Guild Wars 2

I have seen many people complaining about the changes revealed on the stream. While these aren’t exactly enough to make us equal to other classes, they certainly aren’t nerfs.
I get that you wish they were better, but it’s been like that for a while. What exactly is everyone complaining about, or is it just them wishing for better changes?

The changes are totally and utterly random (and junk/useless/crap). None of them are what anyone wanted.
These changes are more random than when they originally changed traits into “tiers” after the beta tests.

They merged and hyper buffed a lot of traits for other classes or made some things base line while Necromancer barely changed at all, still sits with absolutely garbage traits even some GM ones, and an entire tree that our class mechanic fights with.

If you really want to know why Necros are upset, check out thief/engineer/ranger changes.

For example: Read the Wind, Eagle Eye, etc baseline for long bow and grenades getting Grenadeer baseline with a new ADAPT to make them faster and more reliable (in net, a HUGE buff), while we for whatever reason still have Greater Marks and Soul Marks as two separate traits left untouched. Its all just really silly to me. The power creep was immense with the way they merged and made a lot of other classes’ stuff baseline and very little of that happened on necro and we still ended up with some of the most pointless traits.

Actually, they did not say Eagle Eye was baseline. Only after ALOT of prodding by us in twitch did they finally say (during the warrior segment of all things) that LB would still have 1500 range. They didn’t confirm whether the damage portion of Eagle Eye survived as well. Read the Wind is not baseline. Only the velocity portion is, the rest is in Lead the wind which has to compete against Predator’s Onslaught. They rushed through our segment and barely even seemed interested in it. Didn’t even properly explain what things were baseline and what weren’t and they totally got things flat out wrong. I’m guessing because they weren’t the actual people familiar with rangers and in charge of the changes.

The Wizland.8435:

While these aren’t exactly enough to make us equal to other classes

Basically this. Most of the changes to Necromancer were a buff, while a few seem to be nerfs. The problem is that any nerfs aren’t really deserved, Necromancer isn’t strong enough right now so nerfing anything makes no sense. On the other hand, while we did retain some buffs, these buffs might not keep us up on the level of power creep other professions had. Meaning we took one step forward, but if everyone else took two we’ve effectively gone backwards.

And we still have issues in our trait lines and major deficiencies, which is part of the problem: these changes weren’t enough to completely bring us up to par. Blood Magic is better now, but still not good enough, and life stealing still conflicts with Death Shroud. Curses has no good GM trait to use for power builds, despite the rest of the line having great potential synergy for power builds. Death Magic still has two minion GMs taking up slots, making it hard for other builds to justify going into DM if they don’t want to play with minions. Axe Training seems to have taken a definite step backwards. And unfortunately even if ANet had gotten the trait changes right, there are still major problems like lack of useful fields, lack of finishers, etc, although those couldn’t have been fixed in this kind of trait change most likely.

Overall I still think the changes are a net positive for us. The problem is with the overall changes it isn’t hard to feel like Necromancer took two steps forward, one step back, and everyone else took a cab to the other side of town. I’m hopeful, because at the end of the day I think we’re getting closer, and the devs are obviously listening to us.

Spite got buffs in terms of it’s minor traits. Other then that it didn’t change much – people are still going to ctd.

Curses it basically the same for condi builds – they’re going to use the exact same three traits. Non condi builds got shafted pretty hard though in this line.

Death magic got buffed for minion builds, but is pretty terrible otherwise.

Blood magic was terrible, and still is.

Soul reaping was marginally buffed for both condi and power builds, but it’s always been good.

Nothing is wrong. Some people feel that they are entitled to more buffs.

The problem is that the traits aren’t sorted. For example i you play dagger warhorn power necro you really want Banshee’s Wail but the point is if you try to get Banshee’s Wail you have to go full in this tree and the grandmaster only give you extra condi with scepter, condi heals and terror dmg. For a Power necro you just waste this grandmaster for 50 % more duration on your warhorn.

The system we got now allows us to go maybe only 4 points into a trait line and dont take the useless condi grandmasters and so we dont waste points but now we have to go all in and that just sux because condi power are just mixed together and sometimes there is not even an alternativ for power :/

runeblade.7514:

Nothing is wrong. Some people feel that they are entitled to more buffs.

If 2 out of 5 Traitlines are crap is nothing wrong to you then there is something wrong with you.
Also Curses GM’s are awful for anything but condis and the choice itsself is a nerf to condis.

@runeblade: I think out of all classes Necromancer is certainly the one most entitled to buffs

Here are the biggest issues I have with the proposed changes…

Yes, they didn´t exactly destroyed the class completely and lot of minor things seemed improved, but just compare that to what they are doing to Engineer for example (new F5 skill, Med- and Grenade-kit rework and completely new elite kit, are you kidding me??!). The proposed changes to Necro seem either good, but totally uninspired, or meaningless to right up nonsensical to me.

If these changes go through as is, I will have serious problems picking a third line as power Necro (Spite/Soul Reaping/???), because Curses will be an absolutely terribad choice and neither Death Magic nor Blood Magic got something compelling to offer for power builds either.
So I might as well shelf power Necro again until HoT comes out, right?

As for condi specs… well, idk.
During the live-stream they made it sound like you´d now have to make meaningful, build defining choices with the Curses GM traits, but I don´t think this is the case at all. Basically they cramped two (possible three, not sure) very good condi traits into one slot, but we will absolutely have to take Terror over Lingering Curse if we want to preserve the current “condi-burst” style of playing condi Necro. I think even after the buff Parasitic Contagion is not an option when competing with Terror and LC for a slot. Basically the only thing that changed is Terror and PoC swapping tiers, nothing more.
Then there is Dhuumfire. While I think it fits the Soul Reaping line much better then Spite, but it is still a pretty bad trait and can´t compete with FitG in the GM slot. The trait really should give us unconditional burns on critical hits (or something like that) or just should be deleted completely and replaced with something worthwhile.

Overall I´m really disappointed (high hopes = bad idea). Half of our traits will still be kitten. The two currently existing power builds (66002 and 62006) will be effectively reduced to one kitten version (RIP Target the Weak) without a good third line to invest in. Condi builds will still be pigeonholed into Terror. Vampiric and MM builds will still be kitten, because Blood Magic is still kitten and minions are still kitten y. (Edit: that’s a lot of kitten, I know :>)

And of course, still no improvements to our non-existent group support (really ANYTHING done here would have been an improvement) besides vulnerability stacking.

So yeah, my Necro will most probably just return to the shelf (once I can´t even cheese-nuke people with super op down state anymore; sadly that’s the only thing I enjoy doing with Necro right now).

Siphoned power at a glance looked like a major step forward. Then i spotted the ICD. Yeah theres some serious problems with Anets careful approach.

The only one build that will be powered up is the minionmaster. But only by a single trait.
Direct damage build will not be influenced by that trait’s so much and nothing is been to be powered up, like everyone wanted to.
Condition damage will be forced to chose between increased condition duration by scepter, fear that give damage or heal by conditions. That will be a big problem and turn down a little the condition build. And Dhuumfire will move to Soul Riping, a traitline that provide absolitly nothing to condition damage.

Everyone wanted some more defensive traits but no one provide us one. Only the same of the past 2 years.

For the www build nothing will change. For spvp there will be a large amount of MM builds because it’s the only one that will be empowered a little. Condition damage build will lose fear damage or condition duration or healing from conditions. And every single thing that will be buffed a little will be lost while you enter the DS state because not a single trait will be use in DS state. Only the Dhuumfire will be good, that will grant a little of condition damage to condi build. But for a dps class nothing will change. Not in better.

Silv.9207:

The only one build that will be powered up is the minionmaster. But only by a single trait.
Direct damage build will not be influenced by that trait’s so much and nothing is been to be powered up, like everyone wanted to.
Condition damage will be forced to chose between increased condition duration by scepter, fear that give damage or heal by conditions. That will be a big problem and turn down a little the condition build. And Dhuumfire will move to Soul Riping, a traitline that provide absolitly nothing to condition damage.

Everyone wanted some more defensive traits but no one provide us one. Only the same of the past 2 years.

For the www build nothing will change. For spvp there will be a large amount of MM builds because it’s the only one that will be empowered a little. Condition damage build will lose fear damage or condition duration or healing from conditions. And every single thing that will be buffed a little will be lost while you enter the DS state because not a single trait will be use in DS state. Only the Dhuumfire will be good, that will grant a little of condition damage to condi build. But for a dps class nothing will change. Not in better.

Death nova become mutually exclusive to the Training of the Master 25% minion damage. It didn’t get a direct buff.

Even if I dislike the change, I still have to say that you are wrong here and there.

Everyone wanted some more defensive traits but no one provide us one. Only the same of the past 2 years.

Putrid defense : Take 10% less damage from poisoned foe. I like it.
Beyond the veil : gain protection when leaving DS. not bad at all.

Only the Dhuumfire will be good, that will grant a little of condition damage to condi build.

I feel Dhuumfire may be revived by a new way to handle burn. If I recall right, I’ve seen stacking to burn in the guardian tree (This this something that may grant more deppth to this trait).

Dadnir.5038:

Even if I dislike the change, I still have to say that you are wrong here and there.

Everyone wanted some more defensive traits but no one provide us one. Only the same of the past 2 years.

Putrid defense : Take 10% less damage from poisoned foe. I like it.
Beyond the veil : gain protection when leaving DS. not bad at all.

Only the Dhuumfire will be good, that will grant a little of condition damage to condi build.

I feel Dhuumfire may be revived by a new way to handle burn. If I recall right, I’ve seen stacking to burn in the guardian tree (This this something that may grant more deppth to this trait).

Death Magic is almost there- if they rework Unholy Sanctuary to be worthwhile, I think that DM will be pretty solid. Blood is a bad joke. Necros still have 3.5 trait lines, meaning we’re still pigeonholed into a handful of offensive builds.

Urug.2543:

Dadnir.5038:

Even if I dislike the change, I still have to say that you are wrong here and there.

Everyone wanted some more defensive traits but no one provide us one. Only the same of the past 2 years.

Putrid defense : Take 10% less damage from poisoned foe. I like it.
Beyond the veil : gain protection when leaving DS. not bad at all.

Only the Dhuumfire will be good, that will grant a little of condition damage to condi build.

I feel Dhuumfire may be revived by a new way to handle burn. If I recall right, I’ve seen stacking to burn in the guardian tree (This this something that may grant more deppth to this trait).

Death Magic is almost there- if they rework Unholy Sanctuary to be worthwhile, I think that DM will be pretty solid. Blood is a bad joke. Necros still have 3.5 trait lines, meaning we’re still pigeonholed into a handful of offensive builds.

I still think they need to add another non-minion trait in the GM area. I offered the following suggestion for the rework/merger of the two GMs

“*Necromantic Corruption:*
Pets pull conditions from the master (1 per 10 seconds per pet) and transfer conditions to enemies when they strike. On death, they become a poison cloud. (Remove the damage portion of the explosion.)

Make the 25% damage to minions baseline, but instead, make it about 20% instead of 25%.

Then have a 3rd NON-minion trait for other necromancers to chose from. Also, with this change, it may make Flesh Golem as a lone-pet maybe a little more attractive if they still can’t be happy with either of the other 2 GMs.!"

The reason I suggest this is; Death nova plays an important part in the skill factor of MM but mostly only in the form of using Putrid Explosion for poison and weakness. Purposefully letting pets die or being rewarded for the enemy killing them felt strange to me. Additionally, this helps a little bit with the condition issues pets already had, give or take the “pulling conditions” part which could be viewed as either positive or negative, but since they hand them off as they get them, I couldn’t imagine anyone being too upset about it. The pet damage should just be baseline to reduce the tooltip bloat. I don’t think non-MMs will be feeling real powerful with a slight minion damage buff baseline, since almost no builds run pets without being invested in them.

Either way, DM definitely needs at least 2 GMs that non-MMs can use, and this at least gives non MMs a little bit of a reason to take the merged Necromantic Corruption.
d(‘-’d)

On one hand I like the idea of having two separate MM builds, one that focuses on keeping minions alive and one that is more personal damage with minions for utility, which choosing between Death Nova and Necromantic Corruption supports. On the other hand DM absolutely needs another non-minion trait.

I think a decent option is to drop Death Nova to Master, merging it with Necromantic Corruption is too much, the traits are alone worth bringing.

The weakest profession got the least buffs and a few nerfs.

They changed little to nothing at all, sprinkle some skills that no one wanted ignore the DS issue completely and you have the Necromancer. It’s not like some of the changes are bad, but we still have no viabilty in group fights, high survivability but low damage unless you’re power spec and most importantly skills that are borderline useless or broken.

I’m not really understanding either.

-We can still use path of corruption and terror in the same traitline.
-Death magic basically still the same, meh, would be nice if it was more useful but I don’t see how it’s a nerf.
-Soul reaping we can still trait staff mastery, master of terror, and FitG. Bonus from this: we now get life force on marks and another fear on downed.

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Sabre.8627:

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Its 15% now, yes.

Bhawb.7408:

Sabre.8627:

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Its 15% now, yes.

That means we get healed for 15% of the damage that our conditions do? If so, that seemed like a really big buff o.o why is no-one talking about that?
Tons of extra sustain in team fights, also in wvw groups, and basically unkillable in PvE.

Yes, you are healed for 15% of the total condition damage you are dealing at any point, including things that are Epidemic’d, and should work with transfers as well. So if you are dealing just 1k condition damage per second, which is only like 7 bleeds, will heal you for 150 healing per second.

Sabre.8627:

Bhawb.7408:

Sabre.8627:

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Its 15% now, yes.

That means we get healed for 15% of the damage that our conditions do? If so, that seemed like a really big buff o.o why is no-one talking about that?
Tons of extra sustain in team fights, also in wvw groups, and basically unkillable in PvE.

Possibly because it’s competing with two of the biggest condition damage traits out there (and for sure the biggest ones for Necromancer), Lingering Curses and Terror. So any build that uses Parasitic Contagion is giving up a lot of power in exchange for that healing. Which is a fair and interesting choice, but it does curb the hype train a little bit.

Plus, a lot of discussion around the new Curses line is about how it isn’t quite a good choice for power necromancers now, since none of the GMs benefit a pure-power build.

Very late edit:
In case some dev comes through to read this later, I think in summary:
Spite is pretty great, just needs some numbers tweaking on the minors.
Curses is full of neat stuff, but only has grandmaster traits for condition builds.
Death Magic is full of neat stuff, but only has grandmaster traits for minion masters. And Unholy Sanctuary, which is “You have regeneration while in death shroud”.
Blood Magic is kind of a mess. A few cool traits, but the insistence on continuous healing as defense is weird, since Necromancers are the only profession that gets locked out of incoming healing. (Through death shroud)
Soul Reaping is pretty amazing.

There are some specific traits, but I think those are the big issues.

The problem is…They’re just that.
Changes to couple traits, some merging and trait moving. From an expansion.

Don’t understand me wrong, it’s good that anything about Necromancer is on the table.

But such balance changes are good bandaid for some balance patch or hotfix, not an expansion. They don’t make Necromancer any more desirable for teamplay, they don’t adress our PvE problems, our WvW problems, our PvP problems. They’re okay all around.

However, none of these changes adress our problems which lay in very core of Necromancer and the idea behind it. Called Death Shroud. That Holy Grail of Necro defense, our OP Second Life Bar. It’s still in kittening beta test.

Nothing about healing in Death Shroud, expanding it so you can actually do something with that Life Force besides using it as a meat shield or bonus cooldown or two, Minion overhaul, Weapon changes.

ArenaNet has created Guild Wars 1 skills. Skills that were interesting, allowed for some clever usage, combos, required thinking and timing. Yet we’re left with some really, really, really basic vanilla ideas. CDR here, more damage there. Wahoo, I’m excited, I do 5% more damage! Nothing unique.

There’s really few traits or utilities which are remotely interesting. Path of Corruption, DPerception, FitG, Parasitic Contagion, Terror, Epidemic, Corrupt Boon, Well of Suffering. They really add some finese, change your playstyle, give you some “skillshot” potential. While some CDR, bonus 5% damage or proc is just failed idea. How do you “sell” the Necromancer? Most people roll it because of theme. But theme is not here, really, neither described profession. Your best PvE combat comes down to spamming auto attack and dropping some wells, flashing Shroud. No “omph” moment, no huge plays. Even Warcraft’s Destro Warlock PvE is more interesting. That’s you, Master of Death, stabbing someone with a knife all day on auto attack. With this criteria, half of Detroit, Bronx or Warsaw’s Praque is more Necromantic then.

Necromancer is sometimes extremaly basic. I’d love to have some huge plays, Life Force management, you know, choices. But, example, Power Necro in PvP is based around spamming auto attacks and proccing the procs, trying to survive, dropping wells and again, spamming auto attack on Lich. I generalize, but that’s your exciting gameplay overall. Condition Necromancer is somehow more finesse, but still suffers from same problems.

You see, my problem is that they’re doing the fluff, but after 3 years of our constant feedback, endless examples within the game, opinions of players, they still don’t have balls to stand there and say:

“Look, Necromancers. We kittened up. But let’s brake it down and make you better. Together”.

What they’re doing is like adding Sparco seats and driving wheel to a car wreck. Yeah, they’re cool, but they won’t make car work again. Because it’s old, has broken engine and it’s tires are unusable after 3 years.

Bhawb.7408:

On one hand I like the idea of having two separate MM builds, one that focuses on keeping minions alive and one that is more personal damage with minions for utility, which choosing between Death Nova and Necromantic Corruption supports. On the other hand DM absolutely needs another non-minion trait.

I think a decent option is to drop Death Nova to Master, merging it with Necromantic Corruption is too much, the traits are alone worth bringing.

My idea was to actually merge them and remove a bit of the less “skillful” aspects. I think having both at once would be more powerful of an alternative than my suggestion.

Its no secret, I actually HATE the idea of minion death explosions because I feel like it punishes enemies too much for playing well. However, I think the poison field itself combos well with Putrid explosion and makes timing its self-blast (for weakness) more skillful and takes some of the face roll out of MM. In addition, making the minion damage passive (but at 15-20% instead of 25%) both increases the likelihood of other people considering minions as an off-utility and slightly reduces the passive damage of minions. I think its the best active-play alternative.

And then, obviously, more than ever, having two minion GMs in a single spot is just silly… It puts a HUGE limitation on building into that tree.

Bhawb.7408:

On one hand I like the idea of having two separate MM builds, one that focuses on keeping minions alive and one that is more personal damage with minions for utility, which choosing between Death Nova and Necromantic Corruption supports. On the other hand DM absolutely needs another non-minion trait.

I think a decent option is to drop Death Nova to Master, merging it with Necromantic Corruption is too much, the traits are alone worth bringing.

My idea was to actually merge them and remove a bit of the less “skillful” aspects. I think having both at once would be more powerful of an alternative than my suggestion.

Its no secret, I actually HATE the idea of minion death explosions because I feel like it punishes enemies too much for playing well. However, I think the poison field itself combos well with Putrid explosion and makes timing its self-blast (for weakness) more skillful and takes some of the face roll out of MM. In addition, making the minion damage passive (but at 15-20% instead of 25%) both increases the likelihood of other people considering minions as an off-utility and slightly reduces the passive damage of minions. I think its the best active-play alternative.

And then, obviously, more than ever, having two minion GMs in a single spot is just silly… It puts a HUGE limitation on building into that tree.

My overall goal here is to: Reduce passive damage in MM overall, retain the skillful parts of both traits (CCing to allow pet uptime to share conditions and death nova posion field for smarter and more skillful considerations for putrid explosion) as well as opening up build options by making minions slightly more considerable as a side-utility and opening up a trait for a new third Grand Master.

Rym.1469:

From an expansion.

This isn’t the expansion, it will hit before hand.

Bhawb.7408:

Rym.1469:

From an expansion.

This isn’t the expansion, it will hit before hand.

They’re changes associated with an expansion, and as evidenced by many of the other classes, there’s usually an expectation that we’re going to see some major shake-ups in traits beyond just balance tweaks or making the old traits and skills fit into the new paradigm. Skill/spell/whatever and trait/talent/AA/whatever changes before an expansion are usually meant to not only shake the game up a bit and tighten it up, but also help to set the tone for the dev’s newest vision of how the class ought to work.

Given that necros are nearly universally considered the most broken class in the game, and that these are going to basically set the tone for Necros in the expansion, there absolutely was a reason for him to expect more from the changes. Instead, while classes which are in a decent state(e.g. Engis) get huge overhauls all necros get traitwise and apparently skillwise so far are basic balance changes and a nerf to literally the dumbest cheesey build I’ve ever heard of.

Bhawb.7408:

Rym.1469:

From an expansion.

This isn’t the expansion, it will hit before hand.

But what’s the point of implementing such balance, ui changes to the game right before expansion hits and, by this logic, changes more? You’re not adding half of changes now and half then if they’re meant to work together. It would break any idea, any logic.

If you tell me that I’ll get a pizza, then you give me only cheese, what will I say? That’s no pizza, that’s bullkitten and I rate your “pizza” 0/10, because that was just a single ingridient, not the whole product. What would you like to accomplish by giving me that cheese, my good feedback?

That’s no logic. So I say that these are our glorified sweeping expansion changes.

One more thing. I appreciate work Gates Assasin does for us, but we were promised, more than half a year ago, that there will be forum specialist for each profession forum. Now, there’s none, they give us the changes not based on our feedback. Because if they were to be, we would already have our specialist, gathering feedback for them as they expressed they cannot gather it by themselves.

That’s a big middle finger to community, expressing “We said that we want to work with your feedback, we told you that you’ll be part of the changes. But, you know, kitten you, we’ll do it by ourselves and you watch”.

I don’t feel like minionmancers got any better. I see less options for minions with the merges and removing of the traits. Maybe I need to watch the video again. But as a minionmancer I was extremely disappointed. I was distracted too though. Still not really looking forward to it.
I did not see Flesh of the master anywhere. merging fetid consumption (i think) with training of the master kittenes me off.

What about Spyte Gm traits?
Sygnet mastery? A GM trait? Wtf, that will make no one use it!
Actually there’s only a few number of player that use a sygnet and that’s not the Locust, that can be good only in pve. But in PvE is better a +20% of damage than a free Sygnet od Locusts and 3 stack of might for it.
And Spiteful Spirit? It can barely be use in www if you’re into a zerk to obtain retalation, but no more. +20% of bonus damage will always be better.
They make us forced to make a very hard choice in the Curses traitline and then they make us make a so easy choice in Spite traitline?
Why?

The Wizland.8435:

I have seen many people complaining about the changes revealed on the stream. While these aren’t exactly enough to make us equal to other classes, they certainly aren’t nerfs.
I get that you wish they were better, but it’s been like that for a while. What exactly is everyone complaining about, or is it just them wishing for better changes?

What I find disappointing about the changes is that they do not address the core design problems that necros suffer from.

Not “more buffs”, we expected better buffs.

In the case of death/blood magic, yes we hardly got any buffs.

It is wrong because it seems like SR traitline is the only one to go (solo, minion, power, condition).
Blood traitline sucks (it was said 10000 times why).
Curse traitline have no power GM trait.
Spite has no Condition one.
Basically, we’ve had so many builds (some more, some less viable, but I loved every single one).
This is the reason why I adored this profession. RIP in Pieces My friend.

I think the rework for Spite and Soul Reaping are fine. Curses is almost there but it needs a crit related GM trait which also works in a power build. Otherwise Curses will turn out to be quite unattractive for anything but condition builds.

When it comes to Death Magic – the line isn’t that far off. If you are a MM. I can’t think of any traitline within in the preview which dedicates so many traits to one singular utility group. ANet quite obviously has too many ideas for Minions. Are they supposed to be power (Necrotic Corruption) or condition centered (Death Nova)? Do you want us to keep them alive (Siphons, Flesh of the Master, Beyond the Veil) and trigger them actively or let them die (Death Nova)? Make a choice, ANet. And make your choice work. No more than 1 Minion trait per tier. Preferably only 2 Major Minions traits in the whole trait line. Personally, I’d favour getting rid of Death Nova and Jagged Horrors (replace by Bone Minions) and build up from there.

Blood Magic… meh. Lifesteal really has to work in Death Shroud. Even if it’s just a certain percentage. Everything else makes half of the line useless. Bloodthirst and Vampiric Precision need to be combined to open up a Master trait. Transfusion and Deathly Invigoration should be combined to open up a GM trait. Then add more group utility! E.g. Vampiric Aura (Siphoning health also heals nearby allies while above health threshold x) or Dark Armor (Blind nearby foes when hit while being affected by a condition, x ICD).

That curses trait that the necromancer needs for power builds exists too: it was called withering precision and it was removed.

Yeah. As I watched the first few professions, I was so excited (Thief’s CS, SA, Tricks, and Acro lines, OMG WTF!), but then they get Necro… :/

One thing to consider though that I think this change will accomplish is that the stats are gonna be ‘moved’ to the amulet/gear. This no longer means putting 2 into Curses for a messily gain for a power build. Yes it gave good extra bit of damage but 6/0/0/6/6 is looking good tbh.

(1) Bad condition removal traits mean we are stuck taking consume conditions

(2) No vigor and bad access to stability mean we are stuck taking 2 stun breaks on our bar

(3) Several interesting but underpowered traits removed completely. The necromancer’s access to weakness from traits is gone for example.

(4) Lifesteal traits are horrible. Even if the numbers were better, they are just damage + heal. They do not support the team or do anything else interesting. Ditto for life force traits. They are boring.

(5) necromancer gameplay is still 1-spam (scepter for condition, dagger for power).

(6) Spite changes are bizaare with all of the conditional threshold stuff. Basically you can’t count on your traits to work for you during gameplay.

(7) Death is still too focused on minions, which are essentially optional utility skills and not a core feature of the profession. (minions have nothing to do with death shroud) This means that Death sucks for non MM, MM locked into taking death, and minion utilities suck unless you devote your whole bar to them.

(8) Blood is the worst trait line in the game. Give up on lifesteal, anet hasn’t been able to balance it for 10 years. Merge all of the vampirics into one optional trait and add boons to the line please.

(9). Still nothing done about being able to receive healing in death shroud.

(10) curses has nothing but condition grandmasters. this means that all necromancers after the changes will be (soul reaping) + (curses or spite) + (underwhelming trait line that doesn’t offer much for offense or defense).

(11). Anybody who has been paying any attention to the game’s development knows that these traits, unchanged, are what the necromancer will be stuck with for the next three years.

(12). Power creep in other classes, but not on the necromancer. So the thief gets a trait that immobilizes and can be used every 15 seconds. How are necromancers supposed to cope with this? Consume conditions? We’ll be sitting ducks.

nekretaal.6485:

(4) Lifesteal traits are horrible. Even if the numbers were better, they are just damage + heal. They do not support the team or do anything else interesting. Ditto for life force traits. They are boring.

(6) Spite changes are bizaare with all of the conditional threshold stuff. Basically you can’t count on your traits to work for you during gameplay.

(11). Anybody who has been paying any attention to the game’s development knows that these traits, unchanged, are what the necromancer will be stuck with for the next three years.

I agree with a lot of your post. But for the parts I disagree with…

4 – Lifesteal traits could be made to work. Mostly they just have to be compressed time-wise, so that instead of applying a minor effect constantly throughout a fight, they apply more dramatic effects at pivotal moments in a fight. That said, I’d rather ArenaNet put our team support options in something more likely to be useful than group heals, like group condition control.

6 – A fight where you can’t get your opponent below 25% is a fight you weren’t going to win anyways. The only exception is point control in sPvP, where leaving your opponent alive and at high health for too long will still probably result in your death.

11 – I really disagree, since these trait proposals were shown to us as works-in-progress and the devs in question pointedly asked for feedback. What the Ready Up preview showed us is far from final, and now’s the time to change it.

My impressions:

CURSES

Similar to what others have already stated, this specialisation in it’s new version is one of my biggest issues with the necro changes as well.

Power necro (in PvE) would usually go 5 into curses for the fury, the warhorn trait and the damage multiplier per condition.

Now the damage multiplier trait has been nerfed and only gives extra precision and the whole traitline has been made into something that wants to appeal to condi necros but still has 2 important power build traits in there.

Suggestion: Either move the warhorn trait and preferably also the fury minor trait somewhere else, or remodel curses to give it at least one power build option in the grandmaster slot and please give us back the damage multiplier in the grandmaster minor.

BLOOD MAGIC

I know most people don’t play this ATM anyway, probably because health siphoning is far from being truly effective, but I still liked to play “vampire necro” just for fun. Some of the changes here are nice, but the grandmaster minor change – much like in curses – is sucking the fun right out of this specialisation. Right now you get +120 power if your health is above the threshold, which suits the build nicely. You can use the mini heals from siphoning to keep your health up and as long as you do so you get more power to inflict extra damge due to the trait, and it also helps to keep your Scholar Rune damage multplier. In the new system you get extra healing power when you drop below the threshold. Life siphon traits currently don’t benefit from healing power, because the healing either doesn’t scale or scales by pitiful amounts. 300 extra healing power gives you 1-2 points per tick, which is bascially nothing. So unless they change the scaling this trait will be useless and the additional power will be sorely missed. :\

Suggestion: Please keep the old grandmaster minor trait! And please take a look at siphoning and make it scale with power and healing power in a way that makes it more viable.

Is there still hope…?

From what we have seen so far, the future still looks pretty grim. But if the greatsword skills offer a melee cleave option, if necros get shouts that give them access to group buffs like stability, fury, might, vigor…, if we get at least one decent blast finisher, possibly even a fire field, if we get some kind of damage mitigation, be it vigor, evades, blocks or immunities, then necro could become yet become awesome in PvE. That’s a lot of ifs though, but hey, hope dies last. I would do the happy dance for days and weeks if the new specialisation brings us at least some of that stuff ;-)

Somewhere on the Forums I came up with something like it, expanding Shroud:

DS #6 being LF to health conversion, total LF reduced, LF generation buffed to make it more dynamic.

Now, we can have up to 3 trait lines.
So for DS utilities 7-9, make them match chosen ones. Name them Rituals.
Rituals cost Life Force to activate and have no cooldown, 1 sec cast time each.
By themselves, Rituals don’t do much or even anything. They could have some small utility added via traits possibly.

Now, Rituals are similar to element mechanics from Magicka games.

Let’s say, you have 3 Rituals avalible from 3 trait lines you’ve chosen:

7. Reaper’s Ritual
8. Ritual of Blood
9. Ritual of Death

When you use one of them, in any possible combination, The Elite icon starts to glow, displaying your combination of Rituals activated already (or on Rituals themselves, dunno).

Once you’ve activated 3 Rituals in certain combination within some basic time frame for that (like 15 seconds?), your Shroud Elite is fully shaped skill you can use.

Examples:

I enter Death Shroud with 100% Life Force. I activate Rituals in pattern:

-Blood, Reaper, Blood, each for 25% of total LF within 15 seconds and 1 sec cast time each.

I get awarded with, let’s say, Guild Wars 2 version of Order of the Vampire I can activate from Death Shroud Elite slot and after that, elite slot resets and becomes unavalible untill another Ritual composition.

But, if I used Rituals in pattern like this, for example:

1. Death
2. Blood
3. Blood

I will get awarded with something like Elite GW2 version of Order of Undeath.

With such change:

1. We could stop treating Shroud and LF as just defense health bar and couple cooldowns slapped on it. Less health in Shroud, more initiative to gain it, less passive sponge equals possibility of getting some vigor or things.

2. Stacked Shroud in PvE, for example, could finally stop being that ugly thing that we don’t really need, but start being used constantly, to support allies, utility, do more damage, add flavour to your combat and make it unique, combo it.

3. Because such system allows for many outcomes, we’re not strictly reduced to just like 3 skills in each slot which have to work for every build. We already have 5 of those. If you’re not that much into Minion stuff, you execute another pattern. That simple.

4. Allows for future expanding. Why limit it to only 3-ritual combo? Could be 2-ritual combos for less game changing, but cheaper, more utility options like evade, teleport, whatever.

5. Is interesting, fun. If anyone played Magicka, that could be kind of similar feel. You craft your own spells.

6. More choices and decision making. More planning. Should I use that Life Force for maybe soaking up a little bit of damage or strictly convert part of it to health and delay my ritual combos OR do I feel safe/good in LF generation enough to use my Rituals to their best?

7. Award good Necromancer plays. If you’re landing your skills, you get your Life Force, you can execute more Ritual combinations and further advance your game play, which rewards you with more often choices.

We don’t even need all combinations avalible on the spot, they could be introduced slowly.

I think such system could not only fix nearly all Necromancer and Shroud problems, but also make Necromancer fresh and much more dynamic, while keeping that skill cap of pro-active playing and put more focus on good decision making.

Potential solution to Curses Grandmaster level:

1. Merge Terror and old Target the Weak. This creates a Minor trait that makes all kinds of builds happy.

2. Rework Withering Precision and make it a Curses Grandmaster. For example, 33% chance on crit for 3 seconds of Weakness. No ICD.

What’s wrong with the changes to Necromancer is that not much is actually changing.

Our traits are, apparently, just being thrown around to fit into the new system.
Every class is getting so many of their traits merged together and yet ours are left separated? What we got were tweaks to bring traits in line with the new philosophy (essentially, we don’t like on kill traits so we’re going to change those).

Group support is still incredibly minimal, Deathshroud still has a few glaring mechanical issues, Minion AI is still subpar, life leeching abilities are not effective and have not been effective for the entirety of GW2, we have 3 combo finishers 2 reliable ones on Staff and sacrificing Bone Minions, our utility skills and mobility skills are incredibly lackluster.

Looking over that list many of those issues are entire Necro trait lines (DS, MM, LL), if they don’t function at a base level of course we will never have build diversity.

Many builds for other classes deal less damage for the trade off of increased group support. We seem to be designed to deal less damage to balance Deathshroud. If that’s really the case Deathshroud needs a serious look at.