Guild Wars 2

when playing necromancer i get this feeling more so than any other class in the game . anets vision of what a necromancer does not fit the vision i have come know for the class since day 1 .

but first i should start where it is from originally . back in the early 2000’s there was a game which im sure some of you might of heard about called diablo 2 . needless to say that was the first game i have played coming across the infamous necromancer , from there it went to everquest , to dark age of camelot to everquest online adventures , to everquest 2 to many other games that had the whole necro theme down .
guild wars 1 even had it down . guild wars 2 shares a lot of the common themes that a necro represents but displays them in the most moronic sense i have ever seen from a game when it comes down to how anet assumes what it is . im left with the feeling that arena net have only seen from other games but never played what a necro is . they say necro is about attrition but if we all know that is a lie . that a necro should focus on it’s mechanic known as the death shroud as opposed to what the very given definition of what a necromancer is all about .

i kinda wonder people who were fans of the class in the past got a good look at it and decided nope , that is not what i prefer . bash me all you want . it only makes my point stand stronger .

i agree that gw1 necros had more of a necro feel, the MMs were perfect,
no corpses? useless
lots of corpses? necrotic overlords!

also vampire builds were viable, life drains in gw2 are weak as weak can be.

the class however doesn’t bend over backwards, it can still preform well, it just doesn’t feel very necroish, it feels like a retake of a standard spell caster class with green particle effects.

what it kinda feels like in a way , it is like playing a necro in everquest 2 but all the spells are adapt level instead of being master and each nerf is a tier lower than what you started out with , but when we do get buffed it goes back to adapt level , we have not got master yet lol .

The term Necromancer is public domain, as is some of its older ‘lore’ but specific variants developed by legal entities may well have intellectual property associated with an implementation of Necromancer.

Necro in GW2 are good just like GW1 imo. MM necro is how necros should be played. In GW1 MM would always make you feel like you were being swarmed and I still get that feeling from the MM in GW2.

I find myself bending over foward more often.

Zoso.8279:

Necro in GW2 are good just like GW1 imo. MM necro is how necros should be played. In GW1 MM would always make you feel like you were being swarmed and I still get that feeling from the MM in GW2.

Swarmed by minions that don’t attack? Interesting.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Zoso.8279:

Necro in GW2 are good just like GW1 imo. MM necro is how necros should be played. In GW1 MM would always make you feel like you were being swarmed and I still get that feeling from the MM in GW2.

Swarmed by minions that don’t attack? Interesting.

in guild wars 1 , go to the jade quarry wait for your team mates to kill off a bunch of guard then use elite skill aura of the lich summon your starting army and then proceed to troll enemy ports while your pets laid waste to them as soon as the ported , grab pop corn , sit back and laugh

lorndarken.3702:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Zoso.8279:

Necro in GW2 are good just like GW1 imo. MM necro is how necros should be played. In GW1 MM would always make you feel like you were being swarmed and I still get that feeling from the MM in GW2.

Swarmed by minions that don’t attack? Interesting.

in guild wars 1 , go to the jade quarry wait for your team mates to kill off a bunch of guard then use elite skill aura of the lich summon your starting army and then proceed to troll enemy ports while your pets laid waste to them as soon as the ported , grab pop corn , sit back and laugh

I sure wish GW2 minions were useful like that!

A lot of viable team combination in GW 1 included necromancers spamming aura of the lich or bone fiends. Reason is bone fiends can easily do up to 80 damage each. You got to consider the maximum or near maximum damage an attack can do in GW 1 is about 200 damage and if you score such a hit its because your buffed like hell and got a scythe 41

some truth about damage in guild wars 1

Hammer warrior dont deal as much damage as they perma knockdown foes, axe deals insane damage but its main tool is deep wound. Warrior main way to kill is trought deep wounds.

Necromancers minion can be stacked up to a number of 10 but degenerate health over time, Running aura of the lich allows for exelent minion army size but somewhat ordinary dps (about 40 per minions) While running bone fiends is about 80 per minions wich means if you have 3 or 4 bonefiends you already do more damage per seconds then a high end dps scythe derv coupled with a good amount of availlable targets. Flesh golem behing near permanant and scoring heavy dps also helps making MM the heaviest damaging profession in guild wars but also the most limited as necromancer damage power depends on the number of minion up as well as constant slaughter wich means you cannot keep your minion squad up witheout corpse and need to gather fodder constantly to keep a healthy army up, witheout constant healing a necro minion dies from degeneration leaving nothing left behind. Funny thing is vampire necro aka blood specialist still deals ridiculus damage over time and got insane self healing.

Ranger damage was pathetic, by default ranger was focused on interupting ennemy skills and dealing damage over time from condition, As insane and funny as it is however pet not only had a HP bar the size of rangers but was also one of the few entities in game that could not have a death penality. Furthermore a well speced pet ranger could not only maintain 7 degeneration uptime permanantly but deal ridiculus damage over the top with brutal strike and heal as one making it one of the most damaging tool in the game (16 beastmastery14 expertise beastmaster ranger pet could outdo a warrior in a damage race due to constant attack speed increase and insane base damage aka +37 +37 on low health target versus the warrior final trust +40 +40 the defrence here behing that final trust cannot be spammed and waste all adrenaline upon use). Id like also to mention the freaking pet could be ressurected to half health every 8 second with no penality and could be speced into the 21 damage reduction and halved shared damage shout so to make the lovely thing near unkillable.

Assassin while similar to our nowaday thief didnt rely on stealth in the least as there was no stealth skill in guild wars 1, instead the glassy assasin had tons of teleporting ability as well as highly punitive finishers. Assassin ran on right hand left hand and dual strike abilities and their gimmick always forced them to run the first two before the third making them somewhat predictable. On a side not Assassin could easily permanantly crowd control a player into behing unable to defend itself and down a character from full health to nothing within a single combo wich is prety much what no other class save for hammer warrior could do. Its way defrent from the nowaday backstab thief who hide and strike constantly as the old assassin was easily slain outright the moment someone had a chance to land a hit on him (insane damage also mean easy to kill if focused in wich way assassin rarely rushed ahead of battle but waited for an oppening to land their one shot combo out witheout outside interuption).

Elementalist unlike today dealth way better damage and relied more on their destructive aoe and single target spells then on their self healing, our days ele feels like some kind of healing tank while yesterday ele had very bad self healign capacity compensated with ridiculusly high instantanous ranged damage (lightning orb and ride the lightning builds are an exemple of this). In guild wars 1 behing blind also had a way defrent signification to it, By default a blind character had a 90% chance to miss all physical (non magical attack because magic could not be dodged save by standing out of aoe) attack for the whole duration of the effect wich means that for exemple a blinding surge elementalist could render a whole team of physical ennemy useless. Blind by default behing one of ele speciality it was expected ele were also the most direct counter to physical build such as assassins dervish warriors paragons and rangers or just anyone carrying around a melee or ranged weapon.

Mesmers damage was entirely depending on how stupid their foe was. What im talking about? Domination had a defrent way to run, spells like empaty and backfire basicaly activated their damage only when a foe attacked using a specific type of action, Empaty for its whole 14 second duration dealth about up to 50 damage per attack done while backfire dealth about 150 damage per spell used both easily countering spellcasters and physical units. In pvp by default a domination mesmer would be king hardcounters against any other class but monks and monks only purpose in existance was behing the team healers. A mesmer that played smart easily could wreck any player however and as such lot of player resented them greatly. I personnaly had a high hatred of Vision of regret domination mesmer wich not only had empaty and backfire but also ran an hex that made all skill activation deal serious damage to the player. Whole point of a domination build? Force you into doing nothing and letting you get killed. Nowaday no mesmer can actualy imagine running itself witheout clones or shatter wich in some way are sooooo away from what GW 1 mesmers used to be.

Ritualist ran similarly to necromancer but had spirits and healing spell as well we called them the spirit spammers.

Paragon ran on party buff and where effectively the best support class in the game, i mean who the hell doesnt like having a teamwide 4 health regen toped up with other stuff like partywide block, Päragon was in some way what guardian would be later on save that guardian mixes paragon monk dervish and ritualist togueter to some extent.

NeXeD.3042:

I find myself bending over foward more often.

I definitely preferred GW1 minionmancers in terms of flavour, it felt good reanimating corpses or blowing them up, stealing health from your minions to heal yourself, or putting death nova on them and watching them take out half the health of everyone around them when they died! But, realistically, I never expected them to be implemented the same way in GW2, as it was a playstyle full of extremes and impossible to balance: you were dead weight until you got your minions up, and an unstoppable avalanche of damage if you managed to hit your limit – until the enemy managed to get all your pets in a big aoe and then you were naked and useless again. That made them hugely OP in pve, where damage was predictable and corpses easy to come by, and borderline useless in pvp, where only gimmick builds focussing on having teammates provide corpses for you ever used them (whether pre-match by sacrificing themselves to death, or through dead pets, IWAY-style), and never to consistent success at a high level.

So yeah, minions were NEVER gonna work the wya they did in GW1, and, much as I miss it, because it could be fun, it’s probably a good thing. However, that’s not to say that I think the way they work now is perfect: I would have liked to have more short-lived, disposable minions like jagged horrors, creating the ability to summon little hordes of weedy little dead critters that only last a few seconds. This could be done with the introduction of low-recharge utility skills that cause short-lived minoins to spawn, or traits which modify weapon skills (or DS skills) to spawn minions when used.

I realise that this would mean that some traits that are balanced around us having only a handful of big minions would need a slight rework. Otherwise a d/d ele could kill themselves if they do some pbaoe damage with 5 little critters surrounding them :P

The thing I REALLY miss from GW1 though, and which doesn’t exist in any form, is the shutdown/attrition necro, mostly specialising in Curses, and most perfectly exemplified by a single skill: http://guildwiki.gamepedia.com/Spiteful_Spirit
The mechanic to punish someone’s aggression doesn’t exist at all in GW2 – the only condition that does it, Confusion, has been nerfed to oblivion, and has been mostly replaced with Torment in the mesmer builds that used to be able to cause it. Now you can only deal direct, unconditional damage, that ticks whether your opponent wises up and stops attacking you or whether they keep barrelling into you like an idiot. And that’s because ANet balances for the low-end, not the high end, so skill plays actually get punished, and professions get dumbed down so that any idiot can learn the basics in 5 minutes. And when emergent tactics are discovered by players (like the fact that if you trick your idiot opponent into backing up against a wall, you can use your charge-type skills like FGS Rush to hit them multiple times, or that you can stay in DS and regenerate your health), they decide it’s an exploit and remove the mechanic making it possible, rather than actually balancing the skills involved. So I don’t think we’ll ever see a control/attrition necro in GW2: the playerbase is too stupid, and the devs too concerned with making sure they don’t have to be forced to think.