Guild Wars 2

The list may get cut back on release but it seems there is an intent to boost damage output, especially with some less popular utilities. The shortened cool down on spectral utilities should pull it into mainstream use and the increased capability for death shroud ought to make using it a virtual requirement instead of saving it as a second health bar. Wells are much improved so conditionmancer was not left out of the equation. Minionmaster got some attention, too.

I can hardly believe the sudden increase in boon access. It is like a dream. Everyone should make sure to keep boons using signets or whatever because Elementalists have a damage boost to those running without them. I am really liking the improvement to might and stability access.

It will be interesting if all of those changes come true what will happen to the current classes of builds. They may splinter or melt entirely into a new set of builds.

we use spectral walk we become super fast and could potentially gain lf faster than people could knock us out of it in the middle of a zerg plus we can basically aoe the kitten out of everyone with ds4 and 5 not to mention perma stability. I can’t wait to kill an entire zerg 1v40.

Edit I mean using sw and immediately hitting ds.

Taken the time to write up a more eye-friendly version (copy and paste .txt if OP wants to edit main).

Death Shroud

• Dark Path: Fixed a bug where the chill duration did not match the tooltip.
• Doom: This ability now lists the damage it deals to enemy targets.
• Death Shroud: No longer removes the Spectral Armor buff.
• Death Shroud: No longer removes the Spectral Walk buff.
• Death shroud: New ability #5 – Dark Binding: You tether all enemies within a 600 range, constantly dealing Torment to them over time. At the end of the cast, Dark Binding immobilizes all affected enemies still within the radius.

Heal

• Consume Conditions: This skill now consumes Torment.

Staff

• Necrotic Grasp: Increased projectile velocity by 10%.
• Necrotic Grasp: Increased Life Force gain from 3 to 4.
• Putrid Mark: This ability will now transfer Blind to enemies it strikes, instead of missing.

Scepter

• Putrid Curse: Increased Poison duration from 2s to 4s.
• Feast of Corruption: Increased Life Force gain from 2/condition to 3/condition.

Dagger

• Necrotic Bite: Increased Life force gain from 4 to 6.
• Deathly Swarm: Increased projectile velocity by 30%.
• Enfeebling Blood: Reduced weakness duration to 6 seconds.

Axe

• Unholy Feast: This ability now removes 1 boon from each target hit.
• Ghastly Claws: Increased Life Force gain from 8 to 10.

Warhorn

• Wail of Doom: Added an unblockable skill fact.
• Locust Swarm: Increased the radius to 210. Increased animation size to better reflect it’s attack area.

Focus

• Reaper’s Touch: Fixed a bug so that it now applies the Vulnerability before the damage. Updated the tooltip to state the correct amount of Vulnerability.

Underwater Stuff

• Crimson Tide – Bleed duration 5s – 6s
• Deadly catch – Cripple duration 3s – 6 s
• Wicked spiral – Vuln duration 6s – 10s per hit
• Deadly feast: Duration of feast, 6s – 8s
• Plague blast: Decreased cast time and reduced aftercast
• Feast: Reduced weakness duration to 3 seconds.

Elites

• Grim Specter: This ability can now be cast while moving.
• Grim Specter: This skill is now unblockable.
• Plague: Reduced weakness duration to 1 second.

Corruption

• Corrupt Boon: Reduced the maximum amount of boons converted to 5.
• Corrupt Boon: Reduced the duration of weakness when corrupting might to 5 seconds.

Spectral

• Spectral Wall: Normalized the amount of protection gained to 7s for allies. Replaced the Vulnerability with a 1s fear when enemies try to cross the wall. Added 4% life force gain on hit.
• Spectral Armor: Reduced the recharge to 60s.

Minions

• Rigor Mortis: This ability is now instant.
• Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend now regenerate outside of combat.
• Shadow Fiend Haunt: Blind Duration increased to 5s.

Well

• Well of Power: This ability now breaks stuns. Added 1s of stability. Cooldown reduced to 50 seconds.
• Well of Corruption: Reduced cooldown to 40 seconds.
• Well of Darkness: Reduced cooldown to 50 seconds.
• Well of Suffering: Reduced cooldown to 35 seconds.
• Well of Corruption: Reduced the duration of weakness when corrupting might to 5 seconds.

Signet

• Signet of Spite: Now applies 2 stacks of bleeding for 10s, blind for 5s, Cripple for 10s, Poison for 10s, 5 stacks of vulnerability for 10s, and weakness for 10s. Recharge reduced to 60s.
• Signet of Undeath: Increased cast time to 3s.

Spite Trait Tree

• Signet Power: This trait has been merged with Signet Mastery.
• Signet Mastery: This trait now recharges signets 20% faster and grants 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds on signet use.
• Axe Training: This trait has been moved to the Master tier.
• New Grandmaster trait – Dhuumfire: Inflict burning to opponents for 4 seconds on critical hit. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.

Curses Trait Tree

• Withering Precision: You apply 5 seconds of weakness on critical hits. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds.

Death Magic Trait Tree

• Death Shiver: Vulnerability applied every 3 seconds while in Death Shroud has been increased to 3 stacks for 10 seconds, up from 1 stack.
• Death Nova: Minions now deal damage when death nova triggers.

Blood Magic Trait Tree

• Dagger Mastery: This trait now grants a 20% recharge reduction.

Soul Reaping Trait Tree

• Speed of Shadows: This trait now increases movement speed by 25% while in death shroud.
• Decaying Swarm: This trait has been removed.
• Near to Death: This trait has been moved to the Master tier.
• New Grandmaster trait – Deathly Perception: You have a 50% greater critical chance while in Death Shroud.

Fungalfoot.7213:

If true once this patch hits minion masters will become completely obsolete ( yes, I know, I’m foolishly implying they already weren’t ) in favor of generic DPS builds. We’re no longer necromancers, we’re just death themed DPS casters. We might as well be hurling fireballs at this point. Oh wait, we are going to do be doing just that.

Yep… and siphoning will still be nearly useless outside MM and blood fiend. Stakitten are still requiring traits… Still no minion elite under water… still minions getting 1 shot in dungeons/wvw etc anywhere outside regular trash pve content. In general regardless of them being fake or not garbage in my opinion.
Turning necro into generic dps class meh… At this point I hope they are fake. If not I think I might actually check TES online. Now how sad is that lol.

Aw come on don’t put too much hype and attention into this. Just wait a few more days till we see the actual patch lol. There’s lots of things that are missing and were mentioned during the SOTG so yeah.

Just remember SotG talks about future changes as well.

I think it is comedy that Reanimator is not on the leaked notes.

Thanks for the organization, ASCII, but I have always liked Necromancer underwater. I seriously hope Arenanet does more underwater stuff (not crap).

Anchoku.8142:

Thanks for the organization, ASCII, but I have always liked Necromancer underwater. I seriously hope Arenanet does more underwater stuff (not crap).

You may like it but underwater anything is like 0.1% of this game and rarely happens, i changed it anyway so i don’t uuh… offend you.

I can guarantee noone scrolled through the notes to find the underwater section first.

Dhuumfire would be good for a might stacking build with life blast, 30/10/0/0/30, even with no condition damage the burning will tick for over 700 with 22+ stacks of might which is very easy to keep up already, even more so with the spectral skills working with death shroud, although the 20% axe and 20% below 50% would still be nice with lift blast hitting for 40% more, both would be great, but it hink dhuumfire would win in the end, with a might build.

Wallach.7291:

I think it is comedy that Reanimator is not on the leaked notes.

I agree – also I thought it was almost certain they were making Greater Marks the baseline and removing the trait.

But if these are true patch notes or partial, then holy kitten mother of god so glad i saved up my laurels for this day.

Nonnatus.8072:

Dhuumfire would be good for a might stacking build with life blast, 30/10/0/0/30, even with no condition damage the burning will tick for over 700 with 22+ stacks of might which is very easy to keep up already, even more so with the spectral skills working with death shroud, although the 20% axe and 20% below 50% would still be nice with lift blast hitting for 40% more, both would be great, but it hink dhuumfire would win in the end, with a might build.

To be more specfic a Death Shroud build build purely on pumping out Life Blasts along the lines of Axe/—- with 30/10/0/0/30 using Reapers Might, Axe Mastery, Close to Death, Unyielding Blast, Deathly Perception for 50% critical.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLcPdTejhPRA949AwZRFAA1j1BAAA-jkyAYLBRCCAJCiIAm8KiGbfoIas6aMlLg2dR127ioVLEwoxA-w

Ouch.

I’ve gotten 7-8k Crits with Deathshroud 4. I can’t possibly imagine how strong they’ll be with this, IF it’s true.

yes it is more believable after seeing what other classes got.

then I noticed that downed HP was not in the notes and I thought thats it! they must be real…

amiright?

“Spectral Wall: Normalized the amount of protection gained to 7s for allies. Replaced the Vulnerability with a 1s fear when enemies try to cross the wall. Added 4% life force gain on hit.”

Really? Who’s up for Spectral Wall fear pong? =)

Confessor.8957:

But if these are true patch notes or partial, then holy kitten mother of god so glad i saved up my laurels for this day.

Yeah I’m sitting on 110 Laurels myself (I run WvW exclusively so it’s my only source of Ascended). I’d been waiting to finally set myself on a single build path and stick with it. We’ll see once things are confirmed next week.

I like how these ‘leaked’ patch notes turn Spectral Wall into almost a mandatory domination utility for Terrormancers. Yet… Corrosive Poison Cloud remains laughably bad.

Fungalfoot.7213:

If true once this patch hits minion masters will become completely obsolete ( yes, I know, I’m foolishly implying they already weren’t ) in favor of generic DPS builds. We’re no longer necromancers, we’re just death themed DPS casters. We might as well be hurling fireballs at this point. Oh wait, we are going to do be doing just that.

Minions are only a small subset of our skills and in no way a core competency of the class. Don’t get me wrong- minions should be viable, but they are not special or class defining in any way.

Draehl.2681:

Fungalfoot.7213:

If true once this patch hits minion masters will become completely obsolete ( yes, I know, I’m foolishly implying they already weren’t ) in favor of generic DPS builds. We’re no longer necromancers, we’re just death themed DPS casters. We might as well be hurling fireballs at this point. Oh wait, we are going to do be doing just that.

Minions are only a small subset of our skills and in no way a core competency of the class. Don’t get me wrong- minions should be viable, but they are not special or class defining in any way.

Remember, we don’t know how much damage their Death Nova will do… they might just become quite disposable.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I like how these ‘leaked’ patch notes turn Spectral Wall into almost a mandatory domination utility for Terrormancers. Yet… Corrosive Poison Cloud remains laughably bad.

CPC got indirectly buffed by the weakness buff.

Wouldn’t call that much. I still don’t see weakness appearing as a major thing in every team’s ‘must have’.

If I’m going to try and avoid a Thief’s burst, like hell am I going to bring CPC when I could just use a Well of Darkness and hide in a Spectral Wall far more effectively, and still be more versatile.

Also, I’m assuming that by the fact that the Devs haven’t denied these notes, they are probably correct.

Draehl.2681:

Fungalfoot.7213:

If true once this patch hits minion masters will become completely obsolete ( yes, I know, I’m foolishly implying they already weren’t ) in favor of generic DPS builds. We’re no longer necromancers, we’re just death themed DPS casters. We might as well be hurling fireballs at this point. Oh wait, we are going to do be doing just that.

Minions are only a small subset of our skills and in no way a core competency of the class. Don’t get me wrong- minions should be viable, but they are not special or class defining in any way.

And that’s why “if” those are true it will turn necro into another generic boring dps class. No thx. Generic and boring is strong with this one, as it is. There is warrior to faceroll and thief… If those notes are real then it turns half the classes into a dumb faceroll parade eff that. Every single “f2download” asian mmo is like that. I’d get more diversity with going for a new one every week theres enough of them to keep me occupied for a year if I stick to switching every week.

Oh and did I forget to mention? 9 months later after effects of super necro nerf are still here. Even downed hp is by this day broken. Along with every other broken trait/skill/mechanic. People are getting too excited about things too easily.

Bhawb.7408:

Just remember SotG talks about future changes as well.

Read as laying the groundwork for June 25 patch to be new DS skill plus tooltip fixes….full stop. One day in the future we might get some of the stuff mentioned in the SotG….might….some day but we have seen this month after month with patches.
EDIT: sorry for being so cynical.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Wouldn’t call that much. I still don’t see weakness appearing as a major thing in every team’s ‘must have’.

If I’m going to try and avoid a Thief’s burst, like hell am I going to bring CPC when I could just use a Well of Darkness and hide in a Spectral Wall far more effectively, and still be more versatile.

Also, I’m assuming that by the fact that the Devs haven’t denied these notes, they are probably correct.

Devs will usually never confirm or deny leaked notes. We can speculate either way.

I personally like these changes. Warriors are getting some small nerfs to their current dps build and rotation which will change things slightly. Mesmers having a delay on temportal curtain is going to have a pretty big impact on pvp but it will also make positioning trash in dungeons more frustrating.

If this is accurate and complete then it is missing one major component that has been asked for and is sorely needed. Reanimator and Protection of the Horde have no mention. I would expect, at the least, these traits to be combined as most people hate them. C’mon, if you want the staff mastery and greater marks you have to put up with both of these minors wasting slots for you

I pray that this, or anything that deals with that really, is reworked this time around!

Burning 30 points into Spite is disappointing, mostly because we still have to go 10 points into Death Magic for Staff Mastery.

Maybe 30/30/10/0/0 or 30/20/10/0/10. But I’m honestly not sure if the changes to life force generation, weakness and utilities will be enough to let go of Soul Marks and Last Gasp.

Good lord, I’ll be trying some Shroud builds if this thing is true! : O
I may finally give Conditionmancer a go as well finally. It’s the one build (weirdly) that I’ve never played. I really like the sound of Torment.

One thing to note: The buff to Feast of Corruption might not seem too big, but when it’s combined with access to burning and torment, more incentive for weakness and the huge buffs to Signet of Spite and Signet Mastery, it should mean a lot more life force while in scepter — something that is greatly needed.

I’m thinking a 30/30/10/0/0 build for condition necromancer next patch (obviously the last trait in Spite is supposed to be Dhuumfire, not Close to Death):
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcVcz9mmnRwMmnRwMxxa9MmabokbV

the changes seem pretty darn awesome so far. though, not sure if this is worth mentioning or not..

in these “leaked notes”, Death Shroud 5 is called Dark Binding.

however, from the GW2Upcoming Skill and Trait Changes update, it states that the name for DS5 is Tainted Shackles?

Necromancer Death Shroud 5

As the professions in Guild Wars 2 continue to grow, we will continue to find ways to augment them and add potency to their arsenal of abilities. With the next balance update, necromancers will be unlocking their fifth ability within Death Shroud: Tainted Shackles. This skill will cause nearby enemies to be inflicted with conditions and controlled if they don’t take very quick action.

there is a slightly mismatch to the skills description as well. though on the gw2 update, it’s rather vague… or am i missing something?

i quite like the Guardian changes from these same “notes” as well, so kind of hoping them to be true. XDD couldn’t help but notice this small discrepancy though.. but who knows.

Interesting. Another issue: Each trait line isn’t updated in the notes.

Might be fake or the leaks are slightly outdated. I’m leaning on the latter. I doubt anyone would waste this much time making up fake patch notes, considering how realistic they are.

yea, i was thinking that they might just be outdated and in the e.g. of DS5, they just changed the name and tweaked the workings of it.

only time will tell. ; )) i am optimistic about this next patch though.
just recently picked up my necro again so was quite excited to see these.

LF Regen buffs + 50% crit chance in DS + Fury on DS is too much, I don’t buy it, there is very little sacrifice for any of this, other than not being able to go 30 into Spite, but you’d probably go for DS utility in other trees in such a build anyway.

You’re talking about 80% crit in DS here without ANY extra investment in precision. This would let you go full Cavalier’s on trinkets for a bunch of toughness and crit damage, while going Soldiers/Knights/Berserkers as you saw fit everywhere else, probably reaching something like 80-100% critical damage fairly easily.

By my estimates, this would cause each Life Blast to hit for like 2.5-3.5k while still retaining a ridiculous amount of bulk. Not only that, but wells which carry on ticking when you pop into DS may well be updated to damage with your boosted stats I guess?

I don’t know, seems pretty OP.

Fake. A number of those notes are either OP or do not make sense.

None of the notes are overpowered if you understand the overall metagame and what actually makes necromancer underpowered.

I think people are overreacting to power builds in general. They’ll still be very squishy.

Bunkers might be more viable, though.

What they supposedly did with condition necromancers is very smart, too. They slightly buffed survivability through life force generation, but they buffed our survivability more by buffing condition damage, particularly through torment, burning and the new Signet of Spite. That will let condition necromancers play a game of attrition in a much better way.

‘tis quite a lot of trouble to go through just to put up some fake notes though.
but again, i guess we shouldn’t be surprised what some people would do for.. whatever reason.

>>> “Locust Swarm: Increased the radius to 210. Increased animation size to better reflect it’s attack area.”

NOO.

NOO NOOOO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Why can’t they just make it AOE swiftness and a leap similar to Foul Current? (Trident 3) This is why people hate horn and this is why Necros lack movement.

UMad 1-10? 9..

Warrior horn is 100x better than Necro horn. Hell, Ranger horn is even better.

akamon.2769:

‘tis quite a lot of trouble to go through just to put up some fake notes though.
but again, i guess we shouldn’t be surprised what some people would do for.. whatever reason.

This is the biggest thing.

Plus, all of the notes match what ArenaNet has been saying, and the notes are all the token level-headed approach ArenaNet typically takes with balance changes. Fake patch notes typically give themselves away by breaking philosophical concepts and going overboard, and these notes do neither.

I think it’s more likely the notes are outdated, not fake.

How did Greater Marks (Death Magic II – greater radius and unblockable) and Staff Mastery (Death Magic III – reduced staff cooldown) not get combined?

Why are they even in Death Magic? They have nothing to do with pets. . . . :-(

I wonder if there will be a cool down on how many times an enemy can trigger the fear on spectral wall. If not, that will be the ultimate troll skill and I will definitely be incorporating it into my build.

Waffler.1257:

I wonder if there will be a cool down on how many times an enemy can trigger the fear on spectral wall. If not, that will be the ultimate troll skill and I will definitely be incorporating it into my build.

If not, just have 2 people put down a fear wall on either side of an enemy and they would run back and forth into the other person’s like ping pong. xD

Ok in good hopes of this being true, ill put 10 gold on the line The 1st who sends me ingame mail to character “Shauma” will be betting against me. Only doing against 1st person, since i got 90g total and saving for t3 sylvari.

/OP nerf nec. if these changes happens, nec will be annoying as **** in pvp and that’s good but i don’t play nec so meh

Some spectral math.
30k hp means 60% of it makes 20k DS hp.
1% of 20k is 200 hp, 3% is therefore 600hp.
Note DS decay is still 4%

So if the spectral effect would last in DS, the 3% gain on hit would about cancel out with the average hit being around 600dmg. With crits i think the average hit is higher, but this DS would actualy be as tanky as a invulnarable skill.

Now what i think was REALY MEANT with this is:
u wont get the 3% LF WHILE in DS, but when u go BACK OUT the spectral effect remains.
ex. i activate spectral walk, after 2s i go into DS, use fear, go out of DS, and the spectral effect and ability to port back remain.

I think this way its fair and should be viewed almost as a fix.

This has to be fake.

What happened to Anet’s “we don’t want to give the necro too much and end up doing whack-a-mole balancing”?

Also: “We wont just give the necro more access to stability and vigor blabla…”
Yeah, with this patch: perma-stability. Seems legit.
Reapplying stability every 5 seconds? That would be THE best access to stability in the entire game…

And some of those changes… how is any necro not running Spectral Wall after this?
Many pointed it out already, 2 necros could terror-ping-pong a zerg to death.
Or what would happen if you trapped someone between Spectral Wall and an actual wall? Too OP, can’t be true.

Stability aside, did anyone notice that this patch wouldn’t do anything for attrition?
Some improved lf regen, but that won’t make the necro an attrition class.
It’s just a huge amount of DPS buffs, which will just result in still being unable to handle multiple opponents and completely dominating every 1v1.

I’m not buying it.

For people talking about retaining spectral buffs in DS… I talked about this with Sharp, specifically about keeping the buff but not benefiting from it while in DS, just like regen right now, and he said they would consider it. So if these notes are real, it will probably be like that.

Also it seems weakness has overall been nerfed – 25% total chance isn’t that great (certainly better then before on high crit builds though), and on top of duration nerfs across the board (and a massive nerf to withering precision, adding a 20s CD making it effectively useless, compared to now where you can get almost perm weakness out of it), weakness it in a poorer place then before.

Still, lots of great changes overall, but either these notes are fake, or foot in the grave has an ICD, no way would they let us have perm stability.

flow.6043:

And some of those changes… how is any necro not running Spectral Wall after this?
Many pointed it out already, 2 necros could terror-ping-pong a zerg to death.
Or what would happen if you trapped someone between Spectral Wall and an actual wall? Too OP, can’t be true.

You can dodge through it just like line of warding, but yeah, in a zerg situation, where you can’t clearly see what’s going on, this would be rediculous.

So the thing that makes me skeptical is the 20pt trait on Near to death, with no ICD on the stability.
It would be more logical to move the stability down (adding 10s ICD to work like now and prevent combo with 30pt 50% DS recharge).
On the other hand i think its not a flat +50% crit chance increase, but 50% from what u already have. I think thats how also the warrior trait for 50% crit on stunned works, or am i wrong?

War Mourner.5168:

You can dodge through it just like line of warding, but yeah, in a zerg situation, where you can’t clearly see what’s going on, this would be rediculous.

Line of Warding can’t be dodged.
Also, enemies still get vulnerability from Spectral Wall if they dodge through (I think…). But yeah, maybe you’d be able to dodge the fear… unless you’re already feared from the other wall :/

Some of these notes are fairly contradictory with what we already know, I’m gonna assume its someone kicking us while we’re down. I’m sure the same guy that wrote this is embezzling money from a cancer charity right about now. Ha.

These buffs aren’t any better than the buffs other classes are getting.

What I hate is the nerf to Corrupt Boon (up to 5 boons removed) which depends though partly on what type of boons does it prioritize. If stability and vigor are covered by other boons and are not prioritized, the skill is going to have a nose dive in usefulness.

All that hype with the burning and we get it as a grandmaster Spite trait?!!! Only useful for hybrid builds.