Guild Wars 2

“Death shroud is still good, but not a panacea. We do not feel that, “Oh, it doesn’t matter, they have Death Shroud!” So please don’t think that.”
- Johnathan Sharp

I’m glad that he took the time to say this, because I know a lot of us Necros including myself thought that ArenaNet just assumed we didn’t understand DS yet. Thanks John for the relief!

Can you say if you’re working on necro’s axe or dagger MH? A long time ago I remember a dev saying they are looking for better power options for the necro. The axe especially is terrible and needs a decent amount of buffs to it, dagger could use slight number tweaks on life siphon.

JonathanSharp.7094:

NP. Death Shroud is very good, and gives the Necro a lot of power, but it obviously can’t answer all issues the Necro has. If it did, then by definition, it’d be OP.

Would be interesting if death shroud would be a bit more dynamic. Lets say you add another ability which is dependent on your weapon combination you currently have equipped.

Also can the fear be aoe please

zexion.5842:

Also can the fear be aoe please

That would be amazingly OP, instant cast AoE fear with 20sec cd….The skills in DS are fine (not including the underwater version…), the projectile from #2 is annoyingly slow but guess we can’t have everything…

Aga.8641:

zexion.5842:

Also can the fear be aoe please

That would be amazingly OP, instant cast AoE fear with 20sec cd….The skills in DS are fine (not including the underwater version…), the projectile from #2 is annoyingly slow but guess we can’t have everything…

The only CC you have in death shroud is fear and against anything with more then 2 players you are basically a sitting duck. It last 1 second, on a 20 sec cd. Mark has a slightly longer cd for the same thing, it is not OP at all.

Doom AOE fear would be ridiculously OP.

20/17 second AOE fear instant cast would be broken.

It’s already the best DS move we have and best defensive as well as offensive CC we easily have access to.

I just think the duration of all fears in general should be increased by half a second. So 1.5 seconds by default.

Currently a 1 second fear isn’t enough to push people off ledges unless they’re sitting right on the edge or very close to it. This is really needed sometimes in places like Forest of Niflhel at the Keep.

Compared to the knockbacks of a guardian or engineer it is severely lacking in actual moving distance. Or even Ride the Lightning.

True, that the advantage of fear is it bypasses stability but still limits me in actually moving people in the direction I would like. And the trade off for increased fear duration currently is too high compared to other classes who get the full knockback distance and CC duration without even traiting it.

Berullos.6928:

True, that the advantage of fear is it bypasses stability

It doesn’t. Stability stops all forms of disable, including fear.

Am I the only one here that thinks that DS skills have no synergy between them at all? Or maybe I need to L2DS?

1. is a projectile
2. is a gap closer
3. is fear
4. is AoE life leech

Why do we need a gap closer if our attacks are ranged? Why do we have fear if we have a gap closer and vice versa? Why is our fear only 1 sec and our projectile takes more than 1 sec to cast? What is the purpose of these skills in relation to each other? Why do we have AoE life leech if we don’t have CC? Why is it that when we go to DS mode, people start to gravitate towards us and attack instead of running away in fear?

At the moment, going into DS is not hadouken >> super hadouken; it’s more like hadouken >> Dan’s hadouken.

But when it is this slow it makes it very unreliable and misses a great deal more, making it less useful overall. As with deathly swarm, these skills have a lot of problem in regular use because they are so easy to dodge/avoid.

In that case, wait for your enemy to dodge twice before using it.

Karl McLain.5604:

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

I will admit that I do enjoy the fact that the blink from it doesn’t interrupt my casting of other spells.

I agree with chuiu.

The combo you listed makes sense theorycrafted but it happening in actual battles is very slim.

If at any point does the target dodge the fear or the dark pact or the immobilize all the burst you plan on using gets wasted.

Plus there are a lot of other character abilities that can get out of immobilize especially when they get bursted hard.

The general practicality of a gap closer is wasted for the small possibility of combos. And the amount of CD’s you need up for that combo is far too great.

Waiting for an enemy to dodge twice requires you to waste other cooldowns beforehand forcing the dodge. A good enemy will save dodges, unless their class is all about dodging (thief), or have tons of vigor up time. You can’t accurately tell how much dodge a person has because you cant tell what gear / build they have.

I’ll tell you that my thief can dodge almost 5-6 times in a row in combat.

And wasting time waiting for a dodge is wasting time not dealing damage, and taking damage in the meanwhile.

The necro playstyle is about, can I live long enough so that you die before me? If you wait for them to dodge, you’re withholding damage and wasting time. Our heals are not potent enough to fully heal our massive health pools, nor do we have other options of healing like elementalist or guardians or engis.

So necros best end up being buffer tanks using their health pools and the consume conditions to act as a timer to show much time you have left to fight.

chuiu.4985:

But when it is this slow it makes it very unreliable and misses a great deal more, making it less useful overall. As with deathly swarm, these skills have a lot of problem in regular use because they are so easy to dodge/avoid.

My dark path never misses unless it gets dodged or blinded or something; I never see it whiff for no reason. The only thing I find annoying is the abundance of NPCs in PvP and the fact that dark path will often collide with a random mesmer clone or pet or thieves guild or whatever. That’s not really a dark path problem though, it’s a game problem, I just notice it with dark path because it’s one of the only projectile skills I have.

Karl McLain.5604:

As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells.

I guess you get a lot of use out of stacking multiple dark combo fields on top of each other….Oh wait….That’s 1 thing I do not understand about wells, you’ll often find yourself needing to use multiple wells at the same time, for a varying range of reason, but the 4 utility ones are the same combo type. I said ages ago in a suggestion that well of darkness should be a smoke field, would really get interesting plays from it and it would teach necro’s to actually pay attention to the order in which they use their wells…

Karl McLain.5604:

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

I think that it’s great for PvP and WvW, but unfortunately fails miserably in the PvE environment. There is never a time when an enemy in PvE is running away unless it is resetting and regaining its life (or chasing another player). This makes immobilize exceptionally useful (I use MH Dagger’s 3 regularly in PvE!), but does nothing for gap closers in PvE. I recognize that some skills will always be better in PvP than PvE and vice versa, but this is a prime example of something that would benefit a lot from a split PvE/PvP functionality.

I never have much of a problem closing in on enemies, I actually like the way Dark Path works.

I’m curious if anyone else feels that Necro doesn’t have enough ways to escape from harm? Fear is powerful, sure, but with such a short duration and the fact that it is single target, it rarely allows me a chance to escape in battles larger than 1v1. The staff is great, but the casting times / animations are just long enough that most classes have no problem rooting, stunning, dazing, knocking me down before I’m able to hit them with the #5 fear.

I think Necro desperately needs a ground targeted shadowstep skill (akin to Thief SB skill #5). The problem with Necro is that although the DS is useful, it does not give me enough of a buffer to protect from high burst DPS. Now, this is without spec’ing the DS trait line, which I haven’t used in a while. But its always seemed too lackluster, too many points just to get DS stability and more lifeforce. I’m sick of out playing everyone else, when all it takes is a single knockdown before I get swarmed by 20 angry Defenders in WvW. My DS gets destroyed in seconds, and even with 25k plus hp I’m dead rather quickly.

I see elementalists go into mist form and run away, guardians knock me around like a ragdoll, warriors roll up on me super fast, thieves disappear to safety… I don’t want more ways of getting close, I want some way of escaping that depends more on my situational awareness than chain crippling, fearing, hitting swiftness and hoping for the best.

Now, this is mostly based on my experiences in WvW, where necro is da bomb IF you can consistently stay out of range. As soon as the gap gets closed by more than a couple people I’m in serious trouble.

Karl McLain.5604:

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

That is quite a combo you have going there Karl. I will have to try this out later tonight. I have always found that chasing people while in deathshroud usually ended up with me on the ground, waving my hand around =(

Death by Chickens.6902:

I never have much of a problem closing in on enemies, I actually like the way Dark Path works.

I’m curious if anyone else feels that Necro doesn’t have enough ways to escape from harm? Fear is powerful, sure, but with such a short duration and the fact that it is single target, it rarely allows me a chance to escape in battles larger than 1v1. The staff is great, but the casting times / animations are just long enough that most classes have no problem rooting, stunning, dazing, knocking me down before I’m able to hit them with the #5 fear.

I think Necro desperately needs a ground targeted shadowstep skill (akin to Thief SB skill #5). The problem with Necro is that although the DS is useful, it does not give me enough of a buffer to protect from high burst DPS. Now, this is without spec’ing the DS trait line, which I haven’t used in a while. But its always seemed too lackluster, too many points just to get DS stability and more lifeforce. I’m sick of out playing everyone else, when all it takes is a single knockdown before I get swarmed by 20 angry Defenders in WvW. My DS gets destroyed in seconds, and even with 25k plus hp I’m dead rather quickly.

I see elementalists go into mist form and run away, guardians knock me around like a ragdoll, warriors roll up on me super fast, thieves disappear to safety… I don’t want more ways of getting close, I want some way of escaping that depends more on my situational awareness than chain crippling, fearing, hitting swiftness and hoping for the best.

Now, this is mostly based on my experiences in WvW, where necro is da bomb IF you can consistently stay out of range. As soon as the gap gets closed by more than a couple people I’m in serious trouble.

You can transfer that immobilize off of you with staff 4 or Plague Signet. I never really have trouble getting away from people with my many condition transfers and Spectral Walk.

Also the advantage of other gap closers is even the attack misses it will still travel the distance. You see this with thief steal all the time. Try to steal and even if you dont get the steal attack it still travels the distance as long as they are within the range.

I’ve seen this multiple times with dark pact speed, you do the move in range, and while during the travel they move out of the distance or behind something and it gets obstructed and the movement is not given.

Time is always of the essence especially with distances.

This is also seen with spectral grasp, where the time flying would make for some sweet combos if it landed but it frequently gets obstructed or out of range by the time it actually gets there.

Well the trouble is I use wells, which I absolutely love for fighting in groups. Also saves the day when defending / attacking keeps and towers.

I have been thinking about dropping them and experimenting with some different things though. I just hate that having a vitality build I still feel quite vulnerable, especially if my wells are on cooldown. I suppose I can’t have the best of both worlds.

The idea of weapon or contextual based DS skills is interesting. What if Dark Path became a shadowstep, depending on you wielding daggers / axe, or staff / scepter? Dark Path is all but useless with the way I play, since I almost never want to be closer to the enemy.

This is all awesome stuff, I have a few questions I’d like to ask if I may?

a) Is DS underwater at a place you’re happy with? The abilities seem a bit crap, and unless I’m imagining it the animation for attack one is horribly slow.
b) Is Gluttony working?
c) Does putting points in Soul Reaping actually increase the total amount of damage that LF can absorb? Cos it doesn’t feel like it at all, and several people have tested it and found it broken.

I’m a pure power necro with D/D and D/F, so I’m very happy you’re looking at our core mechanic as it’s a bit underwhelming currently.

I’d rather have Spectral Grasp and Dark Path swapped.

There’s just so few times I actually want to teleport into melee range. And many times I want to use it for the chill/bleed to kite or w/e. It’s just for fitting for the slow tanky caster to yank stuff to him. It’d need to be adjusted slightly to make it not OP though.

Then dark path could be beefed up into some awesome ground target teleport or something, maybe make it do an aoe fear. Or even better, give us the Scarecrow teleport from that Lunacy game lol.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

a) Is DS underwater at a place you’re happy with? The abilities seem a bit crap, and unless I’m imagining it the animation for attack one is horribly slow.

I actually just found out the other day that the poison/blind skill is actually a pulsing field lol. It’s like 5 seconds long or so which is actually pretty kitten good considering the cooldown, but the Plague Blast man, that thing is just awful, the dmg is bad, the cast time and that horrible disable after using it, bleh.

I actually kind of wish we had that poison/blind field on our land DS lol. The single redeeming feature of our UW DS, the rest including the weapon skills are just make me cringe whenever I see underwater content.

huh. I thought everyone had the Dark Path combo worked out. That was probably one of the first things I figured out when I started playing my Necro regularly. maybe people really do need to L2DS :P

I kid, I kid…

I just wanted to say that I agree with the posters who feel Necro’s lack some escapability. It’s not that we don’t have ‘any’ per se, but not nearly enough to deal with the copious CC and chain stuns which are the biggest issue I have with the class. One Hammer Warrior or Guardian or those kitten Spirit Weapons, or a Shatter Mesmer with an OH pistol and they can hold you down far longer than it takes to plow through our stun breaks, HP, and DS.

It’s sort of part and parcel IMO with our lack of access to Boons. No vigor, no stability, no aegis, means we’re really forced to save DS for soaking up dmg which isn’t an answer to escaping a bad situation. A 30pt grandmaster trait is hardly worthwhile for 3 sec of stability IMO either.

Difficult times editing posts!

So here’s the deal on that one: Dark Path is intentionally slow because it tracks the target and allows you to start using other skills before it connects. One of the ways that I love using it is launching it at an enemy that’s at near (but not at) max range, fearing them, exiting DS, then starting Dark Pact. As soon as the Path projectile hits them, you shadowstep and immediately immobilize them from the short-range Pact, then pound on them with dagger skills and wells. When Dark Path is faster, it’s harder to use it to effectively combo other skills.
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

Considering this is almost exactly what I use Dark Path for in PvE (Minus the Dark Pact use; There’s no reason to immobilize a target that’s going to be chilled when the missile actually hits), I understand where you’re coming from; In PvP, this is much, much harder to pull off, mostly due to the enemy being out of range by the time the Dark Path projectile hits them.

Is there no way to make it extend the actual range the missile can travel before being considered out of range, while keeping the castable range as it is? I’d assume this would keep the original design intent in tact while relieving a metric crap ton of frustration in PvP from our gap closer.

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from.

Unfortunately, that is not the way things are working right now. Any class built for mobility can easily get away from a necro.

It’s the necro that is stuck in a live or die fight once they engage or are engaged. That is not true when a mobile class engages a necro. They can pretty much disengage and leave whenever they want if the fight is going poorly for them.

I’d love to have you describe what you think the ranger is. I enjoyed reading that theme-based balance explanation.

+1 to promurphy, I’d love to hear your philosophy about what every class is meant to be like, might actually help me settle on one.

I would also, love to hear more about these profession philosophies.

I’d also love to hear where the other professions stands in that sort of way.

And just to add, having escapability and mobility is by FAR the best survivability you can have in this game.

If you are trying to balance that with the necro’s attrition survivability, then I think you have some work to do.

Still though, I am enjoying the necro and I do love the death shroud mechanic since there is an element of skill in how you can use it. But, I’m also realistic. Necros will never have the open field survivability of the other classes that you mentioned.

Oozo.7856:

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from.

Unfortunately, that is not the way things are working right now. Any class built for mobility can easily get away from a necro.

It’s the necro that is stuck in a live or die fight once they engage or are engaged. That is not true when a mobile class engages a necro. They can pretty much disengage and leave whenever they want if the fight is going poorly for them.

If they increased the duration on chills and increased the duration on cripple I would totally go for this play style.

But yes, currently most classes can easily disengage from a necro.

@JonathanSharp

I believe it makes sense that we lack the escapes because we are an attrition class, but it seems as though other classes can spec for conditions and do much better with their ability to stack conditions more easily than us, and have access to the more damage dealing ones (Burning and Confusion).

Bleeds seem to be the best we have to use for conditions, and others are to be able to stack those quicker and much more easily than us. Do you have any thoughts on this?

One last thing, I know that most of us feel as though our skill trees are just…well, meh. There really is nothing that exciting. I have played all of the other classes and with them I feel like it is impossible to choose what traits I want because so many are just that great. Your thoughts on this?

(Btw, I am really happy that you guys have stepped it up in our little corner of the world! This, and many other things, is why you guys have been my favorite company since Guild Wars)

Berullos.6928:

Oozo.7856:

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from.

Unfortunately, that is not the way things are working right now. Any class built for mobility can easily get away from a necro.

It’s the necro that is stuck in a live or die fight once they engage or are engaged. That is not true when a mobile class engages a necro. They can pretty much disengage and leave whenever they want if the fight is going poorly for them.

If they increased the duration on chills and increased the duration on cripple I would totally go for this play style.

But yes, currently most classes can easily disengage from a necro.

I’m only really new to the Necro so I won’t pretend I know everything, but say you got scepter/focus and staff. You have 1 cripple from scepter, 1 chill from focus, you have a a chill and a fear on your staff, and you have a chill/teleport on Death Shroud, and multiple boon removing (ie. Swiftness) as utilities. That sounds like quite a bit of control to me.

But yes, currently most classes can easily disengage from a necro.

It’s not just about buffing our snares or roots. Take a look at this trait from the most mobile of classes, the thief.

http://www.gw2db.com/traits/1700-fleet-of-foot

There are a lot of condition removal traits and skills out there. Many of them passive. Conditions are, generally speaking, weak in this game for controlling other players. So, when you have a mobile build with good condition removal (which all well-built mobile builds will have) you get something which can’t be “horn locked” by a necromancer or any other class.

The only way a necro could lock down a class is if you gave them snares which couldn’t be removed, but that is not going to happen. So, the balance that Jon is talking about between the mobile build and the lockdown necro will never exist.

Prove me wrong.

Attrition is fine and all but so many times we cannot actually stop them from getting away. Our dagger root is just to small of a range to work most times when we need it to and why does it have a cast time anyways, dark path seldom makes us catch a player running away to work right. We have chill on blind for a trait which is nice, shadow minion blind takes to long to go off, we also have chill in staff attacks. Then we have spectral grasp which almost never hits anything that moves, long cast time and huge arc. Then if it hits they might not be pulled back all the way, a hill can stop that from working right. We have one minion that can root but the cast is horrible for it go off. We have a cripple from the scepter, and another chill on the focus. I would say we could use fears but 1 second is just not enough, 2-3 seconds without having to spec traits to extend would be perfect since they allows us necros to spec into better things.

So yes we have some chills and some root type things we often have to be in a 600 range for them to actually be effective to hit, they dont last long enough unless you want to just get runes to extend durations so we can actually keep a foe chilled long enough to maybe slow them down while they escape. I would rather spend runes to extend my bleeds or make me harder to kill.

I have had so many players run away from my necro. They cant kill me ether so its just a stalemate. Most times this happens is because when I need something to pull them back, slow them down, or catch up to them it does not work or they are out of my range. I am having better results with a carrion set of armor in a bunker build so i can bleed them to death just they still often get away if they notice they wont kill me anytime soon.

Oozo.7856:

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from.

Unfortunately, that is not the way things are working right now. Any class built for mobility can easily get away from a necro.

It’s the necro that is stuck in a live or die fight once they engage or are engaged. That is not true when a mobile class engages a necro. They can pretty much disengage and leave whenever they want if the fight is going poorly for them.

Exactly. Sometimes I’m able to run people down, but it seems like so many classes have the tools to escape my necro, and if I waste a swiftness getting within range, then I’ve got nothing to run away if I get into a lopsided fight. How is that fair? I’ve managed to commit to a few wars of attrition and win in 1v2’s or 3’s, but this is far from the norm. DOTs simply can’t compare to DPS burst that can destroy my lifeforce bar and render that aspect of the class useless.

Jon, you’re implying that the one class that doesn’t want to get in a Necro’s face is the thief. Because that renders their most powerful tool (the ability to disengage) moot.

This… isn’t true. I have a 80 Thief and 80 Necro. My Necro gets torn to shreds in 1v1 with this class. Not always, if I manage to hit him with a blind, or guess the right spot to throw down a mark or well. But more often than not they hit me so hard my DS is instantly gone and I’m a sitting duck. I’ve put down fear marks on my feet, wells of blindness, anything to buy me the couple secs I need, but the thief just stealths, comes back full health and unloads. Why would I want to fight a war of attrition against a class like that?

I don’t think a single shadowstep would break the class, especially with a long cool down. I think it could fix the class. Against DPS burst builds it would allow me to drop all my condition dmg stacks, then run away, drop marks to keep them at a distance, fill my lifeforce bar and then make the tactical decision to reengage or run away. Currently I have no decision. Do I stay and fight to the death, or avoid the fight altogether? There’s little inbetween.

Yes most classes can easily remove our cripples conditions easily.

The scepter cripple doesn’t last very long only 5 seconds. The focus cast time is ridiculously long and the damage is pathetic. And taking the focus over a dagger is just loss of damage.

The chill on staff doesn’t last long nor does the fear last long.

The Dark Path as mentioned is unreliable and gets outranged a lot.

And the best snare in the game is an Elite from the Ranger. You heard of that sucker?
Immobilize, unless the roots are damage, except they’re so buggy its very difficult to actually damage the roots, usually get lots of dumb Obstructed stuff.

The roots also damage you while stuck in them. Does a buttload of damage.

Only reliable way to get out of it is to teleport out somehow.

Berullos.6928:

And the best snare in the game is an Elite from the Ranger. You heard of that sucker?
Immobilize, unless the roots are damage, except they’re so buggy its very difficult to actually damage the roots, usually get lots of dumb Obstructed stuff.

The roots also damage you while stuck in them. Does a buttload of damage.

Only reliable way to get out of it is to teleport out somehow.

Yes, I’m kind of sad I didn’t roll a Sylvari for world PvP.

Actually, this is a really good point. What if they took our dagger root and made it more like this and made some other similar changes. That would definitely move us closer to what Jon envisions a necromancer to be.

I agree with his overall vision of the difference between a thief and a necro. However, the necro doesn’t fit his definition as something you can’t escape from in it’s current form.

If we are to have low escapability and mobility then give us snares and roots that actually ARE something to be concerned about.

It’s called “flavor.”

JonathanSharp.7094:

So, quickly, on the design philosophy at play here (you can feel free to disagree, but this is what I feel):

We want the Thief to be the class that most “slips through your fingers”. Other classes like the Ele and Mes have some of it too (and rightly so), but if anyone is escaping a fight, that should be a slippery Thief.

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from. It’s an attrition based class, so the idea is that if you lock horns w/ a necro, know what you’re getting into: you’re fighting a class that’s built for attrition. It can dot you, dps you, rip your boons, and severely hinder your movement. AND it also has the ability to soak up a lot of damage. So the longer the fight goes, the stronger the Necro should get. That’s the idea behind Death Shroud, but little escape ability.

So we don’t want that attrition class to also have great ways to escape. This used to be the case, and we felt the Necro was just too strong if it was great at attrition as well as movement/escape. We wanted the Necro to be more about attrition, and for other classes (Thief, Ele, Mes) to be more about escaping and mobility.

Hope that makes sense.

I would just like to point out that there are way too many other builds and classes that are so much better at using conditions than us. It takes me about 5 skills chained up (including two utilities) to get about 13 stacks of bleeding on my well geared and traited conditionmancer. Please tell me that the mesmer next to me facerolling by stacking 25 stacks of bleeding in 4 seconds does not mean our class is broken.

second note, if the game was designed to be a balanced model that eliminates the holy trinity, and our class is designed with the notion in mind that we’re not supposed to be mobile like all of the other classes in our category (Elementalists, Mesmers..) then we’re quite literally shoehorned into a specific playstyle that does not pick up on Guild Wars 2’s emphasis on mobility to avoid danger. Does it justify our long cooldowns, low durations on control effects, and lackluster condition choice? If we are truly a class that is supposed to be rulers of attrition, wouldn’t it make sense for us to have the properly developed skill set to make up for our total lack of mobility? If we can’t instant portal around, remove all crippled effects by mashing the V button, or just simply be able to /afk after hitting one of our 1-4 skills that auto-stacks bleed to the max… Then what is the point of trying with the necromancer anymore?

The idea that we are supposed to be able to lock horns with another player is just non existent. I can watch endless footage on youtube of non-necro players kiting out, gapping out, and simply being able to de-commission our conditions like it’s all just a minor inconvenience. As a class that relies on conditions to do things, our skills and utilities are easily rendered useless by all other classes.

Just the other day, I was in cursed shore trying to get to the gates of Arah (which is bugged on Kaineng btw, nobody can get in) I could not even get up past the first set of steps for the first 5 tries, because all the crippling, weakness, poison, bleeds, dazes, confusions, and burns were unbearable and there is simply no way to get rid of them easily. Sure, i tried staff 4, and plague signet, but the conditions stacked so fast that in the end I just ragequit and stopped playing guild wars 2 because it felt like all the effort put into developing a good necromancer was useless
Being able to stack bleeds and stuff is cool and all, but with less than 3 seconds of fear total in our reach at any time plus a few seconds of being able to chill mobs, our attrition theme is simply nonexistent. Great on paper, not even implemented in reality.

Karl McLain.5604:

Difficult times editing posts!
For in-deathshroud abilities, I tend to use Life Blast until my bar’s about 50% depleted, then Dark Path+Life Transfer for maximum damage and chasing power.

A good melee player will knock you on your butt or stun/daze you if you port to them and life transfer. I’ve found it best to go 30 points in for stability and use that to protect the transfer. That means you pretty much have to lead with it.

I’ve paid the price many many times by not protecting the transfer with stability.

JonathanSharp.7094:

So, quickly, on the design philosophy at play here (you can feel free to disagree, but this is what I feel):

We want the Thief to be the class that most “slips through your fingers”. Other classes like the Ele and Mes have some of it too (and rightly so), but if anyone is escaping a fight, that should be a slippery Thief.

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from. It’s an attrition based class, so the idea is that if you lock horns w/ a necro, know what you’re getting into: you’re fighting a class that’s built for attrition. It can dot you, dps you, rip your boons, and severely hinder your movement. AND it also has the ability to soak up a lot of damage. So the longer the fight goes, the stronger the Necro should get. That’s the idea behind Death Shroud, but little escape ability.

So we don’t want that attrition class to also have great ways to escape. This used to be the case, and we felt the Necro was just too strong if it was great at attrition as well as movement/escape. We wanted the Necro to be more about attrition, and for other classes (Thief, Ele, Mes) to be more about escaping and mobility.

Hope that makes sense.

i play mesmer and necro and mesmer is MUCH tougher to both escape and kill, so I’m really not sure how your design philosophy is playing out. I have rarely played my necro since playing my mesmer since it does just everything better than the necro. Even with a tanky necro build my dps spec’d mesmer with zerk amulet can survive longer with clones/stealth/blinks/dazes/sword immunity/etc while still pumping out great dps. For my necro to survive anywhere near as long as my mesmer i have to fully kitten my dps and use some sort of crappy DS/toughness build.

If that’s the case Jon then you should DEFINATELY consider swapping Dark Path with Spectral Grasp lol.

I do like the sound of it, if it can come to fruition. One thing I actually do like about this style of caster is they usually are : Tanky, Immobile and usually only move about through teleportation, they let the enemy come to them or force them to, they use DoT and Debuffs and use Debuffs to cripple the enemy offensive.

First of all, there is the issue with us actually being easy to escape from, then the fact that Weakness which is really the only defensive debuff is crap compared to Protection. Weakness should probably just be made into a flat 25% dmg reduction or give us a unique condition that we can use in our defense.

Having 2 health bars doesn’t even come close compared to having alot of ways to completely avoid dmg in the first place. There’s a reason Thieves and Mesmers can EASILY get away with going full blown glass cannon. Hell, the only reason Ele bunkers work is because they can easily go for 3 Cantrips anytime they get in a sticky situation.

A good example is WvW, if a thief/mesmer/ele/necro get jumped by 5-10 people who do you think can make it out alive? The thief that instantly teleports 1200 range away and stealths, the mesmer that distortions/blinks and stealths, the ele that just pops every cooldown to avoid all dmg and teleports, or the Necro who pops Death Shroud and dies in 5 seconds? =p

And for us, the only reason Necro bunker works is because Well of Blood with +healing is basically 10 seconds of near god-mode and the occasional god-mode Plague Form. Which is another thing : we’re so cooldown based. Our dmg is also cooldown based (Wells/Life Blasting, then have to get more LF).

also the necro is STILL so horribly buggy it cant even reach whatever potential you want, must people dont even run with corrupt boon anymore since it simply misses for no reason and goes on cooldown more than it lands. This was reported since BWE1. So talking about all this great philosophy doesn’t really mean much until you address the tons of bugs that still exist.

Sprawl.3891:

also the necro is STILL so horribly buggy it cant even reach whatever potential you want, must people dont even run with corrupt boon anymore since it simply misses for no reason and goes on cooldown more than it lands. This was reported since BWE1. So talking about all this great philosophy doesn’t really mean much until you address the tons of bugs that still exist.

It was said last night that a lot of what we think are bugs aren’t. But of course we have no idea which are and which aren’t, which is really getting to me.

Aga.8641:

Sprawl.3891:

also the necro is STILL so horribly buggy it cant even reach whatever potential you want, must people dont even run with corrupt boon anymore since it simply misses for no reason and goes on cooldown more than it lands. This was reported since BWE1. So talking about all this great philosophy doesn’t really mean much until you address the tons of bugs that still exist.

It was said last night that a lot of what we think are bugs aren’t. But of course we have no idea which are and which aren’t, which is really getting to me.

ok well if corrupt boon is working as intended it’s worthless and needs to be re-done. increase the CD if you must just make it land 100% for kitten sake

Oozo.7856:

But yes, currently most classes can easily disengage from a necro.

It’s not just about buffing our snares or roots. Take a look at this trait from the most mobile of classes, the thief.

http://www.gw2db.com/traits/1700-fleet-of-foot

There are a lot of condition removal traits and skills out there. Many of them passive. Conditions are, generally speaking, weak in this game for controlling other players. So, when you have a mobile build with good condition removal (which all well-built mobile builds will have) you get something which can’t be “horn locked” by a necromancer or any other class.

The only way a necro could lock down a class is if you gave them snares which couldn’t be removed, but that is not going to happen. So, the balance that Jon is talking about between the mobile build and the lockdown necro will never exist.

Prove me wrong.

Snares that can’t be removed? Locust Swarm and stick on them. The Frozen from Staff 3 isn’t removed by that trait you listed.

I play a good deal of WvW and not a lot gets away from my necro. Thieves are the most slippery, for sure. But the trick is to learn when your enemy is going to want to get away. During fights I save certain abilities as they get low – staff 4, spectral grasp, dark path. Then as they turn to run I have several options to catch them. Even if one misses or is cleansed I can quickly switch to another.

Thieves are the toughest for sure, but it helps if you run towards them when they hit 1/3 of their life, because that’s when they’re planning to run away. They can still trigger Marks in stealth, so use those liberally.

most classes that want to escape a necro can (mesmer, thief, ranger, ele) can all easily disengage from a necro. The only classes that can’t very well are warriors and guardians but they are melee and want to stay in range anyways.