Guild Wars 2

tuman.6593:

New ways that will not replace old? If yes it will be kinda must have… Its better to make our Soul Reaping spec as Elite and leave slot with golden frame for Elite Specs only but 2 other slots for our 4 core specialisations and same for other classes… But Ideal would be to give us to choose 6 minor + 2 adept + 2 master + 2 grandmaster traits from any of our 4 core specializations + 1 of 2(Soul Reaping and new one) elite specialization into golden slot. But if Soul Reaping still be core it will be bad design IMO…

It won’t necessarily be must have because to get the specialization you need to give up one of your three trait lines. You can only have 3 lines, and of those lines, you can have 1 elite specialization. So if your build relies on things outside the elite spec, then it won’t be must have. The only builds I see becoming reliant on it are GS or whatever new skills we get based builds.

Lily.1935:

well. What is the wording on the skills in Soul reaping? and what do all the current traits say outside of Soul reaping? This can be a clue. Though we might know next week.

A lot of traits would be made useless by not having Death Shroud at all. For example, Deathly Perception, Vital Persistence, Speed of Shadows, Transfusion, all on-entry/exit traits, Unholy Martyr, Reaper’s Might, Death Shiver, Furious Demise, Path of Corruption, Unholy Sanctuary, Armored Shroud, Unyielding Blast.

In fact, every tree has at least a few traits that relate directly to Death Shroud or skills in Death Shroud. Some of these could technically be changed, but I find it really unlikely to not have some kind of Death Shroud with the specialization. Chances are it will be different skills, a different type of shroud, or just different ways to spend LF, because with how many traits they’d have to change its almost a new profession.

Our current 5 “specializations” are core specializations, our elite specialization will be something brand new we haven’t seen yet.

And no, they have only suggested that we will have new ways to use Life Force, and people are taking this to mean all kinds of things.

Res traits are fine because ressing is such a core component of gameplay in every gamemode. As long as they increase res speed and provide some effect to help the res get off then I think they are a solid way for builds to pick up support.

However, falling traits just kinda suck. In PvP it is extremely limited to be able to make any use of fall damage traits, and in PvE it is basically meaningless because there isn’t falling involved with any of the more difficult encounters. So basically it is a trait that only works in WvW (where falling can kind of matter), and even then it is niche. This wasn’t a huge issue back when there were 6 options at the falling damage tiers, but now not only do we have half the options, but in some cases (Toxic Landing), potentially important traits are being merged into the falling traits instead of being made into good traits.

So it makes an entire tier an option of just 2 traits, plus can also make otherwise good traits not worth taking because instead of being wrapped in with another good trait, a good trait is mixed with a bad one.

Parasitic Contagion to BM GM, Deathly Invigoration to Master, Transfusion (back) to Adept, Bloodthirst merged with Vampiric Precision, fill open Curses slot with something.

GW2 isn’t ready. It needs a much bigger sPvP scene at the very least, and it needs to be made much more watchable.

For reference, League of Legend’s World Championship grand finals pulled in over 10 million viewers, GW2 might bring in, what, 10,000 if they are lucky? There are more people that watch random streamers than the biggest tournaments that GW2 offers, it just isn’t big enough for ESPN2 to even consider it. The only reason Blizzard is up there is because they are Blizzard.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Unless the signets get a substantial buff, this trait will see no play whatsoever, especially since it’s going up against Close to Death. Nobody is going to give up a 20% damage boost to an enemy under 50% health for just a slight reduction on cruddy signets, and an active that requires 5 enemies to be remotely effective.

If you aren’t playing a full zerker build 20% damage under 50% isn’t necessarily important to you. Condition builds, bunker builds, support builds, anyone who is making a build where damage isn’t the first concern would be able to take this.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Another thing is that a lot of people are saying that there needs to be some sort of power trait in curses. Why does it have to be curses? Why not some sort of vampiric set of traits in blood magic? Something crazy like Dark Path steals 1,500 health (doubled if from behind). I’ve always wanted to be a vampire necromancer! Think crazy and fun guys.

Furious Demise, Banshee’s Wail, and Target the Weak are all really important for DPS builds. Basically, if you want to support the ability for PvE builds to go full offense, they need 3 trees that support it, which would be Spite, Curses, and Soul Reaping: Death Magic is defense and Blood Magic can’t reach the DPS of pure DPS options because life stealing also heals (would be OP if it did the same damage as pure DPS and also healed).

Think of it this way, if Death Magic only had minion GM traits, would that be okay, that the entire tree was inaccessible to everyone except MM builds? It would mean every other trait in the tree, some of which are really good, are basically inaccessible to non MM because they are then forced to waste their GM slot. As a side note that is also why Death Magic GM should have Necromantic Corruption fused with a weaker version of Death Nova, like what ronpierce was suggesting.

So Curses should have something there to make it accessible to non-condition builds. Remember that this tree was as much a precision tree as it is a condition damage tree, just like Spite is as much a non-damaging condition tree as it is the power tree.

The only problem with Banshee’s Wail being in Curses is that Curses GM is awful to any non-condition build, and so basically makes the trait unreachable for non-condition builds.

The trait sucked and they gave us a way to take 10% less damage from poisoned enemies which doesn’t suck. It was replaced with a vastly superior trait.

Path of Midnight is still around, it just got merged.

That’s something I’d like to note, I’d really like to see our traits have visible CD timers somewhere. This is actually worth knowing for active purposes, it can really help active play.

Necromancers could use taunt, it keeps up with the idea of tanking hits with our “second health bar” and controlling opponent actions, but it isn’t by any means necessary.

They are doing a very large condition remake, so it is expected that some changes will happen. I figured they might remake condition scaling so that they deal significantly less damage with no investment, and also burning/poison are going to deal less damage per individual stack since they can stack intensity now.

This will help fix the celestial plague, as power builds will no longer be able to add very large passive DPS boosts through burning. Plus with stacking, burning and poison DPS gains can’t be overwritten, which helps them in group settings. So basically if you want your conditions to hurt you have to actually have condition damage, much like if you want your normal attacks to hurt you need some power/precision.

Rym.1469:

From an expansion.

This isn’t the expansion, it will hit before hand.

Genesis.7693:

My personal gripe is in the spite tree where they made Signet Mastery a Grandmaster trait just by adding necro’s weakest active signet to the mastery.

Signet of the Locust heals for 970(0.5) per person hit, on a 24s CD. This is just short of the healing you can get from an actual healing skill if you hit 5 targets, and it is on a 24s CD, and you can have two of them. It is entirely possible to heal yourself for 8k per skill use with healing power investment.

Yes, you are healed for 15% of the total condition damage you are dealing at any point, including things that are Epidemic’d, and should work with transfers as well. So if you are dealing just 1k condition damage per second, which is only like 7 bleeds, will heal you for 150 healing per second.

Sabre.8627:

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Its 15% now, yes.

Its worth noting that Deathly Invigoration is currently slated for a buff, and when Transfusion got the similar treatment it was made really nice.

I also think its worth possibly adding (in its current unbuffed form) to Transfusion at the Master tier. Or dropping both of them by a tier (or DI to adept) and merging Bloodthirst into Vampiric Precision. In any case, freeing up a Blood Magic slot for some kind of team healing support.

Gryph.8237:

I was under the impression that Lingering curses only applied to conditions applied with the scepter, as in, I was thinking there was no fear on the scepter. Terror/Fear as it is now, is not affected by Lingering Curse

It applies to all outgoing conditions while scepter is equipped. Effectively, as long as your scepter is the weapon you are currently holding, you have maxed out condition duration on everything.

Oh man, a blanket statement to suggest changes? RIP my Saturday night.

Traits
Spite-
Death’s Embrance – Have it trigger below 50%, essentially it is just a 5% DPS boost below its trigger value, with some small ability to also stack if you have condition duration, which we seem to not have anymore very easily.

Siphoned Power – This ICD needs to be way lower, only 2 might that can’t stack with itself? That is really bad.

Axe Training – I don’t get it, the trait is just worse than it used to be. To reach the old values of CDR you have to land 5 AAs, which ends up not actually reducing your CDs much. Plus the % increase is now conditional instead of flat, so a nerf. A flat 10% damage from all abilities against crippled targets while wielding axe, and higher CDR would make it much better, as it is now I don’t see it competing.

Curses –
Toxic Landing – Just doesn’t feel good to take. It is basically Master of Corruption but with a mostly-worthless falling damage trait tagged on that makes it feel bad in most situations, PLUS CPC gives self-weakness. I don’t understand the insistence on falling traits, but it needs to not apply self-weakness at the very least. Maybe if Consume Conditions and/or Plague become Corruptions this becomes really good to take.

Reaper’s Precision – Just remove it. It isn’t good, its hard to balance, and the very few builds that would want it don’t hit quickly. If it is buffed to work for those builds, then things like dagger/WH with wells suddenly get way too much LF.

Parasitic Contagion – Move this to Blood Magic GM, or drop it to Master to replace RP.

Terror – Revert the 17% damage nerf we saw way back with Dhuumfire. If this is going to compete with Lingering Curse it needs to actually deal significant burst damage in some way. Other ideas would be have it deal extra damage if used to interrupt people (scaling with condition damage), or something like that.

Death Magic –
Beyond the Veil – it would be nice if this applied the minion protection on DS entry, much like the ranger dodge trait.

Greater Marks – merge this into Soul Marks, make the 3% LF base to Staff, and then move this up to Master tier in Soul Reaping, while dropping Master of Terror to adept. Replace it with another defensive trait, since as it is now a non-staff build’s only options are power conversion (useless to condi) or a defense to CC, which is pretty specific. I’d prefer to see another defensive trait here.

Blood Magic –
It really needs to be changed to allow siphoning while in DS. This is just such a big conflict, and every other profession has the ability to receive their own healing while actually invulnerable, yet if we enter our “second HP bar” it completely screws over an entire tree of investment. We can’t proc siphoning nearly as well, so its not like we can sit here forever.

Quickening Thirst – change it to reduce the CD under 75 or 50% HP. Life Siphon isn’t really used at high HP, in many cases this just won’t help us at all.

Chain of changes:
Move Deathly Invigoration to Master
Move Transfusion to Adept (Alternatively don’t buff DI, keep it as it is now and merge with Transfusion)
Merge Bloodthirst to Vampiric Precision (no way this is Master worthy right now)
Give Blood Magic Master a better GM, for example change Renewing Blast to be an AoE splash heal around the target.

Soul Reaping –
Speed of Shadows – 20% CDR to Death Shroud skills

Soul Marks – See the Greater Marks change, merge Greater Marks with this, make 3% LF base, move to Master tier and move Master of Terror down.

Master of Terror – See above

Weapons
Scepter needs better LF gain.

Staff needs some kind of support returned to it, even a small amount of allied condition removal from Putrid Mark would be nice.

We need some kind of finishers on our weapons. Ideas would be Enfeebling Blood and Unholy Feast being blasts, but we need something.

Also need to lower some of our cast times. We have a few 1s+ cast times that just don’t make sense, like Focus 5.

Unholy Feast – can still be blocked by Aegis.

Minions
The AI needs to be fixed. I doubt this is news, but it warrants restating.

The cast time of summoning minions should be 3/4s at most. No good reason for it to be so ridiculously high.

Bone Fiend’s active ability should reset the AA timer

Bone Minion’s Putrid Explosion should blow up the minion closest to the targeted enemy, instead of being closest to the MM.

Shadow Fiends Haunt after-cast animation should be reduced to 3/4s from its current 3s

Flesh Golem Charge should be instant cast for the Necromancer, but then cause the Flesh Golem to have a noticeable warm-up animation for 3/4s before actually charging.

Gryph.8237:

Bhawb, why does terror justify a grandmaster trait as it is? I mean MAXIMUM, you can get what 1250 × 3 damage if you happen to pull of 3 ticks. How does that justify moving to the grandmaster tier to compete with Lingering? In addition, I think terror has been part of every condi build I have ever played, now if I want to have decent duration, I have to drop it? Its too much in my opinion, and it is a net nerf overall.

Terror with Lingering Curses will have its damage output flat doubled, in addition to all fears having insane CC now. Doom 3s, Reaper’s Protection 4s (AoE), SWall 2s, Nightmare runes 2s, plus fears from corruptions and w/e else I’m missing. Basically, if you fear anyone who doesn’t have a stun break, they are dead because even if they don’t die to the 8k fear damage, the 8s of fear gives you so much time to free cast conditions onto them that by the time they get out they have to pop all of their cleansing, and lose the fight. It is way too much, and so Terror and Lingering Curse cannot exist in the same build.

Now, if Terror as is isn’t enough to warrant GM that is a separate issue, and if it is the case it should be buffed.

With 100% duration to every condition you put out while scepter is equipped, Terror won’t matter.

That’s a fair point, its possible that Terror isn’t strong enough to compare to Lingering Curse. If that is the case then I think its worth buffing Terror and moving Parasitic Contagion (which still seems like it should be a blood magic GM, move Deathly Invigoration which has no real business being GM) to make room for a power trait. I just don’t think allowing Terror and Lingering Curse, as they currently exist, to be in the same build is a good idea.

Maybe Parasitic Contagion to BM GM, Deathly Invigoration to Master, Transfusion to Adept, Bloodthirst combines with Vampiric Precision (which isn’t strong enough to be Master, and any build wanting to specialize siphoning should have crit chance), buff Terror if appropriate to make it compete with Lingering Curse (maybe revert that old 17% nerf first?), insert power trait to Curses GM?

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I wouldn’t get too worried. They said in the live stream that the professions they were most looking at and working on at that time was Engineer and Mesmer. I’m sure necromancer will get a much more full treatment after engineer and mesmer is done.

Don’t get me wrong, I do know that they are listening (a ton of changes they did were obviously inspired by the forums), I just hope they have the resources and willingness to make the changes. It seems to me that ANet might know what we want, but are either unable to do it because of how much work it would be, or because they just don’t feel the same.

The big tell here is they ALWAYS mention second health bars, but never mention the fact that we give up everything that makes other professions work for it, and it just demonstrably isn’t working as our only defensive mechanic. They also seem to never address our PvE issues, our lack of support, our lack of finishers.

I’m honestly not sure where the disconnect is, but there obviously is one, and it is hurting us.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Yes but u know, they are devs, they can modify no sense stuff

They sure can, but they don’t exactly have a good history of doing that when it comes to Necromancers, so I’m not getting my hopes up.

Actually there are definite synergies to be found in every tree, they just aren’t quite as good as they could be in some cases.

AoE retal is fine, Spiteful Spirit could probably use a small buff, or at least have a decent Axe trait to make it worth GM.

Here is a list of them: Spite , Curses , Death Magic , Blood Magic , Soul Reaping

In addition to the traits, we have some base changes to the profession:
Minion skills have all their CDs reduced by 20%
Wells are now ground-targeted
15% larger Life Force pool
Focus skills are 1200 range

Overall, most of the changes are positive or neutral. There are some really good changes like Dhuumfire having no ICD, Necromantic Corruption/Fetid Consumption fusing together and minions now transfering conditions on AA, the new Signet Mastery, the new spite minors, etc. However, Axe Training appears nerfed quite significantly (unless the 2% is actually 2% per hit, and so 4% per AA “chain”, still a bit weird though), Curses having no power-build option at GM, and a few others.

There is definite room for improvement with our trait changes. Blood Magic still needs help, Curses needs a power-based GM, Death Magic should have another non-minion GM, and some other changes.

Regardless of your opinion of the trait changes, the trait changes should be good on their own. The Elite specialization should not have to save us from our awful base, it should be a good addition to a good base.

On one hand I like the idea of having two separate MM builds, one that focuses on keeping minions alive and one that is more personal damage with minions for utility, which choosing between Death Nova and Necromantic Corruption supports. On the other hand DM absolutely needs another non-minion trait.

I think a decent option is to drop Death Nova to Master, merging it with Necromantic Corruption is too much, the traits are alone worth bringing.

MarkPhilips.5169:

The reason is because a skill with 30cd can’t overwrite an elite with 180cd for the entire duration.

Yes, it can, that is how transformations are coded to work. It shouldn’t overwrite, but it can.

Dadnir.5038:

Whatever, you still lose a flat 30% condition duration. Thing that you do not take into account. It’s huge.

Standard 0/6/X/0/X condi didn’t lose any duration, only 6/4/0/0/4 or the pretty rare 4/6/0/0/4 did, and Terror is not very necessary in that build with the new Lingering Curse, which gives full condition duration.

I’ve mostly been thinking about minions with these changes (I can’t help it), and there are some interesting uses, plus Lingering Curse has ridiculous synergy with basically every condition everything in the game.

Death Nova Bone Minions + Lingering Curse
Death Nova applies 5s base of poison twice (or three times? I can’t get in game to test it atm). With bone minions, this means 10 seconds of Poison, twice(or three times) per minion every 16s, plus two applications of 6s of Weakness. So, in ideal spots, you can get 4(6) stacks of poison for 10s plus 12s of Weakness, every 16s, plus any extra poison from Jagged Horrors.

Axe/Focus + Spiteful Talisman, Chill of Death, Unholy Feast
In ideal situations you are removing up to 8 boons per 16 seconds.

Blinds + Chilling Darkness + Bitter Chill
Each blind will chill, which will also inflict vulnerability.

And just for fun, the new MM build will be able to remove 5 conditions per 10 seconds from itself (without Blood Fiend or jagged horrors), minions will transfer (in total) 3 conditions per second to your enemy, plus you all get Protection on DS exit, Transfusion, Heal on DS entry, and then you can either go into spite and get what I was talking about with A/F, use a condition build, or go Soul Reaping for Foot in the Grave or Deathly Perception. Should be a lot of MM variation.

Ratphink.4751:

One thing I’m annoyed about is they never touched on our Elites, or how some of these traits will now effect them since all skills are getting put into a skill category.

Elites and Consume Conditions will both be put into either Spectral or Corruptions, they just probably haven’t decided what yet. Either way it is a large buff, although I dislike the current trait that reduces corruption CDs.

The problem with getting Terror as base, or even as a different tier to Lingering Curse, is the ability for Lingering Curse to double the duration of all non-staff fears (assuming it works in DS for Doom as well). This takes Terror from being a burst threat, to being a sustained damage threat that still deals burst-damage levels of DPS.

I think they should reduce Terror’s damage, and then move it, or change all fear-giving skills to deal damage if you interrupt with the fear (so make it baseline, but only on interrupts, and the damage is dealt immediately). But fear dealing this much damage baseline plus allowing Lingering Curses to effectively double fear damage on top is probably too much.

MM gets a decent buff with these changes. If you go the same build that you did before (Spite, DM, BM), you can pick up an extra Master tier slot in Death Magic, you get two new Spite traits, and two new Blood Magic traits, plus the GM minors in Spite/BM. The only thing you lose is Training of the Master, which is easily replaced by personal damage through all of your extra Spite traits.

The addition of Necromantic Corruption as an option just opens up a true difference between MM builds. One will be more focused on personal damage, with minions existing as true utility skills, there to slow down and debilitate the enemy but not so much be the only focus of the build, and another will focus on keeping the minions alive, and in turn them keeping you alive. There is even a decent chance that we will see the introduction of actual decent condi MM builds for the first time, now that Death Nova can really synergize with condi builds.

I’d really like for it to merge into Soul Reaping, and give Death Magic a real defensive trait at the Master tier. While Reaper’s Protection is fine, if you don’t run staff you’re faced with either a stat conversion or RP.

I do think Terror and Lingering Curse actually have a meaningful decision between them. One pushes for spike damage via fear bursts, the other is all about stacking up long condition durations and overloading over a long period of time. That said, there absolutely needs to be a trait in the GM slot to work with power builds, and while Banshee’s Wail is fine moving it up to GM just presents us with bad power slot on Master (Reaper’s Precision should go).

I don’t think you should be able to have Lingering Curse, Terror, and Dhuumfire in one build though (at least not as they exist now). The new Lingering Curse would also boost Terror very significantly by allowing all of your non-Reaper’s Mark fears (its even possible to boost that one) to have double duration. That means a 4s Reaper’s Protection, 3s Doom (assuming it applies in DS), 2s Nightmare Proc, 2s Spectral Wall, and it allows you to drop Master of Terror in favor of the the other two traits, both of which will also boost your fears (more Dooms or more SWalls). If we want to move Terror, it will have to come with a (I hate to say it) nerf to the damage it deals.

On a side note, Corruption CD reduction trait being pushed into a fall trait sucks.

Agreed, no real surprise but SR is still the best trait line after the changes. I do feel there could still be a change or two here and there to fix it up a bit, for example I’d like to see Vital Persistance raised to 20% CDR for DS.

Otherwise, it was the strongest tree we had pre-patch, and then they pushed an improved Dhuumfire, and buffed a few of the traits by condensing them, so it is still really strong. I see it being included in every single build-type,

I feel like the only thing holding it back is the lack of other signets being very good. The SoL activation alone heals for 970(0.5) (according to wiki) per person hit, which is a 5k heal, up to around 8k if you have high healing power, and can be activated up to twice every 24s. In teamfights you’re looking at having two extra healing skills available to you.

Ravezaar.4951:

Condi Necro got Nerfed saying its NOT is a lie

Only very specific condi builds got “nerfed”, and it was ones that took Lingering Curses and Terror. Even then those builds will be significantly stronger overall after this change, but they will be a bit different.

The only concern is if we can compete with the power creep that other professions got.

The Wizland.8435:

While these aren’t exactly enough to make us equal to other classes

Basically this. Most of the changes to Necromancer were a buff, while a few seem to be nerfs. The problem is that any nerfs aren’t really deserved, Necromancer isn’t strong enough right now so nerfing anything makes no sense. On the other hand, while we did retain some buffs, these buffs might not keep us up on the level of power creep other professions had. Meaning we took one step forward, but if everyone else took two we’ve effectively gone backwards.

And we still have issues in our trait lines and major deficiencies, which is part of the problem: these changes weren’t enough to completely bring us up to par. Blood Magic is better now, but still not good enough, and life stealing still conflicts with Death Shroud. Curses has no good GM trait to use for power builds, despite the rest of the line having great potential synergy for power builds. Death Magic still has two minion GMs taking up slots, making it hard for other builds to justify going into DM if they don’t want to play with minions. Axe Training seems to have taken a definite step backwards. And unfortunately even if ANet had gotten the trait changes right, there are still major problems like lack of useful fields, lack of finishers, etc, although those couldn’t have been fixed in this kind of trait change most likely.

Overall I still think the changes are a net positive for us. The problem is with the overall changes it isn’t hard to feel like Necromancer took two steps forward, one step back, and everyone else took a cab to the other side of town. I’m hopeful, because at the end of the day I think we’re getting closer, and the devs are obviously listening to us.

Zetsumei.4975:

Why are there even still traits solely dedicated to falling damage or rezzing?

Nothing is still fully devoted to falling that I can remember (though I could be wrong), and in PvP (to a lesser degree WvW) rezzing is an absolutely necessary and core part of the game mode, and traits that allow you to not only rez faster but safer are really potent. So rez traits will always have a place in builds.

I agree. It is really common for people to cite “two health bars” when talking about Necromancer defense, and it just doesn’t translate properly. We just give up so much for that “second” health bar that doesn’t scale properly and isn’t even all that accessible on many builds.

Was it addressed what would happen with Condition/Boon durations? They did mention that conditions would be a bit more specific, so does that mean we won’t really see any non-specific durations anymore? And how will that work with WvW where people can reduce condition durations by such a massive amount?

Wolfey.3407:

The concern about it being utilized with other classes immobilizes and dazes on the other hand is an interesting point that should be looked into and discussed a bit more.

It is also worth mentioning that it can completely hard counter any elite transform skill just like moa currently does, and hard counters MMs as well, since all minions die upon transformation use.

It is base to the profession, along with 1200 range focus skills, and 20% CDR on minion skills. Other professions got some similar treatments as well. They also mentioned changing signet CDs as a base too.

Farghost.3015:

So… after circa 3 years of the game being out they are just NOW made Foot in the Grave (which is a relatively new trait) a stun break? And merging wells into one trait is a moot point since most of the builds that would support it are all over the place and are frankly rather caddywompus.

Dhuumfire’s original change was asked for, as was the first change to it, and the previewed change. Terror’s various changes were all asked for, staff marks being larger base, reanimator being merged, DM getting new minors, Axe Training going to master tier, both of weakening shroud’s changes (to and now from casting Enfeebling Blood), and a whole host of other things. They have listened to us a LOT, and the lack of speed isn’t unique to necromancer.

Farghost.3015:

Also just want to mention, Necro minion AI is still broken and unusable. Regardless of how much they “listen” to us they have not and probably will not fix the AI. Not to mention, minion AI has been broken for as long as I can remember and at this point we all just accept this fact that one of the main core mechanics to the necromancer is useless.

Minion AI has been addressed at least twice directly, and is most likely going to be addressed again with HoT.

ronpierce.2760:

PS:
With Engis moaing now, if Moa killing pets doesn’t get fixed for Necros, I don’t even know… I will be beyond livid…

Good point. Ideally the moas will only be a visual thing, like a daze that also makes you look like a moa (since it is such a short duration having skills means nothing), instead of actually transforming you, and kill all minions or putting you out of Lich/plague.

Lucentfir.7430:

I think they messed up with the skill fact, because currently how Deathly Invigoration works is you heal when you leave DS. Though new Dhuumfire looks really good imo.

They are basically making it like another Transfusion. Heals allies for quite a lot, but doesn’t heal you at all. Fits Necromancer in its own way, and we keep begging for non-selfish sustain, but I’m not sure that we have the personal defense to be able to give up personal sustain for this. And most other professions get their healing cake and eat it too.