Guild Wars 2

Well, he commented on around everything I wanted to hear regarding necromancers. My favourite thing though, even more than increased value for weakness or the possibility of healing in Death Shroud, is the thought of more significant life force generation. I really think that could be a fun direction for Death Shroud to go.

They need to be careful on making DS 4 too much of our sustain, because you can be interrupted out of it so easily before it finishes. Short of going 30 into SR as a staple for stability, and even then would only matter if you popped it first thing on entering DS, which is probably not ideal if its going to get stronger.

Overall the patch has me more worried than optimistic.

I’m worried about no stability/vigor….

I hope they also make our stun breakers worth having on our bar. I find Plague Signet both useful and annoying in sPvP and it’s unusable in good portions of WvW.

Well, I suppose some cautious optimism is in order. Still, I think the lack of viable stunbreakers in particular needs to be addressed. I also don’t understand how Death Shroud is supposed to be the attrition mechanism of choice for the necro if its skills are to be based around keeping you in close contact with the enemy. If I’m trying to mitigate damage, that’s the last place I want to be, so I just don’t understand the logic behind that decision. Unless you’re a dagger necro maybe…

Also, I can’t say that I’m happy with the fact that A.Net’s answer to the problem that Death Shroud doesn’t work as an attrition mechanic is basically “more Death Shroud”. I understand why they want to emphasize the unique characteristics of the class in approaching the problem, but the design itself is the culprit here. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see just how much damage this extra life force we’re getting will be able to soak… although on that particular issue I’m much less optimistic.

I’m very excited about life stealing perhaps finally becoming viable though, both by getting an overall buff and by healing working in Death Shroud.

I can understand the worries they have about making dark path a ground targeted blink/teleport. One of the main problems with dark path is the projectile travel speed which makes it kinda unreliable. The speed makes it hard to hit on range against players who see it coming since it does not always track the players movement (it sometimes does). The fact that it is a projectile brings me to another problem, which is the high risk of hitting something in front of your actual target in a team fight, specifically ranger pets or mesmer clones. My solution/idea to prevent these really annoying factors would be to make the cast time a bit longer, but make it a teleport to target kinda thing. This would make it more reliable and it would fit the developer idea of necromancers being hard to get away from. Right now necromancers are pretty easy to get away from especially because of dark paths unreliability to hit and cause chill on priority target.

ManaCraft.5630:

Well, I suppose some cautious optimism is in order. Still, I think the lack of viable stunbreakers in particular needs to be addressed. I also don’t understand how Death Shroud is supposed to be the attrition mechanism of choice for the necro if its skills are to be based around keeping you in close contact with the enemy. If I’m trying to mitigate damage, that’s the last place I want to be, so I just don’t understand the logic behind that decision. Unless you’re a dagger necro maybe…

Necromancer lacks good stunbreakers. I would love to see a stunbreak on signet of the locust! I think the most common mistake for most necromancer players is that they play way too defensively trying to stand on range as a turret. Whenever they get attacked they panic and try to run away putting down marks or whatever hoping for the best. Up close is where the condition necromancer puts out the most pressure. Being up close makes it easier to hit ground targeted abilities and grant use of traits like weakening shroud and mark of evasion while being able to proc geomancy (which by far is the best choice for a condition necro). When reading posts about the necromancer profession i always stumble upon players thinking that necromancers are slow at applying conditions, which is true if you are being passive on range. One of the main strengths of the aggressive condition necro is rapidly applying multiple (+10) stacks of bleeding.

I was very happy with the questions asked and answered on Necros. Thank you Grouch and Jon.

More LF generation
Receive healing while in DS
Working on Blood traits
DS#5
Weakness
Activation time on CC including Minions

Very excited to see what happens in near future with these.

Dont know what to say about this cause mostly it just seem’s their “looking at it”, its not like the game just came out and mobility vigor stealth invuln is key to survival how can they make necro good without making it overpowered if Death shroud is suppose to make up for so many many things. How can they make Death shroud work in wvw as tanking ability something like invulnerability without it being OP or are they gonna make a mechanic if lifeforce is depleting to fast it explodes into a 6666 radius knockback ?

Atleast they are aware of the slow cast and longer fight means lifeforce just empties and want us to have easier access to regen it? Perhaps they wanna make the class attrition.

edit almost forgot but how can it even be a disussion whether moa desummons minions or not ?

Would be nice if they removed Foot in the Grave and re-implemented Shade. That would certainly solve our “chain-CC’d into oblivion” issue without giving us more stability/vigor.

djooceboxblast.9876:

ManaCraft.5630:

Well, I suppose some cautious optimism is in order. Still, I think the lack of viable stunbreakers in particular needs to be addressed. I also don’t understand how Death Shroud is supposed to be the attrition mechanism of choice for the necro if its skills are to be based around keeping you in close contact with the enemy. If I’m trying to mitigate damage, that’s the last place I want to be, so I just don’t understand the logic behind that decision. Unless you’re a dagger necro maybe…

Necromancer lacks good stunbreakers. I would love to see a stunbreak on signet of the locust! I think the most common mistake for most necromancer players is that they play way too defensively trying to stand on range as a turret. Whenever they get attacked they panic and try to run away putting down marks or whatever hoping for the best. Up close is where the condition necromancer puts out the most pressure. Being up close makes it easier to hit ground targeted abilities and grant use of traits like weakening shroud and mark of evasion while being able to proc geomancy (which by far is the best choice for a condition necro). When reading posts about the necromancer profession i always stumble upon players thinking that necromancers are slow at applying conditions, which is true if you are being passive on range. One of the main strengths of the aggressive condition necro is rapidly applying multiple (+10) stacks of bleeding.

Ironically, I find that my setup of Staff and Scepter/Dagger works better in melee or near melee than it does at range. Projectile speed doesn’t matter near as much when you are already in their face. The issue is surviving any focused chain CC if you time your approach wrong.

I would love for Necros to become draintanks. It suits them very well. Leave them vulnerable to stuns so they can’t just facetank while teams and we should be ok.

They seem to be intent on us tanking head on, but this doesn’t work in reality… i don’t think it matters what changes they make to deathshroud it’s still going to drain like lightning and then we are screwed.

Bhawb.7408:

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.

bleeds are not often single target, of all our weapon sets only 1 is, all the rest are AOE.

Dredlord.8076:

Bhawb.7408:

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.

bleeds are not often single target, of all our weapon sets only 1 is, all the rest are AOE.

This only still helps if the enemies are within relative close proximity. Boons you can carry with you for some distance.

digiowl.9620:

Dredlord.8076:

Bhawb.7408:

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.

bleeds are not often single target, of all our weapon sets only 1 is, all the rest are AOE.

This only still helps if the enemies are within relative close proximity. Boons you can carry with you for some distance.

i totally agree with you. I was just correcting his mistake.

It is a mistake the devs made with the necro that has been seen in other MMO’s

One class is balanced without buffs compared to the rest with buffs and when they are in a team and getting buffs from teammates they are OP juggernauts or they are balanced with full buffs from team mates and are under powered when solo.

Both scenarios are bad.

This was a poor design choice.

I really love that John said they were going to buff necromancers cast times and lifeforce accumulation. That’s awesome, especially good for condi necros.

Hammerguard.9834:

I really love that John said they were going to buff necromancers cast times and lifeforce accumulation. That’s awesome, especially good for condi necros.

yeah never heard him say something like that before and not follow through…

A bit short on the necro part, but great that the problem is being aknowledged and warriors do deserve more care

I would like to remind not only on cast times, but general “gimmicky, counter intuative, weird” gameplay. Many skills are simply TOO HARD to land, mostly because of our “line of sight” vs others “PointBlank AoEs”. Examples:

-axe#2- no problem if its dogged, but if the small LoS angle is broken, 0 dmg -.- AND it is the core&dmg&LF of axe

-dagger#2- great for no LoS, but the heal+dmg vs time ratio is often not worth it. Could maybe be PbAoE, cz if its 5 targets, ur probably also recieving 5x more dps

-staff#1- slowww —> misses a lot.. And its firerate is actualy 1.3s —> bad combos

-DS#2- i sometimes want to chill but not go back into enemy range (good for power melee, only good for geomancy procs on condi necros)

-DS#1- we lose LF fast and even in power, under 50% it can be outhealed, very weak to blinds