Necromancer Greatsword Script

-- This is a script for a YouTube video. You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/kXqaLncWt-U

If I told you I made a support Necromancer build, and on that build, I was using a melee-range power-coefficient weapon that didn't heal, didn't apply boons, and didn't cleanse conditions, you'd probably think that I didn't know what I was doing when it came to theorycrafting. This build isn't theorycrafting though, and not only is it correct to use this weapon, it's the strongest weapon that Necromancer has access to by a fairly wide margin for any build that isn't roaming. This is a video about Necro Greatsword, why it's a problem weapon for organized groups, and potentially, how to fix it.

First, let's recap. Prior to Secrets of the Obscure, Greatsword was only usable if you were a Reaper, as it was the signature weapon of that elite specialization. Greatsword is designed as a potent, melee-range Power weapon, with a high damage autoattack chain, an Execute-style weapon skill 2, and a lifeforce-refilling weapon skill 3. Your 4 and 5 abilities, while not significant damage-dealers, assist in your ability to lock down and destroy enemies in melee range, with weapon skill 4 pulsing boon corrupt in a pool at your feet, and weapon skill 5 pulling enemies towards you from range. For a long time, this was a well-balanced weapon, complementing Reaper's overall profession mechanics for groups that were able to utilize up-front, heavy spike melee strategies for winning fights. But over time, a series of nerfs and changes to other professions have either overlooked or ignored Reaper, and as other weapons have become weaker, Greatsword has only grown more powerful by comparison.

The biggest shift of power towards Greatsword was in the June 27, 2023 patch. I covered that patch on this channel, in fact, I think it was the first balance patch review that I ever did. This patch did a lot -- it's the patch that added Alacrity to Scourge and Druid, but it's also the patch that changed most boon corruption skills into boon removal skills instead. And while these sound similar, boon corruption skills are significantly stronger than boon removal skills for two reasons. First, boon corruption skills don't just remove a boon -- they convert it into a condition instead, and some of those conditions are really important. For example, Stability corrupts into Fear, so not only does getting Stability corrupted mean you now have no Stability, but it also means you're immediately crowd-controlled unless you also have Resistance. And second, while boon removal skills will remove boons in the reverse order that they are applied, with more recent boons also being remove first, boon corruption removes boons randomly. When you're playing Firebrand, or Chronomancer, or other boon supports, it's good practice to follow up the use of high value skills that apply Stability or Resistance, with low value skills that apply less important boons like Swiftness or Vigor. This helps to buffer your important boons against incoming boon removal skills. But true boon corrupt doesn't care, and can potentially dig directly to your Stability application and convert it into Fear. While this is cool from a flavor standpoint, it's also very powerful, and it's not fun to lose control of your character because an enemy Necromancer spun the boon removal wheel and hit jackpot on your Stability.

But the June 27th patch didn't completely eliminate boon corrupts, it just curtailed them. Axe 3, Spiteful Spirit, Dagger 5, and Lesser Enfeeble were all changed from boon corrupt abilities to boon removal abilities. At present in the World vs. World meta, there are only eight skills that are true boon corrupts -- Scepter 3 when traited with Lingering Curse, Shroud 2 when traited with Path of Corruption, both halves of Sword 3, Lichform 2, Corrupt Boon, Well of Corruption, Elixir of Bliss, and Greatsword 4, Nightfall. Now that may sound like a lot, but many of these skills have significant drawbacks. Scepter 3 and Shroud 2 require you to trait for it by running Curses, which is otherwise a fairly underwhelming set of traits. Lichform is a 120 second cooldown that only lasts for 20 seconds, and makes you a gigantic target. Lichform 2 and Corrupt Boon are also single-target abilities that fall off in effectiveness in larger groups. Elixir of Bliss is a projectile that can easily be destroyed or reflected, and Sword 3 is a leap that requires careful targeting to use effectively. By comparison, Nightfall has virtually no drawbacks, except that you be in melee range. And not only that, but Nightfall pulses boon corrupt, corrupting up to five boons every two seconds for eight seconds total. Nightfall is better than most of the boon removal skills that Necromancer has access to, even before you get to the fact that it's a true corrupt and not just a strip. It's a weapon skill that is on par with Well of Corruption, one of Necromancer's strongest utility skills, and that's after its cooldown was increased twice -- at the time of this patch, the cooldown on Nightfall wasn't 40 seconds, it was just 20.

Prior to the June 27th patch, the 'standard' Necromancer weapons were generally double offhand setups, using Axe/Focus and Scepter/Dagger. But as these weapons got nerfed, either through increasing cooldowns, decreasing boons removed, or changing true corrupts to just strips, Greatsword maintained the same level of power, and this was still when only Reapers could utilize it. But this wasn't the only change in the June 27th patch that benefitted Greatsword. Boon corrupt skills are strong because they can hit Stability from underneath cover boons, but the reason that Stability is so strong is because it prevents crowd control effects. And one of the most powerful crowd control effects that Stability helps to prevent is getting pulled. Pulls separate you from the rest of your group, making it difficult for you to get support like boons and healing, and many groups will use pulls either before the start of a fight, or during a tactical disengage, to try and separate and enemy group and weaken them before a decisive push. There's only a handful of utility skills in World vs. World that are effective pulls from range in coordinated groups -- Hunter's Verdict, Dragonhunter's F1, Into the Void, the backhalf cast of Mesmer Focus 4, Magnet, Engineer's Tool Kit 5, and Grasping Darkness, Necromancer's Greatsword F5. DH F1 and Magnet are single-target 1200 range skills that excel for pulling specific people, like a commander, while Mesmer Focus 4 can reach even further, up to 1500 range -- Temporal Curtain could be cast up to 900, while the radius on Into the Void was another 600. Or at least, that was the case until this patch, which cut the range of Temporal Curtain from 900 down to 600. But even then, a good Temporal Curtain pull will drag an enemy player halfway to your group -- 600 off of the fronthalf, and then another 600 on the reactivation. Grasping Darkness, while it can only reach 900 total, drags an enemy player directly to where you're standing. And not only that, but Grasping Darkness completely disrespects line of sight. It works on walls, behind gates, up cliffs, down stairs, sometimes even around corners.

Greatsword is a great Power weapon, and is always going to be one of the best damage choices for a Reaper to use. But the combination of Nightfall and Grasping Darkness are so strong that even if you ignore everything else that Greatsword does, these two skills alone make Greatsword a best in slot weapon for virtually every Necromancer build that's used in an organized group. With the release of Secrets of the Obscure, and the Weaponmaster feature, the full power of Greatsword was now accessible on any build. Support Scourge ran it during the barrier meta, Power Scourge runs it now, Support Harbinger runs it alongside of Staff, and Power Reaper has obviously used it since the dawn of time. It's so strong that it stifles build diversity and weapon choices on Necromancer as a profession, and regular viewers of the channel will know that when something is so obviously good that it removes any other decision making about a profession -- looking at you, Celestial Firebrand and Celestial Scourge and Celestial Renegade -- that it's something that should be changed to make the balance environment healthier overall, and promote theorycrafting.

Now, even in real life, I'm not a fan of complaining for the sake of complaining without having any solution to offer. So here's my proposal for rebalancing Necromancer Greatsword, if I were making profession balance decisions for ArenaNet. Let's start with Greatsword 4, Nightfall. Thematically, boon corruption is a cool mechanic, and thematically, I like the idea of skills that punish a group that overcommits into melee. I want to preserve both of those effects. But twenty boon corrupts in total is a lot. So instead, you replace the one-corrupt-per-target-per-pulse effect that Nightfall currently has with two corrupts per target, but only on the initial cast, and you leave the Blindness and Cripple intact for all pulses. This lets Nightfall retain its role as a melee punish, boon corrupt skill, and even makes the initial cast of the skill more dangerous, but it mitigates the sheer volume of boons that it corrupts in its current form. Then, for Greatsword 5, Grasping Darkness, the fact that it can pull through walls, gates, and up and down terrain that isn't otherwise traversible is unique among pulls, and it means that groups aren't necessarily safe to do as they please just because they are inside an objective. Given how strong that unique effect is, you can reduce the target cap on Greatsword 5 down to 1 and still preserve that unique utility. Greatsword 5 is still something that you can utilize for opening up gaps and creating spacing against an enemy group, but it requires some coordination so that your Necromancers all use it at the same time, which creates interesting counterplay for an enemy group in knowing when they need to apply Stability. These two changes slightly lower the overall power of Greatsword, and start to introduce some more flexible weapon alternatives into the equation.

With a nerf to Nightfall and Grasping Darkness, groups that want to maximize their boon removal ability are now incentivized to go back to running double offhand, as Axe/Focus and/or Sword/Focus should both generate higher overall strips than Greatsword does. On the other hand, groups that are looking to utilize the Transfuse trait to utilize Support Necromancer builds are already locked into using Staff, but Warhorn is a decent support weapon and something that a Support-oriented Necromancer would love to use if given the opportunity. But for both of these decisions, Greatsword is still a viable weapon choice, thanks to its access to true corrupts and a great single-target pull. The point is that this weapon selection decision now comes down to how individual players, and individual squads, want to utilize Necromancers in their groups, rather than having Greatsword be the de facto selection regardless of comp or role.

Don't get me wrong -- I love Greatsword. I've been playing Reaper since long before the June 27th patch, and I was running Greatsword Scourge the day that it became a possibility. Greatsword 5 is one of my favorite buttons to press in the entire game, across any profession. But I also want to make interesting decisions about my weapon selections when I'm thinking of new Necromancer builds to play, and Greatsword has become so powerful over time that there's no real decisions to make for that weapon anymore, especially when you also want to use Transfuse and get locked into Staff as your other weapon. I don't expect CMC to watch this video and immediately push a patch that implements these exact changes, but I do want to initiate a discussion about where Necromancer Greatsword is at in the current World vs. World meta, and see what other people think of the weapon. This is a new style of video for me, so if you liked it and you want to see more give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel, I really do use those metrics when I'm figuring out what I want to make on YouTube. If there's another weapon, trait, or utility skill that you think I should profile instead, or you disagree with me about Necro Greatsword, drop me a comment and let me know your thoughts. I also stream on Twitch every Tuesday, Wednesday, and sometimes over the weekend, so you can also drop in over there if you want to see me find new and degenerate spots to use Greatsword 5. But until then, I've been Sheff, and enjoy the rest of your day.