Guild Wars 2

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I think anet believe the necro is too dependent on bleeds which is too easily cleared so they are addressing this by adding a new DoT condition to the necro deathshroud which should give the necro much needed condition variety.

A-net may believe that, but what is a new DoT on a #5 skill DS long CD really going to do to solve this? The answer is not a thing, and especially not if other professions also get access to the condition. Effective DoTconditions in tPvP need to be covered or so diverse that cleanses can’t get all of them fast enough. The only way a Necro gets covers is bleeding. The only way to get a condition worth covering is Terror, and its duration is so short that you are miles ahead by just bringing someone with burning. If you just stack bleeds, then your ramp up is too long and you have to start over on pretty much every cleanse. Now Scepter 1 changed to bleed on 1st rep, confusion on 2nd, poison on 3rd, then you would be talking. Adding one odd ball condition that you will have access to every 60s or so isn’t gonna do squadoosh, even if it is double the damage of burn.

Yeh bit worrying its ds5 so will be huge cd.

There are things a well played necro can do better than an hgh engi or other classes. Res, corrupt boon and fear are why I like my necro. Fear especially is extremely powerful and fun to play. You can keep your thief alive like an hgh engi couldnt by fearing their thief off your thief with doom. You can fear guardians off the point just before you kill them (or anyone infact) when you dont own that point (they have to go off to res). You can now pretty much land 90%+ corrupt boons on a guardian unless you mess it up. Which again helps.

Necro is worse just standing above and pounding down on a node than hgh engi. Doesnt mean you dont often stand above and attack from a safe ranged area. But also I think necro can do alot down in the melee area with fears and chills and condition transfer.

Also, 1 on 1 I pretty much only CANT beat a BM ranger. All other classes and builds I can beat 1 on 1 with a fear necro. SO its not that bad or unviable. Maybe it could use some small buffs. Would be cool if they added poision to scepter 2 or something.

rEaPeX.8415:

3.) & 4.) for that you play MM…with the right build you will beat even rangers in 1v1…I have never fought against teldos updated far point assault build so till now.. so I don’t know if that is beatable but till last weekend..I’ve beaten every class in 1v1 as an MM.

Its not about 1vs1. If u r MM u r rly weak in team fights and even in 2vs2, cause some AoE dmg will kill minions. Also Minions in higher skill cap can be easliy avoid by wall bug.

Condi Necro’s are completely viable in a condi cleave comp in a team fight oriented strategy. Necro’s still have the best condi control in the game, and while they don’t have the raw single target condi DPS as Engis, their AoE application is greater and easier utilized at longer ranges. Thus Condi Necros are optimally used on maps/comps where you can force team fights to take advantage of their AoE condi application, and/or vs heavy condi comps for their condi control. But I agree that Condi Engis are much easier to just plug into any random comp/strategy and do well with.

The other Necro builds need some work though. But I do not feel all of the things addressed here are an issue:

-I have no issues with Necros not having any invuln, disengage or evade skills (all of which seems to be intended design via dev responses)

-Vigor: Necros need some form of vigor. I honestly see no reason why Necros are the only class w/o access to vigor.

-Swiftness: Spectral Walk gives high swiftness uptime, however I would like to see the Speed in Shadows give Swiftness on DS.

-Downed State: I think Necros terrible downed state is the biggest reason on why they see so little play in high level tPvP. Downed state management is such a large factor in determining who wins team fights, and this combination of a terrible downed state on such an easily trainable class is just bad. Necros easily have the worst downed state in the game.

Without going through the laundry list of things I would like to see changed on the Necro, I think 2 core issues need to be addressed first:

1) Allow Necros to be healed in DS. I have no idea why DS prevents heals. I always assumed this was a holdover from when DS was the Necro’s downed state, but 8 months in and still this persists.

2) Poison application. IMO Necros, who are stated by the devs as intended to be an attrition class, should have much much better poison application. Increasing Necro poison application would do so much for the class, regardless of spec. It would provide stronger condi cover for bleeds and increase Necros attribution capabilities w/o affecting PvE much. Chilblains should leave a poison field that actually ticks poison after triggered, and I would change barbed precision to inflict 1s of poison instead of bleeding.

I would leave barbed precision as it is, but its definitely true that necro dont have enough poison, and its really weird that classes like engi or ranger has longer poison skills than we do. (same tihng for fear but hei…)

It is also true that necros can be really good in a teamfight with a condition oriented team thx to epidemic, that can spread real panic, but…. on the actual meta, doesnt often happen to have a large teamfight, usually its 2v1 or at best 3v3, maybe if we had a sort of team deathmatch arena necro would shine some more, but even in that case some little boosts are needed anyway.

For sake of argument my guild ran a tPvP group last night of 5 necros with all separate builds and facerolled. The problem really resides in people not understanding how to play necro or trait it well… I tPvP on a necro and I assure you it’s not as underpowered as everyone thinks. The thing is most people who try to play necro need to stick with it it’s a high learning curve

Sadistis.4257:

For sake of argument my guild ran a tPvP group last night of 5 necros with all separate builds and facerolled. The problem really resides in people not understanding how to play necro or trait it well… I tPvP on a necro and I assure you it’s not as underpowered as everyone thinks. The thing is most people who try to play necro need to stick with it it’s a high learning curve

I love when people like you go implying that people with issues concerning the class such as Symbolic need to L2P.

It really never changes when people love to lecture those they don’t even know.

Sadistis.4257:

For sake of argument my guild ran a tPvP group last night of 5 necros with all separate builds and facerolled. The problem really resides in people not understanding how to play necro or trait it well… I tPvP on a necro and I assure you it’s not as underpowered as everyone thinks. The thing is most people who try to play necro need to stick with it it’s a high learning curve

so… l2p, master DS and you’ll be fine?

We arent saying necro suck and thats it (that is Warr role :p), we are just saying that atm other professions can do stuff better.
You can do tourneys with 5 necros and win, but who were u fighting against ? i mean, there are all kind of opponents you can find, and winning one or two matches with a full necro comp doesnt prove much.
We are stating actual facts, not just our feeling on the class, for example the total absence of vigor in the class, no invuln, crap mobility ecc… at least some of these points should be addressed.

All Necro tPvP can work because you stack up huge on the benefits of having Necros (just having 2x condi necros means you can faceroll with Epidemic), but they would never do well in top play. You might be able to make a decent comp out of 3 Necros, a strong bunker, and a roamer, but I wouldn’t push it past there (and that comp would rely heavily on gimmicks with Epidemic and Fear).

Xom.9264:

If you think you have invented a super build that others necros and top necros have not tested you’re nuts. Most are just not forum warriors and spend their time playing.

I used to think the same thing you did about bunkers builds power builds, dagger builds etc… I thought they were good because i did very well with them, until I started playing against better players. Flat out there are other classes that do it better.

There are a ton of builds all over the place for all classes, dont think for a second I and other necros have not tested and tested again anything you think is a god build.

I can’t speak for EU necromancers, nor all of NA necromancers. However I do know many builds that us lowbies have come up with have had things in them that high level players had not thought of before. You tend to get stuck in a certain style of thinking (everyone does), and it takes new players to bring in new flavor. The builds usually aren’t that crazy different either, but just little tweaks here and there can completely change a build dynamic.

Again its not saying that its guaranteed that the top necros haven’t tried a lot, but if you really think that by merit of being better at playing the game, or by merit of playing the game more, that you know everything, then you are no less nuts than you accuse us of being.

And I agree with everyone saying that there are fixes we need. I don’t mind certain built-in deficiencies, because they are necessary, but others are just silly (seriously guys, vigor please?).

Zenith.7301:

Tgames like WoW where the warlock class suffers pretty highly from being trained and their damage over time pressure is outperformed by the efficacy of mage/rogue archetype burst/cc/control benefits.
.

Not sure how warlock performance in wow pvp can be compared to necromancer pvp in gw2. Affliction warlock damage over time pressure and control was always the best since season 1. In fact, any competitive teams pretty much required an affliction lock, its dot pressure simply was amazing. On top of that, they had a dispel protection in the form of unstable affliction, which, not only protected their own dots and CC (those god kitten 8 sec fear) , but also, it was a requirements for classes like frost mage and balance druid who are weak against dispels. It was only in mist of pandaria where blizzard finally aknowledged affliction warlock dominance season 1 to season 11 that they finally nerfed them to the ground by changing dispel mechanic and dot damage. Which is the exact opposite for necromancer where we are all pretty much crying out loud for a buff.
sry for my english, it’s my second language

Sadistis.4257:

For sake of argument my guild ran a tPvP group last night of 5 necros with all separate builds and facerolled. The problem really resides in people not understanding how to play necro or trait it well… I tPvP on a necro and I assure you it’s not as underpowered as everyone thinks. The thing is most people who try to play necro need to stick with it it’s a high learning curve

I really, really hate posts like these. They create dissenting white noise that serves to deflate rallying support behind necromancer changes. The devs read these posts and other necromancer “living in the buble” players and they believe that necromancer is just okily dokily fine. They aren’t. Play more classes and play against better people and you will see glaring weaknesses slapping you in the face.

Who did you play and who did you beat? I guarantee you that if you faced premade super “PUG” groups consisting of players in the top 50-100 ranks you will get crushed into submission with that comp.

Poplolita.2638:

Zenith.7301:

Tgames like WoW where the warlock class suffers pretty highly from being trained and their damage over time pressure is outperformed by the efficacy of mage/rogue archetype burst/cc/control benefits.
.

Not sure how warlock performance in wow pvp can be compared to necromancer pvp in gw2. Affliction warlock damage over time pressure was always the best since season 1. In fact, any competitive teams pretty much required an affliction lock, its dot pressure simply was amazing. On top of that, they had a dispel protection in the form of unstable affliction, which, not only protected their own dots, but also, it was a requirements for classes like frost mage and balance druid so they could burst without getting spam dispel. It was only in mist of pandaria where blizzard finally aknowledged affliction warlock dominance season 1 to season 11 that they finally nerfed them to the ground by changing dispel mechanic and dot damage. Which is the exact opposite for necromancer where we are all pretty much crying out loud for a buff.
sry for my english, it’s my second language

I don’t know what season you played but past season 8 healers could dispel at will despite UA because the silence and damage was negligible relative to their ability to burst heal after the silence. Taking the UA damage on a single person was always preferable to just letting the dots tick on the entire team.

Most importantly, good luck getting UA’s off when that warlock was getting trained by warriors and DK’s and rogues 24/7. Toward the end of Cataclysm warlocks became mediocre, and by MoP they became garbage compared to mages who have always fared well in any season. There’s not a single season where frost mages have been weak.

Condi necro is fine. The main problem with it is that the main dmg is bleeding, and can be removed with a single cleanse. This can be easily fixed with awareness. People just like to stack all their bleeds and try to burst someone down, and then are disapointed when thier 20 stacks are cleansed, and theyre left with no CDs.
Power necro needs some love. daggers and axe have no cleave, all the channels (axe and dagger) are easily dodgeable or interrupted because they are so long, and necro is not mobile enough to be chasing after people with 130 range (the devs intended for necros to cripple the target while you had swiftness with locust swarm but really, casting horn 5 in the middle of a fight is anoying, should be instant) when all the other classes have such good disengage.
our cooldowns are too long, so you need to think every single move you make in a fight, because chances are youre not using that skill again in the duration of the fight.
So yeah, necro has a high skill cap since none of the builds are faceroll 1,2,3 target dead combos, but atleast condi and team based power is completely viable

Just off the top of my head:
1. Poor mobility: We have no teleport/leap type moves to gain ground with. In terms of weapons, we only have swiftness on warhorn, which is a weapon you can really only run with a mainhand dagger or axe. Impractical and very limiting. Oh, we also have swiftness on spectral walk, which is a utility that we don’t really have room for on our bar because other more important utilities take it up such as rez signet, movement speed signet, corrupt boon, epidemic, wells, etc.

2. Bad weapon sets: Axe is laughably bad. It doesn’t know what it’s trying to be. The 600 range on it is a very awkard range as its basically pushing you to be in melee range and its really only useable at all as you are gap closing to get into melee dagger range because auto attack on dagger will outdamage the axe. I will talk about its number 2 attack in the channelled attacks section.

Staff: Yes, staff. You can’t really “fight” in staff after you go through your intial rotation of marks. Basically, the cooldowns are too long on the marks, EVEN, with the reduced cooldown trait. At some point, early in the rotation, you will have chillbain’s, Putrid Mark, and Fear Mark on cooldown. The moment that happens you are left with a completely useless autoattack and a mark of blood. You can no longer effectively fight in staff once this happens and you are forced to switch. In fact, I don’t even think the reduced cooldown trait is very valuable because you will still hit the bottleneck scenario of 3,4,5 being on cooldown and then you switch to your other weapon set. You then fight in that other weaponset for enough time that when you switch back to staff, chillbain’s and putrid will be off of cooldown and reaper’s will be coming back within 5-6 seconds. You aren’t really increasing your “effective” uptime of marks because you can’t/don’t spend prolonged periods of time in staff actually fighting with an autoattack and mark of blood. Futhermore, compare this MISERABLE auto attack to a Mesmer Greatsword autoattack that hits like a mack truck and the farther away you are..the harder you hit. It is just cranking out significant damage at 1200 range and it plenty strong enough to stay in this weapon set until the other weapon skill cooldowns are back. It is not even close to the case with necromancer. It makes no sense. At max range, you are reducing your exposure to damage because you aren’t susceptible to other player’s attacks that don’t have the same weapon range as you and yet that is the range in which their weapon hits hardest..Shouldn’t reward (damage) come with risk? (closer distance) and not the other way around? Did the same person/team really design a mesmer GS autoattack and necro staff autoattack? I feel like it is two different games when I look at the huge disparity in effectiveness.

Scepter: The auto attack on scepter is just OK. The poison on it should last longer and/or be applied earlier in the chain. I even think the attack speed could be raised 10-15%. I think number 2 grasping dead should have a 2 stack of bleed on it and not 1. Number 3 is only valuable in a hybrid/power based build. This needs to get reworked to benefit condition users.

Main hand Dagger: Basically, with this build you are trying to be a “melee burst class” that uses various CC options to keep people rooted and trapped while you spam auto attack with our dagger. Cool. Except, a thief does the role of a “melee burst class” with more damage and more mobility and with access to stealth. So, why would you take a spot on a team to do this when a thief can just do it better? You have to evaluate all these builds that people call “viable” in terms of the opportunity cost of what you are giving up to bring this build into a match.

3. Chanelled attacks:
Another issue with two of our attacks is the axe 2 chanelled ability and number 4 death shroud. It is VERY hard to get the full duration out on them because you have to be closer to your targets and we are the class that is the most susceptible to CC because we have no stability. You start the attack and there is a huge chance in the thick of a fight SOMETHING happens that causes you to get interuppted. Touch a elementalist shocking aura, Boom..cancelled. Or get hit by their updraft or earthquake..cancelled. Touch a guardian ring of warding…Boom cancelled…or get knocked down by their hammer, pulled by their greatsword, knocked down by shield bubble or bump a sanctuary as you are strafing..cancelled..Get stunned/dazed by a ranger/thief/mesmer, etc..cancelled. Oh, but zzod you can get stability in death shroud!..for a whole 3 seconds! Yes, I can…Yes, I can…which brings me to my next point.

4. Stability, Vigor, Stunbreakers: Where are they?
I have to spend 30 points in a trait line to get acess to 3 seconds of stabilty in death shroud. 30 points is a build-defining amount. I have to spend 3/7 of my points to basically get 3 seconds of stability in a tree where the first choice of 10 point traits are super, super lackluster. I want stability in utilities or somewhere else that is more accessible and practical. We have..no vigor anywhere. Why? Our stunbreakers are bad and can’t be used because our other utilities are too needed by our team, so we have no place to put them. SIMPLE solution that would help necromancers everywhere: Make our deathshroud activation be a stunbreaker with a 30-45 second internal cooldown. Clean, simple solution that would help EVERY single necromancer build.

5. Area damage pressure:
Another class I can’t help but look at when I think of marks and even wells look at the rate at which engineer’s with their grenade kit can impose condition AND direct damage presence in a fight? Their cooldowns are much lower (granted nades are harder to land), but they can sustain a barrage of AE conditions on a point much better than we can on staff. Or a trap ranger..Their traps are on much lower cooldowns and they PULSE their effects. These classes completely outshine our AE damage presence on a point. If someone dodge rolls through my mark it is gone. If you dodge roll through a ranger trap and stay there for a second, you will be hit by the conditions. We need reduced cooldown on at least chillbain’s, and possibly reaper’s by 10-20%. I think putrid mark is fine. I don’t think wells are effective enough either. It is extremely hard to keep someone trapped in your well for its full duration. The “payoff” for doing so is not big enough. Classes have too many escapes or damage avoidance abilities to make them effective. Let’s say you CC someone and get them “trapped” in your wells. You are using anywhere from 2-3 of your utility wells now that all have cooldowns in the 40ish sec+ range. Other classes just have too many escapes to get out of them…Ele (mistform,lightning flash), Mesmer(staff, blink), ranger (protect me), guardian (renewed focus) or (insert class here with condition cleanse/stunbreak/dodge roll out).You use 2-3 big cooldown utilities to attempt that and they used 1 utility that could be on a same or shorter cooldown as yours to completely negate your well rotation. Our cost to attempt this versus their cost to escape is disproportional and unbalanced. The cooldowns should be shorter(with wells possibly having less damage) or the “payoff” should be much bigger with escalating damage with each second spent in a well to the point of significant health loss.

6. Bad traits and fragmentation of trait lines
We have bad, fragmented traits all over the place..In our power tree, our 25 point minor trait is gain might when hit and your health reaches 25%…Why on earth would I want might when MY health reaches 25% health? Let alone one measly stack of it. This should be something like you gain 3-5 stacks of might when your opponent’s health reaches 25% health. That would make a lot more sense. We have a 25 minor trait in the curse(condition) tree that gives us 2% more direct damage for each conditon applied. This only helps out power builds/hybrid builds. This along with scepter 3 needs to get looked at/reworked to be effective in helping/augmenting various builds including condition ones especially since scepter/curse tree are condition genre.

We have our traits spread across all over the place. For example, we have 4 traits that effect staff: Marks deal more damage, Marks are unblockable and bigger, reduced CDs on staff, and marks generate lifeforce on trigger..These 4 traits are spread across THREE different trees, and the marks deal more damage and lifeforce trigger require 20 point investments just to access those! Why is that? Was there deliberate, thoughtful planning and vision when this was done or was this slapped together in about 5 minutes becasue the necromancer class designer has a deadline to make? Compare this to say the Alchemy tree of Engineers. They have ALL things pertaining to their elixirs all neatly packed in one tree, tic tac toe. AND passive boon duration too, so that when they make their HGH builds they get their might stacks/other boons to last longer. to make it such a great tree/set of traits that synergizes with so many options in various builds they have.. How convenient for them! Again, a huge glaring disparity in build potential we have there versus other classes.

Or how about our wells? We have wells are ground targetted as a 20 point trait in the curse tree and reduced cooldowns 20 points into the blood magic tree. Look at ranger traps. They have both traits that affect their traps neatly packed together in the same trait line. Why is that? Who bumbled their way through our terrible class design?

There are many more issues that have been pointed out by other players and others I could talk about, but these are just some that I was able to type out in 45 minutes…

Finally a message to the devs: You cannot properly fix this class by listening to the average necromancer player who does hotjoins and plays against weaker competition. You cannot properly fix this class by listening to PVE players. You cannot properly fix this class by listening to WvW players. Finally, you CANNOT fix this class by loading up your own necromancers and hopping into a hotjoin (like I have seen you post about) and test stuff out. Why is this? The reason is because the weaknessess of necromancer are not PUNISHED and EXPOSED until you bring your necromancer into the TPVP scene and face the best players and teams. And that is why the necromancer needs to be fixed so that it has the adequate tools to be able to handle its role in that spectrum.

Thank you for reading.

Zzod

I don’t believe we need more testing to find a viable build, simple theorycrafting wipes most of the table immediately based on factors such as cooldowns, low damage, low survivability and low mobility.

Recently I tried running a Hybrid Power/Condi build. The idea is not to rely on close range, but still deal direct damage close to that of a pure Power build, while sustaining through Condition cleanse.

Much like HGH Engineer, it relies on might stacking to reach acceptable DPS, but it lacks the spammability of Grenades and with S/D thieves spam it is basically suicidal. Blood Is Power + Might duration runes + Life Blast allow you to have constant 10+ Might stacks, though, if you do it right.

Denshee has a similar build on his Twitch page, though I think it’s a bit outdated.

I think it has potential and it’s rather fun to play! Perhaps someone can make suggestions for my Hybrid Power/Condi build?

Stof.9584:

I don’t believe we need more testing to find a viable build, simple theorycrafting wipes most of the table immediately based on factors such as cooldowns, low damage, low survivability and low mobility.

Recently I tried running a Hybrid Power/Condi build. The idea is not to rely on close range, but still deal direct damage close to that of a pure Power build, while sustaining through Condition cleanse.

Much like HGH Engineer, it relies on might stacking to reach acceptable DPS, but it lacks the spammability of Grenades and with S/D thieves spam it is basically suicidal. Blood Is Power + Might duration runes + Life Blast allow you to have constant 10+ Might stacks, though, if you do it right.

Denshee has a similar build on his Twitch page, though I think it’s a bit outdated.

I think it has potential and it’s rather fun to play! Perhaps someone can make suggestions for my Hybrid Power/Condi build?

Yeah, I have messed around with this too. I would run it with 30 30 10 with scepter/focus and staff with 2 x lyssa, 2 x strength, 2 x fire runes with a rabid amulet. Its decent, but HGH engi outshines it completely in every category.

Zenith.7301:

Poplolita.2638:

Zenith.7301:

Tgames like WoW where the warlock class suffers pretty highly from being trained and their damage over time pressure is outperformed by the efficacy of mage/rogue archetype burst/cc/control benefits.
.

Not sure how warlock performance in wow pvp can be compared to necromancer pvp in gw2. Affliction warlock damage over time pressure was always the best since season 1. In fact, any competitive teams pretty much required an affliction lock, its dot pressure simply was amazing. On top of that, they had a dispel protection in the form of unstable affliction, which, not only protected their own dots, but also, it was a requirements for classes like frost mage and balance druid so they could burst without getting spam dispel. It was only in mist of pandaria where blizzard finally aknowledged affliction warlock dominance season 1 to season 11 that they finally nerfed them to the ground by changing dispel mechanic and dot damage. Which is the exact opposite for necromancer where we are all pretty much crying out loud for a buff.
sry for my english, it’s my second language

I don’t know what season you played but past season 8 healers could dispel at will despite UA because the silence and damage was negligible relative to their ability to burst heal after the silence. Taking the UA damage on a single person was always preferable to just letting the dots tick on the entire team.

Most importantly, good luck getting UA’s off when that warlock was getting trained by warriors and DK’s and rogues 24/7. Toward the end of Cataclysm warlocks became mediocre, and by MoP they became garbage compared to mages who have always fared well in any season. There’s not a single season where frost mages have been weak.

“Most importantly, good luck getting UA’s off when that warlock was getting trained by warriors and DK’s and rogues 24/7.”
Don’t know what you are talking about: toward the end of Cataclysm, 7/10 of rank 1 teams consisted of aff lock warlock/resto shaman/rogue aka RLS. Frost mages are outshined affliciton warlock, and I said AFFLICTION warlock (the first international mop tournament was won by a demonology warlock(snutz)/resto shaman(kollektiv)/frost mage (venruki) )for the first time in mop pvp.

http://www.arenajunkies.com/news/574-finally-victory-for-snutz-venruki-and-kollektiv/
——————————————————————————————————

Let’s not forget rbg.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/battlegrounds/

top 10
1 hunter
2 warriors
1 paladin
1 shaman
3 warlocks
1 priest
0 mage
0 death knight
0 rogue
1 monk

So, really, I’m really not sure what you are talking about, and how necromancer performance could be remotly comparable to warlock in wow.

AT Zzod, really well said.
Wish I could +100 those 2 gems.

Edit: Made a separate thread on the necro forums containing those posts .

Zzod made rly good conclusions, i would like to remind that Necro designer gave us some awesome minor-traits i.g. Reanimator!

And they also added a whooping internal cooldown of 30 seconds to it! They sure learned their lesson from GW1 minion factory builds.

Stof.9584:

Recently I tried running a Hybrid Power/Condi build. The idea is not to rely on close range, but still deal direct damage close to that of a pure Power build, while sustaining through Condition cleanse.

Much like HGH Engineer, it relies on might stacking to reach acceptable DPS, but it lacks the spammability of Grenades and with S/D thieves spam it is basically suicidal. Blood Is Power + Might duration runes + Life Blast allow you to have constant 10+ Might stacks, though, if you do it right.

I played around with a bunch of variants with this theme before the S/D thief buff, and it was fun, but not to be taken seriously. It can be marginally effective on maps that you can force team fights and utilize high ground positioning until they see what you are doing and send someone to counter you. Once someone gap closes/pulls/CC’s you it is all over. Ultimately it is as you said, just a poor man’s HGH engi that does fewer conditions and less direct damage with fewer combo finishers and poor survivability.

Alot of good points. My thoughts:

Power necro doesn’t have ways to improve damage through traits without going deep into trait lines for damage modifiers to hit hard. You got 20 spite for marks spiteful marks, 30 spite for Axe mastery/close to death, 25 curses target the weak, 25 blood magic for blood to power, and 25 soul reaping for strength of undeath. We can’t get multiple damage modifiers because they are all to deep into the trees. Our weapons scale poorly with power, traits dont allow us to get a consistent high damage modifier as they are mostly situational based on health % of enemy, health % of us, # of conditions, and % of LF.

A second point is that we don’t get cleave. This is due to the fact that our traits don’t allow for it. Life stealing is weak in most scenarios (small fights or single target) because we have too much aoe capabilities allowing for too much potential if it scaled or if we got aoe auto attacks. They have to balance the possibility of 92 health a hit with vampiric precision and bloodthirst. With alot of aoe (marks), wells that pulse 5 times/5people each, and staff auto projectile that can hit 5 people, and our channeling attacks that hit rapidly like axe 2 and dagger 2 it creates the potential to keep our life and DS bar up in aoe situations.

TLDR: Once you combine regeneration ability with marks, LF regen, life steal with aoe and fast channel procs, and our heals it makes it a nightmare to balance our class. The result is we get stun breaks on long cds, no stability/vigor, builds that can’t output damage.

Buff necro so Djooce(box) can carry(me) harder plx

Torqky.3682:

They have to balance the possibility of 92 health a hit with vampiric precision and bloodthirst. With alot of aoe (marks), wells that pulse 5 times/5people each, and staff auto projectile that can hit 5 people, and our channeling attacks that hit rapidly like axe 2 and dagger 2 it creates the potential to keep our life and DS bar up in aoe situations.

God forbid Necro have a viable bunker build. While in PvE and WvW scaling the siphons might cause minor balance issues (<500 per AoE tick on wells wouldn’t even be bad due to the long CD’s) it would pose no problem whatsoever in tPvP, because you will NEVER hit 5 people that deserve a chance to beat you with a well for 1 tick let alone 5. Hitting 1 person with Staff#1 is challenging if they care to make you miss and if you pull a 5 hit with staff #1 in tPvP (or even in HotZerg), then you will be the first to do it. Putting cleave on dagger’s tiny range would almost never hit anything else anyway, so who cares.

By the way it would still be easily countered by the following:
chain CC necro,
burst at will,
necro down,
necro stomped.
No matter how much lifesteal the necro can output 2 players with heavy CC would down it in less than 5 seconds if they coordinate well. The siphons require the ability to hit a target, and you can’t do that if you are under CC and they are smart enough to not stand in wells. On the extreme outside chance that the necro is running Wurm, Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor (or Plague Sig, lol) in order to maximize stun breaks there would be so little lifesteal being put out that you would still just focus him down super fast. You need the utilities (wells) to really get enough out of lifesteals to make any kind of sustain out of it, and you need the stun breaks to not be a total ragdoll. you can’t have both, so the siphons aren’t an issue no matter how much scaling you give them.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Torqky.3682:

They have to balance the possibility of 92 health a hit with vampiric precision and bloodthirst. With alot of aoe (marks), wells that pulse 5 times/5people each, and staff auto projectile that can hit 5 people, and our channeling attacks that hit rapidly like axe 2 and dagger 2 it creates the potential to keep our life and DS bar up in aoe situations.

God forbid Necro have a viable bunker build. While in PvE and WvW scaling the siphons might cause minor balance issues (<500 per AoE tick on wells wouldn’t even be bad due to the long CD’s) it would pose no problem whatsoever in tPvP, because you will NEVER hit 5 people that deserve a chance to beat you with a well for 1 tick let alone 5. Hitting 1 person with Staff#1 is challenging if they care to make you miss and if you pull a 5 hit with staff #1 in tPvP (or even in HotZerg), then you will be the first to do it. Putting cleave on dagger’s tiny range would almost never hit anything else anyway, so who cares.

By the way it would still be easily countered by the following:
chain CC necro,
burst at will,
necro down,
necro stomped.
No matter how much lifesteal the necro can output 2 players with heavy CC would down it in less than 5 seconds if they coordinate well. The siphons require the ability to hit a target, and you can’t do that if you are under CC and they are smart enough to not stand in wells. On the extreme outside chance that the necro is running Wurm, Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor (or Plague Sig, lol) in order to maximize stun breaks there would be so little lifesteal being put out that you would still just focus him down super fast. You need the utilities (wells) to really get enough out of lifesteals to make any kind of sustain out of it, and you need the stun breaks to not be a total ragdoll. you can’t have both, so the siphons aren’t an issue no matter how much scaling you give them.

Oh i agree with you 100% in tourneys/spvp. But in WvW, you it seems like every aoe attack hits five people with these zergballs. It would be really strong and require nerfing on that point and the devs are too lazy to balance the game around each mode…They are just to slow with balancing… I already abuse axe 3 retal/spectral wall/ and plague form with the siphon. Plague with chill blind/spam, aoe pulse that benefits from life steal, and near 100% retal and protection uptime. I just think its difficult to balance health siphon with all this aoe pulse crap, aoe marks, etc..

Just because some groups runs necros sometimes and do well does not mean anything. I think its pretty clear that Necros are about the third worst class for tpvp. I would put them in front of Warriors and Thieves. That leaves them third out of eight of classes in general viability. Not awful but they could use some boosts.

Kwll.1468:

I would put them in front of Warriors and Thieves.

Really? Warrior and Thieves are worse than Necro in tPvP? If you’re trolling, you got me. 10/10.

Warriors are bar none in the worst state in PvP. Necromancers are in trouble because the one build we have that is easy to fit into comps is outclassed. We have other viable builds, but they require your team to actually build in some way around your build, and frankly I don’t see many people doing that.

Warriors are only worse because of the condi metagame and crappy recovery. Once warriors are allowed to hit someone they are pretty much kings of damage. It’s not even 100b. They don’t have a single skill that doesn’t hit hard. Have him go happy mode with mainhand axe on someone and see how much damage they sustain.

Warrior just happens to require far more support to get their damage in than a mesmer/thief, so those are taken instead — and each of those brings something more.

To say thief is worse off than necro is just laughable. Nobody outclasses the thief on single target gibs or mobility for roaming. Nobody.

Zzod.5791:

Stof.9584:

I don’t believe we need more testing to find a viable build, simple theorycrafting wipes most of the table immediately based on factors such as cooldowns, low damage, low survivability and low mobility.

Recently I tried running a Hybrid Power/Condi build. The idea is not to rely on close range, but still deal direct damage close to that of a pure Power build, while sustaining through Condition cleanse.

Much like HGH Engineer, it relies on might stacking to reach acceptable DPS, but it lacks the spammability of Grenades and with S/D thieves spam it is basically suicidal. Blood Is Power + Might duration runes + Life Blast allow you to have constant 10+ Might stacks, though, if you do it right.

Denshee has a similar build on his Twitch page, though I think it’s a bit outdated.

I think it has potential and it’s rather fun to play! Perhaps someone can make suggestions for my Hybrid Power/Condi build?

Yeah, I have messed around with this too. I would run it with 30 30 10 with scepter/focus and staff with 2 x lyssa, 2 x strength, 2 x fire runes with a rabid amulet. Its decent, but HGH engi outshines it completely in every category.

I ran a might stacking build a few months ago (still do when I dust off my Necro) with staff + dagger/focus (I’m not a fan scepter) with a 20/20/10/0/20 build with 2x Fire 2x Strength 2x Hoelbrak, Carrion Amulet/Rampagers Jewel, 2 Sigil of Battle, and Sigil of Minor Accuracy. Utils were Spectral Walk, BiP, and Well of Suffering, with Lich Form elite (sometimes Flesh Golem when yoloqueuing). I had a lot of fun with the build, and had no problems roaming, 1v1ing, providing damage support, and destroying team fights. It might not have quite the sustained damage output of an HGH engi but it has faster might stacking and a much bigger/devastating aoe bomb that can cover an entire point and will kill anything that eats the full combo. In fact I liked this build so much I thought Engis were foolish for thinking HGH was effective. Like I said, it doesn’t have quite the sustained output but can pack a bigger punch and offer a bit more group utility than HGH-condis offers.

Here’s a link to the build if anyone is interested in the particulars: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-3-0-kHkH0m33KVJ0;9;4JJ9-J45-58-1;329-S-k8S;1CoV3Hgk11Zb

The problem with that build is the same with all necro build Hackkz….. Necro is an easy a focus target.

Necro is fine until you fight good players, problem is right now there are very few people that take GW2 pvp serious so the perceptions of classes is not really correct all the time. Halfway decent players call targets well and they call targets on necros for the easy stomps, bad players tend to call targets on tanky thieves and tanky memsers because they are annoying while they ignore the necro because the necro does not look to be doing anything fancy just swinging a scepter.

/shrug

If you enjoy the necro fine, just seems silly if you never Tpvp to argue with people that do or even worst to make claims the tops teams are using comps they are because they dont understand a class….. come on good players spend hours just talking about and testing builds and combos for all classes.

lol don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Necro’s aren’t lacking in a few areas. I’m just simply offering a build I use and enjoy. someone else had mentioned might stacking on a necro and asked for thoughts. voila!

edit: I should mention that the build does handle being focused rather well, so long as you’re smart with your CDs.

Blackmoa.3186:

Classes with no access to vigor:
-Necromancer

Having been a forum lurker for a few months now I still have yet to see any builds for necromancer that out do what I was using back in December/January.

This was back when hybrid well necros were rampant and terror had just been changed to actually do enough damage to be considered viable.

For a while before that I was really getting tired of playing necromancer since every match devolved into which team could control the initial engagement and remove the other team’s necro from the fight as fast as possible. This lead to constant focus fire and a frustrating play experience.

In order to combat this I tried various things like working on positioning, making teammates lineback/peel more aggressively, and even using different amulet/rune combinations in an attempt to be tankier.

These changes improved the experience a bit, but things didn’t finally click until they introduced the change to terror. Suddenly fears were a legitimate damage tool and defensive mechanic all rolled into one.

This lead me down the path of exploring a new wrinkle in the “standard” build. In my testing I found that 40% condition duration was enough to get me 2 ticks on all of my fears. Because of this, spending points in the soul reaping tree to pick up the fear duration trait like many were doing at the time was actually a waste.

Instead, I decided to focus on maximizing the number of fears available, and keeping the damage output from the hybrid well build. Here’s what I came up with: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V1_-300-kHVI0p3JJVJ0;9;4TJJ;036B58-17;5S-F6a;1hoHAhoHA1Fl

It offers a good amount of versatility, self peeling, damage output, mobility and unmatched battle control. You have 4 fears + an aoe daze to punish people for trying to train you or for res/stomp denial. You have good removal and a potential for more fears through stability conversion.

Condition classes generally aren’t a problem as long as you use your transfers/consume properly and all your cc allows you to create and maintain space from melee classes. It excels in both 1v1 and team fight scenarios.

I used this build in “high level” play right up until I decided to step away from the game for a while.

If anyone has questions about the build or necromancers in general feel free to message me and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.

Problem with the above build is no good (productive) generation of life force, if you’re using any build with a staff you’re near enough forced to take soul marks as it’s too vital to not have.

Have you ever seen a “Necro is OP” thread?

Have you ever seen a successful tPvP team with more than 1 necro?

Have you ever seen a successful tPvP team with a necro that didn’t have to babysit around it?

Don’t fight the obvious…just make a ranger like I did and laugh while your pet virtually kills them 1 v 1. Even if they kill 1 of your pets, send another at them and laugh harder.

There are strengths to a Necro (mainly boon hate), but they actually gave that recently to a class that already had stealth, burst (from close AND range), mobility, and survivability…so roll a thief if you want something real easy and played by everyone else in spvp.

There is no doubt that necro is bat shape atm, mostly new players doesnt understand it ade deffending necro possition.

Tixe.3684:

In my testing I found that 40% condition duration was enough to get me 2 ticks on all of my fears.

That is actually not true, at least not at the moment; Terror applies it’s damage after each second of fear, so you need 100% extra condi+fear duration to pull off 2 ticks of it.

Also, as Symbolic said, the Soul Marks trait is currently mandatory in any staff+s/d build for somewhat half-decent life force generation, without which you are pretty much dead meat in any tournament game. Right now, every decent enemy team’s reaction to seeing a necro is: “there’s the necro”, <target on>, <commence burst>, stomp with stability/mist form/stealth, so you will need to have as much life force as you can possibly generate before that in order to survive long enough to at least get a peel/babysitter.

You’re also counting in 2 very unreliable sources of fear from the runes and cc-fear trait. While the runes are actually strong and most condi necros will use them anyway and the trait is a nice way to delay the burst, both are on a 90-second cooldown which means they’ll only help you once in a fight where you will be targeted by at least 2 burst-specced enemies with heavy cc and by their passive nature it also means you don’t have the option to use them as an offensive tool.

Right now, the only way to be considerably useful in tPVP as necro is to run with a strategy that revolves around forcing teamfights and putting one enemy down asap, which would allow you to put the massive aoe pressure capabilities to optimal use against the rezzers. Of course you can be of great help to take down a bunker guardian or the focused target with fears, chills and poison, but then the above-mentioned aoe pressure will be diminished as the cooldowns needed to pull that off are too long.
Sure, with a good team you can get decently high up the leaderboard and get a decent W/L ratio <points at self>, until you come up against the top teams that know how to work around your strategy.
But the question is, why would a team force themselves into only one possible strategy for all games and have to worry about constantly peeling for you, rezzing you etc, when they can get so much more condition pressure overall out of a much more survivable, mobile and versatile engi?

Gabi P.3094:

Tixe.3684:

In my testing I found that 40% condition duration was enough to get me 2 ticks on all of my fears.

That is actually not true, at least not at the moment; Terror applies it’s damage after each second of fear, so you need 100% extra condi+fear duration to pull off 2 ticks of it.

It’s only the bubble damage text that shows up after 1 second, the damage can actually happen sooner. It’s synced with all other condition ticks on the target. So if the next bleed is going to tick in .3 seconds when you cast fear, then you can get two ticks with just 40% duration. So it’s just rather random, and the original poster might have seen it happen often enough to think he was getting it every time, but he wasn’t.

In general if Fear is doing 1000 damage, then 20% duration you should average 1200 damage (2nd tick 2 out of 10 times). 50% duration average 1500 damage, etc. If Fear is the first condition you put on a target, it will never tick twice though at less than 100% duration since there is not an existing tick schedule ongoing yet.

Tixie and Pendragon have it right. You do not need a 2s fear in order to get 2 ticks. It is a timing issue based on when the program checks for conditions in order to determine damage. I think having more than 1.5s is worthwhile still, but the investment to get 2s fears isn’t necessary if you want 2 ticks more often than not.

With that said, I ran a very similiar build to the one Tixie put up for awhile. The only things I did different were to take Spiteful Spirit rather than Signet Mastery (you have enough power that it does punish attackers sufficiently), Banshee’s Wail for the longer daze, Epidemic and different Sigils. Very effective in the right comp, but you still need people to peel for you often due to the continuous focus fire you take. Building LF is a bit of a challenge, so you can’t just Leroy into an engagement. You have to hit some Staff #1’s at range before really going in. On the forest map the NPC LF gain is a huge boost to this build.

Pendragon.8735:

-snip-

True, however without substantial investment in duration it is extremely unreliable, not to mention that 2 sources of fear are out of your control, which brings us back to the point of having to sacrifice soul marks to obtain the necessary duration. So regardless of which route you choose to follow to obtain around 50% extra duration (condi duration traitline or master of terror trait), making it plausible to intentionally time your fears around your other condition ticks, you will lose a lot of lifeforce generation and possibly lifeforce pool if you choose to use the Spite line.

Right now imo the necro is lacking in a few aspects that should be balanced out one way or the other:
- ability to disengage/better mobility
- ability to sustain (either through more dodging/vigor or more regeneration; no healing in DS is also a major issue here)
- ability to reliably avoid one stomp
- ability to apply heavy condition pressure to enable more offensive play

These issues are present regardless of spec and they make a necro too much of a liability for the team. I think getting all of the above would be over the top, but at least 2 of those will be needed before the class can become viable for high-level play.

Personally I love having a boon ripping necro on my team. D/D ele’s, guardians, engineers are all a cake walk.

Gabi P.3094:

Right now imo the necro is lacking in a few aspects that should be balanced out one way or the other:
- ability to disengage/better mobility
- ability to sustain (either through more dodging/vigor or more regeneration; no healing in DS is also a major issue here)
- ability to reliably avoid one stomp
- ability to apply heavy condition pressure to enable more offensive play

These issues are present regardless of spec and they make a necro too much of a liability for the team. I think getting all of the above would be over the top, but at least 2 of those will be needed before the class can become viable for high-level play.

The Necro feels at least 10 trait points shy of a complete build to me, no matter which ways I build. One good idea I liked was them making the Greater Marks trait default, your marks just start the game at 240 radius and you don’t have those near mandatory points in Death Magic.

Pendragon.8735:

The Necro feels at least 10 trait points shy of a complete build to me, no matter which ways I build. One good idea I liked was them making the Greater Marks trait default, your marks just start the game at 240 radius and you don’t have those near mandatory points in Death Magic.

Exactly.

This was suggested to Devs last SOTG, I think by Symbolic, but I don’t think they understood.

Making the standard radius of staff bigger and having the unblockable aspect in the Traits would open up a lot of new build paths!

Stof.9584:

Pendragon.8735:

The Necro feels at least 10 trait points shy of a complete build to me, no matter which ways I build. One good idea I liked was them making the Greater Marks trait default, your marks just start the game at 240 radius and you don’t have those near mandatory points in Death Magic.

Exactly.

This was suggested to Devs last SOTG, I think by Symbolic, but I don’t think they understood.

Making the standard radius of staff bigger and having the unblockable aspect in the Traits would open up a lot of new build paths!

Making the standard radius as big as with trait, then make the trait have unblockable+cd reduction!

First of all Necromancers in high level sPvP are inferior. They have good builds but they don’t have great builds. Then add to the fact that their good builds are currently being hard countered by all of the passive condition removal that the best builds run.

Necromancers do have problems. The lack of swiftness and weapon skills that provide mobility damages their ability to roam or outmaneuver teams that have better teamfight capabilities.

Their weapons aside from scepter and staff are pretty subpar which forces them to play condition based builds. The issue there is that death shroud’s attacks are based around power/precision and the strongest damaging condition (burning) is absent from necromancers. Without some boost in damage potential the Necromancer will not only be slower but also deal less damage than other condition based classes. Plus with less total conditions the damage is less spread out and it’s easier to get to the vital bleed stack.

Stun breaker- The necro has spectral walk which is pretty good but it’s on cooldown a lot due to using it to get to fights/locations which makes it less reliable. I can’t think of any other stunbreaker they have that’s worthwhile.

I don’t think Necromancer is terrible but it is below the tournament meta average in all of its forms currently.

The problem is that so long as condi engineer builds exist current condi removal cannot be nerfed or hgh engineers become even stronger than they are (and they’re pretty near OP at the moment in damage output relative to survivability).

Bleeding is weak as a condition relative to burning, requiring too much ramp up to start doing damage. But if they buff bleeding, the engineer has bleeding as well so he too is buffed and the necromancer will ultimately always be outclassed.

I think they just need to tone down the ample access to conditions engineers have and then reduce condition removal. Or at the very least the cooldowns on condi application for engineers needs to be increased if necromancers are to start competing.

It’s funny how they supposedly rolled out necromancer as the master of conditions, but engineers ended up being the actual condition overlords. Sort of how like mesmers completely changed from gw1 being a cc based class to just a spike gib class with team mobility. Warriors and engineers and guardians have much better cc than mesmers.

A lot of classes turned out completely different from what people were expecting them to be based on previous descriptions.

Making Well of Darkness a 30-second cooldown and maybe making it a stunbreaker would do a lot to fix necromancers without giving the class too much mobility, which the developers seem resistant to since it goes against the class’s theme.

That should also be part of a broader sweep on necromancer’s utility skills. ArenaNet needs to make the spectral skills more potent and reduce the cooldowns on almost all non-corruption utility skills.

That, on top of a dark DOT that could act like burning in terms of damage and cleansing protection, would be enough to fix the class.