Guild Wars 2

This thread is going to be part lore, part mechanics. However, it is also an attempt to at least explain some of what I believe is the design philosophy that went into the Necromancer and discussion for how to take that philosophy to make the Necromancer something greater.

For any Lore fanatics of the game, the Bloodstones are nothing new. For those who aren’t, the short version of what the Bloodstones are is that the five gods (minus Abbadon) sealed all the magic available to mortals into the Bloodstones, one for each philosophy of magic (Aggression, Denial, Destruction, Preservation) and one Keystone. The six original classes for Guild Wars 1 included four spellcasters, one for each philosophy.

Necromancers represented Aggression.

The skills in the game were designed to follow this. Healing from a necromancer required that someone get hurt or killed (in the case of Well of Blood/Well of Power). Creation of minions required that something die (save Aura of the Lich, though that was much better with corpses). Buffs to allies were frequently tied to a sacrifice on the Necromancer’s part, and if not, required the ally to hit a hexed foe.

In Guild Wars 2, the Necromancer still mostly follows this trend. Most of our condition cleansing is actually transfers. Siphons and Life Force gains almost all require hitting and/or killing our enemies, and of those that don’t they require us to go headlong and want to be hit to gain the maximum (save Signet of Undeath’s passive).

How to make the Necromancer feel unique and useful, I feel, is tied to this idea. What better way to make them feel unique than rewarding them greatly for going balls to the wall in aggression, diving headlong into situations that should kill other classes?

We already have some skills that reward us for this style play. Unholy Feast, Life Transfer, Locust Swarm, and Deathly Swarm are all more effective when more enemies get hit (as is Putrid Mark, though it is unclear why this is now the case). Before the recent change to Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor, they were far more effective when getting hit tons of times than when only facing one opponent. Our Vampiric traits also reward us more for hitting multiple foes at once.

This, I feel, is what we truly need more of. Necromancers need better reward for diving into the thick of things, knowing that they cannot escape if they miscalculated. A Necromancer in the middle of your team should be something to really fear, not just drop as a free kill and move on.

The interesting thing is that while the suggestion to put more rewards on necros hitting more targets makes them more powerful with more opponents, it also is already capped by the AoE limit of five targets. The scaling already has a hard cap, so a necro can still be overwhelmed in truly suicidal situations.

My first suggestion is to remove the ICD for Spectral Armor and Walk, altering the life force gains as necessary (drop for Spectral Armor is a definite, possibly remove the stacking). This makes them weaker in 1v1s, but they should put out much more life force when the necro is playing aggressively.

My second suggestion would be to rework some skills to give greater rewards for engaging multiple foes. For example, Blood is Power could be re-worked to hit multiple enemies, giving 4 stacks of might per foe hit. Against 1 or 2 foes, it’s weaker, but when engaging more than that, it becomes much stronger. (I am aware that Blood Is Power is pretty good as-is, but this is an example of the reward for aggression that I am referring to). Tainted Shackles could grant Stability for each foe immobilized. Keep in mind at this point, I’m just throwing ideas around.

I am sure other skills could be altered as well to reinforce this idea, though it might require more effects that are neither boons, nor conditions. The changes don’t have to be limited with skills, however. Traits could get modifications too to reinforce this idea. Foot in the Grave could instead grant 3 seconds of Stability whenever the necro is CC’d (initial CC would still take place, but far more difficult to assist-train a necro with the trait)

In any case, it’s late at night for me here, so I would be interested in seeing what the rest of you think. Could this be a viable path for the Necromancer to take, greatly increasing the reward for taking high risk? I know it doesn’t solve the issue of necros not being good at boss fights in PvE, but it should help with pretty much everything else.

Well said.

I’ve frequently advocated in my posts regarding life siphon builds that they’re more effective the more aggressive the necromancer becomes. Throw yourself into the middle of a mob and become the eye of an AoE storm of wells, marks, and Locust Swarm while slashing feverishly at anything within reach. It’s as much about attitude and approach as it is about the skill bar, armor, weapons, and stats.

Though I think the necro community could stand to get a little more aggressive in combat, I think a larger share of responsibility lies with ArenaNet to finally bring the necromancer of GW2 more in line with being effective when being aggressive.

We’re hamstrung by a lack of scaling of our skills relative to the amount of damage, death, and destruction that’s happening around us; attempts to pigeon-hole us more and more into the “master of conditions” role (conditions builds should be effective but so should all the other necro variants, as well); a lack of sustain as befits an attrition class; and the inability to use our health and life force as a resource to directly fuel our skills.

Some good brainstorming ideas, OP. Here’s hoping the devs can return the necromancer to their rightful path.

Playing aggressive is much better the defensive, put condi pressure on people and get them to back off your team.

The trouble with this aggression to survive style is too many enemies can escape Nercomancers when they get in trouble, either with superior mobility, or lots of vigor for dodging, invulnerability, or excessive blocking, etc. When classes go into these evasive maneuvers vs us, we can’t catch them, nor hurt them and suddenly our own sustain starts drying up as noted we need to hit people to build it up.

Then combine that with the Necromancers face tank defensive style, and while low health opponents are escaping or turtling behind superior anti-burst mechanics, we are still getting focused and bursted ourselves when playing an aggressive style, by the enemies still in good shape, but we have no solid anti-burst ourselves to combat the situation. So a lot of the time, its just a ‘kill or be killed first’ strategy for us, which the addition of Dhuumfire just made all the worse, since speccing for it makes you pretty glassy.

The necromancer just has too many contradictions in its design and vision. Things that don’t work well together stylistically, and directly oppose or hinder what you ideally would want to accomplish.

For example given a choice enemies will always focus a Necro first if they are smart, because we are one of the easiest classes to stay on top of and burst down, yet the mechanics and style suggested in this thread is that we want to dive headling into a fight first and give them the opportunity to do this? It’s playing right into their hands.

Putting back in more scaling stuff like the old Spectral Walk would help a little, but you can’t really scale too much more offensive stuff to get better vs multiple enemies because the Necro already puts out a lot of AoE and Condi team pressure. Most of all though I think Necro needs defensive outs that don’t rely on hitting the enemy.

@Pendragon. Agreed on pretty much all of what you stated; the necro certainly needs work. However, I do find that in an organized group that has played together awhile and have become used to each other’s strengths and weaknesses, the aggressive style is still effective.

I may dive headfirst, but once everything’s on cooldown, I’m falling back while my teammates are moving into the opening I’ve made for them; both physically by scattering opponents as well as functionally from having blinded, chilled, feared, immobilized, and weakened them. It’s a band-aid maneuver and not without its risks. Until ArenaNet finally comes round to bringing necro in line with its stated design philosophy, it’s what I’ve got to work with. But, yeah, it’s definitely a gamble

The general idea I have regarding an aggressive playstyle would be bringing the sustain up to be sufficient against one target, but still have it apply equally against each of multiple foes. If an enemy is blocking or dodging your hits, they aren’t hitting you back during that time (save a couple of specific skills).

Necros really need the defensive changes to make this idea effective, though. I feel life force generation may be in a good spot right now, siphons and heals just need to be brought up. Of course, being aggressive does not forgo “master of conditions” or “attrition”, just means you are in the thick of things. The presence of a necromancer in the middle of your team in a teamfight should result in one of three situations.

1. Your team mostly ignores the necro, suffering heavily for it.
2. Your team focuses the necro, allowing the enemy team to bring their full force to bear while the necro takes time to bring down (unless disabled, and disabled frequently).
3. Your team separates to deny the necro as much strength as possible, but opening themselves up to dangerous situations with being outnumbered (never an issue in PvE).

Naturally, a necro should not just win a teamfight for their team, but they should be a major contributing factor. Whether they are putting out lots of damage or disables varies with build choices.

Again, these are just my views. I think ANet really needs to look into what can be done with returning the Necromancer to the aggressive gameplay (which oddly involves boosting their defense options).

I often think it would be very interesting to see a Necro only guild go out and mess around in WvW.

Imagine 30 or Necros all different builds just laying waste to everything they encounter.

Then you would see what is described without the need for any changes at all.

This would work for a little while and then the complaints would fill the forums and we would see nerfs galore I am sure but man it would be fun to watch and play in.

Just imagine 30 or Necros all in DS with spectral armor, using Life Transfer and rolling over an equal sized zerg. These forums would crash.

no point…
imagine 30 tiefs with perma stealth… or 30 super defensive guardians for example

Is interesting how you can aoe 5 guys at max, but you can be instagibed by 15 focusing you… well even if they arent focusing you ake their aoe. it could be a little confusing at first but i think it has to be changed if the max aoe is 5, there should be a mechachic that lets you only take damage from 5 people focusing you.

Nah, the ability to get overwhelmed is actually a good thing. It prevents you from 1vzerging as a D/D ele, for example.

delete necro from the game pls. we already have a full month of idiotism in tpvp only because necros and warriors were weak and needed to be buffed. this game was fine without necros and warriors. why other classes should suffer from it? even top pvp teams are forced to play necros and s/d thiefs in order to be effective. just because it is easy and works well. “best” meta ever

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Again, these are just my views. I think ANet really needs to look into what can be done with returning the Necromancer to the aggressive gameplay (which oddly involves boosting their defense options).

You are not alone in the thought that to encourage Necro offensive game-play their defense option need to be up to snuff:

Death-Shroud-brainstorming

I don’t mind the ICD on Spectrals, so long as they buff other ways to gain LF according to how many people are around. The problem is they seem really fixated on buffing the LF we gain on weapon skills, but nearly every one of them is single target. They should be adding in components to skills like Axe 3, Scepter 2, Dagger 5, etc.; skills that will give you more LF the more people you are fighting.

I would love to be a hyper aggressive life stealing machine on my necro. The traits are there, they just need a significant buff to be viable. And doing so would benefit many many necro builds out there and make a significant amount of new ones as well.
I really see this as the most logical step for making the necro more survivable as well as promoting build diversity throughout the class.
I know I am not the only one sick and tired of having to run condi…

The ideal place to get to would be where focusing a good Necro is not actually always the best option. The game should not be so predictable where the best strategy is just an obvious ‘kill the Necro first’.

In WvW I play aggressive, and also get focused a lot for it, its always a race to unload my offense and get back out of a bad situation. And I find my build becoming more and more defensive. It’s kind of sad because I think the ultimate Necro effectiveness right now might be just as a big scary decoy in team fights, throwing out all these visual effects, conditions, but actually in secret just being a big tank behind it all, so as to attract enemies while your allies kill them.

Unfortunately this tactic can be boring and repetitive to play. Because you aren’t really doing all that much it just looks like you are, and this game doesn’t have a ‘holy trinity’ and therefore should not have a tank, but that is the situation is the Necro is in for a team pretty much. Aggro generator. Oddly enough though, I’m often the last one alive at the end of a zerg fight and even get away entirely far more often than other more mobile classes. Positioning is everything for a Necro both offense and defense.

Out of curiosity, but other than simply buffing Siphons (which should definitely be the first step, then evaluate the situation from there), what other ideas do people have for this concept?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Out of curiosity, but other than simply buffing Siphons (which should definitely be the first step, then evaluate the situation from there), what other ideas do people have for this concept?

Crosses fingers, says prayers, puts on lucky rabbit’s foot necklace, removes four leaf clover from its hermetically sealed box, has palm read, and consults the tea leaves.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, pretty please with sugar on top give us better siphons. Patiently waiting for that day. Just hope they don’t swing too far into the OP zone resulting in another nerf. Make it just right.

Beyond hoping for better siphons, I’m in agreement with the idea that we need some sort of scaling in our offense/defense the more enemies we face. The concept being that – as adherents of the school of Aggression magic – we feed off of it; not just our own, but our enemies’, as well.

The more violence in the immediate area of a necro, the stronger they should become at a fundamental level. Skills and traits should have scalars built in such as “For each additional foe struck by skill X, gain an additional Y.” So if you hit one opponent with a skill that generates Life Force, for example, you gain 1% LF; hit two foes, gain 3% LF; hit three foes, gain 6% LF, etc. (foe #1 [1% LF] + foe #2 [2% LF] + foe #3 [3% LF] = 6% LF total).

WARNING: Major geek moment analogy ahead. You’ve been warned.

There was a Star Trek – The Next Generation episode in which the crew of the Enterprise was on a search to prevent an ancient Vulcan artifact from falling into the wrong hands. The artifact would channel and amplify the violent thoughts and emotions of those who would attempt to attack whoever possessed the artifact. This would allow the wielder to blast those attackers with a beam that became more powerful the more violent and aggressive the opponents. The counter was to put all thoughts of violence out of one’s mind and not attack the wielder; at which point the artifact is rendered inert.

I’m not suggesting a literal weapon or skill for necromancers that emulates the Vulcan artifact. Rather, I’m suggesting the concept be applied to the class design/philosophy. The more opponents within range of the necromancer, the more attacks the necromancer takes, or the more foes the necromancer hits with their AoE, the stronger the necromancer becomes. In a sense, it’s the necro themself who becomes like the Vulcan artifact.

“Stronger” can mean different things:

- increased damage

- receiving boons (Fury, Might, Protection, Swiftness, or Stability come to mind)

- auto-cleansing or reflecting conditions back at the caster (the frequency with which this would happen would increase with increasing numbers of opponents)

- gaining immunity to conditions for short periods of time (duration would increase for each enemy in the area or each enemy attacking the necromancer)

- generating more Life Force

- improving stats temporarily

- siphoning more life

- reduce incoming damage

- shorter skill cooldowns

These are just brainstorming ideas scribbled down as quickly as they came to mind. Some might work, others would be outright OP, and some would be trash.

Implementing a system where the necromancer becomes stronger the more they’re focused by the enemy may kill two birds with one stone. First, it would bring us more in line with the school of Aggression from which the necro draws their power. Secondly, it might contribute towards reducing focus on us. If an enemy knows a necro becomes stronger the more opponents attack them, they may be less inclined to focus the necro.

I’d love to see Orders come back into the game, either via Aura-type effects, or buffs like the Spirits. It fully fits within Aggression (more Aura procs by getting in the thick of the fight, or more “Spirit” procs by attacking as many people as you can), and can take on similar effects to the old Order skills we had.