Guild Wars 2

When is that last time you used or saw any other Lich skill other than#1 used on you?

Players have figured out how to dance around #1, so the whole form is useless unless the other skills can do something for you.

I’m asking for trouble asking for Lich Buffs when everyone else is asking for Rampage nerfs, but Lich is overdue for the Icebow treatment. (Other skills being buffed so the elite isn’t a one trick pony).

Reminder here is what the Lich skills actually are:

Deathly Claws 3/4. Send out grasping claws to damage your foes.

 Marked for Death 1 10 Inscribe a mark that makes a foe vulnerable when they trigger it.

 Chilling Wind ¼ 20 Release a freezing wind that chills and pushes back foes.

 Mark of Horror 1½ 25 Inscribe a mark that summons five jagged horrors when a foe triggers it.

 Grim Specter ¾ 30 Lose all conditions and send out a claw that explodes at the target area. The claw and explosion rip boons from foes and cure conditions on allies.

In addition, all of the skills seem to have a long aftercast.

The two lich marks did get area buffs in the recent patch. They are huge now, which is nice, but it’s not enough.

Think about that. 4 out of the 5 skills are gigantic AoE skills that damage enemies and/or buff your team, but using lich in a team fight doesn’t happen because those skills don’t cut it.

Marked for Death is particularly disappointing.

You have this really cool green flaming skull animation (this is one of the coolest things we have on necromancer), and all you get for it is terrible damage and Consume Conditions level vulnerability.

Is Chilling Wind the worst CC in the game? Necromancer is starved for CC, especially in lich form where everybody just dances around it, and still this skill doesn’t get used. What is the problem here? The long aftercast or weird aiming and animation don’t help.

I like Mark of Horror even though it does no damage. Its in solid "underpowered but still fun territory. Maybe it should get a reduced cast time. Players who take minion traits are not asking Lich (which destroys minions).

Grim Specter is a full Condi clear & a full boon rip in AoE. I thought that kind of stuff was removed from the game along with staff 4 nerfs! And yet, this skill Still doesn’t see use. Maybe it could be transformed into full “old staff 4” with damage and a finisher added. Or maybe, since most necromancer boon rips are getting tuned into corruptions, this could too. For a skill that can be used only once every 3 minutes, hat s no asking a lot.

Since the further reduction in lich duration you really need to be wary of which skills you use since they all have long lousy cast times

waste no time wasting the target with 1 spam nothing else is worth it at all with such a short 15 duration at the moment

Pretty much, with 15 second duration, you can’t do much of anything else other than spam 1. And even if you spam 1, you’re lucky to get a handful of hits in before Lich wears off. The non-homing projectiles from Lich 1 can easily be los’ed or side strafed. Not to mention a guardian could just put up wall of reflection and watch you either kill yourself, or cry to sleep.

Lich is flawed, its use is very situational and very one dimensional.

Honestly, Marked for Death is terrible but all the other skills are not terrible – they’re just not as good as the autoattack with its massive damage! The problem with the other skills is that the cast times is extremely long. Mark of Horror would be good if it was 0.75" like every other mark in the game, but at 1.25 it’s literally 2 autoattacks – those poor jaggies will never do the amount of damage you could do in zerker gear with 2 Ghastly Claws. (Unless you’re using condi gear, in which case they outdamage 2xGhastly Claws, but it’s unlikely you’re using Lich Form on a conditionmancer…)

As for Chilling Wind, I know what the tooltip says but there’s no way that kitten only takes 0.25" to cast – from the moment you start casting until the actual pushback it’s probably closer to about 1"! Probably one of those skills where the actual effect occurs during the aftercast instead of during the cast time (like Grasping Dead doesn’t actually land until 0.25" after you’ve finished casting it). Plus it keeps missing, maybe the arc is too small? It should be 360 degrees, and either instant cast or much further knockback.

I agree with most said above. What I DO like about lich form is when some players are not aware of how to counter it and they just run away in PvP (when they get lucky and I can’t kill them spamming 1)

That being said, I’ve used the jagged horrors to “distract” and Chilling Wind to get somebody out of my face, but I generally don’t use them because of cast times and I only have such few precious seconds in lich form.

I rarely, if ever, use the other skills.

Grim Scepter is the best skill in the game, if you don’t use it when you lich you are using lich wrong.

manveruppd.7601:

As for Chilling Wind, I know what the tooltip says but there’s no way that kitten only takes 0.25" to cast – from the moment you start casting until the actual pushback it’s probably closer to about 1"!

I’m glad somebody pointed this out. I was surprised when I read the tooltip, because the ingame skill seemed to take forever to do anything.

Lich used to be decent a long time ago. Then they nerfed the stat scaling, the duration, then the stability nerf with lich getting only 1 stack instead of the normal 3 each transformation ever has.
Now with the duration nerf it’s pretty much dead.

It was bad before patch too because it didn’t even require boon removal just 2ccs in a 3-second time frame which is totally doable in team fights. Or you know, a random thief steal, mesmer shatter, other necro dark path etc.

Lich was and still is a huge green punching bag. At least it has its own dance so you can still use it to entertain your friends.

I disagree, the duration nerf is not a big deal, you rarely could stay in it for the full 20" anyway. The fact that it gives 20% life force on exiting is a HUGE buff for shroudmancers, if anything! Means if you’re focussed as a Lich you can always instantly drop out and into shroud, rather than just die like you used to. Plus you can now trait it to take over half a minute off its recharge, and have it give an EXTRA 5% life force on activation!

The skills #1 (for DPS), #3 (for chill and have low cast time) and #5 (for boon removal) are somewhat good. But #2 and #4 are complete garbage, there is no reason at all to use them.

Honestly I think the skill would be much stronger if it wasn’t a proper transform but acted like Rampage as One, with an non-boon buff that boosts DPS and is removed if you enter DS, and then had a secondary active while in Lich that allowed you to use the current 5 skill. It wouldn’t boost your HP anymore and not being able to go into DS means you are still squishy, but you have to counterplay the Necro’s normal abilities.