Guild Wars 2

Consume Conditions.

The self vulnerability isn’t keeping you from OOC healing, and the heal of burning stacks is needed.

+1000 signed

I put my sigil of Generousity on my Frostfang way back when, and I think I die a little watching that thing collect dust.

I was going to say that OP just stated that Blood is awesome.

Is it?

The values seem low to me (but that’s just an opinion). The real problem is that the what works and what doesn’t work in death shroud is very confusing.

I think necromancers are happy. The stat increase everybody got made everybody bursty, and necromancers do bursty well. If there is some sort of stat nerf fix coming, our problems are the same as before.

Anet needs to look at that chill to Resistence conversion if it wants reapers to see play. Reapers already have a lot of trouble from some of the other profession builds out there.

Also, the stability to fear boon conversion isn’t working.

1. I’m playing with death magic in my builds.

- The main problem with death magic is that the major traits suck. Your choices are a condition removal minion trait, a toughness to power conversion that seems intended for reapers, and a once in 60s passive defense against stuns (that sometimes exhibits buggy behavior).

Compared to other classes, this is a bad condition removal trait, a bad stun defense (bad cooldown), and a niche boring stat increase trait (for a class with low toughness).

4. I’ve been thinking about how much worse the previewed elite reaper shout skill is than Flesh golem charge… On paper.

Longer cool down than charge, less damage, less targets for the skill to potentially hit 2s knock down vs 2s stun is essentially the same. And yet we’re all going to still take the shout. Is bad AI supposed to be part of skill balance? If not the shout should be a lot better.

The minion trait seems to be the worst offender (I get that minion builds need condition removal and can’t take shrouded removal, but it is another condition removal in a line that already has one & is one of the worse condition removal traits in the game).

Btw: I thought we were getting a 10% buff against vulnerability for all skills, not just axe skills.

Dump a well of suffering on the downed. Burst down anybody who tries to Rez them.

One of the previous patches turned off the illumination of the FDS, mad memories back, most torches, & most weapons.

So you can’t see in the dark in the 2-3 dark spots.

On the other hand, you can buy the flames of kryta toy from the laurel vendor to get this illumination.

Season one was a series of festivals. Party’s over.

Petition: we need a murderer granny tonic!

Sorta. It got changed/fixed so that you were the source of the damage and healing.

Mesmers have a trait that cranks out big aoe heals every time they heal, and so getting to heal from autoattacks was god mode.

The range of Enfeeble is so tiny, it’s almost not worth having. Withering Precision, on the other hand, is the condition trait my power necromancer always wanted.

OP, arenanet never said anything.

The originally previewed lingering curse may have just been a tooltip error.

Anyways, with the treatment that corruptions got with master of corruption, why would you even want the trait?

Short version: the condition durations of everything would have been nerfed to accodate the trait. No thanks.

I’m not sure that this class is supposed to be a quick ramp up Condi burst class (other than signet of spite)

I’m an achievement hunter. I’m also not really rich.

I bought 1 for 100G + 250ectos and got back 25G and 300ectos. So minus 75G but plus 25ectos. Or just down 50g.

Still, 50g for 1 AP is cheaper than the other +1AP I got from purchasing a Gallant Weapon for 100G.

So I’m not even going to complain about the gambling. I’m happy with the result.

The karka hunt, the ecto vendor, the new jump puzzle, the BL weapons, and hero tron….

Is that all of the new achievements, or is there more in the patch?

Everything is too strong.

Too much base pwr/prec/condi got added to everybody. & people haven’t adapted by going to defensive amulets yet.

I expect that the most fair fix that they could give to everybody is to nerf the bonus offensive stats that thy gave everybody.

And then they should just let things be, knowing that we’ll get another shakeup when the expansion comes (possibly as soon as late August).

A pick and choose nerf the meta approach will be a disaster. Literally everything is strong.

Day one of the new meta & everybody does soo much more damage that if you can just survive a punch and hit back almost as hard, then you ought to win. Game is faster paced, higher stakes and less attrition based so far.

Here’s what I’ve had one success with:

Marauder Amulet
+1050 Power
+1050 Precision
+ 560 Vitality
+ 560 Ferocity

Axe/Warhorn + Staff
Sigils of Generousity & Nullification on main
Sigil of Doom and Energy on swap

Rune of the pack
+175 power
+100 precision
Might, Fury, & Swiftness on hit

Consume Conditions
Well of Suffering
Spectral Walk (variant corrupt boon here)
Spectral Armor
Lich Form

Soul Reaping
Soul Marks
Spectral Mastery
Foot in the Grave

Curses
Plague Signet
Path of Corruption
Weakening Shroud

Death
Shrouded Removal
Reaper’s Protection
Unholy Sanctuary

If you get tired playing power signets, and want to try power spectrals, I’m here to tell you that it is also viable. Spectral Armor’s current traited values are 9 seconds of spectral protection on a 40 second cooldown.

This also applies to your last gasp trait. So, In between your weakening shroud, your good protection uptime, your good spectral uptime, your extra vitality which does double duty on necromancer, your good condition removal, your automatic bailout, your tons of stun breaks and stun break conversion, you have good tankiness on what’s still essentially a Berzerker build.

Thats defense against burst, conditions, & stuns.

While retaining boon ripping abilities.

I think Necromancers are going to like the Marauder Amulet. It’s the next best thing to the extra stats from celestial, but all of the extra stats are put to good use. We have poor native access to fury so the extra precision helps, & vitality stat does double duty for us.

Basically you’ve got a puncher who can take a punch. The traditional weaknesses apply (no mobility, focus target, bad team support, sitting duck against range), but we’re used to those.

A special note about Lich Form: Lich form got two buffs that I haven’t seen anybody here talk about. First, the Cast size of Lich skills increased just like the staff marks increased. The second buff to Lich, is that leaving Lich form will not interrupt your last cast skill. Of course, a build with Lich form and unholy sanctuary is one where you’ll not have to worry about death while in Lich form so you can play aggressively.

Feedback welcome

There’s just way more damage flying around.

Everybody hits so hard because of the power creep.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

It seems this new trait rocks! Inb4 nerf coming to necromancer’ signets, calling it right now. Remember my words fellas

If the nerf is internal cool down on signets of suffering, I called that a week ago.

They were never going to let Cancelling signet skills give you might or let signet of the locust AoE boon convert.

Roe.3679:

I don’t think it would. I think it would be everyone waiting for the other 2 teams to start fighting so they can gank the winner. That happens in WvW too – just a big standoff until someone gets impatient.

You could stop that from happening with good map design.

Put something important, like an arrow cart off to the side. Then if somebody doesn’t want to engage, they lose.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

so after seeing some good duels from good necros for a change its pretty obvious that full signet necros sadly is the best build.

i like that we were the kings of transfer but this is much is just kittened. people were even thinking the necros bug using cause hes just playing full tank and then spamming signets.

Signets got a good trait.

The massive power creep boon spam makes boon conversion better than its ever been. Again, Boon conversion is only good because anet has given everybody power creep boon spam.

Plague signet got a huge Cooldown buff. It may be useful now (I still hate the passive).

Even still, I worry about an internal cool down on signets of suffering that if implemented just kills the trait for everybody.

Anet said they were going to change everybody’s build in every class, so I don’t think that increased viability of signets is such a bad thing.

Did you really prefer taking spectral walk and Wurm in every build?

I’ve been saying that Condi builds have plenty of good traits in curses to take and curses isn’t the problem.

Cooldown reduction traits are boring and need a looking at.

Especially if anet is just going to nerf cooldowns to accommodate the Cooldown trait. Then the Cooldown trait functions as a tax on the player. What’s more fun than taxes.

Anet said they were moving away from Cooldown traits, and most of the still remaining Cooldown traits have an additional function.

Except for Master of Corruption. All it does for the player is Cooldown.

Master of corruption ought to be sent back to the drawing board.

manveruppd.7601:

The necro who was beating Chaith was Noscoc, Chaith said. He was Necromancer Dd, the staff/axe/warhorn guy with three signets, who was cancel-casting the signets for might stacks.

Cancelling signets for might stacks looks like a bug they should fix/nerf.

IF the Necromancer can’t give the team support (for thematic reasons) or receive support (while using the profession mechanic) or survive focus fire (thematic reasons) and is a sitting duck against faster ranged classes (thematic reasons again), then the necromancer better be GODLY in all other situations.

This isn’t remotely true.

Or in other words, don’t expect fixes or buffs

I just used Consume Conditions to clear off 6 stacks of vulnerability….

+10000

Can’t support this more

Half of the value of resistance is that it stops immobilize.

You’ve got the rune of the afflicted. So when you down yourself with your elite, you can inflict some death nova quality damage.

@Neandramathal

Death Shroud “flashing” is something that has never worked, because there are no possible traits that are worth giving up all of your defenses for.

The theorycrafting only hypothetical death shroud flashing builds serve only to limit the necromancer.

After three years of playtime, anet has good data on how much life force is actually generated and how much time is actually spent in death shroud. The skills conditioned on DS ought to reflect this.

OP pointed out withering precision. In theory this was remove a condition every 10s, same as traits I other classes, but in the real world it was “remove a condition every 35s.” It got a buff. Now it will remove 2-3 conditions every 35s, on par with other condition removal traits.

Request: I would like to see a full FYI/FAQ on which necromancer heal traits work in death shroud and which don’t after Tuesday.

The funky unwritten Death Shroud Rules are very confusing.

Zaroua.2714:

A little over 3130 condi damage fully buffed using bursting instead of corruption sigil., which gives roughly 260 dmg per bleed. A grand total of 18200 damage done to self while in Plague while fully buffed up. e.

That sounds like almost enough damage to down you when the form ends.

I would love to see a video of a necromancer killing himself with his elite form.

Somebody please make this happen

Yesterday, I was asked to run the far orb in the swamp fractal.

That’s usually pretty hard for necromancers. But I was able to clean off the poison, Immobilize and cripple with my consume conditions and still get out of combat, which let me complete the run in time!

If an AI based build became good (or even good at beating noobs like turrets), then there would be an outcry among the entire player base to nerf it to hell.

Minions can’t be good. Anet will not let minions be good.

All we can ask for is that pointless minion traits (necromantic corruption) get removed so our other builds can work.

There is no such thing as a corruption build of no corruption stun breaks.

I don’t know why the added a sacrifice to plague when it already had a sacrifice (makes you sacrifice minions and spectrals.

Look forward to testing blood bond, but it looks awful.

The trigger condition asks you to be running staff or scepter, which means that you will at best get 600 point of healing when it triggers (or even nothing if the target dodges). 600 healing every 20 seconds of “in combat” with a ramp up time is awful.

Sorry I meant locust Swarm, Warhorn 5. I think they changed the trait because of that.

Papish.5806:

The comment about how x amount of necros run dagger and have been succesful in high level play doesnt hold water as there arent that many necros in high level pvp play.

As for gs not have anything to gap close, it has a 600 range 3/4 sec pull

Our gap closing will be stronger imo due to the leap on rs 2 since even if you are blind or ur opponent is invuln/dodging, you clase close distance while with dark path and its slow projectile has soo many counters.

For the o no chill converts to resistance things ive been seeing. yes it converts to it and its sucks but its only 2sec of resistance and not many classes have actual boon conversions so it shouldnt be coming up that often.
.

1. Occams Razor. You don’t see Dagger winners because dagger is bad. You don’t see necromancer winners because necromancer is bad.

2. The GS pull has aftercast and the follow up attacks are slow. It is a bad skill & bad synergy with the other skills.

3. RS 2 has a slow cast, obvious animation, aftercast and no CC / Soft CC on landing. Reaper may have problems getting lifeforce so it will be useful a lot less often than you think. Reapers are going to miss Darth path and they are really going to miss the zero cast time on DS 3

4. Resistence is total immunity to all of Necromancer control and defense (and total immunity to downed state). Because of this conversion, there’s going to be more Resistence from random guardian shouts & Lyssa runes than there will be from skills and traits. This conversion should be dropped to 1 second or rethought entirely.

I hope PvE bosses (and WvW keep lords) are changed to not just have complete immunity to chill

Honestly, I think the combination they were afraid of was just the range increase on Deathly Swarm…

You take terror, lingering curse, and the plague signet trait if you have precision. Thats three good traits. Your problem isn’t good traits in curses, it’s bad traits elsewhere. (Look at the death magic masters)

If you truly needed the boon corruption, take the signet trait.

Eat the corruption change. (There is no such thing as a corruption build because there are no corruption stun breaks),

If you lose greatsword, you just lost most of your access to chill, and you’re stuck with worthless minor traits.

In addition, that same point still applies when your DPS beyond dagger range is feeble. Where is the lifeforce to run all of those cool reaper skills going to come from?

Remember what happened to us when we got Dhuumfire?

I’ve been making that argument about Dagger forever.

Necromancer dagger has appeared on a winning pvp tournament team once in 3 years.

Its bad. But even dagger has an immobilize. Necromancer Greatsword has neither leaps nor immobilizes nor blocks nor reflects nor stun breaks.

robertul.3679:

What is the reasoning of the 50% nerf? Casual tears? Have said casuals even see the thief changes?

Necro downstate is supposed to be OP.
I thought anet finally fixed that because they realized that’s where necros belong. In downstate.

The reason is that some guardians died from this once.

Once you attract the attention of the guardian or theif forum, you’re dead.

Anybody with a ranged weapon is going to hard counter reapers.

The new greatsword will be worthless, because you’ll never get close enough to generate life force. Also you’ll never get your chill off, because autoattack 3 disappears if you don’t quickly use it.

Kodama.6453:

The way I understood the change, cripple and chill will still have an impact on movement skills. It won’t affect the distance, but the speed you are passing it by.

Thats what slow will do.

Cripple will do nothing and chill will do nothing but affect recharge.

We really need somebody at anet who understands the class, plays the class, and has the pull to make things happen

Well of Blood. Give Necromancers projectile finishers on Staff (non of this % crap) and on shroud if you take the trait. Then you can cast this and finish in the field to clear a condo or 2. Then it’s useable.

Signet of Suffering. Anet hasn’t properly balanced lifesteal for 10 years. I have no faith that this skill will ever be good

Consume Conditions.

I loathe Master of corruption, and the way everything had to be nerfed to justify this trait. First of all cooldown traits that don’t o anything else are boring, Second, there is no such thing as a corruption build if no corruption stun breaks. Anet ought to scrap this trait.

I willing to try consume conditions that self conditions, but i would prefer blind to vulnerability on consume conditions. Ever other corruption gives a unique condition and epidemic already give you vulnerability. Off topic: Why does Plague need to put a condition on you when it already makes you sacrifice your minions and spectral effects.

Your Soul is Mine. The concept is pretty decent. The other heals are spike recovery tools, and Death Shroud is a spike recovery tool. The idea of a low cooldown heal that casts quickly is a baby step towards viability. The numbers on this are bad, however. Especially the cast time. Casts longer and heals for less than thief withdraw for example. Yeah, it works well with ‘on heal’ runes, yeah it works with soldier runes, but the skill has to stand on its own.

My guess is that anet will eventually tweak the numbers into usefulness after 6 months of nobody using this.

A .25 second cast and .5 second aftercast would be fair.

Summon Blood Fiend. The problem with this skill is that the fiend dies in AoE soup because AI is dumb and then goes on full 20s cooldown.

There are only 4 types of buff/tweaks that could be made to this skill that would make me take it

(1) If the minion dies from combat, you get the full heal, regardless of the fact that you didn’t use taste of death
(2) Taste of death has a zero cast time.
(3) there’s a trait that makes downing the enemy fiend in AoE soup good strategy instead of what players are normally doing, (for example: Necromantic Corruption: You bone minion converts one condition on you to 2 seconds of resistance every 10 seconds)
(4). Minions don’t go on full cooldown when they die.

ronpierce.2760:

To be honest, I haven’t considered that it might xfer all conditions every 10… If that’s the case it’s fine, if not fine- very powerful. I’ve been under the assumption that it’s a single condition per 10 that they transfer off them self, which is where I got the idea for 5 sec icd. I’m not really sure what to think if it’s all conditions. I will remain doubtful that it’s a full xfer off them every 10 seconds….

That’s because it probably woln’t work like that.

It will probably we one condition drawed and transferred every 10 seconds of “in combat” no matter how many minions that you have out.

Why we need a condition removal trait in the master tier when we already have one in the adept tier is puzzling.

ronpierce.2760:

nekretaal.6485:

ronpierce.2760:

Roe.3679:

It is worth noting that the reduced condi damage should synergize nicely with the corruptions. Just look at plague, those bleeds aren’t as bad with this trait.

I don’t think it’s worth taking over other traits but I don’t think it’s bad.

Yeah. Personally I still feel like much of Death Magic is underwhelming. …

The problem is that the master traits are bad. Your choices are:

(1) a stun to fear conversion that works every 60 seconds
(2) a toughness to power trait that doesn’t work well with any existing armors (it seems to exist to benefit reapers)
(3) a minion trait that doesn’t work.

Well that’s what I’m saying. Yes, I agree with what someone else said, GM and Adept have some really cool options. I’m not denying that.

As for the major traits. Flesh of the master is still an incredibly boring mandatory trait for minions to not be completely stomped on arrival.

The major trait for minions is necromantic corruption. It’s an underpowered trait that doesn’t really work when conditions come in AoE or when conditions are spammy and short duration. Thats like every condition that exists.

ronpierce.2760:

Roe.3679:

It is worth noting that the reduced condi damage should synergize nicely with the corruptions. Just look at plague, those bleeds aren’t as bad with this trait.

I don’t think it’s worth taking over other traits but I don’t think it’s bad.

Yeah. Personally I still feel like much of Death Magic is underwhelming. …

The problem is that the master traits are bad. Your choices are:

(1) a stun to fear conversion that works every 60 seconds
(2) a toughness to power trait that doesn’t work well with any existing armors (it seems to exist to benefit reapers)
(3) a minion trait that doesn’t work.