Guild Wars 2

Double tapping can be used to stun break > fear > and then immediately heal

Just don’t double tap ????

Bummer =\
Guess that’s not happening. lol

Bhawb.7408:

The axe was very obviously made for Minions, imo. A lot of the “fixes” revolve around turning it into a power weapon, which it isn’t designed for.

I don’t understand why so many people think this is the case.
Just because it applies vulnerability it is designed for minions? What about the fact that it applies retaliation on yourself? This seems like a wasted ability on a minion master, since a large majority of the time, your minions are taking hits and you are not. Not to mention Ghastly Claws having no synergy with minions.
Furthermore, minions are Utility skills with effectiveness only being increased by traits. I don’t think ANet wants minion masters to be tied to any specific weapon sets.
Even if we assume for a second that the Axe is the weapon designed for minion masters, my proposed changes could only make the Axe better for a Minion Master, not worse.

Bhawb.7408:

Power builds are fine (that isn’t to say they couldn’t use some flavor). The issue is that most people want a necro to have the exact same thing as other classes, stop trying to make every class the same. Necro long range power build = traited DS.

I like what the greatsword has for everything except its auto attack. It makes absolutely no sense for a necro to have an auto attack that doesn’t give LF or conditions, it doesn’t fit the class at all, all it does is give us a warrior greatsword with a necromancer paint job.

I like the idea of Death shroud having a condition auto attack, and also letting us see our HP (which at the time is Life Force), boons, and conditions.

I mentioned in my post above that, yes, Power-based Necromancers do have a great damage ability in Life Blast. I also noted the issue with being able to sustain enough Life Force to keep your Life Force bar > 50% when fighting in ranged fights, which involves simply auto-attacking with the Staff over and over.

You’ll notice that the final attack of the Greatsword actually DOES involve a condition (cripple). I don’t think it should gain life force on its auto-attack so as to differentiate it from the Dagger. I suppose the final attack in the chain could always remove a boon. That might be interesting. Again though, I hope to convey that Power-based Necromancers need an AoE option and a true ranged option. The Greatsword skills are merely to illustrate an example.

Bas.7406:

Zinwrath.2049:

Bas.7406:

Quick question about the Death Shroud 1 ability – Why would I need another auto attack? How would the game know if I wanted that one or Life Blast?

You can set what ability you’d like to auto attack.

So it would essentially be 5 attacks, and you would select bleed stacking with low damage or high damage and vuln/might stacking with lifblast?

Yes, with the UI being changed to be like other transforms, you’d have your five weapon skills replaced with five Death Shroud skills.

1. - Life Blast / #2 – Crimson Blast / #3 – Dark Path / #4 – Doom / #5 – Life Transfer
   The idea being that a conditonmancer would always use Crimson Blast as their auto-attack and a powermancer would always use Life Blast as their auto-attack.

@Talgor, yes, understandable. I thought at 1sec cripple it’d be okay, but I guess with traits, etc. it could become a 2 second cripple, which might cause problems.

@Kal, actually conditions DO effect you when you’re in Death Shroud. In fact they deal quite a bit of damage to your Life Force due to the way the game rounds numbers. Having that information would be invaluable in PvP. Dropping out of Death Shroud to see you timed it wrong and your Healing spell isn’t ready… not fun.
I understand a conditionmancer would never use Life Blast over Crimson Blast. The point is that currently, a power-based Necro can enter Death Shroud and use Life Blast attacks to deal quite a bit of damage, so long as they have more than 50% Life Force. A condition Necromancer never wants to be in DS because it’s a DPS loss, which is why generally DS is used only for its Fear and as a second life bar for Condition Necromancers. With this change, Condition mancers might want to actually stay in DS and use their bleed auto-attack, since it would deal more damage than their Scepter auto-attack so long as your Life Force is greater than 50%.

@SwickHobo, well if you’re using a melee weapon, you don’t really want your enemies getting far away from you so the Chill is nice, whereas the Fear acts as an interrupt as well as defensive maneuver. The fear gives you a second of grace time to deal damage to a group of mobs while they’re not attacking. Also, I really wanted the Necro Greatsword to feel like it was about controling the area. That’s why I didn’t give it any gap closers or pulls, like the other professions have on their Greatsword.
Edit – but the point of my post is more that Power Necros needs AoE and ranged options. The skills were just me having fun designing.

I don’t think Axe is a terrible weapon. In fact, I run it in my power-based build and the last buff they gave it was fantastic.
It’s just that as a power-based necromancer, we have two major drawbacks (which admittedly come up in dungeons more so than any open-world content): We don’t have great AoE options and we don’t have great ranged options.

Currently, we have to use utility slot skills or use Life Transfer to deal area damage. Not only are we losing flexibility in our utility slots, but ourarea damage skills are on somewhat lengthy cooldowns. The staff isn’t really an option for aoe damage in a power-build, as the only attack which does any noticeable amount of damage without speccing for conditions, is #4.

Power builds aren’t terribly bad at ranged damage as long as they can keep their Life Force bar filled enough to spam Life Blast. Unfortunately in fights where you have to be greater than 600 yards away, your only sustainable form of Life Force is from Staff auto-attacks. Aside from the fact that this isn’t a great amount of damage, it’s downright boring.

Another change that has been mentioned around the forums is the idea of giving the Axe a cleave which I would also be in favor for, but Power-based builds would still be lacking in effective or interesting ranged options. Without adding a weapon, this would have to be addressed by giving power Necromancers a sustainable way to gain life force from afar through traits. A definite possibility, but then the life force gain would have to be balanced around either the fact that conditionmancers can take advantage of it to sustain even more damage than they already can or it has to be made inaccessable or unnattractive to condition-based Necromancers.

I just posted this in the suggestions form, but I also wanted to post it here as I think the opinions of other Necromancers would be valuable to the discussion. Anyways, I’ve decided to write my suggestion in the form of patch notes. I hope you enjoy!

Today’s patch is aimed at shoring up Power-based Necromancer’s weaknesses by giving them some tools they are currently lacking in hopes that by increasing their their viability, we can encourage build diversity.

Axe
Rending Claws and Ghastly Claws: Range increased to 900.
Unholy Feast: Moved to a different weapon and replaced with Rend Body.
Rend Body: 1 second cast. 15 second cooldown. 900 range. Inflicts the target with Blind (3sec), Crippled (6sec), Vulnerability (5 stacks, 10 sec), and Weakness (10 sec).

Greatsword
The Necromancer can now wield Greatswords! The Greatsword has strong elements of area control.
Dark Slash: Slash enemies in front of you. > Dark Swing: Slash enemies in front of you again. > Dark Sweep: Slash enemies in front of you damaging and crippling them (1sec).
Reap: 1/2 second cast. 6 second cooldown. 300 range. Sweep your Greatsword in a circle, dealing damage to nearby enemies and gaining Life Force for each enemy struck.
Unholy Feast: Swapped to the Greatsword from the Axe.
Dark Aura: 1/4 second cast. 25 second cooldown. Grant yourself an aura of darkness (5sec). Enemies who strike you become blinded for 3 seconds.
Chilling Howl: 1 second cast. 40 second cooldown. 600 range. Fear (1sec) and chill (3sec) nearby enemies.

Death Shroud
Changed the UI to be similar to other form-changing skills, allowing you to see more information, including health, conditions/boons, and skills’ cooldowns, etc.
Additionally, we’ve decided to add a second “auto-attack” (a spammable skill with no cooldown).
Crimson Blast: 1 second cast. 900 range. Deals damage and bleeds the target, increasing bleeds applied with the more Life Force you have.
50% or more Life Force: 3 stacks of bleeding (3sec).
49% or less Life Force: 2 stacks of bleeding (3sec).

By giving Power-based Necromancers a true ranged option in the Axe and a weapon in which they can deal area damage with in the Greatsword, the two greatest short-comings of a Power-based Necromancer are remedied, making it a fun and viable build as an alternative to running Condition or Condition/Power hybrid based builds.
The addition of the second auto-attack in Death Shroud will allow Condition-based builds to have a more interesting decision-making process when it comes to Death Shroud. Should I save my Life Force as a second health bar? Or should I try to get a few extra bleeds in since I’m sitting on a full bar?

I’ve decided to write my suggestion in the form of patch notes. I hope you enjoy!

Today’s patch is aimed at shoring up Power-based Necromancer’s weaknesses by giving them some tools they are currently lacking in hopes that by increasing their their viability, we can encourage build diversity.

Axe
Rending Claws and Ghastly Claws: Range increased to 900.
Unholy Feast: Moved to a different weapon and replaced with Rend Body.
Rend Body: 1 second cast. 15 second cooldown. 900 range. Inflicts the target with Blind (3sec), Crippled (6sec), Vulnerability (5 stacks, 10 sec), and Weakness (10 sec).

Greatsword
The Necromancer can now wield Greatswords! The Greatsword has strong elements of area control.
Dark Slash: Slash enemies in front of you. > Dark Swing: Slash enemies in front of you again. > Dark Sweep: Slash enemies in front of you damaging and crippling them (1sec).
Reap: 1/2 second cast. 6 second cooldown. 300 range. Sweep your Greatsword in a circle, dealing damage to nearby enemies and gaining Life Force for each enemy struck.
Unholy Feast: Swapped to the Greatsword from the Axe.
Dark Aura: 1/4 second cast. 25 second cooldown. Grant yourself an aura of darkness (5sec). Enemies who strike you become blinded for 3 seconds.
Chilling Howl: 1 second cast. 40 second cooldown. 600 range. Fear (1sec) and chill (3sec) nearby enemies.

Death Shroud
Changed the UI to be similar to other form-changing skills, allowing you to see more information, including health, conditions/boons, and skills’ cooldowns, etc.
Additionally, we’ve decided to add a second “auto-attack” (a spammable skill with no cooldown).
Crimson Blast: 1 second cast. 900 range. Deals damage and bleeds the target, increasing bleeds applied with the more Life Force you have.
50% or more Life Force: 3 stacks of bleeding (3sec).
49% or less Life Force: 2 stacks of bleeding (3sec).

By giving Power-based Necromancers a true ranged option in the Axe and a weapon in which they can deal area damage with in the Greatsword, the two greatest short-comings of a Power-based Necromancer are remedied, making it a fun and viable build as an alternative to running Condition or Condition/Power hybrid based builds.
The addition of the second auto-attack in Death Shroud will allow Condition-based builds to have a more interesting decision-making process when it comes to Death Shroud. Should I save my Life Force as a second health bar? Or should I try to get a few extra bleeds in since I’m sitting on a full bar?

I totally agree. When I use the Focus in PvP (and PvE for that matter) it’s primarily for it’s #4 skill due its ability to quickly stack vulnerability and gather a nice amount of Life Force. I’ll of course use skill #5 when I’m facing a profession that puts on Protection, but most other boons are just not worth the skill’s lengthy cast time.

penatbater.4710:

huh, would anyone know if the trinket to be made is soulbound? or soulbound on use?

I believe it’s soulbound on use. I’m making this assumption based on the fact that one of the Twilight Arbor recipes makes a Condition Damage/Precision/Toughness ring which can be sold on the TP (for quite a bit due to the rarity of the recipe).

AKA – if you find the recipe and are willing to farm the ingredients, it looks like you’ll be able to make some serious dough.

In what way is the Axe a minion master weapon?
Yes, the vulnerability helps your minions but generally not so significantly that I wouldn’t just use a dagger over it.
Minions also don’t scale with your stats so a minion master could be geared for conditions and use a scepter.

Edit – what I mean by the above statement is that I generally don’t reach 5+ stacks of vulnerability with the Axel’s autoattack because the #2 skill does SO much more damage (while also gaining life force). A 3-4% increase in your minion’s damage isn’t significant enough to make up for how weak your own attacks are.

Hello fellow Necromancers!
Currently I feel that our Axe is a little weak and needing of something to make it more desirable. Though I of course can’t speak for everyone, I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.

It seems the problem it suffers is that it does not have a niche.
If you want to use a Dagger, you create a build that suits dealing damage in close quarters. The reward being that you generate life force faster than any other weapon and have the highest DPS achievable in a Power-based build.
If you want to use a Scepter, you have the luxury of being at range which allows you to focus your build on DPS stats more so than a dagger build.
The Axe, being ranged does not and should not be able to deal the same DPS as a Dagger of course (cost vs. reward meansthat melee weapons should deal more damage). However, it does not match the DPS of a Scepter build. So what’s the point of taking the Axe?

Of course number tweaks would make the Axe more desirable, but another approach would be to make the Axe deal splash damage to enemies near your target. This would give Power-based builds a choice between using the Axe and Staff as an AoE option.

Was thinking of posting this in the suggestions forum, if other Necromancers liked the idea.

Meanwhile, on the Guardian thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/It-s-great-being-a-Guardian-isn-t-it-guys/first#post864755

Okay, but really. I agree with a lot that has been said. I don’t think we’re a terribly broken class that is unplayable and will make your fractal group die in a fire just for even considering bringing us, but I do think we have a lot of things that need to be smoothed out.

The argument about the Target the Weak I think is very telling of the problem with the class’s trait lines. They simply aren’t resonant. For example, I look at the Explosives line of the Engineer and I get it. I know what the trait line is about, but it still gives me wiggle room for how I want to craft my character. Same with the Guardian’s Zeal line. I love my Greatsword, so I’m going to go down the Zeal line to make my Greatsword better.

Necromancer’s trait lines aren’t terribly mixed up. They each have their idea and you get a picture of what the trait line is trying to do, but not all the traits within that trait line work towards that goal.

Sometimes the forge can be a bit picky when putting things in. Try putting them in in a different order. I had a similar issue with upgrading to Orichalcum a while ago.

oZii.2864:

Terazeal.1976:

It is almost certain that all possible recipes have not been discovered and publicly posted yet. I think that the people who are posting the recipes they find aren’t approaching it from all possible angles, which would explain other weirdness like the comparatively high amount of foci discovered thus far: foci are likely all made using the same general formula, that being the one that the public researchers are exploring.

Pretty much every combination of recipe has been found already. You can see every pistol and rifle in the game just by going to gw2db. They data mined so everyone knows whats in the the game or not. Also I am sure they will add more weapons to the game.

Do you know this for a fact? Can you link a discussion or something that proves this to be true? Otherwise you’re just speculating.

Yes, we know every skin in the game from GW2DB, but that database doesn’t show how to achieve those items so we have no way of knowing if a skin is from a drop or from the mystic forge.

I highly doubt we’ve exhausted the mystic forge’s recipes, especially seeing as there are only TWO staffs on the wiki list, one of those being the Halloween staff.
There are even some mystic forge specific skins which have been discovered by players who won’t share their recipes.

Ps – I’m not trying to be rude, I just think we should try to keep as much misinformation about the forge to a minimum since it can be hard for someone trying to find out about the MF what is true and what isn’t.

Chill out. They change what’s required for the monthly every month just to spice things up. I much prefer them doing it this way than having the same requirements every month.

And don’t forget, ANet has a large player base that they have to appease. Some months you’re gonna like the monthly, other months you’re not. Maybe you just skip this month because you don’t like doing dungeons?

I didn’t really care for WvW, but because it was the last thing I needed for my monthly in October, I stepped into WvW (50 isn’t a lot anyways). And you know what? I actually enjoyed myself. Sure, I’m not going to do a lot of WvW aside from trying to get the monthly, but at least it encouraged me to try something I wouldn’t have otherwise been keen to doing.

Edit:

Tl;dr – Some people like dungeons (I do!), other people don’t. This is true of every facet of the game. Thus, the monthly is going to sometimes be something you like and sometimes something you don’t like. I don’t think ANet should stop playing with variation just because a handful of players want to QQ about it.

Okay, so don’t try to make anything with Gift of Darkness, Energy, Light, or Lightning. Got it. :P
Guess I’ll try out some things trying to find some cool Staff skins. If nothing works, c’e la vie, right?

Hey, so I looked at this list of mystic forge recipes:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Other_Items

Is this a comprehensive list of discoverable recipies or do we have mor to discover?
I’m hoping not as I’m not really fond of either of the staff skins!
If we know we haven’t discovered all the recipies, what would be a good tip for exploring new ones? Throw a Eldritch Scroll and staff components into th forge?

I realize this has most definitely been brought up before but the search function only goes back so far. :P
Ty all!