Guild Wars 2

I want to see the Necro be the class that you don’t want to be in a prolonged fight against. We obviously already have mechanics that work towards that goal like our “health buffer” in DS, life siphoning (though arguably weak), and easy access to conditions and CC, but we’re missing some key components that make a prolonged fight against us dangerous.

When a prolonged fight tilts in our favor, the enemy can disengage and re-engage on their own terms. If we’re not meant to have mobility to chase down a dying enemy, I want to see a mechanic that would make re-engaging us too soon mean you’d have to fight at a slight disadvantage.

The GW1 Mesmer had abilities to disable skills on the enemy either directly (eg. Blackout), or indirectly as punishment for some other action (eg. Diversion punished those who spammed skills or didn’t want to wait for it to expire; Soothing Images was a boon that drained adrenaline from nearby enemies when a friendly was hit). When used at the right moments, it would shift the battle slightly in the Mesmer’s favor for some time. And as the battle is prolonged and more of these skills landed, the more it would turn in the Mesmer’s favor.

Obviously the mechanics between GW1 and GW2 are totally different, but I think the concept can still be applied to GW2 at a high level. In addition to being able to slowly eat away at an enemy’s health pool, we need a way to slowly shutdown their ability to fight or stay alive. Some conditions like poison, chill, and weakness try to do this but they’re also easily removed, don’t last long enough, and aren’t as much about timing and decision making as it is about spamming to keep those conditions applied.

On the other side of the coin, there are times when a Necro doesn’t even stand (literally, due to limited access stability) a chance at prolonging a fight. A necro does not have any defense that scales well with the number of enemies attacking it and doesn’t have a lot of options to defend itself against chained CC. Since disengaging is not an option by design, we need some way to slow down the train that’s trying to steam roll us. I like what ManaCraft mentioned about having an ability tied to DS that scales well to mitigate damage (though I wouldn’t count protection as scalable). But aside from that, if we don’t get access to blocks, vigor, invulnerability, etc. then how about a skill that causes AoE daze (and/or chill, confusion?) centered around the necro every time the necro is hit with an attack? It would be like retaliation but hitting back with shutdown rather than damage.

Elite Mark

When triggered, gain life force, summons zombies, causes chill, and rallies downed allies based on number of targets hit (eg. more targets hit means: more zombies, longer chill, more allies rallied), and leaves poison cloud and dark field for 10 seconds. Radius is 50% larger than staff marks.

Here’s an idea out of my kitten to address the Necro’s problems with dealing with focus fire:

Entering Death Shroud provides 1 second of Distortion and a 50% speed boost. After that, DS behaves the same.

The numbers will probably need some tweaking and LF pool/generation as well to keep it balanced in smaller fights. The idea was to provide some sort of defense that scales well with the number of enemies. The speed boost allows the necro to create some separation (or close a gap) without allowing it to fully disengage so it still adheres to the overall design.

After about 8 months of inactivity I have been playing a little more the last couple weeks. One thing I keep noticing is that I keep messing up the DS + Doom combo. I’ll hit DS and quickly hit 3 but then I look at my DS bar and it’s like I never cast Doom.

Is my timing just off or did something change? Was there some sort of cool down added when entering DS?

Staff is a great utility weapon but it would be interesting to see a build more focused around it. Some of the problems I see with it:

1. As mentioned before, auto-attack is useless in most situations.
2. Since Necro is a bit lacking in combo finishers, perhaps the staff could be traited to add reliable finishers to its skills (eg. #1 becomes 100% chance projectile finisher, #2 becomes a whirl finisher).

To me, it feels like spamming is the problem and not AOE itself. Smaller scale fights combined with long cooldowns discourage AOE spamming but as the group gets larger the AOE skills have better effect AND long CDs are less of a punishment since you’ll have overlapping skills and boons/conditions.

Rather than eliminate AOE, let’s punish mindless spamming of skills. How about a mechanic similar to the GW1 Mesmer’s Diversion?

Just as as an example, let’s say Chill has a secondary effect: if a player uses a skill while under chill, the cooldown on that skill is increased by X. Perhaps limit it to certain types of skills (eg. not auto-attack). Or it maybe need to be another condition altogether.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

I don’t understand why it is so hard to just play against stealth, and not sit there and let the thief hit.

While I can see issues with Aegis blocks causing revealed (or anything that can spam blocks), the OP referenced the “mace’s counterblow or offhand sword’s reposte” which I think counts as “playing against stealth”.

Kolly.9872:

Change Aegis so that it only lasts 3 secs when activated and put a 4 seconds cooldown on it after every succesfull block and we can start discussing about a “reveal” debuff change.

I haven’t really played Guardian much so I don’t know how easily accessible Aegis is but if it’s an issue, maybe change Aegis to cause a miss instead of block and only allow blocks to cause Revealed. The OP has a good point in my opinion.

Kharr.5746:

It’s a 2 second cone aoe daze on a fairly low cooldown. It’s already amazing as it can interrupt an entire group of enemies.

Trait for it with Banshee’s Wail and add in some condition duration (or Sigil of Paralyzation) and it’s a 4-second area daze (!!!) with an even shorter cooldown (!!!)

Kryshade.6075:

I don’t get it. Necro’s ALWAYS had access to fear. Terror is nothing new. It didn’t get buffed in this patch, in fact, it got nerfed in the sense that the moved it up to the master trait line. Everyone claiming fear is OP and broken is just clueless to the necro class.

Exactly. The update also had +0.5 seconds on Fear from Doom if they’re within 600 units distance. But yeah, aside from that and Spectral Wall, which only stays up 5 seconds with a 45 second cooldown (7.5 seconds uptime if traited, and cooldown down to 36 seconds with another trait), there really hasn’t been much change to the fear builds.

After the update, I essentially just swapped in Spectral Wall and my Warhorn was less effective since Terror moved up to Master and I couldn’t take Banshee’s Wail anymore.

Iceflame.5024:

Why do people say that LF generation went crazy high?

Maybe it’s just me but with the reduction to the cooldown of Spectral Armor and the ability to use it while in DS, it becomes extremely strong especially traited. My LF actually goes up while in DS if i’m being peppered with attacks. I assume Spectral Walk has a similar effect as well but to a lesser degree because of the lack of Protection.

I wouldn’t say I feel necro is OP but it definitely feels a lot easier to stay alive now.

It depends. If I do stack the fears (usually in an attempt to finish them) I try to wait towards the end of the first fear before reapplying in case they break out of it.

In sPvP I’ve been running a similar build in concept to Enferian. For me it’s essentially a 10/20/20/0/20 hybrid build traited for fear and condition duration running with D/WH + Staff + Corrupt Boon + Flesh Golem. The idea is to lockup/interrupt players with long fears (DS3, Staff5, Corrupt Boon against stability) and WH daze at critical times. You also have the Flesh Golem Knockdown, a 4s immobilize in Dagger3 and long chills in Staff3 and DS2.

“Spectral Wall: Normalized the amount of protection gained to 7s for allies. Replaced the Vulnerability with a 1s fear when enemies try to cross the wall. Added 4% life force gain on hit.”

Really? Who’s up for Spectral Wall fear pong? =)

The damage from Terror alone might not seem like a lot but keep in mind that the enemy, in general, can’t do anything while he’s feared. Trait and build towards fear/condition duration and that damage (2 ticks from Terror) + cc effect + any additional damage you do while he’s cc’d can add up, especially at the right moment (eg. somebody trying to heal). Plus you can chain into another fear and/or warhorn daze.

Theme-wise and at a high level, I think it’s a neat idea. I like the idea that the longer the fight goes (more stacks of bleeds) the more pressure is put on the opponent and the necro gets stronger. But it does seem like it would make an already popular necro build (if not the most popular) even more popular, and goes against the idea of more build diversity.

One of the most memorable skills for me in the original Guild Wars was the Mesmer skill Diversion. The feeling of landing a successful Diversion on a Monk’s main heal (or any spammable skill that a build was focused around) was a unique feeling of satisfaction. The closest thing in GW2 to Diversion seems to be the chill condition’s secondary (and possibly less apparent) effect in which it is described to cause “skill cooldown increased by 66%”.

If my math and understanding of the description is right, this is essentially adding 2 seconds of skill recharge for every 3 seconds that chill is active but only for skills that are currently on cooldown. It seems to me many applications of chill are for somewhere between 2-4 seconds (before traits, runes, etc.). While I can see this being quite effective with good/lucky timing (eg. adding 2-4 seconds of recharge on a critical heal), this effect seems like it has minor impact on the battlefield overall. Granted, the primary effect of slowed movement speed is very powerful, but I wonder if the secondary effect could use a little buff?

How do you guys feel?

Loyo.8526:

Took a bit honestly. from beta to around october, I ran strictly conditionmancer with staff and scepter+dagger.

I also started as a condi/bleed necro with S/D and staff as nothing else seemed as effective. I mostly played WvW and some casual PvE at the time. Once I started sPvP, I started exploring more with different builds (since I didn’t need to grind for the gear) and that’s when I stopped playing my other characters.

While I can’t speak too much for other classes, I feel like there’s a lot of nuances and variation in the builds that are possible with Necromancer that weren’t in any of the other classes that I played and that makes me want to keep playing it.

The class definitely has some issues with regard to balance right now, but I like its overall design and where it’s heading.

How about a “Cursed” condition: stacks duration and gives a X% chance for conditions to be reapplied for 2x duration on the target upon removal. “Cursed” can end when it triggers to avoid any exponential funniness…

I mostly play WvW and the utilities I rarely, if ever, use are:

• Signets: Even with the buff to Signet of the Locust, I still prefer Spectral Walk. Plague Signet was bugged last I checked but just read on the wiki discussion that it’s fixed (?) so I may give it more playtime now.
• Minions: AI is a problem. Flesh Wurm can be kind of fun though.
• Well of Darkness: Long cool down.
• Well of Power: I typically use Consume Conditions.
• Spectral Armor: I use the trait instead.

The ones I use every now and then:

• Corrupt Boon: I would use this much more often if it wasn’t bugged.
• Spectral Wall: It’s decent in PvE since you can stack a target with 20 (or more) vulnerability by just fighting on top of the wall. Not much use otherwise.

Just wanted to add a comment about Spectral Walk: I prefer this over Signet of the Locust because of its teleportation ability. For WvW, trait it for duration (from 8 to 12 seconds) and charge into the back lines and pop down marks + S/D bleeds + Epidemic and then pop back out. Trait it for cooldown and you only have 12 seconds of downtime for swiftness.

When I login and select my character, I often go off to do another task because my computer isn’t the fastest in the world. It takes a while for the game to load. Often, I get distracted with that said task (eg. doing the dishes, feeding the fish, etc.) and end up spending more time than I had planned. By the time I get back to my game I’m dead… because I loaded in the middle of a mob or what was once an uncontested waypoint.

It’s not a huge deal but just a bit of annoyance. Could we have something to prevent this? Perhaps I can not draw aggro until I do something…

JonPeters.5630:

I can say we are working on updating the UI for DS so that you can actually see your health bar, boons, conditions, etc. We think this is the first step for DS.

Will we be able to see the normal skillbar as well? For instance, it would be nice to know the cooldown on my heal skill while in DS. Actually, now that I think about it, it’d be nice to see the current state of the cooldowns of the DS bar while not in DS.

With regard to thief in WvW, it feels the rendering issues make stealth a much more powerful ability than it should be. I understand one of the main designs of the thief is to control when and where to fight which is the main reason why I play as one, but it does seem a bit unfair that I am essentially in stealth for a few extra seconds due to the rendering issues. Add to that fact the many ways to get in and out of stealth and it results in what people are essentially calling “perma stealth”. Some ideas for addressing this:

1. Make the revealed condition last a bit longer. Force the thief to fight for a while (8-10 seconds?) after an opening attack and it will make them more selective about when to use stealth.

2. Prioritize the stealthed thieves when it comes to deciding who to render.

Matt Witter.6982:

This is not saying that we are against any adjustment to scoring, or against developing another mechanic to improve the capping system.

I agree that players should not be treated differently based on their preferred time of playing. I also understand and accept the fact that WvW is a 24-hour battle. That said, I think something still needs to address the issue of a team controlling 100% (or close to 100%) of the map. It’s really boring for both sides of the battle especially when they last for a week.

Would you be able to elaborate on some ideas that would deal with this? Is this something that we should just expect to fix itself as server populations even out? If that’s the case, should we move to other servers for now in order to have a better experience?

I’ve been on Borlis Pass since the beginning and every matchup I can remember, aside from one, has been completely lop-sided. It’s absolutely boring on either end of that kind of a matchup.

SolarWind.5693:

. A warrior just decimated a 10 person group pretty much single handed. He was speeding the entire time. No cool down between skill use – and he was using the same skills over and over to kill each of us in rapid fire succession.

Did this happen to occur at a supply camp? I remember arriving to the camp and seeing a fairly large group of enemies (10 or so like you said) all dead but only 2 or 3 of my team (Borlis) there. I was wondering what happened…

Suddle D.9412:

The server that is more organized, has more players around the clock and works together will usually win. That’s what has worked for our server. If you want to be the best you have to be dedicated and have 24 hour coverage, period.

I have no problem with this. I even agree with you. I have no problem losing to a more organized team.

But are you really going to tell me the current state of lopsided victories is fun? There is the competitive aspect of WvW and there’s also the fun aspect of it… for the vast majority (of which I assume are casual players) it is currently not fun for anyone when one team dominates the entire map. We are not asking for handicaps so that losing teams become winning teams. We’re asking for ways to make the game more fun.

If the expected behavior of the a 3-way battle is to have the 2 lesser teams eventually teaming up against the winning team, why not modify WvW to encourage it? When a team controls X% of the map and/or has an N-point lead, the two lesser teams are no longer hostile (ie. cant attack each other) and they share alerts when either of them are being attacked. Maybe there should be bonuses to helping each other out.

It’s probably happened a couple times to me but, imo, the benefits of being able to pop in and out of DS quickly (#3 fear for interrupt, DS entry effects, etc.) far outweigh the negatives of accidentally going back out of DS.

SoPP.7034:

With that in mind it should be impossible for 1 server to dominate a map 100% and the fact it’s just not fun, for anyone.

I am glad to see more people bring this point up. There are too many WvW threads that just degrade into arguments about time zones, lack of organization, etc. My main gripe isn’t that more organized servers or more populated servers are winning. It’s that it’s just plain boring when it’s a lopsided victory. There is nothing left to do.

I feel like there needs to be some sort of upkeep for each point that’s being held, or that the points closest to the spawn need to be more difficult to take over by opposing teams. Some people will argue that there already is upkeep since you have to build/reinforce points that you hold, but the fact that a server can hold onto 80%+ of a map pretty much shows that there isn’t enough upkeep.

Our server is currently holding into everything aside from the two towers outside of our opponents’ borderlands spawn point. Those are the only real points where there is any sort of battle going on, and it’s gotten to the point where players on our team intentionally let the towers be taken over just so we can have something to do.

I made a suggestion on another thread about having more small objectives spread out around a server’s spawn point. These objectives could be something like home server siege NPCs that could be enabled (or disabled) and that auto-attack the nearest tower.

This wouldn’t suddenly turn a losing team into a winning team, but would give the losing (and probably smaller) team something reasonable to do. Which, in turn, would give the winning team something to do other than sitting in a keep/tower and waiting for the next spawn of attackers.