Guild Wars 2

Almost everyone here knows that this trait does absolutely nothing right now due to its multiplicative nature. However, if it were additive, certain skills (Locust Swarm, Life Transfer) would become flat-out broken. (6% life force per second per enemy in range for Locust, more for Transfer). There is no way we are meant to be able to hit 30% life force per second over 15 seconds.

So, since neither additive or multiplicative can result in a balanced trait, what would? Clearly life force gain should be part of it.

1-4. I have had this happen a lot to me recently, and It is ALWAYS theives for some reason. I know they aren’t stealthing because they do it before their downed stealth is off cooldown and they aren’t teleporting because I can see the whole range they could go.

For those who do not play Necromancers, the Gluttony Trait increases life force gain from skills by 5%. The skills that gain life force do not grant it in points, but rather percentages. Necrotic Grasp (Staff auto-attack) grants 3% life force on hit.

Now, the problem with the trait currently is that it applies multiplicatively instead of additively. With Gluttony, the staff auto-attack supplies 3.15% life force, which immediately gets rounded down to 3%. Even our highest skill for generating Life Force, Spectral Grasp, only grants 10.5%, which again gets rounded down to 10% (what it normally is).

So, we have a trait that does nothing.

If they were to make it an additive, however, now we have a balance problem on a couple of skills. Locust Swarm, for example, gains 1% life force per hit, and it has a 10 second duration in a small AoE around the necromancer for up to 5% life force per second if surrounded in melee. If Gluttony were additive, that would be a whopping 30% life force per second, which is definitely too quickly.

My suggestion is that the trait needs to be re-written completely. Making it supply 1% life force on any hit will make it very useful, but it still wouldn’t build up life force so rapidly as to make the necro always being able to be in death shroud.

TLDR: The trait doesn’t currently work, the most suggested change will break it, it needs to be completely re-written.

Decklan.7540:

Someone here said that 9 out of 10 times portal bomb wins.

Against some groups. Other groups wipe the Portal Bombers 9 times out of 10. Read everything instead of 5% of the post.

I can’t tell you how frustrated I’ve been recently with trying to do WvW. If I want to go in with any character but my main, I’m not able to supply siege weapons, despite the fact I have about 20 blueprints in my bank of various types. Why, when the methods of obtaining siege weapons, are not soulbound (Badges of Honor being Account Bound and gold being gold), are the blueprints themselves impossible to use with other characters?

Please consider making siege blueprints account bound. It really just makes a lot more sense.

Portal Bombing is not ruining the game. If a Mesmer is taking an army straight to your keep lord, it means they already either

A. Have taken down the gates, so your lord isn’t safe anyway

B. Escaped detection from players for long enough that the enemy reinforcements arrived outside the gate.

Seriously, sweeping for Mesmers is an extremely common task when a tower or keep is taken that if a portal-bomb gets used on you, it’s your own fault.

(I play Necro almost exclusively)

Charr also have access to Hidden Pistol, which is one of the few racial skills I would put on par with a standard class skill, just because it’s a dodge and projectile finisher on a 15 second cooldown (which is pretty quick). Necros have a definite lack of these two characteristics.

I never said it was a good idea, just that it was definitely possible.

To be clear, doubling Fear duration is quite possible for necros with 30 in Spite, 6 Runes of the Nightmare, and Master of Terror trait. (30+20+50=100)

Death Shroud was originally our downed state. Can you see your slkill timers, buffs, or debuffs when downed?

Vv W.7821:

Greiger.7092:

Again I’m just saying stealth stomping should just be removed because it’s inconsistent with the rest of the system, not because I think it’s cheap.

How exactly is it inconsistent? I’m no fan of the finishing move and I do like the downed state, but I see no difference between stealth finishing and stealth resing someone. You can use utilities and skills to both help your team members get back up and to keep the enemy from doing the same with their team.

1. There is a trait that generates a Shadow Sanctuary when rezzing. To have rezzing break stealth makes that trait totally useless.

2. Rezzing someone is not an attack.

3. Stomping someone is the single most influential attack you can do in combat.

Carrion armor has prioritized Condition Damage and secondary Power and Vitality. It’s a pretty safe set to go with that applies pretty well to any necro build.

How recently did you swap from staff to axe?

Kisses.1054:

They should have put in chain fearing in this game. e.g. a la spiritmaster in aion.
That’s always fun.
They put in an OP stealth/mobility/burst class, don’t see why they couldn’t put this (or massive nukes etc.. seem like they just hate casters)

They have massive nukes. They’re called Burst Skills and they belong to the Warrior…

Even without Foot in the Grave, Shroud-stomping/reviving is a good technique to learn as you aren’t actually taking damage while you’re in death shroud. Even without stability, you’re safer in death shroud than out of it.

Aexrael.5918:

Demonical.1039:

in Beta our DS was originally our Downed state, they changed that too what it is now and its design is flawed because original concept for it was our downed state, Now when our class is highly advertised as a minion spec you exspect that to be the thing that acctualy works with the class it doesnt ( they AI is broken you have to admit that sometimes they attack other times they grab popcorn and stare at a monster beating you too death ) Fear was good until they nerfed it too 1 sec ( only class who got their fears nerfed like this btw others have theirs still at 2-3 sec ) and add in the fact the huge amount of bugs people have a full right to be negative, When a key part of the class is not working properly its my theory its broken ( again i mentioned some parts of it work but Minions are a keypart so ill stick with my broken comment )

Death Shroud being a downed state during beta explains why it feels like such a half arsed implementation. It never lost the “downed state ability” feel.
I’m curious what the stable “class mechanic” was prior to Death Shroud then? Anyone know?

It was Death Shroud, actually. Necros didn’t have an active unique mechanic originally. They were supposed to make up for it with Death Shroud being a LOT stronger than other downed states, making you tons more likely to rally than any other profession. Admittedly, with this particular setup, necros were probably a little too hard to kill.

On the minion AI topic, I have issues with them only when I have at least three minions out at once It’s quite possible that the game’s AI for pets is only properly set up to handle 3 “summons” at a time. If I only have Bone Minions, they are very quick to respond. If I have Shadow Fiend, Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, and Fleshie all out, then I start hitting issues with the bone minions watching a show and the bone fiend running up beside me in melee. Shadow Fiend and Flesh Golem have very good “attack this fool” commands.

“best gear for PvP” is irrelevant. When you go into PvP, you can only use gear from a provided set. ANet has done an excellent job making sure your PvE progress and pvP stay completely separated.

As a Dragonbrand player, I think that we have a lot of folks that work second shift on our server as we have a very strong morning presence (US time) It’s not “night capping” so much, but it’s still a bit of an odd time of day.

At the very least, I wish there was some way in-game to tell what you had already killed for the achievement.

Death Shroud is also better than typical “invlunerability” in that it also absorbs condition damage. Invulnerability such as from Defy Pain does not, nor does Distortion.

Yukishiro.8792:

Even capped bleeds on a target is like 3k dps. From three players. That’s about what a single power glass cannon spec can put out. Again not that I particularly advise that in a dungeon, but 3 condition necros is going to be very low dps, especially on boss fights.

My bleeds alone (nobody else contributing) hit for 1.5k a second. Poison slips in another 250 and reduces healing. Add in the direct damage that’s another 250 and 1 necro alone is making up 2/3 of what you said is all that 3 will accomplish. I’m not even counting the other skills I’m running, that’s just auto-attack. I pop off Blood is Power and I hit 3k dps alone.

And I am no glass cannon.

Yukishiro.8792:

Your group dps must have been awful. Although admittedly that beats the average PUG where you have 4 Berserker heroes getting downed every 3 seconds any time anything touches them.

The actual DPS was pretty good, really, thanks to condition damage constantly ticking at pretty close to max power (enemies were always close to the bleed cap, only reaching it when Time Warp got dropped). Between that and the fact that enemies always had at least 4 conditions on them made Feast of Corruption hit pretty hard, the damage output was pretty good.

I just ran some fractals last night and I actually feel that Necros are VERY powerful in them. Between the (now fixed) Spectral Walk and the condition transferring/converting, my group had an extremely easy time save one player (who wasn’t listening to the group). This was a party of 3 necros (All Scepter/Dagger//Staff), a mesmer, and a Guardian.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

So, to answer the OP, (seems i have to type every single thing to evade polemical quotes ) don’t touch your legendary downgrading it to exotic, or you will lose the upcoming patch, making again the legendary weapon the best in game. Soon
The “it’s just a skin” is dead, we are just waiting the update
Do you agreee now, or you keep insist?

They will be equivalent to Ascended weapons (so Transmute again). They are still very much “just a skin”.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

I understand what you’re getting at but when you word it like this it doesn’t sound like too awful design. A condition trait in a condition tree encouraging you to use conditions.

While I agree, the fact that it doesn’t apply to , you know, conditions, makes it rather stupid.

If it amplified all damage, it would be a great trait. It doesn’t affect conditions, though.

I’m attempting to accomplish the Zraith’s Beacon jumping puzzle in Eternal Battlegrounds, but I’m having issues getting past the dark room. Necromancers have no skills that provide light and can’t wield torches or swords (so no go on the firey dragon skin). I can’t see where I’m supposed to go. Does anyone have a suggestion that would help out? No, “getting your mesmer buddy to portal you” is not an acceptable answer.

To be fair, they probably won’t, as it makes the blinding plague a superior choice in every way over the weakness/cripple plague. Larger movement reduction and cooldown increase on enemies? Yeah, complete obsoletion.

That said, they should instead change the weakness/cripple plague to inflict other status effects. Perhaps Weakness and 5 stacks of Vulnerability? The Necro alone would still always use Blind, but in a team battle, you have an actual choice.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

I guess you lost some updates on what devs said long ago, and geargrind we have now
Do you need a link maybe? I guess you can find it by yourself

The “just a skin” era is dead with lost shores update

You can transumte stats you need later, when legendaries status and text will be fixed and kept, it’s a work in progress

What I read on the Lost Shores update was that Legendary weapons would be having their stats buffed to equal those of Ascended weapons. Then there were some patch notes after the Lost Shores update that stated “Legendary weapons have been reverted to their original stats.” The reason for this is because the Ascended weapons are not out yet, so before the reversion, the Legendaries were actually the best in the game (for about 2 days).

This is not what ANet intended and they have reverted Legendaries to match exotics until the Ascended weapons are released, at which time the Legendaries will be boosted to match them.

I read everything regarding equipment and the Lost Shores update. Did you?

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Ye but now, he has to craft an antire ascended weapon with the stats he wants too, just to then retransmute it. Instead of have a free update
Not just, legendaries (maybe i misunderstood) should be a bit more powerful than ascended, we have tiers, and legendary tier is the higher , for what devs said, kept as the topend weapon.

Nope. Legendaries are only for the skin, not stats (though you can’t craft power/tough/vit normally, so I suppose there is that). This is well established in everything the Devs have said on the subject.

Legendaries are indeed the top tier. They are not the only tier with their strength, though.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Zoul.1087:

The buff is based on stats. You murdered the stats.

When ascended comes out transmute it with ascended. Bam stat buff you wanted.

Still inferior of what legendary would have been not ruining it

Umm, no. Legendary weapons are no better than Exotics currently and will be no better than what Ascended weapons will be. This is on purpose so that the only benefit you get from crafting a legendary is bragging rights and the satisfaction you have accomplished a hell of a lot. I have no idea where people keep getting this idea that Legendaries are mechanically superior.

TheWalkingDead.7298:

So you bought that account? Don’t see how you can be lvl 80 and not have played with your necro before.

During the Lost Shores event, everyone was scaled to level 80. It’s quite possible.

I need to get into Arah so I can get the armor/weapons I want, but Dragonbrand server is having issues mustering enough of a force to take out the Eye on the Promenade of the Gods, so Arah is no longer open. Fractals of the Mists is currently the only game in town, so anyone who want the stuff from Arah is screwed.

Frostfang looks awesome on necros.

For non-legendaries, there’s the Eye of Rogdort

There is plenty of reason to transmute legendaries. For example, I am working toward The Bifrost. On a Necrmonacer, you would want Apothecary stats rather than the standard. On a Mesmer, probably Carrion stats. Elementalist and Guardian? Standard stats are good.

Really, just minions attacking when I attack/am attacked would be a good enough change for me. Would definitely improve my QoL when I decide to pull them out.

Venom.6189:

(never made sense why DS only has only 4 abilities when it is clearly a revised down state)

The fact it was originally the necro downed state is exactly why it has 4 skills. That’s all anyone has when downed.

I do like the slow idea, but I think it would be best if it were something like a passive trait. Seems kinda fitting for a Death Magic trait (Rigor Mortis for the name?) something like a 5% slow to all enemies within a radius (450 is probably sufficient), increasing by 5% every few seconds. Probably would cap it at 20% slow, though. Still makes it difficult to escape from a necro. Perhaps it could replace Protection of the Horde, since even if you’re death magic specced, you aren’t necessarily going minions.

I really would like more people to respond to this with their thoughts. I know it’s a long read, but this is a forum. If you’re not here to read, why are you here?

Shadowcaster.9281:

Thanks for the reply dranor. I assume shroud stomping means death shroud pwnage then?

Also, is there a link you can show me as to what talents are taken in this build?

Thank you.

I typically choose Hemophillia or Weakening Shroud, Focused Rituals, and Lingering Curse in Curses, Greater Marks and Ritual of Protection in Death Magic, and Mark of Evasion and Ritual Mastery in Blood Magic.

If you decide to go with fewer wells (I usually run 2 or 3 total), I would suggest Master of Corruption or Banshee’s Wail (Warhorn 4 is a very nice 3 second AoE daze then) in Curses, Staff Mastery in Death Magic, and Transfusion in Blood Magic

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/necromancer#6|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2325|688|1235|20|1569|2331|0|20|2321|2320|0|0|0|0|0|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

“Shroud-stomping” refers to activating Death Shroud and the Finishing move simultaneously so you are in death shroud while performing the finishing move. Technically, any necro can do it, but the real reason to do so requires Foot in the Grave for 3 seconds of stability when entering death shroud (which in turn requires 30 trait points in Soul Reaping).

1. Fears Fear was originally going to be a “necromancer only” condition, but we are the worst with it out of all the professions that can cause it (namely due to pathetic durations). While we can get our downed state fear to last 4 seconds (30 spite, plus master of terror, plus 6 Runes of the Nightmare), that is our only downed state defense and we simply don’t have the quantity of fears to make that investment worthwhile.

2. Signets Only Plague Signet has a worthwhile active, but it’s buggy/misleading and its passive is non-functional in my experience (save once in Battle for Claw Island). All of our signets have recharges that are too long for their active effects and only Locust and Spite have decent passive effects.

3. Long casting times This one wouldn’t be an issue if we had access to stability, but we don’t, so necros are the MOST susceptible to CC out of any profession. It’s a serious problem when most of our ground-targetted effects are counterable by walking (not dodging) out of the area before the casting time completes.

Was a crab or tropical bird. I’ve hit 350k damage in one shot, though that was with an unexploded mortar shell in Straits of Devestation instead of a staff (my necro isn’t power focused anyway)

I’m a fan of the mechanics, actually. The necromancer is very subtle. It has a lot of zone-control options and has a whole “this has been fun, but now it’s time for you to die,” vibe that I get from playing them.

People don’t notice just how much damage a necromancer is actually putting out because it in in lots of little hits (which also mitigates the effectiveness of Aegis and Blind against them)

I would suggest trying a different trait build for PvP that I have had decent success with. 0/30/20/20/0 does a very good job at keeping you alive while dishing out pretty good damage. You are, however, incapable of shroud-stomping, which seems to be a necessary technique in PvP. The good news is that you can just drop a few auto-attacks on a downed target and watch them die anyway while you engage their teammate (using death shroud fear to knock them out of revive)

That said, I am a rather causal PvP player and have not done any tournaments, so my experience is not one to be taken as “word of god”

So you know, Greater Marks makes landing those staff attacks much, much easier (and lets you laugh at Guardians with their virtues).

Or, not, since a huge draw to GW2 is the fact there is no monthly fee, and what you’re proposing is a fee almost twice that of WoW.

Jaraxal.5028:

I have 20 points in Death Magic and selected Greater Marks (II). The only mark that changes its radius is Chillblains. This is true in the tool tip and the mark size on the ground. Is this by design or a known issue?

The mark placement icon only increases in size with Chillblains, but all of the marks are actually that size when placed.

wiazabi.2549:

@Drarnor Kunoram dont understand if speed runs arent reliable why would people do em. And if speedruns are what people wanna do then why shouldnt a necro be viable to do this?

Speed runs require glass cannons and a tank, for the most part. If the aggro gets pulled by the wrong person, the reliability drops very rapidly.

It’s not that necros shouldn’t be viable for speed runs, it’s that their kit makes it so they can’t be viable for them. Yes, this is a problem. No, I don’t think it’s as massive as people make it out to be.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

I think it’s to combat cooldown evasion… like…. try a warrior with rifle/rifle. If you had no weapon swap timer does that mean you can just spam:

volley – swap – volley – swap – volley – swap – etc?

That would deck. :P

Doesn’t work, actually. The cooldown is on the skill, not weapon. I’ve tried it with wielding a main-hand dagger in both weapon slots. Using a skill and swapping leaves that skill on cooldown, even in the new weapon set.

wiazabi.2549:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Eh, I was one of two necros on my first run through it. We did quite well (barring the cliffside fractal where half the party couldn’t make it past the wind…) Necros are not bad at it, but if people are wanting speed clears, we will get left behind.

I would say that makes us Bad. If a class requires alot more effort to just manage while other classes need half the effort and do better then something is horrible wrong.

Necros don’t require any effort above the other professions to manage/do well. The only thing is that necros are NOT speed-clearers. They clear reliably, not quickly. As such, when people want to do speed runs, they won’t pick up a necro.

Eh, I was one of two necros on my first run through it. We did quite well (barring the cliffside fractal where half the party couldn’t make it past the wind…) Necros are not bad at it, but if people are wanting speed clears, we will get left behind.

Really? I find Necros to be one of the strongest professions in WvW due to great zone control abilities. If nothing else, Plague is a shut-down for an opposing army. Wells and marks are fantastic for making the battlefield hostile to enemies. Spectral Wall is a perfect drop on a bridge or in a gate (whichever direction you’re running through)

What they lack, however, is effective ways of dealing with siege weaponry (other than just wading through the arrow carts with protection)

It’s no secret on these boards that the Necro is a bit…lacking, to say the least. We’re plagued with low damage, long cooldowns, buggy or useless traits/skills, and many, many other issues. Here are a couple of my ideas to help improve the necro.

First, though, I want to discuss the core of what a necromancer IS. By the game design, it is not someone who commands armies of the undead to do your bidding (it’s an option, but not the core idea, and currently not a good one). It IS, however, a controller. Necros have very significant area-control abilities and damage mitigation. We have a wealth of cripples and chills, ground targeted effects with good durations, poison, blindness, and weakness. For taking on large numbers of enemies and controlling the battle, necros are very close to the top. We have the ability to support allies (Mark of Blood, Putrid Mark, Well of Blood and Power) and turn enemy tactics against them (boon transformation, condition transferring/use).

TLDR: Necros are gods of controlling the battlefield and encounters.

Now, that said, we are still lacking in a few areas. Namely that for all of this control, we have very little hard CC. We have a single daze (Wail of Doom) and (in most circumstances) 2 fears (both very short duration). We have 1 directed immobilize (Dark Pact). That’s basically it. Sure, we have Charge on the Flesh Golem and the knockback on Lich Form, plus our downed state fears, but those are unreliable/tied to elite skill use. In addition, Fear was originally a necro-only condition, but necros are currently the worst with it out of any class that can cause it.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Shadow Fiend/Haunt:
Change the skill Haunt in particular. The new functionality would be to have the Shadow Fiend teleport behind your target and cause a short Fear instead of Blindness. This would help both as extra hard CC (since it’s another Fear) and helping necros prevent their targets from escaping them (as the Shadow Fiend would be behind them, scaring them back toward the necro).

The conditions caused by minions is already considered to be caused by the minions and not the necro controlling them (condition duration doesn’t increase with traits/runes/sigils, Chilling Darkness doesn’t apply), so whatever the Fear duration/traits are will not matter, making it easier to balance the duration. Note that it can’t really be used as an interrupt due to the delay on the Shadow Fiend. Plus, it’s more fitting that being “haunted” would scare someone.

2. Spectral Armor:
Currently, there is not much use to this skill. Spectral Walk gives the same life force-when-hit and stun breaker as this does, has a longer duration, more utility, and a shorter cooldown. Since they are both Spectral skills, they are both affected by the same traits, so you can’t even trait Spectral Armor to be superior. Necros have plenty of methods to get Protection, so it’s not even good in that regard.

However, if Spectral Armor caused foes that hit you to be Feared, now we have a very potent control/defense skill. Still wouldn’t be worth the 90 second cooldown with its current duration, but it would at least have a definite purpose. A 1 second fear would be sufficient for this, allowing noticeable defense while still allowing multiple hits per enemy to generate life force.

3. Signet of Spite:
Adding a 2-3 second daze/fear/stun would make this skill’s active worthwhile, even for the long cooldown. In addition, the whole “control” theme of a necro would be reinforced on an otherwise mediocre effect. Since no trait increases the duration of signet effects, this would be pretty nice.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Unforeseen mathematical interactions?