Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing my necromancer since the beginning and I just don’t seem to be getting it right for whatever reason. I feel fragile when I’m exploring the 65-70 level areas. Alot of kiting and careful pulls are making me feel a little weak to say the least. By the time one mob is dead another one has respawned behind me limiting my movement.

I’ve been reading about some necromancer issues on the forums and I think it might be a good idea to start fresh with a re-roll.

Any suggestions for a new character? Something that is fun to play and not too ‘squishy’ would be great.

Necro is not squishy. Do you have any toughness or vit in your build? Everyone is squishy if you don’t get defense stats, but necro’s can be very tanky.

And there’s a big patch coming in a couple weeks with lots of fixes and updates, probably some necro love in there. Classes change all the time in mmo’s. Best to stick to the one you like the theme and flavor of. Weak classes get buffs, strong ones get nerfs. whats good and bad now, won’t always be the case as this will always be in flux.

But if you feel squishy as a necro, something is not right. Try using a condition/toughness or condition/vitality build and see if that helps.

But fun is an opinion. Every class is loved by some and hated by others. And like I said, your only squishy if you spec squishy. Necro however, is one of the highest defense classes around.

If your not likeing the playstyle and flavor of the class, try something else. If it’s just defense your having a problem with, that can be corrected with some experimention.

I’d hate to contradict you, but along with guardian I’ve found necromancer to be the most tanky profession I’ve tried ( so far necro and mesmer at lv 80, a warrior at lv 50 and a guardian at lv 22).

If it helps, my necro is geared in a mix of Valkyrie and berserker gear, running a dual dagger power/ vampiric build (something like 20/20/0/30/0) and uses wells. If you use well of darkness and/ or the blind on the plague elite that can save you a few times. Plus death shroud of course. The part which gets really annoying is the lack of condition removal; even if I use the heal that consumes conditions and the staff #4 ability, in Orr they really like to stack conditions >.>.

I don’t really want to say stuff you know already, so if anything there sounds like that I apologise. But necros can be very sturdy and I love mine almost as much as I love my mesmer.

However, to answer your question I’d probably recommend a guardian. Bear in mind mine is only low level, but they seem pretty good at killing and AoE and have really good condition removal. It’s fun, but I’ll probably stand that necros are more fun :p

Necros can be quite tough to kill, but it’s all dependent on how your playing it… Which can be a little confusing if you don’t really sit down and take a look at the class. My buddy had some trouble with his necro early on, but after setting him “on the right course” he’s having a much better time with the class.

Maybe you can expand by giving us an idea of how you got your toon laid out and maybe we can give you some suggestions.

Avoid the ranger if you want a different experience :P

Maybe I was going to the wrong source for information? Is Noxxic.com any good for builds? I never hear them mentioned but I went there out of habit for a quick build and was useing this:

http://www.noxxic.com/gw2/necromancer/damage/pve/core-build-and-traits

…as my solo dps/questing build. Any reliable sources for builds other then noxxic?

Well, I’m no expert on the game, and struggled myself to find a role I liked.

I started Necro, then Guardian, Engineer and have now finally settled on a Norn Warrior.

Really enjoying the fact I can use 99% of the weapons, which means more skills availible to me.

Only level 11, but really enjoying him so far.

I play an engineer, mesmer, and necromancer (so far, as well as a ton of below level 10 random class guys) and honestly by default the necromancer is the ‘toughest’ of the three based on his pets, lifetaps/heals, and special ability.

The mesmer is a different kind of ‘tough’. Can’t take damage well, but with enough illusions and misdirection can solo very difficult things due to the monsters wasting attacks on clones.

Lastly my engineer feels the squishiest of all three (which is weird, since he is the only one with medium armor) BUT I have not traited him for vit or toughness (to be fair, I have yet to train my necro or mesmer that way either and he still feels squishier). One nice thing about the engineer though is that he’s better at running away than the others due to having basically infinite swiftness with the 10 point tools trait.

I don’t think the build you’re using is necessarily bad… but are you using the staff or scepter/dagger more often? My guess is ur using the staff when you should really use the scepter/dagger more.

Also, is this build more power or condition? The reason I ask is because certain weapons scale better to power or condition. It doesn’t seem like the build is really stating condition yet is using the scepter/dagger combination and all sorts of condition makers which scale much better with condition than power.

I would say check out the necro forum first… try some things out and if it’s just not working than consider trying a different class to see if it’s more your fit.

Well I’ve changed my spec to the one suggested by lady.2106 and it seems to be working pretty well. It’s kind of odd to be a caster standing toe-to-toe with the baddie engaged in a knife fight, covered in nothing but cloth but it works pretty well. I was taking out some jungle trolls one by one and kicking some kitten feeling rather please with myself overall. I was glouting in my new found prowess when I accidently got too close to a veteran jungle troll. The fight was pretty good though. It was a group event but I didn’t get one shotted and hurt him pretty good too before he beat me to a bloody pulp.

Oh well.

I have a Rifle / Greatsword Charr Warrior at level 12 right now, and it’s a lot of fun! A little trouble killing two level 14 mobs at once, but any threat level less than that is no problem. The rifle is very powerful, and the greatsword finisher is awesome.

On my Necros, I use axe/focus and switch between that and scepter/warhorn. With deathshroud about the only thing that can kill me is mobs of 5 or more. Anything under 5 though..even mobs a couple of levels above me are pretty much toast.

I do spec 10 in toughness / 10 in vitality and wear resilient gear, however.

There’s a big shift in difficulty when going into the 60+ zones at par level (at least there was for me in Fireheart Rise). They seem to be not just a little tougher than the 50-60 zones, but a lot tougher.

That might be a part of what you’re experiencing.