Guild Wars 2

As someone who mains both of these classes ~600 hours nec and ~600 hours ele, I suggested the following when diamond skin was first announced. This mechanics of this trait should be immune to condition damage when above X% of health, but not immune to conditions. Basically conditions should still get applied to the elementalist, but all condition damage would be zero while health is above the threshold.

The reason for this type of implementation is that the Necro has very limited access to any boons, but receives boon-like benefits through debuffing the target. Under this approach, the health threshold could even be lowered to 75-80%, but this way soft CC and debuffs could still be applied. Also, for Necros looking for a counter to diamond skin, you should try some builds with high retaliation uptime.

Diamond Skin: I think this would be properly balanced if it was something like; immune to condition damage when health is above ~80-85%. Immune to all condition effects just seems excessive considering some classes do not have any self-buffs to compensate for locked out debuff effects provided through conditions.

I think this would be properly balanced if it was something like; immune to condition damage when health is above ~80-90%. This would force Necros to open with physical damage, but at the same time not completely shut down all non-damaging debuffs we have. Immune to all condition effects just seems excessive considering we do not have self-buffs to compensate for locked out debuffs.

Diamond Skin nullifies Reaper’s Protection (a trait they hope people use more) against the Ele’s most popular opening combo. For the record, I have mained an Ele for hundreds of more hours than Necro.

Not so much OP, but countering a Necro is not like other classes. If your first reaction is to boon up and unload all your conditions on the Necro, you are gonna have a bad time. The Necro (if speced for roaming) will first turn all those boons on you into conditions, and then transfer any conditions you have applied back onto you. Once this happens you have most likely lost the encounter.

To counter a Necro you must first understand its greatest weaknesses; we have no escapability, vigor, and limited healing if you don’t stack us up with conditions. Focus direct damage and stuns initially. DO NOT pop boons unless you are sure that you have the upper hand.

Also it is worth understanding how our Plague form works. Plague essentially buys us 20 seconds of time to let our cooldowns reset. It mitigates damage through increased toughness, vitality, and blind’s once per second. It removes all ability for us to remove conditions. If you are within the Necro’s plague form DO NOT blow any spells with cool downs as these will miss due to blind. Confusion is extremely effective against Plague because Plague recasts spells every second. Other conditions are effective as well if casted early in the Plague form. The Necro either has to leave plague to cleanse, or just wait them out.

As much as I hate giving advice on how to fight the Necro, I’d rather people learn before Anet gets out the nerf bat. I currently have an 80 s/d ele, 80 condi nec, 80 d/p thief all with full ascended minus the weapon. Since the elementalist RTL nerf, I have strictly roamed WvW with my Necro.