Guild Wars 2

It’s widely acknowledged in the community that our minion AI has serious problems. The most severe problem is when minions stand by and do not enter combat with the Necro.

So let’s try to make some theories, test them, and perhaps we can give AN some good leads.

1. Not Unique. AI problems aren’t unique to Necros. I’ve heard at various points of Thieves having problems with their summons, Mesmers having problems with particular phantasms, etc.

2. Number of (Potential) Minions. Necros who are into minions can have more out than most professions. A Ranger has at most one pet out at a time. Elementalists could have two summons (Elemental and Lesser Elemental), but generally only use one. Thieves could have three summons. Mesmers could obviously have a boatload of illusions and phantasms, etc. Mesmer Illusions and Phantasms work pretty well — though I’ve heard complaints about some Phantasms just standing by sometimes — so the issue is not as simple as having many minions/summons/pets or having the capability of having many, but it could be a contributing factor.

EDIT: I spent the skill points on the Flesh Golem and have found that this single minion has issues. It does appear that melee minions have particular problems, which suggests Pathing issues…

3. LOS/Pathing issues. GW2 has some deep and lingering issues with LOS. This has affected teleport spells, Elementalist Ride the Lightning, etc, and most professions see erroneous Obstructed messages as they operate. Mesmers were recently hit with a huge nerf stick when their illusions/phantasms suddenly required LOS, and suddenly they were facing LOS issues. I believe that LOS issues could also cause or be related to pathing issues, so “LOS” may actually affect non-ranged minions.

EDIT: Based on my experience with the Flesh Golem, it appears that melee minions act a bit strange, even if they are otherwise working correctly. They don’t have particular problems following, but if separated from their target (the Flesh Golem charging through its target and beyond, for example) they can appear “confused”, sometimes as if they can’t figure out how to get to the target and sometimes they almost appear to think they are next to their master and out of combat.

It has been noted that minions may behave well underwater, which would also suggest pathing issues. (My theory being that underwater straight lines tend to work.)

4. Targeting and Entering Combat. I have a sneaking suspicion that target selection, playstyle, and entering combat have something to do with it. That is, when I’m wielding a staff, I can easily drop five Marks and even a well or two, and be in combat for a while without targeting anything. Certainly other professions are capable of opening with AoE or traps or other non-targeted skills, but I don’t really see a playstyle/rotation that is very common among other professions that actually does it.

Perhaps, if you have a target and enter combat by attacking it directly, minions are more likely to know what to do, but if you enter combat without a target perhaps subtle bugs may be triggered resulting in the minion staying out of combat for an extended period of time. This may also be why Mesmers have fewer issues than Necros even though they can have many illusions/phantasms out: they are almost always tied directly to a target that must be targeted when they spawn.

5. Traits. I haven’t voluntarily traited for minions in any way. Could a common minion-oriented trait be causing bugs in some way?

6. Minion Anti-Collision Code. PinCushion observed that it appears that Minions are coded to repel each other so they don’t stand in the same spot or pass through each other. Combined with Pathing (Item #3 above), a Necro with many minions in an area with difficult pathing may end up with minions that are stalemated and block each other from finding paths/LOS to the target.

7. Tab-targeting. Perhaps if you tab-target through nearby mobs, the minion may remember “targets” and run off to attack something you never actually attacked. (At least one person has noticed that this happens and is repeatable.)

8. Summoning while in combat helps. Several people have reported that minions summoned while you’re already in combat seem to act reliably. Which might indicate that there is something about the minion’s transition into combat that causes a problem.

Have you done any experiments or found any workarounds that seem to avoid minion AI issues, particularly minions standing around? Please share. (I think that issues of minions attacking random mobs are secondary to them standing and doing nothing, so would recommend we tackle that first.)

Abigor.4952:

++ with the 3rd. Only, aren`t any conditions you have will affect you in DS anyway? Kinda, if you you have bleed it will go on and drain your DS and will continue to bleed you if it didn`t wear off when you leave DS, not like it will wait for you to leave DS and then bleed you. (or I didn`t understand something)

It wouldn’t work differently, you’d just be able to tell what’s going on. That would let you decide if you might want to stay in DS longer than you otherwise would, or if you need to be prepared to take some mitigating action immediately upon exiting DS. It would let you see that your swiftness was about to drop off, or when your Elite was off cool down.

The current GUI doesn’t give you any situational info to decide whether you want to stay in DS a bit longer or exit earlier, etc.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

Also I’ve notice a great, great flaw in the system and I don’t think this is easily patchable: any AI controllet minion is not capable of off-links between paths or the path system (I think they use a standard navigation mesh) do not support at all off-links. For simplicity: the minions can’t jump off a cliff. For PVE is not a great deal but for PVP is a great problem since you can’t jump and try to save your self without letting your minion behind.

Most games I’ve played had issues with pets following you when you jumped. Some were (in PvE, in my opinion) too eager to teleport and so the broke my suspension of disbelief too easily, others only teleported when you were physically far away and thus could aggro an entire instance as the pet followed the mesh to you, while others made the poor decision to despawn the pet when it couldn’t reach you. My initial impression of GW2 was that there was enough of a delay that it felt like the teleport had some justification. Haven’t run pets/minions in PvP, though, so I see your point.

P.S. For debugging purposes, Id suggest that the devs add two new emotes, vocalizations, symbols, or “boon/conditions” that help clarify the actual issue players are experiencing: 1) “I can’t get to him”, “I can’t do that”, “tricky devil”, or some kind of indication that a target is selected but the pet/minion can’t find a path/LOS to it, and 2) “I’m thinking”, “What should I do?”, or some kind of indication that a target is not selected and the AI is aware that something is happening (master has entered combat, say) but is still figuring out what to do/target.

That would make it easier to figure out, in the real world, whether it’s an issue of being unaware that action should take place, lags or hangups in calculating actions, or pathing/LOS issues.

Unfortunately, a simple fix would be that if it’s a path/LOS issue to teleport to the target, but a similar behavior was exploited by Mesmers and it’s very unfair so it can’t be done that way.

@LoVeRSaMa: “what build is your Dark Prince?” Sorry, it’s not some clever build. (I wish I did have some cool build to share with folks.)

It was just my way of personifying role-playing expectations. Personally, I just like the Warlock/Necro class, but I don’t envision myself as some dark master of the undead, seething in evil and terrifying all those before me. (When I think of it that way, I don’t actually like it. I’m not a bad guy in real life and other than my thoughts towards those who cut me off in traffic, don’t get any pleasure from imagining myself as a bad guy.)

But some people enjoy role-playing some kind of Prince of Darkness and hope that the Necro might support that. A top-notch competitor doesn’t care what facade is placed over the mechanics, they just care about using the mechanics to their advantage, and if Class A has stronger mechanics than Class B, that’s the way to go. You don’t stick with Class B because you like the uniform colors.

(Heck, in WoW I had a friend who chose inferior armor because he couldn’t stand the clown-like appearance of mixing the better gear. Fortunately, GW2 features color palettes, so you never get the bozo effect.)

Demonical.1039:

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 )

No different than, say, Thieves and poisons. By history, lore, and advertising, poisons and traps are important for Thieves. In actuality, poisons and traps aren’t that great and I’ve seen claims they’re “broken.” But Thieves don’t turn around and say, “Our profession is broken because traps and poisons are broken!!!!!!” They’re realistic about a serious playstyle issue.

Our core mechanic is Life Force (and Death Shroud), just as the Thief core mechanic is Initiative. It doesn’t matter if Death Shroud didn’t work that way in Beta or not, it’s the Release core mechanic. It may be a rough mechanic because it was changed late in the development process, but it’s not broken and the class is not “broken”.

What you have is that a particular set of builds — prominent, historical builds, perhaps — have serious problems with a key mechanic. To be honest, if minions worked flawlessly, it’s not clear to me that the majority of Necros would even equip minions, much less trait and build around them. The Necro toolbox is much larger than that.

So when you say that AN featured minions prominently in their advertising, you have a point. AN needs to deliver and shame on them. You have a right to say that sucks and you didn’t get what you were promised. But the class is not broken: what was important about the class to YOU (and others) is broken.

As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t trait for minions or even equip them, except for specific situations, and there are many Necros like that. You’re not handicapped by not building around minions. And, in my occasion-based use of minions I’ve never had any issues, so I think minions are broken with a certain trait/play-style and not in general.

Anyhow, be as black-and-white in your opinion as you want. Just try not to convince prospective Necros who visit these forums that because Necros absolutely don’t work to your expectations, they can’t possible work for anyone and are BROKEN.

XiL.4318:

According a a recent dev response, Anet does not even consider necro minions as an issue.

Haven’t seen that one. I know they’ve made flippant responses which can be interpreted as they don’t care, but I’ve not seen a posting that says, “Minions are working fine and you’re imagining they’re not.”

XiL.4318:

But if you really do know AI development you also know that the AI they use is not creature specific. So your entire premiss seems a bit silly.

Yes, I really know and do AI. I don’t know how they have coded their minion/pet/summonable AI, and unless you DO know your statement that AI is not creature-specific is pure speculation. Of course, it would be good practice to have a common AI code base and then specialize that, but things don’t always work that way and sometimes in the heat of deadlines you find out that your AI code doesn’t generalize as well as you thought and you take expedient measures.

You also know that Rangers, for example, have a single pet out at a time. Elementalists might have as many as two summonables out. But only Necros might have eight or more minions out. They are obviously different even before you begin to dig into particulars.

XiL.4318:

It really seems most likely that necro minions have an artificial parameter that all other minions do not have or that client/server communication errors cause a logical loop to occur preventing the AI from proceeding with its behavior.

You’re saying that AN has a BROKEN flag that they set to TRUE for Necros and FALSE for all other professions? And you think my idea was “a bit silly”?

If I had to speculate, I’d say that it’s due to either: 1) pathing/LOS issues that due to subtle differences between minions and pets cause minions to not be able to find a path/LOS and thus not acting, or 2) problems with sending multiple targeting information to multiple minions/pets that don’t show up with pets and summonables because you can’t have multiple pets out and don’t tend to have multiple summonables out. (It’s obvious that there are LOS issues in the game, which have shown up as Elementalist Ride the Lightning not working, as minor inconveniences for some professions, and as major issues for some classes like post-patch Mesmers. My feeling is this is strongly affecting minions for subtle reasons.)

XiL.4318:

All other minions, even those controlled by Necro NPCs, work well according to my observations and a lack of any feedback on the forums to the contrary.

I only equip and use a single minion for specific situations, and I’ve never had a minion fail to work as I expected. That doesn’t prove anything, and neither does your “all other minions” anectodal evidence. It does provide clues as to what might be going on, but not having access to their code and design goals, it’s all speculation.

For all we know, NPC minions are not actually minions but rather additional NPCs with minion names and skins. It would be logical to reuse minion code for NPCs as well, but in the real world what’s logical, what’s feasible, what’s kludged under time pressure, etc, are all different issues.

Evidently GW1 had very reasonable pet/minion AI, so it’s not like AN is incompetent at it. Something else is happening that is causing legitimate issues for heavy users.

Demonical.1039:

Im sorry but your first statement in your post is that Necro´s isnt broken and just that is a lie, a Huge advertised class mechanic of Necro is broken, Our minions do not work, when the class was announced and advertised it was a class that can raise creepy ( frankly ugly things i wish were skeletons…) undead beings to serve you, atm they are utter trash

No. This is hyperbole. The Necro core mechanic is not minions, it’s Death Shroud.

To be sure, minions are prominent in Necro lore, and some players definitely choose the Necro because they imagine themselves being the Evil Masters of the Undead!!!!!!!!! Bwahaa haa ha. And based on AN advertising, someone like that has every right to be disappointed that minions have many issues. Agreed.

BUT even with stupid AI, minions are not totally borked. I run without minions because I’ve chosen a different legitimate Necro playstyle. But when I do encounter a situation where I want to equip and use a minion, I’ve never had them not work as advertised. Not saying they don’t need serious attention, but the appropriate description of minions is that their AI has problems that strongly affect minion-based Necros.

(As a side note, you may not like that they don’t regen HP, but that seems like a legitimate choice by AN: other classes have summonables which exist for a limited time, while Rangers have pets that are permanent unless overwhelmed. Minions fall between those two extremes: they are not time-limited, neither are they permanent. And our elite minion is actually pet-like, bridging the gap.)

At any rate, there are multiple mechanics that are signatures of the Necro: Forms (especially DS), Marks, Minions, manipulation of boons/conditions, an unusually tough cloth-wearer, Fears, etc. There are multiple trait lines — none of which are dedicated to minions, by the way.

Yes, the dev remark about DS is ridiculous and provocative and deserves our scorn. Yes, Minion AI is problematic. But the class is not broken, and when the fanatics flood our forums with this unqualified “Necros are broken” thought, they turn away many prospective Necros who would not make minions the center of their builds. (Heck, pets/minions have been problematic in dungeons in every MMO I’ve played, so it’s historically been hard to be a super-pet/minion-focused build in groups.)

YOU are sorely disappointed in the class and it does not deliver what you imagined, based on AN’s advertising. You have a right to be unhappy. Saying that the class is therefore broken is misleading and counter-productive.

Xom.9264:

You need to understand the people that complain are hardcore pvpers, not talking casually doing spvp or wvw. If you play casual you just wont notice the imbalance or you might notice them but be able to overcome them due to spvp being so casual if you have a few bad games no big deal.

True, with two major caveats.

1. “Imbalance” depends on the situation. Obviously PvP has different concerns than PvE. A profession can be “OP, face roll” powerful in PvE and “free kill” in PvP because different mechanisms are important. On top of that, as you say, different kinds/levels of PvP will also perceive balance differently. (Some of this due to skill, but some due to appropriately different mechanisms being important.)

2. I seriously doubt that extremely serious, highly-competitive PvP’ers become emotionally attached to a particular profession and go ballistic on these forums. A serious competitor plays every profession, so they can get inside their opponent’s head and anticipate their moves. A serious competitor views their character as a tool, and a serious craftsman has multiple tools in their toolbox. If Warriors are OP in competitive PvP, play a Warrior. To do anything else is basically showing that you’re more of a casual role-player who has gotten attached to your Necromancer Prince of Darkness.

(Yes, I know that it’s painful to level and equip multiple professions. At the same time, this is an MMO, and MMOs are rebalanced on a regular basis and if all of your eggs are in one basket you will spend a lot of your time being angry. Not to mention that any game where a PvPer can enter a match with a gear advantage is crazy stupid, in my opinion. Serious competition requires equal gear for all characters, so that it boils down to player skill rather than time spent grinding for gear.)

In that sense, I think it’s the mid-level PvP’ers that complain the most. Casual PVP’ers, as you say aren’t invested enough to know. Highly-competitive PvP’ers, though, aren’t attached to a single profession and realize that winning means doing what you need to do, so I doubt they rant on forums rather than adapt and win. It’s the mid-level folks who are invested in their profession, but also PvP a lot and really want to win, that keep hitting the wall until they believe “Necros are broken and worthless”.

QSpec.4298:

I think this is exacerbated by an almost telling silence on the part of the developers. Something like “In the next patch we are releasing a few fixes. These are not the big fixes you are hoping for (like Minion AI), but rest assured we are working on those” would go a very, very long way.

No argument there. I’ve been amazed how devs in various MMO’s go through a negative feedback cycle where they don’t communicate, or they give hints like “Big Patch Coming!!” and then the patch turns out to have very little substance, etc, and user frustration and speculation mounts, then the forums become hostile (not as hostile as this forum, but more hostile) and the devs start avoiding the hostility, figuring it’s all the user’s fault… Having made vague promises and falling through, they stop saying anything in advance, etc. Good, honest communication, including “Yeah, at the last minute the bug fix everyone wants broke something else so we had to roll back. We’ll figure out a way to fix the bug, please be patient.”

QSpec.4298:

I also do not think we are in it alone. I think Rangers (from what I can tell) and Eles could certainly use some love. That said, they still feel more complete than we do. We feel not liked a bugged class but rather more like a beta class.

That’s a huge part of my point. To read these forums, we are in it alone. Every other class has way better skills, way better traits, is much tougher in a fight, and doesn’t have the horrible bugs we do. The fact is, most classes have similar issues.

Knote.2904:

And I’m not sure what you’re talking about in regards to spectral utilities. Death Shroud just removes the (gain lifeforce when hit) feature from Spectral Armor/Walk but that’s it.

Thanks! I’m going to totally reorganize the post into sections to make it more logical.

What I meant about spectral utilities is that either in the tool tip or in the Wiki, it mentions that entering DS “removes spectral effects”. That might be interpreted to mean that effects placed on you by, say, Spectral Walk are removed when you enter DS. In fact, the swiftness part of Spectral Walk continues to be on you and to affect you. Only the “gain Life Force on damage” part of Spectral skills are removed. (I guess it’s a specific boon.)

Kardiamond.6952:

Someone told me in another post fear was a long lasting CC, I called bullkitten. Tested it, and maybe I was wrong.

Well continu testing it and will come back later with my result!

Please make a thread about it. On my first glance, it doesn’t look like we really have many skills that Fear.

It’s certainly unlike the WoW Warlock, but then again the WoW Warlock’s Fear was so long-lasting (you could Fear-kite multiple mobs at once) that it was nerfed into the ground in PvP because it was simply CRT-smashing frustrating if you were the guy who lost control of your character until you died.

Fenirian.3485:

I’m sure you read A LOT of complaints about it and I apologize in advance if bringing it up gets under your skin

Personally, it does not get under my skin, because you’re speaking in qualified, informed, and reasonable terms. The only thing that gets under my skin is, “NECROS IZ BROKE CAUSE MINIONS SUXORS!!!” posts, of which there are quite a few.

My graduate degree is in Artificial Intelligence, and it’s not an easy problem. But evidently GW1’s minion AI was quite reasonable, and even WoW’s minion AI was reasonable, so there’s something going on with GW2 minion AI. Not sure if they tried to be too clever and so it works in non-intuitive ways, or if their seemingly deep issues with LOS and pathing in general is killing pets, or if it’s just buggy and there aren’t many Necros so minion AI is at the end of their queue.

Dulon.9347:

I don’t want to say Necros don’t have problems, but the forums are too negative.

The last time i saw something like this was on the ffxi dragoon forums.
And we successfully managed to damage our reputation in the game to the point
that when you entered a party, at least two people instantly left and just said “loldrg”
in party chat before doing so. Or they asked the leader to kick you.

Thank you! An excellent illustration of what I’m trying to say. It’s already started happening, if some of the posts here (“I see ‘LFG, no Necros’”) are true.

Clarification: by “dagger build” do you mean you’d favor using dual daggers?

In that case, dual daggers is very short-ranged, as with Elementalist D/D builds but without gap-closing tools that Elementalists have. So perhaps you’d swap D/D with Staff (for range), but even then you don’t have many gap closers to really get in faces and use D/D fully.

Just a thought. (Personally, I love the off-hand dagger skills and use S/D and Staff.)

@Knote: I asked in a similar thread just now, but does it copy exactly what’s on the target? Same stacking, same (remaining) duration, etc? I know, for instance, that various bleeds last different amounts of time, and obviously you could have a 20-stack or just 1.

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

try signet of spite? to epidemic just for the fun of it.

I think the signet throws something like 6 conditions on one target, so that followed by Epidemic would be very efficient. (Ignoring condition durations and signet cooldown, which I’m not sure of.)

Question that would affect the ultimate answer: Does Epidemic throw the same stacking/duration conditions or does it just throw one stack of each condition, or something in between? If you have a 30-second bleed, does it throw that, or a more generic (shorter-duration) bleed? If you have a 20-stack of bleed, does it throw that?

I think so, but don’t know.

It’s been noted in the thread, but worth saying again: you don’t spam any abilities in Plague Form. You choose a mode and it sticks until you change that mode.

By default, Plague poisons every second. Press 1 once and it adds bleed with the poison each second. Press 2 once and it adds blind with the poison each second. Press 3 once and it adds weakness with the poison each second. It’s fire-and-forget.

Obviously, you could press 1-2-1-2-1 and if you timed it every second you’d be doing a blind every other pulse and a bleed every other second, but since they’re not long-duration (I believe they’re 1 second), you’re not adding anything to the mix, really.

Pressing 2 once, to turn add blind to the poison makes far and away the most sense, since it poisons for 20 seconds and also makes it very hard to hit you. You also get a slight boost to HP and fairly significant boost to armor in Plague Form, so with blind on, you take relatively little (physical melee) damage while dishing out AoE damage.

QSpec.4298:

@ Druitt

I appreciate your optimism, but I would like to address a few things.

I’m not optimistic. I’m not saying “everything is fine, stop being negative”. I am saying that every profession I’m interested in (i.e. all but Warrior and Guardian) have quite a few problems, some of the that can be called game-breaking if you want. If you’ve played other classes to 20 or 30, and if you browse their forums and the wiki, it’s pretty clear.

QSpec.4298:

The crux of much of what you have said is “you make your own fun.” This is true, but you also need to consider that we are customers and not just some kid in a sandbox complaining about being bored.

Actually, no, that’s not the crux of anything I’ve said. That’s a single quote from a single posting in a single thread. And it was aimed at the over-the-top emo folks who launch threads about how broken the class is, how despised it is by other professions, etc. Pure rage and exaggeration. Which turns of prospective Necros and devs alike.

For those raging folks, it is useful to gain perspective that this is just a game. Try other professions and you might find you like them better. Don’t keep banging your head against the wall and then rage about it.

But that’s not the majority in these forums. Look on the first page of our forums and you’ll find 5-10 threads that say Necros are useless, their traits are worthless, no one wants to invite them to dungeons, the best build for a Necro is to become a Warrior, etc, etc, etc. THAT is what I’m addressing.

QSpec.4298:

We have reasonable expectations that our purchase will be complete. It wasn’t. It was addled with bugs, many of which are directly affecting important traits/skills.

Quite right. The keyword is “reasonable”. I’m trying to fight the unreasonable folks.

QSpec.4298:

Two, the Necro is infinitely playable. It is largely pigeon-holed into condition, but it can make do in a power build easily enough. That said, relatively speaking, Necromancer does feel in a bad place. Our traits are poorly laid-out, thought-out, and bugged. Axe does pathetic damage. Our build options are limited. And our class mechanic is uninspired (it is virtually a shield) and aimless.

A reasonable set of opinions. But I’d point out that Elementalists also complain about poor trait layout (overly-focused and niche in their case), and buggy skills, including build-defining skills like Ride the Lightning (D/D build core skill). I’m not saying that you should be quiet because we’re not alone, but I do think it says that there are things to be fixed and not that the class is uniquely, among all classes, broken.

Which you’re not saying, but a LOT of people — I call them whiners — are. You’re not a whiner.

QSpec.4298:

Finally, and this is important, you weren’t ‘robbed’ by we whiny forum dwellers. You chose to follow the crowd and not roll the class you were most interested in. This is in zero way our fault. Many of us rolled Necros expecting them to be meh (after BWE 3). You could have done the same.

Actually, both you and I were robbed. I didn’t “follow the crowd”. I’ve specifically avoided the most popular classes and even races as much as possible, while still following my interests. BUT when you come to a forum and find that apparently 90% of folks think the class is “broken”, “worthless”, “unwanted”, “despised”, “painful”, etc, yeah it gives you pause. I’ve done MMO’s before and know people in forums are more likely to complain, but the Necro forum was (and still is) the most critical, negative, absolute forums in any game I’ve ever played.

You, too are hurt. As you say, ANet is reasonable, but they are also a business and they don’t have infinite resources and they have to prioritize to please the maximum number of customers, which means the professions that have more players. When the public face of a profession is so over-the-top ugly, it turns away prospective players, which means lower priority in ANet’s queue. It hurts you, too.

technosatyr.3784:

Druitt: both. The base damage from a staff will generally be higher than other weapon loadouts, which will give your DS damage a slight boost. In addition the staff is a good weapon for quickly generating life force to get you into DS faster. It’s an added bonus that the staff itself is a very solid weapon choice for a build that’s trying to maximize the effectiveness of DS.

OK. I’ve heard that the axe is the fastest choice for building Life Force, though I really dislike the axe. (I run staff and scepter/dagger myself.)

DrXer.2918:

I would think your staff would have condition on it which would make it weak for DS. Can someone explain?

Could you clarify: Do you mean is a staff a good weapon to have equipped when you enter DS — because it might enhance you during DS — or do you mean is a staff a good weapon to use a lot if you like to DS — for example because it might fill Life Force faster, or might leave marks which can trigger while you’re in DS, allowing you to “cast” spells other than the DS spells in some sense.

I’d add a couple more:

6. Leaving Death Shroud should count as a weapon swap back to the weapon you had equipped before entering DS. This would allow on-swap sigils to proc, again providing a reason to “dip into DS” as ANet has encouraged.

EDIT:

7. Overhaul Spectral Walk/Recall. Spectral Walk, during the time that Spectral Recall is active, should not leave a green trail. Thieves don’t leave a trail to their recall point and neither should we — it’s a defensive move anyhow. Spectral Recall should last 10 seconds rather than 8. And Spectral Recall should count as a Leap finisher.

8. The Flesh Wurm skill should be three-part rather than two-part. The first step summons the Flesh Wurm at your target, as it currently does. The second step, active while the Flesh Wurm is alive, is Necrotic Sacrifice, which explodes the Flesh Wurm as Necrotic Traversal currently does, except that the Necro doesn’t teleport. Instead, a Flesh Wurm Cyst is left behind. The third step is Necrotic Traversal, which is active for 10 seconds after the appearance of the Cyst, and causes the Necro to teleport to the Cyst and is a blast finisher (at the Cyst).

That is, break Necrotic Traversal into two parts: the poison and the teleport. This also allows you 10 seconds after the Flesh Wurm is killed (by someone other than yourself) to teleport to the location.

Recent discussions here had gotten me curious about what DS actually does beyond the obvious replacement of skills and replacement of HP with Life Force. I’ve done some brief testing and, for the record, it appears that this is in fact most of what DS does. (Though there are some useful details you might find below.)

I’m sure others have a lot more experience than I do, so if there are other aspects please post them and I’ll edit this posting.

ENHANCEMENTS. Our other Forms (Plague and Lich) provide Stability and buff Vitality, Power, and other attributes, but untraited DS does none of these. DS can be traited to provide some enhancements upon entering that are not removed if you exit: three seconds of Stability (Foot in the Grave), and three seconds of Retaliation (Spiteful Spirit). Other things that can be traited to trigger on entering DS are: 10 sec AoE weakness/bleeding (Weakening Shroud), and remove a condition (Shrouded Removal). An AoE heal can be traited to trigger on exit from DS (Deathly Invigorate). You can trait to gain Might for 15 seconds on using the Life Blast DS Skill (Reapers Might), which is retained on exit, and there are several traits (mainly in the Soul Reaping line) to enhance DS skills.

ENTERING AND EXITING. You can enter DS at any time, given that you have Life Force and DS is not on cooldown. This includes while incapacitated, while falling, or while performing other tasks. You can voluntarily exit DS at any time. You are involuntarily removed from DS if you are Moa Morphed or if your Life Force is reduced to zero. DS cooldown begins upon exiting DS and is 10 seconds (5 with the Close to Death trait).

UI. While in DS, you see a UI that is similar to your downed state interface, with the addition of a Life Force gauge. Even though you cannot see Condition, Boon, CC, or skill indicators, all of these are still ticking as usual and are not “placed on hold” in any way.

CONDITIONS/BOONS/CC. Entering DS does not remove any Conditions (see ENHANCEMENTS) or CC effects, and will not remove Boons with the exception of Spectral Effects (not to be confused with various Boons that might be gained by using a Spectral Skill). While in DS, Boons, Conditions, and CC can be applied and will continue to tick and affect you as normal (see ENHANCEMENTS), with the exception of damage to or healing of your health (see HEALTH).

HEALTH. While in DS, damage that would otherwise affect your HP is subtracted from your Life Force. (Life Force also periodically ticks down even if you are not receiving damage, as if you had an invisible Condition ticking every second.) Healing that would otherwise affect your HP is ignored.

EXCESS DAMAGE. If you receive so much damage that your Life Force cannot absorb it all, Life Force absorbs as much as it can, you are removed from DS, and the excess damage is applied to your HP. The exception is Falling Damage, which will kill you if it reduces your Life Force to zero.

DODGE. You can dodge while in DS (and our other Forms), and if you have traited for Mark of Evasion, a Mark of Blood will trigger (subject to cooldown).

DS INTERACTION, STOMP, REVIVE. You cannot interact with anything while in DS. At various times, Necros have been able to revive or stomp in DS by pressing the two keys near-simultaneously. It has been reported that this was stealth-fixed, and it’s not clear that this behavior is intended by ANet.

Any other DS mechanics that you’re aware of?

Sheobix.8796:

I’m only going to address your “lack of defensibility” statement.
My necro has 3000 armor. 28k hp, and 3400 attack. There are a good portion of endgame warriors that don’t even have that. What are you talking about, not being able to defend? we have daze, immobilize, two fears, and a chill if you go d/horn + staff. plus, in DS, your armor still protects you. if you’re running berserkers with no points in death magic, you’re going to die 5x faster than i will. Period. i don’t even have to press any buttons or combos to prove that.

I’d note that Lich Form would increase your attack by almost 40% (though you only have Lich abilities in Lich Form, of course) and would add 4% to your HP which is basically an additional 4% mitigation. Plague Form would would add almost 7% to your HP, and would almost double your armor, plus provide an AoE blind for 20 seconds. DS with a full Life Force bar would essentially give you a channeled bubble that would sustain around 28K of damage before collapsing.

Yes, Forms are limiting and you don’t have full access to your equipment and skills. So you trade off 24 skills you’ve chosen for 5 in the case of DS and Lich, or zero for Plague. Perhaps not powerful enough to rank as highly mobile defense in PvP, but quite useful.

sorrow.2364:

Actually, in my original post I said that Necro lack of real defensive capability and I’ve motivated why I think so. People have probably only read the point title and than thought “wtf taht guy is crzy, necros hav no defenses?”, while I’ve clearly stated that with lack of defensive capability I mean that Necros have only a bunch of HP and not enough way to defend them.

But I believe it’s you who writes off DS entirely as not a defense. I’m not a PvP’er, so perhaps in PvP DS is not useful. But in PvE, it literally is like a channeled invulnerability bubble that lasts for an amount of time based on your stats and the damage it negates. That’s a defense. And it’s fairly active, since you can move and perform some other abilities while still channeling it. Unlike other bubbles, its duration can be extended by the Necro, depending on tactical choices and on equipment and traits.

You also seem to regard Necro armor/toughness/vitality as “not a defense”, while also emphasizing that Warriors have bonuses to their armor/toughness that are defenses. Yes, Necros don’t have invulnerabilities outside of DS and don’t have a plethora of teleports. They do have snares, interrupts, invulnerability via DS, mitigation via (relatively) high armor and vitality, etc.

Perhaps the game is unbalanced such that snares don’t accomplish much, either because of intercept-type moves or ranged weapons/skills. That’s an issue, and perhaps a serious one in PvP. But it doesn’t mean that Necros have no defenses.

Asmodean.5820:

Is the class “broken”? For me that would mean unplayable without being no fun at all. Nope, by no means imo.

Is it great and do the traits offer a lot of interesting synergy? Does the class support many builds which are interesting to explore and really competetive? I don’t think so either unfortunately.

A reasonable summary. Though I would also point out that the other classes I play and follow (Elementalist, Thief, Mesmer, and Engineer) also complain that they’re shoehorned into one viable build (in PvP, anyhow) and they have entire trait lines that no one in their right mind would use, or that are mis-organized.

In which case, my summary is: does the Necro fulfill the conceptual description of the Devs? No. Some things have major problems (minion AI), while other things aren’t significant in actual play (fear).

Is the Necro painful to play? Depends. In PvE, it’s probably one of the more fun and interesting professions. In WvW it’s reasonable. Perhaps in PvP it’s not very exciting. But is the Necro uniquely worse-off than other professions (the fair-haired Warriors and Guardians excepted)? No, not really.

Can you make any kind of Necro that you might imagine from reading the Wiki, and play any aspect of the game (PvE, WvW, PvP), without any issues? Nope. Depending on what aspect of the game you’re playing, some approaches (builds, etc) are much more difficult than others. Is this unique to Necros? Can other professions play whatever way they choose? No, other professions suffer from similar issues.

Just take another profession to, say, level 20, and read their forums. Play with them in the Mists. Some classes (Guardians, Warriors) can be face-roll easy (and boring), but on the whole we all have problems.

I’d love to see suggestions about reorganizing the trait lines. In another thread, I made several suggestions for changing several traits. I’d honestly like to hear examples of how you see no synergy, and how that might be changed.

sorrow.2364:

Druitt.7629:

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

But, while having the same toughness, and bonus toughness cap is the same across all professions, not counting traits (in which Necromancers are inferiors anyway), Warriors still have an extra damage reduction of about 200 toughness compared to clothies. I’ve read somewhere it is 9%+ extra damage reduction on 1800 toughness (900 bonus toughness).
Plus, warriors have access to shield, which is another toughness booster.

I think you’ve lost track of the issue. Someone (perhaps you?) said that Necros have no defense. Someone replied that they can have more toughness, vitality, and attack than many (not all) Warriors, plus various dazes, etc, so most certainly have defenses.

Perhaps Warriors get additional in-built bonuses that put them above his example Necro, but the point remains that in terms of mitigation Necros can be in the same ballpark as many Warriors. The statement that Necros don’t have any defense isn’t supportable.

Now perhaps Necros need some additional defensive mechanics overall. But the whole point of this thread is that absolute statements like “Necros have no X”, “Necros are broken/useless”, “Necro traits suck” are emotional arguments with no real basis. Are Necros OP dominators of every aspect of the game? No. Are they the worst profession at any aspect of the game? No. Do Necros have bugs, like other non-Warrior/Guardian professions do? Yep. Is at least one characteristically-Necro aspect of the profession frustratingly buggy? Yep, minions.

When people make reasoned and well-informed criticisms and suggestion, it’s good for the class and helpful to players and developers alike. Absolute statements simply aren’t true, and the deeper you dig the less true thay are.

@Kardiamond: I just started experimenting with Signet of Undeath, which I hadn’t paid much attention to. Not sure how well it works in practice, but dropping it on 3 dead friendly NPCs resurrected all of them at full health. It has a cast time and a LONG cooldown (150 seconds, I believe), but works at 1200 range. Its target area isn’t huge (I’ve been spoiled with the trait that increases Mark radius), but if you can fit multiple friendlies in it, it’s rather amazing.

sorrow.2364:

Warriors can easily get that amount of HP, armor and attack while having also heavy armor (better damage reduction).

You make it sound as if there are actually different qualities of armor. As far as I can tell, Heavy Armor simply has higher armor values. So if a cloth-wearer and a plate-wearer both have 10,000 armor and 2,000 toughness, they are have exactly the same mitigation.

Or was this just a typo?

Necros are effective support, and can manipulate conditions better than most. (Not just eliminate them, but turn them into boons, or send them to enemies, or turn enemy boons into conditions.)

The unique Necro mechanic is Death Shroud, which changes your GUI in a bad way while you’re in it. Tip: DS is not meant to be entered and stayed in until you run out of Life Force (the juice that enables it). If you think that way, it will suck.

Utility skills that I like: Well of Darkness (AoE pulsing blind), Chilblains (a Mark that does chill and poison when entered), Epidemic (spread conditions from one enemy to nearby enemies), Spectral Walk (30 seconds of swiftness for you, but during the first 8 seconds you can Spectral Recall and jump back to where you started, regardless of elevation change, LOS, etc), Plague Transform (turn into a cloud that poisons and can blind nearby enemies), Poison Cloud (20 seconds of AoE poison), etc.

You also have AoE abilities to turn boons on enemies into conditions, conditions on friends into boons, and to transfer conditions from friends to enemies. I haven’t found these to be useful in my play, but the could be powerful.

Not sure about the armor. I’m not sure Asura can look evil. (Which I love on my Asura Thief: it’s like the scene from Galaxy Quest where the cute little furry creatures suddenly bare their teeth and attack.)

Yukishiro.8792:

Devs don’t want to enter the necro forums because they realize how badly they’ve treated the class,

I highly doubt that they feel guilty and don’t show up.

Yukishiro.8792:

and because so few people actually play it,

One major aspect of how many play a profession has to do with its reputation. Reputation is affected by forums that are full of helpful tips or full of “we’re so broken I’m going to quit the game!!!!!!” posts. Not the only factors, but they are significant factors. I’ve seen it here and on other MMO’s before this.

Yukishiro.8792:

not because they’re upset at the whines. The thief forums were FLOODED with whines after the thief nerfs and they still got plenty of dev posts.

No they didn’t. In the first 10 pages of Thief postings you’ll find 4 threads that have Dev marks and two of these are on closed threads, one was on a joined thread.

Yukishiro.8792:

In fact if anything whining seems to attract dev attention, not turn it away. Whether that attention leads anywhere useful is another question (see: Ranger).

No, popularity of profession drives dev attention. They may not personally like it that way, but it is a business and if a third of your customers play Warriors and Guardians, well Warriors and Guardians will get more attention. If only 3% of players play a profession, it’ll be a lower priority. If, however, the forums are organized, well-reasoned, and helpful, that may raise your priority even if you’re a smaller profession. I’ve seen it on other MMOs (I never play the most popular classes) and I’ve seen no evidence here that it works differently.

Look at just the first two pages of these forums, for negative threads:

Necromancer traits are useless
Best decision I ever made for my necro (Sarcastic, now a Warrior)
Why do you play Necromancer? (Request to convince them Necro is worth it)
Necromancer Sigh
Necro Sucks -Proof
A Necromancer’s Worst Nightmare
Necros are so worthless….
So really how is the Necro? (Talks about how crappy Necros appear based on forums)
Serious Problem Starting to Trend…….. (Talks about “LFG except Necro”)
I Think I Know Why
conditionmancer for wvw still a joke

And that’s not even counting how many threads get side-tracked with “Yeah, but Necros suck anyhow, so…” kind of replies within threads.

Dredlord.8076:

yeah all in all that was a pretty ignorant post Druitt

the necro has come a long long way since release because of the “dedicated whiners” youre talking about

No it hasn’t. I disagree 100%. It’s come a long way because of well-reasoned complaints.

I was a software developer for 16 years (not games, but I know the field well). A well-reasoned complaint gets listened to. Emo rants get ignored (by Devs, not necessarily other customers who don’t know any better).

I’m not against people, even repeatedly pointing out that trait X is bugged, or trait X doesn’t fit into traitline Y, or weapon Z has no blast finishers, etc, etc. Bring it up in every posting you make if you want. Put it in your signature if you want.

But posting “Necros are broken”, “Necro Traits are Useless” (just got another one of these today), “I’m thinking of quitting the game because Necros are so broken”, etc, is counter-productive. I won’t back down from that.

Kardiamond.6952:

We play this class since we love it. We love the style, we love what is working.

But I also want our bug fix. So I will continu to post about them on the forum.

If a forum made you choose another class, it your fault, no one else is to blame.

If you’re well-reasoned, continue away. I myself have done so.

My point is that there are posts every single day here — dozens of threads — that say “Necros Suck”, “LFG but not Necros”, “Troubling Trends Developing”, “Necro traits suck”, “Necros are useless”, “Necros are the most broken class”, etc, etc.

That’s counter-productive. It drives people away, which hurts the profession: fewer players means lower priority in ANet’s eyes. It makes Devs hesitant to enter the forums and engage with us, and it obscures realistic complaints. Not to mention it’s childish.

I’m not saying “Don’t complain, just leave”. I’m saying, “Don’t get all emo and flood the forums with shrieks and wailing.” I imagine you’d agree.

wiazabi.2549:

@Druitt If people wanted to play guardian they would have, but if you keep bumping into problems, stuff that dont work, traits not doing anything, minion ai and the lack of updates / fixes the joy of playing just fades away.

That’s the point. It’s a game. You have choices and it’s up to you to make it fun.

I’m not criticizing people who say X or Y needs to be fixed. I’m criticizing the folks who end up creating dozens of Necros Suxors threads that talk about our “traits are useless” or “Necros are useless” or “Necros are broken”.

Those people need to move on. They need to detach their self-esteem from a game profession and do something fun. Their vociferous whining is overwhelming these forums and turning people off from the class who would actually enjoy it — like me. Those people are probably also turning off the Devs, who see the overwhelming, over-the-top, emo criticisms and don’t bother to dig through the kitty litter to find the reasonable suggestions.

Garo.5304:

Before I go further this is not a troll post I’m being completely serious.

I don’t have to read anything beyond this in order to know that the rest of your post is useless. The title of your post is “Necromancer traits are useless” which they are obviously not. Perhaps some of them need to be changed. Perhaps some of them need to be moved. But they’re not “useless” and starting your post with that shows you’re a troll. No need to read farther.

Some small ideas I’d suggest. Comments? Other specific changes?

1. Change Reanimator (Death Magic’s Adept minor trait) to heal your minions for a percentage of Life Force you gain. Even if minion AI were exceptional — which it’s not — you need the option in certain encounters to be minionless and choosing any traits in the Death Magic trait line means you can never do this. This change would still add a bit of oomph to minions, if you have them out, but would have no effect if you were minion-less. It even fits with the trait name: you’re reanimating your minions which otherwise don’t regenerate health.

2. Change Deathly Invigoration (Blood Magic IX) so that it is also a blast finisher (no damage) in addition to the heal. We seem to lack blast finishers, and it would be a great reason to dip into DS.

3. When you enter Death Shroud, have it work more like other Elites and form changes: lock out the top five skill slots, swap the bottom five utility slots, and swap the health and life force meters so that the ball is green and shows life force while the horizontal bar is red and shows health. If conditions/boons affect you in Death Shroud (I’m not sure, personally), move them to the appropriate place: by the ball if they affect you in Death Shroud form, by the horizontal bar if they affect you once you leave. Also, change the trim around the life ball, so even a red-green colorblind person can tell that it’s now life force and not health.

That way, you can watch cooldown timers, conditions/boons, etc, and it would be more consistent with other forms. I imagine that at some point Death Shroud was unaffected by boons/conditions, and since health cannot change in Death Shroud (either increase or decrease), it made sense to hide all those details. But it no longer makes sense.

4. Have Spectral Recall be a blast finisher and maybe also apply a brief cripple — at the point the Recall is used not at the point you return to.

5. Fix minion AI. It’s easy for us to suggest magic “make it work”, but I’ll try to give an example of specific rules.

First, GW2 should track what targets (within some radius) you have attacked (done something that would have thrown you into combat if you weren’t already), that have attacked you, and that have attacked your minion within the last X seconds.

If you target a player/mob and attack and the minion is not already attacking something else, the minion should attack that target until that target is dead (down?) or would cause the minion to pursue beyond leashing range from you.

If the minion does not have LOS or a path to this target, it should teleport to you (who evidently have an LOS) and try to get LOS or a path. If the minion still cannot get LOS or a path to the original target, it should try with your current target (if that target has attacked or been attacked). If it cannot get LOS or a path to this current target, it should attack the nearest target that has attacked or been attacked and is still in combat.

If the minion cannot attack any other valid target(or there are no valid targets) but is itself being attacked, it should attack the strongest of its attackers.

If you attack multiple targets (e.g. AoE or a bouncing attack) but one is your current target, the minion should go after that target in particular. If you attack multiple targets without having a specific target selected your minion should attack the closest one to you.

If the minion is not already attacking something and you are attacked, the minion should attack the closest of your attackers. If you move out of the minion’s leashing range, the pet should follow you until it is adjacent to you, ignoring attacks on itself if necessary. (Even if it dies in the process. You have to manage your minions at least a little bit.)

A minion should never attack a target that is not already in combat. A minion should never attack a target that you have not attacked or that has not attacked you or itself. A target should try to path in such a way that it does not aggro a mob that is not in combat. (Given some limitation, like the path should not be more than 20% longer than the most direct path.) After its target is dead, a minion should return by the most direct path to you before attacking anything else. If it cannot find a path to you that is within its leashing range, it should teleport to you.

(It really is complicated to specify, and there are still issues like how to distinguish a situation where you’re running through an area and want to ignore everything and keep running and have your minion do the same. Also possible exploits of sending a minion to attack at almost leashing range, then stepping out of leashing range at a particular moment, etc.)

Kursor.5746:

Necromancer’s trait lines aren’t terribly mixed up. They each have their idea and you get a picture of what the trait line is trying to do, but not all the traits within that trait line work towards that goal.

And I think that’s the point of this thread. Play other professions (besides Warrior and Guardian) in PvE or PvW and you’ll find they’re all “broken” in some way. (Maybe in PvP too, I can’t personally say.)

If you don’t want to play other professions, go to their forums. Elementalists, Thieves, Mesmers, and Engineers all complain about bugs, broken traits, and how they only have one viable build because their profession is so screwed up.

Besides Warriors and Guardians, all the professions still need work. Necros are not uniquely broken.

The forums are not equal, though: the Necro forums have quite a few who insist on posting repeated complaints that Necros are the most broken class, have the most bugs, are uniquely booted or refused in dungeons, etc, etc, etc — probably a quarter of the first page of the forum.

To be honest, I LOVED the Warlock in WoW, so a GW2 Necro was an obvious choice for me. Except after reading these forums, Necros looked “broken” and “painful”, so I ended up playing 4 other professions before finally seeing positive postings like the OP and finally trying Necro. My other four alts are on the shelf now, while I’m loving my Necro. (I’m a PvE and WvW guy, not PvP.)

I was robbed by the whiners. Yes, there are problems, and several knowledgeable follks have made a good case for issues and possible fixes in this thread. But the whiners, the “we’re broken” people are turning players away and probably causing ANet to roll their eyes and ignore the legitimate issues that are raised here — if you wade through the whiners. I’m lucky that I decided to try a “broken class”. Many people won’t, which means a smaller player base, which means lower priority to ANet. And whiners mean party/guild leaders will be biased against Necros as well. It’s a self-fulfilling, self-flagelating prophecy.

How about a deal: if you think Necros are broken, then do the intelligent thing and reroll and never come back here. Deal? Roll a Guardian and bask in your working-perfectly, over-poweredness, m’kay?

Dredlord.8076:

if you were wondering what just flew over your head…

it was death shroud.

Ouch! I read just enough to see “rant” and figured I’d be helpful. Should’ve forced myself to read the whole thing.

Still, I’d refer that poster back to Tornado. The worst transform in the game. No skills to exercise, low stat bonuses, and the ultimate perk: its knockback is farther than its attack radius. Being able to see all of your other (locked) skills, etc, only makes the train wreck more terrifying. It’d be better if it blanked out the GUI like DS. At least you could die in ignorant bliss.

(Seriously, you may have better results playing while (new-and-improved) Moa-morphed than playing in Tornado Form.)

Flaming Greatsword is obviously geared towards letting another profession do Elementalist-like things, and oh yeah, you get one too so you can BOTH have fun together. I guess unless you’re an Elementalist who wants to be able to have three sets of meteors falling from the sky at once (two of them watered down and not as effective as alternative elements).

LoVeRSaMa.3289:

That sounds like, they had lots of good ideas, half implemented them and we ended up with a half finished product..

Most MMO’s are half-finished, as far as I can tell. Especially any that have PvE and PvP.

I like GW2 a lot because: 1) weapons matter (unlike, say, WoW), 2) there’s no stupid dedicated-tank-n-healer concept, 3) quests are dynamic, 4) the skill/trait differentiation, 5) the splitting of the Mage archetype into Mesmers and Elementalists, etc.

I’ve not been impressed with the fixes that ANet’s put out in the first couple of months of the game, but I am impressed with the overall level of thinking that went into the overall game itself, and hopefully they’ll be able to balance it out moving forward. And I am impressed that they’ve kept up a steady stream of patches, on basically a weekly basis and without the stupid WoW Server’s All Down Maintenance Day. (Oh, and having overflow servers way better than being queued!)

Personally, I dislike armies-of-minions because they clutter the screen. (Not referring to the GUI, but a group of 5 FotM Necros with 10 minions all running at me is unhappy.)

LoVeRSaMa.3289:

@Rannulf, tell me about it, why is that even in the game if its totally useless and when 4 skills from the blood magic trait make it seems like siphoning is going to be good but just spit in your face..

Yeah, it does feel like siphoning was originally a good idea but somewhere along the line they realized that there were a lot of complications and they simplified it into something that you wouldn’t go out of your way to get. (And you would have to go out of your way to get it.)

Perhaps they were thinking of WoW’s Warlock with life leeching and fears. That was fun and challenging for PvE, but got nerfed into oblivion because of PvP since everyone hates being feared to death. Once ANet decided that fears would be short-lived — for PvP purposes and player sanity — the whole Warlock thing begins to fall apart.

So in GW1 a Necro could literally have 10 buffed minions out and an opponent would have to kill them all to kill the Necro? (Not to mention that a bunch of Necro’s on the field could pull non-gaming machines to their knees with all of that clutter to render.) It’s a matter of taste, of course, but that has made me glad that I skipped GW1.

I haven’t tried it yet, so I’m curious how it works in PvE (outside of dungeons) and PvP? Does it draw conditions continually or in pulses? Etc. Obviously, I’d have to try it out to see the details, but I’ve been puzzling over whether it works in such a way that you could draw multiple 25-stacks of conditions onto yourself within a couple of seconds and end up dying before you can discharge them in some way?

Bottom line, in practice (most concerned about world PvE and WvW right now): is it skating on the edge of death or is it fairly manageable? Does it have a significant impact for your team or is it an “oh, that’s nice” kind of skill?

digiowl.9620:

Thing is that Anet went a step further and more or less eradicated tank and healer in the process.

Tank in that there is no consistent aggro behavior. This again mean that there is no consistent way for one or more toon to act as designated tank.

Healer in that there is no reliable way to put a heal on a single toon or group without walking in the middle of them with a PBAOE.

End result is that everyone either bunker up, or go out and out damage hoping they can use self heals and dodge/mobility as a way to outlast the mobs.

Which requires a different way of thinking that the trinity discourages.

By definition, a designated tank and healer setup means more mindless play for most players. The great DPS masses simply go all-out once the tank has grabbed aggro firmly, and it’s up to the tank to hold aggro and it’s up to the healer to keep everyone alive. DPS has zero responsibility and can basically follow set rotations unless the encounter is scripted to frustrate that in arbitrary ways, or unless healers have enough influence to just let the DPS die when standing in the fire. It’s a stupid system.

Right now, the state-of-the-art of aggro in GW2 is in flux. Most players are used to WoW-style games where there are two choices: 1) damage/healing/taunt aggro, or 2) scripted/random aggro, and they thus assume that since it’s not choice #1, it must be choice #2. But there are lots of hints that’s not true.

Distance matters. Characteristics (vitality/toughness/etc) matter. Rezzing matters. Perhaps the capability to do AoE damage/healing matters, even if you haven’t done it yet. Perhaps equipped skills/traits matter. Oh yeah, and damage/healing matters, too. Yes, DPS may have to worry about being able to kite that mob they aggro’d over the rest of the group. Yes, DPS may have to use some mitigation and healing that benefits their group. Yes, there is no one that whack-a-mole heals. Yes, there is no one that spams taunts.

Personally, I think that’s the future of MMO’s, and it was a major mistake to fall into the Tank/DPS/Heal pigeonholing in the first place, in my opinion.

The biggest issue with GW2 dungeons, in my opinion, is not that there’s no Trinity to promote mindless play, mindless competition among professions, and pigeonholing. It’s that 1) bosses have all kinds of unique mechanics that you can’t really be prepared for, and 2) some trash mobs are too difficult in comparison to actual bosses.

As someone posted in some forum a long time ago, trash mobs before a boss should have a scaled-down version of the mechanic so a team can learn it before the more serious encounter. And you shouldn’t have to dread the 3-archer combination of trash mobs that randomly confronts you before you hit the push-over boss.

Dredlord.8076:

Druitt.7629:

Fiery Greatsword is a niche at best. It has a cooldown, a time limit, a charge limit, and it replaces your 20 weapon skills (counting attunements) while active.

Holy kitten cat katface!!!

you guys get 20 weapon skills????

surely to get to use the extra 10 you lose access to your heals and utility skills as that is double what most other classes get for weapon skills?

I mean at the very least while using all these extra weapon skills your UI is mostly removed right? one shouldn’t get that many weapon skills and still be able to see things like endurance and buff and conditions, amiright?

We get one weapon — no swapping as all other professions except Engineers get — and with that one weapon we get the standard 5 skills which change depending on which of 4 attunements (air, fire, water, earth) we switch to. So we end up with 20 weapon skills versus most professions’ 10. Engineers, however, could equip four kits and thus end up with 29 weapon (plus toolbelt) skills.

We only get five weapon skills at one instant, just like other classes, so the UI is just like other classes and weapon swaps. The Fiery Greatsword, however, replaces our weapon and doesn’t change based on attunement, so we go from 20 weapon skills (with attunement changes) to 5. If we drop the Fiery Greatsword, it disappears and we can’t swap back until the cooldown is up and we can resummon it.

(OK, technically, when we summon it, we get one in our hand and one falls on the ground and can be picked up by anyone. If no one else picks it up, we could use that one if the first one is dropped or uses up its charges. It’s still subject to the time limit and will disappear after the allotted time, even if it has never been picked up.)

The inconsistency I see is the targeting mark: Chillbain’s target circle shows up as larger — as large as the mark if I drop it — while the other marks have an original-sized target circle though the mark itself is larger if I drop it.

This can cause a problem if I’m trying to drop any mark, except Chillbain, just short of a mob: it’ll end up too big and immediately hit them.

So perhaps some of us are looking at the radius of the cast mark on the ground, while others are looking at the target circle. (Obviously if you use fast-casting you don’t see a target circle in the first place.)

I’m a total un-fan of jagged Horrors, so hate to pick up that minor trait, but can’t see using Marks without an enlarged radius.

sorrow.2364:

Actually, as Elementalist that makes sense because not every trait of the Elementalist are tied to the specific attunement in and, basically, all attunements are still good without the need of heavy traiting in.

My point is that the Elementalist forums complain just as strongly as you do about Elementalist traits not making sense. The consensus is you pretty much need 30 Arcana and that entire element-based trait lines (Fire and Air, I think) are basically not very useful. Necro trait lines may be scrambled, but they’re not uniquely messed up or uniquely hated.

sorrow.2364:

AoE blinds of the necros is just Deadly Swarm (which isn’t actually AoE) and WoD, both on a relative enough recharge time. Not enough at all to mitigate the damage. Obviously I don’t take into account Plague which is another topic.

Well of Darkness is an AoE pulsing blind. Deadly Swarm isn’t AoE, but: 1) a bouncing effect can have more reach than AoE, and 2) I believe offensive AoE doesn’t affect more than 5 targets and Deadly Swarm bounces to 4 targets. Signet of Spite is a single-target (1200 range) blind plus a boatload of other conditions. As you mention Plague of Darkness adds a blind, and if you like minions the Shadow Fiend has one as well.

sorrow.2364:

Actually Fiery Greatsword isn’t that bad. Tornado, also, is just the same as Lich Form, except the fact that it has bunch of CC, blindness at the cost of low range.

Fiery Greatsword is a niche at best. It has a cooldown, a time limit, a charge limit, and it replaces your 20 weapon skills (counting attunements) while active. It’s pretty cool, but in reality the only summoned weapon that Elementalists routinely use — if they build for it — is the Lightning Hammer.

Tornado is like the worst combination of Lich and Plague. Like Plague, it has no abilities and the only thing you can do is choose one of three “stances” that change its behavior slightly. Like Lich, it only doubles your Vitality and Precision (and triples Power). Oh, and it can also knock back enemies beyond its attack radius.

By contrast, Lich has five abilities that you can actively use — including ranged abilities — and Plague triples Vitality and quadruples Toughness (which are both higher for a Necro than an Elementalist). However much you hate Lich, you’re doubling the already-higher Vitality of a Necro rather than doubling the lower Vitality of an Elementalist, plus you actually have skills to use.

sorrow.2364:

PvP of course. There is not so much point to talk about balance in a non-competitive gamemode.

Yes there is. Half of the whines in this forum are about “No one invites me to dungeons because every other profession does everything I do, except better.” Balance matters there. Also, PvP is broken up into several aspects, including WvW. If you’re talking about sPvP, you should state that clearly.

sorrow.2364:

Swiftness isn’t mobility. Mobility are skills like Ride the Lightning, Blink, Lightning Flash, Burning Speed and so on. Skills that make the player hard to target, to catch and gives him great advantage with way faster movements. Necromancers have only Spectral Walk, which is only 6 seconds of recall time, not enough by far (I can’t even jump down in WvWvW dropping wells on the zerg without getting Spectral Walk finished before I dropped all the wells). Excluding that skill, they are static as statues, by far subpar compared to any other profession.

To be more precise, swiftness by itself is a weak form of mobility. So are stun breakers. So are cripples, chills, and other abilities to slow other players. Combining swiftness with cripple creates a larger gap in capability.

I know it’s not an important example, but your WvW example happens to illustrate this: let’s see you jump off of a tower wall and drop one good Elementalist AoE spell, then make it back up onto the wall. An Elementalist can’t do it, since none of their teleports will work across height changes. (Heck, RtL hasn’t historically even been reliable for moving uphill, which it’s supposed to do.) In an open field, the Elementalist is the master of movement, of course, but in your example you could drop into a crowd, drop one or two marks, and return to exactly where you started, even with LOS and height changes. (And you could trait to have targeted wells, just like an Elementalist.)

The bottom line is that once you write off DS (which basically doubles your HP), regard only teleports as mobility, and talk only of PvP, you have a point. The problem is that whiners in the forum are whining about PvP, WvW, PvE — all aspects of the game — and so a newbie comes along and reads your posts and will figure Necros suck at PvE, which then becomes “common knowledge” because even the Necros themselves seem to be saying it. Then we get people saying that they run into “LFG, no Necros”.

digiowl.9620:

Druitt.7629:

Mesmer clones are made of paper and certainly don’t buy you anything in PvP.

In terms of damage perhaps. but they excel at confusing the human element at the other end. This more so than PVE mobs that can happily ignore clones and make a direct line for the toon.

From what I’ve read, an experienced player can straightforwardly tell illusions from the Mesmer. They don’t necessarily hold the same weapons as the Mesmer, they stand still and use their weapon skill #1 repeatedly, you can throw a mark on the real Mesmer and it sticks, etc. I’d be fooled, but that’s not saying much. I’d also imagine that AoE or bouncing damage eliminates illusions rather quickly as well.

Not useless, but not some huge defensive capability that Necros can’t make up for.

sorrow.2364:

I’ve played 350 hours on my Necro and 500 hours on all my character and I partially disagree with you.

Nowhere near 350 hours, but…

sorrow.2364:

1. Horrible traitline design:

You get similar complaints in other professions. Elementalists complain basically the opposite: it’s stupid to break the traits up into elements when the Elementalist is meant to swap attunements, which makes 30 Arcana an absolute requirement.

sorrow.2364:

2. Weak damage: compared to other professions, the Necromancer raw damage is subpar. Our damage weapons are Axe and Dagger MH, both are extremely weak in damage compared to other profession’s damage weapons.

Personally, I think the Scepter MH is more damage than Axe, and Scepter/Dagger seems fairly strong to me.

sorrow.2364:

3. Lack of real defensive capability: all professions in this game have intrinsic defensive capability tied to profession mechanic. Necromancer is the only profession who hasn’t that. The only compensation is Death Shroud which isn’t enough if the profession itself has no way to mitigate the damage.

You can’t just write off Death Shroud because “the profession itself has no way to mitigate damage”. Death Shroud is the unique core of the profession. It may not be a great mechanism, but it’s not like it’s something separate. Mesmer clones are made of paper and certainly don’t buy you anything in PvP. (Not clear if you’re talking PvP or PvE in your notes.) Elementalists complain about being “all glass no canon”.

Not to mention that Necros have zero problems with conditions, and can not only remove conditions but actually sling them back. And Necros have several AoE blinds, Warrior-capacity vitality, and basically three life bars if they want.

sorrow.2364:

4. Minion AI: this problem is underrated.

Yes, broken AI can’t be overrated. Agreed, it’s a game-breaking issue for Minion-based Necros. At least Necros have Elites that may be useful. Elementalists have one (10-point) Elite that’s useful, and two (10- and 30-point) that are absolutely useless. Especially the 30-pointer, Tornado. Have you actually ever seen an Elementalist pop Tornado? Tornado makes Lich Form look OP.

sorrow.2364:

5. Transformation Elites: this is also a great problem. Transformations are actually the worse elites in the game because they completely throw out all your skill bar, giving you no access to heal, utilities and death shroud. While Plague Form gives you great survivability, Lich Form is an “I want to die” button. Plus, they actually destroy any minion you have and also all the spectral boons.

Elementalists have Tornado as their top Elite. Tornado functions much like Plague Form except with none of its benefits or abilities. Plague Form can actually be quite useful. (Again, depends on whether you’re talking PvP or PvE.)

sorrow.2364:

6. Horrible Mobility: I’m of course not talking about swiftness, which isn’t mobility. I’m talking about skills which instantly gives you a positional advantage. While other professions have a discrete amount of mobility (most have access to an AoE teleport, others have access to tons of gap closers etc.) our mobility is tied to the quite bad Dark Path skill which is only an offensive mobility, unwanted in most cases. When you add this to the already said low defensive capability of Necromancers, than you have the picture clear.

I can’t recall AoE teleports for “most” professions. Spectral Walk is a nice bit of mobility: it’s an inverse Blink but it also ignores all LOS and terrain requirements, which most teleports do not. (Thieves also have their inverse Blink which seems to operate similarly, but is more useful if you have a target and less useful if you do not.) Warhorn 5 also gives swiftness combined with repeated AoE cripple.) Underwater, both Necro weapons have gap closers, if that’s any consolation. (Actually, Necro Underwater weapon skills feel amazing to me.)

I don’t see Necros has having low defensive capabilities. Perhaps you’re talking about PvP, but I’ve not seen any consensus — even in this Forum-o-Whining — that Necros have poor defenses.

ANet: Your statement about the JH survival time may apply at level 80 and with certain traits/equipment. Unfortunately, many of us are exposed to them by about level 25, and at that level they last about 3-4 seconds and rarely damage anything. (The only time they would damage anything would be if you were swarmed, and it’d be hard to notice a tiny bit of extra damage in all of the text. I’ve never seen any damage in the combat log.)

And as Mazra noted above, there are a lot of inefficiencies in the life of a JH that means that they really can’t accomplish much even at level 80.

So I would also ask for a different minor trait to replace them. At best, you’re thinking of level 80, where the Adept minor trait is a speedbump rather than the accomplishment it should be to a level 25 Necro.

OP, I think you really have to talk about playstyle, not just builds. How do you use Death Shroud and Plague? What weapon sets do you run? What kind of gear do you have — or do you simply change traits but keep the same gear?

Personally, I’m loving my Necro. It’s the deepest class I’ve tried so far (Elementalist, Mesmer, Thief, Engineer) in terms of skills and their uses. Heck, Death Shroud alone has several different uses, depending on the situation.

I’d also echo LastDay’s comments that a more balanced play style is more powerful. The biggest downside of Necros are these forums, which have the highest ratio of whine-to-info of all forums. And the largest number of ridiculous consensus “truths” that aren’t true. People who left a WoW Warrior and picked up a GW2 Warrior moved up in the world. People who left WoW Warlocks (or Diablo Necromancers) and picked up a GW2 Necromancer are often disappointed. (Though my favorite WoW classes were Warlock and Druid.)

Agreed. I started with a Mesmer but got bored around 20. Took an engineer to the mid-20’s, and will probably revisit him. Took an Elementalist to the mid-50’s, and will definitely continue to play him. Took a Thief to 30 or so and will definitely continue to play him. Finally tried a Necro — with a lot of hesitation, since they’re supposed to be “the buggiest class” — and LOVE it.

I’ve bought every single skill, and each is useful under the right circumstances. On my Elementalist, by contrast, one 10-point Elite skill is useful, the others are useless. Heck, Tornado is the only Elite skill I’m aware of (and a 30-pointer!) that is actually harmful to use.

The Necro is actually more of an instant-cast profession than Elementalist, and many of our skills can be targeted more flexibly than an Elementalist’s. Marks can be dropped behind us as we run, and can be pre-laid so they’re faster than instant-cast.

Some hate on Death Shroud, but it’s actually two different things rolled into one, depending on whether you dip into it or stay in it, and whether you have more than 50% life force or not. Warrior-level vitality and multiple health bars? Yeah.

Minions? OK, minions are stupid (literally, as in broken AI). Right now, I generally run minionless, but it’s not like I have to equip non-useful skills to do so. There are so many useful skills that I don’t miss minions in general, and I can equip them when they might be helpful.

Speed? You can be near-perma-swifted by equipping the Warhorn and Spectral Walk. With some traiting and perhaps equipment enhancement, it’s perma-swifting. I usually just equip Spectral Walk, which provides swiftness 50% of the time and is also a very useful return-blink tool at the same time. (Plus, it has a wonderfully cool visual effect.)

The OP has a lot more experience and makes a solid technical case for the Necro. I have a lot less experience, but it’s not difficult to see that it’s a fun and competitive class (at least in PvE and WvW) and all of this mis-informed whining is self-fulfilling prophecy that leads ignorant party leaders to say — according to the whiners — “LFG, No Necros”.

+1

P.S. Whenever people complain that condition builds suck because of condition caps, I wonder why they don’t also say that other professions with condition builds suck too? As the saying goes, “it takes two to tango”, and if another profession’s capping your damage because they’re also running a condition build, that profession must also suck, right? But somehow, that never gets brought up — because it’s obviously not true, and even thinking about it illustrates that the condition cap is not totally what it’s made out to be.

Not to mention that if someone else is taking a boss to the condition cap, a Necro can push those conditions to all nearby mobs. So unless it’s a lone boss, a Necro can actually leverage other professions’ condition stacking. (And can turn mobs’ conditions back on them in multiple ways.)