Hi, my name is Symbolic and I play a condition necromancer for Team Paradigm(although I love playing power builds!). In this blog I’ll be posting what I think of the abilities/traits then give a general consensus of what I feel needs changing. This may be poorly written and for that I apologize as it’s most likely going to be a huge wall of text that’s poorly formatted/worded etc. However I hope you can read through it and give me feedback on your thoughts. This is just a general summation on everything about the necro, from weapons skill to utilities and traits, I’ve given my thoughts on all of them to hopefully offer my insight and thoughts to the necromancer community, from a pvpers perspective.

Necromancer Weapons

Staff

Autoattack

The staff is the most versatile weapon the necro has available, the auto attack is very lacklustre with a slow attacking animation, terrible tracking (you can move side to side and get obstructed), and a fairly long cast time. Despite all of these negatives it’s a great weapon for stacking life force, the necromancer’s mechanic. It also hits fairly hard in a power build. The staff is extremely weak to blinds.

Mark of Blood

Mark of Blood is a great group utility although unreliable in providing regen, however this is mainly a condition based attack, however it’s a useful ability regardless of whichever spec you’re running. It stacks 3 bleeds and a good amount of regen (depending on your healing power and boon duration). Overall, a good skill.

Chilblains

A great skill regardless of spec, it’s chill and poison, always beneficial conditions to have on your opponent.

Putrid Mark

This mark has multiple uses, I’m not entirely sure on the team range of the condition transfer, however it will transfer conditions from you to your opponent without the range between mattering. It’s useful to save this skill, however it has a relatively short cooldown when you factor in weapon swaps etc. This skill also deals a lot of damage in a power build and can be comboed with Chilblains to produce Area Weakness, 10 seconds (Maybe 5? unsure).

Reaper’s Mark

Similar to Chilblains, this skill is great in any spec you are running, it’s AoE crowd control for a second (longer with more condition duration).

Axe

Rending Claws

This ability is only useful really in a power build, and even when used in a power build does not do a lot of damage and is weak to the retaliation boon. The vulnerability stacking is a nice niche to the weapon however due to the low damage of the weapon it feels very poor.

Ghastly Claws

The ‘burst’ damage of the axe, in a power build this can do a lot of damage to squishy targets, however, similar to rending claws this ability is weak to retaliation due to hitting multiple times for mediocre amounts of damage. The life force stacking of the weapon is nice, however I’d like to see this moved to Rending Claws.

Unholy Feast

This is probably the best ability on the Axe, great in AoE situations to grant yourself retaliation based on the number of people you hit, doing a little damage and crippling targets hit. A nice ability however the other skills on the axe don’t really compliment Unholy Feast.

Scepter

Autoattack (Blood Curse, Putrid Curse)

The autoattack on scepter is the best midrange autoattack the necro has. It’s not based on projectiles, which generally means it won’t get a similar trait to the engineer increased range on pistol, which would be nice. However due to the non projectile nature of the scepter, it means the autoattack is instant application and can’t be blocked by sanctuary, wall of reflection and such abilities similar. This is a condition based attack due to the low scaling of power, plus the application of bleeding and poison.

Grasping Dead

Another condition based attack the necromancer has, it applies bleeding and cripple in an area base, it’s strong due to the AoE nature of the spell. Helping the necromancer kite his foe(s).

Feast of Corruption

This ability is amazing in a power build, it does a lot of damage when the enemy has a lot of conditions. It can do moderate damage in a condition build, however in a condition build it’s only used to add a little extra damage when you have cooldowns, or to gain a little lifeforce. Overall I’m confused this is on the scepter with such low power ratios on the autoattack. It’d make more sense to have an evasion ability similar to the ranger shortbow.

Dagger (Main hand)

Autoattack (Necrotic Slash/Stab/Bite)

A very strong autoattack when you can land it, the short range of the necromancer’s dagger means the necromancer can be easily kited with this weapon while chilled/crippled. You should only really use the dagger main hand in a power build. The first 2 autoattacks do nice damage, however the third is amazing in terms of damage. If you can consistently attack somebody with dagger they’re going to take a lot of damage. I feel like the range could be increased to 300 though (similar to elementalist air whip.) Amazing with quickness.

Life Siphon

A nice ability for the dagger when not in range, it does fairly good damage complimented with a little healing (although the heal doesn’t scale well with healing power). It’s also a great ability for when you know your opponent is going to stealth, starting to cast this will keep the damage on the enemy and also heal you.

Dark Pact

This is the defining ability of the dagger and what enables the power necromancer to do damage. It sets up the necromancer to combo into a flesh golem, wells or even just dagger autoattacks. The immobilize is on for a huge amount of time (this only scales so much more with the spite traitline and condition duration) which makes it great for peeling.

Dagger Offhand

Deathly Swarm

This is a nice ability for transferring conditions, it also has a potential aoe blind component too. However this can be a little unreliable due to its slow projectile animation and tendency to not transfer conditions. Due to this it’s not able to use it to make reliable clutch plays.

Enfeebling Blood

The dagger #5 ability is fairly strong, in my opinion weakness is a very underrated condition. It hampers the opponent into only having 2.5% endurance regen per second, and it effectively counters vigor. The glancing blows feature is nice however most burst builds are centred around critical hits, thus glancing blows aren’t reliable. To be able to apply this for a considerable time in an area leads me to think it’s fairly strong and is able to be used in a condition build (extra bleeds, weakness), or a power build as weakness is just a generally strong condition overall. – This ability’s landing time needs fixing as it takes a second or two after casting just to land.

Warhorn

Wail of Doom

Very nice for power builds with a dagger due to the range requirement needed by dagger. Generally a strong offhand weapon especially with runes of the mesmer combined with the trait giving a very long daze, in frontal aoe area. The range (600) is huge for an aoe daze. The range is also what makes it such a strong combination with the dagger, due to similar ranges.

Locust Swarm

The only necromancer weapon skill which grants swiftness, although this does grant swiftness it’s fairly annoying for hitting random objects and landing you in combat therefore slowing you. Though this really helps necro mobility due to not having skills similar to rush/ride the lightning etc. I feel it works best on power builds though with the dagger catching people and being able to chase them. The cripple feature of it is unreliable however this feels like an added bonus when using a warhorn with dagger. – This also grants life force when hitting opponents, useful when in a group of opponents for a slight extra life force generation.

Focus

Reaper’s Touch

I actually love the idea behind this ability, but as I’ve said before with other necromancer projectile based skills – It’s unreliable. It’s got an aoe potential with a regen based feature for allies. However in most cases you want this to bounce from your foe to you, back to your foe for maximum damage but this is generally never going to happen. Sometimes the projectile can also be blocked etc. What I’d like to be seen done to this ability is to maybe make it castable on allies giving necromancers more in the term of reliable group support. Plus an increase on the bounce range, and maybe even the cast time changing. At the moment it feels like it’s an unreliable projectile which is going to give your foe 4 stacks of vulnerability with a fairly long cast time.

– Although when these bounces do connect the vulnerability and life force it provides are very useful.

Spinal Shivers

This ability is amazing, and I would contemplate using the focus if it weren’t for the abysmal cast time. 1 and ¼ seconds is just too long to cast something, during that time it’s fairly easy to be crowd controlled, blinded etc. It’s a great ability for chasing with several seconds of chill and the boon removal feature is another aspect fairly unique aspect of the necromancer.

Overall on necromancer weapons, what needs changing?

The staff autoattack is too slow, it’s easily sidestepped and the cast time is fairly long. Although I feel if the projectile speed was increased this would fix most of the issues with the staff.

The axe needs more damage, or a more defined role. It’s 600 range, the same as the dagger #2 and #3, which both provide more than the axe does. Higher power scaling with the autoattack and #2 could benefit the weapon a lot, perhaps an increased range to 900 could also benefit it a lot, giving the necromancer a power weapon usable from a good mid range. Maybe a cleave? I’m unsure. The axe doesn’t do enough damage to justify using it and it doesn’t have the range to be used with a squishy build as it won’t kill people before you kill them. 600 Range is also very susceptible to most gap closers.

Feast of Corruption, I’m unsure of the choice of this ability, due to the scepter being fairly bad in a power build. I’m sure it could work in a carrion build maybe? But comparing it with the other scepter abilities it doesn’t really fit. As I said before I’d appreciate some form of escape similar to the rangers, maybe an evade ability with swiftness tied in? Or another condition to be usable on an opponent? This weapon doesn’t fit into condition builds at the moment.

Dagger main hand auto attack while very strong damage wise is easily kited, I’d like to see the range increased to 300 similar to the elementalist Lightning Whip. Although I wouldn’t add a cleave as it’d be way too strong.

Deathly swarm – The projectile could use a speed increase for reliability(I’ve had times casting it where somebody would get line of sight on the projectile’s path midway). Plus, the bounce could use a range increase and the condition transferring could be more reliable.

Enfeebling Blood – This could use a shorter delay between the casting of the ability and the ability actually landing.

Wail of Doom – There’s a bug with this ability which allows it to be used through block, this needs fixing.

Locust swarm – Proccing on objectives while running around the map (Khylo) is frustrating as it puts you in combat.

Focus – Reaper’s touch, As said before the projectile is unreliable, needs an increased range on the bounce and maybe the ability to cast it on friendlies.

Spinal Shivers – this ability is amazing, however as said the cast time is way too long.

Utility Skills

For utility skill I’ll just go over each set, giving a brief opinion on each then do a summary of the set.

Healing Skills

Consume Conditions

This is overall the best healing skill the necromancer has, I’d even go as far to say this is the best heal skill in the game. It’s amazing, nothing about it needs changing.

Blood Fiend

This skill is way too unreliable to use, I haven’t actually used it in a while however I think the healing from the bone fiend is minimal and because it needs to get into melee range to heal you it’s most likely going to die. The healing you get from this with current minion AI is fairly bad.

Well of Blood

This combined with traits is a great group support heal. It provides a light field and scales very well with healing power, meaning you can play a support orientated necromancer with this heal.

Overall – Healing Skills

I feel consume conditions is the strongest heal the necromancer has, with well of blood also being a great support utility while also providing major healing over time when geared properly. Blood fiend is just way too gimmicky at the moment to even be considered a good heal.

Signets

Plague Signet

At launch of the game this skill was borderline broken, it would always transfer conditions, remove a stun and ignored blinds, blocks and invulnerabilities. However I feel it’s fallen out of favour, it’s a nice group utility with the condition transfer every few seconds, but if you’ve got 5 team mates and you’re transferring one condition every 2-3 seconds from one of them. In a bigger perspective you’re not nearly doing as much, the passive ends up becoming a hindrance because you don’t want to generally transfer to the enemy what you’re taking from your team. If I were to change this I’d make it a condition removal on active if the transfer did not go off due to blind, block etc. However I’m not entirely sure where that would put it on the balance perspective.

Signet of Spite

This is the worst signet the necromancer has available, it hits the enemy with a little direct damage and a small selection of conditions on short times, for a 90 second cooldown with near a second casting time it’s just not worth taking in any situation. The passive doesn’t really do much either, a bonus 90 power isn’t all that great. To make this skill viable I’d suggest removing the cast time, the direct damage component and the cooldown of the skill to 40 seconds.

Signet of the Locust

This signet was buffed recently, to match the thief movement speed on one of their signets. This change was probably needed. The movement speed on this allows necros to roam more, being close to the swiftness boon. However the active isn’t all that impressive, sure it’s a heal with direct damage, but there are just many different utilities you could use to be defensive, I don’t think this utility is too great for necromancers. I could see it potentially working on a dagger spec or some form of tank spec however the dagger spec is the only thing I feel that would improve from the mobility increase.

Signet of Undeath

This ability is probably the most used skill in tournament play at the moment. It’s the best res skill in the game, although it still is on a 2 second cast time with a 3 minute cooldown. I feel that this skill is balanced, the passive is a little bonus however I feel it could use a change, increasing the life force gain, as it stands at the moment it takes 30 seconds to even touch your life force pool with the passive effect from the signet. I’m not saying it could use a major buff, just a miniscule increase to the passive. Perhaps 1.5% lifeforce over 3 seconds.

Overall – Signet Skills

Overall I feel the signet skills are in a poor state at the moment, especially the actives with their long cooldowns and their ineffective capabilities. There’s nothing that makes me want to take a signet. I feel signets are better matched to power variations of necromancers at the moment, due to their ability to grant conditions to enemies without having access to the condition usually (through plague signet or signet of spite). Signet of Undeath is by far the strongest necromancer signet in terms of group play at the moment.

Corruption Skills

Note – you can generally transfer all of the negative effects from corruption skills

Blood is Power

When this ability was buffed, it was a huge buff. This skill is great for damage, 10 stacks of might however you look at it is always a great multiplier for your damage and this ability compliments both power specs and condition. It can be a little buggy with application of the bleeds however the 10 stacks of might never fail to appear which only makes this skill more tempting to take.

Corrosive Poison Cloud

I feel this skill is vastly underrated, it’s great poison and weakness uptime. I just feel it’s not worth the utility slot because other classes do it better. Thieves do the exact same thing with poison and weakness from a shortbow when traited with weakness. The engineer can apply poison. This skill is great however I generally don’t take it because there are better slot utilities to take. This skill is great, just I can’t fit it onto my skill bar. It’s a control based ability and if you can make your enemy sit in it, that’s perma poison and weakness. Amazing. However, it’s getting the enemy to sit in it and if you’ve already got a thief/engineer on your team your utilities are better spent elsewhere, since you can also apply aoe poison with chillbains, scepter auto attack and weakness with weakening blood. – The application could be a lot quicker with more ticks to exemplify the target is permanently poisoned and weakened over the same amount of time.

Corrupt Boon

This ability in my opinion is one of the best in the game, for example you corrupt somebody with protection, that’s 33% damage reduction into 3% increased damage taken. A 36% increase in direct damage taken from the target. You can corrupt stability to fear, it’s just a great ability to focus on a target. It’s not necessary to have however I feel it’s one of the strongest abilities in the game. It’s problem? It’s unreliable. Although because it has a fairly short cooldown it’s not the end of the world. It needs making into an instant skill, the current self-poison on the ability means if you cast it slightly in the wrong facing area it’s just going to go on cooldown and you’re going to get poison onto yourself. It’s an unforgiving ability in that sense. Regardless, in my opinion, it’s one of the strongest utilities the necromancer has.

Epidemic

This skill at the moment is overpowered, it’s too powerful for it’s 15 (12s when traited) cooldown. It’s too good at what it does. This is because of bugs though, it casts regardless of line of sight, blind, block or dodge roll. Making this ability into something that can actually miss would definitely be more balanced and add more counter play to epidemic.

Overall – Corruption Skills

In my opinion I feel that corruption skills are very strong for the necromancer, any of them are great to have on your utility bar and they work in near enough every spec. A few bug fixes to corrupt boon and epidemic would balance these out even more, however they’re not overly strong at the moment (maybe the exception of epidemic). I think if they want to keep epidemic in its current state (of avoiding los/block/blind etc) they should increase the cooldown to 30 seconds and remove the cast time.

Minions

I feel minions are fairly strong in some aspects as they don’t scale off the necromancers stats, just trait modifiers.

Bone Fiend

Bone fiend in my opinion isn’t viable in a pvp setting, it’s too unreliable it roots itself to root an opponent which makes it easy to just run away from, the actual effect takes too long when trying to cast the immobilize. It does mediocre damage and dies way too easily, I could see this being a very viable tool for a power necromancer if the immobilize were more reliable.

Bone Minions

These are my favourite minions, they do so much damage and avoid block. They’re disposable which means you’re not relying on them to do anything except explode. AI can sometimes be frustrating to deal with but I feel these are amazing in burst based power builds. They can even be used in condition builds for extra burst damage since they don’t scale with the necromancers stats.

Flesh Wurm

This is the equivalent we have to a shadowstep, blink, lightning flash. This is essentially a repositioning tool which is very strong if it weren’t for the long initial cast time. The flesh wurm is fairly strong in single target damage, although it does miss a lot of damage due to buggy projectile issues. Flesh wurm is a nice repositioning tool but it’s unforgiving if you cast it before a fight. I’d suggest something similar with the engineers turrets here. Giving the option to reduce the cooldown by something similar to an engineer picking his turrets up. The only other problem with the flesh wurm is making it focus on your target, it’s fairly squishy without traits and the projectile issues.

Shadow Fiend

The shadow fiend is an okay minion, but it’s very squishy, it’s not disposable and you’re relying on it for a blind which may not cast until it’s too late. The fact it can teleport to somebody within 1200 range and blind is great however I feel like I’ve used this before and the blind has taken way too long to apply. I would never use this in a tournament pvp setting.

Overall – Minions

Minions are in a weird position, you can’t make them unkillable with their current damage otherwise it’d just be frustrating to fight a minion based necromancer. Their damage isn’t really the issue, their reliability is. I think ArenaNet should follow on from bone minions into making these minions disposable, at the moment if one of them dies it’s a utility slot gone. Their active effects should dispose of the minions and provide a strong effect. The bone fiend could apply a stronger immobilize that’s instant and has a longer duration. Make these abilities more reliable with stronger effects and I’m sure they could be viable.

Spectral Skills

Spectral Armor

I like this ability, but the cooldown is way too long and there’s always one comparison I make when I look at this ability and that’s armor of earth. Armor of earth provides protection and stability. We gain our class mechanic instead of the stability. The only thing being if necros go into death shroud while we have spectral armor on, it’s wasted. This needs a shorter cooldown to match protection based utilities of other classes and not similar to something that provides stability. I think this ability should have a base 60 second cooldown due to its stun break feature.

Spectral Grasp

This is such a fun ability, the only problems with it are pathing issues. Comparing it to magnet, the cooldown differences are 5 seconds when spectral grasp provides a chill, although is a projectile. Magnet also goes through block abilities however that’s an engineer problem, and I think this ability is balanced where it’s at right now as the life force gain is just a bonus from this. The only problem is getting it to hit an enemy through a crowded area. Great for chasing and disrupting enemy positioning.

Spectral Walk

Spectral walk is strong and I’d say it was stronger in world vs world than in pvp. It’s a great ability, and the buff it received was amazing to select when you can reposition yourself within a time window. It’s effectively a shadowstep for the necromancer with a return feature (although the necromancer has to run instead of an instant teleport). This ability is fine where it’s at also functioning as a double stun breaker too.

Spectral Wall

This skill is useful, however I feel it’s a little gimmicky. You can use it for group protection and providing vulnerability to foes. If they increased maybe the size of it and the functionality of the combo field (ethereal) I think this ability could be used more. Maybe also if it had an active effect similar to the mesmer focus #4. Something maybe similar to providing what would happen for opponents going through the wall just in an area for enemies who haven’t ran through the wall.

Overall – Spectral Skills

Overall in my opinion, I feel the spectral skills are strong where they are, aside from spectral armor needing a cooldown change and maybe a little change to spectral walk. Other than those 2 fairly minor things spectral skills are fine.

Well Skills

Well of Corruption

This is essentially the area of effect version of corrupt boon. Although it doesn’t corrupt every boon it’s still a strong skill nevertheless. It’s amazingly useful on groups of clumped enemies especially on small nodes in pvp. It’s essentially area denial.

Well of Darkness

This skill is great for avoiding melee bursts or peeling for your teammates due to 5 seconds of near immunity to damage within a small area. I think it could use a cooldown change to 45 seconds as a minute is already long and means you’re going to near enough have to take cooldown reduction in make this skill usable. I compare this skill to the engineer’s smoke bomb, which is doesn’t provide as many blinds however it is on a shorter cooldown. I feel the change to a 45 second cooldown would make this ability more viable in tournament pvp.

Well of Power

In my opinion, one of the most underrated and underused skills in the game, however that’s because it’s not too reliable in what it converts and converts one condition per second. As said before this could benefit from a cooldown change, although it is a really strong skill as it stands. The biggest problem is this doesn’t offer the necromancer pressure which is generally the main reason of running a necromancer at the moment. To pressure the enemy teams into using their defensive cooldowns. Just to give a perspective on this skill, these are what the conditions turn into and this is an aoe basis. The length or stack of the condition doesn’t matter and my times may be a little off.

Burning > Aegis (5s)

Blind > Fury (6s)

Weakness > 3x Might (12s)

Vulnerability > Protection (6s)

Poison > Regeneration (6/12s)

Confusion > Retaliation (6s)

Cripple > Swiftness (12s)

Bleeding > Vigor (12s)

Chill > Vigor (12s)

These boons are very strong, in my opinion the vigor and protection are the strongest as bleeding and vulnerability are probably the most seen conditions in the game, to turn these regardless of time or stack amount into a boon on a static timer is amazing.

Well of Suffering

This ability is all about the damage, it stacks vulnerability and with a power build can do a lot of damage in an area. I think this ability is fine where it’s at.

Overall – Wells

In my opinion, at the moment wells are strong since they offer good area support or pressure. They provide darkness/light fields too, overall generally strong. Some cooldown changes could be used for the wells on 60 second cooldowns. I’d even go as far to say making well of power more viable is to give it a 60 second base cooldown and combine the effects of well of corruption and well of power, giving the option to make a new well. However this could be overpowered, my biggest reasoning for this is the necromancer wants to deal out pressure meaning well of power is generally unused in tournaments. Combining these effects gives the necromancer even more strengths, maybe too many. But the possibility of a new skill is always enticing.

Elite Skills

Lich Form

This ability is amazing for power necromancers, insanely good. It gives you a huge boost in vitality, precision and power, it always works insanely well with a time warp. It’s problem? You’re a huge lich! It’s easy to see that you’re in this menacing form but I think this ability Is fine where it’s at. The responsiveness and general projectile issues are a little problem in lich form however that’s not to say this isn’t strong. Minions also are killed off when you go into this form – this needs fixing!

Tip: Using abilities before you enter lich form (wells, marks) means they’ll scale with your new power in lich form (3.5k+ power with huge critical chance wells!).

Plague Form

I love this ability, it’s amazing. It gives you a huge spike in toughness and vitality. You’re not unkillable in this form but you’re a great damage sponge. It’s very weak to conditions, which is a little ironic however this ability is balanced where it’s at. I haven’t tested it but it could also have issues with despawning minions. It’s essentially a 20 second well of darkness with added poison and chill (when traited). Useful for avoiding damage, absorbing damage and can help with peeling for your team.

Tip: This ability works with the chilling darkness trait meaning you can spam blind, chill and poison on your enemy.

Summon Flesh Golem

As I’ve said before with minions. It’s not disposable. That’s not to say it’s not strong however the pathing and AI can be very frustrating. It could be attacking a different target while you’re wanting to use its ability. It’s great for 1v1 fights – But the necro isn’t a great duelling profession in my opinion. It’s easily killed and not usable to great effect in a tournament setting.

Tip: If you cast the charge into the wall, enemies can take a huge deal of damage. (I’ve instagibbed thieves with this before!)

Overall – Elite Skills

In my opinion, the necromancer has a great duo of elite skills usable. The flesh golem can be strong, but it’s too unreliable! This is a problem with minions in general though. Necromancers can’t complain about Plague and Lich Form due to their effectiveness. These are potentially 2 of the strongest elites in the game at the moment that offer the user a huge power or defensive spike.

Death Shroud – The Class Mechanic

Life Blast

This is a great ability when used in a power spec however the damage falls dramatically below 50% life force. Cast time is long though, if it were to be halved, it would be a very welcomed buff.

Dark Path

I love this ability, it’s a gap closer for the power necromancer, chills the opponent (and aoe chills, although the aoe is small) and adds bleeds to the main target. It’s great in pretty much most necromancer specs. There are a few issues with projectiles however.

Tip: If someone has magnetic aura/reflection on if you use this it’ll bring them to you, although you will suffer from chill and bleeds!

Doom

This is solid, it’s the staple of death shroud. An instant cast fear, regardless of if you’re cc’ed. It’s what gives necromancers the ability to avoid burst by a single target since it fears instantly.

Life Transfer

A general solid ability, it increases your death shroud uptime, applies bleeds through sigils/traits. Doing nice damage in a power build and mediocre damage in a condition spec.

The Problem with Death Shroud

The problem with death shroud is it’s essentially a damage sponge, the only incentives for condition necromancers are to use Dark Path and Doom, Life Transfer if you’re tanking a little damage, or want to deal a little extra while in Death Shroud too. Life Blast should never be used in a condition build unless the opponent is critically weak. You’re just saving Life force for when you get focussed, there’s no incentive to use it beyond what I’ve mentioned. Necromancer doesn’t have any real survivability tools beyond plague to survive onslaughts other than Death Shroud, it has no Endure Pain, Elixir S, Mist form etc. Saying this, I feel this is kind of what ArenaNet wants, choosing between expending your life force for extra damage or survivability. Alls I’m saying is the damage isn’t worth the survivability you gain from it.

The death shroud UI also needs improving, you can’t see your cooldowns, health or boons/conditions.

Traits

Note – Minor Traits – These are basically passive effects for going into a tree, some are worth picking up alone however a lot of them will be simply just added benefits for getting major traits.

Another Note – Some traits take place at % health, the reason I hate some of these traits is they’re not triggered by condition damage, so they’re a little unreliable. I would like to see this changed to trigger on condition damage.

Spite

Passive – Power / Condition Duration

I feel the passive to this tree is very useful for power based necros, it helps with the vulnerability, immobilizes, chill etc and gives you increased power, what more could you want? You can even go into this tree as a hybrid condition damage/power necromancer due to the scaling of the condition duration which is always helpful. It could be worth noting I’d feel more comfortable in changing the critical damage from Soul Reaping and the Critical damage, however for the most part these passive effects are generally fine.

Minor Traits

Parasitic Bond

The idea behind this is nice for PvE, although not entirely useful in PvP.

Death Into Life

Getting Bonus Passive stats is always nice, this is only an extra 100 healing power at 2000 power, but every little helps.

Siphoned Health

While I like the idea behind this, you’re gaining might when you’re under 25% health. You’re basically trying to survive at this point and you don’t want to be hit, it’s kind of counter intuitive. I’d like to see this perhaps changed with Target the Weak. As as power necromancer you generally want more damage whenever you can have it and you’re pretty much always applying conditions on a necromancer, getting rewarded for that with damage is great.

Major Traits

Death’s Embrace

The increase in downed damage is nice however gimmicky, although most classes have this trait. It’s a nice addition to the power necromancer as it provides a huge boost to downed damage. It can also be combined with wells before you go down to increase their damage by 50%.

Spiteful Talisman

This is great if you’re using a focus.

Spiteful Removal

In terms of pvp, I don’t like this, it’s more of a pve trait.

Signet Mastery

This is a nice trait, although I’d like to see something done with signets that keeps their passive effects still applying after usage of the signet.

Spiteful Spirit

This is generally a solid trait for a tankier necromancer, retaliation is a great boon to have and it’s only amplified better when you can tank more hits.

Reaper’s Might

This is a nice benefit to Life Blast, giving it a passive effect. It’s generally a solid trait. Although you never really want to be spamming 1 in your death shroud in a condition build, maybe from afar in a power build if you’re in no threat to taking focus.

Spiteful Marks

Solid trait in general increases the damage from marks although the marks don’t have high base damages aside from Putrid Mark. I’d like to see this given a little buff, maybe an extra duration to the conditions given by marks.

Signet Power

I don’t like this trait, you can’t really spam signets for might. You’re better off using blood is power which outscales this trait by tenfold. Especially on such a short cooldown. The necromancer signets are on such high base cooldowns that this just isn’t worth picking up.

Training of the Master

I love this trait when I use bone minions, it’s worth using if you’re just using bone minions. I’ve seen them crit upwards of 4k. Although this is a slightly niche trait.

Chill of Death

I like the idea behind this trait although I’m sure it’s not working intentionally. I’d love to see this trait buffed to 33% health for the effect to happen.

Axe Training

This trait is kind of ‘meh’. It gives a 15% damage increase to axes only while Close to Death will give you a base 20% damage increase to opponents under 50% health. The cooldown reduction is nice but the axe has short cooldowns anyways.

Close to Death

This is the main reason you come into Spite for. That extra damage is amazing, 20% is nothing to be laughed at. It’s also all direct damage, utility skills, both sets of weapons and death shroud skills.

Overall – Spite Traitline

While I like the Spite traitline the initial traits in here are kind of weak and it all feels like they’re just passive benefits as you really want close to death from this trait line. There’s nothing notably useful I want other than Close to Death. The traits would probably need an overhaul in my honest opinion, because at the moment they’re just minor increases in different skills. They don’t add too many effects to what you’re already doing. There are a few little niche aspects such as the might and retaliation, but it doesn’t effect the combat you’re doing as a whole in my honest opinion. These are only solid because they do what they say. There’s nothing that wows me in this traitline aside from maybe Chill of Death and Close to Death.

Curses

Passive – Precision/Condition Damage

This is pretty solid, it increases the synergy with sigils (eg. Sigil of Earth) plus also synergizes with 5pt minor trait.

Minor Traits

Barbed Precision

This is very weak at the moment, it needs a buff to something similar to sigil of earth. Give it a 2 second internal cooldown, reduce the proc rate to 30-40% and make the bleed 5 seconds scaling with condition/bleed duration. At the moment a 1 second bleed is useless in all honesty, especially since it’s a chance on critical hit.

Furious Demise

This is a nice bonus, nothing more, nothing less. You can use it in a power build for permanent fury if you don’t mind traiting for such, but really it’s just a nice benefit of being 15 points into the tree, who doesn’t want fury? I could potentially like to see this changed with Spiteful Spirit, gaining retaliation whenever you entered death shroud, but I feel like it’s an okay trait and doesn’t detract from the necromancer.

Target the Weak

As said in the Spite overview, I’d love to see this changed with Siphoned Power, due to the fact that this is generally the condition tree, if you’re this far into the tree you’re using conditions. Since conditions gain from might and they’re already on your opponent it makes sense, while you’re getting hit you’re passively increasing the damage you’re doing from conditions already stacked. You don’t need to retaliate entirely to get the benefit of Siphoned Power.

Major Traits

Toxic Landing

I view this trait as more world vs world orientated, most professions have a fall damage trait so I don’t think anything really needs to be done.

Hemophilia

This is great for condition necromancers, 20% extra bleed duration is always great, there’s not much more to say about it.

Chilling Darkness

I love this trait, it’s got great synergy with well of darkness and plague form. Although the necros only blinds outside of those 2 skills are Deathly Swarm and Signet of Spite. Perhaps a blind could be added to scepter #3?

Weakening Shroud

This is another great trait that can be used for condition based necromancer or power. It needs fixing to apply 2 stacks of bleeds however applying weakness to somebody trying to attack you in melee range is always amazing.

Reaper’s Precision

This is a nice tool for increasing your lifeforce, I’d say it was better used on a power spec due to other traits being too good to pass up.

Terror

Due to the buff in the last patch this trait is amazing, it gives condition necromancers a little burst whenever they fear their target, it does a lot of damage and gives the necromancer their own unique damaging condition.

-Scales with condition damage

Master of Corruption

Generally a solid trait, although corruption skills are generally on short cooldowns anyways, a possible change to this would be to remove the self inflicting part of corruption based utilities.

Banshee’s Wail

This trait is a nice extra for warhorn users, it increases the daze duration, insect swarm time and decreases the cooldowns. Could increase the cooldown reduction to 20% although not necessary.

Focused Rituals

This trait is amazing if you’re using wells, you get the ability to cast your wells from afar. Works very well in a power build. Also can be used to support team mates through targeted well of bloods and well of powers.

Spectral Attunement

This is an okay trait, it does feel out of place since most of the spectral based traits are in the soul reaping tree. I don’t feel this trait is worth taking however since the other traits seem so much more fitting for being in the Curses tree, and I doubt I’d want to come this far into the Curses tree just to pick this up.

Lingering Curse

This trait is great for condition necromancers, you have to use scepter to deal condition damage and this only amplifies the damage by increasing the poison and bleed durations applied. The only issue I see with this trait is it only affects to abilities as the scepter #3 doesn’t apply conditions.

Withering Precision

I actually like this trait a lot, it synergizes with the precision gained from being in curses. I think it’s an underrated trait. I would like to see the proc chance increased to 33%. It’s a solid trait which is underused mainly because it doesn’t help with dealing damage although it does pressure the enemy. I’m not entirely sure if this trait has an internal cooldown, however using this with a scepter essentially means you’re sacrificing condition duration to be able to apply weakness more effectively aside from dagger #5. This can also be used with other necromancer weapons to give autoattacks a benefit applying weakness.

Overall – Curses Traitline

I think the Curses traitline synergizes best with a condition build, using a scepter. The traits speak out loud for this. However the trait line is very interesting as it gives other options instead of condition damage. This is my favourite traitline because it can synergize well with multiple builds. I’d say the Curses traitline is fine where it’s at, aside from a few things such as a couple of the minor traits, and a couple of the major traits feeling out of place. Overall though I feel no changes necessarily need to be made. Quality of life changes would be nice however for the time being I feel Curses is fine.

Death Magic

Passive – Toughness/Boon Duration – I feel these are okay, however there are only two traits that scale directly with boon duration.

Minor Traits

Reanimator

There is much discussion over this trait within the necromancer community, and I agree with them, it’s a fairly useless trait. Jagged horrors are only useful when you have multiple of them which this trait does not allow. If I were to choose a trait to have here it’d be natural vigor that the ranger has, since the necromancer does not have any direct access to vigor.

Protection of the Horde

This is okay if you’re running minions, however I don’t like this trait at all. I feel this should be added into one of the minions traits as a bonus effect rather than this minor trait, and giving this trait spot something new and innovative.

Deadly Strength

This trait is fairly basic, it gives you extra power for being tanky. Not too many qualms with this one.

Major Traits

Dark Armor

While the idea behind this trait is to make necromancers a little more tanky, it falls short due to it only applying on 3 of the necromancers skills, which are the Axe #2, Dagger #2 and Deathshroud #4. I just don’t find this all too useful, sure an extra 400 toughness is nice but it’s only when you’re channelling a skill.

Greater Marks

This is one of the greatest traits available to necromancers using a staff, it’s in the adept tier too meaning it’s super easy to get. It means you can interrupt a guardian’s shelter heal putting it on a full cooldown, your staff marks are the same size as your wells with this trait. Overall a great trait.

– Although this trait is bugged in terms of the tooltip aoe size on the #2, #4 and #5.

Minion Master

For any minion centric build this is a great trait to have although I’d say this was more of a pve orientated trait, due to in my opinion, minions being fairly useless. Even if you only pick up Bone Minions this will reduce the cooldown by 4 seconds, not worth it in my opinion.

Ritual of Protection

This is a nice trait for anybody wanting to be able to withstand some pressure, it synergizes very well with well of blood, darkness and power.

Staff Mastery

This is a nice ‘filler’ trait, however for the adept traitline it’s overshadowed by unblockable marks. It would be nice if this trait was in some way tied in with unblockable marks.

Shrouded Removal

This would be useful if necromancer’s could see their conditions in death shroud, but at the moment the current ui doesn’t allow for it. It’s essentially a condition removal every 10 seconds just not in the same mold as the guardian’s. I don’t really like it, sacrificing your death shroud cooldown for a removal of one condition, when if you’re using a staff, dagger offhand and consume conditions you’ve already got 3 ways to remove conditions.

Spiteful Vigor

This trait is nice for anybody going for a tanky build combined with Spiteful Spirit, essentially a retaliation build, however it is a little niche and on a necromancer you don’t generally want to be tanking hits for a prolonged period.

Reaper’s Protection

This trait is in my opinion, amazing. A 2 second fear whenever somebody crowd controls you? It gives you the tool to mitigate damage if you have no life force available or Doom is on cooldown. Great trait overall and worth taking in any spec if you’re this far into the death magic tree.

Death Shiver

I simply don’t like this trait, I could see it being useful to increase your aoe damage while using Life Transfer, however having to be close. The maximum this can stack upto with 100% condition duration is 6 stacks, 6% more damage for being close to somebody for near 20 seconds while in Death Shroud, death shroud rarely even lasts that long. This trait needs removing/changing.

Flesh of the Master

This trait is useful if you’re using minions and don’t want them to die, it feels more pve centric. However as I’ve said before about minions I feel they should be more disposable if they’re to become useful in a pvp environment. I’d never take this trait because I don’t use minions.

Death Nova

The poison cloud from this trait is huge, one of my main reasons for wanting minions to become more disposable. The area is similar to that of wells or a greater mark. It will also weaken the enemy for 4+ seconds depending on your condition duration. This could be a viable trait for pvp but the only minion this works with at the moment is the bone minions due to being able to dispose of it when you want and essentially create the poison cloud where you want to.

Necromatic Corruption

I love the idea behind this trait, however since I don’t use minions I’ve rarely used it. However as I’ve said before, minions are unreliable which therefore means this trait is unreliable. They’re easily killed essentially nullifying this trait, which is a grandmaster trait.

Overall – Death Magic Traitline

Death Magic has some interesting traits. It’s mainly centred around minions however it also looks to increase the staff’s effectiveness aswell as wells. Due to this being centred around minions I’ve never wanted to get more than 20 in this traitline. Unblockable marks and reaper’s protection are the highlights of this traitline and what make it worth going into. I’d love to see Unblockable marks and the staff cooldown somehow fused together to give room for a new trait. It needs some traits buffing to make them feel useful, but as a whole if the traits were brought upto scratch and minions were somehow changed to make them worth using (in my opinion), I’d potentially go into this traitline for more than unblockable marks and reaper’s protection, perhaps even different traits.

Blood Magic

Passive – Vitality/Healing Power

I think these 2 stats fit this traitline best. Although there are issues with the healing power gained – where is it going to be useful? If the vampiric traits were to scale this would be a very tempting traitline.

Minor Traits

Full of Life

Standard regeneration trait, generally borderline across all classes. This is fine.

Vampiric

A very unique minor trait, I’d love to see this scale with healing power in order to make a siphoning build more viable, maybe something similar to the current 25 with a 5-7% scaling on healing power. It’s a nice minor trait, however you can’t focus on a siphoning build. The ‘true’ damage part of it is fine, it’s the healing I would like to see increased.

Note – This trait can be a pain if an elementalist is using Shocking Aura while you’re sat in well of blood as this will trigger the stun.

Blood to Power

A nice minor trait, a little extra bonus for when your health is above a certain threshold. Would like to see it increased to 10%, however, similar to other classes with a 10% damage increase when a certain threshold is met.

Major Traits

Dagger Mastery

A generic cooldown trait, would like to see it increased to a 20% cooldown reduction similar to the staff.

Bloodthirst

Would be useful if healing power affected the 15 point minor trait, and Vampiric precision, as it stands it’s a nice boost for the vampiric traits, however I don’t feel like these are worth specializing into.

Mark of Evasion

This trait is amazing when combined with Greater Marks and Soul Marks, they synergize so well. There is a slight bug with this trait, it only actually stacks 2 bleed stacks. However regardless this trait is still amazing when you have just unblockable marks, it increases your damage and grants you more regeneration.

Ritual of Life

I like this trait although it feels more pve centric, I’m fairly certain it will give the resurrector the well of blood initial heal. However you really need to stack healing power if you want the well’s area of effect to make much of a difference. I could see this being used on a supporting necromancer, however you generally want a lot of tanky stats if you’re reviving somebody. It also works with signet of undeath which is useful, however the well will only spawn at your location. It’s a nice trait however the resurrecting requirement makes me feel it’s more of a pve trait. As a necro you don’t really want to be in the middle of the fight ressing people in a pvp environment, that’s why most necromancers take signet of undeath in pvp.

Vampiric Precision

As I’ve said before with vampiric traits, if they scaled based upon healing power they’d be worth taking, however at the moment they don’t and I don’t feel they’re viable.

Transfusion

A group wide heal on 40/32 second cooldown sounds nice, however the healing is fairly low and doesn’t heal yourself (unless mid channel you run out of life force). If the skill were to scale with healing power I’d see it as being viable. However it is a little buggy at the moment, healing allies with no enemies while using it. It essentially turns your Life Transfer into a 2628 heal over 3 seconds. If it were to scale with healing power I could see this trait being useful in a support spec with well of blood used too.

Vampiric Master

This affects minions, which as I’ve said before are fairly useless for pvp. I feel this trait is the same as the Necromatic Corruption trait, unreliable.

Ritual Mastery

This trait is nice for anybody focussing on a well build, reducing the cooldown on a group heal by 20% is amazing, aswell as group support utilities such as wells. Well worth taking if you’re going to be using wells.

Deathly Invigoration

In a full healing power/support build this will heal for around 600-700, I don’t think this trait is entirely worth it, although you can heal this amount every 5(Near to Death)-10 seconds, I don’t think it’s viable. It just doesn’t do enough healing to be worth it, if you compare an elementalist swapping to water attunement, it heals for a ton more. I’d like to see the healing brought near that area in order to make this trait viable for group utility.

Quickening Thirst

I like the idea behind movement speed traits, they help with dagger users since they rely on movement speed to catch their opponent. However because these don’t stack with swiftness or Signet of the Locust I feel there are more viable traits to pick up. This trait alone isn’t worth going 20 points into Blood Magic for.

Fetid Consumption

If minions were worth using, this trait would be. It’s the necromancer’s empathic bond, although in a weaker form I would say. This lends itself to the disposable minions in that you’re transferring your conditions to them, you don’t care if they die however while they’re alive they’re going to be useful to you by removing conditions. I like this trait, however it’s a problem with minions and not this trait.

Vampiric Rituals

As said with other vampiric traits, this needs to scale with healing power. However there’s currently a bug which means this isn’t affected by Bloodthirst. If proposed changes were made it would make a bunker necromancer viable with being able sustain for prolonged amounts of time with wells. However this trait just isn’t worth it at the moment.

Overall – Blood Magic Traitline

I like the traits in here, they just need buffing in order to be made viable. The life siphoning is very unique to the necromancer, this is a very unique traitline in itself however it’s just not upto scratch with the scalings on some of the traits. There are some traits that are amazing in this tree that are worth taking. A few small buffs would enable this traitline to be viable in a pvp environment. As it currently stands though it doesn’t offer enough to warrant many trait points into.

Soul Reaping

Passive – Life Force Pool/Critical Damage

As said in the Spite traitline I’d like to see the critical damage moved with the condition duration of Soul Reaping. The life force pool percentage is great, it fits into this traitline specifically. It adds extra survivability to the necromancer, and it’s also the class mechanic traitline, similar to other classes specific traitlines.

Minor Traits

Gluttony

A nice passive 5 point trait, it’s not worth going into itself since it’s such a minor benefit, however increasing life force gain by 10% is only going to boost your survivability.

Last Gasp

This is an amazing minor trait, well worth 15 points into the tree just for this. It has a 60 second cooldown as I’ve suggested with the actual utility skill. Amazing trait that offers protection and life force generation when you’re at 50% health, very useful.

Strength of Undeath

Supposed to increase damage by 5%, which I’d like to see changed to 10%. However at the moment it currently increased your power by 10 per 10% life force. This needs to be fixed however the 10% damage over 50% life force would be a nice bonus and would increase synergy with power builds and Life Blast.

Major Traits

Fear of Death

This trait can be useful, a fear on death can delay stomps and help your team secure a revive on yourself. This will also synergize with Master of Terror and Terror traits, this trait is viable. The only trouble with it is on death, so unless you plan on doing a lot of dying this is essentially a precautionary trait.

Vital Persistence

I never like using this trait, I use death shroud as a source of survivability, it doesn’t matter if I’m draining 25% less if I’m still being hit, I can only see this trait being useful if you’re being left to spam life blasts for a prolonged period of time, and even then the difference in a full death shroud bar is 5. I feel this is more of a pve trait than pvp.

Path of Midnight

Decreasing the cooldown on everything to do with your class mechanic (other than accessing it) is great. Reducing the cooldown on your fear, chill with bleeds and a little extra damage with life transfer all adds up. Although I’d like to see the cooldown reduction increased to 20%

Spectral Mastery

A great trait for anybody wanting to use spectral skills. Testing this trait it doesn’t seem to work with last gasp. Spectral skills I’d say were mainly used within power builds, I’d expect this to be used in a power build.

Speed of Shadows

As stated with dagger movement speed in the blood magic tree, this feels useless, especially if you have the swiftness boon. If part of the 15% cooldown reduction trait, I could definitely see this as useful were the two fused. Removing the need to change the cooldown reduction. However at the moment with cripple/chill and swiftness, I don’t feel this is useful as you can’t effectively use the mobility for roaming in death shroud as you’re effectively wasting your class mechanic. Perhaps this could be made into gaining swiftness while in deathshroud for 5 seconds.

Unyielding Blast

This trait is very useful in a power build considering life blast hits hard in a power build, making it pierce is just icing on the cake and I feel that this compliments power builds especially. Stacking vulnerability is a bonus of the trait.

Mark of Revival

For a bunker/support necromancer who wants to res his teammates whenever he can without the use of signet of undeath, this trait is very useful however I feel it is a little overshadowed by other traits in the master section of the traitline. Note – This trait works with unblockable marks and soul marks. Useful synergy.

Decaying Swarm

I don’t like this trait in the slightest, a swiftness proc when you hit 25% with a cripple component. It’s just unreliable, sure it could save your life but I’d rather have something here which would give the necromancer access to vigor, or a different form of access to swiftness. Just not on a proc at 25%, comparing this with something like self-regulating defences of the engineer just shows how terrible it is. Invulnerability for 3 seconds compared with a swiftness proc with a cripple/life force component. The engineer’s trait just feels superior in every way possible.

Master of Terror

This is a great trait for anybody who wants to control their opponent for longer. Although the necro doesn’t have a huge access to the fear condition, only being on 2 skills (more if using reaper’s protection, runes of the nightmare, fear of death and mark of revival) it means the fears you do have are going to 50% more effective. When using this in conjunction with the terror trait, you can make the terror tick twice, dealing quite a bit of burst damage in terms of condition damage.

Soul Marks

I feel this is one of the strongest traits the necromancer has when using a staff. You can 3% life force whenever you dodge and an opponent steps on a mark of blood, great synergy. All of this life force adds up and increases your survivability tremendously. I personally think in terms of survivability this trait overshadows every other trait in soul reaping.

Foot in the Grave

Being the only form of stability a necromancer can access without the use of an elite, this is a great trait if you feel you need the stability. The only problem with this is you need to access your death shroud in order to gain this. Adds to the general survivability of the necromancer and also helps the necromancer in stomping opponents when they’re down.

Near to Death

I feel this trait is only useful if you’re going for a boon centric build involving death shroud (using other traits in other trees which give boons when you enter death shroud). It’s a very niche spec. I would like to see this combined with the foot in the grave trait, however giving the foot in the grave trait a 10 second internal cooldown and creating a new grandmaster trait as this seems a bit lacklustre, especially because your cooldowns in deathshroud last longer than 5 seconds and you don’t usually gain huge amounts of life force every 5 seconds. It allows for more mistakes if you’ve mistimed your death shroud I suppose, however I don’t like this trait.

Overall – Soul Reaping Traitline

In my opinion, the soul reaping traitline is fairly solid. There are some very good traits in there which you can pickup. There are a few which I feel need changing, revamping or removing. Although most of them have their own purpose and can all contribute in pvp. This traitline to me feels more of a survivability traitline which is why I don’t understand the nature of the critical damage. With death shroud being the mechanic of the necromancer, I’d advise most to go 20 points into here to pick up soul marks just for the survivability. It could do with some new traits and improvements to current traits, although saying that there are multiple traits you can pick up in each tier.

Overall – Traits

Overall, the necromancer’s traits aren’t too bad. There are some very useful traits in there which synergize with each other. Some traits do need changing, and I feel the passives on Spite and Soul Reaping should be changed. In my opinion the necromancer doesn’t necessarily need buffs to its traitline, it needs fixes. I’d regard these fixes are more quality of life fixes for the necromancer however. I do also accept there are traits in here which fit the pve necromancer a lot more than they would the pvp necromancer and this is fine, as long as there are a multitude of traits available for both without there being too much imbalance.

In terms of trait lines I don’t feel do enough at the moment, these are Death Magic, Blood Magic and Spite. Spite has useful traits, they just feel uninteresting and some are fairly useless compared to traits in other traitlines. Death Magic and Blood Magic have a few minion traits, which are mainly at fault with minions and not the actual traitlines. They just don’t feel viable into putting 30 points into when you could put your points elsewhere in adept areas of other trees and see more gain from doing so.

The necromancer really just needs fixes, slight buffs to some traits to make them feel usable, however I’d like to see more balance changes before quality of life.

Necromancer’s in PvP at the moment?

I will only outline a basis for condition(tanky) specs and power (burst/squishy) specs within this section, as these are two essentially general specs.

Condition Spec

Currently in my opinion, condition specced necromancers are strong at the moment in pvp, especially when paired with another condition based class that can stack conditions fast due to epidemic. Necromancers are fairly heavily aoe based with their conditions due to staff marks, scepter #2 and dagger #5. Necromancers have boon conversion/removal in corrupt boon, making focussing one target a great option since corrupting stability is effectively a 36% difference in damage, corrupting somebody’s stability while stomping. I’d say necromancer’s are the strongest profession in stopping stomps, if your opponent has stability you can corrupt that, if they don’t have stability you can use terror. If they’re stealthed you can use staff #5.

During the stomping of an enemy, if you just want to do damage, you can. If you can condition bomb a downed target then epidemic this target you’re going to put a lot of hurt on somebody trying to revive this person. Downed people and pets are the strongest epidemic targets since they don’t have condition removal, downed targets especially since people will be trying to resurrect them.

Necromancer’s also have undoubtedly the best resurrection skill in the game, permanently resurrecting somebody on a 3 minute cooldown with a 2 second cast time, the elementalist one doesn’t even come close with such a huge cast time and the mesmer one is a temporary resurrection.

The necromancer’s weakest assets in a condition spec is mobility and survivability(to burst damage mainly). Although survivability is generally okay with life force and plague up, these two are essential to keeping yourself alive if you get jumped by a thief, a warrior is chasing you with a greatsword or an elementalist is throwing fire into your face.

Necromancers in general are also useful for peeling for teammates with weakness, cripple, chill and fears. Corrupt booning a warrior with stability and boons from signet of rage is huge, you’ve made that warrior lose so many boons and decreased his effectiveness.

Power Necromancer’s

While I love to play power necromancer it’s very lacklustre at the moment, while it can potentially put out high burst damage these are usually with wells and dagger. The axe just doesn’t do the damage for a power spec and has no amazing burst available.

As a power necromancer you’re relying on wells and dagger #3 too much to kill things, outside of these 2 skills you’re either chasing somebody like a headless chicken with dagger auto attacks or spamming marks and staff #1 which is fairly ineffective. Power necromancer is generally too much of an all in class, if you pull off the burst it is potentially amazing it’s too much of a one trick pony. Due to the melee nature of daggers you’re so easily kited. Power necromancers have no real gap closer other than death shroud #2 and because of this you’re chasing your target all the time, which is why I recommend a warhorn offhand.

I really do love to play the power necromancer however at the moment it’s too much of a squishy liability in a team, it’s too easily focussed and you need to run lich form in able to perform meaningful burst damage meaning you have no plague form. If the necromancer were to receive skills that would gapclose, give it aoe damage aside from wells then it could potentially become a viable pvp spec. Until then, it’s a one trick pony which dies too easily.

The necro’s weaknesses are very much also – a lack of engaging an enemy when using a dagger, no gapcloser etc. Plus the fact it has such a hard time disengaging.

Here are a couple of tournament clips of me playing power necromancer using a full out damage spec –

http://www.twitch.tv/symbollix/c/1755443

http://www.twitch.tv/symbollix/c/1842249

Viable Necromancer Specs

These specs linked are specs that, in my opinion, are the most viable in a pvp setting, and the most useful. Not all of them are viable in tournament play but they all have their strengths and weaknesses! I may add individual guides to these however for now I will just list the specs.

Glass Cannon Damage Necro –

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-3-0-kHkD0G4sJVJ0;9;4T-9-T08B;11;3589U-V44;1sV2DsV2D5BE

Valkyrie Tanky Necro –

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-3-0;0IFF0G4sJVJ0;9;4T-JJ-46B;113-27;2U-V44;1JF04JF044Bj

Generic Condition Build –

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-34;0kHFG0p3RIkJ0;9;5T99J;113A1;02;029-U-F4a;1hoHAhoHA2Vt

My Current Build –

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-34;0kHFG0p3RIkJ0;9;5J99T;115-1;02;0298U-F4a;1hoHAhoHA2VA

Conclusion

I’ll try to keep this conclusion as short as possible –

All in all, I feel the necromancer is in a fairly good position at the moment in its condition spec. It has utilities which shine in such a build. Where the necro falls short is when it uses a power spec, all of the weapons in this spec have weaknesses which really hamper what the necromancer can do as I’ve listed previously. Another thing which plagues the necro is projectile based skills, this applies to many classes I feel however, there needs to be a higher speed so these projectiles actually hit and people can’t simply run away from them.

Thanks for reading this,

Symbolic of Team Paradigm.