Guild Wars 2

The attritioned class.

oh kitten this -.-
what a bad day for necromancers…
And i dont understand that at all. i mean… the other CC-conditions (Chill, Cripple, Immobilise) dont care about defiant either.

Mammoth.1975:

Downstate nerf. Necros aoe corpses hard, and revive from outside aoe. We were doing pretty well before the nerf, but now there’s a necro in every team.

for someone who barely plays tPvP: what is this downstate nerf?

i think 25% is a bit overkill. 15%/20% wouldve been enough.

even better than the actual change to locust/air/that-ranger-signet are all the whining thieves, who complain how everything is now ruined forever and for everyone

First off, Power and Condition Duration is going to stay the same. Every single profession has these connected, and I’m not going to suggest a change here. I also believe that Vitality and Compassion are correct to be linked together.

“every class got those two paired up” is not an argument imo

Life/Plague Blast- Allow the land version to also transfer one condition to the enemy. This spell would also greatly benefit from being a shorter cast time. Adjust damage to balance, if necessary.

if its damage is lowered anymore i’d probably do more damage with dagger auto-attack…

Doom/Wave of Fear- I’m a big believer that our Fear is underpowered, especially as it was billed as a key component of the profession. I’d greatly prefer the underwater version, and would help reaffirm Fear as being a Necromancer-focused condition.

the underwater-version has a cast time and that would make it worse.
no matter what is going to be changed with that fear, the zero-casttime should stay.

does anyone know what exactly that tiny bit of scaling is? or is it just rumours?

tried it right now in the mists with clerics amulett and without.

no changes and there are still tiny “25/37” numbers falling out of the training golems there (while i am healed by 25/38 per hit), no matter how high my healing is.

a focus that looks like a ceremonial dagger.

cause most foci in this game look kitten and it would fit my dagger/focus necro.

Halcyon.7352:

I’ve seen Guardians in Blood, Rangers in all three legions, as well as Elementalist. I don’t recall ever coming across a Charr mesmer NPC, but players often go Ash with Mesmer.

Your father in the personal storyline is a charr mesmer, if you choose him to be an honorless gladium.

oh, and theres the mesmer trainer in LA, Mira Mindrender

Elmentcius Koronel.6234:

The reason why thieves get that post and we don’t is simple. They want feedback on thief gameplay and not necromancer. Why I don’t get is why do they focus on the most popular classes? Shouldn’t they be focusing on the less popular ones so people play them?

More people play classes like guardian, warrior, thief, so they make more people content if they focus their attention on them.

Or maybe they just try to avoid specific topics like AI, which was never one of Anets strong points (GW1-ranger’s pets were horrible too).

Ezeriel.9574:

• Our condition damage is unreliable. Event bosses have a full stack of bleeds with us being there, and far too many normal bosses don’t trigger our marks, like all of the tree bosses in TA.

so much this.

• And we can forget about easily removing conditions on us. My favorite way to die, is dropping our healing well and spamming staff #1, seeing “condition removed” over my head repeatedly, and still dying from poison. Is poison not a condition?

Auto-attacks tend to have only a 20% chance to activate combo fields.
Besides that, you can trait your DS to clean a condition.
My only issue with condition removal is the cast time tho. Staff-skills are slow as kitten and CC needs 1+ secs to cast aswell.

Sheobix.8796:

it is a little odd i’ve been using lich with 0 precision to utilize the huge crit chance scaling.. (4% => 50ish is crazy good with no stat investment lol)
versus your normal crit rate and where it gets buffed..

yeah, this is odd too!

according to the wiki 21.16 prec = 1% crit chance.

but while your crit chance get raised from 4% to 50something (46% difference),
mine is only increased from 46% to 73% (27%)

Kill.6973:

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Jon, please tell me you are adjusting the speed for necrotic grasp (staff #1 skill for those that don’t know) so i can finally return to this game.

It is just slow and boring. Although i don’t like its animation and prefer something like life blast, i care more about its pathetic slow speed.

how can you not love that black scythe and that hand??

Sheobix.8796:

the problem is, you’re getting down-scaled to an area, and then your lich for is up-scaling your numbers.

I’m sure there are a lot of numbers being lost with rounding and percentage-based modifiers.

then how come my attack/power is exactly the same with items and without in the dungeon?
as i said, changing clothes doesnt change the stat at all

so not a rounding issue imo

striker.3704:

This is an issue with a number of abilities. I know the blood fiend’s numbers act funny depending on the zone your in as well. it’s definitely a bug though.

so this is a known issue?

alanis.6094:

JonPeters.5630:

3 notes

1) it seems to be failing because of a rounding error which we are working on fixing right now.
2) we are buffing it next patch on top of fixing it.
3) carry on.

Thanks for the update! I’m hoping the team realized that 5% is just absurdly small, and 20-25% feels much more appropriate.

20%-25% on the other hand would be a must-have for almost every necro. not sure if i want that.

Can someone explain me the weird scaling/bonus-stats of our lich form?

I did TA exp and noticed that my power/attack barely increases.

I compared some stats inside of TA and this is what i found:
while the precision/vitality of your items is taken into account, your power doesnt matter at all. In lich form, you always have the same power regardless of your equipment. I unequipped my char, went into lich form and put all my clothes back on. All stats rose accordingly, except power.

In LA on the other hand, the stats of your equipment affect your power while in lich form and everything works fine.

So is there any explanation why lich form works differently in dungeons?
Is this a problem with downscaling?
Am i just missing something?

These are screenshots i made inside of TA exp (lvl55, base-stats are 500 on that level, my traits 30/15/10/15/0)
Sorry for the poor quality of the green numbers but for some reason the GW2-screenshots have that bad quality.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

Step one. Enter Black Citadel.
Step two. Behold the destructive beauty of the Charr tanks
Step three. Weep.

Anyways, what exactly are these “tanks” called, do they even have a name? And more importantly, do we ever get to see them in action?

i never saw the big tanks in action, only the smaller ones.

which is said because when i came to fireheart rise i was excited because i imagined that there might be a huge event where you use tanks and all the machine stuff against the flame legion citadel…
but nothing happens there at all, the tanks just stand around

i dont know much about condition necros, but:
please, get rid of prayer to dwayna!

other than that:
curses is your main trait line, so you should max it.
death magic is also very good cause of greater marks and staff mastery. but you dont need more than 20 points in it.

good thing im a necro and wear face paint.

its very annoying, but then again, many helmets look just stupid on charr.

High weapon damage (not the skills, the weapon itself).
If you’re a power-oriented necro, its better to have a staff with high power/precision and switch to it when you activate DS to deal damage.

Zaxares.5419:

She’s displeased that she doesn’t have her breather mask on and is basically having to hold her breath.

haha, yeah. for some unknown reason her breathing mask is a circlet.
apparently breathing with your forehead isnt fun.

from my experience:
you only get 6 orichalcum ores in total from the 2 nodes in the jumping puzzle, doesnt matter if rich node or not.
when im lucky and the first node gives 4 ores, the second will be depleted after 2 hits and only give 2 ores and so on.

It seems that for several days this sigil doesnt work properly anymore.

Often theres no effect at all when i swap weapons (in PvE. Works fine in the mists) and i think it might have to do with swapping your weapons while out-of-combat.
Or does it share its internal cooldown with something else? I dont use any other on-weapon-swap-sigils, my sigils are:
1.set: Sigil of Hydromancy/sigil of blood
2.set: Sigil of air

I was in Honor of the Waves yesterday and noticed that my norn mesmer doesnt look happy at all, when shes underwater and has her weapon drawn(trident or spear, doesnt matter).

Left side: normal; right side: with drawn weapon

what is this? intended? a bug? a joke?

nope, female Norn mesmer here…
but youre right, most of the norn i see are guardian. cant say that i have ever seen another norn caster.

but i thought of making a norn guardian, because heavy armor fits the race and my warrior is already a charr.

i’d definitely prefer Option 1, with the addition of some other skills that would use life force.
If kitten-traits like Protection of the Horde, Siphoned Power, Reanimator, Blood to ppower or Parasitic Bond are gone, there should be plenty of room for DS-customisation via minor traits.
And 3-4 death shrouds and 2 weapon sets would be 22-26 skills. a bit too much imo.

With Option you would just end up with 2 or 3 F1-F4-Buttons that you will almost never use.

And if they cant balance their Necromancer with 1 death shroud, how do you think we would end up when anet has to balance a necromancer-class with 3-4 death shrouds?

thats not only a necromancer problem and thats not the only enemy that got this kitten.
i was playing my thief(condition-specced) in sorrows embrace and i didnt know that theres a boss which transforms every conditions on itself into heal.
since many weapon skills inflict some sort of condition, i was forced to only auto-attack it with my short bow for the entire fight…

So yes, this kind of enemy is really kittened up. same with enemies which reflect projectiles all the time.

1.traits. their placement, their uselessness etc.etc.. if someone needs an explanation for this one, just pick 3 threads in the necro forum at random and read.

2.slooooow skills. like staff (all of it), focus#5, DS#2 and many more. this is annoying, not fun and it happens way too often that enemies get away because your cast animations are that kittening long.

3.Death shroud. You dont see your cooldowns, you dont see your boons, conditions, other effeccts or your actual health. Its kittened up that your enemy basically knows more about you than you while youre in Death shroud.

Andele.1306:

RashanDale.3609:

Grandmaster – Axe Training – Axe damage is increased and axe skills recharge 20% faster. Axe attack range is increased to 900.

increased range, increased damage, reduced cooldown alltogether is too much imo.
pick 2 of those and move it down to master-major trait.

Adept – Full of Life – Gain 5 seconds of regeneration when you enter Death Shroud.

regeneration does absolutely nothing while youre in death shroud…

Adept – Parasitic Bond – Gain life whenever something dies near you. (240 radius same as plague elite)

its still kitten. i would rather want something that helps me DURING the fight, not when it is over (when im not playing with minions)

1) Thats exactly why it would be a grandmaster trait
2) Pretty sure he ment after it so i didnt mention it, but yeah after going out not in DS
3) Minior trait, would save your kitten in PvP from Dots and in PvE easeir mob transitions perfect for 5 points

1)all other weapon traits are adept or master and i think thats a good habit.
in my opinion it is a bad idea to force someone to put 30 points in one traitline to make the weapon viable. i would rather see axe’s base damage increased by 10/15% (without the trait)) and the trait changed to master with longer range and faster recharge.
this way, if someone doesnt need the longer range and can deal with longer skill recharge, the axe would still be useful

some other suggestions:
Soul reaping:
Gluttony: Raise it to 10%
Power of Undeath: 5% is weak for a grandmaster trait. I’d change it to 10% more damage when life force > 75%, 5% increased damage when life force is between 50% and 75%
Curses: Reapers precision needs a buff.

Besides that i really like the idea of minor traits that individualise the death shroud, like Furious demise or the suggested transfusion grandmaster trait and i think there should be more like this.
For example i would move ‘Furious Demise’ into the spite line and give Curses something like ‘each Life blast and each pulse of life transfer add 1 stack of bleed’.

As a power necro, getting a good crit chance is an issue and fury would be really helpful for that.
And conditionmancers would have a death shroud that does more than just soaking up damage.

Grandmaster – Axe Training – Axe damage is increased and axe skills recharge 20% faster. Axe attack range is increased to 900.

increased range, increased damage, reduced cooldown alltogether is too much imo.
pick 2 of those and move it down to master-major trait.

Adept – Full of Life – Gain 5 seconds of regeneration when you enter Death Shroud.

regeneration does absolutely nothing while youre in death shroud…

Adept – Parasitic Bond – Gain life whenever something dies near you. (240 radius same as plague elite)

its still kitten. i would rather want something that helps me DURING the fight, not when it is over (when im not playing with minions)

no, please dont stop doing puzzles like this.

i love them. and i dont see why i shouldnt enjoy puzzles like this because some other people dont like it.

wouldnt it be easier to make a compendium of necromancer traits that are actually good?

anyway, my additions to that:

Transfusion: not that bad but it has to scale with healing. is this considered a bug or intended? i dont know.

Reaper’s Precision: way too weak. 33% of maybe 50% to get 1% life force? lol

Furious demise: good trait, but why exactly is this in Curses? Would better fit in the Spite-line

Necromatic corruption: 10% chance? thats crap for a grandmaster trait. I’d change it to 100% but with an internal cooldown. or another requirement like ‘If a minion dies it rips a boon off of every nearby enemy’ or something like that.

Full of life: Not bad, but the 90%-limit is a bit too high. The mesmer version of it is way better:
Metaphysical Rejuvenation: Gain 10 seconds of regeneration when your health reaches 75% (30-second cooldown).

Blood to power: Many other similar grandmaster traits add 10% damage with a better requirement. For example Exposed Weakness, First strikes, Fluid Strikes, Radiant Power, Elusive Power etc.etc.
Same with Strength of Undeath

Siphoned Power: Not even sure how exactly this trait works, but some might at 25% health is weak.

Gluttony: Barely noticed a difference. raise to 10%?

Wells- and minion traits: Why are they scattered across 3 different traitlines? And why do minions need that many traits? The traits in particular arent useless, but their placement looks strange.

some nice and some unexpected stuff, like the buff of reaper’s touch.

still no buffs/fixes to transfusion, deathly invigoration, the vampire traits, the kitten reanimator etc….
thats what i am disappointed about most.

and they nerfed lich form, kitten

so mesmers have an illusion thats actually useful during a siege?

yeah, that definitely must be a bug…

srsly, when you compare that to the stuff other classes have for a siege, then the iZerker isnt broken at all.

the good thing about this: since soul reaping is confirmed to be even more useless, i now have again 15 trait points left to spend

if i would only know what to pick with them… some bugged traits or some weak traits?

is….is this a red post? :-O

anyway, thanks a lot for the answer!

the condition-description says: 50% chance to reduce the damage of non-critical hits by 50% (or something like that)
i think at first it is determined if an attack is a crit or not. then weakness/glancing is taken into account.

Weakening Shroud however the blood is on top of you, which makes it pretty lackluster and it only stacks 1 bleed instead of the normal 2 of an enfeebling blood.

I really wonder, why somebody apparently thought “oh, 2 bleeds might be too strong, we have to cut that in half”

deathly invigoration has a horrible base heal and it scales with 0.4*healing;
transfusion is still better if you dont have tons of healing.
it really makes you cry if you compare it to other classes’ heal-abilities and scaling.

stationary targets/objects cant trigger marks…so, yeah…

i guess you have to use another weapon/ds/autoattack.

Hufflepuffer.4201:

I disagree, I feel like the passive bonuses in each line are there for a reason and synergize well with each other. The problem is the traits themselves, especially the minor ones, are often really bad or outright broken. Just go down the list and you’ll see.

Minors:

Spite
Parasitic Bond — Broken
Death Into Life — Terrible
Siphoned Power — Broken, but in a good way (grants might when getting hit in DS). If fixed would be Terrible

Curses
Barbed Precision — 1 sec dot on crit that hits for 50 dmg, ie Terrible
Furious Demise — Okay, but only for power builds
Target the Weak — Broken (does not add dmg to conditions!)

Death Magic
Reanimator — Lol
Protection of the Horde — MM specific, ie Terrible
Deadly Strength — Okay

Blood Magic
Full of Life — Terrible
Vampirism — Terrible (heals for 28 at lvl 80?)
Blood to Power — Bad (you’ll almost never be > 90% health)

Soul Reaping
Gluttony — Broken
Last Gasp — Okay
Strength of Undeath — Broken (or the tool-tip is wrong, and this is another “feature”. It adds up to 100 power depending on how full your life force bar is)

Not to mention the 30% extra life force in Soul Reaping atm is apparently not working as intended as well!

And this is just the minor traits… if you look at the major traits, with a few exceptions like Close to Death, most of them are downright bad or broken. Making a necro build becomes less of “oooh! I want that” but rather “okay, which terrible trait is the least worst to fill out my trait bar”

That is the real problem

Except for Death into life (i really like extra 100 healing (would be more awesome if it would scale properly with all the heal-traits tho)) and Full of life (its a good trait imo. too bad that regeneration is completely wasted when youre in DS) i totally agree.
Theres so much useless or underpowered crap in our traits, it’s hilarious.

@Lucifer: Precision at least gives you a chance of extra bleeds. im not sure if it would be good to give curses another primary attribute like toughness or vitality
For the power:
the funny thing is that for some reason every single class has got power paired up with condition duration.
maybe they just copy/pasted that pattern for the necromancer.

it doesnt fit with each traitline having one of the primary attributes (power, precision, vita, toughness, class attribute) and a secondary one (crit damage, cond. duration, cond. damage, healing, boon duration).

i’d rather like to see condition duration swapped with soul mastery’s critical damage, because unlike critical damage, every necro-spec benefits of longer condition duration

and as lcpdragonslayer stated, it would give condition mancers too much benefits in a single trait line.

Cempa.3645:

So many posts talking about how bad axe is or trying to main a Staff, guys they are not designed to be your main weapon! Axe is for the second set and so is Staff! Its a way to get some utility, CC and Life Force regen in while Scepter/Dagger CD is winding down.

what kind of CC does the axe give you??
And why not? I dont see any arguments in your post. How do you know they arent supposed to be main weapons?

candy corn. tons of candy corn…

other than that…nope. take a friend with a group speed buff with you

I’ve heard both of those so far actually.

me too. and they were serious.
One guy was complaining about staff-clones dealing no damage…
the other one cried about necros being so tanky, while he died all the time (as a guardian)

“wow, that jagged horror really helped me to win this difficult fight”

As most mesmers probably do, when my currently targeted is at low health, i switch to a target that will live a bit longer to cast my phantasms.

I noticed that I often have to wait a second or two before casting. Otherwise the illusions are cast on the previous target.

Is this intended? Is this a bug? I have a rather crappy internet connection; could that be the reason why the game sometimes doesnt ‘accept’ my new target?

(Never had such problems with my necromancer; then again, with dagger/staff and wells, most of its abilities were (ground target-)AoE)

how do you manage to get +1200 Power, +500 Toughness, 50%crit AND +342 Vitality? oO

@xavi: thats the ‘Beryl’-Stuff: Beryl Shars, Beryl Crystals, Beryl Orbs.

@Iehova: if there is too much CC, then yes, that isnt fun. And there are plenty of areas/dungeons in this game where you’re chain-disabled which is really frustrating

But in this dungeon you get barely feared, once you figure out how the scarecrows work.

I really enjoy the dungeon and so far it was also more rewarding than any other dungeon i did (4 exotics, yay).

next time i have to try what TheRabbit and rickets are doing. My guild mates are already complaining very often about getting feared of the platform

1.Dagger:
-some sort of AoE, maybe on the third chain-attack?
-buffed Life Siphon (damage and heal-wise). Should be an AoE-heal imo.
-Mobility/Gap-closer. Every other melee-weapon set has it

2.Fixed Traits:
-tons of bugs that have to be fixed (and should have been fixed by now)
-some useless traits/traits that dont scale at all: need to be fixed aswell
-better death magic-traitline
-why Soul reaping has got ‘Critical Damage’ as secondary attribute? I’d change it to ‘Condition duration’, since every spec benefits of it.

Staff:
-better #1 attack (attack sound, attack speed, projectile speed)
-staff related traits that arent scattered across traitlines

3.Necro-only minipets…err, minions:
-some sort of AI
-fixing that fix about losing all minions while transformed
or:
-underwater flesh golem (undead shark would look awesome)

4.Death Shroud:
-life blast: faster attackspeed
-an underwater-death shroud that is somewhat useful and not only condition-remove-support
-a different life-blast/life transfer when a scepter is equipped
-longer fear. 1.5s or 2s.

5.downed state:
-AoE-fear.

6.Combo finishers
-we need some

7.some communication, a post from anet; something that tells us what they are planning to change. if they want to change anything at all or if they just dont care about nec…

cant say much about the axe since i barely played with it

You want to punish people for not building a glass cannon and being more tanky? no, i would hate that…

Havent beaten the tower yet and it isnt the tower itself that annoys me so much.

its rather the stupid cutscene, that you have to wait for ages until you can try again and that i sometimes get teleported out to the beginning for no apparent reason (but that could be caused by my crappy internet connection aswell).

but its nice to see PvE-content that is actually challenging