Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of complaints about stuff like “Horrible Minion AI”, “Lack of Burst Damage” and whatnot.. But the real issue we should be caring about is Spectral Skills. I mean, Minions are undead. Do you REALLY expect a dead creature that was haphazardly pulled from the ground with rotting flesh to be smart? No. As for lack of Burst.. I am a horrible PvPer but I put a hell of a hurting on everyone.

But Spectral Skills need some help, no one really uses them, and they are fairly powerful, fun, and in practice really spices up repetitive gameplay.

Spectral Grasp – This is one of my favorite skills. It’s an interrupt, a CC, a gap closer, and it annoys the crap out of people. The downside is it’s practically useless due to the fact that it’s often blocked, invulnerable, or immune. If it’s not that, it’s plagued with horrible clipping issues.

Spectral Walk – This makes moving around any map so much easier, not to mention you can fool people into a trap when you use Spectral Recall I love this skill and I only wish the green trail you left was like a wall from a Tron bike.. or left a poison. But it’s honestly fine as is.

Spectral Wall and Spectral Armor – If playing a Necromancer taught me anything is that I constantly kite poor unfortunate souls to their impending doom. I’d rarely consider using them, as smart play and weapon skills are your best defense. They both have a short lifespan and a long cool down. Leaving little to be desired when your always mobile and there are better skills to be used.

Unless your spec’d to decrease the cooldown of spectral skills by 20% most spectral skills are weak. Yes, I know. Not a big surprise.. There really is very little use for the skills. Protection is nice, but we are already squishy. Chances are if we are in a pinch and getting nailed.. That extra 33% won’t help much. All I’m asking, is a second thought on Spectral Skills so they actually have some viability. Making Grasp unblockable via Major Traits (Spectral Mastery for example) and fixing the issues where clipping wasn’t a issue would be perfect. (ie: you pull, they hit a rock, your pull stops) If it worked as well as Deadly Catch there wouldn’t be such an issue.

They aren’t great skills to build a build around, however using them in play can really elevate gameplay and I really want to know if others find them useful or at least get others opinions regarding the skills.

Also, staff sounds make me sad.

They are great as third options for safety, but a full build around them might be a bad idea. Spectral skills and Signets being what they are is what made me move to Minions haha.

My power/crit build is full spectral, actually. It made sense to me given the position of the traits in the lines. Spectral Mastery and Last Gasp are in the line that gives crit damage, and Spectral Attunement is in the line that gives crit %. So going 20 into Curses and 30 into Soul Reaping gives you lots of offense, and you still have 20 points to play around with.

The spectral skills become really, really freakin’ good with that spec, too. Wall will give you 14s of protection per cast if you run through it twice, and it’s on a 32s cooldown. Grasp will give you 15% life force if you hit someone with it, and works great as an interrupt or to stop kiting enemies. Walk is great, if you activate it as soon as your life force drains out it will refill pretty quick, you can potentially get another full bar. Armor you don’t need to slot because you gain it automatically at 50% health, giving you even more protection and another potential full life force bar.

As utilities they are themed more toward defense rather than offense. But if you combine them with offensive gear, you become this mobile sort of tank that nothing can afford to stick around and fight, but with all the slows they can’t get away, either (most of them, anyway).

EDIT: Making grasp unblockable (or homing) with a trait would be so awesome…I doubt it’ll get that kind of buff, though :-(

I agree. I actually don’t mind signets too much.. they are weak.. but I’m not sure how you feel, but I feel like I’m stuck on being a condition necro for the most part. I’ve been trying to find more and more ways to just enjoy the necro class. I really do love them, but sometimes I use skills in comparison to other classes and think “aww.. that’s such a shame..” Like elementalist.. Holy crap that’s a lot of skills. And I don’t care who you are, carrying around a flaming axe from a spell is pretty kitten sweet. Why can’t we have like a Spectral Axe skill!? Even a Spectral Banner! It makes me jealous..

If you haven’t noticed, I really like the spectral concept. Oh! We need a Spectral Legendary! … I’m going to far.. I’ll shut up now.

Edit: Lettuce what weapons do you use in your build? I’m curious. I feel almost obligated to have the Staff as an offhand at all times. I really feel trapped with that at least. I’m messing around with builds and weapon combinations, still theorycrafting however, but I’ll look into your build more!

Crimson, I refuse to go condimancer. I am one of the few who feels that our condition stacking lacks symmetry. We dont’ stack quickly we restack repeatedly better than anyone else, but my dislike of ground targeting skills really kills condimancer for me.

DS and Lich Form builds are amazing for pure burst damage.

@lettucemode those are some great tips, but spending the points on spectral skills instead of more DS improvements seems like a loss to me. When I go Spectral Attunement it’s almsot always LB pierce and vuln, LF slower, and 50 percent faster restocking of it. I think 20/20/0/0/30 might be a really strong build, but 20 points in Curses at the cost of losing close to death doesn’t seem like a positive.

I used to use Dagger/Warhorn and Staff. But…I just lost so much damage when I switched to the staff. It’s a fantastic weapon, it has so much utility….regen, bleed, chill, poison, full condition transfer, AoE interrupt….but it really came down to the damage for me. It felt like whenever I switched to the staff I was giving my opponent some breathing room.

So I swapped it out for Axe/Focus. So I have a close range set for bursting, a kinda-close range set for setup for the burst, and a longer range option (Death Shroud) in case I want to soften them up before exposing myself by getting close.

I really, really missed the condition cleanse…but then I found out about Shrouded Removal, and took Near to Death so I can cleanse conditions off every 5 seconds. I find that it’s more useful than Putrid Mark in WvWvW in general, however there are some situations where I get like 8 conditions thrown on me and I have to use my heal early.

Bas, I take Unyielding Blast too. I just don’t use the slower LF loss, using Spectral Mastery instead. I’ve been wanting to experiment around with the slower life force loss, though, as it really improves effective HP when in DS (which I’m sure you know).

I don’t put any points in Spite, either, unless I’m in the sort of mood where I want to gain retaliation on DS switching, which is like once every few weeks.

@lettuce, I need to get back into testing non-minion builds. Shrouded removal looks amazing, and I have the issue where I almost never spec for defensive purposes haha. I am honestly thinking of trying

30/0/20/0/20 for tonights pve ventures in ORR. Just to see how much damage I can push out.

Bas.7406:

@lettuce, I need to get back into testing non-minion builds. Shrouded removal looks amazing, and I have the issue where I almost never spec for defensive purposes haha. I am honestly thinking of trying

30/0/20/0/20 for tonights pve ventures in ORR. Just to see how much damage I can push out.

do ittttt

I never look into Death Magic much.. as the minor traits have nothing to gain. I guess I should reconsider. Currently the build I’m playing around with is 0/20/0/20/30
I’m trying “Deathly Invigoration” out.. But I have been tempted to try out Shrouded Removal. The main thing I take damage from in PvP is bleeds, dropping those frequently would be nice, Consume Conditions can’t always be my saving grace..

Honestly, I feel like spectral skills are just a tad bit off from awesome. Its like the devs had a great conversation about perfect necro skills when they were hammered, and then when they went to actually implement them, they couldn’t quite remember what they wanted; so now we have Spectral skills.

All of them have the potential to be really good (big defensive boost, big speed boost with a recall, big teamfight protection/enemy vulnerability, super-dope pull), but they just missed the mark on making them useful.

In pvp, i layely prefer spectral amor ower walk because:
-the Protection allows me to stay in the fight, where as the walk i find more useful to run away. I a more positive skill
-warhorn/locust/ d/d 25% move trait give u more than enough movement

But if compare it to eles cantrips, it would realy deserve added stability (90s CD cmon).

The wall is very underrated. +10 dmg and -33% dmg taken is HUUUUGE. The only problem is, it works better on paper than in reality.
Tip: place the wall beside u. There is more strafing in melee , its less obvious and harder to notice u walked through 3x times and have 25 vuln.

But again if i compare it to other proffesions, i miss the projectile block and it would be nice if it was just a rectangular aoe. So i wouldnt matter from which side u go through.

Spectral skill are for power/crit/DS builds. In general, use grasp or wall , armor for stunbreak and 3rd a well for burst/blind. All 3 utility spectrals +dagger can give u too much LF wasted, cz u either always have full ds bar , wont have ds available, or will be using ds1 under 50%.

Walk – have it on slot 3 (alternate mouse button) all the time, epic for boss tricks, jumps, running away while generating LF while low and teleporting around with Dark Path, if you ever used warhorn and it you can never go back and even signet of the locust will seem slow.
Grasp – fix it and its the most kitten skill in game, for me it would be more awesome than epidemic, especially if it caused aggro to be set on you.
Wall – good if you locate it under yourself since the eitheral field is off otherwise (either in the middle between your cast location and wall, under you or god knows where), a bit too long of a cooldown for my taste, but with reapplying vuln its ok. Also its a good combination with Grasp.
Armor – useless in 99% of the time, Walk is always the better option, if you want protection that much wall is way better, for stun break and LF there is walk, cooldown way to long for what it gives.

For me they are like the Thief Deception, Guardian Consecration and Hunter Survivals, one is always useful but a full setup around them just seems weaker than a alternative (wells, tricks, shouts, traps respectively).