Guild Wars 2

My point is we have a utility weapon in staff, a ranged power weapon in axe, and a melee power weapon in dagger, so why would arena net address those first as opposed to things we clearly lack like a melee condition weapon or a defensive offhand as you pointed out. I agree that we have a lot of attack types our weapons don’t cover, but part of that is due to a lack of weapon identity. That’s why I posted a thread on reworking necromancer weapons.

Currently we have a utility weapon (staff), a condition set scepter/dagger, a power melee set dagger/warhorn, and a ranged power set axe/focus. We need a melee condition weapon in the form of greatsword, sword/sword, hammer, or mace before we get any more ranged weapons. We have literally 1 melee skill in dagger 1 while everything else is ranged even on that weapon. This weapon set would be cool, but we need a real melee weapon first and foremost.

I’m assuming your using consume conditions, what armor and trinkets are you using? And what is your trait setup like?

What people don’t realize is necros condition damage is now lower than it was before dhummfire. Also power builds do way more damage than condition builds. Zerker warriors with defensive traits have double the damage output of fully offensively traited necromancers. Anyone saying cond/tough/precision is unfair because zerkers doesn’t do more damage doesn’t do simple math. Also power builds have defensive armor in knights and soldiers. I’d be willing to bet a warrior in soldiers would do more damage than a necro could on any build.

flow.6043:

You forgot the focus :P

Btw, staff – axe/warhorn (the worst possible combo according to your assessment) is a popular choice for wvw zerg well builds. Also, I use those weapons in a hybrid build, so I very much disagree that they are as bad as you make them out to be.

Thanks I put the focus up there. I’m not saying they are bad weapons, but they don’t have a solid direction. Axe by itself simply can’t stand up to the power weapons of other classes. It is good for building life force in many builds, but can’t deal out the direct damage it needs to. Also, the range is awkward. I realize you have more experience than me, but it does have shortcomings. The changes I posted aren’t game breaking, but make the weapon stand on its own better.

Warhorn is a solid stun and gives swiftness. The swiftness is the main reason people have it in wvw because they don’t want to use a utility. This is due to how dependent a build is on the utilities it uses, which is one of the things I was addressing.

We don’t have any other options currently for 1200 range weapons, support weapons or large aoe weapons, which is why staff is very popular in the necromancer community. Despite this it lacks cohesiveness and isn’t strong on its own.

[edit]:Focus: Focus 4 should give protection instead of regen. Spiteful Talisman needs a shorter cast time [edit]

Underwater weapons:
Nah just trollin no one goes underwater.

Future weapons:
If something similar to what’s above was done the only thing missing would be a condition melee weapon. I like the idea of two swords, a hammer, or a mace, but that is for arenanet do decide.

Obviously I realize most people would call this overpowered, but changes to axe and staff are a must. Axe simply isn’t strong enough and staff doesn’t know what it wants to be kind of like this class. The main point of this post is to gain a good look at how overly diverse our weapon sets are and how changes need to be made. Thanks for the read.

This is my first post on the forums, but I’ve got almost 500 hours on my necro and wanted to make some suggestions to changes on several of the weapon sets. Currently most necromancer builds are defined by their utilities, which reduces build diversity. My suggestions try to reduce this by giving weapons a more clearly defined role in the game.

Dagger (main hand):
This weapon is headed in the right direction, but doesn’t do enough to keep necromancers alive. Giving the auto-attack a new animation, making it cleave, and making the life force gain scale to the amount of hits would increase how necromancers defenses scale with the amount of enemies. Reworking dagger 2 to siphon health from multiple sources, similar to life transfer, would again help our scaling against multiple enemies. It also needs to scale more drastically with power and healing power. If you have a ton of healing power it should heal you for a lot with 5 targets around. If you have a ton of power it should do a good amount of damage to everyone in the area. Dagger 3 is a good skill where it is at.

Staff:
Honestly the staff sucks, it is supposed to be our group support with soft cc, but it doesn’t do that. It also doesn’t do condition damage well, and the auto attack is useless. I would change the auto attack projectile to have twice as fast movement, and inflict 1 stack of 3 seconds of torment. Torment is both a dot and a soft cc due to how it works and this goes well with the debuff theme. Staff two should be reverted to having 3 bleed stacks and regeneration as it’s the only staff skill that isn’t on a long cooldown. Before the recent nerf it was completely fine. Staff three should inflict the chill it currently has along with the poison field, but should also grant allies 3-5 seconds of retaliation. Putrid mark has been nerfed into the ground recently. The skill needs to be balanced as it’s a long cooldown that only transfering three conditions from yourself, which doesn’t fit with group support. Instead of 3 conditions from the caster it should transfer 1 condition from all allies in the area and transfer 1 boon from all enemies in the area. The coding for this would be difficult, but the skill would have great usage for good teamplay. Staff 5 seems good until you realize it is on a 40 second cooldown. If you have terror, 100% terror duration and hit 5 targets with conditions it’s still only 10k damage to five people every 40 seconds. This seems like a lot until you realize other attacks do a lot more. Keep the fear, but add 5 seconds of protection to all allies in the area.

Axe:
The axe wants to be a ranged power weapon, it really does, but 600 range is terrible and leaves you at the most awkward distance. Increase the range to 900. Then reduce the cast time on rending claws to 1/2 a second as it is already way slow. Buff the damage to ghastly claws to be around 1/3 of hundred blades. Ghastly claws has 1/2 the cast time so it comes out to 2/3 of the damage of hundred blades per second. This makes since because it is a ranged weapon. Axe 3 is actually in a good place for this setup. It cripples, removes a boon, and gives you retaliation. All things that lend themselves to a ranged power weapon.

Scepter:
This is our ranged condition weapon that everyone knows (notice I didn’t say loves). The auto attack is good, but replacing 1 stack of bleeding with one of torment would diversify the amount of conditions on enemies. We need this considering our total condition damage has gone down since before dhummfire. Nemesis went over this in his video and it is really quite sad. Grasping dead is a pretty great skill and should remain the same as it has been. Scepter 3 is where I begin to wonder what they were thinking. A skill that does no condition damage at all, but increases the damage done based on how many conditions where on the target. This sound good, but scepter scaling with power and precision is really weak. Changing the skill to still give you life force, but instead of increased damage adding 1 stack of 3 seconds of bleeding per condition on the enemy would give necros nice burst condition damage.

Dagger(offhand):
Honestly this weapon fits the them of the class and has multiple uses. I wouldn’t change a thing as it’s pretty well balanced.

Warhorn: The skills look great on paper, but don’t do enough to justify their large cooldowns. Wail of doom should give a buff along with the daze. 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds

Why do Necros have less conditon damage now than before dhummfire, while your still buffing condition removal?