_-) and while it does not deal damage, as AoE burning does… (i can’t say how this is for PvP)

Although i quit GW2, i still love to theorycraft; back when i was active (ingame), Necro was one my favourite profession. This being said – atm i cannot judge if that is total absurd or maybe…might be an option.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Some great ideas in here. We’ve talked about moving Dhuumfire up to Grandmaster in the Curses line, and moving Terror as well.

We also like the idea of making Terror scale with # of conditions on your target, so there’s more “play” to trying to load your target up with a lot of condies before you hit them with Fear. Your opponent can try to keep condies low, so that Terror won’t hurt as much.

Dhuumfire moving would also open up a gap for a new GM trait in Spite, so we’d need to figure that out as well.

Great suggestions!

I like that idea. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Point of inquiry 1:
Necromancers are designed to have very limited mobility and limited access to boons such as stability. This makes sense, which is why a Necromancer has to pop an elite skill (or spec into a grandmaster trait) in order to gain stability. However, necromancers have such limited access to boons that it is very easy to strip Stability from their elite abilities, severely impacting the efficacy of their elites.

Has anyone considered changing Plague form and Lich Form giving 20/30 seconds of stability to pulsing X seconds of stability every X seconds? For example: pulses 10 seconds of stability every 10 seconds. This would strike a balance: boon stripping would still be effective, but a single boon strip wouldn’t doom the elite for the entire duration.

Point of Inquiry 2:
Is the “Revive While in DS” trick a bug, or a valid tactic? I ask because you need very good timing to pull this off. If a bug, will it be fixed?

Suggestion:
Lastly, Mark of Revival is kind of stinky. Many times players who go to stomp have stability, rendering this useless. I’d like to offer a suggestion:
– Change Mark of Revival to Mark of Corruption: When reviving someone gain 1 second of protection and create a well which corrupts stability into fear.

If you’re planning to add a GM trait, please make it one that gives us better defense in Death Shroud. Something that gives stability while in Death Shroud for example, would be much welcomed by the necro community. Currently, it is way too easy for necros to be CC’d to death in wvw and pve, and our DS vanishes really quickly under burst damage. We’re literally helpless as we get ping ponged around, and then die. A trait that grants stability in Death Shroud, would certainly be worth a GM tier for sure, but it is something our class is badly lacking.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

A trait that grants stability in Death Shroud, would certainly be worth a GM tier for sure, but it is something our class is badly lacking.

You mean like Foot in the Grave?

I get what you’re saying, we do need more options to deal with CC, since we can’t avoid the attacks, but yeah. May want to word it differently.

JonPeters.5630:

Scarran.9845:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

The difference would be that we would be adding a new 15 point minor as well that you would be getting for free that would have similar power to these. If we took any two major traits that had synergy and merged them they would be overpowered. No difference here.

I’d like to offer a dissenting opinion.

Protection of the Horde (PotH) is so weak that I’d assert it is not worthy of being a 15 point Master minor trait. As such, adding it to a master level trait would only provide a modicum of value. Let’s use an example:

Necro with 30 points in Death tree vs Power Warrior using a main hand sword.

A Necro with 30 in Death with no minions has 2136 armor, based upon the numbers from gw2skills.net Let’s assume the necro has no other toughness, so we can see what the maximum damage reduction from PotH provides.

Let’s say the warrior attacks with “Sever Artery”.

According to the GW wiki, damage is calculated as follows:
WEAPON DAMAGE * POWER * SPELL_Coef / armor

A Warriors MH exotic Berserker’s sword has 905-1000 damage, so let’s just use 1000 for the sake of argument. Also, let’s assume the warrior has 3000AP (that’s a LOT of AP).

1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 2136 = 842 damage

Now, let’s assume the necro has a full minion payload of 5 (ignoring the 5pt adept trait since it’s terrible). This means his 3 utility slots, elite and healing slot are all filled with minions. That’s an additional 100 toughness.

1000* 3000 * 0.6 / 2236 = 805 damage

That’s a 4 % damage reduction, and that’s the best possible situation.

Now let’s assume the necro loaded up on toughness, and picked up amulets and runes with toughness. Now the necro would be sitting around 2945 armor:

0 Minions: 1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 2945 = 611 damage
5 minions: 1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 3045 = 591 damage

That’s 3% damage reduction.

I contend that this in no way sounds overpowered for a Master Level trait:
Flesh of the Master: Increases pet health 50% and reduces damage taken by 0.8% for each minion you control.

For S&G’s, let’s take a look at the Mesmer defensive Master level trait:

Chaotic Dampening: Increased toughness while wielding a staff or trident. Reduces recharge on staff and trident skills.
Toughness: +50
Recharge Reduced: 20%

That’s only different by 50 toughness, which is roughly equivalent to a Necro that runs with 3 minions out.

Sounds pretty comparable to me.

Edit: forgot bone minions give 2 minions instead of 1. However, those are low-hp pets that you are supposed to blow up, so let’s just assume we blew one up. :-)

Thedenofsin.7340:

I like that idea. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Point of inquiry 1:
Necromancers are designed to have very limited mobility and limited access to boons such as stability. This makes sense, which is why a Necromancer has to pop an elite skill in order to gain stability. However, necromancers have such limited access to boons that it is very easy to strip Stability from their elite abilities, severely impacting the efficacy of their elites.

Has anyone considered changing Plague form and Lich Form giving 20/30 seconds of stability to pulsing X seconds of stability every X seconds? For example: pulses 10 seconds of stability every 10 seconds. This would strike a balance: boon stripping would still be effective, but a single boon strip wouldn’t doom the elite for the entire duration.

Excellent suggestion. I really like this idea. If conditions can be pulsed, there’s no reason why boons couldn’t be pulsed, as well. I’d even go as far as saying let it pulse once every 5 seconds with a 5 second duration.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Point of Inquiry 2:
Suggestion:
Lastly, Mark of Revival is kind of stinky. Many times players who go to stomp have stability, rendering this useless. I’d like to offer a suggestion:
– Change Mark of Revival to Mark of Corruption: When reviving someone gain 1 second of protection and create a well which corrupts stability into fear.

Another good suggestion. Just make it a Well of Corruption on revival; internal cool down of 60 or 90 seconds, perhaps. Would give necros a form of party support. Some classes are the “go to” profession for stomps; necros could become the “go to” profession for reviving. Makes sense; bringing the dead back to life should be something at which we excel.

Cooldowns.

It is ironic that for a class that is supposed to have strong sustain that most other classes can out-sustain Necros by virtue of just disengaging the moment a Necro pops a survival tool; waiting it out then killing them with near impunity once it is down and recharging.

Part of the issue is not the strength of our tools, it’s the down time and the window of helplessness that comes with it.

Thedenofsin.7340:

JonPeters.5630:

Scarran.9845:

JonPeters.5630:

“Could you not combine Protection of the Horde with Flesh Of The Master?” -Scarran

We could but I think that would be a wildly OP Master trait…

Currently what is the difference in me spending 20 points in Death Magic and taking Flesh of the Master? Am I not receiving the same benefits? As I get Protection of the Horde as the minor trait at 15 points and I get Flesh of the Master 20 point major.

The difference would be that we would be adding a new 15 point minor as well that you would be getting for free that would have similar power to these. If we took any two major traits that had synergy and merged them they would be overpowered. No difference here.

I’d like to offer a dissenting opinion.

Protection of the Horde (PotH) is so weak that I’d assert it is not worthy of being a 15 point Master minor trait. As such, adding it to a master level trait would only provide a modicum of value. Let’s use an example:

Necro with 30 points in Death tree vs Power Warrior using a main hand sword.

A Necro with 30 in Death with no minions has 2136 armor, based upon the numbers from gw2skills.net Let’s assume the necro has no other toughness, so we can see what the maximum damage reduction from PotH provides.

Let’s say the warrior attacks with “Sever Artery”.

According to the GW wiki, damage is calculated as follows:
WEAPON DAMAGE * POWER * SPELL_Coef / armor

A Warriors MH exotic Berserker’s sword has 905-1000 damage, so let’s just use 1000 for the sake of argument. Also, let’s assume the warrior has 3000AP.

1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 2136 = 842 damage

Now, let’s assume the necro has a full minion payload of 5 (ignoring the 5pt adept trait since it’s terrible). This means his 3 utility slots, elite and healing slot are all filled with minions. That’s an additional 100 toughness.

1000* 3000 * 0.6 / 2236 = 805 damage

That’s a 4 % damage reduction, and that’s the best possible situation.

Now let’s assume the necro loaded up on toughness, and picked up amulets and runes with toughness. Now the necro would be sitting around 2945 armor:

0 Minions: 1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 2945 = 611 damage
5 minions: 1000 * 3000 * 0.6 / 3045 = 591 damage

That’s 3% damage reduction.

I contend that this in no way sounds overpowered for a Master Level trait:
Flesh of the Master: Increases pet health 50% and reduces damage taken by 0.8% for each minion you control.

For S&G’s, let’s take a look at the Mesmer defensive Master level trait:

Chaotic Dampening: Increased toughness while wielding a staff or trident. Reduces recharge on staff and trident skills.
Toughness: +50
Recharge Reduced: 20%

That’s only different by 50 toughness, which is roughly equivalent to a Necro that runs with 3 minions out.

Sounds pretty comparable to me.

I love when math is used to deconstruct an argument that has no merit and no basis in fact. Well done, sir. +1 internetz to you

IIRC I said it earlier in the thread, but I’ll say it again. Reanimator functionality should be changed from “when an enemy dies” to “when either an enemy or non-jagged horror ally dies”, you could also set it on a 20s cooldown or just leave it at it’s original 30s. The problem with reanimator isn’t[] its cooldown, it’s how often you can proc it when needed. The only time the every 15 seconds would be more effective is overworld trash mob slaughters or in WvW. In sPvP and dungeons, the problem with the trait is that it only really is there after the fight is finished. Most of what you fight in dungeon instances are groups of 3-5 silver enemies who usually die around the same time anyway due to stacking. In PvP It’s very likely you won’t be killing another player within 30 seconds, let alone 15s.

Long story short: This adjustment would make jagged horrors a much better trait, and even by extension make bone minions useful for other necromancer builds outside of the blast finisher effect. Other builds that didn’t have anything that really filled a utility slot could go 10 into death magic for some blast finisher and “free bleeds” goodness. This will also help the “protection of the horde” trait along but, as the math the guy above me posted shows, the trait is weak even for minion master builds.

Thedenofsin.7340:

snip

Amazing post, and part of why I thought this idea was terribly dumb.

Lets face it, and I believe I have said this a few times, I wouldn’t even take a PotH that has had its values tripled over Minion Master (an Adept trait) in any build, ever.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

A trait that grants stability in Death Shroud, would certainly be worth a GM tier for sure, but it is something our class is badly lacking.

You mean like Foot in the Grave?

I get what you’re saying, we do need more options to deal with CC, since we can’t avoid the attacks, but yeah. May want to word it differently.

FitG has a very bad uptime if you use DS properly, hell even if you use it as a stance dance, its uptime is lower than when a ele rolls around.
We need shade back.

Andele.1306:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

A trait that grants stability in Death Shroud, would certainly be worth a GM tier for sure, but it is something our class is badly lacking.

You mean like Foot in the Grave?

I get what you’re saying, we do need more options to deal with CC, since we can’t avoid the attacks, but yeah. May want to word it differently.

FitG has a very bad uptime if you use DS properly, hell even if you use it as a stance dance, its uptime is lower than when a ele rolls around.
We need shade back.

I’m not denying that, just commenting on the original post of “we need something like a Grandmaster trait that gives Stability in death shroud” when we do already have Foot in the Grave which is exactly that. I wasn’t commenting on the strength of the traits in question, but rather the wording of the claim.

Personally, I’d prefer seeing things like Reaper’s Protection that can be used more frequently. Maybe it doesn’t prevent the CC, but punishes it instead. Things like siphoning large amounts of life (say 500ish) from attackers while CC’d would make an excellent Blood Magic Grandmaster, for example.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Another good suggestion. Just make it a Well of Corruption on revival; internal cool down of 60 or 90 seconds, perhaps. Would give necros a form of party support. Some classes are the “go to” profession for stomps; necros could become the “go to” profession for reviving. Makes sense; bringing the dead back to life should be something at which we excel.

The concern-icus I’d have with making it a full-blown Well of Corruption is that it may not actually corrupt stability in time. Think of a Guardian, Engie or Ele that have 3-6 boons on them at a time. If I recall correctly, stability is the last boon that gets stripped. I’d rather the well just corrupt stability. I don’t think it’d be overpowered, but instead provide nice counterplay to classes that pop their stability before stomping. Thieves, mesmers and engineers could still pop their invulnerability skills and stomp right through it.

Heck, all it Unstable Revival. :-)

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I love when math is used to deconstruct an argument that has no merit and no basis in fact. Well done, sir. +1 internetz to you

Thank you. To be clear, I think Jon is a very sharp guy, and his argument makes sense for just about every other situation. However, I think that this case is exceptional.

Of course, my assertion is based upon the numbers and calculations I obtained from the GW2 wiki and gw2skills.net. If they are not accurate, then my argument is void.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I love when math is used to deconstruct an argument that has no merit and no basis in fact. Well done, sir. +1 internetz to you

Thank you. To be clear, I think Jon is a very sharp guy, and his argument makes sense for just about every other situation. However, I think that this case is exceptional.

Of course, my assertion is based upon the numbers and calculations I obtained from the GW2 wiki and gw2skills.net. If they are not accurate, then my argument is void.

Not really void, just your calculations are off. The trait really does amount to nothing noticeable, even in the most ideal situations.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Personally, I’d prefer seeing things like Reaper’s Protection that can be used more frequently. Maybe it doesn’t prevent the CC, but punishes it instead. Things like siphoning large amounts of life (say 500ish) from attackers while CC’d would make an excellent Blood Magic Grandmaster, for example.

I like where this suggestion is going. Punishing others for CC-ing us rather than gaining an immunity to the CC itself would be very fitting for necromancers. And I’m not talking about some crappy trait like Reaper’s Protection that works once then goes on a 90 second cool down.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I love when math is used to deconstruct an argument that has no merit and no basis in fact. Well done, sir. +1 internetz to you

Thank you. To be clear, I think Jon is a very sharp guy, and his argument makes sense for just about every other situation. However, I think that this case is exceptional.

Of course, my assertion is based upon the numbers and calculations I obtained from the GW2 wiki and gw2skills.net. If they are not accurate, then my argument is void.

Even if not perfectly accurate, they’re close enough that the actual damage reduction percentage is going to be pretty much the same as the results you came up with. Your argument still stands in my book.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Personally, I’d prefer seeing things like Reaper’s Protection that can be used more frequently. Maybe it doesn’t prevent the CC, but punishes it instead. Things like siphoning large amounts of life (say 500ish) from attackers while CC’d would make an excellent Blood Magic Grandmaster, for example.

I like where this suggestion is going. Punishing others for CC-ing us rather than gaining an immunity to the CC itself would be very fitting for necromancers. And I’m not talking about some crappy trait like Reaper’s Protection that works once then goes on a 90 second cool down.

Well, Reaper’s Protection is getting 30 seconds off of its cooldown on Dec. 10, but I was really just suggesting more stuff along the lines of what it does. We get CC’d, our opponents suffer for it.

Naturally, this kind of stuff has to be traits because it is situational. An actual skill wouldn’t work as well unless it was a stunbreak and was basically "Do X. If stun was broken, do Y (as well or replacement).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, Reaper’s Protection is getting 30 seconds off of its cooldown on Dec. 10, but I was really just suggesting more stuff along the lines of what it does. We get CC’d, our opponents suffer for it.

Naturally, this kind of stuff has to be traits because it is situational. An actual skill wouldn’t work as well unless it was a stunbreak and was basically "Do X. If stun was broken, do Y (as well or replacement).

Yeah, traits would appear to be the most appropriate place for this. It has to have teeth, though, or players CC-ing us will just ignore whatever the “punishment” is. Furthermore, it has to be something that lingers. When we’re CC trained, it’s not all coming from a single source; it’s multiple players hitting us with multiple CCs. So if this counter adopts the paradigm of “single instance of CC gets a single instance of punishment”, it will fail to have a deterrent effect or improve our situation.

For example, if using a CC skill against a necro results in taking 500 damage, that’s not going to stop us from being CC-d. Five players, each casting only one or two CCs, will easily survive through that “punishment”. Meanwhile, we’re still being hit with five to ten separate CCs; pretty much the same situation we’re in now.

Instead, there has to be a lingering and incrementally scaling mechanic in place that applies ever-increasing punishment for each additional CC we receive if it’s to act as a deterrent (which is what we really want, right; to get them to stop CC-ing us?).

The following is a suggestion that is in keeping with the current game mechanics. It may not be ideal, but it’s an attempt to respect the fact that dev time is limited and it’s easier to ask for something that already exists rather than ask for something completely new:

• For each CC applied to the necro, gain X seconds of Retaliation and apply Y stacks of confusion on up to 5 targets within Z radius (the opponent hitting us with a CC is guaranteed to be counted among those 5 targets).

Don’t hit the necro with CC and this trait does absolutely nothing. Hit the necro with CC, and it will start to hurt after a few. This is perfectly in line with the Aggression school of magic; we get stronger or harm our opponents the more they try to harm us. Don’t harm us, and we don’t have much aggression energy to feed off of to do harm in return.

You should make a separate topic as this deserves to be seen as a stand-alone suggestion.

Even something that auto transferred conditions/cc effects every x seconds to a nearby enemy would be a massive improvement; would make a melee assist/cc train much less reliable as a way to render a necro helpless.

The counter play of course is not to be near the necro when doing a cc + focus fire if you suspect them of having this trait. Ranged damage of course tends to not be as high a coefficient as melee and this gives the necro more time to back off/actually use DS to soak damage meaningfully.

Lily had made the suggestion before of a new Death Magic (master iirc, maybe GM), that, while in DS, copied all conditions applied to you to up to 5 targets around you.

That highly discourages all condition-based focus (immobilizing a Necromancer all of a sudden becomes a death-trap for your own team), and along with the increasingly popular idea to bring Shade back to replace its red-headed step-brother FitG, can give us some strong counter-focus that still retains smart play/counterplay.

Revert Death shroud back and scale siphoning better.

Could you please reconsider applying these changes to both pvp and pve?

Weakening Shroud: CURSES IV: Cast Enfeebling Blood when entering death shroud. (15s recharge)

This trait makes us necro’s somewhate desirable in high difficulty dungeons/fractals because it allows for high weakness uptime. Weakness is one of the few party supports we provide.

So please consider not applying these changes to PvE, I understand you prefer to make as few splits as possible and i agree but in this case this change will further push pve necro’s usefullnes down.

some suggestion to make death magic and blood lines better
Also i know some of these are op but its more for the ideas

death magic minors
minor
reduces cast time on minion by 33%
or
shrouded removal

major
gain double life force from death
or
gain protection when entering ds 3sec

master
reanimator
take the natural degen off of the jagged horror and maybe give it some more hp
then people will like the pet (probably)

dark armour
change to + 400 toughness while in death shroud

new grandmaster : doom of the fallen
cast all wells on any down in a area around you
20-30sec recharge
or new grandmaster :
whenever you take greater than 10% of your total health instead
you take 10% life force damage

id remove spiteful vigor

blood magic
its been said b4

give vampiric an icd and increase health gain from it proportionally
vampiric precision same thing probably would be good enough
vampiric ritual
steal health from disabled targets
or
allies around you have vampiric
(maybe a lesser form)

skills
corrosive poison cloud
maybe add destroys incoming projectiles

summon blood fiend make it attack faster and reduce its healing proportionally
that way it is effect less by blinds cc blocks

edit
if you can make signet of the signet of the undeath restore 2 life force
and make signet work in ds

Some other suggestions :
- 30 trait points for 3s stability is so much. This 3s stability must come as default upon entering ds without any trait. If we depend on ds to survive, this is a must. Think this from an aspect of wvw player, wvw has become a massive cc/hammer spam fest. We need much more stability as a class with no mobility to escape.

-The same problem applies to life transfer(ds #4). This skill needs stability during channeling. It gets interrupted at least 70% of the time you try to cast it in wvw.

-Our power based weapons aren’t ranged but we don’t have enough stability to get in a melee range in wvw. This is a huge contradiction.

Please seperate wvw from both pve and spvp, think of massive scale combats and zergs while making balances for necro in wvw. No mobility/escape concept may be ok, but you have to add us stability to compensate that. Our current situation is a “ping pong ball” for hammers. Sometimes we have to enter melee combat to use ds skills or power based weapons. The current situation forces us to play as condition necro to stay as a ranged class. We need solutions to these problems. I think you aren’t looking from the aspect of a wvw necro while making balances, because many of these changes are irrelevant for wvw. For example nerfs/buffs to conditions : These means nothing in wvw because they already get cleansed in 1-2 secs. Even the area weakness you nerf means nothing in wvw due to area cleanses. Nerfing it makes an already bad trait worse for wvw. Please make useful improvements for this class in wvw too, please don’t just think about the balance in spvp.

Here are the best suggestions I can make for necromancers:

Nerf warrior’s cleansing ire and berserker stance (or at least fix the kitten thing)!

There you go! Now you can go ahead and start “fixing” the necromancer.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Some great ideas in here. We’ve talked about moving Dhuumfire up to Grandmaster in the Curses line, and moving Terror as well.

We also like the idea of making Terror scale with # of conditions on your target, so there’s more “play” to trying to load your target up with a lot of condies before you hit them with Fear. Your opponent can try to keep condies low, so that Terror won’t hurt as much.

Dhuumfire moving would also open up a gap for a new GM trait in Spite, so we’d need to figure that out as well.

Great suggestions!

You said something about a new GM trait in Spite. I thought about a new GM trait if you are going to move Dhuumfire to Curses trait line.

Bone Shield
Creates a Bone Shield around Necromancer if Death Shroud is at 100% and will reduce incoming damage.

- Reduce 10% or 15% incoming damage.
- Only works when you have your Death Shroud at 100%.
- If you use Death Shroud, Bone Shield will shatter and either damage, bleed or cripple nearby foes. I do think that cripple will be too much because of Tainted Shackles.

You could also make it be like, at 50% Death Shroud the damage reduction would be at 10% and at 100% it will either be 15% or 20%.

Now you will have to decide to either take Close to Death for more damage or Bone Shield for “sustain” longer in a battle.

The idea behind this is mostly for Dagger, because you are up close in combat and where you Life Siphon for sustain. Because Life Siphon doesn’t go through Death Shroud then maybe a simple damage reduction will help out to survive longer with Life Siphon.

Weakness changes for the necro profession won’t help much in PvE because of Defiant and Unshakable, 2 really poor things that makes necros not wanted in lot of PvE, You could put Chill on instead of Weakness and i think more necro builds would come up.

Dark Path (replace bleed with to torment)
2stacks within 900 units
4stacks above 900 units
——-
Spectral Walk (Spectral Recall)
Return to the point where Spectral Walk began and remove target from enemies

Dark Path applying Torment instead of Bleed is an interesting suggestion which could actually impact PvE even more than PvP (considering that it won’t count toward the full 25 stack of bleeds anymore in huge fights).
But honestly, I don’t think Dark Path needs any changes, as the skill works really well right now.

Well, we still don’t know what any of those “instability” effects are. No way to know for sure how those will change class desirability.

Of course, they still only will apply for a particular fractal level.

pierwola.9602:

Dark Path (replace bleed with to torment)
2stacks within 900 units
4stacks above 900 units
——-
Spectral Walk (Spectral Recall)
Return to the point where Spectral Walk began and remove target from enemies

+1 for Remove target.

We need at least one ability that does this.