The Grave Dweller

[DeathsProphet.7460]

The Grave Dweller

 

The Grave Dweller is a Necromancer, who specializes in the ancient tradition of reanimation through the melding of flesh, bone, and life force. Though often seen as taboo, Grave Dwellers channel strength to their creations, forcing them to do their bidding rather than facing combat alone. A Grave Dweller's ability to summon and maintain the dead is much more advanced than that of the regular Necromancer, giving him/her power to animate more powerful minions. Specifically, Grave Dwellers use ancient necrotic magic to summon Flesh Giants, large creatures of flesh and bone, as powerful as a small army of lesser minions. Unlike traditional Necromancers, Grave Dwellers generally maintain a single Flesh Giant as they require large amounts of life force to control due to their size, strength, and increased will. When situations call for it, Grave Dwellers sacrifice their own blood and health to greatly strengthen the power of their Flesh Giant. Because of this bond of life force between a Flesh Giant and its master, these minions aren't quite as disposable as others meaning they can be maintained for long periods of time without re-summoning them.

 

 

 

**F1**- Summon a Flesh Giant. Requires 0 life force but only one may be controlled at a time. When your Flesh Giant dies, you regain your sacrificed health but cannot summon another for 30 seconds.

**F2**- Command your Flesh Giant to attack target foe. Consumes 1000 life force.

**F3** - Command your Flesh Giant back to your side. Consumes 1000 life force.

**F4**- Consume all of your life force. Your Flesh Giant gains 50% more damage and health for 10 seconds.

 

**Unique Skill Type**-Sacrifice (Upkeep)

Sacrifice x percent of your health to upkeep various buffs on your Flesh Giant. Maximum health is lowered by x amount while skill is maintained.

 

**Utilities**

[Heal] ** Blood Bond**: Sacrifice 10% of your max health. Your Flesh Giant siphons the enemy's health for 20% of each successful attack while skill is maintained. Heals its master for the same amount. Cannot be activated for another 15 seconds after skill is deactivated.

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[utility 1] **Add Flesh**: Sacrifice 10% of your max health to strengthen your Flesh Giant (visibly grows as well). While ability is maintained, your Flesh Giant gains a stack of might every 2 seconds. Each stack lasts for 8 seconds. Cannot be activated for 20 seconds after skill is deactivated.

 

[utility 3] **Grave Affliction **: Sacrifice 10% of your max health. Your Flesh Giant applies bleeding and torment with every 5th attack while skill is maintained. Both last 5 seconds. Cannot be activated for 15 seconds after skill is deactivated.

 

[utility 4] **Fearful Gaze **: Sacrifice 20% of your max health. Your Flesh Giant applies fear and weakness with every 12th attack while skill is maintained. Cannot be activated for 20 seconds after skill is deactivated.

 

[Elite] **Blood Sacrifice**: Sacrifice 30% of your max health. Your Flesh Giant gains protection, quickness, and Fury while skill is maintained. Cannot be activated for 30 seconds after skill is deactivated. If you die while maintaining this skill, your Flesh Giant lives on for 10 seconds until exploding for heavy aoe damage.

 

**Traits**

Traits will be separated into 2 main categories. The first category emphasizes the overall strength of your Flesh Giant as it is your main source of DPS. The second category focuses on negating some of the sacrifice the Grave Dweller makes while buffing his/her Flesh Giant. Lastly, the third category is more arbitrary.

 

**Minor Traits**

* Whenever life force is spent on commanding your Flesh Giant, it gains swiftness for 5 seconds.

* Your other minions gain 10% extra damage and health while your Flesh Giant is present.

* For each utility being maintained, your Flesh Giant gains an additional 5% damage.

 

**Top Traits**

* Your Flesh Giant gains a 25% critical chance.

* Your Flesh Giant applies vulnerability with each attack.

* Every 3rd attack, your Flesh Giant performs a cleave, damaging 2 additional enemies.

 

**Middle Traits**

* While maintaining a sacrifice of at least 30%, gain permanent regeneration.

* Whenever a foe near you dies, you and your Flesh Giant gain protection for 3 seconds. Cooldown of 10 seconds.

* 25% of damage you take is transferred to your Flesh Giant instead.

 

**Bottom Traits**

*Gain 200 Vitality

* Gain stability and swiftness for 10 seconds when you reach the health threshold (50%).

* Whenever a foe dies near your Flesh Giant, it gains 1 stack of **Flesh Pile**. Maximum 10 stacks. Each stack provides 20 toughness.

 

**Weapon and Skills** To be determined.

 

Give me feedback! I know there are many things that would need to changed/reworked for balancing purposes and maybe the whole idea sucks! Either way, give me feedback as I believe a minion master elite spec is thematically perfect for the necromancer and could be extremely cool. Because many people hate anything AI related, there is more control over the Flesh Giant and the self sacrifice provides an Achilles Heel to counteract the bad a** strength of the minion. Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

[derd.6413]

sounds good, doesn't work, never going to happen

[Aetatis.5418]

havent you created the exact same topic 3 weeks ago?

 

[Methuselah.4376]

We will never get an elite specialization that focuses on minions because minions are already part of the core necro.

[DeathsProphet.7460]

> @"Aetatis.5418" said:

> havent you created the exact same topic 3 weeks ago?

>

 

Yes I did...this was the (more) finished product than the other post and my last post about minions in general. Its definitely more of a thematic concept than a viable elite spec unless A-Net could could somehow work minions into necromancer...which isn't impossible but not very likely. Just had to post my last thoughts about minions because I think they are cool and could be fun to play if made viable and if they didn't require a passive play style. If it sounds stupid, cool, that is totally fine, just trying to resurrect some old play style from the GW1 Necromancer that was viable in PVE and PVP even with the stupid AI of minions. I semi-agree with everyone who says it isn't likely or won't fit with the game but I don't find it impossible for skilled game developers to design a thematically interesting aspect of a profession and fit it into the current play style.

[ZDragon.3046]

The traits are too centered on the one minion ideally most of the stuff you packed into skills and or traits at the very least should be free of cost or baseline into the minion itself.

 

While elite specs should focus on beefing up their unique feature some parts of them must sync with core aspects of the profession what you have done here is made something similar to 1 of the reasons why i personally dislike scourge.

 

You have made this one elite spec its own profession nothing really syncs back to the core lines obviously or so its not written out very clearly that it would. if this minion was going to be something that replaced shroud in a future spec it should be tied to giving the necromancer devastating pressure. Mean while the necro would need tools something similar to ranger to keep itself safe from people or foes that choose to ignore your summoned monster and attack the caster directly. Core has nothing that really does that effectively and without a shroud you will just be dead.

 

At least scourge has deadly aoe Zone pressure and barrier to give itself something but this just has nothing.

 

Constructively my advice would be to

Consider other core traitlines when you make your traits can you combine something that works with those traits even if its minimal things to consider would be

- vuln application necro is great at pumping out tons of this on foes with ease even at the core level.

- Fear necro can always have traits that make play of this scourge didnt get any but reaper has a few of them

- Boon corrupts, removal, or perhaps even stealing yes stealing.

- Weakness, again this is something necro is really good ad dishing out and as a necro conditions will be squeezed into every spec regardless of what that spec is because conditions work as part of necros sustain.

 

IF the necro is not going to have a shroud to protect itself consider having active defensive skills (these are random probably not the best ideas)

 

- foes that attack you are taunted by your giant

- Break stun for a short time all damage delt to you is instead dealt to your giant

 

Also consider traits that actually make the giant worth wild be aware that you might have to overload some traits when doing a build set up like this

 

Fatal Frenzy

- Upon taking fatal damage your Giant taunts nearby foes ignores damage moves 50% faster and attacks with quickness for increased damage for 10 seconds

 

Embezzling Hunger

- Flesh giant steals boons from foes it strikes, foes with no boons take an extra strike instead

 

As mentioned some of your skills (the profession skills) should be free base line it should not cost life force to command the giant to attack or stay at your side generally i feel like these are not needed at all unless you want to make it like a ranger pet.

Consider profession skills like

 

Necrotic Deliverance

- Switch places with your giant at the cost of some life force, this ability has a short cool down but requires increased life force per use capping at a stack count of 3.

 

Granted ill be honest im not a fan of a minion elite spec unless it fixes all minions as a whole and i dont just mean by the use of traits i mean it would have to be something that forces anet into their design and coding to actually make them all much better as a whole so that the new espec could be a thing....... even then.... i dont know....

 

Good effort could use more revisions.

 

Edit:

 

Another idea to consider would be making the 3 grand master traits change the type of minion thats spawned from the f1 skill think daredevil here.. it gets 3 unique dodges based on its grand master and its play style changes dramatically based on the type of dodge it has. The game could always use more dynamic traits like this imo but we just have not seen many i think the closes thing that comes 2nd after daredevil would be Holosmith and how its traits change its holo mode slightly in terms of adding ranged attacks to skills/ intentionally blowing yourself up to deal damage/ or over heating for more power with a higher threshold etc.

 

If we had a minion that changed with each grand master say one could be specially tooled for range, one for tanking and providing peel for aggressors on the caster, etc and your utility also changed based on that minion that could be interesting as well.