Guild Wars 2

Silv.9207:

I’ve read only some of your proposed changes, but a large amount of them is more a nerf than a fix.
From the dagger that you want to make his slower, making it worst, expecially why it’s the only weapon we have to obtain “good” health with Vampiric Aura andi is our only chance to obtain a kind of heal while in dps mode.

Then something like that:
[Mighty Shroud]: Toughness bonus increased from +180 to +250 in order to earn its place as a taken trait choice.
[Dead Skin]: Toughness bonus per stack reduced from +300 to +150 in order to better balance it with [Mighty Shroud’s] toughness-to-power conversion effect.
Will really be a nerf. Expecially about your Death Skin (I can think that is Corrupter’s Fervor, right?), that change will make it a really worst trait to chose, making the traitline really a worst one, expecially for a MM. obtain +70 toughness while in DS and lose 150 toughness both in DS than in normal play? When the Scrapper specializzation will obtain a similar trait that will give him a +500 toughness and 20% condi reduction? Simply, why???

There’s some little (very little( good things, but all the other things will be a nerf more than a fix or a power up.

Since when did I say that necromancer needed a buff? What about “holistically conceived design” gives the impression that I was out to just pour mindless buffs onto the class?

Dead Skin/Mighty Shroud
That said, the idea behind the Dead Skin is over 2 years old now, and given that this redesign allows the Necromancer to begin a fight with death shroud available (as well as ways to ramp up the life force pool quickly at the beginning or leading into a fight), taking both traits would result in a titan at the simple press of F1: an instant juggernaut with (if we’re talking pvp zerker amulet) 19k HP, 3638 armor rating and 2954 power without might (did I mention that this was just with zerker ammy and nothing else?). The toughness reduction to Dead Skin and slight increase to Mighty Shroud finds a medium which also helps define the two individual traits: Mighty Shroud is a power booster trait; Dead Skin is a life force generation trait.

Dagger
As for the dagger part, I’ve already mentioned that these changes were made within the context of “balancing spam.” Tragically, anet went ahead with making autoattacks into actual skills instead of just generic non-skill filler spam. That move greatly complicated the act of balancing what happens when a player runs out of abilities to do, and in the case of GW2 in which mindlessly racing through a rotation is meta, it made what is meant to be mediocre filler damage/a last-resort finisher into the most effective thing that a lot of builds can do given that a typical rotation in GW2 relies heavily on instant or near-instant abilities/passive triggers.

While it’s not necessarily bad that autoattacks are unique, the fact that they often deal ludicrously high damage or effortlessly contribute to passive DoT spam makes their effectiveness very contrived (they aren’t good or bad in the way that one uses them, but rather they are super effective just by virtue of the player mashing 1). It’s also funny (and it says quite a bit about the raw over-effectiveness of autoattacks) that you didn’t mention the life force generation that the Necro dagger AA provides; you only focused on getting passive health back from mashing a fast-attacking 1 slot.

Autoattack tl/dr
All autoattacks need a serious toning down in order to put combat emphasis back into skills that actually require some semblance of timing or commitment in order to use. That, however, doesn’t mean that autoattacks need to lose everything about them which make them unique on a weapon-to-weapon basis—except for excessive condition spam (which is why the scepter AA has a projectile and a longer cast-time now in order to provide counterplay that isn’t just “be invulnerable,” “press the cleanse button that you may or may not even have,” or “passively regenerate health/heal yourself at an unnecessarily high rate”).

Sigmoid.7082:

Your reaper changes are a step backwards rather than a step forward. Reaper actually doesn’t need any of the changes and on its own is pretty OK the way Gee has it going.

Step backwards how? Let’s see:

• Shouts deal a baby pittance packet of damage for no real reason (except in the case of the heal which actually justifies damage, although it could still mechanically and functionally get along without it); removed that superfluous tack-on “flavor” from many shouts and replaced it with secondary/conditional effect adjustments to offset the “loss.”
• “Rise!” is now a straight damage mitigation skill and a stun-break in addition to already being a trigger for Death Nova.
• Lower cooldowns on GS with adjusted coefficients and effect durations.
• Theme of “chill spam” is still preserved in the traits; the only difference now is that effects which apply and benefit from chill are much more active and within the responsibility of the player rather than something like “critically hit a guy with anything for free chill.”
• Nobody took Deathly Chill and it will never be good unless they just ramp the passive damage tick up to the point where everyone else starts complaining that it’s overpowered (that’s honestly just how GW2 works; "soft"counterplay doesn’t have a strong presence in the game). It’s either that or they entirely change how chill works JUST for the sake of this sub-par trait that no one else will get which seems like a waste of time and invites horrible potential balance problems with which I don’t see anet coping very well. The new Cold Shoulder’s potential party-wide damage boost is already more effective than Deathly Chill, and since it relies on spreading chill to dangerous or ideal targets, it again puts the emphasis on player decision making rather than just “EVERYONE WHO HAS CHILL NOW ALSO TAKES DAMAGE YAAY.”
• The whirl finisher traits take advantage of GS and reaper shroud as well as giving the reaper a GM that provides some chase ability that must be actively employed by the player (thankfully, the GS and reaper shroud each come with their own respective combo field in order to fuel the baseline effects). I feel like adding some whirl finishers to other skills just to promote synergy with these traits outside of the stock reaper weapon/DS.
• Reaper now has a trait option which helps mitigate 2 spam—I mean ranged projectile damage.
• Nobody needs 8 stacks of stability. Nobody needs 8 seconds of 8 stacks of stability. People have it, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t incredibly overtuned and highly questionable. Remember when “control” was supposed to be one of the three sides to anet’s “soft triangle of Guild Wars 2?” Neither does stability. Defiant never even got the memo for that meeting. Break bar was told over the phone, but it’s always late to work.
• Soul Spiral now helps sponge damage if you choose to forego the reflection trait.
• Executioner’s Scythe already does enough damage to gib some players from ~30% HP. Having it stun is rather superfluous—especially on a 30 s CD. Adding a cleave function and letting the chill do the CC work (in addition to also just spreading more chill for trait benefits) will be a boost to the skill’s versatility rather than a drawback.

Wow, consider formatting this stuff better. Spoilerslike this one, bolded text etc. It’s hard to get through it. Glancing over it I saw three things:

1. You seem to like Elementalist

2. Some of your suggestions are extremaly complicated or niche.

3. You try fo use skill names from GW1. Always a plus.

And I like your account name, reminds me of holidays.

Rym.1469:

Wow, consider formatting this stuff better. Spoilers, bolded text etc. It’s hard to get through it.

And I like your account name, reminds me of holidays.

Oh yeah, spoilers. That’s actually a really good idea.

Rym.1469:

1. You seem to like Elementalist

I mainly like proper cues and cast times that are balanced with their effects. I did drop a lot of shoutouts to lava font and fireball mainly because they are very nicely cued (which allows for some soft counterplay by the opponent while also providing versatile usage for the player utilizing them) while still being very effective and rewarding should they land a hit.

Rym.1469:

2. Some of your suggestions are extremaly complicated or niche.

The only reason this is potentially a bad thing is because GW2 is super homogenized and bland across all classes. Nobody has any real roles and DPS dominates everything because the devs kept caving to people asking for nonsense buffs in a game that never had a well-established cooperative, role-based combat system from the start. A high number of niche options per class would allow for more opportunities for counterplay that isn’t “press the stability button,” “press the invulnerability period button,” or “press the button that removes the conditions.”

Rym.1469:

3. You try fo use skill names from GW1. Always a plus.

I try. Functional flavor is tragically absent in GW2. Many skills in this game are just bland abilities that try to pander to nostalgia instead of being something legitimately useful or unique which can be used to define a specific playstyle.

While Reaper’s Touch received a big update, and I snuck two whirl finishers into two respective off-hand options in order to better provide non-GS synergy with the Reaper whirl trait reworks (the ones that replaced a few sub-par/non-taken Reaper traits), I primarily wanted to draw attention to the healing support capabilities described in this thread’s promoted design.

If you really want to a glimpse of the potential healing support capabilities of Necromancer, take a look at the Blood Magic line (specifically the tier-3 traits) as well as Spectral Armor (including its related tier-3 trait in Soul Reaping). Every suggestion is well within the realm of implementation because they use no mechanic that isn’t already within the game. I’ve also been debating on shuffling around a few traits in the Blood Magic line in order to provide a Necromancer with more healing options. The whole point is to make Necromancer more layered and engaging as the player decides what kind of role he/she wants to take within combat.