Guild Wars 2

This thread is not (intended to be) about balancing issues. I don’t care if certain skills are too weak or not, it’s just about the necromancer mechanics that simply don’t work out.

Minions
They don’t regenerate health out of combat, their skills have way to long casting times (~2s for the Shadow Fiend’s Haunt wtf) and the AI … well, we really shouldn’t talk about the AI, it’s so kitten annoying that the Rangers pets now how to fight while our minions just kitten up all the time.

Underwater Comba
Well, underwater combat is a total train wreck. I don’t know how else I could describe it. In PvE you can do underwater combat, but it most definitively is no fun at all. In PvP you should really avoid engaging enemy players under water since most of them will just crush you and some of them won’t even notice that they were fighting a player.

First of all it really sucks to only have one elite skill (why can’t we have e.g. a Flesh Shark instead of a Flesh Golem?). Furthermore, if you’re playing with minions using Plague makes them disappear (as swimming at the surfaces does).
The second problem are our two weapons, the concept for Trident and Spear just seems off. None of them is really made to be used with a condition or life siphon build. The Trident seems so be a support weapon if you are playing with minions and the Spear is just made for sucide missions.
Next we have the aquatic Death Shroud where Life Transfer was traded for Gathering Plague, which makes no sense since we have to leave DS in order to get rid off the condition we just drew to us.

Condition Build and Damage vs Structures
Since they can’t bleed a condition mancer doesn’t deal that much damage vs structures and therefor having to destroy them is awful .

Cap on Bleed
It works in sPvP and solo PvE, but as soon as there are more than two players attacking the same target the cap is reached too easily and the necros damage drops.

Scepter
Mostly fine, just Feast of Corruption seems kinda useless if you are not playing in a group. In my book the skill should be changed to consume bleed stacks on the target to increase its damage. This would make it more usefull while solo and also help to deal with the freaking low bleed cap.

Staff
The staff is a weird weapon. It has a very weak direct damage auto attack and 4 marks of which 3 have way to long cooldowns so you can’t cycle them without using that stupid auto attack multiple times in between.
It’s also neither made for power or condtion damage builds nor can it be used as a main weapon. It’s solid as a support weapon in World PvP or if used in combination with a minion build, but still not impressive at all.

Axe & Dagger
Since the daggers range was increased I don’t really see a reason to use the axe instead. Both weapons are only useable against single targets and the dagger grants more survivability.

Traits
Another train wreck. A lot of our traits either don’t work or are just plain useless.

Lich Form
It just sucks that your sice gets increased that much, this makes the elite almost useless in PvP since you’ll get focused by almost everybody.

I was thinking of posting something of this nature so I’m just gonna snowball off some of the stuff you’ve said. I don’t have a huge issue with the weapons although I don’t like the way conditions are handled the cap too be specific. I’d rather see no cap and give players/enemies better tools for getting rid of conditions.

Firstly the minions I understand what they were going for they only do token damage and have some form of utility with there actives, but there’s a couple problems in practice. The first being it seems like the minion with the most useful utility the devourer just doesn’t have the survivability to stay alive in PvE or sPVP. And I’ve had similar problems with the Wurm. Now the shade can survive, but it’s active is awful for one very specific reason. When you use it the shade has a cast time, and then all you get is a single target blind. So not only do you only get one miss out of it, but it doesn’t come out fast enough for you to actually stop an attack you might see coming. It seems like you’d either have to give the shade an AoE blind or instant blind for it to even be considered useful. I do like the flesh golem though I think it’s in a pretty good place. Oh and also the AI problems mentioned by OP. Those are pretty frustating.

With trait builds it doesn’t seem like necromancers really have a weapon other than main hand dagger to take advantage of power with. And it tends to make it feel like you can either go for an all out condition build or a kind of utility death shroud build to be effective in sPVP. But I guess my problem is there isn’t really any burst damage options for a necromancer. I will say though I wish more proffesions had ways to remove/corrupt boons though, since many people seem to be boon stacking in sPVP.

It might just be because so many people are going glass cannon, and the necromancer excels at battles of attrition, but it feels like they have some holes in what play styles they can actually do. That is too say they can do a couple things well and I wouldn’t say they’re completely underpowered, but they seem to not be able to fill in nearly as many roles as other proffesions.

That’s just my two cents I’m a little hesitant to talk about balance this early in the game’s life, but it does seem it leaves something to be desired. Too me in any case.

The secret to structures is your Flesh Golem… especially if the structure is butted up against a wall. One charge straight into it with a wall blocking its path through causes the structure to take like 10+ hits. I can just about 1 shot any structure with the correct charge angle…..

After that, your best bet is to keep a dagger around for the decent 1 spam combo dps.

I know about the Flesh Golem “trick”, but I still consider this as a bug and not as working as intended.

I agree with the OP about underwater combat, pigeonholing all necros into plague form is horrible, not only that but it completely ruins transitioning between land and water with the flesh golem as it goes into cooldown the moment you get into the water. Additionally the condition drawing DS skill is quite absurd. I must say though, at least for PvE situations the necro spear is one of the better underwater weapons I’ve used.

nachtnebel.9168:

Next we have the aquatic Death Shroud where Life Transfer was traded for Gathering Plague, which makes no sense since we have to leave DS in order to get rid off the condition we just drew to us.

Did you not read the attack description? The basic attack of the aquatic DS transfers conditions. Anyway, I haven’t had any problems with underwater combat as a necro. I rather like how aoe heavy they are, especially with the trident and my spear can rack up some nice damage with the spin But underwater combat seems very hit and miss with people.

For staves… well you have a weapon switch for a reason. However the basic attack pierces, which means that little bit of damage multiplies several times when attacking a group.

Ax & Dagger- I love the ax myself. The vulnerability stacks on auto-attack are nice to have for my teammates and minions, the cripple is nice for chasing since it has some decent range, plus retaliation if they decide to fight. Plus I can hop in and out of DS as much as I want thanks to the life force siphon. Daggers I haven’t used much since they require getting in the enemy’s face and that’s what my minions are there for.

I agree with op, I also think the necro could benefit from a new weapon since we already have the fewest skills of all proffession .. I could see us using a sword for instance for a more in your face burst dmg combat. Regardless, we desperately need some buffs in the damage department . . Right now every other class outshines us on the dmg front, and what we can do, every other class can do better save for conditions and maybe boon removal..

I’m just going to leave this http://www.teamparadigm.net/forums/Necromancer/374/The-Sorry-State-of-the-Necromancer-in-SPvP-Long-Post/ and this http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/63398-necro-traitsskills-that-dont-work-as-they-state/ here. Both include a very thorough discussion on the broken skills and traits of the necromancer profession.

nachtnebel.9168:

Staff
The staff is a weird weapon. It has a very weak direct damage auto attack and 4 marks of which 3 have way to long cooldowns so you can’t cycle them without using that stupid auto attack multiple times in between.
It’s also neither made for power or condtion damage builds nor can it be used as a main weapon. It’s solid as a support weapon in World PvP or if used in combination with a minion build, but still not impressive at all.

Staff looks not impressive for power or condition build…because is real purpose is Death shroud.

The first skill (with auto attacck) is the only one which gain lifeforce. If you use the traits which makes you gain life force whend triggering marks BAM! Lots of life force against multiples enemies!
Just a bit slower with single target, but you can gather up quite fast with the help of some utility (meaby only axe can do an equal faster life force regen, thx to the second skill).
If you fill faster the life force bar, you can use more Deathshour and unlesh is power (almost twice damage of the staff whend life force is just a few)

For me, the big thing is the Death Shroud.

I find it… incredibly boring that our profession mechanic essentially forces us to ignore our character in the sense that we lose access to our utility powers and the powers we gain aren’t based on our equiped-and-active weapon when we transform. A dagger wielding Necromancer’s death shroud has the same powers of that of a staff wielding one, or a scepter and warhorn wielding one.

I feel like a lot of interesting stuff could have been done with death shroud, but wasn’t.

The other big thing is that it bothers me that 2-5 staff powers are Marks; it bugs me that it’s basically nothing but Targeted AoE attacks. Boring to use, at best. Which is a shame since the whole necrotic scythe blade on the staff looks very cool

The transfer condition attack on offhand dagger is a bit buggy. Its supposed to transfer 3 conditions. It works if you have 3 stacks of something. But if you have 2 stacks of one condition and 1 stack of another it won’t transfer them all. Eg, 2 bleeds and a weakness it will only transfer bleeds

just a quick note for everyone, the DS auto attack gives the enemy one of your conditions each time you attack. so you’re supposed to:
1. go into DS
2. pull all conditions from allies
3.give it to the enemies

the only problem with this is that DS underwater has a ludicrous delay between skill activations.