Guild Wars 2

The only thing I took away from this was the ability to revive allies and finish enemies. And its about time this happened. Death shroud is ever so slightly less parasitic then it was before. Still a very parasitic ability.

That’s a QoL change though, not a balance change.

manveruppd.7601:

That’s a QoL change though, not a balance change.

It has balance implications…. being able to USE DS while ressing someone to pre-emp a stun etc…. now if it breaks actions when it is used it will work about the same way it did for people that knew what they were doing pre-patch…. So in that case it is just easier…

Flashing DS will most likely interrupt ressing and stomping though I would wager.

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

Softspoken.2410:

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…

No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.

To be fair, adding basic functionality to DS in form of allowing you to interact / revive / stomp is a nice change, even if it should have been in the game 18+ months ago.

Rennoko.5731:

Softspoken.2410:

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…

No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.

Most times when I’m about to die, I’d rather just start over with life force.

I can see this being useful for PVE perhaps, but I’ll never take it, just like I didn’t take it before.

I love QoL changes. Others got “things around you tend to go down faster” while we got “hackish things you were doing before are now legit, no more bans”.

Well that 6 second Signet of Vampirism should finally get us to the front of the line in dungeon runs. LFG SoV Necros ONLY.

Collapses from sarcasm overload…

Roe.3679:

Rennoko.5731:

Softspoken.2410:

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…

No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.

Most times when I’m about to die, I’d rather just start over with life force.

I can see this being useful for PVE perhaps, but I’ll never take it, just like I didn’t take it before.

So this brings up a fascinating question….

What about those huge 1-shot kill situations in PVE and PVP. If I have say 5k DS left, and 100 HP. I get backstabbed for 6K, so it autoprocs DS. Does the additional 5900 damage overflow into DS?

Because if it did, that would be pretty comical…. surprise!! you just wasted 25% of your DS for no reason.

This nonsense will only happen if I take unholy sanctuary right? Last thing I want is to now spawn with 0 lf everytime in pvp.

Rennoko.5731:

Roe.3679:

Rennoko.5731:

Softspoken.2410:

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…

No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.

Most times when I’m about to die, I’d rather just start over with life force.

I can see this being useful for PVE perhaps, but I’ll never take it, just like I didn’t take it before.

So this brings up a fascinating question….

What about those huge 1-shot kill situations in PVE and PVP. If I have say 5k DS left, and 100 HP. I get backstabbed for 6K, so it autoprocs DS. Does the additional 5900 damage overflow into DS?

Because if it did, that would be pretty comical…. surprise!! you just wasted 25% of your DS for no reason.

Well we know it bleeds from DS to HP, but who knows if damage bleeds the other way.

So…we get nothing for sustain, no way to stay in fights without being ragdolled to death, some slight cool down reduction for spectral armor and a minor trait in soul reaping associated with it. Lich wellbombs will no longer be possible if i’m understanding it right, so there goes a bit of our effectiveness in WvW. Unholy sanctuary received an automatic activation ability…which is nice I guess? Axe got some after cast reduction, and ghastly claws got a 10% damage increase, and we can finally interact with stuff in Deathshroud! There’s some other stuff, but I feel it’s so minor it’s not worth mentioning.

So summary, we got absolutely nothing that even matters! In fact, I’d even say we were nerfed! I…I normally try and see the bright side of things but man…there is not a single thing in this that I can even think is a silver lining…think I’ll just put my necro up for a while, just play my engi.

Dirame.8521:

And how can you not love the Rez and Stomp in DS? That’s game changing stuff (for PvP that is).

why do people think that this is a “buff” when you could ALREADY do this in the game now?!!!

these changes have done NOTHING, they don’t change builds, they don’t change the meta, they just shuffle around things to make it seem as though they actually did something. we still have no group utility in PvE and now a significant (33%) reduction is damage with the change to Lichform, we still lack sustain in tPvP given that we have no or excruciatingly limited access to vigor, aegis, stability, invulnerability. WvW is arguably the only place where we may still remain viable for zerg, but with the changes other professions received, Necro roamers are going to be very sad in comparison.

all in all: there was nothing in this announcement at all and if that’s what they come up with when they think of the Necromancer, what hope do we have that they will take our feedback now and understand why it’s needed and then act on it?

so kittening disappointed with the general direction of the game now. it’s as though ANet have bitten off WAAAAY more than they can chew in the live environment. it’s a pity though as i used to think that this game’s potential was limitless, but what’s the point in potential when it’s never realised?

Is it just me, or is Arenanet blatantly trying to pin spectral armor to every necro utility bar?

Jayce.5632:

Is it just me, or is Arenanet blatantly trying to pin spectral armor to every necro utility bar?

No question it is the best defensive utility for us now

My biggest thing is there is literally no theory crafting necessary for the patch. Nothing changed. I will not be using Unholy Sanctuary because of your stupid added functonality. I will not be using SoV because of one extra second. I will still use my spectral armor – thanks for the buff?

Jayce.5632:

Is it just me, or is Arenanet blatantly trying to pin spectral armor to every necro utility bar?

What really bothers me is that from all the utility… the one that has been buffed is one of the best one. Go wonder. Anet Logic.

Jayce.5632:

Is it just me, or is Arenanet blatantly trying to pin spectral armor to every necro utility bar?

We want a big defensive CD, we don’t take teh big defensive CD, so they keep making it more enticing.

Simply Laughable!

Bhawb.7408:

These are not all the changes, just the ones they thought were relevant for feedback. It is very important to note that they do not preview every single number change, only some of them. The changes were fine. Were they great? Will we suddenly be top tier everywhere? No, but they were entirely reasonable changes. Frankly my only disappointment was that (as far as I saw) they didn’t nerf reaper’s prot/nightmare runes.

Kudos to you for still defending anet,but personaly i dont like that my necro is drop fed water to survive while the others are eating steaks in front of me and say that we are fine and we dont need anything.

Kahrgan.7401:

Utterly Underwhelming

Welcome to the Guardian boat, a boat we had to chug around in for a very long time! You can have my paddle as I’m getting into a better boat finally!

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Kahrgan.7401:

Utterly Underwhelming

Welcome to the Guardian boat, a boat we had to chug around in for a very long time! You can have my paddle as I’m getting into a better boat finally!

Oh? When did necros become a welcome and valuable part of every game mode?

The changes appear underwhelming but for people who’ve mastered the necro class the changes are really good. Ive been playing necro since around release and I can tell you that these changes will drastically improve my play style, especially dropping the cooldown for spec armour and last grasp by 10 seconds, monumental improvement for me.

The only things i wish they had done was allow necros to gain vigor, and added a weapons teleport skill (even if it had a 60 second cd) if those happened, i would probably delete my other toons.

Isn’t it the exact opposite… these changes do nothing for those who have mastered the class, it really only helps the people who havent…. lowered the skill floor that’s about it.

Dirame.8521:

Axe is the most underrated weapon in the Necro’s cache. Seriously, one good combo and you can 100 to 0 people sometimes.

This is true.

Softspoken.2410:

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

That will most certainly happen occasionally.

However, the really good part here – which by far overshadows the pathetically low healing – is that DS can be triggered when it is on cooldown. If it wasn’t tied to 6 points in DM it would see a serious popularity boost in PvP.

Rennoko.5731:

So this brings up a fascinating question….

What about those huge 1-shot kill situations in PVE and PVP. If I have say 5k DS left, and 100 HP. I get backstabbed for 6K, so it autoprocs DS. Does the additional 5900 damage overflow into DS?

Because if it did, that would be pretty comical…. surprise!! you just wasted 25% of your DS for no reason.

Well, I assume the 50% damage reduction in DS will still be there after the patch. So if you take 6k damage you’ll really just lose 3k life force. However, 10k and 1 damage (because dmg reduction doesn’t work in case of hp overflow) taken in that scenario would mean you’ll waste all your lf on top of dying.

Guard.6751:

Dirame.8521:

And how can you not love the Rez and Stomp in DS? That’s game changing stuff (for PvP that is).

You could already do this if you timed the actions together.. they just made it easier.

I know you could. It’s just sometimes you can’t pull it off in the heat of battle.

NeXeD.3042:

Isn’t it the exact opposite… these changes do nothing for those who have mastered the class, it really only helps the people who havent…. lowered the skill floor that’s about it.

I use DD, and only hitting one target has always been a pain, I think this change also means you get double the ds from dagger auto. I use spec armour, last grasp and spec attunement for pvp and WvW and typically have to drop the cd for armour to be effective, now, if i drop it, I for sure will notice that 40 sec cd with 18 sec total duration.

and that ds finish….that is also a huge change, i cant count how many times i had to bail after downing in pvp bcause i cant finish in ds (I hardly use the ds stomp)

I just realised, i wonder why they dont allow spec armour to grant stability as well for 5 seonds

Eh, I saw this coming. I’m glad for the axe buff. (Although It’s very, very minor) The fact that Necros have been complete crap since the beginning in pve made me realize how much this is never going to change. Thanks for the buffs Anet, but If this is ALL the changes you’ll be making in a SIX month period of time? Yeeeeah, don’t worry guys… We’ll be fixed in five years or so! kitten face

I’m always going to play the necro in dungeons and in WvW/pvp. I love the class dearly, however… I will be putting most of my time into another MMO now and only playing this one off and on. Also, when I saw that Unholy Sanctuary change on the Skill Bar, I realized just how clueless they are about the Necro… Like, really…? Lol.

I think it’s funny how they played up the changes to Last Gasp like it was a trait that badly needed a buff. Seriously, it’s one of the best minor traits we have. I welcome the improvement of course, but there are so many more traits that need a rework instead.

Flow that trait even if not in dm would be garbage. There are times in pvp where you are just going to die. I’d rather go into downed state with a ton of lifeforce so il either I get reseed and go straight into ds until I can heal safely or I get stomped but am respawned with a ton of lifeforce instead of always respawn ing with 0. I mean US of course.

At raisin so you understand my point? You were not doing the things others who have mastered the class have been doing…. and since they have been doing that for a long time this patch really isn’t helping them in those aspects….. meanwhile it’s helping you… kind of tells me it’s helping the people who have not mastered the class……

Actualy nothing.

Thats my 2 words, reason why:

1) biggest buff is warr/thief nerf

2) 2nd biggest buff is a Quality of Life change for DS stomp. nothing balance wise, but great nevertheless

3) NO NIGHTMARE ROONS NERF. pls remove, so theres an actual foundation to balance necros on.

4) AXE #1,2,3 +DAGER #1,2,3 + FOCUS #5, (4?)……. only axe#1 gets smaller cast time , all other dmg is still easy avoidable

5) Sustain….. no comment , as theres nothing to talk about

6) S.Armor …. Why not make it F2 if u want everything on this? whats the point of walk then? too much LF 1v1 ? still dying in teamfight? no changes here

So yeah, there you have it. Basically nothing. Seems like “were in good spot” like guardian.

Odeezee.7362:

Dirame.8521:

And how can you not love the Rez and Stomp in DS? That’s game changing stuff (for PvP that is).

why do people think that this is a “buff” when you could ALREADY do this in the game now?!!!

these changes have done NOTHING, they don’t change builds, they don’t change the meta, they just shuffle around things to make it seem as though they actually did something. we still have no group utility in PvE and now a significant (33%) reduction is damage with the change to Lichform, we still lack sustain in tPvP given that we have no or excruciatingly limited access to vigor, aegis, stability, invulnerability. WvW is arguably the only place where we may still remain viable for zerg, but with the changes other professions received, Necro roamers are going to be very sad in comparison.

all in all: there was nothing in this announcement at all and if that’s what they come up with when they think of the Necromancer, what hope do we have that they will take our feedback now and understand why it’s needed and then act on it?

so kittening disappointed with the general direction of the game now. it’s as though ANet have bitten off WAAAAY more than they can chew in the live environment. it’s a pity though as i used to think that this game’s potential was limitless, but what’s the point in potential when it’s never realised?

I understand what you’re saying. I like the changes and I think they were needed but they obviously could do better and we can only keep pointing them toward the things that could make the Necro better.

I wouldn’t give the Necro too much sustain though but that’s just me.

List of the changes on Dulfy:

http://dulfy.net/2014/08/29/gw2-upcoming-guardian-and-necromancer-class-changes/

just to clarify, we got something that should have been in the game since release and nothing else of substance?

i have to laugh, as a wvw and a necro main why the kitten am i playing this game?

#welistentothecommunity

RlyOsim.2497:

just to clarify, we got something that should have been in the game since release and nothing else of substance?

i have to laugh, as a wvw and a necro main why the kitten am i playing this game?

#welistentothecommunity

but they did listen! we said signet of vampirism does suck, and look, we got a buff!

Been maining Necro for two years now and this kitten right here is a kittening tragedy. What in the name of kitten is an auto Death Shroud trait supposed to do for experienced players? I can pop DS before a lethal attack on my own and so can any half decent Necro as well. I don’t even want to play the class anymore. It feels too like sticking to a hopeless cause. Thanks ArenaNet.

Bhawb.7408:

These are not all the changes, just the ones they thought were relevant for feedback. It is very important to note that they do not preview every single number change, only some of them. The changes were fine. Were they great? Will we suddenly be top tier everywhere? No, but they were entirely reasonable changes. Frankly my only disappointment was that (as far as I saw) they didn’t nerf reaper’s prot/nightmare runes.

These are almost certainly all the changes.
Same thing happened last time. We HOPED there was something more but there wasn’t.

Yeah, the SoV change had to be the most laughable part of the whole thing. So, It’s a pile of crap… And you think adding one second to It’s active is going to fix it? Oh my god, like… Enough said.

I agree with the rest here.

The list of changes misses stuff that actually changes things.

Its annoying that the best thing we got was death shroud interaction, something that should of been done ages ago.

It looks like I’ll be sticking to my current necro build as there was only minor changes.

Rennoko.5731:

manveruppd.7601:

That’s a QoL change though, not a balance change.

It has balance implications…. being able to USE DS while ressing someone to pre-emp a stun etc…. now if it breaks actions when it is used it will work about the same way it did for people that knew what they were doing pre-patch…. So in that case it is just easier…

Flashing DS will most likely interrupt ressing and stomping though I would wager.

But we could already do that with practice, it just lets you do it by default anyway. Oh and if flashing ds would interrupt actions that’s a major problem, as it means your revive would be interrupted if you ran out of lf and got knocked out of ds.

Rennoko.5731:

Roe.3679:

Rennoko.5731:

Softspoken.2410:

I, for one, can’t wait until the anecdotes of people ‘double hitting’ Death Shroud on accident with Unholy Sanctuary roll in.

(Someone tries to press DS right before death, overshoots and ends up cancelling their trait-procced DS early)

There are certianly numerous situations where that trait is unwelcomed…

No one is going to realistically take it in any competitive sense anyhow… So it doesn’t really matter.

Most times when I’m about to die, I’d rather just start over with life force.

I can see this being useful for PVE perhaps, but I’ll never take it, just like I didn’t take it before.

So this brings up a fascinating question….

What about those huge 1-shot kill situations in PVE and PVP. If I have say 5k DS left, and 100 HP. I get backstabbed for 6K, so it autoprocs DS. Does the additional 5900 damage overflow into DS?

Because if it did, that would be pretty comical…. surprise!! you just wasted 25% of your DS for no reason.

That’s an entertaining thought! Actually though I think DS would proc as soon as you receive the fatal damage, so in your example you’ll go into DS as soon as you receive the 6k hit, and you’d still have your 100HP. Of course then you’d take 5k damage to your life force, get knocked out of DS, and the 1k rest of the damage would overflow to your 100HP, downing you, so yes, you do waste 5k life force for no reason! :p

Except, except, EXCEPT!!! Isn’t there supposed to be a bug with damage overflowing from DS to HP? I remember a thread were people were explaining it to me a few months ago. Doesn’t it go like, if you receive a single hit which does more damage than you have Life Force, then instead of the remainder overflowing, you take the whole hit to your HP as well?

So, if you had Unholy Sanctuary, 5k HP, and 5k LF, and received a 6k hit, unholy sanctuary would autoproc DS, you’d take 6k damage to your life force, knocking you out of death shroud, and tkae the full 6k damage again to your HP, downing you? Or did I misunderstand how the bug works?

If that’s the case then not only have you wasted your LF for no reason, but you literally took TWICE as much damage as you should have!

And the fact that we thought of these potential problems within an hour of watching the video demonstrates that Karl and Grouch playtesting changes DOES NOT CONSTITUTE SUFFICIENT QA and they desperately need player input and a test server!

I’m not sure if that bug was stealth fixed or never really a bug in the first place but it doesn’t happen anymore as far as I can tell.

Dirame.8521:

I understand what you’re saying. I like the changes and I think they were needed but they obviously could do better and we can only keep pointing them toward the things that could make the Necro better.

given that THIS is what they gave us after thousands of great suggestions from the Necro community over the past 2.5 years, i no longer have any doubts; they will NOT improve the Necromancer profession the way we the players envision it. most of the stuff we get as changes are things we don’t want and did not even ask for. it gets worse when you look at other professions and they get changes to skills, changes to traits and even new traits they actually asked for. Necromancer have THE most kittened up traits and trait spread of ANY other profession, hands down! if they had just fixed traits i would be overjoyed. but what did they do? they minimally buff an already good (master) minor-trait and leave stuff like Siphoned Power and Death Shiver intact.

I wouldn’t give the Necro too much sustain though but that’s just me.

and here-in lies the problem. you cannot say we don’t want to give Necros too much sustain yet give them VERY little to mitigate/avoid damage: no vigor, no aegis, no easy access to stability, no invulnerability. all DS does is delay the inevitable and gives you a new but VERY small skillset, and while in it you have no access to your groups healing support, that still does not negate being flung around like pinball, so then you cannot even activate your limited skills set.

ANet will undoubtedly say they hear our concerns they are listening (then give us what we got today as a result of said listening), but i am a actions speak louder than words kinda guy and until i see substantive changes in the patch notes/game all they say on these forums is purely lip-service.

My 2 words are: “It’s okay”

Seriously though, a little disappointed that there is not much love for the minionmancer build for the feature patch as it’s my preferred playstyle in all 3 modes. But AI aside, Minionmancer has hardly ever disappointed me.

What changes?

/15char min

Whomp whomp

/15char

Rym.1469:

That Unholy Sanctuary change. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

The unholy sanctuary change, to me, seems to actually be fairly solid, just because it works with SO many other traits. Stuff like “gain health when leaving death shroud” and “gain stability when entering death shroud” put a lot of meat on its bones.

Bhawb.7408:

I love it, we basically get two completely reasonable nerfs, are still completely viable in every way that we were before… and people are mad because it wasn’t enough. What, did you expect them to magically make us good in PvE? That won’t happen without massive changes that are beyond the scope of normal patches. New builds for PvP? Not gonna happen without new content.

Everything is the same, but with some QoL changes. If you want big sweeping changes you might as well play Wildstar until an expansion comes out.

I’ve actually been looking at Archeage bhawb you should check it out. Has some nice dark magic stuffs too ^^

will be f2p on release.

In two words: ghastly disappointing.

Necromancer class ‘could be’ so much fun to play but obviously no devs really care about it or play it fluently. The lack of imagination in skills is horrifying. If only this class had the ability to have a minion resurrect it like a ranger has from it’s pet or have some sort of permanent super spiritual speed. For me this class is slow, buggy and reminds me of an overgrown grub without the firepower.

Regardless, the lack of improvements are a big disappointment to me at least and mine will continue to R.I.P. and dream of what could have been.