Guild Wars 2

You guys are totally fooling yourselves thinking the devs are going to buff the necro, give us mobility, or anything positive for that matter. In addition, the new condition on DS5 will likely be nothing more than an existing condition (i.e. burning) which will do nothing to improve our class, outside of the fact it will not be unique and given to other classes in the future. They have already stated that the necro is close to balanced and has a lotof viable builds. HA!

We are not viable at high end pvp, because we can do nothing unique outside of corrupt boon, and spreading some conditions around that are cleansed with the ease of a button click. To get damage equivocal to the rest of the burst classes we have to totally destroy ourselves, and yet our damage will never reach the level of damage available to other classes. Even with 4k attack, you won’t get near amazing hits, unless you somehow get off a full channel (axe 2).

We can half-way tank, we can half-way do damage, and we have mediocre conditions, which according to the devs, provide proof that necros have a lot of viable builds and are close to balanced (joke?)

In my opinion, hands down, the devs play the necro the LEAST out of all classes and it shows in their statements and in their points of view. You can tell they play their beloved thieves, mesmers, eles, and guardians, because those are by far the best classes and fullfill a solid role in both teamplay and do well in a straight out 1 on 1. Necros are just subpar. I hate it when games do that to a class, they try to make it the hybrid and end up just making it weak.

It just is screamingly obvious that they nerfed the necro into oblivion just prior to release. They took death shroud from an extended downed state, which explains our inability to receive heals, regen, or anything else to our true health pool while in death shroud. It is almost as if the programmers are just lazy and cannot repair things, and instead build on previous mechanisms and call it done.

Our minions are a joke at best unless you do some magical button pressing in some hidden and random sequence to get them to attack. They only work slightly better in tpvp because there are no other mobs for them to attack, yet i still see them standing around 50% of the time. Our trait lines are bugged, scattered, and bring nothing useless. I see so many scatter builds because the grandmaster traits are not even that worthwhile. There are a few grandmaster traits at best that make them useful. While in other classes the grandmaster traits become role defining. Altruistic healing (guardian), Pure of Voice (Guardian), Hidden Killer (thief), are just a few examples.

The lack of stability is another joke, and reachable if you go 30 into SR, which i feel screws up the few good builds we have. I am just tired of hoping the devs get a clue. Oh the necro is balanced. Yeah, come on esports. It will be so fun to see esports with 4 classes, with the same team make-ups going over and over and over again. Yeah, call me when that works out.

Pretty soon all tournaments will be asura guardians, thieves, mesmers, and rangers running around.

Gryph.8237:

-Snip-

Yesterday during the tournament the Devs in chat were getting bombarded with Necromancer and Warrior questions. They said they’re both being seriously looked at for the next balance pass, and that we can expect some changes next month. ANet unfortunately moves rather slow, but i believe them when they say they’re on it. There were also 2 Necromancer developers in HotM yesterday, probably testing some things. They want Necro to be as viable as we do.

What devs say and what they do are two diffrent things.

Copenhagen.7015:

Yesterday during the tournament the Devs in chat were getting bombarded with Necromancer and Warrior questions. They said they’re both being seriously looked at for the next balance pass, and that we can expect some changes next month. ANet unfortunately moves rather slow, but i believe them when they say they’re on it. There were also 2 Necromancer developers in HotM yesterday, probably testing some things. They want Necro to be as viable as we do.

You are putting this like we should be full of grattitude for them because of that. It’s 9 months down the road since release, one thing is being slow and this is a totally different beast.

I’ll bet my money that necromancer forums have been the more active of all profession related since day 1… and still is.
So yeah! Better start to do something for god’ sake!

Copenhagen.7015:

Gryph.8237:

-Snip-

Yesterday during the tournament the Devs in chat were getting bombarded with Necromancer and Warrior questions. They said they’re both being seriously looked at for the next balance pass, and that we can expect some changes next month. ANet unfortunately moves rather slow, but i believe them when they say they’re on it. There were also 2 Necromancer developers in HotM yesterday, probably testing some things. They want Necro to be as viable as we do.

About 7~ months ago, Anet said they will have a patch helping rangers next week… in the state of the game right before the patch they referanced a bunch of big issues (pet AI, projectile speed, longbow, useless traits)… the patch buffed underwater weapons and greatsword.
A few months later they buffed up projectile speed.

They could have all the goodwill in the world, but it would just mean they are pretty bad/incapable of effectively acting on it.
Either way it ends with the same slow/mediocrely thought out patches.

Copenhagen, I get what you’re saying and I want to maintain a positive attitude, but I am dissappointed with the performance and the high degree of bias I see towards certain classes (i.e. mesmer, thief). I also want to point out that the Devs in their last discussion of necro said they are balanced and have a great number of viable builds. So many, in fact, that they want to the rest of the classes to have as many viable builds as the necromancer. I was truly laughing when they said that. I am like viable builds? what condition mancer/terror mancer build (i guess you can say that is 2) and a power/wellbombing build, which all look the same?

I have no faith in these devs, probably from the start when we were given a veiled l2p response essentially referring to how POWERFUL DS really is…. yeah, that got a good response.

Man, my post did not even talk about our incredible long cast times, coupled with the ridiculous cooldowns… let alone the blocked line of site problems from a pebble in my path… the same pebble that blocks all my minions from attacking.

Whatever, esports incoming…. they will focus on that, oh, and more added pve stuff.

They need to look at our trait lines, cast times, mobility issues, scaling, etc. Why don’t we have a signet that increases condition damage? why don’t we have something that decreases cooldowns on scepter? where is our access to poison? why is axe still so crappy? why do we have to kitten ourselves to go power build so much?

1.Make going into DS a Stun Breaker. Its already 50% there allowing us to cast fear.
2.Underwater DS skill #1 hits -50% as much as land DS #1 but throws conditions from you onto the target. Make the Throws conditions part apply to land death shroud.
3.For god sakes lower the Cds on Signets and LF generating skills.

Copenhagen.7015:

They said they’re both being seriously looked at for the next balance pass, and that we can expect some changes next month. ANet unfortunately moves rather slow, but i believe them when they say they’re on it.

They also said that there would be no gear progression in the game; or that there would be no farming; or that guesting will be released at launch; or that bar brawls would be released at launch.
ANet says a lot of things and they’ve always said they have balance on their minds. What happened to their minds these past almost 9 months? Face it, ANet have been coming short on what they say and when they do as they promise it’s either lackluster or outright disappointing.

I have been meaning to ask this since the start of the thread but keep forgetting; so here it is:

Ele, Mesmer, and Thieves all have better mobility than the Necromancer (even Warriors have better mob than us); they also have (excluding the warrior) teleports that are stun breakers as well as on weapon skills with fairly low CD’s (Ele RTL isn’t really a teleport, but that’s besides the point). That being said, given that Necro mobility is so garbage and DS can be drained so fast—how does having DS2 a ground target skill make it OP?

I can understand that maybe a 12s CD teleport/chill/bleed can be annoying as hell if we can move anywhere we want BUT I don’t see it as being OP in regards to how it works now. To me it just seems more of a logical way of doing it and it would be leaps and bounds towards giving us mobility ESPECIALLY considering how hard Life Force is to gather for some builds (conditionmancer). Not to mention that LF can drain extremely fast in certain situations and we start out with zero anyway in sPvP.

So I ask: How would that be OP and/or why is not being considered by Anet? It worked this way before launch, why not revert it now that the Necro population is circling the toilet faster than the sPvP population? I would GLADLY take that over a totally new one in DS5 and it would be so much easier to implement than a new skill.

I have some ideas about necromanser’s traits.

Spite

III – Spiteful Removal
When you kill a foe you lose three conditions.
change to
When you kill a foe you and nearby allies lose two conditions. (mb with some cd).

VII – Spiteful Marks
Marks deal 10% more damage.
Well, this trait is actually useless because marks deal very small amout of damage. Something like +50% would be much more useful and still not op.
But i would like if this trait will be reworked.

VIII – Signet Power
Activating a signet gives you three stacks of might for 10 seconds.
With that high cd on signets 10 seconds of might just not enough.
So, i think that it should be at least 20 seconds. At least.
or it would be a good decision to combine this trait with signet mastery and leave it with 10 or 15 seconds of might.

Curses

Barbed Precision
Critical hits have a 66% chance to cause bleeding.
First of all, description should be at least more detailed. It give 1 stack of bleeding for 1 seconds, and it is simply not serious.
1 stack for 3-4 seconds would be tolerably.

III – Chilling Darkness
When you blind a target, you also apply chill for 1 second.
1 seconds is definitely not enough.
Necromancer has blind with
off-hand dagger (Deathly swarm, 18 seconds cd)
Signet of Spite – 90(!!!) seconds cd
Well of Darkness – 60(48 with trait) seconds cd.

Thit trait only synergise with Well of Darkness, but 1 second of chill for each applied blind is just not serious, lol. Give this trait 3 or even 4 seconds of chill.

Blood Magic
IX – Deathly Invigoration
Heal in an area when you leave death shroud.
If the base amount and scale is like this: Healing 267 (0.32), then it should be greatly improved. It’s master trait and it should be much more powerful than 500 hp for using ds. I think it should be like 1200 + 0.4 healing power.

XII – Vampiric Rituals
Wells also siphon health every time they pulse.
At level 80, heals the player for 10 health per enemy affected (up to five targets), per pulse, per well. Unaffected by Healing Power.
Well, 10 hp per tic for grandmaster trait is… Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhould i compare this to elementalist’s heal from just 1 dodge in water attune with Evasive Arcana? Guess not. I’d say this trait should heal for at least 30-40 hp per tic.

Soul Reaping

V – Speed of Shadows
Move 15% faster while in death shroud.
This trait is seems to be completely useless. To compare with other traits it should give at least +30%ms or swiftness.

IX – Master of Terror
Fear you inflict lasts 50% longer.
Hmm, 50% is fine, but for master trait it’s not enough. I think that it should be combined with trait Terror(from Curses)
(Fear deals damage, and it deals an additional 50% damage if the target has another condition on them.)

Blackmoa.3186:

Necromancers right now are a realy rare sight in tpvp, and that has good reasons.
The main reaons is that Necromancer doesnt do anything better than any other class, the key role of Condition pressure in teamfights is already taken by the HGH engi, who does alot better at it. Also Necromancers have no way to mitigate dmg or disengage and are tehrefore the first taregt in every fight if positioning allows it, but here engineer is again better cause of bigger range and access to swiftness in a viable build.

A short breakdown of this misery:

Classes with no access to invulnerability:
-Necromancer
-Thief (but stealth breaks targeting, so still in a better spot)
(-Warrior)
(-Ranger)

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer

Classes with no disengage mechanic on their weaponsets:
-Necromancer
-Engineer

Classes with no access to swiftness in viable builds:
-Necromancer
-Thief

Classes with no Block/Evade skills:
-Necromancer

Classes that can’t prevent being stomped:
-Necromancer
-Engineer
-Guardian
-Ranger
-Warrior

Well we do have a 2nd HP-bar, which seems to balance this all out…………
But even if it would balance this out, it’s at 0% at start, you can exploit it to around 20% in some builds if you are fast and have the right trait allocation and don’t plan on using flesh golem or SPectral walk (switch to knights amulett, and the trait that gives life force on use of spectral skills, activate spectral walk, replace spectral walk by the skill you realy want to take, summon fleshgolem, switch fleshgolem to the elite you realy want to use, change the spectral trait to teh trait you realy want to use and then switch the amulett ot teh amulett you realy want to use…)
So do realy have a 2nd healthbar you have to win the first fight (which you have to do anyway when you bring a necro or he will just be trained down and you lose the game), but with 0 survivability that is not teh easiest thing to do.

much of what you listed is misleading/just flat out wrong lol. I don’t really even know what you mean by half of what you listed “classes that can’t prevent being stomped” -you list everything but thief ele and mesmer, perhaps you meant “classes that have access to mobility in downed state”? every class has a way to prevent stomps, ranger has an aoe interrupt, engineer has an aoe knockback + a pull/knockdown, warrior has an interrupt + vengeance, guardian has an aoe knockback, and necro even has a fear.

lets go through your list and debunk some of this shall we?

Classes with no access to invulnerability:
-Necromancer: death shroud, plague form + blind spam.
-Thief (but stealth breaks targeting, so still in a better spot): would have been more relevant to list pistol whip spam or something like that.
(-Warrior): endure pain, shield block.
(-Ranger): protect me.

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer: this one is actually correct, but only a few classes can get enough vigor to rely take advantage of it (ranger, ele, guardian, engi-sort of).

Classes with no disengage mechanic on their weaponsets:
-Necromancer: death shroud 2 can theoretically be used as a disengage (use it on conveniently placed clones or rock dogs that are attacking your friends).
-Engineer: rifle 4, rifle 5

Classes with no access to swiftness in viable builds:
-Necromancer: spectral walk?
-Thief: swiftness on dodge roll + evade heal + trait into getting vigor when healing = perma swiftness. (new defensive s/d build)
Guardian is probably the only class that has no viable way to take a swiftness granting utility or trait, imo.

Classes with no Block/Evade skills:
-Necromancer: again, death shroud = most imba block mechanic in the game.

Necromancer is perfectly fine where it’s at in my opinion, ranger just needs to be brought down a little to make it a more viable option for teams. Even if ranger doesn’t get nerfed, necro is just one of those classes with a higher skill floor than the other condi classes out there, and can bring a lot of things to a team comp that ranger simply cannot (aoe blind spams on point, epidemic, boon hate, WELLS, insta clutch fears, ect…). Just because it’s harder to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable.
Now build diversity is a whole nother matter.

lets go through your list and debunk some of this shall we?

Classes with no access to invulnerability:
-Necromancer: death shroud, plague form + blind spam.

DS is not invulnerability, it’s a class mechanic. The “second HP bar” is not such thing cause it degen itself.
Plague form blind are just in an area, do you know what a ranged attack is?

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer: this one is actually correct, but only a few classes can get enough vigor to rely take advantage of it (ranger, ele, guardian, engi-sort of).

“few” and you list 4 out of 8… lol

Classes with no disengage mechanic on their weaponsets:
-Necromancer: death shroud 2 can theoretically be used as a disengage

theory is not what we are discussing here, stick to the thread

Classes with no access to swiftness in viable builds:
-Necromancer: spectral walk?

you’re right here. but not in a condition build.

Classes with no Block/Evade skills:
-Necromancer: again, death shroud = most imba block mechanic in the game.

Again, DS is not block. you need build life force to use DS its really hard in some builds, and it degen itself so fast.

Necromancer is perfectly fine where it’s at in my opinion

ok, its your opinion, but you are very ignorant on what are discussing here.

and can bring a lot of things to a team comp that ranger simply cannot
aoe blind spams on point with an elite skill for 20 sec on 180 sec CD or 60 sec CD well for 5 secs
epidemic epidemic is one of the few good thing necro can bring to a high pvp scenario.
boon hate *what is boom hate when a thief can steal them?
WELLS they are good on power builds, and power build are lackluster

Just because it’s harder to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable.

If a class is hard to play it should be in some ways more rewarding not the opposite

much of what you listed is misleading/just flat out wrong lol. I don’t really even know what you mean by half of what you listed “classes that can’t prevent being stomped” -you list everything but thief ele and mesmer, perhaps you meant “classes that have access to mobility in downed state”? every class has a way to prevent stomps, ranger has an aoe interrupt, engineer has an aoe knockback + a pull/knockdown, warrior has an interrupt + vengeance, guardian has an aoe knockback, and necro even has a fear.

lets go through your list and debunk some of this shall we?

Classes with no access to invulnerability:
-Necromancer: death shroud, plague form + blind spam.
-Thief (but stealth breaks targeting, so still in a better spot): would have been more relevant to list pistol whip spam or something like that.
(-Warrior): endure pain, shield block.
(-Ranger): protect me.

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer: this one is actually correct, but only a few classes can get enough vigor to rely take advantage of it (ranger, ele, guardian, engi-sort of).

Classes with no disengage mechanic on their weaponsets:
-Necromancer: death shroud 2 can theoretically be used as a disengage (use it on conveniently placed clones or rock dogs that are attacking your friends).
-Engineer: rifle 4, rifle 5

Classes with no access to swiftness in viable builds:
-Necromancer: spectral walk?
-Thief: swiftness on dodge roll + evade heal + trait into getting vigor when healing = perma swiftness. (new defensive s/d build)
Guardian is probably the only class that has no viable way to take a swiftness granting utility or trait, imo.

Classes with no Block/Evade skills:
-Necromancer: again, death shroud = most imba block mechanic in the game.

Necromancer is perfectly fine where it’s at in my opinion, ranger just needs to be brought down a little to make it a more viable option for teams. Even if ranger doesn’t get nerfed, necro is just one of those classes with a higher skill floor than the other condi classes out there, and can bring a lot of things to a team comp that ranger simply cannot (aoe blind spams on point, epidemic, boon hate, WELLS, insta clutch fears, ect…). Just because it’s harder to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable.
Now build diversity is a whole nother matter.

You are overpowering DS mechnaism. DS is not a block/evade, DS is not invulnerability, DS is not an escape mechanist.

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer: this one is actually correct, but only a few classes can get enough vigor to rely take advantage of it (ranger, ele, guardian, engi-sort of).

More then a half classes have access to it.
Speaking of Swifness : Specral walk is not an option for most of Necros and mostly wont give necro advatage.

I am not saying that necro is bad, but it need a lot of fixes and balancing.
And on higher skill floor necro is bad option for teams, as there are classes who can bring to team a lot more.

Zodian.6597:

much of what you listed is misleading/just flat out wrong lol. I don’t really even know what you mean by half of what you listed “classes that can’t prevent being stomped” -you list everything but thief ele and mesmer, perhaps you meant “classes that have access to mobility in downed state”? every class has a way to prevent stomps, ranger has an aoe interrupt, engineer has an aoe knockback + a pull/knockdown, warrior has an interrupt + vengeance, guardian has an aoe knockback, and necro even has a fear.

lets go through your list and debunk some of this shall we?

Classes with no access to invulnerability:
-Necromancer: death shroud, plague form + blind spam.
-Thief (but stealth breaks targeting, so still in a better spot): would have been more relevant to list pistol whip spam or something like that.
(-Warrior): endure pain, shield block.
(-Ranger): protect me.

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer: this one is actually correct, but only a few classes can get enough vigor to rely take advantage of it (ranger, ele, guardian, engi-sort of).

Classes with no disengage mechanic on their weaponsets:
-Necromancer: death shroud 2 can theoretically be used as a disengage (use it on conveniently placed clones or rock dogs that are attacking your friends).
-Engineer: rifle 4, rifle 5

Classes with no access to swiftness in viable builds:
-Necromancer: spectral walk?
-Thief: swiftness on dodge roll + evade heal + trait into getting vigor when healing = perma swiftness. (new defensive s/d build)
Guardian is probably the only class that has no viable way to take a swiftness granting utility or trait, imo.

Classes with no Block/Evade skills:
-Necromancer: again, death shroud = most imba block mechanic in the game.

Necromancer is perfectly fine where it’s at in my opinion, ranger just needs to be brought down a little to make it a more viable option for teams. Even if ranger doesn’t get nerfed, necro is just one of those classes with a higher skill floor than the other condi classes out there, and can bring a lot of things to a team comp that ranger simply cannot (aoe blind spams on point, epidemic, boon hate, WELLS, insta clutch fears, ect…). Just because it’s harder to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable.
Now build diversity is a whole nother matter.

You are so wrong on so many levels:

• DS and blind are not invulnerability.
• DS#2 is not a disengage. It is an gap closer… toward an enemy – not away. Just because you came up with one rare, absurd situation that barely fits your description of “disengage” doesn’t mean Necro qualifies as having a disengaging skill.
• DS is not a block
• Necromancer is not fine. Everyone has their opinions – even stating Necro isn’t fine is an opinion, but it is the opinion of the majority (including ANet’s). Thus, Necromancer is deemed not fine.

Zodian.6597:

Necromancer is perfectly fine where it’s at in my opinion, ranger just needs to be brought down a little to make it a more viable option for teams. Even if ranger doesn’t get nerfed, necro is just one of those classes with a higher skill floor than the other condi classes out there, and can bring a lot of things to a team comp that ranger simply cannot (aoe blind spams on point, epidemic, boon hate, WELLS, insta clutch fears, ect…). Just because it’s harder to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable.
Now build diversity is a whole nother matter.

Ranger is not the problem with Necro. Necro disappeared almost entirely as a few things happened.

1) HGH Engis – as more people started picking up HGH everyone figured out that it provided far superior condition pressure to what Necro can bring to the table

2) Boon strips became more common on other classes to compensate – Some comps were handcuffed to necro to get the boon strips, but when they found out they could make due by altering their other players slightly and Thief got a spammable boon steal there was no longer a limiting factor forcing a Necro into a spot in the comp.

3) This goes back a way, but the Epidemic nerf was a biggie. The skill was too much the way it was, but pre-nerf it was a crutch that made Necro’s worth having.

There are other points that chipped in along the way, but in my mind these are the biggest factors.

The main problem with Necro is that it has 0 meaningful (DS is not meaningful) 1vX defensive utilities at his disposal. Other classes have a combination mobility/stealth/healing/blocks.

Since mobility is out the window for Necro (though I still support making wurm non-targeted to your position and a true teleport), that leaves improving the Necro’s healing, giving it significantly more access to stability/protection, movement impairment reductions, and making weakness a meaningful defensive condition.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Zodian.6597:

Necromancer is perfectly fine where it’s at in my opinion, ranger just needs to be brought down a little to make it a more viable option for teams. Even if ranger doesn’t get nerfed, necro is just one of those classes with a higher skill floor than the other condi classes out there, and can bring a lot of things to a team comp that ranger simply cannot (aoe blind spams on point, epidemic, boon hate, WELLS, insta clutch fears, ect…). Just because it’s harder to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable.
Now build diversity is a whole nother matter.

Ranger is not the problem with Necro. Necro disappeared almost entirely as a few things happened.

1) HGH Engis – as more people started picking up HGH everyone figured out that it provided far superior condition pressure to what Necro can bring to the table

2) Boon strips became more common on other classes to compensate – Some comps were handcuffed to necro to get the boon strips, but when they found out they could make due by altering their other players slightly and Thief got a spammable boon steal there was no longer a limiting factor forcing a Necro into a spot in the comp.

3) This goes back a way, but the Epidemic nerf was a biggie. The skill was too much the way it was, but pre-nerf it was a crutch that made Necro’s worth having.

There are other points that chipped in along the way, but in my mind these are the biggest factors.

I very much agree with your points.

To me, It’s just (funny) to watch these threads pop up from time to time. A few months ago it was engineer (and the complaining was probably 3x was much as I’ve seen in this thread), then five guage created 100 nades and everybody complained and got it nerfed, then ostricheggs created HGH and now everyone’s complaining about that and it will probably get nerfed. Before engineer it was ranger, then PZ ran double trap ranger comp and suddenly trap ranger OP. You see the pattern?

I don’t blame balance for the popularity of a class at any given point in time, this thread is filled with people just complaining about how they can’t fit things like swiftness into a cookie cutter build, rather than being innovative and testing new builds that would make the class shine in different roles or situations than the status quo. People have been running epidemic corrupt boon necro since like beta weekend 2, let’s not blame lack of innovation on balance, I’ve watched this same thread pop up for nearly every class that is considered “god tier” right now because smart players created strong builds. There just aren’t many innovative players playing necro right now. -just my two cents., sorry if my previous post set any of you off. These threads just make me lawl.

PS: i’m not saying balance is good for every class, I play every class quiet a bit in PvP and in my opinion, the only class that deserves a buff right now is warrior rely -they just need a bit more access to condi clear and maybe a rework of the passive buff on their disc trait line (burst dmg +%).

Zodian the point is that there is no synergy in the necromancer trait lines. I’ve played around with just about every build I can imagine on necro. I actually came up with one heck of a bunker build that is very hard to kill. Necro’s “can” have different builds, the problem is they sacrifice everything for it.

In today’s meta where classes can be both tanky and put out a solid bit of sustain damage the necro falls behind because the trait lines simply don’t mesh well. Look at most necros and they are running some hodge podge of skills trying to synergize a build because the traits are spread through multiple lines.

You want to put out mad DPS? You’re going to get blown up by the other team because you have ZERO survivability. Want to be tanky? Fine, but you will put out absolutely no damage (unlike rangers/engi’s/ele’s) want to hybridize? Ok, but then there are several other classes that do it much better. Want to be great at 1v1’s and be the back point holder? Minion builds actually works decent for this, but it has absolutely no place in a team fight, again unlike ele’s, engi’s, rangers, etc.

If Anet will fix some of the synergy amongst the trait lines I think you’ll find necro’s have a much better place in high level pvp.

Playing with Plague Signet and Spectral Walk lately has really eased my mobility problems. Necromancers still need more to be in a good spot, but I feel the obsession with Signet of Undeath may be hurting the class in the meta game. It’s OK for a class to take one selfish utility skill, which isn’t completely true for Plague Signet or even Spectral Walk when it’s used to open up kills with AOE pressure, and excel in other areas, such as stripping boons and AOE pressure.

Just as an example, mesmers take Blink, which is mostly used to open burst moments through greater mobility. That’s selfish, but it’s ultimately better for the group as a whole.

Again, necromancers still need help because Plague Signet and Spectral Walk don’t quite cut it all or even most the time against an organized focus attack, but it’s better than not taking a necromancer and missing out on his AOE pressure and boom stripping just because he won’t be able to resurrect every three minutes.

This games pvp is horrible balanced. You’re scared that the Necromancer could be too strong? Please compare Mesmer and necromancer. A mesmer can reach over 1700 conditiondamage (thanks to signet) with phantasms like the Phantasmal Duelist inflicting bleed better than my necro does. Necro can reach max ~1500 conditiondamage. But thats not the point. The necro has skills like corrupt boon.. and most mesmer don’t play conditionmesmer.
Btw.. why can a mesmer simply conter every build i play with moa morph? Shutdown for 10sec, killing all minions and set them on cooldown, conter my Lichform or plague as well. Means it can shut down my entire build if i got minions but at least it makes every elite skill the necromancers has useless. If it had an animation i could actually see and dodge, okay. But i have no chance to see that. Even if it has an an firework as animation, the mesmer could just go invisible to use it. In addition to that.. the mesmer does not need that all shutdown skill.. he is stronger in every possible way. I play both, mesmer and Necro and it’s just disgusting when you compare skills of the mesmer and necro.

Just look at skills like Reaper’s Touch and Mirror Blade.
Range, Cooldown, physical projectile, Damage, Blockable? Please tell why Mirror Blade has to be so much stronger than Reaper’s touch?

Next example: Please look at the mesmer melee mainhand weapon and the necro melee mainhand weapon.. do you see that a mesmer got boonremoval, 2sec invulnerability every 10sec (without trait-> which is ofcourse better than the necro counterpart) and the best: a clone that removes boons on attack, 2sec immobilize, a stunbreaker, 2 leapfinisher that counts for both(clone and mesmer), cripple, vulnerability in one skill that has a 1/2 cooldown and shorter activation time then Dark Pact. Could you please tell me whats the idea behind that?

And why does every weapon of the mesmer has combo finisher? Pistol got Magic Bullet with 2 or 3 Bounces as Projectile Finisher and the Phantasmal Duellist with 20% chance and 8 attacks. Told you about sword mainhand, offhand has the Phantasmal Swordsman with a Leap finisher, ofcourse. The Torch got The Prestige as Blast finisher. The Greatsword got Mirror Blade with 3 or 4 bounces and projectile finisher. The Staff got Phase Retreat. The Focus got the Phantasmal Warden with whirl finisher. Oh anet. you forget the Scepter! But who cares.. nobody should use it over the mainhand sword.. only in condition heavy builds.. maybe.
Okay so far so good. Now the Necromancer Weaponfinisher: The Staff got a Blast finisher with Putrid Mark.

….
….
wait thats all?
why?
Maybe because the necromancer has more fields! Or better fields!
Mesmer got 6 fields and can equip up to 6 in one build. (nobody cares about underwater)
Necro got 8 fields and can equip up to 5 in one build. (nobody cares about underwater)
And don’t say etheral fields are worse than dark/poison fields.

I could go on with that and compare miniondamage, minionskills and Deathshroud to shatter and damage/abilities of Phantasms or look at mobility and escape skills.
And i didn’t even mentioned the traits.

I listed this things after reading that you’re scared the Necromancer could be to strong. The only meaningful conclusion i can come to is that this was actually a joke.
Good job on the mesmer by the way. I like it. I just feel pity for all the necromancers that try tpvp on higher ranks..

I think many of us will agree on most of this…

The things that necromancers need:

Death Shroud
- DS5 skill, why a NEW condition? Give us a ‘fear me’ with a stunbreaker
- DS2 skill, make it a ground targeted ~1000 range 120 radius teleport aoe chill+bleed
- DS1 skill, add at least a 1 sec burning on life blast, please give us (soul) burning!
- let DS4 heal your real healthbar, scaling with healing power
- let DS1 keep its damage even when below 50%
- let us regen our LF to 50% (at least to 33%) while not in combat, helps every necro

Minions
- improve minion AI
- make all minion active skills, except golem, instant cast with no aftercast
- make us able to desummon the wurm when not in 1200 range, halving the CD and LF generation

Weapons
- add scaling to life siphoning
- improve power based aoe dmg, maybe better power scaling for staff?

General:
- improve DS in general for both offensive types and defensive use
- give us more access to stunbreakers, stability and vigor
- improve mobility slightly but not too much, ground targeted DS2 should do the trick

Zodian.6597:

There just aren’t many innovative players playing necro right now. -just my two cents.,

Quote of the month.

Have you ever read the Necro forums?

People who are suggesting making our DS2 a targetable teleport should consider that it is unblockable right now as well as being a slow freaking projectile. If you want a targetable teleport ability, I would rather prefer it to be outside of our DS2. If DS2 gets changed to a targetable teleport aoe bleed/chill then the projectile needs to be really freaking fast and we will most likely lose the unblockable part so meh.

Zodian.6597:

Classes with no access to invulnerability:
-Necromancer: death shroud, plague form + blind spam.

THAT IS NOT INVULNERABILITY.

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer: this one is actually correct, but only a few classes can get enough vigor to rely take advantage of it (ranger, ele, guardian, engi-sort of).

And mesmer (on crit 5 sec vigor, 5 sec cooldown).

-Necromancer: death shroud 2 can theoretically be used as a disengage (use it on conveniently placed clones or rock dogs that are attacking your friends).

Doesn’t count. You can’t run away in wvw with this. You can’t get out of range of enemies with it.

Classes with no Block/Evade skills:
-Necromancer: again, death shroud = most imba block mechanic in the game.

NOT A BLOCK OR EVADE

You are grasping at straws. Necro has no invul, invis, block. Having death shroud does not make up for it. 3 second block or invul can block multiple times as much damage as death shroud can, not to mention block or invul can stop people from applying conditions, can stop CC combos, can stop pulls and interrupts and it can allow to stomp freely. Death shroud stops nothing, except from stopping the necro from healing himself and rotating his weapon skills and utilities.

Necro is far squishier than my zerker mesmer. Simply because my mesmer is extremely had to pin down, can break out of any combination of CC multiple times, can reflect projectiles, can reset aggro with invis, has CC and lots of damage. Why facetank 10k hit with death shroud then spend ages recharging that life force (slow as hell if things aren’t dying left and right), when you can simply dodge or block the blow? Necro death shroud also disables normal skills are replaces them with special ones that might not be what you want (condition builds in particular have a kitten time in DS and they also have hard time charging it), disables all healing even from allies and it’s in general pointless except for jumping off a cliff (though necros seem more of the emo cutter type). As someone who mains a mesmer, a necro feels like a walking pinyata. Their traits are useless. Having realized that after playing the class, they are the first target in pvp. Just run a train on their sad kitten till they quit the pvp server and go roll an ele.

lol everyone is flaming that post, you guys analyze this class from surface level perspectives. You say things like “Necro has no access to X boon or ability” without even realizing that it has access to the same design mechanics just differently named (DS = dmg metigation = block, blocks/invulns = high CD = life force). And things like “zomg condi dmg sucks compared to X class” without even considering alternate forms of damage, has anyone tried a spectral walk power build for example? since RTL nerf on ele it might even be able to compete for a roaming bruiser role.

Everyone is just stuck in this idea that necro should be THE aoe condi class, when in reality it can fill other roles. This is how people think in GW2: “ope I keep dying, my class must be UP. Deff shouldn’t change anything in my build/playstyle, ppl been using this one since release, nothing could be wrong with it.” As new builds come up old builds become antiquated, necro is completely viable in most levels of play (even condimancer somewhat), it’s other class builds (hgh, bm) that simply need to be toned down.

I will say that I believe pet AI should have the option of being manual for necro though (or more manual than it already is -if you can call those abilities that), cas this would allow some rely clutch micro.

Zodian.6597:

You say things like “Necro has no access to X boon or ability” without even realizing that it has access to the same design mechanics just differently named (DS = dmg metigation = block, blocks/invulns = high CD = life force).

No offense buddy, but your argument was refuted, and the reason for disagreement was explained. DS is damage mitigation, but the whole point is that it is substandard when compared to a block or invuln. Everyone is in agreement with you that DS is a mitigation tool, but you are ignoring the obvious weaknesses of that tool that have been pointed out by so many in this thread. You are entitled to your opinion, but in this case you are trying to state that opinion as fact, and it is quite simply false. That is why you are getting shouted down byt others providing evidence for why you are incorrect to think as you do.

Zodian.6597:

And things like “zomg condi dmg sucks compared to X class” without even considering alternate forms of damage, has anyone tried a spectral walk power build for example? since RTL nerf on ele it might even be able to compete for a roaming bruiser role.

Don’t assume that others have not tried things that you may or may not have. I personally tried a large number of SW power build variants, and while it can be very effective at low levels you know full well if you’ve played it that good teams will beat you like a drum, and the reason why is exactly what is being talked about in this thread already. You either lack sufficient damage to be a threat, or lack sufficient sustain to survive.

Zodian.6597:

Everyone is just stuck in this idea that necro should be THE aoe condi class, when in reality it can fill other roles.

I’m not sure anyone said that. I personally play Direct Damage necro more often than condi builds. Frankly I think that they are more effective when well played, but harder to play than condi necros, but that is a whole other discussion.

Zodian.6597:

As new builds come up old builds become antiquated, necro is completely viable in most levels of play (even condimancer somewhat), it’s other class builds (hgh, bm) that simply need to be toned down.

100% correct that Necromancer is perfectly viable at most levels of play, but the basis of this discussion is really high end play. Furthermore there is no level of play at which Necromancer is optimal currently. That is why this discussion started.

Nerfing this or that is not really the way IMO. You could tweak HGH and BM rangers by changing how some of the damage is dealt to make them more skill based rather than spam based and it could be a net neutral change or even buff, but by raising the skill floor for those builds the easy button crap that irritates everyone would go away.

Zodian.6597:

I will say that I believe pet AI should have the option of being manual for necro though (or more manual than it already is -if you can call those abilities that), cas this would allow some rely clutch micro.

The whole of AI in this game needs serious rework at the moment. Some of the AI is far too strong (i.e. Ranger Pets, some Phantasms) while others are near useless (i.e. Jagged Horrors, some of the Turrets). Talking about Minions specifically would be a mistake as far as I am concerned, because it turns the discussion away from the real problem that all AI “stuff” needs to be addressed.

Necromancer

• Greater Marks trait:
  • Now increases the ground target size of all marks.
  • Now increases the size of marks created by the Lich Form skill.
• Death Nova trait: Now functions with Necrotic Traversal.
• Grasping Dead skill: Now lists the correct number of bleed stacks (3) in its tooltip.
• Feast skill: Now lists the correct radius (600) in its tooltip.
• Wicked Spiral skill: Now displays the correct range in the tooltip.
• Dark Armor trait: Now functions with Life Leech, Frozen Abyss, and Wicked Spiral.

Congratulations, you did it again Anet!!

where is the real bug fixing you said you were working at?
minions AI, Reaper’s Touch + Spiteful Talisman, mark of blood… and a lot more, where in the hell are those bug fixings?

So when did HGH engi become synonymous with condi engi? There is some weird revisionist history going on on these forums cuz condi engis have been viable in high level tPvP since release, and HGH engi is not the de facto condi engi build used in high lv tPvP. I’ve played vs ostrich a lot on ladder too and I don’t even remember the last time I even saw him using HGH.

I don’t suppose most of you have yet become aware of this :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/New-Patch-Bugged-Staff-Mastery/first#post2108165

Kiriakulos.1690:

I don’t suppose most of you have yet become aware of this :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/New-Patch-Bugged-Staff-Mastery/first#post2108165

Throws keyboard out the window

Kiriakulos.1690:

I don’t suppose most of you have yet become aware of this :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/New-Patch-Bugged-Staff-Mastery/first#post2108165

This is getting seriously ridiculous. What’s the point of making a very light patch of bug fixes (which most of them are just tooltips corrections -.-‘’) and bug even more things?
I’ve played tons of MMOs (Guild Wars 1, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, Aion, Tera and Neverwinter) and only one thing exceeds this: Age of Conan initial release, plagued with bugs everywhere.

FFS, we are 9 months after release and they are still fixing tooltips. Are you freaking serious? I’ve totally lost my faith on ArenaNet, one of favourites game companies since Guild Wars 1 that now is in the bottom of my favourite’s list.

I vouch to boycott all ANet tournaments and to call up the their sponsors and convey my disgust in their sponsorship.

it’s seriously getting to the point where im thinking they are just doing the bare minimum so that they keep people hooked on waiting for the next months patches. This is seriously kitten ing me off how incompetent these kittening USELESS patches are

It really does feel like ANet is only giving the absolute minimum effort here. Even their “Living Story” content feels shallow and quickly slapped together as an after thought.

Zodian, I really enjoy that you are putting forth effort to contribute to the conversation, but god, DS is damage mitigation but block and invuln negate specific damage completely for a couple seconds. this is something we don’t have. I will also note that I actually quit back during halloween running condi. since around january Ive been playing mostly power based and some hybrid specs, some that require multiple armor set changes and accs in PvE stats. Condi isn’t something everyone runs anymore.

Also, I will have to comment on the mesmer post. I also have a mesmer who is 80. In WvW, I really can care most of the times when im playing her. compared to necro, everything is short and the traits are all lined up to perfection. no one mentioned this, but mesmer doesn’t just have a blink and a powerful invuln, but a mini stun breaker. Staff, Phase retreat has an 8-10 sec CD and blinks you away from your target or backwards. If used right with runes for swiftness and blink, you can literally kite people for miles. This really adds to survivability because negating damage is high, and if you can’t be reached during combat phases, you are basically doing something similar.

Anyway, I just hope they drop Living story at this point and focus on balance. Half the stuff they are releasing for PvE isn’t really enjoyable when you come back to the fact that they still have alot they should and need to do with the class.

God, they are lazy… last month tooltip “bug fixing”, this month tooltip “bug fixing”.
How much time did it take to re write those descriptions? 10 minutes? 1 day? 2 kittening weeks? I’m really frustrated necromancer are the only class they don’t give a kitten about.

So dear Anet Dev’s, address the real problems!!! not wrong kittening tooltips.

Tooltips are the niche for necromancers. This is where we are close to balance and may become frighteningly OP if fixed. I mean check out the new corrupt boon thread that appeared in the sPVP forum. Dat scary and OP corrupt boon tooltip.

Once those tooltips are fixed, a lot of whining threads will pop out regarding necros being OP and our tooltips will most likely get nerfed again.

To be fair about the tooltip fixes, a lot of them seem to be dealing with hard coded descriptions that need to be recoded, then rewritten, then re-checked for every language the game supports. And then they need to be bug tested to make sure that they’re accurately changing along with stat changes, and as soon as you involve bug testing like that you get mind numbing work combined with meticulous paperwork to catalogue everything with. That’s the main reason we only get a couple tooltip fixes per class each update.

However, balance changes are a whole different bag of tricks… At this point I think they somehow still don’t have a full game plan of how they want the classes to work together in the end, so they’re just doing tweaks here and there while they experiment behind the scenes as to what may work. As people have said, the Warrior and the Necro both need changes almost at a structural level and they’re deathly afraid of going in the wrong direction and then having to rescind any changes.

ArenaNet probably took the worst and most bug prone way to implement traits. They seem to have several versions of the same skill as full separate skills. For instance when you pick Staff recharge mastery, the skill mark of blood is replaced by another skill with name Mark of Blood, with different recharge and ALSO different tooltip (they seem to need to manually put the different recharge into the tooltip).

So if you have 2 traits (recharge trait and greater mark trait) that affect the staff, they need to make 4 skills named Mark of Blood with 4 correctly worded tooltips. One without any trait effects, one with greater marks, one with recharge trait, one with both traits. If you had another trait affecting it, then they need 8 skills.

You can see how this can easily produce many many bugs of the type where some traits don’t work together and some tooltips are not correct.

Proven.2854:

To be fair about the tooltip fixes, a lot of them seem to be dealing with hard coded descriptions that need to be recoded, then rewritten, then re-checked for every language the game supports. And then they need to be bug tested to make sure that they’re accurately changing along with stat changes, and as soon as you involve bug testing like that you get mind numbing work combined with meticulous paperwork to catalogue everything with. That’s the main reason we only get a couple tooltip fixes per class each update.

However, balance changes are a whole different bag of tricks… At this point I think they somehow still don’t have a full game plan of how they want the classes to work together in the end, so they’re just doing tweaks here and there while they experiment behind the scenes as to what may work. As people have said, the Warrior and the Necro both need changes almost at a structural level and they’re deathly afraid of going in the wrong direction and then having to rescind any changes.

What? are you telling me they don’t use google translate for the other languages?
… I’m befuddled

Compared to the Mesmer we do have more Health + our class mechanic provides a second health bar. Zodian has a point in that we don’t need as much mobility//stun breakers//invuln as a mesmer does. They need it to stay alive, we don’t. Theoretically.

Context is everything. Mesmers will always have more mobility than Necro’s because they are the mobility casters. No one on the Engineer forums is complaining Engineers don’t have access to teleports and greatswords.

That being said, I think it’s not too much to ask to have at least one skill we can effectively use to break away from a fight, especially for the axe and dagger mainhands. Also, some skills that can combo would be nice. Underwater we are combo kings, but above water we have only one weapon with any combo skills. That is lackluster and might be why we don’t seem to fit into teams very well.

BadJas.5178:

Compared to the Mesmer we do have more Health + our class mechanic provides a second health bar. Zodian has a point in that we don’t need as much mobility//stun breakers//invuln as a mesmer does. They need it to stay alive, we don’t. Theoretically.

Context is everything. Mesmers will always have more mobility than Necro’s because they are the mobility casters. No one on the Engineer forums is complaining Engineers don’t have access to teleports and greatswords.

That being said, I think it’s not too much to ask to have at least one skill we can effectively use to break away from a fight, especially for the axe and dagger mainhands. Also, some skills that can combo would be nice. Underwater we are combo kings, but above water we have only one weapon with any combo skills. That is lackluster and might be why we don’t seem to fit into teams very well.

You are if you want to compare Necro with Mesmer, then you should understand that Mesmer mechanics can deal big amount of dmg – Necros can’t. Mesmers clones should not be loaded to yous, DS should. And that Necro has from start more HP is counter’d with , that every class has more burst dmg and i would even say dmg overall.

BadJas.5178:

Compared to the Mesmer we do have more Health + our class mechanic provides a second health bar.

Please people, stop saying this. Life force is not HP, you start the match with 0 LF, you can’t heal LF, you can’t even heal HP in DS, it’s hard to build LF and degen itself at a stupidly high rate of 4% per sec.

BadJas.5178:

They need it to stay alive, we don’t. Theoretically.

LOL! so necros are meant to die…. Theoretically

vicious.5683:

BadJas.5178:

Compared to the Mesmer we do have more Health + our class mechanic provides a second health bar.

Please people, stop saying this. Life force is not HP, you start the match with 0 LF, you can’t heal LF, you can’t even heal HP in DS, it’s hard to build LF and degen itself at a stupidly high rate of 4% per sec.

You’re arguing a technicality. I agree that some of those issues need resolution, so that Death Shroud can be used in PvP as intended. But if LF was easier to build in PvP, you could use DS as a second health bar to get out of trouble.

vicious.5683:

BadJas.5178:

They need it to stay alive, we don’t. Theoretically.

LOL! so necros are meant to die…. Theoretically

This is why context is so important. You take a little snippet of what someone says or what a class does and you compare it at face value, ofcourse it’s not going to measure up. Especially if you misinterpret your own results.
What I said in this ‘quote’ was that Mesmers need more mobility, stun breakers, and access to invulnerability than Necromancers do, because Necromancers have a defensive use for their class mechanic.
How that leads to you thinking I think Necro’s are meant to die is a mystery to me.

That was some excellent paraphrasing, vicious. Thank you for that. <<— Those two sentences are sarcasm. Don’t use them as a quote in your resume to get a job as a parasailing instructor.

So i was having a coffee reading this post. I don’t main necro that’s to be said. But i have played it quite enough to understand how the “vigor issue” is a certainly a big problem for them.

I thougt: what about making one of the necro weapon abilities to actually steal vigor from targets? I mean, it does make sense after all, it is something that would fit with the “lore”.
I was thinking on the offhand dagger number 4 skill wich sends conditions to foes. What about adding an effect on it so it removes 1,5 of the current vigor from enemy target? (assuming 2 would be the 2 evades) and leech 1 evade from them. It would be insanely strategic, forcing enemies either to weapon swap to benefit from energy sigils or to use defensive utilities or just wait the vigor to regen and eat the dmg while giving the necro another so much needed evade on the close-combat weapon set every time that skill is off cd.
Notice this would be hard to abuse and not op in any way since the range on this weapon skill is not that much and that means the necro is at danger staying in a risky position.
I think this wouldn’t concern Pve either, since stealing vigor from npcs is like, yeh.
Thoughts?

I just don’t understand why those “On opponent death” traits still exist after all the beta feedback explaining the nature of those traits means their uptime is minimal.

Zenith.7301:

I just don’t understand why those “On opponent death” traits still exist after all the beta feedback explaining the nature of those traits means their uptime is minimal.

This is another example of why we NEED separated balance for sPvP/PvE+WvW.
In PvE and WvW those kind of traits are good enough but in sPvP are almost useless.

vicious.5683:

• Dark Armor trait: Now functions with Life Leech, Frozen Abyss, and Wicked Spiral.

hahah that made my day

The thing with DS against evades is:

In 1v1, death shroud will mitigate damage and evades do that also.
2v2 will work quite the same as DS is quite beefy but when you are up against more than 3 enimies and get focused, things start to get wild.

Evades/dodges/distortion/invulnerability all scale up with the enimies. What I mean with this is that when 2 enimies burst on you and you manage to evade it, you will evade double the damage compared to one enemy. Death shroud instead will always have the same amount of life force thus meaning it will get weaker the more enimies you have attacking you. Double the damage, halved ds duration. So the effectiveness to soak damage with ds is actually 1/x , where x is the amount of ppl while evades, dodges and invuls have a scaling of x.

However this is usually not a problem in WvW and PvE where you have critters to regain your LF and the large number of dying enimies, which can help you to regain large amounts of LF while in death shroud to soak up great numbers of damage.

In tPvP though, where you get easily focused hard by 5 ppl, it is a big problem. Your shroud will soak up roughly a friction from the damage spike, where as a well placed (stunbreak + ) dodge will soak more damage in 1-2 seconds than DS could ever handle.

I am not saying they should increase the tanking potential of DS, that would be absurd. All I’m saying is that a reliable source of some vigor, maybe 5 sec vigor on a 20sec cooldown could help a lot.

You should remember that DS is not for just tanking bursts. It is a defnsive based stance for necromancer, which has some offensive uses.

Utility suggestions. Again, not all should be implemented, but picking and choosing from these could help Necro find a viable position in tPvP.

SIGNETS
Plague Signet – Reduce CD to 30s from 60s. Makes it a solid stun break and would still draw conditions faster than the Necro can cleanse them even with Consume, OH Dagger and Staff. With the amount of conditions that a heavy condition comp puts out team fights would basically require spamming on recharge, and mitigating the value of the stun break.

Signet of Spite – Change conditions applied by active to Vulnerability (5x, 10s), Weakness (7s), Cripple (7s), Poison (5s), Chill (5s) . This would make it more useful to direct damage builds that would be more prone to take it due to the passive (+power). Additionally reduce CD to kitten from 90s.

Signet of Undeath – Buff the Passive to 1% per second rather than 1% per 3s and allow it to function while in shroud. This would give it synergy with Vital Persistence and make DS a better means of damage mitigation, particularly for condimancers that struggle with getting LF in the first place. Also fix the active to actually rez low health poisoned targets.

CORRUPTIONS

Blood is Power – Increase base duration of Might to 13s. At 13s a traited, full investment in Might duration would give 100% up time on 10 stacks from the skill and a might stacking Necro could become somewhat viable. Change target inflicted bleeds to 4 stacks for 15s. 30s is unrealistic. At 15s you still won’t get all of the ticks to land, but at least you will get some damage out of them before they are cleansed.

Corrupt Boon – Revert to blockable (but not by Aegis). Reduce CD to 25s from 40s. The unblockable characteristic seems unreasonable considering the instant cast and super short flight time. It should take more than just LoS to hit a skill that is this strong in the right situation. It’s CD reduction would put it closer to on par with the amount of boon stripping that other classes can do.

Corrosive Poison Cloud – Reduce CD to 30s from 40s. Reduce cast time to 3/4s. Change pulses to every 1s from every 3s. Change Conditions applied to foes to Poison 1s/pulse and Vulnerable (1x) 10s per pulse. This would improve its usefulness in general by offering more condition diversity (allowing for more cover to bleed stacks).

Epidemic – Revert to blockable. Reduce cast time to 1/2s. Increase recharge to 20s from 15s. Changes the nature of the skill from spam and pray that it hits for some effect to a bit more selective use that you can actually land more reliably with skilled play but does not make it an easy-button, auto-hit.

MINIONS
I will refrain from comment on Minions, as the AI is still too bad to worry about the basic functions. Others may have something to say here, but I think they are just incomplete without fixing the AI issue.

SPECTRALS
Spectral Armor – Reduce base CD to kitten OR apply 6s of Stability in addition to the Protection. At a lower CD it could be a realistic option for a stun breaker, or if it gave Stability it could justify the long CD. As it is now it is just terrible and only gets on anyone’s bar because they made a mistake.

Spectral Grasp – Greatly increase projectile speed and make it a 100% finisher. If this skill ever hit anything it might land on someone’s bar occasionally, because the function is great. The problem is thakittens pathing sucks, it still doesn’t pull full range and you can walk as fast as it moves.

Spectral Walk – Remove the green smoke trail effect and replace it with an eerie looking green version of a portal to signal the tether point. Increase base duration of the walk to kitten from 8s and make it 60s traited. This would give Necromancer enough mobility to be a viable close point defender.

Spectral Wall – Change condition application to Vulnerable (5x) 10s and Confusion (5x) 10s. This would again help with condition diversity and make the wall more useful in general.

WELLS
Well of Corruption – Change duration to 10s from 5s. Reduce damage to 610 (11x) from 610 (5x). More boon stripping for Necro puts them on an even playing field since they lack the ability to apply boons. Also, I think this would be better as an ethereal field rather than dark, again expanding the potential for application of more diverse conditions.

Well of Darkness – Reduce CD to kitten from 60s. With so much range in the game the 240 radius blind is really limited in its uses. Even with the trait to chill this skill is lackluster and only situationally useful. 11% uptime on this would not be a big deal.

Well of Power – Change to a Light Field rather than dark. Otherwise it is fine as is.

Well of Suffering – Increase damage to about 1800 (6x) and just remove the Vulnerable application. DPS would still be substantially lower than Blurred Frenzy, HB and other channels. U deserve death if u stand in it.