Guild Wars 2

I’m at work and kinda being overwhelmed with boredom, so I thought to myself about a new Mechanic for Necro class that would distinguish itself from the rest.

An Infection system. How does it work? Think of the Miasma in GW1: Faction.

So maybe instead of AoE ground targeting, we just target 1 enemy and cast the infecting spells. Whoever gets close to them contracts the infection and restarts the counter or intensifies it… or maybe in aura form so the longer they stay near you, the more the infection. Kinda like the Plague Elite, but funner / cooler / lower cd.

This way it follows the Mobility design of the game where we don’t need to try to wait for a group of enemies converge to a single spot then blast AoEs all over them only to have them run out of it without a care in the world.

One of the devs said that their idea of the Necro should be that you don’t want to mess with them cause on the longer the fight extends, the worse it gets for the fool that challenged them… Ok not word for word, but you get the idea.

Another idea that came to mind is that either for dagger1 or staff 1 to be attacks that spread conditions… I mean we’re necros… one of our jobs is to EASILY spread conditions and not wait on 1 specific spell for it.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but Necros feel quite lackluster… everyone else can do the same job as us if not better. We’re supposed to be masters of conditions and spreading them like there’s no tomorrow.

Anyways, it’s just an idea…

Main problem we have is that a lot of what is there, doesn’t work, so we’re kind of boned in that we can’t really find a lot of viable alternatives between lacklustre > complete junk. If you’ve worked with application developers in the past as well, I found the more you get them to add stuff to something (which needs a decent debugging) the more of it they break until you’ve sufficiently put a stop to the shenanigans and make them roll back to the last working version!

Except in this case, there isn’t a last working version…

Swap Reaper’s Mark (staff no.5) for Mark of Horror (Lich Form) and buff Reaper’s Mark so that it is viable while in Lich Form. Would make staff alot more fun to me and make minions a bigger part of the necro.

Lucifer.6849:

Swap Reaper’s Mark (staff no.5) for Mark of Horror (Lich Form) and buff Reaper’s Mark so that it is viable while in Lich Form. Would make staff alot more fun to me and make minions a bigger part of the necro.

That would be cool actually!

Exploding minions too…? yes? no?

Thresher.3049:

Main problem we have is that a lot of what is there, doesn’t work, so we’re kind of boned in that we can’t really find a lot of viable alternatives between lacklustre > complete junk. If you’ve worked with application developers in the past as well, I found the more you get them to add stuff to something (which needs a decent debugging) the more of it they break until you’ve sufficiently put a stop to the shenanigans and make them roll back to the last working version!

Except in this case, there isn’t a last working version…

Ahahah… ya.. that’s true.

Well this is mostly a thread for fun. None of these creative (and non-creative like mine) ideas will make it in the game so no need to worry about the more bugging of our class.

If thats the case I’d like Deathshroud (and Lich/Plague) to allow us to use our utility skills, like seemingly every other career gets to just keep doing what it does normally, except us.
For example 2 classes and their specials- Warrior & Thief, they don’t have to re-learn their playing style when they punch out Adrenaline or Initiative, all it does is make what they’re already doing, temporarily better.
Even a complicated class like the Elementalist have a better synergy with their class-special, swapping to different elements, but still doing what they do.

Us, we get 4 buttons for as long as the (currently kittened) power pool lasts for and have to not do what we where doing before and flick over to a different play method to reflect that.

I want a weapon set to actually be based around minions, skills to help them actually. Like spawning more bone fiends, or bone minions so they have a reason to fear the small army not o its just a few mobs that die easy and have long bloody recasts. Heck id like to see more minion types instead of some of our signets, give us access to our army of minions like we had in GW1.

We need heals that do not need a foe to trigger like my staff mark does and ways to actually reduce the damage they take because they die from someone sneezing on them as of now. Skills like life transfer have to scale better heal our minions, I want to actully have a minion army and be feared because of it. Not its a necro save him for last.

Lastly fix minions so we can actually tell them to attack something, heck make them follow foes that go stealth, they are a undead army brought back to life with magic, who says they need to see a target on our spectrum of sight to actually follow them.

Yes power necro using well bomb tactic can drop a foe pretty quickly if they are dumb enough to stay in the well, the other players have so many ways to negate our chills, roots, and such its almost a waste to well bomb with such long cool downs because it is easy to get out of it. I do admit though it works in tpvp pretty well because its more lvl playing field and they need to cap the points so they might not realize quickly what you are about todo.

Condition necros are ok, i actually have mine right now built to take hits and bleed foes down which tbh is boring as all heck but it works.

I wish that ANet would expand the uses we have for LifeForce, right now it’s a resource bar with alot of potential, all of which is wasted on DeathShroud.

The best idea I had up to now was to make a second DeathShroud option, Shroud of Ailments.

What it would do is, when you activate it you keep all your normal skills and gain a different shroud animation on you.
While Shroud of ailments is active LifeForce is slowly drained (50 – 66% the rate of DeathShroud) and all CONDITION based damage is instead dealt to the Necromancer’s LifeForce pool.

This would allow a bunch of different things to click on the Necromancer. We have a bunch of condition transfer skills, but we can’t allow ourselves to tank too many before trying to transfer them without being killed.

Keeping the normal skills would allow us to keep recovering LifeForce, so we would be able to tank alot more of conditions on ourselves, which fits with the design idea of the Necromancer being the attrition profession, WE would be able to deal with condition much better than other professions and win long drawn-out fights.

Having the DeathShroud traits available to us WITH our normal skill set and a way to extend shroud’s active duration for longer would also make many of our traits alot more desirable.

I’m not sure about abilities, but prior to release I wrote a backstory for my character.

She was a norn with an abusive mother who meets this friendly asura who adopts her. But the asura are nasty and tease her for being big and stupid. Later some of the inquest are trying to assassinate her adopted father (who is a mesmer btw) and then she sees grenth there in the room with his hand on the assassin’s shoulder, smiling at her. And then she flips out and kills them all. Except in hindsight, after game release, this would be pretty unrealsitic unless they were really incompetent assassins.

Skills:

-Locust Swarm (5th skill Warhorn) steals life when you touch a foe.
-Wells have a longer duration, maybe 7s.
-Dagger have multiple target. (3 max)
-Improved stealing life from Life Siphon.

Traits:

-Vampiric (Minor trait from Blood Magic) has improved stealing life.
-Transfusion (VI Blood Magic) works with Life Siphon, Signet of the Locust and Life transfer.
-Reanimator (Minor trait from Death Magic) summons a jagged horrow everytime you kill a foe. They don’t degenerate and you can summon up to 5.

I would drop DS altogether, necro’s dont need 2 undeath modes, DS and Lich. And tbh, it really doesnt sync well with necros at all.

I would replace it with the summon skills, F1-F4 would be Summon Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, and Flesh Golem.
Only thing is you would have to build up enough life force to beable to summon them.
(I would like to change Shadow Fiend to a “Bone” or “Flesh” creature to fit in with the rest and to make it unique and not a shared with hostile mobs.)

Traits would have to be changed to fit. Like Minion Master would cause summon minion spells to cost less life force, instead of a faster cooldown. And Weakening Shroud would change to somthing like applying weakness to enemys around the necro when he summons. And some new traits to replace old ones like one that grants stacks of might (or direct damage/condition damage) based on the amount of life force you have. So hording life force makes you stronger.

The slots that use to contain the summon skills in your utility would instead have Dark Path, A skill dagger necros would really like to have as a utility, im sure.
Doom, Not only adds fear but also acts as an “attack” command for your minions. And Life Transfer, The only real reason to enter DS when your not about to be downed. (shut up elitists, you know its true) The 4th skill will be named “Death Shroud”, but nothing like the current one. Instead its a block skill that deals damage to a melee attacker as well as gaining a boost of life force, anther skill I think Dagger Necros would enjoy, but still very useful for all types.

This would make all necros minion masters to some degree, but not really effect there play style if they want to focus on being condition-mancers.
Much like all mesmers use clones, despite there build, or how all rangers have a single pet despite there build, I feel all necros should have minions despite there build.

To me, your just not a necro with out an army of undead, imo.

*There are some problems with this idea, like what to do with Bone Field and Flesh Wurm. I think Flesh Wurm could be changed to Spirit Wurm and be a Spectral Skill. But unless im allowed to have F1-F5 I dont know what to do with Bone Fiend with out greatly changing it.

1) Reanimator to do something useful towards our survivability that doesn’t coerce us into Minion-centric builds. “Inevitability of Death” – you gain 1 point of toughness per 2% of Life Force.

2) Better scaling on our life-stealing traits/utilities, and maybe a broad buff to the coefficient for Regeneration.

3) Greathammer weapon option focused on close/ranged control through cripple, chill, and immobilize.

4) Better trait support per tree for Death Shroud. Currently Power-builds are best supported due to Reaper’s Might, Unyielding Blast etc. How about a Curses trait that makes your Life Blast poison your target? Death Magic – when you use Dark Path, all allies within 500 range of your target are granted 3secs of Protection? Allies are healed for 10% of the damage of Life Blast, range 300.

Naturally, just spitballin’ when it comes to the examples.

I would like to see

(Bugs Fixed Duh)

Torch – Black candle – Burn foe(s) and gain life force
Blue Flame – Burn and Chill foe(s)

Jagged horrors do not give boons if killed (if they still do that) and when they die they do a mini Putrid Explosion without the Death nova trait, they are basically Bone minions.

Update Minion AI (also for Pets/Phantasms etc.) Also Change Bone fiend and Shadow Fiends skills or improve them.

A utility Fear (or give it to one of the utilities already available) and maybe Make fear for necromancers better (it is meant to be our thing anyway.)

Bleed needs a power boost or something.

Other debuffs need a bit of a boost as some are seen as lackluster (Vulnerable, Weaken this is just something I’ve heard I do agree in a way.)

I know Death magic is the Minion Line but the second minor trait is useless unless you use minions.

Staffs 1 skill needs a speed boost or something?

Axe needs a power boost or something that gives it that push towards a viable Primary weapon.

Underwater Death shroud 4th skill is horrible, it really needs a change, or a different skill IMO.

Underwater condition is limited (No use of wells, Corruption skills are good but, it would be nice for some AOE ones too)

Buffing?? I’m not 100% sure about this but necromancers buffing capabilities for teammates are a little slim, off the top of my head they can;

Protect (Both themselves and allies)
Regeneration (Both themselves and allies)
Might (Themselves)
Fury (Themselves)
Stability (Themselves)
Retaliation (Themselves)

I might be wrong about this but it would be nice to buff teammates a little better that’s just my opinion.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Minions with auras would be nice that you can either position somewhere or attach to another player (have an undead bunny riding on that guardian for increased movment speed and a short quickness boost). If it just sits around it would be like a banner that gives buffs and what not to everyone around you, and if you attach it to a player it gives even better buffs, but only to that player.
I mean, who wouldnt be inspired to perfom better when they see a cute, undead zombie rabit. Or an even more cute undead zombie turtle. . .

I would like the model for the lich form changed to something smaller and less like I am walking around with a large sign saying kick me. I don’t like the idea of a lich looking like the incredible hulk anyway, I don’t know if its in the lore or something but the idea of a muscle bound lich just doesn’t work for me.

all lich skills replaced with minion summon skills, so that you could have a minion army for 30 seconds. the current skills are good and all but most of them don’t really seem like the sort of thing a lich would have.

jagged horror usually only survive long enough to get one hit in before they die so why not just have them explode upon contact.

the colour of wells to be changed since I find it very difficult to tell the difference between them once they are down. and the number of times I have seen allies walking away from a well when they could really use a bit of healing I am sure they don’t often realise what it is too.

poison cloud effect to be removed from toxic cloud. I don’t even know what this is for, I have never been in a situation where I wanted to charge off a cliff at an enemy, does anyone actually use this?

androidsheep.4271:

I would like the model for the lich form changed to something smaller and less like I am walking around with a large sign saying kick me. I don’t like the idea of a lich looking like the incredible hulk anyway, I don’t know if its in the lore or something but the idea of a muscle bound lich just doesn’t work for me.

all lich skills replaced with minion summon skills, so that you could have a minion army for 30 seconds. the current skills are good and all but most of them don’t really seem like the sort of thing a lich would have.

jagged horror usually only survive long enough to get one hit in before they die so why not just have them explode upon contact.

the colour of wells to be changed since I find it very difficult to tell the difference between them once they are down. and the number of times I have seen allies walking away from a well when they could really use a bit of healing I am sure they don’t often realise what it is too.

poison cloud effect to be removed from toxic cloud. I don’t even know what this is for, I have never been in a situation where I wanted to charge off a cliff at an enemy, does anyone actually use this?

People used to follow me off a cliff on my necro. Now for whatever reason spectral walk no longer recalls me once i jump off the cliff.

thinking about the lich again, usually they have a phylactery (please correct me if thats not what its called) which grants the character immortality until its destroyed. I think it would be cool if when you go into lich form you put down one of those and that acts as your hit points. it could have the effect where you will be able to go charging into battle without worrying about death from the enemy in front of you, but you need to leave the phylactery unguarded to do so.

1. Increase blood fiend heal on attack and attack damage by 100 each (at level 80) making it comparable to other heal skills through the minions passive auto attacks rather than through it’s active.
2. Remove jagged horror degen (this will inevitably cause the mark of horror on lich form to get an increased cooldown so you could only cast it once in that form.)
3. Make the axe cause more vulnerability per auto attack.

androidsheep.4271:

thinking about the lich again, usually they have a phylactery (please correct me if thats not what its called) which grants the character immortality until its destroyed. I think it would be cool if when you go into lich form you put down one of those and that acts as your hit points. it could have the effect where you will be able to go charging into battle without worrying about death from the enemy in front of you, but you need to leave the phylactery unguarded to do so.

I love this idea! Would make the elite a little more useful and strategic. You could wade into battle and practically be invulnerable for 30 secs however, to outweigh this, I think if left unattended one could shatter the phylactery similar to a stomp mechanic (f) but here’s the kicker since the phylactery is imbued with your soul. You would DIE not get downed if it was fully shattered. Now this would only happen if the phylactery is destroyed. You could also damage the phylactery normally up until a point by attacking it, up until it reaches X HP then the phylactery would be slightly cracked and your soul can escape back into your body and you return to normal form.

It could also pulse with an AOE doing spectral damage the more you damage it . .

SO you would either have to hide it well if you’re planning on leaving it unguarded or have a teammate guard it to prevent people from shattering it.