Guild Wars 2

it’s been my opinion on nearly everything that functionality should always come First before any sort of theme is planned, with every game i’ve played.
this seems to be in the reverse from a design perspective in this game. I wonder how structurally sound bridges would be if they were designed to be pretty first instead of stable.

thoughts?

Shroud is the real reason we can’t have nice things.

Absolutely. Necromancer has too many negative thematics the most harmful one is being the “slow” class

- Slow animations / cast times / telegraphed as hell
- Slow movement / lack of dashing and teleports

Then comes the whole we cant block or do anything as an active defense. No blocks no invuln no evades no stealth ect.

For some reason we can’t heal in DS. We’re aslo the weakest when it comes to siphoning for some fkkitten reason.

We are the only class that relies on allies to function.

The list goes on.

TheDevice.2751:

Absolutely. Necromancer has too many negative thematics the most harmful one is being the “slow” class

- Slow animations / cast times / telegraphed as hell
- Slow movement / lack of dashing and teleports

Then comes the whole we cant block or do anything as an active defense. No blocks no invuln no evades no stealth ect.

For some reason we can’t heal in DS. We’re aslo the weakest when it comes to siphoning for some fkkitten reason.

We are the only class that relies on allies to function.

The list goes on.

yes. your list is why i keep leaving the class, yet the difficulty is why i keep coming back. problem being, there will never be an inbetween.

Lightsbane.9012:

it’s been my opinion on nearly everything that functionality should always come First before any sort of theme is planned, with every game i’ve played.
this seems to be in the reverse from a design perspective in this game. I wonder how structurally sound bridges would be if they were designed to be pretty first instead of stable.

thoughts?

The classes are built around having specific playstyles, and thematic derived from that.

Necromancers are designed as damage soaker class, rather than a damage avoidance class. That is the playstyle that the class was given.

The problem however is that at higher levels of play avoidance mechanics trump everything else which leaves Necros in the dust.

Crinn.7864:

Lightsbane.9012:

it’s been my opinion on nearly everything that functionality should always come First before any sort of theme is planned, with every game i’ve played.
this seems to be in the reverse from a design perspective in this game. I wonder how structurally sound bridges would be if they were designed to be pretty first instead of stable.

thoughts?

The classes are built around having specific playstyles, and thematic derived from that.

Necromancers are designed as damage soaker class, rather than a damage avoidance class. That is the playstyle that the class was given.

The problem however is that at higher levels of play avoidance mechanics trump everything else which leaves Necros in the dust.

I totally agree with you. But look at the Warrior for example. Which was supposed to be weak to conditions. How laughable does it sound now?

I would suggest making the “theme” mechanics stronger, than moving away from them. Give Necro more fear and torment . And of course, stability and protection would fit the theme of a “slow unshakable monster” as well.

TLDR; Nerf other classes that are “out of their theme”. And buff existing mechanics that make necro a necro.

Crinn.7864:

The classes are built around having specific playstyles, and thematic derived from that.

Necromancers are designed as damage soaker class, rather than a damage avoidance class. That is the playstyle that the class was given.

The problem however is that at higher levels of play avoidance mechanics trump everything else which leaves Necros in the dust.

Totally unpopular opinion here but I am a person with slow reaction times, I am horrible at timing “avoidance mechanics” and Shroud is more comfortable to me. I’ve had several professions at lvl80 and my Necro has the best survivability by far, because of Shroud (I play PvE and WvW occasionally).

I know many people don’t like the Shroud but you guys have plenty of other professions with “avoidance mechanics”, please leave the Necro alone because I love how easy it is to play (at least for a slow player like me). Sorry for my bad English!

Crinn.7864:

The classes are built around having specific playstyles, and thematic derived from that.

Necromancers are designed as damage soaker class, rather than a damage avoidance class. That is the playstyle that the class was given.

The problem however is that at higher levels of play avoidance mechanics trump everything else which leaves Necros in the dust.

To be honest, I nearly agree with you on what you say and I’m pretty sure the necromancer could be a damage soaker class.

The main issue of this point of view is that the necromancer is designed for a gameplay as a :
- Damage soaker
- Condition manipulator
- Boon corruptor
- Slow hitter
- selfish
- Life leecher

The problem is that individually each of this role could allow a profession to stand it’s ground but together these role fight each other and leave no room to breath for the necromancer. The damage soaker do not work well with the condition thematic, the boon corruptor force you to rely on other while you are selfish by design and the life leeching thematic is held down by the slow hitter thingy. What hurt the most the necromancer is all those in built nerf that won’t allow him to really shine.

The worst is that all of those necromancer’s design goes against the flow of the game as a whole. The game is nervous and reactive, to shine you need to be able to support, burst and move swiftly from point to point. If the necromancer’s designs only cut him from 1 of these aspect, it would be okay but no, necromancer support is awfull, necromancer burst is a myth, necromancer mobility is a joke and at best the necromancer is dull when you need to react upon a threat.

The necromancer harm himself in every possible way and, honnestly, there is barely anything that help him to keep himself on the game. At the moment the only thing that keep the necromancer into a viable state is the boon corruption on scepter auto attack. Without it, the necromancer would be in an even lowest place than the elementalist.

they could keep the thematics. There are a couple ways i can think of where being slow could work, lingering effects and during cast effects.

For instance tainted shackles continuously applies condis and then ends with aoe damage and immobilize. Its also not on a fixed point like wells. If the skill was better like, continuously applies slow or drains endurance then it would compensate for the really long cast times on executes. The class needs something like this and more of the kind.

If necros got a buff or inflicted debuffs while casting like damage reduction or faster casting while being hit during a cast, spec armor, fear, something to prevent the class from being disadvantaged just for trying to use skills, it would help to deal with not having mobility.

I always thought that there should be a trait with an icd that replaces the dodge ability with insta cast invulnerability or an f2 skill that uses up life force for invulns or blocks.

There are so many things they could try out to make necro not be a brick

Damage soaking as a primary defense is not inherently problematic, but it does have the issue of scaling that avoidance mechanics do not have. This is why I love Reaper shouts so much: they scale in potency based on how much you have to fight against, especially when traited.

But for scaling defensive skills? We have Locust Swarm and YSiM. That’s just not enough. Greatsword has a couple of skills that improve sustain for a couple targets, but not enough.

Basically, we need more health/life force based on number of targets hit or number of targets that hit you on skills. (Unholy Fervor also causing Retaliation to heal you when it deals damage would be interesting!)

reaper gave necromancer a way to be a frontline class in world vs. world, yet at the same time because it’s still a necromancer, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish because of what anet wants done with the class.
i’ve started running the shout heal instead of consume conditions, still waiting to see if that was a smart move or not, charging with tags still doesn’t work, i’m wondering where anet gets the data that it does in fact work.

Lightsbane.9012:

reaper gave necromancer a way to be a frontline class in world vs. world, yet at the same time because it’s still a necromancer, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish because of what anet wants done with the class.
i’ve started running the shout heal instead of consume conditions, still waiting to see if that was a smart move or not, charging with tags still doesn’t work, i’m wondering where anet gets the data that it does in fact work.

With classes that actually have Stability?

I agree Necromancer’s “theme”, or design guide, has always held it back, especially Shroud.

Necro has also spent much of its time hated by developers and balance teams.

The old stigma from when the profession was punished for having a “second health bar”, extra health to start with, a zoo full of pets, and better handling of conditions still persists, I think. Arenanet probably thought that Necro had so many innate advantages over other professions that its players needed to be punished until they left to play a real profession. Necromancer probably looked OP on paper so Arenanet felt like its players must be using it wrong, then whining about it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lightsbane.9012:

reaper gave necromancer a way to be a frontline class in world vs. world, yet at the same time because it’s still a necromancer, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish because of what anet wants done with the class.
i’ve started running the shout heal instead of consume conditions, still waiting to see if that was a smart move or not, charging with tags still doesn’t work, i’m wondering where anet gets the data that it does in fact work.

With classes that actually have Stability?

perhaps i should’ve said in regards to necromancer? i kind figured that was a given considering………………its the forum i posted in.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lightsbane.9012:

reaper gave necromancer a way to be a frontline class in world vs. world, yet at the same time because it’s still a necromancer, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish because of what anet wants done with the class.
i’ve started running the shout heal instead of consume conditions, still waiting to see if that was a smart move or not, charging with tags still doesn’t work, i’m wondering where anet gets the data that it does in fact work.

With classes that actually have Stability?

Well technically we do have stability. Maybe they shouldnt have nerfed infusing terror to the ground?

And Lightsbane the shout heal is actually not bad especially since it has a fast casttime. The only problem it has is that most condi removel necros have are transfers and having a condi removel that is not dependend on hitting your enemies is important in my opinion hence why i think you shoud run the YSIM mainly in an shout build with trooper/solder runes or with well of power (or at places where condi removel not matters).

Ya’ll are mistaking out-of-meta for underpowered.

We are out of meta, we are not underpowered.

The reason we are out of meta is because shroud is non-scaling, which is both a strength and a weakness. Our defenses don’t scale to damage taken which means that we overperform in bunker metas and underperform in bursty meta.

We exceled in S1 and S2 where the bunker meta meant that there wasn’t enough damage output to be a threat to us. We are underperforming in s3 and s4 because the meta has turned to burst and we aren’t scaling with it.