The Scrying Pool: Necromancer's Dreadknight
The Scrying Pool continues its speculation on specializations with Necromancer's Dreadknight.
The Scrying Pool is a Guild Wars 2 column where I simply ask what if? Nothing is off the table as I dive into possible features and future content, looking at what currently exists in Guild Wars 2 before I answer my own what if question with how I think the feature and content could be implemented.
This week we continue the speculation series covering the new specialization feature coming in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Starting off, I had given my general speculation specialization before jumping into the profession specific speculations with Guardian’s Cleric followed by Engineer’s Mechanic and Elementalist’s Mage. This week I dive into speculation for another profession with Necromancer’s Dreadknight.
As I dive into each of these professions and speculate about what their specialization could do, I am looking first at what the profession currently does and what is missing. For Guardian this was a support profession missing ranged support and for Engineer it was an overall slower profession needing some more speed and action. For Necromancer, I see the profession lacking a strong front line presence.
That isn’t to say that the profession is lacking any melee option, but its options are limited in its ability to cleave. Dagger for example is the profession’s only melee option. While the auto-attack will attack an additional target, the other skills on main-hand dagger are fairly weak single target skills. Axe and Scepter are not melee options but both are relegated to being a single target weapon in the main-hand.
We already know that Necromancer will be getting a Greatsword for its specialization as it was revealed during the HoT announce at PAX South. Greatsword is a perfect weapon to fill this gap as it could easily be a melee cleaving weapon that is needed for fighting groups of enemies.
Specializations are not likely going to be changing the base profession much, replacing a single weapon and some utility skills, not replacing everything that is the profession. Something that I said in the general specialization speculation article is that I don’t see the profession specific mechanic—skills F1-F4 by default—changing much, if at all. Warrior’s adrenaline and Ranger’s pet are two things that I don’t think are going to get any change at all. Necromancer’s Death Shroud is one of the things I can see changing a bit.
Death Shroud for Necromancer is a unique form with its own life bar that changes the skills available to the Necro while in the form. It is not the form itself, but some of these skills available while in Death Shroud that I see being changed to match the front line presence that I see the Dreadknight fulfilling.
The Necromancer’s Death Shroud currently has a ranged auto attack, gap closer, fear and two attacks that target nearby enemies. The gap closer and nearby enemy attacks still work for the Dreadknight, but the ranged attack and fear don’t match up with the more melee focus I see for it. The fear I would change into the new Taunt mechanic, doing basically the same thing except drawing the enemy in instead of fearing them away. The ranged auto attack could be transformed into a point blank aoe. The animation could be the character building up a ball of necrotic energy similar to the ranged attack, but instead of shooting it toward the enemy it shoots at the ground causing the necrotic energies to spread around the Death Shroud.
With the left side of the bar covered, we move onto the right side with heals, utilities and elites. As I get into the specifics of these skills, it is important to look at these as the greater whole of the profession. It is unlikely that these will be the skills that you see the specialization having, but gives a better sense of the goal that I want this specialization to fulfill. Plus, it is really fun to come up with entirely new skills.
With previous specialization speculations I have modified the class by replacing a skill of each utility type with a new skill of that same utility type—such as with Guardian’s Cleric and Elementalist’s Mage—or I replaced an entire utility type with a brand new utility type, as with Engineer’s Mechanic. For Necromancer’s Dreadknight, I am envisioning a little bit of both, with a skill of each utility type being removed to introduce an entirely new utility type that I am calling Domains.