Guild Wars 2

So, a friend of mine is going to make a necromancer, and I’ve been playing the game for a while, but I don’t much know how to mesh with that. I don’t know the pros and cons of a necro, and I’m not sure what class would fill in for what a necro couldn’t do.

As far as I know from my experience with necromancers in day to day gameplay, they’re essentially glass cannons, less than an elementalist, but they lack gap closers like eles.

Got any advice guys? Oh, and I’m comfortable with all of the classes, so, know need to ask what my favorites are. I’m just looking for pros and cons and what works for this.

Thank you in advance.

No necros can survive better than many professions. They do mostly condition damage and not direct damage like an elementalist. I’d say play whatever you want except probably another necro.

necros essentially have two healthbars so while they do wear light armour they are quite durable

Yeah necros are very tanky, even using a full glass cannon build. Thieves pair pretty well with them, as they provide excellent ways to escape with shadow refuge and blinding powder. On top of that, the necro is naturally very tank and can easily distract opponents so the thief is free to spam backstab all day. If your friend goes condi necro as well, youve basically got the 2 extremes of both condi and power dmg. Not many people can survive through insane condi dmg and insane power dmg, especially when theyre both happening at the same time

The trouble with necros is that their combo fields can be a bit on the flaky to use consistently. Dark, Ethereal, Light and Poison are what they have access to. Dark and Poison with Blast finishers are probably the more useful of the 4, although Poison is only available in 1 skill on Staff. Dark fields are available on Wells, which are excellent in both offensive and defensive use.

The main pro of a necro is the incredible survivability that can be built into one. They have effectively 2 health bars, they can constantly steal health to sustain themselves in a longer fight. With Plague they have one of my favourite offensive elites, which also negates damage. This in effect gives a necro 3 health bars, the normal one, the death shroud bar and the timer on Plague. In wvw, it takes a lot of focused fire to kill a high toughness, death shroud, plague necro.

You can use Necros in area control and denial. Marks and Wells stack up a great deal of damage. In WvW, well/mark bombing walls during a siege is awesome area denial to the defenders. They’re also great for defending choke points. If you pair with some guards or an ele, you can basically trap a good sized mob with line of warding, unsteady ground, or static fields and mark/well bomb them and make it easier for the hammer train to deal with them or kill them all outright with ele AOE’s stacked on the marks and wells.

In zerg rushes, necros are great for disruption. Dropping things like Spectral wall, Reaper’s Mark, Chillblains into an enemy zerg can seriously break up a charge. Follow up with Death shroud to tear through the back line or using the warhorn #5 skill then go into Plague for more disruption in the middle of blob fight by spamming 2 (blinds enemies on each pulse, which forces them to cleanse leaving them vulnerable to other conditions or not cleanse thus reducing their DPS. Neither of which are good choices since the skill will blind them again on the next pulse).

I think a melee DPS class would pair best with a necro due to their access to fear, chill. cripple, and mobilize. Necro is an attrition class built to pile on conditions and CC and drain their enemies. Thief would reap the most benefit from the necro’s effects, though any class would do fine with them.