Guild Wars 2

Necromancer
Our biggest focus in this iteration for necromancers was that of Epidemic, in that its impact is too instant in most PvP scenarios, as well as its heavy toll on our servers. Secondarily, we’ve long felt that the Plague elite was lackluster and was in need of a rework. In addition to a variety of weapon-based quality-of-life changes, we’re excited to see how the skill changes fare over time.

• Plague Sending: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 30 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP only.
• Chilling Nova: The damage of this trait has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.
• “Rise!”: The cooldown of this skill has been increased from 40 seconds to 60 seconds in PvP only.
• Tainted Shackles: This skill will now apply 5 seconds of Revealed to enemies the first time it successfully hits.
• Infusing Terror (Reaper Shroud): This skill no longer pulses stability but instead grants 3 stacks for 6 seconds upon activating it. The active form of this skill now reduces incoming physical and condition damage by 20% for its duration.
• Chilling Victory: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvP only.
• Plague (Elite): This skill has been reworked and has been renamed to Plaguelands.
• Plaguelands: This skill creates a 240-radius corrupted area at the necromancer’s initial location for 10 seconds. After 1 second, it pulses damage and conditions in that area for 9 seconds. Each pulse applies a new condition, and each pulse applies all conditions from every pulse before it. Conditions applied (in order) are: bleeding, poison, torment, vulnerability, cripple, weakness, blind, chill, and burning. Recharge is set to 120 seconds.
• Epidemic: This ability now fires slow-arcing projectiles from its initial target to up to 5 targets in range. Foes hit by the projectiles gain all conditions from the original Epidemic target. Projectile strikes are unblockable but cannot critically hit. Increased radius to 900.
• Rending Claws: Applies twice as much vulnerability while your target is below 50% health.
• Ghastly Claws: This skill now deals 1% more damage per stack of vulnerability on the target.
• Unholy Feast: This skill no longer applies retaliation. It now invokes a secondary AoE strike against foes below 25% health. Fixed skill-fact bugs that showed range instead of radius and did not display the correct number of boons converted.
• Spiteful Spirit: Updated this trait to clarify that it is no longer casting Unholy Feast.
• Life Siphon: Gains 20% increased healing if cast while you are bleeding. Deals 20% more damage to bleeding foes.
• Dark Pact: Increased damage by 20%. Now inflicts 2 stacks of bleeding on you for 10 seconds.

plague aka plagueland just killed usage of it in WvW/PvP. Another lost for necro to escape or overcome bombing. No stability. They already nerfed it with range now theyve killed it.
another useless well with 1 condition per tick, easy to escape.

Plague was one of the only elite which grants stability and move around with it, now it’s just a random AoE even worse than cloud of corrosive poison (corruption skill with 30s CD which lasts 8s).

Interesting news. The ingame tooltip lists Infusing Terror’s damage resistance as 33%. Crits in the 2.7k-2.9k range consistently reduced to around 2k damage in initial tests.

My opinion:

The changes to Plague Sending, Chilling Nova, Infusing Terror and Chilling Victory are reasonable.

Cooldown increase on “Rise!”… why?

Tainted Shackles: not the buff to Death Shroud I expected, and far from the buffs it really needs, but it’s better than nothing and it shows that anet hasn’t completely forgotten about core skills. So yay, I guess.

Plaguelands: Sounds cool.

Epidemic: I wasn’t aware anyone was even using this skill in PvP or WvW anymore.
As for the heavy toll on their servers, it seems like the skill is still the same except there are now some aditional projectiles bouncing around, right?

Dagger and Axe buffs look nice.
But I’m bummed out about Unholy Feast no longer applying retaliation.
Fyi Spiteful Spirit’s tooltip says there’s still retal, but they removed it here as well.

Sadrel.5623:

Plague was one of the only elite which grants stability and move around with it, now it’s just a random AoE even worse than cloud of corrosive poison (corruption skill with 30s CD which lasts 8s).

Agree… They took all the best parts of plague, namely stability, double toughness and movable aoe and turned it into average pve only elite well, which is not even well… such a fail… sigh

flow.6043:

Epidemic: I wasn’t aware anyone was even using this skill in PvP or WvW anymore.

You must be new here if you didn’t know Epidemic was prevalent in the PvP game modes =/

But then you said “anymore” and it threw me off.

Warcry.1596:

flow.6043:

Epidemic: I wasn’t aware anyone was even using this skill in PvP or WvW anymore.

You must be new here if you didn’t know Epidemic was prevalent in the PvP game modes =/

But then you said “anymore” and it threw me off.

“Anymore” as in: not since 2013.

And if you think I’m new here, then you’re probably new here ;P

I’m not :O I have played daily since launch!

But Epidemic has been used pretty much for the life of the game.

gud job anet

ive always felt the one thing epi lacked was the ability to kill myself

Plaguelands seems half-cooked. It has no combo field, it doesn’t feel good played with CPC as Plaguelands is PBAOE rather than targeted AOE. I’m sure the damage is great on paper but actually trying to keep anyone in the target area is going to be hell.

Those axe changes are beefy.

Dagger changes, not a clue what’s going on there.

Warcry.1596:

But Epidemic has been used pretty much for the life of the game.

Yes, it has always been used in PvE.
But in PvP? I haven’t seen anyone use Epidemic in years.
In WvW, a long time ago, there used to be that small group roaming niche where people took it. But obviously it’s useless in 1v1s and almost as useless in big zerg fights. So pretty much the same here, haven’t seen a necro use Epidemic in WvW in years.

flow.6043:

Warcry.1596:

But Epidemic has been used pretty much for the life of the game.

Yes, it has always been used in PvE.
But in PvP? I haven’t seen anyone use Epidemic in years.
In WvW, a long time ago, there used to be that small group roaming niche where people took it. But obviously it’s useless in 1v1s and almost as useless in big zerg fights. So pretty much the same here, haven’t seen a necro use Epidemic in WvW in years.

Epi has seen more widespread use among both small scale and large scale for quite some time now. Never ran it because it was really easy to shut down in small scale but I still saw it used a fair bit. Pretty much after boonshare died, epi took over and lots of large scale guilds have been complaining about it since.

Sarrs.4831:

Plaguelands seems half-cooked. It has no combo field, it doesn’t feel good played with CPC as Plaguelands is PBAOE rather than targeted AOE. I’m sure the damage is great on paper but actually trying to keep anyone in the target area is going to be hell.

Those axe changes are beefy.

Dagger changes, not a clue what’s going on there.

Now if only it was a ground targeted skill or, even better, a mobile field (like Flames of War).

As a Power Necro (GS/Axe+Focus), I’m happy with these changes! Infusing Terror is awesome (but the tooltip says 33% reduced damage instead of 20%).

The change on Unholy Feast is appreciated, but Unholy Burst’s threshold should be 50%, the radius should be bigger and it should hit 5 enemies.

Also, could we please do something about Focus #5 (Spinal Shivers) in PvE? 99% of the mobs have no boons and the damage is too low without boons. Thanks for the changes, Anet!

With the removal of sigils of hydromancy and ice reaper, the master of chill, has very few ways to inflict chill. This reduced chill output with the increased icd of chilling victory makes the whole ‘chill-o-mancer’ play style very awkward now, for both power and condi builds.
Would be nice if we got more chill application on some more weapon skills (also chill on gs aa is still stupid).

Aktium.9506:

gud job anet

ive always felt the one thing epi lacked was the ability to kill myself

I used your img for a post in general discussion asking anet to resolve the issue. If it is not ok for you i can delete it if you want

Wow… I double checked the date to be sure that we weren’t on april 1st…

Acnologia.6934:

Aktium.9506:

gud job anet

ive always felt the one thing epi lacked was the ability to kill myself

I used your img for a post in general discussion asking anet to resolve the issue. If it is not ok for you i can delete it if you want

I don’t mind. I should point out that it isn’t reflects causing it. Deathly Swarm could always be reflected, which has killed me a few times during Thaumanova fractal boss. Something with the new Epi tags the condis on the target you as if they were condis on yourself, so Deathly Swarm interacts with conditions on enemies as they would conditions on yourself.

Ok i shall point it out ty

RIP condi spvp necro.

If only Unholy Burst would proc another explosion upon hitting an enemy under 25% for some sweet bombs

flow.6043:

• Infusing Terror (Reaper Shroud): This skill no longer pulses stability but instead grants 3 stacks for 6 seconds upon activating it. The active form of this skill now reduces incoming physical and condition damage by 20% for its duration.

The tooltip says 33% and I hope it is 33% as I guess the intention was to split the 40 second CD “Rise!” damage reduction to a 60 second “Rise!” and a 25 second Infusing Terror.

If this was intended, I like it (!) as I hated “Rise!” for its unreliability and I hate minions in general.
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• Plague (Elite): This skill has been reworked and has been renamed to Plaguelands.
• Plaguelands: This skill creates a 240-radius corrupted area at the necromancer’s initial location for 10 seconds. After 1 second, it pulses damage and conditions in that area for 9 seconds. Each pulse applies a new condition, and each pulse applies all conditions from every pulse before it. Conditions applied (in order) are: bleeding, poison, torment, vulnerability, cripple, weakness, blind, chill, and burning. Recharge is set to 120 seconds.

People are underestimating this skill in a capture point fight. It is strong – a very good elite for a condi reaper!

I guess most people don’t understand how this skill works. The last pulse applies 9 conditions at once. Ridiculous!
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• Unholy Feast: This skill no longer applies retaliation. It now invokes a secondary AoE strike against foes below 25% health.

25% health threshold is trash and useless. It should have been 50%. The 180 range is also pretty useless.

The skill rework itself is nice.
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• Spiteful Spirit: Updated this trait to clarify that it is no longer casting Unholy Feast.

Bugged!

Spiteful Spirit does not apply retaliation anymore like the tooltip says and it corrupts only one boon and not multiple boons as named in the tooltip.

This trait is a huge mess in its current state.
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• Life Siphon: Gains 20% increased healing if cast while you are bleeding. Deals 20% more damage to bleeding foes.
• Dark Pact: Increased damage by 20%. Now inflicts 2 stacks of bleeding on you for 10 seconds.

Wtf. ????

Spiteful spirit is buggy as all hell now. Not only is the tool tip completely wrong, it now only corrupts 1 boon! For a grand master trait that is absurd, it is garbage.
I hope it does not take 6 bloody months to get this fixed/changed

KrHome.1920:

25% health threshold is trash and useless. It should have been 50%. The 180 range is also pretty useless.

The skill rework itself is nice.

So, that 180 radius in the tooltip is an explosion centered on the foe that is below 25% health. It is not centered on you.

Managing to tag a cluster of low-health foes will be hilarious to watch as they all just explode.

Would still love to see this increased to 50%, as 25% is too low to ever really take advantage of.

Plaguelands is not a really good elite, but it can be used by a condition damage build and be used in some build. Maybe in WvW or in some static PvE dungeons.

For all the axe things, I play Power reaper in sPvP and I really appreciate the changes on the Axe! Now I can hope to inflict a good/high damage as all the other classes can do. We inflict up to 25% basic damage on an enemy that take 25% more damage. That’s a lot and will be good both for PvP and PvE. A really appreciate thing for every power Reaper in sPvP and PvE. Also the other changes on the Axe are good, we only need some fixes to make them work.

The changes on infusing Terrors isn’t the best I hoped because reduce the incoming damage but… It feel like incomplete… It’s not a immunity, is only a little damage mitigation skill. In sPvP during a team fight that skill will help but will not change the fact that you will die fast and easy as always. Maybe you’ll last 2 seconds longer, but even lesser stability, making you easier to be corrupted and CCed down.

The change to Epidemic killed it, totally killed it. In PvP is useless and in PvE can be reflected by mobs, killing you all the time. The idea isn’t bad but the realizzation is really terrible.

There’s a lot of other minor changed that are hard to know, as the self inflicting bleed on the dagger3 Dark Pact, that is only a poor joke to make you use it and then active the dagger2 Life Siphon, that don’t really make sense because you will inflict more or less the same amount of heal you add to the skill, if you’re not full healing (and there’s not a single necromancer using heal out there…)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Would still love to see this increased to 50%, as 25% is too low to ever really take advantage of.

Yes, please.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So, that 180 radius in the tooltip is an explosion centered on the foe that is below 25% health. It is not centered on you.

I know that and it does not change anything. It’s trash.

You have to cast a 1 second cast time skill at a 25% hp foe to make it "double"hit that foe which alone is bad and then also have to manage that other foes are standing around that foe in ultra low range to use the skills full potential. Most of the time this is impossible and the new mechanic of the skill a pure gimmick for lucky situations.

I like to have control over my actions.

Silv.9207:

The changes on infusing Terrors isn’t the best I hoped because reduce the incoming damage but… It feel like incomplete… It’s not a immunity, is only a little damage mitigation skill. In sPvP during a team fight that skill will help but will not change the fact that you will die fast and easy as always. Maybe you’ll last 2 seconds longer, but even lesser stability, making you easier to be corrupted and CCed down.

You can say that about the stability of everyone. A few minutes ago I managed to stun a Berserker after corrupting his stab. Haven’t done that in months because of the pulsing nonsense.

Corruptions are stronger than before now. Power Reaper in general feels stronger.

I really love the sheer flavour of the Axe changes. Amazing direction, strenghtening the theme of the “execution” weapon. Life Siphon & Dark Pact changes as well, great theme and adds some bonus gameplay to skill. Overall 10/10 job in here. It really looks like ArenaNet has some Dev in there who genuinely likes Necromancer and wants to establish what Necro and particular skills/weapons are about.

Epidemic, once it gets fixed, will be fine. It needed counterplay, it got a bit more counterplay. Better than “standarizing” it.

Other nerfs are understandable, maybe the Rise! cooldown increase is a bit harsh.

While I will miss Plague, Plaguelands are all right. Not a mindblowing Elite that would add some gameplay or thought, but at least Condition Necromancer has some DPS condition Elite now. Wouldn’t mind some more visual effects on it, as right now it is barely noticeable.

Trashing the idea of pulsing Stability is the hidden, yet massive, buff to Necromancers. Good to see it gone at last. If it makes our recently buffed widespread low-cooldown corruption tools too good, I won’t mind slight nerfs.

Changes to Shrouds might go a bit unnoticed, but are significant. 20% DR for Reaper is great. The Reveal on Tormented Shackles is a surprise, but better than nothing.

Good news! Plague is not a transform, anymore!

Pardon me while I continue looking for good news.

Anchoku.8142:

Good news! Plague is not a transform, anymore!

Pardon me while I continue looking for good news.

Just needs ground target, or to move around with us like a mobile field, to make it perfect!

I actually liked the update for once….
I am really happy we didn’t get a nerf for once.
We might get some use in PvE with Plaguelands and in PvP we might have actually gotten a slight buff with the axe changes (never have I used Plague in PvP, not saying its bad but I wasnt into it). Have no idea about WvW…

More good news: Axe seems stronger in PvE!
Axe – The Neverending Story of Buffing

Epidemic is not on the good news list. I dropped it in PvE due to its lower reliability.

I tried to like Plagueland but it always felt like I was risking my hide to moon a boss that would just wander out of it, anyway. No stab, no big health and toughness bonus, and very little total damage in return. It does not feel like it has enough tactical value now that it is not a short-term clutch-immunity. That is what it comes down to; twenty seconds of near-immunity traded for a red circle of area denial that is not ground-targetable. I understand that it can stack with other red circles to make a super-bad land but it is just another DoT AoE. Is it worth being an Elite skill?

KrHome.1920:

flow.6043:

• Infusing Terror (Reaper Shroud): This skill no longer pulses stability but instead grants 3 stacks for 6 seconds upon activating it. The active form of this skill now reduces incoming physical and condition damage by 20% for its duration.

The tooltip says 33% and I hope it is 33% as I guess the intention was to split the 40 second CD “Rise!” damage reduction to a 60 second “Rise!” and a 25 second Infusing Terror.

If this was intended, I like it (!) as I hated “Rise!” for its unreliability and I hate minions in general.

That makes sense, now that you mention it.

Rym.1469:

Trashing the idea of pulsing Stability is the hidden, yet massive, buff to Necromancers. Good to see it gone at last. If it makes our recently buffed widespread low-cooldown corruption tools too good, I won’t mind slight nerfs.

Yes, fighting warriors just got a little easier.

As for the low cd corruptions, it’s actually a double edged sword because pulsing stability could be corrupted more than once. Like, no more trapping Reapers with Infusing Terror in a Well of Corruption.

KrHome.1920:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So, that 180 radius in the tooltip is an explosion centered on the foe that is below 25% health. It is not centered on you.

I know that and it does not change anything. It’s trash.

You have to cast a 1 second cast time skill at a 25% hp foe to make it "double"hit that foe which alone is bad and then also have to manage that other foes are standing around that foe in ultra low range to use the skills full potential. Most of the time this is impossible and the new mechanic of the skill a pure gimmick for lucky situations.

I like to have control over my actions.

My initial thought was that the secondary hit would corrupt as well, but turns out it’s really just some extra damage. It’s like they’ve added a super lame version of Sigil of Fire.

Even if the radius was bigger and there was no hp threshold at all, losing retaliation over this is a big nerf. Not just for its damage potential, but also for its synergy with Blighter’s Boon.

I really hope removing retal on Spiteful Spirit as well wasn’t intended, but knowing Anet, they’re probably just going to “fix” the tooltip.

On the upside, the Unholy Burst does deal identical damage to Unholy Feast itself, so it’s not too awful in that respect. If you can get even just two overlapping procs, that’s some serious burst to execute.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On the upside, the Unholy Burst does deal identical damage to Unholy Feast itself, so it’s not too awful in that respect. If you can get even just two overlapping procs, that’s some serious burst to execute.

if this happen and it become a thing, it will more likely be nerfed hard pretty fast. The worst being that it will be higly efficient in pvp against downed player. I’m pretty sure tat Anet will stand against the idea if this skill become a wide area stomp skill.

Dadnir.5038:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On the upside, the Unholy Burst does deal identical damage to Unholy Feast itself, so it’s not too awful in that respect. If you can get even just two overlapping procs, that’s some serious burst to execute.

if this happen and it become a thing, it will more likely be nerfed hard pretty fast. The worst being that it will be higly efficient in pvp against downed player. I’m pretty sure tat Anet will stand against the idea if this skill become a wide area stomp skill.

They haven’t nerfed Gravedigger, which hits about the same area and hits harder.

I dont see why they needed to nerf chilling nova and chilling victory, it was perfectly fine for pvp :,,( . Changes feels more random than balance. Also sigil uh y.y, power necro feels weaker overall.

They fixed infusing terror tool tip within a day but refuse to fix spiteful spirit…..
I guess we will be stuck with a joke of a gm trait forever now: ‘’when entering shroud deal miniscule dmg and corrupt ONE boon, also some cripple lol’’

Dagger 2 and 3 make no sense to me other than for flavor. Or AN thinks we enjoy hurting ourselves with most of our best skills. Either way not adding anything condition wise to the auto attack just makes the changes look half done and pointless.

Khailyn.6248:

Dagger 2 and 3 make no sense to me other than for flavor. Or AN thinks we enjoy hurting ourselves with most of our best skills. Either way not adding anything condition wise to the auto attack just makes the changes look half done and pointless.

Prepwork for next expansion? It will be announced once the next Living World chapter releases.

So MH dagger was a power weapon and OH dagger was a condi utility.

Now, I am confused. Is MH dagger now a power-condi hybrid and why the self-bleed without another transfer skill?

I am not sure I see a connection between an expac weapon and MH dagger. Anything is possible but this change takes melee power away from Necromancers without an elite trait line. Is axe supposed to be the core power weapon? Is the intent to force dd-staff? Traiting Curses for MH dagger does not sound too appealing.

Anchoku.8142:

So MH dagger was a power weapon and OH dagger was a condi utility.

Now, I am confused. Is MH dagger now a power-condi hybrid and why the self-bleed without another transfer skill?

I am not sure I see a connection between an expac weapon and MH dagger. Anything is possible but this change takes melee power away from Necromancers without an elite trait line. Is axe supposed to be the core power weapon? Is the intent to force dd-staff? Traiting Curses for MH dagger does not sound too appealing.

It’s like they were going to make dagger mainhand our condi melee weapon but forgot to add bleeding to auto attack.

Anchoku.8142:

So MH dagger was a power weapon and OH dagger was a condi utility.

Now, I am confused. Is MH dagger now a power-condi hybrid and why the self-bleed without another transfer skill?

I am not sure I see a connection between an expac weapon and MH dagger. Anything is possible but this change takes melee power away from Necromancers without an elite trait line. Is axe supposed to be the core power weapon? Is the intent to force dd-staff? Traiting Curses for MH dagger does not sound too appealing.

It may not directly be with the new weapon, although it is possible we see an offhand designed to synergize with dagger mainhand, or traits that synergize with bleeding in various ways. Given the speculation of “sand shroud,” bleeding is quite possibly a subtheme of the next elite spec.

A bleed on AA making MH dagger a true hybrid makes sense. Sceptre-dagger / dagger-dagger would work nicely if someone had not forgotten to add a bleed to AA.

Still, requiring a condition transfer on a power weapon…

Anchoku.8142:

A bleed on AA making MH dagger a true hybrid makes sense. Sceptre-dagger / dagger-dagger would work nicely if someone had not forgotten to add a bleed to AA.

Still, requiring a condition transfer on a power weapon…

Its annoying as I actually still used dagger as a secondary weapon in wvw for zerging. Now I just feel dirty using my favourite skill (dark pact) and inflicting myself with bleeding.

Making mh dagger a hybrid weapon would be nice then we could finally run d/d and it wouldnt be terrible.

I always hated the fact that both dagger weapons didnt work well together (unlike in the alpha when dagger offhand was a power weapon with lifeblast and unholy feast as skills).