Guild Wars 2

It’s bothered me for a while, but today it has become especially apparent Necromancer skills are all made up of recycled sounds and graphic effects. Even NPCs have a better deal than us in many ways. It comes across as really, really lazy.

This thread is only intended for the looks and sounds of skills, not bugs or balance.

So has anyone else noticed the extent of this? Are you bothered by it?

I’m hoping some attention to this might do us some favours.

The list that follows is made up of a quick 2 minutes of trying all abilities. Some things are recycled even more, but they were either only for very minor things that I didn’t feel were worth noting or simply couldn’t be bothered to add to the already long list

The list:

Jagged Horrors are just smaller Bone Minions.

Staff’s 1 skill looks identical to Lich Form’s 1 skill, Lich Form’s 4 skill, Spectral Grasp and Death Shroud’s 2 skill.

Staff’s 1 skill shares the exact sound of Focus’s 4.

Lich Form’s 1 skill shares the same sound as Focus’s 5 and, on further research, is shared by every minion summoning and most minion command skills as well as Poison Cloud among other skills.

All the Marks look very, very similar. Some are identical, like the 3 and 5 skill (also shared by the Mark of Revival trait). The 3 and 5 skill are also shared by Lich Form’s 2.

All Wells look very, very similar.

The Well of Power icon on the boon/condition bar, when you’re in it, has the same picture that Well of Blood has on your skillbar. Very confusing.

Scepter’s first and second part of it’s three part #1 skill combo have no effects whatsoever.

Dagger’s 1 skill is in three parts, the third and final part of the combo is shared by Scepter’s 3 skill and Axe’s 3 skill.

Dagger’s 1 skill (final part), Scepter’s 3 skill and Axe’s 3 skill is shared by many undead NPCs, all of the NPC versions have the same graphical effect hit three times one after the other, which also looks far better.

None of Plague Form’s skills show anything happening whatsoever.

….

I also tested Underwater skills and I’m not sure what to make of them. About six or seven of them (out of ten) are recycled Necro sounds, but I believe that the graphics (aside from one) are all fresh. Underwater Deathshroud was the same with repeated sounds but new visible affects and animations.

…

Now, the undead NPCs (Risen and the like) can easily beseen to have some better skills than us. After having a quick look I’ve found many abilities that suit us which we don’t have to use, yet NPCs do. Since NPCs have so many of our abilities, it seems strange to me they have so many unique abilities we’re missing and in their place with have repeats.

NPC names and skills:

Risen Plaguebearers use the previously mentioned effect of Dagger 1 (Necrotic Bite) and Scepter 3 (Feast of Corruption) among other skills. It’s far more distinctive than any of our single biting copy and pastes – their version, with multiple bites, is called Flurry of Bites.

Risen Corrupters have Vapor Blades (and an underwater variant of the ability that shares the name and effect, but has a different colour). Vapor Blades shoots out three greenish magic blades that fly forwards then back to the caster. Necromancer has nothing like it, it looks great.

Risen Corrupters have Cone of Corruption, where they breathe out eerie green flame that does five lots of damage. Necromancer has nothing like it, it looks great.

Risen Preservers have called Water Bolt, firing off a bolt of Necromancer-green water as an attack.

Risen Preservers have a skill called Corrupted Geyser, causing an AoE circle beneath you shooting out corrupted green water.

Risen Presevers have Wave of Corruption, which shoots a large blast wave of corrupted water from him in a PBAoE.

Risen Rotmouths shoot out green orbs that fly up into the air before splashing down on you.

…

Thoughts? Opinions?

Totaly agree to u.We need some new skills or my opinion we need Risen skills :P they just look better

I agree. Necromancers feel a bit unfinished in that respect.
Personally i wouldn’t mind a few … flashier effects.
Many spells just don’t feel very satisfying to use, to me.

That’s a good point, many are just underwhelming in general.

An example I touched on before is Scepter’s 1 skill. It has no effect on the first and second part of the combo, but even the third part is fairly weak – it’s just a small dark green flash. Since Scepter is the second most popular weapon for Necromancer an update would not go amiss.

indeed, could not agree more – and what is more important is that this topic should not get into oblivion as it is very important part of gameplay and enjoyment. personally I would like to see crows/ravens involved in some abilities and much more changes as necromancer seems to be really unfinished and lacking.

Crows and ravens are a fitting idea. I’d suggest an ability where they swoop down and attack a foe, but Ranger has it already.

A pity. We could have called the ability A Murder Of Crows. Never would the term have been so literal.

Whatever they do, they should NOT change the graphic of staff 1.

It is by far the coolest graphic i’ve seen on any profession, makes me DROOL from an rp perspective.

shadow-scythe plus grasping hand of death just wins for this weapon.

You missed the fact that staff #1 is the same as spectral grasp.

Delryn.7235:

You missed the fact that staff #1 is the same as spectral grasp.

Then change spectral grasp, but staff one is RP-perfection for a necromancer.

The point is, Staff #1 is shared by about five abilities. The shadow-scythe on the staff is easily one of Necro’s best looking graphics, but the claw that it shoots is far too overused for the profession. I think another good looking projectile, if the staff one ever gets changed, could be just as rp too?

plasmacutter.2709:

Delryn.7235:

You missed the fact that staff #1 is the same as spectral grasp.

Then change spectral grasp, but staff one is RP-perfection for a necromancer.

I don’t even mind the fact the staff #1 looks like a big black hand, my only issue with it is the slow moving projectile aspect of it, it’s nearly useless in a majority of situations.

And that isn’t even my biggest problem, I agree that in general most necromancer skills are so lack lustre it’s just meh.
The wells are just a small greenish mark on the ground, the effect of wells should take up the entire space they’re meant to take up, it should looks better, like for the blind one a black smoke-like substance emerging from the ground in the entire area.

In general everything is just so meh.

I do love the necro however, it’s just so bland playing it though.

Well… i agree it could go faster.

I also disagree with the complaints that the marks, etc look alike.

If anything, I’d like to see the marks look MORE alike. It will cause confusion and hesitation in pvp opponents… “will this circle mass-fear my team, or just inflict some bleeding our guardian could remove”?

They have the flying demorphed snake/zhaitan/undead dragon skull projectile in game, why not use that for staff 1, you know since a nice chunk of risen bosses have it?

Well to me it’s not even about looking different, but more about looking more interesting. Even if all marks looked exactly the same (which I actually agree is a decent idea) they should at least look nicer. It’s just a tiny little green circle that doesn’t even occupy the entire area of effect circle it’s supposed to. That’s always been something that bothered me.

For example the dagger’s offhand #5 attack which affects a large area – the actual animation is a tiny green whirly thing hitting the ground in a small area when in reality it affects a much larger area than shown.

Wow, ya know i’ve always felt this way but never came around to saying it. Interesting that so many agree.

Well given that melee’s complain that they can’t spot tells because of all the ranged effects, i suspect it more likely that the elementalists will get theirs toned down than ours spruced up.

The idea of keeping Marks and Wells as they are for the confusion has occurred to me, but in all honesty I don’t think that should happen. Every other profession has very distinctive abilities.

Identical abilities can also be harmful.

An example of it being harmful is the fact that two of our Marks and two of our Wells help allies. Our allies don’t actually know which circles they should be stepping into and which they don’t need to.

This same exact topic was brought up a couple weeks ago too. They also mentioned how the Risen Undead get better animations than us, with like the green poison well. Kinda sad – even the undead are stronger than us!

Karther.7481:

The idea of keeping Marks and Wells as they are for the confusion has occurred to me, but in all honesty I don’t think that should happen. Every other profession has very distinctive abilities.

Identical abilities can also be harmful.

An example of it being harmful is the fact that two of our Marks and two of our Wells help allies. Our allies don’t actually know which circles they should be stepping into and which they don’t need to.

about the damaging/healing wells and such needing different visuals…. i couldnt agree more!!!

I wonder how long it’ll be before people start realizing that Necro skills having similar animations is a good thing…

Aga.8641:

I wonder how long it’ll be before people start realizing that Necro skills having similar animations is a good thing…

Mind elaborating?
Honest question here. I’d love to hear your complete opinion about this

Similar animation means hard to counter

I don’t even mind them having similar animations as long as they have animations. With that I mean our skills are extremely boring to look at – unlike both the elementalist and mesmer for example.

Can’t say I care about sound and graphics that much. Thiefs almost always do their woofy shadowy move sound on skill use.

Ironic that Risen NPC’s are more developed than the Necromancer.

Umm, you do realize that not all risen are necromancers. Preservers are undead Guardians, and Corruptors are undead Elementalists.

Not saying you are wrong about us needing variety, but don’t just steal another professions animations and recolor them, which is exactly what they did for the Risen.

True, but they use all cross profession skills (all risen use Dark Path except Nobles that have thief Steal and all with scepters use the whirly water auto attack even if they are of another profession if they use a scepter).

Totally agree with all of this. I rerolled anyway it’s just a boring and dumb class lazily developed ad pigeonholed into 1 or 2 builds.

I agree, but also hate that necromancers are not necromancers at all… They are Demonologists…
Totally miss reviving skeletons or zombies from corpses, not weird demon minions…

The worst animation we have is the warhorn daze. It does not help you at all with trying to use the skill. I’ve only realised how big and how useful that skill is after a ton of trial and error.

This is why I turned off all game sounds. Can’t stand this “whoom-whoom-hate-anet-whoom-whoom” nonsense. I had serious headache because of this.

Karandor.4201:

The worst animation we have is the warhorn daze. It does not help you at all with trying to use the skill. I’ve only realised how big and how useful that skill is after a ton of trial and error.

That’s a good point, I too have noticed this 600 range large CoE looks as if it only hits a small space in melee range. Very misleading.

What is funny is that not only does the Lich Form look like the staff attack, it IS the staff attack. I got 1000 staff kills with it, and I rarely use staffs.