Guild Wars 2

Here in the Necromancer forums, we always read that, other classes can do what we can do better. On Burst Damage, Warriors and Thief excel. Guardians and Elementalists excel at Bunker builds. Rangers and Engineers excel at condition damage (mainly bleeds).

Guardians excel at fire cond. damage, while Mesmers have their confusion, etc. etc

Thieves are known for their ability to “slip right out of your hands”. I think you get the gist at what I’m trying to say.

So this opinion thread asks the Question: What should the Necromancer be really good at? On what aspect of the Necromancer should we excel at? If it doesn’t exist, tell me what you think the Necromancer should be.

Since this is an opinion thread please respect other people’s opinions. I’m genuinely curious as to what the community wants our most beloved Necro to be.

TL;DR Every Class excel at something, what should we as Necromancer have that will make us excel and make the Necro awesome.

You gave examples of other classes. In short, I think we should be the antithesis of all that.

Many classes excel at mobility. We definitely don’t. Instead, we excel (with some rough spots) at shutting down mobility and preventing escape. Not pursuit, but prevention.

Similarly, the current metagame is extremely boon-application and condition-removal heavy, and it’s going to stay that way forever unless something changes. I feel that Necromancers, as well as Mesmers to a lesser extent, should be the tip of the boon-removal sword. Unfortunately, our side of the equation (boon removal and condition application) is the considerably slower/lighter side of it all, and it’s a precarious balance to begin with.

If those two roles could be locked in place I’d be pretty kitten satisfied. I can’t really comment much on death shroud, as that feels even more difficult to balance out.

We excel at conditions. Note that this does not have anything to do with conditions that damage. We have, by far, the most access to conditions overall of any class in the game. In fact, barring the dagger, every weapon we have has at least 2 conditions, and every weapon set possible has at least 3 conditions (dagger+focus or warhorn), with many weapons having more (staff has 4 + condition transfer, scepter has 3 + at least 2 from offhand).

What do most of our utility skills do? More stuff to do with conditions. Corrupting boons into conditions, turning conditions into boons, 1 minute bleeds, taking conditions from allies in the area. In fact only 2 spectral skills and 2 signets have nothing to do with conditions, out of 20 utilities. Those 4 abilities together are about life stealing or life force, minor necromancer mechanics.

Even 2 out of 3 elites have great access to conditions, with one of them just being a giant swirly cloud of conditions.

Necromancers are, hands down, the kings of conditions. It is our main spot in the game. We also have the best access to boon removal of any class as a nice little bonus.

I think the necromancer should be particularly good at applying debilitating conditions. Chill, weakness, cripple, poison: not actual control effects, just conditions that make life a struggle. Of those, I feel like chill is present enough, which gives cripple a bit of a pass. But poison could stand to be much more ubiquitous, and weakness could have a bit more presence as well.

EDIT: Oh hey Bhawb!
I do feel like necromantic control of conditions is exceptional, I just think the application of a few of them could be upped in availability.

Conditions as stated. The duration runes being bugged is really annoying me, because when you have so many conditions, its a multiplier to make them last longer.

The real question though concerning conditions being our strength, is are they too easy to counter in PVP, are there too many cleanses readily available, especially as groups get larger and share them.

In PVE mobs have no defenses and conditions can wreck stuff, but PVP we are totally at the mercy of the other guys build.

Wish we had something like the ability to ‘blow up’ our conditions or a trait that put some kind of debuff on an enemy for cleansing, just to give us some small control over our conditions being totally neutralized.

Would really love to have even one application means of Burning or Confusion too. Of course its nasty to spread it via epidemic with teammates, but they aren’t always around. It’s clear they didn’t want our conditions to reach too much DPS levels, but then again, with the lack of availability of positive buffs we have, I think it would be fair for us to have those two conditions minimally.

Great ideas everyone, I hope this could make our discussion going.

@Furienify – I agree, I want us to be that class that you want to think twice about engaging, I want players to say, “Holy Kitten, once I engage that Necro I should win, or I will never be able to escape.” If Thieves are the pillar of escaping, I want us to be the pillar of “You will never be able to run away.” I think a few more tweaks to our class should get us nearer.

Heya Bhawb,

I do understand that we excel in manipulating and controlling our conditions and to some extent the players around us. That’s what I love in being a Necromancer. But do you think it is enough for players and other classes to “Need” us in the current Tpvp, WvW and PVE meta?

@Softspoken – I like that. If guardians are Boons and Fire, we should be Conditions and Chill. The Mr. Freeze build was aimed for that but a few more tweaks for more chills available naturally to our class sounds good. Death is cold.

What I would like to see is some spreading out of our condition damage, to alleviate so much of it being bleeds. When almost all your DPS is in one stack of a condition and someone wipes a 20 bleed stack, you just lost a massive truckload of damage, likely lost the fight.

If they did more of a balance with poison (or one of the other dmg conditions I mentioned, burning & confusion) it would really help our reliability of damage as well as attrition playstyle.

Something like upping our poison durations for a few seconds, and reducing some of our bleed durations. Right now we have bleeds that last base 10 and 30 seconds. It’s easy to get those near 20 seconds and 60 seconds with bleed duration, but its just overkill. Only the most moronic player is going to let a bleed sit on them for 20 seconds, let alone 30 or 60.

Terror was a good step in this direction, but has to be built heavily for to be truly effective.

Pendragon.8735:

Conditions as stated. The duration runes being bugged is really annoying me, because when you have so many conditions, its a multiplier to make them last longer.

The real question though concerning conditions being our strength, is are they too easy to counter in PVP, are there too many cleanses readily available, especially as groups get larger and share them.

In PVE mobs have no defenses and conditions can wreck stuff, but PVP we are totally at the mercy of the other guys build.

Wish we had something like the ability to ‘blow up’ our conditions or a trait that put some kind of debuff on an enemy for cleansing, just to give us some small control over our conditions being totally neutralized.

Would really love to have even one application means of Burning or Confusion too. Of course its nasty to spread it via epidemic with teammates, but they aren’t always around. It’s clear they didn’t want our conditions to reach too much DPS levels, but then again, with the lack of availability of positive buffs we have, I think it would be fair for us to have those two conditions minimally.

I feel you on the bugged condition duration so I’ve been parking my necro a lot because of it till they fix it.

Interesting, we should have a unique mechanic to our conditions that makes us stronger as we deal more conditions without making us overpowered. Cleansing on the other hand happens too much in PVP, and with our semi long cooldowns reapplying them takes a while and by the time we reapply it to a reasonable stack, they cleanse it again.

Any good ideas about it?

See my above post about spreading the damage around more. Also we do have ‘Target the Weak’ that gives us 2% more damage per condition, the funny thing is that only affects direct damage, while if you have a build triggering it with many conditions, often means you have gimpy direct damage, so it doesn’t do that much.

But that is also a trait that would become better if we had access to confusion or burning, as it would be one more condition not just for another 2%, but one more condition to hide our stronger damage debuffs behind.

I use to use the Skale Venom consumable in WvW for that purpose, not because it was so great on its own, but kept 2 more conditions around to hide my bleeds as well as for target the weak. Now they nerfed using that in WvW, but still helpful in PVE for the same purposes.

Pendragon.8735:

What I would like to see is some spreading out of our condition damage, to alleviate so much of it being bleeds. When almost all your DPS is in one stack of a condition and someone wipes a 20 bleed stack, you just lost a massive truckload of damage, likely lost the fight.

If they did more of a balance with poison (or one of the other dmg conditions I mentioned, burning & confusion) it would really help our reliability of damage as well as attrition playstyle.

Something like upping our poison durations for a few seconds, and reducing some of our bleed durations. Right now we have bleeds that last base 10 and 30 seconds. It’s easy to get those near 20 seconds and 60 seconds with bleed duration, but its just overkill. Only the most moronic player is going to let a bleed sit on them for 20 seconds, let alone 30 or 60.

Terror was a good step in this direction, but has to be built heavily for to be truly effective.

I could use more poison. Poison is good since we make their healing less effective. With them wiping more conditions but us makes their healing innefective would be good for attrition.

How about decreasing our bleed stacks but increasing the damage of each individual bleeds, so that we could be effective at less stacks thus getting less kitten by the 25 stack limit? Thus making us the only class that deals more damage with each bleed.

Upping the bleed coefficient would be one way to go. But Necro bleeds should already be doing the most damage, as we are probably stacking the most condition damage.

Offloading some on to poison would hurt for PVE though, because it only stacks in duration, meaning if 20 people are fighting a boss, all the necros are going to be adding on to the same poison timer. But the bleed cap isn’t any more helpful in that regard. Burning would be better in that regard as its so short, you’re not going to see the cap hit much.

Pendragon.8735:

See my above post about spreading the damage around more. Also we do have ‘Target the Weak’ that gives us 2% more damage per condition, the funny thing is that only affects direct damage, while if you have a build triggering it with many conditions, often means you have gimpy direct damage, so it doesn’t do that much.

But that is also a trait that would become better if we had access to confusion or burning, as it would be one more condition not just for another 2%, but one more condition to hide our stronger damage debuffs behind.

I use to use the Skale Venom consumable in WvW for that purpose, not because it was so great on its own, but kept 2 more conditions around to hide my bleeds as well as for target the weak. Now they nerfed using that in WvW, but still helpful in PVE for the same purposes.

Lol you type faster than I do.

On Confusion, when I learned that asurans have Pain Inverter, I wished I rolled an Asuran Necro.

The best boon we could use really is more might. Since it ups our conditions and normal damage both. Splitting between power and condition damage, which is like 60/40 inherent in a lot of our abilities, is really what hurts the Necros vs other more specializing clasess, that can just go all power or all crit and own.

And I think they did a good thing with Blood is Power, and I’ve seen a lot of people try to make might builds around that, and with runes and sigils and such, but it takes a lot of work and sacrificing other things. The main problem with a Might build right now is that it requires very specific rotations that are not fight reactive, so that if you get in a situation where you can’t say go into DS to load up on Might via Life Blast, there goes your DPS.

Pendragon.8735:

Upping the bleed coefficient would be one way to go. But Necro bleeds should already be doing the most damage, as we are probably stacking the most condition damage.

Offloading some on to poison would hurt for PVE though, because it only stacks in duration, meaning if 20 people are fighting a boss, all the necros are going to be adding on to the same poison timer. But the bleed cap isn’t any more helpful in that regard. Burning would be better in that regard as its so short, you’re not going to see the cap hit much.

And this is why Balancing on both PVP and PVE is hard. Burning and Fear, even if it’s not making the boss run away, if it ticks for more damage I would be satisfied.

Pendragon.8735:

The best boon we could use really is more might. Since it ups our conditions and normal damage both. Splitting between power and condition damage, which is like 60/40 inherent in a lot of our abilities, is really what hurts the Necros vs other more specializing clasess, that can just go all power or all crit and own.

And I think they did a good thing with Blood is Power, and I’ve seen a lot of people try to make might builds around that, and with runes and sigils and such, but it takes a lot of work and sacrificing other things. The main problem with a Might build right now is that it requires very specific rotations that are not fight reactive, so that if you get in a situation where you can’t say go into DS to load up on Might via Life Blast, there goes your DPS.

I saw that Necrobuster thread with might, (I read most Necro threads everyday, between play, shows how much of a lurker I am.) and it is an interesting effort. The most fun I have is when I’m playing with an ele and a guardian and I am getting 25 stacks of might consistently. Amazing thing it does on your condition damage.

I would like the necro to be rebuilt to “burst conditions” with skills (utility and weapons). Attrition just doesn’t work with so many condition removals. Instead of a stack of bleed for 4 sec, we should apply 4stacks of bleed for 1 sec.

I would also like pets to be mobile meat shield (no more offensive pets with borked AI). Give them effects when they die (cuz they WILL) to differentiate. They just follow you around absorbing AoE’s and providing los obstructions.

Attrition.

But for reals this time. Having a huge life pool means nothing if you can’t sustain it, so siphoning is required.

And also much moremeaty, regenerating minions. It matters not if they do crap damage if they can keep you alive, especially when taking advantage of traits like minion life steal and such.

Necromancers are meant to be the best at not allowing others to escape.
Too bad that’s almost useless in PvE. And in WvW people usually get away anyway…
At least we can make some choice melee mobs easier to kite in Dungeons.

Necromancers are also meant to be the best at manipulating Conditions offensively.
And they probably are!
Too bad corrupting Boons is useless in PvE most of the time since so few mobs use Boons.
Same goes for Boon stripping.
Putrid Mark and and Epidemic can be great though!
Yet in WvW everybody and their grandmother seems to have Condition removal.

Also Necromancers have Minions that aren’t on a timer.
For something you are intended to base a whole build around they are too vulnerable to AoE.
That makes the whole build situational, which is bad.
It’s one thing to have 1 skill you swap in/out, it’s an another to have to retrait.

Necromancers are also supposed to be great at attrition, but they really aren’t if you ask me.
The idea seems to be you slowly stack up Vulnerability/Bleed, build Lifeforce and outlast your opponent with high survivability.
From my experience in reality my Pistol Thief does it much better.
Apply tons of Bleeds, stealth. Repeat until the enemy slowly dies.

I honestly feel like Necro is messed up in that we have some insanely powerful skills (maybe even overpowered) but they require very specific circumstances.

Too specific.
While many Professions are based around things that can be good everywhere Necro seems to be based around very situational mechanics.
GW1 term “Build wars” comes to mind.

Also Necros lack escapes by design which might make sense in sPvP (I dunno, does it? I don’t sPvP much) but it’s just reaaaally annoying and serves no purpose other than to add to repair costs when trying to run past mobs in PvE or run from a 50 man Zerg in WvW.

We have a few roles, but AOE big guns is where its at, whether its condition or power based. Secondary is crowd control. We sacrifice special movement spikes to be in control of our environment more.

Attrition is just one direction you can go with necro imo, but you lose damage. So thats just one option, or anywhere in the middle. Its definately a feature to have the choice.

DarkniteJ.8053:

Heya Bhawb,

I do understand that we excel in manipulating and controlling our conditions and to some extent the players around us. That’s what I love in being a Necromancer. But do you think it is enough for players and other classes to “Need” us in the current Tpvp, WvW and PVE meta?

In the current tPvP meta we are actually very strong, most people just don’t realize it because there are relatively few good necros out there. The meta in tPvP is heavily towards boons; and we have the strongest access to boon stripping/corrupting. It makes us insanely good near-point bunkers right now because with the right build, your opponent almost never has boons, which is a bit of an issue for them if they are an elementalist that relies on boons for a lot.

In WvW I would say we are great, and definitely needed in coordinated groups for Epidemic spam, for the fields we can put down, and a bit of other utility we can bring (plague signet for more condition removal from allies). We just aren’t hugely common because you only need so much Epidemic’s flying around.

PvE I don’t think is competitive to really “need” any of anything. It makes certain things easier if you have X class for Y path, that is pretty much it outside of Fractals, which I just don’t know well. However I have talked to other necros who have had great success with Fractals (I think Nemesis said he got to the 30s-40s in fractals).

Necros should be about minions, life steal, fear.

PvE necros are fine cause currently most bosses don’t strip conditions.

sPvP/tPvP I have no experience in, I’ll let others talk about those.

But in WvW we seem to be either the first to die or the last to die.
We’re first to die because we don’t have access to stunbreak and if focused on with hard CC, our high health doesn’t stop the gankfest.We’re also the last to die because if we don’t get focused on, the condition transfer, condition heal, deathshoud and plague/lich form all allow us to keep our health higher longer.

Since the FoTM in WvW is hard CC and combo fields/finishers necros are not favored.
This might change now that you can damage the camp supervisor with Righteous Indignation by using a light field/blast finisher for area retaliation and a dark field/projectiles for lifesteal and necros can use 4 wells, 1 light and 3 dark and the slow staff projectile.

Just waiting for the WvW map chat “Necros needed to flip supply camp” to be as popular as “sweep for mesmers”

I’d like to see a time when a defending zerg needs necro dark fields with projectiles to lifesteal the attacking zerg, followed by spectral wall and projectiles to spread confusion only to finish with well of blood and blast finishers to give area retaliation.

One common theme that all necro agree on is attrition. That means outlasting the enemy and dealing moderate damage until the target dies.

This can be done in a few ways:

1) Large HP pool – Necro take the cake for this one. With DS a necro can have 40k hp. 10/10

2) Healing – Necro got decent healing to counter incoming damage. They also regenerate life force as they fight. However that Life Transfer healing doesn’t heal the necro himself, because he is in DS. So that’s a conflict of interest, self contradiction. Life Siphon also doesn’t scale with healing power. 7/10

3) Damage avoidance and mobility – They got Spectral Walk and Flesh Wurm, but that’s about it. They do have a few snares, but they are better used offensively than running away. Necros cannot survive in Fractal level 40+ because Hp pool doesn’t matter when mobs hit you super hard. You need to avoid those overwhelming damage to survive. 3/10

4) Damage reduction – Necro is very weak here. The protections that a necro cast cannot be sustained. Spectral Armor’s cool down is way too long. And when the enemy cast a Meteor Shower right on your Spectral Wall, will you still try to stand in it? No immunity skills. No blocking skills. 1/10

5) Counters and interrupts – Necro got a few fears and pull skills. However their cool down is too long. They are also unreliable since both fear and pull often fail. Necro also cannot cause confusion. 3/10

So overall I would rate necro 24/50 in terms of attrition. We would need to do a lot better to be a true attrition class.

This might put it a little close to rangers, but I think the various minions should take place of DS and be put on the F1-F4 skills. After that, depending on what utility or weapon skills we use, all your minions inflict a certain amount of a certain condition per each hit. Or if you use scepter two on an enemy and your minions happen to be in the aoe, then they’ll start inflicting cripple per hit as well. After that, the utilities can have more space available for things that help the necros last through a fight, or utilities that give your minions an effect, like chill all enemies in a radius around each minion, or cause them to lifesteal, etc.

Basically I’m thinking of what it’d be like if we merged the minions and conditions sides of the necro closer together at the expense of DS (which has it’s use but I’m not too fond of as a class mechanic skill).

Bhawb.7408:

DarkniteJ.8053:

Heya Bhawb,

I do understand that we excel in manipulating and controlling our conditions and to some extent the players around us. That’s what I love in being a Necromancer. But do you think it is enough for players and other classes to “Need” us in the current Tpvp, WvW and PVE meta?

In the current tPvP meta we are actually very strong, most people just don’t realize it because there are relatively few good necros out there. The meta in tPvP is heavily towards boons; and we have the strongest access to boon stripping/corrupting. It makes us insanely good near-point bunkers right now because with the right build, your opponent almost never has boons, which is a bit of an issue for them if they are an elementalist that relies on boons for a lot.

In WvW I would say we are great, and definitely needed in coordinated groups for Epidemic spam, for the fields we can put down, and a bit of other utility we can bring (plague signet for more condition removal from allies). We just aren’t hugely common because you only need so much Epidemic’s flying around.

PvE I don’t think is competitive to really “need” any of anything. It makes certain things easier if you have X class for Y path, that is pretty much it outside of Fractals, which I just don’t know well. However I have talked to other necros who have had great success with Fractals (I think Nemesis said he got to the 30s-40s in fractals).

Single target skills like Epidemic and Corrupt Boon is useless in high tier wvw. It is nearly impossible to pick out an single enemy full of condition or boons in the middle of a full on 50vs50 zerg fight. There is insane graphic lag, often dropping the game to 5 fps. Sometime it is so bad that you can’t even follow your commander properly. There is network lag, which prevent you from using your skills. There is culling, preventing you from seeing the enemies.

In those rare and precious few seconds that you can use your character properly, you would want to spam as many AoEs as you can so you are making a difference. You should also be sticking with your commander 24/7, so there aren’t much time for detailed and skilled gameplay. It is a zerg fest, it is what it is.

In a perfect world, this is how I would balance the game:

Warriors: Make them the linebackers of the game. Let them excel in stuns and knockdowns. They should be able to close distance for melee very well.
Reduce their PvE dps to be more in line with other classes.

Thieves: Burst dps and stealth. They should be particularly good at applying blind. Very high mobility.
– Boost their PvE survivability to be more in line with other classes.

Rangers: Single target ranged dps should be high. In PvP, they should excel at snaring enemies (fits in line with the role of the trapper and transitions well from the crip shot rangers of ye olde GW1).
– Boost PvE dps and make PvP maps larger so that there is the need for a person who excels in snares.

Necromancer: Should be the kings of AoE conditions. Also should have the most application of poison. Low mobility should be offset by vampiric drain-tanking abilities. This should be a strong steady dps pressure class.
– Boost PvE dps and make larger maps that empower AoE conditions.

Mesmers: Should be pretty much what they are now
– No changes

Engineers: Should be great at support roles. Should have great slot skills that benefit the group and have good healing capabilities for others.
– Increase the steady dps (not burst dps) that players receive in PvE so that healing and support builds are more viable.

Guardians: Should be pretty much what they are now.
– No changes

Elementalists: Should be pretty much what they are now
– No changes

Heya Everyone,

Thank you for your input. Sadly I cannot reply to all of them as my workload’s back. Well, the gist of it is most of you have mentioned that we must be good at Attrition (which Chips has mentioned that we need about 50% more improvement to go to just be there.) , Life Steal, Minions and Conditions.

Jackums has also mentioned that yeah, some classes has multiple builds that they excel at.

I’m also surprised that no one has mentioned our Hybrid and Power builds that we currently have. What is our state currently in the game? Do you think we need more improvement on this aspect of the Necro?

DarkniteJ.8053:

I’m also surprised that no one has mentioned our Hybrid and Power builds that we currently have. What is our state currently in the game? Do you think we need more improvement on this aspect of the Necro?

We are great at conditions, something everyone has said. You have to realize that with a necromancer, every single build we make is going to be a condition build. What you are talking about is how we damage; not every build is a condition damage build.

There are people that play power builds very often, in fact many people prefer them. Hybrid builds are also very strong because we can pretty flawlessly transition between direct damage and condition damage because of our condition application, and the way that even our “condition” weapons have direct damage aspects. They aren’t mentioned because those are all specific builds we can do, they are all just separate pieces of a necromancer. Necromancers overall, however, are all about conditions.

As for builds, I honestly believe that is a community issue. Necromancer builds have proven to require a bit of creativity (like the Mr. Frost and Terror builds show). You need to decide what you want to do (a role to fill), how you want to do it, and then the specifics to make it work. Necromancers, in reality, have a lot of variety to the builds we can use effectively, more so than many other classes, it just takes a lot of effort to make those builds; whereas other classes have very limited options, but it is very obvious how to put the build together.

Boon removal means very little in pve besides the dredge, and conditions like chilll and poison hardly cause value in most pve content, so you’re left with bleeds and weakness, which don’t compensate for the terrible damage and utility coimpared to other classes.

The only reason the necro is good in pvp is wells and boon removal. The cc is kinda nice, but nothing that can’t be replaced with an engineer or elementalist.

PvE you can also Epidemic and drop fields for life steal/blindness.

being the summoner pofession with a minion army.

Bhawb.7408:

PvE you can also Epidemic and drop fields for life steal/blindness.

Thieves do blindness much better than the necromancer ever will.

As a side note, the only skills I’ve seen mentioned in this thread as points where the Necro excel have been the wells, consume conditions, 3 of the corruption skills and marks 3, 4 and 5.

Having so many good skills tied up as utilities really cuts down between what we can theoretically do great and what we can actually bring to bear.

From a Mesmer perspective, Necros tend to be one of our toughest opponents.

AoE conditions obliterate our clones/phantasms and makes our stealth nearly useless. Unless the Mes has a greatsword a competent Necro is often a nightmare for us. Ive always wondered, can you stack traps ontop of eachother? So when they step on one theyre really stepping on like.. 3?

Also, its worth noting that Necros excel at debilitating the enemy, the combined effects of conditions can get crazy. Weakness: half my attacks do 50% damage and dodges regenerate slower, poison stunts my healing, chill makes skills take longer to recharge.. Mesmers dont have much condition removal, usually only carrying maybe one or two of our 3-4 removal skills which even then have long cooldowns, and even then you dont always end up removing the right conditions (poisoned&bleeding out but I remove weakness and cripple.. facepalm)

From an outside perspective, it looks as if Necros are the masters of debilitations. Especially when applying them strategically rather than facerolling as many as possible

I kinda wish we excelled at the hybrid dd+ condition damage. It would be a lot easier to do this if there was a power-tough-condi damage gear set since this would go well with undead runes (5% tough added as condi damage) and the death magic 25 point minor. It would be a build that hit hard but not burst and kept conditions on you as well.

We are the masters of condition applying. I tried it on a lot of classes, but it’s the best on Necromancer. Mesmer confusion doesn’t work in pve, and in wvw is to easely removed/countered/doesn’t last long enough. The staff clones, attack to slow and to random to apply reliable condition damage. It’s not bad, but for condition build, I take Necromancer any day over mesmer.

We are the masters of minions. Although this is more of a lore thing then the truth. Anet needs to improve minions.

While we may not be the fastest or most reliable condition removers (guardian has more of them I think), many of the necromancer tools remove more then one condition, many of them even remove ALL CONDITIONS. In in that specific way, they are also ‘the best condition ’handlers’. Turning them into their own advantage (damage on enemy), is quite nice.

They are the masters of ‘forms’. Our elites (plague form and lich form) are both some of the best ingame in my opinion. ‘worthy’ elites. Something I miss on my elementalist. The elemental summon is to weak/long cooldown, fiery greatsword is only good, when you are able to survive without needing to rely on water skills for a while, and cooldown is quite long, Tornado is good, but only in very very specific situations. I prefer Necromancer any day.

They are the kings of Aoe. I’ve alwyas like aoe. Elementalist comes close to what I like, but the spells are just not my cup of tea. Having almost spammable marks on staff, utilities that are also aoe, a heal that’s aoe, elite that’s aoe… I just love it. And epidemic is not a ‘target area’ aoe, in that way it require very good timing. But I like that, if you manage to time it well, it’s one of the best aoe’s in the game (or the worst if the mob is dead when you cast it, or time it wrong).

Attrition we are not good at. Simply for the reason of Stuns. We lack stunbreakers, and many professions spam them. Against stun spam necromance has few tools to survive. Stuns in my opinion are the only True thing that prevents necromancer from becoming Attrition. I understand though that necromancers need a weakness and stuns perhaps should be it. But we could use some more stabilities. Especially on one of our utilities like maybe spectral armour. I don’t see the point of a 90 sec cd skill, being op, if Stability was added to it. Once it’s on cooldown the enemy can still relentless ‘stun’ us, it’s just a short window of safety against control, that every class should have access too.

I’ve played necro a bit recently, and while it’s kind of fun, I feel a bit disappointed that it’s more dark-caster and less master-of-death.
While necros are great at inflicting- and manipulating- conditions, I’ve really thought that they should be at home in a different place entirely: death. They should have corpse exploitation mechanics like they did from GW1 (not necessarily in raising minion armies, because that was incredibly overpowered at times), by spreading conditions and general discord from nearby corpses, which in turn helps them make more corpses to feed on. This cascade of power would amplify greatly in a WvW zerg, and would falter solo unless they just killed some mobs nearby.
I think this is what Anet tried to do this with death shroud, but in all honesty, I’m disappointed in it. The best part of it is the AOE siphon ability. This just doesn’t feel necromancer.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Ive always wondered, can you stack traps ontop of eachother? So when they step on one theyre really stepping on like.. 3?

Yes and no, depending on exactly what you are asking. We can stack all of our marks on top of each other, so when you seem to be stepping on one, you are stepping on 4. But we can’t stack the same type of mark on top of itself (like 2 Marks of Blood).

DarkniteJ.8053:

So this opinion thread asks the Question: What should the Necromancer be really good at? On what aspect of the Necromancer should we excel at? If it doesn’t exist, tell me what you think the Necromancer should be.

Poison/Bleed with some Chilled and Fear thrown in for good measure.

Too bad those Conditions are so kitten in the current state of the game.

fractalKinesis.8569:

I’ve played necro a bit recently, and while it’s kind of fun, I feel a bit disappointed that it’s more dark-caster and less master-of-death.
While necros are great at inflicting- and manipulating- conditions, I’ve really thought that they should be at home in a different place entirely: death. They should have corpse exploitation mechanics like they did from GW1 (not necessarily in raising minion armies, because that was incredibly overpowered at times), by spreading conditions and general discord from nearby corpses, which in turn helps them make more corpses to feed on.

Aesthetically I agree, all the minions are more like weird aliens, maybe frankenstein creatures at best, rather than something you rose from the grave.

Though we do get life force when stuff dies, and can even get regular health too. Though our actual skills we have available to use in Death Shroud to consume all that life essence, don’t seem all that death inspired. I think it might be all the green. I know they tried for each class to have a color theme, but its a bit overkill on the green effects. How about some black or purple.

It makes sense lore-wise. To my knowledge, green is the color of Grenth, the god of death and essentially supreme-bossman of all necros. It also goes in line with poison. And almost all of our green isn’t a bright Christmas green, its a dark green, usually with plenty of black.

Purple is Mesmer colors (goes with their god).

Pendragon.8735:

fractalKinesis.8569:

I’ve played necro a bit recently, and while it’s kind of fun, I feel a bit disappointed that it’s more dark-caster and less master-of-death.
While necros are great at inflicting- and manipulating- conditions, I’ve really thought that they should be at home in a different place entirely: death. They should have corpse exploitation mechanics like they did from GW1 (not necessarily in raising minion armies, because that was incredibly overpowered at times), by spreading conditions and general discord from nearby corpses, which in turn helps them make more corpses to feed on.

Aesthetically I agree, all the minions are more like weird aliens, maybe frankenstein creatures at best, rather than something you rose from the grave.

Though we do get life force when stuff dies, and can even get regular health too. Though our actual skills we have available to use in Death Shroud to consume all that life essence, don’t seem all that death inspired. I think it might be all the green. I know they tried for each class to have a color theme, but its a bit overkill on the green effects. How about some black or purple.

Meh, I don’t mind the green of it so much. I feel death shroud is actually a really disappointing mechanic. Maybe it gets cooler later? I dunno, it just feels like a weak AOE lifesteal, a TINY secondary health pool (the aforementioned lifesteal only funneling into this pool), and a bunch of junk slow firing attacks, that get even gimpier as you use them. Oh yeah, and a worthless one-second fear. What’s that even for? I don’t get it at all.

Also black would be cool, but would make any rendering look flat and bland. I assume Anet is saving that for when they release Pandaren Deathknights in a future expansion.

I think Necromancers should be able to have more of a minion army than they do. This could help a lot because generally casters are squishy and necros could have more minions for croud control…. Or at least make the minions stronger.