Guild Wars 2

There are two wells that have synergy with power (WoS/WoC) and two with the Curses tree (WoD/WoC). I really don’t see the issue here, when there are arguably plenty of others that could be brought up.

They can just increase the vertical “step” allowance, allowing them to walk over things that normally would stop them up.

I can see it being good as an extra condition. More crap that they have to remove makes it much more likely that the conditions you want to stay will stay.

Roe.3679:

I don’t think death knight happens because of China and their aversion to death symbols.

Death symbols aren’t the issue, just human skulls.

I almost want them to call us Death Knights just to kitten with people.

It is a brand new profession, presumably with a specialization as well although I don’t know if they have explicitly said so.

Lily.1935:

I like what I hear from you so far. But I took away something different. I think you’ll have a reason not to become the secondary option. I think there will be incentive for players to stay with their base version. A new mechanic sounds like it would replace our profession mechanic. And losing death shroud could be a serious choice to make for a player. Or for a guardian losing their virtues. Although we can’t be completely sure It doesn’t sound like a strict upgrade to me.

I feel like it is unlikely for them to fundamentally change things. Not that it is impossible, but with how they’ve made decisions so far it seems more likely to me that they will make slight changes to existing mechanics rather than completely change them. A few reasons for this: they don’t seem to like professions being too complex from a learning standpoint (losing DS is basically like a different profession), Druid kept the pet, this is considered progression (and having a reason to not progress seems weird to me).

I basically expect any changes to the profession mechanic to be either like something you’d see from a trait, or like they did with Tainted Shackles (an addition, but without a huge power creep).

Idk, I find pebbles to be more dangerous to them. Also water, in many cases.

So they’ve talked a bit more about it, using Druid as a template.

Johanson: Specializations is a new system that allows you to take each of the professions we have in the game and grow them almost into a new sub-profession or secondary profession. An example of this is, a Ranger can become a Druid. Once a Ranger becomes a Druid, they have the ability to use the powers of the jungle and that gives them new skills, new traits, they can use a new weapon that a Ranger could never use before, and they get new profession mechanics that fundamentally change the way a Ranger plays when they become a Druid. Each of the professions will be getting one of these Specializations and this also is a framework that we’ll use to grow the professions in the future. This will be the way we add more skills, traits, and abilities to the game moving forward. That’s how we’re growing our existing professions.

So that is what we can expect. Necromancers will get one specialization at HoT launch, with more on the way at some point later down the line. We’ll get a greatsword to use, a new heal, utility set (4 skills), elite, traits, and profession mechanics. At first this will be literally just an upgrade from the sound of it, later on when they release more it’ll actually be a more meaningful choice.

They hired someone about 9 months ago who is an AI specialist. The issue in GW2 isn’t necessarily the AI itself (although it is super basic) but that they are so limited in their vertical movement that tiny changes in height of what they are walking on completely screws them up. That is why minions almost never have issues if you’re standing on a flat area and don’t move too far, but bug out super easily if you are moving a lot.

It happened 9 months ago, give or take.

I’d love new minion skills, but honestly if the GS has a chill on auto attack it’ll be amazing for minion builds anyway so I’m good to go.

The last thing we need is more passive minions out. The game is too based on active abilities for there to be more abilities that are at maximum usefulness just by merit of existing (looking at you healing signet). Minions (mainly the traits) need a rework on how their actives/passives are balanced, we need more minions like Bone Minions and less stuff like Training of the Master or Reanimator.

I bought the bat sword after I saw the bat effects. The rest of the swords that looked cool were like 5g so its not like I’m too worried about them going up. I could have bought Dawn but that is a ridiculous investment before I see the new legendaries and the changes, plus I need that money to make more money.

Also just because Rangers might not get a big change doesn’t mean we won’t. They are already the only profession that can customize their profession mechanic (and it is possible that being a Druid changes the pet active/passive abilities). So there isn’t a lot we can say based off that, all we saw was that being a Druid doesn’t remove their pet.

I probably won’t bother with dusk until I see what the new legendaries are and see the specialization. I’ll probably pick up a Cobalt though since I was/am flipping it anyway.

What is wrong with Necromancers buffing? One of our biggest specs in all of GW1 was a party buffing spec, and MM was heavily focused on both buffs and debuffs as well.

I need suggestions for GS skins. I have 1.4k gold so its not like money is a huge issue.

I hope I’m wrong too.

As an example, if you specialize in Druid as a Ranger, you might lose access to a certain weapon/utility type, but gain the Druid stuff. I don’t know specifics though. I imagine we’ll have to wait on that.

@Lily: The one time Condi Necromancer was OP was when we gained access to a lot of offensive conditions all at once. If they introduced a new weapon that applied a lot of offensive conditions, plus a Death Shroud that applied offensive conditions, and an elite that applied offensive conditions (realizing that our current ults are highly defensive or non condition), we could potentially see something similar to what happened during the Dhuumfire patch where we suddenly gained a ton of offensive presence all at once.

It isn’t at all guaranteed that it would be bad. But one of the things that keeps our current condi build from being totally overbearing offensively is that it really only has scepter/dagger plus utility skills to apply offensive conditions (while staff/DS/utilities are there for utility or small bursts, but don’t sustain much), it lacks offensive synergy with quite a few other areas where it could potentially gain a lot of new offensive options. A “worst case” scenario for condi power creep on necro would be: 5 new skills on a new weapon, 5 new skills on a new death shroud, and a new elite that gave offensive condition pressure. We could very easily overwhelm condi removal with that many new skills.

Again, nothing guaranteed. Its just a possibility that I hope they have considered.

Edit: okay I’ve heard from a couple of people that say they talked to ANet people at the afterparty. One specialization per class, and when you specialize you lose access to some of the base abilities of your profession, and in exchange get the stuff the specialization gives you. Just something I’ve heard, not 100%.

Tadsoul.6951:

dps
support
crowd control

I think it kind of depends on how they want the specializations to work. If they want to correspond to the playstyles, then there would probably be 4-5 max (though not all in this expansion), or they could do the three you mention, or just offensive/defensive, or explore new stuff (like druids are kind of a new thing for rangers). So there is a lot they can do with it, its hard to really tell what.

I don’t think they will be flat additions, and nothing they have said so far seems to suggest that. Specializations seem to just allow you to gain access to replacements for things we currently have to allow people to further focus on something specific. The only real worry for powercreep is if they allow too much specialization. For example imagine a condi necro with scepter/dagger plus another heavy offensive condi weapon set, a condi heavy DS, a condi-damage elite. Scary stuff.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Dagger 2 and 3 arent exactly bad. They just arent particularly useful in PvE. Anything that is single target tends to suffer a lot. Especially if its also low damage.

This. People really underestimate Dagger 2, which depending on build can be as strong as a full heal, and Dagger 3 is a pretty strong single target CC. They aren’t damage or great for PvE, but they have really good utility.

My guess is the base profession that we have now will be available to every Necromancer. You have the basic Necromancer, which is what we currently have, and then specializations that are mutually exclusive to each other. So if you specialize in attrition, you bar yourself from the support specialization. Each specialization has a weapon associated with it, a new heal, set of utilities, elite, and some unique change to the profession mechanic which are only available when you specialize there, but are optional what is picked up.

And like Spoj said, I imagine the profession mechanic change will either involve new Death Shroud skills which change some of the utility of death shroud but not its base use, or will completely change Death Shroud into a similar (life force gated utility skillset) but different mechanic.

They wouldn’t make current necro a specialization, because you cannot use one specialization’s abilities if you aren’t that specialization. Meaning you’d be locked from the class. They very specifically said that only Druids could use the staff, not all rangers.

The only way that I see specialization being just one is if it forced you into using new stuff somehow, meaning there would be a reason to not specialize. Otherwise its just an upgrade, and a lot of the stuff that they have said is meaningless.

They kind of implied that Marj was the teaser for it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she just uses all of the new stuff, especially since she has brand new animations instead of reused ones.

Ravezaar.4951:

I do guess GS for Necs will work more likely Mesmer as range specially AA, doubt it will be Melee but yea looking into GS Skins now

Well we have two examples of Necromancer greatsword users already. Are they melee or ranged?

Could be badly worded. Could be he was saying “greatsword is part of the necromancer specialization (leave out the name)” meaning that greatsword will be available through specialization, not base to the class. Its a bit nitpicky on semantics, but I think the big point is that specializations very heavily imply that there are other things you could have specialized in, but picked one of multiple options.

They specifically said that staff will only be available to rangers who specialize into druid. But if there is only one specialization, that means nothing, every ranger will specialize into druid and everyone will have staff. It implies that there will be multiple, otherwise what they said makes little sense.

There will be multiple specializations, which will essentially be sub-classes that focus your build a bit more. Just as a speculation, they could have a specialization corresponding to each of our trait trees: Curses would change your deathshroud/heal/elite/weapon choices to be condi focuse, Spite would do the same for power, Death Magic for minions/tankiness, Blood Magic for more siphoning.

We know that multiple specializations will exist. This is really just a good thing for Necro, since it means there is a good chance that the weakness of certain build types can be covered up by their specialization, or we can further specialize into something, making builds more unique. My Death Magic specialized MM build could be totally different than a Blood Magic specialized one, despite using a similar build, for example.

They mentioned that it will change profession mechanic as well IIRC. I’m guessing we’ll get what people have wanted for ages: themed Death Shrouds.

Hell yes, so much hype.

Necromancers do tend to complain about cast times, in general. Maybe not specific to this skill, but definitely complaints in general.

Essentially a cast time on this skill serves no purpose except to slow down your overall rotations. Its not like enemies are going to respond to it by dodging, and it has no immediate effect besides the swiftness. So there really was no reason for a 1 second cast time, which is generally reserved for higher impact or more offensive abilities.

Edit: also it does technically increase your mobility. You move 33% faster for 0.5 seconds more than usual. So whatever distance that corresponds to is your increased mobility. Obviously it should have been mentioned as a QoL change because that is what it really is, but whatever.

I wouldn’t expect anything meaningful until a large release.

Same afaik

No Red Bull sponsorship yet.

CPCs issue isn’t CPC, its the lack of a support/bunker build to use it. With this change you have a 12 second field on a 30s CD, 24s if traited. Untraited, it is theoretically possible to get 100% uptime of weakness and poison on up to 5 people, assuming they are stupid. If you trait it, then you make a capture-point sized area nearly impossible to fight on 50% of the time. It is actually a very significant buff to the skill.

The issue is just that the “best” necro builds have no room for it. The builds that can compete in high tier PvP can’t afford to pick it up, they need the damage or stun breaks other things give them. However the minute that ANet enables a bunker build, especially a condi bunker/support, I guarantee this will see play. Try to bunker a point as an ele or guardian when your healing is cut.

Lily.1935:

Or an aoe burst on enemy contact. Give it a 240 radius and call it a day.

This is literally all it needs. At least then it would be reasonably useful.

Does Plague Signet even work while in DS?

Holy crap, people are ungrateful as hell. These are all fine changes, literally direct buffs in any situation in every single way except for Nightmare runes. They aren’t going to fix our big issues in some random no-content patch. Stop complaining every single time they buff us just because it isn’t enough, the last time they did too much at once we ended up with Dhuumfire and were nerfed over and over for months because of it.

Fine build for Condi MM, you’ve certainly got the basic idea down, and I imagine it would perform well. A few notes to tighten things up a bit:
- Consume Conditions: BF isn’t worth it, even in MM. There is one build where it is “okay”, and this isn’kitten
- Rabid or Settler Amulet: toughness > vitality on MM, healing power can also provide a lot of sustain
- Go for Leeching/Renewal sigils: they provide a ton, and are more consistent
- Drop Bone Fiend for Flesh Wurm: no stun break on Necro is just asking to get stun locked

Did we ever actually get our CDI? As far as I was aware they only did Ranger, which actually turned out fairly well for them. But they are working on an expansion (which will be released soon™ ) and that’s bound to take away the free resources they’d use to help us. Not to mention Necromancer is entirely impossible to fix without new content, which probably isn’t something they can heavily address in a CDI.

SoV’s passive doesn’t work while in DS, and has an ICD while still being weaker in ideal situations than other passive heals. That should sum up the general problems with the entire profession atm.

Don’t expect any big changes until whatever this new content that is coming out comes out.

There is more or less a guarantee that an “expansion” (or something similar) is coming. The speculators are the ones who tried to put a date to it, but afaik they essentially announced an expansion in progress during one of their calls a while ago. The unknowns are when it will happen and what that “expansion” will be.

Fuji.6284:

I think necros provide invaluable support in WvW.

What support? Honestly curious, since it was my understanding that their role was long-ranged direct damage, and provided no (or very little) actual support outside of the damage.

spoj.9672:

Gnat.9405:

Greatsword is coming folks

You wish.

I do too. Second only to OH jagged-horror shooting pistol.

Usagi.4835:

The lack of build diversity is kind of depressing lol. I look at the other profession subforums and, by comparison, the necromancer forums are… dead. Hardly any new threads discussing new builds or anything.

Because Necromancer has essentially been unchanged in ages. Basically since launch there have been very few changes that fundamentally changed how the profession or builds within the profession were played. The big trait additions (namely Dhuumfire, Path of Corruption, and Deathly Perception) were the only things I can think of that really made people re-think how they built their characters, and made large playstyle differences.

Other professions have, comparatively, changed very significantly. There have been new optimal builds to find in PvE, whereas Necromancer is nearly irrelevant in PvE. There have been all kinds of changes in what people play in WvW, with Necromancer having basically been the same for a long time. And PvP Necromancer builds at the top level really haven’t changed a ton; even the power build that resurfaced a while ago was just the launch power build with some updates to the current meta with the new SR trait on top.

So if you are using the same weapons, nearly the same trait layout, and the same overall playstyle and gameplay goal with only runes/sigils and individual traits or skills here and there changing to make small optimizations, there won’t be much activity. Hell, even I quit playing the profession for a long time despite how invested I was in it.

How do I stand it? By regularly quitting for large periods of time to wait for ANet to make a meaningful addition to the profession. Not that they ever have, but hey it keeps me from quitting permanently.