Guild Wars 2

Here’s a thought.

Change the Terror trait to: Fearing a target inflicts “Terror”. Terror deals an additional 50% damage if the target has a condition on it. The duration of Terror is equal to the initial duration of the fear cast.

Then replace Dhuumfire with DhuumTerror.

DhuumTerror: Your critical hits have an X% (20%? 15%?) chance to inflict 1 second of Terror on your target. 10 second cooldown.

This would resolve the schizophrenia with Fear/Terror, and would give the developers some room to tune Terror without having to mess with Burning.

Durations, base damage and chance of hit are all subject to test/tune.

Dumb idea? Dhuum idea? :-)

20/0/30/20/0 and stack condi damage

Iavra.8510:

Since it’s part of a power line, it should probably apply vulnerability, cripple or chill. Also, move Terror to Grandmaster, disable spectral skills in DS (it’s supposed to do this, right?) and rework DS #5 to convert a certain amount of lifeforce to HP (channel?). Tadaa, here you have your sustain.

On a related note, i would change necro scepter autoattack and thief dagger autoattack (any other i missed?) to not be able to get permanent uptime on poison. The condition is too strong to be so easily accesible and instead should be timed to counter heals.

You know nothing, Lavra Snow. On a related note, they should increase revealed to 10 seconds and cut engineer condition duration by 50%. Tadaa, you have balance.

2 seconds is not worthy of a grandmaster trait. 3 seconds is the correct duration. This needs to be moved to the Master tier.

Good info. Since this will be showing off the GW2 to people new to the game, have you guys put together some kind of “lead in/off” package that gives people a quick overview of the gameplay, professions (strengths/weaknesses) and general strategies?

Perhaps even just a script that shoutcasters could use before a tournament starts up?

One shortcoming I’ve seen in amateur shoutcasts of GW2 games is the lack of an overview of the professions and strategies. I’m familiar enough with the game to follow along, but I know that a neophyte would be completely lost.

Something along the lines of an abbreviated version of the professions page, combined with a quick listing of popular specs and spec synergies (e.g. elementalists synergize well with condimancers due to their ability to provide peels and heals to compensate for a condimancers lack of disengage, etc.), I think would help make the game more approachable.

Enundr.9305:

vicious.5683:

Enundr.9305:

thank you Engels……and ill bring this point up…..Burning…?….BURNING?
What part of the aspect of death is ever considered BURNING?!?!?!
We are NECROMANCERS , not ELEMENTALISTS!!!!
WE BRING THE COLD TOUCH OF DEATH IN GRENTGHS NAME!!!! NOT BALTHAZAARS!!!!

In Short , REMOVED DHUUMFIRE , NOONE wanted it , reverse some of the nerfs (aka the terror dmg nerf). We are NECROMANCERS , we bring the cold touch of death , not the hot burning wrath of balthazaar , we reap terror into those that fear death.

;-P

the human gods are dead, Grenth is no more. And they are just human deities, not charr, norn, asura or silvary. Those races necros don’t pray to Grenth and don’t get their powers from that fallen god.

In GW2, necromancers are like no other game/story necromancers. Where are the zombies, skeletons, ghouls? We have just non-humanoid meat and bone parts bound together to create some weak, pathetic and abhorrent critters.

Is natural that necromancers from the present started looking for new sources of power, like the former god Dhuum.

there are no demons being summoned , we are not warlocks , hence no fire , we reanimate the dead (aka NECROMANCER) , not just raise skeletons zombies and ghouls , the only thing remotely close to a demon is the shade , and thats a creature from the underworld , not a demon in of itself. we are still necromancers , we are not warlocks that use fire , or elementalists either.

Necromancers don’t have “death shroud”, or any kind of abilities that draw on their life force, and they don’t have Life Blast. You know who does have powers that draw on their life force to create blast attacks? Warlocks (Eldritch Blast). So by your logic, they need to get rid of Death Shroud as well.

After having tested post-patch necro in a mix of PVE, WvW and PvP, I think the overall changes are good. What was not clear in the patch notes is the severity of the Death Shroud bug, which made a big difference in overall survivability.

Edit: I retract my retraction.

Enundr.9305:

thank you Engels……and ill bring this point up…..Burning…?….BURNING?
What part of the aspect of death is ever considered BURNING?!?!?!
We are NECROMANCERS , not ELEMENTALISTS!!!!
WE BRING THE COLD TOUCH OF DEATH IN GRENTGHS NAME!!!! NOT BALTHAZAARS!!!!

In Short , REMOVED DHUUMFIRE , NOONE wanted it , reverse some of the nerfs (aka the terror dmg nerf). We are NECROMANCERS , we bring the cold touch of death , not the hot burning wrath of balthazaar , we reap terror into those that fear death.

;-P

Well, necromancers are more of a hybrid of the traditional necromancer and traditional warlock.

Think of speccing into Dhuumfire as an analog to Hellfire Warlock.

Sounds to me like counter-comps have appeared. Revert the patch – necros were fine before!

Ichishi.9613:

Apply chill on crit (1s, 4s cooldown). Foes already chilled are burned instead (4s, 10s cooldown)
cooldowns are per target affected

I think that Trait would be titled, “FreezorBurn”

Gaile Gray.6028:

That really does sound like a bug, but I’m concerned that the team won’t have enough information from an in-game bug report. Would you be willing to submit a ticket about this? Don’t worry — we will not take action on your account! But if you submit a ticket, we can get more details so the devs can look into what sounds like a quirky bug that needs to be corrected.

Thanks!

Already known bug – flagged by the developer: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/ANET-Fix-Your-Towers/first#post2472718

I vote for Spicy Sweet Chili flavor icon as in addition to the current Cool Ranch flavored Dorito icon.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey that is me!!!! I noticed that I went through the gate <snip>

Reported for using in-game exploits.

AkiLeaves.2613:

It makes me a little sad. I liked it being a 10 point trait…

It made me extremely happy. Now staff is fully viable without it, and very strong with it.

Flesh Wurm does decent damage and is a mediocre disengage. I’d rather have just plain old Necrotic Traversal in its place with no LOS problems or any way of having it get destroyed.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I say play it a while and then see how you feel.

So death shroud gains may not be as high as you would like, but we’ll keep monitoring them and looking at further improvements to make.

The base marks improvement was excellent, thank you. For the first time I feel like I can use the staff without having to trait it.

Pinkus.2860:

While I appreciate the thought process here Jonathan, what works for one part of the game, doesn’t always work for the others. Finally Necros had a structurally strong build which only needed some damage tweaking (aka the fear damage and possibly the burn damage also) to fix the fotm 30/30/10 build. Instead, you ruin it completely by moving greater marks to the master tier. There was already a serious lack of condition build diversity and now we’re left licking our wounds. WvW was finally seeing Necros again but I guess people will just bench them again.

I’d respectfully disagree. I’m now running without greater marks and I can say that, for the first time since beta – staff is quite usable without that trait. Huzzah! (I don’t know if it’s really a ‘master level’ trait, however)

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh, also, the reason we can’t give Necro’s too much disengage has to do with the point of “purity of purpose”.

In this game, we want to allow classes the ability to deal with all situations but in different ways. But, if we give all classes all TOOLS (which is a different thing), then players get confused as to which classes fill which roles, and in what way they fill those roles

Example: In PvP, the Necro and Engi both vie for the position of condition pressure. The engineer has more physical alternatives, the Necro has more boon/condition manipulation, the Engi has more escapability, and the Necro is a little squishier. If we gave the Necro too much mobility or escapability, then all of a sudden their “tools” start to line up exactly. If this is the case, one of them will simply be better than the other, as far as efficacy goes, and thus, one will push the other out of the meta for that “role” on the team. This class would then be the “apex” predator for that role. So, in order to prevent this, we try to make it so that the classes don’t have all their tools overlap perfectly. This means you have to say (following our example), “Well, if we take a Necro, we get more condies, but a squishy body that can’t disengage…..but if we take Engi, we lose some DPS and control (depending on utils), but we get someone who can stand up to a spike better”.

Make sense? If we just gave the escape to Necro’s, then all of a sudden, the Necro is just the clear choice. Not all decisions come down to a clean break like this, but this is the type of thing we’re trying to do when we “deny” some classes certain tools.

That provides a perspective I hadn’t considered. Thank you for that.

I guess then the question is: with the current meta, does the extra condi pressure a Necromancer bring compensate for his (significantly) greater susceptibility to an assist train at the start of the fight?

My initial thought would be that the answer would be dependent upon the team composition. That is, can the team comp provide adequate peeling and healing to cover the necromancer’s shortcomings?

I don’t believe I’m adequately qualified to answer that. Anecdotally, I think Zombify was running a double ele team to get pressure off him and his most recent posts seemed to indicate his comp was insufficient prior to the patch.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

The best tool we have, is Deathshroud 3. It’s also very situational unfortunately, and a Scepter/Dagger Staff Necro has very little access to Life Force compared to other builds. Standing in Deathshroud to eat a burst when being focused, simply removed any of your effective tools/damage the next time you are fighting, smart players will simply get you to waste your Deathshroud, reset, then come back and kill you.

Very true – Scepter generates hardly any life force.

Shar.3402:

Death shroud takes up an utility slot? no, it doesn’t. Mist form does? yes. Apples to oranges. Again.
Also, you’re assuming every elementalist runs with mist form. I don’t. Phantaram doesn’t. Mogow doesn’t. Many other high profile elementalists (higher than me for sure, I’m just a random_elementalist_#1337) don’t.

And they don’t because they have so many other on-demand damage mitigators and disengages at their disposal (not to mention down state mist form), that they don’t NEED to take the Mist Form Cantrip.

Navzar.2938:

Thedenofsin.7340:

jmatb.6307:

Stealth openers are going to gib anybody, not just necros.

Untrue. Mesmers can go invisible/teleport. Elementalists can go mist form or RTL. Thieves just vanish. Elementalists can Elixir. Rangers can stealth now. Guardians are.. well guardians.

RTL and stealth aren’t really good counters. One of the attacks just needs to use a short immobolize.

As for the coordinated spike problem, it’s as you said, it’s because necros don’t have a strong short term damage mitigation. That doesn’t necessarily mean they need more life force as the solution.

Oh I agree! I don’t think more life force is the solution. I think a reliable disengage (i.e. one that can’t be killed) on a utility slot is the solution. If necros could really rely on Flesh Wurm as a viable disengage, and didn’t take it – well, then that’s the player’s issue and not a problem with the game.

I don’t think those arguments necessarily equate. In my opinion, I don’t believe people are saying that necromancers cannot survive a burst combo 1 on 1 when they have a decent amount of life force.

CAVEAT: I have not yet tested the ‘bug fixes’ to Death Shroud damage yet.

The issue, as far as I can see it, is that there is a distinct vulnerability at the start of a fight, when a Necromancer’s Death Shroud is at 0, that, when combined with it’s lack of disengage, makes it a prime target for an “assist train” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Assist%20train)

I believe Flesh Wurm is the answer to this, for some builds; perhaps some builds need a different kind of disengage. Flesh Wurm gives the Necromancer a means of disengaging the assist train. However, in my opinion, it’s something that could be made to be a more reliable disengage. It suffers from 2 setbacks – LOS and it can be killed. If Flesh Wurm were given a longer cooldown but ignored LOS and Necrotic Traversal was, even for a short duration, available after the Flesh Wurm was killed (even if that required an Adept Major), I think Necromancers would have a counter to the assist train. It would come at the cost of a utility slot, but would be a fair trade off.

I’m not a game developer or one of those ‘cool guys’ that gets to sit in on State of the Game. But I’ve seen this exact issue before playing as a Warlock in competitive WoW arenas. In WoW I at least had the ability to pillar hump, and my team could help peel. Here though, if the assist train is stealthed and/or has Stability, peeling is basically impossible.

Again, I’m only speaking for myself and this is my opinion. However, I don’t believe giving Necromancers Life Force at the start of a fight is the right answer. I believe the right answer is readily giving Necromancers to a reliable means of a disengage.

I posted this elsewhere, but what if you tested something like this with your test team: give flesh wurm, say, an 80 second cooldown, but have Necrotic Traversal ignore LOS and, if the Flesh Wurm is killed, allow the Necromancer the ability to activate Necrotic Traversal for, say 10-15? seconds. Try this out against a stealth assist team and see if this gives you proper counter play.

JonathanSharp.7094:

People keep asking for mobility on the Necro, and again, by design, this is something we’re going to keep to a minimum. We will continue to make sure they get more attrition tools (Deathshroud is a main point here), the ability to manipulate boons/conditions, and the ability to control opponents.

The current patch is an attempt to do small “shavings” to bring the class into line with these goals, in the same way we tried to “shave” the Ele numerous times, rather than “nerfing it from orbit”. Are all Ele specs equally viable in all game types? No. Is this ok? Yes. Staff can see play in one game type while D/D or S/D see play in others. As we’ve said, we’ll split skills/weapons more and more in the variuos game types, but each time we split a skill, it gives us more update work down the road. We have to be very prudent when we split skills.

Same thing with the Necro. They have a few different viable builds in different types of content, and we’re trying to make sure they continue to see play in various roles spread throughout the various gametypes.

But seriously, OP, wait until you play the patch and THEN update this. I’d love to know what you think….but as Allie posted theorycrafting is pretty hard for us to make informed decisions with. Let us know how they feel in game.

With much love from Chinajoy,

Chap

Would you consider a small change, like making Flesh Wurm a more reliable disengage utility?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Evan Lesh.3295:

What everyone has been playing now will become ‘Team Arena’ (group queue), and we will additionally add a ‘Solo Arena’ (solo queue). The ratings will be split, and each will have their own leaderboard. We’re also planning on shipping a couple other long-standing requests with Solo Arena that many have been waiting for. A blog post will go into details about everything.

Will the “dishonorable” debuff be arriving concurrently with this change (ideal), or prior (sub-optimal)? That is, is the debuff one of those “long-standing requests”?

If so, then Bravo! That is the optimal solution and avoids all the headache I witnessed first-hand with Rift’s implementation of the debuff.

Good idea – I think a more apt term would be “Fleshwarping”

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20050408a&page=10

Shar.3402:

Mist form has a SEVENTY-FIVE seconds cooldown, disables ALL your skills. It also takes up an utility slot.
Thieves teleport has an initiative COST and removes the thief from the fight (well, kinda)
Death shroud has a 10 seconds cooldown, allows the necro to: damage, teleport, fear, aoe damage, torment+immobilize, and depending on traits it can apply retaliation/weakness/whatever

don’t compare apples to oranges or melons.

Death Shroud has a 7 second cooldown and can only be cast once the necro actually has enough life force to use it. And it does nothing to stop you from getting gibbed at the start of a fight. Teleport and Mist form do. Therefore, for the situation we are discussing, they are far superior means of damage avoidance than Death Shroud.

apples to apples.

Shar.3402:

BTW, I see a lot of complains about “necro getting gibbed from stealth openers”, but that’s a problem for every class. I’ve seen guardians getting insta-gibbed by such things….I guess the problem is with stealth stacking, not lack of survivability for class X (necro needs something to survive, but letting them start with half life force bar is not the solution, utilities are meant for stuff like that, imo.)

You play an ele – you aren’t getting gibbed from a stealth opener. If you are, then you’re doing something wrong. You have enough escapes that a stealth opener would be wasted.

Personally I’m fine with giving Necromancers a utility slot as an escape mechanism. Here’s how I’d go about doing it:

- Flesh Wurm: Necrotic Traversal ignores line of sight and will remain available to the Necromancer until the cooldown of “Summon Flesh Wurm” has reset.

It’s Rift PVP all over again.

Are there any developers reading this?

This exact same issue creeped up in Rift about 16-20 months ago. Players would quit warfronts because they were losing, which resulted in a more lopsided finish.

The solution was to implement the “Deserter” debuff – that’s exactly what this “Dishonorable” debuff was.

However, there was a problem – matches where you had PuG vs Pre-made. Those games were an absolute slaughter, in favor of the pre-made team naturally, and they’d effectively farm the PuG team.

It was not fun and made the overall experience much less enjoyable. People quit.

Eventually Trion fixed this by implementing queue systems that prevented this kind of match up…. which eventually killed pre-made teams due to a lack of competition.

The moral of the story is this: When you implement this feature, please use sound judgement. Don’t punish players who want to leave a PuG v Premade game in the same manner you would punish players who leave more appropriately matched teams.

jmatb.6307:

Stealth openers are going to gib anybody, not just necros.

Untrue. Mesmers can go invisible/teleport. Elementalists can go mist form or RTL. Thieves just vanish. Elementalists can Elixir. Rangers can stealth now. Guardians are.. well guardians.

Pyriall.5027:

That’s a situation that’s not unique to necros and has more to do with stealth openers than necro survivability. Please note, I’m not saying necros don’t need a disengage mechanic.

If we peel back the onion, I’d argue the issue has more to do with the fact that stealth has no counter play.

Imagine if warriors were able to unstealth or tag players with the “Revealed” debuff – how valuable would warriors become!

The best feedback I could give right now would be to look at a very similar situation that happened with WoW arenas in Season 3/4 with warlocks (I think Season 2 had this problem too, but my brain is too old now). If someone on the dev team played WoW back then and you mention it, I’m certain they’ll have a V-8 moment on the spot.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ok Defektive.7283, then answer me this. Since it is common in tPvP, you’re suggesting that the opportunity cost of focusing on the necro, as opposed to someone else on the team, or focusing on capping a point/other secondary objective is not great enough?

If so, then let me ask you this: if there was a different class that felt more threatening, would you perform the same maneuver on them instead?

What I’m seeing is – you’re establishing a threat according to your team comp, and focusing on that threat. If a necro didn’t threaten your team because of the comp that you’re running, would you still do that?

How is it not counter, when there is a specific condition that is necessary for the success of that strategy? Maybe I’m not understanding what you’re saying, but it sounds a lot like counter play to me.

If it’s counter play, then how do you counter the counter play? You can’t unstealth a team. You cannot peel an invisible team, and if they have stability, you can’t peel them anyway. So the only viable options I am seeing are: a) send the necro somewhere else, thus introducing a numbers disadvantage, b) don’t bring a necro and bring a different profession. We’ve already established that Necromancers need a support group to keep them alive, so option “a” doesn’t seem really very viable.

Flesh Wurm would be a nice counter if it didn’t have the problems of being killable and having LOS issues.

I think counter play is a great idea, but there’s an implied understanding that the counter play is bi-directional. When a ‘counter’ itself cannot be countered, is that not imbalance?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Don’t forget that you’re also doing tons of damage while you’re casting all those abilities. Is it really balanced to give you survivability AND glass-cannon damage all at once?

That depends on perspective. Do you believe glass cannon thieves with stealth and an instant 1200 meter teleport are balanced? Do you believe that scepter/dagger elementalists with the Mist Form Cantrip are balanced?

Those are prime examples of having glass cannon damage while being able to completely disengage from a fight.

lettucemode.3789:

Just want to point out that you can already start a match with 30% life force. Before the 10-second countdown, switch 2 of your slot skills to Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend, and switch your elite to Flesh Golem. After the countdown starts, summon each of the minions, then change the slots back to what you really want. When each minion is despawned (as a result of you switching out of those skills), you’ll get 10% life force, more if you have Gluttony, and the skills you switch to won’t be on cooldown.

If you’re worried about not being coordinated to switch all the slots back in time you can do it with just 2 of the slots. Doing all 4 slots might be possible but I haven’t tried it.

Yes, but that’s really not the intended use. Now that you’ve told the developer about it, I’m sure they’ll put it at the top of their priority list of things to fix for the next patch, thus further reducing Necromancer survivability.

Defektive, maybe you can post a link to a video showing the developers just how crippling this is.

Allie Murdock.8152:

sorrow.2364:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Let’s brainstorm some scenarios if we did this, FOR SCIENCE!

If death shroud = survivability, and we allowed necros to have death shroud from the start, then how could that change how necros play? How would this affect certain maps and the balance of those maps? How would this affect the meta? How would this affect other classes?

Also, if we gave necros death shroud, should we give warriors adrenaline? Should we give thieves initiative? Should we give everyone everything they ever wanted?

Ultimately, what I’m looking for is the reasoning, and why you feel this would be a positive change for the game. I’m curious, because it’s easy to say “I want, I want” without saying why.

I think that the reason is quite simple.
Death Shroud is, by far, the most prominent source of survivability of Necromancer, while adrenaline is used only for offensive purposes (I don’t know what you meant with giving initiative on thieves, since they start the match with full initiative anyway :P).

What I’m trying to say is that to build up Life Force you are supposed to survive but, if you want to survive, you’d probably want to use Death Shroud, which is based on Life Force, which is what you want to survive for.
It is a vicious circle.

About adrenaline it is different. Adrenaline is solely for offensive purposes. You hit your enemy, you build adrenaline and then unleakittens destructive power :P

Sure sure, but if we gave you life force at the beginning of the match, how would that help you when you’re in battle? What I mean is, by the time you get into combat, have used a fear or two, have used some life steal, other life-force producing skills, etc., do you not have the life force you need to try and survive? Wouldn’t that mean you’d actually have a surplus of life force?

Don’t forget that you’re also doing tons of damage while you’re casting all those abilities. Is it really balanced to give you survivability AND glass-cannon damage all at once?

Instead of going down this path, let me try a different approach.

Allie, did you play, or are you familiar with WoW arenas? If so, are you familiar with Warlocks, especially in the Season 3/4 timeframe?

Quick recap: Warlocks were a heavy condition class that could apply a lot of condition pressure to multiple opposing team members. They had a pet (Voidwalker) that would share the damage the warlock received, effectively acting a little like a second health bar (it also mitigated some damage). However, the warlock had no means of escape. It could not disengage or run away, and relied on his/her teammates to peel opponents off him/her in order to not get killed.

Do you see the parallel here?

While it was a powerful class, it had massive drawbacks in arenas in Season 3/4 (when I last played a lock) because opposing teams knew that, once they were able to establish an “/assist” train on the warlock, it was a matter of time before the warlock dropped. Opposing teams would burn through the pets first, then burn through the warlock. There was no real counter to this, except to run away.
So teams with warlocks basically played this meta-game where the lock had to play hide and go seek to prevent from getting walloped. Naturally this also had the effect of castrating the efficacy of the class. Ultimately it was very limiting to the class overall.

WoW later fixed warlocks by giving them “Demonic Circle/Teleport” – a ranged teleport that was also a stun breaker.

From what I can see. the situation is here is very, very similar in nature. However, here you have professions that have access to a number of knockdowns/knockbacks/stuns and have simultaneous access to stability (i.e. no peeling!). Furthermore, in the warlock case, they effectively walked into battle with a full Life force meter (VW), and still got burned down.

I think that it’s also important that keep in mind that Death Shroud is really the only readily available means of defense a Necromancer has; and it really is far inferior to other means of mitigation/disengages such as dodges, teleports, mist form and stealth.

I’ll nibble.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, if we gave necros death shroud, should we give warriors adrenaline? Should we give thieves initiative? Should we give everyone everything they ever wanted?

Thieves have initiative. Warriors don’t need adrenaline to survive an assist train.

Every profession has 2 dodges at the beginning. Other professions readily (i.e. it’s basically given to them without making undo sacrifices) have means to access one or more of: vigor, protection, invisibility, invulnerability, rapid/instantaneous movement. Necromancers have… Death Shroud, which cannot be accessed until they’ve built up enough Life Force.

hihey.1075:

tetrodoxin.2134:

Scrolling through the huge amount of changes for other classes, then seeing the Mesmer changelog…

At least no nerf, eh?

Still better than Elementalists, who only received text corrections

Not really. Elementalists need a big nerf. They are still in nearly every 5v5 comp, and still a lot of teams are running double elementalist. That says OP.

Bas.7406:

Oblivion.8307:

don’t worry guys, necro still broken op.

I agree with one caveat. Condi Necros are still broken op because nerfing terror doesnt’ fix our incredible amount of damage and we can still chain 3 straight fears on one person.

Power Dagger Necros who had it rough before are now completely done with the ds change. Your only hope is to blow someone up before you die. Previously you could use ds to kill and get out if it failed. Now it’s just die even if you outplay the ds nerf means you will still take damage even if you used it defensively to eat the damage.

@Nemesis – necros are still very viable in pvp. They are just bad in solo queueing, and they are even worse now thanks to the ds nerf. The necro should never be stomping anyways. Leave it to your team and rely on positioning and use the downed body as your epidemic train.

/target Necro
/assist

win

That’s basically the strat now, as I understand it. It’s season 3/4 of WoW all over again, just change the name from Warlock to Necromancer.

This is the exact same problem Warlocks had in WoW. The exact same problem. They had no viable escapes and could put down strong DoT pressure. So opposing teams would create assist trains and burn down the warlock first.

WoW finally realized they had to give warlocks a means of breaking the /assist train, so they gave them “http://www.wowwiki.com/Demonic_Circle:_Summon” a teleport.

This fix just relegates necromancers back down to the bottom of the barrel.

Everyone knows Lich Form is like putting a big “hit me” sign on your head.

How about giving Lich Form a passive that has a 30% chance when hit to Blind the attacker?

I concur with Aphix. However, I’d qualify his statement. I’ve run condition builds in zergs with good success. Signet of Spite + Epidemic will, in my opinion, put excellent condi pressure that is very difficult to cleanse quickly. Combined with staff marks and Well of Darkness (or Spectral Wall), you will make a strong impact on opposing zergs.

It’s also a very effective means of tower/keep defense. If an arrow cart is raining down on attackers and you manage to nail a combo of: Signet of Spite + Epi / Spectral Wall behind attackers + Stakitten , you will go a long way to wiping a small-moderately sized zerg. The attackers will get stuck in the AC area of effect for 2+ seconds and will be blinded, poisoned and crippled. It’s almost guaranteed to stop the current wave of attackers

During the last State of the Game, Jonathan Sharp indirectly hinted that he was concerned about Weakness in its new form, when spread with Epidemic.
I think Zombify stated he didn’t see it as overpowered, but I am concerned Sharp does not share the same view.

I have concerns about changing Epidemic to not spread Weakness. Much of the current game seems to encourage a mass zerg onto one point. Epidemic+Weakness, at the very least, is a powerful deterrent to this gameplay.

Additionally, it’s one of the few ways to help slow down the focus train on necromancers in the current game.

Removing Weakness from Epidemic appears, in my opinion, to amplify some of the current problems with the game and Necromancers.

You could probably get the same effect by getting stacks of might when you apply chill.

Draehl.2681:

Deathly Oppression: (Replaced Dhuumfire as I don’t feel it fits the tree) When chilling or fearing an enemy you also apply Vulnerability. You deal increased damage to Vulnerable foes. (maybe 1% more damage for every 5 stacks of vuln?)

This can create some useful builds around the focus, which currently lacks a good deal of synergy with, well, anything.

Vulnerability already is in the game, it’s 1% more damage per stack.

Elite skill: Inversion

Compromises your opponent’s sense of orientation. Reverses the opponent’s heading and direction for 10 seconds. (forward becomes backward, right→left, camera panning is reversed, etc.)

I’d like a new Trait called ‘confusing flares’. Your pistol attacks also deal 3 stacks of confusion debuff to each target and place a revealed debuff for on each target for 5 seconds.

Softspoken.2410:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Softspoken.2410:

I’ll admit, part of it is me being a miser and not wanting to grab a second axe for my necromancer. I also haven’t given too much thought to sigils yet, I’ve just got a stacking sigil on my Axe. What would you use in the off-hand weapons in that scenario?

Edit: Just testing it now, and I can actually proc the on-swap bonus with just one main-hand axe. Obviously that’s only one type of on-swap bonus, but still something.

Wait – you’re literally running with just one axe? Doesn’t that kitten your stats pretty heavily?

Stats are only used from one weapon set at a time, so no, not really? (I’m still using off-hand weapons, two in fact, just only one main-hand.)

Ah, so it considers the weapon to be part of each “set”. Makes sense.

I bent the rules – I didn’t want to make just an Adept Major.

New Blood Magic Grandmaster:

Shrouded Vitality
Heals and regenerative effects on you while in Death Shroud restore a portion of your Life Force.

New Death Magic Adept Major:

New Blood Master Major Trait:
Corrupted Blood
Gain 20 healing power for each unique condition on you.

New Soul Reaping Adept Major Trait:
Searing Blast
Your Life Blast deals 3% more damage per unique condition on your target.

Skeletons
Skeletons
Skeletons
Skeletons

Did I mention Skeletons?

Avalanzhe.5761:

As a Charr Necromancer, I despised the Bifrost. So colorful and shinny, and the concept of a Charr wielding it makes me think of a Nyan Cat. And I’m only interested on having a staff legendary.

So I’m hoping for a Legendary bloody staff, probably a fleshy type of staff with a hand or anything to hold a beating heart as it’s the head piece of the staff, and then blood drips downward the staff and leaves blood trails as you move.

or just a twilight type of staff..

I think you’re going to get your wish. I’m certain there will be a new type of legendary staff coming this year, and I suspect it’s going to be a stark contrast to bifrost.

I’m hoping to see something rather Lovecraft-ian in nature.

Wouldn’t it be cool to leave a trail of these things where ever you walked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfu8gfqOQU0

A very interesting build. I’ve been wondering about the benefits of Chaotic Interruption and off-hand focus. Pulling with Focus #4 while casting Focus #5 to result in pulling the target and immobilizing him on top of the warden.

I may have to try this build out just to see what that will do.