Guild Wars 2

I’m not blinded, I see the issues before me. But I also don’t know what changes they’re making to their core traits and skills. This is something they’ve either mentioned in passing (such as signets) or directly stated but didn’t show us anything just yet(blood magic trait changes). I’m looking forward to see how that effects us. This is the reason I haven’t posted anything lately of relevance to balance. Because I have no idea where they’re going. I’d like to speculate on what might change, but we don’t know.

Lots of people want to speed run stuff but don’t understand the damage rotation of the zerker meta that they’re trying to imitate. Many who run zerker gear don’t even know how to survive in it which leads to bad groups. Necromancer isn’t bad for general dungeon runs, except for Arah. Arah seems to be specifically designed to screw over all the necromancer’s defenses regardless if you’re taking full sentinels or zerker.

I’d suggest finding a friendly guild who would be willing to run the dungeon with you. Especially if you don’t want to cheese it.

If I’m going with usability? Or power it would be like this.

1. Chronomancer
2. Dragonhunter
3. Reaper

If we are going with Mechanical design, how much it adds to the profession.

1. Dragonhunter
2. Reaper
3. Chronomancer

Now if we go with which i’m most interested in playing then its

1. Reaper
2. Chronomancer
3. Dragonhunter

In terms of design the reaper is top down design. Its got the most complete theme out of any of the three. It doesn’t look nearly as close as dragonhunter to being finished though. The problem with the reaper it doesn’t address many of its various weaknesses the necromancer has. While both the Dragonhunter and chronomancer address weaknesses their respective professions have without overwhelming them. The reaper doesn’t do this. And it will be super fun to play but it just wont provide nearly the competitive usability or skillful play that the other two will provide. Not to mention the shouts are extremely lacking aside from a couple while both the chronomancer’s wells and Dragonhunter’s traps provide them with something that can really change the way you can play.

Take Lingering curse. Terror really isn’t going to provide you with the sustain damage you need. Lingering curse will provide greater control and give your damage higher sustain. Also, with runes of the nightmare the fear will last much longer allowing you to abuse it to pressure your foe into a really bad situation.

Also, Terror with Dhuumfire isn’t as good as it sounds. Lingering curse should increase the burn duration giving you 6 seconds of burn on attack while you’ll have 3 with terror. The damage will be half that of LC which wont make up for the over all sustained damage loss.

Unless some major changes happens to the core necromancer I can’t see taking terror as anything but a waste of time. But that’s my opinion. I could be wrong, but that 100% condition duration will just be too useful not to pass up. Even if you’re sacrificing the damage from terror. 24 seconds of chill on your elite, double the fear duration with the chill, double burn duration. There just isn’t enough incentive for me to take it. And depending on how much damage deathly chills deals you might just want to take blighter’s boon.

They need to just completely change the skill to a chain skill. This is just dreadful and its getting worse each day I look at it. Especially considering how close I am to finishing frostfang.

hailsatan.2865:

Lily.1935:

I’ve suggested making minions cost life force or your actual life as to justify the recharge reduction. An Idea I doubt is popular. But having an extremely low cool down could make it so a well timed moa can counter us but also give us a chance to recover. Which I feel would be more important then just making them immune to it. But thats my opinion.

I love this idea. Not only would it be a throwback to gw1 but it would make all the sense in the world that creating these horrors would cost a small percentage of your life or blood.

Would be interesting. I wonder if it should just only take life force while in Combat so players could enter the fight with their full minion bar force.

Even though i don’t play Minion Master, it is a style of play I’m extremely interested in one day actually playing. I used to Love MM in GW1 and I’d like to be able to use it in GW2 as well.

Issue 1: This is something I’ve thought about allot. I’ve considered suggesting this idea myself, but could never find the right idea that would work for it. I’m still not sure about that idea, but I don’t dislike it.

issue 2: Yeah, I agree.

Blood Fiend: Hmm. I was actually going to suggest something like this for the signets. Like allowing Vampiric signet to heal you in Death shroud. But I wondered if that would just be too much with vampiric traits. Its hard to judge if the healing through death shroud would really be needed by either of these skills in combination with the blood magic changes. No opinion right now.

Bone Minion: I think they should increase the number of bone minions to 3 and give the explosion a cast time and ground target where the minions scream bloody murder while flying and spinning through the air before slamming into the ground with their iconic explosion! O_O But that’s just my opinion. Still 1 second recharge. This would make them a bit slower, but the play with it could be quite interesting.

Shadow Fiend: Yeah… Yeah.

Bone Fiend: Ditto ^

Flesh Wurm: I kinda like it where its at actually.

Flesh Golem: Yeah, I could see this helping. I stopped using this elite after its bugs started to get worse though. The more they changed the flesh golem the less it seemed to do.

I’d like to add something to this. I constantly go on and on about how minions should be spammable. Also sometimes mention how they should be disposable. Which I always have to explain that Disposable doesn’t mean fragile. I personally feel that minions need a baseline cool down reduction. I’ve suggested making minions cost life force or your actual life as to justify the recharge reduction. An Idea I doubt is popular. But having an extremely low cool down could make it so a well timed moa can counter us but also give us a chance to recover. Which I feel would be more important then just making them immune to it. But thats my opinion.

Dadnir.5038:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DS-1-vs-Dagger-1/first#post3827116

Spoj The Second.7680:

Axe with axe training is exactly the same as staff. Axe with axe training and slaying sigil + force is slightly better than staff because staff only has 1 sigil slot. But as i said i avoided using the extra slaying sigil on all calculations. Plus staff will have 2 sigil slots after the april patch so the difference will be gone.

Staff will probably win in testing because the damage varies less than with axe.

Well, no change on how the trait work since this thread even if he may be a bit old.

NB.: I know this is a low blow :p

Might not be as easy to see now with the axe because the damage is kinda random. But if you go with the Dagger trait that gives a speed buff then its much easier to see that they do effect you in death shroud.

Gexim.3289:

Fhenrir.5297:

12 stacks of burn anyone?

Burning stacks?? How? When? Can you explain?

Burning is changing to a stacking condition. its going to be shorter duration still and higher damage then other stacking conditions. But it is going to stack now. How much the damage is going to be is honestly hard to say. But when I was watching the dragonhunter live stream they showed some footage of a build where they stacked burning up to 5k a tick. It can be assumed that the change will come before HoT with the trait changes.

The Auto attack in reaper’s shroud is really fast. So expect necromancer to be able to get anywhere between 12-15 stacks with the auto just with traits. This isn’t including extra burn duration through runes or sigils.

Probably something like this. Might change later, but at the moment I like it. Not changing anything for my condi armor though. I like that too much. The power armor will look like this though.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all,
The animation of this ability has changed so that the attacks occur later in the skill, fixing the draw to constantly cancel the ability for an unintended increase in damage. The overall active time of the ability hasn’t moved (remains 1 second flat), so there shouldn’t be any actual loss of damage as long as you’re not cancelling the ability early. The first strike now occurs at ~0.5 seconds in (slightly past it), while the second attack occurs closer to the 1 second mark than before.
There is a bug with the attack hiding your weapon, which was unintended and will be fixed.

-Karl

I’m swinging my axe so it looks like I would hit the flat part of the axe. Its an unsatisfying animation to say the least. I don’t mind the overall change, its just the animation thats throwing me off as a human female.

This is how the new axe animation feels to me. I don’t mind the over all changes to its damage or delay. It just doesn’t look right to me plus I don’t like the fact that it removes my off hand when its waved.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

You are making zero sense. Axe 1 hits once near the start, then once at the end of the 3/4 second cast. It is then followed by a .2 second delay.

I think its stronger now. It kinda feels that way. but I’m struggling with the animation. Its like I’m waving a fairy princess wand now and my warhorn vanishes when I use it.

it feels weird. Especially when you’re using it and then use skill 2 its just like… um… okay?

So they could do one of 4 different things.

• Increase the number of Jagged Horrors. This could work. 10 Jagged horrors suddenly sounds much better. But its not very interesting.

• Use an existing Minion Type. I really like this idea only if it counts as a minion of that type to combo with their respective active. This would be super fun to use. Having 7 Bone Minions would be absolutely epic and would make me build a minion build pretty quickly. But would it be way too much? It could very well be. And how strange would it be if it summoned up to 5 flesh wurms? And of course 5 flesh golems would be way too much.

• Randomize the minions it summons. This could be interesting but I’m not as big of a fan of this since necromancers aren’t random. And I think that should be an important fact about them.

• A new minion type completely. I think this is the best possible option for the necromancer. Summoning Shambling horrors seems like it would be the best option. Make it so they don’t degenerate, are a bit stronger then jagged horrors, spawn a Jagged horror on death and cap the number of them you can have between 5-8 as to prevent abuse. I’d like to have 8 so I can have a reason to use this on cool down if some are still alive, but if the new ones killed the old ones and spawned jagged horrors that could be good too.

I’m afraid I’ll never care for minions as long as they remain fragile but not disposable. And no they are not the same thing. Fine china is fragile. Paper plates are disposable. The minions we have now are like fine china, without the fine part.

Bhawb.7408:

Yeah SC could be replaced without any complaints.

What if it had the added bonus of saying “whenever a foe or minion dies gain X” on top of its normal ability? I personally don’t want to strip its flavor away. It could even say minions grant life force on death. Which would be fitting for death.

Shadelang.3012:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Dark Knight? What do you mean with that?

Hes reffering to knight shroud. The actual name of what alot of people are calling reaper shroud.

as for the OP’s issue. I honestly have no idea. If theres issue with one you would think it would cross over. but the two are different enough I can’t say for certain.

It could also be fixed by then. (I have never run into this issue myself)

Reaper’s shroud is what the skill is called. Shroud Knight is what the trait is called that gives you reaper’s shroud.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Lily.1935:

Proven.2854:

Necros want to be hit… right. I’ve been thinking lately how to make that actually a thing. Best I can think of is baking traits into Death Magic. Here’s one idea:

Trait: Retaliatory Force
Gain Life Force while hit under the effects of Retaliation.

Any other ideas?

What about a trait that just converts the damage of retaliation into Life stealing? Something like “Insidious parasite” or something along those lines.

That combined with blood magic traits working in shroud could become a bit obscene as far as sustain goes.

As far as what to add to death shroud traits at this point I’d love to see some more retaliation & stability
If they are going to focus you at least make them pay for it.

maybe. But its fun to dream. Lol. It would probably have to be low healing. Like half the damage or something. It could be really interesting with Spiteful Spirit when it changes. I’d love to see a retaliation build on the necromancer. But I honestly don’t think Retaliation is quite good enough.

Proven.2854:

Necros want to be hit… right. I’ve been thinking lately how to make that actually a thing. Best I can think of is baking traits into Death Magic. Here’s one idea:

Trait: Retaliatory Force
Gain Life Force while hit under the effects of Retaliation.

Any other ideas?

What about a trait that just converts the damage of retaliation into Life stealing? Something like “Insidious parasite” or something along those lines.

I’d defiantly like to have both Resistance and Stability. But I don’t think the cast time should really be touched. Considering how low it can get with the trait, its pretty big. Like, down to 78 seconds big. Or something like that. I think they’re using Celestial gear in the video as well, so the damage being at 1k is pretty nice. But since its celestial the heal’s actual heal is a bit too low in my opinion. Its basically a 3k heal. Should be 4k base in my opinion. 3k is a bit too low.

Edit:Scratch that. I don’t know what gear they were using. Never mind!

Yes. Do also note that weapon traits also effect you while using death shroud as long as you have that weapon equipped. So if you take Dhuumfire with Lingering curse for example, then your Dhuumfire will go from 3 seconds to 6 seconds a hit.

OlliX.1705:

Dark Path as it is now is way too unreliable as a gap closer. The main problem is the slow projectile. It’s way too slow. They either need to increase the velocity of the projectile to make it very fast, or just scrap the projectile and make it a blink (like guardian sword 2). The only way to reliably hit someone with it in its current state is if you’re standing in melee range already.

Life Blast could use a shorter cast time, it is incredibly slow.

Other than that I’m quite satisfied with Death Shroud. The buff to Life Transfer would be nice, the Reaper does look like it has better life force sustain while shrouded so brining baseline necro in line with that is probably not a bad idea.

I think Tainted Shackles is okay as it is, I don’t think we need a taunt. If it was going to get buffed I’d rather suggest it applies a movement impeding condition to enemies that leave its range (slow, cripple, or chill). This makes it harder to escape. They can break of out the torment, but they will be crippled so you can close in on them again easier for the final blast.

Adding in some finishers would be nice. The current Death Shroud seems a bit barren in that regard. Leap on Dark Path and a blast finisher on the final blast of Tainted Shackles would fix that.
Life Blast is already a 20% projectile finisher as far as I’m aware, 100% would be nice but could potentially be a bit overpowering. Life Blast is already quite strong, and we’ve already suggested a faster cast time for that.

I don’t know where people are getting this taunt from. I didn’t suggest that.

Also, Life blast isn’t a projectile finisher. Not currently not ever. It should be though. And I agree with 100% chance.

Zefrost.3425:

I agree than tainted shackles should inflict taunt and that life blast should be a projectile finisher. Dark Path should revert to how it was way back in beta where it was a ground targeted teleport that caused AOE blind.

We aren’t getting taunt. Its not in our flavor. Arena Net has already stated that quite a few times. A pull would honestly be better.

Zefrost.3425:

Lily.1935:

Zefrost.3425:

Lily.1935:

Also, the grandmaster you’ve replaced LC with Your Withering Precision would be insanely broken with the reaper.

Not really. In the example I gave you would have to spec into Reaper, Blood Magic and Curses. Decimate Defenses (vulnerability = more precision) doesn’t really do much for this build and the fury from Furious Demise only lasts 5s. You won’t be achieving 100% critical hit chance unless you become a glass cannon.

If you skip the blood magic part then you could go into soul reaping and achieve 100%.

But you also have to be around multiple enemies for it to really make a difference.

And let’s be realistic… Anet is completely throwing balance out the window with all of these changes they’re making anyway. Everything is going to be broken when it ships.

I don’t need to spec into precision. I can take Soul reaping along with reaper and get 100% crit chance with 0 investment in precision. Or I can get minor precision gear and still get 100% crit chance without soul reaping. Its insanely broken. I’d be transferring minimum of 2.5 conditions a second. Max would be 12.5 a second. That is absolutely busted.

It would be with an auto attack that requires you to be in melee range at all times. I still doubt it would be overpowered because underwater plague blast baseline transfers 1 condition but that’s a ranged attack that is safer to use whereas this would require you to be in melee range and have high critical hit chance.

Though I suppose Withering Precision could cause life blast to inflict weakness on critical hits instead of transfer a condition. I’d be cool with that too.

And plague blast is considered busted beyond repair. The underwater death shroud is absolutely amazing, it easily makes necromancer one of the best, if not the best underwater fighter. And that can’t do nearly as much as your suggestion.

Lets not forget that Reaper has chill coming out of its ears. Who’s going to escape them? You’re options would quickly become run away or run away. Good luck killing them.

No, necromancer has enough condition transfer. Leave Lingering curse alone. its perfect where it is. Parasitic Contagion is trash and should be replaced. Curse is honestly fine other then a couple of underwhelming traits. Parasitic Contagion, Toxic landing and maybe target the weak. But with the Reaper, I don’t think target the weak will be all that bad, sounds better each day. Lingering curse is absolutely needed to make a condi mancer viable. At them moment, they are not and Terror wont be able to make them viable.

Zefrost.3425:

Lily.1935:

Also, the grandmaster you’ve replaced LC with Your Withering Precision would be insanely broken with the reaper.

Not really. In the example I gave you would have to spec into Reaper, Blood Magic and Curses. Decimate Defenses (vulnerability = more precision) doesn’t really do much for this build and the fury from Furious Demise only lasts 5s. You won’t be achieving 100% critical hit chance unless you become a glass cannon.

If you skip the blood magic part then you could go into soul reaping and achieve 100%.

But you also have to be around multiple enemies for it to really make a difference.

And let’s be realistic… Anet is completely throwing balance out the window with all of these changes they’re making anyway. Everything is going to be broken when it ships.

I don’t need to spec into precision. I can take Soul reaping along with reaper and get 100% crit chance with 0 investment in precision. Or I can get minor precision gear and still get 100% crit chance without soul reaping. Its insanely broken. I’d be transferring minimum of 2.5 conditions a second. Max would be 12.5 a second. That is absolutely busted.

I hope you guys understand that we are losing a tone of condition and boon duration with the coming changes. Lingering Curse isn’t busted as is, its better then it used to be but not by much.

When looking at the Reaper’s shroud it becomes even clearer to me just how bad the skills in Death shroud are. You look at how fluid Reaper’s shroud is and how well all the skills combo with each other then when you look back it death shroud it just seems like death shroud is rather slow and really clunky.

I personally feel that people should have clear incentives not to take an elite specialization. And the necromancer defiantly has that incentive already. The chill on fear along with the melee style of the reaper give the vanilla necromancer a clear and defining space they can fill.

With that said, Death shroud really needs to Combo with itself far better. Each skill should be able to function in multiple build rolls since we are expected to be in Death shroud a large percentage of our play time, we shouldn’t feel like casting one skill over the other is a waste of the valuable time we have in DS.

A few suggestions I have which could help a vanilla necromancer out.

• Life Blast: Reduce cast time to 3/4 and reduce after cast delay. Adjust damage accordingly. Make life blast a projectile finisher.

• Dark Path: My suggestion here is to add a ground targeted aoe field that acts as a dark field and pulses conditions and damage. You can stop the field at any time to activate dark path to move to that location. Give it a 900 range so this provides an escape that a foe can see. This will provide some interesting counter play for both the opponent and the necromancer.

• Life Transfer: Increase life force generation and stop life force decay while its channeling.

• Tainted Shackles: Add a secondary skill to this that pulls foes toward you and ends the skill. The secondary effect would trigger the ending effect of tainted shackles immobilizing your foes. This could prevent people from escaping and also combo with my above suggestions.

What do you guys think? This could give death shroud allot of play to it that makes it valuable to take over Reaper’s shroud besides just as a ranged option. Suddenly we could have useful utility on the shroud for multiple styles of builds.

Don’t take my Lingering Curse away. I need that. Plus you’ve literally stolen 110% bleed duration from me and taken away a useful master trait. If anything, Toxic landing should be improved and parasitic contagion should removed and replaced with something more useful.

Also, the grandmaster you’ve replaced LC with Your Withering Precision would be insanely broken with the reaper.

Condimancer is what I like, so I’m sticking with that to start. I’ll make a Valkyrie build later, but for now I have the gear for condi so not much work needs to be put in on my part.

Sinister armor and weapons with Runes of Grenth, Sigil of Ice. Not too sure what I want after that. Will be testing.

Curse: Chilling Darkness, Reaper’s Precision and Lingering Curse.
Soul Reaping: Unyielding blast, Vital Persistence and Dhuumfire.
Reaper: Chilling Nova, Decimate defenses(or Chilling force), and Deathly Chills

+120% Bleed Duration, +150% Chill Duration. If Lingering curse doesn’t count toward the 100% then you can stack the duration quite high. What I add in the other weapons is yet to be determined.

Skills. “Your Soul is mine”, Well of Darkness, Blood Is power, Undecided and “Chilled to the bone!”(elite)

I call my build the song of fire and ice. A pve build for sure. I’m still deciding on what I want to do, there are quite a few great traits to work with and this could easily change of curse has some good changes. Such as if corruptions gave resistance. That could change some things.

At the moment, the reaper gives my condi build some melee. I have no interest in switching out my scepter so I will just keep it equipped. In theory I should get the +100% condition duration from Lingering curse while in Death Shroud/Reaper’s Shroud. So the number of stacks of burning I should be able to apply would be around 15. Which is sizable damage on its own. Plus barbed precision and chilling nova along with sinister damage it should be a solid hybrid build.

I like the heal and AoE Boon stripping. I think those have some real potential. The Boon Stripping one reminds me of Chilblains. Which was a strong skill in its day. Having the ability to heal with “Your soul is mine” as well as produce lifeforce is great. Its usually when you need life force too, when you’re low on health. At least enough times its noticeable.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

I’d like to see Shambling horrors.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Animate_Shambling_Horror

Solid idea IMO. I might be a teensy bit worried about them double-Death Nova-ing, but other than that they are pretty cool, especially if the first set don’t degenerate HP.

The damage is pretty minor on its own. And even with 2 minions its not great against fewer foes. I feel with 2 minion spawns it would still only antagonize foes then cause major harm. But then again, I don’t use minion builds.

Still I’d be willing to try if it did something like this.

With Dhuumfire on the normal Death shroud, life blast visually changes. I’m going to suggest that Dhuumfire changes the Scythe visual on the Reaper as well. Something along the lines of Dhuum’s Soul Reaper? Perhaps?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dhuum%27s_Soul_Reaper

Personally, I’d like to see Shambling horrors return. They were one of my favorites in GW1 and having a minion that spawns another minion sounds really fun. This would give the minion build a way to sustain with actually disposable minions that just keep coming, and the new concept could be really interesting.

But that might require a new model design. Which I understand if they don’t want to do that. However, having a minion that looks like its about to burst with another minion coming out of it might be pretty cool.

I’d like to see Shambling horrors.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Animate_Shambling_Horror

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit. I was wrong. And oh how delighted I am to say that. How wrong I am will be determined in the coming months. Though, I wasn’t too far off the survivability of the lich idea I had. Wrong about the shouts though. They completely changed what shouts do for necromancer. Which is fine. I have to admit I really like it.

But on to what this thread is about. I’m already concocting builds I could do with the reaper. And I think an extremely tanky, high damage reaper is not only possible but extremely likely. My first build isn’t that though, as I kinda want to wait and see the changes to blood magic first before I create a build.

Song of Fire and Ice: This will probably be my first build I run. Curse, soul reaping and Reaper. I’ll be focusing on chill and the duration increase with Lingering curse at range. Since I don’t want to drop the duration of my conditions I’ll probably be running Scepter/dagger and Scepter/focus. As for the traits? I’m not 100% sure yet. But I’ll be running Dhuumfire with the new chill damage trait as the name suggests. Depending on how its run I might run the valn adds crit chance trait for groups to benifit from heavy power teams, but it depends. I’ll be sure to be having fun with this type of build though.

Nuclear Winter: The idea of tanking is really cool. concept with the reaper. having a 10% damage reduction with poison and a 15% reduction with the reaper’s grandmaster minor could make a build on its own. But I’m looking more at the boon aspect of this. How this will turn out, I’m not sure yet but I’ll be happy to share the builds in the coming months.

Valkyrie victory: The concept of stacking tones of valn with the deathly precision trait is all too appealing to me. Running something like Valkyrie or Cavalier rather then berserker and still getting a 100% chance to critical hit sounds just too good to pass up in my opinion. This opens the door to very interesting stat gear we could see in the future.

What do you guys want to do? What are you most excited about? I have to say, I want to make a fire and ice build.

Yeah, my hype died pretty hard.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m so happy for the new Necro specialization. Just by reading the blog today, I can tell that this will make Necros the new anti-zerg meta in the proper set up.

As a Necro/Warrior, these players are no longer just a mid to back line threat. Now, they can have a dual role, playing it safe from the back line by casting conditions and CCs, and instantly switch to a high powered melee dealer in the Reaper mode. Traiting with Chill focused sigils and runes, and you’ll be able to effectively control groups of targets within zergs. Add in some PTV armors for sustainability, and that’ll give you some time to pull off your Gravedigger attack within enemy groups.

Dare I say it… Necros are looking to be awesomely Overpowered!

Have you read the Chronomancer at all? They chew on the reaper like candy. Unless we get some reveal skills, stability, resistance, movement skills and party support not only are we going to be destroyed, we’ll be permanently pushed out of competitive play. Not to mention still having no place in PvE.

Gemini K.8529:

No. I’d fear a chronomancer or dragonhunter using a hammer+gs+traps more so far. But we’ll see after the stream tomorrow.

hopefully my mind changes about it. But so far I’m not impressed.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Without any real detail, it sounds like you’re saying “When they move more towards what GW1 did, it’s right. If they try to go a new, different direction, it’s wrong.” I played GW1 for hundreds of hours, and I have no idea what mistakes or positive progress you’re talking about. In GW1 you could multi-class. You had dozens, if not hundreds of abilities to choose from. Conditions were a completely different animal. Health/mana regeneration was based on pips, creating a tug-o-war situation. Not every class could heal. Mana was a thing. You had 8 abilities instead of ~15 gated by weapons/heal/utility/elite. You couldn’t dodge. You couldn’t move while casting.

In order to even draw parallels, you have to dig really deep into the core design, but I don’t see that in any of your posts. All I read is “I really liked GW1 and wish I could still play a game like it.”

I’ve been posting for years. And I’ve been pulling examples from GW1 for years. Some examples of them going in the right direction that were already in GW1 was allowing players to change their builds when they like, free of charge. Something that we didn’t have at first in GW2. I’ve used that example before.

The thing is, You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel every single time. I don’t want Guild wars 2 to be exactly like GW1. What I want to see is they’re actually learning from both the mistakes they made in the first game and where they did extremely well and even did it right.

The Guild Wars 1 necromancer wasn’t perfect. Far from it. It had major game breaking flaws that had even crashed the game a few times. Such as they used to be able to summon an unlimited number of minions. That number had to be capped. Another issue was with soul reaping. It used to have no limit or cool down on it meaning you could sustain your energy completely without investing many points in soul reaping. Those flaws got fixed.

On top of that its also important that they’re not too cautious with professions. If they’re too scared to jump then no progress can be made. This is what I’m seeing with the GW2 necromancer. They took allot of risks with the GW1 necromancer and they are taking no risks with the GW2 necromancer ever since them being broken in the alpha for a short period of time. The reaper is not giving us anything new and its also just a very “Safe” solution for them. The GW1 necromancer had a lot of risky design and in the end it worked incredibly well. GW2 necromancer has taken no risks and its stagnant.

Nope.

Nothing. I don’t have to sacrifice anything. I’ll be taking Curse, Soul reaping and reaper. And on my Power build I’ll be taking Spite, soul reaping and reaper. That isn’t a sacrifice.

Roe.3679:

Lily.1935:

Roe.3679:

Lily.1935:

Roe.3679:

Or maybe you should wait. And perhaps stop making GW1 and GW2 comparisons. They are different games.

I’ll never stop doing that. GW1 is an amazing game with tones of depth. It had play styles that don’t exist in other MMOs and even in GW2. Arena net have been slowly pushing GW2 to be more like GW1 in many ways and its why I haven’t left yet. GW1 wasn’t a perfect game, by any stretch of the imagination. But if Arena net can’t learn from what it did well, what its mistakes were then GW2 will die.

GW2 is an amazing game in its own right, but it isn’t gw1.

Missing the point, as usual. Not surprised.

Wishing this game is something it isnt, not surprised.

Except I’m not. Its important that we learn form the past so we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Arena net is doing this in part. But when there is success then that should be repeated. Arena net is forgetting the previous success that they had with the necromancer in the first game. And because of it they seem to be making nothing but mistakes with the profession in GW2.

It has nothing to do with wishing GW2 to be identical to GW1. It has to do with building on success. I don’t know why you guys can’t understand that. This is a fundamental part of game design.

Worst Elite specialization hands down. It basically takes everything the necromancer already did, adds nothing new, then makes them melee and even slower then before. So basically, they’re just as parasitic as before and just as bad as before.

Roe.3679:

Lily.1935:

Roe.3679:

Or maybe you should wait. And perhaps stop making GW1 and GW2 comparisons. They are different games.

I’ll never stop doing that. GW1 is an amazing game with tones of depth. It had play styles that don’t exist in other MMOs and even in GW2. Arena net have been slowly pushing GW2 to be more like GW1 in many ways and its why I haven’t left yet. GW1 wasn’t a perfect game, by any stretch of the imagination. But if Arena net can’t learn from what it did well, what its mistakes were then GW2 will die.

GW2 is an amazing game in its own right, but it isn’t gw1.

Missing the point, as usual. Not surprised.

Roe.3679:

Or maybe you should wait. And perhaps stop making GW1 and GW2 comparisons. They are different games.

I’ll never stop doing that. GW1 is an amazing game with tones of depth. It had play styles that don’t exist in other MMOs and even in GW2. Arena net have been slowly pushing GW2 to be more like GW1 in many ways and its why I haven’t left yet. GW1 wasn’t a perfect game, by any stretch of the imagination. But if Arena net can’t learn from what it did well, what its mistakes were then GW2 will die.

Looks like we’ll still provide nothing but damage to our group. The Crowd control is nice and all but it wasn’t something we really struggled with. Chilled and crippling was something we did a ton of and have easy access to. Chill would need to have some major impact on mob encounters for it to be useful in PvE and the stacking and zerker meta needs to be smothered to death before this can see use. But if they create challenging and interesting content that you can’t cheese then we still have a major issue with party support.

GW1 necromancer supported their allies in a very unique way. It was a play style that still doesn’t exist in GW2 and with the expansion it looks more like the revenant will be providing that unique support many of us GW1 players have been craving for years. But thats bitter sweet really. We’re still a rather parasitic profession with an extremely parasitic mechanic. And no one wants a parasite on their team.

Its rather meh. I can’t be excited about playing a parasitic profession.

Ravezaar.4951:

Anet dosent want us to do that, we known this for 3y so why still ask for it… maybe the Increased dmg + cleave + shouts can give you the PvE tools u want (i dont do PvE) but buffing allies never really bin the concept of Necro

well, not so much buffing allies. But I’ll still beg to differ! The guild wars one necromancer had a very unique way of supporting allies that we don’t see in GW2.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_Bond
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_Ritual
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_is_Power
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dark_Fury
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Order_of_Pain
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Order_of_the_Vampire
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Well_of_Blood
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Well_of_Power
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Barbs
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mark_of_Pain
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Death_Nova
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Tainted_Flesh
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Withering_Aura

I hate it. I hate everything about the specialization. From its scythe, to the name to the slow attacks and especially the shouts. Well, they solved the simple UI problem I was talking about earlier. By making them harm foes rather then help allies through something like orders.

Scythe in this new “Death shroud” is basically arena net’s way of saying “NO! we’re never bringing back scythes. STOP ASKING NEVER AGAIN!” so that is dead and buried, so no hopes there.

We attack slow. It really doesn’t matter if we deal tones of damage, one of our issues was how easy a tell we are. We are also insanely predictable. So guess what? We’re going to remain predictable. People will think its good for a while then be like “Mmmm. Nope, continue to focus fire necros.”

When the necromancer is really lacking supportive options we’re given offensive options. Good job arena net, you changed nothing about the profession and made it no closer to what it was in the first game.

Even if they fix the stupidity that is the zerker meta in PvE and stacking, necromancers have no place in that format what so ever. And the’ll still struggle to see competitive PvP because being aggressive against focus fire still means your going to get snuffed out against focus fire.