Correcting the spine of the necromancer

[Dadnir.5038]

Introduction:

The necromancer have great mechanisms on the paper but the way they are implemented turn them into a mess. Most issues come from the traitlines, this thread is my end-of-year take at fixing this mess.

Chapter 1: Spite and might generation.

Spite isn't a bad traitline per se, there are some traits that are hardly competitive like chill of death or dread but the main issue of the traitline is it's might generation. The traitline is designed around the idea of getting stronger as the fight last and use might as a way to achieve this goal. This was a great design and if all profession had this same design it would have been perfect, however, it's not the case and it create for the necromancer an overreliance on might for it's own DPS resulting in a easy to achieve but lower maximum damage potential.

Two traits need to change for the traitline to be healthy:

• Reaper's might: gain power (80) and additional power while in shroud (80).
• Siphoned power changed to Rending shroud: Pulse vulnerability (8s) around you every second while in shroud.

Chapter 2: Curse and boon convertion

First thing off, there is a need to adjust some trait for PvE in this traitline:

• Barbed precision need to see it's bleed base duration increased to 5 second in PvE only.
• Chilling darkness need to see it's ICD reduced to 1 second in PvE only.

Now on the topic of boon convertion, which will be the controversial part of this chapter. There is a need to reduce base boon convertion effect on the necromancer at the benefit of boon ripping. To this end, there is a need to first change all boon convertion effects on weapon skills into boon ripping effects and then make Path of corruption apply a condition specific to the necromancer's specialization to a successful boon ripped. (Yes this is a flat nerf of the necromancer but it is a necessary nerf)

• Unholy feast, Dark pact, Feast of corruption, Enfeebling blood and Nightfall no longer convert boon but rip boons instead.
• Dark path now rip 2 boons baseline.
• Death charge now rip 1 boon baseline.
• Path of corruption changed to: Boon ripping deal damage to the defiance bar. Ripping a boon/defiance bar apply a condition based on your specialization (Core: poison 4s, Reaper: chill 0.5s, scourge: torment 8s).

Chapter 3: Death magic

The main issue of the traitline is that it's effects/mechanisms are all over the place. Minions traits can't work properly without a baseline generation of minions while Death carapace give imbalanced values to the different traits. Thanksfully, shuffling a bit the differents effects can fix everything while keeping the goal of the traitline.

Minor:

• Armor shroud would need to be replaced by Flesh of the master: gain carapace for each minion you control. Summon a jagged horror whenever you gain life force (ICD 4-5s, maximum 5 jagged horror).
• Soul comprehension would need to be replaced by infuse condition: Transfer conditions on you to your minions. Gain carapace whenever that happen.
• Beyond the veil would need to be replaced by Corruptor fervor: Inflicting a condition on a foe grant carapace.

Adept:

• Flesh of the master is replaced by Armored shroud.
• Putrid defense: no change.
• Shrouded removal: no change.

Master:

• Necromantic corruption is replaced by Soul comprehension: Carapace also grant vitality (10). Carapace last longer.
• Dark defiance: Flesh of the master now summon shambling horror . If you are disabled summon a shambling horror.
• Deadly strength: Carapace also grant power (10). Minions deal 25% more damage.

Grandmaster:

• Death nova: When you or one of your minion is downed create a poison nova. Using a minion's active skill create a poison nova at the necromancer's position.
• Corruptor fervor replaced by Beyond the veil: take reduced condition damage and gain life force every 3 seconds based on the carapace treshold. (10 carapaces: 10% condi damage reduction and 0.5% LF. 25 carapaces: 20% condition damage reduction and 1% LF)
• Unholy sanctuary: (I don't like this trait but...) no change.

Chapter 4: Blood magic

A very short chapter only bringing the mark of blood from mark of evasion in line with the original mark in both CD and damage.

• Mark of evasion: ICD reduced to 4s. Damage increased.

Chapter 5: Soul reaping

This is an equally short chapter. The main issue of the traitline are the traits that proc on the use of shroud#1. These traits are horribly imbalanced and create disparities that are hard to balance with each e-spec.

• Unyielding blast changed to: Convert condition (2) on you whenever you enter shroud.
• Dhuumfire changed to Death aura: Upon entering shroud, blast the area around you (Core: drain life, Reaper: chill, Scourge: burn) and gain an aura based on your specialization. (Core: dark aura, Reaper: frost aura, Scourge: fire aura)

Chapter 6: Utilities

Let's beat up a bit of sense in some of the necromancer's utilities:

• Epidemic: Changed to now copy conditions on the caster to it's targeted ennemy and up to 5 foes around this ennemy. Self-ailment happen before the conditions are copied.
• Putrid explosion: Make the bone minion which is the closest to the caster's target explode.
• Bone fiend: No longer cripple on hit.
• Rigor mortis: Now a 100% projectile finisher. No longer immobilize it's target but cripple it for 5s per hit. CD reduced to 20 seconds.
• Plague signet: Passive: reduce incoming condition damage taken by 10% (15% traited).

Chapter 7: Reaper

Let's save it's PvE condi damage and make up for the loss of might generation.

• Chilling nova: ICD reduced to 4 seconds (PvE only)
• Blighter's boon changed to Blight: Gain life force whenever you apply vulnerability. If you are in reaper's shroud, gain health instead.

Chapter 8: Scourge

Scourge is a big chapter, which tell how bad it's shape is right now. 3 issues need to be addressed: barrier, area denial powercreep and... the mess of the different dandaid fix that were put on it. While DM could be fixed by shuffling a bit the different effects, unfortunately Scourge need a lot of true changes and undone nerfs for the sake of making the proper nerfs.

Barrier is a mechanism that is too strong due to the fact that it stack. This need to be changed.

• Barrier: No longer stack. Barrier gain increased duration whenever an amount of barrier inferior or equal to the current barrier is acquiered. An higher amount of incoming barrier will replace the barrier on you.
• Adjust barrier number and scaling with healing power accordingly.

Area denial powercreep or the shade mechanism. ANet need to understand that the issue is the "denial" not the "area":

• F2, F3, F4, F5 no longer proc _manifest sand shade.
• F2, F3, F4, F5 now apply their effect around both the user and the shade.
• Desert shroud effects changed to: Allies inside the area of effect take 15% less damage from all damage source (power and condi), do not stack. CD back to 20 seconds in all gamemodes.
• Herald of sorrow effects changed to: Successful projectile and whirl combo finishers apply torment (5s) on foe.
• Demonic lore effects changed to: shades proc a whril finisher whenever you use a shade skill (F2, F3, F4, F5). Torment deal 33% more damage. This basically mean that with 3 shade up, you got the possibility to do 3 combo whirl with each shade skill use.
• Punishment skills boon convertion effect now also proc on defiance bar.

Conclusion:

The list isn't exhaustive and don't fix everything on the necromancer, but at least it address the most urgent issues.

[Nimon.7840]

Yeah no. Pls don't. Most of these changes are pretty bad and wouldnt help necro one bit.And they would make necro completely unfun to play (against).So for gods sake. PLS DONT!

[Dadnir.5038]

@Nimon.7840 said:Yeah no. Pls don't. Most of these changes are pretty bad and wouldnt help necro one bit.And they would make necro completely unfun to play (against).So for gods sake. PLS DONT!

Can you please argument?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

nope these don't make sense and are a general nerf in a lot of cases.

[LucianDK.8615]

Awful lot of nerfs here.

[ZDragon.3046]

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Introduction:

The necromancer have great mechanisms on the paper but the way they are implemented turn them into a mess. Most issues come from the traitlines, this thread is my end-of-year take at fixing this mess.

Chapter 1: Spite and might generation.

Spite isn't a bad traitline per se, there are some traits that are hardly competitive like chill of death or dread but the main issue of the traitline is it's might generation. The traitline is designed around the idea of getting stronger as the fight last and use might as a way to achieve this goal. This was a great design and if all profession had this same design it would have been perfect, however, it's not the case and it create for the necromancer an overreliance on might for it's own DPS resulting in a easy to achieve but lower maximum damage potential.

Two traits need to change for the traitline to be healthy:

• Reaper's might: gain power (80) and additional power while in shroud (80).This is a bad change unless you plan to remove might generation from every profession no.. in case you forgot necormancer is limited in the boon department and might just so happens to be the 1 boon is good at generating (and it still does not generate it as fast as other professions do) the only thing you got right here is that it does not have an out of shroud effect but your idea here is too weak.
• Siphoned power changed to Rending shroud: Pulse vulnerability (8s) around you every second while in shroud.This is a pointless change and all you did was remove more might unlike the previous trait listed this one does work both in and out of shroud ideally you made this trait worse.

Overall you removed might lowering its damage potential but didnt give anything back at all as a result so even when others give it might in high counts its not any better off than it was generating its own might. This is a bad design choice so long as other professions can still generate their own boons including might (which many of them can) IF necormancer was like other professions and had a wider range of access to other boons i would maybe agree with toning the might down but removing it completely is out of the question. Removing it completely when necromancer does not have a wide range of high access to boons is REALLY OUT OF THE QUESTION you have lost you mind.

Chapter 2: Curse and boon convertion

First thing off, there is a need to adjust some trait for PvE in this traitline:

• Barbed precision need to see it's bleed base duration increased to 5 second in PvE only.
• Chilling darkness need to see it's ICD reduced to 1 second in PvE only.ok but you still could have done this better.Barbed Precision should have its 33% chance on crit turned into a 100% chance on crit and give it a 1s ICD or possibly even no icd the only bad thing about barbed.P. is that its ruined by 2 rng effects first is your own crit chance then another lower percentage that only has a chance to trigger if you land a crit. Its outdated when you look at other triats on other professions that use to have something similar.

Now on the topic of boon convertion, which will be the controversial part of this chapter. There is a need to reduce base boon convertion effect on the necromancer at the benefit of boon ripping. To this end, there is a need to first change all boon convertion effects on weapon skills into boon ripping effects and then make Path of corruption apply a condition specific to the necromancer's specialization to a successful boon ripped. (Yes this is a flat nerf of the necromancer but it is a necessary nerf)

• Unholy feast, Dark pact, Feast of corruption, Enfeebling blood and Nightfall no longer convert boon but rip boons instead.
• Dark path now rip 2 boons baseline.
• Death charge now rip 1 boon baseline.
• Path of corruption changed to: Boon ripping deal damage to the defiance bar. Ripping a boon/defiance bar apply a condition based on your specialization (Core: poison 4s, Reaper: chill 0.5s, scourge: torment 8s).

Horrible idea for 2 reasons.1: Boon corruption is a key feature of necromancer there is no point in removing it for simplistic rips. IF you are going to do this then active defense needs more compensation. The conditions that come from corrupts are a part of necromancers conditional defense by removing this aspect you make them directly weaker on all fronts in terms of defense.2: Although you tried to address boon rips in pve with the path of corruption change you forgot one critical thing. Most bosses or mobs in general in pve dont have boons. You went about this in a way that ideally means nothing you could have listed out every corrupt and gave it a bonus effect when used on a target with no boons bust instead which would be much well deserved quality changes fore necromancers in general.For exampleCorrupt boon now inflicts 5 stacks of poison on a foe when they have no boons.Unholy feast now always triggers unholy burst if stuck foes have no boons.

Chapter 3: Death magic

The main issue of the traitline is that it's effects/mechanisms are all over the place. Minions traits can't work properly without a baseline generation of minions while Death carapace give imbalanced values to the different traits. Thanksfully, shuffling a bit the differents effects can fix everything while keeping the goal of the traitline.

Minor:

• Armor shroud would need to be replaced by Flesh of the master: gain carapace for each minion you control. Summon a jagged horror whenever you gain life force (ICD 4-5s, maximum 5 jagged horror).Armored shroud should be default dont put minion traits as minors you cant opt not to choose when most builds wont use minions W T EFF???? Thats a horrid design choice.
• Soul comprehension would need to be replaced by infuse condition: Transfer conditions on you to your minions. Gain carapace whenever that happen.This is a bad choice for the same reasion every build that wont use a minion now has a trait they cant opt not to choose that wont do anything should they not use minions. Bad design choices.
• Beyond the veil would need to be replaced by Corruptor fervor: Inflicting a condition on a foe grant carapace.This is an ok change C Fervor should actually be a minor so yes this is the one thing you got right

Adept:

• Flesh of the master is replaced by Armored shroud.
• Putrid defense: no change.
• Shrouded removal: no change.

Master:

• Necromantic corruption is replaced by Soul comprehension: Carapace also grant vitality (10). Carapace last longer.The vitality part should just be the minor of the current Soul Comp in general. Carapace lasting longer could be a optional thing when combined with something else.
• Dark defiance: Flesh of the master now summon shambling horror . If you are disabled summon a shambling horror.This is a pointless change
• Deadly strength: Carapace also grant power (10). Minions deal 25% more damage.

Grandmaster:

• Death nova: When you or one of your minion is downed create a poison nova. Using a minion's active skill create a poison nova at the necromancer's position.Not too bad of an idea. But not all that good.
• Corruptor fervor replaced by Beyond the veil: take reduced condition damage and gain life force every 3 seconds based on the carapace treshold. (10 carapaces: 10% condi damage reduction and 0.5% LF. 25 carapaces: 20% condition damage reduction and 1% LF)This trait is still doing so much that you are practically forcing people to take it to be honest with you, you shouldn't have moved the condition damage reduction away from dark defiance I dont understand that change.
• Unholy sanctuary: (I don't like this trait but...) no change.

Chapter 4: Blood magic

A very short chapter only bringing the mark of blood from mark of evasion in line with the original mark in both CD and damage.

• Mark of evasion: ICD reduced to 4s. Damage increased.This is just power creep with a damage increase but i mean ok. If the mark itself was more effective in general then this trait wouldnt need changes to start with. But SaFfiSFiNE according to people so its whatever.

You ignored like everything else that could be better with blood magic why? Or did we forget about the grand master that currently boast more risk than reward and two vampiric traits that are limited by healing power despite that they are suppose to have a life stealing effect which should ideally be based on damage done (for at least one of them)

Chapter 5: Soul reaping

This is an equally short chapter. The main issue of the traitline are the traits that proc on the use of shroud#1. These traits are horribly imbalanced and create disparities that are hard to balance with each e-spec.

• Unyielding blast changed to: Convert condition (2) on you whenever you enter shroud.This trait now thematically makes no sense you changed something just for the sake of changing something if you wont to cure conditions into boons change shrouded removal in death magic as the line is committed to self sustain and defense.
• Dhuumfire changed to Death aura: Upon entering shroud, blast the area around you (Core: drain life, Reaper: chill, Scourge: burn) and gain an aura based on your specialization. (Core: dark aura, Reaper: frost aura, Scourge: fire aura)This is a neat idea but ideall you could have used this idea for Unyielding blast and it would have made more sense there than it does here. Dhuumfire should have been changed to deal different stack counts based on what elite its used with but you didnt need to remove it. your idea here is good just put it in Unyielding blast spot not Dhummfires.

Chapter 6: Utilities

Let's beat up a bit of sense in some of the necromancer's utilities:

• Epidemic: Changed to now copy conditions on the caster to it's targeted ennemy and up to 5 foes around this ennemy. Self-ailment happen before the conditions are copied.Horrible idea. You made it ok for pvp (possibly) but ruined it for pve and wvw so i dislike the change. Ideally if you wanted this idea you should have just given it to plauge signet and called it an out right buff.
• Putrid explosion: Make the bone minion which is the closest to the caster's target explode.Pointless changes minions are bad
• Bone fiend: No longer cripple on hit.
• Rigor mortis: Now a 100% projectile finisher. No longer immobilize it's target but cripple it for 5s per hit. CD reduced to 20 seconds.Pointless changes minions are bad, if you want to make this one better make its projectiles fly straight and at a higher velocity. That alone would at least increase its rate of hitting a target thats not an AI.Lol so you are just nerffing a minion that thats not used like why i cant understand this.
• Plague signet: Passive: reduce incoming condition damage taken by 10% (15% traited).Xfer a condition to a foe you strike every x seconds make the passive match the active.

Chapter 7: Reaper

Let's save it's PvE condi damage and make up for the loss of might generation.

• Chilling nova: ICD reduced to 4 seconds (PvE only)
• Blighter's boon changed to Blight: Gain life force whenever you apply vulnerability. If you are in reaper's shroud, gain health instead.Bad change you removed one of the most active a vulnerability application traits and made this depend far too much on the spite minor you made. You effectively made this trait more passive than active by doing the spite changes.

What needs to change here is not blighters boon.What needs to change is Reapers Onslaught.1: Reapers base attack speeds have increased by 25% QoL change (cast times have been cut by 25% on all the reaper skills basically)2: RO now adds and additional 10% attack speed bonus in addition to its ferocity bonus, The quickness has been removed from RO

Reaper has a better attacking speed in general now which opens up all 3 grandmasters again including blighters boon and when given quickness by allies it has a better top end in group play.

Chapter 8: Scourge

Scourge is a big chapter, which tell how bad it's shape is right now. 3 issues need to be addressed: barrier, area denial powercreep and... the mess of the different dandaid fix that were put on it. While DM could be fixed by shuffling a bit the different effects, unfortunately Scourge need a lot of true changes and undone nerfs for the sake of making the proper nerfs.

Barrier is a mechanism that is too strong due to the fact that it stack. This need to be changed.

• Barrier: No longer stack. Barrier gain increased duration whenever an amount of barrier inferior or equal to the current barrier is acquiered. An higher amount of incoming barrier will replace the barrier on you.
• Adjust barrier number and scaling with healing power accordingly.Correction barrier is too strong in WvW because it stacks and not an issue in other game modes hold your high horses on this one.

Area denial powercreep or the shade mechanism. ANet need to understand that the issue is the "denial" not the "area":

• F2, F3, F4, F5 no longer proc _manifest sand shade.
• F2, F3, F4, F5 now apply their effect around both the user and the shade.Ok this is fine.
• Desert shroud effects changed to: Allies inside the area of effect take 15% less damage from all damage source (power and condi), do not stack. CD back to 20 seconds in all gamemodes.This is too situational if its going to have 0 offensive power at all then its going to need more utility than this.
• Herald of sorrow effects changed to: Successful projectile and whirl combo finishers apply torment (5s) on foe.
• Demonic lore effects changed to: shades proc a whril finisher whenever you use a shade skill (F2, F3, F4, F5). Torment deal 33% more damage. This basically mean that with 3 shade up, you got the possibility to do 3 combo whirl with each shade skill use.This would be cool if necro had access to alot of strong combo fields to use but they dont so this design is kind of bad. There is near 0 potential for self use out side of wells for the most part.
• Punishment skills boon convertion effect now also proc on defiance bar.Pointless changeJust make the skills apply more torment or give you more life force when used on a foe who has no boons. (this will almost only ever trigger bonus effects in pve as foes in pvp are almost always dripping in boons it should be rare to get the bonus triggers)

Conclusion:

The list isn't exhaustive and don't fix everything on the necromancer, but at least it address the most urgent issues.

This list makes more issues than its solves note how you ripped away the 1 boon necro is good at

[Methuselah.4376]

No sorry, most if not all these suggestions are bad. I've seen your comments were you advocated for the removal of F1 procs on shade skills and always thought what a hard nerf it would be. Your whirl finisher idea (which makes no sense, why would shades do whirl finishers?) might make up for with a bit and yes proccing from three shades would be great, but you remove burning then. It would be much simpler to reverse the "bug fix" that allowed all shades to affect the same target (in PvE only) and I would further remove the 3 sec icd for burning on Demonic Lore.

Epidemic copying condis from you to enemies might be a situational buff....but to be effective you need to have a lot of condis on you. In PvE, where Epidemic is most relevant, enemies rarely inflict enough condis on you for this to be effective and if you are part of a party/squad, your condis are more likely to be removed before they are copied. Heck when I used to raid with condi Scourge before it dropped below 30k, I used to get annoyed at my group's healers for doing their job too well and clearing my self inflicted condis from BiP before I could transfer them.

And ye, leave might alone. I would go into more detail but @ZDragon.3046 did a good job and I agree with quite a lot of what they said.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"ZDragon.3046" said:Overall you removed might lowering its damage potential but didnt give anything back at all as a result so even when others give it might in high counts its not any better off than it was generating its own might. This is a bad design choice so long as other professions can still generate their own boons including might (which many of them can) IF necormancer was like other professions and had a wider range of access to other boons i would maybe agree with toning the might down but removing it completely is out of the question. Removing it completely when necromancer does not have a wide range of high access to boons is REALLY OUT OF THE QUESTION you have lost you mind.

I disagree with you, the change reduce it's solo damage potential, yes, but overall it increase the necromancer damage potential by up to 160 point of power. Which isn't negligible.

NB.: other professions are in dire need of seeing their self might generation tuned down, however, that's a necro thread not another profession's thread.

Horrible idea for 2 reasons.1: Boon corruption is a key feature of necromancer there is no point in removing it for simplistic rips. IF you are going to do this then active defense needs more compensation. The conditions that come from corrupts are a part of necromancers conditional defense by removing this aspect you make them directly weaker on all fronts in terms of defense.

Well, most of those boon convertion were added along the years and were initially boon ripping effects. The "flavor" have gone to far. Also I'm not removing all boon convertion effects since it remain the job of well of corruption and boon corruption. A necromancer don't really rely on the hypothetic corruption of an hypothetic boon on it's target for it's survivability. Let's be honest, you're not looking at your opponent's boons to verify that he got the boons you want to corrupt in order to increase your survivability before using a boon convertion ability.

2: Although you tried to address boon rips in pve with the path of corruption change you forgot one critical thing. Most bosses or mobs in general in pve dont have boons. You went about this in a way that ideally means nothing you could have listed out every corrupt and gave it a bonus effect when used on a target with no boons bust instead which would be much well deserved quality changes fore necromancers in general.For exampleCorrupt boon now inflicts 5 stacks of poison on a foe when they have no boons.Unholy feast now always triggers unholy burst if stuck foes have no boons.

Most bosses have a defiance bar, the one that don't, I don't see it an issue that it doesn't do anything to them. As for the mobs, it's not "needed" either. What you suggest is a lot more dangerous balance wise than what I suggest, it's sure to backfire in sPvP/WvW because ANet do not split mechanisms (whether we want it or not).

Chapter 3: Death magic

The main issue of the traitline is that it's effects/mechanisms are all over the place. Minions traits can't work properly without a baseline generation of minions while

Death carapace

give imbalanced values to the different traits. Thanksfully, shuffling a bit the differents effects can fix everything while keeping the goal of the traitline.

Minor:

• Armor shroud
  would need to be replaced by
  Flesh of the master:
  gain carapace for each minion you control. Summon a
  jagged horror
  whenever you gain life force (ICD 4-5s, maximum 5 jagged horror).Armored shroud should be default dont put minion traits as minors you cant opt not to choose when most builds wont use minions W T EFF???? Thats a horrid design choice.

So for you, a baseline generation of minion for a traitline that deal with minions is "horrid design". An "horrid design" is a traitline that give you 3 minions traits and no baseline generation of minions (yes, what we got right now). What I suggest give the necromancer a sure way to build 10 carapace stacks as the fight goes on.

• Soul comprehension
  would need to be replaced by
  infuse condition:
  Transfer conditions on you to your minions. Gain carapace whenever that happen.This is a bad choice for the same reasion every build that wont use a minion now has a trait they cant opt not to choose that wont do anything should they not use minions. Bad design choices.

It doesn't need to use minions, you summon them automatically thanks to your first minor. In other word, taking death magic make you summon up to 5 minions without any other investment. It's an 100% better choice than having to invest in taking minion to be able to use the current flesh of the master and necromantic corruption.

• Beyond the veil
  would need to be replaced by
  Corruptor fervor:
  Inflicting a condition on a foe grant carapace.This is
  an ok change
  C Fervor should actually be a minor so yes this is the one thing you got right

Glad you're "Ok" with it.

Adept:

• Flesh of the master
  is replaced by
  Armored shroud
  .
• Putrid defense:
  no change.
• Shrouded removal:
  no change.

Master:

• Necromantic corruption
  is replaced by
  Soul comprehension:
  Carapace also grant vitality (10). Carapace last longer.The vitality part should just be the minor of the current Soul Comp in general. Carapace lasting longer could be a optional thing when combined with something else.

Well, no. Improving death carapace via a minor would be bad design. The direction in which you improve carapace should be up to your choice not up to the only source of carapace you have: the death magic minor traitline.

• Dark defiance:
  Flesh of the master
  now summon
  shambling horror
  . If you are disabled summon a
  shambling horror
  .This is a pointless change

Well, the goal was to free the line from the protection's generation. I happen to do it with a "smart" twist.

• Corruptor fervor
  replaced by
  Beyond the veil:
  take reduced condition damage and gain life force every 3 seconds based on the carapace treshold. (10 carapaces: 10% condi damage reduction and 0.5% LF. 25 carapaces: 20% condition damage reduction and 1% LF)This trait is still doing so much that you are practically forcing people to take it to be honest with you, you shouldn't have moved the condition damage reduction away from dark defiance I dont understand that change.

Is it? Would you objectively take 20% condition damage reduction and 1% life force every 3 seconds over the ability to prevent a deadly hit or deal more damage via poison? I think the 3 grand master are a lot closer than the godly prema prot you gain from the current corruptor fervor.

Chapter 4: Blood magic

You ignored like everything else that could be better with blood magic why? Or did we forget about the grand master that currently boast more risk than reward and two vampiric traits that are limited by healing power despite that they are suppose to have a life stealing effect which should ideally be based on damage done (for at least one of them)

Yes. I'll fight you again on this point, but I do think that having healing effects affected by healing power is good design and open room for specialization instead of created "pure damage dealer with great sustain". I know that you disagree with my point of view on this with argument based on what other professions do, but for me other professions allowing bad design doesn't mean that a proper necromancer traitline should do the same.

Chapter 5: Soul reaping

This is an equally short chapter. The main issue of the traitline are the traits that proc on the use of shroud#1. These traits are horribly imbalanced and create disparities that are hard to balance with each e-spec.

• Unyielding blast
  changed to: Convert condition (2) on you whenever you enter shroud.This trait now thematically makes no sense you changed something just for the sake of changing something if you wont to cure conditions into boons change shrouded removal in death magic as the line is committed to self sustain and defense.
• Dhuumfire
  changed to
  Death aura:
  Upon entering shroud, blast the area around you (Core: drain life, Reaper: chill, Scourge: burn) and gain an aura based on your specialization. (Core: dark aura, Reaper: frost aura, Scourge: fire aura)This is a neat idea but ideall you could have used this idea for Unyielding blast and it would have made more sense there than it does here. Dhuumfire should have been changed to deal different stack counts based on what elite its used with but you didnt need to remove it. your idea here is good just put it in Unyielding blast spot not Dhummfires.

Well, I do agree with you except for the part on dhuumfire remaining as is. Having this trait applying burn on an auto attack is bad design and really need to be removed from the game. Unyielding blast should probably blast the area based on your specialization when entering shroud. As for dhuumfire, it should probably grant an aura based on your specialization and give some bonus while under the effect of an aura or have auras on the necromancer last longer.

Chapter 6: Utilities

Let's beat up a bit of sense in some of the necromancer's utilities:

• Epidemic:
  Changed to now copy conditions on the caster to it's targeted ennemy and up to 5 foes around this ennemy. Self-ailment happen before the conditions are copied.Horrible idea. You made it ok for pvp (possibly) but ruined it for pve and wvw so i dislike the change. Ideally if you wanted this idea you should have just given it to plauge signet and called it an out right buff.

Yes it hurt the aoe performances of the skill, this is on purpose. The trade off is that it make the skill better against a single target. In PvE it make the necromancer less effective at getting rid of adds, but it also allow the necromancer to double the conditions that he send back from himself built via corruptions. In other word it increase the condi necromancer's single target dps. This is the only way to really balance this skill. It won't impact WvW or sPvP that much.

• Putrid explosion:
  Make the bone minion which is the closest to the caster's target explode.Pointless changes minions are bad
• Bone fiend:
  No longer cripple on hit.
• Rigor mortis:
  Now a 100% projectile finisher. No longer immobilize it's target but cripple it for 5s per hit. CD reduced to 20 seconds.Pointless changes minions are bad, if you want to make this one better make its projectiles fly straight and at a higher velocity. That alone would at least increase its rate of hitting a target thats not an AI.Lol so you are just nerffing a minion that thats not used like why i cant understand this.

It's because minion are bad that they need QoL. Technically it's not nerfing Bone fiend since the cripple from this minion is hardly felt, the goal is to make Rigor mortis more accessible by reducing it's CD.

• Plague signet:
  Passive: reduce incoming condition damage taken by 10% (15% traited).Xfer a condition to a foe you strike every x seconds make the passive match the active.

That would make the passive and the active redundant. The logic behind my suggestion is that by taking less damage from condition thanks to the passive you allow more condition on yourself before sending them back to your opponent.

Chapter 7: Reaper

Let's save it's PvE condi damage and make up for the loss of might generation.

• Chilling nova:
  ICD reduced to 4 seconds (PvE only)
• Blighter's boon
  changed to
  Blight:
  Gain life force whenever you apply vulnerability. If you are in reaper's shroud, gain health instead.Bad change you removed one of the most active a vulnerability application traits and made this depend far too much on the spite minor you made. You effectively made this trait more passive than active by doing the spite changes.

What needs to change here is not blighters boon.

It need change since I removed might generation from spite... Wait does it mean that blighter boon was more efficient with spite? That said I do agree that there is a lot more vuln generation via spite than there is might generation, which would most likely make my suggestion OP.

That said I liked your "more passive" joke, it was entertaining.

What needs to change is Reapers Onslaught.1: Reapers base attack speeds have increased by 25% QoL change (cast times have been cut by 25% on all the reaper skills basically)2: RO now adds and additional 10% attack speed bonus in addition to its ferocity bonus, The quickness has been removed from RO

Reaper has a better attacking speed in general now which opens up all 3 grandmasters again including blighters boon and when given quickness by allies it has a better top end in group play.

Maybe or maybe not. From my point of view there is an overall necessity to make the out of shroud dps closer to the in shroud dps. Having the ferocity bonus applied in and out of shroud at the expense of having the quickness lost would be the direction that I'd prefer this trait to go. (But you wouldn't agree to this I think.)

Barrier is a mechanism that is too strong due to the fact that it stack. This need to be changed.

• Barrier: No longer stack. Barrier gain increased duration whenever an amount of barrier inferior or equal to the current barrier is acquiered. An higher amount of incoming barrier will replace the barrier on you.
• Adjust barrier number and scaling with healing power accordingly.Correction barrier is too strong in WvW because it stacks and not an issue in other game modes hold your high horses on this one.

Barrier stacking is an issue. Whether it's in WvW or in other gamemode this stacking ability truly give to much survivability. It's like having aegis stacking on each other.

• Desert shroud
  effects changed to: Allies inside the area of effect take 15% less damage from all damage source (power and condi), do not stack. CD back to 20 seconds in all gamemodes.This is too situational if its going to have 0 offensive power at all then its going to need more utility than this.

It's half a prot damage reduction, with it's own bonus from minor traits the scourge gain almost a full prot's damage reduction. If you add on top the 5k barrier on use it's very decent as a personal defensive skill.

• Herald of sorrow
  effects changed to: Successful projectile and whirl combo finishers apply torment (5s) on foe.
• Demonic lore
  effects changed to: shades proc a whril finisher whenever you use a shade skill (F2, F3, F4, F5). Torment deal 33% more damage.
  This basically mean that with 3 shade up, you got the possibility to do 3 combo whirl with each shade skill use.
  This would be cool if necro had access to alot of strong combo fields to use but they dont so this design is kind of bad. There is near 0 potential for self use out side of wells for the most part.

Why would necro need a lot of strong combo fields to use? Paired with herald of sorrow you'll apply torment on top of any effect the combo field give you anyway. In a dark field if you got 3 shade you'll siphon 3 time 200 point of health for more than 600 point of damage on top of 3 torment stacks. The point is more that in an environment overflowing with fields (raids/WvW) you'll always apply those stack of torment on top of the various effects of the different fields.

• Punishment
  skills boon convertion effect now also proc on defiance bar.Pointless changeJust make the skills apply more torment or give you more life force when used on a foe who has no boons. (this will almost only ever trigger bonus effects in pve as foes in pvp are almost always dripping in boons it should be rare to get the bonus triggers)

Again, the goal is to make it proc on some boss/champion not make it OP for WvW/sPvP by making it proc on foes that have no boons. You're suggesting powercreep when I just want it to proc on mobs that have defiance. Defiance is effectively permanent stacks of stability, there is a need for boon converting/ripping effect to have an effect on it.

Conclusion:

The list isn't exhaustive and don't fix everything on the necromancer, but at least it address the most urgent issues.

This list makes more issues than its solves note how you ripped away the 1 boon necro is good at

Granted he is only good at giving it to himself, it's not a big loss. But well I've already argumented on that.

[ZDragon.3046]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"ZDragon.3046" said:Overall you removed might lowering its damage potential but didnt give anything back at all as a result so even when others give it might in high counts its not any better off than it was generating its own might. This is a bad design choice so long as other professions can still generate their own boons including might (which many of them can) IF necormancer was like other professions and had a wider range of access to other boons i would maybe agree with toning the might down but removing it completely is out of the question. Removing it completely when necromancer does not have a wide range of high access to boons is REALLY OUT OF THE QUESTION you have lost you mind.

I disagree with you, the change reduce it's solo damage potential, yes, but overall it increase the necromancer damage potential by up to 160 point of power. Which isn't negligible.

NB.: other professions are in dire need of seeing their self might generation tuned down, however, that's a necro thread not another profession's thread.You are litterally a joke right now if you think firebrand is ok having 25 might while having almost every other boon in the game.What about rev who also has high might along with a wide range of other boons at any given time.Why on earth do you feel the need to cut necormancers might completely when they litterally have almost no other boon access. You need to stop your ideas are bad here and poorly implemented. This is why the others who have posted so far dont agree with your changes.

ITs fine to want to up necormancers potential when placed into a group but this is not the correct way to do it im sorry but the removal of of might is not up for debate while necormancer holds nothing else boon wise it can claim as its own thing its good at doing. You can keep the 80 and 160 power no one wants that for the loss of all might generation

Horrible idea for 2 reasons.1: Boon corruption is a key feature of necromancer there is no point in removing it for simplistic rips. IF you are going to do this then active defense needs more compensation. The conditions that come from corrupts are a part of necromancers conditional defense by removing this aspect you make them directly weaker on all fronts in terms of defense.

Well, most of those boon convertion were added along the years and were initially boon ripping effects. The "flavor" have gone to far. Also I'm not removing all boon convertion effects since it remain the job of

well of corruption

and

boon corruption

. A necromancer don't really rely on the hypothetic corruption of an hypothetic boon on it's target for it's survivability. Let's be honest, you're not looking at your opponent's boons to verify that he got the boons you want to corrupt in order to increase your survivability before using a boon convertion ability.At the same time remember that conditions use to be stronger. Chill and cripple use to be stronger.Just leave them alone tbh. If boon application goes down then boon corruption can go down but removing this mechanic or even replacing the most common corrupts for pure rips is also not up for debate without compensation for the reasons i said. Conditions are a factor of defense and boon corruption makes up a part of that.

2: Although you tried to address boon rips in pve with the path of corruption change you forgot one critical thing. Most bosses or mobs in general in pve dont have boons. You went about this in a way that ideally means nothing you could have listed out every corrupt and gave it a bonus effect when used on a target with no boons bust instead which would be much well deserved quality changes fore necromancers in general.For exampleCorrupt boon now inflicts 5 stacks of poison on a foe when they have no boons.Unholy feast now always triggers unholy burst if stuck foes have no boons.

Most bosses have a defiance bar, the one that don't, I don't see it an issue that it doesn't do anything to them. As for the mobs, it's not "needed" either. What you suggest is a lot more dangerous balance wise than what I suggest, it's sure to backfire in sPvP/WvW because ANet do not split mechanisms (whether we want it or not).Damage being done to defiance bars is for CC not boon removal especially when most bosses still wont generate boons. Which is still a limiting factor which wont do anything against normal mobs who also dont have boons. Even if we ignore the need for a boss or champion to have boons as necromancers we already have strong tools for busting defiance bars we have strong cc skills in our kits and strong conditions like chill also. Why would we need more damage specificity for defiance bars. (we dont)In s pvp and wvw bonus effects would rarely trigger as much as boons are always self applied by most professions meaning its extremely rare you would get such a thing your ideas ruin the balance just as much by removing corruptions you lower conditional defense if we cant agree here lets just agree to not change anything. I think anet reworking things thus far has a better chance of getting something done right better than what you have suggested so far.

Chapter 3: Death magic

The main issue of the traitline is that it's effects/mechanisms are all over the place. Minions traits can't work properly without a baseline generation of minions while

Death carapace

give imbalanced values to the different traits. Thanksfully, shuffling a bit the differents effects can fix everything while keeping the goal of the traitline.

Minor:

• Armor shroud
  would need to be replaced by
  Flesh of the master:
  gain carapace for each minion you control. Summon a
  jagged horror
  whenever you gain life force (ICD 4-5s, maximum 5 jagged horror).Armored shroud should be default dont put minion traits as minors you cant opt not to choose when most builds wont use minions W T EFF???? Thats a horrid design choice.

So for you, a baseline generation of minion for a traitline that deal with minions is "horrid design". An "horrid design" is a traitline that give you 3 minions traits and no baseline generation of minions (yes, what we got right now). What I suggest give the necromancer a sure way to build 10 carapace stacks as the fight goes on.Yes if you want to use the line but not use minions then yes. As for the 10 stacks Necromancer can already do this in competitive modes with just shrouded removal without insanity that is your changes. Literally the only change you should apply to the carapace system is moving C Fervor to a minor slot. Alot of the rest is very unnecessary.

• Soul comprehension
  would need to be replaced by
  infuse condition:
  Transfer conditions on you to your minions. Gain carapace whenever that happen.This is a bad choice for the same reasion every build that wont use a minion now has a trait they cant opt not to choose that wont do anything should they not use minions. Bad design choices.

It doesn't need to use minions, you summon them automatically thanks to your first minor. In other word, taking death magic make you summon up to 5 minions without any other investment. It's an 100% better choice than having to invest in taking minion to be able to use the current

flesh of the master

and

necromantic corruption

.People wont use flesh of the master in competitive modes though (realisticly) and if you use flesh of the mast in pve you dont need to have minions constantly being re-summoned for you as minions dont die in 2 slaps in pve. Its not a 100% better choice if i just want increased armor and conditional removal which also gets me a similar number of stacks to what your changes suggest without being dependent on the survival of AI creatures that we know cant take a single hit in competitive modes.

• Beyond the veil
  would need to be replaced by
  Corruptor fervor:
  Inflicting a condition on a foe grant carapace.This is
  an ok change
  C Fervor should actually be a minor so yes this is the one thing you got right

Glad you're "Ok" with it.This is literally the only change that needs to happen to the whole Stacking system from a mechanical standpoint so that the grandmasters are opened up.

Adept:

• Flesh of the master
  is replaced by
  Armored shroud
  .
• Putrid defense:
  no change.
• Shrouded removal:
  no change.

Master:

• Necromantic corruption
  is replaced by
  Soul comprehension:
  Carapace also grant vitality (10). Carapace last longer.The vitality part should just be the minor of the current Soul Comp in general. Carapace lasting longer could be a optional thing when combined with something else.

Well, no. Improving death carapace via a minor would be bad design. The direction in which you improve carapace should be up to your choice not up to the only source of carapace you have: the death magic minor traitline.

This is fine but i still dont like the change of the minors you have done here in general which makes me feel some kind of way about the rest of the changes in the line too.

• Dark defiance:
  Flesh of the master
  now summon
  shambling horror
  . If you are disabled summon a
  shambling horror
  .This is a pointless change

Well, the goal was to free the line from the protection's generation. I happen to do it with a "smart" twist.

Why not just add direct % damage reduction then. You removed another boon so at this point necromancer is limited to minor swiftness and a minor protection if you run blood magic, minor fury if you run curses. No might generation. I mean at this point i would think you aim is to just make necro boonless.

• Corruptor fervor
  replaced by
  Beyond the veil:
  take reduced condition damage and gain life force every 3 seconds based on the carapace treshold. (10 carapaces: 10% condi damage reduction and 0.5% LF. 25 carapaces: 20% condition damage reduction and 1% LF)This trait is still doing so much that you are practically forcing people to take it to be honest with you, you shouldn't have moved the condition damage reduction away from dark defiance I dont understand that change.

Is it? Would you objectively take 20% condition damage reduction and 1% life force every 3 seconds over the ability to prevent a deadly hit or deal more damage via poison? I think the 3 grand master are a lot closer than the godly prema prot you gain from the current corruptor fervor.

Considering the poision damage is linked to AI use and that preventing a deadly hit is still limited by lackluster sustain, mobility etc yeah i probably would see the middle option as still much more enticing for general use. Imo the damage reduction from dark defiance should not have been moved and 1% life force is literally nothing here ideally you could have done something better in general.

Chapter 4: Blood magic

You ignored like everything else that could be better with blood magic why? Or did we forget about the grand master that currently boast more risk than reward and two vampiric traits that are limited by healing power despite that they are suppose to have a life stealing effect which should ideally be based on damage done (for at least one of them)

Yes. I'll fight you again on this point, but I do think that having healing effects affected by healing power is good design and open room for specialization instead of created "pure damage dealer with great sustain". I know that you disagree with my point of view on this with argument based on what other professions do, but for me other professions allowing bad design doesn't mean that a proper necromancer traitline should do the same.

But its not a raw healing effect its meant to be a life stealing effect not just flat healing. Thats the issue i have with this. Not to mention there are proper ways to limit this kind of sustain so that its not busted other than by over limiting it with something like healing power. Literally could be heal based on damage done and make it say no single strike can exceed (x)% of maximum hp. Not only is this method of healing limited by your ability to attack its also limited to a max amount it can give back in any single strike. How ever purely limiting it on healing power is silly. We dont need 2 traits in this line that do this one of them can literally be changed.

Chapter 5: Soul reaping

This is an equally short chapter. The main issue of the traitline are the traits that proc on the use of shroud#1. These traits are horribly imbalanced and create disparities that are hard to balance with each e-spec.

• Unyielding blast
  changed to: Convert condition (2) on you whenever you enter shroud.This trait now thematically makes no sense you changed something just for the sake of changing something if you wont to cure conditions into boons change shrouded removal in death magic as the line is committed to self sustain and defense.
• Dhuumfire
  changed to
  Death aura:
  Upon entering shroud, blast the area around you (Core: drain life, Reaper: chill, Scourge: burn) and gain an aura based on your specialization. (Core: dark aura, Reaper: frost aura, Scourge: fire aura)This is a neat idea but ideall you could have used this idea for Unyielding blast and it would have made more sense there than it does here. Dhuumfire should have been changed to deal different stack counts based on what elite its used with but you didnt need to remove it. your idea here is good just put it in Unyielding blast spot not Dhummfires.

Well, I do agree with you except for the part on dhuumfire remaining as is. Having this trait applying burn on an auto attack is bad design and really need to be removed from the game.

Unyielding blast

should probably blast the area based on your specialization when entering shroud. As for

dhuumfire

, it should probably grant an aura based on your specialization and give some bonus while under the effect of an aura or have auras on the necromancer last longer.I still dont agree dhuumfire is fine only core needs a stack count increase, they way it is on reaper right now is fine, the wya it is on scourge right now is fine. I personally would never use the trait if it only gave me an aura thats too pointless. and is limited to shroud activation which makes it arguably worse especially for scourge. To be frank with you Dhuumfire might be fine with other professions get their conditions nerfed down to proper levels so i further see no reason to remove it.

Chapter 6: Utilities

Let's beat up a bit of sense in some of the necromancer's utilities:

• Epidemic:
  Changed to now copy conditions on the caster to it's targeted ennemy and up to 5 foes around this ennemy. Self-ailment happen before the conditions are copied.Horrible idea. You made it ok for pvp (possibly) but ruined it for pve and wvw so i dislike the change. Ideally if you wanted this idea you should have just given it to plauge signet and called it an out right buff.

Yes it hurt the aoe performances of the skill, this is on purpose. The trade off is that it make the skill better against a single target. In PvE it make the necromancer less effective at getting rid of adds, but it also allow the necromancer to double the conditions that he send back from himself built via corruptions. In other word it increase the condi necromancer's single target dps. This is the only way to really balance this skill. It won't impact WvW or sPvP that much.But it wont thoughIt makes the skill better only for pvp and wvw purpose when you have alot of conditions on you.In pve its litterally as good as it gets right now but if it throws conditions on you (which in high amounts is going to be almost never due to friendly clenses and self rotation xfers) there is no point to doing what you want to do to this skill outside of anything other than spvp use and wvw use.

• Putrid explosion:
  Make the bone minion which is the closest to the caster's target explode.Pointless changes minions are bad
• Bone fiend:
  No longer cripple on hit.
• Rigor mortis:
  Now a 100% projectile finisher. No longer immobilize it's target but cripple it for 5s per hit. CD reduced to 20 seconds.Pointless changes minions are bad, if you want to make this one better make its projectiles fly straight and at a higher velocity. That alone would at least increase its rate of hitting a target thats not an AI.Lol so you are just nerffing a minion that thats not used like why i cant understand this.

It's because minion are bad that they need QoL. Technically it's not nerfing Bone fiend since the cripple from this minion is hardly felt, the goal is to make

Rigor mortis

more accessible by reducing it's CD.So just reduce the CD and leave the immobilize on it. or have you not seen what other professions can do with low cd shorter duration immobilizes you literally nerfed it for more cripple which should already be applied from various other sources of your own skills. This is litterally just nerfing (on something thats hardly used no less) im sorry you missed the mark here.

• Plague signet:
  Passive: reduce incoming condition damage taken by 10% (15% traited).Xfer a condition to a foe you strike every x seconds make the passive match the active.

That would make the passive and the active redundant. The logic behind my suggestion is that by taking less damage from condition thanks to the passive you allow more condition on yourself before sending them back to your opponent.It only sends a max of 3 conditions the idea of trying to take more before sending back is a bit silly it would be smarter if the passive allowed you to occasionally throw some back as the fight went on allowing you to save and use it for condition burst defensively not trying to save up for direct offensive use, not to mention death magic's job is condition damage reduction.

Chapter 7: Reaper

Let's save it's PvE condi damage and make up for the loss of might generation.

• Chilling nova:
  ICD reduced to 4 seconds (PvE only)
• Blighter's boon
  changed to
  Blight:
  Gain life force whenever you apply vulnerability. If you are in reaper's shroud, gain health instead.Bad change you removed one of the most active a vulnerability application traits and made this depend far too much on the spite minor you made. You effectively made this trait more passive than active by doing the spite changes.

What needs to change here is not blighters boon.

It need change since I removed might generation from spite... Wait does it mean that blighter boon was more efficient with spite? That said I do agree that there is a lot more vuln generation via spite than there is might generation, which would most likely make my suggestion OP.Thats not what im saying what im saying is that blighters boon (which now also thematically is not fitting) will work off passive minors for the most part as you removed the only direct active source of vuln application out side of axe autos which was Unyielding blast. Generally it was a bad choice on your part to remove the might in the first place. That was a bad way to start off any changes for a class who is mostly only good at generating that 1 boon.

That said I liked your "more passive" joke, it was entertaining.

I was not jokingSiphoned power changed to Rending shroud: Pulse vulnerability (8s) around you every second while in shroud.^ ultra passive when combined with blighters boon you litterally just need to press shroud and stand there and not use a single skill to trigger the BB activation i dont know how much more passive you get than this.

What needs to change is Reapers Onslaught.1: Reapers base attack speeds have increased by 25% QoL change (cast times have been cut by 25% on all the reaper skills basically)2: RO now adds and additional 10% attack speed bonus in addition to its ferocity bonus, The quickness has been removed from RO

Reaper has a better attacking speed in general now which opens up all 3 grandmasters again including blighters boon and when given quickness by allies it has a better top end in group play.

Maybe or maybe not. From my point of view there is an overall necessity to make the out of shroud dps closer to the in shroud dps. Having the ferocity bonus applied in and out of shroud at the expense of having the quickness lost would be the direction that I'd prefer this trait to go. (But you wouldn't agree to this I think.)No because base reaper attack speed is a joke from 4 years ago and one of the biggest complaints about reaper which is how it got the quickness in the first place. You have low mobility and get into melee range in competitive modes and cant deal damage because your attacks are swamp water slow. You are not a threat as people out damage your slow attacks making it more risk outweighs the reward for getting close with no way out and limited mobility way too unbalanced.

While i do agree all traits that grant damage bonus in shroud only should likely follow the design of soul barbs or soul eater the alternative is to do a 50/50 split 150 out that doubles to 300 when in shroud. But that does not answer for the attack speed issue that should not be ignored.

Barrier is a mechanism that is too strong due to the fact that it stack. This need to be changed.

• Barrier: No longer stack. Barrier gain increased duration whenever an amount of barrier inferior or equal to the current barrier is acquiered. An higher amount of incoming barrier will replace the barrier on you.
• Adjust barrier number and scaling with healing power accordingly.Correction barrier is too strong in WvW because it stacks and not an issue in other game modes hold your high horses on this one.

Barrier stacking is an issue. Whether it's in WvW or in other gamemode this stacking ability truly give to much survivability. It's like having aegis stacking on each other.

I dont see complaints about barrier in pvp or pve only in wvw. So what does this mean?

• Desert shroud
  effects changed to: Allies inside the area of effect take 15% less damage from all damage source (power and condi), do not stack. CD back to 20 seconds in all gamemodes.This is too situational if its going to have 0 offensive power at all then its going to need more utility than this.

It's half a prot damage reduction, with it's own bonus from minor traits the scourge gain almost a full prot's damage reduction. If you add on top the 5k barrier on use it's very decent as a personal defensive skill.Yes but it does nothing to keep someone from running over your face and this is still not better than shroud reduction if you do it this way at this point just remove all shade skills and put them under an f1 button if you are going to do this.

• Herald of sorrow
  effects changed to: Successful projectile and whirl combo finishers apply torment (5s) on foe.
• Demonic lore
  effects changed to: shades proc a whril finisher whenever you use a shade skill (F2, F3, F4, F5). Torment deal 33% more damage.
  This basically mean that with 3 shade up, you got the possibility to do 3 combo whirl with each shade skill use.
  This would be cool if necro had access to alot of strong combo fields to use but they dont so this design is kind of bad. There is near 0 potential for self use out side of wells for the most part.

Why would necro need a lot of strong combo fields to use? Paired with

herald of sorrow

you'll apply torment on top of any effect the combo field give you anyway. In a dark field if you got 3 shade you'll siphon 3 time 200 point of health for more than 600 point of damage on top of 3 torment stacks. The point is more that in an environment overflowing with fields (raids/WvW) you'll always apply those stack of torment on top of the various effects of the different fields.I mean if you didnt utterly destroy personal dps all over the place i might agree but because thats exactly what you did with the rest of your changes i cant agree to this. You removed most sources of damage what does the torment increase even matter at this point. Who cares about finishers when you cant even combo them yourself. IF you are going to make finishers there should at less be some self combo use within the scourge kit alone and there just wont be any makiing the weight you used in this trait for combo finishers a bit wasted for personal use.

• Punishment
  skills boon convertion effect now also proc on defiance bar.Pointless changeJust make the skills apply more torment or give you more life force when used on a foe who has no boons. (this will almost only ever trigger bonus effects in pve as foes in pvp are almost always dripping in boons it should be rare to get the bonus triggers)

Again, the goal is to make it proc on some boss/champion not make it OP for WvW/sPvP by making it proc on foes that have no boons. You're suggesting powercreep when I just want it to proc on mobs that have defiance. Defiance is effectively permanent stacks of stability, there is a need for boon converting/ripping effect to have an effect on it.it wont be op in these modes for reason i already explained bonuses will or should rarely trigger in modes where players run around dripping in boons. Your design ideas here are bad im sorry to tell you this.

[Nimon.7840]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:Yeah no. Pls don't. Most of these changes are pretty bad and wouldnt help necro one bit.And they would make necro completely unfun to play (against).So for gods sake. PLS DONT!

Can you please argument?

Strait up nerfs for every single gamemode.You basically obliterate Condi necro.

For example dhuumfire change would make this a completely useless trait.

Too much reliant on those boring AF minions. Stupid AI

And the changes would make necro super unfun to play (against)

[Xxnecroxx.4039]

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Introduction:

The necromancer have great mechanisms on the paper but the way they are implemented turn them into a mess. Most issues come from the traitlines, this thread is my end-of-year take at fixing this mess.

Chapter 1: Spite and might generation.

Spite isn't a bad traitline per se, there are some traits that are hardly competitive like chill of death or dread but the main issue of the traitline is it's might generation. The traitline is designed around the idea of getting stronger as the fight last and use might as a way to achieve this goal. This was a great design and if all profession had this same design it would have been perfect, however, it's not the case and it create for the necromancer an overreliance on might for it's own DPS resulting in a easy to achieve but lower maximum damage potential.

Two traits need to change for the traitline to be healthy:

• Reaper's might: gain power (80) and additional power while in shroud (80).
• Siphoned power changed to Rending shroud: Pulse vulnerability (8s) around you every second while in shroud.

Chapter 2: Curse and boon convertion

First thing off, there is a need to adjust some trait for PvE in this traitline:

• Barbed precision need to see it's bleed base duration increased to 5 second in PvE only.
• Chilling darkness need to see it's ICD reduced to 1 second in PvE only.

Now on the topic of boon convertion, which will be the controversial part of this chapter. There is a need to reduce base boon convertion effect on the necromancer at the benefit of boon ripping. To this end, there is a need to first change all boon convertion effects on weapon skills into boon ripping effects and then make Path of corruption apply a condition specific to the necromancer's specialization to a successful boon ripped. (Yes this is a flat nerf of the necromancer but it is a necessary nerf)

• Unholy feast, Dark pact, Feast of corruption, Enfeebling blood and Nightfall no longer convert boon but rip boons instead.
• Dark path now rip 2 boons baseline.
• Death charge now rip 1 boon baseline.
• Path of corruption changed to: Boon ripping deal damage to the defiance bar. Ripping a boon/defiance bar apply a condition based on your specialization (Core: poison 4s, Reaper: chill 0.5s, scourge: torment 8s).

Chapter 3: Death magic

The main issue of the traitline is that it's effects/mechanisms are all over the place. Minions traits can't work properly without a baseline generation of minions while Death carapace give imbalanced values to the different traits. Thanksfully, shuffling a bit the differents effects can fix everything while keeping the goal of the traitline.

Minor:

• Armor shroud would need to be replaced by Flesh of the master: gain carapace for each minion you control. Summon a jagged horror whenever you gain life force (ICD 4-5s, maximum 5 jagged horror).
• Soul comprehension would need to be replaced by infuse condition: Transfer conditions on you to your minions. Gain carapace whenever that happen.
• Beyond the veil would need to be replaced by Corruptor fervor: Inflicting a condition on a foe grant carapace.

Adept:

• Flesh of the master is replaced by Armored shroud.
• Putrid defense: no change.
• Shrouded removal: no change.

Master:

• Necromantic corruption is replaced by Soul comprehension: Carapace also grant vitality (10). Carapace last longer.
• Dark defiance: Flesh of the master now summon shambling horror . If you are disabled summon a shambling horror.
• Deadly strength: Carapace also grant power (10). Minions deal 25% more damage.

Grandmaster:

• Death nova: When you or one of your minion is downed create a poison nova. Using a minion's active skill create a poison nova at the necromancer's position.
• Corruptor fervor replaced by Beyond the veil: take reduced condition damage and gain life force every 3 seconds based on the carapace treshold. (10 carapaces: 10% condi damage reduction and 0.5% LF. 25 carapaces: 20% condition damage reduction and 1% LF)
• Unholy sanctuary: (I don't like this trait but...) no change.

Chapter 4: Blood magic

A very short chapter only bringing the mark of blood from mark of evasion in line with the original mark in both CD and damage.

• Mark of evasion: ICD reduced to 4s. Damage increased.

Chapter 5: Soul reaping

This is an equally short chapter. The main issue of the traitline are the traits that proc on the use of shroud#1. These traits are horribly imbalanced and create disparities that are hard to balance with each e-spec.

• Unyielding blast changed to: Convert condition (2) on you whenever you enter shroud.
• Dhuumfire changed to Death aura: Upon entering shroud, blast the area around you (Core: drain life, Reaper: chill, Scourge: burn) and gain an aura based on your specialization. (Core: dark aura, Reaper: frost aura, Scourge: fire aura)

Chapter 6: Utilities

Let's beat up a bit of sense in some of the necromancer's utilities:

• Epidemic: Changed to now copy conditions on the caster to it's targeted ennemy and up to 5 foes around this ennemy. Self-ailment happen before the conditions are copied.
• Putrid explosion: Make the bone minion which is the closest to the caster's target explode.
• Bone fiend: No longer cripple on hit.
• Rigor mortis: Now a 100% projectile finisher. No longer immobilize it's target but cripple it for 5s per hit. CD reduced to 20 seconds.
• Plague signet: Passive: reduce incoming condition damage taken by 10% (15% traited).

Chapter 7: Reaper

Let's save it's PvE condi damage and make up for the loss of might generation.

• Chilling nova: ICD reduced to 4 seconds (PvE only)
• Blighter's boon changed to Blight: Gain life force whenever you apply vulnerability. If you are in reaper's shroud, gain health instead.

Chapter 8: Scourge

Scourge is a big chapter, which tell how bad it's shape is right now. 3 issues need to be addressed: barrier, area denial powercreep and... the mess of the different dandaid fix that were put on it. While DM could be fixed by shuffling a bit the different effects, unfortunately Scourge need a lot of true changes and undone nerfs for the sake of making the proper nerfs.

Barrier is a mechanism that is too strong due to the fact that it stack. This need to be changed.

• Barrier: No longer stack. Barrier gain increased duration whenever an amount of barrier inferior or equal to the current barrier is acquiered. An higher amount of incoming barrier will replace the barrier on you.
• Adjust barrier number and scaling with healing power accordingly.

Area denial powercreep or the shade mechanism. ANet need to understand that the issue is the "denial" not the "area":

• F2, F3, F4, F5 no longer proc _manifest sand shade.
• F2, F3, F4, F5 now apply their effect around both the user and the shade.
• Desert shroud effects changed to: Allies inside the area of effect take 15% less damage from all damage source (power and condi), do not stack. CD back to 20 seconds in all gamemodes.
• Herald of sorrow effects changed to: Successful projectile and whirl combo finishers apply torment (5s) on foe.
• Demonic lore effects changed to: shades proc a whril finisher whenever you use a shade skill (F2, F3, F4, F5). Torment deal 33% more damage. This basically mean that with 3 shade up, you got the possibility to do 3 combo whirl with each shade skill use.
• Punishment skills boon convertion effect now also proc on defiance bar.

Conclusion:

The list isn't exhaustive and don't fix everything on the necromancer, but at least it address the most urgent issues.

they need to rework all of necro, from nearly the ground up, some things can stay like some of the weapon skills and some of the utility skills and such but trait lines, the class specific ability (shroud in necros case) and even the elite specs (only somewhat) all need reworking to give the necro an IDENTITY that is NOT just boon corrupt bot. because boon corrupt may be decent-good in WvW AND PvP but in PVE? it is next to USELESS. I feel they need to focus necro into the condi spectrum while allowing reaper to be a power condi hybrid, sorta like what warrior has with burnzerk build. make ONE single entire trait line devoted to changing skills and such into boon corrupt so if you WANT to be a boon corrupt build you can choose to, but it will gimp your damage by replacing current skills with others sorta like what some traits already do. but the baseline of necro SHOULD BE THE SPREADER OF DISEASE, THE BRINGER OF PLAGUES etc and be the king of condis. with either a long but HEAVY damaging condi ramp up OR a shorter ramp up with a lower max damage capability. or even both depending on what content you choose.

now this is what I would LIKE to see for necrobut I know this will never come since Anet hates necros and only want them to be a near useless class that is really only used for boon corrupt(and before you point out that people use power necro, that is not a example because you can place a warrior in that SAME EXACT SPOT as that power necro/reaper and get the same IF NOT better results, same with having a healer instead of a barrier scourge etc)

[Axl.8924]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"ZDragon.3046" said:Overall you removed might lowering its damage potential but didnt give anything back at all as a result so even when others give it might in high counts its not any better off than it was generating its own might. This is a bad design choice so long as other professions can still generate their own boons including might (which many of them can) IF necormancer was like other professions and had a wider range of access to other boons i would maybe agree with toning the might down but removing it completely is out of the question. Removing it completely when necromancer does not have a wide range of high access to boons is REALLY OUT OF THE QUESTION you have lost you mind.

I disagree with you, the change reduce it's solo damage potential, yes, but overall it increase the necromancer damage potential by up to 160 point of power. Which isn't negligible.

NB.: other professions are in dire need of seeing their self might generation tuned down, however, that's a necro thread not another profession's thread.

Horrible idea for 2 reasons.1: Boon corruption is a key feature of necromancer there is no point in removing it for simplistic rips. IF you are going to do this then active defense needs more compensation. The conditions that come from corrupts are a part of necromancers conditional defense by removing this aspect you make them directly weaker on all fronts in terms of defense.

Well, most of those boon convertion were added along the years and were initially boon ripping effects. The "flavor" have gone to far. Also I'm not removing all boon convertion effects since it remain the job of

well of corruption

and

boon corruption

. A necromancer don't really rely on the hypothetic corruption of an hypothetic boon on it's target for it's survivability. Let's be honest, you're not looking at your opponent's boons to verify that he got the boons you want to corrupt in order to increase your survivability before using a boon convertion ability.

2: Although you tried to address boon rips in pve with the path of corruption change you forgot one critical thing. Most bosses or mobs in general in pve dont have boons. You went about this in a way that ideally means nothing you could have listed out every corrupt and gave it a bonus effect when used on a target with no boons bust instead which would be much well deserved quality changes fore necromancers in general.For exampleCorrupt boon now inflicts 5 stacks of poison on a foe when they have no boons.Unholy feast now always triggers unholy burst if stuck foes have no boons.

Most bosses have a defiance bar, the one that don't, I don't see it an issue that it doesn't do anything to them. As for the mobs, it's not "needed" either. What you suggest is a lot more dangerous balance wise than what I suggest, it's sure to backfire in sPvP/WvW because ANet do not split mechanisms (whether we want it or not).

Chapter 3: Death magic

The main issue of the traitline is that it's effects/mechanisms are all over the place. Minions traits can't work properly without a baseline generation of minions while

Death carapace

give imbalanced values to the different traits. Thanksfully, shuffling a bit the differents effects can fix everything while keeping the goal of the traitline.

Minor:

• Armor shroud
  would need to be replaced by
  Flesh of the master:
  gain carapace for each minion you control. Summon a
  jagged horror
  whenever you gain life force (ICD 4-5s, maximum 5 jagged horror).Armored shroud should be default dont put minion traits as minors you cant opt not to choose when most builds wont use minions W T EFF???? Thats a horrid design choice.

So for you, a baseline generation of minion for a traitline that deal with minions is "horrid design". An "horrid design" is a traitline that give you 3 minions traits and no baseline generation of minions (yes, what we got right now). What I suggest give the necromancer a sure way to build 10 carapace stacks as the fight goes on.

• Soul comprehension
  would need to be replaced by
  infuse condition:
  Transfer conditions on you to your minions. Gain carapace whenever that happen.This is a bad choice for the same reasion every build that wont use a minion now has a trait they cant opt not to choose that wont do anything should they not use minions. Bad design choices.

It doesn't need to use minions, you summon them automatically thanks to your first minor. In other word, taking death magic make you summon up to 5 minions without any other investment. It's an 100% better choice than having to invest in taking minion to be able to use the current

flesh of the master

and

necromantic corruption

.

• Beyond the veil
  would need to be replaced by
  Corruptor fervor:
  Inflicting a condition on a foe grant carapace.This is
  an ok change
  C Fervor should actually be a minor so yes this is the one thing you got right

Glad you're "Ok" with it.

Adept:

• Flesh of the master
  is replaced by
  Armored shroud
  .
• Putrid defense:
  no change.
• Shrouded removal:
  no change.

Master:

• Necromantic corruption
  is replaced by
  Soul comprehension:
  Carapace also grant vitality (10). Carapace last longer.The vitality part should just be the minor of the current Soul Comp in general. Carapace lasting longer could be a optional thing when combined with something else.

Well, no. Improving death carapace via a minor would be bad design. The direction in which you improve carapace should be up to your choice not up to the only source of carapace you have: the death magic minor traitline.

• Dark defiance:
  Flesh of the master
  now summon
  shambling horror
  . If you are disabled summon a
  shambling horror
  .This is a pointless change

Well, the goal was to free the line from the protection's generation. I happen to do it with a "smart" twist.

• Corruptor fervor
  replaced by
  Beyond the veil:
  take reduced condition damage and gain life force every 3 seconds based on the carapace treshold. (10 carapaces: 10% condi damage reduction and 0.5% LF. 25 carapaces: 20% condition damage reduction and 1% LF)This trait is still doing so much that you are practically forcing people to take it to be honest with you, you shouldn't have moved the condition damage reduction away from dark defiance I dont understand that change.

Is it? Would you objectively take 20% condition damage reduction and 1% life force every 3 seconds over the ability to prevent a deadly hit or deal more damage via poison? I think the 3 grand master are a lot closer than the godly prema prot you gain from the current corruptor fervor.

Chapter 4: Blood magic

You ignored like everything else that could be better with blood magic why? Or did we forget about the grand master that currently boast more risk than reward and two vampiric traits that are limited by healing power despite that they are suppose to have a life stealing effect which should ideally be based on damage done (for at least one of them)

Yes. I'll fight you again on this point, but I do think that having healing effects affected by healing power is good design and open room for specialization instead of created "pure damage dealer with great sustain". I know that you disagree with my point of view on this with argument based on what other professions do, but for me other professions allowing bad design doesn't mean that a proper necromancer traitline should do the same.

Chapter 5: Soul reaping

This is an equally short chapter. The main issue of the traitline are the traits that proc on the use of shroud#1. These traits are horribly imbalanced and create disparities that are hard to balance with each e-spec.

• Unyielding blast
  changed to: Convert condition (2) on you whenever you enter shroud.This trait now thematically makes no sense you changed something just for the sake of changing something if you wont to cure conditions into boons change shrouded removal in death magic as the line is committed to self sustain and defense.
• Dhuumfire
  changed to
  Death aura:
  Upon entering shroud, blast the area around you (Core: drain life, Reaper: chill, Scourge: burn) and gain an aura based on your specialization. (Core: dark aura, Reaper: frost aura, Scourge: fire aura)This is a neat idea but ideall you could have used this idea for Unyielding blast and it would have made more sense there than it does here. Dhuumfire should have been changed to deal different stack counts based on what elite its used with but you didnt need to remove it. your idea here is good just put it in Unyielding blast spot not Dhummfires.

Well, I do agree with you except for the part on dhuumfire remaining as is. Having this trait applying burn on an auto attack is bad design and really need to be removed from the game.

Unyielding blast

should probably blast the area based on your specialization when entering shroud. As for

dhuumfire

, it should probably grant an aura based on your specialization and give some bonus while under the effect of an aura or have auras on the necromancer last longer.

Chapter 6: Utilities

Let's beat up a bit of sense in some of the necromancer's utilities:

• Epidemic:
  Changed to now copy conditions on the caster to it's targeted ennemy and up to 5 foes around this ennemy. Self-ailment happen before the conditions are copied.Horrible idea. You made it ok for pvp (possibly) but ruined it for pve and wvw so i dislike the change. Ideally if you wanted this idea you should have just given it to plauge signet and called it an out right buff.

Yes it hurt the aoe performances of the skill, this is on purpose. The trade off is that it make the skill better against a single target. In PvE it make the necromancer less effective at getting rid of adds, but it also allow the necromancer to double the conditions that he send back from himself built via corruptions. In other word it increase the condi necromancer's single target dps. This is the only way to really balance this skill. It won't impact WvW or sPvP that much.

• Putrid explosion:
  Make the bone minion which is the closest to the caster's target explode.Pointless changes minions are bad
• Bone fiend:
  No longer cripple on hit.
• Rigor mortis:
  Now a 100% projectile finisher. No longer immobilize it's target but cripple it for 5s per hit. CD reduced to 20 seconds.Pointless changes minions are bad, if you want to make this one better make its projectiles fly straight and at a higher velocity. That alone would at least increase its rate of hitting a target thats not an AI.Lol so you are just nerffing a minion that thats not used like why i cant understand this.

It's because minion are bad that they need QoL. Technically it's not nerfing Bone fiend since the cripple from this minion is hardly felt, the goal is to make

Rigor mortis

more accessible by reducing it's CD.

• Plague signet:
  Passive: reduce incoming condition damage taken by 10% (15% traited).Xfer a condition to a foe you strike every x seconds make the passive match the active.

That would make the passive and the active redundant. The logic behind my suggestion is that by taking less damage from condition thanks to the passive you allow more condition on yourself before sending them back to your opponent.

Chapter 7: Reaper

Let's save it's PvE condi damage and make up for the loss of might generation.

• Chilling nova:
  ICD reduced to 4 seconds (PvE only)
• Blighter's boon
  changed to
  Blight:
  Gain life force whenever you apply vulnerability. If you are in reaper's shroud, gain health instead.Bad change you removed one of the most active a vulnerability application traits and made this depend far too much on the spite minor you made. You effectively made this trait more passive than active by doing the spite changes.

What needs to change here is not blighters boon.

It need change since I removed might generation from spite... Wait does it mean that blighter boon was more efficient with spite? That said I do agree that there is a lot more vuln generation via spite than there is might generation, which would most likely make my suggestion OP.

That said I liked your "more passive" joke, it was entertaining.

What needs to change is Reapers Onslaught.1: Reapers base attack speeds have increased by 25% QoL change (cast times have been cut by 25% on all the reaper skills basically)2: RO now adds and additional 10% attack speed bonus in addition to its ferocity bonus, The quickness has been removed from RO

Reaper has a better attacking speed in general now which opens up all 3 grandmasters again including blighters boon and when given quickness by allies it has a better top end in group play.

Maybe or maybe not. From my point of view there is an overall necessity to make the out of shroud dps closer to the in shroud dps. Having the ferocity bonus applied in and out of shroud at the expense of having the quickness lost would be the direction that I'd prefer this trait to go. (But you wouldn't agree to this I think.)

Barrier is a mechanism that is too strong due to the fact that it stack. This need to be changed.

• Barrier: No longer stack. Barrier gain increased duration whenever an amount of barrier inferior or equal to the current barrier is acquiered. An higher amount of incoming barrier will replace the barrier on you.
• Adjust barrier number and scaling with healing power accordingly.Correction barrier is too strong in WvW because it stacks and not an issue in other game modes hold your high horses on this one.

Barrier stacking is an issue. Whether it's in WvW or in other gamemode this stacking ability truly give to much survivability. It's like having aegis stacking on each other.

• Desert shroud
  effects changed to: Allies inside the area of effect take 15% less damage from all damage source (power and condi), do not stack. CD back to 20 seconds in all gamemodes.This is too situational if its going to have 0 offensive power at all then its going to need more utility than this.

It's half a prot damage reduction, with it's own bonus from minor traits the scourge gain almost a full prot's damage reduction. If you add on top the 5k barrier on use it's very decent as a personal defensive skill.

• Herald of sorrow
  effects changed to: Successful projectile and whirl combo finishers apply torment (5s) on foe.
• Demonic lore
  effects changed to: shades proc a whril finisher whenever you use a shade skill (F2, F3, F4, F5). Torment deal 33% more damage.
  This basically mean that with 3 shade up, you got the possibility to do 3 combo whirl with each shade skill use.
  This would be cool if necro had access to alot of strong combo fields to use but they dont so this design is kind of bad. There is near 0 potential for self use out side of wells for the most part.

Why would necro need a lot of strong combo fields to use? Paired with

herald of sorrow

you'll apply torment on top of any effect the combo field give you anyway. In a dark field if you got 3 shade you'll siphon 3 time 200 point of health for more than 600 point of damage on top of 3 torment stacks. The point is more that in an environment overflowing with fields (raids/WvW) you'll always apply those stack of torment on top of the various effects of the different fields.

• Punishment
  skills boon convertion effect now also proc on defiance bar.Pointless changeJust make the skills apply more torment or give you more life force when used on a foe who has no boons. (this will almost only ever trigger bonus effects in pve as foes in pvp are almost always dripping in boons it should be rare to get the bonus triggers)

Again, the goal is to make it proc on some boss/champion not make it OP for WvW/sPvP by making it proc on foes that have no boons. You're suggesting powercreep when I just want it to proc on mobs that have defiance. Defiance is effectively permanent stacks of stability, there is a need for boon converting/ripping effect to have an effect on it.

Conclusion:

The list isn't exhaustive and don't fix everything on the necromancer, but at least it address the most urgent issues.

This list makes more issues than its solves note how you ripped away the 1 boon necro is good at

Granted he is only good at giving it to himself, it's not a big loss. But well I've already argumented on that.

I agree with zdragon on this, as this is a unecessary nerf to necro that would put them further behind other classes in a very unfair way.

If soulbeast for instance or warrior or guardian or even revenant can generate massive amounts of might, why can't necro? it just creates a bigger gap of power creep, and taking away quickness and not compensating it with 30% faster swing on bonus makes us basically useless in SPVP and a lot weaker in PVE.