Guild Wars 2

Hammer is stretching it as far as I could see it going.

Dirame.8521:

I don’t get the whole “doesn’t fit the lore” thing. I don’t see it written anywhere that Necros MUST NOT carry shields EVER. Conventions can be broken, just like Monks evolving to become Guardians.

Like Troll said, it just doesn’t fit, and frankly it is important to create a consistency like that. And Trahearne wields a greatsword, and another scholar class (mesmer) wields a GS, so yes it fits in this lore. Shields do not. A mace, hammer, torch; those kinds of things I could see, not shield.

Greatsword a la Trahearne kthx.

If you could give us more information about your full build (preferably in a build calculator/editor) along with what you are looking for, it would help out a lot, thanks.

I love for people to explore, I just rarely do with minions since I’ve basically been using the same minion build since the 2nd to last BWE and every other one I try just feels… wrong.

Zenith.7301:

By saying minions do 1.6k DPS, you mean a full minion utility bar? Because most people don’t have the luxury of running one considering you want group condi removal or utility wells in addition to a stunbreaker.

That is the most common 4 minion skills (bone minion, bone fiend, flesh wurm, flesh golem) with the 30% damage trait. If you aren’t going heavy into minions, their DPS is irrelevant, you are taking them for their actives.

I agree they need to have some extra survivability though, in some form, and need out of combat regen (its just a QoL thing to me). The supposed AoE nerfs that are always promised would help in s/tPvP a lot, I think they could use some WvW specific AoE reduction and also something to keep them alive a bit better in PvE.

Minion hybrids with anything are fairly rare because the “standard” (20/0/30/20/0) minion build with power gear is just a really obvious build path, and it works, so no one tries to experiment further. Build looks interesting, at the very least it would be fun.

According to ANet, the cap is a technical limitation brought on by the way conditions are tracked. Basically, the servers have to track all the conditions on every entity on that server, limiting it to 25 stacks limits the maximum amount they would need to track at any time, and increasing that limit would increase possible server load. Take that how you will.

Just keep playing. This game has some new mechanics (as you’ve noticed), you just need time to adapt, it’ll feel more natural with time.

Minions do 1.6k DPS (I had done all the math to show, but then ANet’s wonderful forum design kicked me off my account and scrapped the post, much love, so I’m not writing it out again, you can do it yourself using the wiki numbers, +30% from traits, and using the attack speed someone posted recently), not including any actives, or any finishers (which will be abundant with death nova).

While I agree having condition minions would be very cool, and they do need some more longevity, minions don’t need more than at most a minor damage buff (for damage).

Death Shroud is extra HP, and 4 more abilities. Everyone can find something to do with more HP and more abilities. Not to say it benefits everyone equally, but not a single profession mechanic benefits every build equally.

Roaming is generally running around solo killing people. Havoc groups are small groups that are going around being a pain-in-the-kitten to the enemy team. They are going to back cap supply camps, kill dolyaks, kill other groups, pester the zerg, and maybe even snipe some forts if they happen to have the supply and time to do so. They do also sometimes just run around killing people, but generally speaking a “havoc” group is going to support the server with their actions vastly more than a roamer, who can really only snipe one or two guys doing their corpse run back to the front.

So it depends on who you expect to be going up against, if you know their class before hand, if you can switch builds, and where it takes place.

Why do I say that? Because I’d suggest a soldier MM build for 90% of your fights as long as you are in sPvP. They bug out a lot less there, and also there is a good chance you’ll be fighting on flat surface (which helps). The problem is, of course, that chances are mesmers are going to use shatter builds, and that is a hard fight to win.

Other than MM, vitality/DS bunkers with spectral skills (to generate LF), WoS to burst, 50% CD on DS and some abilities to go with it (fury, ret, cond removal) is strong, or also terror. It just depends on what you are comfortable playing, but all three of those are very strong 1v1 builds, and the other 2 give you options that are probably a bit more reliable all around (if a bit weaker).

Kardiamond.6952:

@Bhawb

You don’t need to use any trait to have another stun.

You also win most 1on1 fight in downed state.

Ranger isn’t top tier downed state, but it’s better then engineer and necro by a margin.

Dog fear for 2 second? If you ask me that’s really useful

Dog fear requires you to bring a dog, hence a specific loadout, not what is base to their downed state.

Ranger base down state isn’t good at all. Sure you can argue that using a very specific trait build it is better, but then Necro downed with 50% siphoning, extra damage, and a terror build is strong too. But that wasn’t the point, their base down state, without a very specific trait build and pets, isn’t good at all.

On paper, yes. In reality, no. Also, it depends on builds (like everything else) as to how things look; you could have tons of amazing skills, but if they are never used in a build then I don’t really include them in the “on paper” comparison.

You want power/precision/crit damage with just enough vitality/toughness/healing power mixed in for your personal taste of tankiness/minion healing.

No, conditions are capped because of technical limitations. Every condition on every mob in the game is tracked by the server, they instituted a cap so the server wouldn’t be too stressed just keeping track of them.

Kravick.4906:

Have you played GW1? GW1 necros are a lot more fun to play than GW2 necros. Telling us that this is a different game only goes so far when its a game within the same series. People kind of expected certain things, and those expectations failed to deliver. A good developer takes everything that was fun and awesome from the previous title and improves on them in the sequel, not discard those things and then make them worse.

That doesn’t apply when game mechanics are being completely reworked. This isn’t Call of Duty 18, where they change guns, maps, and maybe have some cool additions from 17, because in “true” sequels mechanics and overall design is largely preserved; the mechanics are hugely different here.

Also, a lot of things that are being complained about don’t necessarily fit within the current framework for what they wanted. For example the Hex system, while fun for some people, was also badly beginner unfriendly. Balancing such huge number of skills was also unmanageable, and with reduced skills overall, build diversity cannot be maintained.

Heck, even some of the most unique mechanics were best used by other classes. Life stealing as an entire build (for example) wasn’t really that popular for Necros. It was good as a secondary couple of skills to keep your HP up, but Rangers were better at using our life stealing than we were. Using sacrifice as a way to have low CDs was also rarely a main mechanic, but more side thing you put into your build to be able to use when needed (Masochism builds were niche).

There just was no feasible way to transfer over every single tiny niche build and mechanic that every class had. They preserved themes, but with such a huge mechanics overhaul, there was a lot that had to go, or be marginalized; and it was, frankly, handled pretty kitten well.

They have some shared I’m sure, but they have said themselves that the teams are separate across game types and also certain content (like Holiday events are separate from Living Story).

It seems like a bug, as it is only in PvE/WvW, would seem a bit silly for them to have that kind of an inconsistency without it being a bug (but who knows I guess).

I haven’t read it all through, but thanks for the post to help people out, Necro can be hard to start in tPvP (especially build wise); hopefully this will help out.

They have different teams looking at each, although I’m sure they meet since as of now balance is done across the board (mostly).

I agree siphoning should have some healing coefficient. I’m not sure about the wells siphon to allies as well; I don’t know that it’d be OP at all in PvP/WvW, but in PvE I can already face tank a lot as a rampager necro with siphoning wells, a whole team with that seems a bit strong.

I said it doesn’t contribute to winning except against pugs. I didn’t say you couldn’t do it to have fun, I’m sure its plenty of fun to do, it still doesn’t contribute to winning.

Just a 1 second increase is a 20% increase in effectiveness, which is a very significant buff.

I probably am.

And no, everyone knows that you’ll just hit the condition cap and won’t get credit for the fight.

And I don’t know many people that go into WvW saying “you know what sounds really fun, getting my kitten handed to me by a group because I’m running a terrible build for zerging”? His point was invalid, and I said why.

@Pan, first off, roaming around 1v1 doesn’t do crap all for your server in those kinds of builds; against intelligent players. All it does is annoy pugs that just died and want to get back to fighting. Organized groups move in full teams, and a full team is going to wipe the floor with any single build that has the damage to do more than just bring them out of combat. Not to mention all those builds that aren’t worth the time 1v1 tend to hit like a wet noodle compared to actual teamfighting builds (compare the damage of those annoying ranger builds to a single well placed Epidemic).

I agree that they need to tone down the builds, but the point you were trying to make doesn’t work in WvW.

I want to be able to summon Shatterer. He’s undead, I’m a necro, make it happen ANet.

Jokes aside, the unfortunate thing about a lot of the “changes” threads is that a vast majority of changes aren’t thought of from a balance perspective, they are imagined from a perspective of “what would make necros stronger” or alternatively “what will make necros more ‘fun’” (fun is subjective). And whenever I see a huge “changes” post from someone that I don’t already recognize and respect, its really hard to read them. I can’t imagine that isn’t a shared feeling either.

Sounds fun, but I can’t see anyway to make it meaningful without being OP.

Not to mention that requires them to slot a healing skill that has very meager healing unless that 200 is enough to keep you alive.

sas.6483:

Necro is not really an attrition class, because we do not have the defensive tools and mobility to play the attrition game. I’d also argue that our single target condition damage is not really all that great, especially considering the massive amounts of direct damage that’s given up in order to play conditions. (Unless you’re playing rampager, in which case you’re glass and not by definition attrition.) Honestly, if you want to play a real attrition class, play P/D thief or guardian or bunker engi or something.

First off, you said if you want to play the attrition class go play builds X, Y, or Z. That isn’t an attrition class, those are specific builds that play the attrition game quite well.

Attrition is extending a fight out over a long period of time, and having tools that make the fight easier for you. Boons, healing, mobility, stealth can all do this, but so can weakness, poison, DS, cripple, chill, life siphoning, condi transfer, etc. You can argue that at this moment in the game they aren’t as strong as those other builds’, but it remains that every single Necromancer build, regardless of how much you decide to take advantage of it, has access to these very attrition tools, whereas every other class needs to use a very specific build to achieve attrition results.

At first you had me worried that you were saying our normal HP was only 1/3 what it should be :P

But yes, this is something I have noticed (although had no idea that was how bad it was), and should be fixed.

lynspottery.6529:

I can see now why no group wants a necro when running dungeons. My ranger does better than the necro in dungeons (even without a pet).

Credibility just went to 0. Very few groups, and only those that are looking to hit the very extent of min/maxing PvE content have issues with Necros. In fact, I’ve ended up with those legendary elitist warriors a few times, and as of yet I’ve never been called out, but they’ve said things along the lines of “oh great, an engi, i’m not 4 manning a dungeon”. That isn’t to say that it will never happen, because I’m sure it does, but as long as you aren’t joining CoF farming groups that want you to ping gear and maybe super high level fractals (which you should be running with an organized group anyway) you will not find many people who take issue with Necros. Necros take far more issue with Necros than most other classes do.

+1 to what Ramiah said. We don’t need a new aggro system, just make the one in place work all the time.

digiowl.9620:

Wish it was broken down into individual videos for weapons, because i would be very interesting in dagger #1 but finding it in a 20 minute video (if it is there at all) is a pain. This because i swear i have seen the golem sit there while i sliced and diced a mob multiple times, and that was with me opening up with the full dagger chain without him budging.

that you get different behavior for different weapons for no rhyme or reason is annoying, as you really need consistent predictable behavior without spending hours in the mist training grounds drilling every last possible permutation into your reflexes.

Right now it seems ANet can’t make up their mind if they want us to adapt our setups to the situation, or run one build that we have practiced katas with. With different behaviors on different skills we are basically required to do things kata style, but at the same time it seems we should be swapping weapons, utilities, maybe even major traits, to fit the situation.

They all work with the same basic idea, the only difference is how some AoE works. Single target works across all of them. This is just a basic video, if you want a very specific outline of how every single ability in the game works, then you can go to the mist and test it; but the basic idea is hit them with some auto attacks.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Honestly, I miss some of the conditions that NPCs can use in PvE, such as the ability to restrict healing, or reduce your effectiveness. To me, Necromancers should be the great equalizers, turning powerful opponents into scrawny weaklings. (Well, actually, Necromancers should be commanding an undead army, but I’ll settle for the simple black magic I suppose)

“Real” Necromancy is just divination by speaking with the dead, so I think we can go ahead and say that a fantasy Necro can have made up abilities.

Frankly I find Necromancers think their class is worse than anyone else thinks we are, I don’t see it being very hard to convince anyone except maybe those annoying “0nly berzerk warr, p1ng gear speed run for pros onli” people.

He’s horrified of combat.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I like this idea, but the trait would need quite a bit of a cooldown time in order to prevent it from being too OP (such as 40-60 seconds cooldown).

It totally depends on the damage. If we’re talking a very large damage hit (multiple thousands of damage) then sure a 40 second CD is warranted, but if its just 100 per condition removed, then that CD is hardly warranted.

I don’t even know if a shred of what Andele said is true, but kitten is it convincing.

The difference we face is that GW2 doesn’t have the healing vs DPS issue that WoW faces. I think Nemesis went over it in the podcast (the one that might not have been released yet, now that I think about it…), but with the way GW2 is situated mechanics wise, we aren’t going to run into that issue, the only problems here would be: does it bring in interesting and fun mechanics gameplay wise, and then tuning it so it isn’t OP or overcentralizing.

I’d agree, it would be more interesting for it to have effects other than just damage, the only thing is that it seems the condition system in general tends towards very basic things; more interesting effects wouldn’t really “fit” the system (although I’d like it more).

It would be interesting to implement (would make Necro on Necro fights a bit scarier :P). It wouldn’t change much for the standard condition damage build besides a damage boost, but it would be an interesting mechanic for non-damage builds that still apply a lot of conditions; the enemy would have to choose whether they wanted to remove or not.

Bone minions sit at a 16 second CD, and are the only ones you will be actively disposing of often during a fight. Shadow Fiend/Bone Fiend both sit at 24 seconds, and Bone Fiend can be kept alive very nicely with proper aggro management (making sure you engage back away from where you fight). Flesh Wurm pretty much never dies until you activate him, and then Flesh Golem is going to die, but frankly he needs to die with how strong he is. They aren’t going to be dying often enough that they need really short CDs (they sit around 10k HP if I remember correctly) except bone minions, who do have that short CD.

As for the second fight, all but 1 of your minions in the standard minion build (Shadow Fiend is rarely used) can be “refreshed” by killing them off, which works fine unless you are expecting a fight right away. Although I tend to think they they should have out of combat regeneration added in.

I don’t cast a minion and then lose all my damage for 20-30 seconds, I cast my minions and then have most of my damage except for a 20-30 second interval on death. Minions work completely differently from other damage skills.

Kravick.4906:

30 seconds is a pretty long time in this game. Especially for a skill that is supposed to be disposable. In combat, 30 seconds is excruciatingly long if its something you rely on for damage.

Epidemic is the single only utility skill that we have that is on a lower CD than all our minions except our elite and Flesh Wurm, and Flesh Wurm dies the least of all our minions. By that, I’d say minions have manageable CDs.

Only 2 minion skills are on longer than a 30 second CD, one of them is an elite, and the other is going to be 32 seconds in most minion builds (with CD reduction trait).

Minions were a really fun build in GW1, but the base mechanics were not done well; they were made fun by skills like death nova and jagged bones that made them a very difficult and rewarding experience to play. But don’t even try to tell me that if you were in AB and you didn’t wet yourself a little when you saw an MM fully loaded up with 10 minions charging you down.

It wasn’t in a good place, every MM was a mini boss waiting to happen, until they achieved their transcendence to god mode they were like taking your 5 year old brother to a gang fight, and if they were finally allowed to evolve to a higher life form than any mere mortal on the enemy team had to run for their lives or surrender their pitiful existence.

Corpses as a “resource” needed to go. You were useless in any kind of PvP that wasn’t FA, JQ, or ABs, and even then you were incredibly weak until you took 2 AI controlled camps or rolled through another group. PvE certain types of minion builds (mostly ones that focused on Death Nova or the hero controlled discord way) were far too powerful in some areas, and then absolute crap in others; there was never middle ground, you were either trainwrecking content or doing nothing. This was okay in GW1 because they had a lot more skills and so if a few were useless then whatever, but we can’t have 2 entire types of our skills useless in a lot of content.