Guild Wars 2

The “super-secret” aspect of the necromancer, that many still have difficulty grasping, is that the necromancer isn’t designed for 1v1 situations.

Let’s take a good look at the necromancer’s abilities, weapons, and synergies between the two:

Arguably the best ability a necromancer has in terms of raw damage is epidemic. On a 12 second cooldown, this ability alone can deal (5 target aoe x 3000+ damage per second from bleed/poison/burning damage) 15,000 damage PER SECOND.

Not the mention the ability to spread blind, chill, weakness, and vulnerability at the same exact time!

Both the scepter and offhand dagger have aoe bleeds, as well as debilitating debuffs associated with them.

The staff specializes in aoe marks, which can be increased to a very reasonable size with the greater marks trait (if the bugs ever get fixed).

Axes and daggers, although having no AoE damage, benefit the most from power + crit chance. This synergizes exceptionally well with wells, which also happen to be particularly useful in AoE damage.

And of course the highest damage per second ability in death shroud just so happens to be an AoE.

The necromancer is designed specifically for multiple-enemy encounters. This is where the necromancer diminishes in tpvp/spvp, and becomes extremely effective in WvW and multi-target pve encounters.

I really do consider the self-inflicted bleed to be more of a blessing than a curse, as you suggested.

You can either consume it for extra healing, staff #4 to transfer it to the target, offhand dagger #4 to transfer it, or even turn it into a boon with a well.

I’m not attempting to be a Jon Peters fan-boy, but I have seen on multiple occasions the incorrect usage of death shroud. Necromancers will often spend too much time in DS, spamming #1 for stacks of might- And this might be a valid strategy if you don’t expect to take damage. But the difference between keeping life force above 50% to soak up a burst ability and having absolutely none left with 10 stacks of might is quite large.

Necromancers shouldn’t be sitting in death shroud and treating it as a secondary life pool, they should be using it as a defensive utility to counter burst abilities.

I’m not entirely sure if this is a necromancer specific bug, or a graphical problem on my end, but I had absolutely never seen the spell effects of the #4 trident ability until today.

I had simply assumed there was no animation. Are any other necromancers experiencing this problem?

Oh, and in regards to:

Can I address Anet directly? I wouldn’t mind if you sent any fixes or updates out ASAP, even if it means having to restart my client tons of times as they go live. I would prefer to get everything as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for one gigantic dump.

I believe ArenaNet themselves would like to see these bugs fixed as quickly as possible as well, for the longevity and enjoyment of their game. However, it’s much more easily said than done. Despite the necromancer being riddled with bugs, there are many other problems to attend to- Namely, bugs which affect all players regardless of class.

We’ve already seen several fixes to crucial bugs and exploits. With the stability to the trading post, I’m sure they’ll begin focusing attention to events, instances, and botters.

These things take time, and although there is still much more to do to, you can rest assured that ArenaNet is making progress.

I, for one, am quite happy to see a response. Even happier to know that these issues are being looked into. I would like to personally thank you, Jon, despite what appears to be equine odontologists in the thread.

I’m not entirely sure if this would be categorized as a bug, or if it’s working as intended, but the focus #4 ability, Reaper’s Touch, never bounces to minions if no players are in range even though it states that it bounces to “allies” much like other skills that affect health regeneration on pets.