Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m going to be streaming some MM gameplay with the new specializations while I work out builds and whatnot. Come join and watch my awful skills after having not really played in ages.

I just used Consume Conditions to clear off 6 stacks of vulnerability….

you know the condition conversion to boon changes
where chill is converted to resistance
shouldn’t it be immobilize to resistance

Gryph.8237:

Haha Bhawb, if I was an anet dev and saw you upset and these changes, i would feel terrible as you’re one of the few voices of reason here

I feel awful for the person who did these changes honestly. They did an amazing job in almost every single way, and then someone actually thought the corruption changes were a good idea. If you could remove that from the changes, I’d be super happy, but alas.

Can I get a change-profession item?

Downed State Penalty:
Each time you are downed, you earn one point of downed penalty that lasts for 60 seconds. For each point, your initial health bar is reduced by 25%. Characters that accumulate four penalty points are automatically defeated, i.e. if you are downed four times within a minute, you do not have a chance to rally.

The current downed state penalty mechanics only applies to PvE. In PvP, coordinated rez is an absolute essential part of team fighting; however, this promotes certain exploits:

1. Downed bodies lose all conditions when they are rezzed.
2. Mercy runes effectively full heals someone when they rez from the downstate.
3. Lack of downed state penalty allows certain bunker comps to perpetually rezz each other.

Discuss.

7. Blood Magic:

In regards to siphons working through Shroud, they decided to limit healing through Shroud to siphons for balance reasons, but they are still looking into expanding it to other traits and skills if it becomes necessary.

8. Last Rites:

The values for this one will be:
- Above 75%: 150 healing power
- 50-75%: 300 healing power
- Below 50%: 450 healing power
(He didn’t say if below 25% adds another 150, I’m guessing no.)

The radius for preventing allies from bleeding out will be 300.
They didn’t say if the trait works in downed state to prevent several downed necros from being stranded in downed state limbo. But Robert specifically mentioned that the trait doesn’t work on the player himself as it would be too strong, which could either mean that the trait is disabled in downed state or it does work and they didn’t really consider the issue of having necros in downed state indefinitely if an opponent prevents them from rezzing.

9. Blood Bond:

Lesser Signet of Vampirism just marks the target and there will only be 5 stacks instead of 25. So there will not be an initial heal like the one of the real Signet, but the damage and healing of the stacks are the same, which allies can consume as well.
Also the coodlown will be lower, 15-20 sec – they are still figuring it out.

12. Life from Death: Revival percentage is between 5-7%.

13. Transfusion: Revival percentage is 2% per pulse.
Teleport range will always be 600, but the radius in which allies are healed will be determined by the skill used. So 600 for Life Transfer, 300 for Soul Spiral in Reaper’s Shroud.
The teleport will check for up to five allies with every pulse/hit, but it can only work on the same ally once, so you can’t drag someone in downed state across the map with you.

11. Vampiric Presence:

No icd, the values will be what the current values of Vampiric are. Radius remains unknown.

Final Words:

According to Robert, with all the changes – especially to Blood Magic – they wanted to create a necromancer exclusive niche type of support.
Although we don’t know all the numbers and how they will affect gameplay yet, personally I think they’ve done an awesome job in that regard. #Geelieve

For those who haven’t seen it yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbdl5WoAI90

Here’s a summary of the things we hadn’t known before we could watch the recorded stream on youtube:

1. Death’s Embrace:
More downed state damage and striking foes below 33% health inflicts 1 stack of vulnerability for 5 seconds.
What we didn’t know: there is no icd on that vuln application.

2. Barbed Precision:
33% chance to inflict bleeding.
Apparently this was an intentional change. But the explanation for why they did it seems rather weak: “we lowered the critical chance because you’re also getting that 20% bleeding duration”.
Seriously? Like you can’t just get that same duration buff now on top of extra condi duration from points in Spite? The 20% merged into this trait really can’t be the reason for this nerf.
I could imagine that in combination with traits in other specs like Deathly Perception would give this trait a noticable buff, and this might be the reason why they nerfed it. However, I’d much rather take -50% duration on that single bleeding stack than have the proc chance reduced by half. This way the potential to do just as much damage is still there, but now it’s more of a matter of getting lucky with rng than an actual static nerf to the trait.
So if any changes to Barbed Precision are still possible: please revert the proc chance to 66% and reduce the bleeding duration instead.

3. Master of Corruption:

What we didn’t know: the additional self applied condition is a different one from the initial condition, so not just another stack of the same.
Robert Gee didn’t know them by hard (they will be seen in the skill fact), but he mentioned blindness, poison, bleeding and torment being among those extra condis. He also said “some of them can be devastating if you don’t get them off of you in time”.

4. Terror:

Not an actual news regarding the skill itself, but Robert Gee said that it was moved to master because of the feedback they got from the community.
First of all, no one was bothered by the tier Terror was in! It was annoying that it didn’t get the same treatment of the baselining of traits that were standard picks accross all classes, including the necro.
Quote: we made a lot of staff traits baseline and rolled the remaining ones into one because those staff traits were taken all the time anyway. (obviously the very same logic applies to Terror)
Also, even if moving Terror to master tier was an actual request from the community (it wasn’t), this feedback would’ve been based on the version of the Curses specialization we saw before. With this new trait setup Terror makes just as little sense in master as in any other major trait tier. Seriously, please merge this with a minor already!

5. Weakening Shroud:

No icd confirmed. Functionally identical in this case just means it’s the same but also a seperate skill from the dagger’s so it woudn’t interact with Quickening Thirst.

6. Beyond the Veil:

In regards to the community’s request to make this apply to allies:
According to their explanation, Death Magic is not supposed to be a support line for allies but just for buffing your own defense. So Beyond the Veil is primarily protecting the necro and as an extension of himself also his minions.

Its a massive nerf. Resistance now has no chance of being first to convert. As in it will sometimes convert and sometimes it wont. Basically all our corruption skills and traits will sometimes not work at all. This change effectively kills all boon conversion traits and skill for the next 3 years. As in it kills necro for the next 3 years. This is because the only good thing necro does is boon conversion. Now we have traits and utilities which will be totally unrealible because mostly they will not work at all. You will often use corrupt boon and not actually put any conditions on the target due to resistance. It is a complete and utter disaster for necro. Devs dont understand necro so they dont realise as usual.

Our only unique thing, boon conversion, has been deleted by this news. Resistance should always convert first. This will NEVER happen now. As in this change will not be made till another expansion. The result is trash tier for necro for at least 3 more years

They can’t possibly think it has synergy with Plague Signet. Presumably if you’re running Plague Signet you would want to use it BEFORE consuming conditions, not after.

It’s not to give us synergy.

It’s a straight-up nerf of the worst kind.

If they wanted to make the skill less popular, they could have buffed our other heals, or just done the cooldown nerf. Instead they decided to make it completely unusable…..while also making it the default starting heal.

I do NOT understand what they were thinking. For the millionth time, I have to assume that literally no one at ArenaNet mains a necro.

I really wanted to like these changes and see what new builds there might be.

But adding a vulnerability to a heal? Jesus christ, what other class has to deal with that kind of drawback?

Also i think the 8 seconds internal cooldown is total B.S, if I dodge twice in a row I’m a dead man. And its not like necros get any vigor so we do not have the luxury to dodge more than once in 8 seconds…

Necro in the current state already has trouble keeping people from leaving combat after duking it out with you. That was the THEME of the entire class of making it hard to leave and slowly whittling down opponents.

With the movement decreases it allowed you to kite people at around 600-700 range while they couldnt get to you and slowly kill them off.

Medi guard alongside power rangers and good mesmers, new d/p are some of the worst matchups for condi necro and this basically hurts condi necro even more.

This tactic is ESSENTIAL versus the meditation guard in the condi matchup. Because while they have the blink mechanics to get to you, which you HAVE to endure and tank with either death shroud or spectral armor or your wurm blink. The greatsword leap will now be immune to this effect and make it even easier for them to basically destroy you in close range now.

Versus power ranger, getting into range was already difficult but them keeping them in range was easier once you got past the huge hard first step. But now with the changes light reflexes, and GS3 will make it even easier to disengage the fight and engage at 1500 range again to completely make it a horrible matchup. This is after necro probably blew a bunch of cooldowns and lifeforce to get into range.

Versus mesmer this is the same sorta deal but this is just general keeping into range. Good mesmers wont try to get into range at all versus a necro and instead constantly blink around while whittling a necro at range and only burst when they see an easy opportunity. Fear is actually an invisible projectile so it is easier to dodge fears at range. Additionally DS1 (dhuum) and DS2 are blocked by clones making it super advantageous to attack at range. Condi necros used the chill/cripple to make it easier to keep them in range and not attacking you as they try to run away.

6 0 2 0 6 D/p. THis matchup is already horrible cause of the stealth removing condis. But now once they get into range, its going to be extremely hard to crippl/chill peel them off you. This also makes the heartseeker immune to the chill/cripple making it actually EXTREMELY good now. for leaving and for chasing.

Conclusion TL;DR: Do not allow the movement decreases to change. Allow to increases to be capped and effected but decreases will nerf condi necro really badly.

Otherwise condi necros will be pidgeon-holed into a condi reaper spec in order to get DS2 to leap which will take advantage of the movement change.

I seriously start to enjoy clickbait titles.
Now, up to the point.

Hello,

It’s yet another thread of series of threads I plan on posting in following weeks as we slowly approach the Balance Patch. Instead of bundling all things in one wall of text, I decided to pick them one by one. These threads are meant to adress specific Skills, Utilities and Traits, describe the problem and offer a place for discussion just that specific aspect.

Previous discussions:

1. Corruptions – Do we need them?
   https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/1-Corruptions-Do-we-need-them/

Feast of Corruption
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feast_of_Corruption

Feast of Corruption is a weird beast. I think it was designed at release with many hybrid builds in mind. Has good power scalling, damage heavily increases thanks to the multiplier and Target the Weak. Kind of “spike finisher” for some builds, when you stack your conditions and then use it to deliver the final blow.

Sadly, it didn’t really work out. Hybrid builds for Necromancers aren’t as effective as on other professions, today Celestial users. Our conditions are too heavily bound to weapon choices and in case of Scepter, require constant attacking in order to keep the condi pressure up. Not quite “fire and forget” like for Engineers.

So I observe many Necromancer not even using (!) that skill on the scepter. That’s obviously a big mistake, because it generates Life Force, but still, apart from that aspect it’s incredibly underwhelming and feels out of place.

What are your opinions on this skill? And, more importantly, solutions?

*Does it work for you?
*If not, can it be tweaked to work right?
*Or should we get another skill?
*Should it grant more Life Force based on number of opponents?

Personally, for me it’s 2 step way:

Step 1: Life Force. Is it enough? Personally, I would consider 4 or 5% per condition. As Necromancers, we don’t stack a lot of different conditions, unlike Engineer or a Mesmer. Stacking more than 3 or 4 different conditions and them staying on our target long enough to Feast is a challange in itself.

Step 2: Bonus use. I see three approaches, erasing % dmg increase per damage in every case:

1. Damage. In this case, I would focus more on quality of conditions applied rather than quantity. Total damage % of Condition damage applied to the target seems reasonable thing for me. The more potential damage conditions on target have, the more spike damage you do. E.g. If it’s 10% damage: 2000 total bleeding potential damage on the target – 200 damage from Feast. If it’s 20% damage: 5000 total bleeding potential damage – 1000 damage.

2. Utility. In this case, Boon or heal based on conditions.

3. Mix. In this case, I personaly like the most, we get both pressure on the target and get something for ourselves.

My proposal would be: Apply 1s of Weakness and gain 10 Endurance per condition applied.

Because we don’t stack tons of conditions with one skill and procs, it keeps it at bay. At the same time, we’re rewarded the better we fight. Our Withering Precision trait is going away with the next patch and it’s an opportunity to maintain Weakness.

It gives us better survivability vs. multiple and in PvE, giving Endurance and hurts the foe, reducing his endurance generation and damage.

Thoughts?

Los Re.4607:

2. Make bombers die after their attack. That will make rushes less efficient and people will have to spread to the map again for more supplies.

I thought of this idea too, I think it could be really great. You’d probably have to buff the bomber’s toughness/hp a bit, and make them do a little more damage to gates, but I think this could be a great change.

Going to echo ‘Bomber Suicide’, that’s a critical incentive for middle supply to be all the more enticing and for more fights to break out.

Elite Skills and channeling is fairly broken at the moment. I would recommend elite skills preventing channeling rather than damage breaking it, CC would still be a thing.

I feel like the door guards are still a bit low on the health pool despite not doing anything to anyone but the bombers, maybe extend their health a touch more…

I would provide more feedback, but ultimately the meta isn’t quite set in stone yet. Rushing through gates though is really killing the ‘PvP’ aspect at this time.

Pacing is a major issue in this game. I feel like the time is just too short, and winning major fights isn’t really rewarded enough. Wiping the enemy in your lord’s room doesn’t really punish them enough to allow you to mount a strong offensive. While I understand the reasoning for map size and making distance between objectives long, it means that counter-attacks just take too long to develop.

Respawn timers should gradually increase during the game to create more drama over team-fights.

The actual match needs to be extended by ~5 mins, and having the lords run to mid for a final battle is WAY better than just ending it on timer. Having games end due to timer is kinda lame.

Hi everyone! I am back to play my necro, since reaper specilization was showed i got all hyped and stuff like the most of you.
So i made a roaming montage of my fun days in wvw, hope y’all enjoy and thanks for watching.
Sorry any mistakes because you know … long time no necro.

After coming back during every trait revamp to see what’s new I still can’t understand how reaper’s precision and vampiric precision have survived.

I’m going to assume reaper’s precision was always meant to be a way for condition builds to produce more life force. Power builds never had this problem because dagger and axe always provided good life force and super fast life force together. Spectral skills always seemed to be the better alternative for condition builds in need of life force. Reaper’s precision was always made to compete against more important traits while doing next to nothing. If anything it should be baseline for the class and occur every critical hit.

Vampiric precision is odd simply because of the stats it demands. Siphoning builds want healing power and toughness as their main stat. They also want a lot of multi hit skills so this means channeling weapons in the form of dagger and axe. Then depending on if you use wells or minions you want power for wells, power for minions, or condition damage for minions with the new proposed traits. There isn’t any room for precision or support for a critical vampire builds . Conditions don’t proc siphons so I’ll assume criticals from conditions don’t proc vampiric precision. If you want to heal from conditions you are more likely to get a bigger benefit focusing solely on the healing condition trait. Lastly vampiric competes against important traits just like reaper’s precision while being sub-par. Even base line or merged I doubt it will produce the desired effect.

Suggestions:

1. Reaper’s precision becomes baseline for the class and procs on every critical hit since having good life force gen is less of a problem now that shroud has an actual CD and many counters.

2. Delete vampiric precision. Rename trait vampiric symbol. It should be a trait that supports signet vampires since well and minion necros have great support for their siphon builds now. Signets are only half way done with vampire signet and locust. Signet vampires could use a way to make all signets useful and vampiric.

Vampiric Symbol:
Upon activating a signet gain mark of the vampire for x seconds. Mark of the vampire allows you to deal x damage and leech x health per attack. Mark of the vampire stacks in intensity but not duration. Siphons have a chance to proc twice per signet equipped.

HOW the heck is this on page 4??? Upping this. hope fellow necros do too. Instead of creating a QQ thread (i know we re all tempted after hard pvp games) up this post, the most detailed analysis.

spoj.9672:

Shouts dont really make sense on a necro. Id expect something completely new for us. But other options could be spirits or auras.

I think the specializations will be kind of like secondary classes in GW1.

And Mesmer just got the necromancer secondary.

I see why people here are hoping for a warrior secondary, like shouts. Life force is substantially the same thing as adrenaline. It just makes sense.

I made a concept for necromancer just the other day in the pvp section:

Necromancer Elite: Joker
Jokers gain access to the Great sword. The Joker’s unique class mechanic is that it has a split auto attack functionality. You must press 1, then 2, then 3 for its auto attack. For example:
1. Slash. 2. Another Slash. 3.) Slash more, gain 2% life force.
In addition to the Great sword, necromancer also unlocks brand new shout abilities, with classics such as:
“Wait up!” which gives all enemies within 600 range a 5 second cripple!
“I’m Going into Death Shroud, Don’t heal yet!” which tells allies that you’re about to enter death shroud, so supporting you will be useless. This will play a major role in team fights.
And their elite shout:
“I GIVE!”, likely one of the most interesting abilties we’ve added to the game. This ability causes you to instantly enter downed stat triggering all “on downed” traits such as death nova and gives you access to your downed state “1” combo for additional damage. Think high risk, high reward!
I’m stoked.

FotG should at least give stab on exit as well being a break stun on entrance is not enough especially with just 1 stack. I’m holding back my suggestions simply because they follow the removal of the second HP DS but I know it’s stupid… Dhuumfire will depend on how many stacks it applies per hit it should definitely not be 1 or 2, Bloodthirst need to be merged with Vampiric Precision,new adept trait incoming bleeding heals you for a small amount, Deathly Invigoration should transfer your siphon to allies in 600 radius,all self healing need to work in DS including regen(I feel like posting DS as bug in the Bug section of the forums).

Keep Parasitic Contagion in Curses it goes with it but it should drop that master tier at 8%(working in DS) to replace useless Reaper’s Precision,new GM trait increasing crit damage based on conditions on foes, Lingering is toxic don’t make base conditions weak for the sake of this trait make it give AoE buff of +180 condition damage 600 radius(necro deserves it),reduce Scepter CD by 20% and increased all conditions duration by 33%. Remove ICD on Mark of Evasion.

Again I worry of how deep into the profession they will open themselves…

spoj.9672:

Another thing about the curses grandmasters. Its a condi and crit line. But all 3 grandmasters are flat condi traits. They arent related to crit chance at all. We could simply have some kind of on crit trait which benefits both condi and powers. For example might on crit (forceful greatsword style trait but not tied to a specific weapon).

• coughwitheringprecisionreworkcough *

Sorry, got something in my throat.

Suggestion regarding Beyond The Veil: Why not change it to “Nearby allies gain Protection when you leave Death Shroud. 360 radius, no AoE cap.”

This makes it comparable to the Guardian trait Communal Defenses. Your minions will usually be in this range anyway, but now it also allows the Necro to add defensive support to a team. Protection is arguably weaker than Aegis, and despite not including a cooldown, there is a higher cost associated with it for the Necro: namely they are without defense for the next 10/7 seconds.

If they had to reduce the numerical amount of LF we have in exchange for healing in DS so our traits and ally supports actually WORKED, so be it… I’d take that in a second, in fact, it might be pretty good for the game.

Additonally, Necros out of combat REALLY need to generate up to 15% LF out of combat and not degenerate outside of combat. Starting without, and if your primary initial builder misses it swings a fight a very unrealistic amount.

After reading the forums for the past day and a half, I got a slight hint that maybe necromancers aren’t happy with the changes. As someone who has played terrormancer and power necro a bit and had my face wrecked multiple times, I feel you. There’s a lot of builds that almost exist in blood and death magic, but they just don’t work. It feels like there’s a lack of clear vision in those two trait lines.

So, I want to be very open with you guys about what I’m sending to the devs.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND IS NOT THE FINAL VERSION OF THE REPORT. I WILL EDIT AND ADD TO THIS MULTIPLE TIMES BEFORE I SEND IT!

Most of the feedback I’ve read (understandably) has been “WTF IS THIS KITTEN”. I want to get some serious clear suggestions for reworks on all of the traitlines.

1. If you have old posts with suggestions, link to them and I’ll include it.
2. If you have ideas for reworks, post them here.
3. If you have a build type that you’ve always wanted to see for necro, post it!
4. You don’t need to work with what they gave you. Feel free to completely make up your own blood magic line with completely new traits! Even if they don’t fully take your suggestions, it might inspire something cool!
5. While I am the PvP Forum Specialist, I’ll try to include everything I can, even if it dips into PvE and WvW.

I don’t want to read things like “They aren’t listening to us”. They are. Big time. What I put in this report gets plopped right on the desks of the devs working on this rework. There has been no better chance to get your feedback in than right now. Please post!

Spite

• Has perhaps one too many traits that apply vulnerability, what about replacing one with something that takes advantage of vulnerability stacking, replace Death Shiver. It would be nice to have an ally bonus e.g. whenever you apply more than 25 stacks, you give allies a boon, fury or might or quickness with an appropiate icd.

• Spiteful Spirit needs something else to be worthwhile, since it removes boons, a bonus to all boon removal would be nice, and have nice synergy with Chill of Death/Focus 5.

• I don’t like that the minor traits all have a different threshold, why not pick just 50%, so all the minor and major traits in Spite are consistent.

• Signet Mastery needs to give more might, another 2 stacks, and lower cooldowns on signets to be worthwhile.

• The cooldown reduction on axe training is a bit gimicky, while it is more interesting than a flat cooldown, would prefer the flat 20%, that goes for all the Mesmer traits as well.

Curses

• As others have said and bears repeating, needs more traits for power necros including a grandmaster.

• I liked the synergy between Signet of Spite and the damage boost from Target the Weak, maybe the old effect could be made a grandmaster and Terror moved in place of Reaper’s Prescision. Else Reaper’s Prescision could be swapped with Terror and greatly buffed, 4% life force 50% on crits.

• Don’t prefer CPC and Enfeebling Blood on traits, especially with Enfeebling Blood having a 25 sec CD, and CPC applying weakness to necro.

Death Magic

• Needs lots of work.

• Would prefer if Deadly Strength was the grandmaster minor and Beyond the Veil merged with Flesh of the Master in place of the extra toughness and remove that caveat from the game.

• Is there ever a chance that we get a horde of jagged horrors for a grandmaster, that can be replenished more easily like minion masters from GW1, remove the icd from Death Nova.

• This trait line is completely selfish, Unholy Santuary should aid allies while the necro is in DS. Add another master trait that is more supportive, and/or increases the defenses of the necro.

Blood Magic

• Also needs lots of work, more than Death Magic. None of the traits are appealing.

• Revive speed bonuses of 10% are too low, that goes for all professions, should 20%. Why are necros not the best at rezzing, it is a completely missed opportunity.

• Life siphoning is never going to be worthwhile until it heals the necro hp while in DS.

• Unholy Martyr is not a good GM, neither is Deathly Invigoration for that matter unless the numbers are spectacular. The life force gain of Unholy Matyr should be added baseline to Plague Signet. Then Unholy Martyr replaced with a trait that allows passive effects of signets to persist in DS.

Soul Reaping

• Seems to be fine.

So, still no invuln, like every other class? Or, a GTFO skill?