Guild Wars 2

Hi guys!
I’ve played for over 80 hours now with my highest level reach being level 23 because I keep making characters and deleting them because I can’t find the right one for me. I’ve now narrowed it down to elementalist and necromancer and would like to ask you on your opinion for both classes! Also I have some side questions.

Which class is more fun?
Solo PvE gameplay?
What are they like early/mid/late levels?

Ele.

Good for farming in later levels. Huge amounts of damage with the right builds. Teaches the action/mobile combat system to new players. Finally the attunements are a great way to have a diverse character. More bang for your buck.

I did like the condi build for my necro but Ele offered more variety. As far as sole PvE gameplay goes you’ll be able to kill anything outside of world bosses by yourself if you play each build correctly. Finally it feels like any other class as you level. No actual roles in GW2 so pretty much condition, hit fast, hit hard, avoid the “big hits” repeat.

Definitely ele if you ask me. Not only is it more active and versatile, but if you go with an ele, it’ll save you the headache of hearing how bad necros are and how nobody wants you in a dungeon party lol. Maybe necros will be buffed to be better in PVE in the future, but I wouldn’t count on it. For right now, ele is in a much better spot.

In my experience (3500 hours worth) it is much much easier to solo content with a Necro and I would also put both about on par with how fun the game play is. I play a power-well necro, which in PvE solo play is unparalleled in any large group events.

As an ele main character since the beginning, I found it easy enough to level but was actually focusing on conditions back in the early days. Now everything is ‘full zerk’ and levelling an ele like that might be hard to stay alive vs lots of mobs. Only now I would use my ele more in dungeons, but to be honest my necro is far more ‘friendly’ in daily use.

The drawback will be in the late game stages, where dungeons and fractals take main place and you will be considered more desirable if you play an Elementalist. The big events will call for an ele’s spawnable weapons, where a necro you are expected to just do your thing.

So it depends what you are most interested in. Necro will loot-farm better than anything else and keep you alive while doing so. Ele will be more versatile in party-oriented events late game but the annoyance factor of going into down-state a lot might not be your thing.

My personal choice is obvious; play both

I loved loved loved my zerk staff ele, had more fun with it than any other class for pve, pvp and wvw. Had people insulting and praising my skill (so i was at least a lil above average if not good) and just found it a wonderful and flexible class. But I liked it best for meteornado and other enormous burst dmg (gs4 against wall in dungeon was what made it best in pve). After the nerfs my flexible build went from balanced to heavy on support without any real burst dmg. Combined with constant pewpew rangers and it became suicide to play and not enough dmg. rip

I’ve started necro and am playing ridiculously bunky. Love it for pvp but haven’t taken it into wvw/pve too much. Right now I prefer it to my ele. While ele controls the battlefield with fields (water, fire, static, cc) necro more surreptitiously controls the field’s boons and conditions. Being able to soak up condis and pin them on an enemy, or flipping enemy boons is invaluable in pvp/wvw. Right now I think glass necro can do more burst dmg than glass ele also (lich is a beast, ele’s elites have been nerfed).

Both are very flexible for support, defense, and offense. I only like staff for ele so the nerfs hit me very hard and if you were thinking offensive staff it’s something to keep in mind.

My first class at launch was necro, and I threw it away by level 50 as it seemed so under powered. Came back to necro much later (after getting thoroughly bored on warrior), and overall it’s become my favourite class.

Necro is my favourite WvW class. Amazingly versatile, aside from being over-dependent on others for stability. Of the classes I’ve played it’s the best for loot bags! Very, very good survivability – you can run up front with melee (dagger/warhorn) if you want. Though I mostly play it ranged with staff, along with plenty of plague form+DS.

It’s also my class of choice for CS aoe farm events – tags everything

It might not be meta, but necro works pretty well in dungeons too – though you’ll do better with guild runs than in LFG

Choose your traits well!

Elementalist has more skills and traits that are used everywhere. Good class to use berserker gear and DPS builds. For group content, in open world, Berserker DPS is best possible, since 99% of mobs die in 1-3 seconds against such builds.

Necromancers will suffer in group content and part of their traits and skills are useless in PvE.
Necromancers have no consistent DPS capabilities for group content, only Daggers can hit 2 targets with Auto-attacks-only, Wells have long cooldowns and short durations, Minion Master builds not sure if the lvl scale up/down bug is fixed.

Since necromancers are designed for “attrition combat” (slowly kills foes, denies boons by removing or converting them and can survive quite long to let enemies to bleed out), but 99% of PvE consists of mobs that die in 1-3 seconds against berserker DPS…

Boon/Condition Manipulation abilities will have limited usage in PvE, since there’s barely mobs that use boons(very rare) or conditions(some, but not much).
Conditions are no good for group content, if mobs die in 1-3 seconds, conditions will never manage to deal damage.

Necro has a huge burst and is quite good for short encounters as well as fractal of the mist where inexperienced ele would have a hard time with keeping up their survival.

Ele was my first 80, Necro was my second. Couldn’t possibly choose between the two. But which one you may like depends on what you want out of a class.

If you want build diversity, go with the Necro. I have no idea what the guy above is talking about, but with the Ele, you go 15-30 points in to the exact same trees with the exact same stat combos or you feel slow, worthless, and get torn through like tissue paper in a monsoon. A build varies for an ele by one to two traits and their weapon choice. Necros on the other hand can use every trait tree, go with a ton of different stat combinations; and they have several power build, a dozen different condition builds, tanky builds, and even really fun healy damage or healy tank builds.

If you are just looking for just straight up power, if you are willing to meet all its ridiculously rigid build conditions, the Ele is undoubtedly superior.

If you are looking for ease of play, as much as people laud the attunement system as more difficult, at the higher levels there isn’t really a difference in skill or ease of play. However the Elementalist is significantly tougher at lower levels.

Elementalist is the most popular, as necromancer has a large number of drawbacks in pve, however I find ele to be quite boring and simple to play. I enjoy the unique aspects of necromancer’s design

Ele you have everything at your fingertips, whatever you need there’s a build for that (except maybe being ridiculously overly tanky, but you have access to plenty of healing to make you plenty durable if you play right).

Necro are very fun where they are useful, but you simply don’t have the diversity of play that well… any other profession has. Necro has a few things they do very well and outside of that they lack pretty badly.

The only time I’d recommend Necro is if it were PVP then it’d be a toss up, but in PVE easily Ele.

I find the above comment funny since ele really only has about 4 meta builds depending on weapon set and diverging from that means you’re likely only useful/have any survivability in specific situations and setups. For example going for maximum dps on ele in your trait lines means that if you are focused or don’t have a teammate to support you, you’re probably going to die immediately.

Meanwhile even though I’m new to necro I’ve already seen a handful of meta builds and have come up with one i’ve never seen before and had great success with it.
Anet is trying to expand what is viable for ele but to my knowledge it still suffers by being pigeonholed into 3-4 trait builds. And again in my experience, ele might give max dps but to get that you’ll have to sacrifice almost all of your survivability, since a more balanced dps build lacks impressive burst due to the recent patch.

The real question is, how lazy are you? :P Ele has great dps and is great in pve and pvp, it is welcome in dungeon parties, but it is harder to control, learn and master. My first lvl 80 character ever was a necro, and i found it easy to level it up and solo most pve content. I didn’t have problems in dungeons either – only that necro is less welcome in some parties. I also started elementalist many times, but couldn’t bear to level it up above lvl 30 until just recently.

It is true though what Prophet said in the second post – ele teaches combat mechanics very well – after leveling my ele and playing with it for many hours, i noticed that when i’m using any other class, i’m doing much better in certain situations than before – observing more and reacting more quickly, having a more active playstyle overall. So playing ele did improve my gameplay with every other class as well. But it can be tough for a new player, not everyone has that kind of patience.

Ele’s have really good dps and decent survivability once you have the traits you want and the gear you want at 80. I found getting there to be frustrating here and there but over all it wasn’t too horrible. My biggest issue with ele was that once I hit 80 and got the character into exotics and then ran a dungeon or two I found it boring. I found that the amount of dps out put was actually a turn off for me. Although the bigger turn off was the lack of being able to swap weapons in combat. Sure you can swap attunements but that just didn’t matter to me as much as swapping weapons. So that is something to think about. Thus due to boredom I actually deleted my ele.

Before I even tried playing an ele I had leveled a necro and fell in love with it. It fits my playstyle very well. I get to do my own thing in groups and yet I still add to the party with how I chose to build and how I choose to play. I have never met with resistance in dungeon groups for being a necro. Normally if anything is said it’s a compliment in how well I play.

So yeah, I may not be top tier at much of anything with my necro but I’m good all around and I tend to be the last one standing in a dungeon if the rest of the party goes down. I’ve finished fights more than once and then rez the rest of the group.

Your choice depends on your play style and how well you get to know your chosen class. I personally prefer the necro because I feel like there’s more to the class than an ele because of weapon swapping and feeling like I have more build options. Ele just feels like you pigeon hole yourself into one main attunement and then swapping to the others when needed for the utility of the skills.

And there’s always the option to level both. =)