As a fun little experiment / bit of feedback I am going to collate a lot of the thoughts on the Necromancer changes in the December patch into a set of alternative patch notes.
Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We recognised that the overriding problem with the necromancer currently is Dhuumfire, we wanted to change this trait whilst maintaining the viability of the condition Necromancer. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act; we did however recognise that without other means of sustaining themselves the Necromancer is relegated to “facetanking” so we have made a couple of key changes.
- Dhuumfire: Now applies 3 stacks of Torment rather than Burning.
- Dhuumfire: Gets an appropriate name change, maybe “Dhuum’s Torment”.
- Dhuumfire: Now a grandmaster trait in the Curses line.
- Withering Precision: Now an Adept Minor trait in the Death Magic line replacing reanimator.
- Panic Attack: Panic Attack is a new trait added to the grandmaster trait slot in the Spite line that Dhuumfire has now vacated. It functions in exactly the same way as Panic Strike from the Thief Deadly Arts line. In short it immobilises targets under 50% health on hit.
- Dark Armor: Dark Armor now causes the user to be immune to damage whilst channeling, crowd control effects still break the channel and therefore the immunity. (Alternatively Dark Armor could apply protection, or a much higher amount of additional toughness; See: 4 figures)
- Dark Armor: Dark Armor is now a Grandmaster trait.
- Dark Armor: Dark Armor does not function when downed.
- Death Nova: Death Nova is now an Adept trait.
- Protection of the Horde: This trait now reads: “Summon a jagged horror whenever you kill a foe and +20 toughness for each minion under your control.”
- Protection of the Horde: This trait is now an Adept trait.
- Protection of the Horde: The ex-reanimator portion of this trait now has a decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
- Shrouded Removal: This trait is now a Master Minor trait in the slot that Protection of the Horde has now vacated.
- Deadly Strength: Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
- Blood to Power: Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
- Vital Persistence: Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.
- Reaper’s Protection: Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
- Banshee’s Wail: Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
- Chill of Death: Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
- Death into Life: Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
- Main Hand Axe: This weapon will now have a cleave effect.
- Siphons in general: Siphon skills will now work in Death Shroud.
As you can see we have made Siphons viable, Axe is now viable, Dhuumfire is now fixed and the torment stacks can be adjusted as necessary in future patches, the Spite line now contains a Grandmaster trait that allows the Necromancer further control and therefore mobility, Reanimator is no longer giving your opponents free rallys in WvW whilst still being an option for MinionMasters, the Death Magic tree has been rearranged such that going fully into it is a viable choice for additional defence and attrition at the expense of offense, and there are a huge number of Dark Armor + Stability trait/skill builds now opened up including a fun bunker build involving Axe, Dagger, and Foot in the Grave as well as one involving minions.
(edited by Nostredeus.3105)
