Guild Wars 2

Just some ideas I’ve been refining and spitballing. I’ve bounced some previous iterations around before, but I’ve refined them a bit and am posting them again. Feel free to comment, or not, but these are mostly here for the hidden developers that say they read our forum.

Siphoned Power

• Remove old functionality
• Gain 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds when you enter Death Shroud.

Unholy Sanctuary

• Remove old functionality
• Gain regeneration for 5 seconds when you enter Death Shroud. You can be healed by any source while in Death Shroud

Ritual of Protection

• Applies 1 second of protection on pulse, not only when the well is created.

Spiteful Marks

• Remove old functionality
• Remove the blast finisher on Putrid Mark
• This trait now makes all marks blast finishers.

Soul Marks

• Replace this trait with one called “Soul Strength”
• Increases condition damage of nearby allies (+150)

Strength of Undeath

• Now gives +10% damage instead of +5% damage

Foot in the Grave

• Remove old functionality
• Breaks stun when you enter Death Shroud
• 14 second ICD (only starts when a stun is actually broken)

Unholy Martyr

• Remove old functionality
• Pull 1 condition from all nearby allies to yourself when you enter Death Shroud, gaining 325 (0.2) life for each condition pulled in this way.
• Triggers before Shrouded Removal

Renewing Blast

• Remove old functionality
• Gain quickness for 2 seconds when you successfully strike with Life Blast or Plague Blast.

Some skill changes too that I think would be really neat:

Well of Blood

• Now a Water field instead of a Light field
• Affects Wells of Blood created by Ritual of Life

Well of Darkness

• Now a Smoke field instead of a Dark field

Signet of Vampirism

• Remove old functionality
• Passive: Siphon 60 (0.05) life when you attack
• Active: Heal yourself 3,960 (0.5) life and mark a target with 25 stacks of Mark of Vampirism. When an ally strikes the target while it has a stack of Mark of Vampirism, that ally siphons 392 (0.2) life from it and removes a stack.
• 25 second cooldown still

I would love the Unholy Sanctuary, Ritual of Protection, and Well of Blood changes.

Removing our only source of stability though? I don’t use it myself, as I go for Death Perception instead, but a lot of necros do. A lot of people already feel that necros need another way to get short stability, so taking the only source out would be a pretty bad move.

The extra blast finishers on marks might sound nice, but they’re wholly unreliable since you have to hit something for them to actually blast – but they’d have to re-design the way marks work for those to actually be viable. Plus, they’d probably increase the CD on marks to compensate for so many blast finishers on one weapon, which would be a pretty large nerf for something we can’t reliably use. They do need to give us an on-demand blast finisher or two somewhere, though.

The Unholy Sanctuary change is really very much needed, however, if they’re not going to make it a base part of the DS mechanic for us to get outside heals in Death Shroud. Sucks that what should be base functionality would be locked behind a GM trait, but it’s better than what we have now, and that trait is currently useless anyway.

They should just change all of the on enter/exit DS traits to have stronger effects and an icd. For instance, Foot in the Grave could apply 5-8 seconds of stability with a 30-60 second icd. It would allow necros to use their traits and their profession mechanic without making a trade off for one or the other. That and self healing in DS.

I think Foot in the Grave as we have it now is weak. The problem is that they won’t buff it because with sufficient boon duration and when coupled with Near to Death you can maintain the highest percent uptime of stability of any class in-game… The problem is that you cripple the rest of your build and you basically do nothing for your team. I think turning it into a stunbreak is more along the lines of what people want to use it for, requires more play/counterplay (you can now save DS for a reactive stunbreak, or use it for the skills early). I thought about not giving it an ICD at all, but I figured a 7s CD stunbreak was a bit much, considering they could also be packing Plague Signet, Spectral Walk, or Spectral Armor.

storiessave.3807:

The extra blast finishers on marks might sound nice, but they’re wholly unreliable since you have to hit something for them to actually blast – but they’d have to re-design the way marks work for those to actually be viable. Plus, they’d probably increase the CD on marks to compensate for so many blast finishers on one weapon, which would be a pretty large nerf for something we can’t reliably use. They do need to give us an on-demand blast finisher or two somewhere, though.

That was exactly why I did it! Having four blast finishers on the staff (not to mention the blast finishers in Lich Form) would be pretty insane if they could be proc’d out of combat. However, having them in-combat is a sort of balancer, and keeps them fair without making them OP. I also think them not having to change the way Marks work is better because it requires less effort on Anet’s part.

AoE 150 ferocity for party instead of the 5 minor spite trait (might when below % hp)

150 ferocity would indeed be better than condition damage, but I also think it’s less in theme with the Necromancer and way too strong for a minor trait that you get on the side. It would have to be a master major trait at the least.