Guild Wars 2

My problem with that is that this game isn’t really made to support sacrificing too much hp, as there are no healers and it isn’t trinity based. This would likely hurt the Necromancer more than it would help with how this game is designed. Plus, with things like corrupt boon, blood is power etc, people often already feel like we have too many backlash abilities. The minions just need help, we don’t really need to suffer more for that in my opinion.

No thoughts, I just wanted to add that for MM this would fix a few issues, being: Better pet survivability, being able to make decisions that help/affect the minions (adding a skill factor) and livens up the relatively dull trait.

I had a suggestion as a way to buff minion survivability (especially in AOE) while also gives the Necromancer some thinking/skill growth. What if “Flesh of the Master”, in addition to the 50% hp increase (which honestly isn’t enough survivability for these poor things) also gave 50% of the healing the master receives to the minions? Flesh -> of the Master. (Direct healing only, not AOE, as it would double dip in healing) It makes sense, would help these poor things live longer, and is dependent on the master. I think it’d be pretty cool and make it a pretty interesting trait which would read as such:

“Increases the health of minions by 50%, and 50% of the direct healing received by the master also heals their minions.”

It’s a little much for the time it immobilizes. I think 20 would be fine or just lower the cast time. Warhorn is a whole other beast. It needs to be 25 sec CD but also make the cast time 1/4 sec so that it can be used as a proper heal interrupt then I’d be fine with it.

I’ll be honest, since I’ve changed it, as it is now, I don’t think any of this would really make us OP. Clearly we wouldn’t be able to benefit from all of these changes at once depending on build (IE wells and well healing wouldn’t buff a minion master). The minion changes really only help keep them in the fight a little longer, though there are some condensing of traits, which still wouldn’t make an overpowered impact. I’ve even suggested a nerf to minion damage (via the Training trait) to subset some already WELL needed pet survivability. Additionally, I just gave suggestions for improvements on poor traits the Devs already want to work on, and gave a suggestion for Death Shroud, being that since we don’t have means of vigor, mass protection uptime or Stability, every 10 seconds we could just have our stun break be our class mechanic. If you ask me, it doesn’t sound that farfetched since we have little stun breaks otherwise, low mobility and lack protective boons. You also have to have LF in order to access it, so you likely won’t always be able to use it on CD as is.

Lalangamena.3694:

wishful thinking, seriously OP changes.

I would be more than happy only with the following:

— Warhorn 5, Locus Swarm, Swiftness lasts 15 seconds, OR Cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 25. (before trait)

---

Staff 1, Necrotic Grasp travels 20% faster.

Death Shroud:
— entrance to Death Shroud now removes all Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize effects.
—retaliation and stability duration on traits spiteful spirit (spite V) and foot in grave (soul reaping XI) increased by 1 second.

MM-General
Minions regain health outside of combat. (So we can start fights on an even footing.)
minions pathing is fixed, (minions can jump or walk around objects to reach their target..)

Spite
- New trait “Jagged Nightmare”: " Jagged Horrors no longer lose life over time. (can have up to three jagged horrors at the same time)

Death Magic
- Staff Mastery and Greater Marks merged.

Curses
- Focused Rituals changed to Ritual Mastery: Wells Recharge 20% Faster and are Ground Targeted.

these are enough IMHO to improve vastly the playing experience of the Necromancer.

That still doesn’t address MM’s complete loss in any team/aoe fight… Which is a huge deal, its one of the main reasons no one runs MM in tPVP, outside of 1v1 you have terrible mobility and can’t be useful in group fights because your minions don’t last.

I removed the Cast time reduction on staff, I can agree it might be a little over the top, My biggest concern was to get more hits, but a speed boost to the projectile may just do the trick.

I removed DS CD reduction, but I still like the idea of becoming a death shadow to release CCs would be nice since we have no real access to stability. Also removed the proposed additional second to DS stability trait. I feel it’d help with stomps, but I could agree it may become too mandatory and too easily accessed stability. Also fixed a typing error, so that my suggestion is Warhorns 5 being 20 seconds of swift, 25 second CD, not 25 second swift and 20 second CD.

Blaine Tog.8304:

ronpierce.2760:

General:
- Axes deal more damage, and gain 1% LF on hit with auto attack.
- Warhorn 5, Locus Swarm, Swiftness lasts 25 seconds, Cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 20. (AOE Cripple and LF gain remains 10 seconds)
…
- Staff 1, Necrotic Grasp cast time reduced to 1/2 (From 3/4), and travels 20% faster.
(I personally use dagger, but dagger is in a good spot currently.)

Axe may need a bit more damage but it doesn’t need that much extra LF generation. Increase #2’s gain a bit, maaaaybe, and call it good. I’m not convinced it even needs that, to be honest. Warhorn doesn’t need to give permaswiftness by itself with no investment in swiftness/boon duration. And the Staff autoattack is actually fine except for its poor travel speed and tracking. While those could possibly stand to be tuned up a bit, drop its cast time and it suddenly has absurd DPS in niche scenarios. Heck, I just bought a second set of armor for my Necro so I could try out D/F direct-damage and my Staff autos are hitting pretty obscenely hard at very high range even though I’m being lazy and still using my old condition damage staff.

ronpierce.2760:

Death Shroud: (This is to address Death Shroud being intended for being our main source of survivability, instead of handing out vigor/protection etc, I tried to look at simply improving DS’s base viability.)
…
- You can now resurrect allies and stomp enemies in Death Shroud.
…
- You can now be healed while in Death Shroud from passive and external effects. (Still locks Heal slot button.)*

Those suggestions make sense. The others, less so. That said, the Necro should clearly start with at least 50% LF in PvP matches, and I wouldn’t say no to #2 traveling a bit faster and not hitting targets in the way.

ronpierce.2760:

Minions: (Most of this is an attempt to increase group viability, and requiring more attention to fighting an MM instead of AoE/win.)

It might make sense for the minions to take less damage from AoE attacks, but we shouldn’t straight-up buff their health.

The Shadow Field change also sounds cumbersome and unwieldy. If the cast time and wind-up animation on the current implementation were merely reduced to 0 or 1/4 sec (to allow for instant or near-instant blinds), that alone would improve the skill immensely.

ronpierce.2760:

Death Magic
- Necromantic Corruption Minions now gain Necromantic Corruption every (10) seconds, making their next attack remove a boon. (I only say this because that low of RNG is TERRIBLE for esport.)

It’s not very low at all if you’re going full MM, though. With a Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, a Jagged Horror, two Bone Minions, a Shadow Fiend, and a Flesh Golem, that’s seven creatures who each get their proc chance. If we assume they all have the same attack speed, that 10% chance becomes a ~52% chance per interval that they’ll remove a boon from your target (~47% without the jagged horror). Changing it to a charge that accrues over time just means you’ll strip six boons of your foe as soon as you engage them, thus destroying whatever opening boons your opponent tossed onto themselves.

ronpierce.2760:

- Staff Mastery and Greater Marks merged. (Trying to make staff’s traits less bloated/more interesting so Necros can take less mandatory feeling traits. Personally I feel like the radius should be baseline.)

Yeah, the staff is borderline unuseable without the size increase from Greater Marks. I don’t want to put points into Death Magic for every build, but there’s no real way around it.

First off, you pointed out one thing that I did by mistake, I actually meant to have Swiftness last 20 seconds and the CD be 25 seconds* So instead of lasting 5 seconds longer than the CD it’d actually last less time, entirely my bad.

As far as axe, I don’t use it, that’s just the general complaint I hear about it, so I figured it’d help them since other weapons can gain 2-4% LF per hit on auto attack.

For minions:
After I edited the thing, I’m not asking for a buff. I just simply merged two currently existing traits to lessen the amount of mandatory MM traits there are. So that said, I’m not asking for a minion HP buff. I do feel like Blood fiend healing pets with their attack would help with aoe, and provide an interesting way to fighting/dealing with Necros. I cant say I am unchanged on that.

And to dadnir: " Blood healing suggestions : too much, why don’t you just ask for a healing power squaling?… etc."

Currently Vampiric heals for 34 without the 50% increase trait. It’s incredibly trivial, and has actually been stated by the Devs thakittens garbage, the word “double” something SOUNDS harsh and clueless, but if you know the numbers, its really not. When you’re getting hit by 1-4k hits, doubling vampiric wouldn’t break anything. you just might eventually notice it.

All I get from this is “Roll Necro bunkers” :P

Perhapse the added HP bonus would be a bit much, but then again, I had already said I wouldn’t suggest both the blood fiend healing minions and the HP boost together (Maybe I only said that in my long explanation to Jon, my bad) but also it was intended as a 20 point talent as well, not 10.

Edit: I’ll fix a few things to reflect what I explained to Jon and so it doesn’t sound like I want to be a godmode, this is a list of possible changes that would help the class, not that I expect them all to be put in. However, as it stands minions do need help surviving, even if they have 18-22k HP with just the 50% hp increase now, they die with out much effort.

Yeah that’d be wonderful. And daggers be faster but slightly less hard hits while staff hits harder but is slower, just so weapon types feel consistent.

Draehl.2681:

I have a smaller list. Mostly what I feel are reasonable, but just within the context that I play a tanky/power build so I’m not looking at it from a condition or MM perspective…

-Projectile speed of all Necromancer skills increased significantly. Notable skills include Dark Park, Necrotic Grasp, Spectral Grasp.
-Lifesteal scales off healing and power. Power increases damage of the lifesteal (thus indirectly increasing the healing) but at a very low ratio. Healing increases just the healing received, but at a higher ratio.
-Signet of Spite active reworked to sacrifice health to gain a reasonably long duration quickness.
-Players can be healed in Death Shroud, but at a 50% rate of what they would receive normally. (Alluded to by the devs already re: healing in DS)
-Warhorn #4 (Wail of Doom) replaced/reworked into “Call of Doom” which fears nearby enemies towards the Necromancer.
-Life Blast does increased damage the closer you are to the enemy. (Alluded to by the devs already)

Most of that wouldn’t effect me, but no real objections. One thing I heard and really liked the idea of was Life Blast being morphed based on weapon choice. I really like this as I mainly use a dagger. LB would be way more useful to me with a dagger-style damage flow.

whats OP? Its no secret that DS is supposed to be our main source of survivability, but isn’t quite doing its job. Devs are currently looking for ways to improve it rather than give us vigor or protection. None of that is over the top, they’ve already said they’re thinking about allowing healing in DS, it removing CCs on entering? Thats not making it OP… Having a little LF when going into a fight? Its already like that had you won a prior fight. It just helps with front loaded fights. Not much is REALLY changing here?

Minions. They’re terrible in group pvp. They’re just a bit sturdier, thats the biggest thing I suggested. And even with making them surdier, you have the option of killing Blood fiend or doing damage to the MM to make us sacrifice it, then the pets are right back at square one.I suggested giving them some CC removal at the cost of 10% of the boost in damage so they can survive heavy aoe conditions just a little better. Hardly OP. As for the activation times, according to the State of the Game, they’re already looking into that. They also want to buff up some minion active abilities, and fix AI. That’s all I really suggested with them.

In traits, the new trait might be a little strong, but jagged horrors aren’t exactly sturdy or scary damage. I doubt you’d notice much of a difference realistically. I tried to tone down some RNG, and merged 2 lackluster/uninteresting traits to reduce the amount of manditory traits and made the hp boost a little higher (my not be needed if they did the blood fiend thing). As for Vamperic, they already said they don’t like how little it heals. Most Siphons healing is pretty poor. They’re already discussing letting it scale with healing power or just heal for more, so thats nothing new. As far as MM goes thats all I really suggested. Most of which is already on the table…

Other than that I tried to clean up wells manditory traits a bit, same as MM (this obviously isnt ALL affecting just 1 build), because I also had some suggestions for Soul Reaping to make some of those skills a little better, all in all, I don’t think what I said really is over the top. The main goal here was "Sacrifice some MM damage to boost the team survivability of minions, while giving a trick to killed them, being kill the Blood fiend, making gameplay less brainless, and letting MMs fight in a team setting. Then some small suggestions to make DS do its job a little better. I really don’t think I went too over the top. o.O

Added some other fixes I’d like to see.

Edited to only be Minion Master specific, and cleaned it up a bit to reflect the communities concerns/suggestions/criticisms. This is what I’d now like to see for the minion master for the end of the month patch to bring them more inline and more viable for group fights.

Easy to read “My Necro Wishes Patch Notes” by Ron Pierce.

General:
- Warhorn 5, Locus Swarm, Swiftness lasts 15 seconds, Cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 25. (AOE Cripple and LF gain remains 10 seconds)
- Warhorn 4, Wail of Doom, CD reduced to 25 seconds, cast time reduced from 1/2 to 1/4.
- Staff 1, Necrotic Grasp travels 20% faster.

Death Shroud: (This is to address Death Shroud being intended for being our main source of survivability, instead of handing out vigor/protection etc, I tried to look at simply improving DS’s base viability.)
- When out of combat, Death Shroud now regenerates to at least 25%. (So we can start out with the ability to use our class defenses.).
- You can now resurrect allies and stomp enemies in Death Shroud.
- You can now be healed while in Death Shroud from passive and external effects. (Still locks Heal slot button.)

Minions: (Most of this is an attempt to increase group viability, and requiring more attention to fighting an MM instead of AoE/win.)
- Flesh of the Master changed from “Increases minion health by 50%” to “Increases minion health by 50%, and 50% of direct healing done to the master also heals minions.”
- Blood Fiend’s base health increased by 20%.
- Training of the Master: "Increases all pet damage by 20% (down from 30%), and removes 1 condition from minions every 3 seconds. (To help with being condi AOEd down)
- Reduced cast time of minions from 1.5 seconds to 1 second.
- Reduced the cast and activation time from minion abilities. (This has been addressed already in the SOTG)
- Minions passively move 20% faster. (Thus still negatively affected uptime when crippled/chilled, but can actually land attacks better.)
- Minions regain health outside of combat. (So we can start fights on an even footing.)
- Moa Morph no longer kills all minions. They’re turned to mini moas for the duration.

Spite
- New trait “Jagged Nightmare”: "Whenever a minion dies it spawns a Jagged Horror, up to 3 at a time. Jagged Horrors no longer lose life over time.(Very interesting trait to cover the fact that none of the early spite traits have any place for MM, it feels lame picking any traits here)

Death Magic
- Necromantic Corruption Minions now gain Necromantic Corruption every (10) seconds, making their next attack remove a boon. (I only say this because that low of RNG is TERRIBLE for esport.)
- Shrouded Removal: Lose 2 conditions when you enter Death Shroud. (Just livening up a “eh” trait.)
- Greater Marks removed, staff radius becomes baseline, and the “Unblockable” portion moved to Staff Mastery.

Blood Magic
- Vamperic’s base healing increased by 50%, and now scales with healing. (Currently heals for 34 would be 52+very minor healing scaling)

Tell me what you think. I sent this to Jon, I’ve been having some conversations with him over the past few weeks. Hopefully some of this becomes a reality.

Eh, don’t ask me.

Well, luckily (what gives me hope) is that Hamm who is a big PVP Dev didn’t even know about it until I told him a few weeks ago, being that Moa kills all pets, and I doubt this is a big issue in pve, so I’m hoping that he’s just now seeing how much of an issue it is, that we’ll get some love soon. Its painful to have this happen to you, and makes me want to give up almost every time. Its more than a counter. It’s sad.

Okay, here’s your proof, since me telling you the Devs SAID it’s bug, you can see it for yourself. This is a follow-up from a further discussion about various things in GW2 with Jon, one of the Devs who frequently posts on the Forums and deals with abilities…

Edit: Its #2’s question and his #2 answer.

Yeah this went well over my head, too…

Not sure of relevance?

I asked, both Jon and Hamm said it was a bug. However I’m hoping they don’t write it off as minor…

Jon and Hamm both said this is a bug, so, really hoping this gets fixed sooner rather than later. Its way too frustrating to write off as minor.

I’m not seeing (and I’m pretty sure i experienced) Moa still killing all MM necro pets, its a big deal, why no fix???

Dabrixmgp.4758:

emergency necro buff patch?
…well I can dream right?

I won a tPVP with a necro today, they’ll probably emergency nerf them. That’s mmo dev logic. You’re thinking outside of the realm of reality

Same here, just to add to the party.

They can be good in 1v1 and home bunker in tPVP but Hammon refuses to accept that there are issues and counters every argument with “They attack your target” “you have other weapons” and “you have fear”. Clearly there is no issues with MM according to the PVP guy so, its not worth crying about, just accept that you can really only 1v1 with it because he “likes that different builds have different strengths” as in is completely useless in fights with more than 1v1.

Yeah, I get leeching from leaving DS for sure, idk about entering.

I asked Hamm (PvP designer guy) and he said controlling minions is fine, lack of sunbreaks is fine because DS has fear, and some other stuff. It made me feel very unsure of ANet, it sounded more like too lazy to fix than a genuine “I feel like necros are in a good place”. After asking him a few questions, I don’t feel quite a bright about the future of fixes lol

I asked Hamm ingame, and he said it’s likely a bug. The lord be praised.

Most of the traits they have now, esp for MM is just to make it (barely) viable lol

Generally smart players will still auto attack or use easily targetable attacks in areas they expect a stealthed target to be, try being a bit less predictable when you use stealths? That may be one issue (and definitely is an issue for most nonskilled Thieves)

^ Death Knight?

JS though, Soldiers Necro+Greataxe + Spectral Grasp, inc clothy death knights!

Water isn’t an issue if your water skills are the same, DS works how (imo) transformations should work. Moa isn’t just a transformation that locks your bars, it has a side-effect of purposefully getting rid of pets. It even stables a Rangers pet, but that is much less harsh because it can be immediately resummoned, and is often less crucial to the build than all of the necros pets.

I read somewhere that Fused weapons were still from tPVPs, is this still around, confirm/deny?

No, dagger should be a whip and deal the same dmg but cleave

Yes, Archangelus, that’s basically what happens. It’s frustrating. Would love an official heads up if this is an intended thing. I’ve sent a message regarding this to Jon, so I’ll let you know what he says.

Sorry, I hadn’t replied yet, I tried the Germany language swap, and this worked for me. Thanks for the replies.

Hey, everyone, I’m just wondering if others are having similar issues. I was running a full BM build, which worked fine except I feel like pets just were not performing well… It felt like they were running up to enemies and then just not hitting them as they strafed away, and once they stepped up on a bump they suddenly had to go 20 feet out of their way to get up that little bump…

As far as hitting when they get near the enemy (including with Sic Em) it felt as if they get up to their enemy, stop then cast their attacks, and if the enemy strafed out of it, every time it would miss/cancel the attack and they’d chase some more, endlessly unless they were CCed. Even often when snared they wouldn’t attack… Why can’t pet’s attacks be instant, but with a cooldown rather than a cast time? (Or so I assume the issue is, that’s what it felt like) or possibly just faster reacting?

Hey everyone I’ve tried reinstalling GW2 PC version several times from the website, but it keeps going to 1 file remaining and stopping. Any ideas to fix this? I have turned off my firewalls etc to try to let it go, still nothing.

I have a screenie of it, just last night I hit a 10.7k with hiltbash timing just right with the pets special.

Or… Or… They COULD just give us a F2 (Minions Attack) F3 (Minions Yield) and a Button for Passive (Avoid Combat) and Guard (Attack when master is hit or attacks) like ranger but ONLY show up when you have minions on your Utility bar and summoned… Just throwing that out there.

Yep, that’s pretty insane. So, instead: Use hunter’s call and a few auto attacks and half the time or less you can build more stacks faster. One test after getting it to work properly, I landed this in under 4 seconds with a 5k (well overkill) shot landing directly after.

Edit: Scratch this, I didn’t realize hunter’s call went away upon changing weapons even though it’s not channeled damage.

Yeah, no doubt. :S I’ll have to test what you said. I don’t really play ranger, i just wanted to try this, but it worked out better than expected.

Good to know I’m not the only one to takes advantage of this. Btw what got nerfed? The wallclimb bug?

Luckily it wouldn’t really buff Bunker rangers as they don’t really run with Sic Em, but for those who use their pet mostly (aka BMs) for damage, this would also help a little bit with quirky AI with stealth. And it would require timing/planning when best to use it. I like it personally. I even play a mesmer more than Ranger.

Here’s a pretty fun, but admittedly rather gimmicky Ranger PVP set up I’ve been toying with. The main goal is to let the pet get off some rather sick damage while staying alive. I’ve landed pet crits as high as 9.7k usually in chains for 4-5 other hits between 3-7k. It’s very fun and does well in 1v1.

The build is:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBlOD7koiqgzCSxCWLDEtHaSSYiV4QvHtaWtPl9kj3gA-TsAgzCtIuRdj7GzNybs3M+Y9xuAA
(copy paste into bar if it dosn’t work.)

Basically, you have a decent amount of vigor, dodge and healing power to keep yourself alive, and your pet’s damage is constantly rather high. You will want to get to a point in the fight for a final take down and this is where you will do a large amount of damage all at once.

Pets: Jaguar (main), Other cat as off-pet, I use snow leopard to chill, allowing max pet up-time.

Combo: Use Short bow (for fast attacks) After using Rampage as One,
Try to wait a few hits before activating:
Signet of the Wild, then immediately Jaguar Stealth (Making his next attacks for 6 seconds automatically crit) Then finish the combo with Sic Em. Total this is about a 60-65% increase in pet damage, auto crits and anywhere from 5-19 stacks of might on your jaguar, and they will land some very hard hits from a stealthed source with stability, and will generally be very caught off guard.

Warning: Sic Em is currently buggy/stupid and will turn off upon loss of target (including stealth) therefore the main burst is harder to pull off and is generally less effective versus thieves and mesmers, but I’ve still had good luck fighting them.

I’m not saying its an “OMG” build, but it’s pretty fun, and Yes I realize the similarity of it to the main Bunker Ranger build.

I think you both were saying the same thing, that its too frustrating. I had a topic about that, but I still thing a single anti-stealth non point blank aoe mechanic wouldnt be that bad. Plus what better to give it to than someone with a broken skill and an animal that would sniff them out?

I mainly suggested this as a fix to the ability, because it currently ends its effect immediately when an enemy stealths, and i think its pretty kittenty. Also, it makes sense for following the trail of a hidden enemy as an animal would. Just my feelings.

So, I’ve had some beeef with the move “Sic Em”, which is that it completely stops working if the enemy stealths. Thats pretty dumb if you ask me, broken by itself, but to top it off, against a beast?! If you ask me, I think Sic Em should cause the beast to follow their trail hardcore and if they go into stealth, still be able to attack them because they’re in hot pursuit. Animals have insane senses of smell, I think it’d be a good bonus to a rather buggy/broken skill

Thoughts?