Guild Wars 2

KarlaGrey.5903:

Scepter: I think number 2 grasping dead should have a 2 stack of bleed on it and not 1.

It is 3 stacks of bleeding, it just doesn’t’ show it in the description.

Reanimator needs to be changed to some kind of boon. Summoning a minion as a required trait in order to get Staff cooldowns is a terrible idea.

Replace Reanimator with some kind of Vigor trait.

We need…

1# More access to condition duration, besides our trait tree and food is really really hard to get and reach to 100% bleed and fear duration is an odyssey forcing us to pick horrible runes, (literally imposible on Spvp),
2# Condition duration in a tree focused to direct damage is like a kick on the face, anyway every class has to deal with this stupid design,
3# Maybe lingering curse could be 20% condition duration in general instead a 33% condition duration on scepter, (plus only 2 of 3 attacks inflicts conditions),
4# Reanimator and protection of the horde needs to go to hell,
5# We need access to stability,
6# We need access to vigor,
7# Cast times needs to be reduced,
8# Dark path needs to be like doom, insta casted with no animation or projectile,
9# Axe damage needs to be increased,
10# Auto attack on staff needs to be redesigned,
11# We need a cleave weapon,
12# We need to start with our LF filled on Spvp,
13# A light armor class with a short range dagger and the worst mobility in game, really? I’d make a thief, with medium armor and stealth… oh, and no stability, no vigor, no damage reduction…
14# Our trait tree sucks, it’s even worst than the warrior one, (and the warrior trait tree is awfull),

Oh… and we DON’T NEED A NEW CONDITION, not even burning or confusion,

@Engels
1)We don’t need more access to cindition duration, ‘tho we need more duration on our bleed auto attack of scepter
2)It’s not a kick in the face, you need SOME “spread” traits and it would be a bit OP to put the duration with the damage.Altho some proffesions have similar lines with crit chance/dmg
3)Lingering curse is fine if we do the 1) , and all 3 attacks do inflict a condition.
4)Reanimator and protection of the horde could be added to one minor trait and buffed up, this would be fine.
5)True
6)Also true
7)Some true
8)Insta cast yes,a fast projectile also yes.
9)Only on the auto attack and only a bit,a range increase would also be more than welcome
10)Faster projectile,and some secondary ability
11)True
12)No, warrior don’t start with adrenaline filled also, we could maybe start with a 10-20% but not full
13)Mostly true, but we have the biggest life pool also, and we have damage reduction, most dagger builds use well protection.
14)Our traits are not that awful, they are bad but not the way you describe them.

I also believe we don’t need a new condition,we need a Dead Shroud ability that changes with your weapon set.

A lot problems would be solved in the PvP part of the game if we had the chance to adjust our stats better and not just with one amulet and some runes..

Only thing i strongly disagree with you is #14,

Alongside the warrior our trait trees are by far the worst in game,

Just take a look to the other classes, it’s really hard to decide where to put your points,

On the warrior and the necromancer is more like a discard,

On the other hand, minor traits on the necromancer are painfull useless, in fact i could disable many of them and loose exactly nothing,

Uh… no it isn’t hard to decide where to put them in other classes. If you run an ele, you go 0/0/0/20/30 in every single build, period, end of story. Mesmer trait line is predetermined by your build. Warriors have the same thing, Guardians have a bit of variety, but not a ton. Most other classes, the second you choose a build, you already know where 50-60 of your trait points are going, with maybe 10-20 left over with actual decisions to make.

My 2 mains are Necro and warrior, I have played some engi,mesmer, thief, ele and guardian.
I can’t say that our traits are really that bad, but it looks that way because the traits of (almost) all the other proffesions are pretty decent placed.
You can see the engineer, you choose elixirs, you boost elixirs.
The mesmer can pretty much boost anything within a line.
Our traits have some synergy, but they are very spread and weak compared to other proffesions,some useless indeed and some major which are worse than the minors.(E.G Gluttony, even after the boost ,the life force increase is not even noticed,the biggest you can get is 1% out of your 10% in BiP).

Necro is a good proffesion in general, even as it is right now, we can do a lot of stuff, but they are all dull when compared to the other proffesions,what necro needs is a good tuning which will not make us OP, and I say that because when I spec to bunker I can hold 4-5 people for more than half a min, when I spec to glass cannon, I can take down a whole team if I am not targeted soon enough.
We are good, but we need some mild love.

Off-topic : Nerf MoA , it kills all my minions and takes me out of my precious transform elites without giving me the chance to break out of it.
It also lasts 10 seconds.

My necro…

barbed precision = average

furious demise = average

target the weak = useless

reanimator = completly useless

protection of the horde = completly useless

Gluttony = useless

Last grasp = delicious, the exception to the rule

My Guardian…

Valorous Defense = good

Courageous Return = average

Might of the Protector = good

Vigorous Precision = excepcional

Selfless Daring = very good

Elusive Power = very good

Inspired Virtue = very good

My ranger…

Natural Vigor = exceptional

Companion´s Defense = exceptional

Peak Strength = average

Rejuvenation = average

Zephyr’s Speed = very good

Loud Whistle = very good

Nature’s Wrath = very good

Do i need to do this for my thief and warrior?

Engels.8537:

Do i need to do this for my thief and warrior?

Yes. Please try to make the case that Warriors are good for PvP because they have good traits, I would love to see that.

Now tell me please where could i put my points on a condition necro?

I could put them on the first one just to get +30 condition duration, despite all of them are useless to me, except maybe chill of death,

Blood magic? Oh no thanks… hell no,

Saying that the necromancer’s trait tree is ok shows me that the only class you played is a necromancer,

I never said that a warrior is ok for Spvp, in fact they are the worst class at the moment,

Now put words in my mouth that i didnt say, maybe it works,

Not going to answer anymore,

Condi necro go 0/30/10/0/30 pretty easily, and that can give 3 amazing traits (soul marks, terror, and foot in grave are great).

Point being with warriors, it doesn’t matter how good or bad your trait tree is if you are an absolutely useless class. Necromancers have some terrible adept traits, but we also have some amazing traits.

Soul marks and master of terror are master traits,

Foot in the grave sounds great on paper, for a condition necro to obtain LF is not that easy, you are going to spend 30 points to stomp somebody and then be unable to use #2 and #3? (I’m talking about Spvp here)

Plus you are getting critical damage and life force pool…

I’d prefer to get toughness and Reaper’s Protection wich saved my kitten a lot of times, (and because our stun breakers sucks)

Its easy to obtain LF when you have soul marks, which (gasp) is in the build. And you can use DS 2/3 in 10 seconds when your DS comes back up, not exactly a long time.

LF pool is good for every necro that goes into SR. If you aren’t a condi necro, you have good LF generation. If you are a condi necro and you have gone into SR, then you should have soul marks, which again makes LF pool a good thing. Saying LF pool is bad is like saying having extra vitality is bad.

You don’t need the little extra toughness because of how vitality and DS interact, and SR 15 gives you spectral armor at 50% which will save you as much as Reaper’s protection will, except better.

Bhawb.7408:

Point being with warriors, it doesn’t matter how good or bad your trait tree is if you are an absolutely useless class. Necromancers have some terrible adept traits, but we also have some amazing traits.

I think that this was already said multiple times, its current meta with them not warriors as themself that dont mix. It is only hotjoin stuff, but just as my new bunker bomb heal/kit engie and roam stabby stab mario thief that wouldnt work vs a organized team doing the 2 point or zerg tactics in tournaments, a charrior works both as a defender not bunker of 2 point swapping around and smashing with hammer or roam/poking with longbow & Sword/Axe with perma fury and 20 might does its job in nice chaotic and fun hotjoins.

You cannot be serious,

At this point you are defending the undefendable,

Did i say that vitality is bad?

In my build i have spectral armor dude…

I have gone to SR due master of terror (and because last gasp is the best minor trait we have), this way I can get a second tick with terror, because as I said ironically condition duration is not a option for a condition necro because our trait tree is a mess,

I think the issue with this argument as a whole is that players aren’t pitting themselves up against someone with the same skill level as themselves.

You face the Ranger xXxLegolasxXx in a hotjoin PvP match for a quick evening skirmish. You, as a Necromancer, absolutely destroy Mister Legolas. This is completely understandable.

Now throw that concept out the window.
Imagine, for a second, that you as a player, are cloned. This clone of you, with the exact same skills, knowledge, overall stat tally, reflexes, etc, etc, decides they enjoy playing a Profession other than a Necromancer. There are no differences between the two of you in terms of the ability to play the game. The only difference is that you are playing two different Professions.

Now you fight each other.

The players here stating that Necromancers are in a good position mean to tell me that the end result of such a scenario would not be skewed in favor of the Profession that is not the Necromancer? And if such a stance is taken, how?

Edited in: To take this a step further, as there are bound to be people attempting to skew such a statement in their favor, imagine that both you and your clone are attempting to fill in the same role. This should get rid of the ‘But I’d take a build that would counter their build’ argument (Which is absurd as well, given the assumption that if you are capable of taking such a counter-build, this said clone is just as capable), as well as possibly give a tad more insight into the issue.

And vitality doesn’t work well with an attrition class in my humble opinion, with a necromancer once your hp’s gone it’s not coming back, the idea of an attrition class is to outlast your oponent, not to survive a furious burst while doing little damage,

Of course, that’s a personal preference, in my build i didn’t add even a single vitality point and after hours and hours of gameplay I can assure that my survival increased,

Anyway it’s pretty obvious you can’t learn anything because you are beyond mere mortals wich such explanations,

Rennoko.5731:

Life Blast is not good damage as a Rabid Condition build.

I disagree. My necro uses full Rabid gear and gets good numbers with Life Blast. Not Zerker Thief backstab numbers, but pretty good numbers considering it’s at range and I’m mostly speced for conditions. I usually fire 2-3 of them, then drop out of Death Shroud, at which point my weapon skills are back.

Rennoko.5731:

I also disagree on epidemic being so hard to hit, and that justifed by a short cooldown. I have all but given up trying to transfer more than 5 conditions from an active player, because they get so flighty with dodges/leaps/invulns when they are up around 10 bleeds. If I epidemic early, I can at least get a few bleeds spread.

I just think they should lower it (and Epidemic) to a ~3 second cooldown if it fails because of line of sight or range issues, like how many other skills work. I think that sort of Quality of Life change would solve virtually all the problems people have with it right now without raising the power too much.

Rennoko.5731:

It more or less must be used on pets or downed players to avoid it being wasted. It has a short cooldown yes, but it is situational. You need someone with good conditions on them, in range, not invuln, nearby to other players, etc… Not to mention you may do everything right, and they just land their cleanse right before your epi, or they go down right before your epi and whiff.

It’s situational, but kitten is it good when you get it just right.

Engels.8537:

And vitality doesn’t work well with an attrition class in my humble opinion, with a necromancer once your hp’s gone it’s not coming back, the idea of an attrition class is to outlast your oponent, not to survive a furious burst while doing little damage,

The reason Vitality works well on the Necro is because your Death Shroud size is based on your Vitality and all Life Force gains are % based. What this basically means is that in the case of the Necromancer, Vitality essentially increases your healing if you properly use DS as a shield to block big attacks. The more Vitality you have, the more damage mitigation you gain each time you gain Life Force. Whereas other professions need at least two defensive stats to achieve defensive multiplicity, the Necro can get away with only one.

This doesn’t mean Toughness is bad on the Necro (as far as I know, Toughness applies to DS as well), just that Vitality is pretty good too even though we already have really high base health.

Blaine Tog.8304 – I must say Ren is right about life blast, WHEN and only when you got less than 50% LF (what as a condi and even hybrid with soul marks is pretty often since you gotta use it to eat up the hits youd be allowed just dagger + staff 2 away as a power necro most of the time), since the old DS power scailing with life force when you could get life force in DS damage balance doesnt work with its current setup – both for pve and pvp.
Also either aftercast must go away or it getting cut to 3/4 cast time with no facing requirement (could just be as a added effect in reapers might).
You are right about other stuff, Vit has a 1.6~1.77 scailing with DS depending on soul reaping and just as on a warrior its worth is the same for defensive play as toughness, all corruption skills are designed to be stronger than ususal but situational (just wish they used underwater cast times, again or at least removed the hand wave effect and that they are technically projectiles thus can be mimic absorbed and/or destroyed (but not reflected/blocked).

Engels.8537:

barbed precision = average

furious demise = average

target the weak = useless

I bet most people disagree with this assessment. I certainly do on Target the Weak, which imo is one of the best minor traits we have.

Bhawb.7408:

Its easy to obtain LF when you have soul marks, which (gasp) is in the build. And you can use DS 2/3 in 10 seconds when your DS comes back up, not exactly a long time.

Dark Path and Doom CDs are 15 and 20 seconds. But yeah, still low.

Arianna.7642:

Now you fight each other.

The players here stating that Necromancers are in a good position mean to tell me that the end result of such a scenario would not be skewed in favor of the Profession that is not the Necromancer? And if such a stance is taken, how?

I actually believe that in such a scenario, where you build to counter the other class in a duel, the necromancer will be victorious in most fights. In fact the only classes who wouldn’t lose all the time would be those with the ability to stealth. All others could be countered and focused down rather easily.
Then again 1v1s were never really an issue with necros. And neither is it in this thread, it’s original post was about tPvP where teamwork outshines the dueling capabilities of a player. That’s where you need better mobility and boon access a lot more than in 1v1s.

Engels.8537:

And vitality doesn’t work well with an attrition class in my humble opinion, with a necromancer once your hp’s gone it’s not coming back, the idea of an attrition class is to outlast your oponent, not to survive a furious burst while doing little damage,

Of course, that’s a personal preference, in my build i didn’t add even a single vitality point and after hours and hours of gameplay I can assure that my survival increased

There’s no denying that a higher hp pool would increase your survivability even further. Not doing it though means you trait/gear for offensive attributes instead, in case of pure rabid: condition damage and precision.

Considering that, it’s weird that necromancers see themselves as the attrition class.
My build is not glassy at all. But I never feel like I have to outlast my opponents on low damage output, quite the opposite.

Bhawb.7408:

Saying LF pool is bad is like saying having extra vitality is bad.

For a condi build, under discussion, no its not like saying extra vitality is bad. Extra vitality increases your survivability and attrition far better than more life force, because a condi build goes into sponge mode while in Death Shroud, he loses virtually all his condi pressure, loses his kiting ability (unless he wants to shoot into melee with Dark Path – dumb), and loses the versatility to react from his utilities and staff primarily.

Condi uses DS just as flash mechanic, to pop off one skill, or as a last resort to chew up what’s left if severely focused. When being focused 20% more LF is like a fraction of a second more survivability. So more DS isn’t a big boon to Condi Necro’s at all.

I prefer Blood Magic even, not so great either, but vs going all the way down Soul Reaping, because every 10 points actually gives me 1000 more real health to stay in my most effective form, not to mention 60% of that goes into DS as well. SR tree is pretty much just painful filler for condi builds, that you have to take to get to Master of Terror. The rest of it doesn’t synergize well at all. Crit damage with weak power and weak base attack damage? Garbage.

Vitality scaling good with DS is a myth.
Last night I build my necro with a Knight’s amulet,5 runes of the soldier and 1 rune of the wurm just to achieve maximum life pool (32.502 HP, 2329 Vit).Also got him 30 points on Blood and 30 points on Soul using just one trait, vital persistence(25% slower LF drain on DS)
Then I filled my LF Pool on a friend warrior and made him burst me out of DS to see the total damage I could stand.
Taking in consideration the % LF degenerations I could only take about ~20.000 damage before I leave DS.
This tells me that either vitality doesn’t add much on your amount of LF or that the degeneration is a strong percentage(something like 2% per sec maybe more).
I always disliked too much Vit on my necro, now I can safely say that Toughness>Vit for necro.
Also as someone above said, it is hard to heal the huge life pool of necro, and our best chance is some 25-49 ticks of life stealing,which is not a percentage and toughness would scale better than vitality on it.

natsos.3692:

Also as someone above said, it is hard to heal the huge life pool of necro, and our best chance is some 25-49 ticks of life stealing,which is not a percentage and toughness would scale better than vitality on it.

Yep, if you have life stealing, or they ever make siphoning a lot better, you are going to want toughness and real health, far more than Life Force, because you can’t heal yourself while in DS, all your life stealing is being wasted while in it. Not to mention regen that might still be ticking, which Necro can potentially have a lot of, also being wasted the longer you sit in DS.

Just poor synergy. Be like if a guardian had a transform skill that lasted multiple seconds, but none of his boons actually affected him in it. Would make no sense.

natsos.3692:

Vitality scaling good with DS is a myth.
Last night I build my necro with a Knight’s amulet,5 runes of the soldier and 1 rune of the wurm just to achieve maximum life pool (32.502 HP, 2329 Vit).Also got him 30 points on Blood and 30 points on Soul using just one trait, vital persistence(25% slower LF drain on DS)
Then I filled my LF Pool on a friend warrior and made him burst me out of DS to see the total damage I could stand.
Taking in consideration the % LF degenerations I could only take about ~20.000 damage before I leave DS.
This tells me that either vitality doesn’t add much on your amount of LF or that the degeneration is a strong percentage(something like 2% per sec maybe more).
I always disliked too much Vit on my necro, now I can safely say that Toughness>Vit for necro.
Also as someone above said, it is hard to heal the huge life pool of necro, and our best chance is some 25-49 ticks of life stealing,which is not a percentage and toughness would scale better than vitality on it.

Degen is 4% pre second, LF pool is around 59% up to 77% of your hp, last 1% of DS being a hard cap with no hp that just stops the hit and kicks you out of it (you could take 1 damage or 1000000000, the last % will still be consumed with no damage overflow).

@natsos
1 tick of lf degeneration in DS is 4%
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Life_force
read the part about “life force value”

This guy made a test w/ and w/o a PvP Knight’s amulet.
Bottom line according to his test: life force is 41% of hp.
So on a full lf bar the Knight’s amu will not only give you give you an extra 9230 hp but also an equivalent in lf of 3784 hp.
Total of Rabid vs Knight’s: 25904 vs 38918.

And that’s a rather low estimate if you compare it to what Andele said (59 to 77%), that would make the difference a lot bigger.

flow.6043:

I actually believe that in such a scenario, where you build to counter the other class in a duel, the necromancer will be victorious in most fights. In fact the only classes who wouldn’t lose all the time would be those with the ability to stealth. All others could be countered and focused down rather easily.
Then again 1v1s were never really an issue with necros. And neither is it in this thread, it’s original post was about tPvP where teamwork outshines the dueling capabilities of a player. That’s where you need better mobility and boon access a lot more than in 1v1s.

Which would be fantastic if you could counter someone with the same skill levels as you, except you can not, based off of the assumption that they are capable of playing on par with you, which is what the entire topic is based off of; That is, assuming equal skill in the playing field, why bring a Necromancer into any form of PvP when a different Profession can accomplish the exact same manner of thing the Necromancer seeks to accomplish, but in a far more efficient way.

Andele.1306:

Degen is 4% pre second, LF pool is around 59% up to 77% of your hp,

In regards to this, has anyone actually tested this since my topic about it? As far as I’m aware, there has been absolutely no testing on Death Shroud health numbers since this? I haven’t actually seen any updated facts, which leads me to believe that we’re simply going off of Arenanet’s word that they actually fixed Soul Reaping, since it was not functioning as intended six months (Being when I created the topic), or even two months ago (Being the last post about it). I’m actually curious.

This is some nice information both of you.
I have never done any serious math on this game tbh, but 4% degeneration makes sense, and I have to say that it is too kitten big. Even with the 25% trait which would reduce it to 3% per tick.

Anyway the conclusion for me is, Vit<Tough for necro.

Lets get away of LF and keep it more general about necros

flow.6043:

Engels.8537:

barbed precision = average

furious demise = average

target the weak = useless

I bet most people disagree with this assessment. I certainly do on Target the Weak, which imo is one of the best minor traits we have.

I think you didn’t get the point, maybe I express myself bad (probably because i’m not good at english),

I’m not saying that “target the weak” is useless, is in the wrong place, in a condition tree a major trait who increases direct damage for each condition on a foe is not well placed,

In a hybrid build maybe it works great,

Same with protection of the horde and reanimator, if you are a MM they are decent, any other build who decided to invest 20 points here is getting two useless traits,

Our traits has no synergy, some of them are hilarious as Siphoned Power and many of them completly useless, plus most of them are wrong placed and mixed up,

Take a look to this…

Adept => Vigorous Precision

Gain 5 seconds of vigor when you deliver a critical hit. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.

Master => Selfless Daring

The end of your dodge roll heals nearby allies.

Grandmaster => Elusive Power

Deal more damage at low endurance. (10% more)

This is called synergy when one trait becomes more powerfull with another, in other words what you can see here is 1 + 1 + 1 = 6, and it’s not build dependant, it will help you no matter your build,

This synergy on the necromancer it’s only present with reanimator and protection of the horde,

Engels what you say is correct.In a wrong way.Target the weak is in the right tree,but it is too deep.
It would work fine if the first trait was on the 3d minor , the 2nd trait was “first” in line and “Target the weak” was at 15 points, this would make a lot more sense since when you go 15 to 20 points into Curses ,it is usually to boost your critical chance for power builds.
Same thing goes for the minions, when you go deep enough into the death magic to gain the 30 Major traits, you are probably playing MM or a heavy bunker,Horde + Reanimator should be combined on one trait and be given the 3d slot minor trait while Deadly strength should be first in line, with something that gives Vigor as a second trait.
They are placed in the right tree, just too far inside it.

Same works for stability on DS since we get no other source of stability.
I believe that the point I’m trying to make is pretty clear and makes sense.

Engels is actually correct in regards to Traits having no synergization in comparison to other Profession Traits. Take five minutes, log in-game, create a different Profession, bring them to the Mists and take a look. Our Traits are laughable when put next to those of another Professioon.

Sadly, I think the core issue with the Necromancer goes a little bit deeper than most people are giving it credit for. As in, we seem to be based off of one of the first few iterations of Guild Wars 2 as a whole, where combat was -not- supposed to be burst-dependent, and was supposedly more drawn out. We don’t appear to have gotten nearly as many iterations as the other Professions have as the game evolved, which threw this Profession to the wayside. And now that the game is actually released, a proper fix would probably take far more manpower than Arenanet is willing to pour into the Necromancer.

The most blatant, indisputable example of this? Look at our Downed Life issue. Directly from Jon himself:

Ok we found a good repro case. It has to do with how death shroud and downed used to interact. I will get someone on it today and try and get a fix to you all asap.

How long ago was the iteration to change us from being dependent on Death Shroud when downed to it actually being our core mechanic? I’m rather certain that this was months prior to release. Which means that we probably haven’t had a real iteration pass in approximately that long.
That’s not good.

Last two weeks I was playing guard/mesmer/elem on tpvp but my main character is necro . I have got over 1000 hours on him , my fract lvl is 65 and over i have got over 1500 games on pvp . And few quick reflections after these weeks . Necro really need huge buff , its possible to have fun playing necro but other professions are much more powerful than necro. It is much easier to fight 2 guys in the same time on guard or elem than on necro. We all know that necros mobility sucks really bad but our traits are horrible too . We have to spend sometimes 30 sp to get 3 sec of stability !!! are you kidding me ?! or protection from wells which lasts for less than 1 sec .Other classes have got auto vigor recharge,condi remover every 10 sec and necro got nothing. Another horrible thing , weapons . Scepter is fine , staff too but their cooldowns ! Other classed got 5 sec or a bit more cd on their first skills (2,3) and we got 10,15 or maybe even 20. I won`t comment main hand dagger,axe and warhorn because its joke ,not weapon but joke . Another thing our wonderful ‘second health bar’ it`s fine on pve but on pvp it should recharge automatically because it`s always empty (maybe few % after full combo on scepter ?) utilities are fine are ,but breakers suck , yh its so important on pvp and its horrible . Spectral armor (90 sec CD no comment ) , spectral walk (quite good ) and plague signet (fine too but I think a bit buggy , sometimes doesn`t work and all conditions stay on us , and that is sometimes permanent death .) Think necro should receive better condi system because right now other classes can stuck debuffs better than condimancer and that`s a bit sick , and maybe new 1200 range weapon or something . But maybe let`s start from repairing things which exist already in game .

Arianna.7642:

flow.6043:

I actually believe that in such a scenario, where you build to counter the other class in a duel, the necromancer will be victorious in most fights. In fact the only classes who wouldn’t lose all the time would be those with the ability to stealth. All others could be countered and focused down rather easily.
Then again 1v1s were never really an issue with necros. And neither is it in this thread, it’s original post was about tPvP where teamwork outshines the dueling capabilities of a player. That’s where you need better mobility and boon access a lot more than in 1v1s.

Which would be fantastic if you could counter someone with the same skill levels as you, except you can not, based off of the assumption that they are capable of playing on par with you, which is what the entire topic is based off of; That is, assuming equal skill in the playing field, why bring a Necromancer into any form of PvP when a different Profession can accomplish the exact same manner of thing the Necromancer seeks to accomplish, but in a far more efficient way.

I wrote the whole paragraph under the assumtion that I (as you set the premise) would fight my own clone, and therefoe be equally skilled.
And yes, I still believe that especially then necros can counter so many others in 1v1.

Now, bringing a necro into a PvP team is a whole different story.

Arianna.7642:

Andele.1306:

Degen is 4% pre second, LF pool is around 59% up to 77% of your hp,

In regards to this, has anyone actually tested this since my topic about it?

The test in the link I posted is dated 31 March 2013.

Engels.8537:

Same with protection of the horde and reanimator, if you are a MM they are decent, any other build who decided to invest 20 points here is getting two useless traits

Sadly those two traits are also pretty lame for a minion mancer.

Engels.8537:

This synergy on the necromancer it’s only present with reanimator and protection of the horde

lol 20 toughness for jagged horror. Best synergy evaaar xD
You could make the same argument for the entire Curses line though:
Furious Demise helps you trigger Barbed Precision, and that stack of bleeding increases your damage by 2% because of Target the Weak.
I know… it’s a lame synergy, if any at all.

Arianna.7642:

JonPeters.5630:

Ok we found a good repro case. It has to do with how death shroud and downed used to interact. I will get someone on it today and try and get a fix to you all asap.

How long ago was the iteration to change us from being dependent on Death Shroud when downed to it actually being our core mechanic? I’m rather certain that this was months prior to release. Which means that we probably haven’t had a real iteration pass in approximately that long.
That’s not good.

Every time that man speaks, it just further shows he hasn’t a clue whats actually going on with necromancers. I’m sure he has this vague idea in his head on what he thinks is accurate, but if the man just sat down and played a level 80 necromancer for a week in all aspects of the game, PvE, dungeons/fractals, tPvP (not hot joins), and WvW, I feel he would seriously reconsider his stance that he thinks there is nothing wrong with this class.

To answer your question about when they changed DS to a transformation, it was approximately 2-3 months before the game released. The very first BWE they came out and said they had just recently changed DS to a transformation skill and needed feedback on its new functionality from the players.

VOLTCIEAGE what you say doesn’t reflect 1000 hours of playing on necro..I don’t want to get personal and I won’t but I have to say my opinion.

You have some good points, as the mobility issue,traits and long cooldowns,but you are unfair with Axe and Dagger.
Axe “2” has a 8 sec cooldown, and it can be brought down to 6.5 if traited, it is also our burst skill and it gives us some good amount of LF, altho the range is a problem.
Dagger has one of the biggest DPS on the auto attack, it has a good Life Siphon and a pretty useful immobilize , both have bad range and immobilize has a bad cooldown also.
Warhorn needs some love with lowering the cooldowns a bit but it is pretty useful.
About LF HP, definitely no.It should not recharge by itself, it would be an infinite mana shield,it just needs MORE ways to be filled(more skills need to be given LF increase).
Scepter’s auto attack is actually a bad auto attack for me,it makes very low damage because it is a condition weapon, but it is also slow and the bleeds last only a couple of seconds so it is impossible to stack past 10 without a huge condition duration, while other classes can easily stack 15+ bleeds without condition duration.

As I said many times, tuning is what we need, a tuning that will fix us but not make us OP.

flow.6043:

I wrote the whole paragraph under the assumtion that I (as you set the premise) would fight my own clone, and therefoe be equally skilled.
And yes, I still believe that especially then necros can counter so many others in 1v1.

But you can not counter someone of equal skill level, assuming that they will counter you just as well. If you counter someone that is countering you, but has equal skill, it results in a fallacy. You can’t counter something that is equivalent to you. Thus the entire argument is that you’re put into the same style of gameplay/role/whatever, with differing Professions attempting to accomplish the same goal. The issue is that the other Professions can produce the same results, but in a more efficient manner. That is the whole premise of the entire topic, and has been the premise of all complaints in regards to this from the very get-go. It’s not “I can defeat another Profession because I know how to play my Profession”. The argument is that what a Necromancer does may work, but it is less efficient than another Profession. As in, it may require more input to extort the -exact- same output. Couple in the fact that there is next to no Risk versus Reward in the game as it stands, and you have a very underwhelming Profession. This is an issue, and may be why you actually do not see the Necromancer population as high as other Professions.

flow.6043:

The test in the link I posted is dated 31 March 2013.

Whoops, thanks. Didn’t check it because it was directly to the Wiki, my bad. Looks like he did approximately what I had done. The only issue I can see is that it was in the Mists. And as we’re finding out more and more, the differences between WvW/PvE and the Mists are… Strange, to say the least.

Kravick.4906:

To answer your question about when they changed DS to a transformation, it was approximately 2-3 months before the game released. The very first BWE they came out and said they had just recently changed DS to a transformation skill and needed feedback on its new functionality from the players.

So nearly a year ago then. I’d be rather inclined to say that our Profession has not seriously been taken into consideration for approximately a year then, at minimum. This is excluding the fact that the iterations that came about that forced the change from Death Shroud being our Downed and into our core mechanic were probably an additional few months.
That’s -really- not good.

Arianna.7642:

flow.6043:

I wrote the whole paragraph under the assumtion that I (as you set the premise) would fight my own clone, and therefoe be equally skilled.
And yes, I still believe that especially then necros can counter so many others in 1v1.

But you can not counter someone of equal skill level, assuming that they will counter you just as well. If you counter someone that is countering you, but has equal skill, it results in a fallacy. You can’t counter something that is equivalent to you.

I know what you’re saying, but still: I firmly believe that in an arranged 1v1 necros can counter other classes better than the other way aroud.

Arianna.7642:

The issue is that the other Professions can produce the same results, but in a more efficient manner. That is the whole premise of the entire topic, and has been the premise of all complaints in regards to this from the very get-go.

This is a very different issue from the hypothetical scenerio that you set up.

Arianna.7642:

Imagine, for a second, that you as a player, are cloned. This clone of you, with the exact same skills, knowledge, overall stat tally, reflexes, etc, etc, decides they enjoy playing a Profession other than a Necromancer. There are no differences between the two of you in terms of the ability to play the game. The only difference is that you are playing two different Professions.

Now you fight each other.

The players here stating that Necromancers are in a good position mean to tell me that the end result of such a scenario would not be skewed in favor of the Profession that is not the Necromancer? And if such a stance is taken, how?

Edited in: To take this a step further, as there are bound to be people attempting to skew such a statement in their favor, imagine that both you and your clone are attempting to fill in the same role. This should get rid of the ‘But I’d take a build that would counter their build’ argument (Which is absurd as well, given the assumption that if you are capable of taking such a counter-build, this said clone is just as capable), as well as possibly give a tad more insight into the issue.

flow.6043:

I know what you’re saying, but still: I firmly believe that in an arranged 1v1 necros can counter other classes better than the other way aroud.

This is a very different issue from the hypothetical scenerio that you set up.

I should really have just omitted that bold part, shouldn’t I have?
Would “Now you face off in an attempt to see who accomplishes the set goal in a more efficient manner” be a better wording for it?

Engels.8537:

I’m not saying that “target the weak” is useless, is in the wrong place, in a condition tree a major trait who increases direct damage for each condition on a foe is not well placed,

In a hybrid build maybe it works great,

Totally agree, the damage it adds for a Grandmaster Minor is pathetic, at a place where mostly only condi necros are going to have it.

I’ll give an example based on some testing. Killing Svanir in the mists, he has about 26-28K health, when I kill him as a Rabid Necro, only about 5-6K of my damage is direct physical. Now even if I assume an average of 3 conditions on him per the whole fight, Target the Weak would add 6% on that, = 300 damage. A good damage trait is giving you 500-1000 or more damage in a typical fight of that length. Vampiric, a master minor is good for about 500 (damage and healing equal 1000). Barbed Precision 1000 damage in the same fight at 0% duration, as condition build. And it’s a minor adept.

Target the Weak shines vs bosses that have every condition in the game sitting on them for a whole fight, but pretty meh everywhere else in the game, short of a full on power build deciding to go that far in Curses.

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

It is much easier to fight 2 guys in the same time on guard or elem than on necro.

That’s because the class is too predictable. It has a high skill cap to learn but not actually a high skill ceiling once mastered. You can’t kill 2 guys at once (less they are bads) because the class lacks deception, disengage, and proper lockdown/chasedown burst. As well as lack of stability makes it hard to finish your bursts or stomp, which are crucial in pulling off upsets in outmanned situations.

To win such situations you need to confuse your opponents and have periods where you are taking no damage, while continuing to do damage yourself. Invulnerabiltiy skills provide that. Clones provide that. Stealth provides that. Necro is constantly taking damage, with little means to defend it other than facetank. You just run out of health before you can get one guy down. Even if you do get one down, you can’t disengage or reset the fight, nor rebuild your health safely, to deal with the 2nd opponent, so he finishes you and then can rez his buddy.

We actually already have a mechanic, claimed to be a core one of our class, to theoretically solve this specific issue. It’s just too short and weak: Fear. If Fear lasted about twice as long, suddenly you have enough CC time to pull off some tough odds high skill victories. They might have went the wrong way making Terror do damage, instead of just making fear longer. Because while the damage is nice, its still not near comparable burst to what others have.

People try to argue that well Necro is ‘just support’ and you should have a team. That is not what the philosophy of this game was sold as. But rather as no holy trinity, no defined roles, whether in a dungeon or wherever else, all professions can man all roles, and are self sustaining due to their own heals and not dependent on an outside healer or support. But Necro is dependent. He needs a GD bodyguard all the time, or someone to peel for him.

At this point, people don’t even want them on teams either, as per the EU tourney. And they are consistently being rated 7th and 8th in class value in the sPVP forum.

Someone made a great joke about our 5th DS skill being one that pulls a random thief player from the mists and sticks him on our enemy when being focused. That’s about the right of it.

natsos.3692:

VOLTCIEAGE what you say doesn’t reflect 1000 hours of playing on necro..I don’t want to get personal and I won’t but I have to say my opinion.

You have some good points, as the mobility issue,traits and long cooldowns,but you are unfair with Axe and Dagger.
Axe “2” has a 8 sec cooldown, and it can be brought down to 6.5 if traited, it is also our burst skill and it gives us some good amount of LF, altho the range is a problem.
Dagger has one of the biggest DPS on the auto attack, it has a good Life Siphon and a pretty useful immobilize , both have bad range and immobilize has a bad cooldown also.
Warhorn needs some love with lowering the cooldowns a bit but it is pretty useful.
About LF HP, definitely no.It should not recharge by itself, it would be an infinite mana shield,it just needs MORE ways to be filled(more skills need to be given LF increase).
Scepter’s auto attack is actually a bad auto attack for me,it makes very low damage because it is a condition weapon, but it is also slow and the bleeds last only a couple of seconds so it is impossible to stack past 10 without a huge condition duration, while other classes can easily stack 15+ bleeds without condition duration.

As I said many times, tuning is what we need, a tuning that will fix us but not make us OP.

I can agree with you about axe , it can be pretty useful with focus and there are some good builds with axe but dagger is really useless for me . maybe on vampire it makes sense in 8vs8 but in tournaments mostly every class will burst you .Actually siphoning is good only on dagger ,because its hard to keep somebody in well to heal enough but on the other hand this heal is a bit poor . other classes got insta heal + condi remover and thats it , they dont need whole build for it . i think that Anet should change more things in DS#5 update , like traits or some boon durations.

Pendragon.8735:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

It is much easier to fight 2 guys in the same time on guard or elem than on necro.

That’s because the class is too predictable. It has a high skill cap to learn but not actually a high skill ceiling once mastered.

You talking about ele and guard right? Because Necro have (next to engie) probably the highest skill ceiling, you know the fact how or class mechanics interact with cooldowns and control , a necro that times their DS and staff skill usage is 50 times better than a spammer, unlike in some other cases (not to diss on eles, but post learning the base combos you can pretty much just rotate around spamming everything in the right order and not give a toss, just you need to have like 4 arms).

Andele.1306:

Pendragon.8735:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

It is much easier to fight 2 guys in the same time on guard or elem than on necro.

That’s because the class is too predictable. It has a high skill cap to learn but not actually a high skill ceiling once mastered.

You talking about ele and guard right? Because Necro have (next to engie) probably the highest skill ceiling, you know the fact how or class mechanics interact with cooldowns and control , a necro that times their DS and staff skill usage is 50 times better than a spammer, unlike in some other cases (not to diss on eles, but post learning the base combos you can pretty much just rotate around spamming everything in the right order and not give a toss, just you need to have like 4 arms).

We are talking different things I think. You are talking how hard the class is to master, which I agree is high ceiling to learn. But I’m talking what you can achieve once you actually reach that ceiling. Show me the videos of one Necro trolling 2, 3 or even 5 enemies, like an Ele, Thief, or Mesmer, you can’t. Because a mastered Necro’s max capability is much lower due to lacking the things I cited.

Pendragon.8735:

We are talking different things I think. You are talking how hard the class is to master, which I agree is high ceiling to learn. But I’m talking what you can achieve once you actually reach that ceiling. Show me the videos of one Necro trolling 2, 3 or even 5 enemies, like an Ele, Thief, or Mesmer, you can’t. Because a mastered Necro’s max capability is much lower due to lacking the things I cited.

Both rangers and engineers can do this as well. It really boggles my mind how ANet calls necromancers the masters of attrition, yet engineers and rangers do attrition way, way, WAY, WAAAAAAAAY better. Necromancers are apparently fine the way they are though.

I can post the ranger and engineer videos if you want, but only if requested. I don’t want to clutter this thead with unnecessary stuff by other classes.

We know they are better but
I would like to see,the point of this thread is comparing what necros can do better than other classes and what they can’t, so it is on topic.

Andele.1306:

Pendragon.8735:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

It is much easier to fight 2 guys in the same time on guard or elem than on necro.

That’s because the class is too predictable. It has a high skill cap to learn but not actually a high skill ceiling once mastered.

You talking about ele and guard right? Because Necro have (next to engie) probably the highest skill ceiling, you know the fact how or class mechanics interact with cooldowns and control , a necro that times their DS and staff skill usage is 50 times better than a spammer, unlike in some other cases (not to diss on eles, but post learning the base combos you can pretty much just rotate around spamming everything in the right order and not give a toss, just you need to have like 4 arms).

Yes its so hard to throw down circles and get trained in DS : 3

Your last sentence about the ele actually counts for every single class in this game, they are all seriously braindead easy to learn. If anything its the ele you talked about that is the hardest to learn simply because of the cooldown tracking and number of skills and their synergy with eachother, instead of the necros slow activating abilities and stacking 3 different tiny fears to get any sort of duration out of them while you facetank in perpetual stunned mode.

When a thief can fear you for 3 seconds with 1 ability, and you can get a 3 second fear by putting staff, DS and corrupt boon on cooldown, is your skill cap really that much higher? Or are you just clunky outdated kitten? Is scepter really harder than Ele dagger? Hell, is our dagger really that much harder? Or is it just crappier?

I can use my (utility) skills half as many times as other classes can, fear my leet decision making skillz.

I run this exact same gear/build on my ranger in WvW. I am very much able to match what this person does NP as a ranger. As a necro, these fights would be down right impossible.

Prepare to be… depressed.

I’ll post the engineer one in a moment. I still need to find it.

Coincidentally enough, I also have an engineer at level 80, and I managed to have most of the gear for this build too. While I only played this character for about a week, I was still able to easily achieve many 1v2 victories using this guys build. I’m sure with enough practice I could be on this persons level eventually. However, I just lost interest in my engineer as its play style just wasn’t to my liking. BTW, I would like to say that engineer condition application is leagues better than necromancer, and keeping them on is just as easy. Again, as a necro, these fights would have been down right impossible for me to win.

This build is a lot glassier than the above ranger build, but with smart use of Elixir S, Gear Shield, Supply Drop, and some luck with RNG stealth from Elixir S tool belt skill, its a hell of a lot easier to attrition people with engineer.

Prepare to be… more depressed.

Pendragon.8735:

Andele.1306:

Pendragon.8735:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

It is much easier to fight 2 guys in the same time on guard or elem than on necro.

That’s because the class is too predictable. It has a high skill cap to learn but not actually a high skill ceiling once mastered.

You talking about ele and guard right? Because Necro have (next to engie) probably the highest skill ceiling, you know the fact how or class mechanics interact with cooldowns and control , a necro that times their DS and staff skill usage is 50 times better than a spammer, unlike in some other cases (not to diss on eles, but post learning the base combos you can pretty much just rotate around spamming everything in the right order and not give a toss, just you need to have like 4 arms).

We are talking different things I think. You are talking how hard the class is to master, which I agree is high ceiling to learn. But I’m talking what you can achieve once you actually reach that ceiling. Show me the videos of one Necro trolling 2, 3 or even 5 enemies, like an Ele, Thief, or Mesmer, you can’t. Because a mastered Necro’s max capability is much lower due to lacking the things I cited.

Thats not skill ceiling, thats mobility… a characters skill ceiling is how much you can do for invested potential, a learning curve is increase in personal knowledge of said whatever for just as big of a increase from point b to c as from a to b.
Example: in any of the FF games, your main character has the highest skill ceiling because they are designed to fit every role the player wishes to do, as in a blank slate, while lets say a warrior while strong at start with their slices, but barely move in worth output as investment for a Mega master ultimate tech slice 9999xxxxxxx that maybe does 50 more damage, as in they will stay pretty linear with their maximum potential while a mage, while starting with flares and cure will turn into this massive living nuke that shoots 5 ultimas pre boss fight in a row (or reverse if talking original GW).
Necros are pretty easy to start playing, even to play ok, but trying to master timing of DS, control over cooldown rotations and life force maximization is like asking a person that doesnt know how to open a web browser play SC2 vs a pro/max settings comp, virtually impossible, but the better you get at its usage (and staff usage since i still think the 2 are just made to work together), you get just as big of power jumps as you have invested.

Great movies man , now try to show us something similar but with necro