Guild Wars 2

Here are some of my ideas on what is wrong with the necromancer and some fixes I feel should be implemented.

It seems that not only does Anet not know what is wrong with necromancer, but they just do not care. It’s clear after these last two balance patches that no one at Anet even plays necromancer to know what is wrong with the class at how to fix it. There have been NUMEROUS threads on the necromancer forums on what is currently wrong and great ideas to fix them. Every balance patch these are completely ignored and subbed out with LOL underwater combat fixes which are not needed in the PvP scene, since underwater combat is not in the tournament rotation. Here is what is wrong with the necromancer and some fixes.

Traits:

Spite:

-Parasitic Bond Adept Minor Trait – (small hp when something dies – completely useless) needs to be scrapped and replaced. I suggest moving Furious Demise (15 point Curses) here. A power necro should not have to spec into curses to gain fury.

-Siphoned Power Grandmaster Minor Trait – (gain 1 might stack when hit under 25% hp) this is absolute garbage for a 25 point trait. I suggest adding something else a chill would be better when hit under 25% hp.

-Close to Death Grandmaster Major Trait – (20% dmg to targets under 50% hp) this currently does not effect conditions. This needs to be fixed asap since it is clearly broken.

Curses:

-Toxic Landing Adept Minor Trait – (takes 50% less falling damage create poison clould) this is a worthless trait and needs to be replaced. I suggest create a poison cloud when and enemy goes into downed state.

Death Magic:

-Greater Marks Adept Major Trait – (marks are bigger and unblockable) since staff is necessary in any build this needs to be moved out of death magic. I should not have to spec into a toughness tree to make staff a viable weapon. If you do not have this trait the staff is completely worthless.

-Protection of the Horde Master Minor Trait – (20 toughness for each minion under your control) If you run a minion master build that would give you a total of 120 toughness if your using golem elite. This needs to be increased because this is not enough toughness for a MM build.

Blood Magic:

-Vampiric Master Major Trait – (siphon hp when you hit a foe) right now life siphon is completely useless and broken. With the +50% hp on hit and this trait you heal for a magical 39 hp per hit. This is not enough life to keep you alive even with 1 or 2 conditions on you. Life siphon also does not scale with healing power, this needs to be fixed. I suggest a 200% healing buff to this and make it scale with healing so we can get a REASONABLE amout of life per hit returned.

-Quickening Thirst Master Major Trait – (move faster with daggers) this needs to be moved to adept to make power daggers builds viable.

-Blood To Power Grandmaster Minor Trait – (5% more dmg when over 90% hp) this needs to be scrapped you are almost never over 90% hp. This is utter crap for a grandmaster trait.

Soul Reaping:

-Foot in the Grave Grandmaster Major Trait – (Gain 3s of stability in DS) this needs to be moved out of grandmaster trait so we dont have to spec 30 into SR to get our only form of stability. Also it needs be to increased to 5s, you can’t even get a stomp off with 3s of stability.

Deathshroud:

The main problem with deathshoud is that you cannot see what conditions you have on you or the timers on you skills. This needs to be changed since you basically have to guess what is going on. It is a severe hinder to the necromancer.

We also need to be able to rez and stomp in DS without having to time it perfectly by hitting them both at the same time. Eles can rez and stomp in mist for so why cant we?

Minions:

The minion AI needs to be fixed so that they actually ATTACK targets. Minions are not viable atm because they currently stand around and don’t attack anything. The Flesh Golem elite has the same problem it stands and doesn’t attack. This is absolutely unacceptable for an elite. Currently flesh golem is worthless.

Weapons:

-Axe – this weapon needs a complete overhaul. The damage is too weak, it needs to be increased by atleast 100% to become viable.

-Dagger – the only problem is dagger #2 the siphon. This is almost useless atm, i suggest switching our utility spectral grasp to dagger #2. Spectral grasp is so buggy right now it is just not worth putting in a utility slot. If you put this as dagger #2 it would make daggers much more viable.

-Staff – the marks area needs to be increased to how big it is if you trait it. There is NO reason I should have to spec into a tree to make my weapon viable. The staff marks will not hit anyone without the trait.

Utilities:

-Corrosive Poison Cloud – The damage is so weak on this skill, it needs to be increased by atleast 100% to be worth slotting.

-Spectral Armor – This skill has such a long cooldown it’s almost not worth slotting. Even if you trait for 20% reduction on spectral skills its still a 72 second cd for 6s of protection. If you don’t reduce the cooldown spectral armor needs to also give us stability since we have no viable way to give it to ourselves.

-Wells – Right now wells confuse me. How do you justify such a long cooldown for 5s of a skill that someone can just walk or dodge out of. The raidus of wells either needs to be increase or the cooldown reduced significantly.

-Signet of Spite – this is the most worthless signet in the game. All these random conditions for 5-6 seconds? the duration of these conditions needs to be at least 20s for wasting a utility slot and the passive power increase is so minimal you can’t even notice it. The passive power bonus needs a huge buff and the duration of conditions increased.

Elites:

-Flesh Golem – The flesh golem AI needs to be fixed, half of the time it just stands there and does not attack.

Lifesteal Condition:

Currently survivability is a huge problem for the necro. I suggest adding a lifesteal condtion on certain weapon attacks. This would scale with healing power and greatly increase the necro’s ability to survive in combat when combined with lifesteal traits.

I agree with alot of the problems, not so much the solutions.

Necro, and really all classes, should be able to perform every meta role competitively. Not just focus on some arbitrary list of philosophies organized by a 15 minute vote in a single meeting.

Every class should have a high Burst, heavy Tank, Attrition, and Support option that is 100% competitive. Every single class. They don’t need it all simultaniously but it needs to be compeitively viable to have a MesmerTank or a Burst Engi. Or better yet a high Burst guardian, and an Attrition Warrior with condition management.

This pigeonhole bias nonsense they are deploying now is going to ruin any chance they had at making GW2 a viable Esport. No one will come back to a broken game no matter how well you advertise the fixes. And right now GW2 pvp is Broken.

What would be nice on a necro, is if there where more benefits from attacking a foe with conditions on them instead of stacking as many as possible on them.
For example: always crit on blinded, life steal on bleeding, bonus damage on vulnerable(on top of the condition’s effect) and crit hits on chilled foes interrupts(might be OP). Note that this would be traits of the necro itself.

DS for boons, we need more boons.

Smarter minion AI would be a bonus.

Just some food for thought.

All Major Traits should be left as-is (with exception of Foot in the Grave, that really needs to be brought down to Master or have the duration increased). If you don’t like them, don’t select them!

Minor Traits, however, do almost all need an overhaul.

If you move Foot in the Grave down to Master, then we’ll also have access to Close to Death (Grandmaster trait) giving 3s stability (plus boon duration) on 5s CD, so that’s probably not the right solution. Either give us stability on spectral armour or increase the duration.

Pretty much all our minor traits need an overhaul, except last gasp and maybe furious demise. All our adept minors are worthless, even gluttony post-patch. Blood to power should change to something like increased siphoning when health is below xx%