Guild Wars 2

kKagari.6804:

As much as I appreciate a dedicated writer to put out concise information for the devs, I think its best if the information is only firmly rooted in facts. I think the suggestions you put out are very debatable in some areas.

Feel free to add examples you feel isn’t a community concern. Everything on the list is taken from the past 10 threads in the Necromancer section save for one note on the Weakening Shroud/Death Shiver.

If there’s an issue which a greater part of the community feels shouldn’t be on the list, I’ll take it down.

Cleaned up some of the sentence structures/grammar, and added the lack of minion out of combat health regen and lack of autoattack for DS/Lich to the list.

Looking through the list of the Traits revamped/removed during the course of the games development, shows there’s atleast a couple of traits which could replace Reanimator.

GW2 wiki List of Historial Traits

FYI you can fix your links easily.

[url=INSERT YOUR LINK HERE]INSERT DESCRIPTIVE TEXT HERE[/url]

The intention with this list is to serve as a quick hand-off to the developers, so that they may bring it with them to the next design or QA meeting, and so we can expedite the hot topic issues for the class sooner rather than later. It’s not meant to encompass every tiny little bug with the class (there’s already a thread for that), but illustrate the community concerns in broader strokes.

I tried to include all the recently discussed issues, if I missed any I do apologize and will include it in the list when informed about it.

Also there’s a better formatted, easy to print gdoc available here.

Minions

“Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.” - JonPeters source

Minions do not follow the described intention of Jon Peters.

• Minions
  • All Minions randomly idle while the caster is engaged in combat.
  • All Minions randomly attack nearby enemy targets while the caster is idling.
  • With the exception of the Elite Skill Flesh Golem, none of the minions recover Health out of combat. This is a huge issue for Minion Master builds.
  • The Jagged Horror from the Reanimator trait functions as a regular minion, but this also means it keeps the caster locked in combat while it is still alive.
  • While likely intentional the community feels that Minion Master should also reduce the Cooldown of Minion skills and not just the cooldown of their summoning skill cooldown.
  • The Flesh Golem should function underwater. The availability of Elite skills underwater is limited to 1 skill currently. This would also solve the issue of losing the Flesh Golem when entering areas of water, as it de-summons minions not equipped underwater.
  • The Flesh Golem skill Charge is an issue in PvE as it ends up charging far away after hitting it’s intended target and picks up stray aggro from nearby mobs.

Other

• Axe
  • Damage is underwhelming. It has no niche as it doesn’t have the damage or utility of the other weapons.
  • Vulnerability debuff is underwhelming compared to other classes, which have much easier access to the condition such as Elementalist with Vapor Blade or Engineer with Precise Sights and Steel-Packed Powder spamming Grenade.

• Plague Form
  • There is little to no reason to choose Plague of Pestilence or Withering Plague over Plague of Darkness, continued application of the Blind condition trumps the low amount of Bleed stacks being applied, or the Weakness & Cripple. This isn’t call to reduce the effectiveness of Plague of Darkness, but to put a spotlight on the underwhelming performance of the other plagues.

• Fear
  • The supposed master of terror has little access to a reliable Fear condition. Reaper’s Mark, Doom, Fear of Death all have a 1 second duration and Reaper’s Protection have a 2 second duration, but none of them stand to gain a significant benefit from Master of Terror..

Community concerns and issues

Life Stealing
As an attrition class it is important to be able to not only whittle your target down, but also keep yourself from going down, either through recovery of health or avoiding damage all together. One of the tools the class has for that purpose is Life Stealing.
There are several traits and skills with the purpose of stealing Life from the target and returning it to the Necromancer, however they are underwhelming on their own or even combined together due to several issues.

• Life Stealing issues
  • General issue: Low amount siphoned and lack of scaling with Healing Power.
    Vampiric heals for an insignificant amount (25/38 with Bloodthirst) and isn’t affected by Healing Power.
  • Vampiric Master is underwhelming in amount stolen, even with the maximum possible Minions active. Neither is it affected by Bloodthirst.
  • Vampiric Precision underwhelming amount stolen, especially compared to the Sigil of Superior Leeching (975 HP) and Omnomberry Ghost (325 HP). Also doesn’t scale with Healing Power.
  • Vampiric Rituals is underwhelming, as it only heals for 42 HP per target at a maximum of 210 HP with 5 targets. It also doesn’t scale with Healing Power.

Condition Cleansing and Application

To win at attrition means we need to be able to deal out conditions in regular amounts, as well as keep them off ourselves efficiently.

• Condition Cleansing
  • Deathly Swarm currently only removes 1 condition from the caster, sometimes it doesn’t even remove any at all and it seems slow to cleanse the caster when it does cleanse.
  • The ease of condition removal from other classes. Since conditions is a fundamental aspect of the Necromancer class, the community feels that other classes have too readily available Condition Cleansing abilities at hand, especially passive passive effects which require no effort on the player to utilize.

• Condition Causing
  • Condition Stacking from multiple sources. In particular of note is the 25 Bleed Cap Stack, which is severely detrimental to the performance of the class. Other conditions also have issues given the way Conditions which stack on Duration is working.
  • Some other classes have access to rapid application of conditions compared to the supposed master of conditions. Bleeding is perhaps too common on other classes.

Death Shroud

Death shroud is a hotly debated topic amongst the community. Many feel it doesn’t compliment the playstyle of an attrition / condition playstyle very well and rather lends itself towards being used with a Power/Precision focused playstyle.

• Death Shroud
  • Since the functionality of the class mechanic revolves around the Life Force resource, the class mechanic is inaccessible from the beginning of many fights. A lack of passive out-of-combat Life Force generation or quicker initial Life Force ramp up would address this concern.
  • Functionality difference between the on land and in water effects is a concern for the community. Ideally they were more similar and not different. Underwater skills feels underwhelming in comparison to on land skills.
  • Weakening Shroud only applies 1 stack of Bleed instead of the 2 Bleeds as the skill Enfeebling Blood does. Perhaps Weakening Shroud should instead be changed to be similar to Death Shiver so that the effect is continuous while in the shroud. This should benefit Condition playstyle more.
  • Death Shroud interface completely strips awareness from the Necromancer, as the player cannot see any Boons, Conditions, Endurance or use utilize utility skills while in the Shroud such as Minion skills.
  • Death Shroud, and Lich for that matter, lacks the basic Auto-Attack functionality on their 1 skills Life Blast & Deathly Claws.

Necromancer Status Quo – October 2012

The Necromancer community
The design philosophy behind the Necromancer
Community concerns and issues
Life Stealing
Condition Cleansing and Application
Death Shroud
Minions
Other

The Necromancer community

Time is precious for the developers, finding, understanding, testing and writing bug fix takes weeks, so the intention with this thread is to give ArenaNet a clear and precise list of the top issues concerning the Necromancer class. While it does not cover all the bugs with the class, it is not intended to, it is meant as an overview for class functionality which the community as a whole feels isn’t up to par or functioning as the community feels it should.

So lets try and keep the discussion going in one thread, instead of spread out over several. By spreading across several threads we as a community reduce the chances of having these issues addressed in a timely manner.
We know the next balance and content patch is due on November 15th, so lets see if we can get some of the issues addressed by then.

The community greatly welcomes and appreciates the participation and answers from JonPeters, Karl McLain and JonathanSharp as well as other Arenanet developers whom may be directly involved with the Necromancer class design.

The design philosophy behind the Necromancer

“The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from. It’s an attrition based class, so the idea is that if you lock horns w/ a necro, know what you’re getting into: you’re fighting a class that’s built for attrition. It can dot you, dps you, rip your boons, and severely hinder your movement. AND it also has the ability to soak up a lot of damage. So the longer the fight goes, the stronger the Necro should get. That’s the idea behind Death Shroud, but little escape ability.” JonathanSharp – Game designer ArenaNet – source

Also, some of the things you THINK are bugs are actually working, and other things are by design." JonathanSharp – Game designer ArenaNet – source & source

Let me know when the whole thing is on the official site(s).

• Winters Day in December
• November 15th build – Beta version of a new s/tPvP Map, Nov 16th-18th weekend long event with permanent world changes and new island small map with storyline, new dungeon gets harder the further you get in it, whole new rewards in the dungeon.
• Achievement display / look at me I’m special ranking in the future.
• LA statue is gone, not coming back (anytime soon).
• PvP qualifier point system in the future, with ranking, required for participation in future championships.
• No plans for Build saves/slots/templates.
• No plans for LFG tools.

About sums it up.

It may be better to scrap it all and rework the lines entirely. Taking a que from the Elementalist class, they have a trait line for each of their four elements, plus a “generic” one, with some crossover between the different trees, but as a whole it feels a lot more focused than the Necromancer traits.

Note: Boon Duration and Condition Duration could be swapped around in this proposal, if it was deemed better.

Spite: Power, Condition Duration, Axe, Warhorn.
Curses: Vitality, Condition Damage, Scepter, Focus.
Death Magic: Precision, Critical Damage, Staff, Minions.
Blood Magic: Toughness, Healing Power, Dagger.
Soul Reaping: Life Force, Boon Duration.

Note: Following Trait reorganization isn’t listed in a specific order. They would still have to follow general convention of Adept, Master, Grandmaster tiers, however that headache is beyond this proposal.

Spite
Death’s Embrace, Spiteful Spirit, Reaper’s Might, Chill of Death, Axe Training, Close to Death, Banshee’s Wail, Spiteful Vigor, Mark of Evasion, Unyielding Blast, Decaying Swarm, Mark of Revival

Curses
Spiteful Talisman, Spiteful Removal, Toxic Landing, Hemophilia, Chilling Darkness, Weakening Shroud, Master of Corruption, Lingering Curse, Shrouded Removal, Death Nova, Focused Rituals, Ritual Mastery

Death Magic
Spiteful Marks, Training of the Master, Reaper’s Precision, Greater Marks, Minion Master, Staff Mastery, Death Shiver, Flesh of the Master, Necromantic Corruption, Vampiric Precision, Fetid Consumption, Withering Precision,

Blood Magic
Spectral Attunement, Dark Armor, Ritual of Protection, Reaper’s Protection, Dagger Mastery, Bloodthirst, Ritual of Life, Transfusion, Vampiric Master, Deathly Invigoration, Quickening Thirst, Vampiric Rituals.

Soul Reaping
Signet Mastery, Signet Power, Terror, Fear of Death, Vital Persistence, Path of Midnight, Spectral Mastery, Speed of Shadows, Master of Terror, Soul Marks, Foot in the Grave, Near to Death

Spite: + power + critical damage
Curses: + condition damage + condition duration
Death Magic: + toughness + healing Power
Blood Magic: + Vitality + Precision
Soul Reaping: + Life pool % + Boon Duration %

Those suggestions don’t make much sense. Blood has all the healing abilities, so it stands to benefit from the Healing Power.
Boon Duration would be better off being with Spite, and no class has two baseline attributes paired, so that is also entirely in the realm of the Mad King.

GW2 wiki – Traits

Looking at how other classes compare, the stat pairings are quite similar across the classes.

Everyone
Power & Condition Duration

Rangers, Thiefs, Mesmers, Elementalists
Precision & Critical Damage

Guardian, Warrior, Engineer, Necromancer
Precision & Condition Damage

Guardian
Toughness + Critical Damage

Warrior, Engineer, Thief
Toughness + Healing Power

Ranger, Elementalist
Toughness + Condition Damage

Mesmer, Necromancer
Toughness + Boon Duration

Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer
Vitality + Healing Power

Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, Thief
Vitality + Boon Duration

Guardian, Elementalist
Class Mechanic + Boon Duration

Warrior, Engineer, Necromancer
Class Mechanic + Critical Damage

Thief, Mesmer
Class Mechanic + Condition Damage

Now changing stat benefits has a considerable effect on the general performance on the class, because the trait pairings lend themselves towards either Power, Conditions, Support, Control or Utility.

Moving Condition Damage away from Precision doesn’t make a lick of sense because there’s far more Condition Damage based Traits in the Precision line than elsewhere. On the other hand, sans the Proc on Crit, the line doesn’t stand to benefit from Precision. It’s largely the most cumbersome of the Necromancer trait lines and doesn’t have a “simple” fix.

While all classes have Power and Condition Duration paired, at least as far as the Necromancer is concerned, it is an iffy pairing at best. While Power does have a marginal effect on a Condition Build, there is far more benefit in Traits alone from picking other lines. Swapping Condition Duration and Boon Duration around would help the Necromancer a lot in that regard. It would benefit both Power based (Longer Might/Fury Duration) as well as Condition Based setups which could opt out of Spite and go down the Death line instead.

Anything beyond those changes require a rework of the placement of the traits, which while a larger undertaking, could be warranted instead of patchwork changing the class.

Jon, currently all minions aggro on their own, when the caster is not attacking anything. And frequently do they not attack what the necromancer is attacking but instead stand around idle.
There seems to be an issue in their detection radius at times, as if you drag the minions on top of the mobs, they seem to “wake up” so to speak.

Yes, I did read his post. And yes the rune works as advertised, the cooldown is 45 seconds, it can’t be used more often than that.

Cooldown is 45 seconds for Ravens, says so in the description.

Mad King runes work on both summon and charge, I have the set.

There’s any number of Risen models they could have used, or should use, for Necromancer minions that are a thousand times more exciting than the ones available now.

Examples

Dzhudin Stormbreak
Risen Corrupter
Risen Knight
Risen Plaugebearer 1
Risen Plaugebearer 2
Risen Subjugator
Risen Wizard
Avatar of Grenth

There’s even some models in the Mad King’s World which are cool.

Making Minions temp isn’t the solution to them. They need a revamp of stats, AI, function and abilities, not be neutered further.

Greatswords models in this game leave alot to be desired, looks like something straight out of Japanese animation films.

Sword and Shield could be more interesting. Especially given how limited shields seems to be. Shield abilities could have Life Force/Life Drain synergy, with the sword having cleave and leap abilities.

instantcoffee.1785:

Spite is tempting for the condition duration, however often anyone that pays attention to their conditions will notice, a long duration simply increases the chance that your condition will be cut short when the enemy’s removal mechanic comes off cooldown. The ideal situation would be to have short, powerful conditions and couple that with either raw power damage or survivability. Spite gives us the power damage, but leaves us extremely squishy.

Anet could swap Boon Duration from Death Magic with Condition Duration from Spite. That would go some ways towards sanitizing the Condition builds. Outside of the Condition Duration and apart from the Might yielding traits there aren’t any Minor or Major traits in Spite which helps conditions.

One times complete, saw no reason to do it multiple times.
Norn, Female
Necromancer
0% passive speed

Tick tock, the mouse went up the clock, with a group of other mice.

The group aspect adds to the difficult rating, and rightfully so. It would be a lot less stressing if there weren’t other players around, most notably giant norn male characters. It adds both a competitive angle, as well as a distraction, they shouldn’t make this a solo instance.

Nothing has changed.

1) Do on crit sigils stack if they are different sigils? (strength/earth)

They “stack” even if they are the same. GW2guru. Multiply the percentages together for the combined %chance effect of triggering. No you don’t get two separate effects.

2) Do the crits pertain to each specific weapon?
ex: If sigil of earth is on my scepter – it only applies the 60% crit chance on scepter skills? Or is it for all crits?

All to my knowledge. Keep in mind Conditions and Heals do not crit.

3) If sigil of earth is on my staff…would I still get that crit chance bonus if I was using the scepter/dagger?

Only active armor/weapons are used for stat and effect considerations. Anything not currently wielded (inc. runes on waterbreather if you are on land) do not fator in.

I haven’t seen the underlying mechanics behind how conditions stack on targets explained elsewhere.

As I understand it it works like this.

PlayerA attacks first and adds Burning for 5 seconds on Igor.
PlayerB attacks second and adds Burning for 5 seconds on Igor.
PlayerC attacks third and adds Burning for 5 seconds on Igor.

Now the Monster have 15 seconds of Burning effect if you mouse over the icon.
However damage isn’t applied all at the same time.

In fact it’s queued.

So for the first five seconds of the fight with Igor, PlayerA’s Burning effect ticks for Damage every second over the five second span.
Once PlayerA’s effect has expired, PlayerB’s Burning effect ticks for damage, and so on with PlayerC.

So for the first 5 seconds of the fight, PlayerB’s Burning effect is not doing any damage.
And for the first 10 seconds of the fight, PlayerC’s Burning effect is not doing any damage.

Poison and Burning works the same way as far as I can test.

It’s the same case with Bleeding, once you hit the stack cap of 25, as far as I can tell, though this is more difficult to test.

This works “fine” in small scale encounters where you aren’t as prone to run into similar conditions being used, but becomes a significant issue in larger scale encounters. Not to mention lower damage conditions “block” the damage for higher damage conditions in certain situations.

The above have been tested in the mists and through observation in dynamic events.

Any revamp of Death Should should as the first step remove the transformation aspects. We have those on the elite skills, which is fine, but it shouldn’t be on a core mechanic.

Death Should would be far better served functioning more like the Guardian abilities, or as Life Force based, no cooldown, abilities.

The existing Death Shroud abilities can be merged/revamped with the Lich form, and a new fresh approach can be applied to designing Death Shroud to be more universal in application.

Shroud would be better served being a set of channeled or castable abilities, which use Life Force as a resource cost.

Plague and Lich are more than enough transformation abilities IMHO.

You don’t need the Regeneration Duration increase from Rune of Dwayna, nor the additional Regeneration procs, as the uptime is already 100% between Mark of Evasion and Mark of Blood from Staff.

Embalmer

While the GW1 looks alot better than the GW2 golem, it would be cooler if it looked more like the Risen Abominations.

GW2 skills. That’s my current build for Cursed Shore, with Magic Find gear on. You can swap Spectral Walk for Well of Darkness if you need the extra survivability. However you should have enough in Area Weakness from the Poison fields.

Ascii what’s the reasoning behind taking Close to Death instead of Axe Training? Last time I tested it, Axe Training was around 30% or 40% damage increase, alongside the cooldown reduction. Given that the Axe is your primary damage output this would give you a substantial damage increase.

And since you run two wells, wouldn’t Focused Rituals provide more bang for the buck instead of Reaper’s Precision? Or Spectral Attunement, or even Master of Corruption were you to run with Epidemic or Blood is Power instead.

And last, what’s the reasoning behind running Berserker’s instead of say Valkyries which offers substantially more Toughness at the cost of some offense?

Swadow

First issue, on-crit sigils do not stack. This means that having Sigil of Purity and Sigil of Nullification in one set is complete waste, the one on OH cannot proc at all.

This is incorrect. Offhand crit sigils works just fine, tested today with Sigil of Air. Also more testing here by someone else.

Staff 1 sounds like a sick moose in pain, they really need to change it to something else.

This is a soloing build.

Build:
30 in Death Magic (Minion master, Flesh Mastery, Staff Mastery)
20 in Blood (Blood thirst, Vampiric precicision)

Weapons:
Dagger/Dagger (Open with Enfeeble, then Deathly Swarm)
Staff (Dumb all AOEs, then go back to dagger)

Upgrades:
Armor: Major Rune of Vampirism: 4 pieces (+power, steal life, steal life after heal)
Weapons: Sigil of Water (heals nearby pets)

Stats:
Power > Crit > Precision (I’m guessing here)

Techniques / Rotations:
Single Mob
Enfeeble.
Deathly Swarm
Swap to Staff
Dump all AOEs (Mark of Blood, Chilbrains, Putrid Mark, Repairs Mark)
Swap to Dagger (repeat above; life siphon as needed).

Multiple Mobs
Enfeeble.
Death Shroud ? Life Transfer ? Exit. ( Only do Life Transfer, saving Shroud for tough spots or escape)
Swap to Staff
Dump all AOEs (Mark of Blood, Chilbrains, Putrid Mark, Repairs Mark)
Swap to Dagger (repeat above; life siphon as needed)

1) If you have played something similar, how would you improve?

First of, a full minion lineup while funny at first, is not very efficient. Especially Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend aren’t very good for solo play. They lack in damage and survivability and if Blood Fiend dies you are without a heal.

Also by swapping to dagger during the fight, you miss out on 100% uptime on Regeneration, which enables the minions you do utilize, as well as your self, to tank a lot more damage than you otherwise would. Not to mention considerable AoE damage which the dagger doesn’t match. Mobs shouldn’t be alive long enough for you to have time to swap weapon in fact, except versus Veteran/Champion mobs.

Statwise you could stack Toughness, Power and Precision.

As for Runes/Sigils they are open as you desire, however I would steer clear of the Vampirism ones, they are underwhelming. As for Sigils I’d suggest Fire, for AoE on crit.

20/0/30/20/0 Build

Bone Minions needs to be utilized as often as they are available for AoE damage and as Blast Finishers. The wells can be swapped as the situation demands, but their primary purpose is AoE damage.

They are hashes.4523:

Need Confirmation
• (NB0003) Decaying Swarm will trigger after entering DS and receive foe damage. (Ignores %HP trigger)

I’ve seen it happen, though not consistently so.

Some notes on the currently listed issues.

(NB0102)
Works just fine for me, there’s no delay in applying buffs, or any other delays in the chain of events.

(NB0035)
The Flesh Golem doesn’t work underwater, the surface of the water is the same as being underwater, that’s why it’s un-summoned. Neither is (NB0076) really a bug, since you don’t have those minion skills slotted in the example given. It’s no different on land if you swap a minion skill for different skill.

(NB0077) & (NB0079)
This very likely intended behavior, as Conditions bypass Toughness and Defense stats and aren’t intended to be modified by Vulnerability or other effects.

You should check temps with HWMonitor. Let it run in the background while you play GW2, it records min/max values.

A large part of why it feels that Death Shroud is “ruining” anything, is likely because it’s a transformation skill in similar vein to Plague and Lich Form. A second health bar is largely wasted if you aren’t doing anything with it other than to survive a little longer, it simply means you prolong the inevitable in several cases.

Ideally Death Shroud would be more in line with it’s origin name, that of a a shroud enveloped around a dead person for burial. It should be an effect/buff that supplements the class, not substitutes the abilities entirely. Plague and Lich Form already does that.

Looking at some of the removed Traits there’s plenty of ideas that got dismissed that should or could easily be worked into a reworked Death Shroud ability. Lich Form should serve the role as the transformation-go-to ability that Death Shroud is presently and Death Shroud should be reworked to offer something different, could be fixed CD abilities.

The recommendation would be that it’s not worth it to do it.

The minions, beyond their awful AI, have sup-par damage/toughness/vitality even with Training of the Master and Flesh of the Master.

As for the Life Drain/Vampire aspect, the Traits/Skills doesn’t scale well enough with Healing and aren’t good enough to offset incoming damage.