Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, one thing that troubled me (among the several things said during the ready up) was the fact that Necro’s want to be hit. That got me thinking. What mechanisms do we have that supports the idea that we want to be hit?

We have one trait, that gives us retaliation when we go into DS, though it is not very damaging, and we have a cruddy vamp signet that heals us when we get hit, though it is near useless and not used practically at all.

So here are some ideas that would further support the Dev’s idea that the necro wants to be hit.

1. Retaliation: Give us more relatiation power, in that when we have retal up, we truly want to be hit. In fact, give us a trait, or add it to the existing that that when we get hit under the effects of retal, we regen Life force.

2. Death’s mirror/Mirror of Death: Give us a Death Magic grandmaster trait that has two effects (hence the mirror name) – Instead of reflecting damage back, convert a certain (significant but not overwhelming) percent of the damage the necromancer traits into LIFEFORCE when not in death shroud, or into health regen when in DS. That way, we actually want to get hit in certain circumstances, because getting hit actually helps us stay alive to a certain degree (at least in some circumstances). In a 1 v 1, make the percentage not huge, but noticeable, but in a focus fire, perhaps it could scale up at the rate at which we take damage, we regen LF/health faster. More damage, faster rate of LF/Health regen in those circumstance.

3. Another possible idea is that when we get hit by CC out of death shroud a random boon is generated. When hit by CC in LF, an existing condition is cleared.

There are several ideas that could be implemented in order to support the Dev statement that we “want to be hit.”

Right now, I am not seeing it as we don’t get health, life-force, or any added benefit from “being hit.”

Another thing they could do is add a lot more health threshold stuff into traits and skills. Extra benefits when you’re low on health can generate a high risk-high-reward playstyle if done correctly. Blood Magic is ideally the best traitline to get these, but they have to be meaningful and come along with ways to recover decently if we need to.

Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk, Locust Swarm, Signet Of Vampirism, all skills that require being hit to get a benefit. As well as corruption skills which allow you either to transfer the condition applied by the corruption skill or to strengthen the heal of Consume Conditions.

Locust Swarm doesn’t require being hit…

Want to be hit? Then play Guild Wars 2.

This game has loads of “gain free bonus when someone hits you” and it’s only getting more. No game that legitimately takes itself seriously would make taking damage so trivial or rewarding.

I do not see how being hit offers any advantage for Necromancer. Even gaining Life Force on Spectral skills is a poor trade for losing health. I just chalked the comment up to them not understanding how Necro worked.

Maybe they meant getting hit by nerfs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpF6GVJqgl8

Anchoku.8142:

I do not see how being hit offers any advantage for Necromancer. Even gaining Life Force on Spectral skills is a poor trade for losing health. I just chalked the comment up to them not understanding how Necro worked.

It’s not about gaining advantages, it’s just poor design. When HP is a number that can be quantified at points between 100% and 0% (the former being maximum and the latter being dead), reducing that number should be a raw sign of player dominance over another player. Instead, we get things like retaliation, auras and threshold triggers that reward players for effectively being bad, all in a limp-wristed attempt to add some depth to this game’s shallow combat.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Maybe they meant getting hit by nerfs.

Valid point.

Retaliation, spectral skills, vampirism signet, siphoned power (gain might when hit below health threshold). These are obvious.

Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm, Plague Signet (active), Well of Power and Consume Conditions are stronger when you have conditions on you. We can even actively put conditions on ourselves with Corruptions, and draw conditions onto us from other players (Plague Signet, Unholy Martyr).

Other than that, we have a huge health pool and multiple ways to gain life-force, regen, life-siphon so we can shrug off small hits, and with access to protection and weakness, we can make incoming hits smaller. Necromancers don’t rely heavily on vigor/blind/aegis/blocking like some other professions to avoid getting hit.

Maybe one of the new utilities will pulse Taunt, forcing players to hit us while we have something like Spectral Armor up, and potentially it (or another) ability will provide other effects on-hit, such as chills, weakness, etc. It would also combo well with wells, forcing players to stay in them or go back into them (see: taunting into Well of Darkness, traiting to give WoD chill, the other player not really hitting you while stacking chill as you slap them around with Dagger #1).

Could work.

misterdevious.6482:

Retaliation, spectral skills, vampirism signet, siphoned power (gain might when hit below health threshold). These are obvious.

Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm, Plague Signet (active), Well of Power and Consume Conditions are stronger when you have conditions on you. We can even actively put conditions on ourselves with Corruptions, and draw conditions onto us from other players (Plague Signet, Unholy Martyr).

Other than that, we have a huge health pool and multiple ways to gain life-force, regen, life-siphon so we can shrug off small hits, and with access to protection and weakness, we can make incoming hits smaller. Necromancers don’t rely heavily on vigor/blind/aegis/blocking like some other professions to avoid getting hit.

The thing is we gain advantages when we are hit, but it’s still better not getting hit. A good of example of wanting to get hit is defiant stance. Even there you have to be carefull due to stuns.

Forsaker.9213:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpF6GVJqgl8

You know, it’s funny. “We want you to get hit,” would have been almost justifiable (aside from the fact that getting hit is objectively a bad thing), if they had just set all of the necromancer threshold procs at really high points like 75% – 100% or just made them all more or less guaranteed RNG with a cooldown (like runes with “50% chances to proc ‘x’ when struck”). Making stuff like Last Gasp proc at 50% HP is awful because necro has no real way to bounce back from -50% total HP. Then they say stuff like “You have a huge HP pool” means anything when necromancer doesn’t even have that many HP threshold procs at all (not that such things are interesting or balanced in any way).

And yet people still get excited for specializations or think entirely within the design philosophy of anet when saying how any given class could be “better” or “more balanced.”

Anchoku.8142:

I do not see how being hit offers any advantage for Necromancer. Even gaining Life Force on Spectral skills is a poor trade for losing health. I just chalked the comment up to them not understanding how Necro worked.

Have you actually played a proper DS bunker in sPvP/duels? It easily beat both well and minion bunker just because of LF regen.

The problem I see with necro is not the “i want to be hit” role is that the class does not support that instance.
It’s being long the last time I played with necro so correct me if i’m wrong.

We are a light armour class with little direct DPS and although conditions are fine they are proven to be insufficient to survive anything. Even the necro have a hard time surviving in PvE.
We are a class with light armour. We have the biggest health pool but that’s not enough when you get hit for 5K and you can’t regenerate that fast.

I has some pointers to improve the mechanics but maybe it’s just my idea of how this class would be a lot of fun and it doesn’t need to like everyone:

• Improve melee damage, we should have a better constant DPS, not base on spike like ranger. The damage could be direct or condition based but has to be significant.
• All weapons should have an skill to siphon life. Even some of them should be in the AA.
• This is my taste but the staff should became a melee weapon. Be used as scythe, we already have the effect when we use it. Marks could become in place instead long range. Improved direct damage and marks to be bigger and more relevant.
• Avoid direct healing/regeneration skills. Instead use intensively steal life like effects. Taking much direct damage damage because low defenses needs direct healing instead regeneration.
• Minions should be deleted from the utilities. Instead there should be en skill F2 that allows us to call up 5 bone minions. F3 would do the explosion effect. The skills could use life force to somehow balance it’s use.
• Meat Golem could stay as elite. However could use also LF and so reduce the CD or make it stronger. Meat golem should have two instances one activated: Aggresive and Deffensive. First one attack my target like the other minions. Second stay close and attack my attackers. This could be switched by the utility skill itself having two states.
• Because we lost our long range weapon our minions would be it. They have to get a little bit stronger to be balance things. Maybe also be able to reduce AoE damage by trait. Greater leash, at least 2000 units, like the ranger pet. There could be the problem of not be able to attack with them to some targets, for that we should choose carefully our utilities skills.
• Sceptre could be reduced to 600 units and improve the direct damage/conditions damage to affirm the role of the minions and utilities as long range attack.
• Minions don’t need to be smart opposite to the ranger pet that should be able to avoid AoE and do dodges. This minions just attack my target all the time like mindless expendable creatures they are. Be reliable.
• Also the utility skills lost could be replace by some skills to be replacement of long range weapon. Because they have CD we still would relay in our minions.
• Traits about minions could stay the same, making them stronger, tougher and siphone life.
• We should be able to have more fear utilities. Fear is the condition that defines necros but we only have like two skills. To balance the fear could last as little as 1 sec in some cases. Some even as weapon skills.
• Also we need to apply longer fear where applicable. 2 secs fear is not useful in a 40 seconds CD skill. We see how works with Jormag and well designed is manageable.

In general traits and utility skills needs some revision and revamp to make it by the rol anet pretended for the necro. Right now we are the punching bags (free bags) of the game being only useful in very exceptional and few cases.
As i see necro it should be a class that brings fear and death into the heart of his enemies, other players should see the necro like something you don’t want to get close to, same as warrior but for different reasons.

Yeah, I probably disagree with all of that. The real problem with the necromancer, is that the game has superior game mechanics (DPS, Might, reflection, Blocking, Invulnerability, Burning), and inferior game mechanics (Minions, Fear, Conditions, DS, Blind, Chill, Pets). Most classes have sort of a balance between a few superior, and a few inferior game mechanics. But oddly enough, the necromancer is stuck with mostly just inferior mechanics.

In a well balanced game, no game mechanic would be inferior to another. They would all be roughly in the same spot. And then the game designers would be totally in their right to balance the classes around those mechanics, assuming they are equal. The game designers at Anet seem to be balancing the classes, under the false assumption that all the mechanics are equal, when they are clearly not. Until they change this mindset, there will never be balance.

Take fear for instance. Yes, our average fear duration is pretty pathetic (especially when compared to fear on PVE monsters, or even that of other classes). But why would you want to use fear? The entire game revolves around DPS, and having enemies run away from you and your allies, directly contradicts with that goal.

Then conditions. In large groups condition removal can easily be spammed, making it pretty useless. In other situations, conditions simply take time to do their damage potential (making it inferior to direct damage, right out of the gate). But add on top of that the widespread condition resistance and condition immunity on bosses, who have no such resistance against DPS, and a clear imbalance is noticeable. Then there’s the condition cap, which further more holds this mechanic back. So objectively, DPS is always better than conditions as they are now.

Then take control skills. Same story really. Defiant and Indomitable render this mechanic void, when DPS has no such equivalent. And would you rather be juggling your enemy, or killing them? PVE currently makes no use of control skills. They are hardly a requirement for anything, so what is the reason for using them? Again, DPS is the better alternative clearly.

And keep in mind, our class is focused on all these inferior game mechanics. ^

Then there’s the dodge mechanic, which is probably the most broken aspect of the game. It all sounds good on paper. All classes have the endurance to dodge twice, which should make them balanced. But isn’t invulnerability basically an extra dodge? Isn’t anything that grants you endurance, equal to extra dodges as well? What about evasion, or blocking? And now we have introduced a huge balance problem. Because the necromancer is the only class that is stuck with just 2 dodges. Our Deathshroud does not block conditions, or control skills, or even damage. We take the full hit. And although we have double the health of any other class when we use it, we can’t use our utility skills, can’t heal, and it doesn’t scale against focused fire or against really big hits. Something that anyone with invulnerability would shrug off, costs us health. We even get juggled in pvp/wvw while in DS, unable to escape, while any other class can simply pop their invulnerability to make a clean get away.

THIS IS BROKEN

And it is mostly broken, because the game’s combat is broken. DPS dominates the game, and it shouldn’t be that way. But is also broken because of the unequal distribution of defensive abilities, and of dodges.

Fear is great for solo ranged play, though! Staff AA ftw!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Yeah, I probably disagree with all of that. The real problem with the necromancer, is that the game has superior game mechanics (DPS, Might, reflection, Blocking, Invulnerability, Burning), and inferior game mechanics (Minions, Fear, Conditions, DS, Blind, Chill, Pets). Most classes have sort of a balance between a few superior, and a few inferior game mechanics. But oddly enough, the necromancer is stuck with mostly just inferior mechanics.

In a well balanced game, no game mechanic would be inferior to another. They would all be roughly in the same spot. And then the game designers would be totally in their right to balance the classes around those mechanics, assuming they are equal. The game designers at Anet seem to be balancing the classes, under the false assumption that all the mechanics are equal, when they are clearly not. Until they change this mindset, there will never be balance.

Take fear for instance. Yes, our average fear duration is pretty pathetic (especially when compared to fear on PVE monsters, or even that of other classes). But why would you want to use fear? The entire game revolves around DPS, and having enemies run away from you and your allies, directly contradicts with that goal.

Then conditions. In large groups condition removal can easily be spammed, making it pretty useless. In other situations, conditions simply take time to do their damage potential (making it inferior to direct damage, right out of the gate). But add on top of that the widespread condition resistance and condition immunity on bosses, who have no such resistance against DPS, and a clear imbalance is noticeable. Then there’s the condition cap, which further more holds this mechanic back. So objectively, DPS is always better than conditions as they are now.

Then take control skills. Same story really. Defiant and Indomitable render this mechanic void, when DPS has no such equivalent. And would you rather be juggling your enemy, or killing them? PVE currently makes no use of control skills. They are hardly a requirement for anything, so what is the reason for using them? Again, DPS is the better alternative clearly.

And keep in mind, our class is focused on all these inferior game mechanics. ^

Then there’s the dodge mechanic, which is probably the most broken aspect of the game. It all sounds good on paper. All classes have the endurance to dodge twice, which should make them balanced. But isn’t invulnerability basically an extra dodge? Isn’t anything that grants you endurance, equal to extra dodges as well? What about evasion, or blocking? And now we have introduced a huge balance problem. Because the necromancer is the only class that is stuck with just 2 dodges. Our Deathshroud does not block conditions, or control skills, or even damage. We take the full hit. And although we have double the health of any other class when we use it, we can’t use our utility skills, can’t heal, and it doesn’t scale against focused fire or against really big hits. Something that anyone with invulnerability would shrug off, costs us health. We even get juggled in pvp/wvw while in DS, unable to escape, while any other class can simply pop their invulnerability to make a clean get away.

THIS IS BROKEN

And it is mostly broken, because the game’s combat is broken. DPS dominates the game, and it shouldn’t be that way. But is also broken because of the unequal distribution of defensive abilities, and of dodges.

I agree with most of it. That’s why i pointed:
Fear can do damage when applied as there is a trait for it. Fear allows you also to have a free attack on the mob when they leave. Also gives you breeding room to do other stuff. Fear is a very usefull condition the problem is that is being very poorly applied on the necro. Example: Your scythe has a mark that do 3 secs fear and 5 secs of cripple. You are surrounded and call it. Suddenly you have room to do whatever you want, from finishing one of the mobs to cast other utilities or even run to safetly.
You are right with conditions. But there is not easy solution there. First, the damage from our conditions must be significant. A bleeding that does 300 by tick for example, same as guardian burning. So even if the foe use cleanses it will get one tick at least and that’s an extra damage to have in mind. Add that with continuous condition application by our weapons and the foe should have it difficult to keep up.

About the control effects i thought they where more oriented for the enemy players. The PvE mostly has no use for it with any class anyway. If the mob get smarter then yes, you could begin to use control skills to avoid so much evading damage.

Well they tend to make condition usefull in the new map they create and since condition cap seem to be in it’s way to be removed from pve, it may not be an issue in the futur.

I think that what you don’t understand with fear is that it’s a condition that also control your ennemi, so :
- In 1v1, a condition that controle your ennemi and do damage is extremely powerfull.
- In 1vX (assuming you are solo), it’s also extremely powerfull
- In XvX this condition make your foe run from you or your party. So, even if it does damage, it also destroy the damage of your allies. So it become an hindrance. And in PvE, fear is an Hindrance.

In this game that is mostly about teamplay, Fear and Terror are like the necromancer, selfish and out of place.

i think fear should work more like a stun.. not everyone who is afraid runs away some get so scared they cant even move :P

A stun is good. Fearing while running a dagger is annoying.

Personally, Fear would be better if it stunned and gave 2X damage while opponents /cower.

You make a good point there Anchoku. Without that all important damage increase, a stun is still inferior to raw damage. Due to the overblown boon spam in the game, most classes can ignore the damage they receive (or heal right through it without even speccing towards healing). So while you are stunning an enemy (which is not needed), you could also be doing damage to that enemy (which is what the game is all about). So a stun has no place, unless the game balance changes dramatically.

Although I do agree that a stun would be more useful than them running away. At least as far as PVE is concerned. For that purpose alone, a trait that changes the fear into a stun would be perfect, since that would put the choice with the players. (Because in wvw it is a lot of fun to fear a bunch of players down a cliff, and it would be a shame to eliminate that possibility)

I’ve only been playing necro for a little while, no real amount in pvp but I’m starting to get a grasp on how the profession (is supposed to) work.

The first thing that really stood out to me, and which to me seems really counterintuitive to necro supposably being a durable profession, is that you can’t heal in deathshroud. No healing at all not even from the healing minion. Strange.

If you ask me necro should retain their heal and utility skills and gain healing while in deathshroud. That should make them a lot more durable. At the moment deathshroud feels very restrictive and frankly favors glass cannon builds more than anything.
I do feel that the siphon on the third chain of the dagger auto attack would need toning down though. Dagger auto attack spam feels rather strong.

I still think that they should revert the change they made to DS, where damage spills into our actual health pool. Because by removing that, they removed a fun mechanic from the necro, and our only way of blocking a single massive hit. All classes have access to a means of negating massive damage which is superior to what DS used to be, and still they nerfed DS regardless!

We should also be given permanent stability while in DS as a baseline, and be allowed healing in DS. Because our class mechanic should not be inferior to what is essentially a common skill for other classes.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You make a good point there Anchoku. Without that all important damage increase, a stun is still inferior to raw damage. Due to the overblown boon spam in the game, most classes can ignore the damage they receive (or heal right through it without even speccing towards healing). So while you are stunning an enemy (which is not needed), you could also be doing damage to that enemy (which is what the game is all about). So a stun has no place, unless the game balance changes dramatically.

Stuns have a place, just not while stability and invulnerability periods are around (the whole board really needs to be redrawn). Stuns also don’t need to be 2+ seconds long. I still don’t understand why anet made things like super speed, super jumping, leap skills (although they are very ridgedly scripted), and then still loaded such emphasis on stuns and soft CC. It’d be easier on the UI and more enjoyable to just have players moving around constantly and catching up with each other instead of one player effortlessly hitting another player who then can’t move normally or at all for 2-8 seconds. Hard and soft CC are there to get in one or two big hits, not telling a guy that he would be better off making a sandwhich during this life while some other jerkwad takes 5 seconds to hammer through a shallow rotation while his character is more or less immobile or his active positioning is permanently invalidated.

The whole thing is nonsense. It’s also a thing that I corrected with a necro rework.

I totally agree with you there. In fact, the game might be better off if they removed invulnerability completely from all classes. It was the cause of many problems in GW1 as well. (Obsidian Flesh, and the nightmare that was Shadowform)

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I totally agree with you there. In fact, the game might be better off if they removed invulnerability completely from all classes. It was the cause of many problems in GW1 as well. (Obsidian Flesh, and the nightmare that was Shadowform)

I agree. Protect is strong, yet every profession has even stronger damage avoidance skills. Total avoidance should have super glassy builds associated to give equivalent damage taken by tanker professions.

This “I’ll just mash buttons and come out smelling fresh-like” is garbage. There is a bit too much fantasy involved in profession mechanics. Avoiding attacks by watching for tells should have higher reward than executing a rotation or traiting an auto immunity.

Anchoku.8142:

There is a bit too much fantasy involved in profession mechanics.

By “fantasy,” you must mean “flavor.” Flavor is a terrible design foundation. It’s much easier to just make a diverse body of things that work and then mask engaging, functional mechanics in flavor skins as one sees fit. Instead, GW2 got “deal damage” and “be invulnerable” which was to be spread across 8 (now 9) classes.

Anchoku.8142:

Avoiding attacks by watching for tells should have higher reward than executing a rotation or traiting an auto immunity.

It still makes me wonder why dodge wasn’t just a half-second parry to be used while WASD’ing while weapon bars had more raw movement abilities that didn’t necessarily deal damage. Instead of leaping, sprinting, super speed or boost jumping, we get things like “Throw Axe,” “Throw Torch,” or an entire weapon bar of skills that are all the same mechanic copy pasted over 4 slots such as necro staff in a limp-wristed attempt to pass of “flavor” as good game design.

I am one of the few who actually hates staff but uses it because as a condi user I have no other option. It’s bad at stacking bleeds, it’s slow as hell as an auto and easily avoided, and unless traited has really bad cooldowns. i so hope this greatsword uses both condi and pwr.

Gryph.8237:

I am one of the few who actually hates staff but uses it because as a condi user I have no other option. It’s bad at stacking bleeds, it’s slow as hell as an auto and easily avoided, and unless traited has really bad cooldowns. i so hope this greatsword uses both condi and pwr.

I don’t hate it but now I run staff-less with scepter/dagger & warhorn,I am mainly looking for utility/recovery in traits I feel restricted in my weapons and utilities already.

Necro starts PvP with 0 LF, but necro wants to get hit.
Necro sees opponent, pops skill that provides bonus when hit, because necro wants to get hit.
Opponent counters by NOT hitting Necro, waits until skill is over, even though necro wants to get hit.
Opponent hits necro when necro doesn’t get bonus for getting hit, cause you know, necro wants to get hit.
Necro dies quickly.

I think Fear (the effect) is ok like it is. It is annoying as hell that’s right but i like a little bit of everything, not all the effects can be stunned or knockdown (same happens to the Ranger and the PBS annoying but i think is very important that utility to stay) . As long as can’t be spawned every sec should be ok.
About the damage is happening now (i don’t know if you didn’t know that or you don’t play necro). The trait is been there for years, the problem is the damage is too low again, so it’s a point wasted.
Even, let’s think they get longer effect and because is 3 secs running someone fall off a cliff.
That could be avoidable if the other player could be aware of the surroundings. Are you fighting a necro in EotM? So be ready to bring cleanses and careful where you stand.

Also our skills could be extensive to group. For example: a trait could make when we siphon life a percentage could go to the group at cost of loose some self healing. We get less health leached but the group would get some. Or being able to eat conditions from the group and send them to the foes. I don’t know, there is some much play for a real offensive corruption/condition class with group support not using straight physical DPS…

As i described the necro i think could make it much more fun. It stills have it’s weakness but is not like now that can’t actually neither do damage neither support.