Guild Wars 2

Hello all.
A few months ago I entered this idea into an elite spec contest and I have not been able to let go of it ever since.
Thus I would like to ask all of you to read up on it and give me your ideas/input/balancing feedback.

I took a lot from the GW1 Ritualist inspirationwise to create this, so you might see some familiar names.
I present: The Envoy.

Necromancer specialisaton: Envoy

Envoys are shepherds of the souls of the dead. When a mortal dies, an envoy will appear before the newly released soul to guide them into the Mists. All envoys were once wicked criminals in life, forced by the Oracle of the Mists to serve as soul shepherds as penance for their mortal crimes. Envoys appear to possess tremendous power, including the ability to control souls and influence the dead, while also channeling the essence of their crimes into powerful vices.

Philosophy:

Trying to open up new playstyles for damage, condition damage, control and support options.

New F2, F3 and F4 skills: Vices

New Shroud: Envoy Shroud

New Weapon, Mainhand Torch:

Utility skills: Desecrations

Traits:

STATUS: GRASPING WAS KUURONG NEEDS TO BECOME WORTHY OF ELITE STATUS

Hey there! I also love constructing new and future specialization as well so hopefully I can give some small helpful criticism

So for the active on the skill Vice Of Gluttony, I was thinking that the taunt on that one is a bit too long and I feel many players would complain about the constant cc of them losing control of there player. Since you would have access to the semi long taunt for Vice of Envy, Gluttony and then add on fears. I would replace the taunt with weakness. When I think of gluttony, I think of feeding on a foes strength. So the weakness, slow and life steal would be a good combo.

For the torch being main hand; it’s a little silly having a necro bashing people with it in melee range. Though I would keep it in the main hand but make it into a range weapon with a range of 600 or 900.

Gaze From Beyond, I would take away the knock down and instead replace it with, vulnerability and revealed.

Rupture Soul, I would take away the stun and after the few seconds delay, I would have it cause a few stacks of burning and poison.

Defiant Was Xinrae, I love this! But since incoming strikes would be instead converted into a damage boost and it’s a healing skill, is too strong. Bringing back the urns, how about just causing your character to create a ritual on the ground or drop an urn that heals for a moderate amount and then when the “spirit” needs to go back, it drops a water field for xx amount of seconds.

Grasping Was Kuurong, too strong. To simplify it. Make it increase boon effectiveness by 20% in the area and pulses immobilize every 2s to enemies. After when it ends, you steal life from enemies and heal downed allies by a certain %.

Some of the traits need to be looked at again and need atleast a few internal cooldowns.

Overall, I like this elite specialization and love that you brought aspects of the ritualist in as I played the ritualist ALOT back then and miss them dearly. Though I do believe this elite can make due without the vices, but keep everything else. It would be a lot of skills to cram into one specialization and I’m pretty sure they want to have the focus around the shroud mechanic.

I like the idea but there are a few area that don’t feel like a necromancer’s spec.

Vices :
I’d swap wrath and gluttony. Change gluttony’s passive into a life steal every X attack. Wrath should be more in line with boon corruption.

Shroud :
Not sure new shroud + vice could be a thing. Either one of them but not both.

Desecration :
Not sure that combo finisher suit these area of effect, but ofc I like it.

Trait :
Harbringer of desacration is to strong of a trait (definitely)
… Yeah, you pile up to much effects on most of you’re traits, I won’t depicted them all.

Conclusion :
I like the idea even if there are a few thing that feel over the top. I just fear that you’re stepping outside of what a necromancer can do. For example, Anet seem adamant on the fact that the necromancer should support allies in a diffrent way than other profession which mean that a lot of your skills/traits that provide boons (And that I welcome) are skill that step outside of the necromancer’s boundaries.

Vice of Wrath’s active is way too strong. CC and give the target an unremovable enemy buffer? Nope.
Vice of Envy’s active is incorrectly named Vice of Wrath. It is also too strong for the exact same reason.
Vice of Gluttony’s active isn’t as crazy, but the taunt is too much on all of them.
Shroud 1: So does the Shroud one attack like the ranger warhorn birds, because that seems rather intense. Pair it with dhuumfire? Nope.
Shroud 2: Taunt on a 10s cooldown is also too much. Cut down on the CC spam. CC spam is not fun.
Shroud 3: The fear on shroud 3 is fine, but the taunt on kitten cd is not
Shroud 4: Lots of physical damage here. Not seeing a lot of condi damage. Also high damage turrets are debatably bad.
Shroud 5: I’m not sure. It feels like everything on this spec is a taunting turret though.
Torch: It should be ranged. Burn spam is kinda gross though
The heal is pretty cool, but we have nothing that can take advantage of it on our toolbar other than staff 4 (lol).
Torch 2 and 3 want to be power while Torch 1 wants to be burn spam.
The elite needs to chill out, but not go the way of chill.
Utility 1 is very Mallyx. Not sure that it really plays well with Necro.
Utility 2 is very elite-esque.
Utility 3 is not a stunbreak. Also, I’m not sure that forcing people to stand on a little buff circle for so long is a good plan.
Ok, so the taunt traits are unbelievably cruel.
Burn on chill and chill on burn needs an icd so that it can’t stack indefinitely.
There are so many traits that I can’t really talk about all of them, so basically everything except for grandmaster 1 seems overtuned.
Conclusion: On the power side, this has tons of damage, damage reduction, cc, boons, modifiers… It’s too much
The condis feel like an afterthought. A lot of burn spam, one bleed trait, and one random condi in shroud.
Tone down the damage, damage reduction, cc, and boons and incorporate more condi variety and a set of condi traits.
You came here for critique. I chose not to hold anything back, so this took me an hour to write. Hope this helps!

First off, thank you all for the feedback so far!
It shows that my spec needs a lot balance and/or re-thinking.
While I saw that a bit myself, the posts you guys made have showed me way more than I could have ever hoped to spot on my own,thank you all for this!
I will try to adress all of you and all your points, one by one.

Tseison

I agree with the taunt being very long, as a matter of fact, after reading some other comments I am toying with the idea of getting rid of taunt all together. This would open up some trait spots so that besides power spec I could also give condi specs some options. Your idea of replacing the taunt with weakness sounds good and also fits both the skill and the theme. Considering Vice Of Gluttony has a 60 sec base CD, what do you feel is a decent weakness duration without becoming OP? like somewhere between 7-11 seconds ( probably on the lower end since with necro you pretty much always have to factor in condition duration)?

I see the suggestion of torch becoming more of a ranged weapon coming from multiple people. Personally I thought the idea of a melee torch was fun, but apparently it does not seem to be very popular. So I will keep the idea of it becoming ranged in mind. This would however mean some changed to the burn on the auto-attack, since ranged burn-spam might become overpowered pretty quick ( since the third auto also has a blind in there).

Other people also mentioned torch having an identity problem, with the auto-attack being condi and torch 2 and torch 3 being more power based. Should I make a decision here to go one way or the other and adjust accordingly?
Also, torch 1 deals 10% bonus damage if the target is burning and damage in an area ( 3rd auto would hit like 3 targets instead of 1). Would this make torch viable for condi and power, or does it make the identity-crisis only worse?

Gaze from Beyond: Changes are fair, and it would give necro access to revealed for the first time ever. I like this change.

Rupture Soul: This would push the torch more into the realm of condi. While surely possible, it would mean torch has to compete with the massive bleeds over time from scepter. I am not sure how to achieve this without upping the burn on torch-auto.

Defiant Was Xinrae: Basically I envision these desecrations all together as the necro doing a small kneeling animation, followed by a ghostly spirit or something appearing ( like how ascalonian ghosts spawn) with a unique model for the skill, who then does the desecration, and does another animation on leaving. If it is too strong I do not know. I envisioned it as giving a small heal ( let’s say in the range of 2k), then absorbs all power and condi damage for 3 secs ( only absorbs to calculate damage bonus later on, THIS DOES NOT HEAL YOU), and then gives you a damage boost of 1% per 1000 damage absorbed for a small amount of time. the time I was not sure, perhaps something like 5 seconds. That way you could get like 1-2 skills off with some powerful bonus damage, and people would get punished for bad play ( mindlessly attacking you). In PvE you could eat massive boss attacks and throw them right back. I personally feel this would only really be an issue in WvW where you would absorb an entire zergs worth of damage for 3 seconds, only to follow up with insta-kill wells.
The effect is strong, but you do sacrifice your heal ( a small one at that) for it. The waterfield…I liked the idea and did not think it was overpowered due to necro not having a lot of blast finishers.
After this explanation, do you still feel it’s on the strong/OP side?

Grasping Was Kuurong: Perhaps this skill needs simplifying, by removing one of the three effects it applies ( either the leap finishers+effects or the 10% attribute bonus or the +50% boon effectiveness). Basically I tried to make something unique here, something noticable and worth taking in a group scenario ( since people always call necro selfish in the support section).

I look forward to read further suggestions from you!

Dadnir

Vices: I feel unsure about swapping Wrath and Gluttony, but I do agree that lifesteal every x attacks is a better passive than 20% passive condition duration. It would probably be like once every 5-8 attacks, perhaps leeching slightly more than vampiric presence/aura does now ( in the realm of the revenant trait that steals like ~350?).

Shroud: I can understand that it might feel a lot combined with vices, but personally I felt it gave a unique twist, and warrior also gained 2 new mechanics with both primal bursts and berserk. I suppose if I had to choose it would have to be the shroud, but I’d rather keep both ( and perhaps tone down both to balance it out).

Desecration: Perhaps that blast finisher on Khanhei is overdoing it, but I liked the idea of Vengeful Kanhei coming to…you know…get revenge by throwing condis back into everyones face and proceed to go out with a ‘bang’ basically. Since as I described to Tseison above in the section about Xinrae, each desecration would get a unique spiritmodel, they could also get a fitting animation upon ending ( Khanhei could raise his weapon and proceed to slam his weapon into the ground before disappearing or something).

Traits: Harbinger probably needs to lose either the quickness or the taunt. Since I am already toying with the idea of dropping taunt all together, it would probably be taunt. Would reduced CD and 1 quickness every 3 seconds still make it overpowered ( it would basically mean 2-3 seconds of quickness spread over 7 -8 seconds on average with downtime between each 1 sec pulse).

Conclusion: I can see where you are coming from here. Perhaps I am trying to push necro into the traditional boon-support instead of trying to find new ways. Any suggestions are welcome., you might never know if Anet ever reads something they might like!

Cecilia

First of all: Thank you for taking over an hour to provide me with feedback!
I have to admit I became a bit defensive at first after reading all of it, but then I realised that the points you are making are fair in nature and deserve a respons/are worth looking at.

Vice Of Wrath: You have convinced me to drop taunts all together. I will replace this with something else ( in this case perhaps with a burn). I take it that your notion about it being OP mainly applies from a PvP standpoint? Wrath is revolving around anger, and the idea was to hit something quick and hard while being angry ( thus quickness). Would it work if going the “I am so angry I am going berserk at you” route and replacing the quickness on hit by fury on hit?

Vice Of Envy: You got me, that was a type coming all the way from the word document where I first thought of this thing. Taunt is getting removed already ( not sure what to replace it with for this skill, perhaps a short lasting small amount of poison). the 10% damage buff is mainly a PvE perspective, I could see this being a problem in PvP and WvW. Perhaps this could be remedied by allowing either condition cleanses or stunbreaks to remove the Vice’s Mark effects? Would that balance it a bit or would that still push the envelope in your opinion?

Gluttony would also get it’s taunt removed and probably get it replaced by weakness.
The Passive condition duration would be reworked into lifesteal every x attacks.

Shroud 1: It would function like this: You attack your target, deal damage and summon a hateful spirit. spirit attacks on his own for 25% of your auto attack damage. Spirits last 5 seconds untraited, and you can only summon 3 per target ( for a maximum of 75% weapon damage on top of the auto). I feel this could be balanced because:

a) shroud 1 damage could be modified/lowered to account for active spirits. Spirits die after like 2-3 cleaves maximum and die on their own after 5 seconds untraited. Basically you would have to camp shroud 1 forever while doing nothing else to get the most out of it. Considering that makes you sacrifice everything else you could possibly do, I felt this wasn’t that great. Spirits would be seperate entities and thus spirit attacks would not apply burn from dhuumfire.

Shroud 2: Taunt would get removed. perhaps the skill could give a stack of stability for you instead?

Shroud 3: Fear will stay then, taunt will be removed in favor of another effect. The taunt here was meant as a way to draw attackers away from the necromancer. Perhaps the Soul Of Suffering could attack more often or do something like copying some conditions on nearby allies to nearby foes?

Shroud 4: I can see where you are coming from. However, Souls untraited die after 7 seconds, unlike turrets who would stay up for years. and they would have a lot less health than engi turrets did when they were played in PvP. If anything I’d see this skill as a way to give necro some space in a 1v2 situation or a temporarily relief in a 1v1/capping situation ( aoes would cleave this things down in a decent timeframe, thats why they can deal auto attack damage, to make up for their lack of health and short uptime).

Shroud 5: Taunt will be removed, possibly replaced by fear or perhaps immobilize. It is meant as a storm of ascalonian-like modelled spirits that run in a direction designated by the player ( you can choose direction upon cast), that, if people allow to be hit by all 10, to spawn a crapload of spirits for a short duration to wreak havoc, a true storm of souls so to speak. This would also synergise with certain traits. See it as a spike-skill with high risk and high reward. If you hit people you are good, but since the direction is fixed, if people dodge out of it/stunbreak away after 1 hit, you got nothing.

Heal: I will copy here what I told to Tseison, to explain the idea behind Xinrae ( a small heal, but mainly meant as a damage boost and to punish bad plays. Waterfield I agree not having a lot of blast options, we could think of something here however, since with the removal of taunt we get some trait-space).

Defiant Was Xinrae: Basically I envision these desecrations all together as the necro doing a small kneeling animation, followed by a ghostly spirit or something appearing ( like how ascalonian ghosts spawn) with a unique model for the skill, who then does the desecration, and does another animation on leaving. If it is too strong I do not know. I envisioned it as giving a small heal ( let’s say in the range of 2k), then absorbs all power and condi damage for 3 secs ( only absorbs to calculate damage bonus later on, THIS DOES NOT HEAL YOU), and then gives you a damage boost of 1% per 1000 damage absorbed for a small amount of time. the time I was not sure, perhaps something like 5 seconds. That way you could get like 1-2 skills off with some powerful bonus damage, and people would get punished for bad play ( mindlessly attacking you). In PvE you could eat massive boss attacks and throw them right back. I personally feel this would only really be an issue in WvW where you would absorb an entire zergs worth of damage for 3 seconds, only to follow up with insta-kill wells.
The effect is strong, but you do sacrifice your heal ( a small one at that) for it. The waterfield…I liked the idea and did not think it was overpowered due to necro not having a lot of blast finishers.

Torch: I feel you about the identity crisis, I felt like I solved this by giving the third auto attack a damage aoe ( 3 targets) and 10% bonus damage if the target burns, but perhaps this is not enough. Perhaps I should move the torch into the condi camp since spirits are for the direct power dps part. I took some suggestions from Tseison for the torch, removing some cc and adding conditions and revealed. However, a condi mainhand has to compete with scepter. Any suggestions as to how I could be able to do that without making scepter absolete?

Elite Desecration ( Grasping Was Kuurong): It probably has too much going on. It now has 3 effects: 10% attribute bonus, 50% extra boon effectiveness, and the 3 leap finishers that rally/finish. Would remove one of these 3 balance the elite out?

Utility 1 ( Vengeful Was Kanhei): I can see why you would think it’s not very necromancer like. Personally I tried to give necro some way to support allies that have trouble with conditions beyond plague signet. Also, with necro being a master of conditions, we should know everything about them, both how to make them effective, and how to ignore them. Thus I felt resistance would fit the part.

Utility 2(Destructive Was Glaive): I can see why you would think that. It has a decent cooldown however, and the pull+whirl at the end would get an animation to warn in pvp ( think Kohler from Ascalonian Catacombs). Still, how would you propose to balance this? Is it simply a numbers/duration issue with the might?

Utility 3 ( Attuned Was Songkai): Stunbreak seems a neat idea, added. You also say you are unsure if it’s worth standing in the desecrated area for it’s buffs. So this skill itself could use a buff possibly? Would perhaps pulsing aegis be an option?

Traits:

Harbinger Of Desecration would lose the taunt portion. That leaves 20% reduced CD on desecration and 1 sec of quickness every 3 seconds provided you are in the desecrated area. Would that balance it?

Taunt traits will be removed, this gives us a Major and a Master trait slot to think of something for conditions ( since you would like some options for that).

Icy Lights: what would your suggestion be for ICD? 1 second? 3 seconds? 5 seconds?
And would you remove the fury/quickness part?

Weapon Of Souls: Feels redundant indeed ( “one bleed trait”). Perhaps if looking at GW1 we could rework this into something like Splinter weapon, where attack a main target applies bleed stacks to nearby targets or something? Or perhaps give necro access to confusion in some form?

Hey there!! glad I could help! I love creating specializations. I recently made one for a Mesmer main pistol but still waiting for feedback on that so I guess I’m just going around slinging feedback to specializations that peak my interest.

So basically I think you should just redo everything again with taking in consideration the feedback you got so far and then reposting the changes either in bold letters or with a strike through the old changes.

So to keep in mind with your replies to my feedback. Defiantly do not increase burning duration over 2s or 3s. My only reason is because if you play around with the guildwars2builder website, it’s pretty close to possible to get 80% or more condition duration along with adding even more with sigils and runes. So try to keep conditions such as weakness, chill, burning as low but not too low as possible.

Reading down to the others you said you were “thinking” of introducing confusion. Don’t! Haha! As a Mesmer main, leave the confusion condition to them.

Try your best to change things that are fair in both PVE and PVP as there are a lot of whiners on this forum who will complain when you slap too much CC on skills etc…

If you are going for more of a boon/support/damage specialization, then think outside the box with just working with what you have. You can be unique if you put your mind to it. Try to also get some inspiration from the previous Guild Wars game or even other games and then add a little twist to them

Oh and I know you were questioning if you should make the ES either condition damage oriented or power. Why not both?

-Tseison

i read the op then i was about to mention all the taunt seems a bit much when i saw the reply you made.
Maybe edit the op with changes to reduce the amount of reading and then we can see where you are going with the changing your thinking about

you could try and make the torch similar to the staff in functionallity.
a one handed life force generation utility weapon.
have all the skills grant lifeforce

You are right, sorry for not thinking about that earlier.
I have edited my original post, the envoy section is now updated to it’s most recent version based on suggestions made in this thread.

Taunt has been removed, Torch is reworked into a ranged condition weapon that also generates lifeforce, desecrations have been balanced, vices have been balanced, Envoy Shroud has seen some balance changes and several traits have been reworked or replaced by something new.

i like envoy shroud as it sounds like its don’t require you camping shroud to get the most out of it. Sounds like it would be good for a flashing shroud build however flashing shroud builds don’t work in pvp or wvw

It could maybe benefit if instead of aiming at granting a little bit of all boons to grant more of a smaller set
the gaurdian weapons now all of consecrations the envoy it kinda like the dark gaurdian is what i was getting
what if the torch had a descration on it

Glad I could help! I’ll work on a follow-up. We can make this into a fun Necro forum project.

Okay, so I want to focus on Torch. Currently, it is a ranged hybrid weapon. It will struggle the most against opposing ranged classes, because Necromancer only has one anti-projectile skill that applies self-weakness.
I think the number two skill should be changed to this:
Ghostmirror Light (30s cd): Channel a protective bubble around yourself that reflects projectiles and turns them into fireballs that explode and inflict burning. Gain Life Force (1.5%) for each projectile reflected.
However, this has no use in melee.
When the Channel ends, cast Channeled Blast: Deal damage and inflict daze and chill to adjacent enemies. Gain Life force (2%) for each enemy struck

Swap this skill with the #3 skill and tone down the #3 skill until it feels appropriate on a 10-15s cooldown (Spamming autoattack because the other two skills are always on long cooldowns sucks.)

Hey again!! So the ES is looking even much better now! Love how you cleaned it up a bit so now it looks much more balanced as we continue to provide feedback and with the necessary changes, the identity and focus of this build will become more clearer. But for now, I’m just focusing on the skills, traits and weapon with you one section at a time.

Adept trait 1: Harbinger Of Desecrations, I feel that this trait needs to match up with the durations of the concentrations since some of them are different. So as example, you can make all the utilities last 6s so that they all can benefit off getting two pulses of 1s of quickness. Since none of them would be able to pulse out a third quickness. OR you can have it almost like the chronomancer rune but instead whenever you use a consecration, you grant 3s quickness, instead of just “every few seconds”.

So the duration for Marks of Vice of Envy and Gluttony need to be adjusted for the Adept Trait 3: Scholar Of Sins. 10 & 15s of reduced damage by 10% would be too long. 5s or another reasonable number would suffice. We don’t want to nullify another players damage especially when your Elite increases the effectiveness of boons…especially boons like protection haha.

I love Mi Lings Purity! <3

Master Trait 3: Vile Miasma is kind of an odd addition and doesn’t fit the theme too well. I was thinking you could do something more of a: " if reduced to 25% health, your utilities or vices recharge a bit faster? You gain a large amount of life force? For a short duration, your vices become stronger? Spiritual energy bursts out of you and grants all boons to 5 nearby allies for 4s". Something along those lines. Also, this trait is linked to one of the previous necromancer skills which would be a no because none of the other elite skills for every other class is linked to a precious class skill.

Grandmaster: Soul Barbs; I don’t really understand and I kinda do, but then some would look at it and would have rathered something else that’s ‘too the point’. So for Soul Barbs, you can keep the condition threshold and then once it crosses it. 5 stacks of a certain debuff that can’t be healed gets placed onto your target. With every attack, you inflict weakness for 1s, deal slightly heavy damage and sap 10 endurance from them.

Grandmaster Trait 1: Tsungrai’s Generosity
Everything is perfect, I would just reduce the duration for boons and just make them last to 6s. Do keep in mind of armor sets that grant concentration already that many people would immediately grab so don’t feel bad if boons and conditions are low in duration. They can easily be increased.

Grandmaster Trait 2: Splinter Weapon, give this a Internal cooldown and add maybe a bit of life steal. Then switch this with the Adept Trait 3: Scholar Of Sins then it’ll be balanced

Grandmaster Trait 3: Vengeance Of The Fallen, defiantly inspired by the Druid ancient seeds. But I would give this an ICD or you’ll awkwardly have a ton of spirits out in the field dealing damage haha!! Also, these spirits should have a decaying health bar for balance.

Other than that, I’m really liking where this elite specialization is going and will continue to help until a Dev comments etc… Haha!! I know it’s just my opinion but I defiantly believe the ES could make due without the vices and just work around/enhance the shroud. I always see this ES manipulate the shroud in this more enlightened spiritual way so your character is more enveloped in the same shadowy aura but looks different haha!

But we’ll see how others think. I think it just needs to grow on me lol.

- Tseison xo

I like the idea a lot and I like that you’re hunting down that Ritualist theme HARD but I have only 2 issues and that’s with the traits.

Vile Miasma and Soul Barbs, I think it’s too complex. Simplify them. People rarely ever take things that take too long to activate.

And that’s it. I think you’re good to go.

Edited main post:

Scholar Of Sins is now a grandmaster trait, Splinter Weapon is now adept.

Harbinger Of Desecrations now gives 3 seconds of quickness upon casting a desecration.

Utility Desecrations ( so except Xinrae and Kuurong) are now fixed at an 8 second duration.

Tsungrais Generosity: All granted boons now have a 6 seconds base duration.

Vengeance Of The Fallen: This trait now has a 1 second ICD ( to avoid the instant pain of a fully channeled Storm Of Souls to dump the damage of 20+ spirit on a poor person)

Torch skills 2 and 3 have been reworked.

I see some confusion regarding the traits Soul Barbs and Vile Miasma.
Thus I propose the following:

Vile Miasma: This trait gets scrapped and gets replaced by Lingwah’s Anguish.

Lingwah’s Anguish:
When you inflict poison you now also inflict torment (4s).
If a target is moving when a condition you inflicted expires, that condition gets re-applied (10s).
Lingwah’s Anguish cannot re-apply the same expired condition twice in a row.

Soul Barbs:
Whenever a condition crosses the threshold ( 10 stacks), it makes the target drop a Soul Barb. Conditions inflicted near the Soul Barb last 10% longer. Pick up the Soul barb to cause the condition that spawned it to be cleansed, but to also deal all of the damage it would have done over time at once ( basically the same, but only one Soul Barb, while giving a choice whether to pick it up or not, depending on the situation).

Thoughts?

Hmmm; I don’t know how I feel about Lingwah’s Anguish, for what it does that is. I need more options haha! And for Soul Barbs. To be honest, I’d say just have it so a soul barb drops on the ground and if a enemy steps on it, it deals a lot of damage/inflicts a bunch of random conditions. Or if an ally steps on it, they are healed or gain a random boon haha! Or cleanse one condition.

You want some more options?
I will give you some more options!

We have 2 trait spots to fill, ideally 2 but probably at least one that deals with improving condition damage builds.

One trait is the last minor trait and the other is a master.

Options I thought up:

Lingwah’s Anguish:
When you inflict poison you now also inflict torment (4s).
If a target is moving when a condition you inflicted expires, that condition gets re-applied (10s).
Lingwah’s Anguish cannot re-apply the same expired condition twice in a row.

Soul Barbs version 1:
Whenever a condition crosses the threshold ( every 10 stacks), it makes the target drop a Soul Barb. Conditions inflicted near the Soul Barb last 10% longer. Pick up the Soul barb to cause the condition that spawned it to be cleansed, but to also deal all of the damage it would have done over time at once ( basically the same, but only one Soul Barb, while giving a choice whether to pick it up or not, depending on the situation). Untriggered Soul Barbs disappear after 10 seconds.

Soul Barbs version 2:
Whenever a condition crosses the threshold ( every 10 stacks), a Soul Barb (10s) spawns near your target. Enemies touching a Soul Barb take damage based on the amount of conditions on them ( base of 500 damage + x for each condition). Allies touching a Soul Barb lose a condition. Untriggered Soul Barbs disappear after 10 seconds.

Tanasen’s Tranquility version 1:
The next time you would be the target of a successful crowdcontrol effect, gain stability ( 3 stacks 5 seconds) and reflect the effect back to its original target ( so if someone would have hit you with a 2s stun they now eat that 2s stun themselves). This trait has a 60s ICD.

Tanasen’s Tranquility version 2:
Take reduced damage while under the effects of crowd control. Damage reduced: 25%

Kaolai’s Protection:
The next time you would be the target of a successful crowdcontrol effect, gain protection (4s) and heal yourself based on your current amount of lifeforce ( 380-2380 heal). ICD: 60 seconds.

Xiko’s Resilience version 1:
Gain a stack of Xiko’s Resilience (30s) every time a new condition gets applied to you. At 5 stacks, gain the Resilient Xiko effect. Resilient Xiko (5s): Reflect incoming conditions back to their original target. This trait has a 15 second ICD after triggering the effect.

Xiko’s Resilience version 2:
Gain a stack of Xiko’s Resilience (30s) every time a new condition gets applied to you. At 5 stacks, gain the Resilient Xiko effect. Resilient Xiko (5s): Reflect incoming damage from conditions back to their original target ( Xiko triggers while you suffer massive damage from 15-20 bleeds? Whoever put those bleeds on you is going to eat it for 5 seconds). This trait has a 30 second ICD after triggering the effect.

Daoshen’s Cruelty:
Whenever you siphon life, have a chance (33%) to apply vulnerability (5s).
Siphoning life has improved effects when siphoning from targets that are vulnerable.
( siphon an additional 117 health).

Balancing aside, are any of these worthy of becoming either the last minor trait or the last master trait?

Soul Barbs Version 2 I like, as long as it’s worded to “when a enemy steps on a soul barb and/or an ally steps on a soul barb” then that’s perfect. Unless I guess touching and stepping on is the same thing than…carry on and ignore what I just wrote hehe!

Daoshen’s Cruelty seems more of a minor trait to me and should defiantly be added into the trait list.

All in all; let me know when everything is re-edited and I’ll check back to do another walk through so we can see how everything looks

“So far the identity for this new Elite Specialization is a Condition Damage and Boon focus tree with some moderate damage to it (via Power). So far the best armor, weapons, accessories etc… That I believe would benefit this new ES would be: Commander, Viper and Sinister. With possible room for: Trailblazer, Carrion and Dire. Runes: Chronomancer, Balthazar and Forgeman”.

Updated main post.
Cleaned up several skill facts, updated several traits.

Scholar Of Sins damage decrease now has its own 5s duration seperate from the mark’s active effect for balance reasons. Still wondering if it’s current state makes it worthy of grandmaster considering the other options.

Added a small lifesteal effect on Splinter Weapon if foes are already bleeding.

So far, this ES seems to provide:

1. boon support through Desecrations
2. condition counters for allies through resistance, Mi Lings Purity and Soul Barbs
3. Condition damage options through Splinter weapon, Spirit’s Gift and Soul Barbs
4. Power dps through spirits.
5. Opens up some viability for builds going full lifesteal.

So I just went over the ES again as I am very infatuated on how it’s looking so far! So I did a run by and did a chart for PVE & PVP to see if everything seems balanced if I were actually playing the spec. I posted below a few slight suggestions but other than that, everything else is pretty much fine where it’s at haha!

Adept trait 1: Harbinger Of Desecrations: “Just to clarify, is it gain quickness when cast on the area or gain quickness every pulse while standing in the desecration?”

Adept trait 2: Spirit’s Strength: “A part of me feels that the spirits themselves should deal increased damage (10%) as opposed to the user. Reason is because there are items such as, sigil of force, rune of the berserker and vice of envy that increase damage by a certain percentage”.

Grasping Was Kuurong: “So looking back to when the tempests had a trait to improve protection via damage reduction through hardy conduit I believe. They had it so protection had an increased effectiveness from 33% reduction to 40% reduction but now it got taken away. Likely because it was too powerful. So for balance and for all things fair. This utility should just increase boon duration by either seconds or affect the boon duration percentage and NOT the effectiveness”.

Attuned Was Songkai: “So this would defiantly be a blessing of a skill for thieves, engineers and rangers. So switching things around. Why not take away the vigor portion. The aegis and stability keep. Then on the part when it ends, grant protection and 50 endurance OR vigor. Not both”.

Aside from that Wielder, this ES is looking really great. It’s fresh, I defiantly get this spiritual boon monster from this specialization and I’m loving it!!

Quickness is 3s once upon casting it, not per pulse.

While I understand your reasoning for Spirit’s Strength, I feel like upping the damage on spirits themselves would bring way more dps to the table when you consider how many of them you can spawn when chaining skills. Even if spirits do not last long, the spikedamage would go through the roof.

Attuned Was Songkai: I opted for pulsing stability and aegis with protection upon ending. Scrapped vigor, you can still get that if you trait for Tsungrais Generosity. Endurance restored I kept at full ( 100). Reason is that while necromancer was originally designed as a passive defense class ( just eat the damage and outlast people), one of the reason these days for it to struggle ( in pvp) is because active defense is spammed by other classes, with necro being unable to do the same. I figured 2 additional dodges every 40-50 seconds could give necro a slight push into more survivability through active damage migitation without breaking the original class theme ( in a meta with close to perma-evade thieves, block&blur chaining mesmers, revenants evading 50% of the time, necro needs some help for both itself and teammates).

Grasping Was Kuurong: Right now I feel this skill lacks identity and flavour. it is an elite skill on a long cooldown, and I really want it to do something unique, something that makes people go: Oh boy, watch it, Kuurong is up!/ok guys, necro placed Kuurong, we’re good now!

If Kuurong simply adds to boonduration it would simply become an inferior kitten child of Revenant F2 and Revenant Mallyx elite. I personally felt the original 50% additional boon effectiveness ( later nerfed to current 20%), added a unique flavour, considering it is an effect that untraited is only up for 10 seconds every 3 minutes.
10 seconds of “superboons” for the lack of a better word, and only if people stand inside it’s effect.. Is it really that broken,even on such a cooldown?

Something else that is missing right now is an effect upon the spirit leaving.
It needs an “on-end effect”.
Xinrae gives you a small heal and a waterfield,
Kanhei transfers conditions and does a blast finish,
Glaive pulls foes in for damage while doing a whirl,
Songkai gives protection and fully restores endurance,
Kuurong does…nothing right now.

For an elite that feels rather boring.

TL;DR: Kuurong needs effects worthy of being elite, a unique flavour/effect, and an “on-end” effect.

I would love for an end effect that involves multiple leap finishers like I had in the first draft of the skill ( original it increased attributes by 10%, boons were 50% more effective, and performed 3 leap finishers upon ending, resurrecting downed allies and finishing downed foes).

Kuurong needs help.
Let’s all try to be very creative here.
The other desecrations have fun unique effects.
Let’s make him even better.

*bumped for visibility, feedback still welcome

Anything will be better than Reaper so i’ll say that this is awesome.

Congratulations on getting your idea adopted by Arenanet.

Emissary’s Staff
Legends tell of the envoys—people who mucked up so badly in life that they’re forced to spend eternity shepherding souls to the Mists. Has anyone tipped these slackers off to Ascalon? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Anyway, get a jump start on your Halloween costume with this genuine, imitation-replica Emissary’s Staff.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/storm-bow-and-emissarys-staff-in-the-gem-store/