Guild Wars 2

It’s okay Rising, we’re used to it.

We all saw the thread and report you made.

Atleast you can abuse the signet cancelling until they nerf that.

I highly doubt they will stay lazy with balance considering the WTS tournament in August. They need to fix as much as they can as fast as possible for the teams competing in it.

People are missing the point, I’m not saying it’s passive play, I’m saying signets are passive. It’s a bad way to design a skill. You shouldn’t have any sort of bonus while not using something. We already have enough traits and sigils carrying builds and professions, it would be nice to have less passive things on our actual skill bar.

I am not arguing that using signets in a timely matter is passive though.

Game needs less passive things not more. I still don’t know why they think signets are good design.

Meh, we’re still gonna be bad in PvE anyways and power necro is gonna have even more trouble competing with other zerker builds after patch regardless if we had the extra damage.

Not really surprised. They did the same thing with the scepter and probably will with the focus trait just for lulz.

People are whining about the marketing, not the dev work. Devs should be able to see that.

Idiots will always exist especially when they can be anonymous on the internet, they should realize that and ignore those people.

I think we actually need terror to try to keep up pressure. Our condi spec lacks the pressure of a lot of current condi specs.

I’m just out here trying to get a viable heal and engis be like we need 100% swiftness yo. Devs be like engi need more love than necs.

I still think OP is a troll.

I honestly don’t see us becoming OP even if all of these changes were added at once. People seem to forget just how low we are compared to every other profession aside from ranger. If anything we need to look at making us broken instead of small tweaking.

If we break ourselves we’ll either a) catch up to most of the other power creep going on or b) Atleast have a chance at being viable in less than 3 years.

I still think our weapons need complete reworks adding a burst option/sustain option on every weapon. I think cds need reduced. I think we need finishers. We need heals now, all of them need buffed. Our utilities could use cd reductions if they don’t rework our weapons because right now most of our sustain and burst have to come from those 3 slots. All of our elites should be reworked into more interesting/useful without a moa ruining all of them.

Our support is still terrible. It’s all way too gimmicky and niche. How is siphoning ever going to be viable in PvP with those numbers? Considering our non existent fast attack rate besides dagger which is suicide in a lot of cases during a PvP match they need much bigger buffs.

I don’t see why we have to have so many gimmicky themed terrible things like the corruption skills that are nowhere near powerful enough to warrant conditions, or life transfer transferring a downed body. Anet acts like it would be a sin to give us basic group interaction by denying us any heal support which we almost always desperately need with our lack or active defense.

And this is all just from a PvP perspective, we’re still beyond useless in dungeons no one will want a necro, and WvW, mesmers are going to be taking potential necro spots in guilds/zergs.

I don’t see why the devs or a lot of players can’t see this. Have they not played other professions? Do players like living in certain bliss of their minion build killing a doe in open world? Or their condi build only taking 30 seconds to kill a npc?

Necro will always be mediocre with the way it is designed currently relative to the other professions. And the balance philosopy of small tweaks over long amounts of time will always make it so. It’s so frustrating having over 5k hours on a profession and you literally get asked by friends to swap because it’s not wanted anywhere besides WvW. Do people realize necros are actually gimping groups?

It’s a kittening shame people whine about a bleed stack here or there or 1% extra lifeforce on a skill when it will have nowhere near the impact we need. At this rate we’ll never be wanted. Either Robert is the only dev who cares about balance, or he’s the dev that doesn’t know balance. We’re getting balanced on such a terrible curve relative to other professions.

I really don’t see why people don’t think we need an overhaul or how this is even acceptable.

Edit: I know this is more of a rant than actual feedback on your proposed changes, but I felt this was the best thread to put it in, and I do think a lot of these changes still won’t do anything for us.

spoj.9672:

I hope not. I dont even like the change that happens with base DS. Its ugly compared to the base effects.

Y u no like rainbow colored life blasts, Spoj? :c

I don’t think your changes are correct. We need a complete overhaul of weapons or utilities. Either have the weapons contain more utility and burst skills or lower or utility cds since those are used for our burst and sustain and utility moreso than most professions atm.

We need completely new elites, transforms are bad and they’re very non imaginitive to use.

We still need a sustain buff siphon wise with non gimmicky support such as teleporting downed players. Like really that’s the best they could come up with? We need a proper bunker build to be wanted in PvP,

We need healing through ds not traited, not just from siphons, if it has to be lower healing so be it we need to interact with teammates better.

We need shorter cast times on a lot of things.

You mentioned this one but now we need a viable heal. CC even needed a buff imo let alone a nerf.

Tiny tweaks and wait and see and 6 month balance patching is never going to see the Necro be viable in PvP at this rate. If we get overbuffed they can tweak it it’s fine, but tiny buffs here and there that are nowhere near sustaining the power creep other professions are getting are just pushing us farther and farther back relative to the other professions.

I really do think we need something short of an overhaul on a lot of things.

Worst to Best:

Teef
Ranger
Mesmer
Necro
Ele
Engi
War
Guard

You beat a bad thief build with a condi necro on a game that isn’t balanced for 1v1s.

Grats bro.

Lily.1935:

L Step.8659:

ImdA.4701:

Lily.1935:

2) Power-mancer: Strong? No

It’s a lie, powermancer is viable. At least for duels and roaming.

Balance changes are based on PvP. Asking if something is viable is normally used in that context.

And its not. Without access to easy stability or some sort of scaling defense powermancer is exactly the same as it was before. Dueling doesn’t determine matches in PvP and it doesn’t help us any in PvE.

I am agreeing with you, Lily, I was just telling him why we both said it’s not viable :p

ImdA.4701:

Lily.1935:

2) Power-mancer: Strong? No

It’s a lie, powermancer is viable. At least for duels and roaming.

Balance changes are based on PvP. Asking if something is viable is normally used in that context.

Yeah, we are missing some form on context on some of this irrational stuff. I thought he did really well with reaper but these changes..I really hope someone bullied him and forced him into some of these things.

Please don’t make it a corruption. The skill needed buffed actually. The heal was too low for the necro’s health pool, and the cast time is absurd. One of those needed fixed.

Now we have it with a 5 more second cooldown and it gives us 4 stacks of vuln. Not only that but if you trait for it you get it back to the original cooldown but you’ll receive another condition! We don’t have 500 transfers on 5 second cooldowns and not everyone runs offhand dagger, which is beyond easy to avoid.

We really have no viable high end PvP heals right now.

flow.6043:

I completely agree.

Also, CC’s amount of healing is so low that it actually could’ve used a buff, and considering the opportunity cost of having Master of Corruption compete for a slot with Terror and Path of Corruption, a 16 sec cd would’ve actually been decent.

I agree it actually needed a buff. The healing was too low for our health pool and the cast time makes it so easy to interrupt in PvP. One of those needed buffed, not the skill nerfed as a whole. It probably seemed OP to some people because our other 3 heals are useless.

Maugetarr.6823:

Lich was complained about occasionally. It was counterable, because you could run, LoS, or reflect it, but it is annoying. Really the only complaint I’ve consistently had is the spinal shivers proc (especially in downstate if the +20% activates on top of the downstate extra damage). Eating a ~6k proc if you’ve won a fight is annoying.

Everything else, I dunno.

Sorry.

Funny thing with Lich is it’s basically the same thing as rampage on warrior, and warriors didn’t get a reduced transform time and their trait gives it 10% damage unlike our spectral trait. :P

Someone made a dev mad yo.

Engi/Ele/Mesmer imo.

Necro and Ranger got the worst of it imo.

This is my ultimate problem. Necro is my best played and most fun profession but I hate being a liability on every proper dungeon run or PvP team I’m on. I don’t mind playing alone, but group content I just really can’t justify making things unecessarily slower/more difficult for others when I’m supposed to be helping.

We keep sticking around but after 3 years and seeing the power creep of other professions from this trait change I think we’ll be in an even worse spot than we are now, even though we got some minor mentionable buffs and some things went a step in the right direction. It’s just nowhere near enough and at way too slow of a pace to have much hope at this point for me.

EremiteAngel.9765:

I was resting away from the computer earlier when I had an extremely gifted insight.
I am now going to share this insight with all of you fellow necros.

Please follow the following steps:
1) put away all your hate and discontent for a moment
2) look at all the trait lines and skills and weapons again
3) notice something?

INSIGHT
1) Every weapon option is viable
2) Every skill is viable
3) Every trait line is viable
We now have multiple build options that are all equally viable!

Looking at all the discontented posts, I realized that you guys are actually hating on small minor things.
If you look at the whole, the necro changes actually made us very interesting to play, with immense build diversity all viable!

Weapons:
Scepter: No significant change = status quo. still viable as power/condi/hybrid.
Dagger: No significant change = status quo, still viable as power/hybrid
Axe: Slight buff to Axe 3
Warhorn: No significant change = status quo, still viable as power/condi/hybrid
Focus: Slight buff to range
Staff: Buffed immensely in all areas
Great Sword: New weapon, no comments

Skills:
Wells: QOL change
Minions: Buffed
Signets: Buffed

Traits
Spite: Viable? Yes
Curses: Viable? Yes
Death Magic: Viable? Yes
Blood Magic: Viable? Yes
Soul Reaping: Viable? Yes
Reaper: New, no comments

Build Diversity
1) Minion-mancer: This is now no longer a dream. Traited properly, they can be insanely strong
2) Power-mancer: Strong? Yes
3) Condi-mancer: Strong? Yes
4) Corruption-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
5) Spectral-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
6) Signet-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
7) Well-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
8) Hybrid-mancer variant of any listed: Strong? Yes
9) Bunker-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
10) Sustain-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
11) Support-mancer variant: Strong? Yes
12) Shout-mancer variant: New, no comments
13) Chill-mancer variant: New, no comments
14) Reaper-mancer variant: New, no comments

LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF BUILDS WE NOW HAVE AVAILABLE!
And these are not including the mix and match hybrid builds that we can theory craft.

This is the insight I wish to share with my fellow necros.
Thank you Anet for opening up so many build possibilities to us.

1) All of our weapons are terrible besides warhorn. They need reworked skills/cast times. They lack a lot of utility and burst skills other professions have on their weapons. We lack a power ranged option still.

2) Not every skill is viable. Balance changes are supposed to be for PvP. We were the worst class coming into the changes and we’ll be the worst one coming out. We have no viable heals and they nerfed our only semi viable heal which needed a buff to begin with with cast time reduction or higher base heal to make up for our high health.

3) Trait lines are lackluster still. Condi line needs work. Blood still crap, their support is too gimmicky. Nothing too great about any of them, aside from soul reaping imo.

Skills – I agree

Trait lines – Do you know viable needs to be in context of PvP and not some PvE or WvW dreams? That’s literally what they balance on. We aren’t meta, we have no viable meta build, how can you say all the lines are viable?

Build Diversity:

-MM will never be what we want cause of AI and how it’ll never succeed in top end PvP.
-Powermancer nerfed our downed state damage and lich form, our two most useful things. And our only heal. Still can’t sustain.
-Condimancer has lots of problems from traitlines to not enough pressure. Easily outdone.
-Literally have never seen a corruption mancer. I don’t think that exists. People only use corrupt boon in PvP.
-Spectral our best utils with too long cds still
-Signets nice buffs very boring play though and still won’t make us viable
-Wells 2 strong wells, 1 okay well. Still needed in unviable powermancer build
-Hybrid, no can’t run celestial
-Terrible bunker spec because it offers no support in PvP compared to others
-Beyond terrible sustain do you even play necro? It can’t live through focus
- Supportmancer? Okay you don’t play necro
-Shouts were terrible with awful castimes. Will rarely see use in pvp aside from elite.
-Chill/Reaper TBD

Honestly I support optimism in bad times as I’m normally a realist leaning towards pessimism but wow this is overboard.

Orpheal.8263:

maybe, but it was alot more grindy, than it is now with the traacks and not based on RNG anymore.. now you can clearly work for the skins that you exactly want in pvp.

Yeah, but the point is PvPers didn’t whine to get the skins :P Most don’t even care about rewards, Anet just made it more accessible and rewarding so more people would try out PvP.

Orpheal.8263:

Because pvpers complained, that they can’t earn the pvp armor and weapon skins via pvp, that they get “forced” to play PvE to get then.
Thats the simple but true reason, why ANet added the dungeon based PvP reward tracks, so that people stop complaining about, that they have to play Pve to earn those skins …

What, PvPers got dungeon skins as rewards before reward tracks. Each 10 ranks and random mystic forge recipes were what gave them dungeon items before tracks.

Whispers simply for Tybalt.

They’ll most likely nerf epidemic with the condi cap being removed. Would be kind of naive to expect it to stay.

The problem with this video is no one runs condi necro unless roaming. The main necro complaints against rangers is when you run power necro because it’s the meta build and the build power ranger (their meta wvw build) can easily wreck. Condi builds counter power ranger so you should’ve won this.

The Necro and Ranger just need complete re designs from how their mechanics work, their traits, weapon skills, and utilities to be viable imo. Unless Anet feels like nerfing 6 other professions.

Anyone who mains the classes sees what’s its like when you can’t drop focus or peel out, support your team, have mechanics that hinder the class in serveral ways, has no port capabilities to make them a wanted roamer/skirmisher, get countered by all the other zerker classes, it’s just a litany of problems.

It’s no coincidence they’re not in any viable teams besides Abjured running Nos (great player don’t get me wrong), who have no competition in NA to show why necro is a liability until they face EU teams.

I don’t venture to the ranger forums much but I know necro forums have pointed out the obvious flaws for years, and it’s just frustrating the lack of response from anet. Like we’re just now about to get to needed trait reworks. Well great, but other classes who had more proper traits and set ups are getting even better as well. They still haven’t touched the core designs such as mechanics or weapons, or have shown any signs in bringing down the amount amount of mobility/invulns/blocks/support of the other classes for them to compete at an equal level.

I’m pretty sure the necro design will never work in conquest. The things that make you stand out are: mobility/sustain/support.

Anet has already said we won’t get traditional support, so we’re going to be pigeonholed into gimmicky things that will probably never be wanted unless they are overpowered. Which goes to the next thing; we will never have proper mobility. Ports are integral to Spvp, now I know you can be meta without ports, such as the shoutbow, but they provide the support we cannot. Also ports tie into sustain. Flat out negating damage is the best sustain there is. That’s why thieves and mesmers are so good. They can pull off so much, even though they have a really high skill ceiling to play properly. But they can evade an almost infinite amount of damage from focus fire and peel out of fights easily. Stealth is also a great sustain tool they have, the active defenses they have are the things that makes them so mobile to a degree as well. This allow them to almost always outperform in the roamer/damage role. Medi guard also gets the useful port, and hard counters these professions while giving team support so it’s also got more going for it.

The way I see it a necro can never succeed in conquest because our best bunker build can easily be outdone while the other builds have much more support in them. Our best roamer/damaging builds are done much better and we cannot sustain focus. The only way I ever see us in being meta is if we get something blatantly op, such as our old dhuumfire condi build, but even then I think we were over exaggerated.

I think some people will also point to Nos which I really don’t think is fair as well. He’s definitely a great player. But the NA scene isn’t that competitive in top tier PvP. Abjured as a team just overpowers everything and you don’t really see the liability of a necro as much (imo). I think in EU if you take out age limits you’re looking at abjured being 4th best team, but I think they’d be even higher if Nos could multiclass on something else at an equal level as necro.

Really, if you think about it, what’s good about a slow moving, slow casting, non team playing designed profession, where their mechanic is limited and suppose to be used for offense and defense at the same time? It’s supposed to be about attrition but combat in gw2 is fast paced. I just don’t really see what they can do with all of that to make it useful.

So in conclusion, I really don’t see much hope for us besides for 3 things: Giving necros something blatantly OP to make up for its deficiencies, giving up their special vision of the necro and make it more practical to ingame applications, or just a new a game mode that allows us to shine better, I’m not sure what type that’d be, but I don’t really think stronghold is the answer from what I played of it. I know there’s going to be a lot of wait and see with the traits and reaper specs responses, but the problems with necros are everywhere, from the design to the weapons to the utilities to the mechanic, trait changes still won’t bring us to a proper place, which is kind of sad imo seeing as its been almost 3 years.

I really don’t think trait changes will make us viable, just more quality of life stuff. This is merely from a PvP point of view as I hope many people can assume.

Sorry for sounding pessimistic yo.

I wouldn’t expect any actually support aside from group siphoning, anet seems very intent on keeping us as debuffers for support and being unique. I think the design philosophy is bad with how the game is but oh well.

Rym.1469:

6/6/0/0/2 build is “meta” for what exactly?

I don’t recall anything like that. Maybe for group roaming on WvW, sometimes.

He’s talking about PvE/Dungeons.

For the OP: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Guide-DPS-Necro-for-PvE/first

That’s our dungeon meta build guide, I’m sure Spoj can come in and answer any questions you have.

I’m sure the damage is quite less though if you’re not even running close to death or even 6 in spite. We have crappy support.

Looks wise I like the Shiverpeaks because I love snow.

From an actual design standpoint I like the Orr maps because they have no hearts and the events progress the whole map. So you can either speed through mapping, or enjoy events and work your way through areas. Plus the mobs are the closest thing we have to gw1, where they actually have some intelligence and will cc you and I’ve even seen some people die to them.

Galeskyring.9617:

L Step.8659:

I really don’t like the skill personally. It doesn’t really stand out or make me want it in any of our builds for PvP. Useless in PvE. It just has a long cd, it misses way too much, it’s not fast enough, and when it does land you just get a single pull with chill and some extra lifeforce.

There just isn’t enough it would do for me to justifty its use. I think the only time I slot it is to troll people pew pewing on a tower or keep wall in WvW.

It’s just way too niche of a use and when you have utility skills the versatility of the skill is one of the most important things, especially for necros as our axe is borked, scepter and dagger is a lot of 1 spam, and staff has never really been about damage even though putrid mark can hit quite hard but you shouldn’t just be spamming that. Our utility skills really are needed for what little sustain/pressure we can put out. Moreso than other professions I believe.

Also it’s like thieve’s scorpion wire, you almost barely see them slot that besides trolling people on skyhammer, even then that’s just thieves goofing off.

Actually engi is just as bad, if you lock necro and engi 6-0 slots they are probably a bit more helpless, 3 weapons only the pistol can be dueled cause the others are shield and rifle.

Like necro engi relies extremely kitten utility to do anything, cause that’s always where their F1-4 come from.

No heal no F keys utility or elite a necro would pretty much always beat an engi cause better weapon loudout and swap power while engi can only load 1 set and rely on turrets/bundles to back em up. Necro is a small notch above engi in reliance on utility for anything.

The utility reliance pecking order easilly has engi higher to be honest just for clarity x3 no weapon swap power and F key needs 6-9 keys to get toolbelt relative skills. But yeah flip those keys on necro falls when it comes to things like mobility.

which will only get worse if anet goes ahead with the movement change they mentioned.

The engi weapons have nice roles though. The rifle alone is full of cc and has some mobility and a cleanse. The shield has cc and a reflect, the pistol has condis and cc, they’d probably lose in a 1v1 but already they’d be better in any team setting. Our weapons are some of the worst designed in the game imo, and we need utilities to help compensate more. Engi kits are just so broken it makes their weapon sets seem lackluster when really they’re amazing for the most part.

But yeah my point just is even if we weren’t the worst without utilities we are definitely near the bottom imo. I really just can’t justify utilities like spectral grasp. Especially with a lot of nec specs, you don’t want people too close to you atm. It’s like when that dev said necro wants to get hit and everyone laughed at him.

Kinda too late to say it needs a better build up imo, they’ve already left it destroyed way too long.

I really don’t like the skill personally. It doesn’t really stand out or make me want it in any of our builds for PvP. Useless in PvE. It just has a long cd, it misses way too much, it’s not fast enough, and when it does land you just get a single pull with chill and some extra lifeforce.

There just isn’t enough it would do for me to justifty its use. I think the only time I slot it is to troll people pew pewing on a tower or keep wall in WvW.

It’s just way too niche of a use and when you have utility skills the versatility of the skill is one of the most important things, especially for necros as our axe is borked, scepter and dagger is a lot of 1 spam, and staff has never really been about damage even though putrid mark can hit quite hard but you shouldn’t just be spamming that. Our utility skills really are needed for what little sustain/pressure we can put out. Moreso than other professions I believe.

Also it’s like thieve’s scorpion wire, you almost barely see them slot that besides trolling people on skyhammer, even then that’s just thieves goofing off.

mistsim.2748:

sorry for your loss OP. but I completely agree with Orpheal

ronpierce.2760:

I wish they’d swap dagger and focus skills so i could run Dagger/Dagger and get full benefit from the new blood dagger trait. would be worth having to get another dagger :P

Very unconstructive post but this ^ Plus it just looks cooler imo :P

The only horrible thing about world completion for me is hearts. They are really annoying and useless and make it take so much longer. I’d rather map WvW maps 300 times than do 300 hearts again. Atleast WvW is fun.

I just picked Phoenix Roost because I didn’t want to glorify any specific person of any race since LA is a multi cultural hub now.

I’d rather just have broad generic names.

My biggest problem is the stealth bursts that have became meta, especially on opening splits, it’s kind of frustrating/boring watching stealthed groups run past/on eachother and then 1 shot something.

I don’t really know how to counter it except if they somehow added a cooldown to how fast you could restack it, like say you couldn’t blast stealth more than 5 times every 20 seconds, but I don’t see that as practical at all.

It’s not even just a thief problem though, it’s even more frustating watching the moa from stealth mesmer burst as well. I don’t think this promotes healthy gameplay personally. Classes can easily never see the meta with things as strong as this. Luckily most people can’t play mesmer properly even though it should be meta with how op portal is.

Personal thief stealth I really have no problem with honestly, or mesmer. It’s when a whole group can utilize it for large amounts of time that I think it becomes too much in a PvP format.

I’m honestly surprised anyone ever rezzed to get xp. Seems so trivial.

I thought these weapons were pretty ugly like most Black Lion sets :\

My necro skins I like are my Scythe Staff, Deathwish, Eye of Rodgort, Tequatl Dagger, The Crossing, I also like Corrupted Dagger.

My main problem is finding warhorn skins QQ

spoj.9672:

Roe.3679:

Edit – I guess this is about heartseeker, which is like the 4th most important thief mobility skill.

Heartseeker is their best mobility skill unless they have targets for sword 2 spam.

I think Roe might’ve meant in PvP. A lot of thieves prefer sb 5 or withdraw or shadowstep or d/p 3 for mobility in and around points

The one niche axe has is in a GvG type of environement. Pug zergs aren’t organized or skilled enough that you need to worry about being trained down.

Whole weapon needs reworked.

If it’s happening when there’s not 3 queued servers clashing in a spot on the map I’m pretty sure it’s a problem on your end. I’m in NA and play on EU with very crappy internet but a decent PC and skill lag is non existant besides 3 way zerg fights.

Sigmoid.7082:

L Step.8659:

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.

Meta will change with all te trait and stat changes so we dont even know whats going to be what.

Zerker will always be the most damaging gear and most meta specs like shoutbow are getting stronger. There’s going to be a huge power creep in PvP judging from the previewed trait lines. Also condi necro is still in a bad state regardless of traits. Not enough pressure. Cripple on scepter has just become weaker, still can’t generate life force reliably. All it has going for it are transfers, and a monkey can dodge deathly swarm.

They are really determined to make sure necro will never have a small sliver of being viable. Luckily the lack of competition in NA means Nos can keep playing it until WTS so us necro players get to see something.

Zerker still meta in PvE, Shoutbow still meta in PvP along with dd eles. And our condi build isn’t even the best damaging condi build.

Nope still not viable.