Guild Wars 2

These are some improvements and quality of life changes I think the necro needs. I feel the class is/was supposed to be a condition master (not always damage) but I am able to put far greater conditions on more than one mob with my other two mains Ranger and Engineer and I can do it without even having to debuff myself. I would like to see some overall increase to the idea we are cold hearted death dealing machines… emphasis on cold. Chill should be an even stronger condition we bring to the table. These are my opinions, if you disagree I ask only you do it constructively. I tried to look at the overall picture when bringing them up and I do not mean for all to be implemented, maybe just some.

WEAPON SKILLS

Death Shroud
This comment I believe should happen universally to all projectiles when they are set to pierce because ranged in this game is very weak to compared to melee at taking on more than one mob or a very mobile mob. I find it personally very difficult to hit good players because the ranged mobility versus the melee mobility in this game is a little backwards. Greatsword warriors are more mobile than slotting for kiting on ranger. Therefore, if the piercing projectiles are allowed to “cleave”, players would hit more targets than just ones dumb enough to be in a line or stack right on top of one another when rezzing. When fighting two targets even in PVE, if one stops to cast or gets its speed hindered, it will be far more difficult to line them up. 2 mobs will be right on your face and as a ranged player you aren’t able to hit them both nor are you designed to have them on top of you. Your ranged is your CC and is often only going to hit one target. But cone shaped or wider attacks would help alleviate some of the pain.

Life Blast – Projectile wider or cone shaped (at close range).
Dark Path – Since it has a cast animation already with it, the teleport should be directly to the target without a travel path as to prevent other mobs from getting in the way. If someone dashes in front of them last minute or say trying to finish off a player running back to the safety of the zerg, the caster should not end up directly on top of the intervening character.
Gathering Plague – (underwater) should also siphon like the ground version of the spell.

Staff
Necrotic grasp – is the main attack and should have a much faster projectile speed. There is already a wind up cast. The projectile needs to be faster since it also pierces to get successful attacks off more often. I would say it needs to be a minimum of 50% increase.
Chillbains – this is the trademark spell and most useful to necro IMHO. The CD for this spell should be 15 seconds and 12 seconds traited.

Axe
Rending claws – add some CC such as cripple to the first attack or improved damage by roughly 15 to 20% of the AA.
Unholy feast – this ability should chill the target instead of cripple.

Scepter – this obviously is meant to be our condition giving weapon but really doesn’t have that much it can do. The skills do about as much direct damage as condition.
Blood rending – both of the first two attacks on number 1 are very slow lowering the usefulness of sigils, traits, and applied conditions. The bleeding stacks and the cast time animation should be increased. Shortbow ranger can stack faster and higher than the necro by far with only AA. The poison on the third attack should last to 4 seconds by default.
Grasping dead – the cast time for this ground targeting spell could be lowered to ½ second instead of ¾ and/or chill effect instead of cripple.

Dagger
Dark pact – lower CD to 20 seconds and/or lower cast time animation.

Focus
Spinal Shivers – strong ability but can be difficult to cast on smart players and especially if you are trying to shut down boons. Cast time speed decrease to ¾ of a second.

Warhorn
Locust swarm – Wider range of cripple and/or adding a bleed or siphoning during durations. Nothing to strong on the damage scale but there should be come applied damage.

Spear
Deadly catch – lower CD in order for use to use other skills effectively more often, down to 20.
Dark spear – Every time I use this skill I get a small self stun upon landing that should be removed. And according to wiki can use Reaper’s Protection if specced for it, which could either be good or bad, but I feel a self stun on an ability to put yourself in melee range is a bad idea.

Trident
Frozen abyss – lower cast time to 1.5 seconds or 1 (one may be a bit OP).

UTILITY SKILLS

Corrosive – this set of skills debuffs the cast in order to also buff or create a stronger debuff on the target.
Blood is power – is using a target to cast the bleed on both yourself and target, the damage ratio is fair but the duration of the bleed is often too long to make it a fair balance. The bleed time should be across the same 10 seconds as the self bleed.
Epidemic – lower cast time to .5 seconds. Many conditions are short lived and by the time a full set of them is applied you will not have as many to apply to other targets, so any improvement here would help maximize usefulness.
Corrupt Boon – self poison is a strong debuff at the wrong times. A self bleed or vulnerability would be less cumbersome to the caster since many of our trait lines and skills are meant to take life from another. Confusion may even be acceptable.
Corrosive cloud – long self weakness considering there is nothing to hold the target in the area of effect.
weakness to me should be changed to make CRITS (instead of non-crits) into glancing blows. This would put the burst in this game in a much more controllable fashion. The crit can still proc other skills but would be drastically reduced.

Minions – I do not use them much, but for the most part are ok. I ask only that they heal out of combat like ranger pets if they go on CD with death. I know you can change your uility out of combat to reset one or use DS traited to heal, but there is no reason to have them not heal out of combat at the same rate as a player.

Signets – The CD like the ranger are very high, making them often not worth using. I would suggest lowering them all by 50%, except locust (maybe only 25%).

Spectral
Spectral armor – lower CD to 60 seconds or increase the duration by 5 seconds, although I think lower CD is better option.
Spectral wall – allow it to reflect projectiles or even nicer allowing it to work like a solid wall and knock down opponents as they try to pass, still possibly applying the vulnerability.
Spectral grasp – great skill, would recommend slightly lower CD or allowing it to grab all targets either in a line or in a certain range of target.

Elite – Plague – Strong ability already but:
Pestilence – possibly chill instead of cripple, same duration
Darkness – increase blind to 2 seconds (would not shut down fast attacking class but would make sure, mostly in pve, that the AoE blind prevents more attacks).
Withering – increase duration of bleed.

TRAITS

more to come

Spite
Reaper’s Might – signet CD is very long, if they are left unchanged, the might should be 5 stacks for 20 seconds with an internal CD of 20 seconds to prevent massive stacking.
Spiteful Marks – Move to CURSES tree and increase duration and damage of conditions instead of front end damage of mark.
Training of the master – should be in the Death or Blood magic at the same trait level since most power builds do not require the minions for damage.
Axe Training – move down one tier.
Spiteful spirit – Move to top tier trait and make it last 10 seconds, or possibly add protection and leave in same position.
Death Into Life – move to curses tree and base it off of condition damage.

CURSES
Furious Demise – move to SPITE and make it the grandmaster minor trait, move siphoned power to master minor trait.
Chilling Darkenss – We have little access to blind and I have suggest many increases to chill. I would say make this Crippling Darkness which applies blindness when we cripple vs blind gives cripple. If this changes goes through I would change Locust Swarm and Plague to increase cripple duration but also the time between reapplying. Currently this spell really just makes well of darkness shine.

DEATH MAGIC
Death nova – losing a pet is a big deal if built around them, getting only a poison cloud for 3 seconds is not worth a grandmaster trait. Adding a 3 to 5 second chill or weaken to the poison would help drastically.

I stopped reading after you said piercing should cleave, at that point I realized these weren’t quality of life improvements, but rather ways to make the Necro OP or complete changes to the mechanics and play style of a class.

Bas.7406:

I stopped reading after you said piercing should cleave, at that point I realized these weren’t quality of life improvements, but rather ways to make the Necro OP or complete changes to the mechanics and play style of a class.

Well one suggested change doesn’t reflect them all. So if you feel that a sentence gives you an excuse to stop reading the rest of a post then ok. This suggestion was universal across all classes with piercing projectiles. Often the piercing effect does little when 2 units stand side by side. You cannot always flank and often cannot flank your opponents based off terrain. I do not suggest the angle be as wide a greatsword, but at least wider than it is now.

dirtyshame.1863:

Bas.7406:

I stopped reading after you said piercing should cleave, at that point I realized these weren’t quality of life improvements, but rather ways to make the Necro OP or complete changes to the mechanics and play style of a class.

Well one suggested change doesn’t reflect them all. So if you feel that a sentence gives you an excuse to stop reading the rest of a post then ok. This suggestion was universal across all classes with piercing projectiles. Often the piercing effect does little when 2 units stand side by side. You cannot always flank and often cannot flank your opponents based off terrain. I do not suggest the angle be as wide a greatsword, but at least wider than it is now.

Again, I have breezed through a majority of your points.

But here we go

Spectral grasp – great skill, would recommend slightly lower CD or allowing it to grab all targets either in a line or in a certain range of target.

Elite – Plague – Strong ability already but:
Pestilence – possibly chill instead of cripple, same duration
Darkness – increase blind to 2 seconds (would not shut down fast attacking class but would make sure, mostly in pve, that the AoE blind prevents more attacks).
Withering – increase duration of bleed.

all overpowered suggestions.

Minion Masters should not be forced to spec out of spite simply because you don’t like it. We want to stay specced into the spite tree, so that’s out.

Chilling darkness is incredible, and your change would completely break that amazing ability. No one would ever take the ability with your change.

Bas.7406:

Again, I have breezed through a majority of your points.

… Just let me know when you log in and I will proceed to watch you I guess to learn how I need to be playing.

Bas.7406:

Minion Masters should not be forced to spec out of spite simply because you don’t like it. We want to stay specced into the spite tree, so that’s out.

so you are saying my personal preference =/ your personal preference so you win?

Bas.7406:

Chilling darkness is incredible, and your change would completely break that amazing ability. No one would ever take the ability with your change.

Explain to me how it is so great as it is? I find little use for it aside from well and OH dagger.

I have a few simple suggestions that might help them a bit. They might have been suggested before, but right now I’m a bit too lazy to read through everyones posts. =_=

The axe should be a cleave weapon. With how love damage it does compared to the dagger or even the scepter the weapon’s auto and second attack should strike multiple foes. This would solve a complaint that people have with both the axe and the fact that the necro doesn’t have a cleaving weapon.

Lingering curse should increase the duration of conditions on both scepter and trident. I don’t understand why the trident wouldn’t be included in this skill. To me, as the go to underwater condition weapon, it just makes sense.

Minions need something to give them more of an oomph. They die too easily and too much is sacrificed while using them to really want to bring them along on any major event. Perhaps having a trait that summons jagged horrors when one of your none jagged horrors dies would give them the longevity they need in order to maintain the necro’s damage a bit longer while their skills are on cool down. Their AI also need to be improved, but that is more a all around pet problems then just being exclusive to the necromancer.

Increase the duration of Fear. Fear is the weakest stun in the game. Why does it also have the shortest duration of any stun type effect in the game? Fear can be removed from party members, cleansed with instant condition remover and broken with stun breaks. I understand the need to control it in PvP, but in PvE this doesn’t need as strict of regulations on it. especially when an enemy dog can fear spam you with a 5 second duration for each fear. Another note on fear is to replace wail of doom’s daze with a 2 second fear. it had this in the demos, And although the daze is good, it further limits the necromancer’s access to their special condition.

Give the necromancer confusion. I can’t stress this enough. One of the most popular builds for PvE was the necromancer’s SS build. And even SV was popular in PvP for a time. Necromancer’s strongest condition damage comes from bleeds. Poison helps, but when you compare this to other condition professions, they all have 2-3 high damage conditions. engineer has all 4, mesmer has easy access to both bleeds and confusion, warrior has bleeding and burning, ranger has bleeding, poison, burning and now confusion. So why doesn’t the necromancer have confusion? Give us a skill or 2 that causes confusion. Nothing major, just something.

Death shroud needs to mean more. Right now, even with my build, I will often pop death shroud and leave it instantly. I don’t like to stay in death shroud for too long because it decrease my over all damage if I stay in it longer then 5 seconds. I specifically build my necromancer to use death shroud with my build so I could feel like it was doing something. But even I don’t want to use it too much because of how limiting it is to my over all build. The death shroud is far too much of a tanking ability. The death shroud is the most limiting ability of any profession. It would be nice to actually be rewarded for using death shroud rather then being punished if I stay in it too long.

would love it if minions had the same cast time on land as they do in the water. casting a minion in the water is way faster then casting them on land.
Oh and I liked that idea of minions healing over time out of combat. some one posted this on another post but i loved this idea it was to have bone minions follow after your target then blow up when using putrid explosion.