I tried to work up some sort of catchy headline – Necromancer Creates Itself, Necroduction, Auramancer – but they all failed to inspire me. So I went with the concise and informative approach. Anyways, that’s the gist of it. ArenaNet has followed up the GamesCom 2010 promise of a necro class by posting a full write-up on the official Guild Wars 2 website.
The Necromancer, the fourth detailed class for Guild Wars 2, contains the spells you would expect from a purveyor of the dark arts, Fear and the ability to summon minions. The lore team even summed a superb quote to introduce the class.
The great thing about minions is that they never last long enough to work up a horrid stench.
ArenaNet did magic up it own twists to the class. The developer is adding at least one support ability, known as Wells, that enable the dark ones to create AoE areas that will affect those within the spell’s range. The description makes it sound as though the effects can be positive or negative. The necromancer will have a mine-type ability as well. Marks are ground-target spells that will enfeeble enemies that stumble across them, or buff allies. However, the marks aren’t always passive. A proximity-mine specialist can trigger the spell with a second click if she so pleases.
DPS/Support, sounds like a lot of fun, which is why the necromancer is currently my profession of choice. But, we’ve yet to see anything from the shadows. Perhaps we never will.
A query to the audience: Do you enjoy knowing exactly what a class does by its title, or would you rather a spicy name, something original, like many of the Warhammer Online careers? I prefer having to do a little research.
I agree, but then again: It’s easy for us who are veterans of the MMO industry.
For new people they just might not understand exactly what a Necromancer does. After all, even Blizzard is doing this in WoW by having further descriptions on talents / classes / races in Cataclysm.
I agree with Mordril. I mean, those of us who have a fantasy/sci-fi background or have been gaming for, Lord knows, how many years kind of have an idea of what something like this entails.
Blizzard has gone through the trouble of expanding the class and even race descriptions which is going to make it easier for the newbs coming in. It’ll give them a better understanding of their class and role within their particular game but still have a large enough learning curve to really make any new class fun.
To me a necromancer means killing enemies with a skull on a stick until I can raise enough skeletons to trip over themselves to murder Blood Raven for me.