Guild Wars 2

I like the idea of the Necromancer changes, but a few things worry me.

Condition Damage
1) Are the bleeding nerfs permanent, in a way that you want to push us towards Dhuumfire/Terror for damage?
2) If you are going to then nerf Dhuumfire/Terror (the only things that are actually still holding us up as a viable condition damage build), will you revert some of the nerfs we’ve seen since Dhuumfire was added? (not all, but some).
3) What about changing Dhuumfire to Torment? Its current method isn’t fun, the Necromancer has little control over it, the opponent can’t do much about it, its just sucky right now, and it only has 1 way to balance it (duration). Torment, along with a better trigger mechanic, has 2 tools for balancing (duration and intensity), and also has more interesting gameplay associated, since if the person in question needs say 3 seconds till their cleanse they can just sit on the stacks and take the non-upgraded damage.

Defense
You keep saying we should be low mobility high aggression. I 100% agree, we should be the “manliest” class in the game. However we need to all agree that it isn’t the case right now, unless you are an MM.
4) Do you agree that Death Shroud is still slightly subpar when it comes to a defensive mechanic because of its non-scaling with enemies (whereas a block is a block, no matter how many)? If so, do you plan on any good gameplay ways to fix this (such as a 1s block on DS entry as a trait)?
5) Can we agree that non-MM siphoning is still broken? I see the problem with it, it has really difficult balance because it scales with how quickly you hit. What about implementing a short ICD on Vampiric and Vampiric Precision so it doesn’t have the crazy AoE procs (wells can proc 15 siphons per second with full traiting, 5 targets, and critting)? This way even scepter/staff builds with lower attack rates can benefit, making Blood Magic a sustain option for everyone not just dagger/wells.
6) We need more love on Death magic. I’ll talk about reanimator just below, since I talked with Sharp(?) about this before. Death Magic isn’t a good tree unless you have a staff, or are an MM. We need a non MM Grandmaster trait that gives us some really strong defense for the investment, and Necromatic Corruption needs some big changing. Death Magic overall should be our main defense tree, with Blood Magic as our sustain tree, and Soul Reaping as our Death Shroud tree (hybrid offense/defense). As it is right now though, Death Magic gives no noticeable defense to non-MMs. Blood Magic is subpar sustain, and Soul Reaping outpaces both of them in any defensive effort.

Reanimator and On-Death Traits
7) Reanimator. Thanks for the ICD drop, this helps quite a bit. But it needs to proc more during fights. As it is now, it will never proc meaningfully in any PvP match (by the time someone is killed, you won the fight, his addition is meaningless), in PvE they don’t spawn on any boss fights without adds until the end. “Hey guys I just got here, who do I attack?” “Oh, everyone’s dead? I’ll just sit here until I die…”

What about extending it to apply on minion and ally death, and in PvP when enemies are downed (instead of dead, since enemies get downed all the time and come back up, he could help swing things)? The ally/minion activation shouldn’t be guaranteed, but a smaller chance, maybe 20% when a minion dies, 50% when an ally, whatever works. But this way we get benefit no matter what.

This could apply to all on-death traits, almost all of which aren’t great in PvP or boss-fight PvE right now. Allow them to activate on minion or ally death, or enemy down, but at a reduced strength for ally/minion. This creates a lot of internal synergy within the Necromancer class, and it makes sense (why would we only benefit on enemy death? All death is equal, we already take our allies’ life force, why not other things?).

To summarize, I’d just like to know the direction the Dhuumfire/Terror and other nerfs to damage are going. I’d like to know your plans and feelings on Death and Blood Magic as they currently stand, and how you will allow us to have more defensive options. And I’d like to know your feelings on making on-death traits more impactful with more triggers than simply enemy death.

All I see is a kitten warrior who can’t handle the fact that he can’t smash his face on the keyboard anymore.

How about this, when we get vigor, blocks, invulns, a skill that completely fills our DS bar while also making us half-immune to damage, healing signet, massive damage, tankiness, and CC all in one weapon loadout, amazing team support, great might stacking, amazing mobility, and every other mechanic that warrior gets, then we can talk about LF degenerating.

Agree with Robert Gee here, condition transfer on AA, even as a trait, would be crazy powerful.

However, if you turn Life Blast into a two-shot chain that casts the entire chain as quickly as now, with the same total damage (so half damage LBs once per 0.7s instead of full damage every 1.4s), and then have the traits that need to be adjusted only proc on the second hit, might work. This would lower the gap between Reaper Shroud and Death Shroud’s procing of traits like Dhuumfire, which are absolutely fine procing that often, but still allow you to adjust things like might stacking.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

How do you see this working out for the condi Necro in PvE?

I really can’t see how they could improve condition builds in PvE without doing something about the condition cap! This is a hint? Or have they found another way?

Condition cap could potentially be worked around (giving the higher level mobs a higher condition cap, removing it for them, or giving individual caps on those mobs), but I don’t see that happening right away, especially because of, say, Epidemic (as much fun as it’d be to Epidemic 50 bleeds…)

However, the condition cap is not what kills condition builds in PvE. It is an issue, yes, but only when you have 2-3 condition users in the group that center around the same things (Mesmers and Engineers, for example, tend to have very few bleed stacks, but focus on other conditions).

The problem is multi fold.
1) My 1500 condi-damage conditions can get overridden by the 100 condi-damage Ele’s, or Guardians. This is a big issue because those classes in specific have passive conditions that they can’t not apply, and then my 900 DPS burning just got turned into a 400 DPS burning.
2) Conditions overall suffer from lower DPS, worse high-end scaling, and lack of “buff-ability”. Power scales the best with full investment, and in PvE there isn’t much of a downside to being full zerker. Also, the majority of buffs to damage have to deal with direct damage, boosting it even higher.
3) There is a ton of “condi hate” in PvE. Condition removal, debuffs to application, bosses having the majority of their eHP in HP and not armor, structures in general. There are quite a few mechanics to work against conditions, and relatively few against power.
4) Boons can generally do the exact same thing as conditions, but better, more reliably, with higher uptime, and almost no downsides. Just look at Protection vs Weakness.

They really need to address these problems (and they somewhat have in the newer PvE designs) before conditions are on-par with power, even if groups will be limited to 1-2 condition players each.

I’m going to contact some friends in game who I know have lines to the developers, and see if I can’t get contact info so I can personally convey some of our feelings, or at least make sure that those feelings have already been translated.

I’m kind of at a loss of what to say though. I’ve met a good portion of the PvP team in person. I felt like they were really passionate about the game and balance, and I still do. This is their game, its their baby, and they want it as good as possible, but I feel there is a disconnect between ideology and the final product.

This recent signet, for example. The idea was amazing. I and many others were really excited to see it in action, and to play around with it. A signet that gave up guaranteed burst healing for sustained/burst damage, with a lot of counterplay included for defending, and lots of room for skillful use/avoidance? Amazing idea. It had me really, really excited, not only for the skill itself, but the idea that “wow, Anet can come up with ideas like this? I can’t wait for the other skills they do.”

But then it gets previewed, and everything that made the skill really unique was stripped from it. They added a clunky ICD on defense for… what exactly? The passive damage was removed as well, both of these were key ideas for the passive. It was supposed to be something that applied passive damage reduction and damage output, to reward you for being in the fray. Then after you had baited out their defensive mechanics, you slap them with a mark, and your team descends for the kill. You save some fast-hitting moves to destroy them with a big burst, but the trade off is no burst heal at all. You’re completely trading away a guaranteed heal for passive damage reduction/retaliation, and a strong burst option, all with high counterplay.

But all the personality of the skill was stripped. The max stacks made sense (enforces a max-healing cap), but the rest of the changes completely gutted it. There is a big disconnect between what could have been, and what is, and it both saddens and annoys me. They butchered what could have been a great skill.

I’m open to ideas on how to get in contact, because I’d love to. I’d like to think they’d listen to me, as well as a few others, considering our history on these forums and in the community. Long ago I had been told by a dev that he’d really love to show up on a Podcast with me, but he got shut down by “higher ups”. I know for a fact that at least one dev watched a few of our old casts. But now ANet is completely unreachable. I’m honestly at a loss.

Greatsword
Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe – This chain currently takes 3 seconds per cycle, with only a 1.5s base chill at the end. So even with heavy investment, far beyond what you can get anywhere but WvW/PvE with food, just auto-attacking (which you never want to do) can’t keep up perma chill even in ideal situations. I have a few suggestions to fix this problem, but I’ll get to that after I bring something else up first.

To make a comparison, Guardian Hammer and Reaper GS are both slow weapons. They also do nearly the same damage for a full chain when you only consider what they do on hit with the same power and no traiting. The difference however (besides profession differences) is that Guardian’s Hammer leaves a symbol, creating a combo field, providing protection, and also adding significant damage, while Reaper GS only gets 1.5s of chill. This means in a comparison between two weapons that are otherwise similar, 1.5s of chill and a faster AS is being “valued” the same as a 2 second light field symbol which adds around 50% damage over its duration and gives protection. I think this really highlights how much Reaper GS underperforms for its attack speed, and that it needs to be adjusted to be more appropriately rewarding for landing the third hit, like Guardian Hammer.

I’d like to propose two different solutions, these are separate, and depend on whether it is more important that GS AA remain slow and powerful, or be a bit faster but not as strong.

1. Reduce the chain to 2.7s and increase the chill to 2s. It would still be slower and less DPS than dagger, but with chill not LF. This makes it much better to actually land, and feel rewarding when you do. With a 2s base chill, it is possible to technically perma chill with AA once you have 35% chill duration. It is worth noting that while perma chill sounds strong, you’d never actually be auto attacking that often, nor would an enemy allow that to happen.
2. Leave the current skill in every way, only instead of a simple chill at the end, replace the chill with a 2s ice field that deals a bit of damage each pulse, and adjust the overall chill given, if possible to be 0.5s per pulse of the field (3 pulses overall), and 0.5s on hit, for a total of 2s. This requires both 50% chill duration and the enemy standing in the field to get 100% chill uptime, but leaving an ice field allows for more use of finishers, like Gravedigger.

The first option is simple, doesn’t change much just makes the chain better to use damage/chill wise. The second makes GS more like Hammer, which is a commonly used weapon with a really satisfying AA chain, but keeps it as a slow weapon while giving it a sufficient reward for landing the last hit. Final note, each hit should generate 2% LF or so, otherwise the weapon just doesn’t sustain well.

Gravedigger – A strong damage skill in theory, the windup is equivalent to Executioner’s Strike, but the reward for hitting the skill is severely lacking comparatively. Also, the reset brings it to 1s CD, a really awkward timing. Essentially, even if you get the reset you can’t just cast it again, yet casting just about anything else also takes too long, so it doesn’t flow well. Just a full reset would work much nicer, allowing for “spam” in the rare situation it would be usable, and at least in PvE allowing for high DPS under 50%. This might require a longer base CD which I’d rather have, as it is extremely unlikely you’ll want to use it every 5s anyway.

Also, while it lists similar damage to ES (RS5) in theory, one major problem is ES can be combined with Death Perception for nearly guaranteed crits against vulnerable targets, while Gravedigger can’t. This effectively gimps Gravedigger’s use as an execute quite heavily except in sets that invest heavily into crit chance, aka builds that will get sneezed on and die.

Death Spiral – Great skill, applies vuln which has a lot of synergy with Greatsword, Reaper’s Shroud, the Reaper traits and the profession as a whole. While a great skill if it hits, only issue is it could serve to be longer range/larger, maybe say a 300 range frontal cone, as it is now it is fairly difficult to actually use in combat. QoL issues aside, great skill.

Nightfall – Really nice skill, it has at least three obvious functions (dark field for combo, blind for defense, cripple for keeping people in), and has some nice synergy with say Chilling Darkness, though can only proc once. Only change I’d like to see here is a QoL change so that the aftercast is removed, just let me cast and go.

Grasping Darkness – Another cool skill, only problem is it shoots straight out from your character which is an awful targetting mechanism for this type of skill. Just have it work like other skills. Otherwise its fine.

Shouts
General: Shouts need to all act like NCSY, with a strong, desirable base effect that also scales in larger fights. Also, I really, really don’t think Rise! can work without new types of minions, and I think at least one of the shouts has to be a defensive measure at this point; Reaper still gets it really bad for not having any active defense, and shouts are a way for us to get a scaling active defense.

“Your soul is mine!” – I think this will be an uncommon opinion, but I think YSIM as a concept is fine, it just needs to be less bad in smaller fights without making it stronger in big fights. Also, why does it only have a 0.36 healing power scaling?

Suggested change is to give it 5% LF given baseline, with 3% per enemy hit, and a 1.0 healing power scaling, since only the base heal scales with healing power. Builds with high LF pools won’t have much healing power investment, but builds with high healing power won’t have high LF pools. This will give it the same LF if it hits 5 people, but with a better baseline heal.

“Nothing can save you!” – Amazing shout as is, don’t change a thing. This is the one shout that did not once leave my bar while playing power reaper.

“Rise!” – It can’t summon Jagged Horrors. The problem is Jagged Horrors are useless without Death Nova, and fill the exact same role as Bone Minions, but with a more passive “Putrid Explosion” (Death Nova), and while being objectively worse in every way except doing more upfront damage when you summon 5 of them, and synergy with Augery. I don’t think another minion could work either, none that we currently have.

My suggestion is give it a brand new type of minion that has some kind of passive benefit to the Necromancer, or change it completely. If you leave it as minions, maybe something that functions similar to spirits, or something that functions like Illusionary Defender, each one summoned would transfer X% of damage you take to itself. By transfering damage, the minions themselves would give you a scaling damage mitigation, but one that is balanced around the HP of the minions. It provides play/counterplay, as the summoner could try to keep them alive longer for more mitigation, but the enemy is also capable of killing them off directly.

“Suffer!” – Currently “Suffer” is directly worse than Plague Signet, and that is in the best situation. First thing I’d do is make it instant cast and a stun break, as it is primarily a defensive skill. This is the shout I’d like to see changed to a scaling defensive skill. Lower its damage to be the same as the other non-elite shouts, and give it an effect similar to Endure Pain, with 1.5s base that also gives 0.5s longer duration per person hit. Raise CD to 60s.

This makes “Suffer” a 2s damage immunity, 1 condition transfer, stun break, and light damage in a 1v1, but when you hit 5 targets that increases to 5 conditions transfered and 4s of damage immunity. This fits thematically, as horror villains aren’t pushovers that you can just turn around and focus.

“You are all weaklings!” – Good shout, I’d just like to see it give better base might, with less scaling. Similar change as with YSIM, 5 might baseline, with 3 might per person hit gives it the same 20 stack cap.

“Chilled to the bone!” – Great shout if it lands, however with a 2 second cast time good luck landing it. I’d like to see the cast time lowered to 1 seconds, like Supply Crate, and at least look at its CD. I’m not sure if 120s is warranted, but it is hard to know while it is still so difficult to use because of the 2s cast.

“I want to be able to spam abilities without a care in the world and have absolutely no negative consequences.”

Necromancers will be the kings of 1v1. So strong in fact that they can 1v1 themselves with no enemy input needed!

Necromancer forums do well due to such a large presence of players who are helpful in steering discussions, plus the fact that we have been not-meta for so long that the only people left are the ones that really care. Glad to see we’ve turned you to the dark side, we used to have cookies but now they’ve got bugs in them and we decided that was a feature.

Traits
Shroud Knight – Generic “lets you use the specialization” trait, I just want to mention that the existance of this trait not giving any actual power on its own means the rest of the traits have to make up in their own way.

Augury of Death – I think this either needs to be 10% base with 5% per person hit (still 35% with 5 people hit, but only need to hit 2 to go even 20%), and/or needs a slight secondary effect. I think its a solid idea, increases the strength of shouts, but it has to compete with a very strong trait in Relentless Pursuit, and just about every CDR trait in the game gives more than just CDR.

Chilling Nova – I personally think on-crit traits are really unhealthy for the game, though I understand them. Either lower the CD to 10s, or tie it to Reaper’s Shroud, such as an on-entry and every X seconds while in Shroud type trait.

Relentless Pursuit – Great as is, makes it hard to slow down Reaper, love the trait, no need to touch it.

Shivers of Dread – I like this trait, but I want to point something out: Reaper itself, ignoring base Necromancer, has just one fear, with Terrify. In fact, many of my builds had not a single source of fear beyond Terrify and the off-chance of a corrupted stability. I feel like this might need something else, because unless you specific trait for it it does very little, and the chill itself is mainly used to synergize with chill traits and to keep the enemy close, it isn’t as much of a normally “functional” chill, because they are already hard-CCed. I think it might need a bit extra, an idea is chill on RS entry, or some other method of spreading chill out that benefits our builds more widely.

Soul Eater – With Greatsword being so mediocre right now its hard to say how good the life steal is on this. I would say that the CDR is very low however, you need to land Gravedigger twice to even make the CDR worth using, and even that requires a total of 7 people hit over 2 casts, which is just too much. I’d propose either making it a “boring” 20% CDR trait, giving a base CDR plus CDR per person hit by Gravedigger, or increase the CDR per person hit significantly.

Chilling Victory – Strong trait as is, I wouldn’t change a thing right now.

Decimate Defenses – Another really strong and fun trait, brings a lot of vuln synergy and allows you to technically be “tanky” but still have good damage. Maybe worth looking at this to be 1% damage per stack of vuln instead, same damage with no crit, more damage once you’d have maxed on crit, only really a DPS loss in builds that had ferocity and no crit. We’re kind of overloading on crit chance right now, so I think one of our sources should be a damage mod.

Cold Shoulder – I think this is underperforming a little, I thought the old version of it was fine, especially considering we effectively only get two minors.

Blighter’s Boon – Amazing trait, wouldn’t change a thing. It scales into teamfights effectively by allowing the boon use of allies to sustain you, yet in smaller fights it still has nice synergy, especially with Spite.

Deathly Chill – This is just so weak right now I don’t see it competing with the other traits here. Even condi builds could go Blighter’s Boon and gain the LF generation they really need, and if you have Dhuumfire Reaper’s Onslaught would also boost your Dhuumfire by 15%. This trait just doesn’t do enough, Under 50% HP we’re looking at basically 2 bleeds worth of damage, which is awful, just about every single condi trait in the game outperforms this one.

Reaper’s Onslaught – Seems like a great idea, currently bugged and doesn’t work at all.

Closing
Those are my thoughts on everything, having played quite a lot of Reaper Friday/Saturday on stream, and then spending most of Sunday writing this up and going in game to test not just Reaper but other professions to compare to. I’m sure this isn’t the end-all-be-all of feedback, but I really wanted to give the devs something that was direct, in depth, and covered everything the specialization gave. I’d also really like to thank Robert Gee and anyone else who worked on Reaper, it was easily the most fun I’ve had playing Necromancer in a long time, it reminded me of how fun the specialization rework was.

As always, feedback is welcome and encourage. Also I apologize for starting another thread, but I consider myself a bit of a special snowflake here.

Regardless of your opinion of the trait changes, the trait changes should be good on their own. The Elite specialization should not have to save us from our awful base, it should be a good addition to a good base.

Radmage.3741:

NEVER should a DoT deal more damage on 1 tick than 1 hit of a burst skill

I’m sorry, you do realize this is absolute kitten, right? Have you ever seen a 10k condi tick? No? Well I’ve seen 15k direct damage in a single cast. 10k isn’t all that crazy either. And that is with PvE stats, in PvP in a group, you’re going to deal massively more damage than a condi build would ever dream of.

ANet, please don’t listen to people who have never played Necro past FotM builds in tournaments. They have no idea about the class as a whole, they jumped on board after we became too strong, and now are acting like they have half an idea about the class, and it is idiotic. I know you know and talk with the high tier actual necromancers, ones who really know and play the class, listen to them.

Necromancer heal is an issue of a good idea that was destroyed by details.

The passive is essentially a 300ish damage reduction on every hit that comes in… oh wait, no it isn’t, because there is an ICD. Not only did they nerf it from being a life steal (aka doing damage) and having an interesting niche where we could essentially choose a healing skill that did lots of damage, but had otherwise low healing, but they threw an ICD on top to make completely sure that it wasn’t helpful.

The active is just… wow. You can not only avoid getting dodged, you can avoid all of the extra proccing, which, again, has ICD to make sure it isn’t good.

“But it’ll be good for supporting!” Yeah, because we see sooo many support Necromancers.

I’ll try it out in PvE so I can turn our really easy boss fight into a slightly easier boss fight. Other than that, 10/10 job ANet, you’ve managed to make it quite obvious its a personal hobby of yours to get Necro hopes up, only to crush them back down with nerfs.

Its sad, really. We had multiple threads in the Necro forums that already thought the skill would be really niche, and then it turns out its been nerfed since then. But, of course there either won’t be any interaction with Necros as per usual, or they’ll tell us to L2P again.

Necromancers don’t have mobility because we aren’t supposed to have mobility. Its like asking why a tank can’t fly, because its a tank. If you want to fly, hop in an airplane.

The class is supposed to be an in-fighter. Sharp has constantly used fighting terms to describe the necromancer, so I’ll go to those. We are supposed to be an in-fighter. A successful in-fighter has a number of ways to come out on top, one of them is simply out-manlying his opponent. What I mean is he gets in their face, and he starts swinging. He swings hard, fast, and doesn’t relent. This type of fighting style ends up getting you bruised and battered often, but it is a highly aggressive style, and generally relies on just overwhelming your opponents.

To translate it to us. Necromancers are pure-aggression. Almost everything we do has the main focus of being used aggressively, and then some of them have a side-use of non-aggressive play. We win by out-trading our opponent, in our case we debilitate them through conditions, and enhance ourselves through a few limited buffs and things like siphons. As we continue trading with our opponent, this comparatively makes them weaker, each hit from us not only hurts them, but makes us stronger. Every hit from them is made less useful by weakness, every chance to escape is limited by cripples and chills, their attempts to heal are poisoned. And in this way we stay in their face, continuously applying a stream of pressure until they crumble.

Obviously the above can be debated as to how it actually works but that is the goal. We get in your face, we make you weaker in comparison to ourselves, and we slowly beat the hell out of you.

Now back to fighting terms. In-fighters, for their actual fighting style, don’t need or want mobility to run from a fight. They want mobility to get in close, and that is it, but they never truly “disengage” at all. You get in, you stick to their face, and you never relent. All this talk about mobility is literally the opposite of an in-fighter; an out-fighter.

This is someone who dances at the very outside of your range. They weave in for a split second, quickly let out a combo or two, and then weave right back out, disallowing you any chance to reply. They use mobility as their key weapon to accomplish their goal.

TL;DR, ANet isn’t afraid of giving us mobility to make us OP. They won’t give us mobility because it is 100% opposite and contrary to the kind of gameplay style they want us to have. Does this suck sometimes? Hell yes, but that is besides the point.

Can I get a change-profession item?

You just need to keep being vocal, but intelligently vocal (something I suffer from not doing sometimes), and also realistic in your expectations.

No thanks. No more boons unless they are very well done (read: not this way).

If they decide to give us endurance, I want either endurance stealing, or “siphoning” (in the sense that their expended endurance is given to us in some portion). Not vigor.

OP is the definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The problem with all non-minion siphoning is that as it can have massive “potential” scaling, it has to suck otherwise, to keep it from being OP in those situations. As long as this remains, it will always remain subpar or OP, and won’t be satisfying for all build types. Minion skills on the other hand feel great

Look at what they did to Spectral Armor: removed its really high scaling situation via ICD, and then buffed its per-hit effect, and made it our single best defensive skill. All they’d have to do is allow the traits to siphon from up to 5 people for each ICD section (instead of hitting 1 guy with a dagger and setting the trait on ICD right before Locust Swarm ticks for a 5 person siphon); and even then the minion skills do really well in team situations still, so I’m not sure even that would be necessary.

They didn’t promise you kitten. They said that they were aiming for X, Y, and Z. And as anyone who has ever set a goal, or done anything that involved long-term work, kitten happens. You said you wanted to get As in all your classes, but then were hospitalized for a month and ended up with a C. Did you break a promise? No, something you couldn’t have anticipated happened.

These kinds of threads where you insinuate (whether you had good intentions or not) that everything the developers say has to happen exactly when and how they say it or they have failed us in some way slowly but surely torches any lines of communication that devs have with us. Want to know what is going on in the future? Then you have to realize that everything they say is just what they want, not what they promise, and put the torches and pitchforks away when it doesn’t quite happen how it was planned.

That’s how life works. I realize it sucks. I wanted them to get through a lot more as well, but you have to realize it just doesn’t work that way, and everything they say is just what they want, not what they guarantee.

We will, eventually. I realize it is hard to believe, but the core group of devs that actually come up with ideas are amazing. Just look at the concept behind the new healing skill. It is the higher ups, and the ones who make final decisions that are… not so much.

The problem is that they are forced into certain things by their bosses. They have very little resources to make the changes needed to fix the Necromancer class, and I would not be surprised to learn that they are kept from posting in the forums as often as they would otherwise.

C Hanson.4056:

for PvE the new heal is going to be amazing (for team dps more than support). and necro right now is pretty solid in pvp

No.

I think Break Bar would be best suited towards normal Necromancer, via a trait of some sort. For example a break bar where the “HP” of the bar is the same as your Life Force when you enter DS, it relies on you building LF, its CD is tied to DS, and then it can have its power adjusted since not all break bars have to be the same strength.

The good news is even if they kill the class we can just bring it back again.

Unless they nerf that too.

The last time teams were running double anything with frequency was back when D/D eles were insanely broken. There is a reason double warriors were so prevalent, and its not because warrior is balanced. They don’t need to nerf it with an orbital bombardment, but it still needs tuning.

Anastasis.7258:

From my perspective, if you are trying to balance classes from this kind of situation, I will suggest that you also need to dismiss Necromancer’s Life Force while out of combat.

Adrenaline was always supposed to degenerate outside of combat, it just wasn’t working as it was supposed to.

Anastasis.7258:

For people who were trying to defend Nerco Life Force. Do you know that you can build your Life Force for free by hitting some specific structures in Khylo?

Warrior: Adrenaline Decay when out of combat- Makes sense since adrenaline shouldn’t exist while you are not fighting.

Mesmer: Clones Dismiss when out of combat- Makes sense too since you shouldn’t need anything to protect you while you are not fighting.

Necromancer: Life Force still exist when out of combat- Is it really make any sense?

Your call, but my main target is focusing on warrior balancing, not Necromancer.

Life force is HP to us. And its more than that, imagine if after every fight you lost every defensive boon, and every defensive ability you have went on full CD and stayed on full CD until the fight started, at which point it started counting down. That is what you are saying Necromancer LF should do, that the only significant defensive mechanic an entire profession receives should be completely inaccessible to them until they’ve won a fight… except then they lose it all.

We don’t have abilities that give us full LF in a single press regarldess of situation (zerker stance).
We don’t have vigor.
We don’t have blocks.
We don’t have extra evades.
We don’t have multiple semi-immunities.
We don’t have invulnerabilities.
We have nothing except a lot of HP, ways to attempt to replenish it, and a few ways to make attacks take slightly less HP than normal, and our full HP isn’t even available to us until we build it in combat by directly interacting with our enemies (aka, things that have counterplay). Ever wonder why Necromancer has been the #1 focus target in teamfights since people learned what focus fire is? It sure as hell isn’t because LF is so amazing we’re just face-tanking through all that damage (and face-tanking is all we have).

Oh and did I mention that we have the only defensive mechanic in the game that actively negates not only team support, but directly invalidates an entire trait line of the very profession it belongs to?

There are valid complaints about Necromancers and valid nerfs to be proposed, but this is absolutely an awful one. There are cases where comparing cross professions is acceptable or helpful, this is absolutely not one of them, unless you start comparing everything.

Note first before I say anything else that this is simply my opinion on how to make a broad fix on the current minion playstyle. I’m not looking to expand the actual playstyles available to MMs because with the current selection of minions there is really only one broad style available to us, with different specializations you can make (cleric healer, soldier, chill, etc.). I’m also going to address certain things that don’t necessarily have to happen to make balance better but imo improve the health of the gameplay. And finally while some of the concepts here could apply to other summon builds, overall this is specific towards minions.

The main themes here are removing as much passive play as possible, pushing as much strength as possible into active play forced on the player, and putting a bit more control over minions in their hands (we are supposed to be minion masters afterall, not just minion summoners).

Again, this is just my opinion, feedback is welcome.

I. Putting the Master back in Minion Master
As things are right now, minions take a lot of action on their own. They remember aggro they acquired previous to any overwrites that may have happened (say you swap targets, when one is dead they walk right back to the other one), they attack people who attack you and themselves, and you actually get somewhat limited choices over how to control them once they are out besides telling them who to attack.

Now I don’t want to step on the toes of Ranger too much, however there are some QoL things that involve AI. Also I realize this could be difficult to do because minions currently inherit nearly all their AI from mobs, which would need changing. But wishful thinking.

A. Minions no longer attack targets unless you “tell” them to – this means they won’t target anything that you are not currently targeting. They won’t attack to defend you, they won’t attack to defend themselves, they won’t remember aggro from previous targets, they will simply kill the thing that you have told them to and then return to you.

This removes a lot of issues where they end up just randomly wandering around or hitting that one thing you attacked 30 minutes ago, and removes the ability of bad players to rely on the minions to auto defend them even when they are still keyboard turning their character to find the person behind them.

B. Desummon button – simply put, a button that appears only when minions are summoned. Pressing it immediately de-summons all minions, putting them on CD. This would not proc Death Nova, this doesn’t give you the LF from their death, it doesn’t directly give you any benefit, it simply takes the minions off the map. This is especially needed because pathing seems like it will always be an issue, and as it is now minions too easily lose their aggro because you jumped over a log and they couldn’t follow. So you desummon them, gaining no direct benefit, and then can resummon them when you get to the next capture point, free of worrying about AI bugs.

You gave them life, you maintain their existence, you should be able to reverse that gift.

C. Optional Return button – I say optional because I have mixed feelings and think this starts to step on the toes of Ranger. However I also see it as a potentially necessary feature due to the way PvE depends on one-shot mechanics that minions refuse to move out of. Like above, its a button that only appears when minions are summoned. It drops all their aggro completely and forces them to run at max speed directly to you (flesh wurm obviously does nothing, poor guy). Gives you a slight bit of control over their movement, and would slightly improve their survivability in some situations but without passive increases anywhere, you have to notice the danger and make them avoid it.

Again, putting master back in minion master.

Time for ALL the theorycrafting.

Rainshadow.4926:

It’s bugged. Please emergency fix!

You must be new to necro.

I would say that Necromancer is the easiest profession to bring to balanced. With the addition of 1-2 2h weapons, some QoL changes (like making Locust Swarm not hit the boxes on Khylo putting you in combat), and some better access to stability/non-damaging conditions through traits, you’d see a TON of viable Necromancer builds.

As it is right now, there are literally tons of builds that are just short of being viable, but are held back by just a change or two. (All the below are considering high tier play, anything is viable in low-mid tier games).
MM would be viable if Flesh Wurm was 1500-2000 range (far enough that you could go from mid to home before a decap occurs).
Zerker power would be viable if they gave us a ranged power weapon
Condi would be viable if they reverted some of the Dhuumfire nerfs, and gave reasonable (not 6 trait points) access to attrition mechanics
Any bunker build would be viable with the addition of a relevant bunker/support weapon (one for power one for condi)

That wouldn’t necessarily fix all the issues, but with fairly easy changes you’d have a ton of builds. So in a way, Necromancers have the ability to be very balanced very quickly. Its unlikely to happen soon though, since to fully fix a lot of issues requires ANet to actually understand the profession (they’ve shown they don’t, and don’t listen to people who do), and to make changes to make the class have actual synergy.

ZDragon.3046:

Our point is with things we are missing and should have as a light armored profession we shouldn’t have to have the idea that Some traits will only proc once per every other cast By doing that its a draw back to a buff because in those traits should proc every time you successfully completed the action, not ever other time. Its like saying well if you play ele “We will reduce the cooldown on swapping to water by 50% but now you only get traits that effect water every other time you swap into it.” :/ there should not be a need to limit necro with every buff they get by putting a drawback on it when other light armored professions don’t have these drawbacks. Increasing the speed of life blast shouldn’t have anything to do with Reaper shroud skills so lets not even include them.

IT.
IS.
A.
BUFF.
PERIOD.

Its called balance. Some traits are just flat out too strong to just immediately double because we’re weaker than other professions in some areas. This is not the place to make us better by doubling everything, that isn’t how balance works. Light armor means exactly nothing, stop acting like that should matter. And it is nothing like your ele comparison, this is an auto attack, this isn’t some weird ICD, and it worked just fine on Reaper’s Shroud.

Are other professions broken? Absolutely, that’s why they should be nerfed, not Necromancer made OP. This understanding is why Necromancer is one of the only communities that seems to understand how balance works. Apparently the idea of it is a flat buff in every single conceivable way is a bit difficult, but that’s literally what any version of this idea being presented is, a flat buff in every way.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/17#post3138558

Go read and upvote it if you agree with it. I’d like to know their input on some things, hopefully.

Its fine as is. It is AoE, although they need to be fairly clumped up to hit many, and it is an unblockable 2s daze.

No need to completely change it. The only thing I would do is slightly increase the cone angle.

mistsim.2748:

reaper has way too much stab. incredible sustain and damage, hard to punish mistakes.

You mean except for where they only have stab on two sources? I won’t deny Reaper’s have solid sustain and damage, but what we’re seeing is Necromancer performing like they always should have, thriving in the heat of combat so long as they aren’t hard focused by the team to shut down the sustain.

The issue is the only reason to not run max DPS is if you suck. Every build is made with the intent to deal the most possible damage the fastest. You don’t need a trinity to support difficult encounters where running full glass DPS isn’t possible without someone supporting you. This is how things work in PvP and WvW, and it makes for a far interesting setup, because builds have to actually compliment each other.

If you run full glass DPS, you should need someone running a bit more healing to keep you up. You shouldn’t be able to just literally stand still with all your teammates and spam abilities and win in a matter of seconds. I don’t care how long the content has been out for, the ease with which dungeons are run right now isn’t a matter of good practice at difficult content, it is finding out that content that was once thought to be difficult is actually easily exploited to make mindlessly easy.

There is never a reason to not run a DPS build because the content is so easy that it will never punish you for it. This isn’t about not having a Trinity, or “skill” content, the game is literally so easy that it won’t punish you for running the absolute squishiest builds possible. I’m not asking for them to make zerker bad, I’m asking for them to make dungeons so that a dungeon group needs more than just DPS to be run well.

As to your AC, I don’t see how that is a point. I’ve never been in a group that couldn’t stack and kill Queen very easily. In fact, I’ve never been in a group that failed to complete AC, and I only use LFG to find players. Obviously “casual” players have figured out what to do, because every random pug I find knows the exact way to do that boss.

Is burning the only thing we need? No. Burning does, however, have the chance to fix our offensive problems in Condition builds, and depending on how it is implemented has the chance to help out other build types; just based on how high base damage it is (and low scaling).

No one is saying we don’t need more than just burning. Minions, power builds, support, hybrid, every build we have still needs slight work on the defensive front (and some others), but this is a start to fixing our offense. And if you talk to any of the current top PvP Necros, you’ll see why burning is required.

These changes aren’t happening. Most of them are completely OP.

Necromancers should be the kings of long fights, through sustained DPS and debuffing via constant aggression. A Necromancer should want to be constantly fighting and have the tools to thrive in a fight where they are able to stay on their targets, while being weak when fights are over quickly, or when large amounts of mobility are involved. To compensate they shouldn’t have very high mobility (only offensive mobility to stay on a target) and should be generally weak to burst.

Low overall burst, somewhat high “ramp up” time, very aggressive focused playstyle, naturally bulky, lots of debuffing mechanics, buffing and defensive mechanics should be tied to offense, but weak to people who can end fights quickly.

At the moment there isn’t enough access to reactive defensive mechanics, making us even weaker to focus fire and CC than we should be, and with no stability we’re basically triple screwed since all our defense relies on attacking, which we can’t do while stunned, which we can’t really avoid. There are some passive procs, like Chill of Death, that should be looked at to have more clarity so you don’t just get Lich auto + CoD + double sigil crit proc. Also minions need their traits (training of the master and necromantic corruption especially) reworked to be more active, and we NEED that AI looked at, so that the MM needs to be more active in their control of the minions to succeed, but should be better when they do that.

Realistically the only bad parts of the patch were Corruption related. Everything else was arguably fine, some great maybe a little bit mediocre here and there, but if we could ignore everything related to corruptions we’d have a very different opinion.

The problem is Consume Conditions got wrapped up in that, as did Plague.

Or you could just compare it to Path of Corruption, a very similar setup. One trait to one trait:
Steal 35s CD
Steals two boons (only one application of each) and grants you and your allies those boons plus vigor. Master level trait.

Dark Patch 15s CD
Corrupts two boons. Grandmaster level trait.

Very comparable, both are the same range and teleport to the enemy, both only treat the boons as a single stack (corruptions don’t increase in severity for larger stacks/longer durations), both are tied to profession mechanics and deal with two boons. One is a bit more “selfish” but on a very low CD while the other applies AoE boons but on a longer CD.

The one BIG difference is that thieves get to prioritize stability over all other boons, whereas Path of Corruption, and all Necro corruptions, have stability at the bottom of the list, and in fact many of the boons we want to remove seem to be fairly far down.

That is the one big thing that needs to change, all boon removal skills (corruptions, removal, steal, and anything else) need to have a singular priority system.

He just makes a video about doing high damage on a Necro, people freak out and act like he’s trying to prove we’re out damaging warriors now. Calm down.

PvE is an issue not because of Necromancers alone, but simply their game design. They honestly cannot fix us properly within PvE; instead they need to fix PvE itself.

And Necromancers should have lots of boons and mobility, and Thieves need to tank!

Seriously though, its designed for them to be weak to conditions. The issue is the existence of Warriors who spit in the face of the “weaknesses” they are supposed to have.

Kain Francois.4328:

Let’s be realistic here – ANET does read the forums. They hear our voices. And they know we are not satisfied with the Necro spec.

Internally, there’s probably some reason the balance is the way it is. Whether that’d be preparing for a future update, or simple balance issues we are unaware about.

Praise our Lord Grenth someone else isn’t blindly angry. Kain is absolutely right, they read the forums, they’ve proven it, and if anyone doesn’t see it its because they are either intentionally ignorant or just haven’t been around for more than a few days.

ANet is making a product here, this is their livelihood, they aren’t going to have a massive portion of the game that they actively hate and try to screw over. Accusing ANet of ignorance is absolutely justified, but accusing them of hating the very profession they have spent years working on is just flat out stupid.