Guild Wars 2

I main mesmer, but it is clear mesmer’s boon ripping abilities are nowhere near the necro. Sure, you can AA them, and slowly rip all boons, or even use null field and get a burst ripping. And to some extent, I guess mesmer can be a good second choice behind necro (although tempest is getting some too…).
But if you can facetank with your mesmer and do your AA rotation undisturbed or if the boss stands peacefully in your null field, I seriously stop raids. Necro’s boon ripping are the most easy to actually hit: the signets hit at range, locust even in AOE, the axe, “Corrupt Boon” and the DS-2 too… Those are not so easy to miss and remove many boons at a time.

Ideally, the boss would have “burst booning” like a shout guardian, and you won’t want to wait the mesmer AA to remove them 1 by 1 until you reach 25 might, fury and protection. Then necro would be good. The fact that they added boon ripping on ele probably means that raids will need it and they didn’t want to have so few classes having access to it. And that also means necro will not be “needed” as such but hopefully one of the best choices.

What PvE reaper is going to spec into Signets of Suffering over Close to Death? You are giving up 20% extra damage below 50% health for some crappy boon rip on signets, which are also some of your worst and most selfish PvE utilities. That’s a metric ton of damage potential to give up just for boon rip.

Similarly, axe is a terrible weapon, what necro is gonna run it in PvE if they haven’t now? You might as well use focus #5 over it with dagger.

Dark Path is not available to Reaper, no boon removal there.

I don’t see how you people say mesmer has no boon rip. iDisenchanter removes 2 per hit, null field does removes 2 per pulse, your autoattack removes 1 (as do your sword clones), and greatsword #3 removes one as well. No trait investments involved or crappy utility choices for PvE.

Zenith.7301:

What PvE reaper is going to spec into Signets of Suffering over Close to Death? You are giving up 20% extra damage below 50% health for some crappy boon rip on signets, which are also some of your worst and most selfish PvE utilities. That’s a metric ton of damage potential to give up just for boon rip.

Similarly, axe is a terrible weapon, what necro is gonna run it in PvE if they haven’t now? You might as well use focus #5 over it with dagger.

Dark Path is not available to Reaper, no boon removal there.

I don’t see how you people say mesmer has no boon rip. iDisenchanter removes 2 per hit, null field does removes 2 per pulse, your autoattack removes 1 (as do your sword clones), and greatsword #3 removes one as well. No trait investments involved or crappy utility choices for PvE.

Path of Corruption buffs both Dark Path and RS2. And Axe is getting reworked, we just don’t know how yet, so it’s possible that it won’t be garbage by the time HoT hits.

You have no clue what PvE will be like. I don’t get why this is difficult. Elementalists have high DPS because mobs are stupid and stand in fields, if Anet returns (yes returns, because it was originally in the game) the AI that makes mobs move out of pulsing effects Elementalist DPS drops hard. Same if they make mobs hit hard consistently, in a way that just dodging doesn’t mitigate, and zerker thief/ele gets two shot. They could very easily hard-counter the entire PvE meta if they wanted.

Stop comparing the way PvE works now to the way it will work. They can make fields extremely difficult to use by having highly mobile fights, they can make boon stripping mandatory by having bosses that apply every boon in the game to themselves once every 30s, they can make control/range necessary by having a boss that instantly kills anything within a small radius around itself, make conditions required by having mobs with 8k armor. They can take everything you think GW2 PvE is about and completely flip it on its head.

The reason the current PvE meta exists as it does is because every nearly every single fight is a stationary DPS race where the only threat is an occassional highly telegraphed nuke. Glass cannon builds can exist because active damage negation can allow them to work, but if bosses hit quickly and hard Ele and thieves would drop like flies. Things like stacking exist because bosses don’t punish it well, but they easily could.

Until we have further details, stop assuming that ANet will go out of their way to say they will highlight all the unique combat GW2 has, only to give us the exact same PvE they say they won’t give us.

They will never revert the AI to walk out of lava font. If you were in beta, you should have known the very reason they changed it is because players could then exploit this AI by keeping it permanently displaced, a form of free CC.

And ele doesn’t need staff for top notch DPS. D/F ele is only behind by ~1-2k DPS and it’s all mobile damage, and their melee range is actually larger than max melee range so they don’t even need to get in swinging distance of boss melee.

Only thing I know is that I higly doubt that the necromancer will shine by it’s survivability. The necromancer’s defence mechanism is good against small hit not against the kind of hit you encounter in PvE. To put it simply, a single elite mob (thing that commonly appear as soon as you are 10) will wreck your LF bar in 2 hit even if you’re built tanky.

I think, the real worth of the necromancer would only happen if the party had to face encounters in degeneration field (something that would look like a lot the first boss duo in TA aetherpath) since our worth as a support mostly come when you need a kind of sustain.

What’s sad is that the whole reason the necromancer is left behind ATM will probably be the same reason the necromancer will be left behind : The necromancer does not add anything to the party synergy. (In short : unreliable finisher and unwanted combo field)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I can really only imagine two ways raids play out.

1. No DPS check, everyone wears nomad’s and soldiers and wears the bosses down.

2. DPS check, highest dps comps and active defenses reign supreme once again.

Maybe. But there are in between ways.

If there are DPS checks on extended fights, with tight mechanics it might prove worthy to go for a combination of survivability and dps.
You can go full berzerker gear, but if the fight is harsh enough that your elementalists go down every other AoE, then you still won’t make the DPS check.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I can imagine a few ways that Necros become core to Raid runs.

1. Large numbers of boons burst out on the target. Mesmer boon removal is great for sustained removal of one or two boons constantly getting reapplied, but Necromancers do far better against large quantities that are more infrequent.

2. Seperation is key. We already know that raid groups will get split up, but if you have someone needing to go solo some objective, who better than a Necro? We are by far the most self-sufficient profession for buffs and can handle decent pressure from enemies. Necros alone can hit their max damage without going total glass cannon thanks to not really needing Precision.

3. Enemies rip boons. Necros and Thieves are the least reliant on boons.

4. People are expected to go down. Necros do make fantastic rez-bots and healers without interfering with combo fields attempting to provide a different benefit.

5. Mobs with high condition damage output. Sure, your team could remove the conditions, but a Necro can turn the enemies’ spike against them, drastically shortening the time you are fighting and the number of cleanses your team needs.

6. Direct-Damage resitant boss-adds (like some of the stuff in Triple Trouble) that need to be taken down quickly because the boss is immune and/or healing while they are alive (did someone say epidemic?).

Bhawb.7408:

You have no clue what PvE will be like. I don’t get why this is difficult. Elementalists have high DPS because mobs are stupid and stand in fields, if Anet returns (yes returns, because it was originally in the game) the AI that makes mobs move out of pulsing effects Elementalist DPS drops hard. Same if they make mobs hit hard consistently, in a way that just dodging doesn’t mitigate, and zerker thief/ele gets two shot. They could very easily hard-counter the entire PvE meta if they wanted.

Stop comparing the way PvE works now to the way it will work. They can make fields extremely difficult to use by having highly mobile fights, they can make boon stripping mandatory by having bosses that apply every boon in the game to themselves once every 30s, they can make control/range necessary by having a boss that instantly kills anything within a small radius around itself, make conditions required by having mobs with 8k armor. They can take everything you think GW2 PvE is about and completely flip it on its head.

The reason the current PvE meta exists as it does is because every nearly every single fight is a stationary DPS race where the only threat is an occassional highly telegraphed nuke. Glass cannon builds can exist because active damage negation can allow them to work, but if bosses hit quickly and hard Ele and thieves would drop like flies. Things like stacking exist because bosses don’t punish it well, but they easily could.

Until we have further details, stop assuming that ANet will go out of their way to say they will highlight all the unique combat GW2 has, only to give us the exact same PvE they say they won’t give us.

Well i’ve played HoT beta open world and story instances and nothing has changed. There is no magical new AI, no super new mechanics. Things are certainly improved, but I have seen no evidence of any change in the meta from the beta content I have seen.

So I have 3 years of game design and multiple beta weekends as evidence that this is how it will be, please present your evidence now.

Bhawb.7408:

Silverkey.2078:

For offensive support, you also have might vs vulnerability. Necro is good at continuously applying vulnerability, but vuln stacks so easily 25 that it does not matter.
As a result, it is usually agreed on that boons are way stronger than conditions in PvE. This should not be! And people often say “necro have no team support” while in a sense, we have one of the best team support of the game, it is just not “direct support” but support through enemy-debuff.

I’d honestly say Vuln vs Might is the way things should be. Vuln is a significantly higher damage increase than might, and honestly might is much easier to stack over a team. Otherwise totally agree, debuffs have a strange drawback when boons don’t, and it doesn’t particularly make sense.

Might is actually stronger if shared among the whole party. 25x might is something like a 30% damage increase in general.

The base mechanic of vulnerability is stronger since all 5 party members benefit by default, but with might being so easy to share it’s actually stronger than vuln.

I guess another way to look at it is might sharing mechanics are overpowered.

Fine op, necromancers have no role. How does that change.

I, too, will play Reaper in Raids and new HoT content, not because it is a shiny new skill set but because Reaper was designed to handle trash mobs. It is all AoE.

Here are some suggestions for PvE boss improvements:

1. Bosses need boon corruption. Conditions (and Necromancers) were nerfed severely when bosses developed near immunity to conditions, that is changing slowly with damaging conditions stack height increase but Necromancer’s specialty, soft CC, is still weak against them. In contrast, bosses leave boons on players alone. There is no penalty for boon stacking and players are free to maximize them. If bosses punished boon generation as much as they do incoming soft CC, then the berserker meta will finally fade.

2. Boons and conditions need to reflect the player’s stat’s more. The modifiers (healing and condition damage) are weak right now while condition duration is kind of an add-on stat having little to do with the main stat’s. Both boons and conditions need another internal calculation for probability it sticks on the target. This will change the balance a lot, though, because berserker builds will no longer have anything but a base chance of sticking a boon or condition on a target. That “chance” can be different for each profession based upon its specialty and traiting but it would reward players more for building for boons or conditions while reducing rewards for players who do not build for boons or conditions. If players build for condition damage, the game should weight the strength of that condition and make bosses more susceptible. Likewise, if players build for boon generation, boon corruption or removal should be more difficult. (As a side note, boon generation and conditions should be tied to stats better than they are. Many conditions and most boons just happen regardless of what equipment stat’s a player chooses.)

Zenith.7301:

What PvE reaper is going to spec into Signets of Suffering over Close to Death? You are giving up 20% extra damage below 50% health for some crappy boon rip on signets, which are also some of your worst and most selfish PvE utilities. That’s a metric ton of damage potential to give up just for boon rip.

Similarly, axe is a terrible weapon, what necro is gonna run it in PvE if they haven’t now? You might as well use focus #5 over it with dagger.

Dark Path is not available to Reaper, no boon removal there.

I don’t see how you people say mesmer has no boon rip. iDisenchanter removes 2 per hit, null field does removes 2 per pulse, your autoattack removes 1 (as do your sword clones), and greatsword #3 removes one as well. No trait investments involved or crappy utility choices for PvE.

If the need for boon-ripping is strong enough, I will gladly take Signets of Suffering over Close to Death. If boon-ripping enemies are a thing, the extra Might can be quite handy. Damage boosts are nice, yes, but not at the cost of not being able to take down the target at all.

Think of it this way: is Close to Death worthwhile if the boss is applying Protection below 50% health? You would get more damage out of Signets of Suffering, then. Besides, harder content will mean healing is more valuable (Locust), and I would imagine stunbreaks and condition removal as well (Plague Signet, which also helps relieve condi pressure on allies).

Path of Corruption also applies to Death’s Charge. Reaper actually gets it much more often rather than not at all.

Mesmers do have good sustained boon ripping for low counts of boons. But it is very possible we will need spike boon ripping, which Necro does much better than Mesmer. Plus, you say “no crappy utility choice for PvE” on Mesmers and then list Illusionary Disenchanter, which right now is pathetic for PvE (raids may change that, though). The meta utility choice for Necros involves Well of Corruption anyway.

The problem isn’t that the necro doesn’t provide anything. The problem is that what the necro provides isn’t used in PVE.

Take lifesteal, for example. This has a couple of unique properties, particularly that it ignores all kinds of defenses. This has some niche uses, jade maw for example. The necro provides the best lifesteal in the game, both through their own traits as well as the massive amount of access to dark fields. Soon, through whirl finishers as well (gravedigger x 3, soul spiral x 11). Currently this is nigh useless, unless you are fighting an enemy with long invulnerability periods. Raids may give us exactly that.

We’ve got a couple other fields, too. Poison fields for weakness and more poison. An Ethereal field, but that is more area denial than a usable field. Soon we’ll be getting Ice, which while chilling bolts are only good for Bitter Chill, the frost aura does provide a unique form of damage reduction. We’ve also got a light field for retaliation and cleansing, but I do argue strongly that it would be better as a water field.

Second is how we handle conditions/boons. Necromancers are unique in that they convert boons and conditions instead of just cleansing them. If there’s ever a circumstance where there is a pulsing burning effect, I’ve found that well of power is excellent, since it converts burning to Aegis. WE also transfer conditions, too. Turning enemy DPS into our DPS. But, enemies rarely have a set of conditions such that transferring and converting is really useful.

Third is epidemic. This skill has theoretically massive damage and utility. But, in order to take advantage of it, you’d need a set of conditions that again aren’t met in standard PVE. You need a very high health boss who spawns a bunch of adds. In that circumstances, epidemic would wreck so much face, debuffing and damaging masses.

Fourth is bulk. There are a handful of bosses where, in my personal experience, the best tactic to fight them is to have a necro facetank. With high life force generation and health, even in GC gear a power necro is surprisingly sturdy.

Fifth is movement impairing skills. Necros are good at AoE cripple, and soon AoE chill. But, there’s never a group of enemies that you need to run from or chase.

I see people pointing out very niche situations in which we would excel in, let’s not forget versatility is a huge component of the game. Ele is a god in all game modes because it can literally do everything. Necros have never been very versatile. So even if there is one gimmicky phase or fight a necro could be the most useful in what about all the other time in the raid? Why not bring a profession who would be more useful overall.

I agree with Bhawb who said we still know nothing about the raid design, but if we just judge from experience I say necros will still be bottom tier.

The ele “best at everything” meta needs to be nerfed.

The necromancer needs to become the best at something needed.

Damage needs to be increased. (And dagger lvl damage doesn’t cut it for greatsword, which has no defense skills or sustain, or reaper shroud, which is a burst mode that doesn’t last very long)

If a-net keeps its promise, the class roles would probably ressemble the PvP meta more than the PvE meta. The PvE assumes an all static enemy, which all hits can be avoided more or less. PvP meta assumes a difficult encounter, which makes use of all mechanics the game provides. The main difference I see is that raids seem to focus on bosses more than group of enemies which will reduce the strength of AOE/cleave.

With this reasoning, elementalists will still be god-mode and rangers low-tier. But I would argue all other classes are at a decent place.
And in this PvP meta, the necro has a role, and it is tanking + boon corruption. While some people claim that cele signet is only meta thanks to the best team using it, most acknowledge it is a strong build.

So except if I get strongly disappointed by it (not unlikely), I am confident necro and most classes will have its place.

Also, until the content is properly learned and the optimal team comp found, people will not put restrictions on classes. It is a good moment to create a positive image of the class, so take your necro out and do a good job, make people enjoy their experience with necros.

There are three things:

PvE is currently predicated around offence and using invuln frames to bypass mob damage. In the new content, I’m hoping HP tanking is as viable.

Break bars aren’t understood. A dev mentioned reworking chill/blind for bosses, which combined with the new break bars could give us something to do in PvE. This would make sense, as the thief elite spec seems to use blind a lot too.

Our vuln stacking is off the frigging hook as reaper, and we can self stack might to 25 very easily, plus we have finishers and an axe/sceptre rework coming. We also have a fair amount of other utility now which may see a purpose in the new content we’re not prepared for; spawning 5 pets, having unlockable attacks etc.

So as Ljusa said, get out there and prove us worthy of the new meta.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Bhawb.7408:

You have no clue what PvE will be like. I don’t get why this is difficult. Elementalists have high DPS because mobs are stupid and stand in fields, if Anet returns (yes returns, because it was originally in the game) the AI that makes mobs move out of pulsing effects Elementalist DPS drops hard. Same if they make mobs hit hard consistently, in a way that just dodging doesn’t mitigate, and zerker thief/ele gets two shot. They could very easily hard-counter the entire PvE meta if they wanted.

Stop comparing the way PvE works now to the way it will work. They can make fields extremely difficult to use by having highly mobile fights, they can make boon stripping mandatory by having bosses that apply every boon in the game to themselves once every 30s, they can make control/range necessary by having a boss that instantly kills anything within a small radius around itself, make conditions required by having mobs with 8k armor. They can take everything you think GW2 PvE is about and completely flip it on its head.

The reason the current PvE meta exists as it does is because every nearly every single fight is a stationary DPS race where the only threat is an occassional highly telegraphed nuke. Glass cannon builds can exist because active damage negation can allow them to work, but if bosses hit quickly and hard Ele and thieves would drop like flies. Things like stacking exist because bosses don’t punish it well, but they easily could.

Until we have further details, stop assuming that ANet will go out of their way to say they will highlight all the unique combat GW2 has, only to give us the exact same PvE they say they won’t give us.

Well i’ve played HoT beta open world and story instances and nothing has changed. There is no magical new AI, no super new mechanics. Things are certainly improved, but I have seen no evidence of any change in the meta from the beta content I have seen.

So I have 3 years of game design and multiple beta weekends as evidence that this is how it will be, please present your evidence now.

Thank you ZudetGambeous. I have no idea why people keep assuming that ANET is going to make content to invalidate the existing classes that do function properly…just to make necros fit in. Why would they make the existing mechanics of classes, that players have invested in and currently enjoy, just stop working all of a sudden? Why would they make these existing classes just die constantly every time something sneezes? The logic just isn’t functioning in these assumptions. The same way they aren’t going to break survival gear…is the same way they are extremely unlikely to break dps gear. They have active defenses in this game for a reason…why do people keep going back to these assumptions that somehow ANET will do a complete redesign and make them not work anymore?

Yes, I think raids are likely to incorporate some new/slightly varied mechanics/strategies, but don’t expect the existing mechanics in the game to become invalidated as a result. Don’t expect ANET to just decide that its going to be fun to be punished by constant/unavoidable deaths unless you trade in your damage gear for nomad. Don’t expect the trinity to rear its disgusting head just because the “challenging group content” shares the same name as content in trinity games. Tanking hasn’t been a thing in this game so far and really shouldn’t be a thing in these new “raids”. Face tanking should never be the preferred mechanic for anything in this game, as it invalidates at least half of the survival tools ANET built this game around.

That being said…no necro/reaper is going to be able to face tank any boss level mob…especially not in a “raid”. That’s like expecting a necro/reaper to be able to face tank Teq. People are seriously overestimating what the necro/reaper class mechanic is actually capable of. Clearly people are also forgetting the past nerf to shroud mechanics where you can be hit so hard that you still get one/multi shot even through shroud. Unless they build in some ridiculous amount of damage resistance to shroud…its mechanics do not even make it that durable. Building in that much damage resistance to shroud would break the rest of the game.

At the end of the day, I think the OP’s point is valid. There isn’t a real reason to bring a necro/reaper over the alternatives…at least not when our contributions consist of things that other (stronger) classes are already doing to a sufficient degree. I certainly don’t think rezzing will be the reason anyone includes a necro/reaper.

Ah kitten… I just realized my biggest fear came true… We can’t be healed from allies in Shroud. Our tanking abilities will lead to supporters wasting heals.. kitten . Depressed now.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Fine op, necromancers have no role. How does that change.

IMO here is what would be needed for necro to secure a role in most groups (as well as making other classes more useful too)

1. Ele needs to be nerfed. There is just no way around this. They provide the best support, the best damage, and the best survivability in the game (though survivability is a slightly different spec). No one class should be the best at everything. There is simply no reason not to take more eles. Need more healing, take an ele, need more damage, take the same ele, need more support, the extra ele can do that too!

2. Debuffing needs to be buffed significantly or boons nerfed significantly. I doubt they will nerf boons any further, so debuffing needs to be fixed. It seems they are working on a solution to this, but we don’t know what it is. Boss design could play a big role in this. If an enemy attacks the entire party at 2 times a second for low damage then weakness becomes very attractive. If a boss has an attack with a 60 second CD that auto kills 3 people and goes through active defenses then rezzing and chill become important.

3. Necro damage needs to be brought up in line with other classes. In an organized raid everyone will have 25 stacks and might and the boss will always have 25 vuln. This isn’t something special that should mean necro gets less damage. Necro damage needs to be balanced around this fact, not around these assumed situations where necro is the only one with buffs. Sure we are a good self buffer, this is meaningless to raid balance.

4. Condition damage needs to be tweaked. The master of conditions is currently the worst condition class. This is mostly because burn is OP and bleed was nerfed. Reduce burn by 20-30% and increase bleed by the same amount. Finish with a scepter rework and necros become much better at conditions. Epidemic is great for multiple enemies, but most boss fights are against a single enemy which renders epidemic completely worthless. Possibly give epidemic an effect if it doesn’t hit any enemies besides the target (refresh condition durations or something).

These 4 changes would allow necros, as well as some of the other less desirable classes to be competitive in raids and have a potential spot.

Gonna throw this out there again… Necros are actually really good at being independent fighters and distractions to enemies. I think our place will be to cut at the bosses from sides or behind while others attacking from the front. or, alternately, the other way around. And certainly we can hold the line long enough for teammates to get out of dodge. Not to mention… Necros are very effective at preventing full wipes. In current content, that is only really pertinent in an unorganized group. In a raid… It seems that the idea is that it will be difficult enough that people will go down. At the very least, glass builds will.

Necro will have a place, even if it’s just a variation of what we can do now

Things they can do to make it difficult but useful to necros:

Add singleton group buffing units that need to be periodically separate from the cluster, instantly TP back to group if immobilized or knocked down when out of cluster. Using fear/chill/cripple to keep them out while the McGuffin happens.

The boss gets a debuff that can only be cleared by laying down certain fields(E.G. Dark/Poison/Light) and and maybe combo-ing them.

That for once in gw2, stacking is inadvisable. (NOTE: This would require actual skill on the part of the AI team, and foresight from the element-err-balance team, so we may be out of luck there.)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

IMO here is what would be needed for necro to secure a role in most groups (as well as making other classes more useful too)

1. Ele needs to be nerfed. There is just no way around this. They provide the best support, the best damage, and the best survivability in the game (though survivability is a slightly different spec). No one class should be the best at everything. There is simply no reason not to take more eles. Need more healing, take an ele, need more damage, take the same ele, need more support, the extra ele can do that too!

I know that this is something that may feel needed by some people, but asking for a nerf to a class because it appear to be the best at everything is somewhat hard to digest.

Why do elementalist are above other profession? Simply because their combo field are above every other combo field and they can spam them permanently.
Why don’t we talk about making dark field or poison field worth it instead? There is a clear lack of balance between fire field and all other fields. If something have to be done it’s here!

2. Debuffing needs to be buffed significantly or boons nerfed significantly. I doubt they will nerf boons any further, so debuffing needs to be fixed. It seems they are working on a solution to this, but we don’t know what it is. Boss design could play a big role in this. If an enemy attacks the entire party at 2 times a second for low damage then weakness becomes very attractive. If a boss has an attack with a 60 second CD that auto kills 3 people and goes through active defenses then rezzing and chill become important.

I’m a bit puzzled on this. To put it simply imparing movement condition are mainly meant to prevent foe to flee. (which is rarely of use in a boss fight or in PvE)
Weakness is meant to reduce damage, sure but one hit ko mechanism just one hit and in this game mob hit harder the more you are. We already know how hard current mobs hit, I don’t think that in a 10 man raid, mob will just hit less (especially since they said that the content will be harder → mob in harder content hit harder, let’s face it). Just to say it, thieves with their elite spec will have the best defense in PvE content, because dodge beat every single traditional passive defence stat and this should stay as is.
Chill… chill will extend the CD of a skill… But what’s the best? Knowing exactly when this skill will happen or risking to chill the foe inconsistantly and not knowing when the skill will be used? Strategically the chill may become bothersome.

3. Necro damage needs to be brought up in line with other classes. In an organized raid everyone will have 25 stacks and might and the boss will always have 25 vuln. This isn’t something special that should mean necro gets less damage. Necro damage needs to be balanced around this fact, not around these assumed situations where necro is the only one with buffs. Sure we are a good self buffer, this is meaningless to raid balance.

I agree that betting on vulnerability is silly. Simply because every profession and it’s grandma can stack vuln easily. In a 10 man raid, vulnerability won’t be a bother. For might I shall remind you that shared might is capped to 5 allies which mean that you need might providers in each of the 2 parties (thing that may prevent taking a necromancer since he is so bad at sharing things). Otherwise, i’ll say it again and again : Necro damage are, ATM, balanced. By no mean they do need “more” dps, they need more synergy in teamplay.

4. Condition damage needs to be tweaked. The master of conditions is currently the worst condition class. This is mostly because burn is OP and bleed was nerfed. Reduce burn by 20-30% and increase bleed by the same amount. Finish with a scepter rework and necros become much better at conditions. Epidemic is great for multiple enemies, but most boss fights are against a single enemy which renders epidemic completely worthless. Possibly give epidemic an effect if it doesn’t hit any enemies besides the target (refresh condition durations or something).

Here it’s a no. Necro’s bleeds are sustain damage, good in long encounter while burns are burst damage, good for short encounter. The overall damage (even if it’s hard to admit it) is probably already balanced. Actually, I’d say that what necro need in regard of condition damage is a come back of some of it’s extra bleed that have been removed from some skills.

These 4 changes would allow necros, as well as some of the other less desirable classes to be competitive in raids and have a potential spot.

i know Chrono will be getting f5 to be able to double null field and all, but idk how ppl think we arent the best boonrippers… As a reaper we will have an aoe boonrip(2 boons) on a 5-6sec cd, and can take corrupt boon for burst boon corruption. So we do not need to trait for signets of suffering, and if u really need more aoe boonrip you can take well of corruption. Lets not forget the fact ds2 can be traited to also chill+vuln ontop of its blind and boonrip aswell if we need.

If we are in a situation where we do not need boonrip then we can easily have soul reaping instead of curse for more tankiness and with blighters boon and traited for lower ds cd we can easily facetank like a mad man. The reason for this is that with 9 other people in our party able to give out boons in addition to our own boon generation, we basically have a 7sec vulnerability window of dieing. So unless bosses have one/two shot mechanics then once our ds runs out 7 secs later we have full lf and re-enter ds and with all the boonspam we can easily get our hp healed back up to full.

edit: and by 1-2 shot mechanics i mean very quick and often one shot mechanics because if they hit hard enough to two shot us, but only hit that hard every 10sec, we can easily soak the dmg with our ds and build up lf betwee next hit, or let it hit our hp, and enter ds and heal up to full while ds soaks the small attacks in the meantime.

just my 2cents

Papish.5806:

edit: and by 1-2 shot mechanics i mean very quick and often one shot mechanics because if they hit hard enough to two shot us, but only hit that hard every 10sec, we can easily soak the dmg with our ds and build up lf betwee next hit, or let it hit our hp, and enter ds and heal up to full while ds soaks the small attacks in the meantime.

just my 2cents

If DS was this good, you wouldn’t see video of thieve/ele/gardian/warrior soling dungeon but video of necro doing it.

Dadnir.5038:

Papish.5806:

edit: and by 1-2 shot mechanics i mean very quick and often one shot mechanics because if they hit hard enough to two shot us, but only hit that hard every 10sec, we can easily soak the dmg with our ds and build up lf betwee next hit, or let it hit our hp, and enter ds and heal up to full while ds soaks the small attacks in the meantime.

just my 2cents

If DS was this good, you wouldn’t see video of thieve/ele/gardian/warrior soling dungeon but video of necro doing it.

We arent refferring to current content, hence why i was talking about hypothetical mechanics…….All it would take is a hard hitting skill that is used often and unblockable(lets say it hits for about 30k) and suddenly necro is the best for that situation since we could soak the hit with our ds+hp pool and recover inbetween hits.

The reason we would be the best for that situation is, unless you have a class with a very short cd invuln and stack invuln classes and rotate them around in circles to soak the hits you would have to gear/spec defensively which the necro would not. As i said before, all hypothetical.

edit: Also, soloing dungeons as a necro is easy…just because you dont see vids doesnt mean its not possible/doesnt happen. The reason you dont see vids is because we dont do it the fastest and most of the ppl that post vids of it are trying to do it as fast as possible.

ODB.6891:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Bhawb.7408:

You have no clue what PvE will be like. I don’t get why this is difficult. Elementalists have high DPS because mobs are stupid and stand in fields, if Anet returns (yes returns, because it was originally in the game) the AI that makes mobs move out of pulsing effects Elementalist DPS drops hard. Same if they make mobs hit hard consistently, in a way that just dodging doesn’t mitigate, and zerker thief/ele gets two shot. They could very easily hard-counter the entire PvE meta if they wanted.

Stop comparing the way PvE works now to the way it will work. They can make fields extremely difficult to use by having highly mobile fights, they can make boon stripping mandatory by having bosses that apply every boon in the game to themselves once every 30s, they can make control/range necessary by having a boss that instantly kills anything within a small radius around itself, make conditions required by having mobs with 8k armor. They can take everything you think GW2 PvE is about and completely flip it on its head.

The reason the current PvE meta exists as it does is because every nearly every single fight is a stationary DPS race where the only threat is an occassional highly telegraphed nuke. Glass cannon builds can exist because active damage negation can allow them to work, but if bosses hit quickly and hard Ele and thieves would drop like flies. Things like stacking exist because bosses don’t punish it well, but they easily could.

Until we have further details, stop assuming that ANet will go out of their way to say they will highlight all the unique combat GW2 has, only to give us the exact same PvE they say they won’t give us.

Well i’ve played HoT beta open world and story instances and nothing has changed. There is no magical new AI, no super new mechanics. Things are certainly improved, but I have seen no evidence of any change in the meta from the beta content I have seen.

So I have 3 years of game design and multiple beta weekends as evidence that this is how it will be, please present your evidence now.

Thank you ZudetGambeous. I have no idea why people keep assuming that ANET is going to make content to invalidate the existing classes that do function properly…just to make necros fit in. Why would they make the existing mechanics of classes, that players have invested in and currently enjoy, just stop working all of a sudden? Why would they make these existing classes just die constantly every time something sneezes? The logic just isn’t functioning in these assumptions. The same way they aren’t going to break survival gear…is the same way they are extremely unlikely to break dps gear. They have active defenses in this game for a reason…why do people keep going back to these assumptions that somehow ANET will do a complete redesign and make them not work anymore?

Yes, I think raids are likely to incorporate some new/slightly varied mechanics/strategies, but don’t expect the existing mechanics in the game to become invalidated as a result. Don’t expect ANET to just decide that its going to be fun to be punished by constant/unavoidable deaths unless you trade in your damage gear for nomad. Don’t expect the trinity to rear its disgusting head just because the “challenging group content” shares the same name as content in trinity games. Tanking hasn’t been a thing in this game so far and really shouldn’t be a thing in these new “raids”. Face tanking should never be the preferred mechanic for anything in this game, as it invalidates at least half of the survival tools ANET built this game around.

That being said…no necro/reaper is going to be able to face tank any boss level mob…especially not in a “raid”. That’s like expecting a necro/reaper to be able to face tank Teq. People are seriously overestimating what the necro/reaper class mechanic is actually capable of. Clearly people are also forgetting the past nerf to shroud mechanics where you can be hit so hard that you still get one/multi shot even through shroud. Unless they build in some ridiculous amount of damage resistance to shroud…its mechanics do not even make it that durable. Building in that much damage resistance to shroud would break the rest of the game.

At the end of the day, I think the OP’s point is valid. There isn’t a real reason to bring a necro/reaper over the alternatives…at least not when our contributions consist of things that other (stronger) classes are already doing to a sufficient degree. I certainly don’t think rezzing will be the reason anyone includes a necro/reaper.

What if I told you that they’re not going to change content just to make Necros viable, but to make the PvE not suck?

The current PvE design is crap. 90% of the game’s mechanics just flat out aren’t used. The only thing that matters is how much burst damage you have and how many aoe might stacks you can pump out. Literally every class in the game has a ton of abilities, traits, weapons, and builds that just flat out aren’t useful in PvE. This isn’t a Necro Problem, this is an Everyone Except Fire Staff Ele And PS Warrior problem. Is it so absurd to think that ANet might want to make things other than Elementalists, one warrior build, and whoever brings the most reflect uptime, actually useful, as opposed to sitting in the enviable position of “Well, I suppose we could get by without another elementalist”?

Captain Unusual.9163:

What if I told you that they’re not going to change content just to make Necros viable, but to make the PvE not suck?

The current PvE design is crap. 90% of the game’s mechanics just flat out aren’t used. The only thing that matters is how much burst damage you have and how many aoe might stacks you can pump out. Literally every class in the game has a ton of abilities, traits, weapons, and builds that just flat out aren’t useful in PvE. This isn’t a Necro Problem, this is an Everyone Except Fire Staff Ele And PS Warrior problem. Is it so absurd to think that ANet might want to make things other than Elementalists, one warrior build, and whoever brings the most reflect uptime, actually useful, as opposed to sitting in the enviable position of “Well, I suppose we could get by without another elementalist”?

What if I told you that PvE does not suck? I’m pretty sure everyone does not feel the same way you do. What if I told you that ANET is extremely unlikely to allow PvE bosses to be controlled/limited in the same ways that ANET does allow you to control and limit other players in a PvP environment? I’m assuming that’s where you are going with the statement about game mechanics that are not used in PvE. That’s why they are separate game modes…because they are not the same. The way you play, the builds you use, the utilities you bring….are going to need to differ to an extent. The problem comes with the fact that what a necromancer/reaper brings…is not effective on PvE bosses. Hopefully that is getting addressed by way of the alluded to changes to chill, slow, etc by Robert Gee in the mesmer forums. No other profession struggles in this capacity as much as the necro/reaper does. That being the case…it is definitely an issue with the necro/reaper…and not the overall game design. It looks to be intentional that control mechanisms/conditions are not as effective on PvE bosses as they are in PvP on players.

I cant remember the interview but colin did say they were working on pve not sucking because they never intended it to be the way it is now, zerk gear for everything and burn things down as fast as possible.

So Anet have acknowledged that their current pve design isnt good which is why so much work is going into improving the mob ai, their stats and the new encounters as a whole etc etc. Most of this is going to be for the new HoT stuff but they did say some would filter down into the core game.

This interests me because if encounters and creatures in general become better to fight it will be more of a fun game and more play styles will be validated.

Sigmoid.7082:

I cant remember the interview but colin did say they were working on pve not sucking because they never intended it to be the way it is now, zerk gear for everything and burn things down as fast as possible.

So Anet have acknowledged that their current pve design isnt good which is why so much work is going into improving the mob ai, their stats and the new encounters as a whole etc etc. Most of this is going to be for the new HoT stuff but they did say some would filter down into the core game.

This interests me because if encounters and creatures in general become better to fight it will be more of a fun game and more play styles will be validated.

Here you go friend.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-clarifies-his-points-interest-comment

ODB.6891:

Captain Unusual.9163:

What if I told you that they’re not going to change content just to make Necros viable, but to make the PvE not suck?

The current PvE design is crap. 90% of the game’s mechanics just flat out aren’t used. The only thing that matters is how much burst damage you have and how many aoe might stacks you can pump out. Literally every class in the game has a ton of abilities, traits, weapons, and builds that just flat out aren’t useful in PvE. This isn’t a Necro Problem, this is an Everyone Except Fire Staff Ele And PS Warrior problem. Is it so absurd to think that ANet might want to make things other than Elementalists, one warrior build, and whoever brings the most reflect uptime, actually useful, as opposed to sitting in the enviable position of “Well, I suppose we could get by without another elementalist”?

What if I told you that PvE does not suck? I’m pretty sure everyone does not feel the same way you do. What if I told you that ANET is extremely unlikely to allow PvE bosses to be controlled/limited in the same ways that ANET does allow you to control and limit other players in a PvP environment? I’m assuming that’s where you are going with the statement about game mechanics that are not used in PvE. That’s why they are separate game modes…because they are not the same. The way you play, the builds you use, the utilities you bring….are going to need to differ to an extent. The problem comes with the fact that what a necromancer/reaper brings…is not effective on PvE bosses. Hopefully that is getting addressed by way of the alluded to changes to chill, slow, etc by Robert Gee in the mesmer forums. No other profession struggles in this capacity as much as the necro/reaper does. That being the case…it is definitely an issue with the necro/reaper…and not the overall game design. It looks to be intentional that control mechanisms/conditions are not as effective on PvE bosses as they are in PvP on players.

I really want to comment on this but can’t get my thoughts straight right now so I’ll be back. No flaming! Promise!

Sigmoid.7082:

I cant remember the interview but colin did say they were working on pve not sucking because they never intended it to be the way it is now, zerk gear for everything and burn things down as fast as possible.

So Anet have acknowledged that their current pve design isnt good which is why so much work is going into improving the mob ai, their stats and the new encounters as a whole etc etc. Most of this is going to be for the new HoT stuff but they did say some would filter down into the core game.

This interests me because if encounters and creatures in general become better to fight it will be more of a fun game and more play styles will be validated.

Here is the actual text from the interview linked in the previous post.

“We like the way combat works right now, we really don’t plan to change it much other than add more options with elite specs. It works the way we intended: you can play control, support, and DPS actively. To folks who prefer to define by the holy trinity, Gw2 doesn’t force you to pick one of the three from heal, tank, or DPS and only do that – it blends a mix depending on your build and allows you to actively swap roles or soft play between roles. Our goal was to remove the forced singular role per you’re locked into, people often mistake this as saying gw2 has no trinity elements, that isn’t true – we just don’t believe in a forced role per for Gw2 for the reasons I covered in the live stream.

That said the point I really wanted to make in the live stream was the issue with the combat system in PvE isn’t the combat system. It’s that the mobs and encounters we have provided so far very rarely allow/encourage you to make use of the combat system as intended. There are some exceptions, but one of our goals with HoT is to help allow more room for players to experience the full range of the combat system in PvE. From the common world mobs up to the challenging group content we will talk about later, we are asking our design team to design encounters in PvE more focused on using the system we have built."

Notice, there is nowhere that he says PvE “sucks”. I took the liberty of bolding some key things he does say about PvE. Notice he never says anything about wanting to invalidate any play styles…unlike a lot of the suggestions I keep seeing people post about making zerker gear impossible to survive in. He specifically does say the combat system is working as intended…they need to design more fights that are dynamic. I assume he means fights that have more moving parts…instead of always stacking. He never says anything about stacking not remaining an effective strategy…based on the encounter of course. He also never says anything about allowing boss mobs to be controlled into submission. They have already announced changes to mobs in high level fractals with scaling toughness, health, and precision…so this combined with some AI changes…should be what people are really asking for…instead of the ability to CC bosses. I’m not sold on the scaling precision though…that just means more one shots in my opinion…which is bad.

Papish.5806:

Dadnir.5038:

Papish.5806:

edit: and by 1-2 shot mechanics i mean very quick and often one shot mechanics because if they hit hard enough to two shot us, but only hit that hard every 10sec, we can easily soak the dmg with our ds and build up lf betwee next hit, or let it hit our hp, and enter ds and heal up to full while ds soaks the small attacks in the meantime.

just my 2cents

If DS was this good, you wouldn’t see video of thieve/ele/gardian/warrior soling dungeon but video of necro doing it.

We arent refferring to current content, hence why i was talking about hypothetical mechanics…….All it would take is a hard hitting skill that is used often and unblockable(lets say it hits for about 30k) and suddenly necro is the best for that situation since we could soak the hit with our ds+hp pool and recover inbetween hits.

The reason we would be the best for that situation is, unless you have a class with a very short cd invuln and stack invuln classes and rotate them around in circles to soak the hits you would have to gear/spec defensively which the necro would not. As i said before, all hypothetical.

edit: Also, soloing dungeons as a necro is easy…just because you dont see vids doesnt mean its not possible/doesnt happen. The reason you dont see vids is because we dont do it the fastest and most of the ppl that post vids of it are trying to do it as fast as possible.

This is so wrong its unbelievable. We dont generate lifeforce fast enough even in optimal settings for this to work out. And if its every 10 seconds then you can just dodge. Other classes have more evades than us so they dont even need the invulns with attacks that infrequent.

Necro survivability is poor in PvE because we literally do not have any extra defence against big hits other than our base dodges and energy sigils. No matter how you design encounters necro will always be poor for survivability. Only small frequent negligible hits will favour necro. But not enough to make necro good. Especially when you have plenty of passive healing available through various sources and you have classes like warrior which are just as durable but have even better sustain and more active defence.

I took a sinister scepter bleed build into TA and was severely disappointed in it, again.

1. Life force generation was less than adequate with scepter even using traited spectral utilities, which ought to have generated more than enough.

2. Scepter damage and bleed damage was extremely poor. The bleed stacks took too long to accumulate, would roll off when not using AA, and just did not do much damage while I had maximized my condition damage stat.

3. For all the weakness and cripple I dished out, players in my PUG went down quite a bit. There is no reward for res’ing and no reward for running anything but a berserker. Stealth is rewarded, leaps are rewarded, might and other boon stacks are rewarded, berserker is definitely rewarded; there is nothing in older content like dungeons that offers balance.

One thief joyously claimed to have a 40k backstab in TA! I do not really believe that when de-leveled but it added another sour note to my sinister bleed evaluation.

He says combat works fine but encounters and mob challenges are something they need to work on because you dont get to experience the full range of what their dynamic and well built combat system allows. That is a round about way of saying that currently pve isnt in a place where they want it i.e “sucks” but the reason it “sucks” isnt the system but the encounters.

Its also not about invalidating current tactics or existing playstyles is about expanding encounters, mobs challenge and ai so that one play style isnt so so so much better than everything else and the combat system is fully utilised because right now there are few encounters where a lot of mechanics are needed.

If they have encounters that need debuffing constantly, mobs cleanse conditions, remove boons, boon removal needed as mobs grant themselves buffs constantly, condition heavy mobs, mechanics that mean you need to spread out, mechanics that mean you need to stack etc etc etc it would be better because right now all you really need is mostly dps then a reflect or stealth here and there.

The system is so rich with potential that its a shame to see it wasted the way it currently is. The thing if they change it the way i hope they do then all playstyles will fit in there some way or another and when that happens there wont be as much class discrimination or a feeling or uselessness on certain classes, necro included. This is hopefully reinforced by coling yesterday stating about raids :- “Every profession has the ability to do control, damage and support. No required party composition.”

Reaper will be great at farming trash mobs.

Anchoku.8142:

Reaper will be great at farming trash mobs.

Was this a joke attempt?

Can’t every profession kill trash mobs? And aren’t they usually skipped? Reaper is designed to where shouts scale better with more enemies but it’s not like any of them are going to make us god mode at just killing multiples of mobs.

Edit: Oh I will feel like an idiot if Sagat is right :p

They can make trash mobs not-skippable if they want, they could also make a boss situation where trash mobs are spawned en-masse and you’ll break off a few players to deal with them while the boss is killed. Not sure Reaper will do significantly better than others though, unless they did enough damage that Elementalist wouldn’t be able to deal with them without sacrificing a lot of damage.

They need to improve necromancer heals, instead of nerfing them for a gimmick trait they want you to take to un-nerf the heal that you were previously using that wasn’t total crap.

I mean, I look at Well of Blood, and what the hell. 200-300 healing ticks five times? That’s a pitiful 1000-1500 extra health for a heal that doesn’t even heal for much and is on a whopping 40 sec cd, is a worthless light field instead of a water field, and unlike healing spring doesn’t clear conditions.

Hell, the regen provided by healing spring is much better than the extra 1k of healing you get from well of blood’s pulsing, it’s just bad.

And that’s well of blood, virtually all our heals are terrible. Signet of Vampirism is just a much worse Healing Signet/Signet of Restoration.

You would think that for a signet that procs on you being hit, it would heal more than a tick of healing signet+adrenal healing, which are passive and don’t require damage intake to heal.

Before release, they said necromancer would be the hardest caster to take down and would require commitment, and fast forward an elementalist or PU mesmer makes for a far more durable caster since necromancer’s RECOVERY from damage is really bad.

They’ll probably make a spot for us. For example, add foes that condi bomb you, but are really weak to whatever they put on you, so if you transfer it back and use epidemic, the fight becomes a lot easier.

Well you can either assume that all PvE content in HoT and so on will be exactly the same as what we have now, even though Anet and its devs have alluded to and outright said this will not be the case multiple times, or you can believe them even a little and look at all the recent evidence that builds other than high damage single hit mitigation zerkers WILL be needed (Ventari Revenant build, being able to change ascended gear stats, being able to change traits on the fly, taunts being added to the game, etc.) and think that hey, even if we’re not the best at every fight, necro will have a place. Since we have literally no information on raids whatsoever or how classes will be rebalanced in the next two months (and not just their elite specializations either), everything everyone in this thread has said is pure speculation, so it’s your choice.

Personally, I will try to stay cautiously optimistic. And remember that even in a worst case scenario that I can still just play with people who’re fun and like having fun instead of boring zerker speedrunners. Because even if necromancers aren’t so great right now, -I- have never had a problem running any dungeon or fractal at all with mine, or any of the three builds I use with him for that matter. I doubt that’d be so markedly different with raids.

Bhawb.7408:

They can make trash mobs not-skippable if they want, they could also make a boss situation where trash mobs are spawned en-masse and you’ll break off a few players to deal with them while the boss is killed. Not sure Reaper will do significantly better than others though, unless they did enough damage that Elementalist wouldn’t be able to deal with them without sacrificing a lot of damage.

This is like the only situation where necro could shine. Having good self buffing, decent damage, plenty of base durability and more AoE than something like warrior. But honestly thats such a niche situation and i really doubt it will show up in such a way that makes necro favourable.

Oh its totally niche, but its basically what we need until they fix the profession otherwise. Essentially the only situation Necromancer will actually be the #1 pick is a situation where they have to be highly self-sufficient against enemies that have mechanics fairly similar to players. Things like needing good self-buffing, high base durability, mechanics to deal with boons/conditions, and having this all on a single player.

But in group-heavy combat its the same stuff as before. We might be playable though, if they manage to make other professions a bit worse or us a bit better.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of raids force the party to split into smaller groups for most of the raid. Maybe necros would be favored in some of those situations.

Also, whenever there’s a huge amount of condi pressure on the party you’d do well to have a necro traited with Unholy Martyr + Shrouded Removal. That’s another niche that could come up.

I mean, I can definitely understand where a lot of people are coming from; I complain about my necro in voice chat so often when I play him. “Why are corruption skills so all over the place or just outright worthless?” “Why are half my weapon choices bad?” “Why is there at least one skill on my GOOD weapons that just do not make sense being there?” It sucks to choose a profession that jells so well with you thematically and then see that the worst complaints most other classes have is that they liked being ridiculous and nerfing their godlike abilities makes things less fun for them. But so many people here act like necro isn’t just UP right now, but that you literally can’t find your way into group PvE content without being scorned or kicked or denied outright. And even when you’re not queuing with friends this is just plain not true. Either that or I am incredibly lucky, which seems unlikely.

It isn’t that you can’t find a group, plenty of people are willing to carry a good Necro through a normal PvE run. It is that there is objectively almost never a situation where you want a Necromancer in your group over another profession, and it sucks knowing that me playing a Necromancer is holding my group back in a noticeable and significant way over me running something else.

Yeah my main problem is I know I’m outright making content more of a burden on the group on a necro.

People will always be able to find groups with friends, but some of us want to feel useful so we’ll still play something better in certain content unless anet fixes necro or pve design.

Bhawb.7408:

It isn’t that you can’t find a group, plenty of people are willing to carry a good Necro through a normal PvE run. It is that there is objectively almost never a situation where you want a Necromancer in your group over another profession, and it sucks knowing that me playing a Necromancer is holding my group back in a noticeable and significant way over me running something else.

I prefer to play my necro for pugs because the quality of pugs vary a lot. In my experience wipes are extremely rare when I play my necro, so to me it’s the most reliable profession for pugging.

I mean, it could be because I join whatever pug is available so it might not be all zerkers, it might be a totally whack team comp, but waiting for pugs to form is also a consideration for efficiency.

I just want to get into the content, smash it, and get done. No waiting, no wipes. In my experience necro makes that happen reliably. The max speed of a run is a little lower but the average speed of all runs is overall faster, assuming that I’m not picky about who I group with.

I’m not saying it’s a good niche and it makes necro fine, but it’s a reason to play it without feeling like a burden. If I were to join a decent PvE guild I’d just play meta with them because they don’t need to be carried. There would be no place for my necro, and I totally realize that.

Anet has specifically avoided making any promises about making Necros more desired in structured group comps.

The strange, maybe not so strange, thing about profession balance is that Anet makes it their policy to not discuss the meta in general. I’m absolutely certain that Anet is aware of the player psychology and game environment that created the meta, but when talking about what direction they are taking the elite specs and core professions, the current meta is always a non-issue. The lack of recognition affects not only the necromancer but all the other professions in terms of what players can expect when the professions are being balanced. It’s probably a big reason why the tempest received such a lukewarm reception on a class that already has what is needed in the current meta with the core specializations available.

It’s important to remember that Anet has said, and it’s what some have pointed out already, that they believe that the encounters in the game can be improved to where the full extent of the combat system is realized which suggests that there is room for improvement. That statement pretty much runs counter to what players who enjoy the current meta believe, which is that the combat and encounters cannot be improved on, effectively leaving necro out of favor in group comps for the foreseeable future. There’s a lot to this issue and I must admit that I personally feel that people who believe the current meta that excludes the necromancer is immovable are incredibly myopic. How to tackle that issue can be approached from a number of directions, which may include simply giving necromancers blast finishers and invuln/evasion etc., but Anet is, as always, clandestine in their larger design goals. Where necros fit in group content is as much up in the air as they ever were prior to the announcement. Perhaps, in a post beta weekend followup, they’ll comment on this matter.