Welcome to part four of the May State of the Game for Guild Wars 2. This segment of the streamchat sees them discuss classes, specifically the two that are argued as being unable to fit into any team, but instead require the team to build around them. Necromancer and warrior.
Focus Fire
Arenanet feels necromancer and warrior both suffer from situations where they become focused by the other team. No access to mechanics which break target locks means while they are fine in small fights, one on one and such, they have little recourse when focused by an entire team.
With necromancer, specifically, they are looking at making death shroud more powerful in some way. They do not want to simply add stability or protection, to avoid turning it into a temporary guardian in effect, but agree that as a class-specific mechanic it should be more useful than an extra health bar. The extra health bar does not actually matter much while a team-wide focus target, in any event.
Warrior they are looking to grant extra stun-breakers to to better allow them to escape the types of crowd-control that makes the focus fire of a full team so unmanageable and some new traits/abilities to help them clean off conditions.
Necroblink
Both Sharp and Grouch brought up how necromancer used to have a blink as part of death shroud, granting significantly more mobility to the class. Sharp brought it up first by explaining how it made death shroud too strong a tanking tool, how borderline impossible it made actually dropping a necromancer.
Grouch, however, mentioned that blink as being what necromancers need, how the single ability would grant them what they need to be relevant. Specifically it would give them a way to disengage from a losing battle, giving the same sort of reset the other classes have for when they are focused.
Other Necro-Solutions
Sharp countered with the idea of letting death shroud build up much higher, letting it therefor potentially last much longer to let necromancers win fights against heavier damage simply by outlasting it.
Phantaram’s suggestion was to allow other players to heal through death shroud, enabling the necromancer to come out of death shroud stronger than they went in. Such would turn it from a timer to an actual timed play.
Another suggestion Grouch brought from some of the game’s top necromancers was the idea of causing the life-stealing aspects of the blood trait path to scale based on healing power. This would open up new build possibilities and potentially new styles of playing the class entirely. He also passed along the idea of having Spectral Armor or some other skill applying stability, since necromancer is at least one of the classes with the least access to it.
Another issue brought up was the slow activation speed on most of the necromancer crowd control skills, especially the minion skills. Bone minion explosions are blast finishers, but there has previously been a three second delay in their activation. Sharp assures that is being shortened drastically to be more reliable.
Leg Specialist
Warrior was brought up next, starting by Grouch pointing out how incredibly reliant the class is on hitting its crowd control in order to do damage. All of its most damaging skills require holding the opponent in place for the full duration of a multi-hit skill with both Eviscerate and Hundred Blades.
Sharp was smiling and nodding even before Grouch finished. He said he cannot give away too much, but the warrior is getting a new trait along the same lines as leg specialist. The leg specialist trait turns abilities that cause cripple into immobilize, ensuring a target can be burst down readily. The new trait is said not to get to the target, but to ensure the warrior can stay on the target to get off their damage.
Tune in for part five in the link below!
Part 4
