Guild Wars 2

In Curses, I think I would like Terror to apply blind. It could be on a medium or longish CD.

And, because Necro does not get that many blinds, chilling darkness needs something added, too. Maybe add a chill on critical with ICD or a leach on blind.

Weakening Shroud is not the only tame adept in Curses.

Omg I forgot about that. Gates please please help get Parasitic Contagion into blood magic I do not know why it is in a power traitline.

Parasitic Contagion should merge with Lingering Curse instead.

I admit I haven’t read the whole thread but these are my impressions with the current trait changes, I’m sorry if these changes have been talked over already.

Spite:
Overall I really like the minor changes, the old ones were kind of a win more and most of the time just neglected. Now they can give atleast minor benefits instead of being just useless.
Of the adept traits I feel like Bitter Chill and Reaper’s Might are just underwhelming. Necro doesn’t have access to so much chills that Bitter Chill can be abused and Reaper’s Might requires for you to build specifically towards being able to stay in DS for long periods of time, which rarely happens in PvP. I would merge Reaper’s Might together with Unyielding Blast since the two fit very similar role and are both underwhelming.
Out of master traits Chill of Death is amazing as ever but Death Shiver needs major tweaking, it’s a cool idea but very underwhelming at the moment. It might just be better to replace it with something else entirely.
Also I believe that Axe Mastery was just a nerf. It’s an interesting idea to have something else than just flat reduction but especially since necro have access to DS, they just don’t auto attack that much.
Grandmasters also feel underwhelming. Signet mastery feels like a master trait, it’s not that strong although it’s a nice effect. Same goes for Spiteful Spirit, it’s a cool effect but feels weaker than Weakened Shroud which is adept. Overall the Specialization really has just 1 choice that everyone takes since it’s better than the others.

Curses:
Overall I really like this specialization but there are few traits that need work, Like toxic Landing Weakening us. Also buffing Chilling Darkness to include dazes would be nice buff to warhorn, seeing as the warhorn trait is still in this specialization.
Reaper’s Precision should be merged with another trait, it’s very underwhelming now and it was as adept trait too, it could be merged with Vampiric Precision as both traits do similar things and it would fit the vamprism theme.
Also why is Parasitic Contagion in this traitline? If Blood Magic is supposed to be the healing specialization wouldn’t this fit better there? Condi specs already have a very real choice to make in this traitline between the condi duration increase and terror (also add the fear duration into this, no point splitting the 2 when terror spec is going to take both no matter what).

Death Magic:
Combine Flesh of the master and Death Nova and move it to other specialization (spite maybe?) and remove the toughness you gain. Minionmancer is already annoying as it is, no point in it gaining free defensive stats when your minions protect you so well in the first place (counting that the AI works).
I consider Shrouded Removal to be in a good spot, it’s nice amount of condi removal on a short cd but it could be buffed to converting condi into a boon or also remove nearby allies condis but this might be too much powercreep.
Combine Greater Marks with Soul Marks and keep it at master tier in either of the specializations. If the goal is to combine weapon traits why are these 2 still separate, they’re not that strong to need to be separated, although it might need to be moved to grandmaster.
Add Cast Doom on the target who CC:d you to Reaper’s Protection (also could be combined with Fear of Death), this is a fine trait vs melee opponents but useless vs ranged as its radius is so short.
Remove Deadly Strength, this is just me disliking this type of traits. Traits should be interesting but just gaining stat off of another stat is very boring. There can be plenty of interesting type of traits that could be just as strong as this while being more fun.
Unholy Sanctuary is a interesting one but also very underwhelming, it would be awesome if your own healing effects could heal you (well heal, vampirism, regen. etc) while in DS if you have this trait. Considering that your heals outside of your main heal skill aren’t that big I wouldn’t see this being a problem.

Blood Magic:
Make Bloodthirst baseline, it’s very uninspiring trait.
Make Transfusion also apply to dagger #2 (heal nearby allies the same amount), this might be too strong but it would fit the flavor of the trait very well.
Combine Deathly Invigoration with Unholy Martyr, neither of them is very strong trait and this would give a little bit of power to it.

Soul Reaping
Overall this is a great specialization but there could be a little wiggle room with the traits Speed of Shadows and Vital Persistence, Vital Persistence could be buffed to ~80% to be the trait you would get if you want to stay for long periods in DS and move the Near to Death part of this trait to Speed of Shadows to make one trait to encourage heavy use of DS skills and utilize the effects upon entering/exiting DS (could make these compete against each other too at master tier).

The spots opened with merging traits could be filled with traits which would increase the utility of necro instead of just damage or survialibity.

TL;DR
Spite:
Merge Unyielding Blast & Reaper’s Might
Move Signet Mastery to Master
Revert the Axe Mastery trait
Move Spiteful Spirit to Master/merge with something
Do major Tweaks To Death Shiver

Curses:
Remove weakness from Toxic Landing
Add dazes to apply chill in Chilling Darkness
Merge Master of terror with Terror
Merge Reaper’s Precision With Vampiric Mastery and move to Blood Magic
Move Parasitic Contagion into Blood Magic

Death Magic:
Merge Flesh of the Master with Death Nova and move it somewehere else (Spite?)
Merge Greater Marks with Soul Marks and move it accordingly
Add cast Doom to Reaper’s Protection
Remove Deadly Strength
Add Your own healing effects can heal you while in DS to Unholy Sanctuary

Blood Magic
Make Bloodthirst baseline
Merge Unholy Martyr & Deathly Invigoration

Soul Reaping
Add Path of Midnight to Speed of Shadows and move to master
Buff Vital Persistence to ~80%

You know it’s bad when the PvP Specialist has to come go to a profession sub-forum… btw, why haven’t we gotten profession sub forum specialists yet?!

Best wishes to the Necros. As a Mesmer main, I know how our classes have constantly been maligned by bad mechanics, bugs and non-nonsensical traits combinations.

Here are some possible new ways to make some traits more interesting and more powerful (this assumes that the traits stay where they are)

Terror:
In addition to its current functionality,
When you cast doom, you give a Terror buff to yourself and allies around you (maximum 5 targets) that lasts for 5 seconds (60 seconds ICD), if an enemy hits any of these allies, it will be feared for 1 second and the buff ends on all of these allies.

Reaper’s Precision:
When you deliver a critical hit to a foe that has a boon, you remove one boon from that foe and gain 10% life force. (20 sec ICD)

Unholy Martyr:
In addition to its current functionality,
Tainted shackles transfers 2 of your conditions to the enemies that are caught in the final blast.

Deathly Invigoration:
Draw Poison from your allies when you enter death shroud.
Heal in an area when you exit death shroud. The amount of poison damage you took while in death shroud is added to the area heal.

Vampiric Precision: Renamed to Order of the Vampire
You and allies around you (maximum 5) Siphon health on critical hits.

Transfusion:
Life Transfer heals nearby allies and steals 1% more life force with each pulse.

My aim here has been mainly to improve the blood magic line specially toward providing party support that falls within necromancer themes. And also to improve some traits to be able to compete better with their sibling traits.

MailMail.6534:

You know it’s bad when the PvP Specialist has to come go to a profession sub-forum… btw, why haven’t we gotten profession sub forum specialists yet?!

Best wishes to the Necros. As a Mesmer main, I know how our classes have constantly been maligned by bad mechanics, bugs and non-nonsensical traits combinations.

Not all professions were covered with specialists iirc, this is why there is a delay…

That said, Gates is being really supportive here, and he deserves the recognition

Do you think we will receive some dev comments and or interaction? It would be nice to assuage some of our concerns with some interaction. I mean it just would be nice to have the devs discuss some of the great ideas mentioned in these forums directly with the community.

Gryph.8237:

Do you think we will receive some dev comments and or interaction? It would be nice to assuage some of our concerns with some interaction. I mean it just would be nice to have the devs discuss some of the great ideas mentioned in these forums directly with the community.

Totally agree. I mean we’re all tossing out ideas, suggestions, talking about our dislikes and such. But truth is, we have no idea what the dev’s vision about this class is. I would like to find out from Robert, just exactly how he thinks this class should perform. What specs he thinks we should be running and how well we should expect to perform in PvE, sPvP, and WvW.

It’s one thing for someone to say yeah, they’re reading and listening. It’s another to actually know what the dev in charge of this class is thinking, what his visions for necromancers are, and where he thinks we should fit in.

From the live stream it’s clear Robert knows mesmers inside out. It was quite impressive actually listening him talk about mesmers, because mesmers are one of the more complicated class to master & play well. I didn’t get the same vibe when listening to him talk about necros. I do believe he’s the right guy for the job, necromancers are also one of the more interesting classes to play. If he can get mesmers right, he can probably get necros right. But would be nice to get interaction from him to find out what he thinks about some of the ideas being tossed around.

I mean I’m not even reading this thread anymore because ideas are aplenty, some of these ideas aren’t even new, they’ve been tossed around before. What we really need is to find out what the devs want from this class and how they think this class should perform.

I´ll just link the extensive (but maybe not-so-serious) suggestions I made in the other thread here. Have fun

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Double-HP-bar-no-defence-skills/first#post5016186
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Double-HP-bar-no-defence-skills/first#post5016191

flow.6043:

Staff Mastery: merged Greater Marks and mark cd reduction.

I would move a merged staff trait either away from Soul Reaping or at least promote it to SR master tier so it doesn’t overshadow other traits too much.

baseline for marks: 1% life force per hit, instead of a static 3% on trigger to give it a scaling effect in team fights.

I think these ideas are great. Merging the staff traits in some way would actually open up a lot of options for Necros.
-Add 20% staff cooldowns to Greater Marks
-Make Soul Marks baseline for Necro. This trait is really powerful, so the numbers could be played with (doesn’t have to be 3%). It would improve Necro sustain without a doubt, hands down.

flow.6043:

One more idea:

If they merge Greater Marks and Soul Marks the empty spot could be filled by bringing back Decaying Swarm: At 25% health, you become surrounded by a locust swarm.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decaying_Swarm

I like this idea a lot. The only problem with this is that it could reveal you if you’re low on health and yell to your allies “stealth me guys!” and they stealth you and bam… locust swarm. If you don’t rely on allies’ stealth, this trait would be awesome though – it would synergize with Banshee’s Wail too. It might be too strong for a minor though, especially when we consider it can last 15 seconds. Assuming you had warhorn as well, that would be 30 seconds of Locust Swarms! This trait is grandmaster worthy, in my opinion – perhaps a new blood/death/curses grandmaster?

Blood Magic:
-Even though I don’t use it, I’m a fan of Unholy Martyr, especially with the 10% lifeforce now. I think it synergizes well with Vital Persistence. Imagine having Soul Marks as baseline, grabbing Speed of Shadows (for DS cooldown), running Vital Persistence and Unholy Martyr. If you mixed in Shrouded Removal too.. would be really, really tanky. Anyway…
-Mark of Evasion is fine, but I think it would be even better if it had no internal cooldown, but had lower bleeds/regen. This MAY be too strong, but it works with Soul Marks —> more sustain. It would also be a really good tool to remove blinds (dodge, remove your blind so you’re free to cast something else).
-I think I’m a fairly optimistic person, but I don’t find any of the Blood Magic Master traits really appealing… for example… consider Path of Corruption in curses… that’s WOW for a Master’s trait. Blood magic doesn’t have comparable “WOW” Master traits.

Weakening Shroud:
I see why they nerfed this. It was likely because of the new Lingering Curses. You could have a crazy weakness uptime on people with 100% weakness duration but I feel like it would be much better the way it now. No cooldown and a small boost to Deathshroud and when people focus you by having on-demand weakness. 25 seconds is simply too much.
I think if Mark of Evasion and Weakening Shroud had no internal cooldown, you could have an interesting playstyle right there – dodging and entering DS to cause bleeds… which could also synergize nicely with Barber Precision and on-hit / on-crit sigils.

That is all for now… I’m personally happy with Spite, Curses, Death Magic and Soulreaping traitlines overall, but there’s quite a few things that could be tweaked / added which would make a huge difference.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

MailMail.6534:

You know it’s bad when the PvP Specialist has to come go to a profession sub-forum… btw, why haven’t we gotten profession sub forum specialists yet?!

Best wishes to the Necros. As a Mesmer main, I know how our classes have constantly been maligned by bad mechanics, bugs and non-nonsensical traits combinations.

Not all professions were covered with specialists iirc, this is why there is a delay…

That said, Gates is being really supportive here, and he deserves the recognition

I know they aren’t covered, but they were promised to be. Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I’m pretty sure they wanted someone to cover every profession sub forum as well so that they could get solid organized feedback from each profession.

What Gates is doing now is exactly what they envisioned in the first place when it comes to forum specialists.

Bhawb.7408:

Parasitic Contagion needs to be a Blood Magic trait, no other build has to select between its major damage option and sustain in the same tier. Power builds can have Death Perception and Close to Death while still picking up Vampiric Rituals, MMs can get whatever they want and still get blood magic sustain, but condi builds have to choose? Makes absolutely no sense.

I see your point and I both agree and disagree.

Generally, the effort it takes to pick sustain traits and combine them with a proper dps build is disproportionately difficult compared to other classes.
But in that regard, moving traits like Parasitic Contagion to Blood Magic would actually be counterproductive. You’d end up with a single trait line that has all healing traits, so if you want any kind of sustain besides life force you’d have to pick this line. And that is either not worth it at all (because most of its traits don’t work in DS) or it becomes a must-have trait line which would limit build diversity.
So I agree that sustain options should be available to every build and specialisation. But that also means that certain healing traits should stay in lines other than Blood Magic: Spiteful Renewal, Signet Mastery, Parasitic Contagion, Unholy Sanctuary.
Therefore the proper solution for Anet would be to ease up their grip on offensive traits (like Terror becoming baseline) and as a result giving any kind of build the choice to pick one of those extra heals instead of forcing them into a mandatory dps trait that those builds wouldn’t be able to work without.

i get a chill when i think of terror being baseline. It would be such a necro-specific needed buff, that would really up our game and (imo) would not be even close to overpowered, especially given that some of our important builds rely on it as a source of damage and a cc. Just such a noticeable and needed improvement.

Gryph.8237:

i get a chill when i think of terror being baseline. It would be such a necro-specific needed buff, that would really up our game and (imo) would not be even close to overpowered, especially given that some of our important builds rely on it as a source of damage and a cc. Just such a noticeable and needed improvement.

Terror ticks for about 650 in a power build (not that I know this from not switching traits between matches or anything…) so that would throw balance out of whack a bit, I think.

I think terror should come back to master trait status, and if they think PoC is weak, bump it back to GM while buffing it somehow. Then you can choose between more corruptions or more duration.

Also agree that parasitic contagion belongs in blood. Really no good choices for condi builds there, anyway. Could probably bump one of those GMs to master and bump down some other blood traits, then throw a power GM in curses. Bam! Traits are shuffled.

The thing is, Terror really can’t truly be made baseline. This isn’t like Greanade Kit getting a third grenade baseline, this would make all Fears in the game deal damage. Claw of Jormag would become hell…

Best it can do is be merged into another trait. Making it a Minor on its own is a bit unattractive for non-condition builds that want to go into Curses to pick up traits.

If its put into a minor it becomes baseline to a specific specialisation. Which is fine. As long as its done right its not a problem for non condi builds. flows idea of merging it with the new target the weak is a nice idea.

Anyway with the curses grandmasters thing. Something definitely needs to be moved/merged/changed. But i agree with flow, i believe parasitic contagion should remain in curses. It gives a small sustain option without having to spec completely into blood. And its good to have a condi sustain, condi damage and non specific trait in the curses line. So i would be in favour of moving terror to master tier or making it a combined minor.

How about we merge terror with grand masterminor and revert target the weak to the flat damage boost to limit the power creep a bit?

Edit: make to merge.

Sagat.3285:

Could just replace Reaper’s Precision with a weaker version of Parasitic Contagion that works in DS,replace it with increased crit damage based on condition on foes 3% per condition creating a power GM, increased crit chance based on condition is good for rabid and barbed precision might be even easier to proc sigil of torment it should stay as GM minor. If Lingering Curse remains a 100% and conditions source are weak due to it, Terror damage should be increased and we’ll still profit from Parasitic Contagion but still having significant choice since you don’t have PoC or WH trait.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The thing is, Terror really can’t truly be made baseline. This isn’t like Greanade Kit getting a third grenade baseline, this would make all Fears in the game deal damage. Claw of Jormag would become hell…

Best it can do is be merged into another trait. Making it a Minor on its own is a bit unattractive for non-condition builds that want to go into Curses to pick up traits.

Yeah, people are getting carried away with this baseline stuff. People don’t seem to realize how it works to make something baseline. It has to be intuitive and conform to the games general rules. Most things that were made baseline were simple tweeks that could easily be updated in existing ability tooltips.

I would keep contagion in curses, too.

Regarding sustain options, let’s list them by line and see if they fit.

Spite – axe / focus, might & vuln – Signet Mastery proc’s siphon below 50% health on ICD
Curses – scepter / horn, corruption – Parasitic Contagion heals by condi damage
Death Magic – staff, MM – Unholy Sanctuary heals in DS
Blood Magic – dagger, vamp / wells – Deathly Invigoration heals out of DS
Soul Reaping – staff, spectral / DS, – Foot in the Grave stun break with stability going into DS

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The thing is, Terror really can’t truly be made baseline. This isn’t like Greanade Kit getting a third grenade baseline, this would make all Fears in the game deal damage. Claw of Jormag would become hell…

I actually meant baseline just for necros, like a class specific feature
But I guess if it’s tied to the Curses specialisation as a minor the bottom line would be pretty much the same.

MethaneGas.8357:

flow.6043:

If they merge Greater Marks and Soul Marks the empty spot could be filled by bringing back Decaying Swarm: At 25% health, you become surrounded by a locust swarm.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decaying_Swarm

I like this idea a lot. The only problem with this is that it could reveal you if you’re low on health and yell to your allies “stealth me guys!” and they stealth you and bam… locust swarm. If you don’t rely on allies’ stealth, this trait would be awesome though – it would synergize with Banshee’s Wail too. It might be too strong for a minor though, especially when we consider it can last 15 seconds. Assuming you had warhorn as well, that would be 30 seconds of Locust Swarms! This trait is grandmaster worthy, in my opinion – perhaps a new blood/death/curses grandmaster?

Yeah, might be a good Death Magic grandmaster option next to Unholy Sanctuary if they moved one of the minion traits down one tier.

And btw, I use both warhorn and Banshee’s Wail, that combined with the 6 seconds auto attack channel that can’t be canceled makes me almost impossible to stealth rez.
Thousands of Shadow Refuges have been completely wasted on me! ^^

So here’s another one for the devs:
Please make it possible to cancel the downed state auto attack.
Also, Fetid Ground could use an upgrade for ground-targeting so we don’t cast it into the middle of nowhere if we don’t have a target selected.

I know I’m super-late to the party, but hey. I think I’ll drop a couple of ideas down…

What if necros could transfer lifeforce to health? An F2, or an in-DS skill called “Dark Equillibrium” or something like that, which equalizes your health and life-force percentages. Would make the mechanic work more like the second healthbar it’s ‘supposed’ to be. And hey, why not be able to do the reverse and drain health to fill our DS?

Also, I don’t mind being an attrition class, but we could at least stand to be good at it. An important part of attrition is being able to gain ‘momentum’, especially since this game doesn’t have things like mana bars to burn out.

I think we could ALSO use some means of not only mitigating, but actively punishing enemies bursting and focusing us. A traited shadow-aura that applies fear when struck, activated by the necro taking too much damage all at once rather than on health thresholds.

I’d also, personally, say it would be nice to get something like…

A trait that lets us steal a percentage of incoming healing on targets effected by some of our conditions.

It seems Gates has left us to go to the ele subforum.

runeblade.7514:

It seems Gates has left us to go to the ele subforum.

He has a lot of work to do. Plus he came to us first and was around for pages of feedback.

Parasitic contagion is the gm traits for power builds that take the curses line. Even power necros put out bleeds and torment, I think this is supposed to be appealing to power with its 15% heal now.

Honestly well I want to give more feedback I feel anything we say is the same stuff we have been saying for a long time now.

Parasitic contagion’s effectiveness directly scales with conditions applied/damage, so you can’t call it a trait for power builds anymore then terror ‘because power builds can still use fears’.

From the other thread, I suggested a change to make plague signet more playable and interesting.

Currently Plague Signet does this.
passive: Pull conditions from allies 1 at a time.
Active: Transfers all conditions from you to your target.

While the active can be useful, the passive is terrible since we don’t have the condi removal to deal with a trickle of random conditions – our removals work best against burst.

If however we changed it to the following…

Plague signet
Passive: Transfer one condition from self to enemy.
Active: Transfer All (or 5 each, whatever works) conditions from nearby allies to self.

The passive gives you some much needed ‘small’ condi removal, while putting more pressure on the enemy, punishing them with their own conditions (it also makes corruptions less bad).
The active gives you actually meaningful team support, and because you choose when you take the conditions, they are far easier to manage through consume conditions/deathly swarm etc.

On behalf of all the necromancers, THANK YOU GATES!!!!!!

War Mourner.5168:

If however we changed it to the following…

Plague signet
Passive: Transfer one condition from self to enemy.
Active: Transfer All (or 5 each, whatever works) conditions from nearby allies to self.

The passive gives you some much needed ‘small’ condi removal, while putting more pressure on the enemy, punishing them with their own conditions (it also makes corruptions less bad).
The active gives you actually meaningful team support, and because you choose when you take the conditions, they are far easier to manage through consume conditions/deathly swarm etc.

This definitely makes it easier to set up transfer spikes. I’m a little worried though: if things like burning and poison are now allowed to stack intensity, taking everyone’s conditions simultaneously becomes a lot more dangerous. Acceptable risk, or just a trap?

A fee other classed get upgrades to boons and conditions. Theif gets poison and vigour, ranger gets poison, guards get burning.

Based of this concept and the dev talk about how they want us to get hit I believe we should have the following.

Spiteful spirit
Cast unholy feast when entering death shroud.
Increase the effectiveness of retaliation 33%
Or
7% reduced damage under the effects of retaliation.

Add to traits:

1.) Trait: When blind and chill have been applied on target enemy <insert fancy spell name> is cast causing pulsating damage for X sec which improves allies (170) Power & (170) Condition Damage. Damage. Lasts: 5 sec Pulses: 1 sec Buff Lasts: 60 sec CD: 100 sec

2.) Trait: Apply chill to weapon for 5 sec on critical strike. CD: 10 sec

3.) Trait: When chill is applied while wielding a dagger grant Fury (8 sec) & Might 3 (25 sec) CD: 25 sec

4.) Trait: If target has X stack of condition(s) the next condition applied by the Necro will apply <insert fancy spell name> to target enemy. Target receives 5% extra damage from all sources. (Stacks in duration) Lasts: 5 sec CD: 10

5.) Trait: When minion dies it poisons (8 sec) and cripples (5 sec) nearby enemies and creates a pool of stability(5 sec).

6.) Trait: When life is stolen more than X times from one enemy gain Protection (5 sec). CD: 15 sec

Softspoken.2410:

This definitely makes it easier to set up transfer spikes. I’m a little worried though: if things like burning and poison are now allowed to stack intensity, taking everyone’s conditions simultaneously becomes a lot more dangerous. Acceptable risk, or just a trap?

Guardians have save yourselves, which would be in the same boat – if Anet altered that skill then this signet would follow suit.

Also in PvP/party you can see what conditions people have anyway – you know what you’re getting into.

I have an idea for the curses traitline. If we want to give some synergy with power builds, why don’t we have an actual curse? The curse would block incoming heals or boons on the target. If we don’t give support, how about we block it? It’d make the target vulnerable for power necros. I’m not sure how to implement it, but I think it’s a neat idea.

runeblade.7514:

It seems Gates has left us to go to the ele subforum.

Ahem. /wave

The Gates Assassin.9827:

runeblade.7514:

It seems Gates has left us to go to the ele subforum.

Ahem. /wave

You deserve a big applause….

Burjis.3087:

Here are some possible new ways to make some traits more interesting and more powerful (this assumes that the traits stay where they are)

Terror:
In addition to its current functionality,
When you cast doom, you give a Terror buff to yourself and allies around you (maximum 5 targets) that lasts for 5 seconds (60 seconds ICD), if an enemy hits any of these allies, it will be feared for 1 second and the buff ends on all of these allies.

Reaper’s Precision:
When you deliver a critical hit to a foe that has a boon, you remove one boon from that foe and gain 10% life force. (20 sec ICD)

Unholy Martyr:
In addition to its current functionality,
Tainted shackles transfers 2 of your conditions to the enemies that are caught in the final blast.

Deathly Invigoration:
Draw Poison from your allies when you enter death shroud.
Heal in an area when you exit death shroud. The amount of poison damage you took while in death shroud is added to the area heal.

Vampiric Precision: Renamed to Order of the Vampire
You and allies around you (maximum 5) Siphon health on critical hits.

Transfusion:
Life Transfer heals nearby allies and steals 1% more life force with each pulse.

My aim here has been mainly to improve the blood magic line specially toward providing party support that falls within necromancer themes. And also to improve some traits to be able to compete better with their sibling traits.

I really like those, maybe except for the Terror proposal. Firstly, it won’t work in PvE (you don’t want to fear away enemies randomly) and secondly, it’s the same old same old lazy design that Anet pumped into necro with PBAoE effects over which the necro has no control whatsoever.

All the rest are very nice proposals indeed.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

runeblade.7514:

It seems Gates has left us to go to the ele subforum.

Ahem. /wave

Hey Gates, thank you for donating your time and energy to this- I think a lot of people were worried that the devs wouldn’t see the feedback from this subforum (based on past experience), so this is much appreciated.

One general comment on the traits is they should be organized on the trait lines. They might be, now, and the pics of the tool tips are not organized but this is what I am thinking:

Up – Damage, or theme 1, or weapon 1
Mid – Utility, or theme 2
Down – Sustain, or theme 3, or weapon 2

There is no real reason to have the traits mixed up between up, mid, and down so a little organization will help players quickly set their traits.

For me, the traits that bother me the most are the fact that Corruption skills are now tied to falling damage (and now when you take falling damage you get weakness? ok?), that vampiric precision is still a trait and has not been tied into dagger mastery, and that not only has Reaper’s Precision not been deleted, it has been moved up to master tier so its now taking up even more IMPORTANT space than it was before.

I’m really beginning to wonder if some of these things that obviously are bad aren’t going to be reworked. If axe got big buffs, axe mastery would still be good. If reaper’s precision were buffed, it might be an ok option (although probably not still master tier). Some of these things were so obviously weak that it makes me wonder what is really happening.

War Mourner.5168:

Parasitic contagion’s effectiveness directly scales with conditions applied/damage, so you can’t call it a trait for power builds anymore then terror ‘because power builds can still use fears’.

From the other thread, I suggested a change to make plague signet more playable and interesting.

Currently Plague Signet does this.
passive: Pull conditions from allies 1 at a time.
Active: Transfers all conditions from you to your target.

While the active can be useful, the passive is terrible since we don’t have the condi removal to deal with a trickle of random conditions – our removals work best against burst.

If however we changed it to the following…

Plague signet
Passive: Transfer one condition from self to enemy.
Active: Transfer All (or 5 each, whatever works) conditions from nearby allies to self.

The passive gives you some much needed ‘small’ condi removal, while putting more pressure on the enemy, punishing them with their own conditions (it also makes corruptions less bad).
The active gives you actually meaningful team support, and because you choose when you take the conditions, they are far easier to manage through consume conditions/deathly swarm etc.

I call it the power traits because its the only one a power build would take as a gm in curses and its against two superior condition damage traits for the same slot. So the only thing I see is that is was put there as a power trait.

I just don’t think they will make these changes, and it will impact our builds, and how competitive we are. IN face, while every class seems to have received some major changes, improving their gameplay, we are the only class not receiving improvements, or if they are improvements they are marginal at best.

So in dungeon groups necros run into a problem that we dont bring anything to the party that another class doesnt already do better. For just straight up damage, the best played necros can in THEORY keep up with thieves, but in practice thats not happening in all likely hood. In support, we can bring chill weakness and vulnerability. Weakness only helps in reducing damage, and parties have already learned to clear dungeons without that damage reduction. Chill only helps to keep bosses in place with some damage reduction. Again, no need for that damage reduction, and most parties can keep bosses in place already. Vulnerability can be stacked better by other classes. Eles do more aoe damage, even without icebow.

So assume a party with the current meta-ish build (theif, guardian, 2 ele, ps warrior). We dont put out the damage of a thief nor do we bring any stealth, so we cant replace a thief. Our group support comes at a cost of DPS, and we cant really keep the potection/regen of a guardian up. More importantly we offer no reflects or real damage mitigation of that kind. The group fury, the might stacking, or the icebow of an ele (even if ice bow gets nerfed the others are a problem). We dont have the might stacking of a phalanx warrior.

Of these, the closest we are able to replace is the ele. We can bring some level of AOE damage with wells and warhorn locust storm etc. We can keep up damage if we try hard. Ice bows are getting nerfed so we dont have to contend with that. We can maintain personal fury uptime of 70% (elese can do group fury of 100%). Ice stacking isnt neccessary if you have a phalanx. So if our fury trait applied group fury (or if we had a grand master that turned our minor in to a group fury) we could atleast push our way into a group if they cant find two eles. This is not a terribly overpowering pvp change, and not at all over powering in PVE. IT still makes us a second choice to elese, but atleast we could be a substitue. And then this one change to a minor trait would take us from being the useless selfish dps to being “hey you have a necro, i guess you can help out a little”

In short, AOE Fury plz?

Gryph.8237:

we are the only class not receiving improvements, or if they are improvements they are marginal at best.

That’s not entirely true though.
If you look at Spite for example: Spiteful Renewal looks amazing, vulnerability application is buffed and has nice synergy with chilled. So overall it’s definitely an improvment compared to now.
But then there are traits like Siphoned Power in a gm minor slot: 2 stacks of might gated by an icd and a health threshold. Understandably people complain about this, even if it’s better than the current version of it.

Roe.3679:

If axe got big buffs, axe mastery would still be good.

Only if the auto attack is completely changed and the damage buffed again.
Because the new Axe Mastery only has the same effect as the current one if your target is perma crippled and you perma auto attack to reduce cds.
So if the axe and Axe Mastery stay this way there’s no reason not to take Chill of Death instead.

Roe.3679:

If reaper’s precision were buffed, it might be an ok option (although probably not still master tier).

That buff can’t just be more life force though, it would have to be a different trait entirely because utility is more important than a simple stat or life force boost, especially when the trait is competing with Path of Corruption and Banshee’s Wail.

Ele received a nerf, iirc, to ice bow and hammer that should trim it’s PvE advantage.

The lift in cap limits will make Necro scepter useful as well as changing poison to stack. Cond builds were horribly handicapped by dungeons and fractals. If vulnerability has its cap raised, axe will get better in PvE, too. Of course, other professions will have their condi builds buffed, too.

Anchoku.8142:

Ele received a nerf, iirc, to ice bow and hammer that should trim it’s PvE advantage.

The lift in cap limits will make Necro scepter useful as well as changing poison to stack. Cond builds were horribly handicapped by dungeons and fractals. If vulnerability has its cap raised, axe will get better in PvE, too. Of course, other professions will have their condi builds buffed, too.

Ok so people keep pointing this out, but i have a serious concern with it. First of all, they have dropped the damage on poison and burning to account for the raised cap. So even though you can stack hire, its doing less damage per stack. Second of all, I doubt that in a dungeon you will stack enough condis quickily enough for it to matter. Zerk groups in dungeons can burn a boss in 30-45 seconds, not long enough to stack up condis and let them deal their damage. Yes, on world bosses, this is a major buff because condis shine on longer boss fights, but in a dungeon on trash mobs that die quickly or on bosses that only last maybe a minute, condis wont have the ability to deal their full damage and zerk groups will out power the condi builds.

Darwec.3784:

So in dungeon groups necros run into a problem that we dont bring anything to the party that another class doesnt already do better. For just straight up damage, the best played necros can in THEORY keep up with thieves, but in practice thats not happening in all likely hood. In support, we can bring chill weakness and vulnerability. Weakness only helps in reducing damage, and parties have already learned to clear dungeons without that damage reduction. Chill only helps to keep bosses in place with some damage reduction. Again, no need for that damage reduction, and most parties can keep bosses in place already. Vulnerability can be stacked better by other classes. Eles do more aoe damage, even without icebow.

So assume a party with the current meta-ish build (theif, guardian, 2 ele, ps warrior). We dont put out the damage of a thief nor do we bring any stealth, so we cant replace a thief. Our group support comes at a cost of DPS, and we cant really keep the potection/regen of a guardian up. More importantly we offer no reflects or real damage mitigation of that kind. The group fury, the might stacking, or the icebow of an ele (even if ice bow gets nerfed the others are a problem). We dont have the might stacking of a phalanx warrior.

Of these, the closest we are able to replace is the ele. We can bring some level of AOE damage with wells and warhorn locust storm etc. We can keep up damage if we try hard. Ice bows are getting nerfed so we dont have to contend with that. We can maintain personal fury uptime of 70% (elese can do group fury of 100%). Ice stacking isnt neccessary if you have a phalanx. So if our fury trait applied group fury (or if we had a grand master that turned our minor in to a group fury) we could atleast push our way into a group if they cant find two eles. This is not a terribly overpowering pvp change, and not at all over powering in PVE. IT still makes us a second choice to elese, but atleast we could be a substitue. And then this one change to a minor trait would take us from being the useless selfish dps to being “hey you have a necro, i guess you can help out a little”

In short, AOE Fury plz?

The only thing we do is damage. But we dont even come close to ele or thief. And thats not just in practise. Its also in theory. Eles and thieves have around 10 separate damage modifiers. Necro has 3 in traits (currenly can only use 2 at once) and the 3 every class has (potions, runes and sigils). Necros dont even compete for middle ground dps when doing the math. And its all because of the lack of damage mod traits and high coefficient skills. Lich form is our only saving grace and that doesnt compete with staff ele.

spoj.9672:

The only thing we do is damage. But we dont even come close to ele or thief. And thats not just in practise. Its also in theory. Eles and thieves have around 10 separate damage modifiers. Necro has 3 in traits (currenly can only use 2 at once) and the 3 every class has (potions, runes and sigils). Necros dont even compete for middle ground dps when doing the math. And its all because of the lack of damage mod traits and high coefficient skills. Lich form is our only saving grace and that doesnt compete with staff ele.

I agree…but i think that asking to be top or close to top DPS wont be a thing that happens, since thats the thief general role. I also dont think we will be given good support. Necros are supposed to be the condi class, pulling life siphons and condis out. So asking for big changes seems like too much, but asking for small changes knowing full well they wont make the class even close to others seems like a good baby step? I like baby steps.

Yeah well thats what ive been asking for. Anything is better than nothing.