Guild Wars 2

Although a lot of people might disagree with me I ask you hear me once again. Death shroud is our biggest problem. Its what has been holding us back since beta. It has gone through several changes and although it seems to work mechanically, its an absolute mess when it comes to balancing the profession. Its too good when its good and its too bad when its bad. It functions very well in 1v1 provided they struggle with cc and getting away from you and some might even call it OP. While it becomes significantly worse the more people you are fighting against. Unlike other defensive abilities and mechanics which scale up, Death shroud scales down.

But this is were the problems start and not were they end. Because of DS’s very nature, any buff that it gets can seriously unbalance us in 1v1. Giving us access to being healed in death shroud could make us nearly unkillable. Allowing us to have the alpha trait Shade would make us impossible to control. Or just giving us access to some sort of damage evasion could easily push us over the edge.

This leaves us in a really bad state when it comes to balance decisions. If I was designing a game and had a mechanic like this, especially if I was building it into a class inspired by a class from a previous game, I’d save the mechanic and find a better use for it then the old profession. But I wouldn’t keep trying to shoehorn it into the game just because “its really really cool!”.

However, we are already in the second year of the game so removing the mechanic and starting from scratch isn’t an option. So what can be done to fix this? How can this mechanic be balanced to suit the needs of the necromancer without making it overwhelming?

Well, i have a few ideas. Many of which I’ve mentioned before.

#1. We should scale back the total pool of life force. I know a lot of people don’t want this, but in order for the mechanic to be able to function with something like life stealing, or healing the pool shouldn’t be as large as it is. With the other changes, we can easily make up for the overall health loss.

#2. Healing should be allowed in Death shroud, but perhaps at a reduced percentage. This can give people actual reasons to not go into death shroud and to weigh the options they have. It would give players some play and higher level players could see this the benefit of of choosing to stay in or leave. Other types of healing, such as life stealing or through special traits like Unholy sanctuary shouldn’t be effected by the percent loss in DS.

#3. Allow access to Utility and healing skills and perhaps the elite while in death shroud. Some people on the forums seem to assume that this would just make DS a glorified weapon swap rather then a form. I personally feel that forms are just glorified weapon swaps anyway so I don’t see the issue. I do think that if an elite is allowed to be used in DS, activating it should drop you out of it. Giving us access to our utility can provide for some interesting play. It would mean you could do things you might not be able to do otherwise when you just had DS skills to work with. This could also mean we could have unique skill and trait effects that function differently based on the form you take. Although a lot of people wont agree with me, I ask they consider the possibility. And actually consider it and not just dismiss it without a second though.

#4. The necromancer should have some of the best access to stability in the game.Even if no other change took place from my list, this one should be included. We as necromancer are expected to stay in battle for the entire fight. We live or die in the fight, escape isn’t an option. So having the necessary tools to last the long fight is important. Considering a majority of our defenses are generated by our offenses it becomes extremely important that we can keep doing that. Even with easy access to stability just as we are, the necromancer would still be rather poor at attrition.

As far as these changes go, they are not an end all fix all. They are a good starting point for future changes that could be drastically improved on as time progresses. Unlike the current DS which is in a very dangerous and static place right now, I’m confident with these changes they could progress the necromancer in the direction they originally intended without breaking the profession. Its very clear we need a serious rework of the profession. And arena net has redesigned core profession mechanics in the past. So a change like this honestly wouldn’t be a bad thing.

A big YES to healing in death shroud. More stability would be welcomed too.

Not too sure about the other ideas. Having access to your heal in death shroud could potentially make deathshroud quite OP, while without it you’d have to rely on allies to heal you or blood magic traits which seems fine to me. Other utilities could be useful though I guess.

Agree with all suggestions except for number 3. I personally dont think its necessary. And i think it creates an oppotunity cost when entering DS. Obviously signet passives should work in DS. I wouldnt be against suggestion 3, I just dont think its that important.

spoj.9672:

Agree with all suggestions except for number 3. I personally dont think its necessary. And i think it creates an oppotunity cost when entering DS. Obviously signet passives should work in DS. I wouldnt be against suggestion 3, I just dont think its that important.

Right. I’d like to hear more suggestions. Lets brainstorm. One problem though, even with healing and stability, without something else to help DS, reducing the pool could cause us more problems on its own, even with everything else.

I agree with 1 2 and 4 to a point, we should have a utility besides wop that provides it or change fitg but I don’t know if I can drop dp

NeXeD.3042:

I agree with 1 2 and 4 to a point, we should have a utility besides wop that provides it or change fitg but I don’t know if I can drop dp

One of the big issues I have with DS is the fact we can’t stunbreak while in it. Gives is a lose lose situation were we either wait, and possible die, or leave DS and possible die. Having access to our utility I feel could help the issue. Plus the bonus of signets and what not which also become useless in DS. Having a 6th skill which stunbreaks in DS could help the issue, but I’m not sure that would be enough. We are given too many bad choices in combat which often leads to less experienced players abandoning the profession and more experienced players getting extraordinarily frustrated.

We do have an insta fear, it’s not a stunbreak but it can be traited to do damage.

Your not gonna get much discussion since its been done to death that the mechanic needs reworking.There not gonna fix it, there going to band aid it in the worst possible ways if the current form of the class is anything to judge the future off of.I mean they added life blast healing to the class a few patches ago are you really expecting anything at this point?Im not even saying they couldn’t make it work im saying it will work in an extreme silly way like the rest of our builds IE instead of sitting in DS pressing 1111 to 4k+ people in our power build we will prob 4K+ heal people since that’s the most the mechanic will allow.

For 3, I would just show cool down timers for utilities.

I agree with point 1 and 2.
For 3 i would already be happy if we only saw the cd times.

For 4 its rather funny that necromancer have actually the potential highest stability up time but cannot get to such an uptime unless they waste their DS cd…

I can’t believe how left in the dust necromancers are.

Aside from PvP, YOU CAN’T EVEN GATHER LOGS/ORE IN DEATHSHROUD.

wut.

1. Well I somewhat agree with this one. I’m not a big fan of large health pool. The real issue is that dev seem to think that a large health pool is an increase of survivability. Necromancer are a lot like ranger’s pet : lack of dodge and large health pool. And yeah increasing ranger’s pet’s health pool didn’t made them sturdier. In fact, a large health pool is perfect for pvp defense but is this game only about pvp. wvw and pve are at a loss here, I mean, large health pool are usefull in small scale battle and even more 1v1 but this is an mmo and it’s useless to have a large healthpool for group content (or pve with One shot mechanisms)

2. Here, I do not agree. From an RP point of view this should absolutely not be allowed because when you enter death shroud you supposedly switch from one life bar to another. (well I know that the overflow of hits taken in deathshroud already killed this “RP point of view” but whatever). From a player point of view, deathshroud, is right now to much of a defensive mechanisme, most of the necromancer’s use it to suck up damage because there are no other option. Every feature that we trait our deathshroud are optional in the regard of these last defensive option. We do not need healing on DS, we actually need out of DS defensives options. And don’t tell me we got siphon. Siphon are broken useless since release.

3. I don’t agree with this one, this could make DS really too powerful. Minion master would wreck everything (even more) in pvp, too much dps for a lot of specs, hellish defense for spectral spec… No no, this definitely shouldn’t be done.

4. I agree with the fact that necromancer should have more stability. Tiying it to DS? I don’t know. this would even more emphasis the “last defense mechanism” that plague DS.

For me It’s not DS that plague necromancer, it’s more the generally bad design necromancers trait. Necromancers need to be able to support it’s team in a proper way, which would mean :
- better combo field.
- better combo finisher.
- better trait option. Necromancers need to be able to spread a bit more boons.
For all these things we don’t need a large DS pool so that’s why I do agree with #1 but everything else would just keep DS in it’s current state of a last defense mechanism.

Warning in advance… I’ve only played the necromancer off and on for the past 6 months or so. I’m by no means an expert and a lot of my experience with the class is in WvW.

#1: I disagree with this premise because I disagree with the idea of healing while in DS. Ill explain below.

#2: I like the other approach you’re taking by allowing life steals to work unhindered (since they’re fairly weak still overall) and changing it so deathshroud just reduces the amount you’re healed. For example… why not just make it so death shroud puts 2 ‘buffs’ on you. The first reduces incoming healing by 50% and the second makes it so all healing (including life steal) is split between your base health and life force while in death shroud? So this way effectively 50% of life steal procs and 25% of normal healing/regen will go to you and the other 50/25% goes toward life force?

#3: Lock the heal, even with the above suggestion, but release the rest. Especially the elite. There’s tons of times I wish I could go from DS immediately to plague because I will die immediately when leaving shroud.

#4: I agree. I think Necromancers should gain stability when entering deathshroud and foot in the grave should grant it again when leaving. Considering the overwhelming lack of escapes/mobility, the necromancer should be quite sturdy by default.

Now as to the general issues discussed… I don’t really find an issue with Deathshroud or tying so much importance to it for the class (but again, I’m not as experienced as most of you). I think it just needs to be more powerful and have a larger impact when you do use it.

For example… the Fear from deathshroud shouldn’t be single target. It should do an AE fear centered on your target when struck or ‘nova’ after the fear ends on that target triggering a PBAE fear so the skill is more reliable as an escape tool.

Alternatively(in addition to), Dhuumfire should be a PBAE knockback+burn when leaving deathshroud instead of the current mechanic.

Lastly, why not just change dark path to a 600 or 900 range leap like a Warrior’s sword #2 skill? If it lands, you do an AE chill and bleed.

I’m also curious why Deathshroud seems to favor power builds more than condi builds? I understand the premise that the point is for condis to work while you’re safe in deathshroud, but there’s just not enough to do other than sit there if you go complete condi spec. Is this just my inexperience talking? I feel like I just use #5 for the torment, #4 just cause, and spam auto because it’s there.

1. Even with healing and life steal DS would still scale horribly against multiple opponents. So reducing it would be a bad move untill we get things that have been proven to help us in damage mitigation and only then should our amount of lifeforce be tweaked.
2. Healing in DS shouldn’t be reduced for same reason that I mentioned up top in that DS against multiple foes is going to drop fast and most necro’s(myself included) would rather go into DS for those kitten moments and get the full heal provided by our teammates instead of a reduced amount that would just leave us as an even easier focus target than we already are.
3. Like the part of having access to our heal and utilities but don’t like the thought of their effect changes but would have to see what the devs come up with before really judging it.
4. Nothing but yes to this

After reading through the comments I noticed that a lot of people disagree with 3. Your views on it seem to be coming from viewing it in a vacuum rather then view its potential with the other suggested changes as well as what is already their and what other possible changes could go along with it.

One point I’d like to make is that With healing along with access to traits DS goes from a sort of proxy damage prevention to actual damage prevention. Allowing us to heal up and not take any damage to our important health pool gives us real Damage prevention. This is only one example of an immediate effect it would have.

Before we continue with the No on that one, Ask yourself on what would happen if it did get implemented that way? How might this effect game play, skills and traits? What might we want to change to better function with it? Humor me.

I think the reason people are so quick to nix 3 is you are just changing to much at once.

Number 4 would be a bit too powerful.
Though I think foot in the grave could be moved to the second major tier.

Number 3 might be a bit much, I do think you should be able to see the CD’s while in death shroud.

Number 2 could work, but the amount of healing is debatable.

Number 1 could work, but only if life force generation was more normalized & the decay while in death shroud were reduced.

NeXeD.3042:

I think the reason people are so quick to nix 3 is you are just changing to much at once.

The Dervish Change was far more then the number 3 change. So its reasonable to assume that Arena Net could do something like that. They completely reworked the dervish’s primary attribute and changed 90% of there skills! That is far more then This!

Lily.1935:

NeXeD.3042:

I think the reason people are so quick to nix 3 is you are just changing to much at once.

The Dervish Change was far more then the number 3 change. So its reasonable to assume that Arena Net could do something like that. They completely reworked the dervish’s primary attribute and changed 90% of there skills! That is far more then This!

Changing it would require care and effort though. I see no particular evidence anywhere suggesting that Anet gives two kittens about this topic though.

I could be wrong, of course, though necromancer hasn’t changed remarkably since launch. Traits that were garbage then are still garbage, we still have no pet controls or even significantly improved AI.

I feel pretty confident, after two years of watching topics like these keep repeating, that it’s not going to be very much different two years from now either.

Necro is never going to be the best for anything in any situation. Anything it can do, some other class can either do better or do well rather than poorly.

After two years, I don’t feel like I’m being cynical to assume that it’d take financial catastrophe, acts of God or civilization destroying asteroids to see much of any of this change.

We do have a very specific niche corruption. It’s quite nice in pvp

I think signets should continue to work while in ds. Signet of vampirism might actually be useful that way. Just to be clear, I don’t mean we should be able to activate them while in ds, but we should get their passives. I also agree that siphons should work in ds (minus minion siphons of course).

Actually the solution is simpler

1. It should reset to 100% on respawn. This would mean literally everything we have might need to be nerfed, but the class wouldn’t be snowball anymore and could be properly balanced.

naiasonod.9265:

Changing it would require care and effort though. I see no particular evidence anywhere suggesting that Anet gives two kittens about this topic though.

I could be wrong, of course, though necromancer hasn’t changed remarkably since launch. Traits that were garbage then are still garbage, we still have no pet controls or even significantly improved AI.

I feel pretty confident, after two years of watching topics like these keep repeating, that it’s not going to be very much different two years from now either.

Necro is never going to be the best for anything in any situation. Anything it can do, some other class can either do better or do well rather than poorly.

After two years, I don’t feel like I’m being cynical to assume that it’d take financial catastrophe, acts of God or civilization destroying asteroids to see much of any of this change.

Again the dervish change too a few years for Arena Net to actually do. They had also done other not as major changes but still extraordinarily larger. Such as the mesmer’s Fast casting change as well as the Ritualist’s spirits. They didn’t do these until the professions had been around for I want to say at least 2 years for the mesmer and a year and a half for the dervish and Ritualist. I don’t have the time stamps on me.

The reason we can’t have nice things, is because a looong time ago I posted that Necromancer needed more than cleave to be up to par to other professions, yet the majority opinion INSISTED that all we needed was cleave. Well we got cleave now. Happy?

Kain Francois.4328:

The reason we can’t have nice things, is because a looong time ago I posted that Necromancer needed more than cleave to be up to par to other professions, yet the majority opinion INSISTED that all we needed was cleave. Well we got cleave now. Happy?

Cleave that only hits up to 2 targets instead of 3 on a weapon that is designed to be single target so it’s still bad.

Dalanor.5387:

Kain Francois.4328:

The reason we can’t have nice things, is because a looong time ago I posted that Necromancer needed more than cleave to be up to par to other professions, yet the majority opinion INSISTED that all we needed was cleave. Well we got cleave now. Happy?

Cleave that only hits up to 2 targets instead of 3 on a weapon that is designed to be single target so it’s still bad.

And this is why we can’t have nice things. /thread

Kain Francois.4328:

…, yet the majority opinion INSISTED that all we needed was cleave.

Maybe in the profession balance subforum but in the necromancer subforum certainly not.

Lily.1935:

After reading through the comments I noticed that a lot of people disagree with 3. Your views on it seem to be coming from viewing it in a vacuum rather then view its potential with the other suggested changes as well as what is already their and what other possible changes could go along with it.

One point I’d like to make is that With healing along with access to traits DS goes from a sort of proxy damage prevention to actual damage prevention. Allowing us to heal up and not take any damage to our important health pool gives us real Damage prevention. This is only one example of an immediate effect it would have.

Before we continue with the No on that one, Ask yourself on what would happen if it did get implemented that way? How might this effect game play, skills and traits? What might we want to change to better function with it? Humor me.

I carefully answered for 3. And yes taking all your suggestion along, I still think that this would overpowered the necromancer.
Let’s be blunt, I already use spectral skills to enter and leave safely an ennemy zerg. Being able to activate spectral skills while on DS would garante me almost 15s of invulnerability before ds restart to wear of. That’s imbalanced. Using spectral wall while in ds… people are already kittened off that we got a fear in ds imagine if you pop a wall…
Signet : we got a signet that grant us LF while in combat, while we could argue that it’s good it would enhance a lot DS. Being able to condi bomber in DS (signet of spite) and by that improve a lot DS damage would only lead to a nerf on DS attack killing even more DS.
Minions : Here is the worst enemy of your changes. Minion master are terribly tough because of the trait vampiric master. Allowing the minions siphon to pass through DS would make minion masters absolutely unkillable even if you lower LF pool to 10k.
Wells : Again a lot of damage here and absolutly OP heal with vampiric ritual. Being able to enter a zerg via DS2, pop up wells and stay alive enough time to repop DS while doing tremendous damage would be OP.
Corruption : I think those could fit in your changes. But that’s all.

Now, your change to necromancer won’t give a place to necromancers in dungeon. because Necromancer will still lack an actual worth to the team. Necromancer only bring it’s dps to the team. Alas it’s dps is on part with every other profession and is lacking for multitarget. Debuff are nerfed to the ground by bosses property so even if necromancers where the only one to be able to weaken they still weren’t needed for dungeon. Lowering life force will also lower necromancer ability to survive hardhitting thing. Again, a hard nerf to pve survivability where you could careless about some kitty heal in DS.

My point is that your changes wouldn’t help necromancer at all, overpowering him in spvp/wvw and nerfing him to oblivion for dungeon. Open pve doesn’t really matter except the fact that as necromancer you would be only glad to play solo. Taking you apart from large scalling event where mobs hit harder and harder.

Dadnir.5038:

Lily.1935:

After reading through the comments I noticed that a lot of people disagree with 3. Your views on it seem to be coming from viewing it in a vacuum rather then view its potential with the other suggested changes as well as what is already their and what other possible changes could go along with it.

One point I’d like to make is that With healing along with access to traits DS goes from a sort of proxy damage prevention to actual damage prevention. Allowing us to heal up and not take any damage to our important health pool gives us real Damage prevention. This is only one example of an immediate effect it would have.

Before we continue with the No on that one, Ask yourself on what would happen if it did get implemented that way? How might this effect game play, skills and traits? What might we want to change to better function with it? Humor me.

I carefully answered for 3. And yes taking all your suggestion along, I still think that this would overpowered the necromancer.
Let’s be blunt, I already use spectral skills to enter and leave safely an ennemy zerg. Being able to activate spectral skills while on DS would garante me almost 15s of invulnerability before ds restart to wear of. That’s imbalanced. Using spectral wall while in ds… people are already kittened off that we got a fear in ds imagine if you pop a wall…
Signet : we got a signet that grant us LF while in combat, while we could argue that it’s good it would enhance a lot DS. Being able to condi bomber in DS (signet of spite) and by that improve a lot DS damage would only lead to a nerf on DS attack killing even more DS.
Minions : Here is the worst enemy of your changes. Minion master are terribly tough because of the trait vampiric master. Allowing the minions siphon to pass through DS would make minion masters absolutely unkillable even if you lower LF pool to 10k.
Wells : Again a lot of damage here and absolutly OP heal with vampiric ritual. Being able to enter a zerg via DS2, pop up wells and stay alive enough time to repop DS while doing tremendous damage would be OP.
Corruption : I think those could fit in your changes. But that’s all.

Now, your change to necromancer won’t give a place to necromancers in dungeon. because Necromancer will still lack an actual worth to the team. Necromancer only bring it’s dps to the team. Alas it’s dps is on part with every other profession and is lacking for multitarget. Debuff are nerfed to the ground by bosses property so even if necromancers where the only one to be able to weaken they still weren’t needed for dungeon. Lowering life force will also lower necromancer ability to survive hardhitting thing. Again, a hard nerf to pve survivability where you could careless about some kitty heal in DS.

My point is that your changes wouldn’t help necromancer at all, overpowering him in spvp/wvw and nerfing him to oblivion for dungeon. Open pve doesn’t really matter except the fact that as necromancer you would be only glad to play solo. Taking you apart from large scalling event where mobs hit harder and harder.

Right now without any bonus to Soul reaping or health our DS pool is about 11k. I didn’t suggest a number because I didn’t want to shoot too low or too high for the balance. But My personal thought on it was closer to 4-5k with no bonuses to health or soul reaping. Which would mean one good hit(or two if you’re really invested) could knock you out of death shroud so most of your complaints aren’t an issue.

But its only a first point of balance. Not an end all be all. A lot a changes would need to come along with it. And this sort of change would allow for deeper and more appropriate balance of the necromancer were as the system we have now really does not.

1. “Death Shroud Degen – out of combat” is a way better idea than cutting LIfe Force pool, SR trait line and LF regeneration by 45%.

2. And why do you think we have “Unholy sanctuary” trait ?

Well I do understand your point but here we enter in a balance perspective. The fact is that DS ain’t something we should call a defence mechanism. You see it like an aegis and you shouldn’t. In Anet wildest dream Necromancer should be able to dps, tank and support in DS, not using it like an aegis. And in fact, Necromancer can do all of this. The issue is more like DS skills don’t fit for the game combat design.

- Sure life blast can hit 5 targets but piercing is a terrible way to hit more then 1 target and it required player to actually trait for this. Not to say that this is a reeeeeeaally slow skill.

- Sure you can heal a lot if you trait deeply in blood magic and soul reaping while in DS, but the game has been design so that healing scale poorly and most of the usefull support come from boon instead of pure HPS. Which mean that we call defensive support someone who grant protection and vigor and offensive support someone who grant might and fury. There is no place for a heal in this game.

- Actually with DS you can have a taste of good resilience if you use it with spectral skills and warhorn #5. This kind of thing is perfect to suck up a lot of small hit in a short time. The game design make this usefull in zerg v zerg and pvp (out of bunkering) which is “ok” (I mean, I’m sure a lot of people are glad that another bunker option ain’t viable).

What would your “changes” do :

Low DS health pool affect directly directly how much healing you get from healing in DS. But it also affect the time you’re able to dps in DS, The time you support in DS and totally ruin your capacity to facetank small hits. This also affect directly the ratio time beetween LF building/ LF consuming. You will use more of your time to build LF than to use it. You can totally understand what this would do by trying a bit of underwater combat with a DS build (It’s harder to build LF underwater and this hurt a lot DS builds).

Along with the low DS health pool, we got healing in DS and being able to use utility skill while in DS. The time spend in DS has been lowered so what’s good in healing in DS? “Unholy sanctuary” already prove that a small heal in DS is useless at the point that Anet had to add another effect on this trait to make it almost noticable. Let’s adds vampiric traits. Unholly sanctuary become totally irrelevant in front of vampiric master, Vampiric stay crapy and vampiric ritual may become… ah no… vampiric ritual will stay crap until well CD are lowered. (Vampiric ritual is a good trait until you take a focus attack, the worst part of this trait is that you gotta blow all your utility to gain a bit of resilience.)

Spectrals skills would need a lot of balance to gain a bit of interest because they are balanced around the actual DS system. Issue will be that if you can’t take a beating with spectral armor and DS activate, spectral armor will be a dead skill, but if spectral armor give to much LF out of DS, it become an overpowered skill. If we keep the numbers you previously said, Anet would have to double the LF gain per hit on spectral armor to keep the ability to take a beating but out of DS the LF gain become OP with these numbers.

Minion master : even with low DS health pool, the siphon from minion would own. I used to play MM for some time, without heal from siphon in DS it’s pretty easy to keep yourself alive with just your minion siphon. Give 2 second free heal from minion by just entering DS and Necromancers MM become godly. They are, at the moment, almost balanced, a suvivability buff to them wouldn’t do any good to necromancer general balance.

In my opinion, utility skills in DS is still way to dangerous and if you add a bit of stability in DS, it would become totally laughable.

So from my point of view, all your changes ask for a lot of balanced change on other skills that may be balanced at the moment. And at the same time, a lot of thing that actually need changes won’t be looked at because necromancer will rock in area were they are already good at in pvp (condition and minion masters). Necromancer issue ain’t it’s DS, it ain’t it’s survivability against small hits (where DS is just fine), it ain’t it’s dps. The necromancers issue is in it’s lack of teamplay ( bad support, horrid combo zone), it’s lack of a real cleaving weapon (sorry but even if the changes on dagger were a good start, i still think nobody see it as a cleaving weapon) and it’s lack of survivability against hard hit (Necromancer have a large health pool which is hard to resplenish when it’s almost empty while a guardian will pop an aegis or invulnerability which will suck up tons of damage).

In the end, I would like to ask : What if necromancer had a low base health pool (11k HP) and a higher base DS health pool (18k HP)? This would probably hurt condi build a lot (and of course corruption skills) but would this be unbalanced?

Dadnir.5038:

In the end, I would like to ask : What if necromancer had a low base health pool (11k HP) and a higher base DS health pool (18k HP)? This would probably hurt condi build a lot (and of course corruption skills) but would this be unbalanced?

That makes the Necro too reliant on Death Shroud, which they first have to build up. Basically, doing that means the necro is a free kill to everyone. Especially anyone with burst, because they can kill you before you have a chance at building any life force.

And you can’t do anything about it because you don’t have evades, blocks, reliable blinds, or invulnerabilities.

Dadnir.5038:

In the end, I would like to ask : What if necromancer had a low base health pool (11k HP) and a higher base DS health pool (18k HP)? This would probably hurt condi build a lot (and of course corruption skills) but would this be unbalanced?

Part of the reason why necromancers have such a high base health pool in the first place is because we are expected to be able to handle conditions far better then other professions even when we are unable to remove them at the time. Considering the necromancer is fairly slow to react to a situation the smaller heath pool would spell death for a novice or even just anyone roaming around. It would make us squishier then an elementalist is without the damage to back it up. As for the higher DS pool? That would make DS builds far more overwhelming then they are at the moment and would effectively allow us to turtle in it for far too long. Considering building it is based on percentages and not how much health it actually provides it would be poor balance both ways.

Also, I don’t just think of DS as a defensive mechanic. I pointed that out in the initial post because its the first of many of DS’s intrinsic problems. Not to mention that arena net does in fact treat it like a defensive mechanic.

You 2 are right on this. Yes it would be very difficult to play necromancer, in fact using corruption skills would be a suicide move. But why do we still kill ourselve with our utility? Do you really think that necromancer are the best at handling condition? I do think we are on par with other but absolutely not the best.

In fact with natural decay of DS, you wouldn’t turtle damage longer than we do today with a larger DS health pool. Here is my point. Sure necromancer would be able to handle stronger hits but, they wouldn’t stay longer that they actually can. While with your change they wouldn’t.

Also… an elementalist ain’t squishy at all.

Dadnir.5038:

You 2 are right on this. Yes it would be very difficult to play necromancer, in fact using corruption skills would be a suicide move. But why do we still kill ourselve with our utility? Do you really think that necromancer are the best at handling condition? I do think we are on par with other but absolutely not the best.

In fact with natural decay of DS, you wouldn’t turtle damage longer than we do today with a larger DS health pool. Here is my point. Sure necromancer would be able to handle stronger hits but, they wouldn’t stay longer that they actually can. While with your change they wouldn’t.

Also… an elementalist ain’t squishy at all.

In reverse order:
Elementalists are incredibly squishy without their defensive skills. Necro defense revolves entirely around death shroud. Biggest difference between the two is that an ele starts with all of their skills available while a Necro has to first build up enough life force to activate death shroud. Try playing an ele without using a defensive skill for the first 6-8 seconds of a battle. See how you manage.

Second, what the heck are you trying to accomplish? Necros are very good at tanking hits. That isn’t something that needs to be changed.

Third: Necros are very much the best at handling conditions. Only one condition clear on a Necro only clears a single condition, and that’s an unpopular trait (shrouded removal, though I make use of it personally). The typical Necro build has 2-3 cleanses that have the potential to be total clears (if not garunteed). Death Shroud plus a large health pool lets us just sit on conditions when others would actually be worried. Necromancers are by far the hardest profession to kill with conditions.

In my limited experience I agree with Drarnor, but I am finding it incredibly difficult to deliver damage. Especially as a power build. The lack of mobility AND lack of stability is too much to overcome. I’m trying to convince myself it’s a l2p issue related to my limited experience, but I honestly don’t understand why the class was designed this way?

You’d expect a class that wasn’t very mobile to be very sturdy so when you hit it, it’s like hitting a brick wall. Especially since a lot of the skills have long cast times and are easily interrupted.

Is this legitimately a l2p issue? Or is this the main reason condi necros are so popular and power builds tend to be more uncommon? This is why I originally agreed with a lot of what was said. Though after reading this thread and actually thinking about it I have changed my mind on some things.

It is primarily why Necros are usually condition in PvP, because it’s easier to get the damage off (both range and cast times).

That said, Power builds should be making liberal use of Dark Path once they get some life force. That plus Locust Swarm virtually solve any issues with sticking to your target.

Atherakhia.4086:

In my limited experience I agree with Drarnor, but I am finding it incredibly difficult to deliver damage. Especially as a power build. The lack of mobility AND lack of stability is too much to overcome. I’m trying to convince myself it’s a l2p issue related to my limited experience, but I honestly don’t understand why the class was designed this way?

You’d expect a class that wasn’t very mobile to be very sturdy so when you hit it, it’s like hitting a brick wall. Especially since a lot of the skills have long cast times and are easily interrupted.

Is this legitimately a l2p issue? Or is this the main reason condi necros are so popular and power builds tend to be more uncommon? This is why I originally agreed with a lot of what was said. Though after reading this thread and actually thinking about it I have changed my mind on some things.

Arena net is scared to give the necromancer anything significant for fear that Death shroud will rule everything and make the necromancer nearly unkillable for more skilled players like it was in Beta. Because of this fear, we are denied access to essential mechanics that make us viable without support and denied access to higher damage because we are supposed to be attrition.

Its honestly not a LtP sort of thing although knowing the profession inside and out helps allot it pales in comparison when running other professions who do out preform you in almost everything.

I’m not only asking your guys’s opinion on my suggestions but asking for your suggestions as well. After playing other professions I can feel the weaknesses and strengths of each of them I’ve used. The thief’s initiative and stealing feel good and well balanced for what they want to do, Guardian’s virtues are always helpful and noticeable without them feeling like the pin point of my damage or defense, the mesmer’s shatters are extremely versatile and always useful without dominating my build if I don’t want them to.

But death shroud is a problem. Less skilled players view it as a last resort to be used only in dire situations when it most often should be popped long before that. It can be a nervous game trying to maintain at least 70% of DS so in case something goes wrong you can use it, but its also often required to enter DS to maximize movement or damage just to be effective. Not that none of this is enhancing the experience of playing the necromancer but only seeking to keep to the bar minimum of usability. Unlike other mechanics which feel like a natural part of the profession, DS feels forced and heavy handed like it was an after thought for the devs.

Lily.1935:

Death shroud is our biggest problem…

Sad when the profession’s core mechanic is it’s biggest problem, but so true. Personally I think all healing should work (unreduced) in DS and then lifeforce should be rebalanced around that healing change. [edit: because the anti-synergy of non-healing is stupid-broken.]

Normalizing the speed of LF gain might help; put an upper limit on how quickly LF can accumulate to keep it from being stupid-godly with multiple deaths nearby but add some LF gain to all attacks (in much smaller amounts than currently). That way we could count on being able to consistently build LF at a reasonable rate – something we can’t do with most weapons now.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Dadnir.5038:

You 2 are right on this. Yes it would be very difficult to play necromancer, in fact using corruption skills would be a suicide move. But why do we still kill ourselve with our utility? Do you really think that necromancer are the best at handling condition? I do think we are on par with other but absolutely not the best.

In fact with natural decay of DS, you wouldn’t turtle damage longer than we do today with a larger DS health pool. Here is my point. Sure necromancer would be able to handle stronger hits but, they wouldn’t stay longer that they actually can. While with your change they wouldn’t.

Also… an elementalist ain’t squishy at all.

In reverse order:
Elementalists are incredibly squishy without their defensive skills. Necro defense revolves entirely around death shroud. Biggest difference between the two is that an ele starts with all of their skills available while a Necro has to first build up enough life force to activate death shroud. Try playing an ele without using a defensive skill for the first 6-8 seconds of a battle. See how you manage.

Second, what the heck are you trying to accomplish? Necros are very good at tanking hits. That isn’t something that needs to be changed.

Third: Necros are very much the best at handling conditions. Only one condition clear on a Necro only clears a single condition, and that’s an unpopular trait (shrouded removal, though I make use of it personally). The typical Necro build has 2-3 cleanses that have the potential to be total clears (if not garunteed). Death Shroud plus a large health pool lets us just sit on conditions when others would actually be worried. Necromancers are by far the hardest profession to kill with conditions.

Well, I’m playing every classes since gamestart so :

1- I do not agree with the way you see the elementalist. in fact it is really resiliente despite his low natural health pool, it’s just a matter of build.

2- I do not try to accomplish anything. The only real weakness of necromancer is it’s inability to cope with repeated big hit, if you want to use DS as a protective thing just go all the way and make it a very large health pool so it can actually suck up the big hit that we can encounter in game and not just the hit you can received from other player. It’s just a matter of equity.

3- I’am also a shroud removal user and i know perfectly well how much way you got to handle condition. I also know that necromancer aren’t the only one that can trait, use utility, use weapon skills to get rid of condition. So yes, I’ll say it again, necro are on par with most of other class in this aspect. This is just a matter of build.

Now, for the propose change of the OP, my point of view is still that there are to many flaw in it’s change. If he want to change DS, he would have to revamp it all the way like :

- While in DS you are still using your own health pool.
- No more DS health decay while in DS.
- Now, DS skill consume LF (we can imagine that corruptions, instead of weakening necromancer will as well consume some LF).
- Spectral armor and spectral walk transfer damage taken on LF pool.
- Some tweek could be welcome on some DS trait. (ex : Vital persistence : DS skills cost 50% less).
- We can imagine with this a change to “hunger” (Soul reaper specific trait line bonus) : each trait grant 2,5% damage to DS skills.
- On the same time, with this, there would be no more excuse for denying necromancer actual “reactivity” by granting them a bit more defensive ability.

With these base change :
First change from OP become irrelevant
Second and third change are perfectly done.
Fourth change still depend on whether you trait with foot in the grave or not.
We could imagine well of darkness CD halve to 25 second (even with this cool down I hardly think this would be overpowered, granted that thieves can permablind peoples without everybody shouting that it’s overpowered. In fact, this would help a bit diversity because well have way to long CD to be usefull at all.)

Very clearly you didn’t read anything I wrote.

Elemetalists will never have actual bulk. The only way they survive getting hit back is through heavy use of defensive skills, even when in full Soldier’s gear. If they can’t use said skills, they die very quickly. This is not a problem by any means, simply a profession characteristic. However, since you seem to think eles are good at surviving without using defensive skills, that tells me you are stuck in PvE where anything is highly survivable.

The only major weakness of a Necromancer defensively is the fact their defense is almost all effective health, which does not scale with numbers of opponents. This is a very difficult thing to work with, and the fact necros are not great at recovering health is problematic to the profession, especially as it is meant to be an "attrition"profession. They also have a very difficult time disengaging from a fight, but this weakness is by design, so I’ll easily give this weakness a gloss over.

The point I was making is that while everyone can equip utilities and traits to deal with conditions, each one a Necro slots has a much stronger anti-condition effect than other professions get. No other profession can run with two total cleanses in their build before accounting for traits, weapons, runes, or sigils. No other profession routinely has two potential total cleanses plus one constant total cleanse. No other profession can just sit on conditions like a Necro can, because thy lack the raw health for absorbing them. Even if you go light on condition removal as a Necro, you are still very resilient to them. If you actually decide to go anti-condition, you’re practically invincible to condition builds. Other professions don’t get this ability.

A lot of you had problems with the third proposed change, and argued that it would somehow “break” DS. My argument is this: what is REALLY wrong with this? Why should a dramatic increase in survivability and damage be considered a BAD thing? Its what we need, isn’kitten A way for Necromancers to at last be on par with other classes? I believe that using utility skills when in DS, when combined with the OP’s other changes would work perfectly. Besides, our utility skills have horrifically long CDs anyway, and popping them in DS only means you wont have access to them outside of DS.

Well, my point when I said that Necromancer are on par with other profession when you look at condi cleanse is that Necromancer’s condi cleanse are in a way longer CD than other classes condi cleanse that may be weaker but that you can use a lot more.

Anyway, we got different point of view, probably different experience too. And while you’ll sit on your opinion, I’ll sit on mine .

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Barbs

If only we had a unique hex/condition like this. :c

tboneking.2531:

A lot of you had problems with the third proposed change, and argued that it would somehow “break” DS. My argument is this: what is REALLY wrong with this? Why should a dramatic increase in survivability and damage be considered a BAD thing? Its what we need, isn’kitten A way for Necromancers to at last be on par with other classes? I believe that using utility skills when in DS, when combined with the OP’s other changes would work perfectly. Besides, our utility skills have horrifically long CDs anyway, and popping them in DS only means you wont have access to them outside of DS.

Dadnir.5038:

Well, my point when I said that Necromancer are on par with other profession when you look at condi cleanse is that Necromancer’s condi cleanse are in a way longer CD than other classes condi cleanse that may be weaker but that you can use a lot more.

Anyway, we got different point of view, probably different experience too. And while you’ll sit on your opinion, I’ll sit on mine .

I’m going to respond to both of you at the same time. Holidays and what not haven’t been in GW2 much. Opinions are nice and I’m more inclined to agree with one party over the other I think there is some truth in both of what you say. The Issue I see is that we each have our opinions on what can make the profession better and what would be too much. But we could eventually know if Arena net was to be more transparent with us about any changes they would/are making with the necromancer. We are going to have angry players no matter what happens and people are going to go over the top with the vitriol. However its of my opinion that arena net should be more transparent anyway because as far as I can see the anger of the necromancer community has been boiling since release and doesn’t seem to be calming down any time soon. So their distance from us clearly isn’t working. I know I’ve been a part of the problem in the past however I’d like to try and be more constructive.

Number 3: would make us incredibly overpowered. But we all knew that.
Additions
Number 5: access to vigor would be nice.
Number 6: would like to actually reanimate dead opponents. Please allow me to use your corpse as my doll. Thnx.

SaintSnow.6593:

Number 3: would make us incredibly overpowered. But we all knew that.
Additions
Number 5: access to vigor would be nice.
Number 6: would like to actually reanimate dead opponents. Please allow me to use your corpse as my doll. Thnx.

Vigor isn’t in our flavor. And reanimating opponents would be extremely over powered, even as an elite.