Guild Wars 2

At first I’d like to mention that I’m mainly a PvE player. My first character to hit 80 was a necromancer, and it’s still the class that I enjoy playing the most. Sadly, it seems to be the least desirable class to run with for PvE content.

Lately I’ve been thinking of a few ways that the necro could be “fixed” so that it would actually be desirable to bring along in dungeon runs and similar content. Some of the ideas a pretty small, but important changes, while some of my other ideas might be a bit more gameplay changing. Some might just be my preferences, but I’d say most of them are an improvement over the current status of this profession.

Skills:
- Blood is Power: This would be more useful if it granted might to your party as well, 10 stacks on you and 3 for the rest of the party maybe, or 5 stacks party wide.
- Well of Power: Nothing major, but I think it should be instant-cast.

Traits:
- Any trait that activate on entering Death Shroud should apply to the party. Foot in the Grave gives party stability, Spiteful Spirit gives party retaliation, Furious Demise gives party fury, and Shrouded removal cures one condition on allies, etc.
- Reaper’s Might affects allies? Might be a bit OP, but could be altered to work for allies only every other attack, or every 3 attacks or something like that. Maybe at reduced duration.
- Passive ability similar to Empower Allies, Strength in Numbers or Spotter that grants a party wide bonus to condition damage.
- Trait that grants life siphon to allies ever so often, maybe every 10 secons or something like that.
- Trait that grants buffs to allies while in Death Shroud, maybe in form of boons, or possibly a merge with one of the ideas mentioned before?

Death Shroud:
- In the party interface, give the necro two healthbars, one for life force and one for health so other party members don’t think you’re dying when you’re really just running out of life force.
- Possibility to be healed while in Death Shroud, but at reduced effectiveness. 50%, or maybe even less?
- Dark Path: This skill would be much better if it functioned more like Rush on Warrior greatsword, or Fiery Rush on the Elementalist Fiery Greatsword skill. Could then be used as an escape as well as a gap-closer.

Weapons:
- Axe: I’d suggest making it work more like an extended melee weapon. Let the auto-attack hit a certain amount of enemies within an arc in front of you, kinda similar to staff on Guardian. This can be applied to skill 2 on the axe as well. The result is an axe that is actually useful.
- Warhorn: I really like the warhorn, but I think it could be nice to make skill 5’s swiftness apply to allies as well as yourself. Skill 4 could possibly grant vigor to yourself while also dazing enemies like it does now.
- Dagger: I’m generally quite satisfied with dagger, but skill 2 could channel faster. Skill 3 is useful in some cases, but could be more useful if combined with a blink effect?
- Make the Spear work on land?
- New weapons are always welcome, maybe something that adds mobility, or some blocks, or something that helps the party in some way.

I realise there are other weapons too that I did not mention. This would be because I can’t think of any specific ideas for them.

What do you think of these ideas? Any additional input, anything you disagree with, any ideas of your own? I’d like to hear what thoughts other necromancers have on this issue.

I don’t agree on the idea necro is so bad in pve. If you mean anything else than dungeon, they’re pretty good.

About dungeon, the only problem with necros is dps. if it would be increased, it would be great. But no real review of the class seems necessary to me.
Just some soft burst to put its dps in the same line of others.

I think there is no point writing such ideas over and over again here. They are all repeating itself. Let’s just accept the fact that ANet doesn’t give a kitten about necro in PvE and reroll some useful class.

Bloodyhell.8760:

I don’t agree on the idea necro is so bad in pve. If you mean anything else than dungeon, they’re pretty good.

About dungeon, the only problem with necros is dps. if it would be increased, it would be great. But no real review of the class seems necessary to me.
Just some soft burst to put its dps in the same line of others.

Nah they are pretty bad.

Think about “tagging enemies,” doing enough damage to get loot. In a zerg event.

Staff Marks don’t do enough damage by themselves to tag an enemy unless their conditions hit for several seconds, Wells are on long cool downs, Daggers require you to travel to right on top of the mob (and absorb the CC from the mob first), and DS 4 needs to hit a few times to tag.

Other than dagger, there is no autoattack cleave.

The puts the class definitively worse than thieves, guardians, and engineers.

And that the class’ strength.

Remember that you’ve still got to face tank hits and CC, no group utility, no reflects, and bad land speed.

EDIT

The problem with Necromancer DPS in dungeons is no reflects. Classes with reflects do light years more damage than classes without reflects. Other than that, the DPS is actually ok/not the problem. And the dagger cleave buff helps a lot in the typical “stacking” encounter. The problem with necromancers in dungeons has really to do with no group utility/nothing unique that the Necomancer can do better than another class.

Most of these actually seem really reasonable. One thing that I’d definitely like to see is the life force bar in party interface, or at least have the bar change colors. I’ve had many times where a party member has wasted skills trying to heal/protect me because they saw my life force ticking down in the party window, or they’ve even just stopped fighting because they thought they were gonna have to come over to rez me. This makes them waste skills unnecessarily, and I can’t even get the effects since death shroud prevents healing. Maybe we don’t need healing in DS but at least give us this QoL change.

As far as pve goes, I’ve never gotten kicked from a dungeon or fractal for being on a necro and I’ve never had a problem where I was so useless that I felt the need to swap characters. I eventually got sick of lugging around an additional armor/weapon set just for running dungeons, so now I just use my guardian for my pve needs but its definitely not impossible to do all the content as a necro.

Necros do fine enough damage IMO, the problem is utility. We have good utility in theory but most dungeons don’t really require the type of utility we offer (aka, offensive utility and reflects) The only decent offensive utility is decent vuln stacking. Also, it’s kinda tough to notice the defensive utility, in general.

Just make a trait that increases ferocity party wide (like empower allies or spotter). Problem solved.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Necros do fine enough damage IMO, the problem is utility. We have good utility in theory but most dungeons don’t really require the type of utility we offer (aka, offensive utility and reflects) The only decent offensive utility is decent vuln stacking. Also, it’s kinda tough to notice the defensive utility, in general.

Necromancer dps is bottom tier. Only mesmers are usually worse (because phantasms die too fast).
Ingi/ranger both do much more dps (especially in short fights) and both bring much more support and utility.

Necro needs a dps and support/utilitybuff to become usefull in dungeons (and upcoming raids).
And this…will not happen this year. Probably not even next year.

I have an easier way to make Necros decent in PvE:

EDIT: I am always TL;DR. Here’s the short version-
Necros stack lots of vuln with Spite GM minor
Curses Master minor is aoe fury
Buff single target dps or give a group damage buff (like a Ferocity aura)
Every class should have a group projectile blocker ability for pve
We won’t be the best class in pve, but we would at least be closer to the rest of the pack.

Simple Changes:

-Make Furious Demise grant fury to allies in an aoe.

-Remove Siphoned Power (it’s absolutely terrible) and replace it with “Corrosive Hatred: Your hits have a 50% chance to apply 1 stack of Vulnerability (6S)”. I call this a simple change because there are several extremely similar passives, although it could obviously be more complicated than I imagine to implement.

More Advanced Changes (take more time to implement):

-Add an aoe projectile blocking (NOT reflection) ability of some sort to necro AND warrior- many encounters appear to be designed with at least some projectile blocking in mind, and ensuring that every class has some sort of reflect/blocker means that any class can contribute to this important aspect of group support with some investment. It doesn’t matter if it’s a copy/paste of wall of reflection or something- this should be a standard for all classes.

-Pick one of the following:
A. Buff single target dps to bring necros to middle of the pack levels (not thief dps- more like slightly above warriors, given that warriors contribute more in terms of support)

B. Give necros a unique damage boost similar to frost spirit or empower allies. As mentioned above, a ferocity aura would be unique and useful. Alternatively, you could standardize damage boosters- Frost Spirit, Empower Allies, and a new necro trait all give 6% increased damage, and they don’t stack (so you want a ranger, warrior, or necro depending on what your party composition looks like).

Necros can now come pretty close to 25-stacking vuln by themselves and provide decent Fury uptime. This is both thematically appropriate (we contribute to the group by making enemies weaker) and gives necros a solid niche. The simpler changes alone ensure that necros are at least not totally outclassed in a party. The more advanced changes might come with more balance concerns or require creating a totally new ability, which obviously requires more dev time and testing.

Give minions MOAR DAMAGE AND CLEAVE LOLS

Norjena.5172:

Necromancer dps is bottom tier.

I remember that thread a few months back that showed that necros had comparable single target DPS to warriors. Has much changed since then?

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Norjena.5172:

Necromancer dps is bottom tier.

I remember that thread a few months back that showed that necros had comparable single target DPS to warriors. Has much changed since then?

No, Necro just cannot give mad buffs and PvE bosses ignore conditions and CC.

ANet needs to focus on something else.

Make Condi/CC/Snares actually useful.

CC and immob are extremely valuable. Supporting condis like vuln, weakness or conditions useful for a multiplier like burning ( ele 5 fire trait, guardian 2 zeal trait) are also valuable. Necro dps is top tier. They lack offensive support, defensive support, and active defense.

oxtred.7658:

CC and immob are extremely valuable. Supporting condis like vuln, weakness or conditions useful for a multiplier like burning ( ele 5 fire trait, guardian 2 zeal trait) are also valuable. Necro dps is top tier. They lack offensive support, defensive support, and active defense.

+1

25 vuln > 25 might but no one gets that. Or is it, everyone and their Engi can stack it so who really cares?

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Norjena.5172:

Necromancer dps is bottom tier.

I remember that thread a few months back that showed that necros had comparable single target DPS to warriors. Has much changed since then?

That was based on theory crafting.

It assumed that you were dagger/war horn with all minion utilities and that you got all of the war horn 5 procs to hit your target.

In other words, garbage numbers.

In the real world, you don’t have 100% minion uptime, probably didn’t even take the minions ecause you need other utility, can’t get close to all of the warhorn hits to proc, have to face tank all damage and Cc, and have to stop and heal yourself.

Oh and most of your damage is single target.