Guild Wars 2

Of course. Might even get the collectors addition. But we’ll see about that.

I thought of another name. Cultist. Might work actually.

Orders Would be awesome. Minions that actually use corpses. If we get to take over the Ritualists flavor from GW1 and not the Revenant(which is a possibility) then binding rituals would be nice. Curses as well. Although I can’t say how they’d work. I’d imagine that a Curse would be an AoE field that’d stalk people much like those trolls in Silverwastes do with their bug swarms. Hmmm. If I think of more I’ll let you know.

Humans have worshipers of Grenth who are dedicated to death.

Charr haven’t abandoned magic and the ash legion does favor Necromancers over other casters. Although i can’t tell you why, I might have to look that up.

Norn are known to worship the Raven which is a carrion feeder and death would be something they understand as a part of the balance of nature.

Asura are interesting. The Asura’s most influential golemmancers of their history all used necromancy to improve their golemmancy. Oola and Blimm use it to great extent. Blimm even adopted human traditions to help improve his golemmancy.

The Sylvari is extremely fitting as well. In lore, the sylvari are less intimidated by death then the other races and even see it as a part of nature to be understood.

Basically, I’m not helping. All of the races fit.

One really cool idea that someone had was to replace out profession mechanic with orders. It could still use Life force but in a very different way. Triggering a Order might take away your life force and if you have no life force you sacrifice health to trigger them. And yes, we are in fact getting new profession mechanics. We don’t know how drastic they’ll be though. We might not have life force or Death shroud while being the specialization.

Well, my relationship with death shroud is complicated to say the least. I really like the concept of the mechanic. I actually liked it much more at launch then I did after that. I’m very critical of the mechanic because of how poorly it synergies with your other abilities, primarily life stealing as well as other players. Healing becomes a problem and scaling does as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Why-we-can-t-have-nice-things/first#post4669521

That is a thread that goes into a bit more detail about my thoughts and feelings. Do note that you can still enjoy something and be very critical of it.

As for the individual skills? Life blast and Dark path is both pretty bad. You might not think so seeing as dark path is our best movement skill but when you compare it to other professions its extremely lack luster. Doom is good, Life Transfer is also good, and Tainted Shackles is pretty boss.

As for their underwater counterparts? Plague Blast is great, Dark Water is good, Wave of Fear is amazing, Draw conditions is good and Tainted Shackles is just as good under water as on land.

So from what we know so far about the Revenant is that we know they channel heroes to change up their role in battle and style of combat. We also know they channel the powers of the mists. Similar to what powered the Ritualist back in GW1. The more I read and look into it the Revenant sounds similar to the Dervish in terms of its mechanics. Someone else said they sounded like a Dervish, but at the time I felt they were jumping the gun a bit too fast with it. But it would be interesting to see a hybridization of the two. Thematically the ritualist has been missing from the game and mechanically the dervish was missing as well. So this could be really nice.

Here is what the heroes sound like to me. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Form

Do note that forms in GW1 worked very differently then they do in GW2. Be sure to check out what they did for the profession. You can ignore the non-dervish related forms.

So I don’t know if you can answer this yet. But I’ll ask anyway. Back when an expansion was released in GW1 you would get 2 new character slots with the expansion and a new bank tab. Now I don’t expect a new bank tab as awesome as that would be. But I do have to ask, Will we be getting one new character slot so we can make the Revenant at launch?

Piscore.6934:

Lily.1935:

My guess was marked for summer 2015. Maybe spring if we are lucky. But now I’m not so sure. Please Anet. Don’t make us wait a year!

Soon™

Shut up you. lol!

Now I just watched an Interview with Colin talking about HoT. He had some really cool information that gets me excited but he said something that really worried me. He said that the demo wasn’t even ready for Pax. Now I know it could be nothing, but it gives me cold flashbacks of the first trailer of GW2 back in 2009. Don’t tell me I’m going to have to wait 2 years for this expansion!

My guess was marked for summer 2015. Maybe spring if we are lucky. But now I’m not so sure. Please Anet. Don’t make us wait a year!

Fashion Mage.3712:

I’m expecting “Dark/Death Knight”, since they use a greatsword and whatnot.

They wont call it death knight. And there is a few reasons why. First reason is Arena Net and Blizzard have a lot of bad blood between them. Second reason is its not a clean name. If you look at the professions you’ll notice a clear pattern. Every single profession’s name is a single word.

Gerrand.3085:

And just like every other prominent NPC necromancer in the story, it appears that we too will be getting a greatsword. Yay us.

That had me wondering about one story point immediately. Marjory got her greatsword possessed by the spirit of her dead sister. Now I’m pretty sure that my necromancer doesn’t have any dead sisters (at least that he’s mentioned). He did have this mentor he was really close to that died during the battle of Claw Island…

I don’t supposed that as a greatsword wielding necromancer, we’d get to ask the spirits of our dead mentors to fuse with our blades?

I thought my sister in the story was dead. But she got better.

velmeister.4187:

Are there any plans to shift away from the Zerker meta in HoT PvE domain?

Arena net has already been shifting away from Zerker. In Silverwastes Condi builds are more valuable then they normally are. The important thing to do is to make sure that they give value to other build without making zerker useless.

Its really hard to choose because I have 6 character who’ll benifit with the expansion as well as the new area. So I really want to play that but I also really want the Revenant. I could power level the Revenant since my mastery will progress for all characters its really hard to choose. I’ve been looking for a new name for my revenant seeing as my engineer has the name I would use for the profession seeing as my Ritualist had that name in GW1.

Necromancer:
-Duskblade
-Warlock
-Shaman

Mesmer:
-Chronomancer
-Magician
-Mystic

Engineer:
-Artificer
-Mechanic
-Alchemist

Guardian:
-Paragon
-Cleric
-Zealot

Thief:
-Assassin
-Rogue
-Sniper

Elementalist:
-Conjurer
-Wizard
-Sorcerer

Warrior:
-Gladiator
-Brawler
-Champion

Ranger:
-Druid(revealed)
-Hunter
-Strider

Revenant:
-Ritualist
-Psion
-Incarnate

We can’t be sure but these are a few of my predictions for what we could get in the future. I could be 100% wrong, but then again we all could be.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this to say that I am a big fan of the Metroid series and even enjoy Castlevania(although admittedly I haven’t played too much of it.). The new mastery system actually sounds really really cool with some elements from these games. Metroid is a game with quite a bit of back tracking and exploration. It leads you along rather subtly and compels you to continue and see the next area, take the next challenge. This new direction for exploration has to be the coolest thing I’ve heard for a MMO in a long time. I’m also very excited for a lot of the other stuff, but this is probably the most exciting and innovating aspect in the expansion in my opinion.

Its so obvious to have in a MMO for exploration. Mapping was something in GW2 I didn’t enjoy. It was rather mindless in my opinion and I’d often just do it to kill time while I waited for something else. With this change, I can see mapping for new areas extremely exciting. This also could be amazing for future Expansions. If Arena net is willing to create a new system such as using hang gliders to reach new areas and master this new skill who’s to say what other skills we might obtain in the future? Mounting a wild wurm in The Sulfurous Wastes? Navel combat? Spelunking? Perhaps even expand this into underwater traversing. This is really exciting and I’m probably going to enjoy the master system the most in the expansion.

Thank You ArenaNet. Now tell me where those breaks are on this hype train.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Duskblade,_Variant_

Hehe. Actually I don’t care about the death knight. But Necromancers are most defiantly no knights. Death or otherwise.

Bhawb.7408:

I almost want them to call us Death Knights just to kitten with people.

If they did that.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just have one: Medium.

A Medium is a person who speaks to the dead. Marjory already does this and the spirit of her dead sister resides in the sword, making the weapon as much of a spiritual connection as material.

What would actually come of that mechanics-wise? No idea. I do think the new utility skill type we’ll be getting is Orders, though, since they are definitely the most requested skill type for Necros.

Orders would be superb for us. It could provide a level of support that we haven’t had on the necromancer. Medium? Hmmm. Interesting. Not a bad thought though if we are going with spirits why not Ritualist?

Lets play a game. How about we all guess up to 3 names each on what you think the necromancer’s specialization will be called and what it might do. And when its revealed we look back on our predictions. This is just a fun post to see were the minds of our community is coming from and to have fun thinking about possibilities. And even if we are all wrong who knows, perhaps Anet will take notes and use some of our thoughts for future specializations for the profession.

What name(s) do you think it might have?:

Duskblade
Hexblade

Why do you think it’ll be called that? What does the name(s) describe about it?:

Although I don’t think the Hexblade a name would be used for the sub profession I thought I’d include it since both of these are somewhat similar. Although what each of them would do for the profession is very different.

In D&D a hexblade is a light armor melee class who uses hexes to hinder enemies to improve allies chances against them. This has some similarities to what a Cursing necromancer did in GW1. Mark of pain and Lingering curse being some of the most well known methods to hinder an entire group of enemies. This direction would mean that the necromancer would head more into support focus with a heavy condition based melee weapon. Or at least a hybrid. Since the necromancer’s condition damage is rather strong already this would be useful to some players but the primary benefit from this would be the party support. I don’t think hexblade is very likely or something similar to that style but its not off the table entirely.

The duskblade is probably the closes thing to what the community has been asking for for a long time for the necromancer. I think I have good reason to suspect that the specialization will have major focuses on life stealing and blood magic. For those who don’t know a duskblade(at least in D&D) is a melee spell caster who uses blood magic(among other things) in order to imbue their weapon. One of the biggest issues the necromancer has had in the past has been scaling. Their defenses don’t scale up with the increase of enemies and on top of that their life stealing has been laughable. Many players have wanted more use with blood magic and the duskblade would give us just that. With this possibility we can expect to be able to steal more life from foes around us which would scale up with increased enemies and sacrifice health for power. I think that something similar to this will be what we get and Its kinda exciting to say the least.

What do you guys think? What are your predictions?

Try Duskblade or Hexblade.

nekretaal.6485:

If they borrow the system from Aion, where a warrior had base skills and then could specialize into a Templar (tank) or a Gladiator (heavy DPS)…

Then we are essentially looking at 8-10 new classes, depending on whether the revenant is something entirely new or is a specialized warrior.

The system you are talking about is far older then Aion. My first MMO used a similar system of classes changing into other classes. Ragnarok Online had things like Acolyte turning into a priest or thief into a Rogue. Things of that nature.

I don’t think its going to be the same. They described it as a secondary profession so we can expect that our current profession will be the bulk of what we are capable of and if they introduce new specializations then we’ll have to choose one over the other and not have access to some of the other’s skills.

Bhawb.7408:

So they’ve talked a bit more about it, using Druid as a template.

Johanson: Specializations is a new system that allows you to take each of the professions we have in the game and grow them almost into a new sub-profession or secondary profession. An example of this is, a Ranger can become a Druid. Once a Ranger becomes a Druid, they have the ability to use the powers of the jungle and that gives them new skills, new traits, they can use a new weapon that a Ranger could never use before, and they get new profession mechanics that fundamentally change the way a Ranger plays when they become a Druid. Each of the professions will be getting one of these Specializations and this also is a framework that we’ll use to grow the professions in the future. This will be the way we add more skills, traits, and abilities to the game moving forward. That’s how we’re growing our existing professions.

So that is what we can expect. Necromancers will get one specialization at HoT launch, with more on the way at some point later down the line. We’ll get a greatsword to use, a new heal, utility set (4 skills), elite, traits, and profession mechanics. At first this will be literally just an upgrade from the sound of it, later on when they release more it’ll actually be a more meaningful choice.

I like what I hear from you so far. But I took away something different. I think you’ll have a reason not to become the secondary option. I think there will be incentive for players to stay with their base version. A new mechanic sounds like it would replace our profession mechanic. And losing death shroud could be a serious choice to make for a player. Or for a guardian losing their virtues. Although we can’t be completely sure It doesn’t sound like a strict upgrade to me.

met.9653:

On trailer druid still got pet so I don’t think we get new class mechanic. New weapon plus some new utility’s and that’s all.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we wont. Its very possible they’ll use the pet in an entirely new way. Like, perhaps the wolf can turn into light and strike a foe multiple times. Or perhaps the polar bear turns into a small blizzard. We can’t be certain at this point. We may still get death shroud but it could be fundamentally changed.

Bhawb.7408:

I hope I’m wrong too.

There is that whole “Unique mechanics” aspect of it which might suggest something more.

Bhawb.7408:

As an example, if you specialize in Druid as a Ranger, you might lose access to a certain weapon/utility type, but gain the Druid stuff. I don’t know specifics though. I imagine we’ll have to wait on that.

I hope you’re wrong on that. That sounds incredibly dull.

Bhawb.7408:

Edit: okay I’ve heard from a couple of people that say they talked to ANet people at the afterparty. One specialization per class, and when you specialize you lose access to some of the base abilities of your profession, and in exchange get the stuff the specialization gives you. Just something I’ve heard, not 100%.

Whats a “base ability”? If its skills and traits only, it sounds kinda dull. But if its our mechanic then I’m pumped.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t think they will be flat additions, and nothing they have said so far seems to suggest that. Specializations seem to just allow you to gain access to replacements for things we currently have to allow people to further focus on something specific. The only real worry for powercreep is if they allow too much specialization. For example imagine a condi necro with scepter/dagger plus another heavy offensive condi weapon set, a condi heavy DS, a condi-damage elite. Scary stuff.

I don’t think so either. But it is a possibility none the less. To add, I don’t see why that would be scary as it would only really allow you to maintain your conditions. The necromancer can already do that with power and so can most professions with power. So why would this be “scary”?

I think I’d rather keep Death shroud as a mechanic and have it function very differently then to have it replaced with an entirely new mechanic. As much as I dog on Death shroud I still really like it as a concept. Plus I think this is more likely. We did see that the ranger/druid still had their wolf in the trailer. But that doesn’t always mean something. I’d just like to point that out though.

“Evolve your gameplay. With profession specializations, you’ll unlock access to a weapon previously unavailable to your profession as well as new traits, skills, and unique mechanics – all of which will transform your profession into something new.
New” ~heartofthorns.guildwars2.com

So lets discuss the potential future of our profession. What does this mean for us? Although we can only guess and make up conspiracies as to what this actually means let alone what it means for us a few things are pretty clear. I wont state the obvious but I do want to look at a very important feature they mentioned at Pax. They didn’t talk at all about traits, unless I missed something. I would like to talk primarily about the “unique mechanics” that they mentioned.

Now As we all know each profession as a unique mechanic already we call a profession mechanic. So for the sake of discussion lets assume that the unique mechanics are actually profession mechanics. I’ve been thinking a bit and I have a few ideas of what this could mean and how it might shake up the profession.

The First possibility that I thought about was just another mechanic on top of the existing one. Like Death shroud plus or something like that. But that didn’t sound too interesting and I feel it would actually add needless complication to an already very full skill bar.

The second possibility I thought about actually splits into two parts of what it could be. It could be an alternative version of the existing mechanic. So perhaps when you enter death shroud you’re greeted with a completely new set of skills but is still a bonus life pool, or it could be a complete change on how death shroud works. Perhaps a lower life pool but access to your utility skills. The possibilities for this are pretty expansive on what this could be.

The Third possibility we could be looking at with this is the introduction of a completely new mechanic that might replace death shroud. This could mean we might not be getting power from deaths. Or it could mean we still do but use it in a completely new way not yet thought of.

Another thing I wanted to bring up was the possibility that going through this change might lock out old skills and traits we previously had access to in order to give us access to new ones. They said its like a secondary profession, but that in it of itself could mean a lot of different things. It doesn’t have to be similar to GW1’s dual profession system at all.

What does this mean for the necromancer? Well, previously we’ve been described as an attrition profession. A job we aren’t very good at. Well, this could change that description. Perhaps go from attrition to more support and control. Or even raw damage. The possibilities and even the idea that they might play around with this and allow us to make new and interesting choices is exciting.

What are your guys’s thoughts? Do you think we could be looking at a change so drastic as this? And how might this shake up our usability?

Moldur.6275:

Knighthonor.4061:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Revenant channel the power of great legends from Guild wars past and use those to help power its abilities.. King Jalis Ironhammer is one of the legends Revenant will be able to channel and Jalis’s dwarf abilities will be available to you when you channel him. The demon Mallyx buried at the heart of the Domain of Anguish is another legend that Revenant can channel to use the power of conditions to defeat their enemies.

From Dulfy..Controling conditions..thats souund nasty. On the other hand i wonder i they will have weapon swap? Ele – light, doesnt have swap, so does engi – medium.

Sounds very similar to my Reaper class idea, what you think?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-Soldier-Class-Reaper/page/2#post4725022

Similarity: heavy armour.
No Similarity: everything else, especially 90% of your page being a re-skinned melee necro makeover.

No one on the forums was even close to guessing this class beforehand, if someone can prove me wrong please link.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Ritualist-We-pull-strength-from-our-past/first#post2098717

The machincs I suggested are quite a bit different but there is a few key similarities to my ritualist suggestion and the Revenant.

No Walking.6349:

darkace.8925:

It’s nice to see the Ritualist is making it’s way into this game in some form.

Looks a lot more like a Dervish class. Engineers are pretty much the same thing as Ritualists.

It looks like a Ritualist. And sounds like one. The ritualist channeled its powers from the mists. Revenant channels powers from the mists. Ritualist used the power of ancient heroes to aid them in battle. Revenant uses the power of ancient heroes to aid them in battle. It has absolutely no similarities with the dervish from what we can see now.

Personally, I think we need a spammable minion skill. A minion skill with a short recharge that lets you summon more minions without the skill being disabled by a replacement skill. Minions feel so bad to use in my opinion I refused to use them. Plus they’re super buggy. I’d rather have the hyper aggressive minions of GW1 then the pacifist minions of GW2 any day.

I personally view mobility in two ways. In combat and outside of combat. In combat the necromancer is one of the most stationary professions in the game. Very low mobility in combat and a lack of any real way to escape. Out side of combat I’d say we are about in the middle. The minor change helps our increase our mobility up-time but not by much. I haven’t really heard any complaints from the necromancer community about the swiftness from locus swarm. Has anyone else? Does this mean its possible that a dev actually started playing a necromancer and they personally got annoyed with the skill? Because I don’t get annoyed with it generally.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Would it actually see use anywhere if it had an AOE heal on hit, though? I can’t think of any time I’d actually use it, especially since it’s not like you can heal yourself with it by standing in melee with your target.

Consider that Renewing Blast is the highest HP/second healing ability in the game. No other ability (and very few combinations of abilities) can reach 1k healing/second with ease.

The scaling might need to be toned down it if gets Aoe, that healing per second would be pretty nuts in some situations but beyond that it should be aoe.

Long cool down, terrible passive, low self healing for our health pool, active is situational at best. Yeah, that sums it up. And with the nerf to might the buff it gives from signet mastery is even worse now. Good job.

The changes are fine. I"m more excited about about confusion changes considering I’ve wanted to use a condi mesmer for a long long time now. It seems that Arena net is slowly started to try and push to more usability for conditions in PvE. Which would be really nice.

leman.7682:

Locust Swarm: …
Dev note: This change will give necromancers a bit more mobility.

Is this serious? How does this increase our mobility?

It cuts cast time allowing for us to have slightly more up time of swiftness. It doesn’t improve our mobility a tinny bit.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

Or an aoe burst on enemy contact. Give it a 240 radius and call it a day.

This is literally all it needs. At least then it would be reasonably useful.

Wait.. Are you agreeing with me? Are you the same bhawb? O.o

I think even with the suggested changes there needs to be a wider selection of conditions for people to use. And Arena Net is going to have to split PvP and PvE further eventually. Look at GW1? The AI had far more similarities to players then the AI in GW2 does. And it proved to be too detrimental to the game for arena net not to do major splits in skills. Ever single Binding Ritual for example all had different cast times between them. Usually 3-5 seconds for PvP and 3/4-1 seconds for PvE. Fighting a player in GW2 is worlds different then fighting an NPC. While in GW1 I’ve fought NPCs with fewer skills and less health that were harder then some players.

Askherion.4935:

Never used this trait as there’s no way the rare times it would hit an ally would be worth it. A better version in my opinion would be that the green ball splits into homing missiles towards teammates to heal them while the actual blast stays the same. That way it would be useful, and also quite nice to watch I think

Or an aoe burst on enemy contact. Give it a 240 radius and call it a day.

Saiyan.1704:

Lily.1935:

A condition weapon. Giving the Guardian bleeding would be nice. As it stands they have no reason as to why the guardian doesn’t have access to it.

Burns is the guardian’s condi trademark. We’re suppose to be Thee burn class. It’s one of the reasons why we got Amplified Wrath. We have the most damaging condition in the game.

Something has to be done with Supreme Justice. It has to be buffed or merged with another trait.

Actually, terror fear on a necromancer does more damage then burning. Not to mention confusion out damages it with two stacks. Also other damage conditions can out damage it when you start to stack them. The only condition it out damages 100% of the time is poison. Not saying burning is bad, its good. You can’t really make a condition build with just one damage condition though. I’m thinking more for PvE then PvP.

Roe.3679:

Lily.1935:

Roe.3679:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Highly, highly doubt a new profession is coming. Everything else? Very possible.

I really hope they don’t do a new profession. They have such strong tendencies to make anything new very weak, so it’s hard to picture a new profession not being imbalanced. Plus, they have so many play styles that could be made relevant instead of focusing on adding a whole other class.

That isn’t true. Dervish was completely over powered when it came out.

It is 100% true of guild wars 2…

Dhuumfire, Sigil of Torment, Tainted shackles to name a few things that weren’t under powered when they came out. As much as I despise Dhuumfire I have to admit how good it used to be. And tainted shackles have always been good. Runes of Perplexity as well.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Personally I’d prefer a great axe & polearm be added to the game.

If they take a note from mesmer greatsword it could fill the roll of a ranged power weapon.

We have a ranged power, its called the…Bursts out laughing I’m sorry I’m sorry, I can’t say axe with a straight face.

A condition weapon. Giving the Guardian bleeding would be nice. As it stands they have no reason as to why the guardian doesn’t have access to it.

Roe.3679:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Highly, highly doubt a new profession is coming. Everything else? Very possible.

I really hope they don’t do a new profession. They have such strong tendencies to make anything new very weak, so it’s hard to picture a new profession not being imbalanced. Plus, they have so many play styles that could be made relevant instead of focusing on adding a whole other class.

That isn’t true. Dervish was completely over powered when it came out.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Highly, highly doubt a new profession is coming. Everything else? Very possible.

I can dream can’t I? CAN’T I!?! No, you’re probably right. But a Ritualist would be awesome. I’m wondering what will happen. I haven’t been able to log in to do the new story stuff yet because I’m not home yet. Tengu race perhaps? Maybe another race?

I’m not at my desktop at the moment. I’m on my laptop which isn’t good enough to run GW2. I have dyed my armor to match the shadow of grenth back piece and it looks pretty good. But its important to know which race and what armor you’re working with to help. I have a human female with cultural tier 3 armor.

I’m hoping for a new profession, new weapons, new areas, new skills and about 50 hours of personal story. Maybe 30 hours. I could be getting greedy.

SaintSnow.6593:

Number 3: would make us incredibly overpowered. But we all knew that.
Additions
Number 5: access to vigor would be nice.
Number 6: would like to actually reanimate dead opponents. Please allow me to use your corpse as my doll. Thnx.

Vigor isn’t in our flavor. And reanimating opponents would be extremely over powered, even as an elite.