Well there is some interesting lore with humans. You could go Human thief. The Assassin, a profession from GW1 came out of cantha. They revered priests of grenth but worshiped Lyssa herself for her duality.
No, the downed skills suck in PvE too. I’ve been playing mostly necromancer and Mesmer. if you go downed as a necromancer, you are done. Your chances of getting up are almost none existent. Where as with my mesmer I can just distract them with a clone. Not only that the clone also uses the first ability, which confuses, and I can just stack around 8 confuses and even foes at full health just melt. With the necromancer. The second skills doesn’t help me at all because its cast is too slow to do anything, doesn’t help me because if I’m downed there is never just one guy and the first skill’s healing doesn’t offset the degen you have naturally. The 3rd skill? I’ve only ever managed to use it twice. And its damage wasn’t high enough to save me.
The engineer’s is also pretty bad.
Terror isn’t worth running. Even with the 1k damage, it doesn’t do enough compared to just applying bleeds. Its fun to try out every once in a while, but I wouldn’t suggest using it as a primary means of damage. Especially seeing as you are most likely only going to have access to 2 fear skills with a 1 second duration at any given time. You can modify it with runes in order to get close to 2 seconds, but you both have to have 50% from the soul reaping trait and mods from your gear to get that close. There is the option of putting 30 in spite to get the full 2 seconds out of it but then you sacrifice condition damage in the process because you need 20 in soul reaping as well.
Fear is best used as a interrupt…
But if it interrupts and does damage, that sounds like a good plan to me. Not sure what your trying to say here about terror, as you can have terror and bleed duration, as they are not mutually exclusive. Also you don’t need 100% fear duration for two ticks, you just need to have some increased duration and get lucky with the damage ticks. It happens regularly at 70% duration.
Also in a condition build it hits much harder than 1000, I have had it tick for over 1650 before. In my opinion, it is crazy not to take terror. BIP and epidemic already have short cooldowns, and getting those available a few seconds earlier does not justify that damage loss. Since you can take hemo and terror in curses, it shouldn’t be an issue if you need more bleeding duration.
Now if you are talking PVE, terror isn’t really that useful there, but in WvW, it is a must have.
yeah I am talking about PvE. My problem isn’t so much with terror, I rather like the trait. My problem is more with the fear condition itself. The necromancer has too few fear skills with too short a duration and too long a cool down for me to justify using it.
I’ve been having problems with the necromancer ever since I started. It has been both frustrating and disheartening going around trying to use the type of build I want to use only be to out class at my own game by other professions that have more options then I do. I play a condition necromancer and I’ve been struggling with the gear to maximize my damage as much as possible.
I build up about 9-14 bleed stacks and I have to put half my skills on cool down in order to get that much not only that I have to work to maintain those bleeds extremely hard. And underwater I can hardly get up to 6 stacks let along go up as far as 14. Where as my mesmer under water, with out even trying gets up to 15 stacks with in a relatively short time.
I use Epidemic to help out, and it is the best skill the necromancer has. But its really the only thing that I feel is useful in group Events. Seeing as other people are getting the extra bleeds I need along with other conditions I can take out the little guys with out a problem by just targeting the champion. Epidemic has basically been the necromancer’s saving grace in my eyes.
Death Shroud feels like a punishment. If I enter death shroud any time during a fight, its either so close to the end that I can finish them off with a little bit of damage, or I am losing. Using it in the middle of the fight HURTS my build so much. I enter with 14 bleeds stacked on my foe and exit DS with 3 or less.. Its extremely counter productive to my play style. Not to mention some of the DS skills just seem off. Dark path is something I almost never use because I don’t want to get close to my foe and Every other skill of death shroud was designed for range in mind.
Fear has to be the worst part about the necromancer. It was supposed to be the necromancer’s big iconic thing. And I can’t help but feel like 4th best at using it. And There are only 4 professions that can use it! I thought there was supposed to be a split between PvP fear and PvE fear? I thought Fear was supposed to be 2 seconds in PvE? It is underwater, but the hit box for that skill under water is extremely fickle and I have quite figured out how to make it hit most the time. We have 4 skills to reliable apply fear, and one of them is the downed state skill and its trigger is so slow that I’m usually killed before I can use it… If Fear is that big of a problem, just give us a knock back. It would be more useful. Its especially insulting when a dog has a better fear skill then the master of death…
Confusion was another thing that got to me. Anet stated that the necromancer would have access to confusion but not as much as the Mesmer. Okay, fine. I was perfectly okay with that. But we have no skills with it? Bleeding and poison doesn’t have high enough damage alone. And necromancer isn’t allowed to cause burns so we need another option. And Terror doesn’t cut it. Its frustrating especially seeing as my mesmer is both better at surviving and dealing damage then my necromancer at that level.
I remember the necromancer from GW1. Second best profession in PvE and formidable in PvP. They could do everything and anything. we had a wall of minions to block off foes from the back line. We could nuke with the best of them with Spiteful Spirit and archane echo. We had teams dedicated to us. Both Subway and Discordway. We could easily replace the monk or ritualist if needed. I didn’t expect them to be as good as they where in GW1 but this pull back on there abilities is a bit too much for my tastes.
Please Arena Net, Make me excited to play the necromancer again like I was in GW1!
Terror isn’t worth running. Even with the 1k damage, it doesn’t do enough compared to just applying bleeds. Its fun to try out every once in a while, but I wouldn’t suggest using it as a primary means of damage. Especially seeing as you are most likely only going to have access to 2 fear skills with a 1 second duration at any given time. You can modify it with runes in order to get close to 2 seconds, but you both have to have 50% from the soul reaping trait and mods from your gear to get that close. There is the option of putting 30 in spite to get the full 2 seconds out of it but then you sacrifice condition damage in the process because you need 20 in soul reaping as well.
Fear is best used as a interrupt…
I have a real simple suggestion and its something that has been bugging me since I hit max level. When I enter the water my traits are the same. I’m not talking about my 30/20/20. I’m talking about the major traits. A few of them when I’m in water don’t do me any good. Since I’m playing a necromancer I will use that as my example.
On land I have traits like Lingering Curse or Transfusion. Which don’t work under water because I neither have life transfer or a Scepter under water. It would be nice if I could have a separate traits set so I don’t have to spend 5 minutes each time I decide to go underwater and just get right into the action.