Guild Wars 2

or give necro some +25% speed adept trait.

I would disagree after the recent buff. I might argue another cooldown shave, but now that it has good scaling with healing power and doesn’t punish you so harshly for using it, the active is now fine. Pretty nice when you have a 7.2k heal against Mesmers, for example.

We can get almost a 100% swiftness up time with banshee’s wail and warhorn, we have +25 movement speed passive on locust, we have +33ms from spectral walk, we have +40 from D/D and quickening thirst, we even have trait for +25 ms while in DS.

For reals though how much more speed could you possibly need

We don’t need anymore speed, and it’s active is still bad the active should be like rtl where we turn into locust and leech on hit. Bam, sort of a port, more build diversity, looks awesome.

Ragion.2831:

We can get almost a 100% swiftness up time with banshee’s wail and warhorn, we have +25 movement speed passive on locust, we have +33ms from spectral walk, we have +40 from D/D and quickening thirst, we even have trait for +25 ms while in DS.

Quickening Thirst doesn’t add both increases. You get a total of +25% for d/d.
Also, swiftness is +33% out of combat and +25% in combat, and this is as good as it gets.

Junkpile.7439:

or give necro some +25% speed adept trait.

This sounds like you are taking Locust Signet just for the +25% speed.
Keep in mind, you are the slowest profession with or without swiftness or other speed buffs. So don’t make yourself weaker at the cost of getting it.

flow.6043:

Ragion.2831:

We can get almost a 100% swiftness up time with banshee’s wail and warhorn, we have +25 movement speed passive on locust, we have +33ms from spectral walk, we have +40 from D/D and quickening thirst, we even have trait for +25 ms while in DS.

Quickening Thirst doesn’t add both increases. You get a total of +25% for d/d.
Also, swiftness is +33% out of combat and +25% in combat, and this is as good as it gets.

Junkpile.7439:

or give necro some +25% speed adept trait.

This sounds like you are taking Locust Signet just for the +25% speed.
Keep in mind, you are the slowest profession with or without swiftness or other speed buffs. So don’t make yourself weaker at the cost of getting it.

wat? its not 40%? my gawd…all this time….i used to run that trait in pvp a lot thinking….wow

Guardian is slower than necro

Ragion.2831:

We can get almost a 100% swiftness up time with banshee’s wail and warhorn, we have +25 movement speed passive on locust, we have +33ms from spectral walk, we have +40 from D/D and quickening thirst, we even have trait for +25 ms while in DS.

For reals though how much more speed could you possibly need

These are bad options. For example D/D. Why the kitten i would use main hand power weapon and off hand condi weapon? Doesn’t make any sense. Spectral walk you usually need in combat so why i would put it cool down before fight? If i use warhorn i can’t use off hand dagger. I want trait like warrior sprint. Only good adept trait in best trait line. Signet of locust active could give 15 sec stability or something.

Signets still do not have a lot of synergy. Necromancer could really use an additional trim on cool down as a grandmaster trait so a full signet build is less painful.

Junkpile.7439:

Ragion.2831:

We can get almost a 100% swiftness up time with banshee’s wail and warhorn, we have +25 movement speed passive on locust, we have +33ms from spectral walk, we have +40 from D/D and quickening thirst, we even have trait for +25 ms while in DS.

For reals though how much more speed could you possibly need

These are bad options. For example D/D. Why the kitten i would use main hand power weapon and off hand condi weapon? Doesn’t make any sense. Spectral walk you usually need in combat so why i would put it cool down before fight? If i use warhorn i can’t use off hand dagger. I want trait like warrior sprint. Only good adept trait in best trait line. Signet of locust active could give 15 sec stability or something.

Yea necro needs some stabilty. Personally i think that +5% damage minor in SR should be foot in the grave.

I quite enjoy D/D, i use it pretty often actually, useful for fighting on point since we cant escape too well (no im not wasting a utility spot for a flesh wurm that has the attack speed of a drunken ape).

It should break stun on activate.

The active sucks. If you are in the situation that you have to be in to get a decent heal, you are dead anyways. Plus, you’ll never be in that situation on a conquest map.

I think Signet of the Locust is pretty good. The passive is great when moving between nodes, and when on a node and fighting you can bust out the active for a strong heal every so often. The biggest problem is that Necromancers lack resilience to CC, and so their stunbreaks can basically never leave their skillbar except in rare cases or against sub-par teams for extremely powerful skills like Signet of Spite.

If there were a trait that helped sustain CC a lot or some very quick-reload, quick-activation stunbreak, I think we’d see a lot more utilities, like Signet of the Locust, start to fill the third utility slot.

Maybe something like:

Spectral Defense
(30s ICD) Activate Spectral Armor (with its stunbreak) when you are disabled.

nekretaal.6485:

It should break stun on activate.

The active sucks. If you are in the situation that you have to be in to get a decent heal, you are dead anyways. Plus, you’ll never be in that situation on a conquest map.

Not always. Against engies, mesmers, MM Necros, and pretty much any pve content, it becomes comparable to a full heal now (with either bloodthirst and/or healing power) every 32/40 seconds, without using your actual heal. Even when fighting rangers it can be an ok 2-4K heal when you hit them+pet. SoL can also be worked into Necro sustain builds, especially with SoV (as an emergency heal without using SoV active). It works quite well post patch for that.

It’s still really undependable though. All it takes is poison, blind or blocks to utterly ruin using the active. Then all you’ve essentially done is wasted your kiting/speed ability until it recharges. This is why whenever I had SoL in my bar I never used active before its buff, because I got more out of the irremovable speed buff for kiting damage than a heal that’s going to fail 95% of the time.

Now it feels like a completely different skill… to a point. :p

It could really use a stun breaker on it due to how easily countered the active is.

I just wish Necromancers signets had more utility that makes sense to the class. On other classes, I’m actually surprised more people aren’t using their signets (I guess their other utilities are that powerful?). I personally use 3 signets on my hybrid regen ranger and I make good use of both the passive and actives on the SotH, SoR, and SotW. I actually hope that anet roles out healing and elite signets for ranger.

In the case of signet of the locust, it’s active is only really good against mesmers and a couple other quirky ai based match ups (spirit rangers, hyena rangers lol, thieves guild thieves, minion masters, etc.). It is fairly weak in outnumbered cc heavy situations which is an experience every necromancer should be accustomed to. I just consider SoL as a pve signet which would be fine if I didn’t feel most of necromancers signets had problems.

It’s a bad skill in PvE too. The active is on too long of a recharge, and the passive is duplicated by various boosters, kites, and utilities. You only use the skill in PvE when you are cheap.

If Arenanet just changed the radius from 480 to 600 or 900, the odds of catching more than one opponent with the active improve.

Junkpile.7439:

Ragion.2831:

We can get almost a 100% swiftness up time with banshee’s wail and warhorn, we have +25 movement speed passive on locust, we have +33ms from spectral walk, we have +40 from D/D and quickening thirst, we even have trait for +25 ms while in DS.

For reals though how much more speed could you possibly need

These are bad options. For example D/D. Why the kitten i would use main hand power weapon and off hand condi weapon? Doesn’t make any sense. Spectral walk you usually need in combat so why i would put it cool down before fight? If i use warhorn i can’t use off hand dagger. I want trait like warrior sprint. Only good adept trait in best trait line. Signet of locust active could give 15 sec stability or something.

Um, because offhand dagger has a good condi transfer and a really nice aoe weakness skill? That’s useful everywhere.