Guild Wars 2

My biggest issue with the trait is that the best way to use it, a spectral build with a focus on staying in DS as much as possible, has also the worst synergy with healing power possible. The trait is, like so many others, a mechanic that ends up countering itself.

That said, I’d suggest you focusing on more of a spectral build if you want to build around it, with spectral traiting.

Domzz.1260:

what your perspective / outlook is on situations

I’m not exactly sure what this means. Do you mean how do we feel we are (viability wise) in certain spots?

Domzz.1260:

How do you feel maining Necro in comparison to other class mains -

It feels great. Despite the issues in group PvE, I feel like I have the most freedom to actually play how I want and be relatively useful compared to the other specs the profession has. We have a ton of builds that are basically tier 2, just below top tier but all good enough to work at anything below competitive play.

Domzz.1260:

IS it fun?

In group PvE no, I feel the DPS rotation is extremely boring and like I don’t really do much. In anything else I love it.

Domzz.1260:

Do you feel useful everywhere?

In everything except group PvE.

Domzz.1260:

Do you feel outclassed or squishy?

Outclassed? Yes, depending on game mode there are other professions that do our job better. Squishy though, no I never feel squishy, just easy to focus fire. Still, base 29k HP isn’t what I’d consider squishy.

Domzz.1260:

Do you feel all-powerful or niche?

Niche, definitely.

Domzz.1260:

Does anything seem possible or do you feel like you might need to barely squeeze into something with a lot of effort?

Little of both. I feel I have to put in a lot more effort in some situations, especially because I have to work against my own mechanics as much as I have to work against my enemy’s, however in other situations I feel like I can “get by” with far less effort than others. It really depends on the situation.

Domzz.1260:

This is kind of a broad open-ended question but I’m just wondering what everyone’s experience is!
Thanks!

There is a reason I always come back to Necro, and its because it is really fun to play despite the issues.

Just a note so I can help out for the Necromancer builds: what exactly are you looking for when you say “meta” builds? I see you have two MM builds for example, when there are potentially a few variants (clerics and soldier, 4/0/6/4/0, 4/0/4/6/0, 2/0/6/6/0), are you looking for just the most popular version of the spec, or are you looking to have the most popular variants for each of the meta builds?

hehk.8705:

necro is the only class in the game that can pick traits and utilities to give them favorability in any match-up while still having a viable build.

any Guard — POC, corrupt boon and greater marks
any Warrior — same as guard
Engi — well of power and plague signet
any Thief — signet of spite and reaper’s protection
d/d Ele — POC and corrupt boon

and on and on…

Necro is insane in 1v1s it just require good positioning and dodge management. They are just a terrible class when it comes to dealing with outnumbered fights, every other class has some way to escape or sustain themselves. Necro just needs a coordinated team that can call numbers and a peel for the necro.

Yes, if only I could choose all those utilities at once while also having a build to help my team in teamfights and still have everything else I need. This is why players like Nos (Noc? w/e their name is) do so well in the 2v2 tournaments, because with smart adaptation (like yesterday when he picked up WoP + plague signet) you can counter specific situations.

However in an s/tPvP match you can’t. If you want to be viable at all you need Corrupt Boon, if you want to have good teamfight condi pressure you need Epidemic, if you want to spend any time not respawning you need Flesh Wurm (and sometimes Spectral Walk), if you want to be able to rotate you need Traveler/Speed runes, then if you want specific 1v1 matchups you need those other things. Sure if we could have 10 utility slots Necromancer might be OP, but we don’t, and those limitations still affect us, and unlike all the professions that are top tier, we have no way of overcoming our multiple weaknesses on our own. And not only that, we have weaknesses that aren’t even designed weaknesses, they are weaknesses due to oversight, over-correction after Dhuumfire, or just plain ignorance of how we work by the balance devs.

There’s no need to force stacking to not work, just design new and better boss/dungeon mechanics and let the players decide how to accomplish them.

Oh man, if you want to start trying to fix every single thing on Necromancer that doesn’t fit the tooltip GW3 will be out before they are done.

The only thing that Necro doesn’t do well is dungeon/fractal groups. Other than that it either doesn’t matter if you are “subpar” or we’re just fine. In WvW we are amazing, PvP has its issues but only if you care about competitive tier play, and in PvE we just hit issues in groups, specifically dungeons/fractals.

Its an issue that’s been affecting their datacenters, according to a tweet from a Wildstar dev.

Its everyone. Reddit has like 500 posts about it, the servers for whatever reason took a massive dump on themselves a few minutes ago.

Yasha.5963:

They have a lot of life and I know from experience, as would anyone, that it takes a long time to take them down. It is easier to hit them than most other classes, but they can take it, while melting lower hp classes.

They also have their neat tricks, like chain fear, fear when attacked etc- other classes have different tricks.

Maybe they aren’t as strong as meta warriors, dd eles, or engis- or maybe in the right hands they are. But weak? No way.

They have high HP if they have built LF, which is only going to happen after you win a fight, generally. Otherwise they have Warrior level HP with light armor and no ways to actually negate damage. Necromancers are the easiest profession in the game, bar none, to focus in teamfights.

Necros aren’t awful, but the only reason they are viable right now is because of boon corruption in a boon-heavy meta. If you remove Corrupt Boon you remove Necros.

ShakeItOut.6781:

Well, if you are talking about the relevance of this skill, consider that every shatter mesmer has to disengage once he got it, same for thieves. It is also the only skill who lets necros kill a bit faster an hambow (and yet the fight is still long and, as Henrietta said, hambow can still have berserker stance a second time). Moreover, if we consider the top 100 players in team q, we have indeed max 10 players who play as main necro: in this group, the builds change a lot; but the skills are indeed almost the same, except few differences like for instance Djoooce who sistematically uses epidemic instead of signet of spite. It’s a general analysis taking for sample a group of 5-10 necros max who are in top 100, even top 50 only.

I’m not saying the skill is necessarily bad (I should have specified), but saying “all the best necros use it” is a sweeping and untrue statement. I’m sure some people take it, its good for spiking as you said and that can be very helpful, but there are also people who don’t. Also I don’t take top 100 as the pool of best Necros in the game, not enough people take the queues seriously for me to really do that.

Poplolita.2638:

@Bhawb,
1. What do you suggest instead attrition wise? I thought a better access to debuff such a chill may be the best thing to do.

Chill is a great place yes, but that would be best accomplished through spreading out small buffs to all chill sources, not just Dark Path (which is already pretty strong). Really we need overall good access to blind, chill, poison, weakness, and cripple, not necessarily to the point where every single AA applied it, but we should be able to get decent uptime on all of them. Fields and finishers would help this immensely, especially ice, poison, and dark (need some ice fields, maybe another poison field or two).

Also, some better overall LF generation. Scepter needs a buff to the LF on #3, especially a flat value that gets a bit higher per condition on the target, and Axe needs a more reliable LF source instead of a single ability that does all the damage and sustain for the weapon.

However I think the first is more important, because it could help solve the LF issue by letting us actually take different traits/skills.

2. I think AA is already strong as it is. Puting 1 stack of torment every 2 sec just by spamming AA will make it over the top imo. If I recall, arenaNet already removed 1 stack of bleed on #2, so why not add 1-2 stack(s) of torment in #3 scepter to balance it out? The 10 sec cooldown will balance it out, and avoid some spam. Make it require bleed and poison on the target in order to put torment (See fire grab with elementalist), thus people can predict #3, and cleanse/dodge before it lands in order to counter it.

I would revert the Dhuumfire-related nerfs, the nerfs to our various bleed stacks that came up as a result of Dhuumfire. Then I’d take a few abilities, such as Scepter/Staff 2 (as an example) or Dark Path and change the bleeds to torment. The issue with straight buffing #3 is having it do too many things that aren’t related to each other. As it is now its a scaling direct damage/sustain spike skill, adding a bit of torment makes little sense. If they added torment I’d remove the scaling direct damage and instead have scaling torment (have it like Focus 5, you apply additional torment stacks/higher duration ones).

Big issues with Necros right now is lack of weapon-based condi pressure (which causes a reliance on utility skills for pressure, instead of being able to get actual utility), all of our over time damage being focused on bleed stacks, low sustain, the heaviest weakness to focus/CC, awful finishers, lack of fields on certain builds, Death Shroud’s various issues… There are just a number of things that don’t necessarily need a ton of work each, but combined together make bigger problems. Yes you can play around them since we are in a boon-based meta with Corrupt Boon, but that is literally the only reason you bring Necromancers right now.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I have no idea where you heard a silly number like 3rd highest, it’s more like 2nd worst. I suppose there could be some room for debate whether they’re worse than rangers but either way it’s either worst or second worst.

I’ve heard it from multiple sources.

ShakeItOut.6781:

But it’s useful and strong and this is why all the best necros right now are using it.

This is a sweeping statement, and one that isn’t at all accurate.

I’d rather they use the whole ToL process to really evaluate where balance is right now and make a large patch after it is finished.

I don’t think this really has much to do with him getting kicked, but more the fact that Necromancers are objectively the worst profession for PvE, and objectively the only profession that has no place in an optimized group.

Can we deal decent damage in a good group? Yes, afaik its 3rd highest single target DPS. But what else do we bring? Nothing of meaning that someone else can’t do, and do while bringing a ton of extra utility. We literally leech off the group, relying on their buffs to even match them in DPS, because while we are selfish in all of our traiting we don’t even out-selfish other people, while bringing nothing to the table.

Literally every other profession has at least one unique thing they can do best, where you can point to it and say “that is why you’d bring that profession, and without them you’ll lack that thing”. Necromancers do not. It is completely silly that there is an entire profession that is simply not worth taking in a group, and the only reason PUGs allow you in a fair bit of the time is because lets face it a zerker Necro might be bad but it beats bearbow.

This isn’t a matter of people perceiving us as bad, because we are bad. This isn’t a matter of people not theory crafting because we aren’t meta so they don’t bother, we’ve been theory-crafted to death and have been found lacking. This is simply an issue that Necromancer has no niche in 99% of group PvE content. And its going to take a lot of work to give us a worthwhile group niche without breaking other content.

I believe it still works, or at least I don’t remember any change that said it didn’t, unless they stealthed it. It just doesn’t provide better damage than staff, now that staff has the double sigil slot.

Dark Path is strong enough as is, the only changes I would make to it are ones to increase its reliability.

Torment would be really good though, although I wouldn’t necessarily put it on Scepter 3 unless they changed it and nerfed the direct damage. I’d just look at changing some of our bleeds over to torment, and also reverting some of the Dhuumfire-related bleed nerfs (which make little sense now).

I think Death Shroud has to be one of the strongest profession mechanics when you look solely at profession mechanics. Having base 29k HP (and a lot higher when you consider how LF actually works) is absolutely massive, with some amazing skills to back it up. There are faults with this – the issues with healing, a few bugs, some QoL things, and the balance decisions made around it – but overall I think it has the highest impact of any profession mechanic.

Next would be Thief initiative imo, the ability to have no CD on weapon skills is amazing (although also a curse at times), and Mesmer with one of the most fun and well integrated mechanics.

Ropechef.6192:

Bhawb,
What have you been working on lately? Even though some of the minion skills are lack luster. What is it that you are doing to make it work? I confess to not ever really running minions. but something about it interests me. If nothing more than a tool in the toolbox.

I’ve actually been trying to get streaming working. No promises yet but maybe, since it lets me get minion gameplay/theory stuff out there without all the work that editing and youtube entails.

Currently I run this build although I’m testing Dwayna because I think it might overall increase the AoE healing and regen healing, and since I have so few boons the loss of the boon duration isn’t too bad. The real thing I need to see is if I have too much regen, or if the “extra” healing is worth it not being instant and potentially wasted.

Basically you have a ton of self healing, almost 2k per weapon swap, 3k per dagger 2, 1.4k from Water runes (2.4k from Dwayna), lots of regen, 6.6k base Consume with 860 per condition removed (easy 10k+ heal), plus Vampiric and VM healing. And to your minions you get the Water/Dwayna, Renewal sigil, some regen, and 5.2k Transfusion gives them a lot of extra tankiness, and some teamfight help.

On top of all that defense (which is more than enough to stay alive through 2v1s and some 3v1s), you have a lot of sustained damage, and armor ignoring (leeching, Vamp, VM) damage that will wear people down alongside tons of hard CC, permanent soft CC, perma poison, lots of weakness, etc.

I don’t know that it is competitive viable, but a lot of the perceived weaknesses can be worked around and if you know how to rotate and force fights you can be a huge pain in the kitten .

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Really now? Fascinating. Guess I don’t notice it cause you die so fast in PVE and I don’t run that trait in PvP.

I’m imagining how crazy strong it would be if the threshold was 50% in PvP tho _

Also quite problematic because you can trigger it when in Death Shroud, as long as your HP is below the threshold. Still an awful trait, but straight buffing it isn’t good either, just need to change it.

Necros are okay, not great, but okay. There are still a lot of small issues that will remain holding us back from being top-tier, and that’s been the case since launch except for that small period where Dumbfire was overtuned.

Why bother? Don’t, not worth it.

You can reach the third highest single target damage, IIRC (although I have heard some people question that), but you bring very low support, and the little you do bring others will do better.

http://www.twitch.tv/thezombify is the best PvP stream you’ll find for Necros.

Five options I can think of to balance these runes (or some combination of 2-5):
1) Remove them from PvP
2) Rework attack to reduce amount of evade frames
3) Lower attack damage
4) Lower HP
5) Increase CD

As it is right now it has basically the same HP as Rock dog, deals slightly higher damage, and has a pretty long duration evade with each attack, that happens about every 2-3 seconds, all on a lower CD than the dog. Its just a bit overwhelming as a proc right now.

It will not be the same for everyone, it is a lag exploit and so depending on your own personal lag things will be slightly different.

Darox.8069:

Get a clue … I know how damage works I wrote an entire PvE ele guide! Anyway when I say base damage I mean damage without much might nor crit or vuln, but with gear runes and traits. Taking this into account, again, Fire Grab will hit for 900 or 1500 on burning targets.

It’s an extremely poorly designed spell and it needs to be looked at.

Compare Fire Grab to Eviscerate for example, you’ll just end up facepalming yourself to death.

And yet you are too lazy to go in game and test it? They deal nearly identical damage, whether you fully trait for it or don’t, there is only a very small difference in full adrenaline Eviscerate or Grab vs burning target.

Base Fire Grab dealt around 2000 with the same base (no trait) setup as a 2300 Eviscerate, Traited Fire Grab dealt 3200 damage with full traiting, as did Eviscerate. Both were done without any might/vuln and were non-crit, it was just soldier gear, power runes, and 6 in the power tree, and then whatever other traits gave highest damage.

Wiseleaf.7206:

If the purpose is to ‘fix’ necros in pve, why not a gradmaster trait which gives melee attacks cleave?

“At the low low price of an entire Grandmaster, now you too can be a little bit less worthless! (Warning: you will still be completely worthless.)”

Muchacho.2390:

I feel axe lacks something. Axe 3 is really good, 2 is okish but the auto needs something. Maybe more damage or aoe or more range, i dont know but i would like aoe on the auto the most.

Depends on how they want to go with the weapon.

Axe 3 is amazing and the only change I’d ever make is a blast finisher (although that might be too good). I’d either take the vuln off the Auto and put it on the #2 so that it stacks vuln (which would be a nice synergy with focus, so you could “burst” a crapton of vuln), and then buff the Auto’s damage and make it cleave. Or I’d leave the auto basically as is but with cleave, and change the #2 to a frontal cone burst skill.

Darox.8069:

And firegrab hits for 900 or 1500 on burning targets.

Again: when it hits!!

Of course you can increase that damage with might and crit, but the base damage is very low especially considering its terribly designed mechanic and outrageously long cooldown.

Then you need to get a better build, that’s on you not the skill itself.

The bird has 7k HP, and hits for 1-2k.

Dagger is the only thing you should be running in PvE unless you absolutely need range or are using a LB build (in which case you still use dagger when not in DS). So no, you don’t need to use axe or scepter except in very specific situations.

Dagger is used in PvP too, if you are using a power build.

Also, while WvW can be hard without traits, PvP you can do at level 2 or 80 it doesn’t matter, you are always on equal footing as far as stats/traits/gear.

84% Lutete.5379 Vekkel The Asura 187 188 49.87% Northern Shiverpeaks

OP is ranked. Honestly though OP, at your ranking your build might work, that does not mean it is OP. If your build was so OP that Necros need nerfs then you would be in the top 100 with how many games you’ve played.

Koloman.1632:

I almost never see a necro with a focus, I was wondering if there was a build that utilized the focus, or what function the focus is best suited for? With the vuln and boon removal it seems like it would be a nice power build or bunker buster type thing, but then being the only offhand that provides regen it seems like maybe a decent survival weapon. Even still I don’t see many necros with the focus. Where would it fit best?

I use it all the time, its awesome. It is mainly used for the boon removal, which can be utilized by any build, but also has use for burst, vuln stacking, and in chill builds. Basically any build can use it, as long as you need what it provides and can give up what you lose by not taking the other OHs.

I would never run Axe except in WvW and if you already have dagger MH equipped and don’t want to run staff. It is not that good of a weapon, but if you have to use it, you have to use it.

It depends on what utilities you have, and how you are playing. But if you are barely ever using them you might want to consider swapping.

alcopaul.2156:

Since Gamescom is taking place on the European soil, they want the Euros to win. And by including BLU, who is naturally a superb shoutcaster, if voted to the NA team will make the odds to the Euro’s favor.

EU is going to win most likely anyway, they have an entire team roster on their voting list.

NeXeD.3042:

Spectral bunkers could be fixed or at least helped by making lifeblast cast faster and maybe making the projectile faster, something would have to be done about reapers might though.

Increasing zerker Necro DPS would have issues, LB already deals a significant amount of damage per cast.

Pelopidas.2140:

While i like the idea, i dont think scepter lf regen is getting a buff, would make condi builds too tanky…

Whats the problem in your opinion with spectral bunkers ?

Necromancers are supposed to have sustain, but scepter/dagger has no sustain. They nerfed our damage multiple times without a single compensation, LF generation wouldn’t break it.

Spectral bunkers don’t have good weapons to use, imo. All the weapons we have are okay (depending on if you are condi or power with spectrals), but not amazing. We really need a weapon with CC (like warrior hammer), a support weapon (since our staff’s support has been gutted), or one with lots of non-damaging condis (like a greatsword that gave cleaving poison/weakness/chill/boon removal, something like that). Basically spectral bunkers atm just don’t die, they don’t provide much else other than not-dying.

Condi is basically okay in PvP. There are still a few issues that need solving like LF generation on scepter, but the build is still viable in the hands of the right people.

Power has even seen use in high tier teams now, and frankly a power necro carried the hell out of his team in the MP tournament by winning every fight he used Lich in. Does it need help? Yep, and I am not convinced its really viable, but its seen use.

MM of course needs help, but that is mainly fixing AI and a few other issues.

And other builds, like spectral bunker, well support, etc. all need new content to work.

Its certainly a build, that’s for sure. No offense but I highly doubt this is OP, or that it is worth nerfing.

I haven’t tried it with my new setup, but with my old keyboard/mouse I would press both at the exact same time, with shroud being on my mouse.

Chaotic.9742:

Actually, it’s only one week “officially” to get your name out there, but I get where you’re coming from. You could post things like check this vid/my stream before the names were out, but if you mentioned being a candidate for the tournament, anet would remove you from the list. I’m mainly frustrated that Blu is king of popularity/advertisement through his streaming tournaments and not as a player, but he’s getting all the votes to represent as an “all star” player from NA. That’s where the issue lies. Again, he deserves to go, but as a player? Not sold on that…

Officially yes, but the players on the list knew about it for at least 2 weeks before it was announced. You couldn’t publicly say “hey vote for me for allstars” but you could have started streaming, trying to be active on the forums, whatever to get publicity. If some players didn’t take advantage of this that is unfortunate but its on them.

Now, I’m not saying Blu should or shouldn’t go, but not trying to get more popular just before a popularity contest has fairly obvious results.

Chaotic.9742:

The last frustration is to everyone saying they don’t know the players in the pool. I’m pretty sure if you watched a few of the ESL weeklies or checked out the teams that registered, you would see the players at one point or another.

I watch a fair bit of the tournaments, I try to tune in to most of them, although I will often watch while doing something else. I don’t really pay attention to the names, unless I have some specific reason to (generally if I really love the comp or if they play Necromancer), because it isn’t all that important to me. So the people I know of in each region are because I know of them due to their out-of-game contributions, streams, or relation to players I know. Sure I’ve probably seen all these players multiple times, it doesn’t mean I remember or recognize them or their play, however.

Unfortunately, anything involving votes is a popularity contest, and certain individuals simply have put themselves out there more than others. There was a few weeks notice (at least 2 IIRC), so there was plenty of time for those players to stream and get their name out there a bit.

I agree, make it so all stunbreaks with a cast time have an instant-cast stunbreak followed by the skill itself (with cast time) with the covering stability.

There is no point making more useless 25 stack sigil summons, because they are useless. If you nerf the rune sets you might as well just get rid of the pet summoning part altogether. Also while I’m not doubting it is probably true, I’d love to see someone show the math that proves they are actually better than other options. The rock dog, at first look, does maybe 400 DPS or so while he’s alive, with less than 8k HP and a 90s CD.

Everyone talks about how easily Necromancer minions die in teamfights, yet even untraited everything except Bone Minions have higher base tankiness than these summoned pets, and with traiting Bone Minions are equally as tanky. I think the real issue is with Pirate runes, the bird evades far too much, artificially making itself tanky, and has a lower CD and higher chance to summon than Rock Dog. The bird just needs a little bit of a nerf.

I’m confused why they didn’t send you to shoutcast, when its obvious you are the #1 All Star shoutcaster. Either way, frankly I want you to go to the tournament and wreck EU, that would be even better than the Brazil v. Germany game.

Furious.2867:

Have you been following the candidates for gamescom? Not a single necro.

Zombify is a Necro, one who has been around for ages (#Zombify4Gamescon) and is on the list for NA, EU has never really had many Necros in the high tier scene consistently so its not a big surprise they didn’t have a Necro rep.

Rich Fuel.7253:

what is DS?, and i asked which 1 is better as for higher dmg

The one with precision will deal higher damage because of crit chance. DS = Death Shroud.

I’m confused why you’d take Dark Armor when you shouldn’t be channeling skills often in your build, plus the fact that its PvE and as a Necro who abuses DS you’re already going to have a ton of safety in fights.

I think the biggest things we need are

1. New skills/traits (and significant reworks of bad things can fit here too, like if they rework Necromancer Axe), basically new things to play with, because while I enjoy the skills and whatnot that was given on launch, its been nearly 2 years with very few additions to the game

2. New maps, especially ones that are “competitive” but have interesting mechanics. You shouldn’t be able to so easily know who is going to win the game because the only way to comeback is hold a three cap for 5 minutes, there need to be more mechanics like Temple has where swings can occur quickly.

3. More reason to play in the higher levels. A tournament armor was just introduced, why not make an armor (a different one, keep that for just tournaments) that you can only get through maintaining a high ranking for a period of time, or introducing seasons and get it as a reward for being X rank at the end of the season, along with a change to the leaderboards (so people can’t just win 10 games on the very last week before the cutoff and end up ranked 10).

Have one armor (or other reward) exclusive to soloQ, and one to teamQ, to give incentive to people to climb the ladder, and make it harder to climb.