Guild Wars 2

I can guarantee you, that if you and I spent a few hours using Minions together, you would notice that your claim of BROKEN AI is overblown.

No, its not overblown. They’re pretty freakin broken. Something that cannot be relied to function as intended 100% of the time is broken. This isn’t a player dodged your ability so it missed problem. Its a series of skills that simply don’t work as they’re supposed to problem. You can try to make any justification you like, but those are the facts.

Bhawb.7408:

You can’t convince someone of something they don’t want to know. There are a lot of people that are dead-set on the idea that minions are terrible, and even if I posted hundreds of hours of me doing great with them they’d still say they are terrible.

They’re terrible in the sense that they’re unreliable. Yeah, they work most of the time, but that one time you NEED them to work, but don’t, they just bring the whole idea of minions crashing down into a big pile of fail. Especially in tPvP. I’ve tried your minion bunker build. As long as I have minions, its pretty good, until an engineer or elementalist shows up, but thats not what this discussion is about.

However, on more than one occasion they’ve bugged out and failed to work correctly, especially Bone Minions. Losing a fight because you’ve invested all your traits and strategy into minions that sometimes have the chance to fail is why people still call them terrible. If you can’t rely on something to work 100% of the time, what good is it? Its crap, thats what it is.

An example that happened to me a few weeks ago. I get downed by a thief, but its a close fight, and I also manage to down the thief with my minions. As soon as I downed him, all of my minions just stop. Every single one. Then walk back over to me and just stand there. None of my downed abilities are causing my minions to respond and attack the thief again. Meanwhile, I’m getting destroyed by the thief because his throwing daggers are bouncing back and forth between me and my minions, granting him extra damage against me. Had my minions not failed and continued to attack the downed thief, I would have easily out damaged him and rallied. Never seen this problem happen with ranger pets or the mesmers clones/phantasms.

Xom.9264:

Bhawb the pets constantly fail to attack in PvP. Testing in the mists I dont think I ever had them fail to attack when Im testing on one target. However when I test on the lord (multiple targets) the pets very often do not attack after the first target is dropped and will not attack again no matter what skills I use other then the long cooldown activated pet skills charge, blind etc…

You might have something there. When I do map completion, I just mass pull everything around me. Everything. Even if I don’t need that particular NPC for the heart quest I’m doing. Its unusual for me to fight a single NPC at a time. This only happens when there aren’t any other NPCs or they’re to far away for me to grab without the other resetting.

Perhaps having more than one target is whats causing the AI to sometimes break. I do know that when I am fighting a thief in WvW that is constantly stealthing in and out repeatedly, the Flesh Golem will eventually stop doing anything at all. Might be a problem with the reacquisition of targets. However, that still doesn’t explain why sometimes, even if I am only fighting one NPC, the Bone Minions just stand there and do nothing.

Sorem.9157:

Am i the only necro that actually thinks my class is overpowered ? (At least at tPvP)

Yep.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

I just tested minions (Bone Fiend, Bone Minions, Shadow Fiend & Flesh Golem) in Orr against Risen, and in Diessa Plateau against separatists and critters. I could only get them to fail to respond once, and that was by 1) disabling auto-attack, 2) not targeting the separatist, and 3) dropping a mark on him at far range. That said, every other time I did that same routine, the minions did respond. I tried to use the trebuchet hills near the Redreave Mill WP to get an altitude difference, but had no pathing issues.

I had thought marks were unreliable to prompt minions to attack, but I didn’t have an issue aside from that one occurrence, although single-target attack did sometimes seeom to prompt them maybe a half-sec quicker (but that may be observer error).

Roughly 20 risen, and 40 separatists, and maybe a dozen critters.

My build is in my signature. I tried half the test with those traits and half with minion specific traits in Spite(IX), Death(III,X), and Blood(VII). I used both scepter(Bloodlust)/dagger(Agony) and staff(Soldier crest). No detectable difference from weapon or traits changes.

I’m getting vastly different results than you. I don’t know what to say. They work about three quarters of the time. The other 1/4 they just stand around doing nothing, except the ranged minions. They always work. Bone Minions especially seem prone to failure more than the others.

I’m just going to stop using minions in PVE. They’re still broken as far as I am concerned.

Bhawb.7408:

Melee minions have issues with pathing a lot of the time, since they have to get aggro, then get in range, then attack; whereas ranged minions need to only be in range, and have LoS.

Diessa Plateau is 80% flat terrain. How on earth would pathing be an issue?

As was said earlier, the other classes with pets or minion mobs don’t have this problem and they always attack like they should. Thieves Guild attacks every time all of the time. Never had a problem with either of them just standing there in any situation, ever. Ranger pets will stick to a player/NPC like glue and will not get off you even if the ranger is 3000 meters away.

Bhawb.7408:

It does work, I’ve sat in Heart of the Mists for over 10 hours testing minion aggro, and Bas and I release a video via SOAC that showed it in action.

Something must have happened between now and then or HotM has some completely different AI.

I’m finally getting around to doing map completion on my necro. Decided to play MM since I never use it in PVE. Using a 30/0/20/20/0 build. All of this happened in Diessa Plateau. Played for about an hour there before logging off in frustration.

First started with scepter (forgot unequip it o_O) against some separatist NPCs. Only my Bone Fiend and Blood Fiend would attack. Bone Minions, Shadow Minion, and Flesh Golem refused to attack until I used golem charge. Then the golem would attack that one NPC, but would stop in its tracks after it killed it and would refuse to do anything else. The other two still wouldn’t attack no matter what I did. Then I switched to dagger/warhorn. They all started to finally attack on my auto attack chain, but the Bone Minions still refused to do anything 2/3rds of the time. Golem would just randomly stand there for no apparent reason. Axe was hit and miss. Most of the time they would attack, but they’d still bug out (except the ranged minions who would work every time) quite a lot, even when using auto attack only.

Against structures, none of them would attack except the Bone Fiend, period.

I know you made a video, but my experience last night was VASTLY different than what you’ve shown. My conclusion is that minions are still broken and not worth using in PVE.

spoj.9672:

Run a power build = problem solved. Conditions ignore toughness so its a fair trade off to make objects immune to them.

No, not really. Toughness has nothing to do with this issue. Inanimate objects don’t even have stats. This is a condition builds being completely burdened with the inability to do certain heart quests at anything but a snails pace because it takes 5 years to kill one barrel/weapon rack/supply crate issue. As someone else has already pointed out multiple times (sorry I forgot your name), you can set a destroyer and fire elemental on fire to do damage to them AND blast them with fireballs no problem. But that supply crate, that mighty nearly indestructible supply crate…

Having leveled my necromancer as condition build, I empathize greatly.

Tyr.5912:

I dunno, I have targeted guardians, watched them hit “save yourself”, then I hit corrupt boon and nothing happen. Skill goes on cooldown, the guardian was not rolling away. CB just did not work. And this happens all the time. If I auto attack a few times then hit CB it works.

That wasn’t Aegis blocking it. That was just the skill failing to work, which happens often enough.

Leeto.1570:

Thief is a bit different thing, all teleports/slows in world wouldnt help us catch thief in wvwvw that wants to get away but the fact that even low mobility professions can just walk away with swiftness from necro is really disappointing.

I get what you’re saying. I’m not upset at the fact that he got away. I’m just upset at the fact that someone mashing the 2 key on their keyboard trumps anything I have at catching him. 2222222222 is some real pro skills right there.

Now had he escaped because he popped his Signet of Shadows to blind me so Dark Path would miss, or used Shadowstep to avoid the projectile, or hell just dodged it, (it isn’t like he wouldn’t have seen it coming) I wouldn’t feel so jaded. Heartseeker spam is just stupid no matter how you look at it. It also really sucks that this method of escape physically out runs the only gap closer we have. The speed of the projectile is just pitiful. The same can be said about the staff auto attack as well.

I had the same problem with a thief today. I did everything right, dodged all his cloak and daggers, he didn’t so much as get a single stealth off, even interrupted his heal with Spectral Grasp and knocked him out of Shadow Refuge with Staff 5. Completely locked him down and controlled the entire fight. He just Heartseeker spammed away from me at 5% health and there wasn’t a thing I could do to catch him. He out ran my Dark Path with his Heartseeker spam. Of course this happened in WvW so the whole, “If he ran away then you won.” argument doesn’t work. There was no other objective other than killing dirty rotten thieves and beating them at their own game.

I was not happy.

I want flesh golem to work under water again. Minions are pretty decent for under water combat. Well, when they decide to work at least.

flow.6043:

Yes, I know you were right the whole time… the clarifying was directed at poplolita.

Oh, I thought you were talking to both of us. My bad.

flow.6043:

I feel like you two are talking past each other.
Let me clarify a few things for you:
There are conditions and control effects. Then there is CC (crowd control) wich can be both a condition (frozen, cripple, immobilize..) and a control effect (aka hard CC because all of them lock all your skills over the time of their duration).
And yes, fear is in fact both (condition and ce), meaning that it can be cleared by both condition removal as well as stun breaks, only when cast by an ally of course.

He said immobilize wasn’t a CC. I said it was. Then he linked stuff that proved it while still trying to say immobilize isn’t a CC. I already knew it was a condition as well as being a CC. Theres nothing to clarify.

Softspoken.2410:

Ascii.9726:

Corrupt Boon being unblockable and not being blocked by Aegis would be a dream come true for most Necromancers.

Does this still happen? I remember a patch (I think last October or November!) that explicitly noted corrupt boon should now rip aegis instead of getting blocked by it.

As do I. In fact, I distinctly remember converting Aegis into burning yesterday in tPvP. Perhaps he is referring to other block effects such as shield block/gear shield which still do block corrupt boon. I never found these blocking abilities to be an issue. Just the random misses and general failure of the skills to function due to the inherent problems with projectile skills that require you to face your target.

Poplolita.2638:

Look, it’s 3:33 am here, I’m not in the mood to point out all the wrong in your posts:
Are you really comparing immobilize to a pushback? I mean really? God, do I have to highlight everything fot you? I even used poison/immobilize hyperbole to point it out.

I feel like I’m being trolled. Whatever, I’m done.

Poplolita.2638:

Puting words in my mouth now?

Look, at this point, I’m just goin to let facts speak:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

The very first thing it says is:

“Control is the act of manipulating enemy movement, damage, as well as many other game mechanics.”

Then goes on to have an entire section on this:

Controlling movement

Conditions and other effects can be used to control enemies’ movement. It is useful to prevent foes from reaching you or from avoiding your attacks.

Cripple, Chilled, and Immobilize slow and prevent movement.
Sink and Float cause a creature to rise or fall in water.
Wards limit enemy movement beyond a line or circle.
Area of effect skills will deter enemies from attacking or force them to move.

Kinda solidifies my point, not yours. So, yeah. I don’t think you read what you linked.

Poplolita.2638:

You might as well compare immobilize to poison which is also a type of CC which control healing – aka a condition. I hoped you would read the tittle, and assume I was obviously talking about hard CC…

Not even close. Poison doesn’t change your ability to move or the ability to use skills. It doesn’t change your ability to control your character. How long have you been playing MMOs? Its a pretty standard term thats been around for a long long time. Immoblize (roots) have always been considered CC. Besides, as I said before, you can remove any CC (stun breakers remove knock down) in this game with one skill or another, so thats not a valid point.

Poplolita.2638:

Kravick.4906:

Poplolita.2638:

Immobilize is not a cc, but a condition . The only spell that could be both considered a condition and a cc is fear.

Its considered a CC in every other MMO. I don’t see why that would suddenly change here.

You don’t completly lose your character control while immobilized, you are still able to dispel it, and/or cast your spells.

Ah you’re talking about hard CC. The term CC stands for Crowd Control. Immobilize is a still form of control. You cannot move your character and are thus being controlled. Yes, you can remove it, but you can also remove all hard CC with stun breaks. Immobilize is still a CC effect none the less.

Poplolita.2638:

Immobilize is not a cc, but a condition . The only spell that could be both considered a condition and a cc is fear.

Its considered a CC in every other MMO. I don’t see why that would suddenly change here.

Flesh Golem having a cast time on his charge I can agree with. Its pretty powerful and can hit multiple targets, and the knock back is pretty far. The charge itself also hits pretty hard as well. I’ve never really had issues with landing the golem charge unless he gets stuck on some random twig or corner en-route to the target.

What I don’t agree with is Bone Fiend having a cast time on its immobilize. It doesn’t cause the Bone Fiend to immediately immobilize someone. It makes the Bone Fiends next attack (whenever that is depending on when it last attacked) immobilize. Since the projectiles themselves also have a travel time, it can take as much as 3 seconds for your target to actually get immobilized. All of this also depends on whether the ability even lands. If the Bone Fiend is bugged out and just standing there not doing any thing, the immobilize shots will never even fire. More often than not, I find that the Bone Fiends immobilize never manages to connect because of one of many things having gone wrong. Having to CC a target before using this skill also kinda defeats the purpose of it, as its a CC skill itself. You shouldn’t have to CC someone to land a CC. Makes no sense.

IMO, the Bone Fiend immobilize needs to be changed in one of two ways. Either keep the cast time, but make the Bone Fiend immediately fire the immobilize projectiles, or drop the cast time, but keep the “On Next Attack” mechanic. Having both is utterly ridiculous.

Harbinger.8637:

Amazingly OP

I would love it but ya….

People always say this, but they never give examples of why it would be OP. How would it any more OP than PTV?

JonathanSharp.7094:

So, we do read the forums.

Right now we’re thinking this ability will go back to being unblockable, as will Currupt Boons. We still want you to need LOS to your target, however. We want these skills to have fun back/forth play on them, while being fair for both sides (the attacker and defender). Keep in mind, these abilities can still be evaded.

And thanks for all the constructive debate in here, great job!

Its not so much the fact that they’re blockable, but it is nice that you’re changing that. My problem with these two skills is the wonky invisible projectile and direction facing mechanic these skills have. It makes it very difficult to land these skills, and honestly it feels like I’m fighting the mechanics of the game rather than my opponents. In PVE this is much less of an issue obviously.

Maybe there is some internal reason or a game engine limitation which requires both skills to function like this. Both of these skills would be much more reliable and easier to use, and would go a long way in addressing this issue if they at least didn’t require you to face your target.

Its nice seeing a dev post here again. I would like to see more from you guys, but I can understand the lack of visible presence what with so many angry necros around here.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Actually one thing we’re lacking is a condition version of PTV gear. Why no condition dmg-toughness-vitality? Everywhere I looked I wasn’t able to find any. If anyone can feel free to correct me. As well as ugly legendaries of course, besides the trident.

CTV gear would be amazing.

Monoman.2068:

Conditions melt mesmers apparently. I don’t play coditionmancer so I can’t verify this.

They have weak condition removal, but from my experience, shatter mesmer burst trumps our condition damage. The shatter build also utilities frequent invisibility skills making it very difficult to find the real mesmer. Its honestly worse than fighting thieves IMO. The burst combined with the inability to consistently apply our conditions to the correct target makes these fights hard for me. To make matters worse, sword is the most common weapon used with this build so they’re constantly using distortion (immunity to everything for 2 seconds) every 8 seconds. This kind of match up feels very stacked against necromancers.

Confusion mesmers on the other hand get wrecked because of our condition transfers. They need the glamor field utilities to make this build work, so they’re not going to have the constant invisibility that shatter mesmers have. We basically turn their own weapon against them.

My guild has WvW reset events starting around 4pm PST on fridays, but TBH, last night was so much fun that I think I can miss one reset event for this. I’ll make myself available.

PinCushion.7390:

Does this mean you can reflect Corrupt Boon? O.o

It never occurred to me at the time to ask. Can’t say that I’ve ever noticed. Its not like necromancers have that many boons they can apply to themselves that we would notice missing in the middle of a fight. This makes me wonder if things like Smoke Screen and Guardian walls/bubbles can block the projectile. This should be tested.

Very informative. Especially the stuff about tournaments. Sadly, I already knew all the Death Shroud stuff that was talked about. I was hoping to learn some new stupid necro trick.

Regarding Corrupt Boon. My guild has an intern who works at ANet that does WvW with us a lot. He plays a necromancer. He has told us that the reason Corrupt Boon (and now Epidemic) its so difficult to land is because it fires an extremely fast, but invisible projectile towards your target in a straight path to determine if the skill works. This projectile will only fire if you’re facing your target within a 30 degree cone. Because its a projectile, it suffers from the same problems that projectiles in general face. The random obstruct bug (which you won’t see because this projectile doesn’t report back any data to your client), your target suddenly stopping if he is moving at a non parallel trajectory while the projectile is in route, the target moving out of projectile range at the last second, your target moving outside of the 30 degree cone right before you use the skill (causes the skill to fail and go on a 5 second cool down), or any other issue that would some how prevent the projectile from reaching its target.

PinCushion.7390:

Kravick.4906:

PinCushion.7390:

Yeah, but that’s cool because thieves have low hitpoints so it all evens out…

In my experience, it doesn’t, because of Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

I keep forgetting sarcasm doesn’t translate well in text.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, it really doesn’t. :x

flow.6043:

Did you guys find enough necros yesterday? How was it?

We did. It really was a lot of fun. I really want to do it again. Theres always next week. Looking forward to it.

How long does it usually take Bas to edit and put up videos?

Anchoku.8142:

Fear seems to rarely work, and I mean rarely, as an interrupt for a stop when in the downed state. Count on nothing so you can be surprised by a miracle.

They either had stability, or you didn’t have anything targeted when you used the skill, or in the case of thieves, they dropped Black Powder on top of you before the stomp. Blind still makes you miss in downed state.

PinCushion.7390:

Yes, but it’s only because of Death Shroud that you can count to 10. Most classes can only get as high as 5 or 6.

Unless you’re a thief or a mesmer. Then you just teleport out of it and never take the burst. Engineers can just Elixir S out of anything and go invulnerable for 3 seconds followed by a gear shield for another 3 seconds. Guardians can actually eat that burst and not go down because protection/aegis/knock back bubble combo. Warriors will just endure pain out of it then shield block through the rest of it if necessary.

I think rangers and necros are honestly the only ones left out in the cold here, unless theres something that rangers can do that I’m not aware of.

PinCushion.7390:

Yeah, but that’s cool because thieves have low hitpoints so it all evens out…

In my experience, it doesn’t, because of Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

The only thing that stops stomps are hard CCs such as fear, stuns, daze, knock downs, knock backs, or pulls. There are also other methods such as stealthing the downed player or the downed player teleporting away.

MethaneGas.8357:

a thief with a mainhand sword that had barely any stealth but instead had a ton of evade.

This kind of thief is the absolute worst match up for a necromancer. Not only because of condition removal on stealth, but because the sword 2 skill also removes a condition on use (as well as teleports the user). Worst part of it is, the skill has no cool down and they can repeatedly chain that skill as long as they have the initiative, which isn’t a problem because its very cheap on initiative use.

MethaneGas.8357:

Saying a Necro has no escape mechanisms tells me you haven’t played the class enough.

My necromancer is the class with the most hours logged. My thief is the class with the second most hours logged. I’ve played both plenty. I could explain exactly how I deal with necromancers from a thief perspective, but I get the feeling this would turn into nothing but a theorycrafting debate. I’m going by actual in game experience as both a necro and a thief. I never said I couldn’t beat a thief, but the thief has a lot in his favor over a necromancer.

What I can’t show, is my very first necromancer that I made at launch, which I deleted in a fit of rage at one point. It had another 300-400 hours logged on it. So I actually have more hours than shown. Obviously I regretted my decision to delete my necro, but I’ve played this class plenty.

flow.6043:

Yes^^
The part when he says: I’ll kill the necro first, because I don’t want to deal with conditions and fear. lol.

Well, that and necro is a pretty easy target for a thief. They don’t have any escapes, their class defining feature is to take all the damage you give them, they have the least amount of stun breakers for any given class. Also for that particular thief build, conditions mean nothing because he traited conditions removed on stealth, so I’m actually confused why he said he didn’t want to deal with conditions.

But you’re right. That necro was awful.

Bas.7406:

For those who are up for the attempts is everyone free today around 7pm PST? After the podcast recording Bhawb and I usually do a BoC presents, but this would be fun!

I’ll be on.

Nemesis.8593:

5 bunker MMs… not good on paper, good in a real situation, messes with people’s mind… like mesmer clones.

Did this earlier today. Just for fun we had every single person pop out pets, minions, elementals, ranger spirits, warband support, thieves guild, etc. Any kind of NPC possible that would follow you. Made us look way bigger than we actually were. Mostly just scared people away. No one wanted to stay and fight us

We did manage to crash into a smallish group of people taking one of the towers. They had more numbers than we did, but since we weren’t getting any fights we just said eph it and rushed em anyway. Went a lot better than I had expected. I wasn’t even traited to use minions and we managed to wipe them. They didn’t notice us coming up behind them though, so we had the surprise factor which probably helped a lot. Multiple golem charges through the middle of them was an amazing thing to see.

Apparently ranger spirits turn into dolphins when under water. I failed to get a screenshot of that it seems.

Bhawb.7408:

I’d combine the Condition Bunker and Support into one, as Shaman gear traited to support will be as tanky as Conditions get

This is what I have been doing actually, with Well of Blood, Well of Power, Signet of Undeath, and Spectral Wall and at least one other person to support while utilizing the Transfusion and Deathly Invigoration traits, nothing short of a concentrated tactical strike by 3 high burst classes on one target has moved me and the person I’m supporting off a point. It also makes a surprisingly good orb running build.

I’m definitely on board for this. Rating be kittened, I want to see what an all necro team can really do in tPvP. I’ve been running a support build for the last 50 games that I like, but I’ll play any role.

Frotee.2634:

…however, the OP already stated that he/she is not interested in warrior gameplay, so all warrior OPness will be for nothing
I’ve tried. I love my necro all the way, yet I lost interest in my warrior at lvl 17 – no matter the damage output.

Oh I couldn’t agree with you more. I hate playing my warrior. The class is so one dimensional and boring to play. Even when I do speed runs with it I can’t stand to do more than 2 before I’m done and want to do something else.

Grumpy.8365:

2. Necros do have mobility skills.
Locust swarm from warhorn.
Spectral walk on utility for 33% boon with ability to teleport back.
Signet of the Locust on utility for perm 25%.
Flesh Wurm on utility for necrotic traversal (teleport).
Trait for increase in speed while using dagger.
But yes, we do have relatively fewer mobility skills.

I just want to point one thing out. When people talk about mobility skills, they’re talking about skills like leaps, teleports, blinks, etc. Skills that “move” your character. The skills listed above (except flesh wurm which is the necromancers only mobility skill) are all skills or abilities that grant you swiftness. Swiftness is not a mobility. It is movement speed. A lot of people confuse the two or think you’re talking about the same thing, when we’re not.

Mobility are things that get you out of any given situation and out of harms way, or skills that can be used to close the gap on your enemy and chase them down. Its abilities that people use to avoid damage entirely or to escape. Swiftness, in combat, just makes you move slightly faster and doesn’t allow you to avoid any incoming damage, so it is not considered mobility.

The problem with our AoE isn’t that necromancers don’t have access to a lot of it. We do, its just that all of them are on excessively long CDs, and the warriors AoE skills do far, far more damage than what ours do in the same time frame. While the warrior does have less AoE in terms of skills, the AoE skills they do have can be spammed repeatedly in a short time frame, and it hits a lot harder that necromancers AoE. Warriors have a quality over quantity thing going here with their AoE capabilities. Pound for pound, if you want AoE damage, you take a warrior. Its why they’re so popular in dungeons.

However, outside of dungeons, it doesn’t matter. Regular cannon fodder NPCs that you level or farm never have enough HP for this to mean anything.

Bhawb.7408:

I think the problem is that its assumed that a tree must synergize its statistical gains with everything therein, which is just not possible. This isn’t exclusive across Necromancer, however, other classes have similar types of allocations.

Not even close to the extent that necromancers have. Refer back to my warrior example. Every single weapon trait, even if split into different trees, benefits directly from the associated stats that accompany that tree. Honestly, for other classes to be on the same level of insanity that necromancer traits are currently, you’d have to see things like warriors Greatsword/Axe weapons in the toughness/boon duration tree or the vitality/healing power tree just to give you an example.

I still stand by my view point that dagger traits have nothing to do with vitality or healing power. I could see your view point on the whole siphon thing if healing power had any effect on siphons. Unfortunately, only 1 skill of all the dagger skills even has a siphoning effect. The rest of it comes from a minor trait that works regardless if you have a dagger equipped or not. I feel the dagger traits really belong in the Spite and Curses trees.

As for the rest of your post, I’ll just agree to disagree. We’ve both made our points known and I feel there isn’t anything else that either of us could add to further the discussion.

The way you describe your play style, I feel the necromancer would fit you perfectly.

Necromancers are probably the best solo farming class in the game ATM if you trait for minions or conditions. Yes, minions used to be absolute junk in the past, but the AI has been improved enough that they’re usable (need some adjustments though and are still prone to just standing around not doing anything sometimes). Leveling as either a condition mancer or minion master is relatively easy. Condition mancer has a slight learning curve to it (its not a straight forward button mash class like warrior is). I have 4 80s. My necromancer, by far, was the fastest and easiest leveling experience.

However, you need to go into playing a necromancer knowing that necromancers aren’t a class you can really specialize as well with. They also have some pretty dumb trait placement in their trait trees that cause a lot of problems when trying to focus on certain abilities or roles. For everything that a necromancer can do in PvP/Dungeons, another class will be better at it as well. That isn’t to say you can’t still perform your role without issue. Its just that guardians are better at absorbing damage and supporting your group, warriors are better at AoE DPS, thieves are better at burst and single target damage, mesmers bring extremely good utility to the group. Where as a necromancer can do all of these things, just not as well.

In WvW, necromancers is a terrible roaming class. You have no mobility and you don’t have the burst or the sustain to fight the inevitable 1vMultiple that you’ll encounter. However, necromancers have pretty strong zerg support skills. You’ll find that the more allies you have around you, the stronger you’ll feel. In tPvP/sPvP necromancers are more of a support class. Without friends around to coordinate with, you’re going to have a hard time.

Bhawb.7408:

Spite – direct damage: axe, focus, signets.
Curses – conditions, critical hits: scepter, warhorn, on-crit effects, conditions, corruption skills.
Death Magic – defense, minions: staff, minions, general defensive stuff.
Blood Magic – life regen: dagger, life siphoning, life regen, wells.
Soul Reaping – death shroud: death shroud, life force generating, fear.

They all have definite themes involved, and basically speaking a weapon. The exception is staff, which is kind of spread out. I also tend to agree that things are spread out, but I just don’t feel like it is as much of an issue as many people take with it, we just don’t have the very obvious choices like many other classes do.

Almost, but not quite Bhawb.

Blood Magic is not the well tree. As I said earlier above, its spread out among different 3 trees. Furthermore, the only well that benefits from the blood tree is Well of Blood. If you want anything that has any kind of synergy with the other wells you’re using you have to invest into a completely different tree from Blood (IE: power tree for well of corruption/suffering, curses for well of darkness, death for well of power). As such, you’re locked into one specific well rather than being allowed to use multiple wells.

The only Signet that synergizes with the Spite tree is Signet of Spite (the irony is not lost on me), but you still need Curses to get the full benefit from Signet of Spite. You need Blood to boost Locust. Undeath is clearly suited for the Soul Reaping tree for the LF generation. Plague feels like it would fit wonderfully in Curses. However, I think this has more to do with necromancer signets not having a clear focus on what they should do.

Dagger main hand is a power weapon. Dagger off hand is a condition weapon. WTF are those traits doing in Blood? Dagger is badly placed in Blood. Dagger 2 is the only skill that is effected by anything that would remotely synergize with the blood tree, and thats siphoning is 50% more effective. Even the direct damage portion of dagger 2 is affected by power. The condition on Dagger 3 is affected by condition duration, the damage by Spite, so why the hell are dagger traits in Blood and not Spite or Curses where they would get the benefit of extra damage out put or critical chance? Dagger off hand abilities are clearly suited for the Curses tree or the Spite tree. Someone please explain to me why the traits for this weapon are in Blood?

Minions are in the exact same place as wells. To get the most out of your minions you’re forced to go 20/0/30/20/0 or 20/0/20/30/0 or 30/0/20/20/0. Want some crit with your obvious power build? To kitten bad. What about boosting my DS or getting some critical damage stat? Sorry, no can do. You have no leeway what so ever when it comes to minions. The traits are to spread out all over the place again. The reason you can’t use condition damage with a minion build is because of trait placement.

Death Shroud: Yeah you pretty much got that part right. Can’t really deny it.

Curses is the only tree that makes any kitten sense TBH. It might be why condition builds are so popular on necromancers. You get all that you need from scepter (the obvious condition weapon) in a single tree. Corruption skills also feel right at home here, as they fit very well with condition style play. You are now free to spend the other 40 points wherever you want and not feel forced into a specific weapon type or stat combination.

You forgot spectral skills, but thats ok. I forget about them too. Thats another group of skills plagued (hurr, puns are funny) by poor trait placement that have traits in different trees that make no sense. Why is spectral attunement in Curses when it buffs boon duration (Death tree) and Death Shroud (Soul Reaping tree). Its in such an odd location.

You already mentioned staff. Its obvious that its all over the place.

Fear is also divided oddly. Fear does damage is perfectly placed in Curses but fear duration is placed in Soul Reaping. Condition duration is clearly the territory of Spite.

As for why other classes don’t feel that way, I couldn’t tell you, maybe it just happened out that way, or that because of the lack of need to innovate it just isn’t a big deal right now.

Because the weapon placements make sense in those trees and aren’t spread all over the place. They have some actual synergy with the stats that their trees provide, much like Curses does for necromancer scepter.

Bhawb.7408:

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

So why are the traits for other classes not spread out among 3 tiers like that then? They all have a focus or a theme attached to them. If I want to specialize axe on my warrior I go down the strength tree. If I want to focus on greatsword, I go down both strength and arms, which both have synergy with one another. Focus on sword? Go down Arms. Want to hit things with a hammer or mace? Defense tree has all of those traits. Tactics is the warhorn, shouts, banner, and longbow tree. Discipline has a lot of support traits that benefit all weapons to some extent.

The other classes trait trees have a theme and a weapon associated with them. Necromancers have crap spread out all over the place and in very bad locations.

Softspoken.2410:

At the risk of sending you to an early grave, have you experimented with retaliation from the axe in a high power & toughness build? Retaliation is kind of the definition of a one versus many condition, and necromancers have surprisingly good access to it.

My problem with the necromancer retaliation builds is they require a very specific set of traits that are spread out all over the kitten place, so it becomes very hard to do any kind of specialization with it. I’m sure it works in some situations, but because of the trait placement, you’re never doing anything remotely close to burst or tank. Its another niche build in the ocean of niche builds that is necromancer trait builds.

We need more specialist builds, but we can’t do that because of how spread out everything is. Wells run into the same problem. If you want to specialize in wells, you’re forced to take 20 points into curses, 10 into death magic and 30 points into blood for the juiciest well traits, and blood is regarded as our worst tree for the obvious reasons. You’re also left with no ability to get any of the weapon support traits like greater marks/staff, so you can’t really use a staff with it very effectively. You get no synergy with your wells by taking 30 points into blood other than the traits themselves,l so there is an issue with that if you also want to use the Spite tree to boost well damage output.

The trait tree is a huge design clusterkitten.

The only time I have ever 1vX anything on my necro was under water. Problem I have with necromancers in these kind of situations is that we simply don’t have the mobility to avoid obvious incoming high damage attacks and we lack the burst to put someone down ASAP. We also cannot attrition against multiple targets very well either due to lack of reliable long duration protection like guardians have.

Necromancers are just not a solo roaming class. You simply have to give up to much to achieve any kind of survivability beyond what other classes can achieve, but they still put out more damage than us when doing so.

Bas.7406:

We are up to 8 of 10 at least!!

Remember we will all be on but of corpse with multiple players recording, and the goal is to have fun, and attempt as many all out center fights as possible haha!

I’m going to need an invite to that then.