Guild Wars 2

Wanting the class to lack mobility is fine. This is often done for this type of class in other games (Confessors and Warlocks come to mind) but these other games ensure that the limited mobility the class does have, is solid. They also give the class options when they’re being focused down.

Why doesn’t the class have an AE knockback?
Why aren’t health drains more common and have better coefficients?
Why aren’t regens available?

If I had my way…
I’d have bleeds generate LF slowly.
I’d allow wells to be collapsed knocking targets away.
I’d provide protection on exiting deathshroud with a 30second internal cooldown.

Confessor… that takes me back.

Counter mobility with making the enemy have a lack of mobility. Plenty of ways to offer knockbacks and protection.

Where is that Anet notes taker?

Thedenofsin.7340:

For the first time I feel like I can use the staff without having to trait it.

You do realize that from now on you have to spend 20 points to get the “unblockable” trait that actually made staff cool, right?
Guess you haven’t come across many heavy trains in WvW so far.

Dand.8231:

Well I did preface it with saying I dont main necro ^^

I know, that’s why I explained it further. I didn’t mean to be offensive in any way, sorry if I was.

I never thought this day would come where I have to hang up my necromancer, but I think it’s now. They are going in the exact opposite direction from where our class needs to go. With this new DS obliteration, I have no need to play necro anymore. It’s a sad day for me and many other necros in this community too. My final straw was last night when I was asked to wait outside a boss fight because the group “didn’t want to spend the whole fight rezzing the necro” <—- exact wording. I don’t really blame them. I’ve tried using DS like I used to, and the difference is staggering. Either you go full LF or you don’t bother and just eat the dirt. I’m not arguing that the other nerfs were needed, I know they were. But this one baffles me beyond belief. Farewell necro, maybe we will meet again in the future when you get your cahones back.

Dand.8231:

Therefore one solution could involve providing a form of mitigation that scales with the number of hits taken within a small timeframe, IE when you’re being AOE’d, Zerg’d or focused.

This is ironic because we had abilities just like this in Spectral Walk and Armor, and those are precisely the ones that were nerfed – or at least limited in their ceiling – by this patch!

Now they might return more consistent amount of LF, but no longer if you are getting swarmed can they fill almost your whole LF bar. Which even then was not as good as something like a few seconds of invuln or blocking.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I never thought this day would come where I have to hang up my necromancer, but I think it’s now. They are going in the exact opposite direction from where our class needs to go. With this new DS obliteration, I have no need to play necro anymore. It’s a sad day for me and many other necros in this community too. My final straw was last night when I was asked to wait outside a boss fight because the group “didn’t want to spend the whole fight rezzing the necro” <—- exact wording. I don’t really blame them. I’ve tried using DS like I used to, and the difference is staggering. Either you go full LF or you don’t bother and just eat the dirt. I’m not arguing that the other nerfs were needed, I know they were. But this one baffles me beyond belief. Farewell necro, maybe we will meet again in the future when you get your cahones back.

This is what I was trying to explain to Bhawb and some of the pvp guys. This nerf to DS is massive for anyone who plays pve or wvwvw. It’s a nice change for tpvp where you face bunkers and condition spam, but in a boss fight where you 20k damage hits are dealt out more often then 10 seconds, you get destroyed now. I don’t know how many times I used DS because I had already dodged twice in 30 seconds which means with no block, invuln or way to disengage, ds was it. This new change essentially killed us on certain boss fights.

Yeah, even though my necro is my only 80 (and fully geared in Ascended where possible, Exotics where not) and I have done pretty much all the work on getting Frostfang on just him, I sadly am finding the same thing. After I get 3 more skill points (all I need for the Bloodstone Shard), I may not touch my necro for a long time as now I just feel really squishy without the offense to make up for it (never bothered running Dhuumfire and I won’t start now).

Maybe we’re all fine and dandy for tPvP, but I don’t play that and I am REALLY feeling the pain of the death shroud nerf on many champions/legendarys/cliffjumping escapes.

Necro can jump off cliff pop DS survive
Boom they remove it
Ohh they put it back again
ANDD its gone.

Cant we get a change class ticket at some point? clearly the vision of necro is impossible to accomplish so might aswell do the sad right thing.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Our par is NOT OP. We, the necromancer community, are OP because we actually learned how to play our profession despite its glaring shortcomings. If the rest of the player base can’t deal with that, that’s their problem; you don’t nerf skilled players for being skilled.

In the real world, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; you survive, you adapt, you evolve, you prevail. That’s where the necro community is coming from; we survived, we adapted, we evolved, we prevailed. But in the GW2 world, don’t dare do that because otherwise you are punished with nerfs rather than rewarded for skillful play.

Just wanted to say that THIS is the most beautiful thing I’ve read in this thread.

The Boz.2038:

WE NEVER WANTED BURNING.
Take away the spike damage condition, give us attrition and survivability in condition builds, give us valid power options for axe, give us functional counterplay for melee dagger.
Also, fix our traits, so we can actually spec for something with fewer than 80 trait points.

I would have to agree with this. Dhuumfire was never an appropriate addition to the class. We need better attrition/control. Not more damage.

Draehl.2681:

WE NEVER WANTED BURNING.
Take away the spike damage condition, give us attrition and survivability in condition builds, give us valid power options for axe, give us functional counterplay for melee dagger.
Also, fix our traits, so we can actually spec for something with fewer than 80 trait points.

Speak for yourself.
I wanted Burning.
…just not for the already strongest Necro build out there. -_-

If it was somehow restricted to Hybrid builds using stuff like Dagger/Dagger or Axe/Dagger it’d bring a lot more viability to them.
They are already quite decent, Burning could push them from “ok” to “good”.

Right now it competes for Close to Death in those builds (which is often better) and works really great in Terror builds.
…which is completely backwards if you ask me.

I think that they should just completely gut the Terror+Dhuumfire combo and make it impossible but keep the Burning for other Necro builds somehow.

Or I guess Anet might be intentionally trying to keep that combo barely alive and somehow balance it first so that they can add more build options that are in line with Dhuumfire.

I just wish they gave some love to Hybrid builds.
And I agree with you that melee Dagger needs work.
It’s a melee weapon with no gap closer, no block and no escape mechanism.

LastDay.3524:

Draehl.2681:

WE NEVER WANTED BURNING.
Take away the spike damage condition, give us attrition and survivability in condition builds, give us valid power options for axe, give us functional counterplay for melee dagger.
Also, fix our traits, so we can actually spec for something with fewer than 80 trait points.

Speak for yourself.
I wanted Burning.
…just not for the already strongest Necro build out there. -_-

If it was somehow restricted to Hybrid builds using stuff like Dagger/Dagger or Axe/Dagger it’d bring a lot more viability to them.
They are already quite decent, Burning could push them from “ok” to “good”.

Right now it competes for Close to Death in those builds (which is often better) and works really great in Terror builds.
…which is completely backwards if you ask me.

I think that they should just completely gut the Terror+Dhuumfire combo and make it impossible but keep the Burning for other Necro builds somehow.

Adding some random proc off crit (in a trait line that doesn’t even have crit) to apply burning (in a traitline not possessing condition damage) just doesn’t make sense. Instead look at core facets of what the Spite line is about. Since the power portion of it is handled rather well by Close to Death why not play off a non-damaging condition like Vulnerability or Chill?

For example

Leeching Cold
Gain 3s of quickness when applying chill (15s cooldown) Your chills last 20% longer.

or

Spiteful Revenge
When one of your non-damaging conditions is removed you damage the target.

Etc. Something unique to spite instead of “oh, look, i crit and applied a burning effect.” Oooh. Aaah.

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

It’s a shame that when balancing the necro, the actual imbalance between all the classes in PVE is not taken into account. There is a reason why everyone wants guardians, warriors and mesmers in PVE. Why not address this issue first, before nerfing one of the weakest classes into the ground?

And Kraag was completely right, although I would probably have worded it a bit less hostile. The reason why other players perceive necromancers as overpowered, is because the necro community has taught itself to deal with the severe short comings of the class. This nerf was simply not needed, and removing the fall damage thing is removing part of the fun of the class, whether it was intended or not.

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

Aaand, this video is actually showing nothing other than that Death Shroud is finally absorbing the correct amount of damage and how stupidly squishy glass cannon eles are (hint: lowest armor and lowest health in the game).

If the condi pressure is too much in PvP, why did they do nothing to hit that (no, the Terror nerf isn’t going to fix that, just hurt every condi build that doesn’t use Dhuumfire) and instead hit the necro’s defense vs. spike and 1vX situations where they were already weak?

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

Being inconsiderate to tpvp….

Because everything MUST revolve around these esport events.

I throw my hands up at this whole thing.

Keep screwing us in WvW, go on, do it.

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

Inconsiderate to TPvP? Why would an ele continue to spam all of their cooldown spike onto a necro obviously in his most defensive state?

By you “logic” warriors, eles, thiefs, basically every class is EVEN MORE over powered because they can go invulnerable and take no damage and if you spam all your cooldowns on their invulnerable state, you have done nothing.

un-freaking-believable.

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes. From a high end pvp standpoint & many other top tier players will agree that necro’s in their current state are now over the top. Their insane condi pressure & general condi spam is detrimental to team fights especially when used in conjunction with epidemic. Now a deathshroud / spectral armor combo is absolutely ridiculous. See for yourself :

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/434824077

Sorry I have to comment on this one. SO if you are a PvP players you have skill, but the rest of us do not? That is a total strawman case and I must tell you that maybe some of us players don’t enjoy the competition end of this game and bought in if fact for an MMO with a friendly atmosphere.

As far as inconsideration goes, it is you guys that are being inconsiderate to the other TWO areas of the game, in that, if it doesn’t fit in YOUR meta it needs to be removed/nerfed/modified/changed etc. If the condi damage is so over the top, then learn to adapt and take more cleanses to compensate. We here in the PvE/WvW world could teach you a few things about that because any time you guys want or need a change WE are the ones that must adapt to YOUR meta.

From my point of view the DS change and the shroud change MIGHT compensate to a small degree for the bleeding over effect of damage onto my normal hitpoints, but why am I forced to take a utility to get back the survivability I had not one week ago?

Bas.7406:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I never thought this day would come where I have to hang up my necromancer, but I think it’s now. They are going in the exact opposite direction from where our class needs to go. With this new DS obliteration, I have no need to play necro anymore. It’s a sad day for me and many other necros in this community too. My final straw was last night when I was asked to wait outside a boss fight because the group “didn’t want to spend the whole fight rezzing the necro” <—- exact wording. I don’t really blame them. I’ve tried using DS like I used to, and the difference is staggering. Either you go full LF or you don’t bother and just eat the dirt. I’m not arguing that the other nerfs were needed, I know they were. But this one baffles me beyond belief. Farewell necro, maybe we will meet again in the future when you get your cahones back.

This is what I was trying to explain to Bhawb and some of the pvp guys. This nerf to DS is massive for anyone who plays pve or wvwvw. It’s a nice change for tpvp where you face bunkers and condition spam, but in a boss fight where you 20k damage hits are dealt out more often then 10 seconds, you get destroyed now. I don’t know how many times I used DS because I had already dodged twice in 30 seconds which means with no block, invuln or way to disengage, ds was it. This new change essentially killed us on certain boss fights.

Completely agree with both Nay and Bas.

HitmanX.6489:

Now you guys are being completely inconsiderate to tPvP.. you know.. the players who actually have “skill” with their classes.

O-O? This must be the most stupid thing I ever read in this or any other forum.

With regards to WvW – after a day’s experience with the new DS in big three-way ZvZs, while I think that the LF damage-into-health nerf sucks, I am not convinced that our sustain in large scale fights isn’t pretty solid assuming that we trait and gear for it. Going 20 points into SR is possible without giving up much if any offensive utility, and DS does in fact soak more damage than before. Likewise, siphoning is not terrible, if you’ve actually done the math. … I think that if we were to get some of a baseline reduction in LF decay, better ranged LF generation, healing through DS, use of slot skills while in DS, or something like that, I might be reasonably happy.

As a related comment, not to be inflammatory, but it might be unreasonable to expect that 30/30/10/0/0 or similar builds will be or should be tanking much damage through DS. Maybe that’s a problem, but I’m not sure it is.

Last, one of the things that is bothering me is that I get the feeling that the dev team listened to a bunch of vocal high end tourney players with alterior motives, and then nerfed some of the wrong things. Some honest commentary from the dev team about what’s gone on in that regard might be nice, but we probably won’t get it.

Regardless of skill level there is currently no way for a necromancer to avoid being assist trained. This is the undeniable truth and sooner or later you will hit that wall as a necromancer and at that point you will have two choices. Keep slamming your head against it or reroll.

This is clearly an issue and should be addressed. While I fully understand that necromancers are very strong in duels the game should not be balanced around duels. It should be balanced around relevant content.

Speaking as a soldier geared melee Necro we’re sorely lacking in mitigation from large amounts of damage. Compared to a melee Warrior or Guardian who refuse to die, or your Thieves and Mesmers you can’t keep track of or hit half the time…

Where is the upside for being a melee necro? Damage? No. Survivability? No. Utility? Perhaps on par in PvE when using wells. I just don’t see the upside here.

Edit: I feel like playing WoW as a Warlock all over again.

I saw someone toss a nice point. In good games class that lacks mobility/defenses options tends to have, the few they do have, as some of the best in game.

And again… Mr. DevPerson… how about you actually play necro for a change? Mhmm? No?

Draehl.2681:

Speaking as a soldier geared melee Necro we’re sorely lacking in mitigation from large amounts of damage. Compared to a melee Warrior or Guardian who refuse to die, or your Thieves and Mesmers you can’t keep track of or hit half the time…

Where is the upside for being a melee necro? Damage? No. Survivability? No. Utility? Perhaps on par in PvE when using wells. I just don’t see the upside here.

Edit: I feel like playing WoW as a Warlock all over again.

No. In vanilla class wasn’t finished its a different topic. Then it was fixed and fear was OP… it took literally 3 or so months before anyone even realized because hardly anyone played a lock. It took only 1 fat kid to start crying and then it was chain reaction and lock was getting nerfed in every single patch till I quit in wotlk.
Necro here is simply horrid design. If anything else its designed for a different game. On top of that core mechanics are sluggish and chopped. 10 skills?….. 5 are weapons skills… 1 is heal. one is barely used because elites have a year long cooldown. And you entire variation comes in from of 3 measly skills… and a twitch button called dodge. There are a lot of lazy shortcuts in this game. Like dodging… quests, pvp etc. Necromancer is just the most glaring up in your face example. Entire class is welfare. Condition damage from start treated like a rash while physical is the king. All the issues just scream at you.

But then again bigger problem is anet and ncsoft then anything else.

Fungalfoot.7213:

Regardless of skill level there is currently no way for a necromancer to avoid being assist trained. This is the undeniable truth and sooner or later you will hit that wall as a necromancer and at that point you will have two choices. Keep slamming your head against it or reroll.

This is clearly an issue and should be addressed. While I fully understand that necromancers are very strong in duels the game should not be balanced around duels. It should be balanced around relevant content.

Ayup. That’s why I made this thread:

Death Shroud brainstorming

ok lets be blunt here , necromancers have almost NO REAL DEFENSE in pve now , and yet were seeing our one major defense NERFED …….. as others have pointed out in pve that was our major dmg mitigation , now pretty much borderline useless , now lets look at another class , for example the ever dev favored Thief , in WvW i sit there watching a perma stealth thief go in and out of stealth almost non stop , stack him up with so many conditions / max bleeds , goes stealth and comes out full health and hitting like a truck , i tell you why are necros seeing nerfs yet we see classes like thieves running around virtually untouched? this is about getting ridiculous at this point…….

Side Note : as far as the bug where you could survive a fall…..it wasnt that game breaking tbh , there has always been games where you could calculate which angle to fall down a cliff and survive it do to terrain and general mapping of where you can move and sort of just rubber band bounce around and not a single point of dmg taken , sort of a natural aspect to online games , and some off line games as well XD , it was quite hilarious and an escape mechanic (ie perma stealth thieves that can keep wailing on you and run away coming out at full health) , that doesnt bother me as much but it was a fun factor to have……considering MM is still prob one of the most useless builds well see (from playing Original GW from Prophecies (ie when we didnt get our nerfs yet and could solo missions , yea that was the OP time for necros)) i want to see necros actually having MM really viable , like how some mission stories (avoids saying which ones cause some ppl are paranoid about spoilers) where they say to take out the necromancer before they summon their army of minions , yet when you play a necro ….your army is lol ahhh back scratchers (save for flesh golems)

Enundr.9305:

ok lets be blunt here , necromancers have almost NO REAL DEFENSE in pve now , and yet were seeing our one major defense NERFED …….. as others have pointed out in pve that was our major dmg mitigation , now pretty much borderline useless , now lets look at another class , for example the ever dev favored Thief , in WvW i sit there watching a perma stealth thief go in and out of stealth almost non stop , stack him up with so many conditions / max bleeds , goes stealth and comes out full health and hitting like a truck , i tell you why are necros seeing nerfs yet we see classes like thieves running around virtually untouched? this is about getting ridiculous at this point…….

Side Note : as far as the bug where you could survive a fall…..it wasnt that game breaking tbh , there has always been games where you could calculate which angle to fall down a cliff and survive it do to terrain and general mapping of where you can move and sort of just rubber band bounce around and not a single point of dmg taken , sort of a natural aspect to online games , and some off line games as well XD , it was quite hilarious and an escape mechanic (ie perma stealth thieves that can keep wailing on you and run away coming out at full health) , that doesnt bother me as much but it was a fun factor to have……considering MM is still prob one of the most useless builds well see (from playing Original GW from Prophecies (ie when we didnt get our nerfs yet and could solo missions , yea that was the OP time for necros)) i want to see necros actually having MM really viable , like how some mission stories (avoids saying which ones cause some ppl are paranoid about spoilers) where they say to take out the necromancer before they summon their army of minions , yet when you play a necro ….your army is lol ahhh back scratchers (save for flesh golems)

According to some people thieves are bad at capping points in sPvP/tPvP and therefore are not thrown under the nerf knife.

Low ranked players freak out about it but they don’t have the ear of the developers.

This is the impression I get when the nerf thief discussions pop up. I don’t know if it is true but at this point I would not be surprised seeing how the Necro went under the knife for something nobody expected.

Draehl.2681:

Adding some random proc off crit (in a trait line that doesn’t even have crit) to apply burning (in a traitline not possessing condition damage) just doesn’t make sense. Instead look at core facets of what the Spite line is about. Since the power portion of it is handled rather well by Close to Death why not play off a non-damaging condition like Vulnerability or Chill?

For example

Leeching Cold
Gain 3s of quickness when applying chill (15s cooldown) Your chills last 20% longer.

or

Spiteful Revenge
When one of your non-damaging conditions is removed you damage the target.

Etc. Something unique to spite instead of “oh, look, i crit and applied a burning effect.” Oooh. Aaah.

I like the Burning because what Hybrid builds lack is damage.

I think that Condition damage in Spite line screams “Hybrid!” but people just run Rabid with it because it has much better damage. :P

Axe has Cripple and mainhand Dagger has Immobilize but neither inflict any damaging conditions without Sigil of Earth.
You get some Bleeds from off-hand Dagger, some from Sigil of Earth and some from the first Curses Minor trait.
You get a nice amount of Power but barely any Crit Damage.

Even with all of those and possibly Weakening Shroud your damage is behind Scepter condi builds and you don’t have the awesome crits of a 30/10/0/0/30 Power build.
Hybrids often run 30 Spite.
Dhuumfire has 100% chance to trigger on a crit and has a 10 second cooldown so you don’t need a ton of crit chance with it.
30 Spite and Rampager gear go hand in hand pretty well.

I think that there are many ways it could be changed, though.
For example it could be “Vampiric Bite inflicts Burning” and be a Spite or Curses Master trait to allow pairing with Close to Death.
(Vampiric Bite being the 3rd skill in Dagger melee chain, to those who don’t know)

That way it’d be powerful, but be restricted to a weapon that’s currently not used a lot in PvP.

Or Dhuumfire and Terror could both be GM Curses traits and retain their current effects.
This would completely murder the Terror+Dhuumfire combo but could cause other issues.

While Terror builds don’t necessarily need the extra damage I feel that Hybrids running Axe and/or Dagger definitely could use it.

Not that your Leeching Cold idea is bad either.
It’d certainly raise the damage output, but then you’d just see Scepter Necros with quickness stacking Bleeds faster with it.

And your second idea would be completely useless in PvE…
In a PvP-only game it’d could be interesting, if confusing for your opponent.

Honestly I wish Anet was a bit more open and told us what was their idea when adding Dhuumfire.
I speculated it to be for Hybrids only but I’ve lately seen Jon Peters say something about not wanting to gut the Terror+Dhuumfire combo.

I’m not really sure what they are doing anymore.

Let’s get sneaky and creative:

An idea I mentioned in passing some time ago, was to modify DS to either absorb or repel incoming Conditions. It’d probably be a Trait, and possess a reasonable (no, not freaking 90-120 sec) ICD, so as to not go terribly overboard. This would at least help Necros with crapola like being chain-stunned/knocked around as much.
Another logical change might be to allow Boons to exist while within the DS state.

Otherwise, I agree that Terror wasn’t the issue that needed a looksee, it was the combo of Terror/Dhuumfire. Not to mention, adding the damage overflow to DS not only penalizes Necros for the funny “fall trick,” it also screws up burst mitigation to a
more-than-fair degree

sas.6483:

With regards to WvW – after a day’s experience with the new DS in big three-way ZvZs, while I think that the LF damage-into-health nerf sucks, I am not convinced that our sustain in large scale fights isn’t pretty solid assuming that we trait and gear for it. Going 20 points into SR is possible without giving up much if any offensive utility, and DS does in fact soak more damage than before. Likewise, siphoning is not terrible, if you’ve actually done the math. … I think that if we were to get some of a baseline reduction in LF decay, better ranged LF generation, healing through DS, use of slot skills while in DS, or something like that, I might be reasonably happy.

As a related comment, not to be inflammatory, but it might be unreasonable to expect that 30/30/10/0/0 or similar builds will be or should be tanking much damage through DS. Maybe that’s a problem, but I’m not sure it is.

Last, one of the things that is bothering me is that I get the feeling that the dev team listened to a bunch of vocal high end tourney players with alterior motives, and then nerfed some of the wrong things. Some honest commentary from the dev team about what’s gone on in that regard might be nice, but we probably won’t get it.

I think that any necro spec that goes 30 into SR should be able to “tank” damage through DS. That is as long as they refuse to give necro’s vigor and high uptime on vigor at that. If you can’t dodge, then you have no choice but to tank. Otherwise, every necro build would have to involve heavy trait allocation into death magic for the toughness and stacking pvt gear. That would be the opposite of what anet said they were going for with “build diversity”.

I agree that we need some baseline improvements in DS to be viable. There are so many semi mandatory traits for DS in SR because nothing is baked in to DS itself. Anyone who uses DS wants the stability trait, wants the cd reduction trait, wants the anti life force decay trait, wants the piercing+vulnerability trait for life blast, wants the skill recharge trait, etc. Honestly, I even want the transfusion trait out of blood magic so that I’d feel less selfish for playing a necro in a pve group. The seriously need to improve DS on a baseline basis by having some of these things included by default. I’d vote for stability at the very least. We definitely need to be able to heal our real health bar while in DS as well…especially now that we can get killed from DS now if we only have a little health on our real health bar.

I tend to agree that anet seems to balance by listening to a bunch of biased high end pvp players versus actually looking at and testing their own game. That part really needs to change.

The problem I see, is that the necromancer is the class with the least defensive options. We have no access to blocking, no evade or invulnerability skills, no deflection skills, no access to stability (unless traited or elite skills) and few escapes (spectral walk and flesh wurm are very conditional and requires quite an unreliable set up).

The upside of this, should be that the necromancer trades this for superior damage. This is NOT the case. The necromancer is balanced completely around condition damage, which is inferior to direct damage currently. Some of the classes with the best defensive options (warriors and guardians) also have the best DPS. I would like to see a Dev comment on THIS issue.

Dagger is practically useless at dungeons at this point, since it’s difficult to go melee with low mobility, few dodges, and no damage mitigator (like the pre-nerf DS).

I thought this game was supposed to cater to all playstyles? Not all people are into tPVP.

The devs are telling us to learn how to play the class we’ve been playing for months. They should try rolling necro alts (with the anet tag inactive) and play through their dungeons or high level fractals.

The more I think about this, the more and more it’s appearing that this nerf was a knee-jerk reaction to prevent their golden child classes from being very publicly and shamelessly roflstomped by necros in the upcoming PAX tournaments. I can’t blame them for this; business is business. They need to maintain the appearance (illusion?) that their professions and game as a whole are reasonably balanced.

Of course, that’s not the necro community’s fault. ArenaNet painted themselves into that corner with the ill-conceived Dhuumfire addition. Unfortunately, it’s the necro community that will now pay the price – at least in the short-term – through hastily cobbled together nerfs designed to “balance” tPvP for PAX.

The hope is – once PAX is over – they will return to a more reasoned and thoroughly tested balancing. The even greater hope is they will finally come to the realization that this game is not now nor will ever be a viable eSport. Then we can finally end the lunacy of balancing 99% of the game around the needs of 1% of the population (or whatever statistically insignificant percentage of the GW2 population is represented by the tPvP-ers).

ArenaNet, your profits are in your gemstore and future expansions – if any – and catering to the vast hordes of players who play PvE/WvWvW; not the tiny percentage that play tPvP. Either balance around the majority or split the skills between the different game modes as was done in GW1. But for the love of the five gods, stop balancing the game around the vocal minority that is tPvP.

I was trying a bunker build yesterday in pvp. Our dmg mitigation is really good with the spectral armour change and well cooldowns with protection on wells. Unfortunately going up against an ele 1v1 gave me a 5min long fight which i thought neither of us would win. Until i slowly became more and more unable to sustain myself, whereas the ele could pretty much just instantly heal to full hp every 10 seconds. We need actuall hp sustain not lifeforce sustain. Although even with spectral armour and using dagger I found it very difficult to maintain decent amounts of lifeforce for the entire fight. I suspect going clerics instead of soldier gear might of been a better option but I still think our healing options are too weak when trying to play as an attrition class.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

Sometimes I really think that your sole concentration in balancing this game is PvP…. what about PvE, WvW??? If you’re so obsessed with PvP, why won’t you disable necro’s access to PvP altogether? Are we going to see major necro nerfs every single time a tournament is being organised? This is really ridiculous.

You know what kills me us in this fast paced game, is that our entire mechanic is just so kitten slow, which really puts necros at a huge disadvantage. Overall, we are the slowest class, with no damage mitgation besides what is in our Life force pool. we simply cannot compete with high end pvp, and we are becoming everincreasingly useless in WvW which is simply about numbers and movement. To top things off, our cast times for our major skills (marks, epidemic, etc.) are so LONG that we cannot compete with classes that can 1-2 button press to do ~12k damage immediately. Our highest damage hits in power builds, require a channel, which just basically people dodge out of, or go invuln, or just cc us to stop the channel. Oh yeah, anet gave us a good +400 toughness trait when channeling, but that does NOT STOP US FROM GETTING CC’d. It is so easy to nullify a necro.

What does a necro bring:
Condition damage – yes, can put pressure. In tpvp this is significant (specific to condi build). In wvw and pve, this is insignificant. in group pve scenarios (where others bring conditions) you are just a drop in the bucket and are competing for stacks (DUMB). In wvw, your conditions are only useful in small group encounters, where epidemic can help spread the damage. In zergs, your a joke, because your conditiosn get cleansed immediately, thus your stuck going a PVT build and just hoping your wells, and blasting in the wells is spreading blindness and damage. Condition damage is sub par in wvw, and terror is a joke in large scale combat.

Wells – significant damage if you “stand still in the small corrupted area” which is insignficant to zergs, small group combat or pve, unless they are inane, or handicapped with regard to movement. Plus you can effect 5 people or their pets, so if your attacking 5 rangers, each with a pet, you might get 3 pets and 2 rangers, etc, as players are not prioritized. (LAME)

What we don’t bring to WVW/PVE

- no blast finishers – no way to blast wells, fields, etc
- no group buffs
- we leach everything for buffs, we bring nothing.
- we are slow, and our cast times require incredible leading to land on anyone, and unless you go 20 points into DM, your marks are blocked or evaded through (haha this kills me, one thief rolls throughyour mark and voila… he just mitigated your entire damage for that mark.)
- we have 2 dodges maximum in a row
- we have no blocks, no invuln, no stealth, thus we are sitting ducks.
- we haev no escapes, no blink, nothing.

Our only block is now gone, and weakened DS big time.

Im tired of trying to make this class work. I, unlike some, like the addition of burning,a s we could finally bring some pain, however what i dont like is that it came at a cost, which essentially boils down to no expected increase to our defenses, or a worry that defenses will make us OP.

Anet, you have failed.

For survivability you’re pretty much forced as a necro to get yourself a Sigil of Energy, just to have more dodges.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Energy

So much has to be sacrificed to have any survivability at all in PVE and WvW.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

I’m going to say something that you might not like. GW2 will never be as good of a E-sport as GW1 was with your current attitude. You guys have taken a lot of steps forward to promote this, but the things that GW1 did right in this area helped make it the extremely competitive game that it was. Splitting the PvP and PvE skills was necessary for this. And you NEED to do this for GW2. YOU CAN’T LIE TO YOURSELF ANY LONGER!

In GW1 you guys took a lot of risks. You made decisions that you knew could be dangerous to the game balance. This is something you have to do. Because right now, the way you are acting to this profession out of fear of how it was in your Alpha testing is preventing you from seeing the over arching problem.

The 2 things that prevented the necromancer from ever dying in the Alpha was not being able to be stomped because they entered death shroud instead of being downed and because death shroud had a ground targeted teleport to disengage with people. We don’t have either of those anymore as much as I dislike not being able to use death shroud near death. Your concern is misplaced and endangering your necromancer community.

I have had sometime to try out the necro since the DS change and I feel like an already weak ability has become all but useless. I run a maxed out toughness build, so I very rarely use DS to begin with, however since the change this skill has become more of a hindrance. I say that because I like to pop DS only when I absolutely need it as a damage buffer between heal cool-downs, because its attack power is far from effective against most champs, and other player(pvp/wvw). Now though because of the DS overflow attribute I find myself being rolled over by just about anything that can hit a solid crit, this include large enough mobs, most champs and alot of wvw players, all it takes is one solid hit to break my DS and now that solid hit can down me too.

I understand why the Devs tried to change the DS and i think the overflow would have been a good idea if the necro had another way off getting out of trouble, or if the skills in DS correlated to the weapons we equipped, sort of like the elemental’s attribute weapon links, because the current DS skills are far from effective, in pinch.

I urge the Devs to re-consider what they have done to the Necro build and maybe add a few changes to help with the issue.

Another issue is of course Fear. All bosses are immune to Fear. They all have Defiant, and it makes Fear useless as a defensive measure in PVE against bosses. Fear could be an excellent defense, like it can be against players…. but in PVE you can only use it against trash mobs. So how does a necro defend himself against bosses that are immune to one of the few defenses that a necro has, yet packs one-hit kills?

The only thing we can do is dodge, and try to keep our distance. And when we do that, players come down on us for not contributing enough in the fight.

Why do we have close combat weapons to begin with, when we have so little defense?

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

Could we get some PvE rules only patching? A lot of necro’s are put off getting to top level, train for hours each day, tPvP. Were not usually wanted in dungy. Condition spec’s def not wanted in PvE groups. Minions are only good for farming non-scary monsters. Vamp I’ve even seen you LoL @ on life stream.
Then, we go PvP. Seems totally diff builds/buttons/weaps/play-style is required. Variety is the spice of life and all. Which is nice. But then, it’s known, focus CC & stomp a necro first.

So it’s find a team willing to take a necro, and train for hours each day. Or just get shut down.

Not only would adding PvE only updates, would give you a testing ground of new stuff. But it would go a huge way into fixing the unloved/unfair feeling that necro’s seem to face, with everything excluding top level tPvP.

On the new patch.

Awesome work on the staff! What felt like the required weapon, doesn’t feel like it needs 10 points spent, in EVERY build. :-)

DS, now makes more sense. I do like the ‘feel’ of building up more energy is more up time, rather than, little ‘taps’ on low amounts to suck up big hits. (Altho in some boss fights, little taps was covering our lack of vigor. CoE for example)

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

We did a big set of improvements to Necro recently, and we want to make sure we don’t over improve their defense capabilities.

We want to shift more focus to death shroud throug main hand skills, but, again, we don’t want to do this too fast, ESPECIALLY with a major Pax tournament right around the corner.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

and yet we have no purpose at all in PvE
/clap

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

The more I think about this, the more and more it’s appearing that this nerf was a knee-jerk reaction to prevent their golden child classes from being very publicly and shamelessly roflstomped by necros in the upcoming PAX tournaments. I can’t blame them for this; business is business. They need to maintain the appearance (illusion?) that their professions and game as a whole are reasonably balanced.

Of course, that’s not the necro community’s fault. ArenaNet painted themselves into that corner with the ill-conceived Dhuumfire addition. Unfortunately, it’s the necro community that will now pay the price – at least in the short-term – through hastily cobbled together nerfs designed to “balance” tPvP for PAX.

The hope is – once PAX is over – they will return to a more reasoned and thoroughly tested balancing. The even greater hope is they will finally come to the realization that this game is not now nor will ever be a viable eSport. Then we can finally end the lunacy of balancing 99% of the game around the needs of 1% of the population (or whatever statistically insignificant percentage of the GW2 population is represented by the tPvP-ers).

ArenaNet, your profits are in your gemstore and future expansions – if any – and catering to the vast hordes of players who play PvE/WvWvW; not the tiny percentage that play tPvP. Either balance around the majority or split the skills between the different game modes as was done in GW1. But for the love of the five gods, stop balancing the game around the vocal minority that is tPvP.

thats a sad reason to do the nerf, for the tPvP at pax? lol? i hope someone brings this up at Pax then ….cause id love to see the reactions there. it would quite frankly expose how poor of a choice this was , cause i cant see that many on the necro (forum wise that is) community that even thinks this patch was REMOTELY good. id like to see skills back how they were in original GW , pvp seperate from pve…..but at this point i see no hope in that happening or good decisions made in balancing necros or any other class that isnt one of those “golden child” classes.

You guys should be ashamed to let classes go for so long without good balance.

I’m not talking about just pvp balance. Minions blow, life steal blows..So many great builds could be had if you balance it better.

This does not look bad on the players, but looks bad on you. At the rate you are going, do you think people are going to trust a company that pulls stuff like this?

It should go

FUN after that BALANCE.

Minion builds would be fun if they are not buggy. Well fix them. Why have you not done it yet? To much work? If that is the case remove them and revamp them. Leaving half broken and useless skills in a game makes you look bad.

Life steal sucks? Balance it out. Some people life the thought of being weaker but have amazing life steal.

My friends have left, and I’m coming back after a long break to see if you got your act in check, yet you guys have not fixed necros. You have lied about thief class saying that perma stealth was imbalance that is the reason you have the stealth system you do now. Yet, guess what is going on now?

Unless you do a 180, and start focus on class skills and balance a lot better. Unless you guys start talking, and taking feedback better. Do you think you are going to make a new game and have us follow as sheep?

This is your company future we are talking about here. Shape up or ship out.

The selling point to this game for many players was the PVE not using the same ol tank and healer system, and WVW for DAOC and Warhammer players who love that stuff or newcomers who as well.

Yet, you balance around a small group of players. Lmao

rager , minion master was one of the core builds ppl LOVED in GW1 , thats what some of us want to see again , but right now thats clearly never going to be the case as all we see is conditions being the only remotely useful (and relatively subpar vs raw dmg) build we have , weve been pidgeon holed into specific builds because of this , which was against the initial beliefs were being said for the game…..how any build could be just as good as another……lol at that XD and yea things need to get fixed or this is done , where the only ppl left is that tPvP that keeps “balancing” the rest of the game / players out. there are other good mmos around the corner , its best to prioritize which group is more favorable to appeal Anet , the minority tPvP or the majority PvE / WvWvW group , make your choice and sleep with it , cause the games future will rely on it……and the tPvP group isnt exactly expanding in size

Enundr.9305:

rager , minion master was one of the core builds ppl LOVED in GW1 , thats what some of us want to see again , but right now thats clearly never going to be the case as all we see is conditions being the only remotely useful (and relatively subpar vs raw dmg) build we have , weve been pidgeon holed into specific builds because of this , which was against the initial beliefs were being said for the game…..how any build could be just as good as another……lol at that XD and yea things need to get fixed or this is done , where the only ppl left is that tPvP that keeps “balancing” the rest of the game / players out. there are other good mmos around the corner , its best to prioritize which group is more favorable to appeal Anet , the minority tPvP or the majority PvE / WvWvW group , make your choice and sleep with it , cause the games future will rely on it……and the tPvP group isnt exactly expanding in size

I played a little bit of guild wars 1. My friend was a healer and I would summon a bunch of minions yelling at him to keep them up..He said it was the worse time he ever had trying to keep them alive the longest he could lmao. I enjoyed watching him do it.

Someone said before GW = Guardian Warrior.

The idea of just messing up the entire necro class for the tPvP thing at Pax is a lousy thing to do. There is also PVE and WvW, but neither was considered. Necros are still struggling to get into groups, and a lot of players only want guardians and warriors. Why? Because necromancers have poor DPS, and rubbish defense…. and then they remove our only defense against spike damage. Why not remove the class from PVE then while you’re at it?

Lets face it. Making the necromancer class focused on attrition is a bad idea for PVE, when you consider PVE discourages condition builds, and encourages DPS. And the fact that bosses all have Defiant means we have no defense what so ever. No wonder the necro is so unpopular in PVE. Same with the ranger by the way. If you only balance the ranger for tPvP, you’re going to have a lot of very disappointed PVE players, who are wondering why everyone but the guardian is getting the short end of the stick.

rager.4963:

Enundr.9305:

rager , minion master was one of the core builds ppl LOVED in GW1 , thats what some of us want to see again , but right now thats clearly never going to be the case as all we see is conditions being the only remotely useful (and relatively subpar vs raw dmg) build we have , weve been pidgeon holed into specific builds because of this , which was against the initial beliefs were being said for the game…..how any build could be just as good as another……lol at that XD and yea things need to get fixed or this is done , where the only ppl left is that tPvP that keeps “balancing” the rest of the game / players out. there are other good mmos around the corner , its best to prioritize which group is more favorable to appeal Anet , the minority tPvP or the majority PvE / WvWvW group , make your choice and sleep with it , cause the games future will rely on it……and the tPvP group isnt exactly expanding in size

I played a little bit of guild wars 1. My friend was a healer and I would summon a bunch of minions yelling at him to keep them up..He said it was the worse time he ever had trying to keep them alive the longest he could lmao. I enjoyed watching him do it.

actually there were some good builds where the necro could keep them up him/herslef , though a healer also comes in handy , in prophecies (before faction and the first major necro nerf) you could summon enough minions to solo missions if you did it right , that was prob the most justified nerf they ever recieved , though ill still miss being able to raise an army and destroy my enemies XD