Guild Wars 2

As said in the introduction, necromancer currently works in all game modes. To be precise, we have:

• great class in open-world thanks to amazing self-buffing and « passive » tankiness
• meta condi build for raids, in great part thanks to minions and epidemic
• meta corruptomancer for PvP, being one of the best class at removing the loads of boons and having very high condi pressure
• meta wells back/mid-line for WvW, thanks to ranged AOE damage but mostly boon corrupts.

However, there are a few very important negative side to this nice picture:

• power damage is very low in instanced PvE, where the self-buffing (and to some extent the passive tankiness) does not matter. The main reason is the rarity of damage multipliers. On top of that, the class lacks offensive support and is thus completely dispensable.
• Power necromancer is nowhere near meta. Also, both power and condi are incredibly susceptible to focus-damage because we lack scalable defenses and have low access to stunbreak/stability. This means the meta build needs to be baby-sitted to work.
• Despite some good tools in Reaper specialization, necromancer has difficulties going frontline, mostly because of lack of invulnerabilities to escape when a fight is turning dire. Also, the damage as backline is fairly limited, staff being more utility than anything.

The key problem of necromancer is the shroud mechanics. It gives insane passive defense. To balance this, the developers have prevented us access to:

• active defenses (block/evades/invuln)
• slow (easily interrupted) and low healing (compared to our health pool)
• High damage
  So when trying to add those things to the necromancer, care has to be taken to remove some passive defense at the same time to keep the class balanced.

A secondary problem the apparent lack of support. While classes like guardians or elementalist can load you with boons, the necro has barely any access to boons. However that does not mean the necro has not support. Far from it! Actually, if you look at the necromancer design, you can see a very strong parallel with the guardian. I would argue that the necromancer has one of the highest amount of supportive skills/mechanics in the game, but it is not « direct » support, but « debuffing » support. For each guardian « aegis », there is a necromancer « blind », for each « protection », a « weakness », for each « might » a « vulnerability », for each condition cleanse, the necromancer brings boon rip.

The problem is that the game favors boons to conditions. This is clear in PvE where you can give all your team protection/aegis but weakness/blind will just go to the breakbar. Also, debuffs require your to hit a target while boons don’t. Finally, the amount of condi cleanse is far greater than the amount of boon rip. Also, arenanet have started to give debuffs like candies (almost everybody can apply decent vulnerability, weakness, even chill now).

The strength of debuffs should still not be underestimated, but for them to shine as they should, a global rebalance has to be done. I will not develop those, but a key point is described here in the « Condition cleanse and the boon/debuff balance » section:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Maths-Power-Boon-vs-Conditions-balance/first#post6190749

So to fix the problems of necromancer, I did change a lot of skills and traits. Here are some of the key ideas:

• Rework corruption skills. They now sacrifice Life Force and give strong offensive effects. The previous design with self-applied conditions was not working because it is difficult to balance considering conditions can be transferred. The new corruption skills as well as the trait going with them would be very useful, especially in PvE for higher damage and support. They sacrifice sustain for offense, being an elegant solution to the problem mentioned in « My analysis ».
• Spectral skills are reworked to be the answer to the lack of « active defenses ». They do not all provide life force, since active defenses should not add to passive defenses. Also as before, the trait is in competition with « Vital persistence ». Spectral armor is an exception, being an short evade and providing life force, and this may therefore be the strongest spectral skill, but I think the current status of necromancer allows to have one of those without making it OP.
• Necromancer have a love-hate relationship with Staff. I think it is because the staff is very good at what it does (PvP/WvW utility weapon and insane life force building), is our only long range and AOE weapon, but bad at everything else and quite boring design. All skills have now been reworked. They keep a mostly similar theme as the previous ones, but are no longer marks (except skill 2)and have a somewhat significant damage increase while also being a support weapon. At the same time all other weapons now got a « mark » skill, spreading the advantage of the « soul marks » trait.
• Most of the boon corrupts were changed to simply boon rip. We now need a GM trait to have boon corrupts. This is because while some boon counter is good, boon corruption treats cancer with cancer. At least you need some opportunity cost.
• All heal skills have been normalized to have lower cast time (similar to those of other classes).

The spectral skills are now active defensive skills (by opposition to minions being passive). They are meant to fill a fairly similar role to the guardian’s meditations: quick defensive skills used in offensive builds. Because of the « defensive » theme, consume condition is now a spectral skill, but is otherwise unchanged except for slightly faster cast time and the loss of the corruption. Plague and Lich Form where also exchange, because I think they fit the skill type role better this way.

Spectral armor is an instant evade, where all (physical) damage goes to life force. This works thematically (physical actions can pass through a ghost, and spectral is related to ghost) and is a huge change for necromancers, being a fully scalable defense. Note that I do not know if the tech is here for developers to code the damage to life force transfer.
Other than that, spectral walk is the poor man’s version of a teleport, still fairly efficient and our first resistance! Spectral wall lost its protection and gained a projectile denial, so that you can « hide behind it ». Spectral aura is a new skill, and gives us access to some weakness as well as an instant AOE blind, which can be great for a good player, though maybe weaker than the other skills.

Corruptions are now sacrificing life-force to gain better offense/offensive support. As explained in the summary above, using life force instead of conditions as sacrifice makes balancing easier. Also, it allows to increase the damage of necromancer (both some skills and the trait increase the damage) without the tankiness creating imbalances.

I first added a heal skill since Consume Condition is now a spectral skill. This skill is similar to others in that it heals based on the damage you give during a short time. This effect should also work through shroud. The skill also offers quickness and a weak single stack of stability for you to benefit as much as possible from the healing.

Then, I reworked both Blood is Power and Epidemic as upkeeps, and made them more unique and useful. They both work as a debuff (necromancer theme after all!) applied on one enemy and renewed every 3s if the upkeep is continued. Blood is Power makes the enemy take 10% more damage or condi damage from all sources. It is thus a PvE group support of the same type as Frost Spirit or Grace of the Land of a druid, but is a debuff on the enemy instead of a buff on allies. Epidemic is a debuff which copies 25% of the condition damage to all enemies around the target. It is partly a nerf partly a buff compared to the current form. It copies only 25%, but there is no stack restriction like in current epidemic. This is great because 25 stacks of bleeding are not as strong as 25 stack of burning, making the current version unbalanced (especially for necro who focus on bleeds). Also, the new version is more potentially more useful in PvP or WvW where you do not want to cast a skill and realize the enemy just cleansed all his conditions. The new version allows a more « over time » effect. And to negate it, other enemies just need to go away from the target. It feels more balanced to me at the end.

Corrupt boon is essentially unchanged. Demonic Grasp is just a rework of Spectral Grasp, and works similarly to « Kick » for warrior: a very basic small cooldown CC. For necromancer, this fits into the thematic of « anti-kiting ». Lich Form is unchanged.

Wells have received little changes. Well of blood is similar to before but with a rebalancing of the AOE vs personal to be more supportive. The cast time was also reduced to take into consideration the fact that a big part of the healing occurs over time. Well of Suffering got a bit more vulnerability to fit the « support » theme that wells seem to have. Well of Pestilence is just a rebranded version of « Corrosive Poison Cloud », without the projectile hate which I moved to the spectral wall (but maybe it could come back). Finally, well of Darkness is essentially a merge of the least used wells: well of darkness and well of power.

Too little change to bother making nice tooltips. Essentially, the only thing I think should be changed is that « Signet of Spite » should have a condition focus (more reasonable considering the active) with a passive of 180 condition damage. Maybe even call it « Signet of Curses »…

Staff is a great weapon in PvP, but mostly because of « Soul Marks » and the skill 4 and 5. It is also used in WvW but mostly because it is our only range AOE damage and it is arguably very poor in this role.

So first, I spreaded out marks to all main-hand weapons, and there is now only one mark on the staff. This increases diversity by making the staff less mandatory for life force generation in PvP. Marks are also inherently spammable. You don’t need to worry too much about aiming since they can always trigger later when someone walks on them. Also since Life force is a prime focus, all marks are as good for it. So this change makes the weapon more interesting and potentially gives more countering opportunities.

To make up for these nerfs, the damage (hybrid) and support was increased (since I see the staff as an AOE hybrid + support weapon). Skill 1 is bouncing, which makes it more reliable for multi-targets hitting than the current piercing mechanics. It effectively becomes a ranged cleave. Note that this skill (currently a focus skill) used to be a staff skill. Skill 3 is now pulsing, skill 5 now adds torment (nice synergy with fear). Skill 5 should have a clear tell since AOE fear is arguable strong, but the cast time remains low. Skill 4 is quite different, and this is just one possible suggestion. The staff still offers condi cleanse, but only if treated.

I believe this version of the staff is more useful in backline WvW (high damage + nice buffs/debuffs), and has a clear support focus in PvP, making it both less mandatory and quite useful. It may even be somewhat more useful in PvE (open world mostly).

I felt that focus was lacking purpose. It is obviously meant as a damage weapon (Spite line), but is not that great at it, and in particular, the first skill was partly support. So I increased a bit the damage coefficients on the skill 5 and made skill 4 a channelled damage. This should make it a weapon of choice in PvE, but also in PvP for burst power builds.

Then all main-hands received a mark skill, though nothing very surprising about it. Grasping Dead becomes « Mark of Impairment » with exactly the same effect, « Unholy Feast » becomes « Mark of Spite » and does pretty much the same. However, it is a dark field and axe 2 is now a whirl finisher, for great potential combos (especially with the spite GM). Life Siphon becomes « Mark of Vampirism » which is a similar theme but has a support component (all allies will now steal life from the marked enemies) and is now a DPS increase in PvE. I didn’t touch at the greatsword, since it may require a few changes, but it would feel natural to change « Nightfall » to a mark, though it would be the first pulsing mark.

Finally, one big change is that there is that all boon corruption on weapons (in particular scepter AA) are changed to boon rip. If you want boon corruption you will have to trait it (Curses GM).

Spite is the offensive line. It has 3 main directions:

• Straight DPS
• Bruiser
• Offensive support, in particular boon rip.

The minor focus mostly on the executioner style (act when the enemy is below 50%), and the majors are mostly in 3 lines:

• Reaper’s might – Deadly strength – Death Perception : bruiser-y traits. Allow to have high damage even with a tankier amulet and to increase your strength over time with might building.
• Unholy Fervor/Spiteful Talisman – Close to Death – Master of Corruption: the DPS line with all the damage multipliers (and ferocity which is the same)
• SpiteFul Talisman – Path of Corruption – Fear The Darkness: the boon ripping line.

Of course, many « diagonals » can work, the lines just define common theme, not necessarily the optimal combinations!

Note the new trait « Fear the Darkness » which rips boons when comboing in your fields. Note that this means any ally performing projectile/whirl finisher in YOUR dark fields will rip boons. This is a way to boost dark fields which are otherwise neglected in most aspects of the game, and I see in particular some potential use of it in WvW.

Master of Corruption is completely reworked to fit the new theme of Corruption skills. You now gain ferocity when using your corruption, including the upkeeps, and this becomes an additional damage multiplier to boost personal necromancer DPS, especially in PvE.

Spite is the condi line. Like for Spite, it has both condi damage and condi support (debuffs and boon corruption).

Note that terror has now 2 fear traits combined, Chilling Darkness lost its internal cooldown which I felt was unjustified.

There are 2 new traits. Corrupting Disenchantment simply changes all boon rips to boon corrupts. As I mentioned, many of the boon corruptions were changed to boon rips, and you know need this trait to change it back to boon corruption. This is because I think boon corruptions have been given like candies and having it as a trait is more interesting and requires some investment. Note that some skills like corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption are still corruption boons even without this trait.

Finally Putrid Corpse is a weird idea, and I am not sure how OP or UP it is. The idea is simply to make poison stronger as a debuff with reduced healing efficiency of poisoned enemies. On top of that, every time someone gets downed it triggers a cloud of poison, thereby reducing the rez chances.

Curses is also a good place to mention that Death Nova was removed (Putrid Corpse could be seen as a rework, but it is effectively very different). From my understanding, this trait is a significant part of the condi DPS in raids, and therefore with my changes, necro may not be condi meta anymore (but should hopefully be power meta). I didn’t try to compute the condi DPS, so it is possible and can surely be fixed if it is the case. Note also that I see the next elite specialization as a condi specialization, which on its own could be the answer to this problem.

Death Magic is the defensive line. It has 4 main aspects:

• CC protection (Reaper’s Protection + Foot in the Grave)
• Shroud bunker (Armored Shroud, Foot in the Grave, Unholy sancruary)
• Minions (Flesh of the Master and Necromantic corruption)
• Condi bunker (Putrid Defense, Paraistic Contagion, Corrupter’s Fervor).

Among the main trait changes are foot in the grave which has now an additional stunbreak on shroud 3. This will partly help Death Shroud vs Reaper’s Shroud, since it gives Death shroud some more ways to deal with CC.

Necrotic Renewal is a change from Spiteful Renewal, to give it a more defensive focus.

Finally as mentioned in Curses, Death Nova was removed. « On-death » traits are bad design. They were removed from mesmer because they favor passive play and prevents counter (don’t kill the minions and they kill you, kill them and they kill you too). This is true with necromancer too.

Blood magic is the (mostly defensive) support line. It is one of the more difficult line to design for necromancer. At the end, it has 3 distinct themes:

• Healing + revival (Ritual of Life, Life From Death, Transfusion)
• Vampiric (Shared thirst, Blood Bond, Vampiric Presence): note that vampiric is also a form of healing but which does not require healing power investment unlike the first category.
• Debuff and condi cleanse: Unholy martyr, Cleansing Ritual, Unholy Ritual

Some minor reworks: Vampiric Presence is slightly boosted (to make it more worthy of its GM spot). Unholy Ritual is the well trait and instead of having more vampiric (which I found was very very repetitive) I now added some condition/boons which fit well the theme of each well or show great synergy. For example slow on well of darkness means even more skills will be blinded, cripple/chill on Suffering/corruption means less easy to run away from it, blind/vigor on heal means easier to stand in it for a longer time, etc…

The dagger trait was reworked to a boon steal. This was the only idea i had, since I thought the walk speed while very useful made little sense. Finally, the staff trait brings back the missing condition cleanse from the new skills.

Soul Reaping was a disaster for me to change, mostly because I had already stolen the best traits for the other lines…

My main point was to try making it less mandatory but still useful, I am not sure I succeeded at either :p

First noteworthy change is that Soul Marks now affect all weapons and now reduce their CD, and since this is the case, I even added a new trait « Corrupting Marks » for more mark synergy. Last Gasp is now stronger since Spectral Armor is stronger. Speed of Shadows now allow to have perma swiftness… because I like that (though I still think the strength of the trait is the reduced shroud recharge). Spiteful Spirit is now a bit better, but I am not sure it is good. Finally as before, Spectral Mastery and Vital persistence compete, to make sure there is some Passive Defense vs Active defense choice.

I didn’t try to rework reaper. There are probably a few things I would like to change, but I just didn’t take time to think about it.

Only one thing I wanted to mention is the change to « Blighter’s Boon ». I suggested this long ago: in its initial form it was uncontrollable especially in conjunction with a Glint revenant. In its current form it is underwhelming in most cases (where does the necromancer gets its boons???) and only works remotely with Spite’s might.

What I liked about this trait was giving a chance to allies to support the necromancer even when he is in shroud. I think a good compromise between ally support of the initial design and a controllable output is:
« You gain 100 HP or 0.5% LF every seconds for each unique boons currently on you. Maximum number of boons: 5 »
the numbers can be altered, but the key is the mechanics: the initial design favored short pulsing boons compared to long boons and had no limit. This one is limited to 5 boons per seconds and benefit as much from 10 times 2s of protection or one time 20s of protection.