Guild Wars 2

Observation
The current theme of the necromancer is remove boons and use epidemic. While the necromancer is naturally tanky they do not make good juggernaughts. They aren’t very slippery and hard to follow. Their damage is lack luster and support is only about weakening the enemy.

Cause
-limited mobility
-limited boons
-limited evasion
-limited healing
-limited stealth
-lower damage

Related observation
The reaper was suppose to be like a juggernaught trying to hit as many people as possible. The necromancer was to be focus on attriation.

Scope of goal
To be a juggernaught on the battle field you need to have good battle presence. To have good battle presence you need durability, the ability to escape kill zones and have a large area of effect.

Investigation
battle presence
durability
-Health
-toughness
-immunities
Health and toughness are based on gear. As a class we have good health but poor healing. The biggest problem is our lack of immunities.

kill zone escape (KZE)
-reaction
-mobility
-stealth
-immunities
We have very weak KZE our stunbreaks do not remove us from harm except wurm(require set up). Our condition clears can be easily interupted or blocked, take a long time or plague signet. Now if we do have mobility, it takes us the longest to escape, we can’t stealth either and don’t have immunities.

area of effect
-damage
-utility
-support
while our damage is limited, it is still good for a juggernaught. We lack any meaniful team support but still have good area of effect from our corruptions

Summarry
The main reason we fail at being a good juggernaught is a poor KZE and poor immunities.

Solution
There are many solutions and many steps to be taken.
shrouded removal Gain resistance and lose a condition when entering shroud. Lose a condition every few seconds you remain in shroud.
resistance: 2 seconds
Conditions removed: 1
interval: 3 seconds

Foot in the grave Gain stability and break stun when you enter shroud. Gain stability every few seconds while remaining in shroud
Stability: 3 seconds
interval: 8 seconds
Break stun

Conclusion
These two changes address our biggest issues our reaction time in a KZE and immunities. The resistance and stability will ensure we can escape the kill zone as quick as possible. In addition the added stability will ensure we end in less killzones and increase our durability. Having better durability and KZE will improve our ability to be a juggernaught.

We fail at making good juggernaughts not just because Reaper only gives 10% damage reduction from chilled foes, but because damage is so insanely high and easy to dish out. It’s why professions with frequent blocks/evades/immunities are the most powerful in recent metas. They’re the ones that can spec for high damage while also avoiding the high damage.

It’s always my “favorite” factoid that Necromancers are the only class in GW2 that doesn’t have a block. Closest thing they have is Corrosive Poison Cloud blocking projectiles, but but there are good reasons why you don’t see that in spvp that often.

Some active defense that doesn’t involve landing CC like fear or blind would be a great start, heck I’d be OK with a source of vigor beyond removing bleeding with Well of Power.

these balance patch buffs aren’t really cutting it, maybe the next expansion…

I’m talking for sPvP:

In the past we was able to survive and inflict good damage, but the merit was not totally ours.
Before HoT there was a bunker meta, enemies dps was really lower and we had the time to build up enough LF during the fight to survive and even win a 1v1.
Also we was able to inflict good/high damage, but that was not our damage: after the trait and condition rework there was a lot of condi builds (also just to try it, not really optimal builds) and we was able to collest all that conditions and transfert them on the enemy, killing him with his conditions.
We was the only real counter for elementalists (CeleEle) and all the stronger classes focused on boon cpam to obtain damage (might spam) and survavibility (protection and regeneration), granting us a really good spot becoming able to continously corrupt they’re boons and making them really weak and easy to kill.
And we also had a real good source of condition damage: chill was able to inflict up to 1k/sec while full condi and with 25 stack of might (not a really huge problem at this time)
That granted us a good survavibility, high counter damage and a viable source of damage to fight against direct damage classes.

Now every enemy can burst down us even with no might and weakness, there’s no more condition classes to redirect the damage and obtain a good dps (only mesmer play condition right now, with some necro and few warriors that still insist to soloQ with a condi build) and our chill damage had been twisted into a bleed stack that do his poor damage as it can but don’t grant us any decent dps and our only role is poor because there’s so much boon spam (elementalist and revenant, still if now is weaker) and at the same time high dps and survavibility without any boon (high burst by default and immunity skills) that corrupt boon sometimes is useless, unless to corrupt stability into fear. but with the Resistance spam warriors can totally ignore your stability corruption and burst you down easy and fast.

We’re not really weak, we just lost survavibility, damage and our role with massive changes into the PvP area that granted to every other class to make new builds and find new roles (or specializzate better as the elementalist did, still if ele players hate the forced support state of they’re class) but let us back into the past seasons without any way to be viable in this one.

The only thing I can ask for sPvP without ruin all the “Theme Logic” behind this beautifull class is to restore Chill Damage. if we can’t have immunity, block, stealth, evade or movement to increase survavibility and can’t have a good ally support, at last let us inflict good damage.
Making all the math, 1k/sec isn’t so much for a condition class that have poor access to any other condition, with 11 poison stack for RS4 or the scepter AA, that is really weak compared to all the other condition weapons in this game (even the warrior GS now can spam Burn, inflicting better damage than our scepter, making of it the worst condition weapon of the game).
Back in time that 1k was high because we also had a lot of other conditions from a large amount of classes (guardian, mesmer, ele, ranger, also the warrior Burn that with our condi damage was poor in stack but still useful) to send back to our enemies, now we have only confusion from the mesmer and some times few conditions from warriors and other necros. Not so much to fight with.

Back in time we was feared as condi counter and good dps, I only want to have that fear back. Right now everyone that see a necro spam two hits and kill him easy and fast. Make us still killable but more feared will be a good new into this sPvP meta.
Basicly everyone got a dps improvement, we got only a nerf and a indirect nerf.

Okai guiez! I kno how 2 fix necro!

Soul Marks: Along with it’s original effects, marks now also grant alacrity to near by allies.

YES PLEASE!!! i would love if we got more survivability.Playing pvp makes me want to pull my hair out of frustration.

Coffietire.2783:

Okai guiez! I kno how 2 fix necro!

Soul Marks: Along with it’s original effects, marks now also grant alacrity to near by allies.

and trap players with kittenty staff no thanks

How about an elite well & signet.

Avigrus.2871:

How about an elite well & signet.

an elite well that combines WoC and WoP(minus the stunbreak) would be amazing.

Elite signet no life force degen activate =100% shroud

Trouble will this game is enemy attention is based on toughness, so unless we’re always the tank we can’t go much into toughness. This doesn’t help that even without a lot of toughness other professions can do a good job of that as well.

Then there’s out damage…We might as well be fighting with a wet rotten stick

HardRider.2980:

Trouble will this game is enemy attention is based on toughness […]

…in raids. Elsewhere, including fractals, it varies a bunch.

Its beyond just necro, and has been for about a year before HoT came out.

The balance team has fallen into the shiny toys trap that many game developers fall into. They see a new idea, introduce it. It then becomes the meta standard, and they then balance everyone to that new idea, hoping to get everyone to the meta.
When the meta gets stale, they introduce a newer, more powerful new idea, and repeat the process until you get roughly where we are now, where you are either invulnerable, or die, with no middle ground.

I don’t think Anet has the guts to do what needs to be done, and pull everyone back to the lowest DPS required for clearing raids, and re-specialize the classes to enforce teamwork. Its telling that Necro, arguably the only class remaining that benefits from teamwork, is now seen as a weak class because it relies on a team!

ANet needs to make fundamental changes to how Necromancer works, since they tried to port over mechanics from GW1 to GW2 while introducing far more direct counters without any benefits. The idea of “weakening” the enemy is cool, but it doesn’t work when so many things to counter conditions exist, which just wasn’t the case in GW1 when Necromancer’s theme worked.

felincyriac.5981:

these balance patch buffs aren’t really cutting it, maybe the next expansion…

I wondered that, too. So I asked them in the official skill balance thread…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-Skill-Balance-Thread-22-February-Update/page/3

Svarty.8019:

Are Arenanet unwilling/unable to totally rework abilities or just in number tweaking mode?
Does it take the resources of an expansion budget to totally rework an ability?

Irenio CalmonHuang
Game Designer

We’re able, but it is a question of time tradeoffs.
- Tweaking something requires quite a bit of testing to see that it will not have dangerous consequences.
- Re-working something entirely requires even more testing for those dangerous consequences as well as functionality and potential bugs.
If it is needed and we have the time resource then we’ll do a re-work, but we’ll use tweaks when they’re deemed sufficient.

Personally, I’m super super disappointed in Arenanet after so many years of failing to address huge problems with the combat system and touting it around as the best in the genre. I find it laughable that they even host tournaments of this rubbish!

Bhawb.7408:

ANet needs to make fundamental changes to how Necromancer works, since they tried to port over mechanics from GW1 to GW2 while introducing far more direct counters without any benefits. The idea of “weakening” the enemy is cool, but it doesn’t work when so many things to counter conditions exist, which just wasn’t the case in GW1 when Necromancer’s theme worked.

I agree. Shroud makes Necromancer a square peg where all other professions are round.

Also, fear was actually very useful for groups in PvE at game release. Why not make it a thing, again?

“Robert Gee
Game Designer

We always consider raids and fractal composition when balancing. We gather input from a lot of different teams whenever we do a balance pass, including suggestions from fractals and raids teams. We try to keep in mind feedback from a variety of different sources when building our balance changes.

Regarding class optimization. I’d say that it’s more accurate to say we want every class to be viable in each game mode."

Except for Necro in raids and sPvP, it is quite obvious by the lack of any input regarding Necros outside of Epidemic that they haven’t been able to wrap their heads around a way to get this fixed.
I love playing my Necro but the DPS is extremely frustrating in many areas of the game. I was so disappointed in the balance for GS and reaper, it seemed overly cautious at best and completely underwhelming considering the fact we scrape the bottom of the barrel without bringing any unique skills in many parts of the game. Give us something worthwhile to allow us to want to be added to groups it’s pretty much all we ask. As far as solo play a little more DPS for PvE is not going to be the end of the world, it’s freaking AI!

Give mobs boons which are constantly applied and u have a good time.

Patrick.2987:

Give mobs boons which are constantly applied and u have a good time.

not when you have a mesmer or a revenant

mesmer can t strip that much boons and even rev dunno. imagine 5 boons every 7 secs or sth. with prot and resistance, might, fury and quickness beein applied. I think u need to combine them with a necro to get them cleaned easily. Aside from that some bosses should apply conditions so necro can profit from cleansing it for allies and sending back for dps boost. Just ideas but i m not a dev so what do i know.

Patrick.2987:

Give mobs boons which are constantly applied and u have a good time.

Living World Season 1 had this with the Aetherblade invasion. It was a refreshing pace for the Necromancer of then.

Patrick.2987:

mesmer can t strip that much boons and even rev dunno. imagine 5 boons every 7 secs or sth. with prot and resistance, might, fury and quickness beein applied. I think u need to combine them with a necro to get them cleaned easily. Aside from that some bosses should apply conditions so necro can profit from cleansing it for allies and sending back for dps boost. Just ideas but i m not a dev so what do i know.

Depends if you spec for it on a mes. They have 3 utilities that remove boons (null field, phantasmal disenchanter, arcane thievery) and sword auto chain removes 1. Also the Domination trait Shattered Concentration removes a boon per clone shattered + one nearby yourself. The trait alone + sword would be enough to deal with any boons the boss has.

This might be correct. Question is if mes can take all that traits and utility and still provide same amount of allacraty and quickness etc. And taking a third mes therefore might be a bit too much dmg wasted.

rev can also spec traits for passive boon removals on hit + run mallyx np

not to mention you can have some ppl run nullification sigil (no dps classes like chrono/druid) and bam necro not needed + you keep dps slot for engi/ranger

Ye i am probably wrong here. Still i would not like the idea to do 0 condi dmg cause resistance for a few seconds waiting for a nullification proc. Not to mention if the profession with that sigil dies u can t finish the fight. Since Rev is not in the best spot aswell, an option for a mallyx rev is not too bad aswell. Don t know how dps of mallyx rev is tho, probably not that far ahead of necro=more optional variations.