Guild Wars 2

Well of corruption is a pretty useful skill – the damage isn’t as impressive as well of suffering, but against the right opponents the boon corruption is very powerful. Sadly as with all boon corruption, it’s of pretty limited use in PvE, but doesn’t terribly need a change regardless, but a boost to its damage would be nice. (Which reminds me, why does the captain in the ascalon fractal have infinite, incorruptible boons?)

Well of darkness is a great skill, and the only thing I find odd is the higher CD compared to well of suffering/corruption. Is it really that much better?

Well of power is also rather good, but it’s odd that it has a longer CD then well of corruption, while not even inflicting damage.

Well of suffering is a great skill, and has a special place in my heart. It was better when it had the 8s duration, but it’s still a very solid skill.

Elites

Both transform elites are pretty powerful if used at the right time, if used to late however, you won’t get the most out of them, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Lich form is a pretty entertaining offensive elite, with a shockingly powerful piercing 1st skill (although it could move faster, as at long range it is far too easy to avoid), with the other skills being varying levels of situational usefulness. Marked for death tends to not really be worth it, as you can usually do more damage just by spamming 1, although in group fights it would become more useful. Mark of horror would be great, if all the jagged horrors didn’t die to a single aoe attack, or bleed to death in 10 seconds, but the 3rd and 5th skill are both rather useful.

Plague’s is a pretty hilarious skill (and for people that don’t know, press a skill once, and the plague will keep apply that condition until you change it, you don’t have to spam 22222), but withering plague and plague of pestilence are rather lacking when you compare them to the unkillable ball of fun that is the plague of darkness. Maybe buff those two to somewhere near plague of darkness.

Flesh golem might be good if it actually did stuff more than once every blue moon. Come back when minion AI is fixed and we can discuss its balance then.

I think that’s everything for skills, If I missed something, let me know, If you disagree with me, I encourage you to post why, so long as you give reasons, or your alternative solutions. I certainly don’t think my word is the end all, this is just my view on things, and maybe Anet will take a look and see something they can agree with.

Linking this again because I really do think it’s worth a look, although the trait changes are fairly drastic, and I sadly doubt anet would consider it post release, but it’s a good read none the less.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Simple-Improvements-to-Death-Shroud-and-Boons/

If you’ve taken the time to read all my ramblings, thanks, and maybe I’ll make another post about traits some time.

Edit: If I mysteriously missed something, it’s probably because I had to cut up my stuff into multiple posts, might have left something behind/double posted. Oh well.

Corrosive poison cloud is… pretty lack luster. The effects are fairly weak, the application rate is rather slow and of course it applies weakness to yourself. Short of completely changing/scrapping this skill, it needs to apply its conditions more frequently, and frankly should apply at least some sort of damage, like well of suffering or corruption. This skill has extremely limited (read: no) use in PvE at the moment, and is useless in PvP.

Corrupt boon is a great, if situational skill in PvP, but pretty irrelevant in PvE as well as against enemies in PvP with few/no boons, but it can’t do everything, so it’s fine as is.

Epidemic is another situational skill, but can be rather useful in PvP and PvE (and is often downright hilarious in WvW), and with such a short CD, there is really nothing to complain about here.

Minions
Ah, putting the necromancy into the necromancer. It’s a pity that their AI is shockingly bad, and AOE tends to shred them far too fast (although some wily necro’s have used this to their advantage by giving them all retaliation). I don’t really feel I should talk about minions until the very least their AI is fixed, as you can’t judge their balance when they sit 2 feet away from the fight and spin in a circle doing nothing.

Signets
Our signets in general, regardless of their actual effects suffer from a severe case of extremely long cool down (except perhaps signet of undeath, which possibly deserves it’s CD), which makes them all frankly crap for their current effects.

Plague signet is a pretty neat idea, and its effects don’t need changing, although I’m pretty sure it still doesn’t pull conditions with 100% accuracy, and it would be nice if you could still activate this without a target for the stun break. Other than that, perhaps a slight reduction of its CD, but that’s it.

Signet of spite is objectively bad, the increase in power is pretty low (90 at level 80), and its active just throws a handful of conditions at your foe (all single stack of course), for a disappointingly short duration, and then topped off with a bitter 90s CD. This skill either needs a serious reduction in CD, or get it’s active (at the very least) seriously buffed.

Signet of the locust’s passive would be worth considering if the speed increases we had access to actually stacked, but as is, its effectively junk. While I like the idea of the life stealing active, its effect is far too weak to justify the 60s CD. If anet doesn’t want to reduce the CD, then buff the effect, or give it something else; a stun or some other form of CC would be nice, as we have a fairly shallow pool of CC to access.

Signet of undeath’s passive is a little… slow I feel, and could perhaps be given a small buff somehow. Its active ability is a very good, but very situation tool, most useful in TPvP. Not for general use, but this signet definitely has its uses, although you have to make it really count with its massive CD.

Spectral
Spectral armor in its current state is, (in my opinion) not worth using over spectral walk, which offers a longer duration of the spectral armor buff and has a shorter CD, as well as the advantages of spectral recall and mobility. Recently a thread was posted where someone suggested giving spectral armor stability. I think this is probably the best idea to improve this ability, otherwise I would have to suggest something boring like reduce the CD.

Spectral grasp is a great skill other then it continued lack of reliability, and other then improving this, doesn’t need any change.

Spectral walk is a pretty great skill as is (thank you anet for the fix to spectral recall), and I don’t really feel it needs any change. The fact that DS removes spectral effects is pretty stupid, and they should keep working, or at the very least not get removed while in DS. This isn’t a problem with this skill though.

Spectral wall isn’t a skill I’ve had much experience using, but it seems balanced enough as is, although it would be nice if they could fix the placement of the ethereal field.

Wells
The wells seems to be one of the better sets of utilities we have on offer but they suffer slightly from that fact that they all look basically the same; teammates can’t tell a well of power from a well of suffering, and enemies can’t tell a well of suffering from a well of corruption. This is a problem that is also shared by staff marks, which do have noticeable differences, but can’t be seen at a glance. Also not really a problem, more of a lack of variety is the fact that they’re all dark fields. Would it kill anet to change it up and give us an ice field, or smoke or anything different?

Dark path is an invaluable asset to necromancers, providing us with a gap closer regardless of build, with a lovely AOE chill on top. After the buff to its projectile speed it’s now fine.

Doom is an invaluable skill mainly in its ability to interrupt your enemy regardless of what you’re doing, and I don’t think it needs to change, as increasing its duration would make it OP, while its CD is fairly short already (not that I wouldn’t welcome a further reduction!)

Life transfer is a generally very good skill, boosting your life force if you can hit enough targets, and doing pretty solid damage. With a crit build it can easily proc a whole bunch of abilities onto everything near you (the sigil of earth back in BWE2 and before springs to mind), which is rather nice. The down side is that this skill literally begs to be interrupted in PvP, and it’s very easy to do so, unless you have foot in the grave (which still doesn’t cover its entire duration anyway), which is a trait most necromancers are unwilling to invest so heavily into soul reaping to get. If this channeled a little faster, it would be great, but I can’t complain much as is.

Underwater, death shroud is sadly nothing short of a joke. The only useful thing you get it a 2 second fear wave (which makes me again ask why the other fears are only 1 second), and while dark water isn’t outright terrible, the first and forth skill are so gimmicky and weak compared to their land counterparts, and useless in practice it’s quite embarrassing to use. The idea of combining the land and underwater abilities I think really would benefit here, that is life blast with a condition transfer, dark water as is, wave of fear, life transfer and gathering plague (and on land dark path and doom instead of dark water and wave of fear). I’m sure there are other ways to improve it, but I honestly really like this one.

One last thing before I move onto utilities, is the debate as to whether we should be able to stomp/revive in death shroud; in that argument I’m more on the side that we should, as we can still be hit and CC’d in death shroud (since 3 seconds of stability isn’t actually enough to complete a stomp), and so I don’t feel this would be overpowered or anything, and I don’t see why this wasn’t originally implemented.

Oh yeah, I found that thread talking about merging the underwater and land DS skills, and also about changes to the trait lines that I largely agree with, but maybe I’ll make another thread talking about traits as they are currently.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Simple-Improvements-to-Death-Shroud-and-Boons/

Healing skills
Consume conditions numbers among the very best healing skills in the game, with an average CD, and an average heal amount, but with a complete condition cleanse, healing for every condition removed. Definitely nothing to complain about here.

Blood fiend is alright with the recent buff (once it actually works everywhere) in PvE, but still is a bit lacking in PvP, but you can’t have everything I guess.

Well of blood, for what it does it’s fine, but its CD is far too long to make it viable in the vast majority of situations compared to consume conditions. Reduce the CD and I might consider using it. In PvE. Sometimes. Maybe give it some other ability on activation? I dunno.

Utilities

Corruptions
Blood is power is a skill, in my opinion has potential but isn’t quite good enough to use over more useful utility skills. The might side of this skill is pretty much fine (although the life force generation used to be a good way for condition based specs to generate some LF), but the bleed side of the skill is pretty ridiculous. Firstly there’s the self applied bleed, which is effected by your own condition damage/duration modifiers (and I assume by the stacks of might you just applied to yourself), which punishes you for having strong condition stats (on top of the already gimmicky self inflicted conditions that all corruptions give you; the aforementioned change to life/plague blast would make it less ridiculous), but the applied bleed has a base duration of 30 seconds (or if you’re spec’ed right, up to 60 seconds). Against regular trash in PvE any mob is going to be dead in well under 30 seconds, so the only time such a long bleed is useful is against dungeon bosses, or if you’re lucky enough to actually get them applied to a world boss due to the stack limit. In all forms of PvP, that bleed is going to get cleansed, or they’re going to die in less than 30 seconds. Seriously, it’s extremely unpractical, as bleed is the first condition to get removed by any condition removal. Make it 6 stacks for 10 seconds, or 4 for 15 seconds, just something to make this more generally practical.

War horn
The war horn is probably the most underrated weapon the necromancer has, but I think this is partly due to the fact it only really works with the dagger main hand.
Wail of doom is a 2 second daze, with a deceptively large area of effect. People for some reason don’t like this skill, citing its long cast time for a daze, but fail to remember that many skills (heals in particular) have a cast time of 1 second or longer. Having an interrupt in PvP can be invaluable (if you can time it right), and It’s also great in PvE, allowing you to daze multiple foes (I’m still not certain why daze basically acts like a stun against npc’s). Other then possibly reducing the cast time, the only thing I think needs changing here is the animation, which doesn’t correctly show the affected area at all.

Locust swarm is an amazing skill, but only when used alongside the dagger main hand (our only melee range weapon), allowing the necromancer to stay right on top of the enemy, inflicting addition damage and crit based effects, as well as minor life force gains. I think it’s worth noting that when used with banshee’s wail, as well as extending the duration of its effects to 13 seconds, the duration of the cripple (that is applied every tick) is also extended to 2 seconds, even though the tool tip doesn’t state it. This means if you stay on top of a target for the full duration, you can inflict 26 seconds of cripple with a 25 and a half second skill. While it’s unlikely for you to be able to do that in PvP, you can still none the less maintain a lot of cripple, which is hard for them to remove due to the fact it is applied in every second. A slightly larger range would be nice, but is over all a great skill alongside dagger.

I think it’s worth repeating that although this is a good weapon, it performs much better with the dagger then with the scepter or axe, but I don’t know how you could fix this (maybe give us another melee weapon, a sword would still be necro-ish, wouldn’t it?)

Both underwater weapons are honestly fine, not that people use them much anyway.

Death shroud
The balance of death shroud has been talked to death since before release, from its hilariously powerful times in BWE1, to its more demure post release state, some (Anet supposedly among them) saying that it’s powerful enough as is, and that it merely needs to be used better by the players, to those that say it is lacking compared to the class mechanics of other classes, for one reason or another. Personally I don’t think it can be compared to other class mechanics simply because it’s so crucially important to all necromancers, regardless of build (I guess elementalists’ class mechanic is even more tied into the way they play, but that’s completely different). Necromancers are forced to rely on death shroud in a variety of situations, where other classes usually use conventional methods to deal with (death shroud being our principal way of taking damage, where other classes have invulnerability, evades, blocks, stealth and more), so I think that overall it could be improved upon, in a couple of ways.

First of all, Death shroud needs to be treated more like conventional transformations, allowing us to see our conditions and boons, as opposed to our current 4 button UI setup we get currently. That would also open up space for a fifth skill, although whether we need one is debatable, it always struck me as slightly odd that we don’t have a skill to expend our life force for some gain (damage, movement, conditions, what it is isn’t relevant to this post), as that would be more in line with other mechanics, most notably the adrenaline of warriors. The two ideas for a 5th skill that I like most however is either to have a weapon based skill (which would give us some nice variety), or a merging of the land and underwater skills, where we would have life transfer and gather plague on land and underwater.

Considering the slow ROF, and its life force dependant damage and they fact we passively and actively lose life force all the time, I find life blast is a little underwhelming, and think it would just be easier if it did a flat amount of damage, so you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time firing at low life force. Whether it needs to fire faster, or do more damage is a discussion for another day. Alternatively, part of the suggestion someone made about combining land and water DS, was to make life blast transfer one condition like the current plague blast, and to have this shared on land and underwater; this would require no dps improvement, and would help cement our condition control ability.

Off hand: A popular and effective off hand weapon, the only real flaw is the bugged deathly swarm. (Is it still bugged? I haven’t tested it for a fair bit) I do find it a bit odd however, that it’s role is so completely different from the MH version, as most weapons that I can think off behave similarly on MH and OH (ele daggers being close range, warrior swords focused on bleeds etc), but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.
Deathly swarm: has solid range, blinds people, transfers conditions, all good, literally the only problem with this skill is the bug with it only transferring one condition instead of three.

Enfeebling blood is also a good skill, I don’t think people take advantage of weakness enough, as it can seriously cut down on your incoming damage, depending on your opponents build. No change needed.

Focus
The focus is a very solid off hand weapon, both its skills are useful pretty much regardless of what your build and main hand weapon is, and an old favorite of mine.
Reaper’s touch is both useful in PvE and PvP, in 1v1 (stacking all the regen on you, and all the vulnerability on them), or in group situations, making it an all around very good skill. The only thing I thing worth mentioning is that the duration of the regeneration could perhaps be increased, as in my opinion the 4 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds are comparatively better to the 3 seconds of regeneration, which off the top of my head is 400 health or so.

Spinal shivers is an extremely useful skill, allowing you to cancel out common stack of boons, nullifying abilities like the signet of rage altogether, while the chill is always an amazing condition to get. The only thing that would be nice to get changed with this skill is the very long cast time (currently 1 and a quarter seconds), which makes it pretty easy to avoid.

Scepter
The scepter is a poor condition build weapon when you compare it to what some other classes have access to, but when the scepter gets used in a hybrid build it gets it’s chance to shine, to superior damage to the axe over a greater distance, and punishing foes that can’t clear conditions easily. Like all bleed stacking weapons however, it doesn’t like the bleed stack limit, although this is mainly a large scale PvE issue. The real issue the scepter has is that is has very poor life force generation.

Blood curse and the rest of its chain is pretty solid, but not as great since the pre-release nerf, but still good, especially if you invest in lingering curses, which is pretty much a prerequisite of the scepter.

Grasping dead is a little plain, but it’s clear what it’s supposed to do, and it does it well enough. Having some sort of life force gain per target hit would benefit the scepter a lot though.

Feast of corruption has a nice idea behind it, but realistically you’re going to have 4 or less conditions on your target (unless you’re with someone else applying different conditions), so the life force and damage per condition kind of lack. Boost both of those somewhat, or at the very least the life force per condition and this skill is fine.

Staff
The staff is really a nice all round jack of all trades weapon, being extremely popular and generally being fairly useful for most builds, although some have said because we simply lack a useful substitute, which often could be true.

All the marks are basically fine as is, although the necrotic grasp projectile speed is rather lackluster. Someone once suggested making it bounce between targets rather than pierce, which would be nice, but the change isn’t exactly needed.

This I suppose is a rundown of all necro skills, and how I feel they could be changed or improved, if needed. I try to avoid talking about the bugs, as we already have a great thread about that. It’s a bit of a read, but no one’s forcing you, and who knows, maybe you (and hopefully Anet) will come away with a slightly different perspective. Or maybe you’ll just think I’m talking something that the forum considers small and furry, who knows.

Edit: Here is the link to my later thread, on necromancer traits.

Weapons

Axe
The principal problem the axe has, is an underwhelming amount of damage, for the range it has. In PvE you can do a vastly superior amount of damage with the dagger, and barely get hit. In PvP, it’s quite difficult to stay out of melee range while still be less than 600 away, as every melee setup I can think of has (at least) one way to close such a short gap, and you can’t be directly running away from them and while still hitting them.

I think it should maintain its current range, but either increase the damage of rending claws, or increase the attack speed, with some reduction of its damage per hit (say 1/2s cast instead of 3/4s), giving a net higher dps, along with faster vulnerability stacking.

Ghastly claws is basically fine as is, after the recent modest buff to its damage.
Unholy feast is quite good in both PvP and PvE, with decent damage and against multiple enemies it provides a good amount of retaliation, it’s a bit lacking against a single opponent, but you can’t have everything

Dagger

MH: The main hand dagger is my favorite weapon as a necromancer, but it does have a few notable flaws, especially when compared to other classes, who tend to have more practical and useful second skills, and have less trouble keeping in range and avoiding/absorbing incoming damage.

Necrotic slash is good as is, does fairly solid damage, and builds life force well. A few people have mentioned it should cleave or do some small aoe or something, but honestly it doesn’t need to change (although having a cleaving melee weapon would be nice, say a sword or something).

Life siphon is a skill that I honestly don’t like much at all. In PvE it works fine, you can run around and kite while casting the channel, so the healing can be a bit useful. In PvP however, I would call it a downright bad skill. Dagger 1 does far more DPS, and with its life force generation, creates an equivalent amount of ‘health’. Because of this, it’s really worth using over dagger 1, as ranged opponents will still be applying their full damage, and most/all melee opponents shouldn’t have an issue closing that gap and applying their damage. In this regard it suffers from the same problem as axe 1, not enough effect for the range it has. While I guess you could increase the damage or life steal, or speed up the channel, as the dagger is essentially a melee weapon, I think life siphon would be better as a melee attack, as having this low damage ranged attack has poor synergy with the hard hitting melee auto attack. Turning life siphon into a single hit attack (maybe with a short leap or something, as we lack both movement skills and combo finishers) I feel would make this a more useful skill when you consider how the other 2 dagger skills operate together. (Obviously the damage/life steal and perhaps even the CD would have to be rebalanced if this change happened, but that’s a dev’s job.)

Dark pact works well as is, not the best in PvE, but solid in PvP. Having a secondary effect like a short chill or blind (or perhaps a small life force gain) would be nice, but the only real niggle I have with this skill is it’s rather long cast time. This skill is most comparable to infiltrator’s strike (the thief’s second sword skill), in that they do the same damage, have equal range, and both immobilize. The differences though, are that our immobilize is 3 seconds while theirs is only 1, theirs teleports them to the target (and allows them to teleport back if they wish, which is also a break stun, come on) and that we have a slow 1 second cast time. I don’t think Dark pact should be a gap closer (you two extra second to close on them for that, although they can break out I guess), but the cast time makes it much harder to use effectively, usually I have to force them to use their dodges before I can risk casting it, so yeah, a faster cast time would be nice, but solid as is.

Hm? from the screenshot it doesn’t look like you even cast dark path, as it shows not on CD. Also I tried to reproduce this and it hit every time, could you explain more specifically what you’re doing?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Balanced_Stance
8s stability
stun break
40sec CD
gogo warriors.

Test it yourself, it does not work at all.

Necro underwater abilities are actually surprisingly good, trident has its fire and forget aoe bleed auto attack, and spear as carlos said has the 4 → 2 combo, blowing bone minions after the full set of vulnerability/wave fearing/whatever the DS 2 ability is actually called are also nice. I won’t comment so much on pvp, since underwater pvp in general is bad, and some classes have exceedingly good/powerful abilities underwater.

Mesmers have 3 or 4 ways to strip boons, and thief has 1 (but you need to run sword/dagger to get it), including the lich form 5th attack, we have 5, although ours are better overall.

Edit: all 3 classes also have one traited method to remove boons.

A lot of necro skills have really long cast time, but focus 5 is pretty ridiculous, the most effective way to use it is often casting it before you’re in range while closing the gap, so you just get in range when it finishes.

You’re making an awful lot of assumptions without actually finding the correct numbers to back it up.

Axe 2 generates 8% LF roughly every 10s (the channel when timed is about 2s, presumably 2 and 1/4 like it shows in the cast time, + 8s CD), so 0.8% LF/s

Staff 1 generates 3% LF per target hit, every 3/4s, meaning it can (in theory) generate between 4% to 20% per second, of course you can also miss out right and generate nothing a lot of the time.

Dagger 1 generates 7% LF every 2s, so 3.5% LF/s.

Focus 4 will generate 15% LF (if all bounces hit) just over every 19s, so about .8% LF/s.

War horn 5 will generate between 1% and 5% per second, depending on how many targets are in melee range, leading to .32% LF/s at 1 target, to 1.6% LF/s at 5. Obviously war horn is the weapon least likely to apply the fully duration of its LF generation since you have to stay in melee range.

This means the most consistently high LF weapon set would be dagger/focus, as they both only need 1 target to reach their maximum lf generation, while in a crowd staff or dagger/warhorn would be better. (Or you could activate horn 5 then swap weapon set).
Again there are traits that modify durations and CD’s, cause marks to generate LF etc etc, and lots of things that make these numbers harder to directly apply to real situations.

(Also scepter generates like 0.18% to 0.9% per second, it’s pretty crap.)

Did you see me complaining about the lack of visible names? I was merely making a suggestion that would make Ralathar’s proposal more palatable for people such as yourself who would rather remain anonymous in game.

If you’re that worried about griefing and the petty name calling that invariably happens, and aren’t already satisfied with the ability to block and report them, then give players the ability to turn off off chat from the enemy side, block whispers that aren’t from from friends/guild mates (something that should have been in to start with); hell, if you really want, give them an option to hide their player name like it is currently.

These are some interesting and honestly rather reasonable changes you’ve suggested.
Precision only directly benefits conditions builds with barbed precision, and any crit sigils they might be using. While you can certainly build around this idea, precision doesn’t have any direct link to conditions, so this change would overall strengthen condition/hybrid builds by streamlining the stats they’re investing in.

I feel like anet deliberately separated precision and critical damage for most classes, but I don’t see an issue in it myself, although perhaps anet doesn’t want necro’s to be able to max out power, prec and crit in the traitlines?

While boon duration moving to soul reaping along with your proposed minor master trait changes creates a nice synergy, I’m unsure if how many people will be able to justify investing heavily into soul reaping, as any serious commitment to SR means they’ll most likely be getting 2 15pt minor traits in the other lines at most, while overall the traits in SR are lacking. With my current build I would probably keep 30 in SR, but that’s purely because stability is that significant for pvp, but if you’re not going for foot in the grave, I don’t see much reason to go beyond 15 for last gasp. (This isn’t necessarily a fault with your idea, but more a fault of the existing traits themselves)
Also I’m not certain whether your proposed DS traits would be better as major adept or 15pt traits, as having them at the 15pt mark makes it harder to grab more of them, but then most of our 15pt traits are… poor, other then the spectral armour and fury ones.

I like the idea of life blast being more similar to plague blast, but gathering plague is far to gimmicky of an ability in my opinion to bring on land, I’d rather just replace it underwater with life transfer altogether, as the ability is just stupid if you’re playing on your own. Someone else suggested having a 5th ability based on your weapon, which I think is more interesting and gives us some variety.

Edit: The current DS fear is actually very useful as is since it’s an instant cast ability, so even though the underwater fear is really great, overall I would actually find Doom more useful (and having both would be to much, maybe a trait to change it? I dunno.

I’m not sure why the damage reduction doesn’t apply to crit hits, as it gives crit builds a distinct advantage over non crit builds, oh well.

Withering precision is an extremely useful trait in pve and pvp – sure, you can argue about 25% being high enough or not, but as is it’s very easy to keep perm weakness on a target.

My build in WvW runs around with 76% crit chance, and does 5 hits per second when I’m fighting a single person if I set them up right, and combined with the 10s+ of weakness from enfeebling blood (the ds trait one), it should be no trouble to keep in on all the time. Obviously it’s most effective against low crit chance builds, but the endurance reduction alone is extremely useful to secure kills.

In pve it’s even more significant since mobs don’t (as far as I notice) crit, which makes a significant damage reduction. Combined with perm aoe protection from a guardian and a shout warrior, my dungeon group can usually just facetank most fights.

yes, it’s kind of amusing when they’re running way from you and they put up a reflect wall behind them.

android, its a projectile, so they can reflect it with any projectile reflecting ability, the most common in wvw being the mesmer bubble.

Power doesn’t effect the damage conditions, its the might that Blood is power gives that does.

If you have a decent crit chance (which you do), then just run one crit sigil + sigil of force/perception/other sigil here that doesn’t involve a CD of any sort. 2 crit sigils don’t stack additively, so they’ll give you diminishing returns on the 2nd sigil, so its not really worth it in my opinion.

why are you using two proc sigils on the same set? they share a single CD so it’s not efficient to run two.

EthernetHub.1607:

Add a 5th skill that is determined by your main-hand weapon.

I always thought DS should be more like a normal transform, thats is replacing your normal skills, not covering up your UI because LOL DON’T NEED THAT, but I never liked the idea of making all the skills weapon dependent. This I think is a rather simple and effective solution though, and has my vote.

Like many necro abilities, axe 1 has a rather long cast time (3/4 seconds), if this was nudged down to 1/2 like the scepter, It would be able to stack more vulnerability, and of course do more raw damage, although the damage would probably have to be tweaked down a little, so that it still does more then the current version, but not simply 33% more, which could potentially make it stronger then the dagger.

This is a pretty solid build for WvW, Just a few points to make.

You mentioned being a bit iffy about stack sigils, but a full stack 12% (or something near that) crit chance, so on my build I have a off hand with the flat crit chance bonus, as well as a rare version with the stacking sigil. In large group fights you can pretty easily build up your stack, but I usually play solo or with a few guild mates, and just build up the stack before switching weapons and heading out.

If you want absolutely all the precision you can get then you can try maintenance oil (the huntsman potion), as even though the description claims it buffs power, its simply a text error, it buffs precision (you should get over 100 precision out of it), since you lose it on down I wouldn’t bother during large fights though. (Also it’s very cheap to make, its 1 t6 dust + water for 5(?) potions.)

Lastly, I would seriously suggest at least trying spiteful spirit (retaliation) over reaper’s might, as I find the damage you inflict with retaliation much greater then the added might, as you simply take to long to stack it. (Also it’s a decent way to turn a 100 blades/pistol whip/other burst skill here against them if you can’t cc/evade).

They’ve also already started the pvp/pve split with the guardian (they didn’t do it for anything but that one skill did they?), So I don’t think asking for a change that would be unbalanced in pve is completely out of the question.
Also I agree that we could do with all the CC we can get, currently we have the 2 one second fear’s, a daze from the war horn and a knock back from lichform. For a class that’s supposed to be difficult to get away from, we seem to be lacking the tools for the job.

Also with your tiers of fear, you mentioned it being based off the number of stack of bleed or (not and I assumed) vulnerability for tier 2, then number of conditions for for tier 3. For a power build, this would mean you would need at least 2 of 3 from the following – axe MH for the steady stacking, focus OH and well of suffering, in order to ‘max out’ tier 2, correct? (sort of edit: spectral wall I remembered also places 10 stacks if they pass through it, but I consider that a little bit more unreliable). Do you think this would be limiting your options a little if people were to try and get the most out of their fear?

Fear causes them to run from you, not the mark.

Actually there are two blasts. One from you and one from your minion. I’ve gotten chaos armor from a friends chaos storm with my minions finisher when I wasn’t in the field.
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Hm, just tested it in well of blood, the minion’s combo blast happens around 1 second after the one centered around the character, which makes the aoe blind potentially more useful then I realised.

If you don’t know, the blast finisher from bone minions are quite… unusual. Although the damaging blast is centered around the bone minion, the blast finisher is in fact based off your position.

That is, you could be standing in a water field with a ranger buddy, and your bone minion could be next to a couple of mobs in a fire field, but when you detonate it, no area might happens, but an aoe heal effect would happen around you.

(if people don’t know this, maybe I should list it on the bug thread?)

I haven’t used them since week 1, they’re far too weak, and their CD’s are bitterly long.
Plague signet would be alright if it worked as intended.
Locust’s passive would be good if it stacked, but it’s active is pathetically weak.
Undeath I seem to remember not actually being very reliable, on top of a long CD, and a passive which is a little lacking.
Spite could be alright with target the weak, but the duration is a little short, and the CD needs to be cut in half atleast, I don’t know how they justified a 90 second CD for a handful of 5 second conditions.

Hell Nirvana.9045 – It doesn’t matter what weapon the sigil is attached to, as long as you get the killing blow with that weapon set (ie: not the staff), it will trigger the sigil. Same applies for all sigils.
Something I would note however, is that you can (and I do, for wvw) is carry a spare weapon with a stacking sigil, build stacks with that, then switch out to your proper weapon with a more directly useful sigil (in this case you could have a rare 80 horn with sigil of bloodlust, and an exotic with a sigil of force, for example).

Decaying swarm has a CD of 90 seconds, I recorded myself in the mists, getting constantly attacked, flipping on DS roughly every 5 seconds (had 30 in soul reaping to test more accurately), It seems rather high for its effect, but then so do a lot of our cool downs.

SPvP is a little different, but in WvW, I almost always can kill a thief 1v1, as my damage is high enough to kill them before they can do the same to me, and when they stealth up for a backstab, wells will rip through them pretty well.

The only real trouble I have they don’t render for a while after decloaking, giving them the ability to hit me a few times before I can see them – if they’re melee it’s not as big of an issue, as often I can kill them with wells and other aoe without having to see them, But if they keep range (pistol builds mainly) on top of taking advantage of culling, then I often struggle.

Mesmer is the only class that I universally struggle against with my setup, since I rely on doing a lot of attacks very quickly, confusion really hurts, also they have far to many stun breaks (blink, the stealth one, and the double illusion one are the first to come to mind).

I notice it when I use it, are you sure they’re in range? The aoe isn’t that large.

Normally I would agree with that Typhoon, but necro is one class that can get away with it, thanks to death shroud, which already gives us a lot more health, boosted (possibly, we really have to get the health of death shroud figured out) by the investment in soul reaping, means you can still out last most other opponents. Dagger 1 of course nets you a good amount of life force, but its the spectral armour at 50% hp that really regenerates your life force late in the fight that can swing things – I’ve had my life force fully recharged from next to zero thanks to it.

I’ve used 30 curses/soul reaping for a month now, in fact with a build which is extremely close to yours (pretty much the only difference being I use weakening shroud over reaper’s precision), But I never thought to use runes of the mesmer for the extra second of daze.
I can attest that a build like this easily rips through most people, who eagerly try and close in when they see a necro; and yes, killing invisible thieves is hilarious.

Not really, just because it’s ‘official’, doesn’t mean the content is from anet.

well there’s a trait (deathly swarm I think its called), that triggers it on 25% hp, which is terrible, but because of the DS hp trigger bug, you can effectively trigger it on demand. I haven’t checked to see if it will stack in duration with the war horn though. Also fun fact, the swarm this trait causes, it’s duration is effected by the war horn trait.

Edit: it’s called decaying swarm, trait 8 of soul reaping.
Edit 2: It’s got an internal CD of 90 seconds, and they don’t stack in duration.

When traited, the warhorn applies 2 seconds of cripple per second, for 13 seconds (without investment in condition duration) with a 25.5 second CD, making it theoretically (but unlikely) possible to apply perm cripple, but it reality, it just makes it extremely difficult to shake you off.

The daze has a very wide cone of effect, and although the cast time is a little long, it can still be used to interrupt heals and other long cast skills quite nicely.

You can’t stack two sigils of force/accuracy, I would use one of those sigils (probably force), and sigil of air, or if you need more aoe, then sigil of fire, although it does a bit less damage, and costs more. if you want bloodlust or whatever the precision one is called, just have a 3rd weapon (like a yellow dagger or something) you can use to get the stack, then re-equip the proper one in its place.

Have you seen how fast mesmers can produce illusions? every weapon set they have pretty much has a couple of illusion skills, they can make illusions by dodging (with no cooldown, unlike our mark of evasion), they have great stun break that make even more, and they have an adept trait to reduce the CD of ALL illusion producing skills. You cannot realistically keep down all his illusions.

If anyone ever needs another for COE, give me a poke, I’m on SOS (NA).

In PvE it’s not a big deal, even using dagger MH, a necro is rather hard to kill.
In PvP, the axe’s range is the least of its worries, but the dagger is fine, as it generates a fair bit of life force with its auto attack alone, so you’re still far from squishy.

I use it all the time, but like all projectiles it’s easy to dodge by strafing, so its best when they’re running in a straight line (usually directly away from you). Don’t have problems using it on people on top of walls and cliffs.
Also remember the range is from where you fired it to where they are when it connects, so if they’re running away and you use it at max range, chances are it will miss.

A thread discussing developer attention (or lack thereof) to the problems of our class seems rather important, and of meaning to this subforum, but hey, it took them three days just for the mod to notice it, so that says something.

On topic, if the issues we have as a class are that much of an issue for you, bar playing another class just come back to the game in a few (possibly many) months time – sooner or later they will get around to these problems, and since we’re not paying them for our time, stepping away until it’s in better shape is perfectly fine. Just don’t go expecting lots of fixes in the next patch, it’s a surefire way to be disappointed.

Gryph.8237 full of life works every 30seconds (or whatever the CD is) that you’re under 90% health, which effectively means every 30 seconds. Full of life and barbed precision are the only useful adept minor traits.

Saved from something before release, it’s still accurate as far as anyone knows though.

but basically, stability is the last boon to go, so you’re set.

Conditions = become => boons (thought has been given to ranking: first conditions will be converted first)

1. Bleeding ….= becomes => 5 seconds of Regeneration or Vigor (Necromancer only)
2. Crippled …..= becomes => 5 seconds of Swiftness
3. Vulnerability = becomes => 3 seconds of Protection
4. Poison ……..= becomes => 5 seconds of Regeneration
5. Blind………. = becomes => 5 seconds of Fury
6. Weakness ..= becomes => 10 seconds of Might
7. Burning ……= becomes => 5 seconds of Regeneration or Aegis (Necromancer only)
8. Immobilized = becomes => 5 seconds of Swiftness
9. Chilled …….= becomes => 5 seconds of Swiftness
10. Confusion = becomes => 5 seconds of Regeneration
Fear ……………= did not => get converted in our tests!

Boons = become => Conditions (thought has been given to ranking: first boons will be converted first)

1. Protection …..= becomes => 10 seconds of Vulnerability
2. Swiftness …….= becomes => 5 seconds of Cripple
3. Regeneration = becomes => 10 seconds of Poison
4. Retaliation …..= becomes => 5 seconds of Confusion
5. Fury …………..= becomes => 5 seconds of Blind
6. Might ………….= becomes => 10 seconds of Weakness
7. Aegis ………….= becomes => 3 seconds of Burning
8. Vigor ………….= becomes => 10 seconds of Bleeding
9. Stability ………= becomes => 1 second of Fear

Traits
Siphoned power + decaying swarm, are literally only useful if activated via the DS bug.
reanimator, we all know why…

abilities
Plague blast
Gathering plague (the single greatest joke of an ability)
Flesh wurm – our high damage minion, a pity it uses melee attacks, and can’t move.

Full of life is one of our better minor traits.

Necro is honestly rather good at WvW, against groups or on your own.
Against groups/people on walls, necro’s have an awful lot of aoe attacks, and no matter how much people complain about spectral grasp, it works fine for me when i consistently pull enemies, not just running away, but off walls and cliffs, then use dark pact before they get back up, which basically confirms their death.

On my own I can confidently beat pretty much anyone on my own, mesmers offering more trouble then any other class. Speaking of which, I had a few fun duels with a IOJ necro yesterday, pretty sure his build was similar to mine.