Guild Wars 2

Myrmidian Eudoros which game mode are you thinking about when you post all these changes?
Imagine how many people would disagree with the idea about making epidemic or corrupt boon blockable, we just had it patched to become unblockable again heh.

Increasing the CD on epidemic is a very strange way to go about it too. It’s a situational spell and your changes wouldn’t really change much about the “spam and prey” part that you mention just because of the way the ability works.

Taking away weakness from the poison cloud is a strange way to go about it too, why would you prefer vulnerability over weakness when weakness messes with endurance generation and corrosive poison cloud is the spell with best weakness access that we have.

I didn’t quite understand what you want to do with spectral walk. Traited the spectral effect lasts for 12 seconds and if you take the CD reduction then it has a 48 second CD.

Fully traited spectral wall is actually very good as in it has only a 32 second CD and a duration of 16 seconds which gives you unlimited access to protection for those 16 seconds. Although it seems to be bugged as a combo field. The amount of confusion stacks that you can get with it seems to be limited and it’s interaction with blast finishers seems to be random every time I try it. 5 stacks of confusion if an enemy passes through it would be too much but would be nice to have but on the other hand making our staff autoattack 100% projectile finisher and improving it in general would give us a reliable way to stack confusion and would open up good spectral wall staff condi builds. But then again the wall interaction with finishers is very random form my experience as in a lot of times it doesn’t work and sometimes it does in the same situations.

I personally am fine with wells being a dark field and the aoe blind is actually nice in point fights when everyone runs around them. We have our wall as an ethereal field and traited it lasts for a whole of 16 seconds again(that is a LOT). In fact spectral wall has a good synergy with well of blood since the share the same CD.

The only thing to complain about well of darkness is only it’s long CD, I do not quite understand why well of power and well of darkness do not have the same CD as well of corruption and well of suffering. I can see well of darkness being a very powerful tool, especially with chilling darkness but the cd is still long. Well of power is probably the worst well out of them all: situational and depends on what the enemies do to you of your friends(like a lot of our other abilities) and has a HUGE CD while not really bringing that much to the table, no damage at all, the only good thing about it is that(if I am not mistaken) if you place the well in a distance on your allies, you still get its effect while not being inside of it.

Well of suffering deals quite a lot of damage already and vulnerability is nice to have too so I don’t know.

Iceflame.5024:

Myrmidian Eudoros which game mode are you thinking about when you post all these changes?

Iceflame.5024:

Imagine how many people would disagree with the idea about making epidemic or corrupt boon blockable, ….
Increasing the CD on epidemic is a very strange way to go about it too.

Just because people like the unblockable versions doesn’t mean they are good. If you have a block mechanic, then it should be just that IMO, and nothing should be able to override it. Increasing the CD by itself would be foolish, but reducing the cast to 1/2s coupled with an increased CD would make it a more skill based utility that would connect more often. You would get interrupted less, there would be less potential to dodge, etc.

Iceflame.5024:

Taking away weakness from the poison cloud is a strange way to go about it …

CPC self inflicts Weakness. As a Necromancer you have several ways of dealing with this. You can transfer it to the target with multiple different Necro skills, or Consume it for added healing. CPC is also not often used currently, because even though Weakness is the best mitigation for Vigor (it is basically a 1 to 1) it is too weak considering the existence of energy sigils, traits, evades on weapon skills and other things in game that mitigate its effect. Giving the choice to either transfer or consume the weakness makes it more versatile and stronger IMO.

Iceflame.5024:

I didn’t quite understand what you want to do with spectral walk….

Yeah, it got edited for some reason by the language filter. I am saying to make the leash duration 45 seconds at standard, 60 seconds traited. The CD’s would remain the same. A fully traited walk would then be on par with what a Mesmer portal can do, only it would be Self teleport only instead of any ally that can get to it.

Iceflame.5024:

Fully traited spectral wall is actually very good … Although it seems to be bugged as a combo field…5 stacks of confusion if an enemy passes through it would be too much …autoattack 100% projectile finisher …

The protection on this skill is extremely strong, and I agree with you entirely on that point. It is “working as intended” with regards to the combo field as far as I know. If you are IN the wall when you cast Staff 4 and stay IN the wall until it triggers, then you get the effect. Blast finishers seem to all work this way, but the lag on Staff 4 is what makes it uniquely hard to land. It is dreadfully hard to complete that combo, but it is what it is. I think that if you reduce the Vulnerability and introduce Confusion (though 5 stacks may in fact be too many), then it shouldn’t be too stong. Aside from that, opponents rarely walk through it anyway. 100% finisher on any auto-attack is too much to ask for IMO, but having some other means of finishing would be nice.

Iceflame.5024:

I personally am fine with wells being a dark field…

Meh. Dark fields are ok, but more variety would be better for the class IMO.

Iceflame.5024:

The only thing to complain about well of darkness is only it’s long CD, …Well of power is probably the worst well out of them all:…and has a HUGE CD…

Agree on WoD. Converting conditions into boons is an odd thing the way it has been implemented. WoP can be utterly useless or completely turn a team fight upsidedown or even flip the tables on an outnumbered encounter. You can’t usually even know what the outcome will be before casting it, so it is a really randomly behaving skill. You can wind up getting obscene durations of boons with a WoP, and since it can have such strange and unpredictable effects I don’t really want to mess with it too much.

Iceflame.5024:

Well of suffering deals quite a lot of damage already and vulnerability is nice to have too so I don’t know.

I agree. I think that boosting the damage and making it synergize better with a well played Focus #4 would give it more of a skill for kill playability, but really this change is one of the more minor of all of the ones I thought of.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Yeah, it got edited for some reason by the language filter. I am saying to make the leash duration 45 seconds at standard, 60 seconds traited. The CD’s would remain the same. A fully traited walk would then be on par with what a Mesmer portal can do, only it would be Self teleport only instead of any ally that can get to it.

Well the leash duration is currently tied to the spectral effect that gives life force on taking damage so you most likely would need to do some serious changes to the spell
to make it work the way you want to. Would probably be easier to just make a new spell.

Flesh wurm could also work that way if it wasn’t bugged and had unlimited range. But fixing flesh wurm is most likely a huge problem since it seems to be connected to pathing lol. Currently flesh wurm is the best stunbreaker to have in sPVP and is also a good spell to have since it combines a teleport, stunbreaker and it actually deals some rather ok damage.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

The protection on this skill is extremely strong, and I agree with you entirely on that point. It is “working as intended” with regards to the combo field as far as I know. If you are IN the wall when you cast Staff 4 and stay IN the wall until it triggers, then you get the effect. Blast finishers seem to all work this way, but the lag on Staff 4 is what makes it uniquely hard to land. It is dreadfully hard to complete that combo, but it is what it is. I think that if you reduce the Vulnerability and introduce Confusion (though 5 stacks may in fact be too many), then it shouldn’t be too stong. Aside from that, opponents rarely walk through it anyway. 100% finisher on any auto-attack is too much to ask for IMO, but having some other means of finishing would be nice.

I have tried the combo effects form spectral wall many times with different spells. I’ve tried it with putrid mark, blowing up my minions and flehs wurm necrotic traversal for blast finishers. For projectile finishers I’ve tried it with staff #1, bone fiend and flesh wurm.

The result for blast finishers is different a lot of times. I’ve had the chaos armor effect triggered by blasts inside the wall as well as outside the wall but I cannot reproduce them reliably. Necrotic traversal refuses to trigger the combo most of the time when I place the wurm right inside the wall but then suddenly decides to trigger it sometimes when I place it next to the wall with a little distance between them. Same thign for bone minions. I really do not know, it really is random in different situations. Just try it our yourself in heart of the mists to see if it works that way for you.

As for projectiles I thought that bone fiend and flesh wurm had 100% finishers on their attacks but they tend to only proc confusion once from the wall most of the time. Only once have I had the minions proc the confusion twice form the wall out of probably 7 attempts. Staff tends to proc confusion once or twice and then stops lol.

Ok, I have just tested bone fiend and flesh wurm projectile finishers on corrosive poison cloud, they proc the poison effect every time so they have a 100% projectile finisher. I’m creating a topic about spectral wall combo effect in the necromancer forums.

Iceflame.5024:

I have tried the combo effects form spectral wall many times with different spells. I’ve tried it with putrid mark, blowing up my minions and flehs wurm necrotic traversal for blast finishers. For projectile finishers I’ve tried it with staff #1, bone fiend and flesh wurm.

The result for blast finishers is different a lot of times. I’ve had the chaos armor effect triggered by blasts inside the wall as well as outside the wall but I cannot reproduce them reliably. Necrotic traversal refuses to trigger the combo most of the time when I place the wurm right inside the wall but then suddenly decides to trigger it sometimes when I place it next to the wall with a little distance between them. Same thign for bone minions. I really do not know, it really is random in different situations. Just try it our yourself in heart of the mists to see if it works that way for you.

As for projectiles I thought that bone fiend and flesh wurm had 100% finishers on their attacks but they tend to only proc confusion once from the wall most of the time. Only once have I had the minions proc the confusion twice form the wall out of probably 7 attempts. Staff tends to proc confusion once or twice and then stops lol.

Ok, I have just tested bone fiend and flesh wurm projectile finishers on corrosive poison cloud, they proc the poison effect every time so they have a 100% projectile finisher. I’m creating a topic about spectral wall combo effect in the necromancer forums.

Interesting. I did all of my testing with Staff 4 since I considered the randomness of minions to be unsuitable for testing. Nice catch. I did my testing awhile ago, and it seemed to be consistent in the way I described it at that time (there was also the issue of the field being misplaced at the time, so I was dropping it at my feet perpendicular to camera angle and character LoS to try and eliminate the variable). I wonder if there is a rotational issue with the field placement (i.e. it is always parallel or perpendicular to camera angle at the time of placement, but out of synch with the animation.). That might explain the inconsistent results.

I hope some devs can take a look on your testing work Iceflame and Myrmidian Eudoros. It’s awesome

Personally, I find the biggest flaw with necromancers are that all of their other flaws compound each other. I don’t know any other class that does this. I mean, take thief for example. The thief’s flaws are that they are incredibly squishy and they can’t grant/accumulate boons that well. These are mostly independent to each other: If the thief were more durable, they still wouldn’t have the ability to grant boons. If the thief had boons, they would be slightly less squishy in an indirect manner, but otherwise this doesn’t change much.

But the necromancer is expected to do something, and it isn’t given any of the tools to really do it. Lets look at the attrition aspect of necromancers with sustaining damage over time, and compare this to the flaws the necromancer has:

*No burst damage
*Light on hard controls
*Windups on control skills
*Little but costly stability
*No vigor
*No blocking skills
*No evading skills
*No reflecting skills
*No invulnerability or stealth
*Horrible stun breakers
*Few movement skills
*Lack of versatility in static builds
*Separated and fragmented traits
*Gimmicky class mechanic that is difficult to use and isn’t that rewarding
*Subpar heals

And now lets look at the various aspects of attrition: above average sustained damage, high survivability, and the ability to stay engaged.

Sustained Damage: The necromancer has no active defense skills, so the necromancer will itself be under constant damage. Without any active defense or stability, the necromancer will constantly be controlled, giving the opponent higher damage due to their bursts and lowering necromancer damage. The stun breakers do not alleviate this at all. Due to the fragmented traits, the necromancer has no alternative options should their main offense be shut down. The lack of hard controls means that the enemy will constantly avoid their attacks, lowering their sustained damage again. The opponent is always free to us whatever strategy they want to win the fight because the necromancer has no “counter” to anything, whereas half of necromancer damage can be avoided by condition cleanses and not staying in wells. The lack of burst means the necromancer has nothing to do with the few controls they have.

Survivability: The necromancer has plenty of HP and… maybe deathsrhoud? Unless you run a power necro with a dagger, then in sPVP you will not have life force to use Death Shroud. The necromancer has no hard controls to stop incoming damage, making them take more damage. The necromancer has no active defenses, making them take a lot more damage. The necromancer has poor stun breakers and nothing to counter burst, making them take a whole lot more damage. The necromancer’s heals are subpar, making them ineffective at dispelling damage. The necromancer has few movement skills that are awkward to use, meaning they can’t escape damage either.

Staying Engaged: The necromancer’s primary method of maintaining engagement is cripple and chill. These are easily cleansed away or blocked/dodged/avoided. Their two primary movement abilities, Spectral Grasp and Dark Path, are both slow moving and easily avoided/obstructed, making them work less than half the time. Without any movement skills they cannot give chase, and with limited access to swiftness opponents will outrun them. Without active defenses or good stun breakers, the necromancer doesn’t have anything to prevent their opponent from simply disabling the necro then running away.

So, literally, necromancers don’t have any of the tools they need to do what they are expected to due. It is for this reason that the only thing they can do in high end tPVP is a few gimmicks and it ends there. Now, many of these flaws aren’t as serious in WvW or PVE, however that is no excuse. The game should be balanced around making everything in sPVP viable, and then only buffing or nerfing things for PVE/WvW later. It could never be an e-sport if something else is done.

Just stop with the attrition stuff. I don’t care about things that were said eons ago in the development cycle. There is no reason why any profession should be forced into attrition style in this game. I agree that Necromancer can’t effectively play an attrition style right now, but if it could play any role effectively that would be a start in the right direction. Build diversity comes after viability. Where the viability comes first is based on fixing some of the deficiencies. After that diversity is more of a meta consideration than anything, so that’s on us.

If you acknowledge these flaws and build around them, you can make a decent necro. There’s only one problem, and that is the only way to do this is a Minion Master. I might as well put up the build I’m currently using for sPVP:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04-8cFKlHkD0s3wI-K0g3gI-D0z3;6J-T4E48;229B;15;05wW0UN;0PcW5PcW56gM

The reason why the minion master works for the attrition aspect is largely because the necromancer’s direct action isn’t needed to sustain damage. Because of this, the lack of active defense doesn’t matter as much. This build happens to have plenty of controls and chase mechanics, letting the necromancer sustain plenty of damage. It is quite effective to chase someone around with locust swarm, crippling them while auto-attacking so the minions can run up and attack them. The setup also gives protection quite frequently, regenerates life force at a reasonable rate, has a high uptime on retaliation, and so much statistical bulk that the necromancer becomes a walking tank, making fighting the necro a long and arduous task. The minions also provide body blocking as a form of defense as well, and the bone minion provides a readily available and much needed burst AoE damage on a short cooldown. The minions can’t be cleansed away, are very difficult to disable, and provide a fairly reliable form of offense.

It does have its flaws, though. One is the pet AI, which causes problems when fighting multiple targets or fighting something with stealth. Two is that the pressure of 2 or more people fighting the necromancer will end up killing off the minions, leaving the necromancer defenseless. Two point five is that classes with a lot of AoE can end up killing the minions, again leaving them disabled for long amounts of time. So it is only a 1 vs. 1 build, however as a 1 vs. 1 build it is quite good akittens job.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Just stop with the attrition stuff. I don’t care about things that were said eons ago in the development cycle. There is no reason why any profession should be forced into attrition style in this game. I agree that Necromancer can’t effectively play an attrition style right now, but if it could play any role effectively that would be a start in the right direction. Build diversity comes after viability. Where the viability comes first is based on fixing some of the deficiencies. After that diversity is more of a meta consideration than anything, so that’s on us.

I suppose the biggest issue is that the necro is pretty much designed for attrition at the moment by the developers. I would welcome a change from this, however.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

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.

Nope, still garbage in PvE. Those traits do nothing in boss fights.

[/quote]

I suppose the biggest issue is that the necro is pretty much designed for attrition at the moment by the developers. I would welcome a change from this, however.
[/quote]

attrition is fine if the developers would understand how it works, having a 2nd healthpool that can´t be refilled cause you eat more dmg then everyone else is not attrition.
The current attrition classes have perma vigor and multiple sources of heal.
Engi got regen, water blasts, selfrezz, 125heal/sec from a trait + vigor. Same for ele thief and ranger, all have different sources of heal next to their standart #6 ability and they all have vigor and different sources of skill based evades.

heal+avoid+stunbreak+cc= attrition ; 2nd healthpool=crap

! if they really want to make necro an attrition class with unique mechanics then make it easier to fill lifeforce and give them reliable life steal mechanics like necros in every other game have !

My guess is that dev don’t know themself ,what necro should be.
If Thief should be the max burst dmg, Guard best defender with good support,etc.
What should be a necro ?!

emon.1863:

My guess is that dev don’t know themself ,what necro should be.
If Thief should be the max burst dmg, Guard best defender with good support,etc.
What should be a necro ?!

Actually on last night’s But of Corpse, Chaplan made a guest chat appearance and stated this (I am paraphrase as he was in chat with about 30 necromancers answering questions).

“The Necromancer has no access to vigor and limited boon access by design. Our goal was that the Necromancer not be a class that avoids or protects damage through boons, but rather through conditions and “anti-boon”. They want the Necromancer to not be highly mobile, but to be a class that uses conditions to prevent any mobile class from escaping. The goal is to have them use conditions to prevent other classes from being stronger, and to win battles of attrition. This is not currently where they are at, but the lack of Vigor/Stability and Boons is by design and not one we are going to change. They do feel we do not have enough access to the conditions that matter such as more cripple, chill, poison, and weakness. We want weakness to be stronger, and thus allow the Necromancer to use it to prevent damage and thereby win the battle of attrition. Currently the Necro does not have enough return to be a class. Our goal is that when someone goes to battle with a Necromancer they know the Necromancer is not leaving, and they are going to have a really hard time getting away from the Necromancer. Essentially they will regret the battle and have to think twice about it. So tune into the state of the game we think you guys are going to really like this next patch."

That is a paraphrase of the 45 minutes that Chaplan spent in the live chat of the But of Corpse show. It was an incredible and exciting time. I did not do him justice, but he left the 30 or so Necromancers pretty excited about the SOTG.

I think john is right. I cant speak for all necros but i feel we have options to stay alive with death shroud and plague both at our disposal. The problem is we can’t outlast the enemy in the battle of “attrition”. Our condition spec is too dependent on bleed damage (limited poison uptime…Why do engis get bleed, poison, confusion, burning, and plenty of cover conditions?). Our power specs are weak outside of wells and dagger (staff 1 can hit kind of hard but moves too slow). Axe 2 hits hard but the autoattack just isn’t there. DS1 cast time is too long and is easily dodgeable, and the long cast time costs you lifeforce which is effective health from the degen. Death shroud 1 needs rework to be made worthwhile (it useless in condition specs and still bad in power). I can go all day about stun breaks and getting cc’d to death but this has already turned into a rant.

Bas.7406:

Our goal is that when someone goes to battle with a Necromancer they know the Necromancer is not leaving, and they are going to have a really hard time getting away from the Necromancer. Essentially they will regret the battle and have to think twice about it. So tune into the state of the game we think you guys are going to really like this next patch."

This is pretty much empty words and a joke for the moment and I doubt it will change in any significant way since there is this thing called mobility for other classes and stealth as well as other similar mechanics. The only thing that somehow makes this statement true is the conquest mode since people need to fight for objectives(so basically it’s objectives and the game mode that make it seem like those words are somewhat true and not the current class design). Remove the objectives and a lot of classes have no problem disengaging from necros and resetting fights.

So better make it work the way they describe it, until then it’s just empty words.

Bas.7406:

That is a paraphrase of the 45 minutes that Chaplan spent in the live chat of the But of Corpse show. It was an incredible and exciting time. I did not do him justice, but he left the 30 or so Necromancers pretty excited about the SOTG.

GW2 was founded on great ideas, that’s why so many people want to love this game.
They have wonderful people conceptualizing stuff for the game… most of the ideas are spot on about where an MMO should be, which is so rare and makes me want to hug someone… but they seriously shot themselves by hiring whoever it is that actually turns those ideas into reality.

The entire instanced S/TPvP ‘join map’ setup.
The weapon ability designs.
The elite general design.
The traitline setups.
The amulet setups.
The want for underwater combat.
The specifics of close/far point in conquest.
Whoever the guy who pulled that stuff together… and thought it was a great idea to throw a million new half baked things into the game… killed Guild Wars…

Anyways, when they actually start to throw out good patches (its been 9 months) that deepen the gameplay and make it more teamly, I’ll be happy to jump back into it.

Bas.7406:

emon.1863:

My guess is that dev don’t know themself ,what necro should be.
If Thief should be the max burst dmg, Guard best defender with good support,etc.
What should be a necro ?!

Actually on last night’s But of Corpse, Chaplan made a guest chat appearance and stated this (I am paraphrase as he was in chat with about 30 necromancers answering questions).

“The Necromancer has no access to vigor and limited boon access by design. Our goal was that the Necromancer not be a class that avoids or protects damage through boons, but rather through conditions and “anti-boon”. They want the Necromancer to not be highly mobile, but to be a class that uses conditions to prevent any mobile class from escaping. The goal is to have them use conditions to prevent other classes from being stronger, and to win battles of attrition. This is not currently where they are at, but the lack of Vigor/Stability and Boons is by design and not one we are going to change. They do feel we do not have enough access to the conditions that matter such as more cripple, chill, poison, and weakness. We want weakness to be stronger, and thus allow the Necromancer to use it to prevent damage and thereby win the battle of attrition. Currently the Necro does not have enough return to be a class. Our goal is that when someone goes to battle with a Necromancer they know the Necromancer is not leaving, and they are going to have a really hard time getting away from the Necromancer. Essentially they will regret the battle and have to think twice about it. So tune into the state of the game we think you guys are going to really like this next patch."

That is a paraphrase of the 45 minutes that Chaplan spent in the live chat of the But of Corpse show. It was an incredible and exciting time. I did not do him justice, but he left the 30 or so Necromancers pretty excited about the SOTG.

Awesome. Now that the issues have been acknowledged and they admit necromancers aren’t where they should be, we at least now know they know we’re not up to par.

OK not disagreeing just want to add my own footnotes to your statements.

Classes with no access to invulnerability:

Necros in DS take 0 damage from both physical and Condition now.
This means that DS is in fact an invulnerability. However the problem is that it does not prevent any CC from effecting you. And even with the highest level of armor you can slap on the necro, when it comes to 1 high burst theif or outnumbered 2/3 to 1. DS evaporates off the necro like we didnt even have it. if DS actually stayed the course of the duration without deminishing from direct damage. DS would be an asset.
As an example of this failinure I was fighting a theif who imedietly stuned me and bursted as soon as I entered DS, I had a full DS bar. by the time the stun wore off DS was over and i didnt even have a chance to use 1 skill.

@Kravick, they admited that necro is in bad state months ago,but till now there are only word.

With the amount of condition removal in pvp, this will change nothing.

For PvE, weakness changes will do nothing as conditions like weakness have very, very short durations against bosses. So the lack of vigor will continue to hurt necromancers at least in one game type.

More importantly, they are basing the necromancer survival on a source (conditions) that is currently very easy to remove.

Shanos.2459:

OK not disagreeing just want to add my own footnotes to your statements.

Classes with no access to invulnerability:

Necros in DS take 0 damage from both physical and Condition now.
This means that DS is in fact an invulnerability. …

Hold it right there.

See this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerable

You seem to get the general idea that DS doesn’t measure up to the mitigation that other professions get, but suggesting that it is on par with Invulnerable in any way is silly. Death Shroud does not prevent damage or the application of conditions. If life force was “free” and regenerated naturally the way that endurance does, and prevented conditions from being applied, and Stability was granted permanently when in shroud then you could conceivably construct an argument that it was remotely close, but as it stands now the mechanics of generating Life Force make it more like an adrenaline pool that takes way longer to charge, and instead of burst it provides short term mitigation of damage without breaking stuns, combos, etc. This is particularly useless against sustained damage and DoT’s, and can save you from a maximum of 1 burst per encounter against a well played burster that will always be able to turn a burst combo every 30s or less which is far faster than you can recharge LF.

Surely the Dev team was following the same flawed logic that you were when they designed the class, but it is demonstrated fact at this point that Shroud doesn’t work like invuln at all. Lets stop pretending that our “Extra Health Pool” is anything remotely as useful as Invuln or even what a real “Extra Health Pool” would be just so we don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. It isn’t good enough to replace all of the invulnerable, dodges, vigor, stability, etc. that they designed out of the class because of shroud, and they need to make drastic changes (like the pre-release nerf they pulled) in order to make the profession good enough.

They want us to out live our opponents yet our most common boon (rejen), doesn’t even work in death shroud.

They will buff weakness and call it a necro buff even though so many classes have access to it.

So much condi cleanse in this game that we can’t keep up with our slow application of condis.

Is there a reason we can’t have confusion ?

They just said they don’t want to give us stability!!?? For an attrition class? I’ll make sure you don’t get away as soon as I get off the ground! Can’t even shroud stomp anymore…

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Shanos.2459:

OK not disagreeing just want to add my own footnotes to your statements.

Classes with no access to invulnerability:

Necros in DS take 0 damage from both physical and Condition now.
This means that DS is in fact an invulnerability. …

Hold it right there.

See this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerable

You seem to get the general idea that DS doesn’t measure up to the mitigation that other professions get, but suggesting that it is on par with Invulnerable in any way is silly. Death Shroud does not prevent damage or the application of conditions. If life force was “free” and regenerated naturally the way that endurance does, and prevented conditions from being applied, and Stability was granted permanently when in shroud then you could conceivably construct an argument that it was remotely close, but as it stands now the mechanics of generating Life Force make it more like an adrenaline pool that takes way longer to charge, and instead of burst it provides short term mitigation of damage without breaking stuns, combos, etc. This is particularly useless against sustained damage and DoT’s, and can save you from a maximum of 1 burst per encounter against a well played burster that will always be able to turn a burst combo every 30s or less which is far faster than you can recharge LF.

Surely the Dev team was following the same flawed logic that you were when they designed the class, but it is demonstrated fact at this point that Shroud doesn’t work like invuln at all. Lets stop pretending that our “Extra Health Pool” is anything remotely as useful as Invuln or even what a real “Extra Health Pool” would be just so we don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. It isn’t good enough to replace all of the invulnerable, dodges, vigor, stability, etc. that they designed out of the class because of shroud, and they need to make drastic changes (like the pre-release nerf they pulled) in order to make the profession good enough.

I said it was an invulnerabilty not on par with invulnerability.
If i had a choice between invul or DS Id leave DS by the way side as it is right now.
And Im pretty sure the nerf was cause of the Guardian nerf not for progression.
when they killed the guardian the necro suddenly became to powerfull vs the guardian.
so they nerfed the necro and now were to weak vs the other classes.

What would happen if they removed the DS auto-drain and cooldown (making it more like a kit swap)? Also change the trait Near to Death to lower the % of DS life force needed to enter it, and of course assuming any DS-entering boons/traits would have appropriate cooldowns if they dont already (maybe also reduced by Near to Death).

Can moa morph please stop killing my necromancer’s minions

They want the Necromancer to not be highly mobile, but to be a class that uses conditions to prevent any mobile class from escaping.

There is too much condition cleanse in this game for this ever to become a reality. All it takes is one condition wipe and then most classes can use their disengage and are gone. Even if our cooldowns were cut in half I don’t see how this would be solved.

Pendragon.8735:

They want the Necromancer to not be highly mobile, but to be a class that uses conditions to prevent any mobile class from escaping.

There is too much condition cleanse in this game for this ever to become a reality. All it takes is one condition wipe and then most classes can use their disengage and are gone. Even if our cooldowns were cut in half I don’t see how this would be solved.

Don’t forget that Engi has much better accesse to conditions.

Well, improving our attrition conditions is a first step, if we can spam more cripples, chills and weakness we can start to talk about attrition at least. After that, we still have a problem: condition cleanse is the meta right now, so we still won’t have place in teams.

A lot of people seem to be happy about the mentioned weakness change but again they have this narrow minded approach of saying that this is going to be a big deal for necro. While surely it is probably going to be somewhat of a big deal but this is going to be a change that affects all the other classes as well.

Let’s look at necro’s ways to apply weakness:

-off hand dagger enfeebling blood(it has a…. 25 CD, that is in fact a veeeery long CD for an ability like this, then we have this thing where a lot of times my character finished the cast on enfeebling blood and it take another maybe half of a second or maybe less but still noticeable for the animation before the effect takes place)

-weakening shroud trait is the same enfeebling blood although in melee range and doesn’t have the cast time while having only a 15 second CD(I’ve seen a lot of people stating that it’s 10 seconds but that is incorrect, you can test it our yourself or check the wiki)

-putrid mark into a combo field blast finisher which has a 25 second CD

-corrosive poison cloud

-withering precision trait: 25% to cause weakness on critical hits: this is potentially our best weakness application way but with the current state I do not see a reliable build that can use this effectively, the best weapon to use it with is dagger(axe #2 is good for this trait too but every time I try axe i always end up regretting it and going back to other weapons). So basically it’s best for a crit/power dagger build.

The thing’s that’s been mentioned in the SOTG video are nearly all related to the defensive side.

Pendragon.8735:

They want the Necromancer to not be highly mobile, but to be a class that uses conditions to prevent any mobile class from escaping.

There is too much condition cleanse in this game for this ever to become a reality. All it takes is one condition wipe and then most classes can use their disengage and are gone. Even if our cooldowns were cut in half I don’t see how this would be solved.

What if they introduce more pull skills? I realize that as is we have Spectral Grasp, but it seems to me putting more pulls on, say, weapon skills would give Necros an affordable way to negate a disengage. It also increases the “If I go in against this Necro, they can try to keep me here” factor.

Softspoken.2410:

What if they introduce more pull skills? I realize that as is we have Spectral Grasp, but it seems to me putting more pulls on, say, weapon skills would give Necros an affordable way to negate a disengage. It also increases the “If I go in against this Necro, they can try to keep me here” factor.

Neat idea! I had a similar thought yesterday, but it involved buffing Dark Path instead. My simple thoughts:

• Recharge reduced to 10s
• Cast Time Reduced to 1/2s
• Projectile Speed Increased 33%
• Reduce Chill to compensate

The recharge is reduced so that you are guaranteed to be able to shoot off 1 Dark Path every time you enter DS (barring Near to Death). The reduced cast time allows for players to enter DS and leave it without dropping pressure. The improved projectile speed helps to ensure that the target will actually get hit before leaving the 900 range.

With these changes, a Necro could potentially be “in your face” every 10s, which seems to be in line with the dev’s class design.

Anywho, these are just my quick thoughts. I like the idea of gap closers on the Necro, but this may be influenced by my bias towards Power Necros and love of dagger main-hand. As for the Condition Necros…maybe if they made Feast of Corruption a caster AoE (600 range) and added Poison to it, that may synergize with Dark Path. I dunno, I’m just spitting out ideas.

Have a nice day everyone!

OmegaProject.9831:

Softspoken.2410:

What if they introduce more pull skills? I realize that as is we have Spectral Grasp, but it seems to me putting more pulls on, say, weapon skills would give Necros an affordable way to negate a disengage. It also increases the “If I go in against this Necro, they can try to keep me here” factor.

Neat idea! I had a similar thought yesterday, but it involved buffing Dark Path instead. My simple thoughts:

• Recharge reduced to 10s
• Cast Time Reduced to 1/2s
• Projectile Speed Increased 33%
• Reduce Chill to compensate

The recharge is reduced so that you are guaranteed to be able to shoot off 1 Dark Path every time you enter DS (barring Near to Death). The reduced cast time allows for players to enter DS and leave it without dropping pressure. The improved projectile speed helps to ensure that the target will actually get hit before leaving the 900 range.

With these changes, a Necro could potentially be “in your face” every 10s, which seems to be in line with the dev’s class design.

Anywho, these are just my quick thoughts. I like the idea of gap closers on the Necro, but this may be influenced by my bias towards Power Necros and love of dagger main-hand. As for the Condition Necros…maybe if they made Feast of Corruption a caster AoE (600 range) and added Poison to it, that may synergize with Dark Path. I dunno, I’m just spitting out ideas.

Have a nice day everyone!

Taking away chill is not very nice, increasing projectile speed and cast time is good yeah. Regarding the CD though, if you take the DS skills CD reduction trait the CD becomes 12.5 seconds which is already kind of what you want it to be in that it being available every 10 seconds when you enter DS.

I just hope Corrosive Poison Cloud becomes awesome. Right now its about as effective as a fart.

Copenhagen.7015:

I just hope Corrosive Poison Cloud becomes awesome. Right now its about as effective as a fart.

Absolutely agree here, but given the upcoming changes to weakness it would be best to hold off any any tweaking. CPC, however, definitely needs to be improved.

BobJoeXXI.2493:

Absolutely agree here, but given the upcoming changes to weakness it would be best to hold off any any tweaking. CPC, however, definitely needs to be improved.

^This. Let’s see first how the weakness buff improves our beloved Copoclo as a side effect and then, we’ll ask for a look there if needed.

How do people feel about the interaction between stability and terror fear? I currently use a build where I have 2 on demand fears from DS #3 terror and staff #5 and they last for 1,7 seconds each while dealing 2 ticks of 1.1 k+ damage during that time. The terror damage is actually very significant for a necro and it gets blocked by a boon that is supposed to block CC. In the terror case aside from blocking the fear effect it also blocks the damage(and I would like to repeat this again: terror is actually a significant chunk of damage and is essential for necro condi bursting and any necro who took the trait) which doesn’t seem very fair.

In PVE bosses and champions have this anti cc buff mechanic with charges. They work that if you fear them while they still have an anti CC charge, the fear condition is still applied to them but they are not affected by the CC effect so I believe the damage ticks still go in. I would like to see something similar to take effect when you fear a foe that has stability, they get the condition and the terror ticks but are not affected by fear CC. This issue is pretty much exclusive only to the necromancer or rather to the terror trait and seems to be quite unfair. We can also mention stunbreakers but stability is the most offender here.

Against my build stability neglects 2 k + of damage from each terror fear while it is supposed to be an anti CC boon.

Stability is probably the most vicious enemy of a necro in two ways. First is that our class lacks it and second that it blocks our unique damaging condition lol. Necros sure are unique without a doubt.

First necromancer to win a tournament uses Spectral Walk over Signet of Undeath. Imagine that.

Bas.7406:

“The Necromancer has no access to vigor and limited boon access by design. Our goal was that the Necromancer not be a class that avoids or protects damage through boons, but rather through conditions and “anti-boon”. They want the Necromancer to not be highly mobile, but to be a class that uses conditions to prevent any mobile class from escaping. The goal is to have them use conditions to prevent other classes from being stronger, and to win battles of attrition.

But that’s stupid. Yesterday I fought a Risen Abomination veteran. I couldn’t chill or cripple or immobilize or fear it. I had 2 dodges no vigor and a full death shroud and life drain traits. Spent dodges, then death shroud, which didn’t really recharge, my life drain healed for 30 per hit which is a joke. Then it simply flattened me. You know what would have helped? Mobility skills, vigor, block skills, invuls and stealth. You might be thinking: ok but that just one mob. Actually it applies in general. The only way to reliably mitigate damage from a dungeon boss is blocks, vigor and protection. Chilled or crippled applies in specific cases only.

If necros were supposed to stop people from escaping by using chilled and crippled why do a bunch of skills remove chilled, crippled and immobilized specifically? People bring cond removal to counter damage conditions, but those same tools can be used to remove debuff conditions. How the hell is necro supposed to work in that environment? Also designers need to stop pretending like necro is this unique snowflake that has way more conditions than everyone else. This is obviously not true, in terms of conditions necro is above average but not exceptional in any way. Heck necro isn’t even close to being the top dog when it comes to bleeds.

Same for anti boon. I can keep a boon build down harder with a mesmer or a thief. Necro anti boon is a mediocre.

If we are to really commit to this idea of Necro preventing a disengage, then there need to be new concepts added to the game all together. Here is why.

Too many Movement Skills and Teleports
-All the stuff like Phase Retreat, Shadow Return, IA and even things as simple as the Ranger Leaps provide far too much on demand mobility to give Necro a chance to prevent disengages.

Too many ways to instant cleanse and run
-Anyone with an instant cast cleanse or a multi-condi cleanse can escape at will if your only means of keeping them with you is a condition.

Too many ways to invuln and/or evade
-Regardless of if you can keep other professions near you as a necro any profession built with any thought of reducing your ability to hit them is at an inherent advantage. I don’t want to pick on any one class, but I will use 1 skill as an example. Blurred Frenzy. 20% up time of invulnerability, while hitting for high DPS. If it ONLY gave the Distortion and no damage it would still be an uncounterable advantage versus necro specifically. Every class that is not Necro has a form of block, evade, stun break, stealth or silly mobility on weapon skills.

Perhaps the best way to level the playing field is with an effect that is kind of like the inverse of an aura? If necro had some way of disabling Invulns, teleports and evades then they could at least make opponents fight on equal terms with themselves.

The obvious answer is that this is a stupid idea that would entirely break the game. Instead of continuing this absurd dialogue about how necro is fine 1v1 and should be hard to disengage, just give necro balanced access to the same mechanics that everyone else has and lets call it a day.

K Thx bye

Make spectral grasp a f2 skill. Muhahahahah

Login.5102:

Make spectral grasp a f2 skill. Muhahahahah

It’s not a bad idea. I mean change F2 to pull instead of teleport and make the utility teleport instead of grab. Maintain the other things the same: F2 has AoE bleed and chill on impact and utility have chill and LF on impact.

This way we can be more attrition fighters than we are atm.

Login.5102:

Make spectral grasp a f2 skill. Muhahahahah

That’d be awesome! :D

Login.5102:

Make spectral grasp a f2 skill. Muhahahahah

Is good idea, but keep in mind that this change would make our mobility even worst

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

Login.5102:

Make spectral grasp a f2 skill. Muhahahahah

It’s not a bad idea. I mean change F2 to pull instead of teleport and make the utility teleport instead of grab. Maintain the other things the same: F2 has AoE bleed and chill on impact and utility have chill and LF on impact.

This way we can be more attrition fighters than we are atm.

Interesting, but you are unlikely to get this. The devs seem to be set in stone that necro has to utterly lack mobility and apparently a teleport requiring a target that actually hits occasionally is asking too much.

The best way I can think of to give necro more “stickiness” in combat is to give them some leash pulls like Binding Blade (guardian GS #5) only with longer range and either instant or 1/4s casts. It would still require quick reaction to a teleport, but allow the necro a quasi-gap closing ability unique to the current vision of what they are supposed to be. It is tough to think of where to put these given the current state of necro, but I think giving Spectral Wall some kind of a chain that both pulls (like Into the Void for mesmer) and influicts the vulnerable would be an interesting implementation, and perhaps Focus 4 could have this kind of functionality as well. Doing it this way seems too power/vuln focused in terms of its placement, but I can’t seem to find a logical place on other weapons. If you put it on WH, then it probably gets too much CC for a single OH. Both daggers (MH & OH) are about good where they are now. Axe is useless to condi builds, so even though you could put it on #3 there as a chain it wouldn’t help. Scepter #3 might be the best option since it doesn’t really jive with condis and could give a bit more utility to the weapon. I dunno.

As an alternative to leash pulls (or possibly in addition to) some implementation like the Guardian Wards and Shelter might be a good way to go. Maybe make the path of Spectral Walk uncrossable, or the perimeter of the long CD, non-damaging wells.

Personally I like the pulls better as a general idea as it would kind of give Necro an Anti-Guardian feel (Guards live off of knockbacks, so why not have Necro live off of pulls). It reinforces the Light v. Dark feeling and would add strategic depth to bunker v. necro encounters.

The soul reaping traitline should be changed to the point where DS is such a monster form that our weapon skills are just secondary.

Bas.7406:

he goal is to have them use conditions to prevent other classes from being stronger, and to win battles of attrition. This is not currently where they are at…

Thats all that needs be understood really. I get what they are supposed to be and knowing the devs know thats not what they are atm is good news. :P

Boon stripping and condition removal/ stacking is lacking since there are so many counters. Dealing with conditions is almost a pesky annoyance rather than a real threat especially when all u have to do is roll/dodge lol.

Though i do find it a little disturbing that the devs have constructed solid and easily accessible avenues to counter every possible aspect of a necro with every profession but not the other way around. =/

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

It reinforces the Light v. Dark feeling.

Light v. Dark. Cannot…. resist to post….. attachment……. anymore….
Attachment explains the problem of stability blocking terror damage.

Iceflame.5024:

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

It reinforces the Light v. Dark feeling.

Light v. Dark. Cannot…. resist to post….. attachment……. anymore….
Attachment explains the problem of stability blocking terror damage.

Quoted for truth and funny. Nice job

Gandarel.5091

The soul reaping traitline should be changed to the point where DS is such a monster form that our weapon skills are just secondary.

DS used to be a beast, until sledge hammer nerfed into the ground.

Andele.1306:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_UzwdXK5CU and for lich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfE_Xu9H1Bw at 11ish minutes – just from beta 1 to 2, on the old press demo/alpha lich dropped a orb/urn that had around 50k hp (but low armor) and made lich immortal till destroyed (2 was a 3 second 1 minion spawn, 3 the vuln, 4 aura of chill, 5 aura of fear), DS let you absorb life force while in in and upon exiting worked like spectral walks second activation (you ported to where you entered DS).
Also we had pretty much permanent stability, perma retaliation, DS was a stun break and in addition to corruptions there were sacrifices that gave condition like effect for user hp, also like every 4th ability siphoned hp (as seeon on warhorn and staff in TBs video).

Also sweet old 50% damage reduction for 11 seconds on a 60 second cooldown from Sarmor…

Would be nice to be able to inflict that debuff that theifs get after they stealth that prevents them from going stealth. put that on staff skill 2 please.
and give us a trait that applys it like fear when we go down. getin right sick of these theifs that are runing pvp 6 or more in every server.

there all the same. 2 hits your dead, stealth your stomped….LAME