Guild Wars 2

This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a few days and I’d like to get the community’s perspective on it. All are welcome in this conversation since this is going to be a discussion about expectations of the profession when starting the game and of opinions based on how the game teaches you to play the game. So if you do make a response I’d ask you to both explain why you wanted to play the necromancer when you first picked it up, when you started and express any surprises, good or bad, that you experienced when learning this profession.

For the majority of the necromancer’s life in GW2 it seems that the theme of the profession was in direct conflict with the way players are conditioned to play the game. The necromancer was advertised as a attrition profession that uses DoT tactics in order to slowly eat at your opponents life and capabilities to give them an up hill battle as the fight progressed. The profession was also supposed to fill the Pet play style that we see with Warlocks, Witch doctors or summoners in other games. At face value this is an attractive perspective for players. However the issues of this style at the game’s launch ended up in direct conflict with the design of the game and how it was telling its players to play.

This is were we get into the play conditioning of this Discussion. Very quickly in the game’s life people realized that the necromancer couldn’t achieve anything that it was advertised to be able to do. And the balance team seemed intent on suggesting that it was by design that way. However that design lead the necromancer to be one of the most hated and weak professions through its entire life. Much of the community early on abandoned the idea that the necromancer was supposed to be the DoT profession since DoT was neither a viable strategy but the necromancer actively didn’t even compare to warriors in that regard who would push their bleed stacks off just by fighting normally. A fundamental element of the necromancer’s design was lost in the minds of the community except for the most hard core of GW1 vets who still desired to play the DoT style they enjoyed from GW1.

In this laps of memory of the community in one of the necromancer’s pillars of design we ended up asking for extremely off color requests that ran directly contradictory to the necromancer’s design. We as a community started to ask for high DPS options outside of Condition or the swarm element of our minions or even attrition. The three pillars that the profession was built on. People were asking to be more like a warrior with the necromancer. Now I’m not going to say that the community was in the wrong in that regard. It honestly isn’t our fault this happened. It is the fault of Arena net in the way they conditioned their player base to think about content. DPS as quickly as possible and be as glassy as possible. Necromancer wasn’t the only profession to fall victim to this philosophy that the devs accidentally set up in their game but it is one of the most obvious professions that has lasting consequences because of it.

For years the community had screamed to break the pillars of what the necromancer was and with Heart of Thorns the Devs finally caved and gave the community exactly what we thought we wanted. We demanded a cleaving weapon. We got two. We wanted heavy power. We got it. However this is where the story takes a bit of a strange turn of events.

The Skills and Traits of the reaper elite specialization, although heavily set up in favor of power and in deed were design with the communities tunnel vision berserker’s only stance the devs sneaked in something that slowly edged the community to embrace the pillars that the necromancer was founded on. Now, I’m not going to say that this was their intention. I feel that this is an accident more than anything, however I feel that this might lead to a problem for future elite specs for our profession.

The Condi Reaper is currently the most popular and successful necromancer build to date. Yet the community often feels cheated by this, thinking that power is what the necromancer is supposed to be when it never was. But the community has comfortable slid into one of the intended roles that we were advertised on yet there still is back lash to this because the community had been conditioned to view condi negatively from the first few years of GW2. Yet I feel that the community really doesn’t understand why they feel that way and its always been a barrier for discussion between me and the rest of the community.

My perspective has always been that the necromancer should always have the most versatile and powerful condition build in the game, they should have almost lich level of difficulty to kill in some builds and that Zerg ability of the minion master. Those 3 styles of builds were always what I personally was interested in playing for the necromancer and those 3 styles were exactly what the necromancer was advertised on. Yet we’ve only recently gotten 2 of those styles available to us and only for a short period of time before being nerfed into decent territories or completely unusable.

The reaper is a bit of a problem in my opinion in this regard. Its designed to be a power spec yet it seems to be convincing people that its a condi spec. Something it was never intended to be. I personally feel that Arena net should have absolutely strengthened one of those 3 pillars with the necromancer’s first elite spec but they seemed keen on catering to a mentality that they themselves obsoleted with the changes they put in place before the expansion came out.

Now the necromancer does fit in the theme of those 3 pillars far better than before but the reaper is running on old philosophy and its design is being punished because of that. And Subsequently new elite specs for the necromancer could pay for this mentality that influenced the reaper’s design.

Although I’m not going to suggest that the reaper’s Condi build should be nerfed, I think that ridiculous considering DoT is one of the necromancer’s Pillars and Reaper is the only real viable way to run that. But what I would suggest is that the condi build eventually be toned down once a Proper condi elite specialization comes out and to push the focus of reaper in its original direction.

But that might be a minor point.. When reaper was announced, I was… Upset… It wasn’t at all what I wanted or signed up for when I made a necromancer. I wanted to play as the DoT profession. That’s what I desired because I loved that play style. I wanted the Minion master to be viable and for our attrition to get a major boost and overhaul. The reaper provided non of that. To me the reaper at its announcement was pandering to what the community was conditioned to think they wanted and stripping away the identity that the necromancer was supposed to have. But as I’ve mentioned it didn’t seem to play out that way, however that is a bit worry some for me as I’d honestly like to see a proper condi elite spec down the line. And not this shallow version of condi that reaper provides.

My personal believe in this regard is that clearly defining the reaper is the Heavy hitting power house with large sweeping attacks that just KO enemies in one to two hits and the Scorch as the DoT that bleeds and burns the foe in molten glass would my preferred way to go. The power necro players still very much exist in the game, and they do deserve to play with something that fits what they want. But I personal feel that reaper is and SHOULD be what they want because by its design it is exactly what they had been asking for for years. While Although us DoT players got what we want indirectly through related changes, we still don’t quite have the right fit in reaper. Its functional, and is fun to play, but it is still a rather hollow experience.

My feelings on this topic is that I’d like to see a far stronger focus on the 3 pillars of the necromancer. And much of my suggestions in all the years I’ve been playing has been along those lines. The Berserkers only mentality is dead and I’d like to bury that mentality and completely sate that desire in the community purely with the reaper elite spec and have it over with so we can move on to far more interesting elite specs that truly expand on that original philosophy.

Note to self: I really got to stop writing Essays on the Forums…. Very few people even read them.

Lily.1935:

Note to self: I really got to stop writing Essays on the Forums…. Very few people even read them.

There isn’t much that can really be discussed on the topic. Discussing whether condi reaper should be toned down when we get a condi elite, is kinda dependant on us having a condi elite in the first place. We don’t even know if the next elite will be condi, since that assumption is hinged entirely on the torch leak, which didn’t actually specify that it was condi.

Crinn.7864:

Lily.1935:

Note to self: I really got to stop writing Essays on the Forums…. Very few people even read them.

There isn’t much that can really be discussed on the topic. Discussing whether condi reaper should be toned down when we get a condi elite, is kinda dependant on us having a condi elite in the first place. We don’t even know if the next elite will be condi, since that assumption is hinged entirely on the torch leak, which didn’t actually specify that it was condi.

The topic is about warped expectations of the community vs the theme of the profession. The Reaper is the result of the warped expectations of what the community thinks they wanted. The discussion has way more than enough to go on than just the reaper. But the reaper is a good example of this. I’m trying to gag the community on what it is they believe about the profession while also giving my perspective. I want to understand why without making blind assumptions.

Necromancy is a supposed practice of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, to bring someone back from the dead, or to use the deceased as a weapon, as the term may sometimes be used in a more general sense to refer to black magic or witchcraft. – Wikipedia.

We literally DO NOT do any of the above. Cool new skills?
-Commune with a slain foe to temporarily mark any nearby ‘treasure’ on the map. In PvP this may briefly show detailed information on nearby enemies.
-Summon their vengeful spirit in wraith form for a brief time to attack any nearby neutral or hostile enemies. The caster may consume the spirit for a brief unique buff.
-Reanimate the corpse to serve in zombie form until it rots away, a partially decayed visual form of the original creature; in PvP the skeleton of the slain foe will suffice.

As a Necromancer death should matter, right now it really doesn’t. In GW1 minions required fresh dead things, not so in GW2.
Jagged Horrors spawn from the recently killed, this is as close as we get, and it’s a VERY specific trait in a very specialist line.
By all rights the profession should run minions on the Vitality stat, and Black Magic on Condition Damage. Bleed, Poison and Torment should all be accessible, with at least a +30% modifier on all, with Ice and Fire as two mutually exclusive trait sets.
Ice would turn several Black Magic Skills into Direct Damage spells, and Fire would add Burning to almost all Black Magic spells.

We CAN keep Marks and Wells, but Signets and Death Shroud have to go.
For those who want Power based Necromancers please just grow some balls and call it what it is; you want a Death Knight, and Warcraft is that way —>

Let’s sum it up :

I’ve played gw1 and expected the necromancer to be on par with what I experienced in gw1. However, I’ forced to recognized that the GW1 necromancer disapeared somewhere in the 400 ish years that separate the 2 game time.

The necromancer is no 1 man army.
The necromancer do not impact heavily the fight by cursing the foes.
The necromancer’s well are pityable in front of gw’s one.
The necromancer is no longer squishy. (well… not in the same way at least)
The life siphon depend on the minions to be effective (WTF???)
When using sacrifice, gw’s necromancer actually had huge result not like gw2’s.

I have the previous image of the necromancer and that’s why the current necromancer feel off for me. The GW2’s necromancer is the slow monster that’s supposed to fill it’s enemies with dread and that you can’t escape (Jason). GW’s necromancer was a strategic element bringing chaos on the battlefield, controling an army and it’s personal strength mainly came from the support he was bringing.

It’s just world’s appart from what I expected the necromancer to be. We got a soldier when we had a general before. A necromancer is supposed to happily send it’s allies to their death not sacrificing itself by thinking that it will be better done if he is the one to do it. Anet made the necromancer selfish in the wrong way.

I never played GW1, and when I first came into GW2 (like, 2-2.5 years ago) I seriously struggled with maintaining interest for classes. I tried ele, engi, thief and warrior but neither felt satisfactory to play. And I don’t mean some endgame effectiveness – my interest at them dropped by level 25 or so, when I discovered that eles camp 1 attunement all the time (back in the day), engi never uses rifle etc. Thief and warrior just felt pedestrian in terms of animations. Then I stumbled on necro. It was my first (and for long time – only) 80 char, and still remains my main. It looked cool, used more than 2-3 skills, had cool mechanic that also was used and I generally liked the theme.

Unfortunate byproduct of said choice was the fact that necros were actively kicked from all and any groups back then, so it kinda gated me from any group PVE. That changed when HoT came, and Reaper got his short time in the sun. Good times.

I like my reaper and keep her my main, even though currently she is in power version. Still, just in case I’ll ever get my ass to raiding, I have bunch of backup chars. As much as I like her, I don’t have any illusions on her damage numbers.

Oh, and to person kittening about death knights – I guess you missed what Reaper is in theme, did you?

Death Knights engage their foes up-close, supplementing swings of their weapons with dark magic that renders enemies vulnerable or damages them with unholy power.
(worldofwarcraft.com)

Slow and hard-hitting, these deadly combatants call out the impending doom of their enemies with piercing shouts. Capable of heavily afflicting their victims with chill and other conditions, the reaper wades into melee (…)
(Official Reaper release notes.)

I totally got the memo on themes.

DK in Warcraft lore was close combatant relying on unholy and necromantic powers. Hell, he was the one with “Reanimate” skill in W3.

Reaper is, surprisingly, close combatant relying on unholy and necromantic powers. The only thing Reapers lack in regard to DKs is heavy armor access. Still, there are ways to fix that at least visually.

Not to get into any further argument, but few weapons scream “POWER” more than ass-huge slow greatsword.

I love the idea of a Reaper style class, I feel like Revenant should have really filled that, but alas they went some place else with their ‘Elite’ spec. In truth everything I could hope for Necromancer is tied up in my first post here, they have SO much potential, but it feels like ANet really lack the creativity to unlock it.

Lily.1935:

Note to self: I really got to stop writing Essays on the Forums…. Very few people even read them.

I generally value other people’s opinions; varied perspectives help keep you relatively honest in life’s pursuits. Not everyone wants to take 10 minutes to boil down a 5 second opinion. You wrote an essay, that I found easy enough to read mind you, that effectively just said “Necromancer was initially conceptualized with certain functions in mind, but now that it’s being designed closer to those origins I’m not sure how I like it”.

Lily.1935:

But that might be a minor point.. When reaper was announced, I was… Upset… It wasn’t at all what I wanted or signed up for when I made a necromancer. I wanted to play as the DoT profession. That’s what I desired because I loved that play style. I wanted the Minion master to be viable and for our attrition to get a major boost and overhaul. The reaper provided non of that. To me the reaper at its announcement was pandering to what the community was conditioned to think they wanted and stripping away the identity that the necromancer was supposed to have. But as I’ve mentioned it didn’t seem to play out that way, however that is a bit worry some for me as I’d honestly like to see a proper condi elite spec down the line. And not this shallow version of condi that reaper provides.

To be fair, both of those playstyles existed prior to HoT. For quite a while Minion Master was actually a fully valid way of playing PvP on a Necromancer; I did it myself quite well for a long time. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a valid way of PvEing on the class. Condition Necro was also a slow burn, soft CC DoT spec for WvW prior to HoT. It was like playing the game on Hard Mode, outside of the short span of Dumbfire, but it was valid and interesting. Reaper gave Deathly Chill to the DoT aspect, and it gave (arguably) a better Shroud and “Rise!” to the Minion Master builds. While this makes for more of a sidegrade for Minion Master, it’s definitely an upgrade to the DoT specs.

Zero Solstice.9754:

To be fair, both of those playstyles existed prior to HoT. For quite a while Minion Master was actually a fully valid way of playing PvP on a Necromancer; I did it myself quite well for a long time. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a valid way of PvEing on the class. Condition Necro was also a slow burn, soft CC DoT spec for WvW prior to HoT. It was like playing the game on Hard Mode, outside of the short span of Dumbfire, but it was valid and interesting. Reaper gave Deathly Chill to the DoT aspect, and it gave (arguably) a better Shroud and “Rise!” to the Minion Master builds. While this makes for more of a sidegrade for Minion Master, it’s definitely an upgrade to the DoT specs.

I never said they didn’t. I was talking about community expectations. But I did mention this about the reaper that it seemed to embrace at least 2 of the 3 pillars for a while. At least until Jagged horrors got nerfed….. A decision I still think they executed the wrong way. The reaper did help players understand what it was the necromancer was supposed to do, it just did it in a way that was pandering to an old mentality the community as a whole had. But it itself wasn’t good enough in that very system. Which is strange imo.

As for Minion masters prior to HOT? Well, they had fringe use in PvP but where honestly too buggy for the longest time and taking them was an active mistake in all content. Luckily that was fixed. No one like pacifist minions. But again, I never said these didn’t exist. I said that the Reaper should have encouraged one of the 3 pillars of the necromancer’s design. And it encouraged 2 of them. Although I mentioned that this seemed to be an accident rather than intent based on the fact that the reaper seems to have absolutely nothing in terms of traits or its design in the greatsword and reaper’s shroud to support either the Condi or Minion design. Condi has one single trait in Deathly Chill and the MM gets Rise. But those aren’t the focus of the reaper’s design. The fact that they at one point or now pushed the reaper so heavily into condi and/or MM was never the intention of the elite spec. It wasn’t supposed to be the primary option the reaper was supposed to take. Just a side thing to kinda sorta sate that part of the community. The reaper at its core was designed almost entirely for the Berserkers only crowed.

Well, in a perfect world I think elite spec should encompass at least 2 aspects. Because it’s hard to care about new build possibilities if elite doesn’t offer anything worth a kitten to your playstile. Just look at Scrapper.

Wintermute.5408:

Well, in a perfect world I think elite spec should encompass at least 2 aspects. Because it’s hard to care about new build possibilities if elite doesn’t offer anything worth a kitten to your playstile. Just look at Scrapper.

I’ll counter that argument with Druid.

Druid? Support and control.

When I started playing this game at launch, I was coming from WoW, never played GW1. The main thing that brought me to GW2 was the idea that I could pick a class that I enjoy and then play it my way. My expectation was that I could play any class and I could customize it to how I wanted to play, whether it be support, tanky, condi damage, or power damage. Now it didn’t work out to be a perfect concept since you couldn’t play any play style and still be viable, but it was refreshing. I don’t like playing a class I enjoy but being locked into a very specific play style simply because that’s just the way it is supposed to be.

So all this talk about constraining the Necromancer to these 3 pillars or others talking about how Necro shouldn’t have a viable power build or specialization, that just seems to go against the concept of the game. I do find it strange that their power elite spec turned into another condi spec, and I’m not sure if they intended that or not. However, I love the Deathly Chill play style and is what I currently play, but to be honest the next elite spec I am most looking forward to is a necro support spec.

All I’m trying to say is, I get that everyone has their own expectations of what the Necromancer should be, but you should be open and accepting to other play styles of the Necro as they are released. I don’t feel the Reaper spec is a bad thing really, I think it fills a role as a hybrid spec, and there is still room for a pure condi spec in the future.

Shaogin.2679:

So all this talk about constraining the Necromancer to these 3 pillars or others talking about how Necro shouldn’t have a viable power build or specialization

I never said that.

Lily.1935:

Shaogin.2679:

So all this talk about constraining the Necromancer to these 3 pillars or others talking about how Necro shouldn’t have a viable power build or specialization

I never said that.

Bolded the rest for you. I said others, such as this guy:

Zephar.4519:

For those who want Power based Necromancers please just grow some balls and call it what it is; you want a Death Knight, and Warcraft is that way —>

I really want to stay open to new iterations of Necromancer, but at some point we’ll need a new profession name; as I said earlier, we literally do not do anything that the name suggests.
It would be very much like having a Thief who can’t Steal.

Zephar.4519:

I really want to stay open to new iterations of Necromancer, but at some point we’ll need a new profession name; as I said earlier, we literally do not do anything that the name suggests.
It would be very much like having a Thief who can’t Steal.

We had a new profession name, Reaper. The Elite Specializations make the class into something new, some variation or new take on the core Necro. We don’t have to confine everything to the general old concepts of your basic Necromancer.

Shaogin.2679:

Zephar.4519:

I really want to stay open to new iterations of Necromancer, but at some point we’ll need a new profession name; as I said earlier, we literally do not do anything that the name suggests.
It would be very much like having a Thief who can’t Steal.

We had a new profession name, Reaper. The Elite Specializations make the class into something new, some variation or new take on the core Necro. We don’t have to confine everything to the general old concepts of your basic Necromancer.

I tend to say “base Necro” and “Reaper” in conversation in order to try disambiguating the two.

Zephar.4519:

I really want to stay open to new iterations of Necromancer, but at some point we’ll need a new profession name; as I said earlier, we literally do not do anything that the name suggests.
It would be very much like having a Thief who can’t Steal.

This has always been a curiosity for me in terms of GW2. Anet made it so that Nodes don’t diminish when one player takes it only that player uses that up. Which was a great idea and one we take for granted today but is absolutely a great thing to lessen the hostility between players. So my question than becomes why hasn’t arena net used this same concept with corpses for the necromancer? Its always been a rather questionable decision in my opinion. I think it has to do with minions causing a server crash but we often have 8+ minions for minion builds already… so.. um.. What gives anet?

IF arena net is to focus on the minion master with a new elite specialization I’d hope that they used this node technology to support minion masters.

I think it has more to do with the graphic intability at the launch of the game and the fact that it wouldn’t fare well in PvP.

The graphic instability lead them to reduce a lot the time a corpse linger in order to not overload the game with unnecessary graphics.

As for PvP, I think it speak for itself. We are already complaining that we start at 0 life force, imagine if we had to start at 0 life force and 0 corpses for minions. There would be an uproar.

This is probably the point that led them to ignore the corpses in the process of summoning minions. It may not be satisfying from a lore point of view but it might be healthier for the game as a whole.

Also, I think that there is a possibility that one of our (very long to come) e-spec may introduce for us some aspect of the mesmer mechanism. We might have a shroud that produce fantasms and clones. Maybe not named like that but with the same limits. This would probably lead to a shroud skillset that look like :

1. : An auto-attack that work like mesmer scepter auto attack.
2. : Something that work like mesmer sword #3.
3. : a shatter skill that fear your foe at melee range.
4. : Not a lot to say, this skill design is somehow unique…
5. : a skill that summon a fantasm like thingy.

The illusions would probably disapear when we of out of shroud. Illusions would obviously be limited to 3.

If you add this kind of shroud to ranger’s spirits skills, we’d have some kind of gw’s spirit ritualist.

I’m going to agree with Shaogin. I do not want to Necro to be constrained to the “3 pillars.” First, I don’t see them as pillars. They are just characteristics that describe a theme just like reaper is a new theme. The idea of an E spec is to significantly change the play style of the class so I hope in the future we get a more support oriented skillset along with a shroud that fits the theme.

That being said, I think core Necro has trait lines with great themes but they need to be fleshed out more to be viable. We have line for power, conditions, support, minions or tank and improving shroud. It would be boring and redundant and boring to add another pet trait line.

I also see the word necromancer as a catch all for a dark caster class. I don’t think Anet should limit itself to the Wikipedia definition of necromancer. It should also draw from warlock themes since it doesn’t have to differentiate between two dark caster classes.

I must say I love DOT classes and would love necro to be DOT based tactician or general like others have said. The problem is that DOTs (Bleeds in GW2) are clunky and easily removed. They don’t fit in the game well.

For comparison, WoW’s environment makes DOTs easier to implement. The DOT class (warlock) has a basic rotation of 3 insta cast DOTs, a 1.5 second cast DOT that prevents dispels and a few situational spells to prevent AFK after all DOTs are applied. The ramp up time to get your full rotation is less than 5 seconds then you do the same to your next target. There is no epidemic to spread DOTs. This play style makes warlock a more mobile caster because other casters have longer cast times and are rooted for the duration.

If you compare to GW2, bleeds take way more time to stack up and are way easier to cleanse. GW2 is a more mobile game compared to WoW and necro problems are compounded by the fact they have the worst mobility in the game. There is no method to play the attrition game in GW2 as necro because they aren’t tanky for survival nor mobile for kiting.

DOTs are the reason I love the dark caster theme in MMOs. Anet please fix this for Necromancers!!!!

A good necro always uses conditions. I got a spvp power build running paladin’s amulet (power, precision, toughness, vitality) that is possible because of conditions and corrupts. I use them simply as way to weaken my foes rather then doing DoT with them.

But a good necro, be it power, healing, condi or w/e always carries his conditions with him and ability to manipulate them. That’s one thing that is certainly not lost to necro design.

Also the attrition is true with chilling specs – survive their burst (that’s the hard part) while chilling them. With their cooldowns gone to oblivion and your healthpool/shroud replenishing while other takes the pain you can now move in for the kill.

reason core condi necro is in dire straights is hands down it’s sustain. Power necro gets tons of sustain easy, condi necro has to take all the lines and traits that aren’t sustainy and as result we get a necro that takes ages to put his condies on, while moments to be swat like a fly (talking core necro here).

A buff to core necro’s condi play is in order, and most of all deathshroud buff as that’s the first place where core necro can get a buff, that won’t made reaper fly into batshit crazy OP zone.