Guild Wars 2

CC has no condition removal limit. It will wipe every single condition, and you get a bonus heal for them all. However conditions are pretty lax in PvE, you’ll be fine in general without much removal.

Don’t even need vampiric rituals, WoB has (I believe) the highest possible heal of any skill in the game (both single target and AoE) with enough healing.

That’s our thing. We do conditions, so of course we’ll have lots of them.

I don’t believe we truly become a Lich. We channel the power of one for a limited time, but do not become a Lich, which to my knowledge is an irreversible thing.

40% boon duration is absolutely massive. Assuming one day they fix Death Magic, being able to get 75% boon duration with 45 trait points is pretty big.

Traits:
Spiteful Spirit: 5.25s retal per DS entry (53% uptime, 75% NtD)
Reaper’s Might: 26.25s might per LB (allows 25 stacks of might solely by spamming 1)
Furious Demise: 8.75s fury per DS entry (88% uptime, 125% NtD)
Spiteful Vigor: 8.75s retal per healing skill use
Ritual of Protection: 5.25s protection per well
Foot in the Grave: 5.25s stability per DS entry

Skills:
Mark of Blood: 8.75s regen (146% uptime)
Unholy Feast: 5.25s retal per person hit (now only need 3 targets for perma retal)
Blood is Power: 21s might (88% uptime when traited)
Spectral Armor: 10.5s protection (15.75s traited)
Spectral Walk: 52.5s swiftness
Spectral Wall: 8.75s protection
Locust Swarm: 17.5s swiftness

I probably missed a few boons here or there, and ignored well of power. But still, this would be massively overpowered, even though it’d be weaker on us than almost any other class.

The issue being they don’t have the sustained output to do much. Protection spam is nice, but it doesn’t mean much if you never actually kill the other person.

Actually, a Guardian should never win. If they have enough damage to kill the minions relatively quickly, they are very easy to destroy. They aren’t bursty enough to burst you, they can’t kite the minions well, they can’t really keep up enough sustained AoE to consistently keep the minions down, and overall they just don’t have the sustained damage, healing, AoE, and kiting that they would need. They might live a long time, but they can’t put out the offense while retaining defense.

Baltzenger.2467:

What necros need is skeleton minions, one with a sword/shield, one with a scepter, and one with a bow. Trust me.

no

Because they don’t want to bring back the old hex system. This game is supposed to be fairly friendly to new players, and having dozens and dozens of individual skills, effects, and icons to learn isn’t new-friendly.

If the real SS came back, it’d be confusion application.

Stop using it from out of range?

For Melee w/ cleave:
Step 1) Stack as many targets up as possible, you can LoS the ranged minions to get them in melee, MMs tend to be melee as well (if they aren’t they aren’t a big threat anyway), so just try to get on Bone Fiend’s face, you’ll pull the melee minions and Necro with you
Step 2) Cleave. Literally roll your face over all your non-essential AoE moves, if they have Death Nova, you’ll want to try to avoid being right on top of them when they die, but sometimes it can’t be much avoided, make sure to get out of the poison field though.
Step 3) Once minions are dead, train the Necro. Keep this up as long as you can, bone minions will be up in 16s, fiends are up in 24s, Wurm in 32, Golem in 48. Kill the minions the second they come up, this keeps the minion numbers down, and doesn’t allow the very necessary factor of having multiple minions up.
Step 4) Kill Necro. With minions down, he’s basically a meat shield.

Melee w/ single target:
Step 1) Kite minions away from the Necro.
Step 2) Dive the Necro, train them until the minions start catching back up to you
Step 3) Retreat, kite minions away again
Step 4) Rinse, repeat.

Ranged:
Look at above for whichever applies (single target or w/ AoE), only difference is single target doesn’t need to gap close, and ranged probably has no need to stack in melee. Just do the same thing as above with range.

Things to watch for:
1) Big CC CDs: Charge, Rigor Mortis, Tainted Shackles, Wail of Doom, Reaper’s Mark, avoid these and you have little to worry about for CC chaining (a huge part of MMing)
2) Kite Flesh Golem. He’s literally half of the consistent CC/damage they put out
3) Putrid Explosion. Without this there really isn’t any meaningful burst in most builds
4) Normal Necro things. Don’t allow too many conditions to stack up (even if they are low damage, a lot of control conditions will screw you).
5) Pay attention to his build. Death Nova means you need to try to be away from the minions when they die, Fetid Consumption means keep your big condi bursts until after you’ve killed a few minions, Necromatic Corruption means he’s a kitten necro and you’ve got a free kill. Also check for whether he is Soldier’s, Clerics, some weird crap, etc. Soldier’s doesn’t have that great of HP sustain, whereas Clerics will. Lyssa will mean his big bursts are going to follow Charge, Vamp Runes mean you want to dodge the HP procs, etc.

Do not focus the Necro flat out. You will lose 10/10 matches that way unless they are as brain dead as the minions they control. Killing an MM requires patience. Unless you have 2-3 high damage characters, in which case by all means skill-smash your face on the keyboard till you win.

Overpowered? Hell no. We’re doing okay with some specs, badly with others, and we’re hurting a bit in PvE. I think overall we’re a bit subpar balance wise, we’ve got a lot of specs that are JUST off being good, but need a little help.

Not likely, I’m sure we’ve all got quite a few pairs already.

Here is a flowchart (sans chart) for rolling a new class:

Is the class fun?

If yes, roll the class. If no, don’t.

And if you’ve got an 80 Ele and Engi, you’re already used to the two classes that are considered as “broken” as Necro.

Luke.4562:

Vampiric Master and Training of the Master more important and mandatory than Flesh of the Master?
Meh

What do you mean?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I think the trait could give 1 second more of protection base. The issue is more along the lines of well builds not generally going into death magic, as well as its terrible uptime (though that is due to well cooldowns).

Like said above, its a very low base protection on abilities with very long CDs, and it just doesn’t fit with well mechanics in general.

Axelwarrior.9084:

It doesn’t suit their theme and they don’t need it either.
Also, stop comparing GW1 with GW2.

They are games in the exact same universe. In certain issues I agree, but in issues of flavor and lore, no. If someone made a Star Wars game where “good” Jedi started Force choking and lightning-ing people, there would be issues, because it goes against what has been.

It makes no sense that the class based on punishment and attrition lacks the best offensive condition at punishment and attrition. Especially when we had this exact same mechanic in not only multiple skills, but multiple extremely popular builds (SS builds were one of the most common builds throughout GW1). Its absolutely stupid that multiple core mechanics of Necros in GW1 didn’t make it through, and this is one of them.

Enundr.9305:

well Minion Master builds were also good back then , look at them now….complete joke lol

MMs are no weaker than they were in GW1, they just aren’t as broken when they work, and don’t suck nearly as badly when they don’t.

Cogbyrn.7283:

This isn’t Guild Wars 1. Comparing it to Guild Wars 1 and trying to use that as an argument for balance changes is both ill-advised and insane. I understand people loved that game, and I did too, but wishing GW2 was more like it won’t actually make GW2 more like it.

Better to evaluate the class as it is in the current landscape of GW2 than argue what it was and try to shoehorn that in somehow for the sake of nostalgia.

It has nothing to do with nostalgia, and everything to do with class flavor. Confusion perfectly fits Necromancers, bringing GW1 in only cements that fact. We want the Necromancer to feel like a Necromancer, not the incredibly watered down experience a lot of builds give you right now. No one is asking for them to put 5 stacks of confusion per scepter auto attack, we’re simply asking for a balanced source of confusion.

Balefire.7592:

I’m personally quite surprised at how many people are happy with Death Shiver, as well as with the fact that people think PotH is worse than Reanimator (I agree, but I thought people hated Reanimator more). Do any of these results surprise you guys?

Its because PotH is objectively 100% useless in every situation where you do not have a significant number of minions, and is subjectively bad even with a full bar of minions. Reanimator isn’t totally useless, you can still get something out of him sometimes, which is still pretty pathetic, but better than nothing always.

Burning wasn’t the issue with dhuumfire, dumbfire was the issue with it.

First off, more apologies for the stupidly long break. I’m still here, but my desktop has recently broken. So while we should be live next week, no promises, sorry.

Anyway, when we do go live, we’ll be having Shinryuku, a warrior player, on to give an outside perspective. If you have any questions or comments you would like discussed, please leave them here and we’ll bring it up in the podcast.

Sorry again for the delays, and thanks for any input! As always, please try to keep it respectful, and realize that this isn’t a place for in-depth discussion (we’re just getting feedback for the show).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It’s official: these notes are fake.

Ironically, would have been one of the best patches that I can remember.

Confusion is fine, torment is fine, neither would particularly fix anything on its own.

Necromancers are okay in every game mode. We’re pretty strong in WvW, both small and large, and we’re pretty strong in PvP. Most of our builds are at the least okay; not the best, but good enough that you aren’t going to bring down performance by too much if you’re playing well.

That said, realize that we’re not always top tier. We’re more like the second string player who is still really good and won’t make the team lose the game, but isn’t quite as good as the starter.

spoj.9672:

Ele is the most popular class by far which is the only reason its got so many votes. And even though it arguebly does need some help in pvp it certainly doesnt need that much attention to fix its issues. The results of the poll are disheartening because all it is is a biased popularity contest.

Except Warriors and Guardians got the worst scores, and are the most popular.

Rangers are kitten, in both design and play.
Eles are kitten, especially with build diversity (there is none)
Necros and Engis I’d agree are close.

The voting makes complete sense as it is now. Necromancers at least have a place in the game. Eles as they are now are absolutely god-awful across the board. Even if there is a spec or two that works, they are very niche, worse than if they rolled another class (by far), and almost any build is forced into Arcana.

Rangers are just boring to play and uninspired. Not to mention not that good.

At least with Necros you can generally make us work. Yes we deserve the #3 slot, but we aren’t nearly as bad off as Ele/ranger.

Besides QoL fixes like Flesh Wurm working better on the Z axis and Flesh Golem not getting stopped by by minor rocks, the only minion that needs change is Shadow Fiend, as Drarnor said.

A significant reduction of the activation time (still allowing dodges but not being the 25s long cast time it is now) would make him a much better choice.

Besides that, the best thing that could happen for minions is the introduction of new minions and traits that better fulfills other themes for MMs. As it is now, only expendable minion builds are good. I’d love to see strong minions/weak MMs, and MMs that are all about keeping the minions alive.

My feedback on the tree in general

For minions
The tree is good. The one big issue I feel is that DM and minions in general are only supported by a single playstyle; expendable utility minions. There are no good minion upkeep specs, or ones that have weaker MMs and strong minions, or a variety of other possible setups. I’d love to see DM have slight expansions in the adept/master slots to accompany other playstyles, and then have other trees get the “big” things to fill those out. For example BM has the ability to support a super selfish MM who uses his minions as health batteries and survival utilities. Spite could support high damage minions (but with weak MMs), Curses could have similar but condi-based, SR could have more DS/LF based minion mechanics.

But overall the tree is fine for MMs. Minion Master trait is great, FotM is great, Death Nova is great, there is your tree. Necromatic Corruption is terrible however, it should move to a different tree with significant upgrades, and open up the slot for a true bunker trait.

For non MMs
This tree is bad. Plagued by two minors that aren’t even good for MMs, let alone useless for non-MMs, and a plethora of traits that are not that good all around. There need to be much better of two things: support based traits, and selfish bunker traits. Pair that with improved minors (that aren’t minion based), and you have a decent tree.

However, this also leads to another suggestion:
I think ANet needs to increase all trait trees and trait tiers by a few traits each. 3 traits for Adept, 2 for Master, and 1 for GM, for a total of 18 traits instead of 12. It’d allow for a lot more niche traits (like more varied utility type-specific traits), whereas now a lot of things have to be pretty all-purpose, especially at the GM level.

Login.5102:

Quite shocked(actually just plain wierd) that people dont know how important reseting fights is in high rank tpvp.

Depends on your build and what you’re doing. Also, realize that high tier tpvp is going to have a lot less players, only ronpierce has gotten that high using MMs (that has posted here).

Depends on who you expect to 1v1. In a 1v1 that extra 1.5k every single time they kill a minion, and permanent DPS+healing reduction murders a lot of 1v1 builds.

The only time I would ever take it out of a minion build is if you are expecting heavy conditions and aren’t running Lyssa/Dagger off-hand/Blood Fiend, and any time you run blood fiend you want Fetid Consumption.

20% increased personal damage isn’t that great when most builds are only going to see an increase of 100 at best per hit, and only when below 50%. Its just not that great unless you’re running a full-damage minion build (in which case yes it can be fine).

In theory, yes. However, not all boss abilities have AoE limits (to my knowledge), and they will also count to scale-up certain things.

I don’t think they prioritize players but idk.

1. Ele
2. Necro
3. Ranger

I don’t particularly like the build that much, not that it is bad.

Svanir runes are essentially giving you only 4 slots worth of runes (2/4 slot are pretty useless).

Minion Master is amazing. Its a flat 20% buff to bone minions, it means your escape is up 20% faster, and your other two minions are also up 20% faster. Its a huge trait, compared to just 20% off your staff CDs, where staff isn’t that great of a weapon for MMs anyway. You’re trading off uptime on minions, the things that deal at least half your damage, a lot of your healing, and give you control, for 20% faster CDs on Putrid Mark/Reaper’s mark (the other two aren’t that great). By the same line, Greater Mark’s is really only worthwhile for making Reaper’s Mark unblockable, however WH4 can do any interrupts already.

I far prefer using A/F or A/D. staff 2 is replaced by focus 4, or staff 4 is replaced by dagger 4, dropping the staff traits allows vastly better minion traiting, and you end up with almost the same overall utility, but a lot more of it.

Also I feel like Svanir runes just don’t give you enough. Ogre, Vamp, Melandru would all give you a full 6 runes that you use, instead of 4, or Lyssa could give you a set that has strong activation.

Again, not that the build is bad, but I feel like you’re going a bit too all over without much synergy.

Rym.1469:

If I’m not mistaken, Death Nova proc poison field and N. Traversal does same thing. Isn’t it just that poison stack? Because last time I checked it worked fine

Death Nova has two functions:
On any minion death, it spawns a poison field (a pretty crazy one)

On “natural”, non-sacrificed, death, it deals around 1.2-1.5k direct damage.

The main issue of this was that they didn’t want to take Putrid Explosion, which deals fine damage already, and add on a flat almost 3k damage over two minions. Blood Fiend and Flesh Wurm are the only two others that have sacrifice skills, and realistically aren’t often going to proc the direct damage if sacrificed anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal for them to take the easy route and exclude all sacrifices.

Death Nova is still an incredible trait though, able to maintain 100% poison uptime through bone minions alone.

It should proc the poison field but not the direct damage.

Its kind of a complex thing, and I’m not good enough about the lore to explain all the ins and outs of what our powers allow, and what we don’t do out of custom, and out of following the “rules”.

Essentially, the reason we don’t have zombies is because we don’t actually make zombies. Like Luke said, they are golems (constructs) of dead material that we gain from the surroundings. Its a lot like an earth golem, only instead of rocks we use various bits of dead matter to make them. Another thing is that, in general, while we have the ability to raise zombies (someone on lore can make more sense of this), we simply don’t. Imo it’d be a bit too close-to-home for people to be fighting side by side with someone raising zombies… while your main enemy is a dragon that also raises zombies.

Compare Withering Precision to Enfeebling Shroud, and you’ll see why its bad. A 10 point trait has, even in its nerfed form, has only 5% less base uptime; but at the same time applies a bleed, does this AoE, does not rely on crit chance, and a few other things.

yes it is bugged, its noted on the wiki. It should go for a full 15 seconds.

Go test it, it will take you a total of one second, if you’re going slow.

I want to know where everyone is finding these mythical zergs that have commanders they listen to and blast water fields. Unless you are with a guild or are on a really organized server that’s using TS, most zergs are just mindless blobs that follow whatever sparks their interest. Unless you are with a very organized zerg, it really couldn’t matter less what you do as long as you’re pressing your buttons a lot.

RashanDale.3609:

51% think that Full of life is Alright or Great
51% think that Mark of Evasion is Alright or Great
36% think Blood to Power is Alright or Great

O_o

Full of Life gives you 5s of regen (base) for 650 healing (base), in a tree that supports healing. That’s alright, in my build it easily heals for over 1.7k, which is decent for 5 points, and it’ll proc multiple times because of the other healing.

MoE is the exact same thing, 1.7k healing, only this time its now AoE (minions as well), and it will put down some helpful cover conditions with bleeds (which deal 850 damage with no CD investment).

Not great, but those are alright traits.

Luke.4562:

What I’m surprised to see it’s the result on Fetid Consumption.
Nobody made a research to discover the tooltip is uncorrect, that the Minion draws condition from nearby allies.. It’s not a bad trait but it’s NOT THAT good.

Any trait that can remove 6 conditions per 10 seconds is amazing. This is one of the very few times where Necromancers have a trait that is very similar to others (Empathic Bond), but is strictly better.

Its not immediately a pull. You need to apply the TS first, at 1/4s, and then after they have a huge obvious chain on them, you need to again cast a skill to pull them. Unlike the old Mesmer focus there is a very obvious sign that you could be pulled.

Sorry, I’m not super active in game so I don’t respond quickly. I pretty much just screw around/test stuff at this point (and I rarely rep BoC).

Fannion, you are already in the maximum number of guilds so I couldn’t invite you, but if you clear that up I’d be happy to throw you an invite.

ronpierce.2760:

It wasn’t in vain, neither! We discovered that the saying “nothing is impossible” isn’t true! DISCOVERY!

ANet: “We’ll show them, finding a use for SoV…. MWAHAHAHAH”

This would be a very difficult change to make, because it would have to accompany a lot of other changes. Classes with very low base HP tend to have something significant to make up for it. Yes this is balancing some active with passive, but to make any meaningful changes to base passive stats would need to accompany widespread changes within every class affected. Its a huge amount of work to make a change that wouldn’t really make things that much better.

A long CD, not that long of a range, and is dependent on two separate casts landing while keeping the target within 600 range the entire time, and removes any other affect it had.

It’d be strong, but far from OP.

I like it

Who actually spent the 25 points and screwed around long enough to find this use for it? And why haven’t they been put down?

Rennoko.5731:

I fully expect the scaling on minion siphoning to be as lack luster as the other siphons. The irrational fear of the unkillable siphon spectral full minion necro has them unable to make any reasonable changes.

There is reason to hope for it to be the current scaling already in game, which is 0.03 (a far cry from the other siphon scalings). This would also lead it to being a general buff to anyone with decent healing power, and not a noticeable nerf to anyone not.

PvE is not a good basis for difficulty when the conversation is being framed within PvP (which is the only reason MMs are being nerfed). Playing suddenly gets harder when your opponents actually attack you; as do most builds, incidentally.

Carl carrot.6374:

Is there any way to tell the creators to add in skeletons. They could keep the old minions and just add in a raise skeleton ability

No, because that isn’t what Necromancers (in GW2) do. Its like asking for a Warrior to get Magic Missile.

fonvitale.9621:

I imagine the moment when a designer (maybe a developer) came with the great idea of giving a stun break in a well skill. Maybe he/she said “Wait, put 1 sec of stability – well skills have long cast times” o_O Why not make Well of Power an instant skill? Nobody knows, it’s top secret.

Answering to your question, no. This kind of decisions talk about the balance we can expect for necros.

They did that because the stability was added long after the Well skill was implemented. The game had been live for months before it was a stun break, and it makes more sense for them to just make the skill usable (but retain all its original mechanics).