Guild Wars 2

After reading the forums for the past day and a half, I got a slight hint that maybe necromancers aren’t happy with the changes. As someone who has played terrormancer and power necro a bit and had my face wrecked multiple times, I feel you. There’s a lot of builds that almost exist in blood and death magic, but they just don’t work. It feels like there’s a lack of clear vision in those two trait lines.

So, I want to be very open with you guys about what I’m sending to the devs.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND IS NOT THE FINAL VERSION OF THE REPORT. I WILL EDIT AND ADD TO THIS MULTIPLE TIMES BEFORE I SEND IT!

Most of the feedback I’ve read (understandably) has been “WTF IS THIS KITTEN”. I want to get some serious clear suggestions for reworks on all of the traitlines.

1. If you have old posts with suggestions, link to them and I’ll include it.
2. If you have ideas for reworks, post them here.
3. If you have a build type that you’ve always wanted to see for necro, post it!
4. You don’t need to work with what they gave you. Feel free to completely make up your own blood magic line with completely new traits! Even if they don’t fully take your suggestions, it might inspire something cool!
5. While I am the PvP Forum Specialist, I’ll try to include everything I can, even if it dips into PvE and WvW.

I don’t want to read things like “They aren’t listening to us”. They are. Big time. What I put in this report gets plopped right on the desks of the devs working on this rework. There has been no better chance to get your feedback in than right now. Please post!

I have a bunch of suggestions in my analysis for each traitline on the feedback thread. Ill link them here and summarise below.

Spite
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/first#post5002071

• Move Bitter Chill to curses grandmaster and buff it to give +10% damage on chilled foes.
• Siphoned power needs the internal cooldown removed completely. Make it 1 stack of might with no internal cooldown and it can be a decent trait in its new implementation.
• Spiteful spirit needs its internal cooldown removed aswell. Its locked to DS entry which is 10 or 7 second cooldown. So there is no need for an extra ICD to restrict it further. Also make it a blast finisher so players have a reason to take it over CtD (Add the blast finisher to axe 3 while your at it and maybe warhorn 4? ;>).

Curses
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/first#post5002137

• Remove the self weaken from toxic landing.
• Remove the ICD from weakening shroud.
• Delete Reapers Precision and move one of the condi grandmaster traits down to replace it. I would personally suggest move lingering down. That way you make a choice of sustain or terror burst in the grandmaster slot.
• Add a new power focused grandmaster. My suggestion is a buffed Bitter Chill (see above).
• Alternative solution is to bring back Withering Precision but make its ICD per target instead of a global ICD. And add something extra to it to make it worth the slot.

Death Magic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5003966

• Make Greater Marks baseline.
• Give us an active defense trait to replace it. I suggest entering DS gives you vigor.
• Move either Necromantic Corruption or Death Nova down to master tier. Having two minion grandmasters in death magic gives non minion builds no choice but to take Unholy Sanctuary.
• Add a new grandmaster. Something defensive but active. So maybe entering DS makes you reflect/block projectiles for a few seconds.

Blood Magic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5004054

• Remove Vampiric from the minors.
• Make Deathly Invigoration a minor instead and return it to heal on DS exit.
• Move Quickening Thirst to adept and remove Bloodthirst. Remove the movement speed bonus and add +5% damage with daggers (above a health threshold if needed).
• Add vampiric to the master tier. Make this the only siphon trait we have but buff it accordingly.
• Add a new master trait which transfers conditions on lifeblast or through some other method. So we can synergise with Unholy Martyr.
• Remove the siphon from Vampiric Rituals. Siphons should only be from Vampiric.
• With Deathly Invigoration becoming a minor we have a free grandmaster. Add a new grandmaster which allows outside sources of healing to effect the Necro inside DS.

Soul Reaping
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5004104

• Buff the CDR on Vital Persistance/Path of Midnight to 20%.

I’m not big on balance I generally just run around and try to fight things rather than caring if something is or isn’t overpowered. But I wonder if it would be worth merging Chilling Darkness (Curses) with Bitter Chill (Spite) and moving it up to Spite trait line. Maybe reduce the Vulnerability down a few stacks? (3?) Otherwise I feel Chilling Darkness may not see much use and this would open up a slot for a new trait to be created for the Curses line or wherever if they want to shuffle some about.

In addition on the Curses 25s cool down on Enfeebling blood feels a bit harsh and maybe we should look at reducing that cool down a little. Also a little distressed by the apparent lack of Power orientated grand master traits in the Curses line.

Again I’m not much for balance discussion so feel free to rage at me or what not, but if I think of anything else i’ll add it later.

Is this limited to traits?

Sagat.3285:

Is this limited to traits?

No. Feel free to suggest anything. They said they’re reworking signets and unlisted skills as well. Feel free to even mention some tweaks to weapon skills or base mechanics!

That is very nice to hear, thx for doing this!

Please add these two threads

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Terror-should-become-baseline/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Changes-to-Staff-Mastery/

The Gates Assassin.9827:

There’s a lot of builds that almost exist in blood and death magic, but they just don’t work. It feels like there’s a lack of clear vision in those two trait lines.

I think most of the complaints regarding those two lines, especially Blood Magic, aren’t really related to the trait changes directly.
Blood Magic traits, like some of the traits in Spite and Parasitic Contagion in Curses, even the newest addition to our healing skills (Vamp Signet), simply doesn’t work well because no healing works through Death Shroud.
There have been countless threads (one of the most recent ones) supporting all sources of healing to actually work with our core defensive mechanic. This has to be implemented first before any attempt of balancing vamp traits can be made.

Thank you The Gates Assassin for giving us the opportunity to talk directly to the Dev! Great initiative!

I admire your work and persistence Gates. But at the same time I just don’t believe for one second that they care about any of what we say, even you with a link to them. Back in alpha and beta everyone told them to not do 1 pvp game mode and they just decided they were right and did it anyway. Took them 3 years to realise the mistake they made with the new mode in the expansion. In that 3 years the game lost 99% of its pvp community and is left with zero serious pvp teams or players.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I admire your work and persistence Gates. But at the same time I just don’t believe for one second that they care about any of what we say, even you with a link to them. Back in alpha and beta everyone told them to not do 1 pvp game mode and they just decided they were right and did it anyway. Took them 3 years to realise the mistake they made with the new mode in the expansion. In that 3 years the game lost 99% of its pvp community and is left with zero serious pvp teams or players.

That’s an entire gamemode. It’s also during a time where the general feeling was “FFFFF WE NEED TO GET THIS kitten OUT CUZ RELEASE IS COMING”. The feeling now is “Let’s fix everything that’s broken.” I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t believe it. I mean, look at the engi stuff! The only reason it’s that good is because they’re working on it the most right now. Necro will get its turn and I want to make sure they have a full report from the community to work with.

I am glad that “a” person actually got the feedback…

I gotta be honest, I had my last day of worked (forced due to savings, I have a contract, but no hours), woke up early for my last day, which are already two things that do not help one’s concentration or mood
Yesterday, I went to bed after witnessing the Mesmer changes, and was positively surprised as to what I saw, thinking some good things might come
Sadly, I saw what was… well nothing… So obviously I came to the forums and ventilated a bit in a sarcastic matter… I will fully apolegize for that

So thanks for the work you put in here… I hope it will be heard…
I myself cannot think of any substantial changes now due to a severe lack of sleep and aggitation – I just wished there was something that would incentify support within the team (As in, DPS support, not just healing and not in the form of Vulnerability)

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I admire your work and persistence Gates. But at the same time I just don’t believe for one second that they care about any of what we say, even you with a link to them. Back in alpha and beta everyone told them to not do 1 pvp game mode and they just decided they were right and did it anyway. Took them 3 years to realise the mistake they made with the new mode in the expansion. In that 3 years the game lost 99% of its pvp community and is left with zero serious pvp teams or players.

That’s an entire gamemode. It’s also during a time where the general feeling was “FFFFF WE NEED TO GET THIS kitten OUT CUZ RELEASE IS COMING”. The feeling now is “Let’s fix everything that’s broken.” I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t believe it. I mean, look at the engi stuff! The only reason it’s that good is because they’re working on it the most right now. Necro will get its turn and I want to make sure they have a full report from the community to work with.

Necro has already been worked on. That is why its already in game. Its finished. The engi changes are not in game because they are being done now.

For as long as I have played necro, I have been completely in awe at the uselessness of
Speed of Shadows. Even with its current change (increase movement in DS, reduce recharge of DS), the 25% speed increase is completely negligible.

I suggest changing the 25% speed boost to giving Superspeed while in deathshroud. That way, necro’s could actually have some sort of chase-ability in their repertoire.

Malchior.1928:

For as long as I have played necro, I have been completely in awe at the uselessness of
Speed of Shadows. Even with its current change (increase movement in DS, reduce recharge of DS), the 25% speed increase is completely negligible.

I suggest changing the 25% speed boost to giving Superspeed while in deathshroud. That way, necro’s could actually have some sort of chase-ability in their repertoire.

What about -33% crippled chilled and immobilize while in DS and entering DS grants 4s of swiftness? Super Speed is a bit too much I think.

spoj.9672:

I have a bunch of suggestions in my analysis for each traitline on the feedback thread. Ill link them here and summarise below.

Spite
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/first#post5002071

• Move Bitter Chill to curses grandmaster and buff it to give +10% damage on chilled foes.
• Siphoned power needs the internal cooldown removed completely. Make it 1 stack of might with no internal cooldown and it can be a decent trait in its new implementation.
• Spiteful spirit needs its internal cooldown removed aswell. Its locked to DS entry which is 10 or 7 second cooldown. So there is no need for an extra ICD to restrict it further. Also make it a blast finisher so players have a reason to take it over CtD (Add the blast finisher to axe 3 while your at it and maybe warhorn 4? ;>).

Curses
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/first#post5002137

• Remove the self weaken from toxic landing.
• Remove the ICD from weakening shroud.
• Delete Reapers Precision and move one of the condi grandmaster traits down to replace it. I would personally suggest move lingering down. That way you make a choice of sustain or terror burst in the grandmaster slot.
• Add a new power focused grandmaster. My suggestion is a buffed Bitter Chill (see above).
• Alternative solution is to bring back Withering Precision but make its ICD per target instead of a global ICD. And add something extra to it to make it worth the slot.

Death Magic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5003966

• Make Greater Marks baseline.
• Give us an active defense trait to replace it. I suggest entering DS gives you vigor.
• Move either Necromantic Corruption or Death Nova down to master tier. Having two minion grandmasters in death magic gives non minion builds no choice but to take Unholy Sanctuary.
• Add a new grandmaster. Something defensive but active. So maybe entering DS makes you reflect/block projectiles for a few seconds.

Blood Magic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5004054

• Remove Vampiric from the minors.
• Make Deathly Invigoration a minor instead and return it to heal on DS exit.
• Move Quickening Thirst to adept and remove Bloodthirst. Remove the movement speed bonus and add +5% damage with daggers (above a health threshold if needed).
• Add vampiric to the master tier. Make this the only siphon trait we have but buff it accordingly.
• Add a new master trait which transfers conditions on lifeblast or through some other method. So we can synergise with Unholy Martyr.
• Remove the siphon from Vampiric Rituals. Siphons should only be from Vampiric.
• With Deathly Invigoration becoming a minor we have a free grandmaster. Add a new grandmaster which allows outside sources of healing to effect the Necro inside DS.

Soul Reaping
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5004104

• Buff the CDR on Vital Persistance/Path of Midnight to 20%.

I think that those are solid changes and i would totally fine with those changes.

But i kinda wish bloodmagic would give us support in form of siphon share. Maybe something like a vampiric aura that gives allies (necro included) life siphon on attacks. I think something like that would fit a support necro more then simple heals.

Regarding Curses:

Gates, if you play conditionmancer and terrormancer, did you have terror in both of those builds?? I do, and I feel its necessary as we, as a condi build, do not stack condis like other classes, and instead rely on damage output by all condi’s we can stick on an enemy. Thus, I have relied on terror/fear as a damage if i play terrormancer or if i play condi mancer. The biggest difference between the two was wether or not I had the “Master of Terror” Skill in the soul reaping line. Meaning that I relied on the fear in both builds, and the difference was the presence of the duration skill and not whether fear itself was doing damage. Moving Terror to the Grandmaster level (which is entirely unwarranted) forces us to choose between a heavily needed skill in all condi builds (terror), for a skill that increase duration on all condis. It will be a net nerf to damage output in almost all condi builds, given the changes to condi duration.

I feel that the DEVs don’t realize this, and instead made a quick decision without any education.

With regard to Spite: I was ok with the changes, though I did not feel that there was anything special to be honest. The traits we choose in almost all power builds have remained, and we got a GM trait that will never be taken because it simply won’t compete with close to death. The changes to axe were an overall nerf, and will simply reinforce the fact that we simply do not use axe. A cooldown reduction if we use the worst autoattack in the game? ok, do you play this class devs?

Deathmagic? I felt there was nothign here except for minion builds, as the non-minion traits selected were simply the traits that are used on non minion builds if you go into death magic.

Blood magic has been a mess since this game came out, and I can’t think of a single builds outside of minions where blood magic is used for any benefit … at all. Its worthless, especially if you go power and find yourself in DS a lot. So, without any changes to DS blocking out own healing abilities, then it will forever be, useless. Who cares if you get a speed increase with a dagger, big deal.

Soul reaping is fine, but I am frustrated with the nerf to Dhuumfire. Dhuumfire has been a bane to our existence, and it was only powerful when it was on crit. Now it is rarely, if ever used, unless you go full glass condi build. Anet nerfed several of our bleed skills because of dhuumfire, nerfed dhuumfire and never returned our ability to stack bleeds. So, we have a lessor version of dhuumfire tied to DS life blast (the slowest, most telegraphed attack in the game) that will have its damage lowered even more, and require us to stay in DS, as a condi builds, for even longer to get anything out of the skill. Burning at one stack for one second? if you happen to hit, is far surpassed by 1 scepter hit, aside from the fact that condi builds have a terribly hard time regaining life force. So who will even take that skill again, given that we have 0 access to stability aside from crappy transforms, and FitG.

So in general, condi builds will suffer a net loss to damage, and we will still choose the same skills we have since beta on condi builds.

And perhaps you can let the devs know that several of us in the community can see their disdain and lack of professionalism with regard to this class in the videos. It is such a slap in the face to see it, and it downright kittens me off.

I just posted my feedback in Spoj’s thread just now, here are the links:

Spite and Curses:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/3#post5005903
Death and Blood Magic:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/3#post5005906
Soul Reaping:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/3#post5005913

There’s very little that comes to my mind in terms of Necro balance.

I mean, fixing couple traits here and there is okay for balance patch, but not for expansion. I expect sweeping changes from expansion, not merging couple traits, putting them all around and calling it a day.

Unless Death Shroud and it’s idea expands, we look at weapons themselves and on other professions capabilites with relation to re-thinking general vision behind the Necromancer (bullkitten like Attrition, managing Life Force, non-existant party buff in a game built on teamwork), I won’t take part in balancing. I’ve done that in past 3 years. Not anymore.

If they express good will and tell me that they want to get Necromancer on drawning board, I’m all theirs and can provide a lot of my free time even for big projects and discussion.

There was time for bandaiding, merging traits over three years. For expansion, I expect them to use our 3 year feedback, analyze it, review current Necromancer, re-vision the idea and run Public Test Betas where we can actually help them, not dedicating our free time writing our views on forums, getting trashed.

I read the changes. They’re okay. But we need help beyond that because Necromancer is flawed at core.

Thank you,
Rym.

Alright I’ll focus on “gate” propositions that open space and don’t hold back other suggestions to the core. I’ll say in advance that my propositions don’t add much new but rather add reworks since the necromancer change mostly shuffled traits and didn’t add much new.

Death Shround:
Remove the second HP of Death Shround,turn it’s skills into F1-F5. Why? Allowing a resource mechanic to be affected by foes is not good especially if it’s tied to defense and locks you to 5 skills,heals are also prevented while using it and favors a non active style of facetanking. Life Blast can be used without canceling other weapons skills/utilities,Dark Path becomes slower version of Ride the Lighting and lower range, Life Transfer and Tainted Shackles CD reduced to 35 secs. Each skill will cost an mount of LF even Life Blast. Vitality no longer increase the pool and the pool cannot be increased you can only reduce LF cost.

Traits that require the entrance of DS can be tied to F skills ex: Weakening Shroud can remain 25 sec CD affected by dagger traits but triggers when Dark Path connects to a foe. FotG can break stun and grant 3 stack of stab for 7 sec when using Doom whether it hits or not. Traits that require you to stay in DS gets a constant effect ex: Unholy Marty can make absorb 1 condition from an ally healing him and you for a small amount gathering conditions for transfer or heal while providing support, Deathly Perception can grant you increase crit chance based on amount of LF.

Signets:
Signet of Undeath, active need lower CD(lower than War Banner) and cast time, Signet of Spite need lower CD (50),Signet of Locust need to be an instant break stun the siphon effect will have 1/4 sec activation CD 30 sec,Signet of Vampirism needs to steal HP when it with no ICD the active need to provides it’s effect in a AoE directly to allies 5 stacks per each CD 30 cast time reduction, Signet of Plague needs to heal you for a small amount when a condition is absorbed CD 50 sec.

Corruption:
Consume Conditions should be one, Corrupt Boon boon limit up to 7 or put stab higher on the list CD reduced to 35 sec, Corrosive Poison Could needs to destroy projectiles remove the self weakness and replace with 2 stacks of torment, Epidemic increase radius to 900 cast time reduction, Blood is Power needs to provide AoE might(5) with shorter but stronger outgoing bleed (20 sec 4 stacks) and ingoing bleed(10 sec 2 stacks) CD reduced to 25.

Spectral:
Spectral Armor grants 2 stacks of stab, Spectrall Recall grants 6 secs of reflect when used Spectrall Wall CD reduced to 50, Spectral grasp increased projectile speed CD 25. Lich becomes a spectral skill.

Wells:
Well of Darkness is now an Ice field reduced CD to 30 sec,Well of Power pulses stab CD ,Well of Blood grants AoE projectile destruction CD 35 water field,Plague is now a well and can be used to throw yourself as same range as other wells for.

Minions:
Flesh Wurm increased range to 1.5 k cast time reduced to 3/4 sec,Blood Fiend now scales off your healing power it’s attacks are considered as siphon attacks more frequently (2 sec), all minion can attack while walking.

Like someone mentioned how far do they plan rework?? DS itself is not a scaling defense and they are forcing us into it ignoring our needs so really are they going as far as the core of necro?

And I think Drarnor Kunoram had a good idea to solve the impending problem with condi builds. (my personal comments follow his original suggestions).
1. Merge Terror with Master of Terror. Move to the Grandmaster Soulreaping slot.
– Right now it is a master tier skill, and you are not making it more powerful by moving it to a Grandmaster spot. How can you possibly justify this? Move a skill that is a solid master tier skill to a grandmaster skill level just because we pick it a lot? Now it will compete with two other grandmaster skills, that have been grandmaster skills since they were released. There is no justification for this.

2. Move Dhuumfire to Master tier for Soul Reaping.
- You are nerfing the damage to dhuumfire by 66%, though you are allowing us to stack it. How does this warrant a grandmaster trait in competition with two of the best skills in the game, deathly perception, and FitG, for necros. You are forcing us to stay in DS longer to get anything out of burning, which will only happen on condi builds, which can’t regain life force fast enough. Why? In addition, if Master of terror is not merged with Terror, Dhuumfire, will compete with the master of terror skill, which in my opinion, is the “defining” terrormancer trait, not Terror itself. Thus, to be a terrormancer, you choose Master of Terror over Dhuumfire. That is a fair viewpoint.

3. Add a new, non-condition damage focused Grandmaster trait in Curses.
This Needs to happen if condi builds want to remain important.
- this needs to happen as well, becuase power builds will need to take the curses line to pick up necessary traits, but will simply have to choose one of the current grandmasters in Curses as a simple placeholder, because NONE of them give us anything.

Totally forgot to mention this.

As much as im ok with the vampiric ritual trait being a load of well traits bunged together. I really dislike having siphons on them. Its messy and it means non damaging wells are going to put me in combat (WoP and WoB). To be honest I would do something totally different for a wells grandmaster trait (Wells block projectiles?) and add the wells prot trait into that.

I would make the well cooldown reduction baseline.

The PVE side of the equation has also been completely ignored as well. The class still provides nothing of value to the group while at the same time having one of the lowest DPS cycles in the game. I was surprised no trait changes helped your allies. Especially since a rework of the siphon traits could have opened so many doors.

Power builds in particular have changed very little. They’re going to use the exact same traits as they do now, but more because the alternatives are so awful. Without knowing how Signet of the Locust changed, it’s too early to say anything about Signet Mastery other than the simple fact that there’s absolutely no way that is GM worthy. The same is true for Spiteful spirit.

But that said, I’m also afraid what would happen if alternative traits were introduced that were actually worth taking? Power Necros are barely staying afloat as it is right now. Can you imagine how powerful a trait would have to be if it were going to replace Close to Death for a power build?

The Necro changes were easily the least inspired of all the classes. Simple mergers and half-hearted attempts at different traits that no one in their right mind would ever consider using isn’t enough at this stage.

Honestly these balance changes are something i’d expect for a normal balance patch, not an expansion. An expansion should significantly alter the class to bring it up to par with the other classes. The devs have had 3 years of feedback to do small balance changes, necro needs to be reimagined from the ground up. However the devs seem to have focused that effort entirely on engineer, so I assume those kinds of sweeping changes are off the table now.

If we are forced to work within the scope of these very minor tweaks then I think Spoj’s suggestions would make the best use of the least amount of changes. The biggest problems that I see are that power builds are forced to take the curses line but have no viable GM traits to take, and since we are no longer allowed to only spec partially into a line this is a problem. Additionally conditions have had all of their best traits smashed into one line and mostly at the GM tier, meaning we only get partial functionality and have two entire other trait lines that are essentially doing nothing for our condition damage.

I have not played extensively with all the necro specs, but it seems all of our heal and support traits have no effect on us, and only help others… it is hard to help others when we are focused and dead almost immediately.

spoj.9672:

Totally forgot to mention this.

As much as im ok with the vampiric ritual trait being a load of well traits bunged together. I really dislike having siphons on them. Its messy and it means non damaging wells are going to put me in combat (WoP and WoB). To be honest I would do something totally different for a wells grandmaster trait (Wells block projectiles?) and add the wells prot trait into that.

I would make the well cooldown reduction baseline.

Would this be overpowered?

Move the siphon life to Blood Thirst and remove the well cooldown reduction and make all wells have the same cooldown (50seconds). Make this trait reduce your well cooldowns by 1% everytime you crit while in deathshroud. PvP won’t change too much because people don’t sit in wells. WvW will be hit hard, but since the strongest well just had its cooldown increased by 15 seconds, it will balance it out. In PvE, this will have an enormous impact on the class’s DPS while also being beneficial because of the utility on the wells in addition to their damage.

@The Gates Assasin.9827 Before giving anymore feedback seriously what kind of feedback are they talking about? Is it simple ones that will just recreate the usual gap between us and other classes that grew overtime? I started feeling this thread until I thought about that it’s not really “official” and we don’t how the extent of feedback they want.

I think that what necros really lack is survivability (no, I’m not trying to be captain obvious).
We NEED some kind of defensive trait or mechanic (I’m praying that greatsword will give us some sort of block/reflect), but for the time being I think we deserve something.
My 3 ideas:

1) Master/Grandmaster trait that grants 1/2 stacks of stability upon using a spectral skill.
2) Spectral Wall also blocks projectiles. (This would put it on par with thief’s Smoke Screen).
3) Spectral Armor also reflects projectiles.

Necros can dish out good damage, but we’re no good to anyone if we have to think about keeping ourselves alive rather than killing enemies. Anet please give us some sort of survivability.

Thanks.

@The Gates Assassin: Props to you for this initiative.

While I do appreciate actual feedback on the forums, please understand us when we feel like no one listened despite our suggestions, despite us saying “this doesn’t work, please fix it” Im really not sure whoever it was was in their right friggin mind when they put [Dhuumefire](a condition) in a power traitline?! To top it off, yesterday’s stream furthering our concerns for well over a year now because currently Necros doesn’t feel much of a class support or damage wise.

spoj.9672:

I have a bunch of suggestions in my analysis for each traitline on the feedback thread. Ill link them here and summarise below.

Spite
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/first#post5002071

• Move Bitter Chill to curses grandmaster and buff it to give +10% damage on chilled foes.
• Siphoned power needs the internal cooldown removed completely. Make it 1 stack of might with no internal cooldown and it can be a decent trait in its new implementation.
• Spiteful spirit needs its internal cooldown removed aswell. Its locked to DS entry which is 10 or 7 second cooldown. So there is no need for an extra ICD to restrict it further. Also make it a blast finisher so players have a reason to take it over CtD (Add the blast finisher to axe 3 while your at it and maybe warhorn 4? ;>).

Curses
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/first#post5002137

• Remove the self weaken from toxic landing.
• Remove the ICD from weakening shroud.
• Delete Reapers Precision and move one of the condi grandmaster traits down to replace it. I would personally suggest move lingering down. That way you make a choice of sustain or terror burst in the grandmaster slot.
• Add a new power focused grandmaster. My suggestion is a buffed Bitter Chill (see above).
• Alternative solution is to bring back Withering Precision but make its ICD per target instead of a global ICD. And add something extra to it to make it worth the slot.

Death Magic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5003966

• Make Greater Marks baseline.
• Give us an active defense trait to replace it. I suggest entering DS gives you vigor.
• Move either Necromantic Corruption or Death Nova down to master tier. Having two minion grandmasters in death magic gives non minion builds no choice but to take Unholy Sanctuary.
• Add a new grandmaster. Something defensive but active. So maybe entering DS makes you reflect/block projectiles for a few seconds.

Blood Magic
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5004054

• Remove Vampiric from the minors.
• Make Deathly Invigoration a minor instead and return it to heal on DS exit.
• Move Quickening Thirst to adept and remove Bloodthirst. Remove the movement speed bonus and add +5% damage with daggers (above a health threshold if needed).
• Add vampiric to the master tier. Make this the only siphon trait we have but buff it accordingly.
• Add a new master trait which transfers conditions on lifeblast or through some other method. So we can synergise with Unholy Martyr.
• Remove the siphon from Vampiric Rituals. Siphons should only be from Vampiric.
• With Deathly Invigoration becoming a minor we have a free grandmaster. Add a new grandmaster which allows outside sources of healing to effect the Necro inside DS.

Soul Reaping
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necro-Spec-Notes-Feedback/page/2#post5004104

• Buff the CDR on Vital Persistance/Path of Midnight to 20%.

1. Wouldnt Bitter Chill have more synergy (and able to stay in Spite) if Death Shiver caused Chill?

2. Isnt it flat out bad that Siphoned power relies mostly on the enemy?

3. Why not make Spiteful Spirit actual GW1 Spiteful Spirit? Enemies that attack (you) deal damage around them (and to themselves), current proposed one just encourages discarding DS for flashing it.

4. Why, doesnt that just make both a option? Also wouldnt something like Death Perception make a good Curse GM? Both helps with DS and power.

5. Isnt the point of necro not to have many boons, especially not active defense, so vigor goes against that.

6. DM (despite the fact that minors for both DM and BM should be universal, not balanced for minions) is still a minion mostly line, makes sense to have 2 minion GMs, just like it makes sense to have 2 direct damage in spite and 2 health/healing/siphon related in BM.

7. Wouldnt multiple vampiric traits allow for better specialization? Maybe all 3 as grandmaster slot, thus either minions siphon, crits siphon for some defense (or give a shield or something) and some sort of tank siphoning/indirect team support siphon?

8. The idea of condi transfer life blast, why not for Soul Reaping GMs to be all life blast versions (current Renewing blast is a cool idea, even if not very practical), so like: Healing AoE thingy Guard tome like “blast”, Underwater Life Blast or “Dhuumfire Blast” as meaningful options for SR?

Taking into consideration what other classes got I believe we are entitled to equally good changes. Some general opinions on how the traits should be changed I hold are the following:

Spite
Minors:

• Spiteful Renewal: Bump the required health threshold up a bit. Decrease the healing if needed.

• Death’s Embrace: Fine as is. The nerf was warranted.

• Siphoned Power: Decrease the internal cooldown to 1 seconds and reduce the might gain to 1 Might.

Adept:

• Spiteful Talisman: I like this as is. But from a gameplay perspective It would be nice if it did something else than a flat +5% damage. I would suggest removing the damage increase and making it reduce Focus skill activation time by 50% instead.

• Reaper’s Might: This is a skill that I think should be made to affect allies as well. It won’t make us good for PvE content but it will make taking a Necro in your party slightly less redudant.

• Bitter Chill: This feels really lackluster outside of synergy with Chilling Darkness combined with Well of Darkness or Plague of Darkness. Unless vulnerability will get its stack cap increased above 25 stacks I suggest making this skill inflict Burning whenever you apply Chill instead. Alternatively make Chill cause damage they way Terror does with Fear.

Master:

• Chill of Death: Fine as is. I suggest adding an icon to it on the Necromancers boon bar so enemies know it can trigger as it currently lacks counterplay.

• Death Shiver: This trait is competing with Chill of Death add 10% damage to enemies with Vulnerbility on them. Keep the rest as is.

• Axe Training: Once more this is a skill that competes with Chill of Death for a spot. Remove damage increasing fact. Instead add a 3rd hit to Rending Claws(still same activation time and aftercast), add 2 more hits to Ghastly Claws, Unholy Feast now removes 2 boons.

Grandmaster:

• Signet Mastery: Add a range increase(Radius increase for Signet of Undeath). Keep the rest as is.

• Close to Death: No change needed.

• Spiteful Spirit: Unsure as I haven’t seen this in action. I still suggest changing this to cause Unholy Feast to procc on hit when you are in Death Shroud instead. Same internal cooldown.

Curses
Minors:

• Barbed Precision: No change needed. Solid buff.

• Furious Demise: No change needed even though I am not keen skills that promote DS flashing. Would prefer if it was 4 seconds of Fury every 10 seconds while you’re in DS.

• Target the Weak: Horrible change. Revert to the old function.

Adept:

• Toxic Landing: Remove the self-inflicted Weakness. I’d rather take full fall damage than have to deal with 6 seconds of weakness on me.

• Weakening Shroud: Better than the current one by far. I never liked the way Weakening Shroud was changed back long ago. The long duration Weakness was always the main attraction of the trait for me.

• Chilling Darkness: Good trait. No need to change anything.

Master:

• Reaper’s Precision: Useless. Change it to work like Spotter/Empower Allies/Strength In Numbers and give it +150 Ferocity to nearby Allies. Move to Grandmaster.

• Path of Corruption: No change needed.

• Banshee’s Wail: No change needed.

Grandmaster:

• Lingering Curse: Cut that condition duration increase in half. 100% is too much.

• Parasitic Contagion: Keep as is.

• Terror: Move down to Master tier.

Death Magic
Minors:

• Armored Shroud: No change needed.

• Soul Comprehension: No change needed.

• Beyond the Veil: Intriguing skill. Interested in seeing how it works in action.

Adept:

• Flesh of the Master: Solid as ever. Obligatory MM trait. No need to change.

• Shrouded Removal: Keep as is.

• Putrid Defense: I can see this being taken by Condi Necros who simply want Greater Marks. Not very attractive otherwise.

Master:

• Greater Marks. No need to change.

• Reaper’s Protection: Move to Grandmaster.

• Deadly Strength: Might be good. Keep as is.

Grandmaster:

• Death Nova: Move down to Master.

• Necromantic Corruption: Looks good. Don’t change.

• Unholy Sanctuary: Extend healing the effect to affect allies as well.

Blood Magic

Minors:

• Full of Life: Not a lot to say. The internal cooldown looks a bit high.

• Vampiric: No need to change.

• Blood to Power: Terrible. Siphons scale badly with Healing Power and +300 wont even be noticeable at all. Make it +300 Power instead.

Adept:

• Ritual of Life: Good support trait. No change needed.

• Bloodthirst: Would be a good trait if siphons weren’t so terrible. No change needed.

• Mark of Evasion: Merge with Transfusion. Make it trigger on entering DS instead.

Master:

• Quickening Thirst: Solid buff/merge to a formerly terrible trait.

• Vampiric Precision: Awful. Would be good if the siphons were as good as the ones from Superior Sigil of Blood.

• Transfusion: Merge with Deathly Invigoration

Grandmaster:

• Vampiric Rituals: Solid merge of underused traits. No need to change.

• Unholy Martyr: Decent niche trait. No need to change.

• Deathly Invigoration: Merge with Transfusion.

Soul Reaping
Minors:

• Gluttony: Good. No change needed.

• Last Gasp: Good. No change needed.

• Strength of Undeath: Good. No change needed.

Adept:

• Unyielding Blast: Good. No change needed.

• Soul Marks: Solid merge. No change needed.

• Speed of Shadows:

Master:

• Spectral Mastery: Solid merge. No change needed.

• Vital Persistance: Solid merge. No change needed.

• Master of Terror: Solid merge. No change needed.

Grandmaster:

• Foot in the Grave: Make it give 2 stacks of Stability. Add an internal cooldown.

• Death Perception: No change needed.

• Dhuumfire: Looked interesting enough in the AMA. Will have to see it in action before I can say anything about it.

How about renaming the well trait to focused rituals, removing the life siphon but making all wells recharge 20% faster, last 2 sec longer (or have a larger radius or both), and give you and 4 other allies standing in one a flat 20% damage reduction buff that can stack with protection just like resilience of shadows does (the 20% dmg buff can work the same way Hallowed Ground gives a buff to boon duration).

Also maybe change unholy sanctuary to one of my earlier suggestions:

What if instead of it giving us a copy of regeneration while in death shroud, it gives us health per second depending on the percentage of our missing hp.
Lets say it gives us a static 100 hp + 20 hp for every 10% hp we are missing, so if you enter ds when you are at say 45% hp you get 200 hp/sec, and after you get healed to 51% you now instead get 180 hp/sec, 61% 160 hp/sec, or 280 hp/sec if you are below 90% hp.
The 100 hp would not scale with healing power but the 20 that you get per missing 10% would, but very poorly.

Also maybe make chilling darkness or the new bitter chill increase all our chill duration by some amount say 10% or 20% or so.

Another good change i think would be making death shiver apply 1 vulnerability stack that lasts 6 sec to nearby foes ever second while in ds, and then every 4th second a 2 sec blind. Reason for this is making the trait more reliable (due to the small radious players often move away when the tick is about to happen) and adding some defense and synergy with other traits.

foste.3098:

or have a larger radius or both

Giving Wells a larger radius is a terrible idea. Their relatively small size is what makes them balanced. An experienced player knows not to stand in them. They are unblockable and if they were large enough to completely cover a capture point in Conquest they would be overpowered.

Anubis.7058:

1. Wouldnt Bitter Chill have more synergy (and able to stay in Spite) if Death Shiver caused Chill?

2. Isnt it flat out bad that Siphoned power relies mostly on the enemy?

3. Why not make Spiteful Spirit actual GW1 Spiteful Spirit? Enemies that attack (you) deal damage around them (and to themselves), current proposed one just encourages discarding DS for flashing it.

4. Why, doesnt that just make both a option? Also wouldnt something like Death Perception make a good Curse GM? Both helps with DS and power.

5. Isnt the point of necro not to have many boons, especially not active defense, so vigor goes against that.

6. DM (despite the fact that minors for both DM and BM should be universal, not balanced for minions) is still a minion mostly line, makes sense to have 2 minion GMs, just like it makes sense to have 2 direct damage in spite and 2 health/healing/siphon related in BM.

7. Wouldnt multiple vampiric traits allow for better specialization? Maybe all 3 as grandmaster slot, thus either minions siphon, crits siphon for some defense (or give a shield or something) and some sort of tank siphoning/indirect team support siphon?

8. The idea of condi transfer life blast, why not for Soul Reaping GMs to be all life blast versions (current Renewing blast is a cool idea, even if not very practical), so like: Healing AoE thingy Guard tome like “blast”, Underwater Life Blast or “Dhuumfire Blast” as meaningful options for SR?

1. I would assume that would be too much chill. And with that change you may aswell just combine both traits together. If bitter chill stays as it is regardless of whether its moved or not its a good trait that synergised with all sources of chill. Deathly shiver provides DS builds a good source of vuln without having to spec for chill. So i think thats best to leave it as it is.

2. The new version gives you might when you hit an enemy under 50% hp. Thats pretty good. The only problem is its 2 seconds of might for 5 seconds with a 5 second internal cooldown. So you can only get 2 stacks max. Or 4 seconds briefly if you stack boon duration. Thats terrible numbers wise. But the trait itself is a huge improvement to old siphoned power.

3. Old spiteful spirit was almost like that but it was retal. This version still gives retal but adds an AOE damage portion. I know old SS was really good in gw1. But i think we need to get away from that idea. You cant do things like 55hp SS necro in gw2. So
making it a blast on DS entry would be better in gw2.

5. Yes. But this is a major fault that holds the class back. We need atleast a few things to rectify the problem. Reflects only negate a certain type of attack so i think thats ok. And i believe all classes should have some way of getting extra dodges through traits or weapons. Necro doesnt have any currently apart from using runes/sigils/food.

Dont really have an answer for your other points. Most of them dont make sense to me and would make the traits messier.

Anubis.7058:

spoj.9672:

5. Isnt the point of necro not to have many boons, especially not active defense, so vigor goes against that.

This is actually what we are trying to change… No boons=/=no active defense, DS=no active defense. Why are you here if you want that??

Edit: It’s the main issue we are trying to fix….

Vampiric precision and bloodthirst aren’t strong enough to be separate traits. They should be merged. Replace vampiric precision with renewing blast.

Judging by how bored and unprofessional they were when they presented the necro changes made me lose all hope for fixing this class. While i do appreciate and respect what you are doing Gates, i find it hard to believe that after so much time and so much feedback and suggestions from the necro community that they flat out ignored, they will start listening now. It also felt like the changes were more or less final, they moved some boring traits around and called it a day. Just comparing our traits to what other classes have makes me believe that they lack any kind of direction or clear purpose for the necro. If they really want to fix this class, they need to put in a lot of work, which i doubt it will happen. They`d rather work on gemstore garbage, rather than fixing a class the game launched with.

Sagat.3285:

@The Gates Assasin.9827 Before giving anymore feedback seriously what kind of feedback are they talking about? Is it simple ones that will just recreate the usual gap between us and other classes that grew overtime? I started feeling this thread until I thought about that it’s not really “official” and we don’t how the extent of feedback they want.

^Again.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Honestly these balance changes are something i’d expect for a normal balance patch, not an expansion. An expansion should significantly alter the class to bring it up to par with the other classes. The devs have had 3 years of feedback to do small balance changes, necro needs to be reimagined from the ground up. However the devs seem to have focused that effort entirely on engineer, so I assume those kinds of sweeping changes are off the table now.

If we are forced to work within the scope of these very minor tweaks then I think Spoj’s suggestions would make the best use of the least amount of changes. The biggest problems that I see are that power builds are forced to take the curses line but have no viable GM traits to take, and since we are no longer allowed to only spec partially into a line this is a problem. Additionally conditions have had all of their best traits smashed into one line and mostly at the GM tier, meaning we only get partial functionality and have two entire other trait lines that are essentially doing nothing for our condition damage.

I have not played extensively with all the necro specs, but it seems all of our heal and support traits have no effect on us, and only help others… it is hard to help others when we are focused and dead almost immediately.

Great post.

I agree completely with you. In an expansion i would expect complete reworking of traits and skills. Not a lazy merging of a few traits and many other terrible traits being left unchanged.

I’m usually reluctant to suggest lots of changes because Anet doesn’t listen terribly well. If you have their ear however, who knows.

Spite
The new minors are really nice, in large part because they synergise with each other, and make a nice theme to the line (which also means CtD and CoD fits very well with them).

• Bitter chill is kind of iffy, since we don’t have that many chills with which to take advantage of it. If it works in tandem with chilling darkness however, blinding plague/WoD would be pretty funny.

• Spiteful talisman’s damage boost is quite nice – more useful in PvE then PvP though.

• Death shiver works great with DS power builds – will it proc as soon as you enter DS or 3 seconds after? Currently it’s 3s after, which is a strong disadvantage, and is consistent with (for example) the thief’s cleanse in stealth trait.

• Axe training’s effects have all been gated, making the trait far, far worse. No one wants to run their auto attack to try get the benefits they already got by default.

• Close to Death is still by far the best GM trait for any build that relies on direct damage. Signets aren’t so strong currently that signet mastery could hope to overshadow CtD. Spiteful spirit has an awful ICD that makes it absolutely laughable compared to CtD.

Curses
I was genuinely shocked at how gummed up curses got, considering I came in with zero expectations for buffs.

• Barbed precision merging with hemo was a logical move, however the change to Target the Weak hurts power builds, while not really helping condi builds (which rarely are desperate for more crit chance). If it was possible to simply make it buff both direct and condi damage, that would be much better.

• Toxic landing is literally a liability with the self induced weakness. Name wise, it would make more sense to call it master of corruption, since that far more accurately encompasses what the trait actually does.

• Weakening shroud is bad with an ICD. This trait was a shining example of one of the few times devs and players communicated directly on the forums, and came up with a result everyone (by and large) agreed with. Why they would undo this I don’t know – ICD’s on ‘entering DS’ traits is awful.

• Chilling darkness has always been very niche, due to the fact we don’t have a huge amount of blinds to take advantage of it. If it was replaced by something else, I don’t think it would be terribly missed.

• Reaper’s precision has never been good – I’ve experimented with it WvW because I can get 100% crit chance outside of DS (with fury), and I didn’t like tiny 2s dose of weakness from WS. This is absolutely not a master trait – either rework it heavily, or just remove it.

• Path of Corruption is a fairly handy trait, but it only effects one skill, which is behind its own CD, your LF, and your DS CD. It’s also pretty much useless in PvE. It is however useful to both power and condi builds. Move this down to adept and bump off chilling darkness.

• I’m a bit divided on Lingering Curse – it’s powerful, but I think it might be unhealthy for the class in the long term. Too often Anet has balanced things on a ‘what if?’ basis (if necro has 100% boon/condi duration then X is overpowered) – this will certainly cause similar sorts of issues. I’d rather see it in the master slot (replace reaper’s), and make it buff scepter range to 1100 or something, plus the condi damage boost/CD reduction or something. 100% duration bonus effects balance too much I think.

• Parasitic contagion I feel is more of a death or blood magic trait then curses, but the fact you can’t use it + terror is probably a good thing.

• There needs to be a GM trait that benefits non condi builds. Re-adding Withering precision would be nice, without the ICD but a shorter duration, or with ICD’s per target.

Death Magic
This line has the potential to be a good defensive line, but currently I think it’s rathe lacking.

• The minor traits are a bit plain – I’ve never been a fan of soul compression since it only works after people die. Beyond the veil would be nicer if it was just AOE protection, so it’s actual team support, instead of minion support – which you quite possibly don’t even have.

• Shrouded removal would be much more interesting if it was like Shadow’s Embrace, working every 3 seconds rather than just once off.

• Putrid defence is very plain – I only see it being useful if you’ve got death nova and lots of minions, but if I’m running minions I’d be using Flesh of the Master anyway.

• It’s pretty unfortunate to have to choose between Greater Marks and Reaper’s Protection, since both are rather useful in PvP.

• Deadly strength is pretty plain – what about a trait for the master major (or minor) slot, that grants aegis for 2s or something? That creates actual skilled play, in timing your DS specifically to block a big hit, something which the class badly lacks.

• Stacking two minion GM traits in this line doesn’t make a whole lot of sense – it would be more intuitive if there was one in the major line instead of 2 in GM.

• Unholy Sanctuary would be more interesting if it allowed you to benefit from heals, at the reduced rate. Then it would be a simple case of tweaking the % of the heal you get to balance it. Actually, it would be more interesting if all necros had this, but this trait improved that rate.

Blood Magic
This line has been a joke for a long time. You can sort of see what is intended with this line, but it has always failed horribly at it.

• Move ALL of the siphoning bonuses into the minor traits (keep Full of Life, that’s not bad), which then leaves the major traits free for actually impactful abilities, rather than loads of these passive things.

• Remove the ICD on Mark of Evasion – we have no vigor, and no other damge mitigation rather than our dodges, so why the ICD?

• Blood Thirst is real plain, but buffing it too much could make siphons OP. Simple solution is to remove it.

• I have literally no idea what they were thinking, when it came to Quickening Thirst. Dual daggers is niche as hell – remove that absurd hp threshold, it’s useless if it only works over 75%.

• If Transfusion actually worked on yourself, it would be genuinely useful, while not being OP because it’s got to be the single most CC’d skill in the game, I swear.

• I have no idea why Deathly invigoration is a GM trait when A: it’s effect is weak and B: it doesn’t even effect yourself. If this worked on exiting DS (or if it effected you, in DS) this would be ok as an adept trait.

These suggestions leave a few gaps in the major traits, which would take some time and careful thought to fill, but frankly this line is in such a bad state currently I think it’s justified.

Soul Reaping
By and large this line is still great – the new Spectral Mastery and Vital Persistence are great, although it’s a real shame you can’t get the CD reduction on spectrals and DS skills anymore, because I’ve always been of the opinion that we suffer from overall long CD’s across the board.

• The speed buff part of Speed of Shadows is pretty meh, but I’m not sure what would be useful there to replace it. Your suggestion regarding swiftness isn’t bad – although straight up cleansing (just) immob instead of the duration reduction of the three slows would be more useful – if possibly a little strong.

• CDR of vital persistence should be 20% like every other one in the game – especially since it’s a master trait now.

• People might disagree with me, but I think Master of Terror is really bad compared to spectral mastery and Vital persistence – which both have lots of utility value.

• With the new stability mechanics, and in line with death shiver (and my suggested aegis thing) I think it would be more interesting and useful if Foot in The Grave pulsed that single stability stack every 3 seconds (or more, if that is too strong) since it’s honestly not that great now, even with the stun break.

• Dhuumfire is kind of weak with the coming burn changes, but it’s good in this trait line. I would either buff the duration a little, or replace master of terror (debatable).

Oh man, a blanket statement to suggest changes? RIP my Saturday night.

Traits
Spite-
Death’s Embrance – Have it trigger below 50%, essentially it is just a 5% DPS boost below its trigger value, with some small ability to also stack if you have condition duration, which we seem to not have anymore very easily.

Siphoned Power – This ICD needs to be way lower, only 2 might that can’t stack with itself? That is really bad.

Axe Training – I don’t get it, the trait is just worse than it used to be. To reach the old values of CDR you have to land 5 AAs, which ends up not actually reducing your CDs much. Plus the % increase is now conditional instead of flat, so a nerf. A flat 10% damage from all abilities against crippled targets while wielding axe, and higher CDR would make it much better, as it is now I don’t see it competing.

Curses –
Toxic Landing – Just doesn’t feel good to take. It is basically Master of Corruption but with a mostly-worthless falling damage trait tagged on that makes it feel bad in most situations, PLUS CPC gives self-weakness. I don’t understand the insistence on falling traits, but it needs to not apply self-weakness at the very least. Maybe if Consume Conditions and/or Plague become Corruptions this becomes really good to take.

Reaper’s Precision – Just remove it. It isn’t good, its hard to balance, and the very few builds that would want it don’t hit quickly. If it is buffed to work for those builds, then things like dagger/WH with wells suddenly get way too much LF.

Parasitic Contagion – Move this to Blood Magic GM, or drop it to Master to replace RP.

Terror – Revert the 17% damage nerf we saw way back with Dhuumfire. If this is going to compete with Lingering Curse it needs to actually deal significant burst damage in some way. Other ideas would be have it deal extra damage if used to interrupt people (scaling with condition damage), or something like that.

Death Magic –
Beyond the Veil – it would be nice if this applied the minion protection on DS entry, much like the ranger dodge trait.

Greater Marks – merge this into Soul Marks, make the 3% LF base to Staff, and then move this up to Master tier in Soul Reaping, while dropping Master of Terror to adept. Replace it with another defensive trait, since as it is now a non-staff build’s only options are power conversion (useless to condi) or a defense to CC, which is pretty specific. I’d prefer to see another defensive trait here.

Blood Magic –
It really needs to be changed to allow siphoning while in DS. This is just such a big conflict, and every other profession has the ability to receive their own healing while actually invulnerable, yet if we enter our “second HP bar” it completely screws over an entire tree of investment. We can’t proc siphoning nearly as well, so its not like we can sit here forever.

Quickening Thirst – change it to reduce the CD under 75 or 50% HP. Life Siphon isn’t really used at high HP, in many cases this just won’t help us at all.

Chain of changes:
Move Deathly Invigoration to Master
Move Transfusion to Adept (Alternatively don’t buff DI, keep it as it is now and merge with Transfusion)
Merge Bloodthirst to Vampiric Precision (no way this is Master worthy right now)
Give Blood Magic Master a better GM, for example change Renewing Blast to be an AoE splash heal around the target.

Soul Reaping –
Speed of Shadows – 20% CDR to Death Shroud skills

Soul Marks – See the Greater Marks change, merge Greater Marks with this, make 3% LF base, move to Master tier and move Master of Terror down.

Master of Terror – See above

Weapons
Scepter needs better LF gain.

Staff needs some kind of support returned to it, even a small amount of allied condition removal from Putrid Mark would be nice.

We need some kind of finishers on our weapons. Ideas would be Enfeebling Blood and Unholy Feast being blasts, but we need something.

Also need to lower some of our cast times. We have a few 1s+ cast times that just don’t make sense, like Focus 5.

Unholy Feast – can still be blocked by Aegis.

Minions
The AI needs to be fixed. I doubt this is news, but it warrants restating.

The cast time of summoning minions should be 3/4s at most. No good reason for it to be so ridiculously high.

Bone Fiend’s active ability should reset the AA timer

Bone Minion’s Putrid Explosion should blow up the minion closest to the targeted enemy, instead of being closest to the MM.

Shadow Fiends Haunt after-cast animation should be reduced to 3/4s from its current 3s

Flesh Golem Charge should be instant cast for the Necromancer, but then cause the Flesh Golem to have a noticeable warm-up animation for 3/4s before actually charging.

I don’t want the balance to be focused exclusively around pvp, though. Necro need serious amounts of pve love, and it’s all skewed by pvp/wvw performance

Bhawb.7408:

Merge Bloodthirst to Vampiric Precision (no way this is Master worthy right now)
Give Blood Magic Master a better GM, for example change Renewing Blast to be an AoE splash heal around the target.

Glad more people are seeing this. With the whole merging traits to a common purpose thing going on, I was surprised they still overvalued these two traits enough to keep them split. Although my suggestion was to replace vampiric precision with renewing blast after the merge.

Sagat.3285:

This is actually what we are trying to change… No boons=/=no active defense, DS=no active defense. Why are you here if you want that??

Edit: It’s the main issue we are trying to fix….

Defense is what is trying to be fixed, not boons, you are making a false dichotomy here.

I didnt even notice the ICD on Deaths Embrace. And yes its completely true. The new minors for spite are good conceptually. But the Internal cooldowns make them bad. And the health threshold should be no lower than 50%. I dont even like that they have thresholds in the first place.

My personal gripe is in the spite tree where they made Signet Mastery a Grandmaster trait just by adding necro’s weakest active signet to the mastery. Signet Mastery is currently competing with Death’s Embrace and on the build I run which is a Signet Power Necro both traits work well but I prefer Signet Mastery because of Necro’s insanely high signet cooldowns. The 3 stacks of might are nice, but nothing major. I also take Close to Death as my Grandmaster and with the new changes it effectively has to compete with basically the same amount of utility as when it is an adept trait but in the Grandmaster portion of the spite traitline? ESPECIALLY against Close to Death? This change effectively cuts either my build’s direct damage or my personal utility.

Honestly what I expected they’d do with signet mastery is make the CD reduction Baseline bringing signet cooldowns to either 45 – 50 seconds and then Signet Mastery would reduce it again by the standard 20%. This way it would bring necro’s signet cooldowns more in line with other classes keeping the cooldowns at around 36-40 seconds. The might stacks could also probably use an increase to 5 might stacks on necro signet use similar to the thief’s signet mastery. I don’t think we need a kitten auto-activated ability on this mastery, just something that makes signets more useful and not something that yet again destroys our already limited build options.

Anubis.7058:

Sagat.3285:

This is actually what we are trying to change… No boons=/=no active defense, DS=no active defense. Why are you here if you want that??

Edit: It’s the main issue we are trying to fix….

Defense is what is trying to be fixed, not boons, you are making a false dichotomy here.

I am pretty I did not bolded the boon portion of his answer…unless of course if dodging doesn’t count as active defense anymore.

In terms of skill changes, there have always been a few things that niggle me.

Dagger mainhand is undeniably a melee weapon, and while Dark Pact Synergises with the auto chain well, Life Siphon does not. Life Siphon benefits from kiting away from people (since you don’t need to face them to use it) and keeping out of melee range.

While I can see that this lets it be the ‘vampiric’ weapon, synergistically, it would make a lot more sense if this was something like a small (think heartseeker range) leap skill.

This would have the benefits of:
A: Being a finisher
B: Being a movement skill, something that necro’s (melee ones especially) badly need.

It’s actual effect could be something like X damage, Y life siphon, and maybe a little bit of cripple or chill in the mix.

Ghastly Claws and Unholy Feast should either (or both) be whirl and blast finishers respectively. I mean seriously, just look at them.

Reaper’s Touch should also be a projectile finisher, since it literally is a projectile.

Deathly Swarm should be one as well, for the same reason.

Spinal Shivers needs a shorter cast time – it’s ridiculously long.

It would be nice if Locust Swarm gave AOE swiftness. Seriously, not having team support sucks.

It would make more sense if Feast of Corruption, being on a condition weapon and with the name it has, corrupted one(or more) boons, rather than the useless extra damage part.

Putrid Mark needs it’s team support back – it was our only team support and it got nerfed hard and repeatedly.

And lastly, the golem’s charge gives it 15 second of stability for no real good reason. Firstly, using charge should be instant cast (for the necro, still have a cast for the golem). Secondly, it would be more useful if it grants both the golem and the necro a lesser amount of stability. I mean really, even 1 stack for 5 seconds would be more useful then what it is currently.

Genesis.7693:

My personal gripe is in the spite tree where they made Signet Mastery a Grandmaster trait just by adding necro’s weakest active signet to the mastery.

Signet of the Locust heals for 970(0.5) per person hit, on a 24s CD. This is just short of the healing you can get from an actual healing skill if you hit 5 targets, and it is on a 24s CD, and you can have two of them. It is entirely possible to heal yourself for 8k per skill use with healing power investment.

spoj.9672:

I didnt even notice the ICD on Deaths Embrace. And yes its completely true. The new minors for spite are good conceptually. But the Internal cooldowns make them bad. And the health threshold should be no lower than 50%. I dont even like that they have thresholds in the first place.

ICD on Spiteful Removal should stay, I think, but the other two are too long of cooldowns.

I’ll be posting my review tonight. As a warning, it will be in-depth and have plenty of suggestions.

Yeah i agree Spiteful Removal is fine. Siphoned Power and Deaths Embrace arent though. They may aswell be changed to 60 power on foes below 50% and 5% damage to foes below 33%. Because thats exactly what they do with those ICD’s and duruations. They should be stronger when you attack more under those thresholds. And they certainly shouldnt be so static.