Guild Wars 2

panikos.8309:

So here are my 2 cents.
I played GW1 as a necro through the 3 campains and the expansion. Still log in actually. Started playing after all 3 campains were released and Factions was my first campain and were I started my necro.
I just want to ask since you seem to have played the necro from Prophecies, how was GW1’s necro “fun” at the beggining. From what I read dual class was something that came with Factions and until that point you only had the Prophecies necromancer skills to use. Tell me how could that have been fun to play? Tell me how did that have 100s of ways to play it? As with GW1, Anet was not going to make GW2’s release content to include all the different things they plan for the game.
I disagree with you in principle mostly because I do get your point.
You cant compare a 6-7 years old polished dual class skill system that had a skill pool from 4 full campains with a skill system that is single class and has the skill pool from 1 campain only.
Since Anet wanted to go for a combat system that is more active than GW1 they had to do things differently and they had to start over. I find the approach that Anet has on skills of GW2’s necro to be ok and fun for me. I play necro in GW2 as well since pre public betas started. I find necromancer more fun to play than other classes. I am pleased with what I’m getting from a new game that just released. I do expect better things for the future. More polished skill system. More skills and more builds. I know better than to had expected all of GW1 things to be part of GW2.
I, as you, wish for better minions but anw minions cannot be what GW1 minions were. We are talking about an active system here were you need to have quick reactions if you want to survive. Old minions sucked in quick reactions. they worked as a zerg and the only difference with the current minions is that when they saw something they attacked it. Other than that they are the same and, imo, GW2’s minions are a bit improved with the active skill.
To all the people saying if necro didnt have DS and high hp and epidemic they would be useless. Well duh! All the classes, if they didnt have their attunements, their boons, their 100blades would be useless and not fun to play!
They do have them and they are usefull because of them! Thats what makes them unique! I do understand the disappointment and why you find the necro unfun but you should try and see the possitives and as, I’m sure you did, in GW1’s Prophecies ignore skills and builds that dont work for you. Or even the class as a whole until the next expansion were I’m sure more diversity will be introduced to all the classes.

At the end of that 7 years, the GW1 necro was a great class to play. However none of those awesome ideas were transferred to the GW2 necro. That’s the most disappointing thing.

After creating the GW1 necro, making the GW2 necro should be easier than starting out blank. But it doesn’t seem to be the case.

It is not that GW2 necro is that underpowered or that unfun to play in itself. It is the lack of root, heritage and uniqueness that we are complaining about.

Yoh I read your suggestion. It is pretty similar to my Remove DS, add LF skills idea. The difference is that you want to separate the skills into different modes of Death Shroud. That’s cool. Change it so DS skills costs LF, instead of LF draining over time.

DS Type 1: Damage avoidance- Your LF takes damage on your behalf. Provides 4 skills that helps prevent or avoid damage. Interrupt skills, etc.

DS Type 2: Life/power sacrifice balance- Your LF does not take damage for you. Provides 4 skills that costs you both LF and health, and in return gains bonus stats for a set amount of time. Included here is a bonus that increase life siphoning amounts by 400% for 10 seconds. Since these bonuses are not boons, they cannot be removed.

DS Type 3: Minion Master – Your LF does not take damage for you. But you gain 4 skills that summon special minions that continue to lose health over time, just like GW1.

DS Type 4: Binding Ritual – Your LF does not take damage for you. But you gain 4 skills that casts a blinding ritual at target area. Each spirit remains stationary and provides various AoE benefits to allies or harms to enemies. The spirits do not attack foes directly, unlike minions. Spirits only lasts for 30 seconds, and can be killed earlier than that.

DS Type 5: Curses – Your LF does not take damage for you. But you gain 4 skills that casts special curses on the enemy(s) with various effects to mess them up. These curses are not conditions, and hence cannot be removed and will last their full duration. Included here is a snare skill that cannot be removed.

Thor Rising.7850:

This completely sums up how I feel, better than I could have said it. I too mained necromancer in GW1, logging around 2000 hours on him alone. The unique gameplay of the hexes, counterplay, and a small mixture of support just made necromancers extremely versatile and fun to play.

Currently, there are only a couple weapons really worth using, and none feel strong compared to other classes. Scepter is pathetic, axe aa is just too slow and weak, dagger is strong but close range when necros lack mobility it is fairly weak. Staff is great imo, not a fan of the slow aa speed or the sound, but the marks are awesome.

Death shroud… not sure what to say about this, it’s just extremely boring, much like all the necromancer gameplay. Fights on a necro turn into circle kiting fests while you burn down targets at about a quarter of the speed of warriors (who have ridiculous base durability already). I’m not going to pretend to know how they handle class balancing, but necromancer is just boring auto attack gameplay, something I haven’t had happen on any other class and I have the most time logged on necromancer.

After that post where John Peters said people just don’t know how to play necromancer, I bought 3 separate armor and accessory sets to try out different builds, huge waste of time and money as they all feel far weaker than my elementalist.

And the traits, I can’t even explain how useless most of them are. There are some major traits that I don’t even want to pick one because they are all so bad, and the few traits I do like are the only ones worth picking in their lines. On top of that, a lot of the utility skills are fairly useless, all the minions, most of the spectrals, and a couple of the corruptions. While wells are great, I find points in the blood magic line to be points wasted, so investing in well builds loses you a lot of precious stats (unless you are running support).

TL;DR: Necromancer is currently a boring auto-attack spamming class, very sub par damage compared to other classes I’ve played, yet they still have trouble in dungeons due to lack of mobility and viable defensive utilities.

Where did Jon Peters said that “All of you necros are bad players”? Please provide link please.

If he did say that, we in the necro community deserves a very detailed explanation and clarification from him. Show us what we are doing wrong. Prove that we suck by demonstrating how to beat elite players from other professions.

Agreed that Axe 3 is a good skill. That AoE range is huge. It is a shame though that skill is on a single target weapon.

Axe is good on a minion master build. For WvW though minions dies too fast. Since minions are weak in wvw, so is axe.

Overall, I still think the staff is better than Axe in WvW.

Epidemic is bad in WvW now. I just hope that this opens up room for other necro buffs.

Agreed with the bleed cap. They should increase that from 25 to 40 first, and see if it needs additional increase.

Underpowered? Overpowered? Forget all that! It is time to bring out your Engineer, Ranger and Necro for some WvW fun.

Tomorrow (Apr. 4, 2013) starting from 12am PST to 12am PST the next day, everyone please bring your Engineer, Ranger and Necro into WvW. Leave your thief, ele and warrior at home.

We will show them that player skills matters more than class choices. ^^

Furiousbeard.7602:

KN and TC seem to have a certain love affair with FA BL

I’m not sure what it is… maybe like two star crossed lovers who’s families don’t want them hanging out together and need to find neutral ground…..

That’s it! Romeo and Juliet!

You guys are totally doin’ it XD

So i guess this means that FA is your church

Both TC and Kain hates FA. TC are angry due to the Yaks Massacre. Kain dislikes how FA often stabs our backs when we fight against TC.

Lose-lose situation for you guys.

To avoid this in the future start making friends and playing nice, even with your enemies.

Any news for our guild recruitments? It seems TC grew a lot during the past week, specially in NA prime time. Hope some people join our side too. ^^

I said this before, but it is my hope that this Epidemic nerf opens up room for future buffs on other necro skills.

I added a part 11 to talk about equipment selection.

Guys please feel free to provide feedbacks and opinions on these videos. Also feel free to provide topic suggestions. I will make future videos base on those. :P

Make sure you use staff when fighting multiple enemies. It really helps kill them fast.

Watch my youtube guide. It should help you get things started. ^^

lettucemode.3789:

Yoh, I disagree with what you’ve posted here.

I don’t think anyone is arguing they want the GW1 necro back 100%. We understand that a lot of the old stuff are gone. But the GW2 necro got no new, fun and unique abilities and themes to replace what was gone. At the same time many professions got new replacement skills.

For example:

-thieve got stealth, new+fun+unique.
-memser got clones, shatter and portal, new+fun+unique.
-eles got very high mobility, using 20+ skills at once and can still nuke, new+fun+unique.

And in GW2 many of the skills and themes are lackluster. I will use your examples directly:

On the skill level, necros actually have a good bit of uniqueness:
- Marks (which you said you liked) new=yes, fun=no, unique=no
- The majority of our ranged damage isn’t projectile-based, meaning it can’t be reflected or absorbed (see Axe, Scepter, marks, focus 5, dagger 5, warhorn 4) new=yes, fun=no, unique=no
- Best class at condition management and best boon ripper. Corrupt Boon, Epidemic, Plague Signet, staff 4, dagger 4, focus 5 new=yes, fun=yes, unique=yes
- If other classes want a gap-closer or interrupt, they have to trait for it or take certain weapons. Necros get them for free in every build.new=yes, fun=yes, unique=yes

So out of all your examples, only condition controls and DS fits the new+fun+unique requirement. And those are pretty much the theme of the GW2 necro. This is very limiting.

Back in GW1 we got a lot of new+fun+unique themes. LIfe stealing, life/power balancing, true minion master, curses and soul reaping. So that means if a necro player do not like minion master, he might like life/power balancing and so he stays as a necro.

As for GW2, one question you got to ask is, what if a player do not like condition controls and DS? What else does necromancer offer them?

Nothing much.

The next thing we can recommend then is go play another class, since condition control and DS is all the necro has to offer.

Which is bad.

That’s why Anet got to give us something new+fun+unique, that we can present to a player to convince him/her to stay as a necro.

Yoh.8469:

Hey Bas, welcome, glad we could have you.
What do you make of all this? Since you like the Necro more then most.

Also, this is where my position and CHIPS’s diverge, as he’s starting to get into the weeds a bit and go off on functionality, balance, and individual skills, which really isn’t my point.
Sure some skills are going to be underwhelming, but that can be said of every profession. And whether a profession is balanced or not is irrelevant when it comes to fun factor and uniqueness, which is at the core of my argument.

So try to stay on topic guys.

Also, is it unreasonable of me to expect that maybe a developer would weigh in?
…
…
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Doubt it.

I do agree that overall theme is the most important. I was just pointing out examples as to why the necro profession feels boring, uninspired and unimaginative.

My basic idea is that:

-those skills/themes that aren’t unique are boring.
-those skills/themes that does nothing but damage are boring.
-those skills/themes that you cannot learn how to use them better are boring.

This thread should be a sticky. I bet a lot of necros found these helpful. ^^

Villious.8530:

Great videos, but can you turn down the music? The music is as loud as you are, and hard to hear you as well as distracting.

Sorry about that. I took that into consideration for future videos. I had lowered the music volume for my newer videos. :P

Flumek.9043:

Nice videos, quite some work to look over everything i just now finished vid 3 and i absolutely must tell u that u are too harsh on our heal consume conditions.

For ur stats, i calculated that a consume heal 9400hp /25s with 3 conditions and minion heals 12600hp if 8×3=24s +1sec cast , it heals u 8 times every 3 sec, than at last second u use for the big heal. Ideal conditions for the minion, consume could be even better but ok.

The difference if 3000 hp. But we DID NOT consider yet the dmg consume PREVENTS by removing those nasty dots AND criples/immobilizes rekittening in example eviscare hits or getting from a zerg frontline. It realy bugs me cz u mostly talked about WvW useful skills and how REALIABLE they are. With consume my hp goes up-down-up-down-up…. with minion its stays upupupup-minion dies-down-dead. So it only mentaly makes u think u last longer.

I think all our heals are good, wel needs the CD trait and some extra healing power, minions is good but u can NEVER go wrong with consume conditions.

I would like to thank you for pointing this out. I didn’t make my point clear in the video. I might make a follow up video in the future to more detailedly explain this. This will probably happen as more different questions come along. I can’t talk 15 mins on just healing skills alone. ^^

But I will briefly go over why in a wvw zerg vs zerg setting that Consume Condition is the least effective of the three skills.

Team healing: I think Well of Blood is the best healing skill in wvw, because it allows you to heal your allies too. None of the other 2 healing skills comes close to it.

Consume Condition only heals yourself

Team buffing: Blood Fiend can be traited to have a recharge of 16 seconds. It has very good synergy with Rune of Altruism, which buffs all allies with Might and Fury.

Consume Condition’s recharge of 25 seconds is not nearly as effective for team buffing.

1 vs 1: The 16 sec recharge on Blood Fiend and 25 sec recharge on Consume Condition is like a 50% difference. That is huge. That means Consume Condition need to heal 50% more to be effective. And from my experience, it doesn’t. If you face a heavy condition enemy yes it is good. But you cannot guarantee that the enemy is condition based in WvW.

Blood Fiend also synergize better with upgrades like Rune of Dwayna, purely because of Blood Fiend has a quicker cooldown. Consume Condition’s 25 sec cooldown means Rune of Dwayna (normally 15 sec cooldown) will be limited, and only like 50% as effective as it could have been.

You also have to remember that Blood Fiend does deal some damage, while Consume Condition does not hurt your foes at all. When you use Blood Fiend, your enemy takes more damage while you get healed.

So I hope you understand now. Due to:

-lack of team healing support
-lack of team buffing support
-conditions from enemies not guaranteed
-lack of synergy with runes
-lack of damage dealing

Consume Conditions is, overall, the least useful of the 3 healing skills in wvw.

All those skills that only does damage and nothing else need an overhaul. These skills should be changed to help the necro identity. Other than auto attacks, none of the skills should be fire and forget.

Life Blast – Boring.
Ghastly Claws – boringest skill in the game, by far.
Feast of Corruption – Boring
Haunt- Boring

I won’t mind of some of these skills got changed into minion skills, life siphoning skills, or special curse skills (cannot be removed).

Many other skills also should be adjusted to help necro identity. But I won’t list them all.

Currently Guardian is stronger than Ranger. So you should pick that.

Any of the top 6 servers are pretty active in wvw. But if you don’t want too much queue come to tier 2 (rank 4 to rank 6). Consider joining us in Kaineng. ^^

One thing the thread didn’t mention was signets. They were a part of the necro class identity, since GW1 necro signets were hard to use. They require timing and experience to use.

1) Back in GW1 necro signets were defined by ZERO energy cost but with longer recharge than regular energy costing skills.

This no longer applies in GW2. None of the necro skills uses energy anyways. So there is no longer any difference between activating signets and activating regular skills.

There is no benefits or disadvantages of using a signet when compared to other skills. So in a way, it is pointless to even separate out this line of signet skills. The only thing unique about the signets is their passive, which brings me to my next point.

The recharge of many GW2 signets are out of this world. Back in GW1 the longest recharge time on a signet was 30 seconds. In GW2 the shortest recharge is 60 seconds. Because of this, the only reason why anyone would take a signet (other than Undeath) is for its passive effects.

2) Back in GW1 necros signets takes player skills and experience to use. Many requires life sacrifice. Others require specific timing for maximum effect.

Signet of Lost Souls and Signet of Sorrow and prime examples of this.

In GW2 that’s no longer the case. Honestly none of the signets are that hard to use.

I had talk to many about necro signets. Everyone agrees (100%) that these signets (besides Undeath) just suck, period.

There are other types of skills that were watered down in GW2. But I want to look at signets because the difference between GW1 signets and GW2 signets are night and day. It demonstrates and contributes to the reasoning of the disappearances of the necro’s unique class identity.

Lukrath.6982:

i like the necro in gw2. bite me.

Respect your elders, boy.

SamIAm.6198:

Necromancer is no longer what it was. It’s compltely different. Death shroud is actaully a very unique and useful mechaning. I play dagger/dagger, and i use a gap closer utility. I can get in, deal some damage, then when i get lwo, refresh all my health and run away. Or use the lfe siphone thing (4) to make cool plays at low health, and barly winning fights. I would like the summoning to be improved, and a bit more self utility instead of all conditions on weapons would be nice, but necro is not an un-fun class. It isn’t a classic ncro anymore thoguh, it’s the legit definition of necrmoancer. Life-mage. Not death mage.

DS and high health aren’t bad. The problem though is that necro MINUS their DS and high health is very weak. None of their weapons and utilities can fight other professions on a equal footing.

Imagine that you use your necro in a 1v1 or zerg vs zerg fight. Add a rule that you cannot use DS. And also add a rule that your max health is halved (or roughly the same health as your enemy). Would you stand a chance under these rules? Not much if you are fighting against someone at your skill level.

Why not? Well necro skills are all underpowered and unimaginative, intentionally, for game play balance.

I said this before, but I feel that DS, high health and Epidemic are the three things that are burdens for the necromancers. Because of these 3 things, the necromancer is underpowered and unimaginative in everything else.

Each time someone post a reasonable recommendation, either due to underpower or unimaginative of the skills, they get the answer: “But necro got DS, high health and Epidemic! If they get buffs the class would be unbalanced.”

The sad truth is, yes the class might indeed be unbalanced. If the necro skills can be on a equal footing as other professions, the necro would win because they got DS and high health.

Anet really got to look for a balance here. They got to find a balance between game balance and fun+ creativity+being unique.

I said it before and I will say it again. I would gladly take a nerf to DS, high health and Epidemic if it means all other necro skills would be buffed, or overhaul to make them more imaginative and unique. Epidemic was recently nerfed to the ground in WvW. So I hope to see those changes in the near future.

Ramiah.5648:

I am really surprised to hear all of this, truth be told.
I think it comes down to this: When I play a game, I want to play in a way I have the most fun. I find minions to be fun. I find Debuffing and supporting a team to be fun. In Guild Wars 1, sometimes I couldn’t do what I wanted because I needed corpses or fleshy enemies or high armor enemies.
So, I had to play a build I didn’t want to- I ran the Spiteful Spirit build or some other thing. Basically, I played something that was NOT fun in order to get back to a place I could start having fun again.
I love LOVE the new necromancer. I can summon minions whenever I want. Are there issues that need fixing? Sure. But almost all aspects of the game can be played the way that is most fun for me. Plus, my friends see me coming from a mile away with my small army of undead- no corpses necessary. And wells, oh my goodness, wells. Something I can place wherever I want that does damage and blinding or condition/boon removal so I can DPS and support my team at the same time? Yes please.
Thank you Arenanet, for finally giving me a game where I can play the classes I like in a way I enjoy all the time.

I understand that you prefer the GW2 necro over GW1 necro. It might fit your playstyle better. But you have to understand that we are no longer necros. This might sound crazy, but hear me out.

You missed the point on why we GW1 veteran necros are disappointed with GW2 necro: The GW2 necro is just like anyone else.

GW2 minions aren’t necro minions anymore. They are just summons. A lot of other classes also have summons. Other than numbers and effects there is absolutely nothing different between minions and, let’s say, elementals and pets and turrets.

GW2 wells aren’t necro wells anymore. They are just nukes. A lot of other classes also have nukes. Other than numbers and effects there is absolutely nothing different between wells and, let’s say, Firestorm and other nukes.

Condition spread is just another method to deal damage or prevent damage. There is nothing really unique about that.

It is this lack of unique profession identity that is the most disappointing for a lot of us. We are not necros anymore. We are just another class that summon stuff and nuke stuff. There is nothing necro about us.

(continue)

Being unique is very important. Back in GW1 necro could truly life steal and play life/power balancing by sacrificing health. Necro could apply hexes to mess up the enemies and apply cover hexes to “protect” the important hexes. Necros were “true” minion masters and no other profession even comes close at that. Necros truly gets stronger as they kill their foes. To top that off Necros gots tons of creative builds to design and test.

All of that were replaced by DS, high health and slightly better condition spreading. Yup that’s about it these 3 things. And condition spreading is, sorry to say, just another way to deal damage or prevent damage, so it isn’t even that unique. You have to understand that back in GW1 necros got skills like Enfeeble and Spoiled Victor. These kind of damage dealing and preventing is nothing new or unique to us. In fact, in many ways, we were better with those back then.

GW2 life stealing is nothing compared to GW1’s. In GW1 one single Vampiric Gaze steals about 10% health from a level 20 enemy. In GW2 that’s about 1,500-2,000 health stolen. How many hits does life siphon take to do that kind of life stealing? 40 hits to 54 that’s what.

As a GW1 veteran necro myself, I truly sympathize with the original poster. It seems that we lost so much from GW1, and gained so little in GW2. I mean of course we got new skills in GW2. But nothing really stands out powerful enough or unique enough to replace those that we lost from GW1. The gameplay itself of GW2 might be balanced. But being FUN and UNIQUE has NOTHING to do with the game balance. And that’s why I can see a lot of GW1 necros being, at least slightly, disappointed. A lot of GW1 necros has “deep roots” for those “old” playstyles, and the GW2 necro is very very different, for better or worst.

I mean changes are good. But those changes must be unique and cool enough that it totally overshadows the old versions. Like thief got stealth. Mesmer got clones. Eles got teleport. That sort of thing. If not, the veteran players would want to go back to the old version. And when they can’t, they will be disappointed and mad.

Long story short, any GW1 veteran necro that doesn’t enjoy the new DS system and high health would be very disappointed with the GW2 necro. Because nearly none of what they had before in GW1 were re-implemented in GW2.

Hope I am making sense. And I hope new GW2 players, who has never played GW1, can get an understanding of what us GW1 veteran necros are sometimes going though.

Before I comment on this, let me polite point out that this thread is about necro in GW2 behing UNFUN to play. This has nothing to do with L2P. As the original poster said he couldn’t care less how powerful or how weak necro is. This thread is PURELY about GW2 necro being UNFUN to play when compared to GW1 necro. So please everyone stay on topic.

Other “useless” comments include things like “go play another profession”. This adds nothing to the discussion. This doesn’t change the fact (or falsehood) of whatever GW2 necro is UNFUN when compared to GW1 necro. So once again please stay on topic.

I too am a GW1 necro veteran. I was there from the beginning of GW1. I tried pretty much every single necro build available over the years. There were tons of fun and unique builds that I designed and tried.

Dark Aura Bomber was one of my favourite build for PvE hard mode. It is not as dangerous as it sounds, once you get the hang of it.

Ever tried Melandru’s Resilience with Foul Feast? I did and it worked great.

Minion Death Nova bomber aren’t complete unless you add Ancestors’ Rage to it. Even level 32 overpowered mobs goes WTF and quickly joins my ever expanding minion army. And once in a while that Spirit Rift also hits.

And all these were alongside the “common” builds like Spiteful Spirit, MM and Blood is Power, of course.

My necro was unorthodox. She was totally suicidal. She use insane “forbidden” magics to destroy her enemies. She would sacrifice absolutely everything, and take the maximum risk, for that tiny ounce of extra power. She was absolutely crazy and that’s why I loved her. ^^

In GW2 necros took a huge hit in the department of build creativity, on an epic scale. The new necros has zero creativity. Everything has been enclosed to a tiny box, relatively. Yes there are a few different builds, traits, utilities and weapons option. But it aren’t at all comparable, not even 1/20th, when compared to the GW1 necro.

Lore:

It seems “The Order” from GW1 (e.g. The Order of Necromancer) has totally killed the necromancer profession. All the new students of necromancy in GW2 were so “scared” of breaking any rules that they lost all creativity. None of the necro skills in GW2 were that interesting to use. “The Order” killed Ascalon by limiting dark magic, and now they are killing the necromancer profession as a whole. This only leads to one possible result:

The necromancers got demotivated (weak fighting ability) and went to the gym instead (e.g. got more health), since going to gym doesn’t break any rules from “The Order”.

You know I speak the truth. If we lower the necromancer’s health down to the elementalists’ or mesmers’ level, and also remove Death Shroud, the necromancer would be totally useless. The GW2 necromancer, WITHOUT their high health and DS, simply aren’t as efficient fighting machines as elementalists and mesmers. So the necro’s DS and high health AREN’T strengths of the necro. They are BURDENS. Burdens and excuses for “The Order” to continue to suppress the necromancy profession and their skills.

When oh when my fellow necromancers? When would you rebel against “The Order” to reclaim your former glory? We used to, 250 years ago, wield power beyond your wildest dreams today. We used to be able to keep a foe weaken 24/7 by using this skill “Enfeeble” every 5 seconds, which weren’t even an elite skill. We used to be able to kill the strongest boss in seconds with “Spoil Victor”. When would you rise up to reclaim your true potential, and put those overconfident elementalists and mesmers back to their place?

Back to reality:

Designing and testing unorthodox builds were a huge part of my FUN back in GW1. That was totally taken away from me. To say that I am “disappointed” would be a vast understatement.

Another huge disappoint for me is how reliant the necro is on DS and their high health for profession identity. Without DS and that high health, the necro would be “nothing”. Nothing as in nothing UNIQUE. Look for the truly UNIQUE factors of the necro without DS and high health, things that only a necro can do. Where are they?

(to be continued)

Added a part 10 to talk about uphill battles; When you lose but it aren’t your fault.

Axe is, in my opinion, the worst necro weapon right now. It is sort of a team support weapon because it applies vulnerability, which supports your team. But for that purpose the staff is much better. It is also mostly a single target weapon, and then it gives you a skill #3 that is used against multiple foes.

All these lack of focus and contradictions make this a bad weapon, outside of minion master.

Watch my video of it for further details.

Lobo.1296:

Good video, had it on audio while I was doing my tournies yesterday. Good info but I tend to like written guides like Lopez’ condionmancer guides. Makes it easier to get to the info when I want it. Perhaps transcribing or consolodating the guides into a written format down the road is a project someone can take on.

There are some stuffs that can only be demonstrated through video. That’s why I used this format. ^^

Let me know how I can help. Would love to help my fellow necros get better, specially in wvw. We DON’T suck there! ^^

Please watch them and let me know how you feel about them. ^^

I added a part 9 for WvW examples.

Epidemic used to be a stable skill on my bar in wvw because it doesn’t require line of sight. It was great for tower defense and sometimes tower attack.

Now I would never carry it in wvw.

During tower defense, this skill will never hit your foe unless you jump onto the edge of the wall. And a second later you get pulled down to the zerg below and die.

During tower offense, this skill will never hit your foe because the enemy always goes back and forth in their tower. It will always get blocked by the wall.

During open field combat, the game is often too laggy for any sort of skillful play. So it is nearly impossible to find THAT target with tons of conditions in a 40+ enemy zerg.

So for the purpose of wvw, this skill is totally useless now. Sorry but you know I am right. This skill, for wvw, has indeed been nerfed all the way to the ground.

But a part of me am glad that Epidemic got nerfed this hard. It has been my long time believe that Epidemic is one of the major reasons that necro’s other skills don’t get buffed. Now with Epidemic “out of the way”, we can expect some necro skill buffs in the near future. ^^

Kiriakulos.1690:

Pfft, you want to talk useless?
How about a skill with no synergy where it is and takes too long to cast?
I present what HAS to be our worst weapon skill:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feast_of_Corruption

I’m convinced it took this long to be mentioned because all of you forced yourselves to forget it exists.

Ok your’s win. That skill does suck. You often do more (or similar) damage by just auto attacking. Single target. 10s cooldown. This skill causes physical power damage on a condition damage weapon. Doesn’t do anything else.

Rigor Mortis

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rigor_Mortis

It is useless due to long recharge and how often it misses.

Bump. Did you guys watch it? ^^

PinCushion.7390:

CHIPS.6018:

The most important lesson from this video is how rapidly Nemesis applies bleeding to his foes. They gets 9+ stacks so quickly and died pretty quick. If you are a conditionmancer you would need this.

But wouldn’t that also be intentionally missing his overall point?

Well the fact that necros sucks in roaming in wvw should be common knowledge by now. We got no disengage whatsoever.

I LOL’ed when he tried to 1vs2, but there is a 3rd thief hidden so it was actually 1vs3. ^^

The most important lesson from this video is how rapidly Nemesis applies bleeding to his foes. They gets 9+ stacks so quickly and died pretty quick. If you are a conditionmancer you would need this.

As requested. ^^

Here is my mini encyclopedia on necromancers for Guild Wars 2. It covers all the traits and skills available, last updated as of Mar. 27, 2013. The total run time is around 2 hours and has been divided into 9 parts.

Many necros have problems in:

-selecting traits
-choosing utility skills
-picking weapons

It is my hope that this mini encyclopedia can help my fellow necros. It breaks down each necromancer traits and skills into objective discussions. I focus on the purposes that each trait or skill serve, and how they can work in specific builds and situations.

This encyclopedia will not instantly make the viewer into an elite necromancer player. There is a lot of practice and experience involved. However after watching this, a player should be much more comfortable and confident with the build that they take into battle. They should know what they want, and know what traits, weapons and skills to take to help that achieve their objective.

In the future I might further expand this encyclopedia to talk about specific topics and discuss updates. So feel free to comment and feedback.

Part 1 (Passive traits, Spite and Curses)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrAjJ1N6hxs

Part 2 (Curses, Death Magic, Blood Magic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnUdhRIIU4M

Part 3 (Blood Magic, Soul Reaping, Elite Skills, Healing Skills)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H-obRDGX40

Part 4 (Healing Skills, Death Shroud Skills, Corruption, Spectral, Signets, Minions)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDa0ix1GRUA

Part 5 (Minions, Wells, Underwater Combat Skills)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9nE72JRX50

Part 6 (Underwater Combat Skills, Staff, Dagger Mainhand, Warhorn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWEttb-n6x0

Part 7 (Dagger Offhand, Focus, Axe, Scepter, Death Shroud Spec-ing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCILqBucjSs

Part 8 (Death Shroud demonstration, General WvW tips)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xok5WRaIJaU

Part 9 (WvW Examples)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVf29eIy2yk

Here is my mini encyclopedia on necromancers for Guild Wars 2. It covers all the traits and skills available, last updated as of Mar. 27, 2013. The total run time is around 2 hours and has been divided into 12 parts.

Many necros have problems in:

-selecting traits
-choosing utility skills
-picking weapons
-WvW examples

It is my hope that this mini encyclopedia can help my fellow necros. It breaks down each necromancer traits and skills into objective discussions. I focus on the purposes that each trait or skill serve, and how they can work in specific builds and situations.

This encyclopedia will not instantly make the viewer into an elite necromancer player. There is a lot of practice and experience involved. However after watching this, a player should be much more comfortable and confident with the build that they take into battle. They should know what they want, and know what traits, weapons and skills to take to help that achieve their objective.

In the future I might further expand this encyclopedia to talk about specific topics and discuss updates. So feel free to comment and feedback.

Part 1 (Passive traits, Spite and Curses)
[media=youtube]BrAjJ1N6hxs[/media]

Part 2 (Curses, Death Magic, Blood Magic)
[media=youtube]ZnUdhRIIU4M[/media]

Part 3 (Blood Magic, Soul Reaping, Elite Skills, Healing Skills)
[media=youtube]6H-obRDGX40[/media]

Part 4 (Healing Skills, Death Shroud Skills, Corruption, Spectral, Signets, Minions)
[media=youtube]PDa0ix1GRUA[/media]

Part 5 (Minions, Wells, Underwater Combat Skills)
[media=youtube]w9nE72JRX50[/media]

Part 6 (Underwater Combat Skills, Staff, Dagger Mainhand, Warhorn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWEttb-n6x0

Part 7 (Dagger Offhand, Focus, Axe, Scepter, Death Shroud Spec-ing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCILqBucjSs

Part 8 (Death Shroud demonstration, General WvW tips)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xok5WRaIJaU

Part 9 (WvW Examples)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVf29eIy2yk

Part 10 (WvW Outmanned Battle Tactics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpIx1rgib98

Part 11 (Equipment Selection)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lG1tr04jAo

Part 12 (WvW Winning While Outmanned)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4nLM8Va_qg

We are still recruiting. Its been some great fights against TC and FA these last two nights. Join us! ^^

I am now able to see more characters while playing with less lag. Great work!

Loken.9724:

Stawker. Guild founder, myself the primary commander of the main force, saradon warchild the financial backer/ personal body guard, are the 3 guild leaders that left. + 30 or so RET.

I indeed left this tier. I now play in FC T8 with 10 of the RET that followed. I’m only there for 1 week. I was just looking to mess around and have fun rolling a hammer train there

I will be back In 7 days. FA has been and always will be my home.

Our new guild is under the tag [VK]

I can’t stay away from T2 for long. Fighting RISE and being taunted by thier commander is just too fun.

RET will be fine. They still have 400 member base and 10 commanders.

Good luck recruiting players from that tier. ^^

The black scythe now appears right on top of the scythe.

Pendragon.8735:

Thing is this patch is more a nerf for us than a buff, as Epidemic is probably our strongest skill and took a hit, especially the stealth nerf of it only hitting 4 people now. That is a 20% effectiveness reduction! Lame. Then we still have Ele’s running around as kings of whatever they want to do, barely getting tinkered with on the edges at best.

I was really expecting they would make some moves toward solving what are commonly discussed as our bigger weaknesses. They appear to think we are fine, or finished.

They also changed two duration rune sets, nightmare and lich, reducing their 4 pc bonus to 10% from 20%. I see this as yet another nerf to Necro’s, as I don’t know of other profs that make use of these commonly.

I know that the Epidemic nerf sort of sucks. But a part of me is actually very glad that they nerfed Epidemic. I feel that Epidemic, one single skill in the necro’s list, is what’s holding Anet back from buffing other skills.

e.g. Please buff Dark Pact. We need an AoE immobilize skill to be the best snaring class in the game.

Answer: No! You already have Epidemic! That makes your underpowerd skill Dark Pact perfectly fine.

e.g. Please buff Dark Pact. We need an AoE immobilize skill to be the best snaring class in the game.

Answer: No! You already have Epidemic! That makes your underpowerd skill Dark Pact perfectly fine.

You can replace “Dark Pact” with many other skills, and get the same NO from Anet due to Epidemic.

So I hope this nerf on Epidemic opens up doors for buffs on other skills. Epidemic shouldn’t be the all and be all for the necro. It should be a “support” and “utility” skill that further strengthens the other “already balanced” necro skills.

The next thing Anet should look at is our “unusually” high health pool. This might be another hinder to necros receiving buffs that we need. I would gladly take a 10-20% health pool nerf if that means we get more powerful skills.

Oldbugga.7029:

Well if what Bas is saying IS correct, what evidence is there that ANet are trimming the other profs down to our level? NONE (in fact the opposite..epidemc nerf anyone). This is just the old MMO argument “so-and-so class is OP…devs pls nerf it” and we all know where that goes.

The alternative then is to seek an increase in necro abilities to match because that argument above will get us nowhere.

EDIT: and the line of least resistance (effort) for the devs is to buff one or two of our abilities rather than nerf one or two abilities for 3 or 4 professions. So if buffing us is improbable I would say nerfing the others is even more of an improbability purely on the effort required.

Well stealth thieves and mesmers took a huge hit today. So I think Anet is trimming OP builds while buffing under used builds.

For example thieves might be slightly overpowered. But they also have many underpowered builds that no one uses.

Bas.7406:

I posted this in another one, but I do enjoy this conversation quite a bit. I do think a few requests are a bit overboard, but I think we do need some changes.

Personally, I just want to see more ways to build DS without being interrupted or relying on deaths. If they could scale Life Force collection based on the damage we take that would be the ultimate way to go.

Essentially the larger percentage of your total health that’s taken the more Life Force you gain outside of Death Shroud. So if you are sitting at 21k health and you get hit for 14k you would get 20 percent LF. If you are sitting at 30k health and take the same hit you would only get 10 or 15 percent LF. While condition damage and small hits would only give you a minute source of LF per tick.

This would make it more of an attrition game since players would know that a fight with a 30 point Soul Reaping tank class could last quite some time.

Granted if someone took the 5 percent talent and built a tank out of it. he could essentially have a full DS every 5 seconds.

I am glad we agree on this. We definitely need more reliable and consistent sources of LF regen. It shouldn’t be such a huge difference when we face a tanker build and when we face a high mobility+high blast build.

Caveth.3268:

digiowl.9620:

On the topic of staff #1, i could have sworn that the sound has changed.

Yea, they made the sound a lot quieter and a lot less annoying… Some Arenanet warrior player probably heard it from 2000 range away while it hit them and they decided to fix the sound effect…

I suppose fixing that sound is the only experience Arenanet had with playing a necro; while fixing it, they probably tested it in game once to make the the sound fix worked…

While playing, they probably realized the autoattack went further than the tooltip stated. Since you know most Arenanet would have never touched the necro otherwise, this was likely the first time anyone at Arenanet become aware of it and they fixed it (unlike 50 million other more important bugs, like the probably very easy to fix Area of Effect indicators on Greater Marks targeting…).

I know it sucks that “easy” bugs like Greater Marks aren’t fixed. But no need to be too negative. Engineers got fixed. Next up will be rangers or us necros.

1) What made you pick powermancer over conditionmancer or hybrids?

2) What’s the #1 advantage a necro have in 1 vs 1?

3) What’s the #1 disadvantage a necro have in 1 vs 1?

4) If Anet lets you pick one major change for the necro, which change would you want?

Whoa you guys at TC are really pushing us hard. We better rally up to counter strike. :P

As for the patch, really loving the new DS. I also love that they fixed the scythe on my Final Rest.

Epidemic is now “useless” in tower siege and tower defence. Epidemic’s major selling point there was that it doesn’t need a line of sight. Now it will miss all the time. Specially for tower defence, where your line of sight would “randomly” gets blocked by your own wall.

The trait “Focused Rituals” is now bugged, since it recharge all your well skills “one time” when you swipe in and out of that trait.

Here is how it works. A “well under FR” is considered a “different skill” to a “well not under FR”. So those 2 “different skills” have their own separate independent skill recharge. So when you swipe in and out of FR, you are “changing” your skill to a different one, so the different skill recharge appears.

Of course this usually won’t matter, since once you are in combat you cannot swipt traits anyways. But this is leaving room for abuse.

As awesome as it is to have zero recharge wells, please fix this for game balance.

As expected this patch didn’t help us much. But hopefully Anet is reading our feedbacks and working on fixes. ^^