Guild Wars 2

I think the only real thing we lack, is a power based long range weapon. I know, shroud 1 should fill that gap, but it is just underwhelming from the perspective of other classes. You can’t use it all the time, it doesn’t add any benefits, and to capitalize on shroud skills, you have to go into melee range anyways. Rangers can nuke you from long range, even thieves with a bow have better kiting ability. The thing we need is a buff to staff, making it a viable power based choice. Currently, every build benefits from staff, but power builds just fall short. Marks are low damage, ok conditions based skills. Shroud is just too close range to be a viable option.

Tanking is… fine. We lack mobility, we lack damage mitigation, but shroud can tank a lot if necessary.

Hasn’t happened to me ever. 2 years+.

On the other hand, I think what happened, was that you were low on lf, got hit and dropped out of shroud. That happens a lot and got "fixed"TM©, so that now puts your shroud on CD. Most probable cause in my opinion.

You might consider some things.
You don’t have to do anything once your are in plague form, except tap the cast you want once. Plague autocasts that spell from that point in time on. So hitting 2 once will make every single tick blind.

Healing in shroud. sigh Everytime a necromancer mentions being healed in the death shroud, a kitten dies and the dark lord Cthulu weeps about the living souls he can’t get. You. Can. Not. Be. Healed. In. Deathshroud. Period. You are not being healed, you will not be healed and you never were healed in deathshroud. Every time you tap your shroud and the ele next to you tries to save you by healbursting. Yes. It does NOTHING. Except unholy sanctuary. Which is a bad trait.

Don’t run flesh worm. Flesh worm is a horrible skill. Flesh worm is not the stun breaker you want, nor is it the blast finisher we need. Flesh worm is an abysmal joke of a skill. Spectral walk provides you with much more mobility, and can’t be killed. Spectral armor provides you with a lot more tankyness, and can’t be killed.

BUT. I liked your usage of locust swarm and lift transfer a lot. Seems to be a nice combo I’ll try in the future. And you can rez in shroud now. I think. If they didn’t remove it.

I would go for something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBHhZakjmib7txmG+bTULUSWE1A01ZAMDUOHhBA-TVCBABV8AAOTJIWK/A4EAYp6PecEAKa/hNOEA6pPgUAMJMC-w

It’s basically boonstripping mayhem, with enough CC to disengage and get to safety. You primary defensive tool is shroud, while you can dish out heavy hits with lifeblast. Keep in mind, that your enemy is CC, and ask guardians to give you stability.

Most important thing in WvW is perma swiftness. Runes, Warhorn and Spectralwalk will help a lot with that.

First you must decide which way hybrid should be. Do you want to go for more of a condition centric approach or a power focused build?

In either case, necromancer has some “must-have” traits, like chill of death. I think you should ask @flow what he runs, he runs a pretty decent wvw-hybrid roaming build, leaning toward condition damage. Me too, but in… a different way. I use Carrion & Rabid gear with staff, axe and offhand-dagger, while he uses staff, axe and warhorn. I think, if I remember correctly, he is completely carrion with soldier trinkets.

My traits are 6,4,4,0,0,0 with spiteful spirit, chill of death and dhuumfire, weakening shroud and terror, and staff mastery and greater marks. It’s pretty ok for killing about anything that comes along.

EDIT: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3kHFC094-K-K0;9;4TJJ;049C38-46;5VJG7N;1bUytbUytr-Fqs6Z7-7Zy82V6WBXGYL3S4410J72o;9;9;9;9;9;9;0V6s5o

This is basically what I’m running for about a year now. Provides ok utility and if played right, can kill about anything. High chill uptime, great condition damage. It’s a pretty old build, so you might wanna fiddle around with it and try stuff. Haven’t kept up with all the rune and sigil changes, but it still works fine for me.

Necromancer is arguably the most balanced class in the game. We do everything, we do nothing really well, but we do everything. Even after all the nerfs and few buffs, we still steam roll other classes easily. A well played necromancer is a force of nature. We have the coolest class mechanic (there is simply nothing better than shrouding in the life force of diseased enemies), and we have an ok weapon set, primarly focusing on peril and debility.

There is simply nothing in this game, that is as satisfying as melting a mesmer from 100 to 0 in a few seconds, ripping an eles boons or denying a guardians support.

Jinx.7258:

flow.6043:

Jinx.7258:

Du Bist Schuld.8097:

4 transfers…

Consume Conditions is the 4th

That’s not a transfer.
And the potential amount of transfer skills was not the reason for the mark’s nerf.

Would’ve never thought that consume conditions is not a transfer condi skill…. lawl. pointing out the obvioous is so kittened….

CC makes 4 condi REMOVAL SKILLS which makes the necro OP vs any other condi classes. On which side of the earth you dont understand why the change was done?

Oh boy, you must be a thief on your main.
Ok, let’s take the slow route up the mountain. Necromancer was always supposed to be a brilliant shining example for condition play. We are made to excel at conditions. We have the tools to do so, if playing condition damage. Nerfing the Putrid Mark did exactly nothing to condition builds, nothing at all. The first change was fine, it was too strong and nuking someone with a billion stacks of bleeding, confusion and any condition in game, paired with incredibly high condition damage was bad. Removing the 5 condition cleanse was kinda awkward, since we have no real utilities to deal effectively with conditions, nor traits like other classes do. We have consume conditions, which is arguably the best heal in game, next to the healing signet since it’s utility is incredibly high, but what it essentially did, is force necromancers even more into taking that heal, since no one wants to run plague signet anyways. It’s not a bad signet, it’s just not great to constantly blow conditions cleanse, because you draw conditions from your allies. The double blast finisher was uncalled for, it wasn’t imbalanced or anything, just awkward. Since we have no leap finishers or any other real finisher, that is useable on demand, it was useful but not insanely great. The real issue, that most of us have with the nerf, is the reduction of our support / team viability. Most, if not all classes, have default utility casts on their weapons to help teammates, we do not. Staff does not have that utility anymore, or atleast, less. Mark of blood is still there, but giving regeneration, or perma regen to allies is just part of the work.

I hope that you now understand a little more about why we are a bit upset about all the nerfs to our putrid mark.

Are you kidding me?

build for scrubs fighting/hotjoins so warhorn is used…. aint difficult to understand it.

Wow. Such knowledge. So what you are saying is that you, posting on a forum, know better than anyone else, posting on a forum? I can’t even begin to describe how contradictory your position here is.

Mind the main role of necromancer in any setup is to shut down melee classes. Thus the weakness spam,thus necros are countering thieves.

How about… no? The necromancer has no real main role, as we can fill about any, except healer or boon cannon. Shutting down melees is just the same as shutting down ranged with a necro.

About the boon stripping, you seem to have no plan what so ever how this game works. Instead of building your arguments on authority, you should use facts. There is an order in which boons are stripped / converted. You just need to make sure, that you know which ones will be removed. But don’t take it from me, that you have no idea, take it from another high tier Necromancer:https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/WOC-and-Corrupt-Boon-Removal-Order

Sigh,condi is the best coz is kittened burst…. warrs are countered by just kiting the zerker stance…. and its important to land poison so their healing signet doesnt regen…. In the current meta necros counter warrs quite nicely…. Was increadibly dumb when lyssa was present…

Sigh, if it were that easy, warrior would vanish from the pvp meta pretty quickly. Sadly it isn’t. But I imagine that you are not playing well enough to see the problems with kiting, while being thrown around like a fragile egg. Kiting a zerker is one thing, avoiding the cc and the brutal strikes another.

And for the rest… its pretty common to not use axe in small scale…. #1 is too slow,dmg is low,#2 is easily avoidable and compared to many other classes #2 on one-handed weapons IS low dmg….

Damage of #1 is low, granted, #2 is not that easily avoidable without blowing 2 evades or popping something that makes you evade / invulnerable, which leaves you with 2 evades or an invuln skill down, susceptible to terror. #2 is low damage, but cripple + boon strip, which is an ok tradeoff to have. There are not many classes, that have an aoe cripple boonstrip on low cooldown on a weapon.

As I said,dont ask on forums,here everyone knows eveything about the necro when they r not even playing it. Neither on high lvl, nor at all. Coz some scrub made some build after 2 matches in spvp doesnt mean anything. Everything I linked is currently played and some are viable.

Dont see any of u (those 2 posters above me) to be anything good or known players to judge. When you have experience you’ll know best. Till… then…

What I said is common knowledge if you dont have it… well… dont post lol

Atleast we know more about necro than you do it seems. I don’t see the necros mentioned by you to be good players, able to judge the matter either. I provided you with facts, why warhorn and axe are viable weapons in most builds, but you chose to ignore them, provide your personal opinion, and mention some dudes out there, who seemingly play in the mlg.

IF what you said was common knowledge, we wouldn’t have this discussion. It’s at best your personal opinion, and not very informed. lol

Edit:

Some salt for your wounds: Currently you are sPvP Solo rank 356, flow is 253. So going by your arguments, your argument is invalid and he’s right, he’s better than you are and has more experience following your reasoning.

Dirame.8521:

Would you guys find it more useful if it pulled a condition from 5 allies for each second of Life Transfer channel duration?

Yes. Better but still not grandmaster worthy.

Jinx.7258:

Most of the builds posted here are made by the posters themselves and are quite bad. Thats why you dont ask on the forums for builds coz every noob will pop out of nowhere and will offer u his build,that he made by himself… which is sooo wrong.
Axe and dagger mainhand are for power builds. And dagger mainhand with Dhuumfire is more for duels.

In this meta (if there’s any right now) for the necro is:
- Condi – Dhuumfire Condi
- Dark Path – Boon strip…or sort of Dark Path
- Power – well or sort of power Power wells

Condi is the best prolly. Its used for quite some time now. You can swap the wurm and the spectral walk for spite and plague signet if u want more burst dmg (but 1 less stunbreaker and its mostly for hotjoins/fighting scrubs). Or you can swap the wurm for spite only. If you use signets,use signet mastery instead of might on life blast

Dark Path, I gotta say I dont know what exactly is traited apart from Path of Corruption tbh… its sort of that type. Its cheesy and I wont play it,unless its very necessary.

Power wells is for 1v1s/fighting scrubs. Wont work vs descent players. You can swap the wurm for spectral grasp but wont have stunbreaker.

Dont use axe in spvp. Scales bloody terribly with power. No long range physical dmg weapon so… staff on every build. Warhorn is pretty useless as well…. And now you know everything about the necro in gw2…

If not too tired I’ll stream necro gameplay tomorrow late afternoon or on Wednesday…. if you wanna see some basic rotations.

Condi is the best? With all those stance warriors running around, you’de be happy to land even one bleed before being focused down and taken apart. If you want to run condi, you’d better make sure you bring a buddy to tank atleast some damage for you. I admit, having a guardian or ele with you, to buff you up, while playing condi, puts you into a state of god mode, but if you want to cap alone and pressure something else than a condi ranger, a hybrid build would do you more good. Carrion amulet is pretty great since it also provides some power.

Path of corruption is a great addition what we already do best, boon stripping. In the current meta might stacking is pretty essential and you can completely shut down any might stacking with all the corruptions we have. Dark path is just another way to top it of with creaming and a cherry. Run well of corruption, corrupt boon and path of corruption in combination with a dagger for dark pact and you are golden for killing anything that uses boons.

I completely concur with your opinion about well builds…

Don’t use axe? It doesn’t scale well with power, but… 12% shroud + boon strip with cripple aoe? That is some mighty fine skillset right there. Warhorn isn’t useless either. Since you play condi I assume you don’t play those two too much, but Warhorn and axe are (apart from the lack of power scaling) pretty awesome. Warhorn has a 3 second daze on a low cooldown, locust swarming and dropping directly into shroud provides a rather good tanking ability and the daze gives you a good window of opportunity to disengage, heal or drop some heavy damage.

And I would love to know, why builds made by people around here are a problem for you?

djooceboxblast.9876:

flow.6043:

Holl.3109:

just because I don’t have a stunbreaker doesn’t mean i don’t survive…

While I agree with your general assessment, you could easily give up Signet of Spite in favor of a stun break. The more or less only valid use of this signet is applying cover conditions, but since you don’t play a condi build you have very little reason to run it in the first place.

This is bullkitten! Dont listen to him – Signet of Spite is good for defensive purposes (Uh Oh 14 seconds of weakness anyone?!?). It also blinds and is generally a good allround signet used for different purposes.

No it’s not. The build lacks mobility and or defensive capabilities. Signet of Spite is a horrible signet as far as signets go. It’s basically a one trick pony, if it doesn’t work, you die. The conditions are not special conditions that you couldn’t get otherwise and do you really think anyone will let your conditions tick the full 14 seconds? I’d love to see how you use it defensively while being knocked around. The issue here is, the passive is crap, and the active is weak at best. Anyone with a cleanse will have no problem dealing with it.

The flashing was unnecessary… BUT… they work if you drop out of shroud… no more 1 second lockout from utilities. So I’d rather have them flash than not working at all.

Let’s start with the current flavor PvP Condition Damage Necromancer: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAnYWjc0UebvN+0webCchC6DIAi2I/gJgy2YMA-TphCwAYOCALeAAV3fYbZAAnAgKHCAA

You may swap the axe with scepter, but the axe is simply there for 2 reasons, regen lifeforce fast with axe 2 and strip some more boons with 3.

What it does: Tons of damage. Stay out of major brawls, skim along the sides and stack conditions on whoever is unlucky enough to draw your attention. Keep reapers mark up at all times for emergencies like shadow refuge and charging warriors.

How you play it: You stay out of major brawls, tagging people as you pass with conditions. Terror does a billion damage per proc, so that is your primary goal, strip stability, make sure to stack conditions and fear lock them. Make sure to proc dhuumfire once they run fearing you, for maximum damage and rage in the opponents team. Works the same in a 1v1 as in a 1v2 as in a XvX, kite, stack, win.

What you need to watch out for: Stability. Stability and invulnerability (say Berserker’s stance, Rampage as one, Renewed Focus) are your primary enemies. If you see someone putting all the stances up, disengage, wait for them to run out, call your teammates and go somewhere else. With axe & corrupt boon you have a decent boon removal. You may switch the wall with epidemic if you want, it’s fine too.

What I am currently playing: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBIhZakjmybrpx2GOcTgLUQ+mBQ0fwJkvU2GnBA-TpBBwAVeAAAOCAgOBA12focZgAHCAA

You can use axe instead of dagger, but that is a major dps loss.

What it does: Kill about anything rather quickly. I love the DPS while still being tanky as a warrior.

How you play it: Go for the squishees, aka Casters, let the warriors and guardians blow their stability and stances while you rip apart the backline. Piercing blast gives you a good chance of dealing attrocious damage while still tanking and kiting. Make sure to constantly strip boons. Lifeblast gives you a good amount of might, but if you want to win, keep stripping other peoples might. Root enemies with dark path and lay out the well of corruption, constantly convert with path of corruption and corrupt boon. If you find a good opportunity, pop lich form. Make sure that everyone is busy, or its a 1v1. I primarily use it to burst down people coming in for close, even in a 1v2, chances are, that lich form auto will kill them before they land a single skill. Don’t pop it vs necros, just kit them over and over with dagger and shroud. Well of corruption, locust swarm and spectral armor activated, switch into shroud, enjoy invincibility.

What you need to watch out for: Conditions classes. Cleansing on that build is not awesome, you have 1 transfer and 1 complete cleanse. That’s enough for me, hide in shroud until your heal is back up. Another problem, as with any necromancer build, are heavy cc classes. Any class except necromancer will have atleast some problem stripping the lich stability (watch out for boon rip shatter mesmers). Use it against warriors and guardians. Projectile reflection can be a problem if you are smart enough to pop lich while someone is reflecting. Enjoy your own damage. Stay in melee range, to disengage, switch to shroud and hammer with lifeblast.

tuman.6593:

Sigils of energy, stun break abilities, condition transfer and boon conversion skills, some chilling… Engineers have no a lot of condi removals, and use dodges, stun breaks and chilling against warriors. Its hard but not impossible. We have only one weakness what make us useless – we have no escape abilities. Only flesh wurm.

The problem isn’t escaping, the problem is that we can’t play the attrition game we are supposed to play. The current state of the necromancer has worsened every patch. The moment we got dhuumfire it went uphill, because condition mancers, who had no shroud regen (compared to power mancers), and no real escape could hold the line against other classes by dealing high damage and forcing enemies to disengage at some point. We made them run and basically escaped that way. But being borderline op comes at a cost, they took our bleeds and it went downhill from there. The bleed nerf was quite significant, taking away mark of blood bleeds and grapsing dead bleeds, making our bleed burst much worse than before. And then, then they took dhuumfire, leaving everyone who did not go for dhuumfire but path of corruption sit there without the bleeds they’d need. Don’t get me wrong, a well played condition mancer is still a force of nature, but for the wrong reasons. We should be able to tank and reapply conditions constantly, without fearing every interrupt and every thief.

TL;DR: I am fine with not having escapes, as long as people have to think twice before engaging me.

Xhean.3452:

what is attrition? I see it all over the forums but I don’t get it. can someone explain the term to me?

Basically it means to kill your enemy slowly by outhealing them, out tanking them, out playing them whatever your class can do. Necromancers were conceptually meant as an attrition class, slowly killing your enemy with reapplication of conditions, while you tank burst and other damage with your shroud and other skills. Sadly, other classes are much much better at the attrition game. Take a CnD thief, constantly backstabbing you, taking your health chunk by chunk. Yes, you can heal, but your heal is always a little bit less than what the thief has taken from your health. That is a game of attrition, wearing down your opponent bit by bit.

I am at the point where the Elite “Necromancer’s Guard”, simply giving 20 seconds of stability without forcing me to change my form and walk around without being able to stomp anything or pick something up, would make me very happy. 180 sec cd, 1.5 second casttime ._.

or

“Summon Swimming Flesh Golem”
Completely the same as flesh golem, but this one can swim. Essentially, the elite doesn’t do anything, except keeping your golem alive when you enter water, so if you exit, it’s still there.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Parasitic Contagion I would say is edging worthy of the grandmaster status (I sure like it). What it actually does is pretty nice as supplementary healing.

It’s still bad. In a situation where it would be good (1v1, 1v2) it’s bad, because you can’t really build the condition pressure you’d need to get atleast some sustain. Let’s assume necromancer would be really good at what necromancers are supposed to do, and you manage to somehow stack 25 stacks of bleeding on one of your enemies, and let’s assume, that you managed to land the epidemic and you have the ungodly amount of 50 bleeds running, at the same time. That is a whopping 325 heal/s for you. Yes. That much. Going by 21k health, it would take you a minute to heal yourself up, assuming you didn’t take any damage at all, and assuming you didn’t shourd, since heals don’t work through shroud. Even under optimal circumstances, with applied dhuumfire poison and bleeding, you get a whole ~440 heal, which is still optimistic. And this is assuming you hit everything and your enemies don’t cleanse anything.

And why not more targets? As more targets come in, the higher is the chance that someone runs an AoE cleanse, which completely and utterly negates your parasitic contagion. The best case you can get, is stack one target up, hit the epidemic, enjoy your ~600 reg for 2 seconds and then be cc’ed down and killed by a warrior.

For comparison, the warrior healing signet heals ~362 without any conditions. Without stacking anything up. While enjoying the full heal from everyone else. And that’s base.

All in all, this trait is worthy of master or adept, not grandmaster. Just like unholy martyr.

Unholy martyr does a terrible job at what it should do. It removes conditions badly. Horribly. well of Power does a better job, Signet of plague does a better job, while giving you the option to get rid of those conditions. Assuming you have around ~12500 hp in death shroud, unholy martyr provides a 208 heal for your shroud. Doesn’t sound bad? Well, actually it is. That is not factoring in the natural decay of your shroud. Taking decay into account, you get exactly 9% decay instead of 12%. Why? 3*4% – 5%. That happens every 3 seconds. In essence, this is one of the worst traits there is, replacing nothing, providing even less than nothing. Unholy martyr is unworthy of a minor adapt trait in my opinion, since it does nothing at all. Btw, the drawn condition does damage too. So the 9% or 210 heal are reaaaallllyyy optimistic. More like 70 per second.

McLovin.2408:

I PvP and WvW roam most of the time when i play this game and i have come up with a pretty good build for me so i just want to share it with fellow Necros.
http://intothemists.com/guides/2831-mclovins_wvw_condie_build
You don’t have to do everything exactly like the build it is just what i find my self looking at majority of the time i’m roaming. Things you can change are like the gear you can go to Dire which is really good in small groups and of course the utilities like the Signet of Spite, also i good thing to do is if your with another heavy condie applying friend is to use Epidemic.
This works for me so you should give it a try

I roam my necromancer… [Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMax7tbib07JEJFXzzA9YXwFQMSxxEMA-jkBBYhJDpRQOFqIasl1FRjVLjIqWvETKAYmDA-w]

It’s basically a condition bomber. There are some nuances to roaming a necromancer that makes it harder than other classes.
Downsides:
- Although you can clear a camp in seconds, and kill 3 people easily, you have to pick your engagements wisely. If anything goes wrong, you blow a skill or you get interrupted in your epidemic, you are not going to get out of there alive. Necromancers are immobile to the max (hence spectral walk, to have atleast something to move around), and you will die if you get catched by more than 2-3 people.
- Shroud lockout is a real problem. Pick your shroud timings wisely, wait for your heal in the shroud and make sure you take the 1 second ui refresh on shroud dropping into account.
- For any people you run with, you will be a liability. Necromancers are incredibly strong, but get killed easily. We have no blocks, we have 1 evade every 10 seconds and we have to facetank everything (although shroud helps a bit, it’s suboptimal). You will most probably be the first to die if you run with other classes.

Upsides:
- Clears camps alone in under a minute. Thanks @Epidemic & Staff
- Insane pressure on enemies. If you manage to stay behind your friends you can dish out insane loads of damage and crowd control. Dhuum + Terror hits so hard, that most thieves melt instantly. If you stay alive you will melt most other classes and players in seconds. (Granted, if they know exactly what they do… It will take a minute or something=
- Good 1v1 specs. Let’s be honest. Necromancer is probably one of the strongest brawlers. We melt stuff. And with unblockable marks, you can deny most defense other classes have. (Looking at you, PU mesmers.)

Overall, I like roaming my necro, although, I now prefer my thief or mesmer. The mobility of the necro is just attrocious. You can’t run from a fight, and you can’t run into a fight. Everything is faster than we are. Everything. And if played right, other classes will simply disengage and go home, leaving you without a chance to chase them.

For in case when the necro get’s into the situation where there are 4 gates and one enemy, he could siphon more health than he is supposed to. ’Aight.

I kind of like the idea, and it would give us something “supporty”. Some thief chasing your friends? Pull ’em. We are a high health class and should be able to soak up some damage. My suggestion would be, that the pull should come at a high cost, after all, we are a “Bad for me, worse for you” class. Everything we do basically hurts us too. What, and I am just throwing science at the wall here, if this pull, removed the conditions on the target? So that the pull would be a costly investment, since you have to reapply all your conditions? I mean, if you pull five people to you, they will be staff bombed / sceptered to death, but what if the pull would remove their conditions prior to the bombing? I think that would make it a “Better think about this twice” skill, and I think it would fit our class well. And oh yes, please give it a fancy name?

On a side note:
You can do basically the same burst without Signet of Too-High-CD. All in all, I don’t think that is a good build, since you run plague signet and staff and ohd. It’s just overkill on condi cleanse. Blood is power would be much more fitting. And since you chose to more or less kill noobs, I gotta say, I am not really impressed with the fights…

Ascii.9726:

Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.
• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133116

This is my take on the changes:

• Mark of Blood: Well, it kinda had to happen. We really did burst bleeding well, but no one ever complained about our bleeding damage, but our all around condition stacking. We did not have too many bleeds, but too many different conditions. Necros can stack every possible condition in this game in a matter of seconds, and people are just flabberghasted by the amount the cannot cleanse. Which… well… is our primary purpose.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life: Still useless. Does this even work with our siphons? Our heals are bad as they are, and that is not going to fix that problem. Also, it just works around the problem, that the necromancer is unable to sustain, because we cannot dodge anything for 10 seconds.
• Spite X – Chill of Death: That is probably usefull. Currently, the moment Chill of Death procs, the enemy is already dead. You still had to run other condi removals to really bring a buffed profession down. Maybe this will atleast help powermancer.
• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud: Again, we nerf something that was not that broken. Since we can’t dodge, it was kind of important to keep weakness up. Granted, it was a little strong in combination with others, but how exactly did that count as overpowered?
• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail: Brings it en-par with other classes cdrs. No complaint from me there.
• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection: Same as for Banshees.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength: Still doesn’t fix that necros dps on power builds is far less than other professions. Maybe don’t fix the trait, but our scalings? Maybe??
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power: I am not sure if that is really worth 25 points in this line. Although 120 power is good, it is still dependend on you being above a health threshold. Since necro can’t really move around or dodge more than once or twice every fight, this trait still does not much for us.
• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence: Ye, that one’s good. But I don’t really like where this is going. This is forcing about everyone to play shroud centric and only play shroud centric builds, since these are the only traits that really help.

Things that are still missing from the patch:
- No way to gain endurance.
- No way to disengage.
- No way to tank one-shot kills.
- No way to sustain minions in large aoe brawls.
- Death magic still not that great.
- Health siphoning still not that great.
- Support still not that great.

It took me one day to calm down, but, I have to add something.
I don’t know where to put this, so devs read it, and it’s not really a bug.

Here we go.

What infuriates necromancer atm is not that we get constantly nerfed, or that our class is inherently near-unplayably bugged, what really infuriates us, it that you do not communicate at all with us. You change things, you don’t put them in the patch notes. You remove things, you don’t tell us about it. Anet stated that they wanted to establish GW2 as an e-sport, which is not going to happen like this. Constantly you change things that were not broken in the first place, and you do not communicate with players who play the game everyday. Going into a thread and stating that “This skill was the strongest in the game” does not count as communicating, it only shows that you do not seem to understand what it actually meant to play this skill. Every other large game has a Q&A and a “Talk about the new changes before they happen” and a “Here are the reasons we did that and that.”, look at SC2, if they were to change a units dps without changing the tooltip, oh man, something would hit the fan. What really hurts is the non-communication of stealth nerfs. You could have told us that you changed putrid mark. It was NOT in the patch notes.

And now, how to fix this:
- Putrid mark is primarily useful for groups. It’s about the only support we have (please don’t force us to play wells… we don’t support well already as it is.). Other professions get support like this already out of the box. Warrior warhorn is aoe, so many classes are aoe. Mesmers now clear condis aoe with mantras. We can’t we just make putrid mark remove one condition from allies that stand in it? It doesn’t seem overpowered, it doesn’t need to transfer them (which would be a little bit strong), just remove one condition. It would keep up the “supporty feel” and also synergize well with minions.

- Non-Communication: You have a plethora of great players that know what they do here in the forums. You could simply put up the change notes before they happen (all of them) in the profession forums. Tell us what we are going to lose, and for all that is holy, update the tool tips with the changes. Communicate with your community. Everyones on the edge because you keep changing things that no one needed. We need some way of gaining endurance, since we can be one-shot out of our only defense (shroud). We need some way to support, and wells are not it. And if all of this happened because of dhuumfire, remove it. I don’t really enjoy playing a class that does not work at all, because no one knows how to fix it.

If you drop out of plague form prematurely, the “plague is on” thing stays, so does the range indicator. The necromancer is out of plague form, and can use his normal skills.

Second that. Marks do not work on anything that has those targetting circles. Which always reduces me down to just using my scepter, losing regeneration on my minions / allies, losing a fear and losing a condition cleanse (which does only work on me anyways.) Please make it so that I can use my staff vs World bosses?

So to get this straight. Because we got dhuumfire, you bugged our staff, you removed our only party on-demand condition remove (how does plague signet actually work?? Fix your skill descriptions, so they make sense.), you removed our ability to tank hits, as we are the only class without any means of escaping, you took life force regen from us, and now you suggest to move the trait that you introduced to master and buff it in the process? I am kind of afraid, that after that buff, I will get no staff at all, which I think will not be labelled as a bug, my shroud will be available all 3 minutes and my lf will consist of waiting a day to replenish it. Jokes aside, the staff nerf condition removal wise down to 3 conditions per cast was ok. The removal of the only feature that made it really viable for parties was unnecessary. No one ever complained about that one. Everyone is complaining about dhuumfire, and instead of just giving it a 50-80% proc chance on crit, you want to buff it? Where exactly does that make sense? I don’t want to be the only class that cannot under any circumstances run support and still do a bit of damage.

PS: I am kind of sick of the stealth nerfs, and I am sick of the changes that happen and you don’t tell us about at all. Stop pushing out content and fix your classes first. And for gods sake, please, make the tooltips say what the skill actually does? It’s not helping, that my putrid mark still says “Removes conditions from allies, transfers them to enemy.” . Please talk to the quality assurance department and ask them what they are doing down there. It doesn’t seem that they are even reviewing anything.
That aside. Move Dhuumfire to Curses, where it belongs, replace that aweful scepter thing that is in there.

PPS: On another note, Doom (Yes. The shroud skill) is still bugged if you switch into shroud while having a staff equipped and ground targetting at fast. Just putting this here too.

No. Doing this will just ruin most diversity in builds we have. It was an adept trait to begin with. Granted, it did not belong in adept, since you could run terror and dhuumfire and master of corruption, which was ludacrously strong, but no. Terror is not something that belongs in grandmaster. If you want terror, you already sacrafice a good deal of dps, lifeshroud regen or defensive stats. Dhuumfire put us on the same level as other classes, dps wise, since we don’t have confusion (arenanet, if you read this, please nerf confusion damage? K, thx bye). Even with terror, fear is the first condition to be cleansed, stability negates all terror damage and if you had to go into grandmaster and went 30/30, you would lose a great deal of dps because reapers mark could be blocked. In any case. Running terror without dhuumfire takes a good deal of damage away. If we could play the attrition game right, and outsurvive our opponents, then we could move terror to grandmaster and maybe not run dhuumfire, but as it stands, necromancers are not a great attrition class.

I love the necromancer, and every bit of it. Although there is a long way to go to make him a good class, I just like the feel of it. I never liked boons much anyways, so necromancer was my first choice. The thing I really like, which I just couldn’t find in other classes, is the build variaty. It’s basically anything goes. I switch builds every week or so, and they all kinda work. They are not the wombocombo builds like mesmers or eles or warriors have, but they all work. Also, I love the feeling of just calling down the thunder with all the conditions we have. Bursting 20stacks bleeding, chilled cripple and poison just feels nice. And the deathshroud, where my little asura shouts “I AM DEATH INCARNATE!” is just awesome.

Andele.1306:

Ascii.9726:

I’m quoting a dev directly after the Deathshroud change, unless there wrong.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DeathShroud-is-now-base-100-HP/first#post2539415

Im sorry but are you taking the word of the devs (the ones that at least post about bugs on the forums) that said Necro downed hp is ok, Blood well isnt healing the enemy, engie kits work with sigils and that whirlwind/line damage abilities cannot hit a single enemy multiple times?

Wait, what? Blood pool is healing the enemy?

And for our survivability:
We basically have none. What on earth does it help to have 100k+ health if you get permanently cc’ed, have no way to disengage EVER, and about anything can hunt you down? Fighting with my necromancer is always a fight to the death. Either I die, or they die. But again. ANet made us attrition without any means to stand long enough to kill something. Yes. 1v1 we are pretty good. But the moment like 2 eles show up, I know it’s gg. Necromancer has no way to handle the knockdowns without investing 30 into soulreaping (if you are a condi mancer, that is just awesome. Now you can’t outdamage a warrior healing signet.)

Please ANet… Give us a way to run or to stay in a fight (and yes, I mean stability.)

Nec
The Blood line underwent some tweaks, as it’s something that Necromancer players often feel is a lacking trait line. Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, Vampiric Master have all seen improvements.
For QoL (again, quality of life) we also improved the Life Force meter to show the actual bar better (moved slightly so it’s not competing with the skill icon for UI space), and the bar now shows your current Life Force amount, and the tooltip also shows current/max Life Force available. It makes it much easier to see how much Life Force you have, and lets you plan your engagements better.

Although this is exactly what we asked for, we also asked for a few other things. Some stability without wasting 30 into a traitline condition mancers can’t use, and please. For the love of god, and all that is holy, remove the reanimator trait. Just put something else in there, even if it is “Grants you nothing. But also no jagged horror spawns.” – After saying that, I welcome those changes. I’m thrilled to hear about a rework of our blood magic. As a fast ground targetting user, I also welcome that change.

Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.

This is plain awesome. if my golem had a nose, I would ask you to add this to my golem too.

Power Cleanse: We wanted to add some condition support, and made it so that this skill can remove 2 conditions from 5 allies.

Nerf this. nao. this is far too strong. Running 3 mesmers in a group of 5 or a group of up to 15 people will make for an insane conditions cleanse. Not even necros can do this that well…

Oh, one more thing, I FRICKING LOVE that you previewed it, and not just pushed out the “Here’s the patch. Read the notes.”. Thank you so much for that.

..Or just trolling…

Umut.5471:

No stomp option for necro is perfect, i wouldn’t spend my elite skill for one stomp.
Best option is spending 30 trait point at soul reaping for 3s stability of ds, but it’s just a waste of 30 traits if you’re conditionmancer. they have to move this stability trait to adept tier of death magic or blood magic trait lines. Because these trait lines are commonly used among builds.

Not only is it a waste, it also doesn’t work well on a condition mancer. I ran a 20/20/0/0/30 just to get that secure stomp and soon started noticing, that my damage output from conditions had suffered so much, that I could go up against a warrior or ele. I would love to have any form of secure stomp because even if I get ahead in a 1v2/3 and get one person down, I just cant stomp them. Blowing the elite for one stomp seems a bit over the top to me. Move Foot In The Grave to death magic, that would atleast synergize with staff masteries and give some purpose to this otherwise mediocre trait line.

I know that feel. I got kicked from a frac18 party yesterday, because after the 12th wipe, I dared to ask, if they were kittened, running 3 zerg warriors and a mesmer in the fractals. Those zerkers melt like chocolate in the sun, outside of the normal dungeons.

spoj.9672:

teonimesic.1403:

Just dont join speed runs. Its as simples as that. On speed runs people will want to have classes that either allows to skip content, or that manage to kill bosses faster. Which usually means having 4 warriors stacked on a wall spining their blades non stop.

I’ve been playing a lot of CoE and CoF the last few days, with a rabid/dire gear and never heard people complain. Are there better classes for specific contents? Sure, and there are always going to be. Just do yourself a favor and dont join parties with either speed run or lf1 warrior labels.

You do realise you are probably contributing barely noticable damage in coe with a condition build. Alpha and the golem both cleanse conditions.

This is not true. Although conditions get cleansed, you still apply them and they tick for a while. I never had any problems grinding those golems down. The best run I had was 4 necros and a thief. Epidemics just stack conditions so fast, everything melts.

But honestly, I couldn’t give less of a kitten what people expect me to run in a dungeon. I had terrible runs with zerkers, I had terrible runs with pure condi groups. Maybe because I tend to love higher level fractals, and that is where tanky casters begin to shine, maybe because I don’t like the normal dungeons. I had runs with oddballs (thieves engies necros, all in one party!) that worked marvelously, and I had runs with the “zerkers”, that went downhill from the moment I joined their group.

No. If they were to fix their classes, keep more contact with their players (hello? Necromancer bugs unanswered for months.), fix their engine and make WvW more engaging, yes. I would bathe them in my money. If they fixed the necromancer AND made him viable in pvp matchups, I would fly to the headquarters and wash their feet. But as the current state of WvW and PvE and PvP is, no. I’d rather farm for hours.

Most probably Necromancer and Mesmer, as the current state of the game is. Necromancer has insane condition pressure and mesmer does insane damage over all. Guardian, Thief and Ele would most probably rank second, Warrior have about one build that works pretty well in a duelling situation (mace shield, hammer), and engis and rangers have to be played very very well to compete with others.

I’ll be chipping in my 2 cents of thoughts:

First, people are not really prepared for conditions. Most enemies you meet up until you really play WvW and PvP stack some conditions, but not many. You mainly get direct damage, which is stopped by toughness, protection and retaliation. From that you wont learn how much condition punishment your build can take.

Second, condition cleanse on most classes (not necromancer) is kind of bad. Most skills remove 1-3 conditions at most and have a somewhat high cooldown. If you go for OHD and staff, you already have 2 cleanses, which remove 3 conditions each. Other classes don’t have that luxury.

Third, many people think that direct damage is the optimal way to grind on someone. Again, direct damage can be reduced by boons and armor. Conditions completely ignore thoughness protection and retaliation. While a build with much retaliation will kill someone with high power / crit damage rather fast, a necromancer will not be impressed at all.

Fourth, many conditions are hard to judge. Yes, you see that you have 25 stacks bleeding but they all tick by themselves for like 120 damage per second. Now do the math, I can’t really do it in my head, so I just grabbed a calculator. 3000dps. That is what you get. And you don’t clearly see 3000 tick away on you, like with confusion, where you get one big “2k DAMAGE” sign thrown at you the moment you use a skill. Necromancers don’t have confusion. Mostly we work with poison, fear and bleeding. Fear is rather obvious if you spec into terror. 1.5k damage per tick is obviously not good. But people are not prepared for it. You can chain (if you get someone with stability and can corrupt it) 3 fears. If each one ticks for 1.5k damage twice, that is a whopping 9k damage burst. And most people are not prepared for it. Many don’t have anything equipped to get out of a stun lock (aka. fear lock), but one stun breaker. And they use it rather poorly. The first fear hits, most people break it and instantly chew on the other (or other two) fears you can dish out. Condition handling is on most people I have met, rather poor. There are not many classes who can chain up to 3-4 locks and grind away on you the same time.

Packing CC of their own, like many warriors do now, helps. And that is also why I went for foot in the grave. CC is completely underrated, since not many classes have great CC at all. But necromancer do, with their insane fear locks.

Just my thoughts.

I don’t like the thought of a melee death shroud, since it’s vital for me to be able to still kite while in my shroud. BUT I love the idea of a scythe. Why can’t we have a scythe and use ranged attacks? Life blast has a long enough animation to have us swing the scythe and release the blast like a ball thrown from a bat. Also, Dark path, we could throw that scythe at the enemy, with an attached chain. It’s a more obvious animation and would help players recognize it. (Dark path is kinda hard to judge when exactly it hits.). Doom, well… Have us ram our scythe into the ground, like gandalf. Mostly it is a “You shall not hit me” skill. Lifeblast looks nice, but could be bundled into a scythe. And tainted shackles, well, ARENANET make them look like shackles please. Not like some gooy ooze coming out of me. thxkbay

TL; DR:
Melee shroud is a bad idea. If someone dodges you gap closer, well, you are out of luck. Your shroud is now there to be drained, while you run at your opponent.

I can’t test it in PvP, since it relies on food and ascended stuff. None of this is available in pvp. I ran a berserker build in PvP once, but I used lichform, and wells.

Well, Minion Master, I don’t think it will work too well. I tried it (mind, carrion & rabid gear), and it didn’t work so good. Although the golem is great and my elite skill of choice, the others underperform. Without well ground targetting, I couldn’t really kite while my minions did the work. Well of power is about the only conditions cleanser I got, and it was not nearly enough, as I had to waste it as a stun breaker. Although the regen on focus helped, my minions died far too easily. I don’t think this build will stand up in a real fight. Also, in Zerg fights, minions are completely useless. They just get instagibbed by AoE. The life force regen was nice, and useable, but shroud cooldown killed it, basically. Maybe it was just my carrion gear, but I got anihilated. Can you do a video of yourself using it? That would help alot getting the hang of it.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Ok I willl put up a new guide as soon as possible. Sorry was on a vacation and couldn’t reply. But psygate. I have a question to ask you. All i wanted was for you to take a look at my build. A lot of other players also just post their build and ask people to look at it for them and all of this community doesn’t have a problem with it.

I did. Others did. And it was deleted, for a reason. If you don’t stop posting “This is the best build ever, but I’ve never run it.”, this won’t stop. If you want to be taken seriously, post your build, and record yourself playing it. Not just theory craft your stuff, try it.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Why do you only bother me. Please stop. I know i messed up my first post so I made this to try to make it up and start a new. What makes you think that I know nothing about the Necromancer mechanics and think I am just trolling with the whole community?

Again. You do not test your builds but theorycraft stuff. Test your builds, post results and videos of you doing something with it. You self bump your posts and claim they are the best and most valuable on the forum. They are not. Deal with it.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Why do you always criticise me so harshly? And why do you say that I don’t accept criticism? Maybe because you think I have to answer to your mean comments and have to kneel down before you to say how sorry i am of messing everything up.

Because you neither react to what I nor others say. We / I told you, to test your builds and stop self bumping and theory crafting. TEST YOUR BUILDS. AND THEN POST. PLEASE. (On a side note, I can’t find the part where I said kneel before your god, me. Link me to this please.)

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

You know that you are making me angry on perpose. Please stop. This goes to all of the community. I know there are lots of genuinely nice people here. But about 90% of the people in this community only care about the people they know and always try to kick a newcomer out. Please quit it I beg you.

No. I am not trying to make you angry. But you seem to be ignoring nice forms of criticism, telling you to stop and test before posting. I am tired of getting this “This is the greatest build. I clicked it on a website.”

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

Like i said. I was only trying to start a new and try to fix all the mistakes I made in the first post and to do better on this thread. Just stop criticising like I’m some kind of mangy dog. please.

Ok, well, you want it to be like this. I tell you what would be nice of you. Make a thread called “The Menace Builds” and post all of your buils there. Stop spamming the main page and self bumping stuff. Gather your builds, put them in one thread. Stop self bumping your stuff. If someone is interested in it, they will bump it for you.

If I was too harsh to you, I am sorry about that. I did not mean to make you angry or cry. I was merely trying to get through to you and make you stop spamming the forum with mediocre builds. Again, put them all in one thread, and we can talk about them. A great name does not make a great build.

Also, please mention what your build exactly is for. Like this build, if you go for champions in PvE, most of them have defiant. That makes terror a lot less worthy of running.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Necros are decent at quite a few things.

The big one being epidemic, which is the only force multiplier in the game other than quickness. And despite what others above me have said, it dosn’t rely on other professions at all. A good condi necro can stack 12 to 13 bleeds in an AoE rather quickly, and then follow that up with epidemic puts 4 enemies at bleed cap, then 2 enemies half way there. No other class has nearly this potential. This also comes with all of the other conditions that get stacked along the way, such as cripple, weakness, poison, burning, chill, torment, and blind. Throw in other players, and confusion and vulnerability are also multiplied. The biggest advantage here is that epidemic, being a force multiplier, benefits from other players laying down conditions instead of losing out. Necromancer is the only condi class that can claim this, and a good condition necro will disable an entire room of mobs mere moments after entering a room, while doing a ton of damage to boot.

For a good example of what Necros can do, just look at what they do in sPVP. Despite what others above have said, the AoE and disabling potential of Necromancers transfers well to sPVP. The biggest advantage that necros have over other condition classes is that the necromancer can burst long duration conditions. Engineers, rangers, and mesmers all have to slowly build up conditions, or their conditions are extremely short duration. But necromancers lay down long duration conditions, then seal the deal with their deadliest sPVP trait: terror. With terror, the necromancer has a high damaging stun that also prevents condition cleanses, and much to the dismay of low HP classes this can kill an unprepared build outright. They get enough conditions to overwhelm cleanses, which makes them effective in the sPVP scene.

The big confusion people have is that they assume support = buffs and heals. That is a rather shallow definition. While necromancers can give everyone regeneration with marks, protection with spectral wall and wells, and random boons with Well of Power, most of the necromancer support is offensive. Necromancers have the best access to weakness in the game, cutting the direct damage of enemies by 25%. Necromancers are good at stacking vulnerability, which increases the direct damage of all other players by up to 25%. They have good AoE cripple, Chill, and Immobilize, which prevents enemies from escaping as well as prevents enemies from catching up. Then there is boon corruption and blinds, which while some other classes have more access (other classes being thief), necromancer blinds and boon corruption is still extremely useful to the team. Necros also have condition transferrence and corruption, which is superior to cleansing.

One of the cool things necros also have is extremely high Effective HP or EHP. In larger fights the necro has a weakness to being focused, however in smaller fights, Death Shroud provides a large amount of survivability. There are many bosses in the game that have rapid but weaker attacks, and against these bosses the necromancer can face-tank these bosses in bersrker gear. In PVE, against groups of enemies Life Force can regenerate surprisingly quickly, letting the necromancer sit back and blast enemies with a might stacking, vulnerability inflicting, piercing attack that hits for 6k to 8K a shot at range. Necromancers have a high sustained damage, and high EHP combines well with this to make, in all but the worst circumstances, a very deadly combination.

Though necromancers do have their flaws, don’t let that cloud your judgement. There are many things necros do wel.

You are right, I was a bit dishonest in my last post. Necromancers, if not treated right, can be an extreme threat, even if outnumbered (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9kTecZPdro Vid of me and flow taking down a group of 4-5 people.). We excel at condition managment and crowd control. We do an insane amount of condition damage, and while other classes do that too, we stack the right conditions, by keeping enemies chilled and poisoned, the whole fight. 50% heal reduction and skill recharge nerf can hurt quite a bit. Even with our bad traits and strange trait setup, we still are dangerous. We are also quite good at tanking for prolonged periods of time, without having to buff ourselves (yes. we have basically no defensive buffs). And epidemic is one of a kind spell. It can hurt you really badly, if you are cought off position with your group.

We are pretty good at fighting hopeless fights, since we can’t get out of any. Don’t ever forget that!

EDIT:
I forgot to mention our useless traits, like Reanimator, and Protection of the Horde, and Dark Armor! We are pretty good at having messed up trait lines!

I just looked at some footage I recorded yesterday. It seems that putrid mark clears all conditions, atleast in a WvW. http://youtu.be/fkGwgO4CEPQ

(You have to play it twice to see it, its really just me having 3+ conditions, hitting the mark, and getting rid of all of them.)

EDIT:

And then, I found this. http://youtu.be/JSnQ-8yevgg
You can see me, having 3 torment, cripple, fumble and 2 stacks of bleeding. I cast putrid mark to the right, her golem triggers it, and I lose torment, cripple, fumble and STILL HAVE bleeding. This is really strange, as I have shown before, it sometimes removes all conditions…

Rennoko.5731:

Anchoku.8142:

Terror does damage but I really miss Fear being an interrupt before Defiant.

I had forgotten all about those days when we were really well thought of in PVE for our ability to interrupt some bosses.

I wonder if INTERRUPT worked before that patch on players?

Fear never interrupted, it simply forced players and npcs to run away from you. The moment “interrupts” entered the daily, I tried to use fear. It did never interrupt. Which is in my opinion, just ridiculous. If you fear someone out of a heal, it is an interrupt. You stop healing, heal goes on a small cd, and you run away. How exactly does that differ from being smacked around, or flying through the air, or being dazed? I consider fear as an interrupt. It stops you in your tracks, and you do something else. That, in my world, is an interruption to my battle flow.

Drop the lich form, use the golem or plague, if you want. You are on condition damage it seems, not power / crit. use Tuning crystals instead of the oil. Drop the sigil of kittentiness, aka Sigil of Spite and use a stunbreaker like Well of Power instead. Just my two pennies of thought.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Tormenting

2 Stacks of Torment AOE on heal.

All those classes still have an escape and can run. We cannot. We get no stability without 30 in soul reaping, thieves can always use the stunbreak into evade. So there’s that.

Deadball: Every time you get CC’ed more than 10 seconds, you spawn 1 jagged horror with stability.

D’accord.

There was never any problem with us having a burst mitigation, like, all other classes do. We have basically no defense what so ever, except, well, protection in some cases, and our only burst mitigation got stripped away. I’m coming to think, that ANet just wants classes to be played in certain ways. Like they made thieves use d/p, since the other options are much less great. Please give us back what you have taken from us. Granted, I escaped 1-2 battles and certain death by shroudig and jumping off a cliff, but who cares? Knock back from warriors can throw you off a cliff. Every knockback can, but you can’t fear people off a cliff, so we are at a severe disadvantage here. Bring back the old shroud. I urge you.

Happens to me with basically all “line target” skills. Scepter 1 is prone to be obstructed. Doom sometimes fails because there is a “grass” texture between me and the target. Dark path fails because I was obstructed by air. Please…. Anet… fix this. I have one shadow step every 15 secs, and it doesn’t hit half of the time.