Guild Wars 2

Now that we have a very organized bug list thread that has been viewed favorably by Jon Peters it seems like it would be a good idea to start unifying our balance issues into once place so that once that bugs have been corrected they can erasily view some of the potential things that will still need looking at that don’t fall under the category of “bugged”. Please do not make this a whine thread or call for ridiculous buffs that would imbalance the class. The more reasonable and organized this thread remains, the more likely it is that it will actually be reviewed and considered by the dev team.

I’ll start:

*We have pitiful combo finishers: 1 Projectile, 3 Blast 2 of which require pets and kill them in the process, the other being a ground target spell that must be activated by a foe, 0 leap, 1 Whirl (underwater)

*Dagger mobility is a serious issue. Having a cloth class without any inherent survivability or maneuverability seems like a glaring bug to me. A leap and CD reduction on dark pact would go a long way towards correcting this bug. Another problem I see is that for the risk we invest the dagger should have a small cleave mechanic like warrior sword.

*Axe damage gutted for no discernible reason. I remember in BWE axe damage was right where it should be for the 600 range. It also had a very small range cleave and ghastly claws would actually force an opponent to dodge or at least react somehow instead of just laying into us as they east the measly 2-4k damage over the channel duration.

*Life steals in general need to be looked at very closely. I believe the coefficients are bugged because in their current state the level 80 life steal numbers would be unimpressive and barely sufficient on a level 15-20 character. No scaling is afforded whatsoever and I doubt Anet has intended this.

*Wells really need to be GTAoE baseline. Having to invest TWENTY points into a tree that affords almost no other benefits to a well-centric spec seems like a major oversight.

*Pet AI. Pet AI. Pet AI. I was thrilled to see the section in the recent notes about Ranger pets getting AI improvements but was utterly baffled when I couldn’t find a Necromancer section with similar(or any) fixes. Pet AI is still patently horrible. The Flesh Golem has maybe a 20-60% uptime on a target depending on how long combat with them lasts. He either stands next to you watching or runs away and attacks something that you havent even engaged. This is especially problematic when you take into account that these pets, even our elite golem are going to die within sconds of any given pull/boss in dungeons from AoE. I hate to say it, but it would be a good idea to draw some influence from Blizzard and create a trait/passive (maybe to replace the HORRIBLE jagged horror minor) that would reduce AoE damage your pets take by a high percentage (70-90%)

*More of a Quality of Life issue but the current Lich Form elite is simply very cumbersome. It’s nice that it’s imposing and all but the massive character model makes it almost unusable in close quarters combat, puts up a huge “KILL ME” flag in PvP, and is generally just a very strange model in general due to the excessive muscle tone of a supposed necrotic zombie creature. I would love love LOVE to see the possibility added to use the alternate Lich model obtained fro mthe “Ghastly Tonics” in Arah. Much more manageable size and a nicer aesthetic in my opinion.

Jagged Horrors need to be horrible, not dead 5 seconds after they are summoned. Especially with a 30 second cooldown.

I agree with everything you said, especially about the Axe and Dagger mainhand needing some rework. There is absolutely no reason to choose axe or dagger over scepter, and since staff is almost a must have for its utility, necros could really use some buffs to open up usage of their other weapons.

I would also like to add, OUR UNDERWATER SKILLS BLOW! I don’t even go into the water on my necro, I’m afraid of it, I do no damage, and DS is super support oriented underwater. So to do damage I either need to go spear into melee range (which doesn’t work well with my conditions scepter build I’m forced in to.) I would really love to see the Necromancer spear get medium range on its 1 attack. Hell even guardian spear has 600 range on its 1 skill and it does vulnerability. Not sure how they thought that was balanced.

On the Dagger Necrotic Slash Chain, I could care less about it giving me Life force, what I would like to see is the 2nd or 3rd chain give Chill, Cripple, or Life steal.

Maglen.4793:

Jagged Horrors need to be horrible, not dead 5 seconds after they are summoned. Especially with a 30 second cooldown.

This is what worries me about putting traits into Death Magic. I don’t want to give the enemy a free rally. :/ The traits should be helping us, not them.

Death Shroud deals way too little damage with a way too long cast time for even a power/crit/prowess focused character

There is a glaring lack of a group-centric DPS elite. Eles get the fiery greatsword, mesmers the amazing time warp, while the closest necros get is the lich, which is a slightly improved death shroud without the fury (from 15-point Curses). Plague seems to be the group-centric skill of the necro, but the bleed there is too weak to be viable, and blindness is not needed for groups beyond a certain skill threshold.

Warhorn is nearly useless beyond exploration, even for PvP – centric players.

Signet traits are in the Spite tree (power/condition duration), while signets mainly see PvP usage as part of condition builds that benefit most from condition damage and vitality and toughness.

Death Magic 5 and 15 traits are only useful for minion masters, which contradicts the tendency of having the non-selectable bonuses be of use to any build. The jagged horror is useless and, for PvP, actually provides negative utility.

The Spite bonuses are weak, with the most useful of them being the 5 one, which isn’t even related to increasing DPS. A comparison: Curses gets 2-22% straight DPS bonus at 25. Spite gets might (40 power+condition damage) when hit and about to die.

The Terror trait deals too little damage. Something that can only activate once per 10-15 seconds at best should deal at least 1k damage, not the current ~50.

Spectral armor has a way too long recharge. Requiring to be hit a lot for the thing to do something is bad enough; but with a minute and a half of cooldown, even something like a straight boost to 100% life force with no strings attached would have trouble fitting in a build.

I’ll add to this:

Fear: This seems to be the necro’s class defining skill (much as a guardian’s aegis). The problem is access to it is limited to staff, a trait and DS. This seems like an ability that should be slotted as a utility skill. Also why do our fears last 1 second? In comparison warriors and theives can fear for 3 seconds.

Chilling Darkness: Great skill on paper but since this doesn’t work in plague form the ONLY skill that benefits from it is well of darkness (no one’s taking a trait to apply a 1 second chill with deathly swarm). Why not make this into ‘All wells apply 1 second of chill per pulse’.

Why is scepter’s third variation of the #1 attack skill the weakest? This is opposite every other profession (I believe). I’ll explain: First hit 4s bleed, second hit 4s bleed, third hit 2s poison. Vanilla they do the same damage, but of course that’s terrible so let’s add some condition duration that EVERYONE takes- hemophilla (20% longer bleed) and lingering curse (33% longer all). Bleed’s suddenly 53% longer doing 6 ticks of damage and poison (33% longer) is still doing 2 ticks of damage because you need at least 50% longer duration for poison to do an extra tick. Add to that the fact that poison doesn’t stack in intensity. The -33% healing is nice but if #3 was another 4s bleed it’d outpace the healing reduction.

Sigit of Spite- why is the passive power based and the active condition based. I don’t care about power in a condition spec and if I’m power based then it’s a 90 second cooldown cripple.

Our complete lack of mobility is offset by our extra Death Shroud health, I get that. Our lack of a invulnerability (Endure pain, Mist Form, Elixir S) is offset by our extra Death Shroud health, I get that too. Our lack of a stun ability is offset by the death shroud’s ‘Doom’ skill- fine. I don’t understand why Death Shroud is a catch all. Necro’s don’t have unlimited death shroud and being in Death Shroud has the negitive impact of having all your skills being replaced.

Main hand necro weapons are power based: MH Dagger, Axe. Necro weapons that are condition based: scepter. The combo of both and master of support and AoE: staff. A condition based necro is going to take scepter/staff- there is no other choice. A power based necro is going to take axe/staff or dagger/staff. If you want the staff as your main then you’ll probably never switch to another weapon. There’s 0 incentive for any other combination. I’m not calling for staff nerfs (there’s be no reason to weapon switch ever)- I honestly have no idea what the fix here would be.

Corruptions- powerful(?) utilites that inflict conditions to the caster (the necro). Are they so powerful that the caster needs to be damaged as balance? The answer is no as evidenced by the cooldowns and showen by the increased cooldown of corrupt boon. If the drawback was the self inflicted condition then that would have been increased. So are they benefits for the necro? If they’re eaten by consume conditions then yes and you’re now forced to save these for consume conditions. If they’re thrown by plague signet or deathly swarm (pretending that it wasn’t bugged) then still no because you’re now using 2 cooldowns (and another utility slot) for 1 skill. Give necros some benefit for having conditions. Traits that boost for conditions on you. Weapon skills that increase with conditions- I love the underwater Death Shroud. It’s so flavorful (meaning the design of it is very interesting) that I’d love to build around it. Why not give something like this to necros above water? A necro can’t even use all corruptions underwater. (This would also benefit plague signet- which the underwater death shroud has already incorporated into it because the design of it is so amazing)

Consume conditions is a necro’s heal. Unless they’re a well spec or a minion master. Even then consume conditions may be their heal. Blood Fiend is an awful design. As a on-demand heal it takes 2 seperate casts to heal. Clearly not intended to be used that way but having the minion out before you need to be healed risks having the heal going on cooldown when you need it. Pretty high risk for virtually no pay off. Why can’t it work like healing turret? Summon it and it heals you then stays out. Well of Blood’s cooldown is too long. Traited it’s more in line but why does it need a trait to be viable?

Dagger and Axe definitely need more differentiation. IMO Axe should be all about the single target damage and Dagger more of a defensive/control weapon. As it is axe is totally outclasses and while Dagger does nice damage I would trade 10-20% of it for a bit more control/defense/mobility.

The Lich form either needs 5 extra seconds to use or the skills need 2-5 second less cooldown. Most skills in Lich form are only usable once or you’re 90% the way through casting them when Lich form ends abruptly.

I totally agree with everything, especially boosting Axe and Dagger main hand. I don’t like the staff at all…and it seems to be the only good 2nd option depending on your build. Viable alternatives would go a long way for me.

I agree to everything that was said in this thread.
Today Scepter/Dagger + Staff is the only viable alternative for a Necro and, also, it is extremely weak compared to other professions ability to stack conditions and to control.
If they said somewhere that the Warrior is balanced at the moment, I’d expect an huge buff to the Necro coming.

In my opinion minions take up too many utility slots for what they do atm . . I’d suggest not having the generally weaker minions take up utility slots and instead be a class feature .. like death shroud seperate buttons or similiar to mesmers illusion system .. we could still have powerful minions like flesh golem etc as utilty / elite slots. This way we wouldn’t be sacrificing as many utility slots and our utility slots would actually be for utility .. Unslotted minions would obviously be weaker than slotted ones.

• Minions need to regen out of combat.

• Slotted utility minions need a health boost (shouldn’t die in one – two hits) and if
  they were designed to have low hp like the bone minions, the cooldown should be
  lower

• Generally the cd should be lower on all minions .. they are expendable – so it
  shouldn’t cost that much to have them die.

• Minion design should be more intimidating (what’s up with the undead bunnies,
  looking at you bone minion, and jagged horror) Instead of bunnies I suggest remaking them into undead hounds of war.

• Minion Masters should get more utility skills / weapon skills that affect minions .. maybe a skill that sends your minions into a frenzy (increasing dmg and speed etc)
  skills that heal your minions (maybe by damaging you, like in gw1)

• Minions damage should scale with necromancer’s stats.

• Shadow fiends haunt, should do increased damage and have lower / instant cast time.

Also someone suggested we should get more weapon abilities where we actually sent temporary minions to attack our enemies, then despawn. Somewhat like the witchdoctor in diablo.

Not much interest in doing something like this I guess?

Shredicus.8706:

Now that we have a very organized bug list thread that has been viewed favorably by Jon Peters it seems like it would be a good idea to start unifying our balance issues into once place so that once that bugs have been corrected they can erasily view some of the potential things that will still need looking at that don’t fall under the category of “bugged”. Please do not make this a whine thread or call for ridiculous buffs that would imbalance the class. The more reasonable and organized this thread remains, the more likely it is that it will actually be reviewed and considered by the dev team.

I’ll start:

*We have pitiful combo finishers: 1 Projectile, 3 Blast 2 of which require pets and kill them in the process, the other being a ground target spell that must be activated by a foe, 0 leap, 1 Whirl (underwater)

*Dagger mobility is a serious issue. Having a cloth class without any inherent survivability or maneuverability seems like a glaring bug to me. A leap and CD reduction on dark pact would go a long way towards correcting this bug. Another problem I see is that for the risk we invest the dagger should have a small cleave mechanic like warrior sword.

*Axe damage gutted for no discernible reason. I remember in BWE axe damage was right where it should be for the 600 range. It also had a very small range cleave and ghastly claws would actually force an opponent to dodge or at least react somehow instead of just laying into us as they east the measly 2-4k damage over the channel duration.

*Life steals in general need to be looked at very closely. I believe the coefficients are bugged because in their current state the level 80 life steal numbers would be unimpressive and barely sufficient on a level 15-20 character. No scaling is afforded whatsoever and I doubt Anet has intended this.

*Wells really need to be GTAoE baseline. Having to invest TWENTY points into a tree that affords almost no other benefits to a well-centric spec seems like a major oversight.

*Pet AI. Pet AI. Pet AI. I was thrilled to see the section in the recent notes about Ranger pets getting AI improvements but was utterly baffled when I couldn’t find a Necromancer section with similar(or any) fixes. Pet AI is still patently horrible. The Flesh Golem has maybe a 20-60% uptime on a target depending on how long combat with them lasts. He either stands next to you watching or runs away and attacks something that you havent even engaged. This is especially problematic when you take into account that these pets, even our elite golem are going to die within sconds of any given pull/boss in dungeons from AoE. I hate to say it, but it would be a good idea to draw some influence from Blizzard and create a trait/passive (maybe to replace the HORRIBLE jagged horror minor) that would reduce AoE damage your pets take by a high percentage (70-90%)

*More of a Quality of Life issue but the current Lich Form elite is simply very cumbersome. It’s nice that it’s imposing and all but the massive character model makes it almost unusable in close quarters combat, puts up a huge “KILL ME” flag in PvP, and is generally just a very strange model in general due to the excessive muscle tone of a supposed necrotic zombie creature. I would love love LOVE to see the possibility added to use the alternate Lich model obtained fro mthe “Ghastly Tonics” in Arah. Much more manageable size and a nicer aesthetic in my opinion.

Daggers don’t need a gap closer. We have DS for that.

Pet AI is bad, and needs to be fixed.

Wells should be ground target-able as a base line, Agree with that. This would free up some builds. I also think that their CD is to high for only being effective for 5 sec. The longer CD was from a day were the effect lasted for 10sec. Since they have half’ed the effective time down to 5sec, the CD need to be adjusted as well. Also getting 80 HP from each pulse of wells, so 400hp from a ~30sec double trait’ed CD ability is just way too low for investing two major traits.

Lich form should be smaller.

Well honestly, IMO i like the wells not being ground targeted Because thats what i am use to and like using. I DO agree with the fact thats its i na bad spot in the trait line. Should probably be one of the 5 or maybe a 10 trait. Cds arent too bad. I can live with it. I do not know much about the pulsing all that i know is that if u spec healing power + 4 wells/with protection and regan.. OP tank necro

Tony.2150:

Well honestly, IMO i like the wells not being ground targeted Because thats what i am use to and like using. I DO agree with the fact thats its i na bad spot in the trait line. Should probably be one of the 5 or maybe a 10 trait. Cds arent too bad. I can live with it. I do not know much about the pulsing all that i know is that if u spec healing power + 4 wells/with protection and regan.. OP tank necro

for 5 sec this is true. But they can dodge (well not if you play it right) out of it, then come in and kill you. Or a Guard will just CC you out of it, and by the time your back up from the knockback the Wells are done. Next time take a look at how much it heals.

I do agree in some ways, its a real plan to have them ground targeted when you don’t want them to be. (e.i some dagger builds).

Yes i do agree some guards are annoying. But the another point is i explained this a while back post that got deleted. so now i refrain from cussing. which turns into "kitten"s…..
The point of wells is to have Burst. Though i can easily kill someone without it just as well as with is. It just requires more time, and more effort meaning which ( switching weps back and forth). When i get off work tonight i will see how the pusling heal works and if + healing power actually effects it as it needs to be. I noticed that our traits for Life steal in Blood, Is a little low, 25 Hp per hit? Why doesnt healing power affect this? Which it doesnt, Why not increase the gain amount…. 25 is really low… maybe 150 is ok i can live with that. IN other words. The trait not sure of the name the one that 50% bonus life siphon? Why doesnt this affect life steal? If it does? does it affect LS on weapon sigils?. And does it affect pulsing. Ill see what i can do when i get off work.

Tony.2150:

Yes i do agree some guards are annoying. But the another point is i explained this a while back post that got deleted. so now i refrain from cussing. which turns into "kitten"s…..
The point of wells is to have Burst. Though i can easily kill someone without it just as well as with is. It just requires more time, and more effort meaning which ( switching weps back and forth). When i get off work tonight i will see how the pusling heal works and if + healing power actually effects it as it needs to be. I noticed that our traits for Life steal in Blood, Is a little low, 25 Hp per hit? Why doesnt healing power affect this? Which it doesnt, Why not increase the gain amount…. 25 is really low… maybe 150 is ok i can live with that. IN other words. The trait not sure of the name the one that 50% bonus life siphon? Why doesnt this affect life steal? If it does? does it affect LS on weapon sigils?. And does it affect pulsing. Ill see what i can do when i get off work.

It does effect the Life siphon on crit. so it ends up being a little higher (52hp), It is not effected by +healing that i can tell. Bloodthirst is the name, it does not effect Minion life siphon nor does it effect Life Steal from sigils. Perhaps because its Life Steal and not Life Siphon? It also nerfs our HP gain from our life siphon signet (bug).

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Daggers don’t need a gap closer. We have DS for that.

Dark Path has it’s own issues. The projectile is too slow and the range too short. I’d take a longer cooldown on it if it was just a cast-time teleport.

I feel like the Necro was a victim of “we did too many changes at once without realizing how it affects a single aspect” syndrome. I just read about how the Vulnerability condition used to be flat armor shred, so it was nerfed to be a percent damage taken increase. The Axe, at the time, was too powerful when Vulnerability was armor shred, so it’s attack speed and damage was decreased. However, Vulnerability was already getting its own nerf. So really, the Necro got two nerfs in one.