Guild Wars 2

Almost every meta pvp build has the following features:
-the greatest possible number of blocks, evades, and invulnerabilities;
-the best damage they can inflict while keeping those invulns, blocks,etc;

Now, let’s consider one of the few exceptions: the Reaper.
Let’s take, for example, the 2 “defensive” traitlines: Blood Magic for support/sustain and Death Magic for increased tankyness + condi removal. With those traitlines, the Reaper can’t do damage at all, even if we take utilities that grants damage combined with those traitlines (both minions and wells are not that great in a pvp scenario).

So, let’s try with a defensive traitline + an “utility” traitline, like Blood Magic + Soul Reaping. Now maybe we can be more efficent, we have lifesteal, unblockable marks, good life force generation, better cooldowns on reaper shroud. BUT we still lack on damage. We don’t have boonstrip, condi pressure, or good power burst. Let’s face it: we don’t even have a good defensive capabilities, we can’t tank at all. In 1 v 1 maybe.

So we need damage. And what we need for damage? We need Spite/Curses/Soul Reaping. Now we can boonstrip, apply condi pressure AoE, and so on. We can combine Spite with Blood Magic instead of Soul Reaping for a more “teamfight oriented” build, yes. But we are still offensive and squishy.

Basically, if you are a necromancer, you must choose between damage and tankyness. You CAN’T HAVE BOTH. If you take offensive traitlines, you will do damage but you are squishy. If you take defensive traitlines, you can survive better but you can’t do damage. Or crappy damage. Well, you get it.

Now, let’s see warrior, for example. You can take mace and shield for blocks, endure pain (x2) for damage immunity, resistance with berserker stance, blocks and break stuns with rage skills, and Discipline and Defense, that are basically “utility” and “defensive” traitlines. Not a single utility/trait is meant to do damage. So, how the hell I can perma cc / condi burst enemies with 10+ stacks of bleeding+confusion+burning while having 1k hp/s regen with invuln and blocks?? What kind of balance is this??

The same goes for other classes, like power dh, condi chrono, etc: really good damage under passive/defensive utilities,weapons and traits.
I haven’t written here to say “anet nerf this, anet nerf that” since i use both necro and warrior for example. The fact is that, currently the game is based only on those who have more passive defensive skills and don’t need utilities to do damage. It makes no sense, for example, to remove celestial amulet when this condicancer berserker has x3 moar damage than the old shoutbow warrior with almost the same survivability. I know that the celestial was OP for some classes, yes, I just want to make it clear that the most important things aren’t the stats itself but the utility that you have available. Cele reaper was good but not op since it was counterable, especially in teamfights. Cele tempest didn’t had counterplay – CUZ WHAT?- passive defenses/invulns/cleanses AND damage. This game is all about broken mechanics. It always has been, sadly!

All classes should have the right balance between offensive skills and defensive skills, you could not have it all in a single build.

Thank you all for reading

since launch it has never been possible to play any class like that…except necro

Let’s take, for example, the 2 “defensive” traitlines: Blood Magic for support/sustain and Death Magic for increased tankyness + condi removal. With those traitlines, the Reaper can’t do damage at all, even if we take utilities that grants damage combined with those traitlines (both minions and wells are not that great in a pvp scenario).

Lol

“no dmg”

Go on and tell me how “bad” those players are..because from the way you necros talk..it seems that you can play other professions rolling your face on the keyboard

Low skill design…(poor ele..unless played perfectly you lose easily to every profession..but then if you win they’ll call you OP)

We don’t have boonstrip, condi pressure, or good power burst

…Ok I’m done

“supreme”…

The first video is old and that player is just bad. The only thing he did right is took with him a friend that don’t know how to play as a ranger and fool everybody making the necro appear as a godlike class. A really bad video.

The second one is barely true, but also old of a year. At this time there was Another meta and the necro was a little better. Also he fought not exellent players for shure.

Basicly everything you wrote and linked is bad and barely a lie.
Yes, Kappa exagerated a little, but also have some reasons.

Actually the necromancer is the easiest class to kill, with no defensive skills, no high damage, no burst skills (only the gravedigger on the GS, that is one of the worst skill ever, sometimes useless also in pve), no mobility.
There’s some builds that make the necromancer viable and almost all the onehanded weapons have a skill to corrupt boons, making it able to do so also with builds that don’t focus on it., but be useful as a corrupt bot that need an engi to be ressed every 10 seconds is not be in “meta”.

In the actual meta, a sort of defensive skill will only grant to the necro to at last don’t be the eternal “first target and first kill” as in every decent fights.

But hey, we have the Shroud! We have two healt bar! We don’t need any kind of defensive skill, we already have 40k hp!!
I’m really sad about that…

Not bad players, some of them are even terrible bad. They have no damage pressure and/or dies fast on classes that have block shields etc and high mobility.

Also videos are a bit outdated. Its from time when necro perfomed a bit better.

@ Supreme
The funniest thing is that you haven’t understood anything about the post.

I wasn’t trying to say “Necro is bad”, I was trying to make people understand that the necro (necro is only an example btw) to do damage must be builded with offensive traits and skills while other classes can do a lot of damage while maintaining defensive traits and skills because they can rely on passive invulnerabilities, blocks,etc.

I’m sorry if I have not explained well

Can’t up-vote this enough.

This is the entire problem with GW2 and why it’s collapsed.

OP is correct on everything he says. The thing is the game used to be about “give and take” regarding builds. But they just merged all the traits so now you can get all the survivability you would ever want whilst not giving up on damage.

It cannot change though because this is first and foremost a pve game and if you split up all the traits then those people will just quit and the game will die.

Look elsewhere for your competitive pvp

Silv.9207:

“supreme”…

The first video is old and that player is just bad. The only thing he did right is took with him a friend that don’t know how to play as a ranger and fool everybody making the necro appear as a godlike class. A really bad video.

The second one is barely true, but also old of a year. At this time there was Another meta and the necro was a little better. Also he fought not exellent players for shure.

Basicly everything you wrote and linked is bad and barely a lie.
Yes, Kappa exagerated a little, but also have some reasons.

Actually the necromancer is the easiest class to kill, with no defensive skills, no high damage, no burst skills (only the gravedigger on the GS, that is one of the worst skill ever, sometimes useless also in pve), no mobility.
There’s some builds that make the necromancer viable and almost all the onehanded weapons have a skill to corrupt boons, making it able to do so also with builds that don’t focus on it., but be useful as a corrupt bot that need an engi to be ressed every 10 seconds is not be in “meta”.

In the actual meta, a sort of defensive skill will only grant to the necro to at last don’t be the eternal “first target and first kill” as in every decent fights.

But hey, we have the Shroud! We have two healt bar! We don’t need any kind of defensive skill, we already have 40k hp!!
I’m really sad about that…

Conditions deal the most “dmg” in this game, not everything lethal is represented by huge numbers on the screen

Necros are balanced with the marks spammings as basis, long range unblockable dmg will always come with a cost, you’re not forced at mele range to deal the bulk of your dmg and that something Anet keeps in mind…fortunately for the rest of use

The class is very simplistic, so easy to grasp that any min buff would catapult us back to s2 bullcrap with 3-4 kids for team using reaper spamming unblockable marks on the point

If necro/reapers would see 80% of their aoe output converted to single target attacks then I could see some improvement delivered somewhere else but am…no way, too much aor happy trigger.

Forget wars…I see 90% of necros play the same way, rush mid and spam all marks on the point, it works in soloq in over 90% of the cases, easy to play method, you don’t need to worry about any boons on the enemy ( except resistance….maybe), no need to worry if the target got loads of toughness, vitality or healing power…just spam condis, no need to worry if the target hiding behind a wall…just spam marks as they stick to walls

Supreme.3164:

Conditions deal the most “dmg” in this game, not everything lethal is represented by huge numbers on the screen

No they don’t. There is no correlation between condis and high DPS. While some condi classes have exceptional DPS that fact has nothing to do with condis and everything to do with class design.

Necros are balanced with the marks spammings as basis, long range unblockable dmg will always come with a cost, you’re not forced at mele range to deal the bulk of your dmg and that something Anet keeps in mind…fortunately for the rest of use

Necros have 4 marks. Mark#4 and mark#5 are utilities that are not spammed. Mark#2 and mark#3 are the dps marks, and of those two only mark#2 is spammed, since mark#3 is too offensively important to mindlessly use.

Mark#2 however is spammed everywhere since it’s life force (if soul reaping) and it has no other value outside of LF generation so it’s not a loss if it gets wasted.

Please tell me you’re not getting killed by mark#2 spam.

Lordrosicky.5813:

now you can get all the survivability you would ever want whilst not giving up on damage.

You actually do give up damage. However nobody bothers running full DPS builds ever, so people have forgotten what a Glass Cannon actually is.

The basic issue is that the low base health of classes in this game means that stacking defensives takes precedent over all other concerns, while stacking offense has little practical gain.

Crinn.7864:

Supreme.3164:

Conditions deal the most “dmg” in this game, not everything lethal is represented by huge numbers on the screen

No they don’t. There is no correlation between condis and high DPS. While some condi classes have exceptional DPS that fact has nothing to do with condis and everything to do with class design.

Necros are balanced with the marks spammings as basis, long range unblockable dmg will always come with a cost, you’re not forced at mele range to deal the bulk of your dmg and that something Anet keeps in mind…fortunately for the rest of use

Necros have 4 marks. Mark#4 and mark#5 are utilities that are not spammed. Mark#2 and mark#3 are the dps marks, and of those two only mark#2 is spammed, since mark#3 is too offensively important to mindlessly use.

Mark#2 however is spammed everywhere since it’s life force (if soul reaping) and it has no other value outside of LF generation so it’s not a loss if it gets wasted.

Please tell me you’re not getting killed by mark#2 spam.

now i see why you think necro sucks so bad. your not even playing it right. i spam 4 and 5 constantly in team fights while we focus a target. esp if they are down and their team is trying to rez.i hide behind my team and dps from range. then i move in and use chilled to the bone and back out. sure if i get focused ill die. but you shouldnt be winning a fight against 4 other people.the sooner you learn this the better off youll be.

Crinn.7864:

Lordrosicky.5813:

now you can get all the survivability you would ever want whilst not giving up on damage.

You actually do give up damage. However nobody bothers running full DPS builds ever, so people have forgotten what a Glass Cannon actually is.

The basic issue is that the low base health of classes in this game means that stacking defensives takes precedent over all other concerns, while stacking offense has little practical gain.

I meant you can spec incredibly tanky and with massive damage. That is what power creep is. The game is balanced around a ton of survival skills like blocks and evades. So to counter this there is also massive damage. Which is what the power creep is. Instead of everyone having 2 dodges and skills doing less damage, now everything does massive damage but its hard to land anything.

Another example is conditions. They are very spammable now but they get cleansed just as quickly. Auto attacks are putting 5 condis on people but everyone can clear them every few seconds.

The game was designed by better gameplay designers than those who got hold of the game post release imo. The original gameplay designers realised that classes had to be fun to fight both with and against. They realised that classes needed to have to give up stuff to take stuff.

For example, to spec into bunker guardian you needed to invest a lot of your build into 2 or 3 shout traits. If you wanted to be a warrior and have high sustain you would need to take 4 traits or something. This reduced the amount of damage traits you could take. As a result there was always something you were giving up to take something. It was major. And it was the bedrock of the game.

As soon as they merged all the traits it meant you could be a shout warrior or a signet necro with a single trait instead of the 3 previously. So now, as an ele or whatever you can take your condi clear and your direct damage mitigation and your ability to do comditions and direct damage.

If anyone didnt play much before that trait patch then i feel sorry for you. It was really good back then. Instead of rotation wars 2 there was actual fun team fights with classes that were all counterable and weak in some respect (except ele at the time)

sophiewhite.3149:

now i see why you think necro sucks so bad. your not even playing it right. i spam 4 and 5 constantly in team fights while we focus a target. esp if they are down and their team is trying to rez.i hide behind my team and dps from range. then i move in and use chilled to the bone and back out. sure if i get focused ill die. but you shouldnt be winning a fight against 4 other people.the sooner you learn this the better off youll be.

The question was whether marks are being “spammed”

Somehow I doubt any decent necro is going to be spamming mark#4 and mark#5 on CD.

Did someone seriously got killed by a necromancer marks? O_O
The staff is mandatory for every (expecially condi) necromancer build not for how strong it is because it’s the weaker weapon of the necromancer in damage and is only good for two reasons: Utility skills (4 that transfer conditions and 5 for fear) and LF generation. Nothing more. We’re struck with it because it’s the best LF generation weapon(if traited) and the necromancer totally depend from LF. About the damage… only the skill 3 inflict a decent damage but it’s still too low to be good by any sense. The Mark2 don’t inflict any damage and can be only used to obtain LF and Regeneration.
Everyone spam about “staff is strong and unblockable!” but the unblockable fear and transfer are the only things good in that weapon. I will be glad to ANet to grant us a nother weapon for the condition build, or at last able to grant LF as the staff do.

Condition damage is good, sometimes barely at the same level of the direct damage (in burst builds like warrior LB/Mace), but the direct damage is still the best way to kill someone. You don’t need to spam and hope that the enemy don’t clean all your work receiving only the 20% of your damage, and all the damage you do is an immediate damage.
It’s the old story of the Burn Guardian, when a lot of people posted images where they get killed by 90k of Burn damage… If they Survived to 90k of damage before they get killed, then the Burn itself was not good enough to inflict you that “20k” you need to get killed, making you survive for another 70k before make you die. (we can remove another 20k for the downed state? It’s always 50k more than your healt pool).

Condition is not a real big problem and basicly no one used it as main damage in any high level tournament, exeption for few builds (or for the necro, that can’t do anything else than condition damage to be barely good).

Anyway, the main thing was: there’s too many classes that can play in full dps in equipment, utility and traits with still a insane survavibility.
That’s the thing that make the game unbalanced.
Force for real the players to chose between damage and survavibility would be a good choice, expecially now that there’s no more a large amount of bunker amulets for bunkers and hybrids, forcing players to play dps OR bunker.

A rework on traits would be a good thing to start a real balance and a real build diversity system, expecially for the PvP area.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I meant you can spec incredibly tanky and with massive damage. That is what power creep is.

“massive damage” and “incredibly tanky” is meaningless rhetoric. It can mean anything and everything and nothing at all.

Massive damage compared to what? None of the tanky builds in this game are doing anywhere near there dps potential.

Look at warriors their meta builds have the maximum amount of defensives you could possibly stack on a warrior. But they also have terrible DPS compared to a actual strength/tactics offensive warrior. (meta power warrior tends to throw out 8k arc dividers most of the time. a fully offensive power warrior could double that)

There isn’t a single class in the game that can stack both defensives and offensive potency. However people do not know what offensive power is so they end up thinking that builds with low dps are actually high dps builds.

Let’s embrace powercreep? How about no.

You bring broken builds as example and want necro to be buffed to their level? Anything else?

kappa.2036:

@ Supreme
The funniest thing is that you haven’t understood anything about the post.

I wasn’t trying to say “Necro is bad”, I was trying to make people understand that the necro (necro is only an example btw) to do damage must be builded with offensive traits and skills while other classes can do a lot of damage while maintaining defensive traits and skills because they can rely on passive invulnerabilities, blocks,etc.

I’m sorry if I have not explained well

thieves say hi, 11k HP, forced into trickery, forced into DD, SA is garbage – get hit one time -> enjoy spawn time

reapers are fine (i play one myself), just because other classes are broken doesn’t mean we need s2 all over again

I get where u are coming from a bit, OP, but saying Necro has no boonstrip(they corrupt for days, even better), condi burst(it’s not bad but not top tier either), or power burst(must not play power Reaper then) is a bit of an exaggeration. Don’t exaggerate and ppl will react differently to your threads instead of every post being examples of how you’re wrong.

YES, Necro is kinda bottom tier(and has been except when chill damaged and back 3 yrs ago with Dhuumfire), and needs to be babysat, but with practice, outplaying the enemy, and knowing the other professions in and out will get you a long way. I used to main Necro, but tbh I only play it here and there for corruptions and wells. But if you have a good team who can peel and give u stab, Reaper is very dangerous and worth bringing.

First of all, in regards to those who are complaining about OP’s “no corruption, no pressure, no damage” claim, you’re quoting him out of context. He said some spcialization do provide those and some don’t. Obviously you will still be able to corrupt with utilities and weapon skills either way, but it’s a very noticable difference in your contribution to team fights if you don’t pick offensive specs.

kappa.2036:

Basically, if you are a necromancer, you must choose between damage and tankyness. You CAN’T HAVE BOTH. If you take offensive traitlines, you will do damage but you are squishy. If you take defensive traitlines, you can survive better but you can’t do damage. Or crappy damage. Well, you get it.

I’d go a step further.
Not only do you have to choose, but the opportunity cost in picking defense over offense is way to high to make it a viable alternative.
Of course, there are several decent defensive traits in most specializations, or at least some that buff your defense indirectly, but the fact remains: currently there is no such thing as a genuine necro tank build.

Resolving those issues, however, is not a matter of reorganizing the necro’s trait distribution, but rather addressing some more fundamental flaws:

• There are very few defensive skills or traits that actually scale with how many opponents you’re up against, like Vamp traits, Locust Swarm, Putrid Mark or shouts.
  All of them require hitting a target, and when they do they scale relatively poorly, nowhere near enough to account for the offensive pressure of additional players focusing the necro.
  Obviously, a scaling issue that classes with blocks/evades/stealth/invuln don’t have to deal with.

• Necros can’t disengage properly.
  Every other class is faster or has enough range to catch up to a necro, should they even make an attempt to slowly crawl away from a losing fight.

• Healing doesn’t work through Shroud.
  Blighter’s Boon, Vamp traits and Unholy Sanctuary being the exceptions, but a ton of other traits don’t heal through Shroud, regeneration doesn’t heal through Shroud, sigil and rune heal procs don’t heal through Shroud and all of necro’s main healing skills don’t heal through Shroud. That means Vamp Signet’s leech stacks, Blood Fiend and Well of Blood pulses.
  Classic examples of necro countering its own defensive mechanics.
  But most importantly, ally healing doesn’t go through Shroud!

So, not only do necros have the worst defensive mechanics for team fights, but when they need it the most they can’t even get healed by allies.
It blows my mind that this hasn’t changed more than 4 years after the game was released.

lol the first video of Supremes made my day.

this is the problem of gw2 even if it was a sarcasm. many people don’t even take it seriously anymore. so wake up go find new games and get into PvP again. gw2 just isn’t the PvP game anymore. there are alot better games out there.

People are focusing too much on the necromancer example. The point is that when GW2 was in its prime, all builds had trade-offs. You didn’t have CC, good survival, good damage, and good group support all in one bundle.

Silv.9207:

Did someone seriously got killed by a necromancer marks? O_O
The staff is mandatory for every (expecially condi) necromancer build not for how strong it is because it’s the weaker weapon of the necromancer in damage and is only good for two reasons: Utility skills (4 that transfer conditions and 5 for fear) and LF generation. Nothing more. We’re struck with it because it’s the best LF generation weapon(if traited) and the necromancer totally depend from LF. About the damage… only the skill 3 inflict a decent damage but it’s still too low to be good by any sense. The Mark2 don’t inflict any damage and can be only used to obtain LF and Regeneration.
Everyone spam about “staff is strong and unblockable!” but the unblockable fear and transfer are the only things good in that weapon. I will be glad to ANet to grant us a nother weapon for the condition build, or at last able to grant LF as the staff do.

Condition damage is good, sometimes barely at the same level of the direct damage (in burst builds like warrior LB/Mace), but the direct damage is still the best way to kill someone. You don’t need to spam and hope that the enemy don’t clean all your work receiving only the 20% of your damage, and all the damage you do is an immediate damage.
It’s the old story of the Burn Guardian, when a lot of people posted images where they get killed by 90k of Burn damage… If they Survived to 90k of damage before they get killed, then the Burn itself was not good enough to inflict you that “20k” you need to get killed, making you survive for another 70k before make you die. (we can remove another 20k for the downed state? It’s always 50k more than your healt pool).

Condition is not a real big problem and basicly no one used it as main damage in any high level tournament, exeption for few builds (or for the necro, that can’t do anything else than condition damage to be barely good).

Anyway, the main thing was: there’s too many classes that can play in full dps in equipment, utility and traits with still a insane survavibility.
That’s the thing that make the game unbalanced.
Force for real the players to chose between damage and survavibility would be a good choice, expecially now that there’s no more a large amount of bunker amulets for bunkers and hybrids, forcing players to play dps OR bunker.

A rework on traits would be a good thing to start a real balance and a real build diversity system, expecially for the PvP area.

Out of 10 posts from you…9 will be about nerfing everybody and buff/leave the class you play, making fun of anybody who think otherswise, give dozen “explanations” on why they’re wrong and you’re right always…

And in the end…you don’t even play those other professions, neither you try to watch the world under another light…after taking off your bias glasses…

Before was ele with diamond skin…now it’s blocks/evades..and tomorrow will be something else

Was there a time where you would not visit the forum complaining?…ha yes..there was dhuumfire era..and chillmancer era, a clear example of what happens when you buff a class with design concept like necro

Supreme.3164:

Out of 10 posts from you…9 will be about nerfing everybody and buff/leave the class you play, making fun of anybody who think otherswise, give dozen “explanations” on why they’re wrong and you’re right always…

And in the end…you don’t even play those other professions, neither you try to watch the world under another light…after taking off your bias glasses…

Before was ele with diamond skin…now it’s blocks/evades..and tomorrow will be something else

Was there a time where you would not visit the forum complaining?…ha yes..there was dhuumfire era..and chillmancer era, a clear example of what happens when you buff a class with design concept like necro

Yes, I complain a lot from my point of wiew. Also,in the dhuumfire era I wasn’t playing necromancer, then i don’t know how good it was XD

About the necromancer, yes, if you look to the past, it was incredibly strong or incredibly countered (or just weak). before the condi era (outside of dhuum phase) the necro was the worst class to play, not even considered into the sPvP game for how bad it was. Few burst builds came up with wells but there was so weak that even a bunker was able to burst them down for how poor defence they had. The problem is that we had the same defence as this time…

During the Chillomancer era the necro was good, but then everyone discovered that a celestial ele, a thief, a mesmer or a engi with the moa potion was able to totally countered him, making his reign of terror end in few weeks, with no hope to return.

The problem of the necromancer is that, compared to every single other class, lack of defence, damage and mobility, both in direct or condi damage builds. Can’t be a dps because his damage got brutally nerfed with the chill nerf (and still with it the necro will not match the burst damage of a good condi warrior), can’t be a bunker because his defence totally rely on statistics and there’s only few and bad defensive amulets and still with them a necro have only few chances to be as bunker as a dps marauder DH can actually be. Don’t have any kind of movement skills outside of the RS2, that have an aftercast that make it barely useless if you want to flee. Then, if you don’t use the wurm (that frequently bug when you active it, have a limited range, you need to position him before the fight and can be killed easy…) you don’t have any kind of way to flee from a fight.
The necromancer is doomed to be a pure corruption class, without any chance to have a burst build, a bunker build, a defensive support build or even to survive to a fight if you don’t kill your enemy. And the necro is the worst 1v1 class atm.
You can have a better “burst” damage if you use a direct damage build, but you become really easy to kill and your damage is still not even comparable to all the other professions (unless ele).

Yes, a little improvement on the necromancer would be good.
it’s a viable class, but only in premades or in lucky teams with good people that know that have to keep you alive ressing you all the time if he want to make you do something useful for them.

Anyway, the point was: there’s too much active and (expecially) passive defences that grants to some classes a chance to be dps and “tanky” at the same time.
DH can be the top example of how a class can survive to everything as a dps and the necro can be the perfect example to how a class can’t because totally lack of defensive traits and skills, or need to totally focus on them to survive 10 seconds more doing no damage.

A little balance on that way can be good.

I don’t ask now to overbuff the necromancer, but if there’s so much posts about how bad it is there’s a reason…

I would prefer a little balance over the classes to reduce the passive defences and traits and improve active ones as skills and traits related to skills activation.

@ Shadowstep (thieves say hi, 11k HP, forced into trickery, forced into DD, SA is garbage – get hit one time → enjoy spawn time)

You said exactly what I was trying to make people understand.
Thief can be another example in addition to necro. Lot of mobility and evades, but at the same time you have low hp pool and you cant hold a point. Also a lot of traits that you have mentioned are meant to improve damage. You NEED those traits if you want to kill ppl.
Now look for example at the warrior longbow/mace-shield build:
DEFENSE, DISCIPLINE and BERSERKER.
-Shield Master, Defy Pain, Cleansing Ire
-Warrior’s Sprint, Brawlers Recovery, Burst Mastery
-Smash Brawler, Dead or Alive, Eternal Champion

Not a single trait meant to improve damage/condi damage. Only Burst Mastery maybe, but in a condi build that 7% dmg increase doesn’t matter.

Let’s look at the skills:
-Healing Signet
-Endure Pain
-Berserker Stance
-Shattering Blow
-Head Butt

Except the elite skill that is a cc, nothing is meant to improve damage. Damage and condi immunity and blocks.

Weapons: Mace/Shield and Longbow.
On core Warrior, this setup can’t do damage at all. But with zerker spec you can eat ppl alive with this weapons.
Don’t forget high hp pool and heavy armor.
This is what i’m saying. Everything based on defensive and passive skills while doing a lot of damage. The “necro balance” is another thing that should not be discussed here.