Guild Wars 2

I was pretty disappointed with this webcast. My confidence in the balancing of this game is even lower than it was before. The Mesmer having problems with a necromancer was a troll attempt at best.

As far as what I think the balancing issues that remain for the necro are:
Ds 2 skill. This would be so much better as a ground targeted teleport like a shadow step. It would alleviate the lack of mobility we have and give us at least one escape option in a pinch.

Minion attacks or lack there of. In the current implementation of minions they won’t attack until you’ve been attacked. Please make them attack the target you attack. Mesmer clones and phantasms do it shouldn’t be that difficult. At least some passive aggressive defensive options for control would be nice. Hell they had it in DaoC 10+ years ago.

Dagger range and lack of cleave damage. Considering we have arguably the least mobility in the game a increase of range at least would help a ton. Cleave would be nice but I won’t hold my breath.

As far as builds go I feel that most are pretty balanced with the necromancer. I would really like to see the boon hate abilities be developed as I think that would be right up our alley.

I think nerfing shatter mesmers and d/d elementalists or making other builds viable within those classes will make the overall game experience better for everyone.

I just don’t think the devs play their own game, or that any dev has an idea as to what the necro can and can’t do. It is like they just threw some stuff together and scaled back anything that gave us an edge. If you want us to be an attrition class, speed up our cast times, and decrease our kitten cooldowns, give us some way to keep our conditions on or more resistant to instant click wipe offs, and for the love of god, allow us to have some improvements in our trait configurations. For example, ground targeting wells… i have to go into a curses to get that in a power build where i actually use wells. They need to change what abilities go with what trait lines as well, or you make our builds more gear dependent than trait dependent. Basically, for a necro, your entirely gear dependent, instead of trait dependent to get the skill/abilities you need for a specific build. God, i just felt that the devs were really sardonic in their state of the game address… you can tell they love their mesmers though. jesus

Mesmer was the last class released, its not that uncommon for things that are developed later to see a power creep. They also seem always almost proud of boasting the ele as king of versatility, which can easily be read as best at whatever role they want to do, often at the same time.

They don’t want to nerf a top build they say, but rather bring other stuff up. That would be fine if it was happening at a quick pace but its not. The minor buffs they have given here or there to, so far, mostly non popular builds and skills, still haven’t even gotten those up on even footing, so for every profession to reach the place of the strongest couple builds, its going to take years. Which is not good enough.

This talk of boon hate also made me uneasy. This is kind of our specialty right now. If it they start handing it out like candy to balance how over reliant certain builds are on boons, it will weaken our unique identity even more.

Pendragon.8735:

Mesmer was the last class released, its not that uncommon for things that are developed later to see a power creep. They also seem always almost proud of boasting the ele as king of versatility, which can easily be read as best at whatever role they want to do, often at the same time.

They don’t want to nerf a top build they say, but rather bring other stuff up. That would be fine if it was happening at a quick pace but its not. The minor buffs they have given here or there to, so far, mostly non popular builds and skills, still haven’t even gotten those up on even footing, so for every profession to reach the place of the strongest couple builds, its going to take years. Which is not good enough.

Was the Mesmer actually the last class released? Think they’re op now, should have seen them in gw1 lol. I find it hard to believe that the mesmer as a returning class from gw1 (like the necro) would be the last developed. In any case as a necro, I find mesmers to be one of the easier classes to deal with.

Guild wars 2 is like pokemon, every class has other classes that you’re going to be strong against and ones you’re going to suck at fighting. This can of course, be overcome with skill, technique and stats. There is a lot that could be improved with the necro, but it’s still an exceptionally fun class to play and overall I’m quite happy with it.

Mesmer was the last profession that was ‘released’. (aka official announced). They may have had the mesmer long ready already though.

Imo mesmer are amongst most powerfull gw2 professions. In wvw Greatsword, is incredible good. With the 3x beam, it’s incredible hard to dodge this ‘instant triple hit’ damage. You might dodge two of the strikes and that’s it, then the next one is already firing. And RIGHT THIS SKILL they are gonna boost? I’m trampled. If they boost sceptor from mesmer, I would 100% understand, but now they are boosting one of the best ranged auto attacks in the game to even better. Jesus.

Bhawb.7408:

Rok.5260:

This is what I was referring to, I wasn’t trying to insult warriors or anything. As a Necromancer using a Dagger in PvP can you honestly say that this is 100% accurate?

Yes. I bunker near point for my tPvP team, and it is very rare that I will die. The only times I do (barring just playing bad against a thief) are when they send 2 glass cannons that can nuke me down in a second, or 3+ players.

Just because other players aren’t afraid of your dagger hitting for 2k DPS in a bunker build doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be afraid. Especially if I have minions to complement it, you will literally have a few players come to your point, get wrecked, and then you’ll see them later in the game run close to your point, look at you, and run on back to mid instead.

What’s your MM build? I’ve been curious for days about it

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbhG2IjWpermvG9eCQ6R0UDwkCuBHSRuSD;TwAA1CtosxYjwGrNObk2sCZEyeg5AA

Bhawb.7408:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbhG2IjWpermvG9eCQ6R0UDwkCuBHSRuSD;TwAA1CtosxYjwGrNObk2sCZEyeg5AA

So now my question is this. How exactly do you deal with your minions never regenerating their HP between fights? To me, it seems more of a liability that you can never have your minions at 100%. Especially after fighting elementalists who throw AOE around like nobodies business.

Bone Minions and Flesh Wurm can both be killed and recycled in between fights, and Flesh Golem will regen outside of combat, so only Bone Fiend will not be at full HP. And since he is ranged, if I aggro at his max range then most elementalist AoE is too small to hit him. Same with Flesh Wurm.

I cannot believe they seriously think the necro is that diverse. I’m just shocked really. I consider necro one of the LEAST diverse classes in the game.

I legitimately think they don’t play this game at all now. Or at the very least don’t play the necromancer at all.

I have 2 lvl 80’s a banner warrior and a necro, I find myself constantly trying to ‘drop’ Death Shroud with the change weapon button. Then I unintentionally get stuck with the wrong weapon out for 9 seconds.

I think it is a very un-intuitive setup, where engineer kits, warrior banners, ele summoned weapons and whatever else that change your skillbar, can be dropped using the change weapon key, but that Death Shroud has to be turned off by pressing it’s associated key.

Chronoslol.7514:

For a class defining feature it sure does seem awfully awful and limiting

Just like in GW1.

Red Falcon.8257:

Chronoslol.7514:

Wow so entitled, anet doesnt have to give you any functionality they dont want to, check your priviledge

This, and… DS is designed to be a transformation.
When transformed (and most times, when carrying an item) you cannot do basic actions because you’re busy with what you’re doing.
Infact the dev also said DS is designed to be a transformation to use when on low health to continue fighting or to prevent spikes when fighting – not a tool to “bypass” some fundamental mechanics such as being vulnerable while ressing or buying yourself seconds of cooldown with in-transformation swapping.
DS was never meant to be a normal state you use for every purpose.

Elixer X has the same problem. Tornado form has the same problem. Rampager form has the same problem. Form of Melandru has the same problem. Any Norn Spirit Shape skill has the same problem.

I fail to see how this is a unique thing to necromancers.

Its only unique because death shroud is so very limited to begin with.

We get a pretty weak auto attack unless specced crit/power even then….,
A decent bleed/chill that pulls us TO them(any melee will abuse this).
A fear that is an ok duration that will be used at max 1 time if anyone hits you.
And we get a life drain that does ok damage, but doesn’t regen DS by much(if at all), and doesn’t heal us on our normal hp at ALL.

Deathshroud is almost useless. 9/10 times your going to be using it to pop in and out for a single skill(fear), or hit it as an “oh kitten” button, because you just got bursted and can’t escape thanks to our neverending “just sit there and take it” mechanic.
-Oh btw, you also have to BUILD death shroud, it doesn’t come up 100% on spawn and we don’t get skills/signets that just build it up fully like warriors adrenaline. Nah, that would be reasonable.

Empiren.6401:

We don’t get skills/signets that just build it up fully like warriors adrenaline. Nah, that would be reasonable.

You know the difference between a warriors burst skill impact (outside of Hammer/Mace – the stuns) is about as much as 1 of our dooms. Most dont even use them since its a 12% damage increase if you get a basic trait.

War Mourner.5168:

Functionality they have denied us in DS include:
*Stomp
*Revive

You can still stomp and revive in DS by entering DS and hitting the stomp/revive keybind extremely fast.

My DS button is “T” and stomp/revive is “F”.

By rolling my finger across “T” then “F”, I am able to stomp or revive a player.

I know, I do it as well, but it’s never been clarified as intended, even though we’ve asked many times.

War Mourner.5168:

I know, I do it as well, but it’s never been clarified as intended, even though we’ve asked many times.

The only reason I think that it is intended or they are leaving it in the game is because Foot in the Grave stability is not even worth taking without DS stomp/revive in my opinion.

Yeah, if they remove shroudstomping I would drop it as well.

What I find odd regarding shroudstomping/rezzing is that you can still utilize some other “F” functions, like looting. I wish they would just make their mind on it.

Tenderly.7019:

The only reason I think that it is intended or they are leaving it in the game is because Foot in the Grave stability is not even worth taking without DS stomp/revive in my opinion.

Foot in the Grave used to give you “Shade” effect (with multiple glowy eye/while line effects too), you were essnecially a miniboss while in DS.

My first 80 is a thief, I want to finish a necro, but it’s really awful in my spvp testing, I’ve read every video and tried most every build out there but they are the first to be targeted and killed for a reason: easy pickings.

This game is based around evasion and timing and necro has nonexistent evasion. A brick of extra HP that self cripples plus a 1 second untraited interrupt doesn’t make up for how much dodging, mobility avoidance and boon stacking is going on out there. I won’t even mention burst.

I want to build full glass now and just bomb points from outside so I can have a useful pve/lol pvp character but I have a hard time doing that even since I have to go toughness for staff traits.

I just came off a PVT dagger/well/ds build where I got to bounce off guardians, saw thieves slipping away at %5 without even panicking and even rangers with our terrible easily evaded damage in a 3k+++ power build trying to utilize our awful access to might stacking since it involves self ccing in DS.

Every single skill that might make us an actual threat has something counterproductive about it.

SG has a slow projectile, easily dodged.
DS teleport the same.
DS itself is a self stun and self cripple. A terrible tradeoff for the HP usually.
Wells and staff get a lovely red ring to telegraph the move and can be dodged through.
What if wells came with a default suction like guardian GS? They’re using a utility slot even where Guardian GS is not.

If DS didn’t have any cooldowns or much, much shorter ones, and the default slow was removed necro might have a chance. Fear should be lengthened and AOE to boot. Necros have the worst down state abilities on top of everything else. Single target fear for 1s? Really?

Thieves stealing the necro fear have 3 seconds whereas necro fear is 1 second untraited…really?

I agree with the OP, no attrition on the necro because to have attrition you have to live first. Necros can barely survive 1s let alone 2v1s, meanwhile we have eles, guardians, thieves and mesmers proving they can handle 3v1s daily. L2P will be the next post but Necro may have a high skill ceiling but you can put that skill on another class and be godly.

Shroudstomping is not even intentionally added to the class and I have trouble believing people with any reasonable latency can consistently pull it off. Other classes have stealth stomp, quickness stomp, stability stomp without breaking a sweat.

“I cannot believe they seriously think the necro is that diverse.”

It’s very diverse if you want a lot of variety of terrible. :/