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Necromancer's Depth


Lily.1935

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I figured this will be a great post to submit for the necromancer forums and with this new format it should be easier for me to make chances. This Discussion will be regarding to the necromancer's Depth and complexity. while Compare that to its GW1 counterpart. I'll also be discussing how the Scourge in this post but this is using that as a comparison to the GW2's necromancer history.

The Depth problemTo start this off, the necromancer is a fairly shallow profession. I know this sounds like a negative thing to say, but bare with me for the moment. When it comes to difficulty of execution and pay off the necromancer's abilities are fairly low risk and low reward. Although this isn't true all the time, Blood is power traited for Master of corruption is a high risk skill with low reward for its correct use. When comparing this to professions like thief, mesmer or even warrior it becomes clear that playing well on them or even mastering them is rewarding because a player can dive far deeper into that class and find powerful strategies that lets them go beyond what's expected of them or at least have the illusion that they go beyond. The necromancer hasn't had this sort of gameplay.As they stand now, Necromancer is a low risk low reward profession that rewards passive play on the lower levels of things like PvP and PvE, while at high end PvP this passive play that the necromancer has been taught to use becomes a liability but with the mechanics of the profession it doesn't offer much room for improvement on the player's part. What you see is what you get. While lets compare this to the mesmer. A profession with a high skill ceiling. Many players when the pick up mesmer assume its a fairly weak profession that's easily taken down. But as the skill of the player grows with it they eventually realize just how much control and sustain the profession actually has.Contrast that with the necromancer. Necromancers are fairly slow, straightforward and have very few defensive options. Because of this players quickly learn the gaps in the professions armor and its short comings. Its a very simple profession for people to just pick up and use but because of this it sacrifices so much of the depth that the GW1 necromancer was known for in favor of of this user friendly necromancer we see in GW2. Now I'm not saying this is inherently a bad thing. The passive game play and simplicity allows for the necromancer to be a menace in low end PvP and WvW which rewards this sort of profession.As that stands though, this sort of style philosophy pushes the player who decides to make the necromancer their main into a pretty bad position if they decide to get into the depth of the game. Its giving the player a profession with training wheels and expecting the player that they have to be aware that if they' want to advance in the game they'll have to give up their main and start focusing on a profession with a higher skill ceiling. But as it stands the 9 professions are so different and necromancer's defenses are so drastically different from the other professions that it can be like relearning the game all over again with far less to translate over from the necromancer.

The ScourgeThe Scourge is a fairly interesting elite spec when we compare it to the core profession. As an Elite it is far deeper in terms of its gameplay than the necromancer. As it stands now, it has 3 active defensive abilities on its bar at all time, along with the Aoe fear which can be activated without the use of a Shade. This opens up the door to new options and new ways to seriously screw up. This is a good thing! Because of the depth problem that the necromancer has at its core it doesn't offer a reward for high skilled play. While the Scourge is far less passive in its execution and far more active in its gameplay. I've described it as "Necromancer's Crossing over with engineer" which I feel is an apt description of it. Engineer, being one of the most complex professions while necromancers being one of the simplest. Because of this you get a resource hungry monstrosity that has the unique flavor of the necromancer with a bit of that Engineer depth. The Scourge addresses the necromancer's problem with depth and provides players a means to grow and expand with the profession.Why I'm in love with the concept of the scourge is because it moves the player back to the days of the GW1 cursing necromancer. Although that spec in GW1 didn't have much field control, it was quite taxing on your opponent and rewarded you for being aware of your surroundings. GW1 necromancer was loved because of its depth in use and the scourge gives players a bit of this back. While it doesn't offer everything the necromancer desires it is a start.

Guild Wars 1 NecromancerWhen we compare the guild wars 2 necromancer to its Guild wars 1 counterpart the Guild wars 2 necromancer up until this point was necromancer in name only. The GW1 necromancer was a very bursty, controling and damaging profession that ripped holes into its own defenses in order to expose weaknesses of its foes and unlock great power. Because of this the necromancer was a very difficult profession to play and master in the first game, rewarding player for very risky behavior that we haven't seen since. Holosmith seems to be closest to this style. And that isn't the first time I've compared engineer to GW1 necromancer and it likely wont be the last.When Guild Wars 1 necromancer mains were making the transition to Guild Wars 2 the necromancer was a shock to them. Where was the risk? Where was the reward? It just wasn't there. Arena net advertised the necromancer as a high skill profession, a statement we haven't heard in a long time and likely for good reason. Arena net seems to have gone with the GW2 necromancer as a user friendly profession while the GW1 necro players have been starved for that gameplay they left behind from GW1.
Arena net still seems to have some of the core philosophy still buried into the GW2 necromancer. Corruptions being more in line with GW1 necromancer's theme and being fairly odd for the GW2 necromancer when you honestly think about what its trying to do. I'd like to see arena net push further down this path and give us the Power at any cost profession we fell in love with in GW1.

Suggestion for CoreI've harped on for a while about how the core profession is a low skill low reward profession. But I honestly believe that it doesn't have to be. It can still be user friendly while adding a bit of depth to it. One suggestion I've been pushing for years is to have your skills 6-0 always available to you, even when in shroud, but with a hefty cost. I've suggested that if Necromancer was to gain this utility it shouldn't be for free. That using these skills in shroud should cost you life force and that the healing skill shouldn't provide health but still maintain its secondary effect.The Advantage of this would be that the necromancer player needs to make a very interesting decision that GW1 necromancer had to make all the time. Do I sacrifice my defenses for this utility? Which is an extremely meaningful question. And although their defenses would still be quite different when compared to the other professions in the game, this would set up a means to teach new players about rewarding gameplay that involves sacrifice while still letting them play at the lower ends with that level of passivity.Depth promotes enjoyment of a profession. And Complexity is good to an extent, but what you want is depth. Although this is by no means a small change to the profession. It does open up some very interesting prospects to the core and reaper that could allow them to compete with the level of depth that the Scourge provides.

With that said, I think this post is done. A bit of a long one, but tell me what you think. DO you have something to add? I'd be happy to hear from all of you.

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@Kaladel.1670 said:While I agree with the idea behind this post and find it really interesting, I don't think your suggestion is the only thing that can be done about it.We probably need something that push the idea of high risk high reward further.

Sure, I agree. I have quite a few suggestions relating to that idea, but as for this post I was already rambling for quite a while and didn't want to push everything at once. But! Because you've got me curious now. I'd love to hear some of your ideas. :) If you don't mind.

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Yeah, I think a few years back Arenanet already agreed that Necromancers are an easy class to play, and that won't change. You're not likely going to get much depth based on that.

But to be a successful necromancer in pvp, you actually need a fundamental understanding of positioning. Its not exactly class specific but, for instance, rangers, not so much.

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@kKagari.6804 said:Yeah, I think a few years back Arenanet already agreed that Necromancers are an easy class to play, and that won't change. You're not likely going to get much depth based on that.

But to be a successful necromancer in pvp, you actually need a fundamental understanding of positioning. Its not exactly class specific but, for instance, rangers, not so much.

I'm not so much pushing for a major change in how new players play them, but requesting depth for the players who want to master the profession. Arena net have flip flopped on the necromancer quite a bit, and I personally feel that the high skill high reward option is what they should push for future elite specializations. And the request for Utility in shroud has been a long standing one I've been an advocate for for about 4 years I believe.

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Well, after reading this part of your post I was anticipating a suggestion related to Corruption skills or something similar :

@Lily.1935 said:Although this isn't true all the time, Blood is power traited for Master of corruption is a high risk skill with low reward for its correct use.

And the shroud part surprised me.I have some ideas (probably badly balanced and vaguely redundant with Corruption since I feel the theme of sacrifice and blood magic are underexploited) but they'll have to wait until tomorow, since it's pretty late here and I have a hard time explaining them right now (english not being my first language doesn't really help).

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Staff tempest is also pretty easy, and far more powerful. I have one of those for clearing KC and no-upgors and I would say it's an easier rotation then the current viper reaper build. I've never played a warrior but I've gotta be like how hard can any of its rotations be when it doesn't have access to any toolbelt or attunement style weapon set changes, at least necro has shroud.

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@Kaladel.1670 said:Well, after reading this part of your post I was anticipating a suggestion related to Corruption skills or something similar :

@Lily.1935 said:Although this isn't true all the time, Blood is power traited for Master of corruption is a high risk skill with low reward for its correct use.

And the shroud part surprised me.I have some ideas (probably badly balanced and vaguely redundant with Corruption since I feel the theme of sacrifice and blood magic are underexploited) but they'll have to wait until tomorow, since it's pretty late here and I have a hard time explaining them right now (english not being my first language doesn't really help).

Look forward to it. I'd love to dive deeper into these ideas, since i have some myself, but my ideas are more elite specialization territory and not relating to the topic at hand. I'd love to see what you come up with though. I'll make a post in the future about elite specs later. But for now, I'll just wait and see what you have to say.

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@Tobias.8632 said:Staff tempest is also pretty easy, and far more powerful. I have one of those for clearing KC and no-upgors and I would say it's an easier rotation then the current viper reaper build. I've never played a warrior but I've gotta be like how hard can any of its rotations be when it doesn't have access to any toolbelt or attunement style weapon set changes, at least necro has shroud.

I think the difference here is that the Elementalist has the option of deeper gameplay. Just because it has a point where it simpler to play than Necromancer doesn't mean that's the case overall. And Warrior does require some weapon swapping and berserk mode triggers to be most effective.

But I'm more concerned with depth, not complexity. There is a difference in this distinction which I might have failed to express. A video posted by a Youtube Channel called Extra Credit explains the distinction quite well and I can recommend their video if you'd like?

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@Lily.1935 said:

@kKagari.6804 said:Yeah, I think a few years back Arenanet already agreed that Necromancers are an easy class to play, and that won't change. You're not likely going to get much depth based on that.

But to be a successful necromancer in pvp, you actually need a fundamental understanding of positioning. Its not exactly class specific but, for instance, rangers, not so much.

I'm not so much pushing for a major change in how new players play them, but requesting depth for the players who want to master the profession. Arena net have flip flopped on the necromancer quite a bit, and I personally feel that the high skill high reward option is what they should push for future elite specializations. And the request for Utility in shroud has been a long standing one I've been an advocate for for about 4 years I believe.

As much as I want utility in shroud (I really do), I actually think that won't improve the depth of gameplay. You'd end up with no drawbacks for going into Shroud, thereby reducing the decision making. I can't see one elite spec being able to adjust the skill ceiling that much, since the other core specialisations are quite simple to begin with.

Case in point: A lot of the other classes have really obscure GM traits that offer byproduct effects that creates depth through different concepts of gameplay. A very simple one is like Cleansing Ire; you lose a condition for landing a burst attack; i.e. you are rewarded defensively, for playing offensively. There are definitely more obscure ones like Improvisation; while the benefits of the trait are clear, the mileage you get varies depending on player skill.

There's just not enough of that in core Necro. A majority of our GM traits are passive in effect, or doesn't have the two pronged effects that Cleansing Ire has. To increase skill ceiling, and depth for necro, changes should start from core specs; there are simply too many passive GM traits.

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This is a pretty cool discussion so far. I'm interested to see where it goes.

@Lily.1935 said:One suggestion I've been pushing for years is to have your skills 6-0 always available to you, even when in shroud, but with a hefty cost. I've suggested that if Necromancer was to gain this utility it shouldn't be for free.Currently the "cost" for using these skills is that you need to drop out of shroud in order to use them. Rather than paying lifeforce, you are putting your defensive ability on recharge.

@kKagari.6804 said:A majority of our GM traits are passive in effect, or doesn't have the two pronged effects that Cleansing Ire has. To increase skill ceiling, and depth for necro, changes should start from core specs; there are simply too many passive GM traits.I think it's okay to have some passive and simple GM traits. And some passive traits like Parasitic Contagion can act as keystone traits that players can build and play around. It would be informative to hear some specific examples of the traits you're worried about.

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@Robert Gee.9246 said:

I think it's okay to have some passive and simple GM traits. And some passive traits like Parasitic Contagion can act as keystone traits that players can build and play around. It would be informative to hear some specific examples of the traits you're worried about.

I think the top of the list is Unholy Sanctuary. There's not really any interesting play with it because the healing is too low to make much difference and the auto-Shroud on down typically doesn't buy you much time because you likely aren't at full life force if you're going down.

Another one that is just passive without much depth is Death Perception. Yeah, you can drop a damaging well, then go into Shroud to enjoy the increased crit rate, but there really isn't any play with the trait, especially because Necros have so many ways to boost crit chance anyway.

Finally, it's interesting that you mention Parasitic Contagion, because it's confusing to Necros why this is the only self-heal type trait that doesn't heal through Shroud. Any chance you could look into maybe changing this? It won't affect Scourge balance in the slightest, at least.

Also, really wish you had read Lily's post on the prior forum about about discussion with the players. It was a much better post than this thread, and this one is pretty good.

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I think one possible and simple starting point to making core necromancer and reaper a more deep and rewarding profession is to alter base maximum life force, making shroud less effective as a second health bar and more of a time limit that you have some control over. Obviously this would also mean numbers being adjusted for scourge to make shade skills usable, but I find it to be a good stepping stone to balancing the necromancer with less concern over this "second health bar."

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@Robert Gee.9246 said:This is a pretty cool discussion so far. I'm interested to see where it goes.

@Lily.1935 said:One suggestion I've been pushing for years is to have your skills 6-0 always available to you, even when in shroud, but with a hefty cost. I've suggested that if Necromancer was to gain this utility it shouldn't be for free.Currently the "cost" for using these skills is that you need to drop out of shroud in order to use them. Rather than paying lifeforce, you are putting your defensive ability on recharge.

@kKagari.6804 said:A majority of our GM traits are passive in effect, or doesn't have the two pronged effects that Cleansing Ire has. To increase skill ceiling, and depth for necro, changes should start from core specs; there are simply too many passive GM traits.I think it's okay to have some passive and simple GM traits. And some passive traits like Parasitic Contagion can act as keystone traits that players can build and play around. It would be informative to hear some specific examples of the traits you're worried about.

I agree with your analysis of Parasitic Contagion, since it lends itself to altering how you approach your build and Shroud usage. Parasitic wants you to play builds with higher application and uptime, and it wants you to use Shroud in a way where you enter it for a bomb and leave it for the aftermath healing; rather than using it as a substitute health meter you use it to fuel healing towards your actual one. It's a shift in the ideology of what Shroud is used for, and that's cool.

In my opinion, issues arise when some of these traits don't really have identities that are defined. Unholy Sanctuary is pretty guilty in this regard. It has a pretty average-to-mediocre base healing value, but with a Healing Power coefficient of only 0.12, even when you fully build in a way where Unholy Sanctuary should start to have an actual effect, it's still underwhelming at best. I am personally a huge fan of design that tends towards lower bases and better scalars since it forces trade-offs in stat distributions. I would love to see Unholy Sanctuary see a reduction of its base heal from 130 to about 100, but an increase of its scalar from 0.12 to something closer to 0.3 or 0.4. If I want my shroud to truly act as a "sanctuary", I feel like it should give at least as much healing as a Healing Signet from a Warrior with absolutely no Healing Power.

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I played Necro in GW1 and was in love with it from the day I made my character. I was thrilled that the sacrifice made for power and control was worth the cost in PvE, PvP and temple. I purchased GW2 and was looking forward to playing Necro here too but alas it was not the powerful fearsome class I was hoping for and I worked my Mes instead. I feel that the Mes, which was overlooked and under used in GW1 was given greater power and leading roles in GW2 and took away from some of the other classes. As the game aged and changes came its role has stayed level but with some loss. The Necro however never really evolved well in the game to the point that I loved it as I had before and that saddened me greatly. My hope is that with the upcoming release and new elite sets something will put the spark back in it. For now my love of Mes out weighs my hope for change.

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@Robert Gee.9246 said:This is a pretty cool discussion so far. I'm interested to see where it goes.

@Lily.1935 said:One suggestion I've been pushing for years is to have your skills 6-0 always available to you, even when in shroud, but with a hefty cost. I've suggested that if Necromancer was to gain this utility it shouldn't be for free.Currently the "cost" for using these skills is that you need to drop out of shroud in order to use them. Rather than paying lifeforce, you are putting your defensive ability on recharge.

@kKagari.6804 said:A majority of our GM traits are passive in effect, or doesn't have the two pronged effects that Cleansing Ire has. To increase skill ceiling, and depth for necro, changes should start from core specs; there are simply too many passive GM traits.I think it's okay to have some passive and simple GM traits. And some passive traits like Parasitic Contagion can act as keystone traits that players can build and play around. It would be informative to hear some specific examples of the traits you're worried about.

Oh. My. God. We've missed you Rob! Welcome back!

It's not that I'm particularly worried about the GM traits, as I do understand some of them are 'build-defining' but as a response to Lily, there are simply too many passive traits that don't promote high skill ceiling play. They are good traits in the way of functionality, but poor in providing additional options; i.e. Depth Perception.

I think the best example of this argument is actually the change to Signets of Suffering; it was a trait that offered additional options when creating builds with signets and now it has been changed to something that promotes passive play further. Its not that the old Signets of Suffering was groundbreaking in its added corruption effects, you're still applying an offensive effect to the signet's base offensive effect, but it still gave the player additional options. The new Signet of Suffering just feels a bit regressive in the vein of this argument.

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@Robert Gee.9246 said:This is a pretty cool discussion so far. I'm interested to see where it goes.

@Lily.1935 said:One suggestion I've been pushing for years is to have your skills 6-0 always available to you, even when in shroud, but with a hefty cost. I've suggested that if Necromancer was to gain this utility it shouldn't be for free.Currently the "cost" for using these skills is that you need to drop out of shroud in order to use them. Rather than paying lifeforce, you are putting your defensive ability on recharge.

@kKagari.6804 said:A majority of our GM traits are passive in effect, or doesn't have the two pronged effects that Cleansing Ire has. To increase skill ceiling, and depth for necro, changes should start from core specs; there are simply too many passive GM traits.I think it's okay to have some passive and simple GM traits. And some passive traits like Parasitic Contagion can act as keystone traits that players can build and play around. It would be informative to hear some specific examples of the traits you're worried about.

OMG! A dev responded to my post! Now that my fangirlling is out of the way I can discuss this properly.

I actually don't disagree with you that there is some risk in the cost of putting shroud on cool down. What I will disagree with is that that is a major cost. It's only a 10 second cool down. The risk of doing that isn't honestly that high in my opinion and it's a fairly black and white choice.

Let's contrast this with my suggestion for a moment. You still have this choice available to you. But now you have some other options. Let's say that the cost of the utility usage was 15% and the elite cost was 25%. Extremely high costs that could burn through life force in a matter of seconds. Looking at it from this angle the choice becomes far more meaningful. You could drop out to use your utility and put your shroud on a 10 second cool down or you could pay that cost. As it stands now life force on many builds can take far longer to build up than just 10 second so you'd have to weigh your options. Do I rip a hole in my defenses to push harder, do I drop out and risk heavy damage, or do I turtle in shroud and not take those chances? And it can very further than just that.

Also. Personally I don't think passive play is all bad. It isn't. It has its place.

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@Lily.1935 said:

As that stands though, this sort of style philosophy pushes the player who decides to make the necromancer their main into a pretty bad position if they decide to get into the depth of the game. Its giving the player a profession with training wheels and expecting the player that they have to be aware that if they' want to advance in the game they'll have to give up their main and start focusing on a profession with a higher skill ceiling. But as it stands the 9 professions are so different and necromancer's defenses are so drastically different from the other professions that it can be like relearning the game all over again with far less to translate over from the necromancer.

Speaking for PvE only:

If i started GW2 a few years ago i created a necro as my first toon. Mostly of my 2000+ hours of game time i spend on him. I have a few breaks, some longer, some shorter done from the game. The reason was it feels a little bit boring and lackluster. After my last break i decided to create an other alt because the game bored me still after returning. I tryed a mesmer and oh boy what should i say it's felt like i steped in a complete other way to play and enjoy GW2. First i died a lot wich was really new for me. Never really need to use dodging on my necro. Never really used to avoid red area effect in case of the shroud. It was pretty tough for me the first time but after get over this the game feeels so much more rewarding.At the moment i can't even play my necro for 5 mins in a row. It feels so boring an absolut not rewarding to play it. Compared to my facetanking close combat mele mesmer and even my guard the necro cant compete in having fun through skillrotation and deeper gameplay. I love the class really, the lore abaout it fits perfectly and the class immersion is great. It's just to faceroll to play imo and gives not the satisfaction like other classes wich need more indeot understanding of class/skillmechaniks to survive/outplay mobs. It's like trow everything at your oponend, go shroud use all skills, get out of it repeat. Synergies of skill doesn't matter anyway. The question is not if you survive and the enemy dies, just how long it takes, meanwhile ignoring everything he does to you. Scourge were interresting at the demoweekend and stresstest, but i don't think it will take the necro to an skill/rot/class understanding level wich a lot of people wish to have.Over all this males me a litlle bit sad because i have spend a lot of time to play my norn necro girl. But at the moment it seemes i will not play her again.

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I would go further and say that at least in PVE, a reaper is a high risk, low reward profession.

What do I mean by this? PVE typically does not really have the risk part in defensive options, but in offensive ones.Our damage is highly dependent on fields, specifically by using shroud -> 5 -> 4. The risk here is high, if anything goes wrong and you mistime it, a lot of things can screw you: knockdown, others placing fields badly, enemies using a skill you really got to evade, boss throwing up an immune, etc. Similarly, since our damage depends on our one defensive option (Shroud), being in any bad situation that makes you use Shroud prematurely can essentially reduce your damage output significantly.

But even if you get past this, and do it all correctly, you do not get a high reward: Quite the opposite, your damage is some of the lowest of all DPS classes in the game. Even GW2raidar, which aggregates data from a lot of raids, shows this clearly.

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Alas, I can't see any ways to make Necromancer's play any differently to the low reward gameplay it has currently.

I agree there needs to be passive gameplay elements, but I simply think Necromancers have too many of them. It doesn't have the skills that are useful in multiple situations that other classes have, nor the non-linear rotations classes like engineers and elementalists have. A lot of the Necromancer's playbook is fire-and-forget.

And don't get me wrong, every game is going to have the easy-to-play option, and I think Necromancer is definitely that option, for Guild Wars 2.

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@kKagari.6804 said:Alas, I can't see any ways to make Necromancer's play any differently to the low reward gameplay it has currently.

I agree there needs to be passive gameplay elements, but I simply think Necromancers have too many of them. It doesn't have the skills that are useful in multiple situations that other classes have, nor the non-linear rotations classes like engineers and elementalists have. A lot of the Necromancer's playbook is fire-and-forget.

And don't get me wrong, every game is going to have the easy-to-play option, and I think Necromancer is definitely that option, for Guild Wars 2.

That's why I started the post. A group of people working together to solve a problem is far more effective than a single person. I'm sure we can come up with some amazing ideas.Also I think ranger and warrior both fit that role as well. They are extremely easy to pick up and grasp the difference is that they do have more depth even though they can be just as easy to use as necromancer.

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Necromancer is currently the most versatile class, if anyone want to play in the style "I am the skillful that tightens 200 buttons at the right time" just use the skills that fit that style on necromancer and avoid passive, ...., power builds almost have this.

I really do not mind "looking smart", I play more by immersion and to relax. And why do I play Necro? Because I want to be the badass gravedigger who plays plagues on all people. When HoT brought the Reaper, it was like a dream comin true.

This game is going in a dangerous direction with all classes losing the things that make them unique, and I wonder why I have anything between 11 and 13 character slots if everyone is turning clones of each other. I really did not even care about Scourge, which sounds more like a mixture of Mesmer and Guardian. The Guardian is my main on WvW with several hours. When I go to the necro it's just when I'm tired of being a guardian.

I wanted to see a discussion on how to make the Necro more unique, and not expendable because I already have a guardian, warrior, thiev.

As I make a living developing software myself, the last thing I want in a game when i end my work, is to find a board with 200 buttons to push and so "look skillful" "Depth".

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I have been mainly playing my necromancer (reaper) a lot the past few months. Core wise I used to run Death/Blood/Spite, and really just let my minions do a lot of the work in open world. When reaper came out I was Death/Spite/Reaper, but still mostly just a minion master. The past few months I have been playing around with builds and recently been running a Curses/Spite/Reaper as a Condi Reaper. I have been pleased with it in most cases.

But I echo the sentiment that I gave up most of my self healing, my tanky minions, my support healing, and my own ease of survival for what seems like very little gain in damage output. I can surely still burst down veterans and even champions solo with a fair amount of ease. But it requires a lot more dodging and positioning on my part, which is fine, but it feels like (honestly) that I don't gain enough damage output for what all I gave up. I am interested to see how the griever's gear will work with condi reaper, but I think its lack of expertise could hurt the build.

Scourge is interesting and is definitely seems like it will be running the new griever's gear since you can get a bit of crit from "target the weak" and then the torch trait in Scourge gives you expertise based on your condition damage. I didn't play around on it exclusively BUT it seems like Scourge may be very interesting for a condition damage build. The only problem I have had so far with it, is against mobile bosses it is pretty much tanked. Because you place a shade (hopefully the boss hasn't already moved) and then you have to spam your abilities from the shade before the boss moves. Because if it does move out of the radius the shade is worthless from an offensive standpoint. Interestingly though if people stack up in to two group and there is a stationary boss. You can provide support to both 5 man groups & have a shade for damage on the boss. But it requires a lot of micro managing in placing your shades over and over and such.

One thing I liked in GW1 was how necromancers exploited corpses for use in their abilities. Perhaps that may be a good tool to bring back and a way to increase the effectiveness of their skills. Like "Well of Blood" for an example. Currently just "conjures a well of blood to heal allies" maybe if something was added to be like. "Conjures a well of blood to heal allies. Exploits corpses in the area to increase duration and potency." So it could add a bit to the initial self heal and the health per second and maybe even a bit to the duration for each corpse within the well. Same thing could be done for minions, "If summoned within range of a corpse the minion gains increased stats (power/condi/health)". Some fights of course stuff like this wouldn't come in to play, unless your party members have died or maybe if we let minion corpses stay around longer and count so a necromancer could provide their own corpses as a fight goes on. Also the despawn time on enemy corpses would have to be lengthened a bit so necromancers could use them before they vanish because some vanish pretty much instantly after they die. This would at least be a unique mechanic to necromancers and I think it would bring back some of the GW1 necromancer feel.

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Playing GW1 Pvp and GW2 Pvp for quite a long period of time.

I realy think Shroud (Reaper/Death) is what hold back necro since day one in sPvp and maybe in WvW roaming aswell.The trade of sacrificing LF to use 0-6 whyle in death shroud seem to ad more depth to a class that needs this kind of improvements. I also think Parasitic contagion should go through life force (just like blighter's boon heals) but It should have a maxed healing/sec value.


Hard to deal with :There are some huge tracking issues with some reaper skills aswell (Reaper shroud 2 and GS 5), these should be ground targeted if you cannot fix the pathing (like war gs 3).Focus should also be looked at, espcialy the spinal shiver cast time ... it doesn't allow anyone to reactively remove boons and doesn't fit into a burst rotation ... it's just a damage boost skill with a verry long cast time.Off-Hand dagger gives no life force generation.

Personal:Wurm is good if you can set it up and it doesn't get killed ... but realy bad to cast it during a fight (1.5 sec cast) and it gets canceled by transorms. I realy think a utility skill with 1,5 sec cast on a class that doesn't have acces to stab (or low acces) is exessive.

General :For most necro / reaper builds most of it's gameplay comes from passive procs / effects , wich is fine ... but it removes flavor to the class (PS: I realy din't like the signet change). Many utilities have good concept but are just not usable (This is true for every class).

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