Guild Wars 2

Since my job is rather boring, I’ve been thinking about a few different directions that the devs could take the necromancer with future elite specializations. I’ve come up with 4 possible elite specs in that time with only 1 of them in a presentable form to be shown at the moment. However, I don’t wish to share the skills and traits of that elite spec because I suspect that it might already have been planned for the necromancer anyway. Though that’s kinda a Tin Foil hat belief so thats meh.

So the 4 elite specializations that I’ve come up with each work with what the necromancer has and what its missing to see what we can come up with. The 4 I’ve come up with are Ritualist, Lich, Witch and Vampire.

• Ritualist: This first idea was what I speculated would be the necromancer’s first elite specialization to which I was wrong. This elite specialization the concept behind it is pretty much complete with a full list of traits, skills, weapon and even spectral shroud. But I’m not going to show this one just yet, but rather tease it.

The Ritualist elite specialization is a heavily supportive profession that functions extremely well at long range. The spirits they summon having a 1,200 radius and providing both offense and defensive. 3 of the spirits were defensive while the other 3 were more offensive. I’ll give you two skills to show you have impactful they could be.

1. Dissonance: Summon a spirit of dissonance. Every 3 seconds a condition on each allie is transfered to a foe in range. Dissonance loses health for each condition transfered this way.
   ^Agony: Sacrifice dissonance to convert boons on foes within range into conditions. 600 radius of the spirit.
2. Call to the Spirit Realm: Summon a Spirit of Anger, Hate and Suffering. These spirits each send out bolts, damaging your foes.
   ^Summon Spirits: teleport all your spirits within range to target location healing them. 10s cool down.

The spirits themselves are actually fairly fragile but have extremely powerful effects. Because of the health loss of Dissonance it can’t be maintained forever. It will kill itself rather quickly the more allies are in the area. Although health can be adjusted you can expect it to last long enough to seriously hinder your foes.

Call to the Spirit realm is the elite. And it has a dual function, giving you the power to move your spirits at will and heal them. Their abilities are nothing to take lightly. These aren’t your ranger spirits, these are ritualist spirits!

I’ll also give you a preview of a couple of the traits. One Minor and a two grandmaster to see where my thinking is.

1. Minor: Spirit to Flesh: Whenever you would gain life force heal allies for a small ammount. 600 radius.
2. Explosive Growth: Whenever you summon a creature lightning surges out from its location, damaging foes and healing allies.
3. Sight beyond Sight: Stealthed foes have a blue flame around them while you’re in shroud. You are immue to blind while in shroud.

Ritualists are summoners. They were in GW1 and they should be in GW2. Explosive growth lets you combo with runes and sigils, Spirits and also the ever popular Minions! One thing that I really loved about the ritualist in GW1 was this ability to add abilities to their summons like damage or healing. It was something that made a ritualist minion master very unique when compared to a necromancer minion master. So I want to embody that idea in GW2. Giving you some very unique ways to play a minion master. The minor plays into the support aspect of the Ritualist. Letting you benefit and provide support to allies with some minor healing as you build to your spectral shroud. Sight beyond sight is just a total flavor bomb of a trait. Rather than revealing foes from stealth like other anti stealth abilities the ritualist can just SEE them. This gives them the knowledge to always know were their foe is but thieves can still back stab a ritualist.

• Lich: The second idea I had was the lich. Far more tanky than any other elite specialization the lich embodies the idea of being a wizard who has sold their mortality for an immortal body. The lich is the master of Minions, perfecting the art. Although the Lich also works in diseases and the sacrificial arts. I don’t yet have a shroud for them although I have considered the idea that their unique mechanic would be Orders and not a new shroud. They’d still have death shroud but they’d also gain access to new skills called orders which could modify your parties abilities similar to virtues but in a dark and twisted way.

The lich actually would use a shield as its weapon which its skills would actually count as minion skills or provide some benefit to minions. The skill 4 being a skill called Flesh wall which would summon an immobile minion that takes abuse and knocks foes back with it. Acting like a ward skill that can actually be killed. Their skill type would be sacrifice skills which would require a percentage of your health to be activated and have extremely risky and powerful effects.

The Lich elite specialization embodies 3 key ideas of lichs as we commonly see them. Corruption, Sacrifice and immortality.

1. Corruption, the concept would be around this idea of spreading conditions and summoning horrors to do your biding in building tension and torment in the area. Along this lines, the Lich would get a new condition they could apply called Disease. Which would be an extremely low damage condition that stacks and spreads, though can’t be spread to the same target twice with the same application of disease. Minions would become carriers from this concept and the lich itself would have tainted flesh.
2. Sacrifice, this concept builds more into your power specs. Sacrifice skills will play a heavy part in one potential build while normally you might only want one maybe 2 sacrifice skills on your bar. This type of build would put your life on the line to quite literally becoming stronger the lower your health drops. High risk and high reward from this play style, eating away at your own health to chew through your foes. Vitality becomes an important part of this play style, giving you traits that will modify the effectiveness of your sacrifice skills based on how high your vitality is.
3. Immortality isn’t what you think. This concept isn’t literally making the lich immortal. But rather modifying their defenses in such a way they can almost gain a second life. One such trait idea I had would actually halt the decay rate of your life force as long as you are below 25% health. There was a second part to that trait, but I don’t want to spoil it. This path would modify your abilities with a shield and make you difficult to control as well. Though you can still die, you’ll just be harder to take down with this concept.

The Lich needs allot of work. Its concepts aren’t nearly complete and I have allot of ideas for the elite specialization to work out on paper and in theory before feeling it’ll be good enough to show off. But the basic concepts and points I wanted to touch on are all there.

• Witch: This is where things get really interesting. The witch doesn’t actually change death shroud at all. It uses the exact same death shroud as the core necromancer. Rather they get a new condition and new F2-4 abilities. Witches are known for a few things in mythology and how we present them in our culture. Hexes, transforming people into toads, potions and insane cackling. With this elite spec I touch on all of that.

Hex: Hex is the brand new condition that the witch gains access to. This hex deals similar damage to poison and also stacks in intensity with no secondary effect. So whats so special about this condition though? Well, hex does whatever the witch wants it to. Thats right, when a witch has hexed you she can change the debilitating effect that it might cause those suffering from it. The new F2-4 abilities are called Hexes and each of them when activated will cost some of your life force to use and they’ll add or change what hex is doing for a short duration. Suddenly the foe that is hexed might pulse out protection to foes that are around it. Or perhaps their attack suddenly cause them to stumble and daze them for a half second. Or maybe their actions physically harm their allies. Hex is the witch’s tool box condition that can do anything and everything she wants and can be further modified through traits.

The witch also uses Elixirs as their utility skill. But this is where I run into a problem with the witches design. You see, to really embody the flavor and usefulness of this elite specialization the necromancer would need to have utility in death shroud. The elixirs I have designed have a dual function. outside of death shroud the witch drinks them to provide some unusual effects. While in death shroud she tosses them at foes to cause all sorts of chaos such as her powerful hex condition, fear or even turning someone into a toad!

The Witch is something I’d love to play even more than the Ritualist because of how unique and just silly it could get with its traits and skills.

• Vampire: The last idea I had was of a vampire elite specialization. “But Lily! We already have blood magic! What could a vampire possibly do that wouldn’t step all over blood magic.” Lots actually. You see there are allot of aspects of the vampire that the necromancer currently doesn’t touch on at all. Although the necromancer does do life stealing, transformations, and creating minions there is more to them than just that. The Vampire elite specialization would be far more along the lines of modifying bleeds, transforming and gaining supernatural abilities unseen before on the necromancer. The Vampire elite specialization could have a spear as its weapon and rage skills to give it max possible flavor.

The Vampire would embody these aspects. Blood, rage and transformation.

1. Blood as a concept would be about bleeding and modifying your attacks against bleeding foes or even grant you new abilities while in range of foes who are bleeding outside of just damage reduction or increased damage. A bleeding foe might invigorate the vampire giving them vigor. Thats right! I said vigor! The vampire elite specialization would give the necromancer access to a boon we’ve all been craving for a while. Vigor! Blood would also modify bleeding on foes to increase its damage or change skills that would normally daze a foe to full on stun them.
2. Rage would be more along the lines of the vampire moving extremely fast and entering a hyper aware state where they can react much quicker and move at inhuman speeds. So super speed and quickness would be given to this elite specialization further emphasizing that this is a supernatural create you are playing as.
   #Transformation is a bit of an interesting idea. The necromancer already does this with lich form, plague and their shroud. So this line would focus on your vampiric shroud a bit more as well as give you interesting ways to move throughout the world. Your evade would change you into a cloud of bats rather than jumping out of the way. I don’t think I’d add anything to that, just as a cosmetic thing for the elite spec would be cool. It would also be embodied through the vampire’s elite skill which I’ve yet to design. Though want it to modify shroud in some way similar to my Lich form suggestion a while back.

The vampire would be allot of fun to play and I imagine it would probably be more popular than my other ideas in practice because you’d be more in line with a blood raged monster that really gets people blood pumping.

What do you guys think of these ideas? Do you like them? Have some of your own? Let me know in the comments. Mind you this discussion is just to speculate on where out profession could go. And what is flavorful to our design and were we can expand on.

Lily.1935:

Since my job is rather boring, I’ve been thinking about a few different directions that the devs could take the necromancer with future elite specializations. I’ve come up with 4 possible elite specs in that time with only 1 of them in a presentable form to be shown at the moment. However, I don’t wish to share the skills and traits of that elite spec because I suspect that it might already have been planned for the necromancer anyway. Though that’s kinda a Tin Foil hat belief so thats meh.

So the 4 elite specializations that I’ve come up with each work with what the necromancer has and what its missing to see what we can come up with. The 4 I’ve come up with are Ritualist, Lich, Witch and Vampire.

• Ritualist: This first idea was what I speculated would be the necromancer’s first elite specialization to which I was wrong. This elite specialization the concept behind it is pretty much complete with a full list of traits, skills, weapon and even spectral shroud. But I’m not going to show this one just yet, but rather tease it.

The Ritualist elite specialization is a heavily supportive profession that functions extremely well at long range. The spirits they summon having a 1,200 radius and providing both offense and defensive. 3 of the spirits were defensive while the other 3 were more offensive. I’ll give you two skills to show you have impactful they could be.

1. Dissonance: Summon a spirit of dissonance. Every 3 seconds a condition on each allie is transfered to a foe in range. Dissonance loses health for each condition transfered this way.
   ^Agony: Sacrifice dissonance to convert boons on foes within range into conditions. 600 radius of the spirit.
2. Call to the Spirit Realm: Summon a Spirit of Anger, Hate and Suffering. These spirits each send out bolts, damaging your foes.
   ^Summon Spirits: teleport all your spirits within range to target location healing them. 10s cool down.

The spirits themselves are actually fairly fragile but have extremely powerful effects. Because of the health loss of Dissonance it can’t be maintained forever. It will kill itself rather quickly the more allies are in the area. Although health can be adjusted you can expect it to last long enough to seriously hinder your foes.

Call to the Spirit realm is the elite. And it has a dual function, giving you the power to move your spirits at will and heal them. Their abilities are nothing to take lightly. These aren’t your ranger spirits, these are ritualist spirits!

I’ll also give you a preview of a couple of the traits. One Minor and a two grandmaster to see where my thinking is.

1. Minor: Spirit to Flesh: Whenever you would gain life force heal allies for a small ammount. 600 radius.
2. Explosive Growth: Whenever you summon a creature lightning surges out from its location, damaging foes and healing allies.
3. Sight beyond Sight: Stealthed foes have a blue flame around them while you’re in shroud. You are immue to blind while in shroud.

Ritualists are summoners. They were in GW1 and they should be in GW2. Explosive growth lets you combo with runes and sigils, Spirits and also the ever popular Minions! One thing that I really loved about the ritualist in GW1 was this ability to add abilities to their summons like damage or healing. It was something that made a ritualist minion master very unique when compared to a necromancer minion master. So I want to embody that idea in GW2. Giving you some very unique ways to play a minion master. The minor plays into the support aspect of the Ritualist. Letting you benefit and provide support to allies with some minor healing as you build to your spectral shroud. Sight beyond sight is just a total flavor bomb of a trait. Rather than revealing foes from stealth like other anti stealth abilities the ritualist can just SEE them. This gives them the knowledge to always know were their foe is but thieves can still back stab a ritualist.

Nice idea, necros are summoners so why not “spirit summoner” with new staff skills and support for team?
+1

I have been playing with the Kodan Hammer that you can buy for 25 badges.

This is a chill specced hammer and it is so perfect with necromancer stuff. I want it so much.

Well, I enjoy these idea but it feel like very very far from what Anet do when they create Espec (especially the vampire spec which seem to be “anti-necro”)

I believe that Espec are designed to give a second life to existing stuff on each profession while still keeping the base idea of this same profession.

Ritualist :
I believe this one could work (sure, as a huge fan of the GW ritualist I can’t say that it won’t work). Though, It’s hard to imagine a weapon that we don’t have and would work with this thematic. Although for me the ritualist is all about enchant weapon, spirit, ashes and lightning stuff. I’d miss the ashes and enchant weapon stuff with your suggestion.

Lich :
It’s difficult to imagine a spec that would have the same name as one of our elite skill… it would be counter productive I think. Beside sacrificing life is something that you can afford in a game where there are dedicated healer which indirectly mean not GW2. I don’t say the idea is not good but I simply don’t really like it.

Witches :
This one is a bit to complicated. I believe there is room for utility skill in shroud with skills like mantra or glyph, even elixir would be fun but the base shroud would need to be extremly less effective. Beside, pilling up utility in shroud and new “F” skills would certainly be really to much.

Vampire :
This one is far far far away from the Necromancer. Vigor, super speed, quickness… I think your imagination goes wild here. Although… no more transformation please.

While I still enjoy the idea, I must say that none of them respect the necromancer’s concept (At least the picture of the necromancer’s concept that I feel anet have built). And I highly doubt that they will stray this far from this picture with their Espec.

ritualist in gw1 is basically what reverants are doing right now (the ashes) tho the revs summoning the spirit to sort of posses themselves and grant ability and bonuses.
i think spirit summoning should be reserved for Revs and necros get something elese like Totems which, as described, provide offense and support at long range

all totem skills are 1500 range and 15000 hp
>heal totem: spawn a totem that heal you and grant life force 300hp+2%lf
break the totem to gain large heal and protection (10s)
>totem 1: pulse unblock-able life siphon (to the necro)
break the totem to damage (3kish) and daze all enemies in range for 1seconds
>totem 2: totem transfer conditions on you to the totem (interval 2sec)
break the totem to inflict all conditions on the totem to all foes in range
>totem 3: summon a jagged horror at the location of the necro, (interval 5sec)
break the totem to spawn 1 explosive minion at each foe’s location that attach their selves to the foe, the explosive minions explode when the foe is struck by the necromancer’s next attack knocking down the attached foe and launching nearby foes
>Elite totem: fear(0.5s) all enemies in range (interval 30 sec)
break the totem to taunt (5sec) and confuse (3stack) all enemies in range to the nearest other enemies (they wouldn’t do damage to each other but its funny to watch)

also new weapon should be a hammer:
skill 1 is your AA that grant life-force
skill 2 is smash that summon a spike that cripple and torment at the location of all foes
skill 3 is a whirl damage skill much like avatar of Melendru temple boss
skill 4 is a banish like skill that, when struck shadow step the doe hit to your furthermost totem
skill 5 is a skill that teleport you to the nearest totem, the totem you just teleported to gets a 30 second cool down so if you use the skill again it teleport you to the Next Nearest totem

I think that it will be the Revenant who eventually gets Ritualist-like spec (they don’t have any AI, can get kits working like bundles etc.).

To be honest, my wish for spec after Reaper would be something oriented around control, conditions as health/life force sacrafices – basically concept of Corruptions that didn’t quite work out.

Or addition of new 5 Death Shroud skills 6-0 and turning our Life Force into a resource for those.

I had that idea about spec focused on control and vodoo-like stuff there, but I’ll be happy with anything closer to Corruption Necro rather than Reaper.

i love the ritualist idea and vampire-cloud dodges omg!

Dadnir.5038:

Well, I enjoy these idea but it feel like very very far from what Anet do when they create Espec (especially the vampire spec which seem to be “anti-necro”)

I believe that Espec are designed to give a second life to existing stuff on each profession while still keeping the base idea of this same profession.

Ritualist :
I believe this one could work (sure, as a huge fan of the GW ritualist I can’t say that it won’t work). Though, It’s hard to imagine a weapon that we don’t have and would work with this thematic. Although for me the ritualist is all about enchant weapon, spirit, ashes and lightning stuff. I’d miss the ashes and enchant weapon stuff with your suggestion.

Lich :
It’s difficult to imagine a spec that would have the same name as one of our elite skill… it would be counter productive I think. Beside sacrificing life is something that you can afford in a game where there are dedicated healer which indirectly mean not GW2. I don’t say the idea is not good but I simply don’t really like it.

Witches :
This one is a bit to complicated. I believe there is room for utility skill in shroud with skills like mantra or glyph, even elixir would be fun but the base shroud would need to be extremly less effective. Beside, pilling up utility in shroud and new “F” skills would certainly be really to much.

Vampire :
This one is far far far away from the Necromancer. Vigor, super speed, quickness… I think your imagination goes wild here. Although… no more transformation please.

While I still enjoy the idea, I must say that none of them respect the necromancer’s concept (At least the picture of the necromancer’s concept that I feel anet have built). And I highly doubt that they will stray this far from this picture with their Espec.

I imagine the ritualist using the torch off hand as a weapon. There is also the possibility of a completely new weapon with lantern. Also I only gave a small preview of the elite specialization. The Spectral shroud is all about spectral lightning and creating lighting fields. Also, regardless of who was given the elite spec, we’d lose out on spirit weapons regardless because of how much more integral spirits were to the profession. Without making an entirely new profession. When I do finally reveal the full profession it’ll have a tone of lighting on it. Trust me.

We also have skills and traits that reference a reaper without actually being a reaper. Reaper’s touch. Berserker is a gear set as well. Don’t let names limit what could become an elite specialization. As for the sacrifice skills. Its high risk, yes but this provides some possibilities that the profession otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. Originally necromancer was going to get sacrifice skills before GW2 came out but it was dropped in favor of corruption skills. The highest sacrifice I was thinking was 5% health. Nothing near the 33% that Blood is power had in GW1. At a 1 or 2 percent these aren’t any more harmful than corruptions. Though I’d like to see higher percentage as I have a few trait ideas that modify shroud while you are at lower health.

Yes the witch is extremely complicated. Though I don’t think arena net should shy away from complicated anymore. Their game is old enough and they can do something like this without an issue. Chronomancer will always be more complicated than this in my opinion and having a really strange ability like this could seriously ramp up the condition build’s usefulness in groups beyond just damage. The Witch is a massively fun idea that embodies the idea of a GW1 curses necromancer more than anything. Utility is something we need in death shroud anyway. And its one thing that’s holding this idea back. the lack of utility in shroud has been holding the entire profession back as it is.

I can justify the vampire because of its theme. Thematically its very fitting to the necromancer. In the first game the necromancer wasn’t always slow. They had extremely quick cast skills that struck often and quickly. The necromancer does have one of the fastest weapons in the game with the dagger. Being slow is a part of the necromancer of GW1 but its not defining to us. The elite specializations are meant to give us something new and exciting for the profession and are supposed to break normal conventions of that profession. As for transformations, it wasn’t in line with another Lich form or plague. But rather modifying the shroud itsealf or something more akin to the GW1 dervish elite forms.

I’m staying completely true to the theme of the necromancer with all of these. They don’t break their theme or the lore at all. I wouldn’t have presented them if they did. The only Lichs in the Guild Wars universe were all necromancers. Clearly its a Goal that a necromancer can strive for. The ritualist had a long standing rivalry with the necromancers as they both were summoners of the dead. Although they went about it in different ways they were extremely similar in their beliefs and even practices. The witch is more on theme much like the reaper. It defiantly follows in the footsteps of a curse necromancer from GW1. The Vampire is both inspired by the pop culture vampires but also creatures in the Guild Wars universe that are vampires themselves. Many of them would swarm you and steal your health or bleed you to death in the first game and could do it really quickly which made them threatening. This is an idea arena net sorta touched on with the dagger but didn’t go too deep into.

Rym.1469:

I think that it will be the Revenant who eventually gets Ritualist-like spec (they don’t have any AI, can get kits working like bundles etc.).

To be honest, my wish for spec after Reaper would be something oriented around control, conditions as health/life force sacrafices – basically concept of Corruptions that didn’t quite work out.

Or addition of new 5 Death Shroud skills 6-0 and turning our Life Force into a resource for those.

I had that idea about spec focused on control and vodoo-like stuff there, but I’ll be happy with anything closer to Corruption Necro rather than Reaper.

Yeah, my witch idea actually stemmed from your Soulbinder idea with a few changes. Yours is a bit more complex than mine and harder to actually imagine in game. And rather than making a whole new shroud I figured a removable condition would work a bit better in that sort of idea.

Ok, I have already seen your ideas on hex and ritualist, I love the hexer, but I agree with Rym that the ritualist should go to the revenant.

It has been said before, but I reckon the witch/hexer should wield a short bow. Otherwise I dont think I would change much.

Anyway, these new ideas!!

I was already pretty keen for a vampire build, and the swarm of bats ideas is awesome. I reckon it works better as the shroud mechanic??? Could we get some teleports, where the animations would be a fast moving swarm of bats.
Yea, I like the idea of necros getting some quickness, speed and dodges, I had it under wraith, but I now see that it would work better with vampire.
Some other ideas for vampires

• What about invisibility?? Hiding in the shadows definitely sounds like a vampire skill.
• Would there be some cool counter plays where light fields or light related skills damage us?
• And I have mentioned it before, but some sort really hard to land high damage/finisher neck bite would be cool. Might make a good elite skill.
• Could our attack speed be inversely proportional to our targets health, or proportional to the amount of bleeds on a target, or both?? Or maybe you could gain a charge every time you strike a bleeding foe, when you have X charges you gain quickness?
• What if LF was like a measure of your thirst?

Lich sounds like it works.

• The new condi, disease, sounds cool. So it would spread when two players are within a certain distance of each other or us/our minions? Would we and our minions be be permanently pulsing it out?
• And the sacrifice utilities sound fun. I like the idea of it requiring skill, to effectively use these high risk – high reward utilities.
• They should just move the lich form to the lich elite spec (maybe with some changes) and give necros a new elite. (I reckon the same should be done for tempest and tornado but w/e)

just some ideas.

mist form as a vampire is so needed. double the burning damage, make it resistant to poison (the effect, not the damage portion), all condi duration defense (wound healing capabilities)

and for lich, i would let his downed hp never degenerate and let him run around when downed and unable to be finished (except skills finishing like daredevil elite). you would need to dps down the downed hp in general.
(still the downed lich would have only downed state skills). summon swarm of bone minions on death, that attack and hopefully finish a foe.
for me lich should be all about the immortality, undead ARMY and impactful death

Ok, I had a go at filling out your/our ideas for a vampire.

I have kinda gone with something a little different to what you may have been imagining. It is not quite right but I like the general direction, let me know what you think.

So, the more blood that is around, the thirstier you get (generating LF, where LF is a measure of how thirsty you are). When you reach 100% LF or thirst you are automatically put into blood frenzy (our shroud) where you are taunted to the nearest enemy for 3s. (Should you be able to enter shroud before 100%? and should you be able to leave while you are still ‘thirsty’? Maybe there should be some thresholds. >75% to enter and < 25% to exit?)

Minors

• Gain access to blood frenzy (shroud), spear and rage utilities. Also – Bleeds and poisons are ineffective on you. Burning also burns through your LF? You are vulnerable to light fields. Dark fields, give you ???.
• All attacks have a 33% chance to bleed your foe for 1s.
• Nearby bleeding players generate LF (‘thirst’). Does not apply in while shroud/frenzy

Rage

• When entering blood frenzy you gain 6s of superspeed.
• Deal 0.5% more damage to players per bleeding stack while in blood frenzy.
• When in blood frenzy your attack speed is increased depending on your target’s health pool. (5% increased attack speed per 10% health)

Blood

• Spear attacks apply another stack of bleeding on hits. (kinda lame?)
• Bleeds last 30% longer and deal more damage. (Blood frenzy attacks cause bleeding?)
• Your bleeding damage heals you (scales with condi dmg and healing power)

Bat****crazy

• Bleeding a foe gives you 5s of vigor. 10s ICD
• Utility skills recharge 33% faster and ???
• Evading an attack – eg while in bat swarm – bleeds your attacker. (should this trait modify your dodge roll to include bats? or should that be baseline with the vampire spec?)

Utilities Rage skills – that grant LF (Gives us a decent way to trigger blood frenzy)

• Disperse – bats scatter in different directions leaving you invisible/invulnerable the bats reconverge after 5s. Breaks stun
• Turn into a swarm of bats, rise up into the air and slam the ground with your swarm – AoE knockback, ground targeting (like in dracula untold if you have seen it). 3/4s evade.
• Bat swarm – Evade. Movement skill/teleport that uses ground targeting. Short cooldown
• ? (some sort of super sense that can? reveal stealthed players?)

Heal

• Self bleed – Hit button once and you get standard heal 1 sec cast time. But if you hit it again before this 1 sec is over you instantly go in Shroud with 33% LF and generate LF per sec, 8-10 pulses. Even if the shroud is on CD

Elite

• ??? (Impale? or neck bite? – either could be a finisher?)

Shroud skills – Blood frenzy – this is where you have kinda lost a bit of control which is reflected in each skills mechanics. So it’s not very reliable, but it deals heaps of single target dps.

• 3 attack combo. Attacks 1 and 2 are standard, rip/slash, or w/e. Attack 3 – you leap to the nearest enemy, that isn’t the one you are already attacking and isnt within 300 range.
• Leap to the enemy, within range, with the most bleed stacks.
• Fear the enemy, within range, with the least health.
• Neck bite/suck blood – (I want this skill to be harder to land but also hard to get out of once landed – for both the vampire and our foe). Applies lots of bleeds and CCs? You are also taunted for the duration you are channelling this skill, meaning you can’t break it if you want to. Interrupts will really suck.
• Some sort of AoE attack? ???

Weapon skills – Spear

• As usual 3 attack chain. Maybe with an evade in it, or just more bleeds, or gain vigor?
• ???
• Lunge – medium range, leap finisher. Animation could be a charging/swirling swarm of bats then you reappear with your spear and stab your target? Evade 3/4s.
• Javelin – throw the spear, long range. Pierces?
• Impale – impale an enemy on your spear (could use float to do this?). Longer cast time or a very obvious animation? But insane damage or bleeds.

Alternatively we could swap the utility skills into the shroud to make it more related to bats and the utility skills could be more related to blood frenzy? But this doesn’t really work with the idea that LF is a measure of the vampires thirst.

What about healing skill with 2 options. Hit it once and you get standart heal 1 sec cast time. But if you hit it again before this 1 sec is over you instantly go in Shroud with 33% LF and generate LF per sec, 8-10 pulses. Even if the shroud is on CD resets and all Shroud skills reset as well.

I think that it will be the Revenant who eventually gets Ritualist-like spec (they don’t have any AI, can get kits working like bundles etc.).

It’s pretty easy to give every profession we know from GW1 to the revenant. Let’s see, I want a revenant that is a :
- Minionmancer : Legend Verata, set of minions, probably scepter
- Paragon : legend Sogolon, set of aria and shout, javelin (just so there is no confusion between land and underwater)
- Ritualist : legend Togo, lightning stuff, Probably focus
- Mesmer (a la GW1) : legend Gwen (obviously), hexes, flute
- Berzerker : legend leeroy, dumb skills, weapon : flag
… etc.

Yes the witch is extremely complicated. Though I don’t think arena net should shy away from complicated anymore. Their game is old enough and they can do something like this without an issue. Chronomancer will always be more complicated than this in my opinion and having a really strange ability like this could seriously ramp up the condition build’s usefulness in groups beyond just damage. The Witch is a massively fun idea that embodies the idea of a GW1 curses necromancer more than anything. Utility is something we need in death shroud anyway. And its one thing that’s holding this idea back. the lack of utility in shroud has been holding the entire profession back as it is.

I still think that you’re pilling up way to many new mechanisms to make it an Espec. It’s just pure addition, it couldn’t be balanced with the necromancer (base profession). Should I say : “It’s just an upgrade” ?

act.6302:

snip

For weapon I already mentioned Spear. A spear on land is super fitting. But if arena net are really against adding new weapons to the game sword would work. The reason I mentioned spear is because its gushing with flavor. Vlad the Impaler or Dracula would impale his foes on a stake or spear letting them sit out in the sun and bleed to death. At least that’s how its told. So a spear is just fantastic flavor for a vampire In my opinion.

Lily.1935:

For weapon I already mentioned Spear. A spear on land is super fitting. But if arena net are really against adding new weapons to the game sword would work. The reason I mentioned spear is because its gushing with flavor. Vlad the Impaler or Dracula would impale his foes on a stake or spear letting them sit out in the sun and bleed to death. At least that’s how its told. So a spear is just fantastic flavor for a vampire In my opinion.

Opps, missed that. Yea, I agree with that, spear works well. Maybe the elite skill could be some sort of impale? I am kinda keen for the vampires elite to also be a finisher.

mazut.4296:

What about healing skill with 2 options. Hit it once and you get standart heal 1 sec cast time. But if you hit it again before this 1 sec is over you instantly go in Shroud with 33% LF and generate LF per sec, 8-10 pulses. Even if the shroud is on CD resets and all Shroud skills reset as well.

Yea ok, I like that. It gives you a defensive and offensive option with your heal. Dont know about reseting all your shroud cooldowns tho, might be a little OP?

I updated my earlier post about the vampire with these ideas, and made some more changes.

Ofc it need fine tuning, but I like the idea of having the choice. And its not hard implement such skills or balance it.

Dadnir.5038:

I still think that you’re pilling up way to many new mechanisms to make it an Espec. It’s just pure addition, it couldn’t be balanced with the necromancer (base profession). Should I say : “It’s just an upgrade” ?

Chronomancer is just an upgrade to Mesmer. So I don’t think that should be a factor. Also Part of the indicator to show that its changing is you’d hear a loud cackle and its visual would change.

Lily.1935:

Dadnir.5038:

I still think that you’re pilling up way to many new mechanisms to make it an Espec. It’s just pure addition, it couldn’t be balanced with the necromancer (base profession). Should I say : “It’s just an upgrade” ?

Chronomancer is just an upgrade to Mesmer. So I don’t think that should be a factor. Also Part of the indicator to show that its changing is you’d hear a loud cackle and its visual would change.

I like the idea of having utilities in shroud, and also the new customisable condition – hex. Maybe we could combine these ideas somehow to make it more appealing to devs? What if, while in shroud, you could choose which conditions to put into 5 (different types of?) elixr bottles and then throw them? So shroud is like your potion brewing state, maybe there could be some sort of funny animation with a cauldron?