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Would a complete Necromancer rework be good/required?


Kuulpb.5412

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You obviously don't have a clue of how bad necromancers used to be. In the vanilla game the necromancer only use was in WvW zergs, since then ANet gradually adapted the game to the necromancer and buffed it severly.

  • The gameplay used to rely heavily on fire fields/water field and blast which was things that the necromancer don't reliably have and even tend to hinder. (To a lot of players, this was sufficient of a reason to "ban" necromancers from PvE group content like dungeons and fractals)
  • Minion used to just look at you dying without reacting and die themself in second from mobs sneezes.
  • Necromancers were terribad at skipping mobs and more generally sneaking around (it's no longer an issue).
  • Necromancer's shroud used to not have any mitigation and it's down state had as much health than it's life force pool.
  • Spectral skills used to not give any life force to a necromancer while in shroud.
  • Necromancers used to have 3 boon riping abilities and 3 boon corrupting abilities (no more no less), now you got boon corrupt everywhere.
  • Mobs used to barely have any boons to corrupt and when they got boons they used to reapply them every 3 seconds making boon riping/corrupt useless.
  • In HoT reaper's DPS was basically 3/4th of what it is right now.
  • Spectral wall used to apply vulnerability instead of fear... etc.

All in all the necromancer is in a way better spot than it used to be, with viable (when not optimal) builds in all gamemodes while it used to just have a single purpose: corrupting boons in a zerg.You talk about nerfs but the reality is that the necromancer's overall power has gone up again and again making it tremendously more competitive than it used to be.

The necromancer depend on mechanism that are objectively bad and I wouldn't be against a few tweaks that most necromancer would see as nerfs but a full rework isn't necessary.

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Well. DPS wise necro is in a ok/good spot right now for raids.But it has other problems.Also it's very bad if every single build uses one particular traitline (soulreaping). Not because it's super op traitline, but because the other traitlines are just very bad.Power uses it, Condi uses it, healer uses it.

Why? Because deathmagic is bad, bloodmagic isn't good on power or Condi builds because the survivability it adds is non-existant.

Also other classes playstyles changed a lot of the times. Time for necro to get a fresh playstyle and not one, stuck in 2014.

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No. To raze it all and build from ground up would require necro to be a shit profession that fails on all ends and is not fun to play. That is NOT the current state of necro.Currently Necro has several very good things going for it, while some issues to be addressed on their own.

Issues:

  1. Core necro dps and being a ragdoll.
  2. Death magic - still needs some love, albeit last update (dark defiance, & death nova) made it better. Now it's somewhat behind other lines, but not a gaping chasm.
  3. Self inflicting condi plays being gimped by teammates cleansing them off you. Needs fixing.
  4. Lack of anti-burst mechanic (means you get always focused and killed in competitive unless heavily protected, while every other profession has panic buttons for that).

But there are tons of good things about necro that warrant fixing it instead of scrapping all together.

  1. Traitlines are very well balanced (death magic bit behind), and no line is mandatory, promoting great build diversity.
  2. Deep condi manipulation gameplay that other professions don't have (things like epidemic, transferring condies into enemy, boon corrupts)
  3. Extremely flexible gear wise. Necro is a stat-based profession. With huge amount of free stats you have access to tons of gear sets that other profession have no use for. Necro can equip almost any gear set and make it from viable to great when he properly builds for it (like valkyrie/crusader power reaper, or plaguedoctor scourge).
  4. Has a use in each gamemode (PvE - AoE wipeout machine with solid sustain and mass ressing ability. WvW - scourge, nuff said. SpvP - boon corrupt).

There's a long way for necro to be on pair with let's say mesmer, but the profession has a lot of good, fun and unique things in it. It's adjusting and adding features that is needed not dumping the good stuff with the bad for a shot at a "better necro".

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@"Dadnir.5038" said:You obviously don't have a clue of how bad necromancers used to be. In the vanilla game the necromancer only use was in WvW zergs, since then ANet gradually adapted the game to the necromancer and buffed it severly.

  • The gameplay used to rely heavily on fire fields/water field and blast which was things that the necromancer don't reliably have and even tend to hinder. (To a lot of players, this was sufficient of a reason to "ban" necromancers from PvE group content like dungeons and fractals)
  • Minion used to just look at you dying without reacting and die themself in second from mobs sneezes.
  • Necromancers were terribad at skipping mobs and more generally sneaking around (it's no longer an issue).
  • Necromancer's shroud used to not have any mitigation and it's down state had as much health than it's life force pool.
  • Spectral skills used to not give any life force to a necromancer while in shroud.
  • Necromancers used to have 3 boon riping abilities and 3 boon corrupting abilities (no more no less), now you got boon corrupt everywhere.
  • Mobs used to barely have any boons to corrupt and when they got boons they used to reapply them every 3 seconds making boon riping/corrupt useless.
  • In HoT reaper's DPS was basically 3/4th of what it is right now.
  • Spectral wall used to apply vulnerability instead of fear... etc.

All in all the necromancer is in a way better spot than it used to be, with viable (when not optimal) builds in all gamemodes while it used to just have a single purpose: corrupting boons in a zerg.You talk about nerfs but the reality is that the necromancer's overall power has gone up again and again making it tremendously more competitive than it used to be.

The necromancer depend on mechanism that are objectively bad and I wouldn't be against a few tweaks that most necromancer would see as nerfs but a full rework isn't necessary.

I obviously do, no necros in dungeons was sad for me, but i always had a necromancer as i always hoped itd be like gw1 necro or rit... but nope

Edit: being better than when it came out is a good start, but lacking high damage, Survivability and Mobility is just sad. You can argue death shroud is 2x health, but any cc means you get nuked as the only stun breaks are either very specific builds or just not worth it to use, like why use well of power as a stun break now that soectral walk removes condis and gives life force? Why use Plague signet when dagger 4 does the same thing but for less condis.

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I will give my 5 cents personally reaper definitely has improved over the years.

Remember when we got a dps buff with quickness to make us have faster casts on our GS? and the buffs to abilities in shroud? sure we were nerfed on some stuff but think of all the stuff we got changed for reaper to make it up to date. Didn't at one time it used to be like 27-28 with scourge at like 29k and behind all classes? I think we are a bit spoiled changes are coming slowly reapers are getting some improvements sure i don't like that our survivability was weakened in reaper shroud but we are actually more competitive in pve which is amazing, and core is getting a fix.

Also someone said that the core traits should be where our power comes from and i think its true that core should be where some of our defensives should come from.

I think core should help power up our defensives in some way or another like the way it does for some other classes instead of depending on the defensives of the new elite specs, so then we get even more variety.

I don't think a total remake is necessary as we would have to get rid of too many classic things, like:Whats next get rid of shroud life bar? Someone also said one reason for no remake is there are plenty of people who really like some design choices.

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I think all professions need a redesign. I don't have hope it's happening though.

For example, I would remove Death Shroud from core, and make the minions be the core mechanic instead. A real minion master gameplay with proper controls, minion exploding, minion merging, etc. That's what the necromancer should be about.

Anyway, here are my redesign threads:

Elementalist - Mesmer - Necromancer - Engineer - Ranger - Thief - Guardian - Revenant - Warrior

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:You obviously don't have a clue of how bad necromancers used to be. In the vanilla game the necromancer only use was in WvW zergs, since then ANet gradually adapted the game to the necromancer and buffed it severly.
  • The gameplay used to rely heavily on fire fields/water field and blast which was things that the necromancer don't reliably have and even tend to hinder. (To a lot of players, this was sufficient of a reason to "ban" necromancers from PvE group content like dungeons and fractals)
  • Minion used to just look at you dying without reacting and die themself in second from mobs sneezes.
  • Necromancers were terribad at skipping mobs and more generally sneaking around (it's no longer an issue).
  • Necromancer's shroud used to not have any mitigation and it's down state had as much health than it's life force pool.
  • Spectral skills used to not give any life force to a necromancer while in shroud.
  • Necromancers used to have 3 boon riping abilities and 3 boon corrupting abilities (no more no less), now you got boon corrupt everywhere.
  • Mobs used to barely have any boons to corrupt and when they got boons they used to reapply them every 3 seconds making boon riping/corrupt useless.
  • In HoT reaper's DPS was basically 3/4th of what it is right now.
  • Spectral wall used to apply vulnerability instead of fear... etc.

All in all the necromancer is in a way better spot than it used to be, with viable (when not optimal) builds in all gamemodes while it used to just have a single purpose: corrupting boons in a zerg.You talk about nerfs but the reality is that the necromancer's overall power has gone up again and again making it tremendously more competitive than it used to be.

The necromancer depend on mechanism that are objectively bad and I wouldn't be against a few tweaks that most necromancer would see as nerfs but a full rework isn't necessary.

I obviously do, no necros in dungeons was sad for me, but i always had a necromancer as i always hoped itd be like gw1 necro or rit... but nope

Edit: being better than when it came out is a good start, but lacking high damage, Survivability and Mobility is just sad. You can argue death shroud is 2x health, but any cc means you get nuked as the only stun breaks are either very specific builds or just not worth it to use, like why use well of power as a stun break now that soectral walk removes condis and gives life force? Why use Plague signet when dagger 4 does the same thing but for less condis.

You're gonna use well of power in a support mindset.

In case of plague signet, you won't like the answer. Plague signet is a typical GW2 necromancer's skill that enforce the idea of doing "more" throught self harm. It's extremly cluncky to use in the game yet thematically, it define ANet's GW2 necromancer. There is plenty of skills like these that nobody use because "there are better options", yet there is no reason to remove those skills. You can just look at those skills like the "fall" traits or the 3 seconds cast time, never ending CD "revive" skills.

Any way, the current necromancer is 100% better than he used to be and is one of the few profession to have viable builds in all game modes even if those builds aren't meta. The only flaw of the necromancer is that he suck at duelling, for any group fight, with a decent support behind him he will be a top dog against players and decent in boss fights.

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@derd.6413 said:the only thing about necro that needs serious rework is it's defenses

Fully agreed.

Necros are the only ones without a strong defensive weapon skill or utility skill.

The ability to negate damage totally is very important especially when it comes to increasing numbers of foes.

Other classes can:

  • Fully negate damage using their weapon and utility skills (evades, blocks etc.)
  • Drop target completely using their weapon and utility skills (invis etc.)

Necros got:

  • Sub-par blind and weakness as part of its defensive weapon skills.
  • Sub-par protection, life-steal and refill life-force as part of its defensive utility options.

We were designed to get hit but at reduced damage.

  • Protection to shave opponent's damage
  • Weakness to shave opponent's damage.
  • Getting hit then refills our life-force.

Necros are also the only ones without a strong mobility weapon skill or utility skill.

Mobility also forms a crucial aspect of a class' ability to defend itself by disengaging or gaining distance when needed.This is another form of negating damage totally.

Other classes got highly mobile and long range movement abilities on their weapon and utility skills.

Necros got...nothing.Zero mobility on weapon skills.Neither Range nor melee weapons got anything mobile.Sub-par mobility utilities like Spectral walk (requires pre-setup), Wurm (require pre-setup) and Sand Portal (short range, long cast-time).

We were not meant to run.We were not meant to avoid hits.We were meant to stand there and take it like a man.

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It just needs a few trait lines get a good passover. (Death magic and Blood magic. yes blood magic needs a passover too far too many impractical traits in there for my taste personally) I shouldnt take a trait line for one or two traits i like and cringe at the rest of my options and minors.Many of the utility skills need a passover too ie lich form, some of the signets, the minions for sure.

Some traits need to be heavily buffed when used with core necromancer Dhuumfire for example being one off the top of my head. The core shroud also needs much much more while it is getting nice cooldown buffs tomorrow things like more condi application on some skills and more damage on some skills is still needed. To bring it up in line with say core mesmer, guardian, ranger, warrior, etc.

More self options other than might for boons would be nice as well possibly death magic could help there with the grand number of useless traits it has that are just waiting to be replaced.

Right now some core professions can actually still be very very relevant to the meta. Core necormancer is not really one of them, even more so in pve.It does not however need a totally pass over. There are a lot of good things in the current form of necro that need to remain that way.

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Things I want changed:

  • All professions should have good access to fields and finishers. The old mandate that professions should be especially good at one or the other is bad because the fields and their combo results are situational and unequal. Even if field types are restricted by profession, finishers should not be.
  • Death Magic is still bad. Necro does not have an aggro-control build or scaling defenses. It cannot properly tank in PvE.
  • Necro needs more ability to convert conditions to boons.
  • Necro needs a boon duration build as part of its core. It can generate plenty of might but there are no builds that require investing in boon duration to maximize support or dps.
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@Nimon.7840 said:Well. DPS wise necro is in a ok/good spot right now for raids.But it has other problems.Also it's very bad if every single build uses one particular traitline (soulreaping). Not because it's super op traitline, but because the other traitlines are just very bad.Power uses it, Condi uses it, healer uses it.

Why? Because deathmagic is bad, bloodmagic isn't good on power or Condi builds because the survivability it adds is non-existant.

Also other classes playstyles changed a lot of the times. Time for necro to get a fresh playstyle and not one, stuck in 2014.

Power Reaper did use blood magic for a long time (though reaper itself wasn't in the meta of pve) though, back when Reaper shroud was a dps loss and we took Deathly chill instead of Reaper's onslaught. I still wish they had buffed Blood Magic as our secondary damage line instead of Soul Reaping.

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-snip-

Partially agree. Our defenses are not absolute and therefore we have a lot of them. The problem is we don't have room for them, because almost every crucial survival skill we have is on utility bar, and the very tight 3 slots we have to allocate are also hard contested by said mobility and boon corruption!

The nature of our defenses (very situational and damage reducing, not negating) encourages reactive play and synergetic use of them, be it spacing them in time, or popping all at once for a moment of super resistance vs enemy abuse. But that scenario can't really happen with only 3 slots that often are occupied by other stuff, least your necro be dead weight or too easy a kill....

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@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@derd.6413 said:the only thing about necro that
needs
serious rework is it's defenses

Fully agreed.

Necros are the only ones without a strong defensive weapon skill or utility skill.

The ability to negate damage totally is very important especially when it comes to increasing numbers of foes.

Other classes can:
  • Fully negate damage using their weapon and utility skills (evades, blocks etc.)
  • Drop target completely using their weapon and utility skills (invis etc.)

Necros got:
  • Sub-par blind and weakness as part of its defensive weapon skills.
  • Sub-par protection, life-steal and refill life-force as part of its defensive utility options.

We were designed to get hit but at reduced damage.
  • Protection to shave opponent's damage
  • Weakness to shave opponent's damage.
  • Getting hit then refills our life-force.

Necros are also the only ones without a strong mobility weapon skill or utility skill.

Mobility also forms a crucial aspect of a class' ability to defend itself by disengaging or gaining distance when needed.This is another form of negating damage totally.

Other classes got highly mobile and long range movement abilities on their weapon and utility skills.

Necros got...nothing.Zero mobility on weapon skills.Neither Range nor melee weapons got anything mobile.Sub-par mobility utilities like Spectral walk (requires pre-setup), Wurm (require pre-setup) and Sand Portal (short range, long cast-time).

We were not meant to run.We were not meant to avoid hits.We were meant to stand there and take it like a man.

Which would be fine if it was 2k13, when not every class was power creeped and did extremely high dmg numbersThe higher the dmg numbers get, the less effective health is as defense, if you only have limited max health but blocking can avoid infinite dmg

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Id like anything positive done that doesnt get reverted in 6 months but I'll mirror Anet - It's fine and in a good spot. ...Starts random tweaking in no general direction. Add - here it comes animation to focus 5 plus additional self chill.. Unfortunately I see no real logic in their movements. I suggest an elite spec devised around the ways of Seppuku.

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Death magic needs a real focus and should do something like fully focusing on minions or something. It might even be fun if the traits improved minions to a point to a point where you could occasionally peel enemies in PvE.

Sustain or defenses need to be improved. Either cap HPS on cleaves, reduce value in shroud, only make it available in shroud, revert back to the whole "holding a greatsword" 200 HPS if we're going the sustain route. Blood magic doesn't make sense to take when you solo; it's not a viable mitigation for what you trade for it (vulnerability/+10% damage/33% crit + ferocity/reduced shroud cooldowns/more life force and life force generation or might generation/+10% damage on boonless enemies/boon removal/+20% damage on low health enemies). If the sustain was better, it might be an option, but you trade a lot for subpar sustain to the point where it would be better to just kill things faster. So far blood magic is only useful in disorganized groups/groups where any healer is better than no healer.

I would be okay with shroud taking less life force damage from hits, or allowing outside heals. Currently other classes get some sort of evasion or block while still being able to be healed by party members. It made sense when a reaper was self reliant while in this mode, but now it's pretty much gated to safe moments. Since it's ticking down, and it's a melee-focused mode, it's sort of strange how frail it is. At least before if I get insta-popped out of shroud it was a possibility I may have recovered some health. Now I'm force to spend time running away if I'm low in shroud. Seems counter intuitive for a mode designated "Reaper Shroud"; the image of death runs from his enemies in order to avoid going down rather than using it to fuel an onslaught.

I've only been playing for four months, but I finally got ascended gear and managed to get some scholar runes. It kind of sucks that scholar runes reward other classes that can burst while being topped off, or can pop and evade/block while being healed in preparation for a burst. Take a -1750 hit and now shroud is sub-optimal.

Otherwise, things feel alright. Signet of spite doesn't make sense for a power passive, and self corruption play is undermined by AoE cleanses so it's kind of pointless, but a lot of things feel pretty good when you look past the big sustain/defense issues. Not to say the traits in all trees couldn't use some real diversification, but improving survivability would be a good start to making melee feel like better on a class that otherwise takes subpar ranged options as a backup plan.

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