Guild Wars 2

I’m going to be speaking from a Staff-wielding Necro’s point of view.
We’ll assume a 100dmg base and that hitting 3 Mobs is the Anet goal of an AoE.

1 Target = 120dmg
2 Targets = 110dmg
3 targets = 100dmg
4 targets = 90dmg
5 targets = 80dmg

The 10% damage stairstep will need tweaking to balance, but the concept is what we are looking at here. Also, lift the number of mobs hit cap. There should be no reason for a mob to be immune to the hit if it is standing in the Area of Effect.

Calculated simply by the number of mobs and a set differential
1 Target : 100 * 1.2 = 120dmg
2 Targets : 100 * 1.1 = 110dmg
3 targets : 100 * 1 = 100dmg
4 targets : 100 * 0.9 = 90dmg
5 targets : 100 * 0.8 = 80dmg

It was said that Anet doesn’t want us to use AoE’s on a single target, but for a Necro with a Staff that is basically saying DO NOT USE A STAFF. The auto-attack is so slow, it is almost useless. The piercing of it is the only saving grace.

We can also set a baseline (for Necro) that an AoE hitting 3 targets should deal 100% more damage (total) than the auto-attack. So if my Staff auto-attack can hit 150dmg, a total of 300dmg hitting 3 targets would be “right”.

Why does the damage go up for fewer targets?
If my auto-attack hits for 150 and my AoE hits for 120, it is still better for me to use my auto-attack and promotes the Anet idea of not using an AoE on a single target.

Also, keep in mind, the Auto-attack may not be the best baseline, but its is the concept I am sharing here.

In my philosophy, an AoE should deal more damage than an auto-attack when dealing with multiple mobs. That is the point of an AoE. If it is strictly better to auto attack then it is best to single target, focus fire, everything. Forever. Just take the AoE out of the game.

What are your thoughts?

MAGpie.7962:

Account-bound on acquire.

I agree.
On that note, I also think ANYTHING soulbound should be account bound.

Soulbound seems to be one of those thing that is around, simply because it was around before; totally void of reason in this day and age. To me, the value of Soul/Account Bound items is to keep them out of the global economy. If that is the sole purpose, there is absolutely no point for Soulbound when you can Account Bound items.

I’ve heard it argued that Anet wants Soulbound in the game so our characters “feel unique.” Dyes I can live with but Legendaries for example? That’s ludicrous. Even Armor (once equipped) I feel should be Account Bound.

While there are people who want each character to feel unique, unless they have “all-the-time-in-the-world” to play the game, I’m pretty sure no one wants to re-earn a Legendary or armor-set their alt could have used.

I could exemplify this in that, I built a Healing Power Necromancer and a Condition Damage Elementalist. I want to “try” Healing Power on the Elementalist. I’m not even sure if I will like it! But I HAVE the armor, jewels and weapons to do so, Anet just won’t let me.

Another one that gets me, is that mules can not store soulbound items. I made a mule for my Necromancer so I could stow away one of my armor sets for a later date. Can’t do that. You have to haul it around on the character it is soulbound to or flood your bank.

To be fair.
Its a freaking dragon!
If it were more… realistic? He would just smash the mortars, kill everyone with his size alone, and then run off to continue patrolling the map.

I agree though, some kind of more engaging fight would be awesome though. Jormag’s LT is the best dragon at the moment. Removing the Wings seems to be key to fighting these guys.

Zhaitan? The constant flying around the ship was dumb. It should have been more like

• Zhaitan’s been spotted! Straight ahead!
• Ready krewe? We only get one shot!
• {{Cannon charging sound}} BLAST!
• Lower half blown off, he grasp onto the tower. Ground below.
• Acid the flesh off his wings off.
• He can’t fly now.
• All he can do is hold on or fall to his death.

Burn him down and fight adds.

In all reality. How the heck are 20 people on 1 ship going to take down an elder dragon that rose an entire island from the depths and resurrected its citizens as it’s undead army?! Leveraging Technology is the only sensible way (aside from some complex ritual) and the plasma blast makes sense.

The current process for obtaining a legendary is purely throwing gold at the Mystic Toilet/Trading Post (TP) and Random Number Generator (RNG).

Currently, Legendaries are not a measure of any kind of skill; it is a wealth check.
Only the extreme lucky or insightful TP barons can afford these things.
Or the often unmentioned, people who buy Chinese gold.

I suggest a more accessible method. (especially for people with jobs!)

• Introduce a special recipe of each weapon type.
• The weapon created from this will be Exotic.
• When the Task is complete, you can turn it in for a precursor of the crafted weapon.

The Craft
Use current materials for Stat selection
Add recipes to use 1-3 Shards/Slivers/Cores Lodestones, or other rare materials to obtain the desired stats.
Have the Legendary adopt the stats of the precursor!

To maintain a level of scarcity/prestige:

• Create an item that is earned with the monthly, Essence of Legend for example.
• That item is only awarded if one is not currently associated with your account.

The Task
This is just one iteration of the idea.
You will use the crafted weapon to slay every boss of every dungeon and each Dragon in the game.

Another thought on the Legendary stats would be to offer a Right Click> Context Menu option to change the stats. This would make the Legendary universally useful for those with them. You can choose almost any of the stats in combination and the first you pick is the “main” stat of the weapon.

Either the above or somehow stick to the mentioned idea of a Black Moa length quest.

Yes please!
Even if you tie it to the Commander status! Or even Guild status!

It would be Awesome (from a Guild Leader’s perspective) to be able to group all of my guildees when we hit WvW. It really makes meeting back up if anyone gets separated soooo much easier! Or when someone signs on and wants to join us in WvW.

WvW is fun and it’s better with friends.
This would be a minor tweak that gave a high return on investment in terms of appreciation and use.

Armor: Cleric’s Exalted (crafted) lv.80 Exotic
Runes of Dwayna
(1): + 25 Healing
(2): + 20% Regeneration Duration
(3): + 50 Healing
(4): 5% chance to gain regeneration for 10 seconds when hit. (30s cooldown)
(5): + 90 Healing
(6): When you use a healing skill, you and all nearby allies gain regeneration for 5s. (10s cooldown)

Jewelry: Sapphire Orichalcum ______ of the Cleric
Currently using Exquisite Sapphire Jewels in the socket. The difference between the Masterwork, Rare and Exotic isn’t that great so do what money afford you. You can always upgrade later.

Utility Skills:
Well of Blood – This will be your heal forever.
Well of Power – Support the party by cleansing their conditions.
Well of Suffering – 10 stacks of vulnerability and damage.
Well of Darkness – Blind packs early on to mitigate damage. Coordinate your party to take shelter in it. Useless against Dredge.
Well of Corruption – Not ideal for PvE as most mobs don’t have boons, but great in dungeons/fractals. The damage from this well is the only reason to run it in PvE.
Spectral Walk – Between this and your warhorn, you can balance nearly unlimited swiftness. More precisely 1m52s, at 2m you can start the 1m52s cycle again so 8sec of downtime. This is possible because of the + 25% boon duration.
Signet of Undeath – On the move AoE party res. (only from downed, not defeated)
Plague Signet – Take on the party’s conditions, then drop your Well of Power or ship them off.

Discussion:
You should consider playing a healing power necro at least once in your necro career. I have been running this spec for about 3 months and can say; it is awesome. It’s a satisfying role and you’ll get fairly regular compliments that runs go smoother when you’re around. At 80, the perma regen will tick for around 350-400 a second while the Well of Blood will tick for upwards of 900. Another benefit of running this spec is you begin to become keenly aware of the positioning of yourself, your party and game elements. You have to or you’ll start missing timings to drop a support well or a regen/putrid mark.
Hitting Spectral Walk followed by deathshroud to Dark Path teleport to an enemy, Doom-fearing them away while dropping deathshroud to res a fallen ally and then port back to your point of origin by reactivating spectral walk within 8second is the Res-Ninja challenge and is a lot of fun to pull off :P You can Dark Path to them and drop wells as well. Fighting a boss for example, you can jump in, drop Well of Darkness and Corruption and Spectral Walk back to safety.

Here is a write up (WIP) on the Healing Power Support Necro I have been running since September’12. I only recently mixed things up with a condition necro build but hold on to my HP gear to go back to :P

A Necro’s guide to Healing Power
By Sanctus Messor

Traits:
Spite – 15 (+ 15% Condition Duration, + 150 Power)
5 – Gain Life when you kill something.
10 – When you kill a foe, you lose a condition.
15 – 5% of Power is given as a bonus to Healing.
Death Magic – 25 (+ 25% Boon Duration, + 250 Toughness)
5 – Chance to summon a Jagged Horror whenever you kill an enemy. (30 sec cooldown)
10 – 20% reduced staff skill cooldown.
15 – You gain 20 Toughness for each minion summoned.
20 – Increase area of marks and marks become unblockable.
25 – 5% of Toughness is given as a bonus to Power.
Blood Magic – 30 (+ 300 Healing Power, + 300 Vitality)
5 – Gain 5 seconds of Regeneration when your health reaches 90% (30 sec cooldown)
10 – You create a Well of Blood when you revive an ally.
15 – Siphon health whenever you hit an enemy.
20 – Wells recharge 20% faster.
25 – Deal 5% more damage while your health is above 90%.
30 – Your wells also steal life every time they pulse.

Weapons: Staff and Scepter/Warhorn or Dagger/Warhorn
Staff is your bread and butter.
Mark of Blood (2) allows you to maintain permanent regen with careful positioning.
Putrid Mark (4) is a blast finisher and your best damage mark. It is also key to cleansing conditions from you and the party. Again, positioning is key.
Chilblains (3) is great for crowd control. This is your second best damage mark. Use this, then Putrid Mark for a blast finish of Area Weakness! Do not under-estimate this condition, it is very powerful.
Reaper’s Mark (5) is AoE fear on demand. I personally use it sparingly. Use it to disperse mobs from a downed ally or early in a fight with a bunch of mobs to mitigate some damage. Do not use this mid-combat unless you are interrupting a painful incoming attack, melee party members will hate you.
Necrotic Grasp (1) is the worst auto attack we have. It’s slow, easily dodged and doesn’t hit hard. The only redeeming qualities are that it pierces targets, has 1200 range and generates life force. With careful positioning, you can use its strengths to negate its short comings.

Your alternate weapons will be used much less frequently than your staff. I’m not going to break down their skills. These really come down to personal preference but here are my thoughts.
You will want to run Scepter if you are looking to stay at range and provide some CC in the form of AoE cripple.
You will want to run Dagger if you like Death Shroud and want an extra source of healing, not to mention the single target 3s immobilize.
Warhorn gives you an interrupt and extra mobility. This can be instrumental when positioning to support the group.

Sigils:
Staff – Superior Sigil of Life: + 10 Healing Power per stack (+ 250 Healing Power at max)
Scepter/Dagger – Superior Sigil of Water: 30% Chance to Heal Nearby Allies (Cooldown: 10 Seconds)

Ezeriel.9574:

Necro damage is obvious to anyone receiving it, and it’s low damage too, so even when you do get to see your bleeds ticking away, odds are something else killed them.

We need a skill called “Rend Flesh” that allows us to rip conditions and boons off our foes dealing significant burst based on the conditions and boons removed. Put it on a longer cooldown for balance if you have to but something like this would eliminate the ‘sad’ that is necro bleed stacks getting cleansed almost immediately after we get the stack created (and have burned our weapon CDs doing it)

I want minions to get some love as well. I miss minion mastering. It was my favorite thing to do in Guild Wars 1.

My Suggestions
Fix the “Reanimator” trait. The minion that spawns is useless. One way to make this more useful would be for it to spawn a random minion, a minion that Death Nova’s on death, or a new minion. Maybe one that has a Plague Signet built into it and passes it conditions to foes on death. You could also remove or reduce the 30s cooldown as balance required.

Another suggestions would be put minion skills on recharge as they are cast rather than when minions die. Then allow a cap of 15 minions assuming a 30 death trait tree. Bone minions count as 0.5 of the cap (much like Zerglings in Starcraft II). Then limit each type of minion to maintain balance, cant have 15 golems for example. You could however have 30 Bone Minions and zerg things! Super fun! Then if they have to, balance the detonation with a cooldown so you can’t zerg-bomb things.

Another one would be no hard cap. A soft cap minion population of 50% death tree (15 minions at 30 death) and then each additional minion (16+) consumes a percentage of lifeforce per second or X seconds. This would need to be an optional trait (or Rune) though so people not building for it don’t lose their class mechanic.

Maybe find a balance of what is mentioned above and tune it into “Rune of the Minion Master”. Something like:
(1) +3 Minion Cap
(2) +10% Minion Health
(3) +5 Minion Cap
(4) +15% Minion Damage
(5) +7 Minion Cap
(6) On hit, Minions transfer conditions from themselves to foes. (3s cooldown)

Keep in mind that allowing such high numbers of minions may require the trait of “+20 toughness per minion” to be nerfed or nixxed. Maybe we could trade it for a Vampiric Minions (minions steal life on hit) trait or something reminiscent of Parasitic Bond (transfer conditions to minions passively)