Guild Wars 2

There is one thing that I noticed that wasn’t in GW2 that really should be. I know that perhaps expanding conditions too quickly and adding too many of them might be off putting to new players. However, I don’t believe that the fans are so think headed that they can’t remember 16-20 conditions.

So here is my suggestion. One type of debuff that seems to be missing, is the activation debuff, making things take longer to activate. I suggested this back in 2010 and I’ll suggest it again.

What the condition does. This condition increases the activation time of skills and attacks. Instant cast skills are not effected. It would be a stacking condition that causes the effected person to have longer and longer activation time form 10%-50%. Suggestion for the name is meekness, although the name doesn’t matter so much. The effect should be in the game.

Although I’ve mentioned this multiple times in other posts, I never dedicated a topic to just this. So I will suggest this if it hasn’t already been suggested. And even if it has, well doesn’t hurt to suggest it a second or even third time.

Disease back in GW1 was the most hated and feared degen condition in the game. Although people feared burning, they knew it wouldn’t last very long, often no longer then 2-3 seconds. Disease could last a duration of 20-30 seconds and would cause far more harm because it would just spread to all creatures of the same type. It was hated because if you brought it, all the melee classes in your party hated you because you made them that much easier to kill, and the opponents all hated you because now they have to deal with trying to control disease.

For all its flaws, it was a unique and flavorful condition that could only be used by the necromancer and later the dervish. Combining it with poison or bleeding was something the necromancer could easily do, with either of them paired with one another the degen out matched burning.

My suggestion is to return disease to GW2 with a makeover. The damage calculation for it would probably be similar to calculating poison. so 4+level (0.25*condition damage) should be a decent amount of damage to really make it noticeable. At 1500 condition damage at level 80 this would be four hundred and fifty five damage per second. The second change it so that it would only spread to foes and not to care if those foes are of like species.

Giving the necromancer access to this condition would help to solve one of there problems with having a high damage condition to cover their bleeds while still helping them in a situation where they are outnumbered without having to always bring epidemic. Although I don’t think this condition will fix the necromancer’s condition build alone, I do believe that it will begin to push them in the right direction while giving them something that will help them in the 2v1s or 3v1s punishing foes for getting too close to each other and dogging the necromancer.

PS: I had to type out the damage that the disease would deal rather then typing the numbers because the forums thought it was a swear word. o.O

zach.1847:

Yeah… anyway just wanted to say that Gw2 Mesmer is not at all like it used to be in Gw1 – don’t say that.

I played the mesmer rather none conventionally in GW1. And the feeling of them was very similar. The major difference is the interrupts are far easier to use and don’t punish you if you mess up. As for backlash that they often did, that is in GW2. Maybe they feel very different to you because the skill ceiling has been lower drastically between the two games. instead of Mistrust you have feedback. Instead of Simple Thievery you have Mimic. Rather then stealing skills strait up you steal boons. Rather then Hex Eater Vortex you have Null field.

I’m not even running a interruption build on my mesmer and I have 3 interrupts that I use regularly as well. So “Nothing” like the first game, I just don’t see it. What made them fun in the first game is still very much in the second game. Unless you dedicated your mesmer entirely to just sucking energy away. Then I guess i could see how they would be completely different for you. Personally, I didn’t do that much and didn’t enjoy it.

Although using a time slow mechanic might be needed looking back at the first game’s skills. Is that what you are missing? Slowing mechanics and energy denial?

Bhawb.7408:

I think that is mainly it, although I am sure I left something out. I want them to keep the Necromancer flavor, not necessarily trying to reincarnate GW1 but at least keeping the heart of what a Necromancer is.

its interesting you mention that. When I compare the necromancer with its GW1 counterpart I wouldn’t have guessed they where ever related. When I compare the mesmer with its GW1 counterpart, I can see how they are related. Much of what the mesmer did from the punishment, to the interrupt to misdirection has been translated very well. The only thing that is missing is the energy denial. Although they have denial in other aspects.

In terms of the necromancer I’m really missing much of what they did in GW1. Not so much the static stand still mechanics but the failure to translate their offensive party support capabilities. Its hard to get into the necromancer when That is what I loved to do in GW1. Offensive support was amazingly fun and no profession did it better then a necromancer. And they are actually worse at offensive support then almost every other profession in GW2.

I don’t want them to translate EVERYTHING the necromancer did in GW1 to GW2. As cool as some of it may be, some of there skills are too narrow for GW2. Such as there ability to prevent shouts. I personally would like to have life sacrificing skills but I do understand that it doesn’t fit with the GW2 philosophy of simplicity as that sort of thing adds complication.

However small changes that make them more like they where in GW1 are something I desire. Disease as a condition would be a fun and interesting addition to the profession and also give necromancers a way to spread at least one condition without the need of epidemic. Barbs as a condition could easily giving them some very useful damage support making them desirable in teams with low condition damage that hit multiple times. a Vampiric aura would again increase there damage support as well as provide allies with small amounts of healing in the process. These are the 3 things that I would like to see return from GW1. I would be very happy with this on top of the changes being made already.

Some new territory I would like them to explore is keeping with there aggressive style of play, make life stealing scale with healing power. I know people are very against this for balance reasons, however I believe that it should be experimented with first before judging weather or not it would be broken. Because even back in GW1 when Life steal did actually scale up and wasn’t static, it was never broken when the necromancer themselves used it. The mesmer did that for them with there ability fast casting. However since the mesmer can’t break necromancer skills in GW2 there shouldn’t be that problem.

nearlight.3064:

I am happy for the imminent trait changes and the addition of burning, but I wish we had more specific details about the balance patch.

I’m looking forward to the changes the necromancer is getting in GW2. The devs did say there would be a new condition. Disease I hope? I don’t ever want to see burning on the necromancer ever! This breaks lore and flavor and is a cheap and lazy way to balance out the profession. And it doesn’t even fix the problem.

Burning is very much a part of the other group who wants the necromancer to be more like the dark mage professions from other games.

nearlight.3064:

I never played GW1 but I’d really like to know why they were so great in that game.

GW1 had more rolls in the group then just damage, tank and healer. It had Damage support, control, protection, healing, DPS, tank. The unique concept of support through other means then just healing was very much a part of GW1 and the necromancer was very good at it. While control was a massive part of the game and necromancers could do some of it, they didn’t compare to the ranger or mesmer in that regard.

To further explain. The necromancer Would provide support to the party in other ways not just hitting things really hard or nuking them like a Elementalist would. Much of their power came from the physical interaction between there allies and foes. They would punish foes for using skills they where comfortable with and reward allies for doing what they where good at. Thus the example of Barbs and Vampiric aura that I posted. The Necromancer supported the party by giving allies incentive to strike there target. And by doing so allies would gain health or cause foes they weren’t even hitting to drop faster.

The weakest type of profession in GW1 for pve where the physical profession. Those that relied on hitting a foe with arrows, spears, swords or what ever weapon. Magic users, especially the Monk, Necromancer, and Ritualist dominated the much of the meta game. Other professions usually had very niche builds that would work in some situations but not all. The Necromancer would actually benefit more from a group using more rangers, warriors and dervishes then they would a magic based group. Not that they didn’t do well in a mostly magic group. So a necromancer could turn a weak group into a strong group with its damage support.

Another aspect of the necromancer was they could replace a tank without a problem. And they didn’t do it through a gimmicky death shroud mechanic. A Minion master in GW1 was far more powerful then it was in GW2. Being far weaker at the beginning of the fight, a necromancer could summon allies from dead foes to create a large mass of minions that could literally wall off melee attackers from your back line. A single minion in GW1 had average armor and health equaling out to that of a warrior. Although with there slow attack rate and no ability to defend them selves and no understanding of AOE, they would die rather quickly regardless. However, what they lacked in power and defenses they made up for in raw numbers. The major flaw of a MM was that they where a huge drain on a healer. Seeing as they would chew through there own health allot, they needed to stay back most the time. But if done right, the healing they required well made up for it for the survival of the group.

The Necromancer could also spread and maintain conditions far easier in GW1 then they can in GW2. Many of there abilities with conditions made them an idea candidate for pressure in PvP. Keeping bleeds and poison on foes equaled out to higher degen then burning did back then. Add disease on top of this, and there ability to life steal they could put people in tight situations.

With cross profession option in GW1, this also made the necromancer one of the ideal healers for a group. Because you could be a necromancer with secondary monk or ritualist, the necromancer’s primary mechanic of soul reaping would give them energy whenever something around them dies. This meant they could keep healing their allies long after a monk or ritualist would have run out of steam. There disadvantage in this though was they couldn’t be as strong of a healer as either of them, so using short recharge short cast healing skills was a plus.

There really wasn’t a situation you couldn’t bring a necromancer in back in GW1. Need a healer? Take a necromancer. need some more damage for your physical party? take a necromancer. Are you a bit heavy on the back line and need a front line? Take a necromancer. They did everything they needed to do and did it without hurting there flavor. They where so incredibly well designed for GW1 that Every other necromancer like class in other games should aspire to be what they are.

Since I started playing back in February its been apparent that the necromancer community is very divided in how the profession should be improved and how they should play like. The biggest divide seems to be between 2 different groups of necromancer fans. Those who are fans of dark mage type classes from other games such as the witch, warlock or what have you. And those who are fans of the GW1 necromancer. Sometimes these people are one and the same, while other times one might love the GW1 necromancer’s play style but hate the play style of other similar themed classes or vise versa. And some of the fans love all versions and just want the GW2 necromancer to be stronger.

Either way you look at it, many of us can’t agree on anything when it comes to our profession. And it doesn’t help that fans of the first game feel very bitter about the changes made to our profession. This includes myself and if I’ve been less then polite, I apologies.

We have a push pull in our community that wants the necromancer to go in 2 directions that they might not be able to go into. On one side we have people who want to make them more like the dark mage type class from other games, where as on the other we have people who strongly want to keep the old ways of GW intact. One major problem with this is that one way might be good for half the Necromancer community but it might not be good for the other half.

Since I am on the side of keeping the necromancer true to form I can only explain my side. There are a few reasons why I want to keep the necromancer much like its GW1 counterpart. The first being the flavor of the profession. This one I’ve talked about multiple times, and pushed the idea of its lore over and over again to the point of exhaustion on both sides of the argument. Although this could hold up on its own, the problem seems to be the idea of balancing the profession. I personally believe that balance can be done with out changing the nature of the profession.

The second reason I want push them more into the direction of the GW1 necro is because they would have a party support opportunity that other professions couldn’t mimic. As well as really sticking out from other other professions for more reasons then just having death shroud. I don’t like the idea of giving them more access to boons, especially defensive boons like protection, vigor or stability. Rather giving them far more offensive buffing abilities like giving a vampiric aura or a barbs(http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Barbs) like effect.

The 3rd reason is I don’t want the necromancer to step on the toes of other professions or harm the return of professions from the first game I would love to see return. The Biggest example of this being the ritualist. As much as I love the necromancer, I do play a tone of alts to keep things feeling fresh. And giving the necromancer so much they didn’t have before, along with any profession, harms to potential return or addition of old or new professions.

I could get into more reasons, but lets hear for you. What are your reasons for desiring a change in the necromancer and what changes would you like to see?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I agree totally with having the recharge start when the minion is summoned. However, I also feel like this should be a split between PvP and WvW/PvE. Minions are surprisingly decent in PvP anyway, so giving them pracitcally 100% uptime in fights there would be overbearing and probably too powerful. In WvW, however, they die so quickly due to the mass amount of AoE that they would need the recharge to start on-summon just for them to have any decent uptime. In PvE, the minion uptime is kind of a non-issue as they don’t die that quickly (save Fleshie when you wander near water)

I do not agree with minion stats being connected to yours, but I do believe that there should be more trait options to boost the minion stats. I would love to see a Precision boosting trait for minons (perhaps adding an “on-crit” effect for them), as well as a toughness boosting trait. You wouldn’t be able to get all of the minion traits, but customization could be fun.

Taste of Death should be changed to just automatically activate on blood fiend death. There would still be times to manually pop it (you’re about to die, but your blood fiend is still doing all right), but it also wouldn’t leave you with nothing at all for a heal if they kill your fiend first.

I agree with you on most parts. The only thing is the taste of death part. The heals is still bad if that happens. I would like to see more skills that sacrifice minions and increase the number of minions that can be summoned so we can have more effects on killing them. But I really just want to spam minions and be the zerg.

But yes, I do understand for balance reasons for PvP. However, if the minions are effected by your stats that would change the fact that the masters usually bring the tankiest gear possible. So I would say that it needs to be experimented with before we can determine for sure.

Swamurabi.7890:

How about

Frost burn
Soul burn
Flesh eating disease “feels like burning”

Fire isn’t the only thing that burns

Soul burn is a ritualist thing. Frost it doesn’t really work with that. You would want to just have a trait that makes chilled cause damage. Which would make more sense. just call the trait frost bite. Flesh eating disease, have you seen my disease post? Also flesh eating diseases often cause large amounts of bleeding. So it doesn’t work there either. They are also very slow while burning tends to be quick. Burning can also be used as Cauterization which stops blood loss.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Dude, you must be thinking about multiple games.

You were never able to do the following:
Teleport to a minion
Feast on conditions of a minion (Foul Feast didn’t quite work like that)

Things you can still do in GW2:
blow up a minion
consuming a minion
create minions
have a minion pool
transfer conditions to minions
minions not despawning
select specific minions

The removal of the corpse limitation was a very good change as minion masters no longer have to wait for someone else to kill something before they can start doing anything. The removal of all corpse-affecting stuff was likewise a good change.

Uncontrolled minions was also a good thing to remove, as it would have made the necro even more of a liability to groups than it is now (especially in WvW).

I am not saying that minions are better now than in GW1. I preferred the snowballing army, personally, but they are waaaay easier to actually control in GW2.

There are major advantages and disadvantages to the changes they made to the minions for GW2. I’m on the side of more disadvantages, but I’m coming from a PvE perspective. I do understand that from a WvW perspective the old style of minion master could easily create a very dominant strategy. Especially if they keep the individual resource concept with minions. Could you imagine a group of 10 Necros all waiting for a single moa to die to double there numbers? That wouldn’t be okay in WvW. It would be a absolute nightmare both for the server and for balance reasons.

That said, what the Minion master has lost is long term sustainable minions. Which this could be fixed if the minion skills where changed a bit. I don’t personally agree that minion’s stats should be completely independent from the user. Although this helps with low level necromancer who want to level. Because they will basically have minions just as strong as if a level 80 was using them, minus the traits sometimes. Beyond that it hurts the minions more then helps.

So that said, some things i would personally change about the minions would be this. Minion skills recharge after they are cast. Minion skills right now don’t start their recharge until after they have died. This often means that you will have a large amount of down time when your damage is cut in half, probably more then half seeing as you are spect defensively. Not only that you lose your utility. So if You are wandering and all you minions suddenly get killed, with this change you might only have a short down time to recast them. Granted if they get killed just as quickly again, you are still out minions.

The second change i would make to them is change how there stats work. I personally feel their stats should be dependent on your stat choices, much like a mesmer’s clones(although to be honest I don’t know if the mesmer clones precision is the only thing that changes). This will allow the developers to open up new traits to minions that can take advantage of varying stat differences. Such as a group of high precision minions or rather tanky minions.

The third change I would make is more of a skill change then a large minion change. Taste of death in GW2 is kinda a terrible skill. Because you require that Blood fiend is still alive, you can lose your heal rather easily. I personally would remove blood fiend all together and just have the skill be taste of death which would heal you and heal you for extra if you sacrificed a minion.

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself though. Truth be told, you can do more with minions in GW1 then GW2. Just because the individual minion has more skills doesn’t mean you can do as much.

But this is my opinion.

Out of all the professions the engineer seems to have the least customization for their weapons. Everyone else can display a back item with amazing weapons proudly without it being covered up by a weapon kit.

So My suggestion is to give change some of the weapon kits with different back items to give us a bit more style. I often find myself getting jealous of some of the enemies. Especially the flame legion charr with their awesome looking flamethrowers and back piece. I would like to have those options.

It might also be cool to have a legendary back item that changes all our kits in some way. Maybe it would be a bit harder to implement. But come on. it would be awesome. Imagine a TF2 reference with the flamethrower spraying bubbles.

Bhawb.7408:

Burning is just the easiest and most accessible answer for the problem.

Its actually the laziest answer to a problem and doesn’t fix the problem. It isn’t a god send, answer. Its a hollow shell that doesn’t address the problem. If you want to see examples of similar situations look at the long history of magic the gather. The game is a superb teaching tool for what to and what not to do. They have screwed up so many times and done things right so many times, you can find a situation in there history that applies to other games. They even have an example for this exact situation with necros and burning. Its a block called time spiral.

Necromancer has problems with maintaining bleeds and a single second of burning will help the damage a little bit, but wont fix the bleed stack problem. Shorter cast times and cool down will go a long way in fixing the problems. And upping the number of bleeds for existing skills will put their damage at far higher then just adding burning.

There is one way that is flavorfully friendly to the necromancer that they could get burning. And that is through sigils and runes. If you have a 1-2 second burn on weapon swap, and/or a 1 second burn on critical, this starts to give them this condition without actually changing the nature of their magic. Or maybe a rune that burns foes once you drop below 80-50% health. Giving us alternative ways to burn that doesn’t use our traits or skills is a far better way of doing things. Sure it gives other professions more access to burning. However, who that helps would be condition profession that have a bit of trouble already.

shizo.5698:

So necros dealing with fire are forbidden, but shooting unicorns and rainbows is cool?

Yes. Because that is a weapon’s ability to do that and not the user. I wouldn’t be opposed to runes or sigils that cause burning. Because that doesn’t break lore.

LastDay.3524:

Aside from Curses Necros in GW1 were rather physical though, at least compared to Spiritualists.

Ritualist.. And truth be told most the necromancer’s skills had to do with physical. Mark of pain builds where a thing, Order builds where a thing for a while. Minions where physical. Promoting physical interaction was something the necromancer promoted allot. I personally believe that this should be explored a bit more in GW2. Especially seeing as Orders kinda fell out of favor in GW1 and could really bring something new to the table that was long forgotten. Giving the necromancer a vampiric aura that they could grant to allies allowing them to steal life on top of their attack sounds extremely cool and flavorful to me.

The necromancer tends to get hit allot. They don’t have ways to become invulnerable, block or gain vigor. And I personally don’t believe just giving them this is the way to go either. I would like to see arena net promote more of a physical contact strategy along with party buff and foe debuffs that incentivise your party to attack like blood thirsty dogs. I personally don’t feel that vulnerability and might is enough for the necromancer in this strategy. That a Barbs like effect and a Order of Vampirism effect on the necromancer would promote more of a support direction without being identical to lets say a Engineer or Guardian support.

Also.. Screw Trahearne. Really dull character. And if you read some of the Master of Whisper’s battle quotes… He is pretty sadistic. The sylvari have more of a childish wonder about necromancy then the other races. Necromancers are usually looked down on in the other races because of their practices in death. As stated by arena net.

Although I am disappointed that your profession didn’t have anything to do with your story and didn’t effect how people reacted to you. But that is a completely different topic for a completely different time.

Astral Projections.7320:

As it is set up now, no one picks the underwater traits except for something like water fractal. I certainly don’t change out my traits just to go underwater in PvE, even if I am going to be there a while. If it was set up to switch automatically at the same time your underwater weapons appear, this would be great and allow for better underwater combat. Maybe people would like it better if they could fight more effectively underwater.

that is exactly what I’m suggesting…

I have 2 profession that I really loved in GW1. The Mesmer and Necromancer. Now me and the necromancer in GW2 have a very rocky relationship and the profession is a bit stressful at times because of all that it isn’t. So I thought I would make a more upbeat post about the mesmer.

So here it goes. The translation of the mesmer into GW2 feels nearly flawless. I love playing a mesmer and they have actually got me to enjoy melee combat. Something I don’t normally like. The mesmer is so versatile and tricky that I can’t stop having fun with them. I have a strong sense of control of the situation and even enjoy both the proactive side of the mesmer and the reactive side of the mesmer.

I don’t personally like the set up of the zerker for mesmer. It doesn’t feel good to me. But thats okay, I’ve been running a rampagers set up using Sword/pistol(or focus) with greatsword. I love that I can stack a large number of bleed with in a short time while still hitting rather hard. I have so much fun just timing my skills at just the right moment to have my foe’s plan backfire so epicly.

I am a PvE player so everyone knows. And I want to play the mesmer my way. This profession has been nothing but a blast ever since I finally decided what I wanted to do with her. So Thank you Arena Net for translating one of my favorite profession from GW1 so well into guild wars 2. I honestly feel very mesmery.

playing the moa races made me feel sick. I’m against gambling. I come from a family who has a problem with addiction and I’ve known people who had this problem. It was very uncomfortable for me to do, and I ended up just minimizing the screen so I didn’t have to look at what i was doing.

Bumping. I know I should say something else, but this is pretty self explanatory. I go under water. I should have a different set for underwater. I shouldn’t have to spend 5 minutes changing things around. This would be the step in the right direction.

BillFreist.1527:

This is something that I miss dearly from GW1. Definitely something I’d love to explore and possibly add in a future update.

You’re not alone

-Bill

For a deck player like me who likes to run multiple builds on multiple characters, this would be more then helpful. Especially if I can quickly switch them and name them. It made me feel legendary in GW1. So if you guys could implement it I would love you forever with <3.

LastDay.3524:

In case I need to clarify the part about “while fitting the Profession” I already told you I think Fire fits Necro just fine so long as it’s given an appropriate name.

If there’s something else you wanted me to address do let me know and I will do so.

It doesn’t. The idea of “Spirit flames” although spirit fits the meaning of necromancy in the real world, necromancy has a different meaning in the Guild Wars universe. Necromancy, in Guild wars refers exclusively to the dead and dying. Not the after life. The after life is the ritualist’s domain. The necromancer deals in the here and now, where as the ritualist deals in other worldly beings.

If you look at 3 of the GW1 profession you see a pattern that I personally would rather not break. We have the mesmer which is mind. We have the necromancer which is body. And we have ritualist which is soul. Although the lines are blurred sometimes, they aren’t blurred so much that a ritualist ability, such as spirit flames, would ever be usable by a necromancer.

I can justify giving the necromancer confusion. The idea that the necromancer decays a part of their foe’s brain causing them to become more irrational, violent or even passive is well within the realms of the necromancer.

How these lines are blurred, sometimes the necromancer does have the ability to dabble in spirits. However these are spirits that linger in the physical world who don’t pass over to the mists.

Also. Disease. I’m going to repeat myself again. Giving them disease is far more lore friendly then giving them burning. The necromancer doesn’t want to watch you burn, that is the elementalist. They want to watch you rot.

If you have ever listen to Eve in GW1, necromancers are very sadistic. She wanted to drag corpses into the shiverpeaks just so she could watch them rot in a new environment. Necromancer don’t like destruction. It isn’t their cup of tea. They like to watch things slowly die. A short scream might be satisfying for a moment, but looking at the quiet dread in their foes eyes as they slowly drift away, as their body withers before them brings them oh so much more pleasure. They get to watch the show. see the agony on their face as their magic slowly works into their system. The absolute pain of necrosis spreading through the body. The glee they feel while watching the parasites work their way into their skin. The fool who decided to cross them begging them to just end it, only to suffer for what seems to be hours.

Burning them alive is too quick. It destroys the body way too fast and they get no pleasure from seeing them just wither. They never get a chance to root around in the body, or use them as their undead slaves because the fire makes their bodies useless. Its just so messy and impractical for the necromancer on the go.

Bhawb.7408:

Okay, let me put it this way. I don’t give a crap about lore. I’m not reading a book or watching a move. This isn’t an incredibly interesting story-driven gaming experience. This game would have completely failed already if the best reason to play it was for the storytelling, because the storytelling is bland, generic, and forgettable. I’ve seen the exact same themes and ideas used in story after story; and they aren’t even done well. Who hasn’t seen a world with human gods, ancient evils making enemies unite and fight together, and the ton of other boring elements involved in the story. The universe itself is somewhat interesting, but outside the Sylvari I could find better lore on an amateur submission to a free website (and I have, its all over the place).

This is a game and as such is driven by gameplay. If the gameplay is boring, this game dies, end of story. I realize you have a great love for the lore, and that is cool, I’ve been there with other fantasy universes. But I am not using lore as a basis for my debate; I am coming purely from a gaming standpoint. And when it comes down to it, no one wants to play a game that isn’t working (regardless of its story); otherwise I will just read a book.

If you want to argue that burning doesn’t fix us based on a gameplay standpoint then go ahead. But I’m not going to argue lore when lore means nothing here.

Then why are you playing the profession? Without context for what the profession is or their theme of how they do things, I don’t see a reason to even touch any of the professions. If your goal is to optimize and be as powerful as possible, lore be kitten ed, I would suggest playing another attrition profession like the engineer or ranger. You basically have just told me, You have no reason to play a necromancer.

And from a “Pure” gameplay stand point, it still doesn’t work considering the necromancer is supposed to be an attrition profession and keep the fights long. In which case they should be able to apply bleeds far easier and keep the pressure much longer and build death shroud much faster to out last. Burning will make the fights shorter and it cuts a core strategy that they where built around. Which is keeping a player(or players if you are good) occupied for a longer stretch of time litterally wasting their time with you, locking them in an unnecessary combat for them that allows your team to take control of a situation.

How about we give them Disease? A condition from GW1 that would spread to other creatures only change it in GW2 so its 4x bleed damage and only spreads to foes. It wouldn’t be as strong as burning, but it would be flavorful. You would be happy because you have one more powerful damage condition on top of your bleeds and poison. I would be happy because its a return of an old favorite of mine, the devs would be happy because they don’t have to listen to us argue. Everybody wins!

Even if you don’t agree with everything else I say. Can we at least agree that disease in GW2 would be freaking awesome?

Dakiaris.2798:

I wish I had the option to play like my curse/blood necro from gw1… As it is now it plays nothing like necros from gw1 besides inflicting bleeding at a fast rate… The poisoning is a bit lower then gw1 though….

On a side note they said they didn’t wanna bring back hexes but why did they drop plague I wonder… I loved infecting 1 person in alliance battles and watching every singe person friend and foe get it…. Best condition ever.

The condition was disease. Not plague. But yes, I’ve been pushing for disease to return for a long time. And People seem way too hung up on burning to even consider the fact.

LastDay.3524:

Engineer’s defining features are skills that have unpredictable effects, immobile minions and borrowing things from other Professions.
(That and the Toolbelt)

They use an Elixir to turn Conditions into Boons (much like Guardians), an Elixir to turn into an Elite form from an another Profession and one to gain the Quickness effects from an another Profession.

Just Because the Necromancer has Flesh Wurm (an immobile minion) does not mean they suddenly step on an another Profession’s territory horribly.

Nor does Elementalists having Elemental summons mean they are now reskinned Necros.

Every single Profession except Thief and Necro have Burning.
Giving Necro 1 trait with a few seconds of Burning hardly makes them into Engineer rip-offs.
Removing Death Shroud and replacing it with a renamed Toolbelt would.

As for Well cooldowns and the lack of Stability that’s an entirely different issue and should be addressed separately.
Also the lack of Stability could perhaps even be addressed in some other way, such as simply making the DS take more of a beating, but then you run the risk of making Necro invincible like they used to be.

What this particular change is doing is it’s raising Necro’s Condition damage without impacting the Bleed cap.

All those times you ran a pure-condi build to a boss who had 25 stacks of bleed on him?
At least you have some Burning on them now.
Likewise it will likely add build variety. (Unless it’s so good that everyone runs it…)

…and if it really is that good it’ll probably make Necros more wanted in sPvP.
Majority of the damage will still come from Bleeds, no doubt.
Burning is same as 6 or so stacks of Bleed if memory serves me correct.

On that note I think every profession has Bleed.
Edit: Oh, Guardian doesn’t.

You didn’t listen to a thing I said.

LastDay.3524:

Well, most people just don’t care about the lore that much.
We are more interested in balance and the overall flavor.

However, this is a very strong part of the Guild Wars community that cares a great deal about the lore. And it is extremely important to us. If Arena Net breaks our trust with keeping the game’s lore cohesive, then who is to say they can be trusted to keep the balance of the game.

I use magic the gathering as an example allot because the game’s mechanics are based on strict rules on what each of the colors can and can’t do. The professions are the same way. They aren’t just stats and numbers, the professions have an identity and need to preform and work in their own way. This game was designed with asymmetrical balance in mind. An idea that each profession is equal to one another however they are very different. It is also allowing for a small level of imbalance in the game so players have something to chase in terms of what is the best. If the game is done right, you won’t be able to tell which profession is the best at first glance.

Arena net could just make everyone the same with no difference between anyone. Give everyone the same weapons, same moves, same health. This would make the game far more balanced, but it wouldn’t be fun. Giving the necromancer burning actually starts to blur the line between the necro and Engineer. It isn’t just a lore reason why this is a bad idea, its a bad idea from a game play perspective. A necromancer might be a better condition profession then the engineer in a later update. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever want to take an engineer. The Engineer should be able to do something the necromancer has trouble with or can’t do. And vise versa.

The necromancer has tones of problems, not just with a condition build. Giving them burning doesn’t fix their problem. Burning wont reduce the high recharge on wells, doesn’t fix the long cast time and animation time of their spells, doesn’t solve the problems in death shroud, doesn’t make them any less of a pinball, doesn’t help the necromancer escape from combat, and doesn’t give them the ability to keep someone in the fight if they need to.

The necromancer is getting a new condition and many of these problems are being addressed and fixed. When the Ritualist in GW1 was terrible in PvE arena net didn’t just make it so the rit had a bunch of aoe damage spells or gave them the ability to remove hexes. They stuck to their guns and fixed the profession’s problem with its theme, the spirits.

The necromancer needs to be an individual and needs to function in her own way. Rather then jumping on this ridiculous idea that changing something that is both charming and fundamental about the profession you need to be aware of what the profession represents. What the philosophy of that profession is and use the tools that exist or have existed to really help fix what is wrong.

When I say use history as a teacher, its because its a good learning tool. You don’t need to just use the history of Guild Wars 1 either. You can, again, use magic the gathering. There was a block in magic called Time Spiral that skewed the lines between the colors into what each of them might be able to do. Suddenly Blue could discard, black had wraths, Green had fliers, white could counter spell. From a tournament player perspective this was extremely cool, however this confused the new players and caused massive problems with the game that Wizards is still feeling to this day. People still ask them about the set trying to get them to make cards like that without a real understand of how horrible it was for the balance of the game and for the new players.

You need to understand that balance is a ballet between the flavor as well as the mechanic restrictions of the game. You don’t give a ballerina a chainsaw just because your think it might make it more interesting. No, it doesn’t fit. If you are having trouble with a dance move, don’t completely change the choreography, come at it at a different angle, learn what you did wrong and work to make the theme and style work.

hey devs. Pay attention to this. This is important.

Bhawb.7408:

Burning works better for us than confusion. Lore or w/e aside giving us burning is just a small fix to a very specific problem in specific builds; a way to damage with conditions that actually sticks. There is so much condition removal in PvP (and there always will be, because of how destructive conditions are) that burst conditions do much better than trying to slowly stack up 25 bleeds; no one decent will ever let that happen.

The problem is that offensive condition damage builds just aren’t working well on their own in PvP. That is why almost every Necro you will see will be paired with an Engineer (or someone else to “feed” them conditions to work with). That is not good balance, this game is built around classes being at least somewhat self sufficient, and yet our condition builds not only aren’t self sufficient; but they aren’t self sufficient in any way, offensive or defensive.

How do they make offensive condition damage builds more self sufficient? They need to give us a way to burst condition damage. Burning is already just that, low duration high damage. Their other options are giving us abilities like Churning Earth (that stack high bleeds at once), which would require them completely changing around our skills, or making the new condition similar damage to Burning (which, due to it having a secondary effect, makes no sense).

Giving us burning on a trait, which can be controlled, is the easiest way to give one specific group of builds offensive independence. That is all it is. This isn’t the be all end all of our balance, this is nothing to do with defense, this is fixing one problem with one fix; stop making it out to be more than that.

I’m sorry, but no. It doesn’t fix the problems. Giving us shorter cool downs and quicker cast times on the condition skills will work far better then breaking lore. And No, Confusion is far more lore friendly to the necromancer then burning ever will be. If we can apply 10 stacks of bleeding within a second and easily get up to 20 stacks then apply 10 stacks again as soon as they pop their condition removal, the pressure on them will be far more then adding one or 2 skills/traits that give us burning.

You are wrong, You are very wrong, don’t try and suggest butchering the necromancer’s lore for your make believe fantasy that burning solves everything. Because it solves nothing. Unless anet comes out with something like, the blood stones are starting to crack, and magic is becoming more chaotic, there is absolutely no lore friendly way to make burning not kitten all over the lore. But if they did that the guardian should be able to apply poison and confusion. Even though both those go strictly against the school of preservation.

Burning doesn’t fix any of the problems the necromancer has without kittening all over the lore of the necromancer. The fact that magic was divided up by the human gods to prevent the complete domination of magic over everything, those who specialize in necromancer have no access to spells that would allow for something like burning. They don’t have the raw destructive force of the Elementalist, they can’t make someone think they are on fire like the mesmer, nor do they have access to the life giving fire of the Guardian.

Fire is both the element of life and destruction. The necromancer is death and cold. Everything that fire is goes against what the necromancer is about. The necromancer is more about snuffing the flame then creating it.

The fix for the necromancer should be thematic to the necromancer and shouldn’t harm the flavor of the profession. For those who play magic the gathering, Imagine if the developers suddenly decided that the color black or red needed Naturalize.

To add to this, rather then give the necromancer burning, it would be much better for us if many of our skills had a reduce in cast time as well as the addition of a completely new condition to help protect our bleeds rather then just destroy what the necromancer is.

Here is a condition that I push for heavily for the necromancer. Disease. Disease was comparable to burning in the first game even with less degen because it was the hardest condition to remove. The advantage of it was that you needed mass removal in order to cleans it. Without mass removal it would easily spread to party members and foes alike. Although the change for GW2 would have to make it so it only spreads to foes and not your own team and to remove the part where it cares about creature type. Other then that, makes its damage 4x bleed and we have an extremely powerful condition that is hard to remove and lasts longer then burning. Its also lore friendly.

Another condition I’ve suggested is giving us a condition that does the same thing that the skill barbs did in GW1. This one is less likely to be implemented in GW2 then disease is, however its effect is extremely attractive. Having a condition that’s damage only triggers on successful hits on your opponent is like a reverse retaliation. Rather then them taking damage for them hitting you, they take damage for you hitting them.

I have plenty of other ideas for the necromancer that would help fix it, however disease is the most attractive.

Also.. Don’t be like the guys in the comic. Burning isn’t thematic to the necromancer and doesn’t solve our problem.

http://s8.postimg.org/jaq4vb89h/stop_throwing_me_out_of_the_window_o_1069678.png

this is how I feel when talking about the necromancer.

This should really get more attention. I know this isn’t the most interesting fix asked for. it isn’t “OMG! this would be the coolest thing ever!” but we need this if aqua combat is going to be expanded on.

Hexxen.7216:

Lily.1935:

Softspoken.2410:

Lily.1935:

Wells: The wells feel underwhelming at times as support skills. Where Null field just strips all conditions and boons in a second, lasts long, is ground targeted and has a shorter cool down then well of power, I can’t help but feel that there is no real point in taking wells.

This may not change your opinion in the matter, but Null Field only cures one condition & strips one boon per pulse.

Didn’t seem that way when I used it. It stripped them all in under a second. not all at once, but it was under a second. Mesmer is my second Level 80 and the one I use most often when I’m not on my necromancer. It is possible that it doesn’t feel like its only 1 condition because combat feels quicker with a mesmer.

It is one condition and one boon every second they have just never corrected the tool tip. Trust me all us Mesmers wish it was instant.

You are correct. I just tested it, and this seems to be the case. Both strip a boon/condition on activation and one more each second. Although, I still believe the duration of the necromancer wells are way too short with too long a cast time considering.

Softspoken.2410:

Lily.1935:

Wells: The wells feel underwhelming at times as support skills. Where Null field just strips all conditions and boons in a second, lasts long, is ground targeted and has a shorter cool down then well of power, I can’t help but feel that there is no real point in taking wells.

This may not change your opinion in the matter, but Null Field only cures one condition & strips one boon per pulse.

Didn’t seem that way when I used it. It stripped them all in under a second. not all at once, but it was under a second. Mesmer is my second Level 80 and the one I use most often when I’m not on my necromancer. It is possible that it doesn’t feel like its only 1 condition because combat feels quicker with a mesmer.

I’ve suggested this before and I will suggest it again. Please PLEASE Arena net, lets us have different traits set for land and water much like our skills are different. Whenever I go into the Fractals and get the water one I have to make my whole party wait a minute while I change my traits because 60% of them are actually just useless underwater. Why not NOT keep them waiting and be less optimal? Ha! Good one… No. I like to optimize and being less effective underwater because I don’t have different traits set for water underwater.

This is my biggest complaint with underwater combat. With how easy and time friendly you guys usually make your game, this feels grimy and slow compared to the rest of the game. And I avoid water for that reason and that reason ONLY! the other problems underwater become much more manageable when this simple fix is included.

So Please. I don’t want to go underwater and have to change out greater marks and friends every single time I think about spending more then 5 minutes under water.

May I add one? I don’t think this NEEDs to be in the game. I would at least like a skin for it, if they made it a torch.

Lantern – Necromancer and guardian.

I don’t think I’m the only person who believes the necromancer needs a change. Personally, I really want to support as a necromancer but I can’t find a build that supports quite as well as the guardian. I would like to see a support build that is equal to the guardian but does it in a very different way, much like a mesmer support or a paragon support where both good in GW1, but good in very different ways.

There are other areas I would Like to see changes, but for right now lets just focus on support.

Necromancer shouldn’t support through giving allies very many boons other then through conversion or for healing. Necromancers should strip conditions, provide healing buffs and increase the damage of the party in some way.

Suggestions:

Life stealing effected by healing power: Why should this be added? Well for starters, why not? As long as the scaling isn’t too extreme the damage increase wouldn’t break the game. And those who think it would, I would suggest trying it first before judging. This especially goes for you, Devs. Please just try it. If you guys know through testing it doesn’t work, could you at least tell me? It would mean the world to me if it was at least tested. Note: This would mean that the damage from life steal would be reduced if the necromancer got poisoned.

Vampiric Aura: A new buff that would cause all the users attack steal life with each strike. The necromancer would be able to give this aura to allies who used a blast finisher or leap finisher through some of their wells. This would also mean that the darkness combo field should give a vampiric aura rather then blind. Going along with the above suggestion, I would also suggest having the healing and damage scale based on the necromancer’s healing power rather then the user’s to make the most use out of it.

death shroud 5th skill, Order of the Vampire: 60 second cool down, 1 second cast time. For 5 seconds allies gain vampiric aura. Lets make death shroud a bit more party friendly. Death shroud in my opinion is far more fun underwater because it has some amazing skills and has a awesome support skill in drawing all conditions. I would like to see this level of support on land as well without having to trait for it.

Wells: The wells feel underwhelming at times as support skills. Where Null field just strips more conditions and boons, lasts long, is ground targeted and has a shorter cool down then well of power, I can’t help but feel that there is no real point in taking wells. Well of blood and well of suffering seem to be the best wells the necro has going for her, and the others just fall short when compared side by side with skills from other professions that do similar things. so here are some suggestions.

Well of Power: Have it convert all conditions each second rather then 1 condition for every 1 second. Increase duration to 10 second or reduce recharge to 45 second, Either will work.

Well of Corruption: Convert all boons each second rather then 1 boon for every 1 second. Increase recharge to 60 seconds and increase cast time to 1 second. Compare this to Well of the Profane from Guild wars 1. This shouldn’t be easy to use and should make people fear everything about this skill.

Well of darkness: Increase duration to 8 second. Reduce recharge to 45 seconds.

Barbs: A condition that deals a small amount of damage for each successful hit on the effected target. stacks in duration. These hits wouldn’t count from hits from sigils, life stealing, retaliation or damage caused by other conditions. The amount of times this could trigger would be capped by either players or the group’s attack rate. Whichever arena net feels would be better. The reason this is under support is because its damage support. Which necromancer was queen(king?) of in GW1. And this would be a refreshing addition to a party who might lack real damage. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this would make the necromancer’s damage OP, seeing as it would require the co-operation of a party, as little co-operation as that may be.

I hope you like some of these suggestions, feel free to agree or disagree. I will defend my idea as politely as possible. Please leave a comment, I look forward to hearing from all of you.

LastDay.3524:

Lily.1935:

LastDay.3524:

Lily.1935:

Yes thats a great idea! Lets give the necromancer burning. Screw flavor of the profession and the past abilities that made the necromancer great! Ha ha ha… The guild wars 1 necromancer is rolling in her grave…

Flavor?

My Necro in GW1 shouts “Finish Him!” and fires headshots with arrows that appear out of nowhere.
Without a bow of course!

I don’t think Burning would bother him much. :p

Also… Epidemic is a Mesmer skill in GW1.
Nobody seems terribly bothered that it’s somehow moved from Lyssa’s domain to Grenth’s without any explanation…
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/1/1c/Epidemic_animation.gif

Everyone agrees that epidemic should have always been a necromancer skill. Also, both those skills you mentioned are PvE only skills.

I don’t see how that changes anything.
Fact is my Necro in GW1 spams arrows and uses shouts, yet somehow a Necro using Burning in GW2 bothers you?

And the Epimedic part… yeah, so?
It’s still a Mesmer skill, that change went totally against the lore.

And besides my Necro in GW2 already runs around in Burning armor and is working on an Incinerator.
My power build uses a Sigil of Fire so he even has fiery AoE damage.

If you want an example of just using Necro skills to do silly stuff Jade Quarry suicide-bombing comes into mind.
Master of the dead, now a kamikaze man!
The most sensible connection I can make there is the afflicted.

My point is who cares so long as they work well mechanically?
Warriors having Fear after it was toted as a Necro thing doesn’t make any more sense.
Or an Engineer’s crowbar adding Confusion.

…and even though Grenth isn’t much into fire a certain other God of Death was.

That is armor augmenting abilities. This gives warriors the ability to chill or an engineer the ability to have a magical attack. Much like artifacts in magic the gathering, these are usable by everyone and become common abilities. Not abilities of the necromancer, warrior or engineer. This doesn’t change the fact that the necromancer has no magical knowledge of how the rune or sigil works. This also doesn’t change the fact they can use something that was designed for everyone to use.

And using the example of Dhuum doesn’t work. Dhuum was a god before the time magic was given. The blood stone wasn’t put in place and the magic Schools didn’t exist in his time. So Dhuum does in fact use old magic, older then what humans would have access to. Not that it even matters, Dhuum never used burning in the Underworld or did fire damage.

LastDay.3524:

Lily.1935:

Yes thats a great idea! Lets give the necromancer burning. Screw flavor of the profession and the past abilities that made the necromancer great! Ha ha ha… The guild wars 1 necromancer is rolling in her grave…

Flavor?

My Necro in GW1 shouts “Finish Him!” and fires headshots with arrows that appear out of nowhere.
Without a bow of course!

I don’t think Burning would bother him much. :p

Also… Epidemic is a Mesmer skill in GW1.
Nobody seems terribly bothered that it’s somehow moved from Lyssa’s domain to Grenth’s without any explanation…
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/1/1c/Epidemic_animation.gif

Everyone agrees that epidemic should have always been a necromancer skill. Also, both those skills you mentioned are PvE only skills.

Yes thats a great idea! Lets give the necromancer burning. Screw flavor of the profession and the past abilities that made the necromancer great! Ha ha ha… The guild wars 1 necromancer is rolling in her grave…

Bhawb.7408:

Lily is talking strictly GuildWars lore. There is plenty of reason for Necromancers in general to get burning, but within the context of GW lore, we are usually attributed as followers of Grenth, who is the god of ice and death (among other things); ice doesn’t really go with fire.

I’m not sure that it is necessarily a conflict, however. Grenth is a human god, and is worshiped almost exclusively by humans. He is not the source of Necromancy, he is merely the patron god of many human Necromancers. As such, there is no specific lore reason that Necromancers would be unable to have access to abilities that might conflict with Grenth.

Whats wrong with the epic return of Disease? I would much rather have that then burning. And I wouldn’t make the corpses useless for reanimating.

Necromancer shouldn’t ever get burning. It doesn’t make sense for a necromancer to ever use burning outside of sending it back to a foe. I know we need another heavy hitting condition. But as a person who loved the lore and flavor of the necromancer the idea makes my teeth grind.

Bhawb.7408:

It really isn’t difficult to hold aggro as a Necromancer, is more what I was getting at (and surviving). As long as you understand how to kite the mobs in question (and it does depend on your build), you should be more than able to hold aggro of an entire room and never die; and I have done this in rare MF gear (power/cond/MF). Its not about the rest of the group protecting you, its about you running circles, understanding how to keep CC on the mobs, and how to dodge around. I’m sure I’m terrible at it now, but when I actually PvE’d I almost always held aggro on a glass build, rarely with issue.

I’m not saying we are better than others, I have said multiple times on the podcast that current PvE mechanics just don’t require Necros, and greatly reward other classes. But I was simply addressing the idea of “gear carrying you”, when it isn’t hard at all to PvE as a necromancer, even solo, in crap gear.

Also, I’ve been told these changes are quite possibly coming out on the 11th, so it is possible (though not guaranteed) that we will see them soon.

I never mentioned anything about having a problem holding agro. I’ve had problems getting too MUCH agro. Never holding it. And yes, your gear plays a large roll in your Survivability. I use sigil of energy in my staff so I can get myself an extra dodge. And it has saved my life so many times that I wouldn’t think of not taking it. As for a mesmer, they don’t need sigil of energy. Bringing that would be a waste seeing as they have easy access to vigor. This is just one example of gear that is needed vs not. My mesmer runs full glass, and as long as I’m paying attention, I don’t die. My mesmer is actually far more comfortable sticking in the front line then my necromancer is. And they have about a 6k armor difference.

You say how I should play like I don’t do it. And I do it allot. Hell, I look for visual cues on enemies just so I can time my fear right and even train with my necro in south sun to cut down on my time needed to build up and cast skills. This doesn’t mean its easier to survive on my necromancer as it is on my mesmer or guardian. Its much harder and requires me to react much quicker and be much wiser with how I use my skills. Which again is fairly hard to do seeing as the necro has slower cast times with their skills then a mesmer or guardian.

Do I still like my necromancer? Yes! I love my necromancer. I want her to be all that she can be. I’m waiting on the update as well. I’m really looking forward to it. I have high hopes for it, its been the only thing I could talk about with my guild ever since I heard about it.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

So you are basically relying almost entirely on your gear to carry you through defensively, and die a bunch of times.

Really? I am by no means a great player, but I made it very easily through the game without ever buying armor until I was 80, and then I spent the next 6 months or so doing all my dungeon runs with rare MF armor, without issue. It is hard the first time you run something difficult, but its really not that hard to do dungeons as any profession in much less than top tier.

I’ve run a dungeon with 3 necros before. One of them was minion master. Our damage and protection was so low, it took 2 hours to complete it and most of us destroyed our armor. If you are a solo necromancer in a 5 man group with some of the other staples such as mesmer, guardian and warrior, you will do fine, better then fine. But its not you that is making the biggest splash and you will be the one least missed if you left.

When I do a dungeon and we are not doing well, I switch to my Guardian or Mesmer and I end up having to work allot harder then I did before and harder then my allies, but the difference in our performance is greatly improved.

My necromancer is very good, considering. I have something like 7 different builds on my necromancer that I can use. The problem comes that all 7 of those builds are out classed by staple builds being used by other profession. And the builds I use are not bad builds.

Necromancer isn’t a nooby friendly profession. You go through most the low levels with minions thinking you are awesome only to get ground into dust by one aoe spell that kills all your minions removing your heal, utility then nukes you down so hard with nothing to show for it. Then you learn that condition is the general accepted necromancer build. Then you find that you are still having trouble because you don’t have stability, vigor, blocks or invulnerability and death shroud doesn’t cut it at all in terms of defense with a condition build. So you are basically relying almost entirely on your gear to carry you through defensively, and die a bunch of times. Then you give up and play a mesmer, guardian or ranger.

Pretty much the story I hear all the time.

My Main is still a necro for now. I go balls to the wall bleeding. I can quickly stack bleed up to 20. If someone decides to remove it contently, I can get to 10. But this just means my damage is still pretty low and my defenses don’t make up for this. I do alright for myself, I can survive very well. I’m not going to win any 1v1s with any players and in terms of groups, I will probably just take my mesmer or guardian to the fight if we need something better for the group.

I kinda got to the point on my necro where I just said “Screw it” And designed her to stand on her own, and not bother supporting a party. I kinda got a bit discouraged from supporting on a necro when a mesmer can do almost the exact same thing with one skill that I would need to use 3 well skills to match.

I have allot of complaints about the necromancer. Some things are really fun to do on one. However I don’t always feel that it is enough. I seem to mostly play them out of nostalgia for my Guild Wars 1 necromancer.

Draehl.2681:

Necro design isn’t in all that bad of a place… really we just need three things…

1) Death Shroud needs to be more interesting, synergistic with more builds, and generally stronger. We know this is already on the plate in one way or another.

2) Fix our bugs. Everyone knows about them, but it bears mention.

3) Tweak/redesign some of the worse utility skills and traits to increase build diversity. Signet of Spite active makes no sense given the passive. Many of the Staff traits need to be merged or made baseline. Death Magic Passives shouldn’t solely cater to minion builds. Lifesteal need buffed. Spectral skills lack a certain identity and purpose. Etc.

You forgot the wells. They need a buff as well. And probably should be streamlined.

Zenith.7301:

A new condition won’t dent cantrip eles with cleansing water. It just won’t. It won’t dent a ranger with signet of renewal, empathic bond, and healing spring. It won’t dent a guardian with purity, signer, and shout condi removal+purging flames or contemplation of purity.

If the new condition is disease it will. Combine that with all the mass conditions the necromancer can spread, the ele will have to hit 2-3 condition removal skills just to get rid of diseases of they don’t prepare for it properly.

Bhawb.7408:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I would be more in favor of seeing how it worked from other game’s perspectives. I am in love with the might and magic mechanics of Necromancers. I feel that Leeching should scale off of damage, not healing power. 15-20% of the damage you inflict turns into health

While it works in other games, it would not here. It is the same issue as what BM rangers are; you should not be able to build high damage and survivability at the same time. You should have to give up damage to get survivability, in this case you get survivabililty by doing damage.

Except there isn’t a stat combination that would turn you into a high damage, high survivability with healing and damage. Not only that, with the necromancer’s lack of real damage prevention, they may be able to steal, lets say 100 health a hit, but when someone is reducing that with poison as well as bursting them down, life steal isn’t going to do much for their survivability. And even if a necro is stealing 100 health a hit, they deal far more damage with bleeding. It will be noticeable, but won’t be game breaking.

Not only that, if its effected by healing power that would mean the damage would be effected by poison. So by being poisoned the damage would be reduced along with the healing. And damage prevention will always be better then life gain. Preventing a attack from hitting protects you from far more then gaining that life after you where it.

The only balance issue there is with this concept is if healing power made extremely dramatic increases to life stealing.

Quells.2498:

Because there’s no logical reason why your ability to heal would help your ability to damage. In the case of siphoning health, it would only make sense for it to increase the amount of health received.

Considering the lore of the necromancer and the nature of the profession, it makes perfect logical sense. There are 4 schools of magic in Guild Wars lore. Destruction, Aggression, Denial and Preservation. Of the 4 schools, Destruction was where the Elementalist channeled its magic from, Denial was the mesmers, Preservation was the Monks(or in GW2’s case, Guardian) and Aggression was the necromancers.

If you also look at what the necromancer did in GW1 they actually would turn healing into a bad thing for its opponents. Having the necromancer pervert something that is supposed to be for support into an aggressive and unnatural use of what it was supposed to be fits the theme of the necromancer like a glove.

Quells.2498:

Disease sounds more interesting because it creates some great scenarios in PvX. Healing Power shouldn’t affect the damage, only the amount of health received.

May I ask why it shouldn’t? I personally see no balance or flavor problems with it.

With the up coming update for the necro and warrior, I thought it might be a good time for me to put out some suggestions for the necromancer that they might not have thought of.

First I’m going to suggest 2 conditions and how they should work.

Disease: While suffering from this ailment, your foe lose Health over time. Disease is contagious between foes.

I’m not the first person to suggest disease. And I doubt I’ll be the last. There is some changes that should be changed to disease. First, it shouldn’t spread to allies. This is something people hated in the first game. Second, this should be a bit of a strong condition. 3-4x bleed damage should be enough to get it noticed as well as make it desirable to remove. It still wont be as powerful as burning, but it sure will demand its removal.

The Concept of disease was always an interesting one. The same string of disease wouldn’t spread to the same foe twice in the first game. Making it act kinda like the flu virus. But if a new string of disease hit, it would spread all over again even if the foe had cured it. I would love to see this concept applied again into the game.

Barbs: Whenever a foe takes damage barbs deals damage to that foe.

How this one would work is it would trigger on attack damage. And its damage would be fixed based on your condition damage. It wouldn’t trigger on other conditions or retaliation for example. And life stealing wouldn’t trigger it either. This would also have a cap on how many people will cause this condition to trigger. So if you are in a large event and there are 40+ people hitting the same target, only something like 8-10 of them could actually trigger the barbs.

Now for 2 more suggestions that are not conditions.

Vampiric Aura: Triggered by a combo field, this aura would give any ally who gained it the ability to steal some health from striking their foes or being struck themselves.

The necromancer doesn’t seem to have very many interesting combo field finishers for their allies. And nothing that really stands out as there own. This combo field would give them something that other professions don’t have that would also strengthen the feel of a necromancer.

Healing power improving the damage of life steal: This wasn’t my idea. But I love the idea so much. Giving a necromancer the ability to cause more harm because they decided to focus on healing just sound brilliant. Since life stealing tends to be small numbers anyway and having 1000 healing power only doubling the life steal wouldn’t be game breaking considering how little defenses the necromancer actually has outside of death shroud. This would help them augment some of their damage making them truly feel like the mage of Aggression, even turning something that was supposed to be supportive and defensive into offensive.

Love or hate these ideas, please leave a comment below.

I didn’t get into GW2 until much later due to funding issues, so I only have 400 hours on her. However, I have almost 3k hours on my necromancer from GW1.

And I have to say, before I got into GW2, I was very skeptical about the usability of death shroud in GW2. The Alpha tests convinced me that it would be an exciting and fun mechanic to use. Then Beta rolled around, and loads of nerfs happened, and the skepticism of death shroud returned. I decided not to pass judgement on it until I actually used it myself. After I did, I felt right to have been skeptical of it.

Death Shroud reminded me of the GW1 assassin. let me explain. Although mechanically, these 2 professions are worlds apart, there is one thing they have in common in terms of play ability. The assassin was a rather loner profession. When you took one on your team they wouldn’t provide any party buffs or use hexes that incentivized your party to attack the same foe. Where as every other profession has some sort of party combo support. The assassin was very much in a vacuum. Death shroud feels the same way. Although if you are traited for it it can heal your allies. But it still feels like its own thing, independent of even the necromancer using it.

Since death shroud no longer can be used in the downed state, it doesn’t feel like a death ability any more. It feels more like a power shield. And when it replaces your skills for a short time, it feels like I’m slogging through mud using it. Even giving us a skill on the downed bard to enter death shroud would be nice. Hell, replace the 3rd skill with enter death shroud.

The other problems I have with it is how little of the old necromancer remains in the new. The old necromancer had amazing party support through damage and life stealing. the old would never have given protection to their allies. They would have given them a vampiric aura instead, telling them to kill in order to heal. They would have placed a hexes on their foe that would punish for physical contact. The necromancer was a force of pure spite. They didn’t help you because they liked you. They helped you in spite of their enemies.

I’m hoping the update to the necromancer fixes some of the balance problems they have. I’ve talked about that in other posts. I doubt I will ever get that gleefully spiteful sociopath that was the GW1 necromancer ever again.

Softspoken.2410:

I’d love to see something like Order of the Vampire or Blood Bond make its way back into GW2 via the new DS5 condition. Obviously that also allows others to inflict / play with it since it wouldn’t be wholly exclusive, but I think a necro with bloodthirst might get the best usage out of it. Plus they could sneak it onto another couple of weapon skills / utilities, hint hint.

That might be more Heal support than Damage support. As it is, I think damage support is inflicting vulnerability. If you focus (heh) on it, you can spread a lot of vulnerability as a Necro.

the Necro from GW1 had cracked armor along with other damage support skills. Cracked armor actually lowered a character’s armor 2 tiers! To compare it to GW2. Which vulnerability pretty much does at about 20 stacks. Plus life steal does improve damage. So I think it counts. Having Barbs in the form of a well would be Awesome. I would use that skill all the time. And I would love it.

Actually. Arena Net, Bring back Orders and give us Well of Ruin and change well of ruin to function more like barbs.