Guild Wars 2

Dunno what to tell you, man, Thieves and Engineers are the only classes I have trouble catching. Unless they build super defensive, but I don’t find that too common in WvW.

im not talking about WvW, people run bad “pvp” builds in WvW

a simple, stun, stealth, blink as a mesmer will allow you to escape any mesmer

Mr. Sharp, I don’t know if you’re still reading this thread and in a position to reply. I hope you are, because there are some very valid points being raised here. Granted there are some better for another topic, another time, but folks like Sheobix, Knote, Death By Chickens, gamefreak, alanis, they all raise some very valid points.

At the end of the day, from my perspective, mobility will always outweigh durability. You can either stand in the fire and soak the damage by relying on your bulk to see you through, or you can dodge it to avoid it completely. Durability will only get you so far and while the idea of fighting a Necromancer being a long, arduous slog is a pretty cool idea, combat is heavily based around maneuverability in this game and as such, my bulk feels inferior to professions that have solid, reliable escapes and disengages to make up for their lack of bulk. It doesn’t help matters that my bulk is tied to a seperate resource mechanic which, while not taking an inexcusable amount of time to build up, needs to be built up by using specific abilities in combat, killing things or having things die around me.

I’m going to bold this bit so it stands out the most because it’s the point I want to make the most:

In PvP I feel I am balanced around the extra bulk and options granted to me by Death Shroud. Since I start on 0 Life Force I don’t have this bulk where I need it the most – at the start of a fight where my opponents’ abilities are ready for use and I need something to mitigate their front-loaded damage. Thus my bulk becomes less relevant the more a fight drags on – I have access to my mitigation later in the fight when my opponent has more than likely used several of his/her most damaging cooldowns. This is a fundamentally flawed problem – If I’m supposed to be a bulky, tanky caster with limited movement options as the drawback to my mitigation, why don’t I have my mitigation when I need it the most?

(Meanwhile the Thief/Mesmer/Elementalist has gotten away because Dark Path was too slow getting to them, Spectral Grasp was obstructed by a nearby shrub, and my Flesh Golem went charging in the opposite direction. :P)

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 completely agree with the design philosophy of the Necromancer that you presented. To the other replies in this thread — I’m pretty sure that Chap understands that the philosophy does not currently match the gameplay.

The biggest reason is due to the nature of toughness, and certain boons and conditions.

1. Toughness just doesn’t provide as much benefit as glass cannon DPS gear.

2. We have no/limited access to Vigor, Protection, and Stability. All of these provide better damage soaking/mitigation than Death Shroud mechanics.

3. Weakness is terrible. It should be -25% damage, or at least -25% crit.

I would like to begin by thanking Jonathan Sharp for having explained the current design philosophy behind the Necromancers. I know a lot of us have been sticking it out because we love the class but were feeling a bit demoralized at the lack of communication. So to you Mr. Sharp, I say well done and keep up the good work.

I love the concept behind this idea. I currently build my necromancer as a condition bunker build. I can’t speak for tPvP, but I’ve had my fair share of 1v1 1v2 1v3 encounters in WvW which many times they end with a win, stalemate or long drawn out battles to the my death. I believe this fits with your intended design.

JonathanSharp.7094:

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

I think the one problem with this statement is that a lot of our CC abilities are tied to skills that must be used in order to achieve an adequate “burst” or condition stacks. For example.

Scepter/Dagger + Staff

Scepter 1 => Scepter 2 => Dagger 5 => Blood is Power => Dagger 4 => Staff 2 =>Staff 3 =>Staff 4

I don’t know if there’s a better “rotation”, but this is what I use. With bleed on crit trait and Earth sigil, I can usually get up to 14 stacks of bleed with a bit of poison if I’m unlucky. Now how many CC’s did I use just to get my damage rolling?

Scepter 2 =>5s cripple (10s CD)
Dagger 4 (with chill on blind) => 1s chill
Staff 3 => 4s chill (20s CD)

As you mentioned, I’m also an attrition class so I have to keep those conditions rolling as long as possible. So to keep the damage coming I have to re-use these abilities in a timely fashion or my damage over time drops off. So to keep a respectable level of damage I usually have to sacrifice these weapon based CCs instead of holding them back for opportune times.

Other CC options:
Minions: Another poster covered this, but the minion cast times make them unreliable in many situations. Plus minion AI at this time makes it hard to justify selecting them as utilities.
Signet of Spite: 5 second cripple available from the active, but the passive bonus doesn’t help a condition spec too much and the 90 second CD is a bummer.
Spectral Grasp: The large arc and projectile speed make it unreliable unless your opponent is standing still. Misses quite frequently when opponent is strafing.
Well of Darkness (with chill on blind trait): Well usually designed for protection could be used as an escape inhibitor, but would most likely require the well ground target trait to be effective. 2 trait slots sacrificed for this CC.
Dark Path: I know other people have some success with this skill, but more often then not I seems to fail for me. By the time you switch into Death Shroud(if DS and Dark path are not on cool down) and use the skill, my opponent will have gained enough ground to seem to out run the abilities range. This could be a l2p issue on my part.
Spectral Walk: Not exactly a CC but it does provide a nice boost of speed. Many times it’s being used for map mobility in WvW and is on cooldown at inopportune times, but it does provide an option to at least keep up with the enemy (I always us it).

Also in situations where you want to keep an opponent around, our flavor condition, Fear, actually helps our opponent escape.

I personally feel my ability to keep an opponent around isn’t that great. Throw on the abundance of condition removal and it seems very difficult to keep any class within your clutches.

My $0.02 , sorry if I come across as a noob to anybody. I’m not an eloquent writer but I’ve been playing Necro since the beginning and it’s my experience.

~ Skatha

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.

Thanks for the insight on the class philosophy. I’m rather curious though how you feel the current design is measuring up to that philosophy.

Personally I think it takes a whole lot of work to make the attrition aspect work for a Necro against high burst classes. I know you said burst needs toning down but I don’t think it’ll be reduced to the levels that short blinds, chills, and weakness will be enough to subvert the incoming dmg long enough for the attrition to start becoming a factor without impeccable positioning, timing, and use of CDs.

As well, the whole “cannot get away” seems to be nonexistent. Blinds, Chills, a cripple, and a single immobilize don’t stand up to classes with heavy burst and/or heavy CC. Not to mention our feature CC makes people run away. Classes that are forced to stay and fight it out are traditionally bunker specced and making constant use of stability, protection, regen, retaliation, vigor, aegis, and heavy CC. Almost none of which is available to Necro’s.

Don’t get me wrong. Necro is my favorite class by far. I love to jump in and out of the fight using my staff to soften people up before moving in for the kill with my daggers. Whether they want to get away or not is really entirely up to my opponent though.

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.
——————————————————

I don’t play a Necro, I play a ranger, and i just read this post by you Mr Sharp, and I got to tell you…You’re probably not thinking this through very well.

If a Thief is able to escape most classes in this game, It’s going to need Mobility of some kind. Any Class in a game that has Mobility greater then other classes for Escape is AUTOMATICALLY going to be superior at catching people because If they can out run you while getting away, They’re going to be able to out run you if you try and escape thus catch you.

So that means any design you have for the Necro being the class you just can’t get away from is going to be automatically trumped by The Thief.

So you’re really going to have to look at the Necro in the role you want, Because quite frankly what you’ve suggest will not work in its present state, or any future state.

I’ve never found death shroud to be any use, to the point where I literally forget to use it, every time I die I think like a minute later “Oh hey, I totally forgot about death shroud, that might have helped there” but I figure it actually wouldn’t have helped so much because death shroud has no damage. I might have been able to tickle off 1/8th of the enemies health bar with my DS attacks and then died all the same. I just don’t see how it’s supposed to be useful when it’s so weak compared to my normal minions + bleed damage attacks.

Tobias.8632:

I’ve never found death shroud to be any use, to the point where I literally forget to use it, every time I die I think like a minute later “Oh hey, I totally forgot about death shroud, that might have helped there” but I figure it actually wouldn’t have helped so much because death shroud has no damage. I might have been able to tickle off 1/8th of the enemies health bar with my DS attacks and then died all the same. I just don’t see how it’s supposed to be useful when it’s so weak compared to my normal minions + bleed damage attacks.

DS is actually incredibly strong once you’ve acquired enough LF to make efficient use of it.

As I see it though, because of this overlarge HP pool, many of the other class attributes require toning down for the sake of balance. Which seems to have narrowed the capabilities of the class given that the HP is always there and there’s no way to trade some of it for another attribute. Personally I’d give up a good chunk of that HP to be able to have access to more boons and an increase in dmg for daggers and axe.

As well, attrition is only a positive attribute for bunker classes. Dmg oriented builds live and die by their efficiency. Lasting longer in PvP just makes for more reinforcements to show up.

Not saying we need to be theives or warriors, but there should be a bit more flexibility to the potential builds of the class rather than settling for which flavor of face tank you’d like to be. This flexibility already exists in the other classes (possibly excluding thieves as they sit at the other end of the spectrum from us)

edit: DS tip – use it as an “oh kitten!” button. once you get used to that you should start noticing some of the other uses.

I can see how the attrition aspect works with each spec
(but each of them suffers from a big weakness):
-wells give you a “stand and fight” mechanic that punishes enemies for stick around
(but are pretty easy to simply walk out of due to the pulse mechanic)
-condition necromancer can send conditions placed upon him back to the enemy while maintaining conditions
(countered pretty easily by the large amounts of condition removal in PvP)
-minion master can repeatedly summon minions to draw the enemies attention or hammer them for being ignored
(AI is balls, death shroud prevents the use of minion skills, don’t have an underwater elite)
-death shroud spec’d necromancers can create a new health bar repeatedly
(the soul reaping tree DS specific boosts don’t seem to work)
-life siphoning necromancers draw from the enemies health pool
(life siphoning is incredibly small per hit and doesn’t scale in any noticeable manner with healing power)

The thing is, whilst you might be able to chase someone down with Dark Path, why does it have to be melee range? Its not exactly desirable for most necromancers against melee folks.

On paper the idea of a Necro being able to out last and out strategy other classes sounds great. Unfortunately however, this is our reality. Before we get a chance to literally get off a single scepter swing we’re dead.

samkong.2719:

On paper the idea of a Necro being able to out last and out strategy other classes sounds great. Unfortunately however, this is our reality. Before we get a chance to literally get off a single scepter swing we’re dead.

This is why we should settle to a set % of lifeforce when out of combat. We are much weaker when we start out at 0% lifeforce than we start out at 100%, particularly against burst classes. I think a good starting point would be in the 20-30% range.

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.

yeah those are some nice combos, I use them myself depending on the situation.

The real problem is that dark path isnt effective on fleeing opponents, it just wont reach them if they are running away as any movement ability will get them enough distance to outrun the projectile.

A couple possible solutions could be:

- increase the range
- have it track the opponent as long as it was finished casting in range (some classes could drag you into nasty locations and stop though)
- have the projectile speed up till it hits

I sometimes wonder that what is holding me back from combing more with the DS abilities are that they hide on a whole different sub-menu. That is, i can’t simply hit a single key and fire of 2-4, i need to hit F1 first, then 2-4, and then F1 again to get back to using the skill set i have traited for. End result is that i go into DS for two reason, LB when 51%-100% for the damage output (rivals anything i have but Lich) and at any point as a panic button.

@digiowl Quote broken so..

I bind my death shroud to Q or W depending if you’re using wasd or esdf. It makes it easy to reach as well.

Karl McLain.5604:

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.

What if the projectile was sped up, but there was a delay in the shadowstep taking place after it hit? We would get the best of both— having a more viable tracking skill while retaining an element of combos with the delay.

PS: Thanks for your time in posting this.

On the subject of thieves, you cant have a slippery class and give them amazing burst at the same time, otherwise it makes them the best class for PVP and the most played class in wvwvw oh wait thats happening right now isnt it?

So this is it right? Thieves are designed to escape at their hearts content? How is this okay?

@brokenforlife: it is not about the keybind itself, but that i have to hit 2-3 keys just to insert a quick gap closer in my sequence.

Well without stability necros will never be viable. It will get worst as players get better with their control skills and team communication.

30 points into a broken boring tree for 3 seconds of stability is problem

Without stability or stealth we have a hard time stomping people in group fights. We are bar none the worst class at stomping a player and also terrible at bring other players up. There are just too many things wrong with the necro, we seem to really have been kittened on the concept stage.

I really hope this Necros are the ‘attrition class’ concept gets changed because in the Tpvp format long 1 v 1s just dont happen classes move to fast add in the necros terrible ability to stomp another player its a bad class from top to bottom in a hold/take node pvp format.

Death match, is the only format a attrition class will be viable.

A Thief has no problem escaping a Necromancer that they have ‘locked horns’ with.

Here’s a list of other classes that have no problem escaping a Necromancer:

Mesmer
Elementalist
Warrior
Guardian
Ranger

Necromancers are slow, immobile, and have very little to force an opponent into the same situation. They’re basically this wall of meat that’s going to take some time to kill, but is essentially no threat to actually finish you off.

(Main is a Thief, have a Necro alt that I haven’t touched since Plague Signet broke since Plague Signet was >50% of the character).

I think necro is a easy class to get away from, eng, warrior, ranger can spec to make sure you cant get away necro has one slow broken utility pull…. its terrible flat out does not work on a moving target at all. Considering what other classes have build into their weapons or fast recharging utilities like bolas necro is so easy to get away from and they cant spec to make it harder to get away from them.

There is no getting away from a thief that wants to stay on you.

Maybe I just use a weird build but does anybody else think that thieves really aren’t that bad to fight? I run condition necro and honestly I kind of enjoy fighting thieves. The only time a thief should really be able to kill you is if they catch you without any life force.

Try putting a bit of toughness into your build if you’re having trouble with them. For condition necros, consider getting a few pieces of gear with toughness (prec/tough/cond gear from karma vendors) and using Superior Runes of the Undead (relatively cheap on the TP) for more toughness, condition damage, plus a nice 6 piece set bonus.

The thing about necro is for GW2 we are designed to be masters of CC, condition manipulation and boon removal. almost everyone will agree necro needs a major revamp for fix its issues and make them as powerful and versitile as other classes.

The Issues Necro has:

1: condition stacking vs other classes.
2: well and signet recharges
3: Minion AI
4: Bugged or useless traits mostly in Death and soul reaping tree’s.
5: Vulnerability when fighting warriors, theifs and mesmers.

Thing I would suggest to make necro balanced and more builds viable.

1: increase conditions stacking ability either by adding extra stacks of bleed/ vulnerability to skills or increase their current duration to support the idea of the longer the fight the stronger necro’s get. This would also increase our CC ability.
2: increase well durations to 10 seconds or reduce recharge to 20-30 seconds. This would allow for stronger power builds and increase the utility with combo fields, Boon application/removal and condition removal support. All Signets recharges should be cut in half.
3: Minions AI needs to be made to attack our targets period. Trait wise many could use a buff one of which is death nova which I would make it so when any minion dies it does a putride explosion for dmg and add the 3 sec applied poision. Also jagged Horror should live longer and we should have more of them ( say summon 1 horror on kill for every 6 points in death (allowing us to have up to 5 max) jagged horrors up at once. This would fit in with the GW1 traditional 10 minion cap, allow for a self sustained minion bomber effect and thus minion builds would be viable.
4: Give us increased access to a blind spam to help counter Warriors, Theifs and guardians. This could be done by reducing cooldown on deathly swarm, well of darkness, adding blind to either Wail of doom or Locust swarm. We should not have to rely on our elite Plague just to be able to spam blind for defense.
5: We are the masters of Death, The thing you have nightmares about, The thing you fear in the dark so why do we have the weakest fear. we should have either the longest fear or the most spammable one with at least 2 second duration.

I cant see how any of this would make a necro OP or IMBA. It would just give us good solid build options. I dont want to see us gain boon buffs as we are the one role that is not ment for heal/prot support.

You make some good points there xEtherx….. I agree on every front.

I really like the idea of having 5 jagged horrors running around (if they don’t die so easily)

I would also like to see some overall increase in damage for Necro’s…. Not condition damage, but burst damage…. Take Scepter number 1 ability for example, it does almost no burst damage at all, it relies on the condition damage…. If your target can remove conditions, then you do zero damage basically…. of course you can’t remove conditions all the time, but it still hinders a lot…

Yet again it seems we are talking past each other, as some are talking PVE, some WvW, and yet others sPVP. The focus of the game balance so far appears to be the latter, sPVP. And no wonder, as it is designed to be highly level playing field in terms of gear and stats, leaving the outcome more to player skill than anything else. PVE and WvW is more gear based, as you bring what you have scavenged or bought.

Sprawl.3891

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.

Exactly !

I though I was playing a good class until I met that mesmer who destroyed me with little effort :’(

I asked a good mesmer from my guild :

- Hey, do you have problems beating necros ?
- No, I lost one fight against a necro, but it was when we couldn’t see enemies in WvW, I took like 4 hits from Deathly Claws and died …

This is the reality, necros sucks

Karl McLain – A) teleporting stops all channeled skills upon shadowstep (pistolwhip+trap), so no you cannot Dark Pact them unless you abuse the fact that starting a animation while shadowstepping (steal+cloak and dagger – what i concider a bug that should be fixed) isnt actually stopped, but still is around 3/4 of a second for it to go off and a enemy to dodge.
B) Right now DS is still a on demand downed state and will be till it gets more abilites and a actual auto attack.

@Craiger I think its important to remember that a lot of 1v1 is which build wins rather than what class wins. In particular, I think that its asking a lot to have them increase the burst potential on the scepter. The fact is that if you’re running scepter then you’re probably running a condition build. If you go up against someone who’s focused heavily on condition removal than you’re supposed to have a really hard time killing them.

The balancing part is that someone that heavily focused on condition removal is susceptible to power builds. Likewise, someone heavily focused on defending against power builds is going to be an easy target for a condition necro.

I love what you are doing with the game ANet and agree wholeheartedly with your Profession philosophy regarding Thief and Mesmer. As an aside would like to have the complete list?

However… I agree with the people on these boards that Necro is substandard when it comes to holding, detecting or catching up with their fleeing enemy making it way too easy for them to escape.

I think there needs to be balance changes else when you add rankings or league tables we will need the worlds most powerful microscope to see any Necros anywhere near the top half of the list or be able to see anything in fact that is not a Mesmer, Thief, Ranger or Warrior

Like others have said, the CANNOT escape aspect of the class is not really showing at the moment.

Craiger.8579:

You make some good points there xEtherx….. I agree on every front.

I really like the idea of having 5 jagged horrors running around (if they don’t die so easily)

I would also like to see some overall increase in damage for Necro’s…. Not condition damage, but burst damage…. Take Scepter number 1 ability for example, it does almost no burst damage at all, it relies on the condition damage…. If your target can remove conditions, then you do zero damage basically…. of course you can’t remove conditions all the time, but it still hinders a lot…

You would have to leave scepter alone aside from maybe adding 1 additional stack of bleeding to Grasping Dead. The reason being is scepter is your condition weapon. If you want more burst dmg you have to go dagger or axe. Staff has a decent #1 skill but its very slow and easy to dodge.

It’s interesting to see that you consider the necro as the hardest one to escape from.

I started out leveling my thief to 80, which bored me to hell since it is super easy to kill just anything. I searched for some more challenge and thought, that the elementalist would offer me what I was looking for so I leveled one of those to 80 too. I played lots of sPvP and tPvP with both of them of course (rank 25 here), aswell as WvW.

With none of both I ever had any trouble getting away from necros, due to multiple condition removals and mobility skills (like ride the lightning for my ele and infiltrators arrow on thief). We now could argue every necro I faced was a baddy, but I don’t believe that. Also there weren’t that much situations, where I actually had to run from a necro yet.

Once I geared out my ele I was looking for a new challenge and now finished lvling up my necro. While this class still has 2 powerful builds (conditionmancer and bunkermancer), atleast for sPvP I had a hard time figuring out any viable power build.

In my oppinion the core problem are those slow moving skills, like staff auto attack, death shroud number 1 skill and sometimes unreasonably high CD’s (staff for example) and their traits. They seem to have the most unappealing traits, atleast of those 3 profs I played yet.

If they really see the role of the necro as a class where you have trouble to get away from then either the mobility of other classes is way over the top, or the necro still lacks movement restricting skills he should have had from the start.

digiowl.9620:

Yet again it seems we are talking past each other, as some are talking PVE, some WvW, and yet others sPVP. The focus of the game balance so far appears to be the latter, sPVP. And no wonder, as it is designed to be highly level playing field in terms of gear and stats, leaving the outcome more to player skill than anything else. PVE and WvW is more gear based, as you bring what you have scavenged or bought.

I understand what you mean and the few added stacks of bleed and ability to spam blind a bit more would not break spvp in favor of necro. Minion and death tree in pvp in general isn’t very viable and never has been aside from a minion wall for body block.

Necro in arena is best as condition or hybrid specs. Buffing wells and signets along with some traits in the blood line will only make power necro’s a viable build as well.

If your worried that much about necro in pvp I would suggest as a necro anet make stacking double sigils of earth work as a single sigil so we can’t wand #1×3, Roll MoB, #2, #5 weapon swap for geomancer and puff 15-18 stacks of bleed. I’d much rather see the ability to throw more blind, frozen and cripple making it a battle of timing and skill and making the necro the class you cant escape.

I can see how that’s the philosophy for the class. It appeals to me and so on but currently it just doesn’t work otu like that. esp with stuff like condition cleanse.

I play thief in wvw and you can chase pretty much everything down, it is kittening awesome. And flipside→oh there is trouble? I can get out in seconds. Can’t speak for spvp but i think theyre fairly hard to kite there too.

Would love for the devs to show us some videos of sP}vP where Necros are difficult to escape from. It is just not true at the moment

I play thief in wvw and you can chase pretty much everything down, it is kittening awesome. And flipside?oh there is trouble? I can get out in seconds. Can’t speak for spvp but i think theyre fairly hard to kite there too.

This is the problem inherent of the duality of the mobility versus bulkiness/snaring framework. A profession with high mobility over high bulkiness and snaring can escape from combat with impunity, and can also engage/chase with impunity. Which, in and of itself isn’t a bad idea. The bad idea comes when you have a profession that has incredible mobility and it has incredible burst as its’ archetype.

In contrast with the bulky snarer the Necromancer is idealised to be, he has trouble catching up to the fight… Lots of trouble escaping the fight… And not much success in keeping glued to its’ target. And when you get right down to it, the reason is, I think, that the methods of keeping someone close to you stem entirely from conditions save for two abilities – Dark Path and Spectral Grasp. Considering that packing a heavy dose of Condition removal is pretty much the standard in a PvP environment, if you want the Necromancer to succeed in its’ intended design philosophy, you need to do one of two things:

1) Strengthen movement-impairing conditions.
2) Create utilities and abilities for the Necromancer that can keep them in range of the target, but don’t rely on movement-impairing conditions.

Really there’s nothing wrong with copying other professions’ abilities to help mold that design philosophy. Ring of Warding on Guardians, for example. You could spruce up a Necromancer version of that:

Well of Shadows:
Create a shadowy dome that foes cannot cross. Trapped enemies cannot exit the ring while it is active. (1sec castime. 60 sec cooldown. 5sec duration. Combo Field – Dark).

Or if you don’t like that idea, how about something a little more unique?

Necrotic Tether:
Create a Necrotic Tether between yourself and your target. If the target breaks the tether by moving more than 900 range away from you, you teleport to them and immobilise them for 3 seconds. (3/4 second Cast time. 600 Range. 40 second cooldown).

I’m just spitballing here, I don’t expect the ideas of a random forum-goer to be taken on-board, but I love this profession and believe that if you want to follow through with the design philosophy of the Necromancer being someone you don’t escape from, you’re going to need to come up with something better than movement-impairing conditions that are easily cleansed.

You ever saw one of those combat fly movies like top gun or star wars. dark path feels exactly like that.. you’re the enemy of one of the lead character and you fire off a missile and somehow it never reaches its goal..

it’s not just meant to be, the moment they start to move the missile wich is packed with explosives and very heavy is to clunky to track down the slightest movement from it’s path.. and blows up in some kind of meteorite or other useless obstacle.. forcing you to switch to a staf and chillbains to get close or the 1.25 sec cast spinal shivers..

seriously 1.25 sec cast is borderline channel ability imo just remove the boons it takes off and shorten the casttime by 50%..

ps. fix the kitten axe

samkong.2719:

On paper the idea of a Necro being able to out last and out strategy other classes sounds great. Unfortunately however, this is our reality. Before we get a chance to literally get off a single scepter swing we’re dead.

yep thats the reality a lot of necromancers see a thief can blink out engange and re engage constantly untill our cooldowns are all gone and they got a sitting duck in front of them. dark pact is awesome to catch a thief.. 1 sec casting time is plenty of time vs a good thief.

vs any half good thief your basicly forced to use multiple key including elite abilities to get him of your back and even then he got multiple opertunities to flee unhindered the moment the fight goes badly if we try to flee it won’t be that pretty..

oh and the only class that can’t run from us are guardians .. but seriously a half decent guardian who facerolls his keyboard can last forever vs a necromancer we cant transform there boons relaible unless we go well specced and they just heal or bump knockback away from them if we try to melee them..

a warrior can run away from us too they have swiftnes and if gs.. wich 80% of em are they can number 5 and use bull rush and whirlwind to get out of our vicinity if they have too fast.

Some proposals:
1. Condition build

Dispel Protection / Dispel Punishment Mechanic:
Example: “Burning Fever” debuff. If the stack of bleeds gets dispeled it deals immediately X% of damage of the bleed stack. This will also require people to play strategic and not mash their dispel buttons like there is no tomorrow.

Reason: Bleeds get so easily removed it is not even funny considering how long it takes to stack them while direct damage hits you for 1k and more.
Suggestion:

2. Power Builds
This build seems to lack either range/dps/survivability or a combination of both. You have to go toe to toe with melee classes which outdps you, have usually better cc and DS isn’t compensating for it…at all

Add to this that building life focre takes ages…and the whole mechanic actually just cumbersome. Fight a thief and you know what I mean

3. Minion
Well, can’t say much about that build because, quite frankly, minions do not really work due to their AI

4. Finishing someone off – all builds
Lack of stability/Stealth/Quickness makes it a nightmare to finish someone off in pvp. Often a warrior even gets retaliation before you can stomp him

About the design philosophy
The idea is good but it seems not to work for those reasons:
1. Spectral grasp for example is buggy and doesn’t often pull someone to you
2. Life force building takes ages – so tankyness is relative
3. Disengaging is easy from a necro because conditions get removed pretty easily
4. Attrition doesn’t really work either because direct and burst damage is simply so much better at the moment than wittling someone down. Add to this point no. 2 and we have a problem

If thats your design goals then Thiefs need far lower damage if they are supposed to be slippery and get stealths regens and spammable teleports. Necros should get better chasing options. The actual hard CC needs to be usable more than every 40 seconds. And should not be so reliable on horrible travel times and target tracking.

If you find thieves to really be a problem, try working these into your build/playstyle:

• Get some toughness on your gear. You don’t need a lot, but whatever you get will help survive the burst. Toughness makes your already large health pool that much more effective.
• Put at least 15 points into Soul Reaping. This gives you a free spectral armor at 50% hp, which effectively gives you an extra 16.5% hp that the thief has to burst through if I’m not mistaken.
• Always maintain enough life force to activate death shroud. This allows you to have an entire extra hp bar if you react quickly enough. Along the same lines:
• If you’re not used to pressing F1 quickly (many people aren’t as its not used much outside of gaming), consider rebinding it to a key that you find more easily accessible.
• Death shroud isn’t the only key that can save your life. A quick dodge can shut down a thief’s burst entirely.
• Make your first weapon moves count. If you have Scepter/Dagger out, pop your 5 at your feet to weaken the thief (50% less damage output). If you have a staff, use your fear if needed, followed with a combo of 3 and 4 (4 creates AOE weakness within the combo field of 3, same effect as above).
• Consider putting at least 10 points into Death Magic for the Greater Marks (II) trait. (The toughness doesn’t hurt either.)

Sorry if the list is a bit too long, haven’t slept much so I just kept writing far beyond where I originally intended to stop, haha. Hopefully some of you find some of these useful. After a while, you’ll find that glass cannon thieves will have a really hard time of killing you if you’re not alt-tabbed. Enjoy it when you get to that point, that’s when the fights become something that you look forward to (it’s like a surprise party thrown in your honor and all of your favorite conditions are invited, haha).

Edit: One last thing before I forget, use your right-mouse button to keep your back facing away from the thief as much as possible. The bonuses they can get from hitting you in the back are often to significant to overlook and can mean the difference between winning and losing the fight.

Dark path used to be a quick ground targeted teleport. /sad

@JonathanSharp -

I really like this philosophy, but as others have said, in actual practice the mobile classes (not just thief), can rather easily escape a necro. Our easy access to chills is one way to help remedy this, and does a fairly good job.

However, Dark Path and Spectral Grasp are almost out-runnable if the target is using any sort of mobility skills. I understand that Dark path may not be able to have a projectile speed boost since it tracks and is available to all necros, but spectral grasp is still very hard to land given the current speed and terrain collision issues.

Also, I dare say that thieves are much harder to escape from as well given their easy access to gap closers and teleports.

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.

Jon. I feel like the Necro is one of the easiest class to escape from. Have you ever played a Dagger/Dagger thief for example ? Because you are not going to get away from those guys. They have cripple, a leap, steal, plus all the utility’s that teleport them. If Necro should be the class you CANNOT get away from I feel like you guys really missed the mark here.

Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment, there are a number of skills and traits that theoretically have the potential to help you stick to an enemy as long as possible.

Slows/Immobilize:

• Staff 3
• Scepter 2
• Dagger 3
• Focus 5
• Warhorn 5
• Dark Path (DS 2)
• Plague 3
• Bone Fiend
• Flesh Golem
• Spite X
• Curses III
• Soul Reaping VIII

Swiftness/Passively Increased Speed:

• Focus 4
• Warhorn 5
• Spectral Walk
• Signet of the Locust
• Blood Magic X
• Soul Reaping V
• Soul Reaping VIII

Relocating:

• Dark Path (DS 2)
• Spectral Grasp
• Flesh Wurm

Relatively speaking, there are a decent number of things built into the necro already that theoretically should allow us to stick to a target for a long time. I can’t help but wonder if the problem is really that ArenaNet’s concept is at fault or if its actually that we have all the right tools, just that some of them are bugged, broken, or just not working the way people think that they should.

As many already pointed this out, I don’t feel necromancers have adequate way to stop people from escaping. Our dedicated catch-up abilities, grasp and DS charge, fail to work too frequently for unknown reasons. Our weapon-based abilities are part of our damage rotation and are not available for strategic use.

Ideally – corrupt boon speed buff, grasp running away enemy, charge using DS should prevent anyone from escaping. Reality is that all of these abilities have very high chance of not landing due to flawed “slow flying projectile” design.

How to fix this? Well change DS #2 charge into instant ability. We need to be able to count on at least one ability to work properly!

As to survivability/staying power. I play vitality/toughness DS-centric necro, sacrificing everything for survivability, and I am nowhere near as survivable as ‘bunker’ guardian or earth elementalist. Why? It is too easy to root-CC and burn necromancer down. Especially problematic is access to stability that is badly needed.

How to fix this? Perhaps change Stability on DS into 15 or 25 point trait? 4.5 sec DS for any DS-centric build is just too important ability to trade off for anything else.

Last but not least – toughness as a stat does not provide comparable boost to survivability to what precision provides as boost to burst. If you invest into toughness while your opponent invests into precision – they are capable of bursting you down better than if you both invested into no precision and no toughness.

How to fix this? Give necromancers DS multiplier for toughness so you get better return for investing into it.

First of all I admit that most of my problems can be most likely answered with L2P.
I play mostly PvE and DS combos similar to one described by Karl were thing I was using for some time. One problem though. They nearly never worked on moving target. Dark Path really tracks target? That’s a huge surprise. Mine were missing even when mob made one step left. Not to mention random inequality of land or tree appearing. Slow projectile was useless unless I was on a plain field.
Moving on. Thank You Jonathan for description of design philosophy behind Necromancers. I think it fits them nicely. I must say though that attrition for Necros wasn’t working too good for me in PvP. Truth be told I play PowerCrit Necro inspired by one of earlier developer’s reviews describing Necromancer as takny scholar :P Right now enemies couldn’t care less if I try to prevent them from running away. Some of them have no problem with that(Thieves, Elems) other simply have no need (Warriors, Guardians). Necros as attrition based class is great thing but most of skills and traits don’t let us (or at least me :P ) to be on equal footing wot other classes.

I got to say I LOVE all these posts by the devs, especially hearing about the design philosophy and how they use certain skills. I also pretty much agree with everything they said, so I don’t get what some of you are talking about…

That aside, we recently did a lot of testing and found that putting points into Soul Reaping does not increase your Life Force Pool (one of the more serious bugs imo) and that condition damage is doubled in Death Shroud. It would be nice if you could also shed some light on this (working as intended?).

First one is a feature, second one is a bug.