Guild Wars 2

This is only true if this person has no other ticking objects on their character, which is pretty unlikely. All ticks count down on a shared timer, so if you apply a 10 second condition, and then 5.5 seconds later apply a 1 second burn against someone with -40% condition duration, your burn will still tick at the 6 second mark.

No, guaranteed ticks shouldn’t be a thing. If someone else has invested in -duration and you haven’t invested at all in +duration, why should you still get the benefit if you wouldn’t otherwise? If anything -duration needs to be looked at, since in the relevant game mode (WvW) conditions are already massively weaker than power because of how much easier it is to counter in a zerg situation.

You don’t see them putting something in that reduces all direct damage by 40%, I don’t see why conditions get that treatment when they are already weak (in WvW).

Dahir.4158:

Never go full condi.
Never.

DS doesn’t need to be changed, your build does.

This isn’t a legitimate argument. When Necromancers were stacking 15 bleeds on people while under a fear chain and stacked under piles of conditions, people weren’t forced to change their build (for good reason), it was nerfed because it was too strong.

If there was something that invalidated direct damage while above 90% HP people would be up in arms and no amounts of “just change your build” would stop that.

I honestly wish they’d just go ahead and GW1 this game and throw like another 100 skills and some traits at the game and use that to balance us out instead of trying to do 8% buffs and nerfs every 3 months.

But ya I guess I agree. Risking it a bit along with a quick follow up if needed would be fine, and if they don’t do too much in one patch it wouldn’t risk too much either.

manveruppd.7601:

Mine just stands there, doesn’t even cheerlead… it must be very unimpressed with me

You need to roll your face over the keyboard faster then, that’s my strategy and he loves it.

Damaein.6413:

That sounds like a perfect situation. Too perfect….

Its actually pretty easy to set up. Turret engis have to drop their turrets when they get on point. If they aren’t on point yet, you have more than enough CC to put them in a bad situation. They are basically too stuck into a predictable pattern, and as an MM you happen to have an easy counter to that pattern.

flow.6043:

Fighting a turret engi on point (especially after they’ve dropped their supply crate) is not going to happen that easily. On top of several non-turret CCs you’ll eat a knock back for every destroyed turret (Accelerant Packed Turrets).

You pretty much have to intercept them before they can reach a capture node because they won’t waste their elite in the middle of nowhere.
Once they bunker down on one point your team is better off just leaving him there and fight 5v4 on the other points.
It’s not like you can’t beat them in a 1v1 at all, but if you don’t want to spend too much time fighting from range you’d have to make a risky all-in move like Bhawb described. You might win, but the safe bet is to not engage at all and get the other points instead.

They are way easier to fight off point, that is for sure, and especially difficult to take down with supply crate. That said, if you know how to engage them and don’t run in blindly it is possible, but you have to understand how to do it. Also you have to understand your build, if you don’t have the kind of cleave to take out their turrets, don’t even engage, like you say. My build happens to have a lot of burst cleave + healing so it is pretty easy to take care of their turrets.

If they are on point first:
1) Send in Flesh Golem first, use his Charge and try to aim him through as much as possible. He’ll run through a few turrets before they react and hit him, and he’ll take the brunt of the first set of attacks (a lot of turret shots have obnoxiously slow attack speeds).
2) Follow in with Locust Swarm and any other non-DS cleave (Axe 3, Dagger 5, w/e)
3) Once bone minions are in, blow them up in the middle
4) After above, jump into DS and 5/4

If you know how to set up the proper engage, this is very possible and the turrets can’t really stop you. They have relatively low HP, you should have ways to ignore armor (Leeching sigils), high cleave, and Flesh Golem gets 20s of stability when he flies in, so he can finish off the last few turrets if you get bounced a bit.

At this point, if you are running my build your minions will still be alive and his won’t, because you have AoE healing and he doesn’t. You can definitely win the matchup at this point. However, realize your limits, this isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds because you have to understand how he’s set up, how you are, and use things right to absorb attacks well. If you can’t do this, don’t try it when its important to get it right.

If he is coming up to you:
Just blow all your CC and keep him the hell off point. [In my build] You have Charge, Rigor Mortis, Doom, Tainted Shackles, and Dark Pact for hard CC, and Locust Swarm, Spinal Shivers, Unholy Feast, and cripple from minion autos as soft CC. Your goal should be to chain as much CC as possible (save your immobilizes in case he has stability) and make him lose before he can set up.

The most important thing to remember is that your minions have more control than his turrets do. He has no more stability or ways to avoid stability than you in a normal turret build, and his summons die faster. This means if you play things well you can have the glorious feeling of making someone else a pingpong ball for once. Any raging dongers are perfectly normal and to be expected if you play this well.

But again, know your limits and your build. Not every build can do this, I speak specifically about my own.

The second you see the turrets go down you have flesh golem charge through them, blow up both minions, activate Locust swarm, then go into DS and 5/4.

At the end of that everything is dead and turret engis without turrets are pretty awful.

What are you planning to use this build for in WvW?

This is definitely not the way to fix deathshroud, at all. Deathshroud and LF is a good mechanic (that needs some fixing so it doesn’t block our other defenses) because it relies on you being in combat and landing skills. Removing that will never happen because of how counter it is to what we’re supposed to be.

Tim.6450:

The idle base state is like the guard/avoid combat button (but without the button) in my opinion.

The idle base state is how they work already (they just run back to you after their aggro has been carried out), but now that they don’t aggro except on your command, they’ll come back to a resting state whenever you haven’t given them aggro. So you can’t “force” them to come back to you, you can simply have them kill one target and then not have them running off to attack something that poked them 20 minutes ago.

The rest I agree that it might be stepping on toes, unfortunately I think it might be needed to a degree if they are going to leave AI as is.

Damaein.6413:

For the banish minion button would it be like exploding a turret after using its skill or would it be hovering above the skill bar. Would it banish all with one click or have a button for each? I would hate to kill my worm for no reason. But being able to reset its cooldown without being jerked in a direction may be useful in some situations.

It is one button that banishes all of your minions with absolutely no effect except that they are gone and on CD (no LF gain, no Death Nova, no skill-effects).

spoj.9672:

Look at what happened with condi. They added dhuumfire, condi pressure went way up. They nerfed condi. Now its in a decent place with a decent change to dhuumfire. They need to take the same risk with siphons and power builds. Not taking a risk and keeping the class where it is doesnt solve anything.

Except condi isn’t in that good of a place. They added Dhuumfire, nerfed our damage, then took dhuumfire away and left us with the nerfs. If you’re an amazing player you can do it, but without basically perfect play you don’t do enough.

People will always flock to what is considered strongest, especially if it is considered easy to play. Even if they had “perfect” balance, people would still flock to whatever build is considered strongest and easiest to play.

Taygus.4571:

but why not DS? …its not like its a few minutes of super strength, you’re still vulnerable to blocks/conditions etc…

Because it has nothing to do with balance.

Hot kitten people, not every single decision in game is about balance. Minions are not absolutely stupid because of balance, transforms don’t affect signets/desummon minions because of balance, there are a lot of things that are the way they are simply because that is how it is.

You can’t stomp while in Deathshroud because it is coded that way, and changing it (gasp) might not be as simple as going to the area where it says Stomp_In_DeathShroud = “false” and changing it to “true”. Hell if coding was that simple they wouldn’t have random bugs.

connvince.8061:

Also, if this has been a bug for a while, then there’s no excuse. ANet is big enough that it can find an AI guy to work out a debilitating flaw in a class’s main elite skill a couple years after the fact.

This would require a rework of the entire PvE AI system. This is a very high risk situation, its not as easy as just throwing money at it until its fixed.

Its a pathing issue, and unfortunately minions inherit their AI from the same code that drives all NPCs, which apparently is “upon encountering any obstacle it is time to pick flowers”.

It just doesn’t have swimming animations. That’s really all they need to do to fix this.

There was a video showing just how low of damage even carrion and rabid do to a diamond skin ele. If it was just a matter of “deal 1.5k damage to get rid of this trait” then it wouldn’t be an issue, but trying to deal that hen you only hit 300-400 to a target with passive healing + regen + heal on skill cast; its a bit more difficult.

I don’t think 800 gems is all that difficult to get in gold (especially since you have a warrior an can grind out dungeons easily).

There is a reason power Necro hasn’t been seen in competitive play (except very rarely) since 2012, and its not because Lich is too strong or uncounterable.

To OP:
If you have range, literally just spam left and right. The projectiles will try to lead you in the direction you are moving when they are launched, however you aren’t actually moving and they fly wide. If there is a way to remove stability you just can chain CC him, he has basically no defense so just unloading your damage on him might scare him off, any normal defensive measures (damage avoidance) will stop things.

Basically you just want to delay out the duration or down him through it. Worst case, run away and come back, it is a massive CD.

Carpboy.7145:

You have 5 character slots. Why not just make a mesmer with one of your 4 remaining slots and see how it goes?

Absolutely this.

If anything, keep your warrior as a PvE drone. It is very unlikely that the reign of Warriors in PvE will ever be overthrown, so having an 80 warrior would be quite helpful for whenever you want to just blast through a few dungeons.

Yes guys, we get it, no one here plays Necro unless they agree with everything you say.

I just don’t think it should exist, certainly not without a large rework. It is just too feast or famine, the trait isn’t even that good for eles to take except in very niche situations (like against full-condi necros).

It has nothing to do with balance, its an issue of mechanics.

Tim.6450:

I beleive you are trying to take the advantages of turrets and pets and combine them into minions. It devalues the other 2 skill types a bit in my opinon.

I’m assuming you are referencing the parts of I that don’t deal with AI (the two buttons)? That’s basically exactly my worry about it. Desummon is to me more an issue of how quickly minions get bugged due to pathing when you are moving around, and this would help fix that. If they actually had a solid AI system that always worked properly then I’d throw the idea right out the window.

Chaos.2531:

But you are not balancing it since you are offering a very small compensation.

In none of my changes to actual traits did I list full changes, only ideas to show what I mean. So you can’t say whether they are nerfs, buffs, balanced, or absolutely ridiculous; except for the changes to AI/desummon button everything I listed were either flat buffs or simply concepts.

Chaos.2531:

I am gonna fix it for you: The changes to AI only nerf them if you aren’t doing everything by yourself.

If you aren’t doing anything you shouldn’t have any damage output, period. With minions as they are now you a lot of effectiveness out of simply summoning them. You don’t even need to target someone to have them attack, and that’s stupid. You should be playing your build, not the game.

Chaos.2531:

This topic is not about buffing necromancers. Period.
You want them to be nerfed, and then offer a compensation for said nerf.

This is arguing semantics, then attacking me (in an absolutely ridiculous way) because you don’t like my ideas. If you don’t like them, fine, but don’t pretend its because I have something against minions.

Because they are transforms, and you can’t do that in a transform.

Carighan.6758:

I still don’t think MM is such a big deal. Tab-targeting already favours the player, and really if targeting is the issue then stealth-spam Thieves are a much bigger issue with their HS or C&D.

Except that there are MM builds that will never die with minions up. The builds that wreck MMs are ones that can destroy the minions before you take any damage from them, while dealing damage to the MM. If you are in a build that has to ignore the minions because you can’t kill them, you’ve already lost.

Carighan.6758:

And as far as the damage goes, meh.
Ok if a single attack attacks you, but if you’re MM and there’s a group fight, better have a second set of minions stowed somewhere so they can get blown up in the AE, too.

Having better actives on the minions would make their teamfighting better because you’d be able to summon them, use their utility, and then when they die right after it isn’t a big deal because a lot of their usefulness is in their actives anyway.

Chaos.2531:

I don’t like how the OP is merely a disguised: ‘’NERF THE MM PLEASE!’’
You want to give a negligible advantage for players playing the MM actively in an exchange for increasing the skill required to play it by a considerable margin.

Note that I didn’t nerf a single minion’s base stats or abilities (if anything they were buffed). All I proposed was they change TotM/NC from a very passive DPS increase to something that has more impact with their actives. Obviously you’d balance it such that if you landed every single ability well, you’d be even stronger than you are now (because you shouldn’t be landing them).

The changes to AI only nerf them if you aren’t doing anything yourself. If you’re just attacking like normal this will just increase their responsiveness and control.

I’m not someone that hates minions and wants to nerf them; quite the opposite. But for minions to get the buffs they deserve there will be nerfs to accompany those buffs. The build isn’t strictly weak, but it needs the focus of its power shifted.

RashanDale.3609:

i still think it should be the other way around. it’s better to make lifesteal work in DS by default and then adjust the numbers/scaling instead of buffing lifesteal first and then having to balance it again for death shroud.

Fair point.

Argon.1563:

Or you could just have a 2nd set with…any other weapon?…Staff, Dagger, Axe, the lot, all do enough damage to take an ele out of 90%. 10% of an ele’s health is like, not even 2k.

The issue is an ele isn’t going to sit around twiddling his thumbs. If you’re a condi build you just don’t have the direct damage to get through regen, water-attunement regen and healing, and healing-skill healing.

This trait, as has been said billions of times, is just badly made. It is either worthless because its impossible to keep up, or far too strong because it never goes down.

Remorhas.2963:

What I wish they would add if if you somehow was able to summon it on-top of a wall and use tranversal you could TP onto the wall,now that could be useful in WvW you could TP on-top the wall above the gate and fend off defenders.

This is exactly why the TP operates as it does right now. Or you could have zergs of 50 MM Necromancers that run around teleporting directly into your keeps and towers without any way to defend against them.

Yes, you’d have to do things so that they didn’t just end up with abilities that have too much counterplay for their power level, so the active abilities would have to be stronger than they are now (when traited), to balance that out.

I think the first big step is just making life siphoning work period. Then we can do things like introducing traits that allow it to work through DS, or maybe making specific healing mechanics (mainly self-traited ones) work through DS.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I havn’t seen a red post in months. and balancing updates themselves in fact comes very rarely. So the question is, does Anet actually read these forums or are we all just wasting our time?

It takes an insane amount of time to do anything more than read. They only post if they have meaningful reason to do so, otherwise it can very arguably make things worse.

However, if you look through a lot of balance changes, many were based on forum input. Maybe not that they got the idea from the forums only, but that the forums had stated the idea before it was implemented.

The whole point of “is this a joke” was you saying to keep MM out of the build’s best game mode, and keep it in a gamemode it is massively subpar for.

Also I guarantee you will be kicked out of a lot of groups if you run full MM. Hell even I’d kick you if you aren’t really on top of things because of how quickly minions screw things up.

@Brujeria, I think its fine as a niche trait. I agree it certainly won’t see wide play, but the ability to heal teammates while still dealing fairly competitive damage is awesome. The only issue right now is it is totally unreliable.

Just play a Necro and see if you like it.

As for the big, major issues:
The biggest issue with Necromancer is we’re still just missing one or two key things. A weapon here, a unique utility there, a trait rework sprinkled on top, and suddenly we’d become by far the most balanced profession in the game, with crazy diversity and at least niche in every mode with multiple builds. As it is now though, we lack those things and hurt a bit because of it.

But generally just play what you enjoy and not what is good.

Sarrs.4831:

I don’t know how I feel about mega lists of how a trait affects different abilities differently. The most recent examples, I think, are the engi traits for gadgets and turrets- Speaking of which, I think a boon-on-minion-death trait could be pretty cool.

It does bring up an issue of needing to learn a list of weird things, however with ANet getting a lot better with tooltips, they’d simply add the new functions onto the tooltips. So while you couldn’t see it right on the trait itself, it would be pretty easy to find out in game.

The reason I don’t go for straight damage increase is because even if its just on their actives, not all actives are about damage (in fact only one is fully damage based, with one more, Charge, being kind of hybrid). So functionality changes give you improved abilities such that if you would have the minion already, the new functionality would still fit. Also with the cleave it fixes a massive issue with current minions.

Sarrs.4831:

Also, I don’t know if I’ve said it here before, but Minion abilities which don’t summon a minion but instead affect your other minions, would be cool. A bit like the Ranger shouts.

Won’t happen, honestly. ANet have basically said this, they don’t want abilities which only affect other abilities. Ranger shouts are fine because you will always have a pet (just like only-Deathshroud skills would be fine, because while deathshroud is a specific skill, you always have it).

Nothing does. They’re basically a bad version of fresh air ele. You have some crazy burst with Lich Form, and really strong damage through DS, but it is very easy to counter. It is certainly a fun spec to play, and good in yoloQ because of general lack of teamwork, but it is far from OP.

Unfortunately all they did with the new traits was a very slight nerf to damage, but while giving MMs a pretty decent boost in survivability (2% extra LF per minion death, plus extra toughness in DS). All in all I don’t think they really changed much besides giving them a bit more defense and a bit less offense.

The problem right now is minions are a bit too much of a “stat check”, where you either have a build that can deal with them, or don’t. And only if you have one of those builds are you basically able to do anything, or their passive damage/CC/healing is just too much.

If I got more than 10fps on a good day I might stream and teach people how to get rank 80 and top 100 on the leaderboards by afking with minion.

Zach.3264:

Dodging, evading etc also applies to Power builds.
Yes conditions have cleanses, but often you need to sacrifice a large portion of Power damage if you want to obtain these.
Also, there aren’t many transfer abilities available.

Hence, they have almost all the counterplay of a power build (dodging, invulns, blocks, etc.) but also the counterplay of conditions (removal, -duration). You have to give up offense to stop power builds from wrecking you, why should this not be true of condition builds?

The only issue here is if there is a disparity between how easily accessed this defense is relative to its strength.

So I made a massive (over 7k characters…) post about minions in the balance subforum. I’d love it if you could hop over there and discuss it, either here or there. I posted it there because its balance related and to give it more visibility, but I want all Necromancer players to at least know its there.

The aim of the post was to propose some changes, many QoL, and the rest related to giving minions counterplay, so that they don’t have such an overbearing passive presence, but rely on active play to use well. Also put in some ideas that could make them a viable niche playstyle in other game modes than just open world and PvP.

II. Changing Passive Traits to Active
Leading from above, I think minions are a bit too strong with just their passive actions of hitting an enemy. I dislike the existence of traits that solely buff the strength of their auto attacks and not so much their actives. It doesn’t promote active play like the game should.

A. Change to Training of the Master – no longer grants a flat 25% damage buff, instead grants improvements to minions. Melee minions now cleave (shouldn’t affect PvP much, but helps in PvE where we desperately need cleave), and minion active abilities have improved functionality.

For example (obviously balance is debateable):
Putrid Explosion (Bone Minions) – Deals 30% more damage (basically what it is now, because this skill is fine as is)
Taste of Death (Blood Fiend) – Leaves a water field where the minion dies
Necrotic Traversal (Flesh Wurm) – increases teleport range (not sure how much) and the explosion deals direct damage
Haunt (Shadow Fiend) – siphons HP (to the minion, not master)

The main consideration here is to not end up nerfing MM directly, but shifting some of the consistent (and difficult to avoid) tanky-DPS to the actives. So the idea is shifting the damage to things with more counterplay, without strictly lowering it, and trying to support the minion’s unique style.

B. Changes to Necromantic Corruption
Same basic idea as above. Instead of having a passive buff give a buff to their actives. In this case, instead of just being damage/general functionality buffs they would have play with boons.

Possible examples:
Putrid Explosion – strips one boon
Haunt – steals a boon for the shadow fiend
Rigor Mortis – corrupts two boons (one per projectile)

So like above, the consideration is to not lower the amount of boon stripping, but make it more supporting of the minion’s style, more reliable, and with more counterplay. Just for everyone’s benefit, I’ve listed below some numbers on the trait’s current values, for comparison to what a new trait should at the very least accomplish (in reality it should most likely exceed what is currently done, due to the trait being subpar as is).

10% chance per hit (note that this does proc on their actives that deal direct damage, but this makes calculations hard and so is ignored; it also generally decreases their proc speed anyway except for flesh golem)

Blood Fiend/Bone Minion(just 1)/Flesh Wurm – one boon every ~30 seconds
Bone Fiend/Shadow Fiend – one boon every ~15 seconds
Flesh Golem – one boon every ~12 seconds

III. Changes to Base Minions/Abilities
These are changes I think should be made without traiting, just improvements to the base skills.

Necrotic Traversal – the explosion activates at the Necromancer’s location, not the Wurm’s
Haunt – reduce post-cast activation time from 2 seconds to 3/4s
Rigor Mortis – acts as an auto attack reset, so the fiend is immediately immobilized and attacks, but has a more noticeable chains animation on the minion
Putrid Explosion – the first minion to blow up is now the one closest to the target selected
Charge – cast time removed and is an instant-activate (like all other non-heal minion skills), however Flesh Golem now has a pre-Charge “enrage” animation (kind of like you’d expect a bull or something to have) that lasts 3/4s
Blood Fiend – passive healing has added scaling (0.05)

I think that’s all. Its a short post I know, but try to read through at least parts of it. I’d love to hear feedback, both to the original concept of giving them more counterplay, if you think I’ve achieved that goal with my ideas, and then ideas on specifics to the changes I’ve proposed. Please keep feedback civil, even if you disagree completely, and thanks for your time.

TL;DR if you need a short version – I want to give minions more counterplay by focusing their damage and utility on their active skills.

Note first before I say anything else that this is simply my opinion on how to make a broad fix on the current minion playstyle. I’m not looking to expand the actual playstyles available to MMs because with the current selection of minions there is really only one broad style available to us, with different specializations you can make (cleric healer, soldier, chill, etc.). I’m also going to address certain things that don’t necessarily have to happen to make balance better but imo improve the health of the gameplay. And finally while some of the concepts here could apply to other summon builds, overall this is specific towards minions.

The main themes here are removing as much passive play as possible, pushing as much strength as possible into active play forced on the player, and putting a bit more control over minions in their hands (we are supposed to be minion masters afterall, not just minion summoners).

Again, this is just my opinion, feedback is welcome.

I. Putting the Master back in Minion Master
As things are right now, minions take a lot of action on their own. They remember aggro they acquired previous to any overwrites that may have happened (say you swap targets, when one is dead they walk right back to the other one), they attack people who attack you and themselves, and you actually get somewhat limited choices over how to control them once they are out besides telling them who to attack.

Now I don’t want to step on the toes of Ranger too much, however there are some QoL things that involve AI. Also I realize this could be difficult to do because minions currently inherit nearly all their AI from mobs, which would need changing. But wishful thinking.

A. Minions no longer attack targets unless you “tell” them to – this means they won’t target anything that you are not currently targeting. They won’t attack to defend you, they won’t attack to defend themselves, they won’t remember aggro from previous targets, they will simply kill the thing that you have told them to and then return to you.

This removes a lot of issues where they end up just randomly wandering around or hitting that one thing you attacked 30 minutes ago, and removes the ability of bad players to rely on the minions to auto defend them even when they are still keyboard turning their character to find the person behind them.

B. Desummon button – simply put, a button that appears only when minions are summoned. Pressing it immediately de-summons all minions, putting them on CD. This would not proc Death Nova, this doesn’t give you the LF from their death, it doesn’t directly give you any benefit, it simply takes the minions off the map. This is especially needed because pathing seems like it will always be an issue, and as it is now minions too easily lose their aggro because you jumped over a log and they couldn’t follow. So you desummon them, gaining no direct benefit, and then can resummon them when you get to the next capture point, free of worrying about AI bugs.

You gave them life, you maintain their existence, you should be able to reverse that gift.

C. Optional Return button – I say optional because I have mixed feelings and think this starts to step on the toes of Ranger. However I also see it as a potentially necessary feature due to the way PvE depends on one-shot mechanics that minions refuse to move out of. Like above, its a button that only appears when minions are summoned. It drops all their aggro completely and forces them to run at max speed directly to you (flesh wurm obviously does nothing, poor guy). Gives you a slight bit of control over their movement, and would slightly improve their survivability in some situations but without passive increases anywhere, you have to notice the danger and make them avoid it.

Again, putting master back in minion master.

With an ICD sure, but as it is now no.

I’d much rather they give us an adept that drops a blind on entry though with an ICD and bring back some version of Shade instead.

#BringBackShade

Lightsbane.9012:

i really wish i knew who you were to warrant such a farewell.

He’s been around the forums quite a bit. Maybe not as loud and obnoxious as some of us, but definitely a regular on the forums.

Good as Listed
Dark Presence
Target the Weak
Staff Mastery
Unholy Sanctuary
Quickening Thirst
Soul Marks
Renewing Blast

Too Strong
Cursed tools – too strong. These traits are balanced as is, although arguably not very useful they are still balanced.
Withering Precision – thats just a really strong trait for just 1 point. Yes its bad as a GM, but an adept minor from a GM major is a huge swap
Weakening Shroud – its fine as is, no need to make it stronger like this. if anything increase the base weakness by 1s
Barbed Precision – my main issue with this is that Terror is only a Master trait, which means that not all condi damage builds will have access to this potentially very important trait, for a move that doesn’t really help anything particularly well
Shrouded Removal – doesn’t make the trait all that good, imo. One condition removed and one boon? bleh
Unyielding Blast – its fine as is, this also seems a bit too strong because it basically guarantees extra hits, whereas lining up a pierce is much harder

Meh
Banshee’s Wail – this is already balanced, but so is your idea
Unholy Martyr – this trait needs a bit more than just this, I don’t think this is particularly impressive either

Question
How does your proposed Deathly Shiver work? For example, how does Tainted Shackles proc it? Does Life Transfer proc it per-tick, or does it only matter if you get hit by a single tick, or do you have to be hit by the first or last tick? If Life Blast has pierce (or your idea), does it proc on every person, just the first?

FitG as an adept is insanely unbalanced. Just give us utility based stability, forcing it on traits really limits things still.

You should have plenty of condition removal if you want it. Consume conditions (blood fiend isn’t worth taking until they increase its base AA heal + give it scaling), dagger OH or staff 4, runes and/or sigils, fetid consumption, you can basically make yourself immune to conditions if you want. I only run CC and some removal on runes and its more than good enough for me.

Stability isn’t too necessary if you know how to use the minions well. Your CC gives you some pseudo stability.

Gryph.8237:

hey, having an off day, but have they ever implemented changes on traits, etc that players have suggested? i’ve given up hope of having an impact on the devs, as i kitten they don’t take into account the players who actually play the necros, aside from 1-2 elite guys.

Yes, actually.

Terror (as it is now) was a Nemesis idea
Dhuumfire was based on many Necromancer ideas (the need for burning, not necessarily its exact implementation)
PotH/Reanimator combining into other minion traits
Vital Persistance’s effectiveness increase
Weakening Shroud’s current functionality
Axe Training dropping to Master tier
The combination of the signet traits
The things Drarnor listed

There may be others but I remember those specifically, and those are just traits, there have been some other changes (like increasing base size of staff marks, addition of a unique animation on Reaper’s Mark, and others). ANet doesn’t actually get enough credit for listening to the community as much as they do, because its easy to forget these situations and easy to remember ones that make them look bad.

Also, people tend to forget that the Necromancer isn’t the only community that has valid input on Necromancers. Sometimes we get completely justified nerfs (like the one to Corrupt Boon) that were not necessarily our idea, but was still a player idea.

I have recently seen some players doing really well on Necro in sPvP. Hard to tell if that is due to their own skill, good matchups, or what, but its worth noting.