Guild Wars 2

So we all know that necromancers suffer from a lack of mobility. We’re not that great at chasing and we’re even worse at escaping. This got me thinking on why exactly Dark Path is a projectile. To me this squanders the greatest use of the ability which is the teleport. It’s just too unreliable and too easily dodgeable to be of much use as currently implemented.

Now ponder for a moment if Dark Path instead of a slow moving projectile was an instant teleport which brought the necromancer to his target kind of like how shadowstep works for thieves. Would this not effectively remedy most of our mobility issues? I realize that a change like this wouldn’t come without a price but I can’t help but think that it might be a price worth paying. Thoughts?

i like it as it is and necro can get mobility take worm minion and spectral walk.

Honestly it was better before the recent patch. Before you could keep within 1200 or so of your target, and it would still teleport you to them, even if they projectile flew a significantly longer distance. This make it good for actually chasing targets.

After the patch, they increased the projectile speed which was nice, but the change to prevent the projectile from going more then 1200 was a surprisingly significant nerf. It’s in a better state now if your target isn’t outright running away from you, (so in PvP it’s still mainly fine) but when chasing people down while in WvW it’s really killer to our ability to prevent people from disengaging. It’s not useless or anything, but it was an unfortunate change.

While I would certainly enjoy if it was an instant effect skill instead of a projectile, I doubt it would happen, I remember one dev citing the slow projectile speed as an intended, advantageous thing, to cast skills while the projectile was travelling. Of course I’d much rather be able to instantly teleport to them then start casting skills… But yeah.

baylock.1703:

i like it as it is and necro can get mobility take worm minion and spectral walk.

The problem with wurm is that it necessitates setup. It isn’t an active ability which can be used to break away from a fight or to pursue unless you set it up prior to the fight. While it does have a place in SPvP to an extent it just doesn’t work in WvWvW where I’d argue we need escapes the most. Another issue with it is that it isn’t a true teleport like say a mesmer portal. So if an object comes between the player and the wurm it’s not going to travel the full distance. Big issue that.

I’d probably always pack wurm if it was a true teleport but as it stands I find it just as flawed as dark pact. And that’s really the crux of the issue here, no? We do have all these beautiful skills designed for mobility but they all come with crippling flaws.

While I do understand the change to make it not teleport you more than 1200 distance from the point it was fired, it did hurt the necro’s ability to keep people from escaping. That’s an ability we are supposed to have, but everyone else has the tools to just escape regardless of what the necro can do. (save other necros and non-GS Guardians).

I really wish ANet would look better into making the necro actually difficult to escape from, but really, that requires nerfing the other classes or giving the necros brand new mechanics.

Tainted Shackel was a good step in making Necros hard to get away from, but the bigger issue, for me, is that although our weapon sets have many movement debuffs, but people are still reliably getting away.
Why? Mainly because most have very long casting times.
Decreasing our weapons’ casting times would do wonders to Necro’s lockdown and many other facets of the game.

The projectile is still too darn slow. A Chilled target can practically outrun it. If it were as fast as the projectile from Spectral Grasp, it would be in a much better place.

And the recharge is atrocious; especially since the kitten thing practically requires the planets to align just right in order to do what it is supposed to do.

Overkillengine.6084:

And the recharge is atrocious; especially since the kitten thing practically requires the planets to align just right in order to do what it is supposed to do.

That’s the funniest part: it fails so often and takes so long to hit its target anyway that I sometimes forget I even used it until I suddenly teleport.

I remember distinctly that Anet likes the slow projectile, and some dev mentioned how they liked to chain dagger 3 while the projectile was in the air for an instant chill bleed and immobilize (I am rolling my eyes right now).

That being said, I rarely ever have it dodged. People seem to always dodge too early and get hit. The 1200 range change was rough though, because before it would always hit if you got it to lock on, even if they made it outside 1200. Now even if it locks on, and they can get outside of 1200 while it is traveling, it will dud out.

Still the best skill we have hands down, so I can’t hate on it. A speed increase on it would actually give me problems with skill timings oddly enough. If it did goes as fast as spectral chillypull, it would be an amazingly better escape too. As it is right now, I can just about run past it while it is moving.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Overkillengine.6084:

And the recharge is atrocious; especially since the kitten thing practically requires the planets to align just right in order to do what it is supposed to do.

That’s the funniest part: it fails so often and takes so long to hit its target anyway that I sometimes forget I even used it until I suddenly teleport.

I often port to the wrong target (when it works at all) because it moves slow enough someone else can get in the way.

Joy.

The two most notable situations where it hits the wrong thing for me is firstly rangers, where the pet will often be behind them when they’re moving around, but if they’re within range of the aoe chill it’s not to bad.
The second case, is my most hated skill, PHASE RETREAT. The projectile will try follow them when they phase retreat, but since the skill drops a clone, it almost always hits that instead. Heh.

Rennoko.5731:

That being said, I rarely ever have it dodged. People seem to always dodge too early and get hit. The 1200 range change was rough though, because before it would always hit if you got it to lock on, even if they made it outside 1200. Now even if it locks on, and they can get outside of 1200 while it is traveling, it will dud out.

They tend to dodge away from it, and due to the slow projectile speed, that fails a lot. Dodging towards it isn’t really an option if they’re trying to open some space either.

if it is as slow as it is today it should be 1200 when fired or 1500 range period imo. It takes forever to latch on the target so whats the big deal with added range especially when it is a telegraphed skill an opponent can dodge.