Guild Wars 2

Interesting. I just tested it and was surprised to find that Uncatchable didn’t cause a thief to enter combat, even if it manages to make an opponent bleed. I suspect that the change to this trait to bring it in line with others would be making it only work while already in combat though.

Edit:

Just tested it, it doesn’t make you enter combat. So yeah…

It does if the mark triggers, and appears to do so no matter your distance from the mark. (Although you’ve only got 6 seconds to make said distance.)

Dietzen.6127:

Softspoken.2410:

digiowl.9620:

A heal signet thief chewing omnom will outperform a necromancer using traits…

You’re comparing a dedicated healing skill to a collection of two or three traits, one of which is a Master Minor trait. (Nourishment buffs aren’t really relevant from a class comparison perspective.)

A thief with signet still heals for just as much if not more than a necro with both lifesteal on hit and crit and 50% improvement. That’s 2 traits and a minor trait that a thief can cover with just his heal signet. Ayraswag has a lifesteal vid up on youtube that shows the power of lifesteal of thieves. Seems silly that a thief can lifesteal more efficiently than a necromancer can.

I still think that sacrificing your burst heal skill completely (Hide in shadows is practically consume conditions + stealth, and withdraw is a good ‘You can’t catch me’ skill) is a more significant trade-off than 20 points in Blood Magic and 10 in Curses. Basically, if a necromancer can’t siphon enough health via their hit volume, they still have a dedicated heal to fall back on. If a thief can’t make it from their siphon, they’re stuck: it’s rarely a good idea to use the active on Signet of Malice.

My apologies if this bug was already listed, I couldn’t find it anywhere though.

Sometimes if you switch around utility skills while they’re recharging, you can manage to copy the recharge timer across skills. I’ve managed to do it purposefully on my necromancer and mesmer so far.

The process is something like: Use skill A on 7. Switch slot 8 to skill A. Switch slot 7 to skill A again. Switch slot 8 to skill B (B is anything that wasn’t already on the bar) and then switch it back.

I can’t reproduce it consistently, but it has something to do with moving around skills that are still recharging by picking them for other slots, and swapping skills in and out of the bar.

In the attached picture, blood is power has a 48 second recharge remaining. It’s worth noting that blood is power’s default recharge is 30 seconds. Also note that the fractional indicator for the recharge matches Signet of Undeath exactly: that’s the skill whose recharge it copied.

lettucemode.3789:

Softspoken.2410:

Oh, thank you! That is the post I was looking for. Has anyone heard tell of Warriors Vengeance rallying off of minions or the like recently?

In the last patch notes, they disabled/fixed rallying off of things that give you 0 experience for killing them. This includes Necro minions, Ranger pets, and other summons. I haven’t noticed anything rallying off minions since this change. I even saw a Warrior use Vengeance and kill a minion of a fellow necromancer, then die.

Softspoken.2410:

Was just playing with this some more: Lich 5 can be blocked when a foe uses a ‘blocking’ effect, (I tested it on ornery crabs: the Regen was not ripped and I got the Blocked! text) which seems fine, but I still don’t know if Aegis does it or not, because I can’t think of a single controllable / repeatable situation where an enemy has Aegis.

I will try to test this with some guildies in sPvP when I get home from work.

kKagari.6804:

I’ve run into the following bug with Spectral Walk a few times in the last week.

Say you have utility 1 on CD. Then you switch utility 2 to spectral walk. the newly slotted spectral walk will be on CD, sharing exactly the same CD as utility 1.

I have noticed this as well, except with Spectral Wall and Spectral Grasp. So the problem doesn’t seem to be localized to any particular ability. I haven’t been able to reproduce it consistently, though

Much appreciated, lettucemode.

Just managed to get Blood is Power on the same recharge as Signet of Undeath. It has something to do with getting a skill on cooldown, switching the location of the skill by re-arranging the bar, then changing the skill that was in its old position to something completely different.

I’ll look into this on the general Bug Forums, since it doesn’t seem to be limited to a single skill, and affects multiple classes. (I just caused it on my Mesmer as well.)

lettucemode.3789:

Malignar.6905:

I can’t even get putrid mark’s combo blast finisher to work if I’m standing on top of spectral wall. So I’m not entirely sure that the spectral wall combo field work’s with putrid mark at all. Some have said that it works at the caster’s feet, not the case with me.

The blast finisher doesn’t activate until someone triggers the mark (I think). Perhaps that is another reason you’re not seeing it.

In my experience, the blast finisher is decided when you cast the mark, but stored until the mark actually triggers. Once it triggers, the blast finisher is created as well. So you can actually get a Chaos Armor long after Spectral Wall has faded!

Mostly it’s visual changes for me. EDIT- Actually I should come clean on this. It’s visual changes as well as allowing for utilities and elites to still be available, and the hope of healing going to your regular life bar. I’ve seen enough remakes of Death Shroud that I’m burned out on the idea of trying to re-imagine its skills. Frankly at this point of the game’s life, I don’t think I’d change its actual functionality much as a dev.

Hitting DS now alters your skillbar, instead of replacing it with a Downed-style UI. You could possibly add ghostly green effects, as inspired by how a guardian’s virtue of justice causes those blue fire effects.

• Since everything else is in place, all boons / buffs / debuffs / conditions / control effects are still visible in the standard places.
• Functionality change: You can receive healing while in Death Shroud. This is a strict buff, but I’m tired of feeling like Regeneration and other constant heal effects are wasted on me.
• Instead of the single long bar for life force, your health circle is covered in a translucent green coating that fills / empties similarly to regular health. It also shows a static life force total. Your regular health level would still be visible behind it, (possibly darkened) but the exact total is then hidden for the sake of UI space.
• When not activated, your life force total would still be shown as a bar above your 1-5 skills. It fits with the general location of class mechanics, and keeps it easy to read.
• Your first five skills are replaced with the current death shroud skills. You could add a fifth, I guess, but frankly I don’t want to go there.
• Your heal skill is visible, and usable, whether or not you are able to regain health. If the skill won’t regain health, the 6 skill should have a heavy, obscuring green/black border while in Death Shroud. The timer should still be visible though.
• Functionality change: Utility skills and elite skills are visible and usable. Any skill that would normally be cancelled by entering death shroud (Spirit Walk, Lich Form, etc) will now cancel death shroud on use, placing death shroud on full recharge. These skills might also get a unique UI effect to symbolize that they’d cancel it, but this doesn’t seem as necessary as for the heal skill.

My major worry is that these changes would make it too much like an Elementalist attunement visually, and personally I’d like to distance it from that comparison a bit.

So anyways, nobody was trying to suggest making life siphon mechanics try and proc off of stacks of bleeding, despite any confusing statements. In light of this, Too Frisky, do you still find Daecollo’s suggested changes too much / too little?

(I’m just worried you’re both getting far afield of your original topics.)

manveruppd.7601:

Didn’t realize that Bloodthirst affects Life Leech, though it makes sense really. Is it also affected by healing power if anyone knows?

It is, though the ratio is predictably small. (Somewhere around 4 health per 100 healing power, per tick.) I think Bloodthirst multiplies that ratio as well though, and it seems to tick about three times per second, but I’m not sure about the rate of fire.

digiowl.9620:

A heal signet thief chewing omnom will outperform a necromancer using traits…

You’re comparing a dedicated healing skill to a collection of two or three traits, one of which is a Master Minor trait. (Nourishment buffs aren’t really relevant from a class comparison perspective.)

Something to note is that for 9/10 builds, Life Leech only heals enough to match your natural ‘bleed-out’ degeneration from downed state. It won’t heal you back to full unless you take the improved siphoning trait, and even then it’s a bit iffy.

Here’s my general strategy for PvE:

Find a target that’s low, start hitting it with 1 (Life Leech).
If there’s only one enemy

• Use 2 (Fear) once it’s available
• Switch to 4 (Bandage) as your foe is running from you.
• When your enemy walks hits you and breaks Bandage’s channel, if 3 (Fetid Ground) is up, cast it then hit 1 (Life Leech) again.

The objective is to repeat this cycle as long as needed to finish your foe.

If you have multiple enemies beating you down, the cycle is mostly the same, except that you won’t bother switching to Bandage, (Something will be hitting you constantly, so you won’t get any of the healing) and you should use your Fear to force the highest damage opponent to stop hitting you, rather than disabling what you’re actually trying to kill.

Fetid Ground is a near-instant cast, so feel free to throw it at your enemies whenever you’re not channeling something else. Bandage’s heal is much better than Life Leech’s, so use it when you can to stall for time.

If you want to make your Downed State really strong, consider 10 points in Spite, Death Magic and Blood Magic to take Death’s Embrace, Dark Armor and Bloodthirst. Death’s Embrace helps you kill things much more quickly, Dark Armor makes you much harder to kill (since you’re channeling Life Leech almost constantly) and Bloodthirst makes Life Leech strong enough to out-heal your natural life degeneration.

Malignar.6905:

I can’t even get putrid mark’s combo blast finisher to work if I’m standing on top of spectral wall. So I’m not entirely sure that the spectral wall combo field work’s with putrid mark at all. Some have said that it works at the caster’s feet, not the case with me.

I’m still managing to make it work: are you sure you’re putting the mark at wherever you were standing when you cast spectral wall, rather than wherever you were standing when casting putrid mark?

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Softspoken.2410:

Current notes: I’d like to look into rally-on-kill effects triggering on minions. I was sure I saw a Red post stating this shouldn’t be the case, but I’m not totally clear on how that mechanic functions yet.

I think this is the thread you wanted (had to resort to a Google search to find it!):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/I-d-rather-have-reanimator-disabled-until-a-fix-is-ready/587730

Oh, thank you! That is the post I was looking for. Has anyone heard tell of Warriors Vengeance rallying off of minions or the like recently?

Edit:

lichs 5 get blocked by aegis, yet the description says it rips enemy boons.

Was just playing with this some more: Lich 5 can be blocked when a foe uses a ‘blocking’ effect, (I tested it on ornery crabs: the Regen was not ripped and I got the Blocked! text) which seems fine, but I still don’t know if Aegis does it or not, because I can’t think of a single controllable / repeatable situation where an enemy has Aegis.

I noticed today in Ascalonian Catacombs that while disguised as a ghost, entering death shroud temporarily made me use my normal model instead of the generic human disguise. This might happen with other transformations, especially plot-line induced ones. Can anyone think of other examples?

I’ll admit, I haven’t seen that one before. For a second I tried to make it work though.

“Death Shroud no longer has any active skills. How does it function??”
My best guess was that you automatically Life Blast anything that gets near you, and have a weak version of Life Transfusion running 24/7. I don’t know how you’d make Dark Path work without screwing over a starter player though.

It’s definitely a confusingly worded mechanic, but people are telling it to you straight. A lot of numbers regarding Life Force are percentage based, so the % booster from Soul Reaping mostly applies to the amount of outside damage you can block with Life Force.

Basically, points in Soul Reaping let you take more damage while in Death Shroud, but they don’t make your Death Shroud take longer to fill up or drain by the base degeneration.

Remember to take into account that life force generation is a form of sustain, since life force stands in for HP during Death Shroud.

Unknown.2796:

Trait Traitline; Death Magic, trait; II – Greater marks,

This used to function fine for staff; (you see the correct size of the mark before casting it) this got changed in some update and only applies to Chillblains now, the #3 skill on staff. The actual marks are working as intended, they are larger but the preview/ground target just doesn’t show that.

Already noted in the list, but I’ll edit it to be a bit clearer.

EDIT: Tomorrow I should be able to say decisively that Death Shroud clears “Entered Realm of Grenth”. I tried to check it today, but got too distracted by the actual event to pay close enough attention. It looks like it clears it, but the debuff itself seems to come and go at sporadic times so I may just be losing it by the time I leave death shroud and not noticing the cause.

Yeah it clears it.

I don’t understand what you mean by ‘static’ class mechanic. Could you explain?

Okay, I’ve seen the lock-out thing happen on leaving Death Shroud, but I can’t for the life of me get it to act consistently. I’m putting it up on the list with a note that the cause is unclear, but that it started on the Jan 28th patch.

Rennoko.5731:

I would love if someone else could confirm DS#2 not working properly on occasion. I would say at least 2-3 times a night, I will have it just shoot off in a direct straight line from my facing, and not “home-in” on my target like it does 95% of the time.

This sounds like something is occasionally just dropping your targeting before you use Dark Path: It fires off as if you have no target selected. I really can’t get it to reproduce though, and I’m worried it might be more of a general targeting bug than something specific to Dark Path. So I can’t add it, but if you find out any more about it feel free to bring it up again.

Added Training of the Master not updating the tooltips. Thankfully, the damage is being boosted. It seems pretty rare for a % booster to actually change the damage shown on a tooltip for any class, which is just too bad.

I’ll admit: I had never realized that Putrid Explosion always detonated the closer minion to the caster. I’m not sure it would count as a bug though: there’s nothing in the skill description to suggest to the user (besides prior experience with the skill’s GW1 equivalent) that which minion explodes is based on their distance from the caster, let alone being the further of the minions.

Edit:

Wonder what chances are this get stickied!

Apparently pretty good. o_o

I’m not going to be able to play GW2 much the next couple of days, and I don’t know how much I’ll be able to check the thread. I’ll try and test Spectral Grasp in various contexts then to see if there’s any specific triggers for it failing, as well as play through the Grenth event chain.

I can’t think of any PvE mobs that have aegis (let alone aegis + other boons) so if anyone else could weigh in on if Grim Specter (Lich 5) rips aegis properly I’d appreciate it.

Until then I’ve added two of them to the list, but without a confirmed date. If I can come up with a more exact descriptor for what causes Spectral Grasp to fail, I’ll update that one with a confirmation date as well.

EDIT: I leave for three days and suddenly there’s 8 new posts. Maybe I should leave more often?

Drachshyish.2319:

Something wierd happened with that post… wth… it should not look like that..

It’s like if Groundhog Day happened to a post instead of a person.

I’ll admit, I worry about the power of Axe Training – It seems like axe is just sub-par damage wise without it, and only at par with it.

The actual drawbacks to Corruptions (Utility skills which apply conditions) are often much less than they appear, especially when you combo them with other Necro Abilities. Skills like dagger 4, staff 4, consume conditions, plague signet and well of power are waiting to throw those conditions back at your enemies, or to empower you with them.

Even without one of those skills available, I’d say that epidemic and corrosive poison cloud are still pretty safe to use. Three stacks of vulnerability barely matters, and the 6 seconds of weakness is acceptable if you’re willing to give up damage.

As to whether or not a necromancer is what you’re actually wanting to play: only you can answer that. I’d say that you’ll only find more skills you actually like as you continue though.

Dredlord.8076:

You must have missed it the first time so I bolded it for you…

Other half of the post. The one directed at the new thread.

Dredlord.8076:

The new bug list thread is pathetically incomplete. The first one was ignored for so long that no one with half a brain feels it is worth it to contribute to a new one…

That. That is what I take issue with.

Dredlord.8076:

The new bug list thread is pathetically incomplete. The first one was ignored for so long that no one with half a brain feels it is worth it to contribute to a new one…

Hey, kitten. If you’re gonna complain it’s incomplete, would you at least submit a bug to it first? The reason it’s as small as it is, is because those are the bugs I found on the old list that were still broken.

Talentless.5708:

Necro is not an unrefined class. They have a few bugged skills and a few oddities that could do with tweaking. Even with the few bugs and oddities, I still rate the class as far closer to OP than in need of any buff. Again, opinions will differ, but in this case, if you think the Necro sucks, use your spectral mirror skill to find the true problem.

I used this skill, but the person on the other side looks really green. Does that mean they’re actually a troll?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

My main complaint with Spiteful Vigor is that it only works with one of our heals. It does not work with Blood Fiend/Taste of Death nor Well of Blood. While Consume Conditions is the best PvP heal anyway, I still feel really annoyed that we have a trait that only works with a single skill.

I am honestly not seeing either of those bugs. While using Spiteful Vigor, each of the necro’s healing skills gives 5 seconds of retaliation. (For Blood Fiend, it’s on using Taste of Death, not the summon.)

Is anyone else experiencing this bug?

Rennoko.5731:

lettucemode.3789:

Rennoko.5731:

I was surprised that a condition/bunker P/D thief didnt make your list. I would think that would be hell for both Power and Condition. I know it is hell for condition, because of all the condition removal on stealth.

My power build uses Shrouded Removal, which drastically reduces P/D thief effectiveness. Without that trait, yes, they are hell.

That trait is amazing, and I have thought about dropping reapers protection just for it. I am in and out of DS so often it would be a huge advantage. I think part of the reason that trait gets so little play is we can’t really track conditions going on and off while in DS. Whenever they fix it so we can see that horrendous stack of bleed hurting us while sitting in DS I bet this becomes a lot more popular.

Another issue is, it’s the Adept Death Magic slot, which means it’s competing against a lot of very good traits. Such as Greater Marks or Staff Mastery for anyone using a staff. Or Ritual of Protection for any build with wells. Or Minion Master.

I do really like this trait, if only for being the least expensive way to drop a 30 second burn I know of, but it can be hard to convince people to give up Greater Marks.

Derk.3189:

Softspoken.2410:

Derk.3189:

Fear of death is also terrible because if you do manage to down a player, the fear would likely have made them run away further than your downed state attack range. They’ll have lost all their conditions which doesn’t mean well for you either.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Fear Of Death was an AoE Fear with a fairly limited (600ish) range.

But how does it actually benefit you, or this build, unless you plan to fear suicide bomb into a group of enemies (which is actually quite undesirable). Much better off with any of the other traits tbh.

Not the point of my post. My point was, it is very doubtful the fear from Fear of Death will cause your opponent to go beyond 900 range from you. (I was just testing, it seems like the range is a little less than 600, actually.)

I can take a stab at it though. If in a close fight, your opponent goes melee and just manages to finish you off, it will interrupt any combo skill they’re using as well as doing a nice shot of damage. It also clears the area immediately around you from any melee enemies, so it can give you a second to pick and call a target or for allies to dive in and revive you without having to jump directly on top of 2 or 3 mobs.

Would you be better off with other traits? Maybe! I don’t know! But there’s a couple situations it could be useful in.

Derk.3189:

Fear of death is also terrible because if you do manage to down a player, the fear would likely have made them run away further than your downed state attack range. They’ll have lost all their conditions which doesn’t mean well for you either.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Fear Of Death was an AoE Fear with a fairly limited (600ish) range.

xHOODOOx.7693:

Why has no anet rep responded in any way to this thread? What was the point?

Sometimes Devs make threads, then watch them intensely rather than respond. Once a dev starts commenting, it’s hard to stop commenting without people being even more dissatisfied, and once a Dev is talking a lot they are basically directing the conversation even if they really don’t want to.

So I’m betting posts are being read, but they want to let the conversation go a bit more naturally to see what people tend to talk about and focus on.

Anyways: I remember reading more waypoints would be added, since res-rushing wasn’t as doable anymore? I can hardly wait. The example I have in mind is SE Path1 – The three golems can be a brutally difficult fight, and there isn’t a single waypoint between them and the start. Would you consider adding one to where Nokk (Singularities, AoE Confusion fields, knockback into the lava :c ) was fought?

It seems like enough space you couldn’t get back to the Prototype Golems before they reset completely (have to re-do the mined hallway), but it would save you the gauntlet you just punched your way through, which is now really long and boring.

EDIT: I read a few more of the posts in this thread, and I thought I might be an interesting data point to bring up. I am casual. Every dungeon run I have completed was with a group of strangers and no third-party communication. I genuinely think I prefer dungeons this way, since before we would get ‘stuck’ on a boss, but would try and res-rush him down. This lead to everyone kind of doing their own thing. Die? Revive and start running back. It didn’t matter if the run was a full 5 minutes long, with potential to get caught by a few mobs and make it even longer. We would all revive individually and try to make it back before the boss reset. And since we were Bad, it would force us to try and kill a boss with a group of 3, since two people were always running.

Now, it’s clear. If you mess up on the boss, it’s over, and you have to try again, together. It also gives the opportunity to take a minute, think, and try and find tactics. If the ‘correct response’ is to immediately revive and run, it’s hard for your casual player to also chat tactics with their group.

So the change is making us take discrete attempts at bosses, where we tend to change up our tactics (or at least make them!) and frankly I think it’s saving us time in the long run. I’ve done attempts on bosses that stretched out to be incredibly long, that we still lost because too many of us died simultaneously. In recent memory, it’s only taken two, maybe three attempts per boss.

I just realized this conversation shifted from me trying to say “Withering Precision is good guys just trust me” to “Condition Duration is / isn’t useful after you have a 100% bonus”. Frankly I could be wrong on that: maybe you do need that 100% duration or else your build is the suxxors.

But I’m not going to bother with the issue of having too much condition duration. I’m just going to recommend you remove this:

How about our 50% bleeding duration like the warriors?

From your opening post.

Actual question: if a critical from a scepter skill procs Barbed Precision, does Lingering Curse apply to it?

EDIT: I did, in fact, misunderstand what you meant. I didn’t realize that you were in the context of building a 100% multiplier to bleed durations, which I honestly think is misplaced stats even taking the power of barbed precision into account. I also still find the assertion that ‘any bleed that lasts more than 10 seconds will be removed’ iffy, but I’m not experienced with the contexts that give rise to that school of thought.

Engels.8537:

33% on scepter is almost useless except for cripple and the poison duration,

A necromancer wants 100% condition duration due barbed precision, any bleeding lasting more than 10 seconds is a removed bleeding, and i’d love to use my undead runes instead 2x krait 2x lyssa and 2x afflicted, (even if i had to spend 4 silver each 30 min on pizza)

Yeah, if only the scepter had an easy, frequent source of bleeds, that were around 3-5 seconds long , or maybe even poison ?

Solesaver.8764:

ProxyDamage.9826:

I’ll say it again, in simpler terms so you can understand it:

Minor traits, such as Reanimator, should be at least a little relevant to any build who’d want to put points into that tree.

Contrary to what you think, Death Magic is focused on minions, not exclusive to minion builds. It’s actually absolutely necessary to any build that uses staves. It can also be important for most generally defensive builds.

Also contrary to what you think, Reanimator isn’t just useless. “Protection of the Horde” is simply useless to non minion-using builds: It simply does not give you anything. Reanimator is an actual liability:

Serves little to no purpose while it is alive if you’re not a minion-based build

• Adds an uncontrollable element to your attacks.

• Pathing choices are not controllable. Can cause random aggro-pulling by running up to a target to attack.

• Removes the ability to manage aggro (how far you want to pull them) by getting in the way – potentially forcing a fight in the wrong place.

• Is an additional, poorly controllable, hitbox for the purposes of forcing you into combat.

• Once you attack something you can’t just tell it to stop attacking it.

• Can give you away when you’re trying to sneak around or hide.

Is this simple enough for you or should I whip out MS Paint?

Even if you have don’t have dedicated minion build you can get some value out of your jagged horrors. Therefore it is at least a little relevant to any build. In the same way that a thief who wants toughness traits might go in to the Shadow Arts trait line, even if they don’t have a stealth based build, so too can a necromancer choose to constantly whine about the Death Magic minor traits, ignore their effect, or learn to maximize the effectiveness of what they are given.

All I can recommend to you is that you actually pay attention to how your jagged minions interact with you and the environment, then cease spreading myths about it.

ProxyDamage does pay attention to how jagged horrors interact with the environment. That’s why they have a list of ways in which it is a liability. You might do better to try and refute the listed behaviors.

HiSaZuL.2843:

His cooldown on visiting necro forums is 3 months.

The devs typically don’t post on the profession forums.

Possibly because they are cesspits of terrible posts.

MrHaze.3690:

Ectoplasm Rifle.

You know you want it.

Now all I can think of is a Proton Gun from Ghostbusters.

And yes I want it. It doesn’t make sense, but I want it.

Levian.6742:

If anything I think our power builds need a little love. As it stands, condition builds are the most powerful of the Necro builds, AND they have Epidemic. Right now as a power build, you’re pigeon holed into using close range daggers. Being a close range clothie means you’re going to get destroyed unless you spec vitality and toughness, but doing so sacrifices all damage output, completely negating the point of being a power build.

Or you can figure out how to make Life Blast your auto-attack. 900 range and hits like a hammer. Slow attack speed though.

EDIT: Whoops wrong topic. Anyways, for conditions, There’s some love in the 33% increased condition duration for all scepter skills, (and frankly, scepter would be a solid source of bleeds and poison!) and you can never ignore the power of Epidemic. It might sound like giving a free pass on condition issues, but Epidemic really is a strong skill with an oddly low recharge. Terror also makes Fear be a pretty hard hitting limited access condition. There’s a build floating around called “Fear is My Weapon”, that shows how far you can push that particular idea.

Solesaver.8764:

Not unlike necros, thieves get bonuses from stealth. Necros get bonuses from minions. Minions are minions and they do stuff (damage and bleed and distraction/blocking) Protection of the Horde and Reanimator work together to basically give you temporary bonus toughness every time you kill something. You can take more advantage of it by also taking minion utilities, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. Just like even if you don’t particularly care for stealth on your thief, you might not want your first shadow arts minor trait Last Refuge, and you certainly wouldn’t care for extending stealth duration with the master level Meld with Shadows or the grandmaster Hidden Master, but the first one is improved by the other two in case you ever choose to utilize it. Thieves don’t get any significant bonuses from stealth without traits; they get 1 attack modified the first time as they leave stealth (they don’t even get that if one of their other attacks lands as they are getting stealthed). Using that as the example why Shadow Arts is justified is ridiculous. Hey guess what, Jagged horrors die and give you Life Force, Necros get bonuses for having minions. Problem solved?

To rewind the conversation a bit, there’s still a few significant differences between stealth and minions that I want to bring up.

On a purely technical note, thieves have fairly simple access to stealth from weapon sets: Anything with a dagger offhand has it with one skill, and dagger/pistol has it as a natural combo without swapping weapons. Necromancers can’t get a minion from any weapon, although they can have one for an elite.
The reason this is important is, stealth is a natural part of many thief weapon sets, and thus a natural part of most thieves. The only thief weapon set pairs that have zero access to stealth is a combination of shortbow, pistol / pistol, and sword / pistol. So I’d assert that the incidental amount of stealth is pretty significant for a thief.

The second and probably more subjective point is, I can’t easily view minions as a defensive choice. If you play minions for defense, you’re relying on your opponent to make the wrong choice to not waste your utility slots completely. And any time that you can force your opponent to attack your minions instead of you, you probably could have forced them to not attack anything at all. But stealth is an obvious defensive choice, even untraited, because it removes targeting. Now some some enemy skills simply cannot work, and you’re hard to follow, allowing for easier disengagement or making your enemy waste cooldowns trying to snag you.

EDIT: To refer to the more current conversation – I don’t see why any necromancer minor traits have to be dedicated solely to a skill category exclusive to the necromancer. Minions are unusual in that there is also a heal and an elite skill option, but it’s still far from a guarantee that players will just happen to have a minion skill.
Compare it to blood magic – Sure it has a lot of (really good) traits about wells, but none of them are on the minors.

EDIT2: I’ve been thinking about this a bit more, and I’m embarassed I never pointed it out, but there could be some difficulty with allowing traits like Protection of the Horde and Flesh of the Master compete for the same major trait slot, as well as Reanimator and Training of the Master. Since they all scream ‘minion traits’, you have to make sure that they have drastically different appeals. Look at Death Nova and Necromantic Corruption – One is based on a bonus when your minions die, the other on making your minions live & attack as much as possible. As well, one is damage oriented while the other is more control oriented.
I’m not sure how much conflict there is right now, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Bastion.2716:

Repeating it won’t make it true, but the thing is – it is true no matter how many times you repeat it or not. You can check out out bug list, if you’re still doubting it. As I said, that’s really great for you for making a best use of broken stuff, as for me – I like when stuff functions as it’s intended.

Don’t rely too closely on the stickied thread. A lot of the bugs listed there that actually alter gameplay have since been fixed, and a lot of bugs that are tooltip errors are failures to update to augmented values when a relevant trait is taken, but with the skill still behaving in an improved fashion.

You’ll deal pretty good damage, but you’re the kind of build that Weakness hits pretty hard. In any case though, You’ll have a ton of health to slog through and Life Blast will still hit like a truck.

All in all, I’d guess slightly above average damage with lots of survivability.

It’s kind of hard to tell, but here’s what it looks like you’re saying:

“I’m a player with a lot of experience across multiple professions. I already have a way to play my Necromancer that doesn’t use minions and works pretty well for me, so I can’t imagine minions being helpful. So why do you guys use minions?”

To which my answer is: Check out this thread for a start.

Not much there, but given how drastically things like dungeons were changed, it’s not too surprising.

What’s interesting to me though is how many people haven’t picked up on (or at least haven’t commented on) the listed changes to Vengeance and Illusion of Life. If I’m reading it correctly, they can no longer get a full rally off of minions.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Morvian.3270:

This patch was almost entirely focused on non class stuff and tooltip fixes. I’m sure the other classes are whining just as much.

Actually only warriors got a buff….big surprise (Empowered trait)

Not sure if serious.

Regarding the original post – while I wouldn’t call it a Necro-specific buff, not having scepter or dagger interrupt your dodge rolls is a big relief.

I was under the impression that most undead abominations had the “Unstoppable” keyword, that made them immune to most CC. Not even in the Defiant blocking sense, but just completely immune.

Lil Puppy.5216:

They should just copy and paste the mesmer clone ‘AI’ to the minions and be done with it. At least those work.

They can’t. Mesmer clones and phantasms are incapable of changing targets.

One of the things that sets minions apart (and I think might be contributing a few bugs) is that they don’t naturally expire between fights or on a timer like most summons (except jagged horrors) and that they don’t have the Command system that Ranger pets do. (Plus, Ranger pets can be switched out fairly easily.)

Question: does Axe Training give its damage boost to your Death Shroud skills if you’re holding an axe? You are still technically wielding an axe, after all.

I’ve been reluctant to plug my own thread here, but since people are asking about a new thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Bug-Compilation-Mk-II/first

I’ve redone a lot of the compilation from this thread as well as most (hopefully all!) of the bugs submitted in the past four or five pages. I genuinely hope that anyone discovering bugs would be kind enough to alert me to them there.

And if you have a disagreement with how that thread is being maintained, please let me know. I tried to pare the list down to essentials a bit, but I’m open to suggestions.

Daecollo.9578:

Actually, what if “Hits stole a small amount of Endurance from the target?”

<3

I’d certainly enjoy it. Necromancers need better ways to play with their own endurance, in my opinion.

Daecollo.9578:

This is necromancer, we have “on crit” procs scattered everywhere. Lol.

Might as well keep up the pace, no?

The only ‘on critical’ trait (one of four) that isn’t in Curses is Vampiric Precision, which is a healing trait, which is in Blood Magic.

Also: pointing at a mistake isn’t a good reason to keep making that mistake.

EDIT: That said, I feel like Death Magic doesn’t have a great trait identity besides for minions right now. I think it needs to focus a bit more on giving boons out, and I will admit my bias/hope for Vigor right here and now.

Daecollo.9578:

5: Gain 1% Life Force every second.
15: Create a “Combo Field: Dark” for 5 seconds while reviving an ally.
25: Heal yourself when applying a condition to a foe.
Triggers healing for every condition applied. Applying area-of-effect conditions will trigger healing for each enemy affected and skills that apply conditions repeatedly over time, such as wells will trigger healing with each pulse.

At level 80, the amount healed per condition is 45 + 0.05 * Healing Power

There fixed it.

5: belongs in the Soul Reaping trait line.
15: Replaces Mark of Revival, which is a Soul Reaping trait, funnily enough.
25: looks like the Condition verson of Vampiric, which seems more suited to either the Blood Magic or even Curses trait lines.

Gryph.8237:

yeah, gain health with our opponents death. Is that a joke? I mean, how is that an attrition class. How can you outlast someone if you only gain health when they die. To top things off, 5 seconds after the opponent goes down, you start regenning health big time anyways, with the game mechanics. SO that 200 health i got when the enemy went down, IS A JOKE when i rapid heal to 25k hps a few seconds later.

It’s not so useful in a one on one sPvP fight, to be sure. But it’s pretty useful in PvE, especially dungeons that spawn a lot of weak monsters to try and swarm the players.

Edit – As for the actual topic: Dark Armor actually only works with a small subset of our abilities: Life Siphon, Ghastly Claws, Life Transfer, and none of our underwater abilities. Plus, 400 toughness is a drop in the bucket at 80, and the toughness scales down with effective level. So I’m not sure it’s really a good candidate for the slot, as much as it’s “anything that isn’t reanimator”.

Shrouded Removal works a little bit against the basic principle of underwater Death Shroud’s Life Blast. That is, to shoot your conditions back at your foes. I’m not sure how concerned about that I am even in this context, but I thought I should bring it up. I was also going to say it might be a bit too strong as well, but you’re upgrading an Adept Major to a Master Minor, so the power trade might work out there.

Sodzilla.5239:

I’ve been playing as a Necromancer since the headstart. I know there are tricks to get Necro minion AI kind of working, but these tricks don’t always work and sometimes make fights worse. If the death magic line didn’t encourage minion use as much as it does I might understand Anet’s decision to ignore the AI issue as long as they have. As it stands, I’ve played quite a few mmos and playing as a Minion Master Necromancer feels like I’m testing a game that’s still in beta.
I know my words won’t mean much to many. I’ve never used Fraps before, but I thought I’d try my hand at it to give a better example of what I see running around as a Necromancer with minions out. This footage was from about 15 minutes or so of me in game and only showcases problems with the shadow fiend and flesh golem. These two minions seem to be the ones that exhibit problems the most, though I’ve seen these same issues at times with any minion that moves including jagged horrors. Maybe it’s just my minions that are “special”, but this is a fairly typical depiction of me running around with minions solo. Perhaps some of the Captain Hindsights on this forum can tell me what I “should’ve” or “could’ve” done better after watching it. I just don’t believe Necros should have to jump through hoops to “maybe” have a chance of minions just attacking targets.

Oh and I’m not going to apologize for the music in the video. I’ve found the song often helps at times when running with minions out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWgn_Pwa2s

Much better.

On the bright side, Bone Fiend and Blood Fiend were very consistent, and Shadow Fiend only really messed up twice.

On the dark side, Shadow Fiend was still screwing up sometimes. And Flesh Golem… Once or twice it looked like all the sand/water beach borders might have been messing him up (hey, if I despawned the second I hit deep water, I’d be nervous too) but he could also be on the same landmass as the Karka and not rush in to attack.

Out of curiosity, do you remember if that was the same Flesh Golem throughout the entire video? Or did you ever have to re-summon it? It seems to me that sometimes once a minion gets ‘stuck’ the only solution is to kill and re-summon it, which is a bad solution, but I’m interested to know if it would / wouldn’t have worked here.