Core Weapons: My thoughts and some Ideas for Improvement

Although not necessarily pressing, I do want to discuss some of the flaws with the core weapons and how their general utility can be lacking or lacks real distinction to differentiate itself from others in slot. I actually have issues with all of the core weapons, including Scepter which I'd argue is the necromancer's Best weapon and my personal favorite. This discussion is just a few ideas I have to aid these weapons in their utility and to help distinguish themselves or improve what they do now without being overwhelming.

Axe

The Meme of Axe getting a 5% damage boost every patch was a thing, but it never addressed some of the underlying issues with its design. Axe IS a good weapon! I don't want people to misunderstand my critique of the axe as me hating on it, on the contrary, I quite like axe. There are just some issues with its design that I'll address.

• Replace Rending Claws with a chain attack with ramping damage along the chain and vulnerability The first aspect of the axe that isn't that enjoyable, even if its a decent skill is the auto. First issue, the animation is broken on Female characters. And Hasn't been looked at for years. Second issue is that the old animation used to be able to be cast canceled to get more damage. A chain would prevent this while offering a reward to dedicated players similar to how the auto on scepter does the same for condition builds. At the bar minimum its auto attack animation should be Fixed for Human, sylvari and norn female characters.
• Unholy Feast should have its bonus blast trigger if the foes struck still have boons on them and not at specific health thresholds To me, the bonus as it stands now sounds like a win more, especially in PvE where the health threshold is 25%. I personally feel that this skill should be more of a skill that punishes your foe for daring to have more boons in front of you as opposed to bursting at lower health. And the damage should probably be brought up in PvE since it does more in WvW and PvP? that's strange since the skill is rarely useful in PvE. Its Okay, but it would be nice to adopt a more punishment philosophy than target the weak it has now.

Dagger Main Hand

MH Dagger has fallen out of favor pretty hard which is really sad to see because its actually a pretty interesting weapon thematically and mechanically. I could suggest upping its damage and that would help a bit, but I have some more unique ideas as maintaining it as a sustain weapon it seems to have been intended to be.

• Give Life Siphon a transformed skill when you begin bleeding for 3 seconds as opposed to the buff. The transformed skill will be an AoE version of its normal self The flaw with this skill is the reliance on being bleeding at the time. Having it transform into a new skill allows you to gain new utility from it and allows to offer something unique from other weapons.
• Increase dark pact's Range to 900 or reduce its cast time The immobilize is a second longer than most immobilizes, but its a bit of a clunky short ranged skill. A minor improvement in my opinion would open this up a bit more. The long lasting self bleed is perfectly fine in my opinion

Dagger could probably use more improvements other than what I've said, but I don't really want it to be something its not. A self sustain weapon works well for it. Other ideas are welcome of course.

Dagger Off Hand

Not much to say about Off Hand dagger. I don't think its a bad weapon at all. Its serviceable in what its trying to do. There really isn't an improvement to be made with Anet's current philosophy. Cutting Enfeebling blood's cast time a bit or reducing its cooldown a bit would be helpful, but nothing beyond that. Only Anet does a 180 on their stance on boon strip to which I'd say up its Boon corrupt to 2 instead of 1. Boons are sinful! That's a joke, but yeah this is still a solid weapon even if other options at the moment are superior in other ways.

If anyone else has their own suggestions, feel free to comment. I generally like where its at.

Focus

Focus has had a bit of an unfortunate history in comparison to other off hands for necromancer. Although Focus was always taken for Spinal Shivers which is a good punishment skill, their Skill 4 hasn't been so lucky. Skill 4 being an odd vuln spike and support skill in the past that was random and unpredictable made it an awkward skill to use, especially at 1,200 range but its replacement isn't really better. Soul Grasp or reaper's touch, whichever you want to call it, is a very awkward skill today. I'm not sure what other's feelings are on this but for me, I strongly dislike this skill.

• Replace Soul Grasp With something more fun and useful I'm going to give an idea for what it could be replaced with, but its not a definite "This should be its replacement" Its just what I'd like to see.
• Vile Summoning: AoE ground target skill. Range/ 1,200/ Radius 180/ : Damage does and gain 11% life force. Summon an unstable horror at that location. Count charge 2/ recharge 15 seconds/ 3 second recast time. An idea I had for the Focus. Striking the foes to gain life force should stick to Focus. But the Life gain is a bit unnecessary in my opinion and creating distractions that explode would make this more of an engaging skill to use. its my personal desire but perhaps you have a better idea. I like unstable horrors and would like to use them more and Focus seems like the perfect home for them.

Scepter

The biggest issue is with scepter's reliance on Lingering curse. I think its a great weapon with few general flaws, its just this issue that locks you into curses if you're going to use any sort of condi build. Scepter is a great weapon but I'd like to see the Duration of linger curse be made baseline for the scepter and for curses as a specialization to have some housekeeping done to improve functionality. This specific discussion is on weapons though and less on traits although I will mention traits later on, there isn't anything inherently wrong with scepter aside from that reliance.

Staff

Staff honestly deserves its own separate discussion all on its own. This is a hotly debated weapon, should it stay the same? Should it be made into a support weapon to expand necromancer's support kit? There is no doubt that staff is a very useful weapon in PvP and WvW and that it is still used quite frequently. I Don't want to have that discussion just yet. I'll simply voice my opinion on this. I Do think staff should be completely reworked into a support weapon. However, I wont get into specific desires on how that'll look because I don't know myself. I have some ideas but nothing solid as of right now. So for now, We'll just leave staff on the table for a future discussion.

Warhorn

The Last weapon of the list and the one that I'll say at face value, has perfect skills for its design. There are no changes I would make to Warhorn. Except For one thing. Banshee's wail. Warhorn is a skill that I feel should be transformed by its trait, and its not. just more potent. So My issue with warhorn is the trait.

• Remove Banshee's wail and merge the cooldown with Dread. Wail of Doom becomes Wail of Dread which causes Fear. Locus Swarm grants its swiftness and Life stealing (or) dark aura to upto 5 allies. Banshee's wail should be replaced with the Vampiric ritual trait that was removed. Wells need their love, even without the cooldown reduction. As for Banshee's wail changes. I'm not too concerned with where its merged. Either with Terror, dread or Fear of Death, in any case the core necromancer terrormancer I'd like it to be a thing. And having it be the strongest on Core necromancer as opposed to reaper or scourge gives incentive for core necromancer's to experiment and build. Terror does have issues of its own, but discussion for another time.

There are just some ideas I've had floating around in my head for a long while. And I do have purpose to each of these changes. Let me know what you think, and what would you change? I think with a little housekeeping and some updates each of these weapons can really shine in their own unique ways.

@Lily.1935 said:

Axe

• Unholy Feast should have its bonus blast trigger if the foes struck still have boons on them and not at specific health thresholds

Sounds like Axe 3 will continue to be trash in PvE...

Honestly, the only problem with Axe (Aside from the small fact about unlike GS, Axe doesn't provide LF with its auto) is how trash Unholy Feast is in PvE, with its low damage and 25% threshold still.

I'd simply suggest that Unholy Feast puts on a debuff to targets hit that will explode when they go below 50% life. Allowing it to be more flexible in PvE by making it usable whenever, instead of only when targets are all <25% life.

@Lily.1935 said:

Dagger Main Hand

• Give Life Siphon a transformed skill when you begin bleeding for 3 seconds as opposed to the buff. The transformed skill will be an AoE version of its normal self The flaw with this skill is the reliance on being bleeding at the time.

The flaw with the skill is that it doesn't do comparable damage to Axe 2 (Even vs Bleeding targets) making it de-facto unwanted in PvE. Beyond that, it's a Power based weapon that gets benefit from having Bleeding on a target (Which it cannot apply itself) as well as the gimmick of Core Necro's "Self Conditioning" which serves no purpose in the game as it stands (In PvE, Guardian Light Field spam negates many condition applications. In PvP, all it does is kill yourself or cover your opponents damaging conditions so you can't cleanse them effectively)

@Lily.1935 said:

Dagger Off Hand

Not much to say about Off Hand dagger. I don't think its a bad weapon at all. Its serviceable in what its trying to do.

I still feel that Deathly Swarm should apply a single stack of Bleed or Torment by default. So it does something in PvE.

While Enfeebling Blood needs a shorter post cast delay/faster animation so it can more reliably actually land in PvP (The cast time makes is quite dodgable. But the delay post cast time means that you don't really need to dodge it...)

@Lily.1935 said:

Focus

• Replace Soul Grasp With something more fun and useful I'm going to give an idea for what it could be replaced with, but its not a definite "This should be its replacement" Its just what I'd like to see.
• Vile Summoning: AoE ground target skill. Range/ 1,200/ Radius 180/ : Damage does and gain 11% life force. Summon an unstable horror at that location. Count charge 2/ recharge 15 seconds/ 3 second recast time. An idea I had for the Focus. Striking the foes to gain life force should stick to Focus. But the Life gain is a bit unnecessary in my opinion and creating distractions that explode would make this more of an engaging skill to use. its my personal desire but perhaps you have a better idea. I like unstable horrors and would like to use them more and Focus seems like the perfect home for them.

Soul Grasp could definitely see a replacement. The projectile is slow, easily countered and not particularly strong.

Having it deal damage and healing rather than life siphon would be a start (Similar to Dagger 2 and Death Shroud 4) which would allow the possibility to crit.It could also utilize Lich 5's Vitality stealing too as an interesting idea.

Outside of that... Whatever really. Something similar to Spear's skills Deadly Catch or Dark Spear could be neat too.

Spinal Shivers could do its max damage versus Defiant foes so the skill is in any way usable in PvE.

@Lily.1935 said:

Staff

Staff honestly deserves its own separate discussion all on its own. This is a hotly debated weapon, should it stay the same? Should it be made into a support weapon to expand necromancer's support kit? There is no doubt that staff is a very useful weapon in PvP and WvW and that it is still used quite frequently. I Don't want to have that discussion just yet. I'll simply voice my opinion on this. I Do think staff should be completely reworked into a support weapon. However, I wont get into specific desires on how that'll look because I don't know myself. I have some ideas but nothing solid as of right now. So for now, We'll just leave staff on the table for a future discussion.

Personally, I think its kit is okay. With a few small adjustments it could be a solid off-hand option:

• Make the Boon from Mark of Blood apply in an area both around the Mark and the Necromancer (A la Sand Shades)
• Increase the power coefficient of Mark of Blood
• Add a Swiftness boon to Chillblains
• Add an AoE Condi Cleanse to Putrid Mark
• Add a stack of Stability to Reaper's Mark
• Optional: Turn skill 1 into an attack chain. Attack 1 sends out the spectral hand. Attack 2 sends out piercing scythe blade that causes bleeding. Attack 3 causes a spectral scythe to cleave an area around the target causing torment and enfeeble.

It is now a "Necro-themed" support weapon. It still relies on hitting enemies with marks and applying conditions, but now also provides some limited ally assistance too.

@Lily.1935 said:

Warhorn

The Last weapon of the list and the one that I'll say at face value, has perfect skills for its design.

Locust Swarm should stop being life siphon and instead be damage and healing. Thus allowing the potential for crits. Also allowing it to proc Vampiric/Vampiric Presence.

@Taril.8619 said:

@Lily.1935 said:

Axe

• Unholy Feast should have its bonus blast trigger if the foes struck still have boons on them and not at specific health thresholds

Not all skills need to be good in PvE. I think it could still be situationally useful. Its a matter of design for me. At the Minimum the 50% in PvE would be nice.

@Lily.1935 said:

Dagger Main Hand

• Give Life Siphon a transformed skill when you begin bleeding for 3 seconds as opposed to the buff. The transformed skill will be an AoE version of its normal self
  The flaw with this skill is the reliance on being bleeding at the time.

It not being as strong as Axe 2 isn't a flaw. It heals you, its a sustain weapon and that should be its function. The suggestion transforms the skill into an AoE. That's what I'd like to see. Other options could be it does more damage, or even that skill one also transforms. But as a weapon it doesn't need to compete for damage.

@Lily.1935 said:

Dagger Off Hand

Not much to say about Off Hand dagger. I don't think its a bad weapon at all. Its serviceable in what its trying to do.

That's fair actually.

@Lily.1935 said:

Focus

• Replace Soul Grasp With something more fun and useful
  I'm going to give an idea for what it could be replaced with, but its not a definite "This should be its replacement" Its just what I'd like to see.
• Vile Summoning:
  AoE ground target skill. Range/ 1,200/ Radius 180/ : Damage does and gain 11% life force. Summon an unstable horror at that location. Count charge 2/ recharge 15 seconds/ 3 second recast time.
  An idea I had for the Focus. Striking the foes to gain life force should stick to Focus. But the Life gain is a bit unnecessary in my opinion and creating distractions that explode would make this more of an engaging skill to use. its my personal desire but perhaps you have a better idea. I like unstable horrors and would like to use them more and Focus seems like the perfect home for them.

Special functions are nice and all. I Do not think this weapon needs healing on it at all. As a Utility it would be nice if it provided us with high damage pockets which Unstable horrors are quite destructive. Which We don't have a proper Power offhand. As for Spinal Shivers, it could but we've never seen skills specifically gain bonuses against defiance.

@Lily.1935 said:

Staff

Staff honestly deserves its own separate discussion all on its own. This is a hotly debated weapon, should it stay the same? Should it be made into a support weapon to expand necromancer's support kit? There is no doubt that staff is a very useful weapon in PvP and WvW and that it is still used quite frequently. I Don't want to have that discussion just yet. I'll simply voice my opinion on this. I Do think staff should be completely reworked into a support weapon. However, I wont get into specific desires on how that'll look because I don't know myself. I have some ideas but nothing solid as of right now. So for now, We'll just leave staff on the table for a future discussion.

• Make the Boon from Mark of Blood apply in an area both around the Mark and the Necromancer (A la Sand Shades)
• Increase the power coefficient of Mark of Blood
• Add a Swiftness boon to Chillblains
• Add an AoE Condi Cleanse to Putrid Mark
• Add a stack of Stability to Reaper's Mark
• Optional:
  Turn skill 1 into an attack chain. Attack 1 sends out the spectral hand. Attack 2 sends out piercing scythe blade that causes bleeding. Attack 3 causes a spectral scythe to cleave an area around the target causing torment and enfeeble.

I'm not big on those changes. Seems a bit random if you ask me and doesn't add much to the design of the Staff. I could rework it, but like I said Its a discussion I want to save for another time. I'm not big on Marks as a mechanic, they're uninteresting as they are now.

@Lily.1935 said:

Warhorn

The Last weapon of the list and the one that I'll say at face value, has perfect skills for its design.

Okay. That's fair, I don't feel the same way. I don't think its a real flaw with it as Warhorn is sorta a control weapon.

Axe:It's an OK weapon as it stand. Sure ANet could up the health treshold for unholy burst in PvE but that's all.

Dagger main-hand:The only true issue of this weapon is the AA attack speed which is too slow by a beat. Fix that and it become a competitive weapon. Dark pact's cast time and cool down are justified by the effects of the skill (and knowing ANet, they would rather add more effect than give some QoL in the form of reduced cast time for such a skill).

Dagger off-hand:It's an OK weapon, no change needed.

Focus:I don't think adding minion gen on it would be a better option than what we got now nor do I think it's a good idea (And god know how poorly I think about soul grasp current form). Allowing soul grasp power damage to critically hit would be enough to give a breather to this weapon.

Scepter:This is a good weapon that become even stronger with lingering curse. What need fixing is Lingering curse having all it's effects piled on scepter alone. Making the condition damage buff of the trait free from the "when wielding a scepter" condition would help a lot with diversity of main hand weapons for condi builds.

Staff:The weapon is fine but a little frustrating to use. The only thing I'd change is necrotic grasp, making it more hybrid than straight power damage on an otherwise hybrid weapon. Together with the previously said change to lingering curse, the staff could find it's way to become an option in PvE condi builds (opening a bit more complexity in the rotations).

Warhorn:I agree with you and I think what need change is banshee's wail, as it is it's a dead trait, probably in the wrong traitline and focused on a dead weapon. That said, fusioning it with dread is probably a poor idea. Like all weapon traits it need to have broader use than just being pigeonholed into the use of a single weapon.

I'd personally make these changes:

• Wail of doom renamed into banshee's wail.
• The warhorn trait is now named Wail of doom and replace Deadly strength in the death magic traitline.
• Wail of doom: Carapace grant 5 expertise per stacks. Warhorn skills now also poison (2s) foes struck by it's effects.
• Banshee's wail and Locust swarm now have a 25s CD baseline.
• Locust swarm now have it's 10 impacts dealt over 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds.

In a nutshell:Staff: you either love it or hate it. I hate it.

Scepter/Dagger: extremely strong condition damage weaponset for pve and pvp, but so clunky to use that personally I avoid it at any cost. In pvp you spend more time with repositioning yourself to be able to land hits with this weaponset than actual fighting. For pve, where you just stand still and press buttons, it's fine except the stupid tennis-like animations and the boring soundeffects.

Mainhand-Dagger: no impact on the autoattack. While dagger 2 and 3 are completely bloated for no reason, the autoattack needs either more damage or more speed or some additional functionality.

Axe: the threshold of axe3 has to be raised to 50% in pve. The second hit of axe3 should also corrupt a boon.

Focus: fine as it is, has its uses for power and condi builds, great overal utility. The claw of skill 4 looks dumb, but that's all I have to complain.

Warhorn: basically a must pick for non-soul reaping (this means no speed of shadows) speed rune builds. It's also the anti breakbar tool for necro in pve. Besides that even though nice functionality in theory, it became mostly useless due to powercreep. The daze often does nothing (target "immune") and for skill5 to do something you have to hug your target for 5 seconds, which is either pretty deadly or impossible due to kiting for a necro in the competitive modes.

While it surely would have some down sides, I'd still love to have Fear instead of a Daze on Warhorn.

@Xaylin.1860 said:While it surely would have some down sides, I'd still love to have Fear instead of a Daze on Warhorn.

Same. Originally Wail of doom was going to fear and apply confusion to foes. If that sounds strange or because most of Necromancer's original design was scrapped before release.

All I want is for MH Dagger to make up its mind if it wants to be a ST ranged weapon or a Melee Cleave weapon.

Cleave skill 1 is really nice for Life force generation and I don't want this to change, but could use a target increase up to 3.

Life Siphon can be changed to something a little different imo.

Instead of a channelled ST ticking multihit, it could instead be changed to tether the Necro to their target.

It will proceed to Siphon for 500 damage and Healing for 200 health per tick for 10 ticks over 2.5 seconds.(Scales to Power and Healing Power)

Most importantly, it pulses Swiftness to the Necro as long as they are tethered, but the Tether breaks at 900 range.

Skill 3 can remain the same.

Reasoning for Life Siphon change :

• Interrupts Dagger's flow, be it AAing or casting any other skill.

• Turning it into a tether frees the Necro to perform other actions and draws the Necro closer to their target when using Daggers as a combat choice.

• Swiftness helps with Dagger's immobility problems even when Traited and lets them fulfil the Tether range as well as allow them to keep up with their target for meleeing though not straight up being a gap closing skill.

I would also like to propose changes to the traits.

Quickening Thirst in its current form is so silly.

Only movement speed increases when above Health threshold.

I would much rather have this increase scale up the lower HP I am, to emulate a thirst for blood to survive.

My proposal :

Quickening Thirst changed to Bloodthirsting.

When wielding Daggers, gain 25% Movement speed.

When health is below threshold (50%), Dagger Skill 1 will siphon 100 damage and heal for 50 Health per hit.

When health is below threshold (50%), tethering with Life Siphon will double the movespeed bonus to 50% increase.

(Movespeed bonuses do not stack with Swiftness or Superspeed)

@Lily.1935 said:Not all skills need to be good in PvE. I think it could still be situationally useful. Its a matter of design for me. At the Minimum the 50% in PvE would be nice.

No, but it certainly helps overall design when skills are compatible with all modes. Axe 3 is arbitrarily useless in PvE (The mode that uses AoE's in much of its most popular activities). There's no reason why this should be the case.

@Lily.1935 said:It not being as strong as Axe 2 isn't a flaw. It heals you, its a sustain weapon and that should be its function.

It's a flaw, because it will forever limit its use in PvE. If it does the exact same thing as another weapon, but worse. Why would anyone ever use it?

The self sustain can be important in PvP/WvW... But then at the same time, Axe 2 provides sustain via Life Force generation too (While having better range and better damage)

Overall, MH Dagger, is hampered by it trying to be too many things and sucking at them all. Its auto attack is melee (But not very good DPS). Skill 2 is ranged power damage and self sustain that is bolstered by specifically Bleeding being on targets. Skill 3 is a short range immobilize with a self bleed for reasons...

Like, what is MH Dagger wanting to be? In an ideal world where it was balanced. What niche is it trying to accomplish?

Is it trying to be a power based melee weapon for Core Necro? If so, it needs Skills 1 and 2 to be stronger for damage while skill 3 needs to better enable gap closing.Is it trying to be a sustain weapon? If so, it needs some sustain synergy with skill 1 (Maybe life siphon on 3rd hit of auto chain) and for skill 3 to not self harm.Is it trying to be a condi based weapon? If so it needs better condi application on skill 1, skill 2 needs to deal condi scaled damage and skill 3 needs to not self harm.

@Lily.1935 said:Special functions are nice and all. I Do not think this weapon needs healing on it at all. As a Utility it would be nice if it provided us with high damage pockets which Unstable horrors are quite destructive. Which We don't have a proper Power offhand. As for Spinal Shivers, it could but we've never seen skills specifically gain bonuses against defiance.

Not having healing is fine. It's just easier to make a transition if it maintains some of the current theme, which is life siphon for damage + healing.

Also, just because we've never seen specific bonuses against defiance, doesn't mean we can't get them.

Plenty of people have suggested bonuses vs defiance for Necros in the past, in relation to their conditions and boon corruptions/strips that provide no value against defiant foes. Having it apply here would provide Necro with a nice Power OH since Spinal Shivers deals a bunch of damage fully stacked, but is absolute trash in current PvE due to the lack of boons to rip (It also makes that trait that procs a Lesser Spinal Shivers also trash even without competing against the other traits on the tier)

@Lily.1935 said:I'm not big on those changes. Seems a bit random if you ask me and doesn't add much to the design of the Staff. I could rework it, but like I said Its a discussion I want to save for another time. I'm not big on Marks as a mechanic, they're uninteresting as they are now.

Not that random. It's merely taking the idea of Staff being a supportive weapon (Which is its primary use since its damage sucks in both Power and Condition builds) and taking its already existing theme (Mark of Blood providing Bleeding to enemies and Regeneration, the opposite effect, to allies) and applies it across its other skills. Skill 3 providing Chill, also provides Swiftness (Something that Necro would like access to, and also an opposite to Chill's slowing effect). Skill 4 applies condi's to enemies, but also removes condi's from allies. Skill 5 provides CC in the form of Fear, but also provides its opposite effect of Stability (Something else that Necro would like access to)

Marks may be an uninteresting mechanic, but they're not a bad mechanic. Staff in its current functionality isn't bad and some people rather like it. Its major pitfall is just how limited it is in what it does, with low damage and low support (Outside of WvW, where the AoE Chill/Poison and Fear can be useful especially in the form of Marks to create "Traps")

@Lily.1935 said:Okay. That's fair, I don't feel the same way. I don't think its a real flaw with it as Warhorn is sorta a control weapon.

Well, 50% of its skills is control and 50% of its skills is damage/sustain (Just in a really anemic form just like pretty much most of non-Revenant Life Siphons in the game)

It's only used as a primarily control weapon because skill 5 is so meh in doing anything meaningful in part due to how poorly it scales damage and sustain.

That said, if wanting to double down on its control nature, it could always trade the Swiftness on cast for something like Cripple on hit (Especially if Staff is capable of providing Swiftness instead)

@"Taril.8619" said:Like, what is MH Dagger wanting to be? In an ideal world where it was balanced. What niche is it trying to accomplish?

Is it trying to be a power based melee weapon for Core Necro? If so, it needs Skills 1 and 2 to be stronger for damage while skill 3 needs to better enable gap closing.Is it trying to be a sustain weapon? If so, it needs some sustain synergy with skill 1 (Maybe life siphon on 3rd hit of auto chain) and for skill 3 to not self harm.Is it trying to be a condi based weapon? If so it needs better condi application on skill 1, skill 2 needs to deal condi scaled damage and skill 3 needs to not self harm.

Personally I think ANet is trying to have it being a sustain weapon. And there is susatin in the form of LF gain on the Auto Attack. I'm pretty sure even Blood Bank is an attempt from ANet to push MH dagger as a sustain weapon, encouraging the player to use Dagger#2 to build barrier and somehow giving a way to bypass the bothersome health treshold of the dagger trait by capitalizing on barrier.

Like all the things ANet does it's "clever", not "wise" or "practical" but "clever" nonetheless. The idea is probably to have the player use Life siphon as often as possible to both build a barrier keeping you at 100% health and deal damage. The problem being that it happen out of shroud while most everything have been spend to push shroud damage at the top making axe more attractive since it both build LF for the shroud and deal more damage (not even talking about the fact that Blood magic don't really help with damage).

If dagger#2 had similar damage to axe#2 and dagger AA didn't have it's crippling pre and aftercasts. If the necromancer's off hand weren't crippled for power damage due to doing life leaching effects. If the necromancer's traits weren't pushing the shroud damage way beyond the weapons damage. If the environment wasn't so hostile to the necromancer's tools. Then maybe Anet's devs design of the dagger and traits associated could be seen as attractive. But that's too many "if".

I have a perma quickness, perma swiftness, speed rune roaming build for wvw if I want to feel like a reaper on drugs (it's a fun build, but it works) and even on this build I would prefer greatsword over dagger at any day.

Mainhand dagger does not need more speed. Even quickness does not make this weapon viable outside of niche pve scenarios where healing scourges use it to build up life force. The damage and the utility is is too low. You gain nothing but a bit of life force from the attacks and during these you are too vulnerable. A 1 second blind on auto2 would be great und lift this weapon to another level.

Faster attack speed does not help because you are still too vulnerable and you are not a thief that can attack and disengage. Once you started attacking you are at melee range and you can't leave it anymore. It does not make a difference then whether you need 2.1 or 1.4 seconds to finish the auto attack rotation.

The more I think about it... I could try a GS and dagger/wh perma quickness speed rune build. Dagger would have some blind and chill synergies with GS and might work... =) edit: nope, it sucks, not enough damage

At least no one is suggesting Dagger AA get a bleed this time (I'm ready for that nonsense if it ever bears it's ugly face again)

I'm particularly unhappy with Dagger and Staff. Dagger is designed around a failed 'outlast' strategy which isn't applicable to the design of the game in any game mdoe. Staff concept is OK but it really doesn't seem to step up to bat in instances where you think it should be useful. I mean, I thought that staff would be a dead ringer for Scourge especially as support ... but it just doesn't gel there. I don't have solutions ... I've written these off long ago for any build I like to play on Necro. I did go back and try staff/dagger on Scourge but it was pretty underwhelming and thematically, just didn't feel right. Dagger feels like it should be a corrupt weapon, but corrupts on Necro are all about boon strip and boon/condi flips. Dagger just doesn't do anything for that.

@Obtena.7952 said:I'm particularly unhappy with Dagger and Staff. Dagger is designed around a failed 'outlast' strategy which isn't applicable to the design of the game in any game mdoe.

The worst is that when sPvP players find themself outlasted they come to the sPvP subforum to complain about [profession] having broken sustain. We even have a newly created thread in the necromancer's subforum complaining about core necromancer for this very reason.

Please don't get staff changed.

The only thing it needs is some very, very minor adjustments to the #1 and #2 skills with a unique animation for #4. What those would be I'm not certain, but just something small to bring them more in line with the value of the other skills. And the only reason I think a unique animation should be added to #4 is because this skill can crit as high as 10k (I hit people for 6 - 8k on the regular in WvW) and it has the same animation as the other skills. Something to differentiate it from the others would add better counterplay.

Regarding Mark of Blood, for quite some time I've felt it could use just a little more power scaling and a simple additional effect like replacing Regeneration with Siphoning health per foe struck, or per stack of Bleed on the target.

I like some of your suggestions and I know my feelings on staff aren't gospel, just because I don't want it changed doesn't mean it shouldn't be, but I think objectively it is a very good kit even if a lot of people find it a little boring.

@KrHome.1920 said:I have a perma quickness, perma swiftness, speed rune roaming build for wvw if I want to feel like a reaper on drugs (it's a fun build, but it works) and even on this build I would prefer greatsword over dagger at any day.

Mainhand dagger does not need more speed. Even quickness does not make this weapon viable outside of niche pve scenarios where healing scourges use it to build up life force. The damage and the utility is is too low. You gain nothing but a bit of life force from the attacks and during these you are too vulnerable. A 1 second blind on auto2 would be great und lift this weapon to another level.

Faster attack speed does not help because you are still too vulnerable and you are not a thief that can attack and disengage. Once you started attacking you are at melee range and you can't leave it anymore. It does not make a difference then whether you need 2.1 or 1.4 seconds to finish the auto attack rotation.

The more I think about it... I could try a GS and dagger/wh perma quickness speed rune build. Dagger would have some blind and chill synergies with GS and might work... =) edit: nope, it sucks, not enough damage

My thoughts on dagger as well. It's a decent kit but the auto attacks make it never worth choosing in PvP/WvW. It forces you to melee and that's something you rarely want to do while not in Shroud. Greatsword is different in that it has a CC, Blind + Corrupt and 2 very high damage skills that allow the auto attacks to be used occasionally while other skills give the weapon a lot of value even if the autos aren't used. If you're using dagger the only reason you're going to swap to it is to try to heal with the 2 skill and/or immobilize with 3 at which point you're basically out of skills to use until you can swap out or enter Shroud again.

I understand that in PvE it's a little different, and I don't think everything needs to be good in every area of the game, but I do think dagger could be reworked a bit to be more appealing. The auto attacks are the main culprit while other skills need some kind of stronger defensive option(s) to make its feeble attack range of 130 worth the risk. A long cast time immobilize and a long cast time siphon will absolutely not make the auto attacks ever worth trying.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:Please don't get staff changed.

Anet hasn't looked at Staff for 8 years ... so I have no doubt they think it's probably one of the best weapon design jobs they have done. No fear of staff changing. My worry is that if their inattention to staff is any indication of what they think is good weapon design, we are in trouble.