Guild Wars 2

If Chill is nerfed, then thieves should get a stolen skill that counters elementalists even more than chill does.

Anyways what’s problematic about chill is that chill has zero effect on most thief and revenant kills. A condition that counters some hard, but that others get to ignore is bad Rock Paper Scissors design.

Reaper is not good for roaming, it is bad at roaming because it has no escapes (ofc neither does necromancer)

Reaper will be bad at Pvp because it has no little range and can be kited. Play greatsword, and you’ll never get life force against anybody good. Play anything else and you lose the chill that your specialty is based on.

Reaper will be bad at PvE because of no reflects and no group utility. (ofc this is also true of necromancer).

Don’t count on Chill to give you anything for DPS.

Bosses (& WvW keep lords) are immune to chill.

PvE

Most of the PvE big damage that actually matters comes from reflects. Anybody who doesn’t have these is bottom tier.

PvP

Pvp isn’t really a DPS race & the thief is the king of the zerkers. Mobility means more in Pvp than anything else, and the necromancer does not have mobility.

WvW

Necromancer WvW DPS is considered high, because the tons of lifer ore that you get all the time lets you survive well in Zerker.

Power builds are awful at handling conditions. Even if you go axe/Dagger + Staff, you’ll be overwhelmed. This is because everybody else’s conditions and removals were buffed since launch except for the Necromancer’s.

First, I assume you are not talking about PvE, where conditions are negligible.

Second, in the power build, you’ll notice that you don’t actually camp your time in DS. Really, only 40% of your time is in Death shroud.

Third, I bet you’ll notice that the conditions that are killing you aren’t the burns, poisons, and bleeds, but the immobilizes & cripples & weaknesses.

Fourth, As much as we all hate anet for “Death shroud is a second life bar for defense,” it is good at soaking up damage over time if you can kite. It should soon become second nature to you to leave DS with consume conditions or staff 4 ready. This is why necromancer has a good reputation as a pure condition class before the advent of celestial amulets or immobilize spammers.

As for your actual options, there are sigils that remove conditions, and these still work in death shroud. Especially if axe wasn’t so terrible, this would be a decent option.

There are runes that reduce condition duration. These aren’t so great, because you really just need protection against immobilize, not everything else.

There’s a trait that removes conditions when you enter death shroud. It is underpowered, but it could save you.

There is the terrible signet, which would work as a condition clear stun break if that actually happened every time in game (and if it didn’t have a terrible passive).

You can use you DS 2 to try to get yourself out of trouble if you are being condition focused.

Finally, there’s well of power, which removes conditions too slowly to be of much use since it doesn’t prioritize immobilize (and has a too long cool down to be effective against immobilize spam).

The trait changes will bring a removal trait in spite that you won’t be able to count on & certainly won’t help you against immobilize spam (the condition that actually kills you).

The reaper will have a trait that reduces the condition duration of movement conditions. This will become mandatory for all Pvp Reapers. The problem is that the trait is too week, Anybody with kiting skill, range and CC is going to destroy / hard counter reapers (even, for example, necromancers).

I suppose that the Reaper could theoretically also take shouts and soldier runes, but this comes at the expense of even more badly needed stun breaks. The ability to remove up to an additional 5 conditions per minute isn’t anything to write home about either.

Sigmoid.7082:

For pvp this trait is literally the best tier 1 major trait reaper has.

That just means the tier 1 traits suck.

Dogged March gives you similar immunity to the same conditions, without death shroud restrictions, and gives the warrior regeneration.

Jekkt.6045:

necro is not a support class and will never be a support class. what it does is debuffing enemies with weakness and vulnerability

Other classes do vulnerability better. Also, where’s the weakness? Corrosive Poison Cloud? The weakness trait just got removed.

Take a Theif if you want weakness. The thief can also support the team with invisibility, finishers, and stealth.

That trait sucks then.

4 second immobilize minus 66%. == you’re still dead with no dodges. And if you’ve got a staff, and enter reaper shroud, you get nothing? Waste of a trait.

The problem concept/execution wise is anet’s stubborn insistence that the necromancer be a no-utility damage class with low damage.

We all know the problems.

Focus: has too long cast times
Axe: has a worthless #1 skill
Dagger: lifesteal sucks, #2 should be a ranged AoE spike, a leap, or a densive buff
Staff: too-long cool downs on marks
Warhorn: #4 should be a finisher so isn’t such a situational skill
Offhand Dagger: #4 projectile doesn’t hit reliably, cast times
Scepter: #3 should be something a condition spec can better use. All scepter condition durations shoud be doubled and the proposed lingering curse trait eliminated.

OP is overrating the dagger.

No necromancer has ever appeared in a high level Pvp tournament with dagger. The weapon doesn’t have GAP Closers, or defensive tools to survive in melee like reflects or Stability.

Necromancers really did get the short end of the weapon stick.

I think the reason our weapons suck is MINIONS. Their DPS is figured into the overall power budget for the class, Also, their finishers. But since they suck, necromancers who don’t use them have low DPS and no finishers.

1. The base class still needs fixing.

2. I have no faith that the promised blood magic revamp amounts to anything other than “change traits like life transfer into something that makes sense for reaper shroud.”

3. Any class with a ranged weapon will wreck the reaper, who needs to get into melee to generate life force. Life force generation vs a kiting opponent will be difficult, especially when using the slow greatsword.

4. We’re still stuck taking 2 stun breaks, so the new shouts don’t matter. Utility skills that you can’t use don’t count.

5. The greatsword doesn’t have the tools that a Pvp weapon needs to be competitive. For example, dagger, which at least has an immobilize, hasn’t seen any play in any competitive tournament and Greatsword doesn’t even have an immobilize (or stability, or leaps, or other badly needed utility).

6. Reapers look good in PvE, but still no reflects == have to get carried vs lupicus == can’t get a group for hard content. The other issue is that greatsword damage has to be much better than dagger damage to see use, seeing as how neither weapon has utility. One of the 2 weapons is redundant.

7. Thieves are almost completely immune to chill. Their 1-5 skills are immune, their heal clears chill. Revenants, which rely on an energy bar instead of cool downs for the most part, are also mostly immune to chill.

8. The whole design of the reaper is to be slow and hard hitting, but the hard hitting isn’t there. Who is going to be afraid of a reaper, if they have Eviscerate or Hundred Blades up? Gravedigger spam, easily avoided, is weaker than dagger auto.

Final numbers will be important. They need to be superior to Fire Elementalist if the class is supposed to have no utility.

9. I see excitement for the damage reduction vs poison trait. Where is the poison coming from? Scepter? Sigil of Doom.

10. Axe needs to get fixed before this expansion hits.

11. Anet needs to play test Reaper against some meta shout bows. Right now the reaper is hard countered by anybody with range and anybody with Condi clear, and, even though stability does exist on the reaper, stun chains will not be much better than the unaccaptable necromancer level.

Wait a sec. I thought the Relentless Pursiut trait was 99% immunity. 33% for GS + 66% for shroud. Go into shroud wielding GS and you should be at 99%.

Anybody with a ranged weapon to swap to is going to shred reapers

I don’t see the expansion giving Guardians extra mobility.

But they got the range and condis that they always wanted. That projectile refecting projectile will make Dragonhunters the kings of pirate ship battles.

The chronomancer didn’t fix the mesmer’s lack of boon generation either.

Warhorn 4 could use a blast finisher.

Warhorn 5 is ok as long as the Devs realize that Warhorn 5 sucks as mobility and they still need to address mobility for necromancer even though Warhorn 5 exists.

Bhawb.7408:

Shouts can be made to buff allies’ ability to harm enemies, which is very likely because of Orders, and would be great support. ).

This already exists. It’s called venoms and it’s terrible.

Minis are on the Trading post at prices that are waaaaay cheaper than the gem costs to buy them

Anet took the minipet packs off the trading post to prop up the prices.

But they come back for sales a few times a year. You can buy them then, but why would you when they are so much cheaper on the trading post.

Also there will probably be a set 4 released when HoT comes out (mini dinosaurs!)

DS is really easy to work in scaling defenses.

Just give the necromancer the toxic krait projectile reflect bubble as a channeled skill on death shroud 7 (the krait bubble roots, so it works like old engineer shield 5). That gives necromancer scaling defenses.

Before you say that’s imba, realize that the necromancer is not moving, or doing damage, is totally vulnerable to AoE or Melee during the channel, and is losing life force from degen during the channel.

If greatsword is melee with cleave, as rumored, then necromancer is best off getting a zerker spec + the tools to run a zerker spec (mobility, blocks, reflects, condition clears for immobilize spam).

Necromancer dagger or power builds have never been viable in high level Pvp, despite high level PvPers occasionally experimenting with them. Necromancer PvE capabilities are terrible as well.

If support means finishers and group boons on a zerker spec, that’s ok. But anything more support oriented and less zerker than that will leave necromancers in the garbage.

Sagat.3285:

By all means do not let current Lingering Curse out it’s a toxic trait that will naturally makes condition weak for balance with it I

+10000

It will work worse than that. If this trait goes live:

All of the condition transfers will end up nerfed. All of the conditions on Death Shroud will get nerfed. All of the conditions from traits will get nerfed.

All of the conditions on other weapons will get nerfed (because you can for example staff mark somebody and then weapon swap for a double length fear).

Off hand weapons (warhorn, dagger 5) will not get badly needed finishers if this trait exists (potential for unindented uses).

Finally, this trait will probably not result in nerfs to sigils (ie 4 second chills every 10 seconds), but will instead result in nerfs to every other source of necromancer conditions to make up for uses of sigils. (hypothetical uses, we’re still stuck with sigil of energy in the real world).

If scepter skills are too weak to be viable, improve them! Don’t force a grandmaster on scepter users! Especially a grandmaster that unintentionally nerfs every non condition-damage necromancer.

Please no more minion. (Maybe an underwater golem)

I would appreciate less minions however. If I could take duplicate utility skills so I could take a whole team of similar ranged minions, that would be pretty cool.

The more I think about it: Minions are the source of Most of Neromancer’s Problems

1. Minions get their own trait line, which kills non minion build diversity. Just adding minions as utilities doesn’t work because you need the minion traits. Adding death magic without full minions is a waste of traits.

2. Minion AI is horrible.

3. The minions stand in AoE and die very fast

4. Necromancer’s finishers are tied to minions, but because minions don’t work, neither do the finishers.

5. Shadow fiend is a very poor skill

6. Minion damage is part of the Necromancer’s “total power budget”. Weapons have to be balanced with minion damage (and utility, such as finishers) taken into effect, and thus get balanced weaker by themselves (this is also an issue for Mesmer and ranger)

7. Necromancer weapons have no synergy with minions. (anti synergy in the case of staff as tossing marks will not trigger minion attack AI)

8. Minions have nothing to do with death shroud (no synergy there) and get destroyed by lich form and plague.

9. Minions die when you get in the water.

The Wizland.8435:

Honestly the only thing necro is (arguably) better at than some classes is condition and boon management. Personally I play it just because I like how the class functions.

Condition management is terrible. It is quickly overwhelmed by sheer condition output of other classes.

That our condition control is so terrible locks us into staff.

Boon management is pretty bad too. A Traited thief destroys boons every 15s and their rip prioritizes stability. Theif/Mesmer rip boons on autoattack too, so boon management being any kind of strength in pvE is out.

The necromancer’s real strength is a burst caster. By blowing all of your long cool downs, you can do a big chunk of power damage in PvE over 10 seconds before your DPS falls off the cliff. Likewise in Pvp, you can burn a bunch of long cool downs and overwhelm a foe with tons of nearly all of the conditions all at once.

The blood line is awful, and the runes and sigils are awful, but lifesteal food is good. Use lifesteal food on anybody with fast attacks (like a theif or guardian) for great sustain.

Axe is terrible because axe 1 is terrible.

Also, you get all of your life force from axe 2, which s easily negated (you could also take Warhorn, but in order to get life force from that you need to be in melee). Offhand dagger and focus have poor life force generation. Focus is also very poor outside of PvE vulnerability generation (and vulnerability generation is worthless because everybody does it and you hitvthe cap without even trying).

Axe is basically a worse version of warrior rifle.

I played primarily axe for a long time. Using staff as an offhand, casting staff marks as a “bomb” and constantly weapon swapping, it is doable but still underpowered..

In WvW, you can take axe/dagger for a weapon swap set, using strong skills axe 3 and dagger 5. But, if you do that, you should probably take scepter instead for the stronger scepter 2 and poison on auto attack (poisoning downed players kills most of their rallied HP it’s important). Or just stick with dagger/Warhorn.

You forgot about spirit weapons, intended to open up an entirely new playstyle to the necromancer.

(1) Defensive Ability & scaling defenses (block/reflect, etc)
(2) Field use
(3) Condition removal or resistance (something to deal with immobilize spam)
(4) death shroud fixes (heals, fewer traits, quicker life force, faster degen)
(5) Other non field support.
(6). Real mobility options (swiftness is too slow)

Bhawb is right that the necromancer doesn’t have a lot of build defining trait and this contributes to boring stale gameplay, but he is a bit optimistic about what ‘build defining’ really is.

Lingering Curse isn’t build defining, it is just numbers. A required trait to make an underpowered weapon playable. It’s boring. That it also works on sigil & trait procs will just result in nerfs.

Ditto with Deathly Perception. That trait while good (although not good enough to ever see use in a Pvp tournament), might change some gear choices but really doesn’t do much to change playstyle. It just makes Death shroud less underpowered for power users.

Neither of those, nor Spiteful Spirit even with a blast finisher and no cooldown really change anything (a blast finisher would make axe less underpowered, but this is just another example of having to take a trait to make a poor weapon viable).

Even foot in the grave merely opens up 1-2 utility skills that would otherwise be filled with underpowered stun breaks.

The following are necromancer’s actual build defining traits. If you don’t want vanilla you have to take one of these.

Unholy Martyr
Terror
Parasitic Contagion
unholy Sanctuary
Death Nova/Necromantic Corruption
Foot in the Grave

Unfortuately, a lot of these are terrible.

Despite reputation, there aren’t enough conditions to make Parasitic Contagion decent (and there is the whole problem of the grandmaster trait not working with the class mechanic, an anti-synergy of defensive traits).

Nor is there enough condition removal to make unholy martyr workable (the trait also has low, only in DS uptime amongst a host of other issues — but this trait could see play if it granted resistance on condition transfer similar to the revenant ability).

Unholy Santuary turns necromancers into leeroy Jenkins, so it is build defining in a bad way.

Death Nova and Necromantic Corruption define your minion playstyle, but minions eat up your utilities have bad AI and no synergy with necromancer weapons or Necromancer death shroud.

Terror gives a spike of damage to your condition necromancer, which is a good thing because necromancers damage over time abilities are much weaker than their reputation outside of a burst.

Agreed.

Axe 3, Dagger 5, and Warhorn 4 should be finishers. If axe 3 becomes a finisher, then the new Spiteful Spirit trait looks less awful, although still perhaps not GM worthy.

Warhorn 4 should have been a finisher ages ago. It will be exceedingly rare that the skill will both interrupt and blast finish, forcing necromancers to make strategic choices.

Offhand dagger could use a buff (focuse even more so).

It is a 10 years old game. And it’s very different than guild wars 2.

In some ways, It may be more similar to a RTS game like Warcraft than an MMO like world of Warcraft.

It’s perfectly doable solo (you have AI companions to help you out), and it still looks pretty enough. The lore is interesting and the game has a lot of content. You will get value out of this game.

The best value for you money? Hard to say. The game shows its age: no z axis, no jumping, no auction house. The Pvp scene is pretty dead, and the PvE scene might as well be if you want to do more than chat and trade.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Here you have one necro skill in GW1 that obviously blows all others out of the water, yet they are constantly hesitant to make life stealing worth while. In the end, what we got after dozens of minor changes, was that life stealing was just “useable”. It didn’t impress anyone, but it worked, kind of.

TBH, I never liked the GW1 balance either.

You had minion builds, which steamrolled everywhere but the “hard” content that actually mattered, Spiteful Spirit builds, and builds where you used soul reaping and another classes skills.

Everything else sucked. The stuff you could do was limited and gimmicky. And all of their balance updates never changed this.

Lifesteal was always awful. Awful DPS + awful healing. The philosophy of its balance was as if 4+4 could somehow equal 10.

There were once upon a time necromancer teams called “blood spike”. But those teams relied on broken soul reaping and broken GW1 Aegis for their power. If a team of 8 players using their biggest (long cooldown) nuke all attack at the same time, and the result isn’t mathematically enough to kill anybody, the team build sucks.

Ritualist spirits are essentially turrets, and are a giant white flag of anet admitting that our minions suck and will never be fixed.

I’d prefer something else.

If this specialization is melee, then anet better make good on giving the necromancer proper tools to fight in melee (ie the ability to fight current Lupicus without going nomads or getting carried)

What can I do to get on the list of good necromancers? #33 rank NA isn’t good enough?

Death Shroud is not the cause of Necromancer problems

At the end of the day, Death shroud does make the class a little “snowball,” which means that the Class does get balanced a little weak so necromancer teams don’t snowball.

but.

Death shroud is not the reason why we have an entire trait line based on a subset of optional utility skills. Minions have nothing to do with death shroud, which makes their prominence in Death magic very puzzling.

Death shroud is not the reason why lifesteal sucks (anet couldn’t balance lifesteal in GW1 either)

New utilities don’t matter. With poor traits, we are stuck taking stun breaks. We have great utilities already that never see use because anet hosed the class with poor stability, movement, or stability.

I’m mostly concerned that 100% duration lingering curse, even if people do not use it, will result in duration nerfs for focus chill, Dagger weakness, Dhuumfire, and Death shroud fear, chill, and torment.

If Scepter needs longer condition duration on it to be viable, give the scepter weapon skills longer condition duration!

Don’t punish them by denying them a grandmaster, making them take a grandmaster that only serves to make an unviable weapon viable.

Grandmaster traits are build defining: they should do something, not just tweak numbers.

rager.4963:

All this talk of give it “time” and stuff, sure did pay off for the new time skills meser get with wells and stuff.

I can’t wait to see the new necromancer skill, we are going to get a whole new vampire type skills that make us sparkle. Can’t wait to glitter it up on the field.

The new skills don’t matter.

With no endurance regen, stability, disengage, or way to escape immobilize spam, we are stuck taking stun breaks as our utilities. And even with utility stun breaks we are sitting ducks against range.

Or just buff scepter durations by 100%.

That way scepter users get a usable weapon (seriously, scepter is middling as a condtiin weapon) and there’s not a 100% trait out there lurking around nerfing DS#3 and Dhuumfire.

Morale’s pretty low.

It’s not just that these new trait layouts suck. It’s mostly that anet doesn’t seem to understand the class meaning that existing issues won’t be fixed. Ever.

And, reasonable suggestions to fix our issues have appeared… In the revenant.

Mesmer just got necro’d..

All of their skills will be nerfed into uselessness because of hypothetical situations that will never happen in game. Mesmers will come to resent the F5, relying on it as a crutch to prop up their broken class.

The existence of this cool arcane echo and cool down reduction effect should mean that mesmers, starting in hot, will be stuck in cool down hell most of the time.

All skill changes don’t occur in a vacuum. Where one hand gives, the other takes.

And you should also look at the dog that’s not barking: existing mesmers have awful access to boons and will continue to do so. The anet idea of: you can apply confusion so you don’t need defensive boons didn’t change either.

Mesmer got wells, but wells aren’t so hot in Pvp. What looks the best is the super blocking CC inflicting shield.

All necromancers need is some extra traditional defense. It doesnt even need to be that good. No need to get too fancy.

flow.6043:

So I’ve just listened to the recent BoC podcast:

Lingering Curse should not have +100% condition
.
Seriously, the cause or obstacle to any meaningful balance change can’t be a trait in Curses that simply doubles everything

Agreed. Lingering curse is a boring, numbers based, trait that just holds necromancers back. Big numbers seem good, but every condition will have its baseline duration reduced to balance it.

We should get, as a build defining grandmaster, a trait that actually does something new and interesting instead of just increasing numbers. The other two traits accomplish this even if both require you to take condition damage on your gear.

Replace lingering curse with withering precision, then balance the condition duration numbers on weapons to compensate for the nerf to condition duration that comes from not having stats anymore.

The problem with necromancer is not that we won’t get good skills.

I’m sure that anet has dreamed up fantastic skills for necromancer.

The problem is that the new skills DoNT MATTER.

So long as there is no endurance regen, disengages, and stability access is weak, we are stuck taking 2 stun breakers as utility. This leaves no room for new skills, let alone the ability to trait up the new skills.

spoj.9672:

Shouts dont really make sense on a necro. Id expect something completely new for us. But other options could be spirits or auras.

I think the specializations will be kind of like secondary classes in GW1.

And Mesmer just got the necromancer secondary.

I see why people here are hoping for a warrior secondary, like shouts. Life force is substantially the same thing as adrenaline. It just makes sense.

Not not that, but their wells are better than ours. Their wells get an “active” effect and an explode effect.

I’m jealous that they get an elite well too.

The good news is that a well related rune set seems more likely to arrive now.

spoj.9672:

Well yeah its worse than the old version. But if skill 2 and 3 were much much stronger then its not terrible.

No it’s awful.

Landing a rending claws will reduce your ghastly claws cooldown by 0.16 seconds. This is so minor it doesn’t exist.

The other bonus hits enemies with cripple. But cripple from axe is pathetic. Less than 33% uptime on tiny range & easily cleared since power Necromancers don’t have a lot of conditions to worry about. Necromancer main source of cripple is Warhorn, which doesn’t work well with axe at all (axe = skirmishing, Warhorn = melee).

This is a terrible terrible trait.

And if ghastly claws gets a damage buff and Axe 3 gets a blast finisher, its still terrible.

No. I got the owl yesterday and I’ll have to delete it because I already payed for one.

This is dumb.

Crit chance will remain really important.

Without the stat increase from curses, and without, for the most part, fury, necromancer will be starved for precision. All of the current berzerkers might even have to swap to assassins.

Of course, even then, the conditional requirements on target the weak make it’s precision increase unreliable.

Actually, I think we are played very good in spit of our weaknesses and that’s the problem.

Mesmer has been very weak for a long time, but as long as Helseth was around kicking kitten on streams, anet felt it didn’t need to do anything. Then along came a tournament which was won by farming Helseth because Mesmer is just too weak.

Same thing happened later with Necromancer and it was Nos’ turn to be farmed.

PSILO.4068:

I And, in my not so humble opinion, we are more versatile than any other class.

Need power? I got it.

Need condi? I got that too. Need support? Seriously, I have that covered too.

Need a Bunker? Does 40k hp work? .

Your opinion is wrong. The classes that can take advantage of celestial and benefit strongly from every single stat are the most versatile. Stats like healing power or boon duration do almost nothing for necromancer.

Power has never been Pvp viable, condition has never been PvE viable. Support is almost nonexistent.

Minions die instantly to the AoE that everybody bring to every game mode.

Bunkering doesn’t work because you are easily knocked off the point. The HP doesn’t protect you from being immobilized (or stunned) and your condition removal is inadequate. In addition you are a sitting duck against range with no defense or and little ability to even fire back.

Epidemic is a terrible skill and its unlimited potential holds Necromancers back.

Nobody even takes it, not even in WvW which has a “stack together tightly and ball up” play style. The condition cap removal from the beta applied only to one world boss.

Don’t start by playing a necromancer.

The devs didn’t give the necromancer any defense and they expect you to face tank everything. This will give you bad habits and you will essentially have to relearn how to play in order to get good.