Guild Wars 2

I’m surprised almost everyone is claming these two professions are underperforming right now. If anything they may lack options.

Yesterday and today I’ve been encountering some Necromancers (in pugs AND Tournies) wielding main Hand dagger that were literally autoattacking to death my 2800+ armor almost 100% protection uptime 21k HP Guardian. The thing is as I’m a UI junkie so I usually almost instantly know when someone’s running glass cannon, when I have my buffs up or down, etc. Well… these Necros were running all pretty low armor (around ~1900/2000), but were extremely hard to kill. I know that becouse precasting empower (12 stacks), 3 stacks of might on weapon switch, 3 stacks activating VoJ and 3 more blasting on Purging Flames and reach 21 stacks of might and I usually kill glassies in seconds with my hammer (except Mesmers, of course). Sadly, I don’t have screenshots of the afterdeath damage data, but I recall seeing around Necrotic Slash 4 hits (~5700 damage), Necrotic Stab 4 hits (~5700 dmg.), Necrotic Bite 4 hits (~5700 dmg.), Life Siphon (~2700/3000 dmg.). I guess the high durability comes from life leeching, Death Shroud and a 21k+ HP bar?

Also, condition Necromancers are extremely strong period. But this is a known fact I guess. It surprises me not enough people are playing these (and the above mentioned).

Power based Necros feel so much stronger now postpatch, what buffs/fixes did they recieve that could have possibly made them that much stronger (in survivavility specially)? or is just pure nonsensical anecdotal evidence on my part?
I’m not nerfcalling, I’m just saying Necros have so much potential.

I’m starting to see LOTS more Elementalists in tournies, and not those utterly unkillable Staff Cantrip healing power eles, but power based ones, ones that manage to be REALLY hard to kill and do a lot more damage than one may expect. People is starting to get more skilled and is starting to discover high durability high damage builds that actually work.

These two professions may lack certain build options, but I wouldn’t consider them weak by any means which is the perception I’ve been having reading these forums.

Dagger Necros and Scepter / Dagger Elementalists can do a lot of damage, and actually have a fair amount of tricks to mitigate that damage as well. The Necro probably still needs more tweaks, but generally this forum exaggerates horrendously with pretty much everything. A Dagger Necro in your face will do a lot of damage, and due to Death Shroud has a lot of “effective health”. A Sc / Da Ele can burst people down rather easily, and depending on the Amulet can be very difficult to take down. Heck even in a glass cannon setup they can be one of the harder ones to kill.

The problem is they aren’t really that fun in open sPvP, in my opinion. They tend to be weaker to “assist trains” then other professions, and that makes them somewhat weak there. In tPvP however, they are pretty good. The Necro in my opinion needs some Axe work, but beyond that it’s not nearly as dire as the community tends to think. Skill tends to be far more relevant then builds and profession.

If you think life leech/steals are supporting the Necromancer, I’m afraid that’s not the case. Any sort of that scales terrible for the Necromancer, even with heavy +Healing investment. The 15pt minor trait that lets you steal life every swing? 37 hp a hit. Symbols that heal or Bombs that heal completely crap on it if anything.

They actually didn’t buff anything related to survivability for necros at all, it took a small dive if anything, if you look at the patch notes, Blood is Power NO LONGER generates life force but instead grants 10 stacks of might, that might be where the increased damage is coming from.

The reason you see fewer necros these days, a lot of them already jumped ship to play Mesmers. They can take any necro spec and play it better with less hiccups. It’s a simple matter of being completely outclassed. We won’t for sure until all the bugs get cleared up but some of them are seriously hampering. Plague Signet for one is copying allied conditions to the Necro but not removing it off allies.

I recommend you to play the Necro and give it a spin in tournaments so you can have an accurate perspective. It’s not unplayable by any means, it’s just really shackled down and unable to reach full potential to compete on an even level.

Necros can pwn guardians couse they’re masters of conditions/boons controls.

Ayestes, I’m more scared of power Dagger necromancers now than glass cannon thieves/mesmers. Those guys absolutely destroy my tanky Guardian in melee, I can’t even imagine on someone else less tanky than me (pretty much everyone else).

I kind of agree Lumines, but I’m afraid everything gets overshadowed by Mesmers right now. :/

I know that first hand Kaim, I usually go full condi removal on my Guardian, and even then Necromancers smoke me like nothing, I wont complain, I consider them a fair counter, and when Purging Flames gets fixed I wont have that many problems either.

The exageration on elementalists it’s pretty off the charts, I consider that profession pretty decent if played well and requires a much higher level of skill than Necromancers (not according to some dev. whom I dissagree with).

Necros ARE UP, the dagger is the only good high damage weapon, besides the staff which isn’t such a great choice in the fast paced s/tpvp. But the dagger has its own issues as well, I rarely use the dagger mainhand because I don’t like getting close to hard hitters. But come on, only 2800 damage hit? My scepter will hit harder than that if I can manage to throw 5 or 6 conditions on you because scepter #3 gains 8% damage per condition (which never happens). You’re going to get hit harder than that from thieves and warriors.

I run a power necro with dagger/warhorn and axe/focus and the damage has indeed increased because of the recent fixes and the change in BiP. I have 25 pts in soul reaping for increased life force and crit damage, life blast pierce and causing vulnerability and might (this trait is in spite) I cause 5% more damage if my life force is over 50% which I try to keep there unless it’s a really close fight or I have a chance of retreating from a battle. So when I have my enemy under 50% health I cast BiP for even more increased damage. Not to mention Lich Form where I’ve managed to down 3 players with it.

Also use the trait that increases damage by 20% if under 50% health and a rune of the eagle i think that does the same thing with 5% under 50% health. So when my enemy is under 50% health I can switch up to DS and finish them off pretty fast specially because every life blast grants vulnerability and might, if not I switch to dagger depends on my health mostly, I’ve done up to 4k crits with the last hit on the dagger and 5k life blasts to light classes.

This of course with bersekers rune, but I switch it up to vitality/precision runes for more health and longer DS but I lose crit damage.

Tanky elementalists are GOD MODE. Do you really want more?

Teknobug.3782:

Necros ARE UP, the dagger is the only good high damage weapon, besides the staff which isn’t such a great choice in the fast paced s/tpvp. But the dagger has its own issues as well, I rarely use the dagger mainhand because I don’t like getting close to hard hitters. But come on, only 2800 damage hit? My scepter will hit harder than that if I can manage to throw 5 or 6 conditions on you because scepter #3 gains 8% damage per condition (which never happens). You’re going to get hit harder than that from thieves and warriors.

You said dagger is the only one hard hitting weapon like if you had that many other options. If anything let’s buff the Axe, but an underwhelming weapon doesn’t make for the whole profession being underpowered, far from it. Also, Staff, not a great choise for s/tPvP?… Is by far the most used weapon set, viable for condi and power based builds alike. I think we both agree Scepter is good.

EDIT:

I run a power necro with dagger/warhorn and axe/focus and the damage has indeed increased because of the recent fixes and the change in BiP.
…

We need to see more of these Necros!

sami.3801:

Tanky elementalists are GOD MODE. Do you really want more?

And of course, less of these Eles.

Necros have many issues:

1. Power Builds: too fragile for their dps output. Death Shroud’slife transfer…well, a good opponent will just far you, stun you etc. Of course you could take One Foot in the Grave then the enemy will just wait the 3 ticks, which are the lowest hitting one and stun you then (so much for that Grandmaster talent lol)

2. Minions
Bugged, AI Problems, Pathing Problems, No control buttons. That makes them annoying for pvp…to put it mildly. They also take up utility slots and their utility skills are mediorce at best (except the stun). Oh, and as soon as you switch forms e.g. moa morph, plague cloud your minions are gone and put on cd hahah great design really.

3. Life siphon
Woha, a whole line of bummers. You get 25 life while the thief hits you somewhere from 2-6k of damage. Oh noes, wait you can spec it to make it 28.

4. Weapons
Just some examples:
Staff 1 – fire rate is low, and the bolt travels at snail speed. Staff 4 a 1 sec aoe fear on a 40 sec cd…oh wow

Axe – 600 range which means the enemy is in your face and that with a glass cannon build.

5. Traits
Some key traits are still bugged, some are horribly placed (condition traits in the power line and vice versa).

6. Synergy
Death Shroud doesn’t work for all specs. Especially life force generation is a problem

To sum it up:
The necro class is not bad but still in beta status which means bugs gallore, hardly any synergies (e.g. DS in a condition spec) and minions without any resemblance of brains.

Khenzy.9348:

You said dagger is the only one hard hitting weapon like if you had that many other options. If anything let’s buff the Axe, but an underwhelming weapon doesn’t make for the whole profession being underpowered, far from it. Also, Staff, not a great choise for s/tPvP?… Is by far the most used weapon set, viable for condi and power based builds alike. I think we both agree Scepter is good.

Try using the staff against players that are constantly dodging and running back and forth, the 4 ground target marks make it difficult to place, sometimes I get lucky by placing them in the direction they’re going but most of the time they don’t land. I mainly use staff and scepter/dagger but I’ve been finding myself using the staff less and less because of how often players move around.

Death Shroud is fine in a condition spec. You just don’t auto-attack in it, and instead switch in an out for the free bleeds and cooldowns. It still soaks damage, and besides I hardly get any chance to even possibly use auto-attacks when I was playing a Condi-Dmg Necro.

A Dagger Necro does about as much damage as an Axe Warrior. They just have the same issue of being rather vulnerable at that distance. It’s terrible in open sPvP, but in competitive tPvP it can have it’s place. There are a lot of things in this game (i.e. Engineers) that people have yet to realize how powerful they can be.

The Life Transfer subset of abilities does some underwhelming, until you do the math and see how much it’s actually doing with rapid attacks like the dagger. It’s still a choice between Blood and Soul though for traits. The trick with the Dagger Necro is they can have a whole metric ton of Chill to keep an opponent near them too. Again though, any glass cannon spec is just that, a glass cannon. A Necro’s profession defense is just extra health basically, which in a focus fire situation is garbage.

Dagger necro has non-cleaving 130 range melee attacks. That is basically the most limiting attack in the game. If you as a guardian let a necro sit on you meleeing you to death I don’t really know what to tell you. It is like playing a thief with no mobility, less CC, no stealth and less burst. I.e. pretty underwhelming.

Just don’t stand there tanking damage and you’ll be fine.

sami.3801:

Tanky elementalists are GOD MODE. Do you really want more?

Indeed, i’d dropped mine a while back in favour of guardian and then decided to try a bunker spec on it a week or so ago. Holy heck i was surprised :o

Elementalist is strongest profession in the game, it has the best tools to counter a Mesmer and has a decent chance vs everyone else. I have only seen 1 pro Elementalist in sPvP who survived and kited myself and 2 other people for a good 20-30 sec, doubt any of us would take him in a 1v1 and I take 99% of the people I fight in a 1v1.

The problem with glass cannon melee necros is necromancers lack any real access to stability.

There’s really not much a necromancer can do against a class with multiple stuns/knockdowns. And if they are a glass cannon build once you knock them down they aren’t getting back up.

If you get killed by a crit/power dagger necro on a defensive build guardian you seriously need to learn to play.

They are not really underpowered.. What they are though is being guided to 3-4 strong viable builds and rule out being viable without an variation on them (without having to work reaaaalllyyy hard on it). But surely they are not UP (i would like to seee some bug fixes, but which class doesnt )

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Elementalist is strongest profession in the game, it has the best tools to counter a Mesmer and has a decent chance vs everyone else. I have only seen 1 pro Elementalist in sPvP who survived and kited myself and 2 other people for a good 20-30 sec, doubt any of us would take him in a 1v1 and I take 99% of the people I fight in a 1v1.

Was it a max-size Norn wearing a dry bone set and a flame staff? XD

Yust joking, That description would fit 30% of the elementalists