Guild Wars 2

Hi all. Why people in pve don’t like necromancers? Does necromancer is so bad in PvE?

Short answer: yes.
Long answer:
Yes, because necromancers can’t give any meaningful party support and that tiny little stuff they can do can be done by other classes often with less effort and with better results. Also they can’t cleave, which can hurt their damage really bad in certain situations. So yeah, no point to bring a necro, it’s just potentially holds back the group.
Of course thats from a more organised standpoint, in random pugs it doesnt really matter.
And conditions sucks on every class, period.

They can do ok damage and self buff might and such. With dagger warhorn you can do some burst aoe damage. But again, they are very kitten compared to other classes.

Pros:

• Largest health pool for any class, tied with warrior.

• Death Shroud, which to the best of my knowledge, serves as an oh kitten button most of the time. (Gain a second health bar, that’s what)

• Decent single target DPS capabilities (with the right build and gear of course)

• Exceptionally powerful self heal – Consume Conditions. Speaks for itself.

Cons:

• No cleaving autoattacks, forcing you to target and attack one mob at a time. This won’t really matter in open world situations, but in situations like high-end fractals it can sometimes prove difficult to shut down a group of mobs before they shut you (and your party) down.

• (Relative) lack of utility. All classes arguably have utility capabilities, but the necro’s set just doesn’t cut it.
  Blinds? Outdone by a thief.
  Vulnerability stacking? Other classes can apply vuln frivolously, and an engineer can cap it out alone, so yeah.
  Wells? They get in the way of most fields and grant comparatively bad effects with finishers. Most pugs have no idea what combo field priority is, but suffice to say that if your party hasn’t stacked might yet, wait for the fire field to go down before you drop a well.
  Hardly any of the necro’s utility skills actually support the party, and the ones that do are pretty weak or on excessively long cooldowns or interfere with something your party is doing. The interference bit can be eliminated by being a good team player, but can you count on pugs to have that discipline and knowledge?

• Low evasion capabilities. Necros don’t even have direct self-access to vigor, which, coupled with a lack of evasion/invulnerability/blocking abilities, forces the necro to be careful with their positioning and dodges or they end up eating the damage which could otherwise have been prevented by one of the above.

There are more points that I didn’t cover, but this should give you an idea of why necros stink in dungeons. All classes have their cons in dungeons, but the necro’s cons are the kind that prevent it from being optimal in speedruns. I’m not saying you can’t do well with a necro in dungeons, but rather there are classes out that that simply do everything a necro does, but better. If you want to play one, then go ahead. Play how you want, but without infringing on others’ freedom to do so. :)

Because a warrior using axe auto or 100b on cooldown is more dps than whatever pug necros run like condition heal or MinionMaster. At least a warrior dropping a banner helps a lot. Not that dumb tactics one though. Also pugs think warrior is infinite dps and guardian keeps people alive using his/her magic. Mesmer also gets a spot because they saw a video of lupicus skipping from phase 1 to 2 transition straight to death. They want that. Does it happen? No.
In speedruns they bring nothing useful. Like absolutely nothing.

A saving grace could be a summon spammer(which helps the crowd clearing) and a generalist set of skills that can do a lot of things at once, a bardish character if you will. I haven’t played necro but those are my ideas anyway.

I love my Necromancer.
a lot.

It was the first one to get world completion. ascended armour and weapons. and a shiney fractal capacitor.

i love my necormancer so much that i safely tuck it away away from the dungeons and the majority of the pugging that i do.

the Necromancer is a VERY… VERY selfish class.
It has some great DPS against a SINGLE target. it has some great sustain. its got lots of fun things to do and play with.

but it is NOT a very good team player. (at least in Dungeons) unless you build the team around the necromancer. the tools that a necromancer has such as blinds, vuln stacking etc are there yes. but in the process of creating those situations you are damaging your team mates ability to do their job. We can keep up an almost permanent blind and vuln stack, but at the cost of covering up fire fields, condition cleansing fields. etc. so yes. you can blind and vuln the living hell out of everything. but at the cost of your teams might and condition cleansing….

see… selfish

I STILL love my necromancer. But as far as dungeon running goes. if we are doing a casual and or Yolo bring whatever run or low level fractal. what not. Sure i will bring it along. But when it comes down to “work” it stays at home, and farming the world.

regardless of this. a lot of the Necromancer players KNOW this. and we are VERY saddened by it. so till the Game adds something to the Necromancers utility kit that is team oriented that is unique or better than the other classes. you will most likely not see a necromancer in “high end” PvE and Dungeon running.

Delanor’s post summed it up nicely I reckon

I tihnk Rope did it best, even if I suspect he has the same dramatizing that I have.

I will say though,

my necromancer is the only time i have ever been kicked from a group BECAUSE i was DpS.

they wanted a condition mancer apparently and when the bleed count was not high enough for them they asked me about it and removed me from the group.

I laughed. it was their run so i was not about to complain. i did not fit their bill.

so ya, i have been kicked BECAUSE I was “zerker”

:)

What usually its the other way around xD

I also main necro and this issues sadden me but I still take my little salad into dungeons mostly because its my main class, I feel comfy playing as it so I don’t kitten around and mess up my skill timings, die and I try very hard not to mess up combo fields but I run 2 wells so I probably have a lot :’(

As far as I’m aware necro shines in pvp, sadly not pve.

After the feature update I gave a try and played my necro. Thought they improved the Minions. I was really shocked how badly they act. Since release the minions are lackluster. They don’t attack most of the time and if they attack the damage is pretty underwhelming.

Compared to the minions masters in GW1 this is just a joke and I really don’t understand why they did it the way they did. At least make them reliable and useful.

Thematically the Necro is a cool class. Please make them a strong profession/class like the Warlock in WoW. This one is a beast.

Most necros are bads running condi builds, that at the moment is very bad for dungeons.
Now if you go meta you will be better than most, if others go meta they will be better than you, DPS/Support wise.
Now i find that necro can perform very well in COF P1(most single target mobs) and HotW P1(Bypass Ginva reflect).

I think the main problem is we don’t have bursts and efficient burst aiding utilities at the moment. So even if we want to run zerker, it isn’t balanced when you look at how it functions on other classes. Warrior for example is much stronger even if you have the same gear set up. We need a new weapon set or a revamped set with good burst at the very least if necros want to be viable as a zerk dps class. :/

Necromancer is my main and the class I enjoy the most so it really saddens me that no matter what I do I cannot be as good as other classes in a dungeon or fractal.

Cause if they knew what they were doing they’d bring a different class, and necros who don’t know what they are doing are always fearing the boss out of the corner. I’m not picky, use full zerk myself but don’t expect it from everyone, don’t care if it takes an extra 5 min for whatever reason, laugh off wipes, but I avoid joining a party if I see they already have a necro.

Eh, I don’t care. I love my Necro too and I won’t stop using her in Fractals and dungeons. I start dungeons too so PUGs can go ahead and kick me if they want. :P I’ve never been kicked before though; advertising for “friendly run. Can teach if necessary” gets some newbies, sure, but I also get a surprising number of experienced players. I guess sometimes people just like to hop into a dungeon where anything goes as long as the atmosphere is light-hearted and we finish in a reasonable amount of time.

Zaxares.5419:

Eh, I don’t care. I love my Necro too and I won’t stop using her in Fractals and dungeons. I start dungeons too so PUGs can go ahead and kick me if they want. :P I’ve never been kicked before though; advertising for “friendly run. Can teach if necessary” gets some newbies, sure, but I also get a surprising number of experienced players. I guess sometimes people just like to hop into a dungeon where anything goes as long as the atmosphere is light-hearted and we finish in a reasonable amount of time.

Good spirit!

As much as I love my necro, the simple fact that her utility in dungeons and fractals is over shadowed by my warr rules her out of all of them. However, for wvw she is the bomb. I don’t really like being in the hammer train so mark/well bombing is what she is designed for.

like every other class, its mostly dependent on build
on my necro im running a deathblast build where i try to stay almost entirely in death shroud: combined with the trait that lets deathblast to pierce, its a nice cylinder AoE with nice DPS on each hit, this helps with the stacking stratagy: that and the 4 and 5 AoEs are pretty nice too

and lets be honest, (it feels like) 90% of the time people only care about ur outgoing DPS in dungeons

ATM, like ranger, necros are underrated

crosknight.3041:

like every other class, its mostly dependent on build
on my necro im running a deathblast build where i try to stay almost entirely in death shroud: combined with the trait that lets deathblast to pierce, its a nice cylinder AoE with nice DPS on each hit, this helps with the stacking stratagy: that and the 4 and 5 AoEs are pretty nice too

and lets be honest, (it feels like) 90% of the time people only care about ur outgoing DPS in dungeons

ATM, like ranger, necros are underrated

Nice DPS? Deathshroud build? Pahahahaha.

crosknight.3041:

ATM, like ranger, necros are underrated

Rangers actually bring something to the group though (spotter, frost spirit). Necros have diddly squat for the group.

If only they reworked life siphon a bit, it might make necromancers more useful. That and increase the scaling for life siphon damage, I mean, 350 power = +1 life siphon damage?

The heal skill has potential but the cast time and internal cooldown destroy it. Might be useful for burst fights.

So what if they don’t have a lot for the group? let them tank. People said it themselves, if any class can kick butt solo, well, let them, everyone else can hit the enemy from behind or use range while this powerful solo does his job.

and flissy, knight made a great post, and a good point, you simply laughing like a jerk is not an answer, it’s just you being an immature prick. To move away from flame…I can’t say how accurate it is, but I can’t imagine an entire class having no damage per second power, and I’ve seen necros do a -lot- of damage so I don’t think knight is off the rails here.

A lot compared to whom/ what against what?

I don’t know, I never played necromancer.
I do see where everyone is coming from though, it does have synergy problems unless you build around it, which is a bit difficult to do.

If you dont know then why do you say they do ?

VideoGamermike.5813:

I don’t know, I never played necromancer.
I do see where everyone is coming from though, it does have synergy problems unless you build around it, which is a bit difficult to do.

It was more because that particular build is not great for dps and suffers from serious dps uptime problems. Which is ironic because most players who use subpar builds tend to chant the mantra; “dps uptime is more important than dps” (not true if your dps is absolutely terrible).

Necros are still the best choice for dungeon(forum)s.

Wethospu.6437:

Necros are still the best choice for dungeon(forum)s.

0.o

I’ve run my lvl 80 Necro in Dungeons and haven’t had any issues with the right group. I also seen other players who do very well with Necro’s in Dungeons.

Rules for Necro’s in Dungeons
- Groups with 2 or more Necro’s, in most dungeons non-story that’s an instant failure.
- Join groups that don’t have a Necro and has 2 or more of the tanky classes (Warriors or Guardian).

My problem with Necro’s is that the more experienced players will know that Necro’s don’t really bring anything to the table in dungeons that another class can’t do better. This goes for vuln stacking, group buffs and DPS. So whenever I see someone using a Necro, I pretty much assume they are not an experienced player (ofcourse not always true). That’s why I ask for them to ping gear and if they don’t have zerk, kick them.

VitalSuit.1980:

crosknight.3041:

ATM, like ranger, necros are underrated

Rangers actually bring something to the group though (spotter, frost spirit). Necros have diddly squat for the group.

Not only do they bring frost spirit/spotter, but they bring group permafury through warhorn + red moa, great uptime on 5 stacks of might via jungle stalker (+1 from warhorn), a fire field via flame trap, a blast finisher (two if using river drake), a fantastic water field that heals and cures conditions, and they can cleave while being just as survivable as a necromancer. Decent vulnerability output as well.

Aside from having to choose from 2 out of those 3 pets, they do all of this at once. They can also less commonly slot in other stuff like OH axe projectile reflect, stone spirit, or spirit of nature. Rangers are great. Necros can’t even compare, not only to rangers, but to any other profession in dungeons. Necros offer nothing other than average damage output against a single target.

Maybe golem charge against a wall can do norn bearform damage but probably nothing too intense or meta changing.

Nah its really weak. Does much less than burning speed. And its unreliable to hit due to the golem facing the wrong way etc. If you do get it right it can be quite hilarious at burning 15 defiant stacks at once, so continuously knocking down a boss.