Guild Wars 2

Bloodthirst doesn’t affect sigil of blood/leeching’s leech, or the leech of vampiric runes. It only affects some skills/traits.

Sigil of fire is decent imo for some AOE damage while air is better for single target. Bloodlust/perception is also pretty good, considering the effects carry on to the other weapon set as well.

This:“http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10o4mi/the_damage_formula_and_the_efficiency_of_sigils/” is a pretty useful guide on sigils, although you’ll probably have to adjust for attack speeds/etc.

An ability to use basic voice commands with keyboard shortcuts would be nice.

For example,
C->2->3 could be ‘Need two more at [Point 3]’
C->6->1 could be ’I’m going to [Point 1]’

.

This would greatly help pugs communicate in sPVP.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Excio.9153:

The problem is, although its not as useless as people make them out to be, its not quite useful either

• It usually dies before it attacks anything, and if it does attack, i believe it does a minimal amount of damage and inflicts a single stack of bleed. If the trait was reworded to something like – “30% chance to inflict bleeding after killing an enemy (30 second cooldown),” it would be more obvious as to how bad the trait is.
• In some situations – such as Arah explore, jagged horrors are worse than nothing – The jaggged horror runs up to Lupicus – which may give him a free grub requiring a reset.

Interesting that you bring up Lupicus. The grubs and locust swarms he spawns don’t seem to trigger the trait (I never saw a jagged horror during that fight and I was running 20 in death magic). Outside of those, the only thing you can kill is Lupicus himself, at which point it’s irrelevant if a grub spawns on it.

I haven’t run Arah Exp since FotM was released, so I’m not too sure about that. Locust Swarms did use to trigger the jagged horror spawns though.

Imo, all minor traits should be made to be somewhat useful in all situations, and as it stands now, the trait is only useful in rare situations in PVE, and almost completely useless in sPVP (I’ve heard they also give 5 stacks of bloodlust/remove vengeance, however I haven’t verified this)

The minion itself just isn’t that good either, even if it were summon a jagged horror when hit under 90% health, it would be quite a useless trait in most circumstances – the jagged horror should be a suicide bomber instead that just inflicts X stacks of bleeding when it reaches the target – that way, at least there would be a guaranteed effect of some sort.

The problem is, although its not as useless as people make them out to be, its not quite useful either

• It usually dies before it attacks anything, and if it does attack, i believe it does a minimal amount of damage and inflicts a single stack of bleed. If the trait was reworded to something like – “30% chance to inflict bleeding after killing an enemy (30 second cooldown),” it would be more obvious as to how bad the trait is.
• In some situations – such as Arah explore, jagged horrors are worse than nothing – The jaggged horror runs up to Lupicus – which may give him a free grub requiring a reset.

• I also don’t believe anyone even targets the jagged horror – so it can’t really be considered an aegis. On kill traits are also not always useful in most situations – such as boss-fights.

• Its nowhere near as good as traits in the same position such as 50% permanent increase in endurance regen (Ranger), 10 secs of regeneration when under 75% health (Mesmer), etc.

I’m pretty sure the OP doesnt play anymore considering that this thread hasn’t been updated in a while, even after the last update. Somebody bothered should take over.

War Mourner.5168:

As long as you’re in 900 range of the target when dark path is cast, and when it hits, it will work. This means it can travel further then 900 as long as you keep pace, not to mention the fact that it homes to a degree.

I wasn’t aware that dark path homed or chased over 900 range, so i tested it.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/9522001/necromancer_dark_path_testing_random_bugs/

The homing itself doesn’t function reliably, it seems to home with a small chance – unlike mesmer’s staff #1 skill which always homes.

The projectile itself also seems to have an extremely small hitbox, unlike staff. This often causes it to just pass the target by 1cm and miss.

I’m not sure how long the projectile does chase, but some failed dark paths suggest the chase range is ~1500 or so, however other cases such as with the dolyak (start) suggest otherwise. I might try testing it a bit in sPVP when i get the chance to.

Overall, dark path did better than I expected it to by a huge margin, however it is still quite unreliable, only hitting ~50% of moving targets in my tests.

I’d still prefer a mechanic like Ride the Lightning though, with a plague form like effect. It would even suit the name better, blinding enemies in its path.

Also, I seem to have discovered a random bug – If lich form is interrupted right near the end of the channel, the player does not go into lich form, and it goes into full 180 sec CD – see 2:55, and weakening shroud has a delay after the animation before damage is applied, while dagger #5 doesn’t appear to (see end).

IMO, it would be nice if in PVE only, well of corruption inflicts random conditions if there’s no boons to corrupt.

Also, I’d have to disagree with

Dark path is an invaluable asset to necromancers, providing us with a gap closer regardless of build, with a lovely AOE chill on top. After the buff to its projectile speed it’s now fine

With my dagger necro in WvW, I barely use it as a gap close since it has a long cast time and is quite unreliable at hitting.
It also almost never works on players trying to run (Especially if they have swiftness), since it only closes around 300 range before disappearing due to ‘out of range’

I’d love if it were made into a skill similar to ‘Ride the Lightning,’ where enemies in the path are blinded, and when it reaches the target, it does an AOE blind+chill+blast finisher.

.

Death shroud #1 should also be a 40-100% projectile finisher, at the very least. A trait that executes a blast finisher on deathshroud should also exist. In the current state, necromancers basically apply fields, and can’t really reliably finish out of them.
.
.
The #1 skill should also change based on weapon used,

• Scepter could transfer 1 condition, then inflict poison/bleed if there are no conditions to transfer
• Staff could function as is, except with 1200 range
• Dagger could heal the main health bar the equivalent of 1/10th or so of the damage dealt
• Axe could apply vulnerability or something.

In PVE, a berserker’s build is decent, since deathshroud recharges quickly enough to help with tanking.

Tanky stats are nice, but I’ve never found them to be that useful in PVE since all at most, they only help to absorb 1-2 more attacks from mobs. Not getting hit will help more than toughness/vitality.

I personally run a glass cannon berserker, and survive decently in dungeons. (Such as fractals)

…Is there a reason why everything else is inferior ?

no. Not mechanics wise at least, especially considering

P.S: I really don’t care what is ‘over powered’ and what is not

From what you’ve described, thief/mesmer seem to be the best choices. No other classes have access to stealth (Besides engineers to a lesser extent and Norn’s racial elite)

Thieves have a high amount of burst and can AOE stealth which is quite useful in dungeons. They have no weapon cooldowns, using a mana-like system instead.

Mesmers can also stealth and burst with shatter builds. They also offer a bit of support with their staff stacks boons iirc. They focus on making clones and exploding them for damage/invincibility/etc.

Elementalists don’t have stealth, however can burst, and probably has the greatest variety of skills and best comboing in the game. (Range is an issue though, since its dependent on weapon used.) They have four different skillbars for each weapon.

Engineers have an extremely limited access to stealth, and have a wide variety of weapon choice due to kits. They also have decent comboing iirc.

Just choose the profession you like playing mechanics wise, and not based on its current strength-level, atm. Hopefully in the near future, classes will be on-par.

Staff is almost essential in tPVP.

1. is quite fail at hitting, but when it does, it gives a decent amount of lifeforce.
2. is decent for a regen if you’re in the area,
3. chills, and can be used to help with kiting
4. is amazing for removing and transferring conditions from everyone.
5. isn’t that good imo, and is only slightly useful depending on the situation.

Don’t waste the marks, I’ve fought a few necros that just use all four at once at the start of the fight.

Staff also results in significantly more Deathshroud #1 and #4 damage (although it shouldn’t).
(1173 #1/1881 #4 Staff vs
1041 #1/1430 #4 with dagger/warhorn. Same build, no damage affecting sigils.)

Axe on the other hand, just isn’t as viable.

1. does slightly more damage, and hits more often, however does not offer LF regen.
2. is a decent channel
3. for retal is decent, however after the recent retaliation changes, it is not as effective since its more or less a 200 damage reflect/hit.

The vulnerability stacks just doesn’t quite make up for the regen/large AOE condition cleansing staff offers.

I’d also prefer staff’s #4 skill over #4 or #5 of OH dagger/warhorn/focus.

• Lack of survivability traits/Utilities
  • The lack of pretty much any endurance regen traits/ temporary invincibility utility skills makes some encounters more difficult than they should be – such as Lupicus.
  • Although you could soak up the damage with death shroud, its quite difficult when it takes forever to recharge, especially during boss fights or as a conditions build in sPVP.

• Lack of Stability/Stun Breakers
  • This makes killing certain classes such as CC engineers near impossible
  • It also makes killing classes such as 100b warriors more difficult, especially considering most necros use Plague signet to stun break, and thats on at least a 48 second cooldown.
  • Its pretty much also annoying wasting a useful utility such as Plague signet just to break a stun, then just to be stunned again.
  • 3 sec stability on deathshroud does not break stuns.

• Useless utilities/traits
  • Theres a significant amount of traits/utilities that no skilled necromancer uses, thereby significantly reducing build variety
  • I don’t believe anyone uses minion utilities (Besides flesh golem, and possibly bone minions to explode) on non-minion builds. Minion builds aren’t even that viable.

Shadow Assault is pretty broken, as any half decent thief can easily maintain perma-invulnerability if slightly traited for init regen.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xv6d9q_shadow-assault_videogames#.UKkdvIfoRzg
(IDK why every video upload site compresses my vids to 384/480p)
or http://www.mediafire.com/?kk8x4bpk1o26r13 , if you can’t see whats happening. Also, you’ll have to copy the mediafire link :/

Any semi decent thief can pretty much hold ruins permanantly, or just simply solo any underwater boss.

Reaper’s precision is pretty much significantly worse than vampiric.

Assuming you have 24k hp and 30 points in soul reaping, you will have around 19.2k equivalent lifeforce.

Then, assuming 1 lifeforce health = 1 normal health, which is definitely not true -(I’d much rather prefer staff’s autoattack leeching 576 hp per hit instead of 3% LF), Reaper’s precision would be a 33% chance to gain 192 health per critical hit.

With a 50% crit rate (Equivalent to almost full exotic berserker’s), it would equal a 18.33% chance to leech 192 health – or on average, 35.2 health per hit.

That more or less only slightly more than vampiric, or even less if traited with bloodthirst.

Then, considering that most necros consider 1 LF to be significantly less useful than 1 health (Considering DS is used to absorb bursts, instead of normal health), Reapers precision is just a completely fail skill

These are pretty much traits that I don’t believe any decent necro uses. (Excl OP/previous posts)

Vampiric precison – It siphons only slightly more health than vampiric (on crit.) and doesn’t work on utilities. Considering ~50-60% is the max crit , its pretty horrible.
Spiteful Marks – Marks don’t deal much (power) damage at all, besides #4. Also doesn’t affect condition damage. even if this was a 100 damage boost, it wouldn’t be too useful.
Pitch Black – This is only slightly useful in combination with plague
Dark Armor – Decent in PVE, however useless in PVP considering the amount of interrupts that exist. Something like gain stability while channeling would be extremely useful in sPVP.
Vampiric Master – iirc, it siphons only slightly more than vampiric precision.
Fear of Death – I don’t really see it being of much use in either PVE or PVP.
Decaying Swarm – even at its current state of triggering when damaged in death shroud, is not that useful. If this trait were fixed, it would be quite useless. Should be instead triggered on DS and the cooldown lowered to 30 or 45 (from 90) or so.
Master of Terror – .5 secs of fear doesn’t help much. In its current state, necro fears are just used as interrupts instead of CC.

Also,
http://www.teamparadigm.net/forums/Necromancer/374/The-Sorry-State-of-the-Necromancer-in-SPvP-Long-Post/
is another thread with a collection of fail traits, utilities, etc, although it it slightly outdated. (Vampiric precision definitely doesn’t leech 300/crit, foot in grave no longer breaks stuns etc.)

War Mourner.5168:

Decaying swarm has a CD of 90 seconds.

Thats ridiculously high, considering the effect of the skill

Also, another annoying bug – When traited for vampiric (or possibly not,) Skills such as Locust swarm and Underwater spear #3 deal 33 damage to random, undamageable or targetable objects such as the poision bubblers in Arah Explore or the flame heads in the WvW EB Jumping puzzle. This causes combat mode, making the swiftness buff from the skill useless.

Spectral grasp regularly doesnt drag ‘grasp’ the enemy towards you. When there is some sort of bump in the land, it simply knocks down the target, and aggros all nearby enemies. (Extremely annoying in in the part following Lupicius in arah exp, as it causes wipes commonly.) On the otherhand, the skill Scorpion wire for thieves seems to grab enemies just fine in the same circumstances (I’ve never seen it fail during arah runs, while my spectral grasp is 50/50 if it hits).

The Fleshwurm skill – Necrotic transversal sometimes teleports 0 distance (Sometimes just from random landscape shaping). The same occurs with spectral walk (Try it in Battle of kyhlo – Put a flesh wurm on your point, run down the nearby stairs and use the teleport.)

The skill – “Mark of Blood”[Staff #2] has an unlisted regeneration radius – it is neither 120(/240) nor 1200.

When “Blood is Power” misses, it grants 10 stacks of might, and does not bleed yourself. When “Corrupt Boon misses”, it poisons yourself.

The VIII Trait for Soul Reaping (Decaying Swarm) has some sort of unlisted cooldown. From what I’ve tested, its pretty long (At least 30 secs or so)

Although Vampiric now seems to proc on all skills/utilities, Vampiric Precision (the on crit one) doesnt appear to work on utilities such as wells.

Also, (Probably not a bug) the trait ‘Bloodthirst’ does not affect the life leeched by the Superior sigil of Blood, although the sigil’s description states that it steals health instead of heals yourself on attack (Like Water).

This would probably be a good read.

I personally prefer the superior sigil of fire, it does ~1k AOE damage every now and then.

Sigil of blood is also decent, with a 30% chance to steal 480 hp.

Bloodlust and Perception (the 25 stack power and prec ones) are only good in PVE farming. I can rarely maintain a 25 stack in dungeons and WvW.

I would like more achievements for challenging content, and not just grindy ones – especially for titles.

Currently, pretty much all of the title achievements are based around the number of times that something has been done – like revive 1000 people. They don’t really show anything interesting, besides the fact that you were bothered doing X, X amount of times.

Achievements that are unique, and require some level of skill and dedication to complete should be added, for example, solo arah explore, capture stonemist castle with 5 or less people, etc (Possibly less difficult.) Even simple timed achievements such as complete Arah story mode in under 30 seconds would be more interesting than most of the current achievements.

Currently, the only achievements that fall under that category imo are the jump puzzle and boss achievements, the rest are more or less do something X amount of times.

A queue system for dungeons like tPVP would be awesome.
…
…
..

If that’s not possible for whatever reason, a custom LFG chat channel/tab should at least be implemented, one which is serverwide, and limits chats to 1 per min or so.

Currently, shouting LFG/LFM in lions arch is a pretty horrible way of getting a party, considering that half of the players looking for the dungeon are on different maps and it causes an excessive messaging message which lasts for a long time.

Dungeon specific lfg channels would be even better, for example: /arah, /coe, /cof etc.