Guild Wars 2

Sorry, wasn’t paying attention. Too busy playing ele. Wait what.

I just don’t see any “diversity” in running basically one set of gear, and swapping between a small pool of utility skills and traits. I get that the game can be balanced so that everyone has a reason to be brought (which would be an improvement), but Necromancers would still be full berzerker with a power sigil/runeset.

Same build, same weapons, same overall traits, same heal skill, and a very small pool of utility skills that are swapped between; and even those have a certain standard set of skills that you trade out in specific situations only. I don’t see that as diversity. Balanced? Maybe, but having only one build isn’t diverse.

That is what people mean. In WvW you have multiple distinct builds (condi, power, minion, and all of them can go for combinations of tankiness, support, and damage) that each fill a niche. In PvE you simply find the build to finish the dungeon the fastest.

New dungeons wouldn’t fix this unless they change how PvE is approached. You don’t need to run a tanky build to kite for your damage, you don’t need to run a support build so your DPS player can afford to go full glass. Everyone just goes full glass with some support to make things easier/faster. The fact that most content in the game can be solo’d just makes it even more obvious that PvE is flawed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, there still isn’t really any “control” going on (due to defiant and melee stacking), but support is.

Defiant forces groups to coordinate cc. Every single day my group utilizes control in almost every encounter to save dodges or give us some safe time when someone screws up. We also use it for setting up burst (ice bow 5), position bosses and mobs or just interrupting key attacks. Stacking melee makes no difference to the use of control. If anything control is more widely used in organized groups because skilled players dont require support as much. Please stop being willfully ignorant.

@Bhawb
Having diversity that forces you to switch gear would be completely unfair and stupid simply because of the amount of grind to get ascended gear.

Soloing isnt as easy as people make it look. I consider content which can be solo’d due to strategic approach and skill to be well designed. The content is really old, this is why people can solo almost everything. If its locked down to require player counts it ruins the fun and creativity you can have with it, even in a group setting.

It makes sense in a real time action based game with no tanks or healers that you should be able to avoid all damage with knowledge and skill. Which in turn means it should be possible to solo many encounters. I dont see why people dislike this. Sounds like you should all go back to a trinity mmo if you dislike gw2’s system so much.

I am gonna give my 2 cents as well, regarding the topic of PvE and build diversity….

As Spoj said, Berserker gear is not the problem… I also agree that forcing other attributes would only make things worse, and not better… You also gotta remember that playing a Full Berserker party requires more than half a brain, and if you cannot utillize it, then there is no shame of having a guardian playing more bunkerish in order for your party to survive – though this mostly counts for higher level fractals only…

The problem with PvE is the way the classes have niches and that a necromancer fullfills none… Necromancers can give some marginal heals in the form of wells, but at the end of the day no one would care about that… The blinds it can put out gets outshined by many other classes such as thieves, elementalists and guardians… Lastly, “control” is sadly not needed at all, unless your group struggles against the Archdiviner or w/e where you can chill and cripple him (which get reduced in turn) to keep him off the backs of the dying party members…

I have discussed this a bit with my guildleader, and we can see no clear horizon for Necromancer to ever fullfill a niche without redesigning mobs… For instance, so it is good to clear their boons or something, and at the same time buffing the utilities massively for PvE only – which is never going to happen…

The last thing I want a Necromancer to get is traits or utilities that other classes have already – Reflects and Power/Precision traits/buffs… The Necromancer should be unique, but the current state of the game does not grant acces to the uniqueness of a necromancer… The only fight where I truly feel like doing something unique is at the Volcano Fractal, when you can immobilize and chill large groups by the use of Epidemic – but again, with a proper team you would never need to have a Necromancer to do so…

Another small thing, a power weapon with cleave would not solve any issues but making the Necromancer slightly more on par with other classes in terms of AoE power… The problem stays where the Necromancer cannot shine like other classes…

I wasnt planning getting involved in this build diversity discussion as all it leads to is derailment of the thread and a flood of posts from both parties who should just agree to disagree on the matter. Its quite evident with comments of if you dont like it leave that there will never be a middle ground to work towards to try to make all happy.

What gives you the right to take hold of a particular gamemode in an MMO and then tell anyone who disagrees to get lost. I think that is both arrogant and absurd and if that is the attitude of those at the top then I shall stick to the bottom rung thanks very much where people are willing to discuss change to accommodate others.

But saying that all the current builds use berzerker gear and that there is diversity is simply an oxymoron. That is not diversity when only a few traits/points are altered around yet still being pigeon holed into the same gear as everyone else. I think it is ignorant to think that the developers designed one particular game mode to use only one particular set of gear out of the many that exist.

It just so happens due to various reasons and flaws that this is the most optimal method but I definitely do not think it was meant as the only way of optimally doing dungeons. As for the whole debate of whether or not altering berzerker gear will harm or benefit the game…no one knows that.

Will it knock a few noses up top out of joint….im pretty sure it will. But people will either move on to the next FOTM build or as they say quit, but you can’t pull a high figure out of thin air because unless you are able to predict the future no-one knows what will happen. But in my eyes PVE is not working as intended and until there is more gear diversity it will always be broken.

With regard to PVP: I really think if Anet gave us a skill that allowed us to mitigate being focused fired, it would do a lot for the class. A unique skill that allowed us block incoming damage for a short period of time, to be used when you get jumped on a point, or want to hold out for your team to come. For example, if we had a skill that would consume lifeforce when activated (outside of deathshroud), during which time we were rendered imobile with stabilty. At the end of the skill, you would detonate in an exploding poison cloud (end poison yourself). So, the skill consumes lifeforce and is active until life force is depleted, the skill goes on a cooldown (maybe 60 seconds) and ends with a small amount of damage and poison to nearbye enemies. This is just an example that i have floating around in my head, so likely not the best representation, and likely there are other better ideas in the community.

WIth regards to PVE: I am not in the “Cleave solves our pve probs crowd”, but i really think something needs to happen with the condition cap, and boon control. Giving us the opportunity to do damage while using a condition build, as well as be able to impact the boons on mobs and bosses. Furthermore, I remember when we were able to fear bosses to interrupt skills. That made us useful, but also rendered bosses more controllable. I still think our fear-interrupt was a huge hit to our pve viability. Thus,if our boon stripping skills were re-added, we would be useful again in pve encounters.

Scarran.9845:

…but I definitely do not think it was meant as the only way of optimally doing dungeons.

There is only ever one optimum. You wont change that. You can make other methods viable, but thats already the case… If you nerf berserker people will just take the next highest dps gear and gearcheck for that. This is why i dont understand why you players keep asking for things to change. None of your suggestions will fix elitism. You cant get rid of elitism no matter what you do.

The best thing to do is make it hard for pugs to run full glass but without driving them from the game. Ironically that doesnt seem possible, as the recent spider queen change shows. People were complaining about stacking and didnt understand why it was done so they used spider queen as an example to complain about. Anet listened and changed her so she poisons even in melee. Who did that stop? Not the stacking “exploiters” that understood the game (we can still stack and burst her down). It only stopped many casual players from running ac. When anet listens to less experienced/casual players who are trying to stop the meta they only end up hurting the casual players they were listening to in the first place. Ironic justice if you ask me.

The issue is the only reason to not run max DPS is if you suck. Every build is made with the intent to deal the most possible damage the fastest. You don’t need a trinity to support difficult encounters where running full glass DPS isn’t possible without someone supporting you. This is how things work in PvP and WvW, and it makes for a far interesting setup, because builds have to actually compliment each other.

If you run full glass DPS, you should need someone running a bit more healing to keep you up. You shouldn’t be able to just literally stand still with all your teammates and spam abilities and win in a matter of seconds. I don’t care how long the content has been out for, the ease with which dungeons are run right now isn’t a matter of good practice at difficult content, it is finding out that content that was once thought to be difficult is actually easily exploited to make mindlessly easy.

There is never a reason to not run a DPS build because the content is so easy that it will never punish you for it. This isn’t about not having a Trinity, or “skill” content, the game is literally so easy that it won’t punish you for running the absolute squishiest builds possible. I’m not asking for them to make zerker bad, I’m asking for them to make dungeons so that a dungeon group needs more than just DPS to be run well.

As to your AC, I don’t see how that is a point. I’ve never been in a group that couldn’t stack and kill Queen very easily. In fact, I’ve never been in a group that failed to complete AC, and I only use LFG to find players. Obviously “casual” players have figured out what to do, because every random pug I find knows the exact way to do that boss.

spoj.9672:

Scarran.9845:

…but I definitely do not think it was meant as the only way of optimally doing dungeons.

There is only ever one optimum. You wont change that.

That’s true but id prefer not to have the same one for every single encounter/content. I would be happy if certain dungeons required a bit of a mixup from the norm rather than just Berzerker/straight out damage.

I think it is feasible but first they need to deal with those 1 shot mechanics that alot of the bosses have. Currently there is no incentive for going anything other than full DPS and these one hit kill shots just cement that fact. If you are going to die in 1 hit regardless then you may aswell go full out dps. Then they can start bringing normal damage up for the bosses and trash mobs so that you get more sustained high damage making it more challenging and harder to compete in DPS only gear.

Will it prevent those at the top from using DPS, I doubt it but if you raise the skill ceiling it means those that are really good can stick to their style and those that aren’t will have to adjust. I dislike the knee jerk reaction that ANet does every time someone yells out that its too hard and dumbing down content is never good for anyone.

Can you list those 1 shot mechanics. Theres actually very few in the game.

spoj.9672:

Can you list those 1 shot mechanics. Theres actually very few in the game.

Its all about perspective. There are quite a few super-high-damaging-kills-me-in-one-hit attacks in the game. Heck, in my favorite dungeon of CoE there’s one around every corner.

Ice elementals have an AoE attack that regularly wipes entire teams single-handedly.
Icebrood Wolves have a pounce attack that does 12k and stuns, letting them do more damage with additional hits. The third hit usually outright kills any non necro/warrior players.
The champion Icebrood Wolf has a pounce attack that hits for 18k, killing GC gear outright.
Subject alpha has several attacks that can kill in one hit, especially if they layer up and strike multiple times. If you stand on the wrong end of Teeth of Mordremoth, you’ll be hit 2 to 3 times, dying instantly.
The legendary golem has a 3 hit stun attack that can kill most players outright without a stun breaker.
The elite assault golems have a very rapid stunning beam channel attack that will kill anyone trapped in it (literally burned down my entire LF bar and all health on a necro).
The champion abomination builds up frenzy by attacking the NPC, and can OHKO once he is near maximum.
The berserkers have a spin attack that hits for 3k to 4k a pop, which they tend to use consecutively, so by the time you realize you shouldn’t be standing there, you’ve taken 12k to 16k damage, dying immediately.
The bomb golems from plant boss on P2 will frequently kill players immediately when they blow up.
The destroyer on P3 has a dragon fang that kills weaker classes in one hit, if it doesn’t knock into the lava, killing again.
The champion destroyer crab has an AoE that rapidly ticks for 4k to 5k damage, killing many classes before they can even run out of the AoE.
The Bloated risen explosion also kills in one hit, in an AoE.

I used to have a valkyrie set for my Ele, but I eventually just got rid of it, because switching from zerker to valkyrie against these enemies didn’t do a darn thing. Keep in mind that most of these are elite mobs that come in groups of two or three, so if the champion icebrood wolf doesn’t OHKO you, the elites that come with him will finish the job.

spoj.9672:

Can you list those 1 shot mechanics.

I could but I wont. I don’t think me listing these will have any bearing on each others opinion on the matter.

Which brings me back to the original post of that we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I doubt there is going to be any sweeping changes to the way PVE works so I doubt the current Zerker meta will change anytime soon.

Until then I shall stick to WvW as currently its the gamemode that I enjoy the most when im not face hugging doors.

IMO Necromancer need to get more DS skills.

Skills that interact with Life Force and make your enemies weaker and himself stronger:

• DS-7: Necromancer sacrifice all life force and steal Power from target enemy to self for a few seconds(numbers or time depend of life force you spent).
• DS-8: Same for Condition Damage.
• DS-9: Same for Toughness.

And ability to enhance the effect of DS-7-8-9 by self-sacrifice:

• DS-6: Transform some of your HP in Life Force.

And teleport skill, we need it because our role in tPVP is all about position:

• DS-0: Necromancer spends all collected Life Force for move him into the target zone(range depends on Life Force).

Plus we need to make possible to use Life Force as a shield outside from Death Shroud by additional button near DS button(call it Spectral Shield). Foot in the Grave trait must be applied to Spectral Shield too, but Vital Persistence cant.

So who we are? Minions and Conditions manager(or boon remover) – yes, fear is our strong feature too, vampirism a bit. But mainly we are Life Force masters, who takes the life force from enemies and use it against them.

Scarran.9845:

spoj.9672:

Can you list those 1 shot mechanics.

I could but I wont. I don’t think me listing these will have any bearing on each others opinion on the matter.

Which brings me back to the original post of that we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I doubt there is going to be any sweeping changes to the way PVE works so I doubt the current Zerker meta will change anytime soon.

Until then I shall stick to WvW as currently its the gamemode that I enjoy the most when im not face hugging doors.

Thats because their arent any true 1 shot attacks.

The hardest hitting attacks are in high level fractals, and hardest ive witnessed recently was a 29k crit on my glass ele from an ascalonian warrior. If i had passive defence + other damage reduction that would not have 1 shot me. Bosses never hit this kittenly ascalonian trash mobs do and they dont crit very often. So the whole arguement of “if I get 1 shot anyway I may aswell go full glass” can get completely thrown out the window. Most attacks seem to hit for about 9-12k max which only 1 shots low hp classes with glass gear (ele has 11k hp). As soon as you add prot, defensive gear or any other form of damage reduction it becomes very difficult to get 1 shot even as an ele.

Bhawb.7408:

There is never a reason to not run a DPS build because the content is so easy that it will never punish you for it. This isn’t about not having a Trinity, or “skill” content, the game is literally so easy that it won’t punish you for running the absolute squishiest builds possible.

Quoting for emphasis, pve mobs need to have more CC (which they use to interrupt or prevent you from kiting, not just spam it on cooldown like Orr mobs and dredge), ways to debuff players when they come under pressure, ways to buff themselves, and ways to heal and revive their allies. Bosses need to have more adds (so aoe bleeds and weakness means something), the damage for their big attacks need to be lowered, so that healing through it becomes an option, and their effective immunity to interrupts needs to be toned down so their attacks can be interrupted. Also, mechanics like a boss being vulnerable only during brief periods need to go, as they severely protract the fight for non-zerker groups.

It’s really confusing with this company: they make so many obvious mistakes which they had solved beautifully in GW1! I understand that some of the people who built that game left, but surely they didn’t take their code with them! It’s not just pve, it’s things like guild-based ladders in pvp, the game modes, and a billion other little things. Did Jeff Strain wipe all the computers when he quit or something?

As to the actual topic of the thread, I really think that ANet needs to take a look at what they said about attrition. Sure, there are builds (I run one) that can use attrition style tactics, but the vast majority of necro builds don’t work that way. If the entire class is designed around attrition and there are very few viable attrition builds, whats the point of this class? The class is in a bad way because ANet cannot decide what needs to be done about necro.

If we want necros to be an attrition class we need a bit more access to stability across the board. It just doesn’t make sense to run foot in the grave on most builds. We could also do with a method to heal in deathshroud that isn’t terrible. Our current traits are less than useless. The last (and I feel most important) thing necros need is more access to gaining life force quickly. If you start off a pvp match you begin with 0 life force. We don’t gain it very quickly so we are forced to play an attrition class without our best attrition mechanic. This makes no sense to me.

I think people aren’t and haven’t been playing Necro right and the devs are stuck trying to weigh options that would break the class or keeping ignorant players unhappy.

If Thief is a striker, and Warrior is muay thai, then a Necro is jiu jitsu. Death Shroud and life force, like adrenaline for Warriors, is what people should be building around. The condi builds, MM Necro, and burst builds don’t play to the Necros strengths, which are:

• Fear and Terror. Every build that a Necro runs should have Terror as a minimum to take advantage of their cover condis that are in every weapon set. The proc traits and runes are only good if you know you’re not dealing with a bunch of stab, which is rare since most teams are running Guard, Warrior, Ele in their teams.

• Boon control. Spinal Shivers, Well of Corruption, Corrupt Boon, Path of Corruption dictate to Eles, Guardians, Engis, and Warriors who rely on them. If you can’t land those skills then l2play. A Necro, and Mesmer, should be in total control of boons in small and large fights.

• Life force, Death Shroud. No other class can replenish a second health bar and extend a fight like a Necro does. 1v1 should not be a problem for Necros with easy life force generation from Axe/Focus, Soul Marks, Spectral Armor/Walk, etc. This means that Vitality is important, so Carrion, Soldiers, Barbarian, and Celestial are the best PvP amulets for Necros.

• Lich form. This is such a devastating cooldown, and while good players can kite it, if you save it for key moments it will change the course of the game.

• Condition swapping/consuming. At least one weapon set should have this so you can punish people who want to dump condis on you, like Condi Warrior or Engi.

The part that people are going wrong is not seeing Necro as someone who can play sides. That’s what they can do best. While boon control is nice in teamfights, a Necro is not at their best without some if not full DS in those situations. More life force in the build lets you take just about anybody on and be able to handle them.

Also, the strength rune meta is literally the smartest idea I’ve seen from Anet. They are screaming at you, “TAKE NECROS AND MESMERS TO TEAMFIGHTS” and no one is listening. Arcane Thievery, Null Field, Well of Corruption, S/D Thief, Corrupt Boon are all calling your names folks.

The devs keep saying Necro is attrition and the players aren’t listening, so unless you want them to throw you another Dhuumfire bone that will enrage the entire community again please play your class better.

Necros have one “attrition” build in MM. They also have one pseudo-bunker build with heavy spectral use. The lack of ability to stay on point ruins that from actually functioning in PvP, though.

The thing is, Death Shroud alone as a mechanic will never make an attrition build. It can prolong things a bit, but in between uses of death shroud, necros have massive vulnerability points. And death shroud can’t be maintained for long in combat between natural decay and the fact enemies can bring it down.

No, Death Shroud alone won’t work. Make life force generation too strong and necros will be nigh invincible outside of short periods. The way to do it would be improving our ability to restore health and/or greatly increasing our access to Weakness (even if it’s more finishers to use with poison fields).

By the way, do you know why necros and mesmers are still absent from this Strength Rune meta? Because removing Might is harder than you’d think. On boon corruption, it’s either #4 or 5 on the list, which means only Corrupt Boon will touch it. For all boon removal, we also have to think about the sheer frequency of boon application. Just like conditions, you can “cover” boons.

Regardless, the builds that dominate PvP right now are also rather strong against both necros and mesmers. Necros because of high CC and cleansing, Mesmers because of high burst damage.

Something to note as far as sPvP goes, a lot of teams are still using Necro well, and Helseth continues to show that Mesmer can still be played. So while we “should” be weak as far as normal accounts go, people have been making it work well.

Inscrutable.8347:

The devs keep saying Necro is attrition and the players aren’t listening, so unless you want them to throw you another Dhuumfire bone that will enrage the entire community again please play your class better.

I agree with the rest of your post, but attrition is less a matter of listening to the devs than you make it seem.
The biggest issue with sustaining ourselves in a fight over a longer period of time is our regular healing. It is just bad. Of course is has to be to some extent because, like you said, DS and life force has to be taken into account as well. But ultimately the fact that we can’t heal in DS at all and that non-vamp-mms can just heal for a measly 5-6k every 25sec puts a clock on almost every fight we’re engaged in.
Other classes can recover to 100% health in combat. Necro attrition on the other hand means that you just prolong the inevitable: if you can’t mitigate everything above 6k dmg every 25 sec with life force you’ll go down eventually. Yes, you can get more healing with extra conditions, regeneration, traits, sigils, runes, ally healing…. but you get the idea. It’s impossible for us to recover from a certain amount of damage.

Bhawb.7408:

Something to note as far as sPvP goes, a lot of teams are still using Necro well, and Helseth continues to show that Mesmer can still be played. So while we “should” be weak as far as normal accounts go, people have been making it work well.

Those seem more like outliers than a real representation of the profession’s strength. Dendi can wreck people as Pudge in Dota but that doesn’t mean Pudge is a strong hero.

As for what Inscrutable said:

MM, Condi and Burst don’t play to a Necro’s strengths?? The 3 most popular and universally accepted as most effective builds in the Necro forums are wrong?
Arrogant much?

Of course I suppose that not everyone has the genius to come up with this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAndWjc0UcbpNm3whbighSyW4Di8BCAq3iroXB-TJBFwACOFAL3fwaZAAPBAA

Of course that’s just a build that relies on power attacks and terror damage but doesn’t have any innate precision or condition damage. Oh right, Lich and Deathly Perception, yeah that’s a reliable source of critical strikes…

tuman.6593:

IMO Necromancer need to get more DS skills.

Skills that interact with Life Force and make your enemies weaker and himself stronger:

• DS-7: Necromancer sacrifice all life force and steal Power from target enemy to self for a few seconds(numbers or time depend of life force you spent).
• DS-8: Same for Condition Damage.
• DS-9: Same for Toughness.

And ability to enhance the effect of DS-7-8-9 by self-sacrifice:

• DS-6: Transform some of your HP in Life Force.

And teleport skill, we need it because our role in tPVP is all about position:

• DS-0: Necromancer spends all collected Life Force for move him into the target zone.

Plus we need to make possible to use Life Force as a shield outside from Death Shroud by additional button near DS button(call it Spectral Shield). Foot in the Grave trait must be applied to Spectral Shield too, but Vital Persistence cant.

So who we are? Minions and Conditions manager(or boon remover) – yes, fear is our strong feature too, vampirism a bit. But mainly we are Life Force masters, who takes the life force from enemies and use it against them.

I think thats a great idea, opens up some interesting options ^^

Kiriakulos.1690:

Bhawb.7408:

Something to note as far as sPvP goes, a lot of teams are still using Necro well, and Helseth continues to show that Mesmer can still be played. So while we “should” be weak as far as normal accounts go, people have been making it work well.

Those seem more like outliers than a real representation of the profession’s strength. Dendi can wreck people as Pudge in Dota but that doesn’t mean Pudge is a strong hero.

Actually, I think it precisely means that Pudge is a strong hero. His only problem is that you need to be good with him specifically, not just good at DOTA mechanics. The risk may be higher, but the reward is there.

If something is strong in the hands of a great player, then it’s strong. Period. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tweaked, especially in an MMO’s case, but I don’t think it’s healthy to refuse to acknowledge that the potential is there.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Bhawb.7408:

Something to note as far as sPvP goes, a lot of teams are still using Necro well, and Helseth continues to show that Mesmer can still be played. So while we “should” be weak as far as normal accounts go, people have been making it work well.

Those seem more like outliers than a real representation of the profession’s strength. Dendi can wreck people as Pudge in Dota but that doesn’t mean Pudge is a strong hero.

As for what Inscrutable said:

MM, Condi and Burst don’t play to a Necro’s strengths?? The 3 most popular and universally accepted as most effective builds in the Necro forums are wrong?
Arrogant much?

Of course I suppose that not everyone has the genius to come up with this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAndWjc0UcbpNm3whbighSyW4Di8BCAq3iroXB-TJBFwACOFAL3fwaZAAPBAA

Of course that’s just a build that relies on power attacks and terror damage but doesn’t have any innate precision or condition damage. Oh right, Lich and Deathly Perception, yeah that’s a reliable source of critical strikes…

Problems with each

• MM has almost no control over their minions and deny the Necro the ability to reinforce teamfights as effectively as other builds. AoE heavy builds demolish the minions, like Staff Ele, Bomb/Nade Engi, etc., there are no good stun breaks, and you’re forced to put most of your traits into minion buffs. It’s a gimmick.

• Burst is better performed by other classes. Thieves are faster, can use blinds, stealth, and evades, Rangers are also faster, can pew pew from 1.5k, and Mesmer has portal, with Shatters being more effective. Necro is too slow without having to use Runes or giving up a Well.

• Condi got nerfed a ton after they goofed up Dhuumfire because of the reason they gave on the stream. They want Necro to be an attrition class, and being able to 100-0 people with condis while having death shroud was too much. Now its becoming less effective to condi dump on people because Eles have easy condi cleanse again, Warriors just zerk stance and lol, Guardians can just bring Purging Flames, and people are moving away from running Engineers, who are a Condi Necro’s snack. Condi Necro needs at least one Condi teammates to diversify the conditions, like how Outplayed has a Condi Engi and Necro on the same team.

• When you actually play my build you’ll see that it works. The only class that gives you significant problems will be a Thief, which you can deal with by running Well of Suffering / Corruption instead of Corrupt Boon so that you get the same kind of effect that a DPS Guard has with PBAoE. Thief has to get in melee at some point and Wells punish them for doing so. I do want to point out that lately I’ve run Pirate Rune and it’s just vicious.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Condi got nerfed a ton after they goofed up Dhuumfire because of the reason they gave on the stream. They want Necro to be an attrition class, and being able to 100-0 people with condis while having death shroud was too much. Now its becoming less effective to condi dump on people because Eles have easy condi cleanse again, Warriors just zerk stance and lol, Guardians can just bring Purging Flames, and people are moving away from running Engineers, who are a Condi Necro’s snack. Condi Necro needs at least one Condi teammates to diversify the conditions, like how Outplayed has a Condi Engi and Necro on the same team.

Nope, atm more engis play than ever and everyone of them uses turret build. Which atm has prety good chances vs necro/arent that easy snack anymore. In team tourney queue theres almost always 1 engi (sometimes even 2) when i face full premade team.

spoj.9672:

Thats because their arent any true 1 shot attacks.

Thaumanova Anomaly terrain breaking mechanic is a one-shot. ;-;

A good 50% of teams I see right now, in actual tournaments (like ESL) run Necromancers, even in EU which historically doesn’t run them as much as NA. The teams that don’t run them are ones like Helseth (who has the mesmer), or ones running things like double warrior. If a build can be used by properly skilled players at a high level, it simply means that the build in question has some mechanic that isn’t being fully leveraged by other players, or a weakness that isn’t being covered for. And I think both are the case, at a high level you see Necromancers with much better positioning such that trying to jump in and focus them will get you killed much faster than they die, and an ability to spike down boon heavy players that good teams capitalize on.

Inscrutable.8347:

• MM has almost no control over their minions and deny the Necro the ability to reinforce teamfights as effectively as other builds. AoE heavy builds demolish the minions, like Staff Ele, Bomb/Nade Engi, etc., there are no good stun breaks, and you’re forced to put most of your traits into minion buffs. It’s a gimmick.

If you’re properly playing MM you have enough control to make the minions do what you need. If you have the right build, this includes them having very meaningful teamfight utility. You don’t actually have to fully trait for minions, either, only Death Magic (6 traits) will be focused on your minions, 5/6 traits of which actually make minion’s deaths fairly trivial. The only thing that happens to an MM build in a teamfight is a drop in DPS, everything else remains constant. Also, MM’s stun break is so good that non MM builds use it, so I don’t see the point there.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Burst is better performed by other classes. Thieves are faster, can use blinds, stealth, and evades, Rangers are also faster, can pew pew from 1.5k, and Mesmer has portal, with Shatters being more effective. Necro is too slow without having to use Runes or giving up a Well.

Power Necro is a gimmick, that’s the only reason it isn’t used. You either single handily wipe a teamfight, or are fairly weak,it all relies on you landing fairly difficult to land projectiles.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Condi got nerfed a ton after they goofed up Dhuumfire because of the reason they gave on the stream. They want Necro to be an attrition class, and being able to 100-0 people with condis while having death shroud was too much. Now its becoming less effective to condi dump on people because Eles have easy condi cleanse again, Warriors just zerk stance and lol, Guardians can just bring Purging Flames, and people are moving away from running Engineers, who are a Condi Necro’s snack. Condi Necro needs at least one Condi teammates to diversify the conditions, like how Outplayed has a Condi Engi and Necro on the same team.

Plenty of teams have done just fine with condi Necros and not having someone to babysit them. So quite a few people have found ways to be successful regardless.

Rising Dusk.2408:

spoj.9672:

Thats because their arent any true 1 shot attacks.

Thaumanova Anomaly terrain breaking mechanic is a one-shot. ;-;

Bingo! Only correct answer.

spoj.9672:

Rising Dusk.2408:

spoj.9672:

Thats because their arent any true 1 shot attacks.

Thaumanova Anomaly terrain breaking mechanic is a one-shot. ;-;

Bingo! Only correct answer.

Not the only one. Kudu has a one-shot skill in CoE story.

Kholer in AC explorable is really, really close to a one-shot. Necros can survive it if they have death shroud ready, but everyone else gets downed if he hits them.

Bhawb.7408:

A good 50% of teams I see right now, in actual tournaments (like ESL) run Necromancers, even in EU which historically doesn’t run them as much as NA. The teams that don’t run them are ones like Helseth (who has the mesmer), or ones running things like double warrior. If a build can be used by properly skilled players at a high level, it simply means that the build in question has some mechanic that isn’t being fully leveraged by other players, or a weakness that isn’t being covered for. And I think both are the case, at a high level you see Necromancers with much better positioning such that trying to jump in and focus them will get you killed much faster than they die, and an ability to spike down boon heavy players that good teams capitalize on.

Inscrutable.8347:

• MM has almost no control over their minions and deny the Necro the ability to reinforce teamfights as effectively as other builds. AoE heavy builds demolish the minions, like Staff Ele, Bomb/Nade Engi, etc., there are no good stun breaks, and you’re forced to put most of your traits into minion buffs. It’s a gimmick.

If you’re properly playing MM you have enough control to make the minions do what you need. If you have the right build, this includes them having very meaningful teamfight utility. You don’t actually have to fully trait for minions, either, only Death Magic (6 traits) will be focused on your minions, 5/6 traits of which actually make minion’s deaths fairly trivial. The only thing that happens to an MM build in a teamfight is a drop in DPS, everything else remains constant. Also, MM’s stun break is so good that non MM builds use it, so I don’t see the point there.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Burst is better performed by other classes. Thieves are faster, can use blinds, stealth, and evades, Rangers are also faster, can pew pew from 1.5k, and Mesmer has portal, with Shatters being more effective. Necro is too slow without having to use Runes or giving up a Well.

Power Necro is a gimmick, that’s the only reason it isn’t used. You either single handily wipe a teamfight, or are fairly weak,it all relies on you landing fairly difficult to land projectiles.

Inscrutable.8347:

• Condi got nerfed a ton after they goofed up Dhuumfire because of the reason they gave on the stream. They want Necro to be an attrition class, and being able to 100-0 people with condis while having death shroud was too much. Now its becoming less effective to condi dump on people because Eles have easy condi cleanse again, Warriors just zerk stance and lol, Guardians can just bring Purging Flames, and people are moving away from running Engineers, who are a Condi Necro’s snack. Condi Necro needs at least one Condi teammates to diversify the conditions, like how Outplayed has a Condi Engi and Necro on the same team.

Plenty of teams have done just fine with condi Necros and not having someone to babysit them. So quite a few people have found ways to be successful regardless.

My point is that Necro does not have to be and, in my opinion, should not be run without placing an emphasis on life force and Death Shroud as its bread and butter. That’s your unique advantage – just when you think you’re gonna kill a Necro he has a full green HP bar and plenty of damage incoming from 50% more crit damage and a great hybrid damage toolkit.

Minions are just a gimmick. It is not good in teamfights at all, there are so many AoE heavy builds that crush the build its unreal.

• Hambow
• GS/Staff Guardian
• Bomb/Nade Engi
• D/D Ele
• Staff Ele
• Power Ranger (kite and pew pew)
• Condi Warrior

Condi is getting represented more because people realize that their 25 might can become a max stack of weakness with a Necro on your team, and that it can be spread to their teammates in 3v3s. I still contend that it’s not an optimal build because all it takes is a Thief/Mesmer focus fire and that dude is a smoking pile of dead. Just because people are bringing the build doesn’t mean it’s good.

Inscrutable.8347:

Minions are just a gimmick. It is not good in teamfights at all, there are so many AoE heavy builds that crush the build its unreal.

What do I gain by a minion living after it has used its ability? DPS, if traited some healing (can be dropped easily in the right builds), and some light control. The best minions and builds utilize minions that aren’t easily killed, or whose death is unimportant.

Flesh Wurm’s range is too high to be killed without purposely focusing him, Bone Fiend is in the same boat, neither will die by random AoE. Bone Minions you’re going to kill anyway, and have absolutely no reason to keep alive. Flesh Golem has 20k HP, 3k armor, and in my build he’s getting healed by myself very often, he’ll go down eventually, but if you’re relying on random AoEs to do it you better be using the right build, and there aren’t many of them.

In fact, the only minion who regularly goes down due to cleave is Shadow Fiend, who is generally considered the second worst minion anyway.

If you know how to use minions, they are fine. Are they top tier? Probably not, but most of the complaints against them are based on ignorance of how to use them.

Ways to fix necro sustain.

• Remove reapers precision and spectral attunement. All spectral skill now grant life force on use no matter what

• Necros passively generate life force at 3% per second while in combat.

• Signet of undeath gets a new passive. (IDK or care what that new passive is.)

• Wells generate 3% life force per enemy in the wells.

If they want us to have sustain and they want that sustain to come from death shroud they need to give us better options to build up life force. I’m all for a fight becoming more in our favor the longer it goes on. But right now that just ain’t happening. If they don’t want to give us good escapes then fine. Give us ways to be true monsters the longer a fight goes on.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

spoj.9672:

Rising Dusk.2408:

spoj.9672:

Thats because their arent any true 1 shot attacks.

Thaumanova Anomaly terrain breaking mechanic is a one-shot. ;-;

Bingo! Only correct answer.

Not the only one. Kudu has a one-shot skill in CoE story.

Kholer in AC explorable is really, really close to a one-shot. Necros can survive it if they have death shroud ready, but everyone else gets downed if he hits them.

Neither of those are 1 shot attacks. The only other attack that comes close is jade maws beam, but you can tank that with a berserker necro so i dont even think thats fair to count. There are many hard hitting attacks that will 1 shot glassy builds in many situations. But they are not true 1 shot attacks. They can be tanked. Either by stacking passive defence, damage reduction buffs or a combination of both.

I bring this up because your arguement was that theres no point taking defensive gear because so many things 1 shot you anyway. Which is completely untrue.

jportell.2197:

Ways to fix necro sustain.

• Remove reapers precision and spectral attunement. All spectral skill now grant life force on use no matter what

• Necros passively generate life force at 3% per second while in combat.

• Signet of undeath gets a new passive. (IDK or care what that new passive is.)

• Wells generate 3% life force per enemy in the wells.

If they want us to have sustain and they want that sustain to come from death shroud they need to give us better options to build up life force. I’m all for a fight becoming more in our favor the longer it goes on. But right now that just ain’t happening. If they don’t want to give us good escapes then fine. Give us ways to be true monsters the longer a fight goes on.

The first thing should be to at least allow the life siphon traits to work in ds (or even healing in general). And if this is not enough maybe then some of the changes would be ok.

Also Lf generation on szepter should be more reliable.

spoj.9672:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

spoj.9672:

Rising Dusk.2408:

spoj.9672:

Thats because their arent any true 1 shot attacks.

Thaumanova Anomaly terrain breaking mechanic is a one-shot. ;-;

Bingo! Only correct answer.

Not the only one. Kudu has a one-shot skill in CoE story.

Kholer in AC explorable is really, really close to a one-shot. Necros can survive it if they have death shroud ready, but everyone else gets downed if he hits them.

Neither of those are 1 shot attacks. The only other attack that comes close is jade maws beam, but you can tank that with a berserker necro so i dont even think thats fair to count. There are many hard hitting attacks that will 1 shot glassy builds in many situations. But they are not true 1 shot attacks. They can be tanked. Either by stacking passive defence, damage reduction buffs or a combination of both.

I bring this up because your arguement was that theres no point taking defensive gear because so many things 1 shot you anyway. Which is completely untrue.

Kudu’s Kill Shot skill is a one-shot attack. It’s subject to Weakness and Protection, but if neither of those is mitigating and you get hit, you do go down because the damage it deals equals your current health * your armor (then divided by your armor, as normal).

Hmm ok yep you’re right about kudu. Its percentage based. But thats just one.

what about wraithlord crusher in Arah path 3(Forgotten)?

Can tank it. It is one of the more hard hitting ones though. :P

However it actually wouldnt even be a 1shot if you get downed by it. Its multiple hits from the shockwave which is why it does so much.

Artasqweroldy.7458:

tuman.6593:

IMO Necromancer need to get more DS skills.

Skills that interact with Life Force and make your enemies weaker and himself stronger:

• DS-7: Necromancer sacrifice all life force and steal Power from target enemy to self for a few seconds(numbers or time depend of life force you spent).
• DS-8: Same for Condition Damage.
• DS-9: Same for Toughness.

And ability to enhance the effect of DS-7-8-9 by self-sacrifice:

• DS-6: Transform some of your HP in Life Force.

And teleport skill, we need it because our role in tPVP is all about position:

• DS-0: Necromancer spends all collected Life Force for move him into the target zone.

Plus we need to make possible to use Life Force as a shield outside from Death Shroud by additional button near DS button(call it Spectral Shield). Foot in the Grave trait must be applied to Spectral Shield too, but Vital Persistence cant.

So who we are? Minions and Conditions manager(or boon remover) – yes, fear is our strong feature too, vampirism a bit. But mainly we are Life Force masters, who takes the life force from enemies and use it against them.

I think thats a great idea, opens up some interesting options ^^

Sad but nobody else think so((

tuman.6593:

Artasqweroldy.7458

I think thats a great idea, opens up some interesting options ^^

Sad but nobody else think so((

I think a lot of people would like to see more shroud skills, and perhaps it will happen at some point anyway.
However,

tuman.6593:

• DS-6: Transform some of your HP in Life Force.

A lot of people don’t realize it (they’d rather see stability/blocks/evades/invulns/mobility…), but the biggest bottleneck to our non-existent attrition game play is our bad healing.
All healing should go through DS and if it was up to me I’d significantly buff the base amount of every standard #6 heal, and on top of that I’d implement some sort of scaling with the number of opponents so that the base amount would be doubled or even trippled if you’re under focus fire by multiple enemies.
The idea of sacrificing hp for lf should is counterproductive, spending lf for hp on the other hand would be a nice addition.

tuman.6593:

And teleport skill, we need it because our role in tPVP is all about position:

• DS-0: Necromancer spends all collected Life Force for move him into the target zone.

I actually made the same suggestion when anet asked the community for ideas for the (back then) new condition and DS5 skill (torment/Tainted Shackles).
It would be nice of course, but it’ll probably never happen because “necros aren’t supposed to have mobility..”.
But imo losing all your life force would be fair trade for a teleport. Also, it wouldn’t have to be an instant blink/stunbreak like other classes have them, the cast time and range could be adjusted in a way to give some in-combat safety rather than ooc mobility.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Bhawb.7408:

Something to note as far as sPvP goes, a lot of teams are still using Necro well, and Helseth continues to show that Mesmer can still be played. So while we “should” be weak as far as normal accounts go, people have been making it work well.

Those seem more like outliers than a real representation of the profession’s strength. Dendi can wreck people as Pudge in Dota but that doesn’t mean Pudge is a strong hero.

Actually, I think it precisely means that Pudge is a strong hero. His only problem is that you need to be good with him specifically, not just good at DOTA mechanics. The risk may be higher, but the reward is there.

If something is strong in the hands of a great player, then it’s strong. Period. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tweaked, especially in an MMO’s case, but I don’t think it’s healthy to refuse to acknowledge that the potential is there.

I disagree. If the hero’s strength is tied to hard to come by circumstances- pudge hooking- or an enemy’s lack of awareness then the hero isn’ t really that strong. It might be almost game breaking with the correct setup but the necessity of that makes most people choose more reliably useful heroes.

This can be seen in the Necro. Many of our skills are somewhat kitten – Putrid Mark, Life Steal, Signet of Vampirism – because they were balanced to be just good in those specific instances.

Wasbunny.6531:

spoj.9672:

Its been said countless times in the past. Whatever their intended design for necro is it needs to be reconsidered if the class is ever to become respectable in all gametypes. If they never introduce a cleave auto attack to necro then there is no hope for the class in pve. And even with cleave, a lot more needs to be done. Simply because the classes core design philosophies dont fit into the pve gametype.

Muchacho.2390:

It seems they want to make mobs more boon dependent in pve. This may help us in pve since we are the kings of boon removel/corruption.

I think these two points sum it up, specifically as far as PvE is concerned.

When they talked about ‘purity of purpose’ they’re talking about the unique strengths of each profession, what each can bring to the table like no other. A role to be filled. Basically answering the very legitimate question, “Why bring a Necromancer?”

One of the major strengths of Necromancers is their boon stripping/corrupting and CC skills. This strength is offset by their lack of ability to generate and share boons with other party members, also their lack of stability to preemptively counter CC. Since right now PvE is virtually devoid of needing boon stripping and Defiant all but negates the need for soft/hard CC’s all those skills/traits become close to useless.

Imagine how many times guardians would be picked for dungeon runs if every AoE from bosses stripped all boons. Taking away the usefulness of boon stripping and CC’s from necros is pretty close. You can’t really be too surprised when necros aren’t the top picks for dungeons. Not their fault, it’s the flawed mechanics of those dungeons.

When Southsun rolled around my Necromancer was really excited to discover that the Retaliation on the karkas was simply wrecking these poor Guardians & Warriors. I had a role, a ‘purity of purpose’ to strip & corrupt the boons as quickly as I could so that the group wouldn’t retaliate themselves to death. It felt good to be needed. I brought something to the table few others could so the synergies of this group combat really shined. The very definition of balance.

The other point I’d like to bring up is for PvP/WvW. As it stands right now Necromancers are not the kings/queens of attrition simply because when multiple enemies hit us the damage is multiplied by that number, since we have no block or invulnerabilities. If a Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer what-have-you is hit by 100 players while blocking/blurred/invulnerable they take 0 damage. If this happens to a Necromancer they are dead.

There’s definitely some reworking that needs to be done for Necromancers so that our ‘purity of purpose’ really is needed and has, um…a purpose.

Mesmer have superior boon removal to necros, auto attack removes boons on sword, clones removes it as well, + null field with the same cooldown as Well of corruption (kinda same cooldown)

Tell me again how good the necro boon removal is?

Necros don’t just remove the boons though. We turn them into conditions.

Shatter mesmers can often rip up to 4 boons with a 4 clone shatter if traited. Necromancers can corrupt them, which is balanced since its not as frequent. What is broken is S/D thieves spamming larcenous strike and stealing on cooldown to someones boons.

Cogbyrn.7283:

If something is strong in the hands of a great player, then it’s strong. Period. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tweaked, especially in an MMO’s case, but I don’t think it’s healthy to refuse to acknowledge that the potential is there.

Debatable… GW2 has an incredibly high skill threshold for an MMO, and being an MMO it has a high knowledge threshold too. It needs almost as much twitchiness as old school FPS games, except instead of 10 weapons and 5 powerups you have hundreds of different skills and casting animations. Sure, some of that knowledge carries over, but not all of it – and most of the muscle memory for executing new skill rotations and combos DEFINITELY doesn’t! So even an easy to play build like hambow warrior would be a pain to learn from scratch, obviously not to play at an “OK” level, because, let’s face it, you could roll your face across the keyboard and do ok with a hambow, but certainly to play at a top-100 level!

So yeah, if you’re a hammer-of-the-gobsmacking-gods-awesome-level necro, it’s not in your interest to give it up to become a merely “good” warrior. And if you’re talking about switching to a class that actually takes SKILL like elementalist, it would take you ages to get up to a similar level of play. But that doesn’t mean that, at the same level of competency, necro=hambow=mesmer=elementalist! And for sure it doesn’t mean that Helseth is AS POWERFUL as a mesmer as he was before the patch – it just means that his team couldn’t (or didn’t want to) find another player who’s as good at (insert meta build X) as Helseth is at mesmer.

Bhawb.7408:

If a build can be used by properly skilled players at a high level, it simply means that the build in question has some mechanic that isn’t being fully leveraged by other players, or a weakness that isn’t being covered for.

You’re right, and the mechanic in question is boon removal – we’ve become the go-to counter for boon-spam meta which the sigil and rune revamp (particularly Runes of Strength) have given rise to. But, as others have mentioned, mesmer can do it almost as well (arguably better if you just care about removing the boons rather than corrupting them). Additionally, the boon removal is only useful in team fights, because necros usually need a teammate to secure the kill. (Not saying we can’t 1v1 people anymore, but with all our damage nerfs it takes quite a bit longer to do now, and in the meantime you’re losing points from them holding the point!)

I admit the last one is more a problem of the game mode than of the profession balance in an abstract sense. In WvW it doesn’t matter as much how long you take to kill someone assuming you get the job done, so the damage nerfs are a bit less of a problem. Although as other people mentioned it also means that people’s cooldowns will come back up and they’ll be able to heal themselves back to 100%, which is a problem.