Guild Wars 2

Death into Life could be simply changed to convert power into vitality. It could synergize better with Death Shroud then.

For Siphoned Power, I was thinking about making it 50% hp trigger and make it steal up to 2-3 boons from enemies around.
As for Strenght of the Undeath… I think it’s good in general.

I were thinking about some trait synergizing with our boon removals, maybe for adept Blood or Death tree. Like, whenever you remove/corrupt a boon, gain Life Force/copy the boon/siphon health. It could raise the usefulness of Chill of Death major trait for Spite and Spinal Shivers ability for Focus, shifting meta maybe a little bit, making Focus more viable even for non-DS specs

T3 chest and gloves ruin overall look. Get something more theme-fitting. For the rest, I like it

Increasing Axe #1 range to 900 and giving it some cleave/a little bit more damage would be nice. Other than that, I think in general we have pretty good weapons comparing to other classes. They lack something unique, good animations, GW1 Necro’s “sacrifice” and cleave.but in general they work properly.

And to OP – if you want a Mesmer staff, play a Mesmer. It’s prettt easy, you know. I do agree that Staff #1 could use some changes because it’s pretty boring skill (at least it can hit decently in power specs + regenerates LF very quickly if used right)

I think that when in future we’ll see better design and importance of player’s home instance, like home instance upgradable with merchants, etc, we may see something like manual, free portal from UI or some item, which would work similar to.home portal like in Diablo 3.

Natchniony.
In free translation from polish, it means “inspired” “enlightened” “infused”, commonly in religious manner.
As for Charr Necromancer, I find it both quite ironiclly funny and unqie, moving away from traditional “necro” to more “tweaked cultist” like

@Garah Emberbane – 6/10 – As I like “Bane”, “Ember” is totally overused and so common, probably after “The Ghosts of Ascalon” novel. “Garah” sounds too close to “Galraht” , the side boss of GW1, krytan human.

Heh, I always liked the third option I believe, “honorless gladium”. Also, “sorcerous shaman”. Story for Charr is by far better written and more entertaining than whole Living Story so far

Not every Necromancer roams in cheesy 30/20/0/0/20 builds with burst spec.From what I’ve heard and seen, PU mesmers are able to survive most of condition necromancer burst unless you just kittenload them with everything you’ve got and.pray it’s enough. The fact that they stealth so often negates any real tactic vs. them, because in order to put decent condition pressure you have to stack up conditions, what takes time.
On the other hand, if you plan to go more power way, they have insane mobility, vigor, protection, regen and aegis uptime. So even if you catch them off stealth, they’re able to survive quite easily

Bump, great thread

Well, if you know Necromancer class, you can always stop before the mark and take a look at the Mark icon.
Go figure it out Sherlock Holmes!
:p

Frequent Dark Path, Chillbains.
I find it pretty enough. You won’t have some sustain uptime on poison, but enough to set up your burst for couple seconds.
Tbh, take focus and Spiteful Talisman trqit. It helps with bunkers, as with Axe+Focus you have 4 boon removals on low cd, saving up utility for something else than Corrupt Boon. CB is good if you run Condition builds, otherwise it’s not that good.
Spite Signet is another thing you want to run if you build some kind of hybrid.

Anyway, to sum it up.
-Staff is excellent secondary weapon for any Necro build and situation.
-Death Shroud has built-in poison+chill+bleed+teleport which is Dark Path
-You won’t be spamming poison. Get the bunker low, rip his boons off, poison him quickly and burst

If you want to change these things in Thief, no problem.
Just remember to actually buff in-combat survival, reduce amount of traits dependant on stealth, make min cap 3 seconds, max cap 8-10 seconds

You can stomp and you can revive in DS. It’s just about timing and it wasn’t intended.
I think that at least healing effects “healing” your Life Force pool when in DS would be an option

Don’t you dare changing my Reaper’s Touch! Can’t touch this!

I’m afraid of ele if the player behind it is very skilled and perfected his class.
So yeah, maybe half a year ago?

You can’t really compare Thief to Rogue. It’s just different mechanic. When Rogue has more combat tricks, CC, it doesn’t rely on instant burst. You have to build up your combo points and then decide how to spend them. It’s also a thing that Rogue doesn’t rely on stealth that much. Managing resource and timing cooldowns is pretty much all what rogue is about.

Thief is another concept. It doesn’t have any considerable damage mitigation beside dodging and evading all the way. It’s strenght comes from instant, very quick burst which doesn’t need much preparation and quick disengages/stealth.

To be honest, I’d like to see the Thief taking some better things from Rogue’s design, such as less rely on stealth, but more on actual fight. More quick running and usage of various movement effects rather than strict easy-mode teleporting directly to the target. Less focus on spamming evades, maybe a little bit more control with the cost of instant damage, more building-up damage.
Just make it something more than stealth, open, couple hits, disengage/stealth repeat combos.
Let them stay in the battlefield more and support allies with unique stuff. What stuff? Well, maybe something like:

Combat Awarness
For next X seconds you’re immune to critical damage. Gain 10 energy every time you evade an attack. After Awarness ends, lose all remaining endurance and suffer from Weakness for Y seconds
And make it able to affect allies in small radius when traited.
Risk/Reward ooldown concept. Sounds interesting for me

Castaliea.3156:

I wonder what would happen if they gave the thief a Longbow and/or changed the Shortbow skills to be actual weapon skills instead of utility….what would happen to the Ranger population?

Easy. Half of Rangers would roll a Thief. Including myself

Could be the way to make currently useless “trash” item trophies more useful.

Poor Giants.
Warrior or Guardian without gear would survive longer

Players like Bows. We would like to have anything considerable as proper bow. Sadly, ANet doesn’t.

Rennoko.5731:

sierras.6297:

Knowing how the classes work is a big factor. Second of all, power builds IMO are generally better for roaming. I run 30/10/0/0/30. Death shroud is amazing. Dps the mesmer fast then kill the thief.

Except the part where their opening salvo of zerker summon + backstab downs you in a power build instantly… or if you are more tanky, you fail to get them below 50% because of PU and shadow regen.

I have people that message me convinced power works for roaming, but I have yet to see any power video in an outnumbered scenario convince me otherwise. Even fights sure, it works fine, even amazing, and in slightly outnumbered fights if you can lich 1 spam, but beyond that 2 to 1 odds, I cannot see a power build working. Without epidemic to leverage your damage significantly, I don’t see where a power build makes that up.

Presumably the duo was heavily zerker, as most thief mesmer combos are…. that would be a fight where you have to hope they are just bad… it is as simple as that.

Both thief and mesmer have instant cast abilities to break stun, and those abilties either move them out of range or make the untargettable. If you get lucky enough to wait out the decoy or the shadowstep/blinding powder from them without wasting your DS2/DS3 + epidemic combo, you might pull off downing one or the other, but they have shadow refuge and mass invis… so you won’t down or stomp anyone.

Currently the standard PU zerker mesmer phantasm build is very hard for a necro to handle, even if they only run the bare bones condition removal. Simply because they can stay invisible for such a long time cycling cooldowns, that you just have to face tank those summons while he stealths and heals etc.

Thief is far less of a problem in 1v1, but anything + thief in 1v2 makes for an up-hill battle.

I think that the problem you’ve described, about power specs disability to deal with outnumbered fights lies not in power specs, but rather in condition ones.
The game is currently constructed in a particular fashion, that player should have a very hard time dealing with outnumbered fights because of downed state. It kills power specs in outnumbered fights, because most, like mine, have situational, cooldown defense which is lacking when it comes to stop and channel stomp. The exeptions to this rule are mostly Thieves and Mesmers, which have no problems with stomping people, so they’re the most popular classes for outnumbered fights since beta.
Condition specs have just easier way. Condition specs require only one stat to work, rest is usually passive defense. So it works better with stomping because you’re more resilient when casting stomp.

That’s said, I can tell you that I do manage some outnumbered fights in my build. However, most of them, successful, are won mostly by positioning and a lot of preparation.
Condition specs, like yours, running defensive stats can manage outnumbered fights in almost any terrain or situation. Conditions, once applied, always hit and you just can survive more raw damage without using cooldowns or positioning.

So yep, the problem lies not in Power specs, but Condition spec unfair advantage

While I like it overall, I’d still prefer to run with Axe rather than Dagger in here. From what I’ve seen, you swap weapons often to get the Soul Marks triggers and use Life Blast for sustain power damage, you use Dagger #1 very rarely. When I think that Dagger is superior if you go for more tanky builds, I find Axe far better if you swap often and run more offensive power builds. It has more reliable LF generation for non-tanky because you’re not required to be in close melee and is more bursty weapon in general. Also, offers other helpful things.

When I can see some downsides of the build, LF gen and huge life+DS pool are perfect for current meta

I think people like this make these threads only to see someone responding “Warrior”. Then, they’re satisfied about revealing obvious truth and can feel proud if it. Seriously, take a look at 50% of threads over the forum before you post. They all contain same topic, same arguments, same people and same conclusions.

Topics like this only further increase level of QQ on these forums.

If they’re any good, Thief/Mesmer combo has been a Necro buster since day 1, especially in PvE

Hey!
So I’ve decided to give it a shot and post my current roaming build. This is purely Power spec, based on high LF mainetance, cd timing and Life Blast to do high spike damage. I don’t like going for pure Zerker sets because I find them not durable enough. My build, if played good, will provide very high pressure, some nice trick/escape/survive ablity and absolutely no group support besides vun stacking.

I find it very fun to play, especially 1v1/1v2, as it isn’t pure gank build which would kill in couple seconds or die. Instead, you have so high Life Force generation that you’re able to use DS as a defense and offense at the same time.
If you want to roam with someone, I’d suggest taking a warrior, spec’d into CC/maybe condi removal for you.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3kHkH0x3ZJ-K0;9;4T-9-T17B;12;335B5Jk6-J-FV19cV19cn-kKcFP7-VYod3-m5lal5naka-o-Gs1k;5N2EwN2Eq;9;9;9;9;7V8k3C

Q&A
-Why 10 in DM?
As you can see, I use two minions almost every time. Cd reduction allows me to just summon them faster, and after spending 60 points in main traitlines, I found this option the best for WvWvW. Quicker Flesh Wurms, quicker Shadow Fiends – always good stuff.

-Why Minions?
Minions are cool. It’s not only free dps increase, it’s also bodyblock and utility. Their base hp is high enough to be quite durable, they don’t really die to often. And if they do, hey, you have reduced cd! Dying FG also provides a little bit of LF.
I use Flesh Wurm in most of the times because teleport can be quite awesome if placed correctly and is great escape tool. It’s also another stunbreak, so you have 3 total.
I swap Wurm to Fiend when I know I’ll need to blindstomp (guardian, ranger, warrior) in near future, if I need more bodyblock+ Life Force regeneration. It’s also pretty cool damage and second highest HP pool after golem. Use it when Wurm is not really that helpful, like with ranged classes.

-Why not Vital Persistence?
You know, that’s a good stuff. But I use 2 spectrals which are pretty crucial and provide more sustain over time. 12 second cooldown reduce on each is a big thing, ya know

-Mobility?
In-combat, probably one of the strongest for Necromancer. Your positioning is crucial, because when you get in good position, you’re able to put very high pressure on target with LB. You have access to many chills, cripple, even 1200 range. Use wisely.
As for OOC mobility, just use Spectral Walk whenever you need speed boost. Taking Traveler runes or SoL is total waste for this build IMHO. Even if someone catches you off-guard and you’ve used your SW already, you can easily survive CD with your other abilities.

-Will you make a video about this build?
Sure, in near future

Leave some feedback, I’d be glad to hear your visions of build. Contact me in-game if you want [Desolation EU].

Awesome Arnold

I find Necro weapons much more fun than Ranger’s weapons.
And I disagre about the Axe. It’s amazing, only thing lacking a bit is auto attack which should be 900 range als and have some cleave/increased damage. As it stands out now, #1 is just a debuff tool for your further attacks and #2. And Unholy Feast… AoE considerable damage, AoE cripple, AoE boon removal and gives retaliation… What more?

God, rainbow Life Blast… Whoever made this, should burn

You can basclly run a healing guardian. Not only it heals for nice amounts, provides regeneration, has best rezzing in the game and provides AoE Stability/Condition cleanse, but also is a tough tank and buffs allies, keeping them might and protection stacked.

Some classes can achieve more burst healing, like Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer (yes, necromancer) but when it comes to best healing/support class in the game, it’s just Guardian all the way. There’s a reason why it’s one of the most popular classes and demanded for every dungeon

sierras.6297:

Death shroud drop: fall from any height and cast DS just before you hit the ground for DS to absorb damage and do nothing to your health bar ????

Doesn’t work anymore. Now Death Shroud can be indeed used to.absorb a little bit more falling damage, but alone won’t save you from killing falling damage

I think that reducing recharge a little bit on WoD and WoP could be a nice move. Another thing is that what has been noticed above: combo fields. I think we could use more.
-Well of Darkness could be a smoke field instead of dark. Could be fun
-Well of Power could be maybe ice combo field. Giving yourself Frost Armor or chilling enemy makes sense for Necromancer’s theme

^ +1

We also need some fun encounters, especially for low-level bosses, champions. I think it’d be fine if some NPCs assisting in a boss fight would just shout at the new players: “It’s about to do X! Hide behind something/Use Y !”

It’s much more fun to not only dodge around, but also play with cool mechanics. As the players progress, slowly raise the difficulty level of bosses, not by just scaling their HP, but also by giving them some stuff.

You see, we need hard content. But we also need fun content when you have to adapt, move yourself.

^ I think we’d have a Wipe-a-thon for 90% of GW2 playerbase before the phase 2 starts lol ;p
But I like the concept, I’d like to try it. Cleaving melee boss auto-attacks is what we really need to wipe out all those “stack and zerg” so called pros. And round area without obstacles ensures nothing can be really exploited.

In general, you can take most of WoW expansion raids beginning from Sunwell to MoP, just delete the tank and dedicated healer, add some anti-zerg cleaving attacks and you have strong basic variety of ideas for possible dungeon and worls bosses.
Most of new raids are not designed by typical “heal tank&dps” scheme at all

Kahrgan.7401:

Charr /15charr

Here, fixed and agreed

KyreneZA.8617:

I came for the innuendo…

Then you should check
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancers-have-vigor/first#post3468217

Reduced cooldown and buffed minion traits are also a good way to go.
I love having my Bone Fiend up almost every time and not dying instantly.

Utility immobilize gives plenty of time to get into right position and set some protection

Bhawb.7408:

Life force doesn’t need to be changed into a resource pool, our health should be turned into the pool, with Deathshroud actually allowing us to potentially float at lower HP due to sacrificing and then jump into DS to cover us if something bad happened.

This was one of the biggest things I really missed about GW1. I really miss the conditional abilities and the ability to use HP as an extra resource.

+1, would bang to the heaven’s door

Keep in mind, we still have at least 6 possible future Death Shroud skill expansions. We already do have attacks, why not add DS “utilities”?

And more normal weapons/utilities playing with both Life Force and Health

When we’re not really that helpful and strong in executing current endgame content based on “stack and zerg”, I can see ANet devs thinking more and more how to avoid this painful and skillless/tacticless situation in future.
I believe that they’ll try to expand PvE content to be something more than “dodge or die” or “stack in the corridor to win”/total abuse of fight mechanics/skipping 80% of the content/bosses being a free lootbag with zyllions of hp. I think we may see bosses who actually do some damage besides one-shotting/nothing, when Death Shroud, health pool may be useful.
We also may see some content more dedicated for us – bosses using troublesome, meaningful boons/some condition pressure besides insta-gib 25 bleeding stack from one attack over the fight.

Yea, it’s a good point to start leveling your Necromancer. We’re not perfect or suited for mindless zerging. But we may face new content better than any other class in future

Without dedicated healers in the game, keeping up all your minions would be nearly impossible in GW2. We can give some regeneration to them, true, but the cap is 5, includes you and priritizes anything else than minions themselves.

Also, we’re not a type of summoner. It wouldn’t really work in competitive MMO to just sit back and spawn more and more minions when not engaging in fight actively.
As Bhawb said, minions in GW2 do not have any will or mind (even if it would be some nice stuff for some dungeon… Crazy summoner who tried to give his minions mind and they rebel :p ), spawns are just the way of executions master’s will. Also, they’re optional.
And we already have class mechanic.

I believe that further expansion of Death Shroud might bring some new things to the table. We still have 6 places empty and now they’re “utilities”

I think that every player should receive some in-game book, like one of those we’ve got in GW1.

It should be something like a in-game informer, could be built into UI. It would save your stories, lore you’ve experienced…

Think about that. Something similar to Personal Story tab, but much bigger.

Every time you complete a new dungeon, story or explorable, done something with lore (possible future findings? Maybe?) – like small in-game wiki expanding by your account progression. You’ve talked about some lore stuff with NPC? Why your character shouldn’t make some quick notes from that? You’ve experienced something with Living Story, got any in-game knowledge? Why not have easy and fast access to your character personal notes about these things? You know, working just like some quick reviser
with possible built link to gw2 wiki if you want more knowledge on the topic.

It could also have some built-in links stuff, like “The Tyria Times”. You know, informating you about videos like this or new patch notes, reviews and leaving links to them. Just like another tab.

I think it would increase player understanding in a huge way. Also, if you come back after some time to the game, you’d be able to quickly revise what’s recent about your character + check on latest updates summary/story summary for you.

I really hope that one day, when I click on, for example, amulet of the mursaat in the vendor tab, I’ll see a quick descreption like now, followed by “Want to know more about Mursaat? Read more!”.

pzyonix.1645:

Scarlet is not a champ, as Konig Des Todes said it ‘is a filler arc to separate two ED-focussed storylines’

If you want likely Dragonchamps, think like Urgoz on steroids for Mordremoth (assumed name for the Jungle Dragon) or the Sylvari starter personal quest dragon.

The Great Destroyer, defeated exchamp of Primordus in GW1 also was dragonshaped, just like the Claw of Jormag and The Shatterer are shaped like dragons.

No, a sylvari becoming a champion doesn’t make sense. Neither being a minion, she is just way to narcissistic to follow anyone or anything.

Well, dragon champions don’t have to be dragon-shaped. In fact, Great Destroyer looked more like a tennis ball, but whatever, not my point :p

In the novel “The Edge of Destiny” we can read that our überteam are on the hillarious cheese “killing spree” with Dragon Champions, killing one after one, with merely a tea-break.
However, those minions don’t look like dragons at all. The Icy guy , champion of Jormag looks like some variation of Icebrood from what I remember, Destroyer of Life, the Primo buddy is just a destroyer and Zhaitan’s thingy is undead pirate.
It can be that this novel is just poorly written (worst of all three novels, Jeff Grub rocks) and shouldn’t be treaten as any part of serious lore besides making buddy-buddy Edge of Destiny and then breaking it on Kralkatorrik’s fight, but dunno…

But our hand from Staff #1 has the longest reach. May be helpful sometimes

If you ever have a chance, try using Skull dropped by Ranger’s Pet Boar. It has no limit on fear duration, basic fear is 4.5 second, can be spreaded multiple times to accumulate the effect by Epidemic, triggers terror. If your Ranger is specced into Moment of Clarity+some condi duration, you’ll achieve 14-16 second AoE fear without a problem

Since it’s 99% Thief stuff, why do you post it here and not on the subforum? Moderator should move the thread

Also, you do realise that stuff like adding stun factor to Dagger 4 would even further broke the entire idea of already broken kiting in this game? Why should I even bother kiting a thief? S/D would already teleport to me and immobilize every time I manage to create any gap, or just lolstun me+cripple to ensure I won’t get out of Sword #2? Not counting other stuff you w+Why should Hide in Shadows cure another un-coverable condition?

You know, you buff already best Thief healing skill which, with buff, removes 4 damaging conditions out of 5 possible, grants stealth, regeneration and reasonable burst heal? Torment was made to counter mobile classes, ya know. Cleansing it on every step isn’t the best solution ever.

But as I said, keep your suggestions to Thief subforum, where it belongs. And please, please, don’t make another “The XYZ Document”. It’s not Discovery channel. At least name it in other way. Greetings

Siedge of Lion’s Arch? Patch 5.4?

Our mobility and true meaning of skill come from positioning…If you know what I mean

We just outperform other classes so badly that they need bonus vigor. We do not.

Well, you can still troll CClock people down for hours with MoC and Boar pet. I have some saved footage from things like 30 sec AoE fear, fun stuff, may post it when I have time around Feb

To quote System of Down, Cigaro – “My GS is much bigger than yours…”

You see, boy, size is not everything.
Class is a thing.
Still, women prefer Rangers to Warriors

Well, I think seeing some big kitten Spider God or such would be approved by players imo, with good mechanics, for some better fight.

But honestly, we’re at the point when any true content with actual new stuff would be welcomed by players…

Mystic.5934:

being separate from pve/wvw is a big part of it.
but the “rush rush perfect strategy omg stop being a noob learn to play game over” is the biggest turnoff. I prefer slow setup, organize, prepare, execute. being thrown in head first and have to figure out what you’re doing after needing to do it is not for me.
more game types would be nice.
My ideal one would be where you build your own keep on your own time (have 10 turrets, 10 mercenaries, 10 siege, etc. that can be placed where you want on a landscape), then when you’re ready you join a game with others who’ve made their own keep, and you try to capture the others’ flags.
I tried pvp for a few hours. took me 4 games to realize there were capture points. I had gone into it thinking it’s one team vs. another; we are supposed to be killing each other. not exactly.

Some kind of Tower Defense, but in MMO? Hah, could be a nice fun, however it’d have to be 1v1 or organised teams only.
Put something like this in yoloque and people would argue about one turret for an hour ;p

Heavy. For your Guardian or Worrior