Guild Wars 2

One thing I find extremely unsettling and interesting about the necromancer community for Guild Wars 2 is just how divided we are in terms of what we expect and want form the profession and the Devs.

On one hand we have the new players who came over from other games who have played a similar class type who want the necromancer to be more like those classes.

Then we have the veterans from Guild Wars one. These players are people who have a different expectation for the profession then the new players most of the time. They want the necromancer to be closer to the GW1 counterpart. In most cases though, the Veteran players are not as happy with the GW2 necromancer as they would like to be. Myself included.

Now I’m not going to say one side is right and one side is wrong. Both sides need to be satisfied to promote a long lasting relationship with the game. This is true with any profession people come to love, but I’m just focusing on necromancer.

I want to Focus on the Old Necromancer because I personally feel that the New players are really missing out on something the GW1 necro provided that the GW2 necro hasn’t been able to simulate. I think that Arena Net is very aware of this fact and are indeed looking for ways to improve the experience for both the new and old players. Though I personally feel that they are struggling with this on multiple fronts.

Much of the problems that happened with the necro in GW1 where related to energy and secondary professions. Early in the game the necromancer could summon an unlimited number of minions. Soon that was reduced to a cap of about 10 or 13. Necromancer would also gain energy off of deaths. This would mean that they could let there minions die and gain all there energy back. This was soon nerfed to trigger 3 times every 15 seconds. Which was still a lot. Then there where problems with life stealing skills. Now this is a strange one because this wasn’t actually the necro’s fault directly. It was the mesmer’s fast casting ability and the ranger’s Expertise that reduced the casting cost of touch skills. The reason I bring this part up is because I feel that much of arena net’s fears of the necro stems from these problems specifically.

However the necromancer had some really cool abilities that haven’t been nerfed to this day in the first game that really make them stand out in GW1 and even stand out when compared to similar classes in other games. And this is what I feel people are really missing out on. Necromancer where a support class in the first game. But not at all in the same way they are in GW2. They used debuffs on the foe, sure. However their debuffs rewarded allies for attacking your target rather then just weakening them. They had a tone of skills that literally did nothing unless an ally was hitting your target. They also had buffs for allies that where fairly different then the ones they get in GW2. They could give allies a bonus life stealing effect when they attacked, extra health or just damage increase. Many of these skills had been used throughout the lifespan of the first game and changed the dynamic of how parties where formed.

Guild Wars 2 does provide some things that the necromancer did from the first game. The necromancer was really good at stacking conditions. But strangely, this was a very small part of what it meant to be a necro in the first game. The Necro also did have direct damage as well, but this was far FAR weaker then it is in GW2. They also did have some melee capabilities with touch skills.

However its the things that Arena Net as forgotten about that really disappoints the Veteran players. We miss out spiteful spirit, Mark of Pain, Disease, expendable minions, and our orders. And I don’t personally feel that its a stretch to adapt some of these concepts into Guild Wars 2. Spiteful spirit might not be an option but we could certainly have a re-imagined condition for Disease and barbs. Minions could defiantly use a trait that makes Jagged horrors when one of your primary minions die to increase the longevity of their build. The Orders could easily be included through corruptions or giving the necromancer access to a new buff that makes allies attack steal health.

Arena Net has been taking steps to help satisfy the old players. Torment was a big addition that was defiantly implemented because of the first game. So Please arena net, keep digging into our past to improve our profession. You have a good start and I believe that the new players will love it even more then we did back in GW1.

There are a number of things ANet needs to consider. They need to balance out a few things. This isn’t GW1, and while its based off the same universe and franchise, it does have new mechanics and goals, which will invalidate some old mechanics, and open new ones up. The other big one is simply that they have to somehow cater to both the old fans of the original Necromancer, but also cater to newer players (and lets face it there will be more new players than old, if this game wants to be successful).

For the first part, there is the reality that this is a new game, and they don’t want to remake the old one. What I mean by this is, for things like minions, which they wanted to bring back, they very specifically wanted to change how they worked (no corpses). Or the hex/enchant system of GW1, which was normalized to conditions/boons. Because of this, certain things likely won’t be included into this new game.

Certain skills just don’t really make sense anymore. For example Awaken the Blood wouldn’t really translate well, and looking through the list, there are quote a few skills that are either in the game already, or wouldn’t translate well (for example essentially the entire minion setup from the old game is already here in some form, or goes against their design philosophies).

However like you mentioned there are a lot of things they could work with. Support, like you mentioned, could not only translate well, but would be an amazing and unique way to implement things. Also things I would love to see: more skills that play with HP. There were skills like Grenth’s Balance and Bitter Chill that weren’t sacrifice, but had effects that were stronger the more unbalanced a fight was.

There were also things like Contagion, Discord, Foul Feast, there were a lot of unique skills that could potentially be adapted into very interesting abilities.

One thing I’d like to see is for them to implement some of these via weapons. For example, sacrifice and conditional skills make a ton of sense in weapon sets.

But one big thing I agree with you on, is that ANet should still draw from GW1, and I don’t think they should go too far out of their way to appease newer players with the “wrong” idea of what Necromancer is. They have a unique vision for Necromancer, and I think its a great one. Make that core design functional and reinforce it with everything that is added, and I think we’ll be pretty solid (and can start feeling more and more like the old Necromancer).

Edit: this post was pretty badly written. That’s what happens when you write a sentence then ignore it for like 30 minutes, and take half a day to write one post.

Bhawb.7408:

There are a number of things ANet needs to consider. They need to balance out a few things. This isn’t GW1, and while its based off the same universe and franchise, it does have new mechanics and goals, which will invalidate some old mechanics, and open new ones up. The other big one is simply that they have to somehow cater to both the old fans of the original Necromancer, but also cater to newer players (and lets face it there will be more new players than old, if this game wants to be successful).

I am very aware that GW2 is a different game and can’t transfer everything I loved. I Specifically mentioned Spiteful Spirit as one of those things that wouldn’t translate well. I’m not saying they couldn’t do it with that skill, they could. Easily in fact. But the major problem is its too similar to Confusion and the only way to implement it would be through a condition which would cause problems. Putting Spiteful spirit on 2 targets in the first game was a build all itself. Putting it on everyone with epidemic? There is no way to balance that. So yeah. I understand.

On another note that you didn’t touch on is that I also tried to mention the caution that arena net takes with the profession because of the necro’s history in GW1. As much as the community likes to tell the Old players that “GW2 isn’t GW1” the Devs seem to be as guilty of this as we are and need to be reminded of this. The balancing problems the GW1 necromancer had are a non-issue in GW2 and I honestly think the Devs have forgotten that. They have different problems, sure. Removing the energy system entirely created its own challenges.

I personally feel Arena Net is being a bit too cautious with the necromancer. For example. Take a look at Life stealing traits and skills. The damage and healing of these skills and traits are split between 2 attributes. Healing power and power. This to me is a sign of extreme caution. Which I mentioned above about how life stealing was causing problems in the first game. However, GW2 is indeed a different beast entirely and they can afford to try a similar direction with a twist in GW2. But instead arena net decided to take a page out of every other RPG ever made. Which is a real shame because of all the RPGs I’ve played, GW1 was the only one I could honestly say life stealing was fun to use.

You also mentioned that Awaken the blood couldn’t be translated to GW2 and I have to disagree with you there. Because it was. GW2’s Blood is Power Effectively does about the same thing minus the double sacrifice life cause. There effect on the player is effectively the same. Although Awaken the blood helped healing skills too, this minor difference isn’t really enough to say that it wasn’t translated over to GW2.

There is new territory that I would like Arena net to try that couldn’t be done in gw1. I would like Arena Net to involve death shroud into the necromancer’s abilities far more then they do. Not a Single skill outside of death shroud cares about death shroud and only a few traits have an effect on you outside of death shroud because of how full your bar is. Compare this to other professions like the elementalist or warrior who have skills that care a great deal about there special mechanic. I personally feel that DS should be a resource and not just that thing you enter to not die or pop a few skills.

But thank you for posting. I hope we can talk more about this in the future.

I use to want the old gw1 style necro back. Now im not really bothered. I just like the feel of gw2 necro. The main thing I want is proper pve balance. Cause at the moment my necro is just a fractal kitten and im thinking of taking my warrior for fractals instead and just swapping to necro at jade maw. I think the only way necro will be improved in pve is when they get round to adding new skills and weapons to classes. When that happens I hope they add order type skills and a melee cleave weapon. If they dont ill probably completely give up on the class.

+1 to original post. There was so much depth and breadth to the GW1 necromancer; arguably one of the most versatile professions in that game.

Here in GW2 it’s largely been reduced to “go conditions or go home”. Some will counter with, “But we have builds X, Y, and Z.” When compared to GW1, though, and with how some of the GW2 alternate builds are sub-optimal relative to conditionmancer, it’s really no contest. Not only did GW1 necros have a greater variety of builds, they were viable builds, as well.

I understand their desire to simplify the buff/debuff system. However, it’s evident that they constrained themselves to too small a box. They stated they weren’t going to include enchantments in the game; yet witness guardian Virtues. There’d be no hexes; yet witness Tainted Shackles. The precedent is already there. They just need to be willing to expand upon that and not keep themselves so narrowly restricted to the mantra of “everything must be either a boon or a condition”. This would greatly benefit necros specifically given how so much of what we did in GW1 was enchantment, hex, or orders based.

Lily.1935:

I personally feel Arena Net is being a bit too cautious with the necromancer. For example. Take a look at Life stealing traits and skills. The damage and healing of these skills and traits are split between 2 attributes. Healing power and power. This to me is a sign of extreme caution. Which I mentioned above about how life stealing was causing problems in the first game. However, GW2 is indeed a different beast entirely and they can afford to try a similar direction with a twist in GW2. But instead arena net decided to take a page out of every other RPG ever made. Which is a real shame because of all the RPGs I’ve played, GW1 was the only one I could honestly say life stealing was fun to use.

Life stealing in GW1 was done right. It was skill-based, requiring careful timing, energy management, and – most importantly – health management (since hitpoints could be used as a resource by necros in GW1). Necros could also be built as high risk/high reward edge play where – if you weren’t careful – you could kill yourself with your own health sacrifices. To demonstrate just how versatile the profession was, there were even builds where killing yourself through health sacrifice actually benefitted you. Now how much more necromancer-y can you get than that?!?!?

In GW2? Reduced to – as someone in a previous post had stated – a binary system of “hit with X to siphon Y.” Yaaaaaawn. Boring!

There are certainly legitimate concerns regarding life siphoners becoming unkillable. However, that’s a function of unintended consequences from poorly designed mechanics that are not thoroughly tested before release. No profession should be unkillable simply through following a pre-scripted skill rotation or due to exploitable synergies of skills that lead to de facto god mode/invulnerability. A player that is hard to kill due to skillful play rather than broken mechanics is completely unrelated and should be celebrated rather than nerfed.

That doesn’t mean all the fun and skill has to be drained out of life siphoning builds. Of course, despite having simplified the game, achieving “fun” life siphoning in GW2 is – paradoxically – more difficult than in GW1. In GW1, health sacrifice and energy were resources available to a necro. With the lack of same in GW2 in conjunction with the elimination of enchantments and hexes, there’s very little left for an opponent to counter a life siphoner.

In GW1, for example, there was a hex called Insidious Parasite which stole health from the hexed foe and transferred it to the necro whenever the foe struck with an attack. Remove the hex, remove one source of the necro’s life siphoning. In GW2 – oops! – no hexes; one method of counter-play axed.

Another example is a self-enchantment called Vampiric Spirit. This provided the necro with health regen over time. Strip the enchantment, remove a source of healing for the necro. In GW2 – oops! – no enchantments; another method of counter-play eliminated.

The necro could use a skill named Blood Renewal in which they would sacrifice 15% of their health now for a very large self-heal 7 seconds from now. If you were observant, you could catch a necro performing their health sacrifice and spike them down quickly before Blood Renewal healed them for ~50% of their total health. In GW2 – oops! – no health sacrifices; yet another form of counter-play put on the chopping block.

Necros in GW1 had a fair amount of skills with high energy costs. Use energy denial on them and builds which used those skills could be shut down quite effectively. Of course, there’s no energy in GW2. This is the one mechanic I’m glad to see go the way of the dinosaur, though, and don’t bemoan the loss of energy micro-management.

(continued)

(continued)

So what are we left with in GW2 to counter life-siphoning? Ummm…nothing really. Thus, life siphoning has to – by necessity – be made weak and one-dimensional because there are no counters to it other than just generic DPS. Furthermore, there’s no high risk/high reward associated with it. It’s been reduced to that binary system of “I swung a sword and siphoned some health. I swung a sword again and siphoned some more health. Isn’t that great!” Sad, really, given the complexity and richness of what was possible in GW1.

By the way, I’m aware not all of the above are examples of life siphoning skills. They were used to demonstrate how – in simplifying GW2 in comparison to its predecessor –
a great deal of depth, fun and engaging mechanics, and skill-based play have been removed from the game.

Lily.1935:

There is new territory that I would like Arena net to try that couldn’t be done in gw1. I would like Arena Net to involve death shroud into the necromancer’s abilities far more then they do. Not a Single skill outside of death shroud cares about death shroud and only a few traits have an effect on you outside of death shroud because of how full your bar is. Compare this to other professions like the elementalist or warrior who have skills that care a great deal about there special mechanic. I personally feel that DS should be a resource and not just that thing you enter to not die or pop a few skills.

I think Death Shroud – 14 months later – still suffers from being lost-in-translation in having been our downed state repurposed to our profession-specific mechanic. As you state above, it still needs a lot of work to be made to synergize with our class.

I applaud ArenaNet’s courage and willingness to innovate and take risks. However, it’s not always necessary to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s OK to use what has gone before; especially if it works.

Lily.1935:

snip

In my opinion, the over-caution isn’t because of GW1, its actually because of alpha/closed beta GW2 Necros. I’ve harped about it plenty before, but we were very broken in our earlier iterations (for a number of reasons). And I think ANet is scared that if they buff certain things too much (namely siphoning and death shroud) that we will quickly return to that state of a high damage, high control, unkillable tank.

I do agree though, I’d love to see more DS skills. Specifically I’d like to see more conditional skills in general. If opponent has X, do Y extra effect.

Also, I disagree about siphoning. It could be implemented in a number of ways and still be fine. It has just as much counterplay as any type of sustain does. You out-burst their sustain, you poison them, etc. The problem is that since it has “infinite” scaling with how quickly you hit, it needs to be small. Siphoning in GW1 was balanced by either being conditional (Grenth’s Balance), high energy cost (the touch skills), or weren’t super strong/had long CDs. And then a lot of ways to overcome those costs (like energy) involved sacrificing your new HP, at least in part. That was good design, and without Mesmer or Ranger profession mechanics to unbalance it it could come here just fine, I think.

Thing is GW2 necro is SA sin, Most of original necro -curses and quite a bit of dervish efficiency selfishness n transformations play.
To be honest why can we have it all: the mighty spike build, the pressure and control necro, the minion bomber/master, a siphon tank and a transformation/DS specialized build?
Its not a thing of mechanics (all variants of siphon sustain exist over the 2 games), its devs being scared to experiment and right numbers and with no beta realm.

There is a beta, actually. That’s just something people don’t realize.

here is what ALL necro players expect and want:

Unlimited Dark Power !!!!!!!!!

Bhawb.7408:

There is a beta, actually. That’s just something people don’t realize.

Beta is a development stage, the MMO is finished, that is just called a test realm, they have existed since MUDs (but for new text scripts).

Zoltreez.6435:

here is what ALL necro players expect and want:

Unlimited Dark Power !!!!!!!!!

No, we just want our sustain, which is one of the things we need to be strong if we’re supposed to be an attrition class, to actually be worth something.

Bhawb.7408:

In my opinion, the over-caution isn’t because of GW1, its actually because of alpha/closed beta GW2 Necros. I’ve harped about it plenty before, but we were very broken in our earlier iterations (for a number of reasons). And I think ANet is scared that if they buff certain things too much (namely siphoning and death shroud) that we will quickly return to that state of a high damage, high control, unkillable tank.

I don’t want to see a return to the unkillable tank, either. When the sustain becomes god mode due to poorly designed mechanics and unintended exploitable synergies, there’s no skill involved; a player wins because the game is broken, not because they’re a talented player. Some players may find that fun in a trolly kind of way, but it unbalances or even breaks the game; which is not good in the long-term.

ArenaNet’s fears of OP necros are legitimate. Unfortunately, they overreacted following the alpa/beta testing and made the pendulum swing too far to the “nerf” side. It’s been 14 months, though, and the baby-step approach to bringing us back to balance is too slow and frustrating.

Though I support their iterative approach, there’s a missing piece in their design philosophy; the public test server. Merge the iterative approach with a PTS, and the process of testing and balancing the classes would be considerably accelerated as well as more thorough. There’s hope on the horizon, though, as they are essentially implementing a test server for WvWvW. Now if they could just do the same on a more generic, global scale…

Bhawb.7408:

I do agree though, I’d love to see more DS skills. Specifically I’d like to see more conditional skills in general. If opponent has X, do Y extra effect.

I’d love to see a return to conditional skills. It was one of the hallmarks of necro play in GW1.

Bhawb.7408:

Also, I disagree about siphoning. It could be implemented in a number of ways and still be fine. It has just as much counterplay as any type of sustain does. You out-burst their sustain, you poison them, etc. The problem is that since it has “infinite” scaling with how quickly you hit, it needs to be small. Siphoning in GW1 was balanced by either being conditional (Grenth’s Balance), high energy cost (the touch skills), or weren’t super strong/had long CDs. And then a lot of ways to overcome those costs (like energy) involved sacrificing your new HP, at least in part. That was good design, and without Mesmer or Ranger profession mechanics to unbalance it it could come here just fine, I think.

I agree it could be implemented in a number of ways and still be fine. I was commenting on what I see as one of the potential rationales for why it’s being held back (lack of counters or considerably fewer counters than existed in GW1); not that I agree with it.

However, I disagree that the scaling is “infinite”. I know you mean this more metaphorically than literally. However, it’s easy to add up all potential sources of life siphoning, calculate the attack speed of a dagger rotation that has been boosted by quickness, fill a utility bar full of siphoning wells or siphoning minions, and throw in traits, consumables, runes, and sigils to come up with what is the absolute max life siphoning cap achievable by a necro.

I agree that would be some crazy siphoning, but that’s not an accurate picture; or at least not the whole picture. All of that life siphoning would only happen under ideal circumstances and would be further limited by the cool downs of the various skills which grant life siphoning. A necro could pull that kind of burst off just once (maybe), only to then be focus trained down into the dirt. If life siphoning is being held back because of a fear on ArenaNet’s part of the potential for “infinite” scaling of life siphoning, then I find that to be faulty reasoning.

I think part of the problem, too, is perception. The ArenaNet argument amounts to something along the lines of, “We don’t want life siphoning leading to unkillable tanks!” This demonstrates – in my opinion, anyway – a lack of understanding or appreciation of the deeper aspects of life siphoning. Using life siphoning as just another form of healing is what freshman necros learn at necro academy on their first day of class. That is the crudest use of life siphoning imaginable.

Life siphoning – in its highest form – has very little to do with healing. It’s about the psychological manipulation of an opponent. It’s about turning an enemy’s strengths into weaknesses. It’s about getting them to waste their hardest-hitting skills at just the right time. It’s about feeding off their aggression to strenghthen yourself. It’s about taking everything they’ve trained their muscle memory to do and invalidate it. It’s about casting doubt into their minds over their proficiency. It’s about demoralizing and utterly crushing their psyches.

(continued)

Concrete example:

Insidious Parasite, mentioned earlier, is a hex that siphons life every time the hexed opponent strikes. Melee assassins in GW1 attacked very quickly with a flurry of strikes; their strength. Yet I was able to survive through it. Why? Because I’m an unkillable tank able to absorb insane amounts of damage or life siphon ridiculous amounts of health? No; I was actually rather squishy and the life siphoning was pretty low. It was because the assassin is keeping me alive.

Though being hit with an insane amount of strikes, each individual strike is low damage. The siphoning of Insidious Parasite was almost enough to keep up with that damage. With a little additional support from other life stealing skills, I could out-heal the DPS from the assassin’s attacks. I’ve analyzed their strength and turned it into a weakness through the correct application of Insidious Parasite.

Counter? Don’t melee me with fast but low damaging strikes when there’s an Insidious Parasite hex on you, burst me down with a high damage skill(s), or bring a hex removal skill (which were freely available to every profession in GW1).

I’d have assassins who had copied their builds from PvXwiki accuse me of hacking and rage quit the instance over this because they couldn’t kill me in 3 seconds like they were expecting. It wasn’t a hack, an exploit, or even unbalanced. I simply used life siphoning in one of its deeper incarnations; turning an opponent’s strength into a weakness and allowing their aggression to make me stronger as befits our lore.

This is just one example. There are plenty more that would fill pages of posts in describing the subtle nuances of how to leverage life siphoning for more than just mere healing. The point being that all of that depth of play and counter-play was abandoned in GW2. We’re back at day 1 of freshman classes at Necro U. where Life Siphoning 101 teaches you to hit opponent X to siphon Y health. Yaaaawn. Let me know when class is dismissed, professor.

Bhawb.7408:

There is a beta, actually. That’s just something people don’t realize.

LOL. So true, so true

There isn’t a “public” test server, its invite-only, and to my knowledge its not a lot of players, but mostly just ANet (obviously) and then PvPers. But there is one, so it does exist and does get testing done.

The problem with life siphoning as is, is that they have to balance to the ceiling of its effectiveness. They have to consider how strong a high crit chance Necro with food, sigils, runes, 30 in blood magic, with Locust Swarm on, a well or two out, and swinging away with dagger can siphon. And the answer is: a kittenload. Siphoning actually is incredibly powerful, but only in those situations. And that is what they have to balance to, they need to make sure a high damage Necro can’t go flying into the middle of a fight and start siphoning 1k HP/s while dealing massive damage, while the player behind the screen is just rubbing his face all over the keyboard. You know, like Warriors do right now.

What they should do, is normalize the traits out. Look at minion traits. They are at a satisfying amount. Why? Because they have a built in ceiling, the attack speed and quantity of the minions. Wells should be able to be balanced in the same way, because they have their own ceiling as well. The big problem is the on-hit traits that don’t have ceilings, and can potentially heal for a ton, but usually heal for little.

How to fix it? Impose a ceiling, via ICDs. This removes the need for dagger as the only weapon that makes sense to life steal with (dagger still has the best sustain, regardless). With this ICD, jack up the bases, because now you know the exact ceiling amount, and you can control it.

They could have siphoning fixed much more easily, but as it is, I guarantee you that Vampiric and Vampiric precision will forever remain traits exclusively “decent” to D/WH well siphon builds, and no one else.

Thats not testing, its rolling in your own mess, and you have no idea how messy it actually is till you see it from a 3rd perspective.

Bhawb, I don’t believe even those situations are problems. It relies on the necro blowing everything they have to get some semi-decent health back (it actually isn’t that much compared to the incoming damage during that same time). There, people aren’t concerned at all about the siphoning the necro is doing, they’re concerned about all the damage they’re taking.

What they need to do is to make siphoning numbers actually meaningful sustain against a single target. It will auto-scale then with multiple targets to be a useful amount and maybe help remove some of the necro’s ridiculous weakness to multiple opponents.

If they do not put in an enforced ceiling to the siphoning, it will remain a bad mechanic because they need to balance it to the ceiling, not the floor. They have to take into consideration the best case scenario, because they are too strong otherwise. With 1 well, dagger, plus locust swarm, you have up to 12 procs of vampiric and vampiric precision per second, and up to 5 procs of wells siphoning per second. That is up to 1090 HP gained per second, not including any food, sigils, whatever. You are also dealing approximately the same damage.

Why is this an issue? Because if they buffed the amount of siphoning to where it’d be remotely useful for say, a condition build, they’d probably have to double it to its current value to be meaningful and a remotely competitive defensive option. But I think we can agree that it would totally break life siphoning for the builds that want to min/max it (and can, in certain situations).

It unnecessarily gates life siphoning behind certain weapon sets that will always ruin it for the others (I’m looking at you dagger/warhorn), and utility skills that can cause similar mass procs of siphoning. Just look at the math of max situations, at base values:
Dagger: up to 4 procs per second – 140 HP/s
Life Siphon (dagger 2) – 5 procs per second – 175 HP/s (added on top of the already existing heal)
Any non-well AoE – up to 10 procs per second – 350 HP/s
Locust Swarm (as an example) – 350 HP/s – 3500 HP total.
Wells – up to 15 procs per second – 600 HP/s

This means the average well will heal for 3600 HP.
Well of blood? An extra 6600 on top of its healing.

Now, I’m not trying to say that siphoning is too strong as is, because most people would agree that for the investment it isn’t enough and I am with them. But its important to show that theoretically (and these aren’t ridiculous “theoreticals” like a perfect epidemic), but siphoning has the current potential to have massive healing. And the more that they buff it, the worse it gets. And no matter how much they buff it, dagger/wells will always vastly outclass any other setup, barring an entire tree from a group of builds (a problem with Death Magic as well).

That is why they need to impose some ceilings on the two nonspecific vampirics (and you can reward melee range just like DS1 does, but don’t bar it to dagger), which allow them to buff the bases a lot more without worry of a Necro dropping 2 wells+locust swarm and healing 3k HP/s, and it will open the tree up to everyone. There is no reason condition Necros shouldn’t have access to an entire trait tree just because all of our sustain traits work with only two setups.

Lily.1935:

I personally feel Arena Net is being a bit too cautious with the necromancer.

I agree, but actually its kinda true of all the classes. They give class A some big whack of damage, act surprised when the forums go nuts, nerf it and get all gun shy about making further changes, citing that instance as the reason for caution.

Yes, you steal that much life (assuming everything crits, which it won’t) over a 5 second period. That’s it. That’s still less than a single skill that heals (but is not the main healing skill). Heck, even dagger 2 heals for more than that and deals more damage. What you are advocating is that everything must be kept low because if we blow everything we’ve got, we get something decent spread over a 5 second period.

You are taking about blowing three skills simultaneously with a lowest cooldown of 25 seconds. for that kind of healing. We can already get close to that with just dagger 2 and no life siphoning traits and deal about the same damage. For blowing at least 3 long cooldowns, an investment of 30 trait points, and having five idiotic enemies that stand still right next to you? You had better get something real nice out of that situation. What I’m seeing is a Cleansing Wave minus the condition clears and adding a bit of damage.

Ant what non-well AoE do we have that can even proc vampiric more than once? Life Transfer, which can’t heal us?

No, ONE SKILL with those traits will outheal dagger 2; 3600 HP.

I’m not trying to say don’t buff life stealing, I’m saying they can’t possibly balance it as is. If they made life stealing good enough for dagger/well specs, it’d still be a 100% pile of kitten for anyone else. If they buffed it so every Necro build could have a viable sustain option in blood magic, then dagger/well Necros would get a new dedicated heal on every single utility slot.

Life stealing with Vampiric and Vampiric Precision as they stand now are broken, and unable to be properly fixed, end of story. Nothing they do without fundamentally changing them (ie not just tuning their damage/healing numbers up) will never make them good enough for more than one build.

Bhawb, though those numbers you list for the life siphoning are accurate and look borderline OP on paper, they don’t tell the whole story.

Yes, we can get some massive healing from life siphoning if traited for it, dropping wells, popping Locust Swarm, and swinging away with our dagger…for 5 seconds. Then we’re into cool down and being focused.

What’s more is, there’s a hidden catch to that massive life siphoning. Namely, where’s it coming from? From opponents, that’s where. The only reason a necro can pull off that kind of insane life siphoning if min/maxing is because there’s five enemies standing inside of those wells and within range of Locust Swarm. Five seconds later when it’s all run its course, the necro is standing there facing five really ticked-off opponents. Maybe a couple have been downed from the previous kitten storm of well AoE if they were dumb enough to just stand in it.

Now, what with our famous disengage abilities, what happens next? The necro puts up a valiant but futile fight as they are focus trained down into the dirt.

So on paper, it appears there’s this potential for life siphoning to be insanely OP. It doesn’t work that way in practice; even if the numbers were tweaked up a notch. That’s where the issue lies. Life siphoning – when being used even semi-optimally per the scenario described above – is not sustain; it’s burst.

All other uses of life siphoning outside of that scenario then qualify as neither; it’s not sufficient DPS to constitute a threat nor is it sufficient healing to grant us sustain. In this regard, I agree with your final analysis that life stealing with Vampiric and Vampiric Precision are broken; and probably always will be.

I also am beginning to come around to what you’re saying regarding life siphoning being semi-viable for only one build. Attrition and sustain should be fundamental to the necro class as a whole; not just limited to dagger/warhorn blood necros. Life siphoning really needs a reworking; probably from the ground up. Unfortunately, that will be a long time in coming (if ever).

In the meantime, we need something to address the lack of attrition and sustain for the class. I’ve attempted suggestions in other posts but agree, in light of the above, they would only be bandaid fixes. But we really do need this addressed somehow. I’m tired of this pigeon-holing into “go condimancer or go home” path they’re on or attempts at reimagining necros as some kind of half-baked bursty dark mage. I mean seriously; where’s the love for the players who savor slowly yet inexorably tearing down their opponents one piece at a time?!?!?

Maybe it’s just time to admit we are what we do. If there is no viable sustain from life siphoning in GW2, perhaps that’s not an oversight, poor design, the devs not “getting it” when it comes to blood necromancy, or any one of a number of other conspiracy theories (many of which I’m guilty of). Instead, it may just be the case it’s intentional and their actions (or lack thereof) speak for themselves; they simply don’t want viable life siphoning in their game.

It would just be nice if they could come out with a statement one way or the other so we would know whether or not we’re wasting our time asking for improvements.

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree that life siphoning just isn’t good enough right now (unless you have minions) and it needs buffing. And I guess if they really want to, they could just buff it in the mean time (and then revisit it later). I have to admit though, it scares me that it won’t be revisited (like our Elite skills, which just had their tooltips updated to “fix” the problems with minions).

But I do see what you mean. Maybe this is a situation where we’re hurt so badly we need to just slap some bandaids over the wounds until the doctor finally comes around to fix us for real.

Also, I think they do honestly want siphoning in their game, I just think they ballsed it up and haven’t been able to fix it yet. Remember that we (at least a few of us) on the forums probably talk, think, and play Necromancer a lot more than the average Dev. In fact, its probably safe to say that some of us have more to do with Necromancers than any dev, simply because its the only thing many of us do, whereas devs kind of… have a job that involves other classes. Maybe they just haven’t seen a way to fix it yet, I don’t know. But I do think they want sustain, just listening to Sharp, they just haven’t figured it out.

So it looks like this thread turned into a life-siphon thread

I have a few views about this and just wanted to see if I am completely off base with those views.

1. Current system of multiple small siphons – I do not think that this is necessarily a bad thing, as long as they will eventually introduce a weapon with melee cleave. This will do two things for the necromancer. In a 1v1 situation (in PvE/WvW/PvP) it will only allow for a modest sustain. There is a risk v. reward involved where the more the necro puts him/herself into the heat of the battle, the more life siphoned. A focused necro will die. We see that every day right now. Having a melee cleave weapon will increase survivability with multiple enemies targeting the necro but will allow those enemies to ultimately damage through the siphoning, especially after the heals from well/locust swarm are up.

2. The idea of the unkillable tank necro – this is not a bad idea. Obviously, the necro should be killable, but the idea of having a necro that can sustain itself is great – as long as something is sacrificed for this survivability. A necro who runs full clerics and traits into death, blood and soul reaping should be able to survive for a long time and should also hit like a wet mop. A necro who traits some into power and some into sustain should have some balance of damage and survivability. A necro who puts minimal traits/gear into healing should get only minor results. The idea of a super tanky necro is awesome, as long as that is the build’s primary ability. It seems like the best way to do this is to have the heals with siphon scale significantly with healing power.

The other point I would make about this is that necros still tend to be very vulnerable to CC. Granted, you can take foot in the grave to help with this but if you do, you are sacrificing some points in blood or death. If the necro is vulnerable to CC and sustain siphoning requires active hits, after passive damage skills are spent (wells, locust swarm), the theoretical very tanky necro could be CCed and would no longer have that sustain, unlike a warrior with healing signet.

I guess I only had two points but let me know if they are off base. I tend to think those two changes, a melee cleave weapon and low base heal with much better scaling with healing power would make a world of difference.

I still think you are wrong that those “everything goes perfect” situations are what the devs are balancing around. If they were, Epidemic would have been nerfed to the ground long ago (as the potential damage on that skill is probably in the millions).

Even assuming you had five enemies that just stood there and let you pull off your entire burst on them, you’re still healing for less than what you calculated simply because a necro cannot have 100% crit chance outside of death shroud where they can’t be healed anyway.

On top of that, if you pull off a tactic, ANY tactic, in the absolute perfect situation, it should have huge rewards. That’s why it’s the absolute perfect situation.

Again, even assuming being in melee range with five enemies that aren’t dodging, that kind of healing isn’t enough to outpace the damage of five enemies, not even close.

Yeah, sorry Lily :P

I wonder if anyone has input towards the original point of the thread? I’m not actually sure anyone would disagree with it.

I like this subject a lot (and Lily is right on this one) and have been wanting to write on it myself. I never played GW1 so I can’t compare to that. But I have played plenty of other MMO’s / RPG’s over the last 20 years.

My opinion, Necro should not be converted (as forums seem to suggest) to a Melee class, by definition it is a Caster / Summoner / DoT specialist, which in my world is wearing robes and being as far from the enemy as possible. The idea to change class to a Death Knight or Shadow Knight just seems off to me. I see a ton of posts: Add Greatsword, Add ….weapons… and my answer is “oh please no”. If you are going to ADD anything give us a greater access to spells / minions.

I’d rather have punishing / disabling DoT’s and self-sacrificial buffs to our allies, or let us raise and keep raising the dead we just killed. Sure let us be completely be terrible at burst damage, too many other classes already excel in that. But give us a needed utility, the ability to overwhelm the opponent.

Giving a weapon to minions (such as skeletons for example) would be awesome, example giving a long bow for ranged minion or sword and shield for defensive minions, it would add great spice to the class and also have a real use to the greens/blues/whites looted.

Giving the necromancer weapons just is encouraging the player-base to run up to any mob and slash. It takes the strategy of the caster classes out of the game. Let other non-caster classes do that, I am sorry, wearing robes with a sword or axe bigger than our body standing toe-to-toe with an ogre just makes us look ridiculous.

The main reason people are asking for melee weapons is actually that it IS in theme with the Guild Wars necro. Necromancers in Guild Wars are adherents of Aggression magic. They don’t hide in the back lines and hope nobody notices them, they are in the front lines or mid lines, using their superior durability to thrive where other clothies die horribly.

I disagree that the Necro was a support calss in GW1, but I don’t want to debate that. I do agree that the class changed a lot, but because of the mechanics of the game. They didn’t want to add endless debuffs (or hexes, as they were called in GW1) because it makes things too complicated for new players. (I’m sure GW1 had way more than 200 Hexes). Going along with this train of thought, they focused on conditions – Necro has a kitten-ton of condis (necro had a kitten-ton of HEXES in GW1). I’d be inclined to agree that things are looking pretty similar between gw1 and gw2 necros when the two different game mechanics/design are considered but this isn’t really true.

In GW1, one of my favorite things was to be an “anti-melee” necro – basically any physical damage person couldn’t do anything to you as long as you keep them hexed (basically they suicide if they attack you.) This is completely gone from GW2 Necros. Instead… other professions can do this through confusion (E.g. Mesmer – who was ALSO able to do this in GW1.)

Blood magic is mainly gone as well. I always loved draining people in GW1 and surviving through hell by constant life stealing. This… is also gone. Life stealing is very, very gradual in GW2. It would be cool if they made Necros life steal as a source of healing, sort of like how guardians and ele’s survive (In a sense.. we heal through life stealing, they heal through… well.. healing. But the effect is similar. )

We can say whatever we want, but it is a completely different game. In such situations, the lore is what matters, and the Necro is the master of corruption and disease … which…. it really is in both games. Besides, I’m loving my GW2 Necro and I’m a GW1 “veteran”.

As for minions… I really don’t have too big of a problem with them other than (sorry to say this) but… they are plain ugly. Ugly. Ugly and ugly. I’d likely be a minion master right now if i didn’t have to carry around those lack-of-detail – symmetrical – plain-looking things. With the art team working on GW2, I think they coulda done a much, much better job on that (especially Flesh Golem. My god). Anyway.

MethaneGas.8357:

First of all… I think you have a point and your article is well written BUT please… it’s not “they where there.” It’s they WERE there. You have many misspellings like that which threw me off.

I disagree that the Necro was a support calss in GW1, but I don’t want to debate that. I do agree that the class changed a lot, but because of the mechanics of the game. They didn’t want to add endless debuffs (or hexes, as they were called in GW1) because it makes things too complicated for new players. (I’m sure GW1 had way more than 200 Hexes). Going along with this train of thought, they focused on conditions – Necro has a kitten-ton of condis (necro had a kitten-ton of HEXES in GW1). I’d be inclined to agree that things are looking pretty similar between gw1 and gw2 necros when the two different game mechanics/design are considered but this isn’t really true.

In GW1, one of my favorite things was to be an “anti-melee” necro – basically any physical damage person couldn’t do anything to you as long as you keep them hexed (basically they suicide if they attack you.) This is completely gone from GW2 Necros. Instead… other professions can do this through confusion (E.g. Mesmer – who was ALSO able to do this in GW1.)

Blood magic is mainly gone as well. I always loved draining people in GW1 and surviving through hell by constant life stealing. This… is also gone. Life stealing is very, very gradual in GW2. It would be cool if they made Necros life steal as a source of healing, sort of like how guardians and ele’s survive (In a sense.. we heal through life stealing, they heal through… well.. healing. But the effect is similar. )

We can say whatever we want, but it is a completely different game. In such situations, the lore is what matters, and the Necro is the master of corruption and disease … which…. it really is in both games. Besides, I’m loving my GW2 Necro and I’m a GW1 “veteran”.

As for minions… I really don’t have too big of a problem with them other than (sorry to say this) but… they are plain ugly. Ugly. Ugly and ugly. I’d likely be a minion master right now if i didn’t have to carry around those lack-of-detail – symmetrical – plain-looking things. With the art team working on GW2, I think they coulda done a much, much better job on that (especially Flesh Golem. My god). Anyway.

You know, people who commit spelling errors, grammatical errors and abuse ellipses should probably refrain from chastising others for their communication skills.

It’s true that this isn’t some kind of English class but it’s really not hard to write “were” as opposed to “where”, especially if you are trying to make a point (more people will read it. No one will care about some parentheses infested comment down at the bottom of the page, whereas they WILL care about the very first comment/post.)

I guess I shall remove that comment, but my opinion still stands <3

Much love, ciao

Sepreh.5924:

So it looks like this thread turned into a life-siphon thread

Apologies to Lily for the derailment.

Back on topic, yes I agree with the OP that much of what made the Necromancer unique, well-rounded, viable in so many of its incarnations, and fun to play has been lost or diminished in GW2.

I do applaud ArenaNet’s decision to allow necros the option to go melee. That’s been a refreshing change after 7 years of filling a more traditional caster-type role in GW1. Conceptually, Death Shroud is a great addition, as well; it just hasn’t lived up to it’s full potential yet. Outside of those two changes, I’m disappointed in how much has been lost for the necro between GW1 and GW2.

It would be one thing if all that had been lost was replaced with an equally varied and innovative set of new tools. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Virtually everything a necro can do in GW2 can be done better by a GW1 necro and they can perform feats a GW2 necro can only dream about. The graphics may not be as flashy, but there is a far greater variety of effective mechanics available to the GW1 necro. Good graphics are not enough to cover up shallow game play.

The oft-remarked, “They’re different games; get over it!” would be valid if both games gave necros roughly equivalent depth, breadth, and viability of their respective toolsets; even if those toolsets were radically different. That’s simply not the case, though. A GW2 necro is playing with a greatly reduced subset of the tools available to a GW1 necro.

If I walk into a steakhouse, there’s 50 items on the menu, and at least some of them are steak-based, then all is right with the universe. If I walk into a sushi bar, there’s also 50 items on the menu but none are steak-based, and I complain that’s there no steak, then my dissatisfaction and frustration over this is my responsibility and not the fault of the sushi bar.

If, on the other hand, the sushi bar has only 1 item on the entire menu (today’s special; California Roll!…tomorrow’s special; California Roll!…two days from now’s special; California Roll!…), then I’m completely in the right to complain that – in comparison to the steak house’s 50 menu offerings – the sushi bar is coming up short. That’s what the veterans are complaining about; not that GW1 and GW2 are different, but that GW2 offers so much less depth and breadth with regard to the necro profession when compared to its predecessor.

With fewer and simpler game-play mechanics, the GW2 necro becomes constrained in another respect. Much of what GW1 necros did was indirect and counter-intuitive. There’ve been several examples given in this and other posts. I return to the Insidious Parasite example I gave earlier because it’s such a clear demonstration of what I’m referring to for those unfamiliar with GW1 necro game-play.

Insidious Parasite is a hex that siphons life from the hexed attacker every time they connect with a melee attack. Think about that for a moment. If you’re a meleeist, it means the very thing you rely on to be effective with your class has just been turned against you by a GW1 necro. The faster you try to attack, the faster you kill yourself and the faster you heal the necro. It’s a complete reversal of the paradigm from “meleeist hits ==> damage applied to opponent ==> opponent dies” to “meleeist hits ==> damage applied to meleeist ==> opponent heals”.

It’s a mind-kitten for your opponent. Yet this is just one example that only scratches the surface of what necros could do in GW1. Necros manipulated the flow of combat in creative and counter-intuitive ways that were often subtle or indirect. They turned aggression back on the aggressors. They grew stronger the faster opponents attacked. One moment foes have the upper hand, the next moment they’re taking damage from an unexpected quarter (oftentimes themselves) or skill effects aren’t working as expected, and it takes a second or two before they realize why; there’s a necro in the vicinity. And necros accomplished these feats in a bewildering number of ways with a variety of wonderfully unique and creative hexes, orders, debuffs, and skills that defy easy classification.

Then we come to GW2. The game mechanics here are just too simplified – at present – to allow for the kind of complex interactions described above which gave the necro of GW1 its unique style. By comparison, it’s the sushi restaurant with only 1 item on the menu. Now, there’s nothing wrong with California Roll itself. However, there is something wrong when the only option is California Roll (yes, that’s an exagerration; but the analogy is still accurate in describing how much has been lost in the transition from GW1 to GW2 with respect to the necro profession).

It’s the Big Picture that’s missing, rather than a skill-for-skill comparison and dissection between GW1 and GW2.

Bhawb.7408:

No, ONE SKILL with those traits will outheal dagger 2; 3600 HP.

30 point trait investments, with a full build designed around critting is needed for Siphoning from a well on 5 enemies to notably outheal ONE 20 point Spite D2 on any build that just has power as its main stat. Im pretty sure that that isnt something you can even bother calling viable.

The fact that you get off 3 siphons minimum in the time you can do one such well siphon doesnt help the case.
Then again this whole thing wouldnt be a issue if types of siphons (the non specific ones, so a normal hit a on crit and a on condition if implemented) were mutually exclusive and had specified scaling factors in addition to power/healing (e.g. of a master trait Vampiric and Life Siphon dagger skill damage/healing do less/more the lower you are, so a 100% hp necro would heal for 10 on siphon but do like 200 bonus damage pre tick, but necro under 10% hp would heal for 200 hp pre hit but only deal 10 additional damage from vampiric).

Actually, the complaining about us “turning into dark knights” I see almost only from people who didn’t play GW1, because that is closer to what we are than puny little clothies. Necromancers (men and women alike) don’t shy away from conflict, we thrive in it. We’ve always been a quasi-melee class (the only time we weren’t close to melee was in high sacrifice/support builds where our self-sacrificing left us too weak to fight up close).

Now, we don’t necessarily need to do with this a giant hammer in our hands, but the point remains that Necromancers should be the manliest profession in the game, right next to guardians (and laughing at their for hiding behind boons like wusses).

And I think a lot of the “complex” conditional skills can make it back into the game through other mechanics. Just we won’t have more debuffs on enemies, it’d need to be aggressive buffs to allies, or skills with extra effects with certain conditions (which already are in the game).

My charrior would object to this statement, but he is 40% of the time on the floor throwing hammers at spider faces at 3% hp since i dont bother to upgrade his equipment.
On the manly note, i must say with how often im running arah recently (i got over my mental trauma release week arah gave me), i must say seeing a mesmer and 3 warriors fall dead to spiders and eles whil i fear kitten in rampager gear while we all try to run past thrash mobs then have to wait for 20 minutes infront of lupi because they got stuck on that one eye location or the gorillas does feel TESTOSTERONE POISONING LEVELS OF ALPHA AS kitten! (not the subject version trough, he is annoying)

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, the complaining about us “turning into dark knights” I see almost only from people who didn’t play GW1, because that is closer to what we are than puny little clothies. Necromancers (men and women alike) don’t shy away from conflict, we thrive in it. We’ve always been a quasi-melee class (the only time we weren’t close to melee was in high sacrifice/support builds where our self-sacrificing left us too weak to fight up close).

And even then some of us played self-sacrificers toe-to-toe with melee enemies; the ultimate in edge play

Which goes back to what I said earlier about necros playing mind games with opponents; this was another aspect of that counter-intuitive necro style. Sacrificing a chunk of health while fighting a foe to lure them into feeling overconfident – feeling like they’ve almost got you beat – so they over-commit. Then 7 seconds later – BOOM! – 200 point heal from your previous self-sacrifice (in a game where max base health hovered around 500) and a complete reversal of fortune for your unfortunate foe. You could practically see their face fall from the other side of the screen.

Bhawb.7408:

And I think a lot of the “complex” conditional skills can make it back into the game through other mechanics. Just we won’t have more debuffs on enemies, it’d need to be aggressive buffs to allies, or skills with extra effects with certain conditions (which already are in the game).

Keeping it constrained to just the mechanics that currently exist, this could be accomplished with traits or skills which apply aggressive boons (might, fury, retaliation) based on the number of opponents in an area, the number of attacks the necro receives, the amount of DPS the necro receives, or some other condition that must be met.

This ties in with the lore of becoming stronger as more and more violence manifests around us. It also self-balances; face one opponent, the necro won’t be buffed much but face 5 opponents and the buffs may stack quite quickly.

An example:

Some new trait or skill which will apply 1 stack of might for 2 seconds for each attack we receive. Internal cool down between attacks of 1 second. Duration of the trait or skill that grants this ability would be X seconds with a cool down in the neighborhood of X * 2.

Another variant:

Gain stacks of might per the above when surrounded by up to 2 opponents (within a set radius). When surrounded by up to 4 opponents, gain both the stacks of might and fury for X seconds. When surrounded by 5 or more opponets, gain stacks of might, X seconds of fury, and X seconds of retaliation or gain stability.

This allows us to gain boons which scale based on some factor tied to the escalating violence around us. Furthermore, it’s not us applying the boon directly to ourselves (like a guardian does) but rather the aggression of our foes which are buffing us up; appropriate for adherents of the Aggression school of magic.

Hello. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been gone the whole weekend.

I see a lot of talk about how life steal is being handled by arena net. A back and forth of it being potentially being too powerful and still not powerful enough. Unfortunately life stealing isn’t damage prevention. This is something people have to take into consideration when using life stealing. You may heal for 3k when fighting 5 guys, however most, if not all, of them will be taking 1-5k chunks out of your hide. This isn’t including conditions or knock down that can slow or remove your life stealing capabilities.

For those who have played a few RPGs, preventing damage is 9 times out of 10 far more powerful then healing. You block an attack that would deal 5k damage is better then healing for 5k. There are multiple factors that go into this. On paper they look the same. But in practice they function very differently. Blocking the damage prevents potential for being stunned, launched or having exrta conditions applied to you. Healing for 5k, although is good, puts you at a disadvantage because the action is a clean up. You take the damage, so if they stun you, you lose your stun break for a while. You get some conditions, you need to remove them(in the necromancer’s case its the same thing as using there heal.). Not to mention you put your heal on cool down because of this while the block prevents this problem from happening.

I’m not going to say change the numbers on the traits. I would prefer them to change how it functions. Having life stealing linked to 2 attributes makes it feel like garbage to use and limits what can be done with it. I would rather have Life stealing scale with healing power exclusively. And here is why. Healing power is a fairly ignored attribute. The healing from the life stealing along with its damage also doesn’t have to change. it would just change how the numbers scale. This could also mean make poison reduce both the damage output *and the healing from life stealing.

This would in turn make the necro’s dagger skill 2 a bit weaker if someone decided to use the dagger without investing into healing power but at the same time it could potentially be stronger at its peak with a stronger heal. Now like a mentioned above about Prevention vs Healing, the healing from this still wouldn’t be as good as just preventing the damage.

Take the guardian for example. I Have healing skills on her that heal for a minimum of twice what the necro’s life stealing does on top of having the ability to block a good chunk of the damage. With life stealing you wouldn’t be as powerful as a condi or power necro. And you couldn’t survive as well as a guardian even with full investment. However, a tanky necro would have an advantage over a tanky guardian. The necro wouldn’t survive as well sure, but it would be able to apply more pressure. And this is what the necromancer’s life stealing should be. It doesn’t do well at it currently.

A Life stealing necromancer will never be unkillable. I’ll try to go into more depth later, but I’ve had a really busy weekend so I need some sleep.

Reading this thread makes me really sad. It really hits home the reason I quit GW2 a year ago (I’m back now, for who knows how long) and why I look back on GW1 so fondly.

I have always enjoyed playing the control/attrition archetype. My affliction warlock in WoW was just about perfect with drain-tanking and siphoning and managing fears. Combat against elites was slow, but tense and enjoyable. I had to be careful to manage cooldowns and keep all my DoTs up optimally, while edging myself close to death with life tap/siphons to sustain DPS.

The GW1 necro I played for HoM rewards a couple years ago scratched this same itch. I found myself loving hex management, using health as a resource (brinking close to death to gain power). I’ve always hated undead minions, but I wasn’t forced to use them either.

The GW2 condition necro does not really fulfil my necromancer fantasy, largely due to how conditions work in this game and the lack of “hexes” (generic debuffs) and unique abilities. My goal feels like stacking bleeds with boring animations. When I logged in this weekend and saw I had a new skill in death shroud I freaked out in a positive way. The addition of torment felt very necro-ish, and the skill itself felt unique and a sort of return to form. I hope it’s a sign of more to come.

What this game sorely needs is more skill variety. ArenaNet needs to not be afraid of adding unique debuffs that don’t fit neatly into the bucket of conditions.

I want nothing more than to be able to “slip in” to my necromancer again, to feel like I actually am a master of dark magic, using my own blood to fuel spells and turn my foes’ strengths against them.

I have other thoughts (such as how boring elite skills are, with their absurd cooldowns – I miss low cooldown, build defining elites instead of “oh kitten” buttons), but this is the crux of it.