Guild Wars 2

There are 2 evils to the necromancer currently inhibiting his build options:

1- Staff
2- Condition Removal

A necromancer can’t run without a staff, simply because it’s his only AoE weapon. It’s also his only ranged weapon outside a condition build ( a shoddy one at that, with likely the worst autoattack in the game after ranger’s mainhand axe; necromancer axe has a paltry 600 range and a horrid autoattack with little aoe options and no life force generation).

The staff has everything the other weapons do not. A blast finisher paired with their condition removal. An aoe chill and poison, the only other source of fear the necro has, and most importantly the aoe to cope with thieves and mesmers. It’s also the second fastest life force generator after dagger auto with soul marks. The staff baseline is very poor since the marks need to be traited for greater marks, soul marks, and perhaps cooldown reduction (the cd’s on marks are fairly outrageous despite them being the main damage of the weapon).

The staff’s autoattack as per Jon Peters is justified because it pierces, but what use is piercing when people can sidestep the projectile and said projectile is so slow and hits for so little thakitten ’s not a weapon you can stay on for sustained damage once the marks are exhausted? Despite several mediocre qualities to the weapon, it’s the least mediocre weapon the class has. When you’ve got axe and focus (with its long cast times) and scepter’s horrid life force generation to contend with, it’s not hard for the staff to outshine these other weapons.

Then comes the problem of condition removal. It may seem like the necromancer has great condition removal, but it is actually much inferior to classes like the ranger and elementalist and thief by FAR. You’ve got 3 sources of condition removal — one from a 25 sec cd transfer on staff, one from a 25 sec cd heal, and a transfer from offhand dagger at the projectile speed of a snail that anyone can see coming and either kite or dodge (the transfer only works if it hits). You can get one condition removal for shrouded removal.

With the exception of shrouded removal, all these sources completely suppress the hope for build variety on the necromancer. Condition removal is critical in any aspect of the game, and yet your only non-weapon/heal source of condition removal is once every 10 seconds on death shroud from a trait. People will never use the minion heal (too long a cast time and wait with activation time once the minion is destroyed for the next heal), or the well heal (too long a cooldown, kittenty healing total for a 40 sec cd) when neither have condition removal and both are too inconvenient/inefficient to use.

Nobody will use focus or forego the staff when your only condition removals are tied to a staff and offhand dagger. You’ve simply not introduced any effective alternatives.

Moreover, Consume Conditions may seem great, but consider thakittens effectiveness is based on how many conditions you’ve had ticking on you. Burning alone for more than a second or two on a condition spec will outdamage any extra healing you got from the conditions consumed. Elementalists proactively cleanse, and so they have more effective HP/longevity. With the exception of putrid mark, the same can be said of deathly swarm — assuming for some miraculous reason it hits someone with its stupidly slow projectile, it’s about 2 seconds of conditions ticking on you before they are transferred.

There’s just no competition — the class is pigeonholed into the less crappy of their weapons, even if something like the staff is horrendous sustained damage due to the garbage autoattack, and it’s particularly bad for power builds, but you need to use it anyways because what are you going to offer your team if you don’t bring marks for team fights.

They really need more fun-traits as well.

Most of the traits they have now, esp for MM is just to make it (barely) viable lol

Actually I feel like necros have quite a diverse amount of builds.

The problem is that none of them offer anything that is comparable to what other professions can bring.

There is an entire thread that this would be better suited for https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-state-of-Necromancer/page/5#post2076766

Pandabro.8743:

Actually I feel like necros have quite a diverse amount of builds.

The problem is that none of them offer anything that is comparable to what other professions can bring.

How many of these “diverse” builds don’t use the staff or consume conditions as a heal?

Zenith.7301:

Pandabro.8743:

Actually I feel like necros have quite a diverse amount of builds.

The problem is that none of them offer anything that is comparable to what other professions can bring.

How many of these “diverse” builds don’t use the staff or consume conditions as a heal?

I won’t argue that those aren’t very strong (particularly consume conditions, which is arguable the best single button heal in the game). Mesmers almost exclusively use Swd/Focus + Staff (Occasionally with a greatsword but it’s the exception). Guardians almost always have Staff + Scepter/focus. Lots of classes get pigeon holed into roles because of the “meta” but because necro isn’t very strong in any way there is very little meta for them so their builds are quite diverse.

Power builds use Dagger + axe and whatever offhands they favor. MM uses Axe and sometimes staff or dagger. If you are playing heavy condi or terror there isn’t really a way to get away from using staff though.

All I’m saying is I don’t think “diversity” is a problem for necros, it’s just that most options for the necro are not nearly as good as other classes options for those things.

Don’t even compare guardians to necros. ALL their weapons are viable for competent builds. They use greatsword and hammer builds just as well as staff. The one remotely close to necro levels is mainhand sword — but by and far guardian weapons do SO much more than necro weapons in general do.

MM necro with axe is a joke — axe itself as a weapon is a joke.

Mesmers don’t always run sw/focus — they can run pistol just as well, ocassionally offhand sword if they like it.

It’s not just about how many variations people have, but the efficacy of those variations. Take mesmer staff and greatsword, for example. Staff may be optimal for most mesmers, but even in teamfights a greatsword mesmer can shine just as well.

I also disagree heavily with consume conditions being the best heal in game. It’s a 25 sec cd heal with medium healing. It does not compare to healing spring or ether renewal/signet of restoration, or Hide In Shadows (which offers various types of usage for offensive or defensive purposes), or the currently buffed engineer turret. The fact that some of these heals do not remove conditions is moot because said classes have many other ways to remove conditions not tied to one specific weapon and a single healing slot.

I would have said ‘direct damage’ as the first thing. It’s been a few months since I last played Necromancer, but I clearly remember that I was very surprised at how bad direct damage was when I played it. Even with over 2200 power, I still, somehow, couldn’t deal any worthwhile direct damage.

Zenith.7301:

…

Sigh… You aren’t taking this very objectively.

I’m not comparing Necros and guardians. I’m saying that as far as diversity goes we have it pretty good, but mostly because we have no build that is really good. In the “meta” world guardians don’t really use Hammers or Greatswords, I’ve seen a few using sword/shield but it’s somewhat rare. Their builds are almost always 0/0/10/30/30 or slight variations of that (with only about 10 points shifting around).

Are they stronger than Necros? Hell ya. But are they more varied? Not really.

I’m not trying to argue that Necro is in any way compare able to other professions just that DIVERSITY is not our issue. Our issue is lack of anything to offer that another profession cannot do beter.

Consume conditions is more then adequate as a heal, for any given class. In fact I’d say it is one of the best heals available for any given class. The ability to heal a direct amount + bonus amounts based on the amount of conditions and remove all conditions is actually quite powerful and its up to the person playing necromancer to make full use of this at the right time. I say this because what more do you need from a heal? Add anything else and this skill becomes overpowered. Theres absolutely no need to add anything else like stealth, regen, combo field for a single target heal. If anything well of blood could be beefed up to remove conditions per tick much like rangers healing spring.

The way the class is built tho, most of your condition removal actually comes as a form of counter attack if you choose to build that way. Thus your secondary ways of removing conditions becomes situational. Its a bit harder to land deathly swarm but its not at all impossible. I actually like the trade off in risk vs reward with this skill. I do wish though there was some way to increase the amount of conditions tranfered. It would be neat to have a trait that increased the condition transferred from 3 to say 5. With the staff putrid marks, its much easier to get this to land as pretty much every staff build will be traited in greater marks. So I agree with you that necromancers are not the best class at removing their own conditions, but they certainly are not the worst and I actually feel they do an adequate job of condition management.

I do totally agree with you though on what you say about the staff. This weapon is just too good not to use for a necro and definitely offers alot more then the other weapons do. A huge problem I feel with necro’s is that the traits do not synergize at all too well with the available weapons besides the staff traits. Traits like ‘axe training’ is 30 points in grandmaster and is hardly worth it when close to death has a better damage increase across all weapons although at 50% health or below. Axe training should have been a master trait instead of grandmaster in my opinion.

I really do think necromancers are suffering now as a direct result of other classes being upgraded, in particular the emergence of the HGH engineer. If anything, anet should really balance necromancers with consideration to builds like the HGH engineer so that there is healthy competition between the classes that are meant to stack conditions. Also theres no denying necromancers are probably the second worst class when it comes to being in melee range. It feels like in this game, to be effective in melee range you need to be able to get in and out of melee range quickly (ala thief, mesmer and elementalists). Necros need some ability like leap from warriors, ride the lightning from elementalists or shadow steps from thieves on a weapon skill and not utility skill in my opinion. Anyway these are my thoughts on the class, definitely not top tier but still effective at certain things, just not the best in class unfortunately at anything anymore.