Guild Wars 2

Hi, some of you might know me but for those that don’t:
I am playing necromancer since the open Beta period nearly exclusively in all parts of the game with heavy focus on tpvp. I was known as one of the last “competitive” necromancers in EU before the dhuumfire patch, probably mostly known for being a annoying kitten sitting in the water on temple xD. After the dhuumfire patch I was recruited by the then falling apart MiM to fill up their roster again and played for them in the PAX qualifiers. I just recently came back to PvP after an ~6month break from the game ankitten ow the co-host of the SOAC necromancer podcast. I certainly am not among the top necromancers in pvp at the moment as my play got kinda sloppy after my break but I think I know enough about necro to say a thing or two about the current state we are in.

But first lets take a look at the “history of necromancers” in pvp. At release necromancers where able to dish out quite a bit of punishment as teams where lacking experience in fighting them, but builds like pistolwhip thieves made live quiet hard for aspiring necromancers. As an answer to that we learned to stay on the edges of fights, and the 30 30 10 carrion double well necro with rezz signet was born. And man we caused mayhem. Teams where not used to someone just standing on a high-ground and spamming AOEs with a build that was 100% optimized for never even getting attacked, and with the added rezz we basicly dominated team-fights. But like always teams adapted and learned to counter that playstyle, which led necros to drop the wells and go for other stuff instead, but the “focus the necro as soon as you see him” mentality that people learned during the double well period made it close to impossible for necros to sustain through teamfights and they faded from the meta. This basicaly stayed the same until the addition of dhuumfire which just over-tuned necros and together with other buffs enabled them to completely zone people form ~1200 range away and even 100-0ing mesmers from that range quite easily. They became an insanely strong 1v1 class that dominated teamfights and also had lots of CC. Of course well deserved nerfs happened afterwards, but the most important thing was that hambow warriors made it into the meta.
The combinations of warriors “hardcountering” necros(well necro could win 1v1 vs a warrior still but it took all his cooldowns and you would lose a node almost certainly) and that nerfs made necro a kinda hit or miss class for pvp. They stayed in the meta cause if you where able to protect your necromancer they where still really good in teamfights. But now with the featurepack the necromancer dps was reduced quite a bit with the nerf to dhuumfire, making it really hard to use in condi burst rotations, and also a not reliable way of applying burning in teamfights. Also the AOE pressure of necro was now lower than before the dhuumfire patch because other skills got nerfed since then. At the moment necro is in a state similar to before the Dhuumfire patch, if not even worse.
Basically necro is really strong against inexperienced players but gets rather weak against good teams up to a point where having a necromancer is a burden for your team

So what are the problems of necromancers in PvP?

1.) Low mobility. PvP is mostly about good rotations and having a necromancer on your team slows you down and forces you into a team-fight play-style and therefore making you less flexible than other compositions
2.) Bad downed-state. A downed necro can’t do anything about getting stomped. This further encourages teams to focus a necro before other classes.
3.) No sustain. Necro is supposed to be a sustain class according to anet, but their lack of boons(most importantly vigor) combined with point 2 of this list make necros a dangerous choice in longer fights.
4.) Toxic gameplay. Playing against necromancers is 100% anti-fun. Winning against one doesn’t feel like an accomplishment most of the time while losing to a necro feels like being cheated.
This 5 points need to be addressed in order for necromancers to get a healthy spot in the meta.

Proposed changes to achieve this:

1.) Increase range of Flesh Wurm and make it exchange place with the necromancer on reactivation instead of killing it. If used with poor positioning the Wurm will quickly be killed. If used to get out of a bad situation the effect will be nearly the same as now. For balance reasons maybe increase the summoning cooldown.
2.) Give necromancers a way to prevent a stomp. Maybe make their #2 ability “Your downed health becomes lifeforce and you enter deathshroud for up to 3 seconds. Afterwards you are downed again with your remaining lifeforce as hp” You could still dps them down but stomps would be prevented and the necro could get into a better position to be rezzed
3.) Flavorful access to vigor. A prime candidate for this would be the Spite 5 point trait(former 25) siphoned power. Proposed new trait:”Gain vigor when you remove a boon”(with internal cooldown of course). Maybe a buff to lifeleech trait base values but addition of an internal cooldown.
4.) Remove fearstacking. Fear and Immobilize are the only forms of CC that stack in duration and seriously, they shouldn’t do that (I still think immobilize stacking was the worst thing anet ever introduced including the loading screen bug which at least wasn’t intentional). Also maybe don’t make fear duration increase with condition duration, it simply is no fun to be feared for ~4 seconds just because the necro you hit had nightmare runes equipped. CC chaining someone should be at least somewhat reliant on team coordination and not just spam everything. Maybe lower dmg of terror and add more utility like a 1sec chill at the end of the fear.

That’s it from me, pls discuss

Here’s some feedback for ya, blackmoa:

Problems:

1.) Agreed. Necromancers have pretty bad mobility. But let us not forget that the few that we do have can aid us in other important ways; for instance, spectral walk is extremely useful, because it can allow you to flank or trick your opponent, or more importantly, allow you to take any amount of falling damage. This is something that has saved me numerous times.

2.) Bad downed state? Not really. This is much more a matter of opinion. Sure, it’s not as good as the guard’s knockback or the ele’s mist form, but it works, and that’s what’s important.

3.) No sustain? Not true. In terms of endurance regain, yes, but in terms of sustaining one’s health, no. Minion master does an excellent job of sustain through siphons. Besides mm though, I’ve used a fair number of dagger sustain builds and other power builds. They work in PvP, but are really more designed for PvE. As for condition builds with sustain, siphon builds are harder to use, so I generally just use consume conditions, death shroud, and plague form, and that’s often enough. However, I would like to see more options for sustain in the future.

4)Toxic gameplay? Well…not really. I suppose this is true if you are playing against someone with the same build type as you, but I think that’s true for almost every profession. Take the thief, for example: both players usually just try to out-burst and out-cloak each other, resulting in some gameplay that can be rather aggravating. As for how rewarding it is to kill other players, that is totally up to you. This isn’t true for everyone.

Suggestions

1.) Interesting idea, but I don’t find this necessary; flesh wurm is already pretty good as is.

2.) No, I don’t find this necessary either. Most other classes don’t have an invulnerability skill (ds is like invuln in a sense), so we don’t need this. I think it would actually upset balance more.

3.) Ok, yes, some access to vigor would be nice. But not too much….I like your idea, though.

4.) For this last one, I think I have to disagree. Fear stacking is fine. Plus, rune of the nightmare doesn’t fear you for 4 seconds, just saying…not only that, but it has a 90 second cooldown—90 SECONDS! That’s not op, if you ask me.

Hope this feedback helps : P

Stability. Necro’s have no stability outside of deathshroud, which removes the ability to revive or stomp.

Staff/axe need freshening up. Both activate slowly and just don’t keep pace with how fast many PvP players currently operate at.

Master of nothing, jack of nothing either…necromancer has no specific purpose currently. They can be out conditioned stacked. They can be out damaged. They can be out ran. They offer little in the way of team benefits. They can be out boon stacked. They can be out defensed. What is their purpose? Boon corrupting is flawed and at times bugged. Guardians, ele, engi negate all boon corrupting by simply restacking the exact same boons over the stop of corrupted ones. They can be definitely out cleaved. They have limited power builds. They lack leap finishers. They have no blocks or in build evades.

Necromancer was listed in the top 3 professions that players felt needed help alongside ranger and ele. Instead they go nerfs and some very dabbling in skills that was left them weaker with no addressing of actually giving them help. At this stage they’re one build wonders with fear chaining..if you survive that one trick, it is not easy for them to replay it immediately and they need to hope they have full Lifeforce to survive the onslaught they’re about to get.

Good post Moa. I agree with all of it!

1.) Low mobility. PvP is mostly about good rotations and having a necromancer on your team slows you down and forces you into a team-fight play-style and therefore making you less flexible than other compositions

This is not as big of a problem as many of the other points. To make up for the lack of mobility speed and traveler runes are really really good. I use them all the time and for any build. You do lose some damage, but the “roaming” potential and survivability you get is worth it.

2.) Bad downed-state. A downed necro can’t do anything about getting stomped. This further encourages teams to focus a necro before other classes.

A downed necro is usually a stomped necro unless your team can do something to prevent it. On the other hand necro is one of the best professions for stopping stomps and resses. My solution for this is to make our downed state fear aoe.

3.) No sustain. Necro is supposed to be a sustain class according to anet, but their lack of boons(most importantly vigor) combined with point 2 of this list make necros a dangerous choice in longer fights.

Give us a reachable and reliable trait that gives us the ability to heal in death shroud. I cannot count how many times i have had a guardian trying to heal me while i was in death shroud because i would have been dead otherwise. Anets wants the necromancer to be an attrition fighter, but its nowhere near being an attrition fighter. Many other professions do the job better (warriors, rangers).

4.) Toxic gameplay. Playing against necromancers is 100% anti-fun. Winning against one doesn’t feel like an accomplishment most of the time while losing to a necro feels like being cheated.
This 5 points need to be addressed in order for necromancers to get a healthy spot in the meta.

Yes!

Proposed changes to achieve this:
1.) Increase range of Flesh Wurm and make it exchange place with the necromancer on reactivation instead of killing it. If used with poor positioning the Wurm will quickly be killed. If used to get out of a bad situation the effect will be nearly the same as now. For balance reasons maybe increase the summoning cooldown.

Flesh Wurm needs a faster cast time to start with. Right now it is mostly placed before a fight to get an escape route, but most of the time the wurm is killed by a thief or someone else who has noticed it. Good teams will look for it and get rid of it as fast as possible. And you what? It doesnt take that long to kill. When you compare Flesh Wurm to some of the other professions ports – its literally kitten! SO BAD!

2.) Give necromancers a way to prevent a stomp. Maybe make their #2 ability “Your downed health becomes lifeforce and you enter deathshroud for up to 3 seconds. Afterwards you are downed again with your remaining lifeforce as hp” You could still dps them down but stomps would be prevented and the necro could get into a better position to be rezzed

Already commented on this!

3.) Flavorful access to vigor. A prime candidate for this would be the Spite 5 point trait(former 25) siphoned power. Proposed new trait:”Gain vigor when you remove a boon”(with internal cooldown of course). Maybe a buff to lifeleech trait base values but addition of an internal cooldown.

Good idea!

4.) Remove fearstacking. Fear and Immobilize are the only forms of CC that stack in duration and seriously, they shouldn’t do that (I still think immobilize stacking was the worst thing anet ever introduced including the loading screen bug which at least wasn’t intentional). Also maybe don’t make fear duration increase with condition duration, it simply is no fun to be feared for ~4 seconds just because the necro you hit had nightmare runes equipped. CC chaining someone should be at least somewhat reliant on team coordination and not just spam everything. Maybe lower dmg of terror and add more utility like a 1sec chill at the end of the fear.

YES TO EVERYTHING! Fear should not stack in duration, never.

@Chuck Nizzle.6283

The builds you are suggesting are not viable in organized tpvp. They might work in hotjoins and solo q but not in tournaments. You might have played necromancer for a long time but your it does not sound like you have much experience in tournament pvp.

After dhuumfire was introduced its duration was ‘hot-fixed’ as one of the only traits/abilities in GW2 history. After the duration decrease our ability to stack bleeds got hit = grasp of the dead, mark of blood and weakening shroud. All these nerfs happened because of dhuumfire. The feature patch changed dhuumfire again making it mediocre at best. Dhuumfire did not only affect the Necromancer profession but also almost every other profession got their cleansing buffed. Right now the Necromancer is probably in the worst spot in GW2 history in terms of viability and build diversity.

good condi necro used to faceroll and melted every bunker down in a few second.

now it’s still ok but not as good as before… you can’t faceroll like before anymore while having no mobile.
You would get rekted very fast if u r not on top of ur game which a few ppl can pull this off.

5. Staff Auto needs a change. Its bad!

Blackmoa.3186:

Proposed changes to achieve this:

1.) Increase range of Flesh Wurm and make it exchange place with the necromancer on reactivation instead of killing it. If used with poor positioning the Wurm will quickly be killed. If used to get out of a bad situation the effect will be nearly the same as now.
For balance reasons maybe increase the summoning cooldown.

To be quite honest I don’t see how this improves mobility but I think that a better idea may be to decrease the activation time.

Blackmoa.3186:

2.) Give necromancers a way to prevent a stomp. Maybe make their #2 ability “Your downed health becomes lifeforce and you enter deathshroud for up to 3 seconds. Afterwards you are downed again with your remaining lifeforce as hp” You could still dps them down but stomps would be prevented and the necro could get into a better position to be rezzed

This will mean that you either sacrifice all your life force or you don’t preven a stomp so I’m conflicted about this.

Blackmoa.3186:

3.) Flavorful access to vigor. A prime candidate for this would be the Spite 5 point trait(former 25) siphoned power. Proposed new trait:”Gain vigor when you remove a boon”(with internal cooldown of course). Maybe a buff to lifeleech trait base values but addition of an internal cooldown.

Why an ICD? Vigor is granted with 50% ptime for a 1 point traits so a 5 point trait could get 100%.

Blackmoa.3186:

4.) Remove fearstacking. Fear and Immobilize are the only forms of CC that stack in duration and seriously, they shouldn’t do that (I still think immobilize stacking was the worst thing anet ever introduced including the loading screen bug which at least wasn’t intentional). Also maybe don’t make fear duration increase with condition duration, it simply is no fun to be feared for ~4 seconds just because the necro you hit had nightmare runes equipped. CC chaining someone should be at least somewhat reliant on team coordination and not just spam everything. Maybe lower dmg of terror and add more utility like a 1sec chill at the end of the fear.

That’s it from me, pls discuss

Well what do you do with the passive fear procs (rune of nightmare, trait in death magic)? If they don’t stack then that means that they can be procked on unreliable times (even more then now). Also not making fear increase with duration will make fear use less since it can be decreased with -% duration and terror builds rely on the extra duration. Also you just said that damage is on all time low and you want to decrease it more for what? A 1 second chill.

djooceboxblast.9876:

5. Staff Auto needs a change. Its bad!

Working as intended!

When I’m back from a grocery shop, I’m gonna write a bigger post about the state of necro after the patch since I just got countered to elo hell in solo queue and am spot on the current problems.

leman.7682:

djooceboxblast.9876:

5. Staff Auto needs a change. Its bad!

Working as intended!

When I’m back from a grocery shop, I’m gonna write a bigger post about the state of necro after the patch since I just got countered to elo hell in solo queue and am spot on the current problems.

It might work as intended – but its bad and unreliable!

To be quite honest I don’t see how this improves mobility but I think that a better idea may be to decrease the activation time.

It indeed does not help you get somewher you ahvent been before faster, but if you drop it at close at start you can come close quickly from somewhere else and afterwards go abck to where you’ve been and therefore making you more useful in rotations
[Quote]Why an ICD? Vigor is granted with 50% ptime for a 1 point traits so a 5 point trait could get 100%.[/quote]
ICD caus ewell of corruption alone can corrupt up to 30 boons and while i like having vigor i’d rather not have stuff like that in the game.

Well what do you do with the passive fear procs (rune of nightmare, trait in death magic)? If they don’t stack then that means that they can be procked on unreliable times (even more then now).

2 Passive procs overwriting each other seems liek a small price to pay for a step towards healthy gameplay. Some solutions would be to either not use both at the same time, use them knowingly that u have a chance of “losing” a proc if unlucky or anet making it so they cant proc at the same time.

Also not making fear increase with duration will make fear use less since it can be decreased with -% duration and terror builds rely on the extra duration. Also you just said that damage is on all time low and you want to decrease it more for what? A 1 second chill.

Fear already has good base durations for cc, and if terror would become more utility focused the lost duration woudldn’t hit necro as hard as you think(atleast i think so). IF fear would get nerfed liek that it might be a good idea to give us our bleedstacks back that got nerfed away, but if all chanegs i proposed would be implemented i’d rather not have any other dmg back at first but rather see how stuff would work for a couple of weeks and then adjust dmg output accordingly. But ye if onyl fear would change then we would need something else to compensate.

@Chuck Nizzle:

To clarify, let me put it like this: MM is a very general term for a type of build. Perhaps the MM you used wasn’t too great, and so you think “Oh, well, guess that sucks…”. HA…no. You can’t say one build type isn’t viable in PvP just because you think it isn’t. Even if the entire world disagrees with me, here I stand, saying MM IS VIABLE, YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO USE IT.

The concept of MM as necro is at the moment is not viabel for "competitive"play, if you want explanations as to why message me privately, and this is not only my oppinion but the oppinion of every “top level” pvp player i have ever talked to about this.

Once again, a biased opinion; I disagree. Every profession works well against noobs. To say only necro works well against noobs is like saying only the warrior is fun to play. See how subjective that is? It’s the same thing with what you’re saying.

I never said only necro is good vs noobs.

@ someone with authority over balance
Make fleshworm behave like shadow step.. and i will forget all the bugs that haven’t been fixed last patch. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep

@ OP, I don’t think anyone could argue your suggestions.

I have been thinking at the fear idea (the fear non stacking and remove duration out of fear) and I think it will be be benificial for both sides if we make a few changes to some other things.

It will benificial for the enemies:
-fear stacking will no longer be a problem (chaining will but that aside)
-ridiculous long fears on necro’s will not be the norm unles heavily invested (see later why)

it will be benifical for the necromancer:
-diamond skin will no longer be uncounterable for a condition spec
-berserker stance can be countered by condition specs
- -65% condition will be more manageble

But I believe there should be som changes as well:
-rune of the necromancer’s fear bonus should be increased to 50% since otherwise it would be quite useless to take it.
-doom’s fear should be increased to 1.25 and 1.75 seconds of fear not for the condition spec but for the power specs who use that fear with 20%~30% condition duration
-master of terror will still work

Now about terror be more utility like I will have to say it would be not benificial since it would weaken the advantages the new fear would give the necromancer. Chill would cetrainly not work since chain fearing would be severely reduced

@1

Problem: totally agree. There are a lot of aspects of playing a necro that sometimes force your team into an awkward position.
Solution: I don’t think your proposed wurm buff would solve the problem, neither do I think that this problem should be sovled by making alterations to the wurm in the first place. For 2 reasons: for one it would be a build diversity issue, if anything a mobility buff should probably be added to shroud so every build has access to it without being forced to pick a specific utility.
Secondly, imo the wurm sucks as hard as you are making MMs out to be, I think it’s a wasted utility in almost every build and a liability more than a buff to your survivability.

@2

Problem: true, we’re one of the ez stomps.
Solution: it would help. On the other hand, if necros got an invuln added to their downed state, all other classes who don’t already have the same would demand a silimar buff. As harsh as it might sound, I think some classes are just supposed to have weaker downed states and necros are one of them. Imo the actual problem here is that classes that are hard to focus have a hard-to-stomp downed mechanic as well, while the necro is the opposite. So, if you somehow buff our general survivability against being a focus target I’d be fine with the downed state as it is.

@3

Problem: I partially disagree here. In some situations we have no sustain at all, while we’re doing rather well in others. Depends on the fight I suppose, and of course to some degree on your build.
Solution: Well of Power is a rather good source for vigor. I wouldn’t say no to some additional vigor, but I’m not sure a gm minor is the right way. If it severely buffs your sustain game to a point where it’s THE trait to have to even be viable, you’d just create another build diversity limitation. At best you would have to adjust the duration of the boon and the icd of the trait so it’d become too insignificant to be a gm trait in the first place.
Imo the approach to buffing our sustain shouldn’t be through adding boons anyway. The first thing that should be done is: allow ALL healing to work in Death Shroud and buff our healing in addition to that. Most sustain fights are lost because you’re playing against classes that can heal their hp many times over to full throughout the course of a battle, while necros are never able to do the same unless they receive some healing from allies when they happen to not be in DS at the time.

@4

Agreed and agreed. Fear and immob stacking can be so frustrating. On the other hand, should there be a “stacking” limit on non-condition stuns as well? I don’t really see a solution here that wouldn’t cause an imbalance between fear and other stuns if you place a limit on just one of them.
And yes, nightmare runes are stupid. I’ve seen many (bad) necros winning fights they’d never have won without this totally random fear proc. Good thing they didn’t add perplexity to spvp in order to prevent unskillful gameplay…

I can confirm that what moa wrote is completely valid in the current now-shaping meta. Probably even more than it was before.

What wins matches is versatility, adaptability, because sPvP is about resource management.

It’s either a thief who can decap and quickly rotate somewhere else or drop lone targets making the other team waste time or completely lose track of what’s happening. Hambow/condi wars will always find their place in a match by either tanking/stomping in teamfights or invading. An engie or ele are just the same.
Some profession/spec combos are just so versatile you aren’t going to waste with them.

Necro is different. Every necro build has numerous hardcounters that, as expected, are very common in current meta. This leads to necro being just a chance pick, as moa wrote – good vs beginners, redundant vs competent players.

All in all, I agree there is something to be done about the necro and no kitten -buffs like Anet got us used to will fix that (as shown through Dhummfire experience). Necro needs to have a more defined place in the game. The one that the devs seem to believe in (a teamfight juggernaut) is not and hasn’t ever been working.

leman.7682:

Necro needs to have a more defined place in the game. The one that the devs seem to believe in (a teamfight juggernaut) is not and hasn’t ever been working.

Since when are Necromancer teamfight juggernauts? I thought that were warriors…

Muchacho.2390:

leman.7682:

Necro needs to have a more defined place in the game. The one that the devs seem to believe in (a teamfight juggernaut) is not and hasn’t ever been working.

Since when are Necromancer teamfight juggernauts? I thought that were warriors…

Necros stay in teamfights until they die.
They can be quite tanky.
‘Immobile’
Attrition.

Also:
warriors being teamfight juggernauts == necros can’t be teamfight juggernauts.
Some advanced logic there.

Necros are the best class in pvp for now… with death shroud they have like 2 life bars… condi are the new meta

If we even had a semi decent disengage or better sustain via siphons in smaller fights I would be thrilled. I think we are in an ok place atm other than getting focused too easy.

Syphoon is good in pve… is a waste on pvp

Agreed, but Im not sure other than that how to give us more sustain in pvp. We already have a great heal, good hp, and, ds. Still I feel like I get focused a lot and have almost no defense when I do.

djooceboxblast.9876:

After dhuumfire was introduced its duration was ‘hot-fixed’ as one of the only traits/abilities in GW2 history. After the duration decrease our ability to stack bleeds got hit = grasp of the dead, mark of blood and weakening shroud. All these nerfs happened because of dhuumfire. The feature patch changed dhuumfire again making it mediocre at best. Dhuumfire did not only affect the Necromancer profession but also almost every other profession got their cleansing buffed. Right now the Necromancer is probably in the worst spot in GW2 history in terms of viability and build diversity.

You forgot that terror damage was also nerfed by 20% after dhuumfire, more necro nerfs plz!

leman.7682:

warriors being teamfight juggernauts == necros can’t be teamfight juggernauts.
Some advanced logic there.

If you want to do advanced logic you should have cited my statement correctly.
I only wrote

Since when are Necromancer teamfight juggernauts?

which is a question (or if you want to interpret it as the statement: necros are not teamfight juggernauts) and then

I thought that were warriors…

which is a statement (we can interpret as warriors are teamfight juggernauts).

Nowhere i see any equality of the two statements, meaning i nowhere conclude from one to the other and back.
Or if we formalize it: If A and B are the two statements,
then i wrote: A and B
And not A<=>B

MM is not viable in high tier. The single issue that cannot be solved no matter how good you are with the build, or how you tweak a standard MM to fit within high tier play is that simply you have no ability to rotate. You can sit on home node permanently sure, but you can’t afford to move off home or a thief will decap it and be back in a fight before you’re even able to get to the point, leaving your team 4v5 for 10-20 seconds. If they increased our ability to rotate then it wouldn’t be such a big deal, because I could rotate for a teamfight mid, or go and contest their home point, without being out rotated 100% of the time (and you can’t afford runes to do this).

1.) Low mobility.
Agreed.
2.) Bad downed-state.
Agreed again.
3.) No sustain.
Not 100% accurate. Meta Necro builds have no sustain, however there are an entire set of builds (MM, spectral, tanky power, support condi) that have amazing sustain and attrition, but cannot fit high tier for some other reason.
4.) Toxic gameplay.
I don’t think this is always the case. Again this is meta builds, condi necro definitely feels toxic, especially during the height of the dumbfire days. However other builds have plenty of potential counterplay, although in some cases the counterplay needs to be made stronger (MM for example has the potential for counterplay, however at the moment all the skill reads are non-existent)

Proposed changes to achieve this:

1.) Increase range of Flesh Wurm and make it exchange place with the necromancer on reactivation instead of killing it.
I wouldn’t have it exchange places, and especially not with an increased CD. The issue is that a really smart team would just avoid killing your wurm for as long as possible, meaning you wouldn’t have what is now a 40s CD stun break, you’d have a 40s+just short of however long the CD of Necrotic Traversal is. For example if you could reactivate the swap every 30s, a good team would just wait 20s then kill it, and now the CD was made effectively 60s.

I’d leave the function as it is now, but with a slightly reduced cast time, increased range, and swap the poison explosion from where the minion is to where the Necro is. To balance this increase the CD to 50 or 60s.

2.) Give necromancers a way to prevent a stomp.
Make it an AoE fear. Combined with the trait, it’d mean we’d have two chances to fear our targets away. I realize this isn’t as strong as certain classes who can just move away, but it brings us up to bar with Guardians, who are in many ways our counterpart.
3.) Flavorful access to vigor.
Make the 25 trait steal endurance on boon removal, or give us access to boon stealing. Your idea is fine as well, but I think the idea of siphoning endurance has been thrown around a lot and would be great.
4.) Remove fearstacking and immobilize stacking GW2 is literally the last game on the planet to not have DRs for CC of any kind. Just don’t make hard CC stack on itself, it should either overwrite what is already applied if of the same type (for example a 2s fear on a 1s feared target should just give it a 2s fear), or be applied at significantly weaker effect (the 2s fear would have 50% efficiency and add 1s).
Remove the stacking but don’t touch anything else. Fear is still a condition, it still gets double-hit by the fact that it is both a stun and a condition and so is hampered by anti-stun and anti-condition mechanics. Make it bad in some other way, but making it not a condition really hurts fear.

Besides that they need to increase the telegraphing of some of our skills, reduce cast times on others, and make attrition available to all builds, not just MM. Take the mechanics that make MM work via traiting, and put it into other trees. Put traits in that add finishers to skills, that add CC condis like cripple/chill/immobilize, add certain fields, fix our siphoning, etc.

Muchacho.2390:

leman.7682:

warriors being teamfight juggernauts == necros can’t be teamfight juggernauts.
Some advanced logic there.

If you want to do advanced logic you should have cited my statement correctly.
I only wrote

Since when are Necromancer teamfight juggernauts?

which is a question (or if you want to interpret it as the statement: necros are not teamfight juggernauts) and then

I thought that were warriors…

which is a statement (we can interpret as warriors are teamfight juggernauts).

Nowhere i see any equality of the two statements, meaning i nowhere conclude from one to the other and back.
Or if we formalize it: If A and B are the two statements,
then i wrote: A and B
And not A<=>B

You assume that warriors being one thing rules out necros from being the same, which is a fallacy, because there is no basis for such a statement.
Hence the ‘==’ mark on my side.
If you want to go further – you stated A (warriors are juggernauts) => B (necros aren’t), which is an implication. In my mind, A = 1, B = 0 making the whole implication false.

And necros, in design at least, are teamfight juggernauts.

What would you guys say if they fixed the ai? would a minion cleric build be viable on certain maps?

NeXeD.3042:

What would you guys say if they fixed the ai? would a minion cleric build be viable on certain maps?

Cleric MM has the same mobility issue every necro does. I got to 184 in yoloQ pretty quickly with my build, and IF they increased my mobility just enough that I could rotate mid fights without losing home, then I’d say I could make the build work very well. All they’d have to do is increase Flesh Wurm’s range a bit, and fix Warhorn 5 so it didn’t put me in combat off of boxes.

I do extremely well at holding home point, but the issue is that if I want to guarantee I never lose home, the only way I can do that is never get involved in mid fights. So my team has to win the 4v5, or their team has to be dumb enough to constantly send people at me. In lower organized play I can “cheat” a bit because while other people try to teamfight somewhere, I’ll just sneak around and backcap their home, and basically try as much as possible to force them to send people to deal with me. But again, at the highest levels of play my playstyle just wouldn’t work because they wouldn’t get out rotated like that.

i fully agree with Moa and Dj but the worst thing is that devs will not even read this feedback , sad but anet is just immune to what we say , they rather do it thier way (bad way)

Totally agree for the Fear stacking, it’s kittened as hell.

Good analysis but: 1) GW2 isn’t worth spending any effort in PVP, 2) Anet won’t give a kitten about suggestions from customers.

Congrats for the deep work anyway.

Blackmoa.3186:

Basically necro is really strong against inexperienced players but gets rather weak against good teams up to a point where having a necromancer is a burden for your team

Untrue. This is probably a matter of personal skill. Good necromancers are very hard to kill and can deal a lot of damage. If you don’t have hard CC and incredible nuking powers, you’re dead.

The only thing Necromancers are really bad at is surviving stunlocks and huge burst, but that goes for most of the classes. They also have limited team support. Necromancers make up for these drawbacks by having a giant HP pool, excellent conditions or immense damage output and several ways to outlive pressure. Having a good necromancer on your team is most certainly not a bad thing, especially versus high level teams.

Bhawb.7408:

NeXeD.3042:

What would you guys say if they fixed the ai? would a minion cleric build be viable on certain maps?

Cleric MM has the same mobility issue every necro does. I got to 184 in yoloQ pretty quickly with my build, and IF they increased my mobility just enough that I could rotate mid fights without losing home, then I’d say I could make the build work very well. All they’d have to do is increase Flesh Wurm’s range a bit, and fix Warhorn 5 so it didn’t put me in combat off of boxes.

I do extremely well at holding home point, but the issue is that if I want to guarantee I never lose home, the only way I can do that is never get involved in mid fights. So my team has to win the 4v5, or their team has to be dumb enough to constantly send people at me. In lower organized play I can “cheat” a bit because while other people try to teamfight somewhere, I’ll just sneak around and backcap their home, and basically try as much as possible to force them to send people to deal with me. But again, at the highest levels of play my playstyle just wouldn’t work because they wouldn’t get out rotated like that.

Pretty much this. I currently run a celestial frost/heal on hit sigil MM in solo PvP and I rule. One reason being not so good enemies… but the main reason is that I stand on point and wait for them to come. After one kill they come 1 on 1 again and again in rage… I keep the point indefinetely.
But if nobody comes to me I just stand there. Minions are slow as am I. Until I ran to the other side, either my team has already one or lost and the point I was defending is gone as well. Even worse when I jump down somewhere, as Minions will often not port but take the long way. i have situations where it takes 10 seconds until my minions finally arrive and that puts me in a really bad situation if moving. MM with cleric or whatever is like a Fortress. It’s heavily defended and hard to take down, but you just can not move. And then there is Moa skill, which is simply stupid.

Yep. Also the warhorn issue where it will put you in combat for hitting a box is really annoying. There are situations where I could very easily rotate to their home point before they can make it to mine… except I run past a box and it puts me in combat and I slow down to the speed of a fat person at walmart whose chair just ran out of juice.

Aedrion.6483:

Having a good necromancer on your team is most certainly not a bad thing, especially versus high level teams.

Seeing that in the combined ToL EU and NA there were no necroes in the finals and only 1 in each region in semi-finals, it would seem that the high level teams don’t really share your sentiment.

Imo, against competent teams, the (condi) necro always needs to some amount of babysitting by his team. And that was fine when we made up for it with the pressure/damage we brought. But the combination of incremental nerfs and the recent buffs to direct damage make it so we don’t really have that strength anymore; so it’s only normal that we fall out of favor compared to classes that are more self-sustained.

Tbh, and this may be a personal issue so I’m curious if you guys experience something similar, I often feel like a force multiplier more than anything else: if we win, I can make us win (a lot) harder; but if we lose, then I was often akin to dead weight. Never do I feel like my presence turned the tide (beyond a mere number advantage, obviously).

We are back to the guard/ele cleansing! Necromancer does not by itself have enough condi damage to pressure the popular setups. It is a different matter if you are running with an engi in your setup, but then again, most teams would stand a better chance of winning by running something else.

It feels like ANET is unsure about how they want to get the necromancer to where it is supposed to be, or if they even know where that is. It has been a roller coaster ride ever since dhuumfire was implemented. And now we are stuck with something worse than pre-dhuumfire.

Necro atm is competly counterd by condi clear and focus , necro just dont fit to current game mode , team needs mobility/sustain/dmg , necro lack all of this. The worst thing is that we have no impact on how to balance necro becouse our feedback is just ignored.

I think 1,5 years past release it’s clear now that the devs doing the balance are complete idiots who know very little about their own game and don’t care about feedback which is why it’s pointless to post suggestions, as sad as it is.

The most recent example of broken game mechanics I came across are power necros spamming lich form auto attack. Even with 1,9k toughness, the auto attacks hit you for 4k and there is nothing you can do about it except for running away. Now if you run a necro with condition spec, you’re already dead because of your non existent mobility. I ran a powerbuild myself for a while and it’s really that easy – pop lich form, 30 seconds of stability and increased hp pool, auto attack -> gg.

Second example: 1,5 years after release there is no sPvP amulet with condition damage, toughness, vitality. Every class running a power based build gets every combination they could possibly want, zerker, knight, cavalier, zerker combined with vitality. If you run a condition spec, you’re forced to use precision or healing power in addition to toughness and condition damage. This is beyond my understanding.

Actually, they asked a while back which amulets we would like added to pvp (for this release) and immediately said dire (condition damage, toughness, vitality) isn’t going to make it, then they started laughing. I realize it could be over the top on other condi classes (engi, ranger, warrior, etc.), but if you keep insisting that Death Shroud is our subsitute for our lack of stability, block, vigor, invulnerablity, stun breaks, mobility, etc. then you’re going to need to allow us to be one hell of a tanky kitten or it’s never going to match up…

That or (and actally preferably) we need a giant boost to life force generation (without ICD kitten, our defenses not scaling with the number of opponents is a real problem and is only made worse by ICD), especially on a condi necro, and we need to be able to be healed in DS. But because of whatever happened in beta, they seem to really fear going that route…

Well, who knows. We weren’t that great last year and then got a good offensive boost, maybe 2014 will be the year of the defense…

djooceboxblast.9876:

It feels like ANET is unsure about how they want to get the necromancer to where it is supposed to be, or if they even know where that is. It has been a roller coaster ride ever since dhuumfire was implemented. And now we are stuck with something worse than pre-dhuumfire.

Unfortunately they have no one who understands the profession at all, past maybe a very light idea of how condi works, and refuse to listen to anyone who knows the class. All they do is browse the sPvP forums, where people, at best, barely understand the meta builds. There have been hundreds of posts of great feedback, multiple sets of threads collecting and putting forward balance ideas, and at the end of the day, we don’t get a shred of the changes needed.

Necro is somewhat balanced 1v1, but lacks in groupfight. That means if we get boosts to ds or survival in general, to make us viable for those situation, we would become op at 1v1. Our deathsroud is prime example for it … you cant balance it, as it is, for 1v1 and groupfight, where one single evade for 1 sec, could mitigrate double the dmg that full ds can absorb. So in my opnion necro doesnt need any buffs or nerfs but rather some clever redesigning.

Speaking of some interesting idea …. it would be nice for a trait that when we are in ds we inflict blindnes to everyone close around us every 3 sec + it would go well with blind → chill trait + it could be in soulreaping line so we would have to decide between 50% crit and this (necro need no boon as stability … conditions all the way … … shroudblindstompanyone?). This trait would be more for sustain build, just what we need in curent meta.

What about some sort of ds overcharge skill, you need full lifeforce to use it and it completely drains you of lifeforce preventing you from generating any for a length of time but you become invulnerable and gain stability for short period of time? Would of course have to trait it for it to he really effective.

What about some sort of ds overcharge skill, you need full lifeforce to use it and it completely drains you of lifeforce preventing you from generating any for a length of time but you become invulnerable and gain stability for short period of time? Would of course have to trait it for it to he really effective.

wouldn’t realy chaneg alot cause you need to win the first teamfight if you want to get full lifeforce.
In general encro survivabiliyt seems to be balanced around havinf 100% lifeforce at all times, which just doesnt happen. What could help there is a out of combat lifeforce regeneration or at least a base value of lifeforce you start with on spawn.

RAWWWWSRRRRSSSSSS

Lemme up in this thread yo!!

Ok I do agree with everything thing you said moa. The biggest concern for me with the necro is its own lack of balance. If we should have sustain over mobility then at least give us sustain…. If we should have a sad excuse for stability at least give us access to invulns or blocks or whatever.

The thing that irks me is how we’re suppose to have all these different hindering aspects to our class because we have strong something else… not sure what the something else is though.

So we have lots of boon strips and boon flips right? But every other class can defend it now easily. EASILY.

So what do we have? Not sure. We have probably the worst sustain. Just the worst. Our so called attrition is a complete illusion. LF pool is emptied with ease and when you’re through with that you’re pretty much screwed unless you rely on your allies.

We definately do less overall damage than before the dhummfire patch. After dhummfire, terror got nerfed, staff 2 got nerfed, our sigs got nerfed, dhummfire got nerfed, spite adept passive got nerfed (weakening shroud), and the list goes on.

The nerfs are real. And all this including diamond skin, warrior anti-necro cc + healing sig, failed new healing skill (lol), and plenty of other anti-necro changes to the game across the board.

So, yeah. We’re suppose to be the worst class in the game. It’s just how anet likes it. All you’re changes are fine. They’re not going to do them. We have the worst stomping capabilities, the worst sustain, the worst mobility, the worst access to boons, the worst power options, the worst form of cc (can be cleared with condi removal and/or stunbreakers), the worst aoe (all come from utilities), the worst access to finishers (blast, projectile, whirl, etc), the worst minion AI in any game I’ve ever experienced, aaand yeah.

So that’s a bit hardcore. And yes, as it is now we’ll always get targeted first and easily stomped first. And if by some chance a teammate is downed we cant help them properly. And if we kill somebody we have the worst time trying to stomp.

Other classes get buffs. We don’t. Just nerfs yo. Deal wif it XD

The saddest part to me is that MM already has like 90% of the things we need (although its still unviable because mobility>everything), but they refuse to adapt the ideas that make MM work (decent HP sustain, high CC, high uptime of debilitating conditions) as an attrition build. Instead, we got pushed further and further into dealing mass damage through spam and having none of the mechanics we’re supposed to.

Maybe this thread should be linked in the Profession Balance subforum?

djooceboxblast.9876:

Maybe this thread should be linked in the Profession Balance subforum?

Not a bad idea, but frankly I don’t think ANet will notice it anyway.

Bhawb.7408:

djooceboxblast.9876:

Maybe this thread should be linked in the Profession Balance subforum?

Not a bad idea, but frankly I don’t think ANet will notice it anyway.

It has a better chance of getting noticed there than here.

yeah i think last post from dev here was when we got dhumfire :P

Even if they notice this they wont do anything …

Well they might even think that necro is in a good state!

Forsaker.9213:

yeah i think last post from dev here was when we got dhumfire :P

Even if they notice this they wont do anything …

No, the most recent post was around the time that huge embarrassment happened where it took them 4 months to publicly announce Putrid Mark had been nerfed.