Guild Wars 2

Rennoko.5731:

I was really thinking more of gaps not bypassing vertical distance. I am no expert on warriors but I have seen videos of them leaping over gaps that I know my necro and Mesmer cannot. Engineers had some rocket jump that worked the same way. My only point was that allowing worm to actually port would open up too many abusive ways to get places were not suppose to, like on keep walls. The two mentioned and possibly others can do it as well along a horizontal plane, which is similar in spirit though far less abusive.

Put the restriction on the Flesh Wurm then, so it can’t be placed in areas that would allow for abuse, similarly to how portal is dropped at the feet so is guaranteed to not allow people to teleport somewhere they couldn’t walk.

*30-35 Minions (each person gets 6-7 depending on jagged horror or not).

Its (Dark Path) definitely got nothing to do with long cast time abilities, it is a movement ability, always has been. Saying its for channeled abilities is ignoring the fact that it wasn’t always a projectile but a targeted blink (bring it back plox). They changed it, I think, because it gave necromancers too much out of combat mobility, and instead made it a gap closer. If you want to screw up someone’s channel, just Doom them, or use an interrupt, or Spectral Grasp them out of it (heck, Grasp will do both, screw the choice, make them eat the chill and lose their channel).

Also, warriors are far from low mobility, greatsword gives them a lot of movement.

This has been posted about before, I think Kravick and I were in a lengthy discussion about it, refer back to there (I’m sure you can search it or something). In my opinion, they are all situated nicely in the place that makes the most sense for them, just because the meta has chosen something doesn’t mean it makes the most sense (wells are not for power builds, well of suffering is) or that it should warrant a complete redesign of our trees.

As for # of traits, minions by far have the most things that are possible to change, as they are actual summoned creatures that can have base stats buffed, CDs changed, special on-hit abilities added, etc.

I don’t think we need drastic changes. We need quite a few minor changes/buffs/QoL improvements to certain things, and then a few more “major” rehauls like making Signet of Spite (and maybe other skills) a competitive choice in builds, and making a few changes to traits here and there.

Visually, we are fine in my opinion. Yes we could use some legendary love, and I’d like to see more skin related things (like minion skins), but overall I don’t see much need. I don’t want us to be a super flashy class, I’d much rather someone underestimate my marks, rather than have a gigantic black fireball of death come flying from the heavens and smashing apart the earth for every Mark of Blood I trigger. I couldn’t care less if people fear me in combat, so long as the class is balanced so I can kill them.

Edit: I’ll make specific balance things I’d change in the morning (too sleepy to brain right now), but I don’t have much for the rest other than I’d love to have a set of cartoony minions, Flesh Golem a giant teddy bear, Flesh Wurm a snake, bone minions little bunnies, shadow fiend an owl, heck you can even make them “dark” looking, but I’d throw so much money at ANet for cartoony minions (and bunny bone fiends, I NEED them).

“Bypass big ledges and jumps”, has nothing to do with a teleport, he’s talking about their movement abilities.

No need for instant cast time, just allow the skill to cross higher differences in height and I’d love it.

Also, Necromancers are far from underpowered.

Death Nova is a nice supportive trait for fights, because it is going to lay down a poison field when your minions die, and poison fields are a great source of weakness via blast finishers (an underrated but nice thing to have), and Ritual of Protection is still really nice, as you can get up to 15 seconds base (assuming 4 wells + traited well on res).

But in reality, there is no wrong choice, it all depends on what you like best. For me, I don’t have an issue staying alive in PvE, and conditions aren’t a big factor to me with all our condition removal, so I wouldn’t put the 10 in Blood magic as I don’t have the need (plus you’re going to get the protection when you run in). I don’t personally like Axe training, Bas will disagree with me here, but I don’t think trying to max personal damage is worth it when you are going full MM; your personal damage is only a small part of the picture.

Basically speaking, power builds just synergize all around best with minions. The weapons you will use, the gear/food/traits/runes you pickup, and even the playstyle is all much stronger if you do a power build. That isn’t to say that conditions could never work, but that in general power builds have much more natural synergy.

You would need to show math really to make me believe its OP. I could see it being strong due to higher defensive stats, but just like PVT compared to Knight gear, you are gaining defense at the cost of damage, and this would work the same (either giving up the damage from power, or the damage from crit chance, depending on carrion/rabid). I think the tradeoff would make things even.

Rabid is going to be best if you are using Undead runes, which also ends up giving you the highest condition damage possible. Generally speaking, people also tend to like Rabid because necros have a good bit of healing, and toughness will help out there, and we can’t abuse the extra eHP from vitality in condition builds from lower overall LF generation.

That said, a lot of people like Carrion because it will let you survive burst much better (rabid leaves you with base 18k HP, which can be bursted through). In the end, it is really up to what you think works best for your playstyle and setup.

LoS has nothing to do with it, the problem is it is finicky about moving you through unpassable terrain, or to/through places you couldn’t easily walk through.

I hope in the future they release “packs” for all the summons (turrets, elementals, spririts, etc) that change the way they look. I don’t think it will be happening any time soon, but I would certainly support such an endeavor.

The most used weapons are going to have the most skins? Why, by golly, who ever would have guessed?

Seriously though, skins take time to develop, obviously they are going to release skins for the most used weapons, this kind of thing is mirrored along a lot of games. Staff is hugely popular, daggers are huge, in fact most of our weapons are shared with popular professions (elementalists, mesmers, warriors, and guardians, the most played professions, all commonly use our weapons). I see axe, warhorn, and maybe focus being relatively rare, but its not like we aren’t going to have plenty of skins.

Hazor.3140:

Actually since necros have a big health pool and shroud doubles it, it scales better with toughness since your high pool becomes harder to drain

Very, very debatable as to whether toughness or vitality is better on necromancers.

I believe Khalifa’s build has a lot of trouble with thieves. Your real chance is just to burst them down with your combo. When they are in stealth, switch to staff and lay down marks to keep track of them, and to keep them taking damage/conditions while they are stealthed. Remember though, his build is meant to be used with a coordinated team (which includes at least 1-2 people protecting you).

You aren’t supposed to have them out auto attacking much, you wait for them to take a bit of damage, then blow them up when its convenient or before they die, whichever comes first. I’ve run bone minions since beta, I don’t have an issue with them blowing up, you just need to watch their HP (MMs are all about the micro managing).

Ken.9018:

well since deathshroud seems better with more vitality, I tend to run builds with either knight or carrion amulet and my fav weapons are either dagger dagger or sceptar dagger with staff

I’m talking full spec (traits, weapons, gear, utilities), you can use D/D with a bunch of different stats and trait combinations, all of which will give you different ways to handle thieves, some of them very simple (terror builds for example have built in fear on stun), some of them requiring more work/skill (MM builds chain CC to force the thief to waste their stun breaks at the beginning or die outright), and other builds you just don’t have much to work with.

In general, anticipate burst, soak it up with DS, try to Doom them out of combos, CC and kill them when they aren’t stealthed. When they are stealthed, take general guestimates as to where they are and lay down AoE.

What actual builds are you using, because it will greatly determine how/if you can deal with them alone.

We are going to run all MMs later, we just ran into time limits.

If it runs into balance issues they can fix it, but unlike warhorn it doesn’t run into the other issues of changing an established set, and can’t be chained with Doom (since it is essentially doom on steroids).

With 15 in curses, he does have access to fury to give a 20% crit chance buff, which helps at least some.

WvW’s meta is just in change right now. When you get intelligent groups that realize sending 20 people to cap a supply camp is far too many resources for something 4 people could easily do (while essentially stealthed due to not showing up as fighting on the map, unless they changed that), then it will stabilize out with small groups showing up again. But I don’t think solo roaming was ever intended in WvW, it doesn’t really do anything for the “greater good”, its just fun.

For the DS, I wouldn’t make it F1+F2, but let you choose which of the two was your F1 (maybe a trait?)

I don’t think the Siphon would be OP, but it would at least make it a sufficiently good use, it would heal for about 1.6k every 4 seconds, but it still leaves open counterplay from enemies (just kill it), and counter-counterplay from the necro (get the main heal off before he dies), that is good game design where players have these little mini games to do.

As for the Wurm, I lol’d (I’ll go ahead and assume thats a joke :P). It would open up Necro back point defense, which would help make the meta a bit less stale.

@The warhorn issues, basically yes. A well necro using WH offhand gets 2 seconds where the enemy can’t get out with daze+any CC (chill/cripple). With fear they’d just run out of it.

And my bad on the warhorn thing, I misread as fear.

alemfi.5107:

Perhaps.. I’m curious where you got the values for life force <—> health values ( Namely the 1.8% of your total hp per strike).

It is currently accepted that LF = 60% HP, since you get 3% LF per hit, it is effectively giving 60%(3%)HP= 1.8%HP

Small changes I would make:

Increase the range of Flesh Wurm teleport, and make it’s teleport function more like Mesmer Portal (can go any elevation change).

Blood Fiend’s siphon works with 50% better siphoning.

Make it possible to use Underwater death shroud on land, but make it so only 1 can be accessed (so you can’t have both available, keep only 1 shroud at any time, but you can choose).

flow.6043:

alemfi.5107:

Wail of Doom (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wail_of_Doom):
Changing this to a 1 second stun I think would fit the theme of the necromancer better than the 2 second daze it currently is.

Why cut the time in half? Stun and daze is essentially the same control effect.
The sigil of paralyzation even works on both of them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/stun-sigil-work-for-wh-daze/

I posted about this in another thread. Base 1 second fear, trait increases base duration by 50% to 1.5 second fear, 100% fear duration turns this into a 3 second fear, terror turns that into 3-4k damage, on a 25.5 second CD, in addition to the other fears that terror builds have. If they did make the change, it would have to be reduced in duration, otherwise it would be a 5 second AoE cone fear (traited, technically 6 seconds but 5 second cap on fear), and be far too strong in terror builds.

This, combined with the fact that Warhorn is currently an amazing offhand for dagger builds, and pretty bad for condition damage builds (outside of running around), and that changing it to a fear would suck for dagger builds, I don’t really see this being a good change. It would kitten a lot of MM and well builds, and be a minor buff (if reduced base, OP buff if not) to terror builds. It just doesn’t work well imo.

To basically everything else said in this thread, +1.

Bull Zooker.1672:

im not sure its the same thing bhawb? unless of course your referring to something that will never happen?

Pretty much, I was referring to the fact that everyone would like overpowered buffs to their class (like the famous dual wielding greatsword suggestion). I think stability (at least in certain forms) would break the tenuous balance we have.

Retaliation is still fairly strong, but it needs to be used in tanky builds with high power. I have a build that throws back about 400 damage per hit, while this doesn’t seem like a lot, its comparable to a few stacks of confusion, and in the right builds it synergizes pretty well.

I think the biggest problems that we were having were far more towards the side of communication than anything else. When we were coordinated with a solid strategy we completely turned the results on their head (from losing by 300 points to winning by that much). Plus, so many of you were running similar things (signet of undeath, boon corrupting, epidemic) that it makes communication really key (whereas in a standard group, only one or two people would have that, not practically the entire group).

Other than that, I think there will always be room for minor improvements (like I need to practice my wurm teleports, because that really makes travel back to point faster), but overall the setup

I’ve demolished a lot of thieves in 1v1, although I can’t say for certain that they were “good” (I don’t know what makes thieves good). The key for me is that when I see them, I start burning a lot of CC, my full skill chain ends up being Dark Pact→Locust Swarm→Wail of Doom→auto attack (I’m using minions, so at the latest I get aggro here)→Charge→Explode Bone Fiends→Rigor Mortis→swap weapons→Unholy Feast→Ghastly Claws. Now, obviously any thief with half a brain would pop a stun breaker (they are usually pretty dang surprised to see the burst so it will still hit to half health), and if they don’t then at the end of that they are dead. I keep Doom for the obvious burst attempt they are going to try at the end of their stealth to even the odds, and I still have a lot of my important CDs up, and bone minions will be back up pretty soon.

All that to say, you can handle thieves, but like every single other class, it depends on the two builds, the two players skill, and then extra factors (like I always make sure to get the jump on them).

We would enjoy it, but I think we might enjoy it the same way thieves would enjoy a buff to backstab damage.

lettucemode.3789:

Death Shiver I haven’t tried out. It seems like it could be good in a DS-oriented bunker build in teamfights. Passively applying vulnerability with no way for the enemy to avoid it is great. However just reading the description, it seems like it stacks up too slowly. But I haven’t given it a proper go yet, so.

Your generic DS bunker build is going to almost always have 10/0/10/0/30 (for retaliation, condition removal, and 5s DS CD or stability, depending on how you feel about the recharge time on death shroud). Death Shiver isn’t really worth it in this kind of build, you are only going to stay in death shroud if you take the stability trait, otherwise you are going to be flashing DS and only staying in for 2 seconds or so, and if you take stability you are still probably going to want a much better trait (greater marks). The vulnerability just isn’t worth it, when you can just Focus 4 for more stacks.

I’d keep changing the top post and just post a note that its been updated.

As for how it went, it went surprisingly well. I don’t know if we’ll be changing the meta to 5 necro teams anytime soon, but with better teamwork, and some more PvP practice for some of us (me), I think we could make some decent runs.

You can’t use a terrible necro to show any proof for how necromancers are. I could show a video of a d/d ele jumping off cliffs to his death, is his idiocy anything to the class itself? Of course not.

I have played a ton of WvW as underleveled, even at level 2. Just pick up the longest range weapon you can (staff) sit waaaaaaaaay in the back, and just spam crap. You are going to need to pay a lot of attention to your positioning, because you are far squishier than you would be with 80 exotics.

Its not that you can’t do it, you just need to be last in and first out to every fight, and stay in a position where you can do that. Since you are a decent level for traits, pick up highly supportive traits, use wells for support, use staff, and just support the zerg. Don’t expect to be doing much damage though, just try to help out (for example, flipping conditions with well of power is the same at level 30 or level 80).

If you lose a 1v3 to a thief (or any class) you deserved to lose. There are some builds that can’t deal with them, so there isn’t anything they could do with their current setup I’m sure, but that is still their fault for not running a build that can counter an incredibly common scenario in WvW (thieves).

Bryker.5719:

I think you might be overestimating how much harder it would make it.

Probably, I’m sure it would make more sense to me once it was in game and I could play around with it.

I don’t get the arachnid theme being associated with Necromancers. I get that spiders are creepy and necromancers are supposed to be creepy, but frankly they have very little to do with each other otherwise. I much prefer the more realistic connections that this game has given us (like locusts).

I agree I’d like the more control, I’m just thinking of how they could do it so we retain reliable pops. Now, if they made it like Mesmer where if I used the explosion while targetting someone, the minion runs up then explodes, with gtAoE when no one is selected that would be cool (they can do this in other games, I believe in you ANet).

The problem I’m finding with gt is that in a fight a hell of a lot is going on. Right now, I just need to know where my minions are, and blow them up when they are in range, which I can do. If I have to start ground targeting things, that makes things quite a bit harder; fighting as a full MM is generally pretty chaotic already, I don’t think I’d want to have to actually aim things as well.

I’d like to drop a +1 solely for the name, I’ll get back to you when I actually read the build fully.

I like the build, I haven’t tried it so I don’t know how good it is in practice, but I think it looks like a solid build at least for fun. Plus, the name.

Basically yes. I don’t know if it would be possible to code it, but they could have something like If range clicked < X distance (something relatively small, maybe 0-100, so the explosion still hits), then just explode right away, if range clicked > X distance, have a fast jump.

I’m not incredibly worried about tells, because like I said, it already is common for MMs to use one of our hard CCs to guarantee the explosions hit, and as long as they don’t make it stupid obvious (like the hounds’ jump is :P) then I think it would be fine.

If they kept the current AI, you still need to target the explosion, meaning it is going to involve a delay unless you target exactly where they are (or they will walk to the area and then explode, meaning the person might have already left the area). The utility might be nice for non-minion builds, but the decreased reliability would severely hurt MM builds, which require that explosion to be on target to be able to burst targets.

That is why I’d suggest even a small jump, for example a faster (far less obvious) version of what Hounds of Balthazar do, have the bone minions do a little jump so they can retain reliable burst explosions, but give that added control and utility.

As for ground target, any competent MM can control their minions aggro, if I am missing explosions I have lost a significant damage threat, a threat that can’t be replaced simply by being able to get a blast finisher or two off that wouldn’t have happened before.

3 bone minions was too strong. If you play soldier MM right, you can already brute force most builds down, another bone minion means a bit more siphoning, a bit more toughness, a bit more damage on hit, and (most importantly), another explosion. That extra explosion is another 3k damage+death nova+combo finisher, it would be too much.

Even if we can only get a few people (at least 3 just from what we are looking at now), that would let us try out a small version of it.

Bull Zooker.1672:

I would love it if spectral armor gave us stability but cant see that happening.

The problem is if they did that, it would become an exact replica of Elementalist Earth armor, but directly better because of the LF generation.

Ground target would be nice, but it is fairly easy to work around (coming from someone who mainly PvPs as an MM). The key is to first aggro them to the target, so they start closing the distance, and then using some CC to be sure they aren’t just going to walk away from them (CC should be abundant in MM builds anyway).

I think Ground target could present issues as well, if they didn’t incorporate some quick gap closer right before it, because it means you’d have to lead your opponents really well to be sure the minions actually got the finishers going properly. It would help people apply blast finishers more reliably, at the cost of likely being even more difficult to actually damage people with it.

Bas.7406:

Well it looks like we have 5 willing players, anyone else interested? I have jury duty so partaking in extended conversations may take a long time haha. Even so, if you are an EU player and want to take part let me know!

For those who are up for the attempts is everyone free today around 7pm PST? After the podcast recording Bhawb and I usually do a BoC presents, but this would be fun!

BoC presents all Necro tPvP

As for Spirit watch, I think it would come down to not worrying nearly as much about carrying the orb as the standard group might. Not to say that we can’t try to carry it, but that it will probably come secondary to capping and holding points (maybe have the MM run points while the team keeps them all locked up mid). Basically we would play the anti-meta, instead of controlling and running the orb, we’d just stop the team from being able to effectively run the orb, and then maybe pick it up and run with it when we get larger scale wipes on the enemies.

Andele.1306:

Those are not necromancers, it are emo elf sissies that sparkle at day.

Made my day.

flow.6043:

This might not be my place to add to the discussion since I’m not NA and can’t participate, but I want to say a few things:
I don’t think the best group composition is necessarily one where everyone has a different build. Off the top of my head I’d give the team at least 2 if not 3 condition builds.
So far it seems to me that you do the build planing in anticipation of a 5v5 confrontation, then the builds make sense with support, spectral wall and finishers and so on… like a mini zerg. That might happen from time to time, but most of the fights will probably be 1-3vs1-3.

In general tPvP that happens often, yes, but every pairing of the different builds should work out with each other, and the Soldier MM is generally going to be the one missing out on team fights from guarding back point.

And with what Bas said, I actually think Terror builds will find safety in an all Necro setup because of the presence of very high control, and even more threats (if you fight an entire team of people that can wipe you, who do you focus?).

Also, and I was surprised this wasn’t said, but I’d be interested to see how it would work out when it is possible to have up to 4 people on one team with Signet of Undeath, that effectively means one signet could be popped every 45 seconds.

Re full MMs, that really depends on who gets the engagement first, it is also why I suggest Soldier MMs, since it is significantly harder to bring one down. All you would need to do is realize that there exists that AoE threat, and make them one of the main targets, this team setup would have more than enough CC to shut down at least one player. The need for a full MM is defending home point, since Flesh Wurm is already easily accessed, and the easiest way to get back to home point, and full MMs are arguably one of the best 1v1-2 builds in the game, so at the very least they keep home point from being neutralized while the much slower rest of the team comes to help.

Spectral wall would be an amazing utility in this situation, with MM’s bringing 2x projectile finishers (3 if on near point, which is where wurm will need to be to properly defend), 2x blast finishers, and everyone else bringing staff with a blast finisher for the Chaos Armor.

I’d combine the Condition Bunker and Support into one, as Shaman gear traited to support will be as tanky as Conditions get, and put in either another Condition damage necro, or have the Powermancer go full burst and then have another power necro that is more towards Cleric gear with wells to keep up.

The real key would be trying it out in game and seeing which combination gave the best ratio of survivability to damage output.

So a sample setup:
1) Powermancer (either berzerker, or vitality “bunker”)
2) Shaman Support
3) Terrormancer
4) Either a Condition damage build (if vitality bunker) or Cleric power necro
5) Soldier MM

A vitality/DS bunker could potentially work in this situation by stacking protection from his own abilities and the wells of the support, and using the fury on DS to offset the generally lower damage. Again I think we won’t know for sure at all until we’ve tried a few different setups (although I think an MM for back point, one support, one bunker, one terror is going to be the best base setup to work with).