Guild Wars 2

These were the names of necromancer skills in GW1. With the announcement that new skills and traits will be introduced to GW2, I make the following suggestions:

Rend
33% chance to remove one boon from target (and gain X Life Force; optional) on critical hit.

*Likely a Curses trait.

Soul Barbs
Deal an additional X damage for each boon on a target.

*Not sure which line this would best fit; Spite or Curses perhaps.

Soul Bind
33% chance to cripple a target for 1 second on critical hit.

*Not sure which line this would best fit; Spite or Blood Magic perhaps.

Soul Leech
33% chance to steal one boon from target on critical hit.
OR
Generate 1% Life Force for each boon on a target (perhaps limited to critical hits).
OR
Siphon X health for each boon on a target.

*Not sure which line this would best fit; Blood Magic, Curses, or Soul Reaping perhaps.

Ooh, may I join in? (Don’t want to hi-jack your thread)

I approve of the thoughts behind this, though if I may I would suggest life leech to be more like it’s GW1 counterpart as I would love for a proper life leech build (without minions) to be viable.

Soul Leech <- Trait of some sort
When hit steal X amount of health from your attacker

I heartily approve of your Soul Barbs suggestion, Necros really should have a boon hate trait.

Lemme jump that bandwagon too:
Soul Barbs – Enemies apply (1 stack 10 second) Vulnerability to themself each time they attack you.
Soul Bind – When you get immobilized, crippled or chilled, remove the condition and cast cast Tainted Shackles.
Soul Leech – Hitting 3 or more targets with a single skill gives 3% life force (additional 1% pre additional enemy post 3) – e.g. Well of Blood healing yourself and 4 other people would give 3%, Well of Darkness blinding 5 enemies gives 5% life force pre pulse, works with bleeding (not torment, poison or fear).

Gutbuster.8745:

Ooh, may I join in? (Don’t want to hi-jack your thread)

I approve of the thoughts behind this, though if I may I would suggest life leech to be more like it’s GW1 counterpart as I would love for a proper life leech build (without minions) to be viable.

Soul Leech <- Trait of some sort
When hit steal X amount of health from your attacker

I heartily approve of your Soul Barbs suggestion, Necros really should have a boon hate trait.

Great suggestion. I had considered this, as well. In the back of my head, though, I had recalled making a similar suggestion of a new trait I called “Blood to Life”. I guess I wanted to avoid the appearance of double-posting, so I didn’t include it here.

I like your suggestion, better, though; both in the name and it processing “on hit” rather than “on damage” as I had suggested (as a necro could take a hit but not receive damage if they were under the influence of Aegis, for example).

Andele.1306:

Lemme jump that bandwagon too:
Soul Barbs – Enemies apply (1 stack 10 second) Vulnerability to themself each time they attack you.
Soul Bind – When you get immobilized, crippled or chilled, remove the condition and cast cast Tainted Shackles.
Soul Leech – Hitting 3 or more targets with a single skill gives 3% life force (additional 1% pre additional enemy post 3) – e.g. Well of Blood healing yourself and 4 other people would give 3%, Well of Darkness blinding 5 enemies gives 5% life force pre pulse, works with bleeding (not torment, poison or fear).

I like your Soul Bind suggestion. It would certainly cut down on the CC we receive. I think casting Tainted Shackles every time we’re hit with immobilized, crippled or chilled might be a little OP; but that’s easily addressed with an internal cooldown. Alternately, when hit with any of those conditions, they’re transferred from us to the opponent who applied it in lieu of casting Tainted Shackles.

If those conditions are transferred every time we’re hit with them (i.e. there’s no internal cooldown on the skill/trait), then we should continue to suffer from the condition as well. Kind of a “misery loves company” scenario in which the necro and their opponent are soul bound and share the same CC conditions. Alternately, if the skill/trait has an internal cooldown, then it would function as a strict transfer; the necro loses the condition, the casting opponent gains that condition. This maintains a bit of balance; completely cleanse the condition, but endure a cooldown or afflict the casting opponent every time but continue to suffer the condition ourselves.

With the Soul Leech modification you suggest, this would be a good one to scale based on the number of targets hit (as this idea is being discussed in some other threads). Not just a linear progression of 1% Life Force per target, but an additional 1% for each target past the first. The first target grants 1% Life Force, the second would grant an additional 2%, the third would grant another 3%, etc. Hitting 3 targets would give a cumulative total of 6% (1% + 2% + 3%) Life Force rather than just 3%.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Andele.1306:

Lemme jump that bandwagon too:
Soul Barbs – Enemies apply (1 stack 10 second) Vulnerability to themself each time they attack you.
Soul Bind – When you get immobilized, crippled or chilled, remove the condition and cast cast Tainted Shackles.
Soul Leech – Hitting 3 or more targets with a single skill gives 3% life force (additional 1% pre additional enemy post 3) – e.g. Well of Blood healing yourself and 4 other people would give 3%, Well of Darkness blinding 5 enemies gives 5% life force pre pulse, works with bleeding (not torment, poison or fear).

I like your Soul Bind suggestion. It would certainly cut down on the CC we receive. I think casting Tainted Shackles every time we’re hit with immobilized, crippled or chilled might be a little OP; but that’s easily addressed with an internal cooldown. Alternately, when hit with any of those conditions, they’re transferred from us to the opponent who applied it in lieu of casting Tainted Shackles.

If those conditions are transferred every time we’re hit with them (i.e. there’s no internal cooldown on the skill/trait), then we should continue to suffer from the condition as well. Kind of a “misery loves company” scenario in which the necro and their opponent are soul bound and share the same CC conditions. Alternately, if the skill/trait has an internal cooldown, then it would function as a strict transfer; the necro loses the condition, the casting opponent gains that condition. This maintains a bit of balance; completely cleanse the condition, but endure a cooldown or afflict the casting opponent every time but continue to suffer the condition ourselves.

With the Soul Leech modification you suggest, this would be a good one to scale based on the number of targets hit (as this idea is being discussed in some other threads). Not just a linear progression of 1% Life Force per target, but an additional 1% for each target past the first. The first target grants 1% Life Force, the second would grant an additional 2%, the third would grant another 3%, etc. Hitting 3 targets would give a cumulative total of 6% (1% + 2% + 3%) Life Force rather than just 3%.

Bind would ofc have a cooldown (around 45 or 60 seconds as most such do), but the misery loves company would be also a great idea, so something like:
When you get immobilized, crippled or chilled, apply the condition onto its source (spreads via binding like Tshackles, applies 1 second of the condition, bind lasts just as long as the condition, can only transfer 1 condition pre bind – so that a enemy that can both immob and chill you only gets immobilized, you still should use cleanses, but it forces the enemy to chose the condition that they first apply, because they are gonna suffer the same fate – also target based 5~7 second cooldown – again so that multi condis and good transfer/counterplay is a option).

For life force, that was actually my initial thought, but the numbers are kinda to snowbally with wells, i mean 15% pre second, around 30~40% LF is guaranteed with a good well bomb on a location in pvp where it would be game breaking.

I think I might’ve made a mistake looking through the GW1 skills for some inspiration of other potential traits/utils to get in GW2 because it made me re-realize that the current trait, boon etc system is so poor compared to the old one. So many more interesting enchantments, conditions to do cool stuff with.

Anyway, in line with what I’d like (more proper life leeching) I wouldn’t mind seeing some utils, for example since we do have self inflicting conditions.

Angorodon’s Gaze
Steal X amount of health from target if suffering from a condition

Or something like

Blood Drinker
Steal X amount of health from target and inflict bleeding on self

Honestly there’s so many interesting skills from GW1 I’d like to see make a comeback so the list could go on.

I like the Soul Bind suggestion above as well, personally I’m not a huge fan of traits with long internal CDs so to remedy that I wouldn’t mind seeing it as a limited tainted shackles, one that just focuses on the person that applied the condition to you. That should let the internal CD come down from 45-60 sec to 30 or even less then that. The misery loves company thought process is awesome as well as it ties in quite well with the GW1 skill Contagion