Guild Wars 2

Yes, this is another necro fix post. But unlike most other threads on the matter, the changes I would see implemented attempt to fix necromancer’s more fundamental issues with game balance, while also adding some new things (namely the missing utilities). While most of these changes move necromancer towards heavier condition dependency, rest assured current forms of power necro are still doable, and might even perform little better than they do currently.

All of the changes:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y7yXSD_9GqYaf_W2HHzEWjtk2Qa6_Vsy2VwCKf8uLQ0/edit?usp=sharing

To explain the changes briefly I’ll go over each traitline and their associated weapons to give an idea of how they’d work. Also do note that there are 3 damage traitlines now; Spite, Curses and Blood Magic, each with their own damaging condition. Tying conditions to traitlines gives each traitline some uniqueness and also it allows for more varied playstyles under the moniker of ‘’condition damage build’’.

Spite, Axe and Focus
The changes to Spite and its weapons, axe and focus, make it more involved with Vulnerability and boon corruption. You might also notice that there is Torment on Ghastly Claws and in couple of traits. Torment was chosen as Spite’s damaging condition as necromancer was supposed to be the premier applier of Torment. And it also makes thematically more sense than Confusion, wouldn’t want that dirty mesmer condition tainting us with its filth.

Axe and focus, especially traited, are a dual act, with axe forcing enemy to keep moving while focus destroys their boons and inflicts Torment. By making axe into a projectile weapon it becomes more user friendly and in some sense also balancing friendly as there’s no real counter other than being out of reach, beyond line of sight or stealthed to the invisible axe hits of doom. A projectile you can dodge and you instantly see where it is coming from.

Curses and Scepter
Curses has moved to be more Poison oriented, with scepter having all of its Bleed application removed in favor of applying almost exclusively Poison. Curses also includes a flat 50% base duration increase for all conditions, making it a very tempting secondary traitline for Spite and Blood Magic focused condi necros. For primary Curses users Curses offers the best condition DPS in longer engagements where the enemy does not cleanse itself and also due to amount of Poison it can put out, healing against a Curses necro is almost always at the debuffed rate. Curses is also the home of most of the Fear related traits, meaning you no longer need to take Soul Reaping for one measly trait to run a Fear oriented necromancer.

Death Magic
While Death Magic does not have it’s own weapon nor does it even have a condition to call its own, it has minions and ways to make necromancer able to take more of a beating in tough situation. In past Death Magic has had its share of problems because of how Unholy Sanctuary worked so instead of allowing it to heal necromancer it is now a support oriented trait, making you and your allies take less damage while you are in Shroud. The minion play is also more supported as Soul Comprehension now gives you Life Force from deaths of your minions, rather than increase the amount you gain from deaths of others. Yes this means you need to run minions of some kind to gain benefits from this trait, but Death Magic is the minion traitline, so it is very likely you would have one or two slotted in when you choose Death Magic.

Blood Magic, Dagger and Warhorn
Blood Magic, as the name implies, works now hand in hand with Bleeding. By making enemies Bleed more, your Life Stealing gets stronger, allowing for an offensive support type of character. While some would be saddened to see dagger lose damage, it is a itself has been made more healing support oriented, maybe even to extent that necromancer would make a competent healer.

To simplify Life Stealing and to avoid making it less likely a necro was able to stack Life Steal effects on top of each other to gain immortality, Life Stealing traits have been reduced in number, to Vampiric Presence, and new Creature of the Night grandmaster trait. Vampiric Presence is now a minor trait, allowing it to always be on when Blood Magic is chosen. Creature of the Night is more geared towards solo play by giving the necro Life Stealing on critical hits, for those who prefer to not aid their team with Transfusion or Unholy Martyr. Yes this means wells no longer have separate Life Steal tick, meaning they can now be buffed to be more useful without fear of creating an immortal vampiric wellomancer.

Soul Reaping and Staff
As many of you know, Soul Reaping has a problem with its Best in Slot trait, Vital Persistence. That’s why it stays right there, but without the cooldown reductions. Cooldown reductions are now a separate trait, created in spot once occupied by Fear of Death. This separation hopefully is enough to make people consider between being able to use Shroud and its skills more often, or to make Shroud last longer, or take Spectral Mastery to make sure Shroud is always topped off with Life Force. Grandmasters were touched up as well, Dhuumfire isn’t bound to skill 1 of the Shroud, but instead Burns are chance on crit on all Shroud skills, as it should have been right from start after Burn became intensity stacker. Foot in Grave now functions like Form skills in that it applies Stability every 3 seconds.

Staff has been in need of help since the launch, auto-attack and 4 marks is not interesting to play with. So the changes to staff focused on making it more fun to use and keeping the utility weapon role it has. By making the auto-attack apply pseudo-Cripple staff can now be used to catch enemies trying to run away, while it also has self-defense in Reaper’s Aegis, much like how Reaper’s Mark is 99% of the time used right under the necro rather than at its full range.

Reaper and Greatsword
Reaper does not have major problems in the way it functions, except for 3 things. First, the Greatsword auto-attack chain is far too slow for the damage it puts out so obvious fix was to reduce cast times and increase damage on third hit to avoid the problem of people cancelling the chain after first 2 hits for more DPS. Second, Gravedigger is too slow to ever hit another human player unless they are AFK or passed out. To fix this I removed Gravedigger’s cooldown completely and made it a channeled skill. You can release the channel at any time, dealing the damage of the last tier threshold you passed, but it will always channel for at least 1 second to reach the first tier. Each tier needs a second to reach and there is maximum of 3 tiers after which Gravedigger is automatically released. This channeling system gives the Reaper much needed control over their Gravedigger, without making it a DPS monster.

Third is the Deathly Chill, the current favourite necro trait to rag on. The Bleeds it inflicts are excessive for for any kind of vs. player combat, but in PvE it still isn’t enough to make necro wanted. Kneejerk reaction to this seems to be to split it, but I do not think this is the right choice. Splitting should only happen in very extreme cases of disparity between the game modes, to keep the game from devolving into 3 different games all with their own skills on all professions. The fix to Deathly Chill is actually rather simple when you consider that Reaper isn’t supposed to be heavy on condition damage or damage over time in general. If Deathly Chill inflicts a single packet of damage, scaling with your condition damage, whenever you apply Chill to an enemy who already has Chill, it becomes balanced again and offers a rather unique way to play a condi build with this over-freezing mechanic with burstier Chill damage.

Congrats to anyone who actually slogs through both the google doc and that wall of text.

P.S. Yes I would see Epidemic become a condi copy from the necro rather than spread condis from an enemy, simply because of the fact that necro condi output cannot be buffed any further without creating an issue from interaction between Epidemic and Parasitic Contagion, not to mention the issue WvW had because guardians and warriors apparently forgot how to run shout condiclear builds. Epidemic has too much potential for its own good.

I only looked at the google log (excuse me, I won’t read the whole novel ).

While there are some good idea, I don’t get why you want to focus this much on condition damage. The necromancer is at the moment, almost balanced in it’s condi damage output, while he struggle to shine in power damage. And from what i’ve seen you basically nerf power damage outside of shroud.

I find interesting how you tried to introduce some support however, I’m affraid this kind of support won’t be able to be meanigful enough to grant a place in raids to the necromancer. Even worse, you cut down our ability to corrupt boon which was… well… the laughable answer that anet came up with to make us valuable for group content.

To sum it up, I’m affraid these change would slightly benefit pvp, create havock in wvw were you can easily make conditions go out of control and sink the necromancer worth in PvE group content.

PS.: change to shadow fiend is fun but it look like god mode.

One of the reasons I’d like to have necro focus more on condition damage is legacy of GW1 necro as most skills you would use were Hexes, and direct damage was more of the exception. It’s actually funny that many of these direct damage skills were vampiric and here I am suggesting making vampiric play off of bleeding. But then again, because of how life leeching activates from hits it means it can’t really be given proper scaling from your stats, so it makes sense to me that instead the scaling is done from bleeding which your enemy can choose to cleanse.

I do not think power builds would be nerfed by these changes though. If you play exclusively axe or dagger, then yeah your power DPS is lower. But to compensate for this reaper’s greatsword is given the much needed cast time reduction on its auto. Plus, Close to Death doesn’t have HP threshold requirement.

I assume you mean the removal of boon corruption on Putrid Curse. While it kind of makes sense, I wanted to shuffle boon corrupting mostly to focus where you can choose when to punish enemies for using boons or in case of VG, choose when to remove that damage reduction blue guardian periodically gets. Besides, Feast of Corruption was changed to corrupt a single boon when used so scepter’s boon corruption is more responsive than it used to be. I would rather make it so that every time you corrupt a boon it’s because of conscious effort and not as part of spamming auto-attack.

Funnily enough most of these changes were made with WvW in mind, but I guess because most people have forgotten how to condi cleanse properly it could be seen as high amounts of condis. Back in my active days condi necro would’ve not ever been able to do anything to anyone as everything got cleansed the moment you applied it.

But thanks for your interest

I’m really liking the Blood Magic changes. The idea of bleeding being much more of a theme is something I’m surprised Anet has never done. Creature of the Night is just awesome, reintroducing the much missed (in my opinion) life stealing on crits. Vampiric Aura (and in fact every profession aura) as a baseline trait is a great idea too as said auras are just too good not to take.
Not a fan of the Well of Suffering change. Its a pure power/damage skill, nothing more. Well of Blood is a lovely change though.
Your elites are also fantastic. Plague form is an actually desirable condition elite, though I’d likely never take Spectral Fury off my bar (I love power necro too much but I’ve never been a big shroud fan). And Signet of Horrors, well its very much like what I suggested but being a very common request I shan’t sue you for plagiarism ^^

Yeah, there’s lots of necros who would want to see Mark of Horrors moved out of Lich Form as it really is Lich’s only claim to usability at this point and having that massive cooldown just for 5 jagged horrors is so wrong. Making it signet elite seemed the most logical choice.

I would actually concede that Well of Suffering does not necessarily need a change, but I personally liked the idea of making it stop normal condi cleansing too good to pass up, so to balance it a bit I chose lowering damage would be better than making its cooldown go above 40 sec. But yes, in context of PvE stopping condi cleansing makes no sense as there is no mobs that do that (yet), so it might be better to leave Suffering as is and change nothing.

Rid.2736:

Yeah, there’s lots of necros who would want to see Mark of Horrors moved out of Lich Form as it really is Lich’s only claim to usability at this point and having that massive cooldown just for 5 jagged horrors is so wrong. Making it signet elite seemed the most logical choice.

I would actually concede that Well of Suffering does not necessarily need a change, but I personally liked the idea of making it stop normal condi cleansing too good to pass up, so to balance it a bit I chose lowering damage would be better than making its cooldown go above 40 sec. But yes, in context of PvE stopping condi cleansing makes no sense as there is no mobs that do that (yet), so it might be better to leave Suffering as is and change nothing.

You could always add it to Well of Darkness. Its a pretty useless skill and the butt of many jokes.

One of the reasons I’d like to have necro focus more on condition damage is legacy of GW1 necro as most skills you would use were Hexes, and direct damage was more of the exception.

Well, I can’t fully agree with you. Damaging conditions in gw2 aren’t really hexes from gw. Damaging conditions, with the exception of confusion, are skills that put some tics of degeneration on the target. All hexes that does reactive damage at a set value should be viewed as power damage.

I think it’s been translated like that in GW2 and I’m rather ok with it personally.

NB.: After taking a close look at gw’s necromancer’s skill, I see a lot of direct damage spell that aren’t even hexes. I also see tons of support skills… (Raaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!)

Summary of what I liked and didn’t like:
Weapons
Changing Dagger to a condi bleed weapon and sceptre to poison is an interesting idea.
I don’t like the dark pact cast increase, purely because it would remove the insanely cool cast animation. But again if I have to choose between looks or ability, I will choose ability.

I’m against most of the other non-qol changes though. Some changes I’m just not a fan of whilst others I think are a bit daft (like changing axe to projectile based, giving conditions to it). Greatsword auto would be faster than any weapon in game, which is a bit much (just keep the first 2 attacks at 3/4s cast and do the same for 3rd attack). Gravedigger should just be reduced to 3/4s cast and keep the <50% recharge effect. Since its meant to replace auto attack on foes <50% it makes sense to have the same cast time.

Traits
Spite
Close to Death and Siphoned Power are 2 great changes. Offensive traits that only kick in at <50% enemy health, can be annoying especially on long fights where they aren’t used for half the fight.

Reaper’s Might seemed like a big nerf, since we can gain far more might out of the previous incarnation.

Curses
Removing the abysmal Furious Demise and slotting a modified Lingering Curse is nice, though 50% on all base conditions might be a bit much. Toxic Tongue works with the whole Sceptre/poison change, so I’m on board.

No real gripes though.

Death
Yes please to Soul Comprehension, though they should code it so it only occurs if the minion is killed by an enemy or by a skill you used. So people can’t abuse it with out of combat skill switching. Unholy Sanctuary makes for a great party damage shield, compared to the old terrible healing. Also liking Lich’s Protection, very ranger-ish.

Again no real gripes.

Blood
Absolutely adore Vampiric Presence. The separation of vampiric/vamp aura life stealing always did baffle me. Ritual Master is a much needed replacement for the somewhat odd Vampiric Rituals (protection on well, wat?). Creature of the Night brings back my dearly missed life steal on crits. Life from Death is also a great buff, upping our much needed party support.

For Bloodthirst, I think it should just be identical to the current Barbed Precision.

Soul Reaping
Speed of Shadows compliments Relentless Pursuit perfectly. Foot in the Grave is the missing Stability we need to survive in the frontline.

Vital Persistance really needs to become a baseline trait, at least the 50% degen part of it. It’s quite literally the reason to take Soul Reaping in the same way as a thief takes Trickery for +3 Initiative. Small gripe in that, for the sake of being fair make SoU give +5% instead of +6% condition damage. With Dhuumfire, I’d retain the original effect of auto doing burning, but disqualify it from having the 33% chance of burning on crit.

Reaper
Nothing really to compliment given the small amount of changes.

I kind of like the Soul Eater change (very much like its beta form) but that might be just because I hate its current form. I think more can be done with it to make it a contender with Decimate Defence/Chilling Victory. Deathly Chill should remain the same until the new expac (likely a new condi spec). Then they should implement your change but make it scale from power instead of condition damage.

Shroud
All changes are a good idea. Base shroud is in need of some love. With Life Blast, given my suggestion for Dhuumfire, I’d remove the burn on hit but keep the explosion (much better than piercing). Dark Path is a must. Tainted Shackles should really do 2 stacks of torment per pulse though.

Utilities
Signets
Signet of Horrors is a great addition, giving us a viable solo condi dps elite.

I’m very much against the Signet of Spite change though. Reason? Because power is already in the shadow of condi necro. This change would be like stealing from the poor to give to the rich. I’m fine with giving condi a signet but use one of the others.

Corruptions
Plague Form makes for a great party support condition elite, and removes the nasty form aspect of it.

Your Epidemic and Blood is Power changes just ruin the skills however. Epi is one of the few reasons we aren’t a complete pariah. And I really don’t like the idea of self inflicting conditions. Yes I know we have lots of transfer skills, but I’d prefer to use them on conditions enemies inflict on me, not self inflicted ones.

Minions
Summon Flesh Wurm is of course a yes from me.

Shadow fiend change seems like it could be a bit too OP though or useless, depending on the passive tick from the blind/torment.

Wells
Loving the Well of Blood change as expected from a life stealing lover like myself. Well of Profane is also a much needed additional Elite. I guess the effect wouldn’t stack with itself though? Cooldown reductions approved too

As I said before, Well of Suffering is purely a power damage skill. No need for any frills or additions, except either more damage or cooldown reduction. I’d change Well of Power so that it converts 2 conditions per pulse instead.

Spectral
Every addition is just great. And Spectral Fury is something that would likely never leave my bar. Now I’ve seen this idea, I want it so badly!

I gotta commend you on your dedication yo write all of this down, i mean really how long did it take you?

There are some changes i find strange, hard to agree with even:
In the redesign is you almost completely removed boon application from any traits and by doing that made blighter’s boon much worst, especially while shroud is up the trait would prock much too seldom for the amount of health it gives per boon.

Also why turn spite and axe / focus in to a condi / hybrid line, doubly so since the next elite spec is rumored to be pure condi? This would also leave necro without a single handed offensive power weapon (pure power).

Lastly i really thing deathly chill should scale of your power stat since reaper is suppose to be a power/bruiser line especially since the next elite is supposedly condi focused. Making the 2 elite lines compete in functionality could be an issue.

To Dadnir: I would not mind having hexes in GW2 be power if it meant they are close to same functions they had in GW1. But under GW2’s skill system with division between power and conditions, conditions have same feel to them as hexes in that both have a lasting effect on the enemy, while pure power attacks deal their damage and that’s that. While making conditions more prominent does not directly correlate with hexing, it is the closest we can do within this system, without actually making hexes and hex removal a thing. And yeah, GW1 necro had so many more options for team support

To Lahmia: Oh boy, that’s a a lot of things to go through, with some very valid points. I’ll try explain myself on the criticisms! Assume I agree if I don’t comment on something.

Weapons
The logic behind the projectile change is that axe is very fiddly with its attacks sometimes and it really does not allow an enemy any time to react to it before the hit has already landed, unlike other ranged attacks where you have that tiny sliver of time you see a projectile coming and you can dodge it. The addition of Torment on Ghastly Claws came from the fact that if Spite is supposed to be hybrid/boon destroyer line, it would only make sense that the weapon associated with this line has atleast some damaging condition application on it. I would not be opposed to moving torment to be granted to axe skills by Spiteful Spirit trait. That way power necros get to keep their power axe, except with projectiles.

Greatsword auto would not actually be faster if 1/4s was cut from it as all other greatswords have 1/2s cast time across the board, except for ranger’s third hit which is 3/4s, which is what reaper’s third hit would also be. The way I changed Gravedigger was mainly inspired by Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3’s handling of heavy attacks, where you can choose when you launch it but obviously charging for too long leaves you vulnerable to being hit. But I suppose if it’s not feasible in GW2’s engine the current form with faster cast time would suffice for making it usable outside of PvE.

Spite
Reaper’s Might I changed to way it is mainly because of the extra might time coming from Siphoned Power as you can start stacking up might from pretty much start of the fight, It’d be nice to be able to get double might with Shroud 1 spam, but IMO bit broken. Also it probably wasn’t clear from the wording but I intended that Reaper’s Might gives you 3 might per feared enemy, so under right circumstances it can give you immediate 15 might to use. Maybe that is slightly overpowered tho.

Curses
I agree 50% base duration might be bit too much, and could easily lead to situation where every condi build has to carry Curses to be considered at maximum effectiveness. But it should definitely not be lower than 33%.

Soul Reaping
The main problem with moving Vital Persistence is the hole it would leave behind. It would certainly make life much easier if Vital Persistence took Last Gasp’s spot as a minor trait, but Last Gasp does not really fit that well as a major master trait when Spectral Mastery is right there next to it. I wouldn’t really want to put it in adept traits either. So it most likely would have to be changed to do something else than give Spectral Armor.

So what you mean is Dhuumfire would always cause burning on auto but every other skill in Shroud has the chance on crit? I would totally be on board with that.

Signets
The thinking behind Signet of Spite’s change was that if power build takes it, they will very likely never activate it. Condi build on the other hand will spam the ever living kitten out of it because power does nothing for them. Power needs love but I personally think it goes against the design of signets for it to be this bipolar in use.

Corruptions
Epidemic is too powerful in this current form though. I had another idea for Epi but I was not sure if it would still be too powerful (and it requires splitting). The idea basically was that Epi would no longer copy non-damaging conditions (to reduce clutter) and the amount copied is split (again I hate the idea of splitting skills as it causes unnecessary relearning between game modes) to something like 25 stacks in PvE and 10 stacks in PvP and WvW.

I thought the Blood is Power change was rather clever way of making BiP into an honorary Blood Magic skill again because Dark Pact was changed to also transfer bleeds and only bleeds, making it so that you have a great opener and 10 stacks of might to give your allies when playing vampiric necro.

Minions
The figure I had in mind for Shadow Fiend’s attacks was 4-5 seconds between attacks and it can still be killed just like other minions. To balance it further it probably should be bumped up to 30 sec cooldown again.

Wells
That idea with Well of Power is really good, wish I had thought of it that way. It makes more sense than trying to push extra boons on necro.

foste.3098:

I gotta commend you on your dedication yo write all of this down, i mean really how long did it take you?

There are some changes i find strange, hard to agree with even:
In the redesign is you almost completely removed boon application from any traits and by doing that made blighter’s boon much worst, especially while shroud is up the trait would prock much too seldom for the amount of health it gives per boon.

Also why turn spite and axe / focus in to a condi / hybrid line, doubly so since the next elite spec is rumored to be pure condi? This would also leave necro without a single handed offensive power weapon (pure power).

Lastly i really thing deathly chill should scale of your power stat since reaper is suppose to be a power/bruiser line especially since the next elite is supposedly condi focused. Making the 2 elite lines compete in functionality could be an issue.

The spreadsheet I started on Feb 23rd this year and originally it was just a collection of changes to skills that are seldom taken, but over time it evolved to change the whole profession and try fix it to be more balanced no matter what elite spec is added to it.

I don’t think I removed any major boons that reaper would use with Blighter’s Boon, and especially with the changes to Siphoned Power and Beyond the Veil a Blighter Reaper should be even tankier (yes I know Death is rarely taken, but here’s another reason to!).

For axe see my message above to Lahmia. There is another way it could be turned into hybrid weapon through the trait while leaving its power damage to where it is now instead of nerfing it.

On Deathly Chill I agree it could easily be made to scale from power instead of condition damage as Lahmia also suggested and I would have no qualms with this as Reaper is a power focused elite spec. the main reason I chose to put condition damage scaling on it is because Chill is a condition and right now when there’s no condition elite spec yet, Reaper sort of has to cater to condition play too, even if just a little.

Rid.2736:

snip

Well its a nice change to see a lot of effort put into a balance suggestion, much of which I approve of ^^

For Curses, I was actually thinking 33% would be a good spot for it.

For Vital Persistence, my idea was to swap parts of it with Strength of Undeath. So we’d end up with VP as the 3rd baseline trait granting 50% less life force degen and +15% life force pool. Then SoU as a mid tier trait granting +10% damage (or +5% damage and condi damage to go along with your suggestion) and 20% recharge reduction on shroud skills.

For Dhuumfire, that’s exactly what I meant. So it would read something like:
Shroud skill 1 inflicts burning on your target. All other Shroud skills have a 33% chance to burn on critical hit.

That’s understandable with Signet of Spite, it was bad design to begin with. I honestly don’t like signets at all, but since we have them we best use them.

Rid.2736:

I don’t think I removed any major boons that reaper would use with Blighter’s Boon, and especially with the changes to Siphoned Power and Beyond the Veil a Blighter Reaper should be even tankier (yes I know Death is rarely taken, but here’s another reason to!).

You changed reapers might. This trait grants 3 might every 2~2.3s when using the full auto chain. Be removing it you have essentially removed ~250+ HP/s from shroud. Your change to siphoned power would either be OP with no ICD because of how many nulti hit attacks necromancer has, ( no use even contemplating this idea; see fried golden dumpling ) or it would have to function exactly like chilling victory, at which point it becomes weaker in 1v1s. No to mention the function overlap with CV anyways. A BB using reaper with these changes would be weaker at sustaining.

For axe see my message above to Lahmia. There is another way it could be turned into hybrid weapon through the trait while leaving its power damage to where it is now instead of nerfing it.

There is literally no need to add damaging conditions to axe or focus. Causing unnecessary overlap and loss of identity to scepter focus. There would be no clearly defined ranged power weapon. Same with your changes to dagger, unessesaary addition of conditions. Also makes adding a melee condi weapon harder to do for a future elite spec.

This I can understand since it makes sense:

For Vital Persistence, my idea was to swap parts of it with Strength of Undeath. So we’d end up with VP as the 3rd baseline trait granting 50% less life force degen and +15% life force pool. Then SoU as a mid tier trait granting +10% damage (or +5% damage and condi damage to go along with your suggestion) and 20% recharge reduction on shroud skills.

Opening up spectral builds a little more.

But this:

Shroud skill 1 inflicts burning on your target. All other Shroud skills have a 33% chance to burn on critical hit.

Is clearly OP.

Sigmoid.7082:

But this:

Shroud skill 1 inflicts burning on your target. All other Shroud skills have a 33% chance to burn on critical hit.

Is clearly OP.

Yeah that’s a fair point. Honestly I just wanted Dhuumfire to retain its current effect.

Then maybe a compromise with 15-20% chance on critical hit to burn with other Shroud skills while retaining burn on auto attacks? This way Dhuumfire gets that little bit of extra usability but even spammiest of multihitters like Soul Spiral on average inflict only 2-3 burns per enemy. Some might say Dhuumfire does not need a buff, but I think the biggest reason anyone would say this is because of Reaper’s Decimate Defences which makes Death Perception redundant on most builds, leaving Dhuumfire as the only true choice. Take away Reaper and suddenly every build that takes Soul Reaping is using Death Perception again because it does much more than Dhuumfire.

Maybe a 3 sec burning on shroud skill 1 plus increased damage against burning foes

Sigmoid.7082:

You changed reapers might. This trait grants 3 might every 2~2.3s when using the full auto chain. Be removing it you have essentially removed ~250+ HP/s from shroud. Your change to siphoned power would either be OP with no ICD because of how many nulti hit attacks necromancer has, ( no use even contemplating this idea; see fried golden dumpling ) or it would have to function exactly like chilling victory, at which point it becomes weaker in 1v1s. No to mention the function overlap with CV anyways. A BB using reaper with these changes would be weaker at sustaining.

There is literally no need to add damaging conditions to axe or focus. Causing unnecessary overlap and loss of identity to scepter focus. There would be no clearly defined ranged power weapon. Same with your changes to dagger, unessesaary addition of conditions. Also makes adding a melee condi weapon harder to do for a future elite spec.

Yes it might need a 0.5s internal cooldown so you can at max get 2 might per second no matter how fast you are hitting. The main point of this change is to get rid of this below 50% requirement, as it either does nothing for weak enemies, leaves you with a kitten trait for half the fight in very long fights and in PvP/WvW other professions simply run away if their heal is on cooldown when they get to below 50%.

Even if Reaper’s Might change ended up being a nerf to BB regen, I see that as good thing because it might force a glass necro consider running tankier traits.

There is no identity stealing going on here, scepter would still have its identity as the
best ranged condi weapon. What adding condition to axe and focus (both through traits, so axe damage would be roughly same it is now for all power necros) does is it modifies this weapon combo to the boon corrupter playstyle. Currently this build is running marauder, and it is classifiable as a power build, which makes little sense when what you are primarily doing is stacking conditions through boon corruptions. Surely this hybrid build deserve weapons it can use to fully utilise both power and conditions it has access to?

Also dagger having bleed on auto is not unnecessary for the changes to Blood Magic, dagger is the weapon for this traitline so it should be able to make most out of it, not scepter.

And just to point out the fallacy you created when saying it would make it difficult for Anet to add another condi melee weapon; we got GS with Reaper, a power weapon despite the fact that we already had a power melee weapon in dagger. Didn’t seem to stop that from happening. Thief has dagger and sword as power melee weapons. They got a power melee staff, no problems there either. Warrior has hammer, GS, mace and axe, all power melee weapons (sword is hybrid, so it could count too). These are all power weapons, wielded in main-hand, yet they all serve different purpose and function. Same can be done with condition weapons, be they ranged or melee.

I had a really long reply written out but I’m just going to say you have thought up changes. Some are great but not all of your ideas are necessary, useful or fit. imo.