Guild Wars 2

In my opinion, is where we necromancers excelled (past-tense, since it’s more or less remove entirely from the game at this point) at. It was our niche; we had excellent survivablility courtesy of Feast, Dark Water/Wave of Fear & Plague Blast, decent damage courtesy of Deadly Feast & Wicked Spiral, and nice mobility with Dark Spear & Foul Current. We also had a good enough snare (Sinking Tomb) and a pull/cripple with Deadly Catch. We even had a spammable AoE bleed.

Long story short, we were kings of UW combat- every weapon skill used served a purpose, and nearly every weapon skill provided a condition in addition to its normal effect.

Looking at the here and now, we necromancers need improvement— there’s no denying that. Now we could bicker and argue about the best way of improving our profession, so I’ll leave my suggestion here: allow us to use spears/tridents outside of underwater areas. Sinking Tomb is the only skill immediately I see needing reworking for obvious reasons; the sink effect could be turned into a launch effect, a daze effect, or even a stun/knockdown (seeing a giant tombstone drop on an enemy would be very lol-worthy) and the others would need renaming to adjust from the aqueous to terrestrial environment.

Looking at the long term, if something akin to the above is not done (meaning some sort of profession redesign or major change), it is my belief that the only “balance” we’ll see is if an entire underwater “zone” is implemented into the game, a la Blizzard’s Vashj’ir in WoW’s Cataclysm (my guess is a GW2 version of this would pit us against Bubbles with waves and waves of karka & angry/wayward Largos).

Necromancers are kind of incredible underwater. Single Power Necro can solo couple players

That’s said, when I’m not against the idea of making Trident skins unlockable as Staff skins too (I’d instantly go for my first legendary then – Kraitkin), copying skills isn’t really the best idea ever.

As for little off-topic: I loved Vashi’jir with burning love, one of the best leveling areas in MMOs, ever

Vash’jir was extremely atmospheric and awesome. I doubt that the guys from Anet are able to do that (I didn’t have doubts right after release or during GW1 period though…).

I like underwater combat but it seems most people don’t like it (cuz of why exactly?) and they surely had ideas and concepts but abandoned it. I dreamt of a huge underwater zone where we fight Bubbles (unnamed Elder Dragon) on the way to CANTHA. But since NCSoft prohibited to introduce Cantha it’s very unlikely. But well… maybe in 6 years ^^

Rym.1469:

As for little off-topic: I loved Vashi’jir with burning love, one of the best leveling areas in MMOs, ever

Not to hijack the thread, but it was exceedingly fun although it felt out of place or forced upon us, as you suddenly went from dry land to Atlantis, so to speak.

If ANet were to ever employ such a zone into GW2, it’s my hope that we’d get a transition area; sort of like narrative given in the Straits of Devastation, where there’s an ongoing battle or we’re trying to push to a foot hold, from Tyria/Cantha/Elona proper to the coast line, then the shallows, and then finally off the continental shelf and on to the depths.

ProtoGunner.4953:

But since NCSoft prohibited to introduce Cantha it’s very unlikely. But well… maybe in 6 years ^^

Since when?

Just a not so serious assumption. But they do a lot to hide the Canthan stuff initially planned for release like the Great Collapse in Diviny’s Reach replacing the Canthan district etc.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Just a not so serious assumption. But they do a lot to hide the Canthan stuff initially planned for release like the Great Collapse in Diviny’s Reach replacing the Canthan district etc.

I wouldn’t be surprised if stuff like that was due to them being rushed, or other complications, not necessarily that we aren’t going to Cantha. The final boss fight also wasn’t supposed to be what it is now, but they were basically told to hurry up.

They’ve added Cantha-like stuff since launch, so they aren’t totally shying away from it, just not openly saying HEY WE’RE GOING TO CANTHA when its probably not planned for a long time (since it’d require an expansion or expansion-like update).