Swaddle Me in my Death Shroud

I have to say I am surprised a bit by what I’ve seen and read about the necromancer in GW2. I’ve posted a bunch on GW2Guru about my thoughts, though most of my posts were speculation before the profession was revealed at Gamescom. I was hoping for some sort of unique mechanic associated with the gathering of souls and speculated about a soul battery based on some sort of energy gained for slaying baddies that could be used to affect spells.

Yeah, we got something like that alright.

I appreciate the concept of the Death Shroud, especially regarding both the updated mechanics of death in GW2 and the general lore associated with necromancers. As a unique profession mechanic, I’m still not sold. I am a big fan of versatility and, from what I’ve seen about the death shroud, you’ve got 4 skills and a limited amount of time to use them, and it’s unclear whether these give you an advantage in combat. Sure, it’s pretty cool and I like how it looks in the demos, but after the novelty of “ooh, that’s cool looking” wears off, I’m not so sure I’ll see much benefit in using it in battle. This is, of course, me speaking out my butt since I haven’t personally played the demo and I know there’s a good chance that the final version will be different from what was presented at Gamescom. But hey, what’s a blog without opinions?

What I do like about the death shroud is that it also plays the role of the necromancer’s downed skills. It makes sense that, of all the professions, necromancers would be most proficient when they are dieing. This is where I see a clear advantage for the death shroud. Warriors have “Throw Rock,” but necromancers have “Doom.” If nothing else, the downed skills for the necro sound like the necromancer is in control.

I see a lot of returning skills that I like. I’m also appreciative of the return of minions and I hope that necros a) get a few more to play with both in quality and quantity, and b) get a flesh golem equivalent in GW2. I’d like 10-12, personally, and the demos showed 6-7. As for blood magic, a big thank you to ANet for resurrecting that wonderful, if underused and misunderstood, attribute line. It gets a lot more use in GW2 and appears to be tied to daggers (hooray for logic!). I’m also a fan of the fact that necros get to use axes. Because really, what’s more menacing than a creepy guy carrying an axe?

Death magic appears to be strewn throughout the skill lineup without specifically saying it is death magic. Curses are, well, I’m not sure where. There’s a big debate about curses and hexes in general on the GW2Guru forums. I’m not sure how curses will play out in GW2. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m happy to report that wells are returning and I’m curious about “marks.” Mark of Blood and Reaper’s Mark are two reported skills that use this mechanic. I hope we’ll learn more about this tomorrow in the official reveal on the GW2 website.

All that being said, I’m gonna roll a necro. At this point, I’m 99% sure that my necro will not be Belzan. I’ve come to this decision for a number of reasons including character lore and personal interest in other professions (and possible professions). People change a lot in 250 years…

Huge Update

There was a huge update today in GW. Lots of skill revamping and, in my opinion, some nice changes.

Ursan finally got the nerfbat hard. As an elite form with a 60 sec downtime, it pretty much made all of the 5-man Ursan builds useless. I guess people are going to have to do things the old fashioned way by using balanced builds (or gimmick builds).

I’m sure the changes to UW also helped to nerf ecto farming there even more (though I don’t farm that area, so I really can’t say how it was affected).

The following changes affect me, and therefore I’ll discuss them a bit more at length:

• Life Transfer: decreased recharge to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: “Also hexes foes adjacent to target (6..12 second). Causes -3..8 Health degeneration. You have +3..8 Health regeneration.”
• Order of Undeath: increased recharge to 15; decreased Energy cost to 5. Functionality changed to: “All but one of your minions die. If that minion is non-Elite, it deals +5..30 more damage, has +5..20 Health regeneration, and attacks 33% faster (20 seconds).”
• Pain of Disenchantment: decreased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 15 seconds. Functionality changed to: “Target foe loses 1..3 enchantments. Removal effect: that foe and all adjacent foes lose 10..100 Health.”
• Vampiric Spirit: functionality changed to: “Steal 5..50 Health from target foe. You have +5..10 Health regeneration (10 seconds).”

I’m very happy about Life Transfer. I enjoy the AoE nature of this skill and it is now considered the elite version of Suffering, rather than the elite version of Life Siphon. Spread the Degen around!

I’m very upset about Order of Undeath. Rather than it’s very effective previous use of dealing X extra damage (like the other Orders skills) for each minion and dealing you health damage, this new version gives you one weak berserking minion. It doesn’t add any armor to the minion (who is very likely to be below 20th level) and the regen barely counters the degen of the minion. You waste an elite that requires a second animate skill, when you can just as easily take a Flesh Golem. The damage output is comparable and you can enchant and put weapon skills on the Golem.

Pain of Disenchantment. This looks like fun. An elite enchant removal skill that also deals AoE. It’ll go great with Defile/Desecrate for quick AoE damage and enchant removal. I’m looking forward to playing with this skill.

While it does mess up one of my fun builds whereby I am an AoE life sucker…. I kind of like this version of Vampy Spirit better. It works well on a bar with other life steals and adds regen (a saccer’s best friend next to low max health). I’m looking forward to dusting off my old Medusa build to play with this one.

Other than these skills, the PvE skills I usually use haven’t changed much. Most of them received boons and the ones that were nerfed were only slightly so. Most of the PvE skills that received boons got them on the lower end of things, which doesn’t affect me since I’m r8 or better in all of those titles. It is nice for people who aren’t whoring for titles (like me) so they can have a higher benefit at lower ranks in the titles.

That is it for now I guess. More updates as I mess around with these changes. Feel free to post your comments as well.

-Belzan

My current PvE bar

Lately I’ve been running a Curses bar. I made Belzan long ago to be a Minion Master (based off of an old character from Diablo II). I continue to enjoy Minion Mastery, but as of late I’ve been using the Sabway build and filling the role of the Curses Necro. I do it a tad bit differently.

Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support
Spiteful Spirit (though more recently Feast of Corruption)
Pain Inverter
Enfeebling Blood
Weaken Armor
Barbs
Mark of Pain
Rez

Why this build you say?  A number of reasons.

EVAS works well to draw aggro and, combined with Barbs or MoP, does some nice spike damage.  SS is a given for nice AoE damage, but I’ve been using FoC for 100+ AoE damage (in conjunction with an area hex such as Shadow of Fear or Reckless Haste).  Pain Inverter does a lot of damage to a single foe and I use it to quickly take down troublesome foes such as barrage rangers, dervishes and axe warriors.  EB and WA I’ve been using to weaken foes.  They have an area of effect (not very large mind you) and provide nice conditions to foes (weaken and cracked armor respectively).  Thanks ANet for the boost to Weaken Armor!  Finally, Barbs and MoP are excellent sources of damage in conjunction with minions.  I love to see the number 42 appear on my screen from MoP.  In fact, it is more like a parade with so many 42′s, 37′s and 17′s on my screen

I have to say, despite its effectiveness, I am flat tired of Spiteful Spirit.  I’m considering trying out a blood magic build for a bit and letting Master of Whispers take over the SS carnage.  I haven’t done much with Blood Magic lately and I think it is time for a change.

*wanders off to check PvX wiki for some blood magic builds*