I have been playing as necromancer for a while now, and tried various builds over that time, but somehow I could not stop to notice I never included lich form into that list and instead replaced it by the human race reaper of grenth ability,
what is odd as that is only a AOE condition skill,
the reason for not using lich form became clear to me again after using it a few more times, constantly reminding me on how buggy the skill is right now
-Lich form does not respond to traits that add absorbing life force, health or course bleeding (or other conditions) on normal and critical hits with the basic or normal attacks, for this reason the standard attack of the lich form “Deadly claws” is less effective then it could be. Especially for players who have there necromancer build to leech life on every hit they land, suddenly loosing there health regeneration strategy while transformed, no longer being able to heal or build up there death shroud, or loosing the ability to keep stacking there main attack bleeding/poison conditions on foes.
-Fail Auto attack, the Deadly claw standard attack of lich form is not automatically pre set to auto attack, in that note the player needs to manually activate the auto attack after every transformation, waisting precious time of the little 30 seconds you have in that form, most likely being hit a few times becourse you fail to dodge as you are setting to attack to auto, and loosing your surprise element in pvp when your enemy was not expecting you to transform, giving them enough time to adjust to the situation while you are goofing around with the attack system.
-tough I am not sure if its a bug or not In personal taste I think it is strange that Grim specter (condition remover and enemy buff remover) does a good 1,621 damage,
while the offencive Marked for Death mark, only does 409 damage, even tough Marked for Death seems to be more focused on offensive damage, while Grim specter seems more like a support spell that should not be fired for damage, but only for support/weakening enemy’s
-finally, transforming into a lich gives me a small health boost, but does nothing to reduce the damage (for example giving the lich form a aegis effect during the full time the player is transformed, temporarily making the transformed player able to take some more damage to make the whole transformation worth your wile)
as being in lich form only gives you acess to 5 of your 10 skills (not even counting the ones you can use when you switch weapons) and takes away your ability to fight under water, you can see that a damage reducing ability would be VERY handy in that moment,
right now lich form is not useful when your health gets lower or you face a strong enemy as your enemy will be able to kill you just as easily in human form as in lich form, and becourse of the smaller number of attacks in that form it makes it harder as you cannot rely on the strategy’s you usually use during normal fights
right now death shroud is better then transforming into a lich, and sadly reaper of Grent makes a better elite necromancer skill then lich form does for me as it chills and poisons my enemy’s while I can keep using my skills and tactics I usually use
Lich form should be the most offensive elite skill of the necromancer as flesh golem is the defensive skill and swarm the condition/crowd control skill.
Even tough I don’t have high hopes,
still hoping Arenanet will fix the bugs and patch out the weak spots in this skill,
Visually this still is nearly perfect,
but parts of the skill are still lacking
(edited by JefTheReaper.1075)