Guild Wars 2

So we have all that experience of being the ping pong ball on point, even on a team fight, even on the backline (if it’s two approaches like Nifhel), and it SUCKS. With how much much CC other classes have access to (which by the way cannot be condi cleansed), the necro needs a little lovin’ in this area.

Choosing Foot in the Grave over Deathly Perception is like shooting yourself in the foot. It guts your power build more than anything, making you a soggy twinkie waiting to be spanked.

Pulsing stability in Lich Form is great and shouldn’t be messed with at all, but we need something else during the THREE MINUTE COOLDOWN.

Well of Power is great if you want to be stuck in one spot like a sitting duck.

That’s why I propose to implement on of the following:

1. Six seconds of stability on Spectral Armor
2. Eight seconds of stability on Spectral Walk
3. Five seconds of stability on Spectral Wall; or
4. Five seconds of stability on activating Signet of the Locust

I think that stability fits thematically with these skills as well as functionally and the power necro, as a walking artillery unit, desperately needs some stability. We get focused sooooooooooooo easily while other classes have invulnerability, invisibility, teleportation, and channeled blocking. We have nothing other than LF which falls faster than a limp noodle when being focused.

Does anybody else support adding stability to one of the above? Which one would you choose? Personally, I think Spectral Armor is the best choice.

In my mind…

Spectral Armor would fit a projectile reflection, projectile reflected is a trade seeing that the damages aren’t reduced and doesn’t grant life force (no damages taken).

For Stability, I suggest that Well of Blood pulse give a 1s Stability. It’s a trade with Consume Conditions. A choice to make, depending on the situation.
Or Well of Blood could became a Water Field.

3 stacks of stability on spec walk and spec armour (including last grasp) this is something that just makes sense anyway you look at it, its odd how the most obvious things escape the devs.

It doesn’t make sense because slapping stability on every skill (which seems to be what we ask for fairly often) isn’t a good fix.

SoL needs to be a stun break, and if they keep the cast time then it’ll get stability to cover.

SA is already strong enough, it really doesn’t need any buffs unless they are really minor, or involve changing the ICD to be per person hitting you rather than a flat ICD.

SWalk see above with changing ICD, also stability doesn’t really seem to suit the skill. I’d much rather play up other parts of it than slap stability on just because.

Realistically, traits are the best way to give us stability without adding new skills. The rest of our (utility) skills are either strong enough on their own, or don’t fit with stability.

Ya I agree with Bhawb, if spectral armor gave stability for 6 seconds it would be flat out superior to armor of earth in every way (lower cd, bigger effect). Providing stability through traits would be way better because it wouldn’t be a flat buff to the current builds. I was also thinking about spectral walk, it would be cool if spectral walks activate skill was a 1200 range port, and then you had 8 seconds to port back to the origanal location (basically making it work like shadowstep on thieves). The longer cooldown justifies the LF gain, and full teleport back.

Orrrr ANET can just take away the poor excuse for a Grandmaster Trait that is Foot in the Grave, and give us Shade back. One can dream….right?

Spectral skills have more synergy than signets but could still use some tweaking.

Spectral armor’s cool down is longer than I want. I did use protection duration runes for more up time but fundamentally protection is a boon and Necromancer has minimal support for boons. A PVT WvW build was the best full spectral build I could come up with but no amount of protection saves from being focused. Wall’s fear is better ad hoc with other skills and walk is not as necessary as it was when the game was released.

Spectral is ok but no where close to meta, if Necro has a real meta build.

For Spectral Armor, I think it could see some minor buff without breaking the skill. Keeps the skill the same but adding “If you get disable you will gain 3sec of 1 Stability with 1sec ICD but you still eat that disable”

Kulvar.1239:

In my mind…

Spectral Armor would fit a projectile reflection, projectile reflected is a trade seeing that the damages aren’t reduced and doesn’t grant life force (no damages taken).

For Stability, I suggest that Well of Blood pulse give a 1s Stability. It’s a trade with Consume Conditions. A choice to make, depending on the situation.
Or Well of Blood could became a Water Field.

Necro could definitely use some anti projectile stuff.

However it would fit best on corrosive poison cloud & spectral wall.

As for stability, signet of the locust would make a good stunbreak with stability.

Spectral wall already prevent melee aggro both range and melee wouldn’t make sense but the the cloud needs it. SoL just need a stun break it’s main purpose is that out of DS healing it works for that but lacks backbone , FotG needs to break stun on entrance of DS and give stability on exit. You have to improve what’s not used not create a greater gap between used and not used.

CPC is so limited in use it could use a reflect badly. It is not really an area denial but more like an area stink.

Good luck. We have been asking for this, or a mix of this post since beta. 3 years later it is still clear we need help in this area but the response we get is necro does not need it or access to boons. Joke. What is funny is that we seeing a repeating cycle. Players point out the clear issues, get frustrated, leave the class, or shelve their necro. New players come in, gain experience with the game and class, point out the SAME issues, post the same posts, and get ignored by the devs. Nothing changes, community moves on, new ones come in and anet still profits. Yay

Fun fact, in Death Shroud you are immune to getting knocked down. So just absorb the hits in it, and hope they use a knock down.

kybraga.7103:

Fun fact, in Death Shroud you are immune to getting knocked down. So just absorb the hits in it, and hope they use a knock down.

Uh what?

Read the description of death shroud.

Sagat.3285:

Spectral wall already prevent melee aggro both range and melee wouldn’t make sense but the the cloud needs it. SoL just need a stun break it’s main purpose is that out of DS healing it works for that but lacks backbone , FotG needs to break stun on entrance of DS and give stability on exit. You have to improve what’s not used not create a greater gap between used and not used.

This is actually a really great point. I also agree that poison cloud should reflect projectiles or at least block them. Alternatively, it could be an AoE blind which fits better thematically.

BUT, back to stability. The comment about including stability in traits versus skills I think has merit. Spiteful Vigor or Reaper’s Protection are two great candidates that could really solidify the viability of MMs in PvP ( other than better minion ai)

kybraga.7103:

Read the description of death shroud.

Did you once upon a time equip foot in the grave and forget you are using that trait or something?

Anchoku.8142:

CPC is so limited in use it could use a reflect badly. It is not really an area denial but more like an area stink.

An alternative to adding reflect to CPC might be to add AoE boon strip or flip at some number per poison pulse.

Bhawb.7408:

It doesn’t make sense because slapping stability on every skill (which seems to be what we ask for fairly often) isn’t a good fix.

SoL needs to be a stun break, and if they keep the cast time then it’ll get stability to cover.

SA is already strong enough, it really doesn’t need any buffs unless they are really minor, or involve changing the ICD to be per person hitting you rather than a flat ICD.

SWalk see above with changing ICD, also stability doesn’t really seem to suit the skill. I’d much rather play up other parts of it than slap stability on just because.

Realistically, traits are the best way to give us stability without adding new skills. The rest of our (utility) skills are either strong enough on their own, or don’t fit with stability.

Honestly, do you really understand what it means for a class to have next to no movement? you cannot stack bad movement with CC vulnerability on the same class, that is not balance.

You cannot say we need more stab, but we don’t need more stab. If SA and/or SW had stab on it, then we won’t need anymore stability anywhere. If ftg was moved to grandmaster minor, then we won’t need more stab because of near to death. 1 or the other has to happen. What traitline are you gonna put stab in? to replace what?

Wurm port is already destroyed, that port should have a range of 10,000 and should automatically port you to the position, not draw a path. With this alone there would be no need for another escape.

How many sources of protection are there? we have more protection than any other class, why should stab be almost non existent? what is the point of protection when you are stun locked and can’t escape properly? these are questions that should be asked and answered.

Why are you talking to Bhawb of all people like he doesn’t understand the profession?

We could use some extra Stability, yes. We don’t need it on skills that are already very strong defensive options. Honestly, since we now have the shortest cooldown stunbreak in the game (next shortest is more than twice the cooldown when traited than Foot in the Grave is untraited), the extreme need for Stability has been lessened.

Papish.5806:

Orrrr ANET can just take away the poor excuse for a Grandmaster Trait that is Foot in the Grave, and give us Shade back. One can dream….right?

The only reason shade was even considered was a good idea was (if I recall correctly) the existence of auto attack chains that could knockdown.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Why are you talking to Bhawb of all people like he doesn’t understand the profession?

We could use some extra Stability, yes. We don’t need it on skills that are already very strong defensive options. Honestly, since we now have the shortest cooldown stunbreak in the game (next shortest is more than twice the cooldown when traited than Foot in the Grave is untraited), the extreme need for Stability has been lessened.

All im reading so far is we need more stability but we don’t know where to put it. We need it on traits, ok, where? we can’t have two traits that independently give stability. If it’s going to be on another trait it should probably be something similar to "Ritual of Protection, but stability on another skill type which will likely be spectral, which will end up being a bit much if all the spec skills give stability.

The other option is stability as a separate skill similar to “Stand your Ground” ok that could work.

Fastest stun break, thats great but consider this, we use DS for tanking condis, direct damge, as well as CC chains, we use it for ranged power attacks. If we had decent endurance regen or invulnerability skills it would be a whole different story. DS is strained as it is without being forced to choose between CC immunity and doing decent damage with an already slow auto attack.

To gain the most out of ftg you have to ds flash which means you have to sustain yourself effectively as well as space well out of DS to not need to power range or tank . Because of the bad mobility, stability is only useful to us if it is easily accessed as a minor trait and/or part of a skill.

Death Magic is a prime spot for more Stability. Perhaps the 3 point minor became “when you are disabled, gain 1 stack of stability” to help prevent being stunchained. Perhaps Necromantic Corruption was replaced with a trait that gave Stability for some action. Perhaps Ritual of Protection gave all wells a stack of stability to allies when cast.

Signet of the Locust is a popular skill for adding some short stability to.

And perhaps, instead of stability and stunbreakers, we could have more methods of punishing others for stunning us, similar to how Reaper’s Protection does.

Yet another way to deal with the issue is making our Blinds better/more numerous.

TLDR: There are more ways to solve necro’s defensive problems than just throwing Stability on skills we already use for defense.

Instead of stability, DM could do with another way to proc fear – a short one on a short CD.

I could see some of the staff traits combined, too, or add modifiers for the GS.

CPC may be good enough in PvP and WvW but I guess I would like it to have more function in PvE. There are a lot of utilities and traits that are good in one game mode but not in another. FitG just renewed my appetite for variety.

There are also the new conditions and boons coming, too. Taunt seems like it would be very handy with dagger and GS so I hope it fits into the new trait system. Wurm with a taunt might be fun.

Siphons are balanced by the highest potential. Perhaps having stability attached to our siphons would be the right way to go. Putting stability on dagger 2, SoV active and SoL would allow us a way to get closer to that balance more consistently.

Plexxing.2978:

Siphons are balanced by the highest potential. Perhaps having stability attached to our siphons would be the right way to go. Putting stability on dagger 2, SoV active and SoL would allow us a way to get closer to that balance more consistently.

Wut? The first step would be to let them heal in DS, what’s with the stab on everything?

Its the new thing, put stab on everything. Every so often the forums latch onto one idea and then throw it at everything.