Guild Wars 2

Hello. I just wanted to share my thoughts on my favorite profession and what I think should be done to better organize the profession from a support option standpoint. Currently I think the class’s options for support are limited and going forward something should be done to expand on that.

Let me preface this by bringing up the trait known as “Transfusion” in the blood magic specialization. Now, before this trait was added, I already invested heavily in healing power when I leveled up. Regeneration and well of blood was all I could manage to really take advantage of my healing power. But when this trait was added, everything changed drastically. Suddenly, I could quickly heal 10k health from all my allies around me!! Sure it’s on a cooldown, but all of a sudden I could contribute so much more in a group setting and this really made playing my necromancer enjoyable.

But I want to make a point. The trait “Transfusion” entirely opened up a new world for me. It CREATED a niche that I had wanted to fulfill for a while. As such, if I don’t take that trait in a build, this niche ceases to exist for my profession. The traits should ADD to a niche rather than create one. So my first suggestion is this:

Make the healing factor to allies on shroud skill 4 DEFAULT.

After this is done, you can make the teleportation mechanic of downed allies into a trait. See, that ADDS to the niche of supporting allies. It doesn’t create it. If I want to heal my allies, all I would have to do is invest in healing power on my gear, not entirely limit my build. This creates options within the support niche rather than saying “If you spent 500 gold on all that ascended healing power gear, you HAVE to take ‘Transfusion’ or you wasted your money.”

One motivation for making this post is that with heart of thorns coming, it seems like I’m going to be hit in the face with competition from the Druid spec that I simply won’t be able to compete with. Are you going to tell me to reroll? I love necromancer… Don’t force me to either change my niche or change my profession.

And so here is a list of my suggestions:

-Dagger skill 2 should either by default, or have a trait, to distribute a percentage of the absorbed health to nearby allies.

-Focus skill 4 should have a flat +Heal to allies it hits

-Warhorn skill 5 should cast it’s effect on nearby allies as well, working with the Vampiric Presence trait.

-Maybe make the heal from Vampiric Presence scale off of the necromancer’s healing power.

-Signet of the Locust makes me feel selfish. Like the dagger skill 2 suggestion, there should be a way that I can share my healing with allies.

-One of the Death Magic traits, likely in the place of or in addition to “Beyond the Veil” should alter skill 5 of death shroud such that you tether to allies and redirect half of their damage to you for maybe 5 seconds. Maybe it can also cure a condition. This would add to the necromancer’s bulky damage sponge support niche.

-Signet of Undeath has a cast time that makes is basically useless. This might seem a little radical, but why doesn’t it work on allies who are not just downed, but flat out dead? It’s very archetypal that necromancers raise the dead. If someone goes down its a better option to use Transfusion’s teleport than to cast for 3 seconds to revive them. They would probably die in those 3 seconds. If you think this is over powered, than make it such that it drains all of your life force and splits it among those revived as their health upon resurrection. Or make it an elite skill and give us a new signet skill. As it stands, Signet of Undeath’s active effect is not worth using.

-Spectral Wall is just a little lackluster for its cool down. Because +boon duration is hard to come by, I just don’t feel that I can justify using it for simply 5 seconds of protection. Sure, a little breathing room in pvp, but I think the weakness and projectile protection from poison cloud means I don’t really need that breathing room as a supporter. I would recommend increasing the duration of the protection that it gives.

-Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend’s active effects are a little bland. I can’t justify ever using them unless I’m literally going for “get as many minions as possible.” The shadow fiend’s blind takes a little too long for the little guy to cast to really use it at an opportune time. Additionally, a reduction of the cool down time for the blind would mean the shadow fiend would be more useful for break bars. As it stands for that purpose, I would rather just use well of darkness. As for the bone fiend, he’s alright I guess. Just like the shadow fiend, his active attack isn’t very colorful. Maybe a projectile finisher on his autoattack and a multiple extra shots on that active that add immobilize duration.

This is mostly what I was able to think of as a start for expanding the necromancer’s options in the world of support.

One reason I would be on your side is that I don’t like the teleport-downed-allies to come with the healing-on-shroud4. For example, playing melee reaper, I want to heal my allies, but not teleport them to me under full cleave pressure! The teleport only makes sense if you’re at range.

Else I do not think it’s such a good idea to give default healing on all skills. To be fair, necro does not too bad if traited on the healing-allies part. It mostly lacks offensive support.

Silverkey.2078:

One reason I would be on your side is that I don’t like the teleport-downed-allies to come with the healing-on-shroud4. For example, playing melee reaper, I want to heal my allies, but not teleport them to me under full cleave pressure! The teleport only makes sense if you’re at range.

Else I do not think it’s such a good idea to give default healing on all skills. To be fair, necro does not too bad if traited on the healing-allies part. It mostly lacks offensive support.

Your input is greatly appreciated!

Most of the other healing options could potentially be involved in a trait. But the biggest point, I believe, is that there needs to be “Options.” Looking at the focus one, it already gives regeneration. It already is in that “heal allies” spectrum, so why not just add an instant heal to it? See, regeneration stacks time and not intensity. So if they already have regeneration on them, focus doesn’t seem like it would help as much.

Sure they don’t do “too bad,” but I would like them to be able to keep up with the Druid. Much like every offensive specced necro wants to keep up with engineers and the like. The offensive suggestions are being discussed across the board, but I wanted to bring to light the support side of things.

Many of these suggestions take things that are already fine and makes them support for the hell of it, which isn’t good design. Sharing random heals doesn’t really make sense, these are skills that are used so that the Necromancer can heal themselves, and adding random heals to them does nothing but inflates the skills power levels without actually making the skill stronger in its own use. Basically, you end up with skills that do everything at once, but they do all of them badly, so you don’t end up with skills that are used with timing but just… used. This is why its so hard to add support to the profession right now, because you are forced to add it only to very underpowered skills and changing traits that aren’t taken. So you are really limited in what you can play with.

That said, Signet of Undeath and Spectral Wall are both great possibilities for support.

As a side note Bone Fiend is already really strong. 8s of immobilize broken into 2 individual sets of 4s immobilize, and 4 projectile finishers over the total effect.

Rishnock.6230:

Your input is greatly appreciated!

Most of the other healing options could potentially be involved in a trait. But the biggest point, I believe, is that there needs to be “Options.” Looking at the focus one, it already gives regeneration. It already is in that “heal allies” spectrum, so why not just add an instant heal to it? See, regeneration stacks time and not intensity. So if they already have regeneration on them, focus doesn’t seem like it would help as much.

Sure they don’t do “too bad,” but I would like them to be able to keep up with the Druid. Much like every offensive specced necro wants to keep up with engineers and the like. The offensive suggestions are being discussed across the board, but I wanted to bring to light the support side of things.

Focus is technically more of a burst weapon (vulnerability + good damage). To be fair, we don’t really have a support weapon. The initial concept of necro was “help your allies by debuffing your enemy”. A guardian gives protection, aegis and might to its teammates, a necro gives weakness, blind and vulnerability to its enemies. In principle both are as nearly equivalent and complementary. The result felt somewhat short for a few reasons, though the concept still holds: you can heavily support your team through control and debuff as a necro, and on top of that, you have decently good healing in blood magic.

So in summary, I am saying the situation is perfect, far from it. Necro needs more support option. I am just not sure healing is what it needs the most. We should not necessarily aim to beat druid for healing, because you have to see that druid only brings that! I think if you want to play a support build, the 2 main weaknesses of the necro are:

• lack of active defense, meaning if you get focused, you will have trouble
• lack of offensive support (might/fury or any unique ability to increase your allies strength)

maybe the next elite spec will fix that (necro totems?), or maybe changes to our core skills (blood is power for example) will make them more viable.

Some changes i would like to see to improve necros support:

Axe:
AA: is now a chain with 3 attacks, the first 2 stacks vuln and the last one corrupts one boon

Unholy Feast: is now a blast finisher

Focus:
Reapers Touch: gives fury/retaliation instead of regen

Warhorn:
Locust Swarm: share its effects to allies

Traits:
Parasict Contagion: a percentage of your condi damage heals you and nearby allies

Lingering Curses: now a AoE buff that increases your and allies condi damage

Beyond the Veil: now aplies protection to allies too instead of only you and minions

Remove Quickening Thrist and bring back Renewing Blast on its place

Vampiric Rituals: wells apply protection to allies when cast and when they end too

Utillities:

Wells of power and darkness: reduce cooldown to 40s

Well of blood: is now a water field

Signet of Undeath: change its active effect to be a buff that reduces incoming damage to allies bellow 50% health for a short period

PS: Corruptions in my opnion are the skills that need a bigger rework to be made useful, maybe making them upkeep skills with improved effects but gives debuffs to you in exchange?
Just a random example: Epidemic – keeps the same effect on use, while keeping this skill on spreads 2 condis on you to nearby foes(3s ICD), conditions applied to you do increased damage (15% more damage(?))

I would expect to see an elite specialization in the future that focuses on support. Changing our death shroud skills into heal abilities much like the druid’s celestial form.

Bhawb.7408:

As a side note Bone Fiend is already really strong. 8s of immobilize broken into 2 individual sets of 4s immobilize, and 4 projectile finishers over the total effect.

I had no idea they were projectile finishers…. It’s not written in the tool tip.

Rishnock.6230:

I had no idea they were projectile finishers…. It’s not written in the tool tip.

Yep, unfortunately minions’ functionality is really hidden, for whatever reason. Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm each have 100% projectile finishers attached to every projectile they fire off, which in the case of Bone Fiend means every attack is 2x projectile finisher. Then the Bone Fiend active just modifies the normal Bone Fiend attack (similar to how turrets work) and deals more damage + 2s of immobilize per projectile, for up to 8s total.

well the necro needs support for sure.. I think dagger 2 should be an AoE heal and hit in a 360 range.. since with reaper we become some sort of frontline fighter this would be an option to provide some serious healing to allies..
maybe with some stability added.

it would be possible to put this in the dagger trait (like ranger making its axeattack aoe…)
so it deals its damage aoe but doesnt give more healing the more opponents you hit. so its heal cannof get to more than 5k per person

then I would like to see all siphons get their healing value doubled. so our support option vampiric presents would actually be a little useful healing ppl for 80 per hit

with almost perma aoe regen we already offer to team and transfusion heal and teleport, a bloodline necro could even become meta o.O! for sure only if healing in shroud gets adressed…

Probably just going to get bashed for posting these builds because this forum for whatever reason is obsessed with full zerker or gtfo but here ya go.

Power based support

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQNAndWn0ICN3gV3Au0Ac4gjaha+FrdUQHj5oMgJQAMDA-TxxGABAcEAwTJYk6By9VAMp6Pss/QlK/IFgYjsA-e

Condition based support

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQNArYWn0ICN3gV3Ae3A0zhDjha2DJ9LQDioYIi/cAcAA-TxxGABA8EAy9UAwy+DPp8TO9A3pEsR1fIFAEjsA-e

Transfusion heals for 6k to everyone in your group every 34 seconds above 50% health and around 8k below 50% health.

Shroud is used for support, not damage. You will be popping in and out of shroud (on a 7 sec CD) whenever you need a heal. Life from death will heal 2k when you leave shroud effectively making it a 2k group heal on a 7 sec CD.

Rune of mercy is a personal preference. Tested with the trait I can revive someone in 3 seconds from 25% health. A long with the usual teleporting downed players.

Poison cloud is really good now that it stops projectiles. In the condition build you will also have a high fury up time, making up for the lack of crit chance.

The damage is pretty decent. It’s not full zerker or assassins but it’s still high and you get amazing support for the little trade off.