Necromancer suggestions/fixes/etc

This post wasn't created to argue about the following issues. This post isn't here to open up a flame war. This post is for imrpoving necro abilities and rounding the class out.

If you think necros suck, please, take it to another thread.
If you think my ideas are stupid, please, be mature with your reply and back them up with facts and please be constructive.

Yeah, soul reaping is weird without skills. Think about this, I was trying to move away from blood because I didn't really find it useful so I needed to change my energy item thing. So I got the Grim Cesta in Droknar's Forge for 5 Summit Badges. It added 12 energy, but then it said there was a 20% chance to improve soul reaping casting/recharge time. Now wth is up with this, there are no soul reaping skills.

I do think several skills should be changed around, lots of skills are in anoother profession but weaker. Like Soul Leech vs Backfire, Backfire does more damage than soul leech and you really aren't looking to gain health from soul leech that much and its elite. Feast of Corruption needs to be fixed with its 20 recharge time. It should be Shadow damage, then steal X amount of health for EACH hex on those foes, and maybe change recharge to 60. Curses also has lots of useless skills, like Plague signet, Plague touch or sending is way better. A Hex Sending skill would be awesome.

Now about increasing the attribute lvl for death, I don't think thats fair. It would also increase the damage for all the skills, 13 minions are fine the way they are. I really didn't notice till I did GvG, they do a lot of damage. The thing to fix in here is make them attack your target and follow your command. You are their "master", right? This would make them more useful for there damage, and mark of pain . It also would be good if Order of the Vampire/Pain actually worked on them too.

To start, I dont think necros suck. I think necros have the easiest time in pvp in the game, for the most part. Death necros where you get corpses from mobs to be specific. However, they definately need help.

Fully agree with the minions issue. Increasing the levels by two would be a decent solution, since they arent very useful in pvp due to corpse issues, I think perhaps minions should be able to get to lvl 20 as well.

Dark Bond. Agree, just move it.

Blood of the Master. Worthless, its more effective to just keep raising minions most of the time. Reducing the cost would make it more effective, but I dont think it would be effective enough with it only working on 'adjacent' allies. The problem I see with this idea is when a few necros get smart and work together. I realize its a long shot in GW, but it could happen. If the cost was reduced, you could have two necros summoning and one constantly healing, by the end of a mission you would have a 40 minion army! Of course, this still sucks in pvp.

Deathly Swarm. I dont have much of a problem with this spell. If I have any complaints about it, its the fairly low damage.

Soul Reaping. What the hell is soul reaping...oh the necro primary skill. Why the hell would you make a necro primary, all they get is soul reaping.../saracasm off.

I've found a Necro primary is a good disguise for a mesmer or monk secondary. I have NO idea why by necros are usually the last to be messed with in pvp. Even on my warrior, I consider other necros a low priority (this comming from someone who has made one necro, gotten her to droknar's, unlocked MANY skills, and still am going through a remake for the sake of appearance and name issues i had with the first).

Ok soul reaping kicks arse. I hit pvp with my bloodmage necro and soon as a body falls i have the energy i need to drop well of power. With my stats thats +7 hp and +2 energy regen for all my allies near that corpse, great in defending/attacking the lord or king of the hill. Oh add in that i can drop 3 spells in under 5 seconds and steal 250 life. I don't know about you but if its the called target its usually dead, and up goes the well. or if we don't need wells i have the energy to start my barrage all over again. Things start dying around a necro and boom endless energy.

Necros are just underated. Thats the reason they are picked on last. I will admit most people don't know what they are doing with a necro. but those that do.


Necros and mesmers are two of the more difficult classes to play but are extremely powerful if you can get good with them

I"ve only just started playing my necro, and I'm playing this char slowly, so I can't really comment on the so-far-mentioned ideas, except to say that you're right about Deathly Swarm, it does feel awefully slow.

I'd like to add another too... would it unbalance the game to be able to raise minions that are NOT on a timer? Perhaps if their max level was 8 and the max numbers were like 10 or something...

If their max level was 8 they would be worthless against level 20s...

well if you are going to have 20 fiends, make it so lvl 12 death will have lvl 15 or 16 fiends instead of 14. But the only thing that needs to be fixed is making minions target what you target, then if you add weaken armor and barbs, your going to have another fiend/minions to add to your army.

Actually, my N/Mo has been targeted first many times in battles, and when they see me with my minion army I'm also the target there.

And, minions are fine with the health degen, use veratas sacrifice and they live a lot longer.

In my experience with a death necro the minions are not that lacking in power.

My gripes are about them degening too fast and about the slow cast and recharge of raising skills. It isn't like you are not already severly limited by energy and the availability of bodies.

After a battle I'm standing there for like 20-25 seconds trying to heal my minions and raise another 3. My existing minions are 25 seconds nearer death and the rest of the party has run off to start the next battle. If it is a long run to the next battle most minions will be dead by the time I get there unless I stop and heal along the way.

Maybe minion degen and and healing skills should be linked to the number of minions you have. Say minions have a constant -10 degen and depending on your level in death magic you have +10 to +30 regen shared between them. That way you could keep from 1 to 3 minions more like pets and you would spend less time raising new ones, there would also be less conflict of interest over bodies to raise/explode/well.

I agree with others minions ought to attack the called or at least your target.

Okay. My looks on Necros are as followed. Death Magik needs to be boosted, in minions & Soul Reaping. ATLEAST give Soul Reaping atleast two skills, and 3 energy/1 att.. Okay, so maybe my looks on Necros aren't as big as the rest of yours...

actually, in a gvg fiends are very good allies. i mean, im a pure death necro, and i feel i can own with my minions. i got a superior death rune, so i get to have 16 death magic and i get all the other points in oul reaping. why? because with 10-12 points in soul reaping, i can have just as enough mana when someone dies to keep recastng lvl 18 bone fiends. necros have a good energy regen, so actually my bone fiends are costing me 13 energy, the other nergy are gotten when someone dies. as with itm, they are very powerful, because if i feel someone is attacking them too much, i simply cast death nova on them, taste of death, and voila, poison and 105 damage to adjacent foes. the only real problem i have with my minions is when they get bugged. IE in the gvg, when i have to enter the building and theres an archer up there, my minions will face the wall attacking it, thus getting their shots blocked by the high wall. thanks, i lost 3-4 deadly minions that can be attacking enemy forces. they are really powerful, and in large numbers they can be very good.

i think that yes, they should reduce deathly swarm cast rate, as that skill and deathly chill is all i have to attack untill i start to get corpses.

The combanation necro/mes or vise versus is pretty strong. I've taken down W/M without breaking a sweat.

Disagree with everything really:

Minions are plenty tough, in numbers. They already inflict a lot of (aggregate)damage and soak up a lot of hits, and they don't cost anything (with 15 Soul Reaping Horrors are free and minions generate energy).

Dark Bond is just a good way to link the abilities - this happens in several lines anyway - it is to prevent all the power being in one line - think Tiger's Fury and Ignite Arrows being in Beastmastery and Wilderness survival for example - even though they are both marksmanship-type abilities. Or that the mantra to boost duration of illusion spells is in inspiration.

Blood of the master is healing for your minions. It's not great, but it works when they are clumped. If it were much better it'd be too easy.

Deathly swarm is slow, but it is good damage for the energy spent, and is an attack skill in an already strong line - I see no reason to improve it - direct damage is the province of blood magic, death shouldn't even have direct damage in my book.

Soul Reaping is one of the best primaries in the game. It is what allows a minion necromancer to succeed. Any complaints about soul reaping are not going to fly with me - it is that good. Would I object to a few skills for it? no, I'd love them, if they were reasonable, and some have been suggested in other threads, but I don't view it as a weak ability, just one lacking in skills.

I'm just getting used to my nec/elem. He's level 14 now and I just found out what Soul Reaping is for, lol. I was waiting to get a skill for it to put points there.

After reading this thread, I can see the possibilities of the sweet dark side.

My main Necro complaint is that there's no good way to target minions for Death Nova. Also, some Soul Reaping skills would be nice.

I agree with needing some Soul Reaping skills as well as speeding up cast time for Deathly Swarm, but I also think they should lengthen the duration of Order of the Vampire! 5 seconds? That's hardly sufficient, it should be at least 10. I wouldn't mind if they brougth down the regen time on it to bring it up to 10 seconds, but 5 seconds isn't long enough.

Man, don't even try to argue with people about OOTV. They'll just come back and be like "Oh but it's so useful when you have 20 minions!!!!"

Pft, like that happens ALL the time.

For an elite, it does feel very short lived.

I don't even use minions, though, all of my corpse manipulation skills are healing (Soul Feast, Well of Blood) so a lengthened Order of the Vampire would accent my healing side quite well.