Guild Wars 2

Some good things:

• Spite is easily my favourite trait line, mainly because of the minor traits. I also want to point out that I’m really loving the new Signet trait, it’s a very impactful trait and the boon hate is incredible. It has some good synergy in other trait lines too.

• Blood Magic is great, and finally has good synergy with Death Shroud.
  Suggestion: I only wish the damage and healing from the vampiric traits would scale a bit more with the power and healing power attributes. This way, a power build would would provide a more significant increase in party damage, and a healing power build would provide a more significant party buff to sustain.

• I’ve not played around with Death Magic too much, but it seems quite potent.

• Curses is still your go-to line for condition builds, but can also have some uses for power builds as well. I’ve been running Withering Precision in my PvE power build.

• Soul Reaping is good, as always.

The bad things:

• Unholy Fervor is horrible.
  Let’s compare: Warrior has a similar trait that grants them 10% damage boost with greatsword, might on crit and cooldown reduction. Our axe trait has the reduction, but our damage modifier is conditional on having vuln on our target and it gives no further buffs. Let’s also take into consideration how weak axe is compared to the greatsword.
  Suggestion: The axe in itself needs a major buff and/or rework (cleave, more damage, more range… anything), and so does the trait. If buffing axe is too much, at least make the damage increase depend on just vuln instead of having an axe equipped. The trait serves very little use in its current state.

• Dhuumfire is really weak. It really isn’t worth it, you can deal way more condi damage with your normal weapons. Once you start camping life blast you will only be applying burns, and you can only keep up 2 stacks at a time, compared to bleeds and poison, and having access utility skills outside of shroud.
  Suggestion: It needs more stacks, longer duration or some additional effect to become useful.

• Master of Corruption is very bad. Corruptions generally seem too weak to reasonably have the self harming effects on them, adding an additional effect just seems wrong.
  Let’s compare: Elementalist attunement recharge traits… those traits grant 33% cooldown reduction, and buffs to damage. Surely we can have a buff to corruptions as well as the 33% cooldown reduction. I also want to point out how unfair the Plague form change is to condition necromancers, it was the one elite skill that somewhat catered to condition builds, but now it’s very harmful to use on those kinds of builds. I don’t think anyone is happy about the change to Consume Conditions either.
  Suggestion: Some of the corruption skills feel a bit weak right now. Blood is Power… giving it an AoE buff was really nice, but the duration is very very short, a duration increase to 12 seconds would be fine I think. Corrosive Poison Cloud just doesn’t seem worth taking, make it block projectiles or something else useful. Epidemic is very situational, but I think it’s in a good spot, I’d say the same for Corrupt Boon. And please un-nerf Plague and Consume Conditions.

• Other things: I’m still waiting for Axe 2 to receive a whirl finisher, DS 1 to receive a projectile finisher, DS2 to receive a leap finisher and Axe 3 and WH 4 to receive blast finishers. We only seem to have finishers under water for some reason.

Edit:
I also want to add that the Mark of Blood on dodge is really annoying when specced into Blood Magic. You can’t dodge to avoid getting in combat. Could we have this trait changed to combat only?

Death magic is amazing. I am absolutely taking it on non-MM builds.

Corrupter’s Fervor is great flavor and super strong, and shrouded removal is just so nice with all the conditions flying around. The toughness to power conversion in the major slot is perfect synergy with all the toughness boosts in the line. It’s a well designed line with good theme and great power.

1) Blood seems good right now and death could be good especialy for condition builds. But the main problem to death magic is condition builds are forced to run sigil mastery and thus leave no room for the death magic trait.

2) Power builds are pottent , i’d like to see how they perform in a more competitive scene.

3) Condition builds are realy niche , and are strong against condition damage dealers and the weakness uptime helps in duels. But they lack presure compared to other condition builds in normal situation. Our life force regen is highly increased and we now have acces to à lot of stunt breakers wich help a lot on our survability but we don’t benefit a lot from dhumfire while mitigating with life force(losing a lot of presure if you start spaming Lifeblast.)

What i’d like to see is some other options to reliably put presure , and having the option to invest traits into death magic and not behing forced into spite.

4) Master of corruption is realy a waste & I think our heals could have some love. (personal feeling)

5) I din’t try minions , I don’t like AI based stuff and RnG

Overall i find both power and condi stronger, however all other classes are stronger as well.

Particularly liking terrormancer, however plague and consume condition changes suck big time.

Overall i think damage is far too high with this new patch. WvW battles are lasting seconds instead of minutes – it’s not good for the game.

A bit of Feedback from my side:

Spite is very good, in some cases so awesome that i cant decide what trait to choose from. The Minors define the entire traitline in a very good way. Spiteful Spirit could use a little bit of a buff or something added on top as it feels like the weakest grandmaster, although i love its function.

Curses, despite all the flame feels good. Parasitic Contagion needs a buff and needs to work trough shroud asap. Yes, even Master of Corruption and the dispute of Terror and PoC is fine. I will explain later.

Death Magic: A few things: Why 3 Minion traits? Minions are just one type of utility skills, and as that not even as build defining for every necromancer (like spectral skills are). Make the % modifiers for Damage and Health Baseline, merge the exciting stuff into one Grandmaster trait and come up with 1 new major and 1 adept trait. It makes not much sense that way. It wont be OP though, as Only dedicated minion master will use minions apart from fleshworm, and they would have taken these traits anyway. Swap or merge Unholy Sanctuary with Unholy Martyr, it makes more sense in the Blood Magic Line

Blood magic:
Awesome. They gave the necromancer a own niche of supporting people. Unholy Martyr does not really fit here though as a grandmaster at least, Id like a Grandmaster choice for solo play without wells really. I get its the support line but dont hardfore us 100% into support when choosing a grandmaster, use the opportunity to give us a build defining trait that makes us feel even more like a blood sucking vampire. Mark of blood should be combat only with no ICD.

Soul Reaping: The line was pretty much kept as before. The line feels way too mandatory when playing with a build relying on Shroud. It feels like if you want to stay in Shroud for any halfway decent time, you are forced to go into this line, which is really really bad considering its a profession mechanic. A few things: Unyielding Blast: The pierce should be baseline. Then add something different to this trait. Vital persistence: The degeneration should be halfed baseline, then either make this trait to cause no degenration at all, or add something different. Dhuumfire is not good. Buff or replace it.

Now, as soon as Anet has fixed the powercreep with engies and all other classes, i would feel that we can play with builds that feels like a true atrittion class. Which is great.

However, here comes the real big problems: Weapon and Utility skills. Axe sucks. Scepter Sucks. And thus the weapon traits associated with them also suck, people rant about these traits, but the problem lies on the weapons themself. Engineer has a trait that has a lesser potenty on pistol skills then we have on our scepter skills, but it takes effect on every skill, and these skills where really strong to begin with. Please rework them:

Make Scepter 1 Apply torment, Bleeding and Poison, speed up the attack chain a little bit. Make scepter 2 an AOE field, the first hit inflicts Immob, then the field ticks for a bit of damage and bleed and cripple for every second. The Skill 3 Should cause a condition. Make it a channel with more base damage, generating lifeforce with each strike, increased damage and lifeforce for each condition on the foe, then cause AOE torment based on how many conditions the initial target has at the end of the channel.

Make Axe a power based support weapon, like staff is for condition. Give it a distinct attack chain that causes AOE Damage with a bit of flavour, give skill 2 an additional effect, at the first and last tick of damage bouncing projectiles are launched from your targeted enemy that cause something cool for offensive support. The weapon could be easily used for offensive power support because we gain the greatsword as meele power. The only thing we would then need is a 1200 range Power option.

Corruption skills dont justify their name, the traits put even more condis on you. Thats fine but the speels need to be stronger to begin with.
Consume conditions is now instant cast, when traited it heals for more, and removes a few condis from nearby allies, but i cant enter DS for 5 Seconds in adition to the condis i get on myself. Corrupt boon now corrupts ALL boons on my target, when i trait it my target cant apply any new boons for 2 seconds. My plague gets traited 2 new skills, (with a cooldown ofc) an AOE fear with 10 targets, and Deathly swarm with multiple projectiles. My CPC applies Poison and weakness every second, as well as 25 vulnerability, when traited it also nullifies every healing done in the area. For such skills i would accept even more conditions on myself, or even health sacrifice, for rhat CPC i would stun myself for 2 seconds, really.

These are my take on the changes, the traits are very very pleasing, but the problems are to some extent much deeper and should be fixed at the root before polishing the traits even more.

The only feedback I can offer is that I feel more constricted by builds than ever before. Yes people have shown some powerful builds we can make, but the way trait lines work now and how they jumbled everything up and forced us to go maxed out in a trait line pretty much means any creative oddball builds are out of the question. Hybrid, in the old sense, is a thing of the past. I am speaking mainly from a wvw perspective. It didn’t seem much different one way or another to me in pve. Tad more healing was about all.
-In WvW it felt good against 1-2 people. Still can’t dominate the fight like I used to but it was sustainable
-Minion build for roaming was good, but then again it always has been for small skirmishes for me anyway.
-condi build seemed useless in every aspect, especially corruption build.
-power build was great in 1v1 or 1v2 but lost all its sustain in the big fights where it counted most. I was melted repeatedly within seconds with no time to react. It was by and far the worst time I have ever had in wvw. Compared to how last week was playing with similar fights I was totally turned off of necro and since I don’t really pve much and not interested in necro for pvp-I have other classes for that- I’m giving up on necro for wvw.
- death magic was decent for smaller fights, but in larger ones, yet again, it fell off fast. It was about the only viable option for good defense though, so no more using soul reaping as a defensive line. Seems like blood and death were the only 2 not completely jumbled beyond reason and even then blood’s sustain for more than 1v3 wasn’t noticeable at all unless you were going for a rezomancer (vampiric aura was really nice, but with so many other necros around me using it I felt like it was just niche and saw no point in using it myself)
It just feels so lackluster, so cramped in it’s playstyle now. I hate having such limited options for my builds. I can’t take a little bit from this trait line, a little from another and find a nice balance and good sustain like I used to. Yes yes blah blah we all know how everyone has found the most awesome builds ever with the new system. Idc, there’s really not that many good ones now and definitely no creative ones. I feel like we’re being forced to take reaper as the specialization or just stick with the limited builds we can find for core.
Edit: almost forgot…STILL no signet passives working in shroud, negating an entire build. GG

I think Armoured Shroud needs to reconise minons loss of utility when in shroud.
I’m quite happy overall. I can’t say I’ve expirenced it’s nuances, though.

I think sustain might still be an issue, but I’ll have to see how it plays out.
I see necro condi application is fine as being slow, constant, area application and spreading. That’s pressure. Constant pain that doesn’t end. However, this takes time in a fight and time means sustain.
I’m fine with power and burst builds not having as much sustain.

We take damage with health and generate life force then swap and take damage to life force and generate health. If they think our sustain should be linked like this, I don’t dissagree.

For me, I think the main things to watch with necro now is keeping the “health bars” generation balanced with damage taken.

I’d also like to add one important thing:

I am okay with Condition Necromancer being mostly about constant pressure, I want that.
But Arena Net could really use some of Blizzard’s experience when it comes to DoTs being actual DoTs, not burst. Mainly, couple good things about Affliction Warlock tools.

1. A method to avoid long ramp up in between fights with some utility - We can reach decent amount of condition damage in longer fight in PvE. But it takes long time and once we kill our stacked enemy and have to transition between fights, there’s a problem – another ramp up. I would be glad to see some utility that would allow us to minimalize that ramp up time from time to time. This way, we would be able to compete with our Condition damage in PvE.

2. An option to prevent Condition Cleansing - Maybe not with such uptime, but something that when well-timed can be really valueable. If you want us to have sustain pressure, we have to get something to fight abundance of AoE Condition cleanses and procs.

I suggest Terror preventing Condition Cleanses. Basically, when Terror does damage, cleanses don’t work. Terror works when your target is affected by Fear condition. So, in order to cleanse Target would have to break Fear CC first.
Because Fear doesn’t last for long it would have to be timed by us, predicting cleanse. And Stability (and Bunker Guards), stunbreaks would be more important. Fear has clear tell for your allies, so they could easily see if they should cleanse or not. All stunbreaks break CC first anyway.

In exchange, majority of damage could’ve been deleted and rest could be just a health siphon per second of Terror and the cleanse prevent effect would get some ICD per target to prevent chain fears. Currently, Terror is just a boring damage proc, often triggered by stuff like Nightmare runes. With such changes, it would be much more thought-out and missing damage could be just included in other abilities.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Alright, you guys know the drill! How are the changes so far? Either answer these questions for me or just talk about what you feel is important to mention for Necromancer.

Specific questions:

1. Blood line is clearly awesome. How’s the death line? Are you using it at all in non-minion master builds?
2. Condi was thought to be really bad before everything came out. Have you tried out This build by Zombify? How did you like it?
3. Have you been successfully running any odd builds such as minion master or bunker?
4. Yes, I already have feedback on CC and Plague. I nearly ran lich on my terrormancer. I stopped mid fight to say in say chat to my enemies “Can we take a moment to recognize the fact that my Flesh Golem is literally not helping me at all?”

1) from wvw point of veiw blood and death line are rly good as power spec, best part is that u can skip spite as u dont lose the power any more and u get a crap toon more power with tou so noting bad to say about it, over all this is patch is the best thing that happend to necro it is not power or secpter condi spam any more u have alot more to play arund with.

2) tryed smth similar to it yes, it borderline op vs condi spamer that cant clense or a boonspaming mongrel. rly good 1v1. and on the other side of the coin it´s crap in grp play. u have some grp condi cleans but not much else.

3) no, aslong as ai is broken cba with it, bunker well yes sorta u get tanky in the new power build by default. but cc will still kill necros. as we dont have any get the kitten out of town card.

4) only bad thing in this patch is cc u cant have that skill at all in wvw siege fight u get low and heal and 10 vul stack and ur back to where u started in healthpool even lower or dead. and the other heal we have is bad, only option rly is signet of vamp but the cd on makes it meh aswell.
master of corr need to have an look at aswell it makes no sens u have to run multi condi cleanse or dagger oh staff,4 just to get rid of it and blind on heal use? wtf!?!
Scepter over all is not worth useing atm even with lingering curse as it only effect Scepter,

over all i like what thay have done. so gj anet. BUT thay need to have look at chill converted to Resist in the upcomeing Reaper launch. as it looks atm it is rly bad as reaper is all about chill hunt em down, but if the target can just cleanse it and have ressit vs chill necro is back where it started, every one can just run away from it and comeback when thay have there cd up aigen and do it all aigen.

Still relatively new to Necro and mostly play in small group WvW, so my reactions are mostly related to that, will try to answer the questions given.

1) Mostly running Blood Magic, I have tried Death Magic on/off each day but find that in general the extra survival isn’t noticeable… I think it’s very hard to tell how viable the line is right now due to the sheer amount of damage being thrown around (I barely notice a difference between my full Cav/Knight setup (3.2k armor) and my full Zerk (2k ?)) so the extra toughness from the minor or even Corruptors Fervor aren’t really noticeable – the protection is far more noticeable, but the duration is so short.

2) Not tried a condi build properly yet, a few quick duels in sPvP arena with friends when the patch first hit was it. Bulk of condi stacking atm seems to be from AoE applications and specifically burn, both of which we are in fairly short supply of (in comparison to something like a grenade engi). Transfers seem to be the main way for us to deal heavy condi damage right now and that’s reliant on the enemy having a condi player which isn’t ideal.

3) Not tried any odd builds, still getting to grips with the one I have without throwing minion skills into it!

4) General feedback? I’d love something to deal better with multiple assailants, Shroud is nice for absorbing some hits, but it rapidly falls when you get focused. A short duration tool that reflects or prevents damage temporarily would be great, having no Vigor or Endure Pain like effect in exchange for Shroud doesn’t quite work, even being able to receive regular heals through Shroud from allies would go a long way to improving this.

Most the deaths that aren’t silly things like 4-7k mindwracks from stealth (yes, someone hit me for 7k earlier… per hit) are coming from CC lockdown with Shroud disappearing in a second or two when there’s 3+ attacking. Blood Magic is certainly an improvement over before, definitely improves survivability, although the main time I notice it healing me is with Life Transfer due to the multi-tick / multi-target, or with wells. For weapon skills or life blast it’s negligible and I have no idea how allies feel about it.

Consume Conditions… honestly the cast time irritates me more than the vuln, gets interrupted so frequently for such a long CD >.< and I’ve not tried it with MoC, if only because I am put off so much by that blind.

Finally… elites. I can’t remember the last time I used them really. Golem dies to AoE, Lich is basically a gaint “kill me now!” which whilst extremely damaging can be easily avoided by sidestepping, and plague is.. well, in a non-condi build it’s nothing but a safe stomp on a 3min CD >.< (In a condi build it’s easy to walk away from too). I feel both Lich and Plague run along the same line as tomes – taking away access to our utilities, heal and class mechanic – where is our Binding Roots, our Signet of Rage, our ‘Feel My Wrath’, or even Renewed Focus .. something on mid/low CD that we can use mid-combat to boost our existing skills instead of replace them.

Loving the spite line, especially the minors. Haven’t delved very far into Curses yet at all so can’t comment on that. Whilst there is less diversity in point placement there is more now in viable options, in viable lines… still feeling somewhat low in the food chain due to the sheer powercreep though.

I’ll just say that I have never played anything so broken as condi signet necro lmao. Also, corrupt boon is a terrible skill to use when you’re doing a signet necro build. Corrupt boon literally only does anything vs boons so if your opponent has none, it’s useless. It also damages yourself.

Signet of the Locust is better because it corrupts 2 boons in AOE, the cooldown is 16 seconds shorter, it gives you movement speed, it gives you sustain and deals damage. It’s basically a heal skill on your utility slot.

I don’t like the patch overall. Skill has gone out the window and there is less build diversity. I especially hate the fact that stats were removed from trait lines. Now you’re forced into pure specs in SPvP. No more “berserker but with some tankiness” or anything like that.

It’s terrible. Can’t really make any hybrid builds on any class now. Celestial works on necromancer though. Celestial is the only option for hybrids now.

Blood line is clearly awesome. How’s the death line? Are you using it at all in non-minion master builds?

- I don’t agree with the bloodline being awesome. The siphons are still too small, especially considering the amount of damage going around now and the support is too gimmicky. I haven’t used death at all, it’s very selfish, and no matter how tanky you try to make a necro it will always die when it’s focused or be useless to a team comp with what little they can offer. And I don’t really play MM because I don’t like AI, which is the only build I really see wanting it.

Condi was thought to be really bad before everything came out. Have you tried out This build by Zombify? How did you like it?

- The condi build by Zombify just isn’t enough pressure. I definitely prefer the power version of the signet build. I really don’t like how scepter and oh dagger ar ein PvP. Scepter is mainly 1 spam, it’s only really bleed and poison and the 3 skill needs a rework, and OH dagger is just too slow for me. Plus You can take The dagger 5 trait in curses and have enough transfers anyways.

Have you been successfully running any odd builds such as minion master or bunker?

- I’ve been mainly playing power signet necro with soldier amulet. I feel like we lack the sustain with cele and don’t use the heal power enough still. I haven’t tried condi at all (aside froma few games to test Zombify’s build) since our condi set keeps getting worse and it already lacked pressure. I haven’t ran zerker necro because literally every zerker class does the role better/counter a zerker necro. The mobility and sustain of other zerkers just completely screws ours over.

Main thoughts from me:

We really need CC fixed especially when they tone down burning damage or if they play with our signet trait imo.

We still need a lot more sustain to make up for our lack of mobility. We need some infinite scaling defense(s) like every other profession has.

Weapons need complete reworks namely axe and scepter, cast times still need fixed on offhands.

I literally took more damage from plague on a soldier necro with stacked might then 3 other people hitting me on mid to end a game. Plague needs something changed too. Just corruptions in general. NONE of them are strong enough to justify harm to yourself.

^ I agree with L Step on most parts.

Though cele feels somewhat useful if you run SoL, SoV and dagger main. Also no amount of toughness/vit makes current burst less scary, so I’d take more dmg from cele(crit, critdmg, condi) over useless def stats.

I had the same experience with plague with soldier amulett. Thanks to death breakdown I could see the 20k dmg from myself.

Also vamp runes are the bane of every necro. They not only cancel plague and DS but also kill minions(bye, bye emergency worm). One of the most detrimental runes for the class with access to “vampiric” traits.

All in all and despite signets of suffering beeing pretty fun: with the current feel I get from the class compared to the other toons I play I don’t think I’ll touch it until reaper is here.

Regarding healing skills…

There are traits that help handle conditions and I find myself using them frequently. Cosume Conditions is not too awful but the blind seems to be least offensive running scepter. WoP is the best for group support, especially when traited and combined with other condition or heal support traits. Blood Fiend still sucks but it hits reliably where most other minions do not. SoV still feels like it is the worst heal, even with signets traited and as much condition management as I can get. Only a signets build seems somewhat workable because I find myself using SotL and PS a lot. SoU is still a waste.

PS: SoV takes too long to cast for such a lame heal.

as other have said we are still in a crappy state all things considered. Condi, if we can even call it that, is only good due to transfers and lacks pressure on its own. Corruptions def need a rework, either make them more powerful to justify they harmful side effects or remove the side-effects completely even from the MoC as they would just be balanced relative to other professions atm (balancing Necros intrinsically is the reason we will NEVER be meta).

on a side note: it’s obvious some devs have been reading the Necro forums and we have given excellent feedback on helping the profession, but can someone explain to me WHY THE kitten are our suggestions are ending up on the kittening REVENANT?!!!!! really Anet? this is the kitten that makes Necros know you don’t give a kitten about us. get your kitten together!

Condition damage from Necromancer is so poor I do not think there is a worse class for it. Only Epidemic and transfers do anything significant and that is because they use conditions from other professions. Burning stacking is insane and Necromancer’s only significant condition damage contributor, bleeding, was nerfed because other professions get bleeding stacks on weapons that can do power damage.

If the devs nerf burning they should transfer some damage to other conditions all conditions spec that don’t have burning are underperforming, dhuumfire is not a reliable condition trait it’s way too weak also can they please fix that bug with converting stab and transferring fear? Not being able to rely on Terror is getting annoying.

Necromancer could really use a torch like Ranger.

Without that Elite new frost damage trait, Necromancer is awful at condition damage.

Well I just recently installed the game again hearing about all this new trait line hype and it is all great fun and all but then I got roflstomped a few times in sPVP by other classes without being able to do much so yeah…. It might be that I suck and also had not so good teams against duo or tri parties but the core problems for necro are still the same as they were 2-3 years ago(at least at that time I managed to do somewhat decent with a terrormancer which was before the dhummfire patch) and our condi damage keeps only going down for some reason. Sure we got some cool things and can now be a very effective ressurection or condi transfer bot but we are still a walking ping pong target with no mobility or proper defenses and stupid slow cast times which apparently are the theme of a class in an action game with insta teleports, instabursts, dashes, leaps, stealth and all the other evade and vulnerability stuff on others classes. I remember watching the reaper reveal stream and devs saying that they wanted greatsword necro to be like some kind of monster from a horror movie or game like pyramid head so you would have slow and hard hitting weapon skills(I don’t believe this will work in sPVP). With all of the current slow cast times and clunky weapon skills I sometimes feel like someone is playing a devil may cry game where my necro is the AI boss and the other person is the cool main character with all those insta dashes, jumpes and instant attacking high damage moves. I personaly believe that only a redesign could help necro but I guess I could just switch over to other classes or something.

Gates, now that other professions have found out how broken-OP they are in PvE, I have a bit of follow-on feedback.

Build
L80 Necromancer, full exotic Berserker armor and ascended trinkets, Runes of the Scholar, dagger/dagger – staff, Blood Magic/Spite/Death Magic, vampiric DS/Terror/signets, Lich

Event
Jungle Wurm

Result
0 loot from 3 Husk sub-bosses running dagger
Silver credit from Jungle Wurm

That is how badly under-powered Necromancer is in pure power/condition damage builds.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Alright, you guys know the drill! How are the changes so far? Either answer these questions for me or just talk about what you feel is important to mention for Necromancer.

Specific questions:

1. Blood line is clearly awesome. How’s the death line? Are you using it at all in non-minion master builds?
2. Condi was thought to be really bad before everything came out. Have you tried out This build by Zombify? How did you like it?
3. Have you been successfully running any odd builds such as minion master or bunker?
4. Yes, I already have feedback on CC and Plague. I nearly ran lich on my terrormancer. I stopped mid fight to say in say chat to my enemies “Can we take a moment to recognize the fact that my Flesh Golem is literally not helping me at all?”

I think the blood magic rework was very well done. I do think vampric presence could use a boost to its effectiveness on both damage output and healing output. I think its just an issue of tweaking numbers in general with the blood magic effectiveness.

I’ll probably never take death magic as I have no interest in tankiness…I’d rather avoid incoming damage.

I’ll never go the condi route either. I prefer direct damage. That being said, I love the spite and soul reaping lines. I am a bit irritated that the speed of shadows trait only boosts move speed while in shroud.

I am also noticing the lack of any viable elite at the moment. Like others have said, we need an elite that does not transform/take away our utilities. Something that boosts us during combat…like pretty much every other profession has. I’d prefer a signet, but then that goes to my issues with shroud.

Everyone clearly already knows how bad the CC change was. My issue is lack of viable alternatives if they aren’t going to revert it. I keep wanting to use Signet of Vampirism, but the conflict with shroud is killing this.

This brings me to my main issue with this profession…utilities in shroud. They really need to change their stance on this. It just doesn’t make sense to me to take half the profession away to use the class mechanic. I plan on going reaper, so that means I’ll be playing half a class at that rate. Signet passives not working when shrouded is just terrible.

Anchoku.8142:

Gates, now that other professions have found out how broken-OP they are in PvE, I have a bit of follow-on feedback.

Build
L80 Necromancer, full exotic Berserker armor and ascended trinkets, Runes of the Scholar, dagger/dagger – staff, Blood Magic/Spite/Death Magic, vampiric DS/Terror/signets, Lich

Event
Jungle Wurm

Result
0 loot from 3 Husk sub-bosses running dagger
Silver credit from Jungle Wurm

That is how badly under-powered Necromancer is in pure power/condition damage builds.

Ouch, but accurate.

Fractal runners are back to kicking necromancers from their pugs.

nekretaal.6485:

Anchoku.8142:

Gates, now that other professions have found out how broken-OP they are in PvE, I have a bit of follow-on feedback.

Build
L80 Necromancer, full exotic Berserker armor and ascended trinkets, Runes of the Scholar, dagger/dagger – staff, Blood Magic/Spite/Death Magic, vampiric DS/Terror/signets, Lich

Event
Jungle Wurm

Result
0 loot from 3 Husk sub-bosses running dagger
Silver credit from Jungle Wurm

That is how badly under-powered Necromancer is in pure power/condition damage builds.

Ouch, but accurate.

Fractal runners are back to kicking necromancers from their pugs.

While the bugs are still there, I’m surprised it’s not kicking anything that isn’t a Guardian.

If anything, the disparity between professions in world and instanced PvE events is much worse than pre-patch.

I continue to be amazed by the lack of beta testing.

Anchoku.8142:

I continue to be amazed by the lack of beta testing.

Believe it or not, developers are just regular people, and treading the line between ambitious changes and approaching deadlines can be difficult for anyone.

As long as they are on top of the issues, I’d rather see them get more adventurous then go back to the snail-paced tiny tweaks.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Anchoku.8142:

I continue to be amazed by the lack of beta testing.

Believe it or not, developers are just regular people, and treading the line between ambitious changes and approaching deadlines can be difficult for anyone.

As long as they are on top of the issues, I’d rather see them get more adventurous then go back to the snail-paced tiny tweaks.

LMAO, why do people think that you can only do one of the other? Devs are people and people can multi-task; they can be adventurous AND still test their kitten. this patch is a testament to the need for better testing because Necros are NOT competitive no matter the build or game type (unless playing a well bruiser in WvW is your idea of fun) and in some aspects the difference has been greatly exacerbated by this recent patch.

i am kittening tired of waiting for Anet to get their kitten together when it comes to Necros and i am tired of giving them feedback to help with the profession especially when Anet just takes Necro feedback and puts it on the kittening Revenant. Robert all i can do when i play my Necro is just shake my head, especially given what you did for Mesmers. big kittening /sigh

Overall we are so weak compared to all classes in pve, and we bring nothing to pvp unless The other team relies on condis.m truth be told, while we have more builds, we are not meta, and bring nothing useful to organized play.

Gryph.8237:

Overall we are so weak compared to all classes in pve, and we bring nothing to pvp unless The other team relies on condis.m truth be told, while we have more builds, we are not meta, and bring nothing useful to organized play.

TBH the few games I’ve tried to play as Condi necro in spvp… I never managed to get any transfers except the Plague Signets off, perma interrupted

As was posted above, I wouldn’t actually be so confused at necro’s state if not for the fact it’s by the same developer as Mesmer… which is currently one of the strongest. Necro is certainly better than it was pre-patch, problem is so is everything else. If it was the only class to have had these upgrades it would probably be in a good spot.

Currently I see no reason to ever want to pick Dhuumfire. Blood has become more interesting. Death Magic will never be interesting with the current poor state of minion AI, and I haven’t found a use for it on none-MM builds.

Overall with some traits now being baseline, I find myself in a position where I have more freedom to choose other traits for my well-o-mancer. So well-builds seem in a better spot now. Consume Conditions is absolutely horrible, and I would never choose it as it is now.

I just want to point out that despite blood getting much better and improving power PvE builds in some areas, power builds still need a huge dps boost to be comparable to other professions. DnT recently calculated death shroud builds at around 8k dps and dagger builds at 10k dps, just as a reference this is the bottom of the barrel in pve with most averaging in around 14k and engi because it’s broken at 17k dps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuwFe2Aaxk&feature=youtu.be

Condition builds in PvE are still terrible due to ramp up time and the fact that even once reaching max dps they still have less dps than power. The bleed damage formula needs to scale better with condition damage or dhummfire needs to be buffed enough to make it viable in PvE. You might need to make some changes to life blasts cast times as well, considering even a power ds build is only around 8k dps.

Hybrid is awful. Sinister does nothing as Necro.

And unless the AI is fixed, Minions won’t be a true option.