Guild Wars 2

Two heads up:
First, this is going to be a long one
Second, I am aware I am posting this mere hours from “the big rebalance” but since twice leaked notes and already officially updated stuff on the wiki, I am pretty sure what I am about to talk about is not being touched by the patch anyways.

Let me first explain what I mean with “detachment”:
Every class in GW2 has its own unique feature, we know that.
And every class is richer and more interesting for it.
Except the Necromancer.

That can be explained with a bit of devlopment history which I will not explain lengthyly, but let’s just say that the Deathshroud has seen a transformation from an alternate downed-state to an awesome “I OWN YOU”-button to a “HEY GUYS I’M ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT PLEASE CC MY BUTT!”-button.
Life Force itself was supposed to be a stand-in for the energy system from GW1 that was never carried over into the final GW2.

Now what we ended with is a unique class-mechanic that has itself all threads cut to the gameplay mechanics it was intially tied to.

Why don’t other classes?

Well because they weren’t actually designed around the butchered mechanics or simply AFTER they were cut.

Let’s look at the Elementalist!
Go to the wiki and look at the trait list, just the minor adept and master traits of each line!
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_traits
What do we see?
Each of these traits grants a bonus for utilizing the unique mechanic.
When considering that just by investing 5 points into a line already gives you a considerable advantage for using that attunement, that means that every elementalist has at least 3 of those 10 traits that do so much to colour a class that is (imho) one of the most fun and versatile classes to play, even if not the most effective (some even say it’s the least effective).
What do we get?
Only Soul Reaping 5 and Curses 15 give us something that is directly linked to our unique class mechanic.
I acknowledge that that the Elementalist is an extreme case, but check other professions, they all seem very attached to their class mechanic.

If you are running a pure condition build without anything in SR ( and let’s not forget that pure condition builds are far more effective than pure power builds in most situations for the Necromancer!) you can play ages without noticing your LF. There is only one skill in DS that directly benefits from your itemization and stats and maybe one other that can help you in any situation. So most of the time, you only use DS as a trouble-bubble.
Not very effective usage of that mechanic.
What am I going on for?

Well the way I see it every playstyle should be supported by our unique class mechanic. Right now, LF and DS is kinda…THERE. “Yeah, take it if you want, we don’t care. Maybe trait into it, could be cool. Not necessary though!”
A good Necro is not defined by how well s/he can use her/his LF and DS, but by how well s/he can stack conditions, which is important for nearly all classes and builds.

Now that we drew attention to the Problem, let’s conjure up some solution (that will never come, but let us dream!)

Now how can we tie LF into every playstyle without shoehorning in too much change or additional mechanics/skills?

Same as they tied the elementalist to the attunements.

First, something that has been bugging me and that is kinda important: Instead of “Percent LF”, it should be “Points LF”. why? Because even with 30% bigger LF pool, we still get a maximum of 100%. Those 100% might be bigger than the 100% of an untraited Necro, but we can’t see that. By using POINTS, we can have a visibly larger LF Pool. Also this will be important in the following.
Make every Minor Adept trait benefit from LF. This however would cause most builds to just sit on a stockpile of LF and never expend it (and thereby never weakening themselves), so to balance it out and bring in some thinking into playing a Necromancer, bonusses should be given for USING LF, i.e. going into DS. This is what the Minor Master traits should be for.
This is actually kinda easy for a few traits.
The following ar ejust suggestions, but I make them to show you what I mean.

*Spite
Adept: “Increases the damage you deal by 1% for every 10 points of LF you have and by 5% while in DS” (remove the two-stage thing from Life-Blast).
Master: “While in Deathshroud, you gain 3 seconds of Retaliation every 2 seconds” (remove Spiteful Spirit)

*Curses
Adept: “For every point of LF you have, you have a 0.75% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits”
Master: “While in DS, you gain 3 seconds of Fury every 2 seconds.”

*Death Magic
Adept: “For every point LF you have, you gain 3 toughness while standing still.” (remove Dark Armor)
Master: “While in DS, you apply two stacks of vulnerability for 6 seconds on nearby foes each three seconds.” (remove Death Shiver)

*Blood Magic
Adept: “For each point of LF, you gain 0.5 points of health when striking an enemy.” (Vampiric Precision would cause the critical damage multiplier to be applied to the Lifegain as well, giving us a semi-scaling for Vampirism)
Master: “While in DS, you slowly grant life to nearby allies.” (remove Transfusion)

*Soul Reaping
Adept: (as old)
Master: “LF drains 33% slower while in DS”

I hope you also see now how the “LifeForce Points” tie into this: by increasing our LF pool, we increase the potential maximum of our bonusses, allowing us to make more of our LifeForce.
These are, as I said, just suggestions and probably horrendously overpowered (though I wouldn’t mind getting a strong nerf to my basic stats in order to balance out how strong I CAN become if finding the right balance between hoarding and spending LF), but they give a vague image of what I am trying to see in the whole LF/DS business: the key to playing Necromancer!
When is it good to hoard LF like a dragon, pumping myself full of steroids, and when is it important to use it all up?
I hope I was able to give a little bit of an idea, what we should be asking for; not stronger skills, but a mechanics that suits us more.
Necros are far from what they are supposed to be, but I belive that when the devs take this step first, the other steps will be easier.

Everything I wrote is open for discussions.

I agree that our minor traits are bad. I remember the first time I went over Mesmer or Guardian trait lines, I couldn’t believe how good some of the minors were.

Some of these suggestions are way too strong like perma-retaliation in DS, but they could wipe most of our minor traits from the trees and I probably wouldn’t notice many but the ones in Curses.

Wayfarer.2051:

Two heads up:

Second, I am aware I am posting this mere hours from “the big rebalance” but since twice leaked notes and already officially updated stuff on the wiki, I am pretty sure what I am about to talk about is not being touched by the patch anyways.

Now that we drew attention to the Problem, let’s conjure up some solution (that will never come, but let us dream!)

Wow, ArenaNet, you really made me swallow my own words on that one.
Not what I envisioned, but definitely a good step towards a good solution.
I applaud you, thaugh I remain cautious.

Wayfarer.2051:

Now how can we tie LF into every playstyle without shoehorning in too much change or additional mechanics/skills?

Same as they tied the elementalist to the attunements.

First, something that has been bugging me and that is kinda important: Instead of “Percent LF”, it should be “Points LF”. why? Because even with 30% bigger LF pool, we still get a maximum of 100%. Those 100% might be bigger than the 100% of an untraited Necro, but we can’t see that. By using POINTS, we can have a visibly larger LF Pool. Also this will be important in the following.
Make every Minor Adept trait benefit from LF. This however would cause most builds to just sit on a stockpile of LF and never expend it (and thereby never weakening themselves), so to balance it out and bring in some thinking into playing a Necromancer, bonusses should be given for USING LF, i.e. going into DS. This is what the Minor Master traits should be for.
This is actually kinda easy for a few traits.
The following ar ejust suggestions, but I make them to show you what I mean.

*Spite
Adept: “Increases the damage you deal by 1% for every 10 points of LF you have and by 5% while in DS” (remove the two-stage thing from Life-Blast).
Master: “While in Deathshroud, you gain 3 seconds of Retaliation every 2 seconds” (remove Spiteful Spirit)

*Curses
Adept: “For every point of LF you have, you have a 0.75% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits”
Master: “While in DS, you gain 3 seconds of Fury every 2 seconds.”

*Death Magic
Adept: “For every point LF you have, you gain 3 toughness while standing still.” (remove Dark Armor)
Master: “While in DS, you apply two stacks of vulnerability for 6 seconds on nearby foes each three seconds.” (remove Death Shiver)

*Blood Magic
Adept: “For each point of LF, you gain 0.5 points of health when striking an enemy.” (Vampiric Precision would cause the critical damage multiplier to be applied to the Lifegain as well, giving us a semi-scaling for Vampirism)
Master: “While in DS, you slowly grant life to nearby allies.” (remove Transfusion)

*Soul Reaping
Adept: (as old)
Master: “LF drains 33% slower while in DS”

I hope you also see now how the “LifeForce Points” tie into this: by increasing our LF pool, we increase the potential maximum of our bonusses, allowing us to make more of our LifeForce.
These are, as I said, just suggestions and probably horrendously overpowered (though I wouldn’t mind getting a strong nerf to my basic stats in order to balance out how strong I CAN become if finding the right balance between hoarding and spending LF), but they give a vague image of what I am trying to see in the whole LF/DS business: the key to playing Necromancer!
When is it good to hoard LF like a dragon, pumping myself full of steroids, and when is it important to use it all up?
I hope I was able to give a little bit of an idea, what we should be asking for; not stronger skills, but a mechanics that suits us more.
Necros are far from what they are supposed to be, but I belive that when the devs take this step first, the other steps will be easier.

Everything I wrote is open for discussions.

Remember percentages and numbers that represent them can be confused… 0.75% = 0.0075%. So at 100% life force, you’d only have .75% chance to cause bleeding… less than 1% (0.0075×100 points).

Unpredictability.4086:

Remember percentages and numbers that represent them can be confused… 0.75% = 0.0075%. So at 100% life force, you’d only have .75% chance to cause bleeding… less than 1% (0.0075×100 points).

0.75%=0.75%
What you mean is 0.75%=0.0075. As long as the “%” is at the end it means Percent which comes from the word “by the hundred” in latin.
0.75%=|=0.0075%
What I technically should have said is that for every Life-Force-Point the Chance for bleeding/Damage done/…. is increased by 0.75%P (Percentage Points). This wrong nomenclature is currently the confusion about deathly perception: “Does the trait increase the critical hit chance by a relative 50% (from 44% to 66%) or by a total of 50 Percentage Points (from 44% to 94%)?”

Yeah, I understood what you meant, just didn’t have the word for percentage points. Not sure why I put the =0.0075%, meant to say just 0.0075. It makes more sense that way that way to me with the %points htough. I really do wish the game had concise descriptions, therefore there would be no confusion.