Guild Wars 2

Berullos.6928:

Minion builds are strong. Fear builds are strong. But I think for high level play Foot in the grave becomes more and more important or else you’re gonna have a bad time against cc duel classes. Power builds can get insta gibbed. But if you’re skilled enough yo can do it.

Not gonna happen. Not unless all opposing 5 man teams are warriors. People will just save the warriors for last.

Not too sure I would run epidemic without corrupt boon and/or plague signet. I would lose soul marks and as mention by vesta, go with master of terror, but only if go for the 50% condition duration instead of the 40% you have now. If your worried about building life force, you could drop worm and go with spectral grasp. Swap path of midnight for spectral mastery. No better way to support your team than by single handily setting up a focus fire with just one skill while serving up some unsuspecting foe for all to see.

Gandarel.5091:

However a stunlocker can still be kited around. I only have problem with warriors in tPvP where in a teamfight, if the scene mentioned above happens, you are dead. Mostly if there are 3 warriors, which is pretty common nowadays..

You are not going to kite a good warrior, even if just the two of you (1v1). Their gap closers ensures that you are always in range. You can have them under constant cripple or chill while their berserker stance is on CD. Their cleave is pretty much godlike. You can be standing directly behind them, you’re still gonna get the, “Where Am I?”

You guys have to think outside the box. Any suggestions you come up with should be fairly simple to implement as well. Arenanet is clearly determined not to give us more access to defensive boons, like stability. Well, there are skills/traits in place already that would serve the same purpose. They would just require a tweak here and there in the code. Please stop asking for things like invulnerability, blocks, etc. As long as the Necro has DS, you will probably never see those things. While I can sympathize with the case for stability, since it doesn’t prevent damage, I’m also not going to keep beating that dead horse. Keep in mind people that getting focused fired is how a Necro dies, not why they died.

No Necro is going to counter stun warriors. Not without Greater Marks. And having a bugged staff that put marks on full CD when interrupted instead of the usual 4 seconds only adds insult to injury. At best, you can only survive the encounter. If you do kill a stun warrior, its because they let you by not resetting the fight or they lack the experience to properly abuse the build. At any rate, as long as Berserker Stance is on CD, you should never be a feel kill.

from a similar thread about 3 months ago:

Jayce.5632:

no diminishing returns on CC, just that you should not be CC again until the initial CC effect has run its course. this way should require more coordination to lock down someone.

For a Necro to escape, they need to be able to use their skills. They don’t have a single instant cast 900/1200 range teleport skill at their disposal, and they will always eat any damage thrown at them because they don’t have any immunity skills either.

Wait a minute. A Necro has 3 teleport skills:

1. Now you let know how many times the enemy interrupts you activating that 1.5 second double-action cast time skill as opposed to true single-action instant cast ability.
2. You see that “escape here” sign straight ahead while the “focus train” full of pulls, knockdowns, and all other kinds of nasty stuff is closing in on you from the rear? Well, not only does Spectral Walk have a significant set up time, but guess which direction your going to end up closest to when you do pop it. And that’s provided you’re not crazy (<—politically correct word) enough to play chicken with a train.
3. Dark Path disqualifies itself just on general design purpose.

Well what does a Necro have:

With the exception of Spectral Wall latest change, the only utility skill to even qualify, a Necro has absolutely nothing to escape with. While those 3 teleport skills will work in the starting areas, they are a liability to a Necro against real enemies. As I said above, mainly in similar posts, the Necro has to be able to use their skills. 17 out of the 25 non-aquatic weapon skills have defensive properties built into them. On average, with weapon swapping + DS, 10 defensive skills out of 15 is on your weapon’s bar. Its an attrition class after all, but (since you’re a Necro) have virtually no means to forcefully use them without 15pt Last Gasp in a picture perfect opportune time, or 30pt Stability and sacrifice your best defense by flashing it in order to use a defensive weapon ability.

Andele.1306:

As for necro defensive side, still support that we need to get this trait http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits – 10th down the line, back instead of FITG.

or:

• Death Shroud recharges instantly whenever you gain 100% Life Force.
• Foot in the Grave: Gain stability for 3 seconds when you leave death shroud.
• Last Gasp moved to Grandmaster Minor Tier.
• Spectral Armor moved to Elite Skill. Renews if you are disabled below 50% health.
• Strength of Undeath moved to Master Minor Tier.
• Summon Flesh Golem moved to Utility Skill.

These changes would serve to help increase our overall life expectancy against focus fire since we can’t have access to disengages. We would still be vulnerable against enemies once they understand these changes, with them probably opting to use immobilize primarily against us instead of pure disables. If these changes were to be given serious thought, we would more than likely see Spectral Armor’s duration cut by 50% given it’s rather strong attrition effect. This is but a few of the changes I would like to see if or when they decided to decrease our performance in other areas.

ronpierce.2760:

No… I wouldn’t say so. Right now DS can effectively (even flashing it) eat a heal from Blood fiend who can already be killed, evaded, ranged, LOSed, etc. You don’t design a game with poor mechanics to fix the issue of too much healing (IE DS absorbing heals, which our healing isn’t even that powerful), you balance numbers around mechanics so you don’t have abilities that make you shoot yourself in the foot so to speak. The whole DS and the way its designed right now is just that, poorly designed.

One day, DS will be great. But not today. It’s a work-in-progress. One that almost completely functions differently than its original design concept. Some things work, other do not. Some things are too strong, others are too weak. Trial and error when searching for the right balance. You don’t run before you walk, don’t walk before you crawl, don’t jump straight to healing in DS without testing to see if it (in this case, siphons) would throw balance out of whack. If you do, then which collateral option will the necro use to pay for such a thing? What kind of hit will the necro take to gain straight healing in DS?

ronpierce.2760:

Morbridae.8607:

Let us have our 6-0 skills on while on DS, fully functional. That’s all I ask for.

Hell I don’t even need that. I just want my Blood Minion, and traited Siphons and MAYBE my regens to go through. Kinda kittenty our “defense” does us more harm than good by blocking our heals.

Aiming a little high aren’t we? I’d start with siphons only, then re-evaluate.

Dredlord.8076:

Jayce.5632:

Chill affecting initiative would essentially slow 4 weapon skills at once, instead of one skill at a time. I’m not a thief, but even I can see this would really hurt them. The real problem is the initiative system itself that enables thief’s to do what they do.

ok I can see how the auto attack spammers can relate to this argument because well nothing is on cooldown.

When I get hit by chill most of the time it is reducing the cooldown on more than 4 of my weapon skills.

I guess thieves don’t realize this because they have the luxury of staying in one weapon set all the time.

Perhaps I should have clarified that, barring any weapon swapping, chill only increases the CD of a weapon skill after its been used or is already recharging. This does not apply to thiefs because their skills do not have a recharge time. Their entire weapons bar uses only one recharge, by which if chill increased it, then it would be putting 4 skills on recharge reguardless if the thief used them or not.

Having chill increase the initiative recharge rate would hit thief’s too hard. If the idea is to get them to slow the attack rate of their weapons bar, it would have been better if people ask for chill to increase the initiative cost of the individual skills themselves by 20,25,or33%.

Chill affecting initiative would essentially slow 4 weapon skills at once, instead of one skill at a time. I’m not a thief, but even I can see this would really hurt them. The real problem is the initiative system itself that enables thief’s to do what they do.

perhaps I should have said two unconditional fears. any other fears requires some type of effort on the targets behalf.

A necro doesn’t chain fear. They can only directly hit you with two fears. Two doesn’t constitute a chain. It’s the wall that you have to worry about. Don’t subject yourself to getting pent in a corner to where you have no choice but to run into the wall. If you do then come to the forums to complain, how is that the necro’s fault I will never understand.

Vanthian.9267:

Your guarantee is pretty dumb balance wise. That would be like a Warrior using Backbreaker but you dodge it, yet it doesn’t go on cool down. It would make it spam able to the point where it will only go on cool down if it hits and that is pretty dumb in my opinion.
Just like the training wheels on the Thief stealth attacks. You missed? You were blocked? You were evaded while in stealth? Attacked them while they were invulnerable? No problem, that wont’ break stealth and you will just use the skill again in 0.5 seconds. No biggie.

Actually 3 seconds instead of 0.5 seconds. Now some of us actually cancel our cast of some weapon skills on purpose. Since the last patch, this act puts those skills on full cooldown instead of the standard 3 seconds and I’m not talking about channeled skills either.

Andele.1306:

Tobbygnome.6793:

Ah, all these new warriors, yet another reason why Corrupt Boon will never leave my bar.

Well of Corruption is objectively better, AoE, a dodge doesnt stop it, cannot be blocked by small map problems/obstruction, deals damage to enemy and not yourself.

and also to add, CB has always been hit or miss, not something that you can put a lot faith in. nerfing it to only remove 5 boons effectively killed it for me. you would think they would make if more reliable first before ner…trimming it.

no, not viable at all. you would spend your entire time wondering which way is up.

edit: meaning against two classes with multiple ways to hard CC, you would live long enough to dodge provided that you was not immobilized.

DS will always be seen as a means to bunker things since it serves as a replacement of all the normal tools used to bunker. As for Vampirism, they could allow siphons to persist through DS and go from there. No regen, no heals, including wob or blood minion’s main siphon. Anet could solve two problems at once. It should help to increase survivability unless of course that even with the low return on vampirism proves too strong with DS.

Streets.2705:

To heal undead turrets you must feed them 1000 slaughtered fluffy rabbits.

must have ran short on kittens if they moved on to rabbits

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I can’t believe this is hard for people to understand. Necromancers have access to Terror and Burning. Burning is the second most powerful condition in the game, next to terror. The fact that with one instant cast skill (Doom), they can apply both, is crazy. Engineers cannot do this. Again:

In one instant skill, they can apply CC and huge damage. Then can then follow this up with more fear and AoE torment.

You can’t compare skill across classes, even if they are exact copies of each other. You prove how little you know about balancing when you do this.

In short: That trait isn’t OP on it’s own. It’s OP because it has terror in the same class.

relax just a bit. no one has called for nerfing the engineer’s trait. just making light of the difference between the two

you just made some engineers spill popcorn as they glanced away from the numerous op necro threads. shame on you. we never would have known they were there until the crickets stopped chirping, frightened by the impact.

DS is fine as it is now. It’s sole purpose is to replace all the other active defense skills COMBINED. The problem has always been access to it, limited by both CD and life force. I have never understood why but imho, everything a necromancer does should be returning at least a flat rate of life force. For example, 1% anytime they deal damage to a target and one elite skill contender for those times when you need a fast buildup. Since the idea is simple enough in theory, as in a faster buildup when dealing with more threats, Im sure they’ve tested it before but decided against it. Im just curious as to why.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

Darek.1836:

I’ve found there’s no way to beat them with guard but yeah besides the point

you should keep looking and you will find a unusual guard.

I main a Necro and I have to say that people love to complain about things they do not understand. I die more to direct damage or power as the OP stated a lot more than I do to conditions. Keep in mind that this is a condition heavy meta right now and I equip at least 3 condition removers myself. I would need at a minimum, 6 seconds of cast time just down an afk’er (12-30 seconds when they fight back) from 100 to 0 through conditions. Did I mention (incoming sticker shock) that I don’t use the staff? Power can drop me in half that time that it take for me to kill 1 through conditions alone.

The reason you see teams with 2 or 3 Necros is because they want to do the job 2 and 3 times as fast. It’s the same reason you see 2 or 3 Mesmers, Thiefs or any other power based team composition. With my current condition defensive build, am I vulnerable to power? Yes. But I’m a Necro and I’m used to it by now. It’s why I keep insisting on more access to the essential defensive options that we probably won’t ever get. At the same time, I do not go out to rally up supports to the nerf this other class campaign.

The last time I checked, Power (including it’s AOE form) didn’t corner the market on the focusing of a single target.

Ok, thanks all for chiming in. Judging from the replies so far, it would seem that I’m not wrong to worry. To just touch on some of the highlights I’ve seen so far:

1. Faster Cast Times – this would not really help unless they give us more instant cast abilities. As long as the skill have a cast time, its a skill you’re not going to get to use when you’re the ball in table tennis.

2. Stun Breaks – these serve their purpose just fine, unless you have five pair of eyes looking at you necro. They know you are not going to devote all of your utilities for stun breaks. Even if you did, you can only equip 3 of them while each of those five pair of eyes is slotting at least 2 or more stuns with your necro name all over them. In the end, Stun Breaks will not help you get your skills off.

There are only three ways that nearly guarantees skill cast completion. 1)Stability – and we know where Arenanet stands on this. 2)Blocks – necro by Arenanet’s definition automatically means no returns of the number 0 damage for the enemy. You have access to protection, what more do you want? 3)Blind – the necro’s only true form of damage mitigation. The only questions here is, are they going to increase our access to it? And will it include a WoD effect-type for ranged enemies?

The reason I’m worried is because I don’t see Arenanet increasing our attrition effectiveness to a level that we can get by without some form of the above mentioned Big 3. Namely, I don’t see them increasing our life force gains by any significant levels, especially if they are looking to have necros regenerate health while in DS. Too much of an increase in either LF gains or healing in DS (or worse, both) will automatically mean 30 points in SR, no matter the build.

So rumor has it, Arenanet is finally, since release, taking a second look (better handle on attrition) but not a serious look (no blocks, stability, etc) at the necromancer. Because of this my biggest concern, besides the bugs, is that the necro still will not be able to create the opportunities to get their skills off. Am I wrong to worry that this is the one area that will not get addressed?

no diminishing returns on CC, just that you should not be CC again until the initial CC effect has run its course. this way should require more coordination to lock down someone. as far as immobilize, i feel that you should be immune to CC if you are under the effects of immobilize. chances are, the skill you would need to cleanse or get out of immobilize is not a stun break. it is a strong form of control, but it does not reset your skill bar.

The real question is, what is obstructing staff 1? The only thing between you and the roots is, nothing? Unless you have dagger equip, you’re pretty much screwed or you can hope DS 4 in a power build can sometimes do the job.

Enemies downed/defeated while suffering from this new DS 5 condition are added to your DS 6-9 skill slots. Each summoned fallen enemy requires a 1% upkeep of life force. OP?…nah lol

Pretty glaring is an understatement. There are some classes that can chain lock you solo and, coupled with the much better dps than the necromancer, can also down you. Stun break is not the answer. Light-armored classes need to avoid as much damage as possible. Time is not on your side as an attrition class where raw dps trumps dot. In light of that, not being able to defend yourself on top of it is just down right ..

or Stability.

3 – 5 second duration upon activation would at least let the necromancer get their skills off before losing control of their character by eating dirt from the eminent chain locks we all know is coming. How this has been allowed to go on for so long is beyond belief.

i agree with your OP and i approve this message. there is entirely too much damage in the game for areanet to gut ds and life force skills they way they did. and to agree with some, no this is not a 1vs1 game. not yet. but it should not be a 1vs1 game for all the classes, not just for the necro. no class should perform better in 1vs1 over group play if all classes cant do it with the same efficiency. i want some balance across the classes.

Bhawb.7408:

They have changed it a lot from conception to closed beta to open beta. But from open beta on, it has remained fairly similar, although with minor changes. I do agree that there are certain things about it that shouldn’t have been smashed so hard, Necromancers were severly OP pre-DS and Lich nerfs. Pre DS nerf, DS necros could win 3v1 fights simply because going in and out of DS often made you practically unkillable. Lich form was similar, except that instead of being unkillable, it gave you champion level damage output such that Lich was guaranteed to win any and every fight it was used in.

They just overreacted on the nerf sticking a little, and in time that will peel back a little. This game is still only half a year old, it’ll get better.

not to try and keep going off topic, as this would be better for its own thread, but i agree. although now that the players have had time to become familiar with all the professions, im not so sure a necro would still be able 3vs1 people, even with pre-nerf DS. experience will always be your best weapon so im sure that the players could have come to terms on how to exploit DS flaws in time. the scalpel here would have helped to ease this transition.

call me old-fashioned, but i always prefer this route before labeling things OP, which there is not many things are OP in the game. arenanet still thinks the necro is a class that wins their battles through attrition while taking away or severely limiting the very things that would let them do so. the hard cc coupled with the right damage is just too much for the necro to handle in its current state.

what would i call OP? besides the topic starter’s LF skills, i would say the number one thing on my list would be the disabled effect. it’s too strong when chained, allowing for people to just focus spam it. i believe that you should not be disabled again until the initial disabled effect has run its course. this would require players to actually show some semblance of skill when trying to shut down a target.

Bhawb.7408:

1. They aren’t going to completely and entirely change a class like this. This would require a complete revamp of all necro skills and traits.
2. Having this many skills is too strong. You are basically giving us 8 more utility skills that we can use.
3. They are way too strong.

It makes us do too much damage, too fast, with too much tankiness, and too high maneuverability. We could out-everything everyone.

arenanet have already done this to the necro’s DS mechanic. im still waiting on them to revamp the skills and traits to even come close to what was taken away. DS was a stun break on activation, could be traited for stability for its entire duration, and had means for renewing life force while in DS without relying solely on life transfer. this was the original design. this is why we didn’t need any escape abilities. this is why we have extremely limited ways to mitigate incoming damage.

while i agree that DS in this form was very powerful, arenanet could have used a scalpel instead of a hatchet when nerfing it. they simply could have limited the necro’s DS duration in a number of ways as a start. after all, arenanet’s no secret ‘trial and error stance’ on making small changes first must have clearly missed the mark in this case. they never gave the playerbase time really experience DS strengths and flaws in its pre-nerf form.

im not saying this applies to you, but i don’t think most players realize this about the necro. and im pretty sure the necro is the only profession to have received any treatment of this scale to their primary mechanic.

perhaps, but i would be more satisfied if the bone minions spawn via ground targeting just like the flesh worm. in fact, both the bone minions and the flesh worm should be tied to a weapon offhand instead of the utility slots, simply because they round out our remaining combo finishers when you kill them. right now, if we were to use all three of our combo finishers, we can only slot one utility well, two if you’re going to count our healing well, but not good enough for me to pass on consume conditions in the situations i usually find myself in.

the AI is fine for minions for the most part. they just need to always remain consistent by not just standing by idly. they really only need three simple priority behavior patterns:

1. attack what you are attacking
2. attack whatever is closest that is attacking you
3. none of the above (range: 2000), follow you

the only improvement i would ask is that when on land, all minions spawn by ground targeting just like the flesh worm.

i had to login for this topic/discussion as the root problems were getting covered. if i recall correctly, the necromancer is also the only profession to have their class mechanic revamped almost completely different from it’s original design. only the thief received a similar change that even comes close. but my point is, you can’t make these types of changes without them effecting every other aspect of the character. they designed them with a core concept in mind, but later change probably the biggest feature or mechanic behind the profession. great, now we just have to redesign most of the skills and utilities that was also designed around said feature or mechanic we just changed. outstanding, it only took about 3 years the first time, should be able to do this in 2.

retaliation and chill are your best weapons against a thief. you will also have to make sure you rebuild life force during the engaugement so that the thief eats it and not your health. there should be only a small window in which you should not have some kind of a cc on the thief. you have to control their movement during the fight. not much you can do about them running away. but if they are running, then you’ve done something right if it’s a 1v1 situation.

the more pressing bug with marks is that downed players don’t set them off. there has to be a non-downed state enemy player in range of both the mark and a downed enemy for the downed player to receive just the conditions, and hopefully, the front loaded damage on top of it.

mesmer, due their frequent ease of access to both confusion and retaliation. i can understand having one or the other, but not both. no other class, not even instagib theives/warriors comes close to a mesmer’s risk/reward efficiency which is double what ever other class can do.

@lunartic.3647 and Andele.1306

poor choice of words on my behalf and im sorry for that. i was attempting to emphasize the difficult one will have when trying to obtain the runes in question.

note to self: try to refrain from posting when tired.

Consume Conditions, easily the best option and even if there are not many conditions present in an area. speaking from lvl 80 perspective (disclaimer: using a skills/traits setup with the least amount of bugs). with the right build, you wont need minions to control the battlefield or wells for that matter, and still be able to take on 3-5 mobs.

@ Sandara.1096: I am running a purely Conditionmancer using Scepter/Dagger mostly for PvE and WvW i dont really PvP much
Which rune is better Undead or Afflicted or Nightmare i cant really decide.

imo, nightmare is my preferred choice. the problem is that, beyond the mists, no one seems to have found any nightmare runes yet while afflicted and undead are readily available.

there should not be any free transfers to the tier 1 servers. in fact no free transfers to the the top 3 tiers would be better.