Guild Wars 2

SlyDevil.3952:

Ehm, you need to check your meta build. MS cd is 20secs, you could call it a 21 sec rotation if you wanted to add that you lava font before the meteor shower. Sustained damage doesn’t have this mysterious 30second threshold, it just means it’s a repeatable rotation for all skills included. A burst ele rotation can include lightning storm, dragon’s tooth, lava font, pheonix/burning speed, meteor shower, ice storm, frost fan, deep freeze for tempest defense, eruption, ice spike, fiery whirl, fire storm, fireballs. The sustained rotation is just lava font, fireballs, MS.

Burst is dps, they aren’t 2 separate entities, you just have a shorter interval over which you’re calculating the damage.

Edit: Forgot to include attunement swapping in the burst possibilities, extra 20% multiplier during ice spike, ice storm and parts of lightning storm/MS/lava font depending on which element you start your rotation in.

Wow, the wiki is very wrong.. Oh well no biggy. Also meta battle doesn’t account for everything. It doesn’t even seem to have appropriate builds for people in PvE outside of prebuffing teams. Which is designed around burst.

And let me clarify. When I’m talking about DPS I’m talking about Sustaind DPS, not Burst DPS. Just to clear up the confusion. I know its my fault, I should have been more clear.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m willing to bet the 2 sigil torch was a bug. Extra sigil slots sounds like power creep, and power creep is a ting anet is pretty against in the overall design of HoT in theory (though in practice a lot of the elite specs introduce it quite well)

if they can do something interesting with it could be really cool. And since Ascended is always going to be the best type of gear in the game this might not be that big of an issue. Also, if they had categories of sigils that can’t stack this could prevent certain sigils from being put with each other such as night and force. If its a bug thats a pretty major bug.

SlyDevil.3952:

Adding coefficients, multiplying in all the relevant multipliers and stats, dividing by armour. And spoj that’s on 2600 armour, which is very common, only fractal bosses and lupi/abom are really going above that.

This also assumes a small hitbox, and no icebow. 3 skills on a fully buffed ele produces 19k, and the rotation length is 20secs to match meteor shower. This does assume perfect might/vuln, then again, organized groups are very good at creating favourable circumstances.

And the thing to remember, an ele’s sustained dps and a necro’s are both going to drop by relatively similar amounts from the missing vuln/power. Perhaps ele’s slightly more since might makes up more of their total power than a necro who has a signet, or slightly less since they have a precision signet.

If you’re accounting for meteor shower than your DPS rotation is 30 seconds not 20 seconds. If its under 30 seconds its burst not DPS. now if you are accounting for fire grab being your highest DPS skill at the time your rotation is 45 seconds. Already we have a major issue in your calculations as you have to be able to repeat your chain. My DPS could be 30k over 2 seconds. But on that 3rd second it could drop to 5k. My DPS wouldn’t be 30k it would be 11k in that example. For reaper, the reaper can spam gravedigger dealing 20-25k per strike. but their DPS isn’t 20k. The cast time is 1.25 seconds and the DPS the reaper has is lower when the foe is above 50% health both because of close to death and because gravedigger doesn’t have instant recharge unless they’re below 50%. So we need to account for the damage through the entire fight since the rotation changes once the foe hits 50% and take into account both rotations. Since you say your DPS over 20 seconds is this and it can’t be repeated in the next 20 seconds its not DPS is burst.

Frightlight.3796:

I can confirm that when I Made a berserker in the BWE I somehow got the weapon torch skin and it did have two sigil slots I found kind of odd

I am really curious about that. If this was to be planned for the weapons of the future for a player to have 4 total sigils active at one time, this could cause some sigil’s price to sky rocket. However if we saw sigil sets that granted a new bonus for specific sigil pars this could make for some interesting uses. Such as pairing sigil of night with sigil of demon summoning. But thats deep deep into tin foil hat territory.

this conversation is old. Like, years old now. I’ve personally made like, at least 3 threads about this alone. Let alone everyone else. It pops up allot.

Thaddeus.4891:

I never heard of 2 sigils on a one-handed weapon.

As for the new runes. Yep, they probably gonna create a new bunch of new runes and maybe sigils for the expansion. Of course, there is the obvious runes for each elites spec and the revenant, but they also talked a lot about using the same skill type for several profession so that they synergize with runes and trait.

With the xpac, there will be 5 skill type that will be use by more than one Profession.

Trap, Physical, Signet, Shout, Trap and Well.

Signet have the Rune of Resistance (which could use a bit of love).
Shout have Rune of the Trooper (which is already excellent)
Trap have Rune of the Trapper (which is decent)

While Physical and Well don’t have any runes.

So we can be pretty sure that they will at least introduce 2 new runes for those two skill type. Hopefully, they will add more than that so we can have more choice.

A Guildy was talking about how he put two sigils in his torch in the beta. I don’t know, but maybe.

And you put traps twice.

I’m curious about this for HoT. From what I’ve heard the Berserker’s torch in the beta had two sigil slots. Which is very strange. And I’ve heard something about a new rune set for each of the elite specializations as well as the base revenant. And possibly more beyond that.

2 sigils on each one handed weapon or 4 on a 2 handed weapon seems like a bit much. That hypothesis is a bit strange and if its with the sigils we have now I can’t say I’m too excited about that idea. But with new sigils that function more like a set that has unique combos to incentives new uses, I could get extremely excited about it.

The new runes and sigils are something we haven’t heard anything about and its something I’m extremely interested in. I’d like to know more.

Muchacho.2390:

Vital persistence is a really strong trait but i dont think it is mandatory for necros at all.

It is more like that SR is mandatory since it is a better defensive spec then DM and gives offensive as well.

Though when i think about it, we actually have “decent” builds that dont need SR but sadly all of those a MM builds…

well, none of the other traits are really necessary for a necromancer. The Vital persistence is only needed if you plan on staying in Shroud for longer than a second… Aka, 80% of all builds out there. Its kinda like the same problem that Mesmer’s had with what was it called? Shattered disillusion or something like that? You know, the grandmaster that put the shatter effect on you. Its these sorts of traits that force you to take it 80-90% of the time to be effective that need to be either removed if they’re too strong or in the mesmer’s case and by extension the necromancer’s case, be made to be baseline. Now the Degen is really the important part here. The skill reduction doesn’t need to be baseline though it’d be nice.

There are allot of other issues with traits too. But these seem to be with how Soul reaping and Curses function currently to where curses is a pretty bad trait line while soul reaping is way too important.

Aktium.9506:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

High DPS are doing more like 9-10k sustained. Still better than the 8k bleed ticks, but bleed is still not the only source of damage in a condi Necro’s kit. Granted, Torment is negligable, but poison is a thing.

Conds need that ramp up time too. Often it’s just not worth it, like that one sinister Ranger build that had higher dps than the standard zerker build for Ranger, but the ramp up time makes it worse because you’re doing less dps than the zerker one for half the fights with bosses on top of being useless against trash.

That is the general issue with the necromancer’s condi build. Its ramp time is extremely slow and doesn’t often get above the damage of power. Although it could with full buffing a guardian and a venom share thief the issue seems to be on average the necromancer stacks about 10-16 bleeds in an encounter which is just pitiful. In a boss fight it can go up to 30ish stacks by yourself with food max duration, vuln and party buffs but with all that being added why not just use power which benefits the same way and has no ramp time? The reaper on the other hand actually has a rather short ramp time thanks to a few of its traits and skills. I played reaper hybrid in the beta, full sinisters, and it was extremely potent. The major issue I still had with it is you didn’t have allot of diversity in rune sets you really wanted to take. Either Krait or Balth in the beta for PvE. And Orrian runes probably. But Runes of Grenth or something like that really weren’t desirable.

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

He’s reaching. Its extremely unlikely. Like, majorly. More likely why its taking them so long is because the druid has an ability based on your animal companion that they needed to sync up that was causing bugs.

Dadnir.5038:

I still think that you’re pilling up way to many new mechanisms to make it an Espec. It’s just pure addition, it couldn’t be balanced with the necromancer (base profession). Should I say : “It’s just an upgrade” ?

Chronomancer is just an upgrade to Mesmer. So I don’t think that should be a factor. Also Part of the indicator to show that its changing is you’d hear a loud cackle and its visual would change.

Eh. I’ve actually used something similar in Normal PvE and its underwhelming. Condi has really been underwhelming for a while now.. On reaper its great. But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

act.6302:

snip

For weapon I already mentioned Spear. A spear on land is super fitting. But if arena net are really against adding new weapons to the game sword would work. The reason I mentioned spear is because its gushing with flavor. Vlad the Impaler or Dracula would impale his foes on a stake or spear letting them sit out in the sun and bleed to death. At least that’s how its told. So a spear is just fantastic flavor for a vampire In my opinion.

Rym.1469:

I think that it will be the Revenant who eventually gets Ritualist-like spec (they don’t have any AI, can get kits working like bundles etc.).

To be honest, my wish for spec after Reaper would be something oriented around control, conditions as health/life force sacrafices – basically concept of Corruptions that didn’t quite work out.

Or addition of new 5 Death Shroud skills 6-0 and turning our Life Force into a resource for those.

I had that idea about spec focused on control and vodoo-like stuff there, but I’ll be happy with anything closer to Corruption Necro rather than Reaper.

Yeah, my witch idea actually stemmed from your Soulbinder idea with a few changes. Yours is a bit more complex than mine and harder to actually imagine in game. And rather than making a whole new shroud I figured a removable condition would work a bit better in that sort of idea.

Dadnir.5038:

Well, I enjoy these idea but it feel like very very far from what Anet do when they create Espec (especially the vampire spec which seem to be “anti-necro”)

I believe that Espec are designed to give a second life to existing stuff on each profession while still keeping the base idea of this same profession.

Ritualist :
I believe this one could work (sure, as a huge fan of the GW ritualist I can’t say that it won’t work). Though, It’s hard to imagine a weapon that we don’t have and would work with this thematic. Although for me the ritualist is all about enchant weapon, spirit, ashes and lightning stuff. I’d miss the ashes and enchant weapon stuff with your suggestion.

Lich :
It’s difficult to imagine a spec that would have the same name as one of our elite skill… it would be counter productive I think. Beside sacrificing life is something that you can afford in a game where there are dedicated healer which indirectly mean not GW2. I don’t say the idea is not good but I simply don’t really like it.

Witches :
This one is a bit to complicated. I believe there is room for utility skill in shroud with skills like mantra or glyph, even elixir would be fun but the base shroud would need to be extremly less effective. Beside, pilling up utility in shroud and new “F” skills would certainly be really to much.

Vampire :
This one is far far far away from the Necromancer. Vigor, super speed, quickness… I think your imagination goes wild here. Although… no more transformation please.

While I still enjoy the idea, I must say that none of them respect the necromancer’s concept (At least the picture of the necromancer’s concept that I feel anet have built). And I highly doubt that they will stray this far from this picture with their Espec.

I imagine the ritualist using the torch off hand as a weapon. There is also the possibility of a completely new weapon with lantern. Also I only gave a small preview of the elite specialization. The Spectral shroud is all about spectral lightning and creating lighting fields. Also, regardless of who was given the elite spec, we’d lose out on spirit weapons regardless because of how much more integral spirits were to the profession. Without making an entirely new profession. When I do finally reveal the full profession it’ll have a tone of lighting on it. Trust me.

We also have skills and traits that reference a reaper without actually being a reaper. Reaper’s touch. Berserker is a gear set as well. Don’t let names limit what could become an elite specialization. As for the sacrifice skills. Its high risk, yes but this provides some possibilities that the profession otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. Originally necromancer was going to get sacrifice skills before GW2 came out but it was dropped in favor of corruption skills. The highest sacrifice I was thinking was 5% health. Nothing near the 33% that Blood is power had in GW1. At a 1 or 2 percent these aren’t any more harmful than corruptions. Though I’d like to see higher percentage as I have a few trait ideas that modify shroud while you are at lower health.

Yes the witch is extremely complicated. Though I don’t think arena net should shy away from complicated anymore. Their game is old enough and they can do something like this without an issue. Chronomancer will always be more complicated than this in my opinion and having a really strange ability like this could seriously ramp up the condition build’s usefulness in groups beyond just damage. The Witch is a massively fun idea that embodies the idea of a GW1 curses necromancer more than anything. Utility is something we need in death shroud anyway. And its one thing that’s holding this idea back. the lack of utility in shroud has been holding the entire profession back as it is.

I can justify the vampire because of its theme. Thematically its very fitting to the necromancer. In the first game the necromancer wasn’t always slow. They had extremely quick cast skills that struck often and quickly. The necromancer does have one of the fastest weapons in the game with the dagger. Being slow is a part of the necromancer of GW1 but its not defining to us. The elite specializations are meant to give us something new and exciting for the profession and are supposed to break normal conventions of that profession. As for transformations, it wasn’t in line with another Lich form or plague. But rather modifying the shroud itsealf or something more akin to the GW1 dervish elite forms.

I’m staying completely true to the theme of the necromancer with all of these. They don’t break their theme or the lore at all. I wouldn’t have presented them if they did. The only Lichs in the Guild Wars universe were all necromancers. Clearly its a Goal that a necromancer can strive for. The ritualist had a long standing rivalry with the necromancers as they both were summoners of the dead. Although they went about it in different ways they were extremely similar in their beliefs and even practices. The witch is more on theme much like the reaper. It defiantly follows in the footsteps of a curse necromancer from GW1. The Vampire is both inspired by the pop culture vampires but also creatures in the Guild Wars universe that are vampires themselves. Many of them would swarm you and steal your health or bleed you to death in the first game and could do it really quickly which made them threatening. This is an idea arena net sorta touched on with the dagger but didn’t go too deep into.

Quarktastic.1027:

Lily.1935:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Whirl finishers: Whirl finisher bolts are capped at 5 bolts per skill, and only deal 198 damage per bolt. It is technically a DPS increase, but again, negligible enough to not matter over the course of a fractal/dungeon run.

Not true on the cap. For example, Soul Spiral and Whirling Axe both send out far more than 5 bolts. Each one can actually shoot out more along the lines of 30 or more. Shredder Gyro puts them all to shame, though, setting off 30 whirl finishers on its own (with many, many bolts).

Whirl finishers will produce more than 5 bolts, but only the first 5 will do anything. After 5 bolts hit, the rest of the bolts do nothing.

Which is why whirl finishers are pretty much useless.

Considering there are zero texts, whether in-game or even on the wiki, or even anyone else stating this, I will have to call bullkitten on this claim.

Perhaps you are confusing things with Chilling Bolts where only the most recent 5 matter?

I was sending out about 60 chilling bolts with when I was whirling it with soul spiral in the beta. Not all of them mattered, but I was traited for vuln on chill so I could stack an entire group up with vuln really quickly. I tried it out with confusion bolts too. That was fun. got about 13 stacks since they were random. So yeah. What he’s saying is complete bunk.

My damage log must be lying to me then. I’m aware that only leeching bolts appear in the damage log, but I never saw more than 5 make contact, even while standing inside the hitbox of a large enemy. In fact, producing leeching bolts with death spiral did nothing at all. No damage recorded in the damage log, no healing. I suspect either death spiral is bugged, or leeching bolts themselves are bugged.

Okay, here’s where I made a mistake. And I’ll own up to it. It seems a whirl doesn’t produce 5 bolts per. It looks more like 1-3 bolts. However, the whirl does trigger for each rotation of the skill(tested). So soul spiral will trigger a whirl combo field 12 times. The gravedigger triggers it once. So getting 13 stacks of confusion from a chaos field or maxing my vuln thanks to a trait are both reasonable and possible. Which did both of those things in the beta. I actually wanted to test how well soul spiral would work with a chaos field. Turns out very well, but you’re better off letting the mesmer lay it down than you.

If you’re only getting 5, try testing it on another skill that is similar. I tested it with off hand axe on warrior. Also tested it with offhand axe on ranger too. Each of them trigger each time for each whirl. Not “Just 5 times” nope. Full 15 and 12 times respectively. Though it was a bit difficult to see how many bolts the ranger’s axe was providing as they seemed to go into the ground. Now, Wicket Spiral on the necromancer under water only triggers 5 bolts but doesn’t trigger the whirl finisher all 6 whirls for some reason. But that might be because they’ve updated the coding for land and haven’t for underwater in a while. Fiery greatsword also triggers once but seems to provide around 6 bolts and I imagine the warrior greatsword is the same way. so.. According to my testing, You can combo a whirl finisher multiple times. Though it seems the most successful whirls are those similar to axe 5 and soul spiral.

Since my job is rather boring, I’ve been thinking about a few different directions that the devs could take the necromancer with future elite specializations. I’ve come up with 4 possible elite specs in that time with only 1 of them in a presentable form to be shown at the moment. However, I don’t wish to share the skills and traits of that elite spec because I suspect that it might already have been planned for the necromancer anyway. Though that’s kinda a Tin Foil hat belief so thats meh.

So the 4 elite specializations that I’ve come up with each work with what the necromancer has and what its missing to see what we can come up with. The 4 I’ve come up with are Ritualist, Lich, Witch and Vampire.

• Ritualist: This first idea was what I speculated would be the necromancer’s first elite specialization to which I was wrong. This elite specialization the concept behind it is pretty much complete with a full list of traits, skills, weapon and even spectral shroud. But I’m not going to show this one just yet, but rather tease it.

The Ritualist elite specialization is a heavily supportive profession that functions extremely well at long range. The spirits they summon having a 1,200 radius and providing both offense and defensive. 3 of the spirits were defensive while the other 3 were more offensive. I’ll give you two skills to show you have impactful they could be.

1. Dissonance: Summon a spirit of dissonance. Every 3 seconds a condition on each allie is transfered to a foe in range. Dissonance loses health for each condition transfered this way.
   ^Agony: Sacrifice dissonance to convert boons on foes within range into conditions. 600 radius of the spirit.
2. Call to the Spirit Realm: Summon a Spirit of Anger, Hate and Suffering. These spirits each send out bolts, damaging your foes.
   ^Summon Spirits: teleport all your spirits within range to target location healing them. 10s cool down.

The spirits themselves are actually fairly fragile but have extremely powerful effects. Because of the health loss of Dissonance it can’t be maintained forever. It will kill itself rather quickly the more allies are in the area. Although health can be adjusted you can expect it to last long enough to seriously hinder your foes.

Call to the Spirit realm is the elite. And it has a dual function, giving you the power to move your spirits at will and heal them. Their abilities are nothing to take lightly. These aren’t your ranger spirits, these are ritualist spirits!

I’ll also give you a preview of a couple of the traits. One Minor and a two grandmaster to see where my thinking is.

1. Minor: Spirit to Flesh: Whenever you would gain life force heal allies for a small ammount. 600 radius.
2. Explosive Growth: Whenever you summon a creature lightning surges out from its location, damaging foes and healing allies.
3. Sight beyond Sight: Stealthed foes have a blue flame around them while you’re in shroud. You are immue to blind while in shroud.

Ritualists are summoners. They were in GW1 and they should be in GW2. Explosive growth lets you combo with runes and sigils, Spirits and also the ever popular Minions! One thing that I really loved about the ritualist in GW1 was this ability to add abilities to their summons like damage or healing. It was something that made a ritualist minion master very unique when compared to a necromancer minion master. So I want to embody that idea in GW2. Giving you some very unique ways to play a minion master. The minor plays into the support aspect of the Ritualist. Letting you benefit and provide support to allies with some minor healing as you build to your spectral shroud. Sight beyond sight is just a total flavor bomb of a trait. Rather than revealing foes from stealth like other anti stealth abilities the ritualist can just SEE them. This gives them the knowledge to always know were their foe is but thieves can still back stab a ritualist.

• Lich: The second idea I had was the lich. Far more tanky than any other elite specialization the lich embodies the idea of being a wizard who has sold their mortality for an immortal body. The lich is the master of Minions, perfecting the art. Although the Lich also works in diseases and the sacrificial arts. I don’t yet have a shroud for them although I have considered the idea that their unique mechanic would be Orders and not a new shroud. They’d still have death shroud but they’d also gain access to new skills called orders which could modify your parties abilities similar to virtues but in a dark and twisted way.

The lich actually would use a shield as its weapon which its skills would actually count as minion skills or provide some benefit to minions. The skill 4 being a skill called Flesh wall which would summon an immobile minion that takes abuse and knocks foes back with it. Acting like a ward skill that can actually be killed. Their skill type would be sacrifice skills which would require a percentage of your health to be activated and have extremely risky and powerful effects.

The Lich elite specialization embodies 3 key ideas of lichs as we commonly see them. Corruption, Sacrifice and immortality.

1. Corruption, the concept would be around this idea of spreading conditions and summoning horrors to do your biding in building tension and torment in the area. Along this lines, the Lich would get a new condition they could apply called Disease. Which would be an extremely low damage condition that stacks and spreads, though can’t be spread to the same target twice with the same application of disease. Minions would become carriers from this concept and the lich itself would have tainted flesh.
2. Sacrifice, this concept builds more into your power specs. Sacrifice skills will play a heavy part in one potential build while normally you might only want one maybe 2 sacrifice skills on your bar. This type of build would put your life on the line to quite literally becoming stronger the lower your health drops. High risk and high reward from this play style, eating away at your own health to chew through your foes. Vitality becomes an important part of this play style, giving you traits that will modify the effectiveness of your sacrifice skills based on how high your vitality is.
3. Immortality isn’t what you think. This concept isn’t literally making the lich immortal. But rather modifying their defenses in such a way they can almost gain a second life. One such trait idea I had would actually halt the decay rate of your life force as long as you are below 25% health. There was a second part to that trait, but I don’t want to spoil it. This path would modify your abilities with a shield and make you difficult to control as well. Though you can still die, you’ll just be harder to take down with this concept.

The Lich needs allot of work. Its concepts aren’t nearly complete and I have allot of ideas for the elite specialization to work out on paper and in theory before feeling it’ll be good enough to show off. But the basic concepts and points I wanted to touch on are all there.

• Witch: This is where things get really interesting. The witch doesn’t actually change death shroud at all. It uses the exact same death shroud as the core necromancer. Rather they get a new condition and new F2-4 abilities. Witches are known for a few things in mythology and how we present them in our culture. Hexes, transforming people into toads, potions and insane cackling. With this elite spec I touch on all of that.

Hex: Hex is the brand new condition that the witch gains access to. This hex deals similar damage to poison and also stacks in intensity with no secondary effect. So whats so special about this condition though? Well, hex does whatever the witch wants it to. Thats right, when a witch has hexed you she can change the debilitating effect that it might cause those suffering from it. The new F2-4 abilities are called Hexes and each of them when activated will cost some of your life force to use and they’ll add or change what hex is doing for a short duration. Suddenly the foe that is hexed might pulse out protection to foes that are around it. Or perhaps their attack suddenly cause them to stumble and daze them for a half second. Or maybe their actions physically harm their allies. Hex is the witch’s tool box condition that can do anything and everything she wants and can be further modified through traits.

The witch also uses Elixirs as their utility skill. But this is where I run into a problem with the witches design. You see, to really embody the flavor and usefulness of this elite specialization the necromancer would need to have utility in death shroud. The elixirs I have designed have a dual function. outside of death shroud the witch drinks them to provide some unusual effects. While in death shroud she tosses them at foes to cause all sorts of chaos such as her powerful hex condition, fear or even turning someone into a toad!

The Witch is something I’d love to play even more than the Ritualist because of how unique and just silly it could get with its traits and skills.

• Vampire: The last idea I had was of a vampire elite specialization. “But Lily! We already have blood magic! What could a vampire possibly do that wouldn’t step all over blood magic.” Lots actually. You see there are allot of aspects of the vampire that the necromancer currently doesn’t touch on at all. Although the necromancer does do life stealing, transformations, and creating minions there is more to them than just that. The Vampire elite specialization would be far more along the lines of modifying bleeds, transforming and gaining supernatural abilities unseen before on the necromancer. The Vampire elite specialization could have a spear as its weapon and rage skills to give it max possible flavor.

The Vampire would embody these aspects. Blood, rage and transformation.

1. Blood as a concept would be about bleeding and modifying your attacks against bleeding foes or even grant you new abilities while in range of foes who are bleeding outside of just damage reduction or increased damage. A bleeding foe might invigorate the vampire giving them vigor. Thats right! I said vigor! The vampire elite specialization would give the necromancer access to a boon we’ve all been craving for a while. Vigor! Blood would also modify bleeding on foes to increase its damage or change skills that would normally daze a foe to full on stun them.
2. Rage would be more along the lines of the vampire moving extremely fast and entering a hyper aware state where they can react much quicker and move at inhuman speeds. So super speed and quickness would be given to this elite specialization further emphasizing that this is a supernatural create you are playing as.
   #Transformation is a bit of an interesting idea. The necromancer already does this with lich form, plague and their shroud. So this line would focus on your vampiric shroud a bit more as well as give you interesting ways to move throughout the world. Your evade would change you into a cloud of bats rather than jumping out of the way. I don’t think I’d add anything to that, just as a cosmetic thing for the elite spec would be cool. It would also be embodied through the vampire’s elite skill which I’ve yet to design. Though want it to modify shroud in some way similar to my Lich form suggestion a while back.

The vampire would be allot of fun to play and I imagine it would probably be more popular than my other ideas in practice because you’d be more in line with a blood raged monster that really gets people blood pumping.

What do you guys think of these ideas? Do you like them? Have some of your own? Let me know in the comments. Mind you this discussion is just to speculate on where out profession could go. And what is flavorful to our design and were we can expand on.

Norjena.5172:

Lily.1935:

except we don’t have low damage. That’s a myth which has been busted multiple times. Our burst is low, yes this is true but our sustained damage is extremely good.

U are completly wrong and/or ignorant. Your personal opinion does not matter while facts are showing something completly diffrent.

“Burst” is Frostbow, but even without that, a staffele deals out nearly twice times as much dps as a necromancer.

With only 2 skills. Fire 1 and 2 24/7 365 days a year. Thats not burst.

If u rly want extremly long fights, the condition engineer will be maxdps.
And thiefs, warriors or guardians all of them have the same, or more “sustain” dps then necromancers.

At the moment, necromancers are the second worst dps class in this game. Only mesmers are doing less (cause phantasmas die in pve). But mesmers have so much utility, they will find their place in raids like in dungeons or fractals.

A utility change needs a class rework. We wont get this. And i can understand why.

What we need is a huge dps buff for pve, with all weapons and shrouds. We need much more multipliers in our traits. At least 1 per line.
Adding a few of them (only for pve) should not be much work. And we need it.

Axe needs some work, scepter needs some work and dagger off hand needs a life force skill. We also should have access to at least 2 projectile blocks and Curses needs some major work and we need more access to stability.

Other than that we’re pretty much golden. I’d like some changes to focus and warhorn but I’m not going to push that over what we actually need.

Also, you’re completely delusional if you believe that a staff ele’s DPS is higher than a berserker necromancer. Completely delusional. Edit: Almost forgot. Yes I’ll admit that a staff ele using the ice bow exploit does more damage than a necromancer. But that does more damage than every single profession in the game and a bad argument regarldess. Without ice bow it does. But give a necromancer a ice bow and they’ll do more damage than a ele. XD

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Whirl finishers: Whirl finisher bolts are capped at 5 bolts per skill, and only deal 198 damage per bolt. It is technically a DPS increase, but again, negligible enough to not matter over the course of a fractal/dungeon run.

Not true on the cap. For example, Soul Spiral and Whirling Axe both send out far more than 5 bolts. Each one can actually shoot out more along the lines of 30 or more. Shredder Gyro puts them all to shame, though, setting off 30 whirl finishers on its own (with many, many bolts).

Whirl finishers will produce more than 5 bolts, but only the first 5 will do anything. After 5 bolts hit, the rest of the bolts do nothing.

Which is why whirl finishers are pretty much useless.

Considering there are zero texts, whether in-game or even on the wiki, or even anyone else stating this, I will have to call bullkitten on this claim.

Perhaps you are confusing things with Chilling Bolts where only the most recent 5 matter?

I was sending out about 60 chilling bolts with when I was whirling it with soul spiral in the beta. Not all of them mattered, but I was traited for vuln on chill so I could stack an entire group up with vuln really quickly. I tried it out with confusion bolts too. That was fun. got about 13 stacks since they were random. So yeah. What he’s saying is complete bunk.

sigh

Fine, don’t believe it. I’ll be proven right in the end. I usually am. People argued with me about a defiance bar over a year ago and it was implemented in the game showing I was right then. And I know I’m right here.

Now I’m never saying the necromancer doesn’t need work. They absolutely do. And they have some useful utility. These blanket statements about the necromancer having nothing are just poorly thought up and poorly argued.

Quarktastic.1027:

Lily.1935:

Quarktastic.1027:

Two lightning hammers in a water field gives you both proactive and reactive defenses. (not that any of your proactive field combos work on bosses anyway)

GG.

Fields don’t stack. Also blind reduced the break bar last I checked, weakness still reduces their damage, frost armor gives you a passive 10% damage reduction, and stealth prevents you from getting focus fired by the boss.

GG.

I know fields don’t stack, but blast finishers do.

Do you even lightning hammer?

Blind reduces break bars, but so does other soft CC that’s more readily available (like cripple). Weakness doesn’t reduce the effectiveness of critical hits, and only lasts 50% as long on bosses. Blasting a water field heals for more than that 3 seconds of 10% damage reduction will prevent.

I’m not saying other fields aren’t useful, but in the current meta, spamming blast finishers in a water field is basically like turning on god mode.

So you’re double blasting water? That isn’t both proactive and reactive. That’s just reactive.

Healing will always be weaker than damage mitigation. This is just a fact. We know this to be true, I can prove it in ever single RPG ever mad. Thats why heals have to heal for so much. Aegis blocking a 5k attack is better than healing after the fact for 5k, blind causing an attack to miss is the same, weakness reducing the damage of all outgoing attacks are more valuable.

Quarktastic.1027:

Two lightning hammers in a water field gives you both proactive and reactive defenses. (not that any of your proactive field combos work on bosses anyway)

GG.

Fields don’t stack. Also blind reduced the break bar last I checked, weakness still reduces their damage, frost armor gives you a passive 10% damage reduction, and stealth prevents you from getting focus fired by the boss.

GG.

Dadnir.5038:

Lily.1935:

I’m not talking about a 100% perfect scenario. Thats another point I’ve been arguing against. That the meta builds are often run as perfect scenarios and believed that they are even when they’re not. I’m talking about chaos. In a chaotic situation I can keep up 25 stacks of might and vulnerability at all times, I can keep myself at full health, I can maintain perma chill. I can boon strip without a problem. I’ve done the testing in the beta. I ran fractals and dungeons on my reaper. I’ve run organized events. I did it specifically to test their usefulness in groups. And its astounding! We are absolutely amazing. Extremely valuable.

There is some truth in what you say, with the reaper able to do what you say. ANd we are astoundingly good at that. But we are not able to merge into a group. All of this goes to nought only for one reason : If you play in a party you have to do your share of teamwork. Being a lone wolf may be super awesome for solo content but fall short as soon as you are in a party.

Everybody here can see that there is a clear inegality between the value of the different field. Let’s admit it, there is no field that can beat the fire field when it come to offence power. There is no field that beat the water field when it come to defensive power as well. The necromancer got none of them. The necromancer is stuck with the poison field, dark field and light field which effect (on top of their utilities) are totally negligible in PvE. The necromancer is also stuck by unreliable combo finisher.

In a groupe you’ll always be judged by what you can do for your party and how well you will perform with your teammate. A group have to work as a whole, you just can rely on a lone wolf.

Anet’s balance of profession (and elite spec) is very good for sPvP but, they tend to hurt some professions by the restriction they put on PvE and by the fact that they don’t foresee how some skill will perform in a highly dangerous environment (ex : Gyro will most likely only be used with the fact in mind that they will be destroyed instantly).

What we absolutely need Anet to do is to put our field on the same level as the fire field or the water field. We need Anet to make those field wanted and this is here that we will become valuable for the group. The necromancer don’t need heavy change or whatever, it only need that it’s tools gain enough value in the PvE environment so that the necromancer itself become a valuable asset for a party. And from what we could see at the moment, this is not the case.

I’m saying it again, the necromancer do not need to solo the content, he need to be valuable for a party. No party will take a necromancer because he can put 25 stack of vulnerability regardless of it’s team mate. This thing have no value for the party simply because there is no teamwork in it.

NB.: I would also like you to consider the fact that Anet introduce something they call the break bar. The Break bar is meant to weaken boss in a way that it garantee a dps window of a few second. We could say that It’s basically a tool designed for the current meta.

Well, you got a few things wrong here. First, the fire field isn’t the best for damage. Its good, but when you compare it to a dark field the raw damage output from. Now the fire field only wins in blast finishers. When it comes to leaps even, Light field wins this one. But when compared projectile finishers or whirl the dark field wins out with higher raw damage. Lighting field also has more utility in both those categories as well. Its just people under value other types of finishers and over value blast finishers.

Water field isn’t the best defensive field either. And something I’ve explained over and over again, reaction will always play second fiddle to pro-action. Which actually makes Ice fields, Poison fields, dark fields and smoke fields are superior to it in terms of defense. Water field is the best at healing. Nothing else. But that’s not a defense. Its a reaction to damage. It doesn’t reduce or stop damage. Poison Fields, ice fields and dark fields actually provide proactive defense while water does not. You gain no benifit from blasting a water field at full health. You do gain a huge benefit from blasting the other fields or leaping or what have you. Pro-action > reaction. Blind and weakness are extremely valuable in challenging content that require the use of your abilities.

You’re underestimating the value of other fields outside of what the “Meta” told you is best and its not even true. I don’t know who invented this insane concept but its just false.

… They don’t need to put the other fields on the “Same level” as water and fire. They’re better! They’re straight up better. They provide more damage, higher active defenses and control! Something that fire and water fields seriously lack. Fire and water have their uses, but they’re over rated.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Being anchored as an ele while using an ice isn’t a big deal if your guardian knows what he is doing. Aegis isnt something we are suppose to just spam. Aegis allows people to not break their dps chains. Coupled with quickness from guards, you get that off really quick as well.

except there are enemies that’ll stealth interrupt you, one shot you and put pulsing aoes at your feat all at once. Mind you their attack isn’t actually a one shot. Its only a one shot to people who glass armor. So blocking a single attack to try and “Save” you isn’t going to cut it. Being Anchored in Normal PvE doesn’t get you killed normally. In HoT I’ve seen that this isn’t the case at all. I played in low pop maps for HoT and even high pop maps. When you get to around 6-10 people in an event, people drop. Like flies. especially people who don’t move and try to use ice bow. Its kinda funny watching about 7 people all get killed before my eyes while I was playing a reaper and I’m just like “Wha’d up.” and surviving quite well against the same mobs that killed them. Note that those mobs are the easy part and the raids are designed to be much harder. If it is how I expect it to be people are in for a rude awakening.

I think you also need to add in your post this is the second time we’ve played against these mobs and mechanics, people still aren’t used to them. They big thing will be seeing how hard to overcome these mechanics will be after everyone is aware of them.

I got used to them in the first beta weekend. Why are you guys being so slow to adapt? If you guys can’t handle the mobs after 3 years of being conditioned and prepared for it, I have to say you never will be. Of course when doing fractals and dungeons I often make my group fight the bosses as intended and don’t use AI abuses like corner stacking. I’ve done it both ways and I know which one is faster. I also know which one is better for your actual skill in the game. If you guys actually played the game as intended you’d be able to handle the mobs. But people can’t handle them because they didn’t develop these skills they should have learned ahead of time.

Whoooaa, calm down, let’s put some breaks on the hostility train before it crashes into Central flame station. We can both agree this games PvE has been extremely hand holding and forgiving up until what they’re trying to do with HoT. And then you get to dungeons which, while initially hard, people found ways to bug and make the content ridiculously easy, and now we have the menactric problems we do today.

What I’m saying is that, will HoT PvE and raid prevent this problem and help make all classes wanted for something? Or will we just see a doubling up of the dungeon meta with 4 ele’s, 2 warriors, 2 thieves 2 guards? Or even 2 ele’s and 2 mesmers since Mesmer has the portal and alclarity now. Another thing to consider is how much more efficient wil the meta be compared to non-meta comps. And then factor in bugs and terrain abuse, it’s a lot of u know variables people still haven’t had time to figure out.

I am calm. Sorry if that sounds hostile, its just truth though.

Will there be meta builds for raids? Yes, of course their will be. That is unavoidable. Will it be the dungeon meta? Absolutely not, the dungeon meta is build around bursting and is unsustainable in prolonged combat fights. Which is what I’ve been trying to say. The builds that are effective in dungeons will not have a place in Raids. And with these fights that are expected to last much longer this is the necromancer’s play ground. This is the necromancer’s territory. This is where we shine.

I’m not saying the necromancer will be meta for dungeons. by Grenth that wont happen without some major changes. I am saying that the necromancer has a solid chance in raids because of their value in a long fight due to the fact they are far better built for it than any other profession.

It is a possible chance but we’ll just have to see. We might also run into the problem of the fact that with 10 people, our longer sustain in fights might not be needed with everyone healing each other. Though admittedly, I do think we’re one of the best medic classes in the game with transfusion.

I actually have a transfusion reaper’s onslaught build I want to try out once HoT comes out. With that recharge we should be able to pull a tone of people out of a hot spot pretty frequently and easily. Don’t know if it’ll be effective or not but thats what testing it in a real environment will tell us.

Charblaze.6958:

@Lily: You can argue (with reason) that we are too worried because of our past experiences that may or may not be applicable to raids, but you have to concede that your “perfect Reaper scenarios” are no better.

@Everyone: Look at scrapper’s hammer, it’s going to function at 100% capacity regardless if there is a defiance bar, while stripping it if it’s present. Chill’s effects are our support. It’s what’s allowing us to keep up with the enemy, it’s gaining us the time need to land our slow blows, it’s mitigating damage by reducing the foe DPS by delaying attack and helps buy time for the cooldowns to be up again. This is all valuable party support, and we are giving it up for generic defiance stripping that other professions are getting for free on top what they are already doing.

Don’t get me wrong, Reaper is a good and well designed specialization, but the chill DoT is trivializing its role by making it replaceable by any other defiance stripping effect/skill. Unless chill’s DoT greatly reduces defiance regeneration, allowing more breathing room to burst the bar, it’ not easy to justify a Reaper’s spot over more supportive professions.

I’m not talking about a 100% perfect scenario. Thats another point I’ve been arguing against. That the meta builds are often run as perfect scenarios and believed that they are even when they’re not. I’m talking about chaos. In a chaotic situation I can keep up 25 stacks of might and vulnerability at all times, I can keep myself at full health, I can maintain perma chill. I can boon strip without a problem. I’ve done the testing in the beta. I ran fractals and dungeons on my reaper. I’ve run organized events. I did it specifically to test their usefulness in groups. And its astounding! We are absolutely amazing. Extremely valuable.

Zenith.7301:

I don’t think you have any idea about how this game works on prolonged fights to be declaring current meta builds dead on arrival in raids.

Most of your healing/defenses come from water field blasting and use of reflects/aegis/protection, not gear stat choices. Surprisingly, all available to berzerker builds.

If anything changes, people will switch to Valkyrie/Cavalier. Still same offensive focus. Don’t expect PVT’s or celestial.

I’ve watched people bumble around with Meta builds. Both organized parties and pugs. XD So I have a great idea. “Experienced” players suck with them in a long fight. I know because i’ve watched them do it.

I have a better idea. Make life stealing scale exclusively with healing power, make it so its low end is around 30 and high around 120 with max healing. Change Vampiric Presence to cause you to share Vampiric rather than stacking twice. Have life stealing be effected by poison reducing both sides of its scaling. And lastly, profit.

Also, life stealing scales really well with other weapons outside of dagger. Axe and staff do really well in PvE in this aspect.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Being anchored as an ele while using an ice isn’t a big deal if your guardian knows what he is doing. Aegis isnt something we are suppose to just spam. Aegis allows people to not break their dps chains. Coupled with quickness from guards, you get that off really quick as well.

except there are enemies that’ll stealth interrupt you, one shot you and put pulsing aoes at your feat all at once. Mind you their attack isn’t actually a one shot. Its only a one shot to people who glass armor. So blocking a single attack to try and “Save” you isn’t going to cut it. Being Anchored in Normal PvE doesn’t get you killed normally. In HoT I’ve seen that this isn’t the case at all. I played in low pop maps for HoT and even high pop maps. When you get to around 6-10 people in an event, people drop. Like flies. especially people who don’t move and try to use ice bow. Its kinda funny watching about 7 people all get killed before my eyes while I was playing a reaper and I’m just like “Wha’d up.” and surviving quite well against the same mobs that killed them. Note that those mobs are the easy part and the raids are designed to be much harder. If it is how I expect it to be people are in for a rude awakening.

I think you also need to add in your post this is the second time we’ve played against these mobs and mechanics, people still aren’t used to them. They big thing will be seeing how hard to overcome these mechanics will be after everyone is aware of them.

I got used to them in the first beta weekend. Why are you guys being so slow to adapt? If you guys can’t handle the mobs after 3 years of being conditioned and prepared for it, I have to say you never will be. Of course when doing fractals and dungeons I often make my group fight the bosses as intended and don’t use AI abuses like corner stacking. I’ve done it both ways and I know which one is faster. I also know which one is better for your actual skill in the game. If you guys actually played the game as intended you’d be able to handle the mobs. But people can’t handle them because they didn’t develop these skills they should have learned ahead of time.

Whoooaa, calm down, let’s put some breaks on the hostility train before it crashes into Central flame station. We can both agree this games PvE has been extremely hand holding and forgiving up until what they’re trying to do with HoT. And then you get to dungeons which, while initially hard, people found ways to bug and make the content ridiculously easy, and now we have the menactric problems we do today.

What I’m saying is that, will HoT PvE and raid prevent this problem and help make all classes wanted for something? Or will we just see a doubling up of the dungeon meta with 4 ele’s, 2 warriors, 2 thieves 2 guards? Or even 2 ele’s and 2 mesmers since Mesmer has the portal and alclarity now. Another thing to consider is how much more efficient wil the meta be compared to non-meta comps. And then factor in bugs and terrain abuse, it’s a lot of u know variables people still haven’t had time to figure out.

I am calm. Sorry if that sounds hostile, its just truth though.

Will there be meta builds for raids? Yes, of course their will be. That is unavoidable. Will it be the dungeon meta? Absolutely not, the dungeon meta is build around bursting and is unsustainable in prolonged combat fights. Which is what I’ve been trying to say. The builds that are effective in dungeons will not have a place in Raids. And with these fights that are expected to last much longer this is the necromancer’s play ground. This is the necromancer’s territory. This is where we shine.

I’m not saying the necromancer will be meta for dungeons. by Grenth that wont happen without some major changes. I am saying that the necromancer has a solid chance in raids because of their value in a long fight due to the fact they are far better built for it than any other profession.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Being anchored as an ele while using an ice isn’t a big deal if your guardian knows what he is doing. Aegis isnt something we are suppose to just spam. Aegis allows people to not break their dps chains. Coupled with quickness from guards, you get that off really quick as well.

except there are enemies that’ll stealth interrupt you, one shot you and put pulsing aoes at your feat all at once. Mind you their attack isn’t actually a one shot. Its only a one shot to people who glass armor. So blocking a single attack to try and “Save” you isn’t going to cut it. Being Anchored in Normal PvE doesn’t get you killed normally. In HoT I’ve seen that this isn’t the case at all. I played in low pop maps for HoT and even high pop maps. When you get to around 6-10 people in an event, people drop. Like flies. especially people who don’t move and try to use ice bow. Its kinda funny watching about 7 people all get killed before my eyes while I was playing a reaper and I’m just like “Wha’d up.” and surviving quite well against the same mobs that killed them. Note that those mobs are the easy part and the raids are designed to be much harder. If it is how I expect it to be people are in for a rude awakening.

I think you also need to add in your post this is the second time we’ve played against these mobs and mechanics, people still aren’t used to them. They big thing will be seeing how hard to overcome these mechanics will be after everyone is aware of them.

I got used to them in the first beta weekend. Why are you guys being so slow to adapt? If you guys can’t handle the mobs after 3 years of being conditioned and prepared for it, I have to say you never will be. Of course when doing fractals and dungeons I often make my group fight the bosses as intended and don’t use AI abuses like corner stacking. I’ve done it both ways and I know which one is faster. I also know which one is better for your actual skill in the game. If you guys actually played the game as intended you’d be able to handle the mobs. But people can’t handle them because they didn’t develop these skills they should have learned ahead of time.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

If people really think necro are ok and would vote for devs to do nothing about their current state then that is their loss. I’ll keep maining my guard and be just fine. I don’t get why people are trying to defend the black sheep of organized pve without thinking about ways they should be improved. Just keep holding the little light of hope.

Oh that’s not my argument. The core necromancer has allot of issues. The reaper however? Really good. Useful for raids? absolutely.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Being anchored as an ele while using an ice isn’t a big deal if your guardian knows what he is doing. Aegis isnt something we are suppose to just spam. Aegis allows people to not break their dps chains. Coupled with quickness from guards, you get that off really quick as well.

except there are enemies that’ll stealth interrupt you, one shot you and put pulsing aoes at your feat all at once. Mind you their attack isn’t actually a one shot. Its only a one shot to people who glass armor. So blocking a single attack to try and “Save” you isn’t going to cut it. Being Anchored in Normal PvE doesn’t get you killed normally. In HoT I’ve seen that this isn’t the case at all. I played in low pop maps for HoT and even high pop maps. When you get to around 6-10 people in an event, people drop. Like flies. especially people who don’t move and try to use ice bow. Its kinda funny watching about 7 people all get killed before my eyes while I was playing a reaper and I’m just like “Wha’d up.” and surviving quite well against the same mobs that killed them. Note that those mobs are the easy part and the raids are designed to be much harder. If it is how I expect it to be people are in for a rude awakening.

Atherakhia.4086:

Lily.1935:

Atherakhia.4086:

We’ve also seen raids where people all pile onto a single spot in raids in other games.

But even if we are to assume groups need to split up, they’ll likely still be split up into small camps of people as opposed to lone players each standing outside of range of one another. In this situation you make Necromancers even less useful because now the raid needs multiples of the same classes that provide more utility at the expense of raw DPS.

Necromancers have no utility AND low damage. Short of there being some niche encounter that is specifically designed to align with the limited utility the class does provide, things aren’t likely to be any better in HOT. Certainly not for those who choose to play Necro over Reaper.

except we don’t have low damage. That’s a myth which has been busted multiple times. Our burst is low, yes this is true but our sustained damage is extremely good. And, not only that Vulnerability far more valuable to a party than might is in terms of providing damage. This is just a fact we can show this with the mathematics.

The reaper can stack vulnerability like no other profession I’ve seen. And actually sustain it. Not even my engineer does that well in stacking it or as quickly. Will Scrapper be able to stack it just as well as reaper? That is yet to be scene. The answer to that is maybe.

However, the necromancer has more than just vulnerability they can use. They also have some of the most potent boon stripping in the game. Which only the mesmer compares to in that regard.

In raids we are expected to use all of our tools and all of our mechanics. So I fully expect to have to use skills like “Nothing can save you” in PvE. You also have to remember that Chill actually causes the defiance bar to degenerate. That is absolutely huge! Thats going to be a major factor against bosses who might have quick regenerating and/or heard to break defiance. And considering that the reaper can both apply a whole bunch of chill and sustain it on their own while at the same time dishing out a heap of damage and being capable of surviving a boss’s focus fire while doing it, I see major value in the necromancer.

And also, unless you’re planning to run something like, 5 phalanx warriors in your raid my point stills stands. And if you are actually planning that I’d say you’re silly and wasting your time.

PS: Pre-buffing will be virtually useless.

If it’s been debunked, they’re keeping it to themselves because I’ve certainly never seen anything to disprove Necromancer isn’t bottom tier in damage. If someone wants to post what a proper Necro/Reaper rotation is or if you want to link your proof then so be it. But from very basic math it looks like the Necromancer’s overall DPS is 160% of their power a second when not considering things like Frost Bow and the like (assuming a 3min sample to account for Lich DPS). But again, that’s with me putting about 2mins of effort into figuring it out and not knowing the proper rotation.

I’m also very worried when the only things you can list for Necromancer utility is vulnerability, boon stripping, and chill. Rangers can do 2 of those things just as well if not better while providing significantly more utility and stronger DPS. The only time a Necromancer’s boonstripping would be more valuable than a Mesmers is if they design encounters specifically around casting 5+ boons every 30 – 45 seconds. Otherwise Mesmer wins just like now.

Now as for predicting future raid content from ANet given their poor delivery of PvE content up till this point is a waste of time. Their classes aren’t sufficiently diverse and their decision to drop the ‘holy trinity’ really limits their options. All we know is going into HOT the Necromancer is quite poor and the Reaper hasn’t gained enough from what we’ve seen to level the playing field. I’m not going to rest my hopes and dreams on Reaper viability on ANets ability to get PvE Raid content right.

I couldn’t touch my necromancer’s DPS with my ranger. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, which is possible. But I’ve followed the rotation to a T and it just doesn’t even come close to the necromancer’s in a long fight. Combine with that the ranger is a million time squishier than a necromancer which makes it so they go down much easier. Even with the ranger’s vuln stacking its still about 3x slower than a reaper’s vuln stacking and doesn’t sustain nearly as well. Which I’ve had the fortune of testing both. And their chill? Lol! no… Necromancer does that better with the core profession let alone reaper.

When addressing boon stripping, I’m not looking at this in a vacuum. So a ranger can do 2 of these moderately well. Big deal, they can’t do the third. Its the unique combination that the reaper provides which makes them valuable not “How can I preform the same task using 2-5 other professions to fill the same exact role that one person could do for me by themselves” situation. Because the necromancer can do this all at once this is what makes them valuable. They don’t have to super dedicate themselves to one or the other they can use all three and it comes naturally to them.

And Ice bow? I hate to tell you this, but Ice bow 5 wont be enough to break the break bar on the boss. Also.. Enemies in Hot.. they dodge. Line casting is still a problem, but most people don’t know how to do that anyway which for people that don’t know how to line cast it makes the bow less valuable. You’ll just bring your ice bow. Be a sitting duck for a few seconds, half your attacks will get dodged and enemies will snipe you and you’ll die. At least that’s what should happen if you decide to dedicate almost 3 seconds of your time casting a single spell. And before you say “I’ll just take XY&Z!” let me remind you that you can’t actually have everything on your bar.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lily.1935:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lily.1935:

ODB.6891:

Substatic.6958:

Lily.1935:

the necromancer has outstanding sustainability now and can hit extremely hard with sustained damage. Other professions have much higher burst damage than we do, like elementalist and warrior, but their sustainability is no where near as high. As fights last longer the necromancer has an advantage in that regard since our life force generation has actually improved greatly over the years letting us quickly build our bar back up. This means we can stay in the fight much longer. We’re also very self sufficient as compared to other professions. We can stack 25 might without the use of foods are relying on ally buffs. We can also dish out 25 valn on our own meaning we literally don’t need anyone else with us in a fight.

Meanwhile in lfg “LF2M lvl40 Fractal No Necro/Ranger”

the necromancer will have a solid spot on a team.

Beta people said this before release of Vanilla too.

To be fair, this person is apparently talking about open world in a thread about raids and instanced content…this judging from the above reply where they talk about open world specifically in the reply to me about this.

As far as the thread topic though, ANET really needs to pull their heads out of the sand/PvP and fix our PvE participation chances…I mean its been 3 years now. Its clear from the persistent no necro sentiment in PvE group content that the things they do give us are not good selling points for necros in instanced PvE. Its is undeniably proven, after 3 years of observation, that being an unhealable hp sponge that cannot participate in the boon/utility circle of life…has ostracized necromancers from high level PvE instanced content.

To be fair, I’m well respected in the necromancer community and also a group organizer for my guild. I also know how to run dungeons in both might stacking groups and running without pre-buffing and playing the content without stacking. And I can tell you, most party buffs from skills and traits have a 600 range or less. You’re not going to be expected to be within that range while in a Group. Organized or not. Some times you can, however if Raids are what arena net are promising its not going to be often that you will be able to.

Why would you ever be further than 600 from your party members? you are doing something terribly wrong if you find yourself further than 600 from them. I can only think of 1 or 2 instances in all the dungeons where you’d want to be further than 600 from your party members. Obviously really bad pugs tend to spread out, but no truly organized group, or even well organized pug would ever do what you are describing.

The fact is, if it is safe for one person to stand somewhere, then it is safe for the other party members to be standing there as well and there is no reason NOT to be standing there. Other than the occasional debuff that makes one or two people leave the stack I doubt raids will be any different.

You’re comparing dungeons to raids. Which is your first mistake. Raids are not going to be dungeons. And if it is what arena net promises than you’ll need to have a full range of your party. Meaning you’ll have people at 1,200/1,500 range from the boss, people at 600/900 range and people at melee. This isn’t going to be perfect, especially the first time going through, its going to be sloppy and people stacking together in 600 range will get the mopped up by the boss really easily. These areas you should also expect to have your party broken up in to smaller than 5 man groups. Expect several situations were you’re stuck with only 2 of your allies or none at all within your range.

Here is a list of some mechanics that can break your party up:

• An extremely large boss that requires several focal points around its body.

• Effects that forcibly teleport players away from the fight into a location that puts them out of your range.

• Areas that require a certain number of players while one maybe 2 players stay behind to maintain a switch or something similar.

• Defender fights that put way too much pressure at the point that is supposed to be defended in that 600 range so you need people posted at each of the spawn points. Spawn points could be 3-5 and be far away from each other so you can’t rely on all your allies buffs.

• Too many people close together could trigger new types of foes or new abilities of the boss that is specifically designed to counter that.

• An Aoe Field that has a 600 Radius that interrupts each second and deals massive damage that also targets a party member at random… Several times.

Many of these have been seen before in other games and we’ve seen this to a very minor degree in GW2. The aoe field of the last example has been done before in GW1 minus the interrupting part.

All you’ve done is designed a bunch of gimmicks that adhere to your specific pipe dream of what the game should be while completely destroying all the team aspects of GW2. This will never happen so i’m not going to bother to argue against it.

The most effective strategy in raids will be to work with your teammates, not run around ignoring them. Anything else will make raids trivial.

Who said I was ignoring them? I understand that in a group you’re not always guaranteed to be able to stick together. Except in dungeons which are currently horribly broken where people freeze the boss and kill it in seconds before anything can react negating any challenge that would have been there. You wont be able to stand in a corner and face roll. Bosses will have attacks designed to break up the party. This happened in GW1 in some of the most rewarding dungeon/raid type content in the game and to assume that a boss breaking up a party would “Ruin the game” suggests that raiding isn’t for you and you have an extremely narrow view of the game.

Atherakhia.4086:

We’ve also seen raids where people all pile onto a single spot in raids in other games.

But even if we are to assume groups need to split up, they’ll likely still be split up into small camps of people as opposed to lone players each standing outside of range of one another. In this situation you make Necromancers even less useful because now the raid needs multiples of the same classes that provide more utility at the expense of raw DPS.

Necromancers have no utility AND low damage. Short of there being some niche encounter that is specifically designed to align with the limited utility the class does provide, things aren’t likely to be any better in HOT. Certainly not for those who choose to play Necro over Reaper.

except we don’t have low damage. That’s a myth which has been busted multiple times. Our burst is low, yes this is true but our sustained damage is extremely good. And, not only that Vulnerability far more valuable to a party than might is in terms of providing damage. This is just a fact we can show this with the mathematics.

The reaper can stack vulnerability like no other profession I’ve seen. And actually sustain it. Not even my engineer does that well in stacking it or as quickly. Will Scrapper be able to stack it just as well as reaper? That is yet to be scene. The answer to that is maybe.

However, the necromancer has more than just vulnerability they can use. They also have some of the most potent boon stripping in the game. Which only the mesmer compares to in that regard.

In raids we are expected to use all of our tools and all of our mechanics. So I fully expect to have to use skills like “Nothing can save you” in PvE. You also have to remember that Chill actually causes the defiance bar to degenerate. That is absolutely huge! Thats going to be a major factor against bosses who might have quick regenerating and/or heard to break defiance. And considering that the reaper can both apply a whole bunch of chill and sustain it on their own while at the same time dishing out a heap of damage and being capable of surviving a boss’s focus fire while doing it, I see major value in the necromancer.

And also, unless you’re planning to run something like, 5 phalanx warriors in your raid my point stills stands. And if you are actually planning that I’d say you’re silly and wasting your time.

PS: Pre-buffing will be virtually useless.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lily.1935:

ODB.6891:

Substatic.6958:

Lily.1935:

the necromancer has outstanding sustainability now and can hit extremely hard with sustained damage. Other professions have much higher burst damage than we do, like elementalist and warrior, but their sustainability is no where near as high. As fights last longer the necromancer has an advantage in that regard since our life force generation has actually improved greatly over the years letting us quickly build our bar back up. This means we can stay in the fight much longer. We’re also very self sufficient as compared to other professions. We can stack 25 might without the use of foods are relying on ally buffs. We can also dish out 25 valn on our own meaning we literally don’t need anyone else with us in a fight.

Meanwhile in lfg “LF2M lvl40 Fractal No Necro/Ranger”

the necromancer will have a solid spot on a team.

Beta people said this before release of Vanilla too.

To be fair, this person is apparently talking about open world in a thread about raids and instanced content…this judging from the above reply where they talk about open world specifically in the reply to me about this.

As far as the thread topic though, ANET really needs to pull their heads out of the sand/PvP and fix our PvE participation chances…I mean its been 3 years now. Its clear from the persistent no necro sentiment in PvE group content that the things they do give us are not good selling points for necros in instanced PvE. Its is undeniably proven, after 3 years of observation, that being an unhealable hp sponge that cannot participate in the boon/utility circle of life…has ostracized necromancers from high level PvE instanced content.

To be fair, I’m well respected in the necromancer community and also a group organizer for my guild. I also know how to run dungeons in both might stacking groups and running without pre-buffing and playing the content without stacking. And I can tell you, most party buffs from skills and traits have a 600 range or less. You’re not going to be expected to be within that range while in a Group. Organized or not. Some times you can, however if Raids are what arena net are promising its not going to be often that you will be able to.

Why would you ever be further than 600 from your party members? you are doing something terribly wrong if you find yourself further than 600 from them. I can only think of 1 or 2 instances in all the dungeons where you’d want to be further than 600 from your party members. Obviously really bad pugs tend to spread out, but no truly organized group, or even well organized pug would ever do what you are describing.

The fact is, if it is safe for one person to stand somewhere, then it is safe for the other party members to be standing there as well and there is no reason NOT to be standing there. Other than the occasional debuff that makes one or two people leave the stack I doubt raids will be any different.

You’re comparing dungeons to raids. Which is your first mistake. Raids are not going to be dungeons. And if it is what arena net promises than you’ll need to have a full range of your party. Meaning you’ll have people at 1,200/1,500 range from the boss, people at 600/900 range and people at melee. This isn’t going to be perfect, especially the first time going through, its going to be sloppy and people stacking together in 600 range will get the mopped up by the boss really easily. These areas you should also expect to have your party broken up in to smaller than 5 man groups. Expect several situations were you’re stuck with only 2 of your allies or none at all within your range.

Here is a list of some mechanics that can break your party up:

• An extremely large boss that requires several focal points around its body.

• Effects that forcibly teleport players away from the fight into a location that puts them out of your range.

• Areas that require a certain number of players while one maybe 2 players stay behind to maintain a switch or something similar.

• Defender fights that put way too much pressure at the point that is supposed to be defended in that 600 range so you need people posted at each of the spawn points. Spawn points could be 3-5 and be far away from each other so you can’t rely on all your allies buffs.

• Too many people close together could trigger new types of foes or new abilities of the boss that is specifically designed to counter that.

• An Aoe Field that has a 600 Radius that interrupts each second and deals massive damage that also targets a party member at random… Several times.

Many of these have been seen before in other games and we’ve seen this to a very minor degree in GW2. The aoe field of the last example has been done before in GW1 minus the interrupting part.

ODB.6891:

Substatic.6958:

Lily.1935:

the necromancer has outstanding sustainability now and can hit extremely hard with sustained damage. Other professions have much higher burst damage than we do, like elementalist and warrior, but their sustainability is no where near as high. As fights last longer the necromancer has an advantage in that regard since our life force generation has actually improved greatly over the years letting us quickly build our bar back up. This means we can stay in the fight much longer. We’re also very self sufficient as compared to other professions. We can stack 25 might without the use of foods are relying on ally buffs. We can also dish out 25 valn on our own meaning we literally don’t need anyone else with us in a fight.

Meanwhile in lfg “LF2M lvl40 Fractal No Necro/Ranger”

the necromancer will have a solid spot on a team.

Beta people said this before release of Vanilla too.

To be fair, this person is apparently talking about open world in a thread about raids and instanced content…this judging from the above reply where they talk about open world specifically in the reply to me about this.

As far as the thread topic though, ANET really needs to pull their heads out of the sand/PvP and fix our PvE participation chances…I mean its been 3 years now. Its clear from the persistent no necro sentiment in PvE group content that the things they do give us are not good selling points for necros in instanced PvE. Its is undeniably proven, after 3 years of observation, that being an unhealable hp sponge that cannot participate in the boon/utility circle of life…has ostracized necromancers from high level PvE instanced content.

To be fair, I’m well respected in the necromancer community and also a group organizer for my guild. I also know how to run dungeons in both might stacking groups and running without pre-buffing and playing the content without stacking. And I can tell you, most party buffs from skills and traits have a 600 range or less. You’re not going to be expected to be within that range while in a Group. Organized or not. Some times you can, however if Raids are what arena net are promising its not going to be often that you will be able to.

ODB.6891:

Lily.1935:

the necromancer has outstanding sustainability now and can hit extremely hard with sustained damage. Other professions have much higher burst damage than we do, like elementalist and warrior, but their sustainability is no where near as high. As fights last longer the necromancer has an advantage in that regard since our life force generation has actually improved greatly over the years letting us quickly build our bar back up. This means we can stay in the fight much longer. We’re also very self sufficient as compared to other professions. We can stack 25 might without the use of foods are relying on ally buffs. We can also dish out 25 valn on our own meaning we literally don’t need anyone else with us in a fight.

I’ll never understand the need to point out the 25 self might and vuln stacking as our strengths in a team environment…which is exactly what raids are. Those things are redundant and therefore not selling points in a team/raid environment. It doesn’t matter if we need anyone else to accomplish this….because there are guaranteed to be 9 others there whether we need them or not…and we will actually need them since raids will require it.

I would also dispute these sustainability claims. Yes, we can take multiple smaller hits over longer durations, but the sustainability falls apart when the hits are one shots or for short durations…that are able to be blocked/invulned/evaded. Our self spike heals are pretty weak…and the same can’t be said for our counterparts. Its not like they are lacking top tier recovery options.

In open world when I’m doing events with just random people or even in a party with friends the amount of might I gain from them is probably about 3 stacks. Maybe 6. In the chaos of many events and the distance at which I’m expecting these groups to be spread out self generated might is a very strong selling point for a frontline fighter who’ll often not be in the range of your ally’s support.

Yes, one shots are a problem, however they’ve become far more rare over the years and really only Arah seems to put that sort of nonsense on common attacks and not large telegraphed attacks. Most attacks, even the ones that seem like they’re a one shot, are actually not.

the necromancer has outstanding sustainability now and can hit extremely hard with sustained damage. Other professions have much higher burst damage than we do, like elementalist and warrior, but their sustainability is no where near as high. As fights last longer the necromancer has an advantage in that regard since our life force generation has actually improved greatly over the years letting us quickly build our bar back up. This means we can stay in the fight much longer. We’re also very self sufficient as compared to other professions. We can stack 25 might without the use of foods are relying on ally buffs. We can also dish out 25 valn on our own meaning we literally don’t need anyone else with us in a fight.

WIth the reaper elite specialization our sustain becomes even stronger and we can stick it out in the front with Valkyrie and Cavalier armor while still maintaining 54%-100% crit chance at all time without any aid from allies. With our high raw defensive capabilities and our high damage this makes us the perfect profession for the front line in a raid which is expected to wear the party down heavily over time. A attrition based profession like us who actually has the ability to play attrition now will be highly valuable.

Granted we still have gaps in our armor. We currently lack scaling defensive abilities. We can’t defend against projectiles. We can’t escape very easily. We still rely on being hyper aggressive to maintain our attrition, even with blighter’s boon. And when we really need help we often can’t receive it until we’re in a seriously dire situation.

Even with all that said, the necromancer has a unique combination of high valn, long chill, and a large amount of boon stripping that if we’re expected to use all of our mechanics in Raids the necromancer will have a solid spot on a team.

I actually really like the reaper elite specialization as it is. the only issues I’ve been having with it is with the core necromancer, not the elite specialization itself. In my opinion its just about perfect. Its core necromancer thats really holding it back.

Another issue that I am seeing way too often with the elite specialization is how reliant it is on Soul reaping. You pretty much need to take soul reaping. Its hard to justify not taking it. but again, this is an issue with the core necromancer and not so much the reaper.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Good suggestions for sure. I want to have a legendary trail with my Frostfang, dangit!

At least, I will if axe ever not sucks.

expect something in November or December for necromancer. I honestly don’t see anything sooner than that for fixing our god awful weapons.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Lily.1935:

I’d also like to add that the Shambling horrors need to have their own unique skin as well. They look no different from jagged horrors, which is a problem since jagged horrors look no different from bone minions.. Come on arena net.. These little changes are important.

I agree that the Shambling and Jagged Horrors should have unique skins, too. I’m probably in the minority, but I like the Chinese version of the Bone Minions. Those could be used on the Shambling or Jagged Horrors.

The issue with that is they would still need to make new models for the Chinese as well. So why waste time making twice as many models when they can make new models that can be used for both?

for a sylvari I might go with a poisonous plant in real life. Maybe use its scientific name. Like Hemlock or something.

I’d also like to add that the Shambling horrors need to have their own unique skin as well. They look no different from jagged horrors, which is a problem since jagged horrors look no different from bone minions.. Come on arena net.. These little changes are important.

Going to revive this with a awesome piece of art I found on the internet. I couldn’t find a larger picture…

Shiki.7148:

Hybrid would be horrible., at least for axe. Make staff more Hybrid, but Necro severely lacks a GOOD ranged power option, and you want to make axe hybrid so we won’t even HAVE a ranged power option anymore? No ty.

Zenith.7301:

No, thank you.

Hybrid weapons SUCK in PvE. Uusually, hybrid weapons have low coefficients on power and mediocre condi application without excelling in either, benefitting far less from gear tailored to one damage source.

You know, You guys sure do love to jump to conclusions. The weapon would have hybrid potential. Much like the sword for guardian has hybrid potential. Note that the sword on the guardian is not a hybrid weapon. It has no damaging conditions on it. It just functions that way with traits.

The axe suggestion I’ve made does not design it with the explicit intention of being a hybrid weapon. Its a byproduct of what happens when you have a weapon that corrupts boons and has a high Hit per second rate. This does not make it a hybrid weapon it makes it a power weapon that can also be used for hybrid.

I honestly wish you guys would read, stop, think for a moment, think some more.. And when you’re done thinking, think again before you post to make absolutely sure you know what you’re talking about… I’m sorry for being so rude but I’m really sick and tired of people missing the point over and over again when the intent is crystal clear.

I got nothing and need a message body length of 15 or more.

You know, I don’t mind frantic run around and kills as much as possible events as long as their is some sort of reward to them, but if there is close to nothing, or in this case actually nothing, I really hate doing them. (which btw, I hate doing level 1-15 daily event for any area. Just so you know, sorta the same feeling I got with these events which I try to avoid if they’res something more fun to complete my daily with.)

so… I didn’t get anything from the events… Like, at all. Got 14 hero stacks but nothing dropped at all.

I’m confused. I’m not seeing anything here and nothing suggesting where it might be besides “Brisban wildlands.” But nothing strange is going on. The strangest thing is a mass of people standing around waiting for what appears to be nothing.