Guild Wars 2

I honestly find it shameful that it’ll be impossible to run my necro in PUGs because people will just want warriors/mesmers/guardians. I mean, jeez, I made him so I could go into dungeons with an army of undead by my side, not get rejected because I can’t just stand there and do like 5k damage in a matter of seconds.

Perhaps a slight revamp of their skills is in order? Maybe make the minions do something more than “They attack, and sometimes they explode”?

I guess in the end I just find it pitiful that ANet designed three solid classes and three subpar classes (and one decent class, cough cough thief).

Necromancers are just fine in dungeons.

People are kittening kitten and discriminate against necros for a perceived disadvantage.

ANet is not responsible for other people’s stupidity and discrimination.

BlasiuS.8961:

Necromancers are just fine in dungeons.

People are kittening kitten and discriminate against necros for a perceived disadvantage.

ANet is not responsible for other people’s stupidity and discrimination.

I guess? From my friend I’ve heard that the main problems with necros are:

1. Condition and boon removal is something Mesmer can do so much better (why why WHY does a Necro have two skills for something a Mesmer can do with one!?)
2. Necros mainly deal in DoT. Great for PvP! But not so much for PvE when most people simply want to clear a dungeon (and if I want to clear everything?).
3. The Necro has nothing going for them to support a team much. Thieves can steal boons from enemies and deal good amounts of damage, and Eles can heal.

I don’t know, I guess I’m just jaded since people would rather take my GS “lemme just stand here and take half his health away” Warrior than my Necro.

You should look at a well support build. I have great success with specced out wells, can keep regen on allies and offer AoE heals as well as vulnerability, poison, and bleeds. My overall DPS, while of course not at warrior level, is rather respectable. My guild always enjoys having my necro with them in dungeons.

Invictus.1503:

You should look at a well support build. I have great success with specced out wells, can keep regen on allies and offer AoE heals as well as vulnerability, poison, and bleeds. My overall DPS, while of course not at warrior level, is rather respectable. My guild always enjoys having my necro with them in dungeons.

That sounds reeeeeally nice. I myself designed a chill/poison necro build that also went into minion master and am designing another that’s focused on eating and causing conditions nonstop. But that’s the biggest problem: in guilds? Sure, why not, right? They trust you and know what you’re doing.

In PUGs? “What can YOU do that won’t make you a waste of a slot?”

Then again, PUGs are generally terrible…

I’ve only ever been discriminated against on one occasion for being a necromancer, so I don’t really find the problem all that prevelant tbh. It is odd though that PvE balance should be this absurdly out of whack in a game with this many months under it’s belt. And to your point about Mesmers, while I have never been actively recruited as a Necromancer, my Mesmer can’t log on for 5 minutes without getting group requests

The only time I was made personally aware that necros are not wanted in PvE was this week for a lvl 10 daily fractal. We ended up 3 necros in the party, so one necro switched to his 80 war even though the others didn’t mind. Then he proposed that another necro switched too, and when we didnt budge, he just leaves the group. We then proceed to 4 man the lvl 10 fractal and everything went fine.

Apart from our 1/3 downed health bug in PvE, I feel that we are very strong in dungeons, at least for “normal” content. Forget about really high lvl fractals though. Of course it’s faster with 4 warriors, but I really think that has to do with dungeon mechanics giving too much power to… well, Direct damage, cleave and Power in general.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

1. Condition and boon removal is something Mesmer can do so much better (why why WHY does a Necro have two skills for something a Mesmer can do with one!?)
2. Necros mainly deal in DoT. Great for PvP! But not so much for PvE when most people simply want to clear a dungeon (and if I want to clear everything?).
3. The Necro has nothing going for them to support a team much. Thieves can steal boons from enemies and deal good amounts of damage, and Eles can heal.

You’re wrong on all three counts. Necros don’t ‘steal’ boons like a Mesmer; they convert boons. That’s important. For instance, against the Dredge that spam protection every second in the Dredge Fractal, my Necro can not only remove their protection, but convert that into 15 stacks of vulnerability for the whole group you hit. That’s huge. Furthermore, necro may deal damage primarily through DOT with condition builds, but those builds also support with tons of other conditions like blind, chill, poison, cripple, and weakness. These conditions are huge teamwide support tools, and most players don’t give the necro enough credit for just how useful he is in inflicting those.

tl;dr: Your necro is fine in dungeons. It’s not ideal for speed clears is the difference, where the dungeons are so easy that you don’t even need support to succeed.

Necromancers are not broken in dungeons or general PvE. They do have several (possibly many) skills and traits that need some amount of rework, but the class as a whole is far from broken. However, warrior damage is overpowered in PvE, as are reflection skills, which basically accounts for most of the current warrior/guardian/mesmer meta. But necromancers are definitely viable; I have pugged every path of every non-Arah dungeon on my necromancer with good results and no complaints about my performance.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

2. Necros mainly deal in DoT. Great for PvP! But not so much for PvE when most people simply want to clear a dungeon (and if I want to clear everything?).

Power necromancers are viable in PvE. Conditions also do good damage as long as you don’t have too many condition damage characters in the party because of the bleed cap (which I think is somewhat broken, but ANet has said they are looking into how to address this). I don’t play a condition damage focused necromancer though, so that is mostly my impressions from others.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

3. The Necro has nothing going for them to support a team much. Thieves can steal boons from enemies and deal good amounts of damage, and Eles can heal.

I run a support-oriented necromancer in dungeons, and it is certainly viable. Plague form (skill 2) alone offers 20 seconds of amazing damage mitigation when your party is about to get overwhelmed due to a group of enemies. Signet of undeath can easily save a party wipe. Axe and focus offer good vulnerability stacking which can increase the rest of your party’s damage significantly. The rest may be a bit peculiar to my non-standard build, but I can also support the party by perma-kiting most groups of enemies using staff, heal the party when they stack using well of blood, res people while taking a lot of damage using well of blood, provide perma-regeneration that ticks for 330 health/second, provide small burst heals using transfusion (the trait that makes death shroud 4 heal), and heal party members to full health when they revive (the trait that casts well of blood on reviving an ally), among other things.

Of the three situations that seem to cause problems in dungeons:
1. Lots of enemies overwhelming the party
2. High damage bosses overwhelming the party
3. Bosses that require a lot of ranged dodging
I feel very useful in situations 1 and 2, and competent but not as helpful in situation 3, which is more focused on everyone’s ability to dodge than needing actual support. (However, signet of undeath can be amazing in situation 3, because getting off a standard revive can be impossible.)

P.S. If you really want to run minions, they are viable in a lot of dungeons. I typically run minions in CoF p1 now because it’s easy enough that people usually don’t need as much support. (However, I don’t speed run CoF and tend to avoid it if possible, it’s such a boring dungeon and has a worse community compared to a lot of the others, in my opinion.)

Conditions still do quite a bit of damage. 20 bleeds at 150 a tick is 3k damage per second. That isn’t counting poison and all the other damage you are doing with your attacks. 3k dps is a lot more than I was getting on my ele unless multiple AoE fields were hitting the enemy. Add epidemic to that and we have a huge amount of damage output.

That being said, necro and ele are my only two lvl 80s, but I still feel necros are quite strong in PvE. Also, with the mist form nerf to eles, my necro has a far easier time surviving most dungeon content than my ele, even though he draws more aggro.

This isn’t an issue with the Necromancer being weak.
You don’t usually see people begging for Thieves, Rangers, Engineers or Elementalists either.

It’s an issue with Warriors, Mesmers and Guardians being too good in PvE.

How are mesmers and guardians too good ?… It’s a myth… in the beginning they were really popular, and people kept saying how good they are. Since many people say something is really good, better then other classes… even though they don’t know how the other classes are… it kind of got stuck this way. Uuuu… get a guardian get a guardian…

Most guardians have no idea how to play, and their damage is close to non existent… i’ve had fractal grade 48 runs with 3 guardians, none of them used any form of wall or bubble.
Mesmers same thing…

Nemesis.8593:

How are mesmers and guardians too good ?… It’s a myth… in the beginning they were really popular, and people kept saying how good they are. Since many people say something is really good, better then other classes… even though they don’t know how the other classes are… it kind of got stuck this way. Uuuu… get a guardian get a guardian…

Most guardians have no idea how to play, and their damage is close to non existent… i’ve had fractal grade 48 runs with 3 guardians, none of them used any form of wall or bubble.
Mesmers same thing…

I should have been more specific.
4 Warriors and 1 Mesmer is the fastest CoF farming team with the right builds.
CoF = loads of money → People do many runs per day = people only want the best.
I’ve got a few of these “farmers” in the guild I’m in.

Guardians and Mesmers have reflects, which are crazy good in fractals when applied at the right time.
Seeing this people go “those professions are super good!” and in return you have the current situation where everyone wants Warriors+Mesmers for CoF and Guardians+Mesmers for Fractals.

With that said I believe the balancing will change over time, and CoF and Fractals are very likely to be tweaked as time passes on.

Whatever the case this thread doesn’t really have much of anything to do with the Necromancer.

As the most people told you the Necromancer is “not” broken. (except for the bugs which you can look up in the sticky)
Also i find it quite funny that some people write warrior when in fact they mean a full zerker warri, don’t get me wring a full zerker Warrior is good for speed clears but not everyone plays a zerker warrior and if you want to compare to such a warrior you should compare it to the damage output of a zerker glasscannon necromancer, who has almost (and yeah i say almost) the same damage output with lesser support (because of the full might staking a 4 warri 1 mesmer group cna do).
Nemesis made a beautiful video on how much damage a glass cannon Necromancer can do you can see it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_391161&feature=iv&src_vid=zqLt4dD93pU&v=n97xhVrhTL0
However, Skill is soo much more valuable than just the “right” class.
If you avoid Speedruns you will have no Problem finding a group for any dungeon.

What? Fix necros in PvE? We are totally fine.

Useless if you run a power build? Nonsense.

I’ve been playing a full berserk build with axe and streghtening Death Shroud through traits that it’s hilariously powerful. Obviously not as powerful as a warrior or a thief, so what? I attack from a 600-900-1200 range, far away from danger zone. Usually on party with a fellow guardian friend wielding Staff, ooooh the might stacking + BiP.

12k crits Ghastly Claws, 12-15 Vunerability uptime, Piercing and might stacking Life Blasts criting for 5k, also stacking Vulnerability, wich means the party does more damage.

Citadel of Flame pillar goes down in 2 seconds with minions, faster than ANY class.

Oh yeah, and all of this with 22k HP still + Traited DS up to +25% life force pool.

Conditions are fun, yeah, but I got bored of them after leveling, play with your traits a bit and you can do some great stuff. I’ve used a vampiric build with dagger a lot too with well support, and it works great too, just a bit more risky since you are in melee range and healing from vampiric traits are not THAT good, could use some more healing power scaling.

I just fell in love with Axe and DS power crit build, plus if you use DS wisely you can survive almost anything with it in PvE, fractals included. Played Necro since CBT and still rediscovering these builds makes it sooo refreshing, since it plays totally different from other builds.

I think our top of things to actually improve would be :

1. Minions – They should have been created by weapon skills, just like Mesmer phantasms. Since this is not gonna be implemented, just give them all more toughness of effective ways to heal them (healing them with life force anyone?).

2. Vampiric healing power scaling need to go up.

3. Staff Marks should be big like traiting for them BY DEFAULT, since it’s our only 1200 weapon and most of us wield one as secondary even though we don’t play condis, or minion management builds. Just give the trait the 20% reduction and unblockable facts.

BlasiuS.8961:

ANet is not responsible for other people’s stupidity and discrimination.

Thats not entirely true in all cases. As soon as players perceive that one class is more efficient than another, bias develops towards that class. Anet is entirely responsible for such an unbalance.

My biggest gripe is that necro’s have one great advantage in certain dungeons (boon stripping or corrupting). But the most useful class in pve has more boon stripping utilities and a boon strip on their most powerful melee chain. Why does mesmer get absolutely everything? The only weakness mesmers have is a lack of reliable condition removal. Really think necro’s need a buffed more sustained way of boon removal/corruption.

Dont get me wrong I love playing my mesmer. But it is kind of a joke how overpowered they are.

LastDay.3524:

Nemesis.8593:

How are mesmers and guardians too good ?… It’s a myth… in the beginning they were really popular, and people kept saying how good they are. Since many people say something is really good, better then other classes… even though they don’t know how the other classes are… it kind of got stuck this way. Uuuu… get a guardian get a guardian…

Most guardians have no idea how to play, and their damage is close to non existent… i’ve had fractal grade 48 runs with 3 guardians, none of them used any form of wall or bubble.
Mesmers same thing…

I should have been more specific.
4 Warriors and 1 Mesmer is the fastest CoF farming team with the right builds.
CoF = loads of money -> People do many runs per day = people only want the best.
I’ve got a few of these “farmers” in the guild I’m in.

Guardians and Mesmers have reflects, which are crazy good in fractals when applied at the right time.
Seeing this people go “those professions are super good!” and in return you have the current situation where everyone wants Warriors+Mesmers for CoF and Guardians+Mesmers for Fractals.

With that said I believe the balancing will change over time, and CoF and Fractals are very likely to be tweaked as time passes on.

Whatever the case this thread doesn’t really have much of anything to do with the Necromancer.

Guardians and mesmers have reflects which are crazy good in fractals (if they use them), so yeah… it is recommended to get ONE guardian or mesmer. If they were so much better then you would see full mesmer / full guardian parties… and i’ve been in a group with 4 mesmers in high level fractals… all of them combined didn’t have as much damage as i did… it was monstrously bad.

So… 4 warriors and 1 mesmer is the fastest CoF farming team… maybe… now… how many of you would go fractals 48 with 4 warriors 1 mesmer ?

One guardian 1 thief should be in all fractal groups, since the walls + stealth pass certain parts can make your life so much easier… the rest should be either more support or even better, more DPS… and the more DPS is definitely not the mesmer or the guardian…

I wonder what would 5 guardians or 5 mesmers would do at the vulcanic fractal rank 48… 5 necros too for that matter…

There is no best damage build, there is only “best at”… and there is no ultimate team combo, only “best team for”… i know some parts of the game are poorly designed atm, but in general this statement is the general truth… as it should be.

So true Nemesis, we could laugh at berserk warriors doing high level fractals, or other dungeons than CoF path 1… for that matter. They die insanely fast in melee, and the moment they have to run away and attack from afar, any other class is superior in terms of DPS.

But in other dungeons, it’s not only DPS what matters.

Nemesis.8593:

LastDay.3524:

Nemesis.8593:

How are mesmers and guardians too good ?… It’s a myth… in the beginning they were really popular, and people kept saying how good they are. Since many people say something is really good, better then other classes… even though they don’t know how the other classes are… it kind of got stuck this way. Uuuu… get a guardian get a guardian…

Most guardians have no idea how to play, and their damage is close to non existent… i’ve had fractal grade 48 runs with 3 guardians, none of them used any form of wall or bubble.
Mesmers same thing…

I should have been more specific.
4 Warriors and 1 Mesmer is the fastest CoF farming team with the right builds.
CoF = loads of money -> People do many runs per day = people only want the best.
I’ve got a few of these “farmers” in the guild I’m in.

Guardians and Mesmers have reflects, which are crazy good in fractals when applied at the right time.
Seeing this people go “those professions are super good!” and in return you have the current situation where everyone wants Warriors+Mesmers for CoF and Guardians+Mesmers for Fractals.

With that said I believe the balancing will change over time, and CoF and Fractals are very likely to be tweaked as time passes on.

Whatever the case this thread doesn’t really have much of anything to do with the Necromancer.

Guardians and mesmers have reflects which are crazy good in fractals (if they use them), so yeah… it is recommended to get ONE guardian or mesmer. If they were so much better then you would see full mesmer / full guardian parties… and i’ve been in a group with 4 mesmers in high level fractals… all of them combined didn’t have as much damage as i did… it was monstrously bad.

So… 4 warriors and 1 mesmer is the fastest CoF farming team… maybe… now… how many of you would go fractals 48 with 4 warriors 1 mesmer ?

One guardian 1 thief should be in all fractal groups, since the walls + stealth pass certain parts can make your life so much easier… the rest should be either more support or even better, more DPS… and the more DPS is definitely not the mesmer or the guardian…

I wonder what would 5 guardians or 5 mesmers would do at the vulcanic fractal rank 48… 5 necros too for that matter…

There is no best damage build, there is only “best at”… and there is no ultimate team combo, only “best team for”… i know some parts of the game are poorly designed atm, but in general this statement is the general truth… as it should be.

I don’t see how any of this contradicts what I just said.
Unless you are just repeating what I said with more words/elaboration.
I feel like you are trying really hard to disagree with me by saying things like “well if they use the right skills” and “you don’t want to fill your entire fractals party with them” but not really proving what I said is wrong. :P

FirebrandFrog.7603:

I honestly find it shameful that it’ll be impossible to run my necro in PUGs because people will just want warriors/mesmers/guardians. I mean, jeez, I made him so I could go into dungeons with an army of undead by my side, not get rejected because I can’t just stand there and do like 5k damage in a matter of seconds.

Perhaps a slight revamp of their skills is in order? Maybe make the minions do something more than “They attack, and sometimes they explode”?

I guess in the end I just find it pitiful that ANet designed three solid classes and three subpar classes (and one decent class, cough cough thief).

Minions can be effective when used correctly.

There are a few ways you can play Necro that are devastatingly effective. There are quite a few ways to play a necro that are completely worthless. This is the same for ALL OTHER CLASSES AS WELL. In dungeons, bringing a necro with 5 minion skills is like bringing a 5 signet warrior. It a way to play the class that kind of maybe works a bit and can beat renown heart content okay, but it’s very very suboptimal in dungeons.

If you want to be good in endgame pve, go try one of Nemesis’s builds.

Einherjar.5761:

Since this is not gonna be implemented, just give them all more toughness of effective ways to heal them (healing them with life force anyone?).

I like this – make is something along the lines of losing 1% total life force per second, and the minions have regen – as soon as the life force bar is empty, no more regen.

at least for necro power builds they do ok in dungions, the only issues I think they should fix is
(1) how the dagger is single target where nearly every other class’s melee is at least 3 targets at once, because of that you can’t LOS the mobs and burst them all down, sure you have a few aoe skills to help, but nothing that can even compare with a aoe auto attack
(2) the range of the axe is only 600, that works fine for most situations, but there are some boss battles where you need at least 900-1200 range, for that time you can either waste your deathshroud for a few secs before standing around again or use lich form which may kill you because you cant heal while in it. works ok but not nearly as good as any other class. sure you could use the staff, but the staff is used for utility, not dmg, try killing a boss with a staff and it would take hours.

and the scepter also has some ok range, but that is used for condition, not power, does not burst whatsoever

Just run epidemic in dungeons. Then you can kill off the entire room really quickly after you do 80k worth of damage every 12 seconds.

Think that is an exaggeration? The bleeds from epidemic copy your condition damage, so if you are running a condition build and have 1600 or so condition damage, with bleeds doing 120 damage per tick. If an enemy has 25 bleeds (which is quite easy in a dungeon), each of them with an average duration of 7 seconds, and you copy that to 5 additional enemies, then

120 dps x 25 bleeds x 7 seconds x 5 enemies = 105,000 damage.

And with the right trait, you can do this every 12 seconds. You can always tell when you have a good condition necro on the team when every enemy in the room is half dead once you’re finished with the first silver rank enemy. It’s really nice when you can kill all the adds without changing focus from the champion. The trait to reduce the recharge is nice but it isn’t necessary, since most of the time you’ll only need to use epidemic once per group.

Of course if you don’t want to run a condition build, you can always do something else. You could try a well melee build, then throw down some wells to give protection and do damage while healing and converting boons into conditions. Follow up with some bone minions for wandering targetable AoE blast finishers, and if you’re taking the aggro you can use the flesh golem to double your damage output with his high damage. Thankfully the dagger’s auto attack does 30% more damage than the thief’s exact replica of that auto attack, and you can get permanent retaliation to yourself if you opt for the axe. Or if you want to use support, you could always use spectral wall with spectral attunement, so you can have a protection + vulnerability granting ethereal field that lasts for 16 seconds. Use the staff to transfer (not just cure, but transfer) all conditions your group has to your enemies while giving everyone in that same proximity permanent regeneration. If that doesn’t work, they do have the fastest charging instant rez at 144 seconds for up to 3 people.

Necromancers have a lot of problems with their skills and their design philosophy. However, those problems are mostly in sPVP. In PVE and WvW, Necromancers are pretty good. Get a team with cooperation (recognize spectral wall, use combo finishers in darkness fields, stack conditions on one target ASAP, etc), and Necromancers are great.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

Invictus.1503:

You should look at a well support build. I have great success with specced out wells, can keep regen on allies and offer AoE heals as well as vulnerability, poison, and bleeds. My overall DPS, while of course not at warrior level, is rather respectable. My guild always enjoys having my necro with them in dungeons.

That sounds reeeeeally nice. I myself designed a chill/poison necro build that also went into minion master and am designing another that’s focused on eating and causing conditions nonstop. But that’s the biggest problem: in guilds? Sure, why not, right? They trust you and know what you’re doing.

In PUGs? “What can YOU do that won’t make you a waste of a slot?”

Then again, PUGs are generally terrible…

Not to be an kitten but your friend is clearly one of those people who just doesn’t understand their role as a Necromancer. They are supremely tanky, they are the absolute best at applying weakness and massive stacks of vulnerability, they are the best at keeping chills applied, they use condition damage, which is great because condition damage completely bypasses resistances, so it’s a constant guaranteed damage. There’s a ton of things that make Necromancer’s great, and just like any other class it takes some time and experimenting to really understand their purpose.
And as far as pugs go, try gw2lfg.com

Actually it is ANet’s fault that classes are unbalanced in PvE. I have a necro myself and it was my favourite until they nerfed fear, that was the point where the class became somewhat obsolete imo. Problem is, as with other weaker classes, that the necro is superceded in every aspect by said warrior/guardian/mes. If ANet could revamp some classes like engi necro ranger for PvE to represent a unique role and not get beaten by certain classes in every and each aspect I might add, would make the game better overall.

PS.: zerker warriors are the way to go anywhere, they will NOT die if mes and guard protect them, that’s their job.

Cayllara.1564:

Not to be an kitten but your friend is clearly one of those people who just doesn’t understand their role as a Necromancer. They are supremely tanky, they are the absolute best at applying weakness and massive stacks of vulnerability, they are the best at keeping chills applied, they use condition damage, which is great because condition damage completely bypasses resistances, so it’s a constant guaranteed damage. There’s a ton of things that make Necromancer’s great, and just like any other class it takes some time and experimenting to really understand their purpose.
And as far as pugs go, try gw2lfg.com

All what you said is very true but the issue is, do we need in a dungeon what a necro can provide? No. It is obsolete. A necro is a perfect class when it comes to fighting multiple elites in dungeons and the group is not very skilled or inexperienced. But in a group that has skilled and experienced players, the necro ceases to sustain its usefulness. Same with other subpar classes sadly.

FirebrandFrog.7603:

BlasiuS.8961:

Necromancers are just fine in dungeons.

People are kittening kitten and discriminate against necros for a perceived disadvantage.

ANet is not responsible for other people’s stupidity and discrimination.

I guess? From my friend I’ve heard that the main problems with necros are:

1. Condition and boon removal is something Mesmer can do so much better (why why WHY does a Necro have two skills for something a Mesmer can do with one!?)
2. Necros mainly deal in DoT. Great for PvP! But not so much for PvE when most people simply want to clear a dungeon (and if I want to clear everything?).
3. The Necro has nothing going for them to support a team much. Thieves can steal boons from enemies and deal good amounts of damage, and Eles can heal.

I don’t know, I guess I’m just jaded since people would rather take my GS “lemme just stand here and take half his health away” Warrior than my Necro.

I have not experienced it myself that no one wanted me because i was a necromancer, i do mainly run with my guild though, but i do run PUG’s also, for most part i am often the one that stays alive the longest and can prevent a wipe, a necromancers biggest stremgth (to me that is) is that we have so many contol conditions to make the boss hit slower (chill) hit not as hard (weakness) interrupt big hits (fear).

And yes, warriors and mesmers are “needed” but only for Cof p1 speed runs, which i have actually done with 3 warrior 1 mesmer and me (necro) in almost the same time as a “normal” cof p1 speed run group.

Actually, Transfusion trait + Well of Blood is crazy good spike heal support, We have, again, control conditions that are also part of a “support”, chill, weakness, fear, cripple, immobilize is all support and we have that, we have that alot, posion when against a healing boss is also grea support, it’s people thinking “support is only healing” that is wrong here.

Purifier.9865:

Cayllara.1564:

Not to be an kitten but your friend is clearly one of those people who just doesn’t understand their role as a Necromancer. They are supremely tanky, they are the absolute best at applying weakness and massive stacks of vulnerability, they are the best at keeping chills applied, they use condition damage, which is great because condition damage completely bypasses resistances, so it’s a constant guaranteed damage. There’s a ton of things that make Necromancer’s great, and just like any other class it takes some time and experimenting to really understand their purpose.
And as far as pugs go, try gw2lfg.com

All what you said is very true but the issue is, do we need in a dungeon what a necro can provide?

You could say the same thing about almost any class. Twenty-five stacks of vulnerability makes mobs drop super fast, and chill and weakness means they use those devastating abilities less, and hit much softer. I have had fights turn into a cakewalk simply because I dropped a well down. And blind/weakness spam, while not as obvious as a Guardian’s aegis or a Engineer’s cc, are still huge damage mitigaters. Do you always need it? No. But you could say that about a lot of the things other classes provide. The point is that the Necromancer has their role, and they are far from useless.

I’ve seen this same sort of argument a million times in other mmo’s. There will always be classes that are stronger than others, and people will always argue that there’s no reason to bring a class because others are better. And as much as I hear this, I rarely see it practiced.

Back in WoW LK when Boomkins were super subpar I was turned down for a raid maybe twice in my entire time playing. The only reason anyone brought a Boomkin was they applied some miss chance, but people still brought them.

I agree that this class needs some love. There are definitely a lot of other classes that you could argue are better. But I don’t agree with the idea that they are worthless.

I regularly run my necro in dungeons. I only swap it out if there’s not a support guard or ele.

The main problems are, we are supposedly hardest class to use/master. Where as a warrior can mash a few buttons and do decent damage before they die. Ele’s/Guards heal everyone around them even if afk. So even bad players of requested class’s are helpful.

The main problems is we are heavy condition stuff. Support wise, alot of the time others are going to clean the conditions off your group, so you can’t suck them up & send them back at the monsters.

As for using them as damage. I find the biggest problem is, sooo many things need direct damage. Doors/Turrets/etc.
The 2nd, is it’s 25 stacks per condition. A lot of class’s add 3/5 with things like combo fields, and the like. So you just push others damage off the mob. What’s even worse, is 2+ con necro’s in a group.

That being said, a lot of people just focus on the ‘easy’ paths of easy dungeons. A lot of the hate is from not being wanted in under 20min speed runs.
Take us somewhere big, slow and scary. Like a 2hr Arah run. I’m often last standing, also doing most revives by many over anyone else.
Things like having 2 allys run over to help get someone up, and both get 1hit down to the ground themselves, all to be picked up with your sig of undeath… That’s a wipe saver that make’s people love having the necro in the group. ;-)

That’s my 2cents anyway.

Necromancer is a mid-tier class in dungeons. They bring some good utility (wells/signet of undeath) and a lot of condition control. The problem is the way the game is designed to speed clear content for your reward and the condition cap really diminishes the necro’s condition capability.

Necromancer shines in survival and slowing down/blinding mobs for easier takeout. They also have great condition control and damage. I’d go as far to say that when bringing your condition dedicated class in your group go Necromancer because of the control it brings and epidemic, but that’s as far as it goes.

Because of the bleed cap multiple condition necros will be pulling back the team and power necros, though they can pull some great damage, they have no cleave, making any other melee cleaving class instantly better, this is not the case in many dungeons but in most it is.

I will go as far as saying that a Necromancer is the best class to solo dungeons because of its mechanics and flexible builds, I’ve soloed stuff that other classes would have no way of doing it. It’s just with teamwork that they start lacking more and more where the top tier classes bring so much more utility/damage/protection/healing.

Necros are great in pve and dungeons. Mine is my go to unless i need something very specific. My issues lie with my usefulness in WvW. I find somethings very lacking, though I’m trying to get over that. My biggest beef is with our mobility and burst. I generally run a wells build for pve and dungeons and find it works great. I’m considering running MM for wvw. The only class that I found to have a bias against is the engineer. I have never had a problem with running my necro unless I have her traited for my power build, which is great for roaming, but not so good for dungeons, at least not with with my play style. I agree with many of the comments above though. Necros need some love, more utility or crowd control. I’m all for some kind of skill punishment skills. I miss those from gw1.