This I suppose is a rundown of all necro skills, and how I feel they could be changed or improved, if needed. I try to avoid talking about the bugs, as we already have a great thread about that. It’s a bit of a read, but no one’s forcing you, and who knows, maybe you (and hopefully Anet) will come away with a slightly different perspective. Or maybe you’ll just think I’m talking something that the forum considers small and furry, who knows.
Edit: Here is the link to my later thread, on necromancer traits.
Weapons
Axe
The principal problem the axe has, is an underwhelming amount of damage, for the range it has. In PvE you can do a vastly superior amount of damage with the dagger, and barely get hit. In PvP, it’s quite difficult to stay out of melee range while still be less than 600 away, as every melee setup I can think of has (at least) one way to close such a short gap, and you can’t be directly running away from them and while still hitting them.
I think it should maintain its current range, but either increase the damage of rending claws, or increase the attack speed, with some reduction of its damage per hit (say 1/2s cast instead of 3/4s), giving a net higher dps, along with faster vulnerability stacking.
Ghastly claws is basically fine as is, after the recent modest buff to its damage.
Unholy feast is quite good in both PvP and PvE, with decent damage and against multiple enemies it provides a good amount of retaliation, it’s a bit lacking against a single opponent, but you can’t have everything
Dagger
MH: The main hand dagger is my favorite weapon as a necromancer, but it does have a few notable flaws, especially when compared to other classes, who tend to have more practical and useful second skills, and have less trouble keeping in range and avoiding/absorbing incoming damage.
Necrotic slash is good as is, does fairly solid damage, and builds life force well. A few people have mentioned it should cleave or do some small aoe or something, but honestly it doesn’t need to change (although having a cleaving melee weapon would be nice, say a sword or something).
Life siphon is a skill that I honestly don’t like much at all. In PvE it works fine, you can run around and kite while casting the channel, so the healing can be a bit useful. In PvP however, I would call it a downright bad skill. Dagger 1 does far more DPS, and with its life force generation, creates an equivalent amount of ‘health’. Because of this, it’s really worth using over dagger 1, as ranged opponents will still be applying their full damage, and most/all melee opponents shouldn’t have an issue closing that gap and applying their damage. In this regard it suffers from the same problem as axe 1, not enough effect for the range it has. While I guess you could increase the damage or life steal, or speed up the channel, as the dagger is essentially a melee weapon, I think life siphon would be better as a melee attack, as having this low damage ranged attack has poor synergy with the hard hitting melee auto attack. Turning life siphon into a single hit attack (maybe with a short leap or something, as we lack both movement skills and combo finishers) I feel would make this a more useful skill when you consider how the other 2 dagger skills operate together. (Obviously the damage/life steal and perhaps even the CD would have to be rebalanced if this change happened, but that’s a dev’s job.)
Dark pact works well as is, not the best in PvE, but solid in PvP. Having a secondary effect like a short chill or blind (or perhaps a small life force gain) would be nice, but the only real niggle I have with this skill is it’s rather long cast time. This skill is most comparable to infiltrator’s strike (the thief’s second sword skill), in that they do the same damage, have equal range, and both immobilize. The differences though, are that our immobilize is 3 seconds while theirs is only 1, theirs teleports them to the target (and allows them to teleport back if they wish, which is also a break stun, come on) and that we have a slow 1 second cast time. I don’t think Dark pact should be a gap closer (you two extra second to close on them for that, although they can break out I guess), but the cast time makes it much harder to use effectively, usually I have to force them to use their dodges before I can risk casting it, so yeah, a faster cast time would be nice, but solid as is.
(edited by War Mourner.5168)