Guild Wars 2

chaosgrimm.5837:

… by making adjustments to your major traits and utility skills out of combat.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is this literally true? Can you change your major traits at any time?

I never even thought to try this, though I guess this could make sense since you’re not reallocating any trait points. I won’t be able jump into the game any time soon to try it. Can anyone confirm that it works this way?

It would really cause me to rethink what a build means if it’s true!

Xom.9264:

Look at it this way, if a necro takes a skilled player to do well. What would a skilled player do with a stronger class….

I think we need to be clear that there are two possibilities here:

1. Class A is stronger than Class B. That is, if you have the same amount of skill, time, equipment and play Class A, you will always dominate someone just like you playing Class B.

2. Class A is built in such a way that there is a much wider range between poor, average, and good players than Class B. In this case, Class B will dominate Class A in the forums. An average player will not be very powerful with Class A, but will be almost as powerful as the best on Class B.

You see this argument all the time. Point #1 is roughly equivalent to talking about the mean power of the class, while Point #2 is roughly equivalent to talking about the standard deviation.

Both points should be roughly balanced for each class or you’ll have problems.

Some would argue that Necros are a below-average class in the #1 meaning: it’s pretty much less powerful in all aspects. Some would argue that Necros have way too wide of a range of possibilities: if you’re really good it’s incredible but if you’re average it’s not so great. Some would argue that it’s an issue with one build option (minions) being pretty badly messed up and there are those who believe that the class is built around that option, so it’s a bad rap based on a particular build.

All of this takes place in a multi-dimensional comparison, because you then have to compare SPvP, tPvP, WvW, and PvE, and within each of those categories you can break it down into solo (roamer), group, and other styles of play.

Some try to say that Necros are more buggy than other professions. All it takes it reading other forums (except the fair-haired Warrior and Guardian forums) to see that’s not true at all. Some say that DS is a last-minute change that has seriously rough edges, and that’s true.

Unfortunately, the devs have not seen the wisdom of laying out a serious statement. If they said straight up, “Hey, there are some very deep issues with minion AI that for obscure reasons don’t affect pets the same way and we continue to hunt it down. And the DS interface will definitely be changed to match Plague/Lich: it’s a leftover of early beta where DS was your downed state. We also plan on doing a sweep of the Necro trait lines since that was also affected by the late-in-the-game change of DS from a downed state to a form. Please be patient.” Wow, that’d go a long way. Unfortunately, they’ve chasen to be mystical/humorour in a Zen-ish way, which flopped with the community and which came across as flippant and uncaring.

As I’ve said before: when I look at other forums (other than Warrior and Guardian) and play other professions, they all have problems, they all perceive that they’re worse off than most, they all feel that they don’t have realistic build options and are pigeonholed, they all feel that they’re buggy, etc. Not saying that we’re all basically in the same boat so we’re all okay! Fixes are needed, and several of them will be major efforts on ANet’s part.

I don’t believe that Necros are worse in the sense of Point #1. I think it can be argued that they have too large a range in the sense of Point #2. Fixing that would require both buffs (at the low end) and nerfs (at the high end), not just buffs. And as certain bugs are fixed (minion AI, for example) the power of many Necro players may shift dramatically, too.

Kardiamond.6952:

Spectral wall, such an underused skill. It offers a lot.

First you have a protection buff, each time you walk in it (it won’t stack, you only get the protection buff if you don’t have it already).

Even better, the Protection lasts 5 seconds and the wall lasts 9 seconds, so if you stand near the wall you have a 4-second window to pick up another Protection once the first one runs out. I’ve added it to my bar and am still learning to use it well.

+1. Heck +100. Very good, very well-informed summary!

The only thing I’d add is that I really think they need to turn a few more skills into finishers. Perhaps two more blasts, one projectile (perhaps Scepter #1), and one leap. It seems like we have the fewest finishers of any class, though we have a good number of fields. (I don’t think that minions as blast finishers are really useful and they don’t make up for our overall lack.)

Also, it’s been explained to me that the reason Death Shroud’s UI looks so weird is that it was originally the Necro Downed State. (The idea is that we didn’t have a class mechanic, but we were much stronger in our downed state than other professions.) This helps to explain the hideously uninformative UI and why we can’t see boons, conditions, and cooldowns, since none of this matters while downed. But it needs to work just like Plague and Lich in order to be truly useful. (If for some odd reason AN thinks DS is soooo powerful that they need to handicap it with a bad UI so we don’t overuse it, that’s a fundamental mistake.)

I’d emphasize your point that minion AI really, really needs a fix. That issue is in the top three or four for the class.

In terms of changing Staff #1 to a bounce instead of pierce, I’m personally fine with with pierce… As long as it continues to have the side-effect of traveling farther than its “max range”. I can fire — though it won’t auto-fire — out to 1500, which is nice, and I imagine that it works this way to give you some pierce possibility even at max range.

One small bug that I feel knocks Spectral Walk down a notch is that often times your green outline remains behind as a green trail, pointing directly to where you will recall if you use Spectral Recall. Seems like that would make it a lot less useful in PvP.

Anshard.3489:

We are a minion class, but are minions are crap.

Please go to ANet’s web page and actually read about the Necromancer. Minions are one sub-part of the second part of a two-part description. Of the five Necro videos on the page, only one even shows minions. We’re not “a minion class”. We are a class that has minions and we can make a heavily-minion-based build. Minions have serious AI problems that make this build a pain.

This is definitely worth mentioning and absolutely must be fixed by ANet. But it doesn’t break the class.

Anshard.3489:

Actually, you are partially right. Classes that have significant issues are flooded with those issues. Classes that do not have significant issues are more often dominated by strategy discussions. One can easily see this is true by hopping over to, say, the thief forums and comparing it to the Necro forums.

Um, no I read Elementalist, Thief, Mesmer, and Necromancer forums on a regular basis, since I enjoy all four professions. They are all full of complaints about being pigeonholed into a single viable build, that entire traitlines suck because either: a) the underlying mechanism sucks, or b) the traitlines are organized incorrectly.

The Necro forums have folks who are so emotionally attached to their Necro that they rant and rave and claim that all our traits suck, all our skills are broken, ANet is purposely holding the class back, no other classes have the problems we have, blah blah blah.

Anshard.3489:

Players should go onto the forums and speak their mind if they think the class is bunk. If the devs don’t respond, that is not the players fault and it is not up to the players to then ‘please shut up’.

Players who have reasonable arguments should make them. Players who claim the class is broken simply discourage devs from digging through the crap to find the useful comments and discourage reasonable non-Necros from trying Necros or even allowing them into parties. If you read through this thread, you’ll see examples of how this over-hyped over-negative emo stuff can so brand a class as to ruin it forever.

Anshard.3489:

If there is one truth to be taken out of EVERYONE speaking here is that the Necro forums are extremely negative about the state of the class. It is a shame that the response to this is to tell people to shut up, instead of addressing the issues with the class.

You’re saying that people are being told to shut up. What many of us are trying to say in this thread is that over-the-top, unqualified “We’re broken!!!!! SUXORS!!!” is wrong and destructive to the class. If you actually have experience with multiple professions and reasoned arguments, make them.

If you can’t make a reasoned and informed argument, then, well, shut up you’re just using up everyone else’s oxygen.

Black Regent.5897:

Now compare this to a warrior who just has to be in your general vicinity to AoE you in the face with his greatsword. It’s an example of the level of detailed attention you have to pay while playing necro that you don’t have to pay while playing several other classes like Warrior and Guardian.

Warriors and Guardians are generally understood to be the two classes in the best shape in the game, in all aspects of the game, so I’m not sure that’s exactly a fair comparison. I’m not sure that any of the other 6 classes measure up well when compared to Warriors and Guardians. Not to mention that they’re both melee classes, which will have almost entirely point-blank (character-centered) AoE as opposed to a caster class which will tend to have more ranged AoE combined with some point-blank AoE.

When I think of my Elementalist’s AoE, it seems to me that there are more cast-time skills while the Necro’s Marks are all instant-cast. I could be wrong in that recollection, but to be honest, if a non-Mark AoE misses your target, it’s simply going to waste itself on empty space but if a Mark misses your target it will at least linger on the ground and force some maneuvering.

Black Regent.5897:

Marking in PvE is a no-brainer because the AI is dumb as a box of rocks. But against remotely competent players it’s a whole other story.

If you’re comparing (ground-targeted) Mark AoE against non-ground-targeted AoE, Marks lose. But then so would the ground-targeted AoE skills of other casters. Target-centered AoE or caster-centered AoE are more fire-n-forget, of course, and maybe that’s what you’re talking about, but then again I’m not sure that Necros have more of that than other casters.

Black Regent.5897:

Obviously this all applies to skirmish-type pvp encounters.

1. Targeting marks out in the open is ridiculously hard against a remotely competent player. Between trying to avoid their often big attacks and target a mark for them to walk into (even wasting points on that increased area and unblockable mark trait) you have to have rubber fingers to pull it off consistently.

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean it’s hard to drop a Mark at all while moving, or to try to anticipate where someone’s going and drop it there?

I think Marks are very flexible: target anywhere, including behind you, instant cast, instant hit, and traited the are large and unblockable. It’s just an added bonus that they can be pre-placed like a trap.

I’ll admit I’m not much of a PvP’er, though I do use a multi-button mouse and a Logitech G13 pad, which may help avoid “rubber fingers”.

sorrow.2364:

You’re free to believe that Necros are fine, but I don’t think you would think so if you tried other professions after you have sticked on Necro for a considerable amount of time.

Necros are comparable. And you have to qualify what you mean: PvE (solo, groups, dungeons, etc), sPvP, WvW (seiges, roaming, camps, etc), etc.

In fact, my experience is the opposite of yours: having read the over-the-top complaining in this forum, I started with a Mesmer, got him to around 20 and was bored, so tried an Engineer, got him to mid-20’s and wasn’t bored but wanted to try something else, tried an Elementalist and loved him, got him to almost 60 and said, “Hmmm, there are some reasonable voices on the Necro forums, and I’ve seen that Engineers, Elementalists, and Thieves all complain about being pigeonholed, only having a single spec that is viable (usually meaning in PvP), etc., so I think I will try a Necro.”

So I tried the Necro and have LOVED it. Way more toughness than an Elementalist. Way more fun than a Thief. In fact, I just deleted my Mesmer and started a Guardian to see how the other half lives. (I also have a Thief that I will eventually take to 80, along with my ELementalist and Necro. Not sure about the Engineer, not sure about the Guardian. Sure it won’t be a Mesmer. Probably not a Warrior or Ranger.)

Anyhow, in PvE the Necro is most certainly comparable to any other profession. With the exception that Guardians and Warriors are better-constructed than any of the other professions. I don’t PvP much, so I can’t say, but I have seen discussions by reasonable folks in the Necro community who do well. And a good PvP’er actually knows the other professions very well, since they need to get in their heads and anticipate what they’re going to do.

So in PvE, Warriors/Guardians have fewer issues and a more coherent design. In PvP, Warriors, Guardians, and Thieves are probably overpowered. (Or are proper-powered, and the other professions are underpowered.)

Yes, Necros perhaps have the most rough edges, since fairly substantial profession mechanic changes were made as late as Beta.

sorrow.2364:

The AoE condition removals of Necros are Putrid Mark and Well of Power (excluding the Lich skill).
Well of Power is quite worthless because of the high recharge and just one condition cleaned per pulse x5 pulses, so the only good condition cleaning skill is Putrid Mark but, when comparing that skill to Cleansing Wave, Cleansing Water and Wave of elementalist, you see that overall Necro isn’t that much over the other professions when talking about AoE conditions cleaning.

My point was that we not only cleanse, but also transfer or reverse. It’s sort of like condition Judo: leveraging the power of others. If a Guardian comes at you with a boatload of boons, you can not just strip them (Null Field), but also turn then into conditions (Well of Corruption). Of course, the way in which this is done (cooldowns, how large is the area of effect, is it targeted, etc) matters. But if boons—>curses works well, it’s enormously powerful: your target(s) may have used up the time, cooldowns, and consumables of multiple players to achieve their boons and you drop your shoulder, sweep your leg, and flip them.

At least that’s the theory. I WvW for fun, and in WvW and the PvE I do, there just aren’t many boons on enemies to flip.

sorrow.2364:

Swiftness is nothing when you have almost no mobility skills like Ride the Lightning, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Rush etc.
Those skills make a roamer a real roamer coupled with, of course, the ability to quicky burst down targets.
Necros haven’t them both.

This is all I asked for: roaming requires Leap/Teleport abilities and burst damage. Clarification.

I would say that doing long-range travel requires perma-swiftness and Leap/Teleport abilities don’t add up to swiftness once you average in the cooldowns. PvP isn’t large-scale enough to require long-range travel, and WvW isn’t organized enough that it’s a strategic edge, so I’d agree that swiftness isn’t just as good as a Leap/Teleport.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about this and I would say that if Necromancers are to be what I’ve heard AN wants them to be (“hard to kill, and hard to get away from”), we need a new condition in the game, called Terror. Terror would provide a brief Fear, but would be distinguished from Fear by also disabling leaps, teleports, and stealth for N seconds. Or it could be an aura with short range and some kind of mechanism to prevent it from trapping melee for too long.

That way, you really have to make a unique decision of “do I really want to get into this?” when you are looking at ambushing a Necro or you see a Necro chasing you. You can choose to run and the Necro can’t stop you, but if you do engage, you will find it very hard to disengage.

Panhauramix.2784:

I think the effective range of Spectral wall is larger than it appears, so if you cast it too close, you’re already standing in it and not going through it like they want you to.

Maybe it should also tick, say 3 times in 9 seconds, so that if you stood in it you could still get the buff/debuff.

I actually hate all wall-type effects because their targeting line is so fidgety when near you. I’d prefer if they simply dropped at your feed, aligned across your character (long-ways aligning with your shoulders/feet), and if you don’t move you are considered to be “inside” of it so you could Finish easily, but have it trigger when you leave it so running straight forward would give you the boon.

Thanks for more input! Having experimented with the Flesh Golem, I really do think that there are several issues, some of which affect all minions — though melee most severely — and some that are particular to each minion.

For example, the Flesh Golem charges and quite often acts “confused” after that. It will act like it doesn’t see the target it just knocked down, even seeming to try to square up and face the same way as the Necro, as if it were out of combat and next to the Necro. Perhaps this is a bug with charging pets/minions: mobs that knock down definitely pause and don’t attack while you’re down, so perhaps the Flesh Golem is supposed to act similarly. Problem is that mobs that knock down will none-the-less face you and stand next to you until you get up, while the Flesh Golem may actually face away from you and stand where it ended its charge.

It’s getting a little discouraging.

Sheobix.8796:

as for crappy elites, we have two of the best, actually. Plague form – 2x HP and toughness, and button mashing for weakness/blindness/bleeding? mmmm yum.
Lich form? twice the offensive stats? knockdown, spawn 5 jagged horrors, autoattack their HP to nothing? yeah.

lets look at the thief…
Daggerstorm – stupid short stability, melee can walk next to you and clobber you in seconds.

Thieve’s guild – kill your thieves in moments. what a joke?

I do agree that Plague (defensive) and Lich (offensive) are worth getting. But I disagree that Thieves’ Daggerstorm and Thieve’s Guild suck, I think they’re on par with ours. (Daggerstorm combined with healing traits is pretty impressive.) If you want to compare a worthless 30-point Elite, you need go no farther than Elementalist Tornado.

Tornado has the low-interest-level of Plague (choose one of three modes and that’s all you can do), but without sustainability, since it can blow back opponents farther than its effect radius. I guess it has its uses in constrained, high places and perhaps as a near-suicide move in a zerg, but it’s certainly not as useful as Plague, Lich, Daggerstorm, Thieves’ Guild, (Greater) Elemental, or most any Elite I can think of.

sorrow.2364:

Conditions -> Thieves do it better (while retaining better survivability and condition cleansing through stealth). Many other professions like Ranger, Warrior, Mesmer, Engineer and Elementalist (practically everything except Guardians) are capable of stacking bleeding better.

You’re talking only about stacking your own conditions, with a touch of removing your own conditions, NOT conditions as a whole. Offensively, a Necro can AoE turn boons into conditions, and a Necro can take conditions on a single target — perhaps stacked by Ranger, Warrior, Mesmer, Engineers, or Elementalists — and spread them to multiple targets. Defensively, a Necro can not only AoE cleanse conditions, but actually go one better and turn them into boons.

Your view of conditions is rather narrow. I’ll admit that in my play experience, I have not done much of this condition/boon manipulation and transfer, but if you’re going to try to paint the picture that Necros suck at conditions, you’ve got to address conditions as a whole.

sorrow.2364:

Roamer -> Just lol. Everything is a better roamer than a Necro, probably also a chicken.

It’d be helpful if you specified what is key to a roamer, in your opinion? Speed, mobility, burst? (Obviously, if it’s speed, the Necro can be near perma-swifted, so I guess you’re not talking speed. Still, without some specifics, your statement is content-free.)

Mammoth.1975:

Near permanent protection:
4 wells, 30 in death magic, ritual of protection, ritual mastery, 2 earth/4 grove or 2 grove/4 earth, last gasp.

Is there room for Spectral Wall? That alone can give — if you are able to stay near your wall and are able to move — 25% protection uptime. Wall gives 5 sec protection when you go through it, but stays up for 9 seconds, so you can move through it a second time after the first protection has dropped, gaining a second 5 seconds. With a 40-second cooldown. Enemy vulnerability does stack, so running through it twice gives them a 20-stack of vulnerability. And it’s an Ethereal Field, so Putrid Mark would give Chaos Armor. (We need a Leap Finisher and another Blast Finisher!)

Abigor.4952:

Good point, spectral armor is somewhere in between wall and walk, of course you can argue that with spectral wall you need to cast it and then run through it, but still, either longer protection for armor needed (Now 6s armor, 5s wall).

If you watch your timers, you can get more than 5s from wall. Wall is up for 9 seconds, and its protection lasts for 5. So when the first protection ends, run through the wall again and get 5 more seconds.

(Before the latest patch, I believe you could run back and forth and stack protection duration, which was a bit of an exploit and they removed it. If an enemy, however runs back and forth through it, their vulnerability does stack. As far as I remember.)

So that’s actually 10 seconds of protection every 40 seconds. (If you can move, of course.)

Bichpwner.4012:

Minion attack being bound to 1 or something similar to ranger pet commands would solve the entire issue, yes.

If you mean that every time you pressed 1 for your own primary attack, the minion would be sic’d on the target, that’d help. A separate Attack button, though, wouldn’t help much.

Exhibit A is the Flesh Golem. You can force him to attack with his Charge, and 2 seconds after he’s knocked the target down, he’s acting like he thinks he’s: a) out of combat, b) next to his master, shuffling and turning to align with his master in an “I’m your minion” slot. You can’t have him immediately charge again because of the cool down, but even if you could hit an attack button you might have to do it a LOT.

Drakent.9605:

you know is sad that the community is able to find the problem and solution better then the ppl who are actually getting pay to do this and what makes it worst is that they try to fix game issue by doing the exact opposite of what the community tells them.

Yes and no. It depends on how the bug arises. If it’s as simple as minions never attack flying creatures, that’s straightforward to track down. If it depends on what other players are nearby, which traits you have, the terrain, the type of mob (or if it’s another player), the load on the server, and network lag, it’d be very hard for the devs to duplicate this.

It could well be that the devs have a handle on the issue, but it’s deeply-ingrained in their code and fixing minions breaks NPCs, unless they essentially do “heart surgery”. Development like this spans multiple teams and areas of specialization, and so it can take a while to plan, fix, and test it.

Not saying that’s the case. If it is, and if AN has decided to keep their mouths shut instead of saying, “Hey, we’ve identified minion AI problems and it’s a hard, hard fix and unfortunately they’ll remain broken for a couple more patches” that’d be WAY better and would earn them goodwill. (Yes, some ignorant folks would scorn them for that, but people who understand large-scale programming projects and reasonable folks would be glad to know that they see it as an issue, they’ve done work and continue to do work to fix it, and it will be fixed."

Again, all speculation on my part.

In another thread Bichpwner.4012 said:

After hundreds of hours on the necro, I’ve seen minions can bug out and refuse to attack in absolutely any situation. I’ve had multiple minute long 1v1 fights in WvW where minions did not attack once, this despite using their respective skills. There is something in their code that bugs them out, it’s just so inconsistent that it’s really hard to nail down a particular scenario which will trigger the bug 100% and even when they haven’t attacked for some time, they may randomly return to ‘normal’ and fight again.
It’s all well and good to be looking for a way to fix their AI but in the mean time, with such a simply and obvious fix, it’s pretty annoying we’re still left to deal with this.

So I’m not a big minion fan, but I’d like to see them work well. In the interest of experimentation, I got the Flesh Golem since that seems to be strong and regen health OOC. And…

Yeah, he’s pretty stupid. It really feels like that when he charges he loses track of where he is. At times, it looks like he thinks he’s beside me and out of combat. Puzzling thing is, he seems to have no trouble following me. Going to do some experiments with Elementalist summons to see if that yields any clues.

XiL.4318:

Also the artificial parameter I was eluding to would have to do with limiting minion pathing, range, and collisions to make them hold their priority formation…remain with the player…avoid teleporting behaviors…etc; and likely keep them from performing quite so well, or as quickly as NPCs.

Um, no. The discussion was not about minions versus independent NPCs. It was about minions versus other professions’ summons/illusions/pets, which seem to work better than minions. You said that it was because minions must have some “artificial parameter”, which sounds like some useless, arbitrary parameter that minions have that pets don’t. You said this was obvious because surely all minions/illusions/pets would share the same underlying code and since there is an apparent difference in reliability, it must be because minions have an “artificial parameter”.

Now that you say you mean “additional, minion-specific parameter”, it makes some sense, but just talking about an “artificial parameter” is not very helpful.

XiL.4318:

Could you imagine if each necro minion behaved fully like an NPC of their class type? Farmers wouldn’t need bots anymore. Just 1 afk Minion Master Necro. Which I just assumed was obvious.

So yes. I think you are silly.

Again, you’re imprecise and unclear. You may be referring to the difference between minions and independent NPCs, but that was never the issue. (Yes, at one point you mentioned that the minions of NPCs don’t seem to have the issues that the minions of players do, but that’s yet another issue.) The issue has always been the apparent reliability difference between Necro Minions and other professions Pets/Summons/Illusions.

You may also be referring to me saying that NPC minions may actually be independent NPCs. That’s an implementation detail and it’s completely possible that, for various reasons, the minions of NPCs are in fact independent NPCs that are simply labeled/skinned to appear to be minions. There’s no requirement that player minion code be reused by NPC minions.

hackks.3687:

In fact, every bouncing attack I can think of performs the same way, which is why I posted about Reapers touch, because it wasn’t working anything like the other skills and I thought I had overlooked something or just didn’t understand the tool tip correctly.

The Mesmer Staff bounce does not work that way: it bounces around. The Necro Dagger #4 also bounces around. Not sure if they all have issues with missing, etc, but there are several bouncing attacks in the game that don’t work like Vapor Blade.

Vapor blade “bounces” at the end of its range, the others bounce from target to target by a straight line.

hackks.3687:

That’s some pretty weak design IMO. The way I assumed the skill would work (and I really feel that it should work this way) is that the scythe is fired and bounces between me and and my opponent granting regeneration/vulnerability to any ally/opponent in between me and my target.

I think that’s pretty much how the Elementalist skill works that makes that whirling sound and goes out then bounces back adding weakness and doing damage. Can’t remember the name, but for Elementalists it’s a single circular projectile that rolls, and some mobs can fire the same thing in a fan of 4 or 5.

Seems like the mechanism is there for it to work somewhat like you describe. (I think the Elementalist skill actually goes to a fixed distance and then bounces back so it will overshoot your initial target, but basically what you’re describing.)

Is the way the scythe works currently the same as the Mesmer staff bounce? Or is the Mesmer staff bounce more reliable? (It always seemed reliable to me, but it’s been a while.)

kidbs.8920:

Curring.9752:

Personally I don’t think it’s an exploit, if it is then every class can exploit it. Stealth Stomp, Elxir S Stomp, Mist form Stomp ect. So if they do take this away from one class they must do it for all of the classes.

Exactly. Every thief I fight uses pops a stealth to finish their stomp (mesmers can do this as well). Warriors use frenzy for a quick stomp or pop some other stability buff. This isn’t an exploit at all.

“Exploit” can mean different things. It can mean something that’s unintended that gives an undue advantage. DS Stomp isn’t that. It can mean something that’s unintended and the devs hate it so much they’ll suspend you. DS Stomp isn’t that.

But it can also be synonymous with “unintended” or “favorable bug”, and I’m pretty sure DS Stomp does fall in that category. The way it works is just too quirky, too bug-like.

Now it may be that the devs actually even like how it works. That they realize DS has a lot of rough edges and this fortuitous bug makes it slightly better. But that doesn’t mean it won’t disappear tomorrow when some programmer at AN fixes some other issue that’s also caused by this bug.

The OP isn’t asking for whether it’s morally a good idea, or whether it’s helpful to Necros. He’s asking is it likely to go away after he’s ingrained it deeply in his playstyle.

Vexor.3640:

A full pet build also takes ALL of our utility slots. That is a pretty steep cost. It is true that mesmers have Phantasm utility skills but they are widely ignored, especially in regards to pvp situations.

You don’t need to go to the extreme to surpass the Pet Profession, Ranger. Heck, the Flesh Golem (Elite slot) is already as good as a pet: it regens and can be commanded to attack. You only need to use one more utility slot to have twice as many as a Ranger, leaving two free slots… IF Minions are basically as good as pets.

The fact that you could fill your utility slots with Minion-like Pets is just adding insult to injury.

Vexor.3640:

I would rather jagged horrors just flat out not decay. 9/10 they’ve decayed and died before I even get to the next fight.

I’ve never heard a Necro that likes JH. I’ve seen and mentioned three or four changes in other threads. JHs are a totally different kind of thing which isn’t summon, minion, illusion, or pet. And it doesn’t really work very well.

Qareens.5362:

1. It`s wrong . i have thief and mesmer both at level 80 with more than 100 h each and never had a problem with the summoning/phantasm ever . the theif tank pet or summon how do you want to call it , it`s very effective and take the aggro from u all the time and the dps one it`s just awesome . the phantasms are really good too and it helps to mitigate some damage all the time . my 2 cents
with the rest i agree !

The key is that YOU have never had a problem. I’ve never had a problem with a minion on my Necro but that definitely doesn’t prove there aren’t problems. I have watched youtube videos where thief summons stood around, and I’ve read Mesmer accounts of certain Phantasms not attacking properly. (Not an issue of summoning, which is not a problem with Necros, either, but rather an issue of not acting properly.)

I also have a Thief and Mesmer while I haven’t used Thief summons, I can say I’ve never noticed problems with Mesmer Illusions or Phantasms not acting. Then again, I assume they’re acting and never really have time to watch them carefully and see that iBerserker really is whirling every N seconds.

I’ll admit that I just did a quick search of the Mesmer forums and couldn’t find the problem I remember reading about. Though I did find a report about ranged Phantasms having to be within half of their range before attacking (running from their actual range halfway to the target before attacking), which is similar. Gotta run, but I’ll research it more later.

Xym.9417:

Don’t mess with my cheer squad.

I feel much more important and the ego boost is greatly enhanced when my personal audience only decides to help once I shown them for 10-15 seconds that this truly is a worthy fight.

How about if they fix the problem, but then allow you to trait for it? Call the trait, “Admiring Minions: Your Minions will not enter combat for 2 + 0.1 * Level seconds after you do, but will instead emote randomly. You receive the Admired boon, which makes you feel proud of yourself for 20 seconds or until out of combat.”

hackks.3687:

It’s just a bug that happens to have no effect on balance, and makes life a little easier on Necros. It’s not like it’s 100% reliable either and doesn’t work at all with reviving.

I think this is 100% correct. Unfortunately, the people who work on balance are not the people that work on bugs. And any feature that’s due to a bug may disappear when that bug is fixed for totally unrelated reasons.

If AN closes other professions out of actions during Stomp, or if AN makes it so that DS Stomp doesn’t require tricky timing, I’d feel reassured. Unless that happens, it’s a (non-bannable) exploit that may disappear at any time, even in a stealth patch.

(My theory is that DS Stomp works because of delays in client-server communication and how the server side handles two actions that occur within the lag-allowance window. Some programmer at AN could get an award for cutting the latency in half and coming up with a better event queue that makes the game better in a dozen ways… oh, and unnoticed to the programming team also breaks DS Stomp.)

PinCushion.7390:

If I had to give it a anthropomorphic description, I’d say he looks like he’s thinking about how to get back to combat (lots of walking starts and stops), but he’s just very very stupid.

Hmmm… You mentioned elevation changes and I could see a minion that charges over terrain that would require jumping to return might get stuck. They might apparently “decide to join the fight” when the target moves enough that a clear path is available.

Unless AN actually knows what the bug is and they haven’t fixed it because it’s very hard to fix, I really, really think they need to add a console command like “/petstatus” that displays something like: “Your Flesh Worm is bored (92% HP). Your Bone Minion is attacking a Centaur Basher (25% HP). Your Jagged Horror is looking for something to attack (10%HP). Your Flesh Golem can’t reach a Centaur Archer (92% HP).”

Otherwise, we’re forced to be amateur Minion Psychologists. Maybe that kind of console detail would be too useful for bots though.

PinCushion.7390:

… my Flesh Golem, despite being summoned in combat and immediately charge/KD to the enemy, to charge through the enemy (knocking it down) and never come back. He’ll just wander around on the far side of the field where his charge ended.

Does the Flesh Golem ever face the original enemy, or does it wander while facing away, as if it couldn’t see the enemy that was suddenly behind it?

Do people see any indication that minions have a a “vision cone” and only sense things in front of them? Perhaps some dev thought it a good idea for PvP or something strange?

(This could tie back into Drarnor Kunoram’s observation that minions seem to try to avoid passing through or co-locating with other minions: perhaps jostling minions tend to face “the wrong way” if facing matters.)

PinCushion.7390:

Yeah, I agree that it’s fair. My question is if it’s an exploit. I don’t want to learn a playstyle that will inevitably be patched out of existence.

When I see the word “exploit” in an MMO, I think of it in two senses.

First is an action that the devs can suspend/ban you for doing. Obviously DS Stomp/Rez isn’t that kind of exploit since no one’s being banned or suspended.

Second is an action or strategy that’s unintended by the devs and viewed by them as either working around something that they don’t want you to do, or giving you an unfair advantage over other players. Depending on the complaint level and how severely it offends the devs sensibilities, they may prioritize it or not.

I’d say that DS Stomp/Rez is fairly obviously a low-priority exploit of the second type. Perhaps they’re looking the other way because it’s very difficult to fix (probably involving server latencies and server-client communications). Perhaps they realize that the DS mechanism was changed in late beta and is unpolished and so could use a bit if a boost for now, but they’ll fix the problem when they polish DS at some later date.

Why would I say that? The way it’s invoked: you have to hit two keys within a fraction of a second of each other, and the order you hit them in matters. That screams “bug” to me as a software developer.

In fact, some people program macros on their controller to do it, and that’s actually an exploit of the first type and you can be suspended/banned for doing that. (It’s just very hard to prove you did it.) AN has stated that they don’t mind controllers being used or even macros that do a single action, but macros that do multiple actions are illegal. (They don’t provide a programmable UI, unlike WoW, at least in part to prevent this.)

I think minions not healing in combat is AN’s attempt at a middle road between Summons (Elementalist’s Elementals, for example) and Pets (Ranger’s pets).

Historically and lore-wise, Minions are involuntary servants of a master who were not loyal to the master and the master had on loyalty to the Minion. Minions are simply disposable pawns. Pets, however, have mutual relationships and loyalties with their masters. A game can’t be slave to lore or “real-world” or history, but that’s the background.

Summons are time-based summons where you basically have one (maybe two) and they die after N seconds. You have no control over them or their skills.

Pets last indefinitely, unless they’re literally overwhelmed and killed, and you have much greater control over their actions and skills.

Minions and Illusions are somewhere in the middle between Summons and Pets. Illusions are not summons since they’re not time-limited, but like summons you can’t control them. The key difference is that they’re tied to a particular target and only ever directly attack that target, and if the target dies the Illusion goes away.

Minions can last indefinitely and some of them provide some skill control to the Necro. But they don’t regen, so if they’re actually used in combat they will eventually die. I’d actually classify the the Flesh Golem Elite as a pet, since it regens and has a skill that’s controllable by the Necro (and that can force it to attack a target).

If all Minions regen’d, they’d be almost the same as a pet, and considering a Necro can have a handful of them out, I’d say a lot of Rangers would be unhappy that the masters of pets can only have one out while these Necro guys can have 4 or 5 no problem.

In my mind, AN has to maintain the Summons/Minion/Illusion/Pet distinction so if AN closed the Minion-Pet gap with Minions regening, they’d have to open it up again by making Minions weaker in some sense (or restricting how many we could have at one time, or something like that).

The exception is that our Elite is in fact pet-like, though of course we can only have one of them at a time.

Palmski.6419:

I was doing some map completion stuff in Lornar’s Pass and it happened all over the zone as far as I could tell although I primarily noticed it in the Dredge tunnels where I was in a lot of combat in a short space of time.

Good information. Sorry to ask so many questions, but if you could talk about the 30-40% again: was it a) 30-40% of engagements they did not enter combat quickly or at all during that particular engagement, or b) 30-40% of engagements would throw them into a state where they wouldn’t enter combat then or in following engagements until you did something to break them out of it.

That is, are they non-participating in one fight, then the next fight they’re fine, or are they participants up until some particular fight after which they won’t participate in future fights until you do something to kick their butt.

In terms of kicking their butt, I’ve heard mention of commanding minions that can be commanded to take offensive actions, and also dragging minions until they are actually damaged. Evidently, destroying minions that can be destroyed then resummoning them would also work, since I’ve seen multiple mentions that minions that are summond in combat don’t seem to glitch.

Just wanted to thank the thread participants for proposing solutions and gathering data, rather than just complaining. Perhaps I’m naive, but I think it’s possible that the Necro community could find or propose something that AN says, “Hey, let’s do it.”

PLEASE KEEP POSTING your observations and suggestions. They can make our lives easier and perhaps help AN do something more quickly. (At a minimum, if we can document several workarounds, we could ease some Necro’s pain quickly and not dependent on AN doing something quickly.)

The example that comes to mind is the Bugs list and the issue (not a bug) that Moa Morph while you were in DS would keep your Life Force ticking down even though you got no benefit. It was noted as an issue, and AN acted on it and now DS is removed if you are Moa Morphed. Someone noticed a “gottcha” and essentially suggested a straightforward fix and it was done.

Aexrael.5918:

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?

Yeah, I’d been comparing it to the Swimming On Top Of Water GUI, but once he mentioned this, it made sense that it’s essentially a Downed GUI. Considering we have two other Forms that accomplish basically the same thing but do it in a standard, informative manner, I’d hope they could eventually make DS look like Plague and Lich.

From what I gather, it’s unintended by AN. On the other hand, Elementalists can stomp in Mist Form or even with Invulnerability (Earth Focus skill I believe), so it doesn’t really seem unfair until those kinds of loopholes are closed.

PinCushion.7390:

I thought necro was fine as a durable, attrition class…

Then I read the Thief trait lines.

[EDITED]

Well, I always bring up Warriors and Guardians as the exceptional professions because they seem to work so well and have relatively few true issues, but many regard Thieves as OP so that’s not the best class to compare to.

Also, reading traits/skills can be misleading for several reasons:

1. Bugs. They don’t work.

2. Technicalities. They don’t work as you imagine because of things like hidden cool downs, or technicalities like AoE only affecting up to 5 targets. Or Reanimator’s Jagged Horrors, which have a stupidly long appearing animation and come pre-conditioned with a serious bleed on them. (And since they continue to bleed after death, can at times hold you in combat after it’s done.)

3. Limited trait and skill equipping. You can’t get all the traits you want, or even exactly what traits you might want, and you can only equip a limited number of skills. Further, some skills may require certain equipment, enhancements, traits or spec benefits from certain trait lines in order to be powerful, which may conflict with what’s needed for other skills you like.

4. More complex mechanics. For example, Thief skills might have a cooldown and also an Iniative cost and it’s easy to not think if Iniative cost coming from a Necro perspective. Thieves also have the Revealed condition to limit stealth, though rendering and other bugs can allow them to appear to be perma-stealthed.

That said, I do like my Thief. He’s about level 25 or so, and I’m pursuing a very defensive path with him. Using Sword/Pistol and other blind/stealth skills I can basically stand toe-to-toe with up to 3 (melee) mobs and never have to strafe or dodge because I’m got the blinded or am evading so much of the time. Of course, it takes me 2-3x longer to kill those mobs than an offensive-oriented Thief who enjoys strafing and dodging, so it’s a tradeoff.

I do have to say that Shadow Refuge is, in my opinion, the most amazing PvE skill in the game. You literally approach the space in which you operate differently with that and other stealth skills. It’s one of the skills I’ve encountered that I don’t just find helpful or powerful, but downright inspiring. (In PvP, not quite as amazing, in my opinion, but I’m not really a PvP’er.)

If I try to think of Necro skills inspire me like that, I have to admit it’s a bit hard. Plague Form (with blinding) comes to mind. Some people hate on Lich (which I don’t have yet), but that also looks interesting. Oh, the signet that AoE revives up to 3 others (at full health) is very cool, though pretty situational.

So, strangely, I find my Necro more fun to play (PvE, WvW) than my other professions, but if you ask me which professions have skills/traits that delight me, I think of Thieves and Elementalists before Necros.

Palmski.6419:

I’ve just started using minions, namely the Shadow Fiend and the Flesh Golem. I find even with just the two of them out they will follow me around and remain out of combat perhaps 30-40% of the time even with just the two of them active (I do have Reanimator unfortunately). Once in this state they only seem to participate in combat when damaged by something, even running right up to the mob so they are in melee range seems to have no effect once they have decided they don’t want to fight.

Hmmm… this is troubling.

Could you clarify exactly what you mean by 30-40% of the time. From your description, it sounds like occasionally they enter a bugged state and in that state 30-40% of the time they won’t enter combat unless damages. If that’s the case, how often do they get into this state and is there anything common to that? Particular regions, particular mobs, particular attack sequences (e.g. opening with Marks and no target selected).

But if you mean that 30-40% of your battles they end up entering a bugged state and staying in that state for an extended period, is there anything that might be different that 30-40% of the time? Opening with Staff or other weapon or a different skill? Minion recently resummoned, or perhaps very low in health, etc, etc?

I think you’re an excellent test case if the issue’s that obvious with so few minions out.

@PinCushion: Good observations. So pathing plus crowds — which might be worked around by AN if they would allow minions to freely pass through each other or stand on top of each other.

A theory that’s intrigued me is that perhaps the low-level actions (motions and mechanics of an attack, death, etc) of each minion are controlled by the minion object/thread itself, while the high-level actions (select a target, move into attack range, begin attacking) are implemented in another object/thread and that with more than 3 minions out a bug can result in the wrong high-level actions being sent to the wrong minion.

For example, minion A is ranged and minion B is melee and they are both at range. Close enough for A to attack, but too far for B to attack. The target is chosen and the wrong high-level command sent to each: A’s message to begin attacking is sent to B, who is out of range, while B’s messages to: a) move into range and b) begin attacking, are sent to A who is already in range and thus immediately begins attacking. So one minion seems to work fine and the other seems to just stand there.

But your observation idea that minions may be working too hard to not collide is even simpler. Thanks!

Anyone else?

I was initially drawn to the Necro because I’ve liked Necro-like classes (Wow Warlock, etc) in the past, but some very loud complainers in these forums made me think maybe it wasn’t the best idea. I took an Engineer to around 20, then a Mesmer to around 20, then an Elementalist to 50, then a Thief to around 30. I am sure I’ll continue the Elementalist and Thief, but I finally decided to take the Necro plunge, and my Necro will be my first to 80.

Elementalist is a super-flexible class in my mind. Depending on your build you can have the greatest mobility in the game, or you can throw down the most fields in the game. Most classes need to learn to swap between their two equipped weapon sets but Elementalists can only equip one set. On the other hand, Elementalists have four attunements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) and need to swap between them which translates into twice as many weapon skills as the other professions.

On the other hand, Necros feel a lot tougher and faster casting. (Marks, for example, are like traps and can be pre-placed before a fight or dropped onto a mob so that they trigger instantly.) Necro minions currently have problems, though I’m beginning to suspect that mainly occurs for those that have more than two or three out at once.

This is all PvE, of course. If it truly is the Staff that you like, Guardians can equip them, too.

technosatyr.3784:

According to the Wiki it can hit up to three targets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Grasp

Oooo, so I do need to line them up. I’ll take a 200% increase in DPS when I can get it. (Two targets is very convenient in PvE: you need to kill a structure and there is at least one mob guarding it so you target the structure, then move until you’re also hitting the mob. You’re essentially killing the mob for free. Similarly for a boss and minion. Three will take more work.)

To get back on topic, it would also fill your Life Force faster.

Brasilium.3470:

In all honesty, I’d like to see the trait removed. Causes more issues than anything, and gives you no value from it specifically.

In another thread, I suggested that it be changed to give health to minions, as a fraction of the Life Force you absorb. If you have minions out, it lengthens their lives, if not minions aren’t forced on you at awkward times.

Someone else mentioned that JH’s lives should not be limited based on a bleed-like mechanism but that JH’s should damage themselves when they hit, so they don’t go away until they’ve accomplished something.

A more literal “Reanimator” effect could turn the corpse into a generic skelaton (maybe have five models it chooses from based on the corpse’s size and shape) that will crawl slowly up to 200 units to explode near the closest enemy, leaving a poisonous cloud. (If it doesn’t reach an enemy after moving 200 units, it shakes its fist and disappears.)

In another thread, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 mentioned:

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.

This would affect minion-oriented builds, since traits like Necrotic Corruption, Fetid Consumption, and Vampiric Master directly benefit the Necro based on how many minions they have out, while traits that strengthen minions would make you want to use more of them.

Anyone who consistently has issues with minions when you only have 3 or fewer out for a fight? Remember that if you more than 5 points in Death Magic you’re forced to take Reanimator which will spawn another minion when you kill a foe. (A Bad Thing, in my opinion.)

I’ve never had more than two out at once, and have never had a problem.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

It’s an entire line of trait: Death Magic. For me it’s 1/3. Do you want to discuss the right number?

Sure, but the answer is in your sentence. “An entire line of trait” which is one trait line of five, so even in your case it’s down to 20% before we start arguing if Death Magic is “the minion trait line”. The other key part is “For me…”: yes, for you and your expectations and playstyle the issues are more severe than for others of us. That doesn’t mean it’s meaningless, but it does mean unqualified claims of the entire class being broken for everyone are simply exaggerations.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

Exageration? Have you see the sticky post above about our problems?

Yes. First, the list is not more extensive than most other professions. Second, the list includes things (DS while Moa Morphed) that have been fixed. Third, the list includes aesthetic issues (Staff not turning into a Scythe). Fourth, things are considered bugs that may be design decisions (marks triggering on inanimate objects). If you look through for really back-breaking bugs (like minions standing idle during combat) there aren’t “a lot”.

I’ve never said that there aren’t issues, including issues that severely impact various builds, playstyles, and activities. But “broken”, “a lot”, “many” and all of those other statements are exaggerations. Especially when put in the perspective of how other professions (except Warriors and Guardians) are faring.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

I think it’s not fun when I spec in Death Magic but I can’t use minions.
I think it’s not good condition damage is Curse Trait line forcing me to use critical strike.
I can’t see the reason why the Critical Damage is on the Soul Reaping tree forcing me to use the Death Shroud.
I can continue forever.

As you could with any MMO in general and with any profession in GW2. I could, too. But things aren’t unqualified “broken”.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

I don’t get your point anyway. The other classes have problems? So? They have the right to complain exactly as we are doing right now.

What you’re not getting is that there are things that need fixing, and it’s fine to point them out and it’s right to expect fixes. But throwing out words like “the class is broken”, “1/3 of the class is useless”, etc, are just exaggerations, and when you compare to other classes you gain some perspective. Especially since many of the “broken” claims are relative to other classes and how much better they perform and how much better their talents are and…

I don’t want to derail the conversation, but several posters have referred to the Staff’s piercing ability. I thought pierce could only hit a second target (which I use all the time), but can it hit a third and a fourth if all are lined up? I thought I read early-on about a two-target limit so haven’t really gone to the trouble to line up more. (Usually, by the time I get two lined up, the third is out of range.) Does it pierce as many targets as you can line up in range?

Arcades Saboth.5139:

Anyway I partially disagree with you: yes we are “broken” with the meaning that a lot of skills and traits doesn’t work (broken in the programming side), many of those are unknown if they work or simply have so little advantage that are negligible (see Gluttony, but as I said in a my previous post it must be bugged), we lack diversity of builds (broken in design) meaning traits/effects are too sparse on the lines, we lack stability and useful buff (or they are too short).

I hear all of these things in several other forums as well and see similar things in other professions I play. When you say “a lot of”, and “many”, I think you’re exaggerating. Again, I’ll just say, play other professions (other than Warrior and Guardian), and follow their forums. They, too, say that they lack a diversity of builds (usually stated as “we have only one viable build”), that many traits don’t do much (or are bugged), that entire areas of their mechanics are weak, etc, etc, etc.

Some of this is true, some is exaggeration, just as with Necros. They all need fixing, some professions, profession builds, and uses (PvE, WvW, sPvP, etc) have more substantial problems than others, but none are “broken”.

And no, 1/3 of the Necro toolbox is not centered around Minions. Unlike, say, the WoW Warlock, we have enough traits and skills that we can successfully play without minions and not even miss them. (In fact, less micromanagement and other issues that invariably accompany pets.)

[quote=884340;Mathog.3157:Because the swiftness isn’t a spectral effect.[/quote]

Understood, I’m just wanting to avoid confusions based on tooltip/wiki phraseology and reader misunderstandings. Spectral SKILLS may grant various effects, which may or may not include Spectral EFFECTS, and it is only Spectral Effects that are canceled, not all effects of Spectral Skills.

Demonical.1039:

By advertising Minions so heavily as part of the Necromancer Anet themselves made it one of our core mechanic.

Minions are not unique to Necros: other professions have pets and summons. Minions are an important part of (generic) Necro lore, and a prominent part of AN advertising, so they matter and need to be fixed. But the class is not broken.

If you go to the GW2 website and follow the link to Necromancers, the first main section thing on the page is LIFE FORCE, with a subheading of Death Shroud. The second main thing is Special Skills, which has two subheadings: Minions and Wells. If you look at the sample videos, only one out of five even shows Minions. If you look at the summary blurb on the page with all the other professions, it mentions six things Necros do, of which “summon the dead” is one.

Not saying that Minions are not important or that they don’t have problems, but they’re one thing among several and not the CORE you’re making it out to be.

It’s like saying your car is broken because the premium sound system doesn’t work. That’s maybe the primary reason you bought that model, but a reasonable person would be upset that something about the car was broken, not that the entire car was broken. A reasonable person hearing “My car is broken” would assume that it cannot move or was unsafe to move.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

@Druitt
If I switch target they must change target immediately, no matter what, no matter if I keep switch target 100 times per second.

What happens if you clear your target, does it return to you? What if you change your target but do not attack? (You’re tabbing through all enemies, you’re checking the health/conditions/buffs of enemies, etc. It would send your minion on wild goose chases.)

So it seems to me that what your minion does when you switch targets (at least in PvE) is something of a design call. It could be legitimate to say that the minion continues to attack any target it begins to attack and only stops when that target is dead or out of leashing range.

What does your minion do if you attack without target? (AoE, Traps/Marks, auras, etc?) Personally, I think the whole target/combat issue is a factor in minions standing by and doing nothing: there’s an AND where there needs to be an OR and Necros are more likely than other professions to not be fulfilling both parts of the equation.

Shafi.8952:

If the necromancer was not “broken” this thread wouldn’t exist.

No, if people didn’t come here ranting about an entire class being uniquely and utterly broken, this thread wouldn’t exist. This thread exists because calling Necros “broken” is an emotional exaggeration and not even close to true.

Have problems, including problems that break some builds? Yes. Needs to be fixed. But all professions have similar problems. None of this is an entire profession that’s broken, just particular builds in particular settings. That’s a reasonable and accurate statement, and that’s why this thread exists.

I agree. Just doing a Wiki skill comparison can be misleading, but that comparison makes it look like Fear is a Warrior skill that Necros share, rather than being a speciality of Necros.

Once traits, cooldowns, etc, are factored in, I’d say that Necros need to be able to use Fear twice as effectively as the next-most-fearing class in order to be called the specialists. Maybe it’s already true, but if not, I’d vote for a buff.

The problem is that Fear is the most-hated CC in most PvP I’ve seen, and long-running fears eventually get nerfed into the ground because of all of the hate from other players about it.

Perhaps they do need to add an uber-fear that’s unique to Necros and call it Terror. It works lore-wise in that you may well fear a Warrior who comes whirling at you with a long sword, but Necros/Warlocks inflict a supernatural terror on you that has little to do with what you see. So lore-wise, perhaps Mesmers could also do Terror, but not as well as Necros, too.

Just a thought.