Guild Wars 2

Because of the incredible developer attention these days, I propose to sum up a thread discussing on what needs a buff and what needs a nerf in your opinion only related to Necromancers.

Who knows better which things performs way better than expected and which performs just bad about a profession than who plays this profession everyday?

So let’s get started.

Buff —-——————————————————————————————
- Axe damage: it is way too low than expected and the 3 second channeling of Ghastly Claws isn’t that rewarding when speaking about raw numbers. Right now I think that most Necromancer feels that Axe is lackluster.
- Vampiric heals, traits and damage: the heals vampiric skills grant are way too low to consider them as viable, nor when considering them about damage. Life Siphon is just like Ghasly Claws but it last longer for less damage. It can use a buff in both the base heal amount that the raw damage. Traits also heals for really a low amount to be considered enough.
- Plague condition application: some people complained about Necromancers spamming blindness when in Plague form. It is true in my opinion, because there is no point to spread other conditions. In my opinion Plague should have a better bleeding stacking capability.
- Wells duration: wells are powerful, yes, but they last way too short. 2 seconds more on their duration feel perfect to me.
- Death Magic traitline rework: as stated many times, Death Magic traitline needs a serious rework in minor trait redistribution.
- More Death Shroud variety: Death Shroud, right now, feels too much useless to some builds. In my opinion at least 1 skill (Life Blast or Dark Path maybe?) should change their effects depending on weapon set.

Nerf —-——————————————————————————————
Epidemic: this skill is outstanding when compared to the other Necromancer utilities. It needs an increased recharge time in my opinion.
Plague blindness: it is true, Plague grants Necromancer too much defensive capabilities that fell into the overpowered category in my opinion. There should be a sort of balance in the Plague skill around offensive and defensive capability.

Please, keep this thread polite and constructive, remember to reason every buff/nerf you propose.

I’d be ok with a cooldown nerf on Epidemic if it lasted for a couple seconds after using it to basically auto spread any new conditions.

Axe Damage: I can’t really speak on that, as I haven’t used an axe since I left the starter zone. It just isn’t my type, you know?

Vampiric heals, traits, and damage: Agreed. We need some kind of boost for it, nothing major, but more than what it is now.

Plague condition application: Yes. The bleeds are not worth forgoing the blind. It is much too little.

Wells Duration: The duration and cd of wells is what keeps me away from them. Very little benefits on a long cd. The most I ever use is Well of Power.

Death Magic trait line rework: Yes. The first 2 minor traits have no effect on me at all. The Jagged Horror can’t live long enough to get halfway to the enemy, and I don’t use minions, so I don’t get any bonus for the 2nd minor.

More Death Shroud variety: I agree, but I don’t know what would need to be changed. :/

Epidemic: Oh dear Grenth, no! It was bad enough when they took away the infinite range! The skill is only useful when there is more than 1 person, it makes you vulnerable, and it is a gamble. Let’s say it was increased to a 30sec cooldown. You place conditions on a target and another enemy (or the zerg) arrive and you see that as a prime time to spread those conditions. At that same time, the enemy decides to cleanse himself. Now what? You are stuck with a cool down with no effect. What if you are about to blast it off of an enemy and your team mate decides to burst him as you cast it and puts the enemy down. Now what? All conditions cleanse when downed, another waste. The skill is a gamble as is, and I feel like the recharge is fair for the gamble.

Plague blindness: There should be a balance. I feel it would be a balance if more stacks of bleeds were added and nothing else changed. When you add more stacks of bleeding, it makes you think “Should I add those stacks of bleeds, or blind them?”. This would make you choose either offensive or defensive in itself.

Archmagel.1350:

More Death Shroud variety: I agree, but I don’t know what would need to be changed. :/

I mean, the first skill can be linked to the MH weapon and the second skill to the OH.

I’ll give you some examples:
- Dagger MH: 1 skill of Death Shroud inflict more damage based on how much Life you have and steals some.
- Dagger OH: 2 skill which transfer all your conditions to the target or apply some.
- Axe: 1 skill which deal high damage and inflict vulnerability
- Scepter: 1 skill which stack bleeding on hit
- Warhorn: 2 skill which is a gap closer and grants swiftness

Obviously those are just example and probably bad examples, but they show the concept behind.

Archmagel.1350:

Epidemic: Oh dear Grenth, no! It was bad enough when they took away the infinite range! The skill is only useful when there is more than 1 person, it makes you vulnerable, and it is a gamble. Let’s say it was increased to a 30sec cooldown. You place conditions on a target and another enemy (or the zerg) arrive and you see that as a prime time to spread those conditions. At that same time, the enemy decides to cleanse himself. Now what? You are stuck with a cool down with no effect. What if you are about to blast it off of an enemy and your team mate decides to burst him as you cast it and puts the enemy down. Now what? All conditions cleanse when downed, another waste. The skill is a gamble as is, and I feel like the recharge is fair for the gamble.

I’m not getting your point… The good timing of Epidemic is just a requirement, not a gamble.
Keep in mind that Epidemic recharge is lowered by a Curse trait, right now I’m running with Epidemic at 12s recharge, which is way too low considering what it does.

I agree that epidemic is too good in some situations, but then whenever there is only 1 enemy it is useless. If it were changed to a signet so it had a passive effect and longer cooldown then it would have more universal use and it wouldn’t be overpowered in large zergs.

I mean that we still have that cast time for it. By the time we apply a good amount of conditions and attempt to spread it, if they haven’t cleansed it already, they usually are able to do it during that casting time, either passively or actively. (This is from my own experience. They don’t seem to want to keep those conditions on themselves for very long.) I do try to make them burn their cleanses, but many times they are able to cleanse them again by the time I build them back up.

Yes, I also spec for the corruption reductions.

Corruption Spells aren’t Overpowered, they’re finely balanced and all working as inteded. They are currently our strongest Utility Category, especially BiP and Epidemic.
plague would need a bit of a Nerf, I admit.
Another buff would be the Signets. Especially Locust and Undeath passive.
Spectrals ar ealso lackluster, just look at Spectral armor. Apart from the protection, Spectral walk beats it in EVERY Category: CD, duration, utility application!
Grasp is slow and buggy, we’ve all been here before!
Wall is kinda Nice, but hard to use and not rewardig if used right. increase prot-duration or add something else (maybe LF for everyone who wlaks through it?).

A lot of people is whining about Plague perma blind? Are you guys aware that you can just … RUN ? Plague is all ok, if yours foes are dumb enought to stay in plague aoe range then they will just RiP… haha Don’t call a nerf on something which is actually working very well
Regards

Alekto.8297:

A lot of people is whining about Plague perma blind? Are you guys aware that you can just … RUN ? Plague is all ok, if yours foes are dumb enought to stay in plague aoe range then they will just RiP… haha Don’t call a nerf on something which is actually working very well
Regards

Please, Plague is way too strong when defending a node and it is quite obvious. If you go out of AoE range you are probably not in the range for capping that node, so…

you do realize when attack a node… you don’t need to stand on it while killing the other person… standing on a node with someone else there doesn’t accomplish anything…

Why dont we have a weapon that cleaves targets? This is an incredible disadvantage in dungeons and team fights.

Chrysalis.3142:

Your reasoning to nerf epidemic is hilarious, “this skill is outstanding when compared to the other Necromancer utilities”. That’s like saying nerf the channeled axe skill because it’s better than the auto attack lol. Also, all they need to do for plague form is buff the other 2 skills. rather than nerfing the only good one.

Epidemic is on a 12s cooldown when traited, this is too low considering what it does. 20s cooldown when untraited and 15-16 when traited is just fine considering the power of the skill.

You are right about Plague, I haven’t said that they should remove blindness from plague, I’ve said that offensive and defensive capability of Plague should be balanced. Right now there is no point to use Plague offensively because it just sucks. This is why I’ve put Plague in both nerf and buff section.

I agree with almost everything except for Epidemic and Plague. Epidemic is one of the corruption necro’s best skills, true (and probably the only notable one out of the bunch). It has already been “fixed” (nerfed), and I really don’t think it’s a big issue on a 12s CD traited considering how prevalent condition removal is in PvP, and it takes a good 1 – 1.5s to cast which can be interrupted. It’s only truly fearsome when working with another condition build teammate in a large group fight, or if you’ve already spent a good 7 – 10s building conditions on an enemy while praying they don’t remove it and you don’t get ganked in the process.

With regards to Plague, I’ve killed a number of people by spamming bleeds instead of blind. The key to using it offensively like this though is stacking bleed / condition duration. Maybe if they had a small CD in between blind spam it would balance out.

However, it’s not like you’re untouchable while spamming blinds. Most people just hang off for a bit and spam conditions / ranged attacks and you’ll go down quick. If the necro chases, he loses the point. If he stays, he dies faster than any other bunker would.

If they nerf epidemic, i’ll never ever play necromancer again. It’s good as it is, and in no way overpowered. Those that say ‘you can perfectly control it, it’s no gamble’ are wrong, post 6 hardcore Orr events in a row, where you use them every 12 secs, without ever making a mistake (using it without having effect). I dare you you will show tons of mistakes. Mobs die fast (especially in zergs). At one moment they have full hp and you cast epidemic, the next seconds, you realize it’s wasted. There’s no point in arguing against this.

Secondly this skill is bread and butter of necromancer. They are already capped by bleed cap vs bosses in events, capped vs conditino removers (bye bye hard worked for 16 stacks of bleeds by a single condition removal spell). This spell gives some life and meaning to ‘conditionmancer’.

The only way a cooldown increase is justified is if the moment you start casting it, the game remembers the condition form the monster you target, and doesn’t care if it dies early, but copies it 100% certain. Secondly sometimes conditions run out to fast for epidemic, they should add +2 secs on all the copied conditions. With these two changes cooldown increase is ok. Without it, it’s absolutely out of the question (for me).

we have 1 great spell (epidemic) and you want it nerfed? i have no words…

Guys, come on. The fact that you consider Epidemic as a must and a great spell means so much.

Yes, Necromancers need a buff to many other skills and build, but this doesn’t mean that Epidemic at that cooldown isn’t too effective. Just couple it with a profession which spams condition very quicky and at high duration like Thief’s Death Blossom or Warrior’s Sword and with just one Epidemic you have all this amout of condition spread around all the enemies in an huge area. Necromancer right now is only that skill and this isn’t the profession I want to play. I want that all skills are equally effective, useful and strong.

Don’t let your point of view to get biased and watch the things objectively.

sorrow.2364:

Guys, come on. The fact that you consider Epidemic as a must and a great spell means so much.

Yes, Necromancers need a buff to many other skills and build, but this doesn’t mean that Epidemic at that cooldown isn’t too effective. Just couple it with a profession which spams condition very quicky and at high duration like Thief’s Death Blossom or Warrior’s Sword and with just one Epidemic you have all this amout of condition spread around all the enemies in an huge area. Necromancer right now is only that skill and this isn’t the profession I want to play. I want that all skills are equally effective, useful and strong.

Don’t let your point of view to get biased and watch the things objectively.

Necromancers aren’t all using Epidemic, as it’s simply not a must. In tournament play I’ve seen plenty of necros run well of power instead to have more team support than just be a condition cannon.

If they buffed a lot of the other utilities / builds I can pretty much guarantee you people will be hesitant to run it unless they are specifically a conditionmancer build.

It is almost useless in a one on one fight, and if you’re getting ganged up on it won’t help much if you can’t actually get enough time to focus conditions on an individual target. I personally can say I’ve never had Epidemic save me in a defensive fight.

It really only shines in group battles where your team can either protect you and / or help stack conditions on a given target assuming you can get the cast off without being interrupted or the target dies first. All too often you still need to choose exactly when to use it, and missing it or using it incorrectly after burning through cooldowns designed to pump out bleeds will leave you sitting spamming #1.

For this reason, I feel like the skill is very good, but not an “I win” button. At best, it’s an excellent utility in somewhat niche scenarios.

sorrow.2364:

Buff —-——————————————————————————————
- Axe damage: it is way too low than expected and the 3 second channeling of Ghastly Claws isn’t that rewarding when speaking about raw numbers. Right now I think that most Necromancer feels that Axe is lackluster.
- Vampiric heals, traits and damage: the heals vampiric skills grant are way too low to consider them as viable, nor when considering them about damage. Life Siphon is just like Ghasly Claws but it last longer for less damage. It can use a buff in both the base heal amount that the raw damage. Traits also heals for really a low amount to be considered enough.
- Plague condition application: some people complained about Necromancers spamming blindness when in Plague form. It is true in my opinion, because there is no point to spread other conditions. In my opinion Plague should have a better bleeding stacking capability.
- Wells duration: wells are powerful, yes, but they last way too short. 2 seconds more on their duration feel perfect to me.
- Death Magic traitline rework: as stated many times, Death Magic traitline needs a serious rework in minor trait redistribution.
- More Death Shroud variety: Death Shroud, right now, feels too much useless to some builds. In my opinion at least 1 skill (Life Blast or Dark Path maybe?) should change their effects depending on weapon set.

Nerf —-——————————————————————————————
Epidemic: this skill is outstanding when compared to the other Necromancer utilities. It needs an increased recharge time in my opinion.
Plague blindness: it is true, Plague grants Necromancer too much defensive capabilities that fell into the overpowered category in my opinion. There should be a sort of balance in the Plague skill around offensive and defensive capability.

Please, keep this thread polite and constructive, remember to reason every buff/nerf you propose.

Axe – Agreed.
Vampiric – Agreed.
Well duration – Disagree: seems balanced to me.
DM minor traits – Agreed
DS variety – Mostly disagree: its already a unique mechanic. Would be cool to have more variety, but that would be a nicety, not a buff.

Epidemic – Disagree strongly: Epidemic is highly situational in effectiveness and has a long cast animation.
Plague – Disagree: it is an Elite skill on a long CD.

Buff: fix Corruptions so that… you know… they actually hit something.

Axe – Just tune the numbers or replace with Sword (both hands) and Torch for burning
Vampiric – Siphoning should scale with Power as it did with more blood points and damage in GW
Wells – 1/3 uptime should standard like most other class aoe utility effects
Plague – no need for change
Death Magic – strongly agree
DS – 3 more skills (or at least 1 more) so that it aint a on demand downed form and reduction of life blast cast to 1/2 and making it scale with Life Force not lose 50% dps because you are on 49% life force
Epidemic – agree, 20 second/16 second recharge would be better, but it shouldnt be touched till all necro bugs are fixed and we have a viable way of stacking high bleeds