Guild Wars 2

Just get the champion train out of Queensdale and put it somewhere like Orr, which desperately needs new life breathed into it.

This game has so many things to explore, like mini-dungeons, jumping puzzles, and hidden events, but the reward for doing them is generally two greens and a cheap gemstone. It’s rather sad that one of the main premises of the game – exploring the world – is largely pointless. Most of the game’s regions are devoid of players, as is what generally happens to an MMORPG. Moving the train out of Queensdale – which will always have plenty of players anyway – and into dead regions should help alleviate “MMORPG decay.”

The train does have its purposes. I for one would’ve never managed to get enough Bloodstone Dust for an ascended weapon without it.

Needs other options:
-“This trait is too powerful/this trait feels broken.”
-“This trait should be merged with another.”

“Stellar” implies that a trait is good to have and well-designed. Some traits, on the other hand, feel like they break the balance of the game or lower build diversity.

I also have to ask – why are some of the traits (III and V) not present in the survey?

On a side note, I just noticed that Mark of Revival is a blast finisher, while the normal Reaper’s Mark is not.

May as well post my ideas:

Spite
Parasitic Bond – Boost life force gained from nearby deaths.
Death’s Embrace – Get rid of these “downed damage” traits from all professions.
Spiteful Removal – Change or remove. Possibly merge with Shrouded Removal.
Spiteful Spirit – Needs to be buffed somehow. Perhaps duration increase or inflicting confusion in an area. Could be merged with Spiteful Vigor. Obviously data mining by ANet will say that this is a popular trait but only because there aren’t any much better traits here for conditionmancer.
Death Into Life – Needs to be moved into Death Magic or Blood Magic. Should be usable by support builds.
Spiteful Marks – Not very useful due to low base damage of marks. Maybe could just be merged with another staff trait.
Siphoned Power – This trait is garbage. Change or replace it somehow.
Dhuumfire – Disintegrate it from existence with extreme prejudice.

Curses
Enfeeble – Boost weakness duration.
Spectral Attunement – Move this somewhere else, this is a weird place to have this trait.
Withering Precision – Needs an overhaul. Maybe just reduce cooldown to open up more possibilities for conditionmancer based on non-damaging conditions. “On crit” effects are pretty skill-less though.

Death Magic
Reanimator – Reduce health Jagged Horrors lose over time.
Dark Armor – Boost armor to 600 to match mesmer mantras, and/or make it apply while in Death Shroud.
Spiteful Vigor – Garbage. Needs to be overhauled.
Shrouded Removal – Unneeded.
Protection of the Horde – Way too weak, and useless for non-minion masters. Buff protection amount or replace entirely.
Death Shiver – Potentially great trait, ruined by position. Move to Spite or Soul Reaping.

Blood Magic
Full of Life – Decent, but could be better. Maybe make it apply to nearby allies.
Bloodthirst – Redesign this trait and raise baseline lifesteal to match current base + Bloodthirst. Possible idea: allow lifesteal to heal nearby allies and minions.
Mark of Evasion – Remove the cooldown, necromancers don’t have vigor anyway.
Vampiric Master – Nerf or replace.
Quickening Thirst – Remove or replace.
Blood to Power – Change in some way. Maybe change to be defensive.

Lifesteal in general: Buff baseline, nerf Vampiric Master. Allow lifesteal to heal while in Death Shroud.

Soul Reaping
Gluttony – Buff slightly.
Fear of Death – Garbage. Replace or remove.
Speed of Shadows – Almost useless. Replace or remove.
Soul Marks – Move to another trait line or merge with another staff trait (Spiteful Marks?).
Strength of Undeath – Increase damage buff to 10%. Alternatively, change to boost defense instead of offense.
Foot in the Grave – Increase stability duration or make stability stay on while in Death Shroud.

Necromancer is extremely useful in the HotW paths for a few basic reasons, really. Boon removal doesn’t matter much, since that final boss of P1 just regenerates them near instantly. And cleave can take care of any area damage needs due to rampant stacking (Stack Wars 2, the future of online gaming). However…

1. Flesh Golem’s Charge demolishes the buff totems extremely fast.
2. Necromancers can attack from range without using projectiles, so they can keep hitting the final boss of P1 even when he’s reflecting.
3. Necromancers are very powerful underwater, so they are highly effective against the final bosses of P2 and especially P3.

Arganthium.5638:

mini.6018:

Arganthium.5638:

snip

Arganthium why dont you just roll la warrior and make a live stream of you owning everyone in a random duel server or obsidian sanctum duel area already .Please and be done with this theory crafting wich involves zero theory at all except imaginary.

I actually have (or at least have attempted to, tech issues).

Also, what do you know about theorycrafting? You’re just another scrub who can’t handle reasoning.

I wonder how many people don’t realize that their entire argument is invalidated when they resort to sounding like the average 12-year-old gamer.

IMO Lich Form should’ve used a greatsword instead of being like Death from Castlevania 2.

Street Peddler.2638:

probably cause this forum is full of cry babies and it’s not worth the headache.

You should see the elementalist and thief forums.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

Bhawb.7408:

Again: if you don’t like the game, don’t play it, if you like the game play it. It is really not that hard.

Heh…ya. Well, the problem is that, while many of us like the game, we don’t like what’s been done to the necromancer. And besides, I like pretty much all the other professions in the game (guard is super fun :P).

What we want is some real change that comes DIRECTLY from ideas in the COMMUNITY, not nerfs because supposedly we’re “OP”. Technically, we’re not OP, because a lot of times, we lack sustain. And the signet of vamp didn’t help…we need some real changes from real players. But if and when that ever happens, I don’t know. All I know is, a LOT of people are talking about quiting necro right now…that is NOT a coincedence.

As long as condition bombs keep killing unaware people within 15 seconds while disabling the target’s ability to react because they didn’t pack anything to cure fear (nevermind stuns in general), we will always be “OP.” When the average player’s line of thinking is this (this is a warrior talking about berserker stance):

Working as intended.No one feels sorry for condispam necros easymode cheese.How are the other classes do against this insanely op build? Fear needs a long cast time and very obvious animation just like skullcrack.And since fear has range and unblockable in comparison with melee range should have minimum 1 second cast time.No one can counter fear since you cannot react to no animation instant from range and it’s really embarrasing for Anet to leave 3 second+ cc in such a state.

we will always be “OP.”

And there was some listening to the community in the last patch, hence why “Enfeeble” had its cooldown removed instead of lengthened…and then had its strength reduced to, to quote someone else, “troll mode.”

This would weaken defensive/support builds and make the current cheese builds (dhuumfire+terror and minion master) more powerful. Condition duration is not what kills people (outside of fear duration) because many conditions are cleansed before they finish ticking, and if they aren’t being cleansed then the target will die anyway. On the other hand, giving minion masters more condition duration would make their non-damaging conditions and poison more powerful, and minion master is already annoying enough – we don’t need even more pet users cluttering up the matches.

The fact that people go 30 points into a power trait line for a single condition grandmaster trait is an indication that Dhuumfire needs to go. It’s breaking build diversity and making people cry foul.

TheGreatA.4192:

I wish burning was a condition for guardian only, which would force groups to use guardians to grant their condi spammers some burning with F1 for extra damage.

Guardians should already be spamming F1 anyway because it does area blind and vulnerability every time you kill a trash mob.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

amiavamp.9785:

Tainted Shackles is one of the better abilities in the game because its useful for every build. Although I do find it a little silly how it’s such a fast cast to the point where the cast animation looks goofy, but I guess I shouldn’t complain about that.

Dark Path really is a joke, though. It’s useful in every situation except the one it’s designed for – catching enemies. The most use I’ve gotten out of it is stacking bleeds as conditionmancer (probably not even a boost to DPS) and, on my PvP power build, comboing it with Doom right before it lands so I get in some free hits, then following up with Spectral Grasp (assuming it doesn’t send itself to the moon).

The problem with it, with us having such low mobility its quite easy for pretty much any class to get out of its range, i would have preferred if it inflicted Cripple as well i mean after all its on a big cool down (too big imo) and it doesnt always affect everyone seems to have a 5target limited or something which very much sucks.

Its too buggy for my liking, An interesting and IF it worked VERY useful skill how ever the projectile is FAR too slow. Maybe turning it into a AoE that teleports you to a specific area and then inflicts AoE Bleeding and AoE chill would be better, then it would also serve as an escape option

Tainted Shackles was designed the way it is (along with Torment) to punish melee for staying close to the necromancer. The massive amount of mobility melee players tend to have makes this a non-issue though, so it’s basically just a free damage buff since it has almost no cast time.

Dark Path apparently was in fact a teleport in the beta. Then they changed it to its current form and had to buff it a few times to move faster than a snail. I’m not a fan of abilities that have 0 telegraph, but maybe it should just be turned into something similar to the guardian sword teleport where it moves you to the enemy instantly. Maybe it could still have a cast time but the movement be instantaneous instead of relying on a projectile – basically like Spinal Shivers. Then Dark Path and Spinal Shivers might be a bit too similar, but at the same time, I noticed my dagger/focus elementalist has two water skills which are almost identical to one another as well…

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

in my opinion, first and foremost they need to fix the kitten delay when exiting DeathShroud in a certain way – i had a RED post in the bugs section after i made a thready saying:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Yeah I investigated this awhile ago and it’s going through our process. We will get a fix in as soon as we can.

Thanks ~~

Though to me, that means nothing considering how long this issue has been going on for. They also need to fix the Deathhroud skills having to trait for Life Blast to be WORTH using is kind of annoying but boy its worth it, the rest are just Meh and Dark Path is a joke and rarely even works. They could buff up the Life Force gain from Life Transfer and i would prefer they replaced Tainted Shackles with something else.

Tainted Shackles is one of the better abilities in the game because it’s useful for every build. Although I do find it a little silly how it’s such a fast cast to the point where the cast animation looks goofy, but I guess I shouldn’t complain about that.

Life Transfer does a massive amount of lifeforce gain against multiple targets. Of course, it’s most heavily telegraphed attack in the game and it goes on full cooldown when interrupted. I would appreciate it if they at least buffed Dark Armor to be equivalent to the mesmer mantra trait equivalent.

Dark Path really is a joke, though. It’s useful in every situation except the one it’s designed for – catching enemies. The most use I’ve gotten out of it is stacking bleeds as conditionmancer (probably not even a boost to DPS) and, on my PvP power build, comboing it with Doom right before it lands so I get in some free hits, then following up with Spectral Grasp (assuming it doesn’t send itself to the moon).

Monoman.2068:

I don’t mind the initiative system, the problem only arises when anet introduces powerful mechanics a lot of classes have to jump through hoops to get/use with it. Immobilize and dazes are far too powerful an ability to be spammed, but it’s happening and it’s allowed.

In most cases I have to hope these guys don’t interrupt me or dodge when I drop a putrid mark/deathly swarm, then I can finally heal in peace as they panic with their own confusion on them. It’s a horrible rune and the people who build to use it clearly don’t expect much retaliation from their opponents. I personally hope it gets nerfed to the level of the superior rune of resistance (by that I mean an insane ICD) so people can move on from these troll builds.

At the very least, daze can’t be stacked with Headshot anymore since its duration was nerfed to be almost instantaneous. I still think it’s silly that a headshot is the equivalent of an annoyance.

Langdus.6408:

If you fall from a cliff as an example, then you can use spectral walk the second be4 you get down, so then you prevent all falling damage. Wich is op in WvW

So op, I can’t catch the slowest profession in the game before he launches himself off a cliff.

p.s. Guardian also has this bug with sword teleport but I can guarantee that it won’t be changed.

Forsaker.9213:

Reikou.7068:

Forsaker.9213:

Reikou.7068:

just remove damage condis from the game.

Would solve a lot of problems.

It would make more problems tho…

Would it ? Remove Burning, Remove Bleeding, Remove Torment, Change Poison functionality to simply -33% Healing.

Make condis a utility and not a main source of damage, and rename them hexes.

Make it simple remove necro and engis from the game :P Ofc it would make more problems.

Remove everything except warrior, mesmer, and guardian. Game is now balanced and most of the playerbase is still intact.

Necromancers are not going to be given a serious look by anyone as long as people see Dhuumfire+Terror as the equivalent to backstab in terms of cheese. And since the dev team seems to want to keep Dhuumfire…

Get used to being “that class who uses cheese builds exclusively and has two health bars and doesn’t die instantly when I poke them in the back with my knife plz nerf because I don’t know what stun breaks and condition removal and crowd control are.”

keloorie.6085:

Actually it takes me 30 in spite mainly for dhumfire and the condition duration, and then 20 each on curse ( for terror ), 20 on soul reaping ( for master of terror )
In this case i will have 100% terror duration. But i’m seriously wondering if that terror duration would worth it, over the "soul marks " on soul reaping, since in my condi build its nearly impossible to gain life force.
Can anyone help me on this please?

That is the current “overpowered” build aside from minion master. Terror hits extremely hard and your main use for life force is defense or flashing in to cast abilities. You won’t need life force generation if you manage to catch your opponent with a full condition burst.

Yes, it’s a condition burst damage build. No idea how they came up with that one. If you see Diamond Skin or Berserker Stance, just turn the other way, because those are the changes ANet made to counter your build.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Serbianwolf.1652:

I don’t think ANET have any plans for necromancer in the future at all.

Nor for the present. We seem to be the class they are the least interested in.

On the contrary, ANet is going so far as to give other classes new abilities to hard counter one single necromancer build that they seem completely unable to balance in any way. It’s quite obvious why Diamond Skin was added.

It’s a broken trait designed to hard counter one specific build because apparently it’s easier to balance one build by adding new traits and abilities to other professions.

I think it would be prudent to watch this when discussing the trait (skip to 20:00 for the section about Diamond Skin and 28:00 for how to beat Diamond Skin via autoattacking while eating a sandwich):

File a bug report about rangers, engineers, and necromancers existing in the game.

Fix Putrid Mark back to being able to affect allies. This is inexcusable.

Change the underwater Death Shroud 4 ability (Gathering Plague) into a utility skill, or make Plague Signet more effective.

Move Death Shiver into a more accessible trait location (swap it with something like Soul Marks or Spiteful Marks – better yet, get rid of Spiteful Marks and make something new).

Make traits like Shrouded Removal affect allies. Maybe then this trait will actually see any kind of use.

Allow chill to actually affect cooldowns in PvE.

Change Bloodthirst to a trait that gives a portion of lifesteal healing to allies.

Allow necromancers to revive others while in Death Shroud.

Reduce the cast time on Signet of Undeath so that it’s not almost always pointless in PvE. If I use up a utility slot to bring a resurrection ability, I don’t want it to be limited to people who aren’t going to die particularly fast and could easily be resurrected through the normal way in the first place.

Equip some kind of knockback (perhaps a physical utility) and knock them out of the wells. Otherwise, sit outside and attack with your longbow until the wells are gone. Preferably, stay further than 600 range so that Life Blast does minimal damage. The whole purpose of the wells is to create an area that is advantageous for them – and if they’re using wells, it’s also pretty much their only “gimmick.” The cooldowns on the most of wells are pretty long.

A necromancer specced into “wells and might stacking” probably won’t be specced for condition damage (necromancer might stacking = one 10-might utility skill and gaining might on Life Blast autoattacking, which is power-based), so any bleeds they apply aren’t really worth removing aside from maybe the 2 long-lasting bleeds from Blood is Power. Use condition removal against them on things like immobilize and chill.

As you have discovered, one of the weaknesses of a well-based necromancer is simply moving away from the fight. Due to the static nature of wells and the way death shroud drains over time, forcing them to waste cooldowns and life force is a viable tactic.

If the necromancer is using an axe, dodge during Ghastly Claws (channeled attacked) to prevent them from gaining life force. If the necromancer is using a dagger, their melee attack will be their source of life force. And if for some reason they’re using a focus, dodge Reaper’s Touch (flying black scythe). A necromancer who specializes in might will want to use Life Blast, so you want to deny him from gaining life force.

Either way, a warrior condition build isn’t going to fare well against a necromancer because they have a large amount of removals and transfers. Burst damage or especially crowd control work much better. Consider using a build that incorporates a shield, mace, or hammer to deal with necromancers.

The best solution, however, is to fight the necromancer 2v1, because their ability to deal with being outnumbered is next to none outside of their elite skills (which just bide for time until they end in such a situation).

Serbianwolf.1652:

ANET have no idea how much players are kitten ed off right now and how much hate we generate for this patch. I thought it couldn’t get worse, but theres probably more if they don’t consider applying our feedback. If they RIP this Necromancer subforum, I will probably quit playing GW2. I mean seriously, if they would go so far, who knows what could happend next with this game(Like 1hit – 1 kill?).

ANET devs should reconsider their doings really seriously, since rage is really huge. Just saying.

ANet already drove away a large number of PvPers by not adding any new game modes and by ignoring requests for Guild vs Guild. They have yet to address PvE balance at all. At this point, I have to wonder if they care about more than just milking the gem store until the game is a dry husk, although it already blew up in their faces when there was that outcry about the reskinned armor sets.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

So…let me get this straight…you run into a heavily aoe’d area that’s already so cluttered you can’t make out what’s in it…yet continue to run in it anyway, then complain about the effects of your actions?

Yes – I, the person who most definitely created this topic and complained about fear, repeatedly run into walls of fear while playing as a necromancer who creates said walls of fear.

On a more serious note, I’m going to guess you’ve never fought over a point in a PvP match where multiple mesmers/necromancers/rangers were involved while guardians are shooting bloom everywhere.

We feel that the completely existent sustain of the necromancer is far too high. Therefore, we have taken steps to put necromancer on a more equal level with the competition.

• All sources of lifeforce gain have been reduced by 50%. Death Shroud, being as powerful as it is, was previously far too easy to gain access to.

• Doom now has a 3 second cast time and cannot be used while stunned or knocked down. Furthermore, all stun breaks have been removed. Previously, the necromancer was far too capable of escaping damage while being the target of focus fire.

• Consume Conditions now only removes 2 conditions and has had its cooldown increased to 60 seconds. Previously, the necromancer had far too much healing.

• Putrid Mark now only transfers 1 condition.

• Enfeebling Blood’s weakness now lasts 2 seconds, down from 6.

• Lifesteal effects have had their healing boosted by 3%. This does not actually increase the amount of lifestealing done, but it is still technically a buff to be excited about.

• Minion damage has been increased by 10%. We felt that minion master builds were previously not prevalent enough in PvP.

• Life Blast damage has been increased by 20%. We felt that the necromancer was previously not reliant enough on Death Shroud and autoattacking.

Bug Fixes:

• Endurance bar removed for necromancers; dodging to become immune to damage was a completely unintentional aspect of necromancers who have far too much natural defense and health to be given invulnerability, unlike other professions.

• Necromancers now correctly lose all of their lifeforce upon leaving combat. Beginning a fight with enough lifeforce to enter Death Shroud was never intended despite necromancers being balanced around having full lifeforce.

• Well of Blood and Transfusion have been removed from the game. We never intended necromancers to be an asset to their party.

• Signet of the Locust and Spectral Walk have been removed from the game, and Locust Swarm no longer grants swiftness. We never intended necromancers to run faster than mesmers.

• Plague and Lich Form no longer grant stability. Instead, they grant 2 seconds of protection, as intended.

• Added a tooltip correctly stating that Spectral Grasp and Charge have a 50% chance of failure.

• Signet of Spite now correctly inflicts its effects to the caster as well as the target.

• Using Death Shroud during the Temple of Grenth event now correctly results in the instant death and deletion of your character.

Absurd.2947:

How about not running repeatedly into the wall of fear?

First you need to be able to see the wall of fear under the carpet of particle effects and pets that PvP matches are made of.

Caffynated.5713:

What I’ve taken away from this forum:

Warriors think everything is balanced
Necros think everything is balanced except warriors
Engies think everything is balanced except warriors and necros
.
.
.
Eles think everything is OP

You should probably stick your head into the necromancer forum and see how many necromancers think Dhuumfire+Terror and minion builds are broken tier in more ways than one.

So, here is my concept:

Death Shroud does not replace the skill bar. The only disabled abilities are heal (ability 6) and transformations. Your weapon autoattack would be used instead of Life Blast, and Life Blast would be redesigned in some fashion to make it a cooldown-based ability.

Abilities specific to Death Shroud are moved to the function keys, like other unique class abilities such as guardian virtues and elementalist attunements. Only F1-F4 would be used, leaving 3 Death Shroud ability slots. The Death Shroud abilities could be changed like utility skills, except they would only be usable in Death Shroud. This also opens the window for adding new Death Shroud abilities to the game, and perhaps even new variants of Death Shroud itself.

The necromancer receives a bonus to power and condition damage while in Death Shroud based on their accumulated lifeforce. The actual number would definitely need testing, but I think that a 30-50% boost at maximum lifeforce would be interesting. To compensate, the base necromancer damage would be slightly reduced. Traits that currently boost damage passively could also be retooled to function only in Death Shroud. This means that the necromancer would be somewhat weak without lifeforce and very strong with lifeforce, like the old Life Blast attempted to do.

Lifeforce would drain at a much faster rate than it currently does while in Death Shroud – perhaps about twice as fast, or maybe even more. Furthermore, lifeforce would slowly drain even while not using Death Shroud. This allows the necromancer to be balanced around starting fights without lifeforce, while providing momentum if the necromancer makes multiple kills in a row.

Lifesteal effects would function while in Death Shroud, but healing from other sources would be reduced by perhaps 50%. In essence, Death Shroud would (and perhaps should) function as a “frenzy mode” where offense is greatly enhanced and damage is not taken, but when it wears off the necromancer must recover quickly.

Perhaps some of these changes can be implemented in the form of traits or Death Shroud variants. For example:

-A “berserker” shroud that implements the boost to power/condition damage but lasts a short amount of time and reduces healing taken.
-A “blood” shroud that boosts lifesteal effects.
-A “life” or “undeath” shroud that supports nearby allies and/or minions.

The counter to these changes? The same as it is now – crowd control. These changes would allow more customization for the necromancer and increase the offensive and attrition capabilities of the necromancer. Essentially, I think that these changes would make the necromancer feel more dynamic.

This would also alter the usefulness of current abilities. For example, Vital Persistence would be an even more useful trait, as would abilities that regenerate lifeforce. Lifesteal would become much more useful, as the necromancer could use it to heal under the cover of Death Shroud. Playing as a melee necromancer would feel a lot more aggressive, and conditionmancers could actually use Death Shroud to boost damage. Furthermore, it would actually be worth staying in Death Shroud for more builds rather than just flashing in and out.

Of course, balance would be a major issue, but then again, the necromancer already has broken balance. Part of this brokenness comes from Death Shroud’s design, and I think that these changes could help fix that. I sadly know that there is not even the slightest chance of Death Shroud being redesigned, which is a travesty given how terrible its rushed redesign at the end of the beta was.

I know that it is far too late in the game for death shroud and the necromancer to now receive a radical design change. However, an idea came to me, and I would like to share it.

I would like to begin by mentioning that this idea came to me after playing my berserker guardian in a dungeon. During a fight, the first thing I noticed was, Wow, I do a lot of lifestealing with Zealous Blade, and it’s in the power tree of all things. Plus, Litany of Wrath is an outright lifesteal heal. Then, I thought, Wow, I get stronger with every enemy killed because Virtue of Justice refreshes instantly. This boosts both my offense (burning, might, retaliation) and defense (area blind). This momentum is pretty cool.

I then considered why the necromancer doesn’t feel the same way despite having similar abilities. After all, the necromancer has lifeforce which replenishes per nearby death, as well as lifesteal and Parasitic Bond. Yet, the necromancer doesn’t feel as if it has the same momentum.

To that end, I wondered what would happen if Death Shroud was redesigned to function with more momentum – as in, the necromancer would become substantially more effective per nearby death, but be quite weak early on in a fight. I think that the very idea of necromancer should be balanced around this concept. This is present to a small degree, but death shroud’s very design seems to gut the idea. Currently, the necromancer is essentially dead in PvP if he/she does not begin a fight with lifeforce, but even then, lifeforce is mostly used to gain access to a few abilities and to block some hits. This feels like a wasted opportunity.

Furthermore, I thought from the beginning of the game that I would be able to replace Death Shroud with other abilities of similar types. After reading that Death Shroud would remove spectral forms, I assumed that there would be versions of Death Shroud that did different things – perhaps there would be a condition damage form, a healing form, and a melee form. This obviously turned out to be untrue.

There needs to be more game modes, there needs to be less minions/pets/clones/particle effects cluttering up the screen and turning it into a mess, and there needs to be a clear distinction between PvE and PvP balance.

Conditions also need a total rework. Badly.

Necromancer is definitely the least glass cannon out of them all in terms of pure stats. The necromancer philosophy is pretty much to just take hits to the face and keep going. Their area damage is supreme (in PvE at least), and they’re very powerful in solo play. They’re pretty slow, however, and their lack of mobility or defensive options is well known.

Mesmer is a little faster pace and kind of weird and tricky to learn. They’re also rather hard to level due to being highly dependent on traits. You can trait into making your clones explode on death and into creating clones by dodging, which allows you to handle groups more easily. Mesmer plays almost completely differently by the time you reach endgame PvE.

Elementalist is the fastest and most fragile of the three, as well as the hardest to learn and play. Even a simple fight will be complex as an elementalist, and more difficult fights will give you plenty of options to use. You really have to be twitchy with the dodges and blocks, and most of the time it will be your own fault if you die as opposed to having everything on cooldown or being in an unwinnable situation.

Join an active guild, hunt for achievements and jumping puzzles, level new characters, get gear for new builds, go for world map completion, go for ascended items or a legendary.

If all of that fails, do something else for a while and come back to GW2 later.

Build bound – Every profession is rather limited in terms of “viable” builds, especially in PvP. Mesmer, guardian, warrior, and elementalist tend to have trait points to shift here and there in my experience, however. Some professions still have a lot of traits that are downright worthless. Engineer may have the most variety due to their design, but I can’t say for sure.

Solo capability – Every profession can do solo content just fine. This is largely dependent on the build you use. However, I would say necromancer ranks the highest here for general solo play, with thief or mesmer being the best at soloing champions.

Party capability – I’ll just break this one down class by class for PvE:
Warrior: Very high demand, high damage, unique support abilities, can build for healing
Guardian: Very high demand, pretty high damage, amazing support abilities, lots of healing
Mesmer: High demand, decent damage, numerous support abilities, some unique abilities, can build for healing
Thief: Medium demand, very high damage, few support abilities
Elementalist: Medium demand, potentially highest damage, numerous support abilities, lots of healing
Engineer: Low demand, high damage + conditions, some support abilities
Necromancer: Low demand, high single-target OR area damage + conditions, few support abilities
Ranger: Low demand, high damage, some support abilities

WvW zerg bags – Necromancer and engineer are definitely highest here, since they can spam AoE, followed by warrior/ranger/elementalist/thief, then mesmer/guardian

WvW zerg support – Warrior, guardian, elementalist, and mesmer are better at this. Basically, water and fire combo fields = good. Area buffs and healing = good.

WvW Roam – Class-by-class:
Warrior: Very mobile, can destroy people with burst damage
Guardian: Somewhat slow despite constant swiftness, decent at roaming
Mesmer: Slowest (weirdly enough), excels at 1v1 fights, can easily escape fights
Thief: Probably the best roamer; very mobile, extreme burst or attrition, can easily escape fights, can fight small groups alone and win
Elementalist: Decent at roaming (can’t say much here), high mobility
Engineer: Has deadly condition build for 1v1 fights, can survive being attacked by zergs
Necromancer: Terrible at roaming, low mobility, does good in 1v1 fights but cannot escape enemies if outnumbered; ironically does counter thieves though
Ranger: Decent at roaming

PvE capability – See party capability

As far as I know, corruptions haven’t changed a bit and are basically just directly upgraded by a single trait in Curses. You can use wells or corruptions without traiting specifically into them if you’re doing dungeons – powermancers tend to use both Blood is Power and Well of Suffering for maximum damage.

There are certain farming spots that are rather profitable, if you don’t mind repetition. First there’s the champions trains in Queensdale and Frostgorge Sound, which don’t generate a lot of gold but do give you plenty of items to salvage for magic find. There’s also an underwater spot off the north coast of Southsun Cove near the Lion Point waypoint – the barracudas and such there drop a large amount of Large Scales and some Armored Scales, and they’re very easy to kill.

Other than that, dungeons and working the trade post are your best bets. I would recommend playing it safe when playing the trade post if you’re not rich – stick to common items like loot bags and crafting materials. The process basically involves setting your own buy price and then either selling the bought items for a higher price or using the materials to craft more valuable items to sell. Keep in mind that there’s a 15% total tax on selling items.

Current PvP meta is a condition build with Terror and Dhuumfire that maximizes condition duration, 30/20/0/0/20. Uses scepter/dagger and staff. Expect to get a lot of hateful remarks from enemy players for using it, though. There are also minion bunker builds of various types for PvP.

For maximum damage in PvE, there are power builds that run something like 30/10/0/0/30 or 30/25/0/0/15. There are minor differences in damage output; it basically boils down to whether you want to use axe or dagger as your mainhand and whether you want to use a staff or warhorn as your weapon to swap to. Power builds tend to run full berserker, which is relatively easy on necromancer compared to some other power builds because you have higher health to compensate for small mistakes.

If you want to do conditions in PvE, I would recommend Rampager over Rabid, or perhaps a mix of the two. You will pull tons of aggro while wearing Rabid due to armor increasing aggro. Build doesn’t really matter as long as you at least have 30 in Curses. Don’t go for Dhuumfire in PvE, though, because the burning will just get overwritten by guardians and elementalists accidentally.

Bweaty.9187:

I also, still can’t get over 1/3rd downed life. What was it, 4months for a ‘we can’t replicate it reply’, 6months for a ‘this won’t affect new necros’. (Even tho it did, they could just roll a new necro and test it’s downed life).
Then, how many months later did it get a fix…

Latest was Putrid Mark, 3 months before that got a reply of, oh we’ll fix the tooltip sometime. (Still don’t know, was it a intended ninja stealth HUGE nerf to necros, or a bug they just CBF fixing?)

I’ve thought since the day it went live, they need to make there chat fascists get on the job of reply to listed bugs, even if they just wrote ‘noted, thanks’…

Not even sure if I should mention this, but there happens to be a developer who represents my guild every now and then – or used to before my guild died due to disinterest, anyway. This developer is a former member of the QA team and apparently had a large role in fixing numerous dungeon bugs. A guildmate and I tend to be rather vocal about glitches and other random things that occur (like falling through the world when attempting to avoid fall damage in fractals via death shroud), and on several occasions this developer inquired about it and said that it was noted. Coincidentally, in the next patch, the bug would be fixed, even if the bug was very old.

So far this has coincided with:

-Necromancer downed health
-Spiteful Talisman not functioning in PvE
-Tiers of Runes of Perplexity having their costs reversed
-Staff abilities being reset to full cooldown when interrupted
-Putrid Mark tooltip fix (this one took a few patches, so the link is perhaps nonexistent)
-Flaming rocks being invisible in CoF p1 (not even sure if this is fixed, but two ANet developers were with me in the dungeon when I witnessed this one)

Perhaps the issues stem from a lack of communication.

Signet of Spite is the result of it being Opposite Day when the developers originally said that necromancers are supposed to be based on attrition instead of burst, when in actuality necromancers have the best condition burst and the worst sustain. And instead of addressing the issue, necromancers just keep having everything except burst nerfed steadily so the only viable build is the cheese Dhuumfire+Terror with Signet of Spite and staff burst (or minion build…uhg…).

I’d like to preface my post by saying that I have played over 900 hours on my necromancer, which is quite a lot, but not nearly as much as some of the veterans on here. I have tried many builds as necromancer in all forms of gameplay.

I only continue to play my necromancer for a few reasons:

1. Because I’m highly familiar with it
2. To play dress-up
3. Because my necromancer is currently my only character with AR (soon to change)

The game has a very large number of traits and abilities that are rather underwhelming, and necromancer is only one profession – however, the necromancer seems to have the lion’s share of bad implementation. This likely stems from the last minute changes made during the beta. It’s as if necromancer is unfinished.

I seem to recall ANet saying something about how they preferred a hands-off approach to balance. The huge patch on June 25 broke that mold. Soon after, there was a series of knee-jerk patches. ANet seems extremely reluctant to admit that they goofed with Dhuumfire. Upon receiving feedback that Dhuumfire+Terror is EXTREMELY OVERPOWERED WOW, they instead opt to nerf everything else except the root of the problem…which forces people to use the “overpowered” build just to compete.

However, all of this talk of balance ignores the real issues. Necromancer is simply lacking. It lacks creativity. It lacks coherence. There are a thousand ideas for necromancers that could be implemented, including ideas that were already present in GW1. Necromancer abilities feel so watered down. Am I playing as a manipulator of life and death, or am I LARPing as a wizard who makes pretty lights that scratch people? For example:

It feels as if necromancer is not as good as it could be – not in terms of just balance, but overall design. It’s a far cry from both the original necromancer in GW1 and the developers’ idea of how the necromancer is supposed to function in GW2. The fact that the developers continue to contradict themselves with each balance patch is very saddening.

In the end, of course, it’s just a game. However, with rumors that GW2 is supposed to become an e-sport, it would be prudent to at least get PvP into a balanced, playable state. Numerous suggestions have been made that could help accomplish this, but I feel as if the team is very disinclined to actually apply player feedback. Then again, I doubt very much that GW2 has any future in hardcore PvP at this point.

The staff is really only useful as a utility stick in PvE. For a condition build, scepter/dagger will do more damage. For a build centered around death shroud, axe or dagger mainhand with focus offhand give plenty of life force regeneration while also doing good damage outside of death shroud.

I still keep a staff on to burst conditions at the start of a fight, to clear conditions off myself with Putrid Mark, or to keep mobs off of the party while skipping areas in dungeons.

Use Plague when you need crowd control on groups of enemies (like that spider guy in TA story).

Use Lich Form if you feel like being lazy in a power build for a good while.

Use Flesh Golem for everything else. It does decent damage, has an interrupt, has stability, and does extremely high damage to static objects with Charge that would otherwise be immune to your condition damage.

I think I’ve gathered enough key points from this thread and others that I would love to see addressed:

Things that MUST be addressed

Do SOMETHING with Dhuumfire

• It requires no skill to use and is the current source of the stream of nerfs sent to necromancers
• Nerfing other abilities like bleeds only further encourages using the current “overpowered” build with Dhuumfire and Terror, leading to more and more nerfs in an endless cycle
• It is useless in group PvE because of the way burning stacks (or rather, doesn’t stack)
• Burning does not fit with profession aesthetic
  Suggestions:
• Move both Dhuumfire and Terror to Curses Grandmaster trait
• Remove Dhuumfire and replace it with something else
• Change Dhuumfire to another condition like torment

Change necromancer condition builds from burst-reliant to attrition-reliant

• Necromancer is apparently supposed to be an attrition class that whittles down opponents slowly
• Necromancer currently LACKS sustain ALMOST ENTIRELY, relies on BURST (!!!); squishier professions have more sustain, while necromancer simply relies on starting with more health!
• Condition bomb is current main way to kill opponent; nearly impossible to “whittle down” opponent due to others having more sustain and having bleed stacks cleansed off entirely
• Only current sustain comes from life force generation (mostly in power builds) and heal ability (slot 6)

Allow healing and/or lifesteal while in Death Shroud

• Necromancer sustain is supposed to come from lifesteal and Death Shroud
• Lifesteal and Death Shroud actively cancel each other out
• Having contradictory traits like Transfusion is embarrassing
• Necromancer cannot be healed by teammates while in Death Shroud; this is combined with necromancer being the easiest profession to gang up on

Things that would be nice to see addressed

Add purpose to the axe

• Necromancer doesn’t have a proper area damage power weapon (leads to lack of damage in WvW zerging)
• Perhaps add a cleave to Axe 1 and/or Axe 2
• Perhaps add a blast finisher to Axe 3
• Perhaps redesign one or more of the axe abilities

Improve lifesteal

• Lifesteal does a paltry amount of healing in most cases
• Spending points in Blood Magic for lifesteal is not particularly rewarding
• Lifesteal scales very poorly, and again, is canceled out entirely by the main profession mechanic (Death Shroud)

Add a form of active defense

• Death Shroud, basic dodges, and kiting are the only ways for necromancer to avoid damage (kiting is useless outside solo PvE)
• No defense against 1-hit KOs
• No vigor (yet there is Mark of Evasion…)
• Limited access to stability (tied to overloaded Death Shroud cooldown and elite abilities with long cooldowns that require you to transform)
• Little ability to escape being ganged up on (combined with being unable to heal in Death Shroud)

Reduce the reliance on autoattack

• Dagger power build relies on autoattack for max DPS
• Death Shroud power build relies on Life Blast autoattack for max DPS
• Lich Form relies on autoattack for max DPS
• Plague relies on autoattack to function

Fix Spectral Grasp so that it doesn’t miss all the time

• Potentially a very powerful ability
• Misses on flat ground, misses when pulling enemies from walls, sometimes sends itself to the moon for no reason

Add more support utility to the necromancer

• Necromancer is a “selfish” profession
• Little to offer to group
• No reflects
• No water or fire fields
• No boon stacking
• No unique buffs
• No stealth
• Few heals
• Annoys teammates in PvE with fear
• Vulnerability stacking on lengthy cooldown and requires proper bounces; useful vulnerability stacking trait (Death Shiver) unusable for most builds
• “Healing build” awkward to use, not effective (I have in fact tried one in both PvE and WvW using apothecary)
• Damage/survivability are not enough to compensate for lack of utility

Flesh out a type of conditionmancer that focuses on non-damaging conditions

• Useful as a “support” character in PvP
• Designed for group combat
• Weakens enemies with chill, weakness, vulnerability, etc.

Fix/change/remove/replace/destroy minor traits

• Some minor traits basically pointless; increasing numbers does not help
• Reanimator almost universally reviled
• Pale in comparison to minor traits of other professions

I was thinking about this earlier before seeing this thread, and I feel that it would make sense for axe to be “the area damage weapon” and dagger to be “the single-target damage weapon.” This is already true to an extent, but the axe feels a little…patched together.

Perhaps Axe 1 could be made into an area attack like the engineer pistol or elementalist fire staff autoattacks (as some other posts have said). It does relatively low damage, but this would give it AoE vulnerability on top of other vulnerability attacks like Focus 4 and Well of Suffering (and that Death Shiver trait that I’m not sure anyone uses). Of course, necromancer does already has Unyielding Blast to fill this same role.

I always felt that it was strange that Axe 2 is the ability that regenerates life force, especially when an ability very similar to Axe 3 (Feast) is the underwater life force regeneration. If Axe 3 was swapped to be the source of life force generation, it would indeed solidify the axe as the “area damage weapon” by making the necromancer regenerate more per target as they already do with trident underwater. Weirdly enough, in Axe 3’s current state, the necromancer gains more retaliation (???) per target. I’m not sure how this fits in.

I’m of the mind that Axe 2 should be replaced entirely with something new, since in it’s current state it’s just a “press button to do damage” ability.

All of those are useful, but crafting is ultimately not very important for what it makes. You can usually buy gear on the trade post for cheaper than the material value of crafting items.

An axe build focused on Life Blast was already pretty powerful in PvE, although it suffered from having its damage greatly reduced whenever a hit was taken in Death Shroud. With the new +50% crit chance and Life Blast not being reliant on life force (as well as the focus trait no longer being bugged in PvE), both axe and dagger have become significantly more powerful in dungeons. Plus, now you have a 1200 range attack available at all times even without a staff.

And berserker in PvP with wells received a crazy buff with DS#5.

On my other characters I find myself reaching for the F1 button before realizing that I do not have death shroud to save me from low HP or falling damage.

There’s a lot to love and a lot to hate about death shroud. In its current state, I feel that it’s too loaded with too many little things and deserves a closer look as the necromancer’s source of corpse power. Its damage mitigation is also tied to life blast, an interrupt, a gap closer, and area lifesteal, as well as a source of condition removal, area healing, retaliation, stability, fury, might, weakness/bleed, and/or vulnerability, depending on your build. That’s a lot to put on one button with a shared 10 (sometimes 5) second cooldown that can also run out of life force ala initiative/adrenaline while being harder to recharge.

In PvP, burst builds can destroy my life force bar sometimes in a single hit if I attempt to shield with death shroud, locking out several traits and 4 of my skills. Yes, that means it saved my health, but it also means that I’m much weaker (you can forget about trying to DPS with life blast in PvP). Plus, if I happen to start a fight without high life force, I’m missing that “extra hp” that’s supposed to give necromancer the edge it seems to be balanced around. It’s basically a double-edged sword – very versatile, but tying all of these things into one button can make it easy to lock you out of them, especially if you try to use it as an “extra hp bar” instead of saving it for boons or abilities.

This feels rather counter to necromancers being an attrition profession – they dwindle over time naturally due to life force mechanics. It seems as if, in its current state, life force is meant to be full upon a necromancer engaging in a fight, when it should be the other way around. I can see the theory here, as well as a glimmer of the old GW1 necromancer getting stronger as a battle progresses (due to corpses; in GW2 this being in the form of gaining life force from them). Basically, necromancers SHOULD only be able to use some of their abilities after corpses have been made (ala GW1), but as it stands they need access to those abilities immediately when the fight begins to keep up with other professions.

This theory feels a little better implemented in PvE due to life blast being viable. There, I currently use a death shroud-focused axe/focus|staff build. The “attrition profession” seems to be in effect here even for this power build, as I steadily gain more might and do more vulnerability the longer I life blast (the AoE vulnerability in death shroud trait is also an implementation of this).

TL;DR – To put this into easily digestible points about how I feel about death shroud:

1. Death shroud and life blast are, theoretically, the GW2 version of necromancers using corpses as power. This is fitting with necromancers being an “attrition profession,” i.e., becoming stronger over time and weakening their enemies over time.

2. Stacking might and vulnerability with life blast over time is also an example of necromancers being an “attrition profession” even when using a power build.

3. In the current state of the game, necromancers appear to be balanced around starting with full life force and become weaker as they lose and ultimately run out of life force. This is counter-intuitive to the idea of being an “attrition profession” – it is the necromancer who is suffering attrition.

4. Idea: Perhaps it would be better to make death shroud more powerful, reduce life force generation from some abilities, and make necromancers actually rely on corpses as their profession would imply, instead of marginalizing the importance of corpses and life force. Yes, corpses are still useful in the current state, but it mostly just gives you more shielding. Most, if not all, death shroud abilities/traits, should become more powerful or more useful with more life force, instead of just life blast and shielding. Using life force for abilities and using life force for defense should be split into two different things.

As an addendum, death shroud definitely needs to be made more useful for condition builds, but the upcoming necromancer change will likely address that.

I was just discussing this with guildmates yesterday. I think that if hundred blades had its damage reduced by 10-15% (maybe more, maybe less, maybe not even changed at all) OR if it simply just lasted for less time (doing less damage in total for the flurry), and was able to be used while moving, it would be far more versatile and would perhaps even increase a warrior’s total damage output by letting them land more hits.

After all, the issue with it from the warrior’s standpoint in both PvE and PvP is that it makes you stand still, is extremely easy to avoid unless you focus on certain utilities or are well coordinated with teammates, and leaves you vulnerable unless you cancel the skill early. And bosses in PvE can just walk away from you.

However, from other classes’ perspective in PvE, it hits EXTREMELY hard and doesn’t take all that much effort to use, plus it has a short cooldown, which can make other classes’ damage output pale in comparison (under ideal circumstances for the warrior, like on a clustered up group or a particularly sluggish champion/boss). Plus, even a warrior in full berserker gear, while putting out these high numbers, still has reasonable survivability compared to other glass cannons.

I think a simple change like this could fix (or at least soften) two things at once – it would be less “overpowered” in PvE while being easier/more versatile to use, and it would be much easier to land hits with it in PvP (even if someone dodges away you could probably catch them with it if you had swiftness or if they were slowed by conditions).

Plus, it would make greatsword feel less clunky to use, but that might just be me.