Guild Wars 2

Sadly, it would be very situational and still terribly underwhelming.

“Rise!” (and all Reaper’s shout) need a shave on their base CD and/or no cast time. In my opinion, the untraited shout should have had a relatively low CD with cool down addition depending on how many foe are hitten. The trait would have just removed the additional Cool down.
Beside, the extra damage on shout are totally out of place. They wanted to do a chilled base specialization on the necromancer, they should have gone all the way!

For exemple :
“Rise!” : You shout at your foes shivering them and summoning a minion at their feets. inflict 1 second chill, summon 1 jagged horror for each foe hit (5 max). Base CD 20s + 3s per foe hitten. Cast time shouldn’t be more then 3/4s.

This one video is a whole lot less fun and enjoyable than the previous one…

Is this a video on how to counter lich or a video on how to use your defensive abilities on all classes? Because these tactics would work against all skills in the game. Not saying Lich is amazing but this seems like a clear straw man argument.

To be honest, most of these defensives mean wouldn’t work against melee attack. In general, transformation are plain bad granting an illusion of OPness with no skill for a very short uptime. On the other hand, if they were some kind of kit without the OP passive stats, they could be somewhat easy to balanced. There is plenty of way to get rid of these useless transformations that plague the game. Changes to mortar kit and guardian’s tome were a very good start, still 4 transformations to go (excluding racial transformations which would also need this treatment but I don’t think Anet or player base really care about these racial transformation).

Yeah, I imagine… but healing power or not, the scaling is abysmal so it won’t make any difference. You can’t have dedicated healer because even with full healing power they don’t have any impact on the game as it is. And healing power scaling won’t be buff because e-sport. E-sport being the main goal of gw2 developpement, we won’t see this coming.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRQQRBIhtG1IHNUbjN3gxNwhjjlhSeB3c1O/gA4apBxSkqA-TFyAABScQAA4EAM0+Dcp8DNlgB8EAuU9H90PAA-w

This is more or less what I use in WvW.
- huge survivability and LF generation
- Perma 25% speed boost
- no issue at all in 1v1 (just use DS and enjoy your 100% crit chance)
- 2 stun breaker
- No need to be skilled just a good understanding on how spectral skills and DS work is needed.

Just can’t agree with the statement that the design is “good”.

Sure, if you look at the surface traits support well DS to support each role in a traditional game. You can trait to tank, you can trait to powermancer, trait to condimancer and even trait to heal.

But this is where the limitation lie. The Necromancer lack basics things to graduate from the solo profession that is barely OK at everything, to the profession that fit well in the game and use all tools to their full extent.
- No trait, no skill give what is the bare minimum needed to be acceptable : a reliable blast finisher.
- No trait, no skill allow the necromancer to fully enjoy it’s combofield (At this point if the skill weren’t combofield, there would be no difference in the necromancer gameplay. The sad part being that these combofield even are an hindrance in most teamplay because they have an inferior overall value).
- To focus on DS, there is no combofield nor combo finisher on DS. It’s so totally selfish that it’s not needed in teamplay. And basically, that’s why most of the time Necromancers are not needed/wanted in party.

So yeah! I don’t want my necro to be OP, I just want to be able to use some whirlwind finisher or projectile in it’s own well or poison field like every single other profession. I want to be able to blast a field without wondering whether my minion will make it into the field or if the field will last long enough for a foe to trigger my staff mark. I want the necromancer not to only look well balanced, I want him to be balanced deep into the game mechanisms which he isn’t.

MidoriMarch.8067:

So what are u expecting?

A rework like guardian’s tome since plague and lich never intended to be spectral or corruption… Seem legit for me.

Anet to buff lich form pierce through reflect? lich auto attack catchs up? auto attack follows kiting enemy?

Hell no! we don’t want OP thingy just aknowledge of the fact that garbage thingy are garbage.

why not use lich form in proper situation?

There is no proper situation to use lich. Even in PvE you lose to much dps while trasforming.

i see your level by using lich form when enemy uses reflect projectiles , running away

Everybody here saw that the level of sarcasm of the player was really high… except you.

this is why necro players never get good yet expect every single buffs on necro

Necro players aren’t bad in themselve they are just cripple by unfitting mechanisms due to poor design choices.

Next time they show something of one of the profession will either be underwater revenant or ranger elite spec since :

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/

Yeah… it’s sad but :
- Mesmer → chronomancer
- Guard → Dragonhunter
- Necromancer → Reaper
- Ranger → Druid
- Elementalist → Tempest
- Warrior → ?
- Thief → ?
- Engineer → ???

At least we know that Engineer are dead last.

Shiro is basically hit and run with some celerity and an aoe stun.
Ventari is plagued with a tablet that have the worst mechanism possible in this game.
Mallyx is an aoe condition junky and a bit of boon hate.
Jalis is a hammer nerd with some stability.

If you look at it, none of them are especially strong set. On the other hand, weapon set are in another league. Most likely, we will have to see what good the change that have been done on them will do on the balance of the whole class.
Ultimately, no weapon set are linked to any legend. They only share the love of the same traitline.

Exactly what Dlaxer said… the revenant had a zerk amulet. From a basic point of view, the damage weren’t this impressive at all. And at the same time rangers damage are balanced on the fact that the ranger have a pet that do damage with him.

Beside :
Revenant skill 3 : banned from dungeon because it will break boss controle or send the revenant somewhere not needed with a clear risk of wild aggro. WvW the revenant will hate to be the one that all ambiant creature will chase. PvP… might be usable. Clear issue : absolutely no controle on this skill effect.

Revenant skill 5 : again the troll skill that have 100% chance to generate hate from other allies. Whirlwind defense should win the fight in all honesty.

I think that instead of ranting because they have more damage on skill use (while not having a pet alongside of them) the rangers should be smiling at the fact that LB#4 won’t be the most hated skill In game and the ranger hate will soon be nothing in front of the Revenant hate. That’s because they have the potential to be king… of trolls.

The gameplay from GW1 is fondamentaly different than the gameplay of GW2. The profession as well are fondamentaly different. For exemple, mesmers from GW2 ain’t mesmers from GW1.

None of the things from GW1 could “fix” things of GW2 because these are 2 differents game. Of course you can see similarities in skills/traits but in the end the effect are totally differents.

If they brought back hexes, that could fix the necromancer in GW2.

It won’t. Hexes are technically conditions in GW2, be it a debilitating hex (replaced by weakness, vulnerability, blind, cripple, slow, chill), a degenerative hex (replaced by bleed, poison, torment, burn) or even a reactive hex (replaced by confusion).

What the necromancer need to be fixed are skills and trait that fit in the game, not something that look cool and shiny (I should say “dark” for a necromancer) but don’t have any place in a game that don’t support it.

Corruption : The idea of sacrifice was ok in GW1 because there were dedicated healer in this game, you could afford to “sacrifice” life for strong support/damage. In GW2, healing spec being nerfed to oblivion to avoid the neverending GW1 PvP match, it’s another story. You just can’t afford to waste your life for abysmal effect. On the other hand, a few traits intelligents traits supporting the idea of “sacrifice” could change everything but MoC happened.

Siphon : The fact that necromancer’s siphon are balanced around “vampiric ritual” is one of the most displeasing thing as a necromancer. Oh, I won’t say it doesn’t work when you use this trait, it’s even awesome how much survivability we gain but… there is nothing “intelligent” in “vampiric ritual”. You just drop god mode wells that are weak without the trait…

Death shroud : I have a love/hate relation with this mechanism. The point is that I love the fact that I can use it to bear a lot of beating from small fry that hit like wet noodles. But I litterally hate it’s weakness against hard hitting things and the poor design of the 2 first skills.

Minions : GW2 minions and GW1 minions are from different galaxy… Come on, while GW1 minions were really aggressive while being summoned from dead, GW2 minions are dead while being summoned from nothing. The idea behind the actives skills aren’t bad in themselves but just doesn’t work in the game as it is. This would probably need as much rework then ranger’s spirit.

Signet : Well… they were bad. They suffered from their long cool down and barelly any use except for minor support out of “signet builds”. With the change they undergone, they became just to good at the same time : lowered cool down, interesting effect added, passive proc… etc. For me (even if i like the way they are now) it was just to much.

I could continue this review for a long time but i’d like to point out the very first hint where I think there is a real need to work.
The real imbalance that make the necromancer “subpar” come mostly from general mechanism and poor balance choice. Let me explain, the necromancer could be good if a dark field or a poison field had the same value than a fire field or a water field. Again, a necromancer could be good if he has the tools necessary to exploit it’s combo fields (combo finisher). A Necromancer, as a profession, could be balanced if there wasn’t this imbalance between skill type and mechanisms.

CureForLiving.5360:

Allusir.5630:

In a map where loot wasn’t based of tagging as many things as possible and getting loot form their bodies, you can play any role you want and still be rewarded for the difference you make.

I was thinking about this problem. One solution could be that you share in the tagging. Say you give might, you get credit for a percentage of whatever additional damage someone who gets might does… Mind you this might be too beneficial to support. You give 5 people might, those 5 people tag 5+ mobs…
In terms of healing, say a character takes a 100 damage and you heal them for 50, you then get credit 50 dps-es-equivalent-damage-credit on the mob that caused the original damage.

credit for DPS has always be a terrible thing… especially if you consider the fact that this is a “support” thread.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

ok so er.. Am i the only one who understood this thread?

There’s a trait that allows one CC to strip 2 stacks of stability instead of one, and an ability that allows you to throw out unblockable hits if your attacks are blocked (meaning you can CC a guardian using shelter finally)

If unblockable was this good, every warrior and their grandma would use signet of might. The same complaints appeared whan this effect has been introduced and look, the guardian still reckt wars easily.

striker.3704:

A well that gives protection+retaliation+might+resistance makes more sense for a necro.

You’re right (and I would support the idea) but if you’re still not aware of it, Dev seem to think that boons isn’t “necro theme”.

I’d say that shiro sucked the vampirism out of the necro here and Mallyx best the necro at condi masochism.

Now to understand why “rip guardian”, I don’t see. Shiro support is still crappy since (even if a lot of people don’t want to aknoledge it) healing is an inappropriate form of support in a game where active defense is king. The revenant will have it’s place, sure but guards with there aegis and ae block will still rock.

Something worse noting is that the ae ferocity trait was asked by necro (for the necro not for the revenant…)

you can’t (for spirit shard that is, since you no longer gain anything when you level up at level 80), but I believe they will be usefull for masteries helping you filling the experience tracks.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Could the Invocation Adept3, Empty Vessel, be made a Grandmaster, or at least the instant swap portion be added to one of the other selections? I think the invocation line has some nice benefits, but I think the instant swap is a bit too powerful for an Adept.

Not only that, what if someone likes the rest of the traits but don’t want to see the animation of swapping to disappear.

It would be terrible if on other profession weapon swap wasn’t instant, even DS is an instant transformation. Switching legend on revenant is their weapon swap. I pretty think the imablance, here, is that they need a trait to make it instant.

Bhawb.7408:

Passive stability on a signet would be bad. I think the best thing would be to rework Lich and Plague to be effects like Reaper of Grenth or Rampage as One, instead of being transforms which in this game never really work well. None of the current transforms are used in a mechanically interesting way, they are either OP, useless, or involve pressing WASD for 20 seconds.

Then, if they are reworked, they can still pulse their stability while giving either a defensive or offensive boost, but without locking us out of our actual kits.

+1

When they reworked guardian’s tome I had so many hope that Necromancer’s transformation would be reworked in a similar way. There is nothing in lich that feel like a spectral skill and there is nothing in plague that feel like a corruption.

I guess removing the poor animation of the lich transformation mean to much work while getting rid of a floating book is ok. At the moment the lich form is so gutted that barely anyone use anything else than the auto attack.

On the other way, the splendid way they introduced Plague into the corruption realm showed how much testing there have been when they imagine this thing. Player had a lot of fun killing themselve for naught. (don’t bother, I know that they already nerfed this stupid thing)

Like Bhawd said, reworking Lich and Plague to be effects like Reaper of Grenth or Rampage as One wouldn’t be a bad thing. They could even give them a Necromancer’s taste so it doesn’t feel like something we see on another profession (My sarcasm is really high here…)

Let’s say :
Lich : For 10 second your attacks do 20% more damage and drain 1% life force per hit. Grant 1 stacks of stability every 3 seconds for 3s. Cool down 90 seconds.
With these changes, Lich become a life force engine with a welcome damage buff that would allow people in DS to actually do what lich form do at the moment : bursting down ennemies. I’m not saying that 20% ain’t a bit to much but on the paper I don’t see how it wouldn’t fit an elite spot.

An other way to change Lich : For 10s when you drain LF via attack you do additional damage equal to the life force drained. While in lich form gain 1 stacks of stability every 3 seconds for 3s. Cool down 90 seconds.
These change would introduce another form of siphon based on damage instead of survivability. This could also help some unpopular weapon.

Plague : For 10 seconds you are engulfed into a dark cloak that poison, weaken and blind foes around you every second. Grant 3 stacks of stability every 3 seconds for 3s. Cool down 120 seconds.
With these changes, Plague transform the necromancer into a withering machine that corrupt nearby foes, crippling their damage and ability to heal themself. The skill keep it’s defensive purpose without hindering the necromancer.

NB.: Cool down and stacks of stability are thougt in way that Lich have a damaging purpose while Plague is more defensive. (traits are also taken into account)

New revenant origin story confirmed :

In fact revenant have always been in game! The first revenant wasn’t rytlock, it was a Necromancer golem that became sicked bored at doing nothing while it’s master was ganked by other players. So one day he decided to broke free. Since then and since it’s IQ is limited, ancient spirit of the mist fought to controle this mindless body (we call this legends).

When they encounter Rhytlock in the mist, these legend shared their knoledge of possessing mindless body with him. And they said that since he is a charr, it should be also doable with him if he consent to realize a little dream of them. Teaching them how to swim.

Now they have an obvious issue since it’s well known that Rhytlock (like all charr) hate water and golem are destroyed as soon as they enter water.

At the moment, we are at a stalemate. Rhytlock is still in the mist trying to tame some legends while legends try to convince Rhytlock to bath a bit.

With what we know at the moment it’s obvious that the studborness of Rhytlock let him win the trade without praying the price. Maybe he will summon Logan (an obvious choice since he is a brainless fanatic of Queen Jennah) and make him bath for the legends in his place…

I can remember that someone test and legends don’t even show skills underwater.

They will have to change a lot of existing map for that…

Thaddeus.4891:

Dadnir.5038:

Well… The only way to make heal bot valuable (since this is basically what ventari’s legend is) will be to introduce an area degen around boss.

Healing power being what it is, there is no way that a player can “heal” it’s party since boss/silver mobs attack are OH KO mechanisms.

Tanking abilities being what they are, ther will never be “tank” since ther is no way to hold aggro nor to survive OH KO repeatidly if fights goes on.

You are wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ubRKdpDfU8

They do level 50 with 3 people in 30min and one of them is full clerics. Healing Power in the right hand can be good. Not as good a DPS/Support build since Support is better and don’t limit your dps, but still. People believe falsely that one person in healing gear will make the run take 3 hours.

Not being optimal doesn’t mean that it’s useless or even not efficient.

I saw nothing in this video proving that they need healing power at all. 90% of the support is done by clever block and reflect of the guardian. In fact fact I can do the exact same thing in knight armor set.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve never said that support is bad, I’ve said that healing power is useless as a support mean and will stay useless until they tweek numbers and scalling in a way that it become meaningfull. The only issue here is that Anet won’t do it because this will result in a feared imbalance in sPvP.

There is one last piece of the puzzle for the revenant in the expansion—the elite specialization for the revenant hasn’t been announced yet, but that will have to wait a bit longer.

While I’m sure an elite specialization may seem important while still being optional, the underwater combat still need to be adressed before saying this.

I know that talking about underwater combat may seem boring for people that focus on PvP (since the only PvP map with underwater combat have been removed) but this particular aspect of the base profession is still needed in the new player experience, for fractals and dungeon. So please do not wait until we reach Xpac “Y” where we will have to fight the water dragon for releasing an underwater focused elite specialization for the revenant which would add 1 weapon.

Well… The only way to make heal bot valuable (since this is basically what ventari’s legend is) will be to introduce an area degen around boss.

Healing power being what it is, there is no way that a player can “heal” it’s party since boss/silver mobs attack are OH KO mechanisms.

Tanking abilities being what they are, ther will never be “tank” since ther is no way to hold aggro nor to survive OH KO repeatidly if fights goes on.

Thus lead us to the pathetic reality that the PvE game is easier when playing full dps builds and that I highly doubt that they can achieve this promise to make resilient builds and healing bots valuable.

NB.: For me there could be a way, but I’m not sure it would be a “challenging” content for a long time since it would become pretty easy with practice.
It would be really simple in fact. They just need to make boss immune to all attack except some ambiant siege weapon that the player will have to defends against mobs waves while being harrassed by boss abilities (which would be more likely CC or degen aoe).

Honnestly, they should change “Nature’s revenge” so that equiping a spirit give an aura with the effect of the spirit to the ranger’s pet. Active effect would happened at the pet’s position.

Pro :
- The spirit’s would become ok
- Rangers would actually use the active effect while it’s really rare atm.
- This change would fit their strong idea that the ranger must rely on it’s pet.

Cons :
- They will still be useless in fight where pets are instant dead.

Chill stack in duration it won’t stack in intensity even for the sake of the Reaper. The trait Deathly chill will basically do the same thing than Terror. And I’m pretty sure that fear also have this 5 “stacks” limitation and that nobody actually care about this fact.

More stability would be good for QoL but I don’t see stability as an issue since the change that occured on stability itself.

Add 2 secs of stability and damage immunity to death shroud on use. Remove the talent foot in the grave and the other talent thst reduces the cool down on death shroud.

Traits are here to give new dimension in your game experience. Making things like these baseline would be fool. So, it’s just a no for this idea I don’t want to see pointless trait inclued In game because “great traits should be baseline”. ATM FiG is in a place that make him an healthy choice on whether you want to chose some defensive ability or not.

Beside your idea of 2 second damage immunity make spectrals even more OP when cleverly used.

For your second idea, the answer is really simple. The only thing they gotta do is making dark path a teleport skill with a cast time instead of a lame slow projectile skill with a cast time. Just removing the projectile thingy would make dark path incredibly better and probably releviate a lot of our feeling that we lack tools to catch up to our opponent.

Firelysm.4967:

False. They claim 150 vitality has ben added, but they added nothing, there was a post about it how they tricked ups, and they did nothing about it. Plus, what is 150 vitality? 1500 vitality if traited for it.. and this is equal to 1 stack of fire…

Lets need 1500 more vitality, minimum pet health should be 25k.

What people currently do, is just put conditions on pets, make pet die in less then 2 sec, then just look how hopless ranger is with 60 sec cooldown on pet swap..

You seem to not understand why I say that but maybe that’s because you are some kind of new player while I’v been playing relentlessly everyday since september 2013.

So I’ll say it again before they artificially “buffed” pet’s health point (which take us back more than 1 year and a half ago, when beastmastery was really a thing. I honestly really miss this time…) it was easier to keep our pet alive. Why? Because while you weren’t forced to be a brainless skill spammer, trying to actually manage and support your pet was rewarding (since the pet at this time was a hard hitting thing).

That’s why I’ll say it again and again and again, a flat damage reduction will be a thousand time more valuable than a health increase.

NB.: I’d also say that other players barely care about the ranger’s pet since this long time. Because the pet ain’t a threat in itself and whatever he will disapear when it’s master will be dead. Most likely the pet is averloaded by conditions because the master use a conjonction of Signet of renewal and Empathic bond.

Why so many complain?

In short, let’s just say that it’s because the necromancer have a lot of room to be improved and reach the level of teamplay of the others professions.

Firelysm.4967:

Pet sustain Vitality/toughness is even worst in current meta, playing full beast mastery and yet they die in less then 5 seconds in small scale fights 5v5 or even 1v1.

Pets need at least 50% or 100% health buff, and if you choose Empathic boon, they should be immune on conditions! eating 2 stacks of fire kills the pet alone.

Ranger pet state is worst then ever. totally out of place, where pets die in 1v1 when they are on passive.

EDIT: we are not speaking about birds that are squishy, we speak about dogs cats spiders drakes what so ever. Tanky pets just don’t deliver F2 presents that most of ranger synergy requires to do so.

Increasing pet health have already be done. In fact, this is the worst solution to improve their survivability since you will struggle even more to heal them. Increasing vitality only nerf regen, heal skill, signet effect and trait effect that could affect pets. This doesn’t make the pet more tanky, it’s just an illusion.

What’s needed is a flat damage reduction like Bark skin. This trait exist so the technology is here. I don’t even understand why the pet also have an health treshold for this trait. It’s not like this would make the ranger overpowered in PvP to grant perma 50% damage reduction to the pet while traited.

To be honest, it’s not support, it’s healing.

Ofensive support like might/fury or anything else that buff power/precision/ferocity is always welcome. Even retaliation is helpfull.
Defensive support like protection, condi cleanse, stability, aegis, reflect and projectile destruction are key support tools.

But healing and dedicated healer does not have a real place in this game because you’re not supposed to mitigate damage by healing but by playing smartly. From my point of view it was obvious that the ventari legend would be off with it’s clumsy mechanisms and the only great tool being it’s projectile destruction uptime. Do you really think that dragging a stone behind you would be fun?

At the moment the revenant lack to many tools to be viable in game. Oh! you can have a little fun but the profession is still in need for real mitigation tools that help it to survive (block/invul/aegis/vigor/evade skills/blind). I won’t argue on DPS since the profession ain’t complete yet. Still, underwater combat should have been looked at, it’s a pity that even legends don’t work underwater.

Honnestly, I hope they don’t balance the profession around the fact that there will be an hypothetical elite specialization that focus on block (aka. hint on glint shield and cristal based skills). A profession need to be viable without having to rely on an elite specialization.

There is now a revenant sub profession forum… Necro don’t care about having faith in revenant.

To be honest, you got some spirit shard every time you complete your daily.
Doing event help a lot to since some event tend to grant some shard to you.
You also obtain randomly spirit shards on mobs you kill (not sur if you need to be level 80 or not)

At the moment, I’m sitting on 6k800 spirit shards while only playing 2 hour a day. From my point of view it’s even to easy to collect them.

NB.: I’m pretty sure that WvW may be a good farm spot for spirit shards since it’s in this mode that you need them the most and it should be loot from any opponent bags. (When you see how many bag you get in zerg v zerg you should be able to achieve a lot of shard in a short time)

I’m not sure how to explain it but your arguments basis feel wrong.

From the point of view of a regular player that have been already playing for 3 years, there is nothing like a profession that rely on condition damage as it’s core damage (thing that seem to imply when you talk about the necromancer).

To put it simply necromancer may use DD DPS as well as any other profession in game, designing content for condi user wouldn’t make the necromancer more needed.

Plus, at the moment, the necromancer ain’t the best profession to use for condi damage. The necromancer is stuck with the low damage condition (poison and bleed) and what’s even more ironic, is the fact that they don’t even have satisfying tools to exploit there poison field (lack of proper combo finisher).

It’s amazing how every wishes of yours would make the guardian shine even more in PvE since guard are the kings of retal/burn (which is the very best damaging condition atm)/aegis/group condicleanse.

Honestly, changing things on this way would only make it so the actual meta classes will just have to take 2 armor sets : Zodja and Verata. Nothing more, nothing less.
- Warriors will rekt kitten with bleeds, burns and torments while still providing tons of support
- Guardians will just burns everything (even the condition on their allies)
- Ele will have even more use for their scepter and Frostbow #5 already apply bleed (yes please!)
- Thieves are condimonsters add to this a fire field and they have way more than enough potential to stay in the meta.
… etc.

At the moment the condimancer struggle to achieve the same value as the meta profession. Their would be only one way to make them competitive on a PvE condimeta and that would be to make so mobs generate lot’s of boons that may be convert into long duration Burns. The issue is that only aegis convert into burn and for a small duration. (Not to say that in a party, the aegis will be blown away before you even think to corrupt it).

Necro is pretty easy to level up, solo open PvE is a breeze for this profession if you’re smart enough to avoid any tough mob. Sadly, the moment you step out of the open PvE realm or try something a bit harder, the necromancer will struggle more than any other profession.

Dungeon and fractal are group content which need good synergy between team member for smooth run. The Necromancer, sadly severly lack in group synergy for this kind of content where you mitigate damage by avoidance and not by pure “healing”. I highly doubt that you can solo any dungeon with the necromancer at the moment (while it’s doable with most of the other profession)

Necro shine in zerg WvW where he is really usefull. For solo in this game mode, you’ll have to master a bit the profession.

Necromancer have there place in PvP. They are not part of the meta yet but they certainly can make things hard for any team that ain’t ready to face some of the necromancer’s niche builds.

On the other hand guards are facerolling almost everything…

You forgot : prevent “bleed” effect of downed allies.

1. No, it’s just Anet thinking that rezzing allies is a kind of usefull support.
2. You’d have to change the game to make these usefull. Well to be honest it could have been perceived as usefull at the begining of the game when nobody knew about game mechanisms and dodges.

Parasitic Contagion, renamed to Blood Drinker: Bleeds you apply heal allies for 10% of their damage around your foes. 240 radius. A blood build should be a thing in my opinion. And blood magic should have a grandmaster trait to really support a blood necromancer. Giving us the ability to provide decent and consistence heals with a condition build could give us a good decent GM for the condi necros.

While it seem like a good idea, it also feel like one hell of a headache to balance. Let’s say that with 2k condition damage you can achieve more than 1700 HPS (per ally).

NB.: Never forget that necromancers are balanced around optimal situations.

1. No but I used to ask some Necromancer newby to use it on trash mob when I was carrying them through some dungeon path (Blind help against trash mobs).

2.
a/ like
Blind is helpful against trash mobs
b/ dislike
Cool down (basically a thief will alway do better for a lessen cost than a necro wasting an utility slot for this well)
Lack of utility (without trait to support this well, this is just kitteneless thin can)
Target limitation (it still only affect 5 target)

3. I’m affraid a revamp of wells would be needed instead of just a few change on WoD. This would lead us into a drastic change on Vampiric ritual (since Anet still balance around potential efficiency) minor change to all wells and probably a lot of change with other traits.

This could be controversial but here is what i’d do with the traits :
- DM V (Reaper’s protection) replace Curse IV (MoC)
- Curse IV (MoC) replace Curse VIII (Parasitic contagion) and gain resistance when a corruption skill is casted.
- Curse VIII (Parasitic contagion) replace BM VII (Vampiric ritual).
- BM VII (Vampiric ritual) lose it’s vampiric effect and replace DM V (Reaper’s protection). Rename Vampiric Ritual into Sturdy rituals . Instead of granting protection, grant a 10-20% damage reduction to allies standing in our well (this damage reduction does not stack with the number of well).

Now for the utility skills :
- WoS : damage reduced, apply only 1 vulnerability per pulse. Base CD reduced to 25 seconds.
- WoC : Do not do damage anymore, instead it will apply 2 bleed stacks per pulse on top of the corrupt effect.
- WoD : Base cool down reduced to 30 seconds.
- WoP and WoB feel balanced here. No change.

NB.: With this change I’m trying very hard to fit with Anet view of the necromancer while bringing most skills in a realm where we can use it without them being overpowered.

Sorry but you’re wrong. If you use “sick’em” your pet will attack your target at the moment you use it.
So it’s exactly how I descride it : a command like any other F command that’s overwritten when you use a new command.
If you use another command while your pet is in “protect me” mode, it will cancel the “protect me” effect, same for “guard” or “lick wound” or whatever command you use on your pet.

“Sic ’Em” buff removed from the Pet after using F1-F3.

I don’t think it’s a bug since it’s been like this since start. Ranger’s shout does not buff it’s pets, it’s another command like F1-F2-F3. When you use a new command the previous one disapear. (I’m not saying that it does not suck but that how it’s been for ages and probably how it’s intended to be)

… I’d really want to find something to defend this trait but I don’t like it either…

It’s been already a while that people complain about it’s ICD (perhaps from the start of the game), but as Blood Magic wasn’t popular, nobody cared about this trait. Maybe there is an ICD because they are afraid of the mythical Dodgemancer.

There is nothing intended.

After playing for almost 3 years, I can garantee you that you’re just screwed by the billion time cursed RNG. Beside, since the patch I got good days with ectos and obviously bad days. Nothing changed.

I don’t think tequatl is hard but I just think he got to much Health point at the moment. The glaring issue of the current tequatl is that he don’t fit the “play what you want” idea. Nothing more nothing less.

PS: i’d like to say that this thread shouldn’t be in the HoT sub forum

What amaze me is that it seem that there are people that think this game glitch work as intended…
To be honest I though they would have fixed this tuesday. Seem like OP bug for guard can stay a little longer than OP bug on some other classes. They need to get rid of this imbalanced thing.

Shiki.7148:

Rym.1469:

Very overpowered.

They better focus on fixing Parasitic Contagion in PvP, doing something about awful Death Magic Master Minor and just up the Bleeding & Poison applications on Grasping Dead especially. Oh, and make Dhuumfire worth looking at.

^The problem with Dhuumfire is their old stupid habit of refusing to split skills. First it was splitting them in PvP and PvE (which is a freaking MUST in my opinion, especially with them balancing around PvP most of the time completely ignoring usefulness in PvE), and now with refusing to let eg. Dhuumfire in Death Shroud work differenbtly than Dhuumfire in Reapers Shroud. Because current Dhuumfire might be really lame in DS, but could potentially be extremely strong in RS depending on how (and how much) they nerf burning.

For me, in the dumbfire case, the work have to be done on Life Blast . It’s here that the problem lie, Life Blast is simply a skill that’s too slow and because of it, DS will never be able to compete against RS (Puting aside the OP stability bonus of RS).

Siva Mira.3546:

You would need to get hit by all 3 Grenade to get that number and those hits need to crit and proc at a chance of 15%. The possibility of this amazing number can happen is nowhere near realistic.

For Grasping Dead, when traited you have a base Bleeding of 14sec + 20%(trait) + 20%(Sigil) + 45% (Rune) = 24.9sec

I knew there was a big mistake here.

Base bleeding is 7sec. Leading to 14sec with trait/sigil and runes.

does this skill suddenly received a buff? because it’s undocumented on patch note (or I may be blind) and it has never ever been an issue before…. Beside :
- Bleed is the weakest condition in game right now
- In 25 seconds there is no profession that can’t purge itself at least twice.

Taiyetos.3260:

To stay out of combat.

^
This

Bow are fine for open world PvE and they always were. Melee weapon are still what you want to play in dungeon because you melee everything in dungeon.

That was irony…

With the trait like they were, and the obvious emphasis on signet we were bound to exploit this to it’s full potential. With a tiny bit of testing they would have easily seen that this was extremly strong against the actual meta which rely heavily on boon.

This is why, seeing them going back on a mechanism that obviously fit a lot their definition of the necromancer is questionable. Is this the “boon corruption” that is at fault (despite being something they want to be one of the primal strenght of the necromancer) or is it the the boon granted by signet that make this trait to strong? I think it’s the fact that there are 2 passive trait that proc signets which make this effect to strong.

Shiki.7148:

Praise the lord, they did actually FIX not NERF it.

Release Notes”

Necromancer
Signets of Suffering: This trait will now only grant might when a signet is successfully cast.

Should we see that as a fact that the necromancer need boons and them admitting that corrupting boons ain’t a good form of support?