Guild Wars 2

So everyone knows Necros are valuable in group fights and can be difficult opponents when played well, but will always be on the short end compared to any other class other than warriors which are in similar situation fundamentally. Other professions can do almost everything necros can do and more, and have more mobility, fluid skill use, escape ability, and boon access. Necro imo is a very good class and fun to play, but just so clunky and slow. So I’ve thought of some things to bring them up to speed that doesn’t go outside of what you would consider a necro skill or ability.

1. Lets give necros some mobility. Two ideas to do this.
A. Scepter 3 attack, Feast of Corruption. Make it a melee, leaping attack to add some gap closing ability/mobility and a leap finisher and adds some flair as you jam your scepter in your foes face and rip his corruptions out. Or instead you could do this to Unholy Feast, the Axe #3 but I like the scepter idea more.

B. Remove a spectral utility skill, imo spectral wall (yes i know its a decent skill but its the least used in my experience) and add a new skill, Spectral Portal. Basically like thief shadowstep except with Necro style. 900 range port that keeps a return ability open for 8s and gives the spectral life force gain on hit as long as the portal is open. Might be a bit too much like Spectral Walk, but open for suggestions to help the idea.

2. Slow, Clunky skill use. Necros have some great skills with off hand weapons and some utility skills that are bogged down with ridiculous cast times or lengthy animations/slow projectiles. It’s impossible to time skills with 1+ second cast times. Your target is most likely going to move out of range/los, evade, block, go invulnerable, or do something by the time you finally hit your target. Whats the tactic for these skills? “Im gonna use it now and hope it hits him when it gets there or actually goes off”? Speed the pace up and increase effectiveness.

3. Reanimator. People have complained about it for long enough, so lets just get rid of the trait and replace it with something necros do need. One of these perhaps:
A. Increased endurance regen or vigor upon crit.
B. 5-8% chance to turn a boon into a condition on hit.
C. 5% chance to fear foe when hit.

4. Necrotic Grasp. Staff auto attack is frustratingly slow. If I can almost outrun it myself, Im not gonna hit many mobility enemies with it. Speed that crap up a bit. Other than that staff is great.

5. Stability and Boon access that is not dependent on DS. Fury, retaliation, and stability is only given or most reliably given when entering DS. We should have access to these boons in another way that is not so dependent on a DS build. Especially stability since we have only 3 stun breaks which really have no place in certain builds. And any access to vigor would be just dandy.

These are my ideas, I think I had more but I can’t remember them right now so this is what Im gonna post. Hopefully these ideas trend and Anet likes them. Positive or constructive criticism only please.

1.yes, we might need a little bit more mobility/gap closing. but improving dark path or spectral grasp (=making it faster and more reliable) would already help a lot.
A Gapcloser on scepter? rly? Dagger could maybe need a gap closer but in no way scepter.

Spectral Wall: Just no. Pls dont try to ruin my spectral wall. Its a good skill. And “the least used spectral skill”? Please dont tell me you actually use the armor.

2.Yes, it’s annoying. Would love to see some cast times shortened, but by now im already kinda used to it.

3.Yeh, Reanimator is bad, everybody knows that by now. But your suggestions are either too unreliable for my taste or kinda unfitting (the crit-part of vigor-on-crit)

4.again, everybody wants that. nothing new

5.It’s 4 stun breaks.

Replace Reanimator with 2s of Retaliation when you get crit, just so people will stop crying about it.

1. A. Why would you put a leap on the Scepter. It’s a ranged weapon that is best suited for keeping opponents at a distance… and lookit that. It has an AoE cripple to help you do just that. Arguably speaking, the weapon best suited for any kind of leap towards target would be the Dagger.

B. It’s not that your idea is too much akin to Spectral Walk (though it definitely is), but that it’s basically a carbon copy of Portal without the Team Functionality.

To make my point clear though, the problem isn’t that we have lack mobility. It’s that we lack the ability to prevent other classes from disengaging which is more in line with what the developers want. However the current amount of cleansing makes this extremely problematic to actually achieve. We have chills and cripples, we also have them in the form of gap closers (spectral grasp and dark path) however something is not working in that these skills simply aren’t landing due to pathing/speed issues.

3. People keep telling me that I hate Reanimator. “Everybody hates it.” “Nobody likes it.” Please stop making these great sweeping declarations for other people. I find arguments to be more compelling when they don’t involve rationales that imply everybody agree’s with you already (if everybody everywhere agreed that this trait needed to go, Anet would have replaced it because they’d have agreed it needed to go. See the dilemma?). That aside, I genuinely don’t mind it. I don’t love it, nor do I hate it. It’s there and wholly tolerable. Moving on.

4. Stability is really the game breaker and I’m in agreement. We need access to this in order to be a proper attrition class. This is again linked to the question of ‘do we need mobility’. No, we need more adequate tools in order to sustain damage and remain in control of the fight. Necros have no means of escaping players, therefore we need the means to stay up and fighting because we don’t have a reset button. Every fight is a fight to the death because that’s the only alternative to winning.

So more reliable/effective snares + access to Stability would go a very long way to making us the Attrition class Anet keeps talking about.

Ratphink.4751:

To make my point clear though, the problem isn’t that we have lack mobility. It’s that we lack the ability to prevent other classes from disengaging which is more in line with what the developers want. However the current amount of cleansing makes this extremely problematic to actually achieve. We have chills and cripples, we also have them in the form of gap closers (spectral grasp and dark path) however something is not working in that these skills simply aren’t landing due to pathing/speed issues.

So more reliable/effective snares + access to Stability would go a very long way to making us the Attrition class Anet keeps talking about.

I don’t get why people keep saying we need more Stability to play attrition. Most classes have pretty slim access to Stability. I think Warrior and Guardian are really the only 2 that have a lot of it.

And as for preventing other classes from disengaging…which classes? Is this about Thieves and Elementalists? Those are really the only 2 that come to mind when I think of classes that I just can’t catch no matter what. All the others are fairly simple to corner with the tools we have. I mean, it’s too bad those are 2 very popular classes but that’s probably why. Everyone has that problem. Thieves and Elementalists are just hard to nail down in general.

The idea of a Necro seems fundamentally flawed at the moment, in the notion that we should be an attrition class. I find myself really only in need of one thing, and that’s the ability to obliterate mobility.

Necros need more immobilizes. As a class that should be hard to escape from, our ability to negate mobility should be on par with the ability to be mobile as a Thief. Simply, a Necro should generally be able to make it difficult for a Thief to escape.

I’m okay with not being mobile. I understand that a Necro’s way around combat is at a slower pace, but in exchange for being able to potentially last longer*. Necromancers need more tools to be able to be the one profession that can lock an opponent down and keep them from escaping.**

*Debatable, at this point.

**We have this in a perma-chill build, but even then, it’s not ideal and even sometimes impractical.

Adjust/lower cast times and make chill actually do something to thieves skills. The class mobility frankly is a non-issue for me now as I have gotten used to it. Currently my only other beef is how easy conditions are removed in mass. I think all FULL clear conditions should be changed to just three conditions, and necro should get a trait for skill that give condition cleans a chance to fail.

Ratphink.4751:

1. A. Why would you put a leap on the Scepter. It’s a ranged weapon that is best suited for keeping opponents at a distance… and lookit that. It has an AoE cripple to help you do just that. Arguably speaking, the weapon best suited for any kind of leap towards target would be the Dagger.

True the scepter is already ranged and dagger would be more appropriate for a leap, but as I was thinking at the time, scepter 3 would be easiest to integrate to a leap with the current skills without changing much.

Ratphink.4751:

B. It’s not that your idea is too much akin to Spectral Walk (though it definitely is), but that it’s basically a carbon copy of Portal without the Team Functionality.

To make my point clear though, the problem isn’t that we have lack mobility. It’s that we lack the ability to prevent other classes from disengaging which is more in line with what the developers want. However the current amount of cleansing makes this extremely problematic to actually achieve. We have chills and cripples, we also have them in the form of gap closers (spectral grasp and dark path) however something is not working in that these skills simply aren’t landing due to pathing/speed issues.

More of a copy to Shadowstep on a thief as I mentioned, except with different visual effects and the spectral buff of life force gain on hit for the duration. Like I said tho, up for more ideas on the mobility issue. Altho I do like your argument about the bigger issue being disengaging opponents, I still think some amount of mobility should be required for all professions to keep the playing field somewhat level. A huge part of this game is avoiding big damage, not trying to mitigate it. With slow speed, minimal dodging, and no mobility skills, the necro is most likely to be force to take that big damage. We do have the DS hp to help deal with that but it just feels so clunky to me. Perhaps that is from my first toon being a thief. Also in WvW its insanely difficult to dodge a zerg that you weren’t prepared for and its unfair to say "because of the nature of a necro and how we want it, you should just accept that you might as well stand there and let the zergs crush you while your friends zip off into the sunlight, scratch-free. Not saying we need a get out of jail free skill but at least a better option than currently available.

Ratphink.4751:

3. People keep telling me that I hate Reanimator. “Everybody hates it.” “Nobody likes it.” Please stop making these great sweeping declarations for other people. I find arguments to be more compelling when they don’t involve rationales that imply everybody agree’s with you already (if everybody everywhere agreed that this trait needed to go, Anet would have replaced it because they’d have agreed it needed to go. See the dilemma?). That aside, I genuinely don’t mind it. I don’t love it, nor do I hate it. It’s there and wholly tolerable. Moving on.

I wasn’t making the argument that everyone hates it and wants it gone. You and a lot of people don’t mind it or have issues with it, but I’m confident that if it was replaced with a much more useful trait you and the other would not complain. That is what I was going for. Replacing reanimator with a trait that was better all the way around.

Ratphink.4751:

4. Stability is really the game breaker and I’m in agreement. We need access to this in order to be a proper attrition class. This is again linked to the question of ‘do we need mobility’. No, we need more adequate tools in order to sustain damage and remain in control of the fight. Necros have no means of escaping players, therefore we need the means to stay up and fighting because we don’t have a reset button. Every fight is a fight to the death because that’s the only alternative to winning.

So more reliable/effective snares + access to Stability would go a very long way to making us the Attrition class Anet keeps talking about.

Completely agree.

Also I’d like to see some better or improved elite skills. I feel like adding in an elite that worked off the normal skillset somehow would be amazing. The transformations are decent skills but have long cooldowns and are easily countered with ranged dps and boon removal.

Zeke Minus.5720:

The idea of a Necro seems fundamentally flawed at the moment, in the notion that we should be an attrition class. I find myself really only in need of one thing, and that’s the ability to obliterate mobility.

Necros need more immobilizes. As a class that should be hard to escape from, our ability to negate mobility should be on par with the ability to be mobile as a Thief. Simply, a Necro should generally be able to make it difficult for a Thief to escape.

I’m okay with not being mobile. I understand that a Necro’s way around combat is at a slower pace, but in exchange for being able to potentially last longer*. Necromancers need more tools to be able to be the one profession that can lock an opponent down and keep them from escaping.**

*Debatable, at this point.

**We have this in a perma-chill build, but even then, it’s not ideal and even sometimes impractical.

Rennoko.5731:

Adjust/lower cast times and make chill actually do something to thieves skills. The class mobility frankly is a non-issue for me now as I have gotten used to it. Currently my only other beef is how easy conditions are removed in mass. I think all FULL clear conditions should be changed to just three conditions, and necro should get a trait for skill that give condition cleans a chance to fail.

I agree with both of you and it is well said. It would take some tweaks like these to really change the whole situation of a necro in this game. I love the idea that Anet created for necros and I’m sure it looked good on paper but it’s flawed in reality. Can hope that Anet sees what we see and makes some adjustments to put necros at full potential.

Rennoko.5731:

Adjust/lower cast times and make chill actually do something to thieves skills. The class mobility frankly is a non-issue for me now as I have gotten used to it. Currently my only other beef is how easy conditions are removed in mass. I think all FULL clear conditions should be changed to just three conditions, and necro should get a trait for skill that give condition cleans a chance to fail.

I would, instead, be happy with a trait that did damage based on how many of my own conditions were cleansed, or have my conditions do damage if they are removed before they expire. This would help to emphasize the back-and-forth play of PvP and create interesting decisions.

Another, possibly more feasible, idea would be to give Necros more “boon hate.” For instance, something like ‘Scepter 3: Converts 2 boons into opposing conditions,’ or give the Necro the ability to steal boons which would coincide with the idea of attrition (Wearing a player down the longer the fight continues and becoming stronger).

I would take sceptor three converting just ONE boon into a debuff personally, but they have discussed boon hate at length elsewhere on the forums, and I am not sure we would get any love in that department as we are already just about the best at removing them.

I agree on the condition ideas though. I just don’t see them giving us more raw damage from a condition build, but I could be wrong.