Guild Wars 2

Figured I set a thread for anyone who was interested in talking about the recent state of the game talk in relation to the necromancer.

I personally was really sad I didn’t see much mention on the Blood magic tree, but overall it wasn’t disappointing. What are your thoughts on the possible changes coming based off of what was said?

Edit: For anyone who has not seen the SOTG this May 31st live, the VoD is now available at http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/c/2359016

Got a link? I haven’t heard it yet.

Kravick.4906:

Got a link? I haven’t heard it yet.

It just finished like 3 mins ago, not sure if there is a link yet

They didn’t specifically talk about Blood Magic a lot, they did say they are looking into making siphoning better though. But they did address it indirectly by saying they want us to have more sustain.

I personally really like the way they are looking at the class. They are really fighting to not homogenize us and basically give us exactly what other classes have to make us fit into the meta. Instead they want to keep Necromancers different, but then buff or otherwise tweak those uniquenesses to make us more viable in our own right. I love that. I don’t play a Necro to play a dark Guardian, I play a Necro to be the king of debuffs; so I want to have meaningful debuffs, and not just stack boons on myself because that is what the cool kids are doing right now.

I thought the upcoming changes sounded great. And they really didn’t brush off talking about the blood magic tree, they flat out said some of those traits suck (at least I think that was the devs).

So far we’re looking at:
- New DS #5 skill
- Potentially healing in DS
- Buffed weakness which will be huge
- Improving CC cast times and minion cast times
- More ways to keep people locked down

And I think more that I already am forgetting. Sounds good to me.

I can say it got me more than a little angry at how dismissive the devs were about doing anything to help out necros. I am very close to just quiting this game…

I was underwhelmed about the idea of using DS as a defense. I’ll reserve any rage until I see the changes they talked about. I believe the increased life force generation is a good thing, but without easier stability access we will continue getting CC’d making our extra hp from DS useless.

I think more access to blind would help with this instead of giving us stability (which was said they don’t want to do).

I feel more assured coming from this stream than I have in any prior stream. I don’t recall all the details as I was doing Final prep while they were talking, but these are some of the points I remember they discussed:

• Looking into Death Shroud numbers (i.e.: Life Force gain).
• New skill will synergize with Dark Path.
• Want to make DS our “surfival” mechanic.
• They are aware of healing and its interaction (or lack thereof) with Death Shroud. Based on what Jon said, it seems very likely that the first “buff” it will get will be that regeneration heals through DS.
• They do not want to give us Vigor/Stability (it seems their goal is to have DS be our substitute for these).
• Minion skills will respond faster.
• They are aware Vampirism (Blood 15) is bad.
• Weakness may affect Critical Hits soon (after proc adjustments)
• They do not intend to make Spectral Armor gain stability. They fear that this will make Spectral Armor a “staple” (similar to Signet of Undeath, Corrupt Boon, and Epidemic)
• They are aware of Necros getting CC’d and blasted into oblivion.
• Looking into Moa Morph nuking minion summons

EDIT: Discussion of the Necromancer happens at 33:10 of the video

Bhawb.7408:

I personally really like the way they are looking at the class. They are really fighting to not homogenize us and basically give us exactly what other classes have to make us fit into the meta. Instead they want to keep Necromancers different, but then buff or otherwise tweak those uniquenesses to make us more viable in our own right. I love that. I don’t play a Necro to play a dark Guardian, I play a Necro to be the king of debuffs; so I want to have meaningful debuffs, and not just stack boons on myself because that is what the cool kids are doing right now.

Totally agree, Bhawb.

Have a nice day everyone! Enjoy the weekend!

Roe.3679:

So far we’re looking at:
- New DS #5 skill
- Potentially healing in DS
- Buffed weakness which will be huge
- Improving CC cast times and minion cast times
- More ways to keep people locked down

And I think more that I already am forgetting. Sounds good to me.

What??

They said they were looking at those things? The developers?

That would make me never want to play my alts again…. but I will believe it when I see it. Any one of those things would be amazingly appreciated, all of them together could actually draw people back to the class. (especially healing DS)

Rennoko.5731:

Roe.3679:

So far we’re looking at:
- New DS #5 skill
- Potentially healing in DS
- Buffed weakness which will be huge
- Improving CC cast times and minion cast times
- More ways to keep people locked down

And I think more that I already am forgetting. Sounds good to me.

What??

They said they were looking at those things? The developers?

That would make me never want to play my alts again…. but I will believe it when I see it. Any one of those things would be amazingly appreciated, all of them together could actually draw people back to the class. (especially healing DS)

I meant healing in DS, for the record. They talked briefly about how Necros can’t be healed in DS and they said it’s something they are looking at when one of the players mentioned trying to heal Symbolic and then he would instantly pop DS and the heal would’nt do anything.

But yes they mentioned all those things. But they also said they won’t fix us by giving us boons and homogenizing the class more. So I’m not sure what to think. But they did want to make Rangers stronger, and now they are among the top classes. So now Necros are next, so let’s see what they can do.

I really like the information we got and pretty much agree with Bhawb in keeping the necro identity.
They also mentioned the possibility of making DS more melee oriented, or i misheard that part, by letting life blast hit harder in close range. That way DS 2 and 4 would make the Deathshroud kit more round.
I’m hoping for some lifeforce generation and lifesteal buffs and overall the show made me pretty excited (once again…).

I remember they said they were looking at redoing every skill in death shroud instead of just plopping on a #5 skill, it sounded like there would be a lot of changes to how all the current DS skills will work in the future. I really liked the changes they sounded like they are planning on making for the necro, however I am a bit fearful on the timeframe of they changes coming in, will it take them another 6 months? will there be a million bugs with everything DS related? most the time they even make small changes it makes some horrible bugs, with this complete revamp I am kinda doubting any skill will work properly

Chap watched the BoC last night, and I am glad he heard the level of complaints about trying to heal and then a Necro pops ds and it’s completely pointless. I think we hit him 3 times with the same question in 2 weeks. First on SOAC Presents than again on BoC last night when Andele and/or someone else mentioned it three times to him, and then today with the SOTG.

I love it that even those who want Necromancers on their team have found working with them to be incredibly difficult. Our damage has never been an issue it’s always the lack of sustain and lack of control to offset our lack of beneficial boons. This is good news. I really liked that they addressed the concerns about cast and activation times.

This SotG was pure Necro and Warrior + sPvP in general.

I’m hopeful, but still skeptical until I see what gets done.

Still, better than just disappointed like other SotGs…

Bhawb.7408:

They didn’t specifically talk about Blood Magic a lot, they did say they are looking into making siphoning better though. But they did address it indirectly by saying they want us to have more sustain.

I personally really like the way they are looking at the class. They are really fighting to not homogenize us and basically give us exactly what other classes have to make us fit into the meta. Instead they want to keep Necromancers different, but then buff or otherwise tweak those uniquenesses to make us more viable in our own right. I love that. I don’t play a Necro to play a dark Guardian, I play a Necro to be the king of debuffs; so I want to have meaningful debuffs, and not just stack boons on myself because that is what the cool kids are doing right now.

This. The SotG was very hopeful, I found, in the best possible way.

I’m very excited to see where they take Necromancer in the coming months.

I think they’re catching onto the idea that Necromancers are not built for burst but also need the mechanisms to last in a fight since they cannot run away. I don’t believe we need mobility, like they said, as I play a Necromancer to be a juggernaut and to put pressure on opponents over time.

I don’t need to be zipping around the battlefield, but I do hope we get some more staying power in team fights.

Overall, I think this SotG and Chap appearing on BoC at least assured me that they have a definite path for us in the upcomig patches, and a solid vision for us, along with a realistic way to achieve it. The real question now, in my mind, is waiting to see how they realize this vision.

Bhawb.7408:

Overall, I think this SotG and Chap appearing on BoC at least assured me that they have a definite path for us in the upcomig patches, and a solid vision for us, along with a realistic way to achieve it. The real question now, in my mind, is waiting to see how they realize this vision.

I think when might be a more valuable question.
If all gets applied within the next 2 months I’d be content.

heh!! and I taught I’d never see the day. Now let’s see how quick they’ll implement these changes before I’m roaming with another Necromancer, somewhere else.

Zeke Minus.5720:

I’m very excited to see where they take Necromancer in the coming months.

I think they’re catching onto the idea that Necromancers are not built for burst but also need the mechanisms to last in a fight since they cannot run away. I don’t believe we need mobility, like they said, as I play a Necromancer to be a juggernaut and to put pressure on opponents over time.

I don’t need to be zipping around the battlefield, but I do hope we get some more staying power in team fights.

I agree with this.

I don’t care if we never get vigor. I don’t care if we never receive any mobility buffs. What I DO care about is not being able to out last an opponent like we’re supposed to, at least according to the class philosophy. Does this mean we should never lose engagements? Absolutely not. The problem has always been that we lack any meaningful sustain in long fights. The longer the fight lasts, the weaker necromancers get because we simply cannot replenish our Life Force bar quickly enough. Once our Life Force is gone, we die soon after. This problem is multiplied when we face multiple opponents as our Life Force bar will get depleted in a matter of seconds. However, one thing that also needs to be looked at is the ridiculous amounts of condition clearing thats going on. Its not going to change a thing, even if they buff weakness to OP status, if our conditions are wiped off faster than we can apply them, as what is happening currently.

This, of course, is all from a PVP perspective. The only thing I feel we need in PVE is a clean up of our trait trees. I honestly feel if our traits weren’t so spread out all over the place we might actually be able make some decent support builds. Theres also that bleed cap problem that needs to be addressed.

In general though, I feel a reduction in a lot of cool downs and cast times would also go a long way in fixing a lot of problems in both PVP and PVE. Well, and minion AI fixes too.

I can’t seem to get the video to produce any sound (even though everything else is working fine). So I’ll just ask here:

Was anything mentioned along the lines of our horrendously long kitten cool downs?

I gotta say, I’m pretty hyped about what they said.

As far as I understood it:

- the DS5 – Dark Path synergy probably means that the new skill will work only or better in close range.
- DS5 will also increase (solve?) the sustain issues of the necro.
- LF regen will be buffed in general.
- A blink is not out of the picture yet, but they want to see how we do with increased sustain first.
- we’ll be able to heal hp in DS
- Vampiric will be improved.
- Weakness will work against crit-builds.

Those are all serious buffs to the necro. My concern is that on the one hand this might make as better under pressure and focus fire from multiple opponents, but on the other hand totally overpower us in 1v1s.

I envision necros taking advantage of the healing in DS and well of blood + life transfer. As of right now you can get LT to heal you if you time it where the channel continues when your out of life force with the life siphoning trait, but having it heal you when you still have life force is going to be incredible if it works like that.

It sounds like they may be toying with the idea of a life siphon dot, and i also read that we are getting trait updates late june.

Edit
Just wanted to throw some guesses out there for what they may be working on for ds 5. He said they are playing around with 4 ideas or so

Condi transfer condition, pretty much transfers any condition you recieve maybe 1 per 3 seconds?

Boon Steal condition: Steals boons 1 every 5 seconds, 1every 10 seconds if condi is on more than 2 people (not likely)

Life siphon condition: Siphons life while dealing damage does more damage if target is feared

Passive condition: afflicted target cannot target you, condition cannot be spread (not likely lol)

Chesire.9043:

I can’t seem to get the video to produce any sound (even though everything else is working fine). So I’ll just ask here:

Was anything mentioned along the lines of our horrendously long kitten cool downs?

Yes they mentioned they want to increase our ability to use the conditions we have by speeding up the activation times, and I took it to mean that meant cast times or cooldowns.

Bas.7406:

Chesire.9043:

I can’t seem to get the video to produce any sound (even though everything else is working fine). So I’ll just ask here:

Was anything mentioned along the lines of our horrendously long kitten cool downs?

Yes they mentioned they want to increase our ability to use the conditions we have by speeding up the activation times, and I took it to mean that meant cast times or cooldowns.

If that is how they worded it, that sounds more like they will just allow us to cast/attack a little faster and really doesn’t mean anything will come off CD any faster than it does now. That worries me quite a bit actually as quite a bit of our utility skills do not warrant the CD’s they have attached to them. But thank you for responding.

I probably won’t get my hopes up much about this patch and may even take a break from sPvP for a bit until I see the changes. The last few days have given me a lot of frustration with my Necro.

Was there mention of an ETA for the patch?

this is the kind of kitten that should have happened in the first 2 months.

the devs still seem clueless and out of touch with their game and have no clue how to prioritize what needs attention the most.

the last 9 months are proof of that.

pray that the devs got sick of playing their mesmers, eles and thieves and actually want to fix the class because they (at least one) are playing a necro now.

Bas.7406:

Chesire.9043:

I can’t seem to get the video to produce any sound (even though everything else is working fine). So I’ll just ask here:

Was anything mentioned along the lines of our horrendously long kitten cool downs?

Yes they mentioned they want to increase our ability to use the conditions we have by speeding up the activation times, and I took it to mean that meant cast times or cooldowns.

He mentioned cast time on necro crowd control then proceeded to talk about minion ability activation times, which makes me think of bone fiend. Dagger 3 plus rigor mortis is an amazing root that is under utilized…. imagine doing this and having your team stack immob then epidemicing

Not just that, but every single minion ability has to be looked at from start to finish. You summon the minion, taking 1.5 seconds, then wait for them to get in range/get LoS etc., then activate the ability itself (depending on minion, possibly another cast time) then you have to wait for the ability itself to take effect.

Other CC we have also can take quite a long time to actually activate, and that is an issue; it means we can never react, we have to always be 100% proactive, and that is an impossible request.

I don’t know what the weakness change will do except randomize more our defenses.

They are lowering the proc chance already from weakness. It means that you may get the damage mitigation when you need it, or you may not.

Meanwhile protection ALWAYS provides that damage reduction when you need it — it’s not a dice roll and only 2 classes and one thief build can remove it while pretty much every class can wipe conditions clear 2-3 times at least. Our weakness can only be applied every 10 seconds in melee range with a trait, every 25 seconds with offhand dagger, or 25%of the time we crit.

How is that even comparable to the damage reduction of protection? And how will death shroud absorption help when the main weakness of death shroud is that you lose all pressure potential while you are in it so your opponent can tunnel you without fear of retaliation.

I don’t like that everyone wants Necro to be so mobile. I want us to be strong and standing firm. Seems like Gibbly wants us to become Mesmers.

Still, I am confident about where Necro will be.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I don’t like that everyone wants Necro to be so mobile. I want us to be strong and standing firm. Seems like Gibbly wants us to become Mesmers.

Still, I am confident about where Necro will be.

Gibbly knows what tools work in the end. If we don’t get avoidance and instead become sheer tanks, we’ll always be in the binary of either underpowered and unable to tank teams, or overpowered and able to tank teams which means we’ll be eating people 1v1 and people will cry for nerfs.

Zenith.7301:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I don’t like that everyone wants Necro to be so mobile. I want us to be strong and standing firm. Seems like Gibbly wants us to become Mesmers.

Still, I am confident about where Necro will be.

Gibbly knows what tools work in the end. If we don’t get avoidance and instead become sheer tanks, we’ll always be in the binary of either underpowered and unable to tank teams, or overpowered and able to tank teams which means we’ll be eating people 1v1 and people will cry for nerfs.

That logic is fallible, because with a “blink” style utility will make us either like Elementalists, being generic DPS mobility tanks, or Mesmers, being mobility DPS tanks. Either way, people will be unhappy. We have enough mobility based classes in this game, we have NO sustained tanks. At the moment if people are fine with Phantasmals and Beastmasters existing, then I don’t see how we can’t be a strong stand-up fighter.

Also, I dislike how everyone still worships Gibbly. I see no reason why everyone follows every bit of his word.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t know what the weakness change will do except randomize more our defenses.

They are lowering the proc chance already from weakness. It means that you may get the damage mitigation when you need it, or you may not.

Meanwhile protection ALWAYS provides that damage reduction when you need it — it’s not a dice roll and only 2 classes and one thief build can remove it while pretty much every class can wipe conditions clear 2-3 times at least. Our weakness can only be applied every 10 seconds in melee range with a trait, every 25 seconds with offhand dagger, or 25%of the time we crit.

How is that even comparable to the damage reduction of protection? And how will death shroud absorption help when the main weakness of death shroud is that you lose all pressure potential while you are in it so your opponent can tunnel you without fear of retaliation.

Don’t forget you can apply weakness with blast finishers and some utilities. And those applications are for 10+ seconds, so you can easily have 100% uptime on weakness, and a lot of the time it’s happening to multiple players or mobs. That’s a huge benefit to a group and yourself.

It’ll be a huge indirect buff for Necros. Be happy for it.

Beastmasters don’t tank, and neither do Phantasm mesmers. Beastmasters rely entirely on evasion for holding a point.

And we do have a strong standing tank. It’s called a guardian. And they can tank whoever they want.

Zenith.7301:

Beastmasters don’t tank, and neither do Phantasm mesmers.

Excuse me, what game are you playing?

I have a build that heals 1k HP per second for 10 seconds, and it’s on a 25 second cooldown, and when the 10 seconds ends, that means it’s on a 15 second cooldown. That’s a 10k heal, on a 15 second cooldown, while I’m practically invincible while using it with nearly 3.3k Armor for a condition based Ranger that still has nearly 1500 Condition damage.

Mesmers having invulnerability, invisibility, reflection, and alot of mobility.

They are both tanky, I use them for tanking. Guardian tanks are not as strong as Phant Mesmers or BM Rangers.

They do not tank. You try tanking 3 people at a time. It’s damage mitigation, not just recovery. You do not have ample access to stability. You do not have constant, easy access to condition removal (BM bunker removal is passive removal with a 60 sec cd active removal). You don’t have aegis or blind. You don’t have high prot uptime.

If 2 or more GC specs decide to spike you, you’ll be forced to retreat. A guardian can eat shatters — a phantasm mesmer cannot.

There is a difference between bunkers, builds that can avoid some damage, and tanks.

Tank is being able to eat moderate damage while still applying moderate damage, it is a medium between burst and bunker. A Phantasmal Mesmer can eat shatters with S/P Blurred Frenzy, a Beastmaster Ranger can just tank and outheal them with Troll Ungent.

I honestly feel like you have no idea what these classes are capable of, or if you’ve ever tried using a tank build. I can facetank 2v1 on my condition shortbow Ranger with Troll ungent, just dodging until the CD wears off, then I can simply pick them off one by one. Stomping becomes somewhat difficult, but in a team situation, that’s incredibly strong.

The new patch is going to be released this month?

It will be towards the end of June, most likely. They tend to do large patches on a monthly cycle, going back and forth between balance and fixing bugs/tooltips/etc.

Kiriakulos.1690:

This SotG was pure Necro and Warrior + sPvP in general.

I’m hopeful, but still skeptical until I see what gets done.

Still, better than just disappointed like other SotGs…

This is me all over.

Totally moist at the idea, but I’ve been hopeful for a long long time already.

Please come through on this

Bhawb.7408:

It will be towards the end of June, most likely. They tend to do large patches on a monthly cycle, going back and forth between balance and fixing bugs/tooltips/etc.

Thxs for the answer !!

Anything that creates more up-close power, and increases base survivability will turn my Potentate into a fire breathing monster, for me anyways. I can already do amazing things with it.

>weakness will effect crits.
Mmm, my wvw build has boatloads of weakness, I approve.
I also assume the ‘life blast does more damage at close range’ will out right replace ‘do less damage under 50%’?

Bhawb.7408:

They didn’t specifically talk about Blood Magic a lot, they did say they are looking into making siphoning better though. But they did address it indirectly by saying they want us to have more sustain.

I personally really like the way they are looking at the class. They are really fighting to not homogenize us and basically give us exactly what other classes have to make us fit into the meta. Instead they want to keep Necromancers different, but then buff or otherwise tweak those uniquenesses to make us more viable in our own right. I love that. I don’t play a Necro to play a dark Guardian, I play a Necro to be the king of debuffs; so I want to have meaningful debuffs, and not just stack boons on myself because that is what the cool kids are doing right now.

There is one major benefit of boons over conditions tho, transference. Unless i pack epidemic, taking down one target and moving to the next means that with conditions i start from scratch. With boons however they follow me rather than my target.

That just reduced my available utility options from 3 to 2, as i basically have to have epidemic padlocked there so i can transfer those conditions. And that only applies if the next target is withing AOE range.

digiowl.9620:

There is one major benefit of boons over conditions tho, transference. Unless i pack epidemic, taking down one target and moving to the next means that with conditions i start from scratch. With boons however they follow me rather than my target.

That just reduced my available utility options from 3 to 2, as i basically have to have epidemic padlocked there so i can transfer those conditions. And that only applies if the next target is withing AOE range.

Actually Necro conditions are pretty AoE heavy, especially non-damaging ones. Bleeds are often single target, but weakness, poison, chill are all pretty easily put on a team. So you shouldn’t need to spread weakness with Epidemic at all, they’ll probably already have it. Also, with the exception of fighting a Necromancer, conditions don’t usually come back to bite you, boons can. A thief can steal them, a Necro can corrupt them, and a warrior can get more damage out of them. In fact a Guardian can kill themselves very easily by using shouts at the wrong time against CB carrying Necros.

But again, they want to boost our ability to live without needing boons. Obviously that means buffs, which means using the current system is fallacious, they are going to change the system.

I wonder how they are going to deal with the sustain issue if part of the reason Necros have issues in that area is the whole chain CC’d into oblivion thing, but yet they do not want to give the class steady access to stability or vigor…

I mean either you have to be able to avoid incoming CC (vigor →dodging) or ignore it (stability) otherwise you are locked out of being able to use any sustaining abilities.

The only thing I can think of is maybe making more of our abilities instant cast?

Many devs concentrate on gimmicks for a long time until they realize it doesn’t work, or the overhaul to make it work takes more than a year as it was for poor elementalists in GW1 HM’s.

Conditions as mitigation will never match boons. And neither will death shroud if all it is is a damage sponge while you still cannot recover your HP pool and it just wears down. Stalling does nothing good if Death Shroud costs you so much offensively.

Weakness is getting buffed?
Perhaps this will make Corrosive Poison Cloud worth picking?

Death Shroud being more effective up close sounds interesting as well.
Should make Weakening Shroud and Death Shiver more valuable.

With all that said I still wish we had a bit more mobility.
However if we actually become dangerous enough to warrant being so immobile that might be even more interesting.

As for Regeneration possibly working in DS… oh wow!
Definitely makes the Blood Magic Minor Trait better.
Mark of Blood as well.
It’d definitely raise the worth of Healing Power a lot for Necro.
Of course it’s even better when you have allies applying Regen on you!

I feel that tweaking Dark Path slightly could help a great deal with mobility, but while avoiding it becoming a blink/teleport as the devs have stated they don’t want.

1) Increase the projectile speed significantly. This is telegraphed and is far too easily dodged or simply outran by players with swiftness.
2) Slightly drop the cooldown to 12s base.
3) Loosen up the terrain the projectile can pass over without fizzling and generally fix the bugginess of this skill.

These minor tweaks will help the usability of this skill and it can see more reliable use.