Guild Wars 2

Actually, all of the on DS traits become very significant with the reduced CDs.

43% Stability uptime
43% Retaliation uptime
71% Fury uptime
87 HP/s (with 0 healing power)
29% Weakness uptime
86% Bleeding uptime (1 bleed)
1 condition removed per 7 seconds
143% Vulnerability uptime, 3 stacks

Some of that is relatively weak considering the cost, but a lot of it is actually very strong. The best part is that it gives a lot of flexibility, because depending on your build, you end up built with a lot of mixed offensive and defensive stats and traits. A defensive build with this will still have fairly good crit chance/damage, an offensive build with this still has massive stability uptime/decent healing.

But I’d generally suggest not taking all the traits. Try to find a little balance.

So your most basic build will be 0/15/0/0/30, with obvious traits. This gives you a few choices:
10 points in Spite, gives you 3s of Retal
10 points in Death Magic, gives you 1 condition removed
20 points in Death Magic, gives you 10s of 3 stacks of Vulnerability
20 points in Blood Magic gives you some healing

The actual loadout you end up with depends on if you want a more offensive setup, or defensive. I actually like going a somewhat hybrid setup with this (I ran a dancer build a long time ago to guard home). But basically you want to figure out what kind of playstyle you want, then use the traits to support it. You get 25 points leftover after the basic build to let you do whatever you want, or you can drop the Crit chance and have 30 left over. There is quite a bit of customization.

One thing I’d highly suggest though, no matter what, is picking up some kind of defense that doesn’t rely on DS. Siphoning, healing, soldier gear, whatever it takes, but you really don’t want to be doing this in a Carrion/Zerker build.

Edit: this build actually is workable, but I guarantee its the most difficult kind of build we have access to, by far.

Yes Wurm used to be usable underwater, IIRC he just kind of… magically moved around. He wasn’t stuck to anything, he just kind of popped out of nothing and moved around. It definitely was not launch-ready.

Ya I don’t think that’s a problem, considering the Risen literally spawn out of moving water in certain areas.

We already have more than enough cover conditions (including torment which we still have access to) for any kind of PvP (cover conditions don’t matter in PvE). And in PvE the difference between one torment and the bleeds you could get from the other two is only going to matter if your group is constantly maxing out on bleeds, otherwise it is at best half of Geomancy’s damage.

It just isn’t that useful for us on its own.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Yes, but Sigil of Torment has a separate cooldown from all other sigils. That is why it is so useful.

It is the only reason it is useful for us. When they eventually fix it, and I would be very surprised if they didn’t, it will be terrible.

Tim.6450:

it’s pvp while going Rabid.

Ya, that’s normal (its a decent build), but again you wouldn’t even be taking Vampiric Precision anyway so there really isn’t a big deal. Rabid MM will get way more use out of MoE over Vampiric Precision, so even though your crit chance is probably good enough to support the use of the trait, you shouldn’t even be taking it anyway.

It works the same way it did in GW1 with hexes, the most recent is the one removed. That’s a pretty common system, it is also the reason that Necromancers can even exist as a condition class despite having relatively weak damaging condition stacking. Instead of applying 25 bleeds that get removed in 1 second because they are the only thing on the target, we apply 12-15, and then they get “covered” in basically every other condition in the game, and those bleeds are the very last thing to be removed.

The only thing I have to use the mouse for is turning the camera (key-turning is a big nono). WAD controls my movement (forward and side strafing), S is dodge (walking backwards is, again, generally a nono).

1-5 is the same, Shift is F1 (only one I need as necro), Q/E/R/F/T is all my utility skills, G is my interact, and then the rest is all pretty much standard I think.

Also, one great use for your mouse no matter who you are, is stuff like targeting/camera movement. I have all my targeting, call target, take target, swap target, etc. all on my mouse, and all of my camera movement stuff is there as well, because those are all things that are much more easily taken care of by the mouse (won’t make weird hand movements because of trying to hold down the look behind key while doing other things).

Besides that, I suggest you do what you need. I’ve played games that “idled” (just casual walking around) at like 100-200 APM just with my fingers, and spiked up a lot higher with combat, so I’m very used to doing some finger acrobatics to keep everything going. So for me, it isn’t difficult to do most of what needs doing with just the keyboard. But if you find that the keyboard is holding you back (you’ll stop moving to cast certain rotations, or can’t dodge at any moment) then start moving stuff over to your mouse.

Tim.6450:

define “high precision” because I can find a minion master build with 43% crit chance or is that too low?

Are you in PvP/WvW? If you’re in PvE, then its fine, because you shouldn’t need Blood Magic anyway (and I’d argue using it is a complete waste). If you are, you should never have that high of crit chance, unless you are Rabid.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

You mean Plague form has 20seconds of stability? The well has 1.25seconds or something of Stability and pulses every 1 second for 5 seconds.

The well does not give any stability except on cast and if fear is converted.

No optimized PvP (or WvW) MM build utilizes high precision and any non Vampiric Master siphoning traits. It is entirely possible to do something like zerker MM, but it is far from OP in any shape or form.

I can say this absolutely, without the tiniest doubt: fixing siphoning, so long as they adjust Vampiric Master to make up for anything done to Vampiric, will leave MMs just as they are. It will have literally no effect at all.

I did mention I haven’t played dungeons in a LOOOOOOOONG time, right? :P Man, I figured something had changed, but its been way too long.

Overkillengine.6084:

Or they could just tone down the amount spammable cc available to everyone else; or just make it so stuns and other cc do not duration stack.

True, I’m just making Necro-specific changes that will allow us to be okay.

@Ash. There is literally no reason to remove Vampiric Master. You just take the HPs that is added away from Vampiric Master, and its fine. There is no reason to nerf MM builds, especially not when they have only recently become “viable” to the general community.

That one build has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the traits not being viable. Those traits are under-tuned because they have near-infinite scaling, not because ANet is scared of a non-existent MM build that will magically have 40 trait points, and a build that somehow magically gains precision while still using full soldier gear.

Overkillengine.6084:

Yeah it was towards the beginning of the year; some wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued, most of us just shrugged and went on since it was a change to make it more consistent with the rest of the game.

Well, it was a bit stupid that 2 Necros could solo that one CM boss while completely AFK.

Which is why I’d love to see more CC-immunity added in through traiting to other Necros. Seriously, if they just translate certain characteristics of MMs into other builds through traiting, we’d see massively better attrition gameplay.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

And the other builds cant be improved with it affecting MM, i do think that removing Vampiric Master and just buffing up the siphon traits.

Killing part of MM attrition is not the way to make attrition better. Vampiric master has nothing to do with why they don’t buff the other traits, MMs get very small comparative healing from non-minion siphoning; any other build will get more.

Fix siphoning first, then take any HP/s buffs that Vampiric gives MM builds, and take it out of Vampiric Master; problem solved. No MM wants to take Vampiric Precision/Rituals, no MM is taking Bloodthirst, so the only change would be Vampiric itself. So if the new Vampiric gives MMs (who will generally proc Vampiric the least, due to spending more of their time managing minions than attacking themselves) an HP/s increase of 20, take 20 HP/s off your standard MM setup. This is very easily done, most MMs can be assumed to have 3-4 minions of an average attack speed of one attack per 3 seconds. So 60 HP/hit, or about 15-20 HP/hit removed from Vampiric Master.

Also, they could fix Vampiric Master, which has been bugged since they “fixed” the Blood Magic tree. So literally any nerf to the trait like this along with a fix won’t actually change anything.

Oh… uh…

WARNING: Bhawb hasn’t seriously PvE’d with any kind of regularity since 2012, any and all info is highly subject to being flat out wrong.

There we go. Ya, I haven’t really seriously done dungeon grinding since launch, so its possible I’m super wrong. The only recent underwater fighting I’ve done is the Fractal, which doesn’t have much obstacles to cause LoS issues.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I dont run with minions but do the others die when they go into water?

As long as you have those minions equipped on your underwater utility bar no, they just hop in and swim with you.

Not to mention on part 3, that the Trident’s AA is borderline broken on underwater bosses. You can basically AFK a number of bosses because of how it works.

I wouldn’t count on it always staying like that.

Actually, MM builds have some of the best attrition in the game. Problem is that everything that gives them amazing attrition doesn’t translate at all to our other builds.

Geomancy is better for any AoE damaging condition application, Sigil of Earth is better for on-crit.

Yep. Something a lot of people have said and Anet has kind of done in newer bosses.

I think they could give us some “sustain” by traits that modify other abilities to apply what we need, like the Thief 15 trait, where X condition applies Y condition. Or something that makes all staff marks cripple, etc. It shouldn’t be on auto attack, but because the rest of our abilities have decent CDs, have it apply on multiple ones.

We’re Necromancers, despite Dhuumfire, burning is the complete opposite of our nature. A torch that was the exact opposite of what it “should” be, instead dealing chill, would be very Necro-y.

There have been a lot of ideas, I forget what exactly they were. My personal idea was that the #4 ability would summon a Will o the Wisp minion, the #5 would throw an ice field out, and generating a ground-based effect that chilled and punished people the longer they stayed in it, up to when it expired.

Will o the Wisp is a melee minion, every X attacks it chills the target (like Bone Fiend does with cripple). Its active kills it, pulling everyone in a radius towards it, more chill/pull the closer they are. I’d love to see a blast finisher on this skill, to give us SOME kind of blast finisher on a weapon skill.

The #5 skill drops a well-sized Ice field. Its effects start off somewhat weak, but scale up to be fairly harsh at the end.

We really want more chill as a Necro. There are ways to get it, but opening up defensive options for more builds would make a lot of sense.

Its the full package. MMs have huge poison uptime, high base damages, lots of weakness, perma cripple from a single minion, immobilize, knockdown, and life stealing.

Also, something that people actually don’t realize: a full set of 6 minions is only 144 HP/s. When you consider comparative uptimes, and the fact that they are all single target, that actually isn’t much higher than Vampiric Precision with high crit chance. The siphoning is only a very small part of why they are good at attrition, especially when you consider that MMs have god-awful LF generation compared to what other builds can get.

The big difference is consistent and strong offensive pressure and control, while still having a strong defense. Unlike any other Necro, they have MASSIVE amounts of control. A full MM build can keep someone hard-CC’d for up to 15 seconds, with almost 10s of chill afterwards, and perma cripple while that isn’t up. In addition to that, MMs also either boast near invulnerability to conditions, or perma poison with high weakness from either of their GM traits. All of this control and condition output is done while having 100% regen uptime, retal hurting their target back, low but consistent minion/self DPS, and decent healing from siphoning traits.

MMs literally have everything we were promised Necromancers would have. Adapt those qualities to other Necromancer builds, which is something that doesn’t currently exist, mostly due to a high lack of non-minion based control and sustained condition output, and you see an entire line of Necromancers that are… actually Necromancers.

It is very unlikely for them to add brand new weapons at this point. The most you can hope for is a Greatsword that, while using skills, gets a scythe particle effect and scythe-like animations, a la staff.

But it would be a huge resource drain for them to just add in a whole new set of weapons at this point, compared to making Necro have scythe-y animations on existing weapons.

I’d really prefer that our Torch actually not burn, and instead be an AoE control/chill/denial option.

Except that by looking at one example of a working attrition build, you can see why it works. Why is it that MM is the only real attrition build, when it is on the exact same class, with the access to the same weapons, same Deathshroud, a lot of the same things that every other Necro is?

I’m not saying roll MM if you want to be attrition, I’m saying look at why MMs are able to absolutely excel in attrition while everything else fails. Take those things that make MM succeed, and then adapt and apply them to everyone else.

@Nay, I’d love that on land, as long as the rainbow trail happens every single time he charges.

If you want to know what makes attrition work: look at MM builds, not only the best case of Necromancer attrition, but one of the strongest attrition builds in the game.

That fight is actually really easy with a Necro and high poison uptime (CPC) and WoC. You murder his regen, most Necros will also make him really easy to kite, and he’s basically a big punching bag at that point.

No Risen would make sense, we don’t make Risen (or anything like them). Also, in general they are too cool for us to have. We’d probably get something more like a big Tuna, but only a skeleton of one with organs filling the ribcage.

Soul Reaping:

Adept
V – Speed of Shadows – Should either be removed (because they hate giving us mobility, but any flat +% movement weaker than swiftness is basically useless) or be a burst of speed to allow us to catch up to/create distance with an enemy. Something like +40-50% speed for 2-3 seconds while in Deathshroud (no flashing DS to get the effect).

Master
VII – Mark of Revival – Needs a secondary effect. For 20 points we’re getting something that is weaker than almost every other revival trait, so either drop it to 10 points, or give it a secondary effect: increases revival speed by 10% (or so), or gives something to the reviver/revivee.

X – Soul Marks – Not bad as is, but I’d prefer to see it slightly toned down, but given scaling per person hit. Rewards people for smart use of marks, instead of mindlessly spamming them. 2% LF per person hit, up to 6% max gained per mark (or something along those lines)

Grandmaster
XI – Foot in the Grave – Again, not really bad as is, but I’d prefer to see it made more like it’s grandmaster twin. Give us some kind of CC immunity while in DS: either full immunity to hard CC, aka Shade, or at least something much longer than 3s, but only while in DS.

Other than those traits, I think everything in SR is really well designed and balanced. Certain things are weaker or not due to what is currently in the meta for builds, but overall almost every trait is a competitive option for some build. Even all of the minor traits are really solid, and the stats the tree gives are, again, really nice.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I was just in water for 2 maybe 3 seconds and it put it on a FULL cool down :/

He’ll walk through water on his own sometimes and get bugged out for hours.

Just like all condi Necros, or all MM Necros, any kind of “monoteam” is really fun, especially with a class like Necro which has some of the biggest internal synergy.

Lots of people use GS on basically every class because they are fun. Its really cool to see your character swinging a gigantic sword around (why do you think Anime has a fetish for swords larger than the person’s body), unlike daggers.

I wouldn’t mind if they added Scythes, or proper polearms, but that is far into the future. The first thing they will do is open existing weapons to classes, and GS not only already exist, but have the most extensive and awesome assortment of skins.

Just make him some swimming animations. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if he permanently stayed in that stupid falling animation while he swam, and attacks just magically happened in front of him. But it really doesn’t make sense to limit all elite options underwater.

And someone who is better on lore can correct me on this next bit, but I’m like 95% sure a Lich could handle being underwater as well.

Rank doesn’t matter. Pretty much everyone will agree that your rank really isn’t that good of a measurement of personal skill. It will show something, but its not that great of a measurement of overall skill.

Until you’re in a fight with someone on the forums, and then rank is the sole measurement of your worth. So if you want to debate things in the sPvP forums, you better have a really nice e-pe… I mean rank.

An applied debuff on the opponent that leeches healing is probably the best bet. Don’t base it off boons (boon hate is something I really hope they add more off, to make boons actually take some skill to maintain, but it shouldn’t necessarily be too blanket), and don’t base it off of enemies in the area (makes it hard to balance because people in the area =/= people attacking Necro).

A debuff not only makes it easier to balance via “limiters”, such as dodging the application of the debuff and the debuff having some time limit, but also introduces a lot of play/counterplay interaction.

Bloodthirst, would be an interesting way to add it, but I feel like blanket scaling buffs really don’t add much counterplay. However, Bloodthirst makes more sense for this than the “leeching” idea.

I think boon hate should also have some more direct additions, through Spite and Death Magic. Spite needs more boon hate than the single trait it has now, and Death Magic could make Necromancers much better bunkers by giving them the ability to steal boons from opponents. Give us the ability to punish boons, as it is now, only S/D thieves gave any kind of drawback to boon-spamming. There is almost no other drawbacks to it, you crap out tons of boons all over the place, with absolutely not way to prevent them being applied, and no punishment for that application. Necromancers are a logical place to have anti-boon mechanics; let us punish them (with counterplay) for mindlessly spamming boons.

Oldbugga.7029:

What a cop out. I can handle the incompetance of the devs but what gets up the nose is the attitude to the players….and it is doubly disappointing when the fanbois also starting overtly showing that attitude to other players who only have the best intentions for the game…not some blind loyalty to a company that treats its paying customer as we have been.

I am glad Bhawb has some value for his minion builds out of his “close” relationship with the devs, but it leaves the rest of the necro builds looking just that much worse and we can not see any improvement incoming…because no-one on the ANet team will have the guts to tell us exactly what is their intention.

Many of us have poured a lot of time and effort into the game and characters and helping others (other than just themselves), Nemesis springs too mind as just one example. To brush that off with “if you don’t like the heat get out of the kitchen” statements is just insulting and inflamatory and that post should be removed.

My “close” relationship is just that I’ve happened to talk to them once or twice. Its not like I’m buddy-buddy with them. A few of them happen to know my name; mostly via the over THREE THOUSAND forum posts I’ve made, and also a year of Necromancer podcasts, so don’t act like I don’t contribute to the community. I don’t have any contact info for them, I just mention them because I’ve had a bit more contact than your “average” player who has never directly spoken to a dev at all. Its easy to think of them as these magical entities that go out of their way to spite you. At best that is an ignorant idea. The devs are real people who want this game to be the best it can be. They make mistakes, as do all humans, they have to make money, they have bosses who make decisions for them. But when people get stuck in this idea that the devs hate them and have it out for them (something I see in every single thread on this forum), they get a completely disconnected idea of what is actually going on.

But “have fun or stop playing” is the hard reality. If you want to contribute, feel free. If you want to try to improve the game, feel free. But do it for the sake of it. Real contributions to this community are not done when you expect something in return. People like Nemesis who make tons of suggestions and effort do it to help people (and in his case get a little bit of money back, enough to allow him to continue helping people); it is not done to get an inside track, or so people think he’s super amazing. All of my Podcasts, my posting on the forums, and the times I help in game are done because I enjoy doing it. I don’t do it for any other reason (I’d be pretty stupid if I did, considering I get nothing out of it).

But this entitlement annoys the hell out of me. You are not entitled to a dev response because you’ve done X for the community. You’re not entitled to what you think you deserve because you’ve paid Y money on the game. When you bought this game, you paid for the game that it was at that very second. When you buy something from the gem store, you pay for that item. Your money does not buy you any special privilages to make decisions on balance, it doesn’t buy you dev response, it buys you what you already got. Anything extra is done by the devs to make their game better (and obviously hopefully get them more money).

So yes, the end result is that if you are not having fun, leave the kitten game. If you are having fun, play it. If you want to make the game better, make suggestions; but stop acting so kitten ed entitled, like ANet owes you anything.

It makes little sense. It might work as a band-aid to the real issues, but it doesn’t fix anything (as well as being completely illogical as far as trees giving stats goes).

The real issue is that Death Magic is just flat out subpar as a tree entirely. If it wasn’t bad, people would actually spec into it, and you’d have meaningful choice; more damage at the cost of low survivability, or the ability to stay alive but deal a bit less damage.

Trahearne in this very game is a Necro with a greatsword, and despite how many people dislike him he’s arguably a stronger Necromancer than any players can make (he summoned like 10 Flesh Golems before… wtf man).

Lily.1935:

facepalm this was supposed to be in general discussion forum.. I didn’t even think I had the necro forums open.

That’s the second time its happened in the last week (someone else accidentally posted something here from the sPvP forums). Its okay :P

Pelopidas.2140:

getting out of combat takes longer for necros…we might have problems with the class as a class, but saying we need longer to get ooc makes me think that the general frustation leads to imagining problems that arent there

Not true. People used to say this about Necros always getting aggro in dungeons (dunno if it still happens or if I just learned), until we figured out all the aggro mechanics, and found out that certain Necro builds are literally built with a giant sign saying “HEY MOBS, FOCUS ME FIRST”. It was due to us always having the highest HP, often having a ton of front-loaded ranged AoE damage, and pretty strong sustained damage after that. All of that put us really high on the aggro table for an entire group of mobs right off the bat, which led to them getting into melee range of us (another aggro table mechanic), and then us frantically throwing out as much damage in melee range as possible.

Everything just kind of compounded so that most Necros, especially at launch, being the unofficial meatbag tank for their groups. It was humorous when it worked well, as Necros could actually handle it well (although it looked hilarious running in circles throwing crap behind you to kite); it wasn’t quite as funny with crap like the 8k per shot snipers in CM downing you in two shots.

Attrition isn’t just the ability to out-heal damage (which is by far the most boring way to make attrition work), its the ability to survive the other persons damage until they can’t survive yours. Necromancers theoretically have the tools to do this, but the tools we have are under-tuned.

Boon removal takes away their boons. This can make them susceptible to control, lowers their healing, lowers their damage reduction, lowers damage, etc. It all depends on what is removed, but essentially it brings them back down to their “base”.

Conditions then pull their “base” effectiveness even lower. Chill murders effectiveness in general, poison destroys healing, weakness lowers offensive output, control conditions remove their ability to position (offensively and defensively), and long durations/low stacks of damaging conditions set up consistent DPS.

Then to finish off the cake, we have a bunch of effects that improve our ability to keep up in this boon-less, condition heavy environment. Conditions are not only relatively useless against Necromancers, but actively dangerous to use. We also could care less about boons. Instead of boon-based mitigation, we just get craptons of small heals. Siphons, small heals here and there, regen, and life force all give us a lot of effective healing.

Attrition in this game is actually far deeper than just healing more than they hit you for. Guardians could never tank 3v1 if they had to face un-mitigated DPS from 3 people, its their ability to mitigate that allows them to do it. The problem, however, is that the way Guardians have to mitigate damage is not just better, but easier than a Necromancers.

As it is now, condition removal is too skilless for almost everyone else (we’re one of the ONLY classes that actually needs to land something to remove most of our condis), boon removal is too weak, our HP/LF regen is too easily countered, and we have almost no good 1vX mitigation. Compared to a Guardian, which can’t be countered as easily, because the boon application is target-less, condition removal is target-less, dodges, invulns, blocks, etc all don’t require anything than pressing the button at the right time.

They’ve created a huge issue where certain mechanics have literally 0 interaction necessary to be used well, and others rely entirely on interaction.

Again: if you don’t like the game, don’t play it, if you like the game play it. It is really not that hard.

Trahearne did some pretty kitten Necro kitten while using a greatsword, just saying.

No idea. The only “legitimate” reason I could see is if they weren’t being viewed or if someone thought they weren’t “valid” anymore because of how old they are. Neither of which should matter imo, and I really doubt they were removed because he voiced criticism (devs =/= forum mods), most likely just more 0/10 modding.