Guild Wars 2

Keep your Carrion set for practicing a condition damage build in PvE. Almost all condition damage comes from scepter and Carrion has Power to supplement condition damage. Dire trades Carrion’s power for toughness, which you will not need in PvE once you get back up to speed.

Sinister is all offense and could be your next step in PvE for a condition damage build when you feel comfortable in an all-glass build. It is cheaper than Viper’s. However, glass power has more sustain than glass condition damage due to trait and skill differences. Playing scepter in PvE for max dps means avoiding Shroud and other disruptions in order to keep bleed stacks as high as possible, though it only really matters in the most challenging group play.

Power is much faster for map completion and MM (wearing anything) is like riding with training wheels for more casual play.

Metabattle should have what you are looking for. Dire might be decent enough in WvW. Power builds and MM builds are flexible enough for nearly all PvE so get a set of Berserker, Valkyrie, or a mix. Condi for raids, high fractals, and PvP. Raids use mostly Viper’s.

It sounds like you have been away a while so take your time trying different builds and learning about the most recent changes. Metabattle has enough variety to get you going. You can modify builds to suit your needs once you are re-familiarized with the profession.

The passive on the Signet helps you acquire conditions faster for Plague Sending but be warned there are PvE areas where the Signet’s passive can be overwhelming. Snagging yourself Burning stacks every few seconds sounds awesome but rarely works out well in long fights.

Good suggestions, Lahmia.

One other thing to ponder is how Necromancer has damage improvement traits that only kick in when the target health goes below a threshold. It would be nice if the profession had some sort of burst capability for targets above a threshold.

Whether soft CC or actual direct or condi damage, a modifier for opponents near full health could even things out. Waiting until foes are below 50% health for a modifier to kick in sounds like a cool theme but it also end-loads Necro capability a lot.

Yes, Necromancer had such a huge handicap in PvE before Reaper that it still boggles my mind how any of us stuck it out.

I would just run power builds for world completion. Minion Master for utilities is good for sustain, if you need it.

There are many ways to play solo PvE successfully. Try something like this :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRAnY4djM0QLN2VDO2A7NOwFKZOsDh9sIK7qAOABQLA-ThRBABAcGAoU9ni2f4hHAgZKBvS5HA-e

Add a Ferocity bonus depending upon the target’s number of Vulnerability stacks? This would certainly help PvE a lot and may be very slightly useful in PvP so as to not upset balance.

Nikal.4921:

Leiloni.7951:

I’m not sure why you’re asking for such an unusual and irregular body type. I think they’ve done a fairly good job in offering a wide variety of female body types already.

As a female with such an “irregular body type”, I would love to see a body type more in line with my own. It’s what I live with, what I’m comfortable with. Would love to also see a slider for bosom size, for downsizing purposes in my case. I have an athletic type body, I’m very happy with it, and it feels a little odd to me for that body type to be so underrepresented in this game and others.

I would also like reasonable body types included but there may be difficulty scaling armor and outfit skins. Remember the monk’s outfit debacle?

Muchacho.2390:

The orginal reason why we didnt get healing in shroud was because…

Sorry for the rant coming.

Normally, I would pass this but it touched a nerve. The developers ‘developed’ a negative bias against Necromancer during beta that lasted well past the first year of release.

• Power was too much for a condi profession. It went years in a ’zerker meta without a power AoE build.
• Condition damage, in addition to soft CC, was too much. Soft CC (chill)+damage = OP. Why is CC + damage + immunity not?
• The profession was too bunkerish to consider more defense. Siphons svked, and still do. Downed State should be a meme.
• Each attempt at adding condition damage options failed spectacularly (Terror, Dhuumfire, Deathly Chill) and required heavy nerfing. [Nothing but zero-burst bleeds work the way they want.]
• Shroud is not a second health bar. It is a ‘downed delayer’. If it was a second health bar, Necromancer could heal in it.

Honestly, I would like to see profession condition mitigation nerfed across the board.

Raids, and some other content, are heavily gated so individual failures punish the team very strongly.

Difficulty is low once the raid mechanics are learned while recovery opportunities are also low. This is what I struggle with: Raids are memorization, timed/paced, and mechanical, making builds, and using them to their max, critical.

Because raids are so procedural, effort and skill have less value than repetition and build conformity.

It is difficult to separate reward rate (gold/hour) from raids. Perhaps metering rewards more by time than by achieving an all-or-nothing goal after passing multiple gates would help make raids less formidable end exclusive.

Make minions great by offering minion skins in the BLTP.

• 6 sentai uniforms in six colors
• 5 kitten-like robot skins that allow minions to assemble and fumble around when out of combat.
• 6 types of Lord Faren’s best skivvies
• 6 orange clockwork decorations
• 6 molten flame hair-do
• 5 refugee children and 1 balloon with your guild’s emblem

I agree with all your points, too, MethaneGas.

Shroud should not be Moa.
Cool down timers should be visible.
Incoming heals should at least restore fractions of health or LF when in shroud.

TheDevice.2751:

Lahmia.2193:

TheDevice.2751:

Lahmia.2193:

Currently only 2 of the 5 Necromancer wells have a damage value. Power, Darkness and Blood do not, therefore not triggering the life steal from Vampiric and Vampiric Aura. I suggest Anet adds a damage value to those 3 wells.
Well of Blood and Power should get a damage value similar to Choking Gas – 73 (0.2).
Well of Darkness should get the same damage as Well of Corruption – 798 (0.5). It is currently the worst Necro well and deserves some love.

they actually all trigger the vampiric effects.

They only trigger the Vampiric Rituals life steal. Not the Vampiric or Vampiric Aura life steal.

hmm you’re right. this is a bit uncool…

It is partly why wells are for WvW. Wells received an inadvertent nerf when elites were introduced and they were only good for area denial in the first place. If wells were traps like marks, and if chilling darkness was unnerfed, they would be more competitive.

I could enjoy having Terror turn Death Nova into Terror Nova or Dhuumfire turn it into Fire Nova… but that would be too much fun.

Make wells also be blast finishers before dropping the new field.

Combo skills in GW2 have a lot of room for further development.

Think about what performance gaps remain in Necromancer that the next elite line will fill and what may be sacrificed.

As an example, if Necromancer gets stealth, maybe it will require SR for shroud, Curses because the new line does conditions damage, and boon duration forcing players to build a weak condimancer.

Lahmia.2193:

It’s a great concept for Pvp/WvW (which is why it was first introduced) but it is lacking in pve. Condi mesmer and condi revenant will never become viable in pve unless they change it. I always suggested switching the values, so it does more against stationary targets for Pve only.

Perhaps like Vampiric Aura, a new trait line can allow team mates to help stack Torment. It would be nice if Mesmer had an aura that allowed others to proc confusion.

I think torment was meant to punish people who ignore their conditions. It is a good concept.

You get what you get. It is called opportunity cost.

I still think Reaper was designed to fill a gap in PvE builds as AoE power and it does all right in that context.

I find Guard has a lot of uses, especially at end game, but Necro is my favorite for PvE. When I want to be super casual and lazy, a minion master build is nice. I just feel like there are more viable ways to play as a Necro, even if the only builds with variety are not meta. Then, again, I am biased.

Both professions have low mobility.

Add fear sigil to the list, please.

Mea.5491:

As a full Knight Necro, I disagree about Toughness being useless. When we have 3 frogs at octovine in AB and everyone is on the ground, I am still hitting the octo with 50%+ health… When people aggro mobs at towers in DS they get downed in seconds, I can have 15+ mobs on me and still manage to run in circles until forever. When people die in dungeons I am the person who revives them while mobs are tickling my back. So far I haven’t died and only got downed 3 times on HoT maps since the expansion came out and I’m actually proud of that. So yeah, I want to keep my Toughness, thanks.

That sort of misses Runeblade’s point. Bunker builds in PvP are difficult to balance with PvE and aggro management in GW2 is aweful.

Edit
By aweful, I mean the only person who can use toughness in a group is the designated tank, if it can be called that, to manage boss positioning. Also, damage and heals have an insignificant effect on aggro. It is too simple.

I had asked for a land spear years ago for Necro. The profession has nothing but scepter to stack condi damage so Necro’s are stuck auto attacking with it. A bleed-bursting condi weapon is needed for weapon swap to melee range and I thought a spear would be nice. Scepter has no power and greatsword, though it was originally capable of becoming a hybrid weapon, had all of its condi nerfed and was never compatible with scepter builds.

A smoke field would allow someone to blast it for AoE stealth, too. That would at least break target lock. like it.

Restoring Chilling Darkness to pre-nerf would also help.

I have often thought a short bow could be interesting and your ideas certainly sound fun but Arenanet has been reducing graphical clutter. It is a pity they cannot scale their clutter reduction based on how many effects are stacked together.

Muchacho.2390:

I dont know, isnt reaper shroud the most important reason to take the reaper line in the first place? I mean why would you want to run the reaper line but not take the reaper shroud.

Honestly i would rather run reaper shoud without the reaper traitline then the reaperline without reaper shroud.

Very true, though Life Blast is more attractive than before. I will admit to running around in Reaper without GS or shouts.

Signet
Passive – converts one condition to one boon, 2 sec internal cool down
Active – teleport yourself up to 1200 leaving a pulsing swarm of ice locusts that apply 1.5 seconds of chill on each pulse. 3 pulses 2 seconds apart. Leaving the cloud automatically causes 1 second of Fear. 90 second cool down.

Well
Applies 3 stacks of 5 second Torment and 1 stack of 2 sec quickness per pulse. The well has a 1 second pulse, 5 second duration, 240 radius from the caster, creates a light field, and has a 180 second cool down but is not ground targeted.

Dadnir, as interesting as a shroud beast sounds, using LF to make a pet sounds like it would also leave the Necro completely defenseless. Without being able to use shroud to soak damage, Necromancer could be tough to play. The trait line and elite skills/utilities would have to have a lot of immunity-type defenses.

AreeSoothsayer.1068:

gavyne.6847:

We’ll know soon enough, seeing how Anet is full on in closed door meetings building the next expansion. Which means classes are all getting new elite specs.

I really hope they add some pet elites specs. I am a pet fiend and so far necro and ranger are my hopefuls in something … non-cardboard cutout pets coming into play.

I seem to remember Arenanet saying they would continue to rebalance Ranger pets and their skills.

I struggle with end-loaded buffs. Getting rewarded with LF after a victory is fine in casual PvE but a temporary, small increase in LF capacity will not have much value in PvP or other situations.

At least Signet of the Locust and Quickening Thirst are 25% and there are runes, too; much better than at release. Oh, and Speed of Shadows, too.

I do not know about another minion trait line but do have a couple of ideas for new trait themes.

Combat mobility (pulls and dodges)
Fear (condition damage w/o scepter)
Aerial combat (unique Necro skills for gliding)
Condition flipping to boons (more than WoP)
Teleport (as a ghost!) or make group incorporeal for defense.

It would be nice if fish dropped ingredients.

Tim.6450:

Well aggro generation has no point if you don’t have the tools to deal with the aggro. So we can start with that if we are not so easibly focussed down.

An on-demand immunity would be necessary, too. Either a trait that makes blind 100% effective in PvE, or some other form of avoidance.

Spectral Armor and Wall are not strong enough to face-tank with their current cool-downs. However, a Spectral heal that grants a short immunity, medium heal, and long regeneration could be a good tanking tool.

With the right tools, Necromancer could perform as a part-time, or full-time tank. The profession, like many others, has potential but the lack of skills that scale make it impossible right now.

Toughness, alone, is not productive in PvE.

Another thought is that Death Magic is a tanky trait line.

Has anyone considered adding true hate management traits? Things like taunt could be added to some skills. Fear on Shroud could be replaced by taunt, for example.

Spikes of toughness could also be self-applied via skills in order to hold aggro. Corrupter’s Fever stacks toughness but is not an on-demand trait.

Right now, Necromancer is not especially good at hate-management but some tweaks to DM could make it viable.

Muchacho.2390:

Anchoku.8142:

Add to Soul Comprehension the following :

Deathly Swarm generates 2% LF per target hit.
Enfeebling Blood generates 3% LF per target hit.

While i am for lf generation on dagger offhand i dont think a minor trait is the right place for this.

So why no make it baseline? Putting it on the dagger trait would also be fine.

I agree to having it baseline or on Quickening Thirst but it mat be tricky doing so with respect to balance. OH dagger definitely needs LF for condition damage builds even more than power builds. “Paying” for it by taking Death Magic is a kind of compromise.

Your points are well taken, though.

Add to Soul Comprehension the following :

Deathly Swarm generates 2% LF per target hit.
Enfeebling Blood generates 3% LF per target hit.

If there was a way to generate LF with OH dagger, I would use it more. I do not care if it is on a skill or a trait.

The armor is tanky for new players to train in and also to ensure you participate in the economy by immediately wanting another armor set.

Racial traits could be re-balanced and improved to be slightly less useless. Some are quite a bit stronger than others.

Also, racial skills could be made available at lower levels than profession skills to at least allow players to use them before getting profession skills.

I know the Reaper elite trait line is entirely unnecessary for all game modes and does not represent a significant dps or sustain improvement over standard Necromancer. It is just one additional build option for variety.

I wonder if Rending Claws should not have a chance to steal a boon, and Ghastly Claws should steal more than one boon at the end of its channel.

I think all other professions should have their condi and power nerfed. It is like the one thing Necro was good at, surviving conditions, was given to every other profession. Now, our “theme” can be ignored. Power and condition damage builds are both kind of weak. Corruptions and scepter are the only things keeping the profession from being dead last by a large margin.

I agree Necromancer’s “theme”, or design guide, has always held it back, especially Shroud.

Necro has also spent much of its time hated by developers and balance teams.

The old stigma from when the profession was punished for having a “second health bar”, extra health to start with, a zoo full of pets, and better handling of conditions still persists, I think. Arenanet probably thought that Necro had so many innate advantages over other professions that its players needed to be punished until they left to play a real profession. Necromancer probably looked OP on paper so Arenanet felt like its players must be using it wrong, then whining about it.

Dadnir.5038:

Let’s give it a try :

Well of horror : inflict fear for 1 second every second. Last 5 second. CD 180s.
Reasoning : necromancer are the master of fear and a well that basically do the same as spectral wall with a horrendous CD (and no protection on allies) should be a must

Signet of ruin :
Passive : Periodically corrupt a boon on you, applying the condition to you and all ennemies around you. Happen once every 3 seconds.
Active : Transform all conditions on you into boons. CD 120 seconds.

I like these ideas. Necromancer’s Fear nerf from so long ago is still on my mind and the condition is no longer “strong” in the current state of the game with every profession able to pump them out or clear them.

Yesterday, I was considering the merits of tacking Sunless runes on a Viper’s setup just to see if I could build a power/condi hybrid without being stuck auto-attacking with scepter.

Greatsword is, as others have said, good for some situations in PvE.

1. Gravedigger for bosses < 50%
2. AoE power for when you have 3+ mobs around you

Greatesword used to be a fair hybrid weapon before Deathly Chill was nerfed. Because condi was too strong in PvP when combined with long chills, the developers nerfed it into the ground. Now, GS has no value as a hybrid weapon and that was the main attraction of it over MH dagger, which is a pure power weapon. Gs was an alternative to scepter. Now, Necromancer is back to having only scepter for any sort of condi or hybrid build.

I only use off-hand dagger for bleed builds with Master of Corruption.
Scepter/dagger is still very bad for LF generation, though, so I tend to use this sort of build only when relatively “safe”.

Rabid adds toughness, which is strongly weighted in aggro calculations. Group PvE, like Raids, sometimes like to control the mob position via aggro so players not assigned to the task should minimize their aggro. Viper’s armor has minimal armor contribution.

Maybe I am not explaining this right so I will try, again.

Necromancer’s spike damage capability vs other professions is low. It definitely shows up in how tagging is best on an old-style power build that is remarkably similar to old power-PvP builds well before HoT. This is compared to other professions with more powerful AoE spike damage whether the damage is direct or from conditions. Necro/Reaper has no condition-based spike and is greatsword in a power build is still too slow in response to provide a decent spike. Perhaps certain other professions should have their AoE spike damage trimmed back.

As a side-note, I used tagging capability as a method of finding Necro/Reaper’s spike damage capability. Here is what I learned:
1. Run a power build using shroud, staff, and dagger with optional WoS or high-damage shouts like CthB to tag. They are able to produce sufficient AoE spike damage with low cast time.
2. Do not run condi to tag, at all. There are no tagging condi builds.