Necromancer Spear Description

[Vinny.7260]

Quote

Now let’s take a look at some aspects of the necromancer spear. This spear is a melee power damage weapon that also brings some disruptive elements, a bit of mobility, and some strong burst potential through cooldown resets.

Many of the spear skills create soul shards, life-stealing objects that behave similarly to thief’s venoms, but they will only be consumed by strikes from the spear’s second skill. This allows them to be consistently built up to a maximum of six to reach a singular moment of power, instead of being immediately consumed by the next strike. These shards deal increased damage against low-health enemies and grant increased healing while your health is low, giving more opportunities for powerful execution sequences or the ability to sustain when nearing death yourself.

As mentioned above, soul shards will be consumed by Perforate, skill 2 on the spear. Perforate is a multihit attack that strikes enemies seven times, enough to consume all active soul shards. Perforate also deals increased damage against low-health enemies, which, combined with the low-health bonus damage of soul shards, makes it a potent skill for finishing the job.

In order to get full value out of Perforate, you’ll need to generate some soul shards first, so let’s look at another skill that might come in handy.

Skill 4 is Isolate, the singular long-ranged skill on the spear that serves as a gap closer. This skill throws a spear at the enemy, inflicting chill and vulnerability, and on successfully striking a target it flips into the follow-up skill, Distress. Activating the follow-up skill will teleport the necromancer to the target struck by the initial spear and generate soul shards. Additional shards are generated if the enemy does not have any nearby allies of their own, so this skill is great at creating opportunities to pick off lone enemy targets. Teleporting to an enemy will also fully recharge Perforate, so you’ll always be ready to consume your newly generated soul shards. Isolate will also recharge itself when exiting Death Shroud, giving access to a lot of potentially powerful sequences. Skills 3 and 5 also generate soul shards (among other things), but we’ll talk about those a bit more at a later date.

 

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/spearheading-a-new-weapon-guardian-ranger-and-necromancer/

 

Sounds like a really fun concept, I can see it being pretty strong for PvP if a Necromancer build can be made to sustain well enough while using it!

The fact you can basically repeatably reset your Spear 4 is kinda insane theoretically, I can see Reaper really reaping the benefits of this one.

Edited June 6 by Vinny.7260

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

ok, I had zero interest in the expansion, but this definitely caught my attention.

[Apokriphos.7042]

I am concerned that yet another melee range damage weapon will crowd out other melee dps options such as dagger and gsword. I am hopeful that the weapon seems to be supported by shroud play, which is honestly a first for necromancer and should be the case for other necromancer weapons as well.

 

Cautiously optimistic, but without evades, stab, and invuln, I don't see how a melee necromancer would be able to use a spear under pressure without heavy supports. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

13 minutes ago, Apokriphos.7042 said:

I am concerned that yet another melee range damage weapon will crowd out other melee dps options such as dagger and gsword. I am hopeful that the weapon seems to be supported by shroud play, which is honestly a first for necromancer and should be the case for other necromancer weapons as well.

 

Cautiously optimistic, but without evades, stab, and invuln, I don't see how a melee necromancer would be able to use a spear under pressure without heavy supports. 

You drop a pulsing blind to cover yourself, use CCs, and use shroud when you need to.

[felincyriac.5981]

17 minutes ago, Apokriphos.7042 said:

I am concerned that yet another melee range damage weapon will crowd out other melee dps options such as dagger and gsword. I am hopeful that the weapon seems to be supported by shroud play, which is honestly a first for necromancer and should be the case for other necromancer weapons as well.

 

Cautiously optimistic, but without evades, stab, and invuln, I don't see how a melee necromancer would be able to use a spear under pressure without heavy supports. 

a melee channel ability being your main damage means this is an open world/instanced pve weapon. 

 

shame, was hoping for a good pvp weapon, swords weren't great and now this. Lifesteal again as well, can we get something else? Boons maybe? Woah...

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Not a fan that this is yet another power dps weapon.  We have a glut of those already.  Still, it does sound interesting. Especially if there's an immobilize somewhere in the spear kit.

It could work better for power Harbinger than Greatsword does, though.  Reaper will still likely want greatsword for the chill synergy, but Harbinger doesn't really need that.

Edited June 6 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[Dadnir.5038]

Another skillset that doesn't tickle my fantasy. 😞

[mirage.8046]

The teleport and melee range is nice, considering how many ranged weapons there are now. Melee however does not fit necro without swiftness or especially stability. Even if you drop blinds or CCs, you'll get tossed like a ragdoll. This weapon sounds so cool though, and I like that exiting shroud can benefit this weapon. Other weapons should get that treatment in the future. It's really eye-catching, and in general, there should be more reasons to exit shroud after DPSing.

[felincyriac.5981]

21 minutes ago, mirage.8046 said:

The teleport and melee range is nice, considering how many ranged weapons there are now. Melee however does not fit necro without swiftness or especially stability. Even if you drop blinds or CCs, you'll get tossed like a ragdoll. This weapon sounds so cool though, and I like that exiting shroud can benefit this weapon. Other weapons should get that treatment in the future. It's really eye-catching, and in general, there should be more reasons to exit shroud after DPSing.

bruh no way it doesn't provide swiftness at least, don't tell me we still need warhorn...

[mirage.8046]

1 hour ago, felincyriac.5981 said:

bruh no way it doesn't provide swiftness at least, don't tell me we still need warhorn...

Aye I hope it does at the very least. While underwater spear grants personal swiftness, whether or not that carries over to the terrestrial spear, we'll see on June 27th. 😬Also, now that I think about it, the 6s of swiftness on deadly feast's 15 CD is way too short.

[XECOR.2814]

i hate lifesteal mechanic on every f weapon. Because they dont give it high enough numbers to actually do the healing its supposed to.

[KrHome.1920]

Looks interesting and worth a legendary buy. Unfortunately I put 2000 gold in skins right before spear was announced. 😩

[felincyriac.5981]

wonder why all spears don't just have the same style of autoattack the ranger spear has? Isn't it just a strict upgrade?

[Magmi.6723]

8 minutes ago, felincyriac.5981 said:

wonder why all spears don't just have the same style of autoattack the ranger spear has? Isn't it just a strict upgrade?

Be kinda boring if every spear did the same thing tbh. 

but given the fact they noted on the ranger spear description lots of the spears are gonna function this way it kinda feels bad being a outlier. 

epically with the cons written against our power builds currently do both label us being strictly melee it’d of been a nice improvement 

[Magmi.6723]

2 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Looks interesting and worth a legendary buy. Unfortunately I put 2000 gold in skins right before spear was announced. 😩

Tbh after Soto weapons prolly should check if the weapons gonna be relevant at all in our builds. Swords really fell flat in terms of use. 

would hate to spend a load of gold on a legendary to find out you won’t use it at all 😂

[Vile.4387]

Not impressed.

[StraightPath.3972]

2 hours ago, Magmi.6723 said:

Tbh after Soto weapons prolly should check if the weapons gonna be relevant at all in our builds. Swords really fell flat in terms of use. 

would hate to spend a load of gold on a legendary to find out you won’t use it at all 😂

Come again?
I've found them to be an amazing set of weapons well suited to my needs and highly practical.
Now melee power weapon #3 - that can indeed be argued, but swords delivered imho.

Though if we are talking necro spear - I am glad that after so many years Dark Path finally got fixed /s

Edited June 7 by StraightPath.3972

[Magmi.6723]

6 minutes ago, StraightPath.3972 said:

Come again?
I've found them to be an amazing set of weapons well suited to my needs and highly practical.
Now melee power weapon #3 - that can indeed be argued, but swords delivered imho.

Though if we are talking necro spear - I am glad that after so many years Dark Path finally got fixed /s

Well sure. Off hand sword made it into Meta pve builds. 

[StraightPath.3972]

@Magmi.6723  Swords go far beyond meta, which isn't their purpose in the first place.
 

• real mobility (not teleports to an "anchor" or enemy) with double leap
• amazing mob tagging, far better than staff
• a real ranged weapon - Staff and Axe are good for burst only, after that you swap or go shroud.
• well rounded - you got cc, lifesteal, life force generation, mobility, might and vulni generation.

I've no idea why so many necros diss the swords. I'm running full Grieving gear hybrid reaper and I couldn't be happier
having double swords as one of my weapons swap options.

[Magmi.6723]

1 hour ago, StraightPath.3972 said:

@Magmi.6723  Swords go far beyond meta, which isn't their purpose in the first place.
 

• real mobility (not teleports to an "anchor" or enemy) with double leap
• amazing mob tagging, far better than staff
• a real ranged weapon - Staff and Axe are good for burst only, after that you swap or go shroud.
• well rounded - you got cc, lifesteal, life force generation, mobility, might and vulni generation.

I've no idea why so many necros diss the swords. I'm running full Grieving gear hybrid reaper and I couldn't be happier
having double swords as one of my weapons swap options.

I think you answered ur question in your top statement.

most players don’t homebrew their builds, they just use the ones recommended, if it isn’t meta builds for these things are far less accessible so weapons outside of this simply don’t get noticed.

its mmorpg in 2024, either number 1 or trash is the motto. 

[draxynnic.3719]

4 minutes ago, Magmi.6723 said:

I think you answered ur question in your top statement.

most players don’t homebrew their builds, they just use the ones recommended, if it isn’t meta builds for these things are far less accessible so weapons outside of this simply don’t get noticed.

its mmorpg in 2024, either number 1 or trash is the motto. 

And then they don't consider whether what's good for raids/strikes/fractals is actually good for what they're actually doing in the moment. Snowcrows does have an open world section, but it's still populated by elite players who run full glass and judge everything on maximising damage - their usual concession to being an open world build is bringing more self-boons rather than assuming the supports have that handled.

Swords have a nice versatility in that in a solo environment, you can choose to not use the flipovers in order to help resustain, or to go ahead and blow through them in order to kill the enemy a bit faster. They probably shouldn't have that versatility and be a maximum DPS option.

[Magmi.6723]

46 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

words have a nice versatility in that in a solo environment, you can choose to not use the flipovers in order to help resustain, or to go ahead and blow through them in order to kill the enemy a bit faster. They probably shouldn't have that versatility and be a maximum DPS option

True, but I don’t think swords are in necros Meta solo builds as far as I’m aware either. 

So given the fact necromancers top DPs weapons are the stronger solo weapons. I don’t really see the issue, if we are looking at open world balancing, necromancers a mile over the balancing line already. l

on other classes I can see your point, however with necromancer they’re already versatile enough to take on anything in the game realistically. 

and that’s the thing here. Necromancer was already king of the hill when it came to solo gameplay. l

i am full zerker reaper, and use dagger / sword / greatsword, I have no trouble blowing through any hp bar and can solo champion mobs the class is so powerful In open world, and swords do it worse ironically

Edited June 7 by Magmi.6723

[felincyriac.5981]

do we live in a society where this spear will give the necro a boon other than might? Guess we'll find out on the 21rst

[mirage.8046]

4 hours ago, StraightPath.3972 said:

@Magmi.6723  Swords go far beyond meta, which isn't their purpose in the first place.
 

• real mobility (not teleports to an "anchor" or enemy) with double leap
• amazing mob tagging, far better than staff
• a real ranged weapon - Staff and Axe are good for burst only, after that you swap or go shroud.
• well rounded - you got cc, lifesteal, life force generation, mobility, might and vulni generation.

I've no idea why so many necros diss the swords. I'm running full Grieving gear hybrid reaper and I couldn't be happier
having double swords as one of my weapons swap options.

swords make necro so fun. double leaps are pretty rare to have. the boon corrupt on mh sword has a lot of synergy with traits that people overlook. the chills enable condi reaper to use something that isn't scepter or greatsword. off-hand sword makes up for the fact that other off-hands do no damage, or used to. poor focus and warhorn. I swap between sword + torch or double swords for CC.

I've been using sword especially in PvE and WvW because it's crazy to go w/o mobility. People only care about damage or if the new weapon suits their fantasies; the latter is fair. Not everyone spends time homebrewing builds either so I get it.

[Magmi.6723]

1 hour ago, felincyriac.5981 said:

do we live in a society where this spear will give the necro a boon other than might? Guess we'll find out on the 21rst

Likely not tbh. But you never know I guess 😂