Guild Wars 2

If there is one thing about the necromancer that seems to hold us back when it comes to PvE… Well its actually 2 major things. Its our poor damage and our bad support. A few small changes could make us viable as an option for a group.

First thing I’m going to talk about is wells. Wells are often something people talk about on the forums that should be buffed. And I agree. A few small changes could make wells a decent option for groups.

Well of power: This is a decent skill. Probably one of our best support. But its often out classed by warrior and guardian shouts that can do similar things without requiring allies to stand still in your field to get the full benefit. The suggestion I’d make for this one is have it pulse 1(s) of Stability in addition to its normal effects. Not giving the necromancer reliable access to stability makes no sense to me from a lore or balance perspective. We defiantly need more options for this. And having a stability on a cleansing skill that also acts as a stun break would be amazing. Would it be too much? I don’t think so. But seeing as I’m not a tester for the game, I can’t test it.

Well of Blood: This skill should be changed to a water field. I thought about it and well of blood only lasts 5 seconds as it stands. It wouldn’t be the longest water field in the game. Also, the necromancer would have to do much more set up to take advantage of it as compared to other professions such as the engineer. But it would be worth it. I don’t think it would be too much to ask for this.

A grandmaster trait that applies might on well pulls: An idea that my guild gave me. And it actually makes sense thematically and would be really good considering that wells will occasionally override more valuable fields such as water or fire.

Onto other changes I’d suggest.

Vampiric Aura/dark aura: This is something that I find odd. We have a a light aura now. But no vampiric? Having an aura that can easily be applied to allies that is much easier for the necromancer to apply the other professions that provides some sort of life stealing benefit would be interesting to see exactly what the community does with it. And with the new rune set dealing with auras this would make this even more interesting.

Unholy Martyr: Increase its radius from 600 to 1,200. Reduce its life force gain from 5% to 1%-3%(depending on how it would work with balance) per condition. Have it draw 1 condition from up to 4 allies in the area. Keep the transfer every 3 seconds. Make it so life blast transfers a condition from yourself to your target on contact, 1 second cool down.

Unholy Martyr is a disappointing grandmaster trait. It just doesn’t work well enough in a party. If you want to remove conditions from allies just take a guardian. Thats what it feels like. With this at least you’d have a very interesting option to keep pressure going while keeping your allies a bit more healthy.

Plague signet: Also make it draw conditions from up to 4 allies every 3 seconds.

I have a few trait idea that could also help them with support. But I’ll save those for a later post. Seeing as I’m going to try and make a list of about 15 trait concepts for that(one for each tier and 3 for each line.)

Discuss what you think and leave a comment on what you would change. If you think a few of these ideas are broken please explain why in excruciating detail.

On Topic: I really like your ideas, and the Vampiric Aura should really be made more viable, it would really fit well with the Stacking in PVE and WVW.
What about renewal blast? What about other healings and team support ideas?

Off Topic: Anyway, even if you put all this effort in theorycrafting, writing on these forums it’s like throwing a bottled message in the ocean.

The idea of a Dark Aura has one factor that should be considered, though: Shadow Refuge is a dark field on a class with spammable leap finishers. Thieves could get extremely long durations of this aura.

It probably wouldn’t be that big a deal, but it should be considered. Of course, then I would really want some Leap finishers on necros as the iconic health-stealing class would ironically be the only one completely unable to take advantage of the new ability to steal health from attackers.

I think you don’t really get it.

First of all i have to say that necromancers don’t have poor damage. In a full glass setup a dagger/wh necromancer will dish out probably as much damage as a thief (which are well placed in the dps ranking). Why dagger/wh? Because dagger AA is better in dps then thieve dagger AA and wh provide a flat boost in dps with it’s 5th skill. This is balance by the thief stealth attack who provide an high damaging burst every 3-4 seconds.

What I find wrong with what you wrote is essentially your emphasis on well. Wells are our worst ennemy in PvE. In PvE, you need might, might and might again. In PvE, you need fire field, blast and… nothing else. To be more accurate, everything else is an hindrance so wells become automatically an hindrance.

As for your ideas, I think :
- Vampiric aura should be a blood magic grand master trait which could grant your ally within x radius to have the effect of vampiric (the trait). The effect should not be able to stack (I mean you can siphon just once per hit by the effect of this aura to prevent abuse by stacking blood necromancers in a team). Moving this to a trait would have a meaning by becoming a party dps boost and neutral party support.
- Unholy Martyr. As it stand it’s probably the most useless trait in game but i don’t think anet is up to make a move and buff/change/remove this trait. I think the best thing would be to change it to vampiric aura but whatever…
- Plague signet. Never seen this thing work and i don’t even think this would help necromancer to shine in support. Who would want a necromancer to suck condition when warrior/guard can erase them with shout, whirlwind combo etc. ?

I think they do get it. I’ve always admired Lily’s ability to ‘get it’ from even a lore perspective. Rather than a ‘how the numbers are in PvP’ only.

As for damage, it’d be a HUGE thing if they allowed per player condi stacks. Lots of our toolset is condi and that really falls down in any group content.

I think the ‘dream’ for many of us from the start of the game, was to have a ‘double edged knife, condi sucking, vs siphon attrition/support spec’.
The manifesto stuff of the longer the necro says in combat, the better they are off. Never really played out.
As for siphons side of this, it would have been nice to get bigger siphon heals the more condi’s on us. (Sort of like the #6 heal we use)
It would have been nice to have some control over siphons. Rather than the main source being hoping your NPC’s hadn’t broken.
Something like a LONG CD, huge siphon that was better the lower your life was, so that you had the double edged sword thing, so easy to take that extra hit and die, or get it perfect and huge pay off.

The big one tho, our ROLE. We were the ‘master of condi manipulation’. Tho the ninja nerf to staff #4 (Used to to send ALL condi’s off caster & every group member in the mark back to mob triggering mark) & putting a cap on how many condi’s or buffs we could change, gave us no role. As people say, why bother with a necro when you can get a combo field that dose a better job. Or as stated a heavy.

I think our best ‘helpfull to others thing we do’ is now prob, good at lots of chills on trash mobs.

“Getting it” lore wise is almost irrelevant. The game is balanced around high ranked tpvp.

Yes chilling those trash mobs is super helpful.

I like your ideas, Lilly. Vampiric aura could be chill instead if blind to address Drarnor’s concern but Necro could use more group support and spamming more might in game only worsens the might stack problems.

Anchoku.8142:

I like your ideas, Lilly. Vampiric aura could be chill instead if blind to address Drarnor’s concern but Necro could use more group support and spamming more might in game only worsens the might stack problems.

I think the idea was a Leap finisher that causes an effect similar to other “aura” abilities, namely a benefit when struck and a detriment to the striker. Vampiric Aura would be pretty straight forward as a “steal health when struck” effect.

My concern on that was simply that Thieves could very easily build up pretty sizable durations of such an effect. Adjusting numbers would keep that from being imbalanced easily enough.

On a more thematic concern, is that such an effect would be extremely fitting for a Necromancer who would have absolutely no method of triggering the effect.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Anchoku.8142:

I like your ideas, Lilly. Vampiric aura could be chill instead if blind to address Drarnor’s concern but Necro could use more group support and spamming more might in game only worsens the might stack problems.

I think the idea was a Leap finisher that causes an effect similar to other “aura” abilities, namely a benefit when struck and a detriment to the striker. Vampiric Aura would be pretty straight forward as a “steal health when struck” effect.

My concern on that was simply that Thieves could very easily build up pretty sizable durations of such an effect. Adjusting numbers would keep that from being imbalanced easily enough.

On a more thematic concern, is that such an effect would be extremely fitting for a Necromancer who would have absolutely no method of triggering the effect.

Who says it couldn’t trigger on blast? Chaos aura does.

Anchoku.8142:

I like your ideas, Lilly. Vampiric aura could be chill instead if blind to address Drarnor’s concern but Necro could use more group support and spamming more might in game only worsens the might stack problems.

I see your concern and I acknowledge that. However I must say that that is a deeper problem then just the necromancer. Adding this to the necromancer honestly wouldn’t change much. It would just allow for the necro to provide more damage support. The system itself is broken. Not so much might stacking.

NeXeD.3042:

“Getting it” lore wise is almost irrelevant. The game is balanced around high ranked tpvp.

Yes chilling those trash mobs is super helpful.

Lore matters to a great number of players. Myself included. We are invested in the lore of the game and balance should be separated between PvE, PvP and WvW. I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this but its not just an opinion.

We can look back at GW1 for a great example. If any game in the history of MMOs didn’t need skill splits for PvP and PvE, GW1 was that game. Enemy AI was no replacement for a player, sure, but at the same time a AI could and often did imitate what players did. The AI was dumb but at least it had most of the same limitations that players did with access to the same skills players could use. Now look at GW2. The Enemies in GW2 have far more restrictions on them and act nothing like a player. They don’t do hardly anything in comparison to a player, having 1-3 moves they use or cycle through. GW1 absolutely needed the skill split even with how much more the npcs were similar to the players as compared to gw2. To believe that skill and trait splits are not required in GW2 is pure fantasy.

I am actually hoping for a Nerf to might sharing. It makes some professions too strong so that there is a disproportionate amount of focus on might, rather than other boons and conditions.

Might stacking is fine for professions that depend on it as part of their mechanics but stick 25 might on others through boon spamming with no trade for it in their build and we see very high sustained dps. It is no wonder there is such an emphasis on zerker and might builds.

NeXeD.3042:

“Getting it” lore wise is almost irrelevant. The game is balanced around high ranked tpvp.

Yes chilling those trash mobs is super helpful.

99.8% of the game users don’t give a cat about the 0.1% top pvp necros.
Out of the top PvP Necro’s, I’ve seen about 3 that actually give a F about how it works. Most just care about the numbers on screen/them winning.

But sure, let’s strip the game down to 3 class’s. PapperMancer, RockWar & Squizzooorrrsss. That’d actually get the balance they want. I’d also soo cut you down to size as a Squizzzorrrss!

Bweaty.9187:

NeXeD.3042:

“Getting it” lore wise is almost irrelevant. The game is balanced around high ranked tpvp.

Yes chilling those trash mobs is super helpful.

99.8% of the game users don’t give a cat about the 0.1% top pvp necros.
Out of the top PvP Necro’s, I’ve seen about 3 that actually give a F about how it works. Most just care about the numbers on screen/them winning.

But sure, let’s strip the game down to 3 class’s. PapperMancer, RockWar & Squizzooorrrsss. That’d actually get the balance they want. I’d also soo cut you down to size as a Squizzzorrrss!

What…….

Ok, say we don’t care about lore, class feel or any of that, and the entire game is about the sub 1% of players for eSport…

Going this counter/recover from that, playing to out wit & out last the other, is a bit slow for the TV.

So the system is the this wins vs that, but fails vs other that. Like a advanced paper, rock, scissors simulator.

I was saying in a light & fun teasing way, I’d go Scissors, giving you a big opening to be fun and witty and say something like “No way, I’d rock your world bro”.

In no way did I mean that no one should care about lore.

If that’s what your in too that’s great everyone has their own way to play.

The game is still going to be balanced from the top down though.

Almost every mmo in existence has had that whole rock paper scissors thing going for it. But if you think about it rock paper scissors is a perfectly balanced game.

Yeh, p/r/s works good for ‘e-Sport’. It’s very fast & easy for viewers to know what’s going on.

I think I get so ansi about lore here, because. The necro doesn’t FEEL right. Even when we had the fastest casting ‘ranged res’ we sort of had an angle of being masters of death & decay.
Dumbfire – players loved it cause of the numbers. But ‘burst damage over time’ is a dumb concept, then FIRE for a necro? Ya know, if the’d called it burning itch. I’d be happy as! Dumb I know!

The big one tho, this it the first game, (and played lots) that I’ve ever cared & loved the lore!
It’s sad so little is in the game! I’ve spent hours finding lore, and the GW books and all that. It’s sooo awesome!
(tho, apples, apples for sale, nothing to see here! – quest guy OMFG fav!!!)

just to point out that all aura have durations limits so the example of the theif wouldn’t happen unless there was a lot of dark fields on the ground.

I’d like to see the following:

Bloodthirst reworked to:
1- Grant allies siphon-on-hit (or possibly just on critical hits)
2- Increase necromancer’s siphon effectiveness
3- Spotter-like effect for Ferocity
4 – Adjust trait tier as needed

Blood is Power reworked to:
1- Grant necromancer 5x might for 10 sec, bleeds for 8 (1x)
2- Target is marked for next 12 sec, all strikes against the target grant 1x Might for 5 sec, bleeds player/ally for 3 sec (1x). 1 sec ICD

Well of Power reworked to:
1 – Stability on initial pulse, all allies.

Signet of Undeath reworked to:
1 – Revive target defeated ally for 8 sec @ 25% HP.
2 – Revived ally has weakness, poison, and chill inflicted on them for the duration.
3 – Revived target ally must be healed to 100% & score a killing blow to rally.
4 – Signet passive grants additional toughness, condition damage, or buff to minions.

Axe reworked to:
1 – 3-hit AA chain, with cleave on final strike.
2- Be wielded as an OH weapon

Dark Fields reworked to:
1 – Provide Dark Aura for leap combo finishers
2 – Provide Dark Aura for blast finishers (no more AoE Blind)
2 – Dark Aura siphons HP and Blinds or inflicts Weakness upon being struck

Dark Path reworked to:
1 – Increased projectile speed 25%
2 – Combo finisher: Leap