I would like to start this by saying that I am by no means a skill or class designer. I know a lot of people will disagree with these changes. But making these changes to necromancer could make it a more interesting class, while also not losing its own identity (sorry cmc and roy for the blasphemy you might read <3). I made this mostly for fun, hopefully some changes in this list can be made into something feasible. Please comment on anything you may find interesting, a meme or maybe something that could be useful from this change list that could be applied.
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Necromancer changes I would love to see:
The idea of having a second health bar has always been an issue with necromancer in the past, especially in competitive game modes. Currently in PvE reaper is struggling exactly because shroud replaces its health bar. Unintentionally boss mechanics can instantly deplete your life force, hence doing less dps over time. Health on shroud has always been an issue with necromancer in the past making the class extremely unhealthy in PvP, like the minion mancer meta or running 2 core necros in monthly because of how tanky it was.
With this idea in mind, I believe shroud should be changed into a mechanic of basically a type of extremely powerful third weapon set (probably the original idea the core necromancer designer had) with flat damage reduction and not something that replaces your HP entirely. This change by itself would allow ArenaNet to redesign necromancer skills and traits into a more aggressive playstyle rather than the more passive, slow one we have currently.
Now that there is no second health bar, it would only be fair to gain increased benefits to being in shroud. As in, doing way more damage than necromancer currently does. (Especially reaper). Nonetheless, shroud should also give a special buff every time you enter it now that we trade off our sustain for more damage. In core, obtaining a stacking buff that increases your condition damage over time that way you get rewarded for staying in longer periods of time during shroud.
-Rework Life force mechanic: Instead of replacing your health, now it simply provides flat damage reduction. Gain increased attributes by entering shroud (Death shroud: Toughness and vitality, Reaper’s shroud: Vitality and ferocity, Desert Shroud: Condition damage and vitality, Harbinger: Expertise and Concentration).
Core necromancer changes:
Deathshroud:
-Death shroud: Reduced the nerf from 33% damage reduction to 40%. Whenever you enter shroud gain a stacking buff “Necromantic pest” each stack provides extra condition damage as well as condition damage you apply during shroud heals you over time.
Life blast needs a change for PvE scenarios. It is way too slow even with quickness, and generally is a dps loss to even use your autoattack. Having an auto attack chain of sorts like the engineer rifle with 2 shots would increase its usability greatly and would make using the skill more reasonable. This whole auto chain should be at the same speed it currently is with one projectile hence being 1.2 seconds.
- Life blast: Now this skill has two parts. Life shot and life blast.
Life shot is a fast projectile with 0.9 coefficience that applies 3s of bleeding.
Life blast would be a slower projectile with the current 1.4 coefficience that applies 3s of poison and bleeding. When the dhuumfire trait is applied it now includes the burn condition to these skills instead of changing the skill entirely. This entire auto attack chain would last 1.2 seconds
-Dark path: (PvE only) Increased coefficience from 0.25 to 0.44 Increased bleeding from 2 stacks to 3.
-Life transfer: (PvE only) Now applies 2 stacks of bleeding after this skill ends
- Tainted shackles: (PvE only) Torment stacks increased from 2 to 4. Increased damage coefficience from 1.25 to 1.44
Trait lines:
Death magic:
Allowing a necromancer to obtain up to 1600 toughness on a set with full damage is just unhealthy for the game (2557 toughness with full trailblazer and 2121 toughness with celestial gear. Without any runes mind you). It also makes running this trait line during instanced content with a toughness check a nuisance. Having a flat damage reduction can make it easier to balance in the long run since it won’t have any direct interaction with gear (What I mean is it would be easier to tune up and balance overall). This also means utilizing minions gives you less stacks of carapace.
-Carapace no longer applies toughness, instead it provides direct damage reduction can stack up to 10 stacks providing 10% direct damage reduction.
Now that shroud doesn’t replace your HP, unholy sanctuary needs a different effect so receive a lethal blow now gives you a percentage of your life force into health.
-Unholy sanctuary now converts your life force into healing if you take a lethal blow. ICD has been reduced to 90s.
Blood Magic:
This trait line is now entirely reworked. In blood magic I want to focus more into the idea of having a pure heal necromancer specialization that can provide more actual raw healing (and boons but that’s for later) rather than relying on siphoning while turning your main sustain through this trait line into personal life siphoning.
With that in mind, to balance heal scourge and this trait line in general, last rites needs to be changed. People often mistake that heal scourge is op because of the amount of barrier it provides. What makes heal scourge op is its crazy resurrective potential and that is because of last rites not letting players bleed out. This trait has also been incredibly problematic in PvP and WvW scenarios in the past as it makes downstate players completely immune to bleeding out.
-Last rites: This effect has been removed.
Now that we don’t have last rites, it would be a great idea to move transfusion in its place. This makes more sense as it is an active effect rather than a passive one that provides value, allowing the necromancer to have more flexibility on this trait line, since you are always forced to take transfusion for healer builds. However, the healing effect of transfusion has been greatly reduced to compensate being a passive effect.
-Transfusion: This trait is now a part of last rites. Healing pulse reduced from 9 to 4. Healing coefficience has been reduced from 0.3 to 0.25.
Life from death has been moved from master to grandmaster trait, filling transfusion’s place. Ritual of life has been removed and its old effect has been included to Life from death. This gives us the opportunity to bring back vampiric rituals focused in a purely healing trait option and have a free slot for a brand-new trait.
-Life from death: Fixed bug that doesn’t allow this trait to work on death shroud or reaper’s shroud. Utilizing shroud skills heals up to 5 allies in an area. Reviving an ally cast lesser well of blood.
-Ritual of life: This trait has been removed and has been replaced by blood tensions
-Vampiric rituals: This trait is now an adept trait replacing ritual of life. Wells now heal and provides protection to allies. Wells don’t life siphon damage or provide cooldown reduction.
This brand-new trait goes where life from death used to be located.
-Blood tensions: Gain 3s of regeneration when siphoning a foe. Siphoning health from a foe applies 1 stack of bleeding for 2s. This trait has a 5s icd. (10s icd in pvp and wvw)
Blood bond has been moved to grandmaster tier trait. Replacing Blood Bank in its place.
-Blood bond: Siphoning health heals allies around you. Regeneration is more effective on yourself. Cast lesser signet of vampirism when you inflict 3 stacks of bleeding
Quickening thirst has been moved to a master tier trait, replacing vampiric presence’s place. A new trait has been made called Bloody dagger
-Quickening thirst: This trait has been reworked. No longer reduces dagger cooldowns or provides movement speed. Instead gain swiftness after dodging. Siphon extra health under the influence of swiftness.
-Bloody dagger: No longer share healing around allies. Instead, dagger skills deal more damage. Critical hits on dagger apply bleeding.
-Banshee’s Wail: No longer reduces cooldowns from war horn skills. Instead replaces them for Wail of hope and Locust protection. Its other effects remain the same
-Vampiric presence: This trait has been moved to a minor trait, replacing vampiric. No longer shares its effect to allies. However, it keeps its values as it combines with vampiric. New values: Life siphon damage 172, life siphon healing 76. Minion values stay the same.
Soul Reaping:
Removing cooldown modifiers in general would be a great idea for every single class as it makes picking certain trait lines mandatory (like trickery on thief or discipline on warrior). Instead providing actual benefits than lower cooldowns make the trait line more of a strong option rather than something mandatory that you always must choose. So, in my world Sinister shroud no longer reduces shroud cooldowns and instead makes your shroud specific mechanic stronger.
-Sinister shroud: no longer reduces shroud cooldowns and instead makes your shroud specific mechanic stronger giving +20 stats.. All shroud skills have been reduced by 20%.
Now that is out of the way, let’s change some actual traits.
-Soul marks: No longer gives life force and makes marks all unblockable. Instead provide boons to allies around a mark when it is activated.
· Mark of blood: Vigor and regeneration
· Chilblains: 3 stacks of Might
· Putrid mark: Resolution
· Reaper’s mark: Resistance
-Unyielding blast: Apply 5 stacks of vulnerability when entering shroud. Deal increased strike damage to vulnerable foes.
-Eternal life: (PvP and WvW) Increased life-force threshold from 10% to 15%.
Spite:
These changes to minor traits are with the idea of changing spiteful talisman and giving some more flexibility in trait choices.
Minor traits:
-Reaper’s might: Using a shroud skill grants 1 stack of might. Gain 1 stack of might when you strike a foe below the health threshold 2s ICD
-Siphon power: This trait has been replaced by spiteful talisman.
-Spiteful talisman: No longer provides cooldown reductions.
Traits:
-Spiteful renewal: Now cleanses 2 conditions.
-Bitter chill: This trait has been replaced by close to death.
Replacing close to death’s grandmaster slot, Vengeful intentions.
-Vengeful intentions: Gain increased 1% direct damage by stacking a buff of vengeful intentions every time you use your shroud skills. Maximum stacks 10.
Now that we don’t have spiteful talisman and extra shroud hp is out of the question, giving some mobility to necromancers via a teleport in a weapon skill would be interesting. I decided focus could be the perfect choice for this. This is with the idea of making necromancer a more viable option as a roamer in PvP and WvW for chasing targets.
-Spiteful soul: This skill improves axe and focus skills. Soul grasp changes for soul transition. This launches a projectile and if it lands, teleport to the target. Teleporting has a green fade to indicate when the target is teleported. Landing a teleport deals damage. Unholy feast now applies vulnerability based on boons corrupted.
Core necromancer weapons:
Staff:
-Marks now provide life force by default
-Mark of blood: This skill is now Unblockable
-Reaper’s Mark: This skill is now Unblockable
Dagger main hand:
-Dagger skills now share their healing with allies around you. The healing radius is 300.
-Life Siphon: Cooldown decreased to 5s
-Dark path: Cooldown Decreased to 7s
Warhorn:
-Locust Swarm: Cooldown decreased to 24s
-Wail of doom: Cooldown decreased to 24s
When selecting banshee’s wail Locust Swarm is changed to Locust defense and Wail of hope
-Locust defense: Summon a swarm of locusts that protects and heals your allies. Healing coefficience of 0.25. Apply swiftness 15s, regeneration 8s and protection 8s to allies in a 360 radius
-Wail of hope: Dazes enemies instead of fear. Now applies stability to allies for 5 seconds
Axe:
-Cooldowns have been reduced by 20%
Focus
-Cooldowns have been reduced by 20%
Elite specializations
Reaper:
For reaper, Shroud knight doesn’t deplete shroud faster anymore. Instead, it provides a stacking life siphon buff “reaper’s harvest” up to 25 stacks (similarly to battle scars) while also providing quickness to yourself every 3 seconds while you are in shroud. Removing the quickness from reaper’s onslaught since you now get it from shroud knight.
-Reaper shroud change: Now that life force doesn’t replace your hp, reaper keeps its 33% damage reduction.
-Shroud knight has been reworked. Instead of depleting your shroud faster, gain a life siphon buff “Reaper’s harvest” every time you enter shroud. This buff stacks up to 25 times (Basically battle scars from revenant but with increased siphon values).
-Blighter’s boon: This trait has been reworked. Reaper’s harvest now stacks faster and has increased life stealing.
-Reaper’s onslaught: This trait now provides increased critical chance by 10% instead of quickness
-Deathly Chill: Including its effect of bleeding chilled targets. Bleeding damage is increased by 5%.
Harbinger:
Harbinger is one of the clear winners of this patch since it was entirely designed around not having a second health bar. However, its traits are... very bland to say the least so let’s see what changes we can have for harbinger. As I said before, reducing cooldowns is a very boring design idea. I would like to shout out user Seuchenherbst.2746 for suggesting some of these changes in the forums that I find very interesting and fun.
-Elixirs: All elixirs obtain a 20% cooldown reduction.
-Pistol: All pistol skills obtain a 20% cooldown reduction.
-Corrupted talent: Gain 5s of stability (3s in competitive modes) when entering harbinger shroud. Its other effect stays the same.
-Implacable foe: This trait no longer provides stability. Instead Gain increased critical damage increased based on your blight stacks. Its old effect stays the same.
-Wicked corruption: This trait no longer provides critical damage increase. Instead obtain +120 Power bonus.
-Vile vials: This trait has been removed. This trait has been replaced by Protective blight.
-Protective blight: Having over 10 stacks of blight pulses barrier per interval. 800 barrier per blight stack over 10.
-Dark gunslinger: Doesn’t reduce pistol cooldowns anymore. Weeping shots now applies poison. Its old expertise effect remains.
All grandmaster traits have been changed. The passive effects of harbinger shroud are unhealthy in competitive game modes and frankly very boring in a PvE aspect. Deathly haste is fine with being an aura since it only provides quickness and doesn’t deal passive damage. These changes are with the idea in mind of making the spec more interactive with its blight mechanic.
-Cascading corruption: Your shroud doesn’t apply conditions anymore and doesn’t have a passive aura. Instead, it does 10% more strike damage. Being over the minimum blight stacks provides extra power and precision.
-Doom Approaches: No longer provides an aura. Instead, removing a threshold of blight stacks creates an explosion of torment and weakness around you.
-Deathly haste: Now pulses regeneration to yourself while being over the minimum blight stacks.
Scourge:
Now I will admit, scourge traits are fine as they are currently (maybe). But I would like to change some things. These are more of a “would be neat but not necessary” type of thing (especially with my lack of experience with scourge outside of heal scourge)
You only have 2 shades now. These 2 shades are 150 radii. The main problem of scourge in its design is that the shades occupy too much space, they can easily clutter space full of AoEs. Limiting the shades to two and having a smaller radius may help with that issue.
Torch: Cooldowns have been reduced by 20%
Punishment skills: Cooldowns have been reduced by 20%
-Blood as sand: Damage reduction per sand shade increased from 3% to 5%
Traits:
-Abrasive gift: Now removes 2 conditions to the scourge. Allies remain with 1 condition removed
-Sadistic searing: Punishment skills no longer have reduced cooldowns. Gain expertise based on your condition damage.
-Fell beacon: Torch skills now grant you boons when landed. Gain increased condition damage +120
· Harrowing wave: Gain 2 stacks of might per target affected
· Oppressive collapse: Gain 5 seconds of fury
In terms of barrier, personal barrier should be greater than barrier given to allies. This with the idea of making the scourge itself sustainable and not make the entire team immortal with high output of barrier. So, any shade skill that provides barrier gives you a greater amount and your allies less.
-Shade savant: This no longer gives you a singular shade. Instead, Manifest sand shade provides barrier to allies and your shade skills provide boons (2s of alacrity to allies and each shade has a different boon)
· Manifest sand shade: 5s of 2 stacks of Might
· Nefarious favor: 5s of Resolution
· Sand cascade: 5s of Regeneration
· Garish Pillar: 4s of resistance
· Desert shroud or Sandstorm Shroud: 5s of stability
-Desert empowerment: Receiving barrier grants you regeneration. Regeneration is more effective.