Guild Wars 2

Regarding signet, I simply can’t agree with you. In their core state they are all pretty good, granting that they have pretty low cool down and okayish active effectThe trait make their passive permanent and reduce even further their cool down. They are certainly far to be the worst signets in game.

That said, signets used to be better when you could gain a fire aura on signet use thanks to a trait that sadly disapear. I’d be overjoyed to see this kind of effect appear onto a new runeset for example.

As for Arcanes skills, I think there is 2 issues :

- Cool down on arcane power and arcane shield. Arcane power having little to no value in the game and arcane shield being stuck to limit of 3 block, there is no reason for the prohibiting cool down on them.

- The trait Elemental surge which really don’t give anything valuable to the arcane skills. The extra ferocity have little to no value and the extra condition have no meaning, it’s even a bother in the end.

You do not talk about conjure which are as bad as the rest. Sure, some use FGS for mobility, ES for a bit of defense, FB for “burst” or LH for sustain damage. But let’s be honest, the use of these tools is clunky, the “charge” system make them “meh” at best and the associated trait is a joke. (I forgot to say that no one use flame axe)

apharma.3741:

Your clear problem is not that you play mesmer badly and probably more that you play other classes badly.

My ele, rev, warrior, guard, thief and engy blast through enemies wave after wave after wave like they were made of mesmer clones. The only classes that have less ease is condi necro (though power wells is good), ranger and then in dead last is my Mesmer waiting on cool downs while mobs spawn doing about 50% the dps of other classes if phantasms aren’t available and no, chrono phantasma doesn’t help when the mob dies.

I never said that I had issues with other classes thanks. I play all of them and each one are pretty good. What I said is that for me the mesmer is the safest out of all the profession to play. And no there is absolutely no dps issue on the mesmer. If you have issue with the mesmer dps it’s yours to correct them and it’s totally doable via trait/gear. Personnally I can go through wave of mobs with my mesmer without “waiting on cool down 50% of the time”. Beside, clever use of the chronomancer traits do help you even if you don’t want to believe it.

Core :
- Spirit weapon rework (ideally no more summon crap)
- Shield rework (By no way does these skills feel like shield skills)
- make consecration more user friendly (these skills are to situationals)

E-spec (futur) :
- 25% passive movment speed
- reliable acces to soft CC
- Better condi spec option (not that I don’t like burn but guardian’s burn is definetly lacking compared to other profession that still have access to many other conditions)

Well, The real issue of the necromancer is more that it’s mechanisms are overpowered on the paper and sucks when it come to practice. Anet restrain the necromancer in a lot of area (like supportor mobility) because (and I think we all recall this) they think that :

When we will master the shroud we will understand how strong the necromancer is

Sadly it’s been almost 4 years and we are still trying to master the shroud to the point that we feel strong when we play a necromancer. Sure enough, one day we will achieve this goal… maybe.

I like the idea but there are a few area that don’t feel like a necromancer’s spec.

Vices :
I’d swap wrath and gluttony. Change gluttony’s passive into a life steal every X attack. Wrath should be more in line with boon corruption.

Shroud :
Not sure new shroud + vice could be a thing. Either one of them but not both.

Desecration :
Not sure that combo finisher suit these area of effect, but ofc I like it.

Trait :
Harbringer of desacration is to strong of a trait (definitely)
… Yeah, you pile up to much effects on most of you’re traits, I won’t depicted them all.

Conclusion :
I like the idea even if there are a few thing that feel over the top. I just fear that you’re stepping outside of what a necromancer can do. For example, Anet seem adamant on the fact that the necromancer should support allies in a diffrent way than other profession which mean that a lot of your skills/traits that provide boons (And that I welcome) are skill that step outside of the necromancer’s boundaries.

I didn’t do it with my necro yet but, after experimenting with thief, warrior, mesmer and ranger, I think the most optimal build for the bloodstone fen’s story mechanisms is a variant of a minion master build where you will favoured ranged minions and survivability.

- Blood fiend, bone fiend and wurm as key utility.
- DM, BM and whatever line you like.
- a range weapon. I barely recall any boons so scepter ain’t really needed.

Other than that, master magic reflection‘s use and exploit any situation where you can use glider’s skills (safe way to kill stupid AI in story. in the open bloodfen the white mantle seem to have excessive range and hit you with rock attack)

SkinnyT.5382:

Mesmers in GW2 have the same problems Mesmer had in GW1. And just like in GW1 it’s taking the devs years to address it. Yes they have utility, yes they are good in SPvP , but guess what? They also fall behind all other classes in pve. They lack AoE’s in comparison to the other casters, and simply just can not steadily put out as much damage as other classes. Literally the same problems. I thought they were going to address it better than they did at the HoT release.

They need skill revamps. Some skills need to have their functionality completely changed. Maybe even split between pvp and pve. I’m sorry but my clones are not reliable aoe attacks in pve. They just aren’t.

Seriously… you badly need to learn how to mesmer in PvE. I’m playing all professions on a daily rotation and, no, mesmer don’t take more time than other professions to kill things. To be honest, the mesmer is, for me, the safest profession to use in PvE and probably the quickest to solo burn mobs.

Mesmer do have a lot of aoe (shatters/focus fantasm/traits/staff and even a cleaving weapon which is totally viable). Chronomancer add even more aoe damage (well/shield).

Do remember that if you feel that the mesmer lack damages, it will most likely be because you are stuck in a build that is not focused on damages. A pure mesmer condi build do above average damage, a pure power build tend to perform slightly under average damage but not to the point that it’s an issue. In PvE, it’s especially easy to perform well, especially since mobs have no brain.

NB.: On a side note, if you got issues with shatter in PvE, the chronomancer’s traitline give you pretty good utilities to reliably exploit shatters.

While I’m really reluctant to push out any idea of a reliable combo finisher on the necromancer, I still have to admit that the warhorn is already a really good weapon that do not need a blast on top of what it did.

If anything, it would be better to put a blast on axe#3 or dagger#5.

You have to equip the elite spec in the 3rd traitline. This is the only place it will show up.

Well… It always worked this way… This is even the main reason for it to be in the burst specs rotation.

Condi mesmer do 21.7k dps and not all buff are needed for it. I tried it a few time on the test golem.
This is what I used as a build reference :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAr6msICNohVohlcjqMAWtWr+Vn1bF9HWiZA-TxRAABXqEM6TAQP7Psp6P/pHAblfA8AAIFwiKrA-e

Just summon your duelist and use Confusing image on cool down while auto attacking (any other action is a loss of dps). Your fantasms do almost all the job, there is nothing difficult.

Note that i’m taking chrono just for mobility.

Crapgame.6519:

Honest question – how long did it take you to complete the new story?

You or anyone else.

Maybe 3 hours. NPC talked a lot and I took the time to discover the mobs mechanisms by myself on a very squishy thief Oh and there was also the fact that I had to unlock the mastery. I should be able to do it again with my other character in 1 hour.

Sadrien.3470:

Or because necro is the most complete faceroll mechanic trivializing class in pve.

Necromancers are only good at one very specific part of PvE (high level fractal) that happened to be designed in a way that it favoured the otherwise totally and utterly useless (in PvE) specificities of the necromancer : corruption and in-built resilience that does not rely on boons.

Other than that very tiny part of the PvE, everything that the necromancer offer is a tiny bit below what every other professions can offer. Beside, the only reason behing the fact that the minionmancer trivialize this part of the game wasn’t and never was “rise!”, it’s only because their minion over-sustain them thanks to vampiric.

So the very point is that the mitigation was fine for every build that wasn’t a minion build with blood magic. Gutting “rise!” just reduce build diversity in the end.

Not sure 10% LF every 20s with a cast time is worth anything in a game where reactivity is essential.
It feel more like : “Oh I needed a lot of X so I waste Y and Z for the sake of having a tiny bit of X.”

Axe is one of the perfect example of the necromancer’s design :

a) Good and even borderline overpowered in theory :

- AA and burst skill pass through all projectile hate.
- Utility unholy feast is an aoe cripple, damage, retaliation provider and boon corruptor skill which is totally awesome on the paper

b) Perform poorly in reality :

- The consecutive low damage on AA, with a probably terribly bad coefficient make it unimpressive and boring. With what i’ve seen oover these 4 and half year I don’t think the axe AA even come close to, say, even the ranger’s lonbow AA which is imped by the fact that they have a pet as damage support.
- No combo projectile. Yes, it’s an important loss in DPS as well as utility. The axe trade damage and combo for being able to pass through projectile hate. (I feel it’s a big high of cost)
- Unholy feast is not worse the theoretical value. The main reason being that retaliation underperform in everypart of the game. Well… that is a bit of an overstatement, I agree that retaliation on the karka defender perform well, but it does twice the damage of what a player can do.

As for the staff… :
- AA : slow projectile, pitiable damages
- mark are only good to tag pack of monsters or to generate some LF thanks to a trait. Reaper’s mark is somewhat usefull when used properly.

“Normalize” : It feellike they will do to epidemic what they did to WHAO on ranger. Look at the conditions on the ennemy, spread a preset number of the same conditions with number of stacks and duration normalized. Simply put, a big nerf on the potential of all the condition that are stackable… well… on all the condition because there is no way that we will have a 10s normalized chill/cripple/weakness/…etc. spread.

Once upon a time there was a burst spec with Axe/focus… Not sure it’s enough for this spec to walk out of it’s grave.

anduriell.6280:

OGDeadHead.8326:

anduriell.6280:

Guys read the texts:

nerfed

Axe AA

Have yet to decide if I agree on this one…

Don’t take too long. Basically you are missing the return hit if there were 2 targets and that 40% extra will not make for it. Also you will get less might stacks when there are 2 targets or more.

Basically: when there is one target you will it 40% dmg. As soon as there are 2 you’ll be nerfed one full hit (40%40% <> 100%) and more importantly you will miss that extra might stack you benefit not only in power but in condi damage (axe 2 and axe 3)

Also it’s good to notice that what’s awfull in ranger’s weapon damage is the scaling not necessary the base damage. they didn’t touch the damage coefficient just the base damage… what a waste. Less might, less rebound and buff to condi spec with 40% damage increase on the AA tic of damage. (That’s hillarious)

The shallow nerf to Rise! won’t change a lot for us. In fact, most of the time our critters didn’t died from the damage transfer. It was either from the duration or from opponent’s aoe.

A lot of these changes were asked, so thanks Anet.
That’s not the important changes that everyone here wait for but we asked for those axe/focus/BiP/spectral skills change.

Maybe next patch you could teach the golem how to swim? Work a little on DS AA, dark path…? Work on those grandmaster traits with unpracticable effect?

… Asked Anet for less crapy AI on pets.

→ Anet answered by reduced cool down on pet AI skills. (No! God No!)
Is this hard to get rid of the ******* Quickening screech? Is this hard to allow us to prevent our pet from using those god**** skill that we absolutely don’t want them to use? That’s what the ranger badly need since release of the game!

Trully really disappointed. Nothing in this patch that really improve the pet. Only thing interesting are bug fix. That’s sad.

Keystone 1 : Allow you to equip a pistol, unlock manipulation abilities and grant you the ability to summon a Source with F5.

Source : Magic spot that follow the Sourcemaster and automatically copy it’s attunment and core profession traits effect related to attunment, You can fix/unfix the source at a spot with F5 (ground targeted ability short cool down).

Heal : Source of life : Heal you for X. Allies near your Source are healed for Y.

Utility 1 : Chaotic source : you and your source emit powerful ondulations inflicting random alteration to foes and granting random boon to allies. 3 wave over 6 seconds.

Utility 2 : Source of balance : allies around you and your source gain stability also break stun.

Utility 3 : Void source : Your source become a void spot destroying incoming projectiles.

Utility 4 : Flash spot : Blind enemies around your source.

Elite skill : Elemental shock : Your source first draw elemental energy base on your current attunment, inflicting condition to enemy around it, then release a powerful elemental shock dealing damage and leaving a field based on your attunment. Energy drawn for 3 seconds before the energy shock occur. (something almost like a chronomancer’s well).

Pistol :
Fire :
Fiery ray : unleash a fiery beam that continuously burn your foe. Low base damage, burn 1.5s per tic.
Burning round : Unleash a volley of burning projectile.
blazing orb : Concentrate your fire magic at the top of your pistol , leaving a blazing orb that will explode when an enemy try to cross it.

Water :
Ice shot : Hurl an ice projectile that do more damage if the target is close to you.
Freezing shot : Quickly shot a cold projectile that will chill your foe.
Water orb : charge a water orb at the top of your pistol that will explode upon completion, healing allies around you.

Air :
Charged bolt : fire a bolt of lightning that will explode upon reaching the target.
Screaming barrel : Pour lightning magic in your barrel creating a deafening sound that will stun foes around you.
Lightning rift : charge lightning at the top of your pistol leaving being you a stationnary rift that will periodically hit and weaken enemies around it.

Earth :
Sand shot : fire streams of sand that can’t be reflect and have a low probablity of infliction vulnerability on crit.
Gravity round : Fire pure earth energy that will not do any damage but will pull to it, enemies on it’s path.
Orb of erosion : Create an orb of earth energy that will explode upon being crossed by an ennemy, inflicting bleeds and cripple.

Traits :

Tier 1
1-
2-
3- Create an orb of erosion on your current location when being stuck under the treshold.

Keystone 2 : Upon switching attunment your source leave a combo field based on your new attunment.

Tier 2
1- Upon switching attunment your source blast the area (occur after the combo field appear in order to have some synergy)
2- trigger source of balance when you are victim of a hard CC effect.
3- Inflict a damaging condition based on your attunment upon using manipulations.

Keystone 3 : Upon entering combat your source will trigger attunment switch effect

Tier 3
1- While in combat your source will trigger attunment effect every 10s if you do not switch attunment.
2-
3-

The ritualist is a backline support profession. They’re entire philosophy is taking care of NPCs and aiding in battle through minor to major support. The SoS build is an antagonist build, not so much a raw damage build. Ritualists are rather slow as well. They played slow and their moves where all very prepared ahead of time.

I’m affraid you’ve got a very narrow view of the GW1 ritualist. You could make very aggressive build that didn’t need any preparation and very tanky builds without spirits as well as spirit build and support build.

The ritualists, except for pure instant dps build always borrowed the power of the resident of the mist (be it by summoning spirit, imbuing weapon or using urns).

And this is very similar to what revenant does. Revenant have their own way to do damage (weapons) and borrow the power of the residents of the mist (utilities).

NB.: As for binding spirit, the chain were here to help spirit to remain in their shape, not to force them to do anything. None of the “traitlines” of the ritualist were meant to “force” the spirit, it’s always been a matter of communing and channeling with the spirit. Restauration and spawning power weren’t meant either to subdue the spirit but to enhance them or their power.

NB².: On my opinion there is no profession in GW2 that look like more the ritualist (spirit spec) than the mesmer. Clones and fantasm do just what spirit were doing in GW.
- Want a spirit of restauration? equip illusionnary inspiration
- Want range damaging spirit? just use your range clones and fantasms
- Want a spirit of disenchantment? Phantasmal disenchanter is here
- Want a spirit of shelter/union? Phantasmal defender.
- … etc.
Mechanically the mesmer is the closest of the ritualist. But in mindset it’s undoudtedly the revenant that inherit the mindset of the ritualist. The necromancers do not trust in the skills of others, the necromancer thirst for power and dwell in black magic but they will never borrow and use for themself skills that were used by another profession. You could say that they are to selfish for that, their strenght must be achieve by themself even if it come with a sacrifice be it their blood or their corporeal body.

In Closing, Why would you want a second support elite specialization? Wouldn’t you rather branch into new territory such as a more offensive or controlling elite spec?

Why would a specialization named “ritualist” or designed around the “ritualist” thematic be a “support” spec? Like I said earlier, ritualist also used spirit for offense and had offensive tools designed for offense. Beside it’s really easy to create an Espec that would give a taste of the ritualist with the revenant core profession. At least easier than doing it for the necromancer (since you adamantly want it on the necromancer). One must understand that the rituals of the necromancer are vastly different than the ritual of the ritualist if they weren’t you could just rename blood magic into Ritualist since blood magic is were the necromancer’s ritual are. Necromancers use blood rituals while ritualists use sacred ritual which are more a kind of way to worship the power of the ancient. There is a form of respect in what the ritualist do while the necromancer is a selfish thing that is supposed to only pursue power for power nothing else matter not even their own safety (there is always insanity in black magic, no place for respect).

Well… :

First, remove superior weapon siege, then add new system on wall/door that put specific vulnerability stack on them when nobody’s here to tend to them. 1 stack every 2-3 minute per wall/door. Upon removing a stack player have an increase in it’s WvW track. This way maybe scouting may feel rewarding and building that are left alone will crumble faster while “scouted” building should be sturdier than they are right now (maybe add protection on wall/door that are well attend).

The point would be to promote a gameplay where everybody is not out running in karma train looking mainly for silly battle without caring at all if something is taken from them by enemies.

All HoM pets are and have always been mechanical clone of core game pets.

White raven -> raven
Black moa -> pink moa
Black widow -> jungle spider
Rainbow jellyfish -> Blue jellyfish

I even wonder if they don’t share CD on their F2 ability.

It’s obvious… scrapper kill scrapper 1v1

Hesacon.8735:

I’d want a buff to axe, but I’m not optimistic.

Anet’s developpers are pretty shy when it come to buff axe.
- They do not want to buff the auto attack since it’s a range attack that can’t be reflect
- The second attack is descent (damage wise)
- The third attack pile up a lot of effects that, even if they do not have a lot of value in the game, make the skill look like it give already to much.

In the end, necro’s axe is a weapon that is theoretically strong but fall short when it come to practice. It’s understandable that they are reluctant in buffing it when you look objectively at the skills, even giving it a suitable combo finisher feel theoretically like overbuffing it.

NB.: note that theory is when it’s supposed to work but doesn’t, while practice is when it work but it shouldn’t. A good example of the latter being the druid’s staff auto attack which is set to be at the pinacle of crappyness but still stir the rage of the pvp community that rant about it’s damage.

Well of Darkness deleted…actually that would count as a buff nvm

I almost spit out my coffee!!!!

Honnestly I expect no real change for the necromancer. The necromancer is neither in a bad spot nor in a good spot atm and Anet is still adamant at keeping our badly designed trait. If anything they might remove the boon corruption on scepter auto attack and put it on scepter #3 (This would make the necromancer sink to the bottom but at the same time other profession would stop complaining about the necromancer)

I also see this more and more… sadly with every profession… Is it a curse that mordremoth put on the land of our beautiful tyria? Blade of grass, snow, even thin air seem to be able to totally negate all of our attack.

Well as screenshot it would have been better if you had shown your build. Do remember that what’s important is wether or not you equip the Herald traitline or not. On your screenshot you don’t have the F2 available which is a sure way to say that you didn’t equiped the traitline.

And just like justine said, your build change automatically when you change from one game mode to another.

Again, your screenshot say nothing to help anybody resolve your issue.

For what we know you could have even tried the “tutorial” that grant a shared slot before that happen or even talked to the related npc. This thing reset all your traits.

[quote]

Ok, what’s overpowered :

Survivability :
Necromancer’s base survivability + 2 invulnerability skills + Evade skill + additional siphon on auto attack and on poison damage.
I expect you to understand that it is a lot of survivability (way to much, to the point that it’s a direct flag that call for nerf in PvP)

Damage :
Just with the cripple damage alone there is potential to break balance damage wise. You see, you just need to equip a warhorn to gain full potential of this trait and while warhorn is ok at the moment, this kind of trait would just falg it for a very painfull nerf. Because yes, if you want a decent number of damage that support you sword or even the scepter, you will automatically make the warhorn OP.

C’mon just look at locust swarm. Every second for 10 second (30s CD) :
- Base damage + LF generation + vampiric damage + vampiric presence damage + damage from cripple application + stack of poison (trait) + potentially bleed and poison on crit.

With the Wh trait instead of vampiric presence. Every second for 15s (24 second CD)
- Base damage + LF generation + vampiric damage + damage from cripple application + stack of poison (trait) + potentially bleed and poison on crit.

And for the fun, let’s suppose that they reintroduce the trait decaying swarm in the game…

Even I easily understand that it is broken and I don’t even like playing PvP.

There is no way that we ever get something close to this overpoweredness.

Otherwise, I really think that you don’t grasp what Berserker, DragonHunter, Tempest, Herald and Reaper are about if you associate this kind of effect to them.

I usually like seeing what kind of E-spec other player expect but this one feel so broken and ridiculous that I can’t even appreciate the idea. It would also be good to see something that stray from this standard form that’s being accepted for the necromancer. Nothing stop the dev from keeping DS in it’s form and add an F2 that use LF in a different manner.

Both necromancers and ritualists share a lot of similarities and I theories that the both studied under the same school of magic, aggression. They both have similar means of using their skills even if the results might be a bit different.

Well, you may be right but you also may be wrong.

The major difference between the necromancer and the ritualist, in the GW’s environment, is that the necromancers deal with the fleshly world while ritualist deal with the spirit world (In GW we usually call this world the mists).

These 2 fields of expertise, while seemingly like the 2 faces of the same coin, are vastly different and do not step on the toes of each other.

One could say that the necromancers and the ritualists are alike the same way that ritualists and mesmer are alike. Revenants are ritualists in the way that they actually borrow the strenght of the mists inhabitant.

The ritualist was someone who borrow strenght. (because it believed that it’s more efficient to ask help from their ancestor that it worshiped)
Spirit weapon in GW1 was doing the same thing to a weapon than what revenant do to themself when thay invoke a legend. The use of urn was directly the same as invoking a legend in GW2. Spirit skills was like binding a spirit from the mist on the earth to assist the ritualist. And offensive spirit skill were more like ritualist exploiting their ability to open hole through the mist and control the energy backlash to direct it toward their foes.

The necromancer was someone who lend it’s strenght. (because he only count on himself)
On the other hand the necromancer always used its own power and the power of the flesh to wreck havock. Well in GW needed a dead body. The necromancer’s often drew it’s own blood and flesh to support it’s allies or kill it’s foes. Minions were rised by the will and power of the necromancer. GW1 necromancers would never have trully count on other to carry them, they’d better give life to dead in order to keep themself safe than count on another independant and sentient will.

The necromancers and ritualist mindset can’t fuse together. they are way to different.

Dignified Loser.7689:

Dadnir.5038:

If anything, it would fit Death magic more than it ever fit curses. Afterall, when death spreads, there is always flies…

That’s a thought, it certainly would fit better and could perhaps move Death Magic beyond just minions and enhance it’s “defensive” and life force options, like bringing back Decaying Swarm as a minor perhaps? If only to get rid of or enhance Soul Comprehension.

Also, Death magic is the only traitline that doesn’t have any trait that enhance a weapon.
Spite : Axe with unholy fervor
curse : scepter with lingering curse
DM : none
BM : dagger with quickening thirst and WH with Banshee Wail
SR : staff with Soul mark

I’d remove Soul comprehension, put Beyond the veil in it’s place. Move Deadly strengh in minor GM and replace it by Banshee’s wail.

As to what would take the place of Banshee’s wail into the BM line… Maybe :

Vile blood : Your bleeds do 2% more damage per condition on you.

or

Blood spring : Whenever you bleed, you and allies around you regenerate health. Heal 1200 health point over 10 second to up to 5 allies in a 360 radius.

or

Coagulate : reduce the duration of the bleed stack that you (and your allies) suffer. Reduced duration 20-50%.

or

… etc.

Something that seem to be related to blood… and could even have some necromancer’s flavored support.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Like your concept. Not to destroy your work but I’ve thought about possible utilitie skills for necro elite specs that I would find fun to use, and interesting.

How about banners?

Banners focused of dealing damage and debuffing rather than the warriors buffing banngers.

Banners that apply chill, or blindness or pulsing damage?

Don’t see how banners might deal damage, but debuffing banners sounds pretty good. However, look at the warrior. Does anyone use banners ever? Banners, like conjured weapons and spirit weapons, are in very bad place and are pretty much useless.
If banners would get updated/reworked on warrior into something useful, then yes – banners could be awesome tool, pulsing conditions and stuff.

What you say here is not totally true. Banner are an important part of the PvE group content. They may be despised in PvP content, they still are the best summon that exist in PvE. Conjure weapon used to be usefull in PvE as well (though they’ve been nerfed to the ground and cannot compare in any way to Banners or AI summon). Spirit weapon… well… yeah you can say it’s bad, though the spirit shield had it’s hours of glory, the other spirit weapons have never been really usefull in any way (bad design Anet, bad design).

As for what Ovalkvadratcylinder propose, I doubt that balance could allow banner like those. Were are talking of very long lasting debuffing/damaging AoE here, just look at how long _well_’s CD are, those kind of banner that simply replace our well… Impossible.

Not sure that we need minions that do more damage than what we already got but why not?

1 year ago, before we could get a good idea of what Anet meant by “Elite spec”, I came up with something similar that took advantage of minion and hammer. I called that the abomination and the new minion were more chunk of corpse fusing with the necromancer in order to shield a bit of damage or pump up the necromancer himself. Something a bit like the annoying little karka but with some benefit for us (maybe like signet that you’d had to summon). The whole idea was inspired from the orrian abomination with stackable frenzy etc.

If it’s usefull then I’m affraid that I wouldn’t loot anything at all if I weren’t at my base Magic find of 300+%.

Magic find is merely an long term objective when you’ve swept across the whole game and you become a bit bored. It’s a kind of leveling with little to no visible effect.

Except very rare exceptions, all weapon in the game have their DPS ruled by their auto attack. The other skills are either burst skills or utilities skills.

Maybe the real issue of the revenant sword is not it’s dps but the usefullness of it’s utilities skills. If you look at it with différents eyes :
Unrelenting assault : An evade skill that build might as well
Precision strike : debatable skill with almost no obvious purpose.
Duelist preparation : great block skill
Grasping shadow : obviously a decap skill. Design totally aimed at PvP with absolutelly no use in PvE.

does anyone actually use it?

Yes! This trait benefit a lot the warhorn, making the locust swarm uptime really great. And locust swarm being used just before entering shroud give you heaven defying survivability in large scale mele fight.

Is it in the wrong tier/should be “buffed” (switches tiers with Unholy Martyr)?

While Unholy Martyr is questionnable as a GM trait, Banshee’s wail is balanced ATM. I think it’s in the right tier and should absolutely not be buffed even if it was in a GM place. Unholy Martyr issue on the other hand is merely a lack of mean to achieve result with it. The concept is great and could benefit from all the corruption’s stuff granting, at last, some decent LF regen to condi builds.

Hell, is it in the wrong specialization (Blood Magic)? If the latter should it be in Curses?

If anything, it would fit Death magic more than it ever fit curse. Afterall, when death spread, there is always flies…

This is your favourite stance, yet you want to change almost everything about it… This is kinda strange.

May I say that by modifying vengeful hammer you actually ruin the legend for PvE? This damaging AoE upkeep is the most usefull asset of Jalis in both openworld and group content.
- Openworld : because in openworld this is tag war and a moving AE is invaluable
- Group content : Because this is a great source of additionnal DPS that outclass every Shiro stuff because you already gain boons from your teammate.

I understand that in PvP you want a lot of stability but if the developpers don’t give tons of stability to every profession it’s not just for show, it’s for balance sake. Player complain pretty quickly when they got a hard time locking on a target that is almost immune to CC which is what your suggestion lead to.

My bad I fall into the clickbait title.

Should I say that it’s not a Necromancer rework? Although your idea on MH axe won’t do any good to the axe, it will still stay meh. Off hand axe is a possibility for an E spec weapon, we’ve done with no Off hand for 4 years now, it would be nonsense to add a new weapon to core necromancer.

As for the shroud suggestion… this is clearly a “no!”. E spec come with a trade that build a kind of balance. If you were to give availability to the 2 kind of shroud to reaper, you could just delete all people that play core necromancer from the game.

It’s better like this, however:

- I’m still not convince that an LF cost with no trait involved to support this kind of “sacrifice” is necessary
- Fantom’s finess seem like a “nerf me!” banner. (beside, there is a trait that support fantom’s finess before it’s availability. I’m sure that the community would complain about that kind of thing if something like that was going live)

I’d see more something like :
Spirit of twilight : Gain 5% LF per foe you taunt.

Fantom’s Finess : While under the effects of retaliation, your successful attacks grant a stacking Ferocity and Healing Power effect. 10 Ferocity and 10 Healing Power for (10s)
-Maximum Stacks: 15

Harbringer of wrath : While under the effects of retaliation, you do more damage 10%. Scornful Claw now pierces, granting retaliation for each foe struck.

Nurfed.5346:

well i dont like to be forced to play support >< like ele is for ranked pvp atm :P and how u say necro is average isnt necro part of most esl teams? And is necro really that rubbish?

There is one thing that you need to know. In GW2 support abilities are not what you are used to see in other game. Support in GW2 is 50 to 75% of the optimum dps. Being a support in GW2 does not mean that you just heal and grant boons, the support is most of the time directly tied to your dps skills. The point is that the elementalist naturally provide ton of support (buffing himself and it’s partner while doing it’s stuff) while the necromancer have a very selfish gameplay in which it’s support abilities are way inferior to the elementalist’s one.

And yes, a necromancer is a band of rubber (whatever it’s stat choice) if not heavily focused.

All in all, I like the idea but I feel like it’s a bit much to introduce in an elite spec both taunt and stealth. I feel that both may be the base of it’s own Espec.

What i’d change :

Keep Stealth but no taunt
- Shroud 2 : usually it’s a movement skill in this slot, also for the sake of balance you gave it an overly high cool down that make Path of corruption a “No” as a trait option.
- LF consumption : Yes while stealthed, no on Skills. I mean LF cost on skill use is something a bit to dangerous balance-wise as a mechanism while a direct cost over time while stealthed is a safer bet.
- While in stealth consume 6% LF per second.
- Spirit of twiligh : Halve LF consumption while in stealth
- Elite skill : Teleport to a foe to corrupt up to 3 boons, for each boon corrupted you gain might (x3)
- Maybe a trait that drain allies condition while in stealth?

Keep taunt but no stealth
- New shroud 2, put actual shroud 2 in shroud 3 slot.
- Axe : Axe MH would work well with taunt since it’s our main source of retaliation. I feel that axe Off hand could be worked around to strenghten that.
- Axe 4 : become Unholy thirst, instead of the stealth gain the skill become a siphon spike.
- Axe 5 : remove fear option.
- Specter : break stun, siphon heath around you.
- Ghostly culling : knockback and inflict torment (x3)
- Traits : replace fury traits by retaliation traits. Replace stealth trait by taunt focused traits.

In short the necromancer is a rubbish profession forever stuck at the “average” DPS tier with poor support in most of the PvE content. All the unique feature of the necromancer are designed around PvP which is why it perform poorly in PvE (group content).

While the elementalist is a profession with great innate support that rely a lot on it’s traits to excel either in resilience or in DPS. The most glaring issue of the Elementalist is it’s poor innate survivability in PvP content.

It’s up to you to see whether you prefer being the usefull guy with poor survivability in most of the game content (Elementalist) or the guy that is not so often needed but have great passive survivability (Necromancer).

messiah.1908:

man amazing suggestion with spirits

but see the guards with spirits – no one use them in any game type

so try to think how can it be played in pvp and wvw and pve

pve its easy just give them dmg
in wvw AI dies in 1 sec from zerg
pvp you dont see much minions with necro and why is that?….

nevertheless could be nice concept if they give the spirits some defense and good offense and if they do what about illusions for mesmer , guards and minions….

It’s the whole purpose of making the F2 an Upkeep. It doesn’t need any CD, it will just drain you constantly of your energy locking you out of your other upkeep. In the end it become a matter of choice for the player as to whether he want to summon the legend or use the skill of the legend.

The major issue of a mount espec would be… graphical issues. I can imagine an asura mounting any ranger pet, at most I can imagine human and sylvari also doing it but by no mean can I imagine charr and norn doing it.

Nefarius.9702:

I’m curious and I need a bit of help:

I have a necromancer – he’s equiped with zerker gear; after the most recent big patch it seems that “condi” is meta in fractals and raids now, and I’m pretty much rejected by serious groups, which is a problem.

I’ve tried out the condi stuff in PvP and it’s not bad; but the reason why I love the power build so much is the possibility to kill foes in open world VERY quickly.
Yet I’m in a kinda “dilemma” – should I switch all my (ascended) gear to viper stuff and hence focus on conditions BUT risk having “less” fun especially in Open world (which I play a lot).

So here’s my question: If I run around with hybrid stat equip, is it, let’s say, still possible to equip a dagger /WH OR GS in one weapon set and STILL bring down foes pretty quickly? Or is that idea nonsense?

The short answer is : “you’ll do less damage but in open world that is hardly an issue”
The long answer… is to long to be developped today

Well, strictly speaking GS is a skill set that give you :
- a burst skill (Gravedigger)
- a sustain skill (Deathspiral)
- a defensive field (Nightfall)
- a gap closer via a grap (Grasping darkness)

We can say that It’s a whole weapon that answer a lot of issues that the necromancer suffer. The fact that it doesn’t feel satisfying when we use it do not enter in the equation.

As for whether it’s good or not against a condi meta, one must admit that nothing would be balanced if it was good in any situation. The niche of the GS is found against mele power creeps in group fight. It is a satisfying weapon in this kind of situation.