My thoughts on a new elite spec for the Necromancer, this is a fan design

Dear all,

For this thread, I am sharing an elite spec I divised for the Necro a long time ago while lying in bed. I recently dug it up again, so I thought I would spread the word, and gather some thoughts. I will share it in its original format, as I wrote it in a text file on my phone while lying sleepless in bed. My thought process was, I wanted a Strong DPS spec, that could go condi, or power, based on traits, and that would achieve its surviveability through healing, rather than barrier or a second healthbar. Also, since previous specs were more or less core specialisations on steroids for the Necro, I thought a Blood-themed elite spec would be most suitable. Eventually, I landed on the name Bloodlord/Bloodbath. (Yeah, I was not 100% sure which is better, discuss) It would use a sword in the main hand, and it would get a second form (F1), which altered the attacks of the weapon it currently wielded (weapon swapping allowed) (Yes, it would mean adding slightly altered attacks for all core weapons + sword, but the theme is attacks would not be that different, also, I do not think i got into these in my design) The idea behind its heal/utility/elite skills was thematically based on Dancing with death (Jak o' the Shadows, for the WoT fans), but mechanically are more akin to the Herald skills, in that they have a first activate, a channel (with a cost), and then a big finisher on the second activate. You can double tap, but that would not be ideal for some of them. Exact balancing I did not get into, hence why I use x (X) to indicate numbers for the balance team to fiddle with. Final note, a few of these skills were based on anime, since I like those and they provide great source material. Now that that is out of the way, lets get to it:

"Bloodlord/bath: (bloodreaver/bloodborn/bloodletter also sounds alright)

Sword:1.1 Slice:Slice in a small cone in front of you. Inflict bleeding.1.2 Dice:Slice in a circle around you, granting blood for each enemy struck, and inflict bleeding.

2. Blood rush:Leap at an area, dealing flat power damage to x enemies, no target required ground targeted. Reduces cooldown by x% if targets struck are bleeding.

3. Onslaught: (Anime style.)Teleport to targeted area targeted enemy. In a box between initial and final locations, 5 people x targets are struck after a delay inflicting bleeding and dealing multistrike damage. x range.

Dances. after first activate lose blood periodically.Skills:

1. = First activate.
2. = Second activate.

Healing:Dance of the Dradach:

1. Convert blood to health. Cripple yourself while using it. Goes on cooldown when you run out of blood.Satisfaction:
2. Refund x% of the cooldown. Gain a small amount of blood and health. Remove cripple and slow.

Utility:Dance of Dracula draining.

1. Convert all conditions on you at activation into bleeding, as well as x condis you receive during the stance periodically. Gain a bit of resistance to start.Ravenous strike:
2. Transfer all bleeding on you to x nearby enemies.

Dance of the duelist:

1. Break stun. Block attacks. Store attacks as charges. Have a minimum of x charges.Full counter:2.1 Strike enemies in an area with damage proportional to the number of attacks stored, with diminished returns.Hour of the hunt:2.2 Gain offensive boons for each stored attack. One each, at random. Variation is prioritized over stacking.

Dance of the deathgod:

1. Root yourself, gaining x stability, concentrating blood into a slashing powerful attack.Reckoning: (Getsuga Tensho)
2. Release the blood in a concentrated attack in a line. Grows x% more powerful for each second channeled. Removes immobilizing effects.

Dance of diversion: (new)

1. Teleport behind a targeted enemy, stealthing/granting superspeed for the duration of the channel (pulsing on a x second interval) and leaving behind a stationary blood clone/afterimage. Upon defeat of the "clone", the channel ends and enemies in the surrounding area are inflicted with confusion and blind.Aversion:
2. Manually detonate the clone, inflicting bleeding and slow on nearby enemies and granting superspeed/stealthing for x seconds. (The alternative from the channeled skill)

Elite:Dance of bloodshed:

1. Gain x% bonus Blood from all sources. Lose blood gradually even in combat. More strongly than it otherwise would...."Come to daddy":
2. Pull in enemies from a large range and set up a co moving barier centered around yourself. Enemies that cross the barrier are stunned.

Dance of death:

1. Gain increased vulnerability (not nec condi) to damage. Maybe additionally deal reduced damage to enemies. This danage is stored. Disables the use of heal and/or utility skills."Revenge counter":
2. Unleash the stored damage, dealing x% of the stored damage to a single enemy/in a x (small) area.

TraitsMinors:(Minor 1)(New):Lifeforce is replaced with blood (Also scales with vitality).Toggle Dances a la Herald for as heal/utility/elite skills.

Lose "blood" up to a x% threshhold slowly after leaving combat.Traits on entering/leaving shroud gain a cooldown. (If they dont have them already, since the shroud no longer has a cooldown.)

When out of shroud:Generate x% blood through dealing damage.Generate x% blood through taking damage.

Bloodlust "shroud" storm:Toggle alternative skills weapon specific or just slightly alter skills. Transform into a bloodstorm. Replace weapon skills with strong blood magic skills. Lose x amount of hp and blood every x second while using bloodstorm. Gain healing based on x% of damage dealt. Dodges are replaced with vanishing in a pool of blood, inflicting bleeding, and reemerging, dealing bursts of power damage. Blood DOES NOT replace health.

1. Blood Blast: Shoot a blast of blood that explodes on impact, inflicting vulnerability, and bleeding, and deals damage in an aoe.

2.1. Blood pulse: Release a pulse of blood that marks x enemies in an area around you and removes x boons from them. Marks can be cleansed by dodgeing.2.2. Ravage: Drain all of those still marked based on the time marked and stacks of bleeding on them, dealing the full duration of bleeding's damage to them in an instant, cleansing them of their bleeding, with the damage based on time marked scaleing with power damage. Also grants x seconds of stability based on the number of enemies hit. 1 enemy hit=1 stack of stab, 3 enemies hit = 2 stacks of stab, 5 enemies hit = 4 stacks of stab.

3. Vampire's stare: Fear x enemies in a ground targeted cone.

4. Wrath of the vampire: Deal damage to x nearby enemies based on your current health percentage, the lower the health, the bigger the damage.

5. Presence of the vampire: Toggle: Increase blood/health loss, but gain an aura that inflicts nearby targets with bleeding and damages them every x seconds.

(Minor 2)(New): Generate flat health on use of skills. (Ele/Thief healing signet passive, but balanced so as not to be broken)(Minor 3)(New): Increase Healing power by x / x% of power+condi damage.

Adept:T: Gain x% Blood on each hit. Sword skills gain x% reduced cooldown. Increase stacks of bleeding inflicted by sword skills, but also inflict yourself with x stacks of bleeding on using 2 and 3 skills, and finishing an auto attack chain. While affected by bleeding, lose x movement inhibiting conditions every x seconds.M: Increase Blood gain from taking damage by x%.B: Striking a target with x stacks of bleeding grants regeneration.

Master:T: Increase blood gain from dealing damage by x%.M: Regeneration now grants x% blood.B: Bleeding duration is increased by x%. Inflicting bleeding also inflicts vulnerability.

Grandmaster:T: Culling: Increase Power and Feroxity by x/deal x% increased damage in Shroud, but lose blood at a x% faster rate. Also/alternatively, reduce healing received due to Shroud by x%. Alternatively, Healing power boost becomes Power boost.M: Elder vampire: Heal for a percentage of damage dealt in Shroud. Grant vitality based on a percentage of power and condi damage. When inflicted with bleeding, gain a x (%) toughness bonus.B: Edgelord: Inflicting bleeding grants x% blood per stack, but upon being inflicted with bleeding lose x amount of blood. (Lost blood is flat, while gained is % based, encouraging building vitality)"

Now that I am putting this out there, let me hear what you think. Try to keep it civil, this was kinda designed in a sleep deprived state, but it is still dear to me, since it was the first I came up with.

Now that that is out of the way, have a very nice day, and maybe see you online.

Ablon out.

You could call this elite specialization Bloodletter.Dance of Dracula should be called Dance of the Vampire instead.Dracula doesn't exist in GW2 lore, but vampire beasts do.Dance of the Bloody Prince could work, too. But that'd possibly too much of Halloween flavour.

Onslaught might be better as enemy-targetted, rather than ground-targetted.

Your Shroud should be called Blood Shroud.The term bloodlust is not actually related to blood.

Your Top Adept already is contained in the first minor trait, so that spot should be used for something else.Perhaps you could put a sword trait there, along the lines of:Sword skills cooldown reduced by 20%.Move 15% faster while Bleeding.

Which offhand weapon did you envision to fit well together with your sword?

Bloodlust "shroud":Toggle alternative skills weapon specific or just slightly alter skills.

That's the weak spot of the e-spec, it basically doesn't fit the necromancer.

In general, this has similarities to a bleed-burst melee elite discusses since before HoT. Necro has always needed a melee alternative to scepter. Please work it harder.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

Bloodlust "shroud":Toggle alternative skills weapon specific or just slightly alter skills.

I actually chatted with someone over Discord, and we had a nice discussion about it. The Shroud could indeed use some tweaking, he suggested something akin to Mallyx elite skill, but with pulseing bleeds, and damage, and a fair bit of healing.

As for fitting the Necromancer, I do not know anyone else using Blood Magic. I mean, Desert Shroud is also completely different from core/Reaper. Then again, Scourge IS a bit of a weird elite spec.

@Fueki.4753 said:You could call this elite specialization Bloodletter.Dance of Dracula should be called Dance of the Vampire instead.Dracula doesn't exist in GW2 lore, but vampire beasts do.Dance of the Bloody Prince could work, too. But that'd possibly too much of Halloween flavour.

Onslaught might be better as enemy-targetted, rather than ground-targetted.

Your Shroud should be called Blood Shroud.The term bloodlust is not actually related to blood.

Your Top Adept already is contained in the first minor trait, so that spot should be used for something else.Perhaps you could put a sword trait there, along the lines of:Sword skills cooldown reduced by 20%.Move 15% faster while Bleeding.

Which offhand weapon did you envision to fit well together with your sword?

Thanks for the feedback, will try to process it in a bit.

As for offhand, focus could strip boons and provide cover condis, as well as blood and vuln. Warhorn could Daze, and provide blood, as well as long term swiftness. Dagger would provide cover condis, and give you another way to transfer condis.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:In general, this has similarities to a bleed-burst melee elite discusses since before HoT. Necro has always needed a melee alternative to scepter. Please work it harder.

Will go ahead and, as you put it, "work it harder". Dunno if I was inspired by that, but pretty sure the origin of me thinking about this elite spec was around the time of HoT, or MAYBE PoF. It was on my old phone, which I had not used in quite a while.

@"Fueki.4753" said:You could call this elite specialization Bloodletter.Dance of Dracula should be called Dance of the Vampire instead.Dracula doesn't exist in GW2 lore, but vampire beasts do.Dance of the Bloody Prince could work, too. But that'd possibly too much of Halloween flavour.

Onslaught might be better as enemy-targetted, rather than ground-targetted.

Your Shroud should be called Blood Shroud.The term bloodlust is not actually related to blood.

Your Top Adept already is contained in the first minor trait, so that spot should be used for something else.Perhaps you could put a sword trait there, along the lines of:Sword skills cooldown reduced by 20%.Move 15% faster while Bleeding.

Which offhand weapon did you envision to fit well together with your sword?

Also, that sword trait could be pretty cool, especially if it would stack with other movement buffs. Sadly, movement boosts do not stack. Still, I am thinking about it. Maybe something like, "while bleeding, ignore movement inhibiting conditions on you". Sword cooldowns reduced by 20% seems nice too.

Okay, worked on it some more. Thinking Bloodstorm could be a cool "shroud" replacement.

@General Ablon.9760 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

Bloodlust "shroud":Toggle alternative skills weapon specific or just slightly alter skills.

I didn't explained properly, it doesn't fit the necromancer "mechanicaly" because of core traits. The thing is that you need your shroud to be an emergency defense due to Unholy sanctuary, you need a balanced shrd#1 skill that can carry all the shrd#1 traits without being uterly broken, you need a shrd#2 skill that won't be make your skillkit broken even if you add 2 boon conversion on top of it... etc. The core weaponkits just aren't fit to support all those "needs" and designing alternative skill for each weapon is just to much work for an e-spec.

That's why I'm saying that it is the weak spot of your e-spec. From a subjective or even a thematical point of view it would be great, but if you look at it objectively the core necromancer isn't mechanicaly fit to support such e-spec mechanism.

NB.: Scourge was ANet try to part with the shroud and it was objectively a failed try. Not that the way they did it couldn't have worked but they've overcharged each and every F skills which led us to a never ending balance mess. The design you choose also bring with it the risk of overcharging weapon skills and thus lead ANet to nerf those weapon skills despite them being already "poor" for other e-specs.

EDIT: The new version with Bloodstorm is incompatible with Unholy sanctuary again. The idea of a shroud without 2nd health bar is sexy but being sent in such shroud when you're about to be down isn't exactly the best idea ever. I hate this trait, it's always in the way and "force" the main mechanism to be, at least partly, defensive.

I tend to start with the question, "What does it need to do," when thinking about the next e-spec.

In this case, a melee bleed spec on my wish list for many years (back in the old forum) is a bleed burst alternate to scepter auto-attack. Necro has always had a slow dps ramp up on scepter's AA chain. This results in players having to camp it or lose stacks of bleed. The melee bleed-burst concept would is a short range alternate to scepter that would, using one or two of its skills, dump 20 or so short duration bleeds on a target quickly to jump-start dps. The weapon would also have a sustain-type skill. Some kind of gap-closer would be nice, too.

Whatever the new main-hand weapon looks like, it should offer maybe 15% greater average bleed damage output using condition damage gear, Curses, it's new elite traits and scepter or or staff as lower-output ranged alternates. Playing the new condi dps weapon should have more risk and potential reward so it is not benefit from stacking in WvW and is risky enough in PvP without an ally to buff and sustain. The weapon should also apply bleeds to at least 3 melee targets at one time to support large hit box dps and trash mob cleaving.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@General Ablon.9760 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

Bloodlust "shroud":Toggle alternative skills weapon specific or just slightly alter skills.

Soooooooooooooooooo, Rework Unholy Sanctuary to grant a burst of healing rather than go into shroud? If that is the only problem, I am pretty satisfied. If you just rework it the way I said, it COULD actually work pretty well with Unholy Sanctuary. They do not even need a new difficult to code game mechanic.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:I tend to start with the question, "What does it need to do," when thinking about the next e-spec.

In this case, a melee bleed spec on my wish list for many years (back in the old forum) is a bleed burst melee alternate to scepter auto-attack. Necro has always had a slow dps ramp up on scepter's AA chain. This results in players having to camp it or lose stacks of bleed. The melee bleed-burst concept would use a short range alternate to scepter that would, using one or two of its skills, dump 20 or so short duration bleeds on a target quickly to jump-start dps. The weapon would also have a sustain-type skill. Some kind of gap-closer would be nice, too.

Whatever the new main-hand weapon looks like, it should offer maybe 15% greater average bleed damage output using condition damage gear, Curses, it's new elite traits and scepter or or staff as lower-output ranged alternates. Playing the new condi dps weapon should have more risk and potential reward so it is not benefit from stacking in WvW and is risky enough in PvP without an ally to buff and sustain. The weapon should also apply bleeds to at least 3 melee targets at one time to support large hit box dps and trash mob cleaving.

So, what do you think of my edited design? As far as I can tell, a lot of what you want it to be is covered, right? Anyway, specific damage output is up to a balancing team. I just looked into concept design, and "suggestions" for skills and names, some of them strong suggestions, others just placeholders.

@General Ablon.9760 said:Soooooooooooooooooo, Rework Unholy Sanctuary to grant a burst of healing rather than go into shroud? If that is the only problem, I am pretty satisfied. If you just rework it the way I said, it COULD actually work pretty well with Unholy Sanctuary. They do not even need a new difficult to code game mechanic.

Unfortunately, you'd see that there is a score of player that does not want this rework of unholy sanctuary. I know it well, I've been arguing for such a rework for years already. Yet while there are player against, I seldom saw players in favor such rework.

@General Ablon.9760 said:

@"Anchoku.8142" said:I tend to start with the question, "What does it need to do," when thinking about the next e-spec.So, what do you think of my edited design? As far as I can tell, a lot of what you want it to be is covered, right? Anyway, specific damage output is up to a balancing team. I just looked into concept design, and "suggestions" for skills and names, some of them strong suggestions, others just placeholders.

Thoughts on your revised design

• Because condi-dps builds rely on condition damage and expertise stat's power damage can be nearly zero and it is better that way considering Necromancer condi-damage min-maxing. Skills need just enough power to proc' on critical hits.
• Melee condi dps should rely on precision and proc'ing crit's. This is where equipment stat trades come into play. Core Necro has little crit dependency in Curses. Make condi-dps depend more heavily on landing a critical hit through the new elite skills and traits to force the new spec' to require high precision. Power and Ferocity will not benefit so critical hits must trigger condition processes.
• Self-inflicted conditions are still weak for Corruption trait skills so few players bother with the effort of tracking the conditions on themselves and performance boosts when using Master oof Corruption. If you want to make self-inflicted condi a legitimate Necro play style, look hard at rewards and penalties. Make them have more impact and tie in directly with MoC.
• Curses is the trait line a bleed spec would expect to rely on. This does not have to be true but interactions with two other trait lines should be considered. As a developer, you can e-spec to reward or penalize trait lines and specific traits within them. Does SR provide too much benefit? Does Death Magic? Is there something in Spite that can be made less bad on a pure condi spec?
• I really like the enhanced condition management features you added. Some form of group support through condition transfer or flipping into boons is a key part of a melee spec. Each elite specialization should be designed to support two roles. Damage output, healing, buffing, debuffing and crowd control; in your design, condition damage and condition management are highlighted. This is a crowded field among professions, though.
• Boons like stability and resistance are not part of Necro's design style. Arenanet sets the (arbitrary) framework all professions work within but can change the rule at any time. (Necro has bad ranged dps, low mobility and no stab, etc.) A convincing e-spec design might sway them but who knows for sure.
• Arenanet seems to like trading dps for sustain. If the encounter's damage output is high, sustain skills and traits should be low. Try not to allow the best of both world in a specific build. Utility is one thing but alternating between bunker and dps is another so please also discuss the weaknesses for all game modes.

Overall, your design is getting more mature. Thank you for taking the time to describe it.