Guild Wars 2

Necromancer
Bloodthirsty: This trait now functions with the Vampiric Rituals and Vampiric Master traits.
Flesh of the Master: This trait now properly affects Jagged Horrors.
Ghastly Claws: Damage from this ability has been increased by ~10%.
Locust Swarm: The radius of this ability has been increased by ~16% and now has the range of a normal melee ability.
Mark of Revival: This trait now functions with the Greater Marks trait.
Minion Master: This trait now affects Mark of Horror from the necromancer’s Lich Form.
Necromantic Corruption: This trait now functions with Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Wurm, and Jagged Horror.
Protection of the Horde: This trait now functions with Jagged Horror minions.
Rending Claws: Vulnerability application from this ability have been increased from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.
Spectral Wall: This skill’s combo field will now appear where the wall is instead of on top of the necromancer.
Spinal Shivers: This ability now deals bonus damage for each boon that it removes. One boon removed deals 50% extra damage, two boons deals 100% extra, and three boons removed will grant an extra 150% damage to the ability.
Chill of Death: This trait now deals bonus damage for each boon that it removes. One boon removed deals 50% extra damage, two boons deals 100% extra, and three boons removed will grant an extra 150% damage to the ability.
Spiteful Vigor: This trait now functions with racial abilities Prayer to Dwayna and Healing Seed.
Summon Blood Fiend: This minion’s healing effect has been increased by ~80%.
Weakening Shroud: This trait now applies two stacks of bleeding to be consistent with the Enfeebling Blood weapon skill.

HOLY CRAP!! Minions HOOOO! Did Focus just become the absolutely best weapon out there. Spinal shivers!!! I spam that ability anyways!

Axe/Focus got some serious love.

Blood Fiend an 80 percent increase this might make it actually viable for MM. I will never die in pve now that’s for sure.

Fantastic! Can not wait to see the difference.

Nice to see Necros get some love, I’ve been trying one in SPVP and curious to see how main necros react to this.

“Rending Claws: Vulnerability application from this ability have been increased from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.”

This is still a useless skill with poor damage. It doesn’t need vulnerabilty duration, but more power or vulnerability stacks!!!

Axe/focus – GG

I’ve been already rolling newbs with it, time for cry to begin.

@mrmadhaze: atleast we got 10% more damage from ghastly claws…

focus was nice before but the damage buff on spinal finally justifies the cast time.

Nice! I’m so excited about the increased duration of vuln on axe auto attack. More duration = more stacks I can spam when my better sources are on CD. All in all a pretty big buff package in all the right areas. Minions and Axe. Oh my!

I am in total disbelief right now

And yet I still get locked out of my heal and utility skills after exiting Death Shroud. -_-

Necromancer
Bloodthirsty: This trait now functions with the Vampiric Rituals and Vampiric Master traits.

oh heck yeah . i do love my minion master and now we are getting that 50 % more siphon health from pets too alongside with blood fiend getting that 80% , can anyone say monster ?

lorndarken.3702:

Necromancer
Bloodthirsty: This trait now functions with the Vampiric Rituals and Vampiric Master traits.

oh heck yeah . i do love my minion master and now we are getting that 50 % more siphon health from pets too alongside with blood fiend getting that 80% , can anyone say monster ?

I hope it is as good as it sounds on paper, but yeah thought about that too. haha

As happy as I am with any buff we get, how exactly does any of these help us in high end fractal? We still got no defence against crazy mob attacks.

it’s a great day for us brothers and sisters pveMM!!!!

It’s like Christmas at an orphanage, most of us are happy to get anything at all. That said I’ve always liked focus but now I may just have to dust off my axe as well.

still no attack that may be comparable to a melee cleave though (wtb “Ghastly claws now hits up to three enemies” :<)

but ignoring that, YESS PVE MM

Wow Minion Master….. So many buffs…. They will be everywhere in SPVP now.

And also:

Necromantic Corruption: This trait now functions with Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Wurm, and Jagged Horror.

I thought this already worked for those minions? I guess I didn’t realize it didn’t.

Spinal shivers is going to get a nice big hit now too…. nice that they are rewarding proper use of skills. Sort of wish they would have done the same thing with Mark 4 on the staff… 10% more damage per condition removed etc.

Can anyone confirm if they fixed the dodge roll MOB to provide 3 bleeds now as well as the fix to enfeeble?

Didn’t Minions heal for 30 health before? Adding 50% to that isn’t that much health. We’ll see I guess.

Oh wow, and i just got finished re-specing my old necro to hybrid earlier today. The axe and focus buffs came just in time. looks like my warrior is gonna collect dust for a while! YES!!!

Changes to Rending Claws and Ghastly Claws much approached by all Axe users, another 10% damage on Axe-2 is huge.

Loving the fix too Chill of Death too, Power Necromancers can finally run VI, X, XII traits and have an effective Power trait, stripping 3 boons, chilling and doing 150% damage at 25% health.

Guess there are a few changes that might interested sPvP necros. The rest is more or less pointless or does nothing for efficient dungeons runs/high-level fractals.

And obviously does not change any core issues with the necro, but i assume nobody thought we would see something like that in this patch.

Cool, still not enough reason to take axe over dagger for me … awesome damage in melee, life siphon & immobilize.. too good. Still a step closer however

The only real problem for conditions in PVE was the bleed cap, which they have acknowledged and said they are working on it…. that build didn’t really need any buffs to begin with if they would fix the bleed problem.

Draegan.1472:

Didn’t Minions heal for 30 health before? Adding 50% to that isn’t that much health. We’ll see I guess.

That’s a good question, but even it it is that low 3 more heal per attack x 5 minions can equate to about 20-30 healing per second extra.

Calcifire.1864:

still no attack that may be comparable to a melee cleave though (wtb “Ghastly claws now hits up to three enemies” :<)

but ignoring that, YESS PVE MM

Remembering the fact that Anet said they wanted less cleave and less aoe abilities in game, that change will never happen.

Hopefully the fixed spiteful talisman and the reaper’s touch CD is now correct.

bytes.1650:

Guess there are a few changes that might interested sPvP necros. The rest is more or less pointless or does nothing for efficient dungeons runs/high-level fractals.

And obviously does not change any core issues with the necro, but i assume nobody thought we would see something like that in this patch.

Alright negative nancy, sometimes you have a valid point, but in this case you don’t. The only dungeon necro’s have issues with is Fractals past lvl 40. Minions are gone after level 10, Power Necro’s (nice buff) tend to struggle past lvl 25, and 40 is where most necro’s kind of disappear, but guess what SO DOES EVERY OTHER NON MESMER/WARRIOR/GUARDIAN/ELEMENTALIST. So that’s three classes that essentially don’t play past 25 because of preconceived notions that are being proven to be ridiculous on a regular basis.

Not to mention once you get past a certain fractal lvl Mesmers can’t even use clones because they only make it tougher. As for core issues, that seems to be your own personal opinion and not the opinion of the majority of the players who play high end tournaments and pve. In fact, I would say if I took a poll out of the active necros who do high end dungeon runs and tournaments or play on top 10 ranked servers in wvwvw. That your core issues would be widely dismissed as simply a desire by one player to have things work for him the way he sees them, and not a real issue.

The only major issue that we currently have is the DS UI issue. That’s the only major problem Necro’s have.

Bas.7406:

Draegan.1472:

Didn’t Minions heal for 30 health before? Adding 50% to that isn’t that much health. We’ll see I guess.

That’s a good question, but even it it is that low 3 more heal per attack x 5 minions can equate to about 20-30 healing per second extra.

Minion heal was at about 80 for the flesh golem, dunno if different minions heal for different amouts

Well, I know where my afternoon is going.

I’m actually really surprised, I didn’t expect class specific bug changes and fixes to show up for any class.

Yeah this is going to be an interesting day…. don’t think I can get myself to use minions in wvw, but I will take them into PVE and see what they can do… Gives me a good chance to break out that zerker gear and see how it works…

80% more healing from the blood fiend!!

Dang, yo. Power necros, hooooo!!

Excellent buffs and fixes, and great patch overall, thank you very much Anet.

bytes.1650:

And obviously does not change any core issues with the necro, but i assume nobody thought we would see something like that in this patch.

You know how you fix the core issues you see with the necro? Play the class for awhile. Those “core issues” go away. It’s a class that takes practice. Also, when you’re just getting started, play a little bit of everything (open world PvE, dungeons, WvW, s/tPvP) even if in the long run you just want to focus on one aspect.

Sigh. I mean these are welcome improvements and all but..most of the stuff just affects jagged horrors, and the bit of extra healing you can get from pets doesn’t really matter because they’re all still kittening dead from one big windup attack or a few aoes that we still have no way whatsoever of making them avoid. Was really hoping for some kind of survivability increase for minions…bleh.

What’s your beef? There are some trait reworks so they effect minions now. Nobody uses them really and it does not help with their awful AI.
If my car is a 25 year old heap of junk it won’t be any better by putting some nice rims on it.
Boon stripping is, like i said, mostly interesting to sPvP guys, it has no real place in PvE right now.
Axe #2 gets a 10% buff and you’re all excited? Come on, the weapon still hits like a wet noodle, mostly because it has an awful autoattack.

And about the cleave thing, i kinda doubt Anet will just remove it from the bigger weapons; the very fact that a large weapon will hit stuff around you, even without an active target is an essential part of their “woooohooo, look at our active, totally not tab-target combat system”.

Bas.7406:

Calcifire.1864:

still no attack that may be comparable to a melee cleave though (wtb “Ghastly claws now hits up to three enemies” :<)

but ignoring that, YESS PVE MM

Remembering the fact that Anet said they wanted less cleave and less aoe abilities in game, that change will never happen.

and yet mind stab (according to ANet logic, a STAB hits enemies nearby to the enemy being hit, yet making huge swings to rake enemies with huge ghostly claws DOESN’T, it gets even sillier when you see the #2 skill for axe, you send the axe towards the enemy and MAKE IT INTO A FLOATING BLENDER BLADE and yet that only hits one enemy…)

we’re literally the only class that has no spammable autoattack that hits multiple targets.

guardians, mesmers and warriors get cleaves, eles get splash on their staff with fire and all but earth on dagger, engis have pistol’s explosions, grenades, and flamethrower, rangers get a cleave on every melee weapon they have, thieves get a bounce on shortbow and cleaves on sword.

what do necros get as a spammable AoE?
scepter? single target
dagger? single target
axe? single target
staff? piercing, but has a tiny hitbox, is linear only, and is the slowest thing EVER

The only “core” issue I care about is the ridiculous condition stacking/cap system that penalizes multiple condition builds in dungeon groups and certain world boss encounters. And it’s still not fixed! That’s not an issue that just goes away after playing the class for a while.

Enough with the freakin’ mindless cheerleading already.

xev.9476:

Enough with the freakin’ mindless cheerleading already.

I think if you asked Bas, this was pretty much a patch that exceeded his wildest dreams. I think he has every right to be cheerleading.

For conditions this patch basically changed nothing, which is sad, but at least it gives me a chance to change things up with another build.

Core game issues like the condition cap/(not quite there)minion reaction/minion survivability are shared across all the classes that do/have those things, not just necros.

Hopefully they at least fixed the dodge roll MOB, that would be a nice conditions fix. The enfeeble instant cast fix was nice too.. that was a very heavily used skill for spvp. And compared to what we NORMALLY get in patches… this is freaking payday by comparison.

So I recently made a Cond/Power/DS Hybrid build, but I think I’ll switch back to my Spite/SR/BM build.
Ca anyone tell me if Vampiric Rituals also affects allies?

I don’t believe so.

Well, I can see perhaps swapping OH Dagger for Focus in a Condimancer build. MMs got some nice hookup, as did Axe Necros. Still no improved scaling on Lifesteal, tho.
Verdict: (Slightly) Sad Quaggan …

Bas.7406:

The only major issue that we currently have is the DS UI issue. That’s the only major problem Necro’s have.

Cough Cough Minion AI Cough Cough

Rennoko.5731:

xev.9476:

Enough with the freakin’ mindless cheerleading already.

I think if you asked Bas, this was pretty much a patch that exceeded his wildest dreams. I think he has every right to be cheerleading.

For conditions this patch basically changed nothing, which is sad, but at least it gives me a chance to change things up with another build.

Core game issues like the condition cap/(not quite there)minion reaction/minion survivability are shared across all the classes that do/have those things, not just necros.

Hopefully they at least fixed the dodge roll MOB, that would be a nice conditions fix. The enfeeble instant cast fix was nice too.. that was a very heavily used skill for spvp. And compared to what we NORMALLY get in patches… this is freaking payday by comparison.

Claiming the necro has no issues save for DS UI is remarkably thoughtless. It’s mindless cheerleading. I’m happy with the changes we received, but I’m still frustrated that none of these changes will do anything to alter the desirability of condition necros for dungeon groups (or other conditions builds from other classes). It’s likewise frustrating to see thoughtless buffoons continually posting how “x” class has no problems and all is really fine and dandy.

Rennoko.5731:

Haha, yes, I am a bit beyond excited. MM became even better than before. Yes the AI is still abit faulty, but as you pointed out that’s a game wide issue not a core necro issue. I noticed Guardians got Spirit weapons health buffs.

Minions don’t die as often as people think, and now they heal for more. Focus hits harder, Axe 1 has a longer vuln ticker (I was hoping for a 10 percent damage increase on 1) Axe 2 got an increase (10 percent at max damage is at best 800 damage so we may break 9k with axe 2 now at max gear) it’s still below Dagger Auto in terms of damage done, but it’s more inline.

Necromantic Corruption was already powerful with it just working for flesh golem (I didn’t know this) now it works for everything haha. I can’t wait to see it.

Eroiqua.5891:

bytes.1650:

And obviously does not change any core issues with the necro, but i assume nobody thought we would see something like that in this patch.

You know how you fix the core issues you see with the necro? Play the class for awhile. Those “core issues” go away. It’s a class that takes practice. Also, when you’re just getting started, play a little bit of everything (open world PvE, dungeons, WvW, s/tPvP) even if in the long run you just want to focus on one aspect.

Thanks mate, really good advice there. Sadly though, my necro is in full exotic, has countless hours of dungeon runs, fractals and general pve under his belt.
I spent a lot of time, effort and ingame gold on this character, so i really shy away from just shelving him for one of the classes that’s working right now.

With that said, neither GW2 nor the necro class are exactly rocket sciene. It does not take an insane amount of time or pratice to figure it out. And if you’ve spent some time with different videogames, you will notice all the holes and leaks in the classes design.

But keep on trucking, band together with like-minded people and convince yourself the necro is a pretty good class afterall.
Personally, i feel like playing a Tech in Alien Swarm and shooting that one lone alien which tried to creep up on my team.

Credit to the team, no doubt.

Tenebrous.2451:

Bas.7406:

The only major issue that we currently have is the DS UI issue. That’s the only major problem Necro’s have.

Cough Cough Minion AI Cough Cough

And minion survivability. They could have the best AI in the world and it doesnt help if they’re all dead 90% of the time every boss fight and any wvw skirmish of more than 2 or 3 people.

Advent.6193:

Well, I can see perhaps swapping OH Dagger for Focus in a Condimancer build. MMs got some nice hookup, as did Axe Necros. Still no improved scaling on Lifesteal, tho.
Verdict: (Slightly) Sad Quaggan …

Enfeebling blood is still kind of good and another condition transferal is pretty important on corruption builds!
Vampire builds will most likely get a rennaissance, I know I will dig my power gear out again, maybe even using the Bloddfiend and no other minions on it.

Tenebrous.2451:

Cough Cough Minion AI Cough Cough

That’s not a core issue. That’s a utility build issue. Core issues are issues at the heart of the class that affect every single build. Since the utility pet ai is a game wide issue that affects mutliple classes it seems ridiculous to keep bringing it up as a Necro Core issue.

To top it off, they have been gradually fixing it with each patch. It’s better now than a month ago and it was better a month ago than it was at launch. I am speaking from hundreds of hours of Minion play. It’s not as bad as it is being painted.

xev.9476:

Rennoko.5731:

xev.9476:

Enough with the freakin’ mindless cheerleading already.

I think if you asked Bas, this was pretty much a patch that exceeded his wildest dreams. I think he has every right to be cheerleading.

For conditions this patch basically changed nothing, which is sad, but at least it gives me a chance to change things up with another build.

Core game issues like the condition cap/(not quite there)minion reaction/minion survivability are shared across all the classes that do/have those things, not just necros.

Hopefully they at least fixed the dodge roll MOB, that would be a nice conditions fix. The enfeeble instant cast fix was nice too.. that was a very heavily used skill for spvp. And compared to what we NORMALLY get in patches… this is freaking payday by comparison.

Claiming the necro has no issues save for DS UI is remarkably thoughtless. It’s mindless cheerleading. I’m happy with the changes we received, but I’m still frustrated that none of these changes will do anything to alter the desirability of condition necros for dungeon groups (or other conditions builds from other classes). It’s likewise frustrating to see thoughtless buffoons continually posting how “x” class has no problems and all is really fine and dandy.

Again, that’s not a core necro issue. That’s a game issue with condition builds period. that’s a specific build. When you run a singular build based on conditions than you will have issues, there are three other builds that don’t have this problem. That means it’s not a core issue.

Crying over something that affects all classes equally and saying it effectively kills the necro is mindless and a little petulant. Core issues are issues that affect the entire necro itself. The only singular core issue is DS ui.

xev.9476:

Claiming the necro has no issues save for DS UI is remarkably thoughtless. It’s mindless cheerleading. I’m happy with the changes we received, but I’m still frustrated that none of these changes will do anything to alter the desirability of condition necros for dungeon groups (or other conditions builds from other classes). It’s likewise frustrating to see thoughtless buffoons continually posting how “x” class has no problems and all is really fine and dandy.

No I am onboard with your last comment. Some people are far to optimistic about the class where they should be more reserved, but they are counter-acting the insane negativity on the forum, so it is hard to blame them.

Condition cap is my number 1 problem in game right now. If they fixed that I would never complain again. Right now my rabid necro is exactly what I want for WvW, but is either “okay” in dungeons or down right horrible (if other condition heros are around). I don’t like having to feel like a respec is required to do different things in game and I hate having multiple gear sets, but that is life right now.

Anet said they are working on a fix for the condition cap, and while I don’t think its coming any time soon, at least that is better than what they said last time it was brought up which was…. “sorry, thats just the way it is”.

Bas.7406:

Tenebrous.2451:

Cough Cough Minion AI Cough Cough

That’s not a core issue. That’s a utility build issue. Core issues are issues at the heart of the class that affect every single build. Since the utility pet ai is a game wide issue that affects mutliple classes it seems ridiculous to keep bringing it up as a Necro Core issue.

To top it off, they have been gradually fixing it with each patch. It’s better now than a month ago and it was better a month ago than it was at launch. I am speaking from hundreds of hours of Minion play. It’s not as bad as it is being painted.

“Not that bad” isn’t good enough. Rangers dont have that problem, if you can’t design an AI that functions properly all the time then let players tell the kitten things when to attack and retreat, problem solved. GW2 is supposed to be so advanced and the next evolution of mmos and all that, when games 10 years older have far better AI in place for pets. Its inexcusable.