With the impending AOE nerf across all classes I can’t help but worry that the king of AOE, the necro will take a serious hit. For those that doubt our AOE abilities just look at the spamable marks, four wells you can slot, and an AOE blind, cripple, and bleed from plague form. That’s nine useful AOE skills you have access too at one time. Of course our wells are restricted to so we can only lay one at a time, they have a long cool down, and are much better suited for support than damage. The only well that deals a significant amount of damage, well of corruption, is very situational. Even our marks are better for support(2,4,5). Hopefully Arena Net is able to see things our way and looks favorably upon an already week class but in the event they don’t there are a few things I would like to see to help us deal single target damage and perhaps live up to our design philosophy.
First up is our supposed ability to chase down enemies and be hard to escape from. I really can’t think of anyone who would describe the necro in this way. If I’m wielding a dagger thieves can run literal circles around me while I flail wildly at air. It’s almost comical how dumb it looks. The only time I can get in melee range is when the other person wants to be in melee as well. If thieves and mesmers are supposed to be the elusive class we should have more abilities to counter them. Fixing dark path so it’s more reliable would be great. The tracking ability really doesn’t seem to work very well. I would rather have a faster projectile that’s hard to dodge than a semi working tracking projectile. When Jon Peters describes it here ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/PHEW/first ) he makes it sound like an advantage so he has more time to cast other thing. I think most of us would prefer to cast it and instantly be there so we can immediately start meleing. I would love it if this functioned like the thieves steel ability. If we are supposed to live up to our design though Arena Net really needs to commit to their philosophy for us and give us another gap closer. I would propose changing the dagger 2 ability to a shadow step to target. Preferably it would have a 600 range with a shortish cool down. This wouldn’t give us any escape ability but would give us better pursuit.
I know there has been mention of giving the portal ability to another class and I would love to see it with the necro. It would fit our design description and theme. Perhaps changing spectral grasp to a skill that casts a portal at your feet, shadow steps to the target and casts a portal at their feet would be awesome. I would of course be happy with a duplicate skill of the Mesmers.
A couple other suggestions that everyone already knows:
• Fix the axe. I don’t know how. I haven’t used it in a long time but it’s awful
• It would be nice to have more access to boons to help with our tankiness. Maybe add longer protection from wells.
• Let life siphon scale with healing power a little bit. This would give us more reason to stack HP and make the vampiric build that a lot of people want to use possible.
TLDR: Please don’t nerf our AOE! Give us reliable gap closers. Necros would be perfect for the portal ability! Fix the axe. Give more access to boons. Let life siphon scale with heal power.
Please fill in with what you think would help us live up to our design description.