Guild Wars 2

Almost all skills on dagger and focus have waaay too long of a cast time, i mean the reason no one ever uses dagger 2 is it has a 3.5 sec channeling time! Dagger 3 is not horrible in it’s cast but it has a long cd. Long cd and long cast time on a melee weapon that is suppose to be aggressive and in your face just makes no sense, especially on a class that is the least mobile one.
Same for focus 5, there is no reason for it to have 1.25 cast time especially because it is the 1 necro skill that has a more noticeable animation.

Thees skills need to get the locust swarm treatment and get their cast/channeling times reduced and idc about hard to see animations and tells, if them having shorter cast times means the necromancer gets a red arrow above his head and turns purple while casting so be it.

do any of the necromancer weaponskills have insta-cast?

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

do any of the necromancer weaponskills have insta-cast?

No. I think only Eles and Mesmers have instant cast skills on weapons.

@OP: I use dagger 2 all the time. It’s not used for DPS, but sustain, as well as stealth-hitting, kiting (once the channel starts, facing is irrelevant), and dealing with kiting. Dark Pact could use a shaved cast time, but dagger is well designed with each skill serving a distinct purpose and being good at that purpose.

Spinal Shivers, though… yeah, that cast time is unnecessarily excessive.

Dagger#2 DOES need a faster animation. Not so much on the chanel as the healing is traded for the bigger dps of the axe chanel, but on the initial startup time.

Cast times are a big issue for Necromancers right now. Things like Spinal Shivers have completely prohibitive cast times that make them huge losses in DPS in PvE and far too easy to dodge/LoS in PvP.

Things I think that could use a quicker activation time:

• Spinal Shivers – 3/4s
• Dark Path – 1/2s
• Life Siphon – 2 1/2s
• Epidemic – 1/2s
• Signet of Spite – 1/2s
• Enfeebling Blood – 1/2s

While we’re at it, we should really remove the aftercast delay on Wail of Doom. Make it more like Locust Swarm.

Their are two real problems, one is the cast times although that’s on a relatively small number of skills, 3/4s casts are fine. The other problem I see with necros is cooldown times. Necro dagger mainhand, wells, and signets have really long cooldowns relative to other classes.

+1, reduced cast times (where appropriate) makes a lot of sense. Basically 3/4s for any normal skill is time enough, 1s + should only be saved for really high impact abilities, and 1/2s should be used for abilities that have a noticeable traveling animation or aren’t dodgeabe (like Locust Swarm).

A few could use CD reduction too. Stuff like this isn’t a “huge” buff, but it is really nice to play with.

Do any of you use scepter 2 and/or dagger 5?

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Do any of you use scepter 2 and/or dagger 5?

All the time, because they hit hard in condition builds.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Do any of you use scepter 2 and/or dagger 5?

Bleeds, bleeds, bleeds!!!!

I use Scepter 2 and Dagger 5 all of the time as well, but Dagger 5 is very frustrating because not only does it have a long cast time, it has a “drop time” where it falls from the sky, and it has an aftercast delay. Against particularly skilled players, it basically does nothing but lure out a dodge.

It’s why I use dagger warhorn. The cripple from the warhorn makes up for dagger 3 having a long cd and makes dagger 1 more viable, while the dagger 2 is used for foes who stealth and/or kite around ai.

Mesmer also has cast times (or at least animation delays) on most things, including phantasms, but generally it is a set of shorter ones. The only instant (with no animation delay) I can think of is Chaos armour on staff, and possibly a couple of the clones.

When I play my necro it’s more that some of them take too long to cast rather than the fact they have cast times. I don’t actually mind the dagger life steal as I usually use that one for kiting or when there is a gap, but dagger #5 for example really shouldn’t have that slow an attack. I still like it for the weakness and style, but yes… faster please