Guild Wars 2

Meet the Healer
This is where I think we could have a fascinating conversation about just how the hell you would even make the healer work in GW2, since you can’t target players directly.

Which I think is great, because most MMO’s just have you standing around casting single target heals all day. Something like this could be much more positional based.

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First I think you would have to strip all the AOE heals from every profession besides your 3 healers, and improve the raw values of theirs, besides single aoe skill heals from off healers, like the Rangers Healing Spring, or the Necro Well of Blood. This means mostly removing trait heals. Three main healers, Guardian, Elementalist and Engineer.
Two off healers, Ranger and Necromancer.

Second, reduce the base healing of all self healing skills, but raise the multiplier values to Healing Power to make it much more effective, esp on outgoing heals. So having a raw healing skill will struggle to keep you alive.
However even a minimum expense in Healing Power will keep you alive as well as you do now.

This naturally would put much more emphasis on a Healers ability to heal others, if it became the primary form of healing in groups, but will still require the individual to use their own heal skills and minimize damage via tanking/evasion.

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As for the Healers themselves.
The Elementialist could be you standard long range healer, using a lot of wide AOE heals. Big heals, but has longer cooldowns and requires aiming. Plus cone heals if using Daggers. Perhaps they have have heals that do different amounts depending on range, closer is better with Daggers, longer is better with Staff.

Then Engineer is more of a stationary healer, dropping med kits and healing turrets at fixed locations that people have to go to get healed. Perhaps also changing the Elixer Gun so that it’s auto attack works like the Mesmer beam lasers, and pierces allies and heals them, while damaging enemies. Think the Medic from TF2.
Sort of a mid range healer.

And the Guardian is your front line healer/tank, where it’s symbols always heal, but since they have a limited range, it’ll only really heal where the Guardian is.
So constant smaller heals, with limited range, plus buffs and damage mitigation.

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In short, healing should be all about positional and active play. Aiming your heals and positioning yourself.

Introduction
I did not expect I would ever make this argument, I honestly never cared for it, but life is funny that way.

I played GW2 from launch and while it has a fantastic single player experience, towards end game and lvl 80, I felt something was missing, and I couldn’t for the life of me put my finger on it.
It just seemed so dull, repetitive, and nothing worth striving for.

And so when FFXIV: ARR came out I took a break to give it a go, and it’s a great game that honestly takes a few ques from GW2, like FATES ie Dynamic Events, which has made the single player experience much more enjoyable then in most MMO’s I’ve played.
Bravo Arenanet, bravo.

The thing is with me, is that I have very little tolerance for pointless BS and grind, so before FFXIV I never got to end game in an MMO (besides GW1 and GW2) because the single player experience would make me want to tear my bloody eyes out.
So my experience with raiding is rather limited.
(take what I am about to say with a bag full of salt)

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But it there where I finally figured out what missing in GW2 that prevented me from enjoying GW2 endgame all this time: Roles.
There are no roles in this game, you never have to work together in anything but the loosest of senses, and you never rely on anybody for anything.

Which leads to a incredibly dull multiplayer experience, and for a massively “multiplayer” online game, that is a colossal problem.
And as such, I think that this move away from the Holy Trinity, however well intention, may have been a wrong move in the end.

I praise them to high heaven for trying, and I wish more MMO developers would try new things, but things just don’t always pan out.

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(Note, if you already know what roles are, how they work, and agree GW2 could need them, feel free to skip the next three parts)

Defining Roles
I feel this needs to be clearly defined, so we avoid confusion on the issue, esp since in the past Anet have stated that GW2 does indeed have roles, of Control/DPS/Support.
But in fact this is not true, and these so called roles are more just nebulous ideas then hard mechanics.

A role is a class distinction, where one excels in one gameplay element, to the detriment of others. And as such in multiplayer experiences, other players fill the roles that you can not, so where as the group is greater then the sum of it’s parts, and complete a unified whole.
Lose any one part, and the group fails.

This can be anything, from tanking and healing, scouting and sniping, tackling and DPS, or art and programming. But whatever the case, you can’t be everything all at once, you NEED other people.

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However, it’s also not a role if the game never requires it of you.
Stealth for instance is something only the Thief and Mesmer have, but there is never any instance where they game asks “Do you have stealth? If not you fail”, and so it’s not a role, just a class mechanic.

Soul Reaping vs Death Shroud

Soul Reaping was the Necromancers old unique ability, allowing them to generate energy from the death of foes or allies, giving them an almost inexhaustible supply of energy. While it didn’t have a lot of skills to it’s name, they were mainly based around energy management and death.

In other words, it was always useful. Not exciting, but useful.

Death Shroud on the other hand is anything but.
This ability is god awful, not so much in conception, but in implementation.
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While the idea of Life Force is fine and dandy as an idea and it’s implementation into the game, the fact that the ONLY thing you can do with it is use bloody Death Shroud is a complete waste of an opportunity.

With the Warriors adrenaline you can at least get differing effects based on what weapon your using with greater potency the more you have.
But Death Shroud is a one trick pony. It’s a meat shield, that it, period.
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The 4 skills you get suck hard, only Life Transfer is even worth bothering with.
But it’s not just that they suck, oh no. It’s that it’s takes away all your other skills.
Death Shroud is the only ability the specifically give you less options, not more.

What kind of mental ability makes you weaker instead of stronger? That takes all your options away from you instead of giving you more? I’m sorry, but that is grade A mental mc-spacky pants right there.

I hate using this ability and actively go out of my way to avoid using it, so that I can actually fight and kill the dam enemy. I’d rather risk dying then use it.
Only when I need to run away with my tail between my legs does this horrible ability come in useful. But as I am somewhat decent at the game, that doesn’t happen often.
It’s dead weight as far as I am concerned.
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Pretty much every other ability you can take it or leave it, focus on it or not, and it’s still somewhat useful and class defining. It’s pretty dam pathetic that the Necromancers ability takes away it’s already fairly lousy skills, and gives them even worse ones.
Weapons grade facepalm.

And I can conceive of how it could be much more diverse, like if you could use Life Force on skills or abilities besides Death Shroud, or if the Death Shroud only changed your first 5 skills to, idk, something based on the weapon you had at the time.
Even the original idea, of how Death Shroud was some sort of astral projection, where you left your body behind and could wander off, scout, etc, would be miles for fun and interesting.

Anything, and I mean anything, would be better then this trash.
The core idea is bunk, try again.

Death Magic

And then there were many.
Minion Mastery, that was the name of the game, and boy o boy, could you make minions back in GW1.
Not just a handful, but a small army.

From every corpse of your enemy came 1-2 minions, and even when eventually capped, you still had an army at your command to crush your enemies under shear volume. Provided that you could support them long enough to get from fight to fight.

In addition to requiring fresh corpses, minions deteriorated over time, so you had to constantly support and manage your army, which you often did in addition to supporting your allies. Summoning wasn’t just side gig, it was your job.
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As it it really only real returning main feature of the Necromancer, you have no idea how disappointed I was in it’s implementation.
Instead of an army, you get a handful.
No support, no management, no nothing.

You just summon them and they just sort of, stick around, mindless attacking things with their terrible AI (which is par for the course). You just can’t do much of anything at all with them.
Their secondary skills are just underwhelming, esp compared to turrets and other pets.
They lack utility and aren’t worth the slot compared to other skills. Their just mindless cannon fodder with no mind of their own.
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As a side rant, as a Summoner, someone who always gravitates towards summoning classes, you have no earthly idea how much this F’s me off.
At least with the Elementalist elemental, you have some nuance where the elemental you get depends on the attument your in at the time of summoning. Even clones have nuance, and they were designed to be cannon fodder.

But minions you get bugger all. You can’t do a kittenhing with them outside of traits.
Their functionality is nil, and your interaction with them is non-existent.
As a summoner, it should be you job to manage and support your minions, and minions should be your weapon, not just an augmentation. Weather it be a small army, or a single entity that has a mind of it’s own.
IE, like the Ritutalist of GW1.
(Personally I find the FF11 Summoner to be the best I’ve ever played)

And this is what vexes me so, is that Arenanet got this right the first time. How did you bugger it up so badly the second time? The design team for the Necromancer should be bloody fired for what they did. Gah!
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So, yeah, I hate the minions with a passion.
I don’t necessarily mind the idea of not using corpses to summon them and always having them around, but you have to be able to interact with the bloody things.
Their not turrets, stop treating them as if they were.
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Aside from that, you used to be able to blow up corpses and teleport around, which again it’s gone.

A Di-section of the Mechanics

This it going to be where I breakdown every part of the Necromancer, of what it once was, and what it is now, as to draw a stark contrast between the two.

Also, This is not about weather skills or abilities are effective or not, but about how fun they are compared to what they once were.
I readily admit that in many respects the Necromancer is quite effective, even borderline OP with the right build. I don’t give a dam. If it’s boring as a sack of hammers, I’m not going to play it now am I.
Also, don’t give a toss about traits by in large. Passives should conform to active abilities, it’s the active part that makes it fun, not the passives. Like icing on a cake.
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Blood Magic

Blood used to be all about life stealing, energy management, support and direct damage. You stole life, sacrificed life for powerful or cost effective attacks, or supported allies with your own blood.
It was an fun and interesting little dance you did with your health pool and it gave profession a lot of options.
If you wanted to be a bloody vampire, this was it.

Now, effectively gone. The active life stealing part, withered down to 2 skills….. 2!
That’s bloody criminal.
Instead it’s largely passive, and not even a terribly interesting passive at that, just hit or crit for HP…. yaaay!
The only trait that is generally interesting is Vampiric Rituals, where your wells siphon life. That gives you more options. Even thou technically they don’t ‘steal’ life, as they don’t do any additional damage, but simply generate health for you.
So in that sense you can’t really call it life stealing at all.

You can’t sacrifice life anymore, that’s entirely gone.
And support for the Necromancer is easily the most limited. It’s gone from one of the strongest support professions, to the least. Great job.
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Curses

Hexes in GW1 were awesome.
You could drain life, weaken and slow attacks, make attacking backfire, strip enchantments, and spread conditions back and forth like the plague.

It was deep and meaningful.
Now almost entirely gone.
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Hexes don’t exist, but instead have been “replaced” with an expanded condition/boon system. Which quite frankly is a pale imitation and replacement, it doesn’t have anywhere near the dept Hexes once did.

Partly because few classes had strong Hex lines, namely the Mesmer and Necro. As well as their were comparatively few hex removal skills relative to the shear number of hexes their were in the game. So you had to pick and choose which hexes to remove, as a last on first off sort of system.
So as a Hex user, you would cover your more potent hexes with more trivial and spammable hexes, or even ones that would help you if removed.
There was an art to it.

But now the condition system is more herpmcderp, spam conditions as often as possible and as wide as possible, with little to no regard as to what when.
And every profession aside from the Guardian (application), has a wide range of conditions and removal at their disposal, so it’s as if every profession of GW1 had their own Hex line and removal was a dime a dozen.

It trivializes it, and has made the entire system shallow and dull.

Thou while the Mesmers Confusion has some degree of nuance, Fear is dumb as a sack of hammers. I understand it from a boss mechanic standpoint, that makes sense, but from a player PvE or PvP standpoint, it’s a waste of space.
That, and again you only have 2 readily usable sources for Fear, which makes it basically useless. I honestly think the game would be better if it never existed.
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I will make one concession, boon <-> condition skills are pretty nifty, as are condition transfer, esp since they are one of the better preserved hold overs from the original.
Just wish their was a little more of it on the weapons skills, which are lacking.

Disclaimer: The vast majority of my following argument is based on the old Guild Wars Necromancer. If you haven’t played it, thus don’t have it as a point of reference, a lot of what I am about to say may just not make sense to you.
Trust me when I say the Guild Wars Necromancer is vastly superior to the current day Necromancer.
Also, this won’t be short.
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Introduction

The Necromancer.
I hate it. I hate it with every fiber of my being. Not just for what it is, but for what it once was, and what it could have been, but isn’t.

I like to love every other profession in GW2, and I have played them all.
But the Necromancer stands alone as the one profession I hate to play, and actively makes me angry when I do. Which is why I avoid it like the plague, and have regulated mine to a mule and crafter, it has no other value.
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I am writing this to express my extreme disappointment with Arenanet in this regard, as personally I consider it their greatest failure to date. And I am a long time fan since the launch of the original Guild Wars, which is why I don’t enjoy doing this, but if I don’t say anything, then I am not helping.

Much of what I am about to say is an echo of what I said once back in beta, as I was hoping that the Necro would grow on me, or get tweaked and fixed over time, like the Guardian was.
But it wasn’t and hasn’t, as to me this isn’t a small problem, it’s a fundamental structural problem of how the Necromancer was designed from the ground up.

In my view, the Necro is fundamentally flawed.
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The Root of the Problem

A little history.

I’m an old GW1 vet, played it since launch, had many many years of fun with the game. It was easily the most life defining game I have ever played.

I loved the Elementalist, the Ritualist and Necromancer. I was also fond of the Mesmer, in concept anyway, in practice it had something to be desired as in PvE it was borderline useless for many years, where as it shined in PvP. (which I didn’t do a whole lot of) Thou eventually it got redesigned for PvE.

While I mained a Ritualist, the Necromancer was the profession that kept me playing back in the early days when GW1 was still very rough around the edges.
It was just so unique and different from anything I had played before, even thou I have played Necromancer characters before in other games, just not like this.
The mechanics of GW1 were just so different, that it made the Necro an entirely different beast altogether.

So I have nothing short of a lot of fond memories towards the old Necromancer.
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I draw a lot of parallels between the Mesmer and the Necromancer.
Both were unique, GW1 professions, which were heavily influenced by the unique mechanics of the game, and were brought over into GW2.

The Mesmer was so heavily reliant on those mechanics, that it had to be completely redesigned from the ground up in order to work in GW2, yet still retain it’s GW1 identity.
And it was tremendously successful. It feels new, plays interestingly in it’s own unique way, while being faithful to it’s roots. It is easily my favorite profession in GW2, bar none, specifically because of all the new things it can do.

However, where the Mesmer was about 90% based on the old GW1 engine, the Necromancer was at least 75% bases on that same engine.

But did the Necromancer get redesigned from the ground up, adding new and interesting mechanics? Hell no! We got slapped in the face with a wet salmon.
Instead the Necro had it’s guts ripped out, leaving it’s corpse bleeding all over the floor, and this was replaced by a whole lot of bugger all.
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So in the end it was nether redesigned from the ground up, nor a faithful adaptation like other professions, but rather had almost everything about it either removed, or watered down, with very little new to replace it.