Guild Wars 2

Just some thoughts, how I think that this Class could get improved to make more fun to play:
I’ll beginn first with Changes to the Utility Skills:

Minions

First of All, I think it would be best to move the whole Minion Skills away from the Utility Skills and instead add to the Necromancer with F2-F4 3 *Minion Slots", so that every Necromancer would have always regardless of the Necromancer Build 3 different additional Minions at their side. This would give the Necromancer Gameplay the space to give the Class 4 new better and more useful Utility Skills that are nostalgic to the Necromancer Class and should belong to their Skill Repertoire.
Together with this, the Minion Design should get changed also, with 3 completely new Minions, because I’m dead sure, when I say, mostly everybody finds the current Minions absolutely ugly and useless, because of their bad A.I/Skill Effects which get only abused by other player classes, like Thieves having basically a free source of Stealth.

So this that are the 3 Minions I would like to see beign preset for F2-4:

F2: Bone Hounds (remember those?: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Skeleton_hound.jpg) Thats the way how Bone Minions should look like, changes under water into Bone Sharks
Summon two Bone Hounds, which cause with their Bites Bleedings, use Howl of Fear and if killed, they explode in poisonous Death Novas automatically.
Once summoned, F2 changes into the Skill “Gate to the Underworld”, which turns your Bone Hounds into Hellhounds, letting them deal now instead Burning with their Attacks, while their howls cause instead of Fear now Torment and if they get killed, cause Fire Novas that make foes vulnerable.

The Bone Sharks are simpler designed, once summoned, F2 changes into “Blood Rush” which when pressed, lets your Bone Sharks attack two different nearby targets with fast multiple hitting bites that close gaps, causign with hit hit a Stack of Bleeding, while parts of their dealt damage gets added to you as Life Leech and Life Force gain while gaining two Boons that might have been stolen by them from foes.

F3: Nephilim/ Underwater it are then Phantom Irukandji
Nephilims are Flesh Reavers that are basically now the new merged Flesh Wurm and Bone Fiend together.
These kind of Flesh Reavers that you summon, have ranged attacks which cripple foes, but are more mobile, than the previous two Minions. When summoned, F3 turns into “Necrotic Traversal”, which sacrifices your Nephilim and lets you teleport to its position, causing at the position a AoE Torment and lose self up to 3 conditions if traited, otherwise 2.
Phantom Irukandjis, the Underwater Version use the same skill, also Necrotic Traversal, but is has other attack skills that are more similar to the Jellyfishs that we know from the Kodan Dungeon, that cause Chill/Poison and deal multile hits. They have the ability there also to go into Stealth.

F4) Vampiric Horror (same on land/water)
Vampiric Horrors are improved Versions of the Shadow Fiend, just with a different look, that does look more like a real Necromancer Minion and not just like a black ball with eyes. Remodel for them the Design of a Shadow Skelk http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Skelk.
The attacks of the Vampiric Horror do life leech and ignore armor/boons like Protection/Aegis. With its attacks it heals itself automatically and a part of its dealt damage heals the Necromancer also. (Weaker than the Heals from Blood Fiend).
They can go into stealth and deal Blindness with their Stealth Attacks if they hit.
F4 turns when summoned into “Infuse Conditions”, which lets you lose all conditions on you and moves them to Vampiric Horror, which turns them into the counterpart Boons for itself. Works also as Stun Break.
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New Utilities for the removed Minion Utilities – Curses
Curses are the replacement for the moved Minion utilities.

These would be the Curses the Necromancer should get:

Insidious Parasite
Gain the same Health Gains too, whenever your cursed Foe also receives a Heal, while this Curse is active. But your Conditions last therefore in that time 25% shorter.

Price of Failure
Blinds your Foe for the next 10 seconds every 3s and lets the Foe suffer on damage, whenever the attacks of the cursed foe get missed or blocked. You gain for this Skill meanwhile every 3 seconds some Vulnerability.

Rigor Mortis
The Skill from Bone Fiends gets moved here and becomes improved.
A large AoE Immobilization/big Torment if enemies use Stun Breaks/Condition Cleaners, but counts for you too.

Rotting Flesh
Lets the Necromancer deal a new Condition – Disease, which works like a spreaking out Poison to nearby foes, but instead of reducing the Healing , it increases the Endurance Cost for Dodges by 33 and adds a chance, that Auto Attacks can cause additional Vulnerability. You receive Bleedings when using this Skill.

While I like your minion idea, I’m quite certain it will never happen. People are still complaining about the ‘clutter’ the minion mancer causes despite the spec being far less common these days. No one will want every Necromancer out there running it for free.

If you want to streamline the minions in some way, why not just merge them all into a single utility skill? Heck, make it a Signet. Passive is you will have a 10% chance on crit to summon a random minion. There will be an overall cap on how many minions you can summon and each type of minion will have another cap. The active portion of the signet will cause all your minions to explode. Minions will use the same logic as turrets where they’ll shift to your current target and each kind of just auto attacks or has an aura. This way you can still feel like you have an army of undead/minions at your command but they feel more like fodder and don’t eat up so much utility.

I like the premise behind some of you curses too. I especially like the one that causes dodges to cost more vigor. Rigor Mortis may give the class some reliable defensive tools to help them survive being trained. The heal one seems excessive and to balance it perhaps it should poison you instead?

I haven’t been playing Necro that long. Maybe a month or so now. But the complete lack of mobility, no way to escape a melee train, and how most anti-condi options the class has require LOS and have a cast time make escaping quite difficult. I think if they were to add/change things, the focus should be on trying to give the Necro something to help with these areas. Obviously most of them are by design, but even just 1 mobility skill/knockback or an AE root would be a welcome change.

Atherakhia.4086:

Obviously most of them are by design, but even just 1 mobility skill/knockback or an AE root would be a welcome change.

You mean like Tainted Shackles?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Atherakhia.4086:

Obviously most of them are by design, but even just 1 mobility skill/knockback or an AE root would be a welcome change.

You mean like Tainted Shackles?

In addition to that and more of a utility skill as opposed to a DS option.

Won’t happen. This idea is the ranger class mechanic. Ranger has the copyright!