Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Before I start I just want to say that the chief balancing objective in PvE for A-net currently should definitely be making sure all classes have the ability (when set up right) to avoid damage equally, in different ways yes but with equal effectiveness on average.

Anyway back on topic:

So there’s a bit of a problem with Necromancers not getting selected for FotM and dungeon groups. I think we can all see what the problem is, and there is a really simple set of solutions, but before that.

The Problem:

End game content in GW2 is based on the principle of doing a lot of damage to players and in high level fractals having one shot abilities. This creates a situation where the classes in high demand are Mesmers, Thieves, Guardians and Warriors, the reason being that they not only put out a fair bit of damage (Thieves / Warriors) or have decent utility skills (Mesmers / Guardians) but they have a special ingredient that some other classes don’t: Damage Avoidance, and lots of it.

Mesmers have skills such as Distortion and Blink.
Thieves have stealth, Roll for Initiative, Steal, Shadowsteps, Refuge.
Guardians have more ways of avoiding damage than an army of Romans in a turtle shield formation.
Warriors have all kinds of similar stuff.

Anyway, the point is they have a special ingredient that other classes are missing, none more so than the Necromancer.

How does the Necromancer avoid damage?

So the Necromancer works differently to most other classes when avoiding damage; instead of flat out keeping away from damage it absorbs it, it out survives the damage dealer if you will. You guys at A-net call this, and other related concepts, attrition. It’s fantastic and hugely unique, it’s the reason my main is a Necromancer and I love the concepts behind it. The trouble is in places such as FotM it has no real value, you can’t survive 1 hit kill attacks, you can’t life steal through them, and you can’t Death Shroud them and that’s the real issue here.

How is Death Shroud the main damage avoidance and how is it failing?

Death Shroud, as you guys will no doubt know from PvP etc, is the main way for Necromancers to avoid a hit; it absorbs the damage without it hurting the Necro’s health pool and it becomes mitigated in so far as the Necromancer can simply acquire more life force. It fails in FotM and other key areas however, this is due to DS not being robust enough to absorb an attack without damage bleeding through to the health pool of the Necromancer. Instead the 1 hit kill attacks out there strip away the death shroud of a Necromancer and then punish, if not remove, the health pool of that player.

How do we fix things?

Simple; tweak the Death Shroud so that it stays the same but upon an amount of damage that is greater than the life force remaining it absorbs an entire attack regardless of damage done. Instead of having damage bleed through simply say “If the attack does enough to remove the Necromancer’s death shroud then it stops its damage application there and the Necromancer only loses its DS instead of taking damage on top of that.”. Simply put don’t allow damage to bleed through the DS into the health pool.

Basically:

[Life force remaining] – [Damage done] = X

IF X <= 0 THEN [Life force remaining] =0, DS ends and the Necromancer takes no further damage from that attack.

IF X > 0 THEN [Life force remaining] = X

How this changes things.

The Necromancer now has the ability to mitigate an attack much like the Mesmer with Distortion; the Necromancer can even do this repeatedly by dancing in and out of DS with a dagger draining life force or a staff’s marks doing the same. Suddenly the Necromancer isn’t gimped, nor is it a liability in FotM at later levels; it opens up the door for melee Necromancers that dance in and out of DS applying vulnerability to opponents or healing allies. In short it fixes a kitten tonne of things, please, please, implement this ASAP.

Balance.

The ability to only absorb an attack (Where attack means one which would strip away all remaining life force) has three possibilities:

1) Absorb an attack every 10 seconds without stability.
2) Absorb an attack every 10 seconds with stability.
3) Absorb an attack every 5 seconds without stability.

All three are very clearly balanced and have upsides and downsides.

Thanks for reading.

PS: After that there are loads of other things that would help also, feel free to implement some of them.

-A cleaving attack as axe 1.
-A buff to spectral wall.
-Minion AI fixes.
-Remove that sodding minion from the 5 point Death trait… Seriously it slows down jade fractal runs hugely when it gets hit by the 1 shot beam.
-Change Flesh Wurm so it doesn’t get destroyed once Necrotic Transversal is used; hello there secondary damage mitigation skill that can be placed carefully and repeatedly used.
-Rejig some traits so we can get decent wells on top of other things instead of choosing between options.
-Dagger #2; make it fire and forget.
-Life steal in general needs a HUGE BUFF, like crazy through the roof style buff. It should be possible to damage mitigate almost entirely with careful and clever use of life steals, a heal, dodges, well placed wells and the skill to keep enemies in them. Currently it isn’t in the slightest; I recommend a trait that makes Marks steal life and or a huge increase to the life steal that traited wells do.

I could go on for hours, I wont though since I have a FotM group to convince to take me.

well I like the idea, since there are a lot of mobs on higher fractal level who can one hit me (I’m a glasscannon) but I doubt that this will ever happen…

Your suggestion would make us able to jump down any cliff using DS and just stand up at the bottom of it like nothing happend because it only strips the LF bar =D

If you are a close-range fighting Necro in the fractals then you are just going to have a bad time during some fights…

And to be honest, I have no idea on how to help us stay alive from those 1-hit-kills without making DS overpowered…

remove DS 2nd skill and give us an actual teleport. just an idea =/

Sekundes.2376:

well I like the idea, since there are a lot of mobs on higher fractal level who can one hit me (I’m a glasscannon) but I doubt that this will ever happen…

Your suggestion would make us able to jump down any cliff using DS and just stand up at the bottom of it like nothing happend because it only strips the LF bar =D

If you are a close-range fighting Necro in the fractals then you are just going to have a bad time during some fights…

And to be honest, I have no idea on how to help us stay alive from those 1-hit-kills without making DS overpowered…

Well yes, obviously it wouldn’t apply to fall damage for the reason you’ve stated.

To be clear: I don’t run a close range Necro in Fractals; I run the standard cookie cutter well support build, aka the only build a Necro can convince – with way too much effort- someone to take past level 10.

A DS skill #2 teleport would also be appreciated but wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to compete with the ‘usual’ FotM etc classes.

hmm is it really THAT hard to get a party for 10+ as a necro??

I’m in a guild that frequently goes to the fotm and I’m always a part of those parties so I don’t know how it is for a random generated party…

But I get what you mean.
DS is supposed to be that “panic button” that saves us from dying, it does well most of the time, still it fails to do that on powerful hits from champion/boss mobs.

Like I said, I have no idea on how to improve that, but I certainly don’t want DS to be too overpowered…
I barely use DS so all I would like is a good reason for me to do that, besides the few traits that go with DS.

Sekundes.2376:

…Your suggestion would make us able to jump down any cliff using DS and just stand up at the bottom of it like nothing happend because it only strips the LF bar =D…

Not true, fall damage isn’t a hit, its a direct HP reduction, and as such avoids all mitigation (toughness, defense, block, ….) much like the Agony condition from FotM….meaning that going DS during a jump would do nothing, since the fall would directly remove a % of your HP

@OP. DS already works that way. I’ve seen threads from a thief who tested it out with HS and Backstab, a 9k hit on a target almost out of LF knocked him out of DS and left him at full HP.

@Palaryel: If you have enough LF to mitigate the full amount of fall damage it will only be inflicted on your LF pool, if it would remove you from DS it will instead be applied to your HP pool.

Both of you can test this on the Heart of the Mists for confirmation.

@Everyone: Try stuff out in the Mists before bringing them to the forum, it’s the easiest way to test theories, compare builds and confirm mechanics.
Anything that can’t be tested there is welcome.

The problem with Death Shroud is a bug.

I won’t explain the bug on the forums but if anyone wants to know they can PM me. This bug applies to a wide range of skills and effects them in a similar way so exposing it here will probably change the meta.