Ok. Im Purie from EU and im currently rank 60 and been in the tpvp scene since the day one. I’ve used my time and learned all the classes and played them all to some extent(+1000 games on 5 classes).
When necros still existed. They would have hard time against elies. Now they’ve been toned down by multiple nerfs on healing related traits & skills. But the only problem wasn’t the high sustain. The biggest problem with condi necros was that the dmg source would only be bleeds and not that many condies to hide the bleeds. That’s why engineer worked nicely with necro. It gave necro the missing condies to hide the bleeds. If necro epidemiced on a target with those conditions. They would become necros conditions meaning necros condition dmg would take over.
Necros used to have access to burning but not same way as today. In teamfights where you have multiple classes. There is multiple conditions. Via diffrent skills, utilities and traits. You could harness those condies to your self. Aka take them and send them back to your target. But before you could do that you would most likely be low or killed before you could take any benefit of those RNG condies given to you when people spammed X power skills and the duration on those condies would also be so short that when you sent them back. They would have no effect on your target.
What it ment that necro had little chance against a class like elementalist(1v1).
Necro which was supposed to be master of sustain fights. Couldn’t handle the amount of condition cleansing vs elies. U give him 6 bleeds. He cleanses and returns the dmg in power. With sustain that necros have you would die eventually. That’s why power was superior at that point.
If it wasn’t 1v1. In teamfight the necros favorite playinground. You would have to face multiple additional cleanses provided by guardians, elies, rangers.. and so on. When you only have few condies and bleeds. Your dmg was mitigated and that’s what killed necroes and thats also why people started to take engineers instead of necroes.
Engineers offered multiple condies. The biggest thing to note is burning. With decent condition dmg. 1 burning is same as 6-7 bleeds. To apply burning you needed much less global cooldowns(less time) than applying same amount of bleeds. If it got cleansed. It wasn’t end of the world. When necro needed multiple global cooldowns to apply same amount of condi pressure as engineer. I think the choice was clear why engineer dominated over necroes. Just due to the fact how cleansing works and the time needed to apply the pressure. Ofc engineer is also more versitile than necros. Close to elies. I used alot of time on engineer also and 1 major difference was how many good traits engineers has/had compared to necroes. Necros had close to no choise what to choose for and it kills the build diversity. When engineers had multiple good traits.
What we can easily say is that burning works alot better in PvP enviroment than bleeding. If we just compare the 2 conditions. Why necros atm have an edge over engineers is due to being able to self provide the burning and also transfer the conditions given to necro. But on top of that still maintain the way to create bleeds which is how it used to be. What I considered condition priority is Burning > Poison > Stacking bleeds. Which result in alot higher DMG than engineers could provide due to necros way of putting the bleeds. When u add fear dmg and torment. Necro becomes superior in condition pressure.
Also new buffed weakness counters power classes and gives necromancers more sustain in fights. A way to survive to the next heal without having vigor or regen or protection.
What also has buffed necros is nerfs to other classes. Back in the day thief cloak&dagger+steal+backstab could one shot multiple things and especially necroes. It happens from stealth and it happens in an blink of an eye that you may not see it comming and have no time to react. Especially with old quickness. If you didn’t die you would be finished with quickness auto-attacks.
So in a way these buffs and nerfs have made necro superior to engineer IN CONDI PRESSURE. Also necro has been buffed to that extent that it can deal with other classes 1v1.
Atm biggest problem is that people been so used to running. Lets say Portal/Illusion of Life/Mirror image or Blink on mesmer. That’s been normal for so many months. People didn’t wanna change against engineers. Necro’s provide even more condition threath. Maybe too much? I don’t know the numbers but what I know is that this game has been dominated by power dmg. If someone tried to run anything condition based. It would get annihilated by power and cleanse.