Guild Wars 2

Thread guidelines

• This is a Necomancer rework / balancing idea coming from me.
• I do not want any posts on this besides ideas and reworks to the statements I have made.
• Do not post new ideas, make a new thread if you want to do that.
• This will be centric towards balances after bug fixes
• This rework idea of mine is to balance us compared to other classes. IN no way am i leaning over to the necro and whispering “hey im goin to make you op”
• Certain advocate forum users i want to see on this thread. Mathe magician, Angeryflyingsquirel, They are Hashes.
• Rework will include:
  1. Skill overlook
  2. A whole trait rework
  3. Ideas on fixing minion AI (So we indeed are the masters of our minions)
  4. And a few niffty Ideas.

Skill Overlook___________________________________________________

Weapon Skills

• Dagger Main Hand
  • Dark Pact – No Decent Power Ratio
• Dagger Off-hand abilitys
  • Deathly Swarm and Enffebling Blood. -Good skills, No decent ratio to power
• Axe Main Hand
  • Rendering Claws No Decent Power Ratio
  • UnHoly Feast – Horrible Power ratio
• Focus Off-Hand
  • Reapers Touch, Spinal Shiver- No decent Power Ratio
• WarHorn Off-Hand
  • Locust Swarm- Decent swiftness Skill/cripple/escape. Horrible Life Force gain on use
• Staff
  • Imo is just fine-(Need another poster to confirm/ list why is not balanced BTW attacks speed is fine)
• Scepter Mainhand
  • Feast of Corruption- Low Damage per condition percent

Utility Skills

• Wells
  • Wells are ticking 6 times – Not sure if intentions, But if fixed to 5 Sec Like description says- There will be Needed Buff Dmg on the damage Wells ie Corruption & Suffering. IF condition/conditions into boons- Buff effectiveness IE Well of power 2-3 Conditions to 2-3 boons in one pulse. And maybe a 30 Sec CD with trait. not 36.
• Blood is power
  • No power ratio
• Flesh wurm
  • Very slow Attack speed increase attack spped so its not 1 attack every 2-3 seconds No Power ratio
• Bone Fiend
  • Not putting out damage on tooltip hits for 188×2 on Medium golem- no power ratio.
• Bone minions
  • They have a power ratio……………
• Flesh Golem
  • Charge is not what the tooltip says Suggestion on fixing this is Make it hit for Tooltip damage + Power ratio to apply to each person it hits, instead of 230×2 on a single hit. No power ratio on Auto attack
• Spectral Grasp
  • NO Base Damage at all. For example Guardian Great sword leash wit the same effect as Spectral grasp has Base Damage. And If im not mistaken a shorter CD
• Spectral Wall
  • Not applying 10 Stacks of Vulnerability on Target
• Spec Armor
  • Needs to Last longer/ Give Stability/ and be put on 60 sec CD not 90
• Healing Skills
  • Blood Fiend Dies to easily

Skill Summary

• Most of our skills have Little to NO power ratio at all.That should be fixed.
• Minions Dont have a power ratio to there auto attacks/Special Skills.. Execpt Bone minions.
• Some of our skills just have no potential of being used if they only do the damage the tootip says. Understanding that Some spells will not have a power ratio Because it does condition Damage. But not even half have conditons that have no power ratio at all.
• In General We really Lack POWER ratios, HASTE, and STABILITY. Which it seems all other classes have.

Trait rework___________________________________________________

Spite

• Natural bonuses
  • Remove condition Duration and replace with Crit Dmg, Makes the trait more synergizable.
• Minor Traits
  • Parastic Bond- We do not need 2 on kill effects. Rework/Remove or remove Reanimator.
• Major Traits
  • 1-6- Spiteful talisman (II) – Changed tooltip of Spinal Shivers * Do not know if fixed*, And as well It should either has A % increase of DMG, or Of Effectiveness (for Ex. Spinal shivers chill time increases and removes +1 more boons, Regen Heals more of Reapers touch, stacks +1 vuln.) 2nd Option might need to be reconsidered.
  • Spiteful Spirit: Either be moved to a minor trait and to be Switched with Furious Demise, That would grant more synergy with power. Increase on retaliation timer ex 3 seconds to 5 seconds
  • 7-10- Training of the Master Moved to Death Magic and Add new major trait.
  • 11-12- Close to death- Fix Trait only does 10% of Dmg said.; Axe Training (Rename) Need tooltip that has % DMG increase unless its 20% not sure

Curses

• Natural Bonuses
  • Just fine
• Minor Traits
  • Furious Demise To either Be Switched into Power tree and switched with Spiteful Spirit probably need a rename.
  • Target of Weak- Increase % Damage to 5%
• Major Traits
  • 1-6- Chilling Darkness- Chill effect for 1 second a Very short Condition. 3-5 seconds is better.
  • Reaper’s Precision- Moved to Minor trait
  • 7-10- Spectral Attunment Moved to Minor Trait ( Ex. Move down to soul-reaping (Idea) Replace with Last-grasp and make last grasp 1-6 trait in Soul Reaping) or Rework in general.
  • 11-12 Imo opinion Fine

Death Magic

• Natural Bonuses
  • Boon Duration….. Not needed if we cannot have 1 Boon-Stacking ability.
  • Remove/ Either replace with Condition Duration/ Completely Remove Or give us boons. Earlier with rework i suggested CritDmg be swapped with Condition duration and put boon duration in Soul Reaping and condition duration in Death Magic
• Minor Traits
  • Reanimator. WE dont need 2 on kill effects. Remove/Rework.
  • The rest are fine
• Major Traits
  • 1-6 shrouded Removal Should be more than 1 condition removed. Maybe 3? 1 condition for a trait slot on a 10 second cooldown is lacking potential Trait pick.
  • 7-10 Fit training of the master In This
  • 11-12 Fine Imo But could use rework.

Blood Magic

• Natural Bonuses
  • Fine
• Minor traits
  • Vampiric needs Buff 10 point trait shouldnt hit for 25 and heal for 25
• Major Traits
  • 1-6 Fine vampiric Precision needs to be % healing off of crit.
    **Dagger Mastery-15% CD reduction. Everything is already on short cooldown. Why not a % Dmg increase or at least combine with Quickining thirst.
  • 7-10- Quickining Thirst- What effectiveness does this have? None. Rework/Remove, Vampriric Master Do not know if this heals as horrible as the others
  • 10-12 Make Vampiric Rituals wells Heal the team, Much more utility added to necro play with that one move.

Soul Reaping

• Natural Bonus
  • As stated a few switches could be made but overall its good.
• Minor traits
  • Fine IMO Last-Grasp- Doesnt provide Protection buff when hit under 50%, and (unsure*) if it breaks stun.
• Major Traits
  • 1-6 Spectral Mastery- WE have 2 Spectral skills. Do we really need 12 seconds OFF 2 skills? How bout A New trait? Rework/Remove. Maybe even a 50% CD since it only lasts 6 seconds….. for ex spectral armor is a 90 second cooldown for 6 seconds… If traited puts on 72 Second CD, But only useful for Two skill…….(if stability is input into Spec Armor than 90 sec CD is acceptable.)
  • 7-10- Decaying Swarm- Remove… This is just flat out Bad. Locust Swarm does no Damage. How about Decaying Life When hit under 25% gain 25% LF (and give an internal cooldown of 90 seconds) it will give us more survivability and sustain.
  • 11-12 foot in the Grave- 3 seconds of stability in DS Is not useful. Rework/Remove. Necro players would not like to trait 30 points in for a tree for 3 seconds of stability. Maybe 10-13 seconds protecton is a better idea.

Nifty Ideas___________________________________________________

• Minion Control Bar
  • Located above utility skills when you have a summoned minion. With such commands as Attack, Hold position, Passive…
• Death Shroud
  • Overall Good Mechanic but the UI is horrible. Cannot see my health that i have, Cannot see my utility skill CDS, Cant see boons or conditions on me. Fix UI please
  • New skill- Give us a #5 ability, that can stack boons. For Ex something that i have created. Not a good namer but here we go Force of Power – Consume all life force to Give Fury/Might/Protection- 0-50% 5 Seconds, 50-75% 8 Seconds 75%-100 % 12 Seconds. More life force you consume on a risk that you will gain more you will be granted a longer duration on your boons, Actually giving us necros the ability to at least have More that a1 boon stacking ability. and IF heals cast from Regen and Other teammates heals to Heal US Not be ignored while in DS. I do not know if this is hotfixed already

Edit: I will continue look over what i posted/ Traits of necros/ And maintaing balance. Give me some time fellas. This is a complicated post for A complete Rework of the Necro itself. Will Edit For Updates. And Will PM for Post removal so i may have one continues thread if need be. Ty and appreciate the Feedback!!!!

In my opinion the idea of having a #5 ability in DS which consumes all available LF for some beneficial effect (which depends in magnitude on the available LF) is key for fixing the necro. I suggested the same with that new ability being a hard-hitting nuke, but I like your suggestion of buffs like might/protection/stability even better since it scales across all different builds.

One aspect which needs improvement and is missing in your list is the role of MH dagger. I actually like playing a medium range caster and I am fine with the melee range of the autoattack (which is the main source of damage from this weapon) against enemies that run a ranged build and are not able to dish out any serious melee damage themself. However against enemies with a melee build getting close even just for 2-3 sec to get out some autoattacks in generally a bad idea since they are hitting back much harder than you hit them (even with spectral armor/protection) and even worse there is a good chance that they will immobilize/stun/knockdown you and you might not be able to gain distance again. So against melees all you can do is use your #2-#5 skills and then the only two options left are switching to another weapon or DS. Problem with that is that even with a power/crit build the DS autoattack does not really do much damage and ‘costs’ LF. And weapon switching is also only a bad option for me since I of course use staff as my second weapon for the utility. The way I see it the necro needs some ability to actively disable a melee for 2-3 seconds every once in a while to get these dagger autoattacks going. The simplest solution IMO would be to change the 3s immobilize on #3 to a 3s stun.

Yes but the 3 second stun would b eOP because no other class has anything for 3 seconds as a stun.

Though i do like the idea. I do play a power necro myself, and being upfront with melee classes is not a problem with me. If yoru using a dagger try enffebling first before going face to face. it certainly does help.

Ok… You said power ratios about 40 times.

What exactly do you mean when you say “In General We really Lack Power ratios”

what is this mythical power ratio I have not heard of!!!

Hate to say it, but you come across as rude and obnoxious in your post, which im sure your not.
I understand the frustration, but perhaps taking a breather and then rewriting it might be your best option.

Especially where you want a Developer to IM you with a notification, sorry but that aint ever happening.
Any sane dev would look at your post and go like “who does this kid think he is?”

Also your assumption that devs are the ones who pull the strings is wrong, the devs do what the team balancing lead comes up with.
They are what is commonly referred to as “code-monkeys”.

@JoxerNL.3752
Sorry if i do come off rude. I cant even tell when i reread. CAn you point out significant spots where i do so. I will fix tommorw. Ty And much appreciated.

@Zintair.1987
Put points into power.. focus mainly of stacking power Summon a shadow fiend. Let it hit medium golem. LOok at comparasion between Tooltip damage and Actual damage.
Now, Summon a Bone Fiend. Let him hit a Medium Golem. Look at comparasion between Tooltip damage and Actual damage. Now tell me your not gonna say WTF

F.Y.I All Power ratio oriented INFO has been tested.

Your welcome,
First of all " I do not want any posts on this besides ideas and reworks to the STATEMENTS I HAVE MADE. And i do not want people who QQ in the community to be on this thread."

You could easily reword that to a nicer way, something like :
I’d like people to keep this thread on-topic, the topic being the various ideas im putting out here as suggestions to the dev team.
I also would like to ask all replying to keep in mind i would like this thread to stay positive, so please if you got something to complain about, not in this thread.
(Now when someone DOES complain or kitten or whatever, simply report them for going off-topic, simple forum rules-101)

And lastly just remove the want for a notification from ANet to acknowledge your and our (the necro community) existence at the bottom, it does more harm then good, the point was already made in your post prior.

OK sounds good me and they are hashes are working on cleaning it up TY for your input Joxer Much appreciated.

Anytime mate, it’s clear you want the class fixed as much as everyone else (well unless they are a mesmer), so im all for this to look good when a dev takes a look!

Cheers to you mate!

I am running dagger/focus, but I got the trait for EB on DS enter. I also have the trait which gives weakness on crit. Problem with weakness however is that it does only influence non-crits (turns them into fumble) – however most melee builds are invested heavily into crit and with the +20% with fury, weakness against melees is actually not as efficient as is hoped. I also have pretty much maxed crit and with fury active have a 70% crit rate (could increase that even more with +5% crit on weapon). so weakness is actually only 30% effective against me.

I disagree with your assessment of the staff’s auto-attack speed. It doesn’t hit hard, most of the time it doesn’t hit, and the times where it should have hit — the speed of the projectile caused an “out of range” error.

Staff would be almost perfect with a projectile speed buff.

Edit: Other than that, I agree with pretty much all of your suggestions.

I like your ideas!
Also I’ve noticed that all your pet abilities are disabled if you are disabled ( stun, knockback, whatever ) I would love to see that changed. It could be a good counter to a Thief burst, knocking hem down as soon as he stuns you without having to use our Spectral Armor… It might be overpowered with the other pet abilities tho I don’t play MM often so I don’t really know what abilities other pets have. It’s just an idea.
The most frustrating thing I believe, is the lack of information in DS ( CDS, Weapon change, Boons, Conditions, Energy etc… ) that makes it more of an issue in a lot of situations than a real asset.
Also it would be so cool if we could just get rid of that Staff noise!!

@Navi
I did the rework now please remove posts on reformatiing. Ty and much appreciated

@terok
Yes projectile speed!!! i totally forgot aout that when i was writing, i iwll edit that in.
Reason being it doesnt have an attack speed buff, Because necros would just be able to obtain LF to fast.

I just removed them, sorry I was at work all day (you might wanna remove your responses to my posts now they look kinda silly all alone :P). Thread looks great!

I agree with most of what you have said, there are some really good suggestions. Reading through your thoughts (and other posts on the forum) it is very evident that our scaling, for both condition damage and power, feels very under-tuned. I am not sure what the Devs internal number testing shows but with so many players feeling the same way I do think there is an issue somewhere.

Also, I agree with your thoughts on trait synergy. I’m actually a bit surprised about your thoughts on the Death traits as I know many posters dislike the fact that they are so Minion-centric.
Personally, I would like to see

• Flesh of the Master made baseline (Minions automatically have more health)
• Reanimator replaces Flesh of the Master (Major X)
• Protection of the Horde (Minor 15) swaps places with Spiteful Vigor (Major VII)
• Minor (5) swaps places with Minor (15) (aka Spiteful Vigor)
• Minor (15) New Denature: Transforms a condition on a nearby ally into a boon every 3 seconds. This trait prioritizes the Necro first
  I specifically picked something to do with group support and boons because the Death trait line has to do with boons and I feel like we are lacking group support.

I would really like to know what your thoughts are on the current state of Necro combo finishers and fields. I, personally, feel that outside of a Well build we are really lacking combo fields and we are lacking finishers in general (even the ones we do have can be annoying to use like Bone Minions and Putrid Mark).

I think some places for combo skills are

• Warhorn (OH) – Wail of Doom – Whirl
• Dagger (OH) – Deathly Swarm – Whirl
• Focus (OH) – Reaper’s Touch – Projectile
• Axe (MH) – Unholy Feast – Blast
• Scepter (MH) – Grasping Dead – Dark Field

Anyways, those are just some thoughts that I had.

I don’t agree with putting training of the master in death magic. That only nerfs minion masters.

I think Death shroud should have 2 forms.

Instead of forcing us all to use death shroud to tank I think it should have the option to tank like it is now, or use the life force to make direct damaging spells stronger.

That way we can customize the necro to our playstyle instead of being forced into tanking with our class mechanic

@Navi.1032
To clear things up i belive necros do not need 2 5 point minor traits with on kill effects/ Reanimator. I feel this is not needed. So clear up reanimator to a major trait? thats a waste but in all said give me clearer reasons behind so.
Well one tree has to be minion centric- For minion master would have no point.
Really liking the ideas
I think some places for combo skills are
Warhorn (OH) – Wail of Doom – Whirl
Dagger (OH) – Deathly Swarm – Whirl
Focus (OH) – Reaper’s Touch – Projectile
Axe (MH) – Unholy Feast – Blast
Scepter (MH) – Grasping Dead – Dark Field
Best part there but for Grasping dead. Does not stay long enough for there to be many combos.
@striker.3704
Alright yea i see what you mean MM wanna stack power and get an additional bonus for doing so.
@BlueprintLFE.2358
Honestly do not like that idea.

Navi.1032:

I would really like to know what your thoughts are on the current state of Necro combo finishers and fields. I, personally, feel that outside of a Well build we are really lacking combo fields and we are lacking finishers in general (even the ones we do have can be annoying to use like Bone Minions and Putrid Mark).

I think some places for combo skills are

• Warhorn (OH) – Wail of Doom – Whirl
• Dagger (OH) – Deathly Swarm – Whirl
• Focus (OH) – Reaper’s Touch – Projectile
• Axe (MH) – Unholy Feast – Blast
• Scepter (MH) – Grasping Dead – Dark Field

Anyways, those are just some thoughts that I had.

i cant even begin to state how frustrating this is. i run with a scepter and focus, staff as my secondary. i use a lot of wells, and spec’d into the targetable well trait finding it easy to slow and kite mobs through the well (especially well of suffering, thing hits like a truck) but its just so disappointing that with those two weapons not a single one of their abilities sets off a combo. here i can have up to 4 combo fields and nothing useful coming from them unless i switch to staff. i look at other classes and see them getting combos left and right when they assist me. feels really debilitating.

as for OP’s post. pet controls would be amazing. i completely stopped using minions because their AI is just pathetic. on top of this, they die way too easily, especially the blood fiend. 90% of the time my minions are either standing around (especially the golem and the shadow fiend) or attacking random destructible objects. sure they can completely wreck a target when they’re all attacking but getting to do that is frustrating.

overall, damage feels a little lacking and it makes me wonder if the intent for the necro was to be a more support class, providing some healing abilities and plenty of condition to boon and condition removing effects.

Tony.2150:

@Navi.1032
To clear things up i belive necros do not need 2 5 point minor traits with on kill effects/ Reanimator. I feel this is not needed. So clear up reanimator to a major trait? thats a waste but in all said give me clearer reasons behind so.
Well one tree has to be minion centric- For minion master would have no point.
Really liking the ideas
I think some places for combo skills are
Warhorn (OH) – Wail of Doom – Whirl
Dagger (OH) – Deathly Swarm – Whirl
Focus (OH) – Reaper’s Touch – Projectile
Axe (MH) – Unholy Feast – Blast
Scepter (MH) – Grasping Dead – Dark Field
Best part there but for Grasping dead. Does not stay long enough for there to be many combos.

Hmm a bit of clarification on what I meant, I don’t mind that Death is the “minion” trait line but having 2/3 minors minion focused pigeon-holes us into that type of build.
If you go 20 (or 30) into Death for a Well build, Protection of the Horde and Reanimator are totally useless.
Also, I suggested turning Reanimator into a major but I should have added “with changes.” Perhaps lowering the internal cooldown to 10 – 15s, not having the minions degenerate health, and making it so enemies can not rally off their death.

I also agree on the Grasping Dead part, perhaps they could also make it last longer and increase the cooldown a bit to balance that out?

I’m not sure where you’re getting your information about power scaling.

But I just tested it a second time (to be sure) and power is a simple % increase from your base dmg.

Using mist weapons, w/no additional power or modifiers/traits.

Axe skills :

1. - 236 (base power) + 923 Power Amulet = 472
2. - 808 (base power) + 923 Power Amulet = 1616
3. - 269 (base power) + 923 Power Amulet = 540

That’s almost exactly 100% increase for 923 power. Similarly just adding 100 power is a 11% increase. 3 stacks of might (105 power) is a 11.55% increase. 923 Power is 101%.

I tested this with daggers as well, although there the 101% increase shows correctly. Life Siphon and Axe skills show only 100% increase, so there’s a VERY minute difference.

I tested this using skills on the dummy as well with a steady weapon to be sure tooltips aren’t incorrect (avoiding vulnerability on auto of course), still doubling the dmg with the 923 amulet. 35 hits going to 70 for example.

Conclusion : different skills/weapons don’t have different power scaling, everything scales the same (except for maybe a microscopic difference at high levels), and the base Power for your level (916 at 80) simply means 100% base dmg, where base dmg is based on your weapon’s dmg. Additional power adds to that multiplier (i.e. 916 base power + 100 power = 111% base dmg).

And just to throw this in, although should be obvious, Crit multipliers such as % dmg increase multipliers from traits and the like calculate AFTER power scaling (200% base dmg + 10% more dmg will be 220% base dmg + 50-100% increase from a crit = 330% – 440% base dmg).

Also pets, they’re not meant to scale with our damage, all pets (besides phantasms, who share mesmer stats) have their own stats.

In my opinion the rework should be focused on making the Nekromancer a more “caster” ish class.

I mean it feels more like some third rate Cultist from Diablo then a real Dark wizard tipe of class…..
I kind of hate the concept. And thats a shame since it used to be my number 1 class in any other rpg or fantasy.

Scepter : Dont really care for skills, but the cast animations and the skill number 1 needs a rework. It looks stupid as the Nekro swings araund a scepter, like a Wand. Instead of focusing spells trough it, like the mesmer does.