Guild Wars 2

Here’s just a little something I whipped to pass the time until the Reaper
(and Hot I guess) finally launch. Left out specifics, just imagine everything’s balanced.
If any of my descriptions are confusing, be sure to tell me so I can sort them out! I’d love to get some feedback on my little love-child!

Elite Spec: The Adamant

Some necromancers have taken in upon themselves to preserve the cycle of life and death, hunting down and delivering a swift end to those who run from or have eluded death. They channel the power of reclaimed souls and other-worldly force to bring enemies to their final moments and preserve those lives of allies not yet meant to end. Every life must inevitably reach its conclusion. Respect this fact, or you’ll meet such a necromancer.

New Shroud: Hunter’s Shroud, get a fricking ghostly crossbow!

1. Looming Fate
Shoot accumulated life essence at a foe, dealing damage and inflicting slow.

2. Death Row
Fire a piercing projectile that chills foes and pulls them into its wake. Gain Life Force per enemy affected.

3. Foreboding Apparition
Teleport to the target area, fearing foes when you arrive and granting allies Resistance.

4. Reclaim
Root yourself to Initially cripple and drain Life Force from foes in the target direction in the form of piercing projectiles that damage enemies they pass through on their way to you. Gain access to Relinquish if you affect at least one enemy with every pulse.

4- Relinquish
Let loose your reclaimed life force to vault in the target location, evading attacks and firing healing bolts at allies and damaging bolts at enemies while airborne.

5. Ring of Respite
Create a zone at the target location in that prevents allies taking further damage beyond 10% of their maximum health. Allies within are healed when the zone expires.

New Weapon: Longbow, Do you like skillshots?

1. Approaching Oblivion
Fire a spirit arrow at your target, dealing increased damage and applying Vulnerability to foes who suffer from immobilizing or stunning effects.

2. Abandon all Hope
Become intangible, evading attacks while leaping in the target direction. Fire a slew unblockable, piercing bolts at your target while vaulting that steal life force.

3. Pierce the Veil
Let fly a spectral arrow that passes through foes, dealing damage and leaving a window between this world and the next in its wake. Enemies passing through the veil are dazed and have boons removed while allies that cross through it are healed. The wall also blocks hostile projectiles.

4 Last Breath
Become a spectre and pass to the target area, chilling, damaging, and weakening enemies you touch on the way. Heal allies in an area upon arrival.

5. Sorrowful Parting
Fire a volley of arrows that hail down on the target area after a brief delay, rending enemies and applying vulnerability per pulse. The final wave of arrows deals increased damage, immobilizes, and fears foes.

Skill Type: Brands
Mark a target for a moderate duration (10 seconds?) granting bonus effects upon a certain action or interaction with the marked target, and a much greater effect upon them going down or dying. Specialize in turning foes’ defenses upon them and helping allies deal and avoid death. Short ICD limitation on some mark effects; you can probably guess which ones need it. The death effect is procced and the mark removed upon the target entering downed state unless the brand was placed while the target was downed, in which case the effect will occur upon the unit’s actual death.

Brand of Denial – heal
Mark yourself or an ally for a limited time. Marked gain regeneration and retaliation and are healed for a portion of the damage and healing you do. If a marked dies while under its effect, they are revived.

Brand of Anger -
Break stun and mark an enemy for a limited time. Your critical hits against this target inflict cripple and grant you Fury. Your marked target is blinded when they land a critical hit. If a marked unit dies, enemies around their location are taunted towards nothing.

Brand of Bargaining -
Mark yourself or an ally for a limited time. Whenever the marked unit attacks an enemy, they transfer a condition to a foe and take one of their boons. This only occurs if both are present. If the marked unit dies while under its effect, their boons will be copied to nearby allies.

Brand of Depression -
Mark an enemy for a limited time. The marked enemy gains torment while moving and gains chill and suffers damage when they gain a boon. If the unit dies while marked, enemies around their location are dazed and lose boons.

Brand Of Acceptance –
Mark an enemy for a limited time. If that enemy blocks or evades an attack while marked they become immobilized and weakened. If the enemy dies while marked, nearby enemies take damage and are inflicted with vulnerability.

Brand of Certainty – elite
Mark an enemy for a limited time. Allies that strike this target gain might. The marked enemy cannot be healed and cannot block attacks. Killing the marked target will finish them immediately and heal allies who contributed to the kill.

Traits: focus on countering defense, prolonging the lives of allies, and chasing down foes and ending them with impactful crits.

Minors:

Morbid Purpose -
Gain access to Hunter’s Shroud, the Longbow weapon type, and Brands.

Means to an End -
Gain critical damage based on your Life Force percentage. Critical hits reap Life Force from enemies below the health threshold.

Deathly Duty -
You have a higher chance to critically hit foes below the health threshold.
When you gain Life Force, heal yourself for a percentage of the amount gained.

Adepts

Inescapable Fate – ICD = recharge of Brand
Cast Brand of Acceptance when striking a foe that is currently blocking or evading. Brands have substantially reduced recharges if the branded unit dies while under its effect. Additionally, activating a Brand skill grants you resistance.

Delaying the Inevitable – moderate ICD on protection application
Protection you apply has increased effectiveness on low health allies. Grant protection to allies around you when struck below the health threshold.

Harrowing Hunt – short ICD
Critically hitting a foe grants you swiftness and reveals them.

Masters

Piercing Realization -
Applying vulnerability extends the duration of all vulnerability currently on a foe.
Conditions you apply to vulnerable targets have their durations increased per every stack of vulnerability on your foe.

United in Death – short ICD
Killing an enemy heals and grants vigor to allies who contributed to the kill.

Swift Resolution -
Longbow skills have a higher crit chance versus disabled enemies. Reduced recharge on Longbow skills. Abandon all Hope is refreshed when you kill an enemy.

Grandmasters

Undeniable Action -
Hunter’s Shroud skills are unblockable. Increased outgoing healing based on your current Life Force percentage

Preserved Balance – longish, separate ICDs for each effect
Striking a downed enemy pulls them to you and grants you Stability. Break stun for allies and grant them resistance when you are downed.

Closing In – short ICD
Critical hits transfer movement impending conditions to your target. Apply torment when a condition is transferred in this way.

Why is it called adamant? I see the idea is a “invincible” theme but I don’t think this name is fitting for a necromancer spec (would fit better to elementalist). Maybe there should be a name which is focusing more on the spirit aspect.

And I think you want too many things at the same time. You want to grant many boons to the party, you want to heal, you want to deal spike damage, you want to stunlock….. actually, there isn’t a single thing in this game you don’t want to do with this spec.

Just look at some skills. The 3rd skill of your longbow is dealing damage, healing, dazing, ripping boons and blocking projectiles. That is waaaaaay too much.

And I don’t think there should be so many traits for critical chance. Necromancer and Reaper already are pretty independant of precision, why should we do another one of this?

The concept is pretty interesting but there is a bunch of skills that feel out of place like Relinquish and abandon all hope. One of the key principle of the necromancer (core and elite) is that this profession do not prevent hit from being taken.

In this regard I feel that your Brand skill may open something really interesting by making them have a more uniform effect.
1- brand can only be apply on self.
2- brand effect happen when hit and not on hit.

This 2 thing may feel restricting but it’s somewhat of a necessity to avoid overlapping effect and/or unbalanced spike.

I don’t like the concept at all, especially longbow or crossbow. It doesn’t seem fun to play. I’d rather play torch or sword and have sacrifices or undeath

I’m not sure about the theme. It seems like a vampire hunter-esque thing. The name doesn’t really seem to fit and some of the skill names don’t quite gel with that idea, imo.

Spooky ghost crossbow sounds cool. Inflicting Slow on the 1 seems like too much. 4 seems like it’d be a cool skillshot with Transfusion, but 4-2 steps on Transfusion’s toes with its heal. 5 doesn’t make sense; does it mean that an attack cannot deal more than 10% total health in one attack, or does it mean targets cannot be reduced below 10% health?

The Longbow does not really fit its role as a longbow. The longbow on other classes is a relatively low mobility weapon with no movement effects, which sometimes expects the user to stand still and channel their volleys. Change it to a shortbow and it fits the profile better. 2 through 5 seem to do too many different things.

With the class’s theme, it seems like you’re missing a massive opportunity by making the utilities a new school (brands) rather than Spirits. They also seem to have the same problem with the weapon skills in that they just do way too many things; if you split them between a Spirit’s Passive effect and their Active, you can have more effects with more control and play that feels better.

Looking at the traits, it seems as though taking Soul Reaping with it is a bit of a ‘no duh’, and Spite is a close second, with even less benefit for other builds than the Reaper- at least Reaper has “Rise!”. Also, United in Death is total junk.

I dunno. I like the idea of a spooky ghost crossbow but other than that I don’t know if it would really feel satisfying to play just because your skills do so much. They’d have such long CDs and be so low tuned that it wouldn’t feel fun to play.

Kodama.6453:

Why is it called adamant? I see the idea is a “invincible” theme but I don’t think this name is fitting for a necromancer spec (would fit better to elementalist). Maybe there should be a name which is focusing more on the spirit aspect.

And I think you want too many things at the same time. You want to grant many boons to the party, you want to heal, you want to deal spike damage, you want to stunlock….. actually, there isn’t a single thing in this game you don’t want to do with this spec.

Just look at some skills. The 3rd skill of your longbow is dealing damage, healing, dazing, ripping boons and blocking projectiles. That is waaaaaay too much.

And I don’t think there should be so many traits for critical chance. Necromancer and Reaper already are pretty independant of precision, why should we do another one of this?

Dictionary.com defines Adamant as “Utterly unyielding in attitude or opinion in spite of all appeals.” I tried to use it as kind of a description of the spec’s nature. Adamants would hunt down their targets until their purpose is fulfilled, ignoring any hits they may take and begging on the part of the _de_parted. Unless you didn’t catch it, the main theme of the spec’s about the certainty and finality of death. This was just kind on what I found to describe it.

As for doing to much, yeah. It does. Unfortunately, a lot of things fall under the roles I was trying to portray – delivering and preventing death. Mainly it should be good at burst and not at sustain, countering opponents’ defensive measures, mobility, and simply preventing allies from getting that last little sliver of health removed. Maybe not so much healing, but I’m not letting go of Ring of Respite Perhaps it would fit better if it only healed people who got down to 10%?

I’ll do something with the longbow skills and maybe try to make the on crit traits more of an unblockable line. What about Brands? Did those appeal to you? I think they fit pretty well with the theme, mostly countering either death or defensive measures and giving the feeling of hunting a target down. Some could use some changes to be less ridiculous, but do you feel they fit their purpose?

Id much prefer the next spec to be something like Tomb Warden and have them be more of a tank with a shield, their shroud be something like Tomb shroud that turns them more like an undead so they become vastly more durable and harder to kill, sprinkle in a few shield based lifedrains (not health drains). ad a dash of Undead meatshield minions. something like that would be more to my taste